Hoover, of course, regarded himself as a hero; to him, the villains were political radicals, bank robbers and anyone who stood in his way, professionally, politically, or personally. Hoover as the hero was the FBI party line for the nearly six decades he served as the agency’s director (he became director of the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI’s predecessor, in 1924). But, after his death in 1972, a counter-narrative began in which Hoover was the villain. His dirty deeds extended from the maniacal—the “secret files” he compiled and used to blackmail presidents, politicians and everyone else, or using COINTELPRO to infiltrate and discredit the civil rights movement—to the mundane, such as his capricious punishments for agents who displeased him or garnered publicity that should have been his.

In “J. Edgar,” Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who wrote 2008’s “Milk”) try to reconcile the mythologized Hoover, the historical Hoover, and the real man underneath it all. As a result, “J. Edgar” is as elusive and frustrating as Hoover himself.

The film casts Hoover as neither a villain nor a hero, neither sympathetic nor pitiable. Black and Eastwood often come close to revealing the complexities beneath Hoover’s brash exterior and fanatical façade, but frequently come up short. The subject is more to blame than the filmmakers. Hoover did such a thorough job of mythologizing himself and obscuring his personal life that Black, Eastwood, and DiCaprio are left to paint a portrait with only hints, innuendos and suppositions.

“J. Edgar” is told in flashback, with Hoover, at the height of his powers in the late 1960s, reflecting on the beginnings of his career in 1919. With a senile father and a suffocating mother (played with aplomb by Judi Dench), it’s no wonder young Hoover threw himself into his work. He finds comfort and purpose in the pursuit of political radicals, though the source of his fervor is never totally clear. There’s a lot in common here with DiCaprio’s performance as conman Frank Abignale in “Catch Me If You Can”—he plays Hoover as a master of disguise and obfuscation, a man who makes a public show of his own morality and sense of justice to keep hidden his own frailties.

“J. Edgar” really comes alive when Hoover’s frailties become human in the form of Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). The two first meet in a nightclub, where an associate of Hoover’s introduces the young Tolson. It’s not quite love at first sight, but it’s something, and the scene is wonderfully acted by Hammer and DiCaprio. It’s the first time cracks appear in Hoover’s façade, and DiCaprio pulls it off wonderfully. Through him, we see that, even in private, Hoover was never fully honest about who he was and what he wanted. DiCaprio doesn’t inhabit Hoover in the same way that, say, Sean Penn captured Harvey Milk, but it’s not due to lack of skill; he can’t inhabit the role because Hoover himself was a construct.

The relationship between Tolson and Hoover remains chaste but unambiguous in “J. Edgar.” The historical truth of their relationship is hard to pin down, but the emotional truth of unspoken, forbidden love drives the film and gives it a tragic edge.

Reconciling that private tragedy with the arc of Hoover’s career seems more than “J. Edgar” can handle, though. The film gets hung up on Hoover’s involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping, a defining moment in the FBI’s history (since it spurred federal laws that gave the FBI increased investigatory powers), but not a defining moment in Hoover’s life. The tension between Hoover’s ideals of justice and his willingness to subvert the Constitution in pursuit of communists in his middle years is missing—a glaring and frustrating omission.

Hammer breathes some life into the latter half of the movie when the ailing Tolson bluntly challenges Hoover’s version of events. If only there were more of that push between the real and the fictional. There’s room in “J. Edgar” for judgment and sympathy, but Eastwood and Black err perhaps too heavily on the side of sympathy and ambiguity. It was a fine position for Eastwood to take in the meditative “Hereafter,” but it’s maddening in “J. Edgar.”

While it avoids some of the more lurid rumors about Hoover (such as tales of his penchant for cross-dressing), “J. Edgar” never holds its subject accountable. It’s a fundamental problem that seeps through in other areas of the film. Naomi Watts plays Helen Gandy, Hoover’s life-long personal secretary. She’s a fascinating character, just as career-driven and secretive as Hoover, but she’s shuffled off-stage too quickly and the source of her devotion is a mystery.

