Movie Nation

Prolific provocateur and cinema revolutionary Jean-Luc Godard cut a long, narrow swath through film history in his 91 years.

He changed cinema into something messier and more realistic in launching the French New Wave in the 1950s. Movies were never the same after 1959’s “Breathless,” and other early works such as ” Bande à part (Band Apart)” and “Contempt (Le mépris).” And like his onetime idol, Chairman Mao, spent the rest of his career attempting and advocating for a perpetual revolution.

He stirred up passions, pro and con, pretty much for the rest of his life — boo’d at Cannes, pied in the face after his “blasphemous” “Hail Mary,” dismissed, chastised, running off to self-imposed exile and even attempting suicide a couple of times.When he finally died, it was via assisted suicide in Switzerland.

But his towering reputation and legend live on. Quentin Tarantino named his production company “A Band Apart” after the Franco-Swiss enfant terrible. Others still celebrate him, and he remains a bucket-list filmmaker that any self-described cinemaphile must sample.

And now there’s a documentary that attempts to take in the totality of Godard. “Godard Cinema” is an ambitious compilation of clips, snippets of films and other projects, interviews with him and those who knew, married and worked for Jean-Luc Godard — some loving, some hating — as well as academics, biographers and experts (all French) who remind us that while his reputation waxes and wanes, his relevance outlives him, as do his greatest films.

Godard might have been the smartest filmmaker ever to step behind the camera, the very model of the cerebral cineaste, a deep thinker even at his most wrongheaded. Alternately brooding and playful and almost always arrogant, he broke into cinema as a film critic.

Naturally.

As a critic, he was of a generation of French “Cahiers du Cinema” (Notebook of Film) writers who pushed the idea of cinema as art, as if no one had ever thought of it before them, as if they slept through Latin class at their posh prep schools and didn’t recognize that MGM’s logo since the 1920s has been “Ars Gratia Artis,” “art for art’s sake.”

Champions of the “auteur theory,” they lionized filmmakers with consistent themes, styles and obsessions, not just the John Fords and Orson Welles, but Hitchcock, Sam Fuller and genre specialists who made statements as they demonstrated the old maxim “an artist is someone who hammers the same nail over and over again” with every movie.

Ever used the term “film noir?” These are the folks who identified that famous criminal underbelly genre, and named it.

Cyril Leuthy’s film remembers Godard’s avowed practice of asking “What would (filmmaker Jean) Renoir do?” in a given scene or given cinematic situation. “Or Hitchcock?” He’d then try to do “the opposite.”

“I am a painter who does literature,” he said in one archival interview. “Cinema is the truth at 24 frames per second” was a film student T-shirt just waiting for mass production.

Leuthy’s film notes how Godard massaged his “legend,” smoking and wearing his pricey sunglasses indoors, telling anyone who asked — biographers included — that there are “no pictures of my childhood.” One historian asked “Was Godard ever a child?”

Yes he was. Yes, there are photos, or at least one photo. “Godard Cinema” gets at his reasons for covering-up his privileged (raised in Paris and Switzerland), politically-connected upbringing.

He prepared meticulously, some who worked with him declare, but always hid that to ensure he’d be labeled a “genius” for just tossing off his 140 features, shorts and even movie trailers that pass for art.

Godard didn’t like sharing screenplays with the cast, and was an innovator in the “earpiece in the actor’s ear” directing style, passing on dialogue and acting directions mid-take. He was given to quoting philosophers famous and obscure off-set, and having his characters do so in his films. As neither actor nor viewer had a firm grasp of why this quotable line worked here or there, that could be exasperating to all concerned.

The documentary does justice to the man, and does well enough at summing up how his contrary personality serves his art, although it might be better served having an English-language narration for US distribution. By the time we drift past his most famous U.S. TV interview, with Dick Cavett as “Every Man for Himself” (1980) came out, revelations in “Godard Cinema” are in shorter supply, as indeed his relevence seemed to fall-off after that watershed event — save for the rank provocation of “Hail Mary” (1985).

But if “Godard Cinema” prompts streaming services to renew our acquaintance with the work, films from “Breathless” to “Hail Mary” that often retain their power to jolt, shock, inspire and provoke, all the better.

Rating: unrated, nudity, smoking, some profanity

Cast: Jean-Luc Godard, Julie Delpy, Hanna Schygulla, Anna Karina, Macha Méril, with Johnny Hallyday, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Dick Cavett, many others, narrated by Guillaume Gouix.

Credits: Scripted, directed by Cyril Leuthy. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:41

“Photophobia,” Slovakia’s entry for Best International Feature in the upcoming 96th Academy Awards, is a reminder that Ukraine still merits the world’s compassion, aid and attention.

