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In a large, repurposed open floor-plan warehouse in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, a man in baseball cap and sweater vest exhorts his charges, a sea of high school kids whose uniforms are often augmented with college sweatshirts.

But the shirts — Harvard, Stanford, Princeton — aren’t for the state’s football-first schools, and these kids aren’t athletes, Too many bow-ties for that. And the coach leading them through a morning drill isn’t prepping them for sports.

“You CONTROL your own DESTINY…You’re about to change your great great GRANDchildren’s lives! You KNOW what’s at stake.”

Louisiana schools, ranked as some of the poorest and worst in America, aren’t known for producing scholars. But these kids — mostly Black and brown and disadvantaged — are the hope of T.M. Landry Prep, a high school whose claim to fame is getting all its graduates into college, “32% into Ivy League” universities.

At a time in history when prestigious degrees have become the nakedly-obvious yardstick for indicating future success in life, this school is winning the race to changing lower class kids’ futures.

“Accepted” is Dan Chen’s feel-good documentary about an American success story — the school and its businessman and nurse founders, Mike and Tracy Landry, and the kids whose lives are being changed by it.

We hear born-salesman/minister-who-missed-his-calling Mike Landry challenging his kids to “Be aggressive” with the commitment to school work, “make sure you’re taking care of business” by putting in the 11-12 hour days he expects. Landry answers calls re: homework and study at all hours, and we see him leading by example.

The film follows Alicia, Adia, Isaac, Cathy and James through their struggles, hear their classic “against the odds” stories as they shoot for Wellesley, Georgetown, Stanford and Yale. As Oprah has taught us for generations, we’re all the heroes of our own story, and it’s easy to root for these kids. One needs to succeed to create a decent life for her single mom and two special needs sisters. Another’s mother has cancer and may not live to see her graduate from college.

These students are focused, never letting their eyes off the prize.

And then the “feel good” story blows up. The school with the staggering success rate, whose videos of all the kids gathered around a computer and wildly celebrating when this one gets into Yale or that one Harvard went viral, is gaming the system.

The open “no schedule” academics of Landry, showcasing third graders doing algebra on TV, might as well be Trump University. It’s a con.

Or IS it?

Chen’s film, tracking this school through the 2018-19 school year, had the luck — good and bad — of having cameras rolling just as America’s school admissions scandal was laid bare and its academic “meritocracy” myth dashed. Chen seems to be caught just as off-guard as these students, celebrated on TV chat shows from “ellen” to “Today” to “The Steve Harvey Show,” when a New York Times expose blows the whole T.M. Landry thing up.

We have just enough time to wonder why we’re not seeing actual “instructors” working with students, just enough time to think “These kids are exceptional” but “These hard-working folks running this school aren’t,” before “Accepted,” and we its viewers, are forced to reckon with bigger questions.

If these students don’t deserve a shot, where are the tails-tucked-between-their-legs flunkout walks of shame from those who get into prestigious schools and fail? Why should nouveau riche celebrities be able to game the system for their little mediocrities, and working class kids from rural Louisiana, who are putting in the effort, not be able to play to racial stereotypes of “disadvantaged” to get the same opportunity?

What are we not being told about how the upper class, producing more than its share of upper class twits (i.e., the “founder” of Trump University) is operating under a fixed system with rules bent in their favor?

And what kind of country educates its kids and looks for “the best and the brightest” in such a short-sighted, money-matters and patronizing way?

“Accepted” isn’t as thorough as you’d expect (Again, NO teachers are interviewed.). But it succeeds by not offering a simple black and white take on what went on and what is going on with how schools “accept” students and just how arbitrary that unjust system is.

It’s damning, but not in the ways you might expect. “Accepted” offers a “jury’s still out” look at T.M. Landry and its kids, and a serious start to the soul-searching America might want to do over its worship of elites and elitism and anybody who, by hook or by crook, hustles their way into the exclusive schools that perpetuate such elites, merit, “best” or “brightest” be damned.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Mike Landry, Alicia Simon, Isaac Smith, Adia Sabatier, Cathy Bui and James Dennis

Credits: Directed by Dan Chen. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:32

Heres the final trailer. I don’t get hyped about comic book movies. But this one has me wound up, I tell you what.

This take on the Aug. 5 IFC Midnight/Shudder release plays up the war of nerves, Hall tormented by Roth.

It looks good, yes indeed. Hall is raising standards for horror, one high-toned tale at a time.

Anybody hoping to put Louis C.K.’s “issues” and cancellation out of their minds when watching his new film will be sorely disappointed, as there he is, right in the opening scene and playing a therapist, no less.

He’s not the star of “Fourth of July,” just a bit player. But he co-wrote it with comic Joe List, and he directed it. Seeing as how C.K.’s other films as writer-director were “Pootie Tang” and “I Love You, Daddy,” which was abandoned by its fourth-tier distributor when his sexual abuse scandal blew up and shut-down his career, perhaps shying away from the spotlight would have been the smarter play.

