Disney is making bank with “Zootopia,” which is managing better second weekend numbers than I would have figured. A 35% or so fall-off, a $51 million weekend.

Viewers responding to its anti-fear, anti-bigotry, anti-elephants refusing to serve animals who are “different” from them?

Maybe. It’s a blockbuster and parents have to relish its messages about not pre-judging others.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is showing there’s still money in that monster movie franchise. No, JJ Abrams doesn’t want to call it that. Don’t buy the spin, it’s a monster movie. And it’s pulling in over $24 million for the weekend, tops among new films opening.

“The Young Messiah” is bombing. Not even $5 million, unless thousands of churches drag their congregations to Sunday afternoon showings. “Risen,” by comparison, is over $32 million. Better movie, more money.

“The Brothers Grimsby” is the end of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic headliner days at the movies. He won’t hit $4 million. 

“Deadpool” is now closing in on $330 million.

Christian believers can take comfort in the fact that Hollywood hasn’t forgotten how to make old fashioned Biblical epics. Starting with “The Nativity Story” a few years back, and continuing through this year’s surprising “Risen,” studios have been able to attract name actors and top drawer production talent to tell snippets of The Greatest Story Ever Told.

They’re not spending a lot of money on these, but usually that doesn’t show.

In “The Young Messiah” it does.

It’s an “inspired by the Gospels” tale “rooted in history.”  OK, it’s an adaptation of an Anne Rice novel about the formative months in the life of young Jesus Bar Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth.

But a few nice casting touches and a handful of marvelous scenes don’t hide the fact that this Italian production looks little like the Middle East. And the model-pretty Brit-urchin they’ve cast in the title role seems better-suited for a touring company “Oliver!” revival than playing the Son of Man.

The story takes Jesus (Adam Greaves-Neal) and his parents, Joseph (Vincent Walsh) and Mary (Sara Lazzaro) from Egypt, where they fled Herod’s paranoid wrath, back to their homeland. Herod the Great is “Herod the Dead.”

Jesus is seven, but they tell everybody he’s six. Because Herod the Younger, given a sadist/hedonist edge by Jonathan Bailey, is still worried about some child that might have escaped the slaughter of newborns his father ordered in Bethlehem when Jesus was lying in a manger.

The child is beautiful (Does Mary curl his hair?) and kind. And in Alexandria, he is bullied. Satan (Rory Keenan, blond and demonic and quite good) is behind that. But Jesus, who doesn’t know “Who” he is, saves the bully who dies picking on him. The “He can raise the dead” whispers start and make their way to Herod even as the family makes its way back to Galilee. 

Sean Bean brings his usual gravitas to Severus, the crusty Roman Centurion Herod charged with tracking down this miracle worker.

“There’s a Messiah under every tree, every rock.”

A casting coup — putting Christian “Me and Orson Welles” McKay in the role of Cleopas, an avuncular uncle who travels with Joseph, Mary and Jesus. Another nice touch, making his son James (Finn Ireland) the resentful cousin who has hated The Young Messiah since birth.

As the family is pursued through a Holy Land that is wetter and greener than any we’ve seen on the screen before (Italy makes a poor substitute for even the greenest corners of Palestine), James and Cleopas wonder when Joseph and Mary are going to let the kid know who he is.

“How do you explain God to His own Son?”

“The Young Messiah” cannot help but be compared with “Risen,” a minor hit in the same genre still in theaters. They’re both about Romans hunting Jesus and crucifying Jews all along the way.

But “Risen” is more like a thriller, and much more thrilling, and benefits from a better sense of intrigue and a beatific turn by Cliff Curtis as the crucified and risen Jesus, whose body the Romans are trying to track down.

“The Young Messiah” has little urgency to its chase, and bloodless crucifixions on crosses that look like props from community theater Passion Plays.

But it does have a couple of electric moments. Jesus, tested by rabbis who would be his teacher, flummoxes them with his Torah knowledge and seven year old logic. And in confronting the terror (Satan) that only he sees, Jesus faces his first Real test — evil that wants to thwart his destiny.

