Movie Nation

“Puzzle” is a lightly charming New York variation on “The Lunchbox,” another aching tale of romantic longing and disappointment about a lonely married woman who tumbles for the soulful charms of Irrfan Khan.

This time Kelly Macdonald is the housewife trapped in a suffocating, unfulfilling marriage who falls for the sleepy-eyed Indian stranger. “Puzzle” becomes that rare vehicle to make full use of the baggage the sweetly-mousy Macdonald and the droll, sensitive Khan bring to their movies.

Agnes is the child of immigrants, living in the house she grew up in with her high school beau, Louie (David Denman), a mechanic, and their two college age sons.

Her life is built around “taking care of” the other three, a submissive wife who volunteers at church, takes a back seat in every decision being made and when we meet her, is lighting the candles on the cake she had to bake at the party of mostly-his-friends she had to organize — for her own birthday.

She’s not a worldly woman, and that makes her come off as a little dim. The iPhone she got as a present rattles her need for simplicity, quiet and that tiny shred of independence that she enjoys in her Luddite life.

“Would somebody please tell my mom she has to stop living in the 20th century?”

It is another gift that changes Agnes’ life. It’s a jigsaw puzzle. We glimpsed her aptitude for reasoning out shapes and missing pieces when Louis broke one of her dishes. Now, she takes to this thousand-piece challenge with relish.

She tears through it in a flash. She calls the relative who gave it to her, wanting to know where she can get another? She’s that sheltered. That leads to her first trip in ages from Bridgeport to the Big City, tp the puzzle shop where she finds what she’s looking for and the flier that piques her curiosity.

“Champion seeking puzzle partner.”

Robert (Khan) lives in a beautiful old house in New Rochelle, a man of means with a maid and a lot of idle time on his hands. She takes the train to his house and he dumps a puzzle on the table.

“Is this a test?”

“Absolutely.”

Whatever else she doesn’t know, whatever her limited life has kept from her, Agnes is a damned jigsaw savant, a “godsend…It was meant to be,” Robert enthuses.

And thus begins their training in the arcane sport of competitive jigsaw puzzling.

She is shy and just coming out of her shell, he is wounded and a little aimless. She has to lie to her husband about where she’s going and what she’s up, because he thinks, “Children play with puzzles, Agnes.”

But as the Agnes and Robert puzzle away, tinkering with their mismatched techniques, the odd personal question gets answered. He starts calling her by her given first name, Marta. She understands the sort of mind that obsesses over every disaster on cable news, a man who craves the order that comes from disorder in solving a puzzle.

And of course, there’s “The Big Game” cliche that they’re prepping for, the Nationals. With that comes a prize, a trip to the Worlds, in the capital of Belgium. She doesn’t know about that.

“You don’t want a free trip to the ancestral home of the Brussels Sprout?”

That line and Khan’s dry, fatigued and yet effortless reading of it should be a tip. If Hollywood wants him for a movie, this is the sort of part they should be offering and not villains in bombastic “Jurassic World” movies. He has the effortless charm all the great romantic leads possess.

Macdonald has a gift for getting across a Gandhi-like passivity built on top of steel. Agnes may put up with a lot. She may not have a clue what her hip, smart younger son’s vegan/Buddhist girlfriend (Liv Hewson) will eat. But the other son, the drowning in garage work older son (Bubba Weiler) catches the wince in her eyes when Buddhist-girl explains her belief system over dinner.

“We have to give up on the idea of ever being happy.”

Every disaffected wife movie has certain touchstones, and how well they work depends on how easy it is to sympathize with the woman’s plight. Louie is appreciative, but insensitive, never thinking she’s smart enough to be in on the Big Decisions he always has made for them.

The husbands always snore in these movies.

The wives, be they “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio,” the bored, repressed English suburbanite who craves “The Escape” or the Indian woman whose care filling “The Lunchbox” is wasted on an insensate lout, have varying degrees of justification for their wandering eye.

