Movie Nation

Rebel Wilson’s niche in the cinema is an enviable one.

She’s the quintessential “funnier best friend” the ultimate icing on the ensemble comedy (or musical) cake. The Aussie has made a career out of sharing the screen in “Pitch Perfect” or “How to Be Single” or “Bachelorette” — packing a lot of comic value into her moments and stealing virtually every scene she turns up in.

But being a leading lady isn’t about showing up on set and riffing your way to the funniest take, doing that for a few days or weeks, and moving on. It involves a lot more heavy lifting, a lot more range and in the case of “Isn’t it Romantic,” providing all the laughs when the supporting players aren’t in the Rebel Wilson league.

And if this rom-com that’s a send up of romantic comedy conventions and cliches and doesn’t definitively show she’s not up to the demands, it underlines how even Rebel Wilson can’t save a script this joke-starved or direction this uninspired.

Still, we could see why this was pitched, financed and filmed with every trailer for it. The idea, a rom-com that sends up rom-coms, is a winner.

Wilson plays a woman who was always taught that romantic comedies are fables, that as her mother (Jennifer Saunders) put it, “there is no happy ending” for women “like us.”

As in not svelte, beautiful with perfect hair and makeup from the moment they wake up like the star of virtually every romantic comedy ever.

Adulthood reinforced that. Natalie might be a Manhattan architect, but the plump pushover from Oz is treated like the office doormat, even by underlings. Only her adoring colleague Josh (Adam Devine, still not funny) and assistant Whitney (Betty Gilpin of “GLOW”) support her.

And Whitney’s a bit of a dope, endlessly watching rom-coms like “The Wedding Singer” on her work PC. Natalie cannot set her straight often enough.

“All these movies are terrible lies set to pop songs!”

Natalie’s just proven how “invisible” she is to men like their “He’s CW hot!” new client (Liam Hemsworth) when she takes a blow to the head during an NYC subway mugging on the way home. As she wakes up in hospital, something isn’t right. The doctor’s a contender to be the new “McDreamy.”And the decor…

“This isn’t an emergency room! This is a Williams SONOMA!”

She’s dressed in “Pretty Woman” (post-makeover) wear, sent out into the street, where seagulls fly in heart-shaped flocks and “New York doesn’t smell like s–t any more!”

Much bleeped profanity later, Natalie figures it out.

“I”m trapped in a f—–g PG-13 romantic comedy!”

She rages at her cliched interior monologues, is slack-jawed at the over-the-top interest Mr. “CW hot” shows in her (He writes his phone number on a rose. Don’t try this at home.) and sort of loses it at all the insipid pop that underscores every “Thousand Miles” step she takes on these fantasy-New York streets, into her now luxurious apartment and its over-stocked walk-in closet and makeup vanity.

Her testy neighbor (Brandon Scott Jones) has been turned into “an offensive version of a gay guy,” offensive and funny. Before she knows it,”I think we’re being dragged into some dumb ‘makeover montage.'”

And on and on it goes. First we identify the exhausted cliches of romantic comedies — gay BFF, every woman is a cutthroat rival (Priyanka Chopra takes after Adam Devine’s Josh), every New York streetside shop sells cupcakes, flowers or wedding gowns and when the right song pops up — random strangers all work with the same choreographer. Then we try to make something amusing out of sending up those cliches. And fail.

A “My Best Friend’s Wedding” gag repeated in too many rom-coms to number almost works — “karaoke night.” But just when you think “That’s it. ‘Pitch Perfect’ Rebel just needs a few more production numbers,” the movie provides them. They don’t help.

Hemsworth turns out to be the less funny sibling to brother Chris, although, truth be told, nobody here gets much of a break from the trio of screenwriters.

Waiting around for that first giggle is like sitting through a teetotalers’ Irish wake — death itself. And Wilson, letting the strain show the way a hundred other funny folks expected to “save” a flimsy comedy built around them have before her, has never seemed more out of her depth.

