Movie Nation

Torture porn? Not really my genre. Kind of out-of-step with the “#MetToo” zeitgeist, with the perpetrators too-often having that “InCel” vibe about their attitudes towards women.

“Who’s Watching Oliver” is a twisted, darkly comical serial killer/torture porn tale set in Thailand about a nerdy creep who lures, drugs and rapes women — tourists like himself, or hookers — in the land where anything goes, sexually, save for the whole murder and dismemberment thing.

OK, probably not your genre either. “Hostel” was a long time ago. But just in case it is…

Oliver (Russell Geoffrey Banks) is a proper English lad who likes old things. He has old clocks, old luggage, out of fashion clothes. He uses greasy old-fashioned pomade in his hair.

He listens to Big Band jazz. He wears Buddy Holly glasses, even in the shower.

And of all his old things, he’s fondest of his mum, the oldest of the old things in his life. Mum (Margaret Roche) is a real piece of work.

He stammers, talks to himself, talks himself into approaching each victim.

“Just get up, go over there. Tell her she’s pretty. Girls like that.”

And Mum? She’s on his case, knocking back whisky and wine and barking orders via Skype.

“Give Mommy some SUGAR!”

She’s quick to drop “weirdo” on him, from the safety of her British home. But she’s the one who demands on-camera masturbation, sends him into the night to pick up a woman, promise her drugs and bring her home for a little bondage, rape and throat slitting.

“Momma wants some ACTION tonight!”

But as he’s trolling the amusement park, the stunning Sofia (Sara Malakul Lane) approaches him. She starts telling him her dreams. Maybe if you look like a Domhnall Gleeson who never came out of his nerd-shell, this could happen.

Sofia’s got a vulnerable streak, a trusting side and a past. So Oliver doesn’t want her to suffer the same fate as every other woman he talks up.

Director Richie Moore serves up a colorful fever dream of manipulation, hallucinations and violence, a little of it — too much of it — played for horrific laughs. It’s slick and repellent at the same time.

The locations have a certain novelty, not your generic “Bangkok binge” look.

Roche works herself into a delirious, foul-mouthed lather as a “Psycho” mom, and Banks gives himself to over-the-top with a certain glee. That Tony Perkins/”Psycho” dichotomy and subtlety isn’t what they were going for here.

But the monstrous twists aren’t all that. And the pacing is awfully slack for an 86 minute movie, lovely scenic bits of filler meant to capture the struggle for Oliver’s soul. Maybe it’s just the gruesome, excruciating detail of the dismemberments, with an illogically sick “love story” glibly grafted on it, but this thing seems to go on forever.

Again, not my genre. I thought it was dead, and in the #MeToo era, it ought to be.

But as for the nude, debased and abused “victims” here, I’ll leave the “We sent you to acting school for THIS?” chastisement for their mommas.

MPAA Rating: unrated, gory graphic violence directed at women, explicit sexual content, profanity

Cast: Russell Geoffrey Banks, Margaret Roche. Sara Malakul Lane

Credits:Directed by Richie Moore, script by Raimund Huber, Richie Moore and Russell Geoffrey Banks. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:26

I recognized a Hemingway and Harris Yulin, but the stars? Tate Ellington, Tara Summers, Victoria Clark. Another Long Island weekend getaway comedy. You know the tropes.

Oddly, “Wanderland” did not hit its April 20 release date, according to Box Office Mojo.

How much longer is that nasal, New York princess drawled “Yaaaaaaas” going to be funny? Just in terms of cultural currency?

It’s an essential comic component of the latest “Bridesmaids/Girl’s Trip” variation, “Ibiza,” now on Netflix. As in, the screenwriter got a credit, but the way Gillian Jacobs, SNL’s Vanessa Bayer and Phoebe Robinson toss it around, it’s not likely a deserved credit.

Any impending dead spot gets a “Yaaaaaaas,” often delivered by Bayer, and generally delivered through her nose. She is the mistress of this catch-phrase du jour. It’s almost funny the first five or so times you hear it.

“Ibiza” is about a marketing/PR striver named Harper (Jacobs) who endures Manhattan at its grinding worst, just for the job, just to be insulted by her narcissistic shrew of a boss (Michaela Watkins, starring in a FAR meaner/funnier movie) on her four year anniversary, or close to it.

“I’ve decided it’s time to send you on a little business trip.”

“Well, you did send me to Roanoke, Va.”

“I apologize. We paid for your hospital bill. Let’s move on.”

A Spanish sangria bottler wants to crack the U.S. market. Barcelona it is. Harper is off to close the deal with “a bunch of horny Spaniards.” That’s the queue for whiny princess dentists Nikki (Bayer) and bold woman of action Leah (Robinson) to tag along.

