Movie Nation

Today’s Around the World with Netflix offering is another cringey-cutesie comedy from Poland, a wish-fulfillment farce about an old industry, a new couple and the “old ways” — which include Poland’s long history of racism.

“Death Before the Wedding” is ungainly and lumbering and rarely funny enough to make Western viewers forget how disastrously dated it is, even if that misogyny, racism and “ginger” phobia here are played for laughs.

Maja (Natalia Iwanska) has just finished her graduate studies in biology (“fungi”) and is ready to tell her parents about her impending nuptials. But mother Regina (Agnieszka Suchora) doesn’t think that’s a great idea. And knowing her dad, Mirek (Tomasz Karolak) gives even the bride-to-be trepidations.

“All my exes still have a stutter because of him,” she complains (in Polish with subtitles, or dubbed).

Dad’s “over my dead body” is a given, a phrase he likes as much as his “You’d all starve within three days if it wasn’t for me.”‘

That one he uses on his wife, his daughter, and the people who work with him — Regina included — at the local branch dairy that’s been the lifeblood of their town for a century.

But the corporate CEO (Antoni Pawlicki) in far off Warsaw has been downsizing operations. He overlooked this one dairy. And yachting vacation or not, he’s got to go TCB to impress his trophy wife (Paulina Galazka) with how he’s a “take charge” guy. They throw their kids in the back of the Bentley and trek to the boondocks to deliver the bad news.

The “Death” is that of the dairy’s drunken manager, who falls into a milk vat. Nothing or almost nothing is made of this, and none of that “nothing” is funny.

The only thing that convinces the CEO to not close the place on the spot is the promise that his wife can plan “the wedding” that Mirek growls about never allowing. Without telling the bride and groom. No, Friday won’t work.

“Friday weddings, lifetime of dreading.”

Mirek’s worst fear, that his daughter is marrying “a ginger” (redhead) is flipped when Milosz (Gamou Fall) the groom turns out to be Afro-French-Polish.

Mirek’s plans to take over as manager of the plant run up against Regina and the women who work there who figure a woman would do a better job.

“You should just leave the men’s business to the men.”

Mirek will need input from college educated Milosz if they’re to figure out a way to “save” the dairy. Regina and her pals could use some help from Maja.

The town cop will try to dig up dirt on the CEO, and the priest is there for the funeral and the wedding.

And there’s barely a laugh in any of this. The idea was to mock Polish provincialism, how “the old ways” still dominate the thinking of those no living in big cities.

The Black guy must play “basketball,” so let’s see if we can figure out the game so he’ll fit in. The yokels take Milosz hunting, playing into his fears and prejudices.

Having seen several Polish comedies on Netflix and a few pre-Netflix, there’s no easy generalization that fits the genre. The darkest ones translate and travel the easiest. The broad and low farces are just corny and show the country as still dealing with a comic sophistication gap, and that goes for the acting as well, which is typically broad and Adam Sandler movie hammy.

“Death Before the Wedding” could have made comic hay with the corpse, could have found more modern “types” to send up, and could have left the whole wedding out of it, thanks to how little attention is paid to the nuptials. And the ways prejudice, provincialism and sexism stand in the way of true love are too trite and tired to summon a giggle.

Rating: TV-14

Cast: Agnieszka Suchora, Tomasz Karolak,
Gamou Fall, Natalia Iwanska, Paulina Galazka and Antoni Pawlicki

Credits: Directed by Tomasz Konecki and Iwona Ogonowska-Konecka, scripted by Hanna Wesierska and Karolina Szymczyk-Majchrzak. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

Fan anticipation for any Marvel movie is always high. But one didn’t get a lot of sizzle from the “Captain America: Brave New World” trailers over the months.

There’s been so much Marvel content streaming that the entire blockbuster mother lode has seemed a tad tapped out. An “event” like “Deadpool & Wolverine” might be viewed as an outlier in a declining market for comic book adaptations. Is anybody just dying to see “Thunderbolts?”

But a long holiday weekend in Feb. may breathe new life into the brand. Whatever the reviews, and they haven’t been good, “Brave New World” will own this three day and four day weekend and by a mile.

