Movie Nation

The world’s largest excavator, or digger, chews through a wall of earth and rock that was once the German town of Immerath.

A young man, one of the thousands of residents of the Dandora Landfill in Kenya, raps to hear the echo in the canyons that decades of debris have created.

Chefs in Venice horse around in waders, carrying each other home, piggyback, as the city  streets floods, as they now do most any time it rains, or on certain tides.

A yodeling choir helps open the longest rail tunnel in the world, Gotthard Base, which runs underneath 35 miles (56 kilometers) of Swiss Alps.

A wildlife protection activist stands in front of $150 million in confiscated elephant tusks and sadly marvels how many elephants were poached to create this hoard — “Can you imagine? Ten thousand elephants!

These are some of the images, many epic in scale, in “Antropocene,” a documentary aimed at helping scientists make the case that the great geologic ages of Earth history have a new chapter. The Holocene Epoch, which began after the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago, the argument goes.

But humanity, in just 10,000 years, has reshaped the Earth in permanent, astonishing and gravely destructive ways that will be obvious long after humans have gone extinct.

The filmmakers who gave us “Watermark” and “Manufactured Landscapes” travel the world to see the “story” that we’re leaving behind in “the rocks.” Oscar winner Alicia Vikander delivers a dry narration, the odd local witness speaks on camera (unidentified) and we see screen chapters on everything from “Extraction” to “Extinction,” detailing the ways we’re altering the ecosystem we live in.

An early visit is to Norilsk, “the most polluted city in Russia,” a sprawling complex of mines and smelting operations north of the Arctic Circle.

“It takes some getting used to,” one of the female crane operators admits.

In Atacama Desert, Chile, we see the vast array of drying ponds where Lithium sand is extracted to make the batteries that may save us from the hell that coal mining in Germany or the air-choking complex of oil refineries in Houston are pushing us to.

Maybe not.

With limited graphics and spare narration, “Anthropocene” shows the gigantic open pit where Carrara marble has been mined in Italy since the days of the Roman Empire.

“Climate change” comes up when looking at the seas rising on Venice, the “acidification” of sea water brought on by fossil fuels (a reef in Indonesia) and a 120 km/75 mile long sea wall that China built to, um, keep sea water from flooding their highly productive Shengli Oil Field.  

A still from Anthropocene – The Human Epoch by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky, an official selection of the Spotlight program at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Edward Burtynsky. All photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or ‘Courtesy of Sundance Institute.’ Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

The images are occasionally bleak, and the messaging more pressingly so, as old growth forests disappear in British Columbia and Nigeria and landscapes transformed by industrial-scale farming are viewed from the air.

Yes, we’ve filled the atmosphere with levels of carbon dioxide not seen in 66 million years of geologic time. But at least we get our own “epoch,” the Anthropocene,” named after us.

And there’s a smidgen of cautious hope underscoring much of what we see here.

Sure, the Third World, China and Russia are setting a poisonous, destructive tone where regulation and wages and health concerns are lower. But the ingenuity that built that lengthy sea wall, that pierced the Alps and that has turned London’s old air raid shelters into vast underground farms (Bean sprouts, anyone?) can probably figure out ways to save endangered species, reduce carbon and move “extraction” into the realm of science-fiction — “off world.”

If only we can all agree to do it,

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Narrated by Alicia Vikander

Credits: Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier, script by  Jennifer Baichwal.An Oscilloscope Labs release. 

Running time: 1:27

It looks so easy on a map. Just a few inches, or centimeters, get you from here to there. Even if you wholly comprehend the miles — or kilometers — they translate to, modern Western life has conditioned us to regard journeys as simple “trips,” not ordeals.

But when you’re trekking from Tajikistan to Afghanistan, through Iran into Turkey, Bulgaria and you hope, into Europe, when you’re a refugee fleeing for your life, nothing about it is simple.

Hassan Fazili is an Afghan documentary filmmaker who, in 2015, ran afoul of the Taliban. No, they aren’t the government any more. But the fanatical Islamo-fascists still have the run of much of the country. When they say you’re going to come to some harm, you take it seriously.

He, his filmmaking wife Fatima Hossaini and their two little kids fled to Tajikistan. And when time ran out there, resolved to cover 3500 miles to safety in Germany or some other haven.

