Review: 'The Adam Project' delivers Ryan Reynolds in wise-cracking mode, but can't deliver on its own time-travel premise

As a lifelong lover of science fiction — and a dedicated watcher of time-travel stories, who has enjoyed years of “Doctor Who” and repeated viewings of “Back to the Future” — the one thing I know about time-travel stories is this: They have to set up the rules, and then follow them.

This is what makes director Shawn Levy’s “The Adam Project” so disappointing: It doesn’t follow its own rules.

The movie begins in 2050, when time travel is a reality — though, as we’re told, it’s tightly regulated. So when hotshot time pilot Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) tries to steal his time-jumping jet, it naturally draws a crowd of other jets trying to shoot him out of the sky. He escapes narrowly, and lands in 2022, where he goes in search of his 12-year-old self (played by Walter Scobell).

Young Adam is a handful, a pint-sized smart-mouth regularly getting bullied, and talking back to his harried mom, Ellie (Jennifer Garner). Ellie has been flying solo as a parent for more than a year, since her mathematician husband, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), died in a car accident.

Big Adam needs young Adam so he can pilot his jet; there’s some mumbo-jumbo about a DNA signature, and the ship being able to detect that Big Adam is injured. (Just roll with it.) Big Adam is looking for his wife, Laura (Zoe Saldaña), another time traveler who was trying to get back to 2018. Her mission — which soon becomes the Adams’ mission — is to stop time travel before it starts by stopping Louis from developing the algorithm that makes time travel possible, and has been taken over by Louis’s business partner, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener).

Director Shawn Levy is coming off a career high with “Free Guy,” but here he’s wallowing in the creative doldrums that allowed him to make “Real Steel” and three “Night at the Museum” movies. Working with a script credited to four writers, and showing the marks of many wrenches trying to tighten things up, Levy falls back on the most reliable tool in any action director’s arsenal: Ryan Reynolds’ ability to be charming and sarcastic at the same time.

It works, to a point, and certainly having Reynolds’ character bicker with his younger self is a comic goldmine. But when Levy tries to get serious and introspective, as little Adam forces Big Adam to confront the psychological pain of losing his father, the movie discovers a new kind of cinematic time travel — by making the film slow to a crawl.

The supporting cast — Keener the face of exasperated bureaucratic evil, young Scobell as a pint-sized Reynolds, and Garner and Ruffalo staging a small “13 Going on 30” reunion — is solid, but abandoned by inferior material.

The worst of that material is how the writers take pains to explain how time travel works in this story’s reality — then tossing the rules out the window when they prove inconvenient to finishing the story. “You never understood the science,” Louis says at one point, and it’s as if he’s talking to Levy on behalf of all of us.

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‘The Adam Project’

★★

Starts streaming Friday, March 11, on Netflix. Rated PG-13 for violence/action, language and suggestive references. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Gold' is a barebones attempt at a survival thriller, but Zac Efron sacrifices glamour for a gritty role

Watching “Gold,” one notices two things right away: 1) It’s not so much a movie as it is the skeletal framework for a movie, and, 2) Zac Efron deserves points for trying to shake off his pretty-boy image to do something dark and gritty, even if it doesn’t hold together.

Efron’s character is heading to someplace called The Compound, in this near-future desert dystopia that feels about five years away from full Mad Max apocalypse. (Like George Miller’s classics, this movie is also filmed in Australia on a shoestring budget.) His plan — as he tells the guy (played by the film’s director and co-screenwriter, Anthony Hayes) he’s paid to give him a ride — is to make money performing hard labor at The Compound, enough to secure his future.

Somewhere on the way, their car breaks down, and Efron’s character goes exploring. (One of the pretentious of the script Hayes and co-writer Polly Smyth devise is not giving any character a name, so I’ll use to the actors’ names from here on.) Efron finds something in the dirt: A coffee-table-sized nugget of gold. After testing it to make sure It’s real, the two come up with a plan: Efron will stand guard over the gold, while Hayes drives across the desert to a town to get an excavator.

The questions the movie poses from this point are simple: Can Efron stay alive, with limited water and food, baking in the hot sun and trying to avoid snakes, scorpions and wild dogs? And can he survive without going crazy, either hallucinating or becoming paranoid that Hayes won’t return?

When a nomadic woman (Susie Porter) comes across Efron as he guards his treasure, it seems the second question answers itself — and, within moments, the first question becomes a topic for discussion.

