Movie Nation

Even the best thrillers allow or invite the viewer to get a step or two ahead, to anticipate what’s coming next, or what might come.

The script usually reveals its mysteries by relying on melodramatic tropes or cliches of the genre. You think, “She’s in a car, ducking,” so naturally “Who will shoot the windows out?”

A big name is cast in what looks like a minor role, and you instantly guess, “Oh yeah, He/She is IN on it.”

It’s taken a lifetime of training for me to not make the little siren noise I hear in my head, every time I expect the police to show up in the not-quite-nick-of-time, signaling the story’s end.

“Traffik” isn’t a very good thriller, and if you aren’t two or three steps ahead of it, much of the time, you need more practice.

But writer-director Deon Taylor’s “Put Paula Patton in Peril” picture has merits. For one, there’s Patton, whom he and his cinematographer give the full “Damn, girl” treatment — extreme closeups of body parts, cleavage, Daisy Duke derriere, classic semi-clad female objectification. It’s why she’s a movie star, so OK, whatever sells tickets.

Taylor lets Patton trot out that “I can’t get hurt again” coquettish thing, the poor little screen beauty who can’t find and hold onto love. It comes with a girlish voice one would have hoped Patton would have shed after “Precious,” but no.

But Patton doesn’t play the passive victim, another plus.

The action beats– fights, chases — are visceral, well-shot and edited. And some scenes are well-staged, with beautifully-composed shots. “Traffik” begins with a whimper but finishes with a flourish.

It’s all the talking, plotting and what-not in between that gets in the way.

Brea (Patton) is an idealistic reporter with completion anxiety. She can’t boil the work down and get the scoop in a timely manner, so her Sacramento Post boss (William Fichtner) has told her “I don’t think there’s a place for you here, any more.”

On her birthday, no less. Yeah, a newspaper would totally do that.

Her man John (Omar Epps) is a car-builder/restorer who surprises her with a trip to the NoCal mountains. The surprise is repeatedly wrecked by John’s old pal Darren (Laz Alonzo), a can’t-stop-talking, rude and tactless sports agent. How Malia (Roselyn Sanchez) puts up with him is anybody’s guess.

John’s all set to pop the question when these two show up.

There’s been trouble on the way. A strung-out, emaciated woman (Dawn Olivieri) scared Brea with her condition when they met in a gas station’s restroom. And John, driving the ’69 Chevelle he rebuilt for Brea, can’t avoid the hassles of a bunch of let’s-start-something biker toughs at the pumps.

The stage is set for a nighttime visit by those folks, plainly involved in trafficking women for the sex trade. “These women are product” may be the most superfluous line in the picture.

A mountaintop mansion with walls made of glass, as one character cracks, is no place to hold off hoodlums.

Poorly written screenplays always have somebody say “Nobody needs to get hurt,” after we and they have seen somebody murdered, right in front of them.

Brea has something the bad guys, led by British Red (Luke Goss), want. Brea might have need of it, too. Leave it to jerk Darren to work everything out.

“I’m a negotiator. This is what I do.”

It takes a whopping 40 minutes for the action to truly begin, and another 20 for things to pick up in earnest. Patton needs her topless love scene, her bikini dip in the infinity pool, her post-coital wear-the guy’s-unbuttoned-shirt moment.

Am I objectifying her? No. The director got to that first.

And even those scenes you can see coming. But there is one genuine surprise, a jarring if touching and not quite appropriate tune on the soundtrack.

Human trafficking is better known by its original name, slavery.

Just as things reach their bleakest and we fret for the womenfolk falling into the clutches of modern day slavers, Nina Simone curls up on the soundtrack. “Strange Fruit,” she sings, the anti-lynching anthem made famous by Billie Holiday.

Did not see THAT one coming, Miss Simone.

MPAA Rating:R for violent and disturbing material, language throughout, some drug use and sexual content

Cast: Paula Patton, Omar Epps, Roselyn Sanchez, Missy Pyle, Laz Alonzo, William Fichtner, Dawn Olivieri

Credits: Written and directed by Deon Taylor. A Summit release.

Running time: 1:36

Over at Box Office Mojo, they’re calling it “Quiet Place” over $21, “Rampage” falling into upper teens and “I Feel Pretty” $15, “Super Troopers 2” $6, “Traffik,” a Paula Patton/Omar Epps thriller, $3.5.

Maybe that crowd-funded “Troopers” sequel won’t pay off until it reaches the homes of aged frat boys. On Netflix.

But Deadline.com, which also tracks preview take, notes that “Troopers” owned Thursday night — $1.35 million or so. If that holds up, it could put “Troopers” in the $10 million range. My guess? Everybody dying to see it saw it Thursday night. $6 million is close to the mark.

