Movie Nation

Based on late night Thursday and all-day Friday returns, we’re looking at a  big weekend for a thriller pitched as a possible Oscar contender, and a solid opening for a no budget horror flick that works well enough.

“Gone Girl” is riding the hype machine and good reviews (metacritic) over $30 million, according to Deadline.com. Saturday will be the key. The curiosity factor — Ben Affleck’s full frontal (fleeting) — may help drive this.

“Annabelle,” a horror film with Alfre Woodard in a key supporting role (biggest name in the cast), looks to clear $20 million, and do “Conjuring” if not “Insidious” business.

“Left Behind” seems to be having a hard time keeping up. Terrible reviews aren’t helping this Rapture Remake. People prefer Kirk Cameron’s version? Maybe $5-8 million.

“The Good Lie” opens in limited release and Warners expects a healthy $2-3 million on that one.

“Gone Girl” should swipe most of the audience from “The Equalizer,” but Denzel’s crowd may have some late arrivals — a $12-14 take is expected.

I figured I’d be a bit of an outlier as far as reviews go for David Fincher’s latest. “Gone Girl” is a fairly tricky thriller in which the director of “Zodiac” and “Social Network” never really grabs because he gives away the twists too easily. A little miscasting — No, Neil Patrick Harris CANNOT pull off EVERYthing. As a comment on relationships and women, the film based on Gillian Flynn’s novel has surprises, but those are around the periphery. Not one of his very best — just pretty good. Reviews are leaning heavily into the Fincher swoon territory, but I’m not alone in seeing it as more like his “Dragon Tattoo” remake — uninspired.

“The Good Lie” also has a hint of Oscar buzz about it, but the Reese Witherspoon consideration seems grossly overstated. She’s not in the movie that much, it’s not about her, etc. etc. Good reviews for this one, too. I was OK with it, but the people who didn’t like it REALLY didn’t like it. “Dishonest” a couple of reviewers said.

After “Labor Day” And “Young Adult,” and now “Men, Women & Children,” it may be time to send Jason Reitman back to indie world. The “Up in the Air” director isn’t pulling off his ambitious, well-cast relationship dramas any more. He’s like Cameron Crowe or Lawrence Kasdan. And far too young to write off. But something isn’t working, and a return to indie film may keep him employable. Otherwise — more bombs, more bad reviews. “Men, Women” is getting worse pans than “Labor Day,” and that’s not good.

“Annabelle,” an old fashioned ghost story with “Conjuring” connections, should do some business. Most critics, like me, thought the lead was just bad enough to not recommend it. But it’ll make you jump.

“LEft Behind” isn’t going to please Christian Rapture buffs or those who ridicule them. A straight-laced thriller that never uses the “R-word,” it’s not a humiliation for Nic Cage or anybody else involved. It’s just not that interesting or gripping. Some grabber moments, here and there. Better director would have gotten something out of a movie about the Saved disappearing from the Earth in a flash. Terrible reviews for this one.

“Left Behind” is Rapture-fiction as a dull zombie movie where the living dead are non-believers. The Christian faithful have disappeared, all over the world.
That moment, 32 minutes into director Vic Armstrong’s film, is this remake’s lone grabber. A college coed (Cassi Thomson) loses her little brother in mid-hug — empty clothes, baseball hat, glasses and backpack tumble to the floor of the mall where she’s hugging him. The screaming starts and anarchy instantly sets in as nonbelievers start rifling through the purses of those taken and quickly move on to looting.
Meanwhile, coed Chloe’s airline pilot dad (Nicolas Cage) finds his alone time with that shapely stewardess (Nicky Whelan) interrupted when some of his passengers vanish. He ducks back into the cockpit and his co-pilot is gone. An empty uniform, a watch and ring are all that’s in his seat.
Buck Williams (Chad Michael Murray), an investigative reporter and passenger on the jet to London, loses his cameraman. In a ironically newsworthy coincidence, a weeping mom (Jordin Sparks) loses the daughter she was spiriting away, fleeing life with an abusive NFL player.
Buck starts questioning passengers — the angry dwarf (Martin Klebba), the Muslim everyone now suspects of something, a junkie who figures it’s a flashback.
And on the ground, frantic Chloe tries to get home through the abandoned cars and buses and dazed or demented survivors. Home is where Chloe expects to find the fundamentalist mother (Lea Thompson) whose proselytizing drove her away and her father into the arms of a willing stewardess.
“If she’s going to run off with another man,” Dad cracks to Chloe in the prologue, “why not Jesus?”
A little early mockery of the faithful is as close to “edgy” as this film, based on the Tim LaHaye-Jerry B. Jenkins novel, gets. There’s nothing pointed about it — no politics. The judgement here is more implied than overt — Muslims, philandering pilots, TV reporters and college kids aren’t getting into heaven. But there is one preacher left on duty.
But not even preacher man uses the R-word. No one in the movie says “Rapture,” or for that matter swears, and some SERIOUS swear-worthy phenomena is going down. It’s as if none of the non-believers has ever heard of “The Rapture” or puts the pieces of the puzzle together.
It’s inoffensive, unless you take umbrage at the idea that the only people who know not to steal are True Believers and all that keeps society from an instant meltdown are the Faithful.
All this bland action remake (Kirk Cameron’s first Christian films were versions of “Left Behind”) has to do is reunite father and daughter, to get that jet safely on the ground and for Captain Cage to get a refund for those U2 tickets he was planning on taking sexy stewardess to. Because everybody knows that when The Rapture comes, U2 won’t be around to fulfill their contract. “Left Behind,” bigger budget or not, manages most of those without much excitement or mystery.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some thematic elements, violence/peril and brief drug content.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Cassi Thomson, Chad Michael Murray, Jordin Sparks, Lea Thompson
Credits: Directed by Vic Armstrong, scripted by Paul Lalonde and John Patus, based on the Tim LaHaye-Jerry B. Jenkins novel. An eOne/Freestyle release.
Running time: 1:50

