Movie Nation

Is there a point to “Liza, Liza, Skies are Grey,” a coming-of-age tale that trots out every 1960s trope and cliche and treats each as if it’s a new discovery?

The picture takes its title from a song Al Jolson made famous in the ’20s, its story beats from every “road” picture since “The Odyssey” and its cast from the legions of Pretty Young Things gathered in Los Angeles at the Hotel “Haven’t Made it Yet.”

And it’s basically just a random collection of cliches filtered through the movies its veteran documentary producer-director seems to have half-forgotten.

Here I was, all set to ridicule this callow, puerile take on romance amidst the turmoil of the era and attribute it to some first-time filmmaker who wouldn’t know any better, and there’s Terry Sanders credited as writer-director. He’s 85, which explains the Jolson reference. His tin-eared take on an era he should remember suggests he was too old to get what was going on then.

Mikey Madison is the title character, a 16 year-old who spends the summer of ’66 having nightmares about her father’s suicide, getting hit-on by mom’s creepy swinger boyfriend, and letting the Vietnam War coverage and Civil Rights struggle she hears on the news fly over her head.

She seems almost oblivious to war, to The Bomb, to the fact that the family housekeeper is black, and dares not broach that subject or any other with her. After all, one of her best friends (Kwame Boateng) is black. She needn’t worry over anything serious.

After conferring with her sexually experienced tutor — “So, you’ve been to bed with a lot of men?” — she decides to tell her casual beau (Sean H. Scully) “I want to be the first.” So they set off on his Triumph on a blue highway adventure up the coast, brawling with California rednecks, quarreling with seedy motel clerks and partying with tripping hippies.

“Where’s Liza?”

“Where’s ANYbody?”

There’s nothing sexy or even particularly sexual about “Liza,” no heat — even casual — to Madison and Scully’s pairing.

“Don’t make me pregnant!”

Which is why the motorcycle gets star billing.

Characters blurt out random cliches, with no motivation or warning. Mom (Kristin Minter) fumes about Liza “hating” her and “judging” her. Mom’s boyfriend (John-Paul Lavoisier) lures Liza with “See my framed lithographs” as bait.

Wow.

The upshot of which is a hard life lesson for filmmakers aged 15, 25 or 85. Just because you have the money and wherewithal to get a movie made doesn’t mean you should.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, violence

Cast: Mikey Madison, Sean H. Scully

Credits:  Written and directed by Terry Sanders.  An Ocean Releasing film.

Running time: 1:25

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Hardcore fans might glean insights into the psyche of England’s iconic-ironic post-punk poet-singer fashion-political statement Morrissey from “England is Mine,” Mark Gill’s unauthorized bio-pic about Steven Patrick Morrissey’s formative years.

The film has the glum, mopey vibe of depression about it and depicts its hero tap-tap-tapping at the typewriter, venturing into music journalism and cultural criticism, scribbling snippets of inspiration into poetry notebooks.

We don’t hear much of what he’s listening to or get a sense at what he wants out of life, “Jane Austen” put-downs aside.

But it has Morrissey — blandly-played by Jack Lowden of “Tommy’s Honour” —  falling under the beguiling influence of ahead-of-the-curve Goth artist/punk performer Linder Sterling (Jessica Brown Findlay of “Downton Abbey”).  They sit and swap Oscar Wilde bon mots on a bench in a cemetery, inspiring a Morrissey song. Which we don’t hear. But Oscar Wilde isn’t protected by copyright.

“Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

That “unauthorized” cross is an impossible one for this atmospheric period piece to carry. Young Steven posts “band wanted” ads for his singing aspiration. Influences? “New York Dolls, Lou Reed, Patti Smith” and forms The Nosebleeds.

The Smiths are in the distant future, all but off-camera as the picture ends just as meets Johnny Marr (Laurie Kynaston). 

But this cannot be about music if you don’t have the rights. So there’s virtually no on-stage performance content. That means you have to downplay the significance of meeting the big musical collaborators of his life, too.

At least the piled-up pompadour his hair became isn’t protected by copyright. In this coming-of-age tale, the only thing that comes of age is his fashion sense, and that hair.

