Movie Nation

The best thrillers blast through fear and demand action.

They drag you to the edge of your seat. They make you shout at the screen, or at least mutter your response to whatever life-threatening scenario is unfolding before you. You’re there. You’re involved. You’re trying not to panic, trying to avert your eyes, hoping to reason/scheme/plan your way out of the same jam confronting the hero or heroine on the screen.

“Green Room” does that. A ferocious, bloody, primal and pitiless gut-punch of a movie, it packs a struggling band in the green room (backstage waiting area) of a club they have underestimated at a gig that they never, ever should have taken.

They’ve witnessed a stabbing. They’ve tried to call the cops. But management, and its minions, aren’t having it.

The threat here isn’t zombies or werewolves or vampires. The bad guys are Nazi skinheads, violent men, gun nuts, fanatics. But like all gangsters, they’re also menacing morons with impulse control issues. If these over-matched, scared-witless musicians can catch their breath, maybe they can think their way out of this.

Actor/musician Anton Yelchin is Pat, the guitarist for the Ain’t Rights, a DC area punk band at the end of a busted tour, siphoning gas out of cars in packed parking lots just to get home from Washington state. Alia Shawkat is the bass player. They’re the common sense members of the group, and the best at siphoning gas.

A guilt-ridden promoter (David W. Thompson) offers them a chance to make some road trip money, in the woods at a club off the beaten path, somewhere in Oregon. Yeah, it’s a skinhead club. But it’s a gig.

“They run a tight ship, except it’s a U-boat.”

The Ain’t Rights soak up the jackboots, the SS insignias and Confederate flags. First set, they salve their consciences by provoking the rougher-than-rough crowd with a cover of the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks.” But backstage, they walk in on a murder scene.

And that’s when it all goes south.

They can’t get a reading on the club manager (Macon Blair). Is he threatening them, holding them hostage, protecting them?

“We’re sorting it out,” isn’t comforting. Out comes the first gun, and no, they cannot leave, cannot speak to the cops.

And the one hostile eyewitness from the skinhead community (Imogen Poots) trapped in the green room with them cannot decide if she’s friend or foe.

The pacing of writer-director Jeremy “Blue Ruin” Sailnier’s film gives it the feel of both victims and those holding them making this up on the fly. Everybody on scene is improvising their reaction to this situation.

There’s no over-explaining, little stating of the obvious.

“You’re trapped. That’s not a threat, it’s a fact.”

Patrick Stewart rolls in as the club owner, a quietly menacing leader of “a movement, NOT a (political) party.” This is “manageable.” He just needs to get the right people on scene, his “Red Laces” squad — the Survivalist Northwest’s version of Hitler’s Brown Shirts.

Meanwhile, in a room with one exit guarded by a hulking brute with a gun, the band is panicking. What can skinny young pacifists — well, save for the hothead lead singer (Callum Turner) — do in the face of Nazi brute force, Nazi machetes, Nazi guns, Nazi dogs and sheer Nazi numbers? They face a moral dilemma that gives this nail-biter the feel of a parable. What CAN nonviolent people do when confronted with murderous brute force? Can they be as ruthless?

“Green Room” has logic issues, “counting shotgun shells” issues, timeline issues and urgency issues (as in “Shouldn’t we be panicking now?”) .

But even when he slacks off in the suspense department, Saulnier ratchets up the violence — gruesome, bloody, box-cutter wounds and the like. And if you can avoid averting your eyes and keep from slipping off the edge of your seat, you’re going to want to shout suggestions at the cast on the screen.

Doesn’t matter if they can’t hear it.They’re still going to need the help.

MPAA Rating:R for strong brutal graphic violence, gory images, language and some drug content

Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Patrick Stewart, Eric Edelstein
Credits: Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:33

August is, realistically, the first crack in the window of “Oscar season,” when movies with any sort of buzz/potential open with hopes of having the legs to stick around to October.

The story of McDonald’s empire builder Ray Kroc, starring Michael Keaton (and Laura Dern and Nick Offerman), directed by Mr. “Blind Side”, John Lee Hancock. This probably isn’t a contender.

But it has the bones, the timing, and maybe a hope.

For all the near photo-realism of today’s generation of computer-generated effects, there’s still something to be said for old-fashioned, tactile costumes and make-up, for real settings and real scenery.

Want to show an ogre? Dress up a very tall man, dress him in furs and thicken his features.

Telling a story set in Medieval castles? Use real castles, real Medieval towns.

