Bond will be back, Nov. 8, 2019

bondSo they’ve got a date in mind. And Daniel Craig is still under contract to do one more James Bond film. Even though the last film really looked as though he was done with Mr. Shaken-Not-Stirred. Craig will be 51 by the time Bond-the-Next hits theaters. And seven years will have passed since the “last” Bond picture.

In other words, with this deal set up, I would not be shocked if they didn’t try to cast this three movies out and come up with a new Bond. I know, I’ve been saying this after “Skyfall” Craig seemed so “OVER this character.”

Because now, according to Deadline.com, they may have a deal — co-producers/financiers/distributors. MGM will now ally itself with upstart Annapurna Pictures.

It’s an Ellison (Silicon Valley) money venture with Megan Ellison in charge, coming to life in 2012 with “The Master” and “Spring Breakers” and “Zero Dark Thirty” getting them off the ground with a bang.

They’re behind such recent daring fare as “Detroit” and “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” and the Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson Oscar-bait period piece “Phantom Thread” is under their banner, too.

We don’t have a title, having long ago exhausted the James Bond titles of Ian Fleming (A remake, since most of the movies adhere close to formula?). The director won’t be Sam Mendes (supposedly), and Denis Villeneuve, the French-Canadian Spielberg (Ridley Scott?), is a leading contender. He’s on the top of every short list these days, which explains “Blade Runner: 2049.” Sort of.

 

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Preview: Aspiring journalist risks all to write about “The Pirates of Somalia”

Evan Peters stars in a film, based on a true story, of an aspiring journalist who heads to the Horn of Africa (pre-“Captain Phillips”) to make his name writing about the lawless state of Somalia.

VERY impressive supporting cast for this one, including Al Pacino, Melanie Griffith and Barkhad Abdi (speaking of “Captain Phillips”). Limited release, early Dec.

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Box Office: “Thor” hammers in another $54 million, “Orient Express” impresses with $28, “Daddy’s Home Two” $27

boxoffice3“Thor: Ragnarok” has revived 2017’s box office fortunes, pretty much single hammer-handedly, hurtling over $200 million on its second weekend of release. Spending a little money on the Nordic blond has paid off, in spades– $54 million more, this weekend.

But for the non-comic book fans in filmdom, there’s good news, too. The old-fashioned whodunit (and remake) “Murder on the Orient Express” is opening to an impressive $27-28 million, based on late Thursday and all-day Friday results. As I noted in my review, it’s a holiday picture adults can take their older relatives to, and it’s gorgeous and just-enough fun to be a pleasant ride. Ken Branagh’s remake of Agatha Christie’s hoary old murder mystery teases to a sequel at its end. A bit cheeky, I thought. But by Jove, Branagh may get to make it after all.

He has a helluva lot of fun in the part., too.

The excruciating “Daddy’s Home Two” added John Lithgow and Mel Gibson as Daddies to the “Daddies” — funny how Mel’s crimes against public perception pale next to what’s erupting in Hollywood right now. And even though it just doesn’t have the laughs or life lessons (co-parenting in the Age of Divorce) or element of surprise the first film did, it’s a proven holiday brand. Over $27 million, with a chance to catch “Orient Express” by Sunday night.

Oddly, people (a few of them) are still showing up for the latest Madea Halloween movie, and the latest “Jigsaw” reboot.

But “Lady Bird” opened big, breaking box office per-screen average records, and “LBJ” is getting another week just outside of it.

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Preview: Christian Bale goes West for “Hostiles”

Back in the studio system days, a leading man could count on being shoved into war movies, gangster movies, boxing pictures and Westerns.

Christian Bale is getting another crack at the last of those, at long last. Next month, we’ll see if “Hostiles” is as dark and disturbing as this trailer makes it feel. Rosamund Pike co-stars, with Western vet and Bale’s “Yuma” co-star Ben Foster, and…of course, the Great Wes Studi. Long, “Searchers” like story, and the director of “Crazy Heart” reaching for “epic.” I can’t wait.

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Movie Review: Gerald Butler saves the world…again, in Generic “Geostorm”

storm1Gerard Butler had his moment.

Great fame didn’t come to him in the title role of “The Phantom of the Opera,” or via that sweet, sentimental indie romance, “Dear Frankie.”