Agnes’ tiny world is suffocating her, and Louie’s chief sin is not seeing that. Seems a little weak, but as she fibs and keeps up the charade, Agnes loses all patience with a lifetime of grievances with him and their sons, justifying her actions to herself, at least.

Director Marc Turteltaub is far better known as a producer, with indie classics from “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Sherrybaby” and “Chop Shop” among the projects he helped get before audiences. He has a light touch behind the camera here. His chief contribution was recognizing the perfect people to play these two leads and letting them play to their strengths.

“Puzzle” doesn’t get lost in its jigsawing subtext, thankfully. It lets us get lost in new discovery, finding common ground, the empathy that grows with getting to know someone and finding they appreciate you in ways others don’t.

And thanks to its most engaging, sympathetic stars, even the over-familiar path it takes lets us find the warmth in the predictable first steps its characters take toward a richer life.

MPAA Rating:  R for language (sexual situations)

Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Iffan Khan, David Denman, Bubba Weiler

Credits:Directed by Marc Turteltaub, script by Oren Moverman, story by Natalia Smirnoff . A Sony Classics release.

Running time: 1:43

Rachel Leigh Cook, {Paz de la Huerta, Hamish Linklater and Finn Wittrock are the big names  — OK, not quite big — attached to this latest cinema stab at Shakespeare.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” isn’t my favorite of the plays, but it lends itself to modernization, sexy spins and the like. This doesn’t look half bad, and it sounds — like all reasonably respectable and respectful Shakespeare, like a long, lyrical song. Lovely.

An outfit called Brainstorm Media is releasing it next Friday, so maybe we’ll get a look at it before it reaches Netflix.

Even filmgoers too young to remember the ’70s are likely to find “The Escape” dated — almost quaint.

A well-acted, intimate drama about a housewife’s depression over the limited life she’s leading, it harks back to the Decade When Hollywood Discovered Feminism, aka The Golden Age of Jill Clayburgh.

Films such as “An Unmarried Woman” and “It’s My Turn” covered this ground in American cinema 40 years ago. So now it’s Britain’s turn?

Gemma Arterton is most famous internationally for being a “Bond Girl” in “Quantum of Solace.” But she once starred in a Brit updating of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary,” the original housewife ennui tale, a film called “Gemma Bovery.” So she’s covering familiar ground as Tara, a suburban housewife whose horizons have shrunk with every year of her marriage to Mark (Dominic Cooper).

You can see it in the thousand yard stare she wears during perfunctory sex, in between the short bursts of enthusiasm she summons up to entertain their two pre-school age kids.

“I make myself care,” she admits, when pressed by her somewhat self-centered husband over “What’s wrong?”

To him, to her mother (Frances Barber), she “has it all.”

But the definition of that has changed over the decades. A two car, house in a London suburb lifestyle is not “having it all” in the “lean in” era, when woman are assured that yes, they can have fulfillment on levels Clayburgh’s characters could never dream of, back in the day.  Tara is dying of boredom, and Arterton, to her credit, makes this seem literal.

It’s not that she’s suicidal. But she’s checked out. A day trip to London, the chance purchase of a book about famous tapestries (“The Lady and the Unicorn”), that’s what gives her the spark of life, a little hope that there can be more to life than the drudgery of child-rearing and being around other women perfectly content with that.

Writer-director Dominic Savage and his stars go to some pains to not allow either  Tara or Mark to slip into caricature, and all concerned generally succeed at that.

Cooper’s Mark can be selfish, fretting over the ingrate his wife seems to be, doting on his kids when he gets home, not entirely selfish in bed all of the time. But Mark has a temper, and all his concern, “Let’s get this sorted,” and the like, seems coerced. He’s utterly at a loss in terms of suggestion solutions, or even agreeing to Tara’s self-cure idea (art classes).

Arterton’s Tara comes closer to “A Woman Under the Influence” than “An Unmarried Woman,” if we’re referencing ’70s feminist mainstream cinema. Her mood swings are wide, her boredom with the “security” of this life soul-sapping.

“I never meet anyone. Ever. I’m not happy.”

