Movie Nation

A lot of people warned about what might happen. But most of America shrugged those warnings off, only to turn on a TV and gape, in shock, at the attack on the United States capital by right wing extremists on January 6, 2021.

And many of the most stunning images from that infamous day feature crosses, Christian flags, religious zealots waving “Jesus Saves” signs as they and their brethren pummeled police and stormed Congress to keep their “savior” from having to admit he lost the election.

“God & Country” is a chilling new documentary about how “we” as a nation got there, about the history of the unholy marriage of white Christianity and conversative politics, a movement born of bigotry, built with dark money and founded in Southern racism — attempts to keep Christian private schools and “Bible” colleges all white and thus tax-free in the 1960s and ’70s.

Director Dan Partland serves up a lot of footage from what really happened January 6, a reality that this movement and its leader have spent the ensuing years distorting and trying to erase from American memory. And he speaks with theologians, Christian journalists, podcasters, researchers and authors about the forces and figures and moments that created this “loud,” “violent” and “intolerant” minority that seems so determined to “overthrow democracy” and create an authoritarian “theocratic state.”

As the film makes clear, much of America had been unaware of this threat, the degree of radicalization and the amount of money invested in creating those radicals and enabling them to pursue their statistically unpopular agenda at the local, state and national level. Historians and experts list the scapegoating, pinpoint the day “abortion” became the cover “cause” for what was always a racist movement partly founded by old school racist Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Most of America doesn’t attend church, and the majority of churchgoers don’t attend the most fanatical churches. But you can sample the rhetoric driving through many a state, especially in the South, tuning into to “religious” licensed radio stations blasting right wing polemics and “news” in lieu of sermons. Not that the sermons I hear, mixed into this programming as I drive through South Carolina, are any less political, heated and tinged with martyrdom and violence.

“Is Christian Nationalism Christian?” is the most pointed question Partland asks, off-camera, in his film. First Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” and then others detail how that simply isn’t the case. “Power” is what these folks want, and they’ll take all the cash they can get from the lower-my-taxes super rich to achieve it.

Former anti-abortion activist Pastor Rob Schenck recalls recoiling from colleagues who flocked to “the incarnation of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,'” Donald Trump, as “the Chosen One.”

Theologians dive into the ways Jesus would have condemned this “violent movement.” Historians debunk the oft-repeated talking points of how America “was founded as a Christian nation,” listing the ways the Founding Fathers avoided religious language. Oh, and George Washington never prayed in the snow at Valley Forge. That’s just a painting, one with an agenda.

And journalists, researchers and others lay out the funding that shows how well-financed Christian nationalist lobbying groups like the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Alliance Defending Freedom and institutions such Hillsdale College create an echo chamber of the “threatened” which entitle affiliated groups like the Proud Boys to take their intimidation to the streets, and eventually the United States Capital, summoned there by their “chosen” leader.

“God & Country” creates its own climate of fear, not by interviewing the organizers, rabble rousers, hate mongers and more fanatical preachers, politicals and opinion leaders. Partland simply plays a barrage of their public statements, calls to organize, calls to “overthrow” and calls to violence.

It’s alarming, and if you hear it often enough you either become indoctrinated, or simply deaf to the sounds of an anti-Christian, anti-democracy, anti-American “loud” minority in their “God, Guns and Trump” hats openly calling for minority rule — theirs — in an America they remake in their backward, bigoted and violent image.

Partland has made a film that lays out the cause, the “thinking” and secret agenda and not-so-secret financiers of this dangerous Christian National movement. But it’s also a clarion call to the “40 to 50 percent of Americans who don’t vote,” a brilliantly-argued, damningly laid-out documentary case for registering, voting and preserving democracy from its most serious internal threat ever.

Rating: PG-13, news footage of violence, profanity

Cast: Interviews with Bishop William Barber, Kristin Kobes du Mez, Simone Campbell, Katherine Stewart, Russell Moore, Jemar Tisby, Skye Jethani, Pastor Rob Schenck, Charlie Kirk, Andrew Seidel, Anthea Butler and others

Credits: Directed by Dan Partland. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:30

Two hours and 19 minutes of all star action comedy. Ready or not, here we go.

