Movie Nation

“Gladiator” may have been the movie that won Ridley Scott his greatest acclaim. “Blade Runner” gave him enduring cult appeal. And “The Martian” proved he still has it, even as he pushes 80.

But “Alien” was his masterpiece. A gritty, lived-in sci-fi horror tale that held us in gloomy dread before its string of shocks left us slack-jawed and exhausted, it’s a movie that fans (like me) would drag friends to, just so we could hear them scream.

And it’s a damn shame the old master won’t leave it alone.

“Alien: Covenant” continues the chest-busting terrors in the equally-muddled, revived “Prometheus” storyline“Prometheus” storyline, a ridiculously illogical sequel that builds on the secondary threat that’s always existed in the corporate “Alien” universe. It’s not bug-eyed (and bodied) monsters we have to fear, it’s our own technology.

But when “Covenant” is not head-slappingly obvious and perfunctory — Suspense? Surprises? — it’s just laugh-out-loud ludicrous.

Ten years after the Prometheus (with Noomi Rapace and “synthetic” robot Michael Fassbender) disappeared, the crew of the Covenant, a colonizing ark, is jolted out of hibernation by a deep space storm.

The captain (seen in flashback) doesn’t survive the awakening. The movie’s most terrifying death comes in those first seven minutes.

So command falls to the deer-in-the-headlights, quote “the book” first officer, Oram (Billy Crudup). There’s barely time for the captain’s widow (Katherine Waterston of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”) to weep, when the indecisive and faith-based Oram makes his first and deadliest mistake.

They’ve heard a “distress call.” Actually, it’s John Denver’s “Country Roads” emanating from what looks like an “ideal” planet for colonization.  Wonder how “the Company” missed it? Wonder what’s down there?

Not-quite-everything that follows is EXACTLY what we’ve seen before. This crew, comprised of couples and a Next-Gen synthetic (Fassbender, again), would supposedly be more wary and professional than the blue collar gang from that long-ago freighter, Nostromo. But no. They drop to the planet, sans space helmets, and immediately and repeatedly stick their necks out and their noses (and ears) in it.

With too-easily-anticipated results. The “infection” takes different forms, as indeed it did back in 1979’s “Alien.” And faster than Danny McBride can radio, “Babe, are we talking quarantine protocols?”, said protocols are abandoned, the women have weepy meltdowns and scream (very unprofessional) and the crew of 15 is sliced, burst, chewed and gutted. One by one.

It’s a pitiless picture lacking much in the way of tension or urgency. But Scott and the John Logan/Dante Harper script set us up for something more cerebral than “In space, no one can hear you scream” with a prologue that has Last-Gen synthetic David (Fassbender) pondering “I think, therefor I am” with his “father” — an inventor played by Guy Pearce in a serene, austere designer future-mansion in that under-populated Earth that sci-fi often presents as our future.

That’s a “2001” promise this silly movie cannot keep.

McBride, as a drawling straw-cowboy-hat wearing space jockey named “Tennessee,” has a couple of the best lines.

“We didn’t leave Earth to be safe.”

But Scott and Co. want this to be a meditation on the machines we’re building that will someday, Stephen Hawking and James Cameron say, wonder what they’re keeping us around for. So it is that David has survived the Prometheus on this planet, and had a lot of time to think and misquote poetry. And Walter (Fassbender), the newer model on the new ship, gets to listen to David’s pitch, making us question what they’re planning and what we’re doing, giving so much control of civilization to gadgets.

As a thriller, “Covenant” is strictly low-brow horror, eye-rolling scenes where you can shout, “Wait? WHAT? Don’t go in there/out there/OVER there ALONE!” Nobody listens. Or wears a helmet on this alien planet, which once had a civilization that we see traces of, in addition to the familiar horn-shaped ship that the first “Aliens” were found in. Instead, everybody is dragged into a dank castle straight out of Grand Guigonol. And what happens in Grand Guignol castles? Ask Edgar Allen Poe.

The great Scott entrusts his movie to the great Fassbender. But whatever higher debate was intended in his scenes with himself, he cannot overcome the laugh-out-loud stupidity of “David” teaching “Walter” something he’s learned in his ten years on this lonely planet — how to play the recorder.

Thus, the tag line is all that’s really changed in 38 years of “Alien” pictures. “In space, no one can hear you giggle.”

