Movie Nation

  It gets better, the saying and the TV public service announcement campaign told us. Years ago.

And it has. The occasional giant step backward notwithstanding, we’re a long way from “The Hangover” (2009) and its “Paging Dr. Faggot” jokes.

Et tu, Bradley?

“Coming out?” Still a rite of passage. Still brave. Still a big deal on a personal level, and there are still families that might not “get” the whole tolerance thing.  But the tide of history turned a decade ago and the speed of change and acceptance in the culture has been, by any measure, breathtaking.

  “Love, Simon” is a gay coming-of-age comedy that seems from another era. It’s a “coming out” romance” that tries too hard — much too hard, and a dated “edgy” subject comedy with may too much of the edge rubbed off.

Based on Becky Albertalli’s adorable 2015 novel, it’s a film that’s going to speak to kids going through this watershed moment now. But anybody who’s been around for a few decades and maybe seen decades of queer cinema that came before it can be excused (Let’s hope) for shrugging and saying, “Yeah, and?”

It traffics in gay stereotypes and swims in a sea of sweeter-than-sweet characters, none sweeter that its title character.

Simon, played with a sort of guarded reticence by Nick Robinson of “The Kings of Summer,” narrates that “I’m just like you.” He uses words like “normal” in a defensive way that seems straight out of 1999.

Maybe it’s his dumpy hoodie/t-shirt wardrobe, or his carefully chosen-for-public-consumption classic rock playlist (The Kinks), but his family doesn’t know, his friends don’t know. Even though we do. Know.

There’s a cute moment or two when he tries out his gaydar and tries to flirt.

It takes an anonymous blog post from a classmate in the same circumstances to bring Simon closer to accepting who he is and putting that out there for all to see. His email pen pal “Blue” becomes his gay confesssor, the student Simon says everything he feels, at 17, and how much he wants to feel love, to have his “great romance” (teen edition).

Simon still doesn’t think it “fair that only gays have to ‘come out.'” That sets up the dorky “Mom, Dad, I’m heterosexual” gag montage that you’ve seen in the film’s trailer.

Those friends include the requisite slightly-chunky female BFF (Katherine Langford), the hunky jock (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and the cooler-than-cool bi-racial cutie (Alexandra Shipp) Simon’s in “Cabaret” with. Yeah, Simon’s in theater. Noooo, nobody knows.

Jennifer Garner plays his indulgent, bubbly psychotherapist mom with great empathy, and Josh Duhamel’s the ex-jock dad who makes “one man ‘pride parade'” and “fruity” cracks — about other people, not his own kid. Because he doesn’t know.

The lack of bite in those cutting remarks make you think “Dad doesn’t mean it.” That’s a function of the performance and pretty much the way they entire picture plays.

There are homophobes at school, yes. They’re more than offset by the gushing, over-the-top “Your Pal” version of the vice principal (Tony Hale, pulling out all the stops, and then some) and the sassy, “I was an extra in ‘Lion King,’ and this is where I am” lesbian drama teacher (Natasha Rothwell).

A few funny lines ensue, but veteran TV director Greg Berlanti has his cast play them sitcom broad. The film’s flatness creeps into the promisingly unpolished “Cabaret” the kids are performing, and a dream sequence where Simon & Classmates dance to Whitney Houston.

There are a series of fantasy sequences where Simon imagines his gay online friend as this or that kid from school, a Halloween party with Simon and BFF Leah (Langford) dressed as John and Yoko, and we figure out this Georgia high school has parents hip enough to not mind swearing in front of the kids and not strict enough to care when those kids come home from that party drunk. Coed sleepovers at 17? Sure.

And that’s the chief shortcoming of “Love, Simon.” Whatever value it might have to scared, sexually-conflicted kids, mainstreaming tolerance and emphasizing “I’m just like you,” all that feels like old news in the movie.

When every space is a “safe space,” when bullies are promptly dealt with via public cussing-out (by a teacher) and punishment from the “cool” vice principal, when the villain of the piece is just a dork on the jerk end of the nerd spectrum (Logan Miller), where’s the conflict?

Like “Wrinkle in Time,” it’s more a movie one “supports” rather than really enjoys.      Unless of course you’re in the less worldly audience for whom it’s truly intended. The word that best fits it as a comedy, a romance and a coming-of-age story is “innocuous.”  It’s just that at this point in history, after Neil Patrick Harris, after Tammy Baldwin, after Ellen and “Glee!,” “innocuous” doesn’t feel like enough.

