Movie Nation

A borderline homeless teen, a fading racehorse on the seedy, dusty Southwestern side of the sport, Steve Buscemi and Chloe Sevigny.

Those are the ingredients of “Lean on Pete,” a star vehicle for young Charlie Plummer and another intimate, personal portrait from screenwriter/director Andrew Haigh (“45 Years,””Weekend”).

The studio that acquired “Moonlight” and “The Florida Project” and “Lady Bird” and “Ex Machina” and many of the coolest, most interesting indie features of the past few years, A24, is releasing “Lean on Pete” April 6.

Claire Foy is the woman whose paranoia about her stalker gets her committed. “Voluntary,” they say. “Not at all,” says she.

Unbranded horror films without a mad slasher or supernatural element die a quick death in the marketplace. But this doesn’t look half-bad. It opens Friday.

Judy Garland on her last legs, a last run in London, holding it together (barely) and finding love one last time.

That’s “Judy,” going into production with a team of Brits and starring their very own Bridget Jones — Renee Zellweger.

She’s doing her own singing, no lip-synced looping for the “Chicago” star. Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell and Finn Wittrock are among the co-stars.

A comeback for the Divine Ms. Z?

Any film buff knows the pleasures of Turner Classic Movies — TCM — the cable network that replaced AMC — American Movie Classics — when AMC veered from its initial mission.

Old movies, pristine prints, a real cinema historian/cinema completist’s paradise. I tend to mute the introductions as I find the vapid Mankiewicz and assorted telegenic teleprompter readers annoying, but all in all, a valuable resource.

We were waiting up for SNL the other night when I noted this one was coming up, a little-seen Orson Welles-narrated ghost story made in Ireland (The GF and I LOVE Ireland) by the Gate Theatre folks– Hilton Edwards — who “discovered” him in the early 1930s and sent him on the road to glory.

It’s a damned Old School Wellesian delight. Orson as “rhapsode,” as my grad school adviser labeled him — a yarn spinner, storyteller. Welles, in Ireland rehearsing “Othello,” relates a spooky (predictable) tale told to him by a hitchhiker.

And even though Hilton Edwards is the credited director, Hell’s Bells, this is a short Welles film — moody and shadowy, immaculate Wellesian shot compositions and full of Orson blarney, whimsy, winking at his fame, the Irish, etc.

This isn’t as good a print, but here’s the film.

  “Go Fish” is a limp little Canadian comedy about a once-rich girl going through a rough summer at the lake.

Only not really. As anybody remotely interested in cinema, anyone with any familiarity with “Queer Cinema” knows, that’s the title of a no-budget, ground-breaking classic of the genre, a genial, funny and touching lesbian romance from back in 1994, when such stories weren’t told in public and such films (this one was black and white) were rare.

No doubt the makers of “Go Fish,” which feels as if it was intended for Canadian TV, discovered that and shrugged it off. “You can’t copyright titles,” as everybody knows. What’s the harm? Heck, they could’ve titled it “To Have and Have Not” if they’d been so bold.

Gillian Wetherald plays Erica, the heroine and omni-present narrator of the Canadian “Fish.” She lives in a camping trailer by the lake because her Mom died, her Dad (Blair Anderson) went to pieces and lost his job, their house was re-possessed and they even lost the fancy lake “cottage” they used to own.

Still, they’ve got the trailer. And Erica has — or had — a paddleboat to get around the lake, to catch up with her boyfriend Max (Rocky Keller) at the marina. “Had” a paddleboat because Dad had to sell the unicorn-bowed boat to the same opportunists who bought their lake house at auction. Which means her nemesis, prissy one-time pal Marcy (Shaina Silver-Baird) has it.

And as Bush I — or was it The Dude? — said, “This aggression will not stand!”

Erica drags Max into her plots to retrieve the boat, sink it or otherwise destroy it.

“Tonight it’ll be more than marshmallows getting roasted!”

Canadian revenge is best served hot.

Truthfully, this is a terrible movie that is barely even worth reviewing but for the effrontery of its title. Nobody comes off well, the laughs don’t land and the guy they cast as college-age teen Marcy’s beau (Kris Hagen) looks like he might have moved to Canada to dodge the Vietnam War draft. Yeah, that’s an age joke.

MPAA Rating: unrated, pretty darned clean

Cast: Gillian Wetherald, Rocky Keller, Shaina Silver-Baird, Blair Anderson, Kris Hagen

Credits: Written and directed by, Kate Drummond, Brett Heard. An Incubator Studio  release.

Running time: 1:14

OK. Sure. It looks like “Oscar bait.” It’s due out in the fall, on the cusp of “Awards Season.”