“Midnight Traveler” is the movie he made while on this arduous, years-long journey. With only a little cash, what little they could stuff into their car and their cell phones, they fled — using their cells as maps to plan their passages, communication with friends and potential smugglers who could help them, musical entertainment for the kids and as a film production they could stash in a purse or pocket.

Fazili — I’m assuming Hossain did some shooting, too, and we see the oldest daughter Nargis get some images — captures the ardous car ride, videoing through a cracked windshield or a lens fogged up by early morning condensation when they camped out.

We’re shown daytime treks in groups of refugees led by smugglers across easier borders, and the midnight scampers involved when crossing more dangerous ones.

Nargis reads narration to set the stage, “The road of life winds through Hell,” and we can believe it.

Our global refugee crisis, happening in an increasingly dystopian world hostile to the displaced, is personalized in “Midnight Traveler.”

Fatima rages at the smuggler who gets them into Bulgariia and threatens to kidnap their children if they don’t pay up. “These men are vultures!” she complains (in Pashto, with English subtitles). “How do you say ‘help’ in English?”

In some countries, they want the police to find them. A reasonably comfortable refugee camp, freedom of movement and getting your name on an official “list” to cross the next border is what awaits them.

In others, the cops are sympathetic to the right wing protesters who hurl rocks, chase them, march and chant (in Bulgarian), “DEPORT! No day in COURT!”

Aid workers pop up here and there, a TV crew shows up to battle the language barrier to report their plight, friends help here, officials turn them away there.

And as on any family road trip, there are (understandable, here) child meltdowns, miserable stretches and flashbacks.

Fazili remembers (in voice over) the former friend who joined the Taliban, and who called to warn him when a film he made about a Taliban commander irked the commander’s leaders. He was going to be arrested.

As he remembers this, and at other points, he talks of the film he sees in his head, adding “cut” to segments of voice-over, detailing a horrific moment’s potential as “the best part” of his finished movie, imagining a final family triumph that will underscore the closing credits.

Yes, documentary filmmakers are like that, making a “story” out of the reality they or the people or animals the film is about are dealing with.

Much of what was harrowing about their odyssey happens off-camera — the smuggler threats, a rock throwing incident, etc. At other times, Hossaini and others tell her husband to “turn it off.”

And just when you think, “Even in Bulgaria they don’t separate families and treat refugees humanely,” along comes a border crossing into Hungary where the refugee “transit station” is a razor-wired prison camp, which young Nargis takes a phone out to record in “the yard” because “I want to REMEMBER this.”

“Midnight Traveler” is a documentary whose “How we made this film under these conditions” story almost overwhelms the finished product. Too much happens off camera, too many scenes capture the drudgery of the camps, where they were trapped for months and months at a time.

But Fazili has made an otherwise-unblinking cell-phone verite film of the crisis of our times, a first-person account of what people who cannot live where they are do to save themselves. Nobody watching “Midnight Traveler” can come away from it unimpressed, even if some are determined to look on this crisis and remain unmoved.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, some violence

Cast: Fatima Hossaini, Hassan Fazili, Nargis Fazili, Zahra Fazili

Credits: Directed by Hassan Fazili, script by Emelie Coleman Mahdavian. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:27

You knew he was a goner the moment that damning clip showed up. That wasn”t a lapse, ancient history or anything you can explain away.

That was a vile bigot comfortable in long held prejudices.

Via The New York Times

“Shane Gillis, a comedian announced as a new cast member on “SNL” before videos surfaced in which he used slurs and offensive language, will not be joining the show, “SNL” announced Monday. A spokesperson said they “were not aware of his prior remarks.” https://t.co/j5mlsffU73 https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1173694477908815878?s=17

The path to “The World We Make” is paved with patronizing, heavy-handed and somewhat retro good intentions.

It’s a modern day inter-racial romance set in that corner of suburban Nashville that hasn’t turned a calendar page since, oh, 1975. The film stumbles all over the place when it’s not stumbling over its own awkard, clumsy attempts to make something modern that emerges from a seriously retrograde place.

“World We Make” has faith-based filmmakers behind it, and it is to their eternal embarassment, if not shame, that they treat this idea as if the Bob Jones University lawsuits over interracial dating was happening today, and not in the 1970s.

