Movie Nation

Watching “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” viewers are treated to a bit of a movie that’s apparently headed to theaters in the not-distant-future.

Not that we can tell this “David” musical clip that is attached to the front of the “Possum” picture is a “coming attraction.” Playing without an MPAA tag, this musical number, complete with David and his sheep, is based on the 23rd Psalm (“The Lord is my Shepherd,” etc). I thought that Angel Studios was giving us an animated short as a bonus feature for “Possum Trot,” the way Disney has over the years.

Looking for the trailer online just left me confused. Here’s an animated proof-of-concept reel from the work in progress.

But wait, Angel Studios is possum trotting out a “Young David” animated TV series, too?

Then there’s the STAGE production of this material, which I guess somebody has been planning to book as maybe a Fathom Events or church video feed or “select theaters” release next year as well.

Seems like Angel is awfully invested in this story of King David, the Early Years.

Back in 2010, a couple of children’s animated films came out with roughly the same message — that evil geniuses and criminal masterminds are misunderstood, sweet and salvageable as human beings.

“Megamind,” starring Will Ferrell, was a big hit. “Despicable Me,” starring Steve Carell, was a blockbuster that became a franchise, spawning sequels and spin-offs.

The biggest difference between the two films? Minions.

Fourteen years later, the animated movie world comes full circle as Carell and Ferrell unite for “Despicable Me 4,” with Will affecting a French accent to play the criminal over-achiever-turned-family-man Gru’s latest arch nemesis, “Maxime.”

“Eeet’s always SOMEthing! I can nev-air focus on just being EEEvil!”

And the only grins — “giggles” turns out to be too strong a word — in this still franchise come from the gibberish-spouting Minions. Listen carefully and you’ll hear what sounds like “Suppository!” from one as he takes a leap from a great height.

Cling to that, because aside from the odd moment of clever CGI slapstick, there’s noting else to cling to in this exhausted sequel. Good actors were hired to deliver funny voices, but not given anything amusing to say. Bland situations are recycled from other films. “Domestic life” in an evil genius household is about as entertaining as “Modern Family” without the gays or Sofia Vergara.

The plot — Gru (Carell) and Lucy’s (Kristen Wiig) — baby boy is kidnapped by the villainous Maxime and his sassy moll Valentina (Sofia Vergara) — and Gru must find the baby who seems disinclined to bond with his “Da-da,” even refusing to so much as gurgle “Da-da.”

The family of “leetle goils,” Lucy and Gru goes into AVL (Anti Villain League) witness protection, failing to bond with rich neighbors (Stephen Colbert, Chloe Fineman) and their bratty, Gru-suspecting daughter (Joey King).

Meanwhile, AVL chief Silas (Steve Coogan) is morphing Minions into Megaminions, superpowered superhero “agents” who resemble assorted members of “The Fantastic Four.”

That goes about as well as you’d expect.

Bringing Mike White in to co-write the script just reminds us how long ago “School of Rock” came out.

Putting Ferrell in the voice cast just makes one wonder if “Megamind” could have produced sequels.

And every time I see Coogan’s Silas, I wonder how the legendary Brit actor James Fox feels about being visually and vocally parodied by Coogan & Co.

Baby befriends badger thanks to an evil genius Hogwarts heist gone wrong — Gru is blackmailed into kidnapping the school mascot — kids adjusting to new school and new neighbors, nothing here yields funny fruit.

Yes, the animation sparkles. And yes, audiences are lining up around the block for something to take the kids to that isn’t “Garfield” or “Inside Out 2,” turning this into another big hit.

But are ticket-buying parents satisfied by any of this? “Despicable Me 4” barely rises to the level of “harmless. slaptsick distraction.”

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Joey King, Stephen Colbert and
Sofía Vergara.

Credits: Directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage, scripted by Mike White and Ken Daurio. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:36

Cinemas that showed movies continuously, often around the clock, were called “grindhouses,” and back in the ’70s, these were the cinematic epitome of urban decay, moral drift and “alternative” movies.

It’s an American term most often associated with New York movie houses where one could watch Blaxploitation films, B-movies and the like, or just buy a ticket to get in from the cold or heat and nap through movie if it didn’t hold your interest.

But in Britain, there was once a grindhouse that transcended the label, an alternative cinema where classics, “out there” horror, gay films, porn and most any type of movie that had a following would be shown. At The Scala, cult films and their cultist fans could gather in a cult grindhouse of worldwide notoriety.

Of course John Waters was their patron saint.