It’s too easy.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual references, language and teen partying

Cast: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Katherine Langford, Josh Duhamel, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Tony Hale

Credits:Directed by Greg Berlanti, script by Elizabeth Berger, Isaac Aptaker, based on the Becky Albertalli novel. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:49

Is there a more frightening creature in the movies than a bored, amoral teenage girl?

Give the pale princess endless cash and endless free time and problems that seem to visit only the super-rich (in the movies) and you just know the monied minx is capable of anything.

  “Thoroughbreds” is a dry chiller of a thriller, pairing up two pretty and put-together young things in conversations that start awkward, bend to uncomfortable and twist towards murder. It’s disquieting and then disturbing, almost from start to finish.

Amanda (Olivia Cooke of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) is a perpetually deadpan teen dropped off to study with Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy), the too-too-perfect princess of her own — OK, her stepfather’s — Connecticut castle.

They go to private school together. Or did. Amanda’s done something awful to a horse. Lily is so buttoned down and repressed she never says the wrong thing. Or is that fear?

Amanda is a bust at school, she confesses. Again, deadpan. She expects to “Steve Jobs my way through life,” thanks to her business savvy.

But Lily is the one who took money from Amanda’s mom for this “play date.” Not that she admits it. She withstands Amanda’s soul-dead interrogations for a reason. Got to be money.

Amanda claims “I don’t have any feelings. Ever. ‘Anti-social with schizoid tendencies…Doesn’t make me a bad person.”

Actually, it kind of does, dear.

Lily is, in spite of appearances, a lonely soul. She’s unhappy at home. Her callous step-dad (Paul Sparks) is a cold-hearted narcissist and a bit of a creeper. It takes a lot of prodding, poking and provoking from Amanda to get this simple admission out of Lily.

“You’re incredibly off-putting and you creep me out…You smell.”

These two hugging each other is the most unnatural act committed to film since that kid had sex with a peach in “Call Me By Your Name.”

Amanda, it turns out, can dish it out but can’t take it. Lily is miserable and only expects to be more so, and won’t do anything about it. Naturally enough (?) their conversation turns to murder.

The late Anton Yelchin plays Tim, an alumnus of this world, now a drug dealer and big talking hustler whose James Franco/Roman Polanski taste for under-age girls got him a stint in prison.

“You have no idea where I come from!”

“Westchester?”

The all-powerful, taunting-provoking mean girls will use this weak-willed heel to carry out whatever fiendish plot they concoct.

Writer-director Corey Finley makes his feature directing debut a film of foreboding style and ominous tones. He keeps his harpies in extreme closeup, emphasizing the care and grooming and dead eyes of his protagonists. The music is all percussion in the early “Chapters,” with the score filling out as each chapter passes.

The settings have the airless silence of cinematic space ships, adding tension to the never-innocuous conversation chess-matches these two seriously messed-up shrews have.

I like the way their back-stories are filled in a lot more than I enjoyed the too-pat resolution to the story’s central dilemma. But Cooke and Taylor-Joy (of “Split”) make fascinating “Heavenly Creatures,” anti-Lolitas — asexual, antiseptic and heartless. One is more understandable than the other, but calling either “sympathetic” would be a stretch.

And Focus Features was wise to hold this, Yelchin’s last movie, to allow time to pass after his accidental death. Stripped of sentimentality, his turn shows the antsy energy and juvenile vulnerability he never got the chance to grow out of.  Here, he gets a compact showcase, one last chance to show what made him special and his death such a loss.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing behavior, bloody images, language, sexual references, and some drug content

Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya-Taylor Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks

Credits: Written and directed by Corey Finley. A Focus Features release.

Running time:

Death comes to the trailer park in “The Strangers: Prey at Night,” a pitiless sequel to the slasher hit “The Strangers” of a decade ago.

Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) and Martin Henderson (“Grey’s Anatomy”) are the parents who take their kids — troubled Kinsey (Bailee Madison of TV’s “Good Witch”) and wussy Luke (Lewis Pullman) to the grandparents’ place on Gatlin Lake.

And before you know it, the slashing starts. That murdering cult — or club — of “The Strangers” have donned makeshift hoods or Halloween masks, shown up with axes, machetes and pick’em up trucks, and they commence to cutting folks up. 

