Movie Nation

So there’s love for the cast of “Captain Fantastic,” and star Viggo Mortensen, and the A-listers in front of the camera in “Hidden Figures.”

Those are the two big outliers from the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

Jeff Bridges was honored for his supporting work for “Hell or High Water,” but not Michael Shannon for “Nocturnal Animals.”

“Lion” and “Fences” and “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea” join “Hidden Figures” and “Captain Fantastic” in the best ensemble category — usually an indicator of a best picture favorite.

We have our best “best actress” field in decades this year, with dazzling turns by Amy Adams (“Arrival”), Natalie Portman (“Jackie”), Streep and the song-and-dance turn by Emma Stone in “La La Land.”

Supporting actress is similarly star-studded.

And with Meryl Streep AND Hugh Grant winning plaudits from the Golden Globes and SAG, well — could “Florence Foster Jenkins” have the makings of a dark horse?

Below, find the film acting nominations. For the full list, including TV shows, go to the SAG AWARDS website.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

CASEY AFFLECK / Lee Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

ANDREW GARFIELD / Desmond Doss – “HACKSAW RIDGE” (Lionsgate)

RYAN GOSLING / Sebastian –“LA LA LAND” (Lionsgate)

VIGGO MORTENSEN / Ben – “CAPTAIN FANTASTIC” (Bleecker Street)

DENZEL WASHINGTON / Troy Maxson – “FENCES” (Paramount Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

AMY ADAMS / Louise Banks – “ARRIVAL” (Paramount Pictures)

EMILY BLUNT / Rachel – “THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN” (Universal Pictures)

NATALIE PORTMAN / Jackie Kennedy – “JACKIE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

EMMA STONE / Mia – “LA LA LAND” (Lionsgate)

MERYL STREEP / Florence Foster Jenkins – “FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS” (Paramount Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

MAHERSHALA ALI / Juan – “MOONLIGHT” (A24)

JEFF BRIDGES / Marcus Hamilton – “HELL OR HIGH WATER” (CBS Films)

HUGH GRANT / St Clair Bayfield – “FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS” (Paramount Pictures)

LUCAS HEDGES / Patrick Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

DEV PATEL / Saroo Brierley – “LION” (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

VIOLA DAVIS / Rose Maxson – “FENCES” (Paramount Pictures)

NAOMIE HARRIS / Paula – “MOONLIGHT” (A24)

NICOLE KIDMAN / Sue Brierley – “LION” (The Weinstein Company)

OCTAVIA SPENCER / Dorothy Vaughan – “HIDDEN FIGURES” (20^th Century Fox)

MICHELLE WILLIAMS / Randi Chandler – “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” (Amazon Studios)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC (Bleecker Street)

ANNALISE BASSO / Vespyr

SHREE CROOKS / Zaja

ANN DOWD / Abigail

KATHRYN HAHN / Harper

NICHOLAS HAMILTON / Rellian

SAMANTHA ISLER / Kielyr

FRANK LANGELLA / Jack

GEORGE MacKAY / Bo

ERIN MORIARTY / Claire

VIGGO MORTENSEN / Ben

MISSI PYLE / Ellen

CHARLIE SHOTWELL / Nai

STEVE ZAHN / Dave

FENCES (Paramount Pictures)

JOVAN ADEPO / Cory

VIOLA DAVIS / Rose Maxson

STEPHEN McKINLEY HENDERSON / Jim Bono

RUSSELL HORNSBY / Lyons

SANIYYA SIDNEY / Raynell

DENZEL WASHINGTON / Troy Maxson

MYKELTI WILLIAMSON / Gabriel

HIDDEN FIGURES (20^th Century Fox)

MAHERSHALA ALI / Col. Jim Johnson

KEVIN COSTNER / Al Harrison

KIRSTEN DUNST / Vivian Mitchell

TARAJI P. HENSON / Katherine G. Johnson

ALDIS HODGE / Levi Jackson

JANELLE MONÁE / Mary Jackson

JIM PARSONS / Paul Stafford

GLEN POWELL / John Glenn

OCTAVIA SPENCER / Dorothy Vaughan

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Amazon Studios)