Work? Sure. After we’ve riffed about the disgusting stuff you see when you turn on a black light in a hotel room, bad a tanning accident accident and been exposed to a penis-painted-on-the-face prank that’s only visible under black light.

Clubs, after hours parties, hookah hits and booze boss Hernando’s invitation to enjoy “food, drink smiles and eye-opening sexual experiences” are the one thing that leads to another. The drunken pursuit of the sexy DJ Leo (Richard Madden) is actually what sends them offshore.

Frank banter about sex, the lack of it and “oversharing, OVERsharing!,” open-topped taxi rides and a “Sure Thing” pursuit among a sea of drunken driving “horny Spaniards” ensues.

“He’s not TECHNICALLY my boyfriend, but his name’s Diego and I’m PRETTY SURE I’m going to be having sex with him soon!”

Club scenes that go on forever, hot tub moments that go…well you know.

“This is just a moment. I’m having a moment. It’s more about the drugs and…Spain…”

The objective is to get uptight, downtrodden Harper to live a little, cut loose. If we bought Gillian Jacobs as that, well, it would help.

There are plenty of actors who admit they take roles just for the travel. Honest ones in the Michael Caine tradition. So ladies, fess up. Because this script doesn’t explain it, these trite roles don’t do it. It’s a “Girl’s Trip” that never leaves the tarmac.

Ibiza looks lovely, though if you’ve seen one thumping movie neon-and-strobe-filled nightclub, you’ve seen them all.

“Ibiza” is just…boring.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, substance abuse, profanity, sexual content

Cast: Gillian Jacobs,  Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Felix Gomez, Richard Madden, Michaela Watkins

Credits:Directed by Alex Richanbach, script by  Lauryn Kahn. A Gary Sanchez/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

Here’s a documentary/personal essay of the “Roger & Me” variety, a cross-country trip collecting interviews about Elvis, his place in the culture, and the America his rise and fall foresaw.

Eugene Jarecki directed it, Alec Baldwin and Chuck D are in it.

And Emmy Lou Harris, and an Elvismobile — not one of his many Cadillacs, but his Rolls Royce.

Oscilloscope Labs is the releasing studio, and look for it in limited release June 22.

It’s a period piece based on a Henry James story, so it’s about an American among the ancient money/nobility of Europe.

Pairing Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave usually pays off. The ingenues here include Poppy Delevinge and a Polanski daughter.

But what of our protagonist, the fellow in pursuit of lost “papers” of a died-too-young poet? He doesn’t sound like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, not as we’ve ever heard of him. A hint of Joseph Cotten in that accent. Surely he’s not been dubbed.

Nice to see him bounce back, with this and “The 12th Man.”

“The Aspern Papers” open in the U.S. late in the summer, limited release.

Ewan McGregor seems an odd choice to be the adult overworked and losing the thread of life Christopher Robin, the son of A.A. Milne who needs to get back to Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore when grownup life becomes too much.

But here he is, in an Aug. 3 movie that seems somehow redundant in light of “Goodbye, Christopher Robin” a couple of years ago. But Marc Forster directed, Hayley Atwell co-stars. Could be good, even if this trailer lacks a certain magic.

Disney’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” jump started its “weekend” box office count with Thursday night showings, as is now custom.

It has a holiday weekend all to itself as a new release, meaning Monday/Memorial Day, will be huge as well.

But it’s not setting any records, and that in itself is news. Reviews are middling. The “Star Wars” saturation point appears to have been reached, as the troubled production, following the Christmas “Star Wars” movie, is managing about 92 million over 3.5 days, $114 over 4.5.

Disney and Fox, about to merge, would own 83% of the holiday box office had the merger already taken place, notes Deadline.com. Because “Deadpool 2,” despite a STEEP 67% plunge on its second weekend, will clear $50 over four days.

What do we call a movie that loses over 65% of its opening weekend audience the second weekend? You remember. A TPPP — “A Tyler Perry Picture Plummet.”

Disney’s  “Avengers” is still making “Infinity” bucks, another $19-20 million this weekend. 

“RBG,” the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, is hanging in the top ten. It and “A Quiet Place” have one last weekend in the top ten before June films start muscling them aside.

“Quiet Place” is over $180 million, which suggests the Blunt/Krasinski brood don’t ave to worry about Ivy League college cash. Ever.

Nothing dazzling about the Metacritic scores for “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”

A 63 is “meh,” and I find it a tad generous. 

Of course, Rottentomatoes, where fanboys find legitimacy, is registering a more (meh) robust 71.