Casting good actors in such pictures is a bit of a spoiler. But there’s nothing else here that’s remotely surprising either, so whatever. It starts with “What was THAT?” and transitions to the stupidest question any parent ever asked a teenager in an American movie.

“You got a phone on you?”

Only in a horror movie would the answer to that be, “Nope.”

Then it’s “Run like Hell, I’m right behind you” and other variations on “You wait here whilst I go get help” and the like.

The masked murderers are always getting the drop on the constantly fleeing victims. A gun is brandished, but oddly — for a movie set in itchy-trigger-finger-land — the would-be victims only THREATEN to use it, even AFTER seeing the butchery these heartless monsters commit. “I’m givin’ you FIVE SECONDS to leave!” That’s smart.

That’s the first knock on this. It’s dumber than dumb. But the lack of panache in the murders, the lack of style and suspense in the filming and cutting, do “Prey at Night” in.

I prefer my horror without silly supernaturalism. There are things that go bump in the night that are perfectly plausible, and serial killers have always been with us (Read “The Man from the Train” about a nut-with-an-axe case from the early 1900s for proof). And I recall not minding “The Strangers.”

But when any of these movies get to the sequel stage, original thought goes out the window and it’s all about the colorful, clever ways they find to stick a knife into a B-list actor or actress. “Prey at Night” can’t even manage that.

MPAA Rating: R for horror violence and terror throughout, and for language

Cast: Christina Hendricks, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman, Martin Henderson

Credits:Directed by Johannes Roberts, script by Bryan Bertino and Ben Katai . A — release.

Running time: 1:25

Aliens invade — well, three of them do — Japan, and they’re here for our mental “concepts” in “Before We Vanish,” a peculiarly Japanese take on Pod People, what makes us human and the complacency that comes with that knowledge.

The aliens brag that it’ll take them three minutes, then maybe “three days…we underestimated you” to take over. It takes co-writer/director Kiyoshi Kurasawa two hours and nine minutes to get that point across.

Much of that run time is a spent on a story that’s a frustrating and puzzlingly vacuous experience. I know it gave my yen for all films Japanese a severe test. It’s a sardonic satire that lacks the wit, style or pacing to let it come off.

“Vanish” begins with a bloodbath, a schoolgirl, Akira (Yuri Tsunematsu), a favorite and slightly pervy meme of Japanese cinema, comes home and butchers a houseful of relatives. Akira had no motive, just a lurching, zombie-ish walk to tip us that she’s not quite right.

Across town, Narumi (Masami Nagasawa of “Our Little Sister”) confronts her cheating and possibly weirded out husband Shinji (Ryûhei Matsuda of “The Raid 2”) before dragging him to the doctor. He can’t remember much of anything. 

“We’re married? What does that mean?” he asks (in Japanese, with English subtitles).

Her increasingly exasperated explanations of every “concept” he questions her about only earns a cryptic “Interesting” from him in reply.

A hustling TV reporter (Hiroki Hasegawa, of a recent “Godzilla” movie or two) notices the Japanese defense forces, the U.S. military and even the Ministry of Health are on the move. A contagion? A kid (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) tips him off. “We’re invading.”

Over the course of two hours, these three storylines follow the three aliens as they try to meet and “E.T. phone home!” their people. Along the way, they reveal their alienness by not quite fitting in, not showing proper respect or Japanese manners in conversation.

And in Akira’s case, it’s the mayhem she brings with her that gives her away.

But that mayhem is a blessed relief in a movie that grapples with the idea of “work” and “family” and “love” (explained, sort of, in a Christian church) and what would happen to us if an alien demanded that we visualize it, then says “I’ll take that” with a touch of his finger.

Odder still are the humans who more or less consent to being each alien’s “guide.” They explain, and are puzzled at their own explanations, the “traps” they live their lives in.

As in “work” means compromising your beliefs, ethics (plagiarism) and integrity (sexual harassment must be endured) to get money, “family” is out of date, etc.

Having the trap of one’s belief system sprung doesn’t quite explain the complacency of the reporter helping end the human race (the aliens are not immortal, and he’s got access to guns and a truck that could run them over at several points), the wife suddenly loyal to the cheating, stumbling husband who now seems reborn as a fish-out-of-water philosopher.

There’s a little “Starman” here — too little — and a bit of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” There’s little style to the filmmaking (filler “traveling” scenes) and zero urgency to this emergency.

