Movie Nation

Absolutely awful news ends a year full of that, a year stalked by the specter of death.

Carrie Fisher has succumbed to illness and a body ravaged by a lifetime of hard living. She was just 60. 

She was never shy about admitting that, and managed to spin her awful years into books and a second breath as one of America’s great wits. “Star Wars” fans aren’t the only ones shocked and saddened by her passing.

I interviewed her a couple of times over the years. She came to Orlando’s hosting of two “Star Wars” “celebration” conventions. She gave off a vibe of good humor and great sportsmanship. All the other films she made, she knew what made her immortal, what would be in all her obituaries. And she was OK with that.

She knew what the fans wanted, and she made sure to give them that. Including this pose, on stage, in Orlando. Shaking my head over this one. So is the rest of the “Star Wars” world.

An icon for recovery, and for being a good sport when fate gives you the gift of that one immortal role. Mom may be “unsinkable,” but Leia Organa was pretty tough, too.

Sixty is way too young to go, even after a life as raw as hers.

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So I waited around to binge-watch the entire “first series” of “The Grand Tour,” biding my Amazon Prime time, wanting to see the whole thing in one sitting.

As a long-time “Top Gear” fan, owner of many a boxed set of the boys and their car hijinks, someone who once bought a vintage British sports car on James May’s recommendation,  I was looking forward to their reboot, though perhaps not with the fervid anticipation of some.

And watching the increasingly portly Jeremy Clarkson, ever-more-wizened James May and experiments in diminutive dye-jobs of Richard Hammond in their tent, with shows from the US southwest, Johannesburg, Whitby, Rotterdam and snowy Finland, I was reminded why I’d gotten control of my addiction a few years back.

The shows have turned repetitive, routine. Only the TG series finale (sans Clarkson) was worth checking into, with featured films that they’d never gotten around to airing on the regular run of the series. Vintage car “restorations,” late model SUV “rambling” through fox hunting country — funny.

The epic road trips in unsuitable or unserviceable used cars were the best things about the series. Title the new show “The Grand Tour,” and you kind of expect that to be the way they go.

But no. New Mustangs, another comical riff on self-designed “green” cars, drifting, drifting drifting Dodges and the like, group drives in enviro-friendlier hyper cars, more Mustangs, and a drawling cliche of NASCAR Americana replacing the Stig. They did away with the “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” bit for a straining running gag about inviting celebrities who appear in a filmed gag only to “die” before reaching the set.

Paging Alan Partridge.

Ginned up scripted “controversy”? Smacks of desperation, the desperation that had Amazon giving away the premiere away over the holidays.

The only memorable bits in six episodes were the opening to the premiere episode, with Clarkson and his mates departing dreary England for sunny Southern California and a “bright, sunshiny day,” and James May’s oddly-timed appreciation of the Ford GT. Yes, they did that on “Top Gear” five years ago. And yes, the movie “The 24 Hour War” came out before this much-hyped, much-delayed series made its bow. But May, the historian and pedant of the show, did a decent enough job summing up (again, and far too briefly) the Ford vs. Ferrari LeMans wars of the 1960s.

And about that “departure.” Though Jalopnik and others are swallowing it, still, I’m not buying the cover story that the punching of a producer was the reason Clarkson was canned. Remember, the sacking came mere weeks after the BBC went to the mat for him over the debacle in Argentina. Clarkson and/or the BBC had broken the law, faking/customizing a Falklands War “coded” licence plate as a joke for their Patagonian road trip, claimed that they didn’t (because it is illegal to do that) and were looking for an excuse that would let the BBC off the hook and let Clarkson save face.

But all would be forgiven if the new show was a dazzler. And it isn’t. “Conversation Street” is just inane, scripted formulaic and jokey chatter about cars and what have you. The gags — playing “Battleship” with old cars, G-Wizes and cranes — were merely passable filler. I rather liked Hammond’s little “Mustang now available with Wrong Hand Drive Steering here in the UK” appreciation. They’ve lost a little of the show’s eccentric Britishness — slang and “personalities” unknown outside the Empire.

