Movie Nation

This weekend’s generous late-run predictions for Stephen King’s finally-fading “It,” and the horrid “Kingsman” sequel, turn out to have been wrong.

Projections that the non-branded true story comedy thriller “American Made” wouldn’t clear $20 were right on the mark. So Tom Cruise, wearing the best reviews he’s gotten since “Mission: Impossible,” still has a slim chance of claiming a box office win. But with all three of those titles lurking around the $16 million mark, it’s a win by default situation.

Fox Searchlight’s hilarious, uplifting and touching “Battle of the Sexes” charged the net and crashed the mid-ranks of the top ten, a healthy $3-4 million for a title with a more limited opening and more adult appeal.

Remaking “Flatliners” may pay off — if it makes some money overseas. The $20-30 million picture with no big-name stars is underperforming and won’t reach $6 million this weekend. Weak reviews won’t help it. 

Spoiler alert. There is absolutely no reason — NONE — for casting Kiefer Sutherland in the remake of “Flatliners” if you’re not going to have him reprise his character from the first film.

He’s a totally new character, the head resident, the adult in the room at the Boston teaching hospital where this new crew of residents flirting with death. And the only reason to have him there, longish hair gone wholly grey, walking with a cane, is the lecture he’s honor bound to give this new quintet of risk-taking whippersnappers “flatlining” for science and an edge on their fellow med students, about “tempting fate” and “Youth is wasted on the young,” and “I KNOW what you’re doing, because…”

I can’t even remember if his character survived the 1990 film, but if he didn’t, why cast him at all?

Aside from that, this rebooted “Flatliners” starring five fresh and exceedingly pretty faces testing, pressuring and reviving each other after stopping each other’s hearts, isn’t half bad. It’s more of a straight spook-fest, a scary movie about the demons deep within our brains that our final moments of brain activity might bring to the fore.

A few hair-raising moments, here and there. A poignant scene or two. And there’s Diego Luna, swaggering in as the older student, the ex-paramedic voice of common sense, arguing against these “experiments” devised by the haunted star student, Courtney.

Ellen Page plays Courtney, who is introduced as she is cell-phone-distracted into the accident that killed her kid sister. Nine years later, she’s a promising doctor-in-training who interrogates any patient whose heart stops.

She wants to know “if you felt anything, you saw anything?”

She’s got to know. So she lures overwhelmed student Sophia (girl-next-door Kiersey Clemons) and on-the-make trust-fund playa Jamie (James Norton) into helping her kill herself.

Because they’re capable of bringing her back. Almost. Only the abrupt arrival of Ray (Luna) saves the day. And he’s followed by hyper-competitive Marlo (Nina Dobrev).

So they’ve all got a secret, one they can’t share with their teachers. But Courtney comes out of this near-death experience a tad manic, with an explosive improvement in memory. Yeah, it turns her into the bestest doctor-in-training ever. The other kids want them a piece of that.

Director Niels Arden Oplev (“Dead Man Down”) is more at home providing frights than building romance, empathy and motivation for the characters. Because as they, one-by-one, flatline, deep-seeded guilt comes to the fore. They experience a momentary afterlife where they’re confronted by those they’ve wronged.

That’s the downside. The upside is that they’re liberated from doubt, freed from foggy memories of their education, masters at diagnostics, healers on steroids.

“I’m JESUS,” Jamie crows. “Everyone I touch today I’m going to HEAL.”

If, that is, he makes it through the day.

The scary stuff is strictly standard issue frights — spectral visitors, nightmares mixed in with the heavenly visions of flying, or motorcycling through scenic Boston. Guilt, mixed with a more supernatural take on what’s going on than the first movie offered, is what this “Flatliners” is about. And that’s about it. Jokes don’t really land, characters don’t connect. The big romantic allure of the first film, which explained why the characters were willing to risk death, is missing.

As I said, it all adds up to “not half-bad,” with Page managing the emotional high point and Clemons and Norton delivering the near-laughs and Luna the sober man-of-science common sense.

