John Powers

Like that 60s warhorse Failsafe, A House of Dynamite reminds us that America's nuclear defense is based on elaborate protocols that offer an illusion of control.

Yet once that unexplained missile shows up on the radar, the system instantly starts dissolving.

The missile defenses don't work.

It's like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as they say here.

You can't get Putin's guy on the phone.

And our North Korea specialist has the day off.

The encrypted video conference starts breaking up.

Endless planning can't tell you what to do when the choice is between surrender and suicide.

While all of this is unnerving, it's also thrilling to watch.

Bigelow directs with a maestro's lucid precision, perfectly orchestrating the complicated shifts from person to person, time frame to time frame.

We can follow exactly where we are and what's going on.

Every moment pops, from Barry Ackroyd's alert cinematography to Kirk Baxter's jittery but controlled editing to Volker Bertelsmann's score, whose shifts keep ratcheting up the tension.

While the script's ending is a tad too oblique for my taste, the movie still packs a wallop.

And rightly, Bigelow is tackling something important, especially now when the world's nuclear arsenals are increasingly controlled by aggressive nationalists.

Yet it's unlikely that her warning about all the world's nukes will have any greater effect on the real world than the scads of cautionary movies that came before.

Sad to say, a house of dynamite is likely to be remembered not for making us any safer, but for being so darn exciting.

On the stock exchange of literary acclaim, reputations rise, fall, go bust, and sometimes rise again. These days, few writers have a higher valuation than Jane Austen, who's gone from being merely a great novelist to becoming a marketable brand.

On the stock exchange of literary acclaim, reputations rise, fall, go bust, and sometimes rise again. These days, few writers have a higher valuation than Jane Austen, who's gone from being merely a great novelist to becoming a marketable brand.

On the stock exchange of literary acclaim, reputations rise, fall, go bust, and sometimes rise again. These days, few writers have a higher valuation than Jane Austen, who's gone from being merely a great novelist to becoming a marketable brand.

Beyond the scads of adaptations, we've had movies titled Austenland and the Jane Austen Book Club, Anne Hathaway playing the young Jane, and Mr. Darcy's popping up everywhere, from Bridget Jones's Diary to the Hallmark Channel's Mr. Darcy Trilogy.