You don’t have to read his bio to know that this Kurosawa (“Pulse”) isn’t related to the more famous one, even if Tarantino’s addled production company (Wild Bunch) did drag this oddity into American theaters.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence

Cast: Hiroki Hasegawa, Ryuhei Matsuda, Masami Nagasawa, Mahiro Taksugi, Yuri Tsunematsu

Credits:Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa , script by .Tomohiro Maekawa, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sachiko Tanaka. A Super LTD/Wild Bunch release.

Running time: 2:09

  Alicia Vikander makes us feel Lara Croft’s pain, with every grunt, whimper, yelp and gasp of exertion she makes as the “Tomb Raider.”

Yes, the Oscar winner is a Swedish slip of a thing, and having her stand next to — well, any of her co-stars save Walton Goggins — makes it clear that all that kick-boxing and wrestling we see her do to set up her mad skillz in the physical realm will convince nobody.

It’s not physique, it’s physics. She can barely reach the villains she’s spin-kicking left and right, much less deliver the throw-weight to make a punch look like more than a slap.

She makes for a more serious Lara Croft in a duller, less supernatural and somewhat less fun version of the video game heroine based on Indiana Jones. If it seems only yesterday that Oscar winner Angelina Jolie was playing the “Let’s get PAID” role in a T & A & L (especially “L”) take on the tank-topped terror. Maybe that’s because SyFy has been airing the 2001 film repeatedly these past few weeks to gin up interest in the re-boot/remake. And present comparisons when the new film comes out.

That film was more stunts/somewhat less digital, though both “Tomb Raiders” are a bit let down by their villains. Here, it’s Walton Goggins as the pistol-packing predator running a tomb-search on a remote Japanese island. He has a few scenes with a sat-phone, as if to head off charges that he “phones it in.” It’s a half-hearted turn at best, and pales next to his murderously mincing menace in TV’s “Vice Principals.” Now THERE was a bad guy.

Lara is a London pizza delivery heiress in the new film, a kickboxer who never knows when to quit, a bike racer who treats the mean streets as her BMX course.

Her guardian (Kristin Scott Thomas) wants her to take over the family multi-national, but that would mean admitting that Lord, billionaire and avid Indie-imitator father Richard (Dominic West) is dead. He may well but, Dad’s “first letter from my final destination” (post mortem) gives her fun clues to work out that tell her what he was up to.

And that sends her to Hong Kong in search of Lu Ren, every Hollywood action movie’s Compulsory Chinese Content. He will help her find her way through The Devil’s Sea to the island where an ancient Japanese sorceress was buried.

That’s where Lara runs up against Mathias Vogel (Goggins) and his minions. And that’s where he learns she was quite the kickboxer, and before that, an archer for the ages.

The chases and fights are ho hum with a capital H. Vikander is game, and hurls herself over digital gorges, through digital gauntlets and into digital raging rivers. A shipwreck almost impresses, until you remember the execrable “Hurricane Heist” managed one of those. Not the hardest thing to fake these days.

Aside from the presence of Nick Frost (as a chatty pawn broker), it’s a humorless affair. There’s no urgency to the plot, even though Dad warned of world-ending consequences to the discovery of this tomb. The quest just sort of shuffles along, a gunfight here, a crawl across a ladder there.

Vikander is more the coquette here than any English language film has ever let her be. But even at that she seems a tad too serious to want to hang with. Jolie let her vamp flag fly, and that’s sorely missed. The movie’s dull, and at least a little of that falls on Vikander.

The rest? I’d credit the director whose first name seems like a promise he’s ill-equipped to keep, Roar Uthaug.

Not that the original film is any better or anybody’s idea of a classic, or even passable entertainment. But when your set pieces fail to surprise, your dialogue fails to deliver even one decent one-liner and your villain looks like he’s dealing with dysentery on location, maybe 17-18 years isn’t long enough between reboots.

Just don’t tell “Spider-Man” that.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and for some language

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Dominic West, Kristin Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi

Credits:Directed by Roar Uthaug script by Geneva Robertson-Dworet ,Alastair Siddons. An MGM/Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:58

The rules for this bachelor party are simple.

“Number one, ‘Get drunk.’ Rule number two, ‘Stay drunk…'”

Mustaches are optional.

