THE LADY IN THE FAKE

In theaters this weekend:

Fly Me to the Moon--Scarlett Johansson plays a Madison Avenue marketing hustler brought to NASA in Florida in the late '60s to help re-sell the Apollo moon mission to the public, and thus to an increasingly reticent and tight-pursed Congress. Soon the astronauts are sporting Omega watches in print ads, and Tang drink mix is being touted as the beverage of space travelers.

Those of us who go back that far may remember this advertising blitz; I certainly consumed unhealthy quantities of Tang around that time--any quantity was probably unhealthy--because of its supposed outer space connections. But in this lavish period romcom, it's the highly fictitious set-up for the meet-cute between Johansson and Channing Tatum, as a serious-minded NASA launch director.

He falls for her at first sight, then when he learns who she is he's outraged at her interference. And it truly is outrageous; she even hires actors to play some of the less charismatic or more camera-shy NASA staffers in TV interviews, Tatum included. But of course, over time his resistance is worn down by her adorableness.

Johansson is pretty adorable, at that. She wears the chic '60s outfits like she was born for them, and her purse-lipped, mischievous little smirk is winning as always. Tatum is in his comfort zone here, too; likably bland and dim and stalwart. The stars have a comfortable romantic rapport, and they're well supported by a roster of character players, like Woody Harrelson as the jovial mystery man who hires Johansson, Jim Rash as a prima donna commercial director and Ray Romano as Tatum's loyal sidekick. There's also a gorgeous black cat.

Between the cast, the vintage atmosphere and retro styles and settings, and a terrific soundtrack, the movie, directed by Greg Berlanti (of Love, Simon) from a script by Rose Gilroy, would be ludicrous and fluffy but inoffensive enough, even charming. But in the middle of this buffoonish burlesque of NASA history, there are attempts to generate genuine drama and poignancy over the earlier tragedy of Apollo 1 in 1967 that strike a sour note.

Worse yet, in the severely overlong second half, the plot goes off the rails. Harrelson's government spook makes Johansson stage, you guessed it, a fake moon landing, as a contingency in case the real one fails. She reluctantly goes along with this, unbeknownst to Tatum, as the real landing is taking place, even though she feels like she's betraying him.

This extended finale is clumsily staged, but that's not what's offensive about it. The "Fake Moon Landing" narrative is one of the quintessential paranoid American folk legends, likely arising, I've always suspected, among the many people who insisted that the moon landing was a ridiculous folly and would never succeed--arising, like so much else in our toxic national discourse, from the common American inability to admit it when we're wrong. Fly Me to the Moon means it all facetiously, of course, but this doesn't strike me as the most auspicious time in our country's history to lend even that much credence to a conspiracy theory.

MOTHERS, FATHERS, SONS

Opening this weekend...

Evil Dead Rise--This fifth feature in the beloved horror series that began in 1981 moves most of the action out of the woods and into the city. An earthquake uncovers a copy of the "Book of the Dead" in the bowels of a decaying L.A. apartment building. Near the tome are a couple of vinyl records on which a priest has recorded the incantations necessary to invoke the evil spirits that re-animate dead bodies to torment the living. The kid who finds all this is an aspiring DJ, so he has turntables, so...

Through this laborious set-up, the lissome tattoo-artist single mother (Alyssa Sutherland) ends up possessed by a malevolent force. It's up to her guitar-tech sister (Lily Sullivan) to defend her nephew and two nieces. Gruesome mayhem ensues, hitting on the obligatory tropes of the series--grinning, leering, levitating corpses, oceanic amounts of gore, hurtling demonic POV, the repeated phrase "dead by dawn!"--as well as nods to Kubrick's The Shining and to Fargo.

I'm afraid I've run out of patience with this style of horror flick. Watching a woman's corpse terrorize and murder her children probably wouldn't be my idea of entertainment in any case, but here it's not only unpleasant but tedious. I've grown weary of films in which characters stand transfixed as something ghastly happens in front of them. After a while one begins to suspect that all the interminable gasping and whimpering and slowly backing away may not even really be about generating terror or heightening suspense, but rather about padding a thin script out to feature length.

Sam Raimi's original Evil Dead trilogy was not inconsequential cinema. The "shaky cam" techniques that Raimi and his cronies developed on those indies, out of economic necessity, were highly influential on the Coen Brothers and Barry Sonnenfeld and others. But beyond the realm of technical innovation, Raimi's movies, especially the marvelous Evil Dead II of 1987, had a low-tech vigor, a whimsical sense of macabre comedy and a guileless campfire-story gusto that, combined with the one-of-kind slapstick acting of star Bruce Campbell, made them classics.

