Movie Nation

A little charm is meant to go a very long way in the daft and twee Greek American comedy “A Spartan Dream.”

Never quite funny but aspiring to “cute,” it serves up a little Greek history — some of it in fantasy form (NOT a “true story”) — along with Greek culture and Greek grievance in a love story that like many things about this movie, never gets off the ground.

Pete Bundic of Netflix’s “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” series stars as Brad, a college-age son of a widowed and broke Greek diner owner in New Jersey sent back to The Olde Country to sell a piece of inherited property.

But evicting Uncle George (Nikos Tsergas) and Aunt Marigo (Isadora Deli) will take guts and maybe a little “This is just business” heartlessness, as aunt and unclde have lived in the house with an orchard Brad’s late mother, George’s sister, inherited for over 26 years.

Further complicating matters is the cute Greek teen Brad’s aunt and uncle took in, Gorgo (Georgia Mesariti). Brad practices his Greek, listens to his Greek history lectures on tape and absorbs the culture he inherited but never experienced first hand.

Brad starts learning the minute he gets off the plane, waylaid by a too-helpful cabbie (Kostas Koronaios) who takes him to see the objects this “Spartan” lad’s ancestral home, Vapheio, is most famous for — the Vapheio gold cups.

It’s 1987, and Greece’s famous actress turned Minister of Culture, Melina Mercuri (Katerina Didaskalou) has gotten serious about demanding the British return the Parthenon Marbles that Britain’s Lord Elgin “bought” from the Greece-occupying Turks over 170 years before.

Brad wrestles with his responsibility to his father, his empathy for his Greek relatives and those in the flat-broke town they live in, his attraction to young Gorgo, a country in the midst of a 220 day drought and a heritage that keeps manifesting itself in halucinations and dreams of Spartans of the past.

It’s no wonder Spartan-expat Brad snaps.

Athens still owes Sparta a debt, he figures. And the way to get them to pay attention and pay up is to restart Sparta’s ancient Peloponnesian War with Athens. Do this on the verge of a Queen Elizabeth visit to Greece and it’ll make headlines and an international stink.

All Mercuri wants to do is shame the old monarch into giving back the marbles cut off from the Parthenon and displayed, for well over a century, in the British Museum.

The plot is loosely borrowed from Leonard Wibberley’s “The Mouse that Roared,” an early film hit for Peter Sellers from over sixty years ago. Start a war nobody intends to fight as a fund-raising exercise.

But there’s almost no comic pop to any of this, with few scenes and few players acting them out making a comical impression. The girl slaps the guy a few times more than he has coming. The scheming part of “plan” is underwritten and written off.

The cabbie named Roy Rogers is the most promising laugh, and he’s more of a philosopher than a comic foil.

“There is no coincidence! Gods make the puzzle. Gods solve the puzzle. And all we do is hang on!”

Didaskalou evokes a hint of the grande dame Mercuri, but sure laughs are underscripted and the direction (by Michael A. Nickles, billed as “M. Achilles” here) is flatfooted and comically tone-deaf.

Our leading man has echoes of a Colin Hanks at his most colorless, not a good thing.

Guys, getting finance to film a comedy as working vacation in Greece is the easy part. Making a comedy that plays is where the “work” comes in. “A Spartan Dream” loses too much in translation. Apparently.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Peter Bundic, Katerina Didaskalou, Georgia Mesariti, Nikos Tsergas,
Kostas Koronaios and Renos Haralambidis

Credits: Directed by M. Achilles (Michael A. Nickles), scripted by Leonidas Demas and George Demas. A Freestyle release on Amazon Prime, other streamers.

Running time: 1:37

“The Debt Collector” is a rigidly, laughably formulaic martial arts thriller that takes forever and a day to tick off the checklist of ingredients of that formula.

The plot of this Thai tale is so moldy, with one mandatory waypoint or plot point following another, it’s sprouted its own rainforest.

But hey, the fights are OK and the chases pass muster. More or less.

Nadec Kugimiya of the “Death Whisperer” movies is our anti-hero, Num. We meet him as he’s shooting and slapping, beating and butchering a “deadbeat” debtor in hock to Num’s boss. Riddling the debtor with bullets isn’t just a bad business model. It lands him in prison.

But hard-hearted and handsome Num underwent a Buddhist spiritual conversion during his decade in The Joint. His priest/monk (Paphon Jirahitaphat) tells him “You are released from your suffering,” when he gets out. It’s implied that he’s released from the need to make others suffer, too.