Hayes’s film becomes a showcase for Efron to play solitary survivalist. In a few scenes, Efron is quite effective, like when he gets wild-eyed while waving a torch in the pitch-black night, fending off wild dogs who he hears but doesn’t see. Efron also goes for the glam-free look, with makeup designer Jennifer Lamphee layering on simulated sunburned skin to his face.

Even with Hayes’ bag of directing tricks, and with Efron’s go-for-broke performance, there’s no covering up the barebones state of the screenplay. The plot of “Gold,” ngoes everywhere a viewer expects it to go, and takes enough time getting there that it drains whatever suspense might have been wrung from it.

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‘Gold’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 11, in some theaters. Rated R for language and some violent content. Running time: 97 minutes.

Review: Pixar's 'Turning Red' is a funny, warm-hearted take on a 13-year-old girl's journey growing up

Even with the fantastical element at the center of its plot, a viewer will be hard-pressed to find a coming-of-age story that can match the wit, empathy and honesty of “Turning Red,” Pixar Animation Studios’ newest gem. 

The specificity of director Domee Shi’s story has the air of autobiography. Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a 13-year-old girl of Chinese ancestry, living in Toronto, Canada, in 2002. She is a devoted daughter to her perfectionist mom, Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh), working her afternoons in the family’s temple, dedicated to their ancestor Sun Yee. At school, though, Meilin hangs out with her besties — Miriam (voiced by Ava Morse), Priya (voiced by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Abby (voiced by Hyein Park) — crushing on their favorite boy band, 4*Town, and trying to figure out how to attend their upcoming concert in the Rogers SkyDome.

One morning, caught up in her adolescent emotions from her mother embarrassing her in front of a boy on whom her daughter has a crush, Meilin wakes up to find she’s changed. No, not “the red peony,” as her mother puts it (recording, for the first time in Pixar history, a mention of menstrual cycles and maxi pads). Meilin finds that she has become an 8-foot-tall red panda — and she’s desperate to hide this from her parents.

What happens next? It’s best for viewers to find that out for themselves. Though, like another Pixar story of a young woman with red hair — “Brave” — the story takes off in a fascinating and surprising direction.

Shi (who directed the Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao”), who wrote the screenplay with Julie Cho (a playwright and former story editor on “Big Love,” making a strong movie debut), finds in Meilin’s panda transformations a perfect metaphor for adolescence and the ever-shifting emotions of discovering one’s own path — and, in particular, figuring out whether that path is parallel to or away from one’s parents.

Somehow, by whatever alchemy of animation wizardry and storytelling magic, Pixar nearly always manages to find that sweet spot of smart humor and tear-inducing honesty. That’s no different with “Turning Red,” which is as clever with its visuals as with its story. 

My favorite touch is the anime-inspired look of the teenage characters, where their big grins and eyes that shine when they smile. Another great detail comes from 4*Town’s songs, written by musical siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, which play just like anything you remember from the Backstreet Boys or your other favorite boy bands.

“Turning Red” is perhaps the best take on adolescence since Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade.” It’s a funny, charming and emotional ride through a 13-year-old girl’s journey, and it’s a pleasure to take that ride with her.

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‘Turning Red’

★★★1/2

Starts streaming Friday, March 11, on Disney+. Rated PG for thematic material, suggestive content and language. Running time: 100 minutes.

Review: 'Ascension' is a thoughtful, impressionistic look at the 'Chinese dream' of consumerism and capitalism

What does it look like when millions of people try to dive into consumer culture and capitalist acquisition all at the same time? It looks a lot like China in the 21st century, as captured by filmmaker Jessica Kingdon in the endlessly fascinating documentary “Ascension.”

Kingdon spent two years, 2018 and 2019, filming at more than 50 locations around China, getting an close look at an economy of making and selling, buying and earning, playing and working. It’s called the “Chinese Dream,” and it’s as elusive and difficult to define as the “American Dream.”

The first scenes show recruiters on the street of a big city, trying to get workers to sign up to work in one of the different factories that are manufacturing goods for the rest of the world. The come-ons involve wage hikes, bonuses, and the perks of cafeterias, dormitories and other amenities. 

Then the recruits board buses to the factories, where they make spray-bottle tops, processed poultry, blue jeans, plastic Christmas trees, Ralph Lauren jackets, “Keep America Great” merchandise and — in one unsettling and weirdly appealing sequence — life-sized and lifelike sex dolls.

