Movie Nation

“First to the Moon” is a delightful new “in their own words” account of America’s first actual mission to the moon — Apollo 8.

No, the crew — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders — didn’t land on the surface. That was Apollo 11, and in truth, the narration-free “Apollo 11” documentary is the new gold standard for spaceflight history in film form.

But the three astronauts provide personal history, wry commentary about lots of context in their discussion of this rare upbeat moment from 1968, the most roiled year in American history since the Civil War.

It was the height of the Vietnam War, a year rocked by political assassinations and protest marches.

And here were these three guys from the Brylcreem generation, racing to beat the Russians to the moon, a race that very much seemed like a toss-up from this side of the Earth.

In droll anecdotes about their early years, the differing paths each took to NASA, accidents and near-accidents as children, barely missing combat as Navy pilots (Anders and Lovell), flunking this astronaut test, back for another try, missing out on getting into Annapolis, the trio weave an interesting tale of “The Right Stuff: The Second Generation.”

Borman reminds us that the USSR had just done a dry run of their heavy-lift lunar rocket, sending a spacecraft into lunar orbit and bringing it back to Earth. Borman and his crew were moved up from Apollo 9 on the schedule in a rushed mission to at least achieve that same feat, testing most of the Saturn V/Apollo systems for an orbital flight.

Borman admits that they were all “So oriented towards beating the Russians, so absorbed” in their work that the assassinations, the war and the protests of that tumultuous year “didn’t have a large impact on us.”

He takes more than a little satisfaction in recollecting that “The Cold War had three battles. Korea we tied, Vietnam we lost, in Space we won.”

The Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts was fresh on everybody’s mind. Two of the men, Lovell and Borman, were Gemini program vets, and in describing his Gemini mission, Lovell brings up the workmanship at NASA’s contractors (North American Aviation among them) at the time, the loose washers and leftover parts floating into view when they hit weightlessness in Gemini 7.

Later, director Paul J. Hildebrandt has fun contrasting the spaceflight veterans’ experience of Apollo 8’s liftoff to that of the understated, outspoken Anders.

Saturn V was “an old man’s booster,” no more than 6Gs, Borman muses.

Anders: “I felt like I was being catapulted through the instrument panel.”

It was a bit loud, Borman remembers.

Anders: “It was so noisy, you couldn’t speak…couldn’t communicate. Couldn’t think.”

Later, we hear them comically bicker over who gets what camera as they come around the moon and scramble to get one of the most famous photographs in history, Anders’ “Earthrise.”

Cute anecdotes about the two Annapolis (Naval Academy) guys (Lovell, Anders) giving the West Point man a hard time for getting space sick, then sea sick (on landing) give “First to the Moon” a little comical color. Anders describes, in lurid detail, the weightless ball of vomit Borman upchucked and slowly floated “right towards Lovell, SPLAT, split up like a fried egg RIGHT on his chest.”

“First to the Moon” isn’t the first film on this subject — PBS did a “Nova” episode on it a few years back. And it isn’t the best Apollo moon mission doc ever.

But it’s still valuable oral history, capturing three of the most articulate astronauts while they’re still alive, still able to summon up what they recall, still the red-blooded All American embodiment of “The Right Stuff.”

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Bill Anders, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell

Credits: Directed by Paul J. Hildebrandt. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 2:01

“All is True” is not all true, as we know precious little about the personal life of one William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

But if anybody in the movies has the license to speculate on that life, it’s Sir Kenneth Branagh, whose “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet” and “Henry V” and “Othello” and other adaptations make him this generation’s Olivier, or better still, Orson Welles when it comes to passing on his love of the Immortal Bard to the movie-going masses.

So here’s a speculative film; stately, handsome — Wellesian, even — about Shakespeare in Retirement. And if it’s not a witty dazzler or moist-eyed appreciation, it’s still a warm homage to the Greatest English speaking playwright, and lovely to look at, to boot.

