'Mile 22'

No matter how cynical you think a moviemaker can get, director Peter Berg will outdo it, and his new special-ops action mess “Mile 22” manages to be even more opportunistically dismissive of its audience than “Patriots’ Day” — and I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

Like that movie and “Lone Survivor,” this one reteams Berg with actor Mark Wahlberg in tough-talking supercop mode. Here, Wahlberg plays James “Jimmy” Silva, the on-the-ground leader of an elite and super-secret commando team called Overwatch — though it’s so super-secret, most people don’t call it anything, because they don’t know it exists. If that sounds pedantic and repetitive, it’s a close approximation of most of the dialogue in Lea Carpenter’s overly talky script.

Berg shows Overwatch’s standard operating procedure in the prologue, as Silva and his crew try to take down a Russian terrorist cell in an American suburb. Silva’s team is wired to a remote squad watching satellite and drone surveillance, all under the command of a boss code-named Mother (John Malkovich, in scenes he probably shot in a single day). Even so, the mission ends up with one of his crew dead, and the house blowing up. So much for stealth.

Fast-forward 16 months to another mission in a southeast Asian country. (Like the old “Mission: Impossible” TV series, geography is intentionally vague.) Overwatch is searching for some missing cesium, which if let loose on a city could cause Hiroshima-level damage. One of Silva’s team, Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan), has a source with the required information: A former local police officer, Li Noor, who walks into the U.S. Embassy with an encrypted disc that will electronically evaporate in 8 hours unless he gives the code — which he won’t do until he’s on a plane out of the country.

Li Noor is played by Iko Uwais, the dynamically athletic Indonesian martial-arts star who burst into global attention in “The Raid” and “The Raid 2: Redemption.” Uwais, who was one of the film’s fight choreographers, takes over the movie with his ferocious action scenes, like an early bit where he fends off two assassins while handcuffed to a hospital bed. Alas, Berg has no clue how to film Uwais’ fast moves, and chops his scenes into an incoherent bloodbath.

The bulk of the movie is a ticking-clock scenario where Silva, Alice and their colleagues (including MMA star-turned-actor Ronda Rousey) must drive Li Noor through 22 miles of city streets to an airstrip where an American military aircraft will take him to safety. Of course, there are ambushes at every turn, orchestrated by a corrupt local government operative (Sam Medina). 

The action, sliced and diced as it is, is interrupted further by Silva’s post-mission debriefing, where he waxes philosophical about Overwatch’s place in the sloppy world of real politics. Berg thinks he’s being topical by putting words like “collusion” in Wahlberg’s mouth, or tossing an image of Donald Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong Un in the opening-credits montage, but such additions just muddy a storyline that was pretty confused already.

Wahlberg, as usual, is portrayed as an indestructible know-it-all who sees all the angles, right up to the idiotic twist ending. Thankfully, even his ego isn’t big enough to have Wahlberg and Uwais battle mano-a-mano, which would have been a comical mismatch — like the time on the ‘60s “Batman” when Bruce Lee (as The Green Hornet’s aide Kato) fought Burt Ward’s Robin to a draw. Uwais deserves a better Hollywood introduction than “Mile 22,” and audiences deserve a less pummeling action experience.

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‘Mile 22’

★

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

'Alpha'

“Alpha” isn’t just a shaggy dog story, but the first shaggy dog story — about the domestication of dogs in prehistoric Europe — so it’s too bad it doesn’t have a little more bite.

Some 20,000 years ago, the movie says, a tribe of hunters is preparing for the annual trek to bring down The Great Beast, a giant horned bison. It’s the first time Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the son of the tribe’s chief (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), is joining the men on the hunt, and he’s determined to make his father proud.

Keda’s first steps are faltering ones. For example, he can’t muster the courage to finish off a wounded boar. The chief is stern with his son, but is sure he will show he’s got the strength to hunt and eventually lead.

When the big day comes to hunt the Great Beast, Keda is thrown over a cliff by the bison. He falls halfway down, landing on a thin ledge, and the chief and his men reluctantly give him up for dead. Once they head for home, though, Keda awakens, and finds himself alone, away from home, and with a broken ankle.

Early on, Keda must scramble up a tree to avoid being devoured by a pack of wolves. He slashes one wolf with his stone dagger, and the others run away. Keda takes the injured wolf to a cave to nurse its wounds. He gives the animal water, and shares his campfire and what small prey he can catch. The relationship is uneasy at first, with the wolf growling when Keda gets too close, but soon a familiarity develops. Keda even gives the wolf a name: Alpha.