Yes, a lot of people think that way and it might be worth revisiting the subject in a serious way. But “erious” should not be confused with “mature” or smart in this picture, whose “modern” veneer will feel modern only to those who missed decades of memos on the state of the culture.

Rose Reid (“I’m Not Ashamed”) and Caleb Castille (“Woodlawn”) are the two very attractive stars in this melodrama set in Tennessee horse country.

Jubilee Grove (Reid) goes by “Lee” for obvious reasons, a rising high school senior who teaches kids about horses and riding at the family horse (hobby) farm, an operation she runs with her older brother, Casey (Richard Kohnke). Dad (Kevin Sizemore) bought the place for their mom, and since she died, he’s burrowed into classic car restoration.

Lee’s life hasn’t found its purpose, though a therapist who uses horses with her patients might be a hint to her future.

Casey, though, has come up with the idea that they’ll take their two favorite horses and travel cross-country, old school and on horseback, an “epic challenge,” something that could render them into what their dad has counseled them to be — “a person of distinction.”

But Casey is killed in a car wreck. His high school pal, Jordan (Castille) comes by to help out, shoveling out stalls and heaving “hay cubes.” And quite abruptly, a friendship between the college athlete and the ponytailed high school beauty turns into something more.

It’s an indication of how tin-eared the three writers behind this are that they have Lee suggest Jordan play basketball with her little brother.

Why, because I’m black?

Well, maybe because you’re an ATHLETE?

The whole point of such an exchange is playing up black “touchiness” about the subject of race, and devaluing black victimhood. It’s so patronizing as to make you wince.

There’s no problem from Lee’s dad or brother. But Jordan’s father (Gregory Alan Williams) can’t be told about this romance . And the pretty teen from his neighborhood (Candace West) is here to lecture Lee on how “woke” she isn’t, and how dating this guy won’t “east your white guilt.”

West, of “Nobody’s Fool,” practically grits her teeth, having to spout such stupid lines.

There are promising ingredients to the story, Jordan’s business school/”statistically speaking” brains, Lee’s grasping at anyone who both reminds her of her brother and allows her to get away without properly mourning him.

The leads don’t set off much in the line of sparks, which is just as well. Classmates, local business owners, fellow diners in a restaurant and when push-comes-to-shove, a local cop, all are profiling Jordan and giving Lee an eyeful of the “different worlds” they come from and their different experience of the world they share.

That’s as “progressive” as “The World We Make” gets. Lee spouting nonsense like “We’re a lot more progressive than that. We’ve had a black president.” will get a lot of head-nodding from viewers who hear versions of those lines on Fox News 24/7.

“Is this what it’s always going to be like?” feels like a line from a ’70s movie, and a lot more could have been made out of the fact that it isn’t.

Yes, racism thrives, especially in small towns in the South. But such relationships barely reach the raised-eyebrow level of outrage among anyone under 70, these days.

Moments like that make “The World We Make” hopelessly out of date, and even more out of date for the fact that the folks making it don’t realize that in the first place.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material and brief violence

Cast: Rose Reid, Caleb Castille, Gregory Alan Williams, Kevin Sizemore, Candace West

Credits. Directed by Brian Baugh, script by Brian Baugh, Chris Dowling, George D. Escobar. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:49

“Groupers” is a farce about kidnapping two homophobic high school bullies and forcing them to prove their “thesis” — that homosexuality, “sexual proclivity,” is a choice.

If it is, they can “choose” to dabble in it same sex romance, and voila, go free.

It begins as a chatty, catty and not that amusing or harrowing hostage tale that falls well short of “thriller,” and devolves into something less.

A woman (Nicole Dambro) lures two young jocks (Peter Mayer-Klepchick, Cameron Duckett) into a van, where she gasses them and then ensnares them in an elaborate rope trap in an empty pool in an abandoned suburban LA subdivision.

It’s an “experiment,” she tells these two — cunning Brad (Mayer-Klepchick) and doltish Dylan (Duckett). She’ll record their actions, initiate “phases” to the experiment to egg (threaten) them on, and perhaps humiliate them in front of the world.

“Have you maimed me? Maimed US?”

