Movie Nation

What a difference a title makes, right? I mean, who’s going to buy tickets to a screen romance titled “Holding Pattern.”

This thin, slow Jake Goldberger dramedy sat in cinema limbo until somebody had the bright idea of re-titling it “Almost Friends.” That and the fact that star Freddie Highmore landed a new TV series (“The Good Doctor”) to replace the one (“Bates Motel”) that he was in when he filmed this back in 2015 made this one worth releasing.

Charlie (Highmore) is a young man adrift. He’s made a career out of working at the local revival cinema, never moved on when he should have, never finished his education, never lived up to whatever promise he had. He still lives at home with Mom (Marg Helgenberger) and her second husband, still puts in the big brother time to his much-younger sibling.

He can’t even get up the nerve to flirt with “the only girl I’ve ever felt charming around.” That would be Amber (Odeya Rush), cute barista at the hapless (not in a funny way), hip Calf-Fiend coffee shop.

But his badgering pal Ben (Haley Joel Osment) finally prompts some action. And that’s when Charlie’s safe, “holding pattern” of a life breaks formula.’

Because Amber is deeply involved with vain, egotistical college track star Brad (Taylor John Smith). It’s just that Charlie’s awkward, say-the-wrong-things charm earns her attention. Charlie’s gift for stumbling into saying the wrong thing puts him on the spectrum of his “Good Doctor” character, who is actually autistic.

At least Charlie has Heather (Rita Volk) to tell his troubles to.

“Our mothers met in Lamaze class. It’s an eternal damnation kind of thing.”

And he’s got a talent, which Amber slowly drags out of him.

“Can you cook?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Goldberger’s script hangs on a couple of Big Secrets — his and hers — revealed in the middle acts. And it lives or dies on any sparks the two leads set off, which are few in number.

There must have been an alarming moment in the editing process when a scene involving the drunken lout of a cousin (Jake Abel) Amber lives with goes on a date with the too-sharp-for-him Heather turns out to be funnier, more romantic, more honest, more heartfelt in the writing and playing than anything the younger, no-more-attractive leads can manage.

The Big Reveals don’t knock the viewer for a loop, not when we ponder the reasons Osment (“The Sixth Sense”) was cast as Ben. A side story about Charlie’s no-good hustler dad (Christopher Meloni) adds an arc to the idea that Charlie will break out of his comfort zone, but adds no real interest to the film.

The Israeli actress and “Goosebumps” alumnus Rush seems to get her best shots in movies about this size (“The Bachelors,” “The Hunter’s Prayer,” “Lady Bird”). The one-time child-star has yet to show us she’s much more than an exceptionally voluptuous pair of lips.

Highmore (“August Rush,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) is managing the transition from child star to adult roles just as tentatively. His agent is smart to point him at TV, where his low-heat style registers better over the course of longer form storytelling.

Thus, we have stars who aren’t quite up to breaking the “Holding Pattern” that Goldberger’s script puts the movie in.  Oh, to have been a fly on the wall that day he watched the Cousin Jake/Heather date scene cut together and realized, “Well, shoot. THERE’s my movie.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, alcohol abuse

Cast: Freddie Highmore, Odeya Rush, Haley Joel Osment, Marg Helgenberger, Christopher Meloni, Rita Volt, Jake Abel

Credits:Written and directed by Jake Goldberger . A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:40

“Thor: Ragnarok” looked like a $100 million hit Friday morning, based on Thursday night’s numbers.

But Friday changed all that and for the better. It’s now headed toward a $115-120 opening, right at the top end of projections.

That’s the best opening for a “Thor” movie, by a long shot. And that’s swallowing most of the money this weekend at the box office.

“A Bad Moms Christmas” proves that as long as you release your mediocre holiday comedy before anybody else’s holiday comedy comes out, there’s cash to be pocketed. Midnight Sunday, it should have earned $20 million or so. Wednesday opening paid off…a little.

