Movie Nation

It only cost $75 million, Deadline.com says. So a $66-70 million weekend (Deadline notoriously under-estimates kids’ movies Saturday take) ensures Universal will make bank on its latest big screen version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

“The Grinch” as they titled it, pretending to have him do something other than steal Christmas, didn’t get the best reviews. But it’s not awful. And they probably wanted to get into the Benedict Cumberbatch business, so money well spent.

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” which opened at a heady $51 million last weekend, defying expectations, is seemingly headed towards $30 million, which was everybody’s prediction for its earning power for this weekend. Saturday could raise that, too.

The fanboy buzzed “Overlord” got a lot of reviews more generous than mine. Still, seeing it in a packed house late Thursday I was sure it would do better than the $11-14 million it was projected to earn. Nope. The “Zombies of Navarone” combat “suicide mission” and monster movie mashup is bombing — $11 million. You’re making producer J.J. Abrams cry, guys!

The other new arrival this weekend, in wide release anyway, is “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” Sony rebooted the franchise with another “girl” and a totally new script. Which led to weak reviews and a feeble $8-9 million take at the box office.

Give us Stieg Larsson and Noomi Rapace, guys. Don’t give us Spider tattoos in place of dragon ones. Or don’t bother. They never managed to finish the original trilogy with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in the lead roles. Why cook up a tale of world conquest originating in Sweden, with one Bourne escape after another, when you couldn’t make a hit out of an international best seller that produced the biggest hit trilogy of movies (made for Swedish TV) ever to come out of Scandinavia?

“A Star is Born” will probably cross the $200 million barrier next weekend.

Tyler Perry’s Tiffany Haddish comedy “Nobody’s Fool” took a dive, but not the usual “Tyler Perry Plunge” of 70% achieved when his movie is so awful word gets around and kills it on the second weekend. A falloff that amounts to 61% of opening weekend? Still in the top ten, call that a “win.”

Start-up distributor STX is dabbling in animation, too.

Their MO — throw money at “names” of dubious cinematic merit — applies to the animated side, too. Janelle Monae, Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Gabriel Iglesias, Wanda Sykes, Emma Roberts and Blake Shelton do the voices in this cartoon about “being different” in a world where dolls are usually not quite so ugly.

“UglyDolls” opens May 10. 

“Astral” is a British thriller in the “Ouija” mode, young people creeped out by what they stumble into exploring the “other” world.

Shot quickly and on the cheap (12 days, limited locations), it plays like a prospectus for a bigger, perhaps better movie that could expand on this limited supernatural suspense story. If you see a Hollywood remake built around this low-key “sizzle reel” of a movie, don’t be surprised. .

But taken on its own terms it quietly, quickly and efficiently gets down to the simple business of raising the hair on the back of your neck.

Frank Dillane, of “Fear the Walking Dead” and a couple of Harry Potter pictures, is Alex Harmann, a college kid with brooding good looks and a personality to match.

He’s 21 and one of his classes at his stately British university touches on “astral projection,” the idea that you can give yourself an OBE — not an “Order of the British Empire” honor but an out of body experience.

Alex is interested. OK, obsessed. 

“With increased awareness we can see into another world?”

He’s so taken with this “theory of astral projection” that he barely notices the comely coed Alyssa (Vanessa Grasse of “Leatherface”) who flirts with him almost non-stop. He wants to see if he can detach his spirit from his physical body.  So he reads up on it.

“Had a go at that astral projection thing,” he tells his mates (Damson Idris, Ned Porteous, Jennifer Brooke and Ms. Grasse). “Useless.”

But Professor Powell (Trevor White) was convincing, if skeptical. Alex hunts for instructions on the Internet. Naturally he finds them, and of course they work.

“I’ve perfected it. I’m a genuine projectionist!”

All he has to do is come up with “proof” for his doubting, not-easily-fooled friends.

That’s where “Astral,” which opens with a “Don’t try this at home” credit, draws us in. Computer recording Alex during his sleep with a proof-pendulum (an object dangling from a string) suggests the long-haired kid was wandering outside his physical body in his dorm room.

And proof or not, that “projection” made him start to see things — “shadow people.” What’s worse, his friends do, too. And I don’t know which is creepier, the ghostly glimpses in the movie, or the fact that “shadow person” warrants an entry in Wikipedia.

Dillane, son of top notch character actor Stephen Dillane, gives away the speed of this shoot only rarely. Oftentimes, rushed filming leads to rushed performances. Here, he gets caught underplaying the odd chilling moment when he needed another take to give us something to move us or shake us.

“I swear, I was outside of my body, looking down!”

