(L-r) HENRY CAVILL as Superman and AMY ADAMS as Lois Lane in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “MAN OF STEEL.” ©DC Comics/Warner Bros. Entertainment.

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Gritty, gray and grim from the moment it leaves Krypton, the meandering and morose “Man of Steel” has more in common with Christopher Nolan’s joyless “Dark Knight” trilogy than with any previous Superman incarnation. You’ll believe a man can fly, but this one never truly soars.

Nolan, who directed those three Batman blockbusters, serves as a very vision-defining producer here. He even brought along his Batman trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer and score composer Hans Zimmer. Although Zack Snyder (whose previous comics-to-movies credits include “300″ and “Watchmen”) is credited as director on “Man of Steel,” he never strays from Nolan’s gloomily downbeat template once Superman arrives on Earth.

While the filmmakers deserve credit for attempting such a bold break from the character’s cinematic past (which includes four inconsistent tongue-in-cheek Christopher Reeve flicks, and “X-Men” director Bryan Singer’s disastrously misguided 2006 “Superman Returns”), going dark and dismal simply doesn’t suit Superman. Moping and operating from the shadows is fine for Gotham City’s slightly psychotic protector, but nobody wants to see super-powered Clark Kent hiding out as a bearded loner transient, refusing to give a deserving jerk his comeuppance and generally acting pity-party pathetic. When he finally gets into costume, even his outfit’s iconic primary colors are muted to dull respectability.

We first see the adult Clark (a fittingly handsome and hero-jawed Henry Cavill) toiling as a far-north fisherman and later bussing tables at a restaurant, apparently not staying anywhere very long after doing inhumanly impressive but anonymous good deeds.

HENRY CAVILL (center) as Superman and CHRISTOPHER MELONI (far right) as Colonel Nathan Hardy in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “MAN OF STEEL.” ©DC Comics/Warner Bros. Entertainment. CR: Clay Enos.

An incredible coincidence puts him near a long-hidden spaceship from his home planet Krypton, where he learns his back story and gets The Suit. The ship also apparently provides Clark with a generous supply of pancake makeup and high-gloss mousse. Whenever he appears in costume, his pallor turns zombie pale while his hair becomes shinier, blacker and more rigidly styled.

Unexpectedly, “Man of Steel”‘s most enjoyable segment turns out to be its imaginative retelling of Superman’s famous origin. That familiar “newborn rocketed to Earth” tale is given an elaborate fantasy makeover that includes flying dragons and an underwater fetus grove. Russell Crowe is sly and defiant as new father Jor-El, who clashes with ferocious rebel General Zod (Michael Shannon) over the best way to preserve their doomed planet’s legacy.

Like Marlon Brando’s Jor-El in 1978′s “Superman,” Crowe’s Jor-El later appears to his son Kal-El (aka Clark Kent) as a virtual ghost in the machine. Although technically deceased, Jor-El may be the most dynamic and interesting member of the cast.

His only begotten son who was sent to provide hope and salvation to mankind faces his greatest trial at age 33, just in case all of the movie’s other Christian parallels aren’t obvious. That’s when vengeful General Zod locates Kal-El and begins wreaking monumental havoc to take him prisoner.

A basic problem with the plot is that General Zod and his evil Kryptonian shipmates are exactly as super as Superman on Earth. Because that means all of them can move faster than a speeding bullet, all of their battles should be short-lived blurs. For the same super-speed reason, what is supposed to be an emotionally devastating scene in which Clark’s foster father Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) meets his demise makes absolutely no sense.

Also, the movie makes a dramatic change to Superman’s nature that will seem familiar to SF fans acquainted with the Harlan Ellison “Outer Limits” episode “Demon With a Glass Hand.” Putting the weight of his world on the character that way burdens him with one more excuse to be miserable, which is the last thing the character needs.

Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) gets an empowerment upgrade that makes her more than a mere damsel in distress (although she serves that function as well). Lois doesn’t have much chemistry with either Clark or Superman, acting more like a concerned associate than a potential love interest.

Then again, Cavill is so blankly stoic in both roles that it’s hard to imagine him warming up to anyone. That’s also why an out-of-character laugh-line zinger he has to deliver in the last act seems inappropriate.

Laurence Fishburne is an ear-stud-wearing version of Daily Planet editor Perry White, whose main concern when skyscrapers start falling is rescuing an attractive underling named Jenny (Rebecca Buller). Those scenes feel so detached from the rest of the action that they seem to be taking place in a different movie.

HENRY CAVILL as Superman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “MAN OF STEEL.” ©DC Comics/Warner Bros. Entertainment. CR: Clay Enos.

Upping the ante from last year’s battle of New York in “The Avengers,” the climactic Metropolis showdown in “Man of Steel” is a horrific building-toppling free-for-all that would encompass thousands (if not tens of thousands) of likely fatalities. Where the urban destruction in “The Avengers” somehow managed to remain a comic-bookish catastrophe, the devastation in “Man of Steel” resembles a grotesquely extended 9/11 urban nightmare.

