Movie Nation

Think of the simpler than simple terrors of “The Mist,” “Christine” (demonic car), “Cujo” (demonic dog), “Pet Sematary,” Firestarter.” Stephen King never had to get too fancy or complicated to find his horror hooks, and set those hooks in us.

The novella “In the Tall Grass” takes us back to the general “Children of the Corn” idea, that there’s menace in a vast grassy field that turns into a supernatural maze (“The Shining”) the moment you step into it.

Yes, his son Joe Hill co-wrote it, but there’s ground the master has covered before here. Thank goodness the film that comes from it is tight enough to let us skim by the over-familiar and find some chills.

Laysla De Oliveira plays the very-pregnant Becky in “Grass,” driving cross-country with brother Cal (Avery Whitted) to start over in San Diego, when a blast of morning sickness makes them stop in America’s flatlands.

There’s a weathered, abandoned church across the road, with cars in the parking lot. But in the field next to where Cal pulled over, there’s a child’s cry.

“HEEEeeeeeeeelllllp!”

The grass? It is tall. So when Becky answers back, the child’s “I’m LOST in here…I’ve been stuck in here for DAYS!” makes just enough sense.

Becky overhears a woman trying to shush the child, but no matter. It’s “Cal to the rescue,” as he plunges in. And disappears.

Becky has just enough time to establish that favorite trope of modern horror — darn it, “No SIGNAL?” — when she follows.

And damned if she doesn’t lose track of Cal just as Cal has lost track of the child.

Calling to each other while standing still makes no difference. They sound as if they’re wandering further apart.

Panic, darkness, and then a grubby kid (Will Buie Jr.) comes upon Cal. That’s the same moment that the kid’s dad (Patrick Wilson) stumbles into Becky.

The father is a realtor. Trustworthy?

The kid? He’s got answers, explained in Stephen King creepy child-speak. “The tall grass knows everything,” he says. There’s this big “rock.” “That’s how we got in…that’s how it works” he says, not really explaining himself.

And even less reassuring — “The field don’t move dead things around.”

How long has this child been here? How long have WE been here? The look on Becky’s face asks the most important question of all.

“WTF?”

That killer 20 minute opening segues to the arrival of Travis (Harris Gilbertson). He’s looking for Cal and Becky. He’s her baby daddy, and he’s on their trail.

And when he sees their car, covered in dust parked in that same abandoned church parking lot, he too will be drawn into the field.

I like the way “Splice” and TV’s “Hannibal” director Vincenzo Natali dangles logic and hope in front of through Travis. He mulls it over, and decides to try and climb the church steeple to look over the field, first.

He goes in with his backpack. He marks a trail, tying off the grass.

As someone who muttered all the way through “The Blair Witch Project,” Hike to WATER, FOLLOW the WATER out like good little Scouts,” I relish those “just what I would do” touches.

Of course it’s to no avail. But heck, wouldn’t be much of a horror movie if mere nature lore and hiking common sense could save you.

The film loses much of its lean, mean narrative drive when we get into group dynamics — who can you trust, who has been drinking the tall grass KoolAid — and the whole supernatural mumbo-jumbo “explaining” what they’re dealing with, and how they can escape it, takes over “In the Tall Grass.”

Wilson is the stand-out in the cast, but the kid is terrific and De Oleira makes an OK case for this being a break-out movie for her.

It’s not great, just a tad more interesting than the muddled “It” sequel and more engrossing (and brief) than TV’s “Mr. Mercedes.”

Let’s hope King passed along to his son not just a career, but the best advice he himself ever followed. KISS — keep it simple, Stephen.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Patrick Wilson, Will Buie Jr.Will, Harrison Gilbertson, Rachel Wilson.

Credits: Written and directed by Vincenzo Natali, based on the Stephen King/Joe Hill novella. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

Her big decade was the ’60s, when she made movies and starred in the groundbreaking African-American TV series “Julia.”

I caught up with Diahann Carroll in the ’90s, when she toured with a concert cabaret act.

