Movie Nation

We know it’s going to own May, maybe a chunk of June, depending on the pent-up “Let’s see if an alien actually pops out of somebody’s chest in ‘Alien’ this time” demand.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is going to open huge — epic. The first was such a delight that the second can’t help but surpass it, right? Even if it is somewhat of a dispirited grind, still full of laughs, but not “giddy” the way the first film was. I watched a bit of FX’s helpful re-broadcast of it the other day to confirm what I thought in my review — that the new movie’s slow and downbeat and Pratt lost a lot of bounce from his step between films.

Box Office Mojo figures there are $158 million worth of tickets about to be bought for this Marvel Megahit this Cinco de Mayo weekend.

Box Office Mojo predicts $152 million.  As the film is opening on over 4300 screens, and it is in 3D on many of them, I wonder if they’re lowballing it. The first film was so adored, it earned over $17 million in Thursday night showings, surely there’s a $165 million weekend in it.

Meanwhile, speaking of Cinco de Mayo, this promises to be another big weekend for Eugenio Derbez’s limp little Hollywood comedy, “How to be a Latin Lover.” Aren’t Hispanic audiences a little bummed that it’s almost entirely in English, and a lot of the guy’s manic Mexican edge is rubbed off? Another $7 million for this one should put it over $20 million. It could actually challenge “Fate of the Furious” for second place ( anther $7-9 million expected).

The biggest worldwide hit ever produced by India, the action-fantasy sequel “Baahubali 2: The Conclusion,” should remain in the top ten even if it is still only on 400 or so screens.

“Furious” should clear the $200 million mark by dawn Saturday.

August used to be home to movies that weren’t quite muscular enough to hold their own against prime summer cinema competition.

Then “Signs” came along. And “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Blockbusters can break out of August as easily as most any other month, especially the films rolled out in the first weekend or two.

Stephen King’s batting average on the big screen isn’t exactly big league ready. “Shawshank,” “Shining,” “Stand By Me” and a lot of forgettable horror filler. But “The Dark Tower” is his most anticipated adaptation in eons. EONS.

That said, not having read the book, I’m not overwhelmed by this trailer or the set up depicted here. Kid swept into a world he’s only imagined, protected by gun-slinging Idris Elba from death-and-desctruction-dealing Matthew McConaughey.

Director isn’t a Major Brand. And…August.

Still, there’s enough here to keep your fingers crossed. Aug. 4.

I caught “The Circle” after the tepid heat of its weak opening weekend, after the first wave of overwhelmingly negative reviews. And I didn’t have to read those reviews to pick up on what turned people off to this ambitious, flawed effort from the talented director James Ponsoldt (“Off the Black,” “Smashed,” “The Spectacular Now”).

There are lapses in logic, conveniences in this adaptation of a Dave Eggers novel about a young customer service rep who becomes the ground-breaking public face of an Internet-eating, many-tentacled social media empire.

Come on, even if she looked and came off as the smart, cute and sensitive Emma Watson, that’s a promotion that no corporate culture would stand for, much less let out of its control.

Characters exist out of an inorganic expediency, and aren’t given their due as flesh and blood people caught in the maw of the no privacy age.

But damn it, there’s value here, laced all through this cautionary fable about the cult of “Information should be free,” that the world, and those who people it, shouldn’t have anything to hide, so “No Secrets Allowed.” It’s smarter than its Tomatometer suggests, than many critics are letting on.

Take the depiction of the culture Mae (Watson), a working class college grad with a crummy custumer service job with a local water company, plunges into.

The Circle is “the chaos of the web made simple.” It’s where you can interact with friends in all manner of ways, pay your bills, make your purchases, network and so on, one-stop shopping for all your Internet/social media needs.

And the campus where this vast “Circle” is set up is just as all-encompassing. It’s a vast playground, with all-consuming work schedules, seemingly benevolent day care and health care and employee concerts (Beck!), parties and social and self-help and support groups, where everything interpersonal is just a “metric.” It’s exactly the way we’ve been shown Google, Apple and Facebook are set up.

