Movie Nation

The packed Thursday night preview in Durham NC I saw “Deadpool & Wolverine” should have been the tell.

It’s on thousands of screens, some 3D, many IMAX, and thanks to that and the fact that theaters nationwide gave it just under half of all the Thursday evening showings the “preview” record fell as the movie that will eat the second half of the summer took in about $38.5 million in afternoon and evening showings.

Friday’s take, Deadline.com says, puts this bromance in new  BO territory for its Thursday-Friday opening “day.”

So, for the weekend, maybe $185 million? Maybe $200? $200+?

It’ll clear “Captain America,” “Black Panther” and “Doctor Strange” sequels,, in any event — BIG. Considering it’s R-rated and making a lot of that money from late LATE night showings, that’s Epic.

Not quite plotless, and certainly built for fan service, “Deadpool & Wolverine” earned mixed reviews. The fans don’t care.

Everything else in theaters will be picking up crumbs.

“Twisters” pulled in a LOT of crumbs — $35.3 million, based on the $10 million this movie made Friday, despite round-the-clock “Deadpool/Wolverine” showings at every multiplex.

“Despicable Me 4” added another $14 million, will clear the $290 million mark domestically and has earned over $630 million internationally, so far.

“Inside Out 2” will managed just under $9 million, and is over $600 million DOMESTICALLY.

“Longlegs” is horror with legs, as it will clear $6, close to $7 and will hurdle past the $60 million mark all-in by Wed.

Final Sunday estimates (“actuals” come through Monday) from @BoxOfficePro.

“The Arctic Convoy” is a taut, old-fashioned World War II thriller detailing the grim realities of civilian merchant seamen sent in harm’s way to deliver supplies to the Soviet Union to ensure Nazi Germany would be fighting a two-front war it could not win.

It’s a fictional account based on the ill-fated Convoy PQ-17 saga with ships, many of them Norwegian, under escort in the deadly summer of ’42 when their escort was removed and they were ordered to “scatter” and try and make their own way, each alone, to the northern Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk.

There have been decades of versions of this sort of story for filmgoers to appreciate, most of them concentrated during and in the decade or so after the war ended. The recent “Greyhound” showed the murderous cat-and-mouse destroyer vs. U-Boats view of the Battle of the Atlantic. “Arctic” is the second Norwegian film to focus on conquered and occupied Norway’s greatest contribution to the war effort, following Netflix’s excellent three-part series “War Sailor.”

Like the sailors who endured this deadly service, the viewer knows the drill in such cinematic recreations.

“Convoy” has a grizzled skipper, Skar (Anders Baasmo) and a seasoned but jumpy new first mate, Mørk, played by Tobias Santelmann of “In Order of Disappearance.”

It doesn’t matter that the crew grouses about the Russians being Nazi allies until Hitler sent his legions in search of more “living space.” Skar is a dogged and dogmatic skipper determined to do Norway’s “part” in this fight and supply their allies. Mørk just survived a ship he captained that was sunk out from under him on this very duty — Iceland to Murmansk. He might be a gunshy.

There are frightened green “kids” aboard, a female radio operator (Heidi Ruud Ellingsen), a nervous wreck of an engineer and a tough Swede, Johan (Adam Reier Lundgren), who mans the 20mm anti-aircraft gun during air raids. He’s got his reasons.

For convoys passing north of Norway and the arctic circle, every menace facing a merchant mariner during the war came into play. Summer or not, it was cold and/or foggy, with icebergs a menace the further north you went. They were in range of German Ju-88 bombers for much of the voyage. U-boats were a near constant menace. The Germans dropped mines.

And tucked into Norwegian anchorages were the last major German warships, including the feared Tirpitz. The mere hint that the Bismarck’s sister-ship might put to sea gave the British escorting convoys the jitters.

That’s what happened with PQ-17.

“The Arctic Convoy” puts its unnamed Norske freighter through the wringer with all of those menaces, a power struggle developing between the captain and first mate, a crew ready to mutiny over a “suicide mission” and an engineer who has to drink to keep his nerves and stay at his post below when he’s sure he’ll be trapped when — not if — they sink.

The skipper? He’s resigned to his fate every time he boards.

“I consider this a coffin,” he shrugs (in Norwegian, with English subtitles). As for the crew, “I don’t know any of their names.” Makes it easier to send me to do deadly work, to keep going when a crewman falls overboard (there’s no turning back).

Netflix has this fractious, sentimental dramedy — “Awards Season” ready — which premieres in Sept.

Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo and “The LEGO Movie” and scores of other film scores, did the fine electronic-flavored score for the new series “Time Bandits.”

But while the opening credits are passable, in a sort of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” way, he should have considered the jaunty tune, “Dream Away,” that the 1981 movie “Time Bandits” rolled under the closing credits.

Sure, licensing a George Harrison song, even an obscure one, isn’t free. But a new cover of this would send viewers off on a higher note. I remember staying through the credits, trying to ID it when the original Handmade Films movie came out. And then having no luck tracking it down at the record store.