Here, she’s a Rebel without a laugh.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, some sexual material, and a brief drug reference

Cast: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra, Betty Gilpin and Jennifer Sanders

Credits: Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson script by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox and Katie Silberman. A Warners/New Line release.

Running time: 1:28

There are worse sins than “trying too hard” in a romantic comedy.

With twee (precious) characters, a twee setting — the world of antiques and vintage dealers in small town Arkansas — and twee subject matter, as in getting to know your late alcoholic daddy by living in his house and taking a job at the antiques mall where he worked — “Antiquities” tries too hard on too many levels.

It’s so tart and sweet it makes your teeth hurt. But it’s cute enough to more or less come off, in a featherweight sort of way.

Walt Prior, played by Andrew J. West of TV’s “Once Upon a Time,” has come “home” to the small town where his late daddy lived, loved, worked and died. Walt’s not making a big deal out of it, but he’s in town to “live in his old house, work in his old job, go through his old things and know the people that he knew.”

So, issues? Maybe.

It’s a place with a jovial surface to it, everybody naturally assuming that the son from the big city (Little Rock) will move back here and take up Dad’s old booth at the antiques mall. Walt surprises us and possibly himself when he rejects that booth idea, but he takes on a job at that mall — which as in small towns all over America, is a long-closed department store in a half-dead downtown.

Cue the colorful cast of eccentrics that populate the place. If you’ve ever spent any time in such emporiums, you’ve seen the “types.”

There’s the bullying, oversharing unreconstructed Confederate Blundale (Roger Scott) entirely too into his Civil War dioramas.

“My Daddy…he used to WHUP me…he’d put his foot about RIGHT there on my neck and HIT me with a shovel. He was a good man.”

Dolores Jr. (Michaela Watkins) dresses in vintage accessories and drawls through her planned surgeries — nose, or a boob job first? Whatchathink, hon?

Old Coach McGee (Ryk St. Vincent) sells sports training cards and will bend your ear about the athletic exploits of anybody he played with or coached.

Jimmy Lee (Graham Gordy, who co-wrote this and is quite funny in it) is flamboyant and just closeted enough to effeminately talk up the sex appeal of any woman entering the store, like he’s fooling anyone. Or selling to anybody who visits his elaborately detailed recreation of a childhood Christmas in his home growing up. That’s his booth.

“Women like that can’t have nice things. Did you see her shoes?”

Stocky Delaney (Michael Gladis ) insists that he’s on the same training regimen as his brother, a Navy SEAL. Delaney downs those little energy drinks you find at service stations and lies like a sealskin rug.

Presiding over everyone in Sticky Vicky’s Antiques Mall is manager and antiques trader Dewey (Troy Hogan of TV’s “Queen Sugar,” an absolute stitch here). He went to high school with Blundale, and ended up marrying the crank’s mother. But back in the day, he assures Walt,  he was “gettin’ more Tang than Buzz Aldrin.”

Everybody over-shares. Everyone is a trapped in their past. Everyone is presents equal degrees of difficulty when it comes to extracting yourself from a conversation with them.

You’d have to include Ellie (Ashley Greene of TV’s “Rogue” and “Pan Am” and a lot of iindie movies) in that group. Because even though she’s a world traveler and pretty enough to have never been told “no” by a guy, she’s there selling pottery in Sticky Vicky’s, sizing up and pulling the new guy’s leg.

“Delaney’s parents? First COUSINS…When I was little, I didn’t think fat people could feel things.”

Even though culture-shocked Walt “can’t tell the difference between a nice girl being flirty and a flirty girl being nice,” he takes her bait and takes his shot.

Even though he’s only been in Vicky’s mere minutes, Dewey gives him the “You’ve got that look…the look of management,” pitch. He should take over all this and let Dewey and his elderly wife Vicky retire to a life of second-hand RV travel.

“Antiquities” has the feel of a tale that’s been researched. Having dated Southern women deep into collecting and even joined them in estate sales and auctions, in “picking,” restoring and re-selling this stuff, I recognized every “type” here in an instant.

