Movie Nation

Cardi B gets billed above Senora Jennifer Lopez on this trailer, at least.

J Lo shows a girl how it’s done.

Madeline Brewer, Keke Palmer, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Mercedes Ruehl, Usher, Frank Whalley…

Sept. 13.

The “news” about what should prove to be the biggest blockbuster of the fall is that Warners set a new record for the number of gallons of fake blood used on a film with this second half/sequel.

Old school huxtering. Gotta love it.

From Ty Burr, even though I am not alone in wishing I had tweeted it first.

Amen.

“This is the exact opposite of why I got into this business.” https://t.co/j1dqPUYaKw https://twitter.com/tyburr/status/1152784807379775488?s=17

A $192 million plus weekend let “The Lion King” pass a later Harry Potter picture to take the all time July opening week record.

A big Thursday and huge Friday pushed it there, with a Sat fall off letting it flirt with $200 million.

“Avengers’ Endgame” passed “Avatar* as the biggest hit of all time, in unadjusted dollars.

“Lion King” mirrored that success overseas, and even though adults like it more than kids — not as cute, funny, etc. as the animated classic it is based on — it secures Jon Favreau’s status as a Disney go-to director.

Not that anything we see in this photo real animation looks or sounds as it it was “directed .”

“Spider-Man: Far from Home” took a plunge to about $20, “Toy Story 4” tailed off steeply to the low teens.

“Crawl” is doing fine — another $5, “Stuber” is plunging.

“Yesterday” is still holding audience like the sleeper hit it is. Closing in on $60 million and $75 is within reach.

“The Art of Self-Defense” didn’t dent the top ten in wide (ish) release.

https://deadline.com/2019/07/the-lion-king-weekend-box-office-july-records-1202648944/

A rainy night, a frantic dash into a phone booth a car circling — pursuing. Strings on the soundtrack urge us on.

A woman, pursued. Hiding in a rest stop toilet, breaking into a car.

A guy in a rainproof hoodie, the flash of a blade, a narrow escape. Or not?

“Secret Obsession” is the stuff pure hokum is made of. It’s a humdrum and solidly unsurprising “a woman stalked” thriller, and about the best thing you can say about it is that the leads got to be leads for a change, and that hey, string players need the work — even in Hollywood.

We can hear “I’ll love you forever…and a DAY!” promised on the soundtrack as we ponder the hospitalization and recovery of Jennifer, played by Brenda Song of “The Social Network” and TV’s “Station 19” and “Pure Genius.”

She survived that opening scene, but barely. Nurse Masters (Ashley Scott) is concerned, and blunt.

Because Jennifer’s husband, Russell (Mike Vogel of TV’s “The Brave” and “The Case for Christ”) has shown up.

“My wife was in a car accident.”

“Sir, you CAN’T go in there!”

Her injuries including head trauma. There’s…amnesia.

Russell is handsome, his designer glasses and perfectly-trimmed stubble underlining that he’s “professional” and “concerned.”

Or, you know, a “Lifetime Original Movie” stalker. Serial killer, maybe.

He questions his wife, and he starts explaining — their romance, their life together.

Just. Like. “The Notebook.” Awwwwww.

She keeps smiling, obviously appreciating the life she leads at the “been in the family for years” remote (Pomona) mansion, but frowning in puzzlement when his back is turned.

And sex? Recoiling in terror seems to work

Dennis Haysbert is the long-in-the-tooth detective whose “obsession” with this case is no secret. He’s “compensating,” as they say in Writing Screen Cops 101, “atoning” for an earlier failing. The chief knows. The chief always does.

“Whatever you do won’t make up for what happened…When was the last time you took a day off?”

“This was no accident!”

Jennifer sneaks around, hunts for her phone and picks up hints and clues that something isn’t kosher in Pomona, California.

The detective keeps raising his eyebrow as he computer-searches while driving. I think that’s illegal.

The script, by Kraig Wenman and director Peter Sullivan, gives away its “surprises” with ridiculous ease. They decided to go for suspense instead. Abandoning mystery hurts their case, even if they manage some tense moments as Jennifer makes the Heroine’s Journey from pretty but passive pawn to proactive “How do I get out of this?”

