Movie Nation

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.

“Z for Zachariah” is a good looking film built on the simplest sci-fi premise of them all.

Last woman on Earth? Meet the last man. Okay, MEN.

Margot Robbie (TV’s “Pan Am”) is our heroine, a methodical young woman who has survived the radiation disaster on a remote mountaintop farm. She occasionally makes forays into her now-abandoned nearby town. Candy raids, mostly. She has to wear an improvised haz-mat suit to survive those.

Ann hoes her garden, checks her traps, tends her chickens and plays the organ in the chapel her family built on the farm. Her dog is her only companion.

Until the scientist shows up. Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor of “12 Years a Slave”) was in a bunker, underground. He stumbles into her oasis farm, a sickly and somewhat paranoid survivor. He’s more worldly, more educated. As he recovers, he pitches suggestions that help her run the farm and retrieve the technology of a civilization that has ended.

“Planning. Rebuilding.” She likes those ideas. They fit into her theology. Her collection of books is built around a set of Bible reading instruction books — “A is for Adam” — thus, the film’s title, “Z is for Zachariah.”

It’s when Loomis wants to strip the wood from the chapel to build a mill race (and create hydro-electricity) that she figures he’s going too far.

The film of Robert C. O’Brien’s novel promises to set us up with something profound as the man of science tries to rationalize to the woman of faith the need to start civilization over again. She could be making arguments against science, which brought on their doom, against desecrating the church.

But she’s just glad to have a man around, one who can introduce her to a little more of the world — to love, for instance, and alcohol, the one thing she never bothered scavenging from the abandoned country store.

And then the miner shows up.  Chris Pine matches Robbie, drawl-for-drawl. Caleb is obviously a better match for Ann. Loomis, being a scientist, can see that.  And “Z for Zachariah” becomes a half-hearted love-triangle tale for the End Times.

New Zealand and West Virginia provide the striking settings, and you can almost see what the cast saw in this as promising and meaty. But the script skips past deeper debates and doesn’t deliver much in the line of fireworks for the love triangle.

While “Z for Zachariah” can be embraced for taking civilization’s collapse out of the hands of zombies, it’s no “Book 0f Eli.” You’d have to go back to a Medieval plague picture, “The Last Valley,” to find a more apt ancestor. And more “apt” doesn’t add up to “better.”

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for a scene of sexuality, partial nudity, and brief strong language

Cast: Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine
Credits: Directed by Craig , script by Nissar Modi, based on the Robert C. O’Brien novel . A Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:35

People who only know Ben Kingsley for his breakout performance in the epic “Gandhi” or his recent years of playing the go-to Brit villain would be surprised by the variety in his non-Jaguar commercial resume.

There was the arm’s-length romance set against the release of aquarium-bound sea turtles, “Turtle Diary,” and the darkly romantic longing of a backwater spy of “Pascali’s Island.”

“Learning to Drive” fits in with that part of his repertoire, a mild-mannered not-quite-romantic romance about a Sikh driving instructor and the harried, depressed and distracted student, a woman going through a traumatic divorce.

Kingsley is Darwan, a dignified and somewhat stiff Sikh, a workaholic who seems to support an apartment full of Sikh men who turn out to be illegal immigrants.

By night, he’s a cabbie. And then, after a morning visit to the temple (Kingsley is meticulous and respectful in his practice of rituals), he checks into his day job — as a very patience, quite conscientious driving instructor.

Wendy (the vivacious Patricia Clarkson) meets Darwan on the worst night of her life. Her husband (Jake Weber) is leaving her, trying to escape her clutches in a cab. And she takes the fight — profane and weepy and physical — into Darwan’s taxi.

When she leaves a parcel in his car and he returns it, he leaves his card. On an impulse, with her daughter (Grace Gummer, Meryl Streep’s other daughter) living on a farm in Vermont, Wendy resolves to finally learn how to drive. But she changes her mind in the sober light of day. Darwan has to trick her into sitting behind the wheel.

He quietly and patiently gives her a step-by-step instruction. Wendy, a book critic always lost in her thoughts (GREAT trait to have, if you’re a New York City driver), absent-mindedly follows them. And then snaps to attention. Not happening, she says, after getting halfway out of the parking space.

“You have to go forward now,” Darwan prods. “I haven’t taught you to back up.”

