Movie Nation

It may be ethnocentric to think this way, but one can’t help but hope that universally recognized civil rights, liberty and justice make their way into every corner of the world. Because you never know what sort of values you’ll see in the cinema of Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia or any other corner of the Islamic world.

“Burning” is a mystery thriller from Kyrgystan, a former satellite state of the Soviet Empire, now a land-locked country where Islam is the dominant religion, superstition still has its place in the culture and women’s status is traditionally subservient, with head coverings required. And whatever you do, ladies, don’t let the men catch you smoking.

“Burning” is a tale told in three chapters , titled “Guilted, “Excuse” and “The Reason.” Radik Eshimov’s film unravels the story of a house fire, who and what caused it as “witnessed” or at least understood by three different neighbors.

Like “Rashomon” and its inspiration in this sort of disparate views screen storytelling, “Citizen Kane,” we’re led along and led astray by some of what we’re shown and told by the drunken Jyrdal (Rusalam Orozakunov), the more sober and gruff Durus (Askar Kachkynbaev) and lastly, his pharmacist-wife (Zhanilai Isakova). But some sort of opinion of “truth” and “justice” may turn up in their testimonials.

The home of Asel (Aisanat Edigeeva) and husband Marat (Omurbek Izrailov) has burned. It happened shortly after the arrival of mother-in-law Farida (Kalicha Seydalieva).

This fire happens not long after the couple lost their little boy. But Asel is pregnant and hopeful and Marat has summoned his mother to “help” and look after her as he’s to be away.

Farida is either a scowling witch with nefarious connections to the henchmen of local mullahs that will ensure her control over this pregancy, or a victim or simply a bystander. Asel may be a hapless victim herself, judged “guilty” in losing their son, “possessed by a jinn (genie, demonic spirit) or an abused wife who has few rights and has lost her sanity at her plight.

Marat might be naive, trying to stay helpful and hopeful, concerned and sober minded, or an abuser.

Director Eshimov and screenwriters Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov may give weight to every version of the story, but they cheat in lots of obvious ways. Our “eyewitnesses,” relating their versions of the story to one another and other neighbors after the fire, show us things they could not have witnessed and relate conversations and incidents they did not see or hear.

And of course, the filmmakers’ fingers are on the scales of which “version” is the cold, hard truth.

But the ending is quite moving and underscores what a sophisticated — if slow and uncertain at times — piece of screen storytelling this is.

There’s horror, suspense and violence, and the performances give every one of the three leads the chance to play pleading victims or hissable villains.

It’d be a candidate for “Lifetime Original Movie” in North America, fascinating for the alien culture it captures but clumsy in its melodramatics. But “Burning” gives one hope in its messaging, in the polish of its performances and in the fact that it was made at all.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Aisanat Edigeeva, Omurbek Izrailov, Kalicha Seydalieva, Askar Kachkynbaev, Ruslan Orozakunov and Zhanilai Isakova

Credits: Directed by Radik Eshimov, scripted by Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov. An Indiepix release.

Running time: 1:41

“Last Ride” is a bit of a head-slapper, a creaky, crawling thriller with intensely unlikable characters doing one stupid thing after another and a screwy semi-supernatural plot that staggers from the unlikely to the insanely inane.

It stumbles out of the gate and staggers along for 89 minutes. And then it gets worse.

But because it was produced by Spike Lee’s filmworks and directed by his younger brother, Cinqué Lee, it got into lots and lots of festivals before vanishing without a trace. And now Amazon has it.

See how nepotism in the movies works, kids?

A prologue has an alcoholic father (Gustaf Skarsgård, brother of Bill and Alexander, son of Stellan) arm twist his 20ish son’s (Samuel Pau Small) pot dealer in Norway into leading them up via cable car/gondola to the top of a Norwegian peak. The kid is contemptuous of his old man, but there they are.

Dad, between sips from his oversized flask, allows that he has unfinished business on this mountain.