The film did weak (by Marvel standards) Thursday night numbers — $12 million per Deadline.com, folding into a Friday that added $28. That $40 million opening “day” suggests it might come in below the take for the last lackluster “Ant-Man” sequel, “Quantumania.”

Sat. and Sunday pushed it  to $88.5 million, all in over three days.

They cast it reasonably well, but Anthony Mackie‘s never been a big draw — before now. Harrison Ford’s fanbase isn’t what it was, and Giancarlo Esposito and Tim Blake Nelson — with no other Marvel stars or even a decent female lead included in this “universe” — are excellent actors without the star power to open even an indie drama.

Even if it tails off in a rush next week and beyond, I dare say Marvel will pop a few corks over a $88.5-100 million holiday weekend, considering the rewrites, reshoots and the general malaise that came from them for this bummer of a placeholder picture. But we’ll see if that proves to be an over-optimistic Friday/Sat. AM projection. Word of mouth is already tracking very poorly.

“Paddington in Peru” has gotten much better reviews, but it’s appeal is undeniably narrow in the parents-taking-kids movie market. The books are dated, the humor is reserved and even the slapstick plays as old fashioned, and his twee and quaint British “universe” won’t be to every parent’s liking.

“Representation” counts for something if you’re a Black, Hispanic or Asian parent looking for something your child can enjoy with characters they identify with.

Taking the bear to Peru helps, and bringing in Antonio Banderas as a fun, over-the-top villain counts for something. Word of mouth will have to boost this one, as no child and few parents will consider Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Jim Broadbent and “Downton Abbey’s” Hugh Bonneville, with Emily Mortimer and Julie Walters to be a draw. And the reviews have been more subdued than for previous “Paddington” outtings.

Even if the third film in this charming franchise doesn’t do much more than $16 million over four days, figure word of mouth will give it a kick. But that’s half the opening weekend cash “Dog Man” did and there’s no sugar coating that.

“Dog Man” is set to earn another $10 million this weekend, it’s third in release.

“Heart Eyes” enjoys another weekend as the top horror title in release for fourth place, $7-10 million over four days.

And the Chinese animated “Ne Zha 2,” a blockbuster at home if not the rest of the world (yet) will enjoy a top five finish, with over $6 million in ticket sales projected.

As always, these numbers will be updated as the weekend progresses.

LOL, right?

No agent’s going to get fired for getting her or his client Apple money to make a movie directed by the guy who filmed “Doctor Strange” and “Black Phone.”

But oy. This script. These characters. This dialogue. This setting.

I mean, Miles Teller I get. It’s a LONG time since “Whiplash.” But Anya Taylor-Joy?

“The Gorge” starts out with a certain existential promise in the premise, and then proceeds to cute, glib, explain and EXPLAIN its way out of anything remotely interesting or promising.

To say this goes “generic” in a hot hurry would be an understatement.

Two crack sharpshooters — one a Lithuanian favorite of the Russian kleptocracy (ATJ), the other an ex-Marine (Teller) and sometime “contractor — find themselves hired and assigned to guard this gorge.

It’s a long river valley filled with fog and mystery and darkness. Two towers stand guard over it, along with mines, sensors, automatic sensor-guided machine guns and “cloakers” who hide its existence from the outside world.

The snipers on duty on the east and west rims are cut off from each other and the outside world. Their shift is one year long, four seasons of making certain that whatever’s in this unidentified gasp in the landscape cannot get out.

The Marine is talked into the job by a “high level spook” (Sigourney Weaver) who is awfully vague about what this is all about. The shooter (Sope Dirisu) the Marine replaces thinks this is “the door to hell” and they’re here to “stand on guard at the gate.”

Like a lot of sci fi and horror, that summons up memories of one of the greatest “Twilight Zone” episodes (the Urtext of modern horror, fantasy etc.), “The Howling Man.” But let’s just say that what all this might be about is a lot more mundane and just as far-fetched as that.

The film lapses into “cute” the minute the two shooters realize they’re members of the opposite sex. Their “meet cute” comes through the scope of a rifle.

She’s pale and petite and into “Blitzkrieg Bop” and she packed her leather pants. He’s all about poetry, especially that written on the walls of his tower by generations of earlier guardians at the gate.