And as Morrissey has made hay out of being gay and advocating celibacy, there’s nothing racy in his allure to assorted young women (Katherine Pearce, Jodie Comer) — just a comical stand-offishness.

Musical biographies of this sort are well-served when they can take you into the music scene — the milieu — of their subject, show the ferment that created their art. “24 Hour Party People” painted a vivid portrait of the Manchester where Morrissey grew up. Some overlap with that film’s personas seems inevitable, but it isn’t. More rights issues?

In dramatic terms, Morrissey’s self-absorbed ennui doesn’t reach the level of Ian Curtis, recreated for “Control.”

Lowden, a supporting player in many a film (including “Dunkirk”) can’t make his version of brooding and bookish charismatic. Which lets the vivacious Findlay walk off with the picture. She makes the case for his commitment to celibacy in a heartbeat. She’s utterly irresistible here.

What Gill is confined to is a sort of impressionist sketch of Morrissey’s world —  “Coronation Street” era Manchester, rusting and depressed, a social welfare state where young Steven squanders a civil service job-for-life by not showing up, and not fitting in when he does.

“Why can’t you be more like everyone else?” his boss barks at him.

The big problem with “England is Mine” is that that’s exactly who this Morrissey is. When your film biography is this circumscribed and unlike Jimi Hendrix (“Jimi: All is By My Side”), is still living with access to lawyers, the smart play is to pick somebody else’s story to tell.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Jack Lowden, Jessica Brown Findlay

Credits: Directed by Mark Gill, script by  Mark Gill, William Thacker.  A Cleopatra release.

Running time:  1:34

With its adoring close-ups, lingering shots in the bath, repeated stripping and endless designer costume changes, “Atomic Blonde” plays like a vanity project for its producer-star, willowy model turned Oscar-winner Charlize Theron.

There is no cell phone application for generating generic spy movie dialogue, but if there was, this film could be an ad for it.

“Berlin is a cruel mistress…Berlin is like the Wild West…Berlin is a small town. I am sure our paths will cross again…Maybe we can make some sort of arrangement…I’ve read your file…Shall we begin?”

Yeah, it started life as a comic book, but come on.

The plot’s twists are foretold too far in advance for there to be much in the way of real suspense. The soundtrack for this set-in-1989 thriller is packed with overly-appropriate ’80s pop. You know a spy picture in ’89 Berlin will have “Der Kommissar” and “99 Luftballoons.” But setting a chase to “I Ran,” covering a secret conversation with “Voices Carry?” The songs match the situations so on the nose they become self-mocking.

But all that said, ALL of it — the short/shorter/shortest skirts, the bottomless shots of Stoli and clouds of cigarettes and hailstorms of bullets — pays off because Theron wills it so.

They’re selling this cut-and-paste parody of a spy thriller on its epic fights, and Theron in the title role takes and delivers beatings in visceral, pulse-pounding, eyes-averting stab-him-with-a-corkscrew bloodbaths.

After which, her body tattooed in bruises, our Atomic Blonde eases herself into a nice ice bath.

So yeah, we buy in.

British Agent Lorraine Broughton is sent to Berlin just as the Wall is about to come down. There’s an East German Stasi agent (Eddie Marsan) ready to defect with a vast collection of names of agents, double-agents, something or other “atomic” in its explosiveness.

Her contact in town is hard-drinking, trade bottles of Jack Daniels for information
Agent Percival (James McAvoy doing his psycho/gonzo/dissolute thing).

But the best laid plans “gang aft a-gley,” as the Scottish poet said. We’re privy to the interrogation of Agent Broughton, bruised and bloodied, by her controller (Toby Jones of “Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy”) and a CIA watchdog (John Goodman). This grilling frames the film and leads us — entirely too easily — to understanding what went wrong.

Stuntman (“Fight Club,””300”) turned director (he had a hand in “John Wick”) David Leitch proves he was the right guy for the job with every furious blast of onscreen mayhem.

The car chase is comically over-the-top, but at least the endless succession of flips and crashes are tactile and real — done by stuntfolk.

And the brawls put the beanpole-thin Theron into some of the toughest fight choreography ever staged with a woman. Theron commits, and huge chunks of these punchouts/shootouts are delivered in long-takes, no edits to protect the star or hide the presence of a stunt double.

