Movie Nation

A troubled child finds her life’s purpose, if not necessarily solace, spending the summer on a relative’s farm in “The Swan,” a disquieting coming-of-age drama from Iceland.

Icelandic filmmaker Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir uses images, melancholy reveries and the voice-over narration of her nine year old protagonist to turn Guðbergur Bergsson’s novel into an austere, chilly and cryptic film set in the treeless farm country of northern Iceland. 

Sól (Gríma Valsdóttir) is standoffish, stuck inside her own head, the kind of kid the other kids call “weird.” She also shoplifts and lies and that’s what prompts her parents to send her to live with her aunt and uncle up there.

“You’ll feel better about yourself,” she is assured (in Icelandic, with English subtitles). Feeding the chickens, helping with the cows and horses, taking hikes in the valley, along the streams that lead to the sea, sounds like “the cure,” right?

But there’s something brittle about this family, troubling about the dynamic at work here. The odd moment of warmth aside, these folks are all about practicality, not nurturing.

And the fact that the couple (Katla M. Þorgeirsdóttir, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) park the young girl in the same bedroom as the 20something farmhand Jón will raise eyebrows, if not in Iceland, in North American theaters where this plays.

Jón (Thor Kristjansson) has been coming here for seven summers, laboring by day, writing by night. It’s his annual writer’s retreat.

Jón is friendly to Sól, even as he’s stuck babysitting and informally given the task of explaining this new world to her — not so much the farm, but human personalities and relationships.

“People are always in character,” he says. And lying, making up stories? There are worse sins. Writers are all liars, he assures her. Sól’s voice-over narration suggests she’s taking this to heart, even as we fret over the crush she’s developed on the man.

It is the abrupt return of prodigal daughter Ásta that upsets this uneasy idyll. She (Þuríður Blær Jóhannsdóttir) is mercurial, beautiful, big-city-blunt and upset. She broke up with her boyfriend, fled college and isn’t happy about it.

And she has history with Jón, smarting off about his unpublished “great book,” sassing her parents at dinner about their “medieval ways,” complaining about the cooking.

One minute she’s nice to the kid, not the first one who’s shown up to spend the summer there over the years, the next she’s scaring her with the legend of the “monster” swan that lives on a remote lake in the mountains nearby.

The performances are uniformly sharp, with young Valsdóttir impressively understated when the moment calls for it, and wrenchingly overwrought when confronted by the harsh realities of farm life (animal slaughter) and human relationships. “Troubled” Sól becomes “sensitive” right before our eyes. 

Writer-director Hjörleifsdóttir labors to get across her points without words, and having Jón quote a line from an Andrei Tarkovsky (“The Mirror,” “Solaris”) film tells us what she’s going for.

The obvious thing is that this girl, stealing Jón’s journals, absorbing experiences that can seem like body blows, is destined to write. “We the Animals,” another new indie release, covers that ground more lyrically and more overtly.

The less obvious points every viewer can make up her or his own mind about.

There are other films about a child’s eye view of troubled lovers, feckless affairs of adults. “We the Animals,” for starters. But the one “Swan” brought to mind for me was “The Go-Between,” filmed in 1971 (a classic) and again in 2015, about a boy misused as the messenger/enabler for an illicit affair. It’s famously cryptic and inventive in its flashback and flash-forward narrative.

“The Swan” lacks the coherence of those challenging films, and one suspects that this makes complete sense only in the American-film schooled filmmaker’s head.

But it’s still a darkly poetic, beautifully scenic and in a couple of instances, haunting film that will stick with you even as you’re sorting it out.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, nudity, animal slaughter, alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: Gríma Valsdóttir, Þuríður Blær Jóhannsdóttir, Thor Kristjansson

Credits: Written and directed by  Ása Helga Hjörleifsdóttir, based on a Guðbergur Bergsson novel. A Synergetic release.

Running time: 1:31

James Gunn spends years telling seriously tasteless but some would say “revealing” “jokes” online, on a blog (since deleted) and on Twitter.

A conservative activist decides he doesn’t like the anti-Trump politics of the director of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, tracks this stuff down, and has his followers email-bomb Disney with the news. Gunn is fired by Disney/Marvel.

But if there’s one thing we’ve learned by every college sports scandal, the “fans” are perfectly willing to forgive, forget and move on. Because their short term craving for a their “fix” trumps any sense of principle their parents failed to teach them.

They want what they want. So we (Disney) gets petitions. 

