Movie Nation

“The Incredible Jessica James” is the very definition of “Netflixable.”

It’s movie of undeniable charms, some witty moments and nice chemistry between its stars. But it’s got too little to it to warrant traveling to a cinema and buying a ticket to see.

It’s blessedly brief, but its set-up and situations are sitcom slight. It plays like a TV pilot, with filler that some network exec will need reassurance that “We’ll cut all that out” or “That’ll resolve itself as we get up and running.”

“Daily Show” alumna Jessica Williams has the title role, one of those go-getter New York wannabes who carries herself as if she expects credit for mastering the city.

She’s tall, outspoken and brutally blunt. She works those Eryka Badu dreads and fixes her Tinder date with a stare and lets him know that the sexual come-on he voiced on that hook-up app isn’t “going to happen.”

The hapless nebbish is fileted before he has a chance to finish his drink.

“Going through a really bad break-up” is her excuse.

When she isn’t running into her ex (Lakeith Stanfield, “Snoop” in “Straight Outta Compton”), she’s dreaming about him — nightmares where he’s killed, or some such.

So she throws herself into her work teaching kids at the Children’s Theatre Project, writes plays, and decorates her Bushwick flat with rejection letters from theaters that won’t produce her works, which she brushes off with the arrogant self-confidence you have to have in order to make a go of it in the arts.

“I’m a cocoa QUEEN,” she exults. “I’m standing on my own truth! Yaaaas.”

Actress pal Tasha (Noël Wells) takes and offhanded shot at changing all that. There’s this guy, newly divorced. He’s tall. He’s played by Chris O’Dowd.

This might-be love connection is what makes “Jessica James” Netflixable. O’Dowd is one of those guys, like John C. Reilly, who makes whatever he’s in better simply by showing up.

Jessica’s cocksure “I KNOW I’m DOPE” pose, the rudeness that she uses as a test, doesn’t crush him.

An “I don’t want to be here right now,” on their first date, gets an “Oh why would I be offended by THAT.”

Her “Just because you caught a unicorn in the wild don’t mean you get to ‘tap it’ whenever you want” is worth a “Wow, I didn’t realize unicorns were so arrogant.”

O’Dowd’s presence and the fact that the film was written and directed by a man is the only hope the picture will achieve some sort of comic parity/balance. The imposing, pushyfunny Williams is that strong a personality.

The cute gimmick is here is that as both of them are obsessed with their exes, so each must unfollow that ex on Instagram..but in turn FOLLOW the ex of the other, and thus filter and limit that obsession as they relate what the other’s onetime significant other is up to.

Just one scene of Jessica working with kids finds laughs, the whole “I’ve got New York wired” thing, explored in every recent New York sitcom, plays out on the subway, in living in ultra-cheap Bushwick, and doesn’t dazzle. And the set ups and break-ups with their requisite make-ups are trite and contrived.

But Williams is a bracing funnywoman (She’s in the “Fantastic Beasts” sequel.) and O’Dowd, quick with an Irish-accented comeback, is one of the few leading men who could take her measure.

Together, they’re as Netflixable as it gets.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations and innuendo

Cast: Jessica Williams, Chris O’Dowd, Lakeith Stanfield

Credits:Written and directed by James C. Strouse. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:23

Sure, it’s the Liam Neeson keep-yourself-relevant role model, take on vengeful wise-old-men-of-action films in your 60s.

I’ve gotten over any sense that these are “beneath” the often fine actors who make these movies. Especially after “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” Denzel got a nomination out of a dog, there, but his options are narrowing. As are those of many of his esteemed contemporaries.

Here, Melissa Leo plays the object of his quest for revenge. Nobody else in the cast is a “name.” Not even Pedro Pascal. July 20 is when we see “EQ2.”  

As I type this, the original musical “The Greatest Showman,” an ode to showmanship, show business, show people, tolerance, and the power of Hugh Jackman doing a song and dance, will have been in theaters four months, 120 days.

It sheds screens every weekend as the Blockbusters of Summer line up to take its place, but you can still see people buying tickets to the darned thing at any of the 209 theaters where it’s still showing.

I saw a handful of folks checking in to an Orlando showing while waiting for a screening the other night.

As of this moment, it’s well past its days in the box office Top Ten, but it’s still earning about a quarter of a million bucks every single weekend.

When the last digital print of it is pulled from its last theater, it will have earned $175 million or so, and stands at $173,350,000 today.

It did this despite not getting its due from the Golden Globes of the Oscars.

It is still playing long after the actual “Oscar contenders” fled the scene, none of them reaching the audience it did save for “Dunkirk.”

That’s a bigger take than any “Tomb Raider” remake, a healthier haul than Mr. Spielberg’s video gamegasm, “Ready Player One.”

