Movie Nation

Blake Lively, a swimsuit and a shark — that’s all the titillation and terror most of us will ever want.

“The Shallows” turns out to be just what the summer cinema needed, a little reminder to be afraid to go back in the water.

Horror and action specialist Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan,” “Non-Stop”) serves up a harrowing serving of sea food in this simple, somewhat sensible shark-attack thriller.

Clever, funny and gripping, it goes all far-fetched in the third act. But for 75 minutes or so, we’re stuck with a bloodied Blake out on a rock, waiting for high tide to bring a 24 foot shark into her lap to finish his meal.

Lively shows off her between-babies beach bod to good effect as Nancy Adams, a free spirit who bailed out of medical school to find her way to a beach her late mother once frequented.

Anthony Jaswinski’s script establishes her pluck, her back story and her sense of humor as she mangles Spanish communicating with the friendly local (Oscar Jaenada) who drives her to a Mexican cove with distinct off-shore islets guarding its bay.

“Cuidado,” he tells her (“Be careful.”). “Siempre,” she replies. “Always.”

There are a couple of Mexican surfers there. One has a GoPro mini-camera. And we all know what that means.

While they swim for shore at dusk, Nancy goes for the “one last wave.” And we all know what THAT means, too.

Next thing she knows, she’s stumbled into a shark in a very logical place to find one. She’s grievously bitten, loses her board and finds herself on a low-tide islet with only a shark-injured seagull for company.

Corny touches — Nancy talks to the gull, and the shark.

“Where are you TAKING me?”

And she talks herself through the inevitable surgery-on-oneself moment — not for the weak of stomach.

Lively gives Nancy a hint of shock, a touch of panic and a trace of resignation at her situation. She lets us see the wheels turning as the surfer tries to reason her way out of this jam.

Collet-Serra treats us to stunning underwater slo-mo, establishing Nancy’s ease with a board and a wave, and the hint of menace just beneath the surface. The seas are Tanqueray clear, but the bottom is a minefield of jagged rocks, fire corals and the shark we know is on his way.

Things get into the area of “Oh come on” before they’re done. But “The Shallows” never tries to pass itself off as deep. It’s a straight, simple and primal thriller playing with our darkest deep sea fear — getting eaten.

And Lively, with every bruise, cut and abrasion added to her makeup, with every grunt and scream at a fresh injury, puts us on that rock with her, trying to outsmart one pitiless fish between low tide and high.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for bloody images, intense sequences of peril, and brief strong language)

Cast: Blake Lively, Óscar Jaenada
Credits: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra , script by Anthony Jaswinski. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:25

An important, hot-button topic gets an amusing, convincing if cursory treatment in “Can We Take a Joke?”, a documentary about the war on free speech in America.

It’s not a film about government censorship or old-school State Sponsored Religion restrictions on what people can say or write. It’s about the political correctness that has so infected college campuses and the Internet that stand-up comedians are spending a lot of time apologizing, when they should be trying out new jokes that prick the orthodoxy and challenge sensibilities.

Insult comics from Lisa Lampenelli to Gilbert Gottfried marvel at how emboldened hecklers have become, at how colleges — supposed bastions of airing challenging ideas and hearing others out — have become the home to the “mob censorship” movement.

Director Ted Balaker begins with a parade of public apologies, from Don Imus and Jimmy Kimmel and others, for jokes they’ve made. It shows us video of coed fascists, shouting down plays they take umbrage to, charging the stage to snatch the microphone from comics who offend them.

And scholars, comics and others weigh in on the public’s runaway “right to be offended,” stunned that a generation has grown up to “become what they hated” — censors.

Penn Gillette and Gottfried and a Lenny Bruce biographer marvel over the legendary martyr for free speech who must be rolling in his grave over battles he fought with the anti-free speech conservatives of his day made moot by anti-free speech liberals.

Bruce, whose challenging work of the 1960s is generously sampled here, pushed boundaries that George Carlin and Richard Pryor exploited after him, and generations of comics have enjoyed great freedom in the decades since.