But for many Chinese people Kingdon features are striving to sell another product: Themselves. Kingdon follows social-media influencers as they teach seminars on how to turn one’s personality into a brand. At other corporate workshops, people are picking up the tricks of “business etiquette” or being a security guard.

At every step, Kingdon depicts an economy in which nearly everyone is striving to make money, buy stuff, and fill up high-tech amusement parks. They are trying to unlock the secret of capitalism through the trappings of Western business. They follow Thomas Edison’s maxim about invention being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration; they’ve worked up the perspiration, and are just waiting for the inspiration.

Kingdon doesn’t apply a particular narrative to what she’s showing; her snapshots are more observational, like a Frederick Wiseman documentary that strings together moments to examine system processes. The result is an eye-popping mosaic portrait of a nation on the move, though unsure of what exactly it’s moving toward.

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‘Ascension’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 4, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for images of sex dolls being manufactured. Running time: 98 minutes; in Mandarin, with subtitles.

Review: 'Huda's Salon' is an uneven, but still absorbing thriller about an occupation, from both sides of the divide

The Palestinian-made thriller “Huda’s Salon” has perhaps the most nail-biting first 10 minutes in a movie recently — and follows that with a plot that can’t keep pace with that opening.

When we meet Huda (Manal Awad), she’s hard at work at her hair salon in Bethlehem, in what writer-director Hany Abu-Assad identifies as “occupied Palestine.” Huda is washing the hair of her customer, Reem (Maisa And Elhadi), and chatting while Reem’s baby coos in a nearby carrier. Then Huda slips a drug into Reem’s drink — and when she passes out, Huda moves Reem into a back room, strips her naked, and takes Polaroids of her with a naked man.

When Reem wakes up, Huda reveals that she works for the occupying country’s secret service. (The word “Israel” is never uttered in Abu-Assad’s script, but everyone can read the between the lines.) Huda shows Reem the Polaroids, which she uses to blackmail Reem into becoming an informant, passing along information of the Palestinian resistance. Reem refuses to cooperate, and leaves the salon with her baby.

Once Reem gets home, she’s not sure what to do. Her husband, Yousef (Jalal Masarwa), already doubts her fidelity, and she’s sure he won’t believe her if she tells him the truth. And she’s terrified that the Polaroid will fall into his hands.

While Reem stews over her dilemma, Huda gets kidnapped by resistance fighters. The resistance leader, Hasan (Ali Suliman), interrogates Huda in a dark room — and a cat-and-mouse game develops between them, with each justifying their actions in the never-ending guerrilla war between occupier and occupied.

Abu-Assad — who’s recent films range from the Palestinian drama “Omar” to the American survival drama “The Mountains Between Us” with Kate Winslet and Idris Elba — bounces between Hasan’s interrogation sessions with Huda and Reem’s increasingly frantic efforts to evade Hasan’s men and retrieve that photo. The script structure is too confining, never allowing either part of the story to fully develop. But the main performances, by Awad and Elhadi as women trapped in opposite ends of a repressive system, and that dynamite opening are enough to keep audiences invested.

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‘Huda’s Salon’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 4, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity. Running time: 91 minutes; in Arabic, with subtitles.

Review: 'The Batman' presents a grim, operatic version of Bruce Wayne's evolution from vigilante to hero

In the never-ending debate about comic-book movies, about what kind of tone works best for action stories about people in tights, fans can usually find something to suit their tastes.

Do you like light and breezy, like when Christopher Reeve played Superman? How about inspirational and heroic, like Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman? Or essentially noble and epic with an overlay of jokey and sarcastic — which largely is where the Marvel Cinematic Universe, God love it, has settled?

The one comic-book character who has inspired the most vicious mood swings is Batman, the black-caped defender of Gotham City, the invention of Bob Kane and Bill Finger for DC Comics. There’s the sitcom-silly Adam West of the ‘60s TV series, the semi-seriousness of Michael Keaton in the Tim Burton films, the neon garishness of Joel Schumacher’s films with Val Kilmer and George Clooney, the tormented urban guerrilla that Christian Bale portrayed in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, or the weary warrior Ben Affleck played in whatever Zack Snyder was trying to do in “Batman vs. Superman” and “Justice League.”

Now comes another contender, director Matt Reeves’ grim and operatic “The Batman,” with Robert Pattinson playing the Caped Crusader as a battered anti-hero who makes Bale and Nolan’s collaboration look like a lark.