The whooping and chest thumping, bailing out of AA “because I need a break…I’m gonna go to that meeting Monday –Tuesday at the latest” all but drown out the groom’s endlessly interrupted, “I came down here to tell you guys…”

Because, hell’s bells — the marriage is off. Two weeks before the wedding, too. Bummer.

But when in Big Bear Lake, do as buddies who want to celebrate your continued bachelorhood do. Bars, shotgunned-beers, a stripper…

  “Big Bear” has drunken binges, stripper-administered spankings and a morning after, all the pre-reqs of a bachelor party movie.

Oh, and that offhand remark about what you’d like to do to the guy who stole your fiance? “Make him dig his own grave?” Your “boys” took that seriously.

Joe (writer-director Joey Kern) is our would-have-been groom. Eric (Adam Brody) is the seemingly sensible pal, though that black sticking cap is a give-away. Dopey Nick (Tyler Labine) is the unrecovered alcoholic “bear,” Colin (Zachary Knighton) is the embittered divorced guy who rarely gets to see his kids and is a little too happy to meet the stripper (Heidi Heaslet).

That dart they jabbed into Joe’s shoulder the night before? “Tough-love,” the only way to get the “truth” out of Joe.

And that “dude” in the baseball, hogtied and gagged on the floor? That’s “The guy. The GUY, man.” What do you say to the lad — or lads — who kidnapped the man who broke up your wedding?

“You’re WELCOME.”

Bit of a pickle, wot?

You can see the dilemma, how to untie the guy, extract a promise from him not to call the cops, say “Bygones” and move on.

Here’s where the movie finds some comic footing. The “dude” (Pablo Schreiber, brother of Liev, funny in his own right) doesn’t recognize Joe.

“You’re in my ROBE.”

And the cuckolder is, in every way, in every word out of his mouth, a massive Massengill. Duct-tape on? Victim. Duct-tape off? He’s all over-familiar and condescending, doubling down on provocation, analyzing Joe’s problems.

“You guys had issues. You hate her family. You’re scared of her dad.”

He’s actually relieved to see who took him, because “I thought it was work-related.”

Break out the car battery and jumper cables, the finger-nail pulling pliers, the shovel.

“You can’t just TAKE somebody and not pay the consequences,” the Dude protests, missing the irony his protest.

The funny lines are more grins than belly-laughs.

“Why do you have chloroform?”

“MOST people have chloroform.”

Torture? Really?

“I watched a video on Youtube.”

There are plenty of possibilities set up here, most of them blown. There’s no Mike Tyson, no Bengal tiger, no Vegas even.  There’s barely a hint of Kern’s funniest previous acting credit, “Bloodsucking Bastards.”

The picture’s turns towards touchy-feely are out of character. The menace in the situation dissipates with every passing minute, with every coincidental appearance by “the cop” (Toby Huss).

Take away the fear and you’re leaning on the funny. And it’s just not funny enough for that to work out.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity, violence

Cast: Adam Brody, Zachary Knighton, Tyler Labine, Ahna O’Reilly, Joey Kern and Toby Huss

Credits:Written and directed by Joey Kern. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:27

“A baby doesn’t know how rich its parents are,” Dustin Hoffman famously said in defense of the most expensive flop of his career, the comedy “Ishtar.”

That aphorism could cover pretty much any movie you sit down to watch. We don’t need to know how it was made, how much it cost, how much a movie needs to earn and how many actors/writers/directors were hired, considered, fired or quit.

All that matters is what’s on the screen.

If there’s an exception to this “knowing too much” rule (admittedly, one not everybody is as zealous about as me), it might be “Keep the Change,” a New York romance with a big, fat twist.

Many of the characters are on the autism spectrum, with varying degrees of socialization and intelligence. And many of them are played by people whose symptoms mirror those of their characters, turning our attention away from the disability and onto the obstacles to romance within this community and the myths we and culture have attached to folks like this.

David (Brandon Polansky) comes from money. We meet him in the back of a limo. He’s sure he’s hilarious, and shares his tactless jokes with one and all, including his driver.

“Why did the bum vote for Obama? He wanted CHANGE!”

It isn’t clear right away, but there’s something a little off about this guy, who looks a little like Mark Ruffalo and acts a lot like a fighter who’s taken a few too many shots to the head. He wears sunglasses constantly. He prowls dating websites, smothers would-be dates with his version of oily charm, and only scares them off when one of his many, many jokes finally crosses the line. Cracks comparing summer camp to “Death Camps” in the Holocaust will get you in trouble with the Tribe every time.

