Movie Nation

Clark, the smart, judgmental teen at the heart of “Quitters,” has a reason for being that way.

His mother (Mira Sorvino) is a medicated mess, weepy, unstable and needy. She insists on driving him to a friend’s house after she’s canceled a family getaway at the last minute. She’s in her bathrobe. She’s fawning over him, utterly distracted despite his “Watch the road, Mom,” pleas.

When she plows into a stop sign, it’s her turn to plead. “Let’s keep this between us.”

Whipping out his cellphone tells us he’s not having it. “I’d like to report an accident.”

Clark quits on her, once and for all, it seems.

“Quitters” plays as a downward spiral that plainly has been underway for a while.  Mom is off to rehab, where they’ll try to get her medications right. Because she needs them. Clark, given the loathsome certitude of the self-righteous by Ben Konigsberg (“Anesthesia”), hears his dad (Greg Germann) beg him to “keep this quiet.”

But Clark is above that kind of reasoning. The girl (Kara Hayward) that he most wants to impress gets an earful. And when she dismisses his romantic overtures — with extreme prejudice — she gets Clark’s unfiltered take, too. He starts a whispering campaign about her “depression,” and informs her, by condescending email, that he’s A) “concerned” and B) can no longer “be your friend.”

He’s the sort of teen who debates his hip, young English teacher (Kieran Culkin, quite good) about his grade on an essay, and bullies the guy to get his way.

The kid finds Dad’s “chipper” (small marijuana pipe) in the glove compartment, and wrecks it. He sees a receipt for a massage parlor, and in front of his father, calls the place to catch the old man in an indiscreet lie.

First-time feature writer-director Noah Pritzker has created a near-classic anti-hero in Clark, a kid who wins our sympathy, then our fury and finally, something resembling our pity in this 93 minute film.

We wince at Clark’s infuriating mix of tactlessness and cluelessness. “Awkward” doesn’t begin to cover it. And we grimace at his every misstep, because we see them coming long before he does.

He ogles a hot mom (Saffron Burrows), only to ingratiate himself with her daughter, a classmate (Morgan Turner) he barely knows. He joins them for dinner and angles his way into their lives and into classmate Natalia’s bed, even though she seems to see through him.

He punishes his father, and watching Mom’s narcissistic approach to rehab, we wonder if Dad actually deserves any of this. He sees his son as “a mean spirited little s—.”

We will, too.

Konigsberg is deftly infuriating as Clark, Hayward and Turner make their vulnerable characters more insecure girls next door than beguiling teen sirens, Burrows suggests a deep soul with a dark side and Germann just looks….guilty. Of something.

Set in San Francisco’s tony Presidio, idle affluence permeates Pritzker’s picture. The title “Quitters” signifies relationships that one and all are quick to abandon — the parents cheat or have cheated, the kids abandon this or that significant person in their lives on an impulse. The parents have quit on their kids, too. Sorvino’s May is merely the last to do that.

There’s an abruptness to the conclusion that makes “Quitters” feel incomplete. But Pritzker has conjured up a world and peopled it with believable co-dependents, no mean feat in a 93 minute film.

The adult “Quitters”, caught up in their own melodramas, never ponder how their kids turned out this way, which is funny. Narcissists, by nature, are never that far from a mirror.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with pot use, teen sex, exploitative sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Ben Konigsberg, Kara Hayward, Morgan Turner, Mira Sorvino, Kieran Culkin, Greg Germann, Saffron Burrows

Credits: Written and directed by Noah Pritzker. A Monument/eOne release.

Running time: 1:33

If you’re a film fanatic you’ve seen or heard of them — “fan films,” homages, remakes of or tributes to movies that fans are so crazy for that they want to put themselves into the experience of that world and try to recreate it on the screen.

They tackle “Star Wars” with fast food toys as the stars, recreate the bridge of this or that starship in their house, and act-out and videotape their efforts at playing their favorite characters and recreating their favorite filmic universe.

“Son of Rambow” was a decently-budgeted indie film about British kids making such a movie — (“Rambo”), “First Blood.”