That sums up the main thing wrong with “Man of Steel.” The movie is difficult to enjoy as an escapist superhero adventure because it tries so hard to stay rooted in a dismal no-fun reality. At the same time, its premise is too ridiculous to hold up under its inherent absurdities and logic flaws.

Where “The Avengers” embraced its colorfully bizarre outrageousness, the stodgy “Man of Steel” is so determined to distinguish itself from its funny-book origins that it even keeps the character’s name out of the movie’s title, a la “The Dark Knight.” The word “Superman” is uttered only twice in the nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, and that includes a scene in which Lois is cut off the first time she tries to utter it.

Like Nolan’s cold and resolutely humorless Batman trilogy, “Man of Steel” tries so desperately to be taken seriously that it sacrifices nearly all of its character’s endearing comic-book charm.

(L-R) Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are Noogles in “The Internship.” © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Two of this month’s movies are about a pair of unconventional wannabes motivating a group of similar misfits to achieve unlikely greatness. Pixar’s “Monsters University” is the good one. “The Internship” is the one that is aggravatingly awful.

Salesmen Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) find themselves unexpectedly unemployed when their company shuts down. Nick’s one-scene gig working at a mattress store afterward is the movie’s only vaguely amusing moment. That’s thanks to Will Ferrell’s brief cameo as his domineering and absurdly demented boss, whose garishly huge Sanskrit neck tattoo translates as “make reasonable choices.”

The rest of the running time is devoted to manic motormouth Billy and amiably dumb Nick bluffing their way through an internship at Google that will lead to guaranteed jobs for only the winning team. They are twice the age of everyone else in the program, and their band of fellow picked-last outcasts includes the usual braniac-nerd stereotypes that Hollywood thinks are hilarious. None of them knows what life is about or how to have fun until Billy and Nick take them to a club where the repressed mama’s-boy Asian gets lap dances after his first tequila shots, the testosterone-free team leader finds the nerve to hit on an exotic dancer and the no-boyfriend Indian chick gets wet and wild onstage. Later, the group’s cynical head-always-down hater expresses his appreciation for a scenic view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Aww.

Their nemesis is a standard-issue bully (Max Minghella) who exists only to taunt and occasionally triumph over the group.

Although Billy and Nick are so tech unsavvy that Billy says “on the line” instead of “online” and is ignorant of Instagram, they prevail by being loudly and hyperactively irritating. That makes about as much sense as the idea that a smart and gorgeous Google exec played by Rose Byrne would fall for an immature doofus like Nick, who somehow becomes a computer coding master after what looks like a single night of study.

The movie’s endlessly rambling dialog is so exhaustingly verbose it makes Tarantino scripts seem terse. Vaughn’s stream-of-consciousness diarrhea-of-the-mouth shtick proves that more is sometimes less. One of his teammates notes that “you’re saying a lot of words really fast that mean nothing.” True that!

What’s also offputting is the wall-to-wall product placement for Google itself, to the point that the movie seems like a corporate promotional piece. There’s no fun whatsoever to be had at the company’s expense, so don’t expect anything even vaguely resembling the skewering Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook received in “The Social Network.”

Director Shawn Levy (“Real Steel,” “Night at the Museum”) keeps everything slick, sitcom-phony and full of huge headshots that seem more suited for TV.

Because “The Internship” ostensibly is a comedy, maybe it shouldn’t matter that its plot seems like a cynical wish fantasy aimed at clueless middle-aged men left behind by the information-age job market. Maybe this unrealistic underdog parable wouldn’t seem as condescending if the no-surprises screenplay (by Vaughn and Jared Stern) were funnier. But there’s something cruel about even jokingly suggesting in this economy that arrogant obnoxiousness will trump skills, education and experience in the business world.

Everyone knows that only works in politics.

Front Row Features Film Critic

Its TV ads imply that “After Earth” is an action thriller about a father and son who are both on the run in a future Earth that’s fraught with evolution-gone-mad perils, but don’t be misled. This is actually a classic coming-of-age adventure story about a scared but determined boy (Jaden Smith) who is on his own for most of the movie, while his immobilized military-hero dad  (Will Smith) communicates with him from their crash site.

That means most of the movie’s weight rests on the younger Smith’s narrow shoulders as a struggling military cadet named Kitai. He does a good job of seeming unsure and afraid yet determined to carry out his literally life-or-death mission. If Kitai doesn’t locate a rescue beacon that’s several days away by foot, both he and his father will die.

On the way, he has to deal with potential predators both natural and very unnatural. The deadliest is a monstrous alien life form the ship was transporting to a training base, but which has escaped into the wild.

What quickly becomes apparent is that although “After Earth” has spaceships, a high-tech “cutlass” device that turns into multiple sharp-edged weapons and all kinds of snazzy computer graphics, at heart it’s the same timeless tale that could be told about a caveboy, a spear and a bear in the woods. Driving that point home (zing!) is the screenplay’s refusal to provide the military ship with anything resembling a gun that could kill from a distance.

