Movie Nation

The fourth “Despicable Me” movie — remember there have been two “Minions” spin-offs to this franchise as well — proves that Universal’s biggest animated franchise is a long way from running out of gas.

A $27 million opening day (Wed) and big Thursday rolling into an epic “Despicable Me 4”
Friday-Sunday seems to be adding up to a $120 million five-day “opening weekend” for the only movie “Despicable” enough to knock Pixar’s billion dollar baby, “Inside Out 2,” from the top of the box office.

@TheNumbers is reporting that “”Despicable” will end up earning $75 million over the three days of the actual weekend.

“Inside Out 2” has crossed the $500 million mark in North America and cleared some $154 million on its opening weekend, which wasn’t five days long. Just to give Gru & Crew a little perspective. “Inside Out 2” will finish second over these five days with a $45-50 million take. The three day weekend total will be $30 million. As of Sunday, it will have been in theaters 19 days. Those are “Barbie” numbers, kids.

“A Quiet Place: Day One” will tally another $31 million and change over the July 4 5-day weekend. Yes, we’re getting more movies in that franchise. And yes, it made $21 million Friday to Sunday.

Ti West’s latest Mia Goth horror gorefest “MaXXXine” is opening OK…ish. $8 million hasn’t been great horror opening 3-day weekend take for decades, but the disappearance of the horror audience has been a pronounced feature of the box office this year.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” will do another $8 million. I’ll bet Netflix is wishing it had rolled out its “Beverly Hills Cop” sequel “Axel F” into theaters for two weeks, because audiences are flocking to comfort food franchises this summer. “Bad Boys” will probably fall just short of $200 million at the box office by the time it loses most of its screens.

Kevin Coster’s Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga, Part 1” will add another $6 million (3 daty weekend) in counter-programming cash, which tells us it won’t break even/earn back its $50 million (rumored) budget before heading to streaming.

“Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” proves that the evangelical “faith-based film” audience isn’t all that keen’ on feel good stories about a Black church doing good deeds — $3.5 million over three days.

“Kalki 2898 AD” is in the top ten for its second and last time, managing another $2 million.

“The Bikeriders” enjoys one last weekend before disappearing ($1.35 million, it’ll finish its run at about $25).

And “Kinds of Kindness” is opening wider and still only managing $863k or so.

Everybody on camera looks delighted to be here in the first “Beverly Hills Cop” movie in a dozen years, the first “classic cast” sequel since 1994.

And that’s a lot different from the “relieved to be here” financially-strapped folks who trotted out for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” or a few other hoary old sequels we could name.

Eddie Murphy’s engaged, with series regulars Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Bronson Pinchot and Paul Reiser showing a lot more miles than Eddie as Axel.

Newcomers Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt give fair value, and Kevin Bacon as the heavy? Money well spent.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” isn’t all that as a movie, with a laugh-starved script full of fan service nostalgia, recycled-to-death plot points and limp versions of all the banter and one-liners Murphy & Co. used to tickle us with.

” I know there’s some things we need to talk about,” Eddie as Axel says to estranged daughter Jane (Paige of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Zola” and “White Boy Rick”) not once, but SEVERAL times, none of them touching, amusing or anything but screenplay filler.

It’s like an AI script doctor take on a “Beverly Hills Cop” movie, all tropes and cliches, with some characters past retirement age and Murphy’s Axel trapped in that orginal 1980s wardrobe and original goofy irreverence for Beverly Hills affluence and “the rules” of police work.

But the car and snowplow chases, the shoot-outs and a helicopter get-away that will make you go “Did they actually DO that without models and CGI?” show that Netflix spent theatrical release money on this bad boy.

And since most everybody in this, young (Paige and Gordon-Levitt) and old is almost criminally underemployed, let’s settle in for the old riffs, the old tunes (Pointer Sisters to Seger to Harold Faltermeyer’s synthesizer signature song) and the old gang out for one more ride.

