Movie Nation

“BlackKklansman” is the funniest Spike Lee movie in decades, a film of such wit, tension, passion and relevance that it is his most important work since “Malcolm X.”

This mostly-true story of a grim but ironic undercover sting of the Ku Klux Klan allows a filmmaker infamous for getting in his own way, condemned to low budget filmed stage shows, documentaries and movies-nobody-saw, to return to relevance with a thriller that’s epic in scope and satirical in its bite.

All it took was hot producer Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) and three extra screenwriters to get it made and rein in just enough of Lee’s excesses to get him back to making the sorts of movies he used to toss off with ease.

Ron Stallworth, subtly-played by John David Washington of TV’s “Ballers (and a tween extra in “Malcolm X”) was a straight arrow son of a career military man who became “the Jackie Robinson” of the Colorado Springs Police Department in the 1970s.

He endured the racism of his own department, first in the records room where the rookie was repeatedly asked for files on this or that “toad.” Colorado racist cops had given up the N-word for the T-word. Progress.

But a smart guy like Ron, with his Natural hair style and the ability to switch from his usual “King’s English” to “jive,” figures undercover work is where it’s at. And after much grousing from the more racist colleagues, and his prickly chief (Robert John Burke), he gets his chance. He wears a wire into ex-Black Panther Stokely Carmichael’s speech, invited to address the black community by the local college’s student union.

Stallworth was to spy on this “radical” who was “stirring things up.” The police were looking for an excuse to arrest the FBI target then going by a newly-taken African name, Kwame Ture. No dice there, the rhetoric wasn’t that incendiary, Stallworth insists.

But he passes muster with the undercover guys (Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi’s brother Michael Buscemi). And he does meet a “fine as red wine” sister, Patrice (Laura Harrier), whom he has to lie to even as he resists her crowd’s insistence on calling police “pigs.”

They have their reasons.

But it’s a glance at a brazenly-placed newspaper recruiting ad for the KKK that piques Ron’s interest and gets him on the phone. His “King’s English” convinces the voice on the other end of the line of his “white” legitimacy, his instincts tell him that these creeps are thinking big — and violent. All he’s got to do is convince his boss (Ken Garito), the chief and the rest of the “intelligence” squad to go along with it, and get a white cop to play the role he’s creating on the phone and infiltrate the KKK.

The skeptical, jaded Flip (Driver) reluctantly agrees.

“I’ve always wanted to be black.”

Lee, working from the real Ron Stallworth’s memoir, takes us into a world of virulent racists, paranoid gun nuts and delusional cranks, “The Invisible Empire,” whose members lay low, refer to the KKK as “The Organization,” The Cause.”

And they are planning “a big year,” something bigger than mountaintop cross burnings — “The highest hills get the most eyes.”

Ron, in the person of Flip, goes to redneck bar gatherings and backwoods shooting parties where the boys trot out their named firearms (“I call this one ‘Jew Killer'”) to riddle African American-shaped targets.

He faces the furious, ignorant suspicion of Felix, played in a fine, foaming-at-the-mouth fury by Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen.

And he debates Ron on the importance of what they’re doing.

“For you, this is a crusade. For me, it’s a job.”

Lee balances Ron’s work debates with his guarded arguments with the “Revolution is Now” Patrice. His patriotism has him ironically believing “America would never elect somebody like David Duke president of the United States.” He tests his own idealism with her, his belief  you can effect change “from the inside.”

Patrice, rousted and abused by the most racist local cops on the night of the Carmichael/Ture speech, doesn’t buy it. With her voluminous Afro and high profile in the community, she’s almost certainly on the KKK radar as well.

Lee steadily ratchets up the tension even as he’s never far removed from finding these dangerous men funny. Casting Topher Grace as the young Louisiana racist KKK Imperial Wizard Duke sets the tone, and works wonderfully. Black Ron has to call National KKK headquarters to see about his membership card, and shockingly, the Big D is who answers the phone and expedites the card.

“God Bless White America!”

The local group’s collection of secretive sympathizers in government and literal mouth-breathers warns White Ron that “a war’s coming.” Will Black Ron and White Ron be able to stop it?