Director Albert Hughes, directing for the first time without his twin Allen (together they made “Menace II Society,” “Dead Presidents” and “The Book of Eli,” among others), creates stunning visuals of Keda and Alpha traversing the wilderness. He also takes a stylistic risk by having the characters speak not in English but a prehistoric indo-European language, with subtitles for the audience to read.

The weakness in “Alpha” comes from the script, by rookie writer Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt (adapting a story by Hughes), which is too thin and repetitive to stretch to feature length. There is a nice surprise at the end, but it’s a long slog to get there.

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‘Alpha’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some intense peril. Running time: 96 minutes.

'Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood'

As one-time pimp to the stars, Scotty Bowers has lived a fascinating life, which he talks about candidly in Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” — which is as entertaining for its look at Bowers’ present as it is of his past.

After World War II, Bowers came home from the Pacific Theater, where he served as a Marine and survived Guadalcanal and other battles, and settled in Los Angeles. He got a job running a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, a location that he soon transformed into a hotspot for illicit sexual encounters.

Bowers, who turned 91 during the course of filming (he’s 95 now), enthusiastically recalls the action he oversaw at the Richfield station, and later as a private bartender to the stars. He had a stable of young hustlers ready to perform oral sex for $20. He had a trailer behind the station, split into two makeshift bedrooms, for fast and anonymous encounters — as well as a bathroom with a peephole for those with voyeuristic tendencies.

But what Bowers loves to talk about, first in his tell-all memoir “Full Service” and to Tyrnauer’s camera, are the boldface names who were his friends and clients. He found guys to perform oral sex on Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, who were roommates. He delivered young men to Rock Hudson, Cole Porter and director George Cukor, and simultaneously brought men to Spencer Tracy and women to Katharine Hepburn.

Bowers also claims to have bedded Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner (at the same time), and J. Edgar Hoover, and had a long loving relationship with B-movie actor Beech Dickerson, who left him three houses when he died. Bowers’ sexual proclivity was so numerous that he was a major subject, and provider of interviewees, for sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies.

Some devotees of old Hollywood criticized Bowers for betraying confidences of these stars (all conveniently deceased and unable to sue). But others Tyrnauer interviews — former Variety editor Peter Bart and British actor/writer Stephen Fry among them — champion Bowers as a hero for Hollywood’s deeply closeted gay community, giving gay and lesbian stars a few stolen moments where they could be their honest selves, away from their studio-controlled images of middle-American moral rectitude.

Those halcyon memories are a marked contrast to Bowers’ life now, living with his wife Lois, whom he met when his gigolo days were done in the early ‘80s. (AIDS is mentioned, briefly and a bit conveniently, as the reason for that career’s end.) The houses Bowers inherited from Dickerson are filling with papers, memories and junk, with Bowers now something of a hoarder.

Tyrnauer — whose past documentaries include profiles of the fashion designer Valentino and urban activist Jane Jacobs — seems to have checked over Bowers’ tall tales, and seems to have omitted the ones that he couldn’t corroborate. He also tries, in vain, to get Bowers to psychoanalyze himself — he was sexually abused as a child, but claims he wanted it to happen — and find a deeper context for Bowers’ long sexual track record.

Coming away from “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood,” a viewer may feel there are a lot of stories left to be told. But the ones Bowers tell her, to borrow a word Tracy used to describe Hepburn, are cherce.

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‘Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood’

★★★

Opened July 27 in select cities; opens Friday, August 17, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for images of full male nudity and sexual descriptions. Running time: 98 minutes.

'McQueen'

Alexander McQueen, the bad boy of British fashion through the ‘90s until his death in 2010, gets the documentary treatment he deserves in “McQueen”: A bit shocking in parts, rather pompous in others, and thoroughly well-tailored.

Director Ian Bonhôte and co-director/writer Peter Ettedgui take a generally chronological approach to McQueen’s life, starting as an upstart from London’s East End who briefly apprenticed as a tailor and showed a skill for sewing a perfectly fitted suit in short order. He then jumped to fashion school at St. Martins College of Art and Design. His first student fashion show was inspired by Jack the Ripper, the first of many controversial subjects he tackled.

Bonhôte and Ettedgui structure the movie in chapters, each around a notable fashion show. McQueen excelled in turning his haute couture shows into events and installation artworks, not just showing a line of frocks but creating a story and, with his infamous “Highland Rape” show in 2004, a sensation.