It made its money the way movies used to make their money, with a long, steady profitable run, some good word of mouth, some repeat business from musical theater fanatics.

It’s no masterpiece of the genre, though it is pretty good and damned ambitious. Zac Efron may never be this appealing on the screen again.

Maybe Fox only made this to appease their “Wolverine” money maker. But damned if this didn’t pay off.

Well done.

Wes Anderson’s got something he wants to talk to you about.

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It takes confidence in your jokes-per-minute count to burn through as many as these “Deadpool” movies do. It always seems like a mistake, giving away too much, too many gags/action beats and one-liners.

But maybe not. Will it chase “Avengers: Infinity War” off the top spot upon opening? The fan fanaticism says “Why, yes it will.” May 17.

There was a moment, right at the end of “Inside Amy Schumer” and just after “Trainwreck” blew up, that it seemed everybody wanted to be in the Amy Schumer business.

Make a movie with her, talk her into a stand-up special, write her checks, let her pick her (The retired, but NOT for Amy, Goldie Hawn.) co-star in her next movie, “Snatched.”

She even did Broadway.

She’s had the option of trying to reach beyond her core “Cruder than Sarah Silverman” fanbase, those who love her for the raunch, the graphic and crude Big Girl Who Loves Her Some Sex persona she created pre-“Trainwreck,” who then became Queen of Comedy when the Judd Apatow production blew up.

But is that moment passing? Like, right now?

She got married. 

And now she’s rich. 

Before the reviews of her latest, “I Feel Pretty,” came out, she spent weeks playing defense, playing up the “backlash” that the trailer induced, coloring perceptions of her latest not-thin/still confident and sexy farce. As in “I’m talking about this because there’s nothing else to talk about regarding my movie.”

Those reviews? Mixed. I was a little more generous than some,more generous than some, but maybe “sweet” and Drew Barrymore-ish is not her sweet spot. That’s what you get when you hire Team “Never Been Kissed” to write and direct you.

Box office projections are on the low side. Will she clear $20? $17-18 seems a safer guess. And with another damned “Avengers” movie opening shortly, the window for this one to take “Blockers” money and make bank is tiny.

She collected a big payday from third tier studio STX for “Pretty,” and then didn’t screen it until the last minute. She’s doing all the press for the picture, taking ownership of it and as I said, playing defense. But should she?

If Chris Tucker taught us nothing, it’s that getting rich and earning too much indulgence from Hollywood — “What? What do you want to do? We’ll MAKE that movie!” — can be a career killer. “Hungry” is the word we attach to comics we take to. Once you’re not “hungry,” you’re self-satisfied. “See Carrey, Jim,” or most of his peers. The ones with Will Ferrell longevity are as rare as big screen comic actresses who manage a run as long as Meg Ryan’s.

Waiting for one of Orlando’s “I Feel Pretty” previews Wed., I chatted with theater staff, who shrugged her off, security guards and other patrons who gave me the “Meh” look, and others who simply find the polarizing comic not to their taste.

The people she’s reaching out to, away from her core audience, aren’t interested. And will the faithful be pleased with PG-13 Amy? Without Apatow around, is she quick witted and assertive enough and willing to go “out there” to get laughs without a strong “best joke wins” writing staff, and challenging co-stars?

Aidy Bryant and the co-director’s wife Busy Philips are no threat to upstage her, and Schumer needs that John Cena/Goldie or whoever to push her to find something funnier than “amusing enough, I suppose.”

You didn’t need #MeToo to know that Hollywood is hardest on young women, disposing of them once the novelty wears off and the audience gives studio check-writers even half an excuse to send them packing off to cable.

And as I track the lackluster web traffic on my review, and others, I wonder if Schumer’s run as Queen of the Comic Hard Candy Mountain isn’t flagging, even as the plus-size star she’s most-often compared to (Melissa McCarthy) gets her comic second wind.

In any event, keep an eye on the box office this weekend. If “Pretty” opens big, she’s re-established her clout. And she could. She has a fanbase, and women may be up for a picture about “Don’t let the low self-esteem demons win.”

But anything under $15, and it’s “Uh oh.”

Good actors making their living in the nether regions of the cinematic mainstream are an ongoing fascination for me.

Nicolas Cage, Oscar winner and C-movie mainstay, John Cusack donning and endless selection of baseball caps to hide the inevitabilities of time, filming in BFE Australia or Argentina, Wesley Snipes in exile, any actress over 40 who finds a way to put off a cable series or endless “Blue Bloods” “recurrings — take on the characteristics of the characters they play.

Drifting, staying employed, working in the less fashionable corners of South Africa, Australia or Romania, cashing Chinese production company checks just to keep going.

