Movie Nation

“Before Dawn” is a World War I saga as uninventive as its title, a flat recreation of the trenches of France and the young men who fought there that adds nothing to the extensive canon of films documenting “The Great War.”

Aussie filmmaker Jordon Prince-Wright’s bitten off a lot for his debut feature, which he’s dedicated to his grandfather in the closing credits. But ambition aside, “Dawn” can’t hold a candle to the best Australian film about World War I (“Gallipoli”), much less the classics “Paths of Glory,” any version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “1917,” even if his film stands far above most indie efforts to recreate The Somme, etc., on a tiny budget.

It’s the story of a young sheep rancher from the Outback, joining his mates on the great adventure enlisting promises because “You wouldn’t miss it, wouldya Jim?”

Jim Collins (Levi Miller) leaves behind the rancher/parents who depend on him for a 900 day “adventure” in the mud and blood stalemate of the Western Front.

Prince-Wright’s film, scripted by Jarrad Russell, skips back and forth in time as it tells the story of Jim’s long deployment, the “mates” and what happens on “Day 28,” “Day 753” etc., must of it underscored by Jim’s wartime diary or letters home, recited in voice-over.

We viewers instinctively know better than to get to attached to Jim’s mates, and even Jim’s blunders, tests of courage and morality in trenches that are often too shallow to keep the young men defending them from being picked off come off as “nothing new.”

Good combat sequences, reasonable recreations of No Man’s Land, a few salty “types” — Myles Pollard stands out as the fearless jaded, slouch-hatted sergeant trying to keep this lot alive — lots of “win this” “big push” and “we go home” promises — “Before Dawn” serves up the tropes of the genre and well-worn situations of the war, with the odd Aussie touch.

The lads and their Sgt. set off on a late night “revenge” raid to take out a machine gun crew that killed some of their mates.

The story arc can’t help but be over-familiar. Jim, labeled a “crack shot” by those who know him, is reluctant to take that first life and even more reticent about showcasing his marksmanship.

One thing nobody on the corner of the Western Front misses is a shave or a bath. Muddy moments aside, these are the best-turned-out, made-up trench soldiers of any WWI film of recent vintage.

The odd shot can be striking — very young men piled into a horse-drawn wagon lit by a kerosene lantern, riding out to their destiny in a pitch-dark Outback night. The battlefields and trenches pass muster, but offer little that we haven’t seen before.

One can appreciate the effort and the sentiment driving it. But the conventionality of the story, the long, dull stretches between the passable combat scenes and lack of emotion in the departure from the sheep station and the deaths of friends and comrades hobble “Before Dawn,” a World War I overreach, pretty much start to finish.

Rating: R, violence, profanity, smoking

Cast: Levi Miller, Travis Jeffery, Myles Pollard, Stephen Peacocke and Kelly Belinda Hammond

Credits: Directed by Jordan Prince-Wright, scripted by Jarrad Russell. A Well Go USA release.

Running time 1:40

Over fifty years after its release, Carl Reiner’s cult comedy “Where’s Poppa?” has lost some of its transgressive edge, but not a bit of its ability to make you cringe.

A dark 1970 comedy about Jewish sons and Jewish mommas, dementia and the terrors of the phrase “put me ‘in a home,” this satire is perhaps most famous for a downbeat and twisted ending that isn’t seen on most versions of it circulating — a senile mother (Ruth Gordon) asking her son (George Segal) for the hundredth time, “Where’s Poppa?” He at last answers that “Here’s Poppa,” as they’re in bed. Together.

And the film is most infamous for being the first time American moviegoers heard the familiar New York phrase “c–ksucker” on a film soundtrack.

The down-market nursing home, a rambling, rundown private residence run by a cynical Paul Sorvino in his first screen appearance, still stings.

“It’s tough getting help,” he grouses. “Nobody wants to take care of old people!”

An unhappy wife (Rae Allen) berates her husband (Ron Liebman) for dashing out at night to help his brother care for their delusional, impossible-to-manage mother for the umpteenth time and then blocks the door.