Lee finds places to squeeze in his trademarks — his rolling reverse zoom, pointed political criticism and “Uplift the Race” sermons and lectures. They fit here. Alec Baldwin plays a man rehearsing a KKK film lecture in the movie’s heavy-handed and somewhat ill-fitting (but biting) opening scene. Lee gives actor Corey Hawkins, as Carmichael/Ture, minutes of mesmerizing screen time for his speech.

Ture’s speech doesn’t so much “turn” Ron as lay the out the distances between the races, and ways that gap has and hasn’t closed in 45 years. Harry Belafonte has a moving cameo, telling the story of a long-ago lynching his character witnessed to a rapt Black Student Union audience.

And Lee finishes with a flourish, hammering home the connections between the KKK then and now, racist leadership then and at the very highest levels now.

Those of us who have followed Lee’s work over the years embrace his strengths and his flaws. He shot “BlackKklansman” in a grainy, lurid blacksploitation style (period appropriate tunes) and texture and wonderfully balances the mockery of the racists with the grim realities of the true story.

But Spike never learned to drop the mike, leave the audience craving more. As with “Malcolm” and most of his signature films, he cannot bear to exit the stage, running “BlackKklansman” past its climax, sermonizing until the credits stop him.

At least he’s outgrown the tendency to have an actor turn to the camera and shout “WAKE UP!” at the faithful.

With “BlackKklansman,” the great touches overcome his two Achilles Heels. Let’s hope this reconnects the filmmaker with the wider big screen audience, because talent this mercurial has been a terrible thing to waste.

MPAA Rating: R, violence, profanity, racism

Cast: John David Washington,  Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pääkönen, Alec Baldwin

Credits:Directed by Spike Lee, script by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, David Wilmott, and Spike Lee, based on the memoir by Ron Stallworth. A Focus release.

Running time: 2:

A big Thursday and huge Friday have set “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” on a path to clear $60 million on its opening weekend, perhaps going as high as $63 million.

Deadline.com is reporting that the $6 million Thursday night opening added another $22-25 Friday, with Saturday pre-sales pointing to the biggest  opening weekend ever for the Tom Cruise big screen version of the 60s-70s TV series.

The brand is a big draw and reviews have been stellar. Why not?

“Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again” nipped past last weekend’s surprise winner, “Equalizer 2” during the week and will repeat that this weekend, making over $15 to Denzel’s second weekend take of $13.

That should allow both Denzel’s revenge times two thriller and the ABBA’s B-sides sequel to better “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” ($10-11), pushing it to fourth place. Earlier projections gave “Titans” a shot of reaching $15-17. Considering the quick and dirty Warner Animation comedy only cost $10 (and looks it), any take above $10 you can call a win for the TV toon turned into a big screen draw.

Not many are showing up for something that has all the ambition of a made-for-TV Cartoon Network movie. Why pay for Cartoon Network quality animation best experienced on TV?

Every time we hear it, it sets the pulse-pounding. A Latin beat, timpanis and tambalas, brass and sax, pinning us in our seats and pulling us in.

Directors and villains may change, Tom Cruise may age, but Lalo Schifrin’s propelling score drives the “Mission: Impossible” movies as sure as Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme” is the lifeblood of 007. I mentioned this in my review. 

Something about the jazz of the 60s, especially as it pertains to scores, theme songs and the like, is getting better with age. Schifrin, still with us at 86, was the soundtrack of that era. “Mission: Impossible” might be his crowning glory, a thunderous, swooping rhythm that every new MI incidental music composer may tinker with, but never improve upon.

The original, from the 1966 TV series, stands the test of time. Strings and flutes, spare and packed into a swaying Argentine beat.

He did “Cool Hand Luke: and “Bullitt” for the big screen, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” too — the TV show, remember? Sound familiar?

Back when I worked in public radio hosting jazz programs, rare was the week when I didn’t trot out some big band arrangement of his themes on some new/old LP.

I even engineered field recordings of local big bands covering Schifrin’s rolling jazz thunder. The one all of them had to have in the repertoire was the Schifrin theme that was easiest to perform live, with a standard line-up big band. The TV show was generic, but the music from “Mannix,” and the way it’s used in the still dazzling opening credits, is almost enough to justify reviving that one (and not say, “Magnum P.I.”) all on its own.