One could swap the title to “Phobias” and change the studio branding to “Pixar” and Dreamworks’ “Orion and the Dark” would fit (somewhat) neatly into that Disney studio’s recent obsession with the metaphysical.

A movie about being afraid of the dark could be part of a quartet of films on “feelings” and emotions (“Inside Out”), the first twinges of adulthood and controlling your emotions (“Turning Red”) and that ineffable something that makes us human — explained, in animated form, as “Soul.”

But the meandering Charlie Kaufman (“Orchid Thief”) adaptation of a slim, illustrated 2015 book by Emma Yarlett has more in common with the diffuse, unsatisfying “Elemental” if I’m sticking with the Pixar comparisons.

Screenwriter Kaufman’s taken the “Christmas Carol” element of The Dark, helping a kid appreciate that which he is most afraid of by showing the Dark and its “entities” over the course of one long night, and run with it. And he’s slapped on a framing device that has this story of a childhood turning point being told by the adult version of the kid, Orion, who experienced all this at age 11.

This Netflix production, scripted by Kaufman and perhaps rendered into something more sensible by co-writer and children’s animation vet Lloyd Taylor (“Nimona”) is fanciful but formulaic, and unlike most of Kaufman’s boundary-breaking writing, it’s downright derivative.

It’s “A Christmas Carol” meets “Monsters, Inc.,” with plenty of drawn and sketched “Diary” entries from another “Wimpy Kid.”

Orion — voiced by Jacob Tremblay — narrates the story of his fraught childhood, how he’s afraid “my parents will move away” while he’s at school, of “the gym locker room,” pf the bully Richie Panichi and being called on in “Early Colonialism and Imperialism” class.

Well, he must not live in Florida.

But the phobia that consumes Orion — so-named by his aged-out-of-being hippies parents (just guessing) — is The Dark. He decorates his room with nightlights, asks for extra stories (he’s in fifth grade) at bedtime and still can’t make it through the night.

It’s no wonder The Dark (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “Richard Jewell”) shows up, a tad digruntled about his rep, and takes the kid through one long night of Sleep, Insomnia, Unexplained Noises, Quiet and Sweet Dreams.

Those are the “entities” of darkness, voiced here by the likes of Angela Bassett, Nat Faxon, Aparna Nancherla and others. They take care of business, putting folks to sleep (smothering one restless old man with a “magic” pillow), driving insomnia, startling in noise, etc.

They’ve got to accomplish all this because of what needs to happen in the dark — rest and resetting the brain, keeping us and our world healthy. And they have only so many hours to do it before sunny, upbeat and not-quite-obnoxious Light (Ike Barinholtz) shows up and breaks the dawn.

Kaufman’s embellishments are imaginative, but not particularly funny or entertaining. The meta story, about adult Orion (Colin Hanks) explaining what he learned from The Dark at age 11 to his own little girl (Mia Akemi Brown) is a cute attempt at sentiment which left me cold.

Hauser’s the only voice actor to pop in this production, giving us a gruff but loveable Seth Rogen-without-the-stoner-edge sound-alike. He elicits a grin, here and there. But the other famous voices barely register, and laughs are as rare as a good night’s sleep here.

“Sponge Bob” veteran and first-time director Sean Charmatz has made a rite-of-passage picture that plays over the heads of its young target audience, and has a hard time finding the humor in any of this, despite the obvious intended light touch.

Rating: TV-Y7, scary images

Cast: The voices of Jacob Tremblay, Paul Walter Hauser, Angela Bassett, Carla Gugino, Natasia Demetriou, Ike Barinholtz, Nat Faxon, Aparna Nancherla and Werner Herzog

Credits: Directed by Sean Charmatz, scripted by Charlie Kaufman and Lloyd Taylor. based on the book by Emma Yarlett. A Dreamworks production for Netflix.