I had thoughts of “Maybe we’re heading into ‘Hard Candy’ territory,” an early Ellen Page revenge on a rapist fantasy. But no.

We’re just settling into for this myopic three-character “play,” listening to Meg’s lectures on the nature of the trap, the “secrets” one of them keeps on his phone, the power dynamic of her controlling them with tasers as she taunts their narrow-mindedness, when other characters start showing up. And with few exceptions, each new addition waters down whatever point the movie is reaching for and fails to add anything funny to the proceedings.

The three person dynamic has discourses on “trickle-down abuse” of “hate crimes” the kids have been perpetuating on somebody at school, and the uncomfortable fact that Meg is “hate criming the hate criminals!”

And in extreme close-ups, the two boys — tied so tightly together — turn on each other.

“Are you ALWAYS like this, when you’re not high or drunk or both?”

Then, a glib gay stereotype shows up, joking about kidnapping being “number seven on my bucket list” and local criminal/squatters and the movie’s tongue-in-cheek tone goes straight out the window in favor of flailing, failed farce.

Points about racism and homophobia are pounded home, and of the new additions, only Terrance Wentz makes much of an impression, a stereotypical bulked-up black hoodlum who has some surprising opinions and attitudes on the subject at hand, and a funny way with every line he delivers.

“Oh, that’s savage. No need for savagery!”

When his character declares, “You mutha——s don’t know how to end s–t!” he is talking directly to his writer-director.

Which is to say after showing signs of comic life in the third act, the whole enterprise resolves itself in the most half-baked way you can imagine.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, profanity, homophobic slurs

Cast: Nicole Dambro, Peter Mayer-Klepchick, Cameron Duckett, Terrance Wentz, Jesse Pudles, Travis Stanberry, Max Reed III and Brian Ioakimedes

Credits: Written and directed by Anderson Cowan. A Global Digital release.

Running time: 1:49

Netflix has had better luck with teen comedies than with post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

But Oct. 24, perhaps this mashup farce will change all that.

Office romances, especially those between boss and employee, have made a a rapid transition from “frowned upon” by HR to repellant and condemnable in the “#MeToo” era. They’re positively fraught, these days.

Thus, the misfortune that is “Can You Keep a Secret?” It was never going to be all that funny and romantic. But showing up at this point in time, this wan rom-com should give anybody pause before buying the rights to further works by British novelist Sophie Kinsella. She did “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” and if she isn’t setting back feminism with every trip to the keyboard, her work is certainly aging poorly.

Alexandra Daddario of “Baywatch” plays Emma, a young marketing exec who tumbles for the founder of her organic health food/drink company AFTER drunkenly spilling her guts to him as her fellow passenger on a flight she was sure was doomed. DOOMED.

Just turbulence, dear.

Her panicked confession? She’s too young to die. She’s never gotten a tattoo, never had kids, and “I don’t even KNOW that I have a G-spot!” “I wish I could pee, standing up!” And “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, or been loved!”

That’s a lot to unload on a stranger, who turns out to be your boss’s boss when he shows up at the office the next day.

Jack (Tyler Hoechlin, who is Clark Kent on TV’s “Flash” and “Arrow”) proceeds to use info from that confession to re-arrange the power structure in that office, and to finish off her relationship to the quite-effeminate Connor (David Ebert).

We might not notice that power imbalance so much if they had real chemistry, if Daddario’s bubbly klutz act was matched with something other than humorless hunkiness and nearly-charmless stubble.

Several people in the story have “secrets” — a lawyer-roommate (Sunita Mani) who seems to be bedding a lot of guys from the office, the boss (Laverne Cox of “Orange is the New Black”) who might not have told anybody she used to identify as male.

Nothing much is made of any of these characters or their secrets. The workplace is a parade of inappropriately public conversations, sleep-with-the-boss shaming, an HR nightmare that isn’t a funny nightmare.

Daddario mugs a bit, takes her best shot at “perky” and “clumsy” and “cute” and never completely gives up on the script, or lets us see that she has. She’s almost all alone in this regard.

There’s almost always a spark in such movies, usually provided with the one supporting player who finds room to be funny. Here, it comes from Kimiko Glenn, who plays the cynical, man-wise, hustlerwear roomie, Gemma.

Gemma has the few funny lines. “You need to get even. I know a guy…” And coaching Emma on the phone, “Yes, bitch! Step into your POWER!”

