Movie Nation

She’s the anchor star of “Once Upon a Time,” and Disney/ABC being all about the synergy, she’s got a plum part in the March animated offering from the Mouse, “Zootopia.”

It’s a somewhat daring cartoon about stereotypes, racism and fear. Yes, the elephants are bigots. Or can be.

Ginnifer Goodwin plays a plucky bunny cop. Literally. Type casting?

Anyway, we’ll be talking about that film, her love of short haircuts, maybe her pregnancy (married to Josh Dallas). But I’m always looking for suggested questions. Anything you’re dying to ask her? Comment below, and thanks for the help.

Those compiling a list for “the first against the wall when The Revolution comes” could get a healthy headstart on the work by jotting down names from “Crazy About Tiffany’s.”

Another love poem to New York aspirationalism and vulgar consumption, its 87 minutes are riddled with “Real Housewives” types, the famous and not-really-famous, breathless metrosexuals and condescending style queens of every sex and other worshipers of elegant, obscenely expensive jewelry.

It’s enough to make you weary of life, despairing of a culture that values whatever the folks who peddle the robin’s egg/turquoise blue boxes are selling.

It’s enough to make you ready for The Revolution.

Then, again, maybe it’s  a chick thing –or a “New York values” thing, as Ted Cruz would put it. I’m not meant to get it.

Filmmaker Matthew Miele, thanks to this and “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s,” has become a  cheerleader for these pricey New York institutions at the top of the world’s retail food chain. He sketches in brief bios of jewelers and company founders, dabbles in the history of Tiffany & Co., the jewelry firm that invented the engagement ring, designed the Super Bowl trophy, NASCAR’s Sprint Cup and the New York Yankees’ logo and settles on a few famous customers and a lot of pop culture references to tell the story of Tiffany & Co. and its place in American lives.

Well, the American lives of the One Percent.

We see Jessica Biel trying on this and that pre-Oscars, hear Jennifer Tilly talk about “taking just any piece of crap movie” so that she can pay her Tiffany’s bill, and take in scenes from “Sex and the City,” “”Ocean’s Eleven,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Friends” and of course, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The aura of the brand is all.

Fran Liebowitz and others dissect that last film, at length, as otherwise, you’ve got a 70 minute movie. There are discussions of how the founder of the now 10,000 employee firm stole its signature color from the mid-19th century Princess Eugenie, who conceived it as her trademark, tales of presidents who shopped there and mini biographies of designers like Jean Schlumberger and others fail to flesh out the documentary to feature length.

Little hints of self-awareness sneak in, as most every rich white woman/customer curses (Katie Couric has a potty mouth?) or lets her lapdog interrupt her tale of the first time she got something in that precious “little blue box.” Elaine Stritch sings “Ladies Who Lunch,” music from “La Dolce Vita” wells up on the score as assorted “social X-rays” (Tom Wolfe’s name for them) prattle on about this setting, that brooch or tiara and when she got it.

The film avoids sexism. Most of these women, like Couric, who had an exclusive birthday “breakfast” in the store when she turned 50 —  are apparently spending their own money there, and store insiders reveal that “self-purchases” dominate their business these days, not wedding rings.

The most amusing bit in it is Todd Pipes of Deep Blue Something relating how he is shocked by how every woman he runs across can sing him the words to his hit song, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” even though he himself forgets the lyrics as he starts to pick it out on his guitar.

If the economy really is as Wall Street wants us to believe and we can all aspire to someday shopping in that most famous of jewelry stores, perhaps this glossy infomercial will find a home — on some cable network “for women,” most likely. I’m not the target audience and I found it, and its salivating, precious fans, simply revolting.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with plentiful profanity

Cast: Katie Couric, Jennifer Tilly, Jessica Biel, Fran Lebowitz, Baz Luhrman, Jerry Weintraub, Todd Pipe
Credits: Written and directed by Matthew Miele. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:27

More period accurate than Biblically Correct, “Risen” is a moving, engrossing and yes, entertaining account of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, “Yeshua,” as he was called, back in the day.

Director and co-writer Kevin Reynolds and a solid, accomplished cast deliver an unblinking look at the gruesome violence of mass crucifixions, a fascinating investigation by a Roman Tribune (Joseph Fiennes) into the missing body of this latest “Messiah” and an uplifting, almost lighthearted take on the disciples — the First Believers, who are the only ones clued in to the dead man’s whereabouts.

Clavius is a cynical, battle hardened officer, tasked with the bloody work of tamping down every fresh insurrection popping up in Roman Palestine.

