Movie Nation

Grown men and women weep upon meeting him. His aids good-naturedly grump about what it’s like to try to get the man to a plane on time.  Because a walk through an airport might involve 200 stops, requests to shake his hand, pauses for selfies.

Congressman John Lewis is one of the most recognizable, most celebrated members of of the House, a Democratic icon and an aging lion of America’s Civil Rights movement.

Even those who demonize him fear him for all the right reasons. Because when the cause is righteous and the need arises, John Lewis knows how to get into “good trouble.”

For the film, “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” director Dawn Porter and CNN put their home town (Atlanta) 80 year-old Congressman in a chair in front a large video screen, and in “This is Your Life” fashion, take him through the trials and triumphs of his life, getting his reactions and interviewing colleagues, friends and peers for theirs.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley recalls seeing the then-76 year-old Lewis lead a sit-in for gun control legislation (in 2016) in the U.S. House of Representatives, inspired to run for office herself “because that’s just what I would’ve done.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez marvels as “the radicalism” of Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement, ordinary people who rallied, marched and protested until Jim Crow laws were stricken from the books and voting rights were restored in the then-segregated South.

Lewis shakes his head at the Republican assault on voting rights, renewed through a right wing Supreme Court enabling states to close polling places, strike voters from the rolls and fix elections in those same states where people like Lewis literally bled to win those rights in the first place.

“One day we may wake up and find our democracy gone,” he sighs. So, at 80, he’s taken up the cause all over again. If you’re not impressed by a man who counts his arrests — acquired during protests — in the many dozens, perhaps you’re idolizing the wrong leaders.

We hear about his being inspired to join Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s budding Civil Rights crusade — at 15 — see him march in Selma, and hospitalized after state troopers rioted and attacked the marchers.

“I thought I was going to die on that (Edmund Pettus) Bridge,” he recalls, remembering the “Bloody Sunday” in 1965.

It’s an adoring portrait, covering Lewis’s early life (he started wearing a tie in elementary school, and has never stopped) and the breadth of his career, letting him tell the folksy story of “the boy from Troy, Alabama” to crowds of fans and peers.

But being “adoring” means it flirts with crossing over into hagiography. Accounts of how “dirty” his first campaign for Congress, beating hometown favorite, friend and fellow Civil Rights icon Julian Bond, ending Bond’s career is the rare hint of negative coverage here. Several members of the Congressman’s staff are interviewed or otherwise given screen time, hinting at the filmmaker not casting her net nearly as wide as she might have.

And the lone voice from “across the aisle” heard from is retiring GOP Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin, complimenting Lewis’s efforts to keep the Voting Rights Act alive in the face of GOP assaults on it after the rise of the “Tea Party” wing in that party.

But if Atlanta-based CNN can’t do a bang-up job of documenting the life and career of one of Atlanta’s own, they’d have to hang their heads in shame. Director Porter  — she did the “Bobby Kennedy for President” mini-series — manages that, and more.

Michael Moore might plead for people willing to “put our lives on the line” to save American democracy. Here’s a portrait of someone who actually has, and who continues to do so.

MPAA Rating: PG, scenes of violence

Cast:John Lewis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Cory Booker, Elijah Cummings, Hillary Clinton, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar

Credits: Directed by Dawn Porter. A CNN Films/Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:36

Bobby Soto and George Lopez are here to tell this gang protection money murderer that “You’re bad, but you ain’t that bad.”

But it is Shia LaBeouf who has the title role in the new LA gangland thriller from the director of “End of Watch.”

David Ayer’s “The Tax Collector”  is “coming soon.

A little Euro sco-fi/horror to fill your nightmares? Streams July 7.

OK kids, gather round for today’s lesson in “How to get it done” in the movies.

“Homewrecker” is a C-movie with justifiable delusions of B-movie glory.

One simple premise, a couple of characters and a house you aren’t afraid to mess up, maybe spill some blood on — that’s basically all there is to this “Stalker took me captive” thriller.

