Movie Nation

Think of it as the Original Black Lives Matter moment. It happened 26 years ago, for crying out loud.

Rodney King gets pummeled by cops, it’s caught on videotape, officers put on trial for beating the hell out of him, a Simi Valley jury lets them off. Riots.

The trailer alone makes this the most challenging picture parked in April, and one movie I have been looking forward to, one that doesn’t have monsters, ghosts or smart-alecks in tights pretending to brawl in front of blue screens.

Watch just the trailer, and have an epiphany. Maybe getting your back up over “ALL Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” will start to seem as foolish to you as it pretty much does to me. A movie that matters. Opens Friday.

As in, it’s about them. And “it really happened.” A library, a stupidly valuable book, four young guys trying to plan to steal it the way they do in the “Oceans 11” movies.

Even Peters, Barry Keoghan, Jared Abrahamson, Blake Jenner, with Anne Dowd and Udo Kier. June.

So here’s the full trailer the upcoming movie based on the Kevin Kwan novel. Sort of a “Monster in Law” about Pacific Rim money, love and an emerging class of English speaking actors from that part of the world.

People Americans will easily recognize — Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, Michelle Yeoh.

“Fresh off the Boat” veteran Constance Wu and Gemma Chan (“Fantastic Beasts”) also star, with Henry Golding and Jimmy O. Yang.

The film of Kevin Kwan’s novel — girl meets boy WAY too rich for anything casual — plainly features a few “Are you ASIAN enough,” jokes as if the cultures and people of Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand etc., are interchangable or monolithic, a “yellow on the outside, white on the inside” banana joke (nickname for Asian Uncle Toms). “Crazy Rich Asians” opens in the U.S. in the low-expectations zone — late August.

Jim Carrey as an aged Polish police detective taking one last crack at the sex club murder case no one else could solve?

We are…intrigued.

This indifferent, exploitive mystery, filmed in 2015, is a Kafkaesque nightmare painted in the grim greys and dull browns, the historic “look” of Eastern Europe, even after the Iron Curtain rusted out.

Carrey is Tardek, a loner, on-the-OCD-spectrum cop meant to “keep his head down” in his final year on the job. Some scandal robbed him of his reputation. And working in the non-digitized unsolved cases stacks of the onetime police state, he conjures up one that has haunted him.

A famous — or infamous — man was murdered. He frequented this Euro-dungeon sex club, “The Cage,” and then his body was found trussed up, dumped in a river.

The prime suspect? That would be the famous — or infamous — author Kozlow, played with all the furrowed brow, testy-talking menace that Marton Csokas can summon to his latest villainous turn.

With little to no help from his assistant (Piotr Glowacki), Tardek digs. A break comes from the novelist’s “last novel,” never published but rendered into audio book form (When has that ever happened?) so that Tardek can listen to its vivid descriptions of sex club antics that would force your “Eyes Wide Shut.” Depravity and degradation we’ve seen under the opening credits, later glimpsed in old VHS tapes of the goings on in The Cage, is related by Kozlow with a perverse, profane relish.

And damned if much of what turns up in the novel is straight out of the non-public portions of the case files of this one notorious unsolved murder.

“I think this book is your confession,” Tardek accuses.

“That’s what YOU say,” the author spits back.

“That’s what YOU say,” Tardek grins, pointing at the tape recorder with Kozlow’s own voice coming out of it.

“That’s what I WRITE.”

Charlotte Gainsbourg is the mysterious single mom, haggard and wounded (Gainsbourg’s speciality) whom Kozlow meets, supposedly in secret. What’s she know? What does she have to do with all this?

Greek director Alexandros Avranas (“Miss Violence,” “Without”) loses himself in the glorious production design of this overcast but never-thrilling, not-that-mysterious mystery thriller. Check out the dusty bust of Lenin in this scene, the moldy odor of retarded progress, decay, hanging over every life.

Carrey paves the way for a cast that plays the barest hint of an Eastern European accent, bearded, sullen, curious, “the last honest cop in Poland” who breaks in to plant microphones, jump the gun on arrests and faces media heat from his confrontations with a writer who knows how to use words to win the PR war with accusing cops.

Jeremy Brock’s screenplay — he scripted “Mrs. Brown” and “The Last King of Scotland” — introduces Tardek’s obsession with silence and OCD approach to grooming, and the way he re-arranges the eggs and bacon on his breakfast plate, the daily trimming of his beard. But little else is done with this character “flaw.” He has a wife and child, and they barely figure in any of this.

Carrey doesn’t deliver any sizzle in this role. Csokas chews him right out of their scenes, and the always soulful Gainsbourg (“Nymphomaniac,” “Antichrist”) lets us think we’re looking right into her horrific past, even if this dull, obvious “mystery” doesn’t seem worthy of any of their talents.

It’s worth pointing out how this entire enterprise is not a good look for any actor in the #MeToo era. Especially one with Carrey’s PR situation after the suicide of his ex-girlfriend. The film’s exploitive nature with degrading crimes against women, luridly detailed on those VHS tapes, would give any sensitive actor pause. The fact that the film probably wouldn’t have been financed without Carrey in the cast is a last piece of “Not a good look.”

Gainsbourg doesn’t get off the hook, either. Whatever merits the script had, whatever role her character has in the plot, she’s never been shy at playing “exploited.” And Avranas is no Las Von Trier.

Actors can never know how well a project they dive into will turn out, and taking on a project with this screenwriter and these fellow cast members might have felt safe. But the subject matter and the way it would be played for titillation had to be obvious, fairly early on.

