Movie Nation

A tactless/ruthless acting coach/stage director and a wounded, bipolar mother battle for an unstable young actress’s affections and soul in “Madeline’s Madeline,” an extremely disquieting drama about art, ego, fragility and cruelty.

Whatever the mother’s concerns, to the director, this struggle is worth it. Madeline is a young actress who REALLY gets into character.

Working with an improvisational “immersive” theater troupe, nobody takes “be a cat” more seriously, no one goes as deep and far with “performance as the the beautiful but brittle 16 year old.

Because Madeline, played by newcomer Helena Howard, isn’t quite right. She’s fine on stage, wearing masks, making her moments up in the moment, even wandering the streets of the city, grunting in character. But when Mom (indie icon Miranda July) picks her up, the beaming smile fades — gradually or quickly. You never know what will set her off.

And as she suggests to Mom that she’d have liked to stayed after rehearsals to talk with the other mother figure in her life, Evangeline (Molly Parker of “Deadwood”), Mom shows how quickly SHE can be set off.

A hovering, worrying, fretful and indulgent parent turns on a dime — or rather stops her Volvo wagon on one. “Get out. GET OUT.”

Director and co-writer Josephine Decker’s film is a hazy and heady depiction of the breathless enthusiasm of actors wholly-engaged — their brains and every usable sense — and a blurred, confused look at that process through the eyes of a novice who only feels “normal” with that freedom and license, that adrenaline, on or off her meds.

Evangeline is struggling, with a large ensemble of actor/mime/dancers, to invent a show out of “process.” She brings in an ex-con who explains the mentality that gets you through confinement, and orders, “Improvise ‘no way out.'”

There are pig masks and minimalist costumes, ideas worked towards something well short of resolution. Her cast is devoted and celebrate Evangline’s pregnancy announcement. She praises Madeline to the heavens, and we both agree with that praise and wonder how much of it is an acknowledgement of whatever happened in the girl’s past.

Then Mom, interrupting her curious, cute teen’s offstage  adventures with boys who discover her father’s porn collection, shrieks “You want her in a PSYCHE ward for another SIX WEEKS?”

Evangeline? She’s foundering and desperate. Until that first time she gets Madeline to play-act one of her arguments with her mom, playing her mother. As the rest of the cast exchanges increasingly alarmed looks, Evangeline puts Madeline on a gurney. She  says “psyche ward” and orders Madeline to essentially play Madeline, we fear for the girl, the cast, Evangeline, her unborn baby and the future of “immersive theater.”

Because that’s messed up, and probably legally actionable.

In the 1980 cult hit “The Stunt Man,” a director (Peter O’Toole) takes sadistically cruel advantage of a young man (Steve Railsback) on the lam who turns up on his set and is hired as a stunt man. The director seems hellbent on killing the guy.

Parker’s Evangeline isn’t that sadistic, but she has all the power in this dynamic, showing concern about the obviously dysfunctional apple-tree, mother/daughter relationship she’s witnessed — “Do you feel SAFE around your mother?”

We feel sorry for Madeline, sorrier for her hapless mother and take to the edge of our seats, wondering how this dangerous “game” will play out. This rebellious and sometimes violent kid throws ashtrays and pulls her mother’s hair out. How’s she going to understand what’s being done, and how will she react?

What will her improvisations reveal? How will “Madeline’s Madeline” act out this directorial manipulation, and how far will she go in hurting her mother or others?

Howard’s magnetic performance, delivered in a blizzard of mood-swing close-ups, hints at any number of possibilities.

And whatever the balance of power appears to be in Decker’s demanding, quixotic film, never underestimate the dynamism and control a charismatic performer, left to her own devices on the stage, to even those odds.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, adult situations, profanity, teen drinking and smoking.

Cast:Helena Howard, Miranda July, Molly Parker, Okwui Okpokwasili

Credits:Directed by Josephine Decker, script by Josephine Decker and Donna di Novelli. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:33

If Shakespeare was writing today, he’d be having a blast with “catfishing.”

The guy who wrote the book — the plays, actually — on “mistaken identity” romances, disguises, girls dressed as lads, etc., would have been all over social media’s creepy/funny/scary practice of pretending to be someone you’re not and the complications that ensue.

I’ll bet he could find a way to make catfishing romantic. Screenwriter Lindsey Beer, director Ian Samuels and star Shannon Purser? A bit beyond their grasp.

