Movie Nation

“OutStanding: A Comedy Revolution” is one of the most informative and certainly the most entertaining historical documentaries about LGBTQ history on offer this Pride Month.

Built around Netflix’s earlier 2022 “Stand Out:An LGBTQ+ Celebration,” featuring legions of “out” gay entertainers performing, writer-director Page Hurwitz adds scores of intereviews with journalists, a historian and generations of gay comedians to tell the story of gay comedy.

Who inspired Lily Tomlin, Wanda Sykes, Bruce Vilanch and Billy Eichner, and who stuck up for whom as gay comedy took to the barricades of the ’60s, ’70s, 80s and beyond Culture Wars?

The film remembers assorted “sea change in America” moments such as Madonna joining Sandra Bernhard to flirt and joke around on the set of David Letterman’s first late night show, Ellen DeGeneres coming out on her sitcom — but first to her friend and fellow “Lebanese” Rosie O’Donnell.

When Wanda Sykes recalls seeing Jackie “Moms” Mabley on TV as a child, and thinking “I could do that,” a historian is here to remind us that Moms came out “in her 20s, in the 1920s.”

Lily Tomlin is widely-accepted as a gay comic trailblazer, breaking out on “Laugh-in,” but turning that fame into one-woman shows, a stage act and character “bits” that took even on gay bashers like Anita Bryant. But Robin Tyler beat Tomlin to the punch, the first openly-lesbian comic to appear on TV, get her own show and coiner of the early gay rights rallying cry, “We are Everywhere.”

“I don’t mind them being ‘born again,'” Tyler famously joked of the wave of homophobes summoned to activism by Bryant and Rev. Jerry Falwell. “But why do they have to come back as themselves?”

Tomlin inspired Bernhard. And Margaret Cho roared into prominence on their heels.

Scott Thompson’s place in “The Kids in the Hall,” where drag was performed to hilarious effect, let confused and/or closeted teens feel “seen.” A generation of comics followed.

And as comedians and gay culture faced the twin threats of AIDS and official Reagan era indifference, comedians found themselves taking on activism as part of their portfolio, facing “the fierce urgency of the now.”

“OutStanding” brushes on recent history, too, tracking the “acceptable” 1960s homophobia of Mel Brooks through Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison and on to Dave Chapelle, Bill Maher and others.

“Every word is a bullet,“ Marsha Warfield reminds us, and them.

“There’s no such thing as ‘just kidding,’ elder stateswoman Robin Tyler declares. When somebody tells transphobic jokes, assume “they mean it.”

“Outstanding” isn’t on a par with the great queer film history docs about “The Celluloid Closet.” But it’s a bracing, quick and funny survey of queer comedy history, from Moms to Wanda, Scott to Billy Eichner, from Eddie Izzard before the on-stage dresses and heels to “Dress to Kill” Eddie to Suzy Eddie Izzard in all her present day, marathon-running, makeup loving glory.

This time, this “revolution” was “televised.” All we need to do is remember it and laugh.

Rating:TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Lily Tomlin, Wanda Sykes, Scott Thompson, Marsha Warfield, Rosie O’Donnell, Robin Tyler, Bruce Vilanch, Tig Notaro and Eddie Izzard.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Page Hurwitz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

The setting is striking and ancient, with the unmistakable Bridges of Edinburgh used as a backdrop time and time again.

There’s no real reason for the Italian pan-national thriller “It’s Not Over” to set 20 or so scenes in front of, say, the Forth Bridge, and use it and other bridges dozens of other times as establishing shots. But then there are a lot of things seriously unexplained in this cinematic claptrap.

Perhaps the reason Edinburgh is never uttered is that the city sued to get their name out of this debacle. It’s certainly the worst movie ever filmed in Scotland.

It’s got an Italian star (Gianna Capaldi) doing his damnedest to manage a Scots accent. It’s got Frenchman Christopher Lambert playing his father and leaving any attempts to speak Scots to Craig Ferguson.

