Movie Nation

You make a documentary about a rock star fighting cancer by donning military garb and starting a charity, you figure you’ve got your righteous uplifting side of the story covered.

What you can’t count on is the guy’s wife being diagnosed with cancer herself, after you’ve locked down and finished your picture.

That bit of knowledge would have added drama and pathos to Russ Kendall’s “Man in the Camo Jacket,” about Mike Peters of The Alarm and his crusade to get fans to sign up as bone marrow donors. It’s a nice, almost for-fans-only film about Peters, The Alarm, the New Wave/MTV era of rock and Peters’ post-stardom combat with leukemia.

Despite having scads of contemporaries, from Billy Bragg to Billy Corgan, Martha Quinn to Slim Jim Phantom (“The Stray Cats”) sing his praises, the film does a middling job at highlighting Peters’ importance in music, failing to decipher the lyrics for the uninitiated.

The songs — “Blaze of Glory,” “68 Guns” and “Call to Action” connect The Alarm to their sound-alikes, The Clash.

The hair connected them to Flock of Seagulls.

The film charts the rise, plateau and fall of a rock band — Peters announcing his departure, on stage, at the end of a 1991 show, years past their peak.

There was novelty and chutzpah in the way they manufactured their “big break.” They pretended to be the opening act for The Stray Cats on a UK tour. They were found out and ordered to stop setting up their gear. But The Cats admired their brass, and assented.

It finds a little fun in Peters’ “45 RPM” stunt — cutting a hit, releasing it under an assumed name, with much younger musicians shown on the music video, highlighting the ageism of rock. A little cinematic immortality comes onscreen with “Vinyl.”

And then cancer hits, and the relentlessly upbeat Peters decides to don the titular camouflage jacket, to not let chemo or anything else keep him off stage and off the road. Two battles with it later, he’s still going, assisted by a fellow survivor in setting up his bone marrow charity — the Love, Hope and Strength Foundation.

And at his side, the entire time, was and is his bride and the mother of his children, Jules.

You don’t zero in on the film’s emotion remoteness until you Wikipedia Peters and realize Jules was diagnosed with breast cancer after “Man With the Camo Jacket” was filmed.

The picture is pleasant enough, righteous in its cause and inspiring in its “I’ve got no time for cancer” message. But the emotional body blow her discovery must have been would have upped the stakes in the movie just as surely as it shattered, or at least seriously rattled their lives.

Peters, never shown having a moment of very human and understandable self-pity or worry, would surely have presented a different face to the camera had it captured him dealing with her cancer, too.

MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Mike Peters, Billy Bragg, Jules Peters, Billy Corgan, Duff McKagen, Martha Quinn, Fred Armisen, Slim Jim Phantom
Credits: Directed by Russ Kendall. An XLRator release.
Running time: 1:17

Ho hum…another Pixar picture opening, another win at the weekend box office.

But “Cars 3” isn’t utterly outrunning the field, with a $51-52 million opening. You have to go WAAaaaaaaay down this chart to find a Pixar cartoon that has opened under $60 million.

Yes, they’re sucking the money away from “Captain Underpants,” but no, “Wonder Woman” still managed another $40 million in spite of that.

All the years of planning, abortive starts — different directors –– and reviews that didn’t overwhelm didn’t matter to the long-planned Tupac Shakur biopic, “All Eyez on Me.” It earned an astounding $31 million, with the director of “Next Day Air,” nobody’s idea of A-list, at the helm. No big names in the cast, none. Jamal Woolard reprising his interpretation of Biggie Smalls from”Notorious,” and that’s about it. Young Demetrius Shipp delivers the right look and intensity and the Roadside Attractions gamble pays off.

“Rough Night” is bombing, not anywhere within striking distance of $10 million. The cheap, briefly direct-to-video “47 Meters Down” cleared $10 million. After costs, it’ll probably end up with $10 million in the bank above and beyond what it would have made off video. Mandy Moore’s not big box office. Sharks? They draw.

“Pirates” has cleared $150 million. “Underpants” will top out at $65-70, “Guardians” will pass $375 by late Sunday, first shows Monday.

“The Book of Henry” didn’t crack the top ten in limited release, $1.65 million. Poor reviews didn’t help.

Pixar may see “Cars” as its most sentimental franchise, one cooked up by founder John Lasseter as a way of getting computer-animated images of roadside America, memories of road trips and auto racing onto the screen.