Discouraging to see “Only the Brave” fade from sight. Oscar contenders don’t do that. “LBJ” will not crack the top ten, and “Lady Bird” opens big on a handful of screens.

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“Thor: Ragnarok” is the best-reviewed Marvel movie. Ever. On Rottentomatoes, anyway.

On the more discerning and nuanced Metacritic, most everyone still says they liked it. “Love?” Let’s not get carried away, here.

As many have pointed out, it makes little sense — plotwise. Lots of funny lines, winking at the audience, casting coups — Blanchett, Goldblum. Cameos, and not just Stan Lee, either. Pandering, not plot, make it work.

How much will it earn on its opening weekend? It could do a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday weekend-worthy $118 million or so, says the Box Office Guru. says the Box Office Guru. 

As it’s already had a healthy overseas opening and a big Thursday night, Box Office Mojo uses that to justify a prediction of a $120 million opening.

This isn’t an “Avengers” movie, although Hulk has a supporting role. It’s light and loose and fun, but is it a pre-sold package the way “Captain America” and recent “Avengers” have been? I could see it pulling in $100 million, but I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t. It’s Thor, for Pete’s sake. Not Iron Man, Cap, et al. We shall see.

“A Bad Mom’s Christmas” came out Wed., and might hit $20 by midnight Sunday. It’s pretty bad, and even though the first “Bad Moms” stuck around long enough to clear $113 million, I don’t see that repeated here. Bad movie. Quite bad.

The best picture of the weekend in my book is “Lady Bird,” which, like the less lauded “LBJ,” not open on a lot of screens.

“Jigsaw” won a weak weekend pre-Halloween. Expect it to fall off the table this time around.

Greta Gerwig has matured out of playing the adorable, quirky, self-absorbed with self-invention young women of “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Damsels in Distress.” In film after film, she’s let us see the social;y striving — posh, put-on accents, affected to-the-manner-born posing, feigned enthusiasm and self-promotion in every character (“Frances Ha,” “Mistress America”).

Hard to pull that off past 30. But with “Lady Bird,” she’s found a way to pass the torch.

The wonderful Saoirse Ronan channels her writer-director in Gerwig’s self-written, semi-autobiographical comedy “Lady Bird.” And as amusing as it was to hear the affected, pretentiously daffy Gerwig locutions playing perky, upbeat and willfully dizzy Gerwig characters in Woody Allen’s fantasy of New York, the writer-director has parked this rough draft of herself  in a warm, witty and wise comedy about growing up in Sacramento, and yearning far-too-openly for something else.

Christine (Ronan) goes to a Catholic School with, her furiously critical mother never forgets to remind her, “rich kids.” Mom, given an acrid desperation by Laurie Metcalf, is equally blunt in telling Christine, “We’re NOT rich,” that her daughter’s college aspirations don’t match her talents. “You can’t even pass your driver’s test…You aren’t even worth state (college) tuition.”

But in 2002, in the shadow of 9/11, a Sacramento girl can dream. Grades be damned, she wants to go to an school in the East, to New York.

“I want to go where CULTURE is.”

Her guidance counselor laughs in her face. Her teachers, some of them nuns (Lois Smith) are gentler, but just as realistic. It’s just that a girl who has renamed herself “Lady Bird,” who hopelessly runs for class president every year, who’s clueless that her innate theatricality means she might want to consider school plays instead of hopeless dreams of mathletic glory, isn’t about realism.

When she finally dips her toe in the joint girls school/boys school fall musical of her senior year (Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along”) Lady Bird isn’t an instant star (though Ronan allows her a flamboyant charisma and stage presence).  But that’s where she meets her first love.

Danny, given an awkward, amusing luminescence by Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”) clicks with Lady Bird. She may be, as she declares, “from the wrong side of the tracks,” but to Danny, she’s a kindred spirit, and Hedges registers unalloyed delight in her presence. If this dizzy, naive teen from the provinces can charm this rich, handsome leading man, who knows where she can go in the world?

