Capsule reviews of films playing the week of March 17 

ALICE IN WONDERLAND Here's the problem with the vast majority of movies based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass: They're too tame, too hesitant and too conventional to really tap into the more unsettling aspects of an immortal fantasy that provides as much satisfaction for adults as for children. And now, falling down the rabbit hole of good intentions, is Tim Burton's new take on the classic, a visually stimulating rendition that nevertheless comes off as lamentably timid. Carroll's 7-year-old protagonist has been transformed into a 19-year-old heroine (played by Mia Wasikowska), who escapes from a dull Victorian-era garden party only to find herself tumbling into the strange world known as "Underland." She quickly comes to learn that this mysterious place is ruled by the wicked Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who has usurped the throne from her saintly sister, the now-banished White Queen (Anne Hathaway). Convinced that it's all only a dream, Alice largely stumbles from one incident to the next; her strongest ally proves to be The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), who lost his marbles at the same time the White Queen lost her empire. Providing unnecessary backstory to an established character like the Hatter is the sort of boxed-in thinking that often torpedoes the picture. The changes made to the source material are, almost without exception, devoid of true vision or imagination, meaning that the most demented moments need to be embraced whenever they sporadically appear. The only cast member who truly excels is Bonham Carter, whose performance is outrageous enough to meet the demands of the Red Queen's excesses yet also allows a smidgen of pity to be applied toward the character's resigned awareness of her own deformity. The actress clearly holds the winning hand here, trumping all other players in this rickety house of cards. **1/2

AVATAR The only film capable of surpassing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the Fanboy Fave of 2009, James Cameron's massively hyped Avatar at least differs from Michael Bay's boondoggle in that it's, you know, entertaining. On the other hand, the notion that it represents the next revolution in cinema is nothing more than studio-driven hyperbole, because while the 3-D visuals might rate four stars, Cameron's steady but unexceptional screenplay guarantees that this falls well below more compatible marriages of substance and style found in such celluloid groundbreakers as the original King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Toy Story and Cameron's own Terminator films. Here, the story meshes Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas with, amusingly enough, this year's animated flop Battle for Terra -- it's the year 2154, and the Americans have decided to destroy the indigenous people on a distant planet in order to plunder the land and make off with its riches (plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose). Employing technology that allows humans to look like the blue-skinned locals, the Earthlings send in a Marine (Sam Worthington) to gain their trust, but as the jarhead gets to know these aliens better, he finds himself conflicted. For all its swagger, Avatar is rarely deeper than an average Garfield strip, but Cameron's creation of a new world demands to be seen at least once. ***

THE BOOK OF ELI Talk about apocalypse now. If there's one positive thing to be said about the sudden glut of end-of-the-world tales, it's that the batting average in terms of quality has been on the winning side. Certainly, 2012 was a stinker, but The Road, Zombieland, Terminator Salvation and now The Book of Eli have all been compelling watches, each for different reasons. In the case of The Book of Eli, the first film directed by The Hughes Brothers since 2001's criminally underrated Johnny-Depp-meets-Jack-the-Ripper movie From Hell, it's the potent religious slant that makes it intriguing. Thirty years after a war that wiped out most of the world's population, only one Bible remains in existence. The righteous Eli (Denzel Washington) owns it, planning to use it for good; the despicable Carnegie (Gary Oldman) wants it, planning to use it to forward his own insidious agenda (no mention in Gary Whitta's script as to whether Carnegie is related to Pat Robertson). Admittedly, the spiritual stuff often takes a back seat to sequences of Eli slicing and dicing his way through hordes of sinners. But Washington provides the proper amount of gravitas to his role, and the surprise ending almost matches the denouement of The Sixth Sense as an audience grabber. ***

THE CRAZIES After a mysterious virus is accidentally unleashed on a small Iowa town and turns many of its inhabitants insane, the military arrives to quarantine the area and contain the threat. But it soon becomes clear that, to the unaffected humans, the soldiers are as hazardous to their health as their crazed neighbors. While this remake of George Romero's 1973 film is more smoothly realized than its predecessor, it's also been streamlined for mass consumption, removing all thorny sociopolitical subtext, avoiding a cruelly ironic conclusion (arguably the high point of the '73 model), and throwing in far too many cheap scares. The use of lowbrow shock effects (i.e. when someone suddenly jumps into the frame, or a loud noise suddenly fills the soundtrack; see The Wolfman for more examples) is a real shame, since the more effective moments suggest that director Breck Eisner could have built genuine suspense had he been given the chance: One character's encounter with an electric medical saw is both hair-raising and humorous, and an attack inside a car wash is effectively staged. More scenes like these would have truly goosed the proceedings, but as it stands, The Crazies is creatively too measured for its own good. **