Tricky thing about half-bad, though. That means, at its best, it’s only half good.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for violence and terror, sexual content, language, thematic material, and some drug references

Cast: Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, Kiersey Clemons, James Norton, Kiefer Sutherland

Credits:Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, script by Ben Ripley, based on a Peter Filardi story and earlier screenplay. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:50

“American Made” is the best-reviewed Tom Cruise movie in ages, a crackling, witty drug trade docudrama about a hot shot pilot who gets himself in the middle of the Iran/Contra Scandal, and Reagan Administration extra-legal shenanigans that flooded the country with cocaine and illegal immigrants.

No, don’t expect a lot of ads for it on Fox News or The Blaze.

But it could in red states and blue, and knock that crappy English import “Kingsman” right off the top of the box office mountain. Or could it?

Box Office Mojo figures “It” has another solid week in the upper $teens in it, and that “Kingsman” will clear $20. “American Made” they figure as not-quite-hitting $17. Not buying that. Word of mouth on “Kingsman” has got to be deadly, this second weekend.

Box Office Guru is calling it “Kingsman” $20, “It” and “American Made” both tracking at $16.

So we’ll see. Cruise isn’t quite over-and-done with as an action star, and his supporting cast has zero star power. The sobering look at the venerated Ron Reagan’s criminal connections (Ollie North is here, sure) will earn some wingnut media pushback. I think “Made” might hit $20+. It’s certainly entertaining enough.

“Flatliners” nobody knows Jack about, save for the fact that it’s a remake/sequel to the Julia Roberts/Kiefer Sutherland young-docs-taste-death thriller of decades ago.

The studio had such confidence in it that they not only didn’t preview it, they didn’t allow theaters to open it Thursday night. Sounds like “This sucks.” But we’ll see. If it does $8 million with that cast, it’ll be champagne all around the office Monday.

There is an Orlando that exists in the very shadow of the theme parks that make the city America’s Vacationland.

It’s the Orlando of the young service-sector poor, transients — many with children. They wait on the tourists, clean their toilets. And those are the lucky ones. A few too many bad choices about drugs, tattoos and appearance and even those jobs are hard to get. Preying on tourists becomes their last option.

Most can’t buy a home, and when they do, they have to abandon it. Childcare is left to chance, unless the state gets wind of it.

That’s the gritty side of “The City Beautiful” that movies have only hinted at — the fruit stands, “discount” ticket kiosks, souvenir shops, C-list attractions and seedy fifth-hand motels of “Monster” and “99 Homes.”

This Orlando — suburban, run-down Kissimmee to be precise — is where the adorable, reckless foul-mouthed imps of “The Florida Project” raise themselves. Writer-director Sean Baker has followed his riotously raw filmed-on-a-cellphone “Tangerine” with a poem to childhood mischief, imagination and acquired coping skills set within sight of Every Child’s Fantasy Vacation — Disney World.

Moonee, played with an unfiltered exuberance by discovery Brooklynn Prince, is the leader of the pack. If there’s a spitting contest to be staged, a profane shout-off with adults to be engaged, a utility room at the Futureland Inn where she and her running mates (Christopher Rivera, Aiden Malik) are never supposed to enter, she’s the instigator.

Broken families and broke families reside there, scraping together the $38 a night to sleep, cook, smoke and socialize by the pool of this dead-end of the tourist corridor, where garish purple paint long ago took the place of actual maintenance.

Not that Bobby, the manager, wants it that way. It’s a terrible job — dealing with brawls in the parking lot, hookers setting up shop, residents who can’t pay their bills and won’t follow the rules. But he does it. And if it “takes a village” to raise Moonee’s pack of free-range six year-olds, they could do worse than Bobby, given sympathy and forbearance by Willem Dafoe, in one of his sweetest performances ever.

Whatever minimal supervision his residents — who must skirt “residency” rules, with his help — can’t be bothered to give their kids, Bobby is there, a last line of defense against accidents, eviction and the sorts of predators who find their way anywhere children are gathered in great numbers.

