Movie Nation

The faith-based romance “Old Fashioned” is a slow, preachy romantic comedy opening Valentine’s Day week opposite “Fifty Shades of Grey,” counter-programming “love” that’s kinky with love from Corinthians.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…”
But pride, or pricing is the film’s worst enemy. The writer-director, perhaps for reasons of economy (surely not vanity) cast himself as the romantic lead. And Rik Swartzwelder, competent behind the camera, is an utter stiff on screen.
Elizabeth Roberts is Amber, bubbly and upbeat, even as she and her cat run out of gas in small-town Ohio. Her hand’s in a cast, and she uses her last cash for fuel to get her ancient Jeep Cherokee off the road. There’s an upstairs apartment above Old Fashioned, an antiques store where the meticulous and quiet Clay (Swartwelder) presides.
He’s an odd one. Her heart-melting smile don’t seem to move him. He won’t do a walk-through of the apartment with her. Clay has resolved to “never be alone with any woman who’s not my wife.” While that kept Billy Graham a televangelist beyond reproach, it’s incredibly off-putting for an eligible bachelor. That’s not “Old Fashioned,” that’s…Catholic priest, Islamic fundamentalist, Orthodox Jewish, something beyond “traditional.”
Clay quotes the Bible, starts a lot of sentences about dating, love and romance with “I have a theory” and is a general stick-in-the-mud. Naturally, Amber is intrigued. “Dating,” he lectures, just teaches us how to act “witty, romantic and charming.” He doesn’t believe “dating trains us to be husband and wives.”
Amber bumps into him at the market, wears him down a bit, and then starts breaking stuff in the apartment that he’ll have to come fix.But on that first date, he drags her to his pastor and picks up copies of a Christian relationship workbook. He’s firing off questions from the book that predict compatibility — “Do you believe in the death penalty? How many sexual partners have you had in the past ten years?”
When Amber doesn’t run run run from this self-righteous bore, we cannot help but think “It’s only a movie.”
To his credit, Swartzwelder doesn’t people this world with anyone as one-dimensional as his character. There’s the ex-classmate shock jock (Tyler Hollinger) leaving town for the Big Time. Best friend David (LeJon Woods) and Lisa (Nina Hadjis) are an interracial couple “living in sin,” and have a child. People have wine with meals, and Amber can hit the local bar with her hot hot colleague (Lindsay Heath) from the florist shop where she finds a job, and not be painted as a harlot.This is a faith-based romance set in something like the real world.
Even Clay’s behavior has real world underpinnings. He’s a prime example of the Big Mistake Theory — people who do some great wrong or perceived wrong who suddenly embrace religion, and a little more firmly than the rest of us.
But Swartzwelder’s Clay lacks the charisma, charm or animation that would catch anybody’s eye. And it doesn’t help that the actor dresses and wears the haircut of a 40something charismatic preacher trying too hard to look younger and hipper — mop top combed-forward over his hairline, shirt tails out, relaxed fit jeans that are a little too long.
Roberts, Woods and Heath are good in lighter roles, and Dorothy Silver, playing outspoken Aunt Zella, has the funniest lines. She makes a big production of “Let us give thanks” before a meal. Everybody pauses, holds hands and closes their eyes. “Thanks” is all she says.
A shorter, slightly faster-paced version of this with a better lead might have worked. But that sounds like every maudlin Nicolas Sparks novel ever adapted for the screen. Who’d go to that?

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some thematic material

Cast: Elizabeth Roberts, Rik Swartzwelder, LeJon Woods , Lindsay Heath, Tyler Hollinger

Credits: Written and directed by Rik Swartzwelder. A Freestyle/Pure Flix release.

