Movie Nation

This coming-of-age odyssey is instigated by one of the great cringe-worthy suggestions in the history of publishing.

Yuma has cerebral palsy, is 23 and confined to a wheelchair. She is also a talented manga artist, hoping to break free of the Youtube pixie, Sayaka, who publishes her work and steals all the credit. That’s why she’s meeting with a publisher of manga porn, the kinkier side of Japanese comic books.

“Artists draw from experience,” the publisher (played by Japanese broadcaster Yuka Itaya) complains (in Japanese, with English subtitles). “But you don’t have any. The sex scenes…don’t feel authentic.”

Go out and get some experience, she says with a crass wink. Then we’ll see.

“37 Seconds” is a remarkably frank and surprisingly warm depiction of disability, care-giving and sexuality. Writer-director Hikari (Mitsuyo Miyazaki), with her debut feature film, doesn’t shy away from anything in showing 23 year-old Yuma’s quest to get “experience.” And she takes pains to not let that, with its titillating possibilities, take over this story of finding yourself, your voice and your independence when confined to a wheelchair.

Here’s what Yuma, played by first-time actress Mei Kayam, who has cerebral palsy, is up against. The genetic illness is just the beginning.

Her mother (Misuzu Kanno) is smothering, never wanting to let her do anything on her own. Yuma can take the train to work, but Mom must pick her up, insists on cooking for her and even bathes with her.

Then there’s the boss, one of those cotton-candy-wigged Japanese nymphets with the mousey voice and the popular Youtube brand, to which she’s added a popular manga. She (Minori Hagiwara) insists to interviewers, “I work alone!” But who knows how much she actually draws?

Yuma creates the manga on sketchpads and digital tablets. Yuma meets deadlines. Yuma gets zero credit and very little pay as Sayaka cannot be convinced the PR value of having a disabled artist as her “assistant” would be pay off in sales.

Yuma is shy, her voice a squeaky whisper. But by Godzilla, she’s been told to do something about her “cherry,” and that’s what she’ll do. Studying porn on the Internet might help. But the real research is in the red light district, where sex workers of every “pronoun” under the Rising Sun can be procured.

One characteristic of Yuma’s journey is the kindness she encounters in this world. Flattery from transgender performers, and even sympathy from the seemingly-all-business gigolo she hires makes up for how badly things can go wrong with your “first time.”

And then she stumbles into Mai (Makiko Watanabe), wheeling around with her “favorite client” (actor and disability activist Yoshihiko Kumashino). Yuma’s horizons grow, in an instant.

The most dramatic scenes pitch the daughter rebelling for her independence and her mother fighting back by restricting it. Kayama, a social worker in real life, holds her own with veteran actress Kanno, who makes the mother fierce, paranoid but still sympathetic.

Mom complains about “creeps” and “freaks out there” in the big bad city. But the film’s joys are in the lurid world of Kabukichō, Tokyo’s red light district.

The culture clash for North American viewers of “37 Seconds” is in the professionalism and compassion in the film’s depiction of the sex worker trade.

But Hikari’s eagerness to not let this “sex trip” take over her movie, to not make it all about “How I Got My Manga Published,” leads to some over-reaching. Yuma’s story grows more complicated, and those expanding horizons take her to Thailand.

Not for reasons you might think.

That detour never stops “37 Seconds” cold, but we never lose the sense that it is indeed a detour and probably superfluous to the plot, if not the title.

It’s still an eye-opening, heart-warming deep dive into multiple cultures — Japan, cerebral palsy, sex workers and manga.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, nudity

Cast: Mei Kayama, Misuzu Kanno, Shunsuke Daito, Makiko Watanabe, Yuka Itaya, Minori Hagiwara

Credits: Written and directed by Hikari. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:55

“Standing Up, Falling Down” is a comfort food comedy. It finds laughs in all the expected and familiar places, sentiment in a few more, and reminds us how offhandedly hilarious Billy Crystal was and remains.

There’s banter and wit and stand-up comedy and karaoke and bad choices and sage advice to this “coming home defeated” tale. And if you want to know what a comedy that really “sticks the landing” looks and plays like, here you go.

