Movie Nation

Miriam Colón, one of the most celebrated actresses ever to come out of Puerto Rico, has died. A screen mainstay from the late 1950s through her recent triumph, “Bless Me, Ultima,” she was 80 years old.

She worked with Brando (“One-Eyed Jacks”) and did the occasional film. But the lady lived her life on the TV — scads of roles, from “Mike Hammer” and “Have Gun-Will Travel” in the late 50s and early 60s, through “Sanford and Son” and “Law and Order” and on and on. President Obama gave her the National Medal for the Arts.

I interviewed Ms. Colón when “Ultima” came out. A grand character actress who got a moment in the sun late in life. RIP.

“Logan” sends the Wolverine off with a box office bang, as Thursday night and Friday showings push estimates for its opening weekend to $79 million.

With Hugh Jackman recovering from skin cancer (Did you see him on Colbert this week? Wear sunscreen, kids. Wear HATS.), that’s a huge endorsement of his inhabiting that character and the studio’s decision to let Logan age and show Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in his dotage. The dark approach worked.

“The Shack” is another film enjoying a healthy opening weekend. Faith-based (Octavia Spencer IS the Almighty!), starring a former Terminator (Sam Worthington), it’s headed to $16.5 million.

Then there’s “Before I Fall.” Lovestruck teens are missing out on this fine little “Groundhog Day in High School” starring Zoey Deutch. It’s only managing $4-5 million.

“Get Out” held a lot of audience from its first weekend, sitting at $26-27 million. It’s re-writing the rules for horror movies. Big box office, “satire” that doesn’t “Close on Saturday night,” as the wag once said.

Oscar winner “Moonlight” hits 1500 theaters and only does $2.2 million more this weekend.

They didn’t have a word for it, not one that had the right measure of cute, quaint and sentimental blended in. So the English invented “twee.”

It was made for movies such as “This Beautiful Fantastic,” a quirky-cute English romance about an orphan rescued by ducks, a grumpy-poetic old man rescued by an adorable new neighbor and a garden.

Oh so English. Ever so twee.

In writer-director Simon Aboud’s confection, Bella Brown, played by Jessica Brown Findlay (“Downton Abbey,” “Winter’s Tale”) is a foundling kept warm by a flock of ducks until she was discovered by the English park lake and whisked away to a Catholic orphanage.

Years later, she’s grown up with a lifelong aversion to nature, a morbid OCD fear of disorder and the perfect job for someone with those traits — junior librarian and aspiring children’s fiction writer.

But when she’s not being shushed and scolded by the metaphorically named Bramble (Anna Chancellor), she keeps a tidier than tiny house. Her over-organized pantry is like “a food prison,” her one visitor notes.

Her crusty, twinkly and bookish old neighbor narrates our story, and you have two guesses as to who plays him. No, not Jim Broadbent. Tom Wilkinson.

Alfred “Alfie” Stevens is a bully and a brutal wit. It doesn’t matter how neat Bella keeps the inside of the house,  it’s the garden this “horticultural terrorist” has let go that enrages him.

“You have squandered everything Nature has given you!”

He must force her into the yard, into the dirt, into “the beautifully ordered chaos.”

His Irish cook (Andrew Scott) is sympathetic, widowed with two little girls, and smitten. And Vernon-the-cook isn’t alone. There’s this odd duck (ahem) at the library, a noisy/rule-breaking nerd (Jeremy Irvine) with a thing for artist inventors who is enchanted by Bella, and has more of her attention.

Aboud, whose first feature was a heist picture “Comes a Day,” and is best known as Paul McCartney’s son-in-law, unravels this plot in the most predictable ways. Bella’s magical-realism orphanhood is a non-starter, and introducing Bella’s desire to learn Gaelic may be a dead end. Why exactly does she wear only greys and blacks?

But everything else in this sweet nothing of a romance you see coming a furlong away.

Still, Findlay and Scott don’t force their charm on us, Wilkinson makes the aphorisms, anecdotes and literary quotations poetic and warm. So much of it takes place in the flowers and brambles of a garden that this verdant movie smells like spring.

And Aboud has one character utter the most revealingly English line I’ve ever heard in a screen comedy, one that can be applied to the slight charms of his little romance.

