Author: David Medsker

Someone out there is going to use the phrase “the thinking man’s ‘Ring’” to describe “Dark Water,” the latest Japanese horror flick to get an American makeover. And it would not be at all cliché to do so. Indeed, “Dark Water” is less a horror movie than a psychological thriller, focusing on how the ghosts of our past haunt us more than any floating creepy crawlies ever could. It uses more of “The Ring’s” story structure than it probably should, Faustian deal and all (both “Ring” movies and “Dark Water” share writer/director Hideo Nakata), but “Dark Water” plunges far deeper into its characters and their histories, and as a result its payoff is more rewarding.

Jennifer Connelly is Dahlia, a recently divorced mom who’s undergoing a nasty custody battle with her ex-husband Kyle (Dougray Scott) over their daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade). In an attempt to thwart Kyle’s efforts to move all of them to Jersey City, Dahlia takes an apartment in a run-down building on Roosevelt Island. Things slowly start to unravel when water begins to drip into the bedroom from the apartment above them, which confuses both building manager Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly) and superintendent Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite), since the family living above them have been out of the country for months. As Dahlia learns more about the residents of the vacant apartment, she starts questioning her own sanity as well as that of Ceci, who has a new imaginary friend that knows things she shouldn’t know.

There are many refreshing aspects to “Dark Water,” but perhaps the most pleasant one is the near absence of special effects. Director Walter Salles (“The Station Agent,” “The Motorcycle Diaries”) wisely stays out of the way, allowing the story to tell itself without any fancy gimmickry or cheap “boo” jumps. If he uses anything, it’s the contrast of shadows and light to create an unsettled mood, which suits the material perfectly. The script, adapted by Rafael Yglesias (“Fearless,” “Death and the Maiden”), is well balanced, exposing Dahlia’s flaws but preventing her from looking like a loon, while at the same time peeking into the darker sides of everyone around her, even those trying to help her.

Connelly is fascinating to watch here. Dahlia knows her weaknesses better than anyone, and watching her deal with how things are versus how things appear versus what she’s afraid is about to happen is heartbreaking. Gade, unfortunately, doesn’t fare as well. Ceci’s sudden insistence that Dahlia take the apartment, coming on the heels of her begging to leave at once, could have used another take. Postlethwaite’s nonexistent accent needed work, too. Truth be told, this is Connelly’s movie, and everyone else, from Reilly’s nice-but-creepy Murray to Tim Roth’s perpetually on the go lawyer Platzer, exists solely to assist or prevent Dahlia’s slow descent into madness.

Smart movies have not done well so far this summer (see “Cinderella Man,” or do what the rest of the country did and skip it), but to be fair, the dumb ones haven’t done so well, either. Touchstone would be wise to position “Dark Water” as a movie more akin to “The Others” than “The Ring,” if it hopes to find the audience the movie deserves.

[ust 3.5]

There are two star ratings for this one. I went back and watched it a second time, and felt the need to address a couple of things.

That gale-force wind blowing outside your window is merely Christopher Nolan letting out a sigh of relief now that he’s officially finished with the “Batman” franchise. He has dealt with – and exceeded – unreasonable expectations from the moment he signed on to direct 2005’s “Batman Begins,” so you have to think that he is ecstatic to be moving on. Indeed, it appears that Nolan himself knew when he began work on “The Dark Knight Rises” that there was no way that he could one-up the relentless thrillfest that is “The Dark Knight,” so this time, he didn’t even try; instead, he chose to make a Big Statement about society as a whole, and shoehorned Bruce Wayne and friends into it. He may have stuck the landing – and he did – but it comes at the end of a very, very long routine. By the time it arrives, the audience is exhausted from watching. And not in a good way, like it was at the end of “The Dark Knight.”