The “malls” inevitably have more clients running booths than customers, with those booth folks enjoying having each other to talk to about their specialties, their “picking” and their obsessions. There’s competition, gossip and a whole lot of reluctance to unload their most precious treasures.

And I’d swear I’ve overheard this very line (courtesy of Dolores Jr.) at an Oak Hill, Florida flea market.

“I’ve taken so much ginko I think I can hear what my neighbors are thinking.”

The hangup that all these people in the movie share is their big smiles and surface enthusiasm for the past, for their DOA business and for keeping up appearances, is all just goofy glossing over for their pain.

That’s a bit of a reach, and “Antiquities” has no business shooting for “deep” for even one second. Sentimental? Sure. The filmmakers pull that off.

It’s the goofy gloss that director and co-writer Daniel Campbell and Gordy absolutely nail — Delaney sucking on helium because it “makes me feel better when I’m depressed,” the native cunning of a small town pole dancer who knows how to take a tip when it’s not being give, the entertainment value of a small town Japanese cook-at-your-table steakhouse. He’s clumsy, and there’s a bit of the insult comic in him (David An).

“Hey stringbean, show over here. I killing myself for you.”

Mary Steenburgen has a two scene cameo as the local shrink Walt consults with, someone who keeps a chatty parrot to help her narcissistic patients hear their self-absorbed words hurled back at them in mockery.

But the standouts in the cast are Gordy, Scott, Watkins and especially Hogan, who makes every singeing admission, every stinging insult sing.

“The only toes you need to worry ’bout steppin’ on are under this desk — covered in athlete’s foot.”

Greene has a lot more to play than West, but truthfully, the leads seem like bemused anchors for the funnier characters to bounce off of. That’s sitcom writing.

With CBS exploring the revival of “Northern Exposure,” I could totally see “Antiquities” as an hour-long character comedy. “Trying too hard” doesn’t seem like a shortcoming in that format.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Ashley Greene, Andrew J. West, Michaela Watkins, Michael Gladis and Mary Steenburgen

Credits: Directed by Daniel Campbell, script by Graham Gordy, Daniel Campbell . An Orchard release

Running time: 1:33

The French-Canadian sex comedy, “Slut in a Good Way”   three rebellious teen vulgarians who take jobs in a toy shop.

And romance, or something damned near like it, ensues.

It’s black and white, therefore it must be “art,” as those raving up “Roma” and “Cold War” can attest.

“Slut in a Good Way” opens March 22.

In cinema history it is the Ur Western.

Yes, “The Great Train Robbery” was the first “film” and it is fitting that it too, was a Western. But “The Covered Wagon” established the tropes, the conventions, the action beats and archetypes that carried John Ford and John Wayne, Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway, Clint Eastwood and the Coens through a century of Western cinema.

The stoic Westerner — a good-bad man with a tainted past, looking for a reset on the American Frontier — the dewy Eastern flower, soon to be hardened her odyssey across The Plains — the scheming rival, the colorful comic “trailblazer” — cattle and horses and oxen pulling Conestoga wagons across dry, dusty flatlands, over mesas and up mountains, from Westport Landing (Kansas City) to Oregon — it all began with “The Covered Wagon.”

There’s a wide river to ford, buffalo, Indian raids, fistfights and gunplay and the distraction of “Thar’s GOLD in them thar Hills!” (California)

It’s all here in a film released in 1924.

I caught James Cruze’s jaunty “The Covered Wagon” in a Florida cinema that opened in 1924. No, I wasn’t there on opening night, thank you. Accompanied by a pianist rattling through a repertoire that included classical music snippets, “Oh! Susanna!,” “Bonanza” and “Rawhide” themes — and “Mighty Mouse” — it was a presentation that showcased the film’s dazzling, almost documentary-real detail and production design, its vast scope and dated humor and startling, chaotic action.

And the damned thing still works.