As a film critic, I’ve seen a few of these enthusiastically cheesy efforts over the years. I recall one that a bunch of Orlando area theme park employees — set builders — made in a guy’s house, styrofoaming every room into a different corner of a space ship. At least the sets were impressive. They made a documentary about their filming this back in the ’80s. But an hour’s dogged research and memory crunching have failed to turn up that title, or the title of any other fan films I’ve checked out over the years. They’re forgotten because, well, they’re forgettable.

“Raiders! The Adaptation” got itself billed as “The Greatest Fan Ever Made” in the capital city of geekdom — Austin, Texas. It was a  1980s attempt by a bunch of Mississippi kids to do a shot-by-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Think for a minute what that would require. No wonder it took them seven years to complete it. Or almost complete it.

Steven Spielberg’s film, based on a story dreamed up by Philip Kaufman and George Lucas, hit little boys where they live. I remember some college friends dressing up as Indy and running around doing semi-dangerous stunts — sneaking into an unclimbable  bell tower on a college campus — videotaping their derring do.

Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala  and Jayson Lamb were 11 and 12 year olds who set out in 1982 to recreate not just the movie, not just every scene, but every SHOT Spielberg & Co. created. The  storyboards alone, detailing hundreds and hundreds of camera set-ups, angles and edits, were as thick as a Manhattan phonebook.

Their goal was to film it, using up every summer vacation from school to do it, then show it to Spielberg, and maybe jump start careers in the movies with it. They dream big in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

The boys, and the girl they talked into playing Marion Ravenswood (Angela Rodriguez), shot in their parents’ homes, setting up DIY SFX (special effects) that could have injured them or burned down those houses.  Yeah, they were unsupervised, and there are outtakes of every accident.

They saved their allowances and made every Christmas and every birthday about the movie. Please, Santa, bring me a Stetson fedora? A bullwhip? A leather jacket? Money to buy an old truck without an engine that I can turn into a 1930s German Army Mercedes?

And they kept at it. For seven years. They shot out of sequence. They outgrew costumes. They turned into teenagers on camera. They never quite finished. How DO you fake the big fight in front of a Nazi Flying Wing?

But their project got discovered and championed by Eli Roth, made its way to Austin and online film geek Harry Knowles’ film festival. And Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen made this documentary about the guys, 30 years later, raising money to shoot that last 124 shot, six minute sequence.With a flying wing.

“Raiders!” is a movie with a better back story than finished product. Kids did this. That’s the hook. The kids fell out, and only reunited, decades later, for the finishing scene. Things went wrong when back then. Things go wrong today. That happens on amateur movie shoots. And life got personally messy in the intervening decades.

Yeah, the kids weren’t ordinary. One’s mom was a local TV anchor married to the owner of a TV station. None of them, not one, has or had (back then) a Southern accent. They apparently had one black friend, cast as the the friendly ship captain who helped Indy. The “personal struggles” anecdotes pale in comparison to the obvious advantages they had that allowed them to do this. Indulgent, distracted parents were a help.

Lamb, the effects guy and cinematographer back in the ’80s, comes off as cocky and geekish, with a hint of bitterness. Zala is the committed, organized one (he directed) and Strompolos the one with an arrogant edge, a well-off but unhappy childhood, followed by a lot of indulged child’s problems as an adult.

But “Raiders!” will make any movie buff laugh out loud at the sheer chutzpah and kiddie problem-solving that it took to, for instance, recreate that boulder chasing Indy out of a South American temple.

Getting permission to show the original footage, side by side, with their “adaptation” of it was a coup. So was getting John Rhys-Davies –Sallah, in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — to sit for an interview about their passion, then and now.

But in keeping with this little boy’s attempt at movie-making, it takes a kid to put it all in perspective. Zala’s kids are around, watching Dad finish up his dream project, and his son gets off the movie’s best line.

“Why did Steven Spielberg need $20 million to make ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’? My dad only needed his allowance.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, profanity, drug abuse discussions

Cast: Chris Strompolos,  Eric Zala, Jayson Lamb, John Rhys-Davies, Eli Roth, Harry Knowles
Credits: Directed by Jeremy Coon, Tim Skousen.  A Drafthouse release.

Running time: 1:35

The reviews of Andy Samberg’s 86 minute SNL sketch “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” have been generous. And it’s not a bad time killer.

The parody plays like a pulled punch, lots of raunchy semi-outrageous music videos and concert sequences that keep slamming up against off-stage moments that fall utterly flat.