Eight years after Batman took the fall for the crimes committed by former do-gooder district attorney Harvey “Two Face” Dent, Gotham is still enjoying a relatively crime-free existence, though the truth about that night’s events still eats at police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman). Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), meanwhile, has become a recluse now that the city no longer needs his alter ego, and Wayne Enterprises has suffered greatly as a result. Bruce abruptly finds himself back in the game, though, when a cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) nicks some valuables from one of Bruce’s vaults. Selina doesn’t realize at the time that her job was a small part of a much larger plan devised by bulked up terrorist Bane (Tom Hardy) to destroy the city in general, and Bruce in particular.

Most movies have a ‘B’ story that goes side by side with the ‘A’ story, but “The Dark Knight Rises” has an entire alphabet’s worth of sub-stories. Along with Selina and Bane, there is Bruce’s relationship with lifelong butler Alfred (Michael Caine), Jim Gordon’s guilt, righteous policeman John Blake’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) frustration with the force’s lack of results, and the blossoming love affair between Bruce and environmental rights activist Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard). That makes for a lot of plot, which is compounded when one of the characters receives an origin story to boot. And yet, while the movie would have greatly benefited from a shorter running time, it’s difficult to say what, if anything, should be removed. Everyone plays a vital role in the end, and to diminish their screen time in any way would jeopardize the impact of the third act.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about “The Dark Knight Rises” is how unsurprising it is. Nolan usually has three or four tricks up his sleeve when shooting a film, but this time around, he has one, and the studio used it in the very first trailer cut for the film (the football stadium scene). He did add a new wrinkle with the Bat Bike, but there really isn’t anything here that Nolan didn’t do better in his first two “Batman” films (the flipped semi truck, the train crash, the hospital, etc.). It’s as carefully considered and well executed as those movies, but it’s all been done.

Sad to say, the acting follows suit, even with four Oscar winners in the cast. Bale is, well, Bale as Bruce Wayne, and Anne Hathaway was an inspired choice to play Selina Kyle (she’s a high-stakes grifter as opposed to Michelle Pfeiffer’s spurned secretary), but Gordon-Levitt is given very little to do as the impatient Blake, and Tom Hardy has to act with his mouth covered, which makes it difficult to do much acting. Matthew Modine, meanwhile, is pretty awful as a complacent lieutenant. It’s tempting to talk about Marion Cotillard, but…no.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is arguably Christopher Nolan’s weakest movie, but let’s put that in perspective: it’s still better than the best “Transformers” movie, and for all of the things that don’t work, give Nolan credit for not taking the easy way out. He aimed for something big, and that’s good; unfortunately for him, he bit off more than he could chew.

P.S. I watched “The Dark Knight Rises” a second time, and it’s funny how much different the movie felt from the very beginning, once I knew where it was going and how it was going to get there. People who write about music don’t write their reviews based on one listen; they’re allowed to absorb the album and get to know it on an intimate level. People who write about movies, on the other hand, tend to regurgitate rather than absorb. We get one shot at forming what we hope will be an opinion that we can live with for the rest of our lives. This is one instance where I will readily admit that I didn’t get it quite right the first time.

This is not to say that the movie is a masterwork – Nolan leans on some plot devices that border on hoary, it could have benefited from some nips and tucks in the run time, and Bane is simply not as interesting of a character as the Joker – but take a step back, and the movie makes more sense. To those who saw “The Dark Knight Rises” and were disappointed, I say: I get it. But before you run to Twitter about how it’s the worst movie ever (it’s not, by the way), consider giving it a second chance. If anyone has earned that, it’s Christopher Nolan.

You’re going to read a lot of not very nice things about “Dark Shadows” on these here interwebs – including this – and while they are not without cause, let’s set something straight: this movie was positively bursting with potential. It’s a film adaptation of a daytime soap opera from the ‘60s and ‘70s that involved the supernatural, time travel and parallel universes (bonus points for being way ahead of the curve), with Tim Burton directing and Johnny Depp starring as a vampire. On paper, that’s a home run, but they don’t play the games on paper. There is a lot of story – over 1,200 episodes worth, the second longest running soap in history – that they try to condense into a little less than two hours, and it creates some issues in terms of flow. The worst thing about the movie, though, is that it’s boring. Tim Burton movies are many things, but rarely are they boring.

