By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

In 1997, the first Men in Black movie offered a clever blend of comedy, extraterrestrials and action, heightened by the amusing pairing of the chatty Will Smith and the laconic Tommy Lee Jones.

A sequel followed five years later. It was neither as amusing nor as successful as the original film, and it seemed as if all concerned realized they should not push the idea any harder.

Tommy Lee Jones (left) and Will Smith star in Columbia Pictures' Men in Black 3. (Wilson Webb/Columbia Pictures)

Now, a decade after the second film, we have Men in Black³. It has some laughs, but there is also a great deal of melancholy in the affair, and not only because Smith looks startlingly old in the early scenes. It’s not a bad film, and it ends with a nice flourish. But I expected something livelier and funnier.

Men in Black³ finds agents J (Smith) and K (Jones) still dealing with alien misbehavior on Earth. Their now long partnership has become frustrating to J because K never reveals his emotional self, and J cannot understand what closed K off so completely. But his attempt to understand his partner is interrupted when the dreaded Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords) escapes his lunar prison and heads to Earth, bent on revenge against the man who caught him: K.

Boris’ scheme involves going back in time to 1969 and his last confrontation with K and killing the agent. It appears at first that he has succeeded — J’s many years with his partner have been erased — so J must also go back in time to stop Boris and save K. That allows him to meet a much younger K (played by Josh Brolin) and to get a peek at what the man was like before events turned him into the sorrowful K.

Men in Black³ should have had a great opportunity in the 1969 scenes, and it takes advantage of some, including its showing of earlier versions of the agents’ gear. But there are even more moments when the movie is uninspired. A visit to Andy Warhol’s studio lasts far longer than necessary. And while Brolin — who has worked with Jones — knows how to replicate his older co-star’s moves, the young K is not that much more open than the older version, so Brolin and Smith fall into rhythms we have already seen often enough via Jones and Smith.

Indeed, in the latter stages of the movie, the most watchable part involves Griffin, an alien who can not only see the future but multiple futures, depending on which course people take. Griffin is played by Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, Boardwalk Empire) as a sweet presence who rejoices in the good paths the future follows — but is tinged with sadness at seeing the tragic turns life may take.

And Griffin’s view of life fuels the movie as a whole, especially in an ending that, touching though it may be, explains K’s emotional journey a bit too well.

In the end, there were just enough good bits in Men in Black³ to keep it from being just an attempt to rake in more money from an old, beloved franchise. But there were not enough to make me recommend it wholeheartedly. And the use of 3-D, while good at times, is so sparing that you should skip paying the 3-D premium and get what you can from the 2-D’s comedy and drama.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and Ohio.com, and in the HeldenFiles Online blog (www.ohio.com/blogs/heldenfiles). He is also on Facebook and Twitter. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or by email to rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES: G.I. Joe won’t be going into action on the big-screen this summer, after all.

In this film image released by Paramount Pictures, Channing Tatum, left, and Dwayne Johnson are shown in a scene from "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." (AP Photo/Paramount Pictures, Jaimie Trueblood)

While it’s not uncommon for studios to shuffle opening dates, it is rare for such a big-budget movie to get the bump so close to its release.

Paramount executives told the Reporter the move was made so the studio would have time to convert “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” into a digital 3-D version.

Action films often get most of their revenue from 3-D showings, which cost a few dollars more per ticket and can boost a movie’s prospects to make its money back.

Paramount did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

Jake Coyle
AP Entertainment Writer

CANNES, France: In Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” the famously meticulous director takes his fastidiously fashioned world and flings it into the woods.

Even a relatively loose Anderson film is more ornately composed than most dollhouses, so no one should expect cinema verite in his latest fable. But there is — gasp! — actual handheld camera work in “Moonrise Kingdom,” a story of pre-adolescent love on a rustic New England island.

For Anderson, whose previous film was the animated “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” it’s a welcome return to the vagaries of live-action filmmaking.

“It was nice to have the sort of lack of control that you get on the set,” Anderson said in a seaside interview in Cannes, where “Moonrise” opened the prestigious film festival before releasing in theaters May 25. “It’s nice to go on location with a group. That’s something I kind of missed.”

“Your year takes a certain shape when you’re making a movie,” he added. “I like that.”

Making “Moonrise Kingdom” was essentially sleep-away camp for Anderson’s usual troupe of actors (Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman), as well as a few new inductees (Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand).

Shot on an island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, the film is about a 12-year-old orphan (Jared Gilman) who runs away from his scout troupe — the Boy Scout-like Khaki Scouts, whose leader is played by Norton — with his young love (Kara Hayward), the melancholy daughter of a local family (Murray, McDormand). Set in 1965, it’s a more innocent, quaint America.

While Anderson’s movies — “Rushmore,” ”The Royal Tenenbaums” — have often had a childlike sense of whimsy, “Moonlight Kingdom” is almost entirely from the perspective of the children. It started for Anderson with his own memory of first love, a mysterious new feeling he didn’t act on, unlike his young protagonist.

“It’s a memory of an emotion, but kind of a memory of a fantasy as well,” says Anderson. “Everything that happens in the story is what didn’t happen to me.”

But there are many elements of Anderson’s own experience in the film, too. Like Hayward’s character, he found a parental guide to “troubled” children atop his refrigerator, terrified and ashamed to know it applied to him.

Anderson has, naturally, stocked the film full of carefully chosen accoutrements, like faux children’s books with covers specifically designed by various contributors. But when the two kids set off into the wilderness, a more natural environment fills the screen.

Roman Coppola co-wrote the script with Anderson, helped tease out the story from a long-gesticulating concept of Anderson’s, which had amounted to just 15 pages of material and some fragments. Coppola, who also co-wrote Anderson’s India-set “The Darjeeling Limited,” believes the director is increasingly looking for chaotic environments for drama.