Cast two decent actresses, get them to collaborate on the dialogue and “problems” each character must solve so that they’re all-in, and blast through it in 75 not-quite-breathless minutes.

There’s not a lot of polish, little in the line of over-the-top action or pizazz. But all involved wring every last drop of entertainment out of this student-film-simple movie.

They keep running into each other in yoga, spin cycle or dance class. Michelle (Alex Essoe) is younger, lithe and 20something. Linda (Precious Chong, yes, you-know-who’s “other” acting daughter) is a generation or so older. And if we know where to look, we notice she’s paying a lot of attention to Michelle.

A “chance” meet-up in a coffee shop gets the ball rolling. Meek and “nice” Michelle doesn’t know what to do with the stranger who notes their shared classes and exercise mania, who insists on sitting down for coffee, who moves her CHAIR so she can look at Michelle’s screen and see the answer to her second pushy question.

“Whatcha WORKIN’ on?”

The first query was about the photo on Michelle’s home screen. “Is that your BOYfriend?” No, it’s her husband. Before we or Michelle know it, Linda is asking nosy questions that reveal they’re “trying to start a family,” but that “he” isn’t that into the idea.

Linda’s questions are relentless, and when she gets around to what Michelle does for a living — interior decorator — the trap is sprung.

“You’re gonna do my HOUSE. It’s close by. C’mon! Let’s take a look at what you’ll be dealing with.”

Michelle, too polite and yes, compassionate — Linda’s wide-eyes scream “NEEDY!” — is in a car with a slightly-off stranger going to a house she doesn’t know in a neighborhood where she’s out of her element.

And once inside — you guessed it. The eyes turn from wide and “needy” to wild and “crazy.” The woman who insists her home be decorated “around this one piece,” a SLEDGEhammer she has hanging from her wall, has Michelle in her clutches.

What does she want? When will Michelle start to resist? How can she escape?

The script starts innocuously and then turns to building suspense. Just over 20 minutes in, the ’80s VHS copy of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (the movie), the ’80s “Let’s Get Physical” headband, the ’80s teen board game “Party Hunks” stops being amusing and turns unsettling.

We channel surf straight into “This freak is STUCK in the ’80s, and she has a SLEDGEHAMMER!”

Chong manages a “Valley Girl with Malice” vibe with ease. Totally buy her in this, in Linda’s “Life peaked in the ’80s” mania. Chong hurls herself in an imaginary music video in which she acts out Lisa Loeb’s video of “Stay.”

Talk about chilling.

Essoe does well enough by the hapless “victim,” although the fights — struggles to get the drop on her captor, attempt an escape — have a timidity that matches the character perhaps a little too closely.

If there’s a fault to the picture it’s that the life-and-death wrestling and punching are stage-fight tentative. Neither nice young actress wants to hurt the other, seeing as the shooting and editing strategy doesn’t allow time to film from many angles to create the blur of violent close-ups hurtling past that allow stunt doubles to take over.

The film’s coda seems to provide more explaining and logic than the viewer needs or has asked for.

But “Homewrecker” is laugh-out-loud funny and edge-of-your-seat thrilling just often enough to come off. Dollar for low-budget dollar, it delivers fun and value many a Hollywood production would envy.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Alex Essoe, Precious Chong and Tony Matthews.

Credits: Directed by Zach Gayne, script by Alex Essoe, Precious Chong and Zach Gayne. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:16

I was joking with a critic friend online that I might have to give the aged Vietnam Vets on “one last mission” comedy “Never Too Late” a better review than Spike Lee’s aged Vietnam Vets on “one last mission” drama, “Da 5 Bloods.”

Because A) the “aged” vets are properly 70+ in age, B) it has far lower ambition, but it manages to amuse and C) it’s a freaking hour shorter than Lee’s strained history lecture/dramedy/treasure hunt/firefight.

Nah. They’re of roughly the same quality when weighed against what the films were going for. I’ll just say I liked this one better, and leave the compare-and-contrast reviewing at that.