Writer-director Chris Mul’s script has a tidy symmetry about it, a formulaic way of treating foreshadowing (the pre-credits prologue ends with a suicide) and only a few mild frights to it.

But less can be more in such movies, limiting the frights to a few key moments, lulling the viewer into complacency first. “Hmm, they’ve got video proof we can leave our bodies…Wait, what’s THAT in the corner?”

The best moment might be the rare funny one. Alyssa has finally decided to tell her feelings to Alex, who is so jumpy from what he’s been seeing that his eyes dart and he keeps turning his head, looking for shadows. Only his realization that now is the time I should lean in for a kiss keeps her from fleeing this long-haired wack-job.

British girls are made of sterner stuff.

Mul and his players keep a British drollery about everything that’s going on that’s cute and culture-clash funny. “Ghosts…the ONLY plausible explanation.”

It’s just that there’s so little here that the finale arrives abruptly and feels like it needed more buildup and oomph. We’ve seen “Ouija,” and that means you’ve got to give us more when you’re ready to confront the shadows stalking you.

“Astral” may have a refreshing quiet dread about it. But at some point, the stakes are raised and a big payoff is in order. The climax has to feel like something the movie preceding it has earned. Not here.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Frank Dillane, Vanessa Grasse, Catherine Steadman, Damson Idris, Trevor White

Credits:Directed by Chris Mul, script by Chris Mul, Michael Mul. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:22

Filmgoers have lots of choices at Fandango.com or in the line at their favorite cineplex box office this weekend.

The holdover “Bohemian Rhapsody” should continue the Queen revival.

But “The Grinch” gives families with small children something to go see, even though the Chuck Jones cartoon from the ’60s is far better, and cheaper to obtain.

“The Grinch” is sitting in “fresh tomato” territory on Rotten Tomatoes, but isn’t even close over at the more selective Metacritic. 

I thought it Cumber-boring, pretty, empty-headed and heartless. 

Horror fans, video gamers, mashup movie buffs and their ilk — referred to as “fanboys” and “fangirls” — have to be salivating over the J.J. Abrams produced “Overlord,” which was pitched as “D-Day with Zombies,” dollars to donuts.

It’s getting mostly favorable reviews, although not raves — something Metacritic reveals more readily than Rotten Tomatoes.  

For me, “The Zombies of Navarone” was a bit of a drag. A good-looking one, but so reliant on cliches (noble sacrifice, child in danger, suicide mission, Nazis in leather, intrepid French beauty who speaks English and isn’t collaborating, etc).

But as pioneering film critic Abe Lincoln once said, “Those who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like.”

Poor notices and the lack of a screening in my market mean I will get to “Girl in the Spider’s Web” later today. I do love that Claire Foy, though if I was doing a fresh installment in that franchise, I would have given serious thought to using the one and only Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace. Still, could be good. Fingers crossed.

Box Office Mojo is predicting a $60 million weekend for Universal’s latest version of “The Grinch,” which allows the studio to make bank before “Ralph Breaks the Internet” comes in to rain all over their Disney Parade.

Box Office Mojo is thinking $52 million is more likely.

Deadline.com figures “Grinch” will hit $70 million in the US on its opening weekend.

No word yet from Deadline.com about Thursday night preview ticket sales, but I saw “Overlord” in a mostly-full IMAX (it wasn’t really, AMC just charges more) showing. Guessing it got the jump on “The Grinch.”

I also would bet the bank that BO Mojo’s prediction that “Overlord” will only add $11 million to Paramount’s bottom line is laughably off. The fanboys and fangirls are eating up the zombies/WWII D-Day movie mashup. Box Office Mojo is saying $14. I figure over $20, but we will see.

The “Girl/Spider’s Web” predictions are in the $8-10 range, which may be a tad high.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” opened to a gravity-defying $51 million last weekend. Anything more than $30 this one will be a big win for Fox, anything less suggests it’ll never match “A Star is Born” in the fall musicals box office race. “Star” is over $170, “Bohemian” not quite at $70. Will the Gaga/Fat Bottom Girls gap close?

“Overlord” grafts World War II combat movie cliches onto zombie and Frankenstein “Give my creature LIFE!” cliches, a D-Day with Monsters mashup with splendid firefights, digitally dazzling airdrop action and gruesome as all get out Nazi Walking Dead effects.

It’s such a slick spin on the two genres that it feels familiar, first scene to last. But when your whole concept is “Let’s give these cliches a new setting,” this “Re-animating Private Ryan,” “Frankenstein SS” or “The Zombies of Navarone” (I see a drinking game in the making) is rarely more than a grind. We know where it’s going, know the settings, know the action beats long before they show up. As comfortingly familiar as they are, the cliches play like a checklist from a screenwriting seminar.

