Movie Nation

In Hollywood they call it “runaway production.”

But here in the “Rest of the States” we call it making movies that look like America, on location, movies with a hint of “local color.”

“Strange Nature” is a not-at-all-terrible low-budget horror pick about pesticide-driven mutations popping up in the Great Lakes, in Duluth, Minnesota.

We almost never see thrillers, or films of any sort, set in “Doo-LOOT.”

This ripped-from-the-headlines nightmare was written and directed by Duluth native James “Jim” Ojala, a sometime director/widely-credited makeup artist and effects specialist who has worked on scads of TV shows (“True Blood,” “The Core”) and movies such as “Hellboy II” and “John Dies at the End.”

So we know to expect the effects to be pretty good — gurgling bleed-outs after animal attacks, spurting blood from shotgun blasts and stabbings.

The six-legged frogs are passable, the two-headed/four-faced wolves a bit less so. Both  crop up after “American Patriot” chemicals starts selling its “organic” fertilizer to the simple happy natives.

The hole in the middle of “Strange Nature” is the hour in the middle of the thing that doesn’t require effects. It’s pretty boring.

Lisa Sheridan (TV’s “Invasion”) is Kim Sweet, the hometown girl who left to become a pop star, only to not have that work out so well. She’s coming back to the town she once mocked to take care of her ailing Dad (Bruce Bohne). She’s still got her looks, her blue hair and her collection of shorts and fishnet stockings. She’s also got a tweenage son (Jonah Beres).

“If we hate it we will find a way to leave,” she reassures young Brody. Sure she will.

But upon arrival at the end of summer, teens are disappearing — on nature hikes, swimming.

And the one hike that doesn’t lose any kids comes back with six-legged frogs. Kim, having a kid and a sick father, all of them living on a lake, is concerned.

Her kid’s science teacher (Faust Checho) has the beginnings of an explanation. “Frogs literally soak up their environment.”

It’s just that Kim’s the wrong person to sound the alarm. The town feels used by her and up where the winters are long the grudges are longer.

“We’re not giving you any attention,” the local newspaper grumps. The mayor (Stephen Tobolowsky) is of the same mind, and not prone to causing “a premature panic.”

“You’ve found some deformed frogs, that’s it?”

Kim, whose language tends toward LA colorful, loses it.

“God, you’re like some MOVIE mayor!”

But as devoured deer and missing people pile up, as deformed frogs prefigure deformed puppies and then birth defects among the local babies, panic sets in. And who do they focus on? The disfigured father across the lake and his Elephant Man forehead daughter.

The superstitious rednecks don’t suspect anything chemical, especially with the name “American Patriot” on the front of it. Wrestler/actor John Hennigan plays their ringleader.

“Let’s put them out of their misery. Some things aren’t meant to be!”

As TV news finally wises up to the threat and gawking tourists show up with “Minnesota — Land of 10,000 Freaks” t-shirts (Man, I’ve got to get me one of those.), the blood starts to flow and this slow-footed creature-feature finally finds its footing.

Ojala opens his film with clips of news reports (“Nightline” with Ted Koppel vintage) about frogs as “canaries in the coal mine” of our environment, and makes no secret of who his villains are — corrupt, shortsighted chemical companies and the unthinking, short-cut taking farmers and small town Red State types who trust them.

Sheridan makes a feisty, if not quite fiery enough heroine. Tobolowsky’s here for comic effect. And Henningan underscores the point that more wrestlers should look for work as heavies — bad guys.

It’s a C-movie, pretty much start to finish. And once Ojala gets his sermons about the environment out of the way and gets down to business, he’s got a movie gore goofballs TROMA Films would be proud to distribute.

It’s just that middle hour that hamstrings “Strange Nature” and mutes whatever novelty a move about mutations in Minnesota might have had.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Lisa Sheridan, Stephen Tobolowsky, John Hennigan, , Tiffany Shepis

Credits: Written and directed by James Ojala. An ITN release.

Running time: 1:39

A bit late for a “teaser” for a movie opening Sept. 29. And it’s a lulu.

