“Extraction,” adapted from a graphic novel, introduced Rake, a former Australian Army Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) operator turned rescuer-for-hire, recruited to save an incarcerated drug dealer’s son in Bangladesh.

The novel ended with Rake dead. The movie followed suit. “When we began the original script, the character was done by the end, riddled with bullets, a piece of Swiss cheese toppling off a bridge. That completion felt necessary for the story of this redemption tale,” Hemsworth, 39, said in a Zoom interview Monday.

Rake didn’t stay dead for long. Before filming finished, Hemsworth and director Sam Hayward “started talking about if we ever did another one, what the character would do. How the world could expand.

They decided, “We should give ourselves an out in case audiences respond. So at the very end of shooting, we added a little piece to indicate the character was alive.

“Then,” the Melbourne native noted, “the film was the biggest film on Netflix at the time,” making a sequel inevitable.

“It was like telling an origin story for the second time — because the story’s emotional components were only the tip of the iceberg in the first film.

“We didn’t really understand or know a lot about where he was from, what his backstory was, what drives him. That unraveling — and a closer examination of who the character was — was really exciting to me.

“Probably the most exciting thing (because) we knew the action was going to be there and I knew Sam was going to elevate it even further.

“But to have a story that had more depth and was able to have something an audience could relate to was important and exciting.”

Tyler Rake is indeed different now.  “What I liked is we had a character that had, for whatever reason, a very hard exterior surface. But underneath he’s bottling emotions and trauma, unable to express and share any of that with anyone.

“In this film, you see him opening up. Some healing does occur. For me that is something that I’m glad we’re allowed to explore onscreen. I don’t think 10 years ago you could have had a male action hero cry onscreen. Be vulnerable. Show emotion. And that is problematic for society, across the board for everyone involved.

“So I’m proud of the fact that we were able to explore that and show different facets to the character.”

“Extraction 2” streams on Netflix Friday

Q: Why is it important that Peggy be an addict?  I kept thinking when this was being developed, did people sit there and say, ‘We can’t have her be an addict, struggling through this. This is too serious or too depressing.’ Or whatever?

PATRICIA ARQUETTE:  Yeah, I’m sure. That is why we got turned down by 100 million places. We have to do it though. Because after two, everything’s going to clean everything up. And then we get back to this just homogenized, boring middle ground. But the truth is: We all know addicts. And this story was based on one of our show’s creator and show runners Nancy Fishman’s sister, Marjorie, who was an addict and who’s now passed on. Who struggled with these things and loved opera and took care of her mom. And was a liar and a manipulator and incredible person. She  also said to Nancy once, ‘I’m going to be a PI (a Private Investigator) and she thought, ‘That’s crazy, but you could actually be an amazing PI.’  So, this is born of love. And born from and inspired by a person who had struggled with drugs. I think we’ve all loved addicts, and they can have some beautiful, beautiful qualities. And it’s sad, you know. It’s an illness.

Q: The two of you have this combustible marriage. We begin with a prologue where every life looks spectacularly good and then the police come and that life goes Splat!  We jump to years later and we meet Matt in prison where Peggy visits while tripping on acid. How did the two of you create what the history of this couple is?

PA: That was actually the last scene that we shot. But do you want to talk to those?

MATT DILLON: To credit the writers, the foundation was already laid, right? So it made it easy for us to go have fun and make the most of this because the backstories are so strong. Like Denny comes walking into the prison’s visitors room and they look at each other — they’ve got a past, right? And it’s really nice. Because we know what that past is.  Because the show, the characters, are real. It was interesting on the set, because we’d be talking about these characters like they were real people! Because in a way they were — because as Patricia said Peggy was inspired by Nancy’s sister. And then Denny was inspired by Nancy’s sister’s husband.  So that was very, very real. That richness is what made it fun. What made me want to go to work and why I enjoyed it so much, Denny was a fun character for me to play because of all the polarizing qualities in his personality.  He’s spiritual and he really genuinely is seeking the spiritual life. And yet, he’s a he’s a criminal, man.  He’s a convicted felon, a kind of a career criminal and a manipulator. He’s going to use the spirituality to help him in his other endeavor, which is illegal activity. (A laugh) This is what is kind of fun about all this complexity. I mean, Peggy’s character, she’s all over the spectrum — classical music, drug addict, co-dependent.

NEW DVDs:

DOOM & GLOOM DOMINATE THIS CABIN                 ‘Knock at the Cabin’ (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Code, Universal, R) is M. Night Shyamalen’s latest twisted thriller, a Doomsday fable that is completely sincere – and totally bonkers. Fun this is not, but provocative? Decidedly.  The cabin in the woods has a vacationing gay couple (out actors Jonathan Groff of ‘Mindhunters’ and Britain’s Ben Aldredge, ‘Spoiler Alert’) with their daughter who are taken hostage by 4 strangers, led by David Bautista.  Needless to say they aren’t here to rob & pillage but on a Divine Mission to save planet Earth.  With a human sacrifice!  Unrelenting.  Bonus: Deleted scenes, the Chowblaster Infomercial that features the filmmaker, Behind the Scenes and ‘Tools of the Apocalypse.’

CHRISTOPHER REEVES’ 5 FLIGHTS                      Before there was Tim Burton’s spectacular revival of Batman, there was Richard Donner’s go-for-broke resuscitation of the all-American comics hero who fought for ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way.’  Yes Christopher Reeve became a star as the alien from Krypton who, when he wasn’t saving the planet and people, worked as reporter Clark Kent at the Daily Planet.   Warner Bros. has now issued the entire 4-film series in a 4L Ultra HD upgrade:  ‘Superman: 5 Film Collection 1978-1987’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code, WB, PG).  There are ‘Superman: The Movie,’ “Superman II,’ ‘Superman III’ and ‘Superman IV.’ Here also ‘Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut,’ which makes for a quintet.  Super Special Features are included in the multiple Bonus:  From commentaries and vintage featurettes to 1940s and ‘50s WB cartoons like ‘Super-Rabbit,’ ‘Snafuperman’ and ‘Stupor Duck.’  There’s a featurette on restoring Donner’s vision to ‘II’ with deleted scenes, a 50th anniversary Superman 50th anniversary TV special from 1988, a 1983 TV special on making ‘III.’  Standouts among the ensemble: Gene Hackman, Richard Pryor, Annette O’Toole, Mariel Hemingway and Terrence Stamp.

BORIS KARLOFF’S EXIT                                       Forever known as Frankenstein’s monster, Boris Karloff ended his career with the heralded 1968 debut of a promising writer-director named Peter Bogdanovich who would go on to make the Oscar-winning classics ‘The Last Picture Show,’ ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ and ‘Paper Moon.’   Conceived with his then wife Polly Platt, the low-budget ‘Targets’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, R), filmed in 3 weeks for $125,000, owes its existence to the legendary King of the Bs, Roger Corman. Karloff owed Corman 2 days’ work and had made a terrible Gothic horror movie. If Bogdanovich, a film buff, could use Karloff with the limited time, insert footage of his bomb movie and then fill in the rest for a new movie, he was in business.  ‘Targets’ has Bogdanovich onscreen as a director eager to use a legendary horror icon called Orlok (Karloff, playing a version of himself) for one last role.  At a drive-in premiere they will cross paths with a psychotic young man, a disturbed Vietnam vet, who after killing his wife and mother has gone on a shooting spree.  The killer is based on the notorious 1966 U of Texas-Austin Clock Tower sniper and mass killer Charles Whitman.  Yes, “Targets” presents an all-too-familiar quiet ‘nice guy,’ but the real, prophetic target here is an America awash in guns.  The film flopped when released after the RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. Today it’s a model of cinema’s classic push/pull regarding screen violence.  The Criterion extras, from a 4K digital master, include the filmmaker’s 2003 commentary and an introduction (Bogdanovich died last year), a 1983 audio interview with Platt and a new, all-encompassing overview with Richard Linklater (‘Boyhood,’ ‘School of Rock’) who lives and works in Austin.

FLY & SAY GOOD-BYE                                             ‘Ant-Man + The Wasp: Quantumania’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code, Marvel, PG-13) concludes a trilogy begun in 2015.  This ending is determined not by the Marvel-ous storytellers but the middling box-office.  Superhero fantasies are incredibly expensive and blockbusters are the Darwinian result of who gets to fly sky high again and who doesn’t.  ‘Quantumania’ to be fair is very complicated storytelling spanning decades.  Standouts in the large cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, the revered veterans, Paul Rudd (of course! he IS Ant-Man) and as the mighty villain Kang, Jonathan Majors.  Bonus: Gag reel/deleted scenes, an audio commentary from director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness, plus the actors’ on their characters.

GIVE US BACK THAT STOLEN NAZI ART!                 ‘Righteous Thieves’ (Blu-ray + Digital, Lionsgate, R) has a terrific hook, hanging its brazen efforts to retrieve stolen Nazi art.  Those very long time coming reparations have been stalled since WWII ended.  Annabel (Lisa Vidal) leads a top-secret group whose only business is to recover stolen art.  Their target is a sneering neo-Nazi Otto (Brian Cousins) whose Monet, Degas, Picasso and van Gogh do not rightfully belong to him. Although Otto would not agree.  Naturally there is more to Annabel’s quest than millions of Euros in paintings.  Bonus: ‘Coming for It All’ featurette.  Optional subtitles in Spanish and English SDH.

SCOTT CAAN LEADS THIS LION                            Scott Caan, a veteran of 10 years on TV’s ‘Hawaii Five-Oh’ reboot in a supporting role, takes command as the star of this comedic hit man drama ‘One Day as a Lion’ (DVD, Lionsgate, R).  Caan’s Jackie Powers (the name sounds like a genuflection to Elmore Leonard) is to kill JK Simmons’ debtor but fails the assignment and flees by taking a waitress hostage.  She, surprisingly, is sympathetic because Jackie needs money to spring his son out of jail.  (At this point, let us agree it is not a lucky family.)  Also around as the bullets fly: Virginia Madsen and Frank Grillo.  Bonus: Deleted scenes.

YET ANOTHER HIT MAN STUMBLES                                  A classic setup. An international assassin (Daniel Stisen) finds himself in a ‘reassignment’ center where he’s to be given a new identity, only all too soon he finds himself fighting for his life in that center in ‘The Siege’ (Blu-ray, Well Go USA, R).   The assault team is intent on removing all witnesses so our would-be killer has no choice if he is to survive the night unless he teams up with a hitwoman (veteran stuntwoman Lauren Okadigbo) to defend their turf.  Or die trying.  Bonus: Making of featurette.

“My vision wasn’t about the making of ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ it was about the moment of ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” Buirski said in a phone interview.

Her “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Making of Midnight Cowboy,” “looks at the film in the context of the time. Because the film has been successful and continues to resonate, it tries to help us understand why it does — the culture, the politics and all of that.” It screens in as part of the Provincetown International Film Festival Thursday.

“Midnight Cowboy” was wild stuff in the anti-authoritarian ‘60s where feminism, gay, civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests were changing the landscape.  The film’s mix of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll follows the friendship between naïve Texan Joe Buck (Jon Voight in a star-making performance) and crippled, broke New York con man “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman).

Joe imagines he will be a stud for hire to lonely women but ends up on 42nd Street with queers.  England’s John Schlesinger, who as a gay Jewish kid was bullied, had already created movie magic with his 1965 “Darling,” a look at trendy Swinging London that made Julie Christie an Oscar-winning star.

“Midnight Cowboy,” Buirski emphasized, “is a really interesting examination of why film is so important to our lives. We don’t just use it for entertainment: It changes us. That’s really what I wanted to look at.

“A new generation was taking over. You see in our film that there isn’t one thing that triggered ‘Midnight Cowboy’ — there were many.  My challenge was to weave them all together.

“The ‘60s was so different than the ‘50s,” she added. “In the sense that in the ‘60s they felt a license to disrupt, ask questions, push back. There was this sense we didn’t have to necessarily listen to authority anymore. That intrigued me.

“Schlesinger I feel was understanding how important it was to ask those questions as he was observing the world.”