Running time: 1:33

Lionsgate has this “true story” (Perhaps merely inspired by?) Action epic.

They’ve had good luck with WWII films, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

“Deep Fear” isn’t a straight-up “Dead Calm” knockoff, despite the similarities in these waylaid-at-sea stories.

It’s still about a sailboat hijacked by a person or persons the skipper stopped to rescue. The nautical props and “weapons” are going to be the same and some of the story elements are over-familiar.

But this Caribbean thriller has sharks and some impressive underwater footage of dealing with those killers while trying to get someone out of a sunken boat. So they’ve got that going for them, if nothing else.

Mãdãlina Ghenea plays Naomi, whom we thought drowned when her family’s sailing yacht sank off the Bahamas in a storm 15 years ago. But here Naomi is, on a high-end 50 foot sailboat, diving off Guadelope with her nephew (Ibrahima Gueye) and beau/business partner (Ed Westwick), sailing past Dominica for her home island of Grenada.

She’s done all right for herself. Insurance settlement?

The trio are separated due to an impending business deal, which is puzzling because why wouldn’t vacationing nephew Barny stay to help sail the boat home? Jackson has a meeting, but Barny?

Anyway, that’s why she’s alone at sea, racing ahead of a coming storm, fielding worried sat phone calls from Jackson but sure of her solo seamanship.

She lets Jackson know when she sees people adrift on wreckage, but doesn’t alert the Coast Guard. The castaways (Macarena Gómez, John Paul Pace) are grateful but frantic. Somebody else is trapped in an air pocket in the trawler that went down.

The fact that they insist Naomi dive down without calling for assistance or alerting the authorities to a sinking should be her “tell.” But never mind.

She and survivor Tomas dive down and fetch Jose (Stany Coppet). Damned if Tomas doesn’t get eaten by a shark on the way back up.

Gloves are off, cards are on the table. There’s something on that sunken boat that a suddenly menacing and all-business Maria and Jose want. Storm be damned, sharks be damned, Naomi is going back down there to get it.

Even hearing “We have no idea how to sail a boat” doesn’t alert Naomi to the leverage she has in this situation. In a panic she gives in. Jackson, who has been tracking her progress, is increasingly alarmed at her radio silence.

The screenplay by Robert Capelli Jr. and Sophia Eptamenitis is mostly dull and almost always predictable. There’s an idiotic bit of Naomi flashing back to the trauma of her near-death at sea decades ago. And yet, here she is, sailing and diving without a care or a hint of PTSD about her, aside from those flashbacks.

But the French cable network Canal+ put money into this, so the digital sharks and underwater calamities in Marcus Adams’ film are slick and convincing. It’s just that Adams had a couple of poorly-received thrillers — “Long Time Dead” and “Octane” — that bombed over 20 years ago, and virtually no credits since.

However exciting the underwater bits are, the film’s lack of urgency kills any sense of suspense. Star Ghenea may be a looker but has little presence and never seems comfortable doing much more than posing on camera and rarely sounds at ease delivering the screenplay’s inane dialogue.

Any movie with a taste of “The Islands” and the gin-clear waters of the Caribbean will always have some allure. But this one just reminds us of all the superior thrillers with similar stories, characters and settings that came before it.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug content

Cast: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Ibrahima Gueye, John Paul Pace and Stany Coppet

Credits: Directed by Marcus Adams, scripted by Robert Capelli Jr. and Sophia Eptameniti. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:25

A martial arts period piece set during the Sino-Russian tensions of the early ’70s.

This looks…nuts.

Feb. 23, Kino Lorber does what it can for US/Estonian relations. Russia mocking? One can only hope.

A body can go months at a time without seeing a crime thriller that DOESN’T have an obligatory “strip club scene” where a malefactor hangs out, where the cops, a detective or a relative of a missing person goes to “get some answers” about a mystery.

One theory about why this is might be that these scenes are for the creeper producers who like to gawk and hit on the actresses and dancers who are cast in such scenes, or who hope to be cast.

