Movie Nation

For the love of God, SOMEbody say “We’re going to need a bigger boat!”

Because there’s no shame in quoting a line from THE shark movie when you’re confronted with one 80 or so feet long. Especially when there are so few other funny lines in what is meant to be a sort of big screen answer to “Sharknado.”

On the “Jaws” to “Sharknado” scale, “The Meg” tends to be more serious than the trailers have hinted, a popcorn picture of the “disaster” variety with Jason Statham trying to save Chinese beachgoers and The World from a prehistoric behemoth that somehow survived extinction and is unleashed by clumsy scientists.

Propped up by $150 million in Chinese production money for effects, with Chinese co-stars and a South China Sea setting, it’s more a popcorn pic spectacle that you endure, rather than enjoy. Perhaps it’ll play better with the People’s Republicans.

A billionaire (Rainn Wilson) has financed the building of Mana One, essentially a space station under the South China Sea, with the aim of getting his and a science team’s name on the discovery of a floor below the deepest ocean floor, a “new world” beneath what the depth sounders have measured.

Dr. Zhang (Winston Chao) and his divorced scientist/explorer daughter Suyin (Bingbing Li) head up this effort, with Mac (Cliff Curtis) in command, engineer Jaxx (Ruby Rose), remote-control rover specialist DJ (Page Kennedy) and “Doc” (Robert Taylor) all monitoring the sub that’s gone down to penetrate a chilly hydrogen layer that’s hiding this “new world.”

Lori (Jessica McNamee), Toshi (Masi Oka) and The Wall (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) are on that sub when it makes it to the bottom, and is promptly pounded by something that leaves it disabled and stranded.

Only one former Olympic swimmer has the experience to get down there and bring them back. Fetching him from a (not dissolute enough) drunk in Thailand proves easier than it should, what with him growling “You’re going to appeal to my better nature — I don’t have one.”

But it’s Jason Statham, and action fans know, “Never bet against The Stath.” And as we’ve seen in the prologue, Jonas (Statham) has “experience” with this sort of rescue, in more ways than one.

That harrowing rescue attempt, the realization that there’s a megalodon down there, and they’re all in this glass-walled science station chatting with the whales, is only the first act of “The Meg,” which features cool undersea tech like speedy bubble-topped jet subs, clear plastic polymer shark cages and an undersea lab that looks like every absurdly spacious, Apple-design team space station you’ve ever seen in a movie.

There’s a too-cute kid (Shuya Sophia Cai) — “Eight-year olds hear EVERthing!” — moments of  careless death and of personal sacrifice and even environmental complaint (Shark fin hunters get what’s coming to them.). 

And it has some of the most ridiculous place-yourself-in-peril moments ever committed to film. At least Statham’s still got that Olympic swimmer physique and the muscle memory to look great slicing through the water…swimming towards an 80 foot shark.

Muttering “Just keep swimming” as he dives in for another go at the damned shark is about as wry as he gets.

Director Jon Turtletaub (“National Treasure”) emphasizes the tech and the mayhem here. We can guess what a shark that size (twenty feet longer than a Coast Guard Cutter) would do to a crowded Chinese beach, or a Yorkshire terrier.

Whales, motor yachts, fishing trawlers and submarines? We can guess that, too.

That being the case, the movie dawdles along, boring us as it does, in between action sequences. There’s a good chase or two, a generic escape here and there, but almost no cool lines and no catch-phrases.

“There’s a monster and it’s watching us.” “It’s not easy being the person who survives.” “Man vs. Megalodon isn’t a fight. It’s a slaughter!”

Among the cast, Rose and Curtis are wasted and Statham alone has his moments as the deaths, even the “honorable” ones, lack emotional punch.

They’re selling this as a funny escape, and that’s the movie they probably should have made. The laughs are rare — a sight gag here, the stereotypical “scared black guy who can’t swim” there. Rainn Wilson has maybe one amusing moment, and it’s in the trailer.

But the Chinese financiers may learn a hard lesson from this pricey pic, if it sells tickets the way it lumbers through the water. From liquor billionaires to Japanese conglomerates and Arab oil potentates — when it comes to “new money,” Hollywood always sees a sucker coming.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action/peril, bloody images and some language

Cast: Jason Statham, Ruby Rose, Rainn Wilson, Bingbing Li, Cliff Curtis, Winston Chao

Credits:Directed by Jon Turteltaub, script by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, based on the Steve Alten novel. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:53

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas once said, “Figure out what 12 year-old girls want, and you’ve got a hit.”

And “To the Beat!” is a veritable shopping list of those “wants.”

