Movie Nation

If nothing else had happened at the movies this year, 2017 would still go down as that moment when Warner Brothers finally achieved parity — at least in tone and quality — with the Marvel men and women in tights.

“Justice League,” the DC Comics version of “The Avengers” (or “X-Men”), a superhero (and heroine) all-star team — finds laughs, fun action beats and fan-friendly winks and cameos in a picture that’s on a par with the year’s biggest blockbuster, “Wonder Woman.”

It doesn’t hurt that Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) plays a pivotal role in this new aggregation of super-might, a team assembled to fight a planetary threat. More helpful still is the addition of charismatic new players Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller, as a badass, trash-talking Aquaman and a hyper-nebbish of a Flash.

“Buffy” vet Joss Whedon, who made “The Avengers” movies funny, co-wrote the script.

“Dressed like a bat,” the burly Atlantean with all the tattoos growls. “I DIG it!”

“I hear you can talk to fish,” a misinformed Batman (Ben Affleck) counters.

The fresh threat to Earth is cosmic silliness of the most generic variety. An alien named Steppenwolf (I kid you not), digitally inhuman, but with the voice of Ciaran Hinds, needs three  boxes to seize control of the planet and avenge himself against the humans, Amazons and Atlanteans who thwarted him eons ago.

Yeah, “Lord of the Rings” stuff. Yawn.

“You will KNOW the righteousness of power!” he roars in warning. Sure.

The trouble is, Amazon warrior Diana Prince (Gadot) can’t stop this threat by herself. Nor can Bruce Wayne. And Bruce (Affleck) had a hand in killing off Superman (Henry Cavill) a while back, you may recall. Bad move on Bruce’s part.

So they need to round up superheroes based on rumors of who this fellow might really be, where that one actually lives. They need to convince the loner Arthur Curry/Aquaman to join up, win the trust of the computer-assisted Victor Stone/Cyborg  (Ray Fisher) and figure out how to “Pet Sematary” a certain Kryptonian.

The locations, ranging from Iceland to British Columbia and New Zealand, impress, although most outdoor shots are cast in that Zack Snyder blue-grey gloom. The fights are what we’ve come to expect in such pictures (Whedon took over directing duties on re-shoots).

There’s no getting around this contorted, stupid as all get-out story. But the right tone helps put it over. The “team” has its grumpy founder (Batman), its powerhouse smart alec (Aquaman), its “kid” (Flash) and the technically improved computer/war machine (Cyborg).

Wonder Woman is the adult in the room, the Captain America of this franchise.

It’s as if Warners has been making course and casting adjustments, fixing this “universe” on the fly. Middling Superman movie? Give the Man of Steel a smaller role and watch Cavill shine. Batman fighting Superman gets panned?  Push the Bat into the background, too. Affleck’s no Christian Bale, but he’s got a lighter touch.

Make this series’ “Spider-Man,” the eager beaver kid (Flash) a bit leery of his first combat, a chatterbox who owns his junk-food mania (energy requirements) and Jewish go-for-the-gag humor.

Yes, Cyborg is a character as boring as his name. And there are several supporting players simply wasted in forgettable (and forgotten) roles. Joe Morton and Billy Crudup play fathers of two heroes, Amber Heard comes out of the water just long enough to insult her fellow Atlantean (meekly), Jeremy Irons is the first Alfred-the-Butler prone to profanity, and J.K. Simmons is just right, if ridiculously under-used as Police Commissioner Gordon.

But Amy Adams returns as Lois Lane, and Diane Lane comes back as Clark Kent’s mom, bringing heart to the picture. The brawls, as over-familiar in their Bruce-in-a-china shop mayhem, amuse. And you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to not be a little touched by the mythos of the finale.

“Justice League” doesn’t have anyone with the witty way with a line Robert Downey Jr. brings to Ironman, or the swagger of Chris Hemsworth (Thor) to carry it. But Momoa’s bemused physicality has its own cockiness, Miller’s wide-eyed Flash innocence and Gadot’s commitment to earnest, brave and spoiling for a fight Diana put “The Avengers” on notice.

