Movie Nation

Suppose the country decided that instead of banning, taxing and forcing ruinous insurance premiums on gun nuts, they simply tracked “Loners” among us, made them wear tracking headbands with a giant “L” on them, able to tase-shock “dangerous” behavior that might lead to mass shootings?

Hey, anything to avoid doing the obvious, right?

“Loners” is a groaning, labored and low-budget comic satire about just such a future, where such a program, enthusiastically endorsed by a persecuting, scapegoating, tweeting buffoon of a president.

There are ideas here, just not laughs, or in any event, not many.

Actor turned writer Neal McGowan envisions an America where Homeland Security is waging a ” “war on loneliness,” where action recovery teams might show up at any moment where a “headbander” is choosing to avoid the company of the rest of the human race.

“Society-loving Americans” have to be protected from “people hating freaks,” y’see.

There are “mandatory guidelines” which the headbanded must follow, all to avoid those neighbors standing in front of a camera described the latest mass murderer as “a quiet man who kept to himself.”

The “Loners” we meet hit most of the demographic warning signs — white, male, cut off from others. Let’s regulate that away, a draconian series of edicts and guidelines. that can lead to frantic phone calls.

“The government needs…me to have 100 friends” by the end of the day, Lincoln (Brian Letscher of “Scandal”) pleads into his phone. Success! He’s signed up another. “Thanks, Mom!”

They’re jeered by teen punks.

“How many loners does it take to screw in a lightbulb? ONE. Because, you know, no choice.”

They can’t work alone, a required “work buddy” must be issued. “A registered loner” has to check in with new neighbors.

“I just prefer to spend my time alone, is all.

Sure, mass shootings are up. But hey, we’re TRYING.

“Loners” is built around a marathon meeting of Lone ANON, a therapy ground led by the ditsy Mike (Keith Stevenson), where Lincoln, an ex-jock Sports Authority sales associate, standoffish yard service guy Tanner (Tyson Turrou ), librarian Franny (Brenda Davidson), sneaky-loner businessman Ed (David Christian Welborn), IT nerd Dabney (Neil McGowan), sociopathic conspiracy buff Jeremy (Khary Payton) and  defiantly solitary Clara (Denise Dowse) meet and try not to interact.

It doesn’t matter that holding hands or other bodily contact will cut the mandatory meeting time in half. They’re sure as hell not doing that.

But something is up, something has their group red flagged and under surveillance. Clara is busted, the meetings take on an “underground” tone. And puzzled loner Senise (Melinda Paladino) takes Clara’s place.

Their meetings are being watched and discussed high up in the paranoid corridors of power. And a mysterious Mr. Tessman (famed character actor Stephen Tobolowsky) is monitoring their meeting, too, scheming to undo it all, it appears.

A priest drops (Tucker Smallwood) drops in for a few words of encouragement.

“Introvert, a word that’s not that dissimilar from ‘pervert.’…”Make a friend, or BURN in HELL!'”

And the group slowly, reluctantly “bonds.” Sort of.

“You work in a library? I didn’t know they still had those!”

“Did you ever?”

The situation has more promise than the script keeps, as even Tobolowsky is lost in a land of no laughs.

The group therapy is nonsensical, which is fine, but not cutting edge funny or silly funny to go along with that, which isn’t.

First-time feature director Eryn Tramonn can’t find laughs in the material, which doesn’t hit its satiric points hard enough (guns, mass shootings by disaffected white males, a culture fighting every idea that could reduce this threat — regulating “loners” rather than the weapons they use) and doesn’t have enough fun with its “types.”

Davidson is the lone cast member to hint at knowing how to play up the humor, and her mere presence makes for “Loners”‘ best gag.

Librarians are a perceived threat?

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Brian Letscher, Melissa Paladino, Brenda Davidson, Tyson Turrou, David Christian Welborn and Stephen Tobolowsky

Credits: Directed by Eryc Tramonn, script by Neil McGowan. An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:31

Kevin Costner’s the voice of the dog, Enzo.

Amanda Seyfried is among the stars in this odd odd odd duck of a racing movie, with Milo Ventimiglia as the racing driver that dog hooks up with.

Kathy Baker, Gary Cole…damn this looks weird.

“In racing, your car goes where your eyes go.”

This Fox release opens Aug. 9, and it’ll either be a sleeper, or an object lesson from Disney that screams “See? THIS is why we canned half of Fox when we bought them out.”

