Movie Nation

Scorsese’s mobsters and Jimmy Hoffa picture shows up Nov. 27.

On Netflix.

The scariest clown movie of 2019 is a documentary.

Nothing’s hiding in the sewers, nobody is bullied and beaten until he becomes Batman’s nemesis.

“Wrinkles the Clown” is about an aged “retired” party clown who offers “behavioral services” to parents. They are clients stretched thin by work and life in a gig economy where social safety nets and family support have eroded, distracted adults who aren’t so much raising their children as looking up from their phones long enough to see how out of control those kids are.

Kids acting out, throwing tantrums, flouting parental authority? Call Wrinkles the Clown to scare the bejesus and Beelzebub out of them.

It started in Naples, Florida, where Wrinkles stickers offering his services papered telephone poles and beach bathroom toilet stalls. A video popped-up on Youtube, showing a clown in a despairing, horrific mask, polka dot jumpsuit and elbow-length rubber gloves, crawling out of a sleeping little girl’s trundle bed on the bedroom’s closed-circuit TV.

Filmmaker Michael Beach Nichols tracks Wrinkles to the van where he works and sometimes “lives” — between nights in the occasional budget motel. He samples Wrinkles’ work, some of it available online.

We’re shown the wave of local, regional and national news coverage that swept the country when this guy with a gimmick first broke out, and get a taste of what being in the middle of a tornadic national phenomenon is like.

He lets us listen in on scores upons scores of calls from reporters, booking agents, and from little kids and alleged adults, asking Wrinkles who he really is, wanting to know if he’s killed children, small kids leaving graphic death threats about what they will do if Wrinkles ever dares to show up to correct their out of control behavior.

“It never ends,” the clown sighs. Here he is, just an old man “living out my last years” in Florida, “trying to contribute something to society” and receiving “multiple death threats a day” from gullible strangers (children, mostly, but not entirely).

“It’s kind of disheartening to hear,” Wrinkles says, his white-bearded face hidden, his voice masked.

Director Nichols interviews a child psychology professor (“Misguided,” he calls Wrinkles, and the people who “hire” him.), the author of a “Bad Clowns” book, a folklorist and others, including a children’s party clown.

“Real clowns aren’t scary,” the happy clown declares, slathering on the greasepaint, as old video of news anchor David Brinkley intoning his intro to the story of the December, 1978 arrest of Chicago clown and mass murder John Wayne Gacy.

But the scariest and yes funniest material in “Wrinkles the Clown” comes from online videos, where parents have let their 10 and 11 year old kids have their own Youtube channel, or concoct a video where a little girl discusses Wrinkles with her discipline-averse Dad, who listens and laughs when she says “I know where the gun is” when the idea of a Wrinkles visit is broached for her bratty behavior.

The film travels to Jonesboro, Georgia and Wytheville, Va., Knoxville, Tennessee to several points in Texas, capturing kids — many entertained by this clown mythology that consumes them, more than a few on the Honey Booboo media and junk food diet.

“I really don’t think of it as ‘child abuse'” one lamentably dim procreator says of Wrinkles and the services he wants provided by him.

The Wrinkles presented here is both a product of groupthink — a myth that enters modern folklore like Bloody Mary and Slenderman (also discussed) — and cultural preconceptions.

Nichols does a ride-along with Wrinkles as he hits the strip club. Because he’s a creepy old loner living in Florida. What else is he going to do?

He’s a cross between “The Simpsons” cynic, Krusty the Klown, and Pennywise — the monster of “It.” Because that’s descriptive shorthand we all understand.

Wrinkles stages and acts-out video horror child-abduction fantasies, complete with a lynch mob in hot pursuit. Law enforcement officials talk about dangers to public safety posed by such figures who incite such mobs.

And then, the copycats sweep the land — pranks and stunts and alleged crimes and hysteria, swept along by CCTV videos all over the Internet.

Fun, fun stuff. And scary? Yes, but not necessarily in the ways you might think going in.

