Movie Nation

There’s something about the world’s first detective novelist that makes writers and filmmakers envision him as a gentleman sleuth.

A courtly, erudite romantic with morbid streak and a Virginia drawl, Edgar Allan Poe must have been one of the inspirations for “Glass Onion” peeler Benoit Blanc. That Poe himself is on the case in the period pieces “The Raven” and last summer’s “Raven’s Hollow,” a writer solving a mystery that directly implicates him, there is no doubt. That’s also the case in Louis Bayard’s novel “The Pale Blue Eye,” which shares its Poe-as-a-West-Point-cadet setting with “Raven’s Hollow,” on the page and now on the screen.

There could not be more compelling subject for a Virginia filmmaker like Scott Cooper to lure his “Hostiles” star Christian Bale to than Poe and a macabre murder mystery bathed in gloom, snow and unstinting period detail.

Bale stars as Augustus Landor, a retired New York police constable whose last years of highlands solitude are interrupted by a summons from the nearby U.S. Military Academy. A cadet has died by hanging, and the captain (Simon McBurney) sent to fetch Landor, and the school’s commanding officer Colonel Thayer (Timothy Spall) figure they could use the help of an investigator, expert code breaker and master of “gloveless interrogation” (no torture) to figure out what’s happened.

“Discretion” is called for. And sobriety. Yes, they’ve heard all about the widowed Landor, whose only daughter disappeared as well. If this matter isn’t tidied up, this still-new school could be defunded and shut down, Col. Thayer, the superintendent frets. So “no drinking” on the job.

Landor finds himself examining the body, correcting the school physician (Toby Jones), questioning witnesses, looking for clues and then abruptly offered help by this quirky uniformed weirdo with the big forehead and floridly poetic speech.

“It is incumbent upon me and the honor of this institution to share some of the conclusions which I have reached.”

Yes, we know who this oddball cadet is before Landor figures that out. It’s the already-published poet, drinking and gambling University of Virginia drop-out and future father of detective fiction Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps he (Harry Melling) can be of some assistance?

As the dead man had his heart carved out, as mutilated animals have been found nearby and as a second cadet turns up hanged, Landor is going to need someone inside the institution to break down clues and sift through suspects.

It isn’t the black and white cinematography that gives away the fact that “Lenny,” Bob Fosse’s film about the life, career and decline of comedian Lenny Bruce, is of a different era. It’s the patience.

This 1974 film, based on a stage play by Julian Barry (who adapted it for the screen), almost does a disservice to one of the most influential stand-up comics of all time simply by taking forever to get going.

But cinema was a rarified entertainment back then. You couldn’t watch a movie, distracted by commercials or text messages on the cell phone or tablet you might now be watching it on. You had to sit in the dark and watch this dark movie slowly unfold. You had to pay attention.

“Lenny” introduces Bruce — real name Leonard Schneider — near the end of his career, in his bearded, hipster deep dives into the veneer of American culture, censorship and his own persecution for violating “decency” standards with the words he used in his act.

The structure portrays Lenny’s ex-stripper ex-wife (Valerie Perrine), his retired-comic mother (Jan Miner) and his agent (Stanley Beck) being interviewed about him, intercut with snippets of his act, at the end and at the very beginning of his stand-up life.

The long flashbacks that give us more of his story come later. But the film opens when Bruce had ceased being funny, literally reading his obscenity trial transcripts in his last years, and showing us what a terrible, derivative, worn-out-joke hack he was in his early days, following his mother’s career path into the Borscht Belt resorts and venues, the smoky strip clubs and and dives of the early 1950s.

The viewer can be tricked into thinking “What’s the big deal? This “nepo baby” wasn’t the least bit funny.” The film, shot in grainy, dark black and piercing white as an aesthetic choice, is arresting right from the start. Bruce, played by Dustin Hoffman in what could be his finest performance, is onstage in tiny pools of light amidst the inky darkness and general silence (there’s no laughter from the audiences), hunting for laughs or at least pithy observations.

But the lack of laughs and monochromatic film stock set a tone. This is a history lesson. This will document a performer and thinker who transcended punchlines and shtick and talked about sex, race, violence and the grim unspoken truths of The American Experience and The American Way. Even when Bruce hits his stride, becomes the hot and happening stand-up embraced by “the in-crowd, he’s going to be pointing his humor at the maladjusted psyche and arrested development of the land of his birth.

“Now dig,” he’d say, before zeroing in on some insight about “uptight” America’s prudishness about sex, sex acts, venereal disease, the Kennedy Assassination or racism. Our biggest hang-up, he said then in an opinion that resonates today, is our desire to “not start talking about it.”

