Movie Nation

The most famous “Big Eyes” case in literary history, an artist whose husband claimed credit for her work, was the French novelist Colette, who wrote the novella that the musical “Gigi” is based on, the novel that the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Cheri” was based on, a series of books on a young heroine, “Claudine” — tales of  coquettes, women of a certain age, romance, wildly popular works.

Dominic West plays Henry Gauthier-Villars, the writer whose famous nom de plume “Willy” was the brand that allowed him to take the credit for his wife’s “girl” stories. West makes great villains.

Keira Knightley plays Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and her performance and the film have the look, feel and uplifting story one wants out of an Awards Season period piece.

Can Bleecker Street campaign an Oscar contender to a win? “Colette” opens in limited release Sept. 21.

We shall see.

She wants to get into Harvard, more than life itself.

He’s hellbent on Yale, come hell or high water.

Hemlock Prep classmates Bennett (Jacob Lattimore of “The Maze Runner” and “Detroit”) and Lona (Sami Gayle of TV’s “Blue Bloods”) long ago decided that academia was a zero sum game. At war since kindergarten, raised by single moms — his is a wealthy state senator, hers is, well, Christina Hendricks of “Mad Men” — want it all, the whole “Candy Jar.”

Netflix continues to step into the niche — teen rom-coms — that the major studios abandoned when they went all-in on comic books, with this tolerable trip down utterly predictable lane — mismatched, but oh-so perfect-for-each-other that we know where this is going long before Homecoming.

Gayle and Lattimore play these speed-debaters, sentenced to be “co-president” of their debate team, as if they’re terrified their supporting cast will scald them, given half the chance.

When their best scenes are with Academy Award winning comic actress Helen Hunt, you can understand their concern. Cathy — she likes the kids to call her by her first name — was Obama’s classmate and is thus sympathetic to their Ivy League dreams.

Finish that application and get a DATE. Find a little balance.

“My greatest skill is arguing with people,” Bennett complains. “Not exactly date material.”

“Forget Yale! “Focus on becoming a better kisser.”

Hemlock Prep is the sort of school where the (mostly) rich kids annoy the principal (Tom Bergeron, a hero to generations of toddlers via “America’s Funniest Home Videos”) into ranting his retire to the South of France fantasy to shut them up.

The debate coach (Paul Tigue) has a thing for quoting movies — badly.

“STOP! Not my tempo!”

As the kids spend the year haggling — at caffeinated speeds — “Resolved, the Cost of a College Education Do Not Outweigh the Benefits — Lona and Bennett find they have a lot more in common than either would admit.

The arcane rules of debate, its place within the Ivy League admission, law school, Wall Street or political success is laid out. The descent of debate into rapid-fire recitations is dissected.

State Senator/Lawyer Julia (Uzo Aduba of Broadway and “Orange is the New Black”) does that politician thing of being fake-tactful, tooting her own horn, Hendricks’ Cool Mom Amy is depressed, doesn’t keep house, drinks and swears in front of her over-achieving kid.

Yeah, the single moms hate goes WAY back.

The two best debaters in the county? They can’t stop a lifetime of sniping overnight. Or can they?

“You disrespect the judges!”

“You have bad debate habits!”

“You have bad breath!”

“YOU have a stupid face!”

The arguments, kid and adult, are built around debate “rules.” Those arguing argue their opponents into corners, where they pin them. Checkmates are acknowledged through gritted teeth. Unlike in the real America, people who disagree keep it civil.

Worldwise, onetime over-achiever but settled-for-this-life Cathy, who placates her young charges with treats from her “Candy Jar,” is there to remind one and all that life isn’t predictable, that stressing over the head-start you assume a prestigious college admission earns you, is no guarantee of success, a meaningful life, or happiness.

I like the film’s messages and aspirations, the recognition that kids (and their helicopter moms) need to learn that “Sometimes, you lose.” For a Netflix film aimed at this age group, it’s quaintly chaste.