James Cromwell (“Babe”) leads this crew, a multi-national special forces team billed as “The Chain Breakers,” as they were once captured and then busted out of a Vietnamese POW camp.

Some 50 years later, Jack (Cromwell) is willing to fake a stroke and skulk in a wheelchair to get into a nursing home and get close to the nurse (Jacki Weaver of “Silver Linings Playbook”) he used to know, way back then. He gets just enough time with Norma to realize she’s beginning to suffer from dementia.

And damn his luck, she’s being shipped off for a three month drug trial that might treat her condition. Jack is stuck in a place which has found him out and caught him trying to escape.  His threats to his “captors” don’t have the bite they did when he was young.

“Unless you want to know what it’s like to dribble teeth, let go…”

There’s nothing for it, then, but to get the old team back together — and in the same nursing home. But Wendell (Roy Billing) is in a wheelchair, Angus (screen veteran Jack Thompson of “Breaker Morant” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”) is “forgetting” things and the Brit, Caine (Dennis Waterman) has even more serious health concerns.

The “lads” enlist the teenage son (Zachary Wan) of a nurse in their schemes, and even “old Hank” (Max Cullen), the only bloke ever to break out of this “joint,” an actual WWII “Great Escape” survivor. So yeah, he’s 90something and full of piss and vinegar.

So the slapstick and scheming set-up is a “Great Escape” comedy attached “The Notebook” romance.

The various plots to get out are cute and uncomplicated. That goes for the characters, too.

That only takes this intentionally geriatric “romp” so far. And while it’s lovely to see this cast again (Waterman is a British TV vet, Biling has been in plenty of Aussie comedies), “Never Too Late” never transcends the undemanding, old fashioned lighter-than-light entertainment for seniors that it’s meant to be.

A trifle slow and skimpy on the action and believability for anybody under 70, in other words.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: James Cromwell, Jacki Weaver, Jack Thompson, Renee Lim, Dennis Waterman, Roy Billing and Zachary Wan.

Credits: Directed by Mark Lamprell, script by Luke Preston. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:35

Quarantined America earns a lovely July 4 present as Disney+ presents “Hamilton,” the stage sensation, this weekend instead of making us wait until the fall of next year to see what all the hoopla’s been about.

This is the show, with the original cast, just as it appeared on stage in 2016, a filmed-performance from the summer after the show opened. And while filmed plays are always anti-cinematic and are usually the province of PBS’s “Great Performances,” it beautifully preserves a multi-cultural musical in its moment and of its moment.

Lin Manuel Miranda hasn’t so much reinvented the form as taken it further down the road to its next logical step. And he didn’t really rewrite American history so much as reclaim it for “all the people.” The hip hop-influenced score and choreography of this 2015 play are a playful delight, the stagecraft busy, populous and fun.

It’s a brisk and breezy dance through one Founding Father’s life, presenting first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (Miranda) as the original “American Dream” striver, a young man on the make, hellbent “on not throwing away my shot.”

Color-blind casting gives the show a “re-appropriation” vibe, flying in the face of rising American (and global) xenophobia.

“Immigrants (We get the job done)” isn’t just a break-out song from the show, it’s an ethos.

The story has a built-in tragedy to its central pairing, Hamilton meeting, re-meeting, befriending and rivaling his Princeton contemporary, Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.), a fellow striver and future vice president increasingly embittered by Hamilton’s machinations to stand in his way. Many others — Gore Vidal among them — have seen Burr as the truly tragic figure in this clash.

But “Hamilton” sinks its hooks in us long before it stage-marches into their date with destiny, the play’s poignant denouement. It gallops and giggles out of the gate, through the “bastard son’s” early years. We sense his eye for the ladies as he flirts with “The Schuyler Sisters” (Jasmine Cephas Jones ,Renée Elise Goldsberry) courtship and later marriage to his wife, third sister Eliza Schuyler (Phillipa Soo), the daughter of a rich landed-gentry general, Philip Schuyler, infamous for “losing” Fort Ticonderoga.

