Movie Nation

It’s the comic book universe’s great imponderable. In a world where Superman exists, what’s the point of any other superhero?

The guy has godlike powers, the purity of a savior and perfect PR. That’s got to cause some resentment and fear, right?

If he shows up 20 years into Batman’s reign of vigilante justice, the Dark Knight’s not going to take it well. And that makes The Bat ask the Big Question of the Man of Steel.

“Do you bleed?”

Zack Snyder, whose post-“300” years as a director have turned him into the most ponderous screen storyteller, tackles that rift in the long, hulking and utterly engrossing “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” It’s a franchise-reboot that gives Superman relevance and a new actor a crack at The Dark Knight.

It swirls in a larger continuum, hurling a Next Generation (son of) Lex Luthor at the Man of Steel, a twitchy, antic supervillain who will test his Ego against Superman, and then his Id. Literally.

And it presents all this in a nation that is starting to question the mysterious alien’s motives, intentions and collateral damage. Can a democracy endure with a citizen who has that much power?

Dark? Oh yes, and not just Snyder’s revival of his “Watchmen/Sucker Punch/300” color palette. In comic book film fanboydom, “Dark equals deep.” Here, that’s kind of true.

I mean, Batman (Ben Affleck) paraphrasing Dick Cheney’s “One Percent Doctrine” about how to treat even the remotest threats?

When the grizzled veteran vigilante Bruce Wayne puts down his gadgets and pistols and ponders his violent past, he’s not inclined to give the new guy the benefit of the doubt.

That’s dark.

Holly Hunter is a senator in charge of Superman oversight. But Superman (Henry Cavill) doesn’t explain himself — to anyone. If lady love Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is in jeopardy, he’s there, making a mess and NOT taking names. Young entrepreneur Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg in Full Zuckerberg) plays with the senator’s fears.

“The redcapes are coming, the redcapes are coming!”

Wayne/Batman has been on the hunt for a mysterious criminal overlord  who is selling weapons, tracking remnants of kryptonite, making the world less safe. And the Superman from Metropolis is messing up the Gotham Bat’s case.

Faithful butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons, perfectly dry) has tired of this crime-fighting and not producing a Wayne heir nonsense.

“Even YOU got too old to die young.”

The Bat, who has taken to branding his quarries, is bitterly sizing up his place in this New Superman World Order.

“We’re criminals, Alfred. We’ve always been criminals.”

And there’s this mysterious, tall, on-task bombshell who sashays straight from the catwalk onto the periphery of this feud — Diana Prince (Gal Gadot).

“Batman v. Superman” was cobbled together from previous films and a pretty famous graphic novel treatment of this potential “war,” and often feels like that. From the opening credits (yet another version of Bruce Wayne’s origin myth) to the various chases through assorted Dodge/Jeep/Fiat products, and the many nightmares Batman has about the ways Superman could go wrong and be his and America’s doom, this is a comic book epic with a lot of fat and flab around the edges. But the fights are shorter and more involving than the “Transformers” cluttered clashes of “Man of Steel.”

And there’s this Hieronymous Bosch feel to the many slo-mo Messianic/Satanic tableaux.

Like Warners’ various “Dark Knight” pictures, it’s not utterly joyless, but certainly a mirth-free two hours and 33 minutes. Where’s the urgency, the wit? Even Laurence Fishburne as newspaper editor Perry White lacks laugh-lines. And that’s just not done.

But Cavill, not forced to carry a picture by himself, grows into the Man of Steel. And Affleck carries the Bat Cape and Bat Weight surprisingly well. Hunter and returning players Diane Lane (SuperMom) and Kevin Costner (Dad of Steel) add gravitas.

But Amy Adams was the casting stroke that continues to pay dividends. She gives the story heart and makes us feel the consequences. Everybody else is kind of vamping through the opera until the redheaded lady sings — or weeps.

It’s involving enough, with all the backfilling from previous stories and revenge and recriminations and communications breakdowns (How DO two superheroes set up a meeting?) and stuff about God and Metahumans and democracy and the responsibilities of power, that you forget the dread built into a picture like this.