From the outside-the-box job interview questions — “Sushi or soylent?” “Joan Baez or Joan Crawford?” “Quality or Convenience?” — to the bubbly, overly-concerned, over-sharing/over-knowing YOUR business co-workers, there’s something very Big Brother about it all.

But since Big Brother, in this case, the CEO, is a friendly first-name-basis boss played by Mr. Every Decent American Tom Hanks, we figure Big Brother is a benevolent dictator.

So when the company knows entirely too much about Mae’s family  — her father (the late Bill Paxton) has multiple sclerosis and her mother (Glenne Headley) can’t afford the best treatment for him — Mae can only be mollified by the sudden, generous and life-saving gestures that her new employer makes to her and to her parents.

Still, we’ve seen the girl is a bit of a loner. She likes solitary trips, kayaking, and chose to distance herself from her down-to-Earth ex-boyfriend (Ellar Coltrane of “Boyhood”). The pill-popping, perky pal who got her the job (Karen Gillan, Nebula of “Guardians of the Galaxy”) may not acknowledge them, but Mae should be seeing warning signs. And laughing about the company’s plans to ingratiate itself more fully into global culture, to erode privacy further, is no way to impress the higher ups.

One of them (Patton Oswalt) at least, the Chief Operating Officer, has more than a hint of super-villain about him. And there’s something about Hanks’ creepy smile here that reminds one of Steve Jobs, or any number of famous Scientologists — a charming, disarming invitation to be on your guard.

Anyone addicted to social media (guilty) will get chills over each evolution of The Circle’s mission, each of them amounting to a mass surrender of more privacy, a mass abdication of more of democracy to a faceless, secretive for-profit corporation. They’re not subtle, and Eggers, in naming such transitions “SeeChange” and the like, tags this world at cultish, Scientology without the pyramid scheme.

John Boyega of the “Star Wars” franchise makes no impression as a mysterious colleague whose ties go back to the founding of the company, and who isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid any longer. Watson’s Mae isn’t the savviest character, and that would have flown in the face of our general impression of Harry Potter’s clever gal-pal, Hermione. Still, she’s had nude photos she shot on her phone and let into the cloud come out. We know even smart cookies, especially the young ones, are slow to awaken to the danger of all this destruction of privacy.

And there are moments that will burn in, that you might remember every time you log on. Cyber-stalking in real time, cameras everywhere, World Wide Web Witchhunts streaming for all to see and participate in is something we should all fear.

The comments/threatening emails assault facing anyone based on selective exposure on the web can be savage, cruel and wholly unjustified.

No, we haven’t abdicated all our rights and given up all our common sense, as the movie sometimes suggests. But in an era of voyeurism-inviting web celebrities, fake news disrupting the legitimate news cycle and organizations built on finding impartial truth, the paranoia underlined, high-lighted and foot-noted by an over-reaching satire like “The Circle” seems more unreasonably “reasonable” by the minute.

And the movie about this multi-front assault on our basic humanity, for all its weaknesses, is too important to skip.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements including drug use
Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Bill Paxton, Glenne Headley, Ellar Coltrane
Credits: Written and directed by James Ponsoldt, co-written by Dave Eggers, based on his novel. An STX release.
Running time:

“Sleight” is a prestidigitation thriller that lives up to its title only if you misspell it.

It’s a smart kid drug-dealer trying to “get out” tale, slight in its ambitions, blessed by a charming cast but sorely lacking the magic — sleight of hand and cinematic — to let it come off.

We meet Bashir, “Bo,” via phone message. He’s just lost his mother, and a favorite science teacher wants him to know he can still take that scholarship and make something out of his life.

Cut to a year later, and Bo (Jacob Latimore of “Collateral Beauty”) has taken another path. He’s raising his kid sister (Storm Reid) and supporting their LA lives by any means necessary.

That means street card tricks during the day. The guy is a magician, making playing cards pop up on the other side of a glass store window, levitating golden rings and quarters and moving metal chairs.

