Movie Nation

It can be helpful every now and then to watch a movie out of order. Catch the final act first, then get to the beginning and build-up to that climax later.

I caught the last 20 minutes of “Paterno” while on vacation, and just got around to the rest of it. Barry Levinson’s HBO film damns “JoPa” for all time with that dramatic climax, a myopic (literally) emperor (Al Pacino) whose dying thoughts were probably about all the times he was told, all the steps beyond “I did what the law/school regulations required” he avoided, all the ways he ignored the scores of Gerald Sandusky child rapes happening right under his nose, for years.

But the indictments don’t stop there. The culture of an institution of Top Ten/Big Ten football that is supposed to be a state college, a temple of learning and legal rectitude and ethical leadership is skewered — “loyalty” trumps all in this Trump-like “family business.”

One son (Scott Paterno, ably and haplessly played by Greg Grunberg) blows up in outrage at his father and family’s indifference, Paterno’s wife (Kathy Baker) lives, like her husband, in willful denial, son Jay and daughter Mary Kay (Annie Parisse) all are helpless in the face of their father’s stonewalling and their own unwillingness to challenge him.

The student body is skewered as well, their refusal to do what Paterno himself refused to do — embrace the facts, reason through Paterno’s complicity, accept responsibility and the rule of law.

And then there’s TV and the broadcast media’s chattering classes. The modest Harrisburg Patriot News and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sara Ganim (Riley Keough) did their lonely work under threats and intimidation from the school, turn-a-blind-eye law enforcement and the enraged, circle-the-wagons community.  Months passed after Ganim’s first story, a “kernel that didn’t pop,” as one person mocks her while working as a volunteer sideline marker (She graduated from Penn State) during a PSU football game.

Then the grand jury catches up with the story and all of a sudden, vultures from the previously compliant TV Industrial Sports Complex show up and leech on, desperate to steal her sources, more interested in “opinions” about the scandal than the newspaper’s steadfast, sturdy fact-based reporting.

Pacino is an American institution himself, and his subtle, focused and blithely arrogant performance is a wonder. It’s easy to see the cranky, defiant 84 year-old Paterno in his “Fire me? Good luck with that!”

Keough, the Elvis granddaughter slowly building a real actor’s resume (“Logan Lucky”), makes the most of her best role ever. Her Sara Ganim is young, impressionable, salty and defiant. There’s a righteousness that fills the performance that allows her to be outraged for us, when nobody around her would allow themselves that dignity.

The film, focusing only in the narrowest terms on a single victim, pans an implied spotlight across look-the-other-way journalism as it is practiced in the small college “towns” where football coaches are emperors — from Clemson to Tallahassee, State College to Columbus.

And it is re-opening the wounds of this debate. Read the moronic “user” pans of the movie on IMDb.com. The people who ensure that college and pro football are all the mouth-breathers of sports-talk radio yak about, through basketball, hockey and baseball seasons, are up in arms that the damned thing was filmed.

It’s a terrific movie, another feather in Levinson’s “Rain Man/Wag the Dog” hat and a “kernel that didn’t pop” in the broader culture’s worship of “Just win, baby” college athletics. Michigan State? You’ve probably watched this and quaked in your boots.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, descriptions of pedophilia, sex with children

Cast: Al Pacino, Kathy Baker, Riley Keough, Annie Parisse, Greg Grunberg, Larry Mitchell

Credits:Directed by Barry Levinson, script by Debora Cahn, John C. Richards. An HBO release.

Running time: 1:45

Deland, Fla., this AM.

Yeah, I looked inside. Still have my face. In other words, “empty.”

I mean, check out dude’s SWORD. For Pete’s sake.

So it started life as a series of shorts, for Pepsi? Do I have that right?

Anyway, branding being what it is, dressing up basketball stars of today and yesterday in old man makeup as “street ball” legends — Kyrie, Reggie, Shaq, et al — is now a feature film due out June 29.