CASEY AFFLECK / Lee Chandler

MATTHEW BRODERICK / Jeffrey

KYLE CHANDLER / Joe Chandler

LUCAS HEDGES / Patrick Chandler

GRETCHEN MOL / Elise

MICHELLE WILLIAMS / Randi Chandler

MOONLIGHT (A24)

MAHERSHALA ALI / Juan

NAOMIE HARRIS / Paula

ANDRÉ HOLLAND / Kevin

JHARREL JEROME / Kevin (16)

JANELLE MONÁE / Teresa

TREVANTE RHODES / Black

ASHTON SANDERS / Chiron

Now this is more like it.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” has fresh faces, fresh music, fresh tech and a fresh take on “Star Wars,” a rarity in this venerable franchise.

It’s almost wholly satisfying — witty, warm and entertaining — a film in which fatalism isn’t a joke, where pitiless death is doled out by Empire and Rebellion, where those deaths have weight and meaning, where suspense is genuine, even if we know that this other-point-of-view prequel will wind up with a very irked Darth Vader.

” Commander, tear this ship apart until you find those plans!”

It’s amazing how viewers can be drawn to the edge of their seats when you try for something novel, a tale more than a glib facsimile of “A New Hope.” Yes, that’s a shot at the dreary, predigested “The Force Awakens.” “Rogue” is the movie J.J. Abrams should have made.

As brisk as the editing and effects whiz Gareth “Monsters/Godzilla” Edwards’ direction might be, it’s the crackling script by Oscar-nominated screenwriters Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) and Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”) that makes “Rogue One” take flight.

And a cast of brilliant role-players generates empathy, fear, inspiration and quiet mutters of “He/she is soooo cool” in scene after scene, fights and one-liners included.

There’s this new thing, code-named “Death Star,” that the Empire wants finished. It needs its master designer, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) for that. And Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, a good villain) is determined to find him.

Only Galen’s little girl, who lived with dad on work sites playing with Storm Trooper dolls, escapes. Jyn (Felicity Jones) grows up to be a tough, resourceful smuggler and thief. She’s The Hope of The Rebellion. Only she can talk a rogue warlord (Forest Whitaker) into helping her track down her WMD-building dad.

Her minder on this mission is the spy and assassin Cassian Andor (Diego Luna in hired killer mode). And he’s assisted by a re-purposed Imperial droid, drolly voiced by Allan Tudyck.

Their quest takes them to a holy city adjacent to all-important Imperial mines, where Jedi with no mission lounge about, bored religious fanatics with mad fighting skills.

George Lucas used the Akira Kurosawa samurai adventure “Hidden Fortress” as his model for “Star Wars.” “Rogue One” gets deeper into Ronin (samurai whose master is dead) movies with characters played by Wen Jiang and the great martial arts star Donnie Yen (“Ip Man,” “Hero”). Yen is Chirrut Îmwe, a “Star Wars” version of the famed Japanese character Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman.

Chirrut perks up his ears, swings his staff and Storm Troopers go flying. He makes wisecracks as they do, even when he’s taken prisoner, a bag wrapped around his head.

“Are you KIDDING me? I am BLIND!”

Chirrut is the coolest “new” character in this universe since Yoda. Yen is given the funniest lines, but also the most soulful. He is Yoda in human form.

“I am with The Force. The Force is with me” is his mantra.

The guiding principle for this script is “Boba Fett.” He was the bounty hunter some fans latched onto in original trilogy, a ruthless mission-focused mercenary. Versions of that dark ethos ripple through this cast of characters. There’s no “phasers on stun” equivalent in “Rogue One.” Necks are snapped and even friendly informants and possible allies who “know too much” might be dispatched.

Edwards conjures up a fresh twist on a worn-out lived-in galaxy, where hardware is patched and kept running but never repainted, where military transport ships are as dangerous to their crews as to the enemy, and where no technology is OSHA compliant.