I see it as Pixar’s most cynical, great-and-getting-greater animation in the service of selling movie tie-in toys. Three films into the series, and the filmmakers have finally perfected the look, and the format.

With “Cars 3,” at long last, Pixar makes a movie without a single laugh in it — not one. Its only utility to its audience — children — is giving them a taste of NASCAR history, or its cartoon equivalent — and mortality.

Because from Paul Newman to the big laugher of the” Car Talk” brothers, George Carlin (recast, vocally) to the film’s very themes, this movie summoning back the dead plays like a grim funeral — no jokes that work, little heart, nothing for it but to endure it.

“Ah’m about to commit a MOVIN’ violation!”

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has plateaued in the Piston Cup. Next Gen cars, represented by the fast clean lines of Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), have seen to it that he’s chortled his last catch-phrase “Ka-CHOW” in the winner’s circle.

Everybody’s telling him that he’s through, racing commentators to his new team owner, Sterling (Nathan Fillion),

All the high tech stuff, big bucks and “brand” protecting PR aren’t doing it for Lightning. “Don’t fear failure” isn’t motivating him.

So there’s nothing for it but to hit the highway, “get my tires dirty” on dirt tracks and seek out the guy who taught his mentor, Doc (Newman).

That would be Smokey (Oscar winner Chris Cooper), a tow truck/mechanic/guru lost in the weeds of one of the traditional, historic tracks the Piston Cup has abandoned as it became a big business. “Knocksville,” “Thomasville” and the like are the North Wilkesboro, Ontario and Rockingham of cartoon car racing.

To get to Smokey, Lightning and his “trainer” (an Aston Martin voiced by Cristela Alonzo) have to do a little “Crazy 8” demolition derby racing (Lea DeLauria is the demented school bus local favorite) and endure the taunts of the Big Timers they left behind.

None of which offers much of anything of entertainment value. No funny voices, no funny lines that play as funny, nothing but digitally-animated races and lamenting the world that’s passed the old cars and the small towns by.

There might have been a backhanded “Make NASCAR Great Again” subtext, but co-writer/director Brian Fee doesn’t make it work.

NASCAR faithful may get something out of this nostalgia for the small town tracks that made NASCAR, which Big Business Racing has tossed aside (I drive by a few of these sad circuits visiting relatives in Virginia and the Carolinas.).

Kids? They may appreciate just how shiny, metallic and real the cars and landscapes look. And they might want the toy cars.

But they, like me, are going to be bored to tears by the story and the limp, half-hearted way it’s told. “Cars 3” surpasses “Monster University” as the dullest, dimmest Pixar movie ever.

MPAA Rating: G

Cast: The voices of Owen Wilson, Chris Cooper, Cristela Alonzo, Nathan Fillion, Lea DeLauria, Armie Hammer, Kerry Washington, Larry the Cable Guy

Credits: Directed by Brian Fee script by Kiel Murray, Bob Peterson and Mike Rich, based on a story by Fee. A Disney/Pixar release.

Running time: 1:49

“All Eyez on Me” is a too-tidy/too-pat musical biopic that sheds light on the messy, provocative and watershed life that was Tupac Shakur, rapper, rebel and would-be revolutionary.

Overlong, more solid than inspiring, it makes a good go of illustrating just how much fame, music and controversy the man squeezed into 25 short years. It demands a lot of screen newcomer Demetrius Shipp, Jr., asking that he recreate the charisma of this rap and acting icon, too much. The screenwriters and director are often hellbent on presenting Tupac’s story the way he himself would have told it.

But whatever shortcomings it has, it makes a suitable companion piece to the George Tillman’s superior Biggie Smalls biopic “Notorious,” and even shares Biggies — the same actor plays that other late rapper in both films.

If there’s one takeaway that this film makes even plainer than the definitive documentary on the subject, “Biggie and Tupac, it is this — Tupac Shakur was no accident.

Named for an 18th century Peruvian revolutionary, raised by a fierce, radical Black Panther mother (Danai Gurira, superb) who carried him almost to term while in prison awaiting trial, educated to be proud, to make a difference and to embrace the arts, Shakur considered himself “a reporter,” someone channeling what he saw on the mean streets of New York, Baltimore and Oakland into lyrics.