Nothing’s more depressing than seeing the future and not seeing anything more than humdrum routine on your horizon. This isn’t a new feeling or a new phenomenon. Listen to “Try a Little Tenderness,” or the third act appearance of a sympathetic Older Woman Who Gets It (Marthe Keller) in “The Escape.”

Some cope with that by making vacations more adventurous. But being this close to London, and thus that close to Paris, Tara can almost see her salvation, a place where art and beauty and romance are paramount in life, where sensual and intellectual pleasures abide.

We know what’s coming, but Arterton and her director tease it out, almost endlessly, and find no fresh resolution for all this thought of “Escape.”

That makes this a sturdy melodrama, more enjoyable for its performances than from its aged, time-tested and formulaic plot.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sex

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper, Marhe Keller

Credits: Written and directed by Dominic Savage. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:41

Emma Roberts has had an interesting time of it, trading on her aunt and uncle’s name, crashing and burning at the end of her youth role years (she was going to take time off for college, but hated the hard work), a tread lightly “comeback” in quirky indie fare.

This has “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” tones, ethnic and family friendly (ish), a little of Europe, a little “Little Italy.”

Hayden Christensen is the bartender hunk from the family hers is feuding with, with Andrea Martin and Danny Aiello in support.

“Little Italy” was directed by Donald Petrie, still kicking around the business decades removed from “Grumpy Old Men” and “Miss Congeniality” (the guy knows sweet, offbeat funny) and opens this fall, near as I can tell.

Rock “The Dwayne” Johnson’s run of box office blockbusters comes to an end this weekend. And you can thank “Rampage” for that.

Surely some of the residual “We shelled out $16 a ticket for THIS?” hangover from that mad monkey movie hurt “Skyscraper,” a “Die Hard/Towering Inferno” mashup that wasn’t nearly as bad.

“Skyscraper” is the underperformer of the weekend, based on limp Thursday night and weak Friday numbers. A $34 million (projected) hit only will manage $23-24, based on that.

“Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” earned mixed reviews as well. But little kids don’t read criticism, and their parents are too busy to. It will clear $40-42 million on its opening weekend, in line with projections for it. 

That means “Ant-Man and The Wasp” will squeeze into second place on its second weekend, a steep 60-65% fall off would put it at $28. It’s doing low end of blockbuster business, it’s just a lot less monetarily dazzling than every other Marvel title in recent years.

Three films with almost entirely African American casts are in the top ten at once, led by “The First Purge,” which has a chance to reach the $50 million mark by midnight Sunday.

“Sorry to Bother You” goes wide this weekend, a satire of work and class and black life in the stacked deck of American capitalism, it’s no “Get Out,” but a healthy $4 million take on its first wide weekend means profitability is just around the corner.

And “Uncle Drew” has one last week in the top ten as well.

Mariano lives and breathes futbol, especially as it pertains to the Mexican national team/

He nervously drinks shots with friends and relatives, bickers over whether they are “traitors” for not rooting hard enough and trash talks one and all when they score.

“If I watch the Mexican team play, they never lose,” he brags, in Spanish with English subtitles. “I am their good luck charm.”

Mariano (Adrian Uribe) leads younger brother Pancho (Carlos Manuel Vesga) singing, “Ay, yai yai yai, Canta y no llores” after every win.

OK, it’s Mexico. He sings even after a draw. A man’s got to have something.

Something more than living like a 40something mooch in the house he grew up in, more than a cushy government job which he’s barely clinging to, more than vintage 70s hair, a ’70s mustache and a dishy, indulgent Colombian girlfriend, Luz (Julieth Restropo).

“Penalty Kick  (“La pena máxima”) is a wants-to-be-daffy soccer comedy from South of the Border, where guys with limited expectations for the future and jobs they hate obsess over futbol, not “football,” as they do North of the Border.

Mariano puts off trading cars, puts off getting a loan for the new apartment Luz craves, avoids helping his mom with her property taxes.

Everything takes a back seat to “the beautiful game.”

Which is why he makes the Big Bet. Ok, Big BETS.

