Movie Nation

It’s not meant to be the definitive biography of Steve Spielberg. And veteran critic Molly Haskell pays plenty of homage to Joseph McBride’s date-by-date, deep background and thorough recent (conventional) biography of the filmmaker.

What Haskell has taken on, courtesy of Yale University Press’s “Jewish Lives” series (I prefer the label “Jews in Action,” but that’s just me.) is a close-reading of Spielberg’s filmography. “Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films” revisits the movies and filters them through the lenses of Freudian criticism, feminist criticism and gossip.

So she’s all over his “shrieking woman” characters, fathers not cut out for fatherhood, refusing to grow up morphing into fathers mistakenly idealized by their sons. She charts Spielberg’s assorted father figures — his own dad, he seemed to think, was remote, unavailable — Lew Wasserman to Steve Ross, Kubrick to Billy Wilder.

And she recaptures Kate Capshaw’s asingle-minded pursuit of becoming Mrs. Spielberg, in ways only a feminist critic can get away with.

Offhanded shots include her take on the Spielberg producer/collaborator Frank Marshall’s escape from “Twilight Zone” justice. The blood on that set was on his hands just as it was John Landis’s, but Marshall simply left the country and could not be even half-heartedly investigated.

There’s astute, deconstructive criticism of “Close Encounters,” “E.T.,” “Empire of the Sun,” “AI” and “Amistad,” with Haskell scratching her head over the unjust pounding she (and many others) gave him for such efforts as “The Color Purple” and the like. Haskell is hard on the Indiana Jones films, appreciative of “Saving Private Ryan” and determined to rescue the reputation of “Empire of the Sun” and “Amistad.”

Haskell also takes us back to a Golden Age of Movie Criticism in her own admissions, reactions and agendas. There was a time when heavyweight critics would position themselves as Freudians (psychological takes on movies, based on what we know about those who wrote and directed them), feminists, deconstructionists, Semioticians (films interpreted through symbolic imagery) and so on.

If there’s ever a bio-pic, “Life of Spielberg,” Haskell’s book — connecting this scene to that childhood event — would make the best source material to start with. Sure, it’s got the usual Haskell head-scratching takes on this or that film, and the odd boner (a “Chinese battleship” named “Petrel” isn’t sunk in “Empire of the Sun.” China hasn’t had a “battleship” since oh, the 15th century. HMS Peterel was the ship sunk, in reality, book and film.

But the book is useful, too, in reminding us that great directors are artists, often pounding the same nail (childhood traumas, Judaism, the lure of science fiction’s night sky) over and over again. Great directors make great movies, with the occasional great blunder or miscalculation. Spielberg has managed, over five decades in film, to deliver heartfelt, thought-provoking and witty blockbusters and serious pictures blessed with those same virtues, letting them carry their weight lightly.

A fun, short book to read in a summer of billion dollar hits whose shelf lives are as suspect as the lightweights studios put in charge of them, just to keep the trains running on time.

I saw “War for the Planet of the Apes” some weeks ago, when it was screened for most critics. And I’ve been mulling it, and my not-quite-repellent response to it ever since.

Because whatever one feels about the new touchstone for digitally-created hairy animals (apes) and the motion-capture suit “performances” this final film in the latest Apes saga represent — and it’s impressive, but not worthy of the hype — the movie is a serious downer.

Bleak, grim, symbolic and dark, it presents a vision of America that is depressing if you think about it. And the film’s bland dialogue and formula quest/test narrative, told wholly from the apes’ point of view, force you to think about it, no matter how pretty the monkeys riding horses through the snow might be.

Escape? This is sci-fi at its most dystopian. If I want to immerse myself in a celebration of America’s decline as a civilization, I turn on cable news, preferably Fox, the network owned by the same studio that produced this film.

Molly Haskell’s summation of the conflicted loyalties engendered by “A.I.” related in the new book, “Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films,” captures how I felt about “Apes”

“We are invited to witness our demise almost as a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

Sorry, that’s not for me.

Aside from that, the saga has lost that “Fear of a Black/Yellow Planet” metaphor of the original Pierre Boulle novel or the first films to come from it. But it’s still a movie with a message, that revenge and violence are a cycle civilization can overcome if individuals can learn that lesson.

If only the humans were the ones learning it.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) hasn’t lost his perma-scowl. He’s trying to keep his tribe safe in the woodlands of northern California. But the last remnants of the American military won’t have it. Ambushes, counter-ambushes and massacres are the products of this guerrilla (and gorilla) war.

