Of all the named causes of California’s ongoing water shortages, and the water wars of the state’s agricultural heartland, the Central Valley — here’s one you never thought of. It’s all the fault of naive environmentalists who apparently hate farmers.

It’s got nothing to do with rain patterns shifting as the planet warms, thanks to burning fossil fuels. Let’s not talk about runaway development that fills the state with new residents, new homes for those residents and lawns and golf courses that help make Californians twice as thirsty as any other state in the U.S. And the farmers can’t be to blame for the allegedly wasteful sweetheart deals made decades ago that give them so much water to that they can grow broccoli in a damned desert.

No, environmentalists and their love of endangered species and their apparently unscrupulous funders have created this “fake” crisis.

That’s the utter horse-hockey premise of the drama “Pray for Rain,” a laughably ludicrous bit of right wing Big Oil agitprop from oil billionaire Forrest Lucas’s production company.

It’s about Emma, a New York fashion journalist (Annabelle Stephens) who comes home to the Central Valley after her farmer dad (John Heard, glimpsed in a farewell video) dies. She’s stuck dealing with her estranged mother (Jane Seymour), never without a drink in her hand and all too happy to ditch this farm and finally live somewhere fun, and perhaps not so dry.

“I’ve forgiven you,” Emma says through gritted teeth.’

“You’ve forgiven ME?” Mom growls back.

But the water wars in the county have brought in Hispanic gangsters, muscling farmers into selling out. Emma’s old high school buddy sheriff (Nicholas Gonzalez) seems helpless, even though his almond orchard owning dad (Paul Rodriguez) is one of those being threatened.

And there’s something fishy about Emma’s dad’s death. So she’ll blow off her fashion magazine boss (Missy Pyle, oh honey, why?) and root around to get to the bottom of this.

And at every point, as Emma sneaks up on covert meetings, flees from bad guys on her old dirt bike and wonders if the reason she hates her mother (she cheated) connects with all this, the fingers are pointed at those snooty, elite, environmental activists.

Director Alex Ranarivelo gives us about half as much action as it would take to hide the way the script (by actress turned writer Christina Moore and Gloria Musca) doesn’t massage or hide its mystery. This aspires to late night Hallmark Channel production values and entertainment level.

Because entertainment value isn’t what Ranarivelo is about. He makes movies with a message. He’s filmmaking’s Marco Rubio, a feckless puppet who lives off the largess of his puppet master, right wing billionaire Forrest Lucas, of Lucas Oil.

Their first film together, as financier and filmmaker, was “The Dog Lover,” an expose of animal rights activism geared towards defending Lucas’s love of puppy mills.

Just so we know what we’re dealing with.

The caricatured environmentalists here are backed by a clueless little old lady, and are given to callously telling the failing farmers, “Challenge leads to opportunity.”

Government officials are lazy nap-taking do-nothings.

Hell, where’s the heroic oil man to offer to save the farmers through the miracle of fracking? Yeah, it’s that ridiculous, and all concerned — especially the Summer’s Eve who wrote the checks — should be embarrassed.

Seymour gives the most interesting performance, and even it comes off like a pulled-punch.

No doubt most of those involved are praying for this to disappear as fast as Lucas’s movie money cash. That’s one thing Hollywood folks are good at — taking money from suckers with agendas.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for thematic elements and some violence

Cast: Annabelle Stephens, Jane Seymour, Nicholas Gonzalez, Paul Rodriguez, John Heard

Credits:Directed by Alex Ranarivelo , script by Christina Moore, Gloria Musca. An ESX release release.

Running time 1:35

Add another $54 million to Warner Brothers’ coffers for “gambling” on putting the DC Universe’s future in the hands of an Israeli actress playing “Wonder Woman.”

This is turning into the blockbuster WB/DC have craved since Bale & Co. finished off Batman. So good on them. It’s not just fanboys, and not just girls and women turning out, but a $202 million combination of both.

“The Mummy” steps up Universal’s “Dark Universe” approach to their historic horror franchises. It got pounded by the aggregated critics (on Rotten Tomatoes, anyway), and still managed to do, based on Thursday night/Friday numbers, enough to guarantee a $31 million or so weekend. That’s not nearly enough.

I found it perfectly entertaining, in a popcorny way. 

Will Universal spend the big bucks on big names (Russell Crowe’s recurring character in “Mummy,” for instance) to interconnect Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein and oh, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde movies? The jury’s out.

