Ben Stiller's biggest problem as a director has been that his material has never quite been worthy of his obvious ambition. But in Tropic Thunder, a satire about the insecurity and immaturity of movie stars, which he co-wrote with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, Stiller's obvious comfort and confidence in the material grounds the film so firmly that, for the first time, his directorial ambitions can flourish. The premise is that five actors -- three of them international superstars -- are stranded somewhere in Asia believing they are shooting a guerrilla-style Vietnam War epic, when they're in fact caught up in very real danger. This structure serves up so many delicious possibilities that Stiller and his cohorts can't help themselves, they try everything: physical comedy; self-serious Oscar-bait trailers; profanity-laced diatribes from Hollywood power players -- they even mock the horrors of drug withdrawal, all the while playing up the ceaseless insincerity of almost everyone involved in moviemaking. Well-shot by cinematographer John Toll, and cannily edited by Greg Hayden, the film is a visual treat. Moving briskly from joke to joke, Tropic Thunder, much like Hot Fuzz, works as both as an action film and as a spoof of action films. When there are visual allusions to other Vietnam classics like Apocalypse Now or Platoon, the point is never just to reference those great works -- there's always something else going on in those scenes to make them funny, so the homages simply add another layer of laughter. The care that went into the art direction, for instance (especially in the movie memorabilia on display in an agent's office), will bring a smile to anyone paying attention. Nobody can be faulted for missing some of these subtle pleasures, however, because the big jokes are so consistently uproarious. Everyone from Steve Coogan, as the befuddled British director, to Danny McBride, as a gung-ho special-effects man, to Matthew McConaughey, playing a loyal, unctuous agent, takes full advantage of the numerous opportunities to score laughs. Jay Baruchel deserves particular praise for playing the straight man flawlessly against each and every one of these raging lunatics. But it's Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian critical darling revered for his chameleon-like method acting, who will keep viewers doubled up with laughter. The character undergoes a radical surgical process that turns his skin black so that he can play an African-American role, and Lazarus refuses to break character, even when the cameras are off. His ongoing verbal battles with entrepreneurial rapper and fellow cast member Alpa Chino (a rock-solid Brandon T. Jackson, whose character gives the film its screamingly funny first scene) become so comically convoluted that they defuse the racial tension. That comedic shock value adds yet another dimension to a movie that already draws upon the rich tradition of Hollywood self-mockery, from Sullivan's Travels to The Player. Time will tell if this film ends up in the pantheon with those poison pen letters to Tinsletown, but it is safe to say that {|Tropic Thunder|} is the most consistently funny movie Hollywood managed to produce in the summer of 2008.

Buckle in, listeners, for a wild ride! The Department of Diachronic Operations, a secret government agency, seeks to revive magic for 21st-century use. A crack team of core operatives, composed of polyglot Melisande “Mel” Stokes, military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons, physicist Frank Oda, and a cantankerous witch named Erzebet, develops a system of time travel. Multiple narrators weave memorable character performances with increasingly tangled “strands” of events, along with an assortment of letters, memos, meetings, chat transcripts, and other communications media. Their distinct accents and intuitive pacing summon a magical blend of personalities and narrative. It’s a highly complex, amusing, and engrossing world. Eventually, the team’s best-laid plans go askew when rogue operatives, military officials, and bureaucrats complicate matters considerably. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

★ 2017-04-17
Immense and immensely entertaining genre-hopping yarn from hard-core sci-fi veteran Stephenson (Seveneves, 2015, etc.) and historical novelist Galland (Stepdog, 2015, etc.)."You have an agreeably uninteresting existence," says the shadowy government recruiter. "Let's see if we can change that." Our heroine, a brilliant specialist in ancient languages, cannot refuse, especially since the pay packet Tristan Lyons is offering is many times more than her adjunct position pays. With that, they're off—but where? Blend time travel with Bourne-worthy skulduggery, throw in lashings of technology and dashes of steampunk, and you have the makings of this overstuffed, disbelief-begging storyline. That storyline begins and ends with language, but in between there's a fair amount of outright mad science, courtesy of the inventor of the Ontic Decoherence Cavity ("An MIT physics professor who tried to patent groundbreaking technological innovations is a Luddite?"), and—well, of witchcraft, which seems an uneasy fit at first but soon comes to make as much sense as anything else in this head-spinning tale. And what is D.O.D.O., the place where the ODEC is put into play courtesy of DARPA? Melisande Stokes, said linguist, gamely guesses that it means "Department of Diabolical Obscurantism," but no, it's much more than all that. Stephenson and Galland turn ethnic clichés on their heads, introducing Magyar sorceresses and hipper-than-thou Asian baristas into the mix as their yarn careens into Dan Brown land: we know we're there when we hit on Athanasius Fugger and his penumbral lineage, "completely absent from the historical record," characters worthy of Umberto Eco and perfectly at home here. Suffice it to say that the story gets weirder and more madcap from there. A departure for both authors and a pleasing combination of much appeal to fans of speculative fiction.