Moss plays a chatterbox, strung out punk rocker, with a camera crew in tow, surrounded by all those folks, plus Amber Heard, Ashley Benson and Dan Stevens.

Several of them turn up in this long, rambling backstage take. “Her Smell” played in Toronto and the U.S. distributor is unclear. So? Not many screens, wait for Netflix?

“The Nun” is managing another $18 million or so on its second weekend, putting the fall’s first sleeper in the range of $85 million by midnight Sunday. 

And it’s not even “fall” yet. Not by the calendar.

But Fox throwing a huge bag of extra cash, Shane Black, Olivia Munn, Keenan Michael Key, Thomas Jane and Boyd Holbrook at “The Predator” reboot isn’t proving to be cash well spent. Deadline.com is now projecting the $88 million recycling of the “Alien Whoopi Goldberg invasion” thriller — sixth in the series — to do $26 million, enough to “win” this weekend. It did OK Thursday night, OK ($10 million+) Friday.

It had that whole stink of Shane Black hiring a perv pal for a bit part and Olivia Munn calling him on it, and reviews had an over-it quality. 

With ancillary markets not being what they were, that’s going to wind up in the red. Controversy didn’t help, probably didn’t hurt, either. It was never going to reach a fresh audience. We know what we’re getting, and most of us are over it.

Lionsgate spent the smart money this weekend, with the $20-30 million “A Simple Favor” rolling up $17-18 million, and the chance to stick around to make more. Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick have HUGE social media presences, so if tweets and click-through rates deliver, this femme-centric thriller– great reviews are helping — could make money on into October.

The uneven but well-acted and entertaining “White Boy Rick” doesn’t have a brand, Matthew McConaughey isn’t a big draw on his own and nobody in it has the social media connection to amplify the marketing. The trailers were funny/cool, reviews have been good enough. It’s still only pulling in $9 million by midnight Sunday.

The faith-based “Unbroken: Path to Redemption” sequel is still on track to hit $5 million, poor reviews trumping any pulpit push for this one.

This is intriguing — a little adventure, a bit of danger, some special gifts and a hint of, as the trailer puts it, “whimsy.”

“Big Blue Sea” opens in Hong Kong in January. Maybe it’ll get US distribution, maybe Netflix will grab it.

Took opera world by storm, loved Onassis before he married Jackie, embraced in a heartbeat by the early adapters (check out who swoons over her in ticket lines), interviewed for TV for decades, this Tom Volf film, opening in November, may not start a Maria Callas revival.

‘Her glory years came long before digital recording, and opera hasn’t really gotten the hipster comeback it might have.

But “Maria by Callas” looks like something resembling the last word on the diva’s diva.

It lacks the familiar logo — the giant stylized “W” on its distinctly-angled slab sides.

But there’s no mistaking the metal box on wheels that flashes its lights at a passing kid, then flings open a door to invite him in, into “The TOYBOX!”

Sorry, the all-caps are mine, the title is “The Toybox.”

Just the place, a Winnebago, “grandpa’s new toy,” for an extended family of five Californians, to vacation — a road trip to TERROR.

Sorry.

A father (screenwriter Jeff Denton), his 20something brother (Brian Nagel, the director’s brother), a wife and mom (Denise Richards), a little girl and grandpa (Greg Violand) board the killer RV for a trip.

The “old mare may have a few more starts left in her,” but the AC doesn’t work, most of the windows don’t open. So of course, they’re headed to the desert.

“It’s OK, Olivia. We can watch a little TV.”

“TV doesn’t work.”

When they stumble upon siblings Samantha (Mischa Barton) and Mark (Matt Mercer) broken down on the side of the road, it’s “We can give you a ride.” Because noooo, there aren’t not enough people on board this 31 footer.

‘”Dad! Why are you SPEEDING UP?”

“It’s not me…”

Wrecked, in the desert, with a Winnie who Wants to Whack Us!

We’re going to be out here for days or weeks!

Sam barely has time to get out, “I have a BAD feeling about this” when death and destruction arrive. Mother Jennifer (Richards) sees a bloody ghost on board, and little Olivia (Malika Michelle) is drawing grisly ghouls in crayon.

“There is SOMETHING going on IN THERE!”