More petitions. And stories about petitions. 

We’re seeing the cast of the very lucrative “Guardians” films rally to Gunn’s side. 

And what do the vast majority of these stories, about petitions, about the cast, even the original ones on the scandal, leave out? The actual “offensive” tweets.

All these people arguing for Gunn’s reinstatement, rallying the troops, calling the posts and tweets “ancient history.” And they are scared to death to actually re-post the tweets.

First of all, six years is NOT “ancient history.” Gunn was not some callow kid when he said this stuff. He was a 40something closing in on 50ish writer and director who cut his teeth on bad taste — TROMA Films — under his mentor, Lloyd Kaufman.

“Ancient history” is when a teen ballplayer posts homophobic or racist tweets, perhaps out of genuine bigotry, perhaps in a false sense of “permission granted” to use words that Axl Rose and other entertainers have used in public that most Americans find offensive. And they come back to bite him in adulthood.

Based on my memories of the films, pedophilia gags are not a staple of the TROMA universe, but I am sure it’s considered fair game there. So he gets the benefit of the doubt, there. Kind of.

If you read this stuff , and it wasn’t isolated — it was oft-repeated and creepy (What is James Gunn’s DEAL?) — maybe you pick up on the attempts at humor.

But you cannot miss the meanness — the actionable, vile shot at a guy with a certain amount of showbiz power takes at a pre-“Baskets” and thus relatively powerless comic Louis Anderson.

How daring of Little Jimmy Gunn. Want to make a “likes boys” joke, go after oh somebody with a name. Crack on Tom Cruise’s sexuality, the whispers about any number of far more powerful showbiz folk with a taste for “twinks” — you know who “The Usual Suspects” are, SKG.

Nah. Wouldn’t be prudent.

Here’s the Cernovich “reporting.”

And here’s another gag that didn’t land.

So enough with this “reporting” that is more of a “paint this over.” 

ENOUGH of this utter BS that “Gunn has GROWN” since, what, his 45th birthday?

It does not MATTER that a wingnut activist played “gotcha” with him over his tweets. They were first pointed out by GLAAD.  Disney knew.

Yeah, there’s a pitchfork mentality at work here and yes, people have to do a lot better at being able to take a joke. We’ve all crossed lines with this or that attempted un-PC humor.

But this dude’s go-to jokes only play in R.Kelly/Polanski-land.

Back in the day, Margaret Cho was a Disney (ABC) employee, doing a family sitcom while regaling her largely-gay following with “fisting” jokes. And demonstrations. On stage. Disney didn’t can her.

Sarah Silverman built her career on being cute as she told jokes about minority groups and the like, called for a military coup after Trump’s election. Not yet, dear. She’s still in “Wreck-It Ralph 2.”

On the other hand, they paid an actual pedophile to make “Powder,” back in the day.

And they were in business with King Creeper Harvey Weinstein for more years than they’d care to remember.

Maybe Gunn is closer to the Weinstein end of the spectrum than, oh, Sarah; so much so that the controversy-averse Disney can not tolerate it. Perhaps not.

But say what you want, it took guts to #MeToo a guy who added this much to their bottom line.

Hey, maybe Disney knows something that isn’t being reported — about pee tapes and little boys and James Gunn. See how that works, Jimbo? Maybe Louis Anderson can use that one in your Comedy Central roast.

I say let Gunn look for work and let others learn from this “teachable moment.” Cultural mores shift, the line in the sand moves. Would “The Hangover” have as many “Don’t be gay” jokes if remade today? We could all use a dose of “It’s a JOKE, move on.” But pervert poses and nods toward bigotry are timeless and have no statute of limitations.

And taking a stand while pretending the actual tweets don’t exist, that they don’t follow a creepy, offensive pattern of “thinking” that would give anybody pause, avoiding the actual language he used, as a GROWN ASS MAN, for YEARS, and refusing to repeat it, is disingenuous at best, dishonest and cowardly at worst.

Netflix has rapidly evolved into a safe space for famous actors to dabble in TV — streaming series — and take acting risks without denting either their quote or their marketable screen personas (brands).

Think Jason Bateman’s dark “Ozark,” etc.

Thus, “Maniac,” with the New Jonah Hill as an institutionalized man living a rich fantasy life that includes Oscar winners Emma Stone and Sally Field, Gabriel Byrne and Justin Theroux, directed by Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre,” “Beasts of No Nation”).