We’re promptly dropped into a flashback, Three obnoxious tweens (Roman Griffin Davis, Charlie Price, Felix Jamieson) are trying to talk a Norwegian cable car worker (Kristofer Hivju) into taking them up that same mountain in iffy winter weather.

The kids reek of privilege. It’s early March, 1982, and they’re not in school, they’re on vacation. Two of them have divorced parents who have…taken an interest in one another.

And they all have a secret that isn’t really a secret.

Devin, Syd and Jamie takes Polaroids of one another, patter maniacally about girls, school, family and each other. And they won’t take no for an answer from redbearded “Viking” Øyvind.

He finds himself “just a babysitter” for twerps “like you.”

But a shared love of The Clash abruptly changes “No. Go home…Come back tomorrow” or whenever to “Yes.” And so they sing-along to “London Calling” as the gondola takes one more wintry trip up the mountain in the gathering gloom.

Our first tip that not all is well is having the “London Calling” sing-along cover the entire tune. No canny director wastes screen time on a gag once we’ve gotten the gist.

And the cassette has barely finished when an ominous noise brings their gondola to a halt. Everything electrical and electronic is zapped. Poor Øyvind has barely put out a fire when he, too, is shocked. And there they are.

We see lights flickering out in a wave across the valley below. The jabbering kids are beside themselves. Who will save them? How? And what the hell just happened?

“If it was a blackout, there should be car lights,” one of them reasons.

There’s not a lot of “reasoning” in this lot, who take a while to adjust to the fact that there’s a dead body in their midst, someone who did them a favor and paid for it with his life. That last part they never reconcile.

Three varying-degrees-of-stupid boys must cling to life in a freezing cable car twelve storeys off the snowy ground, confronting every new clue about their situation with the dumbest possible response.

They’re children, so there is no “work the problem” here. There are light sticks in the first aid kit? Let’s light’em all up. It’s cold and getting colder? Let’s steal the dead guy’s…cigarettes. And clothes.

“I can smell his breath” on his sweater, one remarks. “Yeah, one of his last” another retorts.

What writer-director Lee was going for here is a Nordic peril “Stand by Me.” Alas, “Hang by Me” was not a considered title. “The Grand Allignment” was. Yes, Lee went to the trouble of attaching this traumatic tragedy to an astronomical event.

The old fiction writing 101 maxim “Write what you know” seems to have evaded Lee — he also directed the gimmicky “Window on Your Present” — who may have called on memories of all the indulged, idiotic white kids he knew growing up, or just imagined how awful such children can be.

The claustrophobic setting is comically misused.

The kids just scream “child actor” in their performances and the script does the adults no favors, either.

Anf then an epilogue as inane as the prologue ensures that whatever the outcome of what happened in that gondola was, the movie about it accomplishes nothing but leave a bad taste in the viewer’s mouth.

Rating: TV-16+, violence, profanity, tween smoking

Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Charlie Price, Felix Jamieson, Kristofer Hivju, Samuel Paul Small and Gustaf Skarsgård

Credits: Scripted and directed by Cinqué Lee. A Quiver release on Amazon.

Running time: 1:38

It is turning into another big weekend for Sony’s “soulless” and “joyless” latest Tom Holland “Spider-Man” comic book adaptation.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is on track to pull in another $145 million, building on a boffo Friday ($43 million) take at the box office. That’s not the best “second weekend” ever. But as Deadline.com points out, it’s close. It’s the first Sony movie to ever have a second weekend take this large. It’s earned over $650 million in North America alone.

As the picture opened with a stunning $360 million payday last weekend, even a 60 percent fall-off, weekend to weekend, isn’t going to make anybody cry.

Trumpflation ticket prices and IMAX “premium experience” ticket prices explain part of this. But is the movie a part of the national conversation? Not that I can tell.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is about to become his biggest box office hit ever, surpassing even his biggest “Dark Knight” performance. It’s cruising to another $31.5 million or so this weekend, clearing $461 million in North America alone, well on its way to $500. And yes, it is still a conversation starter.