But as the critically adored “It Comes at Night” proves, horror has a ceiling — generally in the $12 million range, $18-22 million for a proven franchise — on opening weekend. Universal just shattered it. “It Comes” won’t even hit $7, but it should stick around, and as it cost maybe $5, it’s money in the bank for A24.

The Bleeker St. tear-jerker/flag waver “Megan Leavey” isn’t doing at all well, despite getting very good reviews and having that military mid-America appeal. What, Fox News isn’t beating the drum over the hero-soldier fighting-to-keep-her-war-dog story?

Oh. Right. Chuck Schumer plays a positive role in the story. And it’s about a woman in the military. Murdoch’s minions can’t be seen endorsing that.

Then there’s the old fashioned mystery-romance “My Cousin Rachel,” in limited release but not quite cracking the top ten.

Cute little framing bit, with Martin Freeman chatting up Gollom/Andy Serkis. And an elaborate origin world for the superhero is here.

The rest? Standard issue hero-in-tights comic book stuff, with a dollop of humor. Marvel mass production values. Enjoy.

Bruce Willis makes his getaway, by skateboard and buck naked, when he’s caught in bed with a young client in an early moment in “Once Upon a Time in Venice.”

Which is pretty much all you need to know about this action/comedy. Well, that and it’s not about Venice, Italy, but Venice Beach, where filmmakers can attract a long line of solid B-listers to pop into their movie, if only for a name-for-the-credits for the foreign markets.

So David Arquette swoops through a shot, whooping about “getting the Band back together,” and Kal Penn can play his first and last Indian-American convenience store owner.

And Bruce? At 62, he’s still fit enough to not make you strain your eyes to ensure that yes, that’s a stunt double streaking through downtown Venice, in the dark and in the buff, crawling out of windows, etc. That sprint through a crowded bar, still starkers? Yeah, that’s Bruce, only in the trailers he’s wearing gym shorts. So some digital stripping or alternative take business is going on somewhere.

Willis plays Steve, elder statesman of Venice, the only private eye in the town, given to hectoring lectures of the 10 year-old sk8Rboyz about “weed, hookers and blow.”

Then he and the film’s narrator, his “partner” (Thomas Middleditch of “Silicon Valley,” a poor man’s Simon Helberg) land a case. They’re to catch whoever is spraying obscene graffiti on an apartment building owned by “Lou the Jew” (Adam Goldberg, of course).

Then there’s the favor, retrieving a lowrider ’60s Chevy Impala for the pizza guy (Adrian Martinez). That runs Steve afoul of Spyder, the drug dealer (Jason Momoa). And Spyder is the guy who ends up with Steve’s “Parson” Jack Russell terrier, beloved by his niece (Emily Robinson) and sister (Famke Janssen), who are going through a rough time now. Steve is damned sure going to get that dog back.

“Venice” is the sort of random, rambling thriller where everybody the private eye meets — from drug dealer to real estate hustler, loan shark to surf shop pal (John Goodman) going through a divorce, says, “Tell you what I’m gonna do,” followed by “do this for me” or “get that for me” and “I’ll help you out.”

The messy tangle of the plot, which involves Steve-Bruce getting knocked out, more than once, does little more than throw a whole lot of potentially silly stuff against the screen — some of it landing laughs.

Willis naked on a skateboard, Momoa’s chill but grudge-toting drug dealer, Middleditch’s efforts to tail a subject into her sex addict’s anonymous meeting and “fit it,” and oh one of other epic moment — Willis, in a dress, wig and makeup, chased by a cohort of Venice’s transvestite hookers — those are kind of funny.

Given a bigger budget, this could have gotten the script doctoring it needed to pack in more laughs. I counted maybe five. And they’d have had the money to use “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” as a gag, or “real” surf music by Dick Dale, or “real” Beach Boys tunes — instead of the nakedly obvious rip-offs of these tunes tucked into the score.

The 50ish Cullen Brothers produced the Willis/Kevin Smith debacle “Cop Out,” so it’s not like they’re novices. This is as good as they’re going to get.

And Willis? He’s a young 62, but this is kind of where his career has gone — tepid, limited-release action comedies without the hot property script, the big paycheck or budget to quite come off.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Bruce Willis, John Goodman, Jason Mamoa, Famke Janssen, Thomas Middleditch, Adam Goldberg, Wood Harris

Credits:Written and directed by Marc and Robb Cullen . A Voltage release.

