Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Oct. 22 

Current Releases

BODY OF LIES Despite Russell Crowe's shared marquee billing, this is really Leonardo DiCaprio's film, as the young thespian handles the part of Roger Ferris, a compassionate CIA point man working in the Middle East under the jaded eye of his ruthless superior (Crowe) back in the U.S. Hoping to track down a bin Laden-like terrorist (a menacing Alon Aboutboul) responsible for a series of attacks on America and its allies, Ferris ends up traveling to Jordan and entering into a terse relationship with Hani Salaam (Stardust's Mark Strong), the head of Jordanian intelligence. The film's best scenes are between DiCaprio and Strong, as their characters alternate between working together and keeping each other at arm's length. Better than the vast majority of the post-9/11 terrorist yarns, Body of Lies is both more ambiguous and ambitious than such heavy-handed duds as Rendition and Redacted. Director Ridley Scott (who last teamed with Crowe on American Gangster) and The Departed's Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monaghan (working from David Ignatius' novel) refrain from merely putting Ferris and Hoffman through the good-cop-bad-cop routine: Ferris' idealism isn't always beneficial, while Hoffman might be a prick, but he occasionally exhibits more clarity than might be expected. And even a superfluous romance between Ferris and a Muslim nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) allows for some insight into societal disapproval for such a coupling, as the pair can't even shake hands in public. It's the extra attention to smaller details that gives this Body its necessary heft. ***

BURN AFTER READING As is the case with most great filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen produce only two classifications of pictures. There's Major Coen, like No Country for Old Men and Fargo, and there's Minor Coen, such as Intolerable Cruelty and The Big Lebowski. (And then there's the strange case of Raising Arizona, which looks Minor but is Major every step of the way.) Burn After Reading is decidedly Minor Coen, which means that it's still more enjoyable than a lot of the product out there. With George Clooney and Brad Pitt in full-on clown mode, the film feels as much of an insignificant riff as those Ocean heist flicks, but with the Coens at the helm, it features a pitch-black comic sensibility that will either attract or repel moviegoers. The memoirs of a recently fired CIA wonk (John Malkovich) accidentally fall into the hands of a pair of idiotic gym employees (Pitt and Frances McDormand). Their awkward attempts at blackmail produce a vortex of misunderstandings that also ensnares the ex-CIA suit's aloof wife (Tilda Swinton) and her lover (Clooney), a bundle of energy who enjoys jogging, womanizing and building stuff in his basement (his creation yields one of the film's biggest laughs and will be at the top of most women's Christmas wish lists). The three guys are more fun to watch than the two gals, although the film is stolen by J.K. Simmons (Juno's dad) as a thoroughly confused CIA bigwig. Still, while the picture offers strikingly off-kilter characterizations and a number of huge guffaws, it won't remain in the memory like most of the siblings' output. See Burn After Reading, but then expect to Forget After Seeing. ***

THE DUCHESS A substantial number of British costume dramas focus on the efforts of a corseted beauty to land a husband to call her own. These tales generally end on a "Happily Ever After" note, but The Duchess, based on a true story, begins where the others end and takes matters down a darker route: What if the man you snag turns out to be a complete lout? Keira Knightley stars as Georgiana, who, as a teenage girl in 1774, is entered into a marriage with the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). She soon discovers that the Duke's only interest in her is that she produce a male heir, so after she gives birth to a couple of girls, he loses complete interest and embarks on an affair with her best friend, Lady Elizabeth (Hayley Atwell). For her part, Georgiana keeps busy in her role as a society trendsetter, but she eventually finds herself contemplating an illicit romance with rising politician Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). The Duke commits some monstrous acts during the course of the film, but it's a credit to the performance by Fiennes that the character never emerges as a dull, one-note villain but rather an emotionally stifled man whose Neanderthal brain can't quite grasp certain aspects of civility and respect. Likewise, Lady Elizabeth is revealed as far more than merely a spouse-stealer, and Atwell does an exemplary job of insuring her character remains the tenuous connective tissue between the Duke and the Duchess. As for Knightley, she's establishing herself as England's go-to girl for this sort of period epic: A bright and sunny presence in Pride and Prejudice, she's given greater depths to explore in this picture. She doesn't disappoint. ***