But at night, Bo makes his real cash, selling and delivering drugs for the handsome charmer Angelo (Dule Hill, in a stand-out turn).

One of the women Bo plays tricks for, Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) appreciates his charms. She’s model-thin and pretty, the sort of LA college kid who uses “hence” correctly in a sentence. But she serves cupcakes at a bakery, and there’s a darker back story for her, too.

Not that Bo shares his own, or reveals where his cell phone calls that interrupt their every date take him. Angelo is dragging him deeper and deeper into the business. And Bo’s youthful amorality aside (selling Molly and coke to one and all, including his young peers), Angelo’s charm doesn’t mean he can’t turn on the sadism when his business is threatened by interlopers.

So here’s what writer-director J.D. Dillard sets us up for with this Sundance film. Young lovers, looking to get out, a murderous business entanglement, a hustler with “special” skills that he’ll need to get out of the upcoming jam.

“Any one can do a trick,” Bo intones. “But doing something no one else is WILLING to do makes you a magician.”

The young cast holds our interest, even though young Miss Gabriel’s character has taken on a “vocal fry” that grates, like being trapped in a Kardashian cook-out.

Toss out the implausibility of the red-flagged romance (she should be a lot of more suspicious and judgmental), the fact that anybody who’s been to the movies will see where this wish-fulfillment fantasy with a drug-dealing/violent edge is going, and “Sleight” still trips up over its own plot devices.

Making metal float in thin air isn’t impossible. But it can’t be a golden ring or a zinc/nickel/copper quarter. Not with magnets, no sir.

And since we’re never really sold on the notion that Bo has something supernatural figured out, that’s an Achilles Heel for a weary, conventional movie that doesn’t need any more big flaws.

MPAA Rating:  R for language throughout, drug content and some violence
Cast:  Jacob Latimore, Seychelle Gabriel, Dulé Hill
Credits: Written and directed by J.D. Dillard.  A WWE Studios release.
Running time: 1:29

The surprise success of the middling but good-hearted and “immigrant” topical parenting comedy “Instructions Not Included” was enough to convince Hollywood that it should be in the Eugenio Derbez business, and quickly, before the 50something Mexican funnyman aged out of his audience.

So up pops another sleeper hit, “How to Be a Latin Lover,” a comedy tailor made for his timing, his physical comedy skills, if not his Spanish slanguage gifts. It’s promising in premise, but limply plotted, offering Derbez too few chances to cut loose even as he makes the most of a game and goofy Hollywood-supplied supporting cast.

Derbez, cast as Maximo, whose boyhood dream was to be a “kept” man, is amusingly ridiculous as a louche lover of the Latin variety — a gold-digger lucky enough to have found his sugar momma when he was in his 20s.

All Maximo was ever good at was modeling banana hammocks, delivering smoldering stares and unsubtle come-ons.

“Oh,” he purrs, exiting the pool. “Did I make you wet?” 

Twenty-five years later, he’s let himself go — just a little. And holding a mirror under the nose of Peggy (Renee Taylor, who was in the original version of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”) hasn’t produced the desired death and inheritance. Spending her money on McClarens and Rolexes hasn’t lost its appeal.

Until she takes up with an even younger car salesman (Michael Cera, a hoot). Maximo is out on his banana-hammocked butt. Not even his fellow gold-digger (Rob Lowe, almost TOO perfectly cast) can help him out. Rich (Lowe) has his own problems, keeping the oversexed/over-financed/not-over-the-hill Millicent (Linda Lavin) happy.

So Maximo’s off to stay with his estranged, widowed sister, played with her usual verve by Salma Hayek. She’s raising a little boy (Raphael Alejandro) who is just getting interested in girls. And as one of those girls is the granddaughter of a most eligible rich widow (Raquel Welch), Maximo is ready to help the boy out.

The comedy comes from the inappropriate lessons the aged Lothario passes on to the lad — sexist, too mature for his tender (ten) years. How’s the kid in the sack?

