Movie Nation

Here’s a sweet, slight little samosa of a Euro-Indian comedy, a tale that’s a little bit topical, a tad picaresque, with just a hint of Bollywood thrown in spice.

“The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir” takes a poor Indian boy from Mumbai to Paris and beyond, hoping against hope that whimsy and a charismatic star will put it over.

They don’t quite manage it, but clocking in at roughly half the length of a Bollywood musical, it makes a nice sampler — Anglicized — of the frothy fare that India’s musical romances offer to the locals.

The singing actor Dhanush plays Ajatashatru Lavash Patel, who shows up one day to pass along a little advice to three street urchins who have just been sentenced to four years in prison.

His story, he says, “is a tragedy,” about how we all come into this world “equal,” and then “the tyranny of chance steps in…no more level playing field.”

He was a doting son whose laundress mother (Amruta Sant) got him to eat, if not stay out of trouble, by promising to take him to Paris with her someday.

But a chance glance at a swami’s “act” — levitating, thanks to a cleverly engineered chair that passed for a cane — led Aja and his cousins to steal the chair and set themselves up as magician, with Aja a poor “fakir” hustling the tourists with fake magic and not-fake-enough poverty.

Aja became a lifelong trickster, with just enough sleight of hand at his command to pocket change from the gullible. His mother dies before they can go to Paris, but after her death he discovers her reason for wanting to make the trip. And that becomes his mission, by hook or by crook.

He tumbles into town, tumbles for the first American tourist (Erin Moriarty of “Miracle Season” and TV’s “The Boys”) who will play act out a “marriage” with him in his favorite furniture store — Bergman Bogärt (think IKEA).

They plan to meet at the Eiffel Tower, but darned if he doesn’t find himself shipped (in a furniture crate) to London in a truck filled with desperate migrants.

Remember Barkhad Abdi from “Captain Phillips?” “I’m the captain, now!” He plays one man anxious to reach “the land of milk and honey.”

They’re busted. “But…but…I’m a TOURIST! I don’t WANT to be in England!”

“Is it the weather?”

“NO!”

A comically cranky customs agent (Ben Miller of the “Johnny English” movies) launches into a little song and dance about shipping them all to an unsuspecting EU country.

“You’ve got to go back to Spain…”These kids love churros! How many times must I explain? You’re all going to Spain!”

And off they go, with Aja finding himself in a Spanish detention facility, caught up in the whirl of a movie star’s (Bérénice Bejo) studio negotiations in Rome, and so on.

It’s a picaresque journey, or would be with a lot more laughs and comic edge.

Dhanush has presence and skills, but his performance only comes to life when he breaks into song and dance at a disco.

His character is somber, delivering lines about fate and chance — “We play with the hand (chance) deals us.” — and karma.

As in he’s got to build his up if he expects that airport detention center door that he checks every night to be unlocked that one time he needs it to be in order to escape.

I kept thinking “Eugenio Derbez would have made this guy funnier.”

Still, there’s a warmth throughout this not-as-extraordinary-as-you’d-hope “Journey of the Fakir” thanks to the impromptu family of refugees he joins, the easy charm of the Not-IKEA furniture store courtship (he literally “steals” a kiss, #IndiaToo).

The French Canadian director Ken Scott gave us “Seducing Doctor Lewis” and “Starbuck,” which was remade as “The Deliveryman.” He keeps this sweet-nothing of a comedy light on its feet, but the script needed doctoring — more jokes, more antic sight gags. Heck, even more production numbers would have helped.

This Fakir’s “Extraordinary Journey” needed many things to live up to its title, especially more “magic” to come off.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive content and brief strong language.

Cast: Dhanush, Bérénice Bejo, Erin Moriarty, Barkhad Abdi, Gérard Jugnot

Credits:  Directed by Ken Scott, script by Romain Puértolas, Luc Bossi, Jon Goldman and Ken Scott, based on a novel by Romain Puértolas. A Cradle Walk/M! Capital release.