When he’s dropped off without ceremony at a Jewish Community Center for a court ordered group therapy session, he may say “I don’t have a problem. I’m just passing through.” We know better. So do the more overtly Asperger’s sufferers and autistic adults there. David may play on his phone and reject interaction. But he belongs here.

Writer-director Rachel Israel’s film gives us permission to laugh, not so much at the awkwardness of one and all — limited eye contact (wearing sunglasses gives David a crutch for this), tactless bluntness — as at the ways a society like this might function. There are plenty of ruffled feathers, trumped by a generous helping of forgiveness.

Aspiring dramaturge Sammy (Nicky Gottlieb) would love David for his new play, a role he was born for, a gay man.

“I’m not gay!”

“But you have such gay mannerisms!”

Oh well, never mind. Bygones, etc.

It’s in this closed circle that David finally finds a woman who gushes about how sexy he is, who finds him “normal.” Sarah (Samantha Elisofon, an utter delight) is sexy in that Amy Schumer way. She’s plump, confident, assertive and prone to breaking into song at every opportunity, onstage or off.

The first time we hear her, we realize that’s not the best idea. But not Sarah. She just charges on. And David, who struggles to maintain a cocksure air, is simply blown away. Others have to tell him, “Oh, she’s a PLAYA. She just wants you for dates and sex.”

As if that’s a deal-breaker.

The struggle Israel underlines in this genial comedy is within David himself. His parents (Jessica Walter, Tibor Feldman) rein him in, try to keep tabs on his boundaries and emphasize the “normal” in him. Others in that group take him more at face value.

He’s a bit of a jerk, but he’s not close to being the biggest jerk in the bunch. If you thought people with Asperger’s were tactless purely by accident, “Keep the Change” will deflate that myth.

David doesn’t pick up the social signals that his “Muslim sex doll — it blows itself up” joke isn’t appropriate. He literally cannot read the room. And it’s cute that the born comedian — who dreams of making a movie based on his old home movies of the Bar Mitvah and prom he went to when his parents were sure he was more “normal” —  blows his punchline by emphasizing the wrong word.

Other elements of the story are melodramatic tropes — the relative who’s a Broadway star, a first-ever trip on a bus, autistic fish out-of-water at an absurdly expensive fine-dining establishment.

But after all these years of movies and TV giving us Amanda Plummer or Hugh Dancy or that “Rain Man” himself, Dustin Hoffman, pretending to be “on the spectrum,” “Change” finds humanity, a sweet moment or two (rare) and some good-natured laughs at the misperceptions and misunderstandings that occur when on-the-spectrum meets off-the-spectrum, and even among people all on the same wavelength.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with adult themes, sexuality

Cast: Brandon Polansky, Samantha Elisofon, Nicky Gottlieb, Jessica Walter

Credits: Written and directed by Rachel Israel. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time:

Mumblecore comedy meets the fateful, fatal romance of gambling in “Win it All,” an engaging wallow in the land of the losers starring Jake Johnson.

It’s a low-rent travelogue reminiscent of every hot-streak-goes-bust picture ever made, the ones that emphasize charm and ineptitude over violence.

It’s not “Rounders.” It’s more “Let it Ride.” With a dollop of “California Split.”

Johnson, of “Safety Not Guaranteed” and “Let’s Be Cops” and TV’s “New Girl,” is Eddie Garrett. His pick-up line isn’t the smoothest with single mom Ava (Aislinn Derbez).

“What do I do for a living? What do I do for a living? It’s hard to say these days.”

Get into the rhythm of the speech, the give and flow of the dialogue. That’s what “mumblecore” was. It’s hard to even call it a genre of its own any more. It’s the somewhat improvised, insanely chatty drollery that made Greta Gerwig a star (“Hannah Takes the Stairs”) and Joe Swanberg and the Duplass Brothers filmmakers to watch.

Eddie is a Chicago hustler who is the last guy — the LAST guy — you’d think to “store” a bag full of cash and the evidence of a crime with. But that’s exactly what a bookie’s collector (José Antonio García) does when he’s headed for a stint in prison.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t look in the bag.”

Eddie is faced with this dilemma, but he’s got a sponsor (Keegan-Michael Key) to help him do the right thing.

“There can’t be a happy ending.”

The right thing is the last thing Eddie is going to do.