“I tell you, chaos rules, and I am ITS PRINCE!” the demon growls.

The whole affair feels more promising than presentable, with unruly costumes and a Holy Land where no one sweats and no garment ever seems to get dirty.

The direction, by Cyrus Nowrasteh (“The Stoning of Soroya M.”) lacks urgency or art. The performances are, for the most part, emotionally flat.

Believers may relish hearing “The Lord’s Prayer” chanted as the refugee family makes its way through a gauntlet of crucified criminals, or in catching Sarah (Jane Lapotaire) pepper her speech with quotations from The King James Version.

But discriminating movie-goers will do their due diligence and compare “The Young Messiah” to “Risen,” and wonder why Focus Features didn’t spend a little more money and get it right.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for some violence and thematic elements

Cast: Adam Greaves-Neal, Sara Lazzaro, Vincent Walsh, Christian McKay, Sean Bean

Running time: 1:51
Credits: Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, script by Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, Cyrus Nowrasteh, based on the Anne Rice novel. A Focus Features release.

Believers may relish hearing “The Lord’s Prayer” chanted as the pilgrims make their way home through a gauntlet of crucified criminals, or in hearing Sarah (Jane Lapotaire) pepper her speech with King James Version quotations.

Once more, dear friends, to “Cloverfield” we go.

Another trip into monster-movie land. Another blast of J.J. Abrams hype. Another movie floated to us in an attempted sea of secrecy.

Does it live up to the brand, the hype, the attempts at hiding what we cannot NOT know about what’s going on?

Nope.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is, we know from the commercials, a survivors of “the event” of “Cloverfield” tale. They’re holding out in a bunker. Or it’s an abduction picture, with the unutterably gorgeous Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“Smashed,” TV’s “Mercy Street”)  scheming, battling to get out, to escape the clutches of the hulking, menacing and plainly-a-bit-deranged John Goodman.

Is this just a seriously inferior version of “Room”, or a mostly humorless riff on “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” with a fetching hostage yearning to break free? Or did this Howard fellow do her a favor when he plucked her from a road accident and brought him into his lair, buried beneath his rural Louisiana farmhouse?

It turns out that putting “Cloverfield” in the title of your movie, much of the guesswork is gone. And all the armed survivalist Howard’s protests about “ingratitude,” as he endures this or assault or trickery might have a point.

“There is nowhere for you to go.”

Then again, there are fates worse than what’s been going on on the surface, and there’s no guesswork to those either, as we’ve seen Howard’s explosive tirades, and scores of movies about this sort of creep.

The best the team of screenwriters can come up with here is keeping Michelle (Winstead) in the dark about what’s happened in The World. But since we know, remembering the shaky-cam special that was “Cloverfield,” we don’t fear for what she finds when she gets up there (Nor does she, judging from her lackluster performance).

Aliens invaded — Godzilla monsters, civilization under assault. We remember even if she doesn’t.

Howard’s paranoid refusal to share details (Does he have any?), the lack of media access (Is there any media left?) and the slim bits of corroboration of the OTHER possible hostage/rescued survivor (John Gallagher Jr. of “Short Term 12”) are all Michelle has to go on.

It’s just that Howard’s behavior is creepier and more immediately threatening than anything her imagination could create.

The slim pickings of the script leave long stretches of dull downtime between the few showcase moments of violence. Director Dan Trachtenberg doesn’t compensate for this.

The spectacular car wreck may have you wondering what they put poor Winstead through to get that shot in the can. But seriously, we’ve seen spectacular, in-the-car-camera crashes before. The shaky cam returns for the finale, for those who might have nodded off long before.

What “10 Cloverfield Lane” (And how does that title logically tie-in to the labeled found footage the military had its hand on for “Cloverfield”?) relies on most heavily is performance. And Winstead, a good actress, gives us little suggestion of terror and Goodman leaves little doubt about Howard’s malevolence.

Gallagher? He’s just dull at playing an exceptionally dull character

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is built on the fear of an unknown that we know. Turns out, all that secrecy and hype and branding the “Cloverfield” name were not just this product’s marketing strategy. That’s all they had. Period.

