Movie Nation

The first wide release cartoon to show up since “Incredibles 2” figures to own the box office this weekend.

None of the “Hotel Transylvania” movies have been all that. I mean, Adam Sandler, right? Reviews for the cruise ship installment in the series, “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” have been indifferent, at best.

But Box Office Mojo figures it’ll do a whopping $45 million or so business by midnight Sunday.

The Box Office Guru is figuring $40 million is more in line with this proven brand’s expectations.

Either call should put it ahead of that other proven box office brand, Dwayne Johnson. His “Skyscraper,” another vehicle pairing the wrestler/actor with his “Central Intelligence” director, should do gangbusters business — $34 says Mr. Mojo, only $32 sayeth the Guru. I figure, after “Jumanji” and “Rampage,” Johnson’s BO appeal has never been higher and at least this is better than “Rampage.” “Skyscraper” could get a lot closer to the vampire cartoon.

Everybody is predicting “Ant-Man and The Wasp” to have a big drop-off on its second weekend. Low $30s is the most Marvel can expect to bank. Anything below $32 and you can blame comic book movie fatigue, four films inside of five months.

It’s done well during the week, a HUGE Tuesday, for instance. But basically, that one’s due to fade pretty quickly.

“Sorry to Bother You” is the best reviewed picture to hit wide release this weekend, an African American/Working American satire that hits more than it misses, it should crack the top ten, earning maybe $3 million. As George S. Kaufman famously quipped, “Satire is what closes Sat. night.” And “Sorry” is no “Get Out.” 

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” will clear $350 by Sunday, “First Purge” will clear $50, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” will be chased out of the top ten, as will “Ocean’s 8” (probably) and “Tag” (ditto), which are losing screens with all the new arrivals taking over.

There are a limited number of tropes common to “the prison picture.”

“Normal” guy gets tossed in the joint, where he adapts to the savagery or dies (see the popular “Shot Caller”). Dodging rape or death in the shower, coping with the Big House hierarchy, tattoos, “shivs,” corrupt, sadistic guards — rare is the prison picture where these elements aren’t the building blocks of the story.

This ordinary person bent by a twisted system drives “Orange is the New Black” and most other variations of the “in stir” genre.

Set your story overseas, and everything — the stakes, the violence, the corruption and the life disruption are just dialed up. Hell, even Bridget Jones had her moment of truth in a Thai prison.

“A Prayer Before Dawn” hurls a violent man into this world of violence, sort of a “Bronson” parked in “The Bangkok Hilton,” as it is called. But this true story of Brit boxer Billy Moore’s ordeal dodges a few genre conventions and turns toward “Midnight Express” in its relentless violence, fish-out-of-water sense of displacement and rare moments of humanity.

It’s not a reinvention of the genre, but it is a fairly engrossing variation on a theme. And that’s in large part due to the violence — sexual and otherwise — it recreates.

Joe Cole of TV’s “Peaky Blinders” plays Moore, a Brit kicking around Bangkok’s underground fighting scene, only not kicking enough to win. He’s an over-matched boxer in a Muay Thai MMA world, tough as nails, always on the wrong side of the law and addicted to yaba, that methamphetamine and caffeine blend that is Thailand’s contribution to illegal drug culture.

Billy gets nicked, and we skip straight past the trial and to his introduction to Thai prison life. The sea of disreputable humanity that surrounds him, the sheer scale of everything from that indoctrination strip/search to the 70 inmates (one dead) packed into his cell, tells us that tough guy or not, being slightly bigger and paler is not going to help our lad fit in with this bunch.

That first trip to the bathroom is terrifying and traumatic. Resisting the “cell boss” (Panya Yimmumphai), covered in tattoos, metal-toothed and surrounded by tough lackeys, is futile. None of that “fight the toughest guy in the yard” cliched BS. Resisting the corrupt guards won’t do him any good, either.

“No family, no money, no cigarettes” is the one English phrase they know.

Cole and the script don’t give this guy much of an interior life, but Billy seems to accept his fate, hunting for angles that allow him to get by – mastering the cigarette economy that prisons the world over traffic in, for instance.