Need albino twins for your movie? Cast real twins, dye their hair and give them contact lenses.

The Italian director Matteo Garrone took this approach in “Tale of Tales,” an adaptation of the early 17th century Neopolitan fairytales of Giambattista Basile. Though the adaptations are not literal and you’ll be hard pressed to find moral lessons in these fantasies, the film is cinematic eye candy — not as spectacular as the more fanciful works of Terry Gilliam (“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”, “The Brothers Grimm”), more on the order of Tarsem Singh (“The Fall”).

Basile’s morbid, bloody and often sexual tales pre-date the collecting of The Brothers Grimm. Garrone and screenwriter Eduordo Albinati take on three of them for their somewhat plodding two-hour-plus film.

Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly play a queen and king who cannot conceive an heir. A mysterious conjurer shows up and says all they lack is a measure “of courage and sacrifice.” Oh, and the heart of a  sea monster, cooked by a lone virgin and fed to the queen.

He warns them that “Every new life calls for a life to be lost,” but the brave king dives and attacks a monster, dying in the process. The queen gets her heart, and her child, an albino boy (Jonah Lees) grows up to become transfixed by a servant’s son who is a dead ringer for him (Christian Lees). Nothing the Queen can do can keep these mismatched twins apart.

Vincent Cassel (“Mesrine,” “Eastern Promises”) plays a sexually insatiable king who becomes enchanted by the singing of two sisters, played by Shirley Henderson and  Hayley Carmichael . But he hasn’t seen them. They’re both spinsters, impoverished crones.

And when he tries to court one of them, she fearfully hides this by only letting him touch her finger. He thinks she’s just being coy.

Finally, she relents and agrees to come to his bed. But that involves her sister gluing her sagging breasts into place and pulling back her wrinkles. The king isn’t fooled, is repulsed, and has her hurled out a window. But a witch takes pity on Dora and makes her young again. Not that this pays off, either.

And then there’s the king (Toby Jones) and single-father who is infatuated with fleas. He raises one to be the size of a sheep, and when his daughter (Jessie Cave) demands that he “get me a husband,” he has the flea skinned and tests each of her suitors by demanding that they identify what animal produced this pelt.

That’s how he ends up giving her to an ogre (Guillaume Delaunay).

The tales are peopled with jugglers, fire-eaters and other Medieval circus folk. Garrone reminds us, in gory detail, how violent and sexual ancient fairytales often were. This is about as suitable for “the little ones” (Basile’s own words in the title of his “Tale of Tales” collection,  Il Pentamerone) as “The Huntsman–Winter’s War.”

The ambitious effects and simple Medieval-ness of the works are what recommend “Tale of Tales.” It’s fun to see this cast tossed into this milieu, even if the stories, so freely adapted and altered, don’t connect or truthfully, seem to have much point.

The two sisters one is the cleverest, the two albinos one the most unfathomable and “The Flea” the least inscrutable. See it for the eye candy, the vivid recreation of an Italian “Once upon a time,” all of it done without computers and digital fakery.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with nudity, sexual situations, graphic violence

Cast: Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, Bebe Cave, Jonah Lees, Christian Lees
Credits: Directed by Matteo Garrone, script by Eduordo Albinati, based on the stories of Giambattista Basile . An IFC release.

Running time: 2:13

The Filmmakers’ Generation has but a handful of saints. More than a few of them are Italian-American. Most have had to fall back on their reputations in recent years. Some got too rich to keep working. Some tried to do intimate pictures that audiences didn’t connect with.

But their names are a veritable ’70s movie lovers’ mantra.

There’s Spielberg and Lucas, Coppola and Scorsese.

And Brian De Palma.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider A24 the new studio with the hottest, most-debatable lineup of films, an outfit that released “Ex Machina” and “The Spectacular Now,” “Amy” and “Room,” “Spring Breakers” and “Locke,” “Mississippi Grind” and “The End of the Tour.”

So it’s not the least bit surprising that they’ve got their hands on a movie-lovers’ movie about a filmmaker who has long been a favorite of genre movie-lovers, covering a fairly wide range of genres.

“De Palma” opens in June in limited release.

Even Kristen Stewart knew the world was in no need of a sequel to that dreary “Snow White and the Huntsman” movie she made.

But being pointless turns out to be the least of the shortcomings of “The Huntsman: Winter’s War.”