The title comes from the “alternate” title of “Henry VIII,” the last play Shakespeare produced in London, an opening title reminds us. After the fire that a prop cannon caused that burned down his beloved Globe, the poet and playwright gave up writing, and although not yet 50, retired to the little town where he was born.

Will (Branagh) is resigned to resting on his laurels and his profits.

“You tell stories?” a boy asks.

“I used to.”

He returns to a woman he left at home, his older wife, Anne Hathaway (the peerless Dame Judi Dench, the heart of the film), his two daughters, Judith “the spinster” (Kathryn Wilder) and the married Puritan Susannah (Lydia Wilson).

He returns to mourn the little boy, Hamnet, who died decades before, to settle his affairs (having no male heir) and create a garden for the child, an aspiring poet.

The conflicts that greet him and us are over the family’s reputation in these Puritanical times, a scandal that might engulf Susannah and the insults and accusations hurled at Will by Hamnet’s surviving twin.

Judith describes herself as “an angry bitch,” and wails “Why did the wrong twin die?” as if she believes that’s what her father has always thought.

Hadley Fraser plays Susannah’s pious to the point of self-righteous husband, a Puritan’s Puritan who almost appreciates the irony that a man who does not condone acting or the theater stands to inherit most of his father-in-law’s estate.

Shakespeare plays with his granddaughter and the neighbor’s dog, and plays at being a gardener, digging and planting flowers in memory of a son whose funeral he was too busy to leave London to attend.

It’s all rather dry and seriously mundane dramatic material, and all of Branagh’s Wellesian scene-compositions — deep focus shots placing characters in pools of candlelight at different points-of-focus — cannot spice it up.

The best scenes pair Branagh with Dench, for brittle reminiscences over a marriage that lost its fire long ago, and with Sir Ian McKellan and Gerard Horan.

McKellan plays Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southhampton, a patron of Shakespeare, the person to whom several of his most romantic poems are dedicated. He was much younger than Shakespeare in real life, the “fair youth” of his love sonnets.

But even though McKellan is thus miscast, their fireside chat has the warmth of intimacy and wit that much of “All is True” lacks. The Earl wants to know why “the greatest man in the Kingdom, after His Majesty, of course,” is “so small,” why he has “lived the smallest life.”

That’s a perfect commentary on this under-educated man who in truth, lived large and cast a giant shadow, but who left London and retired to a life that was everything the Earl said it was — small.  His genius, revealed in his irritated answers to “How” and “Where” questions from a fan, was his imagination and his ability to read widely and adapt history and earlier plays freely in creating a stunning string of timeless comedies, dramas and tragedies.

Horan plays Ben Jonson and brings a nice twinkle to their fireside scene, two great writers, friendly rivals, with Jonson freely admitting to being the lesser of the two “equals.”

None of those grand moments are enough to remove the air of disappointment the whole affair wears, the sense that screenwriter Ben Elton (“Blackadder”) should have found a few more crackling exchanges, given Shakespeare more of the wit we hear in the plays.

But as funereal as it all can feel, “All is True” manages the wistfulness that must have been Branagh’s design, the director of “Thor” and “Murder on the Orient Express” returning to his first love, his idol, for an affectionate if somewhat perfunctory portrait.

Perhaps he has “King Lear” in him, and perhaps the upcoming “Artemis Fowl” and “Death on the Nile” will give him the capital he needs to attempt it. Until then, he’s managed a perfectly pleasant if not wholly satisfying Bard in Winter, and that’ll have to do for now.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material and language

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellan, Jack Colgrave Hirst, Kathryn Wilder

Credits: Directed by Kenneth Branagh, script by Ben Elton. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:43

“Why?” you might rightly ask.

Stallone, looking more like a national monument than ever, revisits his second biggest franchise, as you folks convinced him revisiting “Rocky” was such a good idea (Nope).

Lionsgate has “Last Blood,” Sept. 20.

“Rocketman” is a proper musical, with lots of tunes, big production numbers and the actors doing their own singing.