Axel’s managed to remain a detective in Detroit, with his old colleague Jeffrey (Reiser) now the retiring chief weary from decades of covering his ass. A call from his former cop pal Billy in Beverly Hills (Reinhold) alerts him that Axel’s high-powered attorney daughter is under threat from cartel killers and a narco-cop commander (Bacon) out to silence her.

Axel’s been in a rut, stuck in that damned Detroit Lions jacket and driving a Chevy Nova, for Pete’s Sake. Something has to bring him back to relevance.

Axel jets out, can’t find Billy and can’t get his daughter (Paige) to take his calls. But something’s up, so he might as well do a few funny voices — a Jamaican accent among them — bluff assorted bad guys, kingpins (Luis Guzman SINGS!) and maitre d’s and do his whole “bull in a Detroit Lions jacket in a china shop” shtick until he gets some answers.

“They LOVE me in Beverly Hills!”

At least in Beverly Hills they have an ’80s beater Ford Bronco for him to rent. Very OJ.

“Shtick” is the main component of this “everything old is new again” variation on the formula.Those still affectionate for the ’80s-90s films, their casts and the roles they play will get a little chuckle out all these friendly and much-older (save for Murphy) faces.

Cameos almost produce a laugh, here and there.

But the well-preserved Murphy has lost his fastball and the picture feels winded when at their best, the earlier films were breathless — fast-talking with brisk action, when they delivered it.

Axel F is slow-footed, and you can say the same about the movie that catches up with him after all these years. A warm grin of recognition here and there and memories of better banter, quicker pacing and a real fish-out-of-water feel from the earlier films is about the best one can hope to get out of this “Cop.”

Rating: R, gun violence, drug abuse, lots of profanity

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Taylour Paige, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Luis Guzman, Bronson Pinchot, Affion Crockett, Christopher McDonald, Paul Reiser and Kevin Bacon

Credits: Directed by Mark Molloy, scripted by Will Beall, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, based on the Danilo Bloch/Daniel Petrie Jr. characters. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

Don’t let the multiple anti-climaxes that parade across the screen in the finale of “Escape,” a new thriller from actor turned director Lee Jong-pil (“Born to Sing,” “Samjin Company English Class”) throw you off.

Up to then, it’s a crackling getaway picture about a Korean soldier’s ever-evolving effort to defect from the North to the South, a straight-up defector genre thriller complete with sadistic cat-and-mouse games, games given added edge thanks to the strong homoerotic overtones between our cat and mouse and others.

Sgt. Lim (Lee Je-hoon, just seen in “Noryang: Deadly Sea“) is an NCO with a North Korean DMZ patrol unit, a short-timer about to muster out of the army. But he’s not just demobbing when his service is up. He’s planning on jumping across the border and escaping “Supreme Leader” and his “People’s Republic.”

We meet Lim as he slips out of the barracks in the middle of the night, using his compass, map, watch and knives to work his way through the minefields that separate the two halves of the Korean peninsula. The watch is key, as he has been dry-running this getaway for a while, edging a trail through that no man’s land, marking mines and other obstacles as he does every night he makes these forays.

A treasured childhood book he keeps with him gives away his game. Sgt. Lim read Roald Amundsen: Tenacious Explorer” and took the Norwegian polar pioneer’s lessons to heart. Amundsen was famously methodical.

“Escape” is about everything that doesn’t go according to plan as Sgt. Lim’s last day in the service approaches. First, there’s a storm coming, one which might both obscure his dash, and wash out every carefully placed marker through the minefields. Then his subordinate Kim Dyong-huk (Hong Xa-bin) spills that he’s been watching him sneaking out and knows what he’s up to.

“If you wag your tongue, I’ll cut your head off” is a pointless warning. Private Kim wants out, too. “Take me with you! (in Korean, with subtitles).”

The cautious and methodical sergeant’s plan goes to crap when the kid jumpts the gun and flees on his own. Only Sgt. Lim knows what path he took as the rest of their unit scrambles about as “Deserter Alert!” claxons and PA announcements blare.