And Melissa McCarthy? Maybe her Queen of Comedy run is winding down. So why not take on something dramatic, a “true” story about a failed writer turned literary forger?

Casting her as down-on-her-luck loner Lee Israel, pairing her up with Richard E. Grant, this looks…great. Absolutely wonderful — sad and tragic and giddy with fraud.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” wasn’t directed by indie icon Nicole Holofcener. But she scripted it. Look for this Oct. 19.

“Paul, Apostle of Christ” is an intimate, conversational film of the last days of the Apostle Paul, the Pharisee (Jewish zealot/judge) and persecutor of Christians who had the original “Come to Jesus” moment on the Road to Damascus. He became the prophet who developed and enforced early Christian dogma and passed it on through his epistles — long, discursive letters to the Corinthian, Galatian and Roman Christian communities —  and his travels.

Half of the New Testament can be attributed to his writings, “definitive” accounts of testimony about the actions, life and teachings of Jesus — not witnessed first-hand, but collected from those who said they had and from Paul’s own visions, three encounters with Jesus (post mortem)  recounted in the Acts of the New Testament.

A story worth telling? Most certainly. But worth a better storyteller than was entrusted here.

In the movie, Paul (James Faulkner, a character actor still known for playing King Herod on TV’s “I, Claudius”) is in prison in Rome, and in 67 A.D., the Romans are literally feeding Christians to the lions.

Christianity has spread over much of the Mediterranean. But with so little written down, the threat of a watering down of the faith via false teachings, phony Jesus accounts and the like, and Paul no longer traveling and “correcting” the record, is real.

That’s why Luke (Jim Caviezel of “The Passion of the Christ”), a physician later canonized as St. Luke the Evangelist, has shown up. He needs to put Paul’s final thoughts down on paper, a last gasp at synthesizing the still-new religion for now and forevermore.

At least until the Council of Nicaea, 250 years later, when the Christian Bible was edited into something resembling its current form.

The story’s urgency is conveyed by the furtive nature of Luke’s meeting with the (literal) Christian underground. John Lynch (“The Secret Garden”) is Aquilas, who lays it all out for the future saint (Luke was Greek) when they finally meet.

“Rome is stained with the blood of our brothers and sisters.”

“I’ve never seen Rome darker,” adds Aquila’s wife Priscilla (Joanne Whalley, recently seen as a nun in TV’s “Daredevil”).

Christians are a threat to the Empire, Nero has decreed.

But Luke’s imprisonment, even after he’s been moved to a dungeon, is lax enough that Luke can see him to take dictation and confide in the Voice of the Church. What he tells Paul, about unrest within the community, a determination by many to take the fight to the Romans, earns lecturing messages to be taken back to that community.

“Evil can only be overcome with good.” Luke underscores this when he passes Paul’s words on to the Faithful with an emphatic “Love is the only way.”

If that’s too subtle, Priscilla chisels this line in stone.

“Christ asked us to care for the world, not rule it!”

Paul, in his conversations with Luke, flashes back to his younger days, persecuting Christians and “blinded by the light” of his encounter with Jesus, his sight only restored by the Christian healer Anainis (Manuel Cauchi).

Meanwhile, his Roman jailer (Olivier Martinez of “Unfaithful” and “The Physician”) holds them all in contempt, but has his own crisis of faith looming. His daughter is sick, and no Roman physician or Roman gods can save her. What about “the Greek,” this Christian fellow who keeps meeting that trouble-maker Paul?

If you’re going to make a movie set during the Roman Empire, Malta is the most authentic-looking location you could choose. And writer-director Andrew Hyatt, who earlier tried his hand at horror (“The Frozen,” “The Last Light”) and failed, assembled an impressive cast for this handsomely-mounted Biblical story.

But Hyatt isn’t very good at getting across the urgency of the story, and for all the suggestions of torture (“Another 20 lashes!”) and scenes of prisoners being burned, the picture lacks drama or the tension that an account — based on the New Testament’s “Acts” and Christian tradition — might have had.

Faulkner’s Paul looks right, bald, bearded, weary but righteous — “I boast only of my weaknesses!” But his mostly-whispered performance has few moments with a fiery human spark to them.

“You speak as if you have never heard the words of Christ!”

Having his jailer as Paul’s only foil puts pressure on the French actor Martinez, and there’s no intellectual heft, no menace and little heat in their encounters.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say how Paul died, but Catholic tradition dating from a few decades after his death says he was martyred by order of Emperor Nero. Nero and the Great Fire of Rome that occurred during his reign (Catholic tradition says Nero blamed Christians for starting it) are mentioned several times in “Apostle.” And speaking in strictly dramatic terms, the movie sorely misses Nero’s actual malevolent presence.