As the songs are from the extensive, radio-dominating Elton John songbook, there are scores of them most of us know by heart. And as star Taron Egerton is better at enunciating than Elton ever was, Bernie Taupin’s lyrics pop out to great effect.

The lead is a reasonable facsimile of the former Reginald Dwight turned Elton Hercules John. And if Egerton’s singing voice isn’t exactly a chart-topper, he’s an acceptable singing alternative at least faintly resembling the real thing.

Elton John’s life and dirty laundry are hung out, and “Rocketman” is far more open about the singing sensation’s sexuality than say, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was, as indeed Elton was and Freddie Mercury wasn’t. He taught a generation the word “bisexual,” and how it could be used to soften the news of a famous person “coming out.”

But damn, “Rocketman” is a slog, a nearly joyless musical that threatens to take flight at several near-tingling moments and never does.

It’s as if the “miserable Elton” of his alcoholic years, and his latest years (the grumpy tantrum tossing concert-quitter) was final arbiter of the tone of this. And so it’s all “I’ve had an unhappy time of it, now it’s YOUR turn.”

Little Reggie (Matthew Illesley) can show off his uncanny ear and piano score memory and burst into an underage “The Bitch is Back,” and you grin and think, “Here we GO!” Teen Elton (Egerton, of “Kingsman” and the godawfulest Robin Hood on record) can play, dance and duck through a pub as director Dexter Fletcher’s camera chases him into the streets belting out “Saturday Night’s Alright” (for fighting), and you lean into the picture, expecting more of the same.

Nope. It’s more about a little boy’s “When’re you going to HUG me?” to his priggish, heartless dad (Steven Mackintosh), a tween Reggie (Kit Connor) stumbling across his cheating, self-involved Mum (Bryce Dallas Howard at her beady-eyed, Brit-accented best) or a drinking, lonely superstar Elton hearing “Nobody’ll ever love you” from that same Mum, or the seductive, handsome but faithless lover-manager John Reid (Richard Madden)

And Taupin? As portrayed by Jamie Bell, who almost steals the picture with a single alternative take on “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,” Taupin is Elton John’s savior, champion and the movie’s patron saint.

“Rocketman” is told in a flashback his first visit to AA, in a Satanic vamp stage costume, perhaps the corniest framing device in the history of musical bio-pics. The film tracks his story from piano prodigy, with only his beloved grandmother (Gemma Jones) keeping the faith and encouraging him as he dazzles the family, then a Royal Musical Academy teacher by repeating the “Rondo Alla Turca” (by Mozart) she just played, even though he’s never heard it before.

We get a taste of his first rock band, a moment of touring in a van, a not-their-real-names bit of backstage advice and seduction from an American 1960s soul music tour — “You’ve got to KILL the person you were born to be in order to become the person you WANT to be!”

How…screenwriterly.

That magical first meeting with the man who would become his real life partner, “the brother I never had,” his lyricist Bernie, is held in freeze-frame. So is that first “I’ve got some lyrics that need music” passing of a manila envelope.

There’s just a touch of the young agent (Charlie Rowe) who hears and sees something in him, and the crusty grump (Stephen Graham) who doesn’t.

A favorite sequence in such movies is that “breakout” moment. For young Elton, who stole his name from a bandmate and John Lennon, that was a canny booking (by that crusty old agent) at LA’s Troubadour, run by the flirtatious, hip and “Far out!” Doug Weston, given a laid-back charm by Tate Donovan.

Fletcher, who did “Eddie the Eagle” with Egerton, lets his star get away with a few too many closeups jammed with bad, hammy, mannerisms. And he can’t keep this picture moving forward to save his arse. “Rocketman” lurches along between songs.

But what songs. You may be startled, as I was (and I owned a lot of these records in my youth), at the breadth and complexity of what this duo composed and recorded, something brought out in the tempo changes to some of the performances and Egerton’s care in making every word heard.