The comedy here comes from their gentle, sentimental friendship. Wendy is struggling with the loss of a spouse of 21 years, the fact that maybe her inattention contributed to the split. Darwan has a past of his own, and he’s being nagged into an arranged marriage (to Sarita Choudhury, who first gained fame for “Mississippi Masala”).

“Learning to Drive” was written by the screenwriter of “What Lies Beneath” and directed by the comedy-impaired Isabel Coixet (“Elegy,” “My Life Without Me”). It was conceived as a project aimed at older viewers, and it works well enough — charming scenes, the odd bit of comically frank profanity or explicit sex.

But close-ups here are used as pandering to the actors, not in service of the story. Scene after scene is chopped up with unnecessary attempts at “moments” played with a single face in the frame. The editing is unusual enough to call attention to itself, never a good thing.

The characters are roughed out nicely. Wendy’s temper is always getting the better of her. The lady has quite the foul mouth.

“I think it’s time to discuss road rage.”

But Kingsley is entirely too stiff and proper in this part to suggest any heat between them, and even if that serves the script, the film cries out for more warmth. It’s a chilly piece, scattered funny situations and laugh-out-loud lines, and a good cast performing them.

“Learning to Drive” needed more culture clash, more scenes between student and teacher, more sparks — even if they’re kind of chaste.

“Love is the road to God.”

“I unfriended God a long time ago.”

A little more of that, and a little less attention to recreating Sikh rituals or Wendy’s ongoing break-up might have helped “Drive” take off.

MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content

Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley, Sarita Choudhury
Credits: Directed by Isabel Coixet, script by Sarah Kernochan. A Broad Green release.

Running time: 1:30

Hand it to Pierce Brosnan. He’s never turned in that License to Kill for an AARP card.

He shows up as a sort Bond ex Machina in “No Escape,” a genuinely harrowing thriller about an American family trapped in the middle of a Southeast Asian coup.  He’s the back-slapping barfly who is, of course, more than he seems when he bumps into the Dwyers on the flight in.

We’ve already seen the bemedaled prime minister and his staff slaughtered in the film’s opening scene. And the guy with the beard and jovial accent is, well, Pierce Brosnan. We know this “Hammond” fellow is going to come in handy when the chips are down. As they will be in about a day.

Jack (Owen Wilson) has a much-needed new job as a hydraulic engineer. Annie (Lake Bell) is his leery wife. Their four-star hotel seems like an island in the middle of something else entirely (The country is never identified as Cambodia or Laos or Thailand).

“Welcome to the Third World,” Jack crows.

“Actually, it’s the FOURTH world,” she snaps.

Then the mayhem starts. Mobs with guns and machetes, wearing those red scarves that we remember as the trademark of the Khmer Rouge, take to the streets, overwhelming the riot police and then the army. They hack up or shoot anyone in a suit, especially foreigners. Yeah, there’s something about Jack’s work that is inspiring this, but the analog the filmmakers were going for is straight-up savagery –Khmer Rouge.

There’s no cell service, no escape from the hotel. But they’ve got to get to the embassy. And the Dwyers have to do this with two somewhat traumatized pre-teen daughters.

Filmmakers John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle (“As Above, So Below,” “Quarantine”) serve up a horrific string of “Sophie’s Choice” situations, in between the breathless chases and brutal violence. Children are hurled off buildings, parents must weigh, in an instant, how their sacrifice might keep the others alive.

Because at every turn, ugly, progress-and-foreigner hating locals are butchering everyone in sight.

“No Escape” reminded  me of the British films about the Zulu Wars from the 1960s — a sea of savage brown people indiscriminately hating and hacking up whites. The way the movies got away from that Cowboys/Indians racism was to turn those few-against-many tales into zombie pictures. Nobody can reason with a zombie. Nobody cares when zombies are mowed down. It’s no surprise that the Dowdles cut their teeth in horror films.

Planting a speech where Hammond justifies the locals’ rage is only going to provoke eye-rolls. And much of what has happened before that has crossed into melodrama, with each nick-of-time delivery from death, each narrow escape.

Which kind of gives the lie to the title, doesn’t it? As visceral as the film often is — and Bell really SELLS the fright and the awful choices they’re facing — you have to guess, early on, where the sacrifice will come from and who will be delivered from the restless natives.

At least that deliverance is bit ironic, if you know your Indochinese history.

