Movie Nation

Here’s a documentary about the “brave new world” of brain research that points a day when we we “fundamentally change what it means to be human.”

In “I Am Human,” filmmakers Elena Gaby and Taryn Southern talk to futurists, neuroscientists, entrepreneurs and science fiction writers to create a snapshot of where brain research and the possibilities of “brain interface” devices stand today.

It’s the focus of much of what is being done to correct illnesses or physical disabilities and create “enhanced” human abilities via technology that could alter the path of human evolution.

“Everything we’re trying to do, everything we’re trying to become, everything we’re trying to FIX” is in the brain, as brain research entrepreneur Bryan Johnson of Kernel Labs puts it.

It’s the “everything we’re trying to fix” part of this informative but generally dry documentary that will grab everyone’s attention.

We meet a “tetraplegic” man in the chapter, “I Am Bill,” someone disabled in a bicycle accident but willing to work with the cutting edge — and invasive (at this point) — technology that could let our brain send signals to devices or machinery to compensate for his injuries.

Anne is “not really sure what’s going on in my brain.” She has Parkinson’s, and the “I Am Anne” profile shows how “deep brain stimulation” can tamp down symptoms of that condition and allow her something like a more normal life.

In “I Am Stephen” the “human guinea pig” is a blind man willing to take on an interface that looks not wholly unlike the glasses worn by Lavar Burton’s Lt. LaForge on “Star Trek” so that he might “see” the sister he hasn’t been able to gaze upon in years.

Lip service is paid to the potential “dehumanizing” effect of all this. But if a blind person is given her or his sight back, with the possibility of enhanced “Six Million Dollar Man/Woman” vision (infrared, for instance), if people confined to a bed in a extended care facility room are given mobility, it’s hard to see any downside that would outweigh that.

Then we’re reminded of all the ways tech has brought out the worst in human nature via social networks and intrusive Google data farming, and we’re given pause.

And with the rationed health care of today, who exactly will be able to afford these “miracles” bears considering.

Still and all, a pretty good film of the “What will they think up next?” variety.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Bryan Johnson, Nita A. Farahany, Ramez Naam

Credits: Directed by Elena Gaby and Taryn Southern.  A 1091 Films release.

Running time: 1:31

Projections for the second weekend of release for this “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie are as all over the place as the opening weekend’s guesses were.

Maybe it’ll manage $29 million, perhaps $40 is within reach. My guess would be the lower number.

About $1 million in tickets were sold last night to the kid friendly “Call of the Wild” co starring Harrison Ford and a digital dog. It could grab $20 million all in by midnight Sunday, but saner heads are saying $17 million.

The sequel to “The Boy” titled “Brahms: The Boy II” is on its way to a $9 million or less weekend. I saw it with two other people in the multiplex I went to last night. I figure $5 is the best STX should bank on from this dog.

“Birds of Prey” should be in the $80 million range by Sunday night. Not turning into the complete disaster it seemed at first.

https://deadline.com/2020/02/sonic-the-hedgehog-call-of-the-wild-barks-brahms-the-boy-ii-weekend-box-office-1202865381/

Think of “Farmageddon” as a child’s introduction to science fiction cinema.

It’s a non-verbal giggle — a bit slow to be a romp — through decades of sci-fi on the big screen (and on the small) packaged in a preschool age-friendly “E.T.,” with our old pal Shaun the Sheep as our guide.

It’s about an alien flying saucer landing in English farm country, Mossington and Mossingham Forest, where Shaun and his fellow sheep share their sheared lives with Farmer John and his dog, Bitzer, who keeps the peace on the farm.

Kids will enjoy the usual Aardman stop-motion animation sight-gags as sniggering Shaun tries to outwit Bitzer, this time helping a blue alien with a puppy dog’s head, shapeless tentacles for arms and a body like a Christmas tree, “go home.”