Glenn is all alone in giggleland in “Can You Keep a Secret?”

And just when you give up on the intended comedy ever coming together, it dives into something edgier. But that flip-flop is only a tease for a movie that never was, and probably never was going to be funnier than the one they ended up making, which is as charmless as it is laughless.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity, alcohol abuse

Cast: Alexandra  Daddario, Tyler Hoechin, Sunita Mani and Laverne Cox

Credits: Directed by Elise Duran, script by Peter Hutchings, based on a Sophie Kinsella novel.

Credits: A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:34

It’s been mostly miss or miss, with hits pretty rare, since Tiffany Haddish broke out with “Girls’ Trip.”

Pairing her up with Rose Byrne, under-rated as a comedienne, but damned funny in “Neighbors” and “Bridesmaids” and “Get Him to the Greek,” is a smart play.

And Salma Hayek as badassed and predatory? That’s a slam dunk.

This is a Jan. 10 release, meaning this movie will be competing for attention against blockbusters and Oscar contenders, mostly films released over Christmas.

Paramount is either A) saying not to expect much here, lowering expectations or B) counter-programming against “prestige” pictures with a little lowdown lady-powered comedy that could make some noise.

Here’s an excruciating foot-dragger of a comedy about how an Italian immigrant makes his way to New York where he then makes his mark, as a waiter — inventing an ice cream dessert when the kitchen runs out of pastries.

The “American Fango” — “mud” in Italian — of the title is invented in the film’s first scene. “Excruciating” kicks in as the film struggles, through long, unfunny and uninteresting flashbacks, to get us back to that “beginning.”

Francesco (Brando Boniver) was a struggling actor in Italy who figures he’ll try his luck in America when a pretty blonde he met on a set (Emily Jackson) invites him to LA.

But the sex and sand of Malibu is just a tease, as Christine suddenly announces she’s got a film to shoot in India. For the first but not the last time, handsome Francesco, who is a mouth-watering temptation to every American woman he meets, is left in the lurch by a lady.

The tedious middle acts have our hero stumbling from apartment to Days Inn, from Venice Beach to Brooklyn, where he is alternately helped, and let down, by various actresses whom he’s met on sets in Rome.

“American women, they change their mind like they change their hairstyle!” his corny actor pal Massimo (Alexander Mannara) opines, because you know actors can’t think of anything funny to say without somebody else writing it for them.

I was almost amused by pretty boy Francesco’s shock SHOCK at discovering Christine and then other actresses are self-absorbed. Just like him.

The movie makes banal points about New York actors helping each other more than L.A. actors do, about actors needing waiting jobs so desperately that there’s an “agent of waiters” (Gaetano Iacono).

Keep an eye out for the actress who “ghosts” Francesco the hardest. Kathy (Samantha Scaffidi) has a married, wealthy boyfriend who keeps disappointing her. Whatever Tony (Brian Vincent) lacks in charm or faithfulness, he is the ONLY amusing character in “American Fango.”

He’s a stereotype, a goombah who warns Francesco away from Kathy, who is letting him crash on her sofa.

“I put about $200,000 into this girl over the past year,” is how he starts. And “Keep your little ziti in cold water” is how he gets to the point.

So many scenes do nothing but delay Francesco’s hiring as an inept but handsome waiter in a New York Italian restaurant. So many scenes go on and on past their possible (not really) “payoff.”

The performances start with promise, but the script limits the players because every character is more colorless than the one before.

And the finale is as soggy a noodle as every waterlogged, droopy moment that’s preceded it.

There have been so many movies about coming to America and struggling to get on one’s feet, it’d be a shame to waste more than a few minutes on “American Fango” confirming my review. This one never gets out of its own way.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations

Cast: Brando Boniver, Samantha Scaffidi, Emily Jackson, Maggie Wagner, Victor Colicchio

Credits: Directed by Gabriele Altobelli, script by Gabriele Altobelli and Brittany McComas. An Artist Connection/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:44

“The Goldfinch” is a sprawling, ungainly but perfectly watchable mess of a movie, one of those novel adaptations where one wishes they’d taken the time to edit that beast into something tighter before the cameras rolled.