The story begins in 1760, as a young English boy named Barnabas Collins leaves with his family for the new world, where they establish a fishing empire in Maine, creating the roots for a town that would eventually be known as Collinsport. A grown-up Barnabas (Depp) has an affair with housekeeper Angelique (Eva Green), but he does not love her, and leaves her for someone else. What he doesn’t realize is that Angelique is a witch, and she punishes him for his crime of the heart by sending his fiancé to her death, turning him into a vampire, and burying him alive. A group of unfortunate people inadvertently release Barnabas from his grave in 1972, and the culture-shocked Barnabas must learn to adapt to the times, while doing his best to restore his family’s name and deal with his curse.

There are several interesting ideas and bits in “Dark Shadows,” but they fail to build any momentum, even when they take place back to back. It’s as if the cast shot four separate movies – the fish-out-of-water comedy, the romance, the family drama, and the horror film – and then Burton whittled them down to one film. It might run the gamut of emotions because of the stylistic choices, but none of it strikes an emotional chord, which is not a good thing when your primary goal is to victimize the ruthless vampire. In addition, several plot threads are left unresolved or, worse, game-changing revelations appear out of thin air, with little explanation. All concerned clearly bit off more than they could chew here.

And then, there but for the grace of God, is Johnny Depp, who commits to the role of Barnabas in a way that redefines Method acting. He had to know before they had finished shooting that “Dark Shadows” wasn’t working, but Depp refuses to give in to the material’s inherently campy nature and plays Barnabas bone-straight and dead serious from beginning to end. By comparison, Eva Green has it easy as the flashy, sexy Angelique, but her character is underdeveloped; despite the misery and heartache she’s caused him, the relationship between her and Barnabas would be a lot more interesting if she were more sympathetic. And we still haven’t discussed Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earl Haley, or Chloe Grace Moretz, which goes a long way towards explaining that, while this movie may feature a large cast, it is by no means an ensemble. Pfeiffer, in particular, is wasted here.

There is very little about “Dark Shadows” that makes sense, from its overreaching story to its release date (May? Really?). The smarter play would have been for Burton to shoot this one quick and on the cheap, like “Ed Wood,” and aim for a late September release on the art house circuit. Cult followings are nice, and “Dark Shadows” boasts a formidable one, but cult acts rarely make for good, successful summer blockbusters. This is no exception.

Last year, he won an Academy Award for playing Stephen Hawking. This year, he’s playing a pioneer in the transgender community. You’ll understand why people who haven’t yet seen “The Danish Girl” (this writer included, until now) have been quick to predict that Eddie Redmayne might be the first person to win back-to-back Oscars for Best Actor since Tom Hanks did it in 1994 (“Philadelphia”) and 1995 (“Forrest Gump”). This talk will change once more people see the film. This is not to say Redmayne is awful. He’s not, at all, but he’s not convincing, either. It doesn’t help matters that his co-star, Alicia Vikander, blows him off the screen in nearly every scene. There is an Oscar-worthy performance in this film; it just isn’t Redmayne’s.

It is the year 1926, and Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is a successful painter. His wife Gerda (Vikander) is also a painter, but struggling to find an audience. Einar agrees to help Gerda finish an overdue painting by posing as a woman, wearing panty hose and holding the dress up over his body, and the experience awakens something long-dormant in him. He starts to dress as a woman around the house (going by the name Lily), and even poses for Gerda for paintings, and those paintings change Gerda’s fortunes in the art world. This cross-dressing thing is no joke for Einar, though; he is a woman trapped in a man’s body, and he is desperate to experience life as the woman he sees himself to be. The medical experts he visits want to have him committed, but luckily for him, Gerda has got his/her back.

