Movie Nation

The 37th annual Golden Raspberry Awards, dissing the disasters of cinema, were announced this week. And the voters cooked up their usual blend of condemnation and dish on the year’s unworthiest films, scripts for films and actors in films.

So yeah, there’s a lot of hate for “Batman v. Superman,” “Dirty Grandpa, “Mother’s Day” and the DOA “Divergent” series.

Nice that they got around to ridiculing that fascist fraud, Dinesh D’Souza. The foreign-born Pied Piper of the lunatic right picked up five nominations. And Owen Wilson, Gerard Butler, Kate Hudson and everybody in “Collateral Beauty.” “Suicide Squad”? Yeah, kick a movie while it’s down.

Jared Leto’s much-ballyhoo’d take on The Joker gets its just desserts.

A rather tepid line-up of films and dishonorees, actually. “Gods of Egypt” seems hardly worth it. No hate for “Passengers” or “Why Him?” or “Sing” or “Trolls”?

The Razzies are handed out in gala roast/mockery meal on Feb. 25.

The full list of nominees is below. The dishonor, as ever, is in being nominated.

The conventions of the “fresh out of prison” drama are long-established. But they’re recycled, to good effect, in “Chapter & Verse,” a well-acted genre picture that suffers only from a chronic inability to surprise.

Writer-star Daniel Beaty lays out the benchmarks of such films, plain and true.

Ingram (Beaty) is back on the streets of Harlem, mistrusted by his “You back on drugs?” probation officer, unable to find the work that prison trained him for — computer repair.

Job interviews reveal the limitations of the skill set Green Haven penitentiary gave him. Even the jargon of online start-ups has a speaking-in-tongues unfamiliarity.

“You know, walk me through it once and I’m good.”

He’s forced to take a job at a meals-on-wheels charity, where having no license means he must haul this stuff onto subways and through the mean streets that made him.

Temptation is all around, even from his pre-prison best friend (Omari Hardwick of TV’s “Power”), a former gang member now running his own barber shop.

And then there are the clients. The great Loretta Devine is the grandmother whose life Ingram finds himself drawn to thanks to her outgoing personality and her frank admission that the grandson she’s raising (Khadim Diop) is hanging with the wrong kids and about to go wrong the same way Ingram once did.

Filmmaker Jamal Joseph, working from Beaty’s script, follows both Ingram’s progression back into the straight world and Ty, the teen’s descent into gangland. Robberies and other violence are committed on dares. In one memorable moment, the kids practice shooting from a rooftop, heedless punks hurling bullets into the city’s void without a single thought about who or what might get hit.

Devine plays a heartfelt cliche, the “old school” but still young-ish grandma who barks, “You pull up’em pants You gone’show me your butt, I’m gonna smack it!”

And the rest of the film suits that approach. Yeah, there’s an inappropriate sexual come-on that plays as blackmail. Yes, there are moments of truth between reluctant father-figure and reluctant teen-in-need-of-a-father.

But the sleepy-eyed Beaty brings a gritty authenticity to Ingram, a tough guy made timid by the fear that one slip-up and he’s back in prison.

It’s no “Straight Time” or “Johnny Handsome” — no ground-breaking entry in the ex-con genre. Casting around the edges is weak enough to be jarring. But even as “Chapter & Verse” repeats an over-familiar story arc chapter and verse, it finds a little screen redemption in being ever-so-thoughtful as it repeats its well-worn story of redemption.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, adult situations, violence

Cast: Daniel Beaty, Loretta Devine, Omari Hardwick, Khadim Diop

Credits:Directed by Jamal Joseph, script by Daniel Beaty and Jamal Joseph. A Bubble Factory/Harlem Film Co. release.

Running time: 1:38

Yet another entertainment icon has passed. Mary Tyler Moore was 80. The cause of death wasn’t made immediately available, but she suffered from diabetes and battled brain cancer in recent years.

She made her mark on TV, starting with her “leggy” turn on “Peter Gunn,” breaking out as Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke” show in the ’60s, stepping out as a single woman/career woman/feminist icon in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the ’70s.