The “Rise Up!” Revolution is treated by Hamilton as a cause to embrace, and an opportunity. The college-educated lawyer with trade and mercantile (logistics) experience turns down aide duties with other generals, holding out for becoming the right arm of THE general, George Washington (Chris Jackson).

He befriends the equally bold, impulsive and full of fight Marquise de Lafayette (Daveed Diggs), finally gets a taste of combat — and when the war is over, takes up the law, again picking his spot to shine when the infant nation realizes “Articles of Confederation” won’t do, that it needs a Constitution.

The sometimes bitter debate over Federal authority and early American foreign policy priorities and “revolutionary” limits is delightfully dealt with via Hamilton’s rivalry with “The Virginians,” easily the play’s comic highlights and stand-out performers.

The stolid James Madison (Okieriete Onaodowan) would write his share of the pamphlets arguing for Federalism, “The Federalist Papers.” Paired with the brilliant, mercurial “Declaration of Independence” author, and rakishly just-returned Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson (Daveed Diggs again), they would give Hamilton fits and steal his thunder, just as Diggs and Onaodowan steal the show.

This is “Hamilton” at its most brilliant. Re-casting Jefferson as a dashing dandy is inspired. As a swaggering, singing African American romantic, revolutionary and idealist, the character strips the white supremacy from the smartest and most idealistic Founding Father and makes him fun.

And that comical high sets the stage for the tragedies — many self-inflicted — of Hamilton’s later years.

Filmed stage shows are myopic and stiff, missing the essence of cinema. In a play, whatever the author’s intentions, there’s so much going on that the viewers’ eye decides what to focus on. This is a very busy, multi-level theatrical production, with a lot of distractions that can feel like “spectacle” when you’re in the theater, but look like clutter as a film.

Movies, by design, are a close-up medium, where the filmmaker chooses what you focus on at every moment. This filmed-played has a few close-ups, and while the acting is good and the singing generally grand (As “Mary Poppins” proved, that isn’t Miranda’s strong suit.), it’s a story we embrace at arm’s length. It never lets you forget the proscenium, the artifice of the art form.

But any doubts that this show has cast its limelight far and wide in the culture is evidenced by the “research” it encourages you to do after watching it. Every principal in this larger story’s Wikipedia page has been broadened to include Miranda’s spin on their life and place within American history.

It isn’t literal history, and for all the work Miranda did adapting Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography for the stage, he crosses the line from “historical liberties” taken for the sake of streamlining the story, to simple boners built out of his need to get a rhyme.

No, Washington’s rival for command of the American Army, General Charles Lee, wasn’t a bad general due to “inexperience.” He served in the British Army in the French and Indian War, was an officer in the Polish military in the years after that, and served in the American Army for a couple of years before blundering at Monmouth Courthouse. He was a bad general because he lacked nerve and was better at grabbing credit than seeing a battle through to its conclusion.

Miranda chooses to call the election of 1800 “a landslide,” when it was a helluva lot more complicated than that, and misses the chance to explain further Hamilton’s fears of Burr’s ambition and character and Burr’s grievances against Hamilton.

Will “Hamilton” transcend its “of its moment” status and join the Great American Musical canon? Only time will tell. But if “Rent” did, after a fashion, why not?

This filmed staging, which wouldn’t have “played” well on the big screen, is as rich with cinematic possibilities as it is musically. If millions find and love this version on the home screen, perhaps this “Hamilton” will encourage Disney to properly adapt it for the big screen down the road. I’d pay good money to see that.

[“Hamilton” vs. “1776,” an unfair fight?]

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and some suggestive material

Cast: Lin Manuel Miranda, Phillipa Soo, Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, Chris Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos, Jonathan Goff and Renée Elise Goldsberry

Credits: Directed by Thomas Kail, book, words and music by Lin Manuel Miranda, based on the Ron Chernow biography. A Disney+ (streaming) release.