“If you look at his desk, everything will be lined up in perfect rows, so there’s something in his personality that’s drawn to that sense of symmetry and order — it’s somewhat who he is,” says Coppola. “But I think recently, when I worked with him on ‘Darjeeling’ and this film, that he’s drawn to situations and settings that have disorder just automatically.”

Anderson says he often begins a film with only a small shred of an idea, like “Royal Tenenbaums,” which started with just the image of a girl exiting a bus, and an unrelated scene of a meltdown on a tennis court. Such scant beginnings are all the more remarkable for the deeply layered finished films: “Tenenbaums” became a full portrait of an intellectual New York family a la “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

“It always feels like the story exists somewhere and you’re just discovering it,” says Anderson. He recently finished a new script —one “particularly unrelated” to “Moonrise,” he says — with unusual speed. It began from researching a real-life character that has little to do with the finished story.

While Anderson’s films have often revolved around a clash of innocence with a cynical world, “Moonrise Kingdom” is his most stark dichotomy of adults and children. In the film, the grown-ups react variously to the children’s gambit, with a chance for redemption for Willis’ police officer.

“His adults are always kind of wrangling disappointment,” said Swinton, who plays a bureaucrat simply called “Social Services,” in a news conference at Cannes. “And this film, I think maybe more than any other film, the adults are the disappointed ones and the children, they’ve got the grail.”

Schwartzman, a frequent collaborator with Anderson since “Rushmore” who considers the director his mentor, thinks his films are getting slightly deconstructed.

“I feel like Wes in each movie is examining, in a more intense way, an aspect of something that’s in his own body and world,” says Schwartzman. “And I think in other movies he’s examined or played around with the idea of young feelings of love and feeling stuck or confused.”

The wisdom of one of Anderson’s characters comes to mind: Gene Hackman’s rascal Royal Tenenbaum, who implored, with a glint in his eye: “I’m talking about taking it out and chopping it up.”

By Roger Moore
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a Valentine’s Day take on impending parenthood. Assorted couples cope with pregnancies, planned and unplanned, adoption and the epic change that is coming to their lives.

It’s wafer-thin, but it has plenty of laughs — a lot of them involving pregnant women’s bodily functions, the rest coming from Chris Rock, who unloads lots of daddy-to-be wisdom on one prospective father. But what’s surprising is how touching this film from the director of Waking Ned Devine manages to be. Kirk Jones and the screenwriters found real pathos in adapting the Heidi Murkoff self-help book, dubbed America’s “pregnancy bible.”

Cameron Diaz stars as Jules in What To Expect When you're Expecting. (Melissa Moseley/Lionsgate)

Elizabeth Banks plays Wendy, a self-help book author, a pregnancy expert who has never been able to get pregnant herself. Until now. She and hubby Gary (Ben Falcone) are all set to glow with the angel’s kisses of this miracle. And then her husband’s ex-race car driver dad (Dennis Quaid) and his trophy bride (Brooklyn Decker) one-up them. Father and mother-in-law are expecting twins.

Anna Kendrick is the food-truck chef whose one-night tumble with a high school flame (Chace Crawford), also a food-truck cook, put her in a family way.

Cameron Diaz is a super-fit TV fitness guru newly pregnant with her Celebrity Dance Factor partner (Matthew Morrison of TV’s Glee.). Sure, she found out she was pregnant by throwing up on live TV. But she figures as fit as she is, she can do this pregnancy thing in her spare time.

And Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro are buying the house and prepping for an adoption. Santoro’s Alex is the guy his wife sends to a dudes group, daddies with toddlers who trundle their kids through the parks of Los Angeles. And that’s where daddy Chris Rock presides.

“Ready? There’s no such thing as READY,” Rock’s character, Vic, bellows. “You just jump on a moving train, and DIE.”

He and his crew make a lot of death jokes about what life is like after a baby enters the house. And cracks about the man’s loss of parity when there’s an infant in tow.

“Women pretty much control the baby universe,” so yeah, you’re buying a house, yeah, you’re deferring on every major decision regarding the baby. And yeah, babies “are where happiness goes to DIE.”

In montages, couples visit obstetricians or explain their state of mind to friends or colleagues. Couples bicker over matters big — circumcision, the baby’s name — and small. Couples struggle to endure, as couples, the strains of unplanned pregnancies.

Every so often, the “dudes group” (Thomas Lennon is a member, and the very funny Joe Manganiello is the single, womanizing photographer-jock they idolize) gathers to dispense more warnings to Alex.

And then we return to Wendy, who has built a career out of romanticizing this experience, but who has no more clue about what she’s facing than her daft assistant (Australian comic Rebel Wilson, who is OUT there). If Rock is the voice of comic wisdom in What to Expect, Banks is its heart. She brings pathos and humor to a character who is hell-bent on loving this circle of life thing, until she’s overwhelmed.

Interestingly, the actresses involved in this movie all chose to play characters outside their own parenting experience. Lopez has children, and plays a woman who can’t. Banks, playing a woman determined to love pregnancy, had her baby through a surrogate. Kendrick and Diaz and model-turned-actress Decker aren’t moms — yet.

That doesn’t hurt the film, which is basically a light, superficial and frothy little romp through the pregnancy experience. It’s choppy and episodic, and funny — especially when Rock, a veteran dad in real life — is holding court. But the overarching message is both moving and amusing.

Expecting a baby? You have no idea what to expect.

By Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune

For most of its quick and extremely dirty running time, the new Sacha Baron Cohen offender The Dictator wages war with itself, crude nonsense up against crude nonsense that’s really funny. Then comes the golden ticket, the speech of speeches, the scene in which the fictional North African dictator General Admiral Haffaz Aladeen addresses a gathering in New York City, recanting his barbarous ways with a heartfelt confessional.