She was hilarious when she needed to be, but the MTM Show let her play straight-woman to a legion of funny supporting players.

Moore didn’t make a lot of movies, “Ordinary People” was her outstanding big screen performance. But one of her more recent/ not-that-recent movie roles prompted me to get her on the phone to talk about what she found funny.

Why did she take on “Flirting With Disaster”? She wanted to work with Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni and most importantly, somebody a little closer to her age — Lily Tomlin.

We started the interview and she mentioned that, and blurted out — “Lily taught me something new on the set, how to BURP on demand.”

Before I could stop laughing at that, she followed, with perfect timing, “Wanna HEAR it?”

And before I could say, “That’s OK, Ms. Moore, Queen of Sitcom TV, I’m good,” she demonstrated.

“Baarrrrrappppppp.” No Dr. Pepper required.

And then gales GALES of laughter over the phone.

She was unforgettable for a lot of reasons, for a lot of roles. But for me, MTM was always and forever a lady who knew where to get a laugh, who recognized a laugh in others, and wasn’t shy about busting up when she delivered one to an utter stranger, who was never an utter stranger after that.

One of a kind.

Not all Vin Diesel franchises are created equal.

Then again, maybe they are. Paramount tries to clone the Diesel “Fast/Furious” formula with “xXx: Return of Xander Cage,” a ham-fisted, instantly-awful action revival back from back in Diesel’s heyday.

It’s got breathlessly shot and cut action beats that defy the laws of physics — improbable chases and impossible escapes. Diesel’s agent Xander Cage is surrounded by a United Nations of supporting players — Indian, Chinese, Thai and, um, Australian.

And every “Want to be a Model?” casting agency in the Eastern and Western hemisphere is emptied of applicants as the producers — lonely men who prey on the “aspiring” — populate ridiculously cosmopolitan parties on jungle isles in the Philippines with scantily clad beauties of every skinny race and genetic description.

The script, by somebody billed as “F. Scott Frazier” (ROFL), peppers the screen with bullet point descriptions of characters, comical “dossiers” to describe them.

Xander’s old boss, Augustus Gibbons’ “Karoake Go to” is “What a Wonderful World.”

The :”Call of Duty” video game handle of the lesbian sniper he recruits for his team, Adele (Ruby Rose)?

“Lady_Boner.”

Isn’t that cute? “Ridonculous” seems more apt.

When villains get their hands on “Pandora’s Box,” a gadget that enables them to crash satellites into precise impact points on Earth (taking out targets and destroying the satellite at the same time), Cage is tracked down by Gibbons’ boss (Toni Collette).

“It’s time to be a patriot,” she pitches.

“Patriotism is dead. There’s only rebels and tyrants, now.”

The re-activated xXx pulls in other xXx agents — Adele, a DJ-fighter-“baller” Nicks (Kris Wu) and a getaway driver (Rory McCann, Tennyson (“Longest relationship: With his rugby mouthguard”) and goes after a team led by Donnie Yen.

What’s the only thing “Rogue One” and “xXx” have in common? They’re both stolen by the martial arts master Yen. He doesn’t play blind or have any clever lines here. but his dazzling brawls are the best thing in the movie.

Diesel, slimmed down, smiles and smirks his way through beefy come-ons, group sex scenarios and utterly impossible stunts involving skiing off a microwave tower, skateboards and a motorcycle that becomes a personal watercraft, a “Jet Ski” by another name.

“The things I do for my country.”

Collette wears lots of white suits (Hillary?) and Nina Dobrev dons glasses to transform herself into a knockout tech nerd improbably attracted to the over-the-top burly and 40something xXx.

The gadgets are ho-hum. None of it’s funny — intentionally funny, anyway. And little of it makes much sense, except in the most cynical “Let’s reach the Asian, Indian etc. markets by making Deepika Padukone, a model trying her hand at swagger, ‘the girl.'”