“Get away from that door or I’m gonna CHOKE your child.” Oh yeah. He means it. See the still shot above.

But the most shockingly funny bit would probably never pass muster today, a late night mugging that turns to comical sexual assault, with the repeat mugging Central Park victim (Liebman, always searingly funny) baited into taking on the rape by the amused and amusing Black gang (pre-“SNL” Garrett Morris is the most famous face in the lot) who regard their “regular” victim as “a friend.”

“This your first rape?”

Segal stars as Gordon Hocheiser, the son who lives in their roomy but dated and cluttered Central Park West apartment with his dotty mom (Gordon, immortalized in “Harold & Maude”). Her clingy madness is battering his once-promising legal career, as he keeps showing up to defend people he’s barely met or researched.

We see an assault case against a not-so-peaceful peace protester (Carl’s son Rob Reiner) who whacked off the toe of an aged Army officer (Barnard Hughes), a brawl that began with the younger man raging about “How many ‘g–ks and ‘krauts’ we killed?” Col. Hendricks takes the stand to ghoulishly brag about how many “g–ks and krauts” he killed.

Gordon’s mom chases off every caregiver, has pinched or punched many a hairdresser. And Gordon is desperate for help. Then, an angel dressed like Florence Nightengale (Trish Van DeVere, making her screen debut) applies. Gordon swoons. They click and spoon over her frank discussion of her abortive “32 hours” long marriage.

But Mom is still around, on a demented tear, to muck it all up.

The brothers bicker in that distinctly New York version of brinkmanship — see “choke your child” above.

As things go quickly if not demonstrably from bad to worse — Nurse Louise owns up to how she’s not a “very good” nurse, etc. — brother Sidney’s late night park muggings turn cinematic.

“Remember Cornel Wilde?” Yeah, he was just in “The Naked Prey.” “You better start praying ’cause you’re gonna be naked” and chased through the park, as Wilde was in Africa in that film.

Gordon’s efforts to shock his mother into a stroke include waking her, bellowing and growling, in a gorilla suit. That suit is all he offers naked Sidney after that naked Central Park chase. And a New York cabbie would still rather pick up a guy in a gorilla suit than a Black domestic servant when it comes to late night cab rides.

Reiner, already a comedy legend thanks to “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and his long “2000 Year Old Man” party record partnership with Mel Brooks, did an efficient job of adapting Robert Klane’s novel (screenwriter Klane wrote the script), staying out of the way of some laughs, amping up the energy of the arguments and courtroom scenes (Vincent Gardenia plays another hapless Hocheiser client).

The “plot” is a tad slapdash and the finale — no matter which version you see (Tubi has the “happier” ending) — is abrupt and less than satisfying.

Segal vamps the hell out of his fear and loathing of his mother and instant lust for her prospective new nurse. Gordon is more passive here than in her iconic turn in “Harold & Maude.”

But Liebman, Hughes, Reiner and the hilarious Comic Park Five (Morris, Joe Keyes Jr., Arnold Williams, Israel Lang and Buddy Butler), gang go hilariously over the top and ensure that this comedy’s biggest laughs endure through the ages.

You’d have to tweak that “Your first rape?” scene if you remade the film today. Well, maybe you would. Maybe lean harder on the Manhattan “Jewish momma/Jewish son” dynamic post Eptstein/Weinstein and Woody, or abandon it as the still-amusing stereotype it and so much else in “Where’s Poppa?” is.

But if easy to see the path that Reiner’s comedy was headed on, dark and kind of Mel Brooks Lite in terms of intentional satiric offense, destined to turn dizzy (“The Jerk”) and gloriously sentimental (“Oh God!” and “All of Me”) before he retired and rested on laurels that 98% of Hollywood would envy.

Rating: R, nudity, profanity, adult subject matter

Cast: Ruth Gordon, George Segal, Trish Van Devere, Ron Liebman, Barnard Hughes, Vincent Gardenia, Joe Keyes Jr., Rob Reiner, Garrett Morris and Paul Sorvino

Credits: Directed by Carl Reiner, scripted by Robert Klane, based on his novel. A United Artists/MGM release.