The confrontations are so in your face that you may want to don an icepack when you get home. I certainly did.

The action beats are such spectacles that they’ll make you laugh. Not that there isn’t the odd funny line.

“David Hasselhoff is in town…Berlin is truly DOOMED.”

Not really, but you could see how they might think that back in 1989.

In between the fights, we’re reminded of how beautiful Theron is by those lingering, hair-over-one-eye close-ups, the Olivia-Wilde-in-“TRON” perfect makeup, the wondrous selection of fishnet stockings and some pretty serious grappling with the fetching Sofia Boutella (“The Mummy”) as a possible rival, or friendly agent.

The ending feels written by committee, and that laundry list of other quibbles can take you out of the picture. But the camera puts you right in the fights, in the car and facing down the barrel of a gun with our heroine.

And Theron and Leitch give this lightweight LeCarre the heft to punch well above its atomic throw-weight.

MPAA Rating: R for sequences of strong violence, language throughout, and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Sofia Boutella

Credits:Directed by David Leitch, script by Kurt Johnstad, based on the comic book series “The Coldest City” by Anthony Johnston and Sam Hart . A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:55

Yes, when his entry in the Big Book is written on college athlete turned Yale School of Drama character actor Raymond J. Barry, we’ll hear about “Training Day” — the movie and the TV series.

There’ll be mention of “The X-Files,” where the white-haired character heavy played a senator, and “Steel City” and “Little Children” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”

But never let it be forgotten that “Brave New Jersey,” a no-budget indie comedy with Kickstarter connections and Tony Hale as its star, just might be Barry’s finest hour.

Where else could he, as a 70something WWI vet facing down a town panicked over Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, utter the immortal line “Don’t give me any of that half-assed half-assedness?”

Where but here will we hear him growl, “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it!”

Barry, as the Lullaby, N.J. town curmudgeon and Hale (“Veep”), as its loopy, put-upon mayor, class up a somewhat lifeless farce about “the Night that Panicked America,” when a vivid, credulous Orson Welles Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast convinced America’s most gullible that Martians were attacking, and that they’d made their beachhead the wilds of rural New Jersey.

It’s a village that might have become famous as the home of the Rotolactor, a mass-milking machine that village swell Paul Davison (Sam Jaeger) plans to introduce on that fateful All Hallow’s Eve in 1938. But no.

His long-suffering wife (Heather Burns) is the object of the mayor’s lovesick blues, but she can’t notice him, so long as Paul is about to make them all rich.

Then there’s the plucky school teacher (Anna Camp) whose escape from her dull local intended (Matt Oberg) might be the fact that the world is coming to an end.

Or so they all think.

The kids (Grace Kaufman) are convinced. I mean, it’s ON the RADIO, it must be TRUE.

“Mom, how MUCH more do you need to hear? We’re under ATTACK!”

As do assorted locals. And who do they turn to in their desperate hour? The town crank, at 70something entirely too old to be playing a WWI doughboy vet (Those guys would have been about 40 in 1938).

The film’s anachronistic score and assorted chronological/logical errors like that one wouldn’t be an issue if every character was as funny as Old Man Ambrose Collins (Barry) or his profane takes on their situation.

“I’ve seen things that’d make you s— a GREEN carrot!”

The TV movie “The Night that Panicked America” was the definitive spin on this story, decades old and G-rated (none of the F-bombs this movie features). But there’s no sin in taking another shot at it. It’s just that this one has nothing much to offer, archetypal characters giving rote performances of a script that needed serious workshopping and edge-adding.

At least Barry, growling and dressed in a trench coat back when we knew what TRENCH coat meant, gives fair value. Hell, the man’s seen things that…well, you know.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity

Cast:Tony Hale, Anna Camp, Heather Burns, Raymond J. Barry,  Sam Jaeger

Credits:Directed by Jody Lambert, script by  Michael Dowling, Jody Lambert. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:30

It took seven weeks to do it, but “Wonder Woman,” holding onto more audience and more screens for a longer period of time, finally passed “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” to become the biggest hit of the summer cinema season.

With “Spider-Man” fading and “Apes” falling off dramatically, that’s going to hold true for the entire summer, all the way through Labor Day.