EAGLE EYE The peril of encroaching technology has been a cinematic mainstay at least since Stanley Kubrick allowed HAL to temporarily get the upper hand in 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey (film purists can feel free to go even further back, to Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis), but rarely has this intriguing concept been presented as daftly as in Eagle Eye. Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, this tiresome action yarn finds slacker Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) drawn into what appears to be a terrorist strike against the United States. Initially strangers, they find themselves working together after each one receives threatening phone calls from a woman who orders them to carry out her instructions ... or else. The caller seemingly has control over every electronic device in sight, as she's able to manipulate traffic lights, power lines, subway cars and cell phones. Even allowing for the big twist that reveals the villain's identity, this requires a greater suspension of disbelief than might be humanly possible. If Jerry perishes during the course of his misadventures, then the assignment's a bust, yet the caller repeatedly places him in death-defying situations (I especially liked his leap-before-you-look jump from a speeding train). A faster running time might have helped us overlook the gaping idiocies, but the film is packed with repetitive – and poorly edited – vehicular chases that bloat this to a punishing two hours. But pay heed to the movie's warning: Technological advancements might indeed become a concern in the future, especially if they allow for greater mass production of duds like this one. *1/2

THE EXPRESS The problem with most musical and sports biopics is that they adhere so much to rigid formula, they rarely allow their subjects to breathe. There's a sameness to these types of films – their characters' triumphs and travails can be predicted at every turn – that it's no surprise to see most critics go gaga over something that dares to break the mold like I'm Not There, which was audacious enough to allow both a woman and and a black child to portray Bob Dylan at various points in his career. There's nothing daring about The Express, which, like most real-life sports stories co-opted by major studios (The Rookie, Miracle, Remember the Titans), strips the achievements of any individuality or historical worth and renders them all part of the same gumbo of sticky clichés. Here, the sanitized story is that of Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), who became the first African-American player to win college football's Heisman Trophy, only to helplessly stand by as personal tragedy derailed his plans to become an NFL superstar opposite his idol, Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown. It's a heartrending tale worthy of the Greek gods, yet here it's been robbed of its vibrancy, and as blandly and beatifically played by Brown, the character never registers as anything more than a walking sliver of American history. But the sight of gridiron-star-turned-actor Jim Brown (played here by Darrin Dewitt Henson) does raise a thought: How about a movie based on his interesting life? Because even if the studio homogenizes it to the point of tepidity, at least audiences might get treated to a few scenes from Brown's best-known Hollywood outing, The Dirty Dozen. **

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA There's a scene in Miracle at St. Anna in which a light bulb mysteriously flickers back to life, and it feels as if director Spike Lee is paying tribute to whimsical Italian maestro Federico Fellini. Alas, that moment passes, and it no longer becomes clear exactly what Lee is honoring with this baffling motion picture. Certainly, Lee wants to pay tribute to the black soldiers who served this country during World War II, but a more linear narrative might have helped him accomplish that goal. This turns out to be a clusterfuck of good intentions crossed with clunky storytelling, opening and closing with a contemporary (read: 1983) framework that's supposed to infuse the story with a heady mystery but only adds unnecessary clutter to the 150-minute film. The flashback portion of the movie finds four African-American soldiers (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller) stranded in a Tuscan village in Nazi-occupied territory. The quartet take it upon themselves to protect the locals, leading to underdeveloped storylines involving Italian partisans, supernatural intervention and, worst of all, an ongoing feud between two of the men as they vie for the attention of a shapely villager (Valentina Cervi, trapped in an impossible madonna/whore role). Despite his personal commitment to the material, Lee rarely blesses this picture with his trademark style, an expression of cinematic prowess that enlivens even his clunkiest films. On the contrary, there's no moviemaking miracle at work here, just a half-baked project that might be Lee's biggest disappointment to date. **

NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Nick and Nora (no "h") were the sophisticated sleuths played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the popular The Thin Man movies back in the 1930s and '40s, and this married team never encountered a criminal they couldn't bring to justice. By contrast, the Nick and Norah in this tone-deaf feature are vanquished by the piece's villains, who are revealed to be director Peter Sollet and scripter Lorene Scafaria (adapting the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan). In short, this is one Thin Movie. Michael Cera, who needs to play a Norman Bates-like character to shake things up, stars as Nick, a high school kid crushed by being dumped by Tris (Alexis Dziena), the sort of vapid princess who in real life wouldn't even give someone like Nick the time of day, let alone six months of quality dating time. Through plot contrivances too laborious to outline here, Nick and Tris' pal Norah (Kat Dennings) end up spending an entire after-hours session combing New York for both Norah's drunken friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) and a secret jam session by the city's latest "It" band. Dennings displays a slightly off-kilter personality that marks her as someone to keep watching (she's also appeared in Charlie Bartlett and The House Bunny), and Cera's teddy-bear cynicism – his wisecracking character is sweet even when trying to be caustic – provides extra zip to his better lines. But for a film set amidst the hustle and bustle of late-night NYC, this is one lethargic picture, with Sollet's inert direction bringing nothing to the party. For an infinitely better movie about hipsters looking for love, wait for In Search of a Midnight Kiss to hit DVD. **

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE Diane Lane and the Tuscan countryside prove to be a more dynamic duo than Diane Lane and the Outer Banks, an assertion that immediately becomes clear when placing Under the Tuscan Sun and Nights in Rodanthe side by side. The former made the most of its setting and its star, resulting in a winning romantic comedy whose love-struck spirit rubbed off on audience members eager to lap up its sense of joie de vivre. The coastal-Carolina-shot Rodanthe, on the other hand, starts off well as Tuscan Sun's more serious-minded cousin, but it eventually sinks under the weight of the shameless plot devices thrust upon it by author Nicholas Sparks and adapters Ann Peacock and John Romano. Lane, teaming with Richard Gere for the third time (following 1984's The Cotton Club and 2002's Unfaithful), plays Adrienne Willis, who agrees to look after her best friend's (Viola Davis) beachfront inn at the same time that her philandering husband (Christopher Meloni) is begging her to let him come back. Gere co-stars as Paul Flanner, a doctor brooding over a minor surgery procedure that went tragically wrong. As the only two people stuck at the inn, Adrienne and Paul open up to each other and gradually fall in love. For a while, Nights in Rodanthe works as a mature and even touching drama, but then the melodramatic devices take over with the force of a hurricane. And speaking of hurricane, the second-act emergence of this force of nature is but one of the hoary aspects that sink the production, along with a sour twist that is as expected as it is defeatist. **

THE WOMEN The 1939 screen version of The Women, based on Clare Booth Luce's play and helmed by "woman's director" George Cukor, has been refashioned as a Sex and the City wanna-be, in the process losing the smoldering conflicts and zesty subplots of its classic predecessor. In that version, Norma Shearer's angelic society woman had to decide whether to stay married to a husband who dared to dally with Joan Crawford's skanky shopgirl. With nary a male in sight but an all-female-cast to die for (Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine were also part of the ensemble), the picture examined females as complicated beings forced to simultaneously respond to social duties, duplicitous acquaintances, and the demands of their own independent hearts. Predictably, this new version opens with a nod toward modern materialism and then proceeds to offer contemporary stereotypes rather than memorable individuals. Here, everything has been smoothed out to the point of tepidity: Eva Mendes (as the hubby-swiper) is merely naughty where Crawford was lethal, and Russell's role as a backstabbing "frenemy" has been transformed into Annette Bening's tough-yet-tender magazine editor. Meanwhile, Meg Ryan (as the jilted spouse) doesn't stray too far from her established screen persona, while Jada Pinkett Smith's casting in a worthless role (cut it, and the film doesn't change) demonstrates that writer-director Diane English was more interested in covering all demographics (black and lesbian, in the case of Smith and her character) than in making any salient points about 21st-century girl power. **

OPENS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24:

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR: Zac Efron, Vanessa Anne Hudgens.

PRIDE AND GLORY: Edward Norton, Colin Farrell.

SAW V: Costas Mandylor, Tobin Bell.