The sight gags include glue accidents, alien-hunters in hazmat suits in the “alien hunter cafeteria” (one wears a chef’s hat…over his hazmat helmet), an electronic scoreboard of the “No Accidents In X Days” variety that displays “UFOs Captured – 0001” — zip line ingenuity, a dumpster chase, a farm combine that accidentally carves crop-circles in Farmer John’s barley and an alien with a taste for pizza with just two words in her vocabulary which any Mazda owner will recognize.

“Zoom zoom!”

Grownups? We can turn this comical clay-animated contraption into a drinking game. Or not. Nobody could survive playing a game where you take a belt every time a science fiction movie or TV show is referenced in “Farmageddon.”

There’s a “Wall-E/Short Circuit” robot, Daleks, a “2001” HAL 3000 computer bank, and way too much of “E.T.” for this to wholly avoid charges of plagiarism. A “Life of Brian” visual cue here, a “Close Encounters” musical one there.

Those robot arms came off Robby the Robot from “Lost in Space.”

And could that be Doctor Who?

It takes a while to get up to speed, but once it does, “Farmageddon” delivers the jokes, visual puns and slapstick in a mad flurry. Any money Netflix spends making movies with Aardman is welcome, and well spent.

MPAA Rating: G, general audiences

Credits: Directed by Will Becher and Richard Phelan, script by Jon Brown and Mark Burton. An Aardman/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

Joan Didion’s cluttered, convoluted pot-boiler of a thriller “The Last Thing He Wanted” becomes a cluttered, convoluted mess of a movie for Netflix.

Who knew? Certainly not director and co-screenwriter Dee Rees, who brought the hilariously over-rated “Mudbound” to the streaming service. She never saw it coming. Apparently.

A nonsensically twisty take on the muddled geo-politics of 1984, when journalists couldn’t get America interested in the Reagan administration’s hysterical fear of “socialism” south of the border and its illegal support of Nicaragua’s “Contra” rebels, “Last Thing” is about guns for cocaine smuggling, shady operators in and out of government and a “Pennsylvania Ave. reporter with a moral compass.”

She’s played by Oscar winner Anne Hathaway. She took the role to bite off big chunks of that famous Didion dialogue. She scripted the Streisand “Star is Born,” “Play it As It Lays” and a minor classic — “True Confessions.”

Nobody tells Elena McMahon (Hathaway) that she’s in over her head, sniffing around a story no one — including her editor — wants. It’s about “selling a few third rate military leftovers to second rate revolutionaries at, I’m guessing, first rate mark-ups.”

Elena and her photographer colleague (Rosie Perez) have been in conflict zones. She’s seen stuff. So when her disreputable, estranged father (Willem Dafoe) reconnects long enough for his dementia to require her to complete “last thing” “big deal” for him, she grimaces, but never flinches.

In an odyssey that takes her from Miami to Nicaragua to Costa Rica to Antigua, she hunts for clues that aren’t readily apparent to the viewer, stumbling by with her instincts as this or that faction seems to be gunning for her, setting her up or stealing her passport.

There’s a government “ambassador at large” (Ben Affleck), a gun runner go-between (Edi Gathegi) and a gay resort owner (Toby Jones). Can she trust any of them?

I should mention that this, the meat of the movie, takes over an hour to set up. First, our reporter has to do a lot of what reporters do in movies — yelling at her editor for having to cover Reagan’s “victory lap” ’84 campaign.

“The incumbent cowboy is already neck deep in four years of deceit!”

She’s got to placate her boarding school daughter with promises of letting her return to Malibu. Hah. Right. On a reporter’s paycheck.

All the while, she’s the subject of the ire of the Secretary of State, George Schultz (Julian Gamble) who won’t be convinced she can be used as “the bullhorn” for administration policy via Affleck’s character’s sales pitch.

It stops making sense about thirty minutes in and never recovers.

Director Rees let herself be seduced by the character, a tough smart broad in a tight spot, and by all that juicy dialogue, some of it delivered in voice-over narration.

“Some real things happened lately…I wanted to know why.”

Let’s hope neither she nor Netflix lets that happen again.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some violence, disturbing images and brief nudity

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Rosie Perez, Edi Gathegi, Toby Jones and Ben Affleck

Credits: Directed by Dee Rees, script by Marcos Villalobos and Dee Rees, based on a Joan Didion novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:55

Hey Jude, what’s with the doll?