CRAZY HEART Robert Duvall appears in a supporting role in Crazy Heart and also serves as one of the film's producers. His participation in this project makes complete sense: He wanted to personally hand the baton off to Jeff Bridges. After all, Duvall won his Best Actor Academy Award for 1983's Tender Mercies, and now here comes Bridges, the odds-on favorite to finally win his own Oscar for playing the same type of role essayed by Duvall -- that of a rumpled, boozing, country & western star who enters into a relationship with a sympathetic woman at least two decades his junior. Bridges' grizzled character goes by the name Bad Blake, and that first name describes less the man who bears it -- he's fundamentally decent although, like most drunks, irresponsible and exhausting -- than the circumstances of his present lot in life. Washed up, perpetually inebriated, and playing honky-tonk dives while his protégée, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), fills up massive arenas, Blake stays in the fight even though the odds are against him. But suddenly, unexpected developments on the personal and professional fronts hold real promise. Sweet turns up and, clearly fond of his former mentor, offers him an opening slot on his tour and the opportunity to write new songs for him. And Blake, a multiple divorce' and unrepentant womanizer, finds a chance at a lasting relationship when he meets and falls for reporter and single mom Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Will Blake finally encounter true happiness, or will he find some way to screw everything up? Adapting Thomas Cobbs' novel, writer-director Scott Cooper throws enough curve balls into the expected plotting to keep the narrative from completely dissolving into formula. This is Bridges' show from start to finish, and he seems to be taking particular glee in letting it all hang out (sometimes literally, as a generous gut is frequently glimpsed bursting through an open shirt). Jeff Bridges is a great actor and Bad Blake a great character, and that's more than enough to make this otherwise unexceptional picture sing. ***

BROOKLYN'S FINEST Brooklyn's Finest certainly isn't Hollywood's finest. This tired police actioner admittedly picks up during its second half, but by then, patrons may be too deep in slumber to be woken even by the constant gunplay, shouted profanity or blaring coincidences that clang against each other with Crash-like precision. Speaking of Crash, that film's Don Cheadle shows up for ensemble duty here as well, playing one of three NYC police officers whose lives will intersect at various points during this pedestrian picture's running time. He plays Tango, an undercover cop who isn't sure if he can betray the powerful crime lord (Wesley Snipes) who trusts him like a brother. Meanwhile, Sal (Ethan Hawke) is tired of trying to support his large family on his measly salary, so he figures there's no harm in pocketing the cash found in the drug dens he helps bust. Finally, there's Eddie (one-note Richard Gere), a surly loner who has only one week to go before his retirement. Antoine Fuqua previously directed Training Day (for which Denzel Washington won his second Oscar), but here he's tackling a script with training wheels, as Michael C. Martin (making his feature-film writing debut) can't escape from the ghosts of cop flicks past. The only modest surprises occur at the very end -- not everyone gets the fate that might be expected -- but at that point, most viewers will be ready to walk a different beat altogether. **

EDGE OF DARKNESS Although based on a 1985 British TV miniseries, Edge of Darkness mostly feels like The Constant Gardener shorn of all emotional complexity and weighty plotting. That hardly matters, though: This could have played like an episode of Sesame Street and audiences would still turn out just to answer the pressing question: So, what's Mel been up to these days? It's been eight years since Mel Gibson has handled a leading role on the big screen (2002's Signs), and he's spent the time since then directing the biggest moneymaking snuff film of all time, getting in trouble with the bottle, with the law and with the wife, and being brilliantly parodied in a memorable episode of South Park. And now he's back in Edge of Darkness, and while his off-screen antics have noticeably aged him, he hasn't lost a step when it comes to exuding that undeniable movie-star magnetism. Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a widowed Boston cop whose grown daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is murdered right before his eyes. The devastated dad starts snooping around and finds that all signs point toward Emma's former place of employment: Northmoor, a shady corporation with all sorts of underhanded ties to the government. Edge of Darkness is effective as a cathartic revenge yarn, at least until the absurdities begin to pile up during the final half-hour. As for Gibson, he's just fine in the sort of role that's been his bread-and-butter for the majority of his career: the maverick out to right a massive wrong by any gory means necessary. It's not exactly a fresh interpretation -- one reason the similar Taken works better than this picture is because we're not used to seeing Liam Neeson in such a part -- but it demonstrates that Gibson knows the best way to reconnect with his sizable fan base is by giving them what they expect and nothing more. And now that the edge has been removed from his public persona, can the career resurrection be far behind? **1/2