MPAA Rating: R for sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Cruddup , Danny McBride, Amy Seimetz, Demian Bichir

Credits:Directed by Ridley Scott, script by . A Fox release.

Running time: 2:06

Amy Schumer, the comic vulgarian whose every utterance is a “Vagina Monologue,” seems somewhat defanged in “Snatched,” her sophomore outing as a movie star.

It’s “Romancing the Stone” with semen jokes and feminine hygiene sight gags and exposed breasts as punch lines.

Like Melissa McCarthy, looking for mainstream middlebrow amusement with “Tammy,” Schumer has chosen a formula “buddy” comedy with one of “The Banger Sisters” as her mom and co-star. McCarthy paired-up with Susan Sarandon, Schumer with Goldie Hawn. And we all know how that worked out.

Still, Schumer adds a little “acting” to her resume as Emily, a spoiled, narcissistic drain on society with an adenoidal whine. No wonder her musician boyfriend (Randall Park) dumps her. Upcoming Ecuadoran vacation or not, he’s not sticking with somebody without “any direction,” who can’t even hold on to a stockroom job at a cut-rate clothing store.

Desperately selfie-and-instant messaging through her social network for a replacement companion for the non-refundable ticket, Emily draws the attention of her mother (Hawn), who notices her “no relationship” Facebook status.

“You still have two years left to find someone!”

But upon visiting her divorced, cat-obsessed mom, still taking care of her agoraphobic piano teacher brother (Ike Barinholtz), Emily has maybe her first ever moment of altruism. MOM needs this. Mom, paranoid about…everything — will travel to a Third World country, take in the sights — at the gated resort — and keep an eye on her careless, thoughtless oldest child.

“Mom, you are too YOUNG to be acting like this!”

“You are too OLD to be acting like THIS!”

But Emily carelessly gets them into a situation where they wind up kidnapped, with a menacing gang leader (Oscar Jaenada), and a shut-in, socially inept sibling and two tough-talking “companion” tourists (Wanda Sykes and a hilariously silent Joan Cusack) as their only hope of rescue.

“Snatched” is a comedy of low-hanging fruit — old lady jokes, unattractive Amy jokes, “rape whistle” (a dog whistle, naturally) gags, Beyonce “All the Single Ladies” quotes and “Powder” movie references.

Screenwriter Kate Dippold, thanks to “Parks and Recreation” and “The Heat” and “Ghostbusters,” has a reputation for inferior femme-centric laughers, a rep which “Snatched” chisels in stone. The story lurches hither and yon, taking on convenient new characters to magically remove our heroines from this or that dilemma. The characters’ “arc,” or learning curve, with each woman learning something important from the other — seems imposed just before the final edit.

The deaths — generally kidnappers dispatched by “accident” by Emily — are kind of funny. As are the “You’re on your own” calls to the State Department (Thanks, Trump) and brother Jeffrey’s furiously incompetent threats to the do-nothing bureaucrat (Bashir Salahuddin) dodging those calls. Hawn still has that Oscar-winning timing, and Schumer’s on-set riffs and brazen “out there” big girl body confidence amuses. 

Director Jonathan Levine, who has fallen a ways since “50/50,” wisely keeps our kidnapped heroines in the dark about all the Spanish-speaking going on around them (no subtitles), even if he can’t cover the “magical” arrival of a tapeworm-curing jungle doctor as a clumsy plot contrivance. McCarthy often has Paul Feig behind the camera, covering her stunt doubles, looking out for her interest. Schumer would hate to hear this, but she needs somebody like that in her corner. Hired gun Levine phones this in.

In all honesty, it’s got enough laughs to get by. But it’s a real crossroads picture for Schumer, who proves herself shamelessly willing to go where her plus-sized sister Melissa McCarthy has gone before. The crass shtick will only take her so far. Acting and physical comedy that doesn’t rely on others doing all your “stunts” (too obvious) create staying power.

“Snatched” won’t.

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout

Cast: Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Oscar Jaenada

Credits:Directed by Jonathan Levine, script by Kate Dippold. A Fox release.

Running time: 1:31

Because when else would you release a moody movie about drugs, paranoia murder and-or suicide? Release it just when fall fashion season is underway.

The trailer to this Kirsten Dunst picture doesn’t give much away, aside from the fact that it was co-directed by fashion designer sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy (Rodarte) and is being released by those canny purveyors of smart cinema, A24. Intriguing? Goes without saying.