I used to have an editor at a newspaper where I worked who recited her grandmother’s favorite aphorism every time such proof of human manipulation, ignorance, gullibility and cruelty surfaced.

“Fall of Rome,” she’d say. “Fall of Rome.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with horror images, threats and profanity

Credits: Directed by Michael Beach Nichols, script by Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker. A Magnet release.

Running time: 1:18

Some of us put a lot of stock in a script that tickles the ears with its witty banter, putdowns, twisted jargon and the like.

By that measure, “The Day Shall Come” is the funniest film in months and months. It’s a dark satire about a comic “black jihadist” in South Florida, building his religion/cult around a peaceful upending of the status quo.

And Moses (screen newcomer Marchánt Davis, a stitch) gets off the first of a flood of funny lines when he interrupts some frat bros’ spring break drug deal.

“May you live to see the end of the accidental dominance of the white race!”

“May Black Santa prevail!” he’s prone to declaring, either to his “flock” as they brown-face yard-santas, or to the fake Middle Eastern sheikh he’s been conned into meeting to “finance my (urban) farm revolution.”

“Yes,” the Syrian (Pej Vahdat) blackmailed into helping the FBI purrs. “And hail Black Caesar, Black Snow White and Black T-Rex!”

Venus (Danielle Brooks), Moses’ wife, is always pushing the “Star of Six” (they use the Star of David as their religion’s symbol) Farm’s produce on sympathizers.

“You want eggs? Eggs that taste like eggs before science fiction?”
The local FBI boss (Denis O’Hare) has all manner of creative epithets for the growling cluster-cluck that this “case” is turning into.

“Nails of CHRIST, people!”

I mean, think of the stakes involved here — terrorism, “radioactive” or otherwise. “Next thing you know, the Statue of Liberty will be wearing a burka and we’ve beheaded Bruce Springsteen.”

At least everybody’s given his crack agent (Anna Kendrick) the perfect Anna Kendrick nickname — “Agent Chipmunk!”

Sorry, Anna.

The plot, “based on a hundred true stories” is about a sting that goes wrong and the backup sting the FBI (Agent Chipmunk) comes up with to CYA. This Miami Beach fixture who talks a big game about black nationalism, Jesus, Mohammed and “General Toussaint,” could be just the ticket.

Moses is noisy but non-violent, and desperate for money to keep his flock together. They’ve been given their eviction notice, although the landlord hints that they could barter something to get a break on the rent. Something…radioactive?

There are all these Middle Eastern emigrees that the Feds have something on, forced to be informants, and there’s a turf war-pissing match that involves the FBI, the local police, and the Federal prosecutor (Michael Braun) who is cynical about the process, and contemptuous of the FBI’s blundering efforts, taunting Andy (O’Hare) that he should try to “retire on a better case.”

“Hey, Mexican Hezbollah IS planning an attack on Orlando!”

And in the middle of it all, ensnared but with “the threat signature of a hot dog,” is Moses, who is dying to tell one and all about “the day God talked to me through a duck.”

Random moments, like Moses making somebody who is trying to set him up do calisthenics as he interrogates him, are laugh-out-loud funny.

There isn’t a bad performance in the lot, with Kendrick adding a dash of menace to her stacatto come-backs and put downs. Yeah, pal, you’re looking at “twenty years in a penitentiary that uses your screams to power the lights.”

Davis flirts with dazzling, at times, all dolled up in a tri-cornered hat, a shower curtain for a cape and a horse to ride into negotiations with. It’s a delightful performance as a deranged character, somebody who has let the proliferation of construction cranes in Miami drive him nuts.

The third act is entirely too pat to leave one with the same taste in the mouth that the first two promise. But director and co-writer Christopher Morris (the Brit who did the jihadi joke fest “Four Lions”) and his players hit more than they miss.

Especially when it comes to the banter, right up to the moment when Moses has a meeting with “Honky Hitler” (Jim Gaffigan), a guy who’s “a racist, but one of the GOOD ones.”