We see two massive wagon trains, white canvas tops stretching out into the distance, forming up for the joint crossing — one led by Wingate (Charles Ogle, born just after the Civil War), the other by Will Banion (J. Warren Kerrigan, who starred in the silent version of “Captain Blood,” and had the title role in “Samson”).

They’re under the ostensible “command” of Sam Woodhull (Alan Hale), who has earnest designs on Wingate’s pretty daughter Molly (Lois Wilson, who worked into the TV soap opera era).

It’s obvious that Mexican War vet Banion and his trusty/ornery trailblazer Jackson (The Scot Ernest Torrence, a veteran heavy in silent films) is the one who will get this train through, obvious that Molly will fall for his manliness and obvious — by his raccoon eye-makeup that Woodhull will do whatever he can to keep them from coupling.

Little Jed Wingate (Johnny Fox) is along for the ride, picking at his banjo, offering a “chaw” to any pioneer what needs it.

I’ve seen scores of silent films in such settings — accompanied by a pianist, organist or local symphony raising funds with a special benefit showing. “Phantom of the Opera,” “The General,” Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, Fairbanks — all impressive.

But while “The Covered Wagon” isn’t a silent John Ford Western or directed by one of the acknowledged masters of the medium, isn’t one of the widely known antecedents to the most American of movie genres, it’s impressive in ways that any film buff can appreciate.

Just 75 years removed from the events of the 1848 setting of the film, Paramount was able to shoot this movie in Utah by asking to borrow any covered wagons still in the families of the state’s second and third generation Latter Day Saints.

That “recent history” and authenticity carries over to the costumes — worn, lived in leathers, a wide assortment of hats, rough homespun fabrics.

The hero doesn’t wear a gun, as that practice was more a Civil War era innovation.

The script is corny by modern standards, lots of talk of “Empire Builders” heading West, the implied Manifest Destiny that came with that and showing off what would become known as “The Plow that Broke the Plains.”

But real Native Americans are seen inveighing against such a plow in their encampments, this “monster weapon” that would take their land, fence off their lifestyle and chase away the buffalo. The tribes are given their motivation for fighting back, reinforced by wagon train treachery, even in a movie filmed in 1923 and released in 1924.

The fights aren’t photographed in close-ups, but in wide, chaotic tumbles, dust clouding the screen as brawlers or settlers circling the wagons and fighting off a tribal attack, all with the feel of silent newsreel footage.

The only “name” in the cast that most film fans will recognize is Hale, 15 years before playing Little John to Errol Flynn’s definitive Robin Hood. He gives fair value as a solid villain, not even close to the over-the-top such characters were played in B-movies.

The acting has its share of swooning, glowering and mugging for the camera — close-ups are paler than the somewhat contrast-free and washed out wide shots.

It’s a talky silent movie — too many intertitles giving us exposition we can figure out with the visuals, lots of pauses for jokes — most of them in Jackson’s drawling argot.

“A fight now would disorganate this here train!”

But here’s an “opening of the West” Western that captures the immense challenges of such a quest, almost by accident. The “forts” were adobe built, not wooden stockades seen in so many later Westerns (no trees). The world was small in this pre-49er era. Jim Bridger and Kit Carson make appearances.

The movie doesn’t dwell much on just how terrifying a river crossing could be to humans and the livestock they often drowned in the attempt.

Such scenes, and a couple of early cinema stunts — no camera tricks, just good horsemen pulling off daring japes — keep the fact that while this pre-Production Code romance was chaste in the extreme, it was also pre-oversight by the now somewhat discredited Humane Society. I grimaced at every hint that something bad might have happened in the assorted animal melees.

It’s not high cinematic art, but very few were making movies of that standard in the early 20s, not in genre pics for mass Midwestern, Western and Southern consumption.

But “The Covered Wagon” is much more than merely “the first” to show us the West this way. It has a freshness about it that belies a movie upon whose frame almost every genre pic that followed was built on. And if Utah native and “Great Gabbo” director James Cruze isn’t one of the acknowledged geniuses of the early cinema, he at least can be remembered for insisting on an authenticity that later filmmakers drifted further and further from as the genre matured.