The huge social media presence of Amy Schumer and her star-vehicle “I Feel Pretty” suggests that all the $15-17 million opening weekend predictions are a little thin.

I’ve thought “anything below $15 and she’s in trouble,” but likewise, anything over $17 could lead to a second Amy Boom. Early in the week, we were running across $17 million predictions. Those have fallen off. Are they lowballing Amy? Or do they know something?

Prognosticators are notorious for sandbagging African-American star vehicles, but “Traffik” is only on 1000 or so screens. It’ll be fighting “Isle of Dogs” for pride of place.

Just a teaser, has a touch of Tyler Perry with an all-Asian cast. Gloss and aspirational consumption (check out the cars).

Not a laugh in the teaser, but the target audience is underserved, under-represented and HUGE. Maybe it’ll work out.

One way to elevate the stoner comedy — And who asked for that? — might be to cast against type.

Thus “Dude,” an L.A. high school stoner romp about four BFFs coping with senior year, prom, college plans, singing along to your favorite hip hop and getting baked in the SUV every AM before class.

They’re young women, a willfully diverse weed wolfpack led by Lily (Lucy Hale of “Truth or Dare”) and peopled with the likes of Amelia (Alexandra Shipp of “Love, Simon”), Rebecca (Awkwafina of “Neighbors 2”) and Chloe (Kathryn Prescott of TV’s “24: Legacy”).

They’re introduced at junior prom, where they establish their routine (firing up), their characters and their tragedy.

Chloe’s jock older brother (Austin Butler), Lily’s crush, is killed in a car wreck.

A year later, they’re queens of campus as seniors. Lily’s class president, throwing herself into micromanaging the prom. Chloe is keeping her crushing college options to herself, quietly grieving with her openly-grieving mom (Brooke Smith, awesome), Rebecca is having impure thoughts in the bathroom stall about a guy who might ask her to prom — not likely, as he’ll be there, as a TEACHER — and Amelia is doing the “younger boy throw-down, they do what you say” while mediating her parent’s break-up.

It’s Path Less Taken High’s finest hour, or not.

“All right ladies, let’s throw on some slutty dresses and get f—-d up.”

The code of teen rom-coms decrees that Lily has to also be the star of the soccer team, and that she has to reject the sweet, helpful underclassman on the prom committee (Alex Wolff), even though he sings and plays the ukulele in front of the rest of the committee as a way of asking her to be his date.

“I’m a Jew. You’re a Jew, too…Jews should stick together because there’s not so many of us.”

The banter is prime California Crude — “I’d let him Harry Potter this.” “I’ve gotta dump out.”

School back East? Will they be able to tolerate inferior Eastern weed?

“Treeless in Seattle?” “One Tree Hill.”

Maybe they’ll get into “Cool, like brooding, winter drugs…like opium,” Rebecca suggests.

Jack McBrayer is the “cool” PE teacher with tales of flinging drugs over the wall to his brother in prison. Just a way of jump starting the kids’ essays on drug abuse.

“Who’s ready? Angel Dust?”

The old trash-bag/vaporizer “bong” trick is rolled out, “COPS! Cops with DOGS!” bust up a party, and some fairly explicit toilet activity is explored. A dog eats their supply and we see what the dog thinks as she trips.

Just like “Dude” guy comedies. Except for the tampon gags.

As an aficionado of teen comedies going back to John Hughes, let’s just note “Dude” has the most explicit teen sex scene since, oh “thirteen” or “Kids.” Which weren’t comedies.

And then there’s the date rape. Or “The guy was…goal oriented.”

Irresponsible behavior has “limited” consequences. Parents may let you call them by their first name, may swear like longshoremen in front of you, but they’re in charge for a reason.

The big message — “People can be there, if you let them.” — has its merits.

The cast is good, though Awkwafina is the comic heavyweight here and the rest hunt for laughs in her shadow. As this is a Lucy Hale vehicle, most everybody else feels a little short-changed. Shipp’s crack about “our token WHITE friends” is “ironic,” but too too true.

Director/screenwriter (“Ocean’s Eight”) Olivia Milch parks a lot of serious in with the silly, which tends to slam the brakes on any comic momentum the picture aims for. It drifts on, far past its climax.

To quote from the canon, it’s “Pretty in Pink” packed with pieces of “Foxes.” It’s entirely too adult for 15-and-under, in other words.