The test drives/reviews have a little bite, though one does wonder about the product placement factor in a show that no longer has a “news” network and its standards to prevent pay-for-play deals. They’re all about the shiny new toys, and that was only part of the appeal of the old show.

They’re topping the season with a dune buggy trek through Namibia. Even that seems like a “been there, done that with this lot” variation.

Which suggests that “Top Gear” still has a shot at getting it right and doing it better. The Chris Evans/Matt LeBlanc show had just as many memorable “bits” as “The Grand Tour” – the long-overdue “Jeep vs. Land Rover” challenge, and visit the uncut video of that LeBlanc “Hoonigan” tourist trek through London, which Hammond mocked in GT by “being respectful” driving the Mustang past the same war memorials in London. It’s the best “Top Gear” segment in years.

The dazzling car porn production values are now spread out over two programs — GT and TG. Many many edits, many many cool angles, much drone footage, lots of slo-mo, endurable music rights clearances. But all “The Grand Tour” amounts to is filming the various public appearance tours the three rich Yorkshiremen have been doing for years for gas money, showing the flag in front of adoring crowds hither and yon. Yawn.

Getting TG back on the road for some epic, break-down filled “adventure” drives would level the playing field, especially if the chemistry and overloaded cast problems of New Gear are worked out. Yeah, that’s a big “if,” but LeBlanc seems to mix with the younger guys who are stepping in. If it turns out the Youtube star and the trained racing driver are inept at improvised repairs, so much the better. Old funny guys rule.

In essence, you can say the same thing about “The Grand Tour” that one said at the conclusion of the Chris Evans “Top Gear” year. The jury’s still out. Show us something. Thanks to a lot of hype and not a lot of backup for that hype, “Grand Tour” has kept “Top Gear” alive, left the old show some passing room on the straightaways. Do they have enough HP (BHP) under the hood (bonnet) to make it a real race?

We’ll see.

I doubt you could call an $18 million opening for the pricey space romance “Passengers” passable, even if this wasn’t a four-day holiday weekend. Even if it wasn’t the poorly-reviewed pic’s opening weekend.

There’s no spinning the bad news on “Assassin’s Creed,” either. It opened Wed. and will have tallied $22 million by midnight Monday. On a $130 million budget? Nope.

“Why Him?” is giving audiences a “Why bother?” vibe. Weak reviews didn’t help.  It will clear $15 million by end of biz the day after Christmas.

But enough bad news. “Sing,” an animated all-star animals sing the hits “comedy,” is pulling families in. To the tune of $76 million, per Deadline.com. 

And “Rogue One” have tallied $108 million by Monday night, despite a middling 55% fall-off from its opening weekend. “Force Awakens” scared people off, and one more movie about a Death Star — even one about building it and stealing “those plans,” may be too many.

“Collateral Beauty” is bombing and could lower Will Smith’s salary quote. But he may have a little longer grace period, even though “Concussion” under-performed and “Suicide Squad” — which did over $325 million — left nobody happy.

A Great American Play becomes a Great American Film with “Fences,” Denzel Washington’s letter-faithful adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece.

Set in Wilson’s beloved Pittsburgh in the late 1950s, it’s about the African American diaspora, sons and daughters of cotton pickers come north to find better lives. It’s about African American aspiration and deep-seeded bitterness that decades cannot erase. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, responsibilities vs. desires, it’s all in this intimate yet emotionally epic story about a garbage man, his friends and his family.

Washington and Viola Davis reprise their Broadway revival performances as Troy and Rose, a long-married couple still full of lust, frisky, ribald banter and love.

“I love this woman,” Troy tells his best friend and ready-made audience, Bono (Broadway veteran Stephen McKinley Henderson. “I love this woman so much it hurts. I love her so much…I done run out of ways of loving her.”

He doesn’t care if Rose overhears him. He’s ready with a comeback the second she opens her mouth.

“This is men talk. I got some talk for you later. You know what kind of talk I mean. You go on and powder it up.”