His boss is the self-serving, corrupt political hack Pilate, given a testy world-weariness by Peter Firth. Pilate is expecting trouble, warning Clavius of the coming execution and the factions braying for it.

“Never seen a death so wished-for,” he says, “even by Him.”

Clavius does his duty, even has a centurion hasten the crucified man’s end. He might be haunted by the last look the Jew gives him from the cross, but in death he is nothing but a corpse — eyes still open, mouth contorted in agony, blood everywhere.

Clavius allows Yeshua to be removed to a proper burial, and following orders, has the tomb guarded. But centurions have a taste for drink, and next thing he knows, the body’s gone, “Caiphus and his pack of raving Jews” are nagging Pilate and Clavius has to mount a search.

Fiennes (“Shakespeare in Love”) morphs into U.S. Marshal Tommy Lee Jones, ordering a house-to-house, grave to grave search for the missing corpse. Tom Felton is his high-born new lieutenant, learning to offer “no quarter” to the civilians under their thumb.

They question Mary Magdalene (Maria Botto) and work the case — cop show style — making their way to the Apostles, who are in hiding. And it’s when the investigation finds Bartholomew (Stephen Hagan), that the movie turns and the tone lightens.

This future Saint Bartholomew is a surfer without a swell. He is tickled to be found, elated to be questioned and The Original Hippy in his credo.

“Our only weapon is LOVE,” he gushes. Yeshua isn’t a corpse. He’s out and about. And in case Clavius, who supervised the man’s death hasn’t figured it out, “This changes EVERYthing.”

Director Kevin Reynolds has been Kevin Costner’s go-to guy over the years (“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Hatfields & McCoys”). What’s he’s cooked up here is a modern version of “The Robe,” a Richard Burton sword and sandals, sand and Savior epic from the 1950s.

Meeting the other disciples and then Yeshua himself, played with an infectious grin and agenda-with-a-light-touch by New Zealander Cliff Curtis (“Live Free or Die Hard”, “Fear the Walking Dead”) will change Clavius.

It’s not a movie that hangs on surprises. But even though we know where all this is going long before it gets there, the story has enough absorbing twists and the performances are so compassionate that “Risen” draws us in.

Faith-based films, even the ones with the budget to recreate the Biblical Middle East, rarely lure actors as accomplished as these. Fiennes, Firth (“The Hunt for Red October”), Curtis, Harry Potter’s nemesis Felton and others, such as a twinkly Stewart Scudamore, as the fisherman Peter, lift “Risen” into the first rank of films about “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

Yes, it’s aimed at believers. But Reynolds & Co. avoid the traps of Mel Gibson’s movie and many others, which made these times horrifically violent and real. The emphasis is on these Biblical figures and what they were about. They are compelling in their kindness, soft-selling their message so sweetly that even a Roman with blood on his hands will question his Empire, his religion and his way of living before all is said and done.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Biblical violence including some disturbing images

Cast: Joseph Fiennes, Cliff Curtis, Peter Firth, Maria Botto, Tom Felton, Stewart Scudamore

Credits: Directed by Kevin Reynolds, script by Paul Aielo and Kevin Reynolds. A Sony/Columbia/Affirm release.

Running time: 1:4y

A recent piece by the numbers-crunching pundit site fivethirtyeight.com tried to come to grips with which actor has had the worst career, after winning an Oscar.

And while you can quibble with the methodology and conclusions that the website conjured up, you know in your gut that two names are going to be high on that list — Nicolas Cage and Adrien Brody.

Cage has, on a couple of occasions, told me about the therapeutic escape work offers him, and that this has more to do with his mania for making Z-movies, one right after the other, than finances.

Brody? After winning the Oscar for “The Pianist” and giving Halle Berry a smooch for the ages and then delivering one of the most heartfelt and touching acceptance speeches in Oscar history, he’s seemed hellbent on avoiding great success. Viewed from another angle, he’s defiantly gone his own way, rarely grabbing roles in potential blockbusters (“King Kong”), choosing to work instead with directors he admires (“Midnight in Paris”, “The Darjeeling Limited”), on no-budget films that challenge him (“The Jacket,” “The Experiment”) or just seem “cool” (“Splice,””Cadillac Records,””Hollywoodland’).

Thus, “Backtrack.” A ghost story set and shot in Australia, if he took it for the challenge — he almost of blows it. The performance is passable, but the Australian accent his troubled psychotherapist should, by rights, have, only pops up in the last scenes.

But if he was angling for “cool,” this sometimes hair-tingling thriller fills the bill. It’s a stylish riff on the man-haunted-by-his-past (literally) that makes for a pretty good ride.

