Movie Nation

“You should have finished the job” is the credo of many a “We thought we killed you” thriller.” Westerns like “Valdez is Coming” and “Hang’em High” honored this grim vengeance tradition.

“Revenge” is about a fellow who takes a mistress he probably intends to get rid of on a “guy’s retreat” somewhere in the coastal desert.

As it’s a French film with Belgian money, and no locations are listed on imdb, I wonder — South Africa, Morocco, Australia?

Madeleine Lutz is the victim, left for dead, hellbent on getting hers. Look for this in limited release May 11.

The only thing that might have tamped down the take for Steven Spielberg’s latest is its lack of a brand name title. Not Marvel, not “Indiana Jones” (in his case).

Otherwise, the impressive $53 million “Read Player One” pulled in this holiday weekend  (it opened Wed.) would have been greater. It’s earned $123 million abroad.

No such provisos are necessary for “Acrimony.” The Tyler Perry brand brought this soapy, melodramatic tale of female victimhood run amuk a solid $17 million.

“I Can Only Imagine” is the faith based hit of spring, holding audience weekend after weekend, over $10 million this past one for a $55 million running total. It came in just behind “Black Panther.” “Panther,” by the way, is finally losing screens to newcomers, so it’s fall-off should turn steeper, starting next weekend. $650 million and counting for that one.

“Isle of Dogs,” on just 165 screens, cleared $2.8 million, just outside of the top ten (right behind “Paul, the Apostle”).

The end of the “God’s Not Dead” franchise opened on ten times as many screens and did $2.6.

 “Tyler Perry’s ‘Acrimony'”

Let the record reflect that Taraji P. Henson is one scary broad, when she wants to be.

“Empire?” Hah. “Proud Mary?” Child’s play.

In “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony”  she’s all eaten-up with crazy, dripping with homicidal intent. She’s sitting there, pouring her enraged guts out to an unseen psychotherapist, and we just KNOW she’s about to cigarette burn-a-b—h if she interrupts her again.

Let the record also reflect that Tyler Perry is not the guy you go to for a showcase of murderously scary R-rated melodrama. Ms. Henson deserves better.

Perry has her narrate, start to almost the finish, this tortured tale of marital discord and misuse. And a veteran dramaturg like TP has to know, HAS TO, that voice-over narration is the laziest cinematic storytelling there is.

You almost never see it in the theater for that reason. Seriously, if this is how he wants to tell a story, there’s a career in romance novels awaiting him. Or a Madea wig.

Henson plays Melinda, enduring court-ordered anger management for stalking, harrassing her ex, Robert, played by Lyriq Bent of TV’s “She’s Gotta Have It”).

Melinda almost sucks in her teeth with every furious drag she takes off a cigarette as she tells the story of how Robert won her over in college, lived off her for nearly 20 years while he perfected his “battery,” only to strike it rich AFTER their divorce.

What’s he owe her?

“Every damn breath in his body.”

Perry is going back to his Black Woman Victimhood trope, the one that launched him with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” over a decade ago. He puts words into Melinda’s narrating mouth about how “Every time a black woman gets mad, she’s a stereotype.”

No dear, just in Tyler Perry movies.

The way this was probably supposed to work would be we’d hear her story, and question if she’s a reliable narrator, if she’s entitled to her suspicions of and opinion of the “con artist” who seduced her, promised her the penthouse and the yacht, and didn’t get that stuff until AFTER her suffering and support had ended.

Is she crazy, or not?

Henson and the endless narration leave no doubt.

He crosses her and she’s going to “introduce him to my bitch.”

Robert used the word “forever,” and keeps her hanging on with “a four letter word — love.”

Hackneyed? Yeah. Perry even helpfully defines words like “Acrimony” and “Sunder” (as in “Torn asunder”) with inter-titles, showing contempt for his audience as he does.

The stereotypes extend to the supporting cast, with Ptosha Storey channeling generations of African American character actresses playing siblings putting down their sister’s “no good man.”

Perry has never been his own best editor, and this flaccid drama, which has a lulu of an ending, could have shed 20 minutes of the nearly endless flashack, for starters. Plant more doubt about the sanity of Melinda’s point of view, maybe tell parts of the story from the ex’s vantage point.

As it is, about midway through this, we don’t know who we should be rooting for even though Perry’s MO is always take the woman’s side, always show male nudity if you’re going for an R-rating.

And telling your story with endless pages of sarcastic, venomous narration? It doesn’t work and even Henson was bored with it, judging from her line-readings.

MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content and some violence

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Lyriq Bent, Ptosha Storey, Jazmyn Simon, Crystle Stewart

Credits: Written and directed by Tyler Perry. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:53

The virtues of “God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness,” are few. So let’s get them out of the way right out of the gate.

