Me and Orson Welles (2013)

Christian McKay and Zac Efron in "Me and Orson Welles"

Despite a flashy performance at the middle, Richard Linklater's handsome but shallow “Me and Orson Welles”—a glimpse at the famous filmmaker's first work as a stage director for his fledgling repertory company—never quite lives up the lofty status of its venerable subject.

The movie was based on a novel of the same name by Robert Kaplow and is set in New York City in 1937, where a baby-faced 22-year-old Welles (Christian McKay) is tirelessly working his Mercury theater cast and crew—among them, Welles regular Joseph Cotton (James Tupper) and George Coulouris (Ben Chaplin)—ahead of their much-anticipated Broadway debut of “Julius Caesar.”

The title is inspired by the stormy relationship that develops between Welles and a young actor, Richard Samuels (Zac Efron, trying gamely to distance himself from his Disney channel teen heartthrob image), whom Welles makes an unlikely new star by casting him impetuously off the street. By taking Richard under his wing, the precocious Welles assumes the role of elder statesman, despite the fact that the men are separated by only a handful of years.

Trouble follows after Richard meets an eager young production assistant, Sonja (Claire Danes), and falls for her. Sonja likes Richard but idolizes the brilliant Welles, who steps in just when she begins to get cozy with the kid. The setup creates an awkward love triangle of sorts that boils over when Richard tries to expose the married Welles as an unctuous womanizer.

The movie might be adrift without McKay’s scene-chomping, cheerfully grandiose performance, capturing the manner, energy and aplomb of the charismatic, sometimes irascible Welles. But beyond the impressive affectation, there’s not much emotional depth; like much of “Me and Orson Welles,” the performance is showy but empty.

Linklater’s movie is a nice homage to Welles’ theater career, but what’s missing is much of an allusion to his great filmmaking work to come. Aside from a brief mention of “The Magnificant Ambersons,” there’s little to suggest his distinct use of mise-en-scene, ambitious visual style or virtuoso long takes.

“How the hell am I going to top this?” Welles says coyly near the end during thunderous applause for his show. Indeed, the boy genius—who would go on to direct “Citizen Kane” less than three years later—still had plenty of tricks up his sleeve. You might find yourself wanting to revisit one of them the more “Me and Orson Welles” fades into irrelevance.

Evil Dead (2013)

'Dead' On Arrival: Jane Levy is wasted
in a dreary, uninspired remake.

Of the several horror franchises being updated lately, perhaps none is more offensive and egregious than “Evil Dead,” an unnecessary and execrable remake that disgraces writer-director Sam Raimi's memorable, vastly superior low-budget splatter film of 1981. The new movie, the feature debut of Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, retains a number of the plot details of the original but has none of the spirit or essence.

Once again, we meet five college students whose sojourn to a remote, decaying cabin deep in the woods turns nightmarish when they come across an ancient book full of menacing illustrations and dark secrets. Soon, one by one, they turn on each other—and turn into malevolent, bodily fluid-oozing demons—as they are overwhelmed by sinister forces.

A fundamental pursuit of both films is to push the limits of Grand Guignol-like mayhem, but the secret to Raimi’s success lied in his fusion of Three Stooges-inspired slapstick and cartoonish violence to take the edge off the gore. This, along with Raimi’s other stylistic techniques—bizarre, tilted camera angles; deliriously exaggerated camera movements; creature and dismemberment effects using stop-motion animation evocative of Ray Harryhausen—helped form the foundation of what is now known as a paragon of horror-comedy.

Unfortunately, Alvarez plays it straight for the remake, and the result is a depressing mess of shock gore and bloody violence that has more in common with the tedious, forgettable die-by-numbers formula of slasher and torture films. At times, Alvarez seems to be aiming for the grisly, solemn style of Lucio Fulci (“The Beyond,” “The House by the Cemetery”), but it rings hollow without the Italian midnight movie master’s sense of atmospheric dread or a genuinely eerie soundtrack.