The movie’s only pure fantasy element, in fact, is one that actually detracts from the story. In the same way that the telepathic Force in “Star Wars” seemed like a mystical cheat, characters in “After Earth” can become invisible to the vicious alien life form by hiding all of their fear. What works as a metaphor is shakier in the execution. It’s hard enough to believe that an untested and frequently skittish teenager could keep his cool around something that big, scary and fast-moving. But it’s impossible to believe he could will himself to “ghost” by putting aside every bit of his completely understandable terror.

Fortunately, that flaw isn’t enough to spoil the story. Director M. Night Shyamalan keeps things moving at a not-too-fast but not-too-slow clip once Kitai starts his journey. The natural scenery is so lusciously shot that the abandoned Earth looks like a paradise, which is a switch from standard SF post-humanity dystopias.

Unlike superhero blockbusters, “After Earth” has the benefit of being about something other than people beating each other up. That makes the movie more kid-friendly than those comic-book punch-ups. Although Kitai is forced to kill, the violence here is on a more personal scale that doesn’t involve global terrorism, mass-murder or overwhelming destruction.

Also, Kitai’s something-to-prove relationship with his father has a classic feel that’s familiar without being annoying. Will Smith plays against type as a stonefaced, seemingly emotionless hardass who displays Vulcan-like stoicism even when performing surgery on himself.

The last thing dutiful dad hears from his adoring wife before what will turn out to be a life-altering journey is that he and his son should “go make some good memories together.” Mission accomplished.

Front Row Features Film Critic

Any studio cocky enough to call a movie “Epic” without putting something extra special on the screen is just begging for “epic fail” comments from unimpressed critics. Although this beautifully animated offering from director Chris Wedge and Blue Sky Studios (aka “The People Who Brought You ‘Ice Age’”) isn’t bad, it falls so short of its grandiose moniker that “Adequate” may have been a better title.

That’s because nearly all of its action-adventure beats are so jokey, lightweight and Saturday-morning-TV simplistic that the story doesn’t have the sweep, menace or drama of a true epic fantasy. The basic elements of what could have been a bigger and better movie are here, with a shrunken human girl caught in the middle of a crucial battle between hummingbird-riding forces of good and a rot-worshipping army of darkness. But nothing about it feels monumental or overwhelming enough to be considered anywhere near “epic.”

It doesn’t help that the hokey dialog is loaded with tired contemporary clichés such as “ginormous,” “seriously?” and “I’m messing with you.” When one bad guy tells another, “You look good in rot—it’s slimming,” it hard not to wonder if the line originated in a bad sitcom.

The movie also is hindered by an inconsistent cast. Singer Beyoncé Knowles, who supplies the voice of the inches-tall spirit of the forest Queen Tara, delivers her dialog with a distractedly disinterested drawl. Steven Tyler, voicing a very hammily showmanlike caterpillar who is keeper of the kingdom’s scrolls, breaks into an awkwardly hammered-in but thankfully brief production number that is the film’s only musical moment (although a Beyoncé song is heard over the end credits).

As Nod, a stereotypically reckless but eventually responsible young rebel, Josh Hutcherson (“The Hunger Games”) couldn’t sound more kiddie-film phony if his voice had been supplied by a computer simulator. Ditto Amanda Seyfried (“Les Miserables”) as Mary Katherine/M.K., sounding like standard-model, suitable-for-all-purposes Disney Channel teenager fresh from the cloning lab.

Jason Sudeikis is absent-mindedly professorial as M.K.’s ditzy dad, a gadget-festooned obsessive who has been trying to find evidence of the forest’s unseen little people for years. Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari, as a soldier-wannabe snail and a suggestive small talk-making slug, fill the movie’s “doofus sidekicks” slot.

Colin Farrell is good as a noble and mostly no-nonsense soldier who has the unlikely name Ronin despite the fact that the character doesn’t appear to be Japanese. Ronin gets to deliver the movie’s solemn “no one’s on their own” and “many leaves, one tree” moral about the interconnectedness of all living things.

Christoph Waltz is the theatrically villainous Mandrake, leader of gray-skinned little monstrosities called Boggans. And rapper Pitbull gives a shady Toad named Bufo a casually intimidating ‘tude.

William Joyce, who earlier produced and designed Blue Sky’s “Robots,” adapted the “Epic” screenplay with four cowriters from his book “The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs.”

Visually, the elaborate attention to detail that’s obvious in the movie’s realistic renderings of forest settings, plants and creatures (both actual and imaginary) is impressive. Even Pixar’s CGI movies still don’t quite get humans right yet, but the videogame-style versions of people here will do.

What’s strange in a movie with so much outdoor lushness is that one of its most charming scenes is a small indoor moment. After M.K. slides across a floor and under furniture, she emerges with some clinging dust bunnies and a static charge that has literally shocking ramifications.

Then again, as the rest of the movie proves, little things can mean a lot.