It happened Sunday night, with “Woman” edging over $389 million, and “Guardians,” losing screens after a long and lucrative run, topping out at $387. It won’t reach $400 million domestically, but “Woman” has a slim chance, slimmer thanks to “Atomic Blonde” coming in and taking screens and femme-powered BO punch away this coming Friday.

The actuals on “Dunkirk” were $50.5, “Girls Trip” just over $31, neither of them franchise pictures. And that will hold true next weekend and for the rest of the summer, barring some unforeseen blip in the already-released pictures staging a comeback.

“Big Sick” is hanging in the top ten, “47 Meters Down” will end up with almost $50 million in the bank — not bad for a straight-to-video loosed on theaters thanks to Mandy Moore and sharks.

There are basically two types of “ex-con” pictures. You have the ex-con who wants to go straight, but “the life” pulls the convict back into old alliances, old habits and murderous practices (“Straight Time”). Or we’re shown a released-inmate dive back into that life with relish (“The Get Away”).

And there’s generally just one version of con that we’re treated to — the innocent man/woman wronged, or at least unjustly punished.

“Shot Caller” gives us the latter in an overlong, brutally clumsy attempt to have the former both ways.

It’s yet another “Game of Thrones” star quickie, a place for Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to go shirtless between seasons of Blood, Sex, and Medieval Supernaturalism.

He plays a businessman whose DUI puts him in prison, into prison gangs and in a murderous place where he’ll be “validated” and “lose his cherry” as he stabs to save his skin. Yes, a DUI — with a fatality — sets all this in motion.

In writer-director Ric Roman Waugh‘s lumbering narrative, we meet Harlan, covered in tattoos, prison mustache, prison mullet and prison nickname (Money) writing a “farewell” letter to his son. But he isn’t about to die. Murky circumstances lead to his release after ten years.

The gang leader of the prison (Holt McCallany, monstrous) has something to do with Money’s early release. He’s the real “shot caller” behind those walls, with Jeffrey Donovan (“Burn Notice”) and Evan Jones (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) as lieutenants.

Money’s parole puts him back in the company of former prison buddy Shotgun (Jon Bernthal at his most menacing). Money is back in the game, in the middle of a big arms smuggling deal involving weapons from Afghanistan bound for Latin American drug gangs.

We also follow Money’s parole officer (Omari Hardwick) as he and other cops (Benjamin Bratt) try to zero in on this gun deal.

And then there’s the family that Money long ago left behind, though how one turns one’s back, even in prison, on Lake Bell is a mystery.

Treachery, double-crosses, drive-by shootings and brutal, bloody flashbacks to the escalating in-prison crimes that put Money in this position drag the movie’s stumbling march toward an obvious conclusion out to two hours.

I’ve summarized and summarized, boiling this down to a digestible/understandable thru-line, I hope. Writer-director Waugh does us no such favors. “Shot Caller” is all over the place, incoherent at times, with unnecessary characters (Bratt is here, why?), scenes, digressions and momentum-killing flashbacks. Waugh stages a prison riot that would have been more at home in an ex-con comedy.

The character follows an arc built upon abrupt alterations in his fundamental character, a “good” man who goes utterly amoral. It’s an arc that leaps up and down like an EKG readout.

And the plot is a gimmick-strewn “long con” — a chess game built on murderously amoral absurdities and laughable plot contrivances. If you’re not rolling your eyes by the ridiculously never-happen artificiality of the finale, there’s a Nigerian prince who’d love to have your money.

There are some interesting players involved here, TV actors mostly — not a big screen headliner in the bunch. But none of them, including the brooding star, get to play anything that draws us into the story or make us connect with any character.

Unless, of course, all it takes for you to develop empathy is a ripped Dane with his shirt off.

Among the players, Bernthal shows us commitment and his usual supporting ferocity (check him out in “Baby Driver”), Bell and McCallany don’t embarrass themselves, but  Hardwick’s part is both poorly written and unconvincingly played.

Coster-Waldau? He simmers, and when the scene calls for violence, he brings it — sort of. His first prison fight is a joke in the blows landed and the outcome, but the other bits of savagery feel uninhibited and “Who IS this guy?” scary. The movie kind of wallows in this stuff.