There are turncoat apes helping the humans, the equivalent of collaborationists in a POW picture and Native American “scouts” working for the cavalry in Westerns.

But Caesar has seen beyond tit for tat. He is Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, and his version of “I will fight no more forever” is “The killing will stop.” No, it’s not poetic. None of the dialogue here is.

Showing mercy to human captives will force their fanatical, desperate commander (Woody Harrelson) to change his view of the apes whose revolt ripped America apart.

“He will see we are not savages.”

Fat chance.

The Colonel (Harrelson) has ventured too far into the heart of darkness for enlightenment. Whatever his true motivations, he is hunting “King Kong,” his army’s code-name for Caesar, the first ape to learn to talk. And when he grabs Caesar’s son and heir (Another “Chosen one?”), Caesar must set out to save the child. Forget his “Apes…TOGETHER” mantra. This is a select mission for him and a couple of aides.

It is on that journey, leading up to a finale that is borrowed from every World War II commando picture (and a lot of James Bond thrillers) that Caesar maybe senses the consequences of the ape uprising and the viral catastrophe (human made) that it heralded.

Director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield,” “Let Me In,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) and his production design team perfect their depiction of a post-civilization America, wood and stone and snowy greys — apes as Apaches on horseback vs. the last chopperloads of gas for the army. It’s a film dark in appearance, darker in tone.

The apes, both the speaking Caesar and empathetic, expressive other featured simian characters — Maurice, Cornelius from the original “Apes” movies, and “Bad Ape,” the comic relief voiced by Steve Zahn — look photo-real and move with greater dexterity than ever. Sure, the super-human stuff has to be animated in because 50ish actors in mo-cap suits don’t have gorilla or chimpanzee strength and skills.

But the apes are also counted on to deliver “performances” here which, I’m sorry, don’t add up to that. They’re fine in action scenes, and the soulful eyes are expressive. But the animation lacks the body language and facial muscled nuance that actors have in generating emotion.

Which is something the picture, as a whole, sorely lacks as well.

It’s got the dark tone and brand recognition that promise great success at the box office. But this lacks the weight of “Logan,” the wit of “Guardians of the Galaxy” or the attempts at warmth seen in most any sci-fi blockbuster outside of the plastic “Transformers” franchise. The slack pace, somber story and meandering-between-action-beats scenes make it something of an impressive glum and glummer bore.

I was reminded of similar smashes that might have a momentary resonance within the culture. Think of the pent-up demand, and finally-diverse cast of characters of “The Force Awakens” promised that got fans worked up — but which fail to sustain the breathless “Me TOO” rave reviews that greeted its release, or even make a mark on the collective memory.  This summer has been packed with sequels like that.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” is as downbeat a popcorn picture as “Logan,” but the differences are marked, those between a movie you just watch, and one that makes you ponder your life, your world and your attitudes. It’s the difference between seeing and absorbing.

To me, it’s just another “Jurassic World,” technology and production design on a whole new plane, story, dialogue and characters that we’ve seen before (too often), the entire hyped and over-rated enterprise half-forgotten before it hits Netflix.

MPAA Rating: PG-13, for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, thematic elements and some disturbing images

Cast: Digitized Andy Serkis, Judy Greer and Toby Kebbell, with Woody Harrelson. Amiah Miller

Credits: Directed by Matt Reeves, script byMark Bomback and Matt Reeves . A -20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 2:20

Ever since the first cathode ray tubes flickered to life in America’s living rooms, the byword in Hollywood has been “Make Movies Better” than TV.

Make them bigger, from Cinemascope to Cinerama to 70mm to IMAX 3D.

Give them better sound, better effects, epic stories.

Make movies with movie stars, not actors ticket-buyers can see for free on the “boob tube.”

But as small screen distractions have multiplied and viewing/gaming choices have swelled, big screen viewership has steadily shrunk, coinciding with the shrinking size of our viewing screens. It’s not all demographics, but an aging population is setting that stay-at-home trend, something younger homebodies try to ignore when they proclaim “We’re in a New Golden Age of TV!”

Like Walmart suppliers trapped in contracts that force them to slash prices and move American jobs overseas, studios have become ever more and more reliant on a small corner of their North American audience — comic book film fans, horror fans — and an increasingly important overseas marketplace.

And not to paint the foreign film fan with too broad a brush, but the main reason we’re doomed to see more “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and “Transformers” installments is they’re still earning hundreds of millions in China and India, even though American audiences have, in general, moved on.