It’s replaced the generally hostile, defensive and political tone of the first two films with a veneer of “We have to learn to get along.” It’s still toxic, only less so.

So the parade of straw men this propaganda piece trots out are fewer in number and less testily-defined. No godless academic shrieking for the superstitious to prove their superstition is “the only Truth.” The preacher (David A.R. White) jailed for not surrendering the texts of his sermons (!?) in ARKANSAS (!#?) is at least out of jail in this third film in the series.

And John Corbett’s in it, the “Northern Exposure/Sex and the City/Big Fat Greek Wedding” veteran who makes most everything he turns up in a little more whimsical, a little better.

But here’s a tip. You want to see a pretty good, reasonably apolitical faith-based drama with Corbett in it? Redbox or Netflix “All Saints.” Much better.

Corbett plays the faithless older brother/lawyer who comes down from Chicago to represent his brother in the fight with Hadley College, a state school trying to evict St. James Church, whose presence on campus has been deemed unConstitutional and divisive by the women of the college’s board (among them, a martinet played Tatum O’Neal). The poor college president (Ted McGinley) has his hands tied.

The divisions on campus have consumed coed Keaton (Samantha Boscarino), her beau Adam (Mike C. Manning) and their outspoken pal, Mateo (Schwayze).

The church gets torched, causing even Pastor Dave (White) to lose his temper and question his faith. “Now, it’s just a crime scene.”

And one and all decry the “political agenda” that everybody seems to have…everybody on the “other side,” that is. Funny thing, there are all these talk shows depicted debating this conflict. Hosted by impartial voices like…shrill Fox News Judge Jeanine Pirro.

Corbett gets to make the counter arguments here, a preacher’s kid who gave up God as he got more educated. “The church has outlived its usefulness,” he says. But he sticks up for his brother, even if the preacher is “pretty quick to play the victim card.”

The protests have loaded imagery — Mateo taping a speech with his cell phone, which has an upside down photo negative image of a flag. But one young person sums up the Evangelical movement’s NASCAR (falling attendance, ratings, etc) problem in a flash. “We’ve spent years hearing what the church is AGAINST. What’s it FOR?”

Aside from anybody running for office calling themselves a “social conservative?”

But the logic-resisting pre-law kid who started all this on campus bickering (Shane Harper) is still tugging at Keaton’s soul and counseling everybody to act more like Jesus and get along.

This is far and away the worst of the three faith-based choices viewers have at the movies this Easter. The presence of Corbett only underlines how his charisma lets him act rings around the rest of the cast. Boscarino is sympathetic, nobody else in this blandly reactionary script stands out. Not even McGinley.

Tatum O’Neal should sue the cinematographer.

There’s one laugh in it, Preacher Dave seeking counsel from the African American minister (Gregory Alan Williams) across town, wallowing in his victimhood, telling him “You have no idea” how he’s being persecuted, and getting schooled.

“Brother, who d’you think you’re TALKING to?”

In America, churches that burn are almost always black. Torched by white men. Mass murdering a congregation is most famously a white racist-on-black crime. Religion was politicized by the intolerant far right, and that continues to this day, even as church-going shrinks within the American populace.

And all this “Get along” stuff? It’s what we see in Congress whenever one party has used disrespect, inflammatory lies and Russian money and influence to steal a Supreme Court seat and put a stealing, cheating, lying treasonous whoremonger in the White House.

“Come on, can’t you guys be NICE and not, um, DIVISIVE?”

The one comfort I take from this is that I saw it in the rural South, in a Red State cinema. As an audience of one. Nobody else is buying into this garbage.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements including some violence and suggestive material

Cast:  David A.R. White, John Corbett, Samantha Boscarino, Shane Harper, Benjamin A. Onyango, Tatum O’Neal, Shwayze, Gregory Alan Williams, Ted McGinley

Credits: Written and directed by Mason Williams. A Pure Flix release.

Running time: 1:48

Projections for how big “Ready Player One” were a bit fuzzy, with it having a Wed. night opening and then an entire Easter Weekend to make some coin.

The $40 million or so 3/day always seemed low, and a big Wed., very big Thursday and $15 million Friday seem to point toward something closer to $50 million than $40 million.

But Saturday will be telling. Deadline.come is still it’ll have over $40 over the weekend (excluding Monday), $53-55 since Wed by midnight Sunday.

They’ve been inching their predictions upward, but I still say they’re underestimating it. When I saw it with a mostly-college crowd pre-opening, about a third seemed REALLY into it (gamers, pop culture sponges of the “Family Guy” fanbase variety). It panders to that crowd for two hours and 20 minutes — endless inside jokes, pop culture references, game tricks, etc. Their talking it up will only carry so much water, but again, a Sat. as big or bigger than Friday will be the tell.

