Movie Nation

Not using a “real” dog as Krypto, the superdog, was as understandable as it was unfortunate.

James Gunn’s take on “Superman” has a CGI version of a dog he’s owned as an antic, overeager but always-hits-his-mark digital sidekick.

It’s got jokes, a welcome light touch. Hell, it’s got Nathan Fillion as The Green Lantern. You laughed the minute you read that, I’ll wager.

David Corenswet of “Twisters” and TV’s “We Own This City” proves an inspired choice for the Man of Steel, and “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s” Rachel Brosnahan pretty much channels Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.

But cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo)? He’s a player. Nicholas Hoult’s Muskovite turn as villainous Lex Luthor brags about “brains over brawn” to figure out how to best Superman, and we know he’s just not that smart.

The film is a cluttter of characters and collection of plot points that don’t add up to anything resembling a compelling narrative.

It’s gimmicky, from casting Bradley Cooper and an actress (Angela Sarafyan) who looks just enough like Lady Gaga to make you do a Warner Brothers squint, to parking Frank Grillo in his perma-Brillo stubble as enforcer Rick Flagg Sr., in charge of arresting our Superman, who needs to start thinking about the “consequences” of his high-handed “Metahuman” actions, interfering in human affairs — wars and whatnot.

“You didn’t read me my rights.”

Famous players such as Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker “play” the CGI robots who tend to Superman’s wounds in his Antarctic Fortress of Solitude. But of course only master robot voice actor Alan Tudyck has any lines.

Fillion’s Green Lantern is the face of the Justice Gang, a privately financed force independent of Superman (Isabela Merced is Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi is a droll Mister Terrific). And no, they didn’t focus group that “name” before settling on it.

This Superman is a lot less omnipotent. This Superman has supervillains and fake news TV opinionaters arrayed against him. This Superman is definitely in love with Lois Lane.

I like the fact that Gunn chose to join this saga “in progress,” as it were. This isn’t an origin story. This is about Superman losing his first fight, coping with the consequences of interfering in a war between fictional Russian Federation (ish) “states” that Luthor has taken sides in.

The movie’s politics have conservatives snowflaking out. Superman is an “alien,” an immigrant locked in a private prison that isn’t hidden in El Salvador or wherever, but in a “pocket universe” that Luthor can access. Torture and murder are common currency in this metaverse jail.

Superman’s the victim of “monkey bot” online disparagement, which has trashed his rep. Luckily, Jimmy Olsen has an ex (Sara Sampaio) influencer/girlfriend to Luthor who feeds Jimmy tips about what the amoral, heartless DOGE-ish tech bros are up to.

The plot is all over the place, the villains kind of amorphous and just generally “against” the idea of a Superman and there just isn’t enough Fillion and Gathegi or enough jokes outside of those jokers to get the picture over the hump.

Super-dupe cracks one just as he’s about to “Up, up and AWAY” (No, he doesn’t say that. Dammit.).

“Hey buddy, eyes up here.”

It’s all pleasant enough between the generic super-being brawls, which aren’t impressive enough to avoid the label “sleep-inducing. You just know the reporters will struggle to clear the guy’s name, his family will remind him of who he is and the damned digital dog will play “Fetch,” to the advantage of Mr. “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

Heck, maybe that’s why the snowflakes are complaining that the picture’s “too woke.” It’s got a guy who stands for all three of those, a guy who loves dogs and whom dogs love. They ought to be “triggered.” If there’s a point to Mr. Gunn’s “Superman” movie, that might be it.

Rating: PG-13, violence, “action” and lots of profanity

Cast: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Isabela Merced, Skyler Gisondo, Wendell Pierce, Sara Sampaio, Mikaela Hoover, Beck Bennett, Zlatko Buric, Bradley Cooper, Frank Grillo, Neva Howell, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Alan Tudyck and Nathan Fillion.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Gunn, based on the DC Comics. A Warner Bros. release.

Running time: 2:09

Bang a gong, get it on, Groovers. August 8.

“A Great Divide” is a righteous, topical and long-winded culture clash drama about America at its most racist and least welcoming.