Everything we need to know about the marriage of Mary and Michael is plain to see, just in Debra Winger’s eyes. Whatever writer-director Azazel Jacobs’ script for “The Lovers” tries to get across with words and actions, Winger manages with just a look.

There’s guilt and regret, weariness and longing and just a hint of panicked confusion, captured in lingering, wordless close-ups of Mary’s no-longer-young face. And that jolts this darkly comical exercise in romantic minimalism, a movie whose lapses in logic and rationality and minutely observed stasis needs such jolts.

Michael (actor/playwright Tracy Letts, last seen in HBO’s “Divorce”) and Mary are middle class Californians who have suffered through their cubicled careers, collected the nice suburban house and two cars and gotten their son into college.

What they’ve forgotten in all this is each other. Neglect ices up the screen when they exchange their nightly banalities after work.

“I just came from the gym.”

“Actually, I’m getting drinks with Ben after work tomorrow.”

Why they even bother lie to is a mystery. But lie they do — to each other, to themselves and to their new loves. Michael is infatuated with Lucy (Melora Walters), a children’s ballet teacher. And Mary is recapturing her youth by taking up with a younger writer (Aidan Gillen).

The remade couples communicate via that illicit-affair-enabler, the cell-phone. They text and call. They disguise the numbers that ring in as “work.” And they argue. Not Mary and Michael. They’re past that. It’s the side-guy/side-chick who hears the empty promises about “Joel, our son, is coming home…I’ll him/her then. It’s over.”

Jacobs (HBO’s “Doll & ‘Em”) crosses us up by making the paramours openly unpleasant people. Robert the writer (Gillen, also seen in “King Arthur”) is insistent, pleading and threatening. “It’s me or him, and this time I mean it.” Lucy is a weeper, a near hysteric and mistrusting enough to be the only one of all these consenting/cheating adults to figure out what’s happening.

But in both cases, we ponder the depth of the connection, the high-maintenance nature of the “new” partner. Walters’ Lucy is borderline bipolar and Letts lets on that Michael might be content to give up all the drama if things turn around with Mary.

Because they just might. The act of cheating gives the long-marrieds a little kick, magnified when they stumble into a re-attraction of sorts, a torrid clandestine affair with each other.

All of which is going to be hard to swallow when that highly-strung college kid (Tyler Ross) and his girlfriend (Jessica Sula of “Split”) show up.

“The Lovers” is a compact tale, a chamber music melodrama underscored by lavish, romantic strings and a Prokofiev waltz. It never quite escapes the stage-bound feeling. Having Americans drop “hence” into everyday chit chat does that to your script.

Letts, who wrote “August: Osage County,” as an actor has a prickly persona and little of the subtlety that might make Michael attractive to a younger woman. His smiles and laughs seem insincere, though he has a droll way with come-ons, phone sex and the like. His resting bitch face from earlier roles (“Indignation”) seems his best go-to move.

But Winger, lured back onto the screen by a part that lets her show what a wonder she would have been during the silent cinema, is worth the price of admission, all by herself. Her Mary is every affair explained and justified, every punishment for such transgressions internalized.

She is the “Lover” we identify with, pity and feel for even as these aimless “Lovers” “go round and round and round in the Circle Game.”

MPAA Rating: R for sexuality (nudity) and language (profanity)

Cast: Debra Winger, Tracy Letts, Aidan Gillen, Melora Walters, Tyler Ross

Credits:Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:24

Well, if the Queen didn’t exile the members of Monty Python for their “Holy Grail,” Guy Ritchie has little to worry about with his “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.” For now.

True, it bears about as much resemblance to the “Once and Future King” Arthur of Camelot that English myth and various twistings of that myth we’ve seen on the big screen. And for the first half-hour of this gloomy, grim and effects-packed riff on the myth does make one remember how Guy Ritchie rhymes with Alan Smithee — as in, “Jeez, should he have taken his name off this?”

But then the Cockney slang bursts out, the famed backstreet banter Ritchie perfected in “Snatch” and “Rock’n Rolla” and the like — the quick cut flashback “stories” characters hilariously launch into.

“And ‘ow did you get money from a VIKING?” a Blackleg villain, one of the usurper King’s men, bellows.

“I feel a joke coming on,” Arthur, played by Charlie “Sons of Anarchy” Hunnam, quips, in his natural accent.