It’s a docudrama with non-actors “playing” the role Putin’s Russian invasion has limited them to, that of refugees in their own country, living in the sections of Kyiv’s subway which serve as the safest air raid shelter in the city.

“Niki” (Nikita Tyshchenko) looks to be about nine, a boy somewhat traumatized by the experiences that brought him and his family down here, urged to keep a diary by a doctor who visits everyone and checks their ears, throat, pulse and general mental wellbeing.

His biggest health issue is “Photophobia.” He needs sunlight, “Vitamin D” and fresh air. As do they all. They need a country free from Russian invasions.

Luckily for him his sister Anya (Anna Tyshchenko) is there to roam the empty stations and tunnels and play with him, his mother (Yana Yevdokymova) is there to comfort them and his friends are still somewhere that they can text him.

“Where are they,” his mother wants to know?

“They don’t say,” he replies in Ukrainian with English subtitles.

We get a glimpse of the routines of life in a shelter, food shortages but everyone shares because everybody “down here” has a story about where they were when “the war started,” some of which Niki takes to transcribing in his diary.

Niki and Anya’s parents — his stepdad (Yevhenii Borshch) is here with them — debate whether to go back “up there” because others do, only returning to the subway at night to sleep in relative safety. And they wonder if “the kids will remember this.”

Meanwhile, an elderly busker (Vitaly Pavlovich) serenades one and all with folk songs and ditties as he accompanies himself on his guitar, an entertainer keeping himself busy distracting passersby and those within earshot with reminders of their shared Ukrainian heritage via love songs and the like.

Filmmakers Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarcik limit themselves to a mere snapshot of this grim but survivable life led by those who stayed in Kyiv during the Russian siege. They pepper their picture with cell video “snapshots” of the people of the city, their lives “above” after the attack.

Their film is thus a bit myopic, even if it is a worthwhile reminder that democracies everywhere are under attack and Ukraine is the front lines of this global war for liberty and freedom from fascism.

Rating: unrated, discussions of violence

Cast: Nikita Tyshchenko, Yana Yevdokymova, Yevhenii Borshch, Anna Tyshchenko and Vitaly Pavlovich

Credits: Directed by Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarcik, scripted by Marek Lescák, Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarcik. A Cinémotif Films production.

Running time: 1:11

Your first though when you see him is that “High School Musical” alum Zac Efron is the beneficiary of the latest tech used to make “The Hulk” come to life.

He is a walking muscle, bulked-up so much his head seems an immovable object riveted onto his neck. The bulging muscles of his legs and simple bulk of his body affects his forward motion, forcing him to sidle into scenes rather than simply walk in.

It’s a stunning transformation, and whatever he went through to achieve it, that speaks to his commitment to “The Iron Claw,” a “true story” of wrestling, toxic masculinity and the dreams of the father pursued without much choice by four sons of a onetime pro who never got that coveted world heavyweight title belt.

The latest drama from writer-director Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “The Nest”) is a tale of God, guns and steroids and the performative masculinity of a sport and “scene” seemingly tailor-made for Texas.

It’s about the Von Erich clan, four young men trained, tested, taunted and bullied into the ring by their father in pursuit of his dream, to settle his “grudge” against the wrestling establishment that never gave him his shot.

“Fight Club” and TV’s “Mindhunter” veteran Holt McCallany has his chewiest big screen role in years as that patriarch, Fritz Von Erich, who “ranks” his sons in terms of who is his “favorite” determined by who has the best shot at that elusive “belt.”

He’s not physically abusive, just uncompromising and demanding, running his family as part of the Texas wrestling business he bought out in his later years. His boys will be “the toughest, the strongest and absolute best.” And they’ll get their shot.

If not Kevin (Efron), the best looking and bulkiest of the lot, then it’ll fall to towering, charismatic David (Brit actor Harris Dickson of “Where the Crawdads Sing”). If not David, then Olympic prospect Kerry (Jeremy Allen White of “The Bear”) will change sports and he’ll be The Chosen One.

Skinny, musically-minded Mike (Stanley Simon)? Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, right?

Kevin is our single-minded narrator, the one who talks about “the family curse.” Not only was Dad unable to reach the pinnacle of success, but he lost his first-born son before the lad reached his tweens. His other boys become his project, working out constantly on their Texas ranch, roughhousing and bonding when they aren’t body-building and getting shots in the rump to aid that bulking up.

Kevin’s handsome and unworldly, a bit shy. Naturally he’s bowled-over by the brassy fangirl (Lily James) who asks him “What do you want in life, Kevin Von Erich?” His dopey answer, “to be with my brothers,” gets a cards-on-the-table reply from her, and our great big wrestler turns into a lovesick puppy.