The Hollywood movies about strippers include the ludicrous, pervy fantasy “Showgirls,” Demi’s “Striptease,” and a lot tales of the sordid, dangerous life led by those who go into that work.

But a French strip club movie? That would have to be an alotogether different thing. They must have “unions” over there. And workman’s comp. And all of the women are, you know, French.

“My Sole Desire” is a French drama about a novice in the trade, her awkward baptism by fire, the icky initiations of “private dance” parlours and the private bookings that take this “exotic dancer” trade into the realm of The World’s Oldest Profession.

The basement strip club named “À mon seul désir” (“My Sole Desire”) is a strange place for grad student Manon (Louise Chevillotte) to turn up. But here she is, looking for work.

The manager and guy who watches the door (Pedro Casablanc) raises an eyebrow, answers her “I’d like to try out” (in French with English subtitles) with a blunt warning to her and to the viewer.

This is “an erotic theater,” he grumps. It’s “not like in the movies.”

He lets her in, for free, just to see what she’s considering as a job. Everything about the show is down-market. The club has near-bare-walls decor, and is intimate to the point of tiny, with a clientele of regulars, pervy one-visit-and-banned types, and the curious.

“Not all clients are pigs” is hardly re-assuring.

The base pay is poor, dependant on tips and private “parlour” sessions to make it a living wage.

Manon takes in the stripteases, the stripper who deconstructs striptease as an art form, the duets and menage a trois acts. She has questions backstage.

But she is young and lithe and willing. If she can avoid crossing swords with the resident “young” (ballerina and perhaps schoolgirl uniform) act, the aloof Sati (Yuliya Abiss), perhaps Manon — taking the stage name “Aurora” from “Sleeping Beauty” — can get the hang of things. And if she can, Pablo the manager assures her, she’ll always be “in charge.”

The dressing room is filled with French variations on stripper archetypes — battle worn, sisterly and supportive and those figuring on doing this until they can start their real lives with marriage or a place at the Paris Conservatory acting school.

That would be Mia (Zita Hanrot), Aurora’s mentor, friend and eventually her lover.

Because whatever sexual charge Manon got from walking into that joint and shaking her money maker had its roots in a general disappointment in “love” and “men” and conventionality.

Mia’s acting dreams and professional status are in conflict. Nobody who can show off her moves on a pole — on a moving subway car — is likely to give all that up for work as an extra on some crummy movie, or life as a full-time acting student.

As their affair, triggered by their sexy teamwork onstage, deepens and the complications of Mia’s life come out, Aurora/Manon finds herself going further down the rabbit hole with ex-colleague Elody (Laure Giappiconi), who arranges private party appearances that devolve quickly and unsurprisingly into actual sex work.

Aurora will ignore Pablo the manager’s “rules” and warning number one — “No sex. Your mouth is gold, got it?” But will she, as the expression goes, “f— around and find out?”

There are a few things I really appreciated about “Suncoast,” writer-director Laura Chinn’s memoirish remembrance of the slow, wasting death of a sibling.

Characters live through story arcs, reminding us of the hope that even the most lost among us can change.

Characters transcend the “types” that the movie sets them up to be. Yes, teenage girls can be mean, shallow and and vapid. But nobody is merely their worst traits, which for teens are almost certainly temporary.

The performances have a wonderful sensitivity, with Laura Linney at her brittle best, Woody Harrelson at his warmest playing a very controversial type of activist and nepo baby Nico Parker (the spitting image of mom Thandiwie Newton) holding her own with them playing a teen who comes of age in a trying, testing and touching way.

And it’s a movie of consequence, revisiting the “Right to Die” culture wars of the early 2000s. Set in Florida, it’s a tale of learning ethics and morality and personal responsibility and has as its backdrop the infamous Terri Schiavo case, politicized by fanatical activists and opportunistic Governor Jeb “Please Clap” Bush.

Doris (Parker) is a seventeen year-old with big responsibilities. She’s the one who wheels her older brother about and cares for him when Mom (Linney) isn’t around.