It’s the Age of Branding at the movies, proven properties, movies with name recognition are the ones studio chiefs who want to keep their jobs green light. “Wimpy Kid,” “Spider-Man,” “Insidious” and Dracula, “The Mummy” and any comic book or graphic novel that has a following has an edge. Half the marketing is already done.

But as is becoming increasingly obvious with the myriad Marvel, DC, horror and “Pirates” films and their ever-expanding “universe,” film studios are stealing storytelling style from the raft of limited-run TV series that so dominate water cooler culture in an era when the water cooler is now a Facebook page devoted to “House of Cards” or “Twin Peaks,” et. al.

Every movie in these broad sci-fi/fantasy/horror/action genres reach for an open ending, because no studio exec wants to be the one to leave “Planet of the Apes” or “The Accountant” money on the table.  Nothing ever ends. There is no completion, no “closure.”

Nobody has moved further in this direction than Marvel, a studio which has created a generation of film fans who stay through the credits. The kicker at the end adds nothing to the film that precedes it, and on occasion, undercuts it. All these “teaser” scenes do is sell the next picture.

The vast continuum of Marvel Universe “Avengers” is a clever bit of engineering. Take the new “Spider-Man.” In giving us the third incarnation of the character in 15 years, Marvel skips repeating that spider-bite origin story to backdate him only to his introduction to “The Avengers” in “Captain America: Civil War.”

As a stand-alone film, that one made little sense, its conflicts, collaborations and forward motion masking the fact that these films have all become part of cross-marketing content to a willing audience. It’s all about drumming up interest in the next movie(s), rounding up more Marvels to the hoots of approval of an audience that isn’t insulted when it is pandered to. They expect it, demand it.’

The only reason there was a “Civil War” is Marvel needed to create factions for the spin-offs to have fights the “fans” are salivating to see. Yeah, I laughed at Thor’s “We work together” joke about being pitted against The Incredible Hulk in the “Thor Ragnarok” trailer, the use of classic rock (Led Zep, baby).

But let’s not confuse “interconnectedness” for story “depth” or density. Let’s not mistake pictures that are “populous” for films with complexity.’

Because the upshot of all this cross-referencing/cross-marketing is they’re telling what little “story” they bother to shove in there the way cable and streaming service series do — in tiny dribs and drabs, “saving” this or that for “later.” The movies take the “Raiders/Star Wars” ancient Saturday morning serial style of cliffhanger to its most cynical extremes.

You’re being played, toyed with, lured, pre-sold.

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” is all tease and tease out, every important thing — from Peter Parker’s first “real” love to villains who will seemingly be with us, forever, in the style of 1960s TV “Batman” episodes, with Iron Man as the deus ex machina, there to come to the rescue when the scenarists paint Peter Parker into a pickle.

There’s no finality to any of these serial stories, because the executives are waiting for the fans to let go first. Johnny Depp will be stuck in that eye-makeup forever, Mark Wahlberg will be eased out of “Transformers” because, well, most of the world just wants to watch those sassy, trash-talking robots. well, most of the world just wants to watch those sassy, trash-talking robots. 

And these are all important, TV-driven changes to the medium. Hitchcock famously said a film should be like a short story, with a beginning, middle and end that can be absorbed in one comfortable sitting. Two hours and 22 minutes of “Spider-Man,” and the soap opera is just starting to soap up.

I will try, at the girlfriend’s request, any number of streaming series, with their tiny dollops of plot stretched out with layers of filler and “Character development.” “Kimmy Schmidt” to “Narcos,” “Divorce” to “Big Little Lies,” “Handmaid’s Tale” to “Gypsy.” Even the best of them drive me a little crazy, because the creators telegraph where things are going (even the cleverest of them) and then drag and drag and drag the saga out to make you think you’re eating a meal, when you’re standing around, nibbling on hors d’oeuvres.

It’s a “new normal” that’s inferior to the storytelling model it replaces, except to people who don’t want to admit they don’t go out any more. The exclamation point on this argument is the end result of “binge-watchable” connected movies. While I can sit through a chunk of the “Back to the Future” trilogy, where the movies almost stand alone, and can tolerate chunks of the “Star Wars” saga, and even select sections of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy rendered into four films, the “Hobbit” pictures will never get another second of my viewing time.

The Harry Potter films are better as stand-alones than binged (a couple of good directors had cracks at episodes). The “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” are mere repetitions of a standard formula.

As are the Marvel movies and their generally inferior DC clones (the Bale/Nolan “Dark Knights” work only as stand-alones). If you’re watching numerous installments, in order, of the ever-expanding universe on a slow weekend, you might need to step back and take stock of where you’re allocating your hours.