No working engine  no cell service — because phones are USEless in horror movies — no hope. Or IS there?

Foreshadowing — a knife loose on a dinette table as the RV hurtles out of control, the ominous cooling fan blades as somebody reaches into the engine bay of a motor that doesn’t start, until…

Black water in the tanks, blonde hair clogging the drains, the signs are all here. “The Ring” needs a ring job, “Christine” gave her engine to a new vehicle, or the desert takes no prisoners — something is sure to get them, preferably one by one.

A radio that tunes itself to Radio Music of the Dead (tunes in the public domain, “In the Pines”), ghostly voices in the desert, everybody has horrific visions –sometimes replaying moments with the recently-deceased, “don’t go in there” cabinets that open mysteriously…

“Mommy, can I play with the jump rope?

There’s nobility in work, and while it’s hard to imagine members of this cast tackling an indie horror picture whose chief expense was buying a seventh-hand RV if they had other choices, a few moments work — a death here, paroxysms of grief there.

But for a place with no cell service, there are plenty of people pretty much phoning it in, or simply not having the skills to act in the moment and react convincingly to terror, physical threats or the sudden death of a loved one right in front of you.

The “names” Barton and Richards give something like fair value, but the guys? They seem distracted, especially the two fretting about what they have to do NEXT behind the camera.

It’s an intriguing horror filmmaking exercise — a confined set moved to a deadly location, players inhabiting it as they’re picked off. Bit player turned turned director Brian Nagel (“The Retrieval”) doesn’t do much with it.

“It’s the ONLY thing that makes sense!”

“That makes SENSE to you?”

And “The Toybox” itself, like the movie about it, is never scary, just kind of grim and rusty and dogged. It obeys no “horror” or “ghost” rules and makes less sense the more you think about it.

But Barton plays moments and lines like she means them — “Your HELP got my brother killed!” With this and the similarly low-budget/no-budget “The Basement” earning limited release the same weekend, she doesn’t let on the struggle it is to find decent roles to play once you’re a dozen years beyond “The O.C.”

If only Tarantino would call.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast:Denise Richards, Mischa Barton, Jeff Denton,Greg Violand

Credits:Directed by Tom Nagel, script by Jeff Denton. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:35

Praise the Lord, Netflix has gotten into the Nicole Holofcener business!

One of the cinema’s most independent, distinctly quirky, distinctly feminine voices should be right at home on the streaming network, where fans will have time to find her work — lots and lots of time.

Holofcener makes movies for adults about adults with adult problems, real or imagined. The director of “Friends with Money” and “Lovely and Amazing” and “Please Give” writes sparkling dialogue and created great parts for her muse, Catherine Keener and career-changing opportunities for Jennifer Aniston and Julia Louis Dreyfus as well.

“The Life of Steady Habits” gives Hollywood’s heavy of the moment, Ben Mendelsohn (“Rogue One,” “Ready Player One”) a chance to play the guy who gets the girl.

OK, “girls.” Women. Anders Hill is retired, newly single and spending a lot of time picking up women in home decor stores in the film’s opening. Holofcener sets her films in real world situations in a real world. The first scene is in Bed, Bath and Beyond, and it doesn’t get more real than that.

Edie Falco plays his ex, and her blurting out “God, I hate these f—–g SPANX” is pretty real world, too.

Anders used to be in finance and used to be married. Now he’s adrift, and so is his son (Thomas Mann). Out of college, out of rehab, Preston is living with his mother, trying to set a personal record for days not screwing something up — a job, his life.

And the sad thing is his dad is going through exactly the same thing. Anders gets blitzed at a party thrown by family friends “I can’t stand.” How? He lights up with the kids gathered around Charlie (Charlie Tahan of “Ozark”).

“Oh, I feel joyful, oh soooo joyful. And SAD, too. Jesus! This is some serious grass!”

It’s PCP, actually. Because Charlie, sweet and whimsical as he is, has a problem. He’s a younger version of Preston, gutting his future at an even earlier age than Preston did.

Anders is six months divorced and trying not to tell his ex that he hasn’t been paying the mortgage because “I can’t afford to retire AND pay for the mortgage.”

