Movie Nation

With Hollywood largely abandoning that most distinctly America film genre, The Western, it’s encouraging that independent filmmakers and start-up studios are at least trying to revive it.

But getting one to come off — the looks, sounds and feel of rawhide, dust and tumbleweeds — is proving damned difficult.

I stumbled across “Painted Woman” as my father was feeding his Showtime/Westerns cable addiction, a rare title that isn’t a big screen classic, B-movie “oater” and isn’t “Lonesome Dove” — the staples of such channels.

It’s based on a Dusty Richards novel, one of his “Brandiron” novel series — he’s rightly described as “prolific” within this paperback genre — it features, horses, guns, a stagecoach and Oklahoma settings. That the title of that book is “The Mustanger and the Lady” tells you adapter/director James Cotten (“Sugar Creek,” “La Linea”) changed the focus, somewhat.

It’s about a brutalized “kept woman,” a hooker kicked up and down the line (Australian redhead Stef Dawson) whose deliverance from the rich brute who keeps her (Robert Craighead) may depend on a hired gun (Matt Dallas) or a horse catcher/trainer (David Thomas Jenkins).

Her jealous “owner” has reason to be suspicious of Frank Dean (Dallas). Her “I belong to you” is no reassurance. The old man beats her at will and she takes it as if it’s a life she’s grown used to, if not accepted.

Dean may give her hope with “A gentleman never strikes a lady,” but will he go against his nature, his contract, the hired gunman’s code, what have you, to save her?

And then there’s the “mustanger” she runs up on when she makes a break for it.

A famous classical music critic once remarked that he could tell if a performer or orchestra was bad within a minute or so. Movies are the same way. “Painted Woman” is death itself, earnest and appropriately costumed, but static, flatly lit and photographed, almost instantly awful.

It’s a film with no forward motion at all through the early scenes, underlit, dully acted, ineptly directed and edited. When Old Man Allison (Craighaid) yells at Julie to “Get over here,” the film cuts to her, sees her stand, then start her slow walk and follows her across the room.

Nothing registers — not fear, not dread, not urgency. Cut to her in motion and the scene is animated. Instead, it just lies there like an uninteresting portrait intended for a barroom wall — unfinished, with us watching the paint dry. “Painted Woman” is an endless succession of such scenes with no motion, nothing to drive them or lure us in.

Roles like this are rare for actresses, and a movie like “Painted Woman” might have attracted one — an ambitious second-banana on TV looking for work on a hiatus, a young-ish “name” who hasn’t worked for a while. If the script’s good, they’ll come, no matter how thin the up-front pay.

The script isn’t good. The fact that Cotten couldn’t lure somebody with a little box office ID and charisma to play the part should have told him, “This script needs more work.”

He’s made a Western that will confuse and bore Western fans, and a character drama that won’t reach anybody else because the characters are dull and the no-name performances barely competent, utterly lacking in charisma.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, adult themes

Cast: Stef Dawson, Matt Dallas, David Thomas Jenkins, Kiowa Gordon Robert Craighead

Credits:Directed by James Cotten, script by James Cotten and Amber Lindley, based on a Dusty Richards novel. An SP release.

Running time: 1:48

One of my gripes in recent years has been how the major studios have shied away from working with established directors. They’ve treated people of talent and accomplishment as dispensable, an expense they don’t need.

Filmmakers find their ability to get a movie made circumscribed in their late 40s and early 50s.

That’s not the case with Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón. But suppose a filmmaker with his bonafides wants to make something personal, its limited box office potential not justified by her or his passion?

Netflix has another niche it can fill, one among the many corners of the marketplace they’re angling to control (teen films, senior citizen comedies or dramas, etc).

“Roma” is such a film for Cuarón, set in the Mexico City of his youth — the early 1970s. No name cast, esoteric setting, time period and story.

This lyrical trailer advertises a film festival favorite slated for Oct. release.

Like “Beasts of No Nation” and “First They Killed My Father,” “Roma” will have just enough of a theatrical release to qualify for the Academy Awards, and then make its way quickly to Netflix as nominations come out.

Married too young, TV gig falls into her lap, a first year of marriage dramedy like “Paper Year” makes it all look too easy, with the “obstacles” kind of artificially inserted.

“You ever feel that sometimes everything is just…hard?”

“It’s supposed to be the best year,” Mom Andie MacDowell says to daughter Eve Hewson.  Avan Jugia plays the new husband, and Hamish Linklater has a supporting role.

“Paper Year” (a wedding anniversary gift reference) opened in the Philippines, and is coming soon to a theater near you. Perhaps.

I could totally see the former “Robin Sparkles” as a Chrissie Hynde type, breaking big decades ago, breaking up the band, going to school, still a bit of a hell raiser.

Not sure if “Alright Now,” picked up by Gravitas Ventures (a studio of last resort) will do much for her. But she’s got a little of that Gillian Anderson following, thanks to the TV show and her Marvel supporting work.

