Movie Nation

Young Lexy Kolker looks so much like young Drew Barrymore that I had to double-check the credits to “Freaks” to make sure Stephen King wasn’t involved, that I wasn’t seeing a “Firestarter” sequel or remake.

And as this dark, hallucinatory vision from Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein unfolded, I had to check again.

It’s a paranoid fantasy about a little girl (Kolker, of TV’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Shooter”) locked in her house by her seemingly unhinged father.

Emile Hirsch would have been my first, or at least second best guess as to who they’d get to play Dad. He’s spot on.

The first words we hear from the father tell us Chloe has been sequestered, pretty much since birth.

“You’ve gotta be a good HIDER, otherwise the bad guys will find you!”

He drills her on her cover name, the answers she’s to give if “the bad guys” get their hands on her.

“I’m Eleanor Reed, age 7.”

She recites details about “Eleanor” from memory, daily exercises Dad tests her on constantly. Heaven help her if she gets one wrong.

“BANG! You’re dead…You don’t know the answer to something, you make something up. You need to lie to be normal.”

But who’s the abnormal one here?

Dad doesn’t sleep, because ” “I can only protect you when I’m awake.” He sometimes bleeds from his eyes. He watches old videos, duct-tapes windows so that no one can see in and fends off Chloe’s many demands to “play with Harper,” a child next door, or to have ice cream.

Hearing that vendor’s truck go by daily is torture to the child, even if she’s supposedly never been out.

And there’s another form of torture being exercised in this cluttered, child-drawing-decorated suburban home. When Chloe makes a big mistake, she’s locked in a closet.

“You opened the door. You almost got us killed!”

So what are we dealing with, here? Crazed survivalist? Man who lost his mind when he lost his wife (Amanda Crew), whom Chloe “sees” in another closet in her room, apparently demented? This much is certain, Dad has weaponized his paranoia.

“You know what’s in an ice cream truck? Frozen kids’ bodies!”

Or has Dad got his “reasons” for behaving this way, treating Chloe as he does?

We can ascertain from the script that the co-writers/directors, who have shared credits on episodic TV and TV movies (“Ingressed Obsessed”  the “Kim Possible” movie) is that double-checking that “Firestarter” connection isn’t unwarranted.

Like Mr. King, these two must have binged on “The Twilight Zone” — probably as they were writing “Freaks.” Perhaps that explains why the wind goes out of the picture’s sails once the obvious-as-you-reason-it-out “mystery” is solved. The script is structured to play towards a punchline, which “Freaks” hits at about the one hour mark — “Twilight Zone” (the longer seasons) length.

As to what happens after that punch line/revelation is that Chloe goes outside, and the guy driving that damned ice cream truck is none other than Bruce Dern.

“Freaks” is far more interesting when it’s not spelling itself out to us, just an adult and a child, trapped in a house together, paranoid and loving, nurturing and torturing, all at once.

The first two acts are where the “hallunicatory” comes from, time-and-space-warping effects that put Chloe into other rooms, with other people, the sense that this is a world post-apocalypse, which kind of explains Dad freaking out at every knock at the door.

The third act is a pull-out-all-the-stops data dump of delayed exposition — what actually is happening here — and the rising threat level facing Chloe, the threats coming from all sides, but with the fear we start to develop emanating from her.

The final act isn’t as interesting as the first two were to me. But Hirsch impresses, as usual, as a man losing his wits and Dern always gives fair value as a canny old coot who knows more than he’s letting on.

And young Ms. Kolker holds her own with the heavier weights (Grace Park shows up as a formidable cop), and suggests that yes, should the Great Stephen King Revival extend to remaking “Firestarter” (It’s in developement), there’s this little girl with a lot of TV credits who might be perfect for the part.

MPAA Rating: R for violence and some language

Cast: Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Lexy Kolker, Amanda Crew, Grace Park

Credits: Written and directed by Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:44

A 1950s private eye tale was director/star Norton’s aim in adapting Jontahan Lethem’s novel.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Michael Kenneth Williams and Bruce and Leslie signed on.

“Gangster with Tourette’s” is quite the hook.

It has 2:24 worth of gravitas and a Nov. 1 release date.

“Low Tide” is a “Bling Ring” variation of the well-worn “friends find treasure and turn on each other” story trope, one with just enough suspense, atmosphere and local color to come off.