Running time: 1:24

This road trip drama stars Philip Ettinger as the troubled sibling brother Jake (Daniel Diemer) must “evaluate” on the drive back to their demanding or perhaps understanding and wise father (J.K. Simmons).

Might Mom (Polly Draper) have a say in writer-director Sheridan O’Donnell’s debut feature?

“Little Brother” comes out Sept. 24.

That’s the good news. “Winner,” starring Emilia Jones as , Zach Galifianakis and Connie Britton, played at Sundance and other festivals this year.

Winner, you should recall, was an NSA translator thrown into prison for leaking information about how much the government knew about Russian efforts to put Donald Trump in the White House.

Vertical, a poverty row distributor, picked “Winner” and is set to release it. Will anybody outside of film festival goers see it? Soon?

Let’s hope.

“The Paragon” is one of those indie film festival darlings that seems to come out of nowhere, with its budget a big part of its legend.

Movies from “El Mariachi” and “Clerks” to “Slackers” “The Blair Witch Project” and “Tangerine” have found glory and distribution based on film fest buzz of the “Look at what they got out of $9, $22 or $25 thousand dollars!”

“Paragon” is sci-fi on the cheap, and being from New Zealand, leans more towards the twee charms of “Safety Not Guaranteed” than the doom and dread of the even cheaper “Primer.”

It’s a parable of the true cost of revenge and the great value of enlightenment. Managing that in a movie with no famous faces and no “names” in its cast is no mean feat, even if this comedy never quite comes off.

“Paragon’s” laughs are mainly light chuckles, its action another variation on “good” supernaturalists fending off “evil” ones. And its best special effect may be a 1970 Lincoln Continental which our anti-hero’s psychic “coach” can drive from the back seat when everyone knows the steering wheel’s in the front.

Dutch, played by Benedict Wall (New Zealand’s Will Forte?), is a once 347th ranked tennis pro who loses his “Knife Fight Tennis” coaching business, his bored wife Emily (Jessica Grace Smith) and his house when he becomes the victim of a hit and-run.

“The end of me and tennis” has him morose, on crutches, living in his half-brother’s (Shadon Meredith) travel trailer and lusting for “revenge.”

The cops aren’t interested in looking for that one particular silver Toyota Corolla in Auckland. He’s fuming and lost until he sees the flier with phone-numbers dangling below, one of which he tears off.

“Do you want to see the Unseen?” it asks. Dutch does. He wants to find that Corolla and its driver and punish both for what they’ve done to him.

Calling the number from a pay phone, he’s not nearly impressed enough by the fact that the woman answering it knows his name and sends him to an empty gym on the other side of town “for answers.”

His cynical goof of a brother insists its a scam, because “people are running scams all the time. That’s basically how the economy works these days.” But Dutch goes, meets the cowled and mysterious Lyra (Florence Noble, the deadest deadpan since Buster Keaton) and submits to her extensive list of questions.

“How often do you masturbate?”

The woman with the giant “V” tattooed on her forehead is ready to turn the raging smart-aleck down when he pleads with her and they touch and she gets her clue that he might be ready to receive “psionic powers.”

“Have you ever been dead, Mr. Lawson?” Why, yes he has — after the accident — for six minutes.

The bulk of writer-director Michael Duignan’s film is one long lecture, training and psychic testing montage.

“Please take off your watch.” “Please stop smoking, drinking coffee and masturbating so much.” There’s a even “color diet” (“blue food, yellow food, red food” etc) to heighten Dutch’s reception of “The Protocol.”

Duignan, a veteran TV director (Down Under?) has our hero learn “telelocating,” which will help him find that illusive Corolla. Dutch must learn about the “ten dimensions,” what to do if he gets “lost in a parallel universe,” and to be wary of Lyra’s evil brother Haxan (A “Blair Witch” joke?), given a sinister edge by Jonny Brugh.

Naturally, there’s a magic crystal that must be telelocated.