But the film formerly known as “Songbird” will make its way to screens on Sept. 7, in any event.

A Wednesday opening jump-started “Crazy Rich Asians'” weekend, as the Warner Brothers all-Asian comedy is on a pace to reach $31 million or so by midnight Sunday. That’s adding in a $21 million weekend, allowing the adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s first novel in his comic trilogy to just edge the second weekend of “The Meg,” which will manage $20 million and change.

Deadline.com suggests that “Asians” is making bank mainly on the West Coast where America’s largest Asian-American population lies.

“The Meg,” remember, was Chinese financed and heavy in Chinese setting, content, characters and subtext. China owns August at the American box office.

“Mile 22” is a rambling, incoherent “Trump’s right, America’s not great” action film wrapped in post-patriotism, Russians-win messaging, and lots of Mark Wahlberg babbling about nobody knowing what “collusion” means and the like. It’s not going to break even — $14-15 million tops.

“Alpha” deserves a bigger audience than the million or so parents and kids who are paying to see it. It might reach $10 million if Saturday is more impressive than Friday or the Thursday night previews.

“BlackKlansman” is giving Spike Lee his first modest hit in a decade, it should be in the $35 million range by Labor Day.
“Mission: Impossible — Fallout” could hit $200 million by summer’s end, “Christopher Robin” should clear $70, all-in. “Mamma Mia!” the ABBA B-sides prequel will finish its run right around $125. And appallingly, “Hotel Transylvania 3” will leave the top ten next weekend in the $155-160 million range.

“The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Coming Home,” “Bound for Glory,” “Harold and Maude” and being there — Hal Ashby was every bit as important to film in the ’70s as Scorsese and Allen, Altman and Coppola.

He was, as those testifying in “Hal” note, a guy who “hasn’t gotten his due.” Now here’s a documentary that sees to it that this Oscar winner does.

But I have a hunch why he hasn’t been lauded, and I am guessing “Hal” glosses right over it. There’s the story Bette Midler once told me about her awful experience on the “boy’s club” of the bomb “Looking to Get Out.” They didn’t use hashtags back then, but #MeToo comes to mind.

Hal liked to imbibe on the set.

Read any good Peter Sellers bio about how Sellers went to his grave knowing Ashby had cost him his best shot at an Oscar, putting outtakes at the end of “Being There.” Sellers sent him pleading telegrams, “It breaks the SPELL. Do you understand. It breaks the spell!” Sellers was right. Funny outtakes, but pointless. And they broke “the spell.” Ashby wouldn’t be dissuaded.

There were people who worked for him who hated his guts. Apparently, more than a few. Maybe with good reason. Judd Apatow, testifying here and obviously a fan (I’m one, too.) never worked with him.

But the films speak for themselves, and a couple — “Harold and Maude” and “Being There” — dazzle, even today. “Shampoo” is as good a history of the ’70s as “Nashville,” “Last Detail” is top drawer Jack Nicholson and “Bound for Glory” was David Carradine’s finest work. Yes, I’ve seen “Kill Bill 2.”

“Hal” opens Sept. 7 in select cities. Worth asking for at your neighborhood multiplex, I say.

A novel milieu and an understated turn by Jack Jovcic, playing a mobster turned priest, give the otherwise dour Australian drama “Hidden Light” a fighting chance.

Writer-director Aaron Kamp set his story in the Serbian Orthodox community of Perth, Australia, folding the tragedies of two lives into that of our troubled, guilt-ridden priest, Jovan.

When we meet him, the burly man with the impressive tattoos is scourging his flesh, atoning for his life of drugs and violence. His mother is dying in hospital, and Jovan seems to figure his past and her fate are connected.

He’s the priest that the more streetwise members of the community come to for council. Drago (Troy Coward) is a highly-strung street dealer who knew Jovan in his previous life. Now, he’s got a pregnant girlfriend (Vivienne Marshall) and a motivation to get out.

Only his boss, Jovan’s old partner (Jag Pannu, who looks and sounds like a war criminal, which fits) won’t hear of it.

“I’ll get it sorted,” Father Jovan vows.

Big time real estate agent Jacob (Jeremy Levi) knows what Jovan used to be, as well. When he stumbles upon his wife’s body, dead from an overdose somebody she picked up in a bar gave her, he approaches the priest — “You used to know how to handle these situations…Someone needs to pay!”

Jovan is never more holy than in the simple, righteous and common sense question he poses with a single word — “Why?”

The priest might be able to solve both these problems by going to the police. Maybe it’s his vows that prevent him. Maybe it’s the vows he took in his previous life, “back when I WAS somebody,” that keep him from naming names.

These crises in others’ lives become Jovan’s dilemma, his cross to bear.

Kamp floods the score with dramatic music and fills the screen with a plot that advances like lava cooling off too fast to be a threat. The settings — a church, a bar, a drug lord’s apartment, a junkyard, and Jovan’s car.