But drawn out? My stars and garters! This is a 60 minute episode (52 plus commercials) of a hundred episodic TV plots dating back to the ’60s, padded and padded — always underscored with urgent strings — to 1:37.

It’s good that everybody, including Netflix, is leaping into that “Crazy Rich Asians” driven “Let’s try to tell more stories with Asian characters/actors” trend. Song has screen presence and has earned her shot, and Haysbert is criminally underemployed.

But “Secret Obsession” never looks like anything more than the quick, cheap and under-developed hack job that it is.

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Brenda Song, Mike Vogel, Dennis Haysbert

Credits: Directed by Peter Sullivan, script by Kraig Wenman and Peter Sullivan.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

I can’t say I saw this as “a series” when a friend loaned me the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic n./comic book many moons ago.

But when the movie is sort of right but not quite…it’s the natural way of things for cable or streaming (“Catch-22” for instance, “Dune”) to take a fresh shot at it.

So here we are.

The cast has a few highlights, dazzling names, but is overall, underwhelming. At least on paper.

Radicalization via run-ins with the State and its suspicions about his associations, recruitment, notoriety, TV “popularization” that turns into global infamy.

Britain’s “Jihadi John,” TV beheader, explored and maybe…explained? July 31?

Absolute peers, known each other from their beginnings, a chat among equals in every sense. Funny bits, and the show is generally at it’s best when Jerry isn’t higher status than his guest. Tries harder, let’s them be them.

Murphy? Relaxed. Lying about planning to get back into standup. Comfortable in his own skin, no “uncomfortable” questions.

Nice cars, as always. I must say, the tendency towards newer Porsches and Rolls Royces seems a tad…product placement.

More comics, Seth Rogen chuckling over moving off the Sony lot by because “They hate us” after the whole Kim Jung In movie and hack, much more.

Ricky Gervais, back and in a Roller, no less. Cackling.

“Not shy about the fact that we’ve done well.”

Matthew Broderick, disarming and charming and walking his old neighborhood — DENIED entrance to a pretentious NYC coffee shop.

Driving Melissa Villaseñor around in the personification of Seinfeld’s view of collectible cars, that they’re “like toys from when you were a kid.” He puts her in a Nissan Figaro, the most toylike car of its day.

Seinfeld’s most human moment? Showing his prickly side (journalists have seen it, and Ke$ha), fuming about an unnamed comic who criticizes him to Bridget Everett. Gottfried? Goldthwait? Kindler?

Best show of its type. Why waste time with Leno? Or for that matter, Letterman?

New season’s on Netflix.

It’s subtle enough that you might not notice it while “Wild Rose” is telling its story on the screen. Maybe it’ll hit you later, on the ride or walk home.

This is a world of women, succeeding or failing, aiding or hindering, self-helping or self-destroying, where the men are in the background — drinking/sex buddies, house band members, all-but-anonymous stepping stones or obstacles to a woman obsessed with achieving her dream — becoming a country music star.

That’s what Rose Harlan, played in a break out performance by Irish-born actress Jesse Buckley (Marya in British TV’s “War & Peace”), covets above all. If only she could stick to it, put the effort in, maybe learn to play an instrument and write songs, sober up.

If only she wasn’t in prison when we meet her. Of course, that wasn’t a hindrance for  Merle or Johnny Cash. But still, everything we learn about her in a brisk opening montage — exuberant on release, stopping for a quick drink and a shag with an old beau — points to “This is NEVER happening.”

Rose is in her mid-20s, with two kids she gave birth to before she turned 18. Her mum (Julie Walters) has been raising them — because Rose was in prison, and Rose took care of her own impulses and “needs” before coming “home” to her plainly-traumatized, almost-strangers children, aptly named Wynonna and Lyle.

With an ankle monitor keeping her at home between 7pm and 7am, how will she make time for honky-tonking?

And hell, Rose lives in Glasgow. “Whoever HAIRD of a country music star from Glasgooooooo?” she purrs in that lovely burr.

