'The Great Alaskan Race'

Earnest intentions can only carry a movie so far — and not as far as the sled dogs and their human guides in the fact-based drama “The Great Alaskan Race.”

It’s 1925, in Nome, Alaska, where a diphtheria epidemic has broken out, specifically threatening the town’s children. The town’s physician, Dr. Welch (Treat Williams), says the last shipment of medicine didn’t include antitoxin, and the supplies he has have expired. The only hope is to get more antitoxin shipped in from Anchorage, more than 1,000 miles away.

In Anchorage, an argument ensues about the best way to get the antitoxins to Nome. A forward-thinking newspaper editor (Henry Thomas) urges the governor (Bruce Davison) to send an airplane, but the governor distrusts the untested aviation technology. He sides with the Nome city fathers, who organize a relay of dog sleds to cover the 700 miles between Nome and the nearest train station. (The movie waits until the ending to state what the title already implies, that this incident inspired the famous Iditarod race.)

That’s where Leonhard Seppala, played by the movie’s writer-director, Brian Presley, comes in. Seppala, we’re told, is the best musher in Alaska. We’re also told, through an eyeroll-inducing narration by an character identified as a “shaman,” that Seppala was adopted into the Inuit community — and married an Inuit woman, whose death years before has turned him sullen and withdrawn from the townsfolk.

The light in Seppala’s life is his daughter, Sigrid (played by Presley’s daughter, Emma), Sigrid is also a favorite of her church choir director, Constance (Brea Bee) — who’s also Dr. Welch’s daughter and head nurse, and has an obvious crush on Seppala. When Sigrid becomes one of the children hit by the diphtheria epidemic, Seppala’s motivation to drive his dogs just grows.

The movie is clearly a labor of love for Presley, but it’s often just laborious to watch. Chunks of dialogue, and even entire characters, exist to provide constant exposition that beats the lead characters’ heroism into the audience’s skulls. 

There are high spots. Williams brings a gravitas to the role of kindly town doctor. The action sequences, as Seppala and his dogs brave freezing weather and unstable ice to get the serum home, are energetic and well-staged, given the miniscule budget. Too often, though, “The Great Alaskan Race” is as much a slog as anything the sled dogs have to navigate.

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‘The Great Alaskan Race’

★★

Opens Friday, October 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic material, brief bloody images, some language and smoking. Running time: 84 minutes.

'Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool'

Few biographical documentaries touch all the bases — chronicling its subject’s life, analyzing the subject’s work, and providing the context for the subject’s legacy — as masterfully and as effectively as “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool” does.

Miles Davis had quite the life to recount. He left East St. Louis, Ill., where his father was a well-to-do dentist who sometimes beat Davis’ mother, for New York, to play the jazz clubs of 52nd Street. He worked early with such greats as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and with them created what became bebop. Davis was after a different sound, a tone more pure, more polished. more personal.

Forming his own quintet, with a young John Coltrane on tenor sax, Davis revolutionized jazz with his improvisation-heavy 1959 album “Kind of Blue.” His later combos brought in other fresh talent, such as a 23-year-old Herbie Hancock, and he explored flamenco (“Sketches of Spain,” 1960), Disney melodies (“Someday My Prince Will Come,” 1961) and a radical departure into funk and rock (“Bitches Brew,” 1970).

His personal life was marked with substance abuse — heroin in the ‘50s, cocaine and alcohol at other times in his life, and painkillers after a botched hip surgery — and a string of marriages and lovers. Some of those women speak up in the film, describing incidents of domestic abuse, often fueled by the drugs.

Director Stanley Nelson — whose past films have covered such topics as Marcus Garvey, the Jonestown massacre, black colleges, Freedom Riders and the Black Panthers — collects a wide range of interviews. They include Davis’ old friends, fellow musicians (including Carlos Santana and Quincy Jones), and historians and music experts who help explain to the uninitiated the importance of Davis’ musical evolution and his status as a prosperous, proud African American man.

But Nelson’s best two weapons are Davis’ words, read by the actor Carl Lumbly, and his music, which speaks volumes with every note. “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool” will be a treat for jazz fans, and an essential guide for anyone looking to understand the mark Davis left on the second half of the 20th century.

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‘Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool’

★★★1/2

Opened August 23 in select cities; opens Friday, October 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for language, and descriptions of substance abuse and domestic violence. Running time: 115 minutes.

'Becoming Nobody'

When one becomes frustrated with one’s guru, the reason usually circles back to the person asking the questions — and having outsized expectations about the answers, expectations the guru has no obligation to fulfill. 

That’s a lesson the spiritual teacher Ram Dass learned from his guru. It’s one the filmmaker Jamie Catto learns from Ram Dass, and it’s one anyone seeing Catto’s documentary about Ram Dass, “Becoming Nobody,” will learn as they watch.

Catto’s documentary handles the basics of biography, of Dass started his life as Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychologist and author looking for ways to expand his mind. His first experience was when Timothy Leary, the famed advocate for hallucinogenics, first gave Alpert psilocybin. From then on, as Ram Dass describes in lectures preserved in his archives, he tried all manner of chemicals to replicate that high — but every time, he came back down.