You’re a big boy, turn out that night-light.

Remember, the voices are just in your head. Just stick to your bed. And never forget the doll’s rules. Or you know, he’ll kill you…

It’s back to Jolly Olde for “Brahms: The Boy II,” a horror sequel about the Victorian collectible with the insanely-lifelike green glass eyes, a doll that doesn’t walk and doesn’t talk.

Not to YOU, anyway. Not if you’re the parents (Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman) whose beautiful little boy (Christopher Convery) has dug up this doll in the woods near a familiar English estate.

Jude, the kid, stopped speaking after a home invasion that almost got Mummy killed back in London. He was a normal child with the most grotesque Tim Burtonesque wall decor, “too big for a nightlight” when we meet him, a lover of pranks he likes to play on Mum.

One violent robbery later and this is the family where trauma lives. Liza has headaches and nightmares and Jude’s stopped talking. His shrink (Anjali Jay) can’t fix him. He just scribbles notes on his pad, in between pages upon pages of the most morbid memories of that awful night scrawled in alarming drawings.

The “fresh start” in the country isn’t one the moment the kid is summoned by a voice to dig up the doll from hell in the woods.

What’s the dolly’s name, son?

“Brahms” he writes. “Like the composer,” Dad says. “How’d you come up with that?”

“He told me.”

As is the way of such formulaic horror, the adults are slow to take the kid’s warnings that the doll is talking to him, that Brahms is “angry” if you break his “rules” (“No guests.” Brahms must take his meals with Jude. “Never leave me alone.”).

The groundskeeper of the old estate next door (Ralph Ineson) seems to recognize the doll. And the guy’s Alsasian can’t stop growling. He knows.

There is one seriously suspenseful scene in the script, and it’s suspenseful because the trailers to the movie have given it away. Nothing else in it is scary, and the third act’s a career-killing embarrassment.

There’s little rising panic, paranoia or questioning her sanity in Holmes’ performance as the mother. She has to be wondering if this doll is freaking her out because of her own fragile state. Aside from soft focus wooziness effects, Holmes doesn’t do justice to this.

Fiercely protective Mom? That she acts the hell out of. The kid isn’t nearly creepy enough. The movie might work better — or just a tiny bit better — if he was absorbing more of the doll’s malevolence.

As it is, this “Brahms” is a lullaby of horror, lulling you to sleep without any threat of nightmares.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for terror, violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.

Cast: Katie Holmes, Christopher Convery, Owain Yeoman, Anjali Jay, Ralph Ineson

Credits: Directed by William Brent Bell, script by Stacy Menear. An STX release.

Running time: 1:26

“Rag Doll” is a boxing-my-way-out-of-a-jam drama that flirts with being interesting, in between passages of middling melodrama and wilder, illogical “Nobody’ll see THAT coming” surprises.

It’s a fight picture of slo-motion bouts (for the most part, hides the skill levels of the fighters), obstacles that build, misery upon misery, and a whole lot of stuff that happens off camera when less interesting stuff is what we’re often treated to on camera.

The twist here is that the mixed martial arts fighter is a woman, a pale redhead named Nora Phoenix (Shannon Murray of “The Maestro”). And the stuff she’s dealing with, man…

She’s got a sick mother (Stephanie Erb) who makes jokes about dying.

“Who wants to sit around and watch me fall apart?”

She’s broke, even though she works as a hotel maid and turns tricks on the side. The other maids hate her “lazy” guts.

And she trains. “Ok, let’s see some Jiu JITSU!” her trainer (Dot-Marie Jones) bellows. Nora’s appearance has earned her the nickname “Rag Doll” at the gym. But she’s a ready-to-suffer sparring partner/punching bag for contender Aisha (Roxana Sanchez).

Oh, and she’s attracted to Aisha. Anything I’m leaving out?

