While far from out of this world, “Fly Me to the Moon” stays aloft with a fun premise, star power, a nice tempo and good vibes.

The romantic comedy set in the late 1960s against the backdrop of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union pairs Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum as, respectively, a freewheeling New York City marketing specialist and a by-the-books NASA launch director.

Directed by Greg Berlanti (“Love, Simon”), “Fly Me to the Moon” is jaunty and jazzy from its musically enhanced opening credits sequence, which brings the viewer up to speed on the relevant history, including the tragedy of the Apollo 1 mission in early 1967, which greatly informs the behavior of Tatum’s Cole Davis.

It is now seven months from the launch of the Apollo 11 mission, which, if all goes according to plan, will see the U.S. put the first men on the moon in mid-1969. To say Cole is wound a little tightly is an understatement — he’s obsessed with catching a black cat having the run of the Cape Kennedy facility in Florida — but, in fairness to him, he is nearly blown to smithereens in the movie’s first few minutes.

It is then we also are introduced to Johansson’s Kelly Jones, who, pretending to be pregnant, sells some male car executives — who initially do their best to dismiss her — on an advertising campaign that would sell not just the automobiles’ speed but also their safety, which, she says, will appeal to the wives of the prospective customers.

NASA needs that creativity and do-whatever-it-takes attitude to resell the American public on the Apollo program, believes Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a shadowy government operative in the administration of President Richard Nixon. After all, the agency is working to fulfill the late President John F. Kennedy’s desire to see American men on the moon while the war in Vietnam is costing American lives — and American taxpayers, with members of Congress considering pulling NASA’s funding. Thus, Moe makes Kelly an offer she can’t refuse.

So she’s off to Florida with assistant Ruby (Anna Garcia), who is conflicted about doing anything for Nixon. There, Kelly encounters Cole in a diner, where he puts out the fire she’s started with a book and a candle. He proceeds to tell her that while she’s incredibly beautiful and he’d love to get to know her, he simply doesn’t have time.

Next thing he knows, she’s bouncing around a restricted area at Kennedy and all up in his very demanding business. The attraction he felt seemingly gone, he banishes her and Ruby to a bleak, windowless office.

That won’t stop Kelly, who, along with having a window installed by facility personnel, sets about marketing the mission without his help, going so far as to hire actors to portray him and his right-hand man, Henry Smalls (Ray Romano), in interviews with the press with which Cole refuses to be involved.

As “Fly Me to the Moon” — a little long at more than two hours — dances on and launch day approaches, Cole and Kelly must learn to work together, of course, which (surprise!) brings them closer together. But, wouldn’t you know it, issues crop up that keep them soaring off in opposite directions.

These are brush fires, however. If Cole catches wind of a high-stakes endeavor Moe coerces Kelly into undertaking — we won’t spoil the nature of it, as it’s pretty clever, along with coming deep into the proceedings — it very well could spell the end to any stellar future the two could share.

As a tandem, Johansson (“Jojo Rabbit,” “Black Widow”) and Tatum (“The Lost City,” “Magic Mike’s Last Dance”) are … fine. You may find yourself, as we did, spending time while watching “Fly Me to the Moon” thinking about the myriad potential Hollywood pairings that may have made the movie more consistently dynamic. That said, they hit the major moments well enough.

Working from the first produced screenplay by Rose Gilroy, Berlanti keeps things moving at a peppy-enough clip — aided by an enjoyable selection of songs from the era selected by music supervisor Season Kent the ever-moving camera of director of photography Dariusz Wolski — that you almost don’t notice that writer and director have failed to flesh out any of the characters aside from Kelly and Cole. Given Romano’s presence, you’d think more would have been made of Henry, who’s barely more than a background player.

Not surprisingly, Harrelson (“The People vs. Larry Flynt”), playing a character somewhat similar to the one he occupied in the so-so 2023 series “The White House Plumbers,” finds his moments to be comically impactful. However, the comedy MVP is Jim Rash, whose Lance Vespertine — an eccentric movie director on Kelly’s payroll — essentially is the actor’s Dean Pelton from “Community” with a different look. (No complaints here.)

From a production standpoint, you can’t help but notice that, for a movie built around the launch of a spacecraft, “Fly Me to the Moon” doesn’t exactly boast the most expensive-looking sets or props. On the other hand, with a reported budget of about $100 million, it’s pretty steep for a rom-com,

Hey, can you really put a price on good vibes?

