Movie Nation

Michael Waltrip is an affable NASCAR retiree and Fox Sports color commentator, much like his older brother, NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip.

And like Darrell, Michael has a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve. That, and Michael’s connection to one of the star-crossed moments in NASCAR history, makes him a somewhat compelling subject for a documentary, “Blink of an Eye.”

That’s how long Waltrip had to celebrate his unlikely victory in the 2001 Daytona 500, breaking an epic 462 starts-zero wins streak that, let’s face it, if not for his magical surname, might have ended his career before he ever got his chance.

The fact that as he crossed the finish line at that 2001 race, just ahead of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. that Jr.s dad — Waltrip’s idol and the team owner who finally gave him the chance to drive a winner — was having the wreck that killed him, make Waltrip’s breakthrough victory the most bittersweet moment in NASCAR history.

Dale Earnhardt, #3, died on the track on Feb. 18, running interference, blocking other drivers who might have caught Waltrip, “The Intimidator” being intimidating one last time.

“Blink of an Eye,” directed by a veteran of documentaries about surfing (“The Lost Wave”) and motorsports (“Unchained: The Untold Story of Freestyle Motocross”), focuses on Waltrip, his home movies, his reminiscences, those of his curmudgeonly but proud older brother, and of other motorsports figures (Richard Petty, Richard Childress, etc.) who watched Waltrip’s career and remember that fateful way he finally landed his first win.

Waltrip has a self-effacing candor that engages, remembering his brother dismissing his racing dreams, “lightning rarely strikes twice” — until the kid started winning, right from his first outing in a go-cart — and almost admitting that his name opened a lot of doors for him.

“I showed up as Darrell’s little brother!”

Mentored by Richard Petty, jumped into a NASCAR Winston Cup career where he became a hard-luck driver and something of a self-described punch line — Mr. Third Place — Waltrip’s last great bit of good fortune was befriending the rough and tumble “blue collar” champion Earnhardt, the driver who took over the sport when “The King” (Petty) retired.

“Blink” touches on Earnhardt’s life, and one of the film’s shortcomings is that it doesn’t give us more of that. But that’s another film, you say to yourself. This one is about one day, one season, and three men — one who didn’t survive the year’s opening race. That season provided another memorable moment which longtime NASCAR fans can get teary-eyed about, one that also involved Waltrip and the younger Earnhardt and Daytona.

Oddly, Waltrip is the one who gets choked-up talking about Dale Sr. Dale Jr. has more control of his emotions, which might separate the two as drivers. That makes one wonder if Jr.’s experience of his father was radically different, or if Dad brought on Waltrip to push the kid.

That points to the biggest shortcoming of “Blink of an Eye.” It’s a seriously unchallenging documentary, one that has no contrary voices suggesting why Waltrip never won before Earnhardt took him on (More hard luck? Nobody says so, nobody asks.) and as it lapses into hagiography, the film borders on “NASCAR Sanctioned” and “Official Myth-Burnishing.”

Because the biggest challenge missing from the film is one involving that day, m the series and “the company” itself.

The film sugar-coats, glosses and does not dwell on Earnhardt’s grisly death, and none of its narrow range of interview subjects sits far enough removed from the subject to address any of this.

Journalists? One who cozied up to Earnhardt Sr. and became an employee is the only one here.

This is another subject one can lump into the “That’s another film” category, and give filmmaker Paul Taublieb a pass on that, as well.

Then he sticks a grating closing credit on how “NASCAR redoubled its safety efforts” after Earnhardt’s death, and thus, no driver has died on the track since.

The Intimidator, as loyal a company man/driver as he was, would have almost certainly used a phrase about bovine excrement over that.

The newspaper I used to work for all but predicted Earnhardt’s death in stories about NASCAR’s foot-dragging over the HANS neck-protecting device published a week before that fateful race.

All of NASCAR was shocked at the accident that all but-decapitated Dale Earnhardt. Not reporters, editors and readers of the Orlando Sentinel.

NASCAR’s reaction to those stories and Earnhardt’s death was to strong-arm Florida’s legislature to change laws regarding open public records, so that nobody would know exactly how Earnhardt died, and the NASCAR/France Family empire could escape culpability (HANS was widely used in other racing circuits).

Laws regarding death certificates and the like were bent to shape NASCAR’s ass-covering, using Earnhardt’s widow as their public face for this assault on watchdog journalism and safeguarding the public.

That example just highlights how myopic, “officially sanctioned” and white-washed “Blink of an Eye” is.

Sure, the fans get the myth that they want to believe. That doesn’t mean it’s true, or that it’s good for them, for corporate accountability and for the role of a press in a free society.

This unchallenging “Hollywood” version of that tale is too incomplete to be definitive.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violent death in a car race, the 2001 Daytona 500.

Cast: Michael Waltrip, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Darrell Waltrip

Credits: Written and directed by Paul Taublieb. A 1091 Media release.

Running time: 1:28

He’s older now, pushing 50. And if Mr. “Black don’t Crack, we smoke it” hasn’t matured — not a lick — so be it.