Why does this still resonate?

“Many reasons! Many of the social problems that are apparent in ‘Midnight Cowboy’ are even more so in our society today — homelessness, poverty. People who are the outcasts, the desperate souls.

“But there’s another part that really speaks to almost any decade.  Basically any century. That’s the compassion that is called on to save these people. We all need saving in some ways. It’s so much a part of who we are as a species — to care about each other.

“And when we stop caring, that’s when we’re really forced apart.”

And all it takes to undo that monumental effort is one scandal.

As Warner Bros. was quickly reminded when Ezra Miller, the titular character in their $200 million-plus superhero saga “The Flash,” began a self-destructive binge that threatened “The Flash” ever being seen.

This “Flash,” after decades in development, involves time travel and boasts the return of two Batmans — Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck. Actual production wrapped in October 2021. A release was scheduled for last July.

Having survived years of changing concepts and scripts, “The Flash” was soon plagued by leading man issues. The multiple reported incidents and legal troubles of Miller, 30, boggle the mind:  a purported strangling incident in Iceland, arrests in Hawaii, harassment allegations in Massachusetts, and in August 2022, a burglary charge, to name a few.

At that point WB and Miller confirmed he would get treatment for “mental health issues.”

Sadly, “The Flash” is hardly alone in its highly publicized near-derailment.  Will Smith’s shocking Oscar slap at comedian Chris Rock prompted a 10-year ban from his attending any Academy Awards ceremony. It also doomed Smith’s subsequent film, the $100 million slave drama “Emancipation,” from any hope of Oscar attention.

In 2016 Nate Parker was zooming to Hollywood heights with his rousing slave rebellion epic “The Birth of a Nation” – the title intentionally a gloss on D.W. Griffith’s racist silent era epic.  Parker starred in, wrote and made his directing debut with “Birth.” He then made history at Sundance when “Birth” was purchased for distribution for a record-busting price.

That success prompted renewed attention to 1999 rape allegations of a fellow Penn State student against Parker.  Soon, that story dominated every discussion of Parker’s “Birth” and blighted his career.

In a sad echo of Parker’s plight, Jonathan Majors, a rising Black star after outstanding work in “Creed 3” and as the Marvel villain Kang in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” was booked in NYC on assault charges in a domestic dispute with a woman. Majors, 33, was immediately dropped from promotional campaigns for the Texas Rangers and the Army, replaced in an upcoming movie, dropped by his management and publicity agencies. Now, who knows whether Majors’ Kang will return in future Marvel epics?

That, folks, is the simple, feel-good premise of “Flamin’ Hot,” a very appealing, if also modest tale of a man who despite a cruel, damaging father finds himself and his sense of worth with the help of his wife, children and new friend Clarence, whose name recalls the guardian angel in the iconic family classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Longoria did most of her work by brilliantly casting of the film.

As Richard, Garcia is not immediately likable in part because he is at first involved with a drug-dealing gang. Fate deals Richard a bad hand until he meets Judy. His wife and his children are the reason he wants to turn his life around in spite of lacking even a high school degree. Garcia challenges us to find what is good in the film’s working-class, immigrant hero, and the filmmakers are smart enough to see the answer. They make us want to see past his lack of confidence and obvious shortcomings.

As Richard’s father, Emilio Rivera (FX’s “Mayans M.C.”) invites us to dislike him. According to the screenwriters, Reagan’s “trickle down theory” makes life difficult for the Latino working-class in the 1980s. Shifts are cut. Full-time workers become part-time. Sales are down, and the plant itself might be shut down. White overseer Lonny (an always welcome Matt Walsh) rides Richard hard. But Richard builds up the nerve to call Enrico’s office on the phone to pitch his idea. Can Richard and his spicy snacks idea save the plant? Are you kidding?

That is the story the film was made to tell, although some sources suggest “Flamin’ Hot” is mostly fiction. Inspired in art by Montanez’s 2013 autobiography “A Boy, a Burrito and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive,” screenwriters Louis Colick (“Ladder 49”) and Linda Yvette Chavez (Netflix’s “Gentefied”) have fashioned a classic and also uniquely Latino rags-to-riches fable, an American success story we can all relate to. Longoria, who has directed episodes of “Devious Maids,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Black-ish” displays a deft hand at getting the best from her talented cast. Director Martin Ritt (“Hud,” “Norma Rae”) once said “Directing is casting.” Longoria heard that.

(“Flamin’ Hot” contains profanity and brief drug references)

MOVIE REVIEW

“Flamin’ Hot”

Rated PG-13. On Hulu and Disney+

Grade: B+

Knockoffs of Bernard Rose’s 1992 prescient horror film “Candyman” don’t come much more flagrant than Thomas J. Churchill’s low-budget horror offering “Devilreaux.” With its talented lead (Virginia Madsen) and a creepy score by none other than Philip Glass (!), “Candyman” was a bit of a one-of-a-kind. Based on a short story by Clive Barker set in a poor section of Liverpool, “Candyman,” switches the setting to Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing development and turns an eye on America’s heritage of lynching and slavery.

In short, “Candyman” is a lot more than your average piece of B movie-making. “Devilreaux” is a lot less. Set in New Orleans and environs, “Devilreaux” begins when a police lieutenant named, ahem, Briggs (Krista Grotte Saxon, speaking with an accent not found in the Big Easy) interviews a traumatized young woman named Lexy (Monae Moyes), who says her companions at a “historical farm/museum” in the area have all been horribly killed. She says they were playing a game involving a Ouija board and some blood and that the killer was someone named Devilreaux. “He was relentless,” says Lexy. Suddenly, Lt. Briggs is sitting in Willy Earl’s Bar (note the cheap-looking sign) with Dr. Turner (Jon Briddell, TV’s “Doom Patrol”). “What do you know about Devilreaux,” Briggs asks Dr. Turner. “Devilreaux is not something you should take lightly.” I did, more lightly, by the second.

As it turns out, Turner is a descendant of one of the men, who along with a certain Willy Earl, killed a freed slave named Baron (Vincent M. Ward), the son of a slave named Leonard, played by, wait for it, Candyman himself Tony Todd, who somehow hasn’t aged much since 1992. Leonard had Baron with a slave-and-soon-to-be-a voodoo witch named Sally (Meberate Abajian). Devilreaux wears dreads and skull make-up on his face and a top hat also adorned with skulls. He carries a shovel (the one he was beaten to death with, we are told), and he uses the shovel to bonk, slash and impale his victims. Instead of bees, Devilreaux’s approach is heralded by a cowbell (like “Mississippi Queen”).

The “Devilreaux” screenplay is credited to both director Churchill and lead actor Ward (“The Step Daddy”). The film also takes many cues from 1980s slasher films. Somehow, Turner has avoided being killed for what looks like 40 or more years. He attributes this in part to “cleansing baths.” Well, he must have skipped one because Devilreaux pops out of his bathroom and gives him some bloody whacks.

Cut to a flashback in Civil War-era Louisiana (although no one mentions the war). This is the setting of the backstory we have already been told. Leonard wants to escape from the clutches of evil owner-rapist Mr. Michaels (Dennis W. Hall) with Sally, his pregnant wife. Cut to about 20 years later. In poorly-staged and shakily-shot scenes, Sheriff Whitman (Michael Cervantes) encourages plantation owner Michaels Jr. (Wil Crown) to kill a slave (Baron) that the sheriff believes is altogether too friendly with the owner’s white wife Kelly (Jessamine Kelley, sporting a ridiculous coif). Cut back to scenes involving young people in the historical farmhouse being stalked and killed by Devilreaux. “Let’s go to the funhouse,” someone later says to Lt. Briggs. “That sounds like fun,” says Briggs. The dialogue alone will kill you.

(“Devilreaux” contains bloody violence and drug use)

MOVIE REVIEW

“Devilreaux”

Rated R. On VOD

Grade: C

When these warriors don their golden masks, they are endowed with superpowers. Li becomes armed with a mystic bow that never runs out of arrows. Aesop’s hammer becomes super-charged. Zuma can fire beams of light. When Charlie (Kiefer O’Reilly) is magically transported to the ancient city of Sanxingdiu, his mask gives him some sort of telekinetic powers. Back in Chicago, the orphaned Charlie is at the mercy of a not-very-threatening mob boss named Rizzo (Plummer, doing a jokey riff on Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone in “The Godfather” films).

Based on a novel by Scotsman John Wilson, “Heroes of the Golden Mask” is a Canadian-Chinese co-production, boasting a flying tiger, a demonic yak, a zombie crocodile and a snake with one head and two bodies. While the lighting effects can be good, the animation is crude at best. The characters don’t appear to walk or run very well. The lip-syncing isn’t great either. Kun-Yi, who dresses in shades of brown and beige, has one of those short-sided, long-on-top haircuts favored by some contemporary young men. Kun-Yi is after the “tree-of-life” of the oddly jovial King Yufu (King Lau), which Kun-Yi will use to open a portal and take possession of the all-powerful “Jade Blade.”

Directed by Canadian animator Sean Patrick O’Reilly (“Go Fish”), the founder of the Canadian comic book empire Arcana, “Heroes of the Golden Mask” takes several cues from “Star Wars.” Charlie must undergo superhero training sessions. Warlord Kun-Yi returns repeatedly to Sanxiangdiu with different monsters to pit again the “heroes.” In one case, these are giant blob creatures that I’m hoping were made out of chocolate. A creature dubbed “hole face” was far more nightmarish, like something out of “The Night Parade of Dead Souls.” Three little kids comically dodge Kun-Yi’s monsters and soldiers. At one point, Kun-Yi, who boasts an evil laugh (“ha-ha-ha”), kidnaps Aesop’s larger-than-life mother Helen (Canadian actor Jayne Eastwood) and chains her outside his “obsidian tower.” Paging Freud. On their journey to the tower, the heroes must escape the clutches of scary-looking “hungry ghosts.” Zhu refuses to transform into a dragon because he is afraid of what might happen. When he finally does, the result is not impressive. “Heroes of the Golden Mask” was inspired, we are told, by an actual archaeological discovery in China of 3,000 year-old gold-foiled bronze masks. Ha-ha-ha, I say.

(“”Heroes of the Golden Mask” contains fantasy action and violence)

MOVIE REVIEW

“Heroes of the Golden Mask”

Not Rated. On Digital.

Grade: C

“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: B

Please send me the names of those clamoring for another “Transformers” film, who aren’t employed by or related to producers Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. But here we are. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which is set in 1994 Brooklyn and later in Peru, is sort of like a “Transformers” film with those shape-shifting Autobots grafted to a “Planet of the Apes” movie. The best parts of the film are the fraternal ties between the lead human, Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos, “In the Heights,” “Hamilton”) and his ailing little brother Kris (Dean Scott Vasquez) and between Noah and a wise-cracking, trash-mouthed Autobot named Mirage (Pete Davidson). Ably directed by Steven Cable Jr. (“Creed II”) and written by at least six people, “Rise of the Beasts” kicks off with the usual sepulchral narration.

For the record, the film is a sequel to “Bumblebee” (2018) and a prequel to “Transformers” (2007) and the seventh film in the live-action “Transformers” series, and while it is not a great piece of cinema, it benefits from the beating hearts of Ramos, Vasquez, human female lead Dominique Fishback and Davidson and from its affable, self-deprecating humor. The narration introduces us to some of the characters, including a monstrous “Terrorcon” named Scourge (voiced by Peter Dinklage), whose touch is poisonous, and (in my mind at least) another pesky robotic creature known as Exposition.

The plot, which is both complicated and child-like (imagine a toddler banging their toys together), requires Diaz, who is desperate for a job to help his family and gets involved in car theft, to become the ally of the Autobots, who search for the “Transwarp Key,” a glowing device that will allow them to return to their home Cybertron. At the same time, Elena Wallace (Fishback), a brilliant assistant researcher at an Ellis Island museum, discovers the key inside an ancient Horus-shaped sculpture. Also on the trail of the key are Scourge and the evil Terrorcons, who have raptor-like robots at their beck and call. In another introduction, we meet creatures known as Maximals, led by the King Kong-like Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman). Also among the Maximals is a falcon-shaped creature named Airazor voiced by the literally everywhere Michelle Yeoh. The Terrorcons want to use the key to open a door to planet-devouring Unicron (Colman Domingo) and… well, you get the picture.