So, “Room” is still in theaters. It’s more harrowing, more terrifying, more thrilling and moving than “Cloverfield Lane” could ever hope to be. And it stars an Oscar winner and reminds us that the scariest things on Earth are actually on Earth. Go see that instead.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material including frightening sequences of threat with some violence, and brief language

Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.
Credits: Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, script byJosh Campbell Matthew Stuecken, Damien Chazelle . A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:44

Exotic India!

Well, HERE’s a place to set a horror story! A new place, a new sort of story!

It’s all RIGHT THERE on “The Other Side of the Door.”

Only it isn’t.

Here’s another dead child story with the requisite story beats, the requisite jolts, the requisite tropes. Nothing to see here. Barely even a hint of India, for starters, which is where our unhappy American family has relocated to run their antiques exporting business.

But let’s start with what works. Sarah Wayne Callies plays Maria, a woman so riven by grief that she pummels her husband (Jeremy Sisto) in bed for being able to sleep after their loss.

Maria can’t sleep without nightmares. And she may never be able to “go on” as before. Driving in India she wrecked their car, crashing into a river. She had two children in the back seat. She could only save one.

You don’t have to be a parent to find that scene, her helplessness, her little boy’s cries for help, wrenching.

It’s not something anybody could get over. And Callies (“The Walking Dead”) plays it that way. It’s her best scene and stands out because everything else Maria reacts to in the movie fails to phase her. After you’ve stood down zombies (“Walking Dead”) it takes a lot to frighten you, I guess.

The movie starts to go wrong with the inscrutable, faintly creepy housekeeper, Piki (Suchitra Pillai). She doesn’t seem sympathetic or the least bit touched by her American employer. And yet she reaches out.

“What if I could bring your son back to you just one more time, to say your final goodbyes?”

Maria leaps at the chance and travels to a remote village, wandering into a dead jungle to an abandoned temple. Scatter Oliver’s ashes on the steps, lock yourself inside, and wait. But whatever you do, no matter what Oliver says, “Do NOT open the door.”

Everything else in this, and I mean everything (right up to the cop-out finale) plays according to formula. She opens the door, runs back home, and all of a sudden their surviving child (Sofia Rosinsky) has an invisible playmate, and Maria has to go back to reading bedtime stories to the ghost of Oliver.

And those aren’t a hint of the horrors to come.

A creepy-crawly Indian spirit has been awakened, the Guardians (wild men painted in the ashes of the dead) stare Maria down and bear witness to her transgression. And things die.

A few frights pay off, but most don’t. The performances are TV-series flat — designed for close-ups.

Leaving us little reason to peak at what’s on “The Other Side of the Door.” Horror’s same old same old. In India.

MPAA Rating: R for some bloody violence

Cast:Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeremy Sisto, Sofia Rosinsky, Suchitra Pillai
Credits: Directed by Johnannes Roberts, script by Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:36

Monty Python’s Terry Jones uses puppets as a way of livening up a talking-economic-heads documentary about capitalism’s psychology-driven business cycles in “Boom Bust Boom.”

But the biggest smirks in “Boom Bust Boom,” an otherwise most informative explanation of why we should never, ever believe it when this or that generation of economists tries to explain away the possibility of a Next Great Depression (“This time it’s DIFFERENT. We have the Internet! More information, you see!”), is the presentation of John Cusack as one of the on-camera expert witnesses.

It’s a film with famous economists — some living, some dead, played by puppets — historians and psychologists, all explaining the human nature that sets us up for the cycles capitalism lives through — boom, “euphoria” driven bust, boom again.

And John Cusack. “One semester at NYU” is all the Internet Movie Database gives him, as far as credentials. But he’s got opinions, especially about the meltdown of 2007-8. And he’s outraged. So anyway.