“I’m GREAT in bed. I don’t pee, or anything…any more.”

And there are laughs in Maximo’s efforts to finance his pursuit of the Widow Welch.

Stand-out moments — Derbez, as Maximo, teaching the kid to “take charge” with his simmering eye contact, to walk with a sexual strut and confidence. Maximo’s attempts to raise cash put him in a mismatch with a master street-corner sign spinner, run him afoul of some car-wrapping sales hustlers (Rob Riggle, Rob Huebel) and the widow’s protective chauffeur (Rob Corddry).

Best of all the many “Robs” Derbez surrounded himself with is Lowe, who throws himself into the kept-man routine, selling every sell-out line as if it’s his own. Rich exercises and um, bleaches, to please his lady-keeper. “Gotta keep it white and tight.”

Kristen Bell earns grins as a frozen yogurt clerk covered in a different set of band-aids every day. Because she’s a cat hoarder. And “even if they hurt you,” you love them. There’s a lesson for pet ownership, family and lovers. Or so the movie says.

Actor turned director Ken Marino leaves a lot of cuttable moments in, and generally lets things drag, from the childhood prologue to the too-pat finale. He pays too much attention to the supporting roles.

Derbez, saddled with a script mostly in English, has too few moments of his own to score. Watch him light up when he gets into Spanish tiffs with Hayek, who sings and dances in her small role, and you see what’s missing. He’s funnier in his native tongue, restrained and constrained in English.

That’s the risk taken by “How to be a Latin Lover,” a justifiable but misguided gamble to make Derbez an English language cross-over star. If you’ve ever seen any of his comedies from South of the Border, you know he’s funnier than this. So does the entire audience showing up for “Latin Lover.” Most of that audience speaks Spanish, and must be disappointed to see this close-but-no-cigar effort in its least amusing form — without subtitles for the Gringos.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for crude humor, sexual references and gestures, and for brief nudity
Cast” Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell, Raquel Welch, Linda Lavin, Rob Corddry, Micheal Cera
Credits: Directed by Ken Marino, written by Chris Spain, Jon Zack. A Pantelion release.
Running time: 1:55

It takes a village to raise Baby Groot.

There are worse things that you could call a trigger-happy/tech savvy ill-tempered talking raccoon than “raccoon.” “Trash panda,” for instance. “Triangle-headed dog.”

Sly Stallone doesn’t do alien makeup, because he’s Sly Stallone.

Stan Lee isn’t done doing Marvel Movie cameos after all.

And having a dad named “Ego” is your first tip that a father-son game-of-catch was all you missed growing up without a dad.

Just some of what we further learn about the misfit mercenaries, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” in their second movie — an eye-popping, wise-cracking body-count packing high end sequel to the big Marvel hit of a few summers back.

“Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2” takes a “More is better” approach to the lighthearted, zap-zinger-and kill-shot action comedy that so tickled us way back when. It’s two hours and 20 minutes, plus endless “teasers” stuffed into the closing credits, and purpose-built to please fans of the franchise, the genre and ’70s and ’80s pop.

“‘Brandy, by Looking Glass. One of the great songs of Planet Earth. Perhaps the greatest.”

But all this excess has its price. What flipped by as a funny, big-budget whimsy before takes on gravitas — daddy issues, intimacy issues, trust issues. The first film achieved giddy, every now and then. This one? Pro forma, by the book, funny every so often — but flat.

It takes on new actors. And its longuers let us see that star Chris Pratt has a way with one liners, and little else in his acting quiver. The story has a first-sequel creakiness, as if Marvel and James Gunn are more hell-bent on setting up the next sequels (stay through the credits) than in delivering maximum fun/maximum impact with the movie at hand.

At least, when all else fails, there’s Baby Groot — dancing to “Mister Blue Sky” as the other Guardians — Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Drax (Dave Bautista), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and the human, Star Lord, Peter Quill (Pratt) — endure all manner of mayhem, stopping, mid-brawl, to hand off the “baby” or otherwise see to it that he’s safe in between all the shooting, knife-fighting and swordplay.