Max is not quite vegetative, but he’s uncommunicative and has been for quite some time. And as we meet this family in their little pink cinderblock bungalow, it’s time to put Max in Suncoast hospice.

Mom doesn’t want to hear any complaints about being late for (Christian) school. If Doris is needed to help get Max in and out of the pickup and into the hospice, “I’ll write you a note.”

Mom Kristine is irritable, domineering and quick to guilt-trip her youngest kid about all that Doris isn’t doing for her brother. We get the impression that Kristine has been a walking, raging, judging panic-attack about this tragedy forever.

And Doris is over it. SO over it.

The first person she can let on that her mom is “a monster” and that all Doris wants at this stage is “a normal” teenage life is a friendly stranger (Harrelson) among the sign-waving protesters in front of Suncoast. They’re protesting Terri Schiavo’s husband’s efforts to let her die in that hospice, backing Schiavo’s parents’ legal struggle to prolong her vegetative life.

“Every life is precious,” Paul insists. But Paul isn’t some red-in-the-face ranter, just a wounded guy who felt called to come down and protest with people a lot more vehement than him.

Kristine’s constant “Will you THINK of your brother?” tirades at Doris tell us she’s only focused on one thing. The fact that she doesn’t flinch when she sees her teen daughter hanging with a 50ish loner from out of town shows us just how checked-out she’s become.

But Mom’s increasing devotion to Max has her insisting that she’ll keep crossing the protest lines (Schiavo was actually at a hospice named Woodside) and spend the night at Suncoast so he won’t be alone. A hurricane’s coming? So what? Doris will be “fine” alone.

“So you have to use a flashlight for a few hours.”

That’s how Doris stumbles into her first grasp at normality with her classmates, none of whom know her name. Their “hurricane party” plans have fallen through. Wait. My MOM won’t be home. Come to my house.

Thus pretty Doris finds herself tight with class bombshells Laci (Daniella Taylor), Britney (Ella Anderson), Megan (Ariel Martin) and dreamy Nate (Amarr of “American Housewife”). Drinking, “weed” and fake IDs are her initiation.

Chinn lets us judge these characters and decide they’re using Doris the way unpopular teens are always used in the movies. And then she upends those expectations.

Similarly, we can accuse, judge and convict Kristine and buy into the “monster” label, witness her theatrical insults to the staff and showdowns with a cop trying to protect a hospice from the bomb threats the crazies out front have been calling in.

“Everyone in there is about to die, anyway! Who’ll want to waste a bomb on that place?”

But there’s a human being inside that raging harpy.

Actress turned writer (TV’s “Florida Girls”) and director Chinn’s script flings Kristine about on the emotional roller coaster she’s living through, blind to the fact that Doris is trying to make her own decisions, some of which she’s sure to regret.

Both characters are fascinating to watch, with Linney pinning the “unlikable” needle, even as we start to see the person behind the fury.

Harrelson’s odd and seemingly sketchy character exists simply to personalize the Right to Die debate and maybe settle it, at least in the writer-director’s mind.

There’s a feeling that all of this isn’t quite coming together at many points in the film, that Chinn pulls her intellectual and emotional punches. But scenes set in a Christian school’s ethics class and at “the most important night of our lives” high school prom get the movie’s messages across.

And the relationships, messy as they are, leave us with the hope that things will work out, just not easily or tidily.

As “mixed bag” coming-of-age dramas go, “Suncoast” surprises with its heart and consistently punches above its emotional weight.

Rating: R, teen drug and alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson,
Daniella Taylor, Amar, Ella Anderson, Ariel Martin and Pam Doughtery.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Laura Chinn. A Searchlight release on Hulu.

Running time: 1:49

More minions, new villainy, one big happy family?

This is one frenetic and sentimental edit job.

One good gag in this action packed trailer for the summer’s big animated romp.

The gang’s all back, save for the dead guy. They met Bill Murray’s asking price.

Annie, Ernie, Danny and Rudd-not-Rudnick and Patton and Kumail…

Atherton’s back to lay down the law.

Harold Ramis is still missed, but there’s money in this franchise.

March 22.