Levi resists Drasa’s entreaties as “not allowed,” forcing her to wait a beat or two or three before he realizes she looks exactly Anya Freaking Taylor Joy.

The human sex drive being what it is, they’re sure to find a way to connect on a more personal level. They brag and inhumanly talk shop about their most “impossible ” long distance murders. They might share intel on their duty, puzzle over the nature of the gorge and ponder their fates when things go wrong and all they have is each other to get out of this “hell” — literal or metaphorical — alive.

A top tip — “There’s only one. Jeep.”

Screenwriter Zach Dean had a lot of ways to go with this, ways a lot more interesting and satisfying than cutting and pasting snippets of Sartre and T.S. Eliot and Buddha to read aloud from the walls of Levi’s tower.

But the idea of two amoral mass murderers who can’t sleep at night facing their demons or their sentence to hell for shooting scores and scores of people was too smart, I guess.

You’ve got to hit that second act dilemma and third act crisis and cue a cover of “All Along the Watchtower,” after all. I’m guessing the “Whiplash” and “Queen’s Gambit” gags were invented on the set. But maybe not.

Director Scott Derrickson ensures the action beats are solid enough, that the production design is CGI-assisted gloomy and that the stars looked good in whatever light, fight choreography or romantic interlude they were placed.

But the literal plunge into “explaining” and explaining some more unravels whatever mystery might have made this direct-to-Apple-TV release dramatically challenfing and theatrically releasable.

Perhaps a better agent would have sensed that from the screenplay.

Rating: PG-13, violence, bloodshed, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller, Sope Dirisu and Sigourney Weaver.

Directed by Scott Derrickson, scripted by Zach Dean. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 2:08

Golly guys, I still haven’t worn out my t shirts from the original film, which was about a math whiz who knows too much.

April 25.

Arch, stylized and production designed to the nth degree, “100 Yards” is a sort of ramen noodles martial arts Western.

With their harmonica and guitar backed score, sibling filmmakers Hoafeng Xu and Jenfung Xu lean into Leone — Sergio, that is — and his spaghetti Western style with this parable about the rituals and arcane practices of Chinese martial arts academies into the 1920s.

In the anarchic China of the Western-dominated years before WWII, before communist “order” became the rule of the day, cities like Tianjin had thug and bully problems. But martial arts academies, and their students, kept the peace within 100 yards of their front gate. A “circle” of such academies, ruled by committee and dedicated to a rigid and arcane code, might ensure merchants at the market and other swathes of town could be peaceful enough for the locals to do business without hassles.

Whatever the truth, that’s the way this “universe” is set up.

An old master ordains that his best pupil, Quan (Andy On) should “duel” his son, An (Jacky Heung) to see who will inherit his academy.

Quan bests An, who has to decide if he’s going to accept that result or pursue the banking career his now-dead father urged him into. It should be an easy choice, Quan figures.

“Everyone wants to pick a fight to see how tough you are,” he advises (in Mandarin with English subtitles). “Do you really want that kind of life?”

There’s a woman (Bea Hayden Kuo) connected with the bank who offers An a future family. But damned if the imperious, imperialist foreign bankers don’t want to see their clerk fight. An consents, and then quits. The gauche Frenchmen and women have offended his honor.

Thus begins a movie-long quest to have a do-over, to re-fight Quan and perhaps change the order of The Circle of martial arts academies, whose tough-broad, short-haired chairwoman (Yuan Li) dresses in men’s suits and rules by being cooler and sexier than anyone within 100 yards of her.

There are ruffians for hire who enforce their own law — with slingshots — who figure to have a say in all this.

And the two combatants get in each other’s heads by hinting at a mythic “fourth fist fight form” that the old master may have taught one. Or the other.

Might it involve “short sabres?”

The film is a series of set-piece fights involving such sabres, and swords and sticks and fists and feet — sometimes blocked with curved wooden forearm shields.

The entire affair looks movie musical unreal, soundstage-clean, from fancy restaurants and bank dining rooms to spotless walled streets, cleaned and covered in red sand for one thrown-down.