Running time: 1:32

Grimes plays a guy who thinks he’s left his criminal past behind, only to have that scary damned Frank Grillo show up for pay back.

James Badge Dale also stars in “Into the Ashes,” which opens July 19.

In the movie business, you can either wait for a break, to be “discovered,” or you make your own.

So congratulations for Keith Sutliff for getting his own star vehicle, “The Refuge,” off the ground, in front of the camera and into a theater or two.

“The Refuge” is his self-written, self-directed, self-produced, self-released, self-starring heist picture. He also took “casting” and “unit production manager” credits.

That’s one way to flesh in your Linked In profile. Well, if you want something done right…

But who wants to see a thriller where the action — you know, the exciting parts — takes place pretty much entirely off camera?

As the correct answer is “Nobody,” maybe — as the popular inanity goes — “The universe is trying to tell you something.”

“Refuge” is a stupefyingly dull thriller, pretty much right out of the box, from the trite phone call that frames our story in the “present,” to the 95 minute flashback that tells us how our hero (Sutliff) got here.

“You’re f—–g dead, you hear me?”

Markus is an LA getaway driver who often just arranges the jobs he’s commissioned to do.

I mean, he pulls a heavy wrench out of his backseat to walk up on a van carrying stolen cash and the guys who stole it. But that’s almost the only active moment moment we see from this head-shaved man of few words.

Markus gets a call, often from the Russian Zander (sic) played by Martin Copping. He strolls out to his black Dodge Charger, and he’s off.

In my notes for the film, I jotted down that “he wastes a couple of minutes too many on a slow pursuit filmed from the back seat where all we notice is that his satellite radio is tuned to ‘Classic Rock 95.1.'”

That turns out to be most of the movie, Hell, almost all of it — just the star, sometimes unseen, sometimes in profile, driving the empty streets, bridges and nearly-empty tunnel of LA on his way to a meeting, an armed robbery or (on one or two occasions), a getaway.

Gee, we know your character can drive, Keith. We get it. Maybe not a “stick.” But whatever.

The violence of the robberies is off-camera. We cut away from the action just as its about to happen or other characters (Matthew Webb plays a trigger man) leave the frame to do the dirty work. Well, there’s a burst of badly-staged violence in the finale.

There are meetings with assorted underworld folk (played by Julien Cesario and Webb) where their characters chatter on and on and on and Markus/Sutliff just sits there, offering the occasional monotone monosyllable in reply.

Watts (Webb) — You know I love lite beer. It’s my favorite….Keeps you thin. Sexy. Full…Me myself? I try to learn something new every day..”You know this city. Lotta talk, not a lotta walk…try to have fun, live under the sun.”

Markus: “….”

The mesmerizing electronic thriller score by Federico Vaona is a plus. But it’s also a clue. Sutliff was inspired by the Ryan Gosling thriller “Drive.”

But “The Refuge” is like an outtake reel, the dullest parts of “Drive” and that Tom Hardy in an SUV drama “Locke” without dialogue or action or much of anything to hold our interest.

If only, if ONLY the screenwriter had taken his hero’s exhortation to Frank (Cesario) to heart.

“Cut to the chase!”

“All right, all right, I’ll cut straight to the chase!”

MPAA Rating: R (for language throughout)

Cast: Keith Sutliff, Reine Swart,Julien Cesario, Matthew Webb, Tien Pham

Credits: Written and directed by Keith Sutliff  A KS Films release.

Running time: 1:38

The performances anchoring “American Woman” are some of the finest screen acting we’ll see this year.

Sienna Miller and Christina Hendricks play sisters with all the lived-in love and knowing-which-buttons-to-punch of the real thing. Amy Madigan slips into the role of their mother as if she’d had 30 years of practice.

And Aaron Paul, Will Sasso and Pat Healy make vivid impressions as the men in the background, supporting or controlling, defending or abusing these strong, flawed blue collar women we watch weather a dozen years of tragedy, bad choices and tough compromises.

