Movie Nation

Been looking forward to this one.

A deep bow or a curtsy, if you please, for the late Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning, two legends of comedy writing of the late ’50s and early ’60s. One was an Oscar winner for “Pillow Talk,” the other came up with “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

But the piece of their legacy that holds up the best just might be 1964’s dueling con men comedy, “Bedtime Story,” with which starred Marlon Brando and David Niven, and led fun Steve Martin/Michael Caine remake “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” of 1988.

And here it is, again, titled “The Hustle” and pairing up con artists of the fairer sex, comic force of nature Rebel Wilson and Oscar winner Anne Hathaway.

Damned if it doesn’t work about as well as it ever has; the French Riviera opulence, the casinos and villas and conspicuous consumption, the rich marks grifted by the posh sophisticate and rival bumpkin bull in the china shop.

Yes, this remake is old fashioned, and maybe the “mark” (Alex Sharp of “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”) is a tad green and less interesting. But sometimes, it’s fun watching two wildly different stars mix it up in sumptuous settings, and seemingly have a ball doing it.

The Aussie Wilson is Penny Rust, plump and poker-faced and a gifted small-timer, hustling hustlers for some time scores with hard luck stories and cracking wise about…breasts.

“Basically, if her t–s were batteries, they’d go into a watch.” No, mate, what you want is “the full bouncy house.”

An impulse sends her to Beaumont Sur Mer in the South of France, where the idle rich idle away the days in the casino, unless they get hustled the more old-fashioned way. It is the hunting ground of the lithe damsel Josephine (Hathaway), a sophisticated con artist whose cons have bought her a seaside villa. So naturally she pulls out all the stops to keep Ms. Low Rent from moving onto her turf.

Penny figures this out the hard way, but imposes herself on her would-be sensei.

“Teach me your sugar baby ways!”

The secret, Josephine says, agreeing to this all too quickly, is that “No man will ever believe a woman is smarter than he is.”

They trot out “The Lord of the Rings Play,” which involves the familiar (recycled from “Bedtime Story” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”) “royal” luring a rich guy, and springing her madwoman sister on him just as they’re about to set a wedding date.

Wilson, if her career has taught us nothing else, cannot be topped in mugging and hamming like a crazy inbred from the lesser nobility of Europe.

Hathaway makes a fun contrast — pretentious, cunning, but vamping her way through the improvs each throws at the other as they make up lies and cons on the spot in front of each new mark, forcing each other to sling Aussie (Hathaway) or South African (Wilson) accents.

The main mark — a tech mogul — may be out of his depth, but we’re treated to some dazzling bit turns by little known character actors as other targets of female ripoff empowerment — Dean Norris, Casper Christiansen and Douggie McMeekin stand out.

Welsh actor-turned-director Chris Addison (TV’s “Veep”) keeps the camera close and the pace just brisk enough in this jaunty, jolly picture, whose tone is set by cutesie ’60s style animated opening credits. The slapstick isn’t up there with the Best of Blake Edwards (keeping to that ’60s yardstick), but it’s often as funny as PG-13 allows.

So perhaps this will be best appreciated by an older audience, much as “Detective Pikachu” isn’t really for anybody over the age of seven. “Hustle” won’t be raunchy enough for the Seth Rogen set.

Hathaway finds her laughs losing her beautiful, rigid stick-up-her-bum dignity, and Wilson finds hers riffing. Josephine’s probably gay police inspector accomplice (Ingrid Oliver) becomes “Captain Pantsuit,” a Danish posh becomes “Nazi Gollum” and ordering off the menu requires special instructions for the waiter.

“I’m salad-intolerant.”

It probably got re-edited, with some cast members listed in earlier versions of its credits not turning up in the finished cut. The rewrite of the screenplay takes a back seat to Wilson’s on-set riffing.

But who cares how they got there, as long as this plot’s very funny bones are intact?

MPAA Rating: PG-13 on appeal for crude sexual content and language

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp, Ingrid Oliver

Credits: Directed by Chris Addison, script by Jac Schaeffer and Dale Launer, based on the 1964 film “Bedtime Story” by Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning. An MGM release.