It’s the overall performance, party scene to bar scene to wife scene to teen son scene to make-a-gun-deal scene, that lacks a firm commitment and point of view. They figure they’re cleverly hiding the big twists in the story by keeping him poker-faced.

It’s as if star and the director are holding back, expecting to reveal a little more in “next week’s exciting episode” of a limited series, like the one he’s in on TV. Only there isn’t one.

MPAA Rating:R for strong bloody violence, pervasive language, some drug use and brief nudity

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lake Bell, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Benjamin Bratt

Credits:Written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh . A Saban Films/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:01

“If it’s too loud,” the ancient wisecrack about youth music goes, “you’re too old.”

The documentary film version of that saying might be, “If it’s too long, it’d damn-well better be about the Holocaust.”

“Turn it Around! The Story of East Bay Punk,” befitting its subject matter, breaks that film rule and gives us two and a half THOROUGH hours of the music scene where punk arrived in the late 1970s — and never really left.

As musical tastes waxed and waned, punk turned to hard core/thrash, seemed to die, then burst into radio-and-MTV-friendly punk pop with Green Day, the most famous band to emerge from San Francisco’s East Bay scene.

So there’s this long, talk-to-EVERYbody oral and cartoon-illustrated history of Hippytown Punk because, uh, Green Day is getting nostalgic in their proto-punk dotage? They’re the climax, the end-destination of the picture and they have producing credits (They got it made).

But this is much more than just an East Bay to Broadway (“American Idiot”) tale. Director Corbett Redford — a longtime member of that scene, so don’t take his name at face value — tracked down generations of Bay Area punks and tells as complete a story of the music, ethos, lifestyle and politics of this movement as anyone could want.

Musicians from Jello Biafra to Davey Havok,  Kevin Seconds and Mike Dirnt, scene participants with equally self-chosen monikers like Marshall Stax, Steve List (he compiled weekly lists of every underground punk performance, its venue, etc., and handed out The List every weekend at various shows) tell the story.

Those deep into the music, then or now, should be enthralled. And speaking as an outsider — I’ve ducked my head into many a thrash bar, and ducked back out again before tinnitus set in — it’s a fascinating history.

See the earliest stirrings of the West Coast music inspired by The Ramones, chart it through its many incarnations — Riots Girls, Thrash/Hard Core, Grunge.

Iggy Pop narrates the picture, a Detroit punk who never aged out of the ethos and is the perfect sardonic observer to the locale that produced Dead Kennedys, Rancid, Avengers, 7 Seconds and hundreds of other bands.

Punk — Iggy narrates — “is a conversation with society. Often, it’s an argument.”

So it was never just “about the music, man.” It’s spiked hair and piercings, more tattoos than any living body can use, brutally violent mosh pits, confronting Nazi skinheads when they seek to take over the clubs and seize the “scene.”

Writer/actress/filmmaker Miranda July staged her first punk play at the Gilman St. club which was the nexis of everything punk in East Bay.

And of interviews connect East Bay to the punk-turned-to-grunge music scene in Seattle and Olympia, Washington, cross-pollinating.

And yes, Green Day arrives, punk’s Apotheosis. The documentary makes it a side-mission to dismiss the cries of “sell-out” that the faithful have long slapped on the trio who had the ambition, talent and discipline to make the music popular to the masses.

Interest, for me, faded in and out, owing to the excessive length and repetition of “Turn it Around!” I enjoyed the animation — designed to look like the work from self-published/hand-penned and hand-drawn music ‘zines of the pre-Internet era.

But as valuable as it can be to call oneself an insider when plunging into a subject, maybe an outsider should have edited this. For all the old home movies of Green Day and those who preceded them, all the glorious black and white club photos of scene-photographer Murray Bowles dedicated to “showing people having a good time,” all the eyewitness accounts and opinions, “Turn it Around!” turns out to be too much of a good thing.

