Movie Nation

“The New Mutants,” shelved even before Fox made it an orphaned film by selling out to Disney, became a classic “late August release when The Mouse took custody. Dumped in theaters this weekend, a last gasp of X Men rebooted earned $7 million, when $8 to $10 had been projected. Friday’s opening numbers pointed to $8 but it fell off a cliff Saturday.

“Mutants” with a no name cast, earned only $2.9 million in the rest of the world, where more cinemas are open because they had more competent folks handling the pandemic.

“Unhinged,” last weekend’s big (ish) opener, fell off by 34% or so and managed another $2.6.

It’s worth remembering that “Bill & Ted” is a 31 year-old franchise, that all involved and most of those who adore them have gotten that first AARP solicitation in the mail. I’m guessing this one did decent business as a video streaming release. In theaters? $1 million. Whoa. Big bomb.

The Dickens adaptation “The Pesonal History of David Copperfield” did not lure its even older target audience into cinemas. Over $520,000, but on over 2,000 screens. Bad weekend for a good film.

“Words on Bathroom Walls” added $435 to last weekend’s meek total.

Sources, Exhibitor Relations and Box Office Pro.

Yes, it is now Disney+’s “Mulan.” The live-action remake of the animated musical (made in Orlando) based on a Chinese folk legend was headed to theaters, seemed sure to be the blockbuster of the summer, and then Wuhan Don’s blunders killed that idea.

So, Disney+ it is. Hope it’s great. Or at least better than “The One and Only Ivan.”

“Unknown Origins” (Spanish title “Orígenes secretos”) plays like the penultimate draft of a mash-up of “Se7en” and “Kick-Ass,” a not-quite-there script that Netflix let its Spanish division put before the cameras.

Co-writer/director David Galán Galindo, who also wrote the book this is based on, cooked up a serial killer story set in the comic book geek universe.

Yes, there’s a “Big Bang Theory” comic book subculture in Madrid, too.

It’s a rather ungainly blend of glib and grisly, with a few laughs, a heart-tugging moment or two and a screen filled with archetypes and stereotypes, cop movie cliches and comic book nerds.

But as its the sort of movie that plays around with comic book origin stories — with a murderer turning his victims into a lifeless Tony Stark or “Fire Man” (Cough cough, “Human Torch”) — and rewards fans who get references like “Joe Chill” and “Detective #33,” well, it’s worth watching in Spanish before Hollywood takes a shot at a remake.

Javier Rey plays David Valentin, a buttoned-down new detective on the force paired up with the legendary Cosme (Antonio Resines) on the older cop’s “last day on the job.”

They show up at the crime scene where a dead body-builder lies, his corpse an unusual hue, a torn comic book cover one of the clues found there.

The squeamish Valentin barely has time to clean the puke off his shoes when his new boss (Verónica Echegui) shows up to remind Cosme to clean out his desk and turn in his badge. She’s hard to take seriously, not because she’s gorgeous, but because she’s all dolled up in a cosplay costume of her own making. Norma is into this stuff.

But the expert Cosme recommends as Valentin’s sidekick is his sleep-till-noon lump of a son. Jorge (Brays Efe) is the classic “comic book guy” — bearded, bellied, with an astonishing memory for comic book arcana. Valentine is contemptuous of this slovenly dork, even when the dork is in his element. Jorge runs a comic book store.

“In MY shop,” Jorge sneers (in Spanish, with English subtitles), the ‘freak’ here is YOU.”

The reluctant partners, often rescued by the cool and often cosplay-attired Norma, and assisted by the seriously smart-assed coroner (Ernesto Alterio), must face a villain who taunts them, leaves them clues and keeps recreating “origin story” comic book hero corpses. Which character will he conjure up next?

“If only it was based on The Seven Deadly Sins,” Jorge cracks (a “Se7en” joke), “this would be a LOT easier.”

The “buddy” dynamic is classic nerd-earns-the-respect of the at-first-contemptuous “partner,” who refuses to call him a partner. “Sidekick?” Eventually.

Norma gets to make the “We’re not childish. We’re more successful than you, for starters” argument made in every “geeks like us” movie or TV show.