“Sierra Burgess is a Loser” is about the smartest girl in school, the daughter of a famous writer with chip-off-the-old-block (Alan Ruck) tendencies, Stanford ambitions and nothing at all that would get any guy’s attention at school.

Sierra (Purser) is freckled, plumpish and knows it. “You are a magnificent beast!” is her morning mirror affirmation, and hints at both confidence and self-awareness.

She has debate team, marching band, her probably gay BFF (RJ Cyler of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) and the enduring contempt of the Mean Girl Three.

That would be Chrissy, Mackenzie and Queen Bee/Cheerleader Veronica (Giorgia Whigham, Alice Lee and Kristine Froseth).

Sierra has the thick skin to shrug off their insults, even Fairest of the Fair, Veronica’s. She has the brains to burn her right back.

“Move, before you break the mirror, Frodo,” in the bathroom gets a smart-girl correction.

“Quasimodo.”

Veronica’s revenge? Palming off Sierra’s number when some cute guy (Noah Centineo of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”) who asks for hers. He texts and texts, and Sierra is overwhelmed, and then wised-up. She figures out what happened. But can she break free of this boy she’s connecting with? You know, tell him the truth?

“He’s imagining her when he’s talking to me…but…they’re MY words!”

As Mean Veronica is a bit of a dumb blonde, jilted by some college freshman she’s dated, Sierra strikes a bargain. Pretend to be interested in the guy who wanted your number and Sierra will “teach you to study.”

Sierra makes a shocking discovery. Veronica’s home life is a comic fallopian hell — shrieking little sisters, a pushy mom living vicariously through her. Veronica’s “discovery?” Sierra is smart, and smart can be cool.

“‘To be or not to be,’ I’ll have to teach you that next.”

“Nietzsche is like a sexy German vampire. He whines a lot and thinks everything’s pointless.”

BFF Dan frets at what could become of Sierra’s new occupation with boys — “Things escalate, texts turn to calls, calls lead to hand holding, holding hands lead to teen pregnancy, unemployment, lady baldness.”

Purser, of TV’s “Stranger Things” and “Riverdale,” doesn’t have funny in her bones. She makes Sierra thick skinned but not needy or touching enough to root for. Her line readings are teen-real — rushed blurts — which prevent her jokes from landing, ruining her few funny lines.

Even Cyler seems a bit off his wacky-sidekick game here — “Are you a catfish, or a ‘can’t fish?”

They’re not helped by the production. Their wittiest exchange comes in the middle of band practice, blurted out between flute or clarinet parts in the arrangement that’s being played around them. Hilarious? No, mostly inaudible, killing the timing.

Froseth has a winsome way with the prettiest girl, the “Dorian Gray” of high school, suffering in her own way and compensating by lashing out. Even when she’s not lashing out, her little kindnesses have a tactless edge.

“She’s not a lesbian. She just has no taste.”

“Loser” has flashes of empathy and a high mindedness about literature and philosophy and book learning in general.

It’s just that it’s light on “heart,” and has a touch of what the Bard labeled “lackwit” in its banter and the ways its few funny lines are played.

Screenwriter Beer kicks the most interesting relationship, Sierra and Dan, to the side. The two smartest kids in school palling around, rivals in seeking something outstanding or just odd to make them “stand out” in their college applications.

Little grace notes are scattered around the edges — a girl who turns a poetry assignment into a furious rap, the hapless track coach (Geoff Stults) forced to let resume-padding lumps try out for his team — don’t overcome the general sourness of the proceedings.

Slapping a bunch of teen comedy stars of yesteryear in supporting roles — Ferris Bueller’s pal Ruck plays Sierra’s dad, Lea Thompson is her mom — doesn’t bestow that John Hughes magic on the film. Giving the hilarious, empathetic Loretta Devine nothing funny to play (she’s the English teacher) is criminal.

So yes, “Sierra Burgess IS a Loser.”

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexual references, language, teen partying and thematic material

Cast: Shannon Purser, Kristine Froseth, RJ Cyler, Noah Centineo, Loretta Devine, Giorgia Whigham, Alice Lee, Alan Ruck

Credits:Directed by Ian Samuels script by Lindsey Beer. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

Jennifer Garner shows she can still get a dirty, bloody, job done in “Peppermint,” an avenging angel action picture about a widow who lost husband and daughter to “The Cartel” and The System, and means to get her justice the hard way.