The cool confidence with which Eastwood constructs the film comes to a halt whenever Hoover faces off against a historical figure. A scene between Hoover and Robert Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) should be tense but comes off as stilted and strained. Later, both DiCaprio and Hammer appear under heavy old-age makeup, and the effect is distracting. Like Hoover’s life, the film’s larger arc works, but the details holding it together are weak.

Eastwood makes subtle nods to the present landscape, tracing the roots of political dirty tricks and partisan hackery back to Hoover. “J. Edgar” is not the flattering portrait Hoover would have preferred, but it’s not so damning, either. History is written by the winners, and, 40 years after his death, Hoover still seems to be in control of the story.

The simple premise seemed ripe with raucous possibilities for blockbuster season. It’s helmed by Jon Favreau and stars Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and a stable of great character actors. What could go wrong?

Almost everything, as it turns out. But most glaringly: the movie’s five credited screenwriters squander the premise, Favreau loses the swagger he brought to the “Iron Man” films, and each cast member seems to think he’s in some other movie about cowboys and aliens—a comedy, maybe, or some kind of ironic western.

Craig, at least, is pretty clear on his role. He’s Lonergan, a hard-drinking, ass-kicking gunslinger who’s got no memory of how he ended up in the desert wearing some weird jewelry and sporting a bad wound in the gut. Lonergan makes it back to town, gets sewn up by the preacher and, in short order, lands himself in jail on charges of robbing a stagecoach. The gold he allegedly stole belonged to Dolarhyde (Ford), the big-shot cattle rancher who runs the town and who is determined to see Lonergan hanged for his crime.

But then the aliens show up in some jets that look sort of like dragonflies. They strafe the town, blow up some buildings, and snatch up a bunch of townsfolk, including Dolarhyde’s no-good son (Paul Dano) and the wife of the local saloon keeper (Rockwell). Lonergan’s bracelet comes to life and starts zapping alien ships, the remaining townsfolk form a ragtag posse, and the mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde) tries to help Lonergan recover his memory and commit to kicking alien ass.

Favreau keeps things chugging along, but it’s so predictable that there are no surprises and little fun. The screenwriters, including genre vets Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, mash together western clichés with alien invasion clichés instead of having fun with the material. A brief stop at a riverboat casino the aliens have dropped in the middle of the desert is promising but never amounts to much. And some sequences are downright laughable, such as when Lonergan undergoes a mid-movie vision quest with the help of some Apache and his spirit animal, a hummingbird.

Nothing fits together here. Is “Cowboys & Aliens” a lighthearted sci-fi action flick? Is it a serious-but-dumb blockbuster? Is it an ironic tweak on genre conventions?

It seems to depend on who’s on-screen at the moment. Craig is grim and confident, but with a touch of humor—a perfect performance for a brainless mid-summer blockbuster. But Ford seems grumpy and vaguely embarrassed about his lines. Dano and Rockwell, meanwhile, tailor their performances for an ironic western comedy that might or might not involve aliens. Favreau doesn’t even seem to know what sort of movie he’s making, and the cool confidence he lent to “Iron Man” and its sequel are totally absent.

The problem may start with the source material itself. “Cowboys & Aliens” originated all the way back in 1997, when Scott Mitchell Rosenberg pitched the movie based on a one-sheet poster of a cowboy fleeing from a UFO. That pitch became a graphic novel in 2006.

“Cowboys & Aliens” is a movie based on a comic based on a poster, which wouldn’t be so bad if the film ever moved beyond its own premise. But it doesn’t, and the crazy thrills promised by the idea of cowboys slugging it out with aliens never materialize. Rosenberg should have stuck with the poster and left it at that.