I find myself a lone voice, bemoaning that silly films about superheroes, pirates and car robots and talking Apes inhabit the lines of an old, forgotten in the fear-mongering of Rapture preachers, Protestant hymn.

“World without end. Amen. Amen.”

Fun little niche that funnywoman Jenny Slate has carved out for herself in the movies.

The “SNL” alumna has been voted Hollywood’s Most Likely to Make a Bad Decision…by accident. In films such as the accidental pregnancy comedy “Obvious Child,” playing a schoolteacher who beds her gifted second grader’s guardian in “Gifted,” and now as Dana, an engaged woman who tumbles, out of fear, into an affair with an old beau in “Landline,” the perky/ethnic Slate is the vulnerable version of Aubrey Plaza.

Yeah, the libidinous Jewess stereotype lives on, mostly in indie films.

In “Landline,” we see how such a character might be created. It’s a nurture vs. nature argument that starts with smart, self-involved and indulgent parents — Italian (Edie Falco) and Jewish (John Turturro).

And the kicker is Dana’s younger sister, Ali, a teen trainwreck-in-progress played with insolent, defiant and peer-pressured abandon by Abby Quinn. She is every mistake Dana has made, squared and cubed. Seventeen, and she’s smoking, dabbling in sex, weed and absolutely willing to snort a little “H” when a peer pressures her to do just that.

“It’s like climbing back into the womb!”

Maybe that’s because with Dana long out of the house, living with her intended Ben (Jay Duplass), there’s nobody but Ali to see the strained marriage her parents cling to, to stumble across the floppy disc with copywriter-poet-playwright Dad’s love odes to a mysterious other woman — “C.”

There’s little reason for director and co-writer (with Elisabeth Holm) Gillian Robespierre to set the movie in 1995. But floppy discs, pay phones, CD stores, PJ Harvey on the radio and “Mad About You” and Hillary Clinton — in that famous pink pantsuit — on TV suggest filmmakers’ living out some bit of comfort-zone autobiography in this warped dramedy.

When we meet Dana, she’s attempting sex in the woods with Ben, checking off things on her single life bucket list (poison ivy is a bonus). There’s a hint of panic about her, as her future seems to promise little such excitement.

Ali, meanwhile, is sneaking out at night to clubs, dropping the ball at school and indulged by a father who refuses to rein her in.

“Most people learn from failure!” he kvetches.

“YOU should know,” judgmental wife Pat punches back.

The mystery of Dad’s affair, fear of the coming wedding and genuine sisterly concern — in that order– bring Dana home and hurls the siblings closer together. But when she’s distracted by an old beau (Finn Wittrock of “Winter’s Tale” and “Unbroken”), all that takes a back seat. One last fling time.

Through it all, Quinn’s Ali tests boundaries, takes stupid risks and all but cries out for attention and intervention. It’s an insightful character made real by a performance of flesh and blood, hormones and adrenaline.

“Landline” — Remember those? — meanders along on a pleasant buzz of the familiar and the somewhat funny. We can guess the trials these siblings will face, and extrapolate those into a finale anybody could see coming 45 minutes in advance.

Still, the odd stinging line reminds us that pigeon-holed or not, Slate is a veteran stand-up comic and can create her own laughs. Her crack about Helen Hunt’s tight pants in “Mad About You” will make for an awkward red carpet moment, someday.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and drug use

Cast: Jenny Slate, Edie Falco, Abby Quinn, Jay Duplass, Finn Wittrock, John Turturro

Credits:Directed by Gillian Robespierre , script by Elisabeth Holm and Gillian Robespierre. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:33

The long weekend, which stretches into into a midweek holiday with July 4 coming Tuesday, started out more promising for Universal’s “Despicable Me 3.”

Sure, the ads suggested zero laughs, and without the Minions, a “Cars 3” fate awaited.

But a better Friday ensured that it would open bigger than the $65 million “Cars 3” — an animated wake — managed. It’s just that the less than stellar reviews and bad word of mouth depressed the Sunday turnout. A movie projected to pull in $81 million+ fell off to $75 by midnight Sunday.

Ouch.

“Baby Driver,” on the other hand, has bettered early projections and done $30 million since Wed. Expect this one to hold, maybe ring in a few “Fast and Furious” fans who recognize a better car picture when they see one. $27 million was the top end of expectations Sat. AM.

“Transformers 5” plummeted, but barely edged “Wonder Woman” for third place — $17 to $16. Bad movie.

