Movie Nation

Pick up any biography or autobiography of the glitterati of the Swinging Sixties or Hedonistic ’70s and you’ll find mentions — plenty of mentions — of the surrealist painter and Spanish bon vivant Salvador Dali.

He might have been infatuated with Mia Farrow, was quite taken with Alice Cooper, and everybody who was anybody wanted to bask in “the presence of Dali.” But only a chosen few went so far as to live, for a time, in “Daliland.”

Ben Kingsley brings a larger-than-life figure to a small, somewhat abridged and compact film of the Dali of those days — a legend for nearly half a century, more famous for his parties, his public appearances and his mustache, a surrealist who had outlived surrealism. His colorful turn as the self-mythologizing eccentric grandly enlivens the new film by the director of “I Shot Andy Warhol.”

“Daliland” is slight but fun, a gloss on Dali-the-Legend that leans on Kingsley’s twinkle and is all the warmer for it.

Director Mary Harron and screenwriter John Walsh (“Pipe Dream”) serve up an “in the presence of greatness” dramedy about Dali, his domineering, dominatrix wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa) and their “salon” of orgies, dalliances, wild spending and a last burst of creativity in New York and Spain, as seen through the eyes of a young assistant (Christopher Briney) who falls under Dali’s spell and into their drama.

James is a failed artist from Idaho lucky enough to land a job with the gallery that handles Dali in New York. A single delivery to the Dalis at their suite at the St. Regis Hotel introduces him to their moveable feast, an endless party with actors and models revolving around Dali’s personality, Gala’s lecherous gaze, Dali’s transvestite muse (Andreja Pejic) and the machinations of Captain Moore (Rupert Graves), Dali’s long-suffering but indulgent manager.

One look at James’ “angel face” and Gala is thinking impure thoughts and Dali MUST have him for his painting and life assistant. James’ dealer/boss (Alexander Beyer) agrees, only if the kid will spy on Dali and keep the old master on task, creating paintings for a gallery opening in a few weeks.

Dali calls the kid “San Sebastian,” because of James’ “beauty.” Our witness is there to look pretty, dodge Gala’s groping, and to run errands — delivering cash to and from the flat and Dali’s various licensing deals and sales. James soon becomes a guest at the parade of lavish lunches and teas Dali throws for his “friends,” witnesses the artist tolerate withering abuse from Gala, who is carrying on an open and open-checkbook affair with the star of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and gets a bead on what makes the man tick, on his genius and the performative life and image Dali has created and maintained at great expense.

Like his idol Picasso, Dali’s taken to paying his lavish dinner bills by check, drawing on them to ensure the check will never ever be cashed.

James also meets a Dali hanger-on/model (Suki Waterhouse) who is here to introduce the Idaho innocent to cocaine and threesomes. If you know how these “My Week with Marilyn” tales play out, you know she’s also here to break his heart.

And no coming-of-age story would be complete without the eye-opening discovery of the sketchy side of “the brand,” the artist as a businessman preying on collectors, or preyed-on by unscrupulous print makers and dealer intermediaries.

Harron and Walsh bite off too much to truly chew through here, with Dali taking his new protege into flashbacks that show how he (Ezra Miller makes a fine young Dali) met the wife of his surrealist poet-friend Paul Éluard. He dubbed the former Elena Ivanovna Diakonova “Gala.”

But Kingsley makes the man — his hands shaking too much to paint with ease, or to allow the easy application of the dyes and eye-liner he used for his extravagant public appearances — human, a bit kinky, and comical, always speaking of himself in the third person, something captured on chat shows and in Adrien Brody’s amusing version of Dali in “Midnight in Paris.”

All is beauty, life is at its most hedonistic living under a constant fear of death, and everything is a performance — even an interaction with a waiter.

“No No No. Dali does NOT want spin-ACHE. Dali ABHORS spin-ACHE. Dali can only eat food with defined SHAPES, that the mind can clearly grasp…like OYSTERS!”

Sukowa makes a fine villain, one among many “using” Dali. But Kingsley is the reason to visit “Daliland,” allowing us to “be in the presence…of genius” and be irritated, titillated, amused and maybe a little depressed about the trap our imperious host has flounced into and embraced like the doom he dreads but so feverishly craves.