As Kevin isn’t a natural at the rehearsed and “performed” trash-talk that promotes TV wrasslin’, he’s facing an uphill battle. David, on the other hand, has that shtick down, always using the family’s trademark wrestling hold, “The Iron Claw” as his punchline.

Kevin’s sensitive enough to see the toll all this competing and paternal pressure is taking on himself and his siblings. Mom (Maura Tierney)?

“You work that out with your brothers,” is her dodge. “That’s what they’re here for.”

The film tracks the Von Erich (original surname Adkisson) clan through the ’70s, taking its best shots in the ’80s and coping with “the family curse” that is their father’s excuse for when things don’t work out, often with tragic consequences.

Of the performances, Efron’s startling transformation impresses, letting you see the limits it imposes — physical, emotional and intellectual — on poor Kevin, who like most of his siblings, has little else that he’s fit to do in life. At least he gets a dance number — a boot-scuffling line dance with his brothers.

The film on the wandering wrestling family that settled in Texas dabbles in the rigid gender parameters imposed in their world and the violence even in a “rehearsed” and “staged” sport. Those tables they and their great “national” rival, Ric Flair (Aaron Dean Eisenberg, a hoot here) crash through, those folding chairs that make handy weapons, those concrete floors they’re doomed to land on, hurt and cripple.

Durkin’s longish and thorough (“ish, as he left out one brother) account of this family, its sport and its “curse,” can feel cursory, as if he hasn’t made up his minds about all this when filming finished. McCallany has too few scenes and Fritz feels watered down, perhaps owing to family sensibilities, as a brute who scarred his brood for life.

The film plays as a “Great Santini” in which no one stands up to the bullying, controlling patriarch. That makes it more an observation than anything Durkin is drawing a conclusion about.

The performances are good, the wrestling thrillingly-shot and cut together. But with a meandering message and an ending that is almost a parody of the “paradise” these boys reach for, it’s forgiveable to consider “The Iron Claw” — scripted and acted to the limits of what the script serves up — as little better than a draw.

Rating: R, violence, steroid abuse, sexual situations and profanity

Cast: Zac Efron, Lily James, Jeremy Allen White, Stanley Simon, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney and Holt McCallany

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sean Durkin. An A24 release.

Running time: 2:10

As “classics” go, “Black Magic” is very much a mixed-bag.

A fanciful and dark account of the life of a real-life historical figure, the magnetic and captivating 18th century magician, con-man and hypnotist Cagliostro, it features impressive Italian locations, soaring sets, dazzling costumes and Orson Welles, all in service of a plot that’s “inspired by” historical events and so uneven in emphasis that it’s hard to make much sense out of it.

But if you’re a film buff, all you saw in that previous paragraph was “ORSON WELLES.” The film is remembered for being a later addition to the Orson Welles directing canon — on-set stories related that he directed himself in his own scenes and perhaps some other sequences under credited director Gregory Ratoff. A “Wellesian” will see The Master’s Touch in the way this shot is lit or framed, that camera angle, in the overlapping “radio drama” styled “realistic” dialogue in some sequences.

Dismissed upon its release — the New York Times lumped the initialed-but-unsigned review of it in with a review of a forgotten bio-pic of the trotter/harness-racing “pacing” horse “The Great Dan Patch” — “Black Magic” has a few things to recommend it. Chief among them is Welles, a magician in front of and behind the camera, on and off set.

There are many times we get the sense that a quote famously attributed to Welles is true, that he had more “fun” making this movie than any other he filmed.

Having just watched another adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers,” knowing that Dumas the Elder wrote about Cagliostro, and this being the season of holiday hams, I was in the right mood for a little Orson prestidigitation.

The story is framed in an 1848 argument between Dumas the elder (Berry Kroeger) and his “Camille” writing Dumas “fils” (son), played by the always riveting Raymond Burr.

We hear in voice-over and see the tale of the hard life of the Gypsy boy Joseph (Guiseppe) Balsamo, the execution of his falsely-accused mentalist mother and father and his own rescue just as minions of the high-handed Viscount de Montagne (Stephen Bekassy) have finished beating young Joseph and pulled the branding iron out of the fire to blind the boy as punishment.

Balsamo would not forget this great wrong. He grows up, not as a medium but as a healer/persuader, and becomes a traveling wagon show magician and hypnotizer (the word hadn’t been coined) who gets the attention of the scientist for whom “mesmerizing” was coined, the Viennese Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer.