“The Beguiled” wasn’t all that, despite the Coppola Cannes acclaim. And the laughably limp Civil War chiller/thriller didn’t draw a crowd, either. Under $4 million, after opening wider this weekend.

“The House” couldn’t find laughs pairing Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler. $9 million is nothing to brag about with an R-rated comedy opening in a marketplace with no competition in that genre.

Next weekend, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” sucks up all the oxygen in the theaters, and we’ll get an idea is “Despicable” and Illumination can out-earn “Cars 3” and Pixar over the long run. “Cars” is over $120 and fading.

Give it up for Marvel imposing its will on Sony for the THIRD Spider-Man incarnation in living memory. They don’t repeat the origin story this time, change-up the age of the title character and give him the ADHD energy that the unseen radio-active spider bite made worse, not better.

In “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” he’s manic, 15 and breathless, battling his hormones and digging an older teenage girl, one seemingly out of his league.

Uncle Ben isn’t in the picture, and Aunt May has morphed into Aunt MILF (Marisa Tomei).

They summon Michael Keaton’s menace in conjuring up Marvel’s best bad guy in years  — even if they give him just one scene to get that across.

But in back-engineering this “friendly neighborhood” character into the Avengers/Marvel universe where our latest Spidey (Tom Holland) made his antic entrance, unheralded director Jon Watts and six credited screenwriters substitute hyperactivity for depth, inside jokes and “universe” interconnectedness for coherence.

The chatterbox character and the film are earnest but lightweight, making for a movie that lacks gravitas, romance, fear or zing. For young Mr. Holland’s opus, “at least he’s not Andrew Garfield” isn’t enough.

Robert Downey Jr. collects another “Iron Man” check as young Peter Parker’s mentor, Mr.  “The kid’s got a future.” Sparkling, snarky Tony Stark has too much on his plate to ride herd on the novice super-hero, leaving him to the annoyed “head of security” Happy (Jon Favreau). Happy and Iron Man don’t listen when the wonder boy tries to tell them about stolen alien tech and the embittered, short-cut taking small businessman, Toomes (Keaton) who is making black market weapons out of it.

Aunt May doesn’t know Peter’s secret, but his plump nerd-pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) finds out. It’s a pity Peter can’t parlay his secret identity into scoring time with high school senior Liz (Laura Harrier).

Peter’s hands are tied by Tony Stark’s “Don’t do anything I would do, and don’t do anything I WOULDN’T do.” And all he wants to do is catch bad guys, break a big case and impress his way into The Avengers.

There are, of course, multiple levels of Marvel fandom, but only two will suffice for talking about “Homecoming.” There are those who squeal with glee at every tie-in character who makes a cameo, every new costume introduction — and those who silently roll their eyes and mutter, “Yeah, and?” Guess which camp I’m in? And being in that latter group, I want something with more human qualities than the pandering piffle aimed at those who like the extended soap opera that the studio is ever-engineering.

Marvel has mastered the effects — there’s a doozy involving watercraft — the art of setting up the next picture, loading up the next freight car on the gravy train, and at capturing the right, light-and-jokey with dark moments tone.

But they’ve utterly lost the plot when it comes to plot. And gravitas. It’s as if they packed ten movies’ worth in “Logan,” because whatever energy “Homecoming” delivers in some (not all) its many scenes, it has no weight — zero.  It’s cute, never more than that.

Give Michael Keaton one great scene to make his natural menace felt, and then make that moment all talk and no “violence has consequences.” Introduce a high school bully, and make him a non-threatening shrimp (Tony Revolori), a mean girl in boy form. 

Jaunty montages set to vintage pop and punk (“Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones) make the effects-driven action beats play, even if they’re beyond repetitious at this point.

Marvel can take a bow for making the film’s multi-culturalism stand front and center, from inter-racial friendships and romances, to multi-racial gangs and the Japanese American school principal (Kenneth Choi) whose WWII Nisei-uniformed dad’s photo figures prominently on his desk, bookending the gym teacher (Hannibal Burress) whose detention hall is postered with James Baldwin and Frederick Douglas images. That’s another, “Yeah, OK, and?”

But pretending this is anything other than pleasant, time-killing filler for the next Marvel marvel is laughable. Changing up the story removes some of the onus of comparison to the first Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi “Spider-Man.” Not when it comes to romance, suspense, guts and heart, however.