As endings go, it’s a good one, though not without some difficulty. Director David Yates, who’s helmed the Potter series since the fifth film, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” had the tough job of wrangling Rowling’s sprawling seventh novel into two films. The first “Deathly Hallows” is more contemplative and full of angst than its sequel, which fires off magic curses first and delivers explanations second. It mostly works, although “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is so concerned with racing to the inevitable, climactic battle between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) that the smaller character touches that have made the series so great get lost in the shuffle.

“Deathly Hallows: Part 2” opens minutes after the final moments of part one. Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) have concluded their sojourn in the wilderness and realize they must return to Hogwarts, where they will find the last of the horcruxes, the magical devices that, when destroyed, will weaken Voldemort. But the Hogwarts they return to is not the whimsical place found in the series’ earlier movies. Now under the control of Headmaster Snape (Alan Rickman), the school is dreary and oppressive. Students march in neat little rows to and from class and discipline is meted out with fists and other implements. Voldemort isn’t far behind, of course, and as Harry scours the school, the dark wizard marshals his army and begins his final push to destroy Potter once and for all.

Those battles are the main attraction in “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and, for the most part, they don’t disappoint. Yates gives the siege of Hogwarts a deservedly epic treatment, and as waves of dark wizards, giants, and enormous spiders descend on the castle, the danger feels real and the grandeur is palpable.

Harry and Voldemort’s final duel, though, lacks some of that snap. We know it’s important, but there’s little spirit. They tumble off cliffs and rickety bridges, wands flashing and exploding, but they fight alone, almost wordlessly, while their respective allies busy themselves someplace else. The staging suggests that the fight at the school, full of sharp characters, small acts of heroism, and some nice comedic moments, is the main event; the Harry-vs.-Voldemort fight is just a sideshow.

That weakness is likely a result of trying to cram in so much from the book, but it’s too bad Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves couldn’t have slowed things down a bit and provided a little more lead-up to both battles. Nearly all the secondary characters get some great moments here, especially Maggie Smith, who’s both fierce and funny as she rallies the school’s defenses. Matthew Lewis, the once-bumbling-but-now-hunky Neville Longbottom, makes a heroic stand, and Julie Walters, the matronly Mrs. Weasley, has a nice bit in which she ruthlessly defends her daughter.

But as the script rushes from one bit to the next, those moments feel perfunctory rather than grand. An early bank heist sequence set in the wizard world’s subterranean bank is exciting, but the best part comes near the end, as an escaped dragon perches momentarily on a roof and takes a deep, exultant breath.

The cast makes up for the few lapses in the script. Everyone is on their A-game for “Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” from Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, who have all grown into fine actors, to supporting players like Rickman, Smith and Fiennes. Rickman gets some of the film’s best scenes as he transforms Snape, one of Harry’s long-standing adversaries, into a tragic hero with complex allegiances and complicated goals.

Ultimately, it’s a fitting end for the series. When the first film was released a decade ago, Harry’s world was cheerful and bright, with only hints of menace lurking around the edges of whimsy. “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is the opposite, with bits of light shining through the darkness. The actors, and the characters they play, have all matured, and the movies have traded Quidditch matches for brutal fights and a good amount of snogging.

But when that dragon takes a deep breath or Maggie Smith gleefully sets an army of stone soldiers a-marching, it’s clear that light is still at the core of “Harry Potter.” Seven books, eight movies, and more than 10 years later, Harry and friends remain forever young.

In “Horrible Bosses,” those targets are Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day), and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), old friends who are trapped under the oppressive heels of some sinister supervisors.
Vexing them are Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey), a psychotic, manipulative control freak; Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell), a coke-addled dweeb with a collection of nunchuks and kimonos; and Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), a sexually aggressive dentist who probably belongs on a state registry.
There’s a recession on and new jobs are hard to come by, and so Nick, Dale and Kurt decide to deal with their bosses in the most logical way possible: they’ll kill them.

