Producer: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Kevin J. Walsh and Brad Ingelsby   Director: Michael Pearce  Screenplay: Brad Ingelsby   Cast: Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, Edmund Donovan, Albert Jones, Melanie Nicholls-King, Rebecca Creskoff, Kristina Valada-Viars and Kyle MacLachlan   Distributor: Apple TV+

Grade: C-

Julianne Moore is one of our finest actresses, but Michael Pearce’s “Echo Valley” isn’t worthy of her.  What starts out as a sensitive study of a troubled mother and her drug-addicted daughter turns into a ludicrous piece of claptrap masquerading as a thriller that even Moore can’t salvage, though she gives it a patina of respectability.

As the film written by Brad Ingelsby begins, Moore’s Kate Garrett is struggling to keep her horse ranch operating; the buildings need work she can’t afford, and with no one to help with the animals, she’s exhausted and forced to suspend her only source of income, classes in horsemanship for the children of parents whose horses she boards. 

As we will gradually learn, Kate’s a grieving widow.  Her wife Patty (Kristina Valada-Viars), the farmhand she fell in love with, leading to her divorce from Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), died in a tragic accident.  And her daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) is a drug addict, in and out of rehab, who’s gone off with her sleazy boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan).

Though Richard reluctantly helps out with money to repair the barn’s roof, he insists that Kate consider selling the place—and that she finally agree to stop giving Claire cash whenever she shows up claiming to be clean.  Naturally when Claire does return, her mother can’t say no.  She takes Claire in, hoping they can be a family again.  Of course, that doesn’t happen.  Instead Claire runs off with Ryan once more, leaving Kate back in the doldrums, relieved only briefly  by intervention from her old friend Jessie (Fiona Shaw), who lives some distance away with her partner Joan (Melanie Nicholls-King).

Now the plot spins wildly into thriller territory.  Claire returns distraught, with a body in the back seat of her car.  The fact that it’s carefully wrapped up should immediately raise doubts about Claire’s explanation, since one must wonder how, in her hysterical state, she could have been so meticulous.  But that’s just the first of many implausibilities they script asks us to swallow without question.

Kate’s determination to protect her daughter leads her to desperate actions to get rid of the corpse.  That sets off a chain reaction as Claire disappears again and a shifty drug dealer named Jack (Domhnall Gleeson) appears at Kate’s door making threats and demands.  It would be unfair to writer Brad Ingelsby (whose mini-series “Mare of Easttown” proved him capable of better things) to reveal the twists he intends to surprise and enthrall viewers; suffice it to say that they include such varied elements as an insurance scam and even what might be called a kind-of resurrection.    

It’s not unfair, though, to note that after suggesting one downbeat denouement it all wraps up in a frenetic explanation of “what actually happened” that shifts matters into a far more upbeat mode.  Though a police detective (Albert Jones) is part of the mix, he doesn’t tells us what occurred, the way the cop did in another recent, overcomplicated thriller (“The Ruse”); director Michael Pearce opts instead to frame the revelations in a montage edited by Maya Maffiolo that moves very quickly in an effort to mute the unlikelihood of things having fallen so securely into place.  But the effect is just as silly here as it was in “The Ruse.”  Even worse, it’s capped by a final shot that conveniently ignores the moral ambiguity of the ending, positing instead an unearned “happily ever after.”

Whatever power the film has derives entirely from Moore’s committed performance; she invests her deeply flawed character with a traumatized intensity that makes palatable even the worst scenes—one in which she’s attacked and injected with drugs (nothing much follows from it, however) and another in which she has a nightmare, thrashes about in bed and winds up trapped in the sheets just like the corpse Claire had brought home.  You might not be convinced, however, that such a troubled woman would be capable of the cleverness she exhibits in the end. 