Writer-director Kevin McMullin, making his first feature, leans on character “types” and familiar situations entirely too much. But leads Jaeden Martell and Keean Johnson, as burgling brothers, and Shea Whigham as the local law give it just enough pop to overcome its shortcomings.

Alan (Johnson), Smitty (Daniel Zolghadri)  and Red (Alex Neustaedter) are Jersey Shore teens who resent the “Bennies” who show up in their coastal town every summer season. How much? Enough to turn them into benefactors by motoring across the bay and robbing them when nobody’s home.

It’s about 1990 — Peak Bon Jovi — and they hunt for liquor, drugs and jewelry in their ransackings.

Smitty, their not-wholly-reliable “lookout,” busts his leg on one such foray. That’s when Alan decides to bring in his kid brother as a replacement.

Smitty is on the shifty and shady side. Red, the hotheaded son of a local developer, is the leader, a bully — violent. Alan and little brother Peter are just broke. Dad’s on a long haul, long-line fishing boat for the summer., Mom died years ago.

Jaeden Martell (“St. Vincent,” “Midnight Special”) plays Peter as sort of a variation of his character in “The Book of Henry.” He’s “the smart one,” into black and white horror movies and works on the docks, selling fish for the skippers there. He’s also “a Boy Scout,” literally and figuratively. He has no business getting mixed up in this.

That’s what the local cop (Whigham) says when Alan is caught on their very next outing. Red’s a sociopath in the making, Alan is at a crossroads in his “comic book…origin story.” But Peter? He’s an innocent, maybe with a future.

Nobody’s talking to the cops. Or maybe everybody is. And that last heist, which turned up some choice loot at a dead ship’s captain’s remote cabin, has everybody suspecting everybody else of betrayal.

Only Peter and Alan know the exact contents of the haul, and only Peter knows where he buried it.

Kristine Froseth plays Mary, the pretty “Benny” Alan so wants to impress that he starts flashing money around.

Mike Hodge plays the pawn broker, the one who lectures the kids on what is and isn’t “gold,” and the one who (pre-eBay) has no idea what gold Spanish Doubloons are actually worth, then or now.

It’s also eye-rolling that the “smart kid” asserts that vintage coin stashes are “always worth more together, as a collection.” Seriously, screenwriters, a little homework renders your world more real.

Would a 50ish police sergeant in 1990 use “comic book origin stories” as an analogy to an impressionable teen? Nope. Fanboy screenwriters would.

But there’s much more sharp dialogue than clunky, with the boys announcing their “code” of who they’ll rob, and who they  won’t — “No locals!”

And the cop’s lecture gets good the moment he drops his whole “origin story” analogy. “Bad guys never think they’re bad. They’ve got their reasons, and they do one thing which leads to two things which leads to a million.”

“Low Tide” — on DirectTV Sept. 5, in theaters Oct 4 — is on its surest ground when it deals with the real (not melodramatic) world of its day, sons of fishermen in a “Mystic Pizza/Breaking Away” town bonding over their contempt for wealthy vacationers, making idiots of themselves over girls on the boardwalk.

“She’s a countdown girl. Looks great from far away, 10. Then as she gets closer, 9, 8, 7…”

The cast is uniformly fine, with Neustaedter (of TV’s “The Colony”) throwing an evil Heath Ledger vibe and young Zolghadri born to play a prison “snitch.”

McMullin doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, and “types” and “tropes” only take “Low Tide” so far. But this one delivers just enough suspense, menace, violence and betrayal to never leave us high and dry.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some violence and teen drug use

Cast: Jaeden Martell, Keean Johnson, Shea Whigham, Kristine Froseth, Mike Hodge, Daniel Zolghadri and Alex Neustaedter

Credits: Written and directed by Kevin McMullin. An A24/DirectTV release.

Running time: 1:26

Post 9/11, Congressional investigators uncover some of the things the Bush Administration was covering up, “Rendition” things.

Amazon has this one slated for Nov. Release.

The Hollywood Reporter says that “tens of thousands” of customers credit card info was was stolen.

MoviePass, the bust that keeps on busting.

https://t.co/vSc6qUUf9p https://twitter.com/THR/status/1164542000714133504?s=17

A24 and Direct TV have this teen burglary drama. Jaeden Martell is one of the stars, Shea Whigham plays the law.