Exhibiting a flair for crime on par with their ability to find better jobs, they hire a “murder consultant” (Jamie Foxx), who suggests they each kill each other’s boss, a la “Strangers on a Train.”

Bateman, Day and Sudeikis share the sort of easy chemistry that leads to great riffing, and that’s what holds up “Horrible Bosses” during its sluggish beginning. The script, by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and Michael Markowitz, takes an easy, identifiable premise and drags the setup out to an interminable length. Bateman’s a great deadpan straight-man, Day is wonderfully manic, and Sudeikis is a charming-but-incongruous rake. Though they work well together, they always seem to be running in place. Spacey, Farrell, and Anniston, meanwhile, get to revel in their characters’ awfulness.

Things pick up quickly once the boys enact their plan (and Nick and Dale accidentally inhale a pile of cocaine), but just as quickly, the movie lurches to a halt. “Horrible Bosses” works best when its leads succeed (or think they succeed) despite gross incompetence. In one inspired bit, Day gets everyone out of police custody thanks to some barely-remembered lines he once heard in a “Law and Order” episode. In others, Foxx dispenses assassination advice and drops choice hints that his criminal background might be a tad embellished.

But just as often, the script, and director Seth Gordon, set the characters into motion but give them nothing to do. As a result, things get flat and unfunny pretty quickly. And as thin (yet promising) as the plot is, Gordon loses the thread completely by the end, even forgetting that there’s still one out of three bosses to deal with before the credits roll. That’s not to mention all the gay jokes and extensive talk of prison rape, which seems to be the go-to off-putting trend these days for comedies aimed at dudes.

Like “Bad Teacher,” “Horrible Bosses” could’ve been a satirical triumph, if only better writers and directors were involved. There are some throwaway jabs at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, but Gordon and the writers expend most of their energy on some lamely constructed (even by the most generous standards) poop jokes. Still, you’ll probably laugh a little, which is just enough to keep everyone involved in “Horrible Bosses” working another day.

Somewhere in all that, there’s room for a good satire, but it’s not “Bad Teacher.” Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (the team responsible for the 2009 bomb “Year One”) and directed by Jake Kasdan, “Bad Teacher” takes the formula perfected in “Bad Santa” and follows it joylessly to the letter. Take an innocent, sacrosanct profession, add a boozy, vulgar protagonist looking for redemption, mix in some adorable kids and see what happens.

But Billy Bob Thornton, in all his gruff, gross glory, anchored “Bad Santa” with an equal mix of pathos and unapologetic jack-assery. Cameron Diaz doesn’t even come close in “Bad Teacher,” though she might deserve an A for effort. Well, maybe a B+.

Diaz stars as Elizabeth Halsey, a lazy woman who’s killing time as a middle school teacher until she marries her dumb, ultra-rich fiancé. He breaks off the engagement, though, and Elizabeth’s dreams of a luxurious life are thwarted. Unsure of what else to do, she returns to school in September and sets out to find another rich man.

One possibility is Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake), a sexy new substitute with a massive family fortune and an earnest, goofy personality. To get her man, Elizabeth decides she needs to get breast implants, and so she begins stealing, scamming and conniving her way to earning the $9,000 or so she needs for the operation. Opposing her is the manic uber-teacher Miss Squirrel (Lucy Punch), who disapproves of pretty much everything Elizabeth does.

Miss Squirrel gets to do a lot of disapproving. Elizabeth drinks and smokes pot while she’s at school and her entire teaching plan revolves around showing her students movies about better, more inspirational teachers (“Stand and Deliver,” “Dangerous Minds” and so on) while she sleeps off her many hangovers. And that’s all in addition to berating her students, their parents and everyone else who works at the school. The only character enamored with her is Russell (Jason Segel), an affable gym teacher who shares some of Elizabeth’s extracurricular interests but keeps all his drinking and smoking off school grounds.