Regal but modest, sure of her place in cultural history and perfectly happy with it.

https://t.co/HLKhbHVHCT https://t.co/PjTrxTeDIW https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1180158277683834880?s=17

The master speaks. In this case, to The Guardian, as borrowed by The Wrap. A me. As The Guardian is a notorious online content thief, fair is fair.

“Theme park rides” and roller coasters. Not “cinema.”

I tend to agree, although a few folks have taken a shot at delivering something new within the genre. “Joker” doesn’t have guys in tights or endless digital fights. So there’s that.

It doesn’t take more than five minutes of the Mexican comedy “Solteras” (Ready to Mingle)” to make one wonder “Which millenium is this set in?”

It’s about “desperate” single women, mostly in the 30-40 age range, who lose faith in Tinder and Match.com, in long-term beaus who never “put a ring on it,” and attend a “How to Find and Close the Deal with a Husband” workshop.

However that plays South of the Rio Grande, north of the border, it’s a seriously outdated social expectation and a romantic comedy trope that was worn out and abandoned at about the time Monica finally got her ring on “Friends.”

To get anything out of “Mingle,” you have to ignore the current “women don’t need men” thinking, resign yourself to some pretty stale rom-com tropes and repeat, in Spanish (with English subtitles) “pelicula chica.” It’s an old fashioned chick picture, so let’s roll with it and see where it takes us.

Ana (Cassandra Ciangherotti) is dumped in the middle of a wedding, chosing the worst possible moment to wonder why “I’m the last single (soltera) of all my friends” to her beau of ten years, Gabriel (played by Pablo Cruz).

Months of drinking and crying later, she hears the news that her “ugly” cousin has just gotten engaged, and uses threats to figure out Tamara’s (Lucía Uribe Bracho) secret.

“I took a workshop!”

Ana decides to check it out, is encouraged by the “Hola, guapa!” (Hello, gorgeous!) greeting from the receptionist, but a bit put off by the knowitall “Love Coach,” Lucila (Gabriela de la Garza). And she can’t see herself as “desperate” as the four women she sees there — a frumpy drunken doormat, a divorcee racing against time, a wallflower and sexy but perhaps delusional about her beauty bombshell who can’t get all the way to the altar.

It’s only when Ana takes one last, hopeless run at Gabriel that she realizes she’s as desperate as the rest. She’s all-in on lessons that begin with “Maybe YOU’RE the ones who don’t take yourselves seriously” and progress to a makeover (“You are looking for a husband, not a job…Men only notice looks…It’s in their DNA!”), to leaving “your comfort zone…No more pilates. Find a class with more men in it.”

Dating small-talk rehearsals, learning what to conceal and what to flat-out lie about.

All very retro. Throw in the “bad dates” montage, a staple of such movies since forever, not the least bit funny in this film. Add a LOT of culture clashing lines about waiting for a man to cover one’s bills and “let you live it up,” lives put on hold until this threshold is crossed (one woman has been paying for her wedding dress, in installments, for years) and you’ve got a film that may resonate with someone demographically or culturally more “old fashioned.”

To everybody NOT around when “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” made its theatrical run, this is so stale and dated it is grating.

Cinagherotti has her Kristen Wiig’ish charms, but the “types” that surround her — including the greying architect (Juan Pablo Medina) who starts to look like “the one” if Ana can only set the hook — are dull, more a collection of cliches than actual characters.

Too slow, too few funny lines to go with a couple of promising comic situations, “Ready to Mingle” turns out to have been the wrong title to translate this tie-the-knot-of-die comedy to. They left out the “Not.”

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, near nudity, adult situations, alcohol abuse

Cast:  Cassandra Ciangherotti, Gabriela de la Garza, Irán Castillo, Juan Pablo Medina, Flor Eduarda Gurrola and Pablo Cruz

Credits: Directed by Luis Javier Henaine, script by Luis Javier Henaine and Alejandra Olvera Avila. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

It’s already blowing up in Korea, Europe. A $155 million worldwide opening is what prognosticators are predicting for Warners’ latest not-quite-canonical DC comics adaptation.