The gambling here is over Siamese Fighting Fish fights (a funny touch). Conjugal visits? Those are from prostitutes, Thailand’s infamous “Ladyboys,” one of whom, named Fame (Pornchanok Mabklang) speaks English and starts to help him out, that one human lifeline to “outside” that Billy can count on.

The screenplay emphasizes Billy’s total immersion in this experience — hurled into anarchic chaos, speaking little of the language (the real Billy Moore taught English to the locals, supplementing  that salary with his back-alley boxing), trying to understand each fresh threat, trying to make himself understood.

Subtitles are rarely provided. We hear what Billy hears, see what Billy sees, and try to figure out what’s happening or about to happen the same way he does.

His salvation, after many trips to “the hole” and narrow escapes from death, is fighting. There’s a gym, guys train under the tutelage of a tall, charismatic, chain-smoking Muay Thai master played by Somlock Kamsing, the most impressive of several real fighters cast in supporting roles. 

It’s ancient history to generations of moviegoers now, but Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express,” scripted by Oliver Stone and about an American “Billy” imprisoned in Turkey, is the closest analog to “A Prayer Before Dawn.” That’s the gold standard for “locked-up abroad” films, but far more of a thriller (and more harrowing and emotional) than “Prayer.”

Little that we see here hasn’t turned up in other prison films, and there’s not enough to Cole’s performance to make Billy a wholly sympathetic, iconic hero/survivor. We root for him because that’s pre-ordained, fear for him because he’s our proxy in this Third World Hell.

“A Prayer Before Dawn” still manages to tell a gritty story without blinking or ever looking away, a sobering look at how even the fittest among “us” would be lucky to survive the murderous world Billy Moore misbehaved his way into.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence including a brutal rape sequence, drug use and language throughout, some sexual content and nudity

Cast: Joe Cole, Pornchanok Mabklang, Panya Yimmumphai

Credits:Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, script by Jonathan Hirschbein, Nick Saltrese. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:53

You know, just with kids and no “name” actors at all, no tangible presence of R.L. Stine, and lots and lots of effects?

From the looks of this, nah. October 12 may prove me wrong, but comic movie stars make the supernaturally wacky work. As in “Jumanji.”

This is dazzling, real Elizabethan eye candy. This latest “Mary, Queen of Scots” promises a more feminist, “what we have in common” spin on this bloody, sibling rivalry.

Yes, they cross that line. But scheming menfolk had a hand in creating this quarrel, men who cannot abide the thought of a woman running the show.

Guy Pearce and David Tennant also star.

“Mary, Queen of Scots” opens in December. Oscar bait? Sure looks like it.

“The Skin of the Wolf” is a wilderness battle-of-wills set in the stunning heights of the Spanish Pyrenees, a fur-covered mountain man used to getting his way confronted by a woman who takes his measure.

It’s more striking to look at than riveting to follow. But if you ever doubted Europe has wilderness to rival America’s dazzling snow-capped peaks, wild waterfalls and unforgiving forests, it’s worth a look.

Martinón (Mario Cassas of “Witching and Bitching”) is the epitome of “The Natural Man.” Bearded, self-sufficient and solitary, he hunts, farms a little and keeps a mountainous Spanish village free from wolves in the Pyrenees of the late 19th century.

He knows his trades, and treats every transaction with the same, pitiless roughness.

The village owes him money? Maybe we can work something out. Maybe the miller’s daughter, who submits to his rugged, earthy “charms” on occasion, can be bought.

Pascuala (Ruth Diaz) barely has time to get used to the routine — firewood chopping, planting, cooking and being mounted like a wolf, with about as much romantic intent — when she announces she’s pregnant.  Martinón has little chance to soften his ways, as her pregnancy quickly leads to her death.

His grief burns into rage, and it’s as an aggrieved customer that he shows up at the grist mill, dragging her body in after him. He wants his money back or else.

The miller barely has time to quake, “What kind of animal ARE you,” (in Spanish, with English subtitles), when he comes up with an “or else.”

