Movie Nation

A big opening night and burly holiday Friday numbers are pointing to another Marvel blockbuster, this one good enough to make cinema owners remember pre COVID bottom lines.

Huge HUGE opening. Deadline.com is saying $190 million in North America is within reach.

Nothing else in the top ten matters, no overseas market where this is opening expects it to underperform –$300 million worldwide by midnight Sunday.

It may not turn out to be the culture shifting phenomenon that “Black Panther” was, but business is business. No time to mourn while there’s money to be made, and all that.

That kind of BO could underwrite a lot of real Chadwick Boseman murals, all over.

I’ll update this Sunday as more data is released.

Re-edited for a “director’s cut” or not, 1997’s “Going all the Way” is best appreciated as an all-star-from-before-they-were-big-stars artifact of ’90s cinema. It’s a post-Korean War period piece with a couple of future Oscar winners — Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz — rising starlet Rose McGowan and damned if that isn’t baby-faced Nick Offerman there as one of the jocks that Affleck’s character hung out with back in the day.

It’s fun seeing one and all in the bloom of youth, and catching a couple of Oscar nominees — Lesley Anne Warren and the late Jill Clayburgh — going at it as mothers of returning soldiers with competing ideas of who they should be and who should be their friends in the only film these two would make together.

Based on a seminal novel by Dan Wakefield, who wrote the screenplay, “Going All the Way” is a little “Catcher in the Rye,” a bit of “Breaking Away” (also set in Indiana, with a swimmin’ at the quarry scene) and a whole lot of Deep Thoughts and homoerotic subtext mixed in with a kind of “Best Years of Our Lives” disillusionment with coming home “a changed man.”

The film came out to indifferent reviews in 1997, and I can’t recall ever seeing it or whether it had the insipid/meant to be ironic voice-over narration hanging over its 103 minutes.

“Sonny felt weirdly removed from what was going on,” we can plainly see and and yet an unnamed narrator adds redundantly.

If that was added for this “50 minutes of never-seen footage” re-edit by director Mark Pellington (“Arlington Road,” “The Last Word,” “The Mothman Prophecies”), that uh, didn’t help.

And judging from this trudging, indulgent exercise in navel-gazing, I’d say the last thing it needed to be was 20+ minutes longer. There is no pace at all to this re-edit. Artful montages, fever dreams of our hero (Jeremy Davies, the kid GI “translator” of “Saving Private Ryan”) imagining this or that direction his life might take after serving his country, lots of establishing shots of 1950s Midwestern life cluttered with random images of traffic lights, borrowing tropes from better films and a stultifying self-seriousness burden a movie whose 1970 source novel had lots of ironic laughs.

Well, there is a fight/ that plays as a half speed rehearsal version and not a final take. I laughed at the incompetence of that.

Davies and Affleck play two GIs who connect on the train home to Indianapolis. “Gunner” (Affleck), the handsome, popular ex-jock is the one who recognizes “Sonny,” the classmate nobody knew who used to photograph all Gunner’s big games. Gunner reaches out, makes grand assumptions about how smart, philosophical and sage Sonny must have been to “stand back and observe” all the nonsense all the popular kids were obsessed with back then.

Sonny, whose Korean War was spent in military PR in Kansas, doesn’t correct Gunner, but we can guess that the popular jock is WAY overstating the depth of the nebbish opposite him. Gunner’s life was changed by visits to Japan, including one spent recovering from a war wound. His horizons expanded. Sonny? That hasn’t happened to him, yet. But he does feel a certain unease at his future.

And now that they’re “Back Home Again in Indiana,” Gunner makes Sonny his new drinking buddy and wingman.

As Sonny struggles to work up anything enthusiasm for his beautiful and adoring high school girlfriend (Amy Locane), skirt-chasing Gunner drags him out to museums, bars and and dances and fills his ears with the sounds of zen — “riddles” delivered in boorish monologues about Japan.