“Rag Doll” follows Nora on a downward spiral, disinterested at work — and exhausted — appeasing her mouthy mom’s caregiver and dealing with the unwanted attentions of an Uber “guy who is well-balanced on his meds” (Dante Basco), a nice man who paid her mom’s co-pay at the pharmacy once.

Sanchez is a far more convincing fighter than Murray, Erb is one of those too-healthy-looking dying actresses.

Basco? He gives the fussiest, most mannered and irritating nothing of a performance I’ve seen in a while.

Seriously, if the script does you no favors, adding vocal tics and stammers and fidgets — he IS supposed to be medicated — isn’t going to help.

“Rag Doll” is at its most involving when it’s depicting the simple struggle of keeping all these wolves at bay — depression, doubt, poverty, etc. The fights, including “the big tournament,” are cliches right down to the ringside “coverage” of a small time event that isn’t on TV, but the “announcers” treat it that way.

Very “Bad News Bears/Pitch Perfect.”

Murray is kind of “indie film convincing” in the octagon (cage matches), but comes off too fragile to get in there and throw a punch. The wrestling part of the training, close-ups and sound effects of tendons straining, is far more realistic. And that’s due to editing.

She and the film collected a few lesser film festival prizes over the last year. Needless to say, I don’t see it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, MMA violence, profanity

Cast: Shannon Murray, Stephanie Erb, Roxana Sanchez, Dante Basco, and  Dot-Marie Jones

Credits: Directed by Bailey Kobe, script by Darren Longley.  A DoubleEntente release.

Running time: 1:44

The messaging in “Rich Kid$” might be heavy-handed, preachy even. The plot twists can be melodramatic and predictable. It’s still a fine indie calling card for all involved — in front of and behind the camera.

It’s “The Breakfast Club” meets “The Bling Ring” with a barrio accent, a well-acted day of escape for poor teens sampling the life of “los ricos,” “the rich folks,” just for a day.

It hangs on one question, just thrown out there in the middle of a pool party in a McMansion that turns into breaking and entering.

“So when did you find out your family was poor?”

Matias (Gerardo M Velasquez) has known for a while. His family getting evicted on this Labor Day morning confirmed it.

He spends just enough time pondering the problem to dive into teenage denial. He runs into somebody who knows a gated house with a pool. The “gringos” aren’t home. Pool party!

Nervous wreck cousin Steve (Justin Rodriguez) thinks they’ll get out without incurring extra risk. Then Matias invites smart Vanessa, bookish Izzyy and sexy Jasmime (Michelle Magallon, Naomë Antoinette,  Alessandra Manon) over.

“Today, this is all ours! Today, we are ‘los ricos!'”

It’s a party! Romping in the pool, raiding the owners’ bar and emptying his bottles of Midori and what not.

And might romance be in the air? Matias has been sweet on Vanessa since childhood.

But local shoplifter/thug Carlos (Ulysses Montoya, terrific) gave Matias a cell he lifted from “Wally Martinez” (WalMart). He’s owed a favor. When he shows up, things have nowhere to go but “wrong.”

“Oh my God, this is just like GTA!” That’s “Grand Theft Auto” for the uninitiated.

The kids have personalities that add to the “types” they’re playing. Vanessa is a feminist, in addition to being the “one who most wants to get out.” Matias is smart, too, but he’s the king of “You can’t let Carlos DO that to you” to Steve, when Matias is just as intimidated by the “hard” guy as his sniveling cousin.

The David Saldaña, Laura Somers script (which she directed) takes corny turns — “Let’s get dressed up” in the rich folks’ cloths, “Let’s play ‘Truth or Dare!'” But it sometimes transforms those teen-party-picture cliches into something sharper.

The slang is solid, and it’s un-PC but funny to see kids recalling their parents’ Mexican toast.

“Arriba, abajo, al centro y pa’dentro,” “Up, down and in the middle, bottom’s up!”

“Rich Kid$” made a little noise on the festival circuit. Parking it on Netflix should be a “Hire me, I’m good” ad for everybody involved.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sexual situations, alcohol and marijuana abuse

Cast: Gerardo M Velasquez, Justin Rodriguez, Michelle Magallon, Naomë Antoinette,  Alessandra Manon and Ulysses Montoya.