A hackwork script of stock characters spouting lines that aren’t funny and wouldn’t pass muster in a junior high English class, actors forced to stand stock still because they’re playing dwarves and Universal, which didn’t make “The Lord of the Rings,” apparently couldn’t hire anybody who knew how to let them move around — you know, act — a plot borrowed from “Frozen” with scenes from “Lord of the You Know Who,” well, you get the picture.

A sequel that’s a prequel, because well, they got confused.

Two hours of this, with poor Chris Hemsworth, manfully manning up as the manly Huntsman, a Scots-accented hero with a sometimes bemused self-awareness — think Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast.” There’s Jessica Chastain as his beloved, the one the Ice Queen (Emily Blunt) took from him before “Snow White and the Huntsman,” an ax-wielding warrior Scots lass who is pretty handy with a bow.

“I never miss.”

Returning is Charlize Theron, the vanquished and vain evil queen, the one so dependent on her “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” who lords it over her baby sister (Blunt), teaching her that true love is a lie.

“Love blinds even the most trusting eye,” Liam Neeson narrates. But consider that sentence. It makes no sense. The most trusting eye would OF COURSE be blinded by love.

“Love ends in betrayal,” Chastain’s Scots-sounding redhead declares, “aye, and always.”

Those are just the first head-slappingly-stupid English-Must-Be-Our-Second-Language groaners from typists Evan Spiliotpoulos and Craig Mazin–may-they-never-work-in-movies-again.

The Evil Queen wants the Ice Queen to lend her a hand, or her army of trained killers, her “Huntsmen,” just until she gets back on her evil feet.

“I will regain my kingdom again!”

The Ice Queen, in a daze from a long-ago betrayal, doesn’t stop to say “‘Again’ is unnecessary in that sentence, Sister. That’s what REGAIN means.”

Ice Queen wants the mirror to help her “Save every child” within her reach from the dread consequences of love. The Huntsman, with dwarf sidekicks Nick Frost (“Shaun of the
Dead”, “Cuban Fury”) and Rob Brydon (“The Trip,” “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”), Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach, must get to the mirror first.

The dwarves are meant to be comic relief, but our intrepid hacks can think of nothing funny for them to say. And our effects team can manage nothing funny or daring for them to do. They’d have to walk and talk and fight and it just seems beyond them.

The mirror effects are still striking, Theron, Blunt, Hemsworth and Chastain still fairy-tale beautiful.

But “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” is the very picture of a movie that should have never been made. It never, for one second, gives us a reason to think otherwise.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for fantasy action violence and some sensuality

Cast: Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Emily Blunt, Nick Frost, Rob Bryden
Credits: Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, script by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:54. A Universal release.

It’s just a tiny slice of pop culture trivia, meaningless in the greater historical sagas of the lives of The President and The King.

But you can’t look at that photo of Elvis Presley meeting Richard Nixon in The Oval Office and not laugh. The “How” and “Why” of this meeting, and the “What on Earth did they talk about?” would make a helluva story.

And so it does in the deft and delightful “Elvis & Nixon,” a short, quick and clever recreation of the how that came to pass and an imagined version of the conversation that could have taken place.

This lightweight, laugh-out-loud farce allows two of the greatest actors working in movies to try on the guises of two cultural icons, and find the humor in their self-delusions.

Michael Shannon isn’t as pretty as the real Presley. He doesn’t bother much with his Deep South drawl. But he plays the delusions, the ennui, and the last vestiges of “Cool Elvis.” This Elvis is a country boy who never grew up, with the naivete of a guy who figured he could leave a letter at the White House gate and get an audience with The President, then and there.

Because…ELVIS.

As Christmas of 1970 rolled around, Elvis was looking at the sorry state of America and deciding he was just the fellow to set things right.He will get Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover or somebody to appoint him “Federal Agent at Large.” Hell, he’s acted in 31 movies. He’d be a cinch at undercover work.

And “I can supply all my own firearms.”

Since we meet him as he’s silencing three TVs at Graceland with his pistol, we know that’s true.

Elvis, who has been deputized by every sheriff and police chief within reach of Memphis, wants a Federal badge. And his pal Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer) is just the guy to get it for him.

Jerry used to be in the “Memphis Mafia,” the Elvis entourage. He’s escaped to Hollywood, working in film editing at Paramount. He has a girlfriend and a life. But when “E” calls, Jerry delivers. Besides, Elvis has already thought this through. He flies West to fetch Jerry, writes Nixon a letter and all they have to do is show up in “Our Nation’s Capital” and deliver it.