“Return of Xander Cage” adds up to a movie “all jacked up on Red Bull and Mountain Dew.” And we all know how bad that stuff is for you.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for extended sequences of gunplay and violent action, and for sexual material and language

Cast: Vin Diesel, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa, Ruby Rose, Rory McCann, Nina Dobrev

Credits:Directed by D.J. Caruso, script by F. Scott Frazier. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:47

We don’t need a movie, based on a novel, to tell us what “A Dog’s Purpose” is.

Dogs provide unconditional love, non-judgmental companionship and teach us about loyalty, responsibility and mortality.

It can’t hurt to be gently reminded of these things by a film. But there’s a lot of bleak slipped in between the “Aww” cute closeups of mutts, puppies and AKC-approved purebred pixies in this one.

“A Dog’s Purpose” might more accurately be titled “Six Funerals and a Wedding.” It begins with a feral puppy, promptly picked-up and euthanized by a Michigan dog-catcher.

No, we don’t see that death. But we see many others — and a cat corpse dragged from the grave — in this canine comedy for kids. A dog is shot, others are abused and the only consolation is the story’s insipid insistence on canine reincarnation.

Josh Gad, whose voice proved to be perfect for kid content in “Frozen,” is the friendly, winsome voice of Everydog here, a nascent, naive philosopher who asks the movie’s Big Question — “Why are we here?”

He narrates the story, thinking through the many forms a dog’s life can take in the U.S. — coddled, played with, pampered or tied up in backyards.

His first “life” of consequence is with Ethan, a little boy who is with him from almost-birth until death. Almost. That’s how Bailey, a retriever, sees it.

“Every morning, a big yellow box with wheels took Ethan away from me.”

When Ethan gets older, Bailey helps Ethan (K.J. Apa) “get the girl.” She’s played by Britt Robertson.

After Bailey’s too-short life ends, he returns as a police dog who is the only friend of a lonely cop (John Ortiz), then he’s back as a corgi companion to a cute coed (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), and so on.

Filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom of “Chocolat,” “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” but more tellingly “My Life as a Dog” and “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” films this with a lot of extreme and extremely cute puppy close-ups, snippets of the story seen through the dog’s eyes at a dog’s eye level.

The third act is where the biggest name in the cast — Dennis Quaid — makes his appearance, and if you’ve seen the TV commercials, you know his role.

Gad voices gentle narration aimed at capturing how a child, or a dog, might see the melodrama unfolding around him — from love to a prank that turns deadly, to shy owners who relate better to dogs than people, to the alcoholic father (Luke Kirby) whom Ethan, his mom and his dog must cope with.

“Dad always talked too loud when he smelled that way.”

It’s all harmless enough, with the odd lump-in-the-throat moment as another dog meets his or her end. As a lifelong dog owner, I found the going rather grim.

And then there’s the viral video of the dog nearly drowned on the set of “A Dog’s Purpose” that will undoubtedly smother its box office potential. This damning footage should be the death blow in the unholy alliance between Hollywood and the turn-a-blind-eye “No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Movie” hypocrisy of the American Humane Association.

We will never know what went on in the decades of dog films — from “Lassie” and “Benji” to “Milo and Otis” — that were shot before every phone was a camera and every traumatic moment on a set could not be documented by one crew member with a conscience.

The last thing “A Dog’s Purpose” needed was something else to cast a pall over it.

But it gets this right. Dogs aren’t with us for long. That’s what they have to teach us, that we have just so many of these moments and we shouldn’t waste them by not being present, or by seeing some sentimental, ethically-compromised Hollywood distillation of them in a movie that never really answers the question posed by its title.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements and some peril

Cast: The voice of Josh Gad, Dennis Quaid, Britt Robertson, K.J. Apa, John Ortiz, Kirby Howell-Baptiste

Credits:Directed by Lasse Hallstrom script by Cathryn Michon, based on the W. Bruce Cameron novel. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:33

That, to me, is the only “story” in this year’s Academy Awards nominations.

Meryl Streep makes a “Suffragette” worthy speech at the Golden Globes, a tirade against Trump.

And the lightly-regarded “Florence Foster Jenkins” and her adorable, vulnerable turn in it is moved up to “Oscar worthy” and Amy Adams‘ luminescent performance in “Arrival” is kicked to the curb.