The action features the trademark, transforming Autobots, which can be acquired from Hasbro, like most of the other ‘bots, a nicely-staged car chase on the Williamsburg Bridge, a robot beat down on a grassy knoll on Ellis Island, an “Indiana Jones”-evoking race to track down the key in an Incan temple in Peru with the help of a local Transformer named Wheeljack (Cristo Fernandez). The save-the-planet battle at the end is the usual superhero-movie CG stuff. But the film was shot in part on location in a spectacular-looking Peru, where a festival is staged, and the film might actually spur interest in the ancient Incan Empire among children. I cannot imagine the complications facing cinematographer Enrique Chediak (“Bumblebee”). But he gives the film a real sense of place in each of its settings. The 1990s-era soundtrack boasts vintage Wu-Tang, Biggie and LL Cool J. Making his film debut, rapper Tobe Nwigbe is fun as Reek, a local car thief who enlists a reluctant Noah. Davidson’s espanol needs some work. But he gives his laugh lines real, ahem, energy. “Transformers: Rise of the Beast” has a truly sweet and surprising twist ending. Will the Autobots pluck happy victory from the rubbish prospect of the end of the world? Cue the gravelly-voiced narrator.

(“”Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” contains violent action, profanity and rude humor)

Coming hot on the superhero heels of the mind-blowingly multidimensional animated work of art that is “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “The Flash” is an almost-as-excellent universe-hopping live-action extravaganza.

Almost always moving at what feels like the speed of light (but, ironically, not in theaters until next week), this first feature film featuring the subatomically fast DC Comics hero is a zippy and entertaining blast. And yet it nonetheless manages to serve up a few heartfelt moments amid all its carefully choreographed chaos.

As trailers have made very clear, among the familiar faces showing up in “The Flash” is Michael Keaton, who played the Dark Knight in Tim Burton’s 1989 megahit “Batman” and its 1992 sequel, “Batman Returns.”

You wanna get nuts? This movie will GET NUTS.

And while we get a lot of Keaton — initially as wealthy industrialist Bruce Wayne, retired from caped crusading and living alone in his mansion in a now-much-safer Gotham City — “The Flash” benefits from a super-fun performance from Ezra Miller.

For our purposes, we’ll set aside the controversial “Perks of Being a Wallflower” actor’s well-publicized issues, even as concerns have persisted that their involvement will hurt the movie at the box office. What matters here and now is that Miller, just as they have been in a couple of previous entries in Warner Bros. Pictures’ DC Extended Universe, is consistently engaging and regularly comical as the titular hero and his socially awkward alter ego, Barry Allen.

As the story begins, Barry stops on his way to work at a regular haunt, a coffee shop where he orders a high-calorie breakfast to satisfy his supercharged metabolism. However, he’s called to Gotham City by Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons), the butler of his universe’s Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), to help clean up what Barry sees as just the latest “Bat-mess.” (He says he’s accepted that he’s basically the janitor of the Justice League, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.)

Soon, the Flash quickly and cleverly saves a bunch of babies falling through the air from a collapsing hospital wing and Batman stops the bad guys — with a little help from a mutual friend.

Barry’s late for work as a police forensic investigator for Central City, frustrating his boss, but what else is new?

Mainly, he’s focused on the legal proceedings of his father, Henry (Ron Livingston, “The Conjuring”), who is still trying to clear himself in the murder of his wife and Barry’s mother, Nora (Maribel Verdu, “Y tu Mama Tambien”).

When Barry realizes he can use his power to travel through time and potentially alter the past, Bruce tries to talk himself out of it, noting the murder of his own parents turned him into the hero he is.

Barry doesn’t listen, of course, and — after being knocked off course a bit — finds himself at his childhood home shortly before the incident that gave him his powers. He encounters his parents, who believe him to be their college freshman son home for dinner (and with a haircut) — and then his younger (and longer-haired) self.

The junior Barry is stoked to learn he may soon gain this molecular magic, while the senior Barry wants his help in setting things right — without telling him everything he knows. (Miller is so good acting opposite themselves — and the effects so convincing at this point — that you forget you aren’t actually watching two virtually identical actors share the same physical space.)

The Barrys soon have a bigger problem: General Zod (Michael Shannon, “Bullet Train”) — a powerful Kryptonian first seen in this universe in 2013’s “Man of Steel” — arrives on Earth with planet-altering ambitions.

Ultimately seeking the help of the missing-in-action Superman, the Barrys first go in search of Batman, the older Barry not expecting the version who resides in this Gotham City.

After they encounter Keaton’s Bruce, he gives them (and, by extension, us) the requisite lesson in how time travel can create branches in reality and thus how the older Barry has royally screwed things up. (Bruce uses a place of spaghetti to illustrate his point. It’s very effective.) But as important as all of that is, “The Flash” never bogs down in multiverse mumbo jumbo.

Summer movie preview: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘The Flash’ and ‘Fast X’ lead appealing slate

The movie is terrifically directed by Andy Muschietti, working from a screenplay by Christina Hodson (“Birds of Prey,” “Bumblebee”), with the story by the tandem of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and Joby Harold (“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”).

The tale draws from two comic book storylines, 1961’s “Flash of Two Worlds” and 2011’s “Flashpoint.” Culminating in a big battle also involving Supergirl (Sasha Calle, “The Young and the Restless”), the ordeal is meant to teach at least one of the Barrys a lesson about sacrifice.

Muschietti’s direction here is especially impressive given his background is in horror, the Argentine filmmaker having helmed 2013’s “Mama,” 2017’s “It” and 2019’s “It Chapter Two.” Unlike a scary movie concerned with slowly building tension, “The Flash” is a masterclass in perpetual motion, the affair going and going without ever running off the rails.

Warner Bros. has held the final few minutes out of earlier advanced screenings, so we won’t spoil any of the late-game fun. But rest assured there is some.

Know that James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”), the new co-CEO DC Studios, has said “The Flash” “resets the entire DC Universe,” so changes certainly lie ahead. (As should be the standard operating procedure for a superhero movie by this point if you’re into this stuff, you’ll want to sit through the end credits.)

Universe reshaping aside, given just how enjoyable this first “Flash” flick is, we’d certainly welcome a second.

‘The Flash’

Where: Theaters.

When: June 16.

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some strong language and partial nudity.

Runtime: 2 hours, 24 minutes.

Stars (of four): 3.5.

A self-described “journeyman” actor, Magaro’s profile has risen after working with writer-directors like Todd Haynes (“Carol” opposite Cate Blanchett) and Kelly Reichardt (“First Cow,” “Showing Up”).

As Arthur in “Past Lives,” he’s married to Nora, a Korean-American (Greta Lee) who finds herself wondering “What if?” when a Korean man (Teo Yoo) she knew 20 years earlier shows up in Manhattan.

“Nora’s family emigrated to Canada from Korea when she was 12,” Magaro, 40, explained. “She went to college in New York City, is building a career as a budding playwright and writer and met Arthur at a writer’s retreat.

“Celine’s husband Justin is, like Arthur, a writer. Celine drew from her own experiences for the kernel of this story.”

Magaro didn’t base Arthur on Song’s husband. “I met him after I got cast. Celine and Justin came over to my place and met my wife who is Korean American as well and had a nice dinner together.

“We found that there’s a lot more in common between the two couples, myself and my wife and them, than we thought. We also shared some kind of a similar experience that a lot of people who are in, whether it’s interracial or multicultural or just from vastly different backgrounds, go through.

“Those partners will always feel — I know I feel this way with my wife and I believe Arthur feels this way — there’s a part of your partner that you’ll never be able to fully understand or fully be able to access. Although you may try and you love and are supportive of them.

“There’s just something because of your experiences that you’ll never be able to quite comprehend. And that’s okay.

“That’s what makes us love them more in a lot of ways — and certainly that’s true for Arthur. I drew from my own experiences and tried to sublimate them in the film.”

Where a husband might feel angry or upset that his wife is having a mental affection for an old beau, Magaro sees “Past Lives” showing a better version of masculinity.

“Although Arthur is put in this awkward situation where his wife’s childhood sweetheart comes, visits and could possibly win her away from him, he remains calm and is able to temper his insecurities and his jealousies and allow his wife to have this cathartic experience that she really needs to go through.

“That was refreshing for me.”

“Past Lives” opens Friday

June is Pride Month, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ pride and commemoration of the history of the fight for gay rights. Pride Month was started after the 1969 Stonewall riots sparked a series of gay liberation protests, and unfortunately, more than 50 years later, Pride Month has taken on a new resonance as the civil rights of queer and transgender people are being rolled back at an alarming rate in the United States.

It’s an apt time to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community as members and allies, but it’s also an opportunity to learn more about queer history, the origins of Pride and the importance of fighting to protect queer and trans lives. Many of the streaming services have collections dedicated to Pride and LGBTQIA+ stories and creators — so here are a few suggestions to help prioritize your streaming, with a focus on history and the fight for gay rights.

Max has a robust library of both narrative and documentary material focusing on queer history and issues. The award-winning docuseries “We’re Here,” follows queens from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” as they travel to small towns around the U.S. spreading the gospel and transformative blessing of drag. “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the 15-season-long reality series, is of course available to stream on Hulu, Paramount+ and Wow Presents Plus (the international versions). Do yourself the favor if you’ve never sampled the delight that is “Drag Race.”

But drag is an art form with a long history, and the groundbreaking 1990 documentary “Paris is Burning” is required watching for all drag fans. Jennie Livingston’s cult documentary featuring interviews with queens from the New York City ball scene lays out all the lingo and references that queens still use. It’s also streaming on Max. To go back even further, watch Frank Simon’s 1968 documentary “The Queen,” following the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, newly restored and streaming on Kanopy. There are many fascinating connections between “The Queen,” “Paris is Burning” and “Drag Race” that will enhance the viewing experience.

Also on Max, the Oscar-winning 2008 biopic “Milk,” about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, and tragically assassinated at San Francisco City Hall in 1978. For a nonfiction take on Milk’s life and death, stream the 1984 documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk,” directed by Rob Epstein and also streaming on Max.

Oscar-nominated documentarian David France has directed three searing documentaries about the history of gay rights, including a film about Marsha P. Johnson, long considered the first person to throw a brick at Stonewall, and thus igniting the gay liberation movement. “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” (2017) details Johnson’s life as a transgender woman in New York City in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and also follows Marsha’s community as they attempt to sort through her mysterious death.

France was nominated for an Oscar for his incredible 2012 film “How to Survive a Plague,” about the AIDS crisis and the activism of ACT UP, utilizing an incredible amount of archival footage to craft a story of community health activism when AIDS was actively being ignored by the U.S. government. Stream it on Tubi and Kanopy. France also directed a film about the persecution of queer people in Chechnya, with his harrowing 2020 film “Welcome to Chechnya,” also streaming on Max.

While many of these titles are extremely heavy and focus on the struggle for queer liberation, a fight that is still ongoing, the LGBTQIA+ experience is also a joyful one, whether that’s celebrated in the form of drag, or in series like “Looking” (Max), “Queer as Folk,” (the original on Showtime/Paramount+, the remake on Peacock), “The L Word” (Hulu/Showtime) and “Pose” (Hulu).

To shout out a few underrated and underseen indie gems about queer life, watch Goran Stolevski’s “Of an Age,” a stunning Aussie coming-of-age drama, streaming on Peacock, and “Other People,” written and directed by Chris Kelly (“The Other Two”) about a young gay man losing his mother to cancer, streaming on Netflix.

There is a world of rich and diverse queer stories out there, so dive in and celebrate Pride.

—

©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

“Sanctuary”

Rated R. At the Coolidge Corner.

Grade: B+

Kinky and notably meta, “Sanctuary” places two very beautiful people played by rising American stars Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott on the screen in very provocative BDSM circumstances and asks us if it is “real,” manufactured by one of its players or just actors playing roles for the camera.