Shannon gets to play a chillingly self-aware Elvis. There’s no suggestion of the drugs that he became famous for, post mortem. This guy knows the world sees him as “a thing, like a bottle of Coke.” He is used to his status. There is only one “King.” And he’s used to getting what he wants, no matter how delusional that seems.

Spacey plays Nixon as something more than the profane parody he has become in history. Stoop shouldered, jacket buttoned and bunched-up, even at his desk, he’s salty, all-business, and not wasting a minute of his time on this crazy pitch that his aide Egil Krogh (Colin Hanks at his most straight-laced and amusing) has come up with. Elvis made the first move. He can help with “the youth vote” and so on. Why not?

Director Liza Johnson and the screenwriters (including actor-turned-writer Cary Elwes) package this as a mirrored tale of two men equally out of touch. Elvis was way past “the youth vote,” and King or no King, there’s no way Elvis Presley should be able to talk himself into seeing The Leader of the Free World and scoring a badge from the Feds, just on a whim. Who does he think he is? Bono?

Much of the film is the comic build-up to the meeting, the horse-trading involved when a King and President meet.

But the biggest laughs come from the women, mostly in the background of this story as they were in American society. Airline ticket agent to “Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs” office staff, White House aides to Nixon daughter, they’re all agog at the merest hint that Elvis hasn’t left the Building. They blush, gasp and giggle and we giggle.

It’s mostly fantasy, at least in several important ways. No drugs were in the system of the rock star who wanted to bust drug users with a Federal badge? Really? Look at the real photo. He was on…something.

But Shannon and Spacey have a blast giving these over-familiar characters new twists.Their delight spills off the screen in their big scene together — it is squirm-inducing, in all the funniest ways. And that delight is shared by all in this whimsical riff on a piece of utterly inconsequential American history, a Trivial Pursuit question at its most trivial.

MPAA Rating:R for some language

Cast: Michael Shannon, Kevin Spacey, Alex Pettyfer, Colin Hanks, Johnny Knoxville, Ashley Benson, Sky Ferreira
Credits: Directed by Liza Johnson, script by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes. An Amazon Studios/Bleecker Street release.

Running time: 1:26

Rave all you like about the computer-generated imagery, the gorgeous 3D jungle flora and fauna of Disney’s latest version of “The Jungle Book.”

You will forget about all that technology within minutes of the opening credits. The interface between a real world captured in photographs, with a real boy in it, and digital renderings of the animals and setting the boy interacts with is that perfect.

This is a movie of weight and heart, leaning heavily on Rudyard Kipling but tugging at our memories of Disney’s 1967 cartoon concocted from Kipling’s stories of the man cub, Mowgli. The animals and the man cub are scarred, dirty, and their struggles reek of life and death consequences.

Jon Favreau’s film harks back to an era when kids’ movies didn’t baby them, but showed them violence, ethical dilemmas, fear and loss. He’s given us a “law of the jungle” tale of human responsibility at the “top of the food chain,” and done it with warmth and humor.

Mowgli, played with empathy and care to make sure his eyes make contact with digital animals that aren’t there by young Neel Sethi, has grown up with wolves. But his mentor, the panther Bagheera (the voice of Ben Kingsley) knows that the kid needs a tribe of his own.

His “tricks” and cunning upset the balance of nature in the jungle. This orphan must return to the Man Village.

The embittered tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba, menacing as all get-out) wants revenge on the species that blinded him in one eye. He wants to kill the man-cub. So the boy’s wolf family, Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o) and Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) send him off with the panther to live among men.

Shere Khan pursues him, the kid is separated from Bagheera, meets Kaa the Snake (Scarlett Johansson), Baloo the Bear (Bill Murray) and King Louis of the Apes (Christopher Walken). And he is tested by the jungle and starts to come of age in the process.

Generations grew up on “The Disney Version” of this story, complete with music by Disney’s house-composers, The Sherman Brothers (and others). There are literally no surprises in the Justin Marks script. We even revisit the earlier film’s most famous songs.

The animals, many of whom (but not all) talk, fear Man and his “red flower” (fire). Mowgli must figure out where he belongs, and how to make that work, on his terms.

But a word is in order about the stunning, conversational quality of the voice-acting. Kingsley doesn’t talk “at” the kid, nor do the sexy-temptress Johansson or the offhanded goofball Murray.