Girls — here they’re 14 and thus examples to their younger sisters — want to dance.

They want fame, and the wardrobe that goes with it. They want a chance to meet and dance for their latest pop idol, here represented by singer-dancer Chris Trousdale, formerly of Dream Street.

And — just guessing here — they want a movie with a little more edge and polish than the achingly sweet, squeaky clean, virtually drama free “To the Beat!”

It’s about twin sisters (Laura Krystine, Brisa Lalich), one studious, the other more “free” and “fun,” but both dancers. Mia (Lalich) is practicing a political speech for school, but Mackie’s not having it.

“Issues facing our country? Girl, we have our OWN issues to worry about.”

She’s just seen, online, an announcement by Trousdale that he’s holding a contest to pick a five girl team of dancers to appear with him in his next video. And Mackie’s just GOT to get in on that. Mia will get a team together, too, even though their styles (modern vs tap) mimic their personalities.

“No matter what happens, I’ll be happy for you.”

“Me, too!”

They don’t need a sibling rivalry, what with their spoiled bratty nemesis Avery (Jayden Bartels) living next door. Avery has Daddy (Eric Martsolf) wrapped around her little finger, and needs him to finance her “plan for me to finally get what I deserve.”

The sisters, meanwhile, assemble their squads and work out with their faux French dance teacher, aptly named Miss Dotty (Susan Denaker). When crunch time hits, Miss Dotty calls in the even-more-camp Bob Fosse-wannabe (Michael Taylor Gray, funny). 

Boys? They’re just here to help plan social media strategies, or in Avery’s case, to get Alex (Jake Brennan) to “fix” the online voting to get into the finals.

Parents? They’re mostly here to subordinate their needs to fulfilling their little girls’ dreams. The twins’ mom (Marie Wilson) is a widow working two jobs, leaving a lot of the “mothering” to oldest daughter Mandy (Veronica St. Clair). Avery’s (Martha Madison of “Days of Our Lives”) is a Southerner and ex-cheerleader who has some “suggestions” for Avery’s routine.

“You are NOT gonna PAULA ABDUL this dance contest!”

Co-writers Susan Bernhardt and Jillian Clare (former child actress, who also directed this) refer to themselves as “creators” in the credits. So this is probably a proof-of-concept pilot for a TV series.

And the very young dancers make that an idea that could pan out. The acting may be wildly uneven, but endless rehearsals, all set to Trousdale’s “Dance for Love,” are sharp and age (and skill-level) appropriate. This isn’t “Step Up,” in other words. Asexual, cute and just impressive enough to be something kids could try at home.

The teen characters, aside from the odd bit of cheating, backstabbing and squealing in delight at every “video” appearance by Trousdale, are supportive and (somewhat) considerate. SOME of them take Trousdale’s “Don’t take yourself too seriously” too seriously. Guess who doesn’t?

“How ELSE am I supposed to take myself?”

The banter is of the “For realz, you’re delusional,” variety. And the story, lacking much in the line of drama, just meanders (too many characters to do justice to many of them) towards its “Big Contest” finale.

That’s where the filmmakers’ “call in favors” casting drains what little air there is out of the balloon. You don’t turn your LONG third act over to “our three celebrity judges” (actress-dancer Alyson Stoner is the most famous one, “Maze Runner” Dexter Darden is another) who go on and on “analyzing” each of the three finalist teams’ performances.

That smacks of “They’re doing me a favor, I need to give them lots of screen time” and it makes the movie fizzle out when it had been perfectly content to just fade away. Slowly.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Laura Krystine, Brisa Lalich, Jayden Bartels, Veronica Stt. Claire, Martha Madison

Credits:Directed by Jillian Clare, script by Susan Bernhardt and Jillian Clare. A Vision/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

“Bel Canto” is a Paul Weitz film of Ann Patchett’s novel, about South American revolutionaries seizing a singer and concert-goers in an effort to free their comrades from prison.

Ken Watanabe is the love interest, with Christopher Lambert and Sebastian Koch also in the cast.

Look for this in limited release Sept. 14. 

The best “What might have been” documentaries about musicians that disappeared (“Searching for Sugar Man”), bands that fell “just shy of making it (“Anvil!”) are the ones that have the best explanations, excuses and screw-ups that reveal how they missed that big brass ring — record deals, big tours, wealth and fame.

“40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie” has a doozy. Several doozies.

And when your biggest fan from way-back-when is a big-shot TV writer and producer, the world’s going to hear those excuses and laugh along with you as you relate the ways you set out to NOT make it.

Lee Aronsohn has a resume littered with hit series, from “Who’s the Boss?” to “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men.” But when he was in college in Boulder, Colorado in the ’70s, there was this band that he’s never been able to get out of his head.

