Movie Nation

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” morphs into The Girl with Nine Lives in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” a bastardized borrowing of Stieg Larrson’s avenging hacker angel.

Lisbeth Salander has more narrow escapes than Jason Bourne in this stylish but stale reboot of the Franchise Hollywood Never Quite Gets Right. It’s still snowy and Swedish (once removed), still a chilling peek at the seamy underbelly of the blonde and beautiful socialist paradise. But here character is sacrificed pure action and story becomes whatever they can make of a fifth rate Bond villain and ridiculous plot device.

There’s an encryption expert (Stephen Merchant) who wants something he sold to the Americans stolen from them,” the sum of all my sins” is how he describes it. Lisbeth, here played by the fierce Claire Foy of “The Crown” and “First Man,” is underground and on the run.

But she has a motorcycle, mad computer hacking skills and hacking support (“Plague,” played by (Cameron Britton) and a rep as a “righter of wrongs.” She’ll take the job.

That puts her, the code expert and the guy’s doted-on son (Christopher Convery) in jeopardy. There’s this murderous pan-national gang “The Spiders” — with tattoos to ID them — who want that computer file as well.

Lisbeth has to take a break from her “vigilante…defender of women” hobby and evade her pursuers, who also include this seriously irked NSA agent (Lakeith Stanfield of “Sorry to Bother You” and “Atlanta”) and the Swedish intelligence service and its bristling chief (Synnøve Macody Lund).

She escapes from an exploding building, dodges cops on her river-ice worthy motorcycle, makes a getaway in a Volvo and eventually steals a Lamborghini.

All made possible because of that lazy deus ex machina  of modern fiction and screenwriting — the Omnipotent Hacker.

Lisbeth can find anyone, take control of anything, often via her handy-dandy smartypants smart phone. And even if she can’t say, break into a building and tell you everyone in it and where they are within that building, her pal Plague can.

Lisbeth’s journalist pal and sometime lover (she’s gay, as are several other characters in this) Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) has been reduced to bit-player/pawn in this tale, perhaps a reflection of the shrinking role of journalism in “righting wrongs.”

Foy, dressed down, butch haircut and covered in piercings and tattoos, gives Lisbeth back the fierceness that skinny rich model Rooney Mara never could manage, even as the script can’t decide here if Lisbeth is violent and vengeful or not. She keeps letting bad guys she knows are murderous go, only to have them try and kill her again.

The little boy is rather bland in the role (some of that’s a scriptural “on the spectrum” requirement), the villains murderous but also inclined to let Lisbeth live when logic dictates they have what they need from her.

The fights staged for director Fede Alvarez (“Don’t Breathe”) are epic. Novel uses of a taser and cattle prod are among the props, and Foy holds her own here — wholly committed to the violence Lisbeth metes out and takes.

One thing about this story that the late novelist Stieg Larsson would have approved of is the stench of corruption the permeates the shiny, progressive gloss that is the world’s image of Sweden. But you have to wonder if Larsson, obsessed with the sordid, Nazi sympathizing past of Sweden’s wealthy elite, would have thought up a story, characters and plot devices as trite and worn as those used here.

Had he lived, I’ll bet he’d have gotten into Sweden’s uneasy relationship with its non-white immigrants and beneath-the-surface attitudes the blue-eyed blondes never let the rest of the world see.

“Spider’s Web” — and the screenwriters seem too embarrassed to acknowledge that slapping new tattoos onto the tale was stupid and lazy, so they don’t make much of it — is never less than watchable. But for all that wintry Swedish gloom, all that ultra-violence and vengeance, there isn’t a minute in its 117 minutes that you’re not aware you’re watching an inferior photocopy.

When it comes to girls with a dragon tattoo, give us Noomi Rapace and a story by Stieg Larsson, or let it go.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and some sexual content/nudity

Cast: Claire Foy, Stephen Merchant, Sylvia Hoeks, Lakekeith Stanfield, Sverrir Gudnason, Cameron Britton

Credits:Directed by Fede Alvarez, script by Jay Basu, Fede Alvarez and Steven Knight, based on the David Lagercrantz novel which used Stieg Larsson’s characters. A Sony release.

Running time: 1:57

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.