Running time: 1:34

The flaws of the Rotten Tomatoes “tomatometer” — an all-or-nothing review aggregation system, are the same as the infamous “thumbs up” opinions of Siskel & Ebert, back in the day.

And that’s never more obvious than when summer cinema season rolls around.

You look at the tomatometer, and “Hey, it’s the WORST Tom Cruise movie ever!” No, it isn’t, not even by the tomatometer (“Cocktail” and “Oblivion,” among others, tracked lower on that scale). It sits at 20% positive reviews, at this writing.

Go over to the more measured, nuanced metacritic, and it’s earned a 35. A few outright enraged pans — Cruise haters die hard — a lot of “meh” and just above “meh” reviews — like mine.

A lot of people write-off Cruise for reasons that have nothing to do with the work on the screen. It’s personal. I don’t much care about the years-long rumors that he’s living a lie with his sexuality, even if producers seem to be giving up on casting him as a romantic lead. The only real “love” affair in “The Mummy” is between Nick, his character, and his faithful, bickering, needs-to-be-saved-from-zombiedom sidekick, Vale, played by Jake Johnson. Nick will do whatever it takes to save Jake.

Is Cruise propping up a bullying, dying pyramid scheme of a religion? Whatever. That doesn’t mean he’s still not doing good film work, and even with that, he’s not — oh — Woody Allen/Roman Polanski.

Similarly, reviews for “Wonder Woman” last week and “It Comes at Night” this week have grossly inflated “ratings” on RTomatoes. Go to Metacritic and you realize, no reviewers (well, no serious ones) are treating either of these formulaic genre pictures as the new “Psycho” or “Citizen Kane.” Good, for what they are — decent reviews, pleasant popcorn pictures, very few swoons among them.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Last” (I hope?). Total pans, according to RT, “Better than expected, even if it isn’t great” at Metacritic. “Alien: Covenant” — raves, according to RT, much more ho hum over at Metacritic. And so on…

Most everybody agrees that whatever it gets wrong, “Megan Leavey” tells a different sort of Iraq War story, and making it about a soldier’s love of her war dog gets to us all.

“The Hero” lets Sam Elliott rise above middling material one more time.

“My Cousin Rachel” is a fall or early spring movie — a little counter-programming to summer popcorn picture season. Good to great reviews for this one, opening wider this weekend.

If I didn’t know (a little) better, I’d swear Paul Mitchell hair care products cash produced “Good Fortune,” a flattering profile of the company’s ever-upbeat/super-righteous/generous CEO and public face of the company, Jean Paul DeJoria.

But the folks who made the no-punches-pulled documentary “Fuel,” and the BP oil spill blow-by-blow “The Big Fix,” Joshua and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, made it. So even if they left their skepticism in a storage locker, there’s still some authority to their 86 minute hagiography of the poster mogul for “conscious capitalism.”

As espoused by the man who guided the company he co-founded with hair stylist/innovator Paul Mitchell to industry dominance, and followed up by inventing the concept of high end tequila with Patron, “conscientious capitalism” seems a more apt label.

“Success unshared is failure,” he preaches, and we see him practice what he preaches on TV’s “Shark Tank,” putting a “people, planet, profits” philosophy to work investing in schemes none of the other business “sharks” sees as profitable enough. We can see Mark Cuban et al fighting to not roll their eyes as DeJoria, a working poor half-Greek son raised by a single mom in East L.A., goes almost weepy when he endorses and buys into an Arcadia, Florida inventor’s idea — the “Tree T-Pee” — that saves water for farmers planting seedlings for fruit and nut groves.

Those almost eye-rolls are the closest this relentlessly upbeat portrait comes to questioning anything about this inspiring business icon’s American business myth.

He’s a thrice-married biker, a born salesman and a cheerleader for his company, his clients (hair salons, hair dressers) and his scores of causes. He underwrites Sea Shepherd, the environmental activists who take on Japanese whalers on the high seas.

He’s funding an L.A. get-the-homeless-back-to-work project, Chrysalis. And those are just for starters. He’s not living modestly, by any means. But an awful lot of cash is headed out the door for one cause after another — over 150 charities, according to the film’s narrator, Dan Aykroyd.