He has another daughter. And this time around, this daughter, Adela (Irene Escolar of “Finding Altamira”), isn’t all submissive and compliant. This rutting brute won’t be burying her out back, where Martinón left the holes he dug for Pascuala open before dragging her back to her father. Adela won’t give  him the chance to drag her corpse down the mountain for a refund.

Such movies inevitably fall under the spell of their location — every exterior a picture postcard, every interior a candlelit study in shadows, rustic furniture and the primitive life. That tends to gloss over the limitations of a spare, straightforward and emotionally barren script.

Cassas hides his good looks behind a beard and labored, bearish breathing. He keeps Martinón unsentimental, a killer who keeps just enough wolves alive to maintain his trade. Trapping, then and now, is a stone-hearted practice and Cassas lets us see how this man, trapped himself in a half-ruined farmstead in the life he both inherited and made for himself, has been shaped by his environment.

Escolar’s Adela has the burden of turning the audience toward her and against Martinón, and while we may root for her, we don’t root that hard. The script doesn’t give her that chance.

Which is a lot of typing on my part to come around to saying, “Too little happens” for “The Skin of the Wolf” to pay off.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with lots of rough sex, hunting violence

Cast: Mario Cassas, Irene Escolar, Ruth Diaz

Credits: Written and directed by Samu Fuentes. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52

Reviews weren’t stellar, because truth be told, you cannot take the world by surprise but once. Repetition is a real risk. And there isn’t much chemistry between the funny Paul Rudd and the fetching Evangeline Lilly.

But “Ant-Man and The Wasp,” the latest Marvel money-maker to stomp onto way too many screens, was at least supposed to best 2015’s “Ant-Man,” in terms of take. Opening weekend projections were in the $100 million range, modest for Marvel (a few figured $130 million was within reach).

And all weekend long, those estimates shrank. And shrank. Well, maybe $94, OK, 88, Yeah, well, $88, $81. $76?

That means, Forbes says, that the movie won’t earn, all-in, as much as its predecessor at the domestic box office.

Competition shouldn’t be an issue, but The Rock has proven to be a superhero-in-tights killer, and “Skyscraper” opens this weekend. It will do just fine, but Marvel has over-saturated the market, and that may be starting to show. The whole universe is in flux, with contracts expiring, Thanos vaporizing all manner of characters and the smartest actors (Downey, Evans, Jackson, Renner) knowing it’s time to move on.

I was figuring “Ant-Man” would have a “Solo” sized drop its second weekend, simply because it’s not a funny, interesting or coherent sequel or stand-alone popcorn pic.

Kind of “Bulworth” in feel, this trailer is about a rich “hack” author (Gabriel Byrne), not content with his Hollywood rights deals (Bob Balaban is his cynical agent) who thinks “authenticity” is a young actress/performance artist who doesn’t sell-out/compromise or seem to be getting anywhere.

Until he champions her. She’s played by Kiersey Clemons.

“An L.A. Minute” gets its LA minute in theaters in the dumping ground of late August (Aug. 24), where a picture that might click but is more likely to be an also-ran, tries to find an audience on the big screen pre-Netflix.

The most famous “Big Eyes” case in literary history, an artist whose husband claimed credit for her work, was the French novelist Colette, who wrote the novella that the musical “Gigi” is based on, the novel that the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Cheri” was based on, a series of books on a young heroine, “Claudine” — tales of  coquettes, women of a certain age, romance, wildly popular works.

Dominic West plays Henry Gauthier-Villars, the writer whose famous nom de plume “Willy” was the brand that allowed him to take the credit for his wife’s “girl” stories. West makes great villains.

Keira Knightley plays Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and her performance and the film have the look, feel and uplifting story one wants out of an Awards Season period piece.

Can Bleecker Street campaign an Oscar contender to a win? “Colette” opens in limited release Sept. 21.

We shall see.

She wants to get into Harvard, more than life itself.

He’s hellbent on Yale, come hell or high water.

Hemlock Prep classmates Bennett (Jacob Lattimore of “The Maze Runner” and “Detroit”) and Lona (Sami Gayle of TV’s “Blue Bloods”) long ago decided that academia was a zero sum game. At war since kindergarten, raised by single moms — his is a wealthy state senator, hers is, well, Christina Hendricks of “Mad Men” — want it all, the whole “Candy Jar.”