Running time: 1:55

Bing Crosby croons “White Christmas” on Armed Forced Radio in Vietnam, the same station where Adrian Cronauer bellowed “Good Morning, Vietnam,” as the Robin Williams movie reminded us.
But this wasn’t the holidays. It was a signal. It was time for American contractors, diplomatic and military personnel, and time for the South Vietnamese closely connected to America’s long involvement there, to pack a bag, meet at a pre-designated spot and flee the country.
That’s one of the marvelous details of “Last Days in Vietnam,” an Oscar nominated PBS documentary getting a limited theatrical release before it airs on TV in late April, the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Director Rory Kennedy’s film is a history lesson, but it plays as a refresher course on long occupations and American military commitments. Because every generation struggles with its own dilemma about where to commit the country and its armed forces, and where to sit back and watch what happens without us.
Kennedy (“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib”) narrows her focus to the war’s End Game, the 1973 treaty trumpeted as “peace with honor” by Richard Nixon, violated within months of Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. The talking heads in Kennedy’s film link the two events, suggesting fear of Nixon and what this “madman” might do kept the North Vietnamese out of the South. They only hint at the fatigue and expense of the war, something that made Congress reluctant to commit more treasure and effort when, in 1975, the North rolled through the South in a dash to conquer Saigon in time to honor the late revolutionary Ho Chi Minh’s birthday.
We see the scramble to get things in motion, logistically, in the face of an ambassador (Graham Martin, of N.C.) who refused to allow such “defeatist” and “alarmist” planning to go on for fear of panicking the South Vietnamese.
After the last minute, he relented, and the panic he’d expected (inevitable) happened, with the vast embassy compound swamped by South Vietnamese trying to flee, with helicopters a last resort escape as the waiting had kept Americans from moving people out by big planes and ships. The movie rightly marvels at the tens of thousands spirited out of the country, heroic efforts by assorted soldiers and intelligence officers, sailors and pilots.
We hear from Vietnamese who escaped and a few of those left behind, facing possible death (Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars had been slaughtering “collaborators” for decades). It’s good to be reminded of Vietnamese treachery and savagery.
But the Americans chosen to appear on camera come from a very narrow section of opinion from that era. To a one, they’re Republicans — from revisionist dissembler Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State, at the time, architect of the peace treaty) to GOP senators. The context is missing. It’s fine to criticize civilian leadership, but leaving out the years of military blunders and distortions (the reason the ambassador insisted on seeing the airport, under siege, himself) tilts the film toward that discredited “We could have won/arms tied behind our backs” view that prevails, in certain quarters, to this day. Only one journalist — and scores of them were eyewitnesses to the war and its last days — shows up, and Jim Laurie’s arrival, late in the film, doesn’t rectify the sense that “Last Days” is either pandering or afraid of offending.
Details are what “Last Days” manages best, disarming Vietnamese refugees by tossing their guns into the pool at the embassy, other famous photos explained anew. That image of a line of people, streaming down a rooftop, trying to climb on a chopper, was not at the embassy, but an employee’s house. Those helicopters tossed overboard from U.S. Navy vessels assisting in the airlift? South Vietnamese Army and Air Force property, pilots flying their families to safety without permission to land, their vehicles discarded to make room for more aircraft.
A careful viewer might connect that fact to the insistence of South Vietnamese military vets who complain of broken or inadequate equipment during the Army’s collapse, America’s “abandonment” of them. The American-provided helicopters seemed to work, held back by South Vietnamese officers planning their personal exit strategy.
“Last Days” is an important slice of history presented as part of the best documentary series on television. But it’s omissions mean that it’s simply not the last word on the subject.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violent war images

Cast: Stuart Herrington, Henry Kissinger, Dam Pham, Juan Valdez, Pete McCloskey, Jim Laurie, Richard Armitage

Credits: Directed by Rory Kennedy, Mark Bailey, Keven McAlester. An American Experience Films release.

Running time: 1:38

Here’s the link, one of the best documentaries of the past year was filmed by PBS (released to theaters, first) and is up for the Oscar.

Watch it for free, from their website, through Saturday.

Over $53 million — not bad for February.

“The Spongebob Movie: Sponge out of Water” is not out of cash, not by a long shot. A huge Friday points to a $53-55 million weekend for the 3D cartoon. The reviews weren’t bad, which doesn’t hurt. But parents starved for a movie to drop the kids into have lept on this one, giving Antonio Banderas his biggest hit since…”Puss in Boots.” The simmering Spaniard does well in kiddie fare. What can we say?

“American Sniper” is still making boatloads of money for Warner Brothers, another $20million plus weekend.

That’s good, because “Jupiter Ascending” isn’t — ascending. $18-20 million is not humiliating, but it points to a film that won’t earn back one fifth of what the studio has invested in it. Figure it’ll manage $35, all in. And they allegedly spent $175 making it. Back to “Bound” budgets, Wachowskis. It’s a blessing in disguise.

“Seventh Son” is part of a near year-long write-off for Universal, Home of the Flops. It won’t even hit $7 million. If nobody sees it, Julianne Moore’s Oscar is safe. I figure.

Kevin Costner’s “Black or White” is sticking around, holding enough audience for another weekend in the Top Ten. Go see it.