It’s a world of double-breasted suits, fedoras and bowlers and tuxes and white gloves. Wait, China gave up all this for communism?

The movie is both too stylized and cinematic to feel real and lived-in, and not stylized enough to play as “mythic.” It’s watchable between the well-staged and beautifully choreographed brawls, but only barely.

The leads are charismatic enough. But the dialogue is stiff and stentorian, with edicts about how “martial artists marry other martial artists” and the like.

When it works it’s pretty cool. But it’s dull enough between fights that I had time to ponder the great mystery of these cinematic “academies” with their marching legions of fist-foot-way fighters and Broadway-worthy choreography, depicted in martial arts movies from Bruce Lee to Jet Li, Donnie Yen and beyond.

What, exactly, is their business model? How can they feed and house and train and cover healthcare (injuries are common) costs for their “students?” What’s the going rate for minions to a martial arts master?

With or without red ink, rich benefactors or government tax breaks, the martial arts academy of “100 Yards” is worth fighting for when there’s a throwdown, and not so much as we stagger towards the umpteenth renewal of this battle for supremacy without a real “hero” to root for.

Rating: unrated, martial arts violence

Cast: Jacky Heung, Andy On, Bea Hayden Kuo, Shiyi Tang and Yuan Li.

Credits: Directed by
Haofeng Xu and Jenfung Xu, scripted by
Haofeng Xu. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:48

The great Western director John Ford’s idea of filming a British police procedural was to make it a lot like his Westerns.

He’d make the hero ironic — serious when need be, but comically bewildered at times. Domestic life would play a big part. He’d stuff the picture with incidents, plot threads and characters, and populate the supporting cast with familiar faces — some British, some Irish.

There might not be any horses or sagebrush, but you could bet your last farthing there’d a company of men being men, with a little gunplay.

“Gideon’s Day” premiered in the U.K. in Eastmancolor and later inspired a British TV series in the ’60s. It came to the U.S. as “Gideon of Scotland Yard,” apparently shown in black and white. It isn’t mentioned among Ford’s Finest because it isn’t.

It’s a day in the life of a Detective Chief Inspector named George Gideon, played by Jack Hawkins, who explains in voice-over that he’s with the Metropolitan Police, better known by the name of its headquarters, “Scotland Yard.”

Over the course of a very long day, Gideon will cope with crime sprees that began in Manchester and end in London, with murderers and “payroll snatchers,” lifelong hustlers, a dirty cop and innocent victims.

He will juggle the stereotypical demands of movie domestic life — “Don’t forget the salmon” pleas from his wife (Anna Lee), don’t miss “my recital” from 18 year-old daughter Sally (Anna Massey) — miss a couple of meals, dash from the phone to the office to crime scenes to The Old Bailey (court) to church to single sentence interrogations of suspects and a jump to furious conclusions over an underling who may be taking bribes.

Gideon will light his pipe approximately 62 times and a few cigarettes to boot as he checks in with a “dope” hating informant (Cyril Cusack), buy drinks for the informant’s Cockney wife (Maureen Potter), brushes past a bullied vicar (Jack Watling), invades the privacy of a cute criminal accessory (Dianne Foster) and joins in a safety-deposit-box robbery’s stand-off.

He will browbeat his underlings (John Loder, Barry Keegan, Michael Trubshawe, Frank Lawton) into working the same insane hours that he does, and suffer the sputtering complaints of his moose-head mounting chief (Howard Marion-Crawford).

And damned if case after case after case is solved, resolved or tidied up on Gideon’s harried single day in May.

As police procedural, even with a little bit of sleuthing involving tire tread analysis, victim interviews and “leads” procured off camera, “Gideon” is rubbish.

But as a by-the-book green recruit (Andrew Ray) insists on writing one and all a traffic ticket, only to by-the-book nab a suspect, as that vicar is pranked one time too many, and that “damned salmon” is forgotten for the umpteenth time, Ford’s flair for the corny and the comic shines through.

There’s something very folksy, Fordsy and Irish about this accused posh Brit’s reaction to the warning “If you’re fool enough to fire that gun…”

“I don’t see why you should speak in the subjunctive! I am going to fire this gun.”