He saw violence, drug dealers and pimps, witnessed his mother standing up to FBI harassment (stepdad was a bank-robber for “The Movement”) and the murder of a neighbor in Oakland. What he absorbed, along with the need to lead, to “drop some knowledge” into songs about police misconduct, racism murder, child abuse and the like, was the need to burn the candle at both ends.

“Tomorrow ain’t promised to NO man.”

Having a background in theater — committing Shakespeare to memory (He played Hamlet in Baltimore’s High School for the Performing Arts), studying dance, the guy was prepared for stardom as if he was born to it.

The limp comedy “Next Day Air” wasn’t great prep for director Benny Boom, but he and three credited screenwriters take us through the arc of Tupac’s life and career — going to school with lifelong friend Jada Pinkett (Kat Graham, perfect), getting his first break as a roadie, rapper and dancer with Digital Underground, getting a bigger break as an actor by pretty much stealing “Juice.”

We see a friendship (Jamal Woolard reprises his Biggie Smalls) sour and go terribly wrong.

And we watch a proud young man harassed by cops, baited by rivals and jealous fans wanting to beat up the rap star (Shipp is a bit too tall to play Tupac.), and bit by bit, falling into a life that imitates his art. He becomes as hard as his music — constant run-ins with the law, a singer who comes to believe he’s earned that “Thug Life” tattoo (actually an acronym) that he wears, along with guns and jewelry.

The story is framed within a prison interview with Shakur, with a TV journalist (Hill Harper) occasionally challenging the guy to justify his actions, his pose and his life.

Music videos are recreated, the ill-fated meetings with the wrong sorts of people — including Death Row music mogul Suge Knight (Dominic L. Santana, carrying some of the menace, charm and bulk of the real Suge) and assorting falling outs with friends and proteges (like Snoop Dogg, whose voice is dubbed for actor Jarrett Ellis) is detailed.

And the controversies are recalled, from Vice President Dan Quayle’s infamous criticism, to the shoot-outs and the crime that landed him in prison in the first place.

Truthfully, the only times “All Eyez on Me” raises the hair on the back of your neck are in the odd moment on stage, rapping, and in the final act — closed circuit video of Tupac’s last hours, intercut with the revelations and conversations behind the scenes that made fans wonder, then and now, just who was behind his murder.

But Boom has crafted a thorough overview, and Shipp captures some of the stage presence, bits of the charisma and much of the belligerence of this complicated young man with the 4,000 page FBI file. That “fact,” like much of what we see, is subject to at least some debate, and the film is fiercely in Tupac’s corner, telling the story from his point of view — victim, rebel, genius and egomaniac — the way his fans would have it.

It might remain for a future filmmaker to present this subject with all the edge, contradictions (Mama’s boy misogynist, etc.) that others have suggested.

Still, kudos to all involved for showing just enough of the flaws — he witnesses Suge Knight’s violence against those who cross him, and doesn’t raise a finger or his voice — to make this portrait of a man placed on a hip hop pedestal more human, and just as compelling as the pose he struck in life and in death.

MPAA Rating: R for language and drug use throughout, violence, some nudity and sexuality

Cast: Demetrius Shipp, Jr., Danai Gurira, Kat Graham, Jamal Woolard, Dominic L. Santana

Credits:Directed by Benny Boom, script by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez and .Steven Bagatourian A Summit release.

Running time:

The difference between “biography” and “hagiography” is the presentation of contrary views, critical voices that the biographer or bio/filmmaker takes seriously.

That goes for anybody you’re profiling, from political opportunist Sarah Palin to hair care product purveyor Jean Paul DeJoria, or  A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

He’s the guru profiled in “Hare Krishna! The Mantra, the Movement and the Swami Who Started it All,” an adoring, uncritical documentary about the Hare Krishna movement that Swami Prabhupada launched in America in the 1960s.

And even if you just think the shaved-head monks who used to hassle you at airports or in Times Square are a cultural punchline, the movie’s got something to offer, and not just its (relative) riches to rags story of a teacher who gathered followers and inspired a worldwide movement.

The swami was a well-educated Indian businessman who renounced his wealth and past life to take up teaching what he’d been taught by his guru. Whatever attention he attracted in India was nothing compared to the fame he gained, moving to New York, penniless, with just a few books and translations to sell to help him survive the Big City in 1965.