Even the not-late/not-lamented Andrew Garfield’s Spidey brought some of that to the table.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, some language and brief suggestive comments

Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr., Laura Harrier, Chris Evans, Zendaya

Credits:Directed by Jon Watts script by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Christopher Ford, Jon Watts, Chris McKenna, Erik Summers . A Marvel/Sony Columbia release.

Running time: 2:22

Marvel Masters Movies in the Binge-Watching Era.

Here’s a music history documentary that doesn’t answer its titular question for a long while.

All through the punk and metal clubs of 1970s New York, musicians, club owners, fellow fans and movers and shakers would see this kid — underage, Puerto Rican, flamboyantly gay, in the front row or backstage, a hanger-on from Brooklyn’s Hassidic quarter.

And one and all were moved to ask, “Who the F*** IS that Guy?”

Michael Alago was everywhere, glimpsed in the front row in live performance footage of the Dead Boys at CBGB’s, grabbing fan “selfies” with every musician under the sun before we called those “Look who I’M with” vanity shots by that name.

“Who the F***” captures how this gay Puerto Rican punk and metal fan turned the fact that he stood out from that crowd — and how — into a career in the music industry, signing everybody from Metallica to Rob Zombie to their first big recording contracts, making them famous and reveling in the scene and the reflected glory.

Drew Stone is the credited director, but in every scene, as Alago chooses locations to tell his story, narrates his story and calls in favors to fill the screen with everyone from Cyndi Lauper to every member of Metallica (many of whom took producer credits on the film to get it made), it’s Alago’s movie — we witness music industry self-mythologizing at its most naked.

But it’s a fun vanity project, an interesting history as seen from its insiders — the rivalry between the famous clubs — Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s — and the nearly forgotten — The Ritx, L’Amour — the bending of punk into metal (speed metal, death metal, etc.).

Agalo glamorizes the sordid pre-AIDS Golden Age of Gay Cruising in the New York, owns up to falling into the booze and drugs that tempt anyone who dives into the music industry– somehow, every story has him “getting the boy” or winning the fight or surviving — and takes credit for exposing many a metal fan or metal band to the first openly gay man many of them had ever met.

He tells his story to the camera, or sometimes is captured on stage reading from a sort of one-man confessional about the era. His connections to the great one-man-show artist Eric Bogosian (“Talk Radio”) or inexplicably prolific hack filmmaker Dito Montiel are never really explained, but here they are — friends bearing witness.

John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten, remembers Michael booking his band Public Image Ltd. into The Ritz, where the former Sex Pistol started a riot by having them perform behind a hide-from-the-audience screen.

“‘Hey, the DRINKS are on me,'” Lydon laughs, remembering the night. “THAT’s how you stop a riot!”

The take away? Agalo had an ear for metal talent and a nose for charisma, but more importantly, an eye for the brawny, tattooed males who would take over that scene in the ’80s.

And in that world of piercings, weightlifting, skinheads and homophobia, he made his mark and forced those inhabiting that space “to put up with me.”

Good on him.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, drug discussions, promiscuity

Cast: Michael Alago, James Hetfield, Cyndi Lauper, Rob Zombie

Credits:Directed by Drew Stone. An XLRator Media release.

Running time: 1:17

THE popcorn picture of the summer — that would be “Baby Driver,” to you toy robots/boys in tights/girls in bustiers folks — is headed to a MARVEL-ous $27 million opening weekend. Not comic-book level, not “Fast and Furious” franchise level.

Add in the Wed-Thursday numbers, and it’s a $30 million hit.

But without being a big name brand name picture, with a cast led by a little known young actor “famous” for supporting roles in lightly-regarded YA almost-hits, that’s impressive. Ansel Elgort now has his shot. Edgar Wright steps into the ranks of major box office directors.

Of course, the “brand name” picture of the weekend is dominating the box office. “Despicable Me 3” is headed to an $81 million opening. Parents and kids have built in expectations, thanks to the brand. And we all love those Minions. That’s $16 million more than “Cars 3” opening. Pow, right in the kisser, Pixar.

But seriously, the godawful/not-funny-in-the-least “Despicable” TV commercials should be your warning. This isn’t “Cars 3” bad, utterly devoid of laughs. The Minions see to that. Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig trying to improvise TV spots where they switch personalities? Painful. Just like the picture. Even Universal marketing’s lamest efforts don’t matter. The SECOND weekend, though — watch out. This dog will have that canine word of mouth about it.

The second weekend is most telling for “Transformers: The Last Knight.” The fifth “Transformers” pic, phoned in all around, fell off the table after its opening weekend. Third place and plummeting. It almost lost a place to “Wonder Woman,” which has been out forever.