Can it be all of those things? Is it a more pretentious “50 Shades of Grey?”

Meet Hal Porterfield (Abbott). He’s the heir to a hotel chain dynasty. He lives in the sort of splendor that appears to have been conjured up in the mind of an interior decorator specializing in posh hotel suites. We hear him order a ridiculously indulgent dinner ending with a hot fudge sundae. What is he, 12? He has a dominatrix for hire pretending to be a lawyer named Rebecca (Qualley, “Fosse/Verdon”)). It isn’t long before her true identity is revealed and the fireworks begin…in the bathroom.

Directed by New York City-based film director, Tisch School of the Arts graduate and film critic Zachary Wigon (“The Heart Machine”) and written by Micah Bloomberg (“Homecoming”), “Sanctuary” reminds me of the work of Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”) insofar as Wigon’s work thinks it is very clever. But it is often also very tedious.  As you might imagine, a lot of the dialogue involves Hal and Rebecca playing mind games on one another and the audience. But, again, do I really care if the business landing in Hal’s lap by way of inheritance has a “board of directors” or not? “Sanctuary” often comes across like the kinkier, but also less interesting episode of “Succession.”

What keeps this little two-hander kink-off going is the talent and screen presence of Qualley (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) and Abbott (“Possessor”). Qualley, who looks much better without the obvious blond wig she wears in opening scenes (Why?), demonstrates a brilliant command of her very expressive face.  Abbott for his part, has the spoiled heir/rich mama’s boy bit down pat. He informs Rebecca that since his fearsome father has died and he is moving up the chain of command to take over the business, he wants to end their association since he now has a reputation and a dynasty to protect. Rebecca does not want to hear it, especially now that she has made drastic changes in her life to accommodate Hal and his needs. In effect, she has become addicted to their kinky game-playing. It comes down to blackmail and how much Hal is willing to pay to keep Rebecca happy.

The plot of “Sanctuary” is not important or surprising. You watch it because Qualley, who also served as an executive producer, and Abbott are just about two of the most watchable actors of the moment. Her vacant-eyed, Manson-follower temptress in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” looked like she could have had Brad Pitt for lunch. Twitchy music by Ariel Marx (“Shiva Baby”) is another plus.

(“Sanctuary” contains sexually suggestive scenes, profanity and some violence)

“Shooting Stars”

Rated PG-13. On Peacock.

Grade: B+

Based on the 2009 book by Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger (“Friday Night Lights”) and nicely directed by Chris Robinson (“Woke”), “Shooting Stars” is the 1990s-set coming-of-age story of James and his “Fab Four” crew of fellow basketball enthusiasts with whom he played and grew up in Akron, Ohio.

When we meet James (Marquis “Mookie” Cook, making his debut) and his closest friends and surrogate brothers Lil Dru (Caleb McLaughlin, “Stranger Things”), Willy McGee (Avery S. Willis Jr, “Swagger”) and Sian Cotton (Khalil Everage, “Cobra Kai”), they are together in the basement of Lil Dru’s house, which he shares with his father Dru Joyce (an excellent Wood Harris), a some time basketball coach and mother Carolyn (Diane Howard). LeBron lives with his single mother Gloria James (Natalie Paul), who is an enormous influence on him and who will work as many shifts as possible to keep a roof over their heads. When the local public school coach tries to separate the four by making the short-of-stature Lil Dru play for the junior varsity team, they decide to switch schools and play for the “Fighting Irish” of the local Catholic School St. Vincent-St. Mary. At St. Vincent-St. Mary, where African-Americans are few, the young men meet Coach Keith Dambrot (Dermot Mulroney), a failed college coach, who recognizes their tremendous potential and LeBron’s greatness.

“Shooting Stars,” which was adapted by Frank E. Flowers, Tony Rettenmaier and Juel Taylor (“Creed II”) with James as an executive producer, is not winning any awards for originality. A “Nutty Professor” poster is on the wall of the basement where the players hang out. Someone makes a Carlton of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” joke. When they aren’t outside playing basketball, the boys are inside playing basketball video games. But it is amusing to see the St. Vincent-St. Mary “Fighting Irish” mascot, a leprechaun on the court with our protagonists, or to hear bagpipes and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” used to accentuate the accomplishments of the “Fab Four.”

Beginning with their freshman year, the “Fab Four” lead St. Vincent-St. Mary to championships. Soon, Sports Illustrated is printing features about “high-school phenom” James. He meets classmate Savannah (Katlin Nichol). He takes her to the local Outback, where the car he borrowed won’t start afterward. The moral of “Shooting Stars” is that sometimes high school friendships turn into lifelong sources of happiness, camaraderie and solace. St. Vincent becomes the number one high school basketball team in the country. After a scandal involving a vintage jersey given to Lebron by a fan, James is suspended for a few games. Will his friends step up to win without him?

James will be tempted to sample the excesses of superstardom. We see a young man’s bed surrounded by boxes of shoes. His bedroom walls plastered with posters. As his best friends get better as players, Willy sadly observes that he has “stayed the same.” Will Lil Dru ever lose the chip on his shoulder?

As the hotheaded “fifth” member of the Fab Four, newcomer Sterling “Scoot” Henderson is impressive. Universal is not giving “Shooting Stars” a theatrical run. While the film is no blockbuster, this is a mistake. LeBron James is a genuine, real-life superhero, and Cook is very sympathetic in the role. Paul is just as good as his mother and “rock.” The young actors have charisma, screen presence and chemistry. For crying out loud, they even got game. What more do you want, bagpipes?

(“Shooting Stars” contains profanity, suggestive language and underage drinking)

“The Boogeyman”

Rated PG-13. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: B

Working with writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods – who co-wrote “A Quiet Place” with John Krasinski – and also writer Mark Heyman (“Black Swan”), British director Rob Savage (“Host”) brings us “The Boogeyman,” a film based on a short story by the master of modern horror Stephen King. We all know how much King loves scaring his “children” aka readers with stories about kids being terrified by all the manifold horrors of childhood (psychotic clowns, ghost twins, insane parents, the thing in the water, possessed cars, vampires, etc.). The truth is that King just loves scaring himself (his vast output has not been “work;” it has been a runaway train of addictive self-amusement).

In the amusingly titled “The Boogeyman,” King and director Savage go to something as primal as they get: the thing lurking in every child’s closet that comes out and gets them when they are alone in the dark. I’m scaring myself just writing these words, and I am not a child. I do not recommend bringing children to see “The Boogeyman” unless you want them refusing to sleep in their own beds.

In the beginning, we see glowing balls of protective light covering a child in a bed. But in the dark, something with a gnarled hand and a frightening voice kills a toddler. Cut to a different grieving household. Older sister Sadie Harper (the very talented Sophie Thatcher) smells a dress worn by her mother, who was recently killed in a car accident. Sadie wears it to school, where a rude, fellow student causes it to become soiled. Is Sadie going to set the other girl on fire with her mind? No, back home Sadie’s little sister Sawyer (the remarkable Vivien Lyra Blair, “Birdbox”) sleeps with a ball of light, which she rolls on the floor to illuminate the dark corners (and the closet). Something bad is going to happen (again) in the Harper household because Sadie and Sawyer’s father Will Harper (Chris Messina), a therapist, has allowed a deeply troubled stranger named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian, “Dune”), a man whose face resembles a painting by Edvard Munch, into the house.

The film’s writers can be terribly vague on the details. Why does no one else in the house hear the bangs, screams and destruction? Why does Billings’ widow Rita (Marin Ireland) have dozens of lit candles melting on the floor in the halls of her house, which she patrols with a pump-action shotgun? Obviously, it’s because Savage liked the look. If you aren’t bothered by that sort of thing, or by Savage’s use of the dreaded, outmoded shaky-cam in some scenes, you are going to enjoy “The Boogeyman” more than I did (and I liked it). It reminded me of the unadorned 1980s horror films about stricken families. Thatcher especially goes full angry and depressed. We get no sugarcoating of Sadie or her relationship with her father or little sister. King usually trowels on the sentiment in this sort of environment. But this time, I guess, working with a short story gave the writers and actors more freedom. Many viewers will be reminded of the far superior and more original 2014 Australian film “The Babadook.” We are told that the Boogeyman of the film’s title preys on “broken families” (Whose isn’t?) and that it has existed “forever.” LisaGay Hamilton is fun as a family therapist the Harpers turn to, perhaps inadvisedly. We get a weird bit about a loose baby tooth of Sawyer’s that Sadie extracts using a technique we do not recommend. Almost every “scare” in the film is a “jump cut.” These eventually wore me down. I felt bullied by jerks. Lights flash. Doors slam. And is it just me, or does Sadie descend into every basement she comes across? Still, how could anyone not smile at the sight of the crafty little Sawyer cloaked in coils of blinking Christmas lights?

(“The Boogeyman” contains frightening images and content, underage drug use and profanity)

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Rated PG. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: A-

Are you ready for “Spider-Man” meets “Everything Everywhere All at Once?” As much as I enjoyed the art, effort, talent and ingenuity mustered in the making of “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse,” Sony’s follow-up to its 2018 Academy Award-winning, computer-animated hit “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” this whole “multiverse” thing has gotten way out of control and has become a gimmick and a bit of a cliche, allowing for all manner of excess and overkill. Fanboys love it.

In this installment of the “Spider-Verse” series (next up: “Beyond the Spider-Verse”), Brooklyn’s own Spider-Man aka Miles Morales teams up with multiverse Spider-Woman Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to battle the Spot aka Jonathan Ohnn (Jason Schwartzman) , a wise-cracking, faceless, blob-like creature capable of opening up holes to other dimensions. Eventually, Miles and Gwen attempt to team up with members of the multiverse’s Spider People, known as the Spider Society, only to have a run-in with their leader Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). At the same time, Miles and Gwen are trying to find a way to avoid the seemingly inevitable death of someone very important to each of them. In one of the film’s best sequences, the villain known as the Vulture aka Adrian Toomes (Jorma Taccone) attacks Manhattan’s iconic Guggenheim Museum and its patrons.

Describing the plot of one of these “Spider-Man” animated efforts is a pathetically inadequate way to express the film’s content and impact. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” pulses, crackles, glitches and flashes. Its sound and visual designs are an integral part of its deeply immersive impact. This is the filmmaking equivalent of a wizard casting a spell using all the dark arts at their disposal.

New York City is a maze, a jungle, an “urban-verse,” a vibrantly diverse setting for multiple races and nationalities to live and interact. Stan Lee’s hometown, NYC is this world’s original multiverse.

The visuals mix Marvel superhero imagery and characters with real-life images of New York City and the famous Brooklyn setting of the immortal (and illegal) chase in “The French Connection” and later in the story we will visit the comically narcissistic Spider-Man India in his hometown.

Producers and co-writers Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (“Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse,” “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) give each world its own visual style. The shading and chiaroscuro recall comic book panel art at its finest. The Spot is a truly nightmarish creation, a horror to himself (?) as well as to others. In the middle of all of this, Miles has a meeting with his parents (Brian Tyree Henry and Luna Lauren Velez) and his school principal (Rachel Dratch) and later tells his parents that he wants to attend Princeton to study Quantum Physics (the respect for knowledge and learning in Marvel is another by-product of Lee’s immigrant background). In one of the stops along the multiverse, we will encounter a Lego Daily Bugle. Has the New York City skyline – equal parts Camelot, Oz and “Metropolis” – ever looked more magical? Does rock star Spidey look like Jimi Hendrix? An alternate universe Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) wears a furry pink bathrobe and carries baby daughter May strapped to his chest. Watching all the Spideys chasing Miles and Gwen I thought I was going to plotz. Composer Daniel Pemberton returns with another wonderfully inventive score. Congratulations to directors Joaquim Dos Santos (“Avatar: The Last Airbender”), Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”) and Justin K. Thompson (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”). Swing, Spidey, swing.

(This PG “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is truly kid friendly. Take them.)

“Boogeyman,” where Messina’s therapist and his two young daughters must confront and survive the nastiest of demons, proved so successful last December in a test screening that it was pulled from Hulu to open in theaters.

