Movie Nation

Here’s the movie that will probably own June. As this latest X-Men adaptation brings the gang back one more time and opens June 7.

Far too many movies about teens, sexuality and growing up relegate the adults to afterthoughts. The kids have to work it all out for themselves, because in the movie’s universe, the grownups are distracted, self-absorbed, overworked or worse.

The moment that tells us “Giant Little Ones,” a Canadian drama about sexual confusion and the increasingly fluid spectrum we’re understanding sexuality to be, is different is when the school swim coach mishandles the harassment of a gay swimmer, but does it in a way that shows compassion and good intentions.

“Cut the crap,” he tells his boys. Even the coaches are evolving in this corner of Canada.

“Giant” is about Franky (Josh Wiggins) and Balles (Darren Mann), two lifelong friends and teammates tested by a moment of sexual curiosity.

Franky is pale, sensitive with delicate features and a general timidity about sex. Balles is brawny, brash, confident — bragging about how many times he had sex with his girl (Kiana Madeira) before school as they meet to bike-ride to classes.

Franky? He’s playing the part, but getting “Is there someone you like better?” questions from his shallow, equally virginal girlfriend Priscilla (Hailey Kittle).

Balles is a swaggering jock, never shying away from a fight, bludgeoning the rednecks who tease the boys at the local convenience store. Franky isn’t, and his attempts to converse with Balles’ shunned sister Natasha (Taylor Hickson) with a sad face and serious drinking problem, suggest both history and sensitivity. And even though he’s not sticking up for the gay kid on the swim team, the fact that his other BFF is a Gay BFF (Niamh Wilson), a girl who is comically experimenting with her own sexual identity (flannel, baseball caps, “strap-ons”) speaks volumes.

In cinematic terms, Franky looks the part so he must be…

A night of partying throws Franky and Balles together. It doesn’t matter that Balles is all “Never would’ve happened…we were wasted.” Franky, still denying he’s “gay,” even to GBFF Mouse (Wilson), knows something did.

But coping with Balles’ version of events, which he spreads all over school, is a teen crisis like few others. Social shunning, gossip and even violence follow. The lifelong friends are at war, which brings their families — adults — into the picture.

The actors are proficient at playing kids who are an up-to-date collection of “types,” none more than “Mouse,” who lacks only a motorcycle to achieve full stereotype status. But Mouse’s “You should OWN this” advice is treated like the cliche it is. Sexuality is understood to be more complicated, now. “Surrender, Dorothy,” and build a Lady Gaga belly-baring shirt collection with eye makeup to match isn’t the only choice life offers today’s Frankys.

It’s the adults who surprise us here, playing catch-up on the learning curve. Maria Bello plays Franky’s seemingly too-self-involved to-get-it Mom. But she does. Kyle MacLachlan (terrific) is the father Franky shuns because…well, Dad left Mom for another man.

Peter Outerbridge also impresses as Balles’ dad, trying to smooth troubled waters, trying to understand, reaching out.

It’s all a bit on-the-nose, but writer-director Keith Behrman keeps it topical and touching, even if he never quite transcends prioritizing that topicality.

We’re past “Own it,” and labeling sexuality is starting to seem very 2000-and-late. That makes the tentative, exploratory steps taken here “Giant Little Ones,” no matter how big a deal they are to the kids taking them.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug/alcohol use – all involving teens

Cast: Josh Wiggins, Taylor Hickson, Darren Mann, Maria Bello, Kyle MacLachlan and Niamh Wilson

Credits: Written and directed by Keith Behrman. A Vertical Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:33

The heavyweight boxer who took a title, but so wished to not be a fighter that every time he stepped into the ring,, he”wished that the city got hit by a massive blackout, or a f—–g tornado,” anything to save him from the fight — the golfer whose epic collapse went down in the annals of the sport’s history,  an English football club, about to be relegated into oblivion — kicked out of the sport — these are the “Losers” of Netflix’s delightful, touching, laugh-out loud documentary series “Losers.”

Eight snack-size (about 30 minutes each) portraits are painted of Canada’s top curlers, Torquay’s woebegone soccer team, future trainer-to-the-stars and character actor Michael Bentt, golfer Jean van de Velde and others — people who plunge into the ignominious “darkness” of the ultimate humiliation — getting knocked out, having a “Tin Cup” sized collapse on the 18th hole of the British Open, having your team and town removed from the ranks of competitive British soccer.

Director Mickey Duzyj comes from an animation background, and uses interviews, archival footage, painted recreations and animation to tell the story of — for instance, Michael Bentt, a New York prize-fighter bullied and beaten into the ring by a brute of a father.

