Movie Nation

Chadwick Boseman adds to his growing repertoire of Great Figures in African American History with “Marshall,” a light and thoroughly entertaining historical drama about a trial that helped make future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s reputation.

Its subject and themes — racial injustice, the importance of the rule of law and fighting for civil rights — give it the inspiring feel of “A movie America needs to see Right Now.” And Boseman as Marshall may be regal, smart and aloof to the point of patronizing. But the actor’s not above giving us that mischievous sideways glance that let us in on the fun in “42” (as Jackie Robinson) and “Get On Up” (as James Brown).

In 1941, Marshall was the sole hotshot attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), traveling the country, grandstanding in court in cases he and his boss (Roger Guenveur Smith) figure can make some larger political point even as he’s struggling to save unjustly accused black person or right one festering social wound.

When a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) is accused of raping a rich white woman in tony Greenwich, Connecticut, that’s where Marshall goes. This isn’t just about another “To Kill a Mockingbird” (before that book was published) case. Black servants all over the supposedly liberal north will lose their jobs if white employers up there believe they’re capable of such monstrous, high-profile crimes.

But Marshall needs a local attorney to vouch for him before the judge, to be co-counsel in the Bridgeport court. And that’s where the small-time sell-out Sam Friedman, laboring in the soul-dead world of civil insurance law.

Josh Gad and the screenwriters make Friedman an EveryMensch, a little (big) man easily buffaloed by the Big City lawyer who’s argued before the Supreme Court. The last thing a Jewish immigrant lawyer in WASP country wants is to get “a reputation” via Marshall, for rocking the boat.

And yes, what’s happening to Jews in Europe is on his mind, too.

“Find someone who wants this attention…This is NOT my PROBLEM.”

But Marshall ignores him. He talks the accused into accepting their services, orders Sam’s more Civil Rights conscious brother (John Magaro) about and starts making statements to the press.

“The Constitution was not written for US, but from this moment on, we claim it as our own!”

All before the Old Money Judge (James Cromwell, perfect) denies him the right to speak in court. All before the jury is seated. All before the Senate-bound prosecutor (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey,” venom delivered in a velvet glove) unloads his arsenal on “this heinous crime.”

“Marshall” gives us just enough of the world the man circulated in to make its points. “Whites Only” waterfountains, black lawyers forced to work as taxi drivers in states where they could not practice law, a traveling black attorney forced to stay with a local black family because no hotel would accept him.

And there’s a hint of the exciting social and cultural milieu that made the man, New York clubs where he could rub elbows and swap put-downs with the famed poet Langston Hughes, only to have Zora Neale Hurston show up and change the stakes.

Comedy vet Reginald Hudlin (“Boomerang,” “Serving Sara,” lots of sitcom episodes) only lets on that gravitas isn’t his thing with the film’s laugh-out-loud courtroom “gotchas” and the light touch he brings to even the inevitable racist beatdowns. He seems to forget the stakes involved, that this is a RAPE TRIAL, and goes for the easy laugh almost every time.

That said, “Marshall” makes for an entertaining take on history and Boseman’s winning performance a playful spin on an icon the passing decades have chiseled in stone as a Great Man and one of the giants of American legal history.

And if you can’t figure out why this story and this man and this piece of history are worth remembering now — of all times — you must be living under a rock.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexuality, violence and some strong language.

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, James Cromwell, Sterling K. Brown, Dan Stevens.

Credits: Directed by Reginald Hudlin, script by   Jacob Koskoff, Michael Koskoff. An Open Road release.

Running time: 1:58

Every action star has to change his repertoire when he clears 60.

Brawls characters played by Stallone, Gibson, Neeson, Willis and Schwarzenegger used to settle with their fists start relying on duffel bags filled with guns and grenades. The theme becomes vengeance, the pictures turn pitiless, the violence sadistic.

Even for the great and once seemingly ageless Jackie Chan.

One of the world’s lightest, most likable movie stars turns dark as a father hellbent on revenge in “The Foreigner,” a long and generally unpleasant “First Blood/Death Wish/Taken” turn for an actor whose fights are now exercises in creative editing with the unmistakable air of stunt doubles. At 63, playing a Vietnam War vet terrorizing Irish politicians with lingering ties to the old IRA, Chan shows us something we hadn’t really noticed when he was having beautifully-staged slap fights with bad guys and playing straight man to the likes of Chris Tucker and Owen Wilson.

He can’t act.