That’s where he has the talk with a couple of longtime expats who knew his late father, back when they defended a monastery back in the old country together. They speak to him in the mother tongue, admonish him to do right — “You help people,” they say (via subtitles). “That’s what’s important.” And they may exist (in their native costume) wholly in Jovan’s bouncer-bald head.

Truthfully, the magical realism of the car chats with old Serbs are the only charming moments in “Hidden Light.” It looks right, at times, blazing sunlight through stained glass windows of a church. The bar scenes are lit like a teacher’s lounge. No wonder the chanteuse Amber (Sharyna Thompson) can’t draw a crowd.  My favorite “We made this with no money” moment is Jovan, sitting down to dinner in front of a TV while the sound of the RADIO version of “The Lone Ranger” wafts out of it.

No tragedy is small to the person living through it, but these play like melodrama — the drug dealer looking to get out, the cuckolded, grieving husband hunting for review, the priest who wasn’t always pure and who still likes his wine.

The dialogue, like the situations and the strident score, can seem played out. Rare is the line that takes one by surprise.

“Don’t give me one of your lectures, Jovan! Not today!”

We don’t see how good the mobster is at preaching, a serious omission.

But Jovcic has a soulful quality, a big man who used to be a violent man, trying to honor his renunciation of that life, trying to help desperate people find peace, wondering what it will cost him in the process.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast:Jack Jovcic, Sharnya Thomson, Jeremy Levi, Troy Coward

Credits: Written and directed by Aaron Kamp. An Indie Rights/Small Voice release.

Running time: 1:31

So we’ve got this faux ’50s Italian-American greaser (Spencer Boldman) who swipes cars and car radios on 1980s Long Island, and this Jewish Girl Who Wants to be Bad (Emily Ratajkowski) who takes a tumble with him over the course of a summer.

Vertical has it slated for limited release Sept. 28, and Ms. Ratajkowski has a following, so this Stray Cats era nostalgia should see the light of day. “Cruise” was written and directed by Robert D. Siegel, who did “Big Fan” and scripted Darren Aronosky’s “The Wrestler.”

A Sundance farce that looks madcap, slapstick, surreal and Jemaine all at once.

A guy known for screwball horror (“The Greasy Strangler”) is behind it, Emile Hirsch is also in it.

Plaza’s reliably hilarious and should do nothing but make indie pics, one right after the other, from now until she’s Parker Posey’s age.

“An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn” will have its day in the sun — or on a few screens — Oct. 19.

The Wednesday opening of “Crazy Rich Asians” came in at $5 million, not the $6 million originally projected (Deadline.com has walked its numbers back). 

Thursday night’s “Mile 22” money wasn’t all that.

And “Alpha” was always going to be a hard sell, a somewhat tough-minded prehistoric boy and his wolf/dog movie launched after the kids have gone to school.

Box Office Mojo is projecting that “Alpha,” undersold and arriving in that August hole where movies without hype wither and die, will earn only $6 million in the U.S. Saturday/Sunday will tell, but lacking matinee Monday, Friday’s not going to help it.

Box Office Guru and everybody else figure that “Crazy Rich Asians” will own the weekend. I do wonder if the advertising has lowered its ceiling — perhaps emphasizing “Asian” too much, “Rich” as well. The earlier $30 million+ suggestions (I was sure the hype would pull in the curious, putting $35 million Wed.-Sun within reach) are gone with the wind. Maybe $27 million sayeth the Guru, $25 is the BO Mojo guess. Maybe $27 Deadline.com concurs.

“Mile 22” is a Mark Walhberg/Peter Berg thriller dumped in the Black Hole of August, pounded by critics and yet its Asian action-nonsensical Hollywood plot mashup could make $16, Box Office Mojo says, $18 million according to the Guru. Wahlberg has had good luck with off-season fare, owning a few Januaries in recent years with smarter action pics than this (“Contraband” for instance). He’s intensely unlikable in “Mile 22,” and his limp “Daddy” comedies and godawful “Transformers” paydays have devalued his brand. This won’t help.

“The Meg” did not fall off a cliff during the week, so the weekend could register another $20 million at the box office. It could conceivably win the Fri-Sunday frame with that, if “Asians” doesn’t hit the sweet spot and land closer to $30. “Meg” will have cleared $85 by midnight Sunday. $100 million is in reach, mark this $130 million Chinese-financed production in black ink. It’s done well all around the Pacific Rim.

“Mission: Impossible–Fallout” is closing in on $175, but won’t stick around to reach $200.

“Equalizer 2” won’t be in the top ten, and is losing so many screens it will fall short of $100 (low 90s, all in).

Disney may yet get to $65 million with “Christopher Robin,” though nobody’s that happy about it.

And “BlackKklansman” will enjoy a decent second weekend. Figure Jordan Peele’s producing help in and Spike Lee’s picture could hit $25 million — eventually.