Movie Nation

Details details.

A darkly comic fable about two archangels…one’s a demon actually…rivals through eternity, teaming up at long last to save humanity from the Antichrist has Christians protesting and threatening a boycott.

They haven’t seen it. They don’t even know which streaming service has it. Amazon Prime does. But if you’re gullible enough to vote for the Antichrist, you’re not exactly set up to sweat the details.
https://t.co/h7YYmzreYY https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1141976566123118592?s=17

Thomas Haden Church also stars. None of them have Downs Syndrome, so this “Huck Finn Meets Rain Man” road picture Odyssey has an “introducing Zack Gottsagen” co-star.

Looks adorbs. August. Roadside Attractions has “The Peanut Butter Falcon” so nobody will see it in all likelihood.

The sky seems to be the limit for the latest sequel to roll into cinemas this summer.

Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story” appeared to bow out, gracefully and quite profitably, a few years back with “Toy Story 3.”

It earned more than $1 billion at the global box office in 2010.

But all that money means they couldn’t resist coming back for more. “Coco” and “The Good Dinosaur,” “Cars 3” and “The Good Dinosaur” couldn’t manage that.

But “Finding Dory” and “The Incredibles 2” did, and how.

The Hollywood Reporter is saying $200 million is the high end of “Toy Story 4” expectations, but Variety adds that $140 is easily within reach. Disappointingly, Box Office Mojo hasn’t ventured a prediction. Yet.

By comparison, “The Secret Life of Pets 2” won’t reach $140 at all in North America. It’s made most of what it will earn, and it just cleared $105.

“The Child’s Play” reboot is getting some decent early reviews, but probably won’t cross the $20 million barrier opening weekend.

“Anna” from Lionsgate/Summit is damaged goods, has a no-name leading lady and will be lucky to clear $4.

Why wasn’t “Anna” shelved?

Luc Besson, the great French action auteur, has long had one of those creepy whispered-about reps.

He was married to Milla Jovovich for a bit, often built his thrillers around barely-age-of-consent actresses (“Leon: The Professional” sexualized a tweenage Natalie Portman).

And he was accused of this crime right after it allegedly happened, by a model/actress on the shoot of drugging and raping her during production.

Love the LA Times headline about all this, focusing on its cost to the production. The film is “stuck in #MeToo limbo.” Golly. “Company town” and all that, innocent until proven guilty, etc. But heck, it’s not something you’d think anybody would accuse a filmmaker of (Sand Van Roy appears to have been cut out of the film) without cause.

Jaqueline Fleming can handle fight choreography.

The low-budget thriller “Atone” proves that. She should be able to assemble a fine audition reel of her sweep kicks, flips (while firing a gun) and cartwheels while battling her way through bad guys towards the villain in chief in this “Die Hard” in a Megachurch.

No, her work on TV’s “The Quad” didn’t require any of that, or a stunt double.

What did legendary bank robber Willie Sutton say? He robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” He might change his target after looking over the opulence of these modern day/TV tithed cathedrals and the multi-millionaires living like Liberace on donations.

If writer-director Wes Miller, who did the faith-based “Prayer Never Fails,” had stuck to action scenes, smack-talk one-liners and a few judgmental speeches about all that cash coming in and corrupting Christianity, he might have had something.

Instead, he’s delivered an uneven, sloppily-plotted tale with a badass leading lady, a lot of bloodshed and many a scene that stops the action and puts our gang leader (Columbus Short of TV’s “Scandal”) on the therapist’s couch.

It’s a short but stumbling fight your way through a huge church thriller that gives away its intentions early and falls into every bad guy cliche in the book, including everybody’s favorite — a bad guy putting down his guns to fist-fight the heroine, because he’s under-estimated her, and because otherwise, it’s “game (and movie) over.”

Fleming plays Laura Bishop, a widow and single-mom with that favorite action film resume, “Ex special ops.” That, and her dad being a deacon, gets her a security job at Bethel Community Church, working under the armed and dangerous Xander (Jackson Rowden).

But she hasn’t officially started when this cadre of commandos marches in, “military style,” and takes the place over.

It’s in the middle of  Jackson, Mississippi (apparently), this vast new glass and steel monument to the largess of the flock of Rev. Shaw (Robert Rusler).

The gunmen are in color coded masks — Green, Black, White, Purple, Yellow and so forth, so they address each other “Reservoir Dogs” style.

Desperate to save her daughter (Genesis Martin) and deacon/father (Jay R. Unger) after the assault begins. No time or hope of notifying the police, just find a thug, isolate him and trash talk him to death.

“Let me find my little girl…and I’ll let you live.”

She brawls and shoots her way through the gang as White (Short) makes his demands known, via in-house intercom, to the Reverend and his deacons, locked in a conference room.

An opening scene has Laura dropping in on “Fight Club,” showing she can both take and deliver a punch. Of course, she can’t talk about “Fight Club.”

White discovers her presence, and makes his threat.

“I will see you soon!”

“Not before I see you!”

There’s a lot of pointless foreshadowing, security that’s all the more necessary, the security chief says, when a Charleston or mass shootings like them happen. It’s pointless because the bad guys just stroll in and take over.