“The Miscast Champion” features Bentt, who stumbled into a title only to lose it in spectacular fashion, taking us into his worst moment and the light that came after it.

We don’t really need Ron Shelton, who directed “Bull Durham,””White Men Can’t Jump” and “Tin Cup” to tell us “Boxers are the bravest people in the world.” Bentt, a towering presence with a Hollywood mien, took abuse from his old man (a Jamaican immigrant) and quaked at the thought of every fight, shows us what that means — terrified of the beating he’d received, the shame of being knocked out, all of it. Shelton turned out to be Bentt’s salvation (helping him get cast as boxer Floyd Patterson in “Ali”).

Torquay, “The English Riviera,” might best be known as home to “Fawlty Towers,” the John Cleese sitcom about a haplessly run hotel in a resort that’s long in the tooth and not exactly a top tourist draw. But when their century old football club, half-burned stadium, sullen fans and all, faced “relegation” out of the sport for not being competitive, the town rallied, got terribly invested and clung to hope that this 1985 final match would not be their last ever.

If you don’t know about the Alsatian police dog who saved Torquay United, you’ve missed one of the funniest, sunniest and silliest tales in all of sport, related in “The Jaws of Victory.”

And if you’ve never considered the grace, peculiarity, good humor and good manners (a quintessential Canadian sport) of that “loser” of a sport, curling, “Stone Cold” will remedy that.

“Losers” makes winners out of its subjects, and tickles and occasionally enlightens the viewer as it does. These aren’t definitive versions of these assorted tales, going just deep enough to pique our interest and send us to the next fascinating episode. But that’s precisely what’s called for, here, in what might be the best sports doc series ESPN never did.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Credits: Directed by Mickey Duzyj.  A Netflix release.

Running time: Eight short documentaries, about 30 minutes each

People are still working themselves into a tizzy of outrage over who winds up winning Hollywood’s annual popularity contest and laughably inaccurate recognition of cinematic excellence.

Spike Lee reminds us that he hasn’t mellowed with age, taking all the acceptance speech time from the other winning writers for his multi-handed script Oscar for “BlackKklansman,” trying to storm out of the Kodak Theater when “Green Book” wins best picture and unloading on the movie to one and all when he loses.

Classy. Petulant, privileged and same old prickly bantam rooster, Spike.

I was rooting for a “BlackKklansman” upset and for Spike to get his due as best director. But all he did was remind me of the many times we’ve spoken in interviews, which sometimes went pleasantly and often did not due to his awful mood.

Justin Chang unloads in the Los Angeles Times that “Green Book” is the “worst Oscar winner since ‘Crash.'”

He forgot last year, but never mind.

Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan exchange “sideeyes” over “Green Book” winning Best Picture. So?

And on and on it goes. Over an award handed out by a vastly expanded and more diverse Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which still gets it wrong and pretty much always has. Same old Oscars.

But I think Chang accidentally hit on something pertinent to the whole argument. What do “Crash” and “Green Book” have in common? As I said in my review of “Green Book,” it’s “cinematic comfort food for the holidays.” “Crash” had that going for it, too. Optimism.

Comforting to whom? The vast majority of moviegoers, who want to feel good, even if the ugly truth is given a fresh coat of assuaged guilt, would be the answer.

“Crash,” manipulative as it was, covering a range of LA experiences re: race and crime and a roiled populace, was in the end, on the upbeat side. Good performances by Cheadle and others, a brittle turn by Bullock — and the film’s win was universally ridiculed.

“Crash,” like “Green Book,” made the viewer “feel” something. That’s the biggest thing they have in common. Anybody “feel” anything over the death in “A Star is Born,” over the life of privilege contrasted with powerlessness in “Roma,” “The Favourite” or “BlackKklansman?”

No? Then there’s my point.

Perhaps the only “worse” outcome this year would have been a “Bohemian Rhapsody” Best Picture win.

Seeing Javier Bardem joyously singing and dancing to “We Will Rock You” in the show’s opening number was THE telling moment of this year’s Academy Awards. “Bohemian Rhapsody” made Queen fans feel the way their songs and concert performances used to make us feel. Despicable director, lip-syncing star and all, it had that going for it.

Mahershala Ali seemed to be carrying the weight of “Green Book’s” vigorous social media, and yes “social justice warrior” beatdowns during his Best Supporting acceptance speech — stammering, at a loss for words, guilt-ridden. He didn’t have to accept the nomination, and he read the script. He didn’t have to accept the role.

But he saw something ennobling in the enterprise, the characterizations. As did Viggo Mortensen. They took a flier on Peter Farrelly being able to pull this off, and delivered a winner.