“To say ‘No’ would be rude.”

MPAA Rating: PG for some thematic material and language

Cast: Jessica Brown Findlay, Tom Wilkinson, Andrew Scott, Anna Chancellor

Credits:Written and directed by Simon Aboud. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:32

It could be a $75 million opening weekend for the final Wolverine X-Men movie. Which means, of course, it won’t be the “final” one after all.

But in any event, all signs are pointing to a huge, fitting finish to Hugh Jackman’s sideburned slasher. Box Office Mojo is saying $74 million. Box Office Guru is pitching $68, which is sand-bagging it a bit. Not seen any figures from last night’s pre-opening showings, but the fanboys and fangirls were sure to turn out.

Great reviews won’t hurt. 

The unpreviewed faith-based drama “The Shack” was the best job onetime Terminator Sam Worthington could land. And it could open well, a $10-12 million take predicted by Mojo. That seems high. The Guru’s conservative $9 million opening seems more like it. “Shack” doesn’t have the victimhood/hate non-believers pull of “God’s Not Dead” and its ilk.

Teen death romance? “Before I Fall” got decent reviews and should do better than its predicted sub-$5 million opening. But we’ll see.

“Get Out” should have another big weekend, but that’s the thing. Will it? It’s smart. It’s social satire. And it’s horror. Will it clear another $20 million with all that audience reveling in Wolverine ultra-violence? We’ll see.

It’s packaged as a love triangle romance in time of war. Its director was behind the break-out Julia Roberts thriller “Sleeping with the Enemy,” and the screenwriter adapted “Bridge to Terabithia.”

But “The Ottoman Lieutenant,” a drama set in the corner of the Ottoman Empire called Anatolia during World War I, has greater aims. Its titular hero and entire point of view seems aimed at correcting the world’s attitudes toward the “Armenian Genocide” that is the backdrop for this romance. And while there are scholarly points to be made in that argument, this picturesque but slow and corny romance is hardly the right place to make them.

The story takes place in a region “of unspeakable violence,” torn by massacres, mass uprootings, treachery and lawlessness. There are Turkish troops facing brigands and rebels — Armenians quick to show support for Russian incursions into the empire after Germany tricked the Ottomans into joining their side in The Great War.

Josh Hartnett is Dr. Jude Gresham, a heroic caregiver in a hospital in the region. On a fundraising trip to Philadelphia, he tells stories of a population under threat, ethnic strife and the urgent need for medical care to an appreciative audience. That inspires an idealistic, free-thinking, wealthy young nurse (Hera Hilmar) to make her way East, and to bring her late brother’s truck with her.

Maybe she’s inspired by the handsome doctor, too.

But Lily Rowe’s eyes are opened the moment she debarks in Istanbul. A dashing stranger (Michiel Huisman) shows her a little of the city, including the great mosque. She is charmed, even if when it comes to her reason for being there, he isn’t having it.

“Miss Rowe? Go home. Go home immediately.”

Naturally, the stranger turns out to be a Turkish officer, an Ottoman Lieutenant. And his superiors may share his concerns, but they see a different solution to the problem of Miss Rowe. Lt. Ismail Valli will escort the American nurse, and her truck, to the hospital in East Anatolia.

Along the way, they see evidence of atrocities — “This wasn’t done by my army.” They face armed bandits (Armenians).

Eventually, he gets her to her hospital, which is coping with a typhus epidemic and a shortage of everything. The founder of the institution (Ben Kingsley) is not impressed.

“This is no place for a woman! We are drowning in death!”

But fierce Lily stays, and in between surgical assistance and romantic boat and horseback rides, finds herself torn between two would-be lovers. Or would, if the simplistic script could manage that simple feat.

The passionate doctor insists that they will treat whoever comes through their doors, but he has taken sides in the conflict. The passionate lieutenant sees things from a world-weary Turkish point of view.

“Freedom is an illusion. We all take the role we’re given.”

And Lily? She is swept up by the guy with the longer hair and uniform.

The Turkish and Czech settings are novel, with striking views of Mount Ararat, and the action sequences handled with skill. Newsreel footage of the World War pepper Lily’s narrated memories of the time.

