Movie Nation

You’re gut shot, left alone to bleed out and die in the desert.
And the only person who can save you is your teenage daughter, who suffers from agoraphobia so crippling she’s barely been out of doors in her entire life.
That’s the killer set-up for “Big Sky,” a well-cast but alternately loopy and overly-predictable thriller starring Kyra Sedgwick (“The Closer”) as the mother and Bella Thorne (“The DUFF,””Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”) is the daughter in Jorge Michel Grau’s film.
They’re on their way to a sanitarium when two hijackers/hit-men dressed as cops (Frank Grillo and Aaron Tveit) ambush them.
Hazel (Thorne) was cowering, covered up in the enclosed luggage bay of the van, only hearing the violence that errupts when her fierce mama almost gets the drop on the weak link in the bad guy chain. That would be “Pru” (Tveit), who seems as mentally off as Hazel. Others in the van are killed.
The mayhem ends, Mom is left to die, and Hazel must hold back the crazy long enough to hike out and get help, to separate those who can really help them from other loons in the desert.
Grau, working from a seemingly compartmentalized script by Evan M. Wiener, skips back and forth in time and in points of view, half-explaining why Hazel and mother Dee were on their way into the desert and why the murderous brothers were lying in wait for them.
The direction is flashier than the writing, something you might expect from a filmmaker most famous for doing a sequence from the omnibus horror film “The ABCs of Death.”
Thorne plays the difficult, fearful and over-ripe teen with ease, and Sedgwick does what she can with her few decent scenes.
But thanks in part to that very promising set-up, “Big Sky” ends up going pretty much where you expect. That’s very B-movie, and somewhat satisfying in its own way. But this thing is one rewrite away from being something we’d remember.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Bella Thorne, Kyra Sedgwick, Frank Grillo, Aaron Tveit
Credits: Directed by Jorge Michel Grau, script by Evan M. Wiener.

An eOne release.

Running time: 1:30

There’s nothing inherently wrong with treating that semi-campy 1960s TV spy series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” as a lark, and the two agents in it as the original “Ambigiously Gay Duo.”
But Guy “Sherlock Holmes” Ritchie doesn’t have the touch in this miscast, comically thin and cutesie spy caper comedy.
It’s filled with a Who’s Who of “Not Quite Made Its,” from Henry Cavill (a middling Superman) to Armie Hammer (funnier here than as The Lone Ranger). The wonderful Alicia Vikander (“Ex Machina,” “Testament of Youth”) shows no flair for comedy as “the love interest, and no credibility as a tough cookie.
And not a dime was spent on villains, leaving a gaping chasm in the middle of this slow-footed romp through ’60s spy games.
Cavill is American thief turned spy Napoleon Solo, forced to join forces with his Soviet counterpart, Ilya Kuryakin, to foil some ex-Nazis trying to get their hands on The Bomb.
First, they have to “meet cute,” though. Solo must help the daughter of a scientist (Vikander) escape from East Berlin, with Kuryakin, referred to as “a giant” by his peers, “The Red Peril” by Solo, trying to stop them.
It’s 1963, post-Missile Crisis, a time of hats and trench coats and the finest clunker cars the former Soviet bloc could muster.
Kuryakin must pose as Gaby, the girl’s, fiance, and hide his mad dog fighting skills. Or “skeels.”
“Ees not the Russian way,” he purrs, avoiding fights as the conspirators “test” him to make sure he is who he says he is — “Soviet architect.”
Solo, given a nice perfectly coiffed deadpan by Cavill, is nicknamed “Cowboy,” but has little funny to say — save for the scattered bits of sexual innuendo.
“I’ll take the top!”
“I’ll be the BOTTOM!”
Elizabeth Debicki is the female second tier mastermind for the Forces of Evil, and like Vikander, is supermodel thin and yet supposed to be tough and scary.
A torture scene comes off well, Hugh Grant is on-the-nose as the Brit who intervenes in all this Russo-American cooperation. Jared Harris (a feeble Moriarty in Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes”) is the CIA boss whose Cold Warrior ethos he sums up in a sentence.
“Inside every Kraut is an AMERICAN tryin’ to get out!”
But the laughs are too few and the tone just a tad off. Ritchie tries to cover the dead spots by filling the soundtrack with obscure ’60s Europop and a point-missing cover of Gene McDaniels’ scalding jazz protest tune, “Compared to What?” Ritchie’s narrow field of view is exacerbated by his all-British (save for Hammer, Vikander) casting.
It’s not so much bad as dull and ill-conceived. It doesn’t so much end as sputter out.
And dropped in the dead zone of August, “U.N.C.L.E” doesn’t harken a new franchise either. We say “Uncle” long before Ritchie does.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action violence, some suggestive content, and partial nudity | See all certifications