Rating: unrated, drug abuse, nudity, sex

Cast: Ben Kingsley, Barbara Sukowa, Christopher Briney, Rupert Graves, Suki Waterhouse, Andreja Pejic, Alexander Beyer and Ezra Miller.

Credits: Directed by Mary Harron, scripted by John Walsh. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:36

That darned Brian Cox has been busy. “Succession” wraps up, he had that fly fishing movie in the can (“Mending the Line“). And now this drama about a terminally ill ex-con coming to stay with his daughter and do some good before he dies comes our way June 30.

It played Toronto. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Could be good.

A good cast and some impressively played, staged, filmed and edited basketball come together in “Shooting Stars,” an over-familiar feel-good sports drama about the relationships, influences, missteps and triumphs of the formative years of LeBron James.

It covers much the same ground as the terrific 2008 documentary “More than a Game.” But that preceded the book LeBron co-wrote with sportswriter Buzz Bissinger, and that archival-footage-and-interviews film doesn’t have the Hollywood touches. There’s a little fictional embellishment, good actors in pivotal adult roles (Wood Harris, Dermot Mulroney, with Natalie Paul playing LeBron’s mother) and a “Rudy” reminiscent score by Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Mark Isham.

The movie is a new/old spin on the LeBron Legend, how this Akron child of a single mom found another “family” on the court, teammates and a coach who were in his life from age 10 onward. All of them shaped the player who became the phenom and then “The Chosen One,” and saw him through the perils of facing international scrutiny as a teen, and made him the man he grew up to be.

The self-mythologizing story omits his real-life brothers and embellishes or bends facts in other regards. And the screenplay has an uncertain grasp on its larger “Rudy-esque” theme, that the people who cared about King James made sure he didn’t just become a great player, but that he’d be an upstanding grown man as well. But it’s entertaining, especially in the ways it keeps our star on the periphery right up to the moment he becomes the hero in his own myth and his friends become his supporting cast.

We meet the boys in Lil Dru’s basement, playing basketball video games, a bunch of ten year-olds under the tween AAU tutelage of big Dru, given a corny earnestness by Wood Harris.

“It’s not how you start the game, it’s how you finish it” is his ethos.

The kids — Sian Cotton, Willie McGree, Lil Dru Joyce and LeBron, call themselves “The Fab Four.” They’re all about “When I make it to the league” dreams, and having “cribs next to each other” when they do.

“Shooting Stars” takes pains to show working middle class parents involved and supportive of their kids, and the boys’ lifelong rapport and friendly rivalry, on and off the court — girls, the classroom.

Then we see the teenaged Lil Dru (Caleb McLaughlin), LeBron (Mookie Cook), Sian (Khalil Everage) and Willie (Avery Sellis Wills, Jr.) face their first big collective decision, as incoming high school freshmen.

When the top dog high school in Akron suggests short and slight Dru could play Junior Varsity, but not varisty, he takes matters into his own hands.

Buchtel might offer a primo education and a prestigious sports history. There’s an assistant coach job for Dru’s dad. But there’s this Catholic School, St. Vincent-St. Mary, that just hired a demoted and embittered college coach (Dermot Mulroney).

The kid he labels a “cocky little bastard” promises Coach Dambrot “We can win you a state championship.” So he gets them scholarships.

“Shooting Stars” shows us the kids grow into young men, hitting all the waypoints of “proving themselves” worthy of getting onto the playing rotation, besting the upperclassmen and eventually besting every other school in Ohio and the best basketball prep schools in America.

“LeBron Mania,” the pitfalls of premature fame, the “meet cute” that introduced him to his future wife (Katlyn Nichol), the “tests” that come on the court and off with failure always followed by learning and growing and eventually triumphing, “Shooting Stars” covers the waypoints on James’ high school journey, and does so in an amiable if often perfunctory way.

I like the fact that the language is salty and that the kids are often arrogant to the point of obnoxious.

Not James, of course. He still controls this narrative, just as he has controlled the arc of his NBA career, which may be winding down and will do so on pretty much his terms.