“Good Fortune” is laced with celebrity endorsements. Friends like Angelinos Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo, comic Ron White, money-marrying media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, high school classmate Michelle Phillips (The Mamas and Papas), his kids and those of his late partner, Paul Mitchell, sing his praises.

And DeJoria tells his own story, the up-by-his-bootstraps Navy vet who tried selling encyclopedias and the like before hitting on the business model that made him and Mitchell and their families rich.

Aykroyd, another friend, narrates a film that goes to great effort to contrast its hero with much of American moguldom.  “Unfortunately, most businesses have only one goal.” For DeJoria, who learned about charity from his immigrant mother, that “just make money” thing is just the first step. It’s giving away cash, making positive impacts on the lives of individuals and the planet, that makes him feel good.

The Tickells use recreations of bits of DeJoria’s past and lots of stock footage of the decade that made DeJoria — the big-haired ’80s — to tell his story. He made a promise to his first clients, “Sell our products in your salons and we will never, ever sell them directly” either mail order, in retail big box stores or today online. Paul Mitchell eventually products wiped the floor with the competition.

To be fair, DeJoria comes off as nothing but genuine — pep-talking his “T-Pee” inventor, by phone, through his start-up — apparently, even when the TV (and documentary) cameras aren’t there.  Still, you kind of wish somebody from Aqua-Net (a corporate foe he vanquished) or one of those ex-wives, ANYbody — had appeared on camera to humanize this saint among us.

I mean, Bill and Melinda Gates are giving away fortunes, following in the shoes of Warren Buffett, and before him, Andrew Carnegie. And nobody considers them pony-tailed saints.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements, some language and smoking

Cast: John Paul DeJoria, Dan Aykroyd, Michelle Phillips, Cheech Marin, Paul Watson, Danny Trejo

Credits:Directed by Joshua Tickell, Rebecca Harrell Tickell, script by Johnny O’Hara . A Big Picture Ranch/Paladin release.

Running time: 1:26

My favorite moment in “The Mummy” comes when the intrepid, pretty blonde scientist (Annabelle Wallis), over the shock of seeing the supernatural and recognizing the menace posed by the she-monster attacking her and and soldier-of-fortune Nick Morton, urges her knight-in-tarnished-armor into battle.

“GET her, Nick! Kick her ass!”

And there you have it, “The Mummy,” a heaping 3D helping of cheese-coated popcorn, a summer slice of action horror where the emphasis is on the silly, not necessarily the scary.

Not that any expense was spared in aiming for frights — epic, devouring sandstorms, clouds of crows, a sea of spiders and a Dark Universe (Universal’s comic book-derived blanket name for its rediscovered horror roots) with its very own Walking Dead — all meant to make good on a Mummy’s Curse.

Because what’s the point of mummifying an evil Egyptian if the shrouds don’t unravel and a curse isn’t part of the bargain?

Still, writer-turned-director Alex Kurtzman and a tag-team of other screenwriters have conjured up a jokey, jolly “Mummy” movie — with Tom Cruise playing a clueless looter who gets clued-in, Jake Johnson as his annoyed, and then zombified sidekick (“I HATE you! I hate you SO much!”) and Russell Crowe as the English expert in this great evil who may have the answer to lifting this curse, an answer Nick (Cruise) et al aren’t going to like.

It begins with an accident — the way such horrors often transpire. Two soldiers (Cruise and Johnson) intent on a little Iraqi looting stumble into this ancient Egyptian tomb — in Iraq.

An antiquarian and hit-it-and-quit-it victim (Wallis, of “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”) arrives, furious at the feckless Nick, but willing to puzzle this Egyptians in Mesopotamia thing out, in a hurry, as insurgents and a sandstorm are bearing down. They retrieve a sarcophagus, sunk in a pool of mercury, and flee.

And that’s when things — which have been noisy and firefight/air strike violent before — get REALLY interesting. Their transport plane is brought down in horrific fashion, Jenny Halsey (Wallis) escapes, but Nick’s survival entails some sort of miracle in the morgue. Might that have something to do with the hallucinations about the Egyptian past he’s having, the “connection” he made with “the chick in the box” (sarcophagus)?

And then there’s the ancient Crusader’s tomb uncovered in London, and the narrated warnings of that Brit expert (Crowe) about “antiquity’s darkest secret.” It all involves murder, treachery and a princess (Sofia Boutella) who sells her soul to the Egyptian devil, Set.