Sgt. Lim is captured with Kim, both are tortured, and only the intervention of Comrade Field Officer, Major Lee Hyong-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) can save Sgt. Lim and get him treated like a “hero,” feted and offered promotion.

The sgt. and the urbane, sadistic and mercurial piano-playing major have history. Lim suspects, as do we, that the major knows what was really going on and is offering him a life-saving lifeline. Not that Lim wants it.

“You know how to accept your fate.”

Major Lee tempts Kim with honors at an officer’s fete, that promotion and “stay in the army” suggestion, which doesn’t sound like a suggestion. But Lim has “decided on my own future.” And no promotion, veiled threat or bleak warning about what might await him in the South will dissuade him.

He must improvise his way out of this lifeline, bluff Kim out of his death-row cell because Kim didn’t squeal on him, and trick, scheme, lie and fight his way out of the security services’ grasp and across the border using the map that’s now “evidence” that the state is holding over Kim.

Director Lee and his screenwriters depict a nearly featureless North Korea, where paranoia is ordered by edit and everybody rats on everybody else. Or else.

The hypocrisy of the State is underscored by the officer class binge-drinking and dancing to Strauss waltzes, with the venomous Major Lee famous for his piano mastery, his cunning and his savagery. His “decadence” is wholly confirmed when we see his distress at meeting not just Lim, who knows his history, but another old flame of the same-sex.

As for Lim, sometimes all it takes to bluff your way past white uniformed security police is a good pair of Aviators, or affecting the right shade of rudeness to a man of not-quite-inferior rank.

The movie strays a bit from the central storyline to introduce details that illuminate our understanding of the state of the DMZ, and to suggest there are armed dissidents in the North, “nomads” who hae lost their home, their means of living or one relative too many to the Security State aparratus.

And the ending, as I suggested at the outset, is clumsily drawn-out in ways that blunt the narrative’s impact.

But the leads are compelling, the action furious and the suspense right on the edge of riveting, which is more than enough to make this “Escape” an odyssey we want to take with these people who want to decaide their own future, rather than having a failing totalitarian state do it for them.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Lee Je-hoon, Koo Kyo-hwan and Hong Xa-bin.

Credits: Directed by Lee Jong-pil, scripted by Kwon Seong-hwi and
Kim Woo-geun. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:34

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, deciphering one’s scribbled notes in the dark taken while watching a film.

But the words “DO NOT WANT” cover a page in the middle of what I noted about the new film from Yorgos Lanthimos. A critical darling since “Dogtooth,” “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” he reverts to his pre-“The Favorite/Poor Things” form for his latest.

“Kinds of Kindness” is an obscurant, indulgent wank — two hours and forty-five minutes of cryptic cruelty, messianic fervor, cannibalism and perhaps a metaphoric peek at the futility of faith, the limits of dogma and the eagerness of the indoctrinated to be exploited.

Or not.

Emma Stone collected her second Oscar for her “fearless” and “courageous” — aka “sexually out there” turn in “Poor Things.” But perhaps this, her third turn for Lanthimos, will make her question that.

Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Mamadou Athie join her for three Lanthimos stories/vignettes (co-written with Efthimis Filippou) that dabble in belief, surrendering control of your life to others and the limits of what ordinary people will do, tolerate and fear from those pulling their strings.

In “The Death of R.M.F.,” Plemons plays Robert Fletcher, a caricature of a businessman whose entire life is run by his smiling, smothering boss (Dafoe), Raymond. Raymond helped scheme Robert into a marriage, and then ordered him not to have children with Sarah (Hong Chau).

Raymond limits Robert’s wardrobe, directs his weight — “Skinny men are the most ridiculous thing there ever is!” — and caters to his every need, “correcting” those needs at will.

“I didn’t pour you a vodka. I think a whisky is better here.”