Ben Schwartz of TV’s “Parks & Recreation” stars as Scott, a Long Island comic failing in LA. He’s doing “bits,” and bombing in a tiny cafe where no one even notices him.

“Ford Fiesta — Why do they even CALL it that? I feel like it’s never really a ‘fiesta’ inside. Right? It’s just a car!”

Do they have crickets in LA?

Scott goes home to Eastern Long Island — NOT “The Hamptons” part — back to his adoring mom (Debra Monk) and dismayed and disappointed dad (Kevin Dunn).

What’s Dad got to be dismayed about? His son’s 34, with no direction and no job. And his daughter (Grace Gummer) is also still living at home — at 30.

The sibling banter is biting, and loving.

“The comedy world’s SLOWEST rising star comes back home!”

She, on the other hand, is managing a pretzel shop in the mall. And “I’m dating a COP!”

“You? I don’t believe it.”

“OK, he’s a security guard.”

Scott laments his lot to one of the few friends he still has in town, pines for the girl “I ran away from — literally,” and rolls his eyes at his mother’s many “Post Office application” hints.

And then he meets the lush. Marty (Crystal) is the resident character at the Whale’s Tail, a local bar. He loves “Jäger Bombs” (boilermakers) and karaoke. Scott and Marty collide in the toilet, where the lush notices the younger guy’s skin rash. “I know a guy…”

When Scott shows up at the dermatologist’s office, Marty — who has no real memory of meeting him — turns out to be “the guy.”

“Stress hives,” Dr. Marty diagnoses. “Or, you could be dying of 30 or 40 other diseases.”

“Are you even a real DOCTOR?”

I put a lot of stock in witty banter in a comedy, and “Standing Up, Falling Down” has plenty of that. We can credit screenwriter Peter Hoare (TV’s “Kevin Can Wait”). But you can’t help but notice there are a couple of stand-ups — one of them a living legend — at the ready as joke-doctors on the set.

The doc has a Twitter joke account — “I’m a good ‘follow.'”

He has lots of great advice — “Regret is the only thing that’s real. It’s why the good lord gave us weed and booze — numbing agents.”

And of course he has loads of issues.

The comic has this whole thing to work out with “the girl I left behind” (Eloise Mumford), and this “voice” thing that stand-ups have to find in order to be funny.

How white is he?

“Wanna hear WHITE? I once bought a Bon IVER album in a Whole Foods!”

And that’s how “Standing Up, Falling Down” plays out — jokes, sparkling bits of dialogue, a few touching third act twists and laughs in surprising places.

Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter, has never been funnier on screen. And David Castañeda as the “security guard” boyfriend is a hoot.

It doesn’t re-invent the “stand-up (screen) comedy,” doesn’t cover much new in the “You can’t go home again” genre. But there are laughs, grins and at least one Billy Crystal bit worthy of a spit-take.

And as I said at the outset, the last couple of couple of scenes are scripted and played so skillfully, warmly and amusingly that this one doesn’t exit quietly. It really sticks the landing.

MPAA Rating: unrated, alcohol and marijuana abuse, profanity

Cast: Ben Schwartz, Billy Crystal, Grace Gummer, Eloise Mumford and Kevin Dunn

Credits: Directed by Matt Ratner, script by Peter Hoare. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:31

Great news! The chances of screens in movie theaters being devoted to the ouevre of Adam Sandler just vanished. Well, maybe.

Netflix loves the Sandman. $240-$275 million, 4 more films is his new deal. Good value, his fanbase is the Netflix Generation. That “Murder Mystery” he did with Jen Aniston was the most watched Netflix original last year.

Win win.

No Oscar nomination. But it wasn’t really warranted. Netflix is a perfect fit.

https://t.co/nCq https://t.co/bHAgj8vJrT https://twitter.com/IndieWire/status/1223546533477539840?s=20

The free #Harriet screenings in 50 Regal sites across the country will be held Feb. 4 and Feb. 11. See what theaters they will be held at: https://t.co/RNAzE2DeVO https://twitter.com/THR/status/1223573985696407554?s=20

Is there any point at all in reviewing an “in his own words” documentary biography of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

Visit Metacritic or Rottentomatoes and you can pretty much guess who will pan “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” — the liberal NY Times or Washington Post — and who will endorse it — reliably right wing critics from the NY Post and elsewhere.