Pete (Brody) spends his days in an office too-jarringly close to the elevated train tracks for anybody in his line of work — seeing patients, many of them with frazzled nerves and grim prognoses.

But Pete is a bit of a patient himself. His wife,Carol  (Jenni Baird) is a weeping wreck. And Pete wanders the dimly lit streets in a permanent funk, one his mentor/shrink (Sam Neill) tries to cure him of. Pete and Carol lost their daughter.

A silent teenager (Chloe Bayliss) in a hoodie who appears, and disappears, in his office, and a brittle, grief stricken mother (Anna Lise Phillips) who pops up on his couch or on his train rides seems to be pushing his buttons.

“I must be hallucinating the whole thing.”

Indeed. He can’t prove their existence to his mentor or himself. But the talking cure and dream analysis suggest a source. And the ghosts he thinks he’s seeing make him backtrack through his past.

Screenwriter (“The Book Thief”) turned writer-director Michael Petroni delivers plenty of surprises in the film’s 90 brooding minutes. Just when Pete and we are reassured that we’ve figured him and his past out, new twists arrive. The effects in “Backtrack” are judiciously applied — human faces turning into corpses, things of that sort — and genuinely hair-raising.

Neill is quietly compelling, as always. Brody underplays Pete, emphasizing his suffering, his victimhood, his guilt. It’s a performance mostly of reactions, and the aforementioned wayward accent.

But watching him, he makes us understand why he chose this project, how his choosing it helped a pretty good film get made and that there are different ways for a screen actor to measure personal success, even if they aren’t measuring by the numbers nerds at fivethirtyeight.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, disturbing images and language

Cast: Adrien Brody, Sam Neill, Chloe Bayliss, Jenni Baird, Bruce Spence
Credits: Written and directed by Michael Petroni. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:30

“A Country Called Home” makes a sturdy enough indie star vehicle for the criminally under-heralded Imogen Poots (“Need for Speed,” “That Awkward Moment”).

She plays Ellie, who ventures to the small town in Texas where her wayward, alcoholic father has just died.

Ellie might have had some company for the trip, but her older brother (Shea Whigham) isn’t having it. Dad ran out on them decades before. Let whoever’s stuck with him now deal with him.

But after Ellie flies into Austin and ventures into the boonies (Smithville and Bastrop, Texas provided locations), we and she start to learn a little something about the boozer.

When he was sober and stable — in stretches — he was a luthier, a guitar and violin maker.

But he never really got sober. Amanda (Mary McCormack), his tippling lady friend who was there at the end, is proof of that. Amanda is sober enough to guilt Ellie about “the least you can do” when Ellie wavers, ready to turn tail and flee. “Stay until he’s in the ground,” at least.

So Ellie does. She meets the grandparents (June Squibb of “Nebraska”) she never knew, and the town that produced her father.

“We ALL know who HE was, don’t we?”

Even a priest skitters out when Dad’s name is mentioned to a store clerk.

It’s a backward hole, and as Ellie explores it in Dad’s 1960s Studebaker station wagon, she stumbles across the closed-in lives that produced him.

Tall model-pretty Mackenzie Davis (“The Martian”) has a showy supporting part, playing Reno, the only lesbian in town (apparently). She wears a bolo, cowboy hat and boots. But she can’t get through a whole song at the local honky tonk without rednecks chasing her off the stage.

Real-life country singer Ryan Bingham (he wrote “Crazy Heart” for Jeff Bridges) plays Amanda’s surly, solid citizen son, a single-dad slow to warm to Ellie’s Los Angeles charms.

Local yokel jokes, clumsily performed by (apparently) amateur supporting actors and utterly generic situations mar director Anna Axter’s quiet study of a people and place. The odd moment with edge — Whigham’s brother listing his father’s first love “booze, money to buy booze” etc., Ellie’s first attempt at standing up to someone — is smothered in the surrounding banality.

But Poots, Davis, McCormack, Squibb and Whigham quickly sketch in interesting, if not quite compelling characters. And they, more than the story or locale, make “A Country Called Home” worth a brief visit.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, profanity, alcohol abuse

Cast: Imogen Poots, Mackenzie Davis, Mary McCormack, June Squibb, Ryan Bingham, Shea Whigham
Credits: Directed by Anna Axster , script by Anna Axter, Jim Beggarly. A Raindance/Kickstart release.

Running time: 1:32

He’s still got the suit, the white bucks, the bow tie.

But it’s easy to see why this was a deemed Netflix picture. There are some laughs. Joe Manangiello delivers.