On a trip to India, Alpert finally met someone “who never came back down.” That man, Neem Karoli Baba — whom Ram Dass calls “Maharaj-ji” — became his teacher, and gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning “servant of God.” Ram Dass brought Maharaj-ji’s message to America, and became a leading figure of the counterculture movement.

Catto doesn’t give more than a brief synopsis of Ram Dass’ biography. More prevalent here are the reams of footage of Ram Dass’ many years giving lectures and teaching his philosophy.

He talks of acceptance of what life brings, noting the Hindu belief that “you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you.” He talks of unconditional love, and how so few of us are able to avoid putting conditions on it. He talks of how people strive to become somebody in this world, but that “the game is … about becoming nobody.”

It’s all very deep, and one probably needs to be in the right frame of mind to take it all in. A viewer might wish Catto was doing more to help, like augmenting Ram Dass’ words with images that could broaden one’s understanding of them. On that level, “Becoming Nobody” is a movie that works better as an audiobook.

Catto’s main role is to interview Ram Dass now, living in Maui, in his 80s. Ram Dass appears quite frail, and talks about being ready for death — a topic he has studied for decades, in his hospice work helping others prepare for death. Even in his suffering, though, Ram Dass says he has found a kind of grace that helps him understand what’s going to happen next.

Catto’s interviews, unfortunately, boil down to the filmmaker spouting his opinion about some part of Ram Dass’ philosophy, only to have Ram Dass — like the psychologist he once was — reply something akin to “Is that what you think it means?”

One might hope, watching “Becoming Nobody,” that Ram Dass would berate Catto for his ignorance, like Marshall McLuhan telling the blowhard in “Annie Hall” that “you know nothing of my work.” But Ram Dass instead smiles, displaying that unconditional love toward his acolyte, which may be the point of it all anyway.

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‘Becoming Nobody’

★★1/2

Opened September 6 in select cities; opens Friday, October 18, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and some sexual content. Running time: 82 minutes.

'Maleficent: Mistress of Evil'

If giving The Joker a sympathetic backstory was tough, that’s nothing to what Disney has been doing for the past five years with Maleficent, the satanic sorceress who put Sleeping Beauty under.

First in “Maleficent” (2014) and now in a daring and sometimes dark sequel, “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” the dragon lady with the black horns dances on the line between the light and the dark — and, thanks to star Angelina Jolie, makes each step captivating.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'The Addams Family'

Considering how often it’s been done — including a TV series in the 1960s and two movies in the early ′90s — making another version of “The Addams Family” shouldn’t be that hard.

Somehow, though, directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan miss the mark, with a rendition of Charles Addams’ macabre characters that’s the movie equivalent of safe-and-sane fireworks: harmless for the kiddies, but with no sizzle.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Gemini Man'

Every superhero eventually faces his or her doppelgänger — even Will Smith, who confronts himself in the action-packed but narratively sketchy thriller “Gemini Man.”

Meeting one’s double is a great storytelling device, because it allows the main character to muse on the roads not taken, the what-ifs of one’s life — as well as letting the actor ham it up by playing variations on the character. Throw in the new technological wonders of de-aging, something such cool actors as Samuel Jackson (in “Captain Marvel”) and Robert De Niro (in “The Irishman”) have tried, and the lure is irresistible for a star like Smith.

Here, Smith plays Henry Brogan, an assassin who terminates the people the U.S. government tells him to terminate. (There’s always a euphemism, and the one here is so good I won’t spoil it.) But, at age 51 and with 72 kills to his credit, Henry tells his boss, Del (Ralph Brown), he’s going to retire to a fishing boat in Georgia.

What Henry doesn’t know at first is that the grad student now managing the marina is really a Defense Intelligence Agency minder, Dani Zakarewski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), assigned to run surveillance on Henry. The higher-ups suspect Harry’s motives for retiring, especially when he meets an old military buddy, Jack (Douglas Hodge), who knows a big secret and shares a bit of it with Henry.

Soon commandos are showing up trying to kill Henry, who drags Dani along to find someone to trust — namely, another military buddy, Baron (Benedict Wong), a hotshot pilot with a home in Cartagena, Colombia.

It’s there that Clay Verris (Clive Owen), a shady military contractor, unleashes the ultimate assassin to take down Henry. If you’ve seen any of the movie’s advertising, you know that this assassin is a 23-year-old clone of Henry, who has all of Henry’s fighting skills and instincts — but not, as yet, his demons.

Director Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) stages some hellacious action sequences. Take, as just one example, that first encounter in Cartagena, which builds gradually from a multi-leveled courtyard shootout to a high-speed motorcycle chase to a mano-a-mano battle where the younger Will Smith is pretty much throwing motorcycles at the older Will Smith. (Lee works a lot of mirrors and reflective surfaces into the scene, to drive home the theme of duality.)

Lee, continuing a habit that started with “Life of Pi” and continued with “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” has been fascinated with the technical side of filmmaking — like still using high frame rates (in this case, 120 frames as opposed to the normal 24) to heighten the crispness of the image. 