It’s a franchise. They’ll be back. And they’ve just fired their most expensive, most impressive bullet. As repetitive as this half-decent reboot is, do the coming “Justice League” and “Suicide Squad” have a prayer of showing us something, anything, new?

MPAA Rating:PG – 13 for intense sequences of violence and action throughout, and some sensuality

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Laurence Fishburne, Gal Gadot
Credits: Directed by Zack Snyder, script by Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:33

More than a dozen years after the indie film phenom and the far less successful TV series that it spawned, do those big fat Greeks of Nia Vardalos still deliver the laughs and the love when their excesses are exposed to the world at large?

Yeah, a few. But “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” is a veritable feast of low-hanging fruit. The laughs are obvious, we see them coming a mile away.

“Telephone, telegraph, tell a Greek!”

But those laughs will connect with any undemanding audience in search of a little — a dolmades serving — of good, clean fun.

Nia Portokalos and hubbie non-Greek hubbie Ian (John Corbett) are still living in Chicago, still trapped on Moussaka Street within reach of each and every generation that Gus (Michael Constantine) and Maria (Lainie Kazan) brought into this world.

They’re still loud, still gauche, still suffocating and still shoveling spanikopata into every friendly face they see. Nia lost her job as the travel agency profession disappeared. So she’s back to being her parents’ slave at Dancing Zorba’s, the family restaurant, “fixing” every family emergency that pops up.

Ian is principal at their daughter’s high school. But Paris (Elena Kampouris) is a rising senior, looking for new eyeliners to freak out her family, looking for colleges as far away from the Greek Empire as possible.

And Nia? She may look suspiciously younger than she did back in 2002 — Pee Wee Herman in “Pee Wee’s Big Holiday” younger. But “I’m in a rut.”

Nothing like Dad discovering that his marriage to Maria wasn’t official back in Greece to kick her out of that rut. He has to stop searching ancestry websites (Look, an old old man who can’t use a computer!) for his connection to Alexander the Great and propose to the wife of 50 years, the mother of his children, and make this right.

But Pappous (grandpa) Gus is too busy to propose to Yiayia (grandma) Maria. He’s hectoring Paris to “find a nice Greek boy” to “make Greek babies.”

The Greeks are the one culture we seem to give a pass to for this grating, anti-melting pot ethno-centrism, and Vardalos soft-sells this trait, this time out. Paris may get to find her own way in the world, even if there are virtues to dating somebody who “gets” Greek exceptionalism.

Her younger cousins certainly do. They’ve adopted Pappous’s hobby — “Give me a word, ANY word, and I will tell you its Greek roots.”

“Chimichanga!”

Vardalos, the lone credited screenwriter, has nothing new to say about her family, the Greek diaspora and what they have to teach us. This material might have found some spring to its step had there been more Greeks and funnier film geeks, off camera, a Judd Apatow comic Darwinism where a lot of minds are thinking up gags and the Best Gag Wins. Here, a lot of weakest gags get on the screen and Vardalos, in particular, strains to make those lines seem like they work.

“Wedding 2” is a lot more like the lame sitcom than the movie that started all this.

But Constantine and Andrea Martin, playing the overbearing Aunt Voula, still steal the show. He’s still got the twinkle of a man who has never given up his Windex as magic bullet for whatever ails you. She’s still the very definition of a Queen Bee, fixing things for the fixer, Nia, and doing it in an accent to die for.

“Remember, you were a GIRLfriend before you were a wife and mother!”

And there are almost enough sweet touches and funny gags reprised — brothers Angelo and Nick, played by Joey Fatone and Louis Mandylor, still scuffle and wrestle — into their 40s — to make this wedding worth crashing. Almost.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some suggestive material

Cast: Nia Vardalos, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Michael Constantine, John Corbett, Elena Kampouris
Credits: Directed by Kirk Jones, script by  Nia Vardalos. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:34

Hey kids, we WANT to love Pee Wee’s new movie. Honest we do!

Sure, he’s 63. And he’s 30 years removed from “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.” And just as many years separated from Tim Burton, who made that film a breakout for them both.

But he doesn’t look a day over…40.(Digital erasure of the signs of ageing.) He’s still infantile, pasty-faced and able to deliver the oldest jokes as if he’s just heard them on the playground.