Farrelly? The second most classless performance by a director on Oscar night — ego tripping when he could have made the case for what “Green Book” actually is, what their intentions were, and defused a lot of this hatred. Nope. Read a laundry list of people nobody knows, crack a joke or two, make it all about “me.”

“Green Book” wasn’t the best picture of 2018. You could make the case for “First Reformed,” “Leave No Trace” or “The Favourite.” There were others that could have been nominated.

The rallying around “Roma” and “Black Panther” was misguided and tone deaf and created false expectations for middling movies. That sideeye, Chadwick, was ridic. Your comic book movie, as on-the-nose in its uplift as “Green Book,” deathly dull dialogue and triumphalist pose and all, didn’t deserve a nomination.

Chadwick Boseman’s been better in most every film I’ve seen him in, including the more moving, thrilling and problematic “Get on Up,” which should have been a Best Picture and Best Actor contender years back.

Oscar and the critics’ groups which delight in their “Oscar influence” got that wrong, too.

People remember “The Right Stuff,” “The Martian,” “Being There,” “Dunkirk,” “Loving,” “Get On Up,” “All is Lost” (a personal favorite) even if not everybody remembers which film the Academy voted into Oscar glory.

Who remembers “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which my friend Matt Olien labels “the worst Best Picture winner ever?” Snobs may smirk at “Dances With Wolves,” but there’s a reason it turns on TV constantly. “Do the Right Thing” might have been Spike Lee’s best picture, but with “Field of Dreams” and “Dead Poets Society” up against it, was he “robbed?”

Give it a few years, see if anybody’s still griping about how “Black Panther” was robbed after its formulaic twist on comic book “alternate history” has a sequel or two under its belt and its shortcomings (indifferent performances, cut and paste script, etc.) become obvious even to the oxygen deprived.

“Roma” is already forgotten, save by those who’ve never bothered to watch black and white Fellini classics which were its inspiration.

But the outrage over this Oscars goes on — trolling every moment of the telecast.

Rami Malek lets slip that Freddie Mercury was a “gay man” and Twitter explodes. The character went from being not gay enough for “Bohemian Rhapsody” to not stir up outrage, to its Oscar winning star taking heat for not covering all the nuances in Mercury’s bisexuality (married) in an acceptance speech.

A critic I don’t know had the most hilarious take-down of Malek on Twitter. Alonso Duralde urged Twitter users to “watch ‘Get On Up'” if you want to see a musical biopic in which the star (Chadwick Boseman, whom fanboys know can do no wrong) “did his own singing.”

Judas Priest, man. Are you blind and deaf? Any fool could tell Boseman wasn’t singing there, that was lip-syncing to the one-and-only James Brown. But even so, LOOK IT UP.

It’s enough to make you miss the days when Oscars were handed out pre-Twitter, when just you and your friends could fume over “The English Patient” or Dustin Hoffman winning for “Kramer vs. Kramer” while Peter Sellers went to his grave without an Academy Award.

Yeah, they vote on these awards and yes, they always get it wrong. Pretty much always, anyway.

Long long ago, before he became a Harry Potter character or was immortalized on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” before his reliable-Liverpool character actor years in films and TV shows and films from “Finding Neverland” to “Robinson Crusoe” to “The Last Kingdom” and “Mary Queen of Scots,” Ian Hart made his mark in film because of his appearance.

He looked a lot like his fellow Liverpudlian, John Lennon. Filmmakers picked up on that and cast him as the iconic Beatle in movies such as “Backbeat” (1994) and most recently, as an aged non-pop star Lennon in “Snodgrass.”

The film that started all that and put Hart on the cinematic radar was a short speculative history feature, something of a landmark in “Queer Cinema,” 1991’s “The Hours and Times.”

Now, this slight, black and white character study, set in Barcelona and built on the notion that the ever-curious/always rebellious Lennon had a fling with Beatles manager Brian Epstein, has been restored for re-release.

It’s interesting historically — depictions of sexuality have progressed far beyond its tentative, 1991 flirting and “tub scene” — and in its spot-on depiction of the John Lennon in 1963, before the British Invasion of America, just as overwhelming fame were about to swallow him, his bandmates and eventually his marriage, culminating in his 1980 murder in New York.

Hart’s 1963 Lennon is cocky and insolent, keenly aware of the class differences a working class Liverpudlian would feel in the presence of a gay sophisticate and worldly Londoner like Epstein, given a buttoned-down and guarded guise by David Angus.

It’s obvious from the moment we meet them, on the flight to Spain. Epstein sips brandy, the disheveled mop-top seated next to him wakes up chewing gum, wanting another cigarette and another Scotch and Coke.