As anybody who has spent 15 minutes studying stand-up could tell you, NOTHING should be off-limits. Or is supposed to be. Gottfried famously told the first post 9/11 joke about 9/11, and was more far famously fired from a duck-quacking insurance spokesman gig for making Japanese earthquake/tsunami/meltdown cracks “too soon” after that tragedy. Thanks to a “Let’s get him FIRED” Internet campaign.

The movie wanders off topic, sidetracked by Internet shaming and its consequences. Considering how brief “Take a Joke” is, that deflates the message and feels like filler.

After all, everybody from Jerry Seinfeld on down the comic hierarchy has complained about this campus-fueled assault on free speech. More voices would have been nice, and just one person, on camera, defending the whole tyranny of “safe space” where “hate speech” and “bullying” is banned on campuses is a grievous omission.

Hearing from the “other side” in a movie that advocates advancing knowledge and understanding through free speech seems like, um, a no brainer.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Gilbert Gottfried, Lisa Lampenelli, Karith Foster, Penn Jillette,
Credits: Written and directed by Ted Balaker. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:19

“Nuts!” is a comical documentary exploration of Americana, a piece of Great Depression history playfully related with animation and tongue planted firmly in cheek.

It’s about a Great American, a visionary almost forgotten today, Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, whose impotence cures made him a legend back when movies were silent, radio was new and Viagra was but a Big Pharma wet dream.

Brinkley kicked around the  fringes of medicine in the early years of the century, settled in Milford, Kansas, and discovered that implanting billy goat testicles cured men complaining of having “a flat tire,” “sexual weakness” Brinkley called it.

It made him and his little town rich, and as he became one of the earliest adapters when radio rolled around, it made him famous.

The adorably-named director Penny Lane has built her film upon Brinkley’s “authorized biography,” and lists the achievements of this scientific wonder, chapter and verse. The famous — Rudolph Valentino, Huey P. Long, William Jennings Bryan — supposedly took the cure. Buster Keaton may have, too, and certainly plugged “goat gland” therapy in one of his movies.

Brinkley put the fourth radio station to take to the airwaves in these United States on the air, and used it to do consultations and make prescriptions and talk, frankly, about sex and sexual dysfunction. One of the historical experts Lane puts on camera describes the goateed Brinkley as “the Dr. Ruth…of the ’20s and ’30s.”

Endorsed by the Los Angeles Times, a man who built an empire of cooperative pharmacies, private hospitals and eventually, multi-state broadcasting, Brinkley was so admired he might have become Governor of Kansas, had the state not engaged in election chicanery to prevent it.

And it was all a hustle. The infant American Medical Association came after him, as did the pre-Federal Communications Commission (Federal Radio Commission). His “real” story was simply scandalous.

Lane saves her departure from the script, according to the self-published biography, for the third act, when Brinkley took his place among the infamous figures of early radio — Father Coughlin and Sister Aimee Semple McPherson.

But that takes little away from his pioneering status. Laws were written to protect the public from people like Brinkley, but millions embraced him. His radio station put country and western music and traditional folk musicians on the air. And when he lost that one, he became the first to sell his elixirs and cures on a purpose-built super-powered Mexican radio station on the border with Texas.

His status as an outlaw radio/musical taste-changer warranted a mention in ZZ Top’s early hit, “Heard it On the X.”

This quick, short Sundance Film Festival award winner leaves out a lot more about Brinkley than in it includes. But save your trip to the library (or Wikipedia) for after the film. The surprises, comic and tragic, are worth waiting for.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult sexual subject matter

Cast: Pope Brock, Dr. James Rearden, the voices of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, Gene Tognacci and others. 
Credits: Directed by Penny Lane, script by Thom Stylinski. A Cartuna/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:19

Sensitive child actor turned sensitive character player and leading man Anton Yelchin is the latest celebrity death in the grim gallery of 2016. Pinned against a wall by his own car, apparently.

It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, under a recall for gear shifter/park problems, according to Jalopnik and CBS.

The too too young “Star Trek” and “Green Room” “Burying the Ex” and “Rudderless” and “House of D” and “Alpha Dog” star and musician (check him out in “Green Room” and especially “Rudderless” to sample his musical side) was just 27 years old.

I interviewed him a few times over the years. He seemed to work constantly.