Lacking that conflict, and with slack pacing that fails to maximize the rising panic of a community hunted and under threat of death in the Circus, without the budget to show us the horrors of that Circus, “Paul, the Apostle” just lumbers along between half-whispered Conversations with the Prophet.

Whatever a movie’s message, whatever value it to its intended audience, it’s an old movie maxim that sums up the shortcomings of this “Apostle.”

Think of Robert Duvall’s “The Apostle” or Kevin Reynolds’ “Risen.” Good directors make good movies. “Paul” didn’t have one. And it shows.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violent content and disturbing images

Cast: James Faulkner, Jim Caviezel, Joanne Whalley, John Lynch, Olivier Martinez

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Hyatt. A Sony Affirm release.

Running time: 1:49

Saint Patrick’s Day didn’t send me to the pub for a pint (for once), but had me searching the streaming services and cable networks for Irish film fare I’ve missed over the years.

No “Quiet Man” or “Leap Year” or “Brooklyn” or Minnie Driver binge for us, oh no. Just something we could watch and say, “Oh look, dear. It’s Dublin/County Cork/Howth/Galway. Remember?”

The appeal of scenery in Irish cinema cannot be understated.

After sampling John Ford’s “The Moon is Rising” from 1957 (Dublin, the way it was before modernity hit), we settled on “The Pier,” a little-seen Gerard Hurley character study/homecoming comedy.

Put “comedy” in quotes here, because this sad-faced little romance is a genre pic that pours effort and thought into defying genre. There are laughs, but a dark undercurrent, too. It avoids melodramatic choices, even as it shoves in a romance in the most melodramatic way imaginable.

I can’t say it’s all that, ah, but the coastline (County Cork), the quaint fishing village, the pub! The PUB!

Hurley (“The Pride” is his only other film credit) is an Irish carpenter living in Chicago, summoned home by the urgent call, “Your Da’ is dying!” from a neighbor lady.

Jack borrows money for plane fare and rushes home, but can’t even get to the door without cursing. There’s the old man (Karl Johnson of “The Illusionist”), out playing golf in the wind-whipped mists.

Jack is in a lather, especially when he picks up on why his estranged father — they haven’t seen each other in 20 years — called. Dad has money owed him all over the village. Jack is called back to help him collect it.

The son’s less-than-bemused dismay — he takes a break to rage and curse at The Almighty in the surf — is tempered, somewhat, by the presence of an age appropriate single-woman “outsider,” an American, conveniently in town and warmly played by Lili Taylor. It’s only the promise of “platonic” walks that gets him anywhere with her.

Instead, he and his cranky, loner father, spend their days riding about in a van, getting told off by many, blown off by others, who owe the father money.

The predictable ways this might have played out are we learn a dark secret about those “debts,” that we hear the “true story” of how Jack’s mother died (on “The Pier”) when he was just a boy.

Hurley avoids these, and most other plot points that would drive interest in this tale. Estrangement from his father, his father’s estrangement from The Church, his father’s actual health, etc., dominate scenes that fill in between arguments in the pub and ambling confession walks with The American Woman along the scenic Cork Coast.

The performances are winning enough, with Johnson’s masterful irascibility masking an ugly streak that reveals itself, scene by scene.

It’s not utterly aimless, but you do get the sense that this one, for its scattered sharp exchanges of dialogue and odd turns (not reaching the level of “twists”) is coasting along on its Irishness, with barely enough blarney to get by.

As a general rule, “Oh look dear, it’s County Cork! Remember?” isn’t enough.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, profanity

Cast: Gerard Hurley, Karl Johnson, Lili Taylor

Credits:Written and directed by Gerard Hurley. A Black Equus release.

Running time: 1:29

The head scratching thing about “7 Days in Entebbe” isn’t so much its almost tension-free take on a harrowing hostage crisis of the ’70s, that rare one resolved with a professional, successful military response. As I said in my review, it’s the mere existence of it.

Why this movie, why now? Is there another agenda at work? Aside from Hollywood’s somewhat tone-deaf echo chamber executive ranks?

“Yeah, a movie about ‘Israel’s Finest Hour’ over 40 years ago is what audiences are clamoring for.”

The movie bombed. Critics pounded it and audiences avoided it, not even getting it into the top ten on this, its opening weekend. More diversity in the offices where movies are greenlit might be in order, because nobody wanted to see this and a broader cross-section of voices in those development meetings would have stopped this, dead in its tracks.

