To be fair, many of this movie’s problems stem not from actor or director but the script.  As banal as it would have been to watch a live-action rehash of the old animated Disney version, screenwriter Linda Woolverton managed to cook up something much worse.  The original movie follows Alice as she wanders through a weird world and meets a bunch of interesting characters. It’s not billed as a sequel, but the Burton film posits a 20-year-old Alice who visits Wonderland for a second time. Yes, she runs into all of her old pals, but this time instead of being aimless and entertaining and subversive, they’re all trying to recruit Alice to save the day in a great impending battle.   So instead of working through a scary but splendid maze, Alice is burdened by a strange hero’s journey artifice that seems meant to evoke “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings.”  There’s a jabberwocky and a mythic sword and a rival queen to the Red Queen and a talking dog and a formulaic final battle scene that doesn’t thrill like its supposed to, or make much sense.

So how much blame does Burton deserve? A lot, actually. Instead of delivering with creepy and spectacular visuals, he fills the screen with a bunch of strange stuff that serves no purpose.  It’s all weird for the sake of weird. Not to turn this into a CGI rant, but he goes a little crazy with the technology, distorting the faces and bodies of the human actors for no reason. Crispin Glover’s frame is digitally stretched out to make him extra lanky.  Why?  Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen is the only source of any human emotion at all, but even the little of interest here is destroyed thanks to a digitally enlarged head.  It’s as if the CGI is purposely used to deaden the performances and make the characters less believable.

As for Depp, there’s just not much to say, but there should be.  His name is selling the movie as much as anything else, and its the type of role he seems cut out for.  But we’ve seen it all before. His Mad Hatter is predictably kooky, vaguely Scottish, and completely uninteresting.  Yes, he’s augmented with an untouching backstory, but it’s never clear who or what he’s supposed to be.  Here’s a spoiler alert (an alert of a couple of things that really spoiled the movie): in the last act the Mad Hatter somehow becomes a skilled swordsman and then shows off his moves in one of the most baffling dance sequences in movie history (Turbo and the broom from “Breakin’” included).

In total, “Alice” plays like a thrown together film made by a couple of hacks who asked themselves, “If Burton and Depp were doing this, what would it be like?”

Attempting to enumerate all the ways in which Taken fails would be an exercise in futility.  The movie is one giant plot hole, constructed with coincidences and contrivances galore.  The dialogue is cringe-inducing, and the performances (except, inexplicably, Neeson’s) are laughable.  At this point you’re thinking, sure, but the action’s great right?

Sort of.

This movie is a Bourne Identity rip-off, which in and of itself is not such a bad thing.  The action sequences are gritty and grounded in reality.  In a better film, the action might be fantastic.  The problem is that the movie is so outrageously bad that even the hand-to-hand combat and gunplay can’t salvage it.  Like when Neeson starts randomly killing, your first thought is to wonder why he’s brutalizing practically everyone he sees, some who are only tenuously connected to the villains.  But even if you can overlook the glaring and weird amorality, you wonder how you can take seriously the guy who just spent fifteen-minutes worth of exposition telling you that he’s perused the manual to a cheap karaoke machine over 200 times so he can buy it and win back the affections of his 17-year-old daughter (who looks 26 but comes off an absolutely grating 12).

The dialogue and story are so bad that they rob the action of any power, producing instead only snickers.  The baffling thing–in a fascinating car wreck sort of way–is that the film doesn’t rush to the action so as to lead with its stronger foot.  We have to wait about 40 minutes before things heat up.  Until then, weird and ineffective character moments lead the way, all underscored almost without exception by, you guessed it, slow piano music.

This was not a good movie.

At first blush The Visitor looks to sit squarely in the indie camp. The story follows Walter Vale, a middle-aged bespectacled economics professor who happens to be a widower. Still mourning his wife’s death, he attends an academic conference in New York City where he finds a young couple illegally inhabiting the seldom used apartment he keeps there. After some initial shock, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira)–a young Syrian and his Senegalese girlfriend–realize that they’ve been renting the place illegally, thanks to some mysterious huckster, and they pack up to leave. Walter takes compassion on them and invites them to stay. Drama ensues.

Just hearing the description you might wonder if a dryer, duller movie could possibly be made. But director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) heads off boredom at the pass, never allowing it to show up. The relationships explored are genuinely meaty, but there’s a lightness about this film as well. There are plenty of well-earned laughs to be had as Walter learns to play the drums from Tarek and slowly tries to ingratiate himself with reserved Zainab. The film is sufficiently deep, but also fun enough to hold your interest. Visually, this character piece finds a way, through well-imagined cinematography, to feel large and substantial without sacrificing nuance.

The most treacherous but ultimately rewarding segment of the film deals with a scrape between Tarek and U.S. immigration officials. Amazingly, the relationships continue to lead, and the movie never devolves into an anti-Bush screed. And just when you think the Hollywood influence might rear its head, the beautifully unsullied ending arrives. The final fifteen minutes are neither sappy nor too hip for their own good.
There are several noteworthy performances here, and Richard Jenkins particularly owns the screen. But the real show stealer here is the story, which constantly walks the line between too much and not enough without ever slipping up.

From the beginning, self-styled progressive priest Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and hyper-traditional nun and principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) are set up as arch philosophical rivals within the church in 1964.  Their differences range from the pedestrian, like Sister Aloysius’s balking at the suggestion that a secular song like “Frosty the Snowman” be included in the school’s Christmas program, to the matter at the heart of movie.  When some circumstantial evidence arises that suggests Flynn may be involved inappropriately with the boy, Aloysius concludes he is guilty and sets about trying to force a confession.

The central drama is enough to carry the film.  In a series of lengthy verbal exchanges Hoffman and Streep go at each other with a pitch-perfect reserved viciousness that conveys a believable mixture of vitriol and decorum.  But it’s not superior acting alone that props up these scenes.  Many of the details are deliberately left murky, and both leads are given enough redeeming qualities and blemishes that it is at times hard to decide who to root for.  This balance is carried through to the end of the movie, and the result is an unusual level of start-to-finish suspense, which is especially surprising when considering that the film is basically a string of conversations mostly devoid of action.

The problem, according to certain critics, is that this device of uncertainty is a manipulation.  They make the case that allowing this level of doubt to color the story is a massive equivocation on Shandley’s part.  This argument is simplistic and unfounded.  Without spoiling the plot, it can fairly be stated that the movie’s liberal use of symbols–some more effective than others–repeatedly hammers home the truth about the relationship in question.  In fact, some of the symbols–light, flowers, storms, juxtapositions of characters and spiritual artifacts like statues and stained-glass windows–are so unsubtle and borderline heavy-handed it’s a wonder anybody could miss them.  Apparently some did.  But a careful viewing of the movie reveals that the real and lasting doubt referenced in the title has little to do with the factual details of Father Flynn’s behavior, but everything to do with identity, faith, religious institution, and ultimately God.