Nobody in it wears a cape. Well, OK. Maggie Smith MIGHT show up in one.

But her superpower is sarcasm.

Yes the “Downton Abbey” fanbase is ordering their tickets and making their plans to catch the Focus Features wide screen treatment of their favorite PBS show.

It opens Sept. 20, and tickets are pre-selling like Beluga caviar, M’lords and ladies.

So sayeth The Hollywood Reporter.

“On the nose” casting can be playful, or it can be a curse — a lazy form of screen shorthand that strips the mystery away from your thriller before the opening credits are finished.

So glancing at the names listed below, the ones that flash by in the opening moments of “Angel has Fallen,” you can probably guess from Danny Huston, Tim Blake Nelson and Nick Nolte, who might be the heavies and who might play the grizzled old mountain man who figure into the plot.

But that doesn’t ruin the movie. As Hitchcock always said, “Good villains make good thrillers” and Huston’s been working that side of the street for decades, now.

It’s a visceral experience — emphasis on “viscera” — with pulse-pounding action, gasping hand-held camera chases and hellacious gunfights.

The third film in the Gerard Butler super-Secret Service Agent series is a movie of big BOOMS, ECUs (extreme close-ups) and a truckload of F-bombs. And if it takes its action beats, plot points and politics from “The Fugitive,” “Shooter,” “RED” and Q-Anon, well that’s just madness to go along with the over-the-top B-movie mayhem.

Butler’s Mike Banning bonds a bit with an old Army buddy (Huston) who now runs a mercenary operation — Salient. “Contractors” they call themselves. Old buddy Wade needs a little help landing government work, and Mike’s in line for the top job at the Secret Service.

Wade doesn’t think either of them is cut out for desk jobs, though — “We’re lions. And that ain’t never gonna change!”

Mike? He’s got a wife (Piper Perabo), a toddler at home and pills for every concussion, neck, back and muscle injury he’s taken defending America’s presidents. He may have President Trumbull’s ear, but maybe that step up is not for him.

And then the most gonzo assassination attempt in recent screen history puts Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) in a coma, Mike in the crosshairs of the investigation (Jada Pinkett Smith is the FBI agent on the case) for colluding with the Russians, and a trigger happy vice president ready to strike back at those implicated in everything from election interference to pee pee tapes, and now a hit on a sitting president.

Mike must escape custody, finger the real culprits, clear his name and save the Republic. Again.

Stunt-man turned director Ric Roman Waugh (“Snitch,” “Shot Caller”) tops the epic (and digitally-augmented) assassination attempt with a kidnapping “hit” out on Mike, and an absolutely stunning, close-up and explosively violent escape, edited into a whirling blur of bodies, blows and bullets to the head.

Waugh isn’t much on subtlety or finesse. And as I say the plot here is a pastiche of other “clear my name” thrillers. But the man knows his meat and potatoes action beats.

Mike’s getaway includes a visit to a mountain and an emotionally overwrought Vietnam vet (Nolte), and getting and getting out of there, stuff blows up.

And no, that’s not even close to the last stuff that blows up, here.

The old man blasts the younger one with an epic speech about war, and an apology — “Me disappearing was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Freeman gets a speech or two as well.

Mainly, though, “Angel has Fallen” (Secret Service agent as “Guardian Angel”) is about the fights, chases, shootouts and explosions. And insane lapses in protocol and logic and loony coincidences.

And Waugh makes those work, finding the odd laugh (NRA loons get what’s coming to them) as he does.

Butler wears the weary man of war thing well, and his stunt crew is aces.

Just don’t take any of the rest of this seriously. The Russian stuff is straight out of Fox News/QAnon apologia. Nobody evers uses the word “traitor.”

And try to forget every supervillain, mountain man or sniveling schemer the names in those opening credits have played, if only for two hours.

MPAA Rating: R for violence and language throughout.

Cast: Gerard Butler, Piper Perabo, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tim Blake Nelson, Danny Huston and Nick Nolte.

Credits: Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, script by Matt Cook, Robert Mark Kamen, Ric Roman Waugh. A Summit/Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:00

Feel free to sing along.

Lionsgate has a holiday movie that features Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie

Think anybody will show up for this?

Should’ve gotten Russell Crowe to play sexual harasser news chief Roger Ailes. He’s good at it.