Jones makes a plucky, more believably capable heroine than the young Brit of “Force Awakens.” Mikkelsen’s perpetual Dane-on-the-verge-of-tears generates pathos works, and Riz Ahmed (“Nightcrawler”) stands out in the diverse cast as a tortured traitor to the Empire enlisted in the rebels’ mission.

But Forest Whitaker towers over them all, playing a broken, twisted true believer who has lost most of his limbs to The Cause and lost all interest in compassion and fair play — until Jyn shows up.

Here’s what doesn’t work. For all the new tech, new locations and attempts to freshen the story and give it new emotions, the action beats are pretty much identical to those of every other “Star Wars” movies, start to finish.

Melodramatic touches abound, but one or two in the third act just grate. In a movie where deaths have pathos and meaning, it cheapens the picture when you illogically have characters we’ve kissed-off come back for a curtain call. The “urgent” holographic message about the Death Star lacks urgency.

And the inclusion of characters in the fresh bloom of “New Hope” youth, achieved mostly by digital animation, is impressive — just not impressive enough to look “real.” Aliens animated into scenes is a great effect, but the skin tones, movements and facial expressions of animated human beings don’t have the spark of life. I don’t think “I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board” would have had the same bite delivered by a digital Leia.

Those who swooned over “A Force Awakens” should be humbled by the novelty, humanity and surprises of “Rogue One.” This is how a script that varies the formula plays, this is what a diverse cast assembled based on talent and star power and not just checking off inclusion boxes on an EEO form looks like.

And this is what a story that back-engineers and then improves on the marvelous canned corn of George Lucas sounds like. How do you accept a future under tyranny, where the Imperial flag waves over an entire galaxy?

“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action

Cast: Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelssohn, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Jimmy Smits. 

Credits:Directed by Gareth Edwards, script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy. A Lucasfilm/Walt Disney release.

Running time: 2:13

Whatever the “meaning” of “Collateral Beauty” — and the title is given an incomplete but understandable definition in the film — it is to be appreciated for the lovely people it captures in loving, perfect close-ups.

As Will Smith’s mad ad-man “Howard” passes through his dark night of the soul, he is visited by the flower of Britain’s Big Screen Beauties. And skipping past the film’s failed weeper ambitions, I’m still hard-pressed to think of a movie where Oscar winners Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet, and future Oscar winners Naomie Harris and Kyra Knightly, looked more beautiful.

Howard was once a brilliant, witty delight, a Big Dreamer boss of a New York ad agency whose offices put Google and Apple campuses to shame in their whimsical, forward-thinking impracticality.

But Howard is broken, drowning in grief, unreachable by his longtime business partner (Edward Norton) and most trusted, compassionate colleagues (Winslet, Michael Pena). Howard lost a child, and ever since he’s been lost.

He’s become a loner, riding his Schwinn through the mean streets in suicidal sprints, building massive domino tumbles in his office and writing angry letters to “Death,” “Time” and “Love,” cursing time as “a dead tissue that won’t decompose” and the like.

So, with the company spiraling down the toilet with a buyout as its only chance at salvation, the “compassionate” friends hire a struggling acting troupe to play “Death,” “Time” and “Love”to visit Howard and respond to his letters.

Yeah, Allen Loeb’s script is cribbing from “A Christmas Carol.” And yes, the actors know exactly what’s up.

“So, you want us to ‘Gaslight’ your boss?”

Death, to be played by Brigitte (Mirren), is to debate him about life and the eternal, and she really gets into the part, looking for notes, clues and improv suggestions from the partner (Pena) who coaches her.

Time, played the prettiest “streetwise” “thug” in screen history (Jacob Lattimore) confronts Howard, takes umbrage at his insults. “I’m ABUNDANT,” he shouts at the man wallowing in years of hurt. Quit wasting time — “I’m a GIFT!”

Howard’s letter to “Love” was the toughest of all. “Goodbye.” Amy (Knightly), the most emotional of the actors and most troubled by what they’re doing, takes her role to heart.

“Don’t try and live without me, Howard!”

Will they cure the man, or just provide evidence for the private eye (Ann Dowd) following and videotaping each of these encounters with things/people who aren’t really there?

