Movie Nation

Some of us are leery of letting valets park our cars. Because, you know, they’re careless. They scratch and dent. They rummage through your glove compartment.

Or they take the car to your home address, use your keys and steal stuff there.

“Bad Samaritan” is about some thieving restaurant valets who stumble into the ugly secret the sinister looking ex-Doctor Who with the Maserati is keeping. He’s kidnapping and maybe/probably killing women.

Tell the cops, fess up to save the woman? It’s never that easy in “Bad Samaritan,” which opens March 30.

A paranoid schizophrenic (Quinto) tells his shrink (Jenny Slate) that he’s anxious about his brother (Jon Hamm) returning to town.

The brother meets the shrink expressing concern for his disturbed sibling. And as the shrink is played by Jenny Slate (see “Gifted”), she sleeps with the guy.

So who exactly is the paranoid one? Very tricky looking indie thriller that is finally headed for distribution, though the date isn’t firm yet.

As Quinto has dropped off the screen and Hamm is doing tax commercials on TV, let’s hope that is soon.

STX and a bunch of Chinese money are gambling that Amy Schumer’s connection to every woman who isn’t a size 4 is huge and that “Trainwreck” was no fluke.

Here’s another Schumer comedy in which she owns who she is, and expects everybody else to deal with it/lust after it, etc.

Looks funny and empowering and all that. Raunchy? I’m guessing “Yeah.”

Those wags at Aardman, the British animation studio which uses artists and clay and a lot of patience to make funny movies, visit the ancient history of the human race and of “the beautiful game” for their latest, “Early Man.”

It’s a daft, adorable and decidedly English film, hand-made figures creating hand-made laughs out of sight gags, puns and inside soccer “futbol” humor. So what if it has about as much to do with ancient human history as that Creationist museum in Kentucky? They embrace the silliness of that in a movie that reminds us that English humor has been post-war Britain’s most reliable export.

Somewhere near Manchester, surviving cave men and women and their pet boar live in an idyllic crater created when asteroids hit the Earth and did in the dinosaurs (shown in the prologue). They’re hunter-gatherers, and what they gather is rabbits.

But Dug, voiced by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, wonders just how far they’d advance as a tribe if they aimed higher. You know, hunted Woolly Mammoths instead. Maybe after mastering the organization it would take to undertake such a  hunt. You know, learning sign language and bird call signals. Improving their clubs, rocks and stone spears. Evolving. Just a bit.

The aged chief (Timothy Spall) is a traditionalist and won’t hear of it. He’s got the white haired wisdom of the ages on his side.

“I’m 32!”

Then “progress” comes crashing down around their ears. The French-accented, armored warriors show up on bronze-plated elephants.

“Zee age of STONE eez oh-VAIR,” Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston, hilarious declares). “Lahng LEEV zee age of BRONZE!”

Dug’s tribe’s valley is rich in tin and copper. Mines are in order. Bronzeworks to follow. They are dispossessed, chased into “the badlands.” It’s up to Dug to (accidentally) visit the Bronze city and find a way to get the interlopers to give them their valley back.

Street vendors sell Jurassic Pork, and pots and pans and Swiss Army knives made out of the wonder metal. And Lord Nooth (pronounced “Lord Knows”) collects bronze coins as tax and keeps the masses in line with a little bloodsport.

“Gladiatorial combat,” you wonder? I did, and that’s what they want us to believe. But no, those rude, brawny armored warriors that have the crowd baying for blood in their coliseum are on the holy pitch, ‘our ‘allowed ground,” playing “the beautiful game.”

If Dug and his people can remember the sport they’ve only seen on long-forgotten cave-paintings, maybe they can play Jurgen, Gonad and the champions in a winner-take-the-valley soccer match.

The sight gags are everywhere in these little jewel-box movies — giant caterpillars that can double as Adidas soccer shoes, a clockwork front gate lock so intricate it relies upon a final tiny sliding latch, an asteroid that hits the Earth and turns out to be the shape of a soccer ball.