It’s a problematic, bloody exercise in formula from those throw-cash-at-stars and anything-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks scrap shooters at STX Films.

Counting “Mile 22” and “Happytime Murders,” “Peppermint” is their third turd in a row.

An over-scheduled, over-worked LA mom misses her daughter’s botched birthday party and she and the hubbie (Jeff Hephner) guilt-drag her to The Christmas Carnival to make up for it. Husband and child are murdered right before heroine Riley North’s eyes, just as she’s fetching peppermint ice cream from a food stall.

The cops (John Gallagher Jr., John Ortiz) are leery about working this case too hard. Riley’s husband kind of got himself into something the The Cartel and its boss, named for the Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba).

The prosecution phones it in. The judge shrugs Riley’s positive ID’d suspects off. She should have taken the opposing counsel’s bribe, delivered with a smirk and a threat by Michael Mosley — nicely done.

Which is more than you can say about El Jefe. Raba has the Cartel mustache, the bulk to be scary, but he’s kind of a pussycat when it comes to murderous drug lords. What did Hitchcock say? “Good villains make good thrillers?” See where I’m headed, there?

Riley cannot know that when she robs the bank she works for, flees to Hong Kong where she takes up cage fighting (to train you understand) and masters every weapon America’s Equip an Army gun stores carry.

Really stupid idea number one, that she’d wait five years to begin exacting her revenge. Stupid idea #2, having her rob such a “military grade” gun store to carry out her scheme.

It’d be a real movie had this lame script thought to put her, overmatched and untrained, into “Death Wish” mode, improvising, stumbling. She should be picking up and stealing weapons from the scores and SCORES of Cartel mobsters, Korean gangsters and crooked cops she takes down, a “spree killer” who finds herself all over the news, and all over the streets as she is bloodied, repeatedly, and must perform that action film staple — “self surgery” — vodka for antiseptic and anesthetic, staples for deep cuts, more vodka for everything else.

I enjoyed watching Garner get back to her “Alias” chops, cuts, slices, shots and head-butts. The editing makes you think she could do this stuff, and her reactions to pain — emotional and ammunitional, is genuine.

But it’s a silly slaughterhouse of a movie — bored cops who have no urgency about them, a cute FBI agent who wears high-higher-highest heels on the job (Annie Ilonzeh), adorable urchins who live on LA’s Skid Row with Riley, a place where she can lay low and nobody will know.

The funniest stuff, Garner’s forte, is Riley’s mission creep — the moment she takes to school a drunk whose little boy deserves better — “This is one of those life-altering moments!” — and her revenge on the Mean Mom who ruined her little girl’s birthday, the one on the night she was murdered.

The unfunny stuff, the sadistically gory stuff, is everything else. It’s so unpleasant and unchallenging that even Garner seems to play Riley as “OK, final scene here, let’s get this over with” in scenes that aren’t the final scene. And the final scene.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and language throughout

Cast: Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, Juan Pablo Raba, Annie Ilonzeh

Credits:Directed by Pierre Morel, script by Chad St. John. An STX release.

Running time: 1:42

The tittering didn’t let up during the showing of “The Nun” I attended. But it had little to do with the jokes in the picture. Maybe a little.

No, this was due to the guy — possibly tipsy — who launched into the hiccups at about the 30 minute mark. He didn’t lose them until the Grand Guignol finale, which tells you something about the quality of the frights of this latest constellation in the “Conjuring/Annabelle/Amityville” Universe.

The prequel set decades before Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson won Jobs for Life as those supernatural hucksters, the Warrens, is about a haunted convent in Romania where a nun dies. The Vatican sends an unflappable “modern” priest/scholar with a troubled past (Demian Bichir) and a novice nun who has visions, and who apparently doesn’t register shock or fear, no matter what she sees or experiences.

Maybe that’s just Tessa Farmiga, who plays her. Badly.

The village is a bit spooked. The helpful delivery guy Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) is their only guide. If they can tear him free of the bar. If he can stop making eyes at Sister Irene.

It’s a gloomy ancient convent, seemingly designed by Hieronymous Bosch and haunted by — wait for it — “The Nun.” If they can survive being buried alive, chased, choked and hurled by “The Nun,” who never seems to want to finish any of them off, they just might solve this mystery, which ties into other “Conjuring” conjurings.