You Americans don’t know how good you have it here, he states. Where he comes from, he says, the top 1 percent controls most of the wealth. Leaders can’t wait to wage war on the wrong country. And on and on he goes. The joke is both predictable and familiar, yet it kills. At the Dictator screening Thursday night, the scene started out one way — scoring easy points with its target audience of liberals — but by the end, with Cohen finessing the loutish Supreme Leader’s spiel just so, the applause in the theater sounded positively bipartisan.

Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator.

This was the old Borat stuff! And I wish director Larry Charles’ third outing with Cohen had more of it. It’s maddeningly uneven, though a step up from the wearying Bruno. Since Borat, something has happened to Charles’ comic technique: The way he films simple dialogue exchanges has grown weirdly artless and often mistimed (the editing is mighty hacky), halfway to Adam Sandler territory for broadness. I stuck with it, though, because Cohen at his best is both brazen and sly. As is The Dictator.

This one’s plottier than Borat or Bruno, for better or worse. When one of Aladeen’s doubles is assassinated, the leader’s longtime adviser (Ben Kingsley, looking a little uncomfortable) hatches a scheme involving a new double (also played by Cohen), a visit to the dreaded America and an unlikely romance with a vegan/feminist/Rush Limbaugh nightmare, played by Anna Faris.

She’s game and a strong sparring partner for Cohen’s unending misogynist wisecracks.

Like Faris, Jason Mantzoukas lends valuable support, in the role of Aladeen’s former nuclear physicist presumed assassinated (by Aladeen). He turns up as one of countless refugees from Aladeen’s country, Wadiya, now living in the Manhattan subsection known as Little Wadiya.

The better gags in The Dictator move fast and get on with it, as when we hear a news announcer intone, “He did not know his mother, who died in childbirth,” while we see two or three seconds of footage of an armed guard smothering Aladeen’s mother with a pillow. (Harsh, but amusing.)

In contrast, when Aladeen’s clueless goat-herder double-swigs urine out of a pitcher and pours it, inadvertently, on Israeli council members … harsh but un-amusing. It’s not filmed correctly. Re-watch Borat sometime to see how fearless satirists get away with murder.

This movie’s more conventional. But it’s worth catching for Cohen’s brief shining Camelot moment at the podium.

By Jill Vejnoska
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The summer movie season has officially started, and we can all agree on the best way to go about enjoying it: with George Clooney, in the private screening room of his fabulous villa on Lake Como in Italy.

OK, who’s up for tips on the second best way to enjoy it? The next three months will feature plenty of cinematic blockbusters — from Marvel’s The Avengers to The Amazing Spider-Man to The Bourne Legacy.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) in Marvel's the Avengers. (Zade Rosenthal/Marvel)

And plenty of sharp elbows, as everyone seems to be angling for the same limited number of opening weekend tickets, parking spots in the multiplex lot and napkins for wiping away the butter from their $8 tubs of popcorn.

Add in the high cost of tickets, and chances are good you’ll need a second mortgage to be able to afford to take the family to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter next month.

Fortunately, help is on the way. Here are six smart says to go to the movies this summer:

1. Join the club

Membership has its privileges. Most major theater chains have some sort of loyalty program that allows you to accrue points toward discounted tickets, concessions or other goodies. For instance, you earn $10 in “Stubs Rewards” for every $100 you spend at AMC theaters. That’s not much more than a family of four spends to see a movie and buy nachos. Regal’s “Crown Club” members receive one credit per dollar spent purchasing tickets, with rewards starting at 50 points (one free small popcorn) and escalating upward. (300 points will get you one free movie ticket.) Join at www.regmovies.com and click on “Crown Club” icon.

Of course, there’s no entirely free popcorn … er, lunch: You have to spend a bunch of money before getting any of it back. (Indeed, there’s a $12 annual fee.) Join AMC Stubs at www.amcstubs.com.

But there are other benefits to joining: AMC Stubs members are waived the annoying “convenience fee” ($1 or more) when buying tickets online. Landmark Theatres Film Club members recently got a chance at free tickets to an advance screening of Headhunters and an “exclusive letter” from The Deep Blue Sea writer/ director Terence Davies. Being able to save on the cost of a bathtub-sized Coke at the concession stand: good. Getting to sound like an insufferably smart movie insider at dinner parties: priceless.

2. Go big or stay home

Another way to save is by buying multiples of tickets at once — if you can get in the actual or virtual door to the store. Several big warehouse shopping clubs offer special movie deals to members. BJ’s Club sells a package of four AMC movie tickets (also good at Loews and Magic Johnson theaters) and one small popcorn voucher for $34.99 — that’s a saving of almost $3 per ticket for nonmatinee shows. Costco sells four-packs of tickets to AMC, Regal and Cinemark theaters online for $34.99. In addition, two-packs of tickets for $15.99 are available in some Costcos. In all cases, the tickets are valid seven days a week and have no expiration date.

3. Like them. Really, really like them!

Social networking can be a good way to snag hard-to-come-by tickets or cut costs on concessions. Groupon and LivingSocial.com periodically have advance deals on tickets for specific movies, while gift-card websites often have discounted fare (PlasticJungle.com was offering 13 percent off on $25 and $100 AMC gift cards recently.) Individuals sometimes post similar offers on Craigslist, although as always, proceed at your own risk there.

Easier still is “liking” theater chains on Facebook and following them on Twitter. Facebook pages in particular are good sources of info on early ticket sales for blockbuster flicks (“The Hunger Games is back in IMAX one week starting Friday!” AMC’s page reported recently, along with a link for tickets), contests to win free tickets, tie-in merchandise and DVDs, coupon offers and more. (AMC’s “Tax Relief Offer” was good for a free small popcorn April 13-15.)

Possible drawbacks: More time spent hunched over your office computer pretending to work when you’re actually on Regal Cinema’s web page waiting for a new concessions coupon to be revealed every Thursday. It’s good for a week.