It’s the holidays and he’s making one mistake after another, like getting drunk and raiding his old homestead for photo albums, etc. — breaking in to do it. ‘

Helene (Falco) has taken up with a new guy, and Anders can’t get his head around it. They used to be friends.

“Acquaintances.” 

She tells him, “It’s not my job, anymore, baby sitting you.”

But somebody should be. Drifting from bed to bed, maybe he’ll recognize quality when he stumbles across her in the strip club (Connie Britton, killing it as a brittle but hopeful divorcee).

The stoner Charlie ODs, and Anders brings him a book of Japanese erotica in the hospital — one he stole from the library. Bad choice after bad choice.

Holofcener scripts these marvelous, intimate conversations — men debating the value of a house one doesn’t want to sell, women “mothering” each other’s adult kids, kids confiding to a friend of their parents what they hate about those parents, pillow talk confessions about “the final straw” in a divorce.

No, that’s not necessary. REALLY.

“No no no no. It’s RIDICULOUS.”

Mendelsohn, a great character actor, has unforced, natural and funny scenes with everybody, delicious moments with Falco, Mann, Tahan, Britton and Everyman Character Actor Camp.

She’s seeing you? “I don’t GET it!”

Little grace notes abound — home movies, a holidays “tip” envelope that holds a picture of a mother and son in happier times, in-depth consideration of the little dog the Russian/Soviet space program pointlessly murdered in the late 1950s, Charlie’s “clubhouse” where he hides out from his parents — their sailing yacht, covered in a boatyard, all the comforts of home — and later, a flare is set off, a kid in distress finally giving that away.

Everybody, especially Mendelsohn, revels in those grace notes and hits the punchlines and reveal little profundities as they figure out their failings and try to be funny about it.

“You have kids?”

“Yeah, a boy. Well, a man now, really. You?”

” have…women!”

Whatever the shifting business model of indie film has done to Holofcener’s career, it’s great that she gets this new lease on life from a streaming service.

Wherever else Netflix is spending its millions on product, “The Land of Steady Habits” demonstrates that Nicole Holofcener is their safest gamble, a smart lady making smart movies that her fans, and new converts, will have a chance to find.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, drug abuse, sex, profanity, violence

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco, Thomas Mann, Charlie Tahan, Connie Britton, Bill Camp

Credits: Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, based on a Ted Thompson novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

You’ve heard what Olivia Munn did — call out Shane Black, who thought he’d help out a convicted sex felon pal by sneaking him into a bit part in his smart-mouthed reboot of “The Predator” franchise.

The perv’s scene was cut out of the release print of the movie (“Director’s cut, here we come!”). But will that keep you from checking out this latest “Alien Whoopi Goldberg” killer thriller? How about bad reviews?  Nooo, not just mine. Pretty much across the board — funny banter, hilarious characters, movie caves in on itself about 45 minutes in.

Box Office Mojo figures it’ll hit $29 million, and no more, thanks to the brand, the compliant target audience and the hype. It earned $2.5 million Thursday night, so Deadline.com believes $30 million is within reach.

“A Simple Plan” got terrific reviews and could have real girls-night-out legs to it once word gets around. A $16-18 million opening, with BoxOfficeMojo predicting the higher end of that range. I think it could make bank on into October — nasty/funny/empowering in a “Bridesmaids” meets “Gone Girl” (Paig Feig directed) way. We’ll see.

I liked “White Boy Rick” better than many. Actually, it’s that rare movie whose aggregate score on Rottentomatoes matches its score on the more selective, more discerning Metacritic.com.They both hit the sweet spot, “passing grade” or “fresh” rating of 61 as of Friday AM.

It won’t make a mint at the box office, Matthew McConaughey’s presence or not. $10 million if they’re lucky, $8.6 the more reasonable expectation, per Box Office Mojo. 

The low budget Pure Flix sequel to La Jolie’s Oscar bait WWII picture “Unbroken” is titled “Unbroken: Path to Redemption,” and picks up Louis Zamperini’s story AFTER he came back home after the war. He found Billy Graham. Middling reviews for this one, though I thought the star was on the money and the production values top drawer. 