He was the first mainstream comic to get into “doing it,” “the dirtiest thing we could do to each other.” Bruce was the original “f-bomber,” talking casually in a big city street argot that would shock “Ed Sullivan Show” America, even in San Francisco, where his act really found its improvisational groove and its most appreciative audience.

“What is dirty and what is clean?” he’d ask. And then he’d open up the Life Magazine issue that broke down the frame-by-frame analysis of The Zapruder Film on declare this these were the real “dirty pictures,” the gruesome violence of the assassination of President Kennedy captured on a home movie camera. And that would lead him into the country’s way of sanitizing its myths and hiding the truth.

No, the shocked Jacqueline Kennedy wasn’t trying to retrieve part of her husband’s head that had been shot off, the way “history” remembers it. She was “fleeing” a car being targeted by a murderous sniper.

The film’s most breathtaking stand-up sequence is Bruce going off on race by asking if there were any Black members of the audience. He used the N-word to make that query, and you could hear a pin drop. He singles out people here and there, and starts his head-count, identifying this Jewish patron by an ethnic slur and that Italian, Hispanic or Irish one similarly. He basically excuses generations of comics who followed by insisting that banning such utterances from the culture wouldn’t change hearts and minds. Only the appropriation and overuse of them would defang the slurs and rob them of their power.

That still hasn’t quite come to pass.

It can sometimes seem that all the “let’s throw some money at” productions that Netflix streamed as feature films over the past year are just one interminable and awful movie. Maybe you figured that out on your own. Me? I had to restart my Netflix account for the holidays (about to shut this pipeline off for a few months again) and cram scores of them into a short period of time to have this epiphany.

Queen Latifah is the producer and star of “End of the Road,” and thus the figure Netflix “threw a lot of money at” in this case. She and her team — director Millicent Shelton, who has directed a lot of episodic TV, including one “Equalizer” outing — cooked up the most generic family-hunted-by-drug-lord odyssey ever.

Every piece of road, every location, every character in it — villain or heroine or just unpleasant bystander — is as generic and over-familiar as the plot of this dog. It’s barely 90 minutes long and feels “Blonde/Bardo” length.

It doesn’t sprint, run or even walk out of the gate. It crawls. And it crawls and crawls until we hit a couple of decent action beats on our way to a laugh-out-loud-bad finale.

I think co-star Ludacris had the right idea for all this. He’s barely awake, first scene to last. His line readings couldn’t have been sleepier unless we actually saw him stifle the yawn that plainly preceded every “Aaaaaannd ACTION” command from behind the camera. It’ was never going to be a very good movie. Ludacris gives away how bad it will get by his lack of commitment and somnambulant stoner energy.

Latifah plays a widow who has gone broke trying to keep the family intact after her husband’s death. We meet Brenda as she finishes packing the house and rousts her lovesick teen daughter (Mychala Lee) and grieving son (Shaun Dixon) up and into the car.

Her brother Reggie (Ludacris) is coming along for the three day drive to Houston. He has to be reminded “no drugs and no weed for the entire trip.” It’s like that.

Wouldn’t you know it, they’re dust-deep in Arizona when they have their first rednecks in a pickup encounter. That’s merely a prelude to the murder they overhear at the dive motel they stay in that night.

These scenes establish that Mom and Reggie understand the rural racism they’re driving through. But Mom is willing to “apologize” and walk away from white male provocations, something she learned from her late Army Col. father. Short-tempered Reggie never learned that lesson, although the weed has definitely mellowed him out, if impaired his decision making. We also hear how Dad taught her and Reggie how to hunt, because foreshadowing should always be this obvious.

That foreshadowing will come in handy when they find themselves hunted by the drug gang of Mr. Cross, “the boss” who had a hand in the motel room murder next door. They’re questioned by the police, and then hounded across country as this Cross gang tries to track down some missing drug money.

The best selling point of “Happy FKN Sunshine,” a “let’s start a metal band” dramedy, is that the title makes it sound British, or better yet Irish.

But no. It’s Canadian, set and shot in Ontario. They swear up there in the Land of Nice, too. So no going on aboot spilt milk, eh?

It’s a scruffy little dramedy that borrows from its better predecessors. There’s more than a little of Alan Parker’s rollicking film of Roddy Doyle’s “The Commitments” in it. But the tropes of this genre are so well-worn it’s pointless dwelling on those connections.

What matters more is that it’s dark and funny, but not quite funny enough. It’s musical, but not so musical that you think “God I hope they make it,” based on the tunes and performances we see here.

And it should be touching, even though it never is.

An Ontario mill town (North Bay was the filming location) hits the wall when its local mill goes on strike. Maybe that’s not the best time for a bunch of high school kids to upgrade their instruments and try to make it as a band.

