Movie Nation

British writer and director Terence Davies (“The Deep Blue Sea, ” “The House of Mirth”) looked at the poems of American poet Emily Dickinson and didn’t see a shrinking violet. He saw more than the shy recluse, the plain spinster who spun lyrics out of a life of utter desperation.

And he gives not the “Belle of Amherst,” of legend, play and teleplay (Julie Harris memorably captured that Dickinson). This is a woman of ambition and despair, fear and fury, a poetess with “A Quiet Passion.”

His portrait begins in her late teens, with Emma Bell as the literary-minded wit, one of three clever and glib children of a stern, pious Massachusetts lawyer (Keith Carradine).

In a single indelible opening scene, young Emily swaps barbs with an over-matched aunt (Annette Badland, quite good). “Cherish your ignorance, Aunt,” she purrs, in the only overt insult the prim old biddy can be sure was intentional. The pretty Ms. Bell (“Gracie”) suggests an Emily of youthful, biting sarcasm whose poetry is a revolt against her lot and humanity’s fate.

“Poems are my solace for the eternity that surrounds us all.”

Hard to be flip and funny with that outlook. But it’s only when Cynthia Nixon of “Sex and the City” takes over the role, the charm slowly fades, the wit takes on a bitter edge that fans of the poetry will recognize, even if it is only glimpsed on the page. And for all the sisterly forbearance that Jennifer Ehle (“Pride and Prejudice”) can summon, that the snarky teacher pal Miss Buffam (Catherine Bailey) promises and the needy assurances that sister-in-law Susan (Jodhi May) requires, Emily cannot fight the bile, the fury that pre-feminist decorum demands she suppress — at slavery, the Civil War, sexism and inferior poets like Longfellow.

“His genius lies in stating the obvious,” she opines with a murderous grin.

Dickinson’s poems are generously sampled, showcasing her genius, explaining her world view of “minor lives,” her grim expectation of death.

“Because I could not stop for Death —
He kindly stopped for me —
The Carriage held but just Ourselves —
And Immortality.”

But rather than grim acceptance, this Miss Emily can work up a fine rage long before the coming of the night, snapping, shouting, accusing and breaking dishes.

Davies does a marvelous job of creating context, suggesting a circumscribed but not hermit-like life (the Dickinson of legend and cliche) and an era when beloved parents died in your arms, at home, when that was all you yourself had to look forward to, even if you “keep atheism at bay.”

Nixon has the gravitas to bring the brittle Emily to life, capturing the way disappointments, losing those close to her to marriage, moving away or death made her curdle into someone unfit for company. And Bell gives a smart alec sparkle to her brief, early moments of Austen-esque banter. The radiant Ehle feels like the better choice for Dickinson the moment we see her, but Nixon’s caustic cuts make the casting make sense. Ehle is delightful and warm as long-suffering sister Vinny, but Nixon’s Emily is only meant to be good company or so long.

It’s a movie that doesn’t focus as much on the creation of the work as it does on a fresh view of the woman who made it, and as such — the petticoats, formality of flirtation and chamber music dances (“I fear you must prepare yourself for a polka.”) can feel like a tease.

But Davies is hell-bent on showing us her private hell. His portrait of the poet is grim, gripping and  less entertaining by design. It does make one pine, just a bit, for a movie about Young Emily, before the talent had truly matured, and before the optimism faded.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for thematic elements, disturbing images and brief suggestive material
Cast: Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine, Duncan Duff, Catherine Bailey, Emma Bell
Credits: Written and directed by Terence Davies. A Music Box release.
Running time: 2:05

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” roared back Saturday to swallow a big chunk of “Alien: Convent” cash — a $15 million to $12 million beat-down. “Covenant” is now projected to maybe hit $36 million.

Word of mouth? Not helping.

“Guardians,” not any as charming/funny as the first film, may clear $35. “Covenant” is now opening far lower on the all-time “Alien” openings scale. 

“Everything, Everything” now looks like a wash — a $12 million+ opening. Maybe it’ll break even, long run.

The “Wimpy Kid” franchise road picture didn’t reboot this tween series — $7 million will not give Alicia Silverstone and Tom Everett Scott work for years to come.

“King Arthur” didn’t recreate all that opening weekend buzz (snort) or audience. It will lose all its screens before it clears $40 million ($26 now).

“Lowriders” earned $1 million this weekend, a steady spike for a film in limited release.