MPAA Rating:R for strong violence including a sexual assault, and for language

Cast: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan
Credits: Directed by John Erick Dowdle, script by John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle. A Weinstein Co. release.

Running time: 1:43

Paolo “The Great Beauty” Sorrentino directed “Youth,” with Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and Rachel Weisz all plopped into Italian locations in a tale of talent, art, age and beauty.

Dear Zac Efron;

We are your fans. Maybe even your friends. But we won’t be either for much longer, if you can’t escape drivel like “We Are Your Friends.”

It’s got music, so we can totally see why you’d be drawn to it. You get to be the Top Dog/Top Hunk with talent and the hot girlfriend in a group of pals living together, frolicking and stripping off their shirts, horse-playing together. Oh, and hustling girls into dance clubs in The Valley.

We get that, too. Nothing wrong with playing that homoerotic card. Again.

But this is a “Step Up” movie without the dancing, “A Star is Born” without Streisand, a musical about “rocking a party” from the mixing board, and a house techno-house music primer about “listening” and the value of organic sounds.

How did you miss the laughable irony in this script about a laptop digital musician who finds his “one track” by collecting real world sound effects on his smart phone?

Most ironic of all? Your star vehicle gives Wes Bentley — yes Wes Bentley — his best role in years playing your drunken, sell-out DJ mentor, the guy who teaches you to “listen.”

Efron plays Cole, a struggling 20something DJing (for free) at clubs in the San Fernando Valley, longing for the day he’s a Star in L.A.

His high school pals are a collection of cute “types.” There’s the tattooed short-fused joker (Jonny Weston), the drug dealing hustler (Shiloh Fernandez) and the nerdy soul of the gang, Squirrel (Alex Shaffer).

They “promote” this local club, passing out fliers and hustling up business, of which they get a cut. Only they never get a fair one. Should they fall in with the high-living mortgage scammer (Jon Bernthal) who promises them unethical riches?

Not so fast. Cole meets James Reed (Bentley, of “The Hunger Games” and scads of Z-movies). Reed’s the star, almost too jaded to enjoy the easy booze, easy drugs and easy women that come with being famous enough to coast on past glories. He has a hot assistant to come home to (Emily Ratajkowski), but not a lot of friends.

He takes an interest in “San Fernando,” his nickname for The Kid. They work on that “one track” that will launch Cole. If Cole can hold his liquor, keep his mouth shut about what he REALLY thinks of the older man and keep his hands off the man’s voluptuous, ill-used lady friend.

It’s all poolside parties and closeups of cleavage and EXTREME close-ups of bikini-clad bottoms, “put your hands in the air” moments in the synth-beat Muzak the DJ is spinning.  It’s about dreams and morality and what you’re willing to do to make it, and there’s no logic to it, from the moment the veteran DJ takes an interest in giving away his throne to a two-fisted Valley boy.

But here’s what works. Cole narrates his story, and he explains Techno, to those of us immune to its charms. It takes talent, and a technician’s expertise with synthesizing sounds. How does a DJ “rock a party?”

“You zero in on their heartbeat,” find that magic rhythm in the 128 beats-per-minute range, and they’re putty in your hands.

But “We Are Your Friends” has no heartbeat. It flatlines, early on, save for the odd droll drunken moment from Bentley or the camera’s occasional ogle of the shapely Ms. Ratajkowski. Tragedy strikes, quarrels are solved by magic and everybody spends way beyond his or her means. Because it’s a movie.

So Zac, even though you’ve sexed up your image and moved years past that “High School Musical” persona, following a chunk of your generation into Techno seems cynical and misguided. Which is why “We Are Your Friends” is the classic “August Movie,” when filmgoers all come up empty, panning for cinematic gold among the dregs of summer.

MPAA Rating:R for language throughout, drug use, sexual content and some nudity

Cast: Zac EFron,  Emily Ratajkowski, Wes Bentley, Jonny Weston,  Shiloh Fernandez, Jon Bernthal
Credits: Directed by Max Joseph, script by Max Joseph, Meaghan Oppenheimer and Richard Silverman.  A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:36

James Ransome played the unnamed deputy who survived the mayhem of “Sinister,” but lost his job over trying to save the family headed by a writer who has stumbled into a cache of supernaturally murderous home movies.