But in execution, “Candy Jar” rarely rises to the level of “time killer.” The leads are adequate, but don’t really set off sparks. The jokes are tepid, the few that work die of loneliness.

Without those elements, a rom-com’s blandly predictable “the price focused kids pay in over-achieving” message is over-exposed, too pale and delicate to stand the harsh light of the day.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, profanity, alcohol

Cast: Jacob KLaittmore, Sami Gayle, Helen Hunt, Christina Hendricks, Tom Bergeron, Uzo Aduba

Credits:Directed by Ben Shelton, script by Chad Klitzman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32

The dizzying, twisted satire of work in post “Black Lives Matter” America that is “Sorry to Bother You” comes close to taking your breath away during its first 40 giddy minutes.

It’s no shock that the jokes about the gig economy and the winner-take-all American system kind of exhaust themselves at about that point. As over-the-top as what we see might be, it’s so close to grim reality for much of working America as to turn dispiriting after a while.

But boy, lyricist-turned-writer/director Boots Riley is onto something. Corporations that trade “security” for a lifetime of low wages and dead-end prospects, “visionary entrepreneurs” who are basically just hype-and-hustle slave masters, phony incentives and the reality of just what “we” represent to “them” — consumers here solely to give them money, workers giving up our time and lives in greater and greater proportions — it’s all here.

He overreaches and delivers a third act that’s not nearly as clever as he thinks it or he is, but “Sorry” still manages laughs that hurt.

Lakeith Stanfield of “Get Out” and “Atlanta” is Cassius Green, an Oakland drudge stuck on the bottom rung of the employment ladder. He’s so hard up he brings Employee of the Month plaques and “moot court” trophies to job interviews. They’re fake.

But that doesn’t matter at RegalVision. The boss (Robert Longstreet)  is onto him, but as he’ll hire anyone who breathes, can read and speak English, Cassius is hired. He’ll be a commission only telemarketer, peddling encyclopedias and the like to hapless, unwilling folks unfortunate enough to pick up the phone.

A witty touch. Cassius, who uses “Sorry to bother you” as his opening line in cold calls, is dropped (literally) into the living room, kitchen or bedroom of whoever he calls and interrupts, face to face with the broke, the broken-hearted and the copulating, none of whom are interested in his spiel.

“Stick to the Script” his foul-mouthed cheerleader/supervisor (Michael X. Sommers, hilarious) preaches. But it’s not until the Old Man of the Phone Banks (Danny Glover, perfect) passes on his wisdom that things work out for Cassius.

“Hey, Youngblood. Use your white voice!”

Damned if sounding and reasoning like David Cross (the white voice Cassius comes up with) doesn’t pay off. He might just make it out of the basement call center into “Power Caller” status, one shiny, access-limited elevator ride up to where the “ballers” of this business make calls to high rollers — governments in need of arms, Chinese oligarchs in need of cheaper phone assemblers, the big money cold calls.

“Bag’em and tag’em” and that big payday gig can be yours, YoungBlood Cassius is assured.

His artist girlfriend (Tessa Thompson, uncomfortable in this sort of second-banana role), a sign-spinner in this side hustle world, is impressed with his initiative. Until, that is, union agitation starts at RegalVision thanks to the one guy (Steven Yuen) who sees the Big Picture starvation-wage economy America is settling into. Will Cassius sell out? “How quickly will he sell out?” is the better question. Which he dodges.

“You’re sidestepping more than The Temptations!”

The temptations of “visionary” Steve Lift (Armie Hammer, all “Holla at yo’ boy” ghetto and the funniest he’s ever been), who runs Worry Free, a live-your-work/work-to-live corporation that’s a little Apple, a lot Google, a lot more Amazon with Lyft wages, prove too hard to resist. Cassius may get his Maserati, bail his uncle (Terry Crews) out of hock and move out of that uncle’s garage (literally). But at what cost?

There’s a little “Soylent Green” and “Brazil,” The Truman Show” and Karl Marx in all this, and Riley gives this just-past-the-present future the sting of recognition, workers with zero power and no rights facing an economy stacked against them at every turn.