Tyler Perry’s days of opening Madea movies into the $25 million range may be over, but he’s still got enough of a brand to pull in $16 million for one of his tortured relationships in the African American community melodramas. “Acrimony” is managing that.

“Pacific Rim: Uprising” fell off a cliff, “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Tomb Raider” are both on track to fall well short of $100 million before they disappear from screens.

“Black Panther” is still pulling them in, #3 at the box office this weekend, but finally fading. It will have cleared $650 million in the U.S. by Sunday night. Stunning.

The best thing about the blase but soft-selling faith-based drama “I Can Only Imagine” and the weak-lead Biblical period piece “Paul, the Apostle,” is that they’ve killed off the angry, defiantly superstitious “God’s Not Dead” movies. That’s a proven brand, making money off Christian victimization in an increasingly secular (and educated) America.

And the third film in the franchise is on nearly 2,000 screens and can’t even crack the top ten. Deadline.com is notorious for under-estimating Sat and Sunday takes on most films, kiddie fare and faith-based movies especially. But right now this one is not set to clear $3 million. That could change, but in any event, the other two Easter movies in the genre have sucked all the air out of that house fire.

Wes Anderson’s charming, touching animated “Isle of Dogs” is only on 165 screens, and it may hit $3 million. Not in the top ten, but better “Dogs” than “Dead.”

The first thing that jumps out at from this trailer is the film’s tone  — melancholy, despairing. Ethan Hawke is a preacher at the end of his rope in this Paul Schrader drama.

The great thing about the existence of A24 as a film studio/distributor is that Schrader, one of the great screenwriters of the ’70s, director of “Cat People” and “Mishima” and “Light Sleeper” and “Affliction,” doesn’t have to beg Lindsay Lohan to show up so that he can get distribution for a movie.

With A24, one of the elder statesmen of cinema — he wrote “Taxi Driver” and “The Mosquito Coast” and “City Hall,” along with films he also directed — can make his kind of movie and land Amanda Seyfried, Ethan Hawke and Cedric Kyles.

It’s a drama. Cedric the Entertainer is using his real name for this one.

Look for “First Reformed,” a man of faith’s test of faith, in May.

me from this trailer is the name Cedric Kyles.

So not having read Ernest Cline’s YA novel “Ready Player One,” one of the first things that struck me when watching it was a “Where have I seen this sensory game-suit?” that the film trots out as The Next Big Thing in immersive video gaming — in 2045.

That idea is a sort of Holy Grail that’s been kicked around in science fiction and game idea boards for a while, seeing as how gaming chairs have gotten more sophisticated with time. If you’re going to lose yourself in an alternate reality, you really have to feel what your avatar is going through in that reality.

Pain? Maybe. Exertion? Sexual stimulation? Yeah, the thinking runs that way.

Which is one reason that’s the BIG PITCH the ditzy nerds of Netflix’s “Game Over, Man” want to make to the Tunisian billionaire playboy/playa/player who throws a party at the swank LA hotel where they’re custodians.

They make their pitch, for “Skintendo,” a Nintendo pun sensory suit, just before the bad guys take over the party and go all “Die Hard” on one and all.

“Skintendo.” That’s what Wade Watt is wearing in “Ready Player One.”

Well played, Netflix. And uh, Adam Devine.

Earlier projections, based on tracking data, had Steven Spielberg’s spin on Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One” under-performing at the domestic box office. $40 million was predicted.

The trailers don’t do it eye-candy justice, the endless parade of Easter Eggs, inside jokes piled up for film and game and pop culture fans, can’t be summed up in a single review.

But Thursday night’s opening was a lot better than expected. It did $3.75 million Wednesday night. It earned over $12, maybe over $13 million on just Thursday “previews.” Deadline.com has moved its prediction up to well over $50 million.

As I said yesterday, it has the feel of a broad demographic appeal, four corners hit. Word of mouth is a given, repeat visits will be a must for the crowd it is aimed at.  It’s on over 4200 screens, a HUGE number for a March opening.

I figure $60 million is on the low end of expectations. Not a “Black Panther” sized blockbuster, but in that ballpark. A big Friday will confirm that. Is $70 within reach? $80? I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t.

It’s piling up money overseas, $40 million and counting already.

[Did Netflix scoop “Ready Player One” with its raunchy, game-friendly farce “Game Over, Man?”]

This is a real eye-popper of a trailer.

Lurid colors, vamped up “Sin City/Streets of Fire” settings. Simon Pegg playing another hit man. Mike Myers acting into his dotage.

Max Irons. Kind of “Kill Me Three Times” or “Seven Psychopaths” meets “Sin City,” if I’m reading the plot summary right. A May 11 release directed by Vaughn Stein. Not a household name…yet.