Robert’s end of the bargain includes driving his Ford Bronco into a stranger’s blue BMW, at Raymond’s order. When Robert only hospitalizes that perhaps hapless stranger (Yorgos Stefanakos), he refuses to repeat the “accident” to greater effect. Raymond often re-directs Robert, making him repeat their “scenes” to a performance more to his liking, sometimes in front of his slinky, barefoot moll (Margaret Qualley).

This refusal to repeat that accident creates a rift that utterly derails Robert’s life. Perhaps a pretty, short-skirted stranger (Stone) can save him.

It’s not like the “R.M.F.” of the story’s title is “Robert M. Fletcher.” No, R.M.F. is the stranger Robert is meant to kill.

“R.M.F. is Flying” has Plemons playing an increasingly off-center cop whose marine biologist wife (Stone) disappeared in a research vessel shipwreck. His partner (Mamadou Athie) is concerned, and he and his wife (Qualley) try to comfort Daniel the cop by coming over to dinner and watching old home videos.

The videos are of the couples’ group sex activities.

When the missing “wife” Liz returns, Daniel starts to wonder if she is an imposter.

And in “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) are a team on the hunt for a woman, a surviving twin, who has the ability to bring the dead back to life. They select and “test” assorted women on behalf of their rich cult leader (Dafoe) and his minions.

Emily has a husband (Alwyn) and daughter she’s abandoned, but whose house she sometimes secretly visits, sprinkling her daughter’s bed in some sort of holy water, perhaps in the hopes of making her special, or insulating her from the cult her estranged mom is all-in on.

The stories overlap and tie-in together enough to make you wonder if there’s meaning to the meandering madness.  Perhaps not.

Some of the bit players cast as medical or police professionals and others are amateurs, not actors. No, you won’t have trouble spotting who they are. The inane dialogue that fills the script doesn’t just let down the pros and the Oscar winner. It exposes non actor’s colorless line readings.

“R.M.F.” doesn’t have any meaning, Lanthimos has admitted in interviews. Greater New Orleans is the setting, but isn’t named. Cannibalism is hinted at and ritualistic suicide underscores one story the way “swinging” does another.

The clever bits in the trailer — Stone recklessly driving a Hellcat Dodge Challenger and dancing with athletic abandon — don’t denote anything and thus provide none of their promised “off the wall” entertainment value.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about “Kinds of Kindness,” whose title is a lie, is in reading reviews of folks turning themselves into pretzels to find something to embrace about it. Lanthimos may very well be the person laughing the loudest at this.

As for me, I think “DO NOT WANT” pretty much covers it.

Rating: R, gruesome violence, explicit sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie.

Credits: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, scripted by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 2:44

A staple of community theater holiday seasons for decades comes to the big screen.

I reviewed this in my theater critic days and always wondered, as middling as it is, why it was never picked up for the big screen.

This film, with production ties to the Biblical series “The Chosen,” will lean into the faith based side of the story and rolls into cinemas Nov. 8.

Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Lesley Manville and Romola Garai and Ben Hodges also star in this Brit thriller about a venomous critic “outed” and out for revenge.

This looks wicked fierce, and delicious.

Simu Liu is a heavy, with Sean William Scott and Machine Gun Kelly, now going by MgK (Whatever bottle blond Colson Baker) also star.

August 15 this MGM release pops up on Amazon Prime Video

The collective star power and screen charisma of Nicole Kidman, Kathy Bates, Zac Efron and Joey King can’t pull the dull, unromantic and utterly predictible romanntic comedy “A Family Affair” out of the doldrums.

Scripted and directed by the usually reliable Oscar nominee Richard LaGravenese (“Behind the Candelabra,” “The Fisher King,” “Freedom Writers”), it pairs up Kidman as the mother of a Hollywood movie star’s assistant (King) with her daughter’s comically erratic, womanizer boss (Efron). And while King’s committed comical fireworks in reaction to this messiness lands a few exasperated laughs, the limited romantic chemistry of the leads and general humorlessness overwhelm the thin plot and everything else going on.