Jones, co-writer, presenter and with his son Bill Jones co-director, takes us through the history of market-driven bubbles, from tulip mania in 16th-17th century Holland, to Britain’s “South Sea Company” government scam based on potential trade in South America, depending on how a then-raging war with Spain came out, to the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith (in puppet form, with an actor reading from his work) intones about the “inordinate desire to get rich quickly with a minimum of effort,” the driving force behind every bubble — tulips, to market derivatives.

Every few decades, people who clamor “Let the MARKET decide,” get their way and convince the rest of us that regulating these licensed gamblers is a sin against liberty. And every few decades, they run the world economy into a ditch.

The film blasts longtime Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as being one of those market cultists, catches him admitting he was wrong, and notes that he went on being wrong after admitting that to Congress. And thus the Great Recession was born.

On Monkey Island, off Puerto Rico, a psychologist (Laurie Santos) observes how other primates can be conned into thinking they’re getting a better deal merely by seemingly switching up the number of grapes they can buy with monkey money, creating the illusion of “bargain” when in fact there is none. Trump voters, no doubt.

The object of this short, clever blend of interviews, movie clips (“Life of Brian”) and “South Park” explanations, is to keep us on our guard, to not let the new Rick Santellis or Ben Cramers convince us “This time it’s DIFFERENT.” When it isn’t.

And besides, they of all people, don’t know. Any more than John Cusack.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Terry Jones, James Galbraith, George Magnus, Laurie Santos, John Cusack
Credits: Directed by Terry Jones, Bill Jones,Ben Timlettt, script by Terry Jones, Theo Kocken . A release.

Running time: 1:11

It’s a cut throat industry, that music business. Infested with sharks, drowning in money and drugs, easy sex, a world of “loaded dice and poisoned chalices,” where success is dictated by luck or timing. It’s a wonder anybody gets out of there alive.

Or without killing somebody.

“Kill Your Friends” is a murder-your-way-to-the top dark comedy, a music biz saga based on John Niven’s darkly comic novel.

It’s anti-heroic narrator is Steven Stelfox, cleverly given a kind of sexually ambiguous ruthlessness (as substitute for talent and hard work) by Nicholas Hoult (“Mad Max: Fury Road”).

Steven quotes Conan — the Barbarian, not the ginger chat show host. You know the bit about reveling in crushing “your enemies — See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!”

He sneaks into the boss’s office and breaks into his computer to get an edge, steals new issues of music industry mags intended for colleagues and shreds them, steams open envelopes.

He’s an “A&R Man,” that’s artists and repertoire — the talent scout responsible for finding the next big thing — singer, songwriter, band.

“God, I hate bands!”

OK, maybe not a band.

And he’s hellbent on taking over the A&R department at Unigram Records in 1997 London. It’s the Cold Play era, and Steven is indulging self-absorbed Brit rappers, ditzy/slutty girl groups with no singing talent, that sort of thing, trying to keep his gig.

Mainly, though, he’s partying and clinging to his lazy, doltish rival (James Corden) to keep him from getting promoted by pretending he’s his best friend, feeding him cocaine and urinating on him when he passes out — anything to make Roger look bad at work the next day.

Only it doesn’t work. Hapless Roger (Corden) is in line for a bump when the sabotaged head of A&R (they always get the blame for hard times) is sent packing. Steven, half-calculating and coke-fueled with rage, beats Roger to death. And then shows up at the office as if nothing has happened, expecting the job Roger was to get.

A cop (Edward Hogg) might close in. Or he might not. He’d love a record deal himself.

Steven narrates the tale (a literary crutch) to the camera, ripping on colleagues and clients alike.

“This pair of sex offenders have just raped up to the tune of 40 grand.”

But Hoult lets us see just how tough it is for even a mediocrity with Machiavellian talents to survive in this world, in his more vulnerable moments.

“These decisions are made under the influence of drugs, alcohol, peer pressure and fear.”

Nobody wants to be the numbskull who misses out on the next Cold Play or Spice Girls.

“Kill Your Friends” wallows in the depravity of the it, the inanity of the music and the mendacious morons meant to pass judgement on it, deciding who gets a shot and who labors in obscurity. The wallowing including too many club scenes, too many stoner orgies, and too much blood.

