***1/2

Directed by Edward Zwick

Starring Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Timothy Spall

What Braveheart did for Mel Gibson, The Last Samurai does for Tom Cruise. Directed for maximum effect by Edward Zwick (who wrote the script with John Logan and long-time partner Marshall Herskovitz), the film is bursting with fierce battles, thundering music, hordes of extras and sumptuous production values (including Lilly Kilvert’s finely detailed production design and John Toll’s stunning cinematography). Love it or hate it, you can’t help but be impressed by it.

The role of army captain-turned Samurai is a meaty one for Cruise (who also produced), and he makes the most of it. Unlike parts where he has relied too heavily on his killer smile and high-wattage star power (Days of Thunder, Vanilla Sky), here he seems to be putting it all on the line, as if to say, “this is as good as I get — if you don’t take me seriously this time, you never will.” His Nathan Algren is a guilt-ridden, drunken ex-soldier (circa 1876) hired to train “Orientals” to suppress a rebellion led by tribal leader Katsumoto (a riveting Ken Watanabe). When the captain’s troops are sent prematurely into combat, Katsumoto’s forces easily decimate them, taking Algren prisoner.

It is during his internment that Algren learns to appreciate (as did Cruise) Japanese culture and the code of bushido — the way of the warrior. Eventually he joins Katsumoto’s battalion as an honorary samurai, flanking the fearless leader in two breathless, back-to-back battles, choreographed by Zwick (an ardent admirer of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa) like bloody ballets. Cruise is surprisingly believable in both the film’s quiet, reflective moments and its demanding, brutal fight scenes (for which he trained extensively) — evidence, one hopes, of his growing maturity as an actor.

Like most war epics (including Zwick’s own Glory), The Last Samurai is too long and too loud, and speaks simultaneously out of both sides of its mouth (war is stupid and futile, but it looks damn good in slo-mo). For the most part, however, it is a staggeringly successful achievement. I would venture to say that Kurosawa himself would have appreciated the professionalism and conviction Zwick and his cast and crew bring to this massive, meticulously realized undertaking. Expect a slew of Oscar nominations. (Citywide)

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Starring Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Djimon Hounsou

In America is based on the experiences of director Jim Sheridan and his wife and two daughters, who left Ireland in 1981 and relocated to the United States. Their ensuing trials and tribulations provided the springboard for Sheridan’s semi-autobiographical tale, which he was inspired to write (with daughters Naomi and Kirsten) after running into a former neighbor at the 1989 Academy Awards, the year Sheridan was a best director nominee for My Left Foot. Sounds like the makings of a powerful movie, doesn’t it? (The trailer alone put a grapefruit-sized lump in my throat.) Yet In America turns out to be one of Sheridan’s lesser efforts, a shallow, poorly constructed “memoir” with little to recommend it beyond its strong performances.

The film opens with Johnny (Paddy Considine, from 24 Hour Party People), Sarah (the always-watchable Samantha Morton) and daughters Christy and Ariel (real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger) entering the United States, poor as church mice (why they would move to another country with no money is anyone’s guess). They move into a spacious but rundown apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, an area of the city teeming with drug addicts and social misfits. Sheridan tells his tale in the form of vignettes, some of them involving (Johnny spends the rent money trying to win an E.T. doll at a street carnival), most of them middling and uneventful. Sarah gets a menial job; aspiring actor Johnny goes on an audition; the kids trick or treat at Halloween; the family befriends an eccentric artist-neighbor named Mateo (Djimon Hounsou), who is dying of an unnamed disease (it is the Reagan era, so the word “AIDS” is never uttered), etc.

The payoff, emotionally at least, is supposed to come as Mateo gets progressively sicker and a preggers Sarah gets closer and closer to giving birth (Johnny and Sarah lost a little boy, you see, so they desperately want this baby). Using Mateo as a sacrificial lamb, Sheridan pours on the “circle of life” cliches, even to the point of using the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” By this time we should be misting up and reaching for our Kleenex, but I for one remained completely dry-eyed, annoyed rather than moved. In America wants to be an uplifting, “life-affirming” look at one family’s personal odyssey, and it will no doubt work on that level for some. But if it has its roots in true events, why does it have such a hollow, emotionally flat ring to it? (Hillcrest Cinemas)

***1/2

Directed by Denys Arcand

Starring Remy Girard, Dorothee Berryman, Stephane Rousseau

Movies concerning death and dying are often treacly or cheaply manipulative. Not so Denys Arcand’s touching, intelligently rendered The Barbarian Invasions, winner of the best screenplay award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and best foreign film honors from the National Board of Review. Remy Girard plays Remy, a cantankerous history professor (“The history of mankind is a history of horrors”) in the last stages of a terminal illness; his ex-wife and estranged son gather together several of his old friends (and a couple of mistresses), who re-live their relationship with the professor in amusing and touching ways, giving him a dignified, loving (and hastened) send-off. How ironic that a movie about assisted suicide is hitting movie screens just as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, incarcerated for precisely that offense, was denied a release from prison due to his own failing health. (Opens Dec. 19 at Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas)

Directed by Wayne Kramer

Starring William H. Macy, Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin

A “cooler” is a guy who “jinxes” gamblers in the midst of a winning streak. At Vegas’ Golden Shangri-La Hotel, that job falls to a sad-sack Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy, in a rare weak performance), who’s just seven days away from working off a huge gambling debt to bullying casino director Shelly Kaplow (a formidable Alec Baldwin) when romance comes calling in the form of sexy cocktail waitress Nathalie (Maria Bello). Bernie’s reversal of fortune is seriously bad news for the casino, which suddenly finds itself paying off one winner after another.

Nifty premise. But after a promising start, The Cooler cools off considerably, getting increasingly hard to swallow as it goes along. First-time director and co-author (with Frank Hannah) Wayne Kramer can’t decide if he wants his film to be an outrageous love story or a hard-boiled drama in the vein of Casino. Thank goodness for Baldwin; he’s the movie’s true good-luck charm. (Opens Dec. 19 at Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas)

Other recommended current releases: Elf, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Missing, Mystic River, Pieces of April, 21 Gram, To Be and to Have, Gloomy Sunday.

Kyle Counts is the film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times

Highly recommended

Worth seeing

Mediocre

Not worth your time