He bets his uncle (José Sefami) all he has, against the quarrelsome, root-against-the-home-team old man, who owns the family home. He bets his boss.

As soccer eats up every male conversation in the city, at the office, at family gatherings, in the bars, you can see how this would happen. As some folks insist that “American soccer” has “advanced” and surpassed Mexico, you can see how the film reels from reality into fantasy.

The very idea.

So with all these bets, with all this money on the line, with Luz kept in the dark about what he’s done with their apartment savings, Mariano finds the universe conspiring to keep “their good luck charm (him)” from catching Sunday’s match, in person.

It’s no wonder the oft-drunk Mariano finds himself slacking off even more at work. It’s the stress! Time to visit the priest to find out what how much they should beg the Virgin of Guadalupe to ensure success in the next match with the U.S.

“Who’s in goal?” the priest wants to know. And how much can you donate to the Mother Church, my son?

The soccer-obsessed milieu is what’s funniest about comedies like this, “The Cup,” “The Van,” or “Holy Goalie.” Even death itself (not his) can deter Mariano from his date with destiny.

But here, the situations are more promising than the execution, I must say. All this juggling should lend itself to chuckles and giggles at the excess. It doesn’t.

There’s no suspense about whether they’ll make it to the match. The comic complications never build up a head of steam. The scheming just isn’t that funny.

Uribe, a star of Mexican TV and friendly rival of “Overboard” star Eugenio Derbez (Uribe had a bit part in that) has a comic style that doesn’t translate as easily. He’s not as broad, not as manic, more of a reactor than an actor.

The supporting players give him no leg up on laughs at all, and the slack pacing (Comedy works best when it is filmed close-up, and cut to dash by at a sprint.) lets potential laughs fizzle.

Though it starts promisingly, that first scene turns out to be the life of “Penalty Kick,” and its peak moment. An hour passes before the Big Game, where it all starts to come undone.

With “Penalty Kick,” you don’t have to wait long for the first laugh. You have to wait an eternity for the second.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, sex, death

Cast: Adrian Uribe, Julieth Restrepo, Carlos Manuel Vesga, José Sefami

Credits:Directed by Rodrigo Triana, script by  Dago García, Luis Felipe Salamanca. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

The upshot of this July 27 release is that Scotty Bowers was a WWII vet and Hollywood hanger-on, a pimp, rent-boy, and above all else a credible kiss-and-tell authority on who was sleeping with whom, and which screen icons were gay before that closet door allowed them to live more openly.

“Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” opens July 27.

“How it Ends” is “Zombieland” with the sobriety of “The Stand” or “The Road,” a post apocalyptic cross-country thriller that has the good sense to put its antagonistic protagonists on the road with a minimum of fuss, and a lot of unanswered questions.

It’s another tale of how quickly civilization breaks down. Men and women and people’s sense of humanity and compassion are tested, as is a Cadillac CTS, as a mismatched young lawyer (Theo James) and his hardcase prospective father-in-law (Forest Whitaker) dash across the American wasteland, from Chicago to Seattle.

A couple of quick scenes establish that Sam (Kat Graham) is pregnant, forcing her beau Will to fly to Chicago to ask for her hand from retired Marine and man of means, Tom.

That awkward dinner goes badly, almost amusingly so. But Will can’t even get back on a plane back to his love before the static hits, “Will, something’s wrong,” power failures from west to east and it all starts to break down. Will wants to wait it out. Tom? He’s not hearing it.

“Let’s look at what we know. There was an event…This moment is not about waiting for the power to come back on. The only thing we can control is what we decide to do.”

Father and fiance pile into Tom’s Caddy for a mad dash through a largely vacated-militarized America with no sign of “the enemy,” where gas is lifeblood that the thuggishly inclined will kill you for.

The fires of North Dakota, the escaped convicts of Minnesota and the redneck survivalists of Montana must be outrun or bested. A Native American mechanic (Grace Dove) who will do anything to escape “The Rez” tags along.