That happened with “Air,” Ben Affleck’s springtime hit about the creation of Nike’s Air Jordan sneaker which was highlighted by Messina’s scene-stealing, much-talked-about role as Jordan’s profane – and profanely angry – agent David Falk.  His blistering phone call with Matt Damon’s Nike veep leaps beyond hilarity to be a career-defining moment.

“Boogeyman,” which counts King among its fans, found Messina doing in-depth therapist research – even though in real life, he said in a phone interview last week, “I have done a lot of therapy, which I loved and found very useful.”

“When I read this script, I maybe stupidly thought, ‘He seems to be a very good therapist, why can’t he deal with himself and his daughters?’

“So I talked to a bunch of therapists who said, ‘In many cases, it’s very true to life. We’re good with other people’s problems and when it comes to ourselves, we can be quite stuck.’ And that was a real jumping off point.”

Messina, 48, credits director Rob Savage with giving him the insight on what makes a horror movie work. Or not.  “He said, ‘You can’t have the jump-scares and the screams and the yells when people watch without characters that you care about.’”

Messina rewatched and studied the Oscar-winning 1980 Best Picture “Ordinary People” where therapy helps a family heal. “I tried to steal both from Donald Sutherland [the therapist] and Mary Tyler Moore [the off-putting mother].”

Come June 8, Messina costars with Kaley Cuoco in the Peacock 8-part series “Based on a True Story” where, he promises, “You’ll be laughing and then it turns itself on its head and it’s incredibly tense, scary and, sometimes, emotional.”

Then comes “I.S.S.” which is, he revealed, “A sci-fi thriller about a group of astronauts, three Americans, three Russians, on the International Space Station. They’re very much getting along until something goes down on Earth that changes their relationship. And things start getting really tense and dark.

“We had a great time making it. We were on harnesses for most of the movie — it takes place in zero gravity. I’ve never done anything like that!

“So, you’d call ‘Cut’ and the director would give you a note and you’d be just hanging upside down.”

“Anatomy of a Fall,” which stars Sandra Hüller as a writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, is only the third film directed by a woman to win the Palme d’Or. One of the two previous winners, Julia Ducournau, was on this year’s jury.

Cannes’ Grand Prix, its second prize, went to Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a chilling Martin Amis adaptation about a German family living next door to Auschwitz. Hüller also stars in that film.

The awards were decided by a jury presided over by two-time Palme winner Ruben Östlund, the Swedish director who won the prize last year for “Triangle of Sadness.” The ceremony preceded the festival’s closing night film, the Pixar animation “Elemental.”

Remarkably, the award for “Anatomy of a Fall” gives the indie distributor Neon its fourth straight Palme winners. Neon, which acquired the film after its premiere in Cannes, also backed “Triangle of Sadness,”Ducournau’s “Titane” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which it steered to a best picture win at the Academy Awards.

Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” This year, a record seven out of the 21 films in competition at Cannes were directed by women.

After a rousing standing ovation, Triet, the 44-year-old French filmmaker, spoke passionately about the protests that have roiled France this year over reforms to pension plans and the retirement age. Several protests were held during Cannes this year, but demonstrations were — as they have been in many high-profile locations throughout France — banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals. Protesters were largely relegated to the outskirts of Cannes.

“The protests were denied and repressed in a shocking way,” said Triet, who linked that governmental influence to that in cinema. “The merchandizing of culture, defended by a liberal government, is breaking the French cultural exception.”

“This award is dedicated to all the young women directors and all the young male directors and all those who cannot manage to shoot films today,” she added. “We must give them the space I occupied 15 years ago in a less hostile world where it was still possible to make mistakes and start again.”

After the ceremony, Triet reflected on being the third female director to win the Palme, following Ducournau and Jane Campion (“The Piano”).

“Things are truly changing,” she said.

Speaking to reporters, Triet was joined by her star, Hüller, whose performance was arguably the most acclaimed of the festival. (The festival encourages juries not to give films more than one award.) But “Anatomy of a Fall” did pocket one other sought-after prize: the Palme Dog. The honor given to the best canine in the festival’s films went to the film’s border collie, Snoop.

The jury prize went to Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” a deadpan love story about a romance that blooms in a loveless workaday Helsinki where dispatches from the war in Ukraine regularly play on the radio.

Best actor went to veteran Japanese star Koji Yakusho, who plays a reflective, middle-aged Tokyo man who cleans toilets in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” a gentle, quotidian character study.

The Turkish actor Merve Dizdar took best actress for the Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses.” Ceylan’s expansive tale is set in snowy eastern Anatolia about a teacher, Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), accused of misconduct by a young female student. Dizdar plays a friend both attracted and repelled by Samet.

“I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” said Dizdar. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.”

Vietnamese-French director Tràn Anh Hùng took best director for “Pot-au-Feu,” a lush, foodie love story starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel and set in a 19th century French gourmet château.

Best screenplay was won by Yuji Sakamoto for “Monster.” Sakamoto penned Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s nuanced drama, with shifting perspectives, about two boys struggling for acceptance in their school at home. “Monster” also won the Queer Palm, an honor bestowed by journalists for the festival’s strongest LGBTQ-themed film.

Quentin Tarantino, who won Cannes’ top award for “Pulp Fiction,” attended the ceremony to present a tribute to filmmaker Roger Corman. Tarantino praised Corman for filling him and countless moviegoers with “unadulterated cinema pleasure.”

“My cinema is uninhibited, full of excess and fun,” said Corman, the independent film maverick. “I feel like this what Cannes is about.”

The festival’s Un Certain Regard section handed out its awards on Friday, giving the top prize to Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature, “How to Have Sex.”

Saturday’s ceremony drew to close a Cannes edition that hasn’t lacked spectacle, stars or controversy.

The biggest wattage premieres came out of competition. Martin Scorsese debuted his Osage murders epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a sprawling vision of American exploitation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Harrison Ford’s Indy farewell, launched with a tribute to Ford. Wes Anderson premiered “Asteroid City.”

The festival opened on a note of controversy. “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama co-starring Johnny Depp as Louis XV, played as the opening night film. The premiere marked Depp’s highest profile appearance since the conclusion of his explosive trial last year with ex-wife Amber Heard.

Celebrity documentaries often dig up old talk show footage, and early in HBO’s “Being Mary Tyler Moore” we see her interviewed by David Susskind. The exchange reveals both the host’s stubborn assumptions about gender roles and Moore’s polite disinterest in pandering to his line of questioning.

The clip is from 1966, just as “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was drawing to a close. The sitcom made Moore a star playing Laura Petrie, and in Susskind’s estimation, the character is an “idealization of the American wife.” Then he pontificates, just generally, on what he sees as the sad state of matrimony in real life: Walk into any restaurant and “the woman is yakking like crazy and the man has a hurt, bored expression.”

What he fails to realize is that he’s creating that very dynamic in the television studio — except he is the one yakking like crazy while his guest has a hurt, bored expression. He thinks women are only “half-married” if they work outside the home. She gently but firmly pushes back. “Women should be human beings first, women second, and wives and mothers third,” she tells him. “It should fall in that order.”

Moore could turn the world on with her smile. Pioneering and funny. But woe to the person who underestimated her steely intelligence.

Off-screen, she was reserved in ways that differed from her most famous roles, first as Laura Petrie in those pedal pushers (previous to that, housewives appeared only in dresses, and it was a change Moore pushed for) and later as local TV news producer Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

She had impeccable comedy instincts — full of warmth and vulnerability and class — and I wish the film tried to examine a bit further how she sharpened those talents over the years.

She would switch gears with “Ordinary People” in 1980. It was a departure from what audiences had come to expect, instead playing a brittle, grieving mother who kept her feelings bottled up to preserve her elegant, upscale suburban Chicago facade. But Moore probably had more in common with the character than many realized — maybe not so chilly, but aloof. She kept to herself and wasn’t naturally open and revealing. That’s one of the more interesting revelations of the film.

She was a combination of strength, nervousness and determination, but she didn’t see herself as Mary Richards, independent woman extraordinaire. She was married throughout the show’s run to Grant Tinker (who headed up her production company MTM Enterprises), but the character’s backbone? “That was real,” she says. “That kind of substance and intrinsic dignity of being.”

Directed by James Adolphus (with a raft of producers including Lena Waithe), “Being Mary Tyler Moore” relies on old interviews with Moore, who died in 2017, and new off-camera interviews that Adolphus layers in as voice-overs.

Moore’s father would joke that the family came from impoverished nobility, but her mother struggled with alcoholism and that created instability: “She was most at ease at a party, or giving a party,” Moore says. “Everybody’s good-time best gal. Not the most attuned to parenting that I would have liked. She would start drinking during the day and would not stop until somebody found the bottle and took it away.”

Moore found fame in the 1960s, thanks to “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” but her career faltered after that, including a disastrous musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on Broadway, and a movie contract that compelled her to appear in less-than-stellar films, including 1969′s “Change of Habit,” as a nun opposite Elvis Presley.

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” would put her back on top in the 1970s. But when the show ended, so did her marriage to Tinker. Single for the first time in years, she moved to New York at 40, looking for a fresh start.

Maybe she was hoping to run away from problems that had been festering under the California sun. So much of her public persona was rooted in those exquisite manners — there was almost a throwback quality to the way she carried herself — but we learn that, in private, she could become belligerent after a few drinks. It was only in middle age that she acknowledged alcohol was a problem for her, as it had been for her mother.

She would eventually marry again, this time to a doctor named Robert Levine, who is an executive producer here and who provided the personal footage of Moore at home, including that of an informal gathering before her wedding that has the feel of a slumber party, where she’s toasted by good friend Betty White, among others.

Moore’s second act in New York was less about burnishing her celebrity than about a woman finally coming into herself. L.A. can be thrumming with career neuroses — the kind that foster an arrested development, especially if fame hits early and fast.

Maybe relocating was a way to shed all of that and reinvent some ideas she had about herself.

———

‘BEING MARY TYLER MOORE’

3 stars (out of 4)

Not rated

Running time: 1:59

How to watch: 8 p.m. ET Friday on HBO (and streaming on Max)

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“The Eight Mountains”

Not Rated. In Italian and Nepali with subtitles. At the Coolidge Corner.

Grade: A

Engrossing and joyously rustic, “The Eight Mountains” comes from married Belgian filmmakers Felix van Groeningen (“Beautiful Boy”) and first-timer Charlotte Vandermeersch, who co-wrote the screenplay based on the best-selling novel by Paolo Cognetti. It begins when shy 12 year-old Pietro (Lupo Barbieri) from the city of Turino goes on a modest vacation with his mother (Elena Lietti) at the foot of the Italian Alps in a tiny (and getting smaller by the minute) Alpine village named Grana.

The boy meets another boy his age, a rustic semi-brute named Bruno (Cristiano Sassella), whose father works as a bricklayer down among the flatlanders and is mostly absent. Pietro’s father Giovanni (Filippo Timi) is a science-minded company executive, who drives an Alpha Romeo, loves the mountains and takes the boys on climbs. Giovanni keeps track of their journeys on a map he has tacked to a wall. Bruno, who considers himself a “montanero” (“mountain man”), nicknames Pietro “Berio.” Bruno goes on to explain that a “mountain man” is part human, part animal and part tree. On one climb, Pietro is almost overcome by altitude sickness and the climbers encounter a terrifying crevasse.

Almost all of the action takes place on what looks like another planet, a place where you are surrounded by a towering phalanx of not-so-distant, snow-covered peaks, shining in the light of the sun or subtly delineated by a glowing moon. Bruno (played by Alessandro Borghi as an adult) dreams of becoming a “casaro,” a cheese-maker like one of his uncles. Pietro (Luca Marinelli, “Martin Eden”), the more introverted and intellectual of the two, writes stories for magazines. Together, they repair a cabin up in the heights, where Pietro’s father dreamed of having a place of his own. They swim in a freezing lake in the sky. It is a kind of high-altitude dual baptism. The stone and wooden cabin they build together is a metaphor for their interlinked lives, lives which will include other people, other places and separations.