“Scala!!! or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits” is a messy, amusing and misshapen history of a theater that long predated its most notorious era — 1978-1993.

A portrait emerges of the place, the time and the people it served is created by interviewing scores of fans, filmmakers inspired to make movies, musicians who joined bands, comics who took to standing up at a mike and gays who decided to “come out” thanks to the decadent free-for-all that was this glorious and ancient movie house, sometimes music venue and social magnet for punks and anybody else who felt out of place in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

Ralph Brown, who played a punk’s punk in the quintessential big screen goof on that era, “Withnail & I,” shows up and suggests the Scala was the best place in Britain to find a lot of girls and boys like the characters in that movie, especially his — Danny.

Cinephiles, William Castle cultists, Derek Jarman worshippers, aspiring artists and filmmakers, teens misspending their youth and “just people who didn’t want to go to bed on Saturday night” haunted this cinema, which operated in a couple of locations — and hosted IggyPop, Lou Reed and Bowie shows at one time –before settling in seedy Kings Cross where it was meant to be all along.

Fans eagerly snapped up the colorful, forbidden fruit-laden monthly program calender, with its promise of “Eraserhead,” “Pink Flamingos,” “The Evil Dead,” “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism,” its programmed celebrations of the Brit TV series “The Avengers” and “Shock Around the Clock” film festivals.

Drug abuse in the ticket line, cats wandering the auditorium, sex in the toilets, suicide out the windows — The Scala had it all, a venue where membership was required, “like joining a secret club,” “the Sodom Odeon” of British moviegoing.

It was a scene, man.

Waters leads the cast of interviewees, a delightfully deviant cheerleader who showed his films there, took friends and cast-members from his movies to experience the place and sets the tone here, reminding us of the importance in helping one find one’s tribe.

“The cinema was an important as the movies,” one interview subject notes, a big, dark old movie palace “that looked like an abandoned embassy.” Like such theaters in New York, and their later imitations (the indie Angelika Film Center), the subway was downstairs, giving the movies an aural rumble that wasn’t on the soundtrack.

For a film buff, “Scala!!!,” co-directed by a former programmer/manager Jane Giles, who wrote a book about the place, is a cinematic flash card, with every title — “King Kong” (the original) to “Koyaanisqatsi” to every kung fu movie of the “Bruce Lee LIVES!” era — inspiring memories of Russ Meyer smut, Waters before “Hairspray!” became a musical and inner city movie theaters before home video ruined the communal love-in that this sort of movie-going experience could be.

I got a taste of New York at the tail end of the grindhouse era. And many a big city indie cinema has at least dabbled in the Scala-styled program-for-the-aficionado, the “alt lifestyle” and just plain “weirdo” corners of film fandom.

But even if you missed all that, “Scala!!!” should amuse and confuse and titilate, providing a history lesson that reminds us that every time the culture tries to turn conservative, the fringe dwellers find the like-minded and strike back. There’s nothing more “punk rock” than diving into a movie some people warn you that you must never see with a whole bunch of like-minded free thinkers.

Rating: unrated, clips of films featuring nudity, sex and violence, with profanity, drug content

Cast: John Waters, Beeban Kidron, Mary Harron, Adam Buxton, John Akomfreh, Ralph Brown and Jane Giles

Credits: Directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles. A Severin Films release.

Running time: 1:36

A feel-good story first brought to light by Oprah and People Magazine, “The Story of Possum Trot” tells of a poor black town in East Texas where one small church’s congregation took it on itself to adopt as many unwanted foster children “in the system,” with testing but also inspiring results.

The film benefits from warm, confident performances from its leads and genuine lump-in-the-throat pathos in its situations and subject matter. It’s hard not to be moved by the sermons performed by Pastor W.C. Martin, played to great effect by Demetrius Grosse of “This is Martin Bonner” and “Rampage.”

And screen newcomer Nika King, as the preacher’s wife, “First Lady” Donna Martin, is just as good, and never more moving than when she makes the simplest, most compelling argument for churchgoers to add adoption to their ministry and their faith,

“How can we not do something?”

It seems like an impulse when Donna Martin, grieving over losing her mother, who raised her and 17 siblings, decides to drag her sister Diane (Jillian Reeves) to a seminar on adoption led by social worker Susan Ramsay (Elizabeth Mitchell). With her part time pastor husband struggling to provide for their two children — one of them with special needs — in between sermons at Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, it takes some convincing to bring him on board.