Hartnett is more impressive in this role than you might guess, “Game of Thrones” veteran Guisman doesn’t embarrass himself, and Kingsley must have taken his small, testy role simply as a show of moral support. He’s played more than a few Turks over the years, and even if he isn’t cast as one, he signs on to the film’s message by being in it.

Young Miss Hilmar of the recent Keira Knightley “Anna Karenina” doesn’t give us much that suggests either possessing passion or inspiring it.

But they’re all stuck in this soap opera bent on historical revisionism. Even if you accept recent, measured scholarship by the likes of Middle East historian Eugene Rogan (“The Fall of the Ottomans”), who recounts in detail the civil war the Turks have long claimed as an excuse for the Armenian death toll, the film plays like Turkish propaganda. No hint of Kurd-driven/Turk-directed Armenian death marches of the historical record.

And even Rogan doesn’t discount that genocide happened, and that Armenian eagerness to be “rescued” by the Russians wasn’t an unreasonable hope, given Turkish/Kurdish oppression and abuses of the population.

So while there are extenuating circumstances that muddy the waters, that’s not enough to justify outright cinematic historical revisionism. That’s what this “Lieutenant” aims for.

What we’re left with is a botched romance saddled with an over-arching, over-reaching message, one that only the Turks will be quick to embrace.

MPAA Rating:R for some war violence

Cast: Michiel Huisman, Hera Hilmar, Josh Hartnett, Ben Kingsley

Credits:Directed by Joseph Ruben, script by Jeff Stockwell. A Paladin/Falco release.

Running time: 1:46

A few words, then, about the Chinese martial arts fantasy “Journey to the West:  The Demons Strike Back.”

And since I don’t know the Chinese translation for “batsh– crazy,” I’ll keep this brief.

This demented, luridly-colored, effects-driven sequel — What, you missed 2013’s “Journey to the West?” — may be the craziest thing you ever drop in on in a movie theater.

Martial arts comic Stephen Chow (“Kung Fu Hustle”) turned a 16th century Chinese novel — more a fantastical folk tale — about a monk, his magical allies and their quest to battle demons into a showcase for Chinese makeup artists (top drawer), production designers (a bit primitive) and effects wizards (treading their own path).

Fans of martial arts pictures and Chinese folklore will recognize the figure of The Monkey King, sometimes sober (Drunken Monkey) trickster and fighter of ancient legend. He (Kenny Lin) is the subject of much hand-wringing by his Monk Master (Kris Wu). With his binding headpiece on, he’s manageable. But cross him?

“BAD monkey! Why are you so bad? Learn to be a GOOD boy!”

He uses his magic bullwhip to punish the monkey. No, the American Humane Society didn’t sign off on this picture.

The monk may think “our days of conquering demons are at an end.” But that’s before they run into femmes fatales, sirens who morph (quite brilliantly) into “hairy crab” or lobsters or spiders.

There’s violence, profanity and general abuse mixed in with fights, exorcisms and nonsensical arguments with townspeople/bystanders caught up in all this colorful mayhem, with pig-faced or monkey-headed heroes tangling with all manner of monster.

None of it makes a lick of sense, and the slaps and slapstick and sexual coercion tucked into this fable make it a tough sell as a cultural crossover.

And the 3D is the worst I’ve ever seen in an American movie theater. Incompatible with some projection systems? Almost certainly.

Impressive effects and makeup, otherwise incoherent.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for fantasy action violence, some suggestive content, rude humor and thematic elements

Cast: Kenny Lin, Kris Wu, Bei-Er Bao, Mengke Bateer, Sihan Cheng

Credits:Directed by Hark Tsui, script by Stephen Chow, Si-Cheun Lee. A — release.

Running time: 1:49

The debacle at the end of the 89th Academy Awards telecast tended to overshadow the obvious — that the show didn’t draw, that the Academy’s (and ABC TV’s) on-and-off experiment with putting TV chat show hosts in charge of the movie industry’s biggest night didn’t work all that well, that there’s a reason Jimmy Kimmel is losing the Late Night Wars, and giving him his biggest audience ever didn’t help.

Will ABC strong-arm the Academy to give Son of Letterman a second shot? Aside from his running Matt Damon feud gag and a few other choice zingers, he didn’t have much to offer. Especially in terms of audience. So maybe not.