Gerwig casts a rich, lived-in tapestry for Lady Bird to inhabit, and that makes the high school movie cliches play fresh. The plump best friend (Beanie Feldstein) who shares Lady Bird’s academic underachievement, the rich girl (Odeya Rush) she wants to impress, the brooding “deep” musician (Timothee Chalamet) she is drawn to all are given a Gerwig twist.

A JV football coach/priest called in to direct a play, in a pinch, feels like a rejected idea from a John Hughes comedy of the ’80s. But it’s funny here.

The beating heart of the picture pulses through the parents. Metcalf, so much more than “Rosanne’s” sister, makes the mother a study in furious resignation, an unfiltered, foul-mouthed nurse who alternately indulges and insults, coddles and cudgels her youngest child. And playwright/actor Tracy Letts (“The Lovers,” TV’s “Divorce”) tries his hand at warm and cute as “the good cop” dad, the one there to comfort and spoil his daughter and encourage the dreams her mom is hellbent on crushing.

Ronan, at 23 reaching the end of her teen movie window, is never less than brilliant as a girl in mid-evolution. Lady Bird’s poses, priorities and passions are mercurial and Ronan and Gerwig get this across in big, broad strokes. Let’s try smoking. Let’s dazzle the rich girl by playing an elaborate prank on Sister Sarah Joan (Smith). Let’s take on the “bad boy” musician instead of the sweet-souled actor.

It’s the genius of this genial, formulaic coming-of-age comedy that Lady Bird never seems too broadly drawn. We’ve known this kid, gone to school with her, watched her reinventions continue straight on into college.

And every so often we caught a glimpse of the “real” her, her farsighted reach for a sophisticated world that the rest of us hadn’t yet sensed. “Yeah,” we thought. “She’s right. She doesn’t belong here. ”

MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content, brief graphic nudity and teen partying

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Lois Smith, Odeya Rush

Credits: Written and directed by Greta Gerwig. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:33

“Tragedy Girls” is a “Heathers” for the social media age. Or that’s its aim.

Director/co-writer Tyler MacIntyre takes aim at a youth culture that’s all about “likes” and page-views and branding, and parks a couple of pretty, heartless horror fangirls right in the middle of it.

They’re sure to make a bloody mess.

“Heavy flow day,” McKayla explains.

“You want to make an omelet, you have to kill some ex-boyfriends,” Sadie says.

Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp play witty BFFs at Rosedale High, cruel teens who aren’t above using hapless boys to lure a suspected machete killer out on the “old” covered bridge so they can kidnap him — after he’s butchered the kid Sadie pretends to make out in the car with.

Stripped of his mask, Lowell (Kevin Durand) is an unthinking brute. The girls may know the difference between “serial” killers and “spree” killers, but not him (or American media, for that matter).

“We’re your biggest fans, dude. We need a trainer, a teacher — Yoda!”

They want to turn into “horror legends.” For a laugh. They’ve watched every movie, absorbed every disposing-of-a-body-via-chemistry lesson of “Breaking Bad.”

“It took a LOT of stray cats and dogs to get this formula JUST right”

They plan on turning what the sheriff (Timothy V. Murphy) won’t tell the town into a social media sensation. “Lowell” (Durand) has killed multiple people. Sadie and McKayla plan to add to that number, butchering exes, hated classmates, whoever, and “report” it on their Tragedy Girls blog — “Hashtag #tragedygirls!” — and get famous.

Just like the Kardashians!

Tbe captured serial killer angle is then forgotten all through the movie’s middle acts as the self-absorbed/selfie-obsessed teens plot first to commit a few murders. But nobody dies easily, so they casually administer a different coup de grace to each victim. Their learning curve involves making sure that the deaths can’t be dismissed as “accidents,” which the first few are.

Their goal — to get the whole “spree killer” gossip they’re creating out in the open so their Internet fame can be assured.

“Hashtag ‘tragedygirls’ they repeat, to everybody they meet — especially the media.