Ethan Hawke‘s a drunken, grieving hit-man who loses a gunfight on the job and gets a second lease on life via science in “24 Hours to Live,” a Chinese-financed/South African  thriller.

We meet him on the beach in the Florida Keys — one of those Coast of Namibia locales that looks nothing like the Florida Keys. He’s drunk with an old pal (Rutger Hauer), a sage who counsels, “You have no SOUL,” and “All rivers run into the sea, if the sea is not full.”

Travis (Hawke) has to pour his wife and son’s ashes into the aptly-named Hawk Channel, or what passes for it, and get back to work — “Wet Work.”

So much for feeling sorry for him. He’s a high-priced hitman sent to silence a witness (Tyrone Keogh) in the custody of an Interpol agent (Xu Qing) in Africa. The mercenary contracting firm “Red Mountain” (Blackwater?) needs this done to cover up its crimes in Africa.

That’s how Travis “dies,” seducing and then getting shot by Agent Lin (Qing). Until Dr. Helen (Nathalie Boltt of “Riverdale”) brings him back. With a catch. The drug and surgery cocktail wh administered “has a built-in fail-safe.”

He’s only got “24 Hours to Live.”

Hawke has to shoot, stab and otherwise mayhem his way out of the the Red Mountain “treatment” center and make some use of his last 24 hours. He hallucinates visions of his dead wife and son, stare at the handy 24 hour digital clock stitched into his arm and right some of the wrongs of his life.

So it’s “D.O.A.” or “Crank” or any movie about the doomed trying to get even, get some peace or get some more time and maybe a little redemption for their past sins in the process.

Travis races the hired killers who have taken over his contract through South Africa, lawless South African traffic and the same green 1999 Jeep Cherokee that shows up in background shot after background shot.

He has flashbacks of every killing he’s ever carried out, every memory of his late lady love. And he’s going to “save” the man he was hired to kill and the woman who “killed” him.

For a few hours, at least.

“We need to get you to a hospital.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

Paul Anderson plays Jim the rival hit man with a posh South African office with a view (which he trashes) on their trail. A cute touch? The phone password each man uses to check in with their employers.

Travis? “Yankees Suck.”

Jim? “Red Sox Suck.”

Yeah, they’re both right.

It’s strictly C-movie stuff, all shootouts and chases and hallucinations. It brings to mind a couple of later films starring the late Paul Walker, “Hours” and “Vehicle 19.”

Hawke manages a few grace notes, Qing, first seen in The West in “Life on a String,” best-known for “Looper,” handles the action scenes well, and speaks in a Hong Kong British accent that seems dubbed, but may not be. Nigerian actor Hakeem Kae-Kazim makes a wonderful impression as a South African underworld figure who knows where the bodies are buried. Formidable Irish character actor Liam Cunningham is the perfectly-bearded Mr. Big villain in charge.

Townships, slo-mo shootouts, Afrikaans’ accented mercenaries and “evidence” transported in a succession of SUV convoys , a kidnapping and absurd coincidences, the action movie cliches are folded into some pretty decent local color and some of the more obvious “obligatory Chinese content” you’ll see.

Can’t say it’s all that because it isn’t. But for fans of the very narrow subgenre I outlined in the opening paragraph, it’s a tolerable Hawke time-killer.

MPAA Rating:R for strong bloody violence throughout, language and some drug use

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Xu Qing, Paul Anderson, Rutger Hauer

Credits:Directed by Brian Smrz , script by on Mita, Jim McClain, Zach Dean.. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:33

Clancy Brown is getting a lot of off-Hollywood work these days. The “Shawshank” star’s long been a favorite of mine.

In “SuperCon” he plays a beloved but hateful genre-picture star — think Ron Perlman/Bruce Campbell/Shatner — whose bounty for autographs becomes the target of a group of convention-goers planning a heist.

John Malkovich, Russell Peters, Mike Epps and Maggie Grace — as the Fanboy’s Fantasy — star in this farce, which of course has to fall all over itself to avoid copyright infringement.

“Supercon” opens April 27 in “select cities.

Vera Farmiga’s a single-mom — some sort of therapist, I gather from the trailer — whose aged father (Christopher Plummer) is a stoner/pot dealer/true believer from way back.

She and her son get re-acquainted, “Road Trip” style, when they have to take the whimsical, blissed out old Buddhist in by driving his ancient Roller (Rolls-Royce) cross country. Bobby Cannavale is her ex, Christopher Lloyd and Peter Fonda are  dad’s old pot-growing/loving/distributing pals.

Looks too cute for its own good, but elderly folks on road trips is totally a thing. At the movies, anyway. “Boundaries” comes our way in limited release in June.