Will Howard have a breakthrough with his all-caring grief support group counselor (Naomie Harris)?

Can Will Smith earn his coveted Oscar with this latest shameless grasp at that elusive prize?

Smith is reasonably comfortable in this role, though his spot-on timing means he’s so much better at the comic moments — yanking his hat on and stomping off at Death’s second visit with an emphatic and funny Will Smith “NUH-uh.”

He benefits from an overabundance of stellar supporting talent, with Mirren, Winslet, Harris and Knightly dazzling, Norton his usual impressive self and Pena getting to show a sad, dramatic side we rarely see.

But if “Collateral” fails to move you — and it might, because I was untouched — it may have to do with the clumsy clockwork machinations of a script that has to make its entire unholy and unethical premise seem “logical” and understandable.

It twists itself into a pretzel to create parallels — Howard isn’t the only damaged person at that agency.

Loeb gives us a Big Revelation or two, and Mirren provides a delightful “ACTING” enthusiasm for the performances her group is to give.

“This isn’t Noel Coward! This is CHEKHOV!”

But it isn’t either. It’s just a script that folds in on itself with a few moments of misdirection in it, a trick or two up its sleeve.

All “Collateral” amounts to is a shiny film that invites you to lose yourself in the romance of great faces, made up to perfection, misty-eyed with sympathy and affection.

Well, great faces and Will Smith’s ears.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Will Smith, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Keira Knightly, Michael Pena

Credits:Directed by David Frankel, script by Allen Loeb. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:37

The Golden Globes love them some Mel Gibson, and they’re thrilled to have the chance to welcome him back from the wilderness with nominations for his “Hacksaw Ridge.”

Hollywood? Maybe. Maybe not.

The 74h Golden Globe nominations show the Hollywood Foreign Press Association swooning over the quirky, cliched Hollywood musical “La La Land,” and the gritty indie coming of age/not-quite-coming out on the mean streets of Miami drama “Moonlight.”

Their “Drama” nominations left out “Loving,” and I’m not having that.

They ignored “Nocturnal Animals” but wasted a best director nod on Tom Ford.

They remembered Colin Farrell for “The Lobster,” Joel Edgerton for “Loving” and Viggo Mortensen for “Captain Fantastic.”

They preferred “Deadpool” to “Doctor Strange.”

The nominated “Hell or High Water” but left out nominations for the actors.

They went all-in on “Florence Foster Jenkins.”

Jessica Chastain gets a little “Miss Sloane” notice. The movie is withering on the vine, weak reviews, etc.

Anyway, a mixed bag from the Globes folks. The full list of nominations is below.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Lion
Manchester By the Sea
Moonlight

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama

Amy Adams, Arrival
Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

Casey Affleck, Manchester By the Sea
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

20th Century Women
Deadpool
La La Land
Florence Foster Jenkins
Sing Street

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Lily Collins, Rules Don’t Apply
Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

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It’s fair if not entirely accurate to say everything funny about it is stuff you can see in the trailers and TV ads for “Why Him?” Because those samples aren’t the least big amusing, and there is a random laugh or three in this latest holiday comedy to put the “R” back in Christmas.

A crude — OK cruder — “Meet the Parents” from the parents’ point of view, the film mostly squanders the sitcom-polished comic stylings of James Franco, Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally, and the loopy improv-gifts of Keegan-Michael Key.

“Him” is about a Grand Rapids family — Cranston, Mullally and Griffin Gluck — who check in on their Stanford matriculating daughter (Zooey Deutch) over the holidays, only to learn that she’s moved in with this manic oversexed goofball of a tech millionaire, played by Franco.

She’s kept this intel from her parents, and the shock of this news isn’t lessened by Laird Mayhew’s first Skype impression — half-naked, covered in tattoos. In person, it’s no better. The game-designing whiz has “Game Over” stitched into his knuckles, a perpetual ridiculous grin smeared across his face and zero chemistry with their sunny, sweet little girl.