Reprobates, members of “my crew,” have names like “Chinese George,” “Flatnose Mike,” “Goosefat Bill,” “Wet Stick” and “Back Lack.” Heck, there’s even Ritchie-styled heist packed into the picture, complete with floorplans to prep it with. Were there floorplans in Arthurian Angle-land?

No matter. “King Arthur” is a Guy Ritchie picture, not a Thomas Mallory “Morte de Artur” adaptation. Lots of “Sherlock Holmes” supernatural effects and Chinese martial artists, where Sir Bedivere is played by the classiest African ever to grace a Camelot picture — and the first — Djimon Hounsou.

John Boorman’s “Excalibur” remains the definitive telling of this tale, but “King Arthur” isn’t really “that” tale. This is almost a spoof of anything with “Camelot” in it. It has the actual historical (not legendary) tyrant Vortigen (Jude Law) betray his brother Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), with the boy Arthur fleeing into exile.

In classic Ritchie style, we see the boy grow up, a veritable Artful Dodger on the streets of Londinium, running his “crew,” living in a brothel.

Until that day when the sorcerer-assisted Vortigen decides he must track down this “born king” by testing every young man of the right age against the Sword in the Stone.

You remember that, right Disney cartoon fans?

And that’s where the young man becomes the Young Rebel, and his crew joins assorted holdovers from Uther’s righteous reign (Hounsou, Aidan Gillen) to challenge the fashion plate King and his Men in Black (Blacklegs) Gestapo.

I like the way the wizards become “The Mage,” a hunted subclass of the kingdom, mistresses (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) of the animals, the weather and the land’s tectonic plates. I miss Merlin. But Vortigen consults a beautifully-conceived version of Macbeth’s witches, slithery serpent-women wriggling in one hissing, prophesying and tentacled body.

The color-blind casting is amusing, in light of Britain’s electoral xenophobia.

But in all honesty, the rat-a-tat repartee and tasty touches of Classic pre-Madonna Ritchie don’t excuse a bastardization that takes forever to get on its feet, that lacks the requisite love story (Ritchie and his “boys will be boys” pictures), that presents too much of Angle-land as a burnt-out pit quarry, that revels in anachronisms.

“You’ve got some heat on you, Arthur.”

Indeed. Because none of this is the fault of young Hunnam, with his Hollywood haircut and Saville Row leatherwear. He throws himself into the spirit of this legendary lark.

Law is more than game, and he gives his villain a sense of a man trapped in the fate he sealed for himself. And there’s no match for the regal Hounsou for dressing up ridiculously, playing an absurd-on-its-face character in a loony tune of a movie — see “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Seventh Son” or “Eragon.”

But the whole “Lord of the Rings” (the movies) riff on the Once and Future King stumbles and drags and over-reaches far too often. The screenwriters and the director ignore the warning in their movie’s best line, the equal measures of combat, magic, romance and origin myth sentiment are all out of whack.

“Balance is a law that cannot be transgressed!”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive content and brief strong language

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Honsou, Eric Bana, Aiden Gillen

Credits:Directed by Guy Ritchie script by Joby Harold, Lionel Wigram and Guy Ritchie. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:06

“The sniper film” is an almost irresistible brand of thriller that straddles genres. Simple in construction, primal, it’s the ultimate “kill-or-be-killed” drama.

Snipers promise the viewer that “first person shooter” video game rush of dealing death with little chance of capture or punishment, or if you’re on the other end of the scope, the terror of a murderous, hidden assailant who must be outfoxed for you to survive.

So “The Wall,” an Iraq War combat film about a sniper team targeted by a deadly Iraqi shooter, has all the ingredients of a superior thriller. We see the conventions of the genre — the patience-testing “stalk,” the terror of bullets that whiz by before the would-be victims hear the shot, the deadly game of hunters turned into the hunted.

It boasts two quite-likable leads — John Cena (“Trainwreck”) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kick-Ass”) and a top-flight thriller director, Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Edge of Tomorrow”).

It’s got combat grit, action and actors captured in extreme, dust-covered close-ups and jolting violence. And the story is told in a brisk version of near-real time, 81 minutes from the credits-to-credits.

And when “The Wall” goes wrong, it doesn’t instantly crumble, though you can feel the foundation collapsing underneath the film’s feet. Taylor-Johnson, who must carry it, holds our interest. It’s just that we know, judging from that fatal flaw screenwriter Dwain Worrell built in as a plot contrivance, that it won’t end well, either.