A nice twist is Jorge’s journey. Seeing the obsessed murderer’s geek art tableaux, consulting with underground comic expert “Paco” (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a paranoid recluse who keeps cats and hates people, Jorge sees himself.

This script is close enough to the mark that a funnier Jorge turn and more brittle take on David Valentin might have gotten it over the top.

It’s not as funny as “Kick-Ass,” or most movies that take-off on comics and “origin stories,” and not nearly as grimly desperate as “Se7en.” We feel nothing for the victims and the villain is pretty damned unimpressive when we meet him. Not one tasty bad-guy zinger for him to turn into a catch phrase?

There’s a “real heroes” prologue and an epilogue that tidies up a story that has already reached its comic-book-appropriate ending.

Which is why I say “Unknown Origins” is about one screenplay draft shy of being ready for the screen, no matter what the director and novelist who wrote the book it’s based on thinks.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Brays Efe, Javier Rey, Verónica Echegui, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Antonio Resines and Ernesto Alterio

Credits: Directed by David Galán Galindo script by David Galán Galindo and Fernando Navarro, based on Galindo’s novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

“Entwined” is a moody, handsomely-mounted modern day Greek folk tale that never quite finds the urgency or suspense to lure us in.

It’s about a beautiful, mysterious woman (Anastasia Rafaella Konidi) who lives in the woods, and the new doctor (Prometheus Aleifer) in the village who falls under her spell.

Panos (Aleifer) has just buried his father when he takes the job in Alytis. It’s a primitive place, where you reflexively ask “Is there a phone in the village?” (in Greek, with English subtitles) when you already know the answer is “No.”

He’s all but shunned by the elderly locals, who tell him there’s never been a doctor there before. But there’s this ethereal music emanating from the woods. He hears it at night. And when he hunts for the source, he finds Danae (Konidi) living in primitive conditions, playing 78s on a wind up Victrola.

“I do not trust motorcars or their drivers,” she complains. “I long for the old ways.“

An ugly skin condition gets his attention, but before Panos can treat her, the grumblings of a drunken old man upstairs, “my father,” sends him scurrying. But he’ll be back.

People try to warn him. His brother George (screenwriter John De Holland) gave him the “science doesn’t have all the answers” lecture before he moved. The locals mutter “This is a small village. You are from the city” brush-off.

Never you mind, he returns to the house, confronts the old man, and eventually takes a drink of the face-melting local retsina Danae offers, and dozes off. He awakens to a house where “old ways” have the whiff of ritual. The fire in the hearth?

“This fire must ever be allowed to die!”

Walking back to his truck he gets lost.

“I could almost swear the trees are THICKER.”

Will Panos ever be able to leave? How long will he even try?

“Entwined” has trouble making us fear for the well-intentioned doctor. The sedate pacing, coupled with what feel like low stakes — Danae is never cruel or threatening — almost emasculates the predicament.

Aleifer’s Panos struggles to figure a way out, but never in ways that point to rising panic, desperation.

First-time feature director Minos Nikolakakis gives us a vivid sense of place, parks us in an enchanted wood, but leaves out the menace his hero must feel and face to escape it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, alcohol, some profanity

Cast: Prometheus Aleifer, Anastasia Rafaella Konidi and John De Holland.

Credits: Directed by Minos Nikolakakis, script by John De Holland. A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:29

His last tweet, folks. (@chadwickboseman) Tweeted: YES @KamalaHarris! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 #WhenWeAllVote #Vote2020 https://t.co/iOU3duBAcA https://twitter.com/chadwickboseman/status/1293330682119421953?s=20

Man, will this year never end?

Dammit. Had no idea he was sick. Apparently only his family did. He was diagnosed four years ago, and only told his family. He rushed through a string of Marvel movies, made “21 Bridges” and worked with Spike Lee on “Da Five Bloods,” all in those last four years. Like late life Olivier, he piled on the work in a race against time, doing it between surgeries and treatments, his spokesperson said.

He will be remembered for “Black Panther,” a blockbuster that became a cultural phenomenon. But he was wonderful — much better — in “Marshall,” “42”and “Get on Up.”