We get precious little of the “magic in the studio” stuff that “Bohemian Rhapsody” made its bread and butter. A little “Border Song” here, a bit of Kiki Dee there.

The film rearranges the chronology of the tunes to use them as devices to fill in the biography, and that highlights the Achilles Heel of the Elton/Bernie songbook, their maudlin streak, a tendency to lapse into bathos.

The film, likeable though it generally is, despite having the best possible screenwriter (Lee Hall of “Billy Elliot”) on board, echoes that. It actually resembles “A Star is Born” more than “Rhapsody” in that crawl-into-a-bottle-and-cry regard.

And its celebration of sobriety, rehab and AA meeting therapy is commendable, if dramatically blasé and nothing new.

Which begs the question, as the closing credits celebrate the triumph over that old agent’s warned pitfall — “Don’t kill y’self with booze and drugs!” Which is better, a posthumous hagiography presided over by the adoring and investment-protecting surviving members of your band, or a downbeat, supervised/subject-approved “my version” big screen “autobiography?”

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

Cast: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Richard Madden and Tate Donovan, Steven Mackintosh

Credits: Directed by Dexter Fletcher, script by Lee Hall A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:01

Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson and Ansel Elgort star in this uplifting or disturbing drama about a lost boy. Looks fascinating, though I can’t get a handle on what they’re going for. MOT a bad trait for a trailer to have

‘John Wick: Chapter 3’ Wins Top Prize at Golden Trailer Awards https://t.co/9KPMgntH0o https://t.co/l0HesC44w9 https://twitter.com/Variety_Film/status/1133992956220678144?s=17

Tweet from Cool Hand Luke Evans…
“Last night in Bolton, we got to surprise this incredible man for his 80th birthday. A magical night, full of laughter, tears and a bit of singing too! Happy birthday to you @ianmckellen You are my Hero!! you do so much for so many, you make me proud to call you a friend! ❤️😚 https://t.co/kJMqlD7RSW https://twitter.com/TheRealLukevans/status/1132203274835288064?s=17

Here’s an intriguing spin on the whole “found footage” mockumentary genre, a thriller built around a documentary filmmaker’s misadventures with online “cam girls.”

As depicted in “Use Me,” these are dominatrixes who make money off humbling, using and humiliating men with very particular sexual peccadilloes.

Actor and sometime documentary-filmmaker Julian Shaw plays himself, an Aussie obsessive who films “everything” — whose next subject is to be the porn performers/sex workers of America’s online sex trade. He will immerse himself in this world and get close to the queen bee of this universe, porn actress and “cam girl” Ceara Lynch.

Lynch, in the film and in real life, bills herself as a “humiliatrix,” a nubile young woman who play-acts and interacts with male clients via video. In various states of undress, she fulfills assorted unconventional fantasies, be they tongue-sucking or cuckolding, being bossed around and insulted –each and every one billed extravagantly for the privilege.

She’s been written up on Salon.com, bills herself as having a psychology degree and insists she’s “helping” these men by showing off her thongs and cleavage, teasing and taunting them to fulfillment with come-ons in her distinctly coquettish vocal fry.

“People pay her vast sums of money, basically for the privilege of being used,” Shaw explains to an interviewer. It’s an online shortcut for those who don’t have the time to court, marry, buy a woman a house and get used the old fashioned way, in other words.

He flies to Portland, Oregon (of course) to meet her, to “find the truth behind me” for this woman who purrs, “The Internet is my dungeon.”

Shaw’s film purports to show 71 days of his immersion in this world, leaving behind his ex girlfriend, whose break-up with him he taped (pausing camera so that she could video his reaction, too), kickstarter funding the film when he and Ceara burn through his cash too quickly, and generally crossing all sorts of moral and documentary-ethical lines as they do.

Shaw rather clumsily sees this as an “American Dream” story — hers, getting rich by providing a service no one else can provide as well as her, using her sexuality to entice “clients” (interviewed in masks or shadows) to give her money and baubles for her sexual attention.

