‘Digger’ and ‘Verity’ Movie Reviews: Two Big Stars, Two Very Messy Movies

‘Digger’ and ‘Verity’ Movie Reviews: Two Big Stars, Two Very Messy Movies

By Manny the Movie Guy

Two major movies. Two major movie stars. And two movies that left me with some very complicated feelings.

Tom Cruise throws away his movie-star vanity for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wildly ambitious Digger, while Anne Hathaway gleefully dives headfirst into the deliciously trashy world of Verity.

One is audacious, absurd and occasionally brilliant. The other is sexy, ridiculous and completely aware of what kind of movie it wants to be.

And yes — they’re both messy.

🎬 WATCH MY NBC PALM SPRINGS REVIEW

Watch Manny the Movie Guy review “Digger” and “Verity” on NBC Palm Springs.

‘DIGGER’ — I LIKE IT. I HATE IT. I THINK IT’S BRILLIANT. I THINK IT’S EXHAUSTING.

That pretty much sums up my relationship with Digger.

Tom Cruise teams with Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu for a movie that is nothing if not audacious. Cruise tosses aside his familiar action-hero persona and embraces the absurdity of a story that’s part satire, part existential crisis, part climate-change parable and part theatrical fever dream.

And Cruise commits.

There are moments in Digger when I thought, this is brilliant. There are others when I wanted the movie to stop screaming its ideas at me.

That’s the problem — and, strangely enough, part of the appeal.

Iñárritu swings for the fences. The movie tackles ego, responsibility, celebrity, environmental catastrophe and our ability to tell ourselves stories even as the world around us falls apart. It’s bold. It’s theatrical. It’s occasionally moving.

It’s also bloated and self-indulgent.

But I’d rather watch a filmmaker take a gigantic, messy swing than play everything safe. And Cruise deserves credit for surrendering himself to that vision.

I liked Digger.

I hated Digger.

Sometimes I did both at exactly the same time.

💋 MANNY’S RATING: 2½ OUT OF 4 MESSY KISSES

‘VERITY’ — WELCOME TO THE CRAZY HOUSE

And speaking of messy…

Let’s talk about Verity.

Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, Verity stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen, a writer who enters the orbit of successful author Verity Crawford and her husband Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett.

And then there’s Anne Hathaway.

Hathaway almost saves this movie.

Actually, she seems to understand exactly what Verity is better than anybody else. She embraces the craziness, devours the melodrama and practically dares the movie to become even more outrageous.

Dakota Johnson is considerably more subdued as Lowen, while poor Josh Hartnett finds himself caught in the middle of this increasingly bizarre household.

The result is part sexy thriller, part soap opera and part high-gloss trash.

And I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult.

Because Verity gets increasingly twisted as Lowen tries to determine what actually happened inside this family — and whether anything Verity has written can be trusted.

The movie ultimately plays with the idea of unreliable storytellers. What is confession? What is fiction? What is the truth?

And perhaps more importantly: what are we willing to believe when believing it gives us what we want?

There’s an interesting movie buried underneath all the glossy craziness.

I just wish there were more of it.

Still, Hathaway knows what movie she’s in.

And girlfriend goes for it.

💋 MANNY’S RATING: 2 OUT OF 4 TRASHY KISSES

THE MANNY BOTTOM LINE

Digger and Verity couldn’t be more different, but they’re connected by one beautiful word:

MESSY.

Digger is the more ambitious film — sometimes brilliant, sometimes exhausting and almost always fascinating.

Verity is the trashier one — a glossy guilty pleasure elevated by an Anne Hathaway performance that understands the assignment.