Movie Nation

Peter is having nightmares — unexplained air attacks on his corner of futurecity, bloody beatings delivered to some unseen threat.

His children are worried. His wife?

“Please see someone!”

His boss, David? “There’s this clinic…”

But these dreams, maybe they mean something. Maybe they’re a warning. Maybe he’s not crazy, just driving his wife crazy with his visions of the coming apocalypse.

“You see that? That light?”

“Extinction” is about The Day the World Ended. Again.

And it’s about that paranoid feeling that someone — something — is watching you, even though you’re arguing that this isn’t just in your head.

“It IS just in your head!”

Peter’s not alone, but meeting somebody else who “can’t sleep” just shows him how paranoid he looks.

Michael Peña stars as a maintenance tech in a high rise near future, one of the few “crazy” people having nightmares about the attack that — twenty minutes into “Extinction” — comes.

But when it comes, objects dropping from the sky, weird craft strafing and bombing everything and everyone, can Peter tell it’s not just another nightmare? And will he have the chance to tell his wife (Lizzy Caplan) “I TOLD you so!”

“Is THIS what you saw?”

What is attacking them? Tentacled flying machines, glimpses of buggy looking helmeted soldiers, insectoid space suits, armed with with long bayonets.

Peter’s quest is as simple as it gets — finding his kids, finding his wife, getting out of a high rise that’s under-assault and gutted, with scattered panicked survivors and unknown attackers keeping them from “the factory” where he works and where his dreams told him they might be safe.

“Extinction” features convincing mayhem, reasonably realistic panic, a global assault rendered personal by the myopia of focusing on this family and some neighbors, fighting to survive.

It’s generic “aliens invade” fare, another “Skyline” or “The Invasion” with smoky ruins,  tracer bullets and brawls, but also dream interpretation and a fun twist on the family dynamic. Wife Alice is the sane, smart one, the tougher one  — the one who picks at Peter’s memories, gets him to dissect his dreams to see what they can do that might save them.

And then there’s that invader that Peter (mainly Lizzy) bested in a brawl — unseen behind his cracked helmet visor, disarmed because Peter has figured out how to hack the ID on this personalized assault rifle so he can use it — an invader for whom hunting them down is personal.

That’s not smart. Anything that stops or slows the forward–motion in a movie like this is bad, because the moment we have a time to daydream, we ponder this whole tedious business of invading, shooting victims one by one, building by building, floor by floor. Why would anybody go to the trouble?

Aliens? Their superior tech makes resistance futile, and lop-sided in the extreme. Why wouldn’t they just bomb or vaporize the works?

Terminators? Our own machines? Why wouldn’t they just electronically shut down civilization and monitor our dying out?

The reveal here is surprising enough, but anticlimactic in the extreme. A downer. Everything after it? Exposition, over-explaining. This is no “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Why pretend it is?

Peña has made a fine living, sucking up the lion’s share of “Latino supporting player” roles in comedies (“Ant Man”), action films (“Shooter”), cop pics and war films and everything in between.

He was good as Cesar Chavez in the bio-pic that offered him a rare solo starring role.

Here, he’s bland, under-emoting in the face of terror and fronting a middling actioner that isn’t as thought-provoking as its creators expected, as surprising as they think it’s “twist” is and isn’t smart enough to get out of its own way.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Michael Peña, Lizzy Caplan, Mike Colter

Credits:Directed by Ben Young, , script by Eric Heisserer. A Good Universe/Mandeville/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Here’s what we know about Paul Walker — he liked to call people “Bro.” A handsome blue eyed blond, he starred in several films of note before the “franchise” that would make him, than found himself eclipsed in that franchise by a multi-cultural ensemble that made the films all about “family.”

He played second banana to Vin Diesel with good grace, made the occasional indie film, raced cars like his character in “The Fast and the Furious,” and died way too young.

He practiced random acts of kindness. This story went viral.

I interviewed him a couple of times, once even before “Furious” took over his life. When he said “Bro,” you felt like he meant it. A couple of his final films were among his best, and didn’t have Vin Diesel or assorted Chrysler products in them to upstage him.

“I am Paul Walker” is coming soon to cable’s Paramount Network.

Disney ridiculing Disney is both product placement for Disney princesses, and a Dreamworks-level burn delivered from in house.

Looks OK, but can “Wreck-it Ralph 2” match the dizzy fun of the original?

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