There’s a new team in town, and they don’t need government funding and a dude in an eye-patch to get a dirty job done.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action

Cast: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Henry Cavill, Ezra Miller, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, J.K. Simmons, the voice of Ciaran Hinds

Credits:Directed by) Zack Snyder (and Joss Whedon), script by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:01

No, amigos. He doesn’t have the title role (all will be clear when you the see the movie, which is magical).

But Anthony Gonzalez is the vocal star, playing a child who just wants to make music like his legendary mariachi band-leading hero (Benjamin Bratt) in a family where music is forbidden — some long-held grudge about the musician who left great-great grandma.

On the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), the lad tumbles into the afterlife where he has to contend with annoyed dead relatives, desperate-to-be-remembered ghosts and the legend who inspired him.

Anthony  sings. He swaps lines with Bratt, Gael Garcia Bernal (at least in the movie). And “Coco” isn’t Anthony’s first movie, or his last animated one (voice cast in Pixar’s next one).  I;m interviewing him shortly.

Questions for Anthony? Comment away, and thanks, as always, for the help.

They moved there to pursue her dad’s dream, to be a rich cardiologist serving the wealthy of California.

“I always said we’d move to paradise,” he reassured the family. And look where they ended up — in seaside Palos Verdes, in a clifftop mansion overlooking the Pacific surf.

But there was trouble before they arrived in paradise, our teen narrator, Medina (Maika Monroe of “It Follows”) tells us. She was 16 and “already in trouble in school.” She’s entirely too attached to her more sociable twin brother  Jim (Cody Fern).

They need to find their place here. That title, “The Tribes of Palos Verdes,” suggests where that place is.

And Mom (Jennifer Garner)? She’s so thrown off-balance by this adjustment from heartland Michigan to a rich, rigid “ladies who lunch” world that we know that keeping her on an even keel should have been a family priority all along. Not that her flirtatious, follow-his-bliss husband (Justin Kirk of “Weeds”) cares about that.

This setting and set-up, based on a Karen Croner (“Admission,””One True Thing”) script, plays like “Big Little Lies Lite,” a more narrowly-focused coastal Cali melodrama about a family in crisis, a disaster waiting to happen.

In the Monterrey-set TV show “Lies,” there’s rivalry, social striving, painful personal history and eventually murder to sort out. Here, we wonder who will snap first and who will fall the furthest.

That could be literal, as music video directors turned feature filmmakers Brendan and Emmett Malloy treat us to ominous shots looking down those cliffs to the ever-pounding sea.

But in a metaphoric sense, it is the mother we fear for, and fear. Garner delivers one of her finest performances as a manic depressive with “black hole moods” on her bad days. She taps into something deep and dark in playing a broken, brittle woman whose paranoia about her roaming husband and the isolation he’s hurled her into is well-placed. Sandy veers between conciliatory and unhinged, and their epic fights — at home and in public — rattle their kids, and us.

Thank heavens those kids have discovered surfing, figured out how to keep the peace with the beach bullies The Bay Boys (Mel Gibson’s kid plays one of them). It’s the other things this world exposes them to that could be the bigger threats. Medina’s sexual awakening is not on the safest ground with this macho-infantile crowd. And Jim seems like just the sort of guy who’d enjoy more than just flirting with recreational drugs.

The Malloys keep the focus and the camera in close on Medina’s journey, and Monroe, a hardcore kite surfer, doesn’t just do her own surfing here. She commands our attention, and not just because the Malloys come oh-so-close to objectifying her. She’s paying attention, as teen narrators must do. And we pay attention to her paying attention.

The connection between the twins is discussed but never understood by the twins themselves. Part of this is the film’s myopic Medina point-of-view, but mostly it’s due to the melodramatic plot threads that pile up in the later acts.

With Dad’s new “love” (Alicia Silverstone) and that new love’s attractive son (Noah Silver), there’s more trouble in paradise in store.

All of which leaves the sibling connection under-explained and the picture’s pursuit of “tribes” incomplete. There’s a compactness to it all that I appreciate (“Big Little Lies” had more incidents, but like all limited-run cable series, the story slowly drips out like molasses in winter). But the story and story arc here are truncated and can leave the viewer still-interested if slightly dissatisfied when all is said and done.