The jocks may want to bask in Gunner’s company once more, but he’s higher-minded than that. And all Sonny can do is fend off the babying his church lady mother (Clayburgh) still insists on and fret over just how much Gunner likes him for himself, or if Gunner’s figuring out the empty shell Sonny’s always been.

The one actually funny episode of their bromance is when Gunner grows a beard, and even his flirty floozy of a mom (Warren, as another “Victor/Victoria” vamp) wonders if he’s become a “communist” and if this nerdy photographer is the reason that happened.

Offerman plays one of the jocks who insists this “unclean” bearded weirdo he used to know should not be allowed in the country club pool. It’s a masterful condensation of 1950s conformity, bigotry and hysteria and it plays.

You can’t say that about much of the rest of the film. Longer does not mean “clearer” or more concise, more immersive or more of anything except scenes that reveal how much Affleck has grown as an actor since then and why Davies — last seen in “The Black Phone” — never became much of a star.

Weisz shimmers off the screen as an exotic Jewish classmate whom Gunner’s mom and the local anti-Semites don’t approve of, and McGowan sizzles, probably the last time one could see her in this bombshell light before a sexual assault unleashed personal demons that dog her and shape her psyche and reputation to this day.

Pellington? This was his debut film, after getting his start in music videos. Judging by his mostly colorless (I liked “Arlington Road,” didn’t hate “The Last Word”) subsequent output, this isn’t a movie “ruined” by a studio or a writer with final cut or anything of the sort. He made it as good as he could manage in 1997. And taking another shot at it 25 years later doesn’t improve it.

But see it for the glories of young stars about to take over Hollywood. Because it’s hard to figure out another reason to get all the way through this version of “Going All the Way.”

Rating: R, sex, nudity, alcohol abuse, some violence, profanity

Cast: Jeremy Davies, Ben Affleck, Amy Locane, Jill Clayburgh, Rachel Weisz, Rose McGowan, Nick Offerman and Lesley Anne Warren

Credits: Directed by Mark Pellington, scripted by Dan Wakefield, based on his novel. An Oscilloscope Labs re-release.

Running time: 2:06

Long before there was “mumblecore,” the sudden discovery that movies could be about conversation and almost nothing else, there was the theatrical “two hander.”

Plays like “Night, Mother” and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” and “True West” and “Waiting for Godot” and “Same Time Next Year” are the true antecedents of a film like “Dylan & Zoey,” a talking, downbeat two-hander about two childhood friends reuniting, discussing their lives and confessing their “issues.”

It’s not bad, as any film grappling with adult subjects and trauma automatically has a certain license and indulgence from the viewer. There’s an acting highlight or two.

If it fails — and it does– that falls on the depressing familiarity of those “issues” and performances that don’t elevate the tragic material often enough to wholly engage us. The pathos is subdued. The humor, what attempts there are at it, barely merits a smile. The whole plays as flat, never quite hitting a high, never remotely touching bottom.

Dylan, played by co-writer Blake Scott Lewis, is a writer and cartoonist working in LA. Zoey (Claudia Doumit) is the old friend who keeps photos of their good times together and long history on her phone, but has a hard time calling him up to let her know she’s in town.

They haven’t quite achieved “‘Happy birthday’ text message” separation, he notes. But their connection is long dormant. We wonder if her “here for a wedding” story is true. We wonder what the nature of their relationship was. We wonder what old wounds are about to be opened.

But we don’t wonder long. As their chat turns to chatter we pick up on his “28 year old virgin” status, which eliminates the thought they might have been a couple. And the moment he says “I’m no longer Catholic” we guess why that might be. That turns out to be one of the film’s few attempted dark jokes.

“I was an altar boy for six years. Why not me?”

No, he wasn’t molested in church. That happened closer to home.

And lest we think the sexy, sexual and sexually blunt Zoey is just here for the empathy, we learn about her rape, which of course Dylan knows all about.

Lewis, co-writing with director Matt Sauer, puts the two friends in a day and night-long conversation, sends the two out to a club and comes to conclusions that any sentient viewer will see coming a mile off.