But when it did, by virtue of his brutish, manly turn as King Leonidas in “300” (2006), he made hay while the sun shone. Romantic comedies with the likes of Jennifer Aniston, romantic weepers (“P.S. I Love You”) and engaging, blustery supporting work in “Nim’s Island,” a turn with “Guy Ritchie (“RocknRolla”), even a little Shakepeare (“Coriolanus”).

Far too many of these flopped, however. Comedies (“Playing for Keeps”) dried up, offbeat fare (“Chasing Mavericks,” A Family Man”) wouldn’t pay the bills.

Which is why we’ve seen the Scot morph into an utterly generic B-list man of action, the star Hollywood calls if Dwayne Johnson, Liam Neeson, Denzel or one of the younger versions of them (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, etc) aren’t interested.

“Geostorm” isn’t “Olympus Has Fallen” or “Gods of Egypt.” It’s no better or worse than any of them, but it gives one little hope for the upcoming “Hunter Killer” (sub captain tries to save the Russian president) or “Den of Thieves” (ruthless cops vs. ruthless robbers) or, for that matter, “Angel Has Fallen,” sequel to “London Has Fallen” which was a sequel to “Olympus Has Fallen.” Butler is in a bad-movie rut.

Directed by the producing partner of “2012,” “Independence Day,” etc. it’s an effects-driven extravaganza with cities torched or flooded, an outer space element and a largely international cast. None of which adds up to a feather in the Great Scot’s bonnet.

He’s the renegade, can-do scientist whose work on “Dutch Boy,” a vast weather-controlling satellite network, could have been a great gift to the world.

“It works. You’re welcome.”

Until, of course, something goes wrong. And he’s lost in the sea of other faces, storylines that send him into space when much of the mayhem, conspiracies and what not are faced by his scientist-brother (Jim Sturgess) here on Earth.

Sturgess gets the love interest (Abbie Cornish, as a Secret Service agent), the tech hottie to flirt with (Zazie Beetz), the car chase and the bullets to dodge. Butler? He’s got the little girl (Tabitha Bateman) he’s “promised” to come home to. From space. He’s bickering with the Mexican (comic Eugenio Derbez), the Egyptian with a British character name (Amr Waked) or the German station commander (Alexandra Maria Lara) on a vast space station, trying to figure out why these satellites have started cooking Hong Kong and freezing Afghanistan.

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Dean Devlin sees to it that the effects come off.

The one “cute” bit sees Sturgess, the government intermediary for all this, get schooled and insulted with his first-ever old-age joke by the tech whiz.

“Awww, Grandpa needs help fixing his phone?”

The rest — you’re two steps ahead of the plot, from the first city to face the true apocalypse of the Geostorm (Orlando) to the villain who is behind all this (Read the cast list below, and guess).

And Butler, a great favorite of mine and legions of little old ladies who swooned over his “Phantom” (“Gerry-atrics,” we call them)? Maybe it’s apt that he’s lost in space here.

One thing easily recognized when you see a leading man trapped in mid-Nicolas Cage free fall is an actor in eclipse.

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MPAA Rating: PG-13 for destruction, action and violence

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Adepero OduyeAndy Garcia, Eugenio Derbuez, Ed Harris, Daniel Wu, Richard Schiff, Talitha Bateman

Credits:Directed by Dean Devlin, script by Dean DevlinPaul Guyot. A — release.

Running time: 1:49

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Movie Review: Nature vs. Nurture gets a workout with “My Friend Dahmer”

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The Ohio high school’s class trip to Washington, D.C. was a bit of a bust. Until, that is, one classmate had the chutzpah to get on a pay phone, make a call and make a pitch.

Before they know it, he and a handful of his classmates are shaking hands and sharing a a few life-goals with the vice president of the United States.

Cute story, something to tell your own kids decades after it happened, right? That day in 1978 when you met Vice President Walter Mondale. And the class joker who made it happen? That would be the weird kid in school, the solitary blond named Jeffrey Dahmer.

“My Friend Dahmer” is a “Dazed and Confused” look back at high school in the ’70s — the hideous fashions, the ugly decor, the high school hijinx that a group of band nerds/tennis team pals got into.

But hanging over it all is the darkest of shadows. That awkward kid who never quite fit in, who got attention by faking spastic fits for laughs in class, in the halls and at the mall? He become one of the most notorious and gruesome serial killers in American history. It’s “Dazed and Confused” with a chilling true-crime edge.