“Redemption” is on a LOT of screens, and with a little push from America’s pulpits could better the $5 million opening weekend that Mojo sees as its ceiling. 

The Old Guys Ride genre of “road picture” isn’t a new thing.

And “American Dresser” adds nothing new to the font of knowledge that, say, “Wild Hogs” fertilized.

A soapy, tame and dramatically-thin cross country odyssey, it’s “Last Flag Flying” on two wheels. “Dresser” gives us Tom Berenger and Keith David on two “dressers,” loaded touring bikes built for comfort, on a ride from Long Island to the West Coast.

The pleasures of some good acting by Berenger and David, Gina Gershon and Bruce Dern doesn’t overcome the over-familiarity of the journey, the stops along the way and the late life lessons learned as they “keep the chrome up,” or try to. It’s tired in every sense of the word.

We meet John (Berenger) as he’s late to his wife’s funeral. An alcoholic disappointment to his daughters, drinking as he reads a long-lost letter his late wife (Gershon) never sent him, he resolves to polish up his “dresser” and hit the road.

David is Charlie, his foul-mouthed “master sergeant” from back in Vietnam. Charlie’s about to lose a leg, and he “tags along” on this “last chance for the ride of a lifetime.”

The geezers hit biker bars, where “Redeck Pride” is the ethos and the Outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd never left the jukebox,. Dealing with belligerent “inbreeds” is how they meet Willie (writer-director Carmine Cangialosi).

A favorite moment — Willie looks them over and asks, “You guys were in Vietnam? You see any action?”

Berenger fixes him with a weary glower that says, “You didn’t see ‘Platoon,’ Sonny?”

Modest budget is no cardinal sin in the cinema, and if you choose to spend your limited funds on getting that shot of driving the road below Mount Rushmore and more on an afterthought scene at the famous Sturgis, S.D. biker rally, so be it.

But with cameos by Bruce Dern, Penelope Anne Miller and Jeff Fahey to get to, Cangialosi is his own worst enemy — or casting decision. “Willie” is forever taking a dramatic, slow drag on a cigarette or joint, taking too long to get to his line, vanity touches that are ill-suited to a film embracing the ageing Harley demographic that the picture celebrates and preaches to. He’s just not interesting as a character or an actor playing that character, even if Willie’s function is to be the “muscle” in a bar brawl, the love interest for a lady biker (Becky O’Donohue) whose path they cross on the blacktop.

Fahey chose not to get a regulation haircut before playing a rush-to-judgement, suspects-beating small town police chief  That’s one good message “Dresser” delivers to its potential audience, one they don’t want to hear. A lot of cops in a lot of places away from media watchdogs figure they have license to do what they please with black folks.

“What is WRONG with you people? He’s a Vietnam veteran!”

Dern drops in as a homeless biker now living in a van and adds a little grizzled sparkle to the dramedy. Gershon, seen in flashbacks, has a lovely moment of hiding the grief of a scary phone call she won’t share with her husband — bad news about the disease that will kill her.

Everybody has a “past,” everybody has a crutch (Cangialosi’s prop cigarette, Berenger’s bottle, David’s profanity).

Aside from that, and figuring out which simple riding along scenes required stunt doubles and actors sitting on bikes on trailers (I’m not sure KD is up to it these days), there isn’t much other than scenery to recommend “American Dresser.”

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Tom Berenger, Bruce Dern,  Gina Gershon, Penelope Ann Miller, Keith David

Credits: Written and directed Carmine Cangialosi. A Cinedigm release.

Running time: 1:37

It’s become old hat to refer to any Emma Thompson performance these days as a crowning achievement in her screen career.

But if Helen Mirren was born to play “The Queen,” she simply had to age into the part, the actress’s actress Thompson is so naturally imperious as an I-won’t-be-second-guessed children’s court judge “The Children Act” that you’d swear that’s what she’s been doing, between movie, these past few years.

As Mrs. Justice Fiona May she is a workaholic, taking her Solomonic duties and herself seriously. She’s deciding custody, weighing court efforts to retrieve children removed from Britain illegally and when we meet her, wrestling with a very public case about conjoined twin babies.

