In the summer of 1974 The Paper Lace released a song called Billy Don't Be A Hero. It has the distinction of being the first and perhaps only hit record to top the charts twice in a year by different bands. The second release in 1974 was by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. For some reason the song was playing over in my head as I watched Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. I'm not sure if it was because the title characters share the same name or because both deal with war. The song was written about the Civil War but was thought by most to be about Vietnam, likely because of the release dates. Vietnam was an unpopular war, and the same can be said for the war in Iraq. The similarities continue. The song ended up fading as summer candy pop music, and the same is likely to be the fate of this film.

Billy Lynn (Alwyn) became an unexpected hero during a firefight in Iraq. The enemy had shot and was attempting to take away his commanding officer. He ended up killing an enemy combatant in hand-to-hand combat. Washington, sensing a growing impatience with the war among the American people, decides to parade Lynn and his company on a two-week goodwill tour. The final stop was a half-time show at a Cowboys game with Destiny's Child. During that few hours Lynn has flashbacks of not only that moment in the war but his family. His sister, played horribly by Kristen Stewart, is trying to get him to go AWOL and to a psychiatrist so that they can make a point about the war. Lynn's torn between his duty and his sister. Throw in a fling with a Cowboys cheerleader just for giggles, and you have the makings of a rather disappointing film.

“I'm writing a book about magical creatures.”

The wizarding world J.K. Rowling conjured for her “Harry Potter” series captured the imaginations of children (and many, many adults) throughout the globe because it was precisely that...a fully realized, living and breathing world with its own lingo and lore. So while spinning off a corner of that universe might seem like a blatant cash grab, Rowling's imagination has provided particularly fertile ground for new franchise opportunities. (OK, OK...the part where Warner Bros. agreed to make five of these before the first one even came out *does* feel like a cash grab.) For example, this latest crowd-pleasing stab at a billion-dollar series is based on...a fictional textbook mentioned in Rowling's “Potter” saga.

Howard Hughes used to be a very big deal for a very long time. Warren Beatty was a big deal for a long time as well, and they have a lot in common. They were both renowned horndogs. Hughes was not only extremely rich, but enormously famous. The Hughes Tool Company, which was instrumental to the oil industry, was the original source of his wealth, but Howard Hughes became better known for his forays into the movie business and aviation industry. There has already been a movie about Hughes called The Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio, but Warren Beatty has been working on a Hughes movie since the 1970’s when he frequented the Beverly Hills Hotel where Hughes had multiple bungalows. Beatty lived a similar kind of fantasy life and identified with Hughes. Beatty has become notorious for taking a long time between projects because of a nearly legendary perfectionism. It has been 18 years since Beatty’s last film. He has been rumored to have done many projects over the years but rejected them all. This may be Beatty’s swan song, since he is now 79 years old. Beatty looks pretty good and seems as sharp as ever. And one of the things that becomes clear immediately is that Beatty understands that both Hughes and Beatty himself are pretty much past history.

The focus of the movie Rules Don’t Apply is two young lovers. One is Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich, a huge hit in Hail Caesar and the star of the upcoming Hans Solo movie) and Marla Mabrey (Lilly Collins, The Mortal Instruments, Mirror, Mirror). Collins is the daughter of Phil, by the way. She also is a dead ringer for a young Elizabeth Taylor at times. Mabrey is one of numerous ingénues that Hughes has acquired much like he acquires companies. Forbes is one of Hughes staff drivers with aspirations for much greater things. Forbes is assigned to driving Mabrey immediately after her arrival in Hollywood with her mother. This is 1958 Hollywood, which coincidentally is about the same time that Beatty had arrived to make his mark. The loving depiction of the time is clearly personal for Beatty. The depiction of 1958 is perhaps more vibrant than I would have imagined possible, and during the course of the movie which takes place over a number of years into the 1970’s we get a similar loving look at numerous world locations.

"There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived..."

The problem is that this starts out with the kind of story we've seen a thousand times before. The alien invasion theme is nothing new. H.G. Wells was describing it back in the 19th Century with War Of The Worlds. Unrelated Orson Welles scared the crap out of a depression-era radio audience with the same story. Independence Day gave us a brilliantly visual story that also begins the same way: alien ships begin to take strategic positions around the world. Here we go again, right? Wrong. We should have guessed from the beginning that when director Denis Villeneuve tackles a genre, he's going to turn it on his head. We’d seen him do it before. Last year's Sicario gave us a "war on drugs" film that wasn't like anything that came before it. Prisoners could have looked like a Taken sequel. I mean, how many ways can a tough guy deal with a kidnapped daughter? Of course, Villeneuve showed us there was at least one more way. He does it again with an alien first-contact film that is a blend of The Day The Earth Stood Still, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and maybe a little bit of the Twilight Zone classic To Serve Man, without the special sauce recipe. But mostly it's a cerebral journey that mines much of the same ground that Christopher Nolan did with Interstellar. Except that Villeneuve did a better job. Oh, and he spent $120 million less to do it. You still might be scratching your head when you leave, but you will also have some wonderful themes to ponder on the drive home. Arrival might well be one of the best films I'll see in 2016.