If you’ve read other reviews on this site, you know which way this is going, too.

The first wicked thought to cross the mind thanks to “in his own words” is that he has been very credibly accused — shown through video store records, etc. — to have perjured himself in 1991 confirmation hearings, which he, in high dudgeon, labeled “a high tech lynching.”

But as his grandfather, who was the biggest influence on his young life he says in his autobiography and in the film (some of which is Thomas reading/narrating from that book) must have taught him, a man’s good name is only as good as his word. And he lied, as a Federal judge just one year into the job thanks to grooming by President George H.W. Bush, to win a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“In his own words” loses something when you’re dealing with a liar.

Still, as Thomas rarely speaks in public, and infamously went over ten years on the Court without ever asking a question or uttering during cases brought before the justices, he’s worth hearing out. Demonized and marginalized, characterized as “lazy” and worse he’s got a story and a point of view. Why not hear it out?

“Created Equal” lets Thomas paint a portrait of a Georgia childhood of hard work and struggle, if not outright want. He grew up in a South where “you assume you’re going to be discriminated against.”

He talks about his grandfather’s conversion to Catholicism, his adoration of the Irish nuns at a Savannah Catholic school he attended, his years in seminary studying to become a priest, his “radical” leftist pro-civil rights politics of the day, and even the day seminary “ended for me.”

That was in April of 1968, when he and his fellow seminarians learned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. A classmate muttered how happy that news made him, and Thomas was out.

“Racism and race explained everything” to him, he says. “It became my new religion.”

Something happened to take him from his pre-law Holy Cross years with “my radical friends” to the radical conservative ideologue he became. He says the conversion started while he was at Yale Law, puzzling over the insistence on “busing” in Boston.

“Someone has a theory,” he hypothesizes about that form of integration, “and then they insert human beings into that thesis.”

Post-law school, he took on the only decent job he could land, with the Republican Missouri Attorney General’s office. His conversion, abrupt as it might seem, is complete, “Road to Damascus” moment included. So he says.

He went on to work at Monsanto, one of the most villainised companies on the planet.

His Federal Government/Equal Employment Opportunity Commission years consisted of weak defenses of laws that had helped him get ahead and were colored by his hiring of two speechwriters from the conservative think tank, the Claremont Institute.

By coincidence, conservative filmmaker Michael Pack, heard occasionally off-camera hazarding a respectful question, is also from the Claremont Institute.

But having this “friendly interrogator” does Thomas no favors in making a movie about him. The cherry-picked news footage of this or that “liberal” or “women’s group” in the film’s long LONG passage on his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the fact that we only hear Thomas and his wife as expert “witnesses” to the event, with Thomas sneering at the accusers and the accusations, playing dumb about his questioning, still a man “done a great disservice,” makes you wish somebody a little tougher was behind the camera.

Oscar winner Errol Morris made a fine foil for Robert McNamara and many others. He’d have made a movie more probing, more challenging and less of an ad for the judge’s book. But then, Morris is very good at getting admissions, at getting at the truth. If there’s one thing this week and these past few years have taught us, “truth” is a worrisome concept to Republicans these days.

With every Huck Finn banjo on the soundtrack, every snippet of “To Kill A Mockingbird” or Louis Armstrong singing “Moon River,” with every softball question, Pack backs away from inconvenient truths about Thomas and creates a version his rightwing fan base will adore.

This is just one side of the whole Clarence Thomas story. We get a sense of how he regards himself as thinking outside of the stereotype of what a black man of his era is expected to think, as never ever needing “equal opportunity.” But we’ve also heard how bitter he still is over the Anita Hill testimony at his hearings, the near-run thing that his nomination — underqualified (again, a Bush judge for just a year), tainted — was.

Pack doesn’t challenge Thomas on that or anything else. This portrait cries out for that, for other voices.

Whatever his intellectual bonafides, as a filmmaker Pack makes videos for the faithful — “Hollywood vs. Religion,” “Inside the Republican Revolution” and possibly edgier, but probably just as partisan — “The Fall of Newt Gingrich.”

Filmmaker Pack is a partisan hack and this is artless political agitprop.