Cast: Henry Cavill, Alicia Vikander, Armie Hammer, Hugh Grant,Elizabeth Debicki
Credits: Directed by Guy Ritchie, script by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:56

The once-promising Michael Polish of the once-promising Polish Brothers (“North Fork”) directed his wife, Kate Bosworth, in “Amnesiac.” And the only memorable thing about this middling thriller is its resemblance to its betters, from “Misery” to “Before I Go to Sleep.”
The pretty but almost-always monotonous Bosworth stars as a woman caring for a man who has just come out of a coma.
That’s what we call her, “Woman.” And him (Wes Bentley)? “Man.”
There was a car accident, and judging from the car, it happened in the pre-seatbelt ’60s. A daughter (Olivia Rose Keegan) was involved. Was she killed?
The man awakens in a hospital bed in what looks like a darkened, empty ballroom. And there’s this woman standing over him. Who is she?
“I’m your wife, and I’m gonna make you all better!”
He’s got “temporary memory loss,” she tells him. Not that he remembers that. Or the memories she flings at him, “kissing me by the creek. You don’t remember?”
“I want to.”
Hey, she’s Kate Bosworth. We get it. Who wouldn’t want to remember that?
There are flickers of old home movies, and clues litter the setting and his mind. Is she who she says she is, or is this something more sinister? Hint, she keeps sedating him. Another hint, check out that studio-provided still photo. There’s little mystery to the spoiler alerts here.
The look is hazy, a film shot in the washed-out colors and gauzy light of eight millimeter filmed home movies. But “Amnesiac” takes a good 30 minutes to get past a dull, quiet and forlorn prologue to set us up for what it might deliver, but pretty much doesn’t. Bentley has morphed into a version of Jake Gyllenhaal who doesn’t elicit excitement or empathy. He works a lot in this corner of no-budget filmdom, and generally the films don’t do him any favors, or vice versa. Bosworth doesn’t have far to go in dialing down the emotions for this character, and that’s been the story of her career, for the most part. Where’s that supporting role on a cable series that she might be suited for?
Most people would give up on it if they stumbled across it on Netflix, and the payoff certainly justifies that abandonment. If you’ve read this far, you probably didn’t, and more’s the pity.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Kate Bosworth, Wes Bentley, Olivia Rose Keegan, Shashawnee Hall
Credits: Directed by Michael Polish, script by Amy Kolquist, Mike Le. An XLRator Media release.

Running time: 1:30

“Mission: Impossible, Rogue Nation” won another weekend, nipping “Fantastic Four” on its opening weekend — $29 million and change to $26 million+.

“Vacation” added theaters, and lost audience. It will not clear $50 million, all in. It’s at $37.

“The Gift” will manage $12 million for its opening weekend.

“Ricki and the Flash” did just $7 million. Sort of an indie film opening for Meryl.

“Shaun the Sheep” did a measly $4 million. Compare that to “Minions,” which just cleared $300 million, or “Inside/Out,” over $335 now.

“Pixels” is fading fast — over $50, but not likely to reach $75. A failure, not a huge flop.

“Southpaw” is at a respectable $40 million.

“Mr. Holmes” is over $12.

When it’s all counted up Sunday night — late — we will know for sure who nudged out whom in the box office race this first full weekend of August.

Shockingly, “Fantastic Four” has overcome terrible reviews and appears headed to $28 million or so, so sayeth Deadline.com.