This was the stand-out trailer I saw at the theater Friday. Stand out as in “head scratcher.” But it could hit. There’s a youtube audience for those Kyrie videos. 

Naturally, Tiffany Haddish has a supporting role. Not on the court.

“A Quiet Place” was predicted to hold audience while the clueless finally got a clue about “Rampage” and stayed away this weekend, with John Krasinski’s Monsters Can Hear You thriller taking in another $20-21 million and easily winning the weekend.

That’s pretty much working out. “Rampage” has taken a tumble, “Quiet Place” is looking at another $20.

Except for the “easily winning” part. Amy Schumer’s round-the-clock promotion/explaining of “I Feel Pretty” meant more than the reviews, most of which were less forgiving than mine. “Shockingly sweet” I called it. “Pretty,” filmed by the team that wrote “Never Been Kissed,” had a $7 million Friday. Not sure if audiences are embracing the less abrasive PG-13 Schumer here. But she’s headed for a $19-20 million weekend if that holds. That’s better than the $17 million projected, pretty much the same as “Snatched,” her last film took in upon opening.

“Trainwreck 2” would have made double that, but that’s branding for you.

The geezers at Broken Lizard weren’t riding great reviews back onto screens with “Super Troopers 2,” either. But they had a big Thursday night, a theater manager I chatted with Friday said the raunchy, dated comedy was doing great business, and they managed a $7 million Friday as well. $19 or so for the weekend as well, unless every ex-fratboy in America dying for this has already seen it, now.

So Saturday AM, the “weekend winner” title is still up for grabs. “Rampage” may pull in another $16 million, depending on Saturday’s take.

“Traffik,” the Paula Patton in Peril thriller about fighting off human traffickers in the mountains of Northern California, is limping towards a $4 million weekend.

The chilling isolation of stardom is the stark take-away from “Gemini,” a smart and knowing film noir set in LaLaland.

Get famous enough, and you’re trapped. Every public appearance is fraught, every social exchange has you questioning motives.

Want somebody you can rely on, trust and confide in? Put them on the payroll. Make them sign an NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement).

Heather, played by Zoe Kravitz (“Big Little Lies”), is the star. Jill (Lola Kirke of “Mozart in the Jungle”) is her trusted assistant.

Jill looks like a celebrity assistant, just pretty enough to have maybe entertained “The Dream” herself, just frumpy enough and self-less enough to be better suited to make somebody else’s dream work out.

Heather is high maintenance. She’s avoiding the famous boyfriend, Devin (Reeve Carney) she just kicked out of their mansion. She doesn’t want to do re-shoots on a movie she finished. She’s ready to back out of one she’s committed to make.

“There’s no MOVIE without you,” Jill protests. Because that’s the deal, poor screenwriter Greg (Nelson Franklin) won’t get financing without her as his star.

And who gets to break that news to Greg at a diner dinner meeting Heather refuses to attend? The same person who gets to screen Devin’s threatening phone calls, the same “assistant” who must deal with the studio that won’t be getting its needed re-shoots, the “assistant” who is more of a manager/father-confessor and BFF for hire — poor, organized Jill.

“You’re the one who remembers things,” Heather purrs, imposing yet another selfish, moderately unreasonable demand on Jill’s time. Jill leaves her tiny Nissan Versa parked while she drives Heather’s Tesla to the discrete karaoke bar, brings Heather from her swank, modernist/Moorish mansion (Spanish tile, floor to ceiling) to her own modest, cute apartment, where Heather makes her least reasonable request of all.

“You’ve got a gun, right?”

Jill, we’ve learned, is a woman of many skills and many layers. She’s smart enough to ask the movie star “You know how to shoot a gun, right?” full well knowing the answer. She’s organized enough to ask the smarter question, “You know how to NOT shoot one, right?”

That, of course, is what happens. The gun is fired. Somebody’s dead. And Jill? She’s a suspect.

