Movie Nation

In the interest of transparency, and perhaps to avoid shipping out another form email to a studio publicist irate over which “embargo” they’ve placed on whatever movie they have entering the marketplace, let me put a few thoughts down here on this subject.

News embargoes are what producers — of cars, books, TV shows, electric lawnmowers and movies — use to control who gets to talk about their product and when.

They want to control the flow of information about their product, want it to peak just as it is available to the general public — information released just early enough to build anticipation, just late enough where a bad notice cannot kill that product in the marketplace.

It’s understandable, especially with costly cars, movies/TV shows etc. You want to do everything you can to ensure you make money off it, control “bad buzz,” and your deal with the devil is that you press the press to help you get the word out.

But sometimes the press isn’t going to like your Tesla/novel/Major Motion Picture.

Thus, embargoes, which in the motion picture world, have gotten completely out of hand.

Sure, movie reviewing/criticism has lost much of its punch over the years, and the audience has, in fits and spurts, shrunk — especially this year.

Now every studio, from the majors to the tiniest of the minors, wants to slap an embargo on reviews of their product. And everybody throws a different date on it. Everybody wants to cherry-pick who gets to review their movie, and get good reviews out before bad ones.

Sometimes, they embargo reviews before whatever they’re calling the “premiere.” Understandable, again. But a reason in and of itself to delay getting the word out about a project? No.

To be clear, I don’t work for these “flaks,” I work for myself — and you. Always have.  And I have a very low tolerance for this crap.

It’s bad enough when a Disney/Pixar/Marvel, Warners, Fox, Paramount, Sony/Tristar/Columbia/ScreenGems, Universal/Focus, Lionsgate or the doomed Weinstein Co. tries to unlevel the playing field and “control” what is said, by whom and when. Smaller studios are pulling the same nonsense, in imitation of the big boys.

And the big boys, for those following what Disney is trying to do to the Los Angeles Times, play rough.

Here’s an email I got with a screener link to a DOCUMENTARY released by a ONE OFF tiny distributor, just today — “Reviews embargoed for 11/12 at 7:45pm.”

Oh? What arbitrary set of circumstances dictate that you should SPRING your barely-released non-fiction (ever so tiny audience) upon the world at that time? Is it after the.director’s gone to bed, so she won’t have to see a bad notice? The dear.

That’s insane. There’s no set, generally agreed-upon day/date (two days before release, midnight, for instance) among this lot. Everybody has their own theory of when “buzz” and # traffic should peak for a film. It’s a load of bollocks, especially for tiny operators with next to nothing for a marketing budget for a movie.

They depend on reviewers to upload and play their trailers, because they don’t pay to put them on TV and theater chains only have so many spots to squeeze one in before a given “feature presentation.”

They depend on reviewers to generate ALL the interest their film garners. And then they want to force every review to post at whatever whimsically-chosen time some dope in marketing dictates. Aside from the innate stupidity of that (They think your average smart phone user will go through 25 movies whose reviews are all posted in the last hours before release? “Think” doesn’t figure into it.), it’s unfair and arbitrary for the people doing their heavy lifting for them — critics.

As a general rule, I respect the embargo. So long as that is made clear before I see the movie. These after-the-fact “By the way, there’s an embargo” emails that come my way if the studio publicist gets it in his or her head that I don’t like their movie, I laugh off. A “Please” in the embargo note is just a suggestion. I know you want all reviews of the movie to pour out at the same time. It never happens, and pretending that it does (aside from “Bad Moms Christmas”) is living in denial.

Seriously. Stop it.

People in my position have to take each movie/review/embargo on a case-by-case basis. I see it as “an embargo is either for everyone, or it’s for no one.” If there’s another review out there in the ether, by God I’m posting mine.

Publicists who cannot read a calendar and insist an embargo stay in force AFTER a movie has opened (in some markets, any markets) I ignore, maybe with a laugh.

Any outmoded model that hidebound studios stick to, that “the trades” get to post the first reviews, is bull. It’s not 1979 any more.

Fanboy sites getting first crack at this or that genre piece isn’t unheard of, but it’s a manipulation of the system, “band-wagoning” in propaganda terms. I don’t sit back and wait for some phantom date to pass in those cases. If I’m the first guy to pan a bad horror, sci-fi or comic book movie, I win.

Once a review of mine is posted, it stays posted — aggregated. That’s that. Not breaking the links.