Running time: 2:40

There’s no sugar-coating what happens in “Adú,'” a Spanish film about the trials of human migration in Africa. The pall of death hangs over it. A child endures horrors no child should experience, and all of those deaths directly impact him.

However Netflix is pitching this, “Adú” is grim going and nobody’s idea of a sentimental or even hopeful tale.

Actually, it’s three tales — that of the title character, a little Cameroonian boy (Moustapha Oumarou) who looks to be about seven, a globetrotting wildlife charity representative (veteran Spanish character actor Luis Tosar) trying, in vain, the save elephants in Cameroon, and Spanish border guards facing the hordes who charge the fence in Spanish Morocco, trying to escape Africa for Europe.

It’s an unwieldy structure that screenwriter Alejandro Hernández (“The Motive”) works out, with those second and third stories less integral to the overall theme of the film, and less interesting to boot. But even in Spain (and for Netflix), you’ve got to throw some familiar faces and names at the public or nobody will want to see your movie about what Africans go through to reach Spain.

The mob at the border of Melila, in Spanish Morocco, is where an African, screaming that he is a refugee, gets hung up on the razor wire, fights to free himself and fights the Spanish guards trying to get him loose. He falls and dies.

Depending on what happened, careers could end, at the very least.

In Cameroon, little Adú is getting a cycling lesson from his sister Alila (Zayiddiya Dissou) when they stumble upon poachers killing and butchering an elephant. They flee, ditching the bike.

There will be consequences for that. The local game wardens are always too late to save the elephant, “the most important animal in the park” (in English, French and Spanish — with subtitles). But their NGO advisor, Gonzalo (Tosar) figures the bike is the clue.

So do the thugs who show up at Adú and Alika’s stilt house on the outskirts of Mbama. The children free. Their mother isn’t so lucky.

But their father earlier made arrangements for them to come north. Their auntie drops them off with the mule, not thinking for a minute that human traffickers are slime the world over. He takes them to the airport, tells them how to stow away on a jet, and ditches them. It isn’t even going to Spain.

Meanwhile, Gonzalo’s being ordered out of the country for not getting along with the locals, focusing only on the animals he wants to protect. His troubled, flirtatious druggy of a daughter (Anna Castillo) picks this moment for a visit. He frets and lectures. But at least the rebellious “adult” Sandra gets a free Cameroonian bike out of it.

Meanwhile, the guards are getting their stories straight, even though the fence incident seems pretty clearly an accident that resulted from the actions of a chaotic mob.

But it is Adú’s quest that holds our interest here. He stumbles from Cameroon to Senegal and Mauritania, copes with more death, attempted sexual assault and a pummeling he takes when he and a new traveling companion (Adam Nourou) try to steal food.

Will they, or at least he, make it to Morocco? Will all three stories neatly align, at some point?

Director Salvador Calvo gets to show us a lot of Africa, from the teeming cities below the Sahara to the posh living in the formerly European enclave city of Alhucemas.

The cast is sharp, with young Oumarou, Dissou and Nourou the standouts.

But the three-interlocking stories structure is unwieldy at best, frustrating most of the time. The linking up of stories is less important than the stories themselves, and Adú’s agonizing journey is one we miss when one of the guards is having an attack of conscience, or the rebellious daughter is acting out against her environmentalist dad by buy a “fake” elephant tusk.

It’s a grim slog for such a mixed-bag of a movie, but the one story that matters almost makes up for the dullness of those stories that matter less.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, deaths, sexual content, much of it involving children

Cast: Moustapha Oumarou, Luis Tosar, Adam Nourou, Álvaro Cervantes, Anna Castillo and Zayiddiya Dissou

Credits: Directed by Salvador Calvo, script by Alejandro Hernández. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:5

Thriller from IFC due out Sept. 18. Looks creepy enough to get the job done.

“Straight Up” is the quippiest, most quotable romantic comedy of the year.