Bobby is the kids’ “Catcher in the Rye.”

The parents range from the competent working poor, mothers and grandmothers, to Halley, Moonee’s mom. And meeting her, you see where Moonee got her mouth and shudder for her future. Bria Vinaite’s not just playing a strip-club trash stereotype, she is a loving incompetent, an impulsive child herself with just enough native cunning to keep them going, week to week.

It’s Moonee and her gang that the movie tracks, from farm fields with cows to the ice cream stand where they hustle free treats, burping contests, finding the magic of humming into a fan, flipping off tourists who take off for those annoying helicopter flights over Orlando’s Big Three theme parks.

It’s Moonee who shows newcomer Jancey (Valeria Cotto) the lay of the land, her new playground.

“This is where we get free ice cream…The man who lives in here gets arrested a lot…Nobody uses the elevator ’cause it smells like pee.”

They’re not just pals, they’re co-conspirators, ranging far beyond what today’s parenting code would consider safe, water-ballooning tourists, playing with matches in abandoned condo projects, cursing like teenagers and keeping mum about their activities.

“We’re just playin’!” A second query from any adult gets a “You’re not the boss of me!” And worse.

Halley, covered in tattoos and piercings, cursing her bad “luck” for not being able to hold a strip club job or get work in “the parks,” keeps a foul temper barely in check with weed and a “Just chill” comeback at every complaint Bobby brings to her door.

Baker peoples this world with hotheads and hangers-on, elderly nude sunbathers and traveling perverts. But he never loses track of those kids, watching them misbehave and take stupid risks, witnessing, as they do, their parents’ careless, sometimes violent behavior. “The Florida Project” maintains a harrowing sense of suspense about those moppets. What, among the smorgasbord of accidents waiting to happen, will be the one that tips them off the razor’s edge they and their parents live on?

Baker documents the nuts-and-bolts of this level of poverty in this part of the world, filling in where “Monster” and the housing crisis drama “99 Homes” merely introduced us to it. That alone makes “The Florida Project” one of the best pictures of 2017.

But rarely has a movie gone as deep into the magical resiliency and adaptability of childhood. As cute as these kids are, as resourceful as any six year-old not in school could be, you fear for them — not just for their risky present, but their cycle-of-poverty future.

Every child’s fantasy might be to live at Disney World. Every parent’s nightmare would be to live near it, without the resources, job and prospects to ever take that child to “The Happiest Place on Earth.” “The Projects,” be they in Chicago, Houston or Orlando, are no place for dreamers.

Roger Moore talks with the filmmakers about Greater Orlando, “Cinderella’s Slums” and the inspiration for “The Florida Project” for Orlando Magazine — linked here. 

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, disturbing behavior, sexual references and some drug material.

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Valeria Cotto, Bria Vinaite, Christopher Rivera, Caleb Landry Jones

Credits: Directed by Sean Baker, written by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:55

Oscar bait? To be sure. Gary Oldman goes for spot-on impersonation of the English bulldog who led Britain through World War II, with Kristen Scott-Thomas as Lady Churchill and the omnipresent Ben Mendelsohn as the King George of “The King’s Speech.”

Nov. 22 we see “Darkest Hour,” a parallel tale to “Dunkirk,” full of political intrigues, strong drink and epic speeches.

Two well-heeled strangers, trapped in Idaho before a blizzard hits, charter a plane to Denver. It goes down in the Rocky Mountain wilderness and they’re forced to depend on each other, blend clashing personalities, to survive.

That’s the premise of “The Mountain Between Us.”

Now, take a moment to imagine the dramatic possibilities. See the potential sore spots for friction, and guess the obstacles, the action beats a “lost in in the mountains in winter” romantic thriller.

Then throw out any of your best ideas for friction and pat yourself on the back for every hoary survival film cliche and coincidence you can think of, because that’s what this movie, based on a Charles Martin novel, throws at us.

It’s an interminable movie that as our thrown-together couple face injury, cold, frostbite, sliding off a cliff, mountain lions and yes — a frozen lake (Craaaaaack) and bear-traps (SNAP) — and find time to um, bond, inspires “Oh just get ON with it” shouting at the screen.