“Have you heard about those new corduroy pillows?”

No, Pee Wee, we haven’t.

“I’m surprised! Cuz they’re making HEADlines! Get it? Heh heh!”

The bow-tie, the white bucks, they’re still the talk of Fairville, his home town.

But the laugh is hard to reproduce in his AARP years. The antic/manic/birdlike energy of his every  gesture is missing. So “Pee Wee’s Big Holiday,” a road-trip comedy starring Paul Reubens as America’s oldest tweenager, doesn’t have the snap of the goofball in his glory.

The pacing is flat, Reubens has lost his fastball and the supporting cast of eccentric casual strangers who cross Pee Wee’s path is middling.

But Reubens/Herman is still innately amusing, and packaging Pee Wee as a bromance-struck short order cook trying to make it to his new bro’s birthday party is hilarious. The new bro? “Magic Mike” muscleman Joe Manganiello, playing himself, a side of beefcake every bit as taken with the kabuki-pale man-child as Pee Wee is with him.

“Double cool,” Pee Wee purrs at Manganiello on a motorcycle, “TRIPLE cool.”

The quest hurls Pee Wee into a female gang of bank robbers (Alia Shawkat plays a hoodlum nicknamed “Pee Wee”), a female car-converted-into-a-plane pilot (Diane Salinger) and Farmer Brown’s farmhouse full of ready, willing, plump and nubile daughters, all of whom want to bed our hero.

Who will not be dissuaded from his quest. The Amish, mountain man Grizzly Bear Daniels (Brad William Henke), Wanda and her RV beauty salon, all just waypoints on his trek from mid-America to New York, where his bro eagerly awaits his new best pal.

Reubens can still milk a simple joke for all that it’s worth, and then some. Watch what he does with the air escaping from a balloon — a vertitable symphony (“Jingle Bells”) built around a rude squeak.

But director John Lee (“The Heart, She Holler”) doesn’t give this any pizzazz. There’s nothing as magical as Pee Wee dancing to “Tequila,” provoking a motorcycle gang or joining the circus.

It’s not much of a movie, frankly. But our good will goes a long way where Pee Wee’s concerned. Herman appreciation is like love for Tinker Belle. If you want to like it enough, you will.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens, Joe Manganiello, Alia Shawkat, Michelle Meredith, Hal Landon, Jr., Paul Rust,
Credits: Directed by John Lee, script by Paul Reubens, Paul Rust. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

The dying “Divergent” franchise, a cut-and-paste knock-off of “Hunger Games,” “The Giver,” and every other Young Adults save us from Dytopia book-movie, took in enough Friday to suggest it’ll manage a $30 million weekend.

Despite the worst reviews of the series. And that, by the way, is the weakest opening of any of these movies. The fact that Summit/Lionsgate greedily split this last lap around lameness into two pictures is being questioned. As it should be. The last “Hunger Games” (middling, but not nearly so much as “Divergent”) suffered the same fate — two action starved action pictures instead of one with a modicum of violence.

“Miracles from Heaven” opened Wednesday to upbeat reviews and half-decent business. By midnight Sunday, this faith-based sick-kid drama will have rounded up $16 million in ticket sales.

“Cloverfield Lane” fell off 45%+, which is just average. Considering all the critical swooning for this “Room with Aliens”, and fanboy enthusiasm (opening weekend) that’s got to be a let down.

“Zootopia” is headed for another $40 million weekend. Wow.

“Deadpool” is closing in on $350.

“The Revenant” is finishing off its time in the top ten post-Oscars at roughly $185 million.

One joke comedies rarely work, even when the one joke is “sex with a gymnast.”

And even when that one joke, a pommel horse punchline long before “Seinfeld” rendered it the object of every man’s fantasy, is delivered by that petite little Melissa Rauch of TV’s “Big Bang Theory.”

Liberated from broadcast standards, Rauch let’s her foul-mouth-flag fly in “The Bronze.” It  reimagines a Kerri Strug/Mary Lou Retton “America’s Sweetheart”type  as a promiscuous, bitter and foul-mouthed small town gymnast whose Olympic glory was doing one last routine on a busted ankle, taking one for the team.