In 1996, McQueen’s “enfant terrible” reputation was put to the test, when he was hired as chief designer of the Paris fashion house Givenchy. Melding his crazy esthetic to the elegance of a prime French label was difficult, but he found ways to inject his wildness, like when he put model Shalom Harlow on a turntable in a strapless white dress and had robotic arms with spray paint covering her in graffiti.

Much of “McQueen” is centered on his fractured personal relations. First, there’s the style icon Isabella Blow, who was McQueen’s mentor and early champion, until McQueen cast her aside when he felt she received too much credit for his success. The movie shows many of McQueen’s personal relationships follow similar trajectories, as the designer finds the pressures of fame and fortune to be devastating.

With archival footage and a wealth of interviews with McQueen’s friends, colleagues and contemporaries, “McQueen” paints a fairly standard rags-to-riches-to-unhappiness portrait. Where the movie is most engrossing is showing how McQueen’s demons and inspirations played out on the catwalk, as he turned the commercial exercise of a runway show into gale-force artistic expression.

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‘McQueen’

★★★

Opened July 20 in select cities; opens Friday, August 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and nudity. Running time: 111 minutes.

'Down a Dark Hall'

The Gothic haunted-house thriller “Down a Dark Hall” is loaded with atmospheric chills, in service to a story that goes from labored tedium to full-tilt crazy — but not enough of the latter to make up for the former.

Kit Gordy (AnnaSophia Robb) is facing her latest suspension from school for bad behavior, but this trip to the principal’s office has a new feature: The presence of Dr. Heather Sinclair (Jodhi May), who teaches literature at an exclusive girl’s academy, the Blackwood Boarding School. Sinclair says Kit, for all of her discipline problems, is exactly the kind of girl who would do well at Blackwood. Kit’s mom (Kirsty Mitchell), out of options, agrees.

When Kit lands at Blackwood, she meets four other young women in a similar predicament: Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman), Ashley (Taylor Russell), Sierra (Rosie Day) and the toughest of the bunch, Veronica (Victoria Moroles). They are given an odd welcome from the headmistress, Madame Duret (Uma Thurman), who promises a rigorous curriculum in art, music, math and literature.

Soon, each of the girls — except Veronica — finds themselves excelling at one of those four disciplines. Kit, who hasn’t played piano since age 9, discovers her talent returning and then some, as she composes ferocious sonatas on the spot. But there’s something strange, almost sinister about how these new talents are manifesting themselves. The girls are also seeing what appear to be ghosts coming out of the shadows.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, who directed the Ryan Reynolds one-man thriller “Buried,” summons up all the visual touches a haunted-house thriller should provide. From the creaky floors to the burning candles, all the elements are there for a spooky Halloween-level experience.

The script, adapted from Lois Duncan’s novel by Mike Goldbach and Chris Sparling, can’t keep the proportions of explainable weirdness and mystifying oddities in balance. The result is a thriller that takes too long to build up to its climax, which turns out to be pretty psychotic — especially with Thurman, fake French accent and all, attacking it with full force. But Thurman’s efforts come a bit late to rescue “Down a Dark Hall” from its early doldrums.

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‘Down a Dark Hall’

★★

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, terror and violence, some language including a sexual reference, and smoking. Running time: 96 minutes.

'Crazy Rich Asians'

In so many ways — as bubbly romantic comedy, as cultural document, as sharp commentary on the super-wealthy, or as feminist empowerment tale — “Crazy Rich Asians” is a delight, an insightful and most of all funny look at life’s luxury suite.

It’s a life that Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) knows about only from research, as an economics professor specializing in game theory at New York University. As the American daughter of a Chinese immigrant, Kerry (Kueng Hua Tan), she’s had to work to get to where she is in life — which, at the moment, includes a sweet, loving relationship with Nick Young (Henry Golding), a well-to-do businessman from Singapore.

What Rachel doesn’t know is that Nick isn’t just from Singapore, but his family owns a sizable chunk of the country, and is one of Asia’s richest families. How rich? So rich that the family can arrange to have their massive mansion not show up on Google Maps.

Nick invites Rachel to spend spring break in Singapore, where he’s to be best man for his longtime friend Colin Khoo (Chris Pang), who’s marrying the also-rich Araminta Lee (Sonoya Mizuno). Rachel agrees, so she can spend time with Nick, meet Nick’s family, and reconnect with her Singaporean college roommate, Peik Lin Goh (played by the rapper Awkwafina).

Rachel gets her first clue of Nick’s family fortune when they get on the plane, and are escorted to a first-class suite that’s bigger than some New York apartments. When she asks if Nick’s family is rich, he replies, “We’re comfortable.” “That’s exactly what a really rich person would say,” she replies.