But that delivery job he takes puts him in contact with street vendor Granny Lek (Kunkanich Khumkrong) and her tiny granddaughter (Ploypaphas Fonkaewsiwaporn). Num isn’t likely to stand by while her cart and business is repeatedly trashed by loan shark “debt collectors” thugs just like he used to be.

Being newly passive and “enlightened,” he pays Granny’s way out of the violence he sees them facing.

“May Buddha protect a good man like you.”

The problem is, that was just one payment. Everybody at the bottom of the social ladder seems in hock to this pale, thin punk Po (Daou Pittaya Saechua) with the hair-trigger temper.

As Num is forced to intervene, that puts him in Po’s sights, in the crosshairs of Po’s hulkish enforcer (Jack Jonathan Holman), on the radar of corrupt cops (Chaiwat Thongsaeng) and crime boss Madame Pim (Nualprang Trichit), who runs things in the city underworld.

There’s sure to be trouble.

The fist, firearm and knife fights are good enough in that “We’ve all seen better” sense. The same goes for the chases — adequate, nothing special.

But it’s the hoary plot that really grates. Our hero grew up in an orphanage, and guess who was his best bud there? Guess how the Dragon Lady crime boss figures into the hero and the villains’ histories?

Don’t bother guessing what happens to the people Num takes an interest in or advice from. Don’t expect no one to say “Using violence is never the answer” because somebody, sure as shooting, will.

Director and co-writer Surapong Ploensang (“Cracked” was his) and his co-writers pile on the cliches — a little terminal illness here, a few past victims haunting someone there — in this not-so-epic epic.

Pacing has been the downfall of many a thriller, and this 80 minute movie packed in a 132 minute package underscores that. If your movie’s slow enough, there’s more time for screenwriting mischief, more minutes allowed for all these superfluous cliches and tropes.

Cut this calamity to the bone and it might go down easier, and it certainly would pass by faster.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Nadech Kugimiya, Daou Pittaya Saechua,
Nualprang Trichit, Paphon Jirahitaphat, Jack Jonathan Holman and Chaiwat Thongsaeng

Credits: Directed by Surapong Ploensang, scripted by Ornusa Dasawaia Pun Homcheon and Surapong Ploensang. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:12

“Unholy Communion” is a lukewarm mystery-thriller about a hot-button topic.

A serial killer exacts vengeaunce on child-molesting Catholic priests in the aftermath of what used to be the biggest sex scandal in history.

These days, with a pedophile-tolerant Catholic-packed Supreme Court protecting the Pedophile in Chief and untold scores of fellow predators and accomplices, and their enablers in Congress, we don’t hear much about the thousands of crimes and the parrish-shuffling pedophile priests that were the church’s cover-up of choice any more.

The mystery in this “Communion” is obvious, stripping any hope of suspense. The situations and settings are generic and the performances are generally tepid. So save your prayers for this one.

It’s a Minnesota Iron Range (filmed in Minneapolis) tale of decades of abuse bringing murderous revenge down on the small town of Scandia.

Adam Bartley of TV’s “Longmire” is Chris, police chief in a two-cop town, the sort of softy who takes home the first murder victim’s retriever to his wife (Iréna Flury) and kids.

The testy county CSI agent (Laura Espring) and pedantic medical examiner (Casey E. Lewis), whom the agent loathes, will be Chief Majek’s only real help in tracking down whoever made Father Doyle (Patrick Thomas O’Brien) eat his rosary beads before shooting him in the head.

Sepia-toned flashbacks to the priest’s criminal history send the message that he had it coming. He won’t be the last. A little priest-to-choirboy Latin is the clue that sets that up.

Writer-director Patrick Coyle (“The Public Domain” was his) serves up side orders of domestic strife involving the department dispatcher (Bridgett Thompson) and her potentially violent husband, and the couple that the chief and his wife set-up, played by Laura Robards (Jason Robards’ granddaughter) and Vincent Kartheiser.

There’s even a transgender ex-lover (Dee McLaughlin) in the mix, none of which muddies the waters in a story where we’ve seen the killer in the first scene and later and there’s virtually no police procedural tropes to make this a “Columbo” styled “Will he get away with it?”

Indie cinema is where we get most of our movies that look and sound like America outside of LA and NYC. But indie films that work are as rare as studio pictures that come off, and this one doesn’t.