Mesmer (Charles Goldner) is amazed at Balsamo’s eye-contact powers of persuasion, perhaps discounting the way the key light (on set) narrows to just his eyes as he zeros in on a “patient” or “victim.” But when Mesmer tries to convince Balsamo to join him in studying this power for the aid of mankind, Balsamo flees.

Remaking himself as Count Cagliostro, he dazzles crowds and “cures” via the power of suggestion. That brings him into the court of aged, chuckling Louis XV (Robert Atkins) of France, the scheming consort Madame du Barry (Margot Grahame), the heir (Lee Kressel) and the dauphin’s wife, Marie Antoinette (Nancy Guild).

Cagliostro falls for a Marie look-alike, Lorenza (Guild again) just at the time a scheme is hatched to discredit the easily-discredited Marie with The Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Cagliostro, hypnotizing Lorenza away from her titled suitor, is drawn into it.

Welles works magic act sleight of hand into not just “The Act” scenes, but in character conversations that reveal Cagliostro’s thinking about this scheme and “What’s in it for” him.

He ensures that he’s shot in crazy-eyed close-up, sometimes underlit from below. And he turns that sonorous voice on an indeterminate Euro-accent that comes and goes, the way such performances did in the days before dialect coaches were on set.

This film comes close enough on the heels of “Lady from Shanghai” and “Macbeth” that we can appreciate Welles seeking or scripting roles that play to his power, presence and voice on screen. Like “Macbeth,” Cagliostro isn’t a mastermind, just a chancer swept along by fate and the ideas of others. But he always owns the room.

The finale has a swordfight that’s pretty impressive in the seamless way the big man is stunt-doubled in all the more dangerous bits. But he’s at his best in a thundering royal trial sequence, and in his commanding answer to a “prank” “cure” staged at court to discredit him when he first meets Louis XV.

“There’s one little matter they all forget,” Cagliostro purrs. “If I can cure, I also can AFFLICT.”

Then, as now, Guild seems a little over-matched, cast in a double role above her abilities, although she delivers a mean “You insolent fishwife” in the best Marie Antoinette tradition.

Valentina Cortese, as a loyal woman who was by Balsamo’s side after his Roma rescue from blinding, makes a better show of it playing a more compelling character.

When the production cast the Armenian character actor Akim Tamaroff as Gitano, the Roma friend who rescues him and becomes Cagliostro’s lifelong sidekick, Welles also found himself a sidekick for life, bringing in Tamaroff for assorted roles, including Sancho Panza in his unfinished shot at “Don Quixote.”

“Black Magic” may largely be regarded as a fat check and European vacation/starring-role between “Lady from Shanghai/Macbeth” and Welles’ grand turn in a character role in “The Third Man.” But there’s fun stuff in here, and a big, broad performance to relish at the center of this big cast/big sets (black and white) Hollywood production.

Not having to take the entire hit if the film bombed, even if it did mean he’d quickly transition to character support for much of the rest of his career as this film finished off the idea of the actor Orson Welles as “leading man” and “box office” must have been liberating, if bittersweet in memory.

He’d make a few classics in the ’50s and 60s, in front of and behind the camera. And he’d become the ultimate Hollywood insider/outsider, revered as Our Great Talent, but not to be trusted with Hollywood money or Hollywood productions as star or director.

It’s no wonder he called this his “most fun” film to shoot. He’d never be this dashing and handsome on screen and never have this much flattering control of his image and performance in a big Hollywood movie again.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Orson Welles, Nancy Guild, Stephen Bekassy, Margot Grahame, Valentina Cortese, Frank Latimore, Charles Goldner, Robert Atkins, Berry Kroeger, Raymond Burr and Akim Tamiroff.

Credits: Directed by Gregory Ratoff and Orson Welles, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas. An Edward Smalls production on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:45

“Stolen Vacation” is a stumbling, slow-footed Mexican “vacation” comedy (titled “Viaje Todo Robado” in Spanish) that barely gets out the front door, fails to arrive at its destination and never once gets up to speed.

Comedy can be slow and deadpan and still pay off. But this is an intended “romp” broadly in the same category as “National Lampoon’s ‘Vacation'” and scores of its imitators. The one thing that makes it stand out might be how lifeless it is, first to last.

Bruno Bichir of “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” stars as a lazy lifer in an office job in 2004 Mexico City who stumbles across cash stuffed in a toilet paper roll in the bathroom who decides to use that cash to take the family on a spring vacation to the Outlet Malls of San Antonio, Texas.

It’s not wholly clear why they set this picture in that particular Mexican election year, which is acknowledged in a single scene in which Carlos, our hero, laments at the voting and the way nothing improves in their lives. But if it’s set in 2004, at least you can attempt flip phone gags and Compuserve one-liners.