The shared trauma wasn’t what connected them, which might have been interesting. As hers came much later, that moves that subtext into the realm of scripted “hook” or “gimmick.”

Doumit — of TV’s “The Boys” — has an exotic Lake Bell vibe about her, and scores when Zoey picks up Dylan’s ukulele and sings an adorable self-analytical tune that uses the styles of famous painters to describe her self-criticism, self-worth and state of mind. She doesn’t have enough to play to make this character interesting. A bit coarse, a little vulgar, maybe over-compensating due to her trauma, but maybe not.

Lewis, an actor, writer and director with TV credits for series I’ve never heard of (“In the Moment” aired or streamed where?) has written himself a character with a big trauma scarring his psyche, but plays the guy so blandly it’s hard to make the jump from sympathy to empathy.

Two-handers became popular “Let’s create work for ourselves” film projects during the pandemic, and some of those (“7 Days” for instance) turned out great. This has that a couple of bar/nightclub scenes, which suggest it could have been made late in the lockdown.

It’s sensitive enough. But with or without those lockdown confines, there just isn’t enough of a story arc to engage us, not enough going on and going wrong to make their stories 80 minutes worth of compelling.

Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Blake Scott Lewis, Claudia Doumit

Credits: Directed by Matt Sauter, scripted by Matt Sauter and Blake Scott Lewis. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:22

Perhaps I was too hasty to write off Renaults. Mais oui?

It’s also pretty obvious France has found its answer to Jason Statham. His name’s Alban Lenoir. Did you see “Lost Bullet?” Yeah. That putain de mère, right there.

I knew ten minutes into its sequel that I was going to break my years-in-newspapering rule to never park profanity in a review. But Gawd DAMN. Have you seen this “Lost Bullet 2” on the Netflix?

It picks up the action right after — and then a year and a half after — our rogue cop Lino (Lenoir) recovers from the near-death-experience that was the case that got his brother killed in the original film — drug smuggling across the Spanish border. Lino’s taken advantage of France’s civilized leave-from-work rules to heal his wounds, move into his car and go a little crazy.

But he’s hellbent on protecting his brother’s widow, Stella (Anne Serra) from the mob that murdered his sibling.

Four bad guys break into her house. There’s no time to call the working police. Lino barges in and proceeds to pummel and torture one of them — bones snapping, the works — in front of two others who say nothing but who HAVE to be thinking, “Damn I did not sign UP for this!” With every savage injury, Lino stares down the other two, daring them to stop him, giving them every chance to do what any sane thug would do.

RUN.

But they never do.

Writer-director Guillaume Pierret doesn’t change things up much from the first film, going just a little — ok a LOT — over the top in Lino’s obsession with revenge, and his “modifications” to his battering-ram-armed Renault 21 Eurobox.

What our writer-director serves up is near non-stop action, adhering to a couple of hard and true action film truths.

Number one, fistfights and no-holds-barred brawls are better than shootouts, every time. Shoot outs are for creaky old action stars who have lost their fastball.

Truth number two, why crash ten Renaults when France is full of them? Why not 100?

“Lost Bullet 2: Back for More” relentlessly serves up a brutal fight, then a pulse-pounding chase, then another fight, another chase and on and on.

It is pure action mayhem and it is a breathless, jaw-dropping hoot.

Lino is still trying to get to the mastermind who killed his brother. His former partner and immediate superior Julia (Stéfi Celma) isn’t hearing it. Her boss (Pascale Arbillot) won’t have it.

There must be dirty cops involved. And the mob has its own killers on the case. Lino thinks this goon Marco (Sébastien Lalanne) can either lead him to the Big Cheese, or simply accept his just deserts — getting beaten to death.

Shot in the arid South of France near the Spanish frontier, Pierret finds narrow roads for chases, scary spots for road blocks and whole sixpacks of Renaults — cop cars, SUVs, etc. — to blow up.