The premise is solid and the casting isn’t bad. But there’s no pace, no urgency to the performances and precious little to grab hold of and invest in here. Even the conflicted Catholicism of some of the characters is half-hearted.

It’s a shame, because this subject is still potent and “Primal Fear” came out a long time ago, and movies such as “Sleeper” and “Righteous Kill” approached the subject more gingerly than one would like, the one mistake “Unholy Communion” doesn’t make.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Adam Bartley, Vincent Kartheiser, Bridgett Thompson, Iréna Flury, Laura Espring and Patrick Thomas O’Brien.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Patrick Coyle. A Freestyle Release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:33

A heinous crime, the vast investigation undertaken to solve it and the elusive pursuit of “justice” makes for an enrossing but sprawling and ungainly mini-series in “The Bombing of Pan Am 103.”

Writer-and-series-creator Jonathan Lee’s second crack at this material — he wrote a “Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103” documentary — juggles many points of view, constructs a few composite characters and unravels the complex story of how those working the case solved it and took it to court over the course of a dozen years.

It’s a lot to take in. No doubt working on the doc helped him organize this material and find his “characters.” And even if the final episode, the trial and its trials, isn’t the most satisfying “Law & Order” wrapped up in a bow, it’s rewarding viewing and a vivid if non-judgemental-to-a-fault history lesson.

Lee plays up the conflict between the Scottish police, in the persons of a chief inspector played by the great Peter Cullan and a dedicated family-man detective played by Connor Swindells, and the FBI, personified by an ambitious careerist played by Patrick J. Adams.

They’re often bickering, as Scotland was the “jurisdiction” where the crime — a bomb blew up a Boeing 747 at 31000 feet — took place. The FBI played turf wars as it played catchup, since 190 Americans — many of them college students flying home for Christmas of 1988 — were the victims.

And the CIA section chief on the case (Terrance Maynard) slows down the works and irks one and all by stalling on doling out leads and names, as leads started pointing to state sponsored terrorism with Libyan fingerprints all over it.

The series receates the hellish night when flaming airplane parts, bodies and luggage tumbled out of the sky onto tiny Lockerbie, Scotland, killing some on the ground and leaving survivors in shock. It plays up the shoe leather work of locating evidence on the ground, detecting and intereviewing, the forensics needed to piece together clues from an 850 square mile crime scene.

And as it focuses on the policing and police politics, it takes time to acknowledge the victims’ families, who didn’t accept the FBI’s secrecy and made a stink about how callously they were treated — by the FBI.

The Scots are depicted as much more compassionate, from the police on the job to the locals, personofied by Phyllis Logan (“Downton Abbey”) as a Lockerbie lady who lectured the cops on the human tragedy and what she thought the families — in town and flying in from 21 different countries — needed and deserved.

Merritt Wever (“Nurse Jackie”) is a drawling Senate aide who rides the Feds to be more resepectful of the grieving relatives or face their wrath.

In a series this populous, dropping a few famous faces and reasonably famous names into the mix helps to keep things straight. Well, somewhat.

The formidable Cullan gives us a Scots chief inspector Orr who won’t tolerate having this case poached from him or slacking from his subordinates. “Evidence first, ‘theories’ later,” he barks. And they listen.

Tony Curran plays the one no-nonense subordinate as intimidating as Cullan’s Orr.

Popular character actor Eddie Marsan tries on a Southern Drawl as the FBI’s go-to bomb expert, and makes a sharp impression.

Dominik Tiefenthaler stands out as a dopey Swiss tech nerd whom no one takes seriously until it turns out his company provided electronics used in the bomb.

The sprawl of it all works against the story’s sense of urgency. This could have made a tight, immersive feature film, perhaps ending before the trial of those eventually accused of murder took place.

But the Pan Am bombing saga doesn’t lend itself to that, if you’re trying to relate an unfailingly accurate account. Little dollops of sentiment sometimes land and at other times don’t play and drag. The geopolitics of the day, with Reagan’s blundering, Thatcher’s efforts to show humanity after the tragedy and plenty of “blame” for all of this to go around, are barely mentioned.

Swiss complicity, the Maltese connection, German and FBI and CIA blundering, airline security lapses, it’s all there in tiny doses, with the stoic Scots persevering even as their justice system seems unready for its close-up.