If you think of the labor/capital arrangement between NFL players and their “owners,” you’re not far off from what this film suggests.

The setting — telemarketing centers — earns head-nods of recognition. It’s a predatory business, sort of the ultimate expression of capitalism. It makes you think of the National Do Not Call Registry, a joke that was the only piece of consumer protection legislation ever passed by a Republican Congress. How’s that working out for you?  Ever stop to wonder why it doesn’t work?

Stanfield has funny fight scenes with Jermaine Fowler, playing Sal, our hero’s best friend and somebody ready to agitate against the injustice of the workplace, as soon as somebody explains what those injustices are. And there are amusing “White Voice” encounters with the King of the “Power Callers” (Omari Hardwick of TV’s “Power”). 

The picture has the rage and energy of early Spike Lee films, and the same “How do I END this?” third act failings. I wanted to love it, but it stalls long before it takes a turn towards something so bizarre it’ll be taught in film schools for decades, “How NOT to give your sci-fi satire a climax.”

As it is, “Sorry to Bother You” has enough injustice every working person, black, white or whatever, has faced to make you laugh in recognition, and seethe about all the way home after seeing it.

Too bad they’re selling this as this year’s “Get Out.” It isn’t.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Lakeith Stanfield, Terry Cruise, Omari Hardwick, Danny Glover, Armie Hammer

Credits: Written and directed by Boots Riley. An Annapurna release.

Running time: 1:45

“Mohawk” is an indie period piece that’s somewhat like life on the frontier of the War of 1812 — “nasty, brutish and short.”

A nonsensical, malnourished tale of vengeance and horror, it’s set in the Mohawk nation, where that warrior tribe, decimated by the American Revolution and the intervening years, has decided to stay neutral in this latest of the “Cousins Wars” between Britain and her former colony, the United States.

The director of “We Are Still Here” wraps a slasher film in Mohawk and Army garb for an odyssey about a meddling Brit (Eamon Farren), his agitated Mohawk warrior friend (Justin Rain), and the woman they share — Okwaho (Kaniehtiio Horn).

Joshua Pinsmail (Farren) is trying to talk Mohawk elders into joining the fight, late in the war (1814) in “Last of the Mohicans” country — upstate New York.

“You are already dying…Trust me. Side with King George. I am here, more will follow.”

Calvin Two Rivers (Rain) has made up his mind, and figures he can trigger a conflagration with just a murder or two. When the three of them run afoul of an Army patrol, which makes an international incident even more likely.

As the shots ring out and knives flash, the crazed Captain Holt (Ezra Buzzington) makes it his mission to bring these “murderous redskins” to heel, to get them back to Fort George or “The Mission,” whichever outpost of civilization shows up first.

Lost in these woods, chasing the Indian and her two lovers, it’s anybody’s guess where they’ll end up.

“I will drag that buck back to Fort George by his buckskin!”

“Mohawk” is a classic over-reaching film festival movie, not really fit for theatrical release. It was shot on the cheap with middling, no name actors, passable costumes, vivid makeup, bloody effects and sharp video cinematography that lacks texture, depth of field and cinematic quality. It looks cheap, as if most every scene was shot at exactly the same hour of the day.

The parkland locations –waterfalls, rivers and the like — are striking. But too many shoot-outs and debates were shot in the neat medium-growth rows of a pine tree plantation.

For too many moments lack even a hint of logic, but here’s one. Walking into an abandoned outpost, the cook fire and candles are still burning. The smoke trails straight up into the sky, not a hint of wind. And yet there’s a bad Western style wooden door swinging, rattling and thumping, open and closed, in this non-existent breeze.

The better to draw the protagonists into the one room that will tell them “What happened here?”

The bigger theme, expressed in the murderous visions of Okwaho, is of a demonic land stained with blood doomed to forever be home to the horror of racial strife. A deer-skull masked demon foretells it. And the American officer (Jack Gwaltney) who questions the sneaky Brit Pinsmail puts it out there, plain and simple.