A real sweetheart, his co-stars went all goo-goo talking about him. I remember Felicity Jones (“Like Crazy”) went “Who WOULDN’T fall in love with him?” when I asked.

Loved him in many an indie film, especially his most recent, “Green Room.” Just stunned at his sudden death.

This will cast a pall over the  his final “Star Trek” movie, opening next month. Sweet kid, good actor, very funny Chekhov.

Some movies, and almost all popcorn pictures, don’t need to be previewed for critics. They’re “brands” more than movies. They have a built-in constituency, and the only things do for that constituency is rile them up if some of us dare to speak truth-to-fanboy.

“Warcraft” sucks. “X-Men: Apocalypse” is a bore. “Transformers” are for trolls. Etc.

A movie like “The Da Vinci Code” may have its problems with critics, but the first rule is “Never show fear.” “Da Vinci was previewed at Cannes, and in theaters for critics all over America, at exactly the same time. We all said pretty much the same thing — “Ugh.” But no matter. Sony leveled the playing field, rolled out the red carpet and took a shot.

Did it hurt the movie? Not a whit.

But another message is sent when you’ve spent hundreds of millions on a movie and are supposedly marketing it to retrieve some of that investment. You’re scared of reviews. You know they aren’t going to be good. And, what the hey? Why spend money getting a beating you know is coming? How can that help?

I get the logic. But if “Warcraft’s” producers had the guts to show the movie pre-release, if every “Transformers” movie and every Michael Bay mishap is hurled at critics before the public release, why wouldn’t you critic screen your movie? You’re already test-screening it.

Twentieth Century Fox has been trying to blunt criticism by opening a lot of its blockbuster in Rupert Murdoch’s home country — Australia. If you own a lot of the media, maybe the first wave of reviews will be kinder. If the critics know what’s good for’em, eh?

They don’t appear to be attempting even that with “Independence Day: Resurgence.” 

“No previews, at all,” I was told. My sister-and-brother critics have been getting the same message. Unless somebody is lying, there won’t be previews of this one before it opens.

Protecting the surprises? Preventing spoilers? Or hiding a product they know is going to get killed? We’ll all have to wait for Thursday to find out.

Pixar’s magic touch has never been more magical. “Finding Dory,” the “Finding Nemo” sequel, is on pace to set the opening weekend box office record for animated films.

$134 million, per Deadline.com.

The most beloved Pixar (Disney Pixar) title to never earn a sequel, it’s earned terrific reviews and didn’t really need them, with that “Finding” brand and “Disney” brand and “Pixar” brand going for it. Staggering numbers.

To compare, the grossly inferior Finnish “Angry Birds” movie has just cleared $100 million, after a month in release.

The sun hasn’t set on Kevin Hart, for those who worried about the Little Man. He’s headed to a buddy picture $32-33 million take with “Central Intelligence.”

Yeah, reviews were mixed. He ends up being second banana to The Rock, after all. But it’s funny enough and there you go.

Of last weekend’s openings, “Warcraft” fell off a cliff. A 72% drop is what we in the business call “A Tyler Perry Plummet.” That plunge would be enough to stagger even those die-hards who loaded my review with enraged comments. Except, you know, numbers, percentages and what not befuddle them. The dears. They think the fact that it’s huge in China is a counter-argument for its quality. China. Where anti-freeze in dogfood and communism are still in fashion.

A POS vid game adaptation in which only adherents could find anything to embrace. Sorry. Only fans could love. Big words. Apologies, “Warcrafters.”

“Now You See Me” held a lot more audience, as did “Conjuring 2.”

Pervy, titillating and deeply disturbing, the one word you’d never use to describe the documentary “Tickled” is funny.

An expose of the Internet phenomenon of “Competitive Endurance Tickling,” it’s one of those “sports” you hear DJs talk about when they hit the “Can you believe THIS?” portion of their radio shows.

Which is kind of how New Zealand “lighter side” TV reporter David Farrier came to it. A guy famous for funny feature stories on the unusual, the trendy and the physical, he heard about this “sport” and sampled the Internet videos that capture it — young, good-looking men — athletes and actors and teenagers, a lot of them — are restrained, then gang-tickled for minutes and minutes on end.

