Movie Nation

One big idea separates “1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything” from other music anthology documentaries bathed in Baby Boomer nostalgia. It’s the overreaching claim in the title, that “music changed everything” in that seminal year, just after the ’60s, just before the ’70s took hold.

It wasn’t just fashion and music that were transformed, but social attitudes on everything from sexuality and pornography to race, drug use, faith to faith in politics were upended in a youth-driven revolution whose big bang still echoes today.

A generation being sent to slaughter in a ruinous war, “at odds with the silent majority,” broke through and drove the Nixon administration and FBI so nuts that Watergate happened and the Vietnam War ended. And musically?

“We were creating the 21st century in 1971,” David Bowie remembered.

In eight installments, episodes titled “Respect,” “Starman,” “Exile” “What’s Happening?” “End of the Acid Dream, “Changes,” “Our Time is Now” and “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” break down the peak year for activism in American pop, rock and soul.

Asif Kapadia, who gave us the warm but blunt Amy Winehouse documentary “Amy” co-produced and co-directed the series, building it on archival footage and scores of interviews — some fresh, some archival, stretching from back then to the present, all heard in voice-over.

Here’s Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders remembering when the National Guard came to her school and shot protestors days after students burned the campus ROTC building. Hynde attended Kent State. We hear from Marvin Gaye, Mick and Carole King, Tina and Sly and see many of them in TV appearances from 1971.

Dick Cavett has a lot of moments with a lot of artists — not all of them comfortable (Sly Stone was blitzed). But who remembers how hip Merv Griffin’s “musical guests” were?

A great stylistic choice? Lyrics appear on screen as Bill Withers sings “Harlem,” Tina and Carole and Aretha sing songs of female empowerment or protesting racial injustice. The breadth of material, with artists from Lennon and Yoko to The Staple Singers, The Stones, Black Sabbath and The Who performing and/or composing music of social relevance, takes the viewer from impressed to overwhelmed.

“Respect Yourself” The Staples sing. Make sure “We Won’t Get Fooled Again,” declare The Who.

Jim Morrison died, “glam” blew up, Elton John broke out in America, Bowie signed a record deal, visited Warhol, met Lou Reed and Iggy Popp and “the actor” took on a new role, a reinvented persona who became “Ziggy Stardust.”

Big rock concerts had given a generation a mythic moment at Woodstock and the tar of infamy at Altamonte. But when George Harrison and his friend Ravi Shankar whipped up The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, musical activism took on the mantle of charity.

The “make the world a little better” benefit concert was born on Aug. 1, 1971, in Madison Square Garden.

The Rolling Stones went deep down the heroin rabbit hole in the South of France, and came out with their LP “Exile on Main Street.” And by the time they cleaned up enough to perform live again, they launched the epic 1972 tour that shaped their stadium-filling persona from that day forward.

Pete Townsend and Kraftwerk dabbled with synthesizers, Marshall McLuhan and Pete prophesied the day when “all the music and film” in the world will be on a machine in your home, for easy access to entertainment and manipulation by The State or Big Capitalism.

African American artists punched through on whitewashed TV and reinvented music’s business model to give themselves a chance. Marc Bolan led young girls astray, and The Osmonds stepped into a “wholesome” vacuum.

The range of material covered and the voices heard — from McLuhan to Bob Marley, Aretha (a supporter of Angela Davis) to Alice Cooper, Gil Scott-Heron to Hunter S. Thompson — is right on the edge of mind-blowing.

Granted, Kapadia & Co. use “context” to work in momentous events that surrounded 1971. The Kent State massacre happened in 1970, and the Beatles broke up that same year. The infamous Rolling Stones Altamonte concert, “the death knell for the ’60s” and “the end of the ‘acid dream,'” played out in 1969, and the epic African American musicians in Ghana concert, “Soul to Soul,” was in 1970.

And if you’ve gone your whole life without catching the soothing sounds of Yoko Ono’s activist, apple-cart upsetting music or hoped you’d never have to consider Geraldo Rivera again, guess again.

Lennon and Ono were front and center, performing and protesting everything from Vietnam to an infamous British obscenity case (“Oz” magazine) with Yoko yelling at bowler-hatted hidebound Britannia to “Open Your Box.” And Rivera? He was all over New York music and culture and protests and the like, the young face of New York TV news at the time.