The not-suspenseful/not-scary/not horrific “The Beguiled” is a bomb. Barely cracked the top ten in wide release. Sofia Coppola remakes a creepy Clint Eastwood chiller from the early 70s (Don Siegel directed), and TOTALLY misses the point. And even though the champagne-drunk dopes at Cannes thought it a masterpiece, domestic critics are having a laugh at it and audiences know to stay away.

New Line/Warners didn’t preview “The House” because they know what Mariah Carey, edited out of the picture for “diva” behavior, must have sensed. It’s terrible, a no-script crap out that relies on Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler to riff it into amusing.

They don’t. It’s still earning $9 million+ based on their names and TV ads.

This past week’s best misdirection play wasn’t a tweet from a doomed, bratty not-really-a-billionaire in the White House. It was from the cast and director of a comedy, dishing on how they’d cut Mariah Carey out of their movie for “diva” behavior.

The joke’s on them, or us. Because Carey is the lucky one. It’s those trapped with “The House” on their credits who crapped out, and those trapped watching it.

Pairing up one-time SNL castmates Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler should have been the safest of safe bets. “Buddy picture” veterans who have made even Mark Wahlberg and Tina Fey funny, just put them in a situation and let’em riff, and you’ve got comic gold on your hands.

That’s pretty much what shows up on screen, two pushing 50 sketch comics straining, stretching, swearing and mugging, trying to find the funny in a comedy about earnest, over-extended, clingy and doting parents who set up an underground casino so that their Taylor Swift wanna-look-like daughter, Alex (Ryan Simpkins) can go to Bucknell.

No, it’s not just a basketball team with a college attached. It’s an expensive university in an era where college costs are spiraling ever upward.

Scott (Ferrell) has a phobia about numbers, and hasn’t paid close enough attention to their finances. And Kate (Poehler) is even less responsible in that regard. A college visit just reminds them that her nickname was “Smoke a lot of pot and pee outside Kate,” back in the day.

They let a dumped, broke and down-on-his-luck pal, Frank (Jason Mantzoukas of “The Dictator”) beg them into joining him for a trip to Vegas. That’s where Frank’s gambling problem is introduced and Kate and Scott almost strike it rich, almost solve their little insolvency.

And even though they live in a square, uptight and financially mismanaged planned community run by a martinet village councilman (Nick Kroll), they let Frank talk them into the one sure thing in a gambler’s life. “The House” always wins. Let’s set up a secret, off-the-books casino in Frank’s empty, foreclosed-upon house, make our college money, and get out.

What I hesitate to call a “script” briskly gets across the DIY nature of the casino — Walmart tinsel and strip light decor, plywood roulette tables and a tiny den converted into a stand-up comedy club. Potential laughs are, as they say in the poker rooms, “left on the table” there.

But the germ of a good idea peeks through, as gambling is presented in classic gateway vice fashion. Flawed “perfect” people in the planned community are exposed as hotheads with impulse control issues. Gambling leads to infidelity leads to drugs leads to violent crime.

And our casino proprietors have only memories of DeNiro/Pesci/Sharon Stone and Scorsese’s “Casino” as their guide in how to act tough and not get rolled by the unsavory characters such operations attract.

Mantzoukas adds nothing funny to the proceedings, so Ferrell and Poehler try to wrangle laughs out of parents dropping the F-bomb in front of their not-so-innocent kid, an only child who adores them and suffers their “Alex sandwich” hugs.

Most of of the scant laughs here pop up on the periphery, neighbor ladies (Lennon Parham, Andrea Savage) airing their feud at town council meeting.

“You know what LAURA brings to a potluck? Her nasty mouth…and NOTHING else!”

That blows up into an actual brawl, which the casino trio improvise into a refereed match, with wagering and DIY duct-tape gloves in a crime-scene tape boxing ring.

It all feels random and slapped together, with seriously under-developed heroes, villains, over-the-top geyser-of-blood violence played for laughs (That works) and the spectacle of Poehler’s Kate living down to that college nickname (public urination) or of Ferrell and Poehler improvising slapstick in a container store.

All of which remind us that the winner, the one person to beat “The House” — is Mariah Carey.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, sexual references, drug use, some violence and brief nudity.

Cast: Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Nick Kroll,  Jason Mantzoukas

Credits: Directed by Andrew Jay Cohen, script by  Brendan O’Brien, Andrew Jay Cohen. A New Line/Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:28

Beatriz wasn’t supposed to be there. Not at dinner, anyway.