“Pride,” the feel-good movie of the fall, is an utterly charming British reminder that there’s nothing scarier to politicians than when seemingly incompatible electorates discover their common interests. Those who want us divided don’t want us to remember that “united we stand.”
In Thatcher’s Britain, the the war of organized labor came to a head with the 1984-85 miner’s strike. The Conservative government sought to try and lift the country out of its economic funk by closing down factories and coal mines all over the country. And if a by-product of that was to break unions and throw hundreds of thousands of Labor voters out of work, so much the better.
Miners went on strike, riots ensued.
In London, Mark (Ben Schnetzer) is a young, headstrong gay activist who realizes the cops are too busy busting miners’ heads to hassle him and his friends. He impulsively decides to show solidarity with the miners at London’s 1984 Gay Pride parade.
“It’s not been planned. It’s not been thought through. But it’s a really good idea.”
Maybe it is. Realizing that the right wing press, the Thatcher government and the police are common enemies, Gay Britain has a lot to gain by sticking up for Labor.
But it’s a hard sell. Miners are rural, conservative — subterranean rednecks. They harass and bully homosexuals. First Mark has to convince his community to accept these one-time enemies as friends. Only half a dozen or so join Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners — including flamboyant actor Jonathan (Dominic West), spunky lesbian Steph (Faye Marsay) and closeted pastry chef-in-training Joe (George MacKay). They raise money, enduring abuse from their fellow gays as they do.
Then Mark has to convince miners to accept it. This proves to be even more difficult. But then they stumble onto the idea of adopting a town, helping feed the families out of work because their men are on the picket line. That’s where the small Welsh town of Onllwyn comes in.
The fun in this comic historical drama is in the culture clash, the dated prejudices trotted out by screenwriter Stephen Beresford one more time for more enlightened, modern audiences to giggle over. No, every miner is not a gay-bashing thug, the gays must learn. And the miners have a ways to go themselves. Only a little get together and dancing to Culture Club can bridge that gap.
That comes when the gay activists pile into a bus and force the town — in the nicest way — to accept them by dealing with them as people, face-to face, people at war with the same enemy as the miners.
Paddy Considine plays Dai, the first miner to figure that gays and their disposable incomes, experience with police misconduct and history of agitating are natural allies. Considine, Bill Nighy (as the painfully shy union secretary) and Imelda Stanton, as the local no-nonsense female organizer of the logistics — feeding people — of the strike, are the heart of “Pride.” Director Matthew Warchus makes their scenes of acceptance downright inspiring.
Schnetzer is properly earnest and dogged as Mark. But we see the film through the eyes of Joe, and young MacKay is adorable as the wide-eyed innocent who finally finds his tribe and his purpose, if only he can come out to his parents.
And West, the teller of the tale in “300,” has the Guy Pearce/Terrence Stamp role in this “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert” meets “Brassed-Off.” Jonathan is the older gay man, cynical and embittered, who can only keep his flamboyant persona under wraps for so long. Of course he’s the life of the party. We just have to wait for it.
The joy of “Pride” is that it delivers so many easy laughs — little old ladies discovering leather bars, sexual appliances and the like — that when it hits you with a lump in the throat moment, and there are plenty of those, too, it’s unexpected. Even people far removed from the coal fields of Wales can take pride in just how far the world has come in the decades since this romanticized alliance in service of a lost cause.