It’s a lot to take in, and almost sure to earn “OK, Boomer” eye-rolls from those who came along decades later. But “1971” starts with an outlandish claim and proceeds to do a pretty good job of backing it up. Will the Britney/Kanye/Kendrick/Beyonce/J Balvin-J.Lo/J-T generation be able to make its nostalgia seem as epochal and historic?

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, nudity, drug content, profanity, smoking

Cast: Tina Turner, John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, Sly Stone, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Curtis Mayfield, Pop and Mavis Staples, Pete Townsend

Credits: Produced by Asif Kapadia, directed by Asif Kapadia, Danielle Peck and James Rogan. A Mercury Studios/Apple TV+ release

Running time: eight episodes @:43-:50 each

The warm, inviting glow of that pricey tank in our homes or our favorite sea food restaurants can be a living, bubbling conversation piece. We treat the tanks and those in them more as decor than pets, which is probably a good thing. Most “pet” salt water fish don’t live long.

And to get that one tang, angelfish or clownfish, many many others had to die as they’re plucked from reefs, stunned with cyanide or rooted out with dynamite. Not pleasant to think about, but “The Dark Hobby” gets right in your face about this vast “trade” in fish collecting and reef-looting.

Paula Fouce’s film parks itself at ground zero in the “war on fish collecting,” Hawaii. It’s the place in the United States where such exotics have been treated as “inventory” by a handful of big aquarium supply companies, depleting the island’s reefs and seriously damaging the coral and dinging the snorkeling/diving tourism industry as it does.

You fly all the way out, rent a tank and day trip to a reef, and it’s as deserted as the brown lumps off the Florida Keys, which also used to teem with life.

We hear from biologists and Kapuna elders, from educators and Humane Society and PETA activists, and from people who were once “in the business” of exporting or selling tropical fish to America and the world’s aquariums. And we witness Hawaii’s battle over regulating or even banning the practice, a stumbling, years-long struggle to not let the Pearls of the Pacific turn into the ruined, lifeless reefs of the Philippines or the Greater Caribbean.

The fish who clean, groom and police the reefs are vital to their survival, the experts here argue. They’re not just “instinctive” creatures, but animals with self-awareness and “biographies.”

Just watch “My Octopus Teacher” as your homework.

The simple truth, one former industry insider admits, is that “there’s not enough value put on their lives” to stop this in much of the world.

Fouce (“Song of the Dunes: Search for the Original Gypsies” and “No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank’s Story”) builds her film around the efforts of Hawaiian Robert Wintner, aka “Snorkel Bob,” a diver, reef-lover and outspoken activist in this long struggle to stop the looting of Hawaii’s natural resources by bottom-feeing wildlife dealers.

“All you need is $50 and a pulse” to get a license to harvest reef fish, Wintner complains here, there and everywhere. The reefs are being damaged, the experience of diving on them ruined and the island’s patrimony sacrificed for “an amusement industry.”

Those fish belong on the reef, Hawaiian elder Willy Kaupiko complains. “Don’t take our fish and put them in an aquarium in New York or Tennessee!”

The film doesn’t seek “balance” on this story, just snippets of a Youtube influencer talking about her tanks and fish that outgrow it. The collectors have been known to attack divers photographing their looting. And no wonder, considering the fact that like baby seal clubbers and Japanese dolphin slaughterers, they know they’re doing something wrong.

A quick DuckDuckGo search reveals the vast subculture of collectors and aquarium aficionados who aren’t giving this side of their hobby a lot of thought. As “in your face” as the arguments presented here are, a more confrontational filmmaker would have filmed Snorkel Bob approaching and debating such enthusiasts, the way PETA people get after puppy mill customers.

But there aren’t really two sides to this, even as we hear discussions of “buying out” people who have made this trade their livelihood, even as we see legislation move slowly, face gubernatorial vetoes and court tests as the reefs grow more barren and brown.

Heck, even the global explosion in destructive lionfish populations is attributable to collecting and tanking tropical fish.

“The Dark Hobby” has rhetorical “solution step” answers to the vexing problems it presents here, the wildlife sanctuaries that are cropping up in the seas off Hawaii, and the one totally surrounding the island of Cuba, a reef in the process of healing that could position the country to be the dive tourism capital of the world unless the rest of the world takes similar action.

There are “reef cams” for those who want that “live fish” experience in their home. “Buy an HDTV” Snorkel Bob half-jokes. Tune in to say, Deerfield Beach, Florida’s reef cam.

Activists are missing the boat if they aren’t attacking this problem on the consumer end. Granted, shaming tropical bird owners hasn’t saved their souls, but fish tank fanatics? They should be easier to reach.