Based on a novel by John Creasey (under the nom de plume J.J. Marric), Ford makes his modest intentions with this material and this working vacation in London clear as the film opens with a musical nursery rhyme — “London Bridge is Falling Down.”

Hawkins smokes and sputters and lashes out and voice-over narrates his dismay at the work, the nature of the cases and the system as he’s chewed-out for being late to a suddenly-moved-up court appearance, which requires his presence for all of about 40 seconds. Hawkins is light on his feet and light in town as Gideon is rushed from dawn to well after dusk, and those “dinner plans, darling” will go by the boards.

Ford built communities on his sets, bringing back favorite stars, character actors, stunt folk and wranglers (and even an on-the-payroll according player) to his Western location shoots. He even did this on a few non-Western dramas and the ironically-titled Irish comedy “The Quiet Man.”

Unable to do anything of the sort with “Gideon,” Ford made do and tried not to appear to be phoning it in. But the way the film’s violent action finale feels tacked on after the fact just underscores how anti-climactic this not-quite-cop-thriller/not-quite-cop-comedy feels, start to finish.

Rating: “approved,” TV-PG

Cast: Jack Hawkins, Anna Lee, Michael Trubshawe, Derek Bond, John Loder, Frank Lawton, Andrew Ray, Barry Keegan, Jack Watling, Dianne Foster, Cyril Cusack and Anna Massey.

Credits: Directed by John Ford, scripted by T.E.B. Clarke, based on a novel by John Creasey. A Columbia release on Tubi, other streamers

Running time: 1:31

Any fans who go to comic book movies for escape from the real world and the comfort of familiar godlike characters achieving something resembling justice and just deserts for evil-doers is going to lament the experience that “Captain America: Brave New World” offers.

Set in a diminished-and-shrinking America, with a somewhat distracted hero facing a dangerous, unstable, ill-tempered president controlled by an evil entity, it’s a little too “real” to pass for “escape.”

And having the “president” devolve into a raging Red Hulk is entirely too on-the-nose.

A fine cast struggles with a patchwork script that never adds up to much more than a big bummer. Some aerial scenes impress, and “Captain” Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez (as Joaquin Torres, the next Falcon) handle the CGI-assisted fight choreography well enough.

Giancarlo Esposito makes what he can with an under-written, quick-to-“explain” heavy. Harrison Ford reaches for gravitas as a general turned president of a Thanos-depopulated Earth and America. And Tim Blake Nelson hopefully paid off his house playing Samuel Sterns, the uninteresting, shadowy supervillain in this outing.

This whole enterprise could be a real come-to-Jesus bummer moment for the heavily-invested Marvel faithful.

In this timeline, this thread of the post-Avengers universe, the depopulated, realigned world is struggling over a new “miracle” element found in the rocky remains of the dead “Celestial” Tiamut, jutting out of the Indian Ocean. Mining Adamantium will “save” the world, the future or what have you.

And the Japanese (Takehiro Hira plays the prime minister) and everybody else want their share, which President Ross (Ford) has negotiated with the cherry blossoms in full bloom.

But Ross still isn’t over the fact that Captain America is “no Steve Rogers.” Sam Wilson (Mackie) and he have things to work out.

When Sam’s old mentor and boxing coach, the former Super Soldier Isaah (Carl Lumbly) attempts to kill Ross, everything positive is off the table.

Sam, his flight-suited sidekick Joaquin and the president’s crack Israeli-born head of security (Shira Haas) have to sort out who is controlling whom and is who about to throw what’s left of the world into chaos.

The president? He’s got to break free of his puppetmaster and control his temper as he does.

There isn’t a laugh or light moment in this unwieldy beast of a movie. As a political allegory, it doesn’t play. As Marvel action pic, it’s sorely lacking. At least they spared no expense in the cherry blossoms dept.

Lectures about “If we can’t see the good in each other, we’ve already lost the fight” ring hollow. A divisive president who ran on the slogan “Together” hardly seems fictional.

And a Captain America reluctant to crush evil without first first chirping “This is the last time I’m going to ask you to stop it” seems as ineffectual and diminished as literally every thing else about this dull, dispiriting dog of a popcorn picture.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson, Xosha Roquemore, Carl Lumbly and Takehiro Hira.