The striking desert around Joshua Tree National Monument inspired U-2 to title an album after it and his friends to take the body of singer Gram Parsons there to cremate him. But it’s the uninspired setting for “3 Nights in the Desert,” a wan, soapy love triangle reunion of the “Big Chill” genre.
Travis, Anna and Barry had a band in college. We meet them on an old college radio interview tape, where they speculate on where they’ll be, as a band, in ten years.
Making good music? Maybe, Anna (Amber Tamblyn) wonders. “Making good choices,” Barry (Vincent Piazza of “Jersey Boys”) suggests.
“We’ll either be famous or dead,” Travis (Wes Bentley of “Interstellar”) dramatically declares.
A decade later they meet up at the pieced-together homestead Travis (Wes Bentley) has in the desert, just to catch up, reminisce and open old wounds.
Barry had a thing for Anna. Anna and Travis were an item. Barry’s “good decisions” have made him a tax attorney, with a wife and a future settling in around him. Not that he doesn’t carry a tacky, masturbatory torch for Anna. Anna has taken her music to Europe, turned pop and become enough of a Youtube phenom to have a career.
Travis? He’s not dead. But he’s got a few scars and walks with a limp. He lives in the desert. I’ll bet there’s a story behind that.
Not much of one, it turns out.
Travis has this cave he wants the others to step into, to “learn something” of themselves. He’d love to “get the band back together.” In the worst way. Anna shrugs that off because of the way they broke up. “It was always on your terms.” And Barry sees that for what it is, “a fantasy.”
That’s easy to believe, here, because the rushed nature of this indie film means there’s not a convincing musical moment in “3 Nights in the Desert.” Nobody proves he or she can play or sing.
Tamblyn (or TV’s “Two and a Half Men”) has nothing of the singing siren about her, Bentley is entirely too well-groomed and under control to suggest the wild-eyed artist. Piazza, the most musically tested of the three, has no hint of a “Jersey Boy,” drummer or otherwise, about him.
The result is a love triangle that feels invented, theatrical and artificial and a musical history that we never, ever believe. There’s no commitment there, no idle strumming, little singing and none of the all-consuming passion for music that decades cannot dispel. In Gabriel Cowan’s film, Joshua Tree fails to work its musical magic.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexual content

Cast: Amber Tamblyn, Wes Bentley, Vincent Piazza

Credits: Directed by Gabriel Cowan, screenplay by Adam Chanzit. A Monterey Media release.

Running time: 1:22

Mark Hamill is guarded, a little hesitant to talk.
“I want to be very careful here, because I have no interest in getting back in the spotlight,” he says. “I’m enjoying my ‘elderly recluse’ years.”
He’s joking, of course. Because that’s who he is — The Joker. At 63, the once-and-always Luke Skywalker is wholly immersed in the universe that swallowed him, a fanboy’s fanboy who went from fan to “Star Wars” hero, cultural icon and in-demand animation voice-over star. He was The Joker in the animated Batman series, and is Alvin the Treacherous on “Dragons of Berk,” the “How to Train Your Dragon” TV series, and just added Gadfly Garnet from the new Disney series “Miles from Tomorrowland” to his absurdly-full plate.
On screen acting gigs? He does that, too. Of course he’s in J.J. Abrams’ new “Star Wars” trilogy, back to Luke. And then there’s his turn in “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” a comic book adaptation by Matthew Vaughn (“X-Men: First Class”) that opens Feb. 13.
“It’s just a fluke, fell in my lap,” Hamill says with a laugh. It all started with the comic, in which writer Mark Millar asked Hamill’s permission to use “Mark Hamill” in the book, “and kill me off, after eight pages! THAT appealed to my perverse sense of humor, so I said ‘Sure.'”
When the film came along, Millar wanted Hamill around, even after a rewrite of the script did away with the need for celebrity kidnap victims. The story concerns a privately run, discrete and super-secret British spy service out to foil a supervillain (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who is kidnapping and coercing the rich and famous for his planned environmental apocalypse. Hamill was cast as a Brit.”I love the sound of the human voice, the music of dialects. Professor Arnold, being a British climate scientist, has more of a mid-Atlantic accent. Not too pronounced. This character is just a plot device for Samuel L. Jackson’s meglomaniacal villain to use.”
Hamill’s decades-long total immersion in fanboydom paid off with first a comic book plug, then a paying film role. Hamill has been stunned, of late, to find that he’s in demand from “that first generation” of “Star Wars” fans — from his “Star Wars” director, J.J. Abrams, to the producer of TV’s new version of “The Flash,” where Hamill reprised a character he once played in animated form in the ’90s.
“The fans know I’m one of them, which is helpful,” he says. “They’re suspicious of civilians. But I was doing conventions LONG before ‘Star Wars.’ I remember when I was a young actor on a soap opera, Kerwin Matthews (Ray Harryhausen’s “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”) showed up to play one of the doctors and I was so thrilled that I asked him if I could take him to lunch and interview him. He let me do that, and the story got published in a fanzine called fxRH, Film Effects by Ray Harryhausen. Hey, THERE’s a real collector’s item! I later met and interviewed Ray for ‘Comic Book: The Movie,’ which I directed, this mock-documentary I did about ten years ago.”
Hamill has “always seemed comfortable in his own skin, and aware of his place in pop culture history without being pompous or aloof about it,” says Tim Clodfelter, an entertainment journalist for Media General Newspapers.Others might bristle at the idea of being typecast, turning up at conventions full of fans who adore things you did in the ’70s. Not Mark Hamill. He made it cool.
And another onslaught of attention is knocking at his door. “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” opens in December.
The fanboy in him popped out on the set of “Kingsman” when he shared a scene with Samuel L. Jackson, who gives his billionaire enviro-villain a funny lisp in the movie.
I didn’t hear him speak until he came up to me, held down in that chair, in our scene,” Hamill recalls. He’s always good, but I’ve never heard him good doing THAT voice. Haha!”
He’s put “Kingsman” co-star Michael Caine “on notice.” They had no scenes together, “but I am COMING for you!” Hamill’s been a fan of Caine’s since childhood. Hamill gushes over the younger actor, Devon Graye, who has taken over his “Trickster” character on “The Flash.” And even though “I like to think of myself as ‘semi-retired’ — then, anything I get asked to do is a bonus ” — as regards his on-camera acting, he says “I still pinch myself” at being relevant and getting to do the work he does, “right up to the time when I have to become that little old guy painting watercolors in the backyard.
“I get paid to go to work and do these things that I’ve loved, from comics to Broadway, TV to movies. I’ve never understood the concept of a second childhood, because I’m not finished with my first.”