Swanberg, who co-wrote this with Johnson, gives us the gamblers’ high, that winning streak montage. How’s Eddie doing in relation to the cash stash he’s supposed to not touch? Swanberg slaps a running tally (“+$2148”) on the screen so we can keep score.

If you know that Richard Dreyfus “classic” of the genre, “Let It Ride,” you know what’s coming the moment Eddie puts on the white linen suit and heads to the track. Everything goes South.

Key, as Gene the sponsor, plays this revelation the way any sane person would. He busts out laughing. He trots out the “rock bottom” admission mantra.

“You’ve got to admit you’re an idiot!”

“Hey, I’m at an all-time low.”

“Say it. Say your name…”

“My name was Edward Garrett. And my friend Gene was right, I’m addicted to losing.”

“Win it All” has a well-worn story arc, and its charms lie in the ways the “good woman and brother (Joe Lo Truglio, quite good) bring Eddie around” interrupts the reckoning we know and dread is coming.

“You’re Ok. You’re Ok. Relax. Stay with it, kid. Get the money back, the money back.”

I’ve seen so many movies of this genre — “Hard Eight” to “The Cooler,” “Mississippi Grind” to “21” — that it’s almost impossible to deliver a twist that’s a genuine surprise. “Win it All” doesn’t have much of one.

So as you and I await the inevitable, listen for the little pearls in the dialogue. Eddie’s brother Ron begs begs begs him to take a “straight” job with his yard service business. And when he does, he rides him — about keeping the mowers running.

“Julio is literally down by the school yard with a broken belt. He’s doin’ lawns that look like crop circles.”

Yes, it’s scruffy and likable enough. But track down “Mississippi Grind” or “Hard Eight” or “The Cooler,” if you haven’t seen them. All in, “Win it All” is all Jake and not enough Johnson.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, with sexual situations, alcohol abuse, gambling, profanity

Cast:  Jake Johnson, Keegan-Michael Key, Aislinn Derbez, Joe Lo Truglio

Credits:Directed by Joe Swanberg, script by Jake Johnson and Joe Swanberg. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:27

Of all the things one can imagine actor Jared Leto as — hearthrob, “Mr. Nobody,” emaciated transgender junkie with AIDS — “made man” in the Japanese mob would have to be low on the list.

But as delicate as he can seem, he more or less gets away with it in the new Netflix film, “The Outsider.” He plays a mysterious American gradually invited into the Yakuza by virtue of his prison time and aid in getting another mobster out of the joint, his silence and his propensity for doing the violently unexpected.

The movie is a sometimes fascinating portrait of post-war Japan, the Osaka and Kobe of 1953, when resentment over the leaving American occupiers is still strong, but the mania for imitating everything American was peaking.

Our mobsters wear matching black suits and ties, travel in Yank tanks (A Chrysler Imperial) and in between sumo matches and Noh theater performances, duck into night clubs where mambo is all the rage, and the bands are a fair approximation of anything you’d have found in Miami or Havana, back in the day.

The “gaijin” (outsider)? He doesn’t talk much. “I don’t speak Japanese” he tells the guards in prison. Outside it, he leans toward plain white tees and khaki over Army boots.

We don’t know why he was in prison. But when the tattooed mobsters who run the joint try to hang a man, he intervenes. That earns a beating from the guards, and a furious lecture. In Japanese. And a newly beaten-up roommate. ‘

Kiyoshi (Tadanobu Asano) enlists his help in an escape plan, one involving the prison hospital and attempted seppuku (hari kari). And when that pays off, the favor is repaid.

We eventually learn the American is named Nick, that he doesn’t shy away from the offer of working with this new “family.” What he doesn’t realize is that the Shiromatsu faction is on the wane. They’re losing territory, threatened by the Seizu family.

The story here, doled out over two hours, is nothing new, nothing we haven’t in scores of gangster movies (“Donnie Brascoe,” for instance). There’s a girl (Shioli Katsuna, sporting quite the American accent), an old friend (Emile Hirsch), a turncoat inside the mob, assorted confrontations rising toward a bloody finale.

What’s novel here is the milieu — the setting — the differing rituals of this version of “The Mob,” finger loppings and Shinto priest blessings at made man ceremonies.

And tattoos. Everybody’s got ink, and not a little. Most of us have gotten at least a tiny taste of Yakuza behavior and code from other movies and cop shows. They have thrived in a culture of good manners, quiet deference and staying in your lane by being loud, garish bullies prone to threaten violence, and on occasion, even deliver it, to get what they want.

