Movie Nation

The critically-acclaimed drama “Call Jane,” about the “bad old days” before abortion was legal in the US, isn’t just a movie, it’s a cause.

Now the producers of it are showing it at women’s health care clinics that provide abortions, a way of spreading the word, pushing voter turnout and reversing the incredibly unpopular and comically “defended” Supreme Court decision that threatens woman and America with a civil-rights-stripping return to something like the Dark Ages.

That’s right. Instead of addressing the assorted problems and crises facing the world today, women are having to organize in ways that the film, set in 1960s Chicago, recreates — prepping for a war over “privacy” and “settled law” that’s been in place for nearly 50 years.

Here’s a short doc on the movement that the film, starring Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Wunmi Mosaku and Kate Mara, recreates.

Scott Cooper helms this latest Tale of Poe to make it on the screen, based on a novel by Louis Bayard in which EAP is a character.

Gillian Anderson is in it. And Harry Melling co-stars as Edgar Allan Poe.

Gloriously gloomy looking, as was the no budget indie “Poe in a murder investigation” film “Raven’s Hollow,” which came out last summer.

Jan. 6 this comes to Netflix.

Interesting that Disney+ goes to the Tim Allen well again. Irrelevant to the generation that has kids, too reactionary for about two thirds of the country to avoid being “canceled.”

You seen some of the stuff he’s been “joking” about? Ugh..

Nov. 16.

A steep fall off from it’s $67 million opening didn’t kill “Black Adam.” Dwayne Johnson’s comic book crap on a cracker added $25 million on its second weekend, pushing it over $108 million overall.

The new Lionsgate release, smuggled into theaters without critics’ previews and shelved so long one of its stars died two years ago, “Prey for the Devil” did $7 million because a PG-13 horror movie is always money in the bank.

It’ll never catch “Smile,” which will hit the $100 million mark next weekend.

“Halloween Ends” has another $3.7 and clears the $60 million mark, far short of “Smile,” but good enough.

“Lyle Lyle Crocodile” is chomping away, over $32 million by the end of the weekend.

“Till” added thousands of theaters and climbed into the top ten, $2.8 million. Good film. Go see it.

“The Woman King” has one last weekend in the top ten, over a million.

“Tar” added hundreds of theaters and didn’t crack the top ten, right around $1 million.

When he thinks of his father, the memories of the distant past are in vivid color. It’s the present day that seems monochromatic, colorless and harsh.

That’s how Héctor remembers his sainted Dad in “Memories of My Father,” based on a novelistic memoir by Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince. That book (“Oblivion: A Memoir” in English) becomes a sweet, sentimental and often moving Colombian story in the hands of Spain’s greatest cinematic sentimentalist — Fernando Trueba (“Belle Epoch”).

The “present” in “Memories” is the 1980s, when Hector (Juan Pablo Urrego) is summoned home from college in Turin, Italy. Dad has been forced into retirement at his Colombian university, and he’s to be feted before he leaves.

But “home” is Medellin, a long-troubled city just then taking its place as a waypoint on South America’s cocaine pipeline, a town that taught the world the meaning of “cartel.” Young Héctor sees the tearful tribute-farewell his colleagues and students have prepared for his father, also named Héctor. And he remembers the colorful, doted-on childhood this celebrated public health crusader, college professor and social gadfly gave him.

Trueba’s younger brother David scripted “Memories,” and the star of David’s best known film in this country, “Living With Eyes Closed,” is the perfect choice to embody this man of learning, letters and principles, the one who would teach his doted-on twelve-year-old (Nicolás Reyes Cano plays the youngest Héctor) those values back in the early ’70s.

The script and the wonderful Javier Cámara create an Atticus Finch image for Dr. Héctor Abad Gómez, a man who agitates, takes direct action and lectures his public health students about the “five needs for healthy growth” (in Spanish, with English subtitles) — “Air, water, food, shelter and affection!”

It’s the latter that we see him shower on his only boy, a kid raised with one younger sister, and four older ones. The kid comes along to university to see the medical cadavers Dad uses for his lectures and watches his father in action, taking students as field workers into the poor barrios of Medellin as part of project Futures for Children.

And when little Héctor, and even older Héctor screws up, his atheist father in Catholic Colombia is the one who makes a teachable moment out of it. A pal talks the kid into breaking the window of a Jewish neighbor and yelling anti-Semitic slurs. Dad marches Héctor over for an apology and tells him the story of Kristallnacht to point out just how wrong he was.

His little sister falls into the sea, unable to swim, and Héctor doesn’t spring into action? His father is a believer in shame as a teaching tool.

Trueba creates an immersive version of the privileged life the kid grew up in, the nanny nun the kid is only supposed to pay just so much attention to, sisters with boyfriends, one sister who has learned English and guitar playing well enough to make the Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” her favorite song.

I kept thinking of Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” which despite being similar in themes, look (more washed out) and length, plays much longer due to his opaque, meandering narrative that really doesn’t go anywhere.

Trueba uses images, not voice-over narration, to tell this story, which can be patience-testing as we pick up on the layers of family life and Dad’s sense of ethics and moral responsibility for the poor in his city and his country, sympathies that get him criticized and threatened, with “Comunista” spray painted on their house.