The femme fatale our young hero, Max, falls for is named Sarah, just buried her husband and mentions her childhood in “Colorado” — in the Polish-Italian accent of Weronika Rosati.

She’s been cheating on that abusive husband and assure her lover Max that she’ll break the news to him. But instead, Max shows up as the cops are tidying up after an “accident” that killed the creep and left Sarah a beautiful, rich widow.

Sarah loves to take Polaroids of freshly-killed animals as “art,” and speaks in foreshadowing “riddles” that are not riddles at all.

“You’re good with a knife.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” you know, as “a kid” growing up in “Colorado.”

Rosati is truly terrible on the screen, a Lake Bell look-like with no presence at all. Saddling her with an even less charismatic co-star seems fitting, as Capaldi’s lifeless performance matches the corpse Max is destined to become.

“It’s not over,” he gasps, unconvincingly, as he bleeds out. And so it isn’t. Curious/furious Dad, and visions of Max haunt our murderess as she goes about her Polaroid-snapping business in a city that refuses to left her call it by name.

The cop (Ian Reddington) who investigates Max’s disappearance? The one who keeps dismissing parental concern with “just a coincidence” and “people take off all the time” — repeatedly? He’s so indifferent you half expect an American accent out of him.

Writer-director Alessandro Riccardi makes his writing directing debut with this debacle. I swear I saw a “based on a novel by” credit, but didn’t jot it down and can’t find it mentioned anywhere.

Just as well. One and all will have her or his career scarred by this disaster. No sense adding to the body count.

Rating: R, violence, sex

Cast: Gianni Capaldi, Weronika Rosati and Christopher Lambert

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alessandro Riccardi, based on a novel by someone who’d rather their name was left out of this. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31

Based on the Laura Lippman novel, this ’60s period piece (Dame Shirley singing the best song from “Man of La Mancha” in the trailer) is about a Baltimore housewife digging into an unsolved murder.

Y’lan Noel, David Corenswet and Mikey Madison also star.

This limited series comes to Apple TV+ July 19.

That’s a durable thriller/horror title, evocative enough to be recycled even if most movies carrying this name have little to do with one another.

This Kit Harington vehicle was filmed under “What Remains of Us,” a story of a British family, holed up in the woods, “cursed” by what has a whiff of “Dad’s a WEREwolf” about it.

Maybe not.

Ashley Cummings co-stars, with grizzled character player James Cosmo as Caoilinn Springall as the little girl trying to make sense of Daddy’s “moods.”

July 26.

Perhaps you didn’t know you needed a twisted comedy about clowns, on the backroads of Ireland after “The Event,” struggling for fame, love and simple “acceptance” after the world ends.

But everybody gets the joke, that even after the power goes out and civilization takes a tumble, those wigged, rubber-nosed greasepainted mimes will still have trouble holding a crowd.

“Apocalypse Clown” is about an entertainer who never made it — Bobo (David Earl) — and one who did, the formerly Great Alfonso (Ivan Kaye), about an incompetent clown apprentice, Pepe (Fionn Foley) trying to pay tribute to the mentor who stroked-out at how bad his act was, and a wild-eyed, wild-haired “street clown” — Funzo (Natalie Palamides, who steals the movie) — who can’t understand why her psychotic come-ons don’t lure children into her tiny tent in public parks.

Stephen King? “Who’s that?”

Can failing reporter Jenny (Amy De Bhrún) get past her daughter-of-a-famous-journalist mommy issues, the bad decisions that had her drunkenly sleep with a clown once and her conspiracy mania to let the world know “solar flares” did it? Because, when everything electronic quits working, it’ll take some seriously analog thinking to set things right.

With well-worn acts, in costume and born to entertain, the clowns figure “This is our time.” Hell, they’ve even got a hand-cranked diesel Renault clown car to travel the country with. Because no car more more modern than that will start.

Only old issues, murderous grudges, petty rivalries and a grotesque lack of talent could hold them back.