Just show them the dusty, unused, long-stored tank you find at any given yard sale on any street in America and ask them if they really have to have one?

Aquariums can be lovely, if you can stand the noise, smell and grim business of cleaning them or dealing with the deaths of the “pets” you confine in them.

A few testimonials about the ordeal of trying to unload the damned thing when you’re tired of the cleaning, maintenance and constant refreshing of the living critters you keep in it would do more to kill off this “Dark Hobby” than anything else.

MPA Rating: unrated

Cast: Robert Wintner aka “Snorkel Bob,” Jessica Wooley, Yvonne Ware, Jonathan Balcombe, Gail Grabowsky, Rene Umberger

Credits: Directed by Paula Fouce, scripted by Paula Fouce, William Haugse. A Rhino Films release.

Running time: 1:13

Wanna feel old?

HBO Max is guessing you do. Still, looks kind of cute. May 27.

This mystery thriller comes our way July 2.

The word “uneven” is built-into any anthology film, and “The 100 Candles Game” is no exception. But here, the least interesting “story” of the eight sampled, is the framing tale, four people gathered in a candle-lit room telling tales of terror, then sent off to see if they see something spooky in a mirror in the next room.

Dumb. Not scary at all. Nothing the four leads (Magui Bravi, Clara Kovacic, James Wright, Agustin Olcese) do changes that.

That’s not true of any of the tales the four “tell” here, of child witches, a boy hunted by the “fog demons,” “black-eyed child” demons, a pregnant woman’s exorcism, a “buried alive” story with a cell phone twist and “Mom sees monsters when she’s off her meds” tale brought to alarming life by Amy Smart (the “Crank” movies, “Seventh Moon,” TV’s “Justified” and “Shameless”) and the like.

But none of them are stop-this-ride-I-wanna-get-off scary. They’re all too short, with the linking story playing like the dull filler it is.

The look, with seven directors signing on, is quite consistent. The effects are generally impressive.

And aside from the always-good Smart, I was most impressed by the Argentine Eugenia Kolodziej, who plays the hell out of that “waking up in a coffin” nightmare.

The brevity of the stories allows them to exit with an abrupt kick, a mild twist here and there. But most of them feel half-baked — punchy, going somewhere, until they don’t.

MPA Rating: Amy Smart

Cast: Magui Bravi, Clara Kovacic, James Wright, Agustin Olcese, Eugenia Kolodziej and Amy Smart

Credits: Directed by Victor Català, Brian Deane, Oliver Lee Garland, Guillermo Lockhart, Tony Morales, Nicolás Onetti, Nicholas Patterson, Daniel Rübesam and Christopher West, scripted by Mauro Croche and Guillermo Lockhart. A Devilworks release.

Running time: 1:38

The tropes of the big screen boxing drama were basically chiseled in stone in the Hollywood of the 1930s and ’40s, set up and recycled — with some variations — by “The Champ” and “Golden Boy” and “Body and Soul,” and repeated ever since.

“American Fighter” is built on those traditions, a “tough kid” with “big obstacles” to overcome if he wants to win the “big rematch” and solve his “big problem.”

Except this kid is named “Ali.” He’s a Persian immigrant in 1981 America, college wrestler tough, but with bigotry and hustlers surrounding him everywhere he goes and a sickly mother back in Tehran who needs American medical attention to survive.

His dad? He was executed on the tarmac before the parents could fly out.

George Kosturos (“A California Christmas,” “The Ride”) steps into the spotlight here, playing a fighter who could only exist in B-movies. He learns “underground” no-holds-barred fighting on the fly, punches way above his weight or the laws of physics, lands scores of knuckle-breaking haymakers and endures just as many as he scrambles to raise the cash to smuggle his mom out of Revolutionary Iran.

He’s scored a back-door college wrestling scholarship on the West Coast, but privileged or not, he doesn’t have the cash or the means of making it to save his mother.

Until his wrestling buddy (Bryan Craig) notes how Ali handles one racist “camel jockey” (and worse) insult too many from their teammates.

“That punch you threw in practice, you think you could do that again?”

Ryan is thus Ali’s entre to the underground fight scene of Northern California, booked and gambled-on 15 minute bouts staged in basements, hay lofts and the like for a few hundred bucks a throw.

Tommy Flanagan (“Sons of Anarchy,” “Braveheart”) is the ever-so-Irish promoter/profiteer who smells money in people betting against the hated “Muslim.” Sean Patrick Flannery (“Dexter,” “Assault on VA-33”) is the sage and boozy trainer the kid won’t give the time of day to, until he figures out he’s in over his head.