There are several things to admire about “The Danish Girl.” First and foremost is the courage that it must have taken Einar to take the steps to bring Lily to life, as it were, especially considering the medical profession’s then-understandable but still-barbaric position on the idea of transgenderism. Immediately behind that is Gerda, for supporting her husband through an unthinkable ordeal, considering the time period and knowing that ultimately, it would end them. (When Gerda realizes that she’s never getting her husband back, Vikander cries what is quite possibly the saddest tear in movie history.) Third, back to Einar, for going out in public as Lily, and fooling men into thinking he was a woman. That’s career suicide if he’s outed. Who would risk that? Einar would, because it matters that much to him, and that is damned impressive.

Lastly, there is a scene where Einar visits a Parisian theater where the men get to peek at a striptease artist through a window. Einar (dressed as a man, of course) isn’t there to ogle her; he wants to learn how to mimic her movements. Eventually, the woman figures this out, and goes all in on helping him discover himself. It goes horribly wrong from there, but in the most honest, heartbreaking way.

It’s hard to imagine anyone besides Redmayne in this role, likely Oscar denial be damned. He has the perfect features for this part, though one wonders if there was some post-production work done to erase his Adam’s apple, because he doesn’t have one at any point. At the same time, he pulls the same ‘aww shucks you’re making me blush’ move too often, suggesting the film is terrified of getting too freaky. His work is competent, but mannered.

Vikander, on the other hand, is a revelation. She is an endless fountain of strength, and ultimately the most sympathetic character in the movie. This is the hand that she’s dealt, in 1926: will you stand by your husband while he tries to find himself in a way that modern science isn’t prepared to deal with, and if successful, will ultimately lead to you being alone? That she says ‘yes’ to any part of that is nothing short of amazing, and Vikander delivers on all fronts.

With the unveiling of Caitlyn Jenner earlier this year, “The Danish Girl” had ridiculous fortune on its side in terms of timing. There are other films that discuss transgenderism, of course, including one this year (“The End of the Tour”), but none of them had both an Oscar-winning actor (Redmayne) and director (Tom Hooper, for “The King’s Speech”). “The Danish Girl” had the potential to change the world, but instead chose to play it safe. Pity.

You’d be hard pressed to find a movie as contrived as “Dan in Real Life,” so it’s a good thing that the movie has charm to spare. The movie gets by almost entirely because of the performance in the lead role by Steve Carell, who takes a deeply flawed character and makes him sympathetic and likable. The movie, at times maddeningly, beats Carell senseless, much in the same manner as your typical Ben Stiller “humiliate me, I enjoy it” movie, but “Dan in Real Life,” thankfully, doesn’t hit as hard, preferring subtlety to a kick in the groin.

Carell is Dan Burns, a successful advice columnist and widowed father to three daughters, two of whom hate his guts (the teenagers, natch). Dan drives the girls to a Rhode Island cottage for their annual get-together with the rest of his family, and it is not long before Dan’s own mother (Dianne Wiest) is suggesting that he get out of the house to give his girls some space. He does so, and in the process meets cute with Marie (Juliette Binoche), only to discover later that Marie is dating Dan’s brother Mitch (Dane Cook). The two share an undeniable chemistry, but decide to put it behind them in the interest of Mitch. This proves to be easier said than done, and Dan finds himself saying and doing things that embarrass himself and everyone around him.

For all the effort that writer/director Peter Hedges, along with co-writer Pierce Gardner, put into developing the characters, it’s rather shocking to see how many holes they left in the story that these characters must act out. Dan’s middle daughter is rightfully punished early in the movie, yet she’s portrayed as a victim of his suspect parenting from that point on, presumably to give the writers one more outlet for pounding on him. Mitch is painfully unaware of what is going before his very eyes, despite the fact that even Dan’s 10-year-old daughter has figured it out. Lastly, and most importantly, Dan himself does things that no advice columnist (or brother, for that matter), no matter how screwed up, would ever do, and after a while, the merely awkward becomes ridiculous.