HBO’s follow-up to the Andy Samberg tennis spoof “Seven Days in Hell” is a rip on the ’82 Tour de France, an all-star romp (again starring Samberg, but also Maya Rudolph, Mike Tyson, Dolph Lundgren, and Orlando Bloom, who has been all about who he’s dating for the past decade).

All those names, all that doping, and one hilarious surprise “secret expert” that is sure to make you laugh out loud. Coming in July.

A good news/not-so-good-news weekend for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Studios.

“Alien: Convenant” is opening big — not huge, but safely near the high end of expectations, probably giving it a win at the box office over the long-released “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.”

Deadline.com is projecting, based on late Thursday and all-day Friday sales, that “Covenant” will lure in 3 million or so ticket buyers, good for a $39 million opening. The best guesses for it had the film coming in at $42, the worst $32 or so.

Conversely, the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” version of “National Lampoon’s Vacation” reboot — new cast, no middle school hijinks — is tanking. It may clear $7 million, which suggests it won’t earn back its meager budget.

“Everything, Everything” isn’t setting teen girls’ hearts’ aflutter, either. The new WB release is riding weak reviews (not nearly as bad as Wimpy’s) to an $11 million plus weekend.

Saturday is the telling day, so if anything shifts due to word of mouth, these numbers could rise or fall. But that’s close to what we’ll see as the final tally Sunday night.

“Guardians 2” adds another $33 million, which puts it over $300 million by midnight Sunday. The Mexican-American car culture saga “Lowriders” added just 70 screens and sits just outside of the top ten. A big weekend for Demien Bichir (He’s also in “Alien”).

“Snatched” added screens and held onto almost 50% of its opening weekend audience, “King Arthur” drops 63% which won’t change its “bomb of the summer” status. Fate of the Furious” looks to hit about $225 before it loses most of its screens, “Boss Baby” will top out at $175, and “Beauty and the Beast” will hit $500 million by NEXT Friday. Wow.

There’s plenty of pushback at the latest iteration of “Alien,” a movie that reaches for something deeper and forgets to provide surprises or frights. But most reviewers are endorsing it. The children.

It could earn over $40 million, though I’d be surprised. Box Office Mojo wouldn’t.  Their prediction is that this latest entry in a long-running sci-fi horror franchise will beat “Guardians Vol. 2.” Box Office Guru is more in line with my hunch, that “Alien” will do $32 million or so and lose the weekend to “Guardians.”

The other wide releases this weekend won’t put a dent in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the bomb “King Arthur,” the under-performing “Snatched” and the fading “Fate of the Furious.”

“Everything, Everything” has built-in teen girl appeal, if there still is such a thing. It could blow up, weak reviews be damned. Because you never know. It works well enough, right up to the point where it lost me, anyway.  Mixed to negative Mixed to negative reviews, overall.

 $10 million seems like a low prediction, but in this wired age, “the hit YA novel” doesn’t mean as much, without vampires. “Fault in Their Stars” being the exception. Box Office Mojo posits that it’ll be lucky to clear $8.  I have to figure this’ll do $15-18.

The latest “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is a road trip comedy, “The Long Haul.” Recast, funny in bits and pieces, tween-poop gag friendly. Poor reviews won’t help, but kids’ movies are critic proof. They have earned as much as $22 million upon opening. This one? Lucky to clear $8. 

“Wakefield” is the best new release, opening  opening in one theater, a real tour de force for Bryan Cranston. As if he needed another.

Kind of surprised “Lowriders” didn’t grab a lot more screens, considering how it made out in just a few hundred last weekend.

You can lock the world, with its bacteria, viruses and pathogens out, but you can’t lock raging teen hormones in. That’s the big message of “Everything, Everything,” a terminal teen romance of the “Fault in Our Stars/Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” persuasion.

Amandla Stenberg didn’t survive long as “Rue” in “The Hunger Games.” But how long can Maddy, her immune-system deprived teen, live without first love? Especially when first love is hunky Nick Robinson of “The Kings of Summer?”

Nicola Yoon’s YA novel becomes a charmingly gooey but somewhat gutless adolescent romance all highlighted and underlined with “forbidden love” semiotics. She’s a pretty black girl, always dressed in white. He’s a white SK8Rboi always dressed in black.

She has SCID — severe combined immunodeficiency. He’s living in an about-to-be-broken family next door. There are glass walls between them. Literally. Maddy hasn’t been outside in 17 years.

“I feel like an astronaut, stranded in space.”

But then Olly’s family moves into the mansion next door. They “meet cute,” through hand-written messages held up to glass — posters with digits on them.

Novice features director Stella Meghie handles the chaste courtship with warmth and wit.

