Movie Nation

You name your daughter Scarlet, you’re just asking for drama.

You take a road trip with a woman named Scarlet, through the desert Southwest to LA, colorful off-the-interstate hotels and empty roadhouses, you’re asking for weirdness.

Like her getting sick, getting rattled by the constant prattle of local TV and radio sermons by a crazed preacher. A crazed white-eyed local peeks into their windows and standsin traffic.

And then Scarlet (Jena Malone) vanishes at the “Bottom of the World.” Or out of their room at the El Rancho. And Alex (Douglas Smith) is lost without her, or so you’d think.

Here’s a cryptic, creepy supernatural thriller that isn’t quite cryptic or creepy enough. This desert tale has hints of “The Vanishing” and every scarred, masked stalker movie ever made, every masked stalker who whistles “Amazing Grace” as he offers “to help.”

“Sometimes, even the mouse chases the cat.”

That preacher? He’s played by Ted Levine, “Buffalo Bob” of “Silence of the Lambs.” He stares out of that El Rancho TV right into Alex’s soul.

The hermit in the mask drags Alex into Monument Valley, and the mystery and threats deepen. Did he bury her alive “with them,” in “the city of pain” where “she never will die?”

Malone gets a few early scenes to make Scarlet burn into the memory. Sultry, sexual in the extreme and mercurial, her Scarlet is given to popping the eyes out of Alex’s head with her confessions about “the worst thing” either of them has ever done. Hers, about a little cousin she abused, is chilly, creepy beyond belief. She’s messing with him. Surely. Hopefully.

She’s happy to drink too much, to mess with his head in between noisy adventures in bed. No wonder he is consumed.

What happened to her? That faintly-deranged, tipsy preacher has to have something to do with it, or some answers. He has an old framed photo of her in his empty church.

“It’s a memento! Alex…”

“How do you know my name?”

“Why wouldn’t I know your name. You’ve been runnin’ around with my daughter.”

Time is a fever dream as Alex drifts between then and “now,” working in real estate, living with a woman (Tamara Duarte) who seems a stranger.

“We met yesterday. I’m your wife.”

Russian roulette with just one competitor, flickering TV static images of people there, and then not there, the faulty memories of a place that when he goes back, looking for answers, offers none.

No “remote” hotel. It’s in a busy town. No Church of the Solid Rock Sufferer. There’s no creepy preacher or creepier stalker

“We’re in hell, aren’t we? I’m DEAD.” Or maybe “I’m dreaming!”

Wherever he is, everybody has some sort of aphorism to share.

“People tend to focus on the world around them, rather than the world within them.”

The weirdness evaporates with a simplistic coda, one of those “We’ve been messing with your head, here are all the answers” finales.

Malone does her best slutty fantasy figure/femme fatale turn. Levine is so naturally scary that it’s a wonder he had a career totally removed from “Silence of the Lambs” frights.

Smith, of TV’s “Big Little Lies” and “The Alienist,” has the haunted eye-sockets of grief and madness. He has to carry a tale that’s too chilly to allow for human connection.

There’s a reason he doesn’t go full frantic “What has happened to my girlfriend?” in those early scenes. But that hamstrings the movie. We need that connection, need his sense of urgency and panic. Mysteries are intriguing, relationships are what pull us in.

“Bottom of the World” is a location (New Mexico) in search of a better movie, a mystery thriller that’s all puzzle and no heart.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Jena Malone, Douglas Smith, Ted Levine, Tamara Duarte

Credits:Directed by Richard Sears, script by Brian Gottlieb. A Zed Filmworks/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:25

Great to see Oscar winner Colin Firth show up and make Everett’s Oscar Wilde bio-pic something people would finance.

Everett doesn’t get the dazzling parts anymore, he’s aged out of being the boyishly handsome delight he was back in the last millennium (Haven’t we all?). But Wilde is, for an out gay British actor (like Everett, like Stephen Fry), a Lear — a role with a crowning glory about it.

“The Happy Prince” is Oscar bait, sure, and opens Oct 5 in limited release.

The animation’s so flat, static and dull it relies on brighter-than-bright sparkly colors to make it pop. Like “Power Puff Girls” or “My Little Pony.”

The jokes are infantile-obvious and pounded home with a sledgehammer, as if the writers figured they had to get through something especially thick.

And the plot? Well, it’s about unworthy “Super Heroes” angling to get a movie made about them. They, uh, succeeded.

“Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” should only be seen by its target audience — ten and under — on the appropriate-sized screen. Yeah, it’s a TV show which they squeezed a cut-rate $10 million movie out of, but I figure it’ll play best on a tablet or smart phone, preferably in the back seat of the minivan on a road trip to America’s National Parks.

With headphones, so nobody over 10 will have to hear this puerile piffle. But under 10? Butt jokes, fart gags and a whole scene of poop — what’s not to love?

I’ve seen a bunch of rave notices for this in the nerdosphere and wondered, “Are Bronies the ones reviewing this?” But no. Might as well be, though.

It begins with the dimmest Warner Brothers short cartoon ever to grace a big screen (“The Late Batsby”), and follows with a tale of how Titan Tower’s most famous resident, The Boy Wonder, Robin (voiced by Scott Menville) craves a super hero movie all his own.

The other Titans? Raven, Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy? They can be in it, too.

Only they’re all regarded as “a joke” by everybody in the DC universe, and in Jump City, where they fight crime and rap out their “sick” theme song. Superman (Nicolas Cage, a clever voice-gag) and Batman (Jimmy Kimmel, less clever) agree. “Goofsters…a joke.”

How to change that? Get Hollywood, especially blockbuster director Jade Wilson (Kristen Bell), to notice them. Go there and round up a nemesis worthy of the big screen challenge (Will Arnett is Slade) and maybe go back in time to change the origin stories so that the real DC superheroes don’t become superheroes.

Their “time cycles?” Big Wheels. Their traveling music? “Back in Time” from “Back to the Future.”

Keeping Bruce Wayne’s family out of that Gotham alley and helping Jor-El (a bad Brando impersonator) save Krypton with techno music is the most interesting inside comicdom part of the plot, and it’s dispensed with in a flash.

At least there’s a “subtle Stan Lee cameo,” as in not-subtle, but funny in concept — Mr. Marvel Comics showing up in a DC movie?

I smirked at Stan and at Michael Bolton showing up to sing the “Upbeat Inspirational Song.” A smirk is all this is worth. The “manic” irreverence and anarchy of classic Warners ‘toons, of “Animaniacs” or even the first “Lego” movie, is missing. The gags about Disney (a “Lion King” spoof) seem winded.

A lot of fanboys seem to be endorsing this as the training wheels film that will create the next generation of cable cartoon TV and comic book addicts. But “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” is too slapdash to manage that.

Go see “Incredibles 2” if that’s your aim. Even seeing it a second or fourth time will be more entertaining and surprising than this.

MPAA Rating: PG for action and rude humor

Cast: The voices of Scott Menville, Will Arnett, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage, Stan Lee and Michael Bolton

Credits: Written and directed by  Aaron Horvath, Peter Rida Michail. A Warners Animation release.

Running time: 1:33

This is one of the two or three movies I’ve most been looking forward to this summer.

Why? Because it could be Spike Lee’s “Comeback?” Nah, the man’s been buried and resurrected more times than Reagan.

Adam Driver’s chance to make something of the stardom he’s not really been able to wear like he’s earned it? Nope.

Five words — Topher Grace as David Duke. As in 1970s Ku Klux Klan Kingpin David Duke, the future face of the GOP, the honest one that MAGAs see when they look in the mirror in the morning.

THAT I’m dying to see. “BLACKkKLANSMAN” opens Aug. 10, and they know this Jordan Peele-produced pic has buzz, and they must think it’s good to be screening it well in advance.

Jovan Adep, Bokeem Woodbine, Wyatt Russell…

Really? November release, says the trailer, “Overlord” on Imdb insists on an Oct. 26 release date. We’ll see.

As zeitgeisty as any horror picture of recent memory, a tale of terror that’s rippled through the culture “like a virus.”

Scary second trailer. Creepy effect (might be a mistake to show the dude before the movie opens).

August 10, we find out if “Slender Man” is as creepy as it promises to be.

Having a thing you’re known for, an identity that makes you memorable, is everything in high school.

Captain of the cheerleading squad, Guitar Guy (wears a guitar everywhere), Drama Girl, Class Clown, Jock, Hat Girl, Class Witch, Vintage T-shirt Guy — we’ve all tried them on, trotted them out and hoped for the best.

But who’d want to be “Cancer Girl?”

