Michael Keaton shines in Alejandro González Iñárritu ambitious but messy “Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.”

Each frame of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest, Biutiful, is a lovingly composed photograph. Every word is chosen carefully. Each performance is measured and full of resonance, particularly Javier Bardem. He effectively conveys the mood of a man carrying the weight of not one, but two worlds on his shoulders, with a gaze even deeper than his voice. On the surface, Iñárritu looks to have done everything right. The only problem: all that useless beauty and depth of emotion floats aimlessly in Iñárritu’s needlessly over-complicated, self-consciously tricky narrative.