Cena is Sgt. Matthews, the shooter — decked out in camouflage, staring through his scope, looking for movement in the battlefield below. Taylor-Johnson is “Eyes” Isaac, his spotter, the one who radios Matthews “You’re clear, 360,” when in fact Matthews isn’t clear 360 degrees around him.

Before you can say “Where’d THAT come from?” shots are fired, bullets enter flesh, tourniquets and painkillers are applied and “Eyes,” the guy who doesn’t take the shot, is trapped behind the remnants of a wall, trying to see where the shots are coming from, trying to overcome the panic long enough to figure out a way to get the wounded Matthews to safety and them both rescued.

The short running time doesn’t mean we don’t have time to get a taste of Eyes’ back-story. I like that the guy is not classically “heroic.” When his shooter goes down, his merest hesitation is all that keeps him from following his instincts — flee to cover, “The Wall” of the film’s title. None of that “Can’t leave a man down out in the open” suicidal fatalism. It gets irritating, after a while. Why won’t this guy, you know, SHOOT BACK?

Yeah, they explain it in the backstory, but still.

The very economy of the story and the film’s length means that writer Worrell and director Liman need something to keep the conversation going, require a short-cut to ratchet up the tension and personalize the impersonal murder of war.

They need to get this “super shooter,” apparently the mythic Iraqi sniper nicknamed Juba, “The Ghost,” into the story. He was a legendary sniper rumored to life during the Iraqi Occupation. And the script has to get this killer talking.

So they put Juba on the radio, questioning, tricking, teasing and taunting Eyes as he tries to figure out a way to save their bleeding-out skins out from under the nose of this long-distance killer with unearthly sniper skills.

And that conversation makes “The Wall” come tumbling down. It’s madly illogical, in a predictable sort of way. “Sniper” turns into “Phone Booth” right before our ears as American policy in Iraq is debated (the reason the American team is there is that Juba has gunned down a contractor detail repairing an oil pipeline), personal, probing questions are tossed out.

“I just want to have a conversation with you,” Juba purrs. “We are not so different, you and I.”

That’s an instant F — or should be — in Screenwriting 101. That one trite, “talking villain” cliche — “We are not so different, you and I.”

And whatever tension, grit, guts and on-the-ground professionalism that “The Wall” offers up — doing the math and geometry it takes to figure out where this shooter is hidden — is ruined by this inane back-and-forth.

“The Wall” needs more combat, more action and a real understanding of that combat cliche first uttered by Hermann Goering, of all people  — “Shoot first, and ask questions later.”

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout and some war violence

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Cena

Credits:Directed by Doug Liman, script by Dwain Worrell. An Amazon/Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:21

The thing that has made most every trailer for this mid-summer’s fictionalized account of the rescue of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk is the presence of Oscar winner “Bridge of Spies” star Mark Rylance. Playing one of the small boat captains urged to cross the English Channel and save England, when the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and the French couldn’t manage it, he has one of the best lines ever uttered in a war film. This isn’t jolly good sport. It’s risk your life and future to save others, and maybe your way of life. It’s got responsibility, mission, idealism and fatalism rolled up into it.

“There’s no running away from this, son.”

Cillian Murphy is the traumatized soldier he utters it to, Tom Hardy is an intrepid RAF pilot, Kenneth Branagh’s in charge on the beach, and as with an earlier generation’s  filmed account of “The Battle of Britain,” every British actor worth his RADA diploma angled to be included. Look for “Dunkirk” on July 21.

Marvel/Disney can crow and declare victory with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” but for those who play the expectations game, they left a lot of money on the table this opening weekend.

Projections were that the picture, a sequel to a squealing-like-little-girls fangirl/fanboy friendly smash, might clear $500 million worldwide, and as much as $160 in the US.

I went to see another film Sat. AM, and when I came out, the Regal Winter Park 20 had changed virtually every mid-day screening to “Guardians.” No more showings of “Gifted,” “The Dinner,” etc until the evening. So whatever the screen count announced by the studio, it was low. Nobody missed this because of sell-outs or inconvenient show times. The excessive running time didn’t hurt it. Much.

The movie made a whopping $51 million Sat. after a $17 million Thursday night and a decent Friday.  So it’s not like word-of-mouth is pummeling it. Reviews were positive, if mostly a bit lukewarm in their enthusiasm. 

So it is coming in 10% below expectations in the US, a bit more overseas, according to the buzz.

“Fate of the Furious” crossed the $200 million barrier, “Boss Baby” is toddling along and should finish its run in the $175 range. 

