When you’re working from a classic Anton Chekhov text, and put together a tremendous cast, it’s going to be hard to screw it up completely. Director Michael Mayer and screenwriter Stephen Karam take on Checkov’s play set in 1904 Russia, as many characters gather at the country home of ailing Sorin (Brian Dennehy)—including Sorin’s sister Irina (Annette Bening), a successful Moscow actress, and Irina’s son Konstantin (Billy Howle), a struggling would-be playwright—for various romantic complications. Saoirse Ronan (as Nina), Elisabeth…

When your entire movie revolves around the enigmatic nature of your central character, it helps to have an actor who’s comfortable with a mostly internalized performance. That’s not exactly the case with Paul Rudd, who stars as Moe Berg, a journeyman major league baseball catcher of the 1920s and 1930s whose post-retirement second career involved joining the OSS during World War II, and possibly taking on the assignment of assassinating German nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong). Robert Rodat’s screenplay…