Every mass murderer makes us reach for answers. The spree killer who shoots up a church, a concert, a nightclub or an elementary school, the methodical, one-murder-at-a-time serial killer who develops a taste for taking lives, the genocidal freak who oversees the slaughter of thousands or millions — there has to be a “reason,” right?

“My Friend Dahmer” gives us one of the most fascinating portraits of a serial killer, ever. We meet young Jeffrey (Ross Lynch of Disney Channel’s “Austin & Ally) his junior year. He sits alone on the bus. The only kid who speaks to him in school is also the only kid more bullied than him.

Hey, you didn’t let the fact you were a Neil Sedaka fan get around in the ’70s.

His father (Dallas Roberts) frets over the kid’s lack of friends, the time Jeffrey spends in the shed out back, his “lab.” Because Jeffrey’s become engrossed with picking up road kill and dissolving the flesh off it with chemicals dad brings home from work.

When we meet Jeff’s mom (Anne Heche), we understand the father’s worry. She’s flighty, flaky and impulsive. And she’s just a month out of a mental hospital.

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But maybe environment can trump genetics. If Jeff would just join different clubs, “get out of your shell,” make friends, perhaps this story could have a happy ending.

“My Friend Dahmer,” based on a memoir by a guy who knew the killer as a kid, reconstructs that last year, when Dahmer became a prankster — inviting kids to laugh at his “fits” (fake), forming friendships when they pick up on his ingenious performance-art style stunts.

The new pals (Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Harrison Holzer) work on the yearbook. “What if I…was in every (club) photo?” The image of the creepy, blank-faced Dahmer staring out of Honor Society, Spanish Club, Debate, etc. shots for all eternity is too hilarious to pass up.

Marc Meyers’ film zeroes in on speculative material about Dahmer’s home life — an unstable mother, a father overwhelmed and ready for divorce, both parents’ preference for Jeffrey’s more “normal” younger brother.

His sexual awakening is a confused blend of peer-pressure girlie magazine ogling, seeking acknowledgement from female classmates, contempt for mother’s effeminate (and spastic) decorator, and a growing obsession with his fit, jogging doctor (Vincent Kartheiser).

Nothing here suggests someone who has “just snapped.” We witness a deepening, disheartening antipathy for life, human or otherwise. God forbid this kid should come into contact with pets.

Lynch is deadpan perfect in the title role, an academically under-whelming, socially-awkward and musically mediocre trumpet player battered from all sides, with no help in sight. High school eventually gives him a quantum of solace, but whatever inroads he makes socially (even bullies appreciate a good fake spastic fit), the pall that hangs over the picture ensures that we know it’ll never be enough.

Heche doesn’t let us hate the mother. Madness isn’t something you can blame somebody for. Roberts’ father-figure has the right worries even if he prioritizes his own happiness. And Dahmer’s high school experience isn’t a “Carrie” horror that aptly explains what he became.

Which, in the end, hamstrings this thriller. We can only know so much, and the guesses don’t quite add up to anything “textbook.”

But “My Friend Dahmer” tallies a bleak scoresheet in the “nature (crazy mom, crazy kid) vs. nurture” (bullied kid, absent father, morbid hobbies) debate.

Whatever path Young Jeffrey was headed down, a lack of competent, unquestioning love — from parents, from any healthy romantic interest — made certain he never strayed from it.

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MPAA Rating: 

Cast:Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Alex Wolff, Dallas Roberts, Vincent Kartheiser

Credits: Written and directed by Marc Meyers, based on a Derk Backderf memoir. A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:47


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Movie Review: A heaping helping of ham hurts “Last Flag Flying”

flag1“Last Flag Flying” is Richard Linklater’s homage to “The Last Detail,” a dark service comedy that was an early screen triumph for Jack Nicholson.

But Linklater’s film, about old comrades-in-arms traveling to bury the just killed-in-action son of one of their number, is a sentimental slog of a movie, more “Bucket List” than “Last Detail.” It ambles along, with a full hour of preliminaries, and flies or flops on the endless, over-eager mugging of Bryan Cranston. 

It’s fitting that the “Breaking Bad” star plays a retired Marine running his own bar in Norfolk, Virginia, and not just because Norfolk is a military town. It’s damned closed to Smithfield, and home to the sort of ham Cranston morphs into for this.