MPAA Rating: Pre-code violence, alcohol abuse, child tobacco use

Cast: J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Alan Hale, Ernest Torrence, Tully Marshall

Credits: Directed by James Cruze, script by Jack Cunningham based on the Emerson Hough novel. A Kino Classics/Paramount release.

Running time: 1:38

The Cocoa Playhouse started life as the Aladdin, a picture emporium which opened in tiny-not-tony Cocoa Village (the inland town of famed Cocoa Beach) in 1924.

They host musical performances and put on a regular season of theater. The thing that gets me here every year is when this old moving picture house hosts a silent movie of the type it would have shown in the years before their installed air conditioning in it.

J. Thomas Black Jr. is the pianist and enthusiast who lends the whole enterprise the feeling of what small town (no pipe organ, just a piano, although the Aladdin USED to have a pipe organ) movie going was like during the silent film era.

He will accompany and provide the score to what many regard as the Ur Western, the template from which every other Horse Opera, oater and Cowboys and Displaced Native Americans picture emerged. A 1923 film that premiered the year the Aladdin opened. See if you can guess it before I review it.

Every author gets this question in interviews or meeting the public — his or her fans.

“Where do you get your ideas?” And as a variation on that, there’s “Who is your muse?”

Author Mitch Stockridge has several answers he gives to these, but none hint at the truth. He has a muse he keeps locked in an upstairs bedroom of his house. He gets his ideas from a monster he has to keep sated with the taste of human flesh.

That’s the dark and clever conceit at the heart of a thriller shot in Tallahassee, a reasonably well-acted and tightly-plotted slice of horror lite.

The title “A Brilliant Monster” refers to that toothy blob of raging “id” — and to the guy who depends on it. Because whatever this beast is that keeps eating people and spitting out pearls of self-help book wisdom, it’s turned Mitch (Dennis Friebe) in a psychopath.

The opening credits of F.C. Rabbath’s indie film note that “Steve Jobs was  a ‘monster’ in real life” and DaVinci and other creative people had “monster” attached to their reputation at one time or another.

We meet Mitch wearing gloves and immaculate paint shop coveralls as he “cleans” a pickup truck which could link him to some unexplained crime. He has a somewhat elaborate modus operandi  — a mute driver (dressed like a member of the chorus from “Guys and Dolls”) picks him up and covers his tracks.

Mitch is locally famous thanks to his ability to grind out “life changing self-help books,” collections of stories around a redemptive theme with titles like “All is Forgiven” or “Your Life is Beautiful.”

Fans tell him “Your book changed my life/saved my friend’s life,” etc. He can get touchy about the “where you get your ideas from” thing.

And when he gets home, the love — from his “more PAGES” editor (Susan  Morgan) ends and the prickly criticism from his aged invalid father (David Raizor) begins.

“I would’ve been proud of a son who became a DOCTOR,” dear old Dad drawls. That’s the nicest of his insults.

We’re learning about Mitch through the flashbacks and descriptions of his ex, Sophie (Alea Figueroa) who has quite a story to tell the detectives (Joy Kigin, Bill Kelly).

“He’s done things, terrible things to others. Even terrible things to me.”

When she gets to the punchline, that there’s a blobby beast who gives Mitch his ideas in exchange for being fed bar pick-ups, hated childhood bullies who come back into his life and others, only the female detective, Abby, takes her seriously. The guy?
But but…”his books are on POSITIVITY!” As if Oprah and Doctor Phil couldn’t be serial killers.

The investigation sends Abby to visit Mitch more than once as men and women from town go missing, with just a hint of a connection to Mitch linking the possible crimes.

“A Brilliant Monster” is more a film festival “calling card” picture than one polished, funny and suspenseful enough to hold its own in the movie marketplace — even in the expanded universe of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming means of distribution.

But Rabbath creatively hides the monster from the camera for much of the film, putting his camera inside the toothy maw in scenes where Mitch introduces his muse to his victims.