Screenwriter Brad Ingelsby (“Out of the Furnace,””Run All Night”) cooks up a blood, bruises, cigarettes and tears portrait of working class lives gutted but going on after the tragedy that seeps out of the first act. And director Jake Scott (“Welcome to the Rileys”) lets his leading ladies make their statement without fuss, letting the gloom of lives of limited options further scarred by loss settle over it all.

For a summer movie, this picture is something else.

Miller utterly immerses herself in the role of suburban Philly single mom/grandmom Deb Callahan. She never married, gave birth at 16 and she treats teen daughter Bridget (Sky Ferreira) like a sister, consulting with her on her skin-tight mini-dress ensembles before every date.

Bridget herself is a new mother, and living under mom’s roof with her toddler Jesse requires a lot of tolerance, understanding, give and take.

“You make do with what’s left,” is all the advice Grandma Deb has to offer.

But the Callahan women are used to that. “Big sister” Cathy (Hendricks), the responsible one, lives across their beneath-the-water-tower dead end street from them. Cathy’s more Catholic, married with Terry (Sasso) with two tween boys.

And great-grandma (Madigan) is over there all the time.

The women bicker to the point of biting, share glasses of wine, offer unsolicited advice, with Deb re-directing many a conversation into sex and profanity, no matter how she was raised.

She’s sneaking around with a married man, so who is she to judge when Bridget keeps trying to make a go of it with the two-night stand stoner (Alex Neustaedter) who fathered her child?

One night, Bridget doesn’t come home. And if we thought Deb was manic, tetchy and high-strung before, well…

“Don’t do anything stupid, Deb” falls on deaf ears, as it must have for years. And as she frantically searches for her kid herself, roars at the police to get on the case and when a community search is at long last organized, breaks down, we see the beginning of her metamorphosis.

“American Woman” is how life goes on, diminished and deflated, after something like this.

Miller’s character arrives peppery, melts down in all the most wrenching ways, settles into furious and embittered as she takes up with and stays with a man who hits her, just to pay her bills, and finds her way to maturity in baby steps.

She raises the grandkid the way she raised Bridget — with a little wisdom, a lot of resignation and plenty of profanity.

“Ray (Pat Healy, playing a brute) is a hemorrhoid,” she sniffs to little Jesse. “A pain in the ass that won’t go away.

Scott’s elegant, compact drama slips through time easily — days pass here, years pass there.

Nobody else changes much, roles don’t shift. But raising a grandson mellows Deb. Eventually.

There’s little “quiet desperation” to these lives spent in houses with ill-fitting storm windows, late model cars in the driveways and owners wearing nametags to work.

There’s no country music on the soundtrack, but the simplicity of the ambitions and the day to day struggles unfold like a classic country tune — Rolling Rock beer, Parliament cigarettes, waitress or cashier, bad decisions passed generation to generation, salty dialogue and falling for the guy who’s held on to his IROC Camaro long past its expiration date (Aaron Paul).

It’s a kitchen sink melodrama, with too many conversations beginning with “Don’t start, NOT today” and ending with a slammed door, a pesky phone call demanding an apology and no time for reckoning and reasoning out how things are going right, or very wrong.

I love the lived-in reality captured here, lives with limited horizons, addictions, ill-advised tattoos, moments of blame and self-pity and small scale soap operatic struggles.

And in a cinema that strains to find actresses worth nominating for this profession’s highest honor, Miller brilliantly makes her statement in a tiny movie few will see, but which none who see will forget.

MPAA Rating:R for language, sexual content and brief drug use

Cast: Sienna Miller, Christina Hendricks, Amy Madigan, Aaron Paul, Will Sasso, Sky Ferreira

Credits: Directed by Jake Scott, script by Brad Ingelsby. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:52

The strangers are drawn to the old movie house with Rialto on its marquee.

Maybe the title listed up there grabs them — “”Mashit: With Father Benedict Abuelo,” “Dead,” or more invitingly — “Nightmare Cinema.”

Each of the five takes a seat — trapped in it, is more like it. They sit, transfixed or lashed in, as a nightmare starring them unfolds on the big screen.