“Norman,” one of two good Richard Gere movies top roll out wide this weekend (“The Dinner” is the other) is riding good reviews to a $1.8 million take. 

There are a lot of old standbys in New York “businessman” and “consultant” Norman Oppenheimer’s vocabulary.
“How can I help you?” he’ll plead, when what he’s really worried about is how you’ll help him.

He name-drops, shamelessly, with great exaggeration. “Very close friend,” he says of every mogul, tycoon, politico or shaker and mover he’s ever locked eyes with. “I’d be happy to put the two of you together.”

We never see him at home, never catch him in “the office.” Nor does anyone else. He’s got his earbuds in, his camel-hair coat covering a not-quite-stylish suit, hat and scarf. And he’s schlepping, kibbitzing, never-quite kvetching.

“Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer” gives us Richard Gere as we’ve never seen him — channeling Woody Allen, juggling lies and agendas like a latter day “Broadway Danny Rose,” more tragic than funny. He’s a fast-talking hustler decades past the age when he should be hustling like this. Norman is a glorious failure, a Willy Loman of the Israeli/New York Jewish power elite, always outside, “a drowning man trying to wave down an ocean liner.”

This schnook has his spiel, and he’s nothing if not persistent. The aide to a New York mogul (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey”), a shaker-and-mover (Josh Charles), an influential rabbi (Steve Buscemi) or his own well-connected but reluctant nephew-lawyer (Michael Sheen), he buttonholes one and all.

He picks his marks and stalks them. Every stalking that leads to a brief street-corner conversation is a “meeting,” every not-quite-chance contact “an old and dear friend,” every promise a not-nailed-down bluff, every lie with just enough truth in it to keep his nose from growing.

Yeah, he’ll remind you of Allen, and a certain politician dominating the TV news these days.

In Joseph Cedar’s film, Norman’s quest is divided into acts — “Act One: A Foot in the Door,” “Act Two: The Right Horse.” We experience Norman’s arm-twisting not-quite-charm, his disarming way of approaching a stranger he’s researched with “Let me HELP you,” promising meetings with the right people about the right deals, all of which he says he can facilitate. But can he?

“The Right Horse” turns out to be Misha, an Israeli cabinet official (Lior Ashkenazi) whom Norman figures can get him in the door with a Wall Street tycoon (Harris Yulin) whose assistant (Dan Stevens) is downright abusive in his dismissals. Norman spies his mark at an Israeli-American conference, works his magic, finds his angle and does the man a little kindness.

Years later, Mischa Eshel is prime minister, a swaggering idealist who big plans for saying “yes” to compromise and peace. And in a Washington receiving line in a reception for the new prime minister, Norman has his moment of vindication and his finest hour.

Nothing in writer-director Cedar’s Israeli filmography (“Footnote,” “Beaufort”) points to the art, craft and comical cunning of “The Moderate Rise.” Norman experiences a freeze-frame moment, embraced by the new prime minister in front of the press, members of Congress and every heavyweight New York Jew who ever brushed him off. His magnanimity, grabbing the big names that ignored him and making introductions to the PM, makes us see Norman as more a mensch (sweetheart of a human being) than a macher (fixer, facilitator). If just for a moment.

He is beyond being insulted, a little man who refuses to hold grudges. And if we haven’t before, we start to root for him. What does the prime minister want? To get his middling-student son into Harvard. What does Norman’s nephew want? The famous rabbi to marry him and his “converted” wife in the prestigious synagogue. What does the rabbi want? Millions to save his historic synagogue. What does the mogul want? Some bit of Israeli intervention in a deal he’s cooking up in Africa.

And so on. Norman, we see, is on the cusp of getting everybody what they want. If only they’d ALL return his calls when he needs them to.

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays an Israeli Embassy employee fascinated by Norman’s methods and “connections.” Hank Azaria shows up in the third act as an even less successful version of Norman himself, a poorly-dressed hustler whose shtick Norman is too numbed to acknowledge as his very own.

Cedar turns his satirist’s eye on an Anti-Semite’s wet dream, a Jewish world where connections are made just by virtue of ethnicity, creed and commitment to Mother Israel. All that’s missing, and missed, from this Manhattan Moebius Strip Marketplace are its media mouthpieces — The New York Times, The New Yorker and B’Nai B’rith Broadcasting (NPR). Cedar still manages to comment on the clannish culture with a jaundiced eye, and endorse it as he does.