But Youtube is where all recorded music lives on.

It’s worth noting, right up top, that the many actors who turn up in “Deadpool & Wolverine” let us know — in big moments and small ones — that they’re better than this movie, this genre and this universe.

And not just the always-Oscar-eligible thunder from down under. The high-voiced chatterbox who thinks it’s all “aboot” him may be paid by the word — many of them four letters long — but he’s damned funny in the role he was born to play.

Bringing in Emma Corrin from “The Crown” as a villainess pays dividends, and classes up the joint. And Matthew Macfadyen leaves “Succession” and a lifetime of “Pride & Prejudice” and “Operation Mincemeat” period pieces to vamp up a villain who could not be funnier if he’d played the cad in culottes.

The players are fun and have fun in what a few of them, plied with enough glasses of Aviation Gin, would admit is a pretty entertaining bad movie.

Five credited screenwriters filled the soundtrack with jokes and sight gags about Disney buying Fox and “Hugh’s divorce” and whatever happened to Daredevil and Elektra and how ridiculous the concept of “multiverses” is and how hilarious it is that comic books and comic book movies are the only places they’re taken seriously.

No, Einstein didn’t sign off on them but Stephen Hawking was um, multi-curious.

Having your characters break the fourth, fifth and sixth walls commenting on a coming “third act flashback,” and the endless pauses for repeated slo-mo musical montages set to AC/DC, Madonna, et al, how “the nerds” are being fan-serviced to orgasm with this character’s revival, that “epic” meeting/confrontation and the like doesn’t let you off the hook. By anyobjective measure, this is a cut-and-paste “assembly” — not a screenplay with a coherent plot and anything like a point.

Mocking “Mad Max” and “Furiosa” is funny, and only flirts with “I.P. infringement.”

“Pegging” might not new “new” for Deadpool, “but it is for Disney.”

When the masked visage of Reynolds looks at the camera 446 times, you can hear the wink, even if you can’t see it.

I laughed and laughed at the jokes, and looked and looked at my watch long before “Marvel Jesus” turned to the camera to assure fans that “we’re almost there” — that the finale was beginning.

When you’re not really going anywhere, time stands still. And when all involved are telling you they’re all out of ideas, you should listen.

Take away the Easter Eggs and cameos and fun performances and there’s no “there” here. And they’re totally OK with it, because no matter what new Captain America trailer is slapped on before the opening credits, the idea is something along the lines of “let’s burn this bitch down and giggle at the flames.”

Four brassy broads roll up their sleeves and do the heavy lifting in “The Fabulous Four,” an old friends reunite for a Key West wedding comedy from the director of “How to Make An American Quilt.”

Their efforts are largely for naught as this turns out to be yet another underscripted comedy for players who have their AARP cards, aimed at an audience that also has theirs.

If you can’t get laughs out of Bette Midler, Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Susan Sarandon, that’s on you, Anne Marie Allison and Jenna Milly (they wrote “Golden Arm” together).

But director Moorhouse, who first gained notice as a producer on her husband’s “Muriel’s Wedding,” finds some heart and room for tunes in this story of strained friendships, bad behavior and last chance romance set in Key West, but largely shot in Georgia.

And if you don’t grin at the sight and sound of Midler, Ralph (a “Sister Act 2” veteran now seen on TV’s “Abbott Elementary) and Mullally singing Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now” while parasailing above the Hawk Channel, that’s on you.

Marilyn and Lou (Midler and Sarandon) were roomies in college and afterwards in New York City, where Kitty (Ralph) and Alice (Mullally) were their neighbors.

Decades have passed, with Lou becoming a hyper-focused and still-single surgeon, Alice a backup singer who never grew up, Kitty a widowed organic pot farmer and Marilyn a newly-widowed housewife of means.

Moving from Atlanta to Key West after her husband’s death did Marilyn more good than she’d expected. Now, she’s summoning her posse from way backwhen to her hastily-arranged wedding.

Free spirits Alice and Kitty are happy to oblige. But there’s been bad blood between Marilyn and Lou. So the other two have to trick her into making the trip by telling cat lady Lou she’s won a Hemingway polydactyl (six-toed) kitty, one of the descendents of Hemingway’s own cats from the Hemingway House, now a museum in Key West.

Once there, fences can be mended as they’ll all stay at Marilyn’s beachside mansion and the two feuders will be forced to make nice for dress-fittings, dinners and entertainment Marilyn has lined up.

The script’s logic flies out the window with all this as Lou simply ignores — or seems to — the fact that her friends lied to her and Marilyn was the offending party and isn’t apologizing for her offense. Still. Marilyn is all “Everything’s fine, now” even though she only planned for two guests, and that leaves Lou as odd-woman out in things like “three person parasailing.”

