Movie Nation

It often seems to me that when it comes to “on the spectrum” characters, the movies have never managed to progress beyond the Hugh Dancy/Rose Byrne Asperger’s romance “Adam,” which came out some 15 years ago. Screenwriters take liberties, making symptoms/behavioral quirks fit the contrivances of the plot, almost always showing themselves at the most convenient moment, shoved into the background much of the rest of the time.

But there’s a line in the new Argentine romance “Goyo” that echoes one I heard and reported from an “Asperger’s Wife” (support group member) I interviewed for a story about how “accurate” “Adam” was back in 2009.

“Have you never dated a man who never seems to lie?”

That doesn’t make this tone-shifting melodrama come off. But it does go a ways in explaining “how” people fall for someone who, for instance, counts the steps of every staircase he encounters, freezes-up or over-reacts to any change in routine, who’s afraid of the subway, leery of being touched and alarmed at the loud noises of any crowd, especially soccer games.

Argentine Nicolás Furtado of “The Big Love Picture” has the title role, a facts-filled/college-educated thirtysomething tour guide at Argentina’s National Museum of Art. If you need someone to deconstruct the South American masterpiece “The Return of Malón,” he’s your guy.

He lives in luxury with his concert pianist sister, Saula (Soledad Villamil) and occasionally hangs with his older brother Matute (Pablo Rago), and his routine includes daily swimming therapy with a “special needs” group that he avoids by holding his breath on the bottom of the pool.

But from the moment he spies “her,” cursing an unwieldy umbrella, her face bathed in the rain, Goyo has a new infatuation. It turns out Eva Montero (Nancy Dupláa) is new security guard at the museum. Goyo can’t stop staring at her.

He stalks her onto the subway, where he freaks out (he never rides the subway) and she freaks out over his creepy stare. But taking romantic advice from the crude, locker-room-talking Matute, he manages an apology and gets his shot at “getting to know” her. And hopefully, as he and Matute crudely and comically make clear, that’ll lead to something else new for Goyo — sex.

Veteran writer-director Marcos Carnevale has worked a LOT in South American TV, and that informs and hobbles his script, which veers from cloying and coarse to sensitive and brittle. Like a lot of TV folks making feature films, he’s overstuffed and cluttered his melodrama, tossing in spousal abuse, mommy issues, alcoholism and the blunt fact that the college-educated docent and the “much older”(not really) middle school drop-out guard have “nothing in common.”

But when Goyo — short for Gregorio Villaneuve — tells Eva Montero of what drew him to her, the way the “light” becomes “chrome yellow…like in Vincent’s paintings” when it hits her cheeks, we’re allowed to swoon, if only for a moment.

Matute’s “MILF” cracks and Saula’s constant boozy rehearsing and Goyo’s noting that the woman he always calls by her first and last name — “Eva Montero” — “Rain Man” style, “smiled 17 times and laughed eight times” on their first date provokes more than a little teeth-grinding.

But Dupláa (“The Retirement,” “10 Palomas”) is almost able to make us buy into this “connection,” showing us common sense reluctance in a mid-divorce mother of two flattered by the attentions of a young, handsome man, “weird” or not.

And when she sees the painting of her she’s started, well, who could resist?

The roiling emotions of love or at least infatuation are heavy-handedly “captured” for Goyo’s hallucinatory reaction to possible rejection. And Furtado and his English language counterpart (you can listen to this in Spanish, or dubbed into English) play Goyo in that standard “on the spectrum” monotone of film characterizations.

So anyone expecting this depiction of Asperger’s/”on the spectrum” autism to advance the medium will be sorely disappointed. The artistic milieu and tentative attempts at making a connection shine, but too much of what’s here is just genre cliches.

Rating: TV-MA, sex talk, profanity, alcoholism

Cast: Nicolás Furtado, Nancy Dupláa, Soledad Villamil and Pablo Rago.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Marcos Carvenale. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

Jay Pharaoh and Jim Gaffigan are in the supporting cast of this Lionsgate farce about people learning exactly how many days they have left on this Earth, and making their love-life/future-life decisions based on that.

This is clumsy trailer that struggles to explain that concept and waits too long — with almost no laughs — to get to pairing up Hale with Gilchrist.

Could be cute, though, reinforcing that “live while you’re alive” ethos and all.

This one comes out Aug. 9.

That “magnificent” hulking, “talking, pratfall-taking sight gag that is Dave Bautista” didn’t get the lesson that maybe a violent action film pairing him with a little girl wasn’t the best idea after “My Spy.”

It wasn’t a box office hit, for STX and I’m damned if I can remember how I actually got to review it. Was it even released in the U.S.? Must have blown up on streaming.