Something that publicists with small studios don’t seem to appreciate is how there are a limited number of hours in the day, days in the week, etc., and that any movie somebody takes the time to watch, takes notes on and then review, is doing them a favor.

I review 600-700 films a year — limited release documentaries, Monterey Media, Gravitas Ventures, Fox Searchlight, IFC, Film Arcade, Shout! Factory, STX, Netflix, Amazon Studios, Cohen Media Group — I get to as many as I can. For those reviews to be worth my trouble, they have to enjoy a longer shelf life to generate any traffic at all. That means I post the review on my schedule, not theirs.

Every week is jammed with pictures to review, posting them all the same day or the same two days does neither the movie nor my website any favors. I spread them out, writing while it is fresh in my memory, posting it within a reasonable period approximating opening day.

Over the 35 years or so I’ve been reviewing, I get blowback on this from time to time, but that’s the way it is. You want me to spend my time on your movie that’s opening in 6 theaters and going on PPV a week later, I am posting as soon as I’m done seeing it. Grow up.

Most recognize that any early review is like priming the pump. If I see other reviews rattling in for a film, I take a look at who is in that movie and what it’s about. That helps motivate me to track down a screening or a screener and weigh in on it with a review. Other critics do the same. Reviews snowball for movies we see others reviewing. Every week, a few tiny releases get no reviews at all. That’s another favor I’m doing them  — the studio, the publicist for that studio — pointing out, “Hey, this one’s worth your trouble, too!”

The latest ruffled embargo feathers are over a movie that opened in limited release on Labor Day weekend, the worst movie-going weekend of the year. This summer’s ticket sales were so low that Labor Day promised to be exactly what it was — the lowest turnout of moviegoers in decades.

No studio that expects to make a dime out of a movie ever releases said movie on Labor Day. None.

The Film Arcade had a wan, listless Lake Bell not-so-near-miss they were pushing to get reviewed, got it to me early, and I reviewed it. Not a cruel takedown, as I’m a Lake Bell fan, just a pan. A simple, deserved pan. And I had to hear about it from a harassing publicist for a solid week (I posted an extra week or so out).

The stakes were low, a movie that was never going to make a dime, a review whose online traffic (practically zilch) reflected that. But scores of calls and emails suggested the world would end if “I Do…Until I Don’t” wasn’t reviewed until the very cusp of opening day. I don’t bend in these cases. And the world? It didn’t end.

Publicists “punish” critics by denying us access to their product, and fair is fair. Disney is probably the worst at that, but Universal, Sony and others have been known to pull that on people like me.

You don’t have to show me your wares pre-release. Many movies aren’t previewed at all  (Hellooooo “Bad Moms Christmas.”). I see a lot of movies in theaters with paying audiences opening night. This irked Film Arcade contract publicist also handles Bleecker St. films, and he figures denying access to their product suits his Film Arcade tantrum as well. Not sure how Bleecker Street feels about that. They’re going to need help selling “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” and cutting them off from my take is their loss, not mine. Take Mom to “Orient Express.”

But again, I don’t work for them or him, and if I have to see something of theirs opening day, that’s their right. Mastering the art of the perfect, cutting-to-the-chase Rottentomatoes blurb is mine. I don’t trash good movies, no matter how petty their publicists, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a special glee is nuking a dog they’ve tried to hide from the paying public or its critic-surrogates. And that perfect blurb? That’s how you “win” Rottentomatoes over opening weekend. I’m very good at that, Bleecker St.

Nobody hides a movie they’re proud of, and whatever you think of reviewers/critics, the vast majority of movies desperately need the attention, ANY attention, a small movie gets from us.

Why else is my in-box jammed with pitches every single day?

Why else would a director I know be emailing for suggestions as to how he could improve the aggregate score of his latest? Every little sliver of spotlight helps. He knows it, I know it, and Mr. Film Arcade/Bleecker St. should know it.

Emily has that “quirky girl vibe” going. She knows it. And she resents it.

Because even though she’s a comedienne, gamely having a go at sketch comedy/conceptual comedy in Los Angeles, she knows her place on the pecking order.

“A comedian is a less attractive version of an actress,” in LA. Her auditions — sprawling conceptual leaps or strained impersonations — are usually played to producers and directors who can’t be bothered to look up from their phones long enough to see what she has to offer.

At least she’s got Youtube fame — little bizarre bits that douse her in spaghetti. If only she’d figured out a way to monetize her millions of hits/thousands of followers.

At least, back in Austin, she was loved — by her cat, and by the ex who got the cat when she ran off seeking fame and fortune and broke up with by phone.