I try not to invest much time in series, in general, as there are only so many hours in the day and the feature film is, to me, the perfect storytelling art form — compact, efficient — while TV, “limited series” (and interconnected never-ending film series, for that matter) drag stories out in droplets, dribs and drabs, endless cliffhangers, wider and wider “universes” that are by their very nature, repetitive. Don’t get me started.

But this looks as if it’ll be worth a peek — Sept. 21.

The bonds of familial love are strained to the breaking point, tugged in several directions, in the lyrical movie memoir, “We the Animals.”

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel, Jeremiah Zagar’s moving indie film takes us into the lives of three tightly-bound siblings, clinging to the joys of pre-teen childhood in rural Pennsylvania even as they endure the trauma of their parents’ turbulent marriage.

“Us three” is how Jonah (Evan Rosado) always refers to he and his brothers. Born just a year apart, they’re a rough and tumble crew — shirtless, roughhousing tweens romping in the woods, raiding a neighbor’s garden, sleeping on the porch, making pretend tents under the covers (“Body heat! Body heat!”), diving into the ol’ swimmin’ hole.

But Jonah is the youngest, the sensitive one. He slips out of the bed they still share and by flashlight, writes and draws in a journal he keeps stashed in the box springs.

“Sometimes, we wanted less…Less work. Less noise.”

Maybe he’s speaking for all of them, but his older siblings (Isaiah Kristian, Josiah Gabriel) are anything but quiet. Jonah’s talking about their parents.

Paps (Raúl Castillo) met Ma (Sheila Vand) when she was 14. He wasn’t. They married, stayed together, got deep into a family — but life is a struggle, even when you’ve got a house and a car.

It’s the ’80s, and that car is a clapped-out Pacer. They’re working two menial jobs, juggling child-care as they do. The boys sometimes go to Paps’ night-watchman workplace, sleeping bags in hand as the old man drinks beer and punches a clock.

There’s a lot of love in this house. Ma dotes, especially on her littlest. “Promise me you’ll stay nine forever.” Paps cuts their hair, teaches them to dance and tries to teach his youngest (and wife) how to swim the only way a macho, working poor Boriqua knows how — letting them sink.

“How else you gonna learn?”

The trauma of that sticks with Jonah, constantly flashing back to “drowning” in confusion over events in the house, the ways he’s the odd boy out in “Us three.”

Ma? She’s enraged that her oaf husband could have drowned one or both of them. The screaming match that follows ends with his admitting to the boys he had to “take her to the dentist” last night, that maybe he was “punching on her a little.”

They haven’t processed that when he abruptly leaves, as he must. Kids don’t know what to do about a mother who won’t eat, won’t get out of bed. They revert to being “the Animals” of the title.

Parents who fight and reconcile this way make kids grow up too fast, learning too many of the wrong lessons.

“You think that’s funny when men beat on your MOTHER?”

Zagar filmed this tale in the gauzy twilight of memory, the hand-held camera chasing the boys on their explorations, finding the wonder in lying on your back as street lights whisk by above the bed of the pickup truck you’re riding in. He never lets the reality of what he’s portraying break from the child’s view of it.

“Is it our fault?”

“It’s always our fault.”

The characters may begin life as tropes — “sensitive” boy turning out the way sensitive boys do, “violent Latin” father, martyred mother.

But as Zagar turns Jonah’s voice-over narration into incantatory repetitions of phrases — “Body heat, Us three,” as he has Jonah’s rough, revelatory, sexually curious and explicitly violent drawings animated to life, as the first rifts between the brothers become clear even as they learn the value of presenting a unified “team” to the outside forces pounding on them, “We the Animals” sets itself apart from other run-of-the-mill “coming of age” stories.

This is “The Florida Project” set in Pennsylvania, a memoir both brilliantly specific and depressingly universal.

MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and some underage drug and alcohol use

Cast: Evan Rosado, Raúl Castillo, Sheila Vand, Josiah Gabrial, Isaiah Kristian

Credits:Directed by Jeremiah Zagar, script by Daniel Kitrosser, Jeremiah Zagar, based on the Justin Torrés novel. A The Orchard release.

Running time: 1:33

A teenage girl and her tween sister ride the bus, cross-state, towards the beach.

One’s an outgoing city kid, living in a foster home, looking forward a rare trip to the ocean. It’s her older sister’s bithday, and she’ll also take her older  to the place their Dad moved to.

The other just got out of juvie.  She’s met with her probation officer, tried to come up with some “goals” to tell him, and tracked down a lowlife gun dealer.