We missed his birthday last month (June 21.). But as “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” blows up the box office, raise a glass with me to Lalo the Great!

One of the best “Mission: Impossible” movies opened Thursday night, one more shot at killing Tom Cruise — 57, and still doing many of his own stunts? DAMN! — and big things are expected by Paramount’s accountants.

It earned $6 million last night (IMAX helped) and may set the MI record (north of $60 million for the weekend would do it) and extend Cruise’s box office shelf life by a few more years.

Cast a great villain (Sean Harris) or two (Henry Cavill, or so the trailers tell us), tear up the streets of Paris and blow a lot of stuff up, the people will beat a path to your multiplex door.

“Teen Titans” earned a million last night. Kids need a fresh cartoon every weekend, it’s a proven TV brand, hyped on channels that kids watch. No great surprise there. A $17 million weekend is within reach, maybe a bit generous for a picture that shows so little effort, but kids want what they want.

What did surprise me were the reviews — too much love on Rotten Tomatoes, more than I would have expected even on the more sober and adult Metacritic. 

Whatever you want to say about the works of Disney, Pixar, Sony Animation, Dreamworks, Ghibli or Laika, or even the Lego movies Warners has jump-started its animation division with, there’s a generally accepted notion that the bar has been raised.

We expect sparkling, witty visuals, slam-bang action (“Bugs Bunny Physics,” I call it) and enough smart humor to keep your average parent from staring at his or her phone playing Words with Friends for 80-90 minutes.

And “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” takes a stab at some of those while meekly embracing the anarchy that has been Warner Brothers’ animated comedy style since Porky/Daffy (in their logo) and Bugs held sway.

But it isn’t as funny or smart as the last lame Lego movie, isn’t as witty or antic as its TV predecessor, “Animaniacs.” This incarnation of the DC misfits has been on the tube for 200+ episodes since 2013, and judging from their first feature film in that post-“Power Puff Girls” (anime-inspired) style, that’s where they should stay.

It’s mass production pablum intended for kids and for inattentive “watching” on TV.

Other reviews don’t reflect that. This one gave me a bigger laugh than anything in the movie. And there are plenty more where that came from, delivered by either third or fourth string backup reviewers (NPR and the NY Times are very good to their interns…apparently) for major media outfits, or fanboys enthusing over anything that mocks the origin stories, comic book or sci-fi movie antecedents that the script pounds away at.

Speaking from early-career experience, it is the lot of the third stringer, reviewing fare that the A-list review won’t bother with, to puff up the mediocre in order to justify what one has been entrusted to review (and oneself), to inflate one’s place within the reviewing firmament and play around with style, and to stand apart from the crowd.

Or are they trying to anticipate what kids will love, and missing the mark?

Generational? It’s not like kids raised on the TV show are now reviewing.

“You just don’t get it” might work here, as I am not the target audience. But I “got” the jokes — obvious, telegraphed set-ups, weak tea all the way around.

Well, the rubber-pencil trick I didn’t see coming.

I just didn’t  get much more than a smirk over Nicolas Cage, once cast as “Superman” (never got to play him) voicing The Man of Steel, or Stan Lee making his usual “subtle” cameo — but this time in a DC, not Marvel movie.

Michael Bolton singing the “Upbeat Inspirational Song” is just about funny enough — for a 22 minute (plus commercials) TV cartoon.

Those were the funniest stand-alone moments, the origin story reversal via time travel was the best single idea here (dispensed with far too soon, before Aquaman could asphyxiate on a plastic six-pack ring, etc.).

I skipped the pre-opening screening of “Teen Titans” because it was half-state away theater chosen to show it, caught it on “pre-opening” night with a theater one third full — of fans who paid cash money to see it (most with their kids). The theatrical experience? “The Quiet Place.” Deathly quiet.

I defy any member of this chorus of opinionators to make the point that this is any funnier than “Hotel Transylvania 3,” about 1-27th as amusing or witty as “Incredibles 2.” It isn’t, and if it lingers in any memory past Labor Day, I’ll be shocked SHOCKED.