MPAA Rating: R for language and brief sexual content
Cast: Ben Schnetzer, Imelda Stanton, George MacKay, Faye Marsay, Dominic West, Bill Nighy, Jessica Gunning
Credits: Directed by Matthew Warchus, written by Stephen Beresford. A CBS Films release.
Running time: 2:00

The Weinstein Co. has been going longer and longer stretches between breakout hits. Even a niche studio needs the occasional “King’s Speech” to boost that bottom line, and they aren’t getting them.

So their deal with Netflix to distribute what seems like a dubious sequel to their years and years ago hit “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” putting it in a few IMAX theaters (86) and streaming it on Netflix, seems natural. The box office gamble on this film is shaky, Netflix will cover that.

But the theater chains, abused constantly by Hollywood’s ever-changing business model, have revolted. No IMAX showings at AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike, for starters. That’s always all of the nation’s cinemas. Why should they give a screen to a studio trying to cut them out of the picture?

I think this says more about the fading fortunes of TWC, which joins the ranks of tiny distributors — scores of whom already distribute their films this way. Nobody sees or hears of the movies when they play in a scattered dozen or so theaters. The films show up on VOD and Netflix and if anybody finds them, it’s by accident. I see 10-15 movies a month that fall under this release pattern.

But theaters, in need of the occasional blockbuster themselves, are right to fight back. Attendance isn’t going up, prices are.

Ridley Scott recreates ancient Egypt, perhaps fudging or blundering the dates of Jewish enslavement there, and pits Christian Bale as Moses vs. Joel Edgerton as Pharoah, with Ben Kingsley as the one who recognizes “The Chosen One.” Or in this case, the “First” chosen one. “Exodus” looks pretty good, even if it covers the same ground as earlier films.

A child’s crayon rolls across a floor. Curtains fly back from a window you thought was closed. A TV-distracted seamstress looks at her late model sewing machine less and less as the camera zooms closer and closer to that naked needle whirring at her fingertips.
And the most alarming looking child’s doll this side of “Chucky” stares, with dead eyes, out of the corner of the frame as a puzzled, haunted young mother steps through a door in the background.
Sometimes, the best effects are the cheapest.
“Annabelle” is another tale of a doll possessed, a horror movie of such hoary conventions that we meet the “knowing priest” (Tony Amendola) in the first scene and we’re introduced to the helpful, occult-curious bookstore owner (Alfre Woodard) before the first act is through.
There’s nothing surprising about this late ’60s tale, including its connection to the modern ghost stories told in “The Amityville Horror” and “The Conjuring.” But what it lacks in originality it makes up with in hair-raising execution. You will scream like a teenage girl.
Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John (Ward Horton) may be the blandest Catholics late-’60s California has to offer. She’s a pregnant housewife, waiting on their first baby. He’s a young doctor and man of science.
A Manson Family-like slaughter hits the couple living next door and spills into their lives. That’s where the murderous cultist Annabelle got her hands on one of Mia’s antique dolls before she died. And that’s when stranger things than a Satanic murder cult attack start to happen.
Father Perez (Amendola) has a theory that feeds Mia’s growing suspicions about a doll so alarmingly grotesque it could only exist in a horror movie.
“Evil is constant. You cannot destroy what was never created.”
And Evelyn (Woodard), an Earthy widow who lost her child years before, is laughably matter-of-fact about the vintage books she sells.
“I think my family’s being haunted by a ghost.”
“Aisle four!”
Wallis (TV’s “The Tudors”), thanks to good luck, or bad, shares the name of the title character, which isn’t really the doll but the evil cultist who inhabits it. But Wallis gives a performance so flat, low-heat and soft-voiced that you wonder what the director was telling her. Surely the sound crew was shouting “She needs to SPEAK up.” If the meek are going to inherit the Earth, Wallis and Mia will surely be landed gentry.
Her underplaying almost works as a counterpoint to the rising terror of cinematographer-turned-director John R. Leonotti’s vintage effects — baby carriages that roll on their own, noises in the attic, dudes dressed like Satan. We’re lulled to sleep by the acting, jolted when something we’ve seen a million times happens.
“Annabelle” delivers nothing new, delivers a mild surprise in the closing credits which sharp-eyed “Conjuring” fans will have already picked up on. The performances don’t ensure empathy, though the young mom nature of the heroine does.
But like “Insidious” and “The Conjuring,” the only goal here is to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. And “Annabelle” does, more than once, before that dolly is done.