With Will Gluck’s sci-fi romance “One Night Only” earned $5.7 million, despite terrible reviews by the grownups and raves by the comically under-credentialed. That weak a take for this weekend’s third place movie tells us we have entered the dog days of the summer cinema season — low expectations for most anything else rolling out from now until Labor Day.

The latest “Super Troopers” sequel earned $4and came in fourth, and the widest opening horror title of the weekend, “Ice Cream Man” tallied$2 to come in eighth.

“Toy Story 5″ ($3.9 million, fifth) “Minions & Monsters” ($3.5, sixth place) and “Moana” ($2.8 million, seventh) cling to the top ten for yet another week.

“The Invite“ ($717k in tenth) isn’t likely to clear the $27 million mark (it’s just over $24 as of Sunday night) before summer’s end.

“Obsession,” “Young Washington,” “Hadestown” and “I Want Your Sex” slid off the charts, coming in behind an opportunistic release “CatVideoFest 2026).

That outperformed the new Anthony Bordain bio-pic “Tony” ($348k on just six theaters).

“The Last House” is “A Quiet Place” with rain — “A Rainy Place.” With survivalism. And monsters.

It’s a dull and exceptionally stupid environmental thriller, sort of “The Revenge of the Sea” for dummies.

Screenwriter Matthew Robinson wrote “Love and Monsters” a few years back, and the unfunny parts of Ricky Gervais’s rom-com “The Invention of Lying.” Here, he feels obligated to have our patriarch-hero utter the lines that every overmatched horror movie dad has said before him when the rains come, their house traps them inside and “something” is “out there” controlling all this.

“I’m not going to let anything BAD happen to us!”

Like that’s within dad Jason’s (Wagner Maura) control.

The set-up is stupid — the rains come, everybody’s house locks them inside to eventually starve or other die. But wait, there are monsters doing this? What’s their angle? People as food? Why let them rot, then?

Dad Jason and plucky mother Ann (Greta Lee) devote themselves to protecting their kids in their tumbledown Seattle home that’s about two mortgage payments shy of reposession. This mysterious “We’re locked in!” has an upside.

“At least we don’t have to worry about the mortgage this month.”

The script dives deep into the DIY nature of being trapped, on your own, in a world that has shut down. Communication with neighbors comes through chalk boards, passing gossip on about how far this calamity extends. Food must be rationed, but if you get sick, you’re all but doomed.

Nobody can “help” anybody else.

The loopsholes our family (Riley Chong and Noah Alexander Sosnowski play the kids, with Gabriel Barbosa and Emma Ho taking over “five years later”) benefits from come from the crumbling nature of the house. They create gaps in the “total lockdown.”

Mom DIYs vegetable garden is manageable with only the seeds of what they’ve been eating (and no, um, polinators). Unemployed engineer Dad makes DIY traps for “chimney fishing” for critters out in the wild, which reclaims their subdivision when the humans are stuck inside.

Yeah, a lot of animals meet their untimely end in this, before you run off to visit DoesTheDogDie.com.

Meaningful subtexts about what constitutes “living” — hiding in a house, or figuring out a way to face the perils of the world outside — are stumbled over. A whole lot of the logistics (walk-around sewers in a subdivision) make little sense and the science makes none at all.

Director Louis Letterrier once gave us an “Incredible Hulk,” but he’s hard pressed to serve up any suspense here, even in the action-packed third act.

The players do what they can, which isn’t much, considering the screenplay’s limitations.

But hey, Robinson got to write a version “Edge of Tomorrow 2.” So at least we’ll know what happened if that never goes before the cameras.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Greta Lee, Wagner Maura, Riley Chong, Noah Alexander Sosnowski, Garbiel Barbosa and Emma Ho.

Credits: Directed by Louis Letterrier, scripted by Matthew Robinson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52

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