Running time: 1:34

No really, I need to know.

This Friday comic release is being screened late. Not that this means anything.

For going on forty years, Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer has done all she can to see to it that we never forget how adorable she is.

A TV chat show mainstay since the cusp of the ’80s, appearances in movies, adorning bookshelves with a selection of over 40 titles — heck, she even had her own board game at one point — the tiny tyro has made it her mission to preach just one sermon, varying only in the specific questions that come from her host, people who called in to her radio or TV talk shows or strangers on the street.

“Better sex.”

“Ask Dr. Ruth” is an appreciation, an as-told-by autobiography and a fun ride of a documentary filmed just as “Grandma Freud,” “The Godmother of Good Sex” and “Happy Munchkin of Sex” (she’s 4’7″) was turning 90 — and not slowing down.

Ryan White’s film, in theaters and available on Hulu, seems to have been filmed on a tight schedule in a pretty compact period of time just before her birthday in 2018. You get the impression that if he and his crew had stuck around any lucker, Westheimer would have run them ragged. She all but sprints from one interview to another, appearances at all manner of media and public events.

“Ask Dr. Ruth” uses conversations between its subject and her children and grandchildren and old friends, archival interviews, clips from her breakthrough radio show “Sexually Speaking” and later series to get at who she’s become.

Strangers on the street and callers to whichever show she’s dropping in on exult in her presence, her “non-judgmental” advice.

“You saved my life…You’re an angel.”

But where did she come from? “Ask Dr. Ruth” reminds us of that, too. It’s been decades since the major magazine profiles, the “60 Minutes” feature, were common.

A Frankfort native, she escaped Germany before the Holocaust began in earnest, losing her parents in The Shoah. Animated sequences recreate scenes from her letters, those of her parents, and her diaries.

“I don’t call myself a ‘survivor,’ I call myself an ‘orphan of the Holocaust,'” and one appreciates her exacting choice of words. She was sent to an orphanage in Switzerland, emigrated to Palestine after World War II.

She goes back to Israel, visits the Holocaust research center to see if anything new has come to light after her murdered mother and father. Then she shows us where she lost her virginity, on a kibbutz, where she trained as a sniper in the Israeli Zionist underground, Haganah.

Damn.

She valued education all her life because one of the last things her father said was “‘You have to learn. Because nobody can take that away from you.”

Frankfort to Switzerland to Israel to Paris and eventually New York — three marriages, children and children, multiple degrees, little Karola Siegel became Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and that was before media discovered her and stardom beckoned — in her mid-50s.

Montages show how big a deal she once was, a self-help pixie who became a pop cultural punchline in the ’80s — loved on talk shows, mocked and imitated by comics, in “Tonight Show” sketches — all in good fun.

And Dr. Ruth, bespectled, giggly and with an accent only Henry Kissinger could appreciate, was in on the joke.

It’s not a particularly revealing film, more a reiteration of her credits and credentials, just a hint here and there about how her parents’ influenced her career choice, even after death. Her son Joel tries to remember Ruth ever talking about losing her parents to The Holocaust. She didn’t unless he or his sister asked.

We see the crowded but homey Washington Heights, NY apartment where she’s lived for  54 years, in “a neighborhood of immigrants.”

We can take in her impact, now, decades after she burst on the scene. And we remember just how verboten most of what she introduced into the public conversation was at the time she first began making noise, frankly and “graphically” discussing sex, sexuality, peccadilloes and quirks.

“There is no ‘normal!'”

She still won’t call herself “a feminist.”

“No. I am olt fashiont! A sqvare!”

And she won’t retire, “no such thing” for me.

After hearing her sing “You are my sunshine” with her first “boyfriend,” Walter, both of them Holocaust orphans, you can’t help but hope she never does.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Credits: Directed by Ryan White.  A Magnolia/Hulu release.

Running time: 1:40

Truthfully, the first name that leapt out at me in the cast of this July 12 release is Ellar Coltrane, whose “Boyhood” Richard Linklater put on film.

A little summer romance on a “Summer Night?” Could be a good thing. Netflix can’t be the only outfit that remembers how to make young romances.