(My review of “Art of Racing” is at this link.)

The chilling moments of “Isabelle” are what a woman who’s just had a stillbirth sees in her nightmares.

Larissa, capably played Amanda Crew of “The Age of Adaline” and TV’s “Silicon Valley,” slips out of her hospital bed and into the morgue to view the corpse.

She sees the baby in the nursery she and husband Matt (Adam Brody of TV’s “Curfew” and “StartUp”) prepared for it, hears its crying and confuses a stuffed teddy bear for it.

The experience would be traumatic for anyone, even without the ghoulish, wheel-chair bound neighbor (Zoë Belkin) constantly glowering at her from her upstairs window across the street.

Larissa can lash out at her husband with “YOU did this,” blame herself declaring “I should’ve stayed dead, not him!” and reject the not-that-helpful priest.

“I know all about Hell. I’m living it, right now!”

But we know it’s all about the pale title character, in that wheelchair, staring daggers at her new neighbor whose only provocation was moving in.

Producer (HBO’s “O.G.,” “The Pinkertons”) turned director Rob Heydon can’t conjure frights out of this generic, mass production script.

Interesting character wrinkles are introduced and abandoned. Larissa is a pianist who plans to give lessons. Matt is being doted over by a too attentive/too attractive intern at the office. Matt’s dad is a cop who is little help when his daughter-in-law starts seeing the ghostly Isabelle in their house, in their dead baby’s nursery.

The dialogue is a banal recycling of pregnant woman insecurities. She’s eight months pregnant and asking her husband, “”Are you sure about all this?” “Do you WANT this baby?”

But Crew makes Larissa’s collapse pretty convincing, from the terse and testy demand she makes of the hospital and her husband after the stillbirth.

“I. Want. To. See. My. SON!”

She won’t tell anybody the answer to this rhetorical question.

“I died. For a minute! Do you have any idea of what I saw?”

Everything around her is strictly boilerplate demonic possession junk.

The priest (Dayo Ade) won’t debunk “demonic possession.”

“I’ve seen…many things!”

Michael Miranda plays the non-clergy “explainer,” the guy who tells Matt what’s really going on and what’s going to happen if he doesn’t act.

It all feels like a story and characters and plot resolution that we’ve seen scads of times before.

But Crew, at least, makes her grieving mother interesting to watch, veering from rage to terror, helpless to pro-active.

It’s tough to play the only person in the viewer/protagonist equation who doesn’t see what’s coming a mile away.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Amanda Crew, Adam Brody, Zoë Belkin, Sheila McCarthy

Credits: Directed by Rob Heydon, script by Donald Martin.   A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:21

Yes. Yes he would. Shocked his name hasn’t come up before now. Watch “Anthropoid” to get a hint.

Or “Free Fire. ” Or “Wind that Shakes the Barley.”

https://amp.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/movie-news/cillian-murphy-would-be-a-great-bond-says-relative-of-007-creator-38127810.html

Oh? That whispered rumor is back? “Cannot drive a stick” was merely the first assault on DC’s manhood.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/20/daniel-craig-gets-intimacy-co-ordinator-bond-25-sex-scenes-9601685/amp/

This is my next Go Fund Me. Not Connery’s “Goldfinger” spa wear. Roger Moore’s “Man with the Golden Gun” safari jacket, mentioned in the story. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7046045/amp/James-Bond-onesie-worn-Sean-Connery-sale-345.html

Make your own “Forget the child molesting charges, this is the REAL crime” jokes. Because I’m too good for that.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?

This looks…excruciating. Somebody make him stop.

Angelina Jolie doesn’t work enough, hasn’t kept up her career, and playing the Witch to End all Witches seems to be the highest profile gig, one big payday she cannot turn down.

Michelle Pfeiffer, Elle F., Juno Temple, Sam Reilly and Ed Skrein are also in the cast, and the formidable Robert Lindsay and Lesley Manville, all of them haunting screens Oct. 18.

Nice cover of an old Donovan tune, if a tad on the nose. “Season of the Witch” indeed.

The “actual” box office take isn’t finalized until Monday early afternoon.

But right now, that sequel to the “cult hit” “John Wick,” which brought Keanu back from the indie film dead, is said to have cleared $57 million.

A proven brand, an actor will to promote the hell out of the picture, and is generally charming as he does, and good reviews drove this “Wick Chapter 3” into blockbuster territory.