Evil Sister Valak of “The Conjuring 2” is messing with the sisters and “poisoning” the nearby town, and must be thwarted. The convent’s Catholic solution? “Perpetual adoration.” Somebody’s got to be praying, in Latin aloud, at all hours of the day or night.

Sister Irene knows enough Latin to pitch in, which is lucky because “only prayer will get us through the night.” Father Burke, meanwhile, catches up on his reading.

The formidable Bichir gives us both shuddering reactions to the various unholy threats his Father Burke faces, and a kind of “Keep calm and Carry a Crucifix” stoicism.

Ms. Farmiga the younger is hard-pressed to seem even as scared as we in the audience are supposed to be. Perhaps she’s seen the trailer. You know, the one that gives away every scary bit in the movie. That crazy gaping hole from Hell Sister Valak is always RIGHT behind her.

There are completists who have to see every movie in a “universe.” The phrase “The studio saw you coming” applies to them.

For the rest of us, that trailer, sampled for free on Youtube, should be enough — a taste of the effects, a hint of the Big Frights, and heaping helping of Romanian gloom in the wide shots mixed in with the extreme closeups that are supposed to scare us out of the hiccups, sooner rather than later.

MPAA Rating:R for terror, violence, and disturbing/bloody images

Cast: Demián Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet

Credits:Directed by Cory Hardin, script byGary Dauberman . A New Line/Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:36

“God Bless the Broken Road” is a sad, slight faith-based drama about loss, grieving, fresh starts and loyalty.

It dares to be somber and downbeat, hitting that whole “God and country” connection that much of Christian America embraces hard but not too hard, a movie where the grief is more deflating than wrenching.

It’s set in an Army town — Clarksville, Tenneessee — which those who serve in the 101st Airborne at nearby Fort Campbell call home. The Screaming Eagles have a support system, a “We’re family…We’ve got your back” ethos that extends to the families of soldiers.

But when you’re married to a trooper who dies in Afghanistan, maybe this isn’t the best place to start over.

Lindsay Pulsipher (“True Blood”) stars as Amber, a devoted churchgoer raising her little girl (Makenzie Moss) to sing with her every Sunday, until that fateful Sunday when the military’s death notification officers show up in — in church — with the worst possible news.

Two years later, her house is in foreclosure, she’s haunting the pawn shop to get by, she’s getting nudges from fellow church members (Robin Givens, Jordin Sparks, Madeline Carroll), friendly re-connect calls from the Airborne and point-blank nagging from her mother-in-law (Kim Delaney).

“Lean on your faith,” she’s counseled. Remember “the mustard seed,” how just a little faith can pay great dividends. If God “wants me, He knows where to find me,” is her curt answer to that.

Enter Cody, a hunky race-car driver played by Andrew W. Walker. Cody’s an “I’d rather crash than lose” hotdog who crashed one too many racecars for Joe Gibbs’ NASCAR team. Now he’s back in “the minors” getting bums-rushed into building go-carts with the Clarksville church’s youth group by mechanic/driver coach Joe (veteran character actor Gary Grubbs). Nothing like a smokey two-stroke go-cart to bring the kids closer to…emphysema?

That’s not humbling enough? How about the day Joe makes Cody play with Hot Wheels toys to figure out why he can’t “punch it” going into the corners. That’s the funniest scene in the movie, sadly.

Cody is warned that “She’s out of your league” when he eyes Amber, and he ignores it. How will Mr. Reckless adjust his style to be with a woman with a kid, who already lost a husband and father.

As Amber’s world teeters between unraveling and renewing, one of her late husband’s wounded comrades, Mike (Arthur Cartwright) makes contact. Yes, he was there when Darren died. No, Amber’s not sure she needs to hear about it.

One of the great pitfalls to many a faith-based drama is casting. Such films don’t often attract top flight talent — a Dennis Quaid here, a Jennifer Garner or AnnaSophia Robb there.

“God Bless the Broken Road” doesn’t have that problem, at least not on the female side of the ledger. The guys? Less impressive, with footballer LaDainian Tomlinson playing the preacher and nobody aside from Grubbs making much of an impression.

But the good players underplay the grief, which is the heart of their story, and the “let’s pray for her” moments don’t have the emotional punch that a single hymn has in the film’s date/concert scene.