Writer-director Aaron Katz (“Land Ho!”) treats Jill’s predicament in screenwriting terms. As in, we’ve heard Devin threaten Heather, and Greg and other film folk and even her agent (Michelle Forbes). There’s a creeper paparazzo. Heather also had a little something on the side, a rich Korean bombshell named Tracy (Greta Lee).

But the detective in charge of the case (John Cho, in his best screen role in years) fixes on Jill.

“You remember things, right?” He picks up on that, too. “You might not think something’s important, and ‘bingo,’ it’s the key to the whole thing.”

Suspect Jill dons a semi-silly disguise and sets about visiting her fellow suspects. Greg is the one who suggests dissecting the clues via Screenwriting 101.

“Motive, opportunity, capacity,” are what “the real killer” requires. Look for the “twists,” as it’s never the most obvious suspect — in the movies, any way.

“You know this is REAL life, right?”

Katz finds a few chuckles via witty, flippant banter (Somebody’s DEAD, remember,), in sharp observations about LA “types” and fairly wallows in production design. The bars, houses are Architectural Digest spectacular, even the “cabins” and tiny apartments.

Kirke, the daughter of Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke, has a Zooey Deschanel deadpan mien, and that lets us totally buy into the “logic” of Jill digging around herself, even if some of her movie-taught sleuthing/getaways are far-fetched.

“Gemini” — yeah, the title’s worth chewing on — isn’t a great thriller. Its Big Reveal is pretty danged obvious, after all. The ending is positively loopy. And it’s a little too sunny and outdoorsy to be top flight noir.

But Katz’s script, settings and characters surprise and delight, and Kirke, Kravitz and Cho deliver performances perfectly in sync with a murder mystery set in Hollywood, as in “Sure, she’s dead, but ‘How’re we wording the PRESS release?’ is the real problem.”

MPAA Rating:R for pervasive language, and a violent image

Cast: Lola Kirke, Zoe Kravitz, John Cho, Greta Lee, Michelle Forbes

Credits:Written and directed by Aaron Katz. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:33

Even the best thrillers allow or invite the viewer to get a step or two ahead, to anticipate what’s coming next, or what might come.

The script usually reveals its mysteries by relying on melodramatic tropes or cliches of the genre. You think, “She’s in a car, ducking,” so naturally “Who will shoot the windows out?”

A big name is cast in what looks like a minor role, and you instantly guess, “Oh yeah, He/She is IN on it.”

It’s taken a lifetime of training for me to not make the little siren noise I hear in my head, every time I expect the police to show up in the not-quite-nick-of-time, signaling the story’s end.

“Traffik” isn’t a very good thriller, and if you aren’t two or three steps ahead of it, much of the time, you need more practice.

But writer-director Deon Taylor’s “Put Paula Patton in Peril” picture has merits. For one, there’s Patton, whom he and his cinematographer give the full “Damn, girl” treatment — extreme closeups of body parts, cleavage, Daisy Duke derriere, classic semi-clad female objectification. It’s why she’s a movie star, so OK, whatever sells tickets.

Taylor lets Patton trot out that “I can’t get hurt again” coquettish thing, the poor little screen beauty who can’t find and hold onto love. It comes with a girlish voice one would have hoped Patton would have shed after “Precious,” but no.

But Patton doesn’t play the passive victim, another plus.

The action beats– fights, chases — are visceral, well-shot and edited. And some scenes are well-staged, with beautifully-composed shots. “Traffik” begins with a whimper but finishes with a flourish.

It’s all the talking, plotting and what-not in between that gets in the way.

Brea (Patton) is an idealistic reporter with completion anxiety. She can’t boil the work down and get the scoop in a timely manner, so her Sacramento Post boss (William Fichtner) has told her “I don’t think there’s a place for you here, any more.”

On her birthday, no less. Yeah, a newspaper would totally do that.