An R-rated action pic opening that big? And not from a cash-flush “major” studio?

Let us celebrate with Keanu this weekend, then. Not a great film, necessarily, but a fun “video game” shoot-em-up, in any event. Good villains, great Halle Berry and Anjelica Huston turns giving it an Oscar burnish.

“A Dog’s Journey” is also an established brand, also the third movie in a loosely connected series about dogs, the role they play in our lives and their afterlife, this one is overexposed. An $8 million opening.

Maybe we leave teen romances to Netflix though, right? “The Sun is Also a Star” is in that semi-doomed “Fault in Our Stars” mold — with a hint of Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” to it.

Middling stars, virtually no money or effort put into the supporting cast, a serious bust — $2.6 million won’t cover anything — casting, location shooting or catering. Jeez. Sorry to see this.

It’s not terrible, and it’ll find its audience…on Netflix.

“Avengers: Endgame” passed “Avatar,” #2 box office smash of all time, “Pikachu” fell off steeply but not heart-stoppingly so.

It began with a twang, a twelve string guitar Greenwich Village folkie Roger McGuinn heard George Harrison play.

Something about the harmony of paired strings inspired close harmony singing, and “Folk rock” was born, thanks to The Byrds.

And from them, Buffalo Springfield and later The Mamas and the Papas.

But it was geography, eventually parking those groups in close proximity to The Beach Boys, that gave birth to “The California Sound.”

The new documentary “Echo in the Canyon” narrows that birthplace down even further, to Laurel Canyon, a hilly corner of Los Angeles where David Crosby of The Byrds led a musical migration that soon put producers, players and innovators in the same place.

Something about it, its “close proximity” the the clubs of Sunset Strip, producer Lou Adler speculates, conjured up a shared sonic idea born mainly of the simple mixing together of people who could stop each other on the street or knock on each other’s doors and say, “Hey, I’ve been working on this. What do you think?”

“Any time something good happens,” Florida native and later California transplant Tom Petty says (in his last interview), “it’s gonna show up other places.”

Jakob Dylan, son of Bob, leader of The Wallflowers, is our narrator and musical guide in this delightfully tuneful odyssey. He tools down the canyon and around town, to Western (United) Sound and other surviving recording studios, in a 1960s GTO as he chats up up Petty in a luthier’s shop as they pick at the Rickenbacker guitars there, over to visit Crosby or Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and Papas, Ringo Starr, McGuinn, Adler, Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills.

Being a member of the Dylan clan, his declared “inspiration” of all this was a time-capsule drama “Model Shop,” a Jaques Demy film that featured Gary Lockwood tooling around the LA of this “scene” in a 1950s MG.

Dylan rounds up musicians of his generation — Beck, Fiona Apple, Norah Jones and others — for a glorious 2015 cover-song concert at L.A.’s Orpheum Theater, performing duets with Apple and Jade and Jones, close harmonizing through songs from The Byrds and The Beach Boys (with Brian Wilson) to Buffalo Springfield and those Mamas and Papas, “reviving those echos,” as he puts it.

Beck marvels at that era’s age of “supergroups” such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the ferment of bands built around dueling innovators.

Clapton revisits how his “Let It Rain” eerily resembles Buffalo Springfield’s “Question.”

“I must have copped it!”

Ringo Starr verifies the legend of how much The Beatles adored The Byrds and the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” LP, and cherry-picked pieces of those sounds for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Crosby has finally mellowed enough to talk enthusiastically about his time with The Byrds, and bluntly admits why he departed for another “supergroup.”

And Petty, who died 2017, reminisces over being the first to “revive” the sound that earlier groups, Jackson Browne and others invented. He saw Buffalo Springfield in a concert and won “Pet Sounds” in an on-air call-in contest from a Gainesville, Fla. radio station “and I never got over it.”

The most ambitious thing about this laid-back documentary was creating a tribute concert and getting big names to perform in it, and that is lovely to hear and behold. The glory of “Echo in the Canyon” is gathering the oral histories of a generation of performers who are passing from the scene, getting their final words on how it all happened.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with profanity, drug discussions

Cast: Jakob Dylan, Michelle Phillips, Fiona Apple, Tom Petty, Beck, Jade, Roger McGuinn, Brian Wilson, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Norah Jones, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton

Credits: Directed by Andrew Slater, script by Eric Barrett, Andrew Slater. A Greenwich  release

Running time: 1:22