“Inoffensive” isn’t the highest of praise you can heap upon a prison drama. But the faith-based biography “The Meanest Man in Texas” certainly qualifies. So let’s start from there and see where it takes us.

It’s a period piece about convicted murderer Clyde Thompson, sentenced to death in 1928 but paroled, who rewarded that reprieve by earning the nickname that became the film’s title — “The Meanest Man in Texas.”

As this is a faith-based film, you can pretty much guess that the road to redemption leads through Huntsville.

From the first moments, it’s obvious we’re dealing with a picture that is going to require a forgiving eye — the amateurism, or at least inexperience, of the cast and much of the crew is equally obvious. Well-intentioned or not, it’s inept on almost every level.

The players are the most fresh-scrubbed choir boy inmates in the history of “prison farm” movies, unpolished performers who have a collective lifelessness to their line readings.

Mateus Ward plays Clyde, a young Cisco, Texas lad who went out “huntin'” with his sweetheart’s mean, redneck brothers, not realizing they were looking to settle a score.

Some neighbor had insulted their sister, they said, saying “She’ll hunt with any dawg that comes sniffin’.” That’s enough to get you killed in that part of Texas at that time. Apparently.

Clyde has a pistol, but not the good sense to see he’s being set up. A wholly unnecessary trial just underlines that. Wracked by guilt, this preacher’s son confessed. But the reason the trial is “unnecessary” is that it serves as first-act filler, slows down the drama with ineptly-staged and written scenes that don’t get us into the meat of the movie faster.

In prison, Clyde meets Clyde Barrow (later to be the second half of  “Bonnie & Clyde”) and assorted hard cases, smart alecks and sadists.

The threats from other inmates, the intimidation, the culture and the cruel guards turn Clyde from meek and remorseful to a shiv-stabbing sociopath — “The Meanest Man in Texas.”

That phrase is trotted out for him roughly 60 times in this script by director Justin Ward (father of star Mateus, a director of sports documentaries) and author Don Umphrey, whose book the screenplay is based on.

The script has a generic quality, the dialogue dips its toes in pure hokum.

There’s the brutish Captain (Jamie McShane) who lays down the law.

“There are three things I cherish — my devoted wife, fierce whiskey and corporal punishment.”

And we’ve got a sexual omnivore who wants to make Clyde his prison wife — “You’re prettier’n any woman I ever saw.”

He’s got a point. But it still gets him shivved.

The requisite botched escape attempts, getting thrown in “the hole,” tests of will delivered via lashes with a belt, it’s all here as it has been in every would-be “Cool Hand Luke.”

“Whattaya you got to say for yourself now, Thompson?”

“Gotta light?”

At times, we can see young Ward grow into the part, just a smidge. But you can’t be this lightweight and pretty and pull off a line like “You’re lucky I ain’t killed you already, Captain.”

The pacing is slow, and the production design — white (often spotless) uniforms in sunlit white barracks or outdoor work details — has a washed-out look, save for night or inside “The Hole” scenes, which are so underlit they’re hard to process.

The acting provokes eye-rolling pretty much from the opening scene.

But one keeps coming back to the cornpone that comes out of everybody’s mouth. Take Alexandra Bard, who plays Julia — the “old maid” of 27, with Scoliosis (hard to play) who takes up Clyde’s cause and steals Clyde’s heart — and who sports quite the um, accent.

“When I find a man who loves me for mah mind, and traits me with respect…”

Even blown lines get into the final cut — “Governor Sterling reprieved your life sentence!” No, Gov. Sterling reprieved your death sentence. You got life in prison, boy!

Getting an indie film scripted and financed, cast, shot, edited and released is a Herculean effort, and hats off the cast and crew for telling this story in a coherent, if generic, drab and inoffensive way.

But if the script isn’t good enough to attract polished actors (McShane is experienced, but not good here, and he and character player Richard Riehle are the only two cast members I recognized), that’s your first clue that maybe you and your movie aren’t ready for their close-up.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Mateus Ward, Jamie McShane, Alexandra Bard

Credits: Directed by Justin Ward, script by Don Umphrey, Justin Ward, based on Umphrey’s book. An Ammo Content Release.