Magic Music was a quintet of singer/guitarists, flutist, tabla, spoons and banjo players, a self-described “hippie jam band” with Eagles harmonizing, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band bluegrass chops and a cult following. Aronsohn decided he’d track them down, round them up and put on a reunion show.

And he’d get the answer to his burning question, “Why didn’t you guys ever break out?”

They had a meeting with Tree Publishing, one of the most famous music publishers in Nashville and all of North America. They wouldn’t sign the deal because they were put off by the guy’s shoes. They were denied an arranged meeting with big time Capital Records in LA, kicked out for showing up barefoot.

Booted from a Cat Stevens tour here, abandoning a record in mid-recording there, these guys — “not a business mind among us” — had their shots, even though listening to their music you can hear what managers, music biz professionals and others heard — “You haven’t written a hit record” or a song that could become a hit. Titles like “Mole’s Stumble” were never going to get them on the charts.

Not that “I just wanna be like the animals, I wanna live close to the ground, I just wanna be like the Indian, and see my Maker all around me,” doesn’t have a late-hippie/John Denver “Rocky Mountain High” vibe to it.

But Aronsohn gets beyond the “what might have beens” and into the lives they were living then, “back to the land” hippies living on a commune, then basically creating their own, calling converted school buses “home” in El Dorado Canyon, Pagosa Springs and other remote corners of the mountains outside of Boulder.

They’d tour, play bars, make music, fall in love and bring women into their lifestyle. And every so often, they’d get a shot, only to be told “You need a drummer” or something else they didn’t want to hear.

Egos got in the way, a need to be pure and “not contrived,” and then life happened. Some fell out, all moved away and yet they pretty much stayed in touch.

“The Magic Music Movie” is  interesting as music and cultural history, tracking the band from flannel and overalls protest folk to bluegrass, against a backdrop of Vietnam, Watergate, marijuana and Earth Day. But where the film is fascinating is the ways it examines the wandering lives of working musicians who stay in touch with the tunes even as life goes on.

One later toured with Carole King. Another played in Vegas backup bands. One cut records and had hits in Europe, one tried disco, one sailed off to Mexico, playing with expats where he settled. One became a cabin and “tiny house” builder, another a visual artist; marriages, families, divorces, drugs, alcoholism — and 40 years later, they could still hit the harmonies and put on a reunion worth preserving on film.

Maybe that’s a happy ending, even if they and their fans are wistful for what might have been. But few bands can claim a better collection of “Funny story about why we didn’t” anecdotes than Magic Music.

MPAA Rating: unrated, drug and alcohol use and abuse discussed

Cast: Chris Daniels, Bill Makepeace, Lynn Poyer, Greg Sparre, Will Luckey, George Cahill, Rob Galloway, Kevin Milburn

Credits:Directed by Lee Aronsohn. A Magic Music release.

Running time: 1:39

Probably not as funny as the trailers suggest, and considering the budget is in the $150 million range, “funny” isn’t all they were going for to begin with.

A late summer popcorn pic is always an iffy gamble, but “Guardians” and “Signs” opened at about this time of this month, and made a mint.

Love the Brit, Chinese, Kiwi, Icelandic plus Rainn, Page Kennedy and Ruby Rose cover-all-the-bases casting. The “check box” diversity is a bit obvious on paper, but as we’ve seen in the “Star Wars” movies, its what you give everybody to do and how good they are at  it that counts. Hope of “Rogue One,” in other words, not those other ones.

And Jason Statham seems to be in on the joke these days, which is a blessing. The embargo on reviews for this picture, which I dare say is screening for critics and select fans EVERYwhere tonight, is 7pm EDT Wed.

Stay tuned for further developments.

“Dog Days” is like a romantic comedy Garry Marshall didn’t get to make. He did the sappy “Valentine’s Day,” “New Year’s Eve” and “Mother’s Day.” But here’s actor turned director Ken Marino (“How to be a Latin Lover”) to get us through the summer with a large ensemble of lovers brought together, or keeping love alive, through dogs.

Like Marshall’s later films, it’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny. But an engaging cast — human and canine — give it, and us, almost enough warm-and-fuzzies to get by.

Nina Dobrev (of “Flatliners”) is the cute, wrapped-too-tight hostess of “Wake Up LA” who only loosens up when her wolfhound looking boy Sam falls for the pitbullish pet of ex-footballer turned co-host Jimmy (Tone Bell, flip and charming).

Dax (Adam Pally) is the irresponsible musician who learns to responsibility when he has to take care of his sister’s dog when she has twins.