Way too young to die, an actor of noble bearing just coming into his own. Rest in peace.

“Good Kisser” must be the most inane, dull lesbian seduction soap opera ever.

It’s about a menage a trois evening that goes the way such evenings go — at least in the movies. SOMEbody feels left out. Somebody’s feelings are hurt. Somebody told us everything we needed to know about about herself by even suggesting it.

It’s as cloying as “I can’t pay attention to two woman at once!” and as sexy as “Can I take your socks off?”

We meet assertive bartender Kate (Rachel Paulson of “Kleptos”) and mousy aspiring novelist Jenna (Kari Alison Hodge of “G.B.F.”) as they hop in a ride share on their way to…

“A date with another woman!”

British-accented Mia (Julia Eringer of “Girls Like Magic”) is their “date,” a confident seductress who widens the rift between the other two. As in Jenna chatters on, inanely sometimes, out of insecurity. And Kate? She cuts off the chatter and works in little digs every chance she gets out of her own insecurity.

“This isn’t an interrogation!”

The night is all wine and hot weather, popsicles and chick lit, affections shifting here and there, “good kissing” and nothing remotely romantic going on, threesome or twosome-wise.

Soap opera lighting, soap acting, soapy scenario, soap bubbly dialogue. A good looking cast and set pretty much wasted.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, drinking, smoking, profanity

Cast: Kari Alison Hodge, Julia Eringer, Rachel Paulson, Carter Rodriguez, Courtney McCullough

Credits: Written and directed by Wendy Jo Carlton. A Wolfe release, on Netflix.

Running time: 1:14

The simplest of scenarios — a married couple wake up, trapped in a car covered in snow in the middle of nowhere, Norway.

The givens? No, the car won’t start. No, there’s no cell service. One person will take the “I think we should stay right here” and “I need you to trust me,” tack. Guess which one?

“Centigrade” is a survival thriller at its most basic, a minimalist tale that gets as much suspense and pathos as that limited and limiting plot allows. It’s a well-acted, well-crafted and utterly claustrophobic tale “inspired by a true story.”

Naomi (Genesis Rodriguez of “Delirium”) and Matt (Vincent Piazza of “Boardwalk Empire”) wake up, having pulled over in a blizzard on their way to a remote hotel that’s part of her book tour.

The windows are iced up. She can’t get the door open, and his words of comfort aren’t comforting at all.

“I just need a few minutes, and I will get us out of here,” he says. How many of us would have a clue about what to do?

We aren’t hit over the head with possible solutions, but we can see the rental car is a hatchback and a sun roof. It won’t start. Nobody tries the horn.

There’s a “survival kit” on board. Nothing of much use there.

She gets testy, and then has to pee. Nobody thinks to try warm urine on a frozen door lock. Hey, worth a shot.

Director and cowriter Brendan Walsh, a “Nurse Jackie” veteran making his feature film directing debut, trots out familiar story beats, hewing to formula. The passing snowplow that would never see them, the few seconds on a cell that are wasted in gulping fear and tears, the recriminations, the “People have secrets” argument.

And of course there’s “How she doing?”

“Keeps on kicking.” SOMEbody is pregnant, on top of “the sh–storm we’re in.”

Rodriguez manages to get across the idea of somebody who has let her needs come first. When scribbling a story, or a letter to whoever finds their corpses, is a priority, you know you’re dealing with a writer. Piazza plays the “Look where YOUR ‘planning’ has put us” card, the martyred and out-of-his-depth spouse, well.

The fictionalized “true story” parameters are another way the film is an exercise in making a movie within a straightjacket. As awful as this predicament is, “Centigrade” never comes close to becoming a horror movie.

But if you like claustrophobic stories of survival, putting yourself in the winter shoes of our antagonists, it’s not bad.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Genesis Rodriguez, Vincent Piazza

Credits: Directed by Brendan Walsh, script by Daley Nixon, Brendan Walsh. An IFC Midnight release.

Running time: 1:29

There’s no denying the utter delight in seeing Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves back in the guises that made them famous, time-traveling slacker-rockers Bill and Ted.