This exceptionally cool alien race, the Sovereign, have hired our mercenaries to save some very special batteries for them from a monster. And darned if the Guardians don’t steal the batteries from the tall, haughty, golden-skinned High Priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki of TV’s “The Night Manager”). The reasoning?

“They’re douches.”

It’s a favorite value-judgement of the Guardians. Along with disparaging remarks, from the ulfiltered lug Drax about “Earthers having ISSUES” and the rogue/con-rtist Peter’s unsuitability for mating with the otherworldy warrior Gamora.

“You just need to find a woman who is pathetic, like you.”

The Sovereign are all about remote-controlled Future War, hunting the Guardians by drone which wear video screen images of the remote pilots seeking to get their batteries and bring the Guardians to Sovereign justice.

There’s still money to be made by the space pirates, Ravagers, in taking out the Guardians. They’re led by the malevolent moron Yondu, played in blue makeup by the great Michael Rooker.

But all this chasing about is what brings the Guardians into contact with the man that impregnated Peter’s mom all those decades ago — back in 1980. The aptly-named Ego is played by a perfectly cast Kurt Russell, who had the same flippant way with a one-liner that Pratt has perfected.

Kurt, of course, is the whole package, and Pratt is never more a One-Trick-Pony than when he’s forced to raise his game in a scene with a more accomplished actor. Rooker, Russell and especially Saldana act rings around him in every shared scene.

He appears bulkier this time out, more a function of his performance than actual weight gain, giving us a lot less reckless abandon when you know all he’s doing is sitting in a partial-set cockpit “acting” a chase spaceship dogfight in front of a green screen. Pratt is wearing the weight of the franchise, literally, in every scene.

And it’s noticeable because the movie has pacing problems that through his acting into sharp relief. The slack stretches have some amusing taunting from Rocket the Raccoon, giving an ill-named captor pirate the business.

The vast collection of motley space murderers is straight out of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a death scene seems only necessary to accommodate future casting (and smacks of the first “Star Trek” film franchise).

But heck, what else is there to say about a movie that includes, and earns thrilled hooting from the fans, a cameo by comic book anti-hero Howard the Duck, featured in one of the greatest ’80s bombs of all?

Go for the exotic alienness of it all — well, save for Stallone, who has trouble getting his mouth around all these alien locales, races and surnames. The alien empath Mantis is a sexy-weird invention, with the beautiful Pom Klementieff rendered almost unrecognizable as human underneath antenna and wild, buckeye-sized eyes. Drax eats something that glows in his soup bowl, and every creature, skyline, sunset and moonrise (half a dozen moons over one planet) is just as other-worldly as you’d hope.

And franchise-film veteran Saldana, slinging a sword like it’s not her first hack-off, working out her sibling issues with the psychotic rager Nebula (Karen Gillan, no match for Saldana in the clenches), reminds us it’s Gamora’s universe and Saldana’s movie. Especially when the rest of it lurches to a stop, as “Vol. 2” does, time and again.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, and brief suggestive content
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Kurt Russell, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Stallone
Credits: Directed by James Gunn, written by James Gunn, Dan Abnett . Marvel Studios/Disney release.
Running time: 2:19

Yeah, I’m getting around to the movie with the cursing raccoon tonight. But this AM, a combat film presents itself, an intimate portrait of an isolated, man-to-man, sharp-shooter to sniper fight to the death. Aaron Taylor Johnson and John Cena are among the stars of “The Wall.” It opens May 12.

“Write what you know,” aspiring novelists and screenwriters are told. And Alexi Pappas knows long distance running, training for long distance running, and the mono-maniacal focus it requires to make it to the Olympic Games.

So that’s what her film debut is about. She co-wrote, co-directed and co-stars in “Tracktown, ” a quirky, light and entertaining coming-of-age romance about a runner raised for the Olympics, but a little distracted by First Love, an important part of her childhood and adolescence that she’s missed.