But all it takes is hearing sensitive Will (Matt Close) turned down by their on-strike dad (Lewis Hodgson) and fretful mom (Carrie Schiffler) for big sister Ronnie (Mattea Brotherton) to buy her sibling a Flying Vee knockoff from the local music and pawn shop.

Ronnie has means of her own. She can tell her parents she works at a landscaping business, and maybe they believe it. Ronnie’s dealing drugs, and Will can do her “a favor” or two, and she’ll get to be the band’s manager on the bargain.

You can guess what the “favor” will entail. But the band name ever-rebelling Ronnie puts out there?

“Happy FKN Sunshine,” only without the “FKN” abbreviation.

With hotheaded lead singer Vince (Connor Rueter) and cute drummer River (Maxime Lauzon), they’re ready for stardom. But as the film’s “Chapter One” tips us, they’re still one brick shy of a load.

“Chapter One: Who the f— Plays Bass in Town?”

That’s how how they end up with local loudmouth and BS artist “Artie,” an annoying pathological liar who is always regaling anyone stupid enough to pause and listen about who he “jammed” with this weekend, or which infamous auto-part-named rocker gave him a BJ last weekend.

Will is as shocked as we are when Artie (Dana Hodgson) turned out to be “unfortunately REALLY good at bass.”

Throw in Artie’s aged Irish-accented music industry vet “Fast Eddie” (Ted Dykstra), the one who sold most of them their instruments, and they’ve got a ticket to ride, or at least rehearse until they’re ready to push their social media numbers up with a live gig.

The child actor stars of “Nightbooks” really “sell” the frights in this Goosebumpy tale of terror. There’s quite a bit of screaming and frantic, gasping weeping at their plight and fear that they won’t survive this predicament or that ordeal.

The effects are decent, the frame for the plot an “Arabian Nights” sort of “Tell me a scar story or die” construction, and the entire enterprise takes on a bookish quality. Books are where the stories are preserved. Books are where the clues lie. Books are how knowledge is passed from one generation of imprisoned kids to the next.

But “Nightbooks” never manages anything that would frighten anyone over the age of 10. It never sheds its “terror with training wheels on” veneer, and simply isn’t entertaining enough to overcome that, the way “Goosebumps” did, on the page and sometimes on the screen.

Considering they had the good sense to cast Krysten Ritter (Marvel TV’s “Jessica Jones”) as the villainous witch, that’s a letdown that’s not just disappointing, it’s surprisingly so.

A “horror obsessed” tween (Winslow Fegley, featured in “Come Play”) storms out of his family’s apartment on his dark and stormy birthday night. He is bound for the basement, determined to toss all his hand-written tales of terror into the furnace. “GARBAGE!” But the elevator leaves him on the wrong floor, in which every empty apartment has its door open and “The Lost Boys” playing on TV. Alex stops, peeks at his favorite scene, takes a bite of pumpkin pie, and wakes up imprisoned by a witch.

Natacha (Ritter) is a demanding she-devil whose hair changes color and whose temper does not improve with every appearance. She orders him to tell her a scary story every night. He will stay in this prison-apartment, subsisting on peanut butter, kept on task and watched-over by her hairless cat, Lenore, who turns invisible at will.

Natacha listens to each tale and sneers, corrects, critiques and — very rarely — encourages his efforts.

We nod our heads in agreement as Natacha blurts out “Stupid!” and “Amateur” and “ODIOUS, a good word.”

The stories are related to us in Alex-narrated voice-over, seen by us as performed by actors in horror makeup on stylized, simple (digital) cut-out sets suitable more for children’s theater than a major motion picture.

Yes, that’s by design, a childish and clever aesthetic choice. But no, the stories — titled “The Playground,” “The Bindweed,” “The Cuckoo Clock,” etc. — aren’t scary or even interesting.

If Alex is to be held here until he becomes the next Stephen King, he’d better learn to shave. It’s going to be a while.

“Every good story hints at truth,” Natacha offers, constructively.

But with his fellow hostage, the smart and cynical Ethiopian-American tween Yasmin (Lidya Jewett of TV’s “Good Girls”) sentenced to cook for the witch (?), Alex schemes and dreams of escape from the vast apartment with no front door. She’s been there longer, and between them, and hints they find in the dust-encrusted library, they might develop a plan.

I enjoyed the film that the new Tom Hanks cranky old man comedy is based on, “A Man Called Ove.” It came out in 2015, and my review of it is linked here.

My only concern is that sweet ol’ Ton Hanks won’t be surely enough. Remember, he was the sweetest hitman in cinema history in “Road to Perdition.”

“Ove” became “Otto” and opens in most of the country Jan. 6, this coming Friday.

If you’re a film buff, you should have seen it already.