Sal is a true hale-fellow well-met barkeep, a big drinker and bigger talker. But he doesn’t recognize the quiet, sad-faced man who parks himself at the far end of “Sal’s Bar & Grill.”

“DOC!”

It’s a long-discarded nickname. They served in Vietnam together, and Doc (Steve Carell) was a Navy Corpsman (medic) with Sal’s Marine platoon.

“I saved his LIFE once!” Sal brags to a rummy.

“You never saved my life.”

Whatever happened “over there” was long ago (the film is set in 2003). Doc, whose real name is Larry, spent time in military prison afterwards. Sal was a lifer who has run this bar for years and years. They share a past and a big secret.

Whatever that is, it’s compelling enough to make Sal take Doc on a road trip, no questions asked. To church. Sal’s “What’d you get me into, Doc?” is still hanging in the air when he realizes who the compelling, popular village preacher is. Rev. Mueller (Laurence Fishburne) was once “Mueller the Mauler,” a bonafide hell-raiser (with Sal) back when he was in the Corps.

He’s a pious, compassionate man. And he’s the other companion Doc wants for his real purpose for showing up. His son, a Marine, has just been killed in Iraq, “a hero.” And he wants these two guys he hasn’t seen in 30 years to accompany him as he attends his son’s funeral on the hallowed ground of Arlington.

If you know your geography, that’s a very short trip. And if you’re going to build days of feuding, bonding, guilting and grieving into your movie, things have to get complicated. You need a much longer journey if you’re going to convince the preacher to take up swearing again, give Sal time to sober up enough to think about someone else  for the first time in his life and Larry time to grieve, and maybe have a strained laugh or three with guys who treated him like the gullible kid he was, back in the day.

Fishburne is perfectly cast as the stern, sensitive true believer in the room.

“We pay for what we say, Salvatore,” he lectures.

“PUT it on my TAB!”

Carell is largely silent for long stretches, his character stumbling into the background of a movie that’s supposed to be his quest.

Because we need all this screen time for Cranston’s blowhard to blow. Hard.

“The worst thing that can happen to anybody just dropped on you” is as soft as he gets with Larry. “You’re just going to have to deal with it.”

J. Quinton Johnson plays a colorlessly written comrade of the dead Marine. Yul Vazquez shines as a “He’s a hero and I’m sticking with that” Marine Lieutenant Col. who tries to convince Larry his son’s death meant something, and that he should stick to the Corps’ Bush Era protocols.

Linklater’s film finds its truth and its virtues in the same places as the equally-flawed “Thank You for Your Service”  — in the rituals of grief, honor and mourning within the service. The Dover Air Force Base hangar where caskets arrive, out of the public eye (a “control the message” bit of Bush/Cheney censorship), is empty save for a few mourners, coffee and a box of Krispy Kremes.

 

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But the honored dead earn formal, compelling escort by the Corps and anybody else who served, from an impromptu gathering of Marine pallbearers to the Amtrak baggage handler who won’t leave a casket alone during transport.

Linklater is still able to move us, even after he’s bored us half out of the movie with his long set-up, even after Cranston has sucked all the oxygen out of the picture with his hernia-inducing twinkle, even after we’ve given up on “Last Flag Flying” as too damned cute for its own good.

2stars1

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout including some sexual references

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Steve Carell, Yul Vazquez, J. Quinton Johnson

Credits:Directed by Richard Linklater, script by Richard Linklater and Darryl Ponicsan. An Amazon/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:04

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Movie Review: Do Your “Disaster Artist” Homework and watch “The Room”

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Meh, I’ve seen worse.

Every year exposes the movie reviewing fellowship to a couple of delusional, talent-free putzes with the family money and the chutzpah to get a movie made and “distributed.” I saw one back in September, “Mike Boy,” that may be the best illustration ever of the maxim, “Not everybody who can get a movie made, should.”

But “worst” isn’t really the label those who have turned “The Room” into a cult film have embraced. “Best worst film ever made” is what they see in it. And that’s harder to debate. As awful as “Mike Boy” is, nobody will remember it. It takes a special madness and singular, delusional sense of self to conjure up a “Plan 9 from Outer Space” or “Tusk.”

Tommy Wiseau, whose proud, dedicated ineptitude is the subject of an awards season favorite, James Franco’s “The Disaster Artist,” is just such a crank.