Unlike the similarly themed “Minari,” it’s more directly about race and more overt in its messaging — downright heavy-handed at times.

And unlike “Minari,” it’s not a period piece. It’s an Unwelcoming West — Wyoming, in this case — as it might be today, in a country that’s finding a lot more tolerance for racism and xenophobia than we’d previously believed about ourselves.

Jae Suh Park (TV’s “Friends from College”) and Ken Jeong play parents who move to a monied corner of rural Wyoming for “a fresh start.”

Director and co-writer Jean Shim’s film goes a little bit wrong, right off the bat, by parking the Lees — sensitive and smart teen son Benjamin (Emerson Min) and his confidante, Grandma (MeeWha Alana Lee) are with them — in an Architectural Digest lodge/home, a hilltop “castle” in wood, glass and stone. They show up in a Lincoln Navigator.

And none of this is theirs. Husband Isaac’s old friend/new-boss (Margaret Cho) is setting them up out on the edge of the Tetons, with breathtaking vistas, moose and bison roaming the wild and an exclusive private high school all laid at their feet.

Sure.

All Benjy has to do is write a compelling essay to show “if I fit in,” at Riverton High, is how he puts it. Maybe Granny can help.

But will he fit in? Can they? His bestie from back in California (Miya Cech) comes for a summer visit, and his first girlfriend is a witness to instant blasts of hostility from the founding family’s entitled crank (Jamie McShane). A “friendly” and “helpful” privately-paid park ranger (Marshall Allman) is sent to give the kids a helpful “orientation” to the place, the wildlife and “the rules” here.

With the threat of “charges” being brought by Old Man McNather, the ranger visit is mandatory with a hint of bullying.

McNather is Mr. “YOU people” and others absorb “Leave the woods to those of us who belong here” ethos from him. As the Lees were passed by a Vanilla ISIS flag-flying pickup on the way from the airport, they’re practically braced for the “God-d–ned CHINESE” and “slanty-eyed” and “as long as you’re here legal” insults and veiled threats.

Mom is particularly sensitive to this. She has her reasons. Granny counsels Benjy that “At the end of hardship comes happiness.” Sure it does.

Director and co-writer Jean Shim’s script is built around a series of character monologues — about the struggles of immigrants, the racism Asians have faced in American workplaces and schools, the generational divide on how to cope with that and the like.

Those pauses to deliver long anecdotes can be moving, but to a one they stop the narrative in its tracks.

Jeong tries to play a few scenes “light,” making “Yee-haw” jokes with a drawl at the local self-labeled “redneck” eatery. That scene rings about as true as the “I’ve got this rich pal who’s given me a job, a mansion and a Matthew McConaughy Lincoln in Wyoming” set-up.

It’s disappointing that a film about such an important subject leans into unreality — artificial affluence, a teenager consulting Granny for everything — as it marches doggedly into melodrama.

The racism is over-the-top, but that doesn’t make it feel less real. Other plot elements are simplistic forshadowing for the predictable arc the story settles into.

The impulses behind depicting this “Great Divide” in modern America are noble and realistic. But the movie wearing that title is entirely too contrived and monologue-driven to live up to that promise.

Rating: TV-16, racial slurs, wildlife injury

Cast: Jae Suh Park, Emerson Min, Miya Cech, West Mulholland, Seamus Deaver, Marshall Allman and Ken Jeong.

Credits: Directed by Jean Shim, scripted by Jeff Yang, Martina Nagel and Jean Shim. A Gravitas Ventures release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:40

Natalie Merchant, W. Kamau Bell, Josh Brolin, Jay McInerny, Matt Dillon and Kerouac’s pal, jazzman David Amran, are among those testifying to the genius of his masterpiece, “On the Road.”

Slick, star-studded, some guy from Michelle Obama’s WH staff directed it. But still…

August 1, all ye disciples of the world’s greatest Slim Gaillard fan gather at the cineplex for this one.

The late novelist Harper Lee was press-shy almost her entire life, especially after “To Kill a Mockingbird” made her world famous. That was her way of avoiding answering one obvious question that weighs on the mind of cinephiles.