(Left to right) Zoe Saldana is Uhura and Zachary Quinto is Spock in “STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.” ©Paramount Pictures. CR: Zade Rosenthal.

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

The entertaining if unsubtle “Star Trek Into Darkness” is an extended “Zero Dark Star Trek” metaphor about terrorism, military madness and the cost of sacrificing ideals for the sake of lawless revenge. That’s because the “Darkness” refers not only to a mass murderer the USS Enterprise must confront, but to an equivalent evil within Starfleet itself.

America doesn’t come off very well in this “we have met the enemy and he is us” exercise, which may explain why the film’s end credits include a heavy-handed have-it-both-ways dedication to “post-9/11 veterans.” Right-wingers could have a field day with the implied message that those vets are heroic dupes sent to war for reasons as morally wrong as the ones in this movie.

Thinly veiled parables about present-day problems have been a “Star Trek” stock in trade from the start, so the subject of whether things like pre-emptive strikes and executions without trial are justified certainly is fair game for the franchise. If it all seems a bit on the nose in this screenplay by Damon Lindelof and returning 2009 “Star Trek” scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, remember that the original TV series included equally obvious allegories, such as an episode about bigotry among quite literally half-black and half-white aliens.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays an icily ruthless villain initially identified as fugitive Starfleet agent John Harrison, who masterminds a London bombing that leads to a deadly skyscraper attack on the organization’s high command. Enterprise Captain James Kirk (Chris Pine) subsequently is dispatched on a kill-not-capture mission so flagrantly at odds with Starfleet’s lofty rule-of-law ideals that engineer Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg) resigns his post in “I thought we were explorers” disgust.

Further complicating matters, Harrison is hiding in off-limits Klingon space, where the Enterprise’s presence could instigate a wide-scale war. When Kirk makes members of the Enterprise’s security detail change out of their uniforms so they can’t be identified as representatives of Starfleet if caught, it’s obvious that a moral line is being crossed.

There turns out to be more to Osama bin Laden stand-in Harrison than meets the eye, which lets the plot skate back and forth between whether he actually deserves savagely immediate execution or a civilized trial. Hawkish Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) is so adamant about taking action that he gets to deliver a frothing “you can’t handle the truth”-style justification for shooting first and asking questions never. But can Seal Team Enterprise really kill a man in cold blood?

Pine is good at tempering Kirk’s smirking gut-level confidence with some strained soul-searching about the nature of honor and duty. His amusing exasperation with by-the-book Spock (the excellent Zachary Quinto) is as fun to watch as ever. As Lt. Uhura, Zoe Saldana petulantly resents boyfriend Spock for risking his life so emotionlessly, but later gets her own “let me speak Klingon” moment of battlefield bravery. Grumpy doctor “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) actually gets to say, “Damn it, man, I’m a doctor, not a torpedo technician!”

(Left to right) Zachary Quinto is Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch is John Harrison, and Chris Pine is Kirk in “STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.” ©Paramount Pictures. CR: Zade Rosenthal.

New characters include Barbie-blond and blue-eyed science officer Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve, a little out of her depth even for a popcorn-movie space-opera).

Visually, returning 2009 “Star Trek” director J.J. Abrams goes aggravatingly overboard with his inexplicable fondness for blue-line lens flares that mar nearly every scene. That bad habit is so out of control here that one segment includes a virtual criss-cross latticework of those bright blue lines, while another is like watching the action from behind neon-blue venetian blinds. As always, the 3-D presentation is a non-essential gimmick that’s not worth wearing those awful glasses or paying a ticket-price premium.

Aside from those annoyances, special effects scenes of volcano-lava peril, interstellar battles and citywide destruction are convincingly impressive. A massive black dreadnaught-class attack ship that is two times the size with three times the speed of the Enterprise is scary cool.

Plot-wise, there always will be inherent story problems in a universe where instant site-to-site “beam me up/beam me down” transports (at warp speed between planets, even) are possible. Also, a climactic catastrophe involving Earthward-plummeting starships would be possible only if this planet had no defenses or warning systems whatsoever, which seems unlikely.

A more overarching flaw with this rebooted alternate-reality franchise is its habit of recreating moments from previous “Star Trek” movies, a tactic that risks becoming more in-joke insular than endearing. (Small spoiler alert ahead.) New Spock ringing up old Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to ask for guidance about a similar threat faced by the classic version of the Enterprise crew feels like a cheat, and one that’s not even (ahem) logical. Because many things in this new “Star Trek” reality differ wildly from events in the classic series timeline—such as new Spock’s love affair with Lt. Uhura—there’s no reason to believe that any character necessarily would behave the same way in both universes.

One of the things that made 2009′s “Star Trek” intriguing and fresh was its use of new characters who looked and sounded like yesteryear’s Enterprise crew but were unbound by that series’ chronology and preconceptions. The studio was able to have its cake and eat it too by retaining all of the series’ beloved archetypes without technically recasting those roles.

In future installments, it would be nice if the new characters were allowed to boldly go where no one has gone before, instead of being saddled with so many winking references to the past.