“You have never been a more endangered species than you are right now,” Baloo warns a gaggle of pesky critters interfering with his “training” the kid in “The Bare Necessities.”

Listen as the late Garry Shandling (as a porcupine) lands one last one-liner.

Favreau, topping his work in the flip, funny and weighty “Iron Man,” tosses in extreme closeups of menace, landslides and stampedes and a vivid digital version of “When Tigers Attack.”

But again, the effects get lost in the story and the  — Dare we say it? –performances. This is top drawer children’s entertainment, smart and challenging, sentimental and sweet.

And it’s as good an excuse as any to pop the musical version it is almost (but not quite) a remake of into the DVD player the minute you and the kids get home. This “Jungle Book” could give remakes a good name.

MPAA Rating:PG for some sequences of scary action and peril

Cast: Neel Sethi, with the voices of Sir Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, Lupita Nyong’o, Giancarlo Esposito, Garry Shandling
Credits: Directed by Jon Favreau, script by Justin Marks, based on the Rudyard Kipling books and the 1967 Disney musical. A Walt Disney release.

Running time:1:45

Mercurial, menacing, charismatic and deep — those are the traits that made Don Cheadle the right guy to take on mythic jazzman and icon of cool Miles Davis.

Cheadle suggests, in not-quite-equal measure, each of those facets of persona in “Miles Ahead,” a musical bio-pic that takes its title from a 1950s breakout LP by Davis. But a better title might have been “Sketches of Miles,” as Cheadle, who co-wrote the script and directed the film, is more interested in the mythic Miles, the musically-blocked, drug-addled paranoid of the late 70s, a man trapped by his “never repeat yourself” ethos and the fear he’ll never top his seminal work, also from the ’50s, “Sketches of Spain.”

The fictional story that makes up this portrait is a gonzo, guns, girls and drug-fueled couple of days when a would-be Rolling Stone writer (Ewan McGregor) shows up to write Miles’ “comeback story” and is eyewitness to the magic of Miles and the madness of Miles.

Cheadle’s Davis is never without a smoke, rarely without a gun, living in the Manhattan dark with his cocaine, his “brown liquor,” his ego (“I was born modal.”) and his tapes.

That’s where the Scottish Dave (McGregor) finds him. He wants that Great Black Whale of music journalism — a Miles Davis interview.

“If you gon’tell a story,” Davis hisses, “come with some ATTITUDE…Don’t be corny.”
And as conventional as “Miles Ahead”, with its “a revealing day-in-the-life” structure, is, one thing you can never call it is “corny.”

There’s a larger frame, a late-career documentary interview, that the film exists within. The Rolling Stone encounter — totally fictional — is a standard bio-pic device. Have somebody there to witness the greatness at a pivotal moment.

Because Miles is in crisis. He’s alone, flashing back to his great romance, Frances (Emayatzy Corinealdi, enchanting), the dancer who got away, and determined not to let his latest session tapes fall into the hands of Columbia, his record company.

Dave shows up at Miles’ door, takes a punch in the mouth, shrugs off having a gun pulled him and we’re off. Miles needs money from Columbia, so Dave will drive. Miles needs drugs, so Dave will use that as an entre to Miles’ confidence.

In a world where artists have been known to take things to extremes, Davis isn’t shy about pulling a pistol on manipulative record execs, unscrupulous promoter/producers (Michael Stahlbarg) and anybody else who crosses him. The clever touch is having this machismo blow up in Miles’ face, time and again.

Flashbacks show us his womanizing (writing his number on a $20 bill), his hipster appeal and his genius — on stage or in the studio. A 1950s encounter with a cop shows the racism that helped drive his bitterness.

“Just woke-up black.”

In the film’s present, Cheadle/Davis broods. And fumes. The script is hard-pressed to not drop “mother-f—–” into Miles’ every line, often to comic effect.

But the real comedy comes from McGregor’s Dave, tricking Davis, turning the tables on him, whispering his story notes into a clunky tape recorder, a corduroy sports coat cliche of the unscrupulous Brit-trained reporter.

“Jazz’s Howard Hughes, revealed and REVILED.”

Davis eschews the “jazz” label. “Call it social music.” But as he and Dave bond over drugs, a shared love of ’70s hair and oversized sunglasses, we get a picture of the artist that was, a legend trying to live up to that legend.