The structure of “The Paragon” is a tad cumbersome — with events visually forshadowed and Dutch occasionally breaking into third person voice-over narration. The joke of Dutch looking for and being given “shortcuts” to enlightenment amuses. A bit.

And as with much Kiwi comedy, slightness of it all won’t tickle everybody. But after feeling offhand, glib and flaky for much of its length, it shows a little heart as we circle around the “revenge” that is a long time coming.

The performances are daft enough to land, and the audacity of it all counts for something.

If “The Paragon” isn’t the paragon of indie cinema frugality (“Tangerine,” shot on a cell phone, owns that title), it is a great example of how the conceit and the script will always be more important than the “stars” you attract to your debut feature.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Benedict Wall, Florence Noble, Jessica Grace Smith, Shadon Meredith and Jonny Brugh

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Duignan. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:25

This major studio reboot — part of Universal’s horror brand and legacy — has attracted a lot of horror genre talent.

The cast (Christopher Abbott has the title role) is lesser known. But Leigh Whannel (“The Invisible Man”) directs, so this has “Saw” and “Insidious” and Blumhoue bonafides.

Jan. 17, a slow season for cinema, is when it opens.

It begins, as many indie thrillers do, with great promise.

There’s a complicated lead character — wife by day, leather cover-band singer and sex-in-the-club-bathrooms rocker by night, air traffic controller later each night.

I know. But stay with me. Pleeeaaase!

On the night “Charlie Tango” opens, multi-tasking tart Kim (Stacie Mistysyn) is even more distracted. And that’s AFTER the poker game among Canadian air traffic controllers, the one they play to “bond” when they’re supposed to be getting and giving “briefings.”

This night Charlie Tango 707 runs afoul of Delta Charlie 543 while India Foxtrot 1120 is passing in those same Canadian skies. That’s a chilling sequence.

If nothing else, Montreal-based writer-director Simom Boisvert’s movie, with convincing (’80s vintage) control screen tech and phone lines “always down,” will put the fear of God in one about Canadian air traffic control.

Hang onto that fear, because literally everything that follows in this air accident thriller is nonsensical to the point of daft and as realistic as any given episode of “Schitt$ Creek.”

The Canadian NTSB investigators suggest Kim “meet with the survivors” of the plane that crashed.

“It was an ACCIDENT. I don’t need a SHRINK!”

Kim’s side-piece (David La Haye) is a French-accented hustler in a dyed man-bun that screams “SKETCHY,” especially when he offers her a job at his “real estate investment” concern.

Who knew pyramids were Canada’s best candidates for “house flipping?”

Kim’s neglected cop-husband (Bruce Dinsmore) may or may not have a clue. Sure, let’s lure him in for a sales pitch, have a sit-down “with the armed spouse of the woman you’re sleeping with.” What could wrong wrong?

And when it all does go wrong — slowly, tediously and incredulously — little of what we’ve seen before is allowed to make a lick of sense.

Rating: unrated, sex and sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Stacie Mistysyn, David LaHaye, Bruce Dinsmore, Marcel Jeannin and Diana Lewis.

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Simon Boisvert. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:38

The sequel to 1988’s “Beetlejuice,” serving up nostalgia, Winona and O’Hara and Ortega and Keaton and vintage Tim Burton production design, if not laughs, is aiming at being the second best Sept. opening weekend record, with a $110 take on tap after a big Thursday, Friday and Sat.

Starting with $14 million in previews pushed the picture over $40 million for the day. Sat. and Sunday will tell the tale.

Reviews have been a lot more mixed than the angry near-illiterates sending me hate mail would have you believe. It’s a gorgeous “joyless” film, a shallow comedy — nothing deeper. And what do comedies require? Laughs. Barely a half dozen chuckles in it.

The picture gives Warners a leg up on everybody else as we head into the fall film season, as “Deadpool & Wolverine” empties its last mag as it  clears $7.2 million this weekend. It’s over $610 million, so perhaps Hugh J. won’t have to do Mint Mobile/Aviation Gin ads with Van City Reynolds to keep a roof over his head.