“Love, Simon,” a gay coming-of-age romance whose time came, oh, 10-12 years ago, underwhelmed as well, only managing $11 million or so. Weeks of studio previews to build word of mouth, a Saturday night “paid” preview last weekend, rapturous reviews (Oh please), and…enthusiasm waned from the moment tickets were first turned in Thursday night.

Group buys are a big part of the success of the faith-based musical bio-pic “I Can Only Imagine.” As I mentioned earlier, I saw it Thursday night when some unknown entity bought out several showings and handed out tickets to folks coming to my local Regal Cinemas, people there ostensibly to see something else. That they were going to pay to see.

Interesting way of ginning up “support.” Did all those purchased seats leads to attendance? Cannot tell. It’s earned $15 million plus this weekend and much support from its target audience.

Then there’s the MGM/Warners “Tomb Raider” reboot, based on the rebooted video game, but more like the 2001 Angelina Jolie film “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” than anybody would care to admit. It managed nearly $24 million, which means it could break even with a LOT of overseas help, only if audiences everywhere else dive into it with more enthusiasm.

“A Wrinkle in Time” lost a respectable 50% of its barely passable (for its genre and hype) opening weekend take.

And “Black Panther” piled up another $28-29 million.

Attention Deficit Disorder is diagnosed at higher rates in the US than in anywhere else in world. And once it’s diagnosed? It’s treated. Ritalin and Adderall are prescribed, what we used to call by the more generic umbrella name, “amphetamines.”

Parents feeding a hyper-competitive “human capital value” culture that has first them then their kids, eager to get “an edge,” look for more energy, focus and stamina in a pill.

The prescriptions often start in elementary school. By college, the kids using these stimulants call it “college crack.” By adulthood, software engineers and musicians, athletes and soldiers are hooked, making America Amphetamine Nation.

“Take Your Pills” is a new Netflix documentary that downloads data, expert commentary, user-testimony and zippy animations and graphics to make the case that it’s not just the meth and opioids that are have American addled.

It’s Adderall.

College kids, Wall Street types, jocks and Silicon Valley nerds discuss their need for the drug, what they get from it.

And academics, journalists, authors and physicians break down the chemistry and the history. Alan Schwarz (author of “ADHD Nation” and “Overselling ADHD”) relates the history of the drugs — Benzadrine of “Speed” made it into many a soldier and fighter pilot, and it made its way into folks at home, getting comical mentions in movie and Big Band novelty song during World War II —  the development of Ritalin, and the timeline of parental and school system push for help with “concentration” that has addicted the nation’s middle to upper middle class kids and adults.

Among those testifying, Eben Britton, an ex-NFL offensive lineman, and his wife Brit — the push to get him a league exception to use it, his wife’s testimony about how it impacted him, from “focus” to the downside.

“Obsessiveness” is one of those drawbacks.

“Blue,” an artist manager in the music business, notes that “Society as a whole, has ADD.” Distracted at every turn, in every minute of the waking day, pills become the easier way to shut down those distractions. His special ed teacher mom Maxine derides the “instant cure” her son sought out once he was old enough to make that decision for himself.

Companies have been able to advertise the drugs on TV, marketing “better grades” and “more compliant” kids as the drugs’ benefits. A popular New Orleans “TV doctor” is shown interacting with kids, and a parent who has a Master’s notes how determined she is that her son, “who had to repeat kindergarten,” get a doctorate.

Other parents confess, “Did I do research? Painfully, no.”

The risks dribble out later — addiction, irregular heartbeats, compulsive behavior, “perfect employees” working themselves until they get sick, have a seizure or collapse.

Psychotherapist Liz Jorgensen declares that “stimulants can help, until they don’t.”

Footballer Britton expresses regrets at “cheating” his way to his achievements, and remembers the “crash,” the depression and exhaustion that followed every hyper-focused “high.”

“Take Your Pills” is a fast-read doc, a surface-skimming of the subject, with most corners of the philosophical, medical and ethical debate over these re-branded uppers at least touched on. People hunting for a way to become “the optimal me” dominate the proceedings, parents, kids, athletes and others rationalize what they’re doing.

“Cognitive enhancement is here to stay,” one marketer/seller announces, and the experts quoted here take a moment to talk about the Brave New World of LSD microdoses, mushroom self-dosing and the murkier self-determination arguments that might be guiding the debate down the road.

It’s pretty late in the game to be getting a primer on this years-long epidemic, but the least you can say about this super-slick, ADHD friendly film is that you can’t watch it and say you don’t have an idea how it could benefit you or your kid, and just a taste of exactly why it’s a bad idea.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with drug abuse

Cast: Dr. Wendy Brown, Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, Alan Schwarz, Eben Britton, Dr. Nicolas Rasmussen, many others

Credits:Directed by Alison Klayman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:27