Let’s face it, film going is devolving into spectacles aimed only at comic book fanatics or horror aficionados.

Movies about cinema are a high profile gasp at providing an alternative this awards season. Babylon,” ” Fabelmans” and “Empire of Light” are shots in the dark at keeping a broader audience engaged and connected to higher minded cinematic storytelling.

And nobody is going to see them.

Can you believe “Maverick” and “Avatar” have Oscar buzz?

Love it or hate it, “Babylon” has real intellectual ambition.

New Year’s resolution number, go see it if you haven’t, while we still have a choice.

Tyler Perry turns his melodramatic eye on the recent past for his latest, a jazz-and-blues in 1940s Georgia tale titled “A Jazzman’s Blues.”

It’s about race relations under Jim Crow, when miscegenation was a multi-syllable word even the trashiest rednecks could pronounce, when “passing” for white had its perils and when jazz got serious about integration, at least in the cities of the north and west.

Perry’s cooked-up a soapy, sad story of a love-that-could-never-be framed within a little old lady’s efforts to get justice for a murder that happened 40 years before the story’s fictive present — 1987. It’s a musically, dramatically and cinematically flat affair, as Perry leans on the hoary device of having old, exposition-filled love letters read in voice-over, makes little effort hide the fate of our murder victim, whose death isn’t “investigated” at all, and tries to pass off a middling singer as an emerging big band star.

Elderly Hattie Mae (Amirah Vann) picks the right time to hit up lawyer Johnathan Dupree (Kario Marcel) to dig into this case, she figures. He’s running for Congress, and he’s a white candidate trying to prove he’s “not a racist” in rural Hopewell County, where enough Black votes could be the difference come November of 1988.

Her “evidence” about this murder is what she remembers, but more importantly, the letters of the dead man, her son.

Bayou (Joshua Boone) was a sensitive sort, growing up in the Mississippi Delta, dismissed as useless and stupid by his bluesman Dad (J. Roger Mitchell), bullied by his taller, more manly trumpet-playing brother Willie Earl (Austin Scott).

But in those letters, the once-illiterate Bayou lets us hear how he met and fell in love with a fellow outcast, the fair-skinned Leanne (Solea Pfeiffer), nicknamed “Bucket” because her mother dumped her there to be raised by her cantankerous father.

Leanne taught him to read, shared his feelings and was yanked away — as a teen — when the mother who didn’t want to raise her (Lana Young) — showed up to intervene and prevent her Leanne from limiting her life with some poor country boy.

Bayou never lost faith, never stopped writing, even though his letters were intercepted by Leanne’s mother. He and his mother moved to Georgia. He did his time in the Army, came home and started singing in his mother’s juke joint, and pined for his lost love until the day she returned — married to a white man (Brent Antonello), brother to the racist sheriff (Brad Benedict), passing for white herself.

When Bayou’s prodigal brother returns, he has a Jewish emigre and would-be agent (Ryan Eggold) with him. That means Bayou might graduate from singing “Let the Good Times Roll” at his mama’s place, if he can just get discovered.

Yes, the tropes and cliches line up at the door for this pokey, corny and old-fashioned potboiler.

The cast, made up of lesser-knowns and unknowns, doesn’t manage to make most of the characters interesting or the situations that engaging.

The music’s OK, but all over the place in terms of quality. Our “new star waiting to be discovered” couldn’t have won a talent show in any town big enough to be worth mentioning, much less succeeded at a major Chicago club’s showcase.

The entire affair plays out like a middling TV movie, with the “murder” not ever investigated, simply explained via a two hour back story that is the film’s “plot.” Perry barely wrestles with the terror of trying to pass for white in the rural Deep South and brushes by other can’t-miss sources for drama just to keep this drifting movie moving.

There’s no suspense, little that’s thrilling or that justifies any investment in this dawdling melodrama with music. At least Netflix’s accountants are happy. This didn’t cost “White Noise” or “Slumberland” money. But expect them to ask “Madea” to make an appearance next time, if they’re staying in the Tyler Perry business.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Joshua Boone, Amirah Vann, Solea Pfeiffer. Austin Scott, Ryan Eggold and Brad Benedict.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tyler Perry. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:07

Here’s a featurette for the killer doll movie that emphasizes the technology “that’s already here” that could make this “Twilight Zone” nightmare

Jan 6, “M3GAN” becomes the first major release of the new year, and I’m guessing…the first hit.

Late March, a more modestly–budgeted musical bio-pic comes our way.

We recognize the ’70s disco and glam rock era icons Casablanca Records signed and rode to glory. The cast of the picture? Aside from Michelle Monaghan and Dan Fogler? Maybe no (Jason Isaacs is also in it).