But perhaps the biggest absence in the new “Evil Dead” is someone like Bruce Campbell in the cast. With his combination of everyman good looks and deadpan irreverence, Campbell was Raimi’s wild card, an infectiously charismatic presence so integral to the series that it spawned two successful—sometimes brilliant—sequels and rose to cult movie-hero status. Conversely, the only recognizable face of the new “Evil Dead” is Jane Levy (of TV's “Suburgatory” and “Shameless”), but the promising young star is largely wasted in a role that requires her to spend half the time as a snarling, yellow-eyed fiend buried behind a mask of zombie makeup and locked up in the cellar.

Notably, Alvarez was tapped for the project after his short film, “Panic Attack,” gained buzz online. Incidentally, the 4-minute movie—a breezy slice of science fiction in which an army of giant alien robots invade and destroy the capital city in Alvarez's home country—is more fun and exciting than anything in the otherwise dismal and uninspired “Evil Dead.”

“Promise me you’ll stay with me until the end,” one character says to another early on in the film. Watching the new “Evil Dead” slog along in a dreary, humorless bloodbath of derivative excess, it’s not long before one might reason that some promises just aren't worth keeping.

Two Days, One Night (2014)

Difficult 'Days': Marion Cotillard (right) confronts coworkers
in the working class drama "Two Days, One Night."

The practice of big business cutting back on labor costs to improve bottom line statistics is nothing new. If a company believes it can make more money by eliminating workers without suffering any significant drop in productivity, you can bet that firings and layoffs will be a popular proposal in front of some board of directors.

It sounds cruel and heartless, but there are plenty of horror stories detailing similar things going on beyond office doors on top floors. However, what about a scenario in which the fate of a worker is not determined by executives wearing expensive suits and polished shoes, but instead is a decision thrust into the same middle class hands of other workers?

“Two Days, One Night,” a new movie written and directed by the Belgian filmmaking brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, imagines such a situation in its tale of Sandra (the great French actress Marion Cotillard), a proletariat, thirty-something wife and mother who works at a company that produces solar panels. Upon returning from a leave of absence for an illness related to depression, she discovers that a vote has taken place among her colleagues to eliminate her job in favor of a large, one-time bonus for remaining workers.

The only way Sandra can save her job is to convince a majority of her coworkers (there are 16) to decline the bonus (one thousand euros each) so she can stay on the payroll. The movie unfolds by following her mortifying door to door trek to neighboring workmates, each time explaining her situation and modestly asking for their vote. The title refers to the last, tense weekend before a new vote on Monday morning determines her fate.

Sandra doesn’t beg or become hostile during these nervous moments; indeed, she is intelligent enough to understand that most people need the bonus for the same reason she needs her job. Consequently, as the days count down, the film becomes a fascinating, sometimes moving study of personalities and themes like class struggle, humanity and common decency. Cotillard’s tremulous, palpably agonizing performance as the blue collar heroine is outstanding.

For the most part, “Two Days, One Night” remains an honest and affecting piece of work, with the only serious miscalculation being a botched, then glossed-over suicide attempt that stretches believability and comes across as manipulative. Otherwise, the Dardenne’s realistic, almost documentary-like visual style—long takes and loose framing so multiple characters appear in a single composition—helps sustain a mood and look of solemn verisimilitude.

As Sandra glumly makes her way across the industrial landscape of Seraing, in the Belgian province of Liege where the movie was filmed, desperately campaigning for the last votes needed to keep her job, “Two Days, One Night” evokes Antonio’s frantic search for the stolen bike in Vittorio De Sica’s 1949 neorealist masterpiece, “The Bicycle Thief.”

While the situation was a lot more bleak in postwar Italy, in both movies, the line between suffering and success, between poverty and being able to make ends meet, pivots on man’s willingness—or lack thereof—to sacrifice material goods for the benefit of a fellow human being.