Cedar pities this wannabe as he zeroes in on his biggest failing. It’s that others won’t openly acknowledge needy Norman’s contribution, take his call and let him get the wheels to turn more smoothly.

It’s startling to see how Gere physically shrinks in this role. The confidence and dash and hint of ruthlessness that have been career trademarks vanish in this smallest of “little” men. Cedar cleverly stages Norman’s approach to the future prime minister in near silence, through a store window, with Gere pantomiming the (literal) arm-twisting charm and instant fake bonhomie that is Norman’s stock-in trade. He’s just brilliant.

Cedar has given Gere his own “House of Cards” to move into, where the game analogies spin out as chess and, most tellingly, dominoes. Norman needs them to fall just so, and if they do, he will be a man to be reckoned with.

But the genius of “Norman” is that we know, and he must suspect himself, that even if that happens, even if his intentions are honorable, he’ll still be as small as ever, kleyntshik even. Once a klutz, always a klutz.

MPAA Rating: R for some language

Cast: Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Michael Sheen, Steve Buscemi, Dan Stevens, Hank Azaria, Harris Yulin

Credits: Written and directed by Joseph Cedar. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:58

“No good deed goes unpunished,” the old joke goes. And that certainly crosses the mind of Dr. Tom Seymour during the course of his interactions with young Ian.

Not when he’s pulling him out of the river where Tom (Josh Charles) and his wife Lauren (Julia Stiles) have just watched the young man (Avan Jogia) plunge in with the intention of drowning himself. But later, Tom starts to question Ian’s motives and everything else about “The Drowning.”

Pat Barker’s novel “Border Crossing” sets the table for director Bette Gordon’s psychological thriller, a lot of tension, mysterious back-stories, the occasional melodramatic touch, and just enough silky smooth menace. It lacks the fireworks or stunning revelations of an A-picture in this genre. But it works as a nice showcase for a cast that’s largely been relegated to small supporting roles these days.

Tom is a criminal psychologist, and it’s only when he visits the man he saved in the hospital that he realizes he didn’t know him as “Ian.” That’s a new name, issued by the court. Tom knew him and studied him as “Danny,” an 11 year old accused of murder a dozen years ago. Tom sent him away.

Back then, the kid was “exceptional and damaged,” something even his juvenile incarceration teachers noted — smart, an aspiring writer. And while New London’s Dr. Seymour may raise an eyebrow at the coincidence of it all , his lingering feelings of guilt — “Maybe I got it wrong” —  keep him from connecting the dots.

The kid’s probation officer (Tracie Thoms) is SURE he’s better, and her long working relationship with Tom lets her saddle him to Danny — again — to keep him from being thrown into prison. Danny turns the compassion screws himself. He’s very pretty and needy and persuasive.

“You’re the only person I can talk to about what happened…Can you AT LEAST help me get my life back on track?”

And that professional relationship means Tom doesn’t tell Lauren that the handsome charmer who keeps popping up where she is might be a murderous menace.

That’s one of a couple of “Yeah, right” moments in the script. Danny’s “life back on track” plea has an edge to it, a suggested threat. What did Tom do to put him behind bars? Will  Tom’s cop colleague (John C. McGinley) reveal some shortcut they took, some way they conspired to punish a kid who claims “I didn’t DO it?”

Meanwhile, Tom’s deteriorating relationship with his hip artist wife drifts from planning a pregnancy to something more damaged and tenuous. Tom’s character starts to show behind his buttoned-down persona.

Director Gordon (“Handsome Harry”) doesn’t hide her or her character’s cards well enough for all the possibilities to present themselves, and be verified or eliminated. Charles is stolidly in character throughout, always suggesting something Tom must be hiding, the under-used Stiles has too little to play. But Jogia (“Twisted” and TV’s “Victorious,” believe-it-or-not) has layers of charm, sex appeal and menace in this role.

The payoff isn’t the head-snapping shock that you’d hope, and the PG-13 nature of the treatment robs the picture of the violence and heat that might have lifted it. But “The Drowning” manages to chill and surprise just often enough to keep its head above water.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with PG-13 level violence and sexual situations

Cast: Josh Charles, Julia Stiles, Avan Jogia, Tracie Thoms, John C. McGinley

Credits:Directed by Bette Gordon, script by Stephen Molton, based on a Pat Barker novel. An Eagle Films release.

Running time: 1:35