Just like that.

I was hoping Adams, rapidly turning into the always-a-bridesmaid of moviedom’s annual acting prizes, might finally get her due with “Arrival.” Nope. Not to be. Let’s send a message to Trump that Meryl isn’t “over-rated.”

It was a year of powerhouse female performances, and somebody was going to be left out. Annette Bening (“20th Century Women”) is an obvious omission, but she didn’t “campaign” for the prize.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Streep beat out Isabella Huppert (“Elle”), Ruth Negga (“Loving”), Emma Stone (“La La Land”), or the odds-on earlier favorite Natalie Portman (“Jackie”) for the Big Prize.

That’ll show “him.”

It wasn’t the strongest year for Best Actor candidates, but it’s nice to see Viggo Mortensen (“Captain Fantastic”) make his way into the final five. Hard to argue with Andrew Garfield’s dazzling pacifist turn in “Hacksaw Ridge,” whatever you want to think of Mel Gibson. Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) is still the favorite, though it could be a nice of “La La Land” when all these statuettes are handed out. Denzel? The class of that field in “Fences,” I think.

Best supporting actor looks like the most interesting race, with Dev Patel (“Lion”), the always ALWAYS impressive Michael Shannon (the best thing about “Nocturnal Animals”), relative newcomer Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”), little known character player Mahershala Ali of “Moonlight”) and a “one more time” honor for Jeff Bridges, who had to wait (like Amy Adams) FOREVER to get an Oscar. He’s up for the marvelous “Hell of High Water.”

The best picture of 2016, “Loving,” got royally screwed, with only a Ruth Negga nomination. No direction, no best picture, no supporting actor or director nominations.

The shame! Oscar so um, clumsy?

Nine films — not “Loving,” which is damned near perfect — are up for best picture. As they have space for ten, it’s a pity there wasn’t enough support for this little seen but widely released wonder to get it into the field.

“Hidden Figures” got in, a feel-good “loose” adaptation of real events, but “Loving” was left out? Kind of patronizing.

“Silence” was all but shut out (Best Cinematography, why not?).

“La La Land” cleaned up (over-rated, in my book), “Fences” did well, Mel Gibson is officially welcomed back into Hollywood’s good graces — a director nomination for “Hacksaw Ridge.”

I am happy to see my favorite documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” in the Best Feature Doc field. Best animated film has the usual suspects, but out of five nominated pictures, two were little seen this past year. It’s easy to defend leaving “Sing,” “Trolls,” “Finding Dory” and a few others out. “Zootopia” and “Moana” are the favorites, but “Kubo and the Two Strings” is the class of that lot.

“Elle” got Huppert a nomination, but no best foreign language film nod. I loved “A MAn Called Ove” and will be rooting for that one Oscar night.

“Arrival” collected lots of technical nominations as well as Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director nominations.

But without Amy Adams in that list, it’s all kind of hollow.

The full list of nominees is below.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

NOMINEES

CASEY AFFLECK

“Manchester by the Sea”

ANDREW GARFIELD

“Hacksaw Ridge”

RYAN GOSLING

“La La Land”

VIGGO MORTENSEN

“Captain Fantastic”

DENZEL WASHINGTON

“Fences”

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

NOMINEES

MAHERSHALA ALI

“Moonlight”

JEFF BRIDGES

“Hell or High Water”

LUCAS HEDGES

“Manchester by the Sea”

DEV PATEL

“Lion”

MICHAEL SHANNON

“Nocturnal Animals”

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

NOMINEES

ISABELLE HUPPERT

“Elle”

RUTH NEGGA

Loving

NATALIE PORTMAN

“Jackie”

EMMA STONE

“La La Land”

MERYL STREEP

“Florence Foster Jenkins”