That said, Thomas reminding the aged white conservative base of the Republican Party of what growing up under Jim Crow was like, even in the papered-over fashion Thomas presents it, even as he votes time again to dismantle voting rights or equal opportunity laws, is useful.

He made it, why can’t every other African American? You know, with a series of powerful white sponsors grooming him for a lifetime of decisions that protect the rich and the racist on the highest court in the land?

He may not say a word about the giant — Thurgood Marshall — whom he replaced on the court. His wife may hiss about how “the demons were loose” when Thomas came under harsh scrutiny. But hearing where and what he came from, and all the civil rights, voting rights and poverty programs he has helped undo — writing opinions, rarely speaking out — is still helpful to understanding why he is so hated today, even if he himself can’t see it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements including some sexual references

Cast: Clarence Thomas, Virginia Thomas

Credits: Directed by Michael Pack. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:55

This is how a fellow gets a reputation.

You review a Netflix movie, “My Teacher, My Obsession.” Yeah, you know what it’s about. But hey, any chance one gets to toss the phrase “Hot for Teacher” into a review, right?

The producers of “Scarborough,” a troubling British psychological drama that deals much more honestly with the very touchy/politically-and-morally-incorrect sort of “romance,” suggest you review their film.

And then comes the pitch for “Before the Dawn.” It’s another student-teacher love affair, more sordid titillation dressed up with weak attempts to “doing the right thing,” strictly pro-forma, all the way.

Making out in the rain, sex in the ol’swimmin’ hole, etc.

And then it gets worse.

It’s the sort of movie you make with the idea that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Australian actress Alana de Freitas stars in it and scripted it. Nice way to “break into” the American market with.

She plays Lila Kendy, the new English teacher at Westbury Catholic. She’s moving on from an unhappy past, ready to start over.

“Troubled” teen Jason (Jared Scott) needs a fresh start, too. He’s just transferred there, with his mother (Kelly Hancock) fervently hoping that he’ll get straightened out and not “turn out like your brother.”

Jason may look like every other mop-topped preppie at Westbury. But he knows “every spot where there’s no security camera,” one of his clients declares. He’s the campus drug dealer. And he’s getting bad grades.

Mom may cry “You’re wasting God’s money, Jason.” But with a little extra attention in English class, and a little after-school tutoring, he just might turn things around.

Or not.

It begins with the personal questions, tilts towards “That would be inappropriate,” and the next thing you know — INTIMACY!

That comes before “We can’t do this again/Stop thinking/You’re just being paranoid.”

Things progress even though she knows it’s wrong, even if she picks up on his side hustle, even if the PE teacher (Houston Rhines) who is interested in her might catch on, and the catty colleague across the hall (Carissa Dalton) is certain to.

You can toss two good looking actors together and mandate “chemistry” in your story, but that doesn’t mean it shows on the screen. The usual way these movies play out — yes, I am now an expert on the genre — is fire by friction, white hot passion. ”

There’s no sign of that, here. The film backs away from being overly explicit, a laughable lapse into “demure.”

The clinginess, the rising fear of discovery, the naive/idiotic “mistakes” that will trip them up? Those by-the-book ingredients are here.

Along with the escalating drug dealer problems, and rape. As I said, “It gets worse.”

Time has run out on this genre, thanks to #timesup. There can’t be any more of these “inappropriate” romances in the production pipeline, right? Outside of porn, I mean.

MPAA Rating: unrated, drugs, violence and sexual content, profanity

Cast: Alana de Freitas, Jared Scott, Houston Rhines, Kelly Hancock, Carissa Dalton

Credits: Directed by Jay Holden, script by Alana de Freitas. An Indie Rights/Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:45

It’s quite late in the game for Taylor Swift to be expecting anybody to change his or her opinion about Swift as a performer, celebrity, icon and influencer.

But this new documentary takes its shot, a somewhat revealing distillation of her life and career, literally “growing up” under the intense spotlight of her fame and her image as “Miss Americana.”

The film captures the willowy, unutterably gorgeous blonde during and after the “Reputation” tour, about to turn 29 and experiencing a political awakening — the risks she took speaking out against Trumpism and its Senate proxies during the 2018 midterms.