“Bad Teacher” is at least a nice change of pace for Diaz, who built her early career on roles as a loveable goofball and has spent the last few years stuck in movies that are beneath her (“The Green Hornet” and “Knight and Day” are two notable examples). She swears and struts and snarls through “Bad Teacher” and it’s a fine way for her to show off her comedic chops, but it’s too bad she doesn’t have as strong or believable a role as Kristen Wiig had in “Bridesmaids.”

Elizabeth’s shocking behavior is funny, but there’s nothing underneath the character. In “Bad Santa,” the appalling behavior is tolerable because we know redemption is at hand. But in “Bad Teacher,” it never seems like Elizabeth wants or needs to turn over a new leaf. She remains unpleasant throughout, and the predictable happy ending seems like a cheat.

That sort of forethought might be asking too much from Stupnitsky and Eisenberg, both of whom have done well as writers for “The Office” but completely dropped the ball with “Year One.” “Bad Teacher” is all over the place, with lots of flat jokes, a smattering of gross-out gags, and decently-constructed setups that go nowhere. Characters disappear frequently and, for a movie set in a school, the students hardly figure into things at all.

Lucy Punch has some great bits of physical comedy, but she never gets the big scenes she deserves. Meanwhile, Timberlake plays against type as a dorky buffoon, but his lines seem like they belong in some other comedy.

Kasdan directed “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” a music-movie parody that fit in well with the Adam McKay-Will Ferrell school of comedies, and there are moments in “Bad Teacher” where that sort of anything-goes aesthetic peeks through. They don’t last long, though, and “Bad Teacher” settles for being average and unremarkable—a bad strategy for making it through school, but a perfectly acceptable one for a summertime comedy.

“Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight” gave us superheroes in a semi-realistic setting with operatic action. “Kick-Ass” gives us realistic people learning the hard way that superheroing sucks. It’s hyper-violent but funny, cartoonish yet sometimes uncomfortably graphic. Mostly, though, it’s a lot of bloody fun.

Those graphic moments mostly befall Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a gangly, curly-haired teenager who decides to turn his years of comic book fandom into a life of crime fighting. Without much motivation beyond a desire to look cool, and without much training other than some posturing in front of a mirror, he dons a green body suit and hits the streets of New York as Kick-Ass. His first attempt to fight crime—foiling a car theft—earns him multiple fractures and an awful stab wound. Dave keeps at it, though, and when his antics are caught on video, Kick-Ass becomes an Internet sensation. Other heroes follow suit, attracting the attention of mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), whose crime empire naturally becomes a target for the heroes.

Well, some of the heroes. Kick-Ass’ efforts are mostly limited to finding lost cats and getting his ass kicked. He’s a terrible hero and, as a character, not all that compelling. Watching Kick-Ass strut down the street in costume is funny, though, and that’s one of the moments when director Matthew Vaughn, who also directed “Stardust” and “Layer Cake,” attempts to make a small statement about comic book heroes. They’re good in theory, but in practice, they’re ridiculous and ineffective. Johnson does well enough as an everyman character, but he’s not as engaging as his costars, including Clark Duke and Evan Peters, who give a lot of life to their little roles as Dave’s buddies.

That’s why it’s a relief when Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage show up as Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, a father-daughter crime-fighting team that puts Kick-Ass’ weak attempts to shame. Cage’s crazy-meter is set to 10 here (down from 11 in 2009’s “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”), and he plays up the camp nicely, adopting an Adam West-as-Batman cadence whenever he’s in costume. Moretz is sweet and sour, but in a good way. She and Cage have a convincing familial chemistry and watching them interact is a good time, but so is watching Moretz stab and shoot her way through a legion of bad guys while swearing like a trucker. It’s almost too bad Hit-Girl and Big Daddy weren’t the main characters—their subplot, which includes a tragic origin story, delivers on all the fronts that Kick-Ass’ own story misses.