The pistol’s in her purse, because Angel (Dominique Fishback) bought a round trip ticket for her sister, a one-way ticket for herself. She’s going to shoot the father she saw beat her mother to death “right in front of me.”

Chatty, outgoing baby sister Abby (Tatum Marilyn Hall) doesn’t need to know that.

That’s the simpler-than-simple set up for “Night Comes On,”  a very fine debut feature from actress (“Ozark,” “The  Good Wife,” “The Mob Doctor”) turned director Jordana Spiro. It’s a lean, understated character study whose grit comes from its attention to detail.

Spiro follows Angel, played with poker-faced resignation by Fishback (“The Deuce” and the upcoming “The Hate U Give”), as she gets out of jail, collects her things and tries to take care of just one thing at a time.

Get my phone. Find a charger for my phone because the state lost my charger. Call Maya, the girlfriend I’m going to stay with. Call her again. And again.

Meet with Mark (Max Casella). Try to negotiate for a gun. He’s got some sort of sexual barter in mind.

Meet with my parole officer. That’s the first stand-out scene in this intimate step-by-step “starting over” (only not really) scenario. Angel cannot shake her prison toughness, her insolence, in just a day. The probation officer (James McDaniel)  isn’t having it.

“The world isn’t going to open up for you.”

It’s all Angel can do to maintain her sleepy-eyed resignation. She can’t make herself show “hope” for her future. Not to this man.

She can’t hide wholly hide her disappointment that Maya (Cymbal Byrd) has moved on to someone else. But she must have expected it. Sleeping in a stairwell? No prob. Just get me a public bathroom to wash up in.

It’s only when she checks in on bubbly sister Abby, warehoused in a big foster home with several other foster kids, that Angel softens. The kid has time to play. She’s smart. Yes, she’s on Ritalin and other meds, but she seems to be thriving.

Angel? She’s tried the authorities, prodded her probation officer and nobody will tell her where her father, released awaiting trial, lives.  Maybe Abby knows.

Spiro and Fishback unlock Angel’s long-dormant compassion with a screenplay that plays up her slow realization that whatever she does today, that little sister needs mothering. Abby has personality that Angel never acquired.

We’ve seen the older sister’s subdued dismay at what other kids her age are up to, living happy lives with friends, cheerleading and such. Angel was doing drugs and shoplifting, violently lashing out, paying the price for family violence that marked her and humiliated her. Abby knows none of that, making friends on the fly. But she doesn’t know how to be wary of the world, doesn’t know what do to with her hair, doesn’t know how to handle her first period — big sister stuff.

“Congratulations! You can pop a baby out!”

Angel doesn’t have the delicate touch.

Young Ms. Hall may be “a natural,” but her performance smacks of “child actor.” It isn’t just foster homes that have given Abby this polish. A couple of others in the cast also have a hint of “undiscovered regional theater actor” to their speech, their carriage and demeanor.

But Spiro has still gotten a striking, gritty and touching debut feature out of this cast, a movie that may lack much in the way of surprises but makes up for it with toughness, empathy and realism.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sexual content

Cast:Dominique Fishback, Tatum Marilyn Hall, Cymbal Byrd, Max Casella, James McDaniel, John Jelks

Credits:Directed by Jordana Spiro, script by Jordana Spiro, Angelica Nwandu . A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:26

Basically a Royal Caribbean ad masquerading as a romantic comedy, “Like Father” pairs up Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer as daughter and estranged father paired on what was supposed to be “her” honeymoon cruise to Jamaica.

“Eeew,” right? That’s what they say, too.

But that’s about as funny as this bland and not-quite-sad little floater manages for its 100 or so minutes.

Seth Rogen’s wife Lauren wrote and directed it, so it has Bell dropping the F-bomb like a drunk prom queen — vulgarity, the glue that makes the Rogen marriage stick.

But it’s as a drunk jilted bride that we meet Rachel, a busy marketing/branding whiz who barely manages to put her phone down before walking down the aisle for her Dream Wedding in Central Park.

Dropping that phone at the altar? That’s a deal breaker, in “Like Father” logic. Owen (Jon Foster), who must’ve been thinking about this a while as he didn’t even bother to shave before this swank, tuxedo’d ceremony, leaves Rachel at that altar.

After seemingly shrugging it off, nailing a pitch to clients at the office, she takes a moment to clear her desk and melt down, just a little.