The script spreads its wealth of character actors across a limited supply of ideas and shortchanges virtually everybody.

Still, there’s a decent third act twist. Pulsipher plays the dickens out of the “Where’s the reward for my faith, God?” moment.

It’s just that the bland unreality of too-many faith-based dramas — melodramas, really — suffocates anything promising. Nothing so testing as truly wrenching grief is attempted  the awful consequences of a military insurance policy not allowing you to keep your house, a town where the pawn broker is nicer than Rosie who runs the diner where Amber works — it’s all Nutrasweet when it should be bittersweet.

Even the combat recreation is so flatly staged and shot as to make one wish they’d just written a really good monologue for Cartwright’s survivor to retell the story with.

Racing scenes? Sure, why not toss in one or two of those? There’s budget money and ambition here, just not the rewrites that give these players something to play, something that truly moves you.

Relying on your message to trump the slack movie-making is as lazy as preaching to the choir, which is all too many of these movies are content to do.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements and some combat action

Cast: Lindsay Pulsipher, Robin Givens, Andrew W. Walker, Arthur Cartwright, Jordin Sparks, Madeline Carroll,  LaDainian Tomlinson, Gary Grubbs, Kim Delaney

Credits:Directed by Harold Cronk, script by Jennifer Dornbush . A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:50

Polly Draper wrote, directed and co-stars, playing the mother to sibling rivals Alex Wolff and Nat Wolff in this love triangle — one brother steals the other’s ballerina girlfriend (Paulina Singer) — set against the backdrop of a beloved, aged dog who is about to be “put down” as we euphemistically say.

There’s been a lot of that in films these past couple of months, I must say, and as I have shared my life with a beloved “Stella” myself, this one could be a hard sell — and not just because we’re over the Wolff quota.

“Stella’s Last Weekend” opens Oct. 12.

“Five Fingers for Marseilles” is a modern day Western, a tale of revolutionary South Africa and its aftermath, a world of blood, revenge, “stepping in” to right a great wrong, and fighting back.

It’s a Sotho “Shane,” brutally beautiful and iconic, fraught with symbolism, harrowing in its violence and its consequences.

Years ago in the “Railway” outskirts of the Sotho hillside town of Marseilles, young friends endure lives of Apartheid, police shakedowns and a justice system wholly meant to keep them poor and in their place.

They stage fights with their slingshots, a couple of them dreaming of the day when they can use something more lethal. “If we don’t give them something to fear, they won’t fear us.”

Zulu “the fearless,” is their leader, Lerato their female “heart and soul,” Luyanda (Cockroach) “the broken one,” Bongani “Pockets” is “the rich one,” Tau “the lion” is the ruthless fighter and Unathi “Pastor” “the storyteller,” who tells their tale.

Yes, there are six of them, but as Lerato is a girl, young sexist Pastor calls them the “Five Fingers for Marseilles.”

When they load their slingshots to attack the cops who show up to shake them down circa 1979, the kids attack and Lerato is taken prisoner. Tau, who instigated the attack, intervenes. Three cops are killed and he’s on the run, leaving the others to fight on without him.

Decades and much violence later, Tau (stoic Vuyo Dabala), “the Lion of Marseilles,” is released from prison. He makes his way back, incognito — “Nobody” he calls himself.

Railway has many of the same old residents. Bongani (Kenneth Nkosi) is now the mayor of New Marseilles. Lerato (Zethu Dlomo) is widowed, with a boy (Lizwi Vilakazi) itching for a chance to prove himself, violently. Cockroach (Mduduzi Mabaso) is a brooding, corrupt cop — part of the problem, now. Because Railway, and indeed New Marseilles is run by a one-eyed gangster/shaman called Ghost (Hamilton Dhlamini), a pontificating murderer who lets his murderous minions, and minion in chief (Warren Masemola, fearsome) run roughshod over the locals — black, white and Chinese.

The drunken traveling salesman Honest John (Dean Fourie) figures “Nobody/Tau” to be a “stepper-inner,” and if ever there was a town that needed stepping in, it’s this one.

Shane, come back!

Everybody, good and bad, looks to “Nobody,” a “hard man” with a History of Violence, to bust heads and set this world right. But that’s not easy for a man sickened by violence, fretting over the example he sets to “the boy” — “You don’t want to be anything like me.”