Hope Gracin knows her name is “ironic.” But even if nobody at school remembers it, that’s of little consequence. They know who she is — “Cancer Girl.”

And she’s made her peace with that and hit that “acceptance” stage of death-and-dying. Hope (Mia Rose Frampton, daughter of You Know Who) isn’t wallowing in self-pity, the “Emo Teen, too ‘obv.'”

She’s not praying for a miracle. “Terminal is…terminal.” She’s “not giving up. I’m just practical.”

Hope has her BFF, Seth (Stony Blyden), her chemo buddy Sarah (Juliette Angelo), and the dreamy Boyfriend from Oz (Beau Brooks)  whom she met on her Make a Wish trip, a boy who followed her back to America to show his devotion. There’s her Vlog — the video diary where she tells her story to the online world. (EVERY teenage girl has one of those. In the movies, at least.) — which gives her purpose. 

And she has her identity — Cancer Girl.”

“Hope Springs Eternal” is a dark comedy about what happens when she loses that. Because if Miss Most Popular  (Lauren Giraldo) doesn’t have that ice-breaker to start a conversation, what Hope is there?

“You talking to me?”

“Is there anybody ELSE dying in art class?”

She’s interested in adding Hope to her entourage, and really interested in “Cute Exchange Student from Australia” (Hope’s beau).

“Can I have him when you’re done?”

The rest of Miss Pop’s entourage are quick to make room for Hope.

“You’re the girl in ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ only REAL!”

“Hope Springs Eternal” is a 78 minute movie peppered with funny lines and promising comic situations, many feeling under-developed thanks to that brisk running time.

There’s the guidance counselor, Mr. G (Pej Vahdat), who warns that she’s flunking every class and wishes she’d “apply yourself more.” Hope is always ready to trot out “My note from a doctor…for life!” in such situations.

“Why, because…you know.”

“There’s Hope’s mom (Beth Lacke), organized for battle — hand sanitizer always at the ready, keeping her girl safe, never giving up “Hope.” 

She’s the one who flips out when Hope’s doctor uses the word “remission.” She’s sending thank-you notes to every teacher and administrator (Tim Kazurinsky) at school for how supportive they’ve been.

But Hope intercepts those, even as she’s heading off her “saintly” boyfriend’s plans to pepper the city with Obama-style posters of “Hope,” “So that people will remember you, you know, after you’re dead.”

That’s why Hope isn’t ready to give up what makes her special. You can’t just take away a teen’s entire identity, just like that. It has her pondering the existential.

“Is it better to die popular (Popular Zoe is throwing her a party), or live as a loser?”

Not the sort of thing you can share with your chemo buddy Sarah. Hope has that movie version of “eye makeup cancer,” as in she’s totally healthy looking aside from her sickly eye shadow. But Sarah is pale, wan, her head wrapped in a scarf to cover the chemo-baldness.

Sarah isn’t still in high school. Too sick. Sarah needs her chemo buddy more each day. And Sarah is put out that Hope kept this a secret, is hiding it from everybody and is reacting to this joyous news like a bratty teenager.

Angelo gives the character pathos and genuine hurt. And Frampton tosses off Hope’s rejoinder, the perfect expression of teen thoughtlessness and cruelty in just three words.

You’re just…jealous!”

“Hope Springs Eternal” could use more genuinely poignant moments like that, more madcap “cover up my cure” hijinx, more of a lot of things. It’s got an intensely likable star, just enough funny supporting players and a big idea that’s a winner.

But it’s hard to send up “The Fault in Our Stars” and do it comic justice and give an achingly sad situation its due in just 78 minutes. Whatever the script offered, director Jack C. Newell (“Open Tables”) should have demanded more. The picture’s so short they stick a musical sing along over the closing credits.

With “Hope Springs Eternal,” the comic instincts are there, the novelty of the premise is a winner, but you can’t help thinking that it’s a promise that’s only half-kept.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material and some language

Cast: Mia Rose Frampton, Stony Blyden, Juliette Angelo , Beth Lacke, Lauren Giraldo, Pej Vahdat, Tim Kazurinsky

Credits:Directed by Jack C. Newell, script by . A Samuel Goldwyn  release.

Running time: 1:18

The adorably cringe-worthy “Eighth Grade” will make you wonder, “Was I EVER that awkward, shy, naive, delusional or unintentionally cruel?”

A better question as you’re pondering the closing credits might be, “How do ANY of us get that that awkward first year of our teens and last year of childhood?”