“I’m sick.”

“Are you dying?”

“Not right now.”

Mere text messages — no, not sexting — are all it takes to set Maddy’s teen imagination off. She’s lived her whole life vicariously, schooled online, studying architecture, designing diners, etc. where she inserts a symbolic astronaut into each model.

And she dreams of the sea. Three miles away from her hermetically-sealed prison, and she’s never been to the beach, never learned to swim. She’s “Princess Madeleine in her Glass Castle,” Olly (Oliver) jokes, a play on her situation and Maddy’s love of “The Little Prince.”

Her online review of that novel? “Love is everything. Everything.”

There’s a nurse (Ana de la Reguera) willing to facilitate things — as far as that goes. Maddy’s doctor mom (Anika Noni Rose) doesn’t seem like an ogre, though she doesn’t explain her standoffishness to the new neighbors.

The rules of such romances are generally pretty arbitrary, and “Everything, Everything” makes these up as they go along. She can’t see anybody new. Until she does. She can’t go outside. But she will. And so on.

That disembowels the story’s pathos, and the further we get into this brisk but unhurried love story, the more featherweight it seems.

But the leads, perfectly cast and coiffed, have lovely teen magazine chemistry even if the characters seem to have nothing in common. Did that ever stop young love?

And girls have to learn the nature of boys somewhere — “He’s not for you.” And he’ll move on. FAST.

It’s not for you, the movie I mean. Not if you’re oh, over 21. But 15 year -girls traditionally eat this stuff up. And they could do worse.

So it doesn’t add up to “Everything, Everything.” What terminal teen romance does?

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements and brief sensuality

Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Nick Robinson, Anika Noni Rose

Credits:Directed by Stella Meghie, script by J. Mills Goodloe, based on the novel by Nicola Yoon. A Warner Brothers/MGM release.

Running time: 1:36

Depression is a serious illness that can hit anybody. Even a rich Massachusetts teen who travels into the Amazon seeking a cure through the “ancient tribal secret” fad du jour, Ayahuasca.

So there’s no mocking James Freeman’s personal journey, his search through a sea of Amazonian hustlers, one of whom might be just the shaman he’s been looking for, the person who can help him cleanse his body of “bad energy,” feed him the  entheogenic brew, put him through ceremonies filled with smoke, trances and being buried alive. No mocking, no matter how tempting mockery might be.

But here’s what is missing from the indulged and indulgent documentary about James’s vision quest. There’s not one medical expert, not related to him, willing to endorse any of what follows or transpires as his “cure” as James moves from self-described suicidal teen to seemingly-adjusted young man.

Did the psychoactive drink cooked up from the caapi vine make him self-aware, forgiving and happy? Or was it simply the trip, getting away from family, school, expectations, pressures and the competition that the Real World was hurling at him?

The actor-turned-director Rez Degan asks him, perhaps on behalf of the audience, the stupidest question in the midst of all this.

“Am I happy? I’m SICK, dude,” the kid re-assures him.

Freeman tumbled into depression while at an exclusive prep school, and gives perhaps the most succinct definition of clinical depression ever.

“You hate yourself. And you hate yourself for hating so much.”

He looked forward to nothing, dumped his girlfriend (“Kate”) and gave thanks that “You can buy guns in Wal-Mart in America.” James wanted to end it all.

Then he picked up on the celebrity-endorsed Ayahuasca treatment, spent his parents’ money on the trip and endured many months and burned through untold clots of cash weeding through incompetent, predatory or less indulgent “healers” until he found “The Last Shaman.” The ones named in the film, in no particular order, are Ron, Pepe and Guillermo.

Degan — Was he hired by James to document “my story?” — ably imitates drug trip experiences with the visuals and editing. But he also captures a rich, sick boy detoxing from therapeutic drugs and a corrosive-to-some culture, a process that covers many months. James lives among the less materialistic and evolves. He also gets caught up in the drama of the materialism that he and celebrities like Tori Amos, Paul Simon, Sting and actor Penn Badgley have brought to the corner of Amazonia where this drug and its attendant rituals are indulged.

It’s not “The Razor’s Edge,” though there are hints of this “Eat, Pray Love” journey of self-discovery attached to James’s search for a cure to what ails him. Something appears to have helped him, given him perspective, if nothing else. The malaise he professed fades away.

But you don’t actually have to sample “the worst thing I’ve ever tasted,” as James describes the brew, to smell the BS in here.

The Razor’s Edge”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, alternative medicine including hallucinogens, smoking.