But Lee seems, like fellow director Robert Zemeckis, to embrace the high-tech aspects of filmmaking while neglecting the narrative problems. And there are problems aplenty in this tag-teamed script — credited to Darren Lemke (“Goosebumps”), David Benioff (“Game of Thrones”) and Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”) — in terms of character motivations and dumbed-down plot exposition, not to mention an idiotic late-inning twist. But as long as it looks spectacular, and Smith looks cool even when he’s literally beside himself, nothing else matters, does it? 

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‘Gemini Man’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence and action throughout, and brief strong language. Running time: 117 minutes.

'Lucy in the Sky'

You can’t blame Noah Hawley for trying, for wanting to cram every metaphor and visual device the innovative TV producer — the mind behind “Fargo” and “Legion” — can pack into his movie directing debut, “Lucy in the Sky.”

The problem is that from space, the problems down on earth, even for an astronaut wrestling with real life upon returning home, seem small and inconsequential — no matter how much polish Hawley and a talented cast apply to them.

Hawley introduces us to that astronaut, Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman), while on a spacewalk, with only a tether keeping her from floating away from the International Space Station into the limitless reaches of outer space. The feeling of being in space, on her 13-day mission, is unlike anything she has experienced in training at the Johnson Space Center with fellow mission specialist Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz), or going home to her sweet but dull husband, Drew (Dan Stevens).

Down on earth, we also get hints about the hard life Lucy lived to get where she is. Her nana (Ellen Burstyn), who raised Lucy and her never-seen older brother, is a tough old gal who drinks Crown Royal and smokes while using her oxygen machine. Lucy and Drew are also caring for Lucy’s teen niece, Blue Iris (Pearl Amanda Dickson), left behind again by Lucy’s irresponsible brother.

And we get a view of the danger on Lucy’s horizon: Hunky astronaut Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm), who knows what it’s like to be in space — and offers Lucy an escape from the humdrum.

Hawley and screenwriters Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi took inspiration from real-life astronaut Lisa Nowak, whose 2006 cross-country drive to confront her lover’s astronaut girlfriend torpedoed her NASA career. This highly fictionalized version eschews the cheap tabloid details of Nowak’s story, presumably because Hawley wants to consider the weightier issues of love, obsession and the siren call of life in zero gravity.

Alas, Hawley doesn’t bring a lot of profound insight into the astronaut’s breakdown. He instead clutters the screen with visual tricks, like constantly shifting the screen’s aspect ratio — widescreen pans for Lucy’s space mission, a more boxy frame for the stifling claustrophobia of earth living, and other ratios just for the hell of it.’

Portman nearly overcomes those distractions to give a fearlessly unhinged performance as Lucy, who acts like she’s keeping it together even as it’s all falling apart. But we’ve seen Portman go crazy before, and better, in “Black Swan,” and “Lucy in the Sky” doesn’t do much to make us forget Portman’s Oscar-winning performance in that movie.

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‘Lucy in the Sky’

★★

Opened October 4 in select cities; opens Friday, October 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 124 minutes.

'Monos'

In its depiction of child soldiers growing up in a hurry, the Colombian drama “Monos” is as grim, stark and surprisingly moving as the high mountaintop where the action happens.

On a mountain in an unidentified South American country, these eight teens — five boys, three girls — perform exercises under the watchful eye of their commander, called The Messenger (Wilson Salazar), who visits occasionally to drill the individuality out of them. All that matters, they’re told, is loyalty to “The Organization,” which is engaged in a running battle with troops down the mountain.

Atop the mountain, this unit is given two assignments. The most recent one is to protect and care for Shakira, a milk cow recently conscripted by The Organization. The other is to keep their hostage, Sara Watson (Julianne Nicholson), an American engineer they call “Doctora,” alive and available to record ransom videos.

When The Messenger isn’t around, the kids have trouble maintaining their discipline. Romances, petty jealousies, drunkenness and boredom all take their toll, threatening the children’s sanity, and the lives of their hostage and the cow.

Director Alejandro Landes, working with writing partner Alexis Dos Santos, creates a spare, intense drama of foot soldiers struggling with the chains of conscription in a war they don’t understand. It’s a story that echoes with strains of “Lord of the Flies” — or perhaps the jungle oppression of “Apocalypse Now,” without Marlon Brando’s Col. Kurtz in charge.

Landes captures this unforgiving world with cinematographer Jasper Wolf’s beautiful images of the mountainscapes, so high up that the clouds lay below them. The score, by Mica Levi (“Jackie,” “Under the Skin”), pierces the high-altitude situation with intensity.

The wonder of “Monos” is the talented cast, almost all of them unknowns making their movie debut. (The exception is Moisés Arias, who a decade ago played Rico, comic foil to Miley Cyrus on “Hannah Montana,” and here plays Bigfoot, a pretender to leadership in the unit.) The young actors reflect both the brutality that they have endured and the vulnerability that still hasn’t been drilled out of them, and give “Monos” its depth.

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‘Monos’

★★★1/2

Opened September 13 in select cities; opens Friday, October 4, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for violence, language, some sexual content and drug use. Running time: 103 minutes; mostly in Spanish, with subtitles.