Movie Nation

Kevin Hart may be the Hardest Working Little Man in Show Business. A new movie in theaters, two more due out later this year, he’s cashing in while the cash is good.

But he’s running low on funny. “Ride Along 2” is Hart’s “Steve Harvey at the Miss Universe Pageant” moment — a warning that he’s spread himself, and his screechy brand of bug-eyed humor, too thin.

Because this buddy comedy sequel, “Lethal Weapon Lite,” has barely a laugh in it. All the attention was paid to the shootouts, the car chases. As if director Tim Story expected Hart to make something funny just by raising his voice from time to time.

“Foot chase! Foot chase!”

Ice Cube shows up, always wearing sunglasses and driving a nicely pimped jet black Chrysler 300 (scene after scene, way beyond “product placement). He’s the about-to-be related by marriage “partner” (“I AIN’T ya partner!”) who drags the shrieking shrimp from Atlanta to Miami to sweat this hacker contact (Ken Jeong) about a Mr. Big (Benjamin Bratt) who is killing people to get his merchandise ashore.

The script’s driving motivation is Miami — bikini shots, bachelor partying in the club, comely lady cops (Olivia Munn). And the payoff is Hart repeatedly referring to the duo as “The Brothers-in-Law.”

Hart’s Ben Barber is juggling wedding planning by phone with his fiance, the Amazon Angela (Tika Sumpter) and having shouting matches with the wedding planner (Sherri Shepherd). Over hydrangeas.

I used to think Cube wore his shades in these movies to avoid cracking up at Hart’s antics. Now, I’m thinking they’re a coping mechanism. He’s more engaged in this film (or at least his stuntman is). Even though he has the same lines.

“I’m gon’ shoot choo in the face!”

Did I joke about the stunts? Here are four lines that will stop you in your tracks. Ken Jeong does parkour.

Nobody can fault the studio for wanting to collect more cash off the surprise hit pairing of these two. Watching Hart try too hard to save it is humbling.

There are more giggles in the trailer to “Central Intelligence,” which parks Hart next to “A Big Johnson” (Dwayne Johnson), and will be shown before showings of “Ride Along 2.”

As for this long, boring, violent sequel? Life’s too short.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sequences of violence, sexual content, language and some drug material

Cast: Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Ken Jeong, Olivia Munn, Sherri Shepherd, Benjamin Bratt, Bruce McGill
Credits: Directed by Tim Story, script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:41

Animation studios cast Big Names in their movies because they figure there’s baggage — the good kind — attached to their voices.

But not everybody is gifted with a naturally funny voice like say, a Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy or Jennifer Tilly.

So it’s surprising to me that more players don’t go the Steve Carell/”Despicable Me” route — find something funny to DO with how you sound.

Couldn’t have hurt Rob Schneider, a physical comic (and walking sight-gag) cast as a talking, marketing/showbiz-savvy polar bear trying to save the Arctic from development in “Norm of the North.”

His comic timing with the odd funny line is still there. Subjected to a disco outfit makeover for a public appearance, his handler (voiced by Heather Graham) asks, “Norm, can you come out?”

“I think I just did.”

Yeah, a dressing “gay” joke. Fits in nicely with the many lemming farts and pee in the aquarium scenes.

If you held a gun to my head, I couldn’t have told you that was Schneider’s voice as Norm, and I do this for a living. But a bland lead vocal performance isn’t the only failing of this scattered, disorganized kiddie cartoon. It’s got a little “Happy Feet” to it, a bit of “Madagascar” and “Ice Age.” And the whole doesn’t add up to much at all.

Norm, the somewhat hapless oldest son of the King of the North, can chase a sea lion — “That’s a SEAL, you generalist!” — but cannot bear to eat one. He’s nervous around the ladies, contemptuous of human arctic tourists (whom he fails to frighten) with only lemmings (this movie’s Minions, or penguins) for company.

“Who needs a bear with too much hair and not enough scare?”

Then a designer condo is plopped on the ice, a TV commercial is sabotaged, and Norm angles to become the star attraction of a hipster/developer (Ken Jeong) and his marketing director (Graham).

“It”ll be like Dubai on ICE!”

To do that, Norm and his lemmings have to stow away to New York.

The idea? He’ll speak out for the shrinking ice cap, and against the developer.

Bill Nighy voices a wise albatross, Colm Meaney is Grandpa Bear and Loretta Devine plays a faux Oprah — a talk show hostess who introduces Norm to America.

The animation — done in India — is about six upgrades behind Pixar’s state-of-the-art.