But “Spy” Dave is back, with four-years-older teen Chloe Coleman, Ken Jeong and Ms. Vulgar Double Entendre Kristen Schaal for “My Spy: The Eternal City,” which MGM/Amazon picked up for streaming on Amazon Prime.

It’s a dull European travelogue that takes us to Venice, Tuscany, Austria, Florence, and Rome — sometimes only in “establishing shots” — and a thriller that climaxes in Rome with a spirited chase that puts Dave on a motorcycle hurtling through “The Eternal City.”

Little Sophie at the wheel?

“I’m taking driver’s ed soon!“

“In TWO YEARS.”

The plot — CIA spies led by Kim (Jeong) have tracked down Russian info on where 100 long-ago-lost “suitcase (nuclear) bombs” are hidden, and a bad guy (Flula Borg) takes that data from them.

Teen Sophie, years-into her “training” under “You’re not my Dad” J.J. (Bautista) gets entangled in this on a tour of Italy with her high school choir with her crush, Ryan (Billy Barrat) and nerdy Colin (Taejo K), who crushes on Sophie and thinks his dad (Jeong) is a pediatric nurse, and not the head of a counter-intel division at The Agency.

J.J.? With Chloe’s mom off with Doctors Without Borders (we assume) in Africa, he’s wrangled into chaperoning.

Can he handle the “raging hormones” and “poor impulse control” of the horny teens in his care, the head chaperone (Anna Faris) wants to know?

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” is still J.J.’s motto. Sophie? She’s trained in martial arts, knife-throwing and parkour for years. When somebody on their trip is kidnapped, she springs into action, “ready” or not.

Eddie vamps up this new take on the Robert Louis Stevenson story, with Scott Chambers, Lindsay Duncan, Robyn Cara and Jonathan Hyde (Why not?) in support.

Has anybody ever asked Eddie Izzard what he thinks of Ricky Gervais and David Chappelle? Just a thought.

August 2.

Even a casual Marx Brothers fan knows that the siblings made their best films for their first Hollywood studio, Paramount Pictures.

Already vaudeville veterans pushing past 40, they made their satiric masterpiece, “Duck Soup”(1933) and the wacky stage adaptations “The Cocoanuts” and “Animal Crackers,” their popularity building until peaking with “Horse Feathers” (1932), which was a smash and landed them on the cover of Time Magazine, all for Paramount.

The act, settling into Groucho, Chico and Harpo, gave up all that, and Paramount’s improvisation-friendly productions for bigger MGM paydays in the mid ’30s, and “A Night at the Opera,” their first film for Metro, was the only one regarded as among their best.

Even in this send-up of pretension, class, opera and the very musicals that the brothers flirted with making, one can feel the “madcap” slipping away as the banter slows and structure and sticking-to-the-script/watch-the-clock MGM “efficiency” weigh on them from the start.

But this Sam Wood musical comedy still produced the most iconic Marx Brothers sight gag, “The Stateroom Scene.” It has an ambitious dance number (not involving the brothers), romantic ballads and the trappings of MGM prestige in many a scene.

It presents Chico’s and Harpo’s musical interludes in a logical (for the Marxes) context, and showcases them beautifully, with Chico’s piano pranks performed, up-close, with an audience of children and Harpo playing a cross-eyed tour de force on the harp.

“Opera” also starts the regrettable process of moving Groucho’s greatest foil, Margaret Dumont, into the background as the love interest — singing actors Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones — and their intrigues with a nastier, more famous singer (Walter Woolf King) and New York Opera director (Sig Ruman) are far more prominent.

But it plays, with veteran screenwriters George S. Kaufman and Morrie Riskind and a circus of uncredited gag writers assisting, leaning into the Brothers’ long-polished comic personas.

The summer’s big blast of climate-changed disaster, “Twisters,” had a big Thursday afternoon and evening and a bigger Friday clearing $32 million by midnight last night.

That’s pointing to a two-studio (Universal/WB) release that will devour the weekend and let Universal claim back-to-back bragging rights, as this Glen Powell star vehicle is exceeding expectations, which had been headed over $70 million on its opening weekend.

Now, as reported by @TheNumbers, the tally is in. “Twisters” will have raked in $80 million by midnight Sunday.

As it cost a whopping $200 million, with almost all of that spent on effects, that has to come as a relief to financiers who cut corners with a younger, less acclaimed cast. There’ll be e no more of that “$50 million and it’ll be fine, $60 million it’s a hit” equivocating.

The soft PG-13 rating (it’s much closer to PG) seems like a smart play, now, as this picture is as family friendly as a Pixar project.

Powell has two topline blockbusters this year. If he’s not “The New Brad Pitt,” it’s not because the table isn’t set for him.