They’re the Mafia with different pasta.

Leto, in slicked back hair that seems a little out of place (not everybody in the cast went for 1953 buzz cuts in the American GI or Japanese businessman style), gets the job done with a minimum of talk — a smart call. Neither he nor his character is ever going to intimidate anybody with muscle.

If Nick’s quick acceptance into this mob raises an eyebrow, that serves to deflect our expectations.Other logical lapses are harder to swallow.

And the violence, graphic in the extreme, won’t be to every taste.

But “The Outsider,” a package bundled up by the father-son producers Art and John Linson (“Into the Wild,” “Sons of Anarchy”) is just far enough off the well-worn mob movie path to be worth a look, even if — like too much on Netflix — you feel the need to bail and see what else is available before it bleeds out.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, nudity

Cast: Jared Leto, Tadanobu Asano, Kippei Shina, Shioli Kutsuna, Emile Hirsch

Credits:Directed by Martin Zandvliet , script by Andrew Baldwin. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:00

Miles Walton is a teen with a dream, one his principal indulges with a killer compliment. He makes little movies, works part time at the local three-screen cinema, and could be “the next Spielberg.”

If only he can get into a college in Chicago.

Miles has a fear, too. He tactlessly tosses that to his guidance counselor (Yeardley Smith).

“I’m afraid I’ll get stick here like everyone else!”

“Here” is Pondley, Illinois, the middle of nowhere. It’s 1999, and when Miles’ hated dad (Stephen Root) dies, having looted his college fund for a mistress, it’s just him, his vanishing dream and his depressed, rage-grieving Mom (Molly Shannon).

But Miles (Tim Boardman) develops a plan. A silly plan. A crazy one.

He’ll try to get a Loyola of Chicago scholarship. For volleyball. The fact that his school district doesn’t have boys’ volleyball team doesn’t stop him. The coach (Missi Pyle)?

“What the heck?”

Senior year’s going to be odd, to say the least, for Miles and his Mom.

Did I mention Miles is gay?

 “Miles” is an unassuming little coming-of-age tale built around Miles’ increasingly controversial volleyball odyssey and his sexual experimenting via chat rooms and schoolteacher Mom’s burgeoning relationship with the school superintendent (Paul Reiser).

“SCANDAL!”

Boardman (of “The Wilde Wedding” and TV’s “Unsinkable Kimmy Schmidt”) has a likably gawky presence. He gives Miles a naive single-mindedness that never lets him see the hits he’s about to take — from parents, from his principal, his boss at the theater.

This 2016 film was one of the first hints that “SNL” veteran Shannon was poised for a grand second act in her career (“Divorce”). Here, she’s angry, despairing, barely clinging to hope but determined to do right by her son, who hasn’t quite come out to her.

The always-engaging Pyle makes a marvelously open-minded, tough-talking gym teacher — think Jane Lynch of “Glee!” without the psychosis.

That’s kind of a failing of the film, in the larger scheme of things. The little conflicts — Mom disagreeing with her new beau over Miles’ quest, school board debates over the meaning of Title IX, Miles’ online beau supporting him, and the nutty idea that he just might pull this off — never have the edge one wants out of a comedy of this well-worn genre.

The superintendent may exemplify small-town provincialism, with his stop “rocking the boat,” and “Save that crap for Chicago, or wherever.” But it’s Reiser, who reeks of Big City values.

The “heat” of that conflict is lukewarm, at best., the “romance” isn’t all that and the quest, to avoid becoming another “small-minded small-town…zombie,” nothing new.

The only “filmmaker” stuff in this is Miles swiping posters from his theater and selling them to classmates. In avoiding the comic low-hanging fruit, co-writer/director Nathan Adloff spares us the sight of Miles wearing women’s volleyball shorts (“coochie-cutters”), but steadily lets the air out of the ball over the course of “Miles.”

And yet he can’t resist a cheap, obvious Stephen Root “Office Space/News Radio” joke. That isn’t funny.

The warmth is here, some of it, any way. But not the laughs.

MPAA Rating: unrated, masturbation jokes, sex gags, profanity

Cast: Tim Boardman, Molly Shannon, Stephen Root, Missi Pyle, Yeardley Smith

Credits:Directed by Nathan Adloff, script by Nathan Adloff, Justin D.M. Palmer. A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:30