With “Deadpool 2” its chief competition, what numbers are we looking at, this Memorial Day weekend?

Deadline.com is calling it a “low-flying” opening, in the $105 million over FOUR days plus Thursday night (“Deadpool 2” did $125 in three plus Thursday night).

Box Office Mojo is calling it a $108 million weekend, with “Deadpool” hanging around at $50-60.

And Box Office Guru is throwing caution to the wind and saying $147 million over four days. Is he headed to Vegas this weekend? That’s a roulette bet.

I hate to see Ron Howard take the hit for a movie whose casting failures he was stuck with during his attempt to salvage the film. Younger critics tend to crucify a reliable old hand like Howard, who was never a dazzling stylist, in any event.

The J.J. Abrams storyline has been just as bad, in my estimation. “Rogue One” was the stand-out in this cycle of Disney cashing in on the Golden Lucas.

But in any event, $100 million in tickets is a lot of customers, and feedback. What are people thinking? I’m not an outlier as a naysayer this time. Lots of pans across Metacriticdom. Usually, if I’m all alone, the people who hate a film flock to a review they agree with (a big source of review traffic).

Yay, or nay on Alden Ehrenreich, Woody, Thandie and Ms. “Game of Thrones” and “Solo?”

It’s a common knock on comedies that they “try too hard.”

But not comedies set in laid-back, chillin’ and slackin’, South by Southwestin’ Austin, Texas. Not since “Slacker.”

Just park your romantic comedy in “The People’s Republic of Austin,” where hipsters grow unruly hair, insist “It’s just patchoili , cling to vinyl like it’s IPO Apple stock and eagerly await the return of VHS, and the comic culture shock laughs will follow.

Theresa Bennett’s “Social Animals” is basically a star vehicle for the quirky charms of Noël Wells, of “Master of None” and the dead-cat indie comedy “Mr. Roosevelt.” It co-stars Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Southern comic Fortune Feimster. And while it throws a lot of Austin-iana at the wall, laughs and comic/romantic insights are hard to come by in a script that expects the “scene” and the “vibe” to do all the heavy lifting. 

Characters rage at how precious the place is turning, “artisanal cupcake shops” driving up property values and driving out old businesses. One of those businesses is House of Wax, where Zoe presides. Yeah, she gives “Brazilians,” a noble profession on the bikini lines of the most hirsute city in the South. 

Except nobody will get waxes with a more painless laser hair removal emporium just down the street. She’s broke, all alone and failing, and about to turn 30. “Let (30) fall on your like a warm blanket on a cold day” her pal (Carly Chaikin) advises. But her pal has “settled” for a dull, boorish fiance — a Republican in “The People’s Republic of Austin.”

“We look great…on paper.”

Not for Zoe.

Across the street, another business is failing. Vulcan Video was doomed before it opened, but its owner Paul (Radnor) likes lost causes. Like his marriage. He and Jane (Aya Cash) have kids, but no life. She’s stressed about supporting them all, and he’s whining about the lack of intimacy.

“Maybe you should have an affair,” she gripes.

“Who has time for that?”

That’s our set-up here, people peripherally interconnected (the newlywed played by Samira Wiley is the planet the others orbit), sort of thrown together as Jane takes up with a gigolo (!?) and sweet, romantic-at-heart Paul is hurled at Zoe, with whom he can wax nostalgic (Hah!) about mix CDs and classic films and the days when a video store clerk could have an impact on his customer’s lives. Bars? Not the best place for them to meet.

“I’m sober.”

“That’s great, because I’m an enabler!”

Wells has an approachable pluck about her, but Radnor is such a bland big screen presence that they set off no sparks and never make us believe them as a couple, or root for them.

Bennett, who scripted “Petunia,” couldn’t find a laugh here if the Alamo Drafthouse depended on it. Characters are introduced with illustrated “favorite sexual position” profiles, and the plus-sized stand-up comic Feimster leads a felatio workshop involving most of the women in the cast, and cucumbers.

Jane’s profound insight, “It’s just so hard to be alone…especially when you’re with someone,” drives the action. But what transpires from a real world relationship in crisis is absurd on every level, and not funny on any.

MPAA Rating: R for strong and crude sexual content, language, and drug use

Cast:  Noël Wells, Josh Radnor, Aya Cash, Carly Chaikin, Fortune Feimster

Credits:Written and directed by Theresa Bennett. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:30

It’s always looks so easy in the movies, “the Big Score,” the “heist.”