An ex-boyfriend, played by Josh Hutcherson, re-masculated after the emasculation of “The Hunger Games,” runs a competing blog and rides a motorcycle? He gots to go.

“I could see it as a ‘Death Proof’ kind of thing. I could TOTALLY work with that”

The fireman Big Al (Craig Robinson) is a threat? Let’s meet him at the gym.

It’s a glib, heartless affair, this business of achieving “the recognition we deserve.” Once you get the point, the numbed-to-violence inhumanity of Generation Web Fame, the never-a-thought for anybody else narcissism, the joke wears thin.

Once you’ve been shocked at a bloody dismemberment, that shock is past.

The relationship will be tested, but not by an outside romance that grabs us.

The banter is snarky, snappy and wickedly funny. But the story arc is flatly horror movie  imitative (sort of the point, but yawn). Supporting performances are wildly uneven (Robinson and Durand give fair value, virtually nobody else does).

And while Hldebrand (“Deadpool”) and Shipp (“Straight Outta Compton,” “X-Men: Apocalypse”) flash a little slang and dress for fanboy appeal, their performances strike just one note. As does the movie.

Pathos? Remorse? “Learning?” Not here.

“Tragedy Girls” is “Heathers” without the just desserts (virtually no one “deserves” his or her fate), “Mean Girls” who don’t truly turn on each other, a slasher satire without a punchline.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references

Cast: Brianna Hildebrand, Alexandra Shipp, Josh Hutcherson, Craig Robinson, Kevin Durand

Credits:Directed by Tyler MacIntyre, script by Chris Lee Hill, Tyler MacIntyre . A Gunpowder & Sky release.

Running time: 1:38

The first “Saw” movie had a minimalist sophistication — strangers, waking up together, presented with life-or-death choices as an unseen tormentor sat in judgement of whether they were fit to live.

Everything that followed, sequels and the whole “torture porn” genre they inspired, diluted that, lost much of what passes for philosophical in the themes and settled into “What creative ways can we come up with to torture/kill people THIS time?”

And maybe it was just me, but the movies also seemed to get caught up in “solving the mystery” of who Jigsaw — the generally disembodied voice offering up his captives their grisly choices; lose a limb, save your life, get HIM killed, save your life — might be.

Movies that generally split between the ticking clock of death for the victims and the hapless cops who can never seem to get there before Jigsaw has exercised his Darwinian revenge became procedurals — detective stories, with a lot of hacked up people in the end.

Then they killed off Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and ran out of ways to revive him/pass on his legacy, etc. Until now.

“Jigsaw,” the eighth “Saw” film hurls five new hapless wrongdoers — whose sins we don’t know (at first) —  into a room, chains around their necks, code-locked death-helmets on their heads.

At the end of the chains — a wall of soon-to-be-whirring circular saws. Funny, “Jigsaw” never uses a jigsaw. Screenwriters almost never take shop class.

One by one, our victims (another generation of the Van Peebles acting clan among them) “confess” their crimes — a mugging accident here, a “sold bad mortgages, stole good coke” there.  There are increasingly baroque killing contraptions, the occasional “blood sacrifice” and a lot of “The truth shall set you free,” the great empty promise of all these pictures.

Meanwhile, the cops (Callum Keith Rennie, Cle Bennett) are puzzled about the dead guy who still can manage to set up these elaborate, expensive and murderous kidnappings/punishments, and having a hard time pretending they care. Their glib complacency is…disappointing.

Even the absurdly callous and well-equipped coroners (Matt Passmore, Hannah Emily Anderson) barely manage to wipe the smirks off their faces as they examine corpses.

Which is the Achilles Heel of this genre. The only character to generate pathos and interest of late is Jigsaw himself, and he’s only heard, pontificating about “justice,” asking for “simple blood sacrifice” and “revenge,” and seen in flashback.

“I ask you, what’s a life worth to you?”