The comic and actor turned writer and director Bo Burnham has conjured up a hopeful girl filled with dread, a pained young teen determined, with help from Google, Youtube and the life lessons she’s figured out all by herself, to have a better time of it in high school now that she’s in the last week of middle school.

Kayla, given a wincing, winsome turn by young Elsie Fisher, is an obnoxious phone-addicted, media and web-savvy child who wonders, as she attempts to face-to-face chat with classmates staring down at their screens, why she has no friends.

She’s delusional enough to post life-lesson Youtube videos “for kids just like me.” Sure, the version of herself she presents in these two minute refreshingly under-rehearsed sermons is some sort of idealized, together worldwise eighth grader. Makeup and a tight camera shot hide her pimples and slow-to-fade baby fat plumpness.

And her life lessons, about “being yourself” and “Getting out there” are more just encouragements for her to start doing what she tells others to do. Because Kayla is the girl nobody remembers.

She hangs her head in shame at being named “Quietest” in the “Superlative” student honors, stares down into the time capsule she and every kid had to make when they entered middle school just a couple of years before, and recognizes her failure.

But if you’re not just a little inspired by her determination to hit restart and delighted by the blind alleys she wanders into along the way, you must have forgotten eighth grade — or be living through that hellish year right this moment.

Burnham works from tried and true coming of age comedy tropes — the pool party where body shaming is a real risk, the scrawny rebel classmate (Luke Prael) who has his own thumping theme music every time he pops into Kayla’s palpitating field of vision, mean girls, sexual curiosity and blundering misinformation.

We worry for Kayla as if she was our own. Some of us remember “Thirteen” — the movie, and the troubled, make or break by making big life mistakes year we all have to survive. 

She saves all her anger for her single dad, given a fragile, fearful flavor by Josh Hamilton, still worried sick about her every pitfall and bad habit (the nonstop iPhone ogling) Kayla’s developed, playing a father whose “dad humor” long ago lost its audience of one.

Another big question the movie asks is “Will Kayla finally give dear-old-Dad a break?”

But Burnham, with rare exceptions, treats these harrowing life hurdles Kayla is rushing through with juvenile crudity that defaults to benign. The hunky rebel’s into “dirty pictures” and sexual practices he’s probably only read about online? He’s out of luck with a shy girl who finds the taste of “practice” bananas revolting.

A “shadow a high schooler day” to help kids brace for the introduction of high school is a grand opportunity for “You’re a little girl” humiliation. But her mentor (Emily Robinson) is bubbly, outgoing, just-popular enough and kind enough to take this too-young wallflower under her wing.

There are scenes that will make your jaw drop, and moments that make your heart stop. The girl-vlogging her every inane thought onto the Internet gimmick was played out before “Eighth Grade” and the far less edgy “Hope Springs Eternal” (opening next month  used it.

But from the dorky teachers trying to act hip to the kids acting too cool and grownup for their own good, “Eighth Grade” feels lived in and real.

And the realest of them all is Miss Fisher, un self-consciously self-conscious, turning Kayla into a poster child for lonesome misery, but a bright kid who learns from every single stumble, and synthesizes those lessons into homilies for her (non-existent) online audience and for herself.

“You can’t be brave if you aren’t afraid.”

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexual material

Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Missy Yager

Credits: Written and directed by Bo Burnham. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:33

Mike Leigh’s take on the 19th century British political revolt that was crushed by armed force — a pro-democracy demonstration broken up with a massacre — comes our way Nov. 9.

It was “The Peterloo Massacre,” which wikipedia files under “battle” for some ridiculous reason. It happened in Manchester in 1819, when the 99 percent of their day gathered to demand representative democracy in a Britain still under the thumb of capricious, inbred royals and the aristocrats of the House of Lords.

Rory Kinnear plays the Patrick Henry of northern England, Henry Hunt, with Maxine Peake, Tim McInerny, Alistair Mackenzie and a few other notable names playing the luminaries of the day.

Her big screen romance fizzled, any minute now the social media darling Bella Thorne will age out teen films — comedies, romances and horror pics.

“I Still See You” is after “the event,” after the apocalypse that leaves the living haunted with after-images of the dead. And the dead…are irked.

Cool effects in this Scott Speer film, which doesn’t appear to have a US release date but should see limited release/VOD if nothing else, this fall.