Everybody liked it well enough, a few doltish raves, bit mostly a lot of “Meh, why not?”  I was on the fence. Which is reason to point you to the metacritic rating for it, a sober but solid 69% positive. The Tomatomater lacks the nuance to capture a lightweight movie’s shrugging endorsements.

Those dreadful Ninja Turtles are back. Small kids — OK, small BOYS — will titter at the profanity (somewhat mild) and ogle Megan Fox’s assorted tight, midriff baring outfits. There’s barely a laugh in it, but the action beats play. Poor reviews for this one.

“Me Before You” is a female wish fulfillment fantasy that panders to a demographic that isn’t male comic book nerds. Condescending, patronizing, with a comically over-animated performance by “Game of Thrones” eyebrow mistress Emilia Clarke. As many pans as as positive reviews.

Is there still an audience for those mutant reptiles? Box Office Guru says there is, but only to the tune of $33 million. Not bad, considering the cost to the Chinese backers who financed it. Not a smash, though.

Box Office Mojo suggests a slightly higher take ($34).

Everybody is predicting no money at all for “Popstar,” which is what Samberg gets for tying his fortune to Adam Sandler — if only briefly. $5 million is the top end of predictions, with most people figuring the best bits are in the trailer (they are). It ought to do better than that, though.

“Me Before You” could have been a decent date movie. Nah, who’m I kidding? A romance between a guy in a wheelchair who wants to die and his fetching day nurse? You’d have to waterboard most guys to get them to see that one. Predictions are $12-15 million for that one.

Two more hours of turtle tedium come our way in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.”

The effects are better, the 3D is put to better use and the opening action beat — supervillain Shredder (Brian Tee) escapes from the cops — is well staged.

And motion capture animation — which is how Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek and Alan Ritchson become green-shelled Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael — has progressed far beyond Gollum in the Hobbit movies. It’s amazing what Chinese money and Hollywood know-how can manage.

But it’s still just a patience-testing bauble for anybody over the age of 12. The Turtles, in this latest incarnation, were and remain shiny but stupid entertainment for kids.

This time, there’s a corrupt scientist (Tyler Perry) helping martial arts monster Shredder. And they’re both aiding an alien invader, a “wad of chewing gum with a face” voiced by Brad Garrett. Something to do with teleportation abd world conquest.

The police chief (Laura Linney) doesn’t know about the turtles. A plucky corrections officer (Stephen Amell) with mad hockey stick skillz is about to meet them — and that hottie TV reporter who hangs with them, played by Megan Fox.

The Turtles sneak into a Knicks game, feud and have to figure out how to cooperate to foil this latest threat to New York.

“It’s the different points of view that makes the team strong,” Splinter, the wise “sensei” rat voiced by Tony Shalhoub counsels.

“What would Vin Diesel do?” a turtle wonders.

It’s still nigh on impossible for actors to actually register under that animation, and they certainly aren’t doing the digitized stunts that the siblings manage. It’s more animation than performance, or seems that way.

A lowbrow kid’s movie (with swearing and lots of violence) like this makes you appreciate the actor’s art and commitment. Fox, backed into a career corner, gives her character everything she’s got. Linney fights back the embarrassment. Will Arnett tries underplaying his comic relief cameraman, given the credit for saving the city in the last movie because the turtles have to stay in “the shadows.”

And Perry? Hamming through lines like “ELIMINATE those Turtles!” isn’t going to keep him out of a dress.

As comic book franchises go, this one skews younger. If you’re seeing it out of nostalgia for the books and the old TV series, maybe it’s time to take stock of your movie habits. Kids? They’ll appreciate the attempts at wisecracks, the limp 3D ninja action and the PG-13 profanity. They’re not supposed to know any better.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence

Cast: Megan Fox, Laura Linney, Stephen Amell, Tyler Perry, Brian Tee, Will Arnett
Credits: Directed by Dave Green, script by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. A Paramount/Nickelodeon release.

Running time: 1:52

His move to Netflix has made accessing Adam Sandler movies easier than ever. As if that’s a good thing.

“The Do-Over,” his latest quick and dirty, is a slapdash action comedy with more plot twists than laughs, and lots more day work for his large retinue of hangers-on.