A dozen years later, the “Amherst Angel” is still living in Amherst, Ohio, still wearing her Rome (nope) Olympics warm-up suit, still cadging freebies from the local diner, the Sbarro and Foot Locker at the mall, still refusing to move on.

The fact that we’re introduced to Hope Anne Greggory masturbating to videotape of her Big Olympic Moment in a dated, split-level house financed by her brief window of cashing in tells us all we need to know about her. Crude come-ons to any and all comers at the local bar underline that impression. You know, “sex with a gymnast.”

But the fusillade of f-bombs she hurls at her widowed, postman dad (Gary Cole) confirms it. She needs to get a job if she plans to continue this lifestyle.

“I don’t HAY-ev a lifestahll,” she honks in a hilarious facsimile of a Buckeye accent. She snaps her gum, inhales junk food, rifles the mail in dad’s truck for cash and refuses to even consider mentoring or teaching other gymnasts.

“I’m a CHAYEM-pion! Nawt a coach!”

But her own estranged coach has killed herself and left Hope Anne some cash. All she had to do is nurture another local star-on-the-rise, “the daffodil who is peeking through the snow” to the Toronto Olympiad.

Maggie’s a perky, squeaky-clean Christian living with her janitor-mom (Cecily Strong of “Saturday Night Live”) in a trailer park. Cute as a button and a walking muscle, she is tailor-made for stardom. Aw, shucks, she’ll overshadow Hope Anne in a heartbeat.

“Shucks? Why don’t you curse normal?”

Hope Anne may be an uneducated dolt, but she’s cunning enough to recognize a threat to her hometown celebrity. Can she overcome her jealousy and do what the great athletes-turned-coaches do? Make her protege better than she ever was?

Sebastian Stan shows up as the villain, a more successful ex-gymnast with bad history (sexual history) with Hope Anne. Thomas Middleditch is the small town guy Hope Anne cruelly nicknamed “Twitchy” in middle school. A love interest? What do you think?

Rauch and her husband co-wrote the script and anchor it in Melissa’s malleable voice and walking (very short) sight gag looks. Hearing such filth pour of that tiny mouth is hilarious.

And yeah, there’s a sex scene for the ages for all the prurient “sex with a gymnast/What’s Bernadette from “Big Bang” look like naked?” curious.

It’s just not enough. “The Bronze” is predictable, and outside of Rauch, Cole and a very convincing (conditioning, some training, clever editing) Haley Lu Richardson, the cast is bland. Strong has nothing to play, and nobody else makes an impression.

“The Bronze” is proof that one great joke is not the route to comic gold, or for that matter silver.

MPAA Rating:R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout and some drug use

Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Haley Lu Richardson, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Cecily Strong
Credits: Directed by Bryan Buckley, script by Melissa Rauch, Winston Rauch. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:48

Morgan Freeman and a lot of folks most of us won’t recognize star in this digitally-augmented remake of “A tale of the Christ,” “Ben-Hur.”

Insane that Hollywood would remake it, but with CGI being what it is, you don’t have to build Roman triremes (galleys) and can fake all the stuff stunt legend Yakima Canutt and Charlton Heston had to do –on set, with real horses and chariots.

This trailer leaves me colder than cold. Where’s the ham, the homosexual undertones, the Technicolor texture, scenery chewing?

Maybe it’ll be better by August.

OK, it looks like “X-Men” for toddlers.

But…Tim Burton! TIM BURTON! A couple of eye-popping bits to feast on, for sure.

“The Brothers Grimsby” is 83 minutes of excruciating, nauseating, boundary-pushing “comedy” that never for a second feels like it’s anything but visual evidence of the end of Sacha Baron Cohen’s comic leading-man career.

And in a lame buddy picture, to boot.

The wonderful character actor Mark Strong and his stunt doubles acquit themselves nicely. And action director Louis Leterrier delivers a showpiece opening, a first-person-shooter/chase sequence with Strong’s secret agent character punching, shooting and stomping after a quarry.

But Leterrier (“The Transporter”) doesn’t do comedy. And aside from stopped-up toilet gags (“Brown Alert!”), elephant semen stunts and endless views of his butt crack, neither does Cohen.