Actually, that’s all on the actors. Young Miss Deutch, of “Dirty Grandpa,” “Vampire Academy” and “Everybody Wants Some!” never quite makes us buy into their connection and never for one second seems up to the demands of a comedy where the on-set ethos is “The Best Joke/Line Wins.” Yeah, it has an Ap Pack lineage — Judd Apatow acolyte Jonah Hill cooked up the story, Franco stars.

Ned Fleming (Cranston) is a printing business owner from Grand Rapids whose business is failing. And now his daughter’s hooked up with some freak, some RICH freak.

“If I DID Google him, what would I find?”

Laird wants to propose to Stephanie. He wants to call Ned “Dad.” And Ned, no matter what his business lieutenant (Cedric the Entertainer) tells him, isn’t having it.

So the foul-mouthed suitor has the holidays and his Architectural Digest mansion and far more polished German-accented assistant/Man Friday (Peele) to win over the Flemings.

“Why Him?” is the sort of movie where overly-indulged new wealth itself is meant to be funny — having the cash to own your own zoo but not the sense not to do it, using a teepee for an office, building a basement bowling alley (complete with new family mural painted on it) is supposed to tickle us.

So is Gustav (Peele), who trains Laird in self-defense by attacking him, at random moments.

“Oh, just like in ‘The Pink Panther?'”

Say what now?

“You know, Cato and Inspector Clouseau?”

Um, who?

The generational divide doesn’t deliver giggles, with Ned botching today’s slang and straining to prevent Laird’s “charm” (Really?) from winning over his family. But Mullally hurls herself at a sex scene as if “Will & Grace” were up for a threesome. And Peele manages a Germanic giggle or two.

The molecular cuisine gags fall flat. Food out of a syringe is a joke almost as old as Clouseau.

Saddest of all is a star cameo by Ned and wife Barb’s favorite band, about 25 years after their “rock and roll all night” expiration date.

With “Bad Santa” and its sequel paving the way, and “The Night Before” and “Office Christmas Party” reinforcing the sense that we’re a dozen “Hangovers” removed from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you need a lot more than a veiled “Meet the Fockers” variation to shock us.

That’s all “Why Him?” was shooting for. And that’s just not enough.

MPAA Rating:R (for strong language and sexual material throughout)

Cast: Bryan Cranston, James Franco, Megan Mullally, Zoey Deutch, Keegan-Michael Key, Cedric the Entertainer

Credits:Directed by John Hamburg, script by John Hamburg and Ian Hefler, story by Jonah Hill. A Fox release.

Running time: 1:51

Little known fact. It wasn’t just daring or pluck that made the Wright Brothers “First in Flight.” It was math. The siblings checked the figures on the generally accepted numeric tables calculating lift and drag on wings, found them wrong and after correcting them, went up — and down in history.

Another little known fact. Before we let machines have this title, people who could perform complex calculations using various formulae, filling blackboards or paper pads with co-efficients and calculus and what not, were called “computers.” When America was desperate to win World War II with superior aircraft designs, or win the Space Race by mastering launch trajectories and orbital state vectors, it turned to legions of women holding this civil service designation — “computers.”

And even at a time when the country was mostly segregated and the South still discriminated through the unbending application of Jim Crow laws, some of those women were black.

“Hidden Figures” is a quietly inspiring and generally straightforward film of Margot Lee Shetterly’s non-fiction remembrance of those women who crossed the color line as they helped America break the sound barrier.

Condensing 20 years of history, applying “Hollywood” twists to real events and emphasizing the crowd-pleasing elements of the story, writer-turned-director Theodore Melfi (“St. Vincent”) has created a bright, entertaining history of the barrier-breaking work done by African American math whizzes at Hampton, Virginia’s Langley Research Center.

Melfi and co-writer Allison Schroeder skip past the World War II pre-history of these “computers,” mostly math teachers. alumni of historically black colleges teaching at segregated schools. America’s manpower and brainpower shortage during the war were the driving force in integration of both the armed forces and the civil service that backed them up.

We glimpse a gifted child from White Sulfur Springs, W. Va., named Katherine — daughter of a hotel porter — singled out for college because of her math proclivities.