She sells her used panties and excrement to the more monied of her weirdo clientele, which her lawyer says makes her “a genius of capitalism.”

And “everything’s virtual,” she insists. She “never meets a client in person,” which is why her dad, interviewed on camera, is OK with it.

Assorted randoms of the “vox populi” persuasion are interviewed about what “The American Dream” represents, and an Australian therapist differentiates between Ceara’s clients fetishes,”paraphilia,” and sexual or behavioral addictions.

“These are all male desires, they aren’t my desires,” Ceara adds.

Trotting out her psychological bonafides (sort of), the “humiliatrix” gives us her guidelines. No full nudity, no sexual intercourse on camera and no “in person” sessions. Those are Ceara Lynch’s rules.

Julian Shaw’s “rules” as a filmmaker are to “never cut,” never let his camera operator shut down. Ignore everybody who says “You’re not recording this” and “Please stop recording.”

These two, the film implies, were made for each other — at least in that compulsive/”services” compulsives way. And as Julian tumbles into her world, burning through cash, having hot tub romps and lewd limo lust-offs, we watch the narcissist moviemaker indulged by Ceara and her friends in “the biz,” all of them very pretty people rolling around doing what comes naturally, in assorted payment plans.

Her “whole brand is that I’m unattainable,” but we’ll see about that. The entry-button on her Cearalynch.com website is “Use Me” but we’ll have to figure out who is using whom here.

Because that’s the game “Use Me” plays. The leads use their real names, but not much of what we see is real — actress playing a girlfriend, actor playing a shrink, etc.

Where “Use Me” goes off the rails is in the contrivances Shaw pieces together out of “Thrillers for Dummies” to set up the third act melodrama that takes over the film.

The mockumentary stuff, with Ceara purring on camera “If you didn’t have money, I wouldn’t even spit in your general direction…Do you want to be my dog?” to clients, the costumes, contortions, writhing and lip-licking exhibitionism of her sex trade “acting” on camera? That’s fascinating.

So is the accounting part of her business — billing clients while she leaves them on hold, “my ignore line,” $5 a minute.

The “actress” Ceara comes off as confident, with the right setting, revealing wardrobe and makeup taking her from pretty to “bombshell.”

Shaw ably plays the eager obsessive, always taping, often lying, keeping his distance but plainly into being around Ceara and her leading competitor and protege, “Princess Cassie” (Jazlyn Yoder of “Chicago P.D.” and “Chicago Justice.”).

And by “being around” I mean naked in a bed, a tub, wherever with these compliant “professionals.”

Hearing Ceara’s stories, seeing where and how she grew up, compels Julian to “open up” himself — about sexual experiences, his mania for filming his entire life and the like.

That interaction, with the sobering transgressions of inventing your own ethical lines in this ever-evolving situation, with the documentary-real treatment of the business, was a pretty good movie.

But Shaw had to muck it up with a corny, under-developed and over-explained riff on “The Grifter” that doesn’t surprise, inform, delight or appall in the later acts.

This was never going to become “a thriller.” Its first, best destiny was to find its way as a pair of character studies, with mystery and intrigues dropped in along the way.

“Use Me” is a mockumentary that works only as long as its still mocking.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult sexual subject matter

Cast: Julian Shaw, Ceara Lynch, Jazlyn Yoder

Credits: Written and directed by Julian Shaw.   A Green Light release.

Running Time: 1:30

A lot of love out of Cannes for this one, decent enough reviews aside from those who got caught up in the Eltonmania over there.

Tonight, we see for ourselves, right?

Not a huge fan of Taron Egerton, but he seems to have a handle on this. Looks enough like the real thing, sings well enough, plays the piano.

Jamie Bell is Bernie Taupin, so there’s that.

“Wild Nights with Emily” was close, but not canonical “Drunk History” in feature film form. Deadline.com says the producers/creators are talking about having a go at making a movie themselves.

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