Then again, notoriety sells. Ask any Kardashian.

So here Louis Louis is, leaning into the public shunning (by “polite society,” not by his all-forgiving fans), right from the get-go. The movie? It’s not “atonement” for C.K.’s s sins or a stark reminder of “the genius we lost” when he was cancelled. It’s a serious “meh,” squishy and sentimental — like a Woody Allen (cough cough) rough draft, with lots more swearing.

List plays a Manhattan jazz pianist with some serious mommy issues to break down with his therapist.

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Then maybe we should.”

Nebbishy Jeff is married, plays in a popular jazz quartet and is two-years-and-change sober. His sponsor (longtime Letterman writer Bill Scheft) figures it’s time Jeff took on an AA “sponsee,” somebody just deciding to get sober.

“Either lean in, take the next step, or lean back and fall down a flight of stairs…Take the next right action.”

Jeff’s new sponsee (Bobby Shelton) is a drummer, a month sober and not into this newbie “speaking in bumper stickers” as advice. But they give it a try.

And then there’s the happy life at home, where Jeff and his wife (Sarah Tollemache) are dreading the annual July 4 trip to Maine to hang out with his family. But the scar tissue of this marriage — Jeff’s issues with his parents — might not be the seat of wife Beth’s unhappiness. Nothing for it but for our nebbish to motor north and finally “confront” the folks he’s told his therapist he would confront many times before.

A sober alcoholic hanging with a bunch of drunks. What says “family” and “our nation’s birthday” better than that?

What ensues is a day or two of dysfunction, none of it all that novel, only some of it funny and only in a bittersweet way.

The family dynamic here has its obvious characters with “toxic” tattooed on their foreheads and “tactless” in their DNA. Mom (Paula Plum) is a braying bully, dad (Robert Walsh) something of a shrinking violet, and everybody else is several degrees better or worse on the spectrum.

His mother bum-rushes Jeff into having “the talk” he tells them they need to have, and Mom promptly betrays that trust and exposes Jeff to endless family ridicule and recriminations. Homophobes, beer-guts and MAGAs, they literally gang up on him.

Stranger Naomi (Tara Pacheco) is here, as a witness and an innocent. Jeff’s one relatable relative is his close-in-age Uncle Mark (Chris Walsh) who helps explain things to her.

“We were drinking buddies since we were 10 (Jeff) and 12 (Mark). The quitter!”

The cast might have been the best they could manage, considering C.K.’s pariah status. The only “name” in the ensemble, aside from him, is veteran comic Allan Havey, currently on TV’s “Billions.”

List may be convincing enough at the keyboard and competent with a line, especially a funny one, whether spoken or reacted to.

“You’re the WORST therapist. I’m suffering here!”

“Maybe you’re not suffering enough.”

But List lacks acting polish or the charisma to be an arresting screen presence. A funnier script might have minimized that. It kept Woody Allen on the screen for decades, after all.

There’s promising if timeworn material here — the jazz milieu, the AA routine, the toxic parents, the jerkiest cousin (Nick De Paolo) of them all. But there’s no pop to the picture, no compelling answer to the question, “OK, why is this a movie?”

One gets the feeling that C.K’s track record of marketing his stand-up specials and the like directly to his fans is the main reason “Fourth of July” was made. As his Kardashian role models showed him, scandal or no scandal, content is content as long as it’ll sell.

Rating: unrated, profanity, smoking, alcohol abuse

Cast: Joe List, Paula Plum, Sarah Tollemache, Nick De Paolo, Chris Walsh, Tara Pacheco, Bill Scheft, Robert Kelly, Allan Havey and Louis C. K.

Credits: Directed by Louis C.K., scripted by Joe List and Louis C.K. An Abramorama release.

Running time: 1:32

July 29 in cinemas, shortly after on Amazon Prime.

Looks really good.

Wonder if Elon Musk appears in it, calling one of the rescuers a “pedophile?” We’ll have to see.

A cast reassembled for a Disney+ sequel to a popular kids and witches comedy.

Divine, Miss M, just Divine.

A novel horror comedy that pairs-up mortal enemies trapped in a supernatural struggle for their mortal souls, “Revealer” turns out to be a clever idea flatly executed.

It’s spooky, with hellish lighting, nasty underworld worms and a scary-silly demonic costumed beast. It’s political, forcing a sassy, smart-mouthed peep show performer to team up with a “low-rent Tammy Faye” Bible-thumper who leads picketers outside the dirty book store where the stripper works.

And it’s cheap, paring its story down to, well, The Rapture, and trying to escape judgement.

What it isn’t is funny or quick-on-its-feet.