Netflix continues to step into the niche — teen rom-coms — that the major studios abandoned when they went all-in on comic books, with this tolerable trip down utterly predictable lane — mismatched, but oh-so perfect-for-each-other that we know where this is going long before Homecoming.

Gayle and Lattimore play these speed-debaters, sentenced to be “co-president” of their debate team, as if they’re terrified their supporting cast will scald them, given half the chance.

When their best scenes are with Academy Award winning comic actress Helen Hunt, you can understand their concern. Cathy — she likes the kids to call her by her first name — was Obama’s classmate and is thus sympathetic to their Ivy League dreams.

Finish that application and get a DATE. Find a little balance.

“My greatest skill is arguing with people,” Bennett complains. “Not exactly date material.”

“Forget Yale! “Focus on becoming a better kisser.”

Hemlock Prep is the sort of school where the (mostly) rich kids annoy the principal (Tom Bergeron, a hero to generations of toddlers via “America’s Funniest Home Videos”) into ranting his retire to the South of France fantasy to shut them up.

The debate coach (Paul Tigue) has a thing for quoting movies — badly.

“STOP! Not my tempo!”

As the kids spend the year haggling — at caffeinated speeds — “Resolved, the Cost of a College Education Do Not Outweigh the Benefits — Lona and Bennett find they have a lot more in common than either would admit.

The arcane rules of debate, its place within the Ivy League admission, law school, Wall Street or political success is laid out. The descent of debate into rapid-fire recitations is dissected.

State Senator/Lawyer Julia (Uzo Aduba of Broadway and “Orange is the New Black”) does that politician thing of being fake-tactful, tooting her own horn, Hendricks’ Cool Mom Amy is depressed, doesn’t keep house, drinks and swears in front of her over-achieving kid.

Yeah, the single moms hate goes WAY back.

The two best debaters in the county? They can’t stop a lifetime of sniping overnight. Or can they?

“You disrespect the judges!”

“You have bad debate habits!”

“You have bad breath!”

“YOU have a stupid face!”

The arguments, kid and adult, are built around debate “rules.” Those arguing argue their opponents into corners, where they pin them. Checkmates are acknowledged through gritted teeth. Unlike in the real America, people who disagree keep it civil.

Worldwise, onetime over-achiever but settled-for-this-life Cathy, who placates her young charges with treats from her “Candy Jar,” is there to remind one and all that life isn’t predictable, that stressing over the head-start you assume a prestigious college admission earns you, is no guarantee of success, a meaningful life, or happiness.

I like the film’s messages and aspirations, the recognition that kids (and their helicopter moms) need to learn that “Sometimes, you lose.” For a Netflix film aimed at this age group, it’s quaintly chaste.

But in execution, “Candy Jar” rarely rises to the level of “time killer.” The leads are adequate, but don’t really set off sparks. The jokes are tepid, the few that work die of loneliness.

Without those elements, a rom-com’s blandly predictable “the price focused kids pay in over-achieving” message is over-exposed, too pale and delicate to stand the harsh light of the day.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, profanity, alcohol

Cast: Jacob KLaittmore, Sami Gayle, Helen Hunt, Christina Hendricks, Tom Bergeron, Uzo Aduba

Credits:Directed by Ben Shelton, script by Chad Klitzman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32

The dizzying, twisted satire of work in post “Black Lives Matter” America that is “Sorry to Bother You” comes close to taking your breath away during its first 40 giddy minutes.

It’s no shock that the jokes about the gig economy and the winner-take-all American system kind of exhaust themselves at about that point. As over-the-top as what we see might be, it’s so close to grim reality for much of working America as to turn dispiriting after a while.

But boy, lyricist-turned-writer/director Boots Riley is onto something. Corporations that trade “security” for a lifetime of low wages and dead-end prospects, “visionary entrepreneurs” who are basically just hype-and-hustle slave masters, phony incentives and the reality of just what “we” represent to “them” — consumers here solely to give them money, workers giving up our time and lives in greater and greater proportions — it’s all here.