(l-r) Greta Gerwig & Mickey Sumner playfighting in “Frances Ha.” ©Pine District, LLC.

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Greta Gerwig is irresistible as the sweetly sincere and endearingly pathetic title character of this thoroughly charming comedy from director Noah Baumbach (“Margot at the Wedding,” “Greenberg,” “The Squid and the Whale”). It’s an offbeat new-economy romance in which being overqualified and underemployed is taken for granted, money’s too tight to mention and staying optimistic about a dream is irrational but essential.

Aspiring 27-year-old choreographer Frances is barely scraping by as an unappreciated apprentice at a New York dance studio. She’s Brooklyn roommates with bestie-since-college Sophie (Mickey Sumner) in a relationship they compare to “an old lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.” Seemingly inseparable, they play-fight like kids in the park and freely compare notes on their boyfriends’ sexual proclivities.

The two attractive opposites—Frances rounded and pleasantly rumpled, Sophie angular and more reserved—have an awkward parting of the ways when Sophie announces she will be moving to an expensive Tribeca apartment that Frances can’t afford. Frances also resents Sophie’s well-to-do boyfriend, a Goldman employee even Sophie mocks for being the type who wears distressed baseball caps and uses the term “take a leak.” Having just broken up with her own beau after refusing to shack up with him because she wanted to stay with Sophie, Frances feels hurt and betrayed that Sophie could abandon her so easily.

Frances moves in with a “rich kid” fedora-wearing hipster and an aspiring writer who’s hoping to land a “Saturday Night Live” staff gig while polishing his spec screenplay for “Gremlins 3.” As her hours at work are cut and her personal life deteriorates, Frances holds out hope that Sophie will come to her senses by returning, and all will be right with the world.

Gerwig, who shined in last year’s “Damsels in Distress,” is award-worthy wonderful as the adrift but undefeated Frances. The effortlessly lovable character is a vulnerable work in progress who admits, “I’m so embarrassed. I’m not a real person yet.” Her perfectly reasonable response to someone who says she should take her time is, “I will. I can’t help it.” And in a moment of unembarrassed candor about her reduced station in life compared to friends who are better off, she asks, “Do you know that I’m actually poor?”

Sumner, in her first feature role, perfectly captures the more mature Sophie’s real-world-adjusted sense of resignation. She’s also good at deadpan comedy, such as when she notes that Frances’ new apartment “is very aware of itself.” When she starts a blog that Frances says looks happy, Sophie points out that “mom wouldn’t read it if it were about depression” (to which Frances replies “mine would”).

Greta Gerwig dancing in front of fountain in “Frances Ha.” ©Pine District, LLC.

Make no mistake, this definitely is one of those critics’-darling no-budget indies that will be a hard sell to audiences craving superhero spectacle, videogame-level violence or “Great Gatsby” grandiose garishness. The closest thing it has to an action scene is when Frances takes a joyously pointless run through city streets accompanied by David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” The movie even is shot in blithely uncommercial black and white, with characters sometimes reduced to near silhouettes when they appear in brightly lit rooms.

“I like things that look like mistakes,” Frances says at one point, and she may just have a point. If this movie were slicker and more conventional, it wouldn’t seem as genuine and believably human. The smart screenplay (by Gerwig and Baumbach) and enjoyable performances here are memorable and real enough to make this miniature marvel one of the best movies of an otherwise artificially overstimulated summer.

(L to R) Han (SUNG KANG), Tej (CHRIS “LUDACRIS” BRIDGES), Gisele (GAL GADOT), Dom (VIN DIESEL), Brian (PAUL WALKER) and Roman (TYRESE GIBSON) get back behind the wheel in “Fast & Furious 6.” © 2013 Universal Studios

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Buckle up and hold on tight for the wildest thrill ride of the summer. This amazingly over-the-top action/soap hybrid is so much crazy fun it’s irresistible. Full of jaw-dropping stunts, gleefully preposterous plot twists and adrenaline-rush car chases that are “Road Warrior”-level outrageous, this pedal-to-the-metal joyride is guaranteed to please.

“Fast & Furious 6″ reunites series standard-bearers Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) with later franchise additions Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang) and Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot) as daredevil street racers who weave between both sides of the law. This time out, the gang is enlisted to help bust international terrorist mastermind Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), a high-body-count hijacker who is after a doomsday computer chip.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson returns as ridiculously pumped-up lawman Luke Hobbs, whose idea of enhanced interrogation involves using an uncooperative arrestee for some creative furniture breaking, wall shattering and even ceiling wrecking. His bait to get the F&F team members out of ritzy retirement after their $100 million haul in 2011′s “Fast Five” is a recent surveillance photo of Dom’s girlfriend Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), believed dead since 2009′s “Fast & Furious.”