“Mr. Roosevelt” is the comedy writer-director-star Noël Wells named after that cat, whose impending death sends her dashing, flat-broke, back to see him off, back into the welcoming arms of Eric (Nick Thune), her beloved musician beau, who surely must be pining away, awaiting her return.

Only he’s moved on. He’s given up the music thing and is diving into real estate, at the behest of his tech savvy/smart and settled new live-in love, Celeste (Britt Lower, superb at playing the adult in the room). Wells lets us see, in a flash, what Emily sees. That the new love is better than Emily. Better organized, better motivated, more thoughtful…better looking.

But one thing Emily won’t stand for is “better at mourning.” Because Celeste and Eric, who put Emily up while she’s there coping with this loss, loved that cat, too. Any hint they loved him more will lead to trouble.

Which it does.

Wells (“Saturday Night Live,””Master of None”) scripts a comic’s mid-shelf-life crisis like few others, a woman who’s still too girlish to take seriously, who can’t find her way to success because she won’t grow up, cannot get a break and will not take good advice.

That Youtube fame is money in the bank. People keep recognizing Emily all over Austin, still hip all these decades after “Slacker.” And she’s too caught up competing with Celeste, ruining a wake for the cat, creating “scenes” wherever they go together, throwing herself at Eric and falling into bed with randoms to see it.

She’s also only starting to realize that Austin might be her first, best destiny. She fit in there, where young, talented and ambitious people can become your best friend (waitress/drummer Jen is played by the earthy, vivacious Daniella Pineda), where “quirky” has a home.

The situations are conventional, but what Wells brings to them is an earnest, shrill cluelessness, a refusal to NOT get into debates with the rational, kind and indulgent (not quite patronizing) Celeste, or the man Celeste is nudging toward adulthood and away from Emily.

“Mr. Roosevelt” isn’t a laugh right. “Quirky” pops to mind a lot more often than is healthy for a movie grasping for our love. But it is funny enough, and alternately sweet and caustic as it depicts, in quick sketches and sharp observances, the LA of our nightmarish ambitions and the Austin of our hip, homey fantasies.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with nudity, adult situations, profanity

Cast: Noël Wells, Nick Thune, Britt Lower, Daniella Pineda

Credits:Written and directed by Noël Wells. A Paladin release.

Running time: 1:30

What a difference a title makes, right? I mean, who’s going to buy tickets to a screen romance titled “Holding Pattern.”

This thin, slow Jake Goldberger dramedy sat in cinema limbo until somebody had the bright idea of re-titling it “Almost Friends.” That and the fact that star Freddie Highmore landed a new TV series (“The Good Doctor”) to replace the one (“Bates Motel”) that he was in when he filmed this back in 2015 made this one worth releasing.

Charlie (Highmore) is a young man adrift. He’s made a career out of working at the local revival cinema, never moved on when he should have, never finished his education, never lived up to whatever promise he had. He still lives at home with Mom (Marg Helgenberger) and her second husband, still puts in the big brother time to his much-younger sibling.

He can’t even get up the nerve to flirt with “the only girl I’ve ever felt charming around.” That would be Amber (Odeya Rush), cute barista at the hapless (not in a funny way), hip Calf-Fiend coffee shop.

But his badgering pal Ben (Haley Joel Osment) finally prompts some action. And that’s when Charlie’s safe, “holding pattern” of a life breaks formula.’

Because Amber is deeply involved with vain, egotistical college track star Brad (Taylor John Smith). It’s just that Charlie’s awkward, say-the-wrong-things charm earns her attention. Charlie’s gift for stumbling into saying the wrong thing puts him on the spectrum of his “Good Doctor” character, who is actually autistic.

At least Charlie has Heather (Rita Volk) to tell his troubles to.

“Our mothers met in Lamaze class. It’s an eternal damnation kind of thing.”

And he’s got a talent, which Amber slowly drags out of him.

“Can you cook?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Goldberger’s script hangs on a couple of Big Secrets — his and hers — revealed in the middle acts. And it lives or dies on any sparks the two leads set off, which are few in number.

There must have been an alarming moment in the editing process when a scene involving the drunken lout of a cousin (Jake Abel) Amber lives with goes on a date with the too-sharp-for-him Heather turns out to be funnier, more romantic, more honest, more heartfelt in the writing and playing than anything the younger, no-more-attractive leads can manage.