Raimi and Campbell are listed as executive producers on Evil Dead Rise, but almost none of the twisted magic of their early work can be felt here. There's some elegance to the production design, and leading ladies Sutherland and Sullivan are stunning, Bukowski-style L.A. goddesses. There's a sweet line in which the youngest niece tells her aunt why she thinks she'll be a good mom someday. And the Hieronymus Bosch-like horror into which the demon's victims conglomerate themselves is a decent Raimi-ish idea, though the CGI renders it soulless.

I'm told that this film, directed by the Irish Lee Cronin, was originally slated to open on cable TV but got a theatrical release after test audiences took to it. So it may be that I've just aged out of this sort of thing, and the movie will truly please audiences. If so, even though it's not for me, I nonetheless find it cheering that people still want to scream in company.

Somewhere in Queens--Less than a month after opening the Phoenix Film Festival, Ray Romano's feature directorial debut opens theatrically here in the Valley. Romano, who co-wrote the script, also stars as Leo Russo, a bedraggled hangdog sad sack who works for his family's contracting business in the title borough. Leo isn't the favorite son, however. His father (Tony LoBianco) shows more respect to Leo's slick brother Frank (Sebastian Maniscalco). Maybe everybody loves Raymond, but nobody loves Leo.

Well, that's not true. His siblings and his wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf) love him well enough, but they don't take him seriously, or listen to him. A sultry widow (Jennifer Esposito) on a jobsite seems to take a shine to him, but he's not the adulterous type.  Leo does have a source of pride, however: his quiet son "Sticks" (Jacob Ward) is a high school basketball star. One night at a big game, Leo and Angela are surprised to learn that Sticks has a girlfriend (Sadie Stanley) they didn't know about. The same night, they learn that he may be good enough for a college scholarship.

Though it's often funny, a forlorn atmosphere hangs over the early scenes of this movie that had me bracing for some sort of wretched tragedy that would leave the characters standing around emergency rooms or something like that. But the story, though it stings, doesn't drag us through the mud; it takes off in unexpected and painful yet believable and sometimes exhilarating directions.

The feel for the setting is convincing, and so is the large cast. The ensemble scenes are well-executed, especially the girlfriend's debut at a big family dinner, where she both irks and impresses the relations with her nerviness. Romano plays Leo as a toned-down version of his stage and sitcom persona, cowed and slow-witted, and his tentative, apologetic boyishness is poignant, even when you can see how his family could find it irritating.

For a while it seems like the film is underutilizing the mighty Metcalf, but finally Angela gets her big moment. Romano lets her articulate the theme of the movie, admitting probably the most frequent emotion of the parenting experience: Fear.

Also opening this weekend, at Harkins Chandler Fashion 20 and Harkins Arrowhead, is Tom Huang's fine comedy-drama Dealing with Dad; it's slated to play at Harkins Shea and at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre in Sedona starting April 28. I reviewed it last year, after it made the rounds of several festivals including Phoenix Film Festival. It's very much worth checking out.

NOTHING BUT THE FEST

The Phoenix Film Festival opens tonight; check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...previewing the festival.

BEYOND THE SEQUEL

Opening this weekend:

Star Trek: Beyond—This movie felt sort of like Star Trek, and sort of like Star Trek is about as much, I suspect, as I’m ever likely to get from this “rebooted” series. But like the first and second entries—maybe more so—it’s entirely entertaining on its own terms, a lively, action-packed space opera of no particular depth but with a warm, rousing, all-for-one-and-one-for-all spirit.

While on a rescue mission, the Enterprise is invaded by the minions of a scary ogre called Krall (Idris Elba). The ship is torn apart and the crew members are captured or marooned in small groups on a nearby planet. Gradually they regroup and their diverse skills come into play in overcoming their enemies. So do Public Enemy and Beastie Boys.

Chris Pine continues to make a respectable, somehow irked Kirk, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban share a droll interplay as Spock and McCoy, Zoe Saldana brings her usual touch of melancholy to Uhura, John Cho is a stalwart Sulu, and the late Anton Yelchin gives touchingly guileless line readings as Chekhov.

Luckiest here, maybe (and perhaps not surprisingly, since he co-scripted) is Simon Pegg as Scotty. The engineer falls in with a seriously elegant alien warrior, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) who provides the gang with their means of escape. She could make an excellent addition to the standard cast of characters.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie—If memory serves, I’ve never seen even one episode of Absolutely Fabulous (or AbFab) the beloved, oft-revived 1992 BBC comedy by Jennifer Saunders, though I was aware of its popularity in the UK and its devoted cult in the States. So I suppose that seeing this movie version was, for me, something like seeing Return to Mayberry (1986) for a person who’d never seen an episode of The Andy Griffith Show.

That is, I can’t say if this film comes close to capturing the flavor of the series, if the characters come across like they’re supposed to, if the timing feels right. And no doubt there are gags and references that were lost on me, because of my unfamiliarity both with the show and with the London fashion/showbiz milieu in which it’s set.