4. Stay ahead of the crowd

Not everything’s about money. Sometimes, avoiding long lines and crowds is a bigger deal — if you can even get tickets for that summer blockbuster movie.

If you absolutely positively have to be there on opening night, stake out Fandango or Movietickets.com to buy tickets as far ahead of time as possible. Again, Facebook and Twitter can help out by letting you know the minute advance tickets for, say, July’s The Dark Knight Rises go on sale. Just be aware that if you follow those links or click “purchase tickets” on the various chains’ websites, you’ll likely end up on Fandango.

For last Friday’s opening night of Dark Shadows, I could get tickets two weeks ahead of time on Fandango.

The bad news: The dreaded “convenience fee.” Still, it’s probably worth it if you want to be first on your block to see Johnny Depp sink his fangs into the role of Barnabas Collins.

The good news: Many theaters now accept tickets purchased online and printed out at home or even sent directly to a mobile device. So, no more having to wait in line anyway at the box office to pick up those tickets you had purchased well in advance.

5. Repeat after us: “I do like Mondays”

Studio moguls, theater owners — they all love to talk about the size of the weekend box office for their blockbuster films. But what nobody likes discussing is how much less crowded theaters are on the other four days of the week. Any week.

“Monday-Thursday are often good opportunities for guests looking for more ticket availability,” the spokesperson for one major theater chain wrote in an email, declining to be quoted directly.

Savvy moviegoers may take advantage of this fact by waiting out Prometheus or Men In Black 3 openings by just a few days and then having their pick of stadium seating on a Monday or Tuesday night. They may also enjoy various incentives theaters offer to bring them in on off days.

Regal Crown Club members get five extra points with paid admission on Thursdays, and there are $2 candy and popcorn deals on Mondays and Tuesdays.

6. Take a Viewcation

Like a Staycation, only better! By taking a day off from work, school or running a household, you can take in as many as three movies in a day, either in different theaters or in the same multiplex. Start with a morning matinee, when ticket prices usually are lower. (At many AMC theaters, for example, the first shows start in the 10 a.m.-11 a.m. hour and cost $6.)

Make sure to schedule your Viewcation for Monday-Thursday, in order to make the best use of “Smart Ways” No. 1-5 above.

By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

The Perfect Family is at best a moderately entertaining movie, one that tries to grapple with some big ideas about faith and doctrine, but which seems unwilling to make either its characters or its audience too uncomfortable.

Written by Claire V, Riley and Paula Goldberg and directed by Anne Renton, the film stars Kathleen Turner as Eileen Cleary, a good Catholic and charitable soul who is one of the contenders for her parish’s Woman of the Year award. Eileen would seem to be a shoo-in for the prize, but it is based on more than good works; the process also involves Eileen’s family, and that is where the doctrinal waters get muddy.

Eileen Cleary (Kathleen Turner) and Monsignor Murphy (Richard Chamberlain) in a scene from The Perfect Family. (Oana Marian / Variance Films/The Perfect Family)

Her daughter Shannon (Emily Deschanel) is pregnant and unmarried, but plans to change that latter situation — by marrying her live-in lover Angela (Angelique Cabral). Eileen’s son (Jason Ritter) is married to a woman, but the marriage is crumbling and he is involved with a local manicurist. Eileen has a secret of her own which may hurt her chances — and which is rather too broadly hinted before its revelation.

In that context, Eileen’s husband Frank (Michael McGrady) is something of a paragon. He’s an alcoholic, but one who has been in recovery for years.

The Perfect Family follows Eileen’s pursuit of the parish prize, and how her actions affect the people around her. The film refuses to treat Eileen as a fool; there are reasons for her beliefs and, even if you disagree with some of them, they do not make Eileen a fundamentally bad person. Indeed, while the movie’s antipathy for some Catholic doctrine is clear, it allows for positive people within the church. Still, Eileen is forced to question her beliefs when they run up against her feelings about her family — and what does or does not make it perfect.

Turner is quite good as Eileen, and she is well matched by Deschanel. (At times it does look as if they have the same eyes). The cast, which also includes Richard Chamberlain as the local monsignor and Elizabeth Pena as Angela’s mother, is for the most part capable; Ritter and Sharon Lawrence, as Eileen’s parish rivai, drift some into caricature.

But in spite of some excellent individual scenes, The Perfect Family struggles with a certain cheapness in its look and a script that is too obvious at times, and too easy in its conclusion.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels. ohio.com. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

By Roger Moore
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

The years, gray hairs and wrinkles fade away from Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer, and the cobwebs are brushed off Dark Shadows in director Tim Burton’s campy and dark take on the late 1960s vampire soap opera. The cheesy and cheap but beloved TV program takes an affectionate ribbing in the film, which has more in common with That ’70s Show than its actual source.

But it’s a fun flashback to the days when jilted witch Angelique (former Bond babe Eva Green, in fine fury) cursed the Byron-haired Barnabas Collins (Depp) to eternal damnation as a vampire, his immortality granted “so that my suffering would never end.”

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows.

The evil Angelique killed his parents, turned the seaport village of Collinsport against Barnabas and had him entombed. And when he is accidentally awakened in 1972, he discovers that was just the beginning of her revenge.

The descendants (Pfeiffer, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloe Moretz, Gulliver McGrath) are living in the cluttered ruins of Collinwood, their vast mansion. Angelique now dominates the fishing industry that made the Collins clan’s fortune. Tragedy has visited the family on a regular basis. Little David (McGrath) lost his mother, and requires a live-in shrink (Helena Bonham Carter), who is also a pill-popping drunk. And they’re about to hire a governess (Bella Heathcote) who is the spitting image of Josette, the long-lost love of Barnabas Collins. First, though, she has to answer some questions about the leading controversies of the day. What do you think of the president, the war?

“Do you think the sexes should be equal?”

“Heavens, no. The men would become unmanageable.”