“Kick-Ass” is based on the comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., the second issue of which carried the tagline “Sickening violence: just the way you like it!” This is not an exaggeration, and your enjoyment of “Kick-Ass” depends on your tolerance for sickening violence. “Kick-Ass” is a comedy, yes, but there’s plenty of slicing, stabbing and dismemberment, most of which occurs at the hands of an 11-year-old girl. One mob goon gets toasted in an industrial microwave, while another gets mashed in a car-crushing machine. It’s so excessive that it’s impossible to take seriously, so cartoony that it’s okay to laugh. There are a few uncomfortable moments, though, particularly when Hit-Girl takes a brutal beating (though she dishes out some major violence at the same time). Watching a little kid take a roundhouse kick to the head is unsettling, even in such an outrageous context. But then someone shows up with a bazooka, and all the discomfort is quickly forgotten.

Maybe Vaughn, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jane Goldman, is trying to make a point here about which forms of cinematic violence are acceptable and which aren’t. How much violence is an audience willing to tolerate? During one sequence, Kick-Ass endures a savage beating that’s streamed live online. When news programs cut the televised broadcast because of the violence, Vaughn shows hordes of New Yorkers rushing to their computers to watch the rest.

Whatever answer Vaughn might have had gets lost in the carnage-filled climax, so maybe he isn’t making a point, after all. Vaughn is a Guy Ritchie protégé who cribs heavily from Quentin Tarantino, and while he’s mastered Ritchie’s flair for violent comedy, he doesn’t have anything to say about it like Tarantino.

But does he need to? As Kick-Ass says during the film, “With no power comes no responsibility,” an inverse of Spider-Man’s own mantra about heroism. Grand statements about human nature are left to bigger, more ambitious superhero flicks. “Kick-Ass” is all about kicking ass, and that it does very well. What more do you need?

Well, no threat to real people, at least. The wispy characters that populate “The Ghost Writer,” led by Ewan McGregor, seem to dissipate at the slightest disturbance, and all the thrills that director Roman Polanski attempts to build up turn out to be not so thrilling to the rest of us. Once the bombshells finally drop and the smoke clears, nothing is left to care about.

Those incendiary revelations concern the career of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who got into office purely by virtue of his popularity among the people. That last bit is according to the unnamed ghostwriter, played by McGregor, who agrees to complete Lang’s soon-to-be-published memoirs. Lang is sequestered in a beachfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard until the book is finished. It’s not a happy household: his previous ghostwriter, a long-time friend and confidant, turned up dead days earlier, though whether it was suicide or an accident remains a mystery. Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams) isn’t happy, either, though whether her depression stems from being stuck in Martha’s Vineyard in the off-season or from her husband’s affair with his secretary (Kim Cattrall) is unclear.

The unfinished book and toxic household are the least of Lang’s worries. It’s revealed he ordered the kidnapping of suspected Al Qaeda agents—who happened to be British citizens—and turned them over to the CIA for a variety of torture-filled interrogations. The International Criminal Court wants a word with Lang. So does his new ghostwriter, for that matter, who can’t seem to pin the prime minister down on any one subject. Why’d he get into politics? What about his days as a student actor at Cambridge? And, what’s it like being prime minister?

The answers, roughly: who knows, who cares, and not much fun. Lang’s new “ghost” senses something is hinky, both with the death of his predecessor and Lang himself. The ghost discovers clues, follows leads and gets in trouble. He’s constantly on the brink of discovering something, but the answers and evidence are all paper-thin.

There’s gunpowder in the film, to be sure. Polanski’s ability to craft a sinister thriller hasn’t diminished, despite his monumental legal troubles (he finished editing the film while in prison in Switzerland). However you may feel about his personal character, Polanski’s a hell of a director. Cinematographer Pawel Edelman gives “The Ghost Writer” a cadaverous look. Everything is blue and gray, and the deserted beaches and towns (located in Germany, actually, but dressed up convincingly like Martha’s Vineyard) hold a bleak, ghostly light.