Shot in and around Savannah, it’s about a Palm Coast bank manager (David Spade) who finally married the Prom Queen (Natasha Leggero), whose best drunken tramp years were burned on Sean Astin, with whom she had heinous twins.Whom Charlie is now raising.

But their high school reunion pairs him up with old pal “Maxie Pad” (Sandler), a live-for-the-moment FBI agent who convinces him to join him in assuming the identities of two rich, dead crooks.

Skip off to Puerto Rico and start over, right? He has to kidnap Charlie to do it, but fair’s fair.

Complications pile up as the dead guys’ associates take an interest in them.

Nick Swardson plays a mysterious stranger who stalks them, Torsten Vorges a hit-man called “The Gymnast,” Paula Patton the widow of one of the dead men and Luis Guzman a Puerto Rican bartender who is very comfy with his naked body.

Sandler and Spade hit the bars in floral shirts and Detroit Tigers hats.

“Too Magnum?”

“You can NEVER be too Magnum. Lose the hat, though.”

There’s a bad Dan Patrick cameo (as usual), a lot of lame Sandler riffs on homosexuality and say, a bartender’s Neanderthal beard.

“Hey, ‘Encino Man.”

“Do-Over” is “Grown-Ups” with guns. And with no Colin Quinn or Chris Rock or Rob Schneider or Norm McDonald or Kevin Nealon. There’s no real direction, no real acting, just a lot of Sandler dependents hitting their marks, collecting their checks and trying not to look as if they’re wondering what there is to do in Savannah after today’s filming.

Sandler may have jumped to Netflix at just about the right time, and his ongoing loyalty to his posse is laudable. But he has been phoning this garbage in for 15 years.

The best you can say about “The Ridiculous Six” and “The Do-Over” is that if Netflix has allowed him to reach his aging, shrinking fanbase easier, it’s also made avoiding his work easier still. So long as you don’t accidentally hit “play” when “Do-Over” is the first thing that pops up on your Netflix queue.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with torture, bloody violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Adam Sandler, David Spade, Paula Patton, Kathryn Hahn, Torsten Vorges, Renee Taylor, Natasha Leggero, Michael Chiklis,
Credits: Directed by Steven Brill, script by Kevin Barnett, Chris Pappas. A Netflix Original release.

Running time: 1:48

Freed from the tutelage of his mentor, Adam Sandler, who has been relegated to making movies for Netflix, SNL alumnus Andy Samberg churns out an old-fashioned SNL character comedy.

“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” is a riff on the music videos he popped out while on the show, a “behind the music” mockumentary where all the energy was pumped into creating new videos and absurdly over-the-top concert sequences. “Popstar” is 86 minutes packed with SNL alumni and far too few funny bits to sustain any of them.

It’s a Justin Bieber spoof that loses its nerve, a film that despite the occasional snort of coke or breast or penis shot, is almost shockingly mild-mannered, a PG version of today’s R-rated comedies.

Samberg plays Conner4Real, a pop rapper popular with the teens, captured just at the moment when it all crashes down around his ears.

He’s got the lifestyle, an indulgent manager (Tim Meadows), a publicist (Sarah Silverman) can only carry him so far and a deal with a major appliance company (repped by the omnipresent Maya Rudolph) that spells disaster.

His new record, “Conquest,” will automatically download to every appliance in the Aquaspin line at midnight on its release date. You open your fridge, there’s Conner4Real and Pink singing about “Equal Rights” for homosexuals, with Conner yelping “Not Gay!” in between every line.

Maybe they’ll get the foul-mouthed tune about the “horny like a Stegosaurus” hook-up who wants him to screw over “like we did Bin Laden.”

Conner is king of the throw-away hip hop catchphrase — “Moped music,” “Patrick Stewart money,” “Turn up the beef.”

He’s got an entourage of yes-men, a turtle sitter for his pet tortoise. But that U-2 styled “automatic download” of his new album has disaster written all over it. And the problems only begin with the nationwide blackout it generates.

The downward spiral is connected with Conner’s need to lose his clueless, omnipotent arrogance and make amends to his former bandmates, the Style Boyz (co-writers/directors Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer). Conner needs to be humbled to get back in the public’s good graces and off of the TMZ knock-off CMZ (Will Arnett, Mike Birbiglia and others mercilessly ridicule the low-rent gossip TV show).