So he’s the lead in “Sinister 2,” now a nameless ex-deputy traveling the land, looking for houses where mass murders have occurred and burning them down. He’s stopping the chain of events, he thinks, that lead to those home movies.

And to his credit, Ransome never lets on that he’s in a sequel so aimless that they didn’t even care to give his character a name.

He isn’t tough and he’s certainly not fearless. The ex-deputy sees ghosts, feels the rage of an evil presence and lets us see the fear. But by golly, he’s got a mission and a purpose. He doesn’t let that stop him. Ransome gives this guy a humanity and beguiling awkwardness that are more than this quick-and-dirty knockoff deserve.

The awkwardness comes into play when he comes to a house, with a deconsecrated church out back, and the lovely Courtney (Shannyn Sossamon) is living there with her two little boys. She’s hiding out from her ex, who has his finger in every corner of this rural Indiana county. The ex-deputy stops shivering in fear at the apparitions he sees in that tumbledown church and helps her out of a child custody confrontation.

Courtney’s sensitive son (Robert Daniel Sloan) sees dead children. They talk to him, play old 78 rpm records in the basement and make him watch snuff films — families murdered by electrocution, beheaded by alligators, burned on crosses.

The ghost-kids need Dylan to watch these. Perhaps they expect him to grow up into Eli Roth.

The scares are few and far between, here. The most frightening moment — mom, grabbing the boys and fleeing a supermarket where the locals have her cornered — is a result of a messy divorce, not the intervention of the supernatural.

“Sinister 2” has so little connection to the first film (save for the home movies) that if you see enough horror movies, you will strain to recall the original. There’s no Hawke here (he’s since pulled an Oscar nomination for “Boyhood”) to job our memories, and little hint that a better movie inspired this one.

But Ransome, last seen in “Tangerine,” gives his character humor and a hint of pathos — fair value, in other words. Let’s hope that he, like Hawke, is in a position to not have to show up for “Sinister 3.”

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

Cast: James Ransome, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan
Credits: Directed by Ciarán Foy , script by Diablo Cody. A release.

Running time: 1:37

A dog dumped into the dog (movie) days of August, “Hitman: Agent 47,” arrives as the “worst reviewed movie of the summer.”

But is it the worst of the worst? Not if you’ve seen “The Curse of Downer’s Grove,” or “Amnesiac.”

A violently stylish Euro-thriller that serves up the architectural wonders of Berlin and Singapore in its exteriors, and Zachary Quinto battling Rupert Friend in its interiors, it’s like every other killer-in-a-black-suit since “Pulp Fiction.”

Only no fun, no thrills, no empathy for anybody. Yes, it’s based on a video game. Surprised?

Katia (Hannah Ware) could use a little empathy. She’s on the run, hunted by this menace (Rupert Friend of “The Young Victoria”) with a shaved head and a bar code tattooed in the crease of his neck. He is “Agent 47.”

“That’s not a name.”

“No, but it is mine.”

He’s been sent to get Katia, daughter of a famous scientist who’s gone into hiding. He has a black suit, bulky with pistols packed underneath it. He wears a black overcoat and carries a black bag loaded with black knives and guns and killing toys. He always gets his quarry.

John Smith (Quinto, of “Star Trek) shows up and offers to save Katia. He, too, wants to know where the scientist-dad is.

The movie has all of the promise a thriller with Quinto brawling, shooting and trash talking Friend can offer. Which isn’t a lot. Ware’s Katia evolves from helpless “package” to active participant, as Katia has the ability to reason out situations super-fast with a kind of genetically-engineered clairvoyance.

Director Aleksander Bach manages the obligatory car chases and shootouts with skill, if not panache. He puts Ware into a swimsuit and gets his product placement (Beretta firearms, Audi automobiles) in. Veteran character actors Thomas Kretschmann and Jurgen Prochnow have thankless bit parts.

It’s all perfectly silly, and Friend, at least, strains to put his tongue in his cheek through all the mayhem.

It often seems that “Agent 47” is more concerned with landscape, buildings, offices and subway stations than it is with characters. It’s a lost cause and we lose interest long before we’re shown the exotic architecture of Singapore.

MPAA Rating: R for sequences of strong violence, and some language. |

Cast: Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciaran Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann, Jurgen Prochnow
Credits: Directed by Aleksander Bach, script by Skip Woods and Michael Finch. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:36