Director Chris Robinson (“ATL,” “Beats” and TV’s “Black-ish”) keeps the tone light, and lets the jokey banter land a few laughs — “What’s the point of being popular” if not for chasing girls, one teammate asks? “E pluribus unum, SEIZE the day!”

Well, they weren’t Latin scholars.

I also like the way confrontations lead to little speeches about having more than basketball, about shaping “great Men” and not just “great players.”

McLaughlin stands out among the “fab four,” with Harris classing the joint up. But Mulroney has his best part in years and makes the most of his best scene, that first “try out” sequence, which begins with a brutally frank speech.

“I don’t give a s–t if you started last year or got a scholarship or if your uncle’s Michael Jordan. If you’re weak or lazy, you ain’t making the team. If you’re slow, you’re not making the team. If you SUCK, you’re out!”

The picture hews too closely to formula to be anything more than filmic comfort food. The rough edges are rubbed off pretty much everybody, with mother Gloria not depicted as being as in over her head as young LeBron was. He went to a party and got drunk and is hungover the next day?

“Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.”

But it’s watchable. And if James announces he’s retiring or making next season his last, “Shooting Stars” makes a timely and genial enough appreciation of how the GOAT got to be the GOAT and the friends and grownups who got him there.

Rating: PG-13, teen drinking, profanity

Cast: Wood Harris, Caleb McLaughlin, Marquis “Mookie” Cook, Natalie Paul, Khalil Everage, Sterling “Scoot” Henderson, Avery Sellis Wills Jr. and Dermot Mulroney

Credits: Directed by Chris Robinson, scripted by Frank E. Flowers, Tony Rettenmaier and Juel Taylor, based on the book by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger. A Universal release on Peacock.

Running time: 1:56

It’s important to know when to “drop the mike.” Know when to say “when,” don’t spoil a peak moment by trying to top it, and don’t clutter up your finale so badly it spoils the effect of the stand-up set, concert, play, series or movie thriller that came before it.

“Mother’s Day” is a mean, implausible and formulaic kidnapping thriller, a distaff Polish “Taken,” in which the bad guys have grabbed the son of a woman with “particular skills,” and a chip on her shoulder.

It hits many of the standard plot points, serves up visceral violence in many settings and even has our heroine engage in a bit of self-surgery, a staple of the genre.

A nice twist? Her stolen son (Adrian Delikta) doesn’t know this demon who stabs, punches, torches and shoots her way to him is his birth mother, even if the bad guys do. Because that’s why they took him.

“Mother’s Day” could have been an exciting if wholly predictable thriller of the “bad movie worth recommending” persuasion. But director Mateusz Rakowicz and co-writer Lukasz M. Maciejewski make such a hash of the bits after the climax and beginning of the credits that they strip a lot of that goodwill away.

Agnieszka Grochowska (“How I Fell with a Gangster”) stars as a supposedly dead-and-buried deep cover agent, high-mileage and low on patience for Poland’s malefactors — be they Proud Boys (she pummels a pack of them with a SIX PACK OF BEER in the opening scene) or mobsters.

“Sorry ma’am, but these days, if someone doesn’t hit a girl, he’s a sexist.”

The bad guys fight back, of course.

When she was made to disappear, her son Maks (Delikta) was adopted out to strangers who knew nothing of his family history. But she stalks him online, checks in on him from a safe distance and grudgingly accepts her fate and his.

And then this Serbian’s goons grab the kid, “revenge” for something she had a hand in long ago. No matter what her handler (Dariusz Chojnacki) tells her, she’s going to retrieve him. Give her the barest intel, and the psychotics hired to do this kidnapping will rue this “Mother’s Day.”

Good fight choreography, camera placement and editing can turn anybody into a gang-burying badass, and Grochowska is just credible enough — on the sliding Gena Rowlands (“Gloria”) to Angelina Jolie (“Salt”) scale — to make this work.

A sizzling set-piece set in a kitcenh has the bad guys basically stand back and wait until she picks up two eggs and proceeds to bust those eggs, bust heads, pick up a knife, a frying pan, a wok filled with flaming oil and a meat tenderizer to make her impatience with their nonsense known.

The villains, chiefly Szymon Wróblewski as a “Borat” underweared (suspenders and a banana hammock) psychopath and a brutish Russian intel commisar labeled “The Witch” (Jolanta Banak) are outstanding.