I guess.

The hook here is that Carlos is under water, dodging collection calls from the note-holder on the family van. Wife and homemaker Lola (Ana Claudia Talancón, who co-starred with Bichir in “Perfect Strangers”) is in debt thanks to her addiction to bingo. Daughter Lolita (Irka Castillo) is endangering her private school scholarship by hustling “burner” CDs, which she gets her Jewish classmate and neighbor to pirate for her. And scholarship son Charlie (Germán Bracco) lies to his all-sexed-up-and-ready-to-go-to-Princeton girlfriend that he’ll be joining her there. Or maybe Harvard. Which he’ll never be able to afford.

The walls are closing in around all of them as Lola’s maid quits over non-payment, Carlos dodges an office investigation into missing funds which could put his promotion in danger, Lolita can’t deliver CDs she’s already accepted cash for and Charlie’s ability to get into any university is down to Mom paying for a placement test. Which she can’t because she’s already blown her household cash, the maid’s pay and her wedding ring gambling.

Nothing in all of that is particularly novel. Other “obstacles” to a happy family vacation include the van’s repossession and forgetting their passports. But even the simple possibilities are botched in this Diego Graue (he also directed) and Santiago Mohar Volkow screenplay. The passports turn up with a minimum of fuss, a neighbor conveniently leaves the keys to a van they can “borrow,” etc.

They run into a hostile Border Patrol agent entering Texas. His name is Rodriguez and he repeatedly demands that Carlos “address me in ENGLISH.”

Like everything else thrown at them and us, just as that might turn into an amusing if cliched episode, it’s abandoned. The shopping business is airlessly and humorlessly dizzy, the culture clash in the Tex-Mex corner of Texas comes to nothing.

The cast don’t rise above the thin material, and there it is, a “Stolen Vacation” that youd best avoid unless you’ve got 90 minutes you can afford to lose to theft.

Rating: TV-MA, a little sex, toilet humor

Cast: Bruno Bichir, Ana Claudia Talancón, Germán Bracco, Irka Castillo and Daniel Haddad

Credits: Directed by Diego Graue, scripted by Diego Graue and Santiago Mohar Volkow. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

The sweet sadness of “All of Us Strangers” envelops the viewer with the warm melancholy of memory, which makes it the best “holiday” movie to have little to do with “the holidays.”

It’s a tenderly-acted romantic fantasy about a lonely man finding love in the fictive present and closure with his long lost parents, burnishing his recollections of them by meeting them in his mind and being tearfully surprised by how “they” turned out. Because they turn out to be pleased at how he turned out.

The Irish actor Andrew Scott, of TV’s “His Dark Materials” and “Fleabag,” plays Adam, a solitary 40something screenwriter mining his memory for a script in a new, mostly-empty high-rise apartment complex in London.

A fire alarm sends him outside, and that indirectly introduces him to Harry (Paul Mescal), a young neighbor who approaches him because gaydar is totally a thing and this nearly-empty building is making him a bit mental.

The tentative nature of their early relationship seems formed by their pasts. Harry has had intermittent contact with his family. Adam lost his parents at 12, in the ’80s.

“Car crash. Not the most ‘original’ of deaths,” screenwriter Adam admits.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says.

“It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

“I don’t think that matters,” Harry replies.

And that’s the movie, that simple, sad, compassionate exchange.

Because as Adam takes the train south to the suburban city and suburban house where he lived as a child to jog his memory and add details to this script he’s writing, he stumbles into his father (Jamie Bell), still in his ’80s wardrobestill smoking and hitting the liquor store on the way home. He recognizes his kid and brings him home where the same late ’70s Ford Cortina sits in the driveway.

“Is it him?” Mum (Claire Foy) wants to know, as if they’ve just lost touch.

And thus begins a brittle and bittersweet reverie of visits, reminscing and catching-up. Adam will “come out” to them. One parent is more instantly accepting than the other. An awkward bit of treating him like a child passes, then Adam gets to bring them both up to date on the changes in the Western world’s tolerance and the end of AIDS. And his folks learn about how he grew up and what he became, and reconnect him with his past and his roots.

“You look just like my Dad,” mum gushes at one point.

“All of Us Strangers” is based on a novel by Taichi Yamada, and shows the same sensitivity writer-director Andrew Haigh has brought to his best work (“45 Years,” “Lean on Pete”).

He bathes his film in ’80s era “new romantics” Fine Young Cannibals/Pet Shop Boys era pop, underlining Adam’s “stuck at age 12” status just as subtly as “Guardians of the Galaxy” has its Star-Lord lean on his late Mom’s favorite mixtape.