Depp is wonderfully adept at playing this sort of fish out of water. Barnabas spies the miniskirt of his teenage descendant (Moretz) and wonders why a streetwalker lives among them.

He shouts, “Show yourself, Satan,” at his first sight of an automobile’s headlights. And there’s a bit of a language barrier.

“Are you stoned, or something?”

“They tried stoning me. It did not woooooork.”

The daffiness extends to Collinwood, where secret passages are now “where I keep my macrame,” matriarch Elizabeth (Pfeiffer) informs him.

Depp and Green set off real sparks as ex-lovers, with Green vamping up her vintage man-eater role and Depp’s Barnabas harrumphing that he will never fall for “a succubus of Satan.”

Also see: Rich Heldenfels: Let’s shed some light on ‘Dark Shadows’

It’s all done in the name of good, slightly off-color fun. Burton relishes the time-period pop so much that he plays entire songs on the soundtrack, lacing Nights in White Satin under the opening credits, the Carpenters, Barry White (the big sex scene, of course), Black Sabbath and Elton John’s Crocodile Rock under other moments. He brings in Alice Cooper for an extended cameo-concert.

The effects are grand, the settings, shadowy and digitally enhanced for your enjoyment. One bit, having a character turn into an eggshell caricature of herself, is something we’ve never seen before.

But all is not Anne Hathaway-size grins and tasty one-liners in Collinsport. Heathcote (In Time) is woefully out of her depth, faintly mysterious but unable to suggest the passion that Barnabas carried for 200 years in a coffin. Jackie Earle Haley, who takes on the Renfield role in this Dracula parody, is hilarious. But Miller is wasted, given little to play and thus bringing nothing to the party.

At nearly two hours, this two-joke comedy is entirely too long. But Burton neither dishonors the show nor disappoints generations of fans of that series, people inspired to pass their vampire love to their children and now grandchildren.

And if nothing else, he is to be commended for the makeup and effects that strip decades away from his older cast members, including Bonham Carter.

“Every year, I get half as pretty and twice as drunk,” her character, Dr. Julia Hoffman, complains.

In Dark Shadows, Burton has made at least half that line a lie.

By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

Movies draw into theaters in different ways. They may offer what look to be spectacular stunts. Or a big star. Or a reworking of an old concept. But regardless of the promise that gets us to buy a ticket, a movie still has to deliver on that promise once we are in our seats.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’s implied promise is that its cast reflects the overall quality of the movie. And the cast sets the bar high. It includes Judi Dench, who is both an Oscar winner and a regular in James Bond films. Bill Nighy, the adept character actor whose credits range from the artsy to the blockbuster. (Among other things, he’s Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.) Maggie Smith, who has two Oscars and of late has been part of the public-TV hit Downton Abbey. And Tom Wilkinson, who rivals Nighy in frequency of screen appearances, his including supporting roles in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and playing Joseph Kennedy Sr. in the miniseries The Kennedys.

Judi Dench as Evelyn, Tom Wilkinson as Graham, and Bill Nighy as Douglas star in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (Ishika Mohan/FOX Searchlight)

So there is a lot of acting weight brought to Marigold, so much that you would think any script would be improved by it. And there is no doubt that the cast helps Marigold. But it is not enough help to overcome the flaws in the story, which is laced with platitudes, strained in its optimism and at crucial moments more interested in talking about key events than showing them.

Dench, Smith, Nighy and Wilkinson — along with Penelope Wilton, also of Downton Abbey, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup — form a group of British seniors who, for different reasons, go to India to stay in what they think will be a fine residential hotel. They are mistaken. In fact, it is a rundown affair perilously near closing, with its young operator (Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire) hoping that it may yet be restored to its former glory.

The group is also for the most part an unhappy lot. Smith, for one, has an outspoken and unapologetic distaste for Indians. Dench is trying to get over several losses. Wilkinson lived in India when he was younger and is trying to recapture a moment from the past. Nighy and Wilton, long married, have very different points of view about their Indian sojourn. Imrie and Pickup hope that new territory also means new romantic adventures.

And, while all that is going on, Patel is trying ever more desperately to keep the hotel going.

Based on the novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach and directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Marigold wants to be an agreeable and uplifting rite-of-passage film for people who are not likely to be attending The Avengers or Dark Shadows. It has occasionally entertaining moments (some of them spoiled by the movie’s advertising) and a view of India that is neither overly bleak nor excessively glamorous. And it has that cast, full of seemingly effortless performances.

Would that more effort had gone into the writing. More than once, jokes are broadly telegraphed, putting the audience well ahead of the characters. There’s a dramatic moment in Wilkinson’s visit that he describes after the fact; Wilkinson is fine with the monologue, but the audience would have been better served by seeing what he describes. And one of the characters undergoes a personal transformation in the movie that is hardly justified by the way that person is first seen, and what happens over the course of the movie.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

The trailer for Dark Shadows promises comedic, bloody and anachronistic lunacy, with Johnny Depp as an 18th-century vampire discovering life in 1972, and Tim Burton at the directing helm.

It is also another case of Burton and Depp digging into pop culture’s past, the way they did in films such as Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.

For Dark Shadows, they dug into bygone television history for what Burton has called “a weird daytime soap opera.”

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows.

That was the original Dark Shadows, a daytime drama airing on ABC for 30 minutes each weekday from 1966 to 1971, a span of more than 1,000 episodes. Alex McNeil’s Total Television calls it “a radical departure from other daytime serials; it featured vampires, ghosts, haunted houses, werewolves and other Gothic surprises.”

This was especially enticing to young people. “I do remember, very vividly, practically sprinting home from school in the afternoon to see Jonathan Frid play Barnabas Collins,” Depp told Entertainment Weekly. “Even then, at that age, I knew — this has got to be weird.”