MPAA Rating: Rated R for intense sequences of disturbing violence and terror
Cast: Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Alfre Woodard, Tony Amendola
Credits: Directed by John R. Leonetti, written by Gary Dauberman . A New Line/Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:38

“Gone Girl” is David “Zodiac” Fincher’s seriously twisted, twisty-turny adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel about a husband accused of killing his wife, first by the outrage engine known as cable news, and then by the cops.
But that’s only ostensibly what it’s about. As Nick Dunn’s famous criminal attorney (Tyler Perry) counsels him, “This case is about what people think of you.” Casting Missi Pyle as a shrill, rush-to-judgment shrew in the Nancy Grace mold kind of underlines that Big Message.
But this absurdly long, occasionally miscast mystery thriller lacks much mystery. Its big reveal comes at the halfway mark. The further twists and competing narratives about what might have really happened unravel rather than unfold. And that Big Message masks something decidedly more cynical.
Entertaining enough. But one of Fincher’s finest? Not by a Missouri mile.
Ben Affleck plays Dunn, a guy who drops into his small town Missouri bar, has a flirty chat with the cute barmaid (Carrie Coon) and comes home to discover his rich, beautiful wife is missing. Nick is confused, concerned. Scared witless? Desperate? Not in the least. The rumpled detective on his case (Kim Dickens) picks up on this. So do we.
There are blood stains. There was an affair. As the missing wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) narrates, theirs was a marriage in trouble. Amy, reading from her diary, says “I feel like I’m something to be jettisoned, if necessary.”
But all is not what it seems. Nick’s barmaid pal turns out to be his twin sister. He tries to act guileless, is slow to hire an attorney. The couple treated each anniversary as a puzzle, a treasure hunt with clues. Amy left those “Clue” couplets, in envelopes all around their world, and Nick is frantic to recover them before the cops do. Why?
His in-laws (Lisa Banes, David Clennon), quick to mobilize search parties and media coverage for the girl they named “Amazing Amy” in a series of kid-lit best sellers, wonder about his behavior. He’s just not distraught enough.
And in flashbacks, we see the flirtation that led to a relationship, the adorable date at the bakery taking its sugar delivery (clouds of sugary powder fill the night air around them), the male wish fulfillment fantasy sex they have in bookstores and the like. But hints of trouble are there, and those might explain Nick’s disconnect from the kidnapping.
Pike, unutterably gorgeous, is just brittle enough in the flashbacks to make us fuzzy on what may have led to whatever has befallen her. Affleck looks…guilty. Which is all that’s required.
Neil Patrick Harris is miscast as a cliched rich beau from long ago, Perry plays a version of a lawyer who might appear in one of his own films — a perfectly-coiffed, sing-my-own-praises showboat.
“Elvis is IN Missouri,” he announces, a celebrity lawyer taking a case that’s become a national sensation.
The actors don’t sell the rift that pulled at this couple, and in giving up his revelations so willingly, Fincher suggests he’s making a commentary on modern relationships and marriage. By the time he pulls out all the stops for the never-ending finale, he’s flirting with misogyny.
It’s good, but we’ve come to expect more from the guy who gave us “Fight Club” and “The Social Network.” This is more on a par with “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” The calculated shocks feel like a movie we’ve seen before, though at least in this case, that’s not true.

MPAA Rating: R for a scene of bloody violence, some strong sexual content/nudity, and language
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry
Credits: Directed by David Fincher written by Gillian Flynn, based on her novel. A 20th Century Fox release.
Running time: 2:29