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

NOMINEES

VIOLA DAVIS

Fences

NAOMIE HARRIS

Moonlight

NICOLE KIDMAN

Lion

OCTAVIA SPENCER

Hidden Figures

MICHELLE WILLIAMS

Manchester by the Sea

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

NOMINEES

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

Travis Knight and Arianne Sutner

MOANA

John Musker, Ron Clements and Osnat Shurer

MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI

Claude Barras and Max Karli

THE RED TURTLE

Michael Dudok de Wit and Toshio Suzuki

ZOOTOPIA

Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Clark Spencer

CINEMATOGRAPHY

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Bradford Young

LA LA LAND

Linus Sandgren

LION

Greig Fraser

MOONLIGHT

James Laxton

SILENCE

Rodrigo Prieto

COSTUME DESIGN

NOMINEES

ALLIED

Joanna Johnston

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

Colleen Atwood

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

Consolata Boyle

JACKIE

Madeline Fontaine

LA LA LAND

Mary Zophres

DIRECTING

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Denis Villeneuve

HACKSAW RIDGE

Mel Gibson

LA LA LAND

Damien Chazelle

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Kenneth Lonergan

MOONLIGHT

Barry Jenkins

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

NOMINEES

FIRE AT SEA

Gianfranco Rosi and Donatella Palermo

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO

Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety and Hébert Peck

LIFE, ANIMATED

Roger Ross Williams and Julie Goldman

O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA

Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow

13TH

Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick and Howard Barish

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)

NOMINEES

EXTREMIS

Dan Krauss

4.1 MILES

Daphne Matziaraki

JOE’S VIOLIN

Kahane Cooperman and Raphaela Neihausen

WATANI: MY HOMELAND

Marcel Mettelsiefen and Stephen Ellis

THE WHITE HELMETS

Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara

FILM EDITING

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Joe Walker

HACKSAW RIDGE

John Gilbert

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Jake Roberts

LA LA LAND

Tom Cross

MOONLIGHT

Nat Sanders and Joi McMillon

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

NOMINEES

LAND OF MINE

Denmark

A MAN CALLED OVE

Sweden

THE SALESMAN

Iran

TANNA

Australia

TONI ERDMANN

Germany

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

NOMINEES

A MAN CALLED OVE

Eva von Bahr and Love Larson

STAR TREK BEYOND

Joel Harlow and Richard Alonzo

SUICIDE SQUAD

Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

NOMINEES

JACKIE

Mica Levi

LA LA LAND

Justin Hurwitz

LION

Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka

MOONLIGHT

Nicholas Britell

PASSENGERS

Thomas Newman

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

NOMINEES

AUDITION (THE FOOLS WHO DREAM)

from La La Land; Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

CAN’T STOP THE FEELING

from Trolls; Music and Lyric by Justin Timberlake, Max Martin and Karl Johan Schuster

CITY OF STARS

from La La Land; Music by Justin Hurwitz; Lyric by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

THE EMPTY CHAIR

from Jim: The James Foley Story; Music and Lyric by J. Ralph and Sting

HOW FAR I’LL GO

from Moana; Music and Lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda

BEST PICTURE

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder and David Linde, Producers

FENCES

Scott Rudin, Denzel Washington and Todd Black, Producers

HACKSAW RIDGE

Bill Mechanic and David Permut, Producers

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Carla Hacken and Julie Yorn, Producers

HIDDEN FIGURES

Donna Gigliotti, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Pharrell Williams and Theodore Melfi, Producers

LA LA LAND

Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt, Producers

LION

Emile Sherman, Iain Canning and Angie Fielder, Producers

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Matt Damon, Kimberly Steward, Chris Moore, Lauren Beck and Kevin J. Walsh, Producers

MOONLIGHT

Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers

PRODUCTION DESIGN

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Production Design: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Paul Hotte

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

Production Design: Stuart Craig; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock

HAIL, CAESAR!