Not good news for Nick, or the world if this “chick” can’t be put back “in the box.”

Cruise plays this guy as a bit of a dope, not slow to figure out something’s up, but damned inarticulate at explaining and understanding it. He’s the reconnaissance Sgt. who teaches his corporal (Johnson, of “The New Girl,” in full “American Werewolf in London” mode) their Iraq War mantra.

“We are not looters. We are liberators of treasured antiquities!”

Cruise amuses, Johnson is a delight, Crowe dives into what should be a recurring role in this “Dark Universe” with the proper relish, and Wallis — not given any real love -interest heft — and Boutella will hopefully parlay their functional but uninteresting roles into future film parts that call for a real performance.

This “Mummy” is similar in tone to the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz hits of a few years back. But Kurtzman and Co. have found new ways to tell the story, skipping the romance, for instance, and new effects to play with and new jokes to tell. Action-packed and patently ridiculous, it’s all in good fun.

You can’t say “Summer” without attaching “Franchise” to it at the movies, and this could be yet another tale told in endless installments. Blockbuster movies, for those who haven’t noticed, have become cable TV limited series — endless long-form tales, prolonged for as many seasons as there are paying audiences for them.

But if you’re angling to sell fandom on your whole comic book picture-copying interconnected cinematic stories, “The Dark Universe,” you might want to start teasing the next movie after the credits. No, viewers, there’s nothing tagged to this one.

That’s not a big quibble, nor is “The Mummy” any sort of modern classic. Mummy movies are supposed to be scary, with genuine mortality at stake. This one rarely finds that sweet spot. They’re too busy pandering to their (fanboy) audience, setting up the next big effect or punch line.

Still, with “Pirates” winding down and Hollywood running out of comic books to crib, there are worse things to realize than every fanboy’s new best friend is his Mummy.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for violence, action and scary images, and for some suggestive content and partial nudity

Cast: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance

Credits:Directed by Alex Kurtzman, script by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:48

If nothing else, the new bio pic “Churchill” can be appreciated for taking the marble bust that history has made of the man, and Conservatives have worshipped, and knocking it on the floor.

This isn’t his “finest hour,” but a countdown to D-Day, when “the old man” so responsible for rallying Britons when they stood alone against tyranny, found himself all but irrelevant — a hard-drinking meddler whose one thing in common with Hitler was the shared delusion that he alone should plan and lead, he alone had the big picture in his mind, that he alone could see the future and the real risks in “this great undertaking.”

And he alone, among Allied leaders, lost his nerve.

Brian Cox, screenwriter Alex Von Tunzelmann and director Jonathan Teplitzky (“The Railway Man”)  give us a Churchill who walks the beaches and has waking nightmares of his great World War I debacle — the invasion of Gallipoli, in Turkey. He gets lost in a no-man’s-land of the mind, recalling the bloody, grinding trench warfare that World War I devolved into.

He is certain it will happen again.  And now, 96 hours before D-Day, he is desperate to reopen all the arguments he’s made against it for two years — that the attack must be on a wider front, or with vast diversions in the Aegean or Norway or wherever.

That famous phrase that led to the grinding Italian campaign which is finally on the verge of seizing Rome, that the Germans can be beaten by attacking “the soft underbelly of Europe,” is trotted out — again.

And that’s when the fireworks begin. Because Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower (John Slattery) isn’t having it. And Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Julian Wadham) is given to muttering “old fool” under his breath. The Prime Minister may embarrass them in front of the King (James Purefoy), but he isn’t overruling Overlord, rattled as he is.

His wife Clementine (Miranda Richardson, quite good) senses that he’s figured out that the world is passing him by. All the lectures about the nature of modern war (Churchill fought in the Boer War, in Sudan, visited fighting in Cuba and Turkey and had both political positions of military authority and a field command in World War I) from his generals don’t sit well with him.

“Do you want to be coddled, Winston?”

Maybe. Just a little bit. The great wordsmith, who prepares his intimate arguments with the same care he gives to the great, memorable speeches, just wants to be heard and have his opinion respected. Those who have been around him for four long years of his stoic leadership, manic hours and sometimes drunken, outside the box planning and thinking, aren’t in awe any more.