‘Fly Me to the Moon’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for some strong language, and smoking)

Running time: 2:12

How to watch: In theaters on Friday, July 12

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Oz Perkins’ eerie, occultist serial killer horror thriller “Longlegs” opens with a psyche-rattling sequence, barely a minute or two long, in which he crafts a chilling sense of shock, awe and confounding humor simply through shot composition, editing and performance. It unsettles the viewer on a bone-deep level, the tension then bursting like a bubble on a bravura music cue.

It is scary, only because of how it is presented formally, not necessarily thanks to any of the basic actions or imagery on screen, and it is thrilling, because Perkins announces from the outset his audacious approach to tone as well as his mastery of cinematic technique to create suspense. The tension never lets up throughout “Longlegs,” though it is peppered with a dry, black humor that somehow just makes everything more disturbing.

One should know as little as possible about “Longlegs” for the best viewing experience: in fact, feel free to stop reading now if experiencing an entirely unpredictable plot and the sensation of sickening dread mixed with bleak humor for 100 minutes sounds like an appealing cinematic experience (it is). But we shall proceed here, because “Longlegs” is just too rich a text to unpack, and the obstacle course of writing around its true horrors is a worthy challenge.

Though it’s a facile comparison, “Longlegs” feels like Perkins’ “The Silence of the Lambs,” in that it follows a young female FBI agent as she plays cat and mouse with a serial killer (there’s also a shared enthusiasm for British ‘70s rock on behalf of our respective boogeymen). Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) has the preternatural skill and drive of Clarice Starling, and both characters similarly fail to mask their vulnerability with toughness, though in different ways.

Blair Underwood in a scene from the movie “Longlegs.” (Neon/TNS)

Harker’s not a people person but she is highly intuitive, perhaps even a little bit psychic. She’s recruited by Special Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) for precisely that quality, to start reinvestigating the cold case of a series of possibly related family annihilations wherein a person named “Longlegs” has claimed a kind of responsibility through coded notes. As she dives deeper into research, it’s revealed that Harker is strangely connected to these cases (is she psychic or are these memories?).

Nicolas Cage plays a strange suspect in one of his more outre and unrecognizable performances. He is brilliant and clearly having a blast committing wholeheartedly to his wacky and terrifying choices (though Cage has never not committed above and beyond in every performance). Alicia Witt also appears as Harker’s mother, with whom the agent has a close, but complicated, relationship. Monroe, with a sort of placid sullenness, is the eye of the storm of these colorful characters, including her bombastic boss Carter.

The performances work in tandem with the astonishingly meticulous and precise filmmaking. Perkins (who is the son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins) has a marvelously methodical eye in crafting cinematic image and sound. With cinematographer Andres Arochi, who works magic with the structure of light, Perkins centers Harker in carefully composed shots where she is dwarfed by the environment, emphasizing her smallness and sense of overwhelm. The camera switches between objective observation of our protagonist, and alignment with her intuitive point of view and actions. Slow, creeping zooms mimic her vision, and backwards tracking shots continuously drag her into danger, her gun always in hand.

The camera bears an omniscient, ominous knowingness that can’t always be trusted, but repeated shots and scenarios suggest connection and comparison between different characters and across time, so there is an internal rhythm to the filmmaking even as the story defies traditional kinds of logic.

“Longlegs” is also a masterpiece of production design (by Danny Vermette) and set decoration (by Trevor Johnston) that suggests a time and place (mid-1990s, mid-Atlantic) and fills in that world with pertinent visual information. Perkins also fills the cast with interesting and memorable supporting roles that make the world of “Longlegs” bigger, richer and weirder, and helps us to understand the characters further, seeing how they interact with the world around them.

However, “Longlegs” does not offer up easy answers about itself on a macro level. Watching it feels like a riddle, the film itself a code to crack, and by the time it’s done, the whole puzzle has not yet been revealed. That’s OK. Understanding everything is not the point in a film that offers such a delicious roller-coaster ride of bad vibes. Just jump on board and let Perkins guide the way — the journey is more than worth it.