The superior but not-all-that latest “Mission: Impossible” is holding right at half of its opening weekend audience, and should be in the $27-28 range as well.

“The Gift” is a modest hit, at $10-11 million. Jason Bateman fans rejoice.

“Ricki and the Flash” is doing rather meekly — over 50 women are showing up, and that adds up to just $7 million or so.

But that’s a lot better than “Shaun the Sheep Movie,” another blow to Aardman Animation. Stop motion sheep in a kids’ comedy where nobody talks? It’s a hoot, has wonderful reviews pushing it, and it won’t even crack the top ten. It opened Wednesday.  It’ll have maybe $5.5 million, in toto, since Wed., by Sunday night.

That’s about a single average day’s take from “Minions.” Pity.

“Vacation” is dying, “Trainwreck” is closing in on $100 million.

The weekend reviews are in. And it’s August. So even the well-reviewed pictures have their work cut out for them.

But for what it’s worth, the thriller “The Gift” collected top drawer reviews, as did the smaller narrower release “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Effusive.

Meryl Streep earns her usual plaudits for her Classic Rock Generation musical melodramedy — “Ricki and the Flash.”

“Shaun the Sheep Movie” won lots of love, on all fronts. Not much story, ZERO dialogue, very SMALL kid friendly, stop motion animation antics at their best.

But “Fantastic Four” didn’t aim for the kiddie audience this time. And the reboot, cynical and stupid and dark and dim, with no money spent on villains and just one KILLER effect (a black hole moment where trees and what not are sucked into space, you’ve seen it in the trailer) is getting killed. KILLED. Heartless, not a smart move on Miles Teller’s part. Yeah, he collected a big post-“Whiplash” check, but man. Worth it? No.

The movies preach that we should never let go of our dreams, and some of us never do, no matter what the universe tells us.
“Ricki and the Flash” celebrates such pigheadedness, and gives Meryl Streep her one and only chance to strut like a rock-star-wannabe, playing a California supermarket cashier who struts her stuff, weekends, at The Salt Wheel, a Tarzana roadhouse where her clientele is as ancient as the band.
Jonathan Demme’s pleasantly predictable family melodrama sends 60something Ricki, in delusional bangles and braids and tattoos, back to the life and family she left behind for her classic rock dreams.
Her ex, played by Kevin Kline, settling nicely into sweater-vested old age, is well off. But their daughter is going through a divorce and cracking up in the process. She needs her mother.
Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer plays her kid, and beyond the physical resemblence, the nepotism pays off in the fearless way she lets herself go. Julie is a wreck, for much of the movie — medicated, unbathed, enraged at the mother who left her.
“I can see you still put in the effort,” she growls, seeing Mom’s eye shadow and ’80s-inspired wardrobe. Mother struggles to connect, daughter struggles to not be suicidal.
And then Julie’s siblings show up — one is getting married, the other gay and not up to date on the headlines about his marriage options. Later, the second wife (Audra McDonald) makes an appearance.
Things go pretty much as you’d expect here, as Demme revisits “Rachel Getting Married,” peopling his picture with tolerance — gay characters, an interracial marriage, an emotional wedding. This is more like his version of “Elizabethtown,” a film that wears its heart on its sleeve and is far too happy letting Streep and a band of real musicians (Rick Springfield is quite good as her guitarist/lover) perform entire songs — “American Girl,” a Jenny Lewis cover, a Springsteen tune here, an Edgar Winter tribute there. Demme’s decades of concert documentaries serve him well, though he does nothing fancy with the camera or the concert staging. And do we really need to re-hear all these covers, start to finish, in Meryl’s voice? Editing would have helped.
But Streep is positively effervescent in the part, sassy and in good voice (the acoustic Jenny Lewis cover is spot-on). And for all its overly-familiar notes, “Ricki and the Flash” rarely seems out-of-tune.

MPAA Rating: PG – 13 for thematic material, brief drug content, sexuality and language

Cast: Meryl Streep, Rick Springfield, Kevin Kline, Audra McDonald
Credits: Directed by Jonathn Demme, script by Diablo Cody. A Sony Tristar release.

Running time: 1:42