Marlon Wayans remains a screen comic in search of a sketch comedy show that can contain his special gifts. Those would be mimicry and the ability to “sell” himself as a woman, a tiny man and even — when the movie called for it — one of two “White Chicks.”

“Sextuplets” is a star vehicle which has him playing a husband awaiting, with his wife, on the birth of their first child. As he is adopted and has no “family history” in terms of genetics and health prospects, his cranky judge of a father-in-law (Glynn Turman) tracks down his birth records for him.

Turns out Alan was one of SIX kids his birth mother had. He has just enough time to tell wife Marie (Bresha Webb), allowing just enough time for us to get our minds in that “Klumps” frame-of-mind, before Alan is meeting the five siblings he never knew he had.

“Maybe one of them changed his name to Idris Elba! We do have strangely similar features. ”

“Sextuplets” is about Alan connecting with the doltish lump Russell, whom his mother kept, and convict and sometime pole dancer Dawn, terminally ill hustler Little Pete, crooked identity thief Ethan, and so on.

Wayans had a hand in the script, which features limp “Jeffersons,” “What’s Happening” jokes, and a “Different Strokes” sing-along.

“It’s like a Tyler Perry movie in here!”

We learn that the siblings share a loathing of avocados –“Tastes like soft-boiled silly putty” and that “Black people don’t wear flip flops.”

Alan’s white pal (Michael Ian Black) is here to use outdated African American slang — “On fleek,” “The Bomb,” “off the chain.”

“We don’t say that!” Anymore.

Gold-toothed thug Ethan is all about “white people credit” and “You got REPUBLICAN money,” because he’s all about the cash.

The film is, sadly, rarely funny. Wayans and his screenwriters roll out his least-interesting, most Eddie Murphy as a “Klump” character first, and saddle the picture with him. That horse is lame.

Dawn is the stand out, a hilarious impersonation of an easily-affronted African American big screen stereotype. Oversexed, unethical and damned if she’s going to be “judged” by the likes of you, she is too many Leslie Jones characters on “Saturday Night Live” to count. More to the point, she’s funny.

The rest of “Sextuplets?” Played, no matter how much verve brings to his various roles.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, adult situations, sexuality, mild profanity

Cast: Marlon Wayans, Bresha Webb, Glynn Turman, Debbi Morgan, Michael Ian Black

Credits: Michael Tiddes, script by Rick Alvarez, Mike Glock and Marlon Wayans. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

Adding screens and footage to “Spider-Man: Far from Home” chased “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” out of the top ten. Finally.

“Don’t Let Go” WAY underperformed and “Angel has Fallen” won the last weekend of the summer — with Labor Day still to be counted –$11 million plus.

New releases did nothing, “Official Secrets,” a Brit import, did $20,000+ per screen, “Peanut Butter Falcon” missed it’s best chance at the top ten.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

“Major back injuries.”

Hoping for the best for Kev Hart.

Not being “cute” with the photo choice. Just the most readily available.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/01/comedian-kevin-hart-injured-in-southern-california-car-crash

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Hunkering down in the Fla. coast, within sight of the Kennedy Space Center.

First comes the wind, then goes the wifi. Then the power.

Guessing this latest storm is killing my “It Chapter 2” screening. So long as that’s all it kills…

Disney owned the summer with a string of billion dollar hits. Nobody else did nearly as well at the year to date is 6% down, summer to summer down 2%.

Putting this much of the Hollywood business under one roof –Walt Disney/Marvel Studios/Pixar/Disney Animation/Lucasfilm — is bad news.

Sony earned a $billion from a “Spider-Man” sequel.

Staggering numbers nothing original came close to. When the public decides it’s over comic book films, “Star Wars” or animated classics remade, if it happens all at once, the Mouse will be in deep.

And that day is coming.

https://t.co/ODZNVyvOwu https://twitter.com/THR/status/1167954223029374976?s=17

Not a good weekend for John Travolta in the movies.

It’s been obvious for a few years now that JT has a future… in streaming and cable.

His big screen career has been on a slide, but selling a single ticket per showing in 52 theaters as “The Fanantic” opens is news he needs to see, writing on the wall that he needs to read.

Cable. Netflix. Hulu. Amazon.

https://t.co/bLpa9rWPm1 https://twitter.com/THRmovies/status/1167908302354669570?s=17

My hat is off to any filmmaker who attempts a period piece, and the look and feel of “The Riot Act” is striking and believably late 19th century.

A tale of love, murder and revenge that borrows from “Hamlet,” it’s a bit of a stiff as a thriller, despite the attention to detail, the lovely pools of light much of the action (onstage and off) is photographed in.

Veteran character actor Brett Cullen stars as Dr. Pearrow, who lords over the small  city (Arkansas, Missouri would be a fair guess) where his stern word is law and his money talks.

He owns the local opera house, thanks to his lucrative practice. And when we meet him, he’s bawling out a tenor (Brace Harris) who has had the temerity to come-on to the doctor’s daughter. Jamison, the singer, is married, just another actor passing through town.

“If I were you, I would catch that late train tonight!”

Yeah, he will. But Allye Pearrow makes her getaway to join him, only to be wounded when her monstrous father guns down Jamison in her arms.

