The Fountain

In The Fountain, an unfashionably earnest meditation on death and immortality, Hugh Jackman plays a medical researcher scrambling to save his terminally ill wife (Rachel Weisz). Director/co-writer Darren Aronofsky thickens his esoteric themes by having the actors also play a 16th-century Spanish queen and conquistador and, in a third intersecting layer, plopping Jackman in an outer-space bubble. It’s visually fascinating, but also airless and baffling. EXTRAS Don’t expect the one doc to provide any answers. Its biggest revelation? The Tree of Life’s sap was actually frosting.