But, for whatever it may worth, I can tell you that on its own terms, I found AbFab: The Movie an inconsequential but perfectly pleasant way to squander an hour and a half, and that it made me chuckle out loud several times. Like the show, it follows the adventures of selfish, cadging, drug-and-booze addled PR agent Edina Monsoon (Saunders) and her party girl pal Patsy (Joanna Lumley), trying to cope with a lack of clients, money and career options, as well as the horrified awareness that they’re aging.

The plot involves Edina learning that Kate Moss (well played by Kate Moss; the film teems with celebrities playing themselves) is looking for new PR representation. In an overeager attempt to get her attention at a party, she seemingly causes the supermodel’s death, and instantly becomes a hunted national pariah.

Somehow she and Patsy end up in the south of France, and Patsy ends up in drag as a man, trying to obtain an inheritance for the two of them to live on. Edina’s daughter Saffy (Julia Sawalha), granddaughter Lola (Ideyarna Donaldson-Holness) and bizarre assistant Bubble (Jane Horrocks), among many other characters from the old show, get caught up in the antics as well.

Saunders, who also wrote the script, carries the picture energetically. But she’s ably supported by Lumley, who was my favorite person in the film—always on hand to provide an unexpected growl or snarl when the situation seems to require it. She’s particularly poised and commanding as a man; she could teach the current crop of male movie leads a thing or two, and she earns the twist on Some Like it Hot with which the picture ends.

Ice Age: Collision Course—The saber-toothed squirrel Scrat, engaged as always in trying to secure his beloved, elusive acorn, stumbles into a flying saucer frozen in the ice and launches it into space. He quickly, and hilariously, becomes the cause of such astronomical phenomena as the red spot on Jupiter, Saturn’s rings and the asteroid belt. All this is before the opening title.

He also sets a meteor on a collision course with earth, and the series regulars—Manny the mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), his wife Ellie (Queen Latifah), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary), eye-patched weasel Buck (Simon Pegg, competing with himself this weekend in Star Trek: Beyond), etc—must band together to find some way to avert this apocalypse. In short, this fifth feature installment of the animated series, set earlier in the Quaternary Period, is the most fanciful yet.

That’s not all bad. With his anguished wails against his existential plight, Scrat is a great cartoon character in the Wile E. Coyote tradition, and his episodes here are so speedy and inventive that at times I found myself wishing they were the whole movie. But they aren’t, and the dysfunction-in-the-mammoth-family drama is a drag on the picture.

There is, however, an episode in which Simon Pegg’s Buck gets to sing his own version of Rossini’s “Largo al factotum” while rescuing an egg that’s rather good. One of Buck’s enemies refers to him at one point, by the way, as a “one-eyed weasel,” a phrase that had a non-literal and R-rated meaning when I was in high school. Was this deliberate, I wonder, or sheer chance?

GOING WITH THE FLOE

The original film which began the Ice Age franchise, in 2002, was a rather low-key, almost poignant affair, by animated kids-movie standards. It was the story of three prehistoric mammals—Manny the mammoth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger, and Sid the sloth, voiced respectively by Ray Romano, Denis Leary and John Leguizamo, trying to return a foundling human baby to his family.

Leguizamo’s lisping nurturer of a sloth was goofy and funny, but the real laughs came from an on-the-margin subplot involving Scrat, a sort of sabre-toothed squirrel-raccoon who speaks in dismayed squeaks and clucks and the occasional anguished wail, and his perpetual, perpetually frustrated attempts to secure his beloved acorn.

It was a sweet, offbeat picture, and a hit, spawning three sequels, each gaudier, more whimsical and less concerned with paleontological accuracy then the last. In the newest, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Scrat’s travails with his acorn directly—and hilariously—result in the break-up of the continents. In the resulting apocalypse, Manny, Diego, Sid and Sid’s grandmother (Wanda Sykes) end up at sea on an iceberg, where they eventually encounter another iceberg carrying a crew of scurvy piratical creatures led by a maniacal primate, Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage).

Meanwhile, Manny’s mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) and daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) try to get their herd out of the way of the approaching continent. More importantly, Peaches struggles with her first crush.

Ice Age: Continental Drift is very silly, but sweet and colorful, with strong performances—Dinklage and Sykes are entertaining additions to the company. As with the other films in the series, the prologue, featuring Scrat, is the best part, and it’s already played in theatres, as a short before last year’s Rio.

Continental Drift, in turn, is preceded by The Longest Daycare, a terrific Simpsons short, featuring baby Maggie—it’s about Maggie’s heroic efforts to save a butterfly from a sadistic classmate at “The Ayn Rand School for Tots.” Grownups may find it the highlight of the bill.