In one of the world’s most turbulent eras, and America’s most roiled decades, Swami Prabhupada grabbed the attention of hippies, LSD users and wealthy spiritual seekers.

“The ancients knew something,” the argument went at the time. Sure, India was one of the poorest, least educated corners of the planet, with the life expectancy to match. But the allure of the exotic, the comforting anti-materialist message of this “ecstatic Vaishnava (wandering) monk,” caught on.

The poet Allen Ginsberg was a fan, and can be seen chanting to an eye-rolling William F. Buckley Jr. on “Firing Line” in the ’70s.

The Beatles followed another swami to India, but when his misbehavior sent them packing, George Harrison found new friends among the followers of Prabhupada. “My Sweet Lord” is something of a Hare Krishna anthem, a poetic sermon delivered, in Hindu, in the chorus.

The movie is filled with the faces and the voices of the faithful, the elders of the movement now, survivors of the ’60s still walking the straight and narrow path laid out for them by the anti-materialist Prabhupada. Supposedly.

Did you know that the reason they shaved their heads and started wearing saffron colored “bedsheets,” was to “stand apart” from the colorful denizens of swinging London? Branding your movement in a place that colorful was difficult.

The movement drew a lot of gays, and figures like Ginsberg and Boy George have been linked to it. But all non-procreative sex was deemed “illicit” by the founder’s reading of ancient texts., with celibacy a big part of consciousness raising.  So, there’s a paradox some folks have to wrestle with, and there were scandals involving “boys” that the film ignores.

“Hare Krishna!” shows the elder stateswomen and men of the movement (ISKCON, International Society for Krishna Consciousness) exaggerating their connection to The Beatles, acknowledging the many movies and TV shows that have mocked the movement, without seeming to “get” the mockery.

The documentary’s final third gets at some of the controversy attached to it, the “de-programming” craze that it fostered and money issues that the filmmakers go to great pains to distance the Swami from.

There have been many critical TV reports and books on the movement over the decades, most of which seem shrill, ignorant and misguided today. And there have been several other documentaries about it, most of them too much like this one. But lacking anything like a dispassionate outside voice discussing this group’s benefits and failings, “Hare Krishna!” never amounts to anything more than a mix of historic relic and modern day recruitment film.

And aside from the already-converted, who’s going to want to see that?

MPAA Rating: unrated
Cast: Srila Prabhupada, Bonnie McElroy, Michael Grant, Allen Ginsburg
Credits: Directed by John Griesser, Jean Griesser , written by Jean Griesser. An Abramorama release.
Running time: 1:26

The only way to appreciate “The Book of Henry” is by treating it as the movie equivalent of a summer read, a beach book that tries to pack in the full breadth of human experience into a few too many pages.

It’s got terror and tragedy, romance and charm, warmth and wit and a real page-turner of a plot. But every single one of those attributes is undercut by the fact that it aims to be the first “cute” thriller about child abuse, making it the most tone-deaf picture on that subject since “Radio Flyer” (Look it up).

Henry, played by the luminous Jaeden Lieberher of “St. Vincent” and “Midnight Special,” is a brilliant 11 year-old, a genius even.

“I prefer precocious.”

He’s so smart he trots out an impromptu discussion of our shared “existential crisis” for his fifth grade “My Legacy” writing project, but his teacher is always more impressed with his humanity.

He’s treated like an adult by most of the adults he knows, mom’s taunting waitress colleague (Sarah Silverman), for instance.

“Hello HANK,” she says, baiting him every time they meet.

“Hey, fashion road-kill,” he snarks back.

He’s the one who manages the finances (investments, included) of his single mom (Naomi Watts, Lieberher’s “St. Vincent” co-star). He’s tall and gangly enough to keep his bullied little brother (Jacob Tremblay) out of harm’s way.

But he can’t keep his cute neighbor (Maddie Ziegler) from the clutches of her creepy stepfather (Dean Norris). He can sense her trauma, see her bruises and guess what happens when the lights go out next door. And he can count the days she misses from school and is willing to cuss out the principal who refuses to act against the well-respected/well-connected Cavalry township police commissioner who is that evil stepdad.

So Henry, who delights in creating elaborate chain-reaction Rube Goldberg (Wiki him, too.) contraptions, makes plans to rescue her. It’s just that he gets these headaches and he might not be able to do the job himself. He needs to get his lonely, hard-drinking mom on board.