The bar for big screen animation has been raised. The bar for reviewing it, it seems, has been lowered.

It’s about having standards, boys and girls, and sticking to them. What did you do in Freshman English? “Compare and contrast,” and honestly, would any of these children say this is on a par with the worst Pixar movie (“Monsters University,” “Cars Anything”), or better than any of the “Hotel Transylvania” pictures?

When you have standards, benchmarks, you don’t fall into that “Well, the kids will go and I am going to put myself in their shoes and justify that” trap.  Therein lies the path to mendacious mediocrity, I say.

Want to know why America has a treasonous moron for president? Reality TV and comic book movies, and people scared to point out this crap is dumbing down the culture.

As for me, “I am standing at Thermopylae!”  Or to quote a more popular picture, “None shall pass!” If it’s thinly-scripted cut-rate junk, I’m saying so.

Peter is having nightmares — unexplained air attacks on his corner of futurecity, bloody beatings delivered to some unseen threat.

His children are worried. His wife?

“Please see someone!”

His boss, David? “There’s this clinic…”

But these dreams, maybe they mean something. Maybe they’re a warning. Maybe he’s not crazy, just driving his wife crazy with his visions of the coming apocalypse.

“You see that? That light?”

“Extinction” is about The Day the World Ended. Again.

And it’s about that paranoid feeling that someone — something — is watching you, even though you’re arguing that this isn’t just in your head.

“It IS just in your head!”

Peter’s not alone, but meeting somebody else who “can’t sleep” just shows him how paranoid he looks.

Michael Peña stars as a maintenance tech in a high rise near future, one of the few “crazy” people having nightmares about the attack that — twenty minutes into “Extinction” — comes.

But when it comes, objects dropping from the sky, weird craft strafing and bombing everything and everyone, can Peter tell it’s not just another nightmare? And will he have the chance to tell his wife (Lizzy Caplan) “I TOLD you so!”

“Is THIS what you saw?”

What is attacking them? Tentacled flying machines, glimpses of buggy looking helmeted soldiers, insectoid space suits, armed with with long bayonets.

Peter’s quest is as simple as it gets — finding his kids, finding his wife, getting out of a high rise that’s under-assault and gutted, with scattered panicked survivors and unknown attackers keeping them from “the factory” where he works and where his dreams told him they might be safe.

“Extinction” features convincing mayhem, reasonably realistic panic, a global assault rendered personal by the myopia of focusing on this family and some neighbors, fighting to survive.

It’s generic “aliens invade” fare, another “Skyline” or “The Invasion” with smoky ruins,  tracer bullets and brawls, but also dream interpretation and a fun twist on the family dynamic. Wife Alice is the sane, smart one, the tougher one  — the one who picks at Peter’s memories, gets him to dissect his dreams to see what they can do that might save them.

And then there’s that invader that Peter (mainly Lizzy) bested in a brawl — unseen behind his cracked helmet visor, disarmed because Peter has figured out how to hack the ID on this personalized assault rifle so he can use it — an invader for whom hunting them down is personal.

That’s not smart. Anything that stops or slows the forward–motion in a movie like this is bad, because the moment we have a time to daydream, we ponder this whole tedious business of invading, shooting victims one by one, building by building, floor by floor. Why would anybody go to the trouble?

Aliens? Their superior tech makes resistance futile, and lop-sided in the extreme. Why wouldn’t they just bomb or vaporize the works?

Terminators? Our own machines? Why wouldn’t they just electronically shut down civilization and monitor our dying out?

The reveal here is surprising enough, but anticlimactic in the extreme. A downer. Everything after it? Exposition, over-explaining. This is no “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Why pretend it is?

Peña has made a fine living, sucking up the lion’s share of “Latino supporting player” roles in comedies (“Ant Man”), action films (“Shooter”), cop pics and war films and everything in between.

He was good as Cesar Chavez in the bio-pic that offered him a rare solo starring role.