Plum Marigold (Pappas) is a minor celebrity in a town that celebrates track and field like no other in North America. Eugene, Oregon is “Tracktown,” and everybody knows the oddball girl who has pursued her Olympic dream almost since birth.

Her dad (Andy Buckley) is a track coach, and yes he’s kept her focused and sure, he’s probably living vicariously through Plum as she tries to make the U.S. Olympic Team.

Her pals — her teammate Whitney (Rebecca Friday) and her own coach (Sasha Spencer) — are runners. Her life is running “90-100 miles a week,” adding supplements to every meal, sprinting in water tanks, sleeping in an oxygen tent and referring to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations for each day’s motivational aphorism.

“In long-distance running, the only opponent you have to beat is yourself — Haruki Murakami.”

“If you keep dreaming, the dreams that you wish will come true — Cinderella.”

But girl-talk while training has her wondering if Whitney’s “sex before a meet” regimen isn’t something else that could give her an edge. And there’s this guy, “Baker Boy,” she almost flirts with when she buys each day’s load of carbs and sugars. He’s played by Chase Offerle of “Thumbucker.”

“Tracktown” has the odd interesting supporting character. Rachel Dratch is the absentee mom who wants to be more involved with her girl’s life. And as mom is barely recovered from some sort of breakdown and there’s a little hint of apples not falling far from trees, Plum isn’t having it.

“You think I’m crazy?” she asks Sawyer, the Baker Boy.

“I think you’re extreme.” 

Because the oddest of the oddballs here is our leading lady. Plum has a savant-like focus and awkwardness. A finely-tuned athletic machine, lean and lithe, she frets over her body like many a 21 year-old, questions if all this running will limit her future chances of having a baby.

“I look like a BOY!”

Even when she drops the largest of hints on Sawyer, we wonder just how naive she is. And Offerle gives Sawyer an offhanded sweetness with just enough hint of “What are HIS motives?” edge.

“Trackdown” goes down easy, and the character portraits are just interesting enough to hold our attention. But you can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a more interesting movie that cut closer to home.

Pappas made it to the Olympics — by becoming a Greek, not US, citizen. She finished 17th in the 10,000 meters in Rio. She and co-director Jeremy Teicher have teamed on other projects (she co-write his “Tall as the Baobab Tree” and was in his “Speed Goggles”).

There’s something of “Rudy” in her personal story — triumphing against odds, self-promoting a not-exactly-epic athletic career and parlaying that into another career.

She’s got an affecting screen presence, in a Jenny Slate/Maya Rudolph sort of way. There could be a future for her in front of the camera.

But if nothing else, she’s made the most interesting behind-the-scenes portrait of track and training since “Personal Best,” a movie whose brevity is a serious flaw only in that we’re left wanting more details, more story and more of an ending that doesn’t feel like an ending at all, but an all-too-conventional “beginning.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with sexual situations, nudity

Cast: Alexi Pappas, Chase Offerle, Rachel Dratch

Credits:Written and directed by Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher. A Samuel Goldwyn/Orion release.

Running time: 1:28

Yes, we have one more weekend of “The Fate of the Furious” owning the box office. Another $18 million or so, based on Friday night’s numbers. A big take for this one, especially overseas. Not as big as the last one, and as talk of The Rock/Statham spinning off, well…

Next weekend, “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” is eating everybody’s lunch, so make it while you can, kids.

“The Circle,” a Tom Hanks/Emma Watson thriller about the threat of big data gobbling social media companies, is managing a respectable $9 million, despite not being previewed for critics and getting pretty bad reviews the moment we started to get around to it.  Abandoning your picture is no way to build buzz for it.

But the story this weekend is the Spanish language comedy “How to be a Latin Lover,” another Mexican import starring the high wattage Mexican comic Eugenio Derbez.the high wattage Mexican comic Eugenio Derbez. It’s roaring in at well over $11 million.

And more surprising still, theaters that book Indian films finally have a blockbuster on their hands. “Baahubali 2: The Conclusion” is the sequel to a 2015 Tegulu fantasy-action smash and got enough screens to manage over $8 million, perhaps hitting $9 million if Sat and Sunday hold up.