Running time: 1:45

There’s a catch. And yes, it’s funnier than the movie.

https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/evil-marketing-genius-ryan-reynolds-leaked-100-mesmerizing-minutes-of-detective-pikachu/

If the shark, depravity and rumored illegality is left out because the group doesn’t want to comment, what is the point? “Official” as in “band approved and sanctioned?” What is the point?

Proof that the makers of “Tolkien” probably chose the wrong parts of his story to emphasize comes the moment Derek Jacobi pops up on the screen. He’s the philologist Joseph Wright who gave the obscure and ancient languages buff J.R.R.Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) the direction, the course of study that would save his academic career and the background he’d need creating the exotic world, languages and names of Middle Earth in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Their scenes together are touching, funny and such a jolt that you wonder why we’ve spent over an hour on the genteel poverty of J.R.R.’s childhood, the love affair that created the family that he’d keep entertained with stories and the formative bludgeoning that his World War I experiences, in the trenches, had on his dark fantasy epic.
All that background is important enough to touch on. But here it is routine, flatly-written and lacks the electricity and twinkle that a great actor like Jacobi can gives his few scenes.
The against-the-odds love story (Lily Collins plays Edith Pratt) that began in adolescence has a couple of nice moments and one almost-magical one. But the chemistry that would create the romantic ache meant to drive the film isn’t there.
The formation of Tolkien’s first “fellowship,” the quartet of private (“public”) school boys he’d cling to, from his teens into The Great War, rarely rises to pleasant or touching. The other three are blandly cast (Patrick Gibson, Anthony Boyle, Tom Glynn-Carney) and Hoult rarely rises above bland in these drably-directed (by Dome Karukoski) scenes of debating, motivating, teasing, drinking and quarreling.
“Tolkien” is quite aptly framed within the horrors of the trenches, a young, feverish lieutenant at the horrific Battle of the Somme, stumbling along the lines in search of a friend, protected only by his stalwart aide, a wise enlisted man named Sam (Craig Roberts) who won’t listen to his lieutenant’s fatalism.
“If I’m not back, you know where to send my things!”
Flashbacks show us a childhood of want and tragedy, the stern but supportive priest (Colm Meaney) who helped the orphaned Tolkien brothers find a home, where Ronald, as he was called, first met Edith, another orphan brought in as piano playing “companion” to the wealthy widow who took them all in.
We see the classism that leads to scraps at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, the headmaster (Owen Teale of “Game of Thrones”) who solves that by pairing up Tolkien with his tormentor by force.
“Men should be comrades wherever they come from!”
It’s all interesting enough to Tolkien buffs, but the script by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford is entirely too humorless and starved of high drama to make this lengthy prologue skip by. The odd joke about Wagner’s opera “Das Rheingold” stands out.
“It shouldn’t take six hours to tell a story about a magic ring!”
Well, somebody wasn’t listening to THAT, were they?

“Tolkien” mopes between the dry way stations of the man’s biography, like the dullish opening chapter of a promising “Masterpiece Theatre.” The Tolkien fan, or even casual “Lord of the Rings” aficionado, may wonder “When does C.S. Lewis (“The Chronicles of Narnia”) show up?” That was the MOST formative relationship of his creative life. “When do we get into the meat of turning the important experiences (Not the love story or much of the rest, which feels like “filler.”) into the most popular and influential fantasy novels of all time?
Sadly, “Tolkien” doesn’t.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sequences of war violence

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Derek Jacobi, Colm Meaney,

Credits:Directed by Dome Karukoski, script by David Gleeson, Stephen Beresford. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:52

“Rainy Day in New York” had better be good. Because Woody Allen will probably never make and release another film. His legacy has been tarred with child sexual abuse allegations, and whether you believe the victim or wonder if this is Mia Farrow’s ultimate revenge, he is finished as a filmmaker, a very old man whose movies were once the toast of Oscar night and which had generations of actors clamoring for the chance to star in one.

His final film opens in Italy, for sure. And a few other markets.