But if you know your Westerns, you know that won’t hold.

Director Michael Matthews, working from a script by Sean Drummond, tells this tale in broad, slow strokes and three languages (subtitled Xhosa, Sesotho and English). There are beatings, torture scenes and heroes shot and left for dead.

Ah, but are there “heroes” in all this? That’s the big metaphor they’re playing around with.

The violence has a heightened Spaghetti Western quality at times, with men going at it with six-shooters and machetes, and everybody having to choose sides before the Gunfight at the Railway Corral.

One of the benefits of working within a tried-and-true genre is that you can skip along through some of the preamble, but Matthews rarely does. An eighteen minute prologue and a 20 minute finale (drawn out) are separated by a lot of somewhat confusing middle story where grown-up versions of the teen “five” are only reluctantly identified.

Dabala, of “Invictus” and “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” is impressive as the lead, and Masemola (“Blood Diamond”) and Dhalamini fine, frightening versions of Jack Palance and John Dierkes, if you know your “Shane” lore.

Stately pacing, sadism and misdirections about which character is which as adults aside, “Five Fingers” holds together quite well, even if the screenwriter never — from first scene to finale, ever gets the “finger” count right.

MPAA Rating: unrated — graphic violence, alcohol abuse

Cast: Vuyo Dabula, Zethu Dlomo, Kenneth Nkosi, Mduduzi Mabaso, Hamilton Dhlamini, Aubrey Poolo, Warren Masemola

Credits:Directed by Michael Matthews, script by Sean Drummond. An Uncork’d Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:58

“American Chaos” is a political documentary of the “How we got here” variety, a filmmaker who ISN’T Michael Moore looking at America’s political divide by focusing on the last presidential election, as it was happening, to dissect what the appeal of the eventual winner, Donald Trump, was to his supporters.

It doesn’t hurt the film that it opens a week before Michael Moore’s latest Jeremiad, “Fahrenheit 11/9.” Film producer and sometime director James D. Stern has put movies as varied as “Looper” and “”Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” in theaters, and directed and or produced documentaries about sport (“Linsanity” “Michael Jordan to the Max”) and politics (…”So Goes the Nation”). He knows how to position his movie in the marketplace, not a Moore lecture, but a “listening tour” visit to the heart of Trump’s America, letting Trump supporters, in their own words, teach America their way of thinking.

He took a film crew from Florida to Arizona, West Virginia to the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland, putting Trump backers on camera, rarely debating or even correcting them, “just to listen, take it in,” allowing only the occasional academic expert on group psychology, media consumption or history into the film to speak on what he was gathering from the Americans in the “Make America Great Again” hats.

Coal country folks, most of whom have never been down a mine, Cuban immigrants in Florida, ranchers, campaign volunteers and others tell Stern, without the benefit of knowing what would come in the next two years, of their unalloyed joy at hearing a campaign message and a candidate who was telling them, at long last, what they wanted to hear.

Stern starts out flummoxed, as if he wonders why nobody but him remembers that 1950s TV Western “Trackdown,” which featured a traveling con-artist, an Oz the Great and Powerful named “Dr. Trump,” whose naked appeals to fear, greed and paranoia (“I can build a wall around your house that nothing can penetrate!”) win favor in the town, until sober-minded voices prevail.

Stern marvels at how many people in Red State America have “this desire to go back in time,” to the pre-integration, coal consuming, pre-immigration flood, binge-buying 1950s.

It’s been a common thread among the hand-wringers over the 2016 election, “We weren’t listening,” a self-reflection/self-blame mea culpa that, coupled with with Hillary’s infamous “deplorables” remark, Russian-Wikileaks interference and James Comey’s decision to throw the election to Trump,  which people use to “explain” what happened to the vast majority of Americans who don’t approve of what happened.

“American Chaos,” with Stern occasionally interjecting his in-the-moment fears about the tide of that election, then proceeds to — almost by accident — figure out the real “listening” problem America has.

“Do you HEAR yourselves?”

In interview after interview, white people ranging in age from their 50s to 70s, reveal that they aren’t listening to what they’re saying. A nation divided by what conservative pundit George Will warned was the coming “information gap,” with a corner of the population willfully misinformed and hellbent on staying that way by leaving the TV or smart phone on Hannity and Jones, Rush and Breitbart, refuses to step out of the echo chamber and accept facts and reality. And when they open their mouths, it shows.