The sight gags — a polar bear twerking, and the aforementioned toilet humor — don’t offer much.

The result is a Save the Planet comedy that plays much longer than its 86 minutes. And that stars a voice you wouldn’t have recognized if I hadn’t given him away. Not that he says much that’s funny or profound enough to make us even wonder if that’s really Rob.

MPAA Rating:PG for mild rude humor and action

Cast: The voices of Rob Schneider, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Bill Nighy, Colm Meaney
Credits: Directed by Trevor Wall, script by Daniel and Steve Altiere, Malcolm T. Goldman. A Lionsgate/Splash h Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:26

BRENTWOOD, CA – FEBRUARY 24: Nate Sanders displays the collection of Oscar statuettes that his auction company will sell online to the highest bidder on February 24, 2012 in Brentwood, California. (Photo by Toby Canham/Getty Images)

As we all try to process the awful news that Alan Rickman has died the same week as his contemporary, David Bowie, the Oscar nominations are out.

And here’s what the Academy proved. They let the Golden Globe voters basically limit their field for them. Less work for them.

As usual. I was hoping the Academy would broaden the field, not let those Globes dopes tell them what the best in cinema was last year.

Not that it’s a weak lot. But the acting nominations could have used a Mulligan. And a Dano. And a few others.

“Revenant” was the big winner and will be the big winner — 12 nominations, and it seems sure to take best picture, actor, director. “Spotlight” is fading, “Room” steps forward. “Mad Max: Fury Road,” collected 10 nominations. Nothing for Charlize, who was epic in it. Maybe George Miller gets his Oscar for this one.

The whole “Why wasn’t ‘Star Wars’ winner of unanimous rave reviews?” babbling of last month is silenced, once and for all. Not that good, not even close.

Nothing shocking in the best picture mix — “Martian,” “Revenant” (the favorite), “Brooklyn,” “Bridge of Spies” (mild surprise), “Spotlight,” “Mad Max,” “Room,” “The Big Short.” Eight nominees, any film feel left out?

Well, I thought “Carol” and “The Danish Girl” were over-rated, upon release. Acting noms were all it warranted. I felt the same about “Brooklyn,” very dated old-fashioned picture. But a best picture nominee. The director of “Room” was recognized, taking what was widely regarded as Ridley Scott’s “Martian” nomination.

Tarantino’s “Hateful Eight” earned cinematography and Jennifer Jason Leigh nominations — deserved. And an Ennio Morricone one, for sentiment’s sake.

Damon vs. Cranston vs. Fassbender vs. Redmayne vs. the obvious winner, Leonardo DiCaprio, for best actor.

Hardy and Rylance and Ruffalo and Bale have to have little hope that Stallone will steal an Oscar for “Creed,” which shouldn’t be in any Oscar conversation.

Blanchett and Larson and Rampling and Lawrence (Gawd…) and Ronan fight it out for best actress.

And Alan Rickman went to his grave without an Oscar. Bloody hell.

The full list of nominees is here.

They hand out the Oscars in Hollywood Feb. 28. And frankly, by offering little chance of anything resembling a surprise (“Martian” as best picture? “Best pictures are directed by best directors.” So, not likely.), the Academy cannot make an argument for tuning in. Seriously, it’s speeches that are laundry lists, without Ricky Gervais insults.

We’ll tune in for “In Memoriam” and little else.

Action auteur Michael Bay handles the Battle of Benghazi like the political hot potato it is, turning this tale of the attacks on US facilities there and the death of a U.S. ambassador into a reasonably balanced, action-packed and fact-based account.

In other words, Fox News and the Hillary Haters are going to feel let down by “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”

It’s not literally “a true story,” as an opening title assures us. There are claims made here that multiple GOP ordered Congressional hearings on the subject shot down — “stand down” orders from civilians to military folk, among them.

But what Bay (“Transformers”) delivers is a newfangled old-fashioned combat movie, “Zero Dark Corny,” with harrowing firefights given state-of-the-special-effects-art detail,  swaggering combat vets who wisecrack and drop one-liners — “How’re all the Jason Bournes doing downstairs?” — and lay on the slang and the acronyms, and get weepy and sentimental when flag or comrades in arms suffer.

Self-glorifying and self-aggrandizing, it’s a movie that answers the question one of its bloodied “contractor” (mercenary) heroes asks near the end, noting how CIA officials and others will be honored for their surviving this nightmarish night.

“What do WE get?”