Production Design: Jess Gonchor; Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh

LA LA LAND

Production Design: David Wasco; Set Decoration: Sandy Reynolds-Wasco

PASSENGERS

Production Design: Guy Hendrix Dyas; Set Decoration: Gene Serdena

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

NOMINEES

BLIND VAYSHA

Theodore Ushev

BORROWED TIME

Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj

PEAR CIDER AND CIGARETTES

Robert Valley and Cara Speller

PEARL

Patrick Osborne

PIPER

Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

NOMINEES

ENNEMIS INTÉRIEURS

Sélim Azzazi

LA FEMME ET LE TGV

Timo von Gunten and Giacun Caduff

SILENT NIGHTS

Aske Bang and Kim Magnusson

SING

Kristof Deák and Anna Udvardy

TIMECODE

Juanjo Giménez

SOUND EDITING

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Sylvain Bellemare

DEEPWATER HORIZON

Wylie Stateman and Renée Tondelli

HACKSAW RIDGE

Robert Mackenzie and Andy Wright

LA LA LAND

Ai-Ling Lee and Mildred Iatrou Morgan

SULLY

Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman

SOUND MIXING

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Bernard Gariépy Strobl and Claude La Haye

HACKSAW RIDGE

Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace

LA LA LAND

Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee and Steve A. Morrow

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI

Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Mac Ruth

VISUAL EFFECTS

NOMINEES

DEEPWATER HORIZON

Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington and Burt Dalton

DOCTOR STRANGE

Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli and Paul Corbould

THE JUNGLE BOOK

Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones and Dan Lemmon

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS

Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean and Brad Schiff

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel and Neil Corbould

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

NOMINEES

ARRIVAL

Screenplay by Eric Heisserer

FENCES

Screenplay by August Wilson

HIDDEN FIGURES

Screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi

LION

Screenplay by Luke Davies

MOONLIGHT

Screenplay by Barry Jenkins; Story by Tarell Alvin McCraney

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

NOMINEES

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Written by Taylor Sheridan

LA LA LAND

Written by Damien Chazelle

THE LOBSTER

Written by Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Written by Kenneth Lonergan

20TH CENTURY WOMEN

Written by Mike Mills

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Judging from the opening weekend box office take, M. Night Shyamalan has a future…in January movies. His self-penned “Split”, a real showcase for the scenery-chewing multi-personality skills of James McAvoy, is on its way to a $33 million take.

Decent reviews (I found it ho hum) didn’t hurt, and McAvoy’s name as first class X-Man is a big help. But any way you slice it, without much competition, a horrific hit.

Paramount tried to cherry pick reviewers to give “xXx” a boost. High early Rotten Tomatoes rating. Then Thursday and Friday came and the real critics weighed in and boom boom, out go the lights. Vin Diesel, back in his third franchise, isn’t packing them in the way he’s packed on the bulk. Less than $20 million. Not exactly a bomb, but weighed against cost, not remotely a hit. Overseas may make this pay off.

People only want to see him in “Fast and Furious” movies, and they don’t show up for him for those either. We go for the cars and assorted dishy women and sarcastic co-stars. We go for The Rock and Michelle Rodriguez. We do.

“Hidden Figures” is racing “La La Land” to $100 million. “Hidden” could get there by next Saturday. “La La” will be right behind it.

“The Founder” opened somewhat wide and will just miss the top ten.

Oscar nominations come out Tuesday. If “Hidden” scores one or two and “The Founder” manages one, expect those numbers to spike. “20th Century Women” is banking on an Oscar boost, too.

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom started his career with an idyllic childhood tale about growing up in Sweden during the age of Sputnik.

“My Life as a Dog” put him on the map, and led to “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” and “Chocolat” and a long career in international cinema. “Hachi: A Dog’s Story,” a Japanese set true story of a dog who stayed loyal after his owner’s death, is also on his resume.

But Universal and Walden Media’s “A Dog’s Purpose” is giving him something his films have avoided over the decades — controversy. It’s an innocuous enough story, and Dennis Quaid is the big name in it. But video, apparently recorded on set and in plain sight of the crew, shows a German shepherd featured in the film forced — in what looks like a cruel and heartless way — to dive into a huge water tank for a green screen scene for the movie.

It’s gone viral, and being about an animal being abused in the making of a movie, it has utterly overwhelmed any buzz the film might have had before its Jan. 27 release. A sweet story about how dogs touch lives, with a reincarnation twist, it seems to have no chance at anything like a successful release, now.

PETA is calling for a boycott. And it looks like another black eye for the American Humane Association, which signs off on the “no animals were harmed making this film,” sometimes with a scandalous disregard for what actually happened. One head has already rolled from this rubber-stamp organization, according to TMZ. Criminal charges might come in Canada, where the movie was filmed.