But for some strange reason, Samberg doesn’t commit to the off-stage bits. Every musical moment is a winner, as Conner unleashes hologram duets with Adam Levine (and himself) on stage, or startles Pink with his not-so-veiled homophobia.

Off-stage, Conner is more mild-mannered and human than we’d expect him to be. He’s not an idiot, follows his plummeting record sales and cannily accepts a hotter opening act (Chris Redd is Hunter the Hungry). In short, he’s not funny. Those scenes are all truncated and enervated as well, lacking the energy to reach some sort of conclusion.

One killer moment — Conner cannily proposes to his “publicity” movie star girlfriend (Imogen Poots) in a for-TV spectacle that involves live wolves and the singer Seal, with predictably disastrous results.

But those moments stand out because most everything else off-stage is introduced without being developed. The whole movie, with Joan Cusack as Conner’s coke-snorting mom, to the scads of star cameos — musicians and Simon Cowell singing Conner’s praises in interviews, Bill Hader as a roadie, etc — feels like an under-developed sketch that goes on for too long.

MPAA Rating:R for some graphic nudity, language throughout, sexual content and drug use

Cast: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Sarah Silverman, Tim Meadows, Chris Redd, Imogen Poots, Bill Hader, Will Arnett, Will Forte, Adam Levine, Pink
Credits: Directed by Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, script by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:26

They didn’t change enough of the show’s format — which had sagged along with Jeremy Clarkson’s jowls and loose-fit jeans — to avoid direct comparison.

Chris Evans, sort of the bastard Michael Caine glasses-wearing child of Roddy McDowell and Ron Weasley, is going to take some getting used to.

The chemistry and banter seemed a bit forced, with both new co-hosts making nice and playing together even when they were supposed to be competing.

The bits they managed in the premiere of series 23 of “Top Gear” in its current millennial incarnation,  offered few surprises. Raves about a butt-ugly winged Dodge Viper (fast, but the wing looks like a tuner’s add-on). A “dogfight” involving the most promising of the third wheels among their supporting cast — Sabine Schmitz — who brings German bluntness and profanity to the proceedings (she crapped all over a Corvette she was racing the Viper with). “Piece of —t,” she mutters about the suspension. “Like a Ferrari.”

Ouch. Then, she’s gone.

But the same theme song, similar opening credits.

Another bashing of a Reliant three wheeler, this time involving ANOTHER race to Blackpool. Really?

The new “Gear” is much the same as the old. Too much.

Chris Evans, who made his bones and his fortune used for car collecting on British radio, is trying awfully hard, but may grow on me. Matt LeBlanc? He’s doing exactly as one would expect — droll, funny (he’d do better with writers, or better writing) and stupidly competent with whatever they put him behind the wheel of. LeBlanc dominated the pilot simply by being more at ease and not trying that hard. Some said he seemed bored. He’s been underplaying “himself” ever since he came to the UK.

But give them credit. The new more Americanized “Top Gear” went where the British show, in 22 seasons, dared not go.

A direct Land Rover vs. Jeep comparison was scrupulously, hilariously avoided by the jingoistic Jezzers and his mates for over a decade on old “Top Gear.”

Stuck in the jungles of South America? Hunting the source of the Nile?
The obvious choice in such an adventure was the one they dared not let anybody make. A Jeep. Assorted Japanese and British and even Swedish vehicles were proffered.

Because otherwise, the guy with the Jeep would have won — crossed the desert, climbed the mountain, towed the other junkers out of the muck. There is only One Jeep.

The finale of the Clarkson/May/Hammond series was the one and only time they dared work a Jeep (Cherokee) into their “challenges.” And that was made up of segments they hadn’t wanted to use, but had to after Clarkson was fired.

This time, they threw a first gen (“Series One”) Land Rover up against the Willys 4X4 that won WWII, with predictable results. British cheating notwithstanding.

My gut reaction to this 90 minute premiere was, “Boy, the Brits are going to be pissed.”

American co-host, a rejiggering of the “star in a reasonably priced car” that pitted Gordon Ramsay against American movie star Jesse Eisenberg (Guess who won THAT?),two American cars in their first comparison contest, and stating the bloody obvious re: 4x4s. Jeeps have always had the measure of the leaky, latterly luxurious Land Rovers.