Some scenes and characters drip menace. Is the shifty-eyed cook in the plot? What about the groundskeeper who’s charged with futilely sweeping dried bits of grass off the walkway? A sequence in which McGregor must surreptitiously get on and then get off a ferry back to the vineyard in order to avoid some shady spies is fraught and engaging. Tom Wilkinson has a juicy role as a stuffy academic with an evil streak. The action builds and builds until a sudden climax comes out of left field, clears the decks, and wipes out the tension.

McGregor’s character is told many times that the stakes are high and the predicaments he finds himself in seem to suggest as much. But maybe the problem is that the fictional Adam Lang’s crimes—state-sanctioned kidnapping, collusion with the CIA, etc.—are utterly pedestrian when compared to the real-life shenanigans perpetrated by politicians and policy makers in the war on terror. The screenplay, which writer Robert Harris adapted from his own novel, “The Ghost,” strives to build a sinister military-industrial conspiracy, but with so many examples of such bad behavior in the news each day, these hints and intimations aren’t shocking.

A thriller is only thrilling if we give a damn about the characters, and that may be the ultimate failing of “The Ghost Writer.” McGregor’s character has no name, no family, no motivations, and precious little in the way of back story (he previously helped write a magician’s autobiography, apparently). He’s continually haunted by comparisons to his predecessor, but without a real identity, his anxieties aren’t engaging.

Brosnan and Williams, meanwhile, are given plenty to work with, but are shuffled on and off the screen too quickly. Both carry with them a certain agitation and torment that contains more explosive potential than McGregor’s shuffling descent into paranoia. There is a flash of chemistry between McGregor and Williams, and McGregor’s character should’ve been the spark that ignited it all. It turns out, though, that even in the midst of smoke, suspicious murders and secret agents, there may not be fire after all.

If any actor other than Bridges had picked up Bad’s guitar, “Crazy Heart” wouldn’t be half the movie it is. Scott Cooper directed the film and wrote the screenplay, based on the novel by Thomas Cobb. It’s a good story, but formulaic. Bad’s riding the fumes of a once-successful career. He’s gigging at bowling alleys and run-down clubs, gulping whiskey and chain smoking when he’s not onstage. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a young journalist and single mom, and quickly falls for her. Of course, the booze gets in the way.

There’s more than a passing resemblance here to Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” also about a broken-down pop culture legend struggling for redemption. But Robert Siegel’s script for “The Wrestler” was stronger, and Mickey Rourke had more material to work with in his role as Randy. “Crazy Heart” succeeds primarily because of Bridges, who can take even the most hastily sketched character and turn it into a gripping, multi-layered performance. Everything we need to know about Bad Blake comes through in the way he walks or the way he teaches Jean’s young son how to make biscuits. It’s tempting to call this a career-making performance for Bridges, but he’s already made his career with roles like this. He’s simply a joy to watch, even with all the aches, pains and indignities that Bad Blake suffers—or, maybe, because of them.

Bridges isn’t alone in the film, of course, and the rest of the cast is good, but not great. Gyllenhaal is never quite convincing as the hard-luck dame who Bad sees as his shot at a new life. She doesn’t carry any unseen weight the way Bridges does, as though she’s not quite convinced of her own past regrets. The same goes for Colin Farrell, who turns up as Bad’s hugely successful former protege—passable, but without the whiskey-soaked gravitas that Bridges possesses.

While Bridges carries “Crazy Heart,” the music helps, too. T-Bone Burnett supervised the film’s music, and Bridges sang his own songs (Bridges is a musician and released a solo album in 2000). The music is a lot like Bad himself—catchy and charming, but with a wealth of burdens and pain lurking beneath. It’s a shame there isn’t more of it; as “Crazy Heart” progresses, songwriting becomes Bad’s way out of depression and financial ruin, but we see him working on songs only a few times. The creative process is never glamorous, but here it’s so vital to Bad’s redemption that it seems essential to see him hash out some songs and get to healing.