Screenwriter Nicole Taylor, who did that wonderful Dominic West/Romola Gary/Ben Whishaw Cold War TV series “The Hour,” cooks up a marvelous portrait of self-destruction that at times feels like an homage to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s indie cinema finest hour, “Georgia,” at other times a bit like “The Thing Called Love,” seeing the Nashville Dream through an outsider’s eyes.

But the “tell” here is the casting of Walters as Rose’s long-suffering mother. “Educating Rita” introduced the world to Walters, and Buckley’s Rose sounds just like her with her “Maybe 20 years at the bakers’ was good enough for you, but not for me” defiance.

Taylor lets us fall-in-hate with Rose, who is, by any yardstick, a terrible mother. Her bipolar temperament — drinking, laughing, the life of the party when she’s onstage or at the pub, exploding at those who have replaced her as “the star” of the Glasgow Grand Ole’ Opry, at her mother for not dropping everything to help out with the kids — makes us fear for the children.

Wynonna (Daisy Littlefield) is bookish and won’t speak to her mother. Little Lyle (Adam Mitchell) is acting out, furious at the world and the only parent he’s ever had a chance to know, but wasn’t interested in knowing him.

Taylor introduces a veritable fairy godmother into this circle of dysfunction. Sophie Okenedo (“Hotel Rwanda”) is sweetness, light, enthusiasm and wealth, the woman whose house Rose takes over cleaning. Susannah doesn’t know about the prison record or the kids, doesn’t keep track of Rose raiding her liquor cabinet.

But she is given a tour of Rose’s favorite tattoo — the most flattering and pithy definition of country music ever put in ink.

“Three chords and the truth.”

As Rose loses herself in her headphones, belting out country classics, dancing and imagining the house band at the Opry backing her whilst she vacuums, Susannah’s kids are smitten. And soon Susannah is as enthused about “Country and Western” — “It’s just COUNTRY. There ain’t no ‘Western.'” — as Rose.

And she starts helping.

film wild rose with Julie walters

I love the way Taylor and Buckley set us up for disappointments, the way Rose is always disappointing her mother and children. A chance to meet BBC Radio’s legendary country music program host (Bob Harris plays himself)? Rose gets drunk on the train and has her money, phone and bag stolen.

Buckley is a gloriously earthy presence at the heart of “Wild Rose,” so much so that you can’t help but root for this reckless wreck. We can see that the white leather jacket and omnipresent white cowboy boots and star spangled stage blouse aren’t enough. Freckled, uninhibited and unexercised Rose tends more towards Celtic “cute” than pretty, her voice a tad thin and undistinguished to stand out in an industry/art form of bombshells and belters.

Buckley never lets us see that Rose sees this, and takes us on this drive down Delusional Dreams Blvd. with her. Walters brings a feisty sobriety to her mother, and Okenedo an indulgent understanding that’s plainly based on misunderstanding.

I wasn’t keen on the tacked-on finale, part of a third act collapse that dings but doesn’t utterly derail the picture. But “Wild Rose” is still a vivid, estrogen-charged charmer, a winning twist on “chasing your dream” and “You can have it all” with just enough sober slapdowns to keep it honest.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexuality and brief drug material

Cast: Jesse Buckley, Sophie Okenedo, Julie Walters

Credits: Directed by Tom Harper, script by Nicole Taylor.  A Neon release.

Running time: 1:41

Lots of prognosticators, perhaps intimidated by Disney and its ability to retaliate, seemed to be avoiding predicting how much the Mouse would make on the second worst-reviewed of its animation-to-“live”-action remakes, “The Lion King.”

I’ve read on discussion boards predictions of as high as $200 million, or as low as $100.

Box Office Mojo was late posting the suggestion that $190 million was the mark Disney is going for.

But Deadline.com lets slip that $180-192 is the range, and a $22-25 million Thursday puts the lower end of that spectrum within reach.

That will bury “Spider-Man: Far from Home” on its third weekend ($22), with “Toy Story 4” fading to $10-12, and only “Yesterday” holding audience, weekend to weekend, and “Crawl” managing another $6-7 million, if they’re lucky.

Bleecker Street’s wide release of “The Art of Self-Defense” is neither wide enough in release (550 or so theaters) or appeal to crack the top ten.