“I’m surprised that a man of your perceived heritage would bear arms against his fellow American patriots” whilst in the company of savages.

There’s no effort to show Indians communicating in Mohawk, or even affect a broken-English accent. The dialogue has the odd profane anachronism, and a certain half-hearted idealization of the Mohawk.

“In my experience, it is the white man who does the scalping.”

The weapons are wounds are realistic, the fights reasonably well-staged, but little costume details and the “map” the Captain consults scream “amateurs.”

Whatever ideas “Mohawk” had behind it, whatever the filmmaker saw in the cast, especially Ms. Horn (think Grace Slick circa “White Rabbit”) not much of a movie came out of the effort.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Kaniehtiio Horn, Eamon Farren, Justin Rain, Ezra Buzzington, Noah Segan, Ian Collewtti, Robert Longstreet, Jonathan Huber, Sheri Foster, David La Haye

Credits:Directed by Ted Geoghegan script by Ted Geoghegan and Grady Hendrix. A Dark Sky release.

Running time: 1:32

I have this weird thought every time I see Michael Peña in a movie. And he’s in a LOT of movies, most often as the hero’s pal, Ant-Man’s sidekick, etc.

Every other Hispanic actor in Hollywood must hate him. Seriously, he sucks up a lot of work, and even though he generally makes the most of every opportunity, there’s a lot of “type” casting that has his agent’s phone ringing off the hook.

“We need a Latino cop/neighbor, FBI agent, ex-con.” Who do they call? It is almost always (it seems) Michael Peña.

Interviewed him several times over the years, and while he’s lost his “luckiest guy in show business” veneer, he’s still the luckiest guy in show business.

He rarely gets the chance to be the lead, but Netflix gives him that shot as a maintenance worker who thinks his dreams are predicting an alien invasion future.

Which of course they are. July 27, “Extinction” comes to the most popular streaming service.

IMDb doesn’t even have him top billed. 

Sundance favorite, Chloe Grace Moretz star vehicle, with Jennifer Ehle taking on the Glenn Close/Louise Fletcher “Cruella meets Nurse Ratched”  villainness, and now opening Aug. 3.

The funny choice is pairing Moretz with her darker skinned, dreadlocked doppelganger, Sasha Lane (“American Honey”) in “The Miseducation of Cameron Post.” Let’s make that “homosexuality is just narcissism run amok” argument in casting, shall we?

Preposterous on an epic scale, “Skyscraper” is “Towering Inferno” meets “Die Hard” — “Hard Inferno” — starring man mountain Dwayne Johnson as King Kong.

Universal and writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber have The Rock clambering up the world’s tallest building — or at least the construction crane used to construct it. They hurl fire and bullets, aircraft (helicopters, not biplanes) at him, and at one point literally have him holding the structure together with his muscle-bound arms.

The King Kong references are as intentional as they are unfortunate.

Don’t expect much from the acting. Toss the laws of physics out of court, sign away your rights to a logical plot when you buy your ticket and remember, it’s not in 3D, so there’s no chance of injury from repeated eye-rolls.

But is all this poppycock fun? Every so often, sure. The odds are about the same as 7,000 King Kongs with typewriters eventually tapping out “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Johnson plays Will Sawyer, an FBI hostage retrieval commando when we meet him, a compassionate guy badly injured when a hostage sets off a bomb. But that’s how he met his wife. Sarah (Neve Campbell) is a Navy surgeon who saved his life.

Years later, he’s in Hong Kong, a one-legged security and safety consultant signing off on ascendant China’s new claim to The World’s Tallest Building, the 220 story monstrosity called The Pearl, after the video-projecting orb that tops it.

But just as its about to open, bad guys hack in, break in and seize the top floors — where the mogul who built it (Chin Han) has his penthouse, where Will’s Sarah and their two kids are vacationing.