‘Longlegs’

4 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for bloody violence, disturbing images and some language)

Running time: 1:41

How to watch: In theaters on Friday, July 12

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An affordable housing developer has entered a purchase agreement to convert Catholic Charities’ vacant Mary Hall building in downtown St. Paul into an 88-unit supportive housing facility for the recently-homeless. Those plans have drawn the attention of a seemingly unlikely opponent — the neighboring Catholic church where Catholic Charities was founded.

Aeon, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that has been building affordable housing since the 1980s, requested that the city make an exception to zoning rules that require a 600 foot buffer between “congregate living facilities.”

The future Aeon apartment building would be 60 feet from Catholic Charities’ longstanding Dorothy Day/Higher Ground homeless shelter, which already offers apartment-style housing with support services on its upper levels, requiring what’s known as a “major variance.”

So far, city officials have smiled on the plan. The St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals voted 5-0 to grant Aeon’s variance request on June 24.

But the decision allowing construction to move forward at 438 Dorothy Day Place has drawn opposition from the downtown Church of the Assumption on West Seventh Street. The Catholic parish, which dates to the 1850s, filed an appeal to the St. Paul City Council, which will host a public hearing on the matter next month.

“This is a substantial variance which reduces the required separation by 90%,” reads the church’s appeal. “The Board of Zoning Appeals disregarded clear testimony that a concentration of similar housing has already resulted in increased crime and diminished safety to residents, guests and visitors to the immediate neighborhood.”

A spokesperson for the church could not be reached for comment on Thursday. The city council, which cannot comment on appeals in advance of a public hearing because it serves in a quasi-judicial role, will hear from both sides on Aug. 7.

Housing for the very poor

On its website, the church notes that it sits “tucked in the heart of downtown St. Paul … close to the Dorothy Day Center and Catholic Charities, places that care for society’s overlooked. It was at the Assumption that Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis was born. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the church ran an orphanage, known today as St. Joseph’s Home for Children.”

The six-story Mary Hall has been used as housing — including housing for the very poor — since its construction in the 1920s as a dormitory for student nurses. The site has a longstanding history of providing services for the homeless, though its been vacant since 2019, when Catholic Charities completed the construction of the two-building Dorothy Day Place campus, which is located next door to Mary Hall.

Dorothy Day Place currently serves nearly 1,000 people per day through both emergency shelter and permanent housing with supportive services. About 75 residents were relocated there from Mary Hall when the former closed five years ago. In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Ramsey County used Mary Hall as a temporary location for people experiencing homelessness and showing symptoms of COVID-19. Among other uses, it housed the Listening House day program.

“For decades, Catholic Charities Mary Hall served as a hub where Catholic Charities and other service providers offered shelter, housing and services to those in need,” said Catholic Charities’ spokesperson Therese Gales.

Affordable housing concentration

Still, arguments that affordable housing has become too concentrated in downtown St. Paul and other corners of the Twin Cities are mounting.

Located above Catholic Charities’ St. Paul Opportunity Center, the Dorothy Day Residence consists of 177 housing units, including 77 efficiency apartments and 100 single-room occupancy units. The Higher Ground St. Paul residences, located above the Higher Ground St. Paul shelter next door, has 193 single-room occupancy units.

A year ago, a group of Black ministers associated with the StairStep Foundation filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota, Minnesota Housing and the Metropolitan Council, accusing state and regional funders of placing too many affordable units along the Green Line in St. Paul and in other low-income, high-minority urban areas ill-equipped to provide resources for those in need.

But efforts to relocate services for the very poor to wealthier areas have sometimes withered against fierce community opposition.

Ramsey County this year announced plans to relocate its Safe Space overnight emergency shelter from downtown Kellogg Boulevard to the Luther Seminary campus in St. Anthony Park, but had to scrap those plans when Luther pulled out of the arrangement after heavy criticism from residential neighbors.

Aeon has been working on the Mary Hall project “for a number of years,” said Laura Monn Ginsburg, a spokesperson for the nonprofit, in a written statement. “We have observed and share many of the same concerns as the Church regarding safety and security in the area and have made commitments for increased resident services and safety provisions based on the environment.”

“This housing is intended to provide a continuum of housing to serve residents as they are ready to be stabilized in the community,” she continued. “We see the area as a focal point to stabilize broadly – our lens does not just focus on the Mary Hall development. We look forward to working with the Church of the Assumption and stakeholders as a collective to strengthen stability in this area.”

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