He overreaches and delivers a third act that’s not nearly as clever as he thinks it or he is, but “Sorry” still manages laughs that hurt.

Lakeith Stanfield of “Get Out” and “Atlanta” is Cassius Green, an Oakland drudge stuck on the bottom rung of the employment ladder. He’s so hard up he brings Employee of the Month plaques and “moot court” trophies to job interviews. They’re fake.

But that doesn’t matter at RegalVision. The boss (Robert Longstreet)  is onto him, but as he’ll hire anyone who breathes, can read and speak English, Cassius is hired. He’ll be a commission only telemarketer, peddling encyclopedias and the like to hapless, unwilling folks unfortunate enough to pick up the phone.

A witty touch. Cassius, who uses “Sorry to bother you” as his opening line in cold calls, is dropped (literally) into the living room, kitchen or bedroom of whoever he calls and interrupts, face to face with the broke, the broken-hearted and the copulating, none of whom are interested in his spiel.

“Stick to the Script” his foul-mouthed cheerleader/supervisor (Michael X. Sommers, hilarious) preaches. But it’s not until the Old Man of the Phone Banks (Danny Glover, perfect) passes on his wisdom that things work out for Cassius.

“Hey, Youngblood. Use your white voice!”

Damned if sounding and reasoning like David Cross (the white voice Cassius comes up with) doesn’t pay off. He might just make it out of the basement call center into “Power Caller” status, one shiny, access-limited elevator ride up to where the “ballers” of this business make calls to high rollers — governments in need of arms, Chinese oligarchs in need of cheaper phone assemblers, the big money cold calls.

“Bag’em and tag’em” and that big payday gig can be yours, YoungBlood Cassius is assured.

His artist girlfriend (Tessa Thompson, uncomfortable in this sort of second-banana role), a sign-spinner in this side hustle world, is impressed with his initiative. Until, that is, union agitation starts at RegalVision thanks to the one guy (Steven Yuen) who sees the Big Picture starvation-wage economy America is settling into. Will Cassius sell out? “How quickly will he sell out?” is the better question. Which he dodges.

“You’re sidestepping more than The Temptations!”

The temptations of “visionary” Steve Lift (Armie Hammer, all “Holla at yo’ boy” ghetto and the funniest he’s ever been), who runs Worry Free, a live-your-work/work-to-live corporation that’s a little Apple, a lot Google, a lot more Amazon with Lyft wages, prove too hard to resist. Cassius may get his Maserati, bail his uncle (Terry Crews) out of hock and move out of that uncle’s garage (literally). But at what cost?

There’s a little “Soylent Green” and “Brazil,” The Truman Show” and Karl Marx in all this, and Riley gives this just-past-the-present future the sting of recognition, workers with zero power and no rights facing an economy stacked against them at every turn.

If you think of the labor/capital arrangement between NFL players and their “owners,” you’re not far off from what this film suggests.

The setting — telemarketing centers — earns head-nods of recognition. It’s a predatory business, sort of the ultimate expression of capitalism. It makes you think of the National Do Not Call Registry, a joke that was the only piece of consumer protection legislation ever passed by a Republican Congress. How’s that working out for you?  Ever stop to wonder why it doesn’t work?

Stanfield has funny fight scenes with Jermaine Fowler, playing Sal, our hero’s best friend and somebody ready to agitate against the injustice of the workplace, as soon as somebody explains what those injustices are. And there are amusing “White Voice” encounters with the King of the “Power Callers” (Omari Hardwick of TV’s “Power”). 

The picture has the rage and energy of early Spike Lee films, and the same “How do I END this?” third act failings. I wanted to love it, but it stalls long before it takes a turn towards something so bizarre it’ll be taught in film schools for decades, “How NOT to give your sci-fi satire a climax.”

As it is, “Sorry to Bother You” has enough injustice every working person, black, white or whatever, has faced to make you laugh in recognition, and seethe about all the way home after seeing it.

Too bad they’re selling this as this year’s “Get Out.” It isn’t.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Lakeith Stanfield, Terry Cruise, Omari Hardwick, Danny Glover, Armie Hammer

Credits: Written and directed by Boots Riley. An Annapurna release.

Running time: 1:45