Here, he’s bland, under-emoting in the face of terror and fronting a middling actioner that isn’t as thought-provoking as its creators expected, as surprising as they think it’s “twist” is and isn’t smart enough to get out of its own way.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Michael Peña, Lizzy Caplan, Mike Colter

Credits:Directed by Ben Young, , script by Eric Heisserer. A Good Universe/Mandeville/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Here’s what we know about Paul Walker — he liked to call people “Bro.” A handsome blue eyed blond, he starred in several films of note before the “franchise” that would make him, than found himself eclipsed in that franchise by a multi-cultural ensemble that made the films all about “family.”

He played second banana to Vin Diesel with good grace, made the occasional indie film, raced cars like his character in “The Fast and the Furious,” and died way too young.

He practiced random acts of kindness. This story went viral.

I interviewed him a couple of times, once even before “Furious” took over his life. When he said “Bro,” you felt like he meant it. A couple of his final films were among his best, and didn’t have Vin Diesel or assorted Chrysler products in them to upstage him.

“I am Paul Walker” is coming soon to cable’s Paramount Network.

Disney ridiculing Disney is both product placement for Disney princesses, and a Dreamworks-level burn delivered from in house.

Looks OK, but can “Wreck-it Ralph 2” match the dizzy fun of the original?

You name your daughter Scarlet, you’re just asking for drama.

You take a road trip with a woman named Scarlet, through the desert Southwest to LA, colorful off-the-interstate hotels and empty roadhouses, you’re asking for weirdness.

Like her getting sick, getting rattled by the constant prattle of local TV and radio sermons by a crazed preacher. A crazed white-eyed local peeks into their windows and standsin traffic.

And then Scarlet (Jena Malone) vanishes at the “Bottom of the World.” Or out of their room at the El Rancho. And Alex (Douglas Smith) is lost without her, or so you’d think.

Here’s a cryptic, creepy supernatural thriller that isn’t quite cryptic or creepy enough. This desert tale has hints of “The Vanishing” and every scarred, masked stalker movie ever made, every masked stalker who whistles “Amazing Grace” as he offers “to help.”

“Sometimes, even the mouse chases the cat.”

That preacher? He’s played by Ted Levine, “Buffalo Bob” of “Silence of the Lambs.” He stares out of that El Rancho TV right into Alex’s soul.

The hermit in the mask drags Alex into Monument Valley, and the mystery and threats deepen. Did he bury her alive “with them,” in “the city of pain” where “she never will die?”

Malone gets a few early scenes to make Scarlet burn into the memory. Sultry, sexual in the extreme and mercurial, her Scarlet is given to popping the eyes out of Alex’s head with her confessions about “the worst thing” either of them has ever done. Hers, about a little cousin she abused, is chilly, creepy beyond belief. She’s messing with him. Surely. Hopefully.

She’s happy to drink too much, to mess with his head in between noisy adventures in bed. No wonder he is consumed.

What happened to her? That faintly-deranged, tipsy preacher has to have something to do with it, or some answers. He has an old framed photo of her in his empty church.

“It’s a memento! Alex…”

“How do you know my name?”

“Why wouldn’t I know your name. You’ve been runnin’ around with my daughter.”

Time is a fever dream as Alex drifts between then and “now,” working in real estate, living with a woman (Tamara Duarte) who seems a stranger.

“We met yesterday. I’m your wife.”

Russian roulette with just one competitor, flickering TV static images of people there, and then not there, the faulty memories of a place that when he goes back, looking for answers, offers none.

No “remote” hotel. It’s in a busy town. No Church of the Solid Rock Sufferer. There’s no creepy preacher or creepier stalker

“We’re in hell, aren’t we? I’m DEAD.” Or maybe “I’m dreaming!”

Wherever he is, everybody has some sort of aphorism to share.

“People tend to focus on the world around them, rather than the world within them.”

The weirdness evaporates with a simplistic coda, one of those “We’ve been messing with your head, here are all the answers” finales.

Malone does her best slutty fantasy figure/femme fatale turn. Levine is so naturally scary that it’s a wonder he had a career totally removed from “Silence of the Lambs” frights.

Smith, of TV’s “Big Little Lies” and “The Alienist,” has the haunted eye-sockets of grief and madness. He has to carry a tale that’s too chilly to allow for human connection.

