‘Ghost in the Shell’ doesn’t come alive as ‘Unforgettable’ plays with familiar scenario

In this image released by Paramount Pictures, Scarlett Johansson appears in a scene from, “Ghost in the Shell.” (Jasin Boland/Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures via AP) 

When did Scarlett Johansson become the go-to actress for otherworldly roles?

In “Under the Skin,” she played a predatory alien encased in human flesh. She has already played super-assassin Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, in three Marvel films and will be in “Avengers: Infinity War” next year. In Luc Besson’s “Lucy,” she plays a woman who accidentally ingests a drug turning her into an enhanced killing machine.

In “Ghost in the Shell,” she is a dying woman who is saved by being turned into a cyber-enhanced soldier known as Major.

When we meet her, she is being assembled and when she’s finished looks like a naked Barbie doll. Her assignment is to go after the world’s most dangerous criminals.

Since “Ghost in the Shell” is based on the longtime Japanese manga of the same name — there was an animated version back in 1995 — there was a fair bit of controversy over the casting of Johansson.

The film, directed by Rupert Sanders (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) is drearily serious, another murky apocalyptic world with vague stakes and vaguer consequences.

It’s not worth recapping the film’s plot, which is predictable. As for Johansson, she’s wasted. At least in “Lucy” and “Under the Skin,” she had some space to act, in “Ghost” she is just a name for the marquee.


‘UNFORGETTABLE’

The thriller “Unforgettable” replays the jealous woman scenario. Katherine Heigl is Tessa, an icy, everything-must-be-perfect sort. Her ex, David (Geoff Stults), is planning to marry Rosario Dawson’s Julia, an editor.

The couple has a daughter (Isabella Kai Rice); so that puts Julia directly in Tessa’s path. The film from veteran producer Denise Di Novi manages to breathe a little life into the old format with Julia’s past of domestic abuse making her unstable. Dawson and Heigl give their roles some edge, but we know the playbook.


‘BOSS BABY’

“Boss Baby” gives Alec Baldwin a voice as an infant. That’s kind of a funny concept and there are a few decent laughs, but that’s about as far as the animated movie gets.