This Week at the Movies

This past weekend, I caught up with a trio of films that all feature a variation on the road trip or feature characters who travel long distances on a quest. In terms of content, the pictures could not be any different.

The first film, Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of Sarah Gruen’s popular novel “Water for Elephants,” is a love story following the nomadic lives of three characters in a Depression-era circus.

Reviews of the picture have been ho-hum. So, you may be surprised to find that the movie is not half bad. It’s not going to be the Oscar winning epic for which Fox might be hoping. And, despite the presence of Robert Pattinson, it’s most likely not going to lure the “Twilight” crowd.

But “Elephants” is a mostly enjoyable old-fashioned Hollywood romance that makes full use of its lavish, colorful sets. In the picture, Jacob (Pattinson) is a young man who is left drifting after his parents are killed in a car crash.

He stumbles upon a traveling circus that is operated by a dangerously charming man named August (Christoph Waltz), whose wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), is the operation’s star horse rider.  

August leaves Jacob and Marlena in charge of training the circus’ new elephant and, of course, love blooms.

The film’s most surprising element is that it is directed by Lawrence, whose previous work includes “I Am Legend” and “Constantine.” The picture is less in line with the filmmaker’s special effects-driven oeuvre and more in the style of a 1950s melodrama.

Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” also follows a journey, which begins in Canada and takes its protagonists to an unnamed Middle Eastern country.

The film, a potboiler, begins with the opening of a letter. Twins Jeanne and Simon (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) decide to fulfill their mother’s last wish – detailed in her will – by seeking out a father whom they believed to be dead and a brother they did not know existed.

The picture simultaneously plays out several stories, mixing Jeanne and Simon’s search with their mother’s tragic past.

The movie’s various twists and turns in its final act may force you to suspend your disbelief. But “Incendies” is a powerful, brutal film that sticks with you.

The third of this week’s road trip trilogy, Jim Mickle’s “Stake Land,” breaks no new ground. The film follows a rag tag group of survivors attempting to flee the American South following a vampire apocalypse.

The film’s cast delivers solid performances and its special effects are elaborate, despite a low budget. But this terrain has been exhausted in recent years, from George Romero’s zombie films to Danny Boyle’s underrated “28 Days Later.”

“Stake Land” is a grade above most other recent examples of its genre, but this specific niche is starting to lose steam.