Stripping the plot down to such basics isn’t for everyone. But these are fights with real violence and obvious bodily consequences, car crashes that are as outlandish and physics-defying as anything you’ll see in your average comic book movie.

There’s nothing obviously digital going on here, kids. The French have long been aces when it comes to car chases.

If you like your fights righteously brutal and head-buttingly realistic and your car chases Vin Diesel free, this is the thriller for you.

You don’t have to see the first film to follow the second, because honestly, plot points went right out of my head right after watching “Balle perdue,” as they titled it in France. But if you haven’t, check out “Perdue” one, take a while to catch your breath, and dive straight into “2.” There’s nothing like’em on Netflix.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, and lots of it

Cast: Alban Lenoir, Stéfi Celma, Sébastien Lalanne, Diego Martín, Anne Serra, Pascale Arbillot

Credits: Scripted and directed by Guillaume Pierret. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

Life in the city wasn’t working for them, so the Hayes family pulled up stakes and moved to “the mountain.”

Here, there’s no “job” for mom or dad, no bus ride to school for their two daughters.

“We make the rules, now,” is Dad’s explanation and their creed.

Sister Mary is young enough to roll with it all. But tweenage Riley is taking this all in, accepting that they’re “pioneers” until she starts to understand what she doesn’t understand, acting out until she figures it out.

“Manifest West” is an engrossing, surprisingly serious portrait of a family in crisis. Whatever the Hayes clan hoped to get from abandoning the city, going “off the grid,” depending on themselves and their fellow grid-shedding neighbors, Riley, played by Lexy Kolker in a breakout performance, could be the one who figures it all out.

This wasn’t a conscious, measured choice. It was a Hail Mary pass, a move made out of desperation. Whatever self-sufficient dreams Dad — played by Milo Gibson in perhaps his best performance yet — had, he’s brought them there because he didn’t know what else to do.

Mom (Annet Mahendru of “The Walking Dead”) isn’t well. And whatever everybody else brought into the woods with them, that isn’t changing her condition or the strength of the single thread holding this family together.

Co-writers/directors Joe Dietsch and Louie Gibson gave us the “Most Dangerous Game” variation “Happy Hunting,” and graduate from the primal and visceral to something subtler and more sophisticated with this thriller with a hint of “Leave No Trace” about it.

The Hayes find themselves in a community of supposed like-thinkers. But Riley sees what we see — free range kids lashing out at this lifestyle, attitudes towards guns and authority that range from adult to infantile — and a world that tests the worthy and prepared, and the medicated, cityfied, unschooled and stressed equally.

Movies with a mental illness subtext always have a glib grasp of their malady, but our writer-director team keep that in the background, minimizing this common shortcoming.

Milo Gibson, brother of co-director Louie — both of them sons of Oscar-winner Mel Gibson — shows us the fears of a man out of his element, struggling to keep it together but increasingly frazzled and paranoid about his role as family provider and protector.

Mahendru manages a subtle enough version of wife Alice’s mental struggles. Michael Cudlitz plays a neighbor who reminds us that not everyone who uses firearms is a nut, and allows us to underestimate him with a performance of sober depth.

But young Kolker, of TV’s “Shooter” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” is our guide into the psyche of a tween trying to turn into a teen amongst the other kids in this world. Riley makes her own mistakes, flunks her own tests, comes to her own conclusions and might very well have her own mental issues thanks to the consequences of her family’s move, her father’s actions and her own response to them. And Kolker lets us see it all, and read just what is sinking in, what her next wrong move might be with us worried for her all along the way.

Rating: unrated, violence, teen drinking, profanity

Cast: Milo Gibson, Lexy Kolker, Annet Mahendru and Michael Cudlitz

Credits: Scripted and directed by Joe Dietsch and Louie Gibson A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:31

People keep messing with John Wick. He keeps killing them off.

If they haven’t learned by March 24, they never will.

You can hand it to director James Gray, who gave us “The Immigrant,” “Ad Astra” and “The Yards,” for presenting a portrait of a childhood which he himself seemed to make “troubled.”

