Movie Nation

Willem Dafoe’s presence gives away the A24 take on a vampiric Gremlin monster rescued by a tweenage girl.

A Scandinavian music video director brings this tale to the screen next spring.

Mom’s raising the kids in California, but “In the Summers” they go to Las Cruces, New Mexico to stay with their troubled but loving father.

This saga about kids growing up with and without their dad did the festival circuit, got a limited release in Sept. and hits streaming Nov. 5.

Looks brittle and lovely.

“Advanced Chemistry” is a sex farce, which is not to be confused with “romantic comedy” as a genre, although that distinction has rarely been applied to a more “PG” picture.

Clunky, timid and tame-right-to-the-edge-of-chaste, it’s a dull dive into biochemistry, “monogamous attraction” via hypodermic needle, air guitar as an art form and “full facial nudity.”

That’s as romantic and as sexy as this one relationship — with a germophobe and central to the plot — gets.

Samba Schutte and Kiaran Deol play chemistry students under the tutelage of an impatiently lceherous mentor (Iqbal Theba).

Allen (Schutte) is a hapless doormat when it comes to love. He’s always losing that potential bar pick-up to his aggressive, lesbian bestie. The ladies — even the straight ones — can’t get enough of Marsha, Marsha Marsha (Chaunte Wayans).

Allen and Lisa (Deol) are competing for that one spot to be funded in their university’s program. He’s working on “Bondo,” a drug that will encourage chemical fidelity to a loved one the way voles practice monogamy. Lisa’s “Lixi” promises better orgasms in women.

As Marsha is “a cheater from a long line of cheaters,” she begs to be a human test subject for Bondo. That’s how Allen tumbles into a world of misdirected needles creating irresistible attractions — few of which he has any interest in.

But Lisa might be different, a co-conspirator in his illegal “test” case and a germophobe repelled by the idea of physical contact, much less physical attraction.

Every so often, as this or that person in the broader plot gets injected, on purpose or accidentally, they have to hide Allen’s actions from wacky, over-committed Safety Officer Nancy (T’Keyah Crystal Keymáh), who pops up like zealous “safety” Nazi.

Director Etana Jacobson keeps the tone light and screwy. The players do their utmost to take things over the top. But the pacing is flat, few jokes come close to landing and the cast’s “utmost” just doesn’t get us there.

“Advanced Chemistry” has problems with the basics.

Rating: unrated, sex, profanity and “full facial nudity”

Cast: Samba Schutte, Chaunte Wayans, Sarah Burns, Kiaran Deol and Iqbal Theba.

Credits: Directed by Etana Jacobson, scripted by Alec Moore. A Good Deed release.

Running time: 1:35

Osgood Perkins was an actor who became a writer and then a writer-director (“Longlegs,” “Gretel & Hansel”), and now he’s tackling a Stephen King short story.

Horror hits home via a wind up “Monkey” Feb. 22.

A little holiday cheer is expressed and even more is shown, or at least sampled, in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.” And almost nothing is explained.

The idea behind Tyler Taormina’s (“Ham on Rye”) warm, aimless and largely laugh-free Christmas Eve wallow in nostalgia is the selectivity of memory, and perhaps how drab the “colorful” memories our director and co-writer decides to show us turn out to be.

Unexplained, disorganized and cluttered with characters we strain to identify in banal situations that go nowhere, this isn’t one that’s going to replace “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story” or even “The Family Stone” or “Feast of the Seven Fishes” on anybody’s holiday movie list.

What we figure out — eventually — is that this extended family is gathering on snowy Long Island for what could be the “last Christmas” with Grandma Antonia (Mary Reistetter). Eventually, a “Carmine” is mentioned and a couple of other names that suggest this is an Italian American clan.

We see a flip phone, a ’90s Buick wagon and a ’92 Jeep Cherokee and piece together that this an “Eve” in the early 2000s.

A couple of siblings bicker with a couple others over “Sunrise Nursing Home” or “live in aid” options for their mother, over who is not doing enough to help this situation and who is.

The little kids are kind of passed-over — merely underfoot — as the adults cook, smoke cigars, kvetch and reminisce, and the teens and tweens experience traditions such as “the walk,” “the bird” (cooked) and “the parade” — decorated fire engines that pass in a blur. Some kids borrow a family Cherokee for a run out to a cemetary, a little drinking and carrying-on shared in dark close ups and hook ups.

“Car equals FREEDOM!”

We assume they’re not kissing cousins, but hey, when you don’t explain Jack, there is is some doubt.

A couple of local cops (Gregg Turkington and Michael Cera) gawk at some of this while on duty and get into one awkward conversation meant to be comical.

And the soundtrack to it all is early ’60s doo-wop and pop, perhaps for its Italian-American connotations.

I found the entire experience a dissonant disconnect as there is barely anyone to identify, much less identify with, there’s little novelty to anything presented here and nothing to root for because basically a lot of nothing or nothing much is all that happens.

Save yourself the drive. Rent “Feast of the Seven Fishes” and get a load of THOSE Italians if you want to see a memorable period piece about a memorable Christmas.

Rating: PG-13, smoking, teen drinking, sexual situations, profanity,

Cast: Elsie Fisher, Maria Dizzia, Francesca Scorsese, Ben Shenkman, Matilda Fleming, Sawyer Spielberg, Leo Chan, Gregg Turkington and Michael Cera.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Taormina, scripted by Eric Berger and Tyler Taormina. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:47

Nykiya Adams has the title role in this latest “How the other half life, love and grow up” tale from Andrea Arnold.