Although the story traffics in a few cliches — drinking and drugs and dancing at the club, each partner wrestling with personal demons — the romance is treated with tenderness and respect.

And the parental reactions to this “discovery” that their boy grew up to realize he was gay features expected responses and an unpleasant unexpected one balanced against an utterly charming, idealized, best-case-scenario parental affirmation of love, connection and a wish for their child’s happiness and success.

Scott effortlessly conveys the guarded solitude, the alone-with-his-thoughts demeanor of the garreted writer’s lifestyle. He and Haigh take us on this character’s journey and make us relish the emotional release Adam feels as he “researches” a script and fantasizes and writes his way to a happier life.

Mescal brings a nice mystery to the forward, overly-chatty and troubled Harry, a most humane man who respects Adam’s boundaries even as he’s trying to express an interest in him.

Foy is spot -n as a mother rattled by this long-delayed “catch -up” with her son, a vulnerable and limited person whose character arc may be the film’s most rewarding and emotional.

And the once-and-always “Billy Elliot” Bell is a marvel, a working class Joe who probably wasn’t the best parent for a gay boy to have, but who — in Adam’s mind — was self-aware enough to know his limitations and offhandedly reconcile this side of him so that reconnect with his kid. Bell makes this character idealized but wholly credible, an EveryDad every kid would love “closure” with.

There are bigger films and more entertaining stories coming to screens this holiday season. But there isn’t one more life and love-affirming than “All of Us Strangers,” a movie that reminds us that memory burnishes loved ones for a reason. If we love them and remember them, they’ve earned it.

Rating: R, for drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Andrew Haigh, based on a novel by Taichi Yamada. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:45

The rules on any adaptation of “The Three Musketeers” are that it’s got to be swashbuckling and that it must be fun.

Disney landed the latter and made a decent showing of the former in their 1993 “Young Guns” version (Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt et al). But the gold standard for this most famous, most filmed of action tales remains the early ’70s two-part all-star Richard Lester romp featuring Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway and Raquel Welch.

The latest French incarnation of this very French tale — the eighth French film version — leans more on the swashing buckles than the slapstick or witty repartee. But “The Three Musketeers — Part 1: D’Artagnan” is a lavishly-produced, full-blooded and entertaining take on the three-plus-one swordfighting team.

Director Martin Bourboulon (“Eiffel,” “Daddy or Mommy”) recycles some settings and finds a few new and novel places to have his duelists throw down. And he and screenwriter Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière find a few surprises for François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmaï to act-out in their cliffhanger “Part 1.”

The four-billed-as-three musketeers are well-cast, with veterans Cassel and Duris lending gravitas and soulfulness, Civil the very embodiment of brash southern mountain “Gascon” hick come to join the King’s Musketeers in Paris, and Marmaï given a new wrinkle to play in the usually portly, food-and-fun-loving Porthos. This time, he’s a gay (Bisexual?) gastronome.

Human or edible livestock, “a thigh is a thigh,” Porthos bellows (in French with English subtitles).

Anbody who has ever seen a version of this tale remembers its waypoints. This time, the context — an heirless king of France (the excellent Louis Garrel of “Little Women” and “The Innocent”) is about to be cornered into a 1620s war with the Catholic country’s Protestants, who are backed by the British — is a bit clearer.

Louis tries to keep his court and his musketeers in line.

“I’ve never been,” he cracks, “but I hear it’s worse in England.”

The king’s double-crossing advisor/proxy Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) is reduced in sinister scale in this production. But the Cardinal’s murderous henchwoman Milady is given a deadly edge by Eva Green, the real casting coup here.

The “meet cute” between the boyish would-be recruit D’Artagnan (Civil of “Rise” and “A Place to Fight For”) and droll, fatalistic Athos (Cassel of “Black Swan”), the chivalrous lady’s man Aramis (Duris of “Waiting for Bojangles”) and smiling, brawling Porthos (Marmaï, featured in “Yannick”) is more perfunctory than the usual “cute.”

D’Artagnan offends his three future comrades in turn, remember, and they all challenge the rural oaf to a duel.

“Three duels in three hours? If I didn’t have to kill you, I’d buy you a drink!”

A new ticking clock element is introduced into the countdown to an almost-cheating queen (Vicky Krieps of “Phantom Thread”) getting caught and outed with her British spy paramour, the Duke of Buckingham (Jacob Fortine-Lloyd). As always, D’Artagnan’s go-between landlady (Lyna Khoudri) is involved, maybe up to her neck.