“Jupiter Ascending” got the beat-down it so richly deserved among critics — eye candy without much of consequence, and much that is unintentionally funny. BOOM. Wachowskis? Done.

“Seventh Son” is a classic early Feb. action picture — sword and sorcery genre. A stinker unloaded at the first of the year. A classic Universal picture, too, which has a string of bombs thanks to its awful lineup over the last year or more, and its hostile relationship with the reviewing press. “The Boy Next Door,” a bad Michael Mann movie, the list rolls backward and onward and it stinks. Do the shareholders know the culture that’s producing these bad movies that big bad reviewers mock, openly? Apparently not. #universasshats.

Maybe “Pitch Perfect 2” will break the string. If not, there’s always that Steve Jobs bio pic slated for the fall.

“The Spongebob Movie” isn’t earning plaudits for its 3D “Spongebob steps into the REAL world” gimmick. “The Simpsons” did that, among others. But it’s funny enough, passing grades in most places.

Poor reviews for Nick Cage’s latest, “Outcast.” It’s no worse than “Seventh Son,” but that’s not saying anything. I wish he’d get a cable deal and re-start his career.

Middling reviews for the drama free ballet doc “”Ballet 422.”

“Love Rosie” reviews rip Lily Collins a new one, and her choice of movie roles.

Bad reviews for a Cenk Uygur doc that’s borderline hagiography. I thought it accurate and honest, but “Mad as Hell” has no contrary voices suggesting he’s a showboating opportunist.