White tries his best supervillain lines — “Reverend Shaw, always with the silver — or should I say ‘golden’ tongue.”

One murderer crosses himself before every shooting.

And when Laura’s dad, the deacon, exclaims, he shouts “You son of a gun!”

The picture is a faith-bashing thriller with faith-based G-rated dialogue, hand-held camera fight action and a staggering body count.

How’s that all work? Not well. Not well at all.

But Fleming has herself some B-movie action film bonafides she couldn’t claim before. She brawls more than MMA actress Gina Carano did in her latest.  That doesn’t “Atone” for the film’s scriptural shortcomings and mostly flat supporting cast. Still, it counts for something.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence.

Cast: Jaqueline Fleming, Columbus Short, Robert Rusler, Genesis Martin, Stephen Farrelly

Credits: Written and directed by Wes Miller. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:29

And it isn’t just Miley Cyrus who says so, either.

This mobster with amnesia thriller is earning late August (dumping ground) release.

But we’ll see.

Anthony Anderson shakes off the cobwebs of sitcom acting and goes back to the hip hop hustling of “Hustle & Flow” for “Beats,” a rock-solid Netflix original set on the meanest streets of Chicago.

That would be Roseland, where gunfire echoes in the night often enough to startle but no longer shock.

Anderson brings his easy way with street slang and flippant flair for making a comic put-down sting to Romelo Reese, a “manager” who used to be big, but now works as a security guard at his wants-to-be-ex-wife’s high school.

He’s not much of a guard. But the school is about to lose funding for all the kids who’re truant. So Principal Vanessa (Emayatzy Corinealdi) sends him out door-to-door to round up missing warm bodies.

“I’m a security guard. I secure s—!”

“Then secure your job.”

That’s where he overhears young August (Khalil Everage of TV’s “Cobra Kai”) whipping up beats on his elaborate sound system. No, his mother (Uzo Aduba) says, he’s NOT going back to school. We already know why. In the opening scene of “Beats,” we’ve seen August’s older sister (Megan Sousa), who passed on her love of mixing to him and was his best sounding board, murdered in a shooting that also wounded August.

Gang-related. Teens provoking a gang not from their ‘hood. Stupid. A waste.

That trauma and his guilt gave him PTSD, which has turned him into a recluse, and Romelo’s intrusion and compliments freak the kid out. But being a hustler, Romelo isn’t taking “Get out of my HOUSE!” from Mom seriously.

“So, you going to take a bullet for him? Y’all want me to send my son off to the slaughter?”

He starts the courtship, but only when Mom is at work.

“I’m not supposed to talk with you!”

“Man, Harriet Tubman wasn’t supposed to run. Doesn’t make it a bad idea.”

Romelo “used to be big,” but something awful went down. He’s still got a good ear, still connected enough to a record label protege (Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya”), still able to sweet talk a gang banger with a studio (Dave East) out of a little recording time.

The kid taps his forehead nervously and furiously whenever he’s stressed. He listens to the “I’ll make you the most famous 17 year-old in Roseland!” pitch. Sure. OK. But only if he can do it all from his mom’s apartment.

Music video (and the movie “ATL”) director Chris Robinson infuses Miles Orion Feldsott’s salty script with a vivid sense of place. Chicago rappers (Dreezy plays even more colorfully-named Queen Cabrini) are scattered into the cast, and the parties, dank pool halls and school corridors ground the picture in geographical and gritty reality.

“Lock-down drill — attendance is mandatory” announcements underscore the school scenes, newscast accounts of shootings provide a backdrop that shows every life there touched by violence.

Ashley Jackson brings judgemental fire to Niyah, the girl who might help lure August out of his safe space.

Evan J. Simpson gives a scary edge to his turn as a former running mate who had a hand in precipitating the violence that broke August’s life and ended his sister’s.

Young Everage suggests fragility and naivete as August, the sort of boy cowed by Niyah’s furious “This is CHICAGO” blast of misguided tough-love about him phobias and fears.

And Anderson was born to play Romelo, a broke man brought low but still remembering the good times and willing to do most anything to get them back. Watch Romelo play the “When I got back from Iraq” card with August’s war-widow mom, hear him plead “I’m gonna be the man you want me to be” to his near-ex and serve up a little “old head, old habits” old school advice to the kid about to overproduce a killer beat.

“The hit is never when the producer puts the entire kitchen sink in there.”

The plot is seriously conventional, even though it packs more darkness into the third act than one might expect.

The music by Siddhartha Khosla and a sampler of local talent is woven through the picture with care.

“Beats” might not have made much noise on the big screen. But it’s just the sort of modest-ambitions winner that Netflix can make instead of those pricier sci-fi bombs that show the service is still years away from competing with the theatrical studios in that genre. This works, and a TV actor in a “Black-ish” rut sometimes makes it sing.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Anthony Anderson, Khalil Everage, Uzo Aduba, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Ashley Jackson, Megan Sousa, Paul Walter Hauser, Davcve East, Evan J. Simpson and Dreezy

Credits: Directed by Chris Robinson, script by Miles Orion Feldsott.  A Netflix Original.