Richard Durden brings patience and the ability to speak freely to Jan Smuts, the South African Boer who serves as Churchill’s aide/placater. Slattery is a bit more histrionic than we’ve been taught to believe Eisenhower was (He had a temper, though.),and does nothing to suggest the man’s pinched, percussive voice. Wadham of “The English Patient,” makes a believable leader as Montgomery — but not being short, not doing the sing-songy speaking voice, he robs the general of some of his short-guy-with-a-short-fuse bantam rooster strut.

The film hangs on Cox, and he makes a dynamic Churchill, not nearly the uncanny impersonation actors like Timothy Spall have brought to the part (Gary Oldman plays Churchill in “Darkest Hour,” due out later this year). Cox makes the most of the many human shadings which screenwriter/historian Von Tunzelmann (“Medici: Masters of Florence”) gives Churchill.

Being a movie, there are liberties taken with events, compressed timing and the like. Condensing Churchill’s arguments (which he had with everyone up and down the chain of command, up to Roosevelt) into 96 hours is dramatic, but a cheat.

It isn’t history that lets the picture down, but melodramatics and a general poverty of production. You can’t recreate the run-up to D-Day in a depopulated southern England, with Churchill dashing hither and yon in his un-escorted period-correct limo to empty camps and striking monuments where he and Ike get into shouting matches. The place was a beehive of activity, overrun with Yanks and Brits and by the way, rain.

With Christopher Nolan set to release “Dunkirk,” an intimate epic about the 1940 disaster turned into a triumph by Churchill and the chest-swelling spin of his military, “Churchill” seems a hasty addition to this Summer of War, with a valid point of view and portrayal, but without the budget or scope to be anything more than a lot of shouted arguments — a stage play with very pretty historical backdrops.

MPAA Rating:PG for thematic elements, brief war images, historical smoking throughout, and some language

Cast: Brian Cox, John Slattery, Miranda Richardson,

Credits:Directed by, script by . A Cohen Media Group release.

Running time:

They’re both ancient history, at least in the pop culture sense, but it’s helpful to remember that Daphne du Maurier was Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite novelist when you’re watching “My Cousin Rachel.”

Hitchcock filmed her romantic mysteries “The Birds, ” “Jamaica Inn” and most famously “Rebecca,” and the thing that made the filmmaker and the writer so hand-in-glove was their shared love for surprise twists.

So no matter how often Rachel (Oscar winner Rachel Weisz) turns on the tears, how sinister her every offered “Cup of tea?” seems, no matter how paranoid the letters from her late husband, read by his enraged cousin (Sam Claflin), alleging a marriage to a spendthrift that has become a deadly trap, keep your smug “Oh she DID it,” to yourself.

Because you never know. Or do you?

That’s the mystery facing young Philip Ashley (Claflin, of “Me Before You”) as he tries to piece together what happened to his late cousin and guardian, the man who left him a vast Cornish estate in late 18th century Cornwall. Cousin Ambrose took sick, went to Italy for the cure, met a charming widow, married her, got ill again and died.

Much of this played out in letters to his young ward, Philip. And as those letters turn paranoid and accusatory, Philip dashes to Italy to save Ambrose, only to arrive too late.

The new college graduate is enraged, threatening the widow’s poncy Italian lawyer when the man insists Ambrose died of a brain tumor.

“I believe NOTHING of what you told me.”

To his godfather (Iain Glen) back in Cornwall, Philip threatens his revenge, “in full measure,” upon this femme fatale. If ever they meet.

But they do. She comes to visit. It turns out, she never changed Ambrose’s will. She inherits nothing. She is sad, lightly flirtatious,  delicate, cries easily. Philip and seemingly every other man within her reach is instantly smitten.

And he impulsively starts trying to set her up for life, ease her pain and give her a rightful inheritance. His advisers’ raised eyebrows and her testy protests of the “shame” his attentions bring her are to no avail. He’s let her wrap him “around her little finger,” but only we in the audience and his godfather’s daughter (Holliday Grainger) see that.

But not Philip. And with her every proffered cup of “herb tea,” every fever and fevered hallucination that follows, we fear for this young fool’s fate.

Adapter-director Roger Michell (“Notting Hill,” “Venus”) gives this quite old-fashioned mystery the jolt of arresting camera work — extreme closeups, handheld horseback jaunts, painterly framing. The production design is of a grubby, under-maintained world of land-rich aristocracy where cleaning, painting and buying new clothes don’t figure, all set under perpetually grey English skies.