They’re stuck inside, and “The Book of Revelation is happening RIGHT here, right NOW” outside…and sometimes inside the dungeon-like store.

It’s the Madonna Wannabe early ’80s, and Angie (Caito Aase) is a workin’ gal in torn fishnets, leather gloves and heels. Sally (Shaina Schrooten) is the bespectacled book-burner leading the marchers out in front of Revealers Book Store.

Angie isn’t having this nonsense at the start of her workday. “You say one more word and I’ll be SENDING you to Jesus in little bitty PIECES!”

“My inner light gives me strength,” Sally snaps back. But in her most self-aware moments, she admits that “shouting at people is a lot easier than actually talking to them.”

“Revealer” has a few of those “self-aware moments.” Because when Judgement Day or some demonic version of it starts going down, and the owner of the shop (Bishop Stevens) has his tongue yanked out and turns into a demonically-recruited zombie, and Sally is trapped inside, with Angie locked in her booth, these two ladies have a lot of time to talk, when they’re not figuring out a way to dig out of this dimly-lit, sex-stained hell.

There’s an imbalance to the characters’ “journeys,” although each woman will have to face her own hypocrisy and tendency to “judge,” and each has something to contribute to their possible salvation.

Sally has an idea of who and what they’re up against, chapter and verse. Angie is the avenging muscle, handy with a crowbar.

“Revealer” punches above its weight in the production design and acting. But the script needed punching up, with more incidents and more testy one-liners to get through, and the funereal pacing makes what’s here play dull and uninvolving.

Mark this no-budget gambit a “nice try” and leave it at that.

Rating: unrated, violence, stripper content, profanity

Cast: Caito Aase, Shaina Schrooten and Bishop Stevens.

Credits: Directed by Luke Boyce, scripted by Michael Moreci and Tim Seeley. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:26

I know it’s “only a sequel,” and “only” a children’s animated film at that.

But “Minions: The Rise of Gru” is a movie of manic, demented genius. It’s a slapsticky/witty, action-and-sight-gag-packed romp of a popcorn movie, a film that delivers more animated laughs than every other kids’ cartoon this year, put together.

Suck on that, Beavis.

Heck, the string of ’70s pop, rock and soul music cues, puns and “Minions Sing the ’70s” giggles utterly outclass both “Sing” movies while rarely delivering a lyric human ears can decipher. Unless, of course, you speak Minion. Feel free to sing along with Paul Simon’s “Cecilia” or the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” if you do.

Nothing against Steve Carell, but who knew Gru, as an adult or in his learning-the-super-villain ropes years in this prequel, works even better as a supporting player? That’s the breakthrough these Minions movies have managed.

Gru, closing in on 11, longs to join the Vicious Six, the best gang of supervillains on the West Coast. It’s 1976, and Blaxploitation baddie Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), wimpled menace Nun-chucks (Lucy Lawless), Strong Hold (Danny Trejo), lobster-legged Jean Clawed (J.C. Van Damme) and Svengeance (Dolph Lundgren) work with the wily old Wild Knuckles (Oscar winner Alan Arkin) to steal The Zodiac Stone, a pendant with magical powers.

After their Indiana Jones-style heist, the other five betray Wild Knuckles and leave him for dead. They’ll hold auditions for somebody new to make them “Six” again. Somebody younger. Maybe a lot younger.

They don’t know Gru’s evil plots mostly consist of self-designed stink bombs he tosses into “Jaws” screenings to clear the theater for him and his Minion pals. They might not be impressed with his spray-can cheese gun, used on anybody who stands in their way at the ice cream shop.

“Don’t cheese me, bro!”

Gru is dismissed as a “punk kid” at his job interview, but decides to take Belle Bottom’s sneering “Come back when you’ve done something to IMPRESS me” to heart and swipes the stone.

A Minion loses that stone as they’re making their wild and crazy getaway. The next thing Gru knows, he’s been snatched pretty much right out of his mother’s (Julie Andrews) Tupperware party, with the still-living Wild Knuckles wanting the Zodiac Stone, Belle Bottom and the other Vicious Five also on his trail and the Minions haplessly trying to track kidnapped “Mini-Boss” and hunt down the misplaced stone.

Their efforts will take in a chase-and-then-road trip with a hip biker (RZA), a stolen jetliner to get to San Francisco and martial arts training by acupuncturist and Kung Fu Master Chow (Michelle Yeoh), who is NOT to be taken lightly, in spite of her short, plump appearance.

Her scenes, beating up “bullies” and training the little yellow “tater tots,” steal the picture.

As I mentioned, Gru is kind of sidelined in this outing, which turns out to be a blessing. Most of those big name voice actors aren’t recognizable and have too few lines to register, even if they were.