His autobiographical “Armageddon Time” will prove to be an interesting contrast to Steven Spielberg’s more star-crossed “Fabelmans” childhood. Mainly because the hero is a self-absorbed, distracted jerk who has to go through some things to have a prayer of being a better person.

But it’s an oddly unaffecting odyssey, and that’s only partly due to its obnoxious sixth grade aspiring artist/protagonist Paul Graff, played by Michael Banks Repeta.

There’s messaging about the discrimination and escape-from-death his family faced in Europe — convoluted, disorganized recollections delivered with warmth or vehemence by Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins as the kid’s doting grandpa. But the overall feel of the film is disconnection and distance.

Set in 1980, Gray goes out of his way to show these New York Jews mocking Reagan and shaking their heads over the direction the country takes in electing him. Members of the Trump family are involved in the private school young Paul is shipped off to when his disinterest, attempts at public classroom comedy and carrying on with his “held back” Black classmate James (Jaylin Webb, quite good) cause him to fail.

“Armageddon” plays like a semi-organized collection of anecdotes, not really pointing towards an epiphany. It’s a little “Basketball Diaries,” a smidge of “The Graduate” and a heaping helping of Barry Levinson’s far more sentimentalized childhood reverie “Avalon,” which was also built around lots of extended family dinners. Here, those are full of bickering, joking and acting out.

Paul is picked on by his older brother (Ryan Sell), indulged by the mother (Anne Hathaway, quite good) who has him in public school for principled and selfish reasons. She’s works, is president of the PTA, and wants to run for school board. Paul’s dad (Jeremy Strong), an appliance repairman, runs hot to cold. He’s got finite limits to just how much nonsense he’s going to put up with from his kids.

Paul refers to his family as “rich” to his classmates. They’re not. He’s a finicky eater, and leaps from the table in the middle of a family dinner he’s rejected to call in an order of Chinese dumplings over his mother’s money complaints and his father’s rising ire that ends up exploding in front of the whole family.

The film can feel like an attempt at atonement by its writer/director. If he was like this as a kid, that’s an interesting shame to carry around with you.

All Paul wants to do is draw. Caricaturing his new teacher, Mr. Turkeltaub, as a turkey, may get a laugh. But that’s what puts him in the “problem” category with his older classmate James.

Next thing we know, they’re ducking out of a class trip to the Guggenheim — where Paul is quite taken with the Kandinskys — to cruise the subway.

Paul picks up on something about James. He’s singled-out in class for abuse by a teacher who has lost interest in helping him, perhaps out of racism. Paul identifies with this, and his grandfather’s lessons about the pogroms grandma fled and the discrimination he didn’t escape when they left Europe. The kid kind of, sort of, takes his first steps towards being a “mensch.”

There’s not a lot that’s novel in these recollections. Even his beats-him-with-a-belt father repeats a credo that generations of parents have tried to live up to. Dad doesn’t want his distracted, “in the clouds” kid to be “just like” him.

“I want you to be a whole lot better than me.”

We don’t need someone meant to be Trump patriarch Fred lecturing the newcomer at Forest Manor Prep that “Your respect for the uniform reflects your respect for the school,” or hear another Trump (Jessica Chastain) point out that these private scion of the (mostly) elite are destined to earn, innovate and rule everybody else.

Young Repeta manages a sort of insecure cocksureness at times. He’s not great in the part, more of a placeholder, someone to bask in everybody else’s light whenever he’s paired up with any other character.

Kids smoking a J in the boys’ room, parents quarreling over a “bad” kid, playing hooky, that one teacher who encourages you, life and death and a future destined to be ruined, Paul faces some hard truths about himself as he shows sympathy but can’t fight his indulged, destructive impulses.

Not all of “Armageddon Time” — it takes its title from Reagan selling a TV interviewer that Evangelical Right talking point about immoral “end times” — is recycled sentiment. But it feels certainly feels that way. And the fact that it comes out just ahead of filmmaker Spielberg’s 1960s similar but but more starry-eyed childhood remembered, “The Fabelmans” just underscores that.