The saga of Sudan’s “Lost Boys,” refugees who wound up in America after fleeing the civil war there, earns an engaging, tear-jerking retelling in “The Good Lie,” a fictionalized account of what faced them.
Sudanese children, often orphaned, fled the country in the ’80s and spent much of the ’90s in refugee camps in neighboring countries. About 3,600 of them were allowed to emigrate to America pre-9/11. “Good Lie” follows a handful of them, from the brutal assault on their village to their thousand-mile trek to safety.
But “safety” is just the first long leg of their journey. Safety means, in the case of Mamere, Jeremiah, Paul and their sister Abital, merely escape from the free fire zone, where Islamic rebels burn, shoot or kidnap anything in sight. These children have seen death, buried friends and comrades and crossed rivers and deserts just to grow up in a Kenyan refugee camp.
They are young adults — played by Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany, Emmanuel Jal and Kuoth Wiel — by the time the United States agrees to take them in.
Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar”), working from a script by Margaret Nagle (“Warm Springs”) then finds the lighter side of this tragic tale of survival. And he does it with such a deft touch that the weight of that long prologue never leaves the movie — even after that pixie Reese Witherspoon shows up.
She plays Callie, a Kansas City employment counselor, entirely too provincial to know what she’s getting into when she picks up the three boys (Abital, their sister, has been sent to Boston) at the airport. Their preparations for America consisted mainly of being handed a piece of ice to show how much colder it is in the Midwest than it is in Africa.
“The Good Lie” — the titles come from Huckleberry Finn’s lesson in lies that serve a moral purpose — shifts from survival epic to fish-out-of-water comedy as “Stone Age” Sudanese villagers are exposed to electricity, telephones, modern appliances and American humor for the first time. Cute.
They’ve all learned their English from the Bible, and Mamere (Oceng) expresses himself in the most delightfully dated and genteel way.
“You make our hearts throb with your many kindnesses…May you find a husband to fill your empty house.”
Witherspoon plays the straight man to these “lost” lads. But this formulaic feel-good film succeeds or fails on their performances, and the guys are winners. Oceng makes the responsible, guilt-ridden Mamere charming, Jal brings a bitter confusion to Paul, who gets more “lost” as he starts to hang out with the stoners at the factory where he finds a job. And Ger Duany has a lanky soulfulness as Jeremiah, the moral center of their group, a would-be preacher who narrates the story even as he serves as a tall, thin sight gag.
Witherspoon’s appearance got the movie made and there was early talk of a “Blind Side” sort of Oscar nomination for it. But Callie’s earthy, working class common sense is more the icing on this cake than a central part of it. It’s a performance by a performer with the grace to know it’s not about her, and she surrenders the spotlight.
“Good Lie” rambles a bit and telegraphs its ending. But its earnestness in reminding us of this story and just what America represents to the world’s rising tide of refugees, and why, makes it a winner, a valuable history lesson wrapped in a feel-good bow.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence, brief strong language and drug use
Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Arnold Oceng, Kuoth Wiel, Ger Duany, Emmanuel Jal, Corey Stoll
Credits: Directed by Philippe Falardeau , written by Margaret Nagle. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:50

Here’s the sort of scruffy action comedy that suits the post-box office-draw careers of one-time hipster John Cusack and fading action star Thomas Jane. It covers the costs of a fun few weeks of working vacation in Australia and provides a few on-screen laughs along the way.
The pairing of these two is kind of a lark. Make Cusack some sort of hitman/crook, a variation on his “Grosse Pointe Blank” hitman, and Jane a semi-retired and over-extended race car driver abducted to be the crook’s getaway car driver.
All that can come from that is “Drive Hard.”
Jane is Peter Roberts, married to an Aussie attorney, father of a smart-mouthed tween. No, we’ve never seen “The Punisher” like this. He can’t get sponsorship to drive Down Under, so he runs a driving school. That’s where Keller (Cusack) finds him.
The American never takes off his gloves, black baseball cap or shades and only slowly lets on that, aside from sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road, he doesn’t need lessons. As they hurtle up and down Australia’s Gold Coast, the banter comes fast and furious. Especially when Keller gets Roberts to wait for him outside a bank, which gloved man promptly robs. It’s handy to have a race car driver when you’re in a tiny driving school econo-box trying to outrun the cops.
“You see why I hired you?”
“You DIDN’T hire me, you KIDNAPPED me!”
“SeMANtics.”
Cusack is an old hand at this sort of fast, flippant repartee. So Jane is the real surprise. They need to swap cars, so they dash into a vineyard hotel where a wedding’s supposed to take place.
“Turn yourself in,” Roberts hisses, so loudly the elderly clerk can hear him.
“We WILL…turn in, once it’s BEDTIME…sweetheart,” Cusack purrs, raising the old lady’s eyebrow at how gay couples argue.
Before they’re done, they will brawl with that foul-mouthed old biddy (Carol Burns) and try to evade the police and the mobsters whom Keller has crossed as Roberts’ wife (Yesse Spence) yanks their kid out of school and breaks the news about dad to the media-savvy child.
“Is Daddy dead?”
No no he’s not dead.
“Terrorist?”
Rebecca, no. Your father’s no terrorist.
“Daddy’s robbed a baaaaa-aank, Daddy’s robbed a baa-ank.”
The “Hard” driving isn’t very impressive, despite being a film from the land of “The Road Warrior.” It never rises above the simple formula that got it made. But a couple of dozen random laughs suggest that if “Drive Hard” is these two leading men’s lot in life, they could do a lot worse.
MPAA Rating: unrated, with gun violence and some profanity
Cast: John Cusack, Thomas Jane
Credits: Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, written by Brigitte Jean Allen, Chad Law, Evan Law. An RLJ Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:32