Quan Ngoc Minh runs a Chinese restaurant in London and dotes on his only daughter (Katie Leung). Then she dies in a bomb blast. The news tells him “The Authentic IRA” did it, and quotes a Northern Irish politician (Pierce Brosnan), formerly of Sinn Fein and the old Irish Republican Army, that he and his generation know nothing about the bombing, that it was carried out “by hotheads who don’t know any better,” young people out to wreck the 19 year-old Irish Peace Accord.

And Quan doesn’t buy it. He tries to bribe the head police inspector (Ray Fearon) for information. Then he starts hassling Deputy Minister Hennessy (Brosnan).

“You know something,” he insists, when he’s actually put on the phone with the guy. “I want names.”

“Names” he says when he comes by the guy’s office. Hennessy, whom we’ve seen rattled and taken aback by the attack, whom we watch call meetings, harangue subordinates and cajole his British bosses in an effort to get A) to the bottom of this and B) make some political hay out of it, assures Mr. Quan “I can’t help you” even as he’s angling to “take care of this…INTERNALLY” and in the old ways.

So Quan stalks him and sends him indiscreet pictures of the man and his mistress. In the manner of every “Man of Violence Returns to His Violent Past,” he packs his duffel bags with the tools of his old trade and walks away from his modest business.

He blows up Hennessy’s office. “I want names.” Then his Northern Irish farmhouse. “Give me names.” His Jaguar? “Names.”

Through all this mayhem, Chan wears one stone-faced expression, a strained attempt at showing grief — a man drained of emotion. It’s the best he can manage.

The action sequences, showing Quan’s old Vietnam War tricks (punji sticks, hand-made bombs, gunplay) are standard issue Rambo stuff. He is the omniscient, omnipotent foe “with very particular skills,” as Liam Neeson’s character always put it in “Taken.” He can find out anything, guess EXACTLY where those tracking him will go, get into any secured location and dress any wound (the “self-surgery” scene mandatory for films of this genre).

Whatever action Bond, Zorro and “Green Lantern” directing vet Martin Campbell cooks up, whatever complications this layered thriller of assorted Irish folk fighting “that bloody Chinaman” delivers, the scenes of the actual bombers holed up in a London apartment, none of it involves urgency.

Brosnan, channeling his best brogue, may act rings around Chan. But we never sense panic. Characters under direct threat, bombs going off moments earlier right in their personal space, walk and gripe out in the open, stand in front of exposed windows and crawl into bed for a good night’s sleep after their lives have been directly threatened by this or that deafening blast.

The film’s lack of sophistication extends the caricaturing from Quan — Vietnamese but called “that bloody Chinaman” — to the murderously old school whiskey-belting Irish and the torture-and-execution happy Brits.

All of which points to a movie built on ancient Western action tropes, but aimed at placating the Chinese and Asian market, where the all-knowing Man of Peace, Man of Asia, teaches Europe a thing or two.

And that, along with the once-sweet Chan’s sour turn, is a turn-off.

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

Cast: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Leung, Charlie Murphy, Ray Fearon, Orla Brady

Credits: Directed by Martin Campbell, script by David Marconi, based on a  Stephen Leather novel. An STX release.

Running time: 1:54

J.K. Simmons has steered his Oscar-winning career from scary guys (“Whiplash,” TV’s “Oz”) to whimsical ones (“Juno,” and the definitive J.J. Jameson in the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” movies).

But of late, he’s sought out vulnerable, damaged characters, none more damaged than Bill, a father broken by the death of his wife in “The Bachelors.” First reel to last, Simmons’ Bill seems medicated or on the verge of tears. In the very first scene, his first words lay out his entire state of mind to his son (Josh Wiggins of “Max”) and the viewer in just a sentence.

“I can’t stay here any more.”

Whatever teenage Wes is going through, Dad is bereft. He quits his teaching job and the house that they shared with his late wife and start over. Kevin Dunn is Paul, the old college buddy now running a fancy private school for “spoiled little snots” in the big city. Bill will be his pity hire.

St. Martins is where the deeply depressed father will get back into teaching math, earn the interest of the available French teacher (the always beguiling Julie Delpy) and finally get some help (Harold Perrineau plays his medication-happy shrink).

It’s also where Wes, who can’t afford to grieve thanks to his dad’s state, has to find new friends (Tyrel Jackson Williams of TV’s “Brockmire”) and his place in the jock-centric culture. Again, it’s the French teacher who intervenes, putting her “advanced” newcomer in charge of getting the brooding, failing Lacy (Odeya Rush) fluent.