We’re supposed to instantly loathe the mercenary mortgage broker (Ryan Braunstein) and, for no reason at all, to empathize with the younger and the prettier — hair over one eye, fishnet stockings, handsome young dude, etc.

The co-directing Spierig Brothers (“Daybreakers”) give the whole enterprise an expensive sheen — cool lighting, pricey torture gear, lots of close-ups and extreme close-ups.

Then they blow the most promising “How this character will die” bit — a bit of poisonous syringe Russian roulette.

That’s the “game” that all the “Saw” movies play, and it’s a dull one. Where’s the fun is Russian Roulette when you know, going in, that every chamber in the pistol is loaded?

MPAA Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and for language

Cast: Tobin Bell, Matt Passmore, Brittany Allen, Mandela Van Peebles, Callum Keith Rennie, Paul Braunstein

Credits:Directed byMichael Spierig, Peter Spierig , script by Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31

Now that Halloween has passed, it’s not too early for Hollywood to unleash its first Christmas comedy. But there’s never a good time to release a bad one.

Nothing like celebrating the holidays with a puerile, sentimental and foul-mouthed slapstick farce for kids masquerading as “adult” entertainment.

The modest pleasures of “Bad Moms,” a farce about Chicago mothers who give up leaning in, trying to have it all and devoting their every waking second to ensuring the perfect home/marriage/childhood, are but a memory. Their profane, drunken escapades are all in the past.

How to top the tipsy hijinx of Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and the ribald riot Kathryn Hahn? Bring in the moms’ moms for “A Bad Moms Christmas.” 

So mild-mannered homemaker Kiki (Bell) is smothered by her needy, clingy and bubbly to the point of inappropriate mother, played by Cheryl Hines.

Bawdy salon waxing specialist Carla (Hahn) gets a surprise visit from her ex-rock roadie/compulsive gambler of a mother (Susan Sarandon).

And freshly-divorced Amy (Kunis) loses her dreams of a “mellow” holiday when the rich and imperious Ruth who gave birth to her (Christine Baranski) returns to Chicago to school her on how a “proper” Christmas has to be managed.

“Mothers don’t ENjoy Christmas,” Ruth purrs, “mothers GIVE joy.”

Baranski, whose face is on the Wikipedia page defining “imperious,” was born to play Ruth — over-spending, over-decorating, leading a Catholic choir of “ringers” in a neighborhood caroling competition (Remember her in “Mama Mia?”).

She is pretty much the saving grace of this graceless romp through shopping, tree-stealing, grinding on a mall Santa and a fierce dodgeball fight at a kids’ zone entertainment complex.

The men — Peter Gallagher plays Ruth’s long-suffering husband, Justin Hartley plays a stripper getting his junk waxed by Carla, and Jay Hernandez just takes up space — are non-entities and the kids are nothing more than props; props who mug for the camera.

At least Wanda Sykes is here, as Kiki’s psychotherapist, ready to offer a rant on why moms of all ages go crazy. “YOU make them that way.”

Releasing studio STX rushed this out on a Wednesday without previews for critics because they, too, know that there’s no good time to release a bad Christmas comedy…unless you roll out so early that you postpone suffering by comparison to every other holiday movie to come this year.

And no, there’s not a “Madea Christmas Story” to take the pressure off.

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and some drug use

Cast: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines, Susan Sarandon, Jay Hernandez, Wanda Sykes, Christina Applegate, Peter Gallagher

Credits: Written and directed by  Jon Lucas, Scott Moore. An STX release.

Running time: 1:44

Lyndon Johnson was a tall man, 6’4.”

He had a habit of leaning into colleagues and subordinates, towering over them, intimidating even in the friendliest of circumstances. And as he had a temper and a mania for hard work, wheeling and dealing and getting his way, he didn’t hesitate to use this trick in touchier, testier situations.

That literal “larger than life” part of the Texan’s persona was fundamental to who he was, and there’s plenty of photographic evidence of him close-talking, leaning into and talking down to people he was trying to strong-arm into voting his way or measuring up to his standards.