Count me among the legion of skeptics who guffawed at the idea of Kiwi cut-ups Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi — with Brit “Inbetweeners” writer Iain Morris — making a TV series based on Terry Gilliam’s post-Python classic film “Time Bandits.”

They might borrow the ingenious 1981 concept — a child drawn through time portals, accompanying mischievous thieves who use a four dimensional map of time which they stole from The Supreme Being to rob famous treasures of history, looting Napoleon, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon and evading the Supreme Being and his counterpart, Evil Genius, who want that map.

They might even mimic the Pythonesque whimsy and way with a droll line.

But we’ve already had an attempt in that direction, a “Bandits” in everything but name ripoff titled “Voyagers!” back in the ’80s, which grabbed hold of the fooling-kids-into-learning-history hook half-hidden in “Bandits'” Biblical allegory/fantasy mashup.

Even with the “Lord of the Rings” artists at WETA doing effects, the glories of New Zealand locations and the best character actors Australia and New Zealand have to offer, how could a new “version” match the chaos, the manic energy, the baroque, muddy and mud-stained Gilliam eye for the primitive periods they’d be perusing?

The answer is, of course they couldn’t.

The latest incarnation of “Doctor Jekyll” isn’t scary enough or campy/weird enough to come off.

The former is no great surprise, as the Robert Louis Stevenson novella has been filmed to death and is too overfamiliar to offer much in the way of shock and awe.

As it stars trans comic Eddie Izzard as Dr. Nina Jekyll and her dragon lady guise by night, Rachel Hyde, the latter judgement comes as a disappointment. Eddie in drag, vamping up the cerebral scientist and her more murderous nocturnal alter ego? How could that not be over-the-top?

In fairness, director Joe Stephenson finally finds something like the right tone for the bloody, pull-out-the-overacting-stops finale. But as this is a production of the venerated horror label Hammer Films, even that’s something of a less-gory-than-you’d-think letdown.

Scott Chambers, who starred in Stephenson’s acclaimed feature debut “Chicken,” is Rob, freshly out of prison but “clean” and in need of work. His brother (Jonathan Hyde, LOL) gets him an interview for a job in “care,” looking after a rich “celeb” doctor recovering from a broken leg on her estate in the country.

Uneducated, unsophisticated Rob has to get past the doctor’s uncompromsing aide, Sandra (Lindsay Duncan), who only agrees to take him on for an unpaid “trial” period, which she is sure he will fail.

Doctor Jekyll? She’s more compassionate, especially when she hears Rob’s got a sick baby daughter he will only be allowed to see if he walks the line and keeps a job during his probation.

Rob has lots of rules and routines to adhere to — medication to administer, meals to deliver, hedges to trim. Nina is forgiving of mistakes, but every now and then lets slip a hint a temper. Still, she’s lonely and interested enough in Rob’s company that she summons him for chess.

“Tonight, I’m going to introduce you to something,” she teases.

What?

“A reason for living.”

But Rob’s ex (Robyn Cara) has other plans. She’s still an addict and determined to wring cash out of “one last job.” Can she force Rob to agree and help burgle his new employer?

Stephenson tries to treat this as a character study in murderously bipolar extremes, which may have medical diagnosis credibility, but doesn’t leave room for any fun.

The pacing is funereal, with too many scenes too inert to move the narrative forward.

Izzard gives Nina a world-weariness at her plight and has the timing and posh accent to make that play when neurologist Nina is relating her family history.

“That don’t make you a bad person,” Rob “Stevenson” assures her.

“Rob, that’s exactly what it does.”

For a 90 minute film, this one takes forever to get to its point, with little of its buildup delivering suspense and nothing in the grimly entertaining finale that we don’t see coming.

Stephenson has a Beatles’ Brian Epstein bio “Midas Man” starring Izzard, Emily Watson, Eddie Marsan and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd in the can. So don’t worry about him.

As for “Jekyll,” Eddie Izzard fans who showed up for decades of stand-up tours and have followed Eddie through some decent film roles, a midlife obsession with running marathons and her evolving description of her sexuality may want to see what she can do with a role that requires evening gowns and a touch of murderous madness.

Rating: unrated, violence, drug abuse

Cast: Eddie Izzard, Scott Chambers, Lindsay Duncan, Robyn Cara, Jonathan Hyde and Simon Callow

Credits: Directed by Joe Stephenson, scripted by Daniel Kelly-Mulhern, based on the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. A Hammer Films release.

Running time: 1:29

That’s not the object of the plot of this (limited) August 16 release. It’s something our hero has to do to face down the guys who have his kids.

I mean, I think that’s what it’s about.

Freeman may be behind bars, but he’s still twinkling and grandfatherly

Hart, in particular, has been on a run of late —shyte shoveled on top of shyte, with the little man standing on top of the piles tailor-made for him.

But slap him in an antic sci-fi action comedy with two Oscar winners and a “Firefly/Serenity” vibe?

Sure, could be more of the same. And it’s “an August movie,” with all that portends. But still…fingers crossed until Aug. 9.