Her man John (Omar Epps) is a car-builder/restorer who surprises her with a trip to the NoCal mountains. The surprise is repeatedly wrecked by John’s old pal Darren (Laz Alonzo), a can’t-stop-talking, rude and tactless sports agent. How Malia (Roselyn Sanchez) puts up with him is anybody’s guess.

John’s all set to pop the question when these two show up.

There’s been trouble on the way. A strung-out, emaciated woman (Dawn Olivieri) scared Brea with her condition when they met in a gas station’s restroom. And John, driving the ’69 Chevelle he rebuilt for Brea, can’t avoid the hassles of a bunch of let’s-start-something biker toughs at the pumps.

The stage is set for a nighttime visit by those folks, plainly involved in trafficking women for the sex trade. “These women are product” may be the most superfluous line in the picture.

A mountaintop mansion with walls made of glass, as one character cracks, is no place to hold off hoodlums.

Poorly written screenplays always have somebody say “Nobody needs to get hurt,” after we and they have seen somebody murdered, right in front of them.

Brea has something the bad guys, led by British Red (Luke Goss), want. Brea might have need of it, too. Leave it to jerk Darren to work everything out.

“I’m a negotiator. This is what I do.”

It takes a whopping 40 minutes for the action to truly begin, and another 20 for things to pick up in earnest. Patton needs her topless love scene, her bikini dip in the infinity pool, her post-coital wear-the guy’s-unbuttoned-shirt moment.

Am I objectifying her? No. The director got to that first.

And even those scenes you can see coming. But there is one genuine surprise, a jarring if touching and not quite appropriate tune on the soundtrack.

Human trafficking is better known by its original name, slavery.

Just as things reach their bleakest and we fret for the womenfolk falling into the clutches of modern day slavers, Nina Simone curls up on the soundtrack. “Strange Fruit,” she sings, the anti-lynching anthem made famous by Billie Holiday.

Did not see THAT one coming, Miss Simone.

MPAA Rating:R for violent and disturbing material, language throughout, some drug use and sexual content

Cast: Paula Patton, Omar Epps, Roselyn Sanchez, Missy Pyle, Laz Alonzo, William Fichtner, Dawn Olivieri

Credits: Written and directed by Deon Taylor. A Summit release.

Running time: 1:36

Over at Box Office Mojo, they’re calling it “Quiet Place” over $21, “Rampage” falling into upper teens and “I Feel Pretty” $15, “Super Troopers 2” $6, “Traffik,” a Paula Patton/Omar Epps thriller, $3.5.

Maybe that crowd-funded “Troopers” sequel won’t pay off until it reaches the homes of aged frat boys. On Netflix.

But Deadline.com, which also tracks preview take, notes that “Troopers” owned Thursday night — $1.35 million or so. If that holds up, it could put “Troopers” in the $10 million range. My guess? Everybody dying to see it saw it Thursday night. $6 million is close to the mark.

The huge social media presence of Amy Schumer and her star-vehicle “I Feel Pretty” suggests that all the $15-17 million opening weekend predictions are a little thin.

I’ve thought “anything below $15 and she’s in trouble,” but likewise, anything over $17 could lead to a second Amy Boom. Early in the week, we were running across $17 million predictions. Those have fallen off. Are they lowballing Amy? Or do they know something?

Prognosticators are notorious for sandbagging African-American star vehicles, but “Traffik” is only on 1000 or so screens. It’ll be fighting “Isle of Dogs” for pride of place.

Just a teaser, has a touch of Tyler Perry with an all-Asian cast. Gloss and aspirational consumption (check out the cars).

Not a laugh in the teaser, but the target audience is underserved, under-represented and HUGE. Maybe it’ll work out.

One way to elevate the stoner comedy — And who asked for that? — might be to cast against type.

Thus “Dude,” an L.A. high school stoner romp about four BFFs coping with senior year, prom, college plans, singing along to your favorite hip hop and getting baked in the SUV every AM before class.