Isla Fisher’s husband stars as a drunken, breeding working class lout and soccer fanatic in rundown Grimsby, a sideburned dope who sexes up his slovenly wife (Rebel Wilson, natch) in mattress stores. Because they’ve produced eleven kids, and privacy’s a matter of degree.

“You’re all out of breath,” he lectures his under-age brood. “I told you lot to quit smoking!”

“I thought you meant crack?” one tyke, perhaps the one named “Django Unchained,” complains.

Nobby misses his long-lost brother, Sebastian. That would be Strong, who used the decades after splitting from his fellow orphan to become an assassin.

The Selection Committee of screenwriters doesn’t bother to figure out a way for Nobby to discover his brother. The writers just hurl them together on an assignment, which Nobby botches.

And now both brothers are on the run, hunted by bad guys and the government agency (Ian McShane runs it, Mrs. Cohen, Isla Fisher, is Sebastian’s control agent), tracking a plot to South Africa.

Where “Push” star Gaborey Sidibe is subjected to the most humiliating scene of her career.

There’s an ugly running gag about Daniel Radcliffe and HIV, assorted gross masturbation/genital moments, involving humans and elephants  And then there are the almost-charming bits showing working class devotion to soccer.

But Cohen is way off his game, even when he delivers an amusing lecture on how guns remove guilt or accountability from violence.

The movie’s body count is almost as jarring as its sexual overreaches.

Toddlers tossing F-bombs, “I’m gettin’ stiffer than a pedophile at Legoland!” jokes and a son named “Luke. We call him that because ‘e’s got leukemia” (not really, just a welfare scam), and those are the highlights.

The rest? Exhausted, obvious and gross.

MPAA Rating:R for strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, language, and some drug use

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Rebel Wilson, Isla Fisher, Gabourey Sidibe, Ian McShane
Credits: Directed by Louis Leterrier, script by Phil Johnston, Sacha Baron Cohen and Peter Baynam. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:23

It now being an established fact that these “Divergent” movies are a terrible, hackwork embarrassment to science fiction, YA films and action cinema in general, the time has come to fret over their real impact.

Have they broken Shailene Woodley?

A young actress of limitless potential and an almost superhuman empathy, we could see great things in her thanks to films such as “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now,” even “The Fault in Our Stars.”

But this “Divergent” series has turned her apathetic, tuned-out and in desperate need of detox.

Watch her in “Allegiant – Part 1,” the next to last drawn out installment in this cut-and-paste sci-fi sampler series, and tell me she’s not in need of rehab, detox or some serious career soul-searching. She can’t even fake concern about the events her character’s hurled into, much less urgency. She can’t turn up the heat for lukewarm co-star Theo James, who at least handles the fights as if he cares. She can barely hide the eyerolls at this or that “twist” in what novelist Veronica Roth had the cheek to call a “plot.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” one character declares, and everybody seems to be thinking, start to finish.

In the story, we’re post “factions” now. Supposedly. Those inane categories the beautiful young adults are sorted into — Candor, Amity, Erudite, Dauntless, etc — are gone. Jeanine (Kate Winslet) has been deposed. Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and Johanna (Octavia Spencer) seem to have things under control in the ruins of Chicago.

But there’s a world “beyond the wall,” and as the survivors in the city plunge into reprisals –show trials and summary executions — Tris (Woodley) and 4 (James) drag the treacherous Caleb and Peter and the true blue Maggie Q (as Tori) and Zoe Kravitz (Christina) into an escape.

The world’s a toxic moonscape, but there’s hope in the distance — a futuristic paradise (“Gadzooks!”) run by the Bureau of Genetic Welfare.

So we have The Council which runs The Bureau sorting out The Pure from The Damaged. Because if there’s one thing this inane series needs, it’s more exposition.

Jeff Daniels is the guy in charge of The Bureau, sputtering out more pages of exposition — human history, back-story, their “mission” — to Tris and Co.

Something about that guy, though…

This sort of movie really should be about more than meekly obvious names for human traits separated into tribes, the future tech, the dystopian landscape, the fashions, the hair styles.

But there isn’t a line that lands, a scene that sticks with you, an emotion you feel or a moment this movie drags you to the edge of your seat.