THE LAST STATION Helen Mirren earned her fourth Academy Award nomination for The Last Station -- she won the award for 2006's The Queen -- so the real pleasure here is witnessing 80-year-old veteran Christopher Plummer finally score his first career nod. Alas, he's been tagged in the Best Supporting Actor category, meaning that anyone hoping this loose dramatization of the final chapter in the life of Leo Tolstoy will primarily center on the Russian author will be sorely disappointed to see him frequently shunted off to the sidelines. Instead, most of the focus falls on Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy, winningly playing the naive outsider for the umpteenth time), a virginal lad who seeks to serve Tolstoy but finds himself caught in a power play between the writer's wife (Mirren) and his advisor (Paul Giamatti). The majority of the film is likable if rarely inspiring, but once the action moves from the Tolstoy estate to the railroad line for a grueling final half-hour, the picture suddenly feels as long as King Vidor's 3-1/2-hour screen adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. **1/2

THE LOVELY BONES Many fans of Alice Sebold's best-selling novel aren't happy, but moviegoers who haven't read the book and accept director Peter Jackson's picture on its own terms (which, ultimately, is how any artistic interpretation should be judged) will be greeted with a powerful viewing experience, a rueful, meditative piece that makes some missteps (particularly toward the end) but on balance treats the heavy topic with the proper degrees of respect and responsibility. In a role far more demanding than her breakthrough part in Atonement, Saoirse Ronan plays Susie Salmon, a young girl living in '70s suburbia with her loving family. One day after school, quiet neighbor George Harvey (a chilling Stanley Tucci) tricks her into his underground lair, where he then rapes and murders her. (Some have complained about Jackson's decision to not show the sexual assault and slaying. I for one applaud his choice; are these critics -- voyeurs? -- saying that the inherent implications aren't horrific enough on their own?) Now stranded in some sort of celestial limbo, Susie looks down as her father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) searches for the killer while her mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) tries to hold the family together. Writing with his Lord of the Rings collaborators, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, Jackson finds a fanciful way to realize the otherworldly visions in Sebold's story without ever losing sight of the tragedy grounded at the center of the tale. Except for the disastrous comic interludes with Susie's Grandma Lynn (I had no idea Susan Sarandon could ever be this bad), the earthbound sequences are somber and often emotionally overwhelming, whether concentrating on Susie's regrets over all the things she'll never get to experience or following Jack as his all-consuming anguish repeatedly gets him into trouble. Jackson loses his storytelling grip toward the end -- a plot device stolen from Ghost doesn't quite come off -- but he never loses his compassion. The Lovely Bones may not exactly follow its literary antecedent, but I have to believe they share the same beating heart. ***

SHERLOCK HOLMES The stench of Van Helsing hung heavy over the trailer for this interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth extraordinaire -- hyperkinetic editing, loopy deviations from the source, an unintelligible plot -- but the end result turns out to be far more successful than those early warning signs indicated. Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, director Guy Ritchie's full-speed-ahead effort still qualifies as decent holiday-season fare, with Robert Downey Jr. vigorously portraying Holmes as a brawny, brainy gentleman-lout and Jude Law providing measured counterpoint as sidekick Dr. Watson. The storyline isn't always interesting as much as it's overextended -- at least one plot strand could have been excised -- and Ritchie's pumped-up techniques often make this feel less like a movie and more like a video game promo. But there's still plenty to enjoy here, and the ending all but guarantees a sequel -- box office returns be damned. **1/2

SHUTTER ISLAND Just how obvious is the big "twist" that concludes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel? So obvious that some folks who haven't read the book are figuring it out simply by watching the trailer. But just how accomplished is the picture anyway? Enough that viewers will happily be led down the rabbit hole by a director with the ability to distract them with every technique at his disposal. Delivering yet another topnotch performance that might help him win some sort of lifetime achievement award before he even hits 40, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. federal marshal who, with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travels to a mental asylum located on a remote island off the Massachusetts coastline. The year is 1954, and the lawmen are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But although the head of the facility (Ben Kingsley) assures them that they'll have the full cooperation of the entire staff, it soon becomes apparent that everyone has something to hide, and Teddy must suss out the truth even while plagued by debilitating headaches, gruesome flashbacks to his World War II years, and disturbing hallucinations involving his deceased wife (Michelle Williams). Scorsese's in pulp fiction mode here (see also Cape Fear and The Departed), which essentially means that this is one of those pleasing instances when "B"-movie material is given the "A"-list treatment. The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis is packed with so much intriguing incident that it's easy to not even notice the plotholes until post-movie reflection, and all the craftspeople who won Oscars for Scorsese's The Aviator are back on board, resulting in an immaculate presentation that fully engages the senses. And while the major plot pirouette will disappoint discerning viewers, it's followed by an ambiguous coda that insures all moviegoers will exit the Island with at least something to ponder. ***