Men in their 50s, Troy and Bono ride the back of a garbage truck and bitch about “Why only white men get to be drivers?” Troy stoops over the payroll sheets and slowly signs his name every Friday. He turns his pay envelope over to Rose. He talks tightwad tough-love to his jazz-playing son by another woman (Russell Hornsby) who always shows up on paydays for a “loan.”

And he rides herd on his teenage son with Rose. Cory (Jovan Adepo) is a football playing teen being recruited by a college “way down in North Carolina.” Cory forsakes his chores for football practice, one of which is helping his dad build a fence, a fence that never seems to get started, much less finished.

It turns out Troy had sporting dreams himself, but don’t tell him he was “too early” to catch the integration of baseball. And he’s not above taking that out on the kid.

“The white man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football noway.”

Troy Maxon is one of fiction’s great creations — complex, gregarious, generous, petty and mean. He laughs big, waxes lyrical and tells tall tales about his wrestling match with death.

“Death ain’t nothin’ but a fastball on the outside corner.”

And Washington, one of the finest actors of his generation, just devours this guy. He and his Broadway “Fences” co-star Henderson rattle through the banter of two back-slapping, gin-bottle-passing old pals who knew each other when times were tougher than they are now. The only thing that can tamp down Troy’s seeming ebullience is Rose, a serious, loving woman who deserves his devotion, who staunchly remains the better angel on his shoulder, even when he’s brushing her off.

“I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams…and I buried them inside you,” she tells him. “I planted a seed and waited and prayed over it.”

Davis is reliably magnificent in the part, both in delivering her heartfelt lines and reacting to Troy’s bitter, hard-bitten responses.

“I give you my sweat and my blood. I ain’t got no tears. I done spent them.”

The film is a theatrical production, calling attention to its limited attempts to “open up” the play and underlining the natural-seeming stage directions that keep the two and three character scenes moving. Occasionally, Washington lets the interactions turn static and flat.

And while the cast is stellar — Mykelti Williamson of “Forrest Gump” is Gabe, Troy’s war-wounded touched-in-the-head brother — young Adepo seems mild-mannered, modern and too meek to stand up to his bullying father.

But Washington more than does justice to the late playwright whose “Pittsburgh Cycle” is the masterwork of the modern American theater. August Wilson’s plays, built on stunningly-real and compelling characters, rich in setting and historic meaning, rife with metaphor (“Fences” keep things out, and keep other things in), have only reached the playgoing public before now.

When Oscar nominations for “Fences” come out, that could change.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements, language and some suggestive references

Cast: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Mykelti Williamson, Jovan Adepo

Credits:Directed by Denzel Washington, script by August Wilson. A  Paramount release.

Running time: 2:22

If you didn’t love “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” as much as any eight year old, you plainly have lost the inner child Wes Anderson has made his living off of his entire career.

So it’s great news that Anderson is following his glorious “Grand Budapest Hotel” with a return to British handcrafted stop-motion animation. “Isle of Dogs” stars the usual Wes suspects — Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, F. Murray Abraham, et al.

An early Christmas present? God bless us, every one.

Video game movie adaptations aren’t really my thing, and for decades, they haven’t proven to be Hollywood’s thing either.

But throwing a couple of Oscar winners, along with Michael Fassbender and $130 million at “Assassin’s Creed” could have changed that. In theory.

It doesn’t. You kind of figured that out on your own, didn’t you? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“Creed” is a big screen re-engineering of the wildly popular stab, slash and slice video game about an ancient cult of killers whose creed has them protecting a magical talisman from evildoers who want that talisman to “take away dissent and free will.”

The bad guys are the ancient order of Knights Templar.

So basically we’ve got an “Underworld” movie set in Dan Brown/”Da Vinci Code” universe, where murderous “knights” battle killer ninjas instead of vampires vs. werewolves.

In 1492 Inquisition Era Spain, assorted assassins, including Aguilar (Fassbender) try and prevent Catholic fanatics from getting their hands on the Apple of Eden. The freedom of free thinkers everywhere is at stake.