Trimming, polishing and shaping something into a tight, best-quotes-only/best-footage-only doc isn’t the antithesis of punk. Remember, the songs were long considered too long if they lasted more than two minutes.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with profanity, photos of nudity

Cast: Iggy Pop, Billie Joe Armstrong, Miranda July,  Jello Biafra, Kirk Hammett, Tre Cool, Murray Bowles, Marshall Stax, Anna Joy Springer, Kathleen Hanna, Mike Dirnt, Michelle Gonzalez

Credits: Directed by Corbett Redford, script by Anthony Marchitiello and Corbett Redford

An Abramorama release.

Running time: 2:37

John Heard had a long, broad career in movies and on TV. He will be remembered, by most, as the flustered dad in “Home Alone,” the one who — along with Mom (Catherine O’Hara) — forgets Macaulay Culkin and leaves him to deal with burglars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern alone.

He was what we used to call “a durable” character actor. He wasn’t often given the chance to show off a lot of range, but delivered villainy, arrogance, adult concern or guilt-ridden with skill.

He had his shot at leading man stardom — “Cutter’s Way” (1981)) was something of a cult phenomenon, its praises sung by Siskel & Ebert — to no avail.

I think his best film was one of his subtlest supporting roles, as the son trying to chase down his wandering mother (Oscar winner Geraldine Page) who has traipsed off to find the family’s ancestral home — “The Trip to Bountiful.” He was great in supporting parts in many films, “Sweet Land,” “The Guardians,” comedies like “My Fellow Americans.” Played a lot of straight arrows and sneaky heavies. “The Sopranos,” “Chumscrubber,” “Pollock,” “In the Line of Fire.” His sweet spot, it seemed to be, was as a sort of quietly put-upon Everyman — Jason Bateman without the snark.

He was found dead in a hotel this weekend, a week after back surgery. He was just 72.

Daniel Stern recalled his former “Home Alone” co-star, and roomie (they shared a place with Bruce “D-Day” McGill in New York in the mid-70s) in a piece linked by Deadline.com.

He has lots of films in the can, but the last thing I saw him in he wasn’t even credited with. Lucas Oil produced the anti-environmental screed “Pray for Rain,” which co-starred Jane Seymour. Terrible movie, Heard is seen in a video will he’s left for his daughter (Annabelle Stephenson). Perhaps he wanted his named removed. I wouldn’t blame him.

He probably wouldn’t want to be remembered for “Sharknado,” either.

“Dunkirk” had a good Thursday night and a very good Friday at the box office, and projections now put it at $51 million+ on its opening weekend.

Christopher Nolan, name brand director, delivers. Reviews have been great, if word of mouth is as strong, expect this to carry over Saturday and Sunday — $57 -60 is now the high end of expectations.

Not bad for a $150 million war movie with little dialogue, barely a single female face in it, no true “box office” stars (Tom Hardy’s quote, however, is spiking as I type) and historical subject matter.

Will Nolan ever do another comic book movie? Not if he doesn’t want to.

Luc Besson talked a lot of folks out of a LOT of money for the potential Euro-blockbuster “Valerian.” It’s dazzling, and dumb. Spend a dime on a rewrite, Frenchy. And spend SOME of your money on actors. “Valerian” cost $200 million, and it’s on a pace to pull in just over $16 million on its opening weekend in the US. Whatever it earns, it’ll have to be in Europe and Asia. It won’t reach $35, all-in, in the US.

“Girls Trip” is the other dazzling opening this weekend, a cheap New Orleans sex, sin and Stoli romp that is headed for $30 million, or damn near close to it. Name actresses, but not a box office draw among them.  BIG laughs and very good reviews  are giving this African American bacchanal cross-over appeal. Some of the dirtiest laughs you’re going to have in a theater are up front and in your face in the movie Amy Schumer would have KILLED to be in.

MEANWHILE — “Spider-Man: Homecoming” re-asserted its dominance over simians during the past week, and that is holding true this weekend. The web slinger is dropping another 50-60% of its last weekend audience, to about $20-21 — but “War for the Planet of the Apes” is in a death spiral, with audiences rejecting the glum, over-praised and downbeat finale in that series. An $18 million weekend means a 68% drop from its opening weekend.

That’s called a “Tyler Perry Plunge,” in box office terms — a second weekend where word of mouth and competition wipes out whatever mark the movie made on its opening.

As part of “Take Dad to ‘Dunkirk’ this weekend, I caught the film a second time. I rarely have time to do that, but period pieces/WWII movies and films about boats are kind of my thing. OK, “things.”