The servants are crusty, adoring and treated as egalitarian equals — at least to a greater extent than is normal for such class conscious period pieces.

Michell looks to deepen the mystery, with hallucinatory flashbacks making us wonder if Philip’s constant accusatory/infatuated flips aren’t as much his problem as Rachel’s. Claflin gets across the “rashness” of du Maurier’s hero, and Weisz, experiencing a career renaissance thanks to “Denial,” “The Lobster” and this, gives vulnerable, and frankly shady shadings to Rachel.

We have many facts to work with, some of them contradictory. Which of them point to an actual resolution?

Best of all, Michell ensures that the cryptic finale to “My Cousin Rachel” isn’t so much a solution as an invitation to an argument on the drive home from the cinema.

MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some sexuality and brief strong language.

Cast: Rachel Weisz, Sam Claflin, Iain Glen, Holliday Grainger

Credits: Written and directed by Roger Michell, based on the Daphne du Maurier novel. A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:46

The has-been movie star has just dropped by his favorite weed supplier when there’s a knock at the door. The other customer strolls in, and gives the old man a wary double-take.

“Don’t worry, he’s cool,” the dealer says.  And since the fellow he’s talking about is that growling, granite monument to Western cinema, Sam Elliott, well hell — we agree. Yeah, he’s cool — “Big Lebowski/Up in the Air/Tombstone” iconic cool.

In “The Hero” Elliott plays a faded star coming to grips with his legacy, his “lifetime achievement.” He might never get another decent job, not a film as iconic as his best work, a Western titled “The Hero.” He might never reconcile with the daughter (Krysten Ritter) he left behind when he divorced her mother (Katharine Ross of “Butch Cassidy and thee Sundance Kid,” married to Elliott since the ’80s).

He’ll probably never buy more than an ounce of grass from his one-time co-star, now handy neighborhood pot dealer (Nick Offerman, delightfully dry).

But Lee Hayden needs to start thinking about such things, take stock. Because his doctor has told him “I’m afraid I don’t have good news.”

Brett Haley’s film captures Elliott in all his majesty, his twinkle dimming as he casts his eyes out over the mountains beyond his house or the rocky beach down the hill.

Lee can’t quite bring himself to tell the dealer/pal, the ex-wife/artist (Ross) or his daughter. “I’ve got some news,” he begins…then mentions a movie he’s about to make.

But the only movie he’s making is that Western from long ago, where he’s an anti-heroic “Hero” once and forever.

Still, there are the attentions of the too-dang-young-for-him fellow cannabis client. Laura Prepon of “That ’70s Show” and “Orange is the New Black,” one of the few actresses tall enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with Elliott, is Charlotte, a poetry-quoting stand-up comic who will flirt and yes, go with Lee to his Western Appreciation Society awards banquet.

She’ll slip a little “fairy dust” (Molly) into his drink, at his invitation, and end up in his bed, even though he can’t figure out what her “deal” is.  And she’ll recite a little Edna St. Vincent Millay to him to help him cope with his decline.

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”

Prepon, Haley (who also directed Elliott in “I’ll See You in My Dreams”) and Elliott never let the film turn maudlin. The opening shot, of Lee voicing-over a BBQ sauce commercial, is a sly way to connect the “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” actor to this somewhat on-the-nose role. Hollywood hasn’t had much use for men’s men like Elliott in recent years.

Ritter has one moving not-quite-reconciliation scene, and Offerman borrows Elliott’s twinkle for his role.

But there’s just enough melodrama here to rub the edge right off the picture. Lee “goes viral,” just like “The Wimpy Kid” and half a dozen other movie characters this year alone. Lazy “deus ex machina” device.

The movie within the movie, the one Lee remembers, has none of the feel or pictorial qualities of a “classic.” And we never really do figure out what Charlotte’s “deal” is.

But Elliott gives the entire enterprise an elegiac quality, letting us revel in this funereal final hurrah. Let’s hope this bushy-browed ol’ cowpoke gets a few more shots at reminding us just what he can do, and hasn’t really been allowed to nearly enough over the decades. His kind of “Hero” is a rare thing on screen in this day and age.

MPAA Rating:  R for drug use, language and some sexual content
Cast: Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon, Nick Offerman, Krysten Ritter, Katherine Ross
Credits: Directed by Brett Haley, written by Marc Basch, Brett Haley. An Orchard release.
Running time: 1:37