So when you’re casting somebody to play him, they’d better be as tall as 6’5″ Randy Quaid (TV’s “LBJ: The Early Years”), or 6’4″ Donald Moffat (“The Right Stuff”) or at least be prepared to play him that big and intimidating (Bryan Cranston of “All the Way”).

The accomplished character actor Woody Harrelson plays an occasionally volcanic, sometimes strong-arming and always cunning and persuasive Johnson in Rob Reiner’s film “LBJ,” a drama framed in the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became president. And although the physical resemblance — big nose, basset hound ears — borders on uncanny, the 5’10” Harrelson never quite carries himself like a big man with big ambitions and a bag full of bully’s tricks. He gives us a drawling, almost soft-spoken Johnson, not the way he’s typically remembered.

Cranston’s recent portrayal thundered, where Harrelson is content to growl.

Some of that falls onto the script, by “Project Runaway” (?!) vet Joey Hartstone. Reiner’s directing career since the wonderful “Flipped” flopped hasn’t commanded the best collaborators or big studio releases. But there’s merit in the ways this story shows us the “deal-maker” Johnson, frustrated by being muzzled and neutered by the conniving Kennedy brothers, bigger than them and forced to sit in the shadows until that awful day in Dallas.

“LBJ” is a mostly flattering portrait that ends before the tidal wave of Vietnam swallowed Johnson’s presidency. Harrelson’s LBJ wears out a vast staff, haranguing one and all for information, numbers of votes he can count on as Senate Majority Leader.

He ends phone arguments with a slam, mutters profane insults, hurls profane threats and even his fellow Democrat and Fellow Texan in the Senate, Ralph Yarborough (Bill Pullman), a liberal, cannot escape his contempt when he disagrees with a political stance.

“Spoken like a true one-term United States Senator,” LBJ growls.

The election of 1960 is approaching, and Johnson wants to jump from the most powerful post in Congress to the White House. But those rich, handsome young Kennedys, candidate Jack (Jeffrey Donovan of “Burn Notice,” quite good) and his sidekick and campaign manager Bobby (Michael Stahl-David, amusingly sinister) have the jump on him.

Johnson may believe “This country is NOT gonna elect a CATHOLIC president,” but he knows the callow but movie-star handsome JFK has the edge, and that plays into a homely country boy’s worst fears.

“He’s afraid people won’t love him,” wife Lady Bird (Jennifer Jason Leigh, spot-on) says.

The movie’s richest, juiciest scenes are between Harrelson and his equally talented fellow character player Richard Jenkins, as Richard Russell, elder statesman of the Senate, an old school Georgia racist and one of the most powerful politicians in Washington. As much as we can make out of the most famous of the LBJ White House tapes of Johnson browbeating the old man into serving on the Warren Commission, the real relationship must have played out more like this.

Johnson flatters, he charms, he begs. His role, upon taking the “most thankless job” in the Kennedy White House, as a nearly powerless vice president, is working as intermediary between the idealistic, Civil Rights-promising Kennedys and the Southern Democrats of Congress. He swaps racist jokes with Russell, then leans in on him to get concessions at a Georgia Lockheed factory where a billion dollar Air Force order might be fulfilled.

Harrelson brilliantly conveys Johnson bridling at the confines of the vice presidency, suffering the pointless, demeaning treatment of Bobby Kennedy, always the politician in front of other politicians, never losing his temper in a group setting.

But in private? On the phone? Nobody ever left a meeting (often in the toilet) with LBJ not knowing if he was pissed off.

Reiner’s picture, framed as it is within scenes of that fateful 1963 visit to Dallas, becomes quite the image-burnishing in the hours after Kennedy was shot — from chaos and Secret Service-inspired panic, to a big man who thinks through what he needs to do and in a snap, starts doing it — angling for “permission” from a testy Bobby to get moving, working the phones, begging everyone from colleagues and Kennedy appointees to ex-presidents for help.