They make the movie seem like it’s crawling along at half-speed.

Jovan Adepo (“Fences”) heads a little-known to unknown cast, playing Boyce, a “90 day wonder” in the 101st Airborne, dropped into Occupied France on the eve of D-Day.

It doesn’t pay to sweat the militaria in this, so don’t get caught up in “The Army wasn’t integrated in WWII” and the Screaming Eagles required a lot more training than 90 days pre-D-Day.

His squad, led by a crusty, foul-mouthed Sgt. (Bokeem Woodbine, fun), is to take out a German radio jamming station built into a church in a French village.

The Sarge gives his men, including the testy new guy (Wyatt Russell, Kurt’s son), the Jewish kvetcher (Dominic Applewhite), the combat-inept photographer (Iain De Caestecker) and the wisecracking Bronx Tale Italian (John Magaro) a call-and-response pep talk. His “ladies” need reminding that the Nazis are “destroying everything that’s good in this world. So what do we have to DO?”

“Our Goddamned JOBS, Sergeant!”

And then all Hell breaks loose — a waking nightmare of anti-aircraft explosions, shrapnel slaughter, a fire on their C-47 Dakota and a frantic CGI plummet into Hitler’s Inferno topped by plunging into a lake.

The handful of survivors are surrounded by Germans, now led by the testy Corporal and still with that “save D-Day” mission, knocking out that tower by dawn.

Fortunately, a French lass who speaks English (Matthilde Ollivier) is wandering the woods amidst all the carnage and combat. She will take them to town.

There’s a long, chatty and noisy interlude in Chloe’s house, where her cute little brother longs to play baseball with the Americans and her aunt, who has been “helped” by the German doctor in town, looks like every George A. Romero extra ever.

The rumpled, chain-smoking SS officer (Pilou Asbæk of “Game of Thrones”) must be captured and interrogated — “Zis is VAR, eh? Pipple die in many UNFORTUNATE vays!”

And eventually, they remember to get around to their urgent, desperate and against-the- odds mission.

J.J. Abrams produced “Overlord” and his touches are everywhere. The film has a lovely sheen, the darkness lit up by acres of light blimps (no doubt), the explosions and monstrous effects have a no-expense-spared gloss.

It never feels less than big budget (save for the cast), even if it the strain of every contrived moment shows. Of course the child is taken, naturally Boyce stumbles into the leftover “Captain America” sets of the science lab/underground lair.

The characters may be “types” borrowed from scores of films (a sniper with a “Put me in range of Hitler” boast stolen straight from “Saving Private Ryan”), but every now and then, a funny line crosses their lips.

“That’s weird.”

“Add it to the list.”

Adepo makes a fine, surrogate-for-the-audience lead, Magaro can handle a punchline and Russell has a lot of screen presence. Ollivier has a sexy spitfire air and Asbæk makes a perfectly vile villain. Still, the characters are never more than cartoons, and they spent no money hiring a proper mad scientist, a mistake “Captain America” didn’t make.

One pitfall of building your movie out of recycled materials is always going to be pacing. When every character is cardboard, every scene is preordained, you have to get more pop out of the performances and move this damned thing along. Director Julius Avery (“Son of a Gun”) was never going to be a guy to sprint us through the usual J.J. Abrams bloat.

“Overlord” has a “just work with me here” vibe, an invitation to “just go with it” goes without saying. But at some point, this 85 minute genre mashup in a 110 minute package, with its assaultive soundtrack and requisite shock-effect images, sucking chest wounds and mangled corpses coming back to life, just wore on me.

It crawls from “Sure, great,” to “OK, expected that” and onward, ever onward to “All right, get on with it” far too slowly to be that much fun.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, disturbing images, language, and brief sexual content

Cast: Jovan Adepo, Mathilde Ollivier, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbæk, John Magaro, Iain De Caestecker and Bokeem Woodbine

Credits:Directed by Julius Avery, script by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:49

It’s a Lars von Trief horror film, but really — aren’t they all?

It looks monstrous.

Dillon’s most challenging film since “Factotum,” I’d say.

“The House that Jack Built” is a serial killer tale starring Dillon, with Bruno Ganz is also in the cast, with Riley Keogh.

It opens at the end of this month, Nov. 28.

“Director’s cut,” they say. The horror, the horror, say I.

Pettyfer makes his directing debut in this Southern Gothic noir.