Friebe, a testy-stubbly dead ringer for Zachary Quinto or Eli Roth, gets across the deadline pressure Mitch is under, his bitter relationship with his disapproving dad AND his profane resentment and annoyance at the growls and grumbles from the hungry muse — cursing through the door at the darned thing.

Dad’s put-downs are blunt and biting, delivering the only real laughs in what this dark comedy. His son mentions that the author his father is reading used to share agents with him,

“You know this guy? That’s a shame. I USED to like him.”

Kigin does generic police obsession with a quarry well. And Mick Leali has a Seth Rogen/Adam Devine lightness to his turn as Mitch’s married lifelong best friend.

Horror that avoids showing us as much as this one does may be cost effective, but without the gore, “A Brilliant Monster” would be a hard sell to the fanbase.

The gore could have been over-the-top and hilarious, and with more jokes and testy-amusing exchanges between Mitch and the cop, the editor, his pal, his father and his ex, this “Monster” might have lived up to its title.

As it is, it never clears the “rough draft” stage, rising occasionally to the “clever” level, always well short of “brilliant.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, implied violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Dennis Friebe, Joy Kigin, Alea Figueroa , Mick Leali, Jason Fusco

Credits: Directed by F.C. Rabbath, script by F.C. Rabbath and Adam Bertocci. An F.C. Rabbath Creations release.

Running time: 1:26

I agree with pretty much everything Trevor Noah says in the video excerpt below, in his “off air” response to a question about Liam Neeson’s mid-interview admission to a knee-jerk racist reaction to a dark moment in his and a friend’s past.

Context spoiled whatever Neeson’s intent was in making this admission. He needed to be saying this to somebody who would push him and push back and get at what he intended his message to be.

That’s why canceling your appearance on Colbert, Liam, was a mistake.

I’ve interviewed Neeson once or twice, but such situations don’t let you really “know” the movie star/filmmaker you’re talking to. Can’t say if I think he’s racist or not. Actors are, broadly speaking, not idiots but wholly capable of sticking their foot in it in a clumsy moment “off script.”

But as he was speaking about a low point in a friend who had been raped’s past and his reaction to it 40 years ago, trying to suggest what blind revenge is like, I was hearing a not just a monstrously hateful thought that wasn’t acted on, and racist to boo, but a fellow trying to give fair value in an interview by confessing to how blinding the rage impulse can be.

I wasn’t forgetting the actor used to be a boxer, a man of violence and brutish belligerence.

So I’m inclined to give this my Samuel L. Jackson Touchstone Test.

How would we react if this had been the outspoken Samuel L., recalling the race-based rage he needed to summon up for say, his character in “A Time to Kill?” I”ve picked up the odd bit of race baiting/tetchiness from Samuel L. a few times (in interviews) over the years.

Suppose it was Samuel L. saying something racist and murderous about dark thoughts from his distant past in an interview? This story would have had a half-life of 15 minutes, or a full day’s attention on Fox News.

Listen to Noah’s off-the-cuff response and decide whether or not this is a “Let’s move on” moment. I think it is.

Producer-writer-director Harald Franklin didn’t want any confusion about the inspiration for his movie, ” “The Glorious Seven.” He put images from “Seven Samurai” and “The Magnificent Seven” right in the opening credits of “Glorious.”

Quick question though, Harald. Have you ever watched either film? Because aside from the fact that there are (roughly, give or take, maybe more) “seven” hero/mercenaries in your Nicaraguan-set action epic, there’s virtually nothing else that connects with the earlier films.

These seven are mercenaries who take $2 million to go rescue a kidnapped trophy wife (Julia Mulligan) of a ruthless Latin American land baron (Fernando Carrera). As we’ve seen the kidnapper (Fernando Corral) freed from a chain gang by cutthroats who killed the police who guarded him, and we’ve witnessed the “massacre” that was a part of that kidnapping, and we’ve ALSO seen the sexual assaults that the brutish land baron uses to keep his imprisoned wife in line, the viewer faces a quandary.