There are bursts of violence outside their and the viewer’s field of vision, reminders of what was starting to happen in Medellin, even before the cartels amped up the violence in the early ’80s.

What young Héctor remembers are the ways his sisters chased him from the room when they wanted to talk about boys, his father taking him to grown-up movies that moved the old man but put the kid to sleep, at seeing his father cry at an impending family tragedy.

Cámara holds the film together and touches us with the moments we see him teaching important things to his son like compassion and responsibility to his son. And he lets us see Héctor Sr.’s human foibles as the kid REALLY screws up and tests a parent’s love. Dad’s belief in his son is unshakable, even if we wish he’d get a little tougher with the kid who seems to be his father’s favorite.

There’s just enough Colombian history to let us see a country’s descent into hard times, and plenty of family history pointing to a patriarch’s courage and sense of purpose in the face of that.

And in Cámara, a favorite of filmmaker Pedro Almodovar as well, we have the perfect player to embody a Colombian of virtue and accomplishment, a noble figure worthy of being celebrated in an era when so many Colombian men gained global fame on “Wanted” posters.

Rating: unrated, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Javier Cámara, Juan Pablo Urrego, Nicolás Reyes Cano, Patricia Tamayo and Kami Zea.

Credits: Directed by Fernando Trueba, scripted by David Trueba, based on a memoir by Héctor Abad Faciolince. A Cohen Media Group release.

Running time: 2:16

Remaking the Jamie Lee Curtis horror canon pays off. So taking another shot at “Terror Train,” which the Queen of Screams filmed back in 1980, isn’t a bad idea.

Not improving on a nut-with-a-knife thriller that wasn’t all that to start with is.

Our heroine, Alana, played by Robyn Alomar this time, gives us a shocked, moving and very human reaction to the site of her best friend’s corpse, making her realize this frat party chartered train ride has a murderer on board.

But there isn’t much more that recommends this listless, generally lifeless remake.

Alana’s a med student mixed up with frat boys (Matias Garrido, Corteon Moore etc) who use her to play a particularly cruel prank. When Halloween rolls around and she and her sorority sisters (Emma Elle Paterson, Romy Meltman) join in on the frat’s party on rails, that opening scene prank comes back to stab people in the ass. Or other vulnerable body parts.

There’s drinking and pranking and hooking up and on-board entertainment — Tim Rozon gives a creepy vibe to the hired magician on board. And there is “staff” utterly unequipped to deal with this “no cell service” emergency. Nadine Bhabha is a not-nearly-overwhelmed-enough porter.

Bodies pile up and the blood will flow.

Who will still be around for their final destination? Who is doing the killing? Who’s in on it? Who figures it out first?

The slack pacing and perfunctory ways the killings are staged by director Philip Gagnon mean that the only real question is “Who will care?”

Rating: TV-MA, bloody violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Robyn Alomar, Emma Elle Paterson, Matias Garrido, Nadine Bhabha, Mary Walsh, Romy Meltman, Corteon Moore, and Tim Rozon

Credits: Directed by Philip Gagnon, scripted by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin, based on the 1980 film scripted by Judith Rascoe and T.Y. Drake. A Tubi streaming release.

Running time: 1:30

Here’s an indie whimsy that just doesn’t work, or work out.

“Hello from Nowhere” sends four folks for a hiking/camping trip along the Pacific Coast Trail in the Pacific Northwest, one fellow that’s a trail veteran and three novices.

The kicker? Two of those tenderfeet are “theater types,” and not just “types,” but friends since high school who used to date, friends who never got over a childish Gilbert & Sullivan style musical their teacher wrote. They insist — ever so much — on regaling one and all with the snappy numbers from “Marmaduke & Murgatroyd, Pirates of Bredvakistan.”

Brendan (G. Gordon Brown) and the slightly less feminine Lanie (Summer Rain Menkee) may be out of their depth. But their response to veteran trailhand John (John Armour), now married to Lanie, and his Wilderness Wisdom lectures is to be always ready with a song.

“When a fairy waves his wand at you, you’re in for a surprise! When you become a rattlesnake, a swarm of tsetse flies!”

Brendan has a new lady friend (DeHah Angel) whose gaydar isn’t switched on. But she’s game to enjoy her first camping trip, despite the nails-on-a-chalkboard showtunes.

Brendan isn’t keen on the freeze-dried backpacker menu — “This is ASTRONAUT food!” But he’s smuggled wine, and his cummerbund — to make dinner more civilized.

And then they all spy the Brawny Towels spokesmodel (not literally) camping right across the lake from them. Jason (Sean Paul Ross) is roughing it in a kilt, which gets everyone’s attention, especially Brendan’s.

“I LOVE that skirt,” he says. “A little lumberback, a little drag queen” he suggests later.

Jason is out there hiking the length and breadth of North America, a true natural man. Or is he just homeless?

“A hobo? A hoboSEXUAL?”

Those are the highlights of the banter sampled here.

Writer-director Anthony V. Orkin had the germ of an idea, put flamboyant theater folk in the forest and fish-out-of-water your way to laughs — Will & Grace and Show Tunes in the Woods!