But when your wife tells you — “He spoke to me.” “Who did?” “The LORD.” — and you’re a pastor, you’re pretty much required to take heed.

And so they start taking in children. And others in their congregation, young and older, single and married couples, take up the call.

The viewer can sense trouble on the horizon when W.C. tells the social worker “We want the ones that don’t nobody else want.”

First Lady Donna reminds Susan Ramsay “The State ain’t no family.” Hey, it’s Texas. We get it.

To its credit, the script doesn’t sugar-coat the trials these earnest, well-intentioned decisions invite. It’s expensive raising kids, even with a stipend from the state for fostering them (I gather actual adoption cuts that off?). The entire church struggles, and Pastor Martin finds himself asking for help from the rich, building-fund/group cruise-taking megachurch across the county (director Josh Weigel plays that somewhat defensive pastor).

And the kids have issues — trauma, trust etc. Taking in Terri (Dianna Babnicova) means coping with a tween about to turn teen who pretends she’s a cat to cope, and who ignores guidance about how to properly manage her budding sexuality.

Still, when Donna and others in that congregation assure these new children they’re taking responsibility for “We YOUR people, now,” you can’t help but be touched.

But “Sound of Hope: The Possum Trot Story” often drifts between the pointed, emotional, spirit-moved sermons, without any pace or much of a sense of forward motion.

First time feature filmmakers Joshua and Rebekah Weigel’s film relies on the lazy screenwriter’s crutch, endless voice-over narration, to tell a story and shortchanges what most of us would consider interesting details as it circles towards an ending we see coming but feels only half-earned.

White filmmakers writing in Southern Black vernacular is by default, problematic. The film struggles to steer clear of being patronizing, at times.

They back away from giving our social worker much of an edge, but hint there’s one there as she brings up the fact that “religious guilt can’t fix a broken child’s hurt.” That whole side of the story is over-simplified, as the state’s responsibilities mean it can’t just sign over children to such groups, as the film suggests is “the solution.” A steady drumbeat of news stories about church abuse in the South underscores this.

And they soft-sell the “Why aren’t more churches doing this?” question by sitting on the fence about that megachurch pastor and his Osteen-lite ethos.

The film isn’t entirely artless, as Grosse and King tug at the heart in sermons and pleas shot in extreme close-up, and with a hand-held camera scene capturing the spirit moving the congregation to buck each other up and shoulder their burdens collectively.

Melodramatic touches and abrupt shifts in time and focus soften this Georgia-shot East Texas story’s impact.

But when the camera’s on Grosse and King, “The Story of Possum Trot” is never less than compelling and convincing in its argument that if ever there was any mission churches should attempt to take on, it is this one.

Let’s just hope this latest film from the “Sound of Freedom” studio — the “Sound of Hope” title ties the two films — is more scandal-free than their last one. Not that it’s without controversy.

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

Cast: Nika King, Demetrius Grosse, Elizabeth Mitchell, Jillian Reeves, Kaysi J. Bradley and Dianna Babnicova

Credits: Directed by Joshua Weigel, scripted by Joshua Weigel and Rebekah Weigel. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 2:07

The fourth “Despicable Me” movie — remember there have been two “Minions” spin-offs to this franchise as well — proves that Universal’s biggest animated franchise is a long way from running out of gas.

A $27 million opening day (Wed) and big Thursday rolling into an epic “Despicable Me 4”
Friday-Sunday seems to be adding up to a $120 million five-day “opening weekend” for the only movie “Despicable” enough to knock Pixar’s billion dollar baby, “Inside Out 2,” from the top of the box office.

@TheNumbers is reporting that “”Despicable” will end up earning $75 million over the three days of the actual weekend.

“Inside Out 2” has crossed the $500 million mark in North America and cleared some $154 million on its opening weekend, which wasn’t five days long. Just to give Gru & Crew a little perspective. “Inside Out 2” will finish second over these five days with a $45-50 million take. The three day weekend total will be $30 million. As of Sunday, it will have been in theaters 19 days. Those are “Barbie” numbers, kids.

“A Quiet Place: Day One” will tally another $31 million and change over the July 4 5-day weekend. Yes, we’re getting more movies in that franchise. And yes, it made $21 million Friday to Sunday.

Ti West’s latest Mia Goth horror gorefest “MaXXXine” is opening OK…ish. $8 million hasn’t been great horror opening 3-day weekend take for decades, but the disappearance of the horror audience has been a pronounced feature of the box office this year.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” will do another $8 million. I’ll bet Netflix is wishing it had rolled out its “Beverly Hills Cop” sequel “Axel F” into theaters for two weeks, because audiences are flocking to comfort food franchises this summer. “Bad Boys” will probably fall just short of $200 million at the box office by the time it loses most of its screens.