The Big Reveals don’t knock the viewer for a loop, not when we ponder the reasons Osment (“The Sixth Sense”) was cast as Ben. A side story about Charlie’s no-good hustler dad (Christopher Meloni) adds an arc to the idea that Charlie will break out of his comfort zone, but adds no real interest to the film.

The Israeli actress and “Goosebumps” alumnus Rush seems to get her best shots in movies about this size (“The Bachelors,” “The Hunter’s Prayer,” “Lady Bird”). The one-time child-star has yet to show us she’s much more than an exceptionally voluptuous pair of lips.

Highmore (“August Rush,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) is managing the transition from child star to adult roles just as tentatively. His agent is smart to point him at TV, where his low-heat style registers better over the course of longer form storytelling.

Thus, we have stars who aren’t quite up to breaking the “Holding Pattern” that Goldberger’s script puts the movie in.  Oh, to have been a fly on the wall that day he watched the Cousin Jake/Heather date scene cut together and realized, “Well, shoot. THERE’s my movie.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, alcohol abuse

Cast: Freddie Highmore, Odeya Rush, Haley Joel Osment, Marg Helgenberger, Christopher Meloni, Rita Volt, Jake Abel

Credits:Written and directed by Jake Goldberger . A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:40

“Thor: Ragnarok” looked like a $100 million hit Friday morning, based on Thursday night’s numbers.

But Friday changed all that and for the better. It’s now headed toward a $115-120 opening, right at the top end of projections.

That’s the best opening for a “Thor” movie, by a long shot. And that’s swallowing most of the money this weekend at the box office.

“A Bad Moms Christmas” proves that as long as you release your mediocre holiday comedy before anybody else’s holiday comedy comes out, there’s cash to be pocketed. Midnight Sunday, it should have earned $20 million or so. Wednesday opening paid off…a little.

Discouraging to see “Only the Brave” fade from sight. Oscar contenders don’t do that. “LBJ” will not crack the top ten, and “Lady Bird” opens big on a handful of screens.

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“Thor: Ragnarok” is the best-reviewed Marvel movie. Ever. On Rottentomatoes, anyway.

On the more discerning and nuanced Metacritic, most everyone still says they liked it. “Love?” Let’s not get carried away, here.

As many have pointed out, it makes little sense — plotwise. Lots of funny lines, winking at the audience, casting coups — Blanchett, Goldblum. Cameos, and not just Stan Lee, either. Pandering, not plot, make it work.

How much will it earn on its opening weekend? It could do a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday weekend-worthy $118 million or so, says the Box Office Guru. says the Box Office Guru. 

As it’s already had a healthy overseas opening and a big Thursday night, Box Office Mojo uses that to justify a prediction of a $120 million opening.

This isn’t an “Avengers” movie, although Hulk has a supporting role. It’s light and loose and fun, but is it a pre-sold package the way “Captain America” and recent “Avengers” have been? I could see it pulling in $100 million, but I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t. It’s Thor, for Pete’s sake. Not Iron Man, Cap, et al. We shall see.

“A Bad Mom’s Christmas” came out Wed., and might hit $20 by midnight Sunday. It’s pretty bad, and even though the first “Bad Moms” stuck around long enough to clear $113 million, I don’t see that repeated here. Bad movie. Quite bad.

The best picture of the weekend in my book is “Lady Bird,” which, like the less lauded “LBJ,” not open on a lot of screens.

“Jigsaw” won a weak weekend pre-Halloween. Expect it to fall off the table this time around.

Greta Gerwig has matured out of playing the adorable, quirky, self-absorbed with self-invention young women of “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Damsels in Distress.” In film after film, she’s let us see the social;y striving — posh, put-on accents, affected to-the-manner-born posing, feigned enthusiasm and self-promotion in every character (“Frances Ha,” “Mistress America”).

Hard to pull that off past 30. But with “Lady Bird,” she’s found a way to pass the torch.

The wonderful Saoirse Ronan channels her writer-director in Gerwig’s self-written, semi-autobiographical comedy “Lady Bird.” And as amusing as it was to hear the affected, pretentiously daffy Gerwig locutions playing perky, upbeat and willfully dizzy Gerwig characters in Woody Allen’s fantasy of New York, the writer-director has parked this rough draft of herself  in a warm, witty and wise comedy about growing up in Sacramento, and yearning far-too-openly for something else.