You get a book deal and lots of TV appearances, like all ex-soldiers involved in a harrowing piece of Dark Ops history do these days. It seems.

John “The Office” Krasinski bulked and buffed up to play Jack Silva, a family man hit hard by the financial crisis, an ex SEAL on his way back to another tour as a contractor — this time helping protect CIA agents at a “secret base” in Benghazi where agents were tracking and buying up the Russian hardware Gaddafi had bought for Libya. An opening montage shows us a rough timeline — recreating the moment when the murderous dictator was dragged out of a drainage pipe and killed by his own people.

Libya has fallen into near anarchy. And a handful of bearded ex-Rangers, SEALs, and others, led by Tyrone “Rone” Woods (James Badge Dale) make up the QRF (Quick Response Force) designed to do the driving and guarding of the agents as they make their deals.

An opening gun-to-gun confrontation with one of the factions they’re dealing with is real Cowboys and Indians stuff — all bravado and bluff and quick-draws.

The CIA boss on the ground (David Costabile, also from “The Office”) isn’t impressed by these weight-lifting, Joseph Campbell-reading (Hah!) “Alphas,” and the contempt from the Alpha Males towards him is mutual.

Then the U.S. Ambassador shows up, shows the flag and makes an effort to bind the new regime to the country that helped it get rid of the dictator. Under-protected, by his own design, he has bought into the CIA’s assessment that “There is no real threat here.”

Wrong.

The Sept. 11, 2012 attacks come, and the contractors chomp at the bit to get into action, but the CIA holds them back. So they say now. The Pentagon is slow, or reluctant, to send even a show of force by air. Confusion about who is attacking and why (riots about an anti-Islamic documentary about Muhammad were thought to be the source) reigns back home.

Bay and his screenwriter make this material murky, leaving out details, editing everything into a blur, as if fearing its controversy. They still can’t escape charges of “historical revisionism.”

Bay is most at home giving us a vivid, realistic setting (shot in Malta and Morocco) and a nerve-wracking, lawless environment where everyone was armed to the teeth and on edge.

The firefights are fierce and the contractors professional and video-game proficient at mowing down the waves of “Tangos” (terrorists) attacking their “modern day Alamo.”

While the various members of the QRF ( and others protecting the “temporary” embassy) are distinct, the action reduces all but Krasinski to a background blur of bullets, RPGs, exploding plaster and blood. Dale (“World War Z,” “Iron Man 3”) bites off big hunks of machismo and spits’em out.

“You’re in MY world now!”

The movies “13 Hours” resembles don’t do it any favors. It plays like “The Green Berets” or “Hamburger Hill,” or any of the wave of Reagan Era “This time we WIN” Vietnam pictures. All-wise (and Joseph Campbell-quoting) military men try to set the civilians straight, and failing that, blame them for a chaotic situation beyond everyone’s control.

But Bay pulls back from making this the political screed many were expecting. As a brutal and gory combat picture with historical underpinnings, these “Secret Soldiers” acquit themselves heroically. The action is visceral and intense.

Only the presence of the odd well-established falsehood undercuts this re-interpretation of what we think of when we think “contractors” (Think French Foreign Legion).

And that’s a shame.

MPAA Rating:R for strong combat violence throughout, bloody images, and language

Cast: John Kransinski, James Badge Dale, David Costabile, Alexia Barlier, Peyman Moaadi

Credits: Directed by Michael Bay, script by Chuck Hogan. A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:15

The 36th (Has it been that long?) Golden Raspberry Award nominations are out. Not good news for the likes of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and Sly Stallone. Then again, maybe Stallone will show up, a la Sandra Bullock, because he thinks he has an acting Oscar in the bag.

Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum, Katherine Heigl. As usual.

“Pixels” and “Jupiter Ascending” earned loads of hate, “Pan” a little less. Adam Sandler? Man, he ought to show up just to silence the annual abuse (It’s harder to mock somebody you meet and maybe has a sense of humor about his shortcomings).

Attacking Julianne Moore, Michelle Monahan and Kaley Cuoco for poor choices seems mean, but OK. That’s how this works.

“Human Centipede” slaps are overdue.

They give these out just before the Oscars. Congratulations to all the nominees, because everybody’s a winner!