“Rise of Gru” is kind of frantic and over-the-top violent. But that’s something to embrace. This may be the most wound-up, slo-mo, cartoonish slapstick animated film since the golden Looney Tunes age of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Bodies and faces distorted by collisions and kicks, eyes bugging out in terror, all vintage Looney touches. The animators even steal gimmicks and action poses/freeze-frames from anime action pictures to make the action even more jaw-dropping and hilarious.

The setting is the campiest decade of them all, and that explains all the “Kung Fu Fighting,” Blaxploitation references and the like. But it also leads to joke after joke made out of the music.

The villains’ lair is beneath a record store cleverly labeled “Criminal Records,” and the password is a Linda Ronstadt hit of the era, “You’re No Good.” But Sunshine Band disco, funk, soul, Carpenters pop, “Fly Like an Eagle” and Rhymin’ Simon all fold into the soundtrack and find a comic foothold here.

The Beastie Boys may not fit, but they’re made to.

It all swirls together in a riot of color, action, deadpan gags and musical and martial arts mayhem, a kids’ movie that rushes by you so fast you won’t want to take a concession stand break. And if you do, you might want to avoid the sugar. The tots, tykes and tweens will be wound up enough without that added pre-diabetic buzz.

Rating: for some action/violence and rude humor

Cast: The voices of Steve Carell, Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, Russell Brand, Pierre Coffin, Lucy Lawless, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgren, RZA, Julie Andrews and Alan Arkin.

Credits: Directed by Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val, scripted by Matthew Fogel. A Universal release, an Illumination film.

Running time: 1:27

I’ve always had a soft spot for Beavis and Butt-Head.

Or maybe that was just the Dulcolax doing its job.

But here they are, 29 years after their MTV debut, moronically sniggering and slap fighting their way through their second feature film.

“Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe” rips off the plot to “Space Camp,” and slaps a dab of “multiverse” on it to let us and all those Marvel suits know that particular sci-fi plot twist is officially “played.”

Yes, our two “heroes” have gotten up from the couch, stopped calling David Lee Roth “fat boy” and Ozzy “an old fart” to set out on an epic journey through space and time, “a quest to score.”

It’s about as funny as your average episode — OK episode and a half — of their long-running, on and off series. Except it’s padded with 45 minutes of “We’ve lost our fastball.”

“Ball… hehehehehe.”

They’re back and Butt-Head wants us to know where they’ve been since 1998 (the series came back in 2011, briefly). And therein lies the tale. It begins with a ruined Highland High science fair which earns them a misguided stint at Space Camp as “two at-risk youths.” Their days at Johnson Space Flight Center — “Hehehehehehehe…’Johnson’ — let them show that they’re really good — obsessed — with uh, “docking procedures.”

“Huhuhuhuhu…”

So the next Endeavor shuttle mission brings them along. Mayhem ensues, people die and these two — sure this is all just foreplay from the mission commander (voiced by Andrea Savage) who “wants to score” — wind up drifting into a black hole.

No, neither Beavis not Butt-Head (both guys are still voiced by creator Mike Judge) can’t let “hole” can let that pass without sniggering notice. Or misunderstood panic.

“I don’t want to die in a Butthole! I have dreams about it all the time!”

They find themselves in 2022, with cell phones, the sexy-sounding Siri app, Kia Souls and college gender studies classes, where they do a broad wingnut-friendly “teachable moment” riff on “white privilege.”

Fair enough. Just not as funny as them, with Beavis shifting into his Cornholio guise, winding up in prison.

Beavis: “That youth pastor always said we’d end up in here some day!”

Butt-Head: “The system works, Beavis.”

The “two idiots” are chased by Men in Black and the former shuttle commander, now a sinister Texas governor with a dirty secret — she “killed” them — she is determined to keep.

And there are smart “alternate universe” versions of the characters that pop up with an urgent plea, which falls on dim and deaf ears. Because stupid Beavis and Butt-Head are as stupid as ever.

Despite making an effort to offend, here and there, the characters have lost some of their edge and Judge can’t help but suggest “old fart” in still attempting to manage those grating, giggling pubescent voices.

Will this movie be enough to create a new generation of fans? No. That’s why it ended up on Paramount+, where we old farts can get nostalgic and remember funnier moments from them, their earlier movie and their heydays in MTV’s golden age, with or without the Dulcolax.

Rating: TV-14, profanity, toilet humor, innuendo

Cast: The voices of Mike Judge, Andrea Savage, Tig Notaro, Gary Cole and Chi McBride

Credits: Directed by John Rice and Albert Calleros, scripted by Mike Judge and Lewis Morton, based on characters created by Mike Judge. A Paramount + release.

Running time: 1:26

This Swiss co-production features teens making bad decisions, using each other and abusing social media and (when they’re in the picture) their parents.

I rather liked “Lovecut,” which narrowly avoids the label “exploitation” in its portrayal of the shortsighted, irresponsible “free range” adolescence. I hope Maitland Library patrons do as well.

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