Yes, it’s “The English Patient in Winter.”

Oscar winner Kate Winslet and Oscar bait Idris Elba are the two stranded travelers. She’s a freelance photographer about to miss her wedding. He’s a neurosurgeon with a young patient depending on him back East.

The skies may be clear, but there’s a blizzard bearing down on Boise. The airlines aren’t flying, but ol’ Walter (Beau Bridges) can get them out. “Flew F-5s in Vi–ET Nam,” he drawls. “Log as nobody’s shootin’ at me, I’m home free.”

Famous not-quite-last-words. Before you can say “Alive!”, they’ve plowed into a mountain with no flight plan filed, nobody knowing they left much less where they went. All the antsy Alex (busted foot) and Dr. Ben have is each other, and Walter’s yellow lab.

The sudsy set-up is that we root for them — to survive and connect — and fear for the dog. As the story was adapted by J. Mills Goodloe, who gave us “Everything, Everything” and “The Best of Me,” we know there’ll be plenty of sap in this corner of the Rockies.

The dynamic of pitching two willful, smart cookies into this situation pays almost no dividends, even though they’re each out of their element. He’s a man of discipline, science and a “system,” which will spring into action now that they’re missing. She’s quick to grasp the worst case scenario.

“Systems fail.”

He’s careful, tentative. She’s “reckless.”

It’ll never work out. Until, as they (at her insistence) start trekking out, their hikes peppered with intimately confessional conversations to take their minds off the starvation they might face and the dog they might lose.

Exhaustion, hunger and desperation never figure into the story or the performances. Whatever Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad brought to his breakout film, “Paradise Now,” he’s way out of his element here. The scenery is stunning, but not breathtaking enough to hide the fact that reality rarely intrudes into each head-slapping coincidence or, for that matter, the make-up trailer.

Both players make the best of things, rarely letting on that they know this is a Nicholas Sparks beach novel without the beach. Whatever drew Winslet to it, “Mountain” makes you wonder if the supposed hot-ticket Elba (“The Dark Tower”) will ever get a mainstream film that justifies his stardom.

Or if what he really needs is to change agents.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a scene of sexuality, peril, injury images, and brief strong language

Cast: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba, Beau Bridges

Credits : Directed by Hany Abu-Assad script by J. Mills Goodloe, based on the Charles Martin novel. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:44

This was a pretty notorious kidnapping case when it happened back in 1973. A Getty grandson nabbed, the kid’s mother is “not a real Getty” and the Patriarch (Kevin Spacey) isn’t likely to pay ransom.

Ridley Scott directed, with Michelle Williams as the woman who just wants her kid back, Mark Wahlberg as the family intermediary and Charlie Plummer as the young Getty whose life is in the hands of terrorists. Look for “All the Money in the World” Dec. 8.

Ok, that’s a mean headline, and this IS a Noah Baumbach film. And with that cast, it could be funny.

Netflix aims considerably higher in its “Let’s Be in the Adam Sandler Business” strategy with “The Meyerwitz Stories.” Not really a laugh in this trailer — maybe one. We’ll see for ourselves on Netflix Oct. 13. 

Granted, Owen Wilson’s been in the rear view mirror for a decade, and Ed Helms’ window to stardom was a pretty narrow one.

But Glenn Close as a randy mom from “the ’70s, man,” and Christopher Walken, Ving Rhames, J.K. Simmons and Terry Bradshaw are the possible father figure.

R-rated “Let’s find Dad” comedy, with Katt Williams and Harry Shearer, just in time for Christmas.

In America, we chart the sea changes in our culture through sport. Seminal figures from Jackie to Fernando, Babe to Althea, signal to us that our world is different or, in some cases, make it different all on their own.

“Battle of the Sexes” gives one of those icons her due. It’s not that we’ve forgotten Billie Jean King, a champion whose march to the top heralded the beginning of a golden age of American tennis. But it’s worth remembering, too, her place in feminist history and the blows she struck against sexism and for equal rights and the cartoonish spectacle of a match that made it all possible.