MPAA Rating:

Cast: Maika Monroe, Cody Fern Jennifer Garner, Justin Kirk, Alicia Silversone

Credits:Directed by, script by . An IFC release.

Running time: 1:43

Robert Reich started warning about the ticking time bomb of American financial inequality shortly after quitting the Clinton Administration, where he’d been a fairly frustrated Secretary of Labor.

Twenty years ago he gave speeches fretting about the “rage” and “resentment” welling up within the electorate over a financial/taxation/”fixed” system that has been moving money “upward,” creating a nation of the increasingly well-off haves and a burgeoning, once middle-class majority of have-nots.

In the decades since, he’s repeated versions of this message, the “myth” of “the free market” and the selling of that myth by businesses and their Congressional lackies and media mouthpieces to an increasingly unheard, unlistened-to public. He’s written books, popped up on cable news and done commentaries on Public Radio fretting about the day that “somebody” figures out “how to bottle that rage,” dealing a potentially fatal blow to American democracy.

“Saving Capitalism” isn’t an “I told you so” book, or documentary. It’s “America, what went wrong” from a guy who should know.

Reich lays out the history of how this happened (It started under Reagan) and voices frustration at his role in it (he was heard-out but voted down by the de-regulation happy Goldman Sachs alumni working in the Clinton White House, and the GOP Congress that ended economic banking customer/economic protections like The Glass-Steagall Act).

And he tilts at the windmills of American division, the knee-jerk belief, schemed for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, preached by Reagan, reinforced as GOP Gospel via politicians and decades of cynical right wing media tirades, that “government IS the enemy.”

The documentary started life as a tour in support of the book of history and urgent suggestions that the man who popularized the phrase “corporate welfare” sees as solutions. But Reich turned it into a listening tour, visiting Missouri farmers and harrumphing Kansas business leaders, irked that 30 years of getting all the breaks in the tax code and regulatory front has made them demonized “scapegoats.”

Reich is trying to alter the national mindset, trying to repeat the oft-stated alert that the billions that businesses and business organizations pour into influencing elections and politicians has warped a system that brought a higher living standard and rising expectations to generations after World War II. Businesses figured out in the ’70s that political power equaled market power, Reich says. And our elected representatives have let them so tilt the playing field that we’re doomed to a shrinking future of diminished expectations, financial insecurity and political instability.

Keep an eye out for life expectancy, crime and wage stagnation statistics in the coming years, and don’t bet on him being wrong.

The diminutive, soft-spoken Reich is a persuasive speaker, whether you hear him for a few soundbites on TV or in longer commentaries on radio or in books. And while “Saving Capitalism” the movie is light on contrary voices (Nobody was willing to go on camera saying “Everything’s fine. The system works great just as it is!”) and a bit murky in the “action” stage of its arguments, it still makes for an eye-opener, especially for those unfamiliar with Reich’s career.

“The system is always going to be regulated,” he argues.  But now, all the regulation is aimed to help businesses and hurt working people and consumers. Banks get fresh protections from consumers who want to sue them for misdeeds. Whole segments of government have their hands tied by a business-appeasing Congress.

What Reich is hoping for appears to be a “post-Democratic/Republican” discussion, by finding common ground with knee-jerk conservatives like Congressman Dave Brat, a vocal critic of “crony capitalism,” a waking up of farmers and rural voters who see their profit margins shrinking as a result of big business-coddling trade and farm policies and a general recognition that powerless people cannot keep voting out of misdirected rage.

And maybe he’s hoping to reach that core of politicians who recognize that however rich the current perversion of the American System might make them now, or when they become well-paid lobbyists after faithfully serving the needs of their wealthy, well-connected donors, that this warped “influence industrial complex” is unsustainable.

Good luck with that last one.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Robert Reich, Congressman Dave Brat

Credits:Directed by Sari Gilman, Jacob Kornbluth, based on the book by Robert Reich. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:12

So 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.

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.

“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.

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.

Gerard 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.

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.

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

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

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

Running time: 1:49

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.

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.

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