“The welfare of the child is paramount,” according to the opening lines of Britain’s “Children Act,” and it is her cover for a wide range of publicly controversial rulings — deciding that the parents don’t get to choose not to separate twins who won’t live long without such surgery. As thoughtful as “My lady’s” rulings are from the bench, “the logic of the lesser of two evils” and all that, when she gets home it’s “I’ve given instructions to slaughter a baby,” she tells her American husband, a college classics professor played by the great Stanley Tucci.

Jack, however, is feeling neglected. And when he announces “I think I want to have an affair,” Fiona — “Fee” — is aghast. She doesn’t have time for this. He has a paramour picked out, and that’s that. Her only dismissive riposte is “I can’t believe how cool we are.”

Weekend duty at the court gets her mind back on work, the sudden call by a hospital trying to save an under-age-of-consent leukemia patient. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness and he’s refusing a blood transfusion.

The judge and the court hear from a hematologist, irritated by the boy and his parents’ posistion, and from the kid’s father (Ben Chaplin, sensitive, working class and passioate) who explains that they all believe the soul is in the blood, and “transfusions pollute it…It belongs to God,” and therefor it is wrong to accept blood from another.

This is going to be a tricky one, something the distracted judge — she is also an enthusiastic piano accompanist at annual legal profession parties — will have to weight carefully. She’s always short with her all-serving clerk. Now she’s downright snippy.’

The court case is the most interest section of this Richard Eyre film, based on a script by Ian McEwan, who wrote the novel it’s based on. The arcanna of the British legal system — the robes, the wigs, the works — is showcased, as is the belief system of Jehovah’s witnesses.

A passionate lawyer for the parents cites “Common Law, privacy and precious dignity” as what’s being debated here. The lawyer for the hospital reminds one and all just how secular Britain can be. arguing that “a religious cult” has convinced the kid to become “a pointless martyr” based on their interpretation “of an Iron Age text (the Bible).”

It’s when the judge takes the unusual step of going to see the lad (Fionn Whitehead) that Eyre’s film — he did “Notes on a Scandal” — takes a turn for the loopy. Adam is charming, breathlessly arguing for his sanity, his personal sanctity and against her acting as “an interfering busybody.”

He reasons with her, explains the merits of belief, that deep-seeded sense of right and wrong his upbringing gives him. And will not let her leave without playing her something on his guitar.

They duet on a folk song setting of a Yeats poem. Seriously.

And after she high-handedly does what she always does, rules from on high and thus “saves” his life, Adam only gets clingier. She has closed one world off to him and he’s scrambling to replace it with another, built on her “wisdom.”

The moral quandary of the film is interesting, but Mrs. Justice Maye’s role in it is more so. As she struggles to treat her marriage’s problems with the same edict-like finality, she fends off Adam’s post-court pleas and moves on to the next pronouncement.

Thompson plays the judge with a brittle, icy edge, firm with Adam even as you can see his plight has reached her humanity. Her performance pulls it back from “loopy” and the movie passes muster on the strength of that.

The domestic melodrama has sparks thanks to the fortuitous pairing of the Oscar winning Thompson with the formidable Tucci. What could play as trite and trivial next to the Big Issues weighed in the other scenes has actual gravitas thanks to the performers.

Thompson also plays the piano and sings, here and there, showing this iron-willed judge’s vulnerability as she does.

Young Whitehead (“Dunkirk”) makes Adam almost laughably overbearing, in an overeager boy’s way. The writer McEwan gets across what the kid’s about in a scene or two, and gives us one or two more for good measure.

This certainly played differently in the UK than it will in the US, where children’s rights appear to have more latitude, even if they can seem even more at the mercy of the caprices of the judiciary.

But what translates on both sides of the Atlantic is the acting, especially Thompson, finally starting to get the roles the Great Mirren began to land at her age, crowning yet another film with the latest in a long line of subtle, layer performances.

MPAA Rating:R for a sexual reference

Cast: Emma Thompson, Fionn Whitehead, Stanley Tucci, Ben Chaplin

Credits:Directed by Richard Eyre, script by Ian McEwan. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:45