Credits Directed by Laura Somers, scripted by David Saldaña, Laura Somers. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

Not previewed for critics, Katie Homes is the big name in the cast.

But it could be great, right?

This murder mystery — Or was it an accident? — set around an IPO that could make a lot of people rich has a sparkling cast and is based on a best seller.

“Human Capital” will have limited release on March 20.

There’s a warm emotional payoff at the very end — the VERY end — of Pixar’s latest, “Onward.” It’s about fathers and sons, father figures and brotherly love. And it’s about 90 minutes too late to save the movie.

We’ve already been through 90+ minutes of a mashup of every wizard, witch, magic and sorcery trope blended into a story of elvish teens trying to have one more conversation with their long-dead father. The ugly truth of their “quest” is there isn’t a laugh in it.

This may not be Pixar’s worst movie — anything with “Cars” or “Planes” (they try to deny the lineage of that “Cars” spinoff, not having it) in the title, or “Monsters University” own that label. But it sure feels like the weakest.

In a world where centaurs and trolls, ogres and elves, flying unicorns and fire-breathing dragons never went away, science and industry have made lives better and “the magic faded away.”

Ian, voiced by “Spider-Man” Tom Holland, is turning 16 — friendless, with a bucket list that includes making friends, learning to drive and the like.  Mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, but not that I could tell) dotes on him, worries about her boys growing up without a father.

But she’s dating a corny centaur cop (Mel Rodriguez). Older bro Barley (the unmistakable Chris Pratt) is a bit distracted, too. And an embarrassment. He’s “taking the world’s longest ‘gap year’ (as Mom puts it), and WAY too into role playing games like “Quests of Yore.” He swears that all this magic stuff in the games “really happened.”

Contrived plot point number one is their late father’s decision to leave them a present to open “when both of you are over 16.” It’s a wizard’s staff. Accountant Dad liked to dabble, apparently.

Super-enthusiastic Barley has this idea to bring Dad back though a “visitation spell,” but he can’t make the darned thing work. The staff, like a wand at Oleander’s wand shop at Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter,” choses who gets to use it. Ian it is.

Clumsy fan-boy Barley interrupts Ian’s version of the spell, breaks the staff’s “Phoenix Gem,” and darn it — Dad only half-materializes. They’ve got 24 hours to find another Phoenix Gem to get their brief reunion with the father Ian never met.

They pile into Barley’s beater of a van and set off on their quest, stopping at The Manticore’s Tavern for directions. But it’s a theme-restaurant and the Manticore (I didn’t recognize Octavia Spencer‘s voice at all) is no longer the fearsome winged lioness of legend. She’s a restaurateur.

Style points to Pixar for casting potentially funny people in their leading roles. Major demerits for never giving them anything funny to play or say.

A manticore knocking back energy drinks? That’s all you’ve got for Oscar winner Octavia Spencer? Holland was a pointless expense for a blandly-written role any teen-to-20something could have played.

The animation’s good, lovely but not dazzling. There’s a spirited chase or two, not much payback for a movie that demands nearly two hours of your time. The best gags are the Harry Potter referencing stickers papering Barley’s van, “Gwinivere.” “Baselisk” is a band name in this universe. Disney’s still mad it didn’t get the Wizarding World?

A mock street sign sticker almost got a chuckle out of me — “None shall pass.” That’s a little “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” gag that the late Terry Jones would appreciate. John Cleese will.

Barley endlessly reciting spells he’s memorized, the “rules” of this one or that one, and delivering the picture’s overt message — “You have to take risks in life to have an adventure” — are no substitute for wit, originality or narrative drive.

You have to be very young to figure “Onward” has either of the last two. And even tiny tykes are unlikely to find this funny.

MPAA Rating: PG for action/peril and some mild thematic elements

Cast: The voices of Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Julia Louis Dreyfuss and Octavia Spencer

Credits: Directed by Dan Scanlon, script by Jason Headley , Keith Bunin and Dan Scanlon.  Walt Disney/Pixar release.

Running time: 1:54