So even though “Dude” strikes a teens-behaving-badly blow for gender parity, even if it’s every bit as raunchy as most boys-get-blasted comedies of its ilk, its several random laughs don’t build to anything, its deep thoughts are too shallow to uplift the genre, or the age group it might have been aimed at.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with explicit sex, drug abuse, profanity, innuendo

Cast: Lucy Hale, Alexandra Shipp, Awkwafina, Kathryn Prescott, Alex Wolff, Brooke Smith, Austin Butler, Jack McBrayer

Credits:Written and directed by Olivia Milch. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

“The Incredible Jessica James” is the very definition of “Netflixable.”

It’s movie of undeniable charms, some witty moments and nice chemistry between its stars. But it’s got too little to it to warrant traveling to a cinema and buying a ticket to see.

It’s blessedly brief, but its set-up and situations are sitcom slight. It plays like a TV pilot, with filler that some network exec will need reassurance that “We’ll cut all that out” or “That’ll resolve itself as we get up and running.”

“Daily Show” alumna Jessica Williams has the title role, one of those go-getter New York wannabes who carries herself as if she expects credit for mastering the city.

She’s tall, outspoken and brutally blunt. She works those Eryka Badu dreads and fixes her Tinder date with a stare and lets him know that the sexual come-on he voiced on that hook-up app isn’t “going to happen.”

The hapless nebbish is fileted before he has a chance to finish his drink.

“Going through a really bad break-up” is her excuse.

When she isn’t running into her ex (Lakeith Stanfield, “Snoop” in “Straight Outta Compton”), she’s dreaming about him — nightmares where he’s killed, or some such.

So she throws herself into her work teaching kids at the Children’s Theatre Project, writes plays, and decorates her Bushwick flat with rejection letters from theaters that won’t produce her works, which she brushes off with the arrogant self-confidence you have to have in order to make a go of it in the arts.

“I’m a cocoa QUEEN,” she exults. “I’m standing on my own truth! Yaaaas.”

Actress pal Tasha (Noël Wells) takes and offhanded shot at changing all that. There’s this guy, newly divorced. He’s tall. He’s played by Chris O’Dowd.

This might-be love connection is what makes “Jessica James” Netflixable. O’Dowd is one of those guys, like John C. Reilly, who makes whatever he’s in better simply by showing up.

Jessica’s cocksure “I KNOW I’m DOPE” pose, the rudeness that she uses as a test, doesn’t crush him.

An “I don’t want to be here right now,” on their first date, gets an “Oh why would I be offended by THAT.”

Her “Just because you caught a unicorn in the wild don’t mean you get to ‘tap it’ whenever you want” is worth a “Wow, I didn’t realize unicorns were so arrogant.”

O’Dowd’s presence and the fact that the film was written and directed by a man is the only hope the picture will achieve some sort of comic parity/balance. The imposing, pushyfunny Williams is that strong a personality.

The cute gimmick is here is that as both of them are obsessed with their exes, so each must unfollow that ex on Instagram..but in turn FOLLOW the ex of the other, and thus filter and limit that obsession as they relate what the other’s onetime significant other is up to.

Just one scene of Jessica working with kids finds laughs, the whole “I’ve got New York wired” thing, explored in every recent New York sitcom, plays out on the subway, in living in ultra-cheap Bushwick, and doesn’t dazzle. And the set ups and break-ups with their requisite make-ups are trite and contrived.

But Williams is a bracing funnywoman (She’s in the “Fantastic Beasts” sequel.) and O’Dowd, quick with an Irish-accented comeback, is one of the few leading men who could take her measure.

Together, they’re as Netflixable as it gets.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations and innuendo

Cast: Jessica Williams, Chris O’Dowd, Lakeith Stanfield

Credits:Written and directed by James C. Strouse. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:23

Sure, it’s the Liam Neeson keep-yourself-relevant role model, take on vengeful wise-old-men-of-action films in your 60s.

I’ve gotten over any sense that these are “beneath” the often fine actors who make these movies. Especially after “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” Denzel got a nomination out of a dog, there, but his options are narrowing. As are those of many of his esteemed contemporaries.

Here, Melissa Leo plays the object of his quest for revenge. Nobody else in the cast is a “name.” Not even Pedro Pascal. July 20 is when we see “EQ2.”  

As I type this, the original musical “The Greatest Showman,” an ode to showmanship, show business, show people, tolerance, and the power of Hugh Jackman doing a song and dance, will have been in theaters four months, 120 days.

It sheds screens every weekend as the Blockbusters of Summer line up to take its place, but you can still see people buying tickets to the darned thing at any of the 209 theaters where it’s still showing.

I saw a handful of folks checking in to an Orlando showing while waiting for a screening the other night.

As of this moment, it’s well past its days in the box office Top Ten, but it’s still earning about a quarter of a million bucks every single weekend.