Vanessa Hudgens plays Tara, the barista with the hots for Hot Vet (Michael Cassidy), who thinks her shot just improved when she takes in a dumpster chihuahua. The nerd running the local no-kill shelter (Jon Bass, funny) pines for her.

New adoptive parents (Eva Longoria and Rob Corddry) are having no luck at all getting through to their new little girl until they find a stray pug. Unfortunately, the lonely widower (Ron Cephas Jones, terrific) lost the dog, and his “punk” pizza delivery boy (Finn Wolfhard) is guiltily helping him look for her. 

The dogs are here to get in the way, open hearts and facilitate the human coupling, all of which play out in exceedingly predictable ways.

The funniest scenes feature comic Tig Notaro as a deadpan doggie therapist whose “real” patient is the TV anchor — “Someone needs to get out there” isn’t really meant for your doggie, dearie.

Dobrev and Hudgens are lightly charming, Longoria plays concerned mom without a lot of spark (Corddry has nothing funny to say or do), Thomas Lennon plays the brother in law and new-twins-daddy and finds a laugh here and there.

But the script needed a LOT more, not more drug jokes or “phallic” gags (one of each, as this is a “family” film). Maybe lines like this one Pally utters at a whiny setter.

“There’d better be a boy in a well for you to be freaking out like this.”

MPAA Rating: PG for rude and suggestive content, and for language

Cast: Nina Dobrev, Vanessa Hudgens, Eva Longoria, Ron Cephas Jones, Rob Corddry, Tone Bell, Finn Wolfhard, Adam Pally, Tig Notaro, Thomas Lennon

Credits:Directed by Ken Marino, script by Erica Oyama, Elissa Matsueda. An LD Entertainment release.

Running time:

You see enough bad horror movies in a row, you start losing faith in the genre. Then one comes along that startles, impresses and even touches you, and you forget all the many ways everything else you’ve seen lately has gone wrong.

“Down a Dark Hall” gets one huge thing right that’s a common failing of most horror — pathos. It makes you care and makes you feel, even though what you’re watching is just a clever mashup of ghost story tropes, a “genre picture” in every sense of the word.

That it works should come as no surprise. Uma Thurman makes a great villain, and AnnaSophia Robb has proven to be one of the best child actresses of her generation.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés gave us the harrowing “Buried” and the creepily intriguing “Red Light,” and gives the film a European sensibility.

And what brought them all together? A film about seriously messed-up girls menaced in a seriously chilling girl’s boarding school, a film based on a novel by the Grande Dame of YA Frights, Lois Duncan of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Kit (Robb) is a polished liar, also an arsonist and heaven knows what else that’s detailed on her rap sheet. She lost her dad very young and she’s never gotten over it, never forgiven the world.

We meet her as she’s about to be kicked out of school. Her parents are desperate enough to try this school that an elegant, European-accented recruiter Dr. Sinclair (Jodhi May) suggests — Blackwood.

“Girls like me end up on meds,” she hisses to the recruiter. But before she knows it Miss Anger Management Issues is packed off to the boondocks, to stately, forbidding and  historic Blackwood Hall.

It’s a lovely setting where painting, writing and music are vital elements of the curriculum.

“At Blackwood, we believe beauty enriches the spirit,” headmistress Madame Duret (Thurman) purrs to Kit while her parents are there. But the moment they’re gone, Kit sees the place is empty, that it has wiring and lighting problems.

And when the rest of the students arrive, it turns out there are only five, including Kit — with a student-teacher ratio that any prep school would envy. The instructors include Madame Duret (painting), Dr. Sinclair (writing) and Madame Duret’s hunky son (Noah Silver) who teaches music.

The “special” girls? Edgy Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman), eager-to-please Ashley (Taylor Russell) and delicate flower Sierra (Rosie Day) are just a bit off. Bullying Veronica (Victoria Moroles) and perpetually pissed Kit are the ones who look like they truly belong in this baroque “prison.”

But the instruction takes hold, even with that feuding duo. This girl is a “natural” at math, that one a gifted painter, one’s a born poet. And Kit? She never knew she could play the piano like that.

It’s Madame Duret’s “results” that first spook Kit. The manic way Sierra wields a brush, the dead-eyed automaton Izzy turns to when solving a proof, the way Kit herself plays until her fingers bleed.

Then, there are those wraiths she sees in the shadows. And there are a lot of shadows, especially in the “closed off” wing of Blackwood Hall. You remember. “Wiring problems.”

