’Mummy’ dearest

For the first “Mummy” film in seven years, kinetic action director Rob Cohen (“XXX,” “The Fast and the Furious”) amps up the action and visuals and keeps everything moving at a breathless pace. The result is possibly the most fun “Mummy” yet.

In “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” adventurer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, taking over for Rachel Weisz) have retired to an English country manor in the 1940s.

However, the couple jumps at the chance to deliver an ancient diamond to Shanghai. The jewel, though, is tied into the mystery of the evil Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), who was cursed to spend eternity in suspended animation along with his 10,000-strong army.

If the emperor wakes from his curse, he will seek to take over the world. No surprise, then, that he comes to, and the kicky CGI visuals give a great, gruesome air to the sequence.

The plot is typical Saturday matinee fare, but Cohen’s flair for action sequences charges everything with a fresh urgency. The movie’s climactic battle is truly impressive, as the emperor’s army of terracotta soldiers do battle with an army of the walking dead.

However, Cohen seems less self-assured with his cast. For example, it’s hard to tell where the Li ends and the CGI begins.

Weisz probably thought all this “Mummy” stuff was beneath her after winning an Oscar, but Bello lacks the warmth and humor that Weisz brought to the earlier films.

And the movie also doesn’t say much about a career in Hollywood for guys entering middle age. Fraser is fit and handsome and still possesses a nice-guy charm that translates well into his role as Rick. But the character, like Indiana Jones before him, is saddled with a college-age son, as if the filmmakers were getting ready to put Fraser out to pasture.

– By Randy Cordova, The Arizona Republic

“Before the Rains”

Set in India during 1937, amid the final years of British rule, this AMC Select feature embodies the kind of themes that, say, W. Somerset Maugham might have explored.

Henry Moores (Linus Roache) is a British landowner, the kind the natives call “sahib,” whose business interests compel him to build a road through jungle hillsides. He depends on T.K. Neelan (Rahul Bose), an Indian educated at an English school and caught between cultures.

Problems ensue, as they must. On the cultural side, the natives are restless, more and more demonstrations showing the impetus for Indian independence. On the personal side, Moores – seemingly happily married (to Jennifer Ehle) – is having an affair with a married Indian servant (Nandita Das).

It would be unfair to give away much more. Let’s just say that things fall apart – again, as they must – and both Moores and Neelan face crises of conscience. The difference between this story, directed by Indian-born filmmaker Santosh Sivan, and what Maugham might have written is that the character who ends up doing the right thing isn’t the one who was born chanting Rudyard Kipling rhymes.

These days, though, that politically correct plot development feels less surprising than convenient. At the same time, the metaphor of a crisis mirroring a coming monsoon feels dated.

All that aside, “Before the Rains,” in trademark Ivory-Merchant style, is gorgeously photographed. And the acting is just what it needs to be, though Neelan, whose face should be carved on the side of a mountain, stands out.

– By Dan Webster