Christine (Ronan) goes to a Catholic School with, her furiously critical mother never forgets to remind her, “rich kids.” Mom, given an acrid desperation by Laurie Metcalf, is equally blunt in telling Christine, “We’re NOT rich,” that her daughter’s college aspirations don’t match her talents. “You can’t even pass your driver’s test…You aren’t even worth state (college) tuition.”

But in 2002, in the shadow of 9/11, a Sacramento girl can dream. Grades be damned, she wants to go to an school in the East, to New York.

“I want to go where CULTURE is.”

Her guidance counselor laughs in her face. Her teachers, some of them nuns (Lois Smith) are gentler, but just as realistic. It’s just that a girl who has renamed herself “Lady Bird,” who hopelessly runs for class president every year, who’s clueless that her innate theatricality means she might want to consider school plays instead of hopeless dreams of mathletic glory, isn’t about realism.

When she finally dips her toe in the joint girls school/boys school fall musical of her senior year (Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along”) Lady Bird isn’t an instant star (though Ronan allows her a flamboyant charisma and stage presence).  But that’s where she meets her first love.

Danny, given an awkward, amusing luminescence by Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”) clicks with Lady Bird. She may be, as she declares, “from the wrong side of the tracks,” but to Danny, she’s a kindred spirit, and Hedges registers unalloyed delight in her presence. If this dizzy, naive teen from the provinces can charm this rich, handsome leading man, who knows where she can go in the world?

Gerwig casts a rich, lived-in tapestry for Lady Bird to inhabit, and that makes the high school movie cliches play fresh. The plump best friend (Beanie Feldstein) who shares Lady Bird’s academic underachievement, the rich girl (Odeya Rush) she wants to impress, the brooding “deep” musician (Timothee Chalamet) she is drawn to all are given a Gerwig twist.

A JV football coach/priest called in to direct a play, in a pinch, feels like a rejected idea from a John Hughes comedy of the ’80s. But it’s funny here.

The beating heart of the picture pulses through the parents. Metcalf, so much more than “Rosanne’s” sister, makes the mother a study in furious resignation, an unfiltered, foul-mouthed nurse who alternately indulges and insults, coddles and cudgels her youngest child. And playwright/actor Tracy Letts (“The Lovers,” TV’s “Divorce”) tries his hand at warm and cute as “the good cop” dad, the one there to comfort and spoil his daughter and encourage the dreams her mom is hellbent on crushing.

Ronan, at 23 reaching the end of her teen movie window, is never less than brilliant as a girl in mid-evolution. Lady Bird’s poses, priorities and passions are mercurial and Ronan and Gerwig get this across in big, broad strokes. Let’s try smoking. Let’s dazzle the rich girl by playing an elaborate prank on Sister Sarah Joan (Smith). Let’s take on the “bad boy” musician instead of the sweet-souled actor.

It’s the genius of this genial, formulaic coming-of-age comedy that Lady Bird never seems too broadly drawn. We’ve known this kid, gone to school with her, watched her reinventions continue straight on into college.

And every so often we caught a glimpse of the “real” her, her farsighted reach for a sophisticated world that the rest of us hadn’t yet sensed. “Yeah,” we thought. “She’s right. She doesn’t belong here. ”

MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content, brief graphic nudity and teen partying

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Lois Smith, Odeya Rush

Credits: Written and directed by Greta Gerwig. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:33

“Tragedy Girls” is a “Heathers” for the social media age. Or that’s its aim.

Director/co-writer Tyler MacIntyre takes aim at a youth culture that’s all about “likes” and page-views and branding, and parks a couple of pretty, heartless horror fangirls right in the middle of it.

They’re sure to make a bloody mess.

“Heavy flow day,” McKayla explains.

“You want to make an omelet, you have to kill some ex-boyfriends,” Sadie says.

Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp play witty BFFs at Rosedale High, cruel teens who aren’t above using hapless boys to lure a suspected machete killer out on the “old” covered bridge so they can kidnap him — after he’s butchered the kid Sadie pretends to make out in the car with.

Stripped of his mask, Lowell (Kevin Durand) is an unthinking brute. The girls may know the difference between “serial” killers and “spree” killers, but not him (or American media, for that matter).

“We’re your biggest fans, dude. We need a trainer, a teacher — Yoda!”

They want to turn into “horror legends.” For a laugh. They’ve watched every movie, absorbed every disposing-of-a-body-via-chemistry lesson of “Breaking Bad.”