It’s Peik Lin, living in Versace-clad luxury with her parents (Ken Jeong and Koh Chieng Man), who gives Rachel the full picture. “We’re rich, but they’re crazy rich,” Peik Lin tells Rachel, who soon learns that Nick is also Asia’s most sought-after bachelor, and that most single women in Singapore have already dissected Rachel’s academic profile and personal information (in a social-media montage that’s quick and delightful).

Rachel makes fast friends with Nick’s sister Astrid (Gemma Chan), and gets the lowdown on Nick’s oddball cousins, the image-conscious Eddie (Ronny Chieng) and the aspiring filmmaker Alistair (Remy Hii). But facing Nick’s mother, the imperious family matriarch Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), is going to be Rachel’s toughest challenge of all.

Director Jon M. Chu — whose credits include two “Step Up” dance extravaganzas, a “G.I. Joe” sequel, a Justin Bieber concert film, “Jem and the Holograms” and the magician thriller “Now You See Me 2” — turns out to be the perfect guy for this job. Capturing the lavish lives of Nick’s free-spending relations requires substantial choreography (Colin and Araminta’s wedding is quite the production number), while distilling the detailed cultural commentary of Kevin Kwan’s 2011 novel (adapted to the screen by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Kim) takes considerable finesse to navigate the financial and family ties.

But it’s not all bling and intellectual observations. “Crazy Rich Asians” is, on top of it all, a charming romance, anchored by Wu’s effervescent presence as a smart, caring woman having to reconcile her image of her suave boyfriend with the spectacular wealth in which he was nurtured. And when she applies her game-theory skills to the cutthroat competition going on around her, we the viewers are all winners.

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‘Crazy Rich Asians’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, August 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language. Running time: 120 minutes.

'BlacKkKlansman'

Spike Lee has been waking up audiences, white and black, for years before being “woke” entered the mainstream (i.e., white) lexicon — so it’s not surprising to see how “woke” his new movie, “BlacKkKlansman,” is in its fascinating and intense depiction of a too-fantastic-for-fiction story of a black police detective infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan.

It’s the early ‘70s, and Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington) applies for a job as a cop in the Colorado Springs Police Department. A city councilman (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) tells him he’ll be the department’s Jackie Robinson, and will endure racist taunts inside and out of the police force.

As a rookie in the records department, Stallworth stands up to the casual racism of an older officer (Frederick Weller), but keeps his cool. Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) assigns him to the undercover unit. His assignment is to attend and monitor a speech by the activist and former Black Panther Party leader Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), who was going by the African-inspired name of Kwame Ture. 

It’s at this speech that Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the proud head of Colorado State University’s Black Student Union. Stallworth and Dumas start dating, having passionate conversations about black liberation and the merits of “Shaft” vs. “Superfly.” What they don’t talk about, because Stallworth doesn’t tell her, is what he does for a living.

One day, reading the classifieds, that he sees a recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan. Stallworth calls the number and makes contact with Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold), the Klan’s local chapter president. The comical opening phone call, in which Stallworth declares his hatred for blacks and other ethnic groups, is reminiscent of the scenes in Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You,” in the way Washington deploys his “white voice” to allay Breachway’s suspicions. Soon, Walter is asking Stallworth to meet in person, to continue the conversation.

For obvious reasons, a face-to-face meeting would be problematic, but Stallworth offers a creative solution: Get a white detective to pose as Stallworth for the in-person meetings. That duty falls on Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who reluctantly takes on the assignment. Zimmerman argues with Stallworth that “to you, this is a crusade; to me, it’s just a job” — to which Stallworth responds that Zimmerman, a non-practicing Jew who wears a Star of David necklace, shouldn’t “act like you don’t have skin in the game.”

As Zimmerman gets inside the homes of Klan members, Stallworth over the phone gets inside their heads. He even gets chatting with the Klan’s top national official, the Grand Wizard, David Duke. Yes, that David Duke. Topher Grace portrays Duke with all the seductive menace and white-supremacist arrogance one would expect in someone who has made a life of trying to intellectualize bigotry and hate.

Lee — partnering again with Kevin Willmott (“Chi-Raq”), rewriting a script begun by first-timers Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz, adapting Stallworth’s memoir — uses Stallworth’s strange-but-true story to explore the struggles of black people navigating a white world, and to confront white viewers with that struggle. Lee doesn’t mince words, as when Stallworth’s sergeant (Ken Garito) suggests that Duke or someone who talks like him someday could harness fear and hatred to win the presidency.