It’s like a Bret Easton Ellis takedown of Britpop.

But the few human touches stand out, and the deck stacks up against Steven at every turn. Even killing his would-be boss hasn’t kept him from being out-of-step with the scene, the music or musicians. An indie pop band The Lazies is pushed by his protege (Craig Roberts) and ambitious young secretary (Georgia King, quite good).

And Steven just doesn’t get it.

“Indie kids really think what they do matters,” he sneers to the camera.

As you’d expect from a movie based on Niven’s script of his own novel, the dialogue stands out and stings. Steven’s promise of recording success is followed by the unspoken promise that he’ll “drop you faster than a Plymouth hooker’s knickers” if you fail.

This could have been a lighter picture, sort of a semi-dark Nick Hornby spin on music. That might have been less accurate, but more watchable.

But Steven is a hard character to keep even at arm’s length. He’s a paragon of what’s wrong with music, the script would have us believe. He’s out of step and out of date, getting blasted at parties and humiliating himself, coming on to talent and chasing them away. He’s a clueless cliche even in 1997.

And yet he is just as likely to deliver a hit as the talented people he encounters, including his biggest threat, an A & R legend played by Tom Riley.

The cynicism destroys any chance that a sense of fun — even perverse, murderous fun — will ever creep into “Kill Your Friends.” It’s as if Hoult is too clever at playing too venal and loathsome for his and his movie’s own good.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, alcohol and drug-abuse, sexual situations with nudity and profanity

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, James Corden, Rosanna Arquette, Georgia King, Tom Riley
Credits: Directed by Owen Harris, script by John Niven, based on his novel. A Well Go USA Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:42

What kind of mother names her son “Eloi?” You know, after the pretty, gullible, post-humanity humans of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”?

The sort of woman who then nicknames the kid “Lolo” and is shocked when that poor judgment pays dividends as the kid enters adulthood with a long track record of sabotaging Mom’s post-Eloi Daddy relationships, that’s who.

Julie Delpy (“Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” etc.) directed, co-wrote and stars in “Lolo,” an Oedipal French farce that manages a few laughs and a lot of grimaces as it toys around with “Throw Momma’s Beaus Under the Bus.”

Violette (Delpy) is an art director for fashion shows, a somewhat hapless Paris sophisticate whose crude BFF (Karin Viard) urges her to “lower your standards” and land a man. Do it in Biarritz, where they’re having a little salon vacation. Who cares if she winds up with “a Biarritz bumpkin?”

Which she does. Jean-Rene (Dany Boon of “Micmacs”) falls for Violette, and she for him. But her seemingly independent, seemingly untalented but connected artist/son Lolo (Vincent Lacoste) isn’t having it. He rates the new fellow a “D,” the first letter in a feminine hygiene product. Lolo declares that Jean-Rene will be “gone by fall.”

And that’s what the spoiled, scheming pretty boy sets out to assure.

There’s itching powder on Jean-Rene’s clothes, and hints to Mom that maybe she needs to have him tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

There’s spiking Jean-Rene’s drink so that he’ll make a fool of himself in front of Karl Lagerfeld at Mom’s big opening.

And so on.

Antoine Lounguine plays Lolo’s plump, worshipful pal, Lulu. He’s there for Lolo to explain his schemes (in French, with English subtitles) to, and because he’s a stereotypical tech nerd — the one who’ll help Lolo sabotage Jean-Rene’s business.

That makes little sense, as Jean-Rene is an IT specialist who would never be suckered by a hacker-nerd. But never mind.

The now-middle-aged Delpy still has a hint of the coquette about her, and that pays off as she and pal Ariane (Viard) casually shock eavesdroppers in the bar or on the train with their coarse talk. She dotes on her “little boy, my little alpine bunny.” She’s blind to his schemes, and even watching “Children of the Damned” doesn’t clue her in to the menace who has moved back in under her roof to more closely supervise the sabotage.

