Review trifecta: ‘Maze Runner,’ ‘Black Mass,’ ‘Everest’

The fall season for movies has begun with a rush of releases, each hoping to be a break-out hit.

One of those is a mini-blockbuster franchise entry, another about a true-life gangster, and finally, an IMAX spectacular about an historic mountain tragedy.

First up is “The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” the second of four planned “Maze Runner” films. Like the “Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” series, this is another young adult, dystopian drama. In the first installment, a bunch of random teenagers find themselves inexplicably trapped in a huge open space (The Glade) surrounded by a giant wall. Led by our hero Thomas, a group of them escapes the Glade and makes it through an enormous Maze that is fraught with danger at every turn.

In movie two, “The Scorch Trials,” Thomas and friends are welcomed by inhabitants of some kind of military and medical base. Before long, Thomas discovers the fact that all’s not quite right there either and again leads another escape, this time through The Scorch &#8212 a hip way to refer to an hellacious desert.

Without giving anything away, we eventually find out why these runaways are so valuable to the powers that be. And the rest of the movie consists of our young heroes being chased over and over and over and over, sometimes even by zombies.

In some very basic way, “The Scorch Trials” resembles one of the best films of the summer, “Mad Max: Fury Road.” But in the ways that matter most, it’s a polar opposite. In this summer’s blockbuster, there’s almost no plot, just a non-stop desert chase. But it’s so full of kinetic energy and creative, in-the-moment cinematography that it pops off the screen. “The Scorch Trials,” on the other hand, is so chock full of plot and characters that it becomes clotted. The movie’s energy dissipates long before its climax and the unremarkable cinematography can’t save it. It begins to feel like just one arbitrary incident after another.

And the bad news is there are two more films in the series to come!

Better is “Black Mass.” It has a great true story to tell about a notorious Irish-American mob boss named James “Whitey” Bulger. In the 1970’s, an FBI agent approached the vicious but well-connected Bulger with a proposition: help us crack Boston’s Italian mob and the Bureau, and you will be protected from future prosecution.

This unorthodox arrangement lasted 20 years, with Bulger acting as an informant and, in return, literally getting away with murder. How Bulger brilliantly worked the system and manipulated his FBI contact to his advantage is a fascinating story but unfortunately, the screenplay doesn’t know how to capitalize on the natural tension in this Faustian bargain.

When this unorthodox arrangement begins to unravel, the stakes couldn’t be higher for both Bulger and his FBI handler and yet the movie for some reason under-dramatizes the crisis. A missed opportunity, despite the best efforts of Johnny Depp who is appropriately scary and almost unrecognizable as Bulger.

And finally, “Everest” has a very different but equally dramatic true story to tell. The tragic deaths of eight climbers on Mount Everest in 1996 were immortalized in Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book “Into Thin Air,” but Hollywood has wanted to bring the story to the big screen for nearly 20 years. After many fits and starts, the film is finally here in all its IMAX and 3-D glory.

Related: ‘Everest’ dredges up tragedy for Seattle family

Filmed partly on Everest and mostly in the mountains of Northern Italy, the movie makes excellent use of the IMAX visual capabilities. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that better captures the sense of what climbing a dangerous mountain must be like. It’s a fully-immersive experience and visually harrowing, even before the deadly storm hits. And once all hell breaks loose up there, it’s dramatically gripping as well.

Since the adventure/disaster is the clear focus of the film, the characters are necessarily not much more than broad sketches &#8212 there’s the cautious guide, the carefree guide, the cocky climber and the nervous one, the fretting support staff down below and the fretting wives back home, etc.

Nonetheless, the cast, which includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin and Keira Knightley, is uniformly fine, even if they recognize they’re all playing second fiddle to the majesty of Mother Nature.