There was a TV movie of almost 20 years ago, “When Billie Beat Bobby,” that got the hilarious hoopla of the 1973 Billie Jean vs. Bobby Riggs match right. What “Little Miss Sunshine” directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton and “Slumdog Millionaire” screenwriter Simon Beaufoy go for in “Battle of the Sexes” is to connect that match with King’s sexual awakening as a gay woman, and America’s changing attitudes towards that.

And by casting the hard-not-to-be-adorable Steve Carell as the self-promoting “male chauvinist pig” Riggs, they’ve produced a picture that’s alternately giddy and touching, with its heart coming from a budding romance and many of its laughs from the naked, reflexive sexism of the era.

When the most jaw-dropping moment of your movie is special effect footage of the grandiloquent popinjay Howard Cosell draping his patronizing arm over tennis star and commentator for The Big Match Rosie Casals (Natalie Morales) as she delivers her take on the battle, one can’t help but marvel at how apt Madison Avenue’s most famous cigarette slogan of the day still is.

“You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Emma Stone, bronzed and hair-bobbed if not muscular enough to suggest the real King’s athleticism, lets us see the vulnerability beneath the steely competitor. When tennis boss Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) identifies himself as the true villain of the piece, refusing to pay women anything remotely like what male players earn at American tournaments, Stone’s King doesn’t wilt, weep or swear.

She starts her own tour. Or puts her manager (Sarah Silverman at her feistiest) on it. She talks most of the best women’s players into joining them, and that cigarette company with the sexy slogan, Virginia Slims, sponsors it.

Riggs is a long-faded star who was one of the greatest players of his era, a mind-gaming hustler who won major titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles in his day. Now, he’s a hilariously unrepentant gambler. He plays cards with his therapist and leads a revolt in his Gambler’s Anonymous meeting.

“Why should we give up the one thing in life we really love?”

His wealthy wife has had enough of this, but in casting Elisabeth Shue in that part, the filmmakers play up the lovable rascal in Riggs. We see him through her amusingly infuriated eyes.

One hustle too many (he wins a Rolls Royce from a rich mark) and she kicks him out. But he sees the Virginia Slims tennis revolt as opportunity. The 55 year-old who plays comic handicapped matches in raingear, wearing scuba fins, or in Little Bo Peep outfits (complete with sheep) will play the top ranked woman player in a hyped big money exhibition match.

Billie Jean isn’t having it. So he plays Australian champ (and new mother) Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), portrayed here as mercenary and judgmental.

What’s she judging? Billie Jean’s succumbed to the flirtations of an LA hairdresser (the great Andrea Riseborough) and taken her on tour with them. Legendary tennis fashion designer Cuthbert “Ted” Tinling ( Alan Cumming, perfect) may have his Sapphic sister’s back. But Court disapproves, and knows the world would, too.

All of this is folded into events leading up to The Big Match, and while the sexual component does add gravitas and romance to the story, it tends to slacken the pace. The picture plays long, as not all the buildup to the finale has momentum built into it.

Beaufoy makes up for this with some sharp dialogue, most of which is uttered by Cummings, such as the moment when King, upset, realizes this “not a match, a show,” is something she cannot dodge.

“What’s gotten into her?”

“Fate, sweetie, coming at her like a runaway train.”

Stone gives the formidable King the warmth to make her easy to root for. And Carell carries his half of the picture with the pathos of a faded star, willing to vamp away what little reputation he has left for one last stunt in the spotlight.

In the end, King is the embodiment of the change she wants to see in the world and Cosell is the relic of an age so alien that we laugh, in shock, at how commonplace his brand of “little lady” sexism was, way back then.

We’ve all come a long way, babies.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual content and partial nudity

Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Alan Cumming, Andrea Riseborough, Bill Pullman, Sarah Silverman

Credits: Directed by Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, script by Simon Beaufoy. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 2:01