Running time: 1:50

I don’t know. But the world survived “Secret Life of Pets 2” so maybe this will surprise.

Anna K. and JTimberlake are back. More singing trolls.

“The Dead Don’t Die” is a slow-motion disaster about a slow-motion disaster.

It’s about a zombie infestation that slowly–oh-so-slowly–devours a town, and the ineffectually slow response of those charged with stopping it.

Yes, Jim Jarmusch is attempting a commentary on Trump Era America, something he underlines with the occasional racist wearing a bright red hat and the mumbling musings of a hermit/sage on a distracted, acquisitive culture helpless in the face of an existential threat. It’s just that Jarmusch (“Night on Earth,””Broken Flowers,” “Coffee and Cigarettes”) isn’t really the right guy to pull this off.

We’ve already had zombie comic satires (“Zombieland,””Warm Bodies”). Watching this deathly dull 104 minute experiment in “Let’s see if the droll Jarmusch can make a BIG HIT for once,” I couldn’t help but think it only worked in the trailers.

A “Funny or Die” or “SNL” short film riff on “Jim Jarmusch makes a Zombie Movie” was the best destiny of “Dead Don’t Die.

Instead, we have members of his rep company (Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi) and newcomers anxious to have a little fun/add-a-little-hip-cachet to the resume (Selena Gomez, Adam Driver) performing in that slow double-take/deadpan Jarmusch style.

Here, it is tedium itself.

Centerville, Pennsylvania has 789 residents and three cops — Murray, Driver and Chloe Sevigny. Chief Cliff Robertson (Haw. Haw.) is the sort who won’t draw his gun even when Hermit Bob (Waits) fires his DIY rifle at him.

“Don’t break any more laws,” the Chief (Murray) begs, a cop who dare not shoot back, because you know, the shooter’s white. “Just calm down.”

Driver is Deputy Ronnie, who drives his SmartCar (best sight gag in the picture) like an emergency vehicle. He’s the one who decides the fact that the sun isn’t going down when it’s supposed to, the loss of cell and police radio service means “This isn’t gonna end well, Cliff.”

We take the time to absorb the irony of the racist MAGA farmer (Buscemi) tetchily talking up the hardware store owner (Danny Glover) at the diner, embarrassed to admit he can’t drink any more coffee because it’s “Too black for me,” or the comic book nerd (Caleb Landry Jones) clerk at that hardware store asking his WU-UPS (Whoops?) delivery man (RZA) to “drop a little wisdom on me.”

“The world is perfect. Appreciate the details.”

And then there are the young “Cleveland hipsters” (snort) rolling into town in Zoe’s (Gomez) mid ’60s Pontiac LeMans, the local TV news anchor (Rosie Perez) noting the strange things happening to pets, livestock and wildlife.

Only the hermit/sage sees it coming. A reckoning.

AARP punk Iggy Popp rises from the dead. As does the town alcoholic (Carol Kane) in the drunk tank.

The cute wrinkle in this version of The Walking Dead? They mutter a single word, reflecting their obsession.

Iggy: “COFFEE.”

A long-deceased skinny teen: “FASHION.”

A dead picker: “GUITAR.”

Carol Kane: “Char-DONNAY.”

Tilda Swinton plays “Our unusual, new undertaker” — Scottish, fond of clown makeup for her corpses, and oh yeah — a master swordswoman.

Tilda Swinton stars as “Zelda Winston” in writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s THE DEAD DON’T DIE, a Focus Features release. Credit : Frederick Elmes / Focus Features © 2019 Image Eleven Productions, Inc.

The guitar zombie is played by musician Sturgill Simpson, whose tune “The Dead Don’t Die” the hipsters and Deputy Ronnie identify as the movie’s “theme song” and are obsessed with. They also discuss the script and Jarmusch as a director. Because, you know, they’re self-aware and above all this.

That’s kind of funny, and truthfully, little moments and portions of scenes land laughs.

None as amusing as the lanky Driver unfolding himself from a SmartCar.

The problem with “Dead Don’t Die” is that it just doesn’t play. Jarmusch’s style doesn’t fit the material at feature film length. The long double-takes and slow-burn reactions, in this context, don’t delight, tickle or amuse.

I’ve been a fan since “Mystery Train” (His earlier break-out arthouse hit “Down by Law” did little for me.), and have interviewed him several times over the years. He’s stumbled before, and the wide release of this one suggests a cynical effort to sell-out and make easy money off people who will see anything with “The Living Dead” in it.

But adding overt social commentary on a genre that has ALWAYS been social commentary by definition is too heavy-handed, and the deadpan just doesn’t deliver the same comic counterpoint when the whole enterprise is deadpan by design.

MPAA Rating:R for zombie violence/gore, and for language

Cast: Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny, Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, RZA, Caleb Landry Jones and Iggy Popp

Credits: Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:44

It’s been a long dry spell since I’ve seen one that scared me. That didn’t have Dane Cook in it, anyway. But we’ll see what Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson get the big bucks for. We will.