A SINGLE MAN Famous fashion designer Tom Ford clearly tries too hard with his directorial debut, but I prefer his overreaching to the cookie-cutter approach displayed by cinematic neophytes merely aping their contemporaries. If nothing else, this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's novel has a visual style that's clearly its own, and while some of the mise-en-scenes smack of pretension, most are quite beautiful and serve the overall mood of the piece. Set in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, the film casts Colin Firth as British professor George Falconer, a closeted homosexual still reeling from the death of his longtime lover (Matthew Goode, seen frequently in flashback). Falconer stumbles through a seemingly typical day fully intent on killing himself that evening, but before that's set to happen, he spends some meaningful one-on-one time with various people, including his lonely friend Charley (Julianne Moore) and Kenny (About a Boy's Nicholas Hoult, all grown up), a sexually ambiguous student who wants to hear more of his teacher's philosophies. The ending, which would be considered a deus ex machina moment had it not been briefly (and clumsily) telegraphed toward the beginning of the film, is a major letdown, but everything leading up to it is pleasingly mature and understated. ***

UP IN THE AIR In the cinema of 2009, Ryan Bingham should by all accounts emerge as the Protagonist Least Likely To Be Embraced By The Nation's Moviegoers. That's because Ryan works as a downsizing expert, hired to come in and dismiss employees that their own bosses are too gutless to fire face to face. Ryan is excellent at his job, which would make him the antagonist in virtually any other film. But because he's played by charismatic George Clooney, Ryan becomes less a villain and more a representative of the modern American, a tech-age person trying to reconcile his buried humanity with what he or she believes is necessary to survive in this increasingly disconnected world. That's the starting point for this superb adaptation of Walter Kirn's novel, but the film covers a lot more territory -- both literally and figuratively -- before it reaches the finish line. As Ryan jets all over the country doing his job, he makes the acquaintance of a fellow frequent flyer (Vera Farmiga), and they strike up a romance that's among the sexiest and most adult placed on screen in some time. Yet Ryan's carefully constructed life threatens to crash and burn when his company's latest hire (Anna Kendrick), a whiz kid just out of college, implements a plan that will require the grounding of all employees, including Ryan. Penning the script with Sheldon Turner, director Jason Reitman (now 3-for-3 following Juno and Thank You for Smoking) has created a timely seriocomic work that manages to be breezy without once diminishing the sobering realities that constantly hover around the picture's edges (for starters, the fired employees interviewed in the film are not actors but real workers who were let go from their jobs). Farmiga and Kendrick are excellent as the two women who unexpectedly alter the direction of Ryan's life, yet it's Clooney, in his best screen work to date, who's most responsible for earning this magnificent movie its wings. ****

VALENTINE'S DAY Like the holiday it celebrates (cheapens?), Valentine's Day is made for couples, which perhaps explains the fastidious casting of twofers throughout its principal roster. There are two actors from Grey's Anatomy (Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane), two from That '70s Show (Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace), two from Alias (Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper), two named Jessica (Alba, Biel), two named Taylor (Lautner, Swift), two from the Roberts clan (Julia, Emma), and other convenient couplings. It's more exhausting to track than any conceivable game of Six Degrees of Separation. With such a wide range of talent on view, It's not surprising that the performances are all over the map almost as much as a screenplay that finds the connecting thread between roughly a dozen stories and then proceeds to tie them all together with one unseemly bow. And as is often the case with anthology-style works, some segments work better than others: I could have used more scenes with Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper (as strangers sitting together on an airplane) or with Anne Hathaway and Topher Grace (as a phone-sex provider and her unsuspecting boyfriend), and less with Jessica Biel (as a lonely woman who hates the holiday) or with the Taylors (as lovestruck high school kids). Jennifer Garner is fine as a trusting teacher who's being duped by her married lover (Patrick Dempsey), but she unfortunately has to spend ample screen time with Ashton Kutcher (as her best friend), who seems incapable of walking and acting at the same time. Were Valentine's Day not such a tissue-thin confection, its underlying content might be troubling. For example, a kiss between an interracial couple is seen not directly but on a fuzzy television monitor, while a smooch between two homosexuals is presented off-camera. Meanwhile, the only two characters not involved whatsoever in all the lovey-dovey exploits are both overweight women (Kathy Bates and Queen Latifah). With its cast of young and old, veteran and novice, the demographically friendly Valentine's Day boldly asserts that it's a film made for everyone, but look closely and you'll find a center as squishy as that of a melted chocolate caramel nougat. **