Suffering from a classic daytime-drama case of total amnesia that thankfully hasn’t affected her fearless driving skills, Letty is now part of Shaw’s very nasty crew. Can devoted Dom jog Letty’s memory enough to tow her back to the right side of life’s double-yellow line? Will taking down Shaw earn Our Heroes the full pardons they crave for their previous crimes? And will new dad Brian ever see his adorable son or his adoring wife Mia (Jordana Brewster) again?

Most of the action unfolds in a version of London where streets never happen to be too congested to hinder hundred-mile-an-hour hot pursuits.  Shaw’s most impressive set of wheels is an armored and virtually indestructible Formula One-style racer that flips and flees from police cruisers. Then again, the massive tank he uses to demolish countless oncoming cars on a highway in Spain is no clunker, either.

Roman (TYRESE GIBSON) makes a death-defying leap in “Fast & Furious 6.” ©Universal Studios.

Possibly the cleverest thing about the zippy screenplay by Chris Morgan, who also scripted the last three F&F features, is its rationale for getting Our Heroes out of modern state-of-the-art wheels and back into some good old-fashioned American muscle cars (including a 1969 Dodge Daytona Charger and Ford Mustang). Shaw and his high-tech henchmen can disable present-day autos by taking over their internal computers, so only vintage vehicles are inviolable.

The movie’s storyline exists in such an amped-up tongue-in-cheek reality that even its genre cliches are forgivable (snipers who don’t take shots, good guys who let villains go free only to chase them again immediately, savagely brutal fistfights that don’t leave so much as a bruise the next day).

Director Justin Lin (who previously helmed “Fast Five,” “Fast & Furious” and 2006′s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”) keeps the action scenes entertainingly edge-of-your-seat frantic. The biggest involves a deliriously extended effort to keep a Russian cargo plane from taking off. That chase, which ends up involving just about the entire cast, lasts so long that the runway would have to be more than 10 miles in length, but so what? Like the rest of the movie, the payoff is more than worth a little suspension of disbelief, or even a lot.

Also, be sure to stay through the end credits for a high-impact bonus scene that sets up the next “Fast & Furious” outing, featuring an action star who seems like an incredibly obvious fit for the franchise.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jay Gatsby in Baz Lurhmann’s “The Great Gatsby.” © 2013 Warner Bros.

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Classic literature goes to candyland in this crazily colorful fever-dream fantasy version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. Director Baz Luhrmann has transformed the author’s noirishly bitter jazz-age period piece into a brazenly bizarre ADD sugar rush that careens from perfume-ad lushness to music-hall madness to operatic melodrama. It’s an inconsistent oddity at best and a flamboyantly flagrant fiasco at worst, but parts of it sure are pretty.

What’s most frustrating about the movie is that its screenplay, adapted by Luhrmann and frequent collaborator Craig Pearce, is almost slavishly faithful to Fitzgerald’s text. That means it could have been the basis for an excellent played-straight dramatization, instead of this cartoonish carnival ride.

Aside from adding a framing device in which narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) is recounting the story of mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a form of psychiatric therapy, and deleting the final-act arrival of Gatsby’s father, the script contains nearly everything that’s in the original novel, right down to moments as minor as Nick wiping a spot of shaving lather from a partygoer’s cheek. The problem is that nearly every technically by-the-book moment of the movie is performed with tongue-in-cheek insincerity, silly histrionics, soapy earnestness or inappropriate slapstick that makes the production play like a vaudeville parody.

Most of the cast could have been ideal for a non-winking interpretation of the material. DiCaprio would have been a fine choice to portray Gatsby’s mixture of “old sport” magnetism, hidden menace and desperately romantic delusion. As the married object of his affection, Carey Mulligan probably could have toned down Daisy Buchanan’s daytime-drama act a notch without much trouble. Likewise, Joel Edgerton (as Daisy’s obnoxious and unfaithful husband Tom) may have been able to dial back his almost mustache-twirling villainy to more human proportions.

Two supporting cast members who shine are Elizabeth Debicki as Daisy’s longtime friend and flapper-fabulous golfer Jordan Baker, and Jason Clarke as beat-down and miserable George Wilson, the husband of Tom Buchanan’s mistress.

The weak links are Maguire, whose pop-eyed aw-shucks boyishness is all wrong for a character who is supposed to feel superior, resentful, disgusted and maybe a little envious of the fabulously wealthy “careless people” he comes to disdain, and Isla Fisher, who doesn’t seem sufficiently hardened or demanding as Tom’s vulgar mistress Myrtle Wilson.

Director Luhrmann’s decision to mix rap and contemporary pop music with less anachronistic songs on the soundtrack is a silly gimmick that’s nearly as annoying as presenting the movie in utterly unnecessary 3-D. The subtle and evocative score by Craig Armstrong, however, may be the most enjoyably unaggravating aspect of this otherwise more-is-less affair.

The film’s gaudily glitzy production design, which has a lot in common with the look of Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!”, is undeniably dazzling. All of that rainbow-drenched garishness is very much at odds with what is basically a melancholy and downbeat tale of obsession, psychosis and “the rich are different” cruelty, however. And music-video-quick cuts and dissolves often make the film appear to be an extended trailer for itself.