Kevin Coster’s Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga, Part 1” will add another $6 million (3 daty weekend) in counter-programming cash, which tells us it won’t break even/earn back its $50 million (rumored) budget before heading to streaming.

“Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” proves that the evangelical “faith-based film” audience isn’t all that keen’ on feel good stories about a Black church doing good deeds — $3.5 million over three days.

“Kalki 2898 AD” is in the top ten for its second and last time, managing another $2 million.

“The Bikeriders” enjoys one last weekend before disappearing ($1.35 million, it’ll finish its run at about $25).

And “Kinds of Kindness” is opening wider and still only managing $863k or so.

Everybody on camera looks delighted to be here in the first “Beverly Hills Cop” movie in a dozen years, the first “classic cast” sequel since 1994.

And that’s a lot different from the “relieved to be here” financially-strapped folks who trotted out for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” or a few other hoary old sequels we could name.

Eddie Murphy’s engaged, with series regulars Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Bronson Pinchot and Paul Reiser showing a lot more miles than Eddie as Axel.

Newcomers Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt give fair value, and Kevin Bacon as the heavy? Money well spent.

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” isn’t all that as a movie, with a laugh-starved script full of fan service nostalgia, recycled-to-death plot points and limp versions of all the banter and one-liners Murphy & Co. used to tickle us with.

” I know there’s some things we need to talk about,” Eddie as Axel says to estranged daughter Jane (Paige of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Zola” and “White Boy Rick”) not once, but SEVERAL times, none of them touching, amusing or anything but screenplay filler.

It’s like an AI script doctor take on a “Beverly Hills Cop” movie, all tropes and cliches, with some characters past retirement age and Murphy’s Axel trapped in that orginal 1980s wardrobe and original goofy irreverence for Beverly Hills affluence and “the rules” of police work.

But the car and snowplow chases, the shoot-outs and a helicopter get-away that will make you go “Did they actually DO that without models and CGI?” show that Netflix spent theatrical release money on this bad boy.

And since most everybody in this, young (Paige and Gordon-Levitt) and old is almost criminally underemployed, let’s settle in for the old riffs, the old tunes (Pointer Sisters to Seger to Harold Faltermeyer’s synthesizer signature song) and the old gang out for one more ride.

Axel’s managed to remain a detective in Detroit, with his old colleague Jeffrey (Reiser) now the retiring chief weary from decades of covering his ass. A call from his former cop pal Billy in Beverly Hills (Reinhold) alerts him that Axel’s high-powered attorney daughter is under threat from cartel killers and a narco-cop commander (Bacon) out to silence her.

Axel’s been in a rut, stuck in that damned Detroit Lions jacket and driving a Chevy Nova, for Pete’s Sake. Something has to bring him back to relevance.

Axel jets out, can’t find Billy and can’t get his daughter (Paige) to take his calls. But something’s up, so he might as well do a few funny voices — a Jamaican accent among them — bluff assorted bad guys, kingpins (Luis Guzman SINGS!) and maitre d’s and do his whole “bull in a Detroit Lions jacket in a china shop” shtick until he gets some answers.

“They LOVE me in Beverly Hills!”

At least in Beverly Hills they have an ’80s beater Ford Bronco for him to rent. Very OJ.

“Shtick” is the main component of this “everything old is new again” variation on the formula.Those still affectionate for the ’80s-90s films, their casts and the roles they play will get a little chuckle out all these friendly and much-older (save for Murphy) faces.

Cameos almost produce a laugh, here and there.

But the well-preserved Murphy has lost his fastball and the picture feels winded when at their best, the earlier films were breathless — fast-talking with brisk action, when they delivered it.

Axel F is slow-footed, and you can say the same about the movie that catches up with him after all these years. A warm grin of recognition here and there and memories of better banter, quicker pacing and a real fish-out-of-water feel from the earlier films is about the best one can hope to get out of this “Cop.”

Rating: R, gun violence, drug abuse, lots of profanity

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Taylour Paige, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Luis Guzman, Bronson Pinchot, Affion Crockett, Christopher McDonald, Paul Reiser and Kevin Bacon

Credits: Directed by Mark Molloy, scripted by Will Beall, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, based on the Danilo Bloch/Daniel Petrie Jr. characters. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

Don’t let the multiple anti-climaxes that parade across the screen in the finale of “Escape,” a new thriller from actor turned director Lee Jong-pil (“Born to Sing,” “Samjin Company English Class”) throw you off.