Who exactly do we root for here?

We’re no longer in the hands of impoverished warriors of feudal Japan or the Old West fighting for their next meal, fighting for embattled, helpless villagers against rapacious bandits.

So “The Glorious Seven” starts with no real point of view. Then it dallies and stumbles and takes forever to get underway as Guerra (Jerry Kwarteng) and his mixed martial arts partner Ryan (Maurice Nash) are hired and  re-assemble their team.

Even that’s wrong. The way every movie from the assorted “sevens” to “The Expendables” introduces the principals is in showcase moments where, say, Toshiro Mifune shows off his character’s untrained fighting style or James Coburn demonstrates skills with a knife.

Here, we go to Russia to round up an old friend who has an old beef with Guerra (Maksim Kolesnichenko), or visit the bar/club where Dennis (Ilker Kurt), a sometimes arms-dealer ogles his pole dancer.

She’s the most heavily-clad pole dancer in the history of poles, dressed as a flamenco or belly dancer.

After the opening kidnapping, the team-formation and everything after that which we’d call “story” is sluggish, slapdash, stuff and nonsense — none of it entertaining, or even ridiculous enough to be any fun.

The shootouts are OK — well-staged and shot. And the collection of firearms…interesting. One underling is running around with a WWII vintage Thompson submachine gun. The prop house must have run out of pump shotguns and AK47s to rent.

They filmed this thing in Spain, Costa Rica (passing for Thailand), Ukraine and Rome.

And the dialogue sounds like the sorts of grating, clumsy usages that would earn you a C in ESL (English as a Second Language) class.

“More than five years before, he took five millions dollars from me!” Before, what? “We haven’t heard a thing from him. And nor from her.”

It’s so…off that you start listening to the voices and looking at the mouths to see if the whole enterprise is Eastern European and dubbed.

Far too many of the voices of supporting players sound like one guy did all the looping. Not a cardinal sin in itself, as the earliest James Bond movies were looped to death — one actor’s voice covering a slew of bit players.

But in “The Glorious Seven” (also titled “The Glorious Seven Reloaded” and opening March 12), it’s just another sign that what we’re watching is somewhere between an exceptionally sloppy B-movie and a very slick D-movie.

C?

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, a suggested rape

Cast:  Jerry Kwarteng, Marina Kinski, Fernando Carrera, Ilker Kurt, Julia Mulligan, Maurice Nash, Sara Sálamo, Ender Atac, Fernando Corral

Credits:  Directed by Harald Franklin. An Uncork’d Release.

Running time: 1:33

Consider this — the “second” “Lego” movie isn’t the second one at all. “Lego” has licensed plenty of direct-to-video titles using their toys, and there was that “Ninjago” thing and “Lego Batman.”

So “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part,” even if it isn’t as giddy as the first big screen Warner Animation Lego film, is a part of a franchise that’s over-exposed.

That helps explain how “The Second Part” is not reaching its projected $50 million opening weekend. Deadline.com is now saying that $33 million is more in line with where it will end up by midnight Sunday.

“Lego Batman” did $53, opening in early Feb., “Lego Movie” did over $60.

Even taking into account Deadline’s notorious underestimation of Saturday  takes on kiddie movies, (maybe $40 is within reach), it’s still falling short. And others are projecting even lower — $31.

As I said, they’ve over-exposed and Warners and Lego have watered

down the brand.

Taraji P. Henson is having a hard time in star vehicles built around her. “What Men Want” is a winner, a better picture than “Proud Mary” and a genre that more suits her talents. It’s managing $18-19 million, per Deadline. Not as much as one might have hoped.

It could have a nice long run if it holds audience next weekend, but $25 would have been more in line with what this picture should have produced.

As I said earlier this week, I think Paramount Players/BET left money on the table by suppressing reviews until the day of release. It’s not bad, the laughs land and she plays the hell out of her part. Funny.  Marketing let Taraji down.