By contrast Sweeney gets to play basically two notes—Claire is either wacked out or pretending to be in control—and Gleeson just projects a smoothly menacing pose, except when he finds himself in a tough spot at the close.  Shaw is engaging as a dame always ready to help even at the cost of putting herself in danger and MacLachlan sells his single scene, while Donovan is convincingly spineless.  Keith P. Cunningham’s production design is pretty ordinary, but he and cinematographer Benjamin Kračun conjure up an impressively surrealistic barn-burning.  Jed Kurzel’s score is like one long musical moan, periodically interrupted by some energy in action sequences.

“Echo Valley” strands the always compelling Moore in a would-be thriller that collapses as decisively as Kate’s burning barn does. 

Producers: Marc Platt and Adam Siegel   Director: Dean DeBlois   Screenplay: Dean DeBlois, William Davies, Chris Sanders and Cressida Cowell   Cast: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Frost and Gerard Butler   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C+

The lamentable practice of remaking popular animated movies in live-action—or, more accurately, hybrid live-action/animated—form has largely been a Disney phenomenon, but it’s spreading.  Case in point: DreamWorks’ redo of their good-natured 2010 boy-and-his-dog (sorry, dragon) adventure, a tale obviously inspired by Androcles and the Lion but embellished with scads of action. The new “How to Train Your Dragon” isn’t terrible, and will probably find a large audience among those who’ve become fans of a franchise that’s grown to include sequels and TV series; but it’s a distant also-ran in comparison to the original.

Writer-director Dean DeBlois, who’s been shepherding the property on the big screen since he and Chris Sanders co-wrote and co-directed the first adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s 2003 book, is clearly protective of his initial effort.  This “Dragon” is almost slavishly indebted to the 2010 movie, following its arc religiously, including ample amounts of its dialogue and framing most the images after the model of the animated version.  But he elongates some sequences, italicizing messages in the process, and the switch to live-action necessarily slows the expository stuff down considerably.  The result is that the new telling of the same story is much longer (123 minutes as opposed to 97), draggier and far more ponderous.

Moreover, the switch from animation to live action darkens and bloats cinematographer Bill Pope’s visuals.  That’s evident in the flying sequences, which in the original had a colorful grandeur and sense of sheer fun lacking here.  It might seem progress to set the animated dragon whooshing along, with a now-human rider on an improvised saddle, against realistic backdrops shot, presumably by helicopter and then speeded up.  But in practice the result looks blurred and murky, more hectic than enthralling.

Then there’s the final battle with the huge queen dinosaur, in which Hiccup’s friendship with Toothless, which goes against the grain of his community’s kill-the-dragons lifestyle, is vindicated.  As edited by Wyatt Smith, it’s more protracted here, presumably to show off the effects, and the monster dino is gargantuan.  But the size of the sequence actually works against it, since it lacks the clarity and precision of the animated equivalent and comes to feel like overkill, especially with John Powell’s score blaring in the background.  (Powell, too, is a returnee from the 2010 film.)  The uplift of the epilogue, accentuated by the “awesome” tones Powell has contrived for the flying scenes, is still there, but that’s because it basically repeats what the 2010 movie did verbatim.

In its favor, though, the plot does retain its worthwhile messages about being true to yourself, bonding with others (including critters) and joining together in a common purpose.  Mason Thames is a nicely awkward Hiccup, and plays his scenes with the computer-generated dragon Toothless (not quite as cute this time around) as well as can be expected, as well as those with humans like his father Stoick (Gerard Butler, now seen in hirsute bulk as well as heard in stentorian voice), chatty blacksmith/mentor Gobber (genial Nick Frost), ambitious rival and eventual love interest Astrid (Nice Parker, nicely managing the transition from surly competitor to stalwart partner) and his fellow trainees Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn).  All the actors, old and young, happily inhabit the Viking world meticulously crafted by production designer Dominic Watkins and costumer Lindsay Pugh and strive mightily to emulate the gestures and inflections of the animated figures that preceded them.

So the question is whether we really needed a live-action/animated movie that essentially replicates a fully animated one that’s only fifteen years old, while dragging it out and darkening it down.  The answer is no, of course, but DeBlois’ commitment to be true to his original vision can be admired, even if you consider the project itself misguided and the realization ultimately disappointing.