Worst Picture

• Fantastic Four
• Fifty Shades of Grey
• Jupiter Ascending
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
• Pixels

Worst Actor

• Johnny Depp in Mortdecai
• Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades of Grey
• Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
• Adam Sandler in The Cobbler and Pixels
• Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending

Worst Actress

• Katherine Heigl in Home Sweet Hell
• Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades of Grey
• Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending
• Jennifer Lopez in The Boy Next Door
• Gwyneth Paltrow in Mortdecai

Worst Supporting Actor

• Chevy Chase in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and Vacation
• Josh Gad in Pixels and The Wedding Ringer
• Kevin James in Pixels
• Jason Lee in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
• Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending

Worst Supporting Actress

• Kaley Cuoco in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer
• Rooney Mara in Pan
• Michelle Monaghan in Pixels
• Julianne Moore in Seventh Son
• Amanda Seyfried in Love the Coopers and Pan

Worst Director

• Andy Fickman for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
• Tom Six for The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence)
• Sam Taylor-Johnson for Fifty Shades of Grey
• Josh Trank for Fantastic Four
• The Wachowskis for Jupiter Ascending

Worst Screenplay

• Fantastic Four – screenplay by Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg and Josh Trank, based on the Marvel Comics characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
• Fifty Shades of Grey – screenplay by Kelly Marcel, based on the novel by E. L. James
• Jupiter Ascending – written by The Wachowskis
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 – written by Nick Bakay and Kevin James
• Pixels – screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, story by Tim Herlihy, based on the short film by Patrick Jean

Worst Prequel, Remake, Ripoff or Sequel

• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
• Fantastic Four
• Hot Tub Time Machine 2
• The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence)
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

Worst Screen Combo

• All four “Fantastics” in Fantastic Four
• Johnny Depp and his glued-on mustache in Mortdecai
• Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades of Grey
• Kevin James and either his Segway or his glued-on mustache in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
• Adam Sandler and any pair of his shoes in The Cobbler

Razzie Redeemer Award

• Elizabeth Banks
• M. Night Shyamalan
• Will Smith
• Sylvester Stallone

Natalie Dormer escapes the sexpot ghetto the movies (“Rush”) and TV (“The Tudors”, “Game of Thrones”) tried to sentence her to with “The Forest,” a ghost story about twins — one lost, perhaps suicidal, the other hunting for her sibling.

“Forest” is what we call “a January horror movie,” promising only a couple of hair-raising moments. But Dormer acquits herself tolerably, and the Japanese setting doesn’t hurt.

That’s where Aokigahara Forest sits, at the base of Mount Fuji.  And that’s this movie’s $12 million (its opening weekend take) idea. There is a real forest so popular as a suicide destination that it world famous for it, and there is a semi-formal infrastructure to deal with it.

Three screenwriters and first-time feature director Jason Zada (he scripted “The Houses October Built”) play around with that when Sarah (Dormer) arrives there.They find jokes in the locals’ matter-of-fact treatment of suicide. A country whose population is shrinking and aging and remains determined to take the whales down the tubes with them? The resignation about suicide fits.

Sarah’s twin sister, an English teacher living in Japan, went missing in the forest. Everybody fears the worst. But Sarah has twinsense.

“She’s not dead,” she says. She’s sure of it.

But the forest is both a bucolic and a haunted place. It has rules. And even though Sarah has a guide (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) and a hunky travel writer (Taylor Kinney) with her on her search, she should follow those rules.

“Never leave the path.” Don’t go in “with sadness in your heart.” The forest messes with that sadness. Sarah breaks the rules.

Simple camera angles, a little makeup and hair dye and slightly altered accents make Dormer convincing as American twins. She plays the rising paranoia and moments of terror adequately, if not quite compellingly.

The best scenes are when Sarah is invited downstairs where a receptionist at the park office is sure they have her sister.

“What is this place?”

Dramatic pause.

“The basement.”

The body? It’s not Jess, the sister. Not to worry. There’s always tomorrow, the helpful Japanese lady says.

“Come back. More bodies.”

There isn’t much more to this than that — a couple of frights, a growing suspicion, and some dry jokes. Kudos to Dormer for getting a paid vacation to Japan, and not having to strip to play it.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and images

Cast: Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney, Yukiyoshi Ozawa

Credits: Directed by Jason Zada, script by Nick Antosca , Sarah Cornwell and Ben Ketai. A Gramercy release.

Running time: 1:33

A Dreamworks animator from Hong Kong and a Taiwanese screenwriter teamed up for China’s biggest home-grown animation hit, “Monster Hunt.”

A monsters and martial arts mashup, it arrives on American shores as an animation/live action combo that loses something in translation — despite a heaping helping of Dreamworks touches — cute monsters and bodily function gags — and Chinese martial arts slapstick and wirework stunts.

