I’m struggling to tap out a half-assed review of Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special (Warner Bros., 3.18), which I saw on the Warner Bros. lot yesterday afternoon. Struggling because my flight to Seoul is leaving pretty soon. I’m as much of a fan of Nichols and his two standout films, Take Shelter and Mud, as the next guy, but Midnight Special (Warner Bros., 3.18) definitely underwhelms.

It’s a grim, grubby paranoid road-chase thing — a kind of shitkicker film about peeling rubber and hiding out in shitty motels and dodging the authorities — mixed in with doses of Starman, E.T. and Close Encounters.

It doesn’t tell you very much but bit by bit you gradually piece it together, but for my money it felt like too much work for too little payoff. I actually found Nichols’ story irritating. When it ended I was muttering to myself, “That’s it?” As I driving back over the hill I was saying to myself, “You can’t hit a homer every time at bat.”

Nichols’ script is about an eight-year-old alien (Jaeden Lieberher) who’s trying to reunite with an alien community that’s been keeping tabs on our affairs and behavior.  Like the Trafalmadoreans did in Slaughterhouse Five and Michael Rennie‘s alien fellows did in The Day The Earth Stood Still.  

The action is about the kid’s father (Michael Shannon), mother (Kirsten Dunst) and the father’s friend/accomplice (Joel Edgerton) trying like hell to deliver the kid to a rendezvous point somewhere in a rural southern backwater. Naturally there’s an army of government guys trying to catch them. With the exception, that is, of a sympathetic good-guy scientist (Adam Driver) who gradually decides he wants to help, etc.

I respected Nichols’ small-scale, minimal-tech approach but overall the film is really not all that interesting. It’s one of those films that make you ask “is something cool going to happen here  or what?” I began to lose patience around the 45-minute mark. It has one good scene (a kind of meteoric bombardment of a gas-station complex) but it’s basically telling an annoying, one-note story. But critics like Nichols and so nearly everyone has given this thing a pass. I’m telling you straight that it’s pretty much a  moderate burn. An interesting, indie-styled burn but a burn nonetheless.

Guy: “I feel like getting out. Wanna catch a movie or something?” Girl: “I don’t know. Depends. Is anything good playing?” Guy: “I dunno, lemme check.”

I’ve no idea if Mildred Rogers, the tragic character created by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1915 novel, was a reflection of a woman he knew or observed first-hand or a type of person he’d heard or read about.  Either way I know this is the kind of tale that would never be re-made today. The 1964 film version (i.e., the only one of the three adaptations I’ve seen) is a drag to sit through. Kim Novak‘s Mildred is so relentlessly self destructive, and so weirdly incomprehensible. This is one depressing, downish, nihilistic film. But even if someone re-made it, not even the most clueless marketing exec would approve copy like you see on this poster. The culture of ’64 was just sexist and crusty enough to use this, which of course was a reflection of male attitudes about femme fatales. I was just..I don’t know, taken aback when I saw it.

Taped/posted two days ago by somebody with Samantha Bee‘s Full Frontal. Until I watched this last night I’d honestly never (a) considered the possibility that Donald Trump has attracted a certain strata of younger educated supporters or (b) considered what their reasons might be for deciding to vote for him. If any under-35 Trump supporters with a couple of years of college are reading, please explain, elaborate upon, dismiss, rationalize or whatever.

Jodie Foster‘s Money Monster (Sony/TriStar, 5.13), a politically-themed hostage thriller that seems to sorta kinda resemble Costa Gavras‘ Mad City, will apparently screen at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, according to trade reports. It will probably screen as a second-nighter on Thursday, 5.12 — the same day and almost the same hour as the U.S. commercial debut.

In other words, Money Monster might be okay or entertaining, but it’s probably nothing to throw your critical hat in the air about. Top-tier U.S. critics will have seen it before the festival begins, of course. The producers are simply looking to use Cannes to promote the European openings, which happen the same weekend.