And a few — the unlucky — have a little of what’s happening explained to them.

“I’m the projectionist, sweetie pie,” he’ll purr. “I’m the curator of a 100 years of nightmares, trapped on the silver screen that never forgets.”

As that Projectionist is Mickey Rourke, “Welcome to my nightmare” is a threat we take seriously.

“Nightmare Cinema” is a highly-polished, well-cast and acted omnibus horror collection, stories by different writers and directors folded in together far more neatly than is the norm for this genre (“VHS,” “ABCs of Death,” etc.).

Some work better than others, all have a surfeit of blood and gore, a few are visceral even if none are all that frightening.

There’s something too-too right about Richard Chamberlain, once TV’s “Doctor Kildare,” and a great beauty in his own right, as a malicious plastic surgeon out to butcher a scarred young woman (Zarah Mahler) whose fiance wants that scar on her face removed before the wedding. And in the Joe Dante (“Gremlins” ) directed “Mirari,” he’ll make a few other little um, alterations.

Alejandro Brugués of “Juan of the Dead” gives the newly-broken up Samantha (Sarah Elizabeth Withers) a nightmare movie in which she’s dependent on the guy she just broke up with to escape death or worse thanks to “The Thing in the Woods.”

She sits in a cinema seat and sees herself on the screen, chased chased by a guy in boots, metallic apron and welder’s helmet, toting a mattock — ok, pickaxe.

“He killed them! He killed them all! He’s hunting us!”

Who?

“The Welder!” Yes, the victims merely stabbed and bludgeoned are the lucky ones, when the monster has a blowtorch.

We’re treated to Elizabeth Reaser (“Twilight,” “Sweetland”) as a mother in a black and white David Slade story (“This Way to Egress”) in which she’s trapped in the madness of a medical nightmare where her tweenage sons (“Very mature.”) and a creepy doctor have to decide if she’s mad.

“Just TELL me if I’m crazy!”

In “Dead” Annabeth Gish is a loving mother whose keyboard prodigy son (Faly Rakotohavana) is the sole survivor of the carjacking that got her and her husband killed.

She comes to him in the haunted hospital where those with near-death experiences can see the dead, bloodied in hospital gowns, wandering the halls.

“Be with me…forever!” mom urges in Riley’s dreams in this Mick Garris (“Sleepwalkers”) story.

Naturally, there’s a cute suicide survivor (Lexy Panterra) who also sees the dead, a fellow patient and guide to show him the ropes.

“All the best people have been dead and back!”

Then there’s “Mashit,” a Catholic schoolkid tale of demonic possession that goes above and beyond the sexually misbehaving monsignor (Maurice Benard of “General Hospital”) and nuns.

A lot of heads explode in this uneven five-pack of horror, with shotguns and pistols and knives and axes and busted broom handles and swords and blowtorches as the instruments of death.

“Nightmare Cinema” is not totally seamless, but the episodes flow in to one another without changing titles (except on the cinema marquee, on occasion), characters merely wander into the Rialto — some meeting the projectionist — and their horrors unfold before them and us.

It’s more clever than gripping, more gory than scary.

Riley comes in, sees the theater organ, and launches into the Bach “Tocatta and Fugue in D” — the greatest musical horror cliche of them all.

Way too many characters get the drop on their would-be murderers, only to flee before finishing the job.

It all sports a gloss that can fool you into thinking the whole is better than its weaker parts. All of the acting is good, although I found “Egress” and “Thing/Woods” the lesser among these “Last Picture Show” offerings.

But as midnight movies go, it’s not (more than) half bad.

Round up some friends for a midnight movie date, designate a driver and…enjoy.

MPAA Rating: R for horror violence/gore, grisly images, language, some sexuality and brief nude images

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Richard Chamberlain, Elizabeth Reaser, Annabeth Gish, Jamie Lynn Concepcion, Sarah Elizabeth Withers, Maurice Benard

Credits: Directed by Joe Dante, Alejandro Brugués , Mick Garris, Ryûhei Kitamura and David Slade, script by Sandra Becerril, Alejandro Brugués. Lawrence C .Connelly, Mick Garris, Richard Christian Matheson and David Slade. A Good Deed Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:58

Righteous of Curry to put himself out there for this production. He produced the docu-drama about the Charleston church massacre and he’s determined to get people to watch it as well.