The passe comic pair who gave us “Never Been Kissed” tamp down Amy Schumer’s go-to coarseness into PG-13 territory for “I Feel Pretty,” an almost-empowering, never-quite-hilarious farce that gets by on charm.

That’s right. Schumer comes off as shockingly sweet–Drew Barrymore sweet — in this film about a plus-size woman who discovers her sexual mojo, her confidence and herself when brain trauma makes her think she’s Fashion Week material.

Co-writer/directors Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein pack a lot of body image/self-confidence/skinny-sexy classism into this one. And if it’s not exactly the rawdog confessional “Trainwreck” was, it’s measurably more palatable than “Snatched,” even if Schumer has to dial back the Big and Sexy, Get Used to It vulgarian that’s been Schumer’s bread and butter.

She plays Rene Bennett, mild-mannered website worker for famed fashion line Lily LeClaire.  She works in a Chinatown storefront with tech troll Mason (Adrian Martinez, always good for laughs) and dreams of making it into the home office up on Fifth Avenue.

She is, like her besties (Busy Philips and Aidy Bryant), aspirational. All she wants is clothes that fit, attention-getting makeup, a fun job, a little respect and a beau. But if you don’t look like say, Emily Ratajkowski or Naomi Campbell, you’re invisible — on dating websites, in New York bars and at Lily LeClaire, whose offices are populated with a vast selection of the world’s skinniest and most put-together runway ready bombshells.

“No one even reads the profiles” on those dating sites, she gripes. And she’s right. A culture that worships the superficial doesn’t even see her. But she tries. She’s downmarket fashionable, and thick-featured or not, she’s fit. She never misses a Soul Cycle class.

But that’s where everything changes fo her, a transformation that’s wholly within her head because she’s had it bashed pretty good by getting it caught in those Soul Cycle pedals. This is where Schumer shines, utterly selling the narcissism that sweeps over Rene when she looks in the mirror and sees someone like Emily Ratajkowski (“Blurred Lines”), who happens to be on the cycle next to her.

“I’m BEAUTIFUL!”

Just having confidence in her appearance transforms her life. She’s instantly entitled. Every guy is whistling at HER, every door is being held open for HER. And that cute dorky CNN editor (Rory Scovel) in line behind her at the dry cleaners? He’s hitting on HER.

Actually, he isn’t, and that’s the best running gag in the picture. He’s a bit scared, thrown on his heels by her chutzpah, like everybody she meets. Rene, presentable enough to not scare the horses, is still the ONLY one who thinks, “Guys, I’m a KARDASHIAN! One of the JENNER ones!”

Oscar winner Michelle Williams trots out a Kardashian Era mousy voice (with vocal fry) as Avery, the heir to the Lily LeClaire thrown her grandmother (Lauren Hutton) still sits upon. She latches onto Rene as her conduit to the sort of down-market (Target) customer the “elitist bitches” makeup company now wants to “pivot” to embrace.

“Regular girls put on their makeup in the rearview,” Rene reports. And Lily LeClaire listens.

There’s a giggle of a scene where Rene brazenly interviews for the front desk receptionist job at the company, a job held by a succession of would-be models. “Yes, modeling IS an option for me,” she brags — to the CFO (Supermodel Naomi Campbell) and CEO (Williams).

A beachside bar bikini contest brings out Rene’s “Flashdancer” delusions. In such scenes, riffing, dancing and dousing herself, Schumer lays it all out there.

The picture stops almost dead in its tracks at the 90 minute mark as we see Rene almost become the sort of dismissive “normal” beauty we’ve seen put her down. Tom Hopper is the other LeClaire heir, a louche hunk who, like many others, finds Rene refreshing and charming.

Of course too much of the edge the picture needs to truly make a comment on the objectification of women, body shaming and the class wars that we’re all subjected to by Beautiful People is rubbed off.

But Bryant, Philips (married to co-director Silverstein), Schumer and Williams all score points on these subjects, just not slam dunks.

And Schumer comes off downright demure at times, no mean feat for a woman who gained fame via a TV series whose title wasn’t so much an innuendo as a come-on — “Inside Amy Schumer.”

Maybe its by design, as she’s one of the most divisive comics working today, no matter what the box office take of “Trainwreck” was. But even with much of her edge smoothed over, Schumer is still reasonably funny. Who knew she could be charming, too?

(So is Amy Schumer in trouble?)

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexual content, some partial nudity, and language

Cast: AMy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Lauren Hutton, Rory Scovel, Tom Hopper, Busy Phillips, Aidy Bryant, Naomi Campbell

Credits: Written and directed by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein An STX release.

Running time: 1:46