“Cold Pursuit” doesn’t seem to have suffered inordinately from Liam Neeson’s confession of dark, racist thoughts 40 years ago — a $10 million weekend. It might have reached $12-14, but a Summit/Lionsgate non-franchise thriller? $10 is all you could hope for.

“Green Book” is starting to get possible “Best Picture” legs, with its re-release pushing it well into the top ten and staying there.

“Miss Bala” is plunging, number 10 with a bullet. Pointed downward.

It was a case that made headlines around the planet, that set up a million punch lines and led to a thousand stand-up bits and numerous “Saturday Night Live” sketches.

But we do we really know or more importantly remember about June 23, 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt took an eight inch carving knife and lopped off and then discarded the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt?

Veteran documentary producer/director Joshua Rofé directed “Lorena,” the new Amazon Originals four-part documentary (available to stream Feb. 15). But Jordan Peele produced it, and the film reflects the sensibilities of the comedian and sketch performer turned director and Oscar-winning screenwriter.

It’s dark. It’s a tad horrific. It’s cautionary, even. And it’s funny.

Best line? John Bobbitt noting the frantic police search for his missing member. “Good thing they found it. Would’ve looked funny on a milk carton.”

“Lorena” begins with “The Night Of,” lets us meet (then, and now) the married couple whose tumultuous marriage ended that night, and follows them through the roller coaster of their individual trials.

Did she attack her unemployed, drunken husband for being a selfish lover in a fit of irrational rage? Or was the ex-Marine abusing her, finally pushing Lorena to the point where she snapped, causing her to lash out?

The film is generously peppered with context as we are led first to one conclusion, then another, back and forth over the four episodes.

Here’s Steve Harvey joking about with her recently on his chat show about “the one act every man every man fears the most.”Back then, we hear Hugh Downs on ABC’s “20/20” describing Bobbitt as “the woman who did the unthinkable.”

Howard Stern hosted a beauty pageant/fundraiser for John Bobbitt, casting him as a judge for the 1994 event, chat shows invited him and his outraged brothers on to vent at “that woman.” Back then, we see Andrew Dice Clay, Robin Williams and others working the act of violence into their own acts.

And yet, even then, women took a decidedly different view of what happened that night and who the real victim was. As a nurse on duty at the hospital that night remembers, “I thought, ‘God, what did he do to make her do something like that?”

The four part film introduces us to reporters and lawyers, jurors and the surgeon who did the “re-attachment.”

A chuckling urologist laughs about the penis which was “lost in action” as we hear about the police search for the “member,” and testimony and real transcripts about hospital and police dispatchers using euphemisms about needing to “salvage this man’s dignity” to keep from alerting the news media about what had just happened in Manassas.

An “extremely drunk” victim, a crime scene spattered with blood, with domestic abuse pamphlets, an Ecuadoran native whose English wasn’t great telling police that she did it because her husband had an orgasm and she didn’t — there’s a lot to chew on (ahem) here.

As we meet and hear from the principals, then and now, “Lorena” gives us an appreciation for the times — post Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill and “Tail Hook” and the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. And we start to see what a cultural watershed this heinous and yet laughed-about act was.

The word “penis” made it into the mainstream media, “He said/she said” was further cemented into the national psyche, “marital rape” and domestic violence attracted attention anew (the O.J. murders occurred a year later).

As we track the ebb and flow of reputations, legal jeopardy, public opinion and the sort of discourse the case attracted back then and over the years, “Lorena” — which can seem too flippant at times — reminds us of what we’ve forgotten and how far we’ve come even as we ponder if the juries, way back when, got it right or got it wrong.

But as it does it answers the question most fundamental to long-form true crime series. It keeps you involved and piques your interest just enough to keep you watching, from “The Night Of” the crime to its chronicle of America’s understanding of “The Cycle of Abuse.”

Bobbit, John Wayne Bobbit, Whoopi Goldberg

Credits: Directed by Joshua Rofe. An Amazon Originals streaming series.

Running time: 1:00 per episode