The sort of thing Tiger Woods would never do. No wonder Trump likes him.

There are more promising — if conventional — directions to take “The Perfection,” a horror tale that twists back on itself so often that the gimmick gives away the game and spoils the fun.

Director and co-writer Richard Shepard did “The Matador” and “Dom Hemingway,” bloody-minded dark comedies that were fine vehicles for Pierce Brosnan and Jude Law. Here, he pairs up Logan Browning (TV’s “Dear White People”) and Allison Williams of “Get Out” and TV’s “Girls” as cellists who find they have a lot more in common than their love of the instrument.

Like say, a lust for each other, a competitive fire and ambition to burn. As good as both are in some moments of “The Perfection,” I found myself longing for a story less self-consciously tricky. They’re both a tad scary, and the picture — at times — is erotic as all get out.

We meet Charlotte (Williams, daughter of NBC anchor Brian, remember) as she is whispered about, “such a good daughter” caring for her dying mother. Once, she was a star cellist at the exclusive Backham Academy.

Does she have designs on getting that back? Her callous “My mother finally died” to Anton (Steven Weber), who runs the place, answers that.

She and we can see the billboards touting Anton’s latest protege, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Wells.

Pairing them up to judge the next generation of recruits — Chinese — in Shanghai throws them together, with much eye contact (closeups) and gushing of compliments.

Nose-ringed Lizzie, “my most prized protege,” and Charlotte, when together, comprise Anton’s “two most perfect students.” They barely hear him. The ladies are busy sizing each other up.

“I downloaded every video of you…”

“You were 14, and everything I wanted to be.”

Lizzie is five years Charlotte’s junior, and she puts a stop to all this one-upmanship complimenting.

“You have been, and always will be, the person who makes my heart skip a beat when you play.”

That takes Charlotte’s breath away, so as they bond while judging, swap snark about the players and their parents, the attraction is overwhelming. They act on it.

Lizzie wants a break from “”this special work…It’s what’s expected of us.” A “rough and tumble” Chinese vacation is in order.

“You should come!”

That “hemorrhagic fever” that they’ve seen people succumbing to? It’s “happening down south.” Not to worry. But of course, they and we should.

The best scenes in “The Perfection” are of that flirtation — Williams’ eyes absolutely devour Browning — and of the illness that almost instantly overtakes one cellist and her absolute freak-out — on a bus in the middle of nowhere.

Lizzie — “I’m dying...I’m scared! What is happening, what is HAPPENING to me?”

Charlotte — “I took care of my mom…for years. I can handle this.”

What happens next we see coming, because we’ve seen versions of this sort of story before. Hallucinations, horrific violence. It feels, for all the world, like the climax to the tale. But we’re not even halfway done.

Shepard’s film has inter-titled chapters — “1. Mission,” “2. Detour” — delineating the direction things are headed in, if not the final destination.

We’re treated to both the climactic moments, and then “rewind” flashbacks explaining how such moments play out, the way came to pass.

That is gimmicky and stops the movie cold, and Shepard repeats it a couple of times in a cheesy “Oh, THAT’S what she was plotting/that’s how THIS was carried out” fashion.

Eye. Roll.

The performances and close-ups have an element of poker game “tells” to them. Williams makes us remember her ulterior motives in “Get Out,” while Browning is more poker-faced about what is happening and what is coming.

Weber delightfully channels Stanley Tucci, his airs and aloof accent. Nobody plays a snob like Tucci, except for — now — Steven Weber.

The story turns into a veritable soap opera of cliffhangers, surprise motives, revenge and revenge on the avenger, some of which the players foreshadow rather obviously.

And for every major surprise, Shepard helpfully rewinds (literally) the cast and the scene, taking us back to the beginning of a sequence and spoon-feeding what is REALLY going on and why we shouldn’t be that surprised at what went down.