Pietro begins to travel to the East, to Nepal, where he finds another cloud world. Bruno restores a former cheese farm and starts a business with the help of new wife Lara (Elisabetta Mazzullo). They have a daughter. People, animals and machines constantly struggle to reach higher places. Pietro learns that his father from whom he was estranged for 10 years, was also a surrogate father to Bruno. After returning from a trip, Pietro tells Bruno and Lara about the seemingly brutal, but also poetic ritual of a “sky burial” as practiced in Tibet.

The rich soundtrack is full of Dylan-esque English-language folk songs by Swede Daniel Norgren and instrumental compositions by the London-based composer known as Savfk. Ruben Impens’ academy-ratio images put you in an almost hypnotic state. Watching Cannes award-winner “The Eight Mountains” is like mountain-climbing from your seat. Pietro and Bruno will remind some of ancient epic buddies Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The film’s almost 2 and a half hour running time flies. You don’t want it to end. Immensely sensuous and featuring two of the most marvelously developed characters in a very long time, “The Eight Mountains” is simply one of the best, most rewarding films of the year. Keep climbing.

(“The Eight Mountains” contains profanity and sexually suggestive material)

“The Little Mermaid”

Rated PG. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: C

This new, live-action “The Little Mermaid” from Disney works on almost no level. It hardly has enough music to be a musical (and some of the songs are sung by off-camera voices), the underwater scenes are murky and look fake, and the lead actors have no emotional connection. Outside of exploiting nostalgia for the 1989 animated version, this new “Mermaid” directed by Rob Marshall of “Chicago,” is just another Disney live-action remake of an animated hit. The fact that it also comes across like a water-logged remake of “Cinderella” only makes it more dull.

Ariel, the film’s fish-tailed protagonist, is played by the Grammy-nominated singer Halle Bailey, whose casting caused a racist backlash. Ariel is a mermaid, who once again sports a big, reddish mane of (CG?) billowing hair and for reasons I did not understand in either film, longs to become a part of the world “above.” She longs for it in spite of the strict decree of her father King Triton (Javier Bardem) to shun all things human because he says with some justification that humans are “barbarians.”

Even though his sailors playfully hurl harpoons at her, Ariel falls for the captain of a sailing ship named Eric (the bland, London-born Jonah Hauer-King). The captain is conveniently also a prince of a small island nation. Ariel makes a pact with her evil “Auntie” Ursula (Melissa McCarthy). Ursula is a witch with many tentacles, who has been living in a dark crevasse for 50 years. Ariel agrees to leave her “voice” with its distinctive “siren song” captive with Ursula in a locket in exchange for being made human for three days. If she cannot get the prince to kiss her during that period, she loses all and must return to the sea. Or something like that.

In this “more realistic” iteration of “The Little Mermaid,” Ariel’s friends Sebastian, a crab (Daveed Diggs), Flounder, a fish (Jacob Tremblay) and Scuttle, a seagull-turned-gannet (Awkwafina in a role played by the great Buddy Hackett in the original), do not have expressive, humanoid faces. This leaves something to be desired for sure, although Diggs, speaking in a Jamaican type accent, almost overcomes it. Bailey’s singing is one of the film’s highlights. For his part, Hauer-King is standard Disney prince material, and his singing is just all right.

The music for the new film is by Alan Menken of the original film and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Menken updated some of the music composed by him and the late Howard Ashman. Miranda contributed new music. Sebastian leads a performance of “Under the Sea,” which Marshall turns almost by default into a Busby Berkeley number, complete with mollusks and fluorescent jellyfish. Some dialogue in the screenplay attributed solely to David Magee (“Mary Poppins Returns”) evokes the climate crisis. We get a glum version of “Kiss the Girl” and a new Miranda song called “The Scuttlebutt.”

Hans Christian Anderson, who created the little mermaid character, is evoked by a big stone off the coast of Eric’s nation, which recalls the mermaid’s perch in Copenhagen harbor. The finale features a superhero-film type battle between a gigantic Ursula (Why? How?) and Ariel and Eric. My biggest beef with this new “Little Mermaid” is how dark all the underwater scenes look. This reminded me of how much darker such scenes are made by 3D glasses (this “Little Mermaid” will be available in 3D, which I seriously do not recommend). At 2 hours and 15 minutes, this “Little Mermaid” is almost an hour longer than the original film. As far as mermaids’ tales go, longer is not better.

(“The Little Mermaid” contains rude humor and some violence)

“Kandahar”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: C

“Kandahar” is the latest action film from actor-producer Gerard Butler and his G-BASE company (“Plane,” “Den of Thieves”). It’s also the second recent film about a Western fighter in the Middle East and his bond with his local translator (the other one is Guy Ritchie’s overrated dud “The Covenant” with Jake Gyllenhaal).

Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, the director of Butler’s previous efforts “Angel Has Fallen” and “Greenland,” and written by former Defense Intelligence officer Mitchel LaFortune (instant winner of best spy-name contest), “Kandahar” features Butler as Tom Harris, some kind of Middle East CIA operative whose specialty is – oy, that again? – doing jobs no one else can pull off in between visits to his beloved 17-year-old daughter Ida, who lives with his estranged wife back home in the UK.

“Kandahar” stretches credulity from the get go. In opening scenes, Tom and his younger partner Oliver (Tom Rhys Harries) plant a device connected to an underground nuclear facility in Iran right under the noses of Al-Qaeda. Later, that device will be used in an act of sabotage. Director Waugh lays on the exotic Middle Eastern music and atmosphere. The idea that Tom and Oliver are like saboteur cable guys from the West doing something treacherous that no one notices is a bit hard to take. Oh, and by the way, before Tom can fly back to Gatwick Airport, he is forced by his CIA handler Roman (Travis Fimmel), who appears to be considering sleeping with the enemy, to agree to one more quick assignment. As magical as its title might sound, “Kandahar” is nothing if not canned.

Also in the mix is a Muslim assassin Kahil (Ali Fazal), who uses dating apps to hook up with beauties when he is not busy killing people and who swoops around the Afghan desert on the back of his powerful black superbike dressed all in black.

To carry out his latest mission, Tom must team up with translator and reluctant partner Mohammad aka Mo (Alan Arkin look-alike Navid Negahban in an underwritten part). We cannot help but notice the bodies hanging from cranes, the fate of traitors and spies in this part of the world. Mo is willing to work for the Western authorities because his only son was killed by the Taliban. In a tacked-on subplot, a young, female British reporter of Middle Eastern descent (Elnaaz Norouzi) is arrested by the Taliban and threatened with public execution for spying.

A battle between Tom and a small enemy helicopter is nicely staged, if not entirely credible. But a scene in which Butler drives his truck down a sidewalk, terrifying locals and destroying stalls to evade capture is a metaphor for this whole film. “Kandahar” is just another Western movie set in a part of the world where we have historically not done much that is good or useful. Inevitably, what the West and its great military minds have not accomplished in reality, their showbiz counterparts recreate as entertainment. Will Tom get home in time to make daughter Ida happy? Will he ever sign those “divorce papers?” “Kandahar” is not enough of a movie to make me care one way or the other.

(“Kandahar” contains war violence and profanity)

“About My Father”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters..

Grade: B

Although its title evokes Pedro Almodovar’s 1999 Oscar-winner “All About My Mother,” Robert De Niro’s comedy vehicle “About My Father” is more like a variation on a theme of the 2000 De Niro-starring hit “Meet the Parents.” Featuring De Niro as Chicago hairdresser Salvo Maniscalco, a part played by Tony Danza in the 2016 Maniscalco effort “Sebastian Says,” “About My Father” starts out as a story heavily narrated by son-of-immigrants Sebastian Maniscalco (himself). Sebastian’s mother and father came from Italy to America, we learn, where they raised their son. The mother has recently died and Sebastian and his father are all that is left of the family. Afraid that her country club-approved, hotel chain-owning family disapproves of his modest Italian immigrant background, Sebastian both fears the prospect and longs to meet his girlfriend Ellie Collins’ parents.

Ellie (Leslie Bibb) is a beautiful, fair-haired artist whose rather monotonous paintings get sold out to a mysterious benefactor at every show. Sebastian is a successful hotel manager for a rival chain. Sebastian is finally invited to the lavish Fourth of July family outing by the Collins. But because he cannot leave his father alone on the holiday, he and Ellie decide to take Salvo with them also to meet the parents, so to speak.

The meeting gets off to a bad start when Ellie’s insanely entitled older brother Lucky (a very funny Anders Holm) shows up to pilot a helicopter to spirit them to a Maryland country club. Ellie’s parents – hotel dynasty scion Bill Collins (the always welcome David Rasche) and “scary” Senator “Tigger” Collins (Kim Cattrall) – are friendly and gracious at the start. Salvo, who has brought his grandmother’s engagement ring for Sebastian to place on Ellie’s finger when (and if) he finally proposes, thinks that he is there to approve of Ellie and her parents, instead of the other way around.

Maniscalco, who has been the star of several comedy specials and who played Crazy Joe Gallo in “The Irishman,” is both the film’s strong suit and its weakness. In addition to starring in the film, he co-wrote the screenplay with Austen Earl, who also wrote “Sebastian Says.” Maniscalco, who has a high-pitched voice, receding hairline and “Jersey Shore” accent, looks older than 42, the stated age of the film’s Sebastian. The real Maniscalco can, however, deliver a zinger with superb timing.

Deft comic actor De Niro has been here before and not just in “Meet the Parents” and its many offspring. He remains the comic master of the character who is just about to blow his stack and likes doing it. This is the funny side of madman Travis Bickle, the clown for whom anger is an aphrodisiac. As the Collins’ “sound bowl”-playing, Kombucha-drinking younger son Doug, Brett Dier (“Jane the Virgin”) is especially good when not-so-ditsy Doug tells his parents that their beloved country club, where only Salvo wants to know what things cost, “was built by slaves.”

When Bill tells Salvo that a piece of art hanging on his wall was by Grandma Moses, Salvo apologizes for belittling his “grandma’s” painting. Salvo and Sebastian have a “cologne bit” that is not really very amusing. De Niro and Maniscalco are relaxed in each other’s company, but the chemistry is lacking. Maniscalco and Bibb are a funny, appealing couple. She remains the secret ingredient in many films. In the film’s funniest sequence, Sebastian goes “jet booting” beside the Collins’ yacht and shows off more than his flying skills in front of Bill and Tigger. “About My Father” actually raises the issue of the “peasant mentality” that vexes some Italian-Americans. It’s a great subject for some other film.

(“About My Father” contains brief partial nudity, profanity and sexually suggestive material)

“This has been such a long labor of love” Melissa McCarthy observed in a virtual global press conference. “It has taken a while to make this beautiful thing.”

Looking every bit like the gazillion dollars it took to make, this is an extravagantly mounted mix of actors – Javier Bardem’s King Triton, McCarthy’s Ursula the Witch, Halle Bailey’s Little Mermaid Ariel – and Ariel’s animated allies, the forgetful fish Flounder (voiced  by Jacob Tremblay), the protective crab Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) and the ditzy diving bird Scuttle (Awkwafina).

McCarthy credits Rob Marshall, the Oscar-nominated directing veteran (“Chicago,” “Mary Poppins Returns”) who first boarded this starry ship in 2018, with making “Mermaid” work.

“Rob sets up this world. It feels so small but it’s this enormous thing,” she said.

“The idea is if we all do our best, maybe we can make a show. He’s just there, swaddled in cashmere, quietly cheering everyone on. The grips. The sound department! It’s an appreciation of all the moving parts it takes to make a movie work and Rob was key, a soft gentle cheerleader.

“The best part? Every little minute of it. It was the rehearsal on this crazy 60-foot clamshell. Or me trying not to cry every time I sang with the tears running down my face anyways.

“The most challenging moment? To do good for Rob and keep up with this cast.”

Atlanta native Halle Bailey, 23, is now Disney’s latest princess. She was 18 when she was cast and the role has had an impact. “I tell people Ariel has helped me find myself. What she had to go through with her passion, drive and speaking up for herself, even if it’s scary, are things I try to do myself now.”