King is Zara, 24 and sentenced to do everything from script consulting to laundry, latte and kiss-this-latest-girlfriend-off gift work for Chris Cole (Efron), star of the Icarus Rush franchise, whose latest superheroics — “Icarus Rush 3” — are based on a script nobody likes, which scares him to death.

He’s a bit of a bully who promised her a path to “producer” duties and credits, but when we meet her, she’s stuck in traffic trying to deliver the diamond earrings he uses to break up with a woman as a prologue to him berating her for not getting there fast enough.

“I want a water and a LETTER of apology!”

That’s his thing. That, and telling her again and again that she’s fired, almost fired or about to get fired.

Efron has a little more luck finding a grin in the whole “I’m a movie star” shtick than he does in the bullying boss business. And it’s cute that LaGravenese named him “Chris,” like Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans and Chris Pine.

Yes, he turned down an Oscar winning role as as blind alcoholic — “My eyes are too pretty to not be on camera.” And he has a lot of overhead to fret over — private jet, security, staff, etc.

Zara’s mom is a wealthy magazine essayist and fiction writer and a widow with a seaside Malibu villa, Audi EV and writer’s block. Her mother in law/editor (Bates) is pleased that she might be finally coming out of that, if not out of her mourning for her long-dead husband.

Zara’s “I quit/You’re fired” hissy over the childish Chris Cole’s latest unreasonable demands sets up a visit by Chris to their house, where he meets her perfectly-preserved mother and takes a tumble for her.

Zara is anxious to get her aspiring playwright pal Stella (Sherry Cola from “Joy Ride”) the rewrite assignment for “Icarus Rush 3,” which will open the door for Stella’s indie “coming of queer” coming of age comedy being filmed.

Zara’s got to translate the French director’s “notes” for thin-skinned Chris on the set. She doesn’t hold back.

And now she’s got her mother rediscovering her sexual needs with her rich and famous and mercurial boss.

“He’s a movie star. It’s not real” everybody agrees — including consults with mother in law Leila, even Zara’s bestie Eugenie (Liza Koshy). But nobody listens to anybody else’s concerns and on we go — Mom swooning, Chris making Big Gestures, Zara having meltdowns.

Hilarity does not ensue. The romance has its barely believable moments. Kidman summons up mature, sexy and beguiling, but has a harder time faking “smitten.” Efron’s self-aware “I’m famous” take on Chris doesn’t have anything beyond that which makes the character funny. Bates is motherly and barely in the picture.

That leaves it to King, a Netflix and streaming rom-com veteran (“The Kissing Booth” movies, “The In-Between,” etc.) to carry the picture. And if effort and amusing meltdowns alone could manage it, she’d have pulled it off. But even she finds making this work or at least play light and amusing a struggle.

The strain to find laughs shows, and not just in her performance. That’s deadly in a rom-com.

Rating: PG-13, sex, partial nudity, profanity

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King, Liza Koshy and Kathy Bates

Credits: Directed by Richard LaGravenese, scripted by Richard LaGravenese and Carrie Solomon. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

This looks funny, famous dude wakes up on an island to discover everybody’s gone save for a few survivors and assorted murderous threats.

And realizes just how little he has to contribute to society in this “New World.”

Donald Glover, aka “Childish Gambino” directs. Not a lot of info on this (IMDb doesn’t even have a page for it, yet. A movie excuse for promoting his new LP?).

From the RCA distribution title and “coming soon” “event” graphics, will this be a Fathom Events one or three night only “release?”

This Sept. 13 MGM release has a laugh-out-loud funny trailer, a cute and sentimental premise and the wisdom of “old” Aubrey Plaza — “Be nicer to Mom,” “The only thing you can’t get back is time.”

Plaza as a profane, worldly and cynically wise mentor and spirit guide for young women? Totally down with that. Pairing up Plaza with “Nashville” alumna Stella? Inspired.