It was also a huge hit. It inspired two big-screen adaptations (House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows), a hit song (Quentin’s Theme), a short-lived prime-time updating in 1991, various related merchandise, an annuity of sorts for cast members in the form of appearances at fantasy conventions, and a career change for the show’s producer-creator, Dan Curtis. The appeal endures, as evidenced by the release of all the episodes in various DVD sets (including a complete-series box) and the new movie.

All this happened thanks to a vampire, Barnabas Collins, who was not even part of the show until after more than 200 episodes had aired.

And Barnabas got his chance because ABC, then a struggling network, was desperate to have something — anything — going in daytime.

In the early ’60s, ABC was doing so poorly, it “was about to leave the daytime business,” then-programming executive Len Goldberg recalls in the ABC history Beating the Odds. A show that would prove long-running, General Hospital, had premiered in 1963 but had not gotten a consistent hold on viewers. Where the Action Is, a pop-music series hosted by Dick Clark, and The Dating Game, the first of producer Chuck Barris’ hits, began drawing viewers in 1965. But Where the Action Is proved to be a temporary fix. And Never Too Young, a soap opera aimed at teens, did not last, leaving ABC searching for something else to fill the gap.

Enter Curtis, a producer known mainly for his work on golf telecasts. The story goes that he had a decidedly gothic dream about an old town, the wealthy Collins family and its governess, then told his wife — who said he should make it as a TV show.

Curtis took it to Goldberg, who told him, “Dan, you dreamed Jane Eyre.” Curtis’ idea had none of the supernatural elements that would make the show legendary. But ABC was ready to roll the dice, and agreed to the series. It premiered in June 1966.

“It didn’t do too well,” Goldberg observed. Curtis was blunter in a conversation with former Beacon Journal critic Mark Dawidziak: “It was going down the tubes.”

In these less patient TV times, Dark Shadows would have been gone in a matter of months, maybe even weeks. In 1966-67, it was still on the air, if unimpressively, when Curtis decided to take a risk of his own.

“My kids said make it scary,” Curtis says in Dawidziak’s book The Night Stalker Companion, a look at a later Curtis effort. “I said, ‘Why not? I’ve got nothing to lose.’ ”

He started with a vampire because “I wanted to see exactly how much I could get away with.”

In April 1967, in the 210th episode, audiences got their first glimpse of Barnabas, played by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid. When his coffin was opened, Frid, dark and somber but with a hint of a twinkle in his eye, knew he was in what he called “a campy soap opera” in a 1970 newspaper interview. He was not a horror fan, but he thought Dark Shadows might lead to bigger things. And, he said, “I don’t play it for laughs. I take it very seriously.” (Burton, for his part, insisted to MTV News that his movie is not a comedy but an attempt to capture the soap’s “weird vibe.”)

Goldberg admitted some nervousness about the move, at one point watching uncomfortably as his bosses checked out the show. But it hit and Curtis found himself at the helm of a fanged phenomenon. To keep it going, he told Dawidziak, he made Barnabas “a reluctant vampire,” and — years before TV saw a similarly motivated character on Angel — that made the character more interesting and more durable. Then the show piled on other elements, including moving the story back and forth in time. And, for five years, it worked.

It also gave Curtis a clear TV identity. During and after churning out Dark Shadows, Curtis proceeded to present still more scary fare: the Night Stalker movies and TV series, versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein, and more. “I put my nightmares on film,” he once said, but it was not always fulfilling.

In the early ’70s, Curtis worried out loud that he was being pigeonholed as a horror-maker. But he did manage to break out of that niche at times, including his magnum opus, the Winds of War/War and Remembrance miniseries.

Frid was not so fortunate. He did some theater work, but screen ventures were mostly Dark Shadows-related. (He has a cameo in the new film.) When he died in April, obituaries seized first and foremost on Dark Shadows.

But for all the actors who labor and never get one memorable role, Barnabas is still a triumph. As is the old, original Dark Shadows, once again in the public consciousness more than 45 years after its debut.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

As though anyone doubted it, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on Tuesday that Avengers 2 is in the works.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in "The Avengers."

Disney, which owns Marvel Comics, already has the next Iron Man and Thor planned for 2013 and the sequel to Captain America coming in 2014. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Iger gave no indication on when Avengers 2 will be released.

Worldwide, Avengers has grossed more than $700 million, according to Comic Book Resources. It’s on pace to become the first billion dollar movie for Marvel Studios.

Now that Avengers 2 is set to go, let the speculation begin. The credits of Avengers hinted at the likely villain for the sequel. But what else could be in store for the movie?

Although there have been no indications, it’s rational to expect more members of the Avengers team. Each of the X-Men movies added more characters, as did the Spider-Man movies.

Could we be see other staples of the Avengers comic book like Giant-Man, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Vision or the Wasp?

LOS ANGELES: Hulk, smash.

That’s what Captain America tells the Incredible Hulk to do in “The Avengers,” and that’s what the Marvel Comics superhero mash-up did at the box office, smashing the domestic revenue record with a $200.3 million debut.

It’s by far the biggest opening ever, shooting past the previous record of $169.2 million for the debut of last year’s Harry Potter finale.

The Avengers added $151.5 million overseas over the weekend to bring its total to $441.5 million since it began opening internationally a week earlier.

That raised the film’s worldwide haul to $641.8 million in barely a week and a half, more than its Marvel superhero forerunners “Iron Man,” ”Iron Man 2,” Thor and Captain America took in during their entire runs.

If distributor Disney’s domestic estimate Sunday holds when the final weekend count is released Monday, The Avengers would be the first movie ever to haul in $200 million in a single weekend.

While the number could dip below $200 million come Monday, Disney spent the weekend revising its forecasts upward as business kept growing.

“There aren’t even words, to be honest. I’m running low on double takes. Every time we looked at a number, it just got bigger than what we could have hoped for in the best-case assumption,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s head of distribution. “With this film, this weekend, anything is possible.”