Centuries later, a boy sees his mother’s lifeless corpse in front of his dad’s bloody blade. That boy grows up to be Cal Lynch (Fassbender again) who is saved from a Texas death by lethal injection to serve this scientist (Marion Cotillard) and an organization led by her father (Jeremy Irons).

Cal is a twitchy convicted killer.

“Why the aggression?”

“I’m an aggressive person.”

The scientist has figured out that he is genetically predisposed to be a murderer, thanks to his relation to that assassin of long ago. But she hasn’t just answered the age-old “nature vs. nurture” question about human violence. She’s found a way to tap into “genetic memory.”

Strap Cal into an umbilical gadget in an arena-like simulation space, and she can make him go back through time, experience what his ancestor did, fighting the Templars. Maybe he’ll “remember” where Aguilar and his fellow assassin (Ariane Labed) hid that apple thingy.

Australian director Justin Kurzel (director of Fassbender’s “Macbeth”) stages Wolverine-gloved ninja brawls and parkour chases through 15th century Spain intercut with shots of Fassbender, shirtless and strapped-in, “experiencing” this action in his simulator while his handlers look on.

The effect of this effect is to ruin any tension built up in the bloody past and bore us to tears with intrigues set in the present. There are other imprisoned “assassins” in this Madrid facility — Michael Kenneth Williams and Brendan Gleeson among them. And there’s an “elder” (Charlotte Rampling) in charge of it all.

Yeah, they’re thinking “franchise” here. Spare no expense.

You can’t really fault the elemental Joseph Campbell “Hero on a quest” storytelling, but the inter-cutting undercuts what little plot there is. The foreshadowing is as obvious as the year the past events are set. Yes, 1492 was the Year of the Reconquista. But who sailed the Ocean Blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two?

And for all the money on crossbow shoot-outs, burning at the stake and recreating pre-Colombian Spain, the settings that stand out are real-world dazzlers, the Alhambra in Granada and the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede in Seville.

Fassbender tries to give this guy some edge, singing Cal’s mom’s favorite Willie Nelson-written Patsy Cline hit “Crazy,” for instance. Yes, he got into shape for the part. But for the first time I can remember, he can’t hide the fact that this is just a paycheck job, with a Spanish vacation thrown in.

Cotillard does a fair job of imitating Irons’ plummy English accent, and nothing more.

It’s all more or less watchable, although certainly of more interest to fans of the game. But  that’s using “interest” entirely too loosely for the rest of us. Quest or no quest, cool locations or green screen soundstages, shirtless Fassbender or Fassbender in an assassin’s hoodie, “Assassin’s” never breaks the creed of Hollywood filmed video games — “Action packed, but dull.”

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Ariane Labed, Michael Kenneth Williams, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling

Credits:Directed by Justin Kurzel, script by Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, based on the Ubisoft videogame. A Fox release.

Running time: 1:55

“Passengers” offers up such a spotless, pristine vision of our space traveling future that you might be tempted to book a flight.

A gigantic, roomy and shiny space liner takes a crew of 250 or so and 5,000 paying clients among the stars — without — in this case at least, a stop in Key West.

The space liner Avalon summons up memories of Douglas Adams’ “Starship Titanic,” right down to the inane in-flight announcements by the automated passenger-service PA system.

“Wake up, Sunshine! It’s time to relax and enjoy your stay!”

You’re on your way to Homestead II, the planet colony you’ll be joining.

“Don’t get homesick! Get Homestead!”

But if you’re hearing that and you’re all alone, something has gone wrong. Your hibernation pod has malfunctioned.

“Hibernation pods are fail-safe!”

How long until everybody else wakes up, you know, upon arrival at Homestead II?

“Ninety years…We apologize for the delay.”