But Pee-Wee Herman’s lost his mania, his fastball. His laugh. That voice is showing a lot of mileage.

Not exactly “timeless.” Needed a daft and deft directorial touch to amp up the energy, or help Reubens fake it.

The typical horror movie can be labeled a success if it manages to jolt you a couple of times, and get the hairs on the back of your neck up here and there.

But “The Witch” works in less visceral, more cerebral ways.And it manages to be deeply disturbing as it does.

Writer/director Robert Eggers’ debut feature convincingly takes us back to Puritan New England and makes one religious, superstitious family confront the unknown.

That unknown is witchcraft, a grasping explanation for that which these colonists cannot explain.

In 1630s Massachusetts, a pious, contrarian farmer (Ralph Ineson) runs afoul of the theocracy in charge of the place and moves his family from the semi-safe comforts of town into the woods.

“We will conquer this wilderness,” he prophesies. “It will not consume us.”

He and his teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy) and tweenage son, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) are just gathering up their first crop, nearly finished with the thatched-roof barn and pen for their goats and horse when tragedy strikes.

Tomasin (Taylor-Joy) loses the new baby in the family in the middle of a game of peek-a-boo. Katherine, their mother (Kate Dickie) is bereft, weeping and lashing out.

“What is amiss on this farm? It’s not natural!”

A wolf got the kid? The daughter did something with him? Mom has another answer — the son has hit puberty and has taken an unhealthy interest in his older sister’s decolletage. Daughter Tomasin is in league with the Devil. She’s a witch!

William, the father, struggles to go on, to paper over the tragedy and the rift it causes in the family. He chops wood. Lots of it. As penance? He orders the mouthy younger twins, Jonas and Mercy, around. And he takes Caleb out hunting. But they get separated.

Eggers uses his effects sparingly. There are no shaky cameras to clutter up his meticulous colonial settings or characters. We catch a hint of the depravity witches might visit on a baby, the nature-loving nudity of these woodland monsters, and see animals and children possessed.

All of this is bent on casting the family’s suspicion at Tomasin, given a “You cannot be SERIOUS” sense of fear and outrage by Taylor-Joy. Young Scrimshaw, playing a child whose only reference to what has befallen him is a short life of religious indoctrination,  has beatific moments of deranged clarity.

Dickie carries grief to new heights.

And veteran British actor Ineson (“Kingsman: The Secret Service”) ably captures the confusion of a man whose limited view of the world gives him an understanding of what is happening but a wholly inadequate response to it.

“We have been ungrateful of God’s love!”

It’s not edge-of-your-seat alarming and its jolts are more creepy than shocking. But for all its period detail and head games, “Witch” works on the most primitive level. Put children in jeopardy, have the adults be ineffectual at confronting it, and let the audience know something that the family can only suspect — that they are dealing with supernatural evil, and that their worst fears don’t come close to imagining what awaits them.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Credits: Written and directed by Robert Eggers. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:30

The cinema produces so few romantic comedies that work that it’s not just a shame, it’s a crime, when one gets out unnoticed.

“Slow Learners” is laugh-out-loud funny, at turns cruel and raunchy, playful and wistful.

It doesn’t star anyone famous enough to “open” a picture, so Sundance Selects picked it up for a song and released it to no acclaim last August.

But it’s on Netflix streaming, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Sarah Burns of the Upright Citizens Brigade (and “I Love You, Man”) plays gawky high school librarian Anne. Adam Pally of “Happy Endings” is Jeff, the bespectacled, awkward school guidance counselor.

They’re best friends. They tell each other everything. Not that there’s much to tell. They’re among the legions of the lovelorn in trendy Media, Pennsylvania (outside Philly).

Jeff’s life highlight might be leading his single male friends’ book club. They’re mostly nerds like him.  But hunky/stubbly neighbor Max (Reid Scott of “Veep”) is their hero. He’s a player. Wallflower Anne pines for him.

She is wearing out her frank-about-post-childbirth bestie, Julia (Megan Reitman) with her self-absorbed tales of lovesick woe.

Yes, their friends can see Jeff and Annie as perfect together. But she doesn’t see him that way, and he’s resigned to going to Mom’s 65th birthday party (Marceline Hugot and Kevin Dunn play his parents) alone.

But the minute school’s out, Anne and Jeff decide to make a change. He loses the glasses, dons a bandanna and resolves to never sit through another computer date with anyone who lists his every physical, dietary, personality or fashion fault (the film’s first big laugh).

“Everything. Starting with your face…It’s like you’re smelling something…You don’t look like you have bones in your body. You’re like an old baby.”