Boon makes Jean-Rene as much of a “hick” as he can manage, but it’s a generally colorless turn. The Mother-Son combo delivers a few grins, but rarely more than a chuckle, as we watch her be the last person to figure her darling boy out.

“Lolo” is entirely too familiar, too predictable, a character study in romantic mishaps that’s far less interesting than the name Delpy cooked up for her “little alpine bunny,” a passive, pretty creature worthy of our contempt, at least as Wells envisioned him.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, nudity

Cast:Julie Delpy, Vincent Lacoste, Dany Boon
Credits: Directed by Julie Delpy, script by Julie Delpy and Eugénie Grandval . A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:37

Yes, “Deadpool” will have topped $300 million by midnight Sunday.

Based on Friday’s numbers, the first blockbuster of the new year will pull in another $16 million, A MONTH AFTER OPENING. People are going back to catch all the jokes, I figure.

But The Mouse House is where the champagne is popping this AM (Mimosas, anyone?). “Zootopia” lets Disney put up numbers for an in-house cartoon that only its partner, Pixar, has been able to manage previously. It’s a $70million+ weekend for the film, based on Friday’s robust take.

“Zootopia” is more message than merriment, in my estimation. But it’s smart and ambitious and has earned some of the best reviews of any recent animated film.

“London Has Fallen” is doing decent action pic numbers — especially for March. A Gerard Butler $22 million opening hit? Sure. “Olympus Has Fallen” set the bar high and this sequel came close to it. Terrible movie, but nobody ever went broke underestimating the tastes of action movie buffs.

I think all Tina Fey fans should be happy for her getting to stretch and showing a little leg and sex appeal in her dotage. Ahem. But I could tell, all week, just by blog numbers for my review of “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” that she’s passe to the kids who dominate the moviegoing populace. A middling $7 million for a pretty decent, edgy Afghan War comedy? Come on. Those are “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” numbers. Show up, people!

The mysteries of the heater, the high hard one, baseball’s overpowering pitch, are explained by the game’s power pitchers, a physicist, a brain cognition expert and the hapless hitters who have to swing at smoke in “Fastball,” a very engaging documentary narrated by Kevin Costner.

Sports documentary director Jonathan Hock had access to them all — well, save for Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton — and manages a quite thorough dissection of the physics of speed, the illusion of the “rising fastball” and the burning question, “Who was the fastest?”

The quick answer might appear to be current Reds hardballer Aroldis Chapman, who one day hist 105 miles per hour on the radar gun in the middle of the game. But David Price and Craig Kimbrel and Justin Verlander are here and are in the conversation. Batters who have faced these guys (Derek Jeter) help make their case.

But baseball is a game of history and a font of myth. So Hock goes at the Big Question historically and methodically. And he gets experts, from sports writers and historians to the men who played the game, to parse the facts as we know them.

Walter Johnson, the “Big Train,” was the first fastballer of note. In the early years of the game, his pitches were the first described as “humming” as they zipped past you at the plate, the first that seemed almost unhittably hard. How hard? The U.S. Army and Remington firearms had this elaborate test range set up to time his pitches in the days before the movies had sound.

Bob Feller, “The Heater from Van Meter,” was equally dominant, and his 1930s and 40s pitches were tested against the fastest motorcycle of the day and other, more scientific means.

Koufax and Drysdale, and the great Bob Gibson (interviewed, and hilarious) are remembered for their intimidating speed. Batters who faced them (Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Mike Schmidt among them) joke about what it was like, facing them.

Every great hitter interviewed talks about the hardest hurler he ever faced. Wade Boggs? “Juan Berenguer (“Senor Smoke”) of the Twins.

“Myth” enters the picture with the story of the fellow who inspired “Nuke Laloosh” of the Ron Shelton movie, “Bull Durham.” Steve Dalkowski was in the Orioles farm system in the 1960s, was never accurately clocked, and was so wild he never made a mark in the big leagues. But his legend grew and grew. Insanely fast. Breaking boards in the backstop fast. Maybe the fastest ever, though the best case can certainly be made for Texan Nolan Ryan, the most dominant pitcher of all time.