Veteran TV director George Kane (“Flacks,” “Timewasters,””Crashing”) helms a comic winner that sprints out of the gate as we see Bobo lose his last job, “depressing” the children in a hospital, Pepe cause his French mentor’s (Barry McGovern) death and the vain Great Alfonso appear on TV promising a comeback when all they really want him to do is pay tribute to the dead clown DuCoque.

Jenny is sure she has a scoop about a coming calamity. But first, go cover this clown funeral, “big shoes to fill,” “Will they all show up in one car?” You know the drill.

A riot at the service gets them all tossed in the clink. It seems street psycho clown Funzo has drawn first blood from the human statues in her local park, and that feud with a Statue of Liberty and a two-fisted, body-painted Jamed Joyce intruded on the funeral.

But being in jail kept them in the dark when the lights went out and “The Event” happened. When they get out, Funzo figures their “clown troupe/fight club” should make its mark in this primitive new world. Maybe not.

Bobo crushes on Jenny. Alfonso schemes, brushes off remarks about his dark past and bullies, Pepe guards his mentor’s body and Funzo tries to ignore warnings that they’re still “fax modems” and “travel agents,” obsolete creatures in a world that stopped needing them decades ago.

Palamides is the stand-out in the cast — demented, dizzy, oddly-accented and capable of anything. But Earl’s hangdog act, Foley’s sadly self-aware mime, De Bhrún’s bellying up to the bitter bar and Kaye’s gift for grandiose and grotesque all contribute to the grim fun.

Throw-away one-liners land, daft enounters with a food truck hunk and a hippy “faire” whose inhabitants are set up to be survivalists, but would rather just consume all their drugs and stakes that rise as Jenny hopes against hope that she’ll have the means to announce her “scoop” to the world propel “Clown Apocalypse.”

It still bogs down terribly in the later acts, but manages to find a little suspense and a big laugh or two the finale.

Hey, as long as you leave them laughing, right?

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: David Earl, Natalie Palamides, Amy De Bhrún, Fionn Foley, Tadhg Murphy and Ivan Kaye.

Credits: Directed by George Kane, scripted by Demian Fox, Shane O’Brien and George Kane. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:42

Naomi Scott and Lucas Gage star in this pricey sequel.

Will the October 18 release “Smile 2” own Halloween? Will the vanishing horror audience show up?

A bitchy, kvetchy, edgy comedy about paying tribute to a beloved granny, traveling and bickering over family history. Eisenberg wrote and directed this Oct. 18 Searchlight release.

It’s getting so a Korean mobster can’t get out of prison and go about his business any more.

The directing debut from actor Jung Woo-sung (“Steel Rain”) opens July 5.

“Remembering Gene Wilder” is an affectionate and sentimental biographical tribute to the beloved star of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein.”

Director Ron Frank uses archival interviews, Gene Wilder reading from his autobiography, and interviews with producers, a couple of co-stars and Mel Brooks to recreate the Milwaukee native’s comical career, focusing on the key collaborations which became the films Wilder is rememembered for.

But it’s never much more than a surface gloss of the man’s life, a quick-and-dirty doc of the sort A& E perfected with its “Biography” series and Biography Channel — superficial, ignoring anything resembling an edge, never letting us know the guy, who died in 2016 at age 83.

There are glimpses of the benchmark moments in the acting career, a telling anecdote Wilder repeated about a doctor telling him to “never argue” with his sickly mother, but to make her laugh, a brief overview of his ill-fated marriage to Gilda Radner, and moving recollections of his final days via his widow, Karen Boyer.

We get a step-by-step genesis of “Young Frankenstein,” and a year-by-year account of how long it took Brooks to get “Springtime for Hitler,” aka “The Producers,” into production, with his wife’s Broadway co-star in “Mother Courage and Her Children” set to launch his screen career as co-star.

But the film career has few value judgments, celebrating the “comic” touch he brought to “Bonnie & Clyde,” his first film, his barely-controlled hysteria in “The Producers,” his brilliance in conceiving, co-scripting and starring with Mel Brooks in “Young Frankenstein.