Similarly, Lurhmann’s busy and sweeping camerawork sometimes seems less appropriate for a class-centric character-based melodrama than a Harry Potter film. Soaring back and forth between the Buchanan’s green-lighted dock and Gatsby’s Hogwarts-huge mansion feels like flying on an agitated dragon’s back.

When it comes to re-interpreting any classic, what one viewer sees as playfully creative irreverence may be regarded by another as blasphemous desecration. Even Luhrmann seems to realize he has gone too ostentatiously overboard when he pulls his flight of fancy closer to earth in its third act.

Misbegotten but memorable, what starts out as an everything-flashier-than-everything-else spectacle wraps up with an ending that actually manages to be moving.

Front Row Features Film Critic

Like Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion, the Iron Man movie franchise goes over a cliff with this disappointing third outing. The first “Iron Man” wasn’t perfect, and “Iron Man 2″ had even bigger problems. But even though “Iron Man 3″ is likely to find box-office gold thanks to the public’s affection for the Marvel Comics character and the star who plays him, this latest installment is a lead-balloon clunker.

That’s despite the fact that charismatic Robert Downey Jr. still seems perfectly cast as billionaire inventor Stark, the wisecracking full-of-himself smartass who is Iron Man’s alter ego. The problem is that the screenplay in which Downey is trapped, co-written by director Shane Black and Drew Pearce, is an ungainly contraption that is anything but a well-oiled machine.

There’s something here to displease everyone from hardcore Marvelites (who should be outraged by the way the movie utterly ruins the Iron Man comic-book’s signature villain) to casual superhero fans (who will be irritated by how little time Downey spends in his armor) to little kids (who may be traumatized by incidents of mass murder, torture and general sadism, when they’re not being bored).

Sir Ben Kingsley appears as the Osama bin Laden-like baddie known as the Mandarin, who commandeers the public airwaves to make menacing terrorist threats. But in a bizarrely wrongheaded change that completely subverts the character and sabotages the movie, the Mandarin later is reduced to neutered comic-relief status.

Considering that the comic-book version of the Mandarin has been around since the Iron Man comic debuted in the 1960s, it’s as if the makers of “The Dark Knight” had decided it would be a nifty idea to portray the Joker as nothing more than a toothless stooge. What’s most unfortunate about this Mandarin is not that his creaky seen-it-before particulars date back at least as far as “The Wizard of Oz.” What’s worse is that the movie trashes the Mandarin name, throwing away half a century of comic-book heritage for the sake of a dumb gag.

The change obviously was made in the name of political correctness, considering that the comic-book Mandarin could be regarded as Fu Manchu-level offensive to Asians. There’s also the fact that China has become such a big international box-office market that a different cut of “Iron Man 3,” featuring a Chinese actress who does not even appear in the US version, will be released in that country. Still, it’s too bad the producers didn’t rise to the challenge of making the troublesome stereotype shocking but somehow credible in a present-day context.

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Stark’s brainy blond girlfriend and the head of his high-tech company. She gets to be both damsel in distress and an action figure in her own right this time around. Don Cheadle is back as Col. James Rhodes, aka the military’s red-white-and-blue version of Iron Man, whose name has changed from War Machine to Iron Patriot. Jon Favreau (who directed the first two “Iron Man” movies) returns for some annoyingly flat funny business as Stark Enterprises head of security Happy Hogan.

Newcomers include Rebecca Hall as a scientist whose 1999 one-night stand with Stark has nasty present-day repercussions (although thankfully not of the “Tony Jr.” variety). Guy Pearce is a vindictive scientist who is up to no good in a big way. Ty Simpkins is an annoyingly precious kid Stark meets in a Tennessee small town, because the producers apparently thought what audiences really want to see are scenes featuring an out-of-costume middle-aged man hanging out with a boy in a barn.

While footage featuring Stark without his armor and helmet gives superstar Downey what is literally more “face time,” it’s frustrating to watch him spend so much of the movie out of costume. Logic gaps also abound. The main one involves Stark wasting so much time improvising MacGyver-like hardware-store inventions instead of simply accessing his Iron Man equipment. A segment in which street-clothes-wearing Stark and Rhodes sneak into a henchmen-guarded Miami mansion plays like something out of a cheesy buddy-cop TV show.

“Iron Man 3″ acknowledges events from last year’s excellent “The Avengers,” a movie that may have set the bar impossibly high for all other superhero flicks. Stark now experiences uncharacteristic and unconvincing anxiety attacks whenever he recalls his near-death experience in that adventure.

“Nothing’s been the same since New York,” he laments, noting that next to gods and aliens he is “just a man in a can.” Yet he bafflingly never tries tapping either his fellow superheroes or the resources of the global crime-fighting organization S.H.I.E.L.D. to combat the Mandarin and his monstrous associates, even after Stark’s home is destroyed, his friend is rendered comatose, the president is threatened with assassination and the public body count keeps rising.

