Movie Nation

So, how much do we South of the Border types really know about our frozen sisters and brothers in the Great White North?

Well, they’re white. And polite. And seriously insecure about the Land of Opportunity that exists just below the 49th parallel.

Oh, and they do LOVE their donuts.

Canadian born TV writer/producer Robert Cohen (‘The Big Bang Theory”, “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment”) had access to many of the legions of Canadians Among Us (the name of a “This American Life” episode that might have inspired this) and thought it would be funny to examine, in documentary-essay form, what “Being Canadian” means.

He frets, he says, about “the world’s indifference to my homeland.” So Cohen got a grant and traveled across Canada, seeing Canadian sites and reciting snippets of Canadian history. He talked to Americans (drunk, in Vegas) about what they know about Canada. And to Canadians about what being Canadian means to them.

“We’re more than just igloos and beer,” he says. And donuts.

And he peppered his picture, “Being Canadian,” with every famous Canadian working in Hollywood or American TV. There’s Shatner and Smulders and Rogen and Rush, Eugene Levy and Martin Short, Morley Safer and Catherine O’Hara, Paul Schaefer and Will Arnett, Alan Thicke and Malcolm Gladwell.

Some take a shot at the big questions — “Why are Canadians so nice?”

Mostly, though, they just react to the popular stereotypes. This thing famous Canadians do when strangers come up and say, “Hey, I’m Canadian too!” Nathan Fillion gets the film’s biggest laugh when he simply demonstrates reaching out and warmly shaking the hand of his fellow Canuck.

They’re always “apologizing,” Alanis Morisette complains.

And they all carry around “the list,” that mental scorecard of just who is Canadian, so they can spring it on people who aren’t from Canada. Barenaked Ladies, Rush, BTO, Captain Kirk, and so on.

Cohen comes close to getting at why Canadians are so funny (at least in the arts). It’s their long winters. We need Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd and many others to explain that to us.

But it’s not a terribly funny or enlightening documentary for anybody over 30, say, or anybody who’s ever wandered through Winnipeg or Toronto and noticed donut shops on every corner.

Full disclosure here — I have lived in Alaska and North Dakota, visited Canada, had Canadian TV (pre-cable) beamed my way and more than my share of “Canuck jokes” in the process. Most of them funnier than what Martin Short, Mike Myers et al sputter here.

But Cohen at least sets up Shatner for a big laugh. How might Captain Kirk clear the bridge on the Starship Enterprise?

“Get OOT” he shouts, letting his back-bacon fly.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Cobie Smulders, Seth Rogen, Michael J. Fox, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Will Arnett, Dan Aykroyd, Rush.
Credits: Written and directed by Robert Cohen. A Candy Factory release.

Running time: 1:30

The producers hid “The Transporter Refueled” from critics. Clever Frenchies. They know, “No Statham, no ‘Transporter.'”

They didn’t need critics to tell them. But we did. Over and over again. This new fellow, Skrein, whom I’ve seen in a few films (that “Northmen” Viking movie for instance) doesn’t have Statham’s presence, his “What ‘are you gonna do to piss me off THIS time, mate?” None of that. More hair, less scowl, less kick-ass. Dull villains, hotter women and more of them.

Maybe Monsieur Luc is pleased with that formula. The rest of us? Not so much.

“A Walk in the Woods” is earning notices that split right down the middle. It ambles along. It’s comfort food for an older audience, one generally under-served by Hollywood. No, it’s not as good as “Wild,” but it’s light fun. And those who don’t get it will get it after their mommies or Grandmommies explain it to them. The dears.

Alex Gibney’s terrific “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” is at about 75% on the tomatometer. So, about 25% of the English Speaking World’s movie critics use iPhones and are Apple cultists. That must be how that polls out. Seriously, Gibney is our greatest documentarian. Period. He does the work, comes to a conclusion, and makes it stick. The dude was a brilliant salesman, a visionary as far as that goes — pushing his companies to make computers warmer and fuzzier. But he was an abusive credit hog and a selfish tool. Bill Gates may get a Nobel Peace Prize some day. Jobs? Worshipped by lemmings until his legacy fades or they find toys they prefer to his.