“It took a LOT of stray cats and dogs to get this formula JUST right”

They plan on turning what the sheriff (Timothy V. Murphy) won’t tell the town into a social media sensation. “Lowell” (Durand) has killed multiple people. Sadie and McKayla plan to add to that number, butchering exes, hated classmates, whoever, and “report” it on their Tragedy Girls blog — “Hashtag #tragedygirls!” — and get famous.

Just like the Kardashians!

Tbe captured serial killer angle is then forgotten all through the movie’s middle acts as the self-absorbed/selfie-obsessed teens plot first to commit a few murders. But nobody dies easily, so they casually administer a different coup de grace to each victim. Their learning curve involves making sure that the deaths can’t be dismissed as “accidents,” which the first few are.

Their goal — to get the whole “spree killer” gossip they’re creating out in the open so their Internet fame can be assured.

“Hashtag ‘tragedygirls’ they repeat, to everybody they meet — especially the media.

An ex-boyfriend, played by Josh Hutcherson, re-masculated after the emasculation of “The Hunger Games,” runs a competing blog and rides a motorcycle? He gots to go.

“I could see it as a ‘Death Proof’ kind of thing. I could TOTALLY work with that”

The fireman Big Al (Craig Robinson) is a threat? Let’s meet him at the gym.

It’s a glib, heartless affair, this business of achieving “the recognition we deserve.” Once you get the point, the numbed-to-violence inhumanity of Generation Web Fame, the never-a-thought for anybody else narcissism, the joke wears thin.

Once you’ve been shocked at a bloody dismemberment, that shock is past.

The relationship will be tested, but not by an outside romance that grabs us.

The banter is snarky, snappy and wickedly funny. But the story arc is flatly horror movie  imitative (sort of the point, but yawn). Supporting performances are wildly uneven (Robinson and Durand give fair value, virtually nobody else does).

And while Hldebrand (“Deadpool”) and Shipp (“Straight Outta Compton,” “X-Men: Apocalypse”) flash a little slang and dress for fanboy appeal, their performances strike just one note. As does the movie.

Pathos? Remorse? “Learning?” Not here.

“Tragedy Girls” is “Heathers” without the just desserts (virtually no one “deserves” his or her fate), “Mean Girls” who don’t truly turn on each other, a slasher satire without a punchline.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references

Cast: Brianna Hildebrand, Alexandra Shipp, Josh Hutcherson, Craig Robinson, Kevin Durand

Credits:Directed by Tyler MacIntyre, script by Chris Lee Hill, Tyler MacIntyre . A Gunpowder & Sky release.

Running time: 1:38

The first “Saw” movie had a minimalist sophistication — strangers, waking up together, presented with life-or-death choices as an unseen tormentor sat in judgement of whether they were fit to live.

Everything that followed, sequels and the whole “torture porn” genre they inspired, diluted that, lost much of what passes for philosophical in the themes and settled into “What creative ways can we come up with to torture/kill people THIS time?”

And maybe it was just me, but the movies also seemed to get caught up in “solving the mystery” of who Jigsaw — the generally disembodied voice offering up his captives their grisly choices; lose a limb, save your life, get HIM killed, save your life — might be.

Movies that generally split between the ticking clock of death for the victims and the hapless cops who can never seem to get there before Jigsaw has exercised his Darwinian revenge became procedurals — detective stories, with a lot of hacked up people in the end.

Then they killed off Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and ran out of ways to revive him/pass on his legacy, etc. Until now.

“Jigsaw,” the eighth “Saw” film hurls five new hapless wrongdoers — whose sins we don’t know (at first) —  into a room, chains around their necks, code-locked death-helmets on their heads.

At the end of the chains — a wall of soon-to-be-whirring circular saws. Funny, “Jigsaw” never uses a jigsaw. Screenwriters almost never take shop class.

One by one, our victims (another generation of the Van Peebles acting clan among them) “confess” their crimes — a mugging accident here, a “sold bad mortgages, stole good coke” there.  There are increasingly baroque killing contraptions, the occasional “blood sacrifice” and a lot of “The truth shall set you free,” the great empty promise of all these pictures.

Meanwhile, the cops (Callum Keith Rennie, Cle Bennett) are puzzled about the dead guy who still can manage to set up these elaborate, expensive and murderous kidnappings/punishments, and having a hard time pretending they care. Their glib complacency is…disappointing.

Even the absurdly callous and well-equipped coroners (Matt Passmore, Hannah Emily Anderson) barely manage to wipe the smirks off their faces as they examine corpses.