Will’s derring do is what follows, fantastical stunts that seem straight out of a video game quest — level after level achieved, bodies piling up along the way. On one good leg, and one made of titanium. Just guessing there.

A simple flaw far too many action screenplays make is building “super competence” into the hero. Will is an ex-FBI commando, and an ex-Marine. He’d have been an ex-SEAL too but even writer-director Thurber (“Dodgeball,” “We’re the Millers,” “Central Intelligence”) knew that was a “He’s trained to be superhuman” over-reach.

Thurber cast a good bad guy (Roland Møller), and gave him one great line — “Light a man’s house on fire and you find out what he truly loves.” Thurber found a few stunning, over-the-top obstacles for Will to overcome.

But for a guy with all these comedy credits, Thurber (and his by-the-numbers star) fail to give the spark of sarcastic life to this version of John “Die Hard” McClane. The script gives Will one half-funny aside, and a single funny line.

“If you can’t fix it with duct tape, then you ain’t using enough duct tape.”

Tape isn’t what this screenplay, brisk as it is, required. Either take it completely over the top (Meet the REAL “Mr. Incredible”) or put more effort at parking it in reality. It dangles between the two, stopping the picture cold more than once.

If they’d put as much effort as The Studio that Brought Us “The Great Wall” puts into kissing up to China (again), with noble Chinese billionaires, stoic Chinese cops and generic Euro-Afrikaans/Australian villains, this might justify the stupid amounts of money it’s sure to make.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of gun violence and action, and for brief strong language

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Noah Taylor, Pablo Schreiber , Chin Han, Roland Møller

Credits:Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:42

How overfamiliar does a horror movie have to be before even the filmmakers have to wonder, “Why bother?”

“The Ritual,” a British eOne/Netflix production, packs a bunch of boy-bonding lads off into the wilds of Sweden. No “found footage,” but it’s “The Borgholm Witch Project” in the Swedish “Cabin in the Woods,” “Wicker Man,” the works.

A beastly presence, witch signs carved on trees, the terror that lies just beyond the flashlight’s last beaming. This is based on a novel, you say? Novelist Adam Nevill was Netflixing every “Ten Little Indians” variation of the past twenty years as prep, then.

There are five, to begin with. Guys who like pubs and booze and group vacations. Even as they close in on midlife, with its curse of brunches and Rogaine. Where to, next?

“We’re too old for Ibiza!”

“Amsterdam?” “Too touristy.”

“Berlin?” “Nein.”

They’ve just rejected “Let’s hike the Swedish ‘Appalachian Trail,'” when Rob (Paul Reid) who proposed it is murdered in a convenience store hold up. Luke (Rafe Spall of “The Big Short,” “Hot Fuzz”) cowered behind a shelf as it happened, a shameful act that gives him nightmares.

The four survivors — masculine, seemingly competent in the woods Hutch (Robert James-Collier of “Downton Abbey”), Phil (British TV star Arsher Ali) and bespectacled whiner Dom (Sam Troughton) — do what survivors always do in the movies.

They take on Rob’s quest, do the hike and stack a few stones into a memorial for him.

A twisted knee, a “short cut” off the treeless hills and rocky crags through a forest, and all Satanic hell breaks loose.

Weird, unnatural noises, “the bit they don’t show you in the nature documentaries,” a gutted goat in a tree, the carvings, the abandoned lodge where rituals abide. Let’s leave nothing out, shall we?

“Ooo knows whut they’re into up ‘here?”

The schisms within the group aren’t avoided with endless, “We’re not THOSE guys” and “Don’t BE that guy!”

These are good actors, and the “World’s End” pub banter promises an entertaining if cliched dynamic, with “Why do you always pretend you were in the Scouts? You were never in the Scouts” and an amusing statement of the horror movie obvious.

“A shortcut wouldn’t be called a shortcut if it was safe. It’d be called a ROUTE.”

But David “The Signal” Bruckner’s horror quickie, the Unseen Threat too quickly becomes Seen, and is seen as silly. The odd chilling bit is utterly undercut by the wacky, worn out premise.