Reeves and co-screenwriter Peter Craig start well into The Batman’s tenure as a crime fighter. He still identified as an instrument of vengeance, focused less on cleaning up Gotham City than on finding the people responsible for his parents’ death 20 years earlier. The Gotham City Police still consider him a vigilante and a menace, though one police detective, Lt. Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), trusts him — and has started making nightly calls using a searchlight with a bat silhouette. (We’re not calling it the Bat-Signal just yet.)

“Fear is a tool,” Wayne’s alter ego says in a noir-level narration. “When that light hits the sky, it’s not just a call. It’s a warning.”

But it’s not the garden-variety thugs and thieves Batman is battling as the movie starts. Someone is killing some of Gotham City’s leading figures, starting with the mayor (Rupert Penry-Jones), and leaving cryptic clues in cards addressed “to The Batman.” Because these clues often come in the form of questions, the killer gets a nickname: The Riddler. (It’s safe to reveal that this character is played by Paul Dano, who is shown in the movie’s marketing even though it’s well into the film before Reeves shows us his face.)

Batman tells Gordon he suspects that the city’s criminal underworld is involved — namely, crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and his right-hand man, Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin (played by Colin Farrell, though one wouldn’t know it because of some impressive prosthetic work). The suggestions that the mayor, who we see fighting for his political life in a race against a young anti-corruption reformer (Jayme Lawson), and his cronies are in deep with Falcone. 

Batman soon discovers someone else is sniffing around Falcone’s operation: A sly burglar, Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz) — who shares Batman’s gifts for form-fitting black suits and stealthy entrances. She also has a lot of cats. ”I have a thing for strays,” she tells Batman, during their cautious dance of seduction.

As the case drags him deeper into Gotham City’s dark secrets, Batman aka Bruce Wayne learns some uncomfortable truths about his late parents — and about his loyal butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis). Mercifully, Reeves doesn’t give us the same flashback cliches we often get with Batman movies; it’s a positive sign that we don’t have to watch another shot of Martha Wayne’s pearls falling to the alley floor.

Reeves — whose credits include the last two “Planet of the Apes” movies and the alien-invasion thriller ‘Cloverfield” —  digs into the dark worlds of Gotham’s criminal underground and Bruce Wayne’s still-grieving psyche. And sometimes the darkness is literal; one of the most striking action set pieces has Batman fighting armed thugs in a pitch-black entryway, lit only by the occasional flashes of the bad guys’ machine-gun fire. Batman works in the shadows, and the intensity of Reeves’ action sequences work well there over three hours that never feel bloated or unnecessary.

Pattinson is a strong choice to play this version of Batman and Bruce Wayne. I’ve always argued that anyone can be Batman, because the suit does the work, and it’s how an actor captures Bruce’s brooding self-destructiveness and “Scarlet Pimpernel”-inspired callow camouflage that makes the difference. Here, I’m not so sure — because Pattinson shows Bruce’s festering grief and his revenge-driven intensity as much as when he’s wearing the cowl as when he’s not. Pattinson also latches onto Reeves’ subtle depiction of Batman’s evolution, from angry vigilante to the hero Gotham needs.

Reeves sets up “The Batman” as a new beginning of a franchise, though seemingly separate from the other branches of Warner Bros.’ DC Comics movie universes. I wouldn’t expect Pattinson’s Batman to slide comfortably into Snyder’s “Justice League” meetings, and there’s no link to Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of The Joker. But Pattinson should be fighting crime in Gotham again, and I’m looking forward to see how he and Reeves carry his arc forward.

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‘The Batman’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 4, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language, and some suggestive material. Running time: 175 minutes.

Review: 'Cyrano' is a sweetly swoony take on the classic romance, with Peter Dinklage perfect as the tragic hero

If there’s any movie lover left who thinks the Academy Awards are chosen solely on merit — rather than the strength of a studio’s marketing campaign — one viewing of “Cyrano” will forever rid them of the notion.

Costume designers Massimo Cantini Parrini and two-time winner Jacqueline Durran got the movie’s only nomination. But I can’t help but wonder who else would have been nominated if not for a stutter-stepped campaign by its studio, MGM, that borders on movie-distribution malpractice.

Maybe cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s sumptuous, candle-lit camerawork. Maybe Erica Schmidt, on her first screenplay, writing such an elegant adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s famous play. Maybe the stirringly romantic song score by brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner (members of the band The National). And, without a doubt, Peter Dinklage’s heartbreaking tour de force in the title role.

