Movie Nation

“The trades” both panned the Jackie Robinson bio-pic “42.” Not fans of the genre, by my read. Fine. Critics are, by definition, not the biggest sports biopic fans. Too many of us were the last kids picked for team dodgeball.

But it’s an earnest, well-mounted film with more good casting calls (Harrison Ford ACTING, wow) than weak ones. And it gets the history pretty near perfect, near as I can tell, and I’ve read up on this and just re-watched Ken Burns’ “Baseball” and “The JAckie Robinson Story.”

I liked it, and that seems to be the consensus. Not bad, no big screwups.

“Disconnect,” a sort of “Crash-lite,” is earning even better notices. Liked that one, too.

And Danny Boyle’s “Trance” opens wide, as does “The Place in the Pines.” I liked Boyle’s potboiler-hypnotism heist picture rather more than the 4 act version of a decent 3 act movie that Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Refn-Winding delivered.

The noise — limited to film buffs, admittedly — about the documentary “Room 237,” about Stanley Kubrick’s film of Steven King’s “The Shining” has gotten Warners interested in the idea of a new version of that story, a prequel.

Deadline says that Glen Mazarra of “The Walking Dead” will set aside zombies long enough to come up with a story to show how the grand hotel came to be haunted in the first place.

A coming of age dramedy set by the shore, an awkward teen (Liam James), his parents Carell and Toni Collette), the bad-good influence (Sam Rockwell) and the objectified object of desire — AnnaSophia Robb.
“The Way Way Back” is packed with character players (Allison Janney, Maya Rudolph, Rob Corddry and life lessons — a laugh or two, too. It opens July 5 in limited release.

If you want a child to be the face of the traffic in the worldwide sex slave trade, you could do worse than Persis Karen. An Indian girl with enormous, empathetic “anime eyes,” she plays Annika in the faith-based drama “Not Today,” which is about that trade — which has 27 million people in bondage, still, in 2013 — 150 years after the American Civil War.
Annika lives in Hyderabad with her father, Kiran (Walid Amini), a homeless puppetteer who promises to protect her and feed her. When she runs to him in fear that “today is the day” when he will have to sell her in order to feed her, and himself, his reassurance is unconvincing.
“Today is not that day.”
It’s an empty promise. An outcaste, he cannot even rely on hand-outs from the likes of spoiled rich kid Caden (Cody Welles) to save her.
“I will NOT take responsibility for your stupidity,” the drunken Caden shouts, in the middle of a hedonistic vacation with his “Hangover” pals. “Things are tough everywhere.”
But her face, those eyes, burn into him. After he sobers up, he resolves to do what he wouldn’t do that drunken night on the street — to help her, and her father.
The faith-based part of this drama is about Caden’s cell-phone conscience. His girlfriend Audy (Cassie Scerbo), mom (Shari Rigby) and stepdad (John Schneider) urge him on with prayers in between phone calls. Every time he hits a dead end, he calls. And they pray.
“After what I’ve seen today, prayer seems useless,” he gripes.
Writer-director Jon Van Dyke sends Caden on an odyssey through the slums of Hyderabad, through the world of human trafficking. It’s a slow-footed quest, father Kiran and concerned American Caden searching for a child-sized needle in a Subcontinent-wide haystack. Unlike the similar film on this cause, “Trade of Innocents,” this one lacks even the rudiments of a sense of cinematic urgency.
Where is the ticking clock, the parallel structure showing the fate Annika faces if they don’t beat the odds and find her?
A couple of moving, almost heartbreaking moments mixed into an hour and forty minute film, one that finishes with an overt appeal for action — the actors, out of character, pitching text numbers and websites — does not add up to a movie with the gravitas of the cause it’s pushing.
“Not Today” is a  message, and a poster child, searching for a better movie to sell both in.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material
Cast: Cody Longo, Waid Amini, John Schneider, Persis Karen
Credits: Written and directed by Jon Van Dyke. An Ocean Ave. Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:58

Steve Oedekerk rejoins his “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” star Jim Carrey for “Ricky Stanicky,” a comedy about an actor hired to play the invented lifelong friend of several guys who have used his name as an excuse to skip events, chores, etc., that they want to get out of, or that made-up friend they go and hang out with when they’re sneaking out to do something else.

“Just playin’ cards with Ricky Stanicky.”

Carrey’s leading man days seem done, and supporting work, even in broad character comedies, is where his future lies. This could break that downward spiral.

Interesting back story from The Hollywood Reporter about Disney’s efforts, with the wholehearted cooperation of Johnny Depp, to fend off criticism from his playing the Comanche Tonto in the new “Lone Ranger” movie.

He’s one of those Hollywood folk who has long identified himself as having Native American heritage. But he took that one step further by being inducted into the Comanche Nation, at least ceremonially, before the film opens July 3.

While we are a long way from the days when Mickey Rooney and Vito Scotti played offensive stereotypical Japanese characters, and even further from actors putting on blackface, I wonder how much of a fuss was ever going to be leveled at Depp as Tonto in that regard. But you never know, and Disney was going for safe over “Sorry.”