Again, it is to Carell’s immense credit that “Dan in Real Life” doesn’t go off the rails. His Dan is one that bends but doesn’t break, and that is exactly what the role requires. Binoche is, duh, lovely and amazing, and her work here actually makes me angry that she doesn’t work more. Cook fares better than he usually does (likable though he may be, he has questionable taste in scripts), which is impressive given the fact that he is given nothing to work with. The only other performances that matter are by Dan’s daughters, and as contrived as her character may be, Brittany Robertson absolutely nails the angst of a surly teenager in love.

“Dan in Real Life” is not a perfect movie by any means, but right when you’re about to give it credit for not being an unwatchable wreck (ahem, “Along Came Polly,” the definitive “Everybody Hates Ben” movie), you remember that it also had the potential to be both a great family comedy and a great romantic comedy. In the end, it’s neither a wreck nor great, but it finds a way to succeed as something in between.

This is the movie that I’ve been waiting for David Fincher to make since “Fight Club.” “Zodiac” has its supporters, but I was not one of them, which means it’s been almost a decade since Fincher delivered something I considered to be on par with his abilities, and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is it. Beautiful, wildly ambitious and a technical marvel, it’s what going to the movies is all about. Fans of Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” should get in line right now.

The movie begins at the story’s end, with an elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett) dying in a New Orleans hospital bed. Her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond), in an attempt to comfort her, finds a diary that contains not her words but those of Benjamin Button, a boy who was born on the day the Great War ended but was abandoned by his father (mother died during birth) when he saw that his baby looked like an old man. Left at the doorstep of a nearby nursing home, Benjamin is raised by the home’s caretaker Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), and despite being a child, he looks just like everyone around him. When a new woman comes to stay at the home, her granddaughter Daisy (played by Elle Fanning as a child) comes to visit, and the young/old Benjamin is smitten. As Daisy gets older, Benjamin gets younger, and their lives go in different directions. Daisy becomes a dancer; Benjamin works on a tug boat and gets roped into World War II. Neither, however, forgets about the other, and Caroline can’t believe her mother kept this torrid love affair a secret.

Fincher executes some jaw-dropping sequences here – the Great War and World War II scenes are flat-out stunning, a recurring bit involving one very unlucky guest at the nursing home gets a laugh every time, and even the title cards are amazing – but the most impressive feat is how they de-age Pitt. Making him look older than his current age (45), that’s easy; when he gets older/younger, however, it’s astonishingly real. There must be some CGI involved (Robert Zemeckis’ “Polar Express” technology in the live-action realm?), because if such a makeup existed, there would be riots whenever it hit the shelves.

Pitt and Blanchett may be the movie’s leads, but there isn’t a single bum performance to be found here. Taraji P. Henson is a stitch as Queenie; Benjamin’s father Thomas (Jason Flemyng) reeks of sadness as he tries to get to know the son he abandoned; the preacher at Queenie’s church (Lance E. Nichols) has one showstopping scene, and the crew on Benjamin’s tugboat, from Captain Mike (Jared Harris) to John Grimm (Richmond Arquette) offer invaluable support to the main characters. Ironically, their roles turn out to be more nuanced than Tilda Swinton’s, who plays Benjamin’s onetime love interest Elizabeth. It’s tempting to call her appearance here stunt casting, but given the facial similarities between Blanchett and Swinton, it’s actually a genius move; Benjamin loves her because she reminds him of Daisy.

“Benjamin Button” is a welcome sight in such cynical times. Fincher pulls a stunt of James Cameron proportions, in that he’s commissioned to deliver a crowd-pleasing love story and instead delivers a crowd-pleasing work of art. Death creeps around every scene, yet the movie’s tone is optimistic, even when it addresses Benjamin and Daisy’s aging dilemma. Tragic and sad – the movie’s final ten minutes are heartbreaking – but not depressing. Shrouded in death, but not morbid and at times laugh-out-loud funny. This is one for the ages

If this movie had a plot, it would be dangerous. As it is, “The Croods” is a rough sketch of an idea, kept afloat courtesy of some well-timed gags. It has heart and a fair share of laughs, and it’s hard not to like the message that we must evolve as a species if we intend to survive, but it feels like a sitcom episode stretched out to a grueling 98 minutes. Ninety-eight-minute movies aren’t supposed to feel long. This one does.