A big dreamer with dyed Geddy Lee hair, a Gene Simmons yen for sucking in his cheeks and the accent (Polish?) of Borat’s hair-dresser, Wiseau raised millions (Hah!) for what amounts to a dreadful softcore porn melodrama.

He wrote, directed and stars in this story of sex and infidelity in San Francisco. And every single thing about it is stunningly, hilariously off.

The sets reveal their plywood-flimsy construction. The lighting screams “My last job was on a ’70s soap opera, and I got fired.” The film stock and color correction — endless establishing shots panning down the San Francisco Bay Bridge — doesn’t match from scene to scene.

The staging is off, with camera placement so clumsy every edit reveals the actors aren’t on the same visual plane. Continuity errors such as having a character serve herself and her fiance a glass filled with bourbon, and pouring what looks like vodka into it as if it’s empty, abound. “Never been to America” blunders (infamous “tossing the FOOTball” scenes) turn up.

The crew’s contempt for Wiseau shows in every shot.

And the writing. “Johnny” (Wiseau) is engaged to “Lisa” (Juliette Danielle). They’ve been together “five years.” Or is it “seven years?” She’s cheating with “Mark” (Greg Sestero), “but he’s my BEST FRIEND.” Mark must say that line 30 times. Lisa? Maybe half a dozen more. Johnny? At least three or four times himself.

“I’m going to do what I want to do, and that’s it. (Pause) What do YOU think I should do?”

Characters make more entrances into the soundstage-built apartment Lisa and Johnny share than you’d see in a season’s worth of “Friends.” Lisa, Johnny, Mark, Johnny’s inappropriate young ward (Philip Haldiman), Lisa’s friends, all perplexing Lisa’s mother (Carolyn Minott), who finally speaks up on behalf of the audience.

“How many people come into this apartment every day?”

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Characters don tuxedos to play a game of catch, confessional scenes are staged on a plainly-fake rooftop with process shot images of San Francisco in the background, and everybody arrives at the same piece of fake alley, and crowding into the frame only heightens the surreal/unreal coincidence of it all.

And half the time, Wiseau’s lines sound and look dubbed.

“You are TEARING me APART, Lisa!”

That’s the trick to making a cult film. It can’t just be bad, it has to be memorably so, and “The Room” is. Fans shout at the screen, wait for the aged pug dog’s first appearance and throw spoons.

So there’s no point further panning this cult calamity (again) now, 14-15 years after “the best worst film ever” was made. You already know what Wiseau and his adherents say to that. It’s in the script.

“Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!”

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(Roger Moore’s review of “The Disaster Artist” is here.)

MPAA Rating: R for sexuality, language and brief violence

Cast: Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, Philip Haldiman, Robyn Harris

Credits:Written and directed by Tommy Wiseau. A Wiseau Films release.

Running time: 1:39

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Movie Review: Grandpas can’t Double the “Fun” in “Daddy’s Home Two”

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It’s an enduring myth of screen comedies that directors who know their material isn’t all that can somehow wring laughs out of it through retakes.

Their instructions to the actors in such cases are an inside Hollywood cliche.

“Again, but FASTER.

Sean Burns was saying that — a LOT — on the set of “Daddy’s Home Two.” He had that winning pairing of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg back for their second “Daddy’s Home” (they also did “The Other Guys”). And Burns went for on-the-nose casting in bringing in these two step-dads acting as “co-dads” to their shared brood of second marriage kids.

John Lithgow plays the silly, touchy-feely father to sensitive helicopter parent Brad (Ferrell). And Mel Gibson growls onto the set as macho estranged pop to rough-and-ready Dusty (Wahlberg).

But the script is so starved of originality, jokes and slapstick laughs that Burns pushed his actors to deliver lines faster and faster. Wahlberg, always antic on the set with Ferrell, hurtles through his dialogue in a near-slurred blur.

It rarely pays off, as the jokes are just lame. Well, there is the odd moment where Dusty, rendered more sensitive (he’s still a hothead) by endless exposure to kind but wussy Brad, suggests his cranky, womanizing ex-astronaut old man could learn by example, maybe take up improv comedy like Brad’s dad.

“You should look into that.”

“I’d rather look into a loaded gun.”

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That’s the dynamic here, the emasculated Whitaker son-and-father (they greet each other with long kisses — on the mouth) baited and bullied by Dusty’s brute of a dad, a man who sets them all up in a family mountain lodge Christmas holiday just to see the “sensitive” Dusty man-up and blow up at these guys who seem like PBS Kids versions of male role models.