This “Mermaid” had real water and wild waves for its stars.  Bailey recalled the pivotal scene where Ariel finds her Prince Eric – England’s Jonah Hauer-King, 27 – in a raging storm.

“He was thrown in this big tank at Pinewood studios and I had to pick him up and save him. They turn on the lightning, fire and waves in and it feels like we really are in the ocean, in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“And I had to look like, I’m a mermaid. I do this all the time. I tried to lift him up and he kept sinking under because of the boots and he was kicking me.

“We were,” she said with a laugh, “just dying in the water the whole time.”

Melissa McCarthy & Halle Bailey, “The Little Mermaid” (Disney), opens in theaters only, Friday, May 26.

When it comes to shaggy dog sports movies of the late 20th century, few did it better than Ron Shelton. As a writer and director, he understood the appeal of semi-ridiculous, semi-charming men past their prime looking for one last shot at greatness — or at least a half-baked redemption. Sandwiched between the soulful minor league romance of “Bull Durham” and dusty pro golfing dreams of “Tin Cup,” Shelton turned to the high-spirited pickup basketballs games of Los Angeles for 1992′s “White Men Can’t Jump,” a buddy film starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as an unlikely pair who team up to hustle any takers.

But “White Men Can’t Jump” no longer exists to be fondly remembered and rewatched, but as a library title to be reimagined. Shelton is credited as a co-writer here with Kenya Barris and Doug Hall, and that should be the good news. But like so much else that Hollywood endlessly recycles, the question hovering around the edges of the movie is simply: Why?

The original is on Hulu. The new version is on Hulu. All things being equal, what would compel audiences to watch the remake?

Stepping into Harrelson and Snipes’ basketball shoes are Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls, and they have a nice, unforced chemistry together. But they’re stuck inside a movie that lacks shape and propulsion — and the effervescent presence of Rosie Perez and her “Jeopardy!” ambitions — but adds a back story about thwarted potential.

In the first movie, basketball was just a means to an end: Fast cash. Now it’s that plus something more.

Better known for his music career, this is Harlow’s first major role as an actor. He plays a one-time college player named Jeremy, whose dreams died with his two bum knees. Now he’s scrapping by selling detox potions and coaching one-on-one. He’s one of those white guys who tries too hard around Black people — this feels like Barris’ influence on the script; it’s a style of joke he’s returned to often across his projects — but Harlow has a looseness that works. He’s a goof who believes in the power of meditation (when he’s not popping pain pills, a detail that is introduced and then mostly abandoned) and he strolls onto the basketball court wearing Birkenstocks and socks and looking out of place. But he can still hit a three pointer.

Harlow has the benefit of a far more seasoned scene partner in Walls, playing a top high school prospect named Kamal who flamed out after decking a heckler at a game. Ten years later, he’s married with a kid and keeping his head down, working as a package delivery driver. He’s stoic for the most part, except when he rings a doorbell and the homeowner says “Don’t I know you?” and all that repressed bile about his nonexistent basketball career comes back up. Walls brings a sense of melancholy to the role and instead of the brash, cocky guy of the original, he’s skeptical and contemplative and bruised. That gives things a slightly more serious subtext.

Walls has real chops (memorably as Don Cornelius in the “Soul Train” biopic series) but here he’s playing a character sapped of the kind of over-the-top personality that might give the film a stronger comic energy. (Calmatic is the director, who also helmed this year’s “House Party” remake).

Kamal and Jeremy are both in need of fast money, but their pickup game hustle is missing that loose-limbed combination of con-artistry and joke-filled, testosterone-fueled posturing. This should be more fun.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare the two movies, but it’s instructive because the changes don’t deepen or improve the story so much as rob it of what made it interesting in the first place. Harrelson played a mostly likable mess of a man who was his own worst enemy; Snipes played a fast-talking, street savvy type who wasn’t above hustling his own partner. But here, Harlow is closer to the human embodiment of a golden retriever looking for a home, while Walls is saddled with character beats that amount to rolling his eyes at his partner’s weirdo antics.

Even the trash talking is minimal and flat.

In other words, everything feels cleaner. No betrayals. No massive debts owed to scary guys. No real banter. And the women are barely more than plot points, although Teyana Taylor does a lot with the little she’s given as Kamal’s wife. Lance Reddick, who died in March, shows up briefly as Kamal’s father and it’s bittersweet to see him in one of his last roles.

Despite it all, the movie mostly hangs together, even if it lacks some of the visual punch of the original, which shot exclusively at outdoor courts. Too many of the early scenes here take place in dimly lit indoor gyms that give off a claustrophobic feel, although the twosome do eventually play at Watts and Venice Beach, locations also featured in the first film.

But at its core, this isn’t a story about two hustlers. Deep down, both Kamal and Jeremy still pine for the NBA. A truer, more shambolic story would have spent time sorting out why that’s such a pipe dream now that they’re in their late 20s. Instead, in the end the movie chooses fantasy.

Hoop dreams, indeed.

———

‘WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for pervasive language and some drug material)

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: Hulu

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

nmetz@chicagotribune.com

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

At 76, Schrader remains celebrated for provocative, violent thrillers like “Cat People” or “American Gigolo.”  “Gardener” finds mystery and power dynamics in the relationship between Weaver’s mistress of the manor and Edgerton’s titular character, a man with many secrets — and revealing tattoos.

Edgerton’s Narvel Roth is the horticulturalist in charge of the sumptuous Gracewood Gardens estate of Weaver’s demanding owner Norma Haverhill.

She calls Norma, “A lusty woman and one of the best roles I’ve ever had.”

For Schrader, Narvel’s a man’s man, a tough guy of few words. “A big slab of beef.”

For Australia’s Edgerton, 48, Schrader’s classic “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” screenplays remain revelatory. “Guys like me in drama school,” he said, “we were looking at guys like Robert De Niro — and it didn’t occur to us at the time that the performances are as indelible as they are because of the writing in them. Paul’s behind some of my thoughts about becoming an actor.”

Edgerton (the Disney+ “Obi Wan Kenobi,” “The Green Knight”) views “Gardener” as, “A familiar vein in Paul’s work: tranquility colliding with chaos.  Particularly, a man hiding from his past who finds a way to navigate with another person things that happened before.”

“The script was so different from any I’ve ever read,” Weaver said. “It was very simple on top but so much detail and passion.”

“I don’t know about everybody else but listening to discussions about plants and their evolution and decay,” Edgerton offered, “it reminds me in the confidence of the writing of this.  Everyone can see that you find your own way through this story. I found myself thinking about the potential for violence.”

Weaver noted, “Narvel says, ‘Gardening is a belief in the future.’ That illuminated the script for me. I felt it was going to be about love in the end.”

Schrader, more reflective and mellow, added, “I’m from the generation that came in riding the coattails of violence — and that time is kind of gone.

“So the notion of how — and if — we can participate in our redemption evolves. A young man’s notion of Christian redemption is through the blood, like Christ. ‘I’ll be redeemed. If I can’t do that I’ll, shoot somebody.’

“In my film ‘First Reformed,’ he blows up. In ‘The Card Counter’ it happens offscreen. And in this film the song, which was written by a friend, is ‘I never want to leave this world without saying I love you.’”

“Master Gardener”

Rated R. At the Coolidge Corner.

Grade: B

Writer-director Paul Schrader is best known as the writer of the landmark Martin Scorsese masterpiece “Taxi Driver” (1976) – the film that immortalized the line, “You talkin’ to me?” – and the writer-director of such films as “American Gigolo” (1980), “Cat People” (1982), “Affliction” (1997) and more recently “First Reformed” (2017). At 76, Schrader now delivers “Master Gardener,” a “First Reformed”-like third film in a trilogy including “First Reformed” (2017) and “The Card Counter” (2021), all featuring deeply troubled protagonists. In this case, the lead is a horticulturist devoted to maintaining the lavish gardens and grounds of the estate of a demanding dowager (Sigourney Weaver), who calls him, “sweet pea.”

The metaphor is arguably too on-the-nose. In addition to summoning the memory of Voltaire’s “Candide” and its garden, the profession of Schrader’s latest alter ego reminds us that all of Western civilization began in a garden named Eden from which our spiritual parents were expelled.

The oddly-named Narvel Roth (Australian actor Joel Edgerton) – odd for a former neo-Nazi – has a secret. Some time before he became a master gardener, Narvel was a bearded member of a right-wing militia of some sort. Presently, however, he writes in a journal about the three types of gardens. His employer Norma Haverhill, owner of Gracewood Gardens, informs Narvel that she wants him to hire her young and beautiful grandniece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) – another of Schrader’s name-game names.

Maya has fallen in with a bad crowd down the road of Schrader’s mini-universe. It’s Narvel’s job to, excuse the pun, cultivate Maya. She’s a garden, too. Will Narvel have to pull out some weeds in the process? I have no doubt. I love the smell of loam in the morning.

Seeds can endure for over a thousand years, we are told. As it turns out, Narvel has some souvenirs of his dark past in the form of neo-Nazi tatts, including several swastikas, on his torso. Edgerton is intense as Schrader’s latest striver. For reasons not entirely clear to me at least, Norma’s living room is covered – ick – in jellyfish wallpaper. Norma has a big charity auction event coming up. She wants the grounds to look perfect. She also wants Narvel to take her to bed and show her his tatts. Yes, kinky things grow in this garden, too.

Is Narvel redeemed by his profession? “Laborare est orare” (Latin for, “work is prayer”) is true for many of us, Narvel included. A person from out of Narvel’s past named – ahem – Detective Neruda (Esai Morales) reappears, complicating matters even further. Will another Schrader character have to violently drag another young woman out of the clutches of hell? Will there be blood? For Schrader that hell might be a metaphor for his strict Calvinist upbringing, which has given him a stark, lifelong, Bressonian view of the world. It’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” all-the-time and one, original sin and sinner after another. Like Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver,” Narvel feels compelled to save someone from the devil. Like so many of Schrader’s heroes, he simply can’t help himself.

(“Master Gardener” contains profanity, nudity and sexually suggestive content)

“Monica”

Rated R. At Landmark Kendall Square and VOD.

Grade: B+

“Monica” is a modern, gender-transitioning twist on the theme of the prodigal son. The film’s eponymous protagonist Monica (Trace Lysette, “Transparent”) is an unhappy transgender woman, who has lost contact with her birth family for reasons not explained to us at first. But we can guess.

In opening scenes, Monica tries to to contact a man named Jimmy for whom she expresses love. But we have a sense that the relationship is over. Monica, who has a lavish floral tattoo on her shoulder and neck, can be seen giving a man a massage and giving herself an injection of some sort. She is summoned by phone and drives for two days to return to her family in the Midwest to help with the care of her dying mother Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson), who is also losing her memory. Eugenia does not recognize Monica (Or does she?) as her former son. Monica’s brother Paul (Joshua Close), who is married to the likable Laura (Australian Emily Browning) and has three young children with her, claims that he would not recognize Monica on the street as his former brother. This sort of thing helps transform Monica into some sort of mysterious, gender-switching, Gothic/film noir femme fatale, and it turns the film into a kind of modern-day variation on “Out of the Past.”

Also in the home is her mother’s care-giver Leticia (Adriana Barraza). In an attempt to establish a kinship, Laura shows Monica wedding pictures of Laura wearing Eugenia’s wedding dress at her wedding to Paul. Laura refers to Monica as “Aunt Monica” in front of her kids. She seems to want to welcome Monica into the family. Monica has a pillbox that plays music. It’s some sort of family memento (there’s no payoff to this). On her own in her room, Monica makes videos that suggest she makes money performing for followers who pay to see her in sexy and nude poses.

More than a little of the content of “Monica,” which was directed and co-written by L.A.-based Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro (“Hannah”) – and shot in the squarish Academy ratio – is vague to a fault. Monica can be seen wearing a Cocteau Twins t-shirt and spends a lot of time sweeping her hair out of her face. She rummages around in the old, upper-middle class home and finds expensive-looking jewelry to try on. Pallaoro is rightly obsessed with his lead’s strikingly Pre-Raphaelite face. The film is more of a mood piece than a narrative. Ironically, Monica and the still beautiful Eugenia grow closer as Eugenia’s condition worsens. But an acknowledgment that Eugenia recognizes Monica remains elusive.

