Movie Nation

Let’s see if there’s anything to see or make a fuss about.

Interesting way for James Cameron to spend his filmmaking capital and his last years as a major director, in any event.

As the pre show ads are playing on a blank screen, it’s not looking good.

Oscar winner Zoe Saldana, the hardest working woman in show business, is why we keep coming back.

KJ Apa does a pretty fair imitation of Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart, who took a break from the movies to pilot a bomber in the fight against Nazis in WWII.

The recognizable supporting players — Jason Alexander, Rob Riggle, Max Casella, Neal McDonaugh and Christopher McDonald — don’t exactly scream “BIG BUDGET” any more than the digital B-24s in this teaser trailer.

Not sure who will be releasing it, but I suspect it’s Angel Studios or some other distributor’s faith-based nameplate.

This hits theaters next November.

Emma Thompson and Patrick Stewart co-star in this Big Time “Babe” vibes murder mystery comedy.

Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Regina Hall, Bryan Cranston and Chris O’Dowd provides voices for the sheep.

May 8.

Realistic mid-life concerns and life reassessments earn a drab and generally colorless going over in “Blue Eyed Girl,” a dramedy with little real drama and even less comedy.

Actress Marissa Coughlan, taking that “Write something for you to star in” film actor’s maxim to heart, scripted this and stars as Jane, a struggling 40something actress in LA summoned home to Minneapolis by her aged father’s latest suicide attempt.

Going “home” to cope with Dad’s (Beau Bridges) depression and consult with her sisters (Elia Coupe, Bridey Elliott) means bumping into her high school flame (Sam Trammell). After sizing each other up — “You make a good grown-up!” — the once-smittens brush by the “hard” question left over from their “angsty youth.”

“So why aren’t we?”

“Aren’t we what?”

“Married to each other.”

There’s wistful promise in Dad’s mournful sadness and his bonding with his just-as-sad nurse (screen veteran LisaGay Hamilton). And the bickering/bonding sisters — Alex (Coupe) is an “I recommend marrying rich” trophy with a house on a private island on of of those “10,000 lakes” in Minnesota, the youngest Cici (Elliott) is a 30something Renaissance Faire “queen” with all the ambition (or lack of it) that entails — have possibilities. Especially when it comes to putting each other down.

About Jane’s limited acting success — she’s in a group of foley (human sound effects) artists who provide crowd noise for movie scenes — “At some point, don’t you have to just call it,” as in call the code on a “career” that’s never happening?

The dizzy Renaissance Faire flake? “She’s 35 going on 14.”

As the what-might-have-been romance is a bland non-starter, other story threads merited more screen time. Renaissance Faire folk are always good for a laugh, and the subculture of actors scraping by with voice-only gigs of every stripe has rarely been explored.

But most everything here is skimmed over, from the crisis (never treated as such) with their father to the second-guessing marriage to a failing writer (Freddy Rodriguez).

Dad may be depressed, but he’s still a sage when it comes to fathering

“Don’t trade in a faded portrait for true love.”

This Minneapolis movie has only the barest whiffs of the city about it. One doesn’t expect Minnesota cliches and “Don’chaknow” stereotypes, necessarily. But this picture could have been filmed and cast most anywhere, with the odd insert of a house on an island in a lake shot.

The entire enterprise is as bloodless as it is colorless.

As it was originally titled “Days When the Rains Came” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” was what beau Harrison used to call blue-eyed Jane back in the day, there must have been hope that they could afford the rights to Van Morrison’s over-used movie-friendly tune “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

That didn’t happen, and it’s just as well. It wouldn’t have helped.

Rating: 16+, adult themes, language

Cast: Marisa Coughlan, Elia Coupe, Sam Trammell, LisaGay Hamilton, Bridey Elliott, Freddy Rodriguez and Beau Bridges

Credits: Directed by J. Miles Goodloe, scripted by Marisa Coughlan. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:37

I’ve never made a secret of my ongoing affection for Bill Forsyth’s classic fish-out-of-water comedy “Local Hero,” the sort of pixiedusted picture that conjured an adoration for small town Scotland even in people who’d yet to venture there when it came out in 1983.

And there’s nothing like sitting down for a periodic renewal of my connection to “Northern Exposure” to remind me of the year (it felt longer) I spent in Kodiak, Alaska. It might be TV’s best “fish out of water” comedy, and it’s inspired movies and movie characters, plot threads and casting whims in many a film since its heyday.

But I never made the connection between the two until this latest dial-hop-stop for “Local Hero.” Historically, Russians have not been strangers to Alaska, from their efforts to colonize it to Old Cold War and New Cold War efforts to threaten it. When I lived there, Russian trawlers would drop in for a touch of unofficial “good will” shore leave, just long enough to shock the crew into how expensive Alaska’s version of America was to shop in. I toured a trawler or two that stopped in when I worked for the NPR station there, always with a a fishing trawler equivalent of the Party Hack/security officer (Zampolit) trailing me as I asked innocuous questions about what they were fishing for and how often they made U.S. port of call stops.

The 1994 “Zarya” episode of “Northern Exposure” is a straight-up knock-off of a “Local Hero” episode — a quaint coastal village gets regular visits from their favorite Russian. Cicely, Alaska wasn’t coastal, but the plot element was close enough to matter, and plainly taken from Forsyth’s film.

Forsyth could have co-created or directed episodes of the show, thanks to the matching tone and colorful eccentrics populating his corner of Scotland and Alaska’s version of “The Middle of Nowhere.”

Late period Cold War comic twists on the cliched “Red Menace” leaned on another Russian stereotype — the gregarious, big living, big loving, hard drinking and singing life of the party Tovarich. We’ll likely never see their like on film or TV again until Putin and his puppet have passed from the stage.