One element I fixated on second time around was how writer-director Christopher Nolan didn’t alter the design of the boats to suit filming purposes. Thus, a shroud (cable) holding up a mast on “Moonstone” gets in Oscar-winner Mark Rylance’s face for a few shots.

Another thing I fixated on was the inspiration for this fictional part of the story. “Moonstone’s” saga appears to be close to that of “Sundowner,” owned by Charles Lightoller, a former “Titanic” officer, sailed by that owner, his son and a friend of his son to the beach that late spring of 1940. Their experience is altered for the movie –the names and backgrounds changed to heighten the pathos and the drama — in a very touching way.

Here’s “Sundowner.” Ran across that photo on Wikipedia. Here’s the boat’s website.

The boat used in the movie was not an actual Dunkirk “little ship,” but an antique 43 footer — “Revlis.” That name, by the way, is “Silver” spelled backwards. The wooden motor-sailor seems even smaller in the movie, and yes, she was used by the Navy during WWII — just not at Dunkirk. Thus, renting her and recreating studio interiors of her involved less risk to an actual “Little Ship.” Film crews can be rough on historic objects and locations.

Another candidate for “Moonstone” inspiration might be a much smaller and thus not-camera-crew-ready vessel, the famous “Little Anne,” captained for part of the evacuation by the author of the first authoritative book on the evacuation, A.D. Divine. It’s a still-surviving 30 footer, similar lines to “Moonstone,” and was auctioned off a few years ago, having been restored in time for the 70th anniversary sail over. It’s a dead ringer for “Moonstone” in terms of cabin/mast/aft tiller design.

Updated: 2018 saw the re-issue of A.D. Divine’s Royal Navy approved 1944 book “Dunkirk.” He was an embedded freelance journalist and eyewitness to the nine days of frantic, blood-soaked evacuation, and his book is a fairly thorough account of the vessels and actions and conditions of the evacuation. He based it on captain’s logs and their reports to the Admiralty, detailing each day’s trip, the difficulties encountered, etc. I highly recommend it.

In relating Lightoller’s logs/reports to the Admiralty about “Sundowner” and his work during the evac, the only thing about “Sundowner” that doesn’t fit “Moonstone” is the fact Lightoller was on a much bigger 60 foot boat.

Like the unnamed skipper played by Rylance in the film, Lightoller lost a son in the RAF during the early weeks of the war, a bomber pilot who told his Dad what to look out for in a dive bombing and strafing run (as related in the film). Lightoller plucked survivors of sinkings out of mid-Channel, as in the movie. Divine’s book removes any doubt, it is “Lightoller” who inspired Rylance’s character.

Nolan could not acknowledge that and still take the historical liberties he did, and mentioning “Titanic” would have hijacked that third of the movie.

In terms of historical accuracy, let’s focus on the film’s harrowing death toll. There is no actual casualty count from the evacuation. But thousands died. That is lost in much of the “Miracle of Dunkirk” historical spin associated with the withdrawal. Over 200 British and Allied ships and boats were sunk during the battle, a staggering number. We’d remember D-Day for much darker reasons had the Allies suffered similar losses in attempting to storm back into France four years later.

Among those lost — HMS Wakeful, a destroyer whose motto was “Si dormiam capiar,” “If I sleep, they will catch me.” “Wakeful” went down with 640 evacuated soldiers on board. One survived. That sinking — and others like it — figure into the film.

I could not find an account of a U-Boat sinking an Allied ship by torpedo, something the film suggests. But German E-Boats, their motor-torpedo boats that patrolled the Channel, wreaked havoc on the evacuation. A torpedo in the dark is just as deadly coming from an E-Boat as from a U-Boat.

I was also struck, on second viewing, by the groaning, rattling nature of the Spitfire Tom Hardy’s pilot flies. It stands out because that’s all we have to focus on in Nolan’s brilliantly minimalist aerial scenes. Lovely sound detail, which anyone who has ever owned a vintage British roadster will recognize as British “that’ll do” clever but under-built engineering. Nimble, quick, graceful — not built for comfort or quiet. Did they leak oil, too? Just curious.