There’s one seriously illogical bit of business set on a cliffside that may stick in your side the way it does in mine. But I like the prologue that introduces D’Artagnan and us to the “conspiracy” going on all around them straight from the start. The fights have a long-take choreographed brio about them. And the finale is so over-the-top that it plays, even if it plays like scores of modern thrillers, going back to Hitchcock, looking for a very public place to make a very bloody statement as a climax.

This version of the story has a few funny moments, but plays things straight and still manages to be a rewarding and enjoyable remake of this story of “Tous pour un” and “one for all.” Maybe they’ll find more of the “fun” in the second half/”sequel” — “The Three Musketeers — Part 2: Milady.”

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, Lyna Khoudri, Louis Garrel, Eric Ruf, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Eva Green.

Credits: Directed by Martin Bourboulon, scripted by Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 2:01

Describing “Saltburn” in cinema shorthand terms is so easy it almost gives away the game. Not that the plot is any big inscrutable secret.

It’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” meets “Call Me By Your Name” — insidious, class conscious, with a bit of violence and a serious taste of the sexually kinky if not downright icky.

The latest feature from actress turned “Promising Young Woman” writer-director-to-watch Emerald Fennell is a slap-in-the-face assault on British classism and an uninhibited tour de force for star Barry Keoghan.

Taken at its dark-intended-as-darkly-funny face value, it’s a satire that crosses lines simply because they’re there and easily overstays its welcome. But it’s still a bracing depiction of ancient fault lines breached by an interloper which the inbred and posh are ill-equipped to reckon with.

The Irish actor Keoghan, last seen in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” is a hapless “scholarship boy” at Oxford, “Class of 2006.” He’s as out of place as his trying-too-hard, dated “Oxford” fashions, as helpless as the look on his face every time he asks “This seat taken?” at his college’s wood-paneled, chandeliered, ancient and venerated dining hall.

That may relegate him to sitting with the highly-strung, self-described “genius” Jake (Will Gibson) as a fellow outcast in this world. But we know from Oliver Quick’s voice-over narration that he aspires to greater things, chief among them the rakish, handsome and ever-so-rich Felix Catton, given a louche ease and comfort about the “station” he was born into by Jacob Elordi (Elvis in “Priscilla,” TV’s “Euphoria”.

A chance encounter leads to a Oliver doing a boon for his rich, entitled classmate. And it doesn’t matter than Felix is related to Oliver’s trying-too-hard-at-snobbery tutoring partner and nemesis Farleigh (Archie Madekwe of “Midsommer” and “Gran Turismo”). “Ollie” soon finds himself sharing pints at the pub, palling around with the effortlessly popular girl magnet Felix and ingratiating himself into his life.

Little details about Ollie’s hard luck life story seem to touch Felix, who is rich enough to be gallant about picking up a tab without sweating it, and touchy enough to not like being reminded of it.

“Get yourself a title and a massive ‘f–k-off castle,” and you don’t have to hear how “only rich people can afford to be filthy” and never clean their college dorm room.

“Saltburn” is the family’s “castle,” a massive, Tudor manor house “pile.” Oliver finds himself invited there over summer break, instantly out of place as he takes an earlier train, goes through multiple gates and crosses vast grounds to get to the towering front door, where butler Duncan (Pauls Rhys) is quietly disapproving of his arrival.

He’s not the only one. The venmous Farleigh is here for a long stay.

Felix’s nonchalant attitutude about this wealth and status is summed up on a long walking “tour” through ornately-decorated halls and rooms covered with portraits — “Dead relly (relative), dead relly, Shakepeare’s Folio…Henry VIII…” But we sense a kindness in him as well.

He may make “Ollie” a subject of gossip with his parents (Rosamund Pike, terrific, Richard E. Grant, spot-on), his strikingly beautiful sister (Alison Oliver) and ever-over-dresssed ne’er do well houseguest (Carey Mulligan). But that’s only to urge them to mimic his consideration to his classmate.

Farleigh won’t buy in. Duncan keeps an eyebrow raised. But that’s not an issue, and it becomes obvious that Ollie is an “innocent” among a wading pool-deep cadre of upper class twits and their seldom-challenged progeny and hangers’ on.

“I have a complete and utter horror of ugliness, ever since I was young,” trophy wife matriarch Elspeth (Pike) declares.

Titled patriarch Sir James (Grant) gushes over every film they watch on movie nights — “Superbad” among them.

And daughter Venetia (Oliver) is a rareified creature of rebellious tastes and eating disorders, who might just have something in mind to do with the peasant boy now in their midst.

But Ollie’s early warning system should be triggered when she refers to him as not quite the same as “last year’s ‘one,” And maybe the Cattons and their hangers-on should have their guard up to this unpolished, seemingly-roughcut lad who can’t quite fit in, but who seems like too quick a study to be underestimated.

