Movie Nation

A point I have made here from time to time, if your movie isn’t on IMDb or Rottentomatoes or Metacritic, it does not exist.

Here is one with Ed Harris and Jason Isaac and Stephen Root and others, a remake of a 1955 Western (maybe not), and there is nothing out there beyond the film itself to prove that it exists.

Because when it was filmed back in 2013, it was called “Sweetwater.”

Mean and coarse and a bust in most regards. And changing the title almost makes it disappear.

Free, on YouTube, as linked below. Good looking archetypal Western, foul-mouthed, metaphoric and violent. But online searching for it under that title turns up nothing.

All involved wanted to forget about it, hide from it by letting it show up on Youtube for free?

Alvin Sargent wrote the most emotional, best-directed, best-acted “Spider-Man” movies — the three with Toby and Kirsten.

https://deadline.com/2019/05/alvin-sargent-dead-oscar-winner-ordinary-people-julia-1202612437/

Working in a thriller with Jessica Alba.

Not exactly prestige picture material, but there you go. Not everybody gets an Oscar Bounce.

Assassins have their own support group, and Suki Waterhouse, Tim McInerny, Oldman and Alba and Sadie Frost are in it. “Killers Anonymous” goes into release, from Lionsgate, at the end of June.

The bigger question, “Wait, Film Arcade is still in business, “releasing” movies?

“Being Frank” is about Dad’s “other” family, features Samantha Mathis and Logan Miller, and opens June 14.

It’s not necessarily for you. Maybe it’s not “the perfect movie” to take Mom to for Mother’s Day

Unless you want her to write you out of the will.

But if Mom is a grandmom? Well, darling, “Poms” could be right up her alley.

This less than challenging lightweight Senior Citizens Swear and Act Silly farce is built around Diane Keaton, who is showing a determination to keep working even if the movies aren’t up to the films that what she became famous for. Here, she’s got an age-appropriate supporting cast that is grateful for the work.

And they’ve made a comedy that’s going to resonate with anybody over 70.

There’s the grandkid stealthily living with granny (Jackie Weaver) in a stupidly strict retirement community, the steady stream of new arrivals and those “checking out” from “Sun Springs,” the obnoxious son trying to rule his aged mom’s life and a widow suddenly freed from the strictures of a suffocating, “He’s the Boss” marriage.

Yeah, there are “Break a hip” jokes and the best “Over my dead body” gag in recent memory.

None of which makes “Poms” a classic, or anything more than barely passable, even in the eyes of its target demo. But if you’re on your third or fifth AARP card, it plays.

Keaton plays Martha, a single, childless New Yorker we meet on the day of her “estate sale.” No, she’s not dead, as confused shoppers wonder about the person whose stuff they are perusing. But she’s got cancer, and she’s rejecting any further treatment/.

There’s nothing for it but to load up the Subaru and make for Sun Springs retirement community in Georgia, which is where folks without the stamina for Florida end up.

It’s a controlling, over-regulated little piece of shrubs-must-be-cut-just-so and Christmas decorations must be down by Jan. 2 sort of place, lorded over by steel magnolia Vicki (Celia Weston, terrific).

“I’m just here to die,” Martha cracks.

“Wayl, I thank we can aim a mite higher’n that,” Vicki drawls.

Martha’s new neighbor (Weaver) is pushy and on-the-make, hosting all-men poker games, trying to enlist Martha in the “fun.” Martha’s not having it.

But the rules state she “must join” one of the hundred or so clubs there. As neighbor Cheryl took a shine to Martha’s old cheerleading uniform, that’s what they resolve to do — form a  cheer squad.

Documentary filmmaker Zara Hayes directed this (the story was her idea, too), and has modest fun in the “audition” montage — women like Pam Grier shaking their groove thing, trying to make the squad.

The rehearsals, set to The Go Gos and Portugal The Man, are almost cute.

Charlie Tahan is the shy grandson brought in to DJ the rehearsals, Alisha Boe is engaging as a high school cheer captain who journeys from contempt to admiration.