“Violence isn’t the worst thing in the world,” he reasons. “Apathy” is.

Director Colin Trevorrow, getting back to his “Safety Not Guaranteed” indie roots after a dip in “Jurassic World,” lets Lieberher have plenty of sweet, empathetic moments even as he’s plotting the crime that will free the neighbor girl he crushes on, the one with her hair always draped over one eye.

Watts, playing an overmatched, indulgent mom who never quite makes the “nature vs. nurture” argument for raising geniuses, gets to sing and play ukulele to her boys — one brilliant, the other also quite bright. Lee Pace makes an appearance as a sympathetic neuro-surgeon.

“Book of Henry’s” wild lurches in tone, from serio-comic and sweet to tragic and murderously violent, can almost be forgiven thanks to those grace notes, and the caper plot, which moves it right along.

But it’s just a bit off, from the child’s “solution” to this intractable problem Henry wants to solve, to the picture’s too-pat resolution. Trevorrow and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz don’t let us know the girl next door. She’s just a remote object of pre-teen desire, sexualized in all the creepy ways Hollywood manages that.

The various manipulations and plot devices — the sobering reality of sickness, Henry’s omnipotent “narration” in his “book” and tape recorded instructions to his mother — don’t excuse the abrupt leap we’re expected to make, along with his mother, to Henry’s radical “solution” to the big problem he sees next door.

Like a beach book, we lean into the story, the more complicated and manipulative it gets. But like such books, we just shrug when we finally reach the end, knowing this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink melodrama will be long forgotten by summer’s end.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Sarah Silverman, Dean Norris, Lee Pace

Credits:Directed by Colin Trevorrow, script by Gregg Hurwitz. A Focus release.

Running time:  1:45

Awww, SOMEbody’s got a girl crush.

Well, it’s on “Saturday Night Live” MVP Kate McKinnon, so I certainly get it.

Every time McKinnon takes a breath and launches into a “bit” in the “Bridesmaids with a Dead Body” comedy “Rough Night,” director Lucia Aniello singles her out in the frame, gives her isolation and says “Have at it. BRING the funny, GIRL.”

Well, maybe it’s not a crush. Maybe it’s from desperation. A tin-eared women-talk-dirty farce with blood and a seriously unfunny “Weekend at Bernie’s” body to dispose of, “Rough Night” needs some laughs. And Scarlett Johannson isn’t going to provide them, and the overbearing Jillian Bell (“Fist Fight,””Office Christmas Party”) wears out her Melissa-McCarthy-meets-Amy-Schumer welcome pretty fast.

“I got my IUD for MIAMI!”

The wildly uneven affair is set during a bachelorette weekend in Miami where four George Washington U. party girls we’ve seen dominating beer pong back in the day gather to celebrate state senate candidate Jess’s impending nuptials.

Jess (Johansson), as a candidate, is a seriously gorgeous stiff. Alice (Bell) is a seriously needy and possessive elementary school teacher.

Then, there’s the professional protester Frankie (Glazer, of TV’s “Broad City”) and the gorgeous, rich, about-to-be-single mom, Blair (Kravitz) Frankie used to have a thing with, back in college.

So nothing like a weekend in Sin City to renew their friendship and party like they’re not trying too hard to relive their college hedonism. But of course they are. “Shot SHOT SHOT SHOT” leads to booze, weed, blow, bickering and bantering.

And then there’s Pippa (McKinnon), Jess’s “new” friend from Down Under. McKinnon trots out catch-phrases — “Bu-MA-zing” — and the worst “shrimp on the barbie” accent this side of “Dumb and Dumber.”

When a stripper shows up and gets killed, by accident, due to their over-enthusiasm? Par for the course. And not funnier than anything that’s come before it.

The stars, playing caricatures, have their moments — save for Johansson, who, like McKinnon, is funnier on SNL than she’s ever been on the big screen. The laughs in this Aniello and Paul W. Downs (“Broad City”) romp live around the edges. The pervy/swinger neighbors (Ty Burrell and Demi Moore) who live next door to the house the party girls are staying in, the parallel metrosexual bore of a bachelor party, with the wimpy-bore of a fiance (co-writer Downs) and Peter the fiance’s mad drive to save a marriage he thinks will never come off are far and away the funniest sequences in the picture.