“Miles Ahead” is a performance showcase, and might have seemed like a sure Oscar nomination for Cheadle, on paper, had the picture been more complete, more fulfilling. It suffers in comparison to Ethan Hawke’s Chet Baker biography, “Shades of Blue.” But not by much. Movie fans will recognize the predatory music industry “types.” Jazz fans will spot the figures of collaborators Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock, played by actors, onstage with Miles at various points.

And Cheadle fans will marvel at the convincingly-mimicked horn playing, the care he put into this interpretation, getting across not just the abrasive personality but the magnetic charm and on-stage sensitivity that made Miles Davis, from the 1950s on, “Miles Ahead.”

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

Cast: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corinealdi Michael Stuhlbarg
Credits: Directed by Don Cheadle, script by Steven Baigelmanand Don Cheadle. A Sony Classics release.

Running time: 1:40

The Brazilian soccer star Pele’ is, by consensus, the greatest to ever play the sport he dubbed “the beautiful game.”

Charismatic, playful, a guy whose joy on the pitch is obvious even in archival footage of his glory days, he was a natural subject for a big screen biography. For decades he’s been the best ambassador for “the world’s game.”

But casting somebody to play Pele’ was never going to be easy. Recreating his creativity on the pitch, his showy, spectacular dribbling and human-highlight-reel goals, as well as his personality, seems impossible.

So “Pele’: Birth of a Legend” played it safe. The filmmakers focus on his early years, before he grew that larger than life personality. The film is framed within his debut on the global stage, at 17, in the 1958 World Cup.

But even within those confines, “Pele'” is bland, Hollywood-zed (in Brazlian/Portuguese-accented English), a sometimes entertaining, dazzling-on-the-field biography built around an utterly colorless lead performance.

Documentary filmmakers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist know Brazil (“Favela Rising”) and soccer (“The Two Escobars”). They get the milieu, the poverty the young shoeshine named Edson Arantes do Nascimento grew up in. Early scenes of a shoeless kid (Leonardo Lima Carvalho) kicking a stuffed sock-ball around in the muddy streets of Bauru with his equally barefoot pals are old-fashioned and sparkle with an old fashioned sports movie life. Racism, poverty, class-ism and tragedy stand in the kid’s way.

But as the boy who nicknamed himself after a goalie nicknamed “Bile'”, and pronounced it wrong, reaches his teens, the film settles into generic in the worst kind of ways. Watered down racial/class conflict within the locker room, coaches who try to “civilize” his “savage” and by extension, “black and primitive” style, disdainful Europeans and white Brazilians — it’s real cut-and-paste stuff.

And while star Kevin de Paula manages the soccer wonderfully (if at half-speed, at times), there’s no spark to the performance. With a lone running gag (“Tie your shoes,” “Lace up your BOOTS,” etc.) and a script structure utterly reliant on the highs and lows of that Stockholm World Cup, they never scripted a personality.

Flashbacks showing how the kid’s ex-player, now-janitor dad (Seu Jorge) taught his kid the martial arts-based “ginga” style of play, kicking mangoes into trash-cans, are cute.

“I’ll win a World Cup for you, Pa. I promise!”

Black and white coverage of the games (as they were seen in much of the world) is nicely integrated into the story. And the stop-time treatment of the games, showing how great athletes see the field of play and envision how they will score, is terrific.

Vincent D’Onofrio and Colm Meaney are solid in supporting roles as opposing coaches, and Rodrigo Santoro stands out among the teammates, guys too intimidated to play the game the way they know how, and not the disciplined “European” style.

And Pele’ himself turns up in a cameo and in the archival footage in the closing credits.

But the Zimbalists fail to get across a sense of how soccer-mad South America is. There’s little that suggests the passion. The crowd scenes are flat, the exultant moments on the field are flatter.

And that goes for the leading man, as well. Young de Paula manages headers, bicycle kicks and those wonderful flip-the-ball-over-your-opponents’ head move with his feet that made Pele’ famous. We see the drive, but too little of the poetry, the delight, the little kid’s sense of fun that Pele’ brought to his adult career.

Here, the glorious life lived within “the beautiful game” is more a static painting than a colorful, animated celebration of a legend whose footwork and infectious grin won the world over.

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

Cast: Kevin de Paula, Leonardo Lima Carvalho, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rodrigo Santoro, Colm Meaney, Seu Jorge
Credits: Written and directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:47

Pretty good parody, plainly they “get” the movies. Thus, does “Saturday Night Live” get the “God’s Not Dead” guys right where it hurts.

In the mockery bone.