And Allison Paige plays the cute coed who digs Ali’s curly locks and exotic accent.

There’s a whiff of “Hallmark movie” to this brute brawl of a drama. Outside of the ring, it’s chaste and downright cheesy — a roller rink date, Mom’s worries in Iran, the fatherly way Flanery’s Duke sobers up just enough to teach “the kid” a thing of two.

“It’s the land of opportunity, kid. And yours is just inside that ring.”

One break from formula is that this “teachable moment” comes awfully late, too late to work, really. How did Ali get so good so fast, and carry on all this time without instruction?

The period piece nature of the pic means we get an ’80s synth-pop score and a lot of cornball post-“Rocky” cornerman wisdom about fighting “three-legged donkeys” and “blame makes you weak, son.”

Despite the racism, the budding romance, the pathos of Ali’s “cause” and the under-developed “wrestling” side of things — no, absorbing the ethics of no-ethics brawling isn’t allowed in the NCAA — “American Fighter” never overcomes the perfunctory story and B-movie “types” performing it.

The players give fair value, but not that extra something that would have lent this pathos or made us care. And if you’ve seen one savage beat-down, you’ve seen them all.

MPA Rating: R for violence

Cast: George Kosturos, Tommy Flanagan, Sean Patrick Flanery, Allison Paige and Bryan Craig

Credits: Directed by Shawn Paul Piccinino, script by Carl Morris, Shaun Paul Piccinino. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:38

IFC has this horrific laugher, on its way to you this June 25.

June 1, this “out there” slasher farce makes its public bow.

Wow.

I don’t recognize the listed distributors, but this cast in an action pic? It’ll make it our way.

Suki Waterhouse, a deep-voice/zero-range “model/actress” plays the “new girl” at a “Seance” obsessed boarding school in this week’s classmate killer horror thriller.

While her look, voice and name are distinctive, I don’t recall her standing out in “The Broken Hearts Gallery” or “Assassination Nation” the way she does here. She’s utterly dreadful, but perhaps she hated the material and figured even “phoning it in” wasn’t worth the effort.

Expressionless Camille shows up an Eveldine Academy just after a seance that led to a teen’s suicide. But WAS it? A suicide?

Camille crosses swords with the mean girl clique, led by Alice (Inanna Sarkis) but including Roz (Djouliet Amara), Yvonne (Stephanie Sy), Bethany (Madisen Beaty) and Lenora (Jade Michael), young women of privilege prone to pranks.

“You really don’t want to get on our bad side.”

Luckily, the new girl with the English accent has one friend, Helina (Ella-Rae Smith), even if Helina’s agenda leans towards friend-with-benefits.

But they’re all in the same boat at this “haunted” school, with the recent suicide, which created an opening for Camille, perhaps caused by a ghost and not by the mean girls tricking, scaring and humiliating her into leaping out a window.

“Some people think that it was an accident,” Helina says. She and Camille are interested in finding out. But those scratching, creaking noises in the walls, lights constantly flickering out and apparitions mean that Alice’s seance-strategy is the one everybody pursues.

Is there a dead disgruntled alumna or something/someone else out to “get” the girls — picking them off one-by-one as they conveniently separate and find themselves alone and dead?

There’s a generous sampling of horror “mystery” cliches in this script, plenty of this or that death/disappearance “doesn’t make any sense.”

Writer-director Simon Barrett makes sure that everyone looks fabulous, as most are playing pretty, vain princesses, and those who aren’t immediately fall under suspicion.

The requisite titillation of the dead (female) teenager movie genre isn’t remotely titillating — a shower scene here, a leotarded dance rehearsal there.

And through it all stands Waterhouse, stone-faced and stiff, underreacting to this death or that bit of peril, selling the fight sequence with all she (and a stunt double) have.

At least she’s been cast in a new version of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” so perhaps that’s what was on her mind while Waterhouse was shooting this. But being second banana to the notoriously awful Dakota Johnson (google her and “bad actress”) tells us all we need to know about that. Perhaps Waterhouse realizes that, as well.

MPA Rating: R for bloody horror violence, language and some drug use 

Cast: Suki Waterhouse,  Madisen Beaty, Inanna Sarkis, Stephanie Sy, Ella-Rae Smith, Jamde Michael, Seamus Patterson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Simon Barrett. An RLJE/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:33