And then we see the adult Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), piled into a worn-out Chevy with Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), dealing with a Virginia cop in “Yessuh, nossuh” 1961. Dorothy heads off potential racist insults with the deft skill of a veteran of Life as a Black Woman in the South.

When the cop accepts what they do for a living, that they’re front line troops in the Space Race against the despotic Russians, he gives them a siren-backed escort to work, setting the tone for the picture. The rough edges of real history can be rubbed off. People can come together for a higher purpose, the inflexible can bend. And even racists have their soft spot for national security. Or used to, until this last election.

But at Langley, the women face a glass ceiling that is made even thicker by their skin color. They may be masters of analytic geometry, but their boss (Kirsten Dunst) just doesn’t want them to “embarrass” her. IBM is racing to put a machine in place that will render all the female computers — black and white — obsolete. Some of the NASA engineers (Jim Parsons of “The Big Bang Theory”) resist integration and refuse to share credit on work they’ve done and scientific papers they’ve published, or even their coffee pot.

It’s up to the Big Boss (Kevin Costner) to play Santa in this version of “Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer.” All he cares about are results. There are lives, global prestige and a ticking clock at stake. He doesn’t have time for racist traditions and doesn’t care whose feathers he ruffles.

“If I said I was sorry, I’d be saying it all day.”

Just clock in, keep your head down and do good work, the older Dorothy counsels. To some degree, that’s just what happens. But that wouldn’t amount to much of a movie if they did, would it?

Facing injustices great (promotions, transfers, co-writing credit) and petty (“colored” restrooms, coffee pots and the like), our heroines stand up, speak up and mouth off — and make history as they do.

Melfi weaves a smart, compact picture of 1961 Virginia, and Hampton — an oasis of black academic achievement in an America that was still coming to grips with “Brown vs. Board of Education.” Cold War paranoia  (“Duck and cover” drills) and the head-shaking silliness of the architecture of racism share center stage.

The story plays up the sacrifices of these family women, the sexism that made them thin-skinned even during courtship (Mahershala Ali plays old fashioned Col. Jim Johnson, who married Katherine) and makes the women more outspoken than the real “Hidden Figures” actually were. But the heroics, the level of trust the astronauts put into these “best and brightest?” All true.

The film wisely leans on a couple of iconic Oscar winners in the cast. After “The Help,” Spencer has come to embody the quiet (or noisy) dignity of “the struggle.” And Costner’s late career has often had him playing an EveryAmerican who can be relied on to, as Spike Lee preached, “Do the Right Thing.” Sure, the women figured out a way to get that “colored” restroom sign removed on their own. Putting Costner in this role in this film means a sledgehammer Big Moment will illustrate that.

Our distance from the Space Age leads the film to more than its share of blunders, from the comically mismatched cluster of military insignias on “Col.” Johnson to the TV reporter who narrates John Glenn’s flight to “an altitude of 116 miles per hour.” The math whizzes back then weren’t holding microphones and smiling for the camera.

But warm and witty performances by Spencer, Hensen and Monae, the stoic moral stature Costner plays and unlikable-until-they’re-reasonable turns by Dunst and Parsons make “Hidden Figures” a winner, a piece of unknown history rendered flesh and blood funny, uplifting and never less than entertaining.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements and some language

Cast: Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Costner, Janelle Monae, Mahershala Ali, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons

Credits:Directed by Theodore Melfi, script by Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi, based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. A Fox release.

Running time: 2:05

Lord have mercy, what has become of the promising-on-paper Independent Film Channel, IFC?

“Con Air.” “Dukes of Hazzard.” “Lethal Weapon” sequels ad nauseum.

As I have complained on their Facebook page, there’s already a cable channel for crap “so bad it’s almost good” (as if there is such a thing, and there isn’t). It’s called SPIKE TV. Then there’s FX and its sisters.

As a film critic, I get “Wanna review this?” notices from publicists for probably 1000 movies per year. I see maybe half. Little studios, from Monterey Media and Magnolia and Magnet to Monument and High Top and so many others take their shot and you’d think IFC would be their films’ Final Destination.