In the Red State/Blue State America of “winners” and “have-nots,” a working class Mexican-American like her wouldn’t sit down to a celebratory dinner with the callous super rich. She’d be serving them.

But she’s had a rare, deep connection to the family hosting this meal where a rapacious developer and his legal and financial team toast their latest success, getting a deal past environmental regulation and the government meant to impose it. And so they, and she are exposed to each other and their wildly divergent worldviews thanks to “Beatriz at Dinner.”

Mike White, who scripted biting, edgy satire of this sort (“The Good Girl,””Chuck and Buck”) before making his fortune with “School of Rock,” serves up an unsettling and generally deft comedy of manners with this clash, a film that greatly benefits from subtle, stinging performances by Salma Hayek and as her opposite number, John Lithgow.

Beatriz wears the weariness of working people everywhere, as wells as a profound sadness. A lonely member of the working not-quite-poor, she gives massage therapy and alternative medicine treatments to cancer patients near her working class Altaduna, California home. She copes with an intolerant and intolerable neighbor, lives with needy, neurotic dogs and a goat, drives a barely-functional VW and dreams of a childhood on coastal Mexico, drifting romantically among the mangroves.

Her life is thrown into sharpest contrast through her other gig, massaging clients like Cathy (Connie Britton), the wealthy wife of a developer (David Warshofsky) living in mansion in a gated community on the coast. 

Cathy’s world screams “Rich White People’s Problems,” but she considers Beatriz a friend. And when that VW quits, she invites Beatriz to stay for dinner. The movie revels in watching the out-of-place Beatriz as she quietly observes the guests arriving wearing clothes and jewels that cost more than her broken car.

She is sensitive, a little embarrassed and left out. She interjects in the conversations only when it touches on her areas of expertise — holistic treatments for kidney stones, muscle tensions, “hair therapy” and the like.

But the overbearing guest of honor, the hotel developer Doug Stutts (Lithgow) and the white wine she sips brings out more from her. This sensitive “healer”is forced to rub up against a callous user and abuser of Mother Earth, animals, government loopholes and people. So we can’t help but expect fireworks.

White, and director Miguel Arteta (“The Good Girl,””Cedar Rapids”) are determined not to provide them. Our antagonists argue, dismiss and try to avoid rolling their eyes at each other’s positions. But they take care to avoid going over the top into unforgivably rude.

Hayek conveys sorrow and a hint of pity for these short-sighted, money-over-all “winners” society has foisted on people like her. And Lithgow, playing a Koch Brother without an “h,” takes pains to be polite even with someone he is hard-wired to regard with contempt.

His tactless “But where are you REALLY from?” in their introductions — wanting to know her legal status and how she got into the U.S. — falls just shy of ugly. He doesn’t know people like her and is indelicate with his questions. Her counter, “But where are YOU really from?” is the most telling exchange in the picture.

He, like those on his side of the political, financial and cultural divide, has chosen to play down his own origins as he moves in a world where wealth is an entitlement rewarded with TV notoriety — “I have opinions, and because I have money, people listen.”

Beatriz’s back-story unfolds in between scenes in which she all but recoils, appalled at what these people are celebrating, at their lifestyles and at the amorality of their choices. Stutts’ bragging about big game hunting in Africa may physically wound her, and Arteta’s camera captures the first signs of discomfort among the other guests. Chloe Sevigny and Jay Duplass are rich lawyers who look down in faint recognition of the deal they’ve made with the Devil to get where they are.

Stutts may be a bulldozer, running over everything and everyone in his path, and Beatriz may seem like a “Star Trek” “empath,” all feelings and hurt — but White and the players take care to never let them drift into caricature.

The adherence to unwritten social codes is so strict that we blanch every time they’re broken. Only when the film takes its most radical third-act jolts in tone does it feel forced, contrived. And the ending is simply abrupt.

White, who just turned 47, has looked at America’s divide and figured out what every other pundit has — that we’ve stopped listening to each other. The gates are metaphorical as well as literal. But like every defensive wall ever built, they cannot separate us or protect us from each other for long. Sooner or later, a Beatriz or Stutts is going to be in our face and force us to deal with him or her.

So the message of  “Beatriz at Dinner” has merits beyond this curtailed social satire’s running time. The longer that conversation is delayed by social niceties, the more alarming that reckoning is going to be.

MPAA Rating: R for language and a scene of violence |

Cast: Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Chloe Sevigny, Jay Duplass

Credits:Directed by Miguel Arteta, script by Mike White. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:22