Juliette Lewis is mama in prison, Robert Patrick is the jaded local sheriff, Nicola Peltz is the ex-con’s sister in this adaptation of a Tawni O’Dell novel.

“Back Roads” may have finished its film festival run and appears to be awaiting a release date.

The “Paranorman” and “Coraline” and “Kubo and the Two Strings” folks are having Annapurna distribute this comedy, featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry.

Yes, there’s a hint of “Smallfoot” about it. Couple of Hugh and Zach titters in this trailer.

“Missing Link” opens April 19.

Glad Universal got “The Grinch” out before Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” sequel. I’m sure they are, too.

Whatever these inside-video-games/characters’ interior lives comedies hold for kids, they’re great fun for adults who get the references, the jokes and the whole digital milieu cooked up for “Ralph” and Sarah Silverman’s little candy colored car racer girl.

“Ralph Breaks the Internet” opens Nov. 21. Yes, Disney is showing this one WAY before release because they think they’ve got a winner.

Committed runners talk about getting “in the zone,” the “zen” nature of the exercise, letting your mind go places unconnected to the path your body is covering one step at a time.

But can it lead to a higher consciousness?

That was the thinking behind guru Sri Chinmoy’s creation of the 3100 Miler Self-Transcendence Race. An avid sprinter himself, the late Indian mystic believed that “the inner life and outer life” come together when you’re running.

So he and his followers concocted a New York ultra-marathon, 52 days of covering at least 60 miles a day, “the longest certified road race in the world.” The idea was if you send runners onto a half mile circuit of part of the city, lap after boring lap, they’re going to figure out things about themselves, their bodies and their connection to the world in the process.

“Sometimes he will run to reach the goal, at times the goal will come to him,” Chinmoy preached.

I don’t know about that. But if you’re making a documentary — “3100: Run and Become” — about this annual race (the 2016 running of it is what is documented), you’re going to have to have “characters” you follow, interesting characters, preferably. And you have to find ways to open up the picture. Because a half mile circuit? That’s ridiculously boring, just reading about it.

Filmmaker Sanjay Rawal decided to focus on a a fellow who came to dominate the race over the years, a Finnish man who runs to deliver newspapers every day in Helsinki.

And when even that wasn’t enough, Rawal broadened the film and burned through Sri Chinmoy cash flying to the Kalahari Desert, where bushmen no longer allowed to chase down prey while hunting still run the desert, to Navajo country in Arizona to meet Native American ultra milers and to Japan to follow a Buddhist monk walking the 1000 day spiritual “walking race,” kaihgyo, around Mount Hiei in Japan.

Ashprihanal Aalto, 45, is the Finn, who has to talk himself into taking on the race again in the opening scenes of “3100.” I’ve run so much. I’ve run enough, you know,” he tells his mentor.

But he’s a devout believer and determined to participate in this annual marathon to honor his spiritual leader. If you’ve been given a new name that means “inspiration fire inside the heart,” you’ve got a lot to live up to.

We follow Aalto as he stands at the starting line with a couple of dozen other competitors — from all over Europe and America (all white, most over 40) — and gets the pep talk from race chairman Rupantar Russo.

“No matter how well you do…you will be changed, and changed for the better.”

And they’re off, in the middle of a heat wave, hoping to run through rain, blisters, chafing and cramps for 52 straight days, a few of them hoping to dethrone the race’s undisputed master.

“It exposes everything about you, whether you want it to or not — emotions, weaknesses.”

When that gets boring, we travel to Africa where Gaola and Jumanda Gakelebone talk about laws that changed their traditional way of life in the bush, but not their need to run.

Then we meet Gyoman-san in Japan, explaining the rituals, attire and spiritual benefits of his 1000 day quest.

Aalto recalls running in a Navajo marathon a while back, which was filmmaker Rawal’s introduction to this new culture and a chance to bring other mystical/religious connections to running into his film.

“Running is prayer you’re praying with your feet,” marathon organizer and distance-runner Shaun Martin tells the competitors. Stunning scenery awaits this crew as they cover 35 miles of breathtakingly beautiful high desert wilderness in this race.

The film, like the enterprise itself, can be a rather tedious affair, with proselytizing woven into the spiritual journeys all these runners take on different pieces of ground, and for different beliefs.

And we don’t know if this enlightenment/higher consciousness thing really takes root. The runners of the 3100 are generally focused on that latest blister, that next meal.  Aalto, speaking mostly English but some Finnish here, comes off as a simple soul who’s found a religion and a guru he can work with.

But then again, he did that long before he ever came to the starting line of the 3100.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Credits:Directed by Sanjay Rawal. An Illumine Group release.

Running time: 1:20