Most of these movies had at least the cachet to get made, to attract at least one B-list or former A-lister.

Katie Holmes turns up in “Miss Meadows,” dark and darker.

Anne Hathaway takes a flier on “Song One.” Shouldn’t you?

Look at the past month of Movie Nation’s site’s archives (search box on the right rail of the home page), scores of titles that earned only limited release, some of them perfectly worthy of your time (between commercials). What is IFC showing? Endless reruns of “That 70s Show.” Wait, the pot jokes made this Fox series “indie?” And…middling original shows (the un-acquired taste “Stan Against Evil”, the acquired taste “Portlandia”). Those, and a sea of films that were never Indie. Ever.

I drop by IFC on nights (and there are plenty) when HBO is showing retreads or movies fresh to TV but which I suffered through in a theater, and never will again. I almost never see anything worth taping or even surfing through between ad blocs on IFC.

I know that AMC and assorted other “movie” networks have gone all-in on original programming. And the streaming services give you access to a buffet of titles on all manner of devices, competition that wasn’t around when AMC was showing actual “American Movie Classics,” and IFC was being brought to life. So the business model that they’re relying on has to evolve to reflect the competition.

But seriously, the bar on “original content” needs to be higher, and showcasing more indie film fare isn’t at all menaced by the many a la carte platforms out there. “Miss Meadows” ain’t trending on Netflix. FilmStruck, a newer streaming service offering classic films, could be a threat. But are they “indie”? Not yet.

What to offer? How about cheap and spooky horror such as “13 Cameras,” or “The Good Neighbor”? James Caan was in the latter.

Why not an “epic” that was based on a book that was a hit overseas? “The Physician” co-starred Ben Kinglsey and Stellan Skarsgaard, and my review piles up web traffic every day for YEARS after its release. Never seen it on any cable channel. In the US, anyway.

Documentaries roll out by the dozens every week –on racial injustice, Toshiro Mifune, water rights issues and the history of the VW bug. There are places some of this stuff shows up on TV, but they’re a lot harder to find than the channel allegedly built on “Indie” films.

I’ve all but given up on you guys. The twee charms of “Portlandia” are just that. And make your teeth ache after short exposure.

Maybe you figured you tried the “Indie” thing, and decided the returns were too poor to justify sustaining that as a business model. AMC used to be “American Movie Classics,” with no commercials, after all. One “Mad Men” and a few “Walking Deads” later, that’s gone by the boards.

We’re talking about niche cable numbers, and even IFC’s “hit” series aren’t doing Trevor Noah re-run ratings. What have you got to lose by remembering your original mission?

At this point, I’m taking your corporate slogan to heart. If you don’t show something off the beaten path and cinematic, you’ll remain “slightly off” in my house.

An interesting in-between weekend at the box office, as the animated juggernaut “Moana” wins another week, besting the raunchy R-rated comedy “Office Christmas Party.”

But it was close, with “Moana” clearing $18 million ($145 million overall, not a world beater, but it will surpass “Trolls” by Monday’s first shows). “Party” will flirt with $17 by midnight Sunday.

“Nocturnal Animals” goes into wide release and cracks the  Top Ten.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is plowing along, now over $60 million, with enough awards buzz to suggest it’ll flirt with $85 million when all is said and done.

“Miss Sloane,” a Jessica Chastain political thriller with limited Oscar buzz, opened wide and didn’t even manage to reach the Top Ten. $2.1 million.

Awards bait limited releases “La La Land,” “Lion” and “Jackie” have opened in less than half a dozen theaters each and are doing spectacular business in those. Oscar buzz will make their Jan. openings healthy.

Maybe this is what we need, at the tail end of America’s “annus horribilis” — a really good cry.

But “Jackie,” the new bio-pic built around Jacqueline Kennedy’s days of grief, shock and utter horror following the murder of her husband, doesn’t let us off that easily.

Star and certain Oscar nominee Natalie Portman brings everything the First Lady must have felt in those moments, days and months after JFK’s assassination, his shattered head falling into her lap that day in Dallas.