Lana Wilson’s film — with Swift narrating in a sort of Q & A format — succinctly and thoroughly sums up the full spectrum of attitudes, the controversies, the blizzard of attacks that Kanye West, Fox News (when she endorsed Democrats in 2018) and others have waged against her, the nasty coverage of her “calculating” high-profile, gossip-friendly/very public “relationships” and the lawsuit she fought and won against a scumbag disc jockey who groped her.

Even winning that suit took a toll.

“You don’t feel a sense of victory when you win, because the process to so dehumanizing.”

If nothing else, the film forces you to add “respect” to your opinion, thanks to the revelations about her experience of the world, which has been both her oyster and her tormenter since she was 16. “Calculating” she may be, but she’s good at math.

Not being in her target demo, that “fanbase that’s grown up with me,” I go back and forth over Swift’s music, her talent and the carefully-cultivated “good girl” image, the one she admits she’s been trapped in because celebrities are preserved in amber the way they came off the moment they became famous.

I’ll think, “She’s not much of a lyricist” and then a song will pop up and make a decent case that lightning strikes (She taps out lyrics on her cell phone in the recording sessions in “Miss Americana.”) on occasion. I wonder if she’s all that as a singer, and then stumble — impressed — into a Youtube video of just her and her guitar, singing and playing in quieter interludes during her epic stadium “extravaganzas.”

But “Cats” is the most recent evidence that she has a lot of trouble with pitch, that she tends towards flat, and there are moments in “Miss Americana” where we can hear this as well. Her singing, like her playing and her songwriting, is a craft where we can see the effort and grimace when effort and production and autotuned are not enough. Which is fine, not everybody is a “natural.”

As a public person, she’s played the “victim” card a bit too often. But she didn’t invite to be groped, or to be a party to the first public proof that Kanye West is unstable. And even if some creep has control of your music catalog, some acknowledgement that her level of fame can make you look like the bully in such a tussle would be nice.

Persistent, undying rumors about her sexuality make you figure that whatever Brit actor she’s connected with today, if coming out is in her future, she’s got an “Apology Tour” to plan. Taking back all those songs she wrote about guys who’ve “wronged” her would be the “nice girl” thing to do.

That goody goody image is why I was a little surprised at hearing all that profanity pop out of her and her mother’s mouths in “Miss Americana.” That ties into the theme of the film, that Taylor Swift was raised to seek “the approval of strangers,” to “be thought of as ‘good,” to “do the right thing and be a ‘good girl.” To not make “trouble.”

When she’s surfing public popularity at the level she’s enjoyed it, any setback can seem personally shattering — Kanye at the Video Music Awards, in court, a Fox or Trump target, more Kayne kerfuffles.

“Do you know,” she asks, how many haters it takes for “#TaylorSwiftisOverParty” to be the top trending Twitter hashtag worldwide?

Stuck in a celebrity bubble, having only her mother to confide in about most things (She’s had friends since childhood, but being famous since childhood circumscribes who those friends are.), she’s been slow to grow up and develop perspective. Mom helped with that, too.

“Do you really care if the Internet doesn’t like you today, if your Mom’s sick from chemo?”

The film opens with a potential meme — Taylor playing the piano with a“kitten on the keys.” Adorbs.

The “big moment” is that decision to tweet her support for candidates who stick up for women’s rights, stand for protections from violence against women and put a premium on kindness. Yes, that rules out Republicans, even if her Dad has been one forever. The moment may be a hotly-debated and considered (before release) tweet. But the impact was huge, if not big enough to flip a Tennessee Senate seat.

The meanest thing a critic could say about “Miss Americana” is that whatever we get to “know” about Swift and her evolution in the documentary, she’s never out of makeup and never remotely as vulnerable as Katy Perry came off in the equally self-promoting but more raw and revealing “Part of Me” documentary of 2012.

But all that said, all the faintly cringe-worthy fan “meet and greets” (One proposes to his girlfriend in front of “Tay Tay,” to make it more memorable.), all the elaborate, anthem-filled stage shows that don’t really give a definitive answer to her singing talent, Swift comes off as likeable as anybody who frets over controlling her resting “mean-face” (while performing on stage or in music videos) can be.