Credits: Directed by Julius Onah, scripted by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah and Peter Glanz, based on the Marvel comics. A Marvel Studios/Disney release.

Running time: 1:58

The old rule that film series for children tend to go one sequel too far pretty much applies to “Paddington in Peru,” the third Paddington Bear picture to celebrate all that’s twee about a bear learning to be British

The strain of finding a proper plot for the bear to play around in is obvious before you note that five writers made it into the credits. And whenever you take a comedy built around a beloved character out of its element — be it a sitcom or a film series — that’s a give away that you’ve out of ideas.

“The Simpsons’ are going to…Knoxville!”

But a lot of the charm is still here, much of it coming from the innocent, well-mannered bear abroad, perfectly voiced by Ben Whishaw.

“You can take the bear out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the bear” isn’t funny unless the bear has that soft, sweet voice, and the bear’s in a jacket — with a marmelade sandwich tucked under his hat.

And tossing a couple of Oscar winners into the mix — Jim Broadbent as a German-accented curio-shop owner, with Olivia Colman beaming as a too-chipper, too toothy singing nun, and vamping Antonio Banderas into half a dozen parts as generations of a Peruvian clan, pays off almost as amusingly as Hugh Grant’s villainous turn in an earlier Paddington picture.

Paddington’s back story is the subject this time, how he grew up in the Andes, lost his family and was raised by a bear who took him in — Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton). The bear was meant to travel all along, according to her.

“If ever you get lost, you just roar,” she counsels him. “And I’ll roar back. I’ll hear you, no matter how far away you are.”

That’s as comforting a message as any film for small children can give. And the tykes are never too young to learn what “foreshadowing” is, are they?

Because when the singing nun (The Andes are alive with the Sound of Music.) who runs the Andean Retirement Home for Elderly Bears calls, telling Paddington how much his Aunt Lucy misses him, there’s nothing for it but for the whole family to join Paddington on a junket to Peru.

Yes, the kids (Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin) have grown up enough to start going their own way. Mom (Emily Mortimer) is starting the empty nest weeping early. And yes, Dad (Hugh Bonneville) is still a risk-averse risk-management expert about to get laid off by his younger, risk-embracing new boss (Hayley Atwell).

But “purple kneed tarantulas” and piranhas be darned, Paddington and the Browns are going to Peru.

Aunt Lucy’s gone on a walkabout, Reverand Mother regrets to tell them. But Paddington discovers a clue to her whereabouts. If they can just charter a boat to go down river…

Banderas plays dashing Hunter Cabot, boat owner, “Svelte, strong, easy on the eye,” he purrs. “And that’s just the boat!”

He and daughter Gina (Carla Tous) will transport the Browns.

But all is not what it seems with this rakish, clumsy riverboat skipper. The walls of his cabin are decorated with paintings of his ancestors — a pushy conquistador, a crusty miner, dapper jungle explorer and aviatrix among them. And those ancestors have their own agenda, which they bark into his ears in the most insistent (and hilarious) ways.

What do they want with Paddington? When the chips are down, “Eat the bear!” may be a part of that.

There are few more reliable laughs in the movies than Antonio Banderas milking that Spanish accent to the “Puss in Boots” max.

Colman, given a song and dance number and a few subtexts to toy around with in her character, is a hoot.

Throw in some ursine pratfalls in a photo booth, a river boat and Incan ruins, with or without his family, with or without his new “brolly” (umbrella) and you’ve got a perfectly cute kids’ movie, no matter how derivative and cut-and-paste makeshift the plot might be.

Rating: PG

Cast: Olivia Colman, Hugh Bonneville, Antonio Banderas, Emily Mortimer, Jim Broadbent, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Carla Tous, Julie Walters, and the voices of Ben Whishaw as Paddington and Imelda Staunton as Aunt Lucy.

Credits: Directed by Dougal Wilson, scripted by Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont, based on the character and books by Michael Bond. A Sony/Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 1:46

These movies have been adorable entertainment for small kids. Let’s see if that “They always make one sequel too many” rule applies.

“Almost,” is the verdict. My review here.