The story progresses along predictable but sympathetically acted lines, with Bill trying to keep his shaky psyche together and Wes trying to figure out what the deal with this disturbed, rich “Princess of Darkness” who won’t give him the time of day — in French.

Writer-director Kurt Voelker scripted the leaden “Sweet November” and the cheap-jack cartoon “Rock Dog.” Saying he traffics in cliches, tropes and archetypes might insult his USC education, but it’s accurate. Punk jock besmirches Lacy’s honor in the cafeteria? You know what Wes is going to do, and what he’s going to do it with.

“The Bachelors” is movie romance comfort food, rarely surprising, rarely upsetting in the places it takes its couples.

But the players rise above the material, with Wiggins and Rush setting off sparks and Simmons and Delpy maintaining the mystery of their attraction, keeping the emotions that brings up close to the surface.

And Simmons makes the deflating exhaustion of grief palpable.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, adult situations

Cast: J.K. Simmons, Josh Wiggins, Odeya Rush, Julie Delpy, Harold Perrineau, Kevin Dunn

Credits: Written and directed by Kurt Voelker,  A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:40

There’s an economy to the writing that marks the earliest moments of “Walking Out,” another winter survival tale — this time involving injured father and son hunters struggling to escape the Montana wilderness.

David (Josh Wiggins) gets off a plane, and his dad (Matt Bomer) tells us all we need to know about this relationship with one question.

“You have a good year?”

They’re estranged, with the father — a real hunter-gatherer type — not seeing the teenage boy more than once a year. He may put a civilized, romantic emphasis on what the boy’s mother now looks like, how she’s faring. But something about his open topped Land Rover (in the Montana winter) and insistence on how he and his kid spend their yearly visit together tells us most of what we need to know there, too.

“I don’t WANT to kill a moose!”

There’s little in this latest slice of frontier life and values from the Smith brothers, Alex and Andrew, to give away that they’re 50 and British. Until Cal, the father with the passion for guns, tendency to nip from a flask and “taste for killin'” starts filling the frosty air with words. The Smiths don’t know from Western Stoicism, the “silent types” the region is famous for.

But Cal, scary eyes or no, has woodlore and wisdom he wants to pass along, grouse-shooting he wants the boy to learn and a .30-30 he got from his father that he wants to give to the boy. As their trip to “get your moose” progresses, father talks and talks and talks to the boy, impressing upon him what he learned from his old man, respect for the wilderness and wildlife, the difference between “hunting and killing.”

Bomer, of TV’s “White Collar” and “The Last Tycoon,” brings a vulnerable earnestness to the macho Cal, who keeps encouraging his city-raised (Briarwood-Dallas) kid with “You’re stronger than you know,” before marching them into deepening snow on a stalk.

Cal explains everything — “Don’t ‘skyline yourself. Stay low!” — “Walk five, wait one!” He gets at the reason all this is so important to him, talking about fathers wanting, more than anything else, for sons to “know” them.

It’s like a talking cure, therapy in the language of self-help. And it pretty much spoils the character and derails the movie before the melodramatic third-act incidents that injure them both and put David in the predictable dilemma of having to apply everything he’s been told in the first hour to their survival situation.

The scenery is startling and the cinematography by Todd McMullen striking.

Young Wiggins (“Max”) finds a sullen silence, with flashes of “let’s TRY to please Dad” to his resistance to the whole idea of this trip.

But the filmmakers, adapting a short story by David Quammen, emphasize the sensitive — and the tendency to talk about feelings, in the father and the late grandfather (Bill Pullman, seen in flashbacks). A young Eastwood would have taken a pen and X’d out this often-superfluous and generally undermining chattiness and rendered this leaner and meaner, perhaps less subtle, but more iconic.

Because that economy of words that the Smiths find so bracing in the early scenes just highlight how far they go off track in what should have been a simpler, more visceral and quieter quest in the wilderness.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for bloody injury images, some thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins and Bill Pullman.

Credits: Written and directed by  Alex Smith, Andrew J. Smith. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:38

The action beats promise more of “Star Wars’ Greatest Hits.” More supernatural mumbo jumbo about “The Force” and “Ultimate Power.” And even though he seems to be filling out in terms of gravitas for this sequel, even the most optimistic studio boss would have to say “Adam Driver’s cooled off CONSIDERABLY” as future-star material.

A farewell to Carrie Fisher, a bow for Mark Hamill, battles on the snow, in asteroid fields, etc.

Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley, trying to measure up to Felicity Jones in the superb “Rogue One,” come our way this Christmas.

That darned John Boyega is making a fair living off of derivative/repetitive sci-fi sequels. Scott Eastwood needs to show he’s more than just a magic surname.

And Charlie Day? He could use the money.

“Pacific Rim Uprising” is a sequel dictated by the shifting axis of world box office clout, from the US/Europe to China/Asia.

Pan-national casts, big dumb action-bot movies that don’t require a lot of dialogue, subtitled or otherwise. Look for this one March 23.

The best line in Eddie Izzard’s stultifying new autobiography, “Believe Me,” comes in the forward. And the British transgender comic attributes it to one of his idols, the Scots comic Billy Connolly.

Billy’s rule for a life in showbiz, or just life in general? Keep yourself “windswept and interesting.”  Eddie says he’s taken this to heart.

So he isn’t just a transvestite, he’s “an ACTION transvestite,” running marathons for assorted charities around the world, performing his stand-up act in every country that will have him. He ran 27 of these 26 mile endurance races in South Africa not that long ago.

He isn’t just a stand-up comic, he’s a comic who sometimes performs in a dress (as if that’s rare in the UK).

But “Believe Me,” which was inspired by a 2009 autobiographical documentary with half that title (“Believe”) is a crushing bore.

Watch his stand-up specials or samples of them on Youtube and you’ve had his warning shot. He’s better at putting over his material — sometimes in drag, because while he loves women, he loves their clothes and makeup and nail polish, too — than he is at coming up with funny, original comedy.

How he won an Emmy for “writing” his first HBO special (“Dressed to Kill”) would be a mystery, if not for the Emmy voters’ Anglophilia and willingness to grab hold of the hot new “novelty act.”

He confesses as much in the book, which tests one’s patience, right from the get-go. How long do you typically give a memoir to “get to the good stuff?” I’m not that interested in his discovery of his sexuality (very young) or his coming out (drama free, pretty much). I am curious how he went from being a star street performer and Edinburgh Fringe breakout to a stand-up and then film star.

He charts that rise, never once using the word “chutzpah” for the cocky confidence that drove him to book theaters before he was well-established, and basically will himself to success. But he also leaves out jokes that made his early mark, descriptions of the routines that drew crowds on the street (his manic patter comes from that) or his breaks in film.

I loved his work in “The Cat’s Meow,” “Across the Universe” and the new period piece import, “Victoria and Abdul.” I interviewed him a few years back about another film appearance, and found him amusing and charming. He doesn’t address any specifics about his rise so much as name-drop how stunned he is that a lad who didn’t even get into Cambridge (and its Footlights comedy fame pipeline) could share the screen with the likes of Judi Dench, who sends him a banana before every opening night.

He was a phenomenon in Britain, and that led to New York fame, and US tours. But there’s just nothing here to explain it. He dismisses the idea that doing his act in drag added novelty, and unique subject matter for his routines, even though surely that’s part of it.

He lost his mother while quite young, and thinks he’s still trying to please her, he figures. Not the first to claim that ground, but there it is. The footnotes to the writing — some laborious, some witty — are more telling than recounting his sporting life, love life (demure in the extreme, in his telling) and professional accomplishments, rising above his comfortable middle class upbringing to stardom.

There’s a disarming “It Gets Better” subtext here as he recounts facing down (with extreme politeness) most of those gay bashers he has encountered on the street over the years.

But if you’re not looking for that sort of affirmation, the entertainment value and “Here’s how I did it” revelations of “Believe Me” are sorely lacking.

I’ll bet Lady Gaga’s fans never realized just how much their iconic tiny dynamo has in common with the late Jerry Lewis.

Lewis injured himself, just as his fame was cresting in the mid-1960s, by pulling a slide-across-the-piano pratfall on his TV show. He lived with chronic back pain the rest of his life — wheelchairs, injections and finally managed that pain when a medicine pump was installed to keep that pain from reaching his brain. This was after decades of trooping on, in the grand showbiz tradition, playing through that pain.

Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) broke her hip five years ago. And ever since, it’s been injections, exotic “cupping” treatments, massages, electro-therapy — all to lesson the pain of fibramyalgia.

That’s the big take-away from the tiny dancer’s new Netflix documentary, “Gaga: Five foot Two.” We see her creating, recording, prepping for the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show.

She’s all here, over 30 and out in the open, in and out of makeup, hugging fans and family, in various states of attire — generally as little as possible. She seems to relish the shock value of toplessness — while she still can pull it off.