Cast: James Freeman, Pepe, Ron, Guillermo, Kate

Credits: Directed by Rez Degan. An Abramorama release.

Running time: 1:18

“Lowriders,” the last sleeper hit of the spring, is an engaging if over-familiar Latino melodrama about fathers and sons, embracing one’s culture even as you stretch it and love triangles.

Corny? Si. But set as it is against the East LA locus of Latino car culture, it is also a delightful appreciation of and history primer for anybody not familiar with where those shiny, bouncy custom cars one sees from sea to shining sea came from.

The great Demian Bichir — of “A Better Life,” and utterly wasted in “Alien: Covenant” — is the patriarch, Miguel. He owns a garage in East Los Angeles, and like his father before him, he’s a car customizer, laying on adding the flash, wiring in effects, loading the hydraulics and layering on “30 coats” to create lowriders with his Coasters car club.

Miguel is a widower who remarried Gloria (Eva Longoria), a proud man fighting for his sobriety and wrestling with guilt.

Because Miguel has two sons. Danny (Gabriel Chavarria) is a talented artist. But he works in graffiti, which could land him in jail. And Miguel cannot have that. He’s already lost one son (Theo Rossi) to the dark side. Francisco has taken on the nickname “Ghost,” because that’s what he is to his dad.

“When they’re your kids, you don’t stop trying,” Miguel’s wife counsels. But that may be too little too late. Ghost wants to have an impact on his baby brother’s life. That’s the first “love triangle” of the story. Who will win Danny’s loyalty?

But being talented, Danny draws the attention of the hip Anglo photographer (Melissa Benoist of “Glee”). She can interpret his art (through white entitled eyes), hook him up with the LA art scene, help him sell out.

“You don’t have to be poor to be real.”

Of course there’s the college bound neighborhood sweetheart (Yvette Monreal), also tugging at his heartstrings. That’s love triangle #2.

The various tug-of-wars play out in the most predictable ways in this melodrama, a term that sums up the conventions of a conventional genre story, with all the shoehorned-in relationship issues, gang fight and cop interventions the picture can manage. There’s as sure to be a kid named Chuey (Tony Revolori) caught in the middle of it all as there is a “Big Chevy” (pronounced “Tchev-ee”) car show where it all can reach a climax.

Bichir is wonderful, young Chavarria is solid in what could be a break-out role and Rossi (“Sons of Anarchy”) gives nice shading to the shady “Ghost,” a gangster with grievances, a son with a heart.

And as predictable as all that is, the film has utility and charm, letting Miguel explain the connections of lowriders to pre-automotive Latin American culture, letting Danny learn that history — the racial profiling that puts laws on the books about how low cars could sit on the road (thus, the retrofitting of aircraft hydraulics to “lift” the cars when the cops drove by).

So for all the corn, “Lowriders” can be appreciated for its rolling stock and serving a criminally under-served audience — Who do you think makes the “Fast and Furious” movies monster hits? — a film with fine performances and teachable moments amidst all the melodrama.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, some violence, sensuality, thematic elements and brief drug use

Cast: Gabriel Chavarria, Demián Bichir, Theo Rossi, Eva Longoria, Melissa Benoist, Yvette Monreal, Tony Revolori

Credits:Directed by Ricardo de Montreuil script by Cheo Hodari Coker, Elgin James. A BH Tilt/High Top release.

Running time:

Alfred Hitchcock almost saves “Diary of a Wimpy Kid — The Long Haul.”

Keeping in mind, of course, that the movie’s for pre-tweens — children who might not have been exposed to any of the scads of “family vacation disaster” comedies that preceded it — and is thus graded on a curve bending towards the unsophisticated.

But for parents, and parents who have imposed Hitchcock on their pre-teen children, there’s a saving grace amidst all the poop/mudhole/piglet/parental sing-along-to-the-Spice Girls gags.

“The Long Haul” has the best “Psycho” shower scene send-up ever filmed. Well, after “High Anxiety.” And this one, at least, is utterly unexpected.

This is a “Wimpy” reboot, with a new look-alike “kid” (Jason Drucker of TV’s “Every Which Way”), a new, dopier-funnier drummer/brother Rodrick (Charlie Wright of “We’re the Millers”) and a couple of big-name upgrades as parents — Alicia Silverstone (“Clueless”) and Tom Everett Scott (“That Thing You Do”).

It starts with our Wimpy narrator becoming the victim of a viral video when he tumbles into a kiddie foam-ball playpit and freaks out as he comes up with “diaper hand,” and then it puts the lad on the road for four days with his family as they drive to granny’s 90th birthday celebration in Indiana. Or to a nearby video game convention, if Greg can figure out how to pull that off.