“Despicable Me 4” cleared nearly $24 million and will vault over the $260 million mark by next Tuesday. Not the best film in that franchise, but…

Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” is cruising to another $12.8 million, and should clear the $600 million mark before next weekend. I

The Neon horror offering “Longlegs” lost some steam, but is holding enough audience to add another $11.7 million to the coffers. Neon may have a $60 million level hit on its hands, when all is said and done (it’ll be under $40-44 million by midnight Sunday). Considering how thin the horror audience has been in 2024, that’s a feat.

And “A Quiet Place: Day One” is looking at a respectable $5-6 million, staying in the top five as its run and screen count wind down. It should finish its theatrical schedule short of $140 million in North American ticket sales.

Right now, Daisy Edgar-Jones‘ (of “Twisters”) and Anthony Ramos’ agents should be making hay and taking calls. They weren’t “box office” before, but at least one can make the claim that they are now.

The best Hallmark movie in years was snatched up by Netflix.

“Find Me Falling” is a Harry Connick Jr. star vehicle and showcases him as an aged rock star fleeing the downward spiral that comes for most rock stars after they turn 50. So his character runs off and buys a house on Cyprus.

That’s the place, it turns out, where he wrote his biggest hit — “Girl on a Beach.”

Guess who inspired the song? Guess who’s still living there? Guess how a young singer there ingratiates herself into Mr. Get-Away-from-All-That’s life?

And guess what goes on in front of that tiny house that sits on the most scenic cliff face on Cyprus?

The label “Hallmark movie” is shorthand for a screen romance that takes the most predictable turns at the most predictable moments. That’s “Find Me Falling.”

Even the subtext — that near has-been John Allmann has bought a house on a “suicide hotspot” famous all over Cyprus, that he had no idea, that he has to contend with the police chief (Tony Demetriou) and guilt when people jump, so he starts intervening — is just as cute and sweet as can be.

The “Girl on the Beach” we and he discover is now the only doctor (Agni Scott of
Bridget Jones’ Baby” and TV’s “Alexander: The Making of a God”) on that part of Cyprus.

On an island where everybody knows everybody and most are related, Dr. Sia kept her connection to the rocker secret. Among other secrets.

The flirty, sassy young taverna singer Melina (Ali Kumiko Whitney of “The Road Dance” and “Cabin Girl”) may have to get involved if these two former lovers are every going to get back together.

Of course it’s all as cloying and cute as it is predictable.

But Connick plays this rock-fish-out-of-water perfectly, giving most every scene a light air of perplexity and embarassment. Scott makes a good foil, with Whitney, Demetriou, Lea Maleni shining, and a just-colorful-enough cast of bit-players giving the rom-com that “local color” that all but guarantees a spike in Cypriot tourism.

This is Vespa country, with Cypriot variations of classic Greek cuisine, Greco-Mediterranean beaches and tavernas where traditional music is played and getting everybody to sing along with Connick and Whitney is easier than getting them not to.

“Find Me Falling” was never going to pull a muscle from trying too hard. Whitney’s “local” singer sounds Santa Monica born and bred and her lack of accent isn’t credibly explained, for instance.

But writer-director Stelana Kliris had just enough can’t-miss elements, starting with under-filmed Cypress and throwing in crooner/actor Connick, Scott, Whitney and Demetriou as the cop/tour-guide/Cypriot cuisine expert.

“Find Me Falling” never reaches beyond the low hanging fruit. But that turns out to be pretty sweet, if not quite as filling or challenging as you might hope.

Rating: TV-14, smoking, adult situations

Cast: Harry Connick Jr., Agni Scott, Tony Demetriou, Lea Maleni, Clarence Smith and Ali Kumiko Whitney

Credits: Scripted and directed by Stelana Kliris. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Fionn O’Shea plays the young Beckett, with Lisa Dwyer Hogg, Sandrine Bonnaire, Maxine Peake, Bronagh Gallagher and Caroline Boulton cast as some among the many women in his life.

Love the casting of the Irish icon Gabriel Byrne as this Nobel Prize winner in winter.

Aiden Gillen plays the other Irish literary lion, James Joyce, whom the young Beckett once sought a meeting with.

August 9, Magnolia releases this first “fall film,” “Dance First,” think later.

Carla Juri and Takashi Ueno star in this downbeat Bradley Rust romance, about a woman who travels to Tokyo to visit a friend after the death of her husband.

She finds that life goes on, experiencing different worlds within the culture. And maybe a first hint of new love pops up to complicate things.

Aug. 16, “I’ll Be Your Mirror” hits select theaters thank to Strand Releasing.

A Pope dies and the world’s cardinals gather, and “you know how rumors spread.”

About the death, the election and the candidates, one presumes?

The cast includes Sergio Castellitto, Lucian Msamati and Brian F. O’Byrne.

November, this latest film from Edward Burger, the director of the recent Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front” serves up an awards contender from Focus Features.