With each rewind, the picture locks-up and we disconnect with what’s going on, and more importantly, with the characters.

Which renders the minimalist promise of “The Perfection” a promise largely unfulfilled.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity

Cast: Logan Browning, Allison Williams, Steven Weber

Credits: Directed by Richard Shepard, script by Eric C. Charmelo, Richard Shepard, Nicole Snyder.  A Miramax/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Samara Weaving stars in this late-August dark comedy, the bride marrying into a family of board game moguls, forced to play this game-of-your-life (crossbows) version of “Hide and Seek,” “Ready or Not” here I come.

Oh yeah, this is redband. Not suitable for work without headphones.

Richard T. Jones is a marvelous character actor of long standing. You have seen him most recently in TV series, from “Hawaii Five-O” (he was the governor, early on) to “Teachers” and the still-running “The Rookie.”

He brings his easy authority and warmth to a “tough love” coach in “Round of Your Life,” a tale of golf, family legacy, grief and faith.

Jones’s character has to ride herd on cocky, unfocused young Taylor Collins (Evan Hara), a 15 year-old son of a PGA veteran (Boo Arnold), brother a tour rookie (Tim Olgetree, also the screenwriter, not bad as an actor).

But every time the kid opens his mouth, I wished Jones was his acting coach instead. Hara, whom the credits identify as a young writer and director, may be reaching for something of a teenager’s slouch, affecting a “too cool to care” that suits the character.

It’s just that every rushed, slurred line reading screams “AMATEUR” and “Give the kid some COACHING, and another take!”

“LooktrustmeIgotthis.” “IhateyouSOmuch.”

Whatever his golf game, whatever the failings of the predictable but functional script, Hara’s performance is representative of how “Round of Your Life” never had a chance. It’s not all his fault, but this melodrama only manages a couple of light moments and one fairly touching one. And time and again, when a scene depends on the leading man to make it and the movie works, he duffs it.

We meet Taylor as the video-game distracted kid is blowing his chance at making the San Antonio Christian school golf team.

“There’s too many golfers in this family already,” he mutters to his older brother, Tucker, a touring pro who admits he paid off golf announcer Jim Nance so that he’d be nicknamed “the green whisperer.”

Dad is so irked he takes away the boy’s phone.

“Whydon’tyouWATERboardme?”

This argument ends with that standby of lazy melodramas — a car accident. Dad’s in a coma, but only Mom (Katherine Willis, solid) seems torn up about it in the hospital. The doctor’s words “a life threatening brain injury….induced coma” don’t phase Taylor.

He’s supposed to be feeling guilt, supposed to be shaken. These aren’t just the expected human reactions, the script underlines them. The kid isn’t very good at remorse, or snark.

A classmate asks (Alexandria DeBerry) asks about his father, and Taylor answers “He’s still on life support or whatever” in a classic teen monotone. So maybe this is an acting choice, just a dull one.

Brother Tucker uses his visits to his comatose father for confessions (a cliche of coma movies) and to hit on Dad’s nurse (Katie LeClerc).

Nobody save for Mom lets us see the gravity of the situation.

Life outside the hospital scenes goes on as before, oblivious. Except Taylor gets coached on how to change coach’s mind about getting on the team by cute blonde Bailey (DeBerry), who happens to be dating the team captain, “Connor, the power tool.”

“We’re just talking…I don’t believe in labels!”

The bulk of “Round of Your Life” is what Taylor does with this opportunity, playing in team tourneys (a little cute golf razzing from the gallery), occasionally dropping back in on the hospital when he’s not trying to steal Connor’s “just talking” girl Bailey.

Coach Wilson nicknames Taylor “Gameboy,” and Jones makes even trite lines sound like real human conversation. “D’you even want to MAKE this team? Make Pops proud? You’re not entitled here.”

A hooked shot off the tee?

“Are you sure your last name’s Collins?”

The faith-based elements are scattered throughout the script — a family prayer here, a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting there.