Damned good film, damning, too.

“Dope” is back in theaters. Worth a look. Daring. Kind of a smart black director’s idea of what sort of movie a white audience would like to see about black teens. Yeah, I said that. Funny, a little patronizing, a bit twisted.

“Chloe and Theo” is a stumbling sermon about Global Climate Change and the Wise Inuit we won’t listen to, no matter how cute the homeless chick (Dakota Johnson) who insists we listen might be. Bad reviews.

Even worse than Neil LaBute’s blundering “Dirty Weekend.” Matthew Broderick and Alice Eve sound like they’re reciting dirty lines in front of an Albuquerque sex shop window for most of it. Ugh. Pity about LaBute.

“Bloodsucking Bastards” had potential. For a workplace satire where vampires are seen as the Evil Boss’s ideal employees. It ends well, at least.

The Kendrick Brothers, those Southern Baptist preachers-turned-filmmakers, go Hollywood and take a step or two backward with “War Room,” their first film since abandoning the pulpit.

Because “What I REALLY wanna do is direct.”

I’d say they “sold out,” but to the best of my knowledge, there are no leaked Sony memos to them with “Do you think you could go a little easy on the whole ‘Jesus thing’ here?”

It’s just a clumsily written, flatly-acted sermon built on some of the same stereotypes that made Tyler Perry rich. There’s no heart, and very little humor to this tale of a marriage going wrong and the God-fearing cliché who hectors a troubled wife into sitting in her closet and praying the temptations away.

Elizabeth (Priscilla C. Shirer) is a successful Charlotte real estate agent, raising a daughter who’s deep into Double Dutch and sharing a McMansion with her star pharmacy rep husband Tony (T.C. Stallings).

But Tony has tuned out this marriage, and Elizabeth is upset. “It is hard to submit to a man like that,” she confesses to her Christian realtor colleagues. No kidding. She really says that.

Not to worry. Her new client, the elderly widow Miss Clara (Karen Abercrombie) has the answer.

“God is in control,” she declares. This is after Miss Clara has impertinently grilled Liz on her church going habits, and made a joke out of her “lukewarm” commitment to Jesus by serving her lukewarm coffee.

Hey, that Charlotte real estate market is tough. You’ve got to submit to a lot of pushy, proselytizing nonsense to land a client.

Miss Clara preaches the need for a “War Room,” a place (a closet) where a woman can go develop a strategy for keeping Satan out of her house and her marriage, a place to pray.

“Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy” lives and marriages, she counsels. Be on your guard. And clean out your closet.

The long-widowed Clara is full of advice.

“Men don’t like it when womens’ always tryin’ to fix them!”

Sounds like a white screenwriter’s idea of how a skinny drug-free Madea would talk.

She fends off a knife-wielding mugger “In the name of Jesus!”

The actors cannot land the attempted laugh-lines that the Kendricks shove into the script. They can’t wrench any emotion out of this material, either. I’m leaving the child actors’ names out of this, because whatever Momma’s been spending on acting lessons hasn’t paid off.

What’s it say when you look back on Kirk Cameron (“Fireproof”) as the gold standard for acting in your Christian films?

The steady stream of Christian films making it into theaters has been a smart move by studios, serving an underserved audience. And there’s nothing wrong with these movies “preaching to the choir.” “Know your audience” is just cinematic common sense. What works for horror and sci-fi fanboys can work for the faithful.

The Kendricks can say they’ve merely exchanged ministries in diving whole-hog into movies. But as they do, they lose their amateur standing, and they invite comparison to everybody else making filmed entertainment. “War Room” throws into sharp relief the ways they don’t measure up, and captive audience of not, they’re not getting better at storytelling for the screen.

They’ve taken their homilies to Hollywood,  But will the choir be impressed with “entertainment” this insipid, a sermon this lightweight?