“Passengers” pairs up the talented and stubble-faced Chris Pratt and the plucky, winsome Jennifer Lawrence in this dilemma. Jim and Aurora are all alone, awake in the void, doomed to die long before their estimated time of arrival. Well, alone save for Arthur the Automated Bartender. Arthur (Michael Sheen) is programmed to listen patiently to their woes, cleaning drink tumblers and generally being sympathetic to their every need. Save for the big one, or the philosophical ones.

“Jim, those are not robot questions.”

Jim’s a mechanic with an engineering bent, Aurora’s a writer — a journalist. He is stumped by the ship’s disinterest in their dilemma, the lack of response from the automation to solving their “unthinkable” customer service failure. Aurora is crafting their memoirs.

“We’re passengers. We go where fate takes us.”

The film has lots of promising problems for us to dive into with our heroes, mechanical and philosophical puzzles to sort out.

But from the opening moments, Jon Spaihts’ screenplay drifts off course, choosing to explain things that would be more dramatic as mysteries and secrets. And Lawrence and Pratt find themselves trapped in a routine cruise ship romance where the pool reaches out into the cosmos, and space suit excursions take the place of rock-climbing walls, luaus and tiki bars.

It’s a slow-moving “spoiler alert” of a thriller. We know what’s wrong, we know who has crossed which lines. All that’s left to ponder in this Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”) exercise in tedium is what they’ll have at the bar, which seems straight out of “The Shining.”

Pratt has nice comic timing, even if he’s somewhat lacking in romantic leading man moves. Lawrence, with or without an Oscar, has never been able to conjure up romantic longing, no matter how beautiful and beguiling she is. It says something about the picture that Pratt is more interesting in his scenes alone, or with the android bartender.

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney set off real sparks and generated genuine pathos in “Gravity,” which has scenarios and suggestions of sacrifice that “Passengers” borrows. That didn’t happen by accident, or by directorial design alone. That’s what chemistry and charisma look like on the screen.

Spaihts, who also scripted “Doctor Strange” and “Prometheus,” is more of a script engineer than a screenwriter. His writing is clockwork get-us-from-A-to-B gadgetry, and his scripts provide a template — in both “Doctor Strange” and “Prometheus” the source material did that work for him — to layer great effects (losing artificial gravity while you’re swimming is nightmarish) onto.

That makes one more too-easily-solved mystery. It should be no surprise that “Passengers” is sterile, airless, a space opera with light comic touches, technological wonder and subzero romantic heat.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexuality, nudity and action/peril

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen

Credits:Directed by Morten Tyldum, script by Jon Spaihts. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:56

There’s no way Harrison Ford could have guessed that any of the roles he took on in the late ’70s on into the ’80s would turn out to be iconic in their genres.

Yeah, Indiana Jones had to feel like a franchise, right from the start. But “Blade Runner”? The shelf life of that sci-fi noir dystopia has been stunning and unexpected.

Here’s the trailer to the new Ridley Scott produced/Denis Villeneuve-directed sequel, with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford on an empty, dusty post-Climate Change Earth where “replicants” are still a problem. Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, a pretty big cast with some pretty big names will bring this horrific near-future vision to life.

No, Vangelis didn’t do the score to this one (that’s his music on the trailer, though). But Philip K. Dick lives! “Blade Runner: 2049” — next fall.

I’m such a huge fan of both of the McDonagh boys — playwright turned writer-director Martin (“In Bruges”, “Seven Psychopaths”) and his brother John Michael (“Calvary,” “The Guard”) that I’m willing to write-off “War on Everyone” as a pastiche that didn’t pay off.

It’s written and directed by John Michael McDonagh as a send-up of Quentin Tarantino, sort of a QT film created by an educated, literary-minded Irishman. It’s a fiasco, but there’s stiff the occasional riff, rant or reference that works.

It’s a modern-day “rogue cops” picture, set in Albuquerque amidst hoodlums, lowlifes, sand and unflattering sun. As in a Tarantino take on the subject, it’s built around  characters trapped in the ’70s.

Detectives Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob Bolaño (Michael Peña) tool around town, swilling beers in a ’72 Monte Carlo, which Monroe is always crashing into bars they’re about to bust up, but is always fully restored by the next scene.