And Anne, who had to admit her surprising lack of intercourse to her gynecologist (also hilarious) lets her inner freak out — drinking, jumping up on bars, putting it out there in every sense of the phrase.

The predictable turns of events that follow turn Jeff into a womanizing jerk and Anne into a libidinous lush. All of which keep them, and us, from the inevitable.

There’s a cute/mean double date scene, misbehavior in a photo booth and tasty tidbits of school life where the kids he’s to advise avoid Jeff and the students who keep messing up her books and the Puritanical principal (Kate Flannery) drive Anne off the deep end.

Burns is a Kristen Wiig waiting to happen, and Pally — a sillier Michael Stuhlbarg look-alike, makes us suffer (amusingly) with him even as we’re laughing at him.

Not every scene works, but the laughs are nicely sprinkled throughout. And if you wonder how the film’s best riffs came off, watch the cannot-keep-a-straight-face outtakes during the closing credits.

Nobody saw it last summer. And Hollywood isn’t beating down the cast’s collectives doors. Yet. But these “Slow Learners” catch on just in time to be the best cheap date movie for Valentine’s Day.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, language, alcohol abuse

Cast: Sarah Burns, Adam Pally, Reid Scott, Catherine Reitman, Mary Grill,
Credits: Directed by Don Argott, Sheena M. Joyce , script by Heather Maidat. A Sundance Selects release.

Running time: 2:36

A $41 million take on Friday hints that the R-rated comic book adaptation “Deadpool” is headed toward some sort of Feb. record.

Better than “Fifty Shades,” anyway.

$100 million+ by Sunday, a four day weekend take of $115, says Deadline.com.

Ryan Reynolds has a career-making smash on his hands, at last.

Reviews were good, Reynolds rocks the role, and it has no real competish.

Save for “Kung Fu Panda 3,” still rolling in the dough with a $26-28 million weekend.

“How to Be Single” is managing a not-bad $22 million weekend, at this pace. Anna Kendrick still holds the Rebel Wilson co-star record in terms of BO.

“Zoolander 2”? At least 8 years too late to have any chance. Seriously. $16 million. The transportation costs for the scores of cameos was more than that.

And one last time, WHO exactly demanded this sequel?

Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next” may manage $1 million this weekend, in limited release (300+ theaters).

A mixed weekend for movies, as we’ve learned to expect from February.

The Oscar contenders, most moviegoers have seen. But studios don’t waste  potential blockbusters on the deep winter doldrums.

Thus, movies like “Ghostrider” and “Kingsmen” and (better) “The Lego Movie” pop up and make a mint. Because they’re at least something new on the menu.

“Deadpool” is a seriously adult (comic book nerdy adults especially) Marvel outing with tasty, testy laughs and blood and violence. Ultraviolence.

Great part for Ryan Reynolds, and he knew it and has clung to idea that this franchise will make bank for him for years.

Now, it’s out and it’s as cool and biting as we’d hoped. Great reviews, generally, for this one.

“How to be Single,” loosely based on a best seller in the chick-lit/pseudo-self-help genre, gives Dakota Johnson another chance to play the inexperienced-at-love gal in the city (“Fifty Shades of Grey”) and have a naked sex scene.

And it gives Rebel Wilson a chance to tear the roof off the sucker, wisecracking, dancing, scamming on guys, the lot.

Leslie Mann steals the movie as the older sister (type) who doesn’t want a baby, until she does, doesn’t want Mr. Right until he makes a play for her.

Mixed reviews for “How to Be Single.” Romantic comedies are so hard to get right. Raunchy ones even harder.

“Zoolander 2” was a movie that somebody wanted to see — perhaps only the cast, perhaps the post-theatrical (cable, rental) audience that made the original fashion spoof a cult hit. Ben Stiller fights off the deep onset of Dad (HIS dad) body — barrel chested, spindly legs, etc.

Owen Wilson has lost some of his zing.

But Will Ferrell brings it, and check out the scores and scores of cameos. Stiller has a lot of friends willing to go back and visit his earlier career.

Michael Moore’s new docu-essay/diatribe is scattered, aiming at multiple targets with many points of view. An excuse to visit the Best of Europe (and Tunisia) and suggest that maybe American exceptionalism is being better practiced in places that are doing what we used to do so well — educate and feed our kids, punish bad bankers, etc. “Where to Invade Next” is weak tea, only for the faithful. Reviews have been good, but some of the same easy marks endorsed “Hail, Caesar!” Old habits are hard to break. Sometimes your heroes deliver a dog.

Tiny pictures like “Standoff” and “A War” aren’t good enough to lure the cognoscenti.