Extra attention from the flight attendant (Stephanie Pack) has already become an entitlement to Lennon.

“She’s just a bird.”

The two touch on “What do you want people to say about you when you’re gone?” Lennon asks the questions, rarely giving away his own ambitions.

Epstein? He wants the world to know that he did his utmost to do right by The Beatles, and “That I came to know myself.”

As they lounge about the Barcelona Ritz, seeking “rest” for Lennon — away from the wife and new baby — and “nothing else,” we know the “nothing else” will turn to what Brian Epstein knows about himself and what the curious Lennon will learn.

“Dr. B. Epstein, Faith Healer and Proctologist,” he jokes, suggestively.

He wants to go to a gay bar, where they pick up another posh (Robin MacDonald), whom Lennon insults into leaving after they get back to the hotel.

Jealous? Losing his nerve over getting a taste of Epstein’s sexuality, which Lennon is constantly asking about?

There’s a tentativeness to “The Hours and Times” that seems as quaint as Epstein’s attraction to the very young and pretty porter (Sergio Moreno) who speaks just enough English to know what the manager of the world’s soon-to-be-most-famous band has on his mind.

Hart’s best moments come in his scene with the smarter-and-more-confident than she looks stewardess, who ends up in his room. His brittle insults, hinting at the guilt he’s carrying over marrying and fathering a child just as fame makes him irresistible to legions, also carry a little “might not be my type” in them.

Epstein is getting the same treatment, moments in the tub aside.

As history that probably never was, “Hours and Times” is more of an artifact of two long-gone ages, the era of its release and the “ancient history” of its setting, when The Beatles weren’t THE BEATLES and homosexuality was illegal in Britain (until 1967).

The slight film is not scholarship, any more than say “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” is, falling as it does into that posthumous “Let’s claim this or that public figure for ‘our team'” category of gossip.

But Hart’s portrayal of the young Lennon, cocky before the confidence that universal adoration gave swept over him, remains definitive and makes one want to revisit “Backbeat” (where I first interviewed him) and get the fuller picture, Young John as Interpreted by Ian, in living color. Or “colour.”

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with nudity, profanity, alcohol and cigarettes

Cast: Ian Hart, David Angus, Stephanie Pack, Robin MacDonald and Sergio Moreno

Credits: Written and directed by Christopher Munch. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: :58

A post plastic and chemical “return to farming the way it was,” holistic, green, climate saving? Or just a bunch of hippy dreamers?

Cute trailer for this wide release doc.

Saw this trailer attached to “Arctic” the other day. A mid-April release from Bleecker

Street, this one seems poppish and could go either way. But we are intrigued.

Screen Media is releasing this “cursed” production, which once starred Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp?

It’ll reach theaters, then, not under a more prestigious studio’s banner. We know of a “one night only theatrical event,” which is Screen Media’s specialty, after all.  But at least it’ll be released. April 10.

When Tim Tebow gave up his NFL dream and turned to movie producing, it’s no surprise that he sought out a story about two things he knows — faith, and football.

So don’t expect the movie that comes with his name attached to it, “Run the Race,” to come with many surprises. Abrupt tests of faith, misdirection plays that life hurls at the heroes — sure. The aw-shucks, zero-profanity, tinged-with-tragedy story may have “family friendly” written all over it. But the Christianity feels a little shoehorned in, even if it is this faith-based sports drama’s reason for existing.

Tanner Stine and Evan Hofer play teenage brothers, basically raising themselves in tiny Bessemer, Alabama. Zach Truett (Stine) is nicknamed “Zach-attack” on the gridiron. Skinny and chicken-chested he might be, but he’s the wily star running back of the Bessemer Rebels, with dreams of impressing college scouts — particularly one from the University of Florida (Tebow’s alma mater).

Younger brother Dave (Hofer) is the responsible one, who maintains their jobs at the market run by godmother Louise (Frances Fisher). Dave goes to church and has a Bible at his fingertips. He can’t play football thanks to a brain injury a previous season. Not to worry. Zach is “getting us outta here. You have my word on it!”

You know what’s coming. Zach and his good ol’boy party pals get into a beer bust dust-up with some players from a rival school, Zach’s knee is damaged, ending his football season.

Might Dave be able to make the track team, win a scholarship and complete their overall mission, escaping the “trap” of a town they’re stuck in and the drunken father (Kristofer Polaha) who is, to Zach, “just some dude who left us after our mom died?”

Maybe.