James puts the effort in, Miles Teller still tries for his laughs. But thanks to the dull scripts and the efforts of director Robert Schwentke (“RED:), Ansel Elgort has, like Woodley, gotten progressively worse. And more inept at hiding that he’s disconnected from all this.

Shailene’s bored, and we’re all bored with her. Get it over with already.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements, and some partial nudity

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Jeff Daniels, Zoe Kravitz
Credits: Directed by Robert Schwentke, script by Noah Oppenheim, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, based on the Veronica Roth books. A Summit release.

Running time: 2:01

A movie must stand on it own legs. If it must be explained by its filmmakers or propped up by our vivid, fill-in-the-missing-parts memories of a book, play or previous film it is based on, then somebody has fallen down on the job.

That’s the case with “My Golden Days,” director Arnaud Desplechin’s 20-years-later prequel to “My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument.”

“Golden Days” once again features Desplechin’s muse, Mathieu Amalric (“Quantum of Solace”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) as anthropologist Paul Dedalus, reminiscing over a couple of specific memories of his youth. The film’s French title is “Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse,” or “Three souvenirs/memories of my Youth.”

It’s a vivid recreation of a time (the ’80s), a place and an intense, physical letter-strewn love affair of youth. But as a stand-alone film it flirts with utter incoherence.

Start with Paul’s last name. Dedelus, aka Daedalus, like the Greek craftsman who made wings for his son Icarus? This is significant, how? He’s crafting his own story? OK.

Then there’s the structure. Paul leaves behind his Russian girlfriend to return to France for a government job. The film is basically a flashback contained (sort of) within a French interrogation he undergoes thanks to a passport indiscretion long ago.

Using multiple, almost randomly selected narrators, “Golden Days” traipses back to Paul’s angry childhood, his “mad” then dead mother, his abusive, broken father (Olivier Rabourdin) and a teenage class trip to the Soviet Union.

The film breaks away from that Soviet thread as Paul (and other narrators) are sidetracked by the great love of his young life, the sultry Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet).

The effect is more chronological than cohesive, and while we follow Young Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) through both story threads, their connection is tenuous, even at the coda.

By which time Desplechin has long since abandoned the flashback, moved forward in time to a point where Paul plainly is clinging to the bitter aftertaste of the end of an affair.

The three stories from the past show the bond between Paul and his siblings, Ivan and Delphine and the risk-taking that their shared childhoods drove them to in adolescence.

Ivan dives into pot and flirts with gangsterism. Paul? He joins a Jewish friend in a risky, escape-from-their-tour-group adventure as couriers for Soviet era (@1980) “refuseniks,” Jews who dissented against the powers of the oppressive police state. Paul came home with a black eye, a story to tell and, it turns out, a future passport issue thanks to his naivete/heroism.

The meat of the movie is the young love/first love affair with Esther, an overripe, Bardot-pouty siren who is awfully popular with the boys.

“My eyes devour you,” he confesses (in French, with English subtitles), sure she’s out of his league.

“I always have that effect,” she smirks in agreement, in between drags on her sexy French cigarette.

They’re sophisticates. He’s more confident than he lets on, sweet-talking a famous Paris anthropologist (Eve doe-Bruce) into taking him on as a student. Esther is abandoning her many other lovers and pining away for Paul in their provincial hometown. Roy-Lecollinet makes of feel how breathless Paul makes her feel.

This love affair, aching and sexual, is the beating heart of the movie and makes one wish Desplechin had given full voice to his Francois Truffaut worship and made this his “400 Blows.” The Soviet story is intriguing, but underdeveloped. The rage of childhood feels tacked on.

Still, “My Golden Days” is inviting enough to make you curious about its precursor. My memories of “My Sex Life” are thin, at best. But binge-watching them both, back to back on some future wintry Netflix/Amazon streaming date may add sense to the seeming randomness of Desplechin’s wanderings. But as a stand-alone film, “Golden Days” feels leaden.

MPAA Rating:R for some strong sexual content, graphic nudity, and language

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet , Olivier Rabourdin, Eve Doe-Bruce
Credits: Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, script by Arnaud Desplechin and  Julie Peyr. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 2:03