Agent Chipmonk couldn’t have put it better.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with some violence, lots of profanity

Cast: Marchánt Davis, Danielle Brooks, Anna Kendrick,Denis O’Hare, Kayvan Novak, Pej Vahdat and Jim Gaffigan

Credits: Directed by Christopher Morris, script by Jesse Armstrong, Sean Gray, Tony Roche and Christopher Morris. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:28

An artist, the old saying goes, “pounds the same nail, over and over again.”

So the generations exposed to Shirley Jackson’s most famous work, the short story that became a play that became various TV movies, “The Lottery,” will pick up on her favorite themes in the Netflix adaptation of her 1962 novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle.”

The small town monsters, fears of mob mentality and seemingly mundane “big twist” are all here in this beautiful, polished production directed by Stacie Passon, scripted by Mark Kruger and featuring a dazzling acting quartet at its dark, dark heart.

Like Jackson’s best work, it is more about the chills of recognition than “gotcha” frights. She was a writer of “The Twilight Zone” era, not a child of it, like Stephen King. “Castle” is more to be savored than feared.

Taissa Farmiga is our narrator, Mary Catherine Blackwood, and the very definition of “the unreliable narrator.” We know she’s not giving us the complete story when she says how the family “never hurt anyone,” that the village near their “castle” “hates us.”

“We will never leave here, no matter what they say or do to us.”

She is reliable in one regard — reliably creepy.

Something happened to the Blackwoods six years before, and most of them ended up dead. Her ever-smiling adored sister Constance (Alexandra Daddario) was blamed, so Mary Cat says.

Another survivor? Uncle Julian. If the gaunt and menacing Farmiga is “on the nose” casting for Mary Cat, putting Crispin Glover in a wheelchair for this disturbing, not-quite-right relative is “on the nostril.”

He spends every dinner hour talking about the book he’s writing about “that day,” test-marketing how he will begin each chapter to his nieces.

Mary Cat? She recites assorted poisons, their source and their effect on the human body.

We are treated to Mary Cat’s rituals and superstitions. She is convinced they are under metaphysical attack, and is always burying coins and other talismans — nailing her late father’s book to a tree — to ward off the bad mojo that has descended upon them.

Constance? She just beams in that 1950s TV debutante/housewife way, pretending everything’s hunky dory.

Mary Cat’s weekly trek into town for supplies — accompanied by taunting, ridicule and threats — reminds us that all isn’t well.

Even when the local garden club tries to coax Constance back into the fold, the air of “all of those who hate us” hangs over it.

“You have a right to be happy. Come back into the world, dear!”

Then cousin Charles (Sebastian Stan) arrives. He is dapper, charming, drives an Austin Healey sports car (the setting is the early ’60s) and is the spitting image of the girls’ late father.

And he’s here to “help out” the extended Blackwood clan’s “black sheep.”

His handyman work is one thing. But the utterly icky moments between him and Constance hint at what might come next, and what might have happened in the past.

Mary Cat? She knows when an existential threat is also a tangible one. “That crazy girl” is the nicest thing her dear cousin says about her.

The filmmakers treat Jackson’s “illusion of normalcy” obsession with respect and capture the quiet menace of the plot. We fear for the girls, the uncle, the cousin and the cousin’s car.

You know what 1962 Austin Healeys are going for these days?

It’s an immaculate production, beautifully shot (in Ireland), edited and scored, with just a hint of the playful horror music you’d hear in a Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket picture.

Farmiga gives Mary Cat a blank-faced restraint that robs the story of some of its menace, but Stan more than makes up for that with the rising fury of recognition of what’s really going on here.

Daddario and Glover are spot on, one playing the “nothing to see here, tra la la” card she’s been dealt, the other doing “doddering, trapped in the past and kind of scary” as if he’s been doing that forever. Which he has, save for the “doddering” bit.

“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” isn’t for the torture porn crowd, and R-rated horror fanatics will no doubt find it dull. They won’t be totally in the wrong for thinking so.