But the mother-son scenes have a dreary predictability that let us know exactly what is coming, when and in what order, the moment he asks “Who ARE you?” (in Polish with subtitles, or dubbed) and she replies “I am your ONE chance!”

And then, another layer of goodwill is stripped away with all the nonsense shoved into the finale and closing credits.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Adrian Delikta, Dariusz Chojnacki, Konrad Eleryk and Szymon Wróblewski

Credits: Directed by Mateusz Rakowicz, scripted by Lukasz M. Maciejewski and Mateusz Rakowicz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

A teenage girl gives in to her hormones and to tempation and faces the fundamentalist consquences in “The Starling Girl,” an evocative, gripping and revealing drama about a strict upbringing and how it can backfire on the person being groomed.

It’s a smart and well-cast and acted debut feature from Laura Parmet, and a fine showscase for Eliza Scanlen of “Little Women” and TV’s “Sharp Objects.” In the title role, she plays 17 year-old “Jem,” whose rural Kentucky life revolves around the neo-Pentacostal “in the spirit” church which she, her three siblings and her parents attend.

She’s in the church youth dance troupe, letting her artistic passion out through PG-rated performances in modest dresses just shy of Amish.

The church is the sort of place where teen courtship is arranged via parents, so when uncharismatic bore preacher’s son (Austin Abrams) takes a shine to her, his preacher dad (Kyle Secor) and Jemima’s dad parents (veteran character players Wrenn Schmidt and Jimmi Simpson, superb) meet and make “Seventeen’s the time to start thinking about these things” noises.

As Jem has to hear out a fellow congregant’s reproach for wearing a bra that can be seen underneath her clothes when she performs, it’s her place to keep quiet and say nothing in protest.

Yes, this is a patriarchy. But the women keep the other women in line, and in Jem’s case, Mom is the one who runs their house, ensuring recovering addict/county music singer Dad on the straight and narrow.

But Jem has hormones that all her middle of the night whispers of “Out Satan, out!” can’t control. The preacher’s other son, Owen (Lewis Pullman of “Top Gun: Maverick” and TV’s “Outer Range”) has just returned from a mission to Puerto Rico. He’s the youth pastor, newly-married. And at some point Jem developed a crush on him that just won’t quit.

She starts stalking him with an earnest sense of purpose he probably notes but doesn’t acknowledge or rebuff. She angles herself into any excuse to chat with him during youth group meetings, at group outings at the fair or helping him gather firewood on a group camping trip.

This is a seemingly innocent infataution, but one with an edge. Whatever the youth pastor is thinking, he’s not saying. Jem lets us know her thoughts in her prayers.

“Lord, I come before you humbled and ashamed.”

Well, children aren’t watching these guys any more, are they?

So why not throw Seth Rogen and his partner in the profane Evan Goldberg at this material. Because there’s just not enough “dark” and edgy fanboy content in the movies these days.

Like the song says, they’re” “growing older but not up.” That could be said of Las Tortugas and their fanbase.

Aug. 2.

Sony’s effort to wholly blur the line between “comic book” and “comic book movie” comes to something like full fruition with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” a mad cinematic jumble of comic book imagery, comic book mimicry, multiverse plotting and ponderous, pandering fan service.

Where the first film in this animated trilogy was an aesthetically-challenging headache of dot-matrix comic book printing imagery that caused instant eyestrain (in some viewers) by design and flash-imaging seizures in others, the sequel shifts away (somewhat) from the former and doubles-down on the latter, diving into every imaginable incarnation of Spider-Man — the animated TV series, a live action character, a leap into LEGO — with a mad whirl of animation, drawing and painting styles often served up in head-spinning montages that take us through the seemingly infinite smorgasbord of Spideys across all the multiverses.

It can be dazzling, overwhelming and eye-straining as you try to decide what to focus on and why the trio of directors on this project chose to render so many characters in a blurry, unfocused foreground or background. A veritable history of 20th century art and comic booking is painted over sequences, shots and scenes, creating some pretty pictures and some downright ugly imagery, a lot of which doesn’t advance the plot.

Still the “multiversing” of Spider-Man does wonders for inclusion, a real selling point for this trilogy.