Back on Sept. 11, 2001, I watched the second jetliner crash into the World Trade Center before heading off to an AM screening of a Disney comedy, “Big Trouble.” When I returned to the office, I called Disney and asked them to give me the scoop when they came to realize they needed to pull the movie. It has a bomb on a plane as a third act plot element.

Sure enough, they called and they pulled it. It came out a year later and promptly disappeared. This is kind of like that. Only “Big Trouble” wasn’t the source of the problem, merely a movie with inconvenient timing.

Universal’s Canadian-shot movie almost drowned a dog, on camera, with the American Humane Association signing off on it. Perhaps the representative was off-set. They have a rep for phoning this sort of “no animals were harmed” endorsement in.

Another important difference between “Big Trouble” and “A Dog’s Purpose” is the distributor. Disney is attentive to what people say about their picture, guarding the brand, seeking religious/indigenous cover for animated films that might be controversial and typically doing that in advance.

Universal? Not so much. 

Nothing much happens to the working class poet Adam Driver plays in Jim Jarmusch’s meditative “Paterson,” a drama aptly-set in the New Jersey hometown of poets William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsburg.

It’s a still-life imagining of a poet’s life — quiet observation, overheard snippets of conversation that inspires writing that the title character, who shares his name with the city, scribbles into notebooks.

Paterson listens to children explaining the life of Paterson boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, spies the various tributes to native son Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello, and wakes up each day with the exotic, unfocused, artistically-minded Laura (Iranian actress Golshifteh Fahrani), who paints everything from her dresses to the shower curtains in their tiny house black and white.

And then he puts pen to paper in his “secret notebook,” musing on a box of Ohio Blue Tip Matches.

“We have plenty of matches in our house,” he begins, weaving that idea into the spark of inspiration about the flame of their love.

His poems (written by a Jarmusch favorite, Ron Padgett) “should belong to the world,” Laura enthuses, before talking up her latest scheme to achieve her dreams of personal expression. She wants to become a country music star, and needs to buy a mail order guitar and lessons.

She may be the true artist in this couple, a mad dreamer heedless of the barriers facing an Iranian finding acceptance in the music of xenophobic America.

Paterson sneaks a listen to a would-be rapper (Method Man) trying out rhymes to the rhythm of a washer in the local laundromat. He stops and hears out a little girl poet, waiting for her mother, maybe even envies her natural talent. And  he isn’t creepy when he, a stranger, sits with her to listen in rapt awe to her metaphors.

Anybody familiar with Jarmusch’s work will recognize his static style — the muted long conversations, the quiet, the storytelling largely lacking in incident, melodrama or narrative drive. Longtime fans will wonder where the humor is.

Maybe, you figure, the “young bloods” who cheerfully accost Paterson on his nightly dog-walks are going to “dog jack” his bulldog, which they admire.

Maybe he’ll be discovered, or something dramatic and out of the ordinary will happen on the bus, to Laura or perhaps to Paterson himself. Perhaps there’s something in the story of how they met. There are photos of a young man in uniform in their house.

Is that Paterson, or perhaps his twin brother? Twins pops up in conversation and in several scenes, a cryptic bit of Jarmusch arcana for fanatics to ponder and puzzle over.

Yes, there are exotic, un-discovered foreign film talents including a throwback to Jarmusch’s early meditation on Memphis and rock’n roll, “Mystery Train.” Japanese actor Masatoshi Nagase from that film shows up again, as a tourist — this time a poet come to pay homage to the hometown of Williams and Ginsburg.

But I was struck by how dated the film feels, or at least out of its time. It’s something of an aged hipster’s idea how a young poet should be and how to tell that poet’s story. Paterson eschews cell phones as “a leash,” and doesn’t seem to have a TV or even a clock radio (he ostentatiously uses his wristwatch to tell him it’s time to get up). Method Man as a wannabe rapper? Maybe in 1988.