But the rest of us can appreciate the chill and growing dread that only a most sympathetic Shirley Jackson adaptation can deliver, that only a production as accomplished as this can manage.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, adult situations

Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, Crispin Glover, Sebastian Stan

Credits: Stacie Passon, script by Mark Kruger, based on the Shirley Jackson novel.

A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

These “World” movies have been dull recyclings of the original “Park.”

So why not make one all about nostalgia?

https://t.co/1sp8uAeQYq https://t.co/RvRkbhbav6 https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1176724285743722496?s=17

“The future is female,” as has been pretty obvious this past year or so.

So let’s put the little kids in their proper order, and give the witch her scary due.

This has a very creepy, classic fairytale of horror feel.

Every January has a break out horror hit, and “Gretel & Hansel” could be the winner of Jan. 21, 2020. We shall see.

It’s become common knowledge, largely thanks to a cartoon that generations of children have seen — “Balto.”

If you walk through Central Park in New York, you can see the well-rubbed (for luck) bronze statue of “Balto” in tribute to the dogs who did the unthinkable back in the 1920s.

No, the dogs didn’t actually talk, but the tale of the Nome, Alaska diptheria outbreak and the town’s rescue by serum delivered in an epic sled dog trek is essentially true.

This version stars Brian Presley, Brad Leland, Treat Williams, Henry Thomas, Brea Bree, and Bruce Davison and opens Oct. 25.

The pithiest review possible for many a movie is a single word — “forgettable.”
Add “instantly” in front of that and you get an idea of the virtues of “Little Boxes.” 

It’s soooooo familiar that I know I’ve seen it before, and I NEVER see a movie without taking notes on it and reviewing it. Ok, plainly “ALMOST never” is true.

But nothing from this, and I’m a Melanie Lynskey fan. Just vague recollections of the “oh, yeah” variety as I re-watched it.

The plot elements are weary tropes  — New York family moves to a small college town in Washington state and copes with moving company delays, a house with mold, a middle school son (Armani Jackson) taken from “blerd” (black nerd) to sexualized teen by the tweenage tarts down the street, an art faculty at the college where the feminist wife/mom (Melanie Lynskey) which believes in meeting over “a liquid lunch” and an African American writer-husband (Nelsan Ellis) who gets profiled — repeatedly — by the well-meaning “liberal” locals.

The best line is directed at the writer. “If you close your eyes, you can’t even tell he’s black!”

The unkindest cut comes from the too-friendly drama teacher, whose fallopian trio of tenure track drinkers get Lynskey’s Gena — “the new hire” (photography, with a “gender informativity” focus) — sloshed. And then comes the slurred “getting sloppy in a small town” lecture from said dramaturg (Janeane Garofalo).

The kid? His exotic good looks and epic Afro have the little lily white girls (Oona Laurence, ringleader) gushing “We like, TOTALLY needed a black kid…This town is sooo white!”

Director Rob Meyer can’t gin up much comic interest in the slow-motion movie where all these characters and plot elements lope — not “hurtle” — towards that moment when the wheels totally come off.

There’s a funny movie in the “big city sophisticates SHOCKED by the transgressive nonsense that goes on in a small (college) town.” This isn’t it.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, substance abuse (pills, alcohol), sexuality and profanity involving tweens.

Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Oona Laurence, Janeane Garofalo, Veanne Cox and Christine Taylor

Credits: Directed by Rob Meyer, script by Annie J. Howell. A Gunpowder & Sky/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:24

There are moments, scenes and sequences in the documentary “Out of Omaha” that will make your heart hurt.

The seven-years-long portrait of African American twins from the roughest neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska allows you to put yourself in these kids’ shoes in those moments.

Suppose you were blindly and unjustly accused of a crime, that the cops, via Crimestoppers, put your name and face out there, which too-helpful local TV broadcast during the evening news? Suppose this happened more than once?

Forget the fact that the people charged are young, African American men and that this happens in a small city or later, in an even a smaller one, so that strangers on the street will recognize you even after exoneration.