So yeah, pander to the huge Chinese market all you want, Hollywood. Domestically, there’s big money in immigrant audiences, especially the ever-underserved Latin and Indian filmgoers. There’s money in subtitles.

“Sleight” is doing decent money on 500 screens.

“The Dinner” is anything but ordinary. Four wait staff deliver each course to the table. The maitre d describes each item in minute detail — “olive oil from the Peloponnese…”

And the conversation? Also out of the ordinary — cutting, profane, an overlapping cacophony of opinions, agendas, polite cover for subjects that, seriously, nobody should go to a four star restaurant to discuss.

“What’s wrong with this place?” the host wants to know.

“EVERYthing” and “Nothing” his guests snap in the same instant.

Herman Koch’s corrosive novel earns a tense, testy and sometimes darkly funny screen treatment by Oren Moverman, whose “The Messenger” and “Love & Mercy” earned awards season buzz, each in its turn. In a very short career, he’s already made a name for himself as a real “actor’s director.”

Richard Gere is Stan Lohman, over-scheduled/over-managed U.S. Congressman running for governor. Rebecca Hall is his embittered “trophy wife,”  Katelyn, a one-time aide who became more when Stan’s ex (Chloe Sevigny, seen in flashbacks) dumped him.

Stan has invited his teacher/brother Paul (Steve Coogan) and Paul’s wife Claire (Laura Linney) to this fanciest, most exclusive eatery for a talk about their kids.

Paul’s voice-over narration doesn’t so much describe events as give us a peek into his mind. He’s taught history, and Gettysburg and the Civil War consume his thoughts. What he says out loud is sardonic, sarcastic, especially when it comes to this absurdly fancy restaurant.

“We don’t have THYME for rosemary,” he barks at the well-scripted maitre d (Michael Chernus).  The laugh that doesn’t land sets the tone for the evening.

Everybody but EVERYbody is walking on eggshells. Even the simplest question about a child — “How’s Beau?” — can set somebody off.

Something happened involving their teenage kids, and as the movie plows through its chapter-courses — “”Appetizer, ” “Cheese Course,” “Digestif,” etc. — we piece that together through flashbacks. They went to a party together, stopped at an ATM on the way home and something happened. Not everybody knows, and Paul’s cuddly-at-arm’s-length scenes with his son (Charlie Plummer, obnoxiously good) are a clue.

Moverman skillfully enfolds events in the present with events from the past, letting “The Dinner” reveal the complicated backstories and mess around with our loyalties.

Somebody almost died, somebody has a feeble grasp of reality, somebody has a terrible temper, somebody — EVERYbody — has some sense of victimhood. And all of them share guilt, or denial, over how their kids turned out and what’s going on with them.

Linney and Gere set off fireworks in their exchanges, with Linney at her brittle best and Gere his most polished, self-righteous and self-absorbed. Hall ably gets across Katlyn’s forbearance (with limits). And Coogan crackles with the intensity of a man stuck in his sibling’s shadow, struggling to get through an awkward evening with wit, when wit isn’t what is called for.

“You pay a bigger price for NOT picking up the check.”

I love the way the film sets us up with “types” — ambitious, narcissistic politico, “trophy” wife, loyal spouse, doting dad — and thoroughly upends them time and again.

The intimacy of the argument, the unsuitability of the rich foodie’s dream of the restaurant, the flashbacks that dole out each clue with care, the moments of violence and the threat of more, make “The Dinner” the first truly outstanding movie of the year.

By moving its opening to the first weekend of May, The Orchard rewards us and reminds us that smart, tough, human cinema has a place, even in the season of “Furious” pandering and grown women and men in superhero tights.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content, and language throughout.

Cast: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Rebecca Hall, Steve Coogan, Chloe Sevigny, Charlie Plummer

Credits: Written and directed by Oren Moverman, based on the Herman Koch novel. An Orchard release.

Running time: 2:00