And if not, who’s on deck?

The Hollywood Reporter throws Kate McKinnon, Damon and Affleck and others out there as potential hosts. I like an off-the-wall suggestion from the comments made on this piece, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He’s SNL tested, funny, charming, and a movie star. He’s “diversity” personified. Why not?

That’s too off-the-wall/outside-the-box for Hollywood, though. So where is the smart money going?

Our friends at Sports Betting Dime are wagering that Kevin Spacey will get the nod. He’s a 9-2 favorite.

Trevor Dueck at Sports Betting Dime gives Johnson (paired up with Kevin Hart–OK) an 11-1 shot, which is cool.

Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig are 6-1 not-quite-long-shots.

Ellen DeGeneres is the leading contender, among TV folk worth considering. She’s been the best hostess in recent years, and there are 12-1 odds she’ll be asked back.

Hugh Jackman? Wrong year for him, with “Wolverine/Logan” far in his rear-view mirror by next winter. McKinnon is a 50-1 long-shot, Dueck says.

Key and Peele? Peele’s new movie (“Get Out”) earns them consideration, but they — like James Corden (Another late night TV host? Yawn), Ricky Gervais (They wouldn’t dare!), Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (Also Golden Globes tested, and NBC stars — never happen.) and a creaking return of the aged egomaniac Billy Crystal (35-1) feel like longer-than-long shots.

Tiny profundities, clever twists and a few giggles are the hallmarks of “Table 19,” a wedding comedy with on-the-nose casting and slight, uneven charms.

It started life as an off-center idea from the Duplass Brothers, of “Cyrus,” “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” and “The Puffy Chair.” Tell the story of strangers, seated together at a table at a wedding reception where none of them rated highly enough in the happy couple’s eyes to be seated closer to the bride and groom.

There’s the unhappily married diner owners (Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson), there because the father of the bride runs diners. Jo (June Squibb of “Nebraska”) was “Nanny Jo,” who helped raise the bride long ago. Walter (Stephen Merchant) is an ex-con nephew of the father of the bride. Renzo (Tony Revolori of “Grand Budapest Hotel”)? He’s an ill-dressed teen on the make with even slimmer connections to the Michigan island resort nuptials.

And then there’s Eloise, played by Anna Kendrick at her most put-upon. She’s the one who bluntly recognizes the Siberia they’ve all been exiled to. Why? She helped plan the wedding. She’s the bride’s oldest friend, and was her maid of honor. But when you split up with the bride’s dopey/hunk best man brother (Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt and Goldie) a month before the Big Event, Table 19 is what you get.

It’s “the table that should have known to ‘RSVP regrets,'” she cracks. And she’s right. Everybody is worried about the ex-maid of honor “causing a scene.” Yeah, it’s coming. They just make us wait for it…”wait for it.”

“I’m FINE.”

Running gags include Renzo’s pep-talking, micro-managing mom (Margo Martindale) whom we only hear in a string of needy, co-dependent cell phone calls. Bino (Kudrow) has worn a jacket that’s exactly the same color as the wait staff at the resort hotel. “Could you take these to table 5?” AWK-ward.

There’s another wedding scheduled for another hall in the hotel, and we repeatedly glimpse the mariachi band that they’ve booked. The Millner-Grotsky wedding has its own ’80s cover band, even though the marrying couple is too young to have experienced Cyndi Lauper, The Go-Gos or The Cars first-hand.

And then there’s the hunk Huck (Thomas Cocquerel) who spies Eloise staring at her ex, and delivers this judgement.

“Nobody deserves a full minute of your attention unless they’re giving it back.”

Might he be her emotional rescue? Will Renzo, sporting a fur bow-tie, get anywhere with the one girl his age at the reception? Will Walter reveal his criminal past? Will Jerry and Bino squabble it out?

“You have a pathological aversion to answering a direct question! You always answer a question with a question!”

Will anybody remember “Nanny Jo?”

“You children are such a disappointment.”

If you know the Duplass Brothers, you know the obvious questions aren’t the ones that’ll be answered, the obvious dilemmas have complications. And everybody — from the callous bride and groom to the jilting best man, the random adult (Andrew Daly) appalled at Renzo’s come-ons to a stranger’s daughter to the Aussie-accented Huck (“Nobody names their kid ‘Huck’ any more.”) has a point of view, and one worth hearing.

