Movie Nation

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

Gosh, I got all the info I needed to put out there in the headline, didn’t I?

Oh. Right. “Black Panther” wins another weekend at the box office, is at $460 million US, a phenomenon that just won’t quit, etc. It’s all about Marvel and all the other studios are fighting over chump change.

That includes the prestige house, Warner Brothers. Their MGM co-produced reboot of “Tomb Raider” is riding underwhelming reviews to an “It’ll never see a profit” $23 million weekend. That’s the good news. It was looking like a high teens weekend for the Alicia Vikander take on Lara Croft. The bad news? It cost $90 million. Not “Avengers” money, but it will have to make a bundle overseas just to break even.

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions didn’t have faith in their no-budget Christian music bio-drama, “I Can Only Imagine.” They spent $7 million on it (they say, and it shows) and did not preview it for critics. Opening night (Thursday), the Regal Cinema I showed up at to see it was giving away two theaters worth of tickets. A word-of-mouth strategy that they didn’t advertise, and is quite curious (Christian film festivals do that, but Hollywood studios and Big Cinema Chains?).

I am guessing that won’t count in the film’s robust showing –$14 million opening weekend. But they were handing out tickets, maybe SOMEbody was paying for them, so maybe walk-ups not paying for a movie were going for free and they’re counting that as “tickets sold by popular demand.” I certainly did. “Group Buys” by, in this case, Full Sail University? That’s what the posters said at the giveaway tickets table. Interesting. Fishy.  

For “Love, Simon,” Fox Searchlight did just the opposite. They previewed and previewed and previewed it. They had a “paid” preview last Saturday night. Audiences bought tickets and saw it a week in advance. It is opening at a middling $12-13 million, and didn’t cost much, so it’s a wash. Kind of a dated, underwhelming coming out romance, but Fox says liberal and tolerant big city kids (including Orlando) are showing up, and that counts.

“A Wrinkle in Time” dropped on its second weekend — a 48% plunge, not awfully steep, but hardly enough to warrant Warners hiring director Ava DuVernay to pilot a future DC Universe franchise, which was announced this week. Mediocring her way to the top, the Hollywood way! Disney’s heavily-hyped “Wrinkle” will be over $60 million by midnight Sunday. Not where they wanted or needed to be, but if it holds like this into April, well — we’ll just see.

Some movies make you question their very existence. The quality starts the questioning. then you think about how over-familiar the subject matter is. Maybe you scratch your head over the timing.

Why are we seeing yet another movie about the daring Israeli commando raid in Entebbe, Uganda, now? The latest, “7 Days in Entebbe” is a blase stroll through a desperate and harrowing affair, inspiring more boredom than fear and utterly lacking in suspense.

The 1976 terrorist takeover of an Air France jet, collusion with an outlaw state led by a vain, delusional and murderous lunatic, Jews singled out among the passengers for mass murder by German and Arab hijackers inspired fierce debate, within and without the Israeli government, little of which is shown here.

The operation planned, re-planned, rehearsed and rehearsed, with every passing hour raising the stakes and the tension. Not that you’d know that here.

And of course, having inspired three movies shortly after the hijacking and raid to free the hostages, including a classic of the oft-maligned TV movie genre (“Raid on Entebbe”), you have to be very young or very forgetful to not know how all this turns out.

The new “7 Days,” by Jose Padilha, a director who forgot what he knew about creating suspense when he made the taut, politically charged hostage docudrama “Bus 174” by the time he remade “Robocop,” is just one long anti-climax.

  Daniel Brühl and Rosamund Pike play the idealistic/fanatical German remnants of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, leftist terrorists in disarray, desperate for a face-saving/status reviving action that would put them back on the map.

Under the overall command of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and with two Arab accomplices, they brazenly brought machine guns and grenades on board a Tel Aviv to Air France flight with 248 people on board and took control.

The script hints at the naive radical book publisher “Boni” Böse (Brühl) as being a “useful idiot” (Lenin’s term), idealistic but not the hardened, committed soldier for the cause that those who were fighting to take their homeland back from Israeli domination. The script has Brühl’s character overly-concerned about how “Germans killing Jews” might look in the headlines. Because he’s no Nazi. No sir. Not him.

Pike brings her “Gone Girl” crazy-eyes to Brigitte Kuhlman, his co-leader, even though the actual hijacking is shot and edited in a most perfunctory, unexciting fashion.

Back in Israel, the government of Yitzhak Rabin (a low-energy performance by the great Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi) treats this as not just a military threat, but a political one. Will Defense Minister Shimon Peres (brilliant character actor Eddie Marsan), militating for a military response straight away, use this to bring down Rabin’s government?’