Winter’s broad, goofy grin, Reeves’ trademark befuddlement — you don’t realize you’ve missed them until you see them again, older, still-in-character, still clinging to the Wyld Stallions dream.

Maybe thirty-one years later they have one more “excellent adventure” in them. Maybe we all do. Maybe not.

Sure, they say “twenty-five years” in the movie. But who doesn’t lie about his age, right?

Decades of pleading fanboy film journalist questions later, they finally made a third movie, a sentimental and cheerful affair that doesn’t amount to much more than an attempt to tap into their residual good vibes. And the glee that they sell their little air guitar moments with in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” makes you root for them, even as the jokes are strained, the moments of wit thin and the pacing not nearly as manic as a zippy zig-zag through time — by themselves and those closest to them — ought to be.

The original screenwriters return, and comedy veteran Dean Parisot (“Red 2,” “Galaxy Quest”) steps behind the camera. The guy knows comic action nostalgia. Or should.

But this too-little, almost-too-late sequel never grabs hold of giddy and never amounts to much at all, just a belated attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle.

Our two dudes are old marrieds now. But their constant togetherness — even taking couples therapy as two pairs– have driven their Medieval wives (Erinn Hayes and Jayma Mays, replacing the “Bogus Journey” Medieval wives) to distraction.

They’ve raised two music-addicted slacker daughters, Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine).

And the Wyld Stallions are still doggedly making music, trying to come up with that one song “that will bring the world together.” But introducing “That Which Binds Us Through Time…the first three movements” isn’t likely to convert anybody to Tibetan chant mixed with a Therimin, bagpipes, etc.

While it may not matter to Rufus (the late George Carlin), his widow (Holland Taylor) now has The Great Leader gig. And she sends her daughter (Kristen Schaal) to fetch the dudes, chew them out and give them 77 minutes to get the song done before space and time tangle up end.

“Whoa.”

Events conspire to send Bill & Ted hurtling through time, via that time traveling phone booth, visiting their later selves, trying to find that point in the future when “we’ve already WRITTEN” the song.

Their daughters talk time-traveling Kelly (Schaal) out of her traveling egg and set out to build their dads the perfect backup band — Jimi Hendrix, caught mid-rehearsal, Louis Armstrong before he became a superstar.

“So what you’re all saying is that you love a song that I write in MY future,” Louis (Jeremiah Craft, good) ponders…

“Which is in YOUR past,” adds Jimi (DazMann Still)…

“But we’re in THIS present (1782 Vienna, recruiting Mozart).”

This “getting the band together” bit is rushed through — ancient Africa for a drummer, ancient China to grab famous composer-flutist Ling Lun, seen as a woman here (Sharon Gee). But too little of the film has that pacing.

The actresses playing the daughters are cute and take their shot at getting that Bill & Ted offspring quirk about them. It must skip a generation. The script isn’t a great help to them, but neither young lady is the least bit funny.

So you reach for the simple pleasures, the way our dudes’ eyes light up when taking up the air guitar again, their return to Hell to visit the droll German-accented Death (William Sadler), whose career as a solo bassist never took off and thus isn’t happy to see them.

“TALK to der hand!”

The many incarnations of Bill & Ted that the lads visit earn just a grin here and there — Bill & Ted in prison, comically muscle-bound, balding in a nursing home, etc.

Actor-musician Kid Cudi turns up as himself, the “Doc Brown” of this version of the tale, explaining the science and time travel paradoxes they’re up against as they scramble to “save everyone.”

It can’t have been easy engineering a story that would bring them back, please the stars, “play as young” as the originals and come off as fresh and funny. The “Bill & Ted” films are more beloved than hilarious, charmingly shambolicl. It’s always been about the characters.

One line from the script should have been an edict to the screenwriters, a line Bill and Ted repeat to each other with each time trip to try and fix the present via the future.

“Make it better, not worse!”

Alas, as sweet as some of this is, they rarely do.

Cast: Keanu Reeves Alex Winter, Kristen Schaal, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Jayma Mays, Erinn Hayes, Kid Cudi, Holland Taylor and William Sadler

Credits: Directed by Dean Parisot, script by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. An Orion/MGM release.

Running time: 1:31