A Florida political operator who notes that America “was its happiest in 1957,” and  Cochise County Arizona rancher Republicans with their ground-level front-line views of immigration give us a word or two of compassion, and a lot of less delicate words directed to “get Washington’s attention” about this issue, and about their “gun rights.” We hear them.

And then there’s the seething, gimlet-eyed hatred, the smug certitude of an Arizona vet (a woman) who blames “those women” Trump was bragging about grabbing and molesting, and insists with all the vitriol she can summon that Clinton is “a traitor. If it was you who did what SHE did, we’d be having this conversation in jail.”

Wonder if her definition of treason has sharpened?

A wealthy Floridian breaks down in tears about West Virginians, “where I like to hunt and fish,” how troubled and “sick” they are, without figuring out that they’re sick from black lung and opioids, meth and a system — economic to educational — they set up themselves to fail themselves — a “conservative” system that is killing them.

Cuban immigrant and former Hialeah, Fla. Mayor Julio Martinez says “I look at Trump, and I see myself in the mirror.” Really?

Brian Beddow, his face frozen in a furious Appalachian glare, declares “Trump’s MORALLY better’n Hillary,” and makes a veiled threat or two about uses of “our guns.”

And then Iris Lynch, a self-described “MENSA” (society of the super smart) member parrots far-right talking points, how every new revelation about Trump’s character, business dealings, corruption and ignorance is just “orchestrated baloney.”

“The Democrat Party is no better than Gaddifi,” which she mispronounces, suggesting “They’ll chop off our heads.”

Their hatred of Hillary, sometimes delivered with fury, other times simply matter-of-factly repeating every disproved “conspiracy” that “I read” about “voter fraud” and “take our guns” and “global government,” spinning emails into “treason” and unwilling to consider the fact-based/investigated alternative, is just chilling.

This is what “We the People” weren’t listening to. This is what “We the People” aren’t hearing as we say it.

It would be grand if Brian Beddow, Iris Lynch, or others like the hilariously hypocritical pastor and his gun-nut wife, saw this and thought, for the first time in a very long while, “Wait, I make no sense. Maybe I’ve been wrong.” But you know they won’t.

With conservative newspapers like the Arizona Republic warning the faithful about what a Trump presidency would be like, with pundits, news stories from legitimate news sources, other Republican politicians and relatives echoing that, with all of those dire forecasts coming true with accounts of White House “chaos,” staffers griping about the “f—ing moron” in charge, endless indictments, ethical resignations and only the Chinese-owned Mitch McConnell standing in the way of Trump’s legal, prison-bound comeuppance, the deafness of the portion of the electorate represented here is…deafening.

What gets drowned-out are the even-tempered complaints of rancher John Ladd, who notes the “big money” that keeps anything from being done about illegal immigration, and reasons”The Republicans want cheap labor, the Democrats want cheap votes and the American People want cheap tomatoes.”

Having a UCLA academic point out that what Trumpists “REALLY” miss is “not having to think or hear about race,” 1957 — in other words, when black and brown people had fewer rights than the rest of us — he’s spitting in the wind. Another academic pointing out how people hate being labeled “racist” worst than anything doesn’t take into account how much racists hate being labeled “deplorable.”

The enraged, knee-jerk reactions to “Black Lives Matter,” refusing to even consider that “those people” might have a point, the few times that Stern lets himself correct a baldfaced, ignorant lie, endlessly repeated in the GOP echo chamber, with “There are no facts to support that — none,” all fall on, you guessed it — deaf ears.

Stern is entirely too concerned with being proclaimed a prophet — analyzing America’s “Who would you rather have dinner with?” rule of thumb about political candidates, telling the camera during the GOP convention and later about how sure he was –at that moment — that Trump was going to win.

So there’s one thing he has in common with Michael Moore.

But he gives the “We need to listen” meme one last, thorough going over. “Forgotten America” gets its say about immigration, “work hard to get everything you have” and West Virginians admit that they didn’t adapt, “diversify when we had the chance” as they’re showing off what used to be a mountain covered in trees that’s now a chopped-top mesa with scrub growing back “like there was never a mine here.”

Right.

It doesn’t take a hectoring Michael Moore or patronizing Dinesh D’Souza to properly account for “what happened” and “who these people are, and why” they supported Donald Trump.