A confusing phone call sends Peter packing — South, from DC to Miami. Can’t go by plane, or train. He’s got to go “Sad Astronaut.” A bachelor party (wine tasting) bro tells him the story of Lisa Nowak, the crazed astronaut in the adult diapers, hurtling cross country to kidnap a romantic rival in Orlando — doing a “Sad Astronaut.” The picture is peppered with Florida cop jokes and references to Florida gun laws.

But truthfully, even though it rallies in its last third to manage something like comic momentum, “Rough Night” never recovers from the bloody death and the mess that ensues. And all the attempted McKinnon moments and omnivorous Demi and Ty come-ons to Kravitz (playing it straight, and killing it) cannot save it.

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content, language throughout, drug use and brief bloody images

Cast: Scarlett Johannson, Kate McKinnon, Zo  Kravitz, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, Paul W. Downs, Ty Burrell, Demi Moore, Dean Winter

Credits:Directed by Lucia Aniello, script by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:41

The movie I’m most looking forward to this summer, as I’ve written on several occasions, is Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” an epic of survival during the darkest moments of World War II.

But that’s just me. As this movie has no comic book tie-in, Warner Brothers has to figure it’s going to be a hard sell. Getting the word out in a culture awash in capes and crusaders, superheroes and superheroines, and getting audiences jazzed up about a vivid piece of history barely beyond living memory is tough.

Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and Kenneth Branagh? Not names to justify the cost of recreating the British evacuation of Europe, a defeat spun into victory, even if the director of “Inception” is behind it.

So WB is touring this “DUNKIRK Prologue Cinetransformer Movie Theater experience,” a mobile cinema with optimum projection, bone-rattling sound and a five minute stunner of a sequence from the film. It’s in Orlando Wed and Thursday at 5421 International Drive, in the parking lot of DXL Men’s Clothing. It’s due in Atlanta, next.

They give you a little “Dunkirk” swag — including a copy of the propaganda the Nazis (Germans) dropped on the trapped British Expeditionary Force and its French allies.

And then you see a breathless, dazzlingly intercut sequence — two corpsmen toting a wounded friend through the chaos of the evac beaches, a businessman played by Oscar winner Mark Rylance, doffing his tweed jacket, overseeing two teens offloading plates ad other non-essentials from his pleasure boat, Royal Navy officers leaving a boatload of life jackets for them to take on.

Tom Hardy takes to the skies, dogfighting in a Spitfire, trying to keep the Germans from strafing the men on the beach.

Rylance, gripped with concern, overwhelmed when his tiny boat passes a destroyer, packed to the railings with evacuated troops — explosions and music and tight closeups and Kenneth Branagh, as the Naval officer in charge of planning, his collar turned up so that he can look cool under pressure.

It’s stunning stuff, and I can hardly wait to see the finished film.

Meanwhile, this Big Trailer with the 60 seat surround sound/floor shaking dazzler of a sequence to the movie may be coming to a city near you. Atlanta by the weekend, and so on, up to opening day. 

Do I look excited to see it? No? Orlando. Too darned hot for that.

That opening day is July 21, and kudos to Warners for indulging Nolan and making this effort to get the word out. “Wonder Woman” may pay the bills, but if there’s an Oscar contender from them this summer, it’s going to be a WWII movie with a top-drawer cast and a great history lesson tucked into the stunning effects.

Two movies I’m looking forward to this summer, and not just because of their killer trailers — I’m a history buff — “Dunkirk” and “Detroit.”

A WWII epic about a Britain that never tires of hearing about it’s “finest hour.”

And “Detroit,” from the “Hurt Locker” team, because America isn’t shy about recalling its darkest days.

Have you seen the comically horrific “Alien Raiders” — you know, the one about a motley collection of folks trapped in a supermarket when the Aliens Attack?

You should.

How about “Killers” (Ashton K. and Katherine Heigl) or “The Air I Breathe?” Worth Netflixing, for sure.

The creators of the web horror/comedy series “20 Seconds to Live” directed and wrote those pictures, respectively.

And they’ve developed the knock for creating get-in/get-out horror jokes, short one-idea films with great production values and funny payoffs.

Here’s a sample of their first season’s work — a gag piece the length of a movie trailer.

They’re hunting for funding for season two, a worthy wagon to get on board, horror fans.