The only question that’s worth considering in “Seventh Son” is whether this all-star B-movie is bad enough to cost Julianne Moore her “Still Alice” Oscar. And the answer to that is, “Not really.”
A sword-and-sorcery epic built around Jeff Bridges, Bridges’ curmudgeonly accent, Bridges’ “Wild Bill\R.I.P.D.” goatee and Ben Barnes, it has Moore as the villain, a witch whom Bridges’ character must kill.
Playing a witch, as Meryl Streep or Susan Sarandon will tell you, calls for “big.” Moore is the queen of small — intimate, internal. So as Mother Malkin, out to avenge herself on the “spook,” Gregory (Bridges), Moore is miscast.
That’s OK, though, because Bridges is big enough for the both of them. Gregory is a grizzled, Falstaffian knight, all tight-lipped boozy bluster and wit. He’s in need of a new apprentice, a “Seventh Son” of a seventh son. That’s where Tom (Barnes of “Prince Caspian”) comes in. He’s a pig farmer’s son, handy with a knife, carrying a magical amulet from his mother (Olivia Williams) as his protection.
The old knight is full of wisdom, which he shares. They’re entering a world “where legends and nightmares are real.” There are all sorts of spirits, monsters and witches, and Gregory knows all their names.
“Stone chuckers,” he mutters. “Cattle rippers. The names are fairly…self-evident.”
He exorcises children and vanquishes monsters — for a price.
“Flattery is fine,” he growls, “gold is FINER.”
The plot, taken from a Joseph Delaney novel, drives spook and apprentice toward a final fight with the witch queen, her allies (Djimon Hounsou among them) and their minions. Alicia Vikander of “Anna Karenina” is Alice, a temptation to Tom, and possibly a witch. She’s a looker with little screen presence.
Sergey Bodrov (“Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan”) directs and stages some splendid if repetitious fights and flights,  most of them involving digital dragons and such. This is strictly by-the-numbers movie-making, genre work that makes the most of our lowered expectations.
Still, it’s great seeing Bridges give fair value in a part befitting an aging warhorse reduced to pitching, on the Super Bowl, a “Dreaming with Jeff” album designed to put us to sleep. Gregory, gumming his zingers like a classic coot from any number of Westerns, manages to keep us awake for the 104 minutes of “Seventh Son.” Barely.
“When you deal with dark,” he says, “dark gets IN you.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense fantasy violence and action throughout, frightening images and brief strong language

Cast: Ben Barnes, Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander

Credits: Directed by Sergey Bodrov, screenplay by Charles Leavitt and Steven Knight, based on a Joseph Delaney novel. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:44

The myth of Cenk “Young Turk” Uygur gets a serious burnishing in “Mad as Hell,” a cheerfully angry and yet upbeat documentary about the creator and host of online’s “Young Turks” Youtube show. Uygur’s journey, from Turkey to America, from conservative law student to progressive firebrand, and all the stops (local TV, Sirius satellite radio, MSNBC, Current-TV) along the way are given a sympathetic airing in film. “Mad” is a showcase for the opinions and impact of a media figure whose mantra is speaking “the truth” and refusing to sell-out to corporate media and the corporate-financed politicians .
Archival footage shows Uygur’s first appearance on TV, as a back-row audience member interrupting Johnnie Cochran on Greta Van Susteren’s CNN show at the end of the O.J. Simpson trial, to his quitting his corporate law job and pursuing a TV career against absurd odds.
He’s thick-featured, dark and foreign-looking. He’s abrasive, crude and loud when he gets worked up. But over a billion viewers have watched his Youtube videos complaining about politics, politicians and “the rigged system” in America.
Andrew Napier’s camera was there for the later highlights in this journey, his dabbling with MSNBC (he claims he was too incendiary for the cable network, that they wanted him to tone down his criticism of Obama and Democrats), his longer-lived show for the now-defunct Current-TV.
He’s never toned down his act, even as he shifted from irate Republican to infuriated Democrat. He won’t shut up, “because I think I’m right and I think you need to hear it.”
Napier interviewed scores of friends and colleagues, but wastes no film on real critics of the guy. There’s no time for a counter narrative, that he is just copying Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck’s angry-man shtick and serving it to a liberal audience. Thus, we hear plenty of “He’s unbearable” or “a blowhard,” but always from smiling pals, from childhood, law school (Georgetown) or his fellow “Young Turks.” Nobody with any real authority is here to suggest that Uygur might be just an opportunist or a professional contrarian.
And any suggestion that his progressivism is making a difference seems laughable, as we see him latch onto the Occupy Wall Street movement (not start it), that his WolfPAC aimed at overturning “Citizen’s United” has gotten nowhere, or simply look at the makeup of the new Congress.
The overarching message is here is the familiar “follow your dreams, follow your passions.” We see how bad he was on TV; clumsy and rude, how awful his team’s earliest shows were –“like something out of ‘Wayne’s World.'”
So ignore the self-generated hype about “largest online news show (by video views) in the world,” and take him, and the documentary’s title, at face value. Uygur is the fuming, fulminating embodiment of the prophetic movie character Howard Beale from “Network.” He is, indeed, “Mad as Hell” and he isn’t “going to take it anymore.” But the jury’s out on exactly he’ll do about that.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Cenkl Uyguyr, Ben Mankiewicz, Connie Chung, Keith Olbermann, Jill Pike

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Napier. An Oscilloscope release.

Running time: 1:22