“I LOVE this car,” Monroe has to say, and who wouldn’t?

Monroe’s into old Glen Campbell tunes and lives in a designer house with a pool — in Albuquerque. How can he afford this?

“Overtime.”

They have a snitch, Reggie X (he’s converted to Islam) who isn’t keen on his role.

“Who am I? ” Reggie (Malcolm Barrett) wants to know. “Huggy Bear?”

They have a boss (Paul Reiser), the sort of commanding officer who is always railing at them.

“This is your LAST chance!”

They’re corrupt and cruel. Yeah, they do a few lines of blow with their snitch. Yeah, they’re trigger happy. Yeah, they steal from “the bad guys. And yeah, they run over a mime.

They have no morals or principles. Bust a crook who gets killed? One of them will take up with the dead guy’s girlfriend. She’s played by Tessa Thompson (“Creed”) in ’70s hair and hotpants.

The boys are after Mr. Big, a rich Brit punk (Theo James) called “Your Lordship” by his minions. There are gay underlings played by Caleb Landry Jones and David Wilmot, a sort of inclusive inclusion that almost has a point, at least as far as the plot’s concerned.

And all of it is pitched as a lark, a paint-by-numbers genre pic spiced up with McDonagh’s Tarantino-ish quips and long tirades. A character complains he can’t read their badges because he has dyslexia.

“Are you an actor? All actors seem to be dyslexic nowadays. Used to be called ‘stupidity.'”

And “You’re cops? Where are you guys from? What precinct?”

“We’re from Hell.”

And on and on, discourses on Simone de Beauvoir and Quaker ethics and the whether the “auteur” (director) Steven Soderbergh is Jewish or Swedish.

Minions use words like “contretemps” and the action is stopped for a game of tennis (doubles) with two Muslim women in full burqas.

It’s funny to see Peña playing the “smart funny partner” instead of the dumb one. Skarsgard brings nothing new to the alcoholic crooked cop cliche and Thompson has nothing to play but pretty pouty close-ups in various stages of undress.

McDonagh’s script is so ad hoc, so clumsily random, that nothing adds up to anything. There’s just violence and strip clubs and one-liners that are more clever than funny and Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits and that lovely blue Monte Carlo.

Neither McDonagh brother (John Michael is the eldest) works often enough that their fans can afford a misfire of this magnitude. And while taking the Irish out of Tarantino is a worthy cause, you’re going to have to bring at least your B-game to that quip fight. This never rates as more than a D.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, sexuality/nudity, drug use and pervasive language

Cast:Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Peña, Tessa Thompson, Theo James, Paul Reiser

Credits:Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:38

Yeah, everybody figured “Office Christmas Party” was the movie to be this weekend, right? Blockbuster in the offing.

Nah.

Will Smith’s latest Shamesless Grab for an Oscar? “Collateral Beauty” is the worst Will Smith opening is the worst Will Smith opening since, oh, “Six Degrees of Separation.” Under $7 million. Terrible reviews didn’t help.

That means that little old “Star Wars” installment guaranteed to buttress Disney’s bottom line owns the field. A $156 million opening weekend, well shy of the inferior “Force Awakens” weekend record ($247 million). But as Deadline.com notes, “Rogue” is building audience as the weekend progresses. Friends telling friends, “Hey, it’s better than “Force.”

Is the wingnut backlash against “political correctness” in the movie (unfounded, in this case) having an impact? Only Fox News & Friends will be making that argument. Fox is just mad that Disney has the rights to SW now.

A couple of legit Oscar contenders crack the top ten — “Manchester by the Sea” and “La La Land.” I’m lukewarm on the latter, but it should garner nominations.

And “Nocturnal Animals” is enjoying the only weekend it will have in the top ten. Not a contender, in my book.

“Jackie” and “Lion” are doing great business in limited release.

“Moana” ($162 million and counting) continues to mop up the animated market, and “Fantastic Beasts” ($207 million) is the WB consolation for the quick death of “Collateral Beauty.”