And still there are no answers, just “End Times” sermons and pleas for help via ham radio because cell phones and the media have gone silent, crashed Army trains and transport planes, F22 flybys and birds flocking in that eerie, horror movie style.

“Ever seen clouds like that before? What the f— is going on?”

Along the way, the young lawyer, whose skill set doesn’t match the circumstances, has to measure up to the the man of action and experience who isn’t as young as he used to be.

Not much is made of this inherent conflict, as Brooks McLaren’s screenplay is content to plow through the conventions of End of the World tales. He’s been charged with re-booting the “Rambo” franchise, so don’t expect much here.

No compassionate deed goes unpunished, no relationship can find its footing before it is ended (abruptly, usually).

We’re allowed just enough proof that there are no decent people left, that “There’s a LOT to be afraid of, out there,” that the NRA’s Armageddon wet dreams have come to pass, between brief confirmations that there is humanity in some corners of the human race.

James always makes a more sturdy than inspiring leading man, but the Great and Oscar winning Whitaker usually has a little more to play than this. Only Dove, playing a mistrusting young woman escaping a limited life for a far riskier one, makes a lasting impression.

The simplest effects — empty streets, or those jammed with the panic-stricken — pay off. The “big one” in the third act is an afterthought.

And “How It Ends” does precious little to add empathy to a quest where it is a given, urgency to a journey that takes (as indeed it would, under these conditions) forever. The sidetracks aren’t really what slows it down, but the endless expanses of road and the need to park an incident into this time of day, that twilight passage tend to slow “How It Ends” down.

Like a lot of made-for-Netflix movies, trimming to build pace, strengthen narrative drive and amp up suspense would be a blessing.

Through it all, “Single Shot” director David M. Rosenthal maintains the mystery. Paranoid gossip is all anybody has, and precious little of that. Until even this saving grace is abandoned for the third act.

“How It Ends” answers its own question, then. The film version of “the end” just peters out.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Theo James, Forest Whitaker, Kat Graham, Nicole Ari Parker, Kerry Bishé

Credits: Directed by David M. Rosenthal, script by Brooks McLaren. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53

The first wide release cartoon to show up since “Incredibles 2” figures to own the box office this weekend.

None of the “Hotel Transylvania” movies have been all that. I mean, Adam Sandler, right? Reviews for the cruise ship installment in the series, “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” have been indifferent, at best.

But Box Office Mojo figures it’ll do a whopping $45 million or so business by midnight Sunday.

The Box Office Guru is figuring $40 million is more in line with this proven brand’s expectations.

Either call should put it ahead of that other proven box office brand, Dwayne Johnson. His “Skyscraper,” another vehicle pairing the wrestler/actor with his “Central Intelligence” director, should do gangbusters business — $34 says Mr. Mojo, only $32 sayeth the Guru. I figure, after “Jumanji” and “Rampage,” Johnson’s BO appeal has never been higher and at least this is better than “Rampage.” “Skyscraper” could get a lot closer to the vampire cartoon.

Everybody is predicting “Ant-Man and The Wasp” to have a big drop-off on its second weekend. Low $30s is the most Marvel can expect to bank. Anything below $32 and you can blame comic book movie fatigue, four films inside of five months.

It’s done well during the week, a HUGE Tuesday, for instance. But basically, that one’s due to fade pretty quickly.

“Sorry to Bother You” is the best reviewed picture to hit wide release this weekend, an African American/Working American satire that hits more than it misses, it should crack the top ten, earning maybe $3 million. As George S. Kaufman famously quipped, “Satire is what closes Sat. night.” And “Sorry” is no “Get Out.” 

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” will clear $350 by Sunday, “First Purge” will clear $50, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” will be chased out of the top ten, as will “Ocean’s 8” (probably) and “Tag” (ditto), which are losing screens with all the new arrivals taking over.

There are a limited number of tropes common to “the prison picture.”

“Normal” guy gets tossed in the joint, where he adapts to the savagery or dies (see the popular “Shot Caller”). Dodging rape or death in the shower, coping with the Big House hierarchy, tattoos, “shivs,” corrupt, sadistic guards — rare is the prison picture where these elements aren’t the building blocks of the story.