And thanks to pre-sales that were through the roof, “Joker” is starting off this first weekend of October with a $10 million Thursday night. 

Projections were for a “Venom” record breaking $80 million opening weekend. The “Venom” record was $80,255,000 and was set just last year.

A $10 million+ Thursday night  could up the ante and push “Joker” over the top.

An R-rated, incredibly violent “No wonder he turned out this way” origin story for Batman’s cackling villain could be Oscar bait for Joaquin Phoenix, and a real game changer for the Dark/Darker/Darkest Knight franchise.

Box Office Mojo is calling for an $85 million opening, but with all those presales…

“Lucy in the Sky” is opening in limited release on just 37 screens, so it won’t see the top ten. Reviews won’t help that Oscar bait make a dime. 

“Judy,” meanwhile, rolls out on another 1000 screens, so we’ll see if Roadside Attractions’ release strategy pays off. Box Office Mojo figures it will only do about as much business as it did last weekend — another $3.1 million or so. But there’s lingering affection for Garland, even if those who know her best are dying off. And Zellweger has been selling the heck out of it. It needs to stick around and clear $20 million, I figure, for it to be a boost to her Oscar chances. One bad weekend and it’s “Maybe not.

“Downton Abbey” came in second to “Abominable” last weekend, but returned to the top every day (save Thursday and Friday) this week, and will be at $75 million by Sunday night. It will hit $100 million before all is said and done.

“Hustlers” has also been out-performing the weakest opening Dreamworks cartoon in decades. Another $7 million this weekend will push it into the low $90s. Jennifer Lopez has herself a $100 million hit and a proper campaign could land her a best supporting actress nomination.

“Ad Astra” is staying in the top 5, still making millions but not nearly covering its budget, “Rambo: Last Blood” is fading and looks like it’ll top out at $45, maybe $50 if it lingers two more weeks.

“It Chapter Two” will clear the $200 million domestic mark by midnight Sunday, “Lion King” will close in on $550!

“Angel Has Fallen” is losing screens and its place in the top ten, and will fall shy of $75, all in.

Further down the charts, theaters are hanging onto “Peanut Butter Falcon” and that should help it clear $20 by Sunday.

“Overcomer” is dropping screens and should top out at $35 or so, a nice long run for a mediocre faith-based drama.

And way down the charts, “Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw” is finally dropping off the charts altogether, not quite hitting $175 million. Not bad.

Didn’t much care for “Surprise Me!,” a wan little romantic comedy about an event planner with commitment issues, trust issues, dead daddy issues and food issues.

It has an ending that I didn’t guess until about 25 minutes before it arrived, so I’ll give them that.

But watching the air go out of this balloon one is struck by how bland, if pretty, the cast is — mostly — and with that being the case, how does one work up empathy, that magical shortcut that puts us in the shoes of the characters going through the story on screen?

Fiona Gubelmann is Genie, our leading lady, an utterly generic pretty blonde who works for a surprise party planning company, “Surprise Enterprise.”

It’s a small Chicago concern — so perhaps she’s a co-owner, with Steven (LaShawn Banks, funny), the gay boss as almost-best-friend.

They do things like fake an apartment open house so that two grandparents can be surprised for their anniversary when they think they’re condo shopping, or fake an arrest so that BFF Danny (Jonathan Bennett) never sees his surprise birthday party coming.

The trouble with life as she knows it comes from meeting someone. Jeff (Sean Faris) is a handsome, grinning cosmetic surgeon, the type who keeps running into her, and making overfamiliar judgments about how she’s dressed — he pulls a pricetag off her blouse — and shops (at the supermarket).’

Such movies live and die on “meet cute.” This is “meet annoying.” But at least that suggests an emotional response, something this picture never achieves.

Jeff is a “never let an argument get started” type, living on giving and getting “the benefit of the doubt.” Genie “cares enough to argue.”

It’ll never work out.