Up to then, it’s a crackling getaway picture about a Korean soldier’s ever-evolving effort to defect from the North to the South, a straight-up defector genre thriller complete with sadistic cat-and-mouse games, games given added edge thanks to the strong homoerotic overtones between our cat and mouse and others.

Sgt. Lim (Lee Je-hoon, just seen in “Noryang: Deadly Sea“) is an NCO with a North Korean DMZ patrol unit, a short-timer about to muster out of the army. But he’s not just demobbing when his service is up. He’s planning on jumping across the border and escaping “Supreme Leader” and his “People’s Republic.”

We meet Lim as he slips out of the barracks in the middle of the night, using his compass, map, watch and knives to work his way through the minefields that separate the two halves of the Korean peninsula. The watch is key, as he has been dry-running this getaway for a while, edging a trail through that no man’s land, marking mines and other obstacles as he does every night he makes these forays.

A treasured childhood book he keeps with him gives away his game. Sgt. Lim read Roald Amundsen: Tenacious Explorer” and took the Norwegian polar pioneer’s lessons to heart. Amundsen was famously methodical.

“Escape” is about everything that doesn’t go according to plan as Sgt. Lim’s last day in the service approaches. First, there’s a storm coming, one which might both obscure his dash, and wash out every carefully placed marker through the minefields. Then his subordinate Kim Dyong-huk (Hong Xa-bin) spills that he’s been watching him sneaking out and knows what he’s up to.

“If you wag your tongue, I’ll cut your head off” is a pointless warning. Private Kim wants out, too. “Take me with you! (in Korean, with subtitles).”

The cautious and methodical sergeant’s plan goes to crap when the kid jumpts the gun and flees on his own. Only Sgt. Lim knows what path he took as the rest of their unit scrambles about as “Deserter Alert!” claxons and PA announcements blare.

Sgt. Lim is captured with Kim, both are tortured, and only the intervention of Comrade Field Officer, Major Lee Hyong-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) can save Sgt. Lim and get him treated like a “hero,” feted and offered promotion.

The sgt. and the urbane, sadistic and mercurial piano-playing major have history. Lim suspects, as do we, that the major knows what was really going on and is offering him a life-saving lifeline. Not that Lim wants it.

“You know how to accept your fate.”

Major Lee tempts Kim with honors at an officer’s fete, that promotion and “stay in the army” suggestion, which doesn’t sound like a suggestion. But Lim has “decided on my own future.” And no promotion, veiled threat or bleak warning about what might await him in the South will dissuade him.

He must improvise his way out of this lifeline, bluff Kim out of his death-row cell because Kim didn’t squeal on him, and trick, scheme, lie and fight his way out of the security services’ grasp and across the border using the map that’s now “evidence” that the state is holding over Kim.

Director Lee and his screenwriters depict a nearly featureless North Korea, where paranoia is ordered by edit and everybody rats on everybody else. Or else.

The hypocrisy of the State is underscored by the officer class binge-drinking and dancing to Strauss waltzes, with the venomous Major Lee famous for his piano mastery, his cunning and his savagery. His “decadence” is wholly confirmed when we see his distress at meeting not just Lim, who knows his history, but another old flame of the same-sex.

As for Lim, sometimes all it takes to bluff your way past white uniformed security police is a good pair of Aviators, or affecting the right shade of rudeness to a man of not-quite-inferior rank.

The movie strays a bit from the central storyline to introduce details that illuminate our understanding of the state of the DMZ, and to suggest there are armed dissidents in the North, “nomads” who hae lost their home, their means of living or one relative too many to the Security State aparratus.

And the ending, as I suggested at the outset, is clumsily drawn-out in ways that blunt the narrative’s impact.

But the leads are compelling, the action furious and the suspense right on the edge of riveting, which is more than enough to make this “Escape” an odyssey we want to take with these people who want to decaide their own future, rather than having a failing totalitarian state do it for them.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Lee Je-hoon, Koo Kyo-hwan and Hong Xa-bin.

Credits: Directed by Lee Jong-pil, scripted by Kwon Seong-hwi and
Kim Woo-geun. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:34

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, deciphering one’s scribbled notes in the dark taken while watching a film.