And in the end, nobody gets off Scot-Free. Not Bruckner. Especially not the actors.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Rafe Spall, Robert James-Collier, Arsher Ali, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid

Credits:Directed by David Bruckner, script by  Joe Barton based on the Adam Nevill novel. An eOne/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

There’s a reason the romantic conversations here have a wordy/moonstruck, up-the-romantic-stakes feel, even as the world they’re delivered in feels lived-in and real.

Dan Fogelman wrote and directed “Life Itself,” and this trailer plays like his more famous creation, “This is Us.”

An intimate epic about life and love, with laughter and tears and Olivia Wilde paired up with Oscar Isaac, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas and Annette Bening in the cast, along with the Meanest Guy in Show Business, Mandy Patinkin, also on board.

Isn’t that Jean Smart as the mother of the groom? Don’t see her listed in the credits. Yet.

Did Samuel L. Jackson make the final cut? Sept 21, we find out.

There’s an implicit covenant between filmmaker and audience, one that Tim Sutton, director of “Dark Night” repeatedly violates.

You can make your movie an attention-demanding exercise, invite us into your head by under-explaining, telling your story with tone, mournful music and visuals.

Your film can even be an impressionistic or expressionistic sketch, leaving so much to the imagination that the viewer is left with just a feel for what’s happening, a mood.

But all that said, the trip inside your head had better be engrossing, entertaining or at least interesting. “Dark Night,” alternately opaque and lurid, chilling when it isn’t just plain confusing, fails on all those counts.

It’s a piece inspired by the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting at a cinema showing “The Dark Knight.” That “lone white punk with automatic weapons” massacre is even an item being reported on the TV news in one scene.

A welfare motel tween plays with his milk snake, a skinhead bonds with his turtle, an articulate gamer does Skype interviews about games and violence, “Aaron” sits with his mother and recounts his disaffected life for an off-camera video interviewer.

Veterans meet and bond over PTSD experiences since returning from Iraq, and one cleans a collection of firearms including a semi-automatic pistol, a shotgun, a bolt action rifle and an assault weapon with a muzzle suppressor.

Assorted coeds strike selfie-poses, in various states of undress. One (Anna Rose Hopkins) is an aspiring actress.

And “Jumper” (Robert Jumper) seethes, pounds the steering wheel of his ancient Mercedes, and makes his plans. How many steps from the parking lot to the back entrance to the mall? Which mask to wear?

Sutton never seeks to explain or motivate, does little to illuminate the Florida lives threatened with impending doom and creates zero sympathy for anybody depicted.

He was going for something akin to Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” but there isn’t enough reality here for us plant our feet in this story. He demands our attention, and then wastes it.

Between the insert shots of street lights (in daylight), visits to the firing range, an interview picked up here and there and “homework” that involves a lengthy session on Google Earth, Sutton manages a couple of chilling scenes.

Jumper practices stalking, assault weapon at the ready, dressed in black and prowling down the working class suburban street where he lives — in broad daylight.

When he’s loaded down for the night’s mayhem, an acquaintance asks, “Where’s the party?”

“At the movies.”

You don’t spend as much time in theaters as I do and not think about Aurora. I went to a movie in a Pasco County cinema where a week later, an ex-cop murdered a jerk he got into a beef with about talking on his phone during the movie (actually, during the previews, if memory serves).

But this Ringling College co-production doesn’t add to anybody’s understanding of shooters or sympathy for victims. It doesn’t even amp up the paranoia that comes from a culture where any public space — cinema, nightclub, church or place of business — could be some NRA-armed nutjob’s platform to cry out for attention.

Self-consciously arty, exploitative (Sutton just leers at the young women) “Dark Night” may be. It’s a drama without dramatics, a destination in search of the movie that takes us there.

MPAA Rating: unrated, firearms, nudity, profanity

Cast: Robert Jumper, Anna Rose Hopkins, Aaron Purvis, Karina Macias

Credits: Written and directed by Tim Sutton. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:25