MPAA Rating:PG for thematic elements throughout

Cast: Priscilla C. Shirer, Karen Abercrombie, T.C. Stallings

Credits: Directed by Alex Kendrick, script by Alex Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick. Sony Tristar Affirm release.

Running time: 2:00

There’s a new set of criteria movies — especially indie films with little or no marketing — must meet. And Indie World is a little slow catching onto it.

Used to be, you made your indie film with festivals in mind. You could afford to be patient in your storytelling, though truth be told, selection committee folk toss your DVD in the trash if you don’t get ON with it. Eventually.

Now, you need to fret over how Netflixable your film is. If we’re willing, and many of us are, to give an unknown but promising title a try on Netflix, how long before we bail and look for something that gets right down to business?

Now that I’ve stalled and beaten around the bush…case in point — “”Bloodsucking Bastards.” The title tells us it’s about vampires, and possibly funny.

The comedy troupe Dr. God cooked it up. And it opens with a gory “the grossest thing I’ve ever seen” moment. Why not wade in?

Why not? That’s almost the only real action or borderline funny thing to it for 45 minutes or so. And it’s only 86 minutes long.

Veteran character player Fran Kranz (“The Cabin in the Woods”) is Evan, a guy semi in charge of a seriously dysfunctional and lazy sales center. He’s up for a promotion, something his especially lazy (video games at his computer all day) wiseass pal Tim (Joey Kern of “Cabin Fever” and “Super Troopers”) relishes.

Then the Big Boss (Joel Murray) brings Max, Evan’s nemesis, on board. Max (Pedro Pascal) is there to shake things up before a round of layoffs, mixing threats with heated pep talks to the troops, to “sell a bunch of useless crap to the fat losers in Alabama and bored housewives in Ohio.”

Which they do. Only bloody things start happening, and only Evan and Tim seem to notice them. Sexual intrigues (Emma Fitzpatrick) take a back seat as the two dopes start to figure out what’s happening, and what to do about it.

“I looked some stuff up on Wikipedia.”

Eventually, the blood starts to spurt and maybe, between the gruesome laughs, we notice the metaphor for today’s Race to the Bottom employment practices. The Undead are loyal, work longer hours and are cheaper to keep.

The one-liners are feeble — “Bam! Snap!” — the performances mostly perfunctory. It takes forever to get going, something nobody who hasn’t bought a ticket will sit still for.

But the finale has to be seen to be believed. Remember, we’ve been promised “the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with bloody violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Fran Kranz, Joey Kern, Emma Fitzpatrick, Joel Murray
Credits: Directed by Brian Max Joseph, script by Dr. God and Ryan Mitts. A Scream Factory/Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:26

The Kendrick Brothers’ latest faith-based foray was marketed to Protestant churchgoers and is doing the kind of business that “Facing the Giants” and “Fireproof” could only dream of.

It’s running second at the box office, as of Friday night, and could manage a healthy $10 million+ over the weekend. A weak weekend, yes, but that’s smart marketing, too. Last weekend of the summer is home to the dregs, and “War Room,” about a little old lady’s “War Room” for prayer (haven’t seen it), was sure to stand out.

Where is the money going for this Sherwood Baptist Church production? Feeding the hungry, one would hope. Movie business accounting being what it is, you wonder.

“Straight Outta Compton” looks to win the weekend — again — but “War Room” is neck and neck with it, at least at this juncture.

“No Escape” with Owen Wilson, Lake Bell (LOTS of Internet searching for luscious Lady Lake) and Pierce Brosnan, is managing a respectably weak opening. Wilson is probably pinning his hopes to “Zoolander 2” at this point. Irrelevant, fading box office hero.

But Zac Efron? His Techno party picture “We Are Your Friends,” — And WHO came up with that awful title? — is bombing.On the weakest weekend of the summer, it couldn’t crack to the top 12.

News flash, Techno sucks. And the people into it sure aren’t going to see a ZAC EFRON movie about it. So.

“Jurassic World” is still making millions — $645 or so by summer’s end —  “Minions” is rolling in the cash, here and abroad, and “Mission: Impossible” is closing in on $170 million.