But I kept wincing at the inappropriate coma-side banter, an absurdly underplayed and glib “officially dead” debate that may be the worst end-of-life decision discussion ever filmed.

Hara’s low energy performance isn’t the only problem with such scenes, just the most pronounced — deflated, disinterested, exhausted-seeming.

It’s not the only double-bogey that hampers “Round of Your Life,” but it is the most obvious “Round” killer.

MPAA Rating: unrated, mild profanity

Cast: Evan Hara, Alexandria DeBerry, Boo Arnold, Tim Ogletree, Richard T. Jones

Credits: Directed by Dylan Thomas Ellis, script by Tim Ogletree. An Ammo Content release.

Running time: 1:33

From the first, Toni Morrison had endure attempts to “ghetto-ize” her fiction, books about the African American experience — from slavery to the trials of African American girl and womanhood, then and now.

Even “sympathetic liberal reviews” from the likes of the New York Times dismissed her as “only a marvelous recorder of the provincial black side of life.”

That was about an early novel, “Sula.”

And only Toni Morrison could get the news that she’s been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, only to wake up the morning after with a blistering collection of bitter, withering put-downs from her “peers” in a Washington Post story about the honor.

All of that, the childhood move north as part of the African American “Great Migration,” marriage and divorce, raising two sons with the help of her parents as she took on teaching and then editing jobs on her way to getting published, makes up “The Pieces I Am,” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ straight-no-chaser documentary about the Nobel laureate.

He captures the grande dame of American fiction at her regal, imperious best — darling of Oprah, popularized by “Oprah’s Book Club,” beloved for “Beloved,” adding an opera libretto (“Margaret Garner”) to her accomplishments but honored with a Pulitzer, American Book Award and scores of other prizes for “Sula,””Jazz,””The Bluest Eye,” “Tar Baby,” “God Help the Child” and other classics of American literature.

“The Pieces I Am” has the writer, simply addressing the camera, with clips of readings, interviews from the past and shots of her at work — yellow legal pad and pen in hand, outlining her stories, drawing floorplans of settings (as in “Beloved”).

We see a photocopy of the 19th century Cincinnati newspaper clipping of the escaped slave who killed her children rather than returning to bondage with them after her re-capture, which inspired “Beloved” and later the opera, “Margaret Garner.”

Oprah Winfrey recalls the fangirlish enthusiasm that led her to track down Morrison and champion her on her TV show. The radical memoirist Angela Davis (an early editing project) zeroes in on what Morrison was up against. Friend Fran Lebowitz has a funny anecdote about hearing her pal Morrison had won the Nobel. And critics, academics and peers  such as Russell Banks sing the writer’s praises in this glossy, two-hour generally superficial treatment of her life.

The real value in Greenfield-Sanders’ film, which goes into limited theatrical release this weekend before coming to PBS in 2020, is in Morrison’s struggles with the white patriarchy of American letters.

She wanted to ignore the implicit “white male gaze” of publishing and American readership.

“I didn’t want to speak FOR black people,” she declares. “I wanted to speak TO them.”

That’s a head-snappingly obvious revelation, that publishing — like American culture in general — defaults to what white people want to read, hear or see on the screen. Publishing is built around that given — that readers are white.

She played around with style, “laying out the whole plot” of “The Bluest Eye” on the first page, showing us “characters and situations never seen before.”

She taught, and when the chance came to take on book editing, she made that work even if it meant her mother was doing much of the child-rearing after her own divorce. She figured out something pretty quickly in the halls of American publishing.

“I was more interesting than they were.” And “I’m very, very smart.”

Yes she is. But as “The Pieces I Am” makes clear, a few recognized this early, but most of us — including the literati and America’s literary critics — had to soak up the phrase “Nobel laureate” to finally have that sink in.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some disturbing images/thematic material.

Cast: Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, Hilton Als, Angela Davis, Russell Banks, Fran Lebowitz

Credits: Directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.  A Magnolia/PBS “American Masters” release.

Running time: 1:59