The Croods are a family of cavepeople who have outlived their Neanderthal contemporaries by playing it very, very safe. The father Grug (Nicolas Cage) insists that everyone stay near their cave, and to never leave the cave at night, much to the chagrin of his curious daughter Eep (Emma Stone). One night, unable to sleep, Eep sees a flickering light outside the cave. She sneaks out to investigate, and meets Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a homo sapien boy who warns her that the world is coming to an end (it’s actually continental drift), and that she and her family must find better, higher ground if they wish to survive. This idea, of course, does not sit well with Grug, but it is not long before Guy is proven right, which creates, in Grug’s mind anyway, a battle for supremacy between brains and brawn.

This is the kind of movie that sweats the small stuff – the disaster sequences will make Roland Emmerich squeal, and the animals they created, especially the piranha birds, are both amusing and inspired – but for some reason, they don’t put the same effort into the story. It gets to the point where they let Cage off his leash (never a good idea) and do this bit where Grug tries to be a thinker like Guy, only Cage sounds like he’s trying to channel Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.” On the one hand, it’s kind of fun to see an animated film play it loose and experiment. On the other hand, it feels forced and out of step with everything around it.

They sure did a nice job of casting the film though, rounding out the A-list firepower with indie queen Catherine Keener, funnyman Clark Duke, who makes a very forgettable character memorable, and Cloris Leachman as Keener’s mom, though to be fair most of Leachman’s laughs come from her character’s actions rather than her words (she’s good with a stick). In spite of these nice touches, “The Croods” is too underdeveloped to pose a threat to its modern-day animated peers. Insert your own joke here about the caveman movie suffering from a lack of development.

Cowboys and aliens in the same movie should create some together-at-last levels of euphoria, and yet “Cowboys & Aliens” is shockingly dull, lacking in tension (though there were several story arcs teeming with the stuff) and crippled by the Slowly Revealing Repressed Memory story device. The subject matter had the potential to be the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of movies, but instead turned out to be Nuts & Gum.

Set sometime during the gold rush, a man (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert with no memory, a strange metal bracelet attached to his wrist, and surprisingly good fighting skills. He finds his way to the town of Absolution (presumably just down the road from Mercy and Redemption) and becomes a folk hero after he embarrasses Percy (Paul Dano), the bully son of local rancher and original gangsta Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). The local sheriff discovers that this new drifter is actually wanted criminal Jake Lonergan, but before he can be carted off to jail, a group of spaceships descend upon the city and abduct nearly half the townspeople. Jake and Woodrow form a reluctant alliance to find and free the abductees, one of whom is Percy, while each hopes that Jake’s memory comes back in enough time to be of use to them.

This movie should have been flying high on nervous energy alone. Not only did Jake emasculate Dolarhyde’s son (and break one of his bones for good measure), he stole money from Dolarhyde himself. Whatever scenario puts them together as a team should have made for “3:10 to Yuma”-type levels of reluctant buddy chemistry, yet from nearly the get-go, the two act like old friends. Even when the local Apache Indian tribe gets involved, the deeply-entrenched prejudices between white man and Native American are resolved and put aside rather quickly. Granted, these are the events that should ultimately take place in a story like this, but it should never happen as quickly, or as cleanly, as it does here, especially in a movie that isn’t exactly what one would call a non-stop thrill ride.