SP.0611.Ryan13 — LOS ANGELES TIMES FILE PHOTO — Angels pitcher Nolan Ryan pitching against the Boston Red Sox at Anaheim Stadium on June 14, 1974. Ryan pitched 13 innings, struck out 19 and threw 235 pitches.

Most fascinating for me was the attempt to compare, using the science and standards of today and measurements (and film footage) from the earliest days of the sport. Johnson and Feller can be compared to Verlander and Chapman.

It’s a fun film, not quite as lighthearted as the similar “Knuckleball” documentary of a short while back, but amusing enough. And as another baseball season is about to begin, it makes a great warmup for another season and a greater appreciation for what the Boys of Summer face every time they step into the box against the high, hard one.

MPAA Rating:  unrated

Cast: Nolan Ryan, Hank Aaron, Aroldis Chapman, Bob Gibson, Derek Jeter, Rich Gossage, Wade Boggs, Johnny Bench, Justin Verlander, David Price, Torii Hunter, Mike Schmidt, narrated by Kevin Costner.
Credits: Directed by Jonathan Hock. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:25

Here’s a lean little slice of sci-fi that proves you can be thought-provoking on a budget.

“Creative Control” is about blurring lines between virtual reality and reality and the dangers the narcissists among us face when our desires take precedence over healthy human interaction.

Co-writer/director Benjamin Dickinson stars as Dave, an ad agency exec in the very near future. VERY near. Like, not tomorrow but maybe tomorrow afternoon.

His agency lands the job of introducing the next generation Google glasses, called “Augmenta.” They’re immersive, wired in VR computers that don’t just allow you to multi-task email, Skype calls, online research and facial identification of those you meet. They offer sexual escape, allowing you to create the avatar of your sexual fantasies for…your sexual fantasies.

Yes, onanism is online, thanks to the “fully immersive” nature of Augmenta.

Dave’s a hard-bitten, hard-driven cynic who lives his life like the hero of “All That Jazz,” popping exotically shapes (with holes in them, like buttons) pills, putting drops in his eyes and listening to classical music as he faces each day.

He hires some multi-media online musician/comic/philosopher personality, “Reggie” (Reggie Watts) to conceptualize the message and utility of Augmenta. And he beta-tests the glasses himself, while he’s at it. And that’s where things get weird.

Dave lives with a gorgeous yoga instructor (Nora Zehetner) but fantasizes about Sophie, the pixie-ish girlfriend (Alexia Rasmussen) of his sexist, cheating photographer pal, Wim (Dan Gill). They flirt, and Dave thinks he has a shot. But these Wonderglasses let him skip past the “Maybe I’ll meet you at a hotel, maybe not” to full on sex — how he’d imagine it — with Sophie.

The acting never calls attention to itself — so natural we utterly believe this world, because it is totally recognizable. The fashion shoots, TV commercials where the client’s endless suggestions are inane and idiotic and must still be placated, all very “Mad Men of the Future” in nature.

The slang — “fry it,” “on trend” — is spot on. The fads? Yoga’s even more popular, as are drugs, especially caffeine.

“I would love a goat milk caramel latte – no foam.”

The effects are top drawer, almost “Ex Machina” level as digital female avatar morphs into Dave’s fantasy figure Sophie — with digital/visual noise around the edges. It is a beta test, after all. Dickinson shot “Creative Control” in black and white, with snatches of color to emphasize the reality Dave is avoiding, or succumbing to.

The story is lightweight and flimsy, and the resolution of the plot is too on-the-nose, pat, but the unfeeling nature of this future — about halfway to “Her” if you remember that film — and the mechanical nature of interactions, even sex, make “Creative Control” one of the most interesting recent exercises in film futurism.

And that makes Dickinson a filmmaker to watch.

MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and drug use.

Cast: Benjamin Dickinson  Nora Zehetner, Alexia Rasmussen, Dan Gill. 

Running time: 1:37
Credits: Directed by Benjamin Dickinson, script by Micah Bloomberg, Benjamin Dickinson. A Magnolia release.