Director/co-writer Black can’t forge what are supposed to be grimly dark elements (including mass-destruction explosions that reduce victims to Hiroshima-style wall shadows), sitcom-bland man-boy moments (potato gun, anyone?) and campy farce (the movie’s misbegotten Mandarin) into an alloy that has any structural integrity. A fireworks-like finale, in which Stark basically leaves himself utterly defenseless for no conceivable reason, makes no sense whatsoever.

The movie does include some impressive action scenes. Stark’s magnificent mansion comes under a jaw-droppingly destructive missile and machine-gun attack, and it’s a kick to see a helicopter taken out by a grand piano. Later, Iron Man comes up with an ingenious if unlikely way to save a ridiculous number of Air Force One passengers who have de-planed in mid-air without parachutes.

The only other silver lining in this rustbucket is that its poor quality may make Downey want to suit up at least one more time, in order to exit the franchise on a high note. It would be a shame if this cobbled-together dud marked his last solo appearance as the comic-book character he has come to define.

Kayden Kross is one of 16 adult-video actresses interviewed in “Aroused.” CR: Ketchup Entertainment

By JAMES DAWSON

Front Row Features Film Critic

Director/photographer Deborah Anderson gets 16 adult-video actresses to bare more than their bodies in the emotionally revealing documentary “Aroused.” With attitudes ranging from arrogance to introspection, the performers discuss their unusual career with a level of candor that brings two of them to tears.

Viewers expecting lots of bumping and grinding will find the film’s title misleading, because the subjects are anything but aroused. Clips from their movies are scarce, skimpy and mostly soft-core. More than 20 minutes pass before any nudity is glimpsed, and photo-shoot footage of the interviewees going through poses on a bed is more professionally cool than pruriently carnal.

Anderson paces the proceedings like a strip-tease artist who doesn’t want to show too much too soon, which may frustrate porn fans hoping for non-stop erotic eye candy. Roughly half of the 69-minute movie is black-and-white footage of the robe-wearing performers being interviewed while getting their hair and makeup done.

That may be a smart move, forcing those who might be distracted by the ladies’ naughty bits to get to know their owners before seeing them naked. When the documentary shifts to color and begins focusing on extreme close-ups of the women’s beautiful faces and bare breasts, the exposure seems more intimate after getting a sense of what’s beneath all that fabulous flesh.

Two of the most thoughtful interviewees are blond beauty Kayden Kross, a former private Christian school student who says that after five weeks of sex ed she still didn’t know she had a vagina, and 41-year-old Francesca Le, who confesses that veterans of the biz don’t tell newcomers about the industry’s dark side.

Kross says the reason so many X-rated actresses come from homes without fathers “is not really because they’re damaged, but because there’s not someone there to disappoint. It’s one thing to disappoint your mother like that, it’s another to disappoint your dad.”

The health risks associated with the adult entertainment industry are not mentioned until near the end of “Aroused,” when Le notes that no one is going to tell new hires “you’re definitely going to get an STD,” or that health insurance won’t cover them when they do. “As soon as you start having sex in this business without a condom, you’re putting your life on the line,” she notes, comparing adult performers to stunt men. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

Still, all of the actresses are uniformly defensive about choosing their line of work, and resent being looked down upon by judgmental outsiders. Misty Stone maintains that “we’re probably a lot cleaner than some of the (non-industry) civilians out there.” Teagan Presley says that having sex with adult-video actors who are tested regularly for STDs may be safer than hooking up at a bar with strangers whose history is a mystery.

The film’s most poignant moments come when the single-named Belladonna expresses how “used” she felt when it was taken for granted that she would do something unexpected and extreme on camera. Pointing out that she doesn’t think the industry will be around in five years because of internet piracy, freckled girl-next-doorish Brooklyn Lee tearfully wonders if she may be screwed (although that’s not the word she uses) in more ways than one.

The actress who took the most unusual journey to porn may be Allie Haze, a fresh-faced former Sunday school teacher who married a Baptist preacher at 18. “Just ’cause I look like this doesn’t mean that I don’t get crazy,” she says, after noting that “I like to be choked, I like to be slapped, I love to spit, I love to smack girls.”

With professional monikers ranging from the elaborately unlikely Asphyxia Noir, Ash Hollywood, Alexis Texas, Katsuni, Jesse Jane and Lexi Belle to the more believable Lisa Ann, Tanya Tate and April O’Neil, the rest of the documentary subjects are similarly frank about their sexuality. While their exotic sense of morality may seem exciting, refreshing or disgusting, their stories are never less than interesting.

Adult-industry talent agent Fran Amidor offers some hard real-world truths about the industry. She says promiscuous women who get into the biz at 18 don’t think about how it might hinder having a normal relationship in the future. “You will have a scarlet letter on you,” she says. “You will.”

O’Neil punctures the biggest misconception about the off-camera lives of performers in the industry by noting that “porno sex and home sex are completely different things.” By giving voices to women like her, “Aroused” makes it easier to believe that there really is more to these fantasy females than meets the eye.