Paterson has built a routine out of a nightly walk with that bulldog to Shades Bar, a somber joint straight out of the 1950s, where the owner/bartender (veteran character actor Barry Shabaka Henley) resists having a TV — the better to overhear the mini melodramas in the chatter of the barflies.

Whatever its charms as a celebration of “the empty page,” of the pauses at the end of poetic phrases which allow the mind to wander into the poet’s head, or in this case — into films similar in tone and tenor — “Tree’s Lounge,” “Factotum,” “Henry Fool” — I was desperate for any hint of Jarmusch’s droll wit, for the humor of “Mystery Train,” “Night on Earth,” “Broken Flowers” or “Coffee and Cigarettes.”

And the omni-present “Girls” alumnus Driver, passively ensconced in this landscape, observing and scribbling without rhyme or the discipline of meter, does nothing  to animate the picture or to give the lie to Jerry Seinfeld’s famous knock on poetry.

“It’s just failed stand-up.”

MPAA Rating:  R for some language

Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, William Jackson Harper, Chasten Harmon

Credits:Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. An Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 1:58

It doesn’t limit “20th Century Women” to call it a “coming of age” story.

Because there is no limit to that which comes of age in it.

Sure, there’s a teenage boy, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann). And he’s got this crush on a bad girl/broken spirit, Julie (Elle Fanning) who keeps coming over, leaning on him, spending the night and insisting that unlike every other guy she knows — she’s promiscuous — with Jamie she’ll “just be friends.”

His Santa Barbara, California mom (Annette Bening) “had me at 40” and is raising him by herself, something fairly novel even in California in 1979.

She studies him, frets over giving him a complete and well-rounded upbringing. But you kind of figure she’s coming of age, too, in between her pearls of tough-love wisdom.

Mother and son are brutally blunt with each other in that hip, sitcommie post “One Day at a Time” way of the late ’70s.

“Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world!”

There’s a fragile, winsome boarder (Greta Gerwig) and free-spirit handyman (Billy Crudup) also under their roof.

And in 1979, America was coming of age — again — about to abandon the serious search for answers to the future and retreat into a deluded nostalgia that lasted for a decade.

So maybe writer-director Mike Mills (“Beginners”) was onto something, tapping into an exhausted zeigeist that suggests America, like Dorothea, Bening’s single-mom in the movie, is earnest and overwhelmed and maybe too tired to get everything just right, to always do right by everybody. She’s not going to be everyone’s friend, not going to get the answers from assorted feminist studies texts.

But being an adult and a mom, she can’t just check out. So the decisive, authoritative Dorothea gets on with it, prioritizing who she wants Jamie to become, enlisting Abbie (Gerwig) and then Julie in her mission. He’s got to be a man who’s a comfort to women, treat them honorably no matter what.

Over the course of the film, his mother and the other women in his life test Jamie, teach him, and on purpose or utterly by accident make him the man he will become.

It’s a sweet, sad-faced comedy in a minor key, with Bening holding forth as the iconic woman of the “20th Century” of the title. Dorothea is unflappable long before she needs to be. This may be mid “malaise” America. But she is pre-Reagan, pre-AIDS, pre-REAL recession.

Gerwig plays a more brittle version of her usual screen flakes, Crudup is perfectly cast as that rooster in the henhouse just outgrowing his “hippie” phase. Young Zumann holds our interest well enough for us to want to follow his story even though we know every other character in this has a more interesting one.

And Fanning, a wise-beyond-her-years starlet, is right on the money as a lost girl in ’70s straightened hair, catnip to the boys not just because of her looks, but thanks to the air of doom that hangs over her.

It’s not a deep film, but it is a rich one — full of flesh and blood characters, realistic “coming of age” moments and pithy homilies on the state of relationships, gender roles, “the California Dream” and the American one.

And as its title suggests, it’s a real showcase for three generations of the best American actresses in the business, women of feelings and heart and steel. They give Mills’ movie its backbone and in the malaise in which this film reaches us, a hint of hope.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual material, language, some nudity and brief drug use

Cast: Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann, Elle Fanning, Billy Crudup

Credits: Written and directed by Mike Mills. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:59