In an ancient age, humans are at war with the monsters in their midst. And there’s infighting among the monsters themselves. A pregnant old queen slips her last egg to an unwitting peasant restaurateur Song Tianyin (Boran Ling). The monster-hunter second class Lily (Baihe Bai) becomes his protector,even as she tries to bag enough monsters in her own right to claim a promotion.

Opposing them is rival monster hunter Gao (Eric Tsang), who aims to claim the infant “king” monster as his own after the eggs hatches.

It’s a comedy of Shrek-like trolls, porcupines with helicopter-blades for hair and heaping hulks that menace one and all. The “good” monsters, capable of donning human disguises, could easily live in peace with people. If they weren’t so cunning and so fond of ordering “human liver” from shocked restaurant waiters.

There’s a goofy charm to some sequences, and Baihe Bai is a mean hand with a whip and no stranger to wirework “flying” kicks and the like. The brawls are just cute enough to pass for kid-friendly. The “humans and monsters can live in peace” is very “How to Train Your Dragon,” which is among director Raman Hui’s TV credits.

The animation? Nothing to write home about — sort of “Pixar 2.0” — not remotely state-of-the-art. And the inclusion of nonsense songs sung in “Monster language” add nothing.

There’s a grisly touch to several scenes that points to a culture clash, even when dubbed (it’s being shown in both English-dubbed and original Cantonese versions). Humans eat monsters, too, among other delicacies.

Why DO you suppose there are puppies for sale in the open air meat market scene?

Take it as a transitional comedy for kids about to outgrow “Kung Fu Panda” and keep your expectations low — very low — and you won’t mind it.

 
MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, bodily function jokes

Cast: Baihe Bai, Boran Jing, Eric Tsang
Credits: Directed by Raman Hui, script by Alan Yuen. A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:51

All you need for a good thriller are some striking settings and two very good actors debating, posturing and convincing us they want to kill each other.

“Mojave” reminds us that Garrett Hedlund is better than many of the movies (“Tron”) he’s been in, and that Oscar Isaac is a lot better than his first-ever hammy/bad turn, in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Hedlund, in full Johnny Depp mode (greasy hair, scraggly beard) plays a film business heavyweight, a self-destructive actor who wants to “be like Byron.” Or something. He wanders off into the desert to find…himself? A reason to go on? A reason to kill himself?

Isaac, all smirk and glower and very bad teeth, is the drifter the actor encounters out beyond Joshua Tree. The drifter is armed, in a duster and cowboy hat. He could easily be mistaken for The Devil. That’s an opinion The Actor offers, out loud.

“Wanna sell your soul?” The Drifter jokes.

“Whattaya got?”

The Drifter is a philosopher, a literary wit, “John Stuart Mill level” smart. “I was tested!” His quips reveal that he’s almost as showbiz savvy as the actor.

“Jesus come out of…not this desert, another one,” he jokes again. But The Actor isn’t fooled by the charm. He’s got The Drifter’s gun, and he’s not giving it back.

“Desert’s no place to be cut,” our villain hisses, drawing a Bowie knife.

Their first fight leads to a shooting, a death, and then a stalking. The Actor escapes back to civilization, The Drifter tracks him through clues The Actor leaves — contacts (a hedonist hustler/producer, played by Mark Wahlberg, a sleazy agent-lawyer played by Walton Goggins).

As a screenwriter, few have worn their “go-to move” as plainly as this film’s writer/director, William Monahan. He’s a “cell-phone scripter,” whose “The Departed” and “Body of Lies” and “The Gambler” are so reliant on phone conversations that the plot device has become his crutch.

It’s a cost-effective trick. Write a lot of heated, colorful conversations — threats, negotiations — conducted by phone. Talk big-names into a minimum commitment role. They don’t even have to be there at the same time as the other stars. Build your movie around name actors having phone arguments.

That’s in evidence here. Wahlberg and Goggins are mostly in the movie via phones.

But the meat of “Mojave” is in the moments Hedlund and Isaac stare each other down, make veiled threats even as they’re thinking through how they can make good on those threats. They debate “the duality of Man,” the fluid nature of justice and “truth” and each one’s skill at avoiding both. Because in court, “truth” is “the fictional narrative that makes the most sense.”

The players and their flinty, smart dialogue make this lean movie the screen equivalent of bleached bones in the desert sand — bones with just enough meat on them to lure us in.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some violence

Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac, Mark Wahlberg, Walton Goggins
Credits: Written and directed by William Monahan. An A24 elease.

Running time: 1:33