Two years later, a mysterious vaudeville troop has been booked at the opera house, where jack-of-all-trades “foreman” August (Connor Price) is good enough to do everything from book acts to sweeping up, but not good enough to warrant free passes to the shows he books.

And his grudge against the boss is nothing compared to the one a masked member of a “dumb” (no dialogue) act in the show carries. She’s got a British accent that comes and goes. Arkansas finds its way in there, now and then.

It’s ALLYE! And as she’s part of an act in which a duo carries out a very realistic shooting, we can see where this thing is going WAY too early.

Lauren Sweetster of “Winter’s Bone” and “Get Happy!” plays Allye, and the fact that she’s a dead-ringer for Cybill Shepherd probably gets her plenty of call-backs.

The script doesn’t give her a lot of chances to show us much, and she makes little of those opportunities. It’s a glum character given a one-note (and a dull note) performance.

There’s this very theatrical storyline that has Dr. Pearrow tormented by anavenger, masked in burlap, backstage at the theater. A “ghost” is haunting a guilt-ridden man, and there’s a show going on with a play within the play promising a finale we’ve seen set up far too early for its own good.

“Hamlet.”

Which suits, because this is a very stagey show — actors “speechifying” because that’s what the script gives them to perform.

“My father has never seen far enough past himself to SEE his daughter!”

Writer-director Devon Park, who still counts his internship in the camera department on “The Help” as a highlight among his credits (short films), even filmed this like a play — that “pool of light” thing I mentioned.

There are non-starter script elements about “the progressive agenda” of this color blind vaudeville troupe (an African American strongman) and a potential love story between Allye and August.

A modicum of suspense, a lot of clever period props (a single-horn telephone, ancient light bulbs, vintage backstage gear) and a certain inevitability inform “The Riot Act,” a title which referred then, as now, to a British sedition law (I cannot find it was ever used as theater slang the way “dumb act” was).

Those virtues or at least characteristics don’t add up to much of a movie, which is a pity. That’s a lot of good period detail wasted.

Cast: Brett Cullen, Lauren Sweetser, Connor Price, Brandon Keener

Credits: Written and directed by Devon Park.  A Giant Films release.

Running time: 1:38

As New Zealand is a “bucket list” country for me, I’m always on the lookout for movies that show the islands, sans hobbits.

“Falling Inn Love” is a Christina Milian comedy about a San Francisco architect and “green” designer/builder who wins an inn on North Island in an Internet lottery.

Hey, they’re always giving away pubs in Britain and Ireland. Why not?

Thus, the stage is set for a fish-out-of-water comedy of the romantic sort. It has a few laughs, and even if the romance doesn’t have the sort of sparks that the best Netflix rom-coms manage and the supporting cast isn’t “colorful” enough to carry it, it’s just Kiwi enough to plow through.

I mean, how else are we going to get a load of idyllic New Zealand scenery, served up with a blast of Kiwi slang —“yakka,” “footie,” “The Wops,” “a squizz” — used, correctly, in sentences?

Gabriella (Milian, of “Be Cool” and TV’s “Grandfathered”) isn’t happy at work, dismissed at her firm, and uphappy in love. Longtime-beau Dean (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) is commitment-phobic.

And then, the company folds and Dean rebuffs her ultimatum. Winning this inn in Beachwood Downs sounds like the ideal rebound.

“Your dream life awaits you in New Zealand!”

And as she’s a “Leap, and a net will appear” type — she’s off. But on arrival, she’s put out that some random hunk (Adam Demos) keeps running into her and trying to sweep “in and save the day.”

Not having it.

The Bellbird Inn? “What the…dumpster?” Yeah, the internet lottery was a bit of a scam.

So we’re set up for a comedy of DIY home (“inn”) improvement set in “The Wops” (boondocks), clumsily driving the beat-up manual transmission Land Rover, with the most competent contractor in town that very same hunk whom she keeps running into.

“Why are you everywhere I am?”

I laughed at the odd moment, here and there. There’s a goat who figures he owns the place, a rival B & B owner and assorted hardware, plant nursery, cafe (a gay couple) folks who trot out that delightful slang people like me put so much stock in.

It’s shot and cut like a TV movie, with no real edge, a dollop of sentiment and generic obstacles and objects (old love letters) to move the story along. Milian remains an engaging screen presence, if not anything like a great comedienne.

A less bland script would have helped. More edge, more slang, more contrast between the city girl (woman) and the country film.

“Falling Inn Love” isn’t unpleasant. It’s only problem is that it’s not enough of anything else, either.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Christina Milian, Adam Demos, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman

Credits: Directed by Kumble, script by Elizabeth Hackett, Hilary Galanoy. A Netflix/MarVista release.

Running time:

It’s what you do until the power and wifi go out.

On a holiday weekend.

Christina Milian, Marlon Wayans, take me…away? From Dorian, at least.

That’s right, cramming screeners in between stripping the boat for a blow, searches for open restaurants and gas stations.

Nobody else on the Tomatomter or Metacritic or MRQE reviewer sites is as dedicated. Or as salty.