They’re young women, a willfully diverse weed wolfpack led by Lily (Lucy Hale of “Truth or Dare”) and peopled with the likes of Amelia (Alexandra Shipp of “Love, Simon”), Rebecca (Awkwafina of “Neighbors 2”) and Chloe (Kathryn Prescott of TV’s “24: Legacy”).

They’re introduced at junior prom, where they establish their routine (firing up), their characters and their tragedy.

Chloe’s jock older brother (Austin Butler), Lily’s crush, is killed in a car wreck.

A year later, they’re queens of campus as seniors. Lily’s class president, throwing herself into micromanaging the prom. Chloe is keeping her crushing college options to herself, quietly grieving with her openly-grieving mom (Brooke Smith, awesome), Rebecca is having impure thoughts in the bathroom stall about a guy who might ask her to prom — not likely, as he’ll be there, as a TEACHER — and Amelia is doing the “younger boy throw-down, they do what you say” while mediating her parent’s break-up.

It’s Path Less Taken High’s finest hour, or not.

“All right ladies, let’s throw on some slutty dresses and get f—-d up.”

The code of teen rom-coms decrees that Lily has to also be the star of the soccer team, and that she has to reject the sweet, helpful underclassman on the prom committee (Alex Wolff), even though he sings and plays the ukulele in front of the rest of the committee as a way of asking her to be his date.

“I’m a Jew. You’re a Jew, too…Jews should stick together because there’s not so many of us.”

The banter is prime California Crude — “I’d let him Harry Potter this.” “I’ve gotta dump out.”

School back East? Will they be able to tolerate inferior Eastern weed?

“Treeless in Seattle?” “One Tree Hill.”

Maybe they’ll get into “Cool, like brooding, winter drugs…like opium,” Rebecca suggests.

Jack McBrayer is the “cool” PE teacher with tales of flinging drugs over the wall to his brother in prison. Just a way of jump starting the kids’ essays on drug abuse.

“Who’s ready? Angel Dust?”

The old trash-bag/vaporizer “bong” trick is rolled out, “COPS! Cops with DOGS!” bust up a party, and some fairly explicit toilet activity is explored. A dog eats their supply and we see what the dog thinks as she trips.

Just like “Dude” guy comedies. Except for the tampon gags.

As an aficionado of teen comedies going back to John Hughes, let’s just note “Dude” has the most explicit teen sex scene since, oh “thirteen” or “Kids.” Which weren’t comedies.

And then there’s the date rape. Or “The guy was…goal oriented.”

Irresponsible behavior has “limited” consequences. Parents may let you call them by their first name, may swear like longshoremen in front of you, but they’re in charge for a reason.

The big message — “People can be there, if you let them.” — has its merits.

The cast is good, though Awkwafina is the comic heavyweight here and the rest hunt for laughs in her shadow. As this is a Lucy Hale vehicle, most everybody else feels a little short-changed. Shipp’s crack about “our token WHITE friends” is “ironic,” but too too true.

Director/screenwriter (“Ocean’s Eight”) Olivia Milch parks a lot of serious in with the silly, which tends to slam the brakes on any comic momentum the picture aims for. It drifts on, far past its climax.

To quote from the canon, it’s “Pretty in Pink” packed with pieces of “Foxes.” It’s entirely too adult for 15-and-under, in other words.

So even though “Dude” strikes a teens-behaving-badly blow for gender parity, even if it’s every bit as raunchy as most boys-get-blasted comedies of its ilk, its several random laughs don’t build to anything, its deep thoughts are too shallow to uplift the genre, or the age group it might have been aimed at.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with explicit sex, drug abuse, profanity, innuendo

Cast: Lucy Hale, Alexandra Shipp, Awkwafina, Kathryn Prescott, Alex Wolff, Brooke Smith, Austin Butler, Jack McBrayer

Credits:Written and directed by Olivia Milch. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37