Then her evening drinking binge is interrupted by Dear old Workaholic Dad, whom she hasn’t seen in 25 years.

“Twenty-SIX.”

His “You could use a drink” becomes an all-nighter, black-out-on-the-sidewalk affair, punctuated by him spiriting her to the town car and then cruise ship honeymoon suite she’d already paid for. Seemed like a great idea while they were plastered.

So these two, boozing and bickering and meeting all the “assigned” table mates on this binge boat, are here to avoid the endless intrusive “You crazy love-birds” questions followed by efforts to “help her” get over her embarrassment.

Seth Rogen shows up as a newly divorced, “rebound” Canadian who shows up 35 minutes in, a bit too late and entirely too little, as it turns out.

“Excursions,” on-board game show entertainment (almost funny), discos and karaoke and “family therapy” from the gay couple that share a table together build towards  abrupt changes in mood and tone predicated by plot necessity.

“You hate me and you probably should,” was Harry’s re-introduction to Rachel. So maybe a little daddy guilt over what he did wrong, maybe a little Rachel running around for a rebound, tantrums tossed, “Dad jokes,” none of it funny.

A Jamaican hike with a little ganja proffered is supposed to be cute (Guess who turns it down?).

We’re grasping at clues as the movie takes a stab at sentiment, Harry’s constant mention of his “business” partner Gabe, his utter comfort crawling into a bottle, even when it’s in a brown paper bag. There’s something we don’t know. Make us care, for Pete’s sake.

I had a notion that Netflix would be a great fit for Bell, whose big screen career has been miss and flop and “Frozen” and “Bad Moms.”

“Like Father” doesn’t quite rule that out, but she and Grammer and especially Rogen (who knows to keep his yap shut at home, I dare say) know this isn’t much.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, pot and alcohol abuse, adult situations, profanity

Cast: Kristen Bell, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Rogen

Credits: Scripted and directed by Laura Miller Rogen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:48

She should be, in this new twist on the “legend” that is based on the infamous “gave her father 40 whacks” with an axe case back in the 19th century.

The presence of Stewart takes this exactly where you’d expect. Sept. 14, we’ll count the whacks. 

“Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” is a conventionally unconventional take on “recovery” movie motif — recovery from a paralyzing accident, recovery from the alcoholism that led to it.

Not everybody who finds himself confined to a wheelchair, a hopeless quadriplegic drunk, can become a celebrated cartoonist with a Swedish airline hostess for a girlfriend. But if John Callahan did it, well…

That’s glib and a bit mean, but it gets the only serious knock on this warm and engaging Gus Van Sant film out of the way up front. The isn’t the experience of the vast majority of “quads.” But Van Sant, like the amusingly self-aware Callahan, pokes fun at that and pinches until it hurts. Get beyond the surface Callahan, and glibness flees into the night.

Exceptional stories are the ones movies are made from, and Callahan, a dark and cynical Portland, Oregon (Van Sant Country) cartoonist who joked about his physical limitations, the Klan and sexuality in his Willamette Week and New Yorker cartoons, was nothing if not exceptional.

His life becomes the source for another startling transformation for Joaquin Phoenix, who shares the spotlight and the kudos with Jonah Hill and Jack Black, two stand-out supporting players in this uplifting Twelve Steps Taken in a Wheelchair comedy.

Callahan’s story is framed within a public acclamation, a speech Callahan is giving at the height of his fame. It is, we quickly discover, an over-rehearsed, oft-repeated recital of his orphaned childhood, the “Irish” “school teacher” mother who, by the way, “didn’t want me.” Callahan has been telling this story ever since he ended up in a wheelchair, as an explanation, a casting of blame, a crutch.

Because he needs one. There are a lot of stupid ways for a slacker — Portland or otherwise — to justify his never making anything of his life. Callahan was a once-promising artist who wound up painting houses, and a hopeless drink since his teens. The drinking calms him, or so he tells himself.

A bottle at his side, John is a charmer (so he thinks), a sarcastic wit, fun to talk to at parties. In his own mind, anyway.

So why does he end up sneaking off to the bathroom to spike his beer, instantly abandoned by the attractive woman he was talking up at the party? Why is he so willing to ditch that party for a round of bar-hopping and binge-drinking with a smarmy hale fellow, well-met he’s just met (Jack Black)?

That led to an accident, which put him through painful, soul-crushing rehab. Callahan  suffers, trapped in his own thoughts, losing his marbles, barely able to summon the dark wit it takes to place himself “somewhere between Decathlon champion and rigor mortis.”