And you don’t have to have played soccer — though generations of American kids now have — to get the many football/futbol gags. An appreciation of post-Python British humor doesn’t hurt, especially if you want to understand the digs at organized religion, violence and the xenophobia that led to Brexit.

How is it that the place where football was born is no longer competitive? Maybe, the movie suggests, Dug’s tribe just quit trying.

It’s not on a par with the sublime “Wallace & Gromit” films or the brilliant “Chicken Run.” But it’s quite funny, and delightful to see finger prints in not-quite-perfect clay arms and legs.  And it’s comforting to know that there’ll always be an Aardman.

MPAA Rating: PG for rude humor and some action

Cast: The voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, Miriam Margolyes, Timothy Spall, Rob Brydon

Credits:Directed by Nick Park, script by Mark Burton and James Higginson. A Summit/Studio Canal/Aardman release.

Running time: 1:29

Antic, manic and stuffed up to its ears with cuddly, realistically animated critters, sing-along pop hits and slapstick violence, there’s no reason every child at around age four would not adore the new “Peter Rabbit.”

And there’s little to no reason anybody over that age would get much out of it. Unless, of course, you’re an Anglophile and enjoy British wordplay, English country and London city locations. Adoring stars Rose Byrne and Domhnall Gleeson doesn’t hurt.

This “Rabbit,” which has almost nothing to do with Beatrix Potter’s mild-mannered imp, is a provincial punk whom we see trigger the heart attack that kills the hated neighbor (Sam Neill) who chases rabbits out of his garden. Gleeson plays Thomas, the old man’s officious OCD suffering Harrods manager heir, who moves in and faces renewed hostilities from Peter, his rabbit relatives and assorted woodland pal.

The joke of course is that the bunnies are doted on by Bea, the cute failing artist who lives next door.  Thomas won’t get anywhere with Bea if she suspects there’s a blood feud a’bubbling just over the garden wall.

Co-writer/director Will Gluck, who has lurched from “Easy A” to “Annie” to this, borrows as much from the Aussie kiddie classic “Babe” as can be allowed by law.

“That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

The running gags include a Greek chorus of pop song singing birds, whose lip-sync repertoire ranges from the syrupy classics to hip hop, a dieting/gorging pig and cracked rooster (voiced by Will Reichelt) who procreates like crazy because he’s never considered that each day isn’t going to be his last.

“No WAY the sun comes up again! No way!”

Another running “gag?” Death. Peter’s parents died, one of them violently. And then there’s the hated old man Peter gave a heart attack to.

Corden’s breathless line-readings may be right for an animal known to be in a bloody hurry to get on with things, life being short and foxes being almost as fast as rabbits and all. He’s exhausting to listen to, and the script barely keeps his Peter just this side of insufferable — winking at the camera and such.

“Did he just wink? I didn’t know we could wink.”

The best line goes to a feed store clerk (Dave Lawson) who takes it upon himself to “diagnose” Miss Bea to new-in-town-Thomas.

“If I was a learned fellow,” he opines, “I’d say she ANTHROPOMORPHIZES them,” critters taking the place of human friends and love. Clever fellow, “learned” or not.

This all adds up to a movie whose net laughs exceed any annoyance Corden, the endless pop song action montages and frantic, “Ace Ventura” animal antics create. Feel free to sidle up to any four year old you know and give them a “Have I got a movie for you.”

MPAA Rating: PG for some rude humor and action

Cast: Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Sam Neill, the voices of James Corden, Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie

Credits:Directed by Will Gluck, script by Ro Lieer and Will Gluck, barely based on the Beatrix Potter books. A  Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:33

We still call them “combat photographers,” even though the more exact term these days is “conflict photographers.” The dangers they face are broader, the conflicts murkier than mere “wars.”

But to master the craft, the risks are the same. “You have to get close,” one and all will tell you. Get right in the thick of things. The opening images of “Hondros,” about acclaimed Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros, make that clear.