There’s no academic or critic to speak with any authority to the work as an actor, and then later writer and director and star. Nepo baby TV host Ben Mankiewicz’s empty platitudes notwithstanding, somebody needs to talk about how badly-received and poorly-remembered almost all of his later films were, and why.

Richard Pryor’s daughter speaks knowingly of the on-camera — and on-camera-only — chemistry between her dad and Wilder in “Silver Streak,” “Stir Crazy” and the lamentable, late-life groaner “See No Evil, Hear No Evil.”

By the late ’70s, when Wilder was at his peak, he was already passe — making lumbering, clumsy and dated comedies like “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother,” “Haunted Honeymoon” and “Lady in Red,” all of which showcased Wilder’s weary style, and his limited bag of comic tricks.

Dwelling on a staggering disappointment like “The Frisco Kid,” which paired him awkwardly with Harrison Ford, is a huge mistake. Leaving out the romp “Start the Revolution Without Me” seems ill-advised. The enduringly funny films are few and far between.

Mercurial outbursts, a quiet side that could suggest “sinister,” good timing that eventually failed him, he was a complicated performer and more complicated, some would say damaged person. And little of that darkness or complexity is suggested here.

“Remembering Gene Wilder” isn’t bad. But it’s incomplete enough to call attention to its shallowness. It never overcomes that “Coming up next on ‘Biography'” superficiality.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda, Rain Pryor, Harry Connick, Jr., Ben Mankiewicz, Alan Zweibel and Karen Boyer

Credits: Directed by Ron Frank, scripted by Glenn KirschbaumA Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32

It’s been pretty widely accepted and understood that stand up comedy can be a sort of talking therapy to those who practice it.

Richard Pryor to Robin Williams, Richard Lewis to Tig Notaro, a lot of performers have taken to the stage to air their personal issues and find laughs in deeper, darker places than the standard “D’ja ever notice?” shtick.

“Group Therapy” is a documentary that taps into that undercurrent in stand-up, a film that gathers half a dozen stand-ups for a chat with Neil Patrick Harris, who isn’t a therapist, doctor or medical professional, but who has played versions of those professions on film and TV.

We see bits of the on-stage acts of Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia and Notaro, hear them talk about therapy and mental health issues and crises they or members of their family have faced in confessional moments of “sharing.”

Cute, sweet and slight, the film has stand-ups talk in the language of self-help speak, quoting everybody from Mark Twain to Oprah, reveal the way they came to talk about their struggles on stage and talk about how that’s helped them.

“There has never been a better time to be mentally ill,” depressed, successful and funny 50something Gary Gulman jokes. And he’s right.

If nothing else, society has become more accepting of talking about such problems, post-Oprah. When Notaro, battling a break-up, the loss of her mother, a deadly illness and then a more deadly cancer diagnosis, rebuilt her deadpan act around that in 2012, it made her famous and made her fortune.

Japanese-American Atsuko Okasuka is revealed to be the only comic in this group — Harris included — not in therapy, she takes in everything all of the others have gotten out of “seeing somebody.” When we sample her family’s troubled history, we appreciate what she’s dealing with without a therapist.

Much of the film is standard-issue “stand up special biographical background” in nature — growing up Black and funny and female in Britain (London Hughes), a jock who couldn’t handle the depression of losing the one thing that was “exceptional” about him at 19 (Gulman) or finding the funny in leaning into “fat” (Byer).

“Group Therapy” doesn’t reinvent the “revealing” profile of comedians documentary. But it’s a novel approach to having performers talk about themselves, those who pursued the work, lifestyle and “sharing” until it killed them (Mitch Hedburg is mentioned, Richard Jeni and generations of others are not), and those for whom therapy — onstage and off — has helped and make happier, or at least a lot better adjusted than they once were.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter

Cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Tig Notaro, Atsuko Okatsuka, Gary Gulman, Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia and London Hughes.

Credits: Directed by Neil Berkeley. A Hartbeat release.

Running time: 1:27