Lee never lets this lapse into Movie of the Week sentimentality. But pulling together all this material, all these people, all those intrigues, tit-for-tat politics and a press corps that’s dismissed early on and the victims themselves — barely introduced — proves daunting in all but the “just the facts, ma’am” sense.

The story is told and the facts are nailed down. But the reality of this monstrous crime is that “gotcha” moments didn’t figure in the police work, big busts were off the table and a lot of dramatic potential is lost by “sticking to the facts.” And that’s before the convoluted finale that can’t help but feel anticlimactic.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams, Phyllis Logan, Merritt Wever, Tony Curran, Peter Cullan and Eddie Marsan

Credits: Created by Jonathan Lee. A Netflix release.

Running time: six episodes @ :60 munutes each

The Venezualan drama “Lost Chapters” is a meditation on memory, both family and national history.

Its slight story about a student’s homecoming to her book-dealer dad to finish up research on a mysterious, “fake pseudonym” hustling Venezuelan novelist of the first half of the 20th century, returning to a “home” she barely knows and getting reaquainted with a grandmother who is losing her memory.

It might be easy to see this film through a Venezuelan political lens — people giving up on the country and moving away, giving away books they cannot sell, with those educated Venezuelans left behind losing themselves in the lost worlds of books.

But politics are never directly addressed, just the closing of a bookstore due to “the state of the country right now.” And it was filmed and released at home before the Trump administration took power, kidnapped the country’s president and took over its oil industry.

First-time feature director Lorena Alvarado, using a couple of family members as her “stars,” takes us into the edenic garden of her heroine’s (Ena Alvarado) grandmother’s verdant, whimsically-named house, La Ventolera, in Caracas.

Spending the summer there, 25 year-old “Eni” reconnects with that contemplative place, where everyone reads, where grandmother (Adela Rodriguez) drops pearls from half-forgotten poems and Dad (Ignacio Alvarado) plans the next’s day’s hunt for rare titles by Venezuelan and “only Venezuelan” authors.

We rarely hear so much as a radio. We never see a TV. Whatever Lorena Alvarado’s real experience is in her home country, it’s obvious she’s seen lots of French cinema, where TV sets are just props and only turned on when the protagonists are guests on literary, political or cinema-dissecting chat shows.

Plowing through her father’s warehouse packed with books, Eni’s obsession is finding one title — “Elvia” — by long lost to history writer Rafael Bolivar Coronado, one of the many psyeudonyms taken up by an early 1900s imposter novelist who’d steal the names of famous writers just to sell a book to a publisher, moving on to another famous name and we assume another publisher time and again as he built his “career.”

The shoe-leather element of the story is Eni and “Nacho,” her father, haunting the cluttered book stalls of street markets, visiting all of Dad’s fellow book-dealer contacts in their jammed stores that feel like archives to reading, publishing and Venezuelan history. The elusive “Coronado” and his many noms de plume is always her quarry.

Dad’s still keeping a foot in the business, hoarding every Venezuelan book he can, “antiquities of a past that never existed,” getting them from collectors who have died, families packing to leave the country and the like, every so often finding something rare enough to re-sell.

“Mamana” (granny) fades all through this, her one sure connection to the past a poem that begins with “Everything is the same.” But nothing is.

There’s not a lot for the viewer to grab hold of here. I was most fascinated by the hunt for a sort B. Traven figure — a writer who “covered” the Spanish Civil War simply by questioning sailors in Spanish ports, who wrote because he must and sold, by hook or by crook, anything he could.

The performances are “natural” in that untrained actor way, and emotionally flat as a consequence.

What attention “Lost Chapters” has earned has largely focused on the filming conditions — Alvarado used a crew of just two — and the fact that her sister and father have the starring roles. But as the stars of “Ishtar” long ago noted, “a baby doesn’t know how rich his parents are,” and degree-of-difficulty in making a movie never excuses its quality.

While what Alvarado puts on the screen is too polished and intriguing — at least in terms of possibilties — to dismiss, there’s no getting around the lightweight, incomplete and in the end inconsequential feel of “Lost Chapters.”

Another thirty minutes of movie and she might have told a richer story about memory, identity, a troubled country and the liberating isolation of tuning out and losing oneself in work in the arcane world of letters and lost authors.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Ena Alvarado, Ignacio Alvarado and Adela Rodríguez

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lorena Alvarado. A Several Features release.

Running time: 1:08