In the music industry, there’s always room for second (and sometimes third and fourth) acts, and it’s not spoiling too much to say that Bad gets his shot at a comeback, both musically and personally. It doesn’t shake out quite as expected, and by the end of “Crazy Heart,” Bad is still feeling the bruises that have faded but will never fully heal. He doesn’t say any of this, of course, but that’s what’s good about “Crazy Heart”—Bad just knows it, and so do we.

First, it’s a prequel, for those of us curious as to how Robin Hood ended up in Sherwood Forest and decided to rob from the rich and give to the poor. That probably would’ve been enough for one movie, but “Robin Hood” features a bonus second movie, full of political espionage and courtly intrigue, in which both civil war and a war with France loom in England’s future. Director Ridley Scott mashes these two very different plotlines together, and instead of two really good movies, we end up with one adequate movie destined to be watched casually on cable on some idle Sunday afternoon.

Why we needed a “Robin Hood Begins” to fill out the legend of Robin, his Merry Men and all the rest isn’t quite clear, and screenwriter Brian Helgeland’s script doesn’t make a good case for it. The answers to how Robin got to Nottingham with his Merry Men have more to do with the machinations of kings and politicians than the characters themselves. Suffice to say, Robin (Russell Crowe) and his three companions arrive in Nottingham after deserting King Richard’s army following the Crusades. They stick around because, well, it seems like a nice place.

Robin meets Marion (Cate Blanchett) and they engage in some tentative flirting. Meanwhile, King John (Oscar Isaac) is raising taxes on everyone and the nobles aren’t happy. His right-hand goon Godfrey (Mark Strong) is charged with collecting, but it turns out Godfrey’s a French agitator paving the way for a Gallic invasion.

Crowe is a decent Robin Hood. He favors grim contemplation and smashing heads over merriment and swashbuckling, but he’s got enough charm and warmth to be a good hero. He’s got plenty to fight against, conceptually: the tyranny of the monarchy, over-taxation, oppression of free men. Some hastily-sketched back story reveals that Robin’s father, a crusader for democracy and equality and all that good stuff, influenced Robin’s own vague politics, and that, too, has enough potential to have carried its own movie. So maybe “Robin Hood” is actually three movies in one. A fourth movie could be hiding in there, too.

Robin’s actual foes are a moderately passable conglomeration of villainy. The dastardly Sherriff of Nottingham isn’t around much in this version of “Robin Hood,” and when he does show up, he’s a buffoon. Mark Strong makes a fine glowering, menacing bad guy, but he’s too thinly sketched to be a good foil for Robin.

Blanchett, meanwhile, is a strong, fierce Marion, and the few scenes she and Crowe share together are good. But the relationship doesn’t add up simply because Robin spends so much time riding to and from various locations that he really doesn’t have time for romance.

Of course, Robin solves all these problems, romance included, and, by doing so, becomes an outlaw. This isn’t so much an “Ah ha! So that’s how he made it to Sherwood Forrest!” moment as an “Oh, that’s complicated” moment. There are more direct ways to become a good-hearted outlaw than preventing a civil war, turning back a fleet of French invaders and arousing the jealousy of a king, but those are for less ambitious movies. Scott, whose recent films have been just-good-enough bordering on great, devotes just enough time to each plot so that all the pieces connect. The scope is too great, though.

A Robin Hood movie featuring Robin Hood doing Robin Hood-y things could have been excellent, and a separate movie about, say, the end of the Crusades or the signing of the Magna Carta, could have been equally good. But Scott and Helgeland try to make history square with mythology, so the history gets muddy and the myth less interesting.

Epics should sprawl and soar, but Scott’s “Robin Hood” ambles down too many divergent paths and gets lost trying to find what makes the story of Robin Hood so enduring. If this is how legends begin, it’s best to wait for the sequel.