Which is the Achilles Heel of this genre. The only character to generate pathos and interest of late is Jigsaw himself, and he’s only heard, pontificating about “justice,” asking for “simple blood sacrifice” and “revenge,” and seen in flashback.

“I ask you, what’s a life worth to you?”

We’re supposed to instantly loathe the mercenary mortgage broker (Ryan Braunstein) and, for no reason at all, to empathize with the younger and the prettier — hair over one eye, fishnet stockings, handsome young dude, etc.

The co-directing Spierig Brothers (“Daybreakers”) give the whole enterprise an expensive sheen — cool lighting, pricey torture gear, lots of close-ups and extreme close-ups.

Then they blow the most promising “How this character will die” bit — a bit of poisonous syringe Russian roulette.

That’s the “game” that all the “Saw” movies play, and it’s a dull one. Where’s the fun is Russian Roulette when you know, going in, that every chamber in the pistol is loaded?

MPAA Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and for language

Cast: Tobin Bell, Matt Passmore, Brittany Allen, Mandela Van Peebles, Callum Keith Rennie, Paul Braunstein

Credits:Directed byMichael Spierig, Peter Spierig , script by Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31

Now that Halloween has passed, it’s not too early for Hollywood to unleash its first Christmas comedy. But there’s never a good time to release a bad one.

Nothing like celebrating the holidays with a puerile, sentimental and foul-mouthed slapstick farce for kids masquerading as “adult” entertainment.

The modest pleasures of “Bad Moms,” a farce about Chicago mothers who give up leaning in, trying to have it all and devoting their every waking second to ensuring the perfect home/marriage/childhood, are but a memory. Their profane, drunken escapades are all in the past.

How to top the tipsy hijinx of Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and the ribald riot Kathryn Hahn? Bring in the moms’ moms for “A Bad Moms Christmas.” 

So mild-mannered homemaker Kiki (Bell) is smothered by her needy, clingy and bubbly to the point of inappropriate mother, played by Cheryl Hines.

Bawdy salon waxing specialist Carla (Hahn) gets a surprise visit from her ex-rock roadie/compulsive gambler of a mother (Susan Sarandon).

And freshly-divorced Amy (Kunis) loses her dreams of a “mellow” holiday when the rich and imperious Ruth who gave birth to her (Christine Baranski) returns to Chicago to school her on how a “proper” Christmas has to be managed.

“Mothers don’t ENjoy Christmas,” Ruth purrs, “mothers GIVE joy.”

Baranski, whose face is on the Wikipedia page defining “imperious,” was born to play Ruth — over-spending, over-decorating, leading a Catholic choir of “ringers” in a neighborhood caroling competition (Remember her in “Mama Mia?”).

She is pretty much the saving grace of this graceless romp through shopping, tree-stealing, grinding on a mall Santa and a fierce dodgeball fight at a kids’ zone entertainment complex.

The men — Peter Gallagher plays Ruth’s long-suffering husband, Justin Hartley plays a stripper getting his junk waxed by Carla, and Jay Hernandez just takes up space — are non-entities and the kids are nothing more than props; props who mug for the camera.

At least Wanda Sykes is here, as Kiki’s psychotherapist, ready to offer a rant on why moms of all ages go crazy. “YOU make them that way.”

Releasing studio STX rushed this out on a Wednesday without previews for critics because they, too, know that there’s no good time to release a bad Christmas comedy…unless you roll out so early that you postpone suffering by comparison to every other holiday movie to come this year.

And no, there’s not a “Madea Christmas Story” to take the pressure off.

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some drug use

Cast: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines, Susan Sarandon, Jay Hernandez, Wanda Sykes, Christina Applegate, Peter Gallagher

Credits: Written and directed by  Jon Lucas, Scott Moore. An STX release.

Running time: 1:44

Lyndon Johnson was a tall man, 6’4.”

He had a habit of leaning into colleagues and subordinates, towering over them, intimidating even in the friendliest of circumstances. And as he had a temper and a mania for hard work, wheeling and dealing and getting his way, he didn’t hesitate to use this trick in touchier, testier situations.

That literal “larger than life” part of the Texan’s persona was fundamental to who he was, and there’s plenty of photographic evidence of him close-talking, leaning into and talking down to people he was trying to strong-arm into voting his way or measuring up to his standards.

So when you’re casting somebody to play him, they’d better be as tall as 6’5″ Randy Quaid (TV’s “LBJ: The Early Years”), or 6’4″ Donald Moffat (“The Right Stuff”) or at least be prepared to play him that big and intimidating (Bryan Cranston of “All the Way”).

