MOVIES

I Come With the Rain

Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung's first genre film after three critically acclaimed art movies could be seen as an attempt at mainstream recognition. The casting of heartthrobs Josh Hartnett, Takuya Kimura and Lee Byung Hun indicate commercial priorities, but Tran's baroque take on hardboiled thriller conventions may prove a hard sell.

Hartnett is a Los Angeles private eye hired by a reclusive pharmaceuticals magnate to retrieve his son (Kimura), who is assumed to be in the Philippines running a jungle orphanage. The trail leads to Hong Kong, where the detective's search intersects with that of a local drug lord (Lee) for his missing girlfriend (Tran Nu Yen Khe), who has ended up in a derelict shack where the wayward son practices Christlike acts of healing through self-mutilation.

Crude religious references dominate a pedestrian story pumped up with brutal imagery. There's also a gratuitously macabre subplot involving a serial killer case that once drove the detective to the brink of madness.

Directed by Tran Anh Hung, starring Josh Hartnett, Takuya Kimura and Lee Byung Hun

Starting Saturday at theaters nationwide

Meet Bill

The title character (Aaron Eckhart) of this midlife crisis comedy realizes that his bad hair and flabby physique are manifestations of a spiritual malaise developed over the years by a pointless job at his father-in-law's bank.

After Bill learns that his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is having an affair with a local TV newsman he begins a determined though awkward program of self-improvement with the help of a cynical teenager (Logan Lerman) who looks to him as a kind of perverse role model.

The movie might be more meaningful and entertaining if Bill's long-term goals were not limited to securing a donut shop franchise; or if the humor inherent in the idea of a donut shop franchise had been exploited with more verve. As it is, "Meet Bill" feels vague and underdeveloped, like Bill's wardrobe and his relationship with a shopping mall salesperson, whose only purpose in the film seems to be to give Jessica Alba a reason to be in it.

Directed by Bernie Goldmann and Melisa Wallack, starring Aaron Eckhart and Jessica Alba

Starting Saturday at theaters in Tokyo and Chiba

The Spirit

Frank Miller, who authored the graphic novels "Sin City" and "300," adapts Will Eisner's parody version of classic pre-1960s noir superhero comics for his directorial debut.

The hero (Gabriel Macht) is an insecure masked ladies man who appears to be indestructible and immortal. His nemesis is the sartorially flamboyant, egg-averse evil scientist The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), who likes nothing better than to show up unexpectedly and engage The Spirit in some bone-crushing fisticuffs.

The violence is cartoonishly extreme and the jokes juvenile, which is normal for this type of adaptation. Macht, however, lacks the requisite charisma to make his character's loquacious earnestness amusing. Perhaps as compensation, Jackson expands his usual outsize screen persona to superhuman scale, thus making The Octopus the only really funny thing in the movie as well as a supreme annoyance.

As his bespectacled sidekick, Scarlett Johansson provides ammunition to those who say she can't act, and Eva Mendes, as the sexy femme fatale, produces just a little more heat than a lingerie advertisement.

Directed by Frank Miller and starring Gabriel Macht

Starting Saturday at theaters nationwide(IHT/Asahi: June 5,2009)