There’s a reason he doesn’t go full frantic “What has happened to my girlfriend?” in those early scenes. But that hamstrings the movie. We need that connection, need his sense of urgency and panic. Mysteries are intriguing, relationships are what pull us in.

“Bottom of the World” is a location (New Mexico) in search of a better movie, a mystery thriller that’s all puzzle and no heart.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Jena Malone, Douglas Smith, Ted Levine, Tamara Duarte

Credits:Directed by Richard Sears, script by Brian Gottlieb. A Zed Filmworks/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:25

Great to see Oscar winner Colin Firth show up and make Everett’s Oscar Wilde bio-pic something people would finance.

Everett doesn’t get the dazzling parts anymore, he’s aged out of being the boyishly handsome delight he was back in the last millennium (Haven’t we all?). But Wilde is, for an out gay British actor (like Everett, like Stephen Fry), a Lear — a role with a crowning glory about it.

“The Happy Prince” is Oscar bait, sure, and opens Oct 5 in limited release.

The animation’s so flat, static and dull it relies on brighter-than-bright sparkly colors to make it pop. Like “Power Puff Girls” or “My Little Pony.”

The jokes are infantile-obvious and pounded home with a sledgehammer, as if the writers figured they had to get through something especially thick.

And the plot? Well, it’s about unworthy “Super Heroes” angling to get a movie made about them. They, uh, succeeded.

“Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” should only be seen by its target audience — ten and under — on the appropriate-sized screen. Yeah, it’s a TV show which they squeezed a cut-rate $10 million movie out of, but I figure it’ll play best on a tablet or smart phone, preferably in the back seat of the minivan on a road trip to America’s National Parks.

With headphones, so nobody over 10 will have to hear this puerile piffle. But under 10? Butt jokes, fart gags and a whole scene of poop — what’s not to love?

I’ve seen a bunch of rave notices for this in the nerdosphere and wondered, “Are Bronies the ones reviewing this?” But no. Might as well be, though.

It begins with the dimmest Warner Brothers short cartoon ever to grace a big screen (“The Late Batsby”), and follows with a tale of how Titan Tower’s most famous resident, The Boy Wonder, Robin (voiced by Scott Menville) craves a super hero movie all his own.

The other Titans? Raven, Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy? They can be in it, too.

Only they’re all regarded as “a joke” by everybody in the DC universe, and in Jump City, where they fight crime and rap out their “sick” theme song. Superman (Nicolas Cage, a clever voice-gag) and Batman (Jimmy Kimmel, less clever) agree. “Goofsters…a joke.”

How to change that? Get Hollywood, especially blockbuster director Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell), to notice them. Go there and round up a nemesis worthy of the big screen challenge (Will Arnett is Slade) and maybe go back in time to change the origin stories so that the real DC superheroes don’t become superheroes.

Their “time cycles?” Big Wheels. Their traveling music? “Back in Time” from “Back to the Future.”

Keeping Bruce Wayne’s family out of that Gotham alley and helping Jor-El (a bad Brando impersonator) save Krypton with techno music is the most interesting inside comicdom part of the plot, and it’s dispensed with in a flash.

At least there’s a “subtle Stan Lee cameo,” as in not-subtle, but funny in concept — Mr. Marvel Comics showing up in a DC movie?

I smirked at Stan and at Michael Bolton showing up to sing the “Upbeat Inspirational Song.” A smirk is all this is worth. The “manic” irreverence and anarchy of classic Warners ‘toons, of “Animaniacs” or even the first “Lego” movie, is missing. The gags about Disney (a “Lion King” spoof) seem winded.

A lot of fanboys seem to be endorsing this as the training wheels film that will create the next generation of cable cartoon TV and comic book addicts. But “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” is too slapdash to manage that.

Go see “Incredibles 2” if that’s your aim. Even seeing it a second or fourth time will be more entertaining and surprising than this.

MPAA Rating: PG for action and rude humor

Cast: The voices of Scott Menville, Will Arnett, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage, Stan Lee and Michael Bolton

Credits: Written and directed by  Aaron Horvath, Peter Rida Michail. A Warners Animation release.

Running time: 1:33