Lee also harnesses a century of racism in film history, from “Gone With the Wind” to “The Birth of a Nation” — which Duke screens at a Klan initiation event, as Klansmen and their wives cheer and chomp popcorn. And for those who would dismiss such images as mere entertainment, he brings out Harry Belafonte — still fighting the good fight at 91 — to narrate the true story of Jesse Washington, lynched and burned in Waco, Texas, which some believe was inspired by “The Birth of a Nation,” released a year before.

John David Washington captures Stallworth’s frustration at the racist system that he has joined in the Colorado Springs Police Department, and his righteous glee at being able to use that system to battle back against white supremacists. Washington’s performance is so good that it won’t be long until critics stop referring to him as “Denzel Washington’s son” and start referring to Denzel as “John David Washington’s dad.”

And, in case the audience doesn’t connect the dots or feels complacent about this story being safely tucked in the 1970s, “BlacKkKlansman” finishes with current events. Lee plays back the footage of last year’s white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., the vehicular homicide death of counter-protester Heather Heyer, the hate-spewing rhetoric of David Duke and the equivocation of President Donald Trump declaring that there are “very fine people” among the torch-wielding racists. Lee's scorching conclusion reminds us all of something about which we shouldn’t need to be reminded: Racism isn’t just in the past, but the present.

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‘BlacKkKlansman’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, August 10, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, including racial epithets, and for disturbing/violent material and some sexual references. Running time: 135 minutes.

'The Meg'

Whenever a new innovation hits the movies, there’s a shakedown period where the storytelling is thrown backwards a decade until filmmakers figure out how best to incorporate that new idea into the Hollywood dream machine.

It happened with talkies, it happened with Technicolor, and now — as witnessed earlier this year with “Pacific Rim Uprising,” again last month in “Skyscraper” and now with the hit-and-miss monster movie “The Meg” — it’s happening with the idea of Chinese co-production.

In all three films, having Chinese backers means having the budget to make big-league special effects. It also means setting part of the action in China — whether it’s the Shanghai skyline in “Skyscraper” or Sanya Bay for the climax of “The Meg.” And it means casting actors who are stars in China in prominent roles opposite the American or European stars. (Certainly this is a step up from sticking an Anglo actor awkwardly in an Asian setting, like Matt Damon in “The Great Wall” or Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell.”)

But it also means, so far, sticking to action formulas that feel a bit dated.

In “The Meg,” based on a 1997 beach-read novel by Steve Allen, Chinese actress Li Bingbing is cast alongside Jason Statham. It’s an interesting balancing act, as director Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”) plays them against each other as co-leads. Yes, Statham’s character saves Li’s character from certain death, but she tough and returns the favor when necessary.

Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea rescue diver whose career imploded several years back, when he aborted a mission on a submarine — and left two of his colleagues to die — because he saw something monstrous attacking them. But when a submersible from marine research station off the China coast gets trapped in the Marianas Trench, seemingly by the same monster, the station’s boss Mac (Cliff Curtis) calls on Jonas to lead the rescue. Jonas says no, until he learns his ex-wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee), is piloting the submersible.

Li Bingbing plays Zhang Suyin, the station’s marine biologist, mandated by the script to be the one scientist arguing the monster must be kept alive and studied. Suyin gets support for this from her father (Winston Chao), the industrialist who spearheaded the station’s creation. On the opposite side of the argument is Morris (Rainn Wilson), the obnoxious American billionaire who’s bankrolling Zhang’s work — and who wants as big a trophy as harpoons, ropes and depth charges can get him.

Turteltaub assembles an offbeat ensemble around Statham and Li, including Page Kennedy, “Longmire’s” Robert Taylor and “Orange is the New Black” sensation (and future “Batwoman”) Ruby Rose. Of course, we know the cast’s main purpose: Bait for the monster, which is revealed early on to be a megalodon, or “meg,” a supersized prehistoric shark.

Most of the action, despite what you’ve seen in the marketing, is at sea, as the station’s crew tries to subdue the beast before it starts seeking other prey, like tourists. The action is often silly, but not quite silly enough to make a giant-shark movie really fun.

Waterlogged as it is, “The Meg” is crying out for a little Jackie Chan-level comedy or Jet Li acrobatics or Bruce Lee intensity. Maybe future co-productions won’t just take Chinese money and Chinese actors, but some of that wild anarchic spirit of classic Chinese action movies.

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‘The Meg’

★★

Opens Friday, August 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for action/peril, bloody images and some language. Running time: 113 minutes.