Whatever little suspense there is on board the jet, which traveled to Khadafi’s Libya (Benghazi!) to refuel and the on to Idi Amin’s Uganda, is frittered away in the quietest Israeli Cabinet meetings in recorded history. There’s no fractious debate, no voices-raised considering of the stakes of negotiating with terrorists, no bickering over how the world will see their action or inaction, only silence from virtually every actor on set save for Marsan and Ashkenazi.

“You want to invade their country, Shimon?”

“We’ll give it back to them when we’re done.”

Then there’s what might have been the most interesting parallel in the story, the Israeli modern dance company putting on an arresting, symbolic “Shed your Orthodox Fanatic Garb” piece (choreographed by Ohad Naharin), led by lead dancer Sarah (Zina Zinchenko), their rehearsals and performances framing the action as Sarah’s commando/lover (Ben Schnetzer) prepares for war.

The commando training, a staple of such movies, is given short shrift. Not the dancing. And the hostages barely make an impression, as a group or as individuals, save for the ruff French aircrew engineer (Denis Ménochet).

    Nonso Anozie has the look, the braying self-promotion and the chuckle of Idi Amin, but little of the murderous menace.

Too much time is wasted on the moral debates of the two German hijackers (The English Pike does most of the heavy-lifting in German), halfhearted attempts to fill in their back story.

That contributes to the sense of a film that tries to have it both ways — jingoistic Israeli decisiveness and righteousness (the Holocaust is invoked), vs. Europe’s youth, consumed with passionate support for legitimate Palestinian grievances and the world’s inattention to them.

All of which points to how inferior “Entebbe” is to “The Baader-Meinhoff Complex,” “Munich” or that long-ago, ham-loaded TV movie I mentioned above.

And all of which brings us back to why this picture was even made in the first place.

Then you remember the heroes of what the Israeli Defense Forces called “Operation Thunderbolt.”  There was a Netanyahu involved — a heroic Netanyahu, not a corrupt, bellicose wag-the-dog politician, but a soldier.

Maybe that’s it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, some thematic material, drug use, smoking and brief strong language

Cast: Daniel Brühl, Rosamund Pike, Nonso Anozie, Eddie Marsan, Lior Ashkenazi

Credits:Directed by José Padilha, script by Gregory Burke. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:46

“I Can Only Imagine” takes its title from a best-selling Christian pop ballad, and tells the story of how composer Bart Millard came to create it.

An anthemic profession of faith, the Christian pop superstar Amy Grant (Nicole DuPort) wants to know how Bart (Broadway’s J. Michael Finley) came up with it.

“You didn’t write this song in ten minutes,” she pooh-poos in an exaggerated Georgia drawl. “It took a lifetime.”

That’s the framing device for this sluggish story of an unhappy, abusive childhood and the two-fisted Texan Daddy (Dennis Quaid) who tried to teach his dreaming, artsy son “Dreams don’t pay the bills. They just keep you from knowin’ what’s real.”

It’s a drab, emotionally flat film, despite having Quaid play an embittered version of the ex-jock dad of “Friday Night Lights,” a jerk who takes out his frustrations in life out on the wife we see leave him, and the little boy (Brody Rose) who learns, very early on, to fight back.

“Life hits me,” the old man growls, “I hit it back.”

The promising cast includes National Treasure Cloris Leachman, as “MeMaw,” the granny who always supported little Bart and whose favorite expression became the name of his grown up band, Mercy Me.” And Madeline Carroll of “Flipped” plays the high school sweetheart Bart leaves behind when he discovers his talent and takes it on the road.

We track through Bart’s high school life, trying to stay out of the way of his violent father, trying to impress him by playing football, and failing at that, getting discovered by the high school choir teacher who casts him as Curly in “Oklahoma.”

Securing the rights to sing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” wasn’t cheap. The producers sprung for songs by U2 and ELO to show young Bart’s love for music at an early age. But they couldn’t talk the real Grant or Michael W. Smith into playing themselves, showing their role in discovering the tune. Either they want to forget that stage in their lives, or they read the limp screenplay.

The film’s leading man — in boy and adult form — sorely lacks the charisma to carry a movie. The kid’s amateurism shows. And Finley’s a doughy, inexpressive lump in the middle of this generic “band tours its way to fame” tale married to a Christian redemption narrative.

Because Dad changes. Cancer will do that to a body.

The only real laugh in it — Finley playing a drunk scene is a real career-killer — comes that first time he takes the screen, as a guy plainly too old to be a bearded high school tight end. “You look like you’re 30,” a character cracks. As indeed he does. Not like a footballer, either.

The producing-directing Erwin Brothers of Alabam made a faith-based football movie (“Woodlawn”) and the comic miscarriage “Moms’ Night Out” and “October Baby.” Unlike a lot of faith-based filmmakers, they have little trouble attracting big names to flesh out their supporting casts. No Kurt Cameron. Country star Trace Adkins, the best thing in “Moms’ Night Out,” plays the band’s manager here.