The towering talent and huge voice shine through, as does the short, insecure-in-her-looks pop icon, captured in between boyfriends and fretting and weeping that she’ll never have another. Whatever contemporaries Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and Rihanna have going for them in the dating game, the most-over-the-top-of-them-all is starting to wonder if her fame, her tendency to show way too much skin and put on larger than life spectaculars that dwarf her humanity might scare any man who isn’t a gold digger away.

See her trash-talk Madonna (who insulted the derivative nature of her persona), thrash out the songs that became the “Joanne” album, prep for the Super Bowl and do media appearances in support of it.

Watch her (clumsily, at times) drive the ’60s Lincoln convertible, the 1970 or so Ford Bronco, the 1980 Mercedes — restored vehicles from her family’s history.

See her weep with genuine concern over sick friends and relatives, but somehow make it about her “losing” someone as karmic payback for her every success.

Her more stripped-down shows — an appearance for candidate Hillary Clinton, for instance — seem to point to where her career should go. Let the talent and not the titillation carry her forward. But even as she cancels legs of her rigorous, gimmicky tours, she fights this future. She has “underboob” to invent and new frontiers in shorter-shortest shorts to explore.

It’s not a great documentary, and considering how many of these she has released, it’s not a particularly revealing one — outside of her efforts (doctor’s visits, treatments) to deal with this ongoing pain.

But the Lady is a trouper. Let’s hope she finds some relief and maybe abandons the whole camel-toe/daily dye job fashion thing before she turns into Cher, way before her time.

MPAA Rating: unrated, nudity, profanity, smoking

Cast: Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) Florence Welch, Mark Ronson, her family, producers and entourage

Credits:Directed by Chris Moukarbel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:40

Looks kind of like Ryan Gosling walking through an empty movie theater, doesn’t it?

Some people are using the “B” word to describe “Blade Runner 2049” and its “Maybe it’ll clear $50,” “Whoops it’ll be lucky to reach $40” and “Uh oh, it better clear $30” opening weekend. A 40% drop in expectations is disastrous, as it means the picture won’t clear $80 in the U.S.

Fanboys and fangirls are a fickle bunch, and the sci-fi crowd has already been burned by a lavishly over-praised “Alien” prequel this year. Were they wary? Distracted? Or are they grossly exaggerated in their influence and enthusiasm or, um, sophistication?

Building a picture that lacks much in the line of humanity, zero urgency and a main villain (Jared Leto) who serves no purpose — and tucking all that into a lovely two and a half hour stroll through a dystopian future that seems all but assured since the last election isn’t paying off. The breathless reviews are ALL based on its look. Not so much the tone, performances and connection with the audience. I see it as a top 15 film, not a top ten one.

Let’s leave it at that. It could hang around and do “Arrival” numbers, all-in.

Is Ryan Gosling Big Box Office? Not yet.

“The Mountain Between Us” survived a fate worse than box office death, losing its opening weekend to a “My Little Pony” niche (tiny tots, and Pony perverts) animated pic. “Mountain” did $10 million. Kate Winslet hasn’t worked enough in recent years — not as a leading lady — to make her a safe bet to open a picture. Idris Elba is doing a lot of films, none of which are very good. He’s a movie star, not a box office star. James Bond was his best bet to change that, and that probably won’t happen as he’s ageing out of that window.

High per screen numbers for “The Florida Project,” which won’t open in Florida and the rest of “flyover country” until next weekend.

The reviews have been of the swooning variety, despite the obvious shortcomings “Blade Runner 2049” has as…a MOVIE. Chilly, inhuman, all the empathy of an iPad.

Then there’s the fact that it is a long long LONG delayed sequel to an iconic but cult-ish film from the early 1980s.

But the $45-50 million opening weekend predicted seemed like a given. Not any more. A robust Thursday gave way to a more modest Friday, and Deadline.com is shoving its projections down to $36 million. 

That’s an “Alien: Prometheus” sized take.

Wow.

It is wiping “It” off the map and sucking up all the BO oxygen. But “My Little Pony” is clearing $11 million, and “The Mountain Between Us” is bombing (as expected) at under $10.

“American Made” and “Kingsman” are still neck and neck (with “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” having come out a week before and thus toting a much heavier purse), “Victoria and Abdul” is healthily inside the top ten, as is “Battle of the Sexes.”

The locally-filmed “The Florida Project” is winning the per-screen race, on just four theaters and piling up the cash. It opens wider next weekend.