“Across the Spider-Verse” fills the screen with famous voices, or in many cases, famous actors with voices most of us couldn’t pick out of a police lineup. Hearing the re-assuring bark of J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson on radio and TV across various ‘verses’ is somewhat grounding. This new “nemesis” “Spot” is unmistakably Jason Schwartzman, that school principal is Rachel Dratch. But Oscar Issac, Daniel Kaluuya, Issa Rae, Hailee Steinfeld and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali flesh out a distinguished if vocally-indistinct supporting cast.

Stay through the credits and see who actually did what. Don’t stay for the after-credits scene. There is none. The third film, “Beyond the Spider-Verse,” is coming. That’s all we need to know.

But as this or that Peter Parker or Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Spider-Punk or Hello Spider-Kitty skids across the screen, one can’t help but wonder if the comic books embraced this wrinkle in scientific theory, decades ago, when they ran out of villains and other ideas. And maybe the myriad multiverse movies are doing the same thing just to avoid commiting to a coherent plot with real stakes, real pathos and a narrative that doesn’t rely on periodic bursts of distraction and applause as each iteration of the character, the more obscure the better, makes her or his bow to swooning fans.

“Who’s Doctor Strange? Sounds like maybe he shouldn’t practice medicine!”

Yes, this is marginally more interesting and watchable than the first “Spiderverse.” No, it’s still more of a “feeling” than a film, getting by on razzle and dazzle, not all of which add to the experience in a positive or illuminating way.

Gwen Stacy’s Spider-Woman timeline moves more center-stage as we see her (Steinfeld) coping with the same issues Peter Parker normally does in Spider-tales. Her cop-dad (Shea Whigham) doesn’t know her vigilante hobby, and is sure Spider-Woman is who killed the Peter Parker in her ‘verse.’

A magical hi-tech wristband gadget allows others, and her, to bounce about universes to scores of numerically-differentiated “Earths,” where Spider-Man might be an Indian (Karan Soni) wisecracking through Mumbattan (a Mumbai turned into Manhattan), or street-cockney punk named Hobie (Kaluuya).

Miles Morales (Shameik Moore of “Dope” and TV’s “The Get Down”) is still on “Earth 42,” still just 15, struggling to make it to school meetings with his parents and the principal because of all the crimes and tragedies his conscience won’t let him pass by without intervening.

Miles is still young enough to think he can “save” them all, without having to choose. Much like the writers in your average comic book multiverse or comic book multiverse film adaptation.

Make a choice, kids. That’s life.

When a new nemesis, Spot (Schwartzman) — whom Miles repeatedly dismisses as “random” and worse, as far as super-villains go — emerges, a young scientist/being who loses “face” and yet can travel the multiverses with menacing ease, we arrive at “Across the Spider-Verse’s” buy-in moment.

Miles can’t handle him by himself. Asorted others — Jessica Drew (Rae), vampire Spidey Miguel O’Hara (Isaac), Gwen et al, are summoned as “back-up.”

If you’re thrilled by the mere thought of myriad Spider-interations joining the fight against a pan-dimensional and somewhat comical villain, and you recognize every character who shows up — Peter Parker as a 30something parent (Jake Johnson?), animated TV series Spidey? — this might be just the ticket. For you.

For everybody hoping to see something with narrative coherence, actions with consequences (before the finale), jeopardy and pathos coming from a screen crammed with images and a soundtrack of scrambled one-liners, some of which are funny, this isn’t all that.

This may start on time. Or not. Apparently, 24 locals somehow went to the wrong theater.

“Tampa” in a nutshell.

An unfortunate aesthetic and technical choice — an attempt to replicate a comic book dot-matrix printing style — rendered the first animated “Spider-Man/Spiderverse” outing painful for some to watch, me among them.

It was literally headache-inducing, even without the multi-verse juvenalia of the plot.

There were also flashing images that were so problematic theaters started posting warnings in the ticket windows about the film.

Perhaps those issues were avoided this time out. I can’t tell from the trailer. But let’s hope so. Review to come Wed. AM.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” opens Friday.

June 9, a little “Dark Crystal,” a bit of “Narnia,” a taste of “The Never Ending Story,” and a lot of reptilian CGI critters