There are plenty of signs of life in this conventional “sports is our ticket out” drama. Mykelti Williamson of “Forrest Gump” is spot-on as the motivating, cheer-leading coach who frets more about what an irresponsible kid might have done to “my season” than hos future. The script, of course, rubs that edge off.

Mario Van Peebles is perfectly charismatic as the preacher whose “Somedays” sermons, about things we’ll all get around to “someday,” reach Dave if not the absent Zach.

And there’s cute chemistry with the film’s love interest, the nurse intern Ginger (Kelsey Reinhardt of TV’s “Transparent”), whom Zach meets twice in the hospital, the second time flat on his back with an ACL tear.

“I remember you telling me how good you were.”

The odd good line — Dave changing the brothers’ escape plan with “I’d rather us be running TO something, than from something” — isn’t so much lost in the mix as kicked to the side with repeated interjections of religion.

That’s the way they play here, like an afterthought. Zach finding out Ginger is a devout Christian (he was raised that way by his mother, but gave up on it) and flunking The Jesus Test at his first meeting with their parents, Dave taking Pastor Baker’s homily that “You’ll be surprised how things start to change when you forgive someone” to heart in an instant regarding their hard-luck, hard-drinking but perfectly groomed dad.

The script takes a serious shot at stealing a little of that “I Can Only Imagine” magic with that redemption of the dad tack. Polaha is no Dennis Quaid, and like every other character, even no-good Dad has his edges rubbed off.

“Run the Race” never feels more abrupt that in its final jerks and jolts to an unexpected, unsubtle and undeserving climax.

But it’s competent on several levels, generally well-acted and no more unpleasant than it is challenging.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic content and some teen partying.

Cast: Evan Hofer, Tanner Stine, Mykelti Williamson, Frances Fisher, Kelsey Reinhardt. Mario Van Peebles, Kristofer Polaha

Credits: Directed by Chris Dowling, script by Jake McEntire, Jason Baumgardner and Chris Dowling. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:41

The title and genre will plant, in your mind, most of the obstacles, pitfalls and crises facing Mads Mikkelsen’s hero in “Arctic.”

It’s a tale of survival and it’s set way up north.

So yes, polar bears, frostbite, etc. are all on the menu of this intimate, minimalist account of surviving a polar plane crash.

But the limpid, expressive eyes of Mikkelsen, summoning all the sadness and soulfulness he can manage, lift this conventional narrative and make its almost dialogue-free presentation eyes-averting harrowing and downright moving.

He plays a pilot, Overgard, whose small cargo plane has crashed beyond the reach of civilization.

We don’t know how long he’s been there, because when we meet him, he’s well into a survival routine. He’s set up trot lines for fishing through the ice, has his watch set for daily treks to high ground to hand-crank the generator that runs his locator beacon.

We see he is methodical, able to improvise, “working the problem” as “The Martian” would put it.

And it may be futile, but he laboriously picks away at the snow, carving and maintainimg a vast SOS he’s written on cleared lava field landscape. Anything he can do to be pro-active is better than huddling in the wrecked plane waiting to die.

First time feature director Joe Penna lets Mikkelsen’s Overgard tell us his story and being in this predicament without flashbacks or inane “Cast Away” narration or “Martian” chatter. There was a co-pilot. He’s buried under a cairn on a hillside.

“Arctic” has just settled us into his routine when we and Overgard get our first taste of hope. Rescue! Or at least a helicopter that’s heard his beacon.

We and he barely have time to process this, with desperate igniting of flare in a coming blizzard, when the chopper crashes in the storm. Another body to bury, and now he has an injured would-be rescuer (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir) to save with a little field surgery, try and communicate with and take responsibility for as his situation, and now hers, grows more dire.

The plot, scripted by Penna and Ryan Morrison, has a predictability you can set your watch by.

But the way he lets the camera linger over Mikkelsen’s consideration of the fish he must kill to stay alive, the fresh problem that a wandering bear creates, the opportunities and responsibilities that the near rescue provides, turns this into a tour de force.

Watch Mikkelsen’s face as he picks up his new charge, who slips into and out of consciousness. Human contact he takes in like the hard, uncooked ramen noodles he devours in the crashed helicopter. He melts just at the embrace of another hang being.

“Arctic” doesn’t vary from the conventions of this genre — ever. But Mikkelsen’s star turn at the center of it makes this wintry tale its own “Revenent,” with suffering and compassion, terror and even humor playing out on his expressive face, with the occasional tidbit of Danish profanity (Overgard mostly speaks English) for comic emphasis.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and some bloody images

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thelma Smáradóttir

Credits: Directed by Joe Penna, script by Joe Penna and Ryan Morrison. A Bleecker Street release

Running time: 1:38