This is, of course, a polite way of saying that “Cowboys & Aliens” is, well, boring. It’s tempting to blame it on the the lack of action sequences, but in truth, that isn’t the problem; it’s what the movie does – or more accurately, doesn’t do – during the quiet moments that do it in. The recurring theme in terms of character development is ‘man up,’ from Sam Rockwell’s milquetoast bartender to the young Indian boy lucky enough to walk away from a staredown with one of the big baddies. It’s a fitting motto for the situation, but not particularly engrossing. The movie even pushes Olivia Wilde on Daniel Craig as a love interest, despite the fact that he just lost the love of his life no more than three days earlier. The tone of the script (written by no less than five people) has a bipolar nature to it, careening between heartfelt and callous in a moment’s notice.

Talking about the acting in “Cowboys & Aliens” is kind of pointless, since it really doesn’t change anything about what works and doesn’t work in the movie itself. Paul Dano, though, deserves a mention for his wholly unconvincing performance as the chicken hawk Percy. The better question is what lured Jon Favreau into making this movie. His filmography isn’t quite on par with Christopher Nolan, but he has shown pretty shrewd instincts when it comes to directorial projects. Even “Zathura” is more enjoyable than this, so why did he agree to make this movie? One wonders if there is a darker, grittier script for “Cowboys & Aliens” on Favreau’s night stand, dog-eared and tear-stained over what might have been.

Renny Harlin should seriously consider having his name legally changed to Alan Smithee. That way, whenever some movie is released that credits the infamous pseudonym as its director, Harlin could at least say, “Nope, that wasn’t me,” and it would be plausible that he’s telling the truth. Yes, “The Covenant” is that bad. Granted, we’re talking about one of the best bad-movie directors of all time (“Cutthroat Island,” “Driven,” “Deep Blue Sea”), so no one was expecting much from him to begin with…and he still under-delivered. Harlin’s 1996 movie “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” one of the best bad movies ever made, looks like “The Godfather” compared to this.

The movie begins with a crawl that explains how four families with supernatural powers escaped to America hundreds of years ago to avoid persecution, then entered a vow of silence to maintain their safety. One of the families was ratted out and killed, while the other four stayed true to their word. The power has been passed down to the present day to first-born sons Caleb (Steven Strait), Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Reid (Toby Hemingway) and Tyler (Chase Crawford), who all attend a ritzy boarding school. Caleb meets cute with Sarah (Laura Ramsey), while Pogue’s girlfriend Kate (Jessica Lucas) gets a little too close to new guy Chase (Sebastian Stan). The four covenant members begin to notice some strange goings-on – a disturbance in the Force, if you will – and Caleb suspects the hot-headed Reid is getting addicted to his power, which apparently will age you prematurely with excessive use. Pretty soon, though, the boys realize that the fifth family was not exterminated after all, and the surviving heir is out for revenge.

The movie is all wrong from the very first scene. The four boys pull a “Lost Boys”/”Underworld”-style drop from a cliff down to a beach party, a gross misuse of their powers (but nothing compared to what they do when chased by the police). The shot implies that the boys are corrupt narcissists when they’re not, which means that the scene only exists for the sake of doing a fancy FX shot. Even worse, from that scene on, the whole Three Musketeers credo that we assume the group maintains is thrown out the window, replaced with Caleb ruling the other three boys with an iron fist, making it less of a covenant than a dictatorship. Snotty jerk Aaron (Kyle Schmid) gets in the boys’ faces at the beach and establishes himself straight away as a villain, but he’s tossed aside about 30 minutes in and is never heard from again. (Speaking of Schmid, good luck telling the difference between him and good guy Kitsch, as they could pass for twins, which should go down on the casting director’s permanent record.) They set up Reid as a potential third dot in a love triangle with Caleb and Sarah, only to drop the thread almost as soon as they start it. Two of the characters are visited by nasty beasties called darklings, though the significance of the darklings is never explained. And I’d love to see a school anywhere in the world that has showers as fancy as the one Sarah uses here.