There’s shock — “He had the most wonderful expression on his face.” And revulsion — “There was blood, everywhere. I tried to hold his head together.”

And then there’s the quiet fury of a mousy-voiced “silly debutante” imposing her will on her fiery brother-in-law, Bobby (Peter Sarsgaard), the bluff new president, Lyndon Johnson (John Carroll Lynch of “Zodiac”) and indeed America. No, she will NOT change her pink Chanel suit, even though it’s covered in blood.

“Let them SEE what they’ve done,” she practically spits at Lady Bird Johnson (Beth Grant).

Portman lets us feel the way Jackie’s loss utterly empties her life of meaning and purpose. But Chilean director Pablo Larrain (“The Club”) lets little John Jr. (Aiden and Brody Weinberg) provide the heart-wrenching release, just as he did back at that state funeral in 1963. 

Larrain and screenwriter and “Today” show veteran Noah Oppenheim frame this story in the most blandly conventional way — in the form of an interview with “The Journalist” — Billy Crudup playing someone meant to be Life Magazine’s Theodore White.

But writer, director and cast make the interview a brittle, biting piece of journalistic combat. He is there at her request, so she can “tell her story.” He can sass her, try to bait and joke about her manipulations of her late husband’s image. She’s not having it.
Demure or not, she knows how to put someone in his place. She still has control, final edit, and she’s not above reminding him of that any time something too personal or injurious to her image or her husband’s legacy.

“Don’t think for ONE moment I’m going to let you print that,” she hisses in that regal, dainty whisper of hers.

The film is built around confessions from the interview, and from post-assassination talks with Bobby, her de facto lady-in-waiting (Greta Gerwig) and a priest (John Hurt).

Jackie, who brought in a historian to help her restore the White House to its historic glory, has the presence of mind to bring him (Richard E. Grant) back when hastily planning a funeral. Don’t think Garfield or McKinley, she says. No, think Lincoln.

The script swallows the “Camelot” myth even as it casts a jaundiced eye on how Jackie cultivated it. And Portman captures the stunning solitude of a woman totally alone with the whole world assaying her grief, threatened from all sides. And she shows the steely resolve of a widow ready to play the widow card as she changes her mind about the scope of the funeral — intimate to epic.

The best of those tussles? With LBJ aide and future Motion Picture Association of America chief Jack Valenti — struggling to be tactful, bordering on testy (as indeed LBJ supposedly was), helpless when Jackie defiantly demands a walking procession to the funeral through the gun-filled streets of a nation that just shot her husband with a mail-order rifle. Max Casella ably plays Valenti as wily, determined and every bit as brusque as his boss, but no match for the Widow Kennedy.

I love the way Larrain and his crew mimic grainy video and TV film footage of the era, filling in the background with TV reality as the young Dan Rather tells the nation the latest on the tragedy, Jackie flashes back to her famous White House Restoration tour for TV reporter Charles Collingwood (played by a look-alike, with the real Collingwood’s questions and interjections) and Lee Harvey Oswald is shot on live TV.

Larrain went for a JFK look-alike as the president (Caspar Philipson, too short) and a great actor as his brother (Sarsgaard, too tall and making no effort to match the Kennedy twang).

But the emotional distance and dramatic parameters of the story they chose to tell lift “Jackie” above similar films attempting to capture the tragedy of iconic beauties such as Princess Diana and Grace Kelly.

And Portman, holding the film together with the force of her gaze and the quiet of her whispers, holds us as well. She delivers an impersonation that punches through the cultivated veneer to show a real woman dealing with the unspeakable, struggling every second with the weight of tragedy and the expectations of history as she does. There was steel and calculation behind those sunglasses the world grew to mock, and a grace that went beyond fashion icon, priestess of high culture and the national monument to mourning we wanted her to be.

MPAA Rating:R for brief strong violence and some language

Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Richard E. Grant, John Hurt, Max Casella, John Carrol Lynch

Credits:Directed by Pablo Larraín , script by Noah Oppenheim. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:39