But even that doesn’t change Callahan’s innate recklessness. Check out the way he hurtles hither and yon in his first electric wheelchair. Anywhere else, this genuine Portland character would have been run over or toppled and left to die in a ditch.

But in Portland he is tolerated, and once he re-learned to draw  — both hands on the pen — he is celebrated. He charms a Swedish nurse’s assistant who becomes a stewardess (Rooney Mara). And with all that, he repeats and rehearses his “My mother didn’t want me” speech until that day he figures he needs to tell it at an AA meeting.

It’s there, in the no-nonsense zone established by rich, gay, profane and bored-with-your-crap Meeting Leader Donnie (Jonah Hill, transformed), that Callahan begins to get a grip on who he is and how he got that way.

Beth Ditto plays Reba, a portly Southern transplant in their group who endures Callahan’s insults, and hits him with one that cuts him to the marrow.

“It’s always ‘Poor me, poor me,’ until it gets to be ‘POUR me another drink!”

Van Sant takes the Twelve Step program seriously, making sure to give it an irreverent Portlandia twist. Callahan’s group has a damaged vet, a gay and defiantly penis-centric poet and others — just like him — who always had an excuse to drink.

Hill, bearded, bare-chested, relaxed and funny, has a “big speech,” of course. But it’s the ease he fits into this slim 1970s gay hipster that marks this performance.

Black revisits his “life of the party,” hep-cat Falstaff persona as Dexter, the party animal there for Callahan’s last night on two legs. But when he returns, and you might even know which “step” Dexter will make his next appearance in, Black gives us embarrassed, guilty, resigned to his fate and joyful at being forgiven with just his eyes. For my money, that’s the best scene in the movie.

Phoenix? He’s always done vulnerable well, but his Callahan (who died in 2010) is the most self-assured we’ve ever seen him, righteous in his reasons to drink, steeled against the criticism his outrageous politically incorrect cartoons earned him in 1980s Portland.

And the fact that’s really him flying through traffic, down crowded sidewalks, in that teetering motorized chair is a stunt and sight gag worthy of the silent film masters.

The star-crossed nature of Callahan’s life is one thing that gave me pause, that first “knock” I mentioned above. And Van Sant’s decision to include a female therapist’s blunt suggestion that Callahan proposition a nurse as sexual therapy (who then accepts it) is “World According to Garp” creepy and tone-deaf in #MeToo America.

But Van Sant never fails to get a laugh out of Callahan’s cynical out-of-left-field cartoons, which he has animated in squiggle-vision at various points in the narrative. “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” takes its title from one of those, an Old West posse finding a wheelchair in the desert, their quarry having abandoned it.

And Van Sant, a legendarily sensitive filmmaker, never fails to see the difficulties in Callahan’s journey, the spirit it takes to overcome them or the fact that they were all difficulties of the man’s own creation. That lifts this “uplifting” story above the twelve steps that are its natural starting point and into the realm of something more challenging than the genre conventions it otherwise adheres to.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, sexual content, some nudity and alcohol abuse

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black

Credits: Written and directed by Gus Van San , based on the John Callahan memoir. An Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 1:54

Barry Jenkins, writer-director of “Moonlight,” spent the capital that Oscar winner game him on doing something folks in Hollywood just don’t do.

He tackled a James Baldwin novel, bringing one of the great American Writers to the big screen. The much-honored documentary about Baldwin last year has pushed him back into the limelight, and this late career novel should make for a timely and timeless film about the African American experience in modern America.

This trailer is all about tone, romance in the face of hopelessness and the comforting mothering of Regina Hall, captured in full, expressive close-up.

“If Beale Street Could Talk” looks like a contender, and opens Nov. 30.

I’ve stumbled past the trailers for this a few times over the weeks, but I was finally forced to sit through it in previews before “Spy Who Dumped Me” last night.

You know, in between all the Tiffany Haddish upcoming attractions.

I’d avoided posting a trailer to “Robin Hood” because this “Kingsman” kid, Taron Egerton,  does nothing for me.

And love love LOVE Jamie Foxx, but period pieces are not where his gifts lie. Yeah, “Django” sucked. I’m saying that. Or reminding you of that.

And really, do we need ANOTHER “Robin Hood” (Nov. 21)? I think not.

I do like the idea of making him a highborn dude turned into a lowdown thief. But the rest of this, meh.