“Did you ever read ‘Intruder in the Dust?'”

On seeing the

Clarence Brown film adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel while researching the University of Tennessee alum Brown for a profile I was writing, I distinctly recall formulating how I’d ask Lee the question if I was to ever get the chance.

“How many times did you watch that movie?”

Faulkner beat Lee to the innocent Black man in jail in the Deep South story by a dozen years. Brown, one of MGM’s longest serving contract directors, the studio’s choice for Garbo movies and auteur of such studio system classics as “The Yearling,” “National Velvet” and “Flesh and the Devil,” got his film of that 1948 novel in front of audiences a year later — in 1949.

Another “coming of age” tale from the director of “The Human Comedy” and “The Yearling” or not, America wasn’t ready for “Intruder in the Dust” in the late ’40s.

Lee sentimentalized her coming of age narrative, that of a child’s view of an accused Black man defended by the ultimate “white savior,” Atticus Finch, a lionized version of her father. The adoring, tomboyish Scout was her alter ego in the narrative. The novel became one of the most beloved texts in American literature and the Civil Rights Era release of the Robert Mulligan/Gregory Peck film version was a watershed moment for shifting race relations in America.

Faulkner wasn’t sentimental. Most filmmakers who tackled his novels tended to give them florid, drawling Tennessee Williams touches. Brown made sure his coming-of-age movie didn’t lapse into sentiment or Deep South soliloquies, even as he was casting his “Yearling” star Claude Jarman Jr. as his sympathetic if skeptical protagonist, a witness and grudging “friend” to the “proud, stubborn and insufferable” antagonist, a Black man (Juano Hernandez) accused of murdering a belligerant, racist bully.

Brown & MGM made a Southern Gothic noir, a suspenseful thriller that didn’t blink at the big questions it was asking, a movie years ahead of its time. MGM, run by the ever-cautious, don’t-rock-the-cultural-boat Louis B. Mayer, was a most reluctant partner in this one.

“Mockingbird” may be an emotional Oscar winning classic, influencing generations. But “Intruder” is Clarence Brown’s masterpiece, flinty and blunt and cynical, and not shy about showing racists in their natural environment, trotting out their favorite slur as the ultimate evocation of white privilege.

In an unnamed town (Oxford, Mississippi) in a nameless Southern county in the fictive 1940s “present,” a local tough has been murdered. It’s the buzz of the barber shop, which bristles with racist fury wondering if the sheriff (Will Geer) has “got the n—er” who everybody knows pulled the trigger.

That barber shops empties out when the sheriff rolls up in his mud-covered, one-tire-flat sedan and Lucas Beauchamp (Hernandez) is led out in cuffs. The accused is stoic and inexpressive. But that one kid (Jarman) he fixates on in a crowd of angry white men gets his attention. He wants to see the Chick’s uncle.

That would be the boy’s Uncle John (Brian James), an arrogant, cynical lawyer who wants nothing to do with this case, and makes that plain over Sunday dinner with the family. That’s one reason Chick takes his sweet time passing on Beauchamp’s message. Another is to underscore a point about how even the justice and fair play white folks in town are in no hurry to “save” this Negro. The murder victim might have been a redneck bully. But he was white. Beauchamp’s fate is sealed.

Even lawyer Stevens is resigned to the lynching to come. “Won’t be their first,” he notes, firing up his pipe as if he has all the time in the world.

The boy has history with the Negro, an awkard encounter (seen in flashback) that was uneasy because the boy didn’t know what to make of a proud, self-assured man who treated him as what he was, a boy, and not the “white boy” who expected and received deference from the other Black people he’s met.

Something about that meeting and their “exchange” has Chick feeling indebted to Beauchamp, or at least determined to get a humble “thank you” from him. That’s why he takes Beauchamp’s next and most unbelievable request to heart. With the help of a household servant (Elzie Emmanuel) and a little old lady (Elizabeth Patterson) determined to ensure the sheriff does the right thing, Chick sets out for the fresh grave containing the victim, far outside of town.

Do-nothing lawyer be damned, they’re going to look for what caliber bullet killed Vinson Gowrie.