This show is plainly pandering to an American audience that still hasn’t warmed to the US version of the popular British car show. It could do better in the US than it does in the UK and the BBC would be giggling all the way to Barclay’s.

But I don’t blame the Brits for feeling a pit put out. Or chaffed.

They upgraded the “reasonably priced car” (no longer called that) to a Mini Cooper, and took it into the mud (an offroad portion of the track). Smart.

The Stig is still around, used in more comic bits. Fine.

There’s a second “after” show allowing the BBC to test out the other co-hosts to see who might be up to playing on the A-team, “Extra Gear.” More money for the BBC, too, for that one. This has become a “thing” on US cable. If the “Real Housewives” and “Walking Dead” can have a show AFTER their shows, why not “Top Gear”?

So I’m more than willing to stick with this one to give it a chance. Evans is obviously an enthusiast, LeBlanc more than his equal but generous. And the “old” “Top Gear” didn’t really hit its stride until bon vivant and pedant James May joined the team, and they started seriously taking off on big trips — the North Pole, the Middle East, Africa, Vietnam, Burma, etc. That was a couple of years into that “new” series.

The BBC hid the first season of the rebooted “Top Gear”, which had basically only Jeremy Clarkson, from DVD release, reruns etc. Because it sucked. Second season wasn’t much better and is similarly hidden. May shows up, and it finally works.

The big question is, will the British audience remember that slow start to the last version and stick with the show as well? It could take years, and I don’t think they have that.

“The Phenom” is a sensitive, unconventional baseball tale rendered in the muted tones of dread, a young player’s fear of letting everyone down.

It’s about a rookie pitcher (Johnny Simmons) trying and failing to cope with the pressures of a fat contract, a brutishly demanding mentor/father, the girl he left behind and his own very public failure — a flurry of wild pitches in a key game — on national TV.

That’s a lot to ask of an 18-19 year old. So Hopper Gibson’s been sent to see a “mental coach,” a sports psychologist played with understated whispers by Paul Giamatti.

Hopper’s sessions on the couch are laced with flashbacks — distracted in class in high school, teenage flirtations, that magic moment when the scouts discovered him and the day he showed his mother “the castle” he bought her with his signing bonus.

Then, there’s Dad. Growing up in tiny Port St. Lucie, Florida, everybody knows Hopper and worse, knows his family. Hopper Sr., given a tattoos and a ferocious prison mullet cut with a performance to match by Ethan Hawke, knows the game. He once had promise, too.

He ridicules the kid, amused that baseball scouts are interested “in a little toothpick like you.” He insults his intelligence.

“I think you don’t have any homework. You don’t have the BRAINS to have homework.”

But in between prison stints and eruptions of rage, the old man’s given the boy every overbearing lesson the game taught him.

“Never show emotion on the mound.”

Simmons, of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” makes Hopper both a convincing pitcher (no small feat) and shy, soft-spoken and thoughtful, even when he’s passing on Dad’s nasty “everybody uses everybody” lessons to his leftist, smart and underwhelmed by his impending fame girlfriend (Sophie Kennedy Clark).

There’s a lightly comical scene where he has dinner with her and her left-of-liberal parents, who surprise him with their suggestions that common sense dictates he pursue the riches the game might dangle in front of him over the enriching and maturing and broadening experience of college.

Writer-director Noah Buschel (“Neal Cassady” was his debut) conjures up a serene and unhurried character study, a 90 minute film so unhurried that it feels much longer. Simmons’ Hopper seemingly on simmer throughout. We see the trials of his public failure, the press scrum circling him like chum in the water. We hear about another pitcher who cracked up and killed himself and fear for the kid’s future.

A clever musical cue sets the mood. Buschel uses Mozart’s wistful and sad Piano Sonata #11 throughout the picture — in the score, a piece being practiced by a horn player in the high school band, and a ballpark organist’s between-innings scene-setter. It tamps down the tempo and puts us in Hopper’s frame of mind.

He’s in his glory, but it’s all coming apart. It’s all this kid can do to tamp down his emotions, get a handle on his fears and calm himself. Maybe a little Mozart would help. And sessions with a shrink.

MPAA Rating: unrated, implied violence, alcohol use, sexual situations

Cast: Johnny Simmons, Ethan Hawke, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Paul Giamatti
Credits: Written and directed by Noah Buschel. An RLJ Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:30