Ignore the reality that the local newspaper and the TV stations that posted your mugshot into living rooms all over the region don’t cover that “charges dropped” part of your story.

How could anybody, much less somebody young and with limited resources (POOR) escape that trap and avoid becoming a self-fulfilling law enforcement-mandated prophecy?

Clay Tweel’s years-in-the-making film is framed within seven years of the life of Darcell Trotter. He is 25 when we first see him, sweeping a floor in 2017. But seven years before, he was a promising kid studying hard, trying to break out of Omaha’s notorious “North Omaha” neighborhood.

Here’s lawyer Wayne Brown, who moved back after escaping a fate chiseled in stone by this phrase.

“My family was in the heroin business.”

Brown is a shining, upper middle class pillar of the community now. But with the siblings and parents who died or went to prison when he was trapped in the red-lined North Omaha neighborhood, a region roiled by protests and violence in the 1960s, buried in poverty, despair and drugs even today, Brown makes the perfect witness to all that will happen to Darcell and the conditions that led to it.

North Omaha “is a six square mile radius that is trapped in 1965.”

Darcell’s dad left the family, a slave to his addictions. Darcell’s twin brother Darrell is more about gang life, “get some money” by any means, “whether it’s hurting somebody or not.”

And here is Darcell, starting school at the University of Nebraska, benefiting from Avenue Scholars, a scholarship and counseling program designed to move people like him out of the gutted dead-end of North Omaha.

What’s the worst that could happen?

“All it takes,” Darcell says, “is for one thing to go wrong, and you’re incarcerated.”

Brown and members of Avenue Scholars talk about the “bad choices” we see Darcell “make” over the next seven years, and invite us to reason out an alternative to those choices, given the poverty, environment, peer and family pressure facing him.

Kids get into selling drugs because that is the neighborhood example, the local industry.

Even if Darcell dodges one pothole, there’s his twin, resigned to stepping right in it. For Darcell, it just takes one night of being in the wrong party with the wrong people at the worst possible time for it all to come apart.

We taste the bitterness of “a dream deferred” in both young men, experience the hope that bubbles up when they leave North Omaha for Grand Island (150 or so miles away) to stay with their father.

Steady work? Sure. But even in Grand Island, where just two percent of the population is African American, the twins get profiled while making appliance deliveries. And that’s just the beginning of their problems.

Everything somebody with a financially stable home life takes for granted, the automatic assumption of innocence, for starters, emergency money to cover a big bill (a lawyer), a support system that can keep you not just out of trouble, but giving you the direction that makes you steer a wide path from it, is missing.

Not every “choice” Darcell makes can be shrugged off or excused. But the real take-away here is the shocking realization of how quickly a young life can be derailed by a “system” that arrests, charges and holds people who are not so much accused as “named” in an incident.

Imagine trying to clear yourself, emptying your pockets and considering selling a little weed just to cover for a lawyer, when all the cops really want is for you to “talk.” Just give them somebody else’s name.

“Out of Omaha” isn’t an American nightmare. There are rays of light and hope that young people like the brothers can be rescued, “break the cycle” as the cliche goes.

But watching this, you will never, ever look at a local news photo of a “Crimestoppers” suspect the same way again.

MPAA Rating: unrated, drug use discussed, profanity

Cast: Darcell Trotter, Darrell Trotter, Barbara Robinson, Wayne Brown, Yano Jones, Aubrey Caballero

Credits: Directed by Clay Tweel, written by Clay Tweel, Tim Grant, Ryan Johnston, Steven Klein, Damien Michael Belliveau. An Imperative Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:37

It’s a gambler-on-a-bender thriller with the Sand-man entangling his family and the family business in his “problem.”

This Safdie Brothers tale co-stars Idina Menzel and The Wkend and…Kevin Garnett?

It made a splash at Toronto and opens Dec. 25.

I’m sorry, if A24 is going to start releasing Adam Sandler thrillers I am going to have to rethink my entire world view. Or Sandler. Or A24.