Cannes is the greatest international festival of all, of course, but I’m focusing on U.S.-produced films for the moment, and what serious Cannes-o-philes care most about in terms of potential U.S. entries are the big-bets — the possible award-season contenders that may not open until the fall. In other words, not films like Money Monster or any other “commercial”-sounding title set to open in May or June.

Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, a period drama about faith, devotion, religious persecution and torture, would be a big bet. Cannes critics, trust me, will find ways to praise or at least be kind to this thing one way or the other. What critic isn’t in thrall to Scorsese? I would be frankly stunned if it doesn’t appear on the Croisette two months hence.

Oliver Stone‘s Snowden (Open Road, 9.16) would be another, although it’s been kicked around so much release date-wise that I have my concerns, not to mention Open Road’s decision to open it during the Toronto Film Festival — never a good sign.

I’ve been nursing a left-field suspicion that Damien Chazelle‘s La-La Land (Summit, 12.16) might play Cannes…maybe. Because it’s screening again this weekend for L.A. research audiences (the second time over the last few weeks) and I just have this feeling that Summit execs believe they have something here. Plus Team La-La has every reason to expect critical support for what I’m told is basically an homage to old-fashioned movie musicals, but shot in a modern-day mode. If any group is going to “get” this movie, Cannes critics (most of whom are already favorably disposed towards Chazelle by way of being Whiplash fans) will.

And what about Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea (Amazon/Roadside)? The domestic family drama is sure to build up an even greater head of steam by way of British and European critics, not to mention those U.S. critics who weren’t able to see it two months ago in Park City.  Then again the Roadside/Amazon guys may decide to hold it until Telluride/Toronto. Who knows?

Watch again the new Ben-Hur trailer and pay attention to the scene when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur, unjustly accused by Messala of plotting to kill a Roman Judean governor, is told that his mother and sister may be crucified. Huston’s response is to scream “Nooo!!” Here’s an mp3 of that moment. I’m sorry but any time a movie character so bellows it’s almost always a tip-off that the film will be mediocre.

Face-punching is another indication of trouble in an ancient-period film. Nobody punched anyone in William Wyler’s 1959 version — lashings and crucifixions but no knuckle sandwiches. But there’s a whole lotta sluggin’ — jabs, right crosses, uppercuts — in Timur Bekmambetov’s film.

And lastly, please pay attention to the moment when Morgan Freeman‘s Sheik Ilderim asks Jack Huston‘s Judean prince for his name, and Huston answers “Ben-Hur.” Who self-announces or self-identifies by their last name? When Charlton Heston was asked the same question by Jack Hawkins in the ’59 version, he answered “Judah Ben-Hur.”

If TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider had endured the same ordeal (i.e., washed up on a beach after escaping three years of servitude as an oar slave) and then was asked his name by Sheik Ilderim, would he answer “Sneider?” No, he would give his first and last name.

I’ll be happy to be proved wrong, but I’ve predicted time and again that Timur Bekmambetov‘s Christian-pandering Ben-Hur (Paramount, 8.12) will be a low-rent, CG-fortified blunt instrument — a Ben-Hur for fans of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. But let’s be fair about this. The oar-slave and sea-battle sequences might be flagrantly CG-ish, but at least they’re more persuasive than the fake models-and-water tank footage used in William Wyler‘s 1959 classic of the same name.

You can sense that Jack Huston‘s performance as Judah Ben-Hur is going to be respectably sturdy; the trailer also suggests that Toby Kebbell‘s Messala will be a kind of moustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash thing — he seems to lack the studly gravitas that Stephen Boyd brought to the role in ’59. And they’ve got Morgan Freeman playing Sheik Ilderim, the role that Hugh Griffith played (and won an Oscar for) in the ’59 film. London is Falling, Evan Almighty, this…is there anything Freeman won’t do for a buck?

The new version, co-written by Keith R. Clarke and John Ridley, apparently adheres to the basic story bones of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, but — be warned! — it appears to have eliminated Quintus Arias, the Roman general played by Jack Hawkins — at least as far as the sea-battle scenes are concerned.