The accomplished character actor Woody Harrelson plays an occasionally volcanic, sometimes strong-arming and always cunning and persuasive Johnson in Rob Reiner’s film “LBJ,” a drama framed in the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became president. And although the physical resemblance — big nose, basset hound ears — borders on uncanny, the 5’10” Harrelson never quite carries himself like a big man with big ambitions and a bag full of bully’s tricks. He gives us a drawling, almost soft-spoken Johnson, not the way he’s typically remembered.

Cranston’s recent portrayal thundered, where Harrelson is content to growl.

Some of that falls onto the script, by “Project Runaway” (?!) vet Joey Hartstone. Reiner’s directing career since the wonderful “Flipped” flopped hasn’t commanded the best collaborators or big studio releases. But there’s merit in the ways this story shows us the “deal-maker” Johnson, frustrated by being muzzled and neutered by the conniving Kennedy brothers, bigger than them and forced to sit in the shadows until that awful day in Dallas.

“LBJ” is a mostly flattering portrait that ends before the tidal wave of Vietnam swallowed Johnson’s presidency. Harrelson’s LBJ wears out a vast staff, haranguing one and all for information, numbers of votes he can count on as Senate Majority Leader.

He ends phone arguments with a slam, mutters profane insults, hurls profane threats and even his fellow Democrat and Fellow Texan in the Senate, Ralph Yarborough (Bill Pullman), a liberal, cannot escape his contempt when he disagrees with a political stance.

“Spoken like a true one-term United States Senator,” LBJ growls.

The election of 1960 is approaching, and Johnson wants to jump from the most powerful post in Congress to the White House. But those rich, handsome young Kennedys, candidate Jack (Jeffrey Donovan of “Burn Notice,” quite good) and his sidekick and campaign manager Bobby (Michael Stahl-David, amusingly sinister) have the jump on him.

Johnson may believe “This country is NOT gonna elect a CATHOLIC president,” but he knows the callow but movie-star handsome JFK has the edge, and that plays into a homely country boy’s worst fears.

“He’s afraid people won’t love him,” wife Lady Bird (Jennifer Jason Leigh, spot-on) says.

The movie’s richest, juiciest scenes are between Harrelson and his equally talented fellow character player Richard Jenkins, as Richard Russell, elder statesman of the Senate, an old school Georgia racist and one of the most powerful politicians in Washington. As much as we can make out of the most famous of the LBJ White House tapes of Johnson browbeating the old man into serving on the Warren Commission, the real relationship must have played out more like this.

Johnson flatters, he charms, he begs. His role, upon taking the “most thankless job” in the Kennedy White House, as a nearly powerless vice president, is working as intermediary between the idealistic, Civil Rights-promising Kennedys and the Southern Democrats of Congress. He swaps racist jokes with Russell, then leans in on him to get concessions at a Georgia Lockheed factory where a billion dollar Air Force order might be fulfilled.

Harrelson brilliantly conveys Johnson bridling at the confines of the vice presidency, suffering the pointless, demeaning treatment of Bobby Kennedy, always the politician in front of other politicians, never losing his temper in a group setting.

But in private? On the phone? Nobody ever left a meeting (often in the toilet) with LBJ not knowing if he was pissed off.

Reiner’s picture, framed as it is within scenes of that fateful 1963 visit to Dallas, becomes quite the image-burnishing in the hours after Kennedy was shot — from chaos and Secret Service-inspired panic, to a big man who thinks through what he needs to do and in a snap, starts doing it — angling for “permission” from a testy Bobby to get moving, working the phones, begging everyone from colleagues and Kennedy appointees to ex-presidents for help.

“I need you more than President Kennedy EVER did” he says to one and all.

That’s the way this script and Reiner’s film lets Johnson have the last word, verifying Johnson’s backroom description of the primary campaign of 1960. Kennedy was “a show horse.” Johnson? Always a “work horse.”

The height and the way he used it should have been addressed. The film, like the player cast as its lead, is too short to do the subject justice.

But Harrelson’s “LBJ” comes off as the bigger man, smarter than he often let on, the one who could read the tides of change as he counted the votes in Congress, someone who could grow into the office and bend the nation’s moral will even if he realized it would take the long view of history to prove him right and finally recognize the titanic efforts it took to alter the course of that history.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stahl-David, Bill Pullman 

Credits:Directed by Rob Reiner, script by Joey Hartstone An Electric Entertainment/Castle Rock release.

Running time: 1:38