MPAA Rating: R for strong and disturbing violent/sexual content including rape, graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Jim Carrey, Marton Csokas, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Credits:Directed by  Alexandros Avranas, script by Jeremy Brock. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:37

A Sunday surge by “Rampage” could move Dwayne Johnson’s joke of a sci-fi thriller into second place this weekend.

But here’s the way things appear to be shaking out — The tense “A Quiet Place” in first with $21 million, Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” manages $18, slightly exceeding expectations but pretty close to what her last comedy “Snatched” managed on opening weekend.

“Rampage” will fall just short of $18.

“Super Troopers 2” has sold $16 million in tickets, based mostly on a strong Thursday night and Friday. It was expected to not earn $10.

“Blockers,” an R-rated comedy that opened with the comedy field all by itself, will end up earning more than either of those two, maybe $60 all-in.

And the human trafficking thriller — OK, ANOTHER human trafficking thriller — this one starring Paula Patton and titled “Traffik,” didn’t earn $4. The title didn’t help. We’ve seen so many movies about this hot-button subject that I noted a huge spike in readers for my review of “Trafficked,” an indie dog of a thriller on the same subject. Yeah, people were confused.

“Isle of Dogs” enjoys one last weekend in the top ten. It’s at $24 million now, and should clear $33-35 by the time it loses most of its screens.

“Black Panther” is finally losing screens, but it’s inching towards $700 million ($681 now), a box office benchmark just out of its reach.

Some movies are so on the nose that you watch them fighting the feeling that you’ve already seen them.

But if the dialogue is clever enough and the cast is companionable, they can fit neatly into way most of us define “Netflixable,” that is “a movie I wouldn’t travel/pay to see,” ut one I wouldn’t mind sitting through if it’s on the Netflix menu.

That’s how “Kodachrome” wound up on Netflix. A film festival movie with wizened Ed Harris playing a legendary photographer, Jason Sudeikis as his estranged son and Elizabeth Olsen as the nurse who helps convince the kid to take dad on a road trip, virtually every thing about it inspires “deja vu.”

The object of their quest? That little shop in Kansas that is/was the last place in America to process Kodachrome film. The newspaper story about it was notorious enough that it inspired many TV imitations of it. The reason Ben has to get there before he dies? These old rolls of film he never got developed, that somehow will impact his legacy. Can you guess what they’re of just by the plot description?

Hell, even the car they take is a cliche — a Saab 900 Cabrio, featured in many a road trip sequence before and after “As Good as It Gets.”

But the cast is inviting and the dialogue crackles with every bitter, cutting exchange. Well, mostly.

“BEHAVE” nurse Zoe orders.

“I’m dying. I don’t have to behave.”

Sudeikis plays Matt, a struggling record company A&R man who has just lost his star band.

“You’re slow, man,” the perfectly scruffed lead singer declares, and with that Matt is out of a job. Or will be, if his fast-talking promise to the CEO to poach a bigger band from another label doesn’t pan out.

Enter Nurse Zoe. She cannot talk him into the road trip she has in mind (These movies always find some BS reason for why the traveler cannot fly, only the one in “Rain Man” is believable.). She can’t even finish her pitch without him having her tossed out.

But Olsen is pretty enough and compassionate enough to make this line work.

“He’s dying. You should see him one last time.”

He may be, his son says to his indifferent, selfish father’s face, “a desperate old man trying to manipulate some BS redemption” for himself. But he’ll be gone, soon, right?

“I’m betting tits up by New Years,” blunt Ben reassures him.

Harris and Sudeikis are both veterans at playing a——s, and that gives their exchanges the feel of a balanced boxing match. Every cutting remark would draw blood when delivered to anybody less unpleasant. Each actor’s baggage lets us buy them as apple and tree. There’s no moist-eyed reunion here.

Even Ben’s stop-off at his equally-estranged brother’s house has the crackle of a sentimental refusal to be sentimental.

“You must be dying,” that brother (Bruce Greenwood) blurts.

Director Mark Raso won a student Oscar for a short film a few years back. Surely he recognized the treasure trove of cliches in this Jonathan Topper script.

The Nurse sizes up Matt by virtue of her “years” around men, the whole “let your guard down” speech ensues.

The Record Guy sizes the Nurse up by guessing her taste in music as they rummage through the record collection in the bedroom he grew up in. Yeah, there’ll be a moment when they sing along to a song that’s part of that conversation.

The illness? A cough, here and there, but as we’ve met the muscular and robust Harris pounding away at his son’s drum kit, reminders of impending death have to be spaced out, delivered right at the end of the second act, setting up redemption in the third.

The tipping point in Matt’s decision to make this trip he’s sworn he would never make is provided by an outside figure (Dennis Haysbert) who just so happens to have information about Matt and influence over Matt’s actions.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Or shouldn’t. Because, you know, 746 other screenwriters got to it before you.

But it’s not an unpleasant watch, on the nose or not. Olsen has a sexy calm about her, Sudeikis, so easy to dislike by virtue of the roles he plays and the cruel, smartass glint always in his eyes, is softening a bit as his career reaches middle age.

The reason formula pictures use a formula is because that formula has been proven to work. Don’t expect the surprises to surprise and you won’t be disappointed.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, adult situations, profanity, smoking, alcohol abuse

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen, Ed Harris, Dennis Haysbert, Bruce Greenwood

Credits:Directed by Mark Raso, script by Jonathan Topper. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

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.