THE WHITE RIBBON Writer-director Michael Haneke, whose penchant for ambiguity worked far more successfully in 2005's mesmerizing Cache, here spins a tale about a small German village in the period right before World War I. Aside from the schoolteacher-narrator (Christian Friedel) and his sweetheart (Leonie Benesch), just about everyone else seems to be up to no good. When he's not insulting the midwife who's provided him with years of oral sex, the town doctor is merrily fingering his own teenage daughter. The local minister ties his son down at bedtime so the boy can't pleasure himself (as the holy man explains, that only leads to sickness and death), but is taken aback when he sees that his frustrated daughter has killed his canary by ramming a pair of scissors through its tiny head. And just who is responsible for the string of accidents that's plaguing this already paranoid community? Haneke's implicit suggestion that the actions of this village reflect the ideologies that would propel the country through two world wars has apparently struck many as brilliant but seems merely facile to me. Likewise, the decision to shuffle so many similar-looking characters on and off the screen (it took me half the movie to figure out which children belonged in which households) in an effort to dehumanize them proves to be equally disingenuous. Christian Berger's black-and-white camerawork is striking to behold, but Haneke's brutal moralizing is likely to leave viewers black-and-blue. **

THE WOLFMAN Loosely based on the 1941 classic The Wolf Man, this disappointing new take casts Benicio Del Toro in Lon Chaney Jr.'s iconic role of Lawrence Talbot, the British-born nobleman who returns to his family estate after spending most of his life in the United States. Estranged from his aloof father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), Lawrence prefers the company of his late brother's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), but he fears for her safety after a wound from a ferocious creature periodically turns him into a monster. Although he's physically right for the role, Del Toro's line readings are unbearably stilted, and he brings none of the playfulness that Chaney contributed in his rendition. In short, he's a brooding bore. Fresh from triumphing as the title character in The Young Victoria, Blunt is alarmingly one-note, hampered by a sketchy part that allows her to do little more than pout and fret. As for Hopkins, he's clearly indifferent to the whole project, and one suspects his eyes kept darting back and forth between the dopey script in one hand and the hefty paycheck in the other as he mulled over whether to accept the part. The makeup design by Rick Baker is excellent, although the transformation scenes aren't nearly as thrilling as the pivotal one in 1981's An American Werewolf in London (for which Baker won the first of his six Oscars). Yet what sinks the film on the technical side is the abundance of CGI effects; these simply come off as (no pun intended) overkill, with Johnston pouring on the gore in an effort to disguise the fact that the picture contains nothing in the way of genuine suspense or scares. Johnston's heavy use of cheap "gotcha!" moments (i.e. when the setting is quiet and then something suddenly LEAPS! into the frame or DASHES! across the screen) likewise points to his inability to coax any authentic reactions out of audience members, who will probably be too busy tittering at the risible dialogue anyway to concentrate on much else. As for the epic battle pitting werewolf versus werewolf -- well, let's just say it couldn't be any less frightening had the filmmakers elected to pit Pekingese against Poodle. *1/2

THE YOUNG VICTORIA Skewing closer to the likes of Marie Antoinette and Lady Jane than to stately biopics of more seasoned rulers, The Young Victoria turns out to be as interested in charting the sexual and societal awakening of a royal naif as in examining the historical events that shaped her destiny. Building upon her already diverse portfolio, Emily Blunt handles all of the heavy lifting in the picture's titular role, first seen as a teenager refusing to relinquish control of the empire to her mother (Miranda Richardson) and her conniving advisor (Mark Strong). Once her uncle, King William (Jim Broadbent), dies and she becomes queen, Victoria finds herself free from her mother but now being wooed politically by Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) and romantically by her cousin Albert (Rupert Friend). Less probing than many costume dramas yet also lighter on its feet, The Young Victoria won't break out of its niche market but stands to service its target audience in satisfactory fashion. ***