The Avengers started with solid midnight crowds Friday, though nowhere near a record. Then it did $80.5 million for the full day Friday, second only to the Harry Potter finale’s $91.1 million first day.

Revenues held up much better than expected with $69.7 million Saturday, and Disney estimated that the film would bring in $50.1 million more on Sunday.

The record weekend was the culmination of years of careful planning by Marvel Studios, which has included teasers for an “Avengers” dream team collaboration in its solo superhero adventures.

Directed by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), The Avengers features Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

A $200 million total for every movie in release is considered a great weekend for the business as a whole, so The Avengers redefines the standards for a blockbuster debut.

“If The Avengers is any indication, we’re going to see a leap rather than a gentle little nudge into new territory, and the lineup is there to justify it going forward,” said Greg Foster, chairman and president of the huge-screen IMAX cinema chain.

Crowds were so anxious to see the film on IMAX’s giant screens that Foster said the company had only one problem: it ran out of seats to sell.

Overall domestic revenues came in at $248 million, climbing 49 percent compared to the same weekend last year, when Thor opened with $65.7 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. The Avengers accounted for four-fifths of the weekend’s domestic receipts.

Hollywood launched a potentially record-shattering summer with a vengeance, “The Avengers” landing as just the first of three huge superhero tales that highlight a lineup filled with other blockbusters in the making.

The Amazing Spider-Man follows on July 3 and “The Dark Knight Rises” wraps up the current Batman series on July 20.

Until the Harry Potter finale, 2008′s “The Dark Knight” had held the revenue record with a $158.4 million debut. Before that, the record-holder was 2007′s Spider-Man 3 with $151.1 million.

So anticipation for those two films could rival that of The Avengers.

As admission prices rise, Hollywood’s record-breakers often take in more money but sell fewer tickets than previous blockbusters. But The Avengers took in so much money that it’s the undisputed champ among debuts.

Based on average admission prices the years they were released, The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 3 had led with about 22 million tickets sold each over opening weekend. Today’s average prices put The Avengers tally at around 25.6 million tickets sold.

The Associated Press

Not that it matters, because it’s going to be a freakishly enormous success regardless of what critics say, but “Marvel’s The Avengers” is kicking off the summer movie season with excellent reviews.

The much-hyped assembly of comic book superheroes including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) finally arrives in theaters under Joss Whedon’s direction. AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire gave it three and a half stars out of four, saying of Whedon: “He’s pulled off the tricky feat of juggling a large ensemble cast and giving everyone a chance to shine, of balancing splashy set pieces with substantive ideology.”

In this film image released by Disney, Iron Man, portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., left, and Captain America, portrayed by Chris Evans, are shown in a scene from "The Avengers" (AP Photo/Disney)

Here’s a look at how these movies and others fared on the top review websites as of Friday afternoon. Each score is the percentage of positive reviews for the film:

— “Marvel’s The Avengers”: Metacritic, 69; Movie Review Intelligence, 78.2; Rotten Tomatoes, 93. Average: 80.1.

— “First Position”: Metacritic, 69; Movie Review Intelligence, 81; Rotten Tomatoes, 89. Average: 79.7.

— “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”: Metacritic, 60; Movie Review Intelligence, 62.3; Rotten Tomatoes, 77. Average: 66.4.

— “Mother’s Day”: Metacritic, 34; Movie Review Intelligence, 44.7; Rotten Tomatoes, 46. Average: 41.6.

By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer

Marvel’s The Avengers is big, generally satisfying entertainment: a contemporary equivalent of one of those World War II movies where a scrappy, seemingly mismatched bunch becomes a team united in common cause.

It works best when it moves, in the epic battle that is the climax of the movie (with Cleveland standing in for New York City). Director Joss Whedon ably and excitingly juggles multiple situations and characters and makes us care about every one of them.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) join forces in Marvel's the Avengers. (Zade Rosenthal/Marvel)

Whedon, who also wrote the film, further keeps fans engaged with his expected tossing-in of references not only to the Marvel canon but to other parts of pop culture, such as the film Independence Day. It also seems at times that Whedon is determined to out-Lucas the mighty George in special effects. And the 3-D version (which I saw) is especially well presented, aside from the excessive darkness that commonly afflicts night scenes in 3-D.

The movie is also helped by a new addition to the Marvel cast: Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, also known as the Hulk. Ruffalo brings a woebegone sweetness to his scenes as Banner; he is not the brooding loner of some Hulk interpretations but a lost soul — as, indeed, are the other characters in this band.

For those of you tuning in late, The Avengers — based on the Marvel comic that began in 1963 — brings together a group of Marvel characters: the Hulk, Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of the secret agency SHIELD, needs them after a source of enormous power is stolen by Thor’s brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who clearly wants it for more than turning on lights.

Fury has pursued the idea of a team-up before — at the end of 2008’s Iron Man, he approached Stark about an “Avengers initiative” ­— but it did not work. As the movie repeatedly makes clear, especially through Stark’s wisecracks, these heroes do not fit well together: Stark’s modern sensibilities clash with Rogers’ World War II attitudes, for example. Each also carries a personal burden. So a great deal of the movie involves the heroes’ slow movement toward a shared understanding — though not without trouble. One of the best scenes has the heroes arguing among themselves, ever more intensely, at the worst possible moment in a crisis.

But eventually the heroes are going to have to face Loki and the horrible horde he has enlisted in his evil deeds. That is especially good news for the audience.

With so many characters to serve in the two hours and 20 minutes of the movie, Whedon’s script often sacrifices character development, or even character detail. Renner’s Hawkeye is especially sketchy, and Downey’s Stark seems to have regressed emotionally since the end of Iron Man 2.

Dialogue is also a problem. Whedon is good at the jokey sound-bite here, but not so good when trying for grandeur; many early lines clang, and a scene in Stuttgart (also played by Cleveland) is heavy-handed in its message-sending.

