Two great Rachel Weisz movies and one not-so-good one

Two Rachel Weisz movies open this weekend, one a big, glossy, romantic period piece, the other a small, thought-provoking indie. I preferred the latter but the former will get all the attention.

Now in case that name doesn’t ring a bell, Weisz is an Oscar-winning English model-turned-actress who also happens to be married to Daniel Craig of James Bond fame. She’s a dark-haired beauty who manages to project both glamour and intelligence with equal ease.

Weisz has already appeared in one of the year’s best films, “The Lobster,” so I was hoping for a trifecta of great Weisz movies in 2016 but, alas, neither “The Light Between Oceans” or “Complete Unknown” can match the brilliance of that disturbing film.

That’s not to say there won’t be fans of “The Light Between Oceans.” Based on the number of sniffles I heard and the profusion of tears I witnessed during the preview screening, this very well may be a late summer sleeper. But I hope not.

It’s a gorgeous film set off the coast of Australia, just after World War I. A war veteran played by the great Michael Fassbender works as a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island. When he falls in love with a nearby village girl, played by recent Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander, the two set up house on the remote and otherwise uninhabited island.

When a healthy newborn washes ashore in a dinghy, the couple make the fateful decision to raise the child as their own, with ultimately heart-wrenching consequences. Rachel Weisz plays the grieving mother of the presumed drowned baby.

Director Derek Cianfrance intends the experience of his film to be as heart-wrenching for the audience as it is for its characters.

Unfortunately, the movie’s melodrama is so belabored, its emotions so overwrought, that the film falls flattest just as it reaches its climax. No amount of great acting and spectacular scenery can save it from its soap-opera plotting and syrupy score. The whole venture feels like a high-class version of a Nicholas Sparks novel. And no one needs that.

The other film, “Complete Unknown,” puts Weisz front and center. She plays a mysterious woman who has lived many different lives in many different parts of the world. Or has she?

She spins so many convincing and conflicting webs that it’s hard for anyone to know who she really is. Michael Shannon plays the man who finally confronts her and when he does, lives unravel, his and hers.

The “Complete Unknown” plays with our notions of identity. Are we what we do? Are we who we say we are? Does our identity define us or entrap us? Are we still ourselves if we change all the time? Are we ourselves if we never change?

The movie wraps these questions in a reasonably compelling mystery. It’s resolved a little too explicitly but the film ends on a satisfying note. A modest success.

Rachel Weisz has one more shot at movie greatness this year.

In the upcoming film “Denial,” she plays a British historian who’s sued for libel by a Holocaust denier. It’s based on a true story, and with a script by playwright David Hare, it sounds like it might be Oscar-worthy material.