“Reagan” is holding (conservative) audience, a less than 40% drop off will allow it to nudge over  $5 million on its sophomore weekend. This Dennis Quaid/Penelope Ann Miller/Jon Voight hagiography will clear the $18 million mark by midnight Sunday.

A24 released “The Front Room” probably a week too late. It’s a late-August dumping ground thriller, it turns out, bombing with $1.5 million (if they’re lucky). Bad reviews, rare enough for A24 titles, killed it. And as I and others have noticed and discussed, the horror movie audience seems to have largely checked-out of the genre, with misses piling up and hits (“Longlegs”) rare as Stephen King Nobel prizes.

“Alien: Romulus” and “It Ends with Us” will both be in the $1.1 million range, falling in fifth and sixth place once that shakes out. “Us” will finish its run as about $145, “Alien” at maybe $131.

I’ll update this running tally over the course of the weekend as more data rolls in more more tickets sell.

This doc feature about funny friends Will Ferrell and Harper Steele on a road trip will play in theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration, and roll onto Netflix Sept. 27.

It’s a doc that gives the lie to the gay/”pronoun” bashing as a popular political stance with much of the county. Perhaps Ron DeSantis should watch it and get a clue.

Chris Weitz’s “AfrAId” lays out the benefits and perils of entrusting our lives and world to artificial intelligence well enough.

A supercomputer-powered gadget that entertains, teaches, takes on research and onerous paperwork and can even diagnose health issues while maintaining security in the home? That sounds like a godsend.

But long before that first easily-forseen moment when the AI, named “Aia” here, crosses that first line and starts to take over, take revenge and begins prioritizing its self-interest “AfrAId” has worn out its welcome by failing to startle, alarm or surprise.

Weitz, a writer and producer who counts “About a Boy” and “Operation Finale” among his directing credits, manages a few wrinkles in the already well-worn “machines will outthink and replace us” thriller genre. What he doesn’t produce are frights, suspense and the rising sense of dread such a film has to have to work.

John Cho (“Searching”) plays an ad-man whose mentor-boss (Keith Carradine) is eager to get to close a deal with this AI firm that’s about to blow up.

Sure, the “geniuses” running it (David Dastmalchian and Ashley Romans) are off-putting, arrogant and “weird.” But this account could make them.

The AI folks give Curtis a “system” to take home and “live with” for a while, a next generation “Siri/Alexa” that might “change the world.” What might its impact be on a fragile family of screen-addicted kids and their harried and frustrated parents?

Sure, it starts with taking on “story time” for the youngest, paying bills and making dietary suggestions for wife/mother Meredith (Katherine Waterston) and the like.

Aia can be a comforting reading prompt for little Cal, a “good listener” for Meredith and bullied middle child Preston (Wyatt Lindner) and advice-to-the-lovelorn for older teen Iris (Lukita Maxwell). But when Iris is cruelly lured into snapping nude shots which her rich creep boyfriend turns into AI animated porn, Aia’s advice turns from helpful to vengeful in a flash.

Aia mimicks voices and faces for online videos and ingratiates herself (Aia has a femine voice) into the children’s lives in ways that will pay off when Dad gets leery of the sinister nature of this tech, which he pretty much is from the get-go.

The effects are limited but effective in a chilling variation on the “surreal fake” AI-generated “art” theme.

The most interesting acting here is from the players who show us the different faces of tech-bro/tech-sis “weird,” with Cho entirely too passive to believe or compelling to follow and most everybody else too limited tin screen time to make an impression.

Cho’s Curtis is put off by the developers, wary of anything that means more “screen time” for his kids and concerned about why that antiquated RV has set up shop on their block. Is this tech being “faked?” Are he and his family being monitored?

The answers to those questions won’t shock, awe, entertain or make anyone “AfrAId.”

Rating: PG-13, violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Lukita Maxwell, Havana Rose Liu, Ashley Romans, David Dastmalchian and Keith Carradine.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chris Weitz. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:24