And let us discuss the acting, shall we? The supposedly hot-headed Hemingway has all the menace of one of those lap dogs that pees when it gets excited. (The producers surely thought they were clever when they had him say “Harry Potter can kiss my ass!”, since Hemingway is a dead ringer for Tom Felton, who plays Potter nemesis Draco Malfoy in that series.) Strait looks a little like Josh Hartnett and Keanu Reeves, but luckily can out-act both of them. Kitsch and Crawford are window dressing by the second act, especially Crawford, whose existence is barely acknowledged. Lastly, there’s Sebastian Stan, who has to be the lovechild of Scott Wolf and Sean Astin with the acting “talents” of Matthew Lillard. None of that last sentence, sadly, is an exaggeration, especially the bit about Lillard. Hoo boy, is he bad in this.

Someone at Screen Gems must have pictures of Harlin in a compromising position with some kind of farm animal. Either that or the summer house in Vienna needed some work. Those are the only reasonable explanations why he would take on a project like “The Covenant,” which is slumming even by his standards. It’s going to take him years to work this one off, assuming he ever does. In fact, this movie might be the long kiss goodnight to Harlin’s career. A bit of advice, Renny: sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t make.

If the animators behind Tim Burton’s love letters to Ray Harryhausen put as much effort into the story they’re telling as they put into the ten-inch stick figures that tell it, they would truly be dangerous. His first stop-motion foray, 1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” was charming but flawed, too impressed with its technical achievement for its own good. The same affliction mars “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” as well; it’s visually stunning, leaps and bounds beyond both “Nightmare” and 1995’s “James and the Giant Peach.” The story, however, is seriously lacking, and the tunes aren’t that good, either.

Johnny Depp stars as Victor Van Dort, the son of two new-money fishing magnates who have arranged for Victor to marry Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson), the daughter of old-money royalty whose family is in fact dead broke. Victor is smitten with her when he finally sees her, but is utterly terrified when having to rehearse his vows and screws them up repeatedly. Walking through the woods after his embarrassing ordeal, Victor is determined to get the vows right when it counts, and rehearses to the trees, even placing the ring on a branch on the ground. He soon realizes, though, that the branch is not a branch but the bony, dead finger of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a lovely girl who was murdered on her wedding day and swore that someday she would be a blushing bride (buried in her wedding dress and everything). Emily takes Victor “underground,” where she and all of her dead friends live, thinking they will “live” happily ever after, but is none too pleased to learn of this other living woman that’s complicating things.

Tremendous potential abounds here. There’s a living fiancé and a dead wife. You have journeys between this world and the land of the dead. You have scheming parents (Emily’s, voiced by Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney) forsaking their daughter’s happiness in exchange for money. You have the family thinking Victoria’s nuts when she sees a dead girl claiming to be Victor’s wife. You have a worm that lives in Emily’s head that looks and sounds like Peter Lorre. Lastly, you have a man who wants to experience love on his own terms, but instead has to deal with it in the most unlikely terms imaginable. They had the makings of something both deeply moving and tragic.

Had the filmmakers put as much effort into storytelling as they did in the animation, that is. The conversations suffer from the age-old joke about movie dialogue, where if any complications could easily be cleared up with one simple sentence, then for God’s sake don’t say it. Also, Victor makes a decision with regard to one of his betrothed that’s more convenient than plausible, and the manner in which they deal with a meddling suitor of Emily is mighty convenient as well. For as many concepts as they brought to the table, no one seemed terribly worried about making the concepts work together. Even Danny Elfman’s songs (there are only a few of them) are half-baked compared to his work in “Nightmare.” A shame, especially when considering that Burton assembled a staggering list of voice talent to bring it all to life, a veritable who’s who of Burtondom that includes not just Depp, Bonham Carter and Finney but Christopher Lee, Tracy Ullman, Michael Gough (Alfred from the “Batman” movies), Jane Horrocks and Richard E. Grant.

What the moviemakers working in cutting edge technology must remember is that audiences will be perfectly happy with a movie that doesn’t look spotless as long as it means something. There’s enough empty-headed nonsense out there already, and “Corpse Bride,” sadly, only contributes to the clutter. A golden opportunity, missed.