“Theater people — they need that light on them all the time.”

Instead they go for the “wild card” in a kilt threatens to upset the two couples dynamic. And even that isn’t rendered into anything tense, funny or interesting.

Rating: unrated, on the PG, PG-13 spectrum

Cast: G. Gordon Brown, Summer Rain Menkee, DeNah Angel, Sean Paul Ross and John Armour

Credits: Scripted and directed by Anthony V. Orkin. A Crunchy release.

Running time: 1:19

This thriller is an alt and engrossing example of a policeman, even with issues, knowing just what he can get away with and using that expertise for less than noble purposes.

“Unidentified” seems like a good tale with subtitles to donate to a library in rural Florida, which sheriffs rule over like law into themselves fiefdoms. The one here is especially sketchy.

Remember, donate your DVDs to libraries, bastions of knowledge even in a banana republic.

MovieNation, spreading fine cinema all across the Southeastern US, one movie, one library at a time.

I haven’t seen the Kurosawa classic about an old man taking stock of a life of quiet company man desperation, “Ikiru,” in ages.

But Bill Nighy in 1950s Britain? I may have to look up the original.

“The Return of Tanya Tucker” isn’t a documentary for people who don’t like triumphant comeback stories. If you can’t get choked-up at “I survived fame and its excesses and lived-to-tell-the-tale” stories, just mosey along.

And if you think Tanya Tucker lost that “outlaw” label and turns all soft and cuddly in her dotage in this film about her recording her first LP of new music in over a decade, you’re missing the tequila and grapefruit juice shooters she’s doing between takes, pardner.

The first image in Kathlyn Horan’s documentary is Tucker, who turned 64 Oct. 10, in close-up, her face showing all the miles of decades of hard living, her white hair splashed with pink and her voice seasoned with more whisky — or tequila — and cigarettes that one can count. That’s a promise that this upbeat and sentimental film makes about honesty, a promise that it keeps.

Maybe Horan and her on-camera alter ego, singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile won’t dig deep into the tabloid years, the “wild child” behavior and all that. But this will be a candid portrait of a singer long gone from the spotlight being yanked back into it by her biggest fans.

They would be Carlile, famous for “The Joke,” from her four-Grammy Award-winning album “By the Way, I Forgive You” and her producer, Shooter Jennings. The two of them go all fangirl/fanboy over Tucker when they meet her in the film, bringing her back into the studio for an album that would quickly be heralded as Tucker’s “comeback.”

The idea, Carlile tells “TT” and us in the Sunset Sounds studio in LA, is to give Tucker the same treatment producer Rick Rubin gave Johnny Cash for his iconic “American Recordings” LP. Do a record that gives a legend her due, in other words.

Horan’s film — she’s also done documentaries on women in prison and The Indigo Girls — blends the biography of a country music star who has been on stage, on TV and in the limelight since she was 13, with footage of pre-pandemic efforts to make the album “While I’m Still Livin'” of new Carlile-and-Co. penned songs, with one — “Bring My Flowers Now,”– co-written by Tucker and Carlile.

We see snippets of scores of TV appearances, home movies and TV interviews that recount Tucker’s rise from trailer park poverty in Wilcox, Arizona, to her “discovery” by Mel Tillis, that heartbreaking career-defining hit (“Delta Dawn”) and all that came afterward, much of it lived in the public eye. I counted a couple of different “60 Minutes” profiles along with a nervous appearance on Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show in the cavalcade of TV chats detailing her “life of the party” years, battling depression, dating many much older country music stars (most famously Glen Campbell).

“I sowed my wild oats” like anybody else, Tucker admits. But ” did it on the cover of the (National) EN-quirer!”

The magic here is seeing an established star like Carlile go full-blown fangirl on her idol. She flatters “TT,” gushes, and Tucker takes to her in an instant. Carlile analyzes Tucker’s voice, makes a few comparisons to other Women of Country, and they launch into an impromptu cover of Tammy Wynette’s “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,” and trade verses of a song Carlile suggests Tanya record. Carlile gently directs Tucker towards the sort of LP she think will make a mark, joins her in the recording booth simply for encouragement and swaps tequila shooters with her to keep the good vibes going.

“I’ve had a f—-g HEADache every day I’ve been in here with you,” Carlile laughs. Then she relates how for a girl growing up, uncertain of her sexuality and her place in the world, Tucker was an inspiration.

“Tanya was TOUGH.”

The whole affair is just delightful. Even the hint of a little of Tucker going astray and sabotaging herself, a big subtext of the Keith Richards/Chuck Berry doc “Hail Hail, Rock’n Roll,” is just that — a hint. There’s little conflict here, just good times, good tunes and a finale that you won’t see coming if you don’t remember what happened with this record. I interviewed Tucker 20 years ago when she was still touring but had given up on recording, and had lost track of her since.

But even if you do know how this story ends, it’s beautifully touching seeing and hearing somebody who’s been through the fame, celebrity and cocaine wringer, just grateful at the victory lap her biggest fan provides for her.

Rating: R for (profanity)

Cast: Tanya Tucker, Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kathlyn Horan. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:48