But the action is marvelous. Scenes aboard a helicarrier — a flying battleship — are good, and then topped by the pace and excitement of the New York City battle. It doesn’t always make sense (the villains display a marvelous lack of tactics), but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face.

The acting varies considerably. Much as I admire Ruffalo, Downey, Hiddleston, Renner and Johansson, they contend with the more wooden Evans and Hemsworth — and a Jackson performance that too often seems reduced to rigid line readings.

Indeed, where some are making extreme claims for The Avengers as, say, the best superhero movie ever, I don’t want to overpraise it. Superman II, for one, lingers wonderfully in my memory. And, among comic-book movies, this is no match for the tragic beauty of The Dark Knight. (In fact, if The Dark Knight Rises lives up to its trailer, The Avengers may not even be the best comic-book movie of this summer.) But The Avengers is a grand piece of popcorn moviemaking. And I was not at all disappointed by the closing promises of a sequel.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels. ohio.com. He is also on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

By Cory Bennett
Columbia News Service

NEW YORK: Left Behind: The Movie is filled with drama: sudden disappearances, a vitriolic Russian Antichrist bent on global domination, and fireballs raining down during the Apocalypse.

“The future as foretold by the Bible has come to pass,” a grandiose voice proclaims in the trailer. “Seeing is believing.”

Its producer, Cloud Ten Pictures, a Christian film company in Ontario, Canada, called it the most ambitious Christian movie of its time. Between 2000 and 2005, the company poured roughly $12 million into three profitable Left Behind movies, which are based on the best-selling novels of the same name.

Fiery explosions rain down during the Apocalypse in "Left Behind: The Movie." (Movie still courtesy of Cloud Ten Pictures)

But this year, Cloud Ten is quadrupling down on Left Behind. It plans to spend roughly $15 million to remake just the first of the series, nearly four times the budget of each of the original three. Not many movies get a complete reboot at four times the original cost just a few years after being released.

The move by Cloud Ten reflects an appetite for Christian cinema that has grown significantly in the last five years. “We really just wanted to be reaching a wider audience,” said Andre Van Heerden, the company’s chief executive. The first films had a “movie-of-the-week” feel and no big-name stars and focused myopically on religious themes, he said. He believes a sleeker, refocused film could cross over to the mainstream.

Over the last five years, independent Christian movies — films with overt proselytizing — have been among the most profitable independent releases across all genres. Several “faith-based” movies from major studios — films with redemptive messages or Christian characters — have also reaped larger-than-expected profits, causing the big studios to take greater notice of the market.

Todd Juenger, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research of New York City, said that after the major studios reduced their production slates to focus more on big-budget franchise films, the door opened for a variety of smaller budget religious films. “Faith-based films offer the benefit of an identifiable, relatively efficient-to-reach target audience, which provides marketing advantages,” Juenger said.

The boomlet in Christian films dates to 2008. Fireproof, the story of several firefighters struggling with marriage and religion, was that year’s highest grossing independent film, taking in $33.5 million on a $6 million budget. That is tiny compared to a major studio blockbuster but it is still a tidy profit.

Things picked up with last September’s Courageous, a redemption story with inspiration from the Bible about policemen reconnecting with their families. The film brought in $35 million on an $11 million budget. Then in March, October Baby — a heavily pro-life film, which opened on only 390 screens — placed in the top-10 its first weekend, beating out mainstream fare that played in 10 times as many theaters.

October Baby, Courageous and Fireproof featured no stars. In fact, Courageous and Fireproof relied largely on volunteers from the church affiliated with the films’ producer, Sherwood Production Co.

“Religious audiences have felt marginalized by cultural changes,” said Craig Detweiler, director of the Center of Entertainment, Media and Culture at Pepperdine University. “Rallying around a particular film is a way to vote with their feet and say, give us more.”

The surge has not been missed by major Hollywood studios who have seen mainstream audiences increasingly gravitate to faith-based movies. The Blind Side, a film about a Christian family taking in an impoverished and talented high school football player, was a surprise hit in 2009. It grossed more than $300 million, was nominated for the best picture Oscar and won for best actress (Sandra Bullock).

All six major movie studios have recently started divisions dedicated to acquiring and producing overtly Christian movies, as well as more mainstream faith-based films. Affirm Films, a division of Sony Pictures, was originally founded in 2007 to acquire Christian movies for distribution on DVD. But the success of Fireproof and Courageous, which Affirm acquired, led Sony to expand the division into production.

“There was some trust and desirability to stretch a little bit and see what else we could do,” said Rich Peluso, Affirm vice president.

Last year, Affirm developed Soul Surfer, based on the true story of a teen who returns to competitive surfing after losing an arm in a shark attack. The film starred Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt and teen Anna-?Sophia Robb, who starred in the popular children’s films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia. It was released on 2,000 screens — more than double the exposure that most independent films get — and grossed nearly $44.5 million on a $37 million budget.

“If we can just get these movies in the theaters and put them in front of people, they will respond because they’re hearing about it and they want it,” Peluso said. “They just can never find it.”

Which is why Van Heerden of Cloud Ten is targeting 2,500 screens and is aiming to land a name director and star actors for the new Left Behind film, slated for 2013. The 16-book series — hugely popular in the Christian community but largely unknown outside it — follows people battling with their faith during the Apocalypse. First, Christians and children ascend during the Rapture, then an Antichrist rises in the form of a United Nations dictator. Van Heerden sees the remake less as a Christian parable and more like a mainstream end-of-the world flick like Armageddon.

But Ted Baehr has seen it all before. He might even be the most well-versed authority on the history of Christian cinema. In 1986, he founded the Christian Film and Television Commission, which encourages media outlets to produce wholesome content, and Movieguide, a publication and now website that reviews movies based on their Christian-friendly content.

“These things always go in waves,” he said. “They’re going to get tired of it eventually.”