Shaky video captures a firefight. And in the middle of it, Hondros takes a call.

“Fine. Things are fine,” he tells the caller as AK-47s go off all around him. “Let me call you back in about a half hour or so.”

For decades, Hondros could be found in every hot spot the world produced, Kosovo to Liberia, Afghanistan to Iraq.

He was not in it for the rush, he declares. “I’m not into adventure sports” or any of the other telltale cliches attached to people in this field. He was all about the journalism, “shining a light” on international tragedies, hoping to awaken the world to human-made disasters, and in so doing perhaps getting the world to put a stop to them.

As his longtime friend and sometime colleague Greg Campbell’s film makes clear, Hondros was moved by what he saw and photographed on the battlefields of the world, men and child soldier weeping over crimson covered bodies of the fallen, a little girl wailing at her parents, accidentally shot as they drove their car through a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq.

What separated Hondros from his colleagues, legions of whom appear in testament to his life and work in “Hondros,” was the extra steps he took.

A Liberian rebel teen has just fired his rocket propelled grenade at the dictator Samuel Taylor’s army, a shot that would make Hondros famous.

Hondros goes back to Liberia after the conflict, friends help him find that young man, and he pays for the kid’s college.

An Iraqi family is all but wiped out in another famous shot. Hondros helps get  a wounded little boy to America for live-saving surgery.

His editors, rivals and colleagues marvel at how anyone was able to get there just ahead of the news, arriving in Egypt to cover the nascent “Arab Spring,” tumbling ahead of the U.S. forces in the invasion of Iraq, “deeply empathizing” with those he photographed at every step of the way.

“Hondros” has to go to some pains to separate itself from other films on this sort of subject, their story “arc” and their many over-familiar tropes. Swashbuckling shooters dashing from war zone to war zone, partying behind the lines, risking their necks under fire when they go into battle.

If you’ve read or seen any film about combat photographers, fiction (“Salvador,””Under Fire”) or documentary (“Which is the Front from Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington”) you know how such films and such careers inevitably turn out. Hondros found his calling, found fame, found love and then was killed.

“Hondros” gets meaning out of that death by devoting itself, at length, to the dangers journalists now face in combat zones. In an era of controlling your own message and easy access to getting that message on the World Wide Web, foreigners filming, interviewing and taking pictures of your struggle can be seen as unnecessary or worse, a threat. Journalists are being targeted in combat zones around the world.

“Hondros” highlights that danger and brings out the humanity in a career that was above and beyond the stereotypes of their profession. (These guys are overwhelmingly hunky white males of the Sebastian Junger set, adrenaline junkies even if they deny it.)

And if this documentary, co-produced by Jake Gyllenhaal, leads to a feature on the most empathetic shooter of all, don’t be surprised. This was a life and career worth celebrating.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with images of graphic violence.

Cast: Christopher Hondros, Inge Hondros, Greg Campbell, many others

Credits: Directed by Greg Campbell, written by Jenny Golden and Greg Campbell.   An Entertainment Studios release.

Running time: 1:32

Stop motion clay-model animation is one of my favorite genres, and the Brits at Aardman are the undisputed masters of it. Their twee little kiddie films have a visual cleverness and richness that gives adults something to marvel over and laugh at as well.

“Wallace” has passed on, as have the beloved “Wallace & Gromit” films. But “Early Man” has a stellar voice cast, a witty setting and that unmistakable Aardman touch. It opens next Friday.

Universal previewed “Fifty Shades Freed” in two theaters Wednesday night in Orlando, where I saw it. Two nearly-packed houses, filled with (mostly) older women.

And as with the first two films in this trilogy, they ate it up. Me? Not so much. Other critics? Nope.

But a huge Thursday night opening and big Friday means “Fifty Shades Freed” will clear $40 million on its opening weekend. Epic numbers, even though all the other films opened bigger ($85 million for the first one). Either the audience is getting smarter, dying off or getting their softcore porn somewhere else. It’s a bad movie, even if they kind of seem to get that and have a few laughs about it as they do.