“Oceans 11,” Oceans 12,” “Oceans 13,” “Oceans 8” or even the woebegone “Logan Lucky” go off like clockwork. The “team” of smart, smooth career criminals with “special skills,” is assembled, the “joint” is “cased,” the caper is rehearsed — preferably with a scale model of the “mark” in question.

The crooks, who banter and get along — when they aren’t double-crossing each other — have seemingly unlimited resources, especially in the glossy all-star caper comedies of Steven Soderbergh.

But the truth is a lot more like “Masterminds,” disorganized mayhem masterminded by morons, or at least people who don’t know what they’re doing. Because they taught themselves how via the movies.

“American Animals” makes it look hard. British producer-director Bart Layton, of TV’s “Breakout” and “Locked-up Abroad,” uses that access to real criminals to conjure up a near masterpiece of  “just ordinary guys out to commit a robbery” genre.

It’s a suspenseful “How to” primer and a droll, amusing and sobering “How NOT to,” the sort of movie that could discourage all the bumpkins, frat boys and anybody else bellowing, “WE could do that” while watching a heist picture and knocking back a few.

The Lexington, Kentucky quartet who actually took their shot at instance riches over a dozen years ago could have used that.

Yes, many of us might be able to score a fake-ID. Anybody with a zest for playing dress-up could figure out a disguise. Procuring firearms? This is America. “Whatever you want.”

But surveillance of the place you want to rob without being detected, “logistics,” how to get in and out, procuring a get-away car, finding a “fence” to sell the stolen property to, hurting somebody who gets in your way? That’s where the fantasy sets in. That’s where the “American Animals” get in over their heads.

Barry Keoghan (“Dunkirk”) is Spencer Reinhard, a UK frat boy studying art who takes a shine to the rarer-than-rare, oversized and illustrated by the author John James Audubon “Birds of America” stored under lock-and-key at nearby Transylvania University.

An introvert like Spencer would never act on any thieving impulse. Or so he’d have us believe. So his reprobate adrenaline junky pal Warren (Evan Peters, Quicksilver in the “X-Men” movies) is who he decides to tell about it.

And Warren, jock that he is, takes the ball and runs with it, right up to the moment he sizes up the task and cracks, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” They need a larger crew. Smart, organized Eric (Jared Abramson) and go-getter/overachieving, monied entrepreneur “Chaz” (Blake Jenner) answer the cryptic question, “Are you out or are you IN?” in the affirmative.

Are they there for the cash? They’re all middle class to upper middle class “kids.” Curiosity of the “What would actually happen in REAL life” variety? Thrill criminals of the Leopold & Loeb persuasion?

Or was it just testosterone-fueled peer pressure?

Layton zips through the obligatory preliminaries — getting a laugh out of the “scale model” cliche, letting us see the various holes in their “fool-proof plan,” as in, a plan conceived by fools who rent “Heist” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” who watch Sterling Hayden tough-talk the gang through “the plan” in the Kubrick classic, “The Killing,” by way of preparation.

They take on “color” names, just as in Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.”

“Can I just say how DUMB this whole thing is?”

“This is just how it’s done,” Warren brags. Like he knows.

But Layton, with all his access to reality TV convicts, lifts “American Animals” to another level by the simplest device imaginable. He has the real crooks comment on their actions, thoughts at the time, and their remorse. He interviews the family, teachers and others about how “We were in SHOCK” at what these boys did.

And from time to time, he injects the real Spencer, Warren, Eric and Chaz, into the action, staring in forlorn regret from a driveway as the fictional versions of themselves drive the getaway car towards their “destiny,” and actually IN that car, stupefied at what their younger self just did.

It’s clever to the point of bloody brilliant, and you can say that about the entire movie as well. Peters pegs the needle as a hyped-up punk in need of a thrill, Keoghan (also seen in “The Sacrificial Deer”) makes you wonder if cagey introvert Spencer’s version of events is true, or a cover-up.

Ann Dowd is the officious, grandmotherly librarian in charge of “special collections,” the one they know they have to “eliminate.” And Udo Kier is all understated menace as a Dutch fence, the one person they can find who might buy what they steal, if they can steal it.

“American Animals” is a tense, taut sober and occasionally silly thriller that reminds us that the Caribbean Island at the end of the Hollywood heist is always a mirage. Real life is not like a Steven Soderbergh movie, and real crooks aren’t all-knowing versions of Bullock, Clooney, Pitt and Cheadle.

They make mistakes, even the ones who aren’t American idiots.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some drug use and brief crude/sexual material

Cast: Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Blake Jenner, Ann Dowd, Jared Abramson, Udo Kier

Credits: Written and directed by Bart Layton. An Orchard release.

Running time: 1:56