It turns out Trump supporters, “in their own words,” is the most damning portrait of them imaginable. You need to listen to yourselves.

MPAA Rating: R for some language including sexual references

Cast: James D. Stern, Brian Beddow, Joyce Kaufman, Dr. Darnell Hunt, Julio Martinez

Credits:Directed by James D. Stern. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:31

The trouble with these “Is this really happening, or is it all his her/his head?” thrillers is tactile.

As in, “Dude, reach out and TOUCH someone!”

Topher Grace stars in “Delirium,” the latest in a long line of horror tales where the hero (or heroine) shouting “You’re not real! This isn’t happening!”

As Tom Walker, freshly out of prison, cleared by his shrink to return to the family mansion whose last resident — his politician dad just committed suicide — has an ankle monitor, a house arrest phone line and a blunt, tactless parole officer (Patricia Clarkson).

She walks him through the house and cruelly answers his question about what happened to his father’s fanatical guard dog.

“Never get between a dog and his dinner. Your father proved that one.”

Paints a picture, doesn’t it? She’s being mean for a reason.

“After what you and your brother did, there’s nothing I’d like more than making sure you never get to swim in that pool again.”

The other thing Tom has in ready supply is medication. It’s barely able to keep the demons at bay, such as seeing that guard dog — or its ghost– chewing his dead father’s face off, or seeing that faceless father (or his ghost) wandering the halls.

He can almost shrug those off, as his shrink counseled him to “Trust my brain, NOT my eyes.” It’s “Risky Business” time in a house with all his old Presidents of the United States of America CDs, his old Gin Blossoms T-shirt, and that pool that opens up beneath a ballroom floor.

“Risky Business” mode is how Lynn the local delivery lady, played by Genesis Rodriguez, finds him. She’s all pretty-and-pushy, dolled up in Goth clubwear, and she’s curious.

“You might as well spill, because whatever you don’t tell me, Wikipedia will.”

“What’s a Wikipedia?”

Tom’s crimes will become clear, even if his mental state is meant to be entirely up in the air. Get him off his meds (parole officer’s will do that, just to mess with you) and all bets are off. Static-filled phone calls “from beyond,” creaking floors, moaning pipes.

Guzzling Nyquil isn’t enough when his partner-in-crime brother (Callan Mulvey) shows up. Or “appears.”

It’s an exceptionally good looking movie. But the performances have that hand-tied-behind-the-back quality that tales that operate by supernatural “rules” often exist under. Grace doesn’t get worked up, nor does anyone else, though Clarkson takes another run at “nasty” (check her out in “Sharp Objects”) and Mulvey is monstrous in that psychopathic way.

Tom’s reluctance to reach out and confirm or heighten his hallucination with a little physical reality, touching, is more obvious in this movie than in most of this genre.

More amusing is the “relationship” he begins with the bored, edgy Lynn, drawing her obsessively, frantically trying to chase her away each time she arrives with a delivery and a desire to chat or touch or something else.

“You’re weird and interesting…I always wanted a stalker.”

Tom’s visions grow weirder and weirder, and “evidence” — on videotapes, computer files — seems to explain some of what he’s seeing. I love it when the supernatural has a “rational” explanation.

Swimming and the pool top closes over him, the face of a woman drowned there — perhaps by his father, maybe by brother Alex.

Telling the cop about it is no help.

“You’re a nutbag,” “Trust me. The only person haunting this place is you.”

Of course she’s wrong. Or maybe she’s right. If only he had some way of FINDING out if “This is real” or “This is all inside my head.”

If only he’d stick his hand out and touch this vision or that apparition.Not that any of them are particularly frightening. Violence takes the place of terror and suspense, mystery and shock.

If only “Delirium” had been scarier.

MPAA Rating: R for some violence and disturbing images

Cast: Topher Grace, Patricia Clarkson, Genesis Rodriguez, Callan Mulvey

Credits:Directed by Dennis Iliadis, script by Adam Alleca. A Universal/BH Tilt release.

Running time: 1:36

Here’s our annual Mark Wahlberg holiday “family” comedy. Sean Anders (“Daddy’s Home”) is behind the camera. Again.

Nov. 16. “Instant Family” begins tugging at heart strings. Can Mark W. find laughs without Will Ferrell? We’ll see,