But their filmmaking has no spark, no flair. Lifeless scene follows flat “travel” filler, with nothing light or urgent about any of it. This story, pointlessly delaying the moment when we finally hear the tune, didn’t offer them many possibilities to demonstrate that they know how to tug emotions, either.

If the song is strong enough, show it/let us hear it more than once. Ask Tom Hanks (“That Thing You Do”) about that. This one? Not exactly a spine-tingler, a tad uninspiring, as performed here.

And that goes for the movie, its lip-syncing (?) star and the rather winded “inspirational” story it tells.

MPAA Rating:PG for thematic elements including some violence

Cast: J. Michael Finley, Dennis Quaid, Cloris Leachman, Brody Rose, Madeline Carroll

Credits:Directed byAndrew Erwin, Jon Erwin , script by Brent McCorkle, Jon Erwin, Alex Cramer. A Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:50

“Girlfriend’s Day” is a quick, dark sketch of a comedy, sort of a Bob Oedenkirk special.

Made with a bunch of friends doing cameos (Derek Waters of “Drunk History,” Flo from those “Progressive” commercials, Toby Huss, Natasha Lyonne, Ed Begley Jr.), it captures the hard-drinking desperation of a greeting card writer, “a poet, if you’ve gotta label me,” suffering from writer’s block.

It’s a collection of deadpan one-liners and wry observations, semi-random scenes in bars, poetry slams and an office of fellow romance card-writing depressives.

“Ray here used to be the best, a real Shakespeare of romance cards.”

“Can I offer you a beer?”

“I’m uh, on medication. So…yeah.”

His wife left him, he lost his job and his former boss, months later, pitches him one last break. A “side project,” where the power word in every card is “Girlfriend.” Before Ray has given it a lot of thought, the governor announces “Girlfriend’s Day,” and it all becomes clear.

“Who can write the most romantic card in celebration of the new holiday?”

It’s all about saving the “failing greeting card industry.”

Here’s a chance to jump the gun, get ahead of the game. Will he blow it, lost in nightmarish visions of his ex-wife (June Diane Raphael) having sex with an owl (a children’s book author played by Andy Richter stole her away)? Or will Ray come through?

Former students (Rich Sommer of “Mad Men”) try to buck him up. Ex-colleagues, too.

A bar pickup (Amber Tamblyn) has the soul-dead Ray suspicious.

“How many cats do you have?”

Ray and Jill (Tamblyn) bond over the sad state of card-writing.

“You’ll get it back. You’ve got to have the feelings, first. Then you can write about them.”     Ray pounds at the typewriter and pounds back the whisky. And then things turn REALLY dark — film noir dark. Stacy Keach as the heavy dark.

None of it quite builds up to a belly laugh, just the occasional half-grinned Oedenkirk smirk.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, alcohol abuse, sexual situations, locker room talk

Cast: Bob Oedenkirk, Amber Tamblyn, Natasha Lyonne, Stacy Keach

Credits:Directed by Michael Paul Stephenson , script by Eric Hoffman and Bob Oedenkirk. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:10

Dennis Quaid is the abusive husband and dad who bullies and poor-mouths the kid who grew up to write MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine.” J. Michael Finley is “Bart Millard,” the songwriter.

Cloris Leachman also stars, with Trace Adkins. Not previewed for critics (Lionsgate doesn’t generally preview its movies), so I am catching it opening night.

Always hopeful that a faith-based film will play up the hope and the uplifting, and not the “God’s Not Dead” victimhood. We’ll see.

Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne and Anne Dowd are the adult stars, with Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro as the kids menaced by um, bad genes? Grandma?

A24 is a studioA24 is a studio that releases challenging films, even the ones you might not “get” or simply don’t quite work. “Lady Bird” and “The Florida Project” were theirs. “Room,” “Ex Machina.” Their horror takes are no different.

“Hereditary” opens June 8. 

Tessa Thompson has emerged as a Hollywood “It” girl, and packaging her with Oscar winners Whoopi Goldberg, Melissa Leo and Anna Paquin is a clever move to cement that status.

Tessa (“Dear White People”) is the guard sent to make sure grizzled con Melissa doesn’t make a break for it. Whoopi seems to be Tessa’s mom — or grandmother. Paquin? Watch the trailer.

Maybe they’re giving away too much of “Furlough” (Perhaps a late summer release?), but however tired this formula is, if they can make “Ocean’s Eight,” they can try a female “Midnight Run” or “Last Detail” or what have you.

Love Shailene. Love sailboats. Love sailboat “Amazing true tales of the sea.”

“Adrift” is one of those “I’m not the SAILOR here” stories about a couple at sea, the sailing buff guy (Sam Claflin) gets badly hurt, and Shailene Woodley takes the wheel.

An Icelandic director, a “blue water boat,” as we sailors describe them, and “the infinite horizon” of the sea. Yeah, I wear that very hat she’s got on when I sail.

This one looks good  (if formulaic) and opens June 1.