Rhea Perlman may not have enough of a character to play. But the always entertaining Bruce McGill plays the head of security at Sun Springs, old enough to realize “enforcement” there is beneath him, not smart enough to figure out a way out of every call for a noise disturbance or what have you.

Keaton is top billed, but it is Jacki Weaver (“Animal Kingdom,” the movie, not the cable series) who owns the picture, the sassy, salty “grown ass woman” who over-instructs the high schoolers she substitute teaches in sexuality, and turns a teen’s sneering “Break a hip” wish for luck into “Get pregnant.”

The jokes are strictly low-hanging fruit, but the film’s predictable path takes just enough care to avoid the places we’re sure we’re headed to sustain its 91 minutes.

It’s not exactly good, nor does it merit the sort of scorched earth reviews some of the children who couldn’t figure out why “Long Shot” wasn’t that funny and wasn’t exactly a hit.

Maybe you don’t get it. Maybe grandma and grandpa will.

MPAA: PG-13 for some language/sexual references.

Cast: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, Rhea Perlman, Bruce McGill and Celia Weston

Credits: Directed by Zara Hayes, screenplay by Shane Atkinson.  An STX/eOne release.

Running time: 1:31

Rene Zellweger frees herself from Hollywood jail with this one. That’s the storyline for this Judy just before she died biopic, due out in July.

Dazzling.

An LA Times piece that may be self serving –LA hates “runaway production,” ie any film or TV production not filmed in LA — bit also prescient. Think of what happened in “bathroom bill” states.
“Dear Hollywood:” writes @marymacTV
“By criminalizing abortion after six weeks, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp just turned the millions you save, and the billions you infuse into the state economy, into blood money.” https://t.co/82ddhPsVTl https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1126923628363251712?s=17

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/5/10/18563503/poms-diane-keaton-anjelica-huston-jackie-weaver-comedy-cheerleaders

It’s a word invented by fanboys, with fangirls eventually getting on board its use, overuse and abuse.

“Spoilers” and “spoiler alert” are applied so broadly that the words, which had no real value to begin with, have become utterly meaningless.

There’s. No. Such. Thing.

I have yet to read a movie review, even from those inclined to do nothing more than summarize the plot and say “I LOVE IT,” that gives away as much as the average movie trailer.

With The Internet Movie Database going to great pains to list the entire cast of a given picture, is anybody “surprised” when this or that character miraculously returns to life in “Avengers: Endgame?” The movies are soap opera comical in their cavalier treatment of “death,” and overlapping universes, “canonical” and non-canonical remakes — endless remakes.

Here’s what a “spoiler” used to be — letting on that Sean Connery shows up as Richard III at the end of Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” Something like that, a little delight saved for the late third act. Stunt casting, a cool cameo, an “Ocean’s 11” team member showing up in “Ocean’s Eight.”

I take care to avoid giving away more than the inciting incidents that drive the plot, and stop taking notes on a picture’s contents at the end of the first act. I may mention an effect, sequence or quote a telling line from later acts, but closing one’s notebook before the midway point is safe ground, I figure.

Again, the way studios have been cutting trailers since the ’90s gives away a LOT more of the movie than any review ever would, and the average fan has been sold on going to the movie by TV ads and trailers.

I get one or two “Hey, spoilers” complaints a year, on average. And while I check back to see if indeed I have given away a key secret/surprise in the picture, that’s almost never the case. “Happened in the first act,” a widely publicized actor/character inclusion, etc.

Still, the word “spoilers” is all over the cinematic internet and it grows more pointless with every use.

If you’re determined to see something without having any idea of what, specifically, happens and is said, the emotions it might engender, etc., you’re basically going to have to avoid the Internet and turn off alerts on your phone.

And who wants to do that? More to the point, who is going to remember anything you’d call a “spoiler” while you’re watching the movie, if it works and has sucked you into the story?

If you’re hunting for information about a movie you’re going to see, and that includes a REVIEW, which by its nature has probably 50-60 facts in 500 or so words, then there’s no such thing as a “spoiler.”

Well, here it is, a first look at the second installment of the screen version of Stephen King’s “It.”

What do we think?