Mulligan, Grant and Pike are the reliable laughs in this cast, hitting just the right “clueless” touch here, a spectacularly tone-deaf touch there.

Fennell’s wit includes from lightly mocking the champagne swigging swells who play tennis in evening wear, bottle in hand, who nude sunbathe on the grounds — the younger generation snorting coke and the older one “planning” parties for their huge staff to actually pull-off, many of them just too polite to cope with modern mores or anyone who overstays their welcome.

Keoghan, one of the most accomplished actors of his generation (“Dunkirk,””’71,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “American Animals,” TV’s “Chernobyl”), impresses early on and turns downright dazzling in the later acts, accepting every challenge from a director prone to “Let’s just GO there” whims in this follow-up to the more focused and furious “Promising Young Woman.”

There hasn’t been much more to be said about upper class twits, filthy rich fussbudgets and entitled folk too polite and sheltered to perceive a threat in years, and Fennell doesn’t really change that.

And that “overstays its welcome” jab suits this picture to a T, as our clever filmmaker decides to linger past drop-the-mike moment and then over-explain it all in a draggy finale.

It’s the film’s sexual “daring” and its calculated shocks that stick with you more than the guessable narrative populated by assorted predators and prey.

But Keoghan — as innocent or cunning, oaf or graceful dancer-in-the-near-dark, will leave you amazed at this performance and startled at just what he was willing to do to fit in in “Saltburn” — the great house or the not-quite-great movie.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, “graphic nudity,” profanity and “strong sexual content

Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Emerald Fennell. An MGM/Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 2:11

There was an accident involving her husband, one that involved brain damage that has left him speechless and borderline catatonic. When we see it recreated in a flashback, we understand her loyalty, why she’s sticking with him, monitoring his symptoms, trying to trigger his memory to shock him back into speaking.

It’s not just taking those wedding vows seriously or scientific curiosity. She feels somewhat to blame.

He came from money, so that’s why they’ve come to the estate house in a small town where he grew up as the scion of the rich DuBose family.

But there’s a portrait in the attic of the great house, one so realistic it takes Sofia aback. It’s a perfect likeness of husband Alex (Ryan Kwanten). What really has Sofia (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) rattled by it is that it was a self-portrait by an infamous forebear of Alex’s, painted back in the 1930s.

And pulling the sheet covering it off the lifesize painting seems to set events in motion, as “things” start “happening” around the house — vases falling, furtive figures glimpsed in the shadows, odder-than-usual behavior from Alex.

“The Portrait” is a quiet and subtle debut feature from British director Simon Ross and British born screenwriter David Griffiths. It’s so understated and cryptic as to not quite come off,  a faintly chilling Gothic mystery with a modicum of suspense but a dearth of jolts and thrills.

A violent 1937 prologue sets up this place, this family and the subject of this portrait with a crime.

But that’s not information that Sofia has when she shows up, greeted by the caretaker (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), moving her routine with Alex — shaving, cleaning, talking to and questioning him, looking for that “one memory that could trigger” something in him — to surroundings familiar to him.

The creepy painting and things that start happening — nightmares, noises, etc,  — after she sees it don’t fit any science that Sofia understands. Hearing about the subject of that portrait, his sadism and abuse of the “wound birds” (women) he is drawn to, is more unsettling than explanatory.

Maybe the faintly sinister relative (Virginia Madsen, in fine form) who sneaks in on them has a clue.

The DuBoses, she riddles, “always come back. Even when you they don’t want us to.”

It’s all handsomely-mounted, even if the setting is rendered generic North American (female sheriff, US or Canadian style police uniforms, etc). There’s one pretty good twist involving a peripheral character, but little in the way of laying out just what’s going on here.

Cordova-Buckley (TV’s “Agents of “S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “The Mosquito Coast”) underplays Sofia’s response to the extraordinary things she thinks are happening and the rising threat level the character faces, undercutting the peril and urgency this short, slow simmer of a thriller might have produced.

“The Portrait” is a puzzle picture loses itself in that puzzle and portrait, and never quite delivers the punch that the easily-anticipated payoff should produce.

Rating:  R for violence, some sexual content, language and brief drug use.

Cast: Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Ryan Kwanten, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Virginia Madsen.

Credits: Directed by Simon Ross, scripted by David Griffiths. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:26

Seeing the film adaptation of the stage musical based on an Alice Walker novel that Steven Spielberg filmed nearly 40 years ago, I found it helpful to remember that Taraji P, Henson can sing, and that David Alan Grier is an acting, joke-landing, singing and playing talent a par with Oscar winner Jamie Foxx.