Kinky. Funny. But, whatever floats your boat, right?

But Farrier’s efforts to get some information from the LA production company doing many of the videos leave him taken aback. He is threatened. There’s ugly name-calling from execs with “Jane O’Brien Media.” Farrier’s gay, and the nastiness includes “little gay Kiwi” slurs and is shockingly out of proportion considering his semi-innocent interest.

“If you want to stick your head in a blast furnace, do it.”

Lawsuits are launched, and Farrier receives letters from both the US and New Zealand law firms. The harassment is non-stop, all-consuming and explicit. Wow, he thinks. What’s going on here?

But the ticklers have under-estimated the features reporter. Farrier and co-director/videographer Dylan Reeve go to America and travel far down the rabbit hole of a “tickle empire” — encountering bullying, the ruined lives of some of the boyish men who took part in the videos and journalists who have tackled this story before.

They meet a less threatening, up-front and proud tickler and producer of tickling videos in Orlando, of all places. Richard Ivey gives insights about what’s erotic about these “games,” the sado-masochistic nature of what’s going on — “control.” The person Farrier and Reeve are after is someone who has gone off the deep end in that regard, a monster with legal acumen and deep pockets. No wonder many people have a fear of being tickled. It’s not that innocent.

It’s a mystery not unlike “Catfish,” a story that begins with one set of assumptions and leads deeper and deeper until the more obvious ones step to the fore. Like “Catfish,” it’s more about peeling the layers than the revelation that “Jane O’Brien” doesn’t exist.

Unlike “Catfish,” what the filmmakers have done is documentary journalism of a public service variety, journalism of a high order. They go on stake-outs, they confront people in the act, they dig through financials, court records, resumes and work histories. They interview victims.

“Tickled” is not a movie that lets you see how the meal is prepared — not totally, anyway. At some point, they stumble into a video shoot at Jane O’Brien Media, and then are beneficiaries of a vast data dump that points them in the right direction (basically solves the mystery). How they got these “breaks” is skipped over, perhaps to protect a source or two.

Reading between the lines, you quickly realize that being tickled isn’t the only thing one has to fear when asking questions the wealthy and well-lawyered don’t want answered. The helplessness one gets being pinned down and tickled, the chilling fear of that, nicely parallels the chill and fear of reporting a story powerful people don’t want reported, which Farrier shows us in this odd and shocking expose.

MPAA Rating:R for language

Cast: David Farrier, Dylan Reeve, David Starr, Hal Karp,
Credits: Directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:31

OK, so now they’re three weeks into “Top Gear: TNG.” How’s it doing?

“Still gaining acceptance?”

Don’t know about that. Wouldn’t be prudent to make a judgment. Yet.

Maybe everybody made up their minds about post-May/Hammond/Clarkson TG with the premiere episode. But as I said back when this monstrosity re-launched for Series 23, they’re entitled to a bit of a shakedown cruise. As the last incarnation took THREE SERIES to get it right, this could be a bumpy ride.

But there are flashes in every episode that show chemistry, comedy and promise. Antique SUV challenge in episode 1, the crunching/bickering South African safari meant to show off the New Jag SUV in episode two, and Matt LeBlanc’s tour de Hoon of London in Ep 3 — those worked.

Pairing up celebrities for the “car in a reasonably priced car” is an improvement over the last incarnation of TG. Kevin Hart, Jesse Eisenberg, paired up with British film and sports stars — better banter, funnier, a bit of interaction between the guests. It’s a Graham Norton touch.

Chris Harris and Rory Reid are better car reviewers, for those who want CAR reviews in the show that started out as a car culture/car review program. Sorry, programme.

Plainly moving Sabine Schmitz into the studio as a third host(ess) is in the show’s future as she’s funny, natural on camera and German — ready-made for Teutonic mockery. And the best driver in the lot.

The last few years of “Top Gear” were “maybe see” TV for me, as they’d run out of ideas and only the “Grand Tour” specials (the name of the new Amazon series starring Clarkson et al) stick with me from that era.

If they’d launched the series with episode 3, they might have dodged some of the abuse they took for their very derivative and chemically-off premiere. LeBlanc is wisely being moved front and center, as Chris Evans starts EVERY test drive with a good bit of shouting. Where do you go from there, Red?