Director John Crowley (“Brooklyn”) & Co. treated Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel the way Warner Brothers treated the works of J.K. Rowling — as if they’d be pilloried for leaving ANYthing out.

But let’s blame Amazon Studios for that, in this case. A 2:24 running time picture fits the co-producing company’s streaming priorities, and they no doubt signed on with visions of Oscar nominations dancing in their heads.

The high-end sheen, the sparkling cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Luke Wilson and Sarah Paulson? That’s the Warners touch.

It’s a tale of loss and grief, guilt and regret, of longing and corruption and “You never know what’s going to change your future.”

And that “sheen?” It bubbles up as texture and subtext, a world of art and antiques, Beethoven and bespoke suits, all swirling around a tragedy at a museum where the 17th century painting by Carel Fabritius that gives the film its title once hung.

Tweenage Theo (Oakes Fegley of “Pete’s Dragon,” very impressive) is taken to the home of a family he once knew, because he can think of no one else after the shock. He was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. An explosion killed her and many others, and as his one-time actor/father skipped town some time before, Theo’s at a loss.

The authorities make a compelling case to Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman), but one gets the sense she’d have said “Yes” in any event. There’s an old money remove about her, old money that married old money and wound up in an antiques-packed Manhattan townhouse with three children and an Upper Class Twit (“Do you sail, Theo?”) husband (Boyd Gaines). That doesn’t mean she lacks compassion.

Theo has night terrors and is wracked by guilt. His voice-over narration has told us “It was my fault,” and he believes it. But the Barbours indulge him, and he finds another father figure in the antiques restorer (Jeffrey Wright) whom he visits to deliver something another victim of the explosion begged him to pass on.

Hobie lives above the shop, and he’s taken in the ward of his now-dead partner. Theo remembers redheaded Pippa (Aimee Laurence) from the museum. Now, she’s recovering and they take comfort in each other’s company, even though they’re strangers.

We catch a glimpse of “bespoke suit” adult Theo (Ansel Elgort) long before the child Theo’s promising future comes undone as his Vegas hustler dad (Luke Wilson, in a nasty, layered turn) shows up, “51 days sober!” and with his new bartender wife (Sarah Paulson, brittle, blowsy and coarse). They spirit Theo from his world of cloistered privilege and private school to a city of foreclosures, lowlifes and public school, where he falls in with Ukranian transplant Boris (Finn Wolfhard).

The film’s middle acts, the “Vegas Years,” sketch in how Theo recovers from that and loops his way back to New York, back to antiques and back to Hobie and the Barbours.

There are traces of “Great Expectations,” of the closed world of J.D. Salinger’s fiction, and of movies such as “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and “Woman in Gold” in this film, all interesting ingredients in a film which alternately feels like a bloated feature film or a truncated mini-series.

Like director Crowley’s “Brooklyn,” the world portrayed here has the scale and melodrama of a Thackery novel, with many plot twists as obvious as a soap opera. I love the very literary device of suggesting how money knows money, and how everybody in the New York chapters is connected. And if you’re not a born member of that exclusive circle, you’re immediately under suspicion.

But there are unnecessary characters and scenes that don’t drive the narrative here. The big mystery at its heart doesn’t demand resolution, but we can’t have puzzles that aren’t solved, can we?

And the third act is as over-the-top as the first two are understated, which the characters remain even when great and terrible things are happening.

Some of us love being ensconced in a universe of Austenesque/”Antiques Roadshow” quiet and money, of finer things with history and beauty, where tweens can discuss Beethoven until their influences shift to the kid who knows what Vicodin and vodka will do to you, and wants somebody to take an acid trip with him.

We few, we not-easily-bored few, can catch “The Goldfinch” in a theater and revel in unerringly modulated performances — everybody is so softspoken that the verbal explosions have alarming violence about them — and a world we might envy, or at least resent a little bit.

Everybody else can wait to see it on a streaming service. I hear Prime is a good deal, so long as you use it to buy books and fine kitchenware, too.

MPAA Rating:R for drug use and language

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Luke Wilson, Sarah Paulson, Oakes Fegley, Ashleigh Cummings, Finn Wolfhard

Credits: Directed by John Crowley, script by Peter Straughan, based on the Donna Tartt novel . A Warner Brothers/Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 2:29