When the last digital print of it is pulled from its last theater, it will have earned $175 million or so, and stands at $173,350,000 today.

It did this despite not getting its due from the Golden Globes of the Oscars.

It is still playing long after the actual “Oscar contenders” fled the scene, none of them reaching the audience it did save for “Dunkirk.”

That’s a bigger take than any “Tomb Raider” remake, a healthier haul than Mr. Spielberg’s video gamegasm, “Ready Player One.”

It made its money the way movies used to make their money, with a long, steady profitable run, some good word of mouth, some repeat business from musical theater fanatics.

It’s no masterpiece of the genre, though it is pretty good and damned ambitious. Zac Efron may never be this appealing on the screen again.

Maybe Fox only made this to appease their “Wolverine” money maker. But damned if this didn’t pay off.

Well done.

Wes Anderson’s got something he wants to talk to you about.

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• 6 people will win the full set of 6 figures
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Every $10 is a chance to win, so $50 = 5 entries

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It takes confidence in your jokes-per-minute count to burn through as many as these “Deadpool” movies do. It always seems like a mistake, giving away too much, too many gags/action beats and one-liners.

But maybe not. Will it chase “Avengers: Infinity War” off the top spot upon opening? The fan fanaticism says “Why, yes it will.” May 17.

There was a moment, right at the end of “Inside Amy Schumer” and just after “Trainwreck” blew up, that it seemed everybody wanted to be in the Amy Schumer business.

Make a movie with her, talk her into a stand-up special, write her checks, let her pick her (The retired, but NOT for Amy, Goldie Hawn.) co-star in her next movie, “Snatched.”

She even did Broadway.

She’s had the option of trying to reach beyond her core “Cruder than Sarah Silverman” fanbase, those who love her for the raunch, the graphic and crude Big Girl Who Loves Her Some Sex persona she created pre-“Trainwreck,” who then became Queen of Comedy when the Judd Apatow production blew up.

But is that moment passing? Like, right now?

She got married. 

And now she’s rich. 

Before the reviews of her latest, “I Feel Pretty,” came out, she spent weeks playing defense, playing up the “backlash” that the trailer induced, coloring perceptions of her latest not-thin/still confident and sexy farce. As in “I’m talking about this because there’s nothing else to talk about regarding my movie.”

Those reviews? Mixed. I was a little more generous than some,more generous than some, but maybe “sweet” and Drew Barrymore-ish is not her sweet spot. That’s what you get when you hire Team “Never Been Kissed” to write and direct you.

Box office projections are on the low side. Will she clear $20? $17-18 seems a safer guess. And with another damned “Avengers” movie opening shortly, the window for this one to take “Blockers” money and make bank is tiny.

She collected a big payday from third tier studio STX for “Pretty,” and then didn’t screen it until the last minute. She’s doing all the press for the picture, taking ownership of it and as I said, playing defense. But should she?

If Chris Tucker taught us nothing, it’s that getting rich and earning too much indulgence from Hollywood — “What? What do you want to do? We’ll MAKE that movie!” — can be a career killer. “Hungry” is the word we attach to comics we take to. Once you’re not “hungry,” you’re self-satisfied. “See Carrey, Jim,” or most of his peers. The ones with Will Ferrell longevity are as rare as big screen comic actresses who manage a run as long as Meg Ryan’s.

Waiting for one of Orlando’s “I Feel Pretty” previews Wed., I chatted with theater staff, who shrugged her off, security guards and other patrons who gave me the “Meh” look, and others who simply find the polarizing comic not to their taste.

The people she’s reaching out to, away from her core audience, aren’t interested. And will the faithful be pleased with PG-13 Amy? Without Apatow around, is she quick witted and assertive enough and willing to go “out there” to get laughs without a strong “best joke wins” writing staff, and challenging co-stars?

Aidy Bryant and the co-director’s wife Busy Philips are no threat to upstage her, and Schumer needs that John Cena/Goldie or whoever to push her to find something funnier than “amusing enough, I suppose.”

You didn’t need #MeToo to know that Hollywood is hardest on young women, disposing of them once the novelty wears off and the audience gives studio check-writers even half an excuse to send them packing off to cable.

And as I track the lackluster web traffic on my review, and others, I wonder if Schumer’s run as Queen of the Comic Hard Candy Mountain isn’t flagging, even as the plus-size star she’s most-often compared to (Melissa McCarthy) gets her comic second wind.

In any event, keep an eye on the box office this weekend. If “Pretty” opens big, she’s re-established her clout. And she could. She has a fanbase, and women may be up for a picture about “Don’t let the low self-esteem demons win.”

But anything under $15, and it’s “Uh oh.”