There are more of moronic Rodrick’s efforts to torment/mentor his kid brother and disappoint his parents. Mom (Silverstone) sends the lads into a store with a shopping list.

“I couldn’t read your curly/oldie fashioned writing!”

“You mean CURSIVE?”

And when they stop for a country fair, Greg gets stuck with his toddler littlest brother, and eventually, a piglet.

The shower scene in question kicks off a livelier third act, as Greg — covered in mud — is trapped in the hotel bathroom shower of their nemesis family as their “Beardo” patriarch (Chris Coppola) uses the facilities. The wimp’s discovery — after a gross and kid-friendly bowel movement — is a shot-by-shot recreation of Hitchcock’s most famous screen sequence, from ripped shower curtain hooks to mud circling the drain. Kudos to Brit director David Bowers for the effort.

The scattered laughs that precede it (Rodrick lines, mostly, Silverstone and Scott singing along to “Wannabe”) don’t add up to much, and the movie lacks the wince-with-recognition middle school spark that marked the first film in this tweenage franchise.

But even if you drop the kids off, come back in time to duck in for a quick shower. It makes “The Long Haul” totally worth it — almost.

MPAA Rating:PG for some rude humor

Cast:  Jason Drucker, Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Charlie Wright

Credits:Directed by David Bowers, script by Jeff Kinney and David Bowers, based on Kinney’s book. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:30

If you need a “name,” even a little-known one, to get your D-movie financed, filmed and released, you want want who’s going to give you fair value.

You want a leading man with a sense of urgency, a dynamism that captures the shock and awe of the supernatural events going on around him. You want an actor who doesn’t look downcast for being cast.

That’s the overwhelming impression Christopher Denham gives in “Camera Obscura,” a thriller which sees its shellshocked war-photographer “hero” stunned by the realization that this pieced-together vintage camera “photographs the future,” then mindlessly accepting its prophecies, which he is heedlessly willing to kill to keep from coming true.

The plot is a spin on the sci-fi/fantasy trope “gadget that sees the future” (See “Time Lapse.” Actually, don’t.).

Denham (“Argo,” TV’s “Billions”) is Jack, a combat photojournalist who saw one too many dying kids and is determined to use what he’s seen as an excuse to never pick up a camera again.

“Life is just a game,” he philosophizes. “Death always wins.”

His shrink (Carol Sutton) may hear him out. But his fiance  She (Nadja Bobleva) wants to end this funk in a flash. She gets him a vintage German 35mm camera that a collector has pieced together from broken bits of other cameras. And as Jack bores the last photo lab in town about how “exciting it is be shooting again,” he can’t help but notice — as do the photo techs — that weird, black and white crime scene photos are what the camera is producing.

And they’re of murders, violent deaths, that haven’t happened yet!

All of a sudden, Jack is blacking out, losing track of what he’s done and what he’s photographed, and in the film’s best (only good) line, he complains he’s “living in an episode of ‘Goosebumps.'”

Jack quickly wonders if he can he intervene, change the course of the future. And when he starts seeing dead shots of Claire, that curiosity becomes a mania and takes on urgency.

Or it would, if Denham gave us any hint of either of those emotions. Denham never gets past “tentative,” never commits to headlong panic. Jack’s descent into a personal hell never feels like more than an actor dipping his toes in tepid water.

The film is framed in a flashback, Jack at his wit’s end, robbing a pizza delivery guy who turns out to be an old friend. That doesn’t really work.

What does pay off is the odd moment of dark comedy — Jack asking the wrongest of the WRONG questions of a hardware store clerk (he’s seeking knock-out drugs, and doesn’t know those are peddled by the neighborhood pharmacist). The cops who keep seeing his connections to various crimes are incredulous, save for the detective in charge (Catherine Curtin). That alone is good for a laugh.

There’s little backstory about the source of Jack’s shellshock, little chemistry with Bobyleva, little here that we haven’t seen in assorted TV and movie horror tales with that “know the future” sci-fi twist.

All of which might matter less if Denham had studied the works of Nicolas Cage, Rutger Hauer, Natasha Henstridge or the late Powers Boothe — players who knew you have to bring that A-game every day, even when you’re earning D-movie money.

“MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Christopher Denham, Nadja Bobyleva, Catherine Curtin

Credits:Directed by  Aaron B. Koontz, script by Cameron Burns, Aaron B. Koontz. A — release.

Running time: 1:35