Genie lost her dad, and tactlessly brings that up to her remarried mother and stepdad, has commitment issues and a weakness for baked sweets — cake, cupcakes, donuts — that suggest an eating disorder.

Which is why she starts seeing a therapist. Veteran character comedienne Nicole Sullivan (“Scrubs”) has just a few scenes and her sparkle and animation glaringly give-away what this blase’ picture lacks — life.

“All day, all night, catch the feeling before you bite!” this “Nobel Pizza Prize” laureate counsels.

Sullivan’s few scenes demonstrate that energy, pacing and casting are working against this chore of a comedy. The two guys allegedly “competing” for Genie’s attention (Danny is in the “friend” zone, even if Genie’s mother wishes otherwise) are, to be as tactful as a review can manage, dully interchangeable.

Courtship montages through the summery sights of Chicago fall flat. Only in the friendly confines of the office of therapist Ellen, with Sullivan acting with her arms, her head, her face, her eyes and her voice, does “Surprise Me!” ever come close to coming to life.

Sullivan sparkles. Nobody else does, and that smothers the movie, surprise or no surprise.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations

Cast:  Fiona Gubelmann, LaShawn Banks, Nicole Sullivan, Jonathan Bennett, Sean Faris

Credits: Written and directed by Nancy Goodman. An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:42

The post-apocalyptic novel, by Lily Brooks-Dalton, will star Clooney, who is directing, and Felicity Jones and Kyle Chandler and now Tiffany Boone. https://t.co/G632mQL9wK https://t.co/i9x1xBP1AV

An early Dec. Release co-starring Kathy Bates, Sam Rockwell and Jon Hamm.

An Eastwood picture about a man convicted, with FBI help, by the media?

Forgive me my skepticism about the old man’s motives. And timing.

“Dolemite is My Name” may be an affectionate homage to Rudy Ray Moore, profane “party record” stand-up comic of legend, progenitor of hip hop and forgotten pathfinder of the indie cinema.

For the film’s star, Eddie Murphy, it’s a “mutha-f—–g” victory lap.

It’s another movie about the making of a bad movie, a blaxspoilation “Disaster Artist” who had the last laugh about his “amateurish” low-brow action comedy long before generations of hipsters rediscovered him.

And as Moore, an aging, less-than-fit Arkansas dreamer who believed in himself, invested in himself and found every budding entrepreneur’s Holy Grail — an audience that white Hollywood wasn’t serving, and served them — Murphy has his best role in ages, a “Bowfinger” that is his and his alone.

The script of this Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow,” TV’s “Empire”) film takes Moore, in his 40s, struggling and hustling to sell the dated-sounded soul and pop records he’d recorded and trying to get a belated stand-up comedy career going, from struggle to gamble, disaster to triumph.

And Murphy makes us care and turns the coarse, rhyming comic “character” Moore appropriated into a laugh-at-me-and-with-me anti-hero. Being hilarious didn’t hurt Rudy Ray Moore, and that’s still in Murphy’s wheelhouse, decades past the days when he was comedy’s cutting edge.

We see Moore as an assistant manager of a famous Central Ave. L.A. record store, hyping  the radio DJ (Snoop Dogg) whose studio is in the back of the store to play Moore’s 45s.

“I ain’t lyin’, people love me!”

Moore’s desperation to “be somebody,” to “get famous” has gotten him nowhere, just a tardy store underling (Titus Burgess of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) to hear his complaints.

“I ain’t got nothin’ nobody wants.”

Until, that is, a smelly local wino with a glorious patter about assorted characters, a self-described “repository of Afro-American folklore,” gives Rudy an idea. He brings a bottle down to the winos’ encampment, tape records some of their lewd, hyperbolic and passed-down braggadocio, breaks out his pimpest outfit and turns himself into one of wino Rico’s favorite characters — Dolemite.

He trots out the character and his crude, boasting couplets at a local club where he emcees shows for his pal Ben’s (Craig Robinson) soul, blues and jazz ensemble. Dolemite is an instant hit.