  “Peter Rabbit,” from the same folks who gave you “Hop!,” is doing roughly half the business that limp cartoon managed. The trailers don’t really sell it and reviews have been weak. They didn’t even bother previewing it in many markets ( I see it today, reluctantly).  A $22 million opening suggests audiences are over British kids’ films. “Paddington 2” overwhelmed as well, remember. Maybe Brexit is to blame.

  Clint Eastwood’s mawkish and poorly-acted “The 15:17 to Paris” isn’t opening on as many screens, was not previewed for critics in much of the country and is bombing, straight out of the gate. Warners knew what it had on its hands, a very old, impatient director who should have bowed out with “American Sniper.” A $12-13 million opening may mean Clint’s blank check with the studio has been cashed. Terrible reviews, some of the worst of Clint’s career, are not helping. ‘

“The Post” and “The Shape of Water” are the best performing Oscar contenders at this late date. “Shape” is nearing $50. Perhaps Hollywood is noting the staggering run of “The Greatest Showman” and wishing they’d given the always wonderful Hugh Jackman his due. $175 million and counting in ticket sale might actually get people to tune in to the Academy Awards this year.

Setting out to make a bad movie is rarely a good idea. And making a sequel to something you’d love to label “a cult film” is even more dubious.

“Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel” is a cut-and-paste/jokes with no punchline follow-up to 2004’s “Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes.” You don’t have to have attended a comic book convention to have ever heard of it.

Actually, you do.

It’s a superhero spoof made from a deathly combination of inept actors, tin-eared joke writing where the default gag is always swishy, retrograde gay, and snippets of convention video from a vast array of nerd-adored TV shows and movies,  from a “Doctor Who” nobody remembers to TV’s original Lois Lane, “Gilligan’s Island” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Battlestar Galactica” (original series) refugees.

There’s many a cameo, but barely a laugh in the entire 89 minutes of this.

Vincent J. Roth returns as “Surge,” comically closeted superhero who is a Big Enough Man in Big City to take his ex-nemesis, Metal Master (John Venturini) out for a drink after the supervillain gets out of prison.

Because “Everybody deserves a second chance…or nine.”

But Hector aka “Metal Master,” estranged from his homophobic parents (Gil Gerard, TV’s “Buck Rodgers” and Linda Blair of “The Exorcist”) has a confession to make.

“I feel naked without my powers, don’t you?”

Which puts him in the employ of veteran villain Augur (Eric Roberts) and sends Surge from Big City to Las Vegas in his superhero Mazda RX-7 to foil an evil plot.

“Sin City will NEVER be the same!” Augur chortles.

“What about Big City?” Hector corrects.

That’s a blown-line, and it may be the funniest one in the movie.

Cheesy costumes, cheap but cute effects, and a tidal wave of guest appearances ensue. Self-aware jokes at Frank Marino’s Vegas drag show and elsewhere, all of which help Surge come to grips with who he is, with the help of his on-car computer (comedy writer Bruce Vilanch) and supernatural savior, Omen (“Star Trek” retirees Nichelle Nichols and Roert Picardi).

It’s meant to be viewed with a crowd of fellow travelers/Comic Con goers, preferably drunk ones. Sober? The attempts at jokes don’t land and cameos are no substitute for story, performances or wit in the script.

This super hero spoof is a played out idea excruciatingly executed.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive material

Cast: Vincent J. Roth, Eric Roberts, John Venturini, Nichelle Nichols, Linda Blair, Frank Marino, Lou Ferigno

Credits: Written and directed byAntonio Lexerot, Vincent J. Roth.  An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:29

The voice Tom Hardy trots out here isn’t his “Revenent” accent, isn’t his Bane mumble. It’s working class Joe, straight out of the mob movie “The Drop.”

The one thing that strikes me in this Sony/Marvel trailer (an October release) is this question. Just how rich is Stan Lee, and how does one get in his will?