In the title role, Lysette delivers a courageous, if also often opaque performance. Monica can have self-destructive impulses. In one graphic scene, she has sex with a stranger who picks her up in a bar. No knight in shining armor is showing up to sweep Monica off her feet, I’m afraid. I’m also afraid that I take issue with director Pallaoro’s use of awful Euro-rock music in some scenes. Clarkson is scary as the old woman losing herself in pain and forgetfulness. Eugenia is slipping down a very real rabbit’s hole. Eventually, we learn that Eugenia dropped the adolescent Monica off at a bus stop more than a decade earlier with the words, “I can’t be your mother anymore,” a ringing and familiar rejection for many members of the trans community, no doubt. But “Monica” does not rely on dialogue, something reinforced in the twist ending, which I found surprisingly endearing.

(“Monica” contains simulated sex, nudity and profanity)

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“It Ain’t Over”

Rated PG. At the AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square and suburban theaters.

Grade: A-

Even if you are not a baseball fan, you must see “It Ain’t Over,” Sean Mullin’s wonderful documentary about one of the most underrated major league baseball legends in MLB history. At the 2015 All-Star Game, several “greatest living players” were introduced to an adoring crowd: Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench and Sandy Koufax. Where was Lorenzo Pietro “Yogi” Berra, whose stats are even better than theirs? Nicknamed for the way he sat with his arms and legs crossed waiting for his turn at bat playing sandlot baseball as a youth, Berra started playing professionally in the post-World War II age of Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio. “Joltin’ Joe” was a 6’2” matinee idol with a baseball mitt, who famously married Marilyn Monroe, establishing a pattern for celebrity-sports stars hookups.

Yogi was a “funny looking” 5’7” “human fire hydrant” assigned to catcher after signing with the Yankees, where he excelled and became famous for calling pitches and talking to batters. Berra became such a popular figure in American sports that he inspired a line of comic books. A master of the “art of hitting,” Berra was a feared ”clutch hitter.” But the media turned him into a clown and because he was laid back and gifted with a sense of humor, Yogi went along with it as did his beloved wife Carmen. Yogi helped guide Don Larsen through his famous 1956 World Series “perfect game.” While Berra played for the Yankees in the ’50s, they won the World Series five times in a row.

In addition to his baseball prowess and savvy, Berra was famous for his oft-quoted malapropisms, including “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” which provided the film’s title. Others include, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it” and – my favorite – “It’s like deja vu all over again.” As a manager of the New York Yankees later in his career, Berra feuded famously with owner George Steinbrenner, who infamously sent an assistant to fire Berra. After that insult, Berra vowed never to step inside Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner owned the team. Berra did not relent until Steinbrenner apologized. Berra was an 18-time All-Star, who won 10 World Series Championship rings, more than any other player. In an age when celebrities were recruited to shill for products, Berra was a spokesman for the Garfield, N.J.-created popular chocolate drink Yoo-Hoo. Even the name was funny.

Berra’s biggest fan, his granddaughter Lindsay Berra, a freelance sports journalist from Montclair, N.J., is Berra’s most articulate and entertaining cheerleader and repeat presence in the film. Her admiration for her grandfather – and her semi-mock outrage at the way he has been “underestimated” – is contagious. Others interviewed in Mullin’s film are Berra fans Billy Crystal, Bob Costas, Derek Jeter and Willy Randolph, who recalls how Berra mentored him. Berra was one of the first to welcome Jackie Robinson to Major League Baseball when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

One might accuse Mullin of being more thin-skinned than Berra himself. Berra had a remarkable and historical career and by almost all accounts enjoyed a rewarding family life in Montclair, N.J. with his beloved “Carm” and their children. A streak of false outrage takes a bit of the air out of “It Ain’t Over.” But not even this can dim the star known as Yogi. There may never be anyone like him in American pop culture again. Or as he might have put it, “It’s not the heat. It’s the humility.”

(“It Ain’t Over” contains some rude humor and brief war images)

Persistent COVID cases aside: The pandemic must be over, because look at “The Super Mario Bros. Movie!” It’s made $1.2 billion worldwide. Where babysitter movies point the way to recovery — the movies that serve as babysitters, that is — an entire entertainment industry prays for many more to follow.

The summer of ‘23 may be reliant on the customary franchises and name brands, as you’ll see below. But if a film as lovely and near-perfect as Celine Song’s debut feature “Past Lives” can likewise qualify as a summer picture, going by the June-August calendar, then a summer place sounds pretty good to me.

Here are 10 on the horizon, most not yet screened as of press time. Release dates vary by market.

“Past Lives” (June 2): A beautiful romantic triangle spanning nations (South Korea, America) and three decades, this one’s about a writer (Greta Lee), her childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo) and her husband (John Magaro). Without wasting a frame or a word, writer-director Celine Song offers a steadily absorbing matter of three hearts in close proximity.

“Asteroid City” (June 16): Set in 1955, Wes Anderson’s latest concocts a fictional, Roswell-esque desert town, where the “Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet” convention experiences a disruption of epic proportions. Anderson has assembled a typically epic star ensemble, including Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Hong Chau, Steve Carell, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Jeff Goldblum — actually it’s easier to list actors not in “Asteroid City.”

“The Blackening” (June 16): A horror film studies seminar, under the gun! When seven Black friends share a remote cabin together, a killer tests their knowledge of horror movie tropes and racial biases in director Tim Story’s thriller comedy. Or comedy thriller. It’s a thromedy!

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (June 30): Many middle-aged tears of gratitude rolled down many cheeks when the trailer for the return of Harrison Ford as Indy came into our world. James Mangold directs and co-wrote this picture, which co-stars Pheobe Waller-Bridge in a fantastical action adventure that traffics, apparently, in time travel and Nazis. Indy has not changed his mind about the latter since “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” four Indys and 42 summers ago.

“Harold and the Purple Crayon” (June 30): The 1955 children’s classic by Crockett Johnson becomes the first live-action spectacle from animation workhorse Carlos Saldanha (of the “Ice Age” and “Rio” franchises). Brady Ryan, Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery and Zooey Deschanel star.

“Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning — Part One” (July 12): The seventh Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt mission, with the second “Dead Reckoning” due in 2024. That’s a lot of reckoning. In this latest stunt-astic mayhem, the Impossible Mission Force scrambles from Italy to Norway to the U.K. to the UAE, and Cruise does things few if any other megastars would have the nerve to attempt, no matter what the piece of the gross. Christopher McQuarrie directs.

“Barbie” (July 21): Already a legend in release-date-matchup lore, director Greta Gerwig’s retina-splitting beach fantasy of multiple Barbies, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is going up against …

“Oppenheimer” (July 21): Christopher Nolan’s latest stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist whose Manhattan Project led to the creation of the device that will surely someday spell Earth’s demise. (Win some, lose some.) An eagerly awaited drama with a cast including Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek and, no doubt, basically Nolan’s previous cinematic evidence, some truly striking imagery.

“Meg 2: The Trench” (Aug. 4): The delightfully eventful trailer promises a sequel to the prehistoric sea beast thriller “The Meg” that eats the first one for breakfast. Jason Statham returns to remind these digital sea punks who’s in charge.

“Blue Beetle” (Aug. 18): We were running a little low on superhero franchises, so DC (the current keeper of Blue Beetle, who came on the scene in 1939) thought, well, let’s go. Angel Manuel Soto (“Charm City Kings”) directs the origin story of how Jaime Reyes (played by Xolo Maridueña) transforms into the Blue Beetle by way of an “ancient relic of alien biotechnology called the Scarab.” I just call it the Scab, but I’m all about syllable removal.

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A ‘90s-era phenomenon, Anna Nicole Smith became famous for emulating Marilyn Monroe’s blond bombshell appearance, first on the pages of Playboy and later as a model for Guess jeans. Smith’s kinship with the ghost of Monroe always came across as superficial. They cultivated a similar look and both would rise to stardom from humble beginnings, only for it to end in tragedy. But that’s a simplistic understanding of either woman.

For anyone old enough to remember Smith’s heyday, the Netflix documentary “Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me” doesn’t reveal unknown facets of her life so much as lay them out in one place. It’s a deeply sad story, but the title of director Ursula Macfarlane’s film is also ironic. I’m not sure anyone here, from those interviewed to the filmmakers themselves, really knows much about Smith beyond what she presented to the world.

Hollywood and certain corners of the media have a way of chewing people up and spitting them out, and there has been a recent spate of streaming documentaries claiming to right those wrongs, while also exploiting their subjects all over again. Are these projects — about Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson and Brittany Murphy — trying to make sense of history, or make entertainment of it?

Celebrity comes with a cost and Smith certainly experienced her fair share of its downside.

Her modeling career wasn’t the springboard she’d hoped for. Her acting career never amounted to much beyond some bit roles. With plenty of interest in her comings and going, but few other career options — plus her tendency to court the paparazzi, plus her marriage to an elderly billionaire she met during her time as an exotic dancer — she was treated as a punchline.

But who was she behind the persona she created for the media? Even as the documentary attempts a more humane telling of her story, she remains someone who was defined by events in her life, rather than her own sense of the world.

Unlike Pamela Anderson, that other ‘90s-era pinup who also felt the sting of tabloid celebrity and was recently the subject of a Netflix documentary, Smith is not here to tell her own story or reflect on anything in hindsight. So we’re left to rely on old interviews, in which she is vague or evasive about the details of her childhood in small-town Texas. Was she raised in an abusive home, as she suggests? Or was that something she invented to garner interest and sympathy, as alleged by her late mother? The documentary simply presents both possibilities and leaves it at that.

I didn’t pay much attention to Smith at the height of her fame, nor the depths. The media coverage seemed empty and sordid and exploitative. There was nothing there. It was a bit dull? But you could say that about any number of present-day boldface names (including the Kardashians) and influencers who have followed in her wake. I think the difference with Smith is that as adept as she was at creating an image, she wasn’t business savvy. She didn’t understand that her initial flush of fame was a small window in which she needed to surround herself with the right kind of people. Namely, those who understood how to leverage her talents and specific appeal, rather than treat her as a disposable commodity. She was sweet and bubbly. There’s always a market for that.

It’s not that she tried to make it on her own. Quite the opposite. She just had bad instincts about who she surrounded herself with. “She kept looking for somebody else to save her,” is how one of her lawyers puts it. Too often, she infantilized herself, sometimes literally; meeting her estranged father for the first time, she shows up wearing pigtails.

Her marriage to oil baron J. Howard Marshall followed that pattern as well. He was 89 at the time; she was 26. If their relationship was transactional, it doesn’t come across as cynical in the footage we see of them together. There’s a tenderness they shared. How often were they living under the same roof? We hear plaintive voicemail messages he leaves for her (I wish the film explained how and from whom these messages were obtained) and it suggests the two were perhaps not living together at all. But they both got something beneficial out of the arrangement. He seemed to adore her and she seemed to adore him right back, along with the money he funneled her way. She was ultimately denied any portion of his fortune after his death, and the inheritance became the subject of a protracted legal fight (which continued even after Smith’s death in 2007) and that became yet more chum for the tabloids.

Things fell apart for Smith due to a number of factors, including a pill addiction and the death of her 20-year-old son Daniel just days after she gave birth to her second child, a girl named Dannielynn.

Watching the documentary, it’s impossible not to think of Dannielynn, who is now 16. It appears she has no involvement with the film. She was just a few months old when Smith died, and she has been raised in relative obscurity by her father, Larry Birkhead.

But the privacy of her childhood seems to be coming to an end. They both attended the Kentucky Derby earlier this month, a social event where the whole point is to be seen and photographed. Birkhead also gave interviews to People magazine and E! about his daughter and you have to wonder: To what end?

If anyone saw firsthand how fickle and damaging celebrity can be, it’s Birkhead. Why would he want anything like that for his daughter?

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‘ANNA NICOLE SMITH: YOU DON’T KNOW ME’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Netflix

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©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.