There’s no arguing over that. The proof is in the patter, all of it played at “on the spectrum” speed.

“You’re the nicest person.” “I’m not. I always lie to homeless people. I always have chance. I just don’t give it to them.”

“I thought I saw Amy Adams at Trader Joe’s. But it was only Isla Fisher.”

“I feel like Sandra Bullock in ‘The Blind Side’ — making dreams come true!”

“What if this is like that movie, ‘As Good as It Gets?'” “What if  ‘Something’s Got to Give,’ like that movie, ‘The Day After Tomorrow?”

Writer-director and star James Sweeney, in remaking a short film of his, attempts nothing less than a re-imagining of the “gay BFF” cliche for a non-binary age. And while I can’t say that he necessarily pulls that off, he’s made a sparkling romance where the connection is all about the cute, and compatibility.

Sweeney stars as Todd, a tech worker and “professional house sitter” living, lovelessly, in L.A. He’s in therapy. He speaks in those clipped, perfectly-formed but breathlessly-delivered phrases that the movies and “The Big Bang Theory” have conditioned us to accept as autistic-smart.

But being smart, squeamish about all sorts of things (most having to do with bodily fluids and functions), fastidious and speaking like that got him labeled, early on.

So he’s lived his life figuring he’s gay. Only, maybe not. He can’t seem to connect with any same-sex partners and finds the various sex acts required repellent. So maybe he’s not gay. His shrink (Tracie Thoms) isn’t sure, either.

“I’m not PAYING you to laugh at me.”

“Your PARENTS pay me!”

Todd is always tidying up stores, or reshelving library books. People ask him “Do you work here?” a lot. That’s how he meets Rory (Katie Findlay).

Their banter is informal, quick and simpatico in the extreme.

“One can like ‘Gilmore Girls’ and not be gay!”

He figures he needs to get that out there. But they’re Cary and Kate, Will & Grace together. Both of them feel it.

She’s an aspiring actress whose improv class, where she almost instantly and almost-always crosses a line, should be telling her to take up stand-up comedy instead. He’s happier house sitting (and “organizing” when he does) than whatever college trained him to do.

Rory and Todd click. They’re chatty, clever, adorable and — here’s the tricky part — aridly asexual together.

How can this work out? He’s confused, she’s slow on the uptake even if she isn’t “gay blind” the way “America was in the ’60s” or South Carolina is today.

His friends, the vain, ditzy and flirtatious model Meg (Dana Drori, hilarious) and the aggressively sexual and gay Ryder (James Scully) are ready to put them to the test.

His parents (Betsy Brandt and Randall Park) are eager to name the date. Well, she is. Dad? Casting Randall Park as Todd’s dad is so perfect that we’re invited to see his sexual identity role model right there in front of us, fey, funny and “confused,” which have long been Park’s screen specialty.

Throw in “racist” (a classic Park touch) and you’ve made your character a scene-stealer.

“Straight Up” wrestles with its messaging, which bogs the picture down. It takes a few predictable turns, and some predictably unpredictable ones. But Sweeney maintains the manic patter even when the pacing flags.

As a leading man, he’s playing more of a “type” than a character. Yes, this guy could have taken the lead on “The Big Bang Theory” had Jim Parsons auditioned out. Yes, this is like a “Will & Grace” reboot without the flaming or the bitching or the bitchy flaming.

Findlay has a “This year’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead” vibe about her — verbose, with a vocal fry, sexy more by default than demeanor.

Needless to say, everybody’s timing — leads and supporting players — has to be spot-on for “Straight Up” to come off. Which, for the most part, it does.

Findlay and Todd don’t necessarily sell us on what they’re selling here. But they’re so cute together we buy into them as a couple, sales resistance be damned.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sex scenes and sexual situations, profanity

Cast: James Sweeney, Kate Findlay, Dana Drori, James Scully, Betsy Brandt, and Tracie Thoms and Randall Park.

Credits: Written and directed by James Sweeney. A Strand release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:36