“I need you more than President Kennedy EVER did” he says to one and all.

That’s the way this script and Reiner’s film lets Johnson have the last word, verifying Johnson’s backroom description of the primary campaign of 1960. Kennedy was “a show horse.” Johnson? Always a “work horse.”

The height and the way he used it should have been addressed. The film, like the player cast as its lead, is too short to do the subject justice.

But Harrelson’s “LBJ” comes off as the bigger man, smarter than he often let on, the one who could read the tides of change as he counted the votes in Congress, someone who could grow into the office and bend the nation’s moral will even if he realized it would take the long view of history to prove him right and finally recognize the titanic efforts it took to alter the course of that history.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stahl-David, Bill Pullman 

Credits:Directed by Rob Reiner, script by Joey Hartstone An Electric Entertainment/Castle Rock release.

Running time: 1:38

So Louis wants to do a Woody Allen homage, playing a movie director in a black and white comedy about a somewhat pretentious, arty movie director.

Ick.

So the guy’s got a nubile, bikini clad (often as not) teen daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) just starting to look for romantic/sexual trouble.

Ick.

His idol, another filmmaker played by John Malkovich, has a “thing” for under 20 young women.

ICK.

And Charlie Day’s in it.

Gag.

Looks like that abortion “My Father the Hero,” where a teen Katherine Heigl tries to pass off her old man (Gerard Depardieu) as “my lover.” So, ick again.

“Lifetime Original Movie” is glib, pejorative criticspeak that no movie with a female protagonist and women-centric subject matter wants as a label. And I might add, that no critic wants to use when the movie’s subject is rape and its aftereffects on the victim.

But for too much of its length, Jessica M. Thompson’s “The Light of the Moon” flirts with that bland, predictable TV movie formula. It’s a point-by-unsurprising point “Special Victims Unit” depiction of events before the crime, the awful crime itself, the moment the police get involved and how Bonnie (Stephanie Beatriz) copes — or avoids coping — with what happens at work, in public and in bed with her boyfriend Matt (Michael Stahl-David) over the next month.

We’ve got the victim feeling accused by invasive police questions, the suggestion that going out by yourself, getting drunk and walking home with headphones on, late at night in Brooklyn, maybe wasn’t the smartest move Bonnie ever made.

There’s the ever-AWOL Matt, out late with “clients” one more time, the gay best friend (Conrad Ricamora) who snipes “I envy how much makeup sex you two must have.” Followed by enormous guilt, walking on eggshells around Bonnie and still managing to say the wrong thing, time and again.

But we can see Bonnie is troubled, fret over her refusal to “share” this awful thing that happened with others (“That puts it all on me,” Matt complains.) even if she’s not buying into whatever the rape victims’ support group she visits one time is selling.

A waitress wants to know if she’s “OK,” because she has a black eye, assuming her boyfriend beats her.

Then “Moon” gets better. A legal advocate for victims levels with her — “We’re not changing the criminal justice system in a single day.” Bonnie renewing her sexual relationship with Matt turns…weird — for both of them. Every conflict between them is wiped away, every thing that came easily turns tentative.

And everything she’s been pushing out of her mind, bottled up in her psyche, starts to erupt as she lays out every indignity this creep has added to her life, every self-doubt, every fear, every outrage over a system that doesn’t catch guys like that quickly enough visits upon victims.

It’s not a great film, but Beatriz grows in stature as Bonnie searches for firmer footing. She and Stahl create a relationship that feels lived-in and fragile.

And first-time feature writer/director Thompson finally gets to pieces of this story we haven’t seen dozens of times before…in a Lifetime Original Movie.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, sexual assault, substance abuse and a sex scene

Cast:  Stephanie Beatriz, Michael Stahl-David, Conrad Ricamora

Credits:  Written and directed by Jessica M. Thompson.  An Imagination Worldwide release

Running time: 1:34