Dinklage doesn’t need a false nose to play Rostand’s tragic romantic, as his 4-foot, 5-inch frame is enough to draw catcalls from strangers. Years of being called a freak — “the insult is ancient, but I’ll accept it,” he says early on — have toughened Cyrano’s hide and sharpened his wit. Cyrano delivers a comical mid-performance takedown of a boorish actor (Mark Benton) in rhyming couplets, and fences expertly when sniveling count (Joshua James) makes the mistake of challenging him to a duel.

Cyrano’s performance, as his comrade-in-arms LeBret (Bashir Salahuddin) notices, is for an audience of one: The beautiful Roxanne (Haley Bennett), whom Cyrano has known for years and loved just as long. “My soul purpose on this earth is to love Roxanne,” Cyrano tells LeBret, adding that because of his small stature, “my fate is to love her from afar.”

When Roxanne seeks a private meeting with Cyrano, he dares to hope that she might feel the same. But soon he learns that Roxanne has fallen in lcve with someone else — a recruit in Cyrano’s regiment, Christian Neuvilette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Christian is handsome and good-hearted, but his tongue and pen are nowhere near as agile as Cyrano’s. Cyrano offers to write Christian’s love letters to Roxanne, and literature’s most eloquent love triangle begins.

There is a fourth character that the other three must deal with: A vain duke, De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who wants Roxanne for his property. When De Guiche sees Christian and Cyrano as obstacles between himself and Roxanne, his jealousy leads to the story’s third act — as the regiment is sent to the front in an endless war.

The Dessners’ songs are lilting, fittingly romantic tunes, and the lead cast — notably Bennett (“The Girl on the Train”) with her breathy soprano and Dinklage’s gravely speak-singing — make the most of them. Their voices aren’t Broadway-musical perfect (even though Dinklage and Bennett played the roles together onstage), but the vulnerability of their voices suits the material better.

The most touching song doesn’t involve the leads, though. “Wherever I Fall” is a mournful, soulful number about soldiers preparing for a battle from which they know they will not return. (One of the three soldiers who sings it is Glen Hansard, the Irish singer for The Frames and The Swell Season, and the co-songwriter and star of director John Carney’s 2007 musical masterpiece “Once.”) 

Director Joe Wright channels the same swooning period style that made his 2005 “Pride & Prejudice” and the 2012 version of “Anna Karenina” work, and he gives his stars the space to get comfortable with the songs through which they must express so much emotion.

Dinklage, one of our most consistently expressive and surprising actors, uses his gruff persona as Cyrano’s armor — a way to fend off the slings and arrows of the world, while protecting his heart for Roxanne. It’s an impassioned performance, one that deserves more attention.

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‘Cyrano’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, thematic and suggestive material, and brief language. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Studio 666,' a horror comedy starring the Foo Fighters, is slapdash but still fun

I can’t say “Studio 666” is a good movie — at times, it reaches Troma-esque levels of cheapness and incompetence — but it’s a fun movie, as over-the-top horror comedies go.

Conceived by Foo Fighters guitarist/drummer/frontman Dave Grohl, the story starts with the Foo Fighters contemplating how they’re going to record their 10th album, which their record-company boss, Shill (Jeff Garlin), desperately needs to release to pay off the label’s debts. Grohl wants to record somewhere unique, and Shill’s friend in real estate, Barb (Leslie Grossman), knows just the place: An isolated mansion in Encino.

What Barb doesn’t mention — and Dave and the band find out too late — is that the last band to record in this house, Dream Widow, was horrifically murdered there. The band doesn’t get the hint when one of their techs is gruesomely electrocuted when plugging in the sound board, the first of many comically gory set-ups that director BJ McDonnell (“Hatchet III”) and writers Jeff Buhler (who wrote the “Pet Sematary” remake) and Rebecca Hughes serve up.

There are a few celebrity cameos, like Whitney Cummings as an oversexed Encino neighbor and Will Forte as a food-delivery driver trying to impress the Foos — and, as a real sign of the filmmakers’ respect for this genre, an out-of-left-field appearance by the legendary director John Carpenter (“Halloween,” “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” “Big Trouble in Little China”) as a sound engineer.

But most of the humor comes from watching Grohl and bandmates Taylor Hawkins, Rami Jaffee, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear try their hand at acting, with hilariously woeful results. They know it’s all a goof, like a “Scooby-Doo” episode with buckets of fake blood, and that self-deprecation is charming enough to let the movie skate by.

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‘Studio 666’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, and sexual content. Running time: 104 minutes.