That’s a lot to squeeze into an 87 minute film, and not all of it works and much of what does work doesn’t really gel until the later acts. Kendrick, Merchant and Squibb’s casting are all a little too on-the-nose, and young Russell is a bit out of his acting league with this crew.

But if you’re willing to sit “in the upper teens” at a wedding you were only invited to as an afterthought, “Table 19” has its charms and its rewards, and they go beyond a slice of wedding cake and dancing to a cover of “Hold Me Now” by The Thompson Twins.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, drug use, language and some brief nudity

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson, Lisa Kudrow, June Squibb, Stephen Merchant,

Credits:Written and directed by Jeffrey Blitz, based on a story by Mark and Jay Duplass. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:27

A nearly-forgotten pan-cultural romance and its role in an African national success story earns a stately, feel-good treatment in “A United Kingdom,” an historical romance from the director of “Belle.”

It’s well cast, and shot on striking locations. But it’s a love story/historical drama that lurches along in fits and starts thanks to a “hit the high spots” script and somewhat flat direction.

Rosamund Pike is Ruth Williams, a clerical worker in hard-pressed post-war London. When her missionary sister (Laura Carmichael of “Downton Abbey”) lures her to a missionary society dance, she’s open-minded enough to go, and thinks nothing of dancing with the assorted handsome African men she meets there.

But one of them catches her eye. There’s something regal about Seretse Khama. He has a gallantry and gravitas about him. Some of that stems from the fact that he’s played by David Oyelowo, who made a noble Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Selma.” And some of it has been explained by a letter from Keretse’s uncle that opens the film.

“It is time to return home to Bechuana Land,” his regent uncle wrote. Time to take the throne and “ensure the advancement of our people.”

It’s the sort of thing he has to get out of the way after their first real date. He is to be king of his poor, desert-covered land-locked kingdom, lands under a British protectorate but coveted by the increasingly rebellious and racist South African regime to its south, hemmed in by racist Rhodesia to the east and Southwest Africa to the west.

And he cannot imagine going back there without a woman he’s fallen in love with.

The abruptness of this romance might be explained by the times. World War II left its survivors with an urgency that didn’t fade for years. That isn’t laid out in the script, nor is Ruth and Seretse’s ahead-of-their-times indifference to race.

Thirty minutes into the film, they’re married despite the fact that her father “will hate him on sight. He’s cleverer than him, and he’s black.” Thirty minutes in, they fly into apartheid South Africa and make the desert drive to Bechuana Land, where many disapprove of this union, including the ruling uncle (Vusi Kunene).

And thirty minutes in, the British government is all in a huff over this embarrassing marriage that is sure to rile up the wavering Empire commitments of South Africa. Jack Davenport (the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) plays another imperious, sherry-drinking ogre of the Empire, determined to break up the marriage or force this future king to abdicate.

The sneering Tom Felton of the Harry Potter pictures is “our man in Africa,” the commissioner in charge of keeping the peace –doing the Empire’s bidding — in a tribe seemingly riven by this union.  Terry Pheto makes a vivid impression as the future king’s disapproving sister.

Director Amma Assante and screenwriter Guy Hibbert do a good job of re-introducing this piece of history — on a budget. But they lose themselves in the obstacles to romance and never give the players the chance to explore and explain the attraction. Yes, she’s Rosamund Pike. But he’s also very well educated, serious-minded. And Ruth is “a salesman’s daughter” with a clerical job and a little wartime ambulance-driving service.

What, aside from jazz and dancing, brought them together?

Each character shows some mettle in the later acts, when Churchillian chicanery threatens everything Seretse hopes for in his country, for his people and for his own happiness. But the script tips its hand and leans into “feel good” outcomes in a way that you don’t have to know Botswanan history to figure out where “United Kingdom” is going.

Still, it makes for a warm history lesson about a country and a love affair that prefigured a change in a corner of the world where the news, for decades, was dominated by violence, injustice and fear.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some language including racial epithets and a scene of sensuality

Cast: David Oyelowo, Rosemund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton

Credits:Directed by Amma Asante, script by Guy Hibbert. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:51