This ordinary person bent by a twisted system drives “Orange is the New Black” and most other variations of the “in stir” genre.

Set your story overseas, and everything — the stakes, the violence, the corruption and the life disruption are just dialed up. Hell, even Bridget Jones had her moment of truth in a Thai prison.

“A Prayer Before Dawn” hurls a violent man into this world of violence, sort of a “Bronson” parked in “The Bangkok Hilton,” as it is called. But this true story of Brit boxer Billy Moore’s ordeal dodges a few genre conventions and turns toward “Midnight Express” in its relentless violence, fish-out-of-water sense of displacement and rare moments of humanity.

It’s not a reinvention of the genre, but it is a fairly engrossing variation on a theme. And that’s in large part due to the violence — sexual and otherwise — it recreates.

Joe Cole of TV’s “Peaky Blinders” plays Moore, a Brit kicking around Bangkok’s underground fighting scene, only not kicking enough to win. He’s an over-matched boxer in a Muay Thai MMA world, tough as nails, always on the wrong side of the law and addicted to yaba, that methamphetamine and caffeine blend that is Thailand’s contribution to illegal drug culture.

Billy gets nicked, and we skip straight past the trial and to his introduction to Thai prison life. The sea of disreputable humanity that surrounds him, the sheer scale of everything from that indoctrination strip/search to the 70 inmates (one dead) packed into his cell, tells us that tough guy or not, being slightly bigger and paler is not going to help our lad fit in with this bunch.

That first trip to the bathroom is terrifying and traumatic. Resisting the “cell boss” (Panya Yimmumphai), covered in tattoos, metal-toothed and surrounded by tough lackeys, is futile. None of that “fight the toughest guy in the yard” cliched BS. Resisting the corrupt guards won’t do him any good, either.

“No family, no money, no cigarettes” is the one English phrase they know.

Cole and the script don’t give this guy much of an interior life, but Billy seems to accept his fate, hunting for angles that allow him to get by – mastering the cigarette economy that prisons the world over traffic in, for instance.

The gambling here is over Siamese Fighting Fish fights (a funny touch). Conjugal visits? Those are from prostitutes, Thailand’s infamous “Ladyboys,” one of whom, named Fame (Pornchanok Mabklang) speaks English and starts to help him out, that one human lifeline to “outside” that Billy can count on.

The screenplay emphasizes Billy’s total immersion in this experience — hurled into anarchic chaos, speaking little of the language (the real Billy Moore taught English to the locals, supplementing  that salary with his back-alley boxing), trying to understand each fresh threat, trying to make himself understood.

Subtitles are rarely provided. We hear what Billy hears, see what Billy sees, and try to figure out what’s happening or about to happen the same way he does.

His salvation, after many trips to “the hole” and narrow escapes from death, is fighting. There’s a gym, guys train under the tutelage of a tall, charismatic, chain-smoking Muay Thai master played by Somlock Kamsing, the most impressive of several real fighters cast in supporting roles. 

It’s ancient history to generations of moviegoers now, but Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express,” scripted by Oliver Stone and about an American “Billy” imprisoned in Turkey, is the closest analog to “A Prayer Before Dawn.” That’s the gold standard for “locked-up abroad” films, but far more of a thriller (and more harrowing and emotional) than “Prayer.”

Little that we see here hasn’t turned up in other prison films, and there’s not enough to Cole’s performance to make Billy a wholly sympathetic, iconic hero/survivor. We root for him because that’s pre-ordained, fear for him because he’s our proxy in this Third World Hell.

“A Prayer Before Dawn” still manages to tell a gritty story without blinking or ever looking away, a sobering look at how even the fittest among “us” would be lucky to survive the murderous world Billy Moore misbehaved his way into.

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence including a brutal rape sequence, drug use and language throughout, some sexual content and nudity

Cast: Joe Cole, Pornchanok Mabklang, Panya Yimmumphai

Credits:Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, script by Jonathan Hirschbein, Nick Saltrese. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:53