All Rudy needs to do is rent some recording equipment, turn a living room into a “club” for the evening so he can record a “party record” of the type that made Redd Foxx famous. Maybe his aunt (Luenell) can pay for it with “all that money you made when you fell off that bus.”

Rudy’s doubting pals (Robinson, Mike Epps, Burgess) become believers and the world, or at least the purveyors of underground, off-color “party records” and then the famed Chitlin’ Curcuit, where black talent had its chance to shine in segregated American entertainment, becomes Rudy’s oyster.

Proving his friends, club owners and record company executives wrong was just Rudy’s first act. A Christmas Day trip to sit with elderly white folks roaring with laughter at the early ’70s remake of “The Front Page” — while he and his friends sit stone-faced, wondering what the hell these rubes find so funny, a movie with “No t—ies, no funny, no kung-fu?” — gives him one last big idea.

His next impossible leap is to the big screen where “I can be EVERYwhere at once!”

No, he’s “no Billy Dee Williams,” but he rooks a serious-minded social justice theater type (Keegan-Michael Key) to help cook up a story, and a pretentious veteran of bit parts in studio pictures and “sidekick” roles in “Black Caesar” and other blaxploitation pictures (Wesley Snipes) to come on board as a co-star and director.

Rudy gambles everything on a “Dolemite” movie back in the days before cheap cell-phone filmmaking, running up against “No thanks” every step of the way.

As foul-mouthed and politically-incorrect (era appropriate) as “Dolemite is My Name” is, it is a classic Hollywood feel-good movie, a sentimental tale of an underdog overcoming obstacle after obstacle to follow his bliss.

A lovely touch, a gaggle of UCLA film students (white) show up as “crew,” and do filmmaker-in-training magic to let the amateurs struggling with even the most rudimentary requirements to make a movie (acquiring “film,” remaking an abandoned hotel into the sets they need, stealing electricity) realize their dream.

If you’ve ever been on a film set when a problem arises, you’ve heard the problem-about-to-be-solved phrase. “I’m on it.” Murphy beams as if the trust fund kid film student “cavalry” has arrived. Little moments like this tickle throughout the “film” part of “Dolemite.”

Snipes is gloriously imperious as D’Urville Martin, Da’Vine Joy Randolph brings warmth and bawdy wit to Rudy’s comedy protege, Lady Reed, Chris Rock and Bob Odenkirk take on chewy cameos.

There are anachronisms, here and there. And truth be told, the picture slows down to a crawl during the sagging later acts.

But feeling good and finding laughs is what this is all about, and Murphy & Co. inject joy into the damnedest places — the pornographic album cover shoots for Rudy’s records, the anger that drove Rudy away from poverty in Arkansas and his first awful critic — his step-dad — anger channeled by his openly contemptuous director, Martin.

The fact that it’s a Hollywood story, replicated just a handful of times through movie history, a lone print of an “I spent everything on this” movie finding success — “A Fistful of Dollars,” “Night of the Living Dead” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Deep Throat” followed similar paths — just makes this that much more mutha-f—–g adorable.

MPAA Rating: R for pervasive language, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Craig Robinson, Keegan-Michael Key, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Snoop Dogg, T.I., Mike Epps, Titus Burgess and Chris Rock

Credits: Directed by Craig Brewer, script by Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:58

I love that Netflix is giving this a limited theatrical release, and dangling the carrot of awards season consideration to an Eddie Murphy comedy, a movie about a 1970s comic who invented a character and became a phenomenon. 

The father of rap? Not for me to say. But others have made the case, and he certainly was a comic, fast-talking role model.

It’s the “true story” of entertainer Rudy Ray Moore, and this 1975 blaxploitation film. 

“Dolemite” was directed by this blaxploitation legend. 

Eddie and Wesley and Craig and Snoop and Keegan-Michael Key and Titus Burgess and Chris Rock and Mike Epps and T.I. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph — people were lined up around the block to get into this Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow,” “Empire”) film.

An Oct. 4 release.