Rating: R, Some Drug Use Involving Minors|profanity

Cast: Michael Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jaylin Webb, Jeremy Strong, Tovah Feldshuh and Anthony Hopkins.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Gray. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:54

“One Piece Film: Red” practically redefines the phrase “eye candy” when it comes to Japanese anime. A colorful cornucopia that pushes the shadings palette, it’s a musical fantasy action adventure so stuffed with characters that you pretty much have to be Japanese to keep all, or at least some of them straight.

That’s what happens when you adapt a manga and get 15 films out of it — visual dazzle and character clutter that leaves the narrative comically incoherent Nipponese nonsense.

I dare say fans will find pleasure in the ongoing brawl between pirates and the straw hats and in Uta the singer’s power pop, so Shakira-stylized that she mesmerizes all who hear her. I’m tempted to source the soundtrack, but I traded my MX5, and the whole point would be to listen with the top down and soak in the stares of everybody who stops next to me at a traffic light.

In this One World fantasy, there is but one government and its most important branch just might be the Navy. They’re the ones charged with contending with pirates. It may be a high tech civilization offering pop show spectacles that would put Lizzo, Taylor and Gaga to shame. But seafaring is still done under sail. Call it “sail punk” fantasy, because steam punk is ruled out.

Uta’s (Kaori Nazuka) putting on this epic show when assorted piratical factions set out to singer-nap her, mid-concert. The straw hats, including childhood chum Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka) set out to foil them. Flashbacks show their childhoods, with Uta’s craving for stardom separating them, eventually.

There are other intrigues and wrinkles in the plot, but they take a back seat to a stadium full of characters. A talking bear, what looks like Hello Kitty’s uncle and a hulking talking and tusked blue beast wearing an Elvis suit (“fat Elvis” era) stand out from the pack.

But there are others — Nami, Shanks, etc. — who are part of the story’s continuum and take on their tiny pieces of the puzzle to move this two hour chiaroscuro cartoon to its climax.

It’s all rather psychedelic in look and feel, not so much a film a newcomer to the series plumbs for meaning. Let it wash over you as spectacle that can be a tiny window to another culture.

For instance, there’s this telling line, served up after we’ve spent much of the movie watching Uta sing via a sort of boots-eye-view, looking up her skirt. She’s not alone in getting the anime lads’ attention. Nami (Akemi Okamura).

“I can almost see Nami-san’s PANTIES!”

No, that isn’t in every anime film. But don’t get me started on Miyazaki.

Film series produced by Hollywood take some pains to make each movie stand alone by giving the viewer enough information and ongoing narrative recap to let it make sense. Japanese anime isn’t bound by those rules. Whatever the simplest throughline of the thread is, “One Piece” makes just enough sense to grab hold of, but not enough to recommend to anyone not already immersed in this world.

About 15 minutes of its dazzling visuals and vapid narrative is enough. But if you doubt this distinctly Japanese art form isn’t making its mark, check out the box office of this film, and take note of the trailer for the next “Puss’in Boots” movie from Hollywood. It’s loaded with anime approaches to fights, action and over-the-top wackiness.

Rating: PG-13 for violence, suggestive material, profanity

Voice Cast (Japanese version): Kaori Nazuka, Mayumi Tanaka,
Akemi Okamura, Shûichi Ikeda, many others

Credits: Directed by Gorô Taniguchi, scripted by Tsutomu Kuroiwa, based on a manga by Eiichiro Oga. A Crunchyroll release.

Running time: 1:55

Well, tonight’s scheduled screening of “Bones & All” got canceled because the publicist who handles that title is in Miami, even though Orlando and Tampa theaters won’t be closed by a tropical storm that blows a bit and rains a bit. Guess it was just easier to cancel them statewide.

So I’ll catch up with this Focus Features under promoted James Gray “personal” movie instead.

No quiet quitting for me.