Guns figure into it, and drinking. The families go to the movies on Christmas and make fun of a Liam Neeson picture with “kids who curse” — just as they do in their movie.

Dusty’s bratty mean girl daughter (Didi Costine) by marriage is a terrible influence on his own daughter (Scarlett Estevez), and they’re both tormenting Dusty’s super-sensitive son (Owen Vacarro) that Brad is raising to be a pushover.

Little Dylan is interested in girls for the first time, so Brad has the talk — about the best ways to get yourself into “the friend zone” with a girl who will then run off and marry somebody else.

The one gag that Chevy Chase would have been thrilled to have in “National Lampoon Christmas Vacation” involves a snow blower and a tangle of installed and lit Christmas lights.

Gibson parrots a bunch of Fox News talking points to “Mr. War-On-Christmas,” his endless come-ons playing like sexual harassment suits waiting to happen.

None of that is funny, and the glee hinted at when we saw the first trailers to this, the perfect casting of Lithgow, fails to live up to its promise. His introduction in the movie trailers is set to “Love Will Keep Us Together” (Gibson arrives to AC/DC). But the final cut of the movie is a limp Barry Manilow substitute.

They look right as fathers and sons, but the chemistry isn’t there and the conflicting parenting styles and relationships that “grow” set off zero sparks.

Attempts to make the poor wives (Linda Cardellini, Alessandra Ambrosio) more than after-thoughts fall flat, and the return of John Cena (Dusty’s wife’s ex) has no payoff.

At least it’s got Wahlberg, sputtering out lines as if he’s in a save-my-cell-phone-minutes rush. But faster, in this case, doesn’t add up to funnier.

1half-star

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for suggestive material and some language

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Linda Cardellini, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Alessandra Ambrosio, John Cena

Credits:Written and directed by Sean Burns. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:40

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Movie Review: Do you Dare Listen for the “Devil’s Whisper”?

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“Devil’s Whisper” is a demonic possession thriller with a Spanglish twist. This time, the family under threat has history with this demon, has a kid aspiring to become a Catholic priest under its own roof, and the curses and warnings about that demon are in both Spanish and English.

It’s not terribly scary, though the money spent on this version of the ghoulish, ghostly “Slenderman” monster (they’re always skinny) was worth it.

Alex (Luca Oriel of TV’s “Shamesless”) seems like the perfect son. He’s taken to his fireman stepdad (Marcos A. Ferraez) and idolizes his hip, war-vet priest (Rick Ravanello), so much so that his upcoming Confirmation could very well be his first step toward the priesthood. Even his confessions are PG, PG-13 at best.

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“Bless me, Father. I snuck into an R-rated movie with my friends.”

“Why movie, my son?”

“Mad Max.”

“Yeah, I LOVED that.”

But the move to their new house got Alex poking around grandma’s old armoire. That’s where he finds the box with no lid. And after he and stepdad almost short out the lights trying to saw it open, a crucifix pops out. Alex puts it around his neck.

You don’t have to be Catholic to know there’s trouble coming. He sees a specter in his closet, streetlights pop on and off. He hears the “Devil’s Whisper.”

I like the way the film presents the kid as idealized — so devout he won’t “Swear to God” as a teen promise — and then humanizes him. He, like stepdad, lets the occasional cussword out. He lusts after the slightly older Lia (Jasper Polish), a girl who could…teach him things.

Teen drinking, peeping tom exploits with his pals (Don’t try this at home, kids.), kids flipping each other off in church, and all this is BEFORE he gets those Satanic circles under his eyes, before he goes bad.

The story’s secrets are dull, the remedies (priest, shrink) duller, the resolution is tried and true and trite. The lead is more adequate than charismatic.

That applies to the picture, as a whole — almost adequate.

But the depiction of a child turning into a rebellious teen, with a demonic twist, works.

If you’re a demonic possession movie completist, if you simply must see everything in this worn genre that crosses your path as it crosses itself, you could do worse.

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MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, demonic frights, alcohol abuse by teens, and profanity

Cast: Luca Oriel, Rick Ravanello, Tessie Santiago, Marcos A. Ferraez, Jasper Polish

Credits:Directed by Adam Ripp, script by Adam Ripp, Paul Todisco, Oliver Robins. A Vega, Baby!/Sony Home Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:25

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