But the words “DO NOT WANT” cover a page in the middle of what I noted about the new film from Yorgos Lanthimos. A critical darling since “Dogtooth,” “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” he reverts to his pre-“The Favorite/Poor Things” form for his latest.

“Kinds of Kindness” is an obscurant, indulgent wank — two hours and forty-five minutes of cryptic cruelty, messianic fervor, cannibalism and perhaps a metaphoric peek at the futility of faith, the limits of dogma and the eagerness of the indoctrinated to be exploited.

Or not.

Emma Stone collected her second Oscar for her “fearless” and “courageous” — aka “sexually out there” turn in “Poor Things.” But perhaps this, her third turn for Lanthimos, will make her question that.

Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Mamadou Athie join her for three Lanthimos stories/vignettes (co-written with Efthimis Filippou) that dabble in belief, surrendering control of your life to others and the limits of what ordinary people will do, tolerate and fear from those pulling their strings.

In “The Death of R.M.F.,” Plemons plays Robert Fletcher, a caricature of a businessman whose entire life is run by his smiling, smothering boss (Dafoe), Raymond. Raymond helped scheme Robert into a marriage, and then ordered him not to have children with Sarah (Hong Chau).

Raymond limits Robert’s wardrobe, directs his weight — “Skinny men are the most ridiculous thing there ever is!” — and caters to his every need, “correcting” those needs at will.

“I didn’t pour you a vodka. I think a whisky is better here.”

Robert’s end of the bargain includes driving his Ford Bronco into a stranger’s blue BMW, at Raymond’s order. When Robert only hospitalizes that perhaps hapless stranger (Yorgos Stefanakos), he refuses to repeat the “accident” to greater effect. Raymond often re-directs Robert, making him repeat their “scenes” to a performance more to his liking, sometimes in front of his slinky, barefoot moll (Margaret Qualley).

This refusal to repeat that accident creates a rift that utterly derails Robert’s life. Perhaps a pretty, short-skirted stranger (Stone) can save him.

It’s not like the “R.M.F.” of the story’s title is “Robert M. Fletcher.” No, R.M.F. is the stranger Robert is meant to kill.

“R.M.F. is Flying” has Plemons playing an increasingly off-center cop whose marine biologist wife (Stone) disappeared in a research vessel shipwreck. His partner (Mamadou Athie) is concerned, and he and his wife (Qualley) try to comfort Daniel the cop by coming over to dinner and watching old home videos.

The videos are of the couples’ group sex activities.

When the missing “wife” Liz returns, Daniel starts to wonder if she is an imposter.

And in “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) are a team on the hunt for a woman, a surviving twin, who has the ability to bring the dead back to life. They select and “test” assorted women on behalf of their rich cult leader (Dafoe) and his minions.

Emily has a husband (Alwyn) and daughter she’s abandoned, but whose house she sometimes secretly visits, sprinkling her daughter’s bed in some sort of holy water, perhaps in the hopes of making her special, or insulating her from the cult her estranged mom is all-in on.

The stories overlap and tie-in together enough to make you wonder if there’s meaning to the meandering madness.  Perhaps not.

Some of the bit players cast as medical or police professionals and others are amateurs, not actors. No, you won’t have trouble spotting who they are. The inane dialogue that fills the script doesn’t just let down the pros and the Oscar winner. It exposes non actor’s colorless line readings.

“R.M.F.” doesn’t have any meaning, Lanthimos has admitted in interviews. Greater New Orleans is the setting, but isn’t named. Cannibalism is hinted at and ritualistic suicide underscores one story the way “swinging” does another.

The clever bits in the trailer — Stone recklessly driving a Hellcat Dodge Challenger and dancing with athletic abandon — don’t denote anything and thus provide none of their promised “off the wall” entertainment value.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about “Kinds of Kindness,” whose title is a lie, is in reading reviews of folks turning themselves into pretzels to find something to embrace about it. Lanthimos may very well be the person laughing the loudest at this.

As for me, I think “DO NOT WANT” pretty much covers it.

Rating: R, gruesome violence, explicit sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie.

Credits: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, scripted by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 2:44

A staple of community theater holiday seasons for decades comes to the big screen.

I reviewed this in my theater critic days and always wondered, as middling as it is, why it was never picked up for the big screen.

This film, with production ties to the Biblical series “The Chosen,” will lean into the faith based side of the story and rolls into cinemas Nov. 8.

Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Lesley Manville and Romola Garai and Ben Hodges also star in this Brit thriller about a venomous critic “outed” and out for revenge.

This looks wicked fierce, and delicious.