To me, it’s working out. Bit by bit. The banter is awkward, but I’m watching a Series 14 episode, and there were still groaners rolling out from the veteran cast, even then.

My first take, that this is “Matt Gear,” still stands. LeBlanc is the stand up/stand out guy in this mix.

They’re getting the cast broken in, and that Hoonicorn Mustang ride through London was a hoot. A couple more good ideas and they can call their shakedown season a success. But that’s the rub, isn’t it?

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin “Little Man” Hart team up for “Central Intelligence.”

That’s all the info we need to know exactly how this action comedy is going down. Lots of Big Man/Little Fella sight gags, confident muscle man, man pf action, paired with wee and manic and increasingly shrill funnyman.

But to its credit, “Central Intelligence” flips that script. From the moment Johnson struts on camera, rainbow unicorn T-shirt, fanny pack and jean-shorts “Jorts?” Really?”), we know he’s supposed to be the goofy one. He’s an extension of his “Pain & Gain” doofus, a variation on his “Be Cool” comic bodyguard.

He’s a dork, a fanboy hero-worshipping his once-popular high school classmate (Hart). And he’s comfortable with his sexuality — VERY comfortable. Really in touch with his feminine side.

Hart? He’s reduced to straight-man for much of this Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Dodgeball”) comedy. He has to screech just to get noticed. Because Johnson is freaking hilarious.

A prologue shows us Calvin “Golden Jet” Joyner’s glorious last day in high school. And it introduces the En Vogue loving Robert Whierdicht (Johnson) dancing in the shower, a roly poly fat boy in braces, a prime target for Baltimore’s bullies. Bob will be humiliated that day in a way that will scar him forever.

Twenty years later, “Most Likely to Succeed” Calvin has married his high school sweetheart (Danielle Nicolet) and succumbed a life of accounting and drudgery. Until his former classmate connects, via Facebook.

The dated “Waaaassssuuuuuup” video email is his first warning. “Bob,” as he’s now called, still wears a fanny pack.

“Hell YEAH. You want one?”

Bob never quite got over high school, never got over “Sixteen Candles.”

“Ever see that one?”

“Well, I’m BLACK.”

Bob drags Calvin out for drinks and down a rabbit hole. He has something to do with the CIA. He needs Calvin’s forensic accounting skills. And hey, maybe later we can hit our 20th high school reunion?

Amy Ryan plays a CIA agent chasing Bob. Calvin must decide who is The Good Guy and who will get him tossed into jail. Are you in or are you out?

In, of course. Reluctantly. With some screaming.

Johnson milks his overly affectionate goof for every laugh in the guy.

“You’re like a snack size Denzel!…”You’re like a Chocolate Google!”

Thurber films much of the movie in comic close-ups, and makes Johnson’s entrances and exits lightning-quick, like magic.

Hart is kind of left on his own, “Run funny, here.” “Hold a gun like it’s the first time” there. “Shriek.” “Let’s see some more eyes-bugging this time.” Hart has less to work with and he lets you see the strain of trying to carry his half of the movie.

Set pieces — “Bob” stepping in for Calvin’s marriage counselor — pay off. The CIA stuff and even the shootouts, by comparison, have their moments, but feel routine.

The cavalier amount of gunplay is common is such pictures, but unfortunately-timed here in light of last weekend’s night club massacre. Seriously, hundreds of rounds  discharged in gunfights, barely a drop of blood? That’s irresponsible at any time, and the MPAA ratings board should recognize that.

This picture would have worked better with less of that, and tighter editing. It dawdles between action beats and big laughs, and in the third act, that lets much of the wind out of it. The anti-bullying message is pounded in without a hint of subtlety.

These guys, both veterans of buddy pictures, make the romance work, as it were. But it’s obvious Hart is a bit bugged at being so utterly upstaged. He knows even second bananas have to be funnier than this.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for crude and suggestive humor, some nudity, action violence and brief strong language

Cast: Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, Aaron Paul
Credits: Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, script by Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen, Rawson Marshall Thurber. A New Line/Universal release.

Running time: 1:47