Every album has to be an event that tops the previous “event.” No Grammy nominations for this or that LP is “fine. I just need to make a better record.”

Knowing she’ll be sent to “The Elephant Graveyard” (for forgotten pop starlets) at 35 is a burden she’s trying to carry, and delay.

A mob greets her as she leaves for the recording studio — “So this is my front yard. And I am HIGHLY aware that this isn’t normal.”

Pressure, pressure and m more pressure.

It’s hard getting to be “Miss Americana.” It’s almost impossible to stay “Miss Americana.” This semi-intimate film gives mere mortals an appreciation of the personal cost of getting there, staying there and staying reasonably sane and happy as you do.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, skimpy costumes, lots of profanity

Cast: Taylor Swift, Andrea Swift, Scott Swift, Tree Paine, Brendon Urie and of course, Kanye West.

Credits: Directed by Lana Wilson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:25

Failed comic moves home and gets inspiration from an alcoholic dermatologist.

Because Billy Crystal’s mother always wanted a doctor in the family?

“Standing Up, Falling Down” earns limited release in mid February.

The thing that bowls you over, straight off, about “Gretel & Hansel” is how beautiful the damned thing is.

Art director Christine McDonagh (TV’s “Into the Badlands”), production designer Jeremy Reed (“Hard Candy”) and lighting cinematographer Galo Olivares (“Roma”) have conjured up a stark fairytale-scape with glowing, supernatural red fog, stylized black witchwear (Leonie Prendergast did the costumes) and buildings that are Bauhaus meets Lovecraft’s “Necronomicon.”

At times, the eye candy nightmares and waking nightmares of this grim twist on the Grimm’s fairytale will make your jaw drop.

Casting the regal horror queen Alice Krige (“Ghost Story,” “Silent Hill,” Borg leader in “Star Trek”) is another coup. The florid dialogue of Rob Hayes takes on poetic undertones as the South African actress delivers lines of chilling menace or spooky empowerment in an Irish accent.

“Women often know things we’re not supposed to know,” she purrs to Gretel — the heroine of this version of the story. “I’d hate for you to start something you can’t stop.”

All that’s missing from this sinister exercise in creepy cuisine is, well, frights. “Gretel & Hansel” are wrapped in a chiller with no thrills, a thriller with few chills.

In a time of pestilence and famine, Gretel (Sophia Lillis of “It”) struggles to feed herself and her little brother Hansel (Samuel Leakey). But the options for a young woman in era are the grimmest thing she may confront. A pervy housekeeping job interview with “Milord,” cast out of a foodless house by their mad mother, even a chance rescue and meal from The Hunter (Charles Babalola) leaves her suspicious.

“Is it safe to trust someone who arrives just when you need them?” she narrates.

Deep into the forest, what is she to make of that black A-frame with the table set for a perpetual banquet, sweets and meats and fresh milk?

“Nothing is given without something else being taken away,” she counsels her little brother.

The kindly, black-fingered crone who lives there seems warmed by their presence. That scent of cakes baking that lured them there? Nothing suspicious about that. Not at all.

“Guests? I’d rather have ROACHES!”

But she keeps busy stuffing Hansel and taking a motherly teaching folkways/witchy ways tack with Gretel, “a girl with action in her power.”

Actor turned director Osgood “Oz” Perkins (“The Blackcoat’s Daughter”) keeps the period piece detail even as the design takes on modernist gigantic sound-stage dimensions.

But all this beauty and detail serves a heavily-narrated, dramatically-thin war of the wills tale, where we and Gretel figure out that there’s no such thing as a free dessert cart.

The framing prologue, about “the most perfect little girl” is colorful but has such a tenuous connection to the main story as to be pointless.

Krige, with her cadaverously unworldly eyes and Irish burr, never takes on the terrifying tone we keep waiting for.

Lillis never seems frightened, just curious.

And when the credits roll, we cast our eyes about the theater at all the other paying patrons casting their eyes around the theater, all of us wondering the same thing.

“Wait, that’s it?”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for disturbing images/thematic content, and brief drug material

Cast: Sophia Lillis, Alice Krige, Jessica De Gouw

Credits: Directed by Oz Perkins, script by Rob Hayes. An Orion Pictures release.

Running time: 1:27