I wasn’t so much conscious of Cortés ratcheting up suspense as absorbed by the milieu, the brittle chemistry and funny/testy banter among the girls and the mystery that Kit is trying to figure out.  Robb, ranging from irked to enraged and rebellious to terrified, makes Kit’s journey a fraught one we take with someone we instantly root for.

Moroles gives Veronica her own Threat Level in the midst of all this, all menace and out of f—-s to give attitude.

Thurman, oily accent dripping with menace, is no Disney villain here. She’s real world dangerous, vulpine, callous, keeping supernatural secret threats from her pupils. And for those occasions where she’s not scary enough, there’s the obligatory Russian disciplinarian (Rebecca Front) to grab you by the hair and restore order.

“Down a Dark Hall” never transcends its genre and only rarely manages surprise. But a superb cast, a reliably spooking setting, good effects, decent frights and just a hint of “culture” make it a pleasant break from under-budgeted crap and endless “Annabelle/Insidious” sequels.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, terror and violence, some language including a sexual reference, and smoking

Cast: AnnaSophia Robb, Uma Thurman, Victoria Moroles, Jodhi May, Noah Silver

Credits:Directed by Rodrigo Cortés, script by Michael Goldbach and Chris Sparling, based on a novel by Lois Duncan. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:36

“House of Deadly Secrets” gives the world, at long last, a haunted house movie for the HGTV Age — a house flipping that goes terribly, horrifically wrong.

Maggie and Ava are mother and daughter who move into this lovely Arts and Crafts era two story house with lots of beautiful wood floors, exposed beams, stairs.

“Family entanglements” kept the house on the market, or so says the too-helpful neighbor  (Patty McCormack) when Maggie (Angie Peterson) asks.

But newly-divorced Maggie is spooked, pretty much from the start. She gets up in the middle of the night to chase a bearded homeless squatter who has been sleeping downstairs. She runs back to that neighbor, who is caring for a mute invalid, for more house-flipper questions.

“Windows seem to open and close on their own…for my own piece of mind, is there any history I should know about, someone DYING in the home?”

Man, all the “Fixer Upper” and “Flip or Flop,” “Flipping Vegas” and “First Time Flippers” episodes the girlfriend makes me sit through, they NEVER let on that haunting is a standard business hazard. Not even on “Zombie House Flipping.”

But Maggie goes right to the supernatural solution to her worries. Sure enough, there’s a story, a girl who disappeared there years and years ago. That realtor’s going to get an earful.

“We’re making friends with the neighbors…and the ghosts!”

But that neighbor isn’t who she seems. The mute stroke victim tries to warn them, tapping on the windows, mumbling. At least the realtor’s the first one to get it. “Sylvia” really wants that house.

Let the “accidents” begin.

“Let me make you breakfast!”

There are few sins as mortal to a “horror” film as giving away your secrets too easily, and “House of Deadly Secrets” goes straight to hell in a hurry. So much is explained, pointed out and underlined in the first act that it’s going to take a whopper or three to pull this clunker into “scary” territory.

It bends towards ridiculous and takes on the tone of a dark comedy with some of the accidents and deaths.

McCormack, who has a career stretching back to “Playhouse 90” and “The Golden Age of Television,” might have taken on a lip-smacking Lin Shaye glee in Sylvia’s malevolence, but the direction and tone of the movie holds her back.

Suspense? Barely a moment of it.

Director Doug Campbell, famed for TV’s “Stalked by My Mother” and “Stalked by My Doctor” and “Stalked by My Neighbor” and “Stalked by My Doctor: The Return,” can’t get a handle on dark comedy. Which is odd, considering those credits. That leaves him with a duller-than-dull thriller.

But if nothing else, he and the screenwriters are to be praised for what is apparently house-flipping’s dirtiest little secret. Repainting that “fixer upper” doesn’t chase away the bad mojo, and they know it.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, graphic violence

Cast: Angie Peterson, Violet Hicks, Philip Boyd, Patty McCormack

Credits:Directed by Doug Campbell, script by Andrea Canning, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Stuart. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

Taron Egerton and Emma Roberts and Ansel Elgort are the stars, young “Greed is good” hustlers in the Go Go ’80s of LA.

But it’s Spacey, bewigged and wicked, who got this one pulled from theatrical release and onto Amazon Prime, then added back in for a limited Aug. 17 release.

The image that stopped me in my tracks in this trailer wasn’t the alarming “possession” makeup — which is scary in its own right.

It’s the presence of Michael Ironside. Horror filmmakers are very sentimental about hiring their idols, be they Lynn Shaye or Lance Henricksen, or the guy who starred in “Scanners,” way back in the day. No release date for this one, but the period piece “Heretiks” may have what it takes to get theatrical distribution.