Movie Nation

Well, isn’t this a lovely, fish-out-of-water tle soaked in melancholy.

Lily Franky, Ryo Nishikido, Tae Kimora and Ciaran Hinds’ daughter Aoife Hinds star in this Man with a Mission, but dependent upon the kindness of British strangers story.

June 7.

“Sight” is a pleasantly bland bio-pic about the Chinese-born surgeon who came up with a treatment that has restored the sight of millions around the world.

Dr. Ming Wang’s story, growing up during the unrest in the last years of China’s Cultural Revolution, battling anti-education/anti-intellectualism at home, prejudice and limited resources in college in the United States, only to become one of the most celebrated people in his field, is the stuff of many an uplifting biography or autobiography.

It’s rather blandly-handled in this somewhat old-fashioned bio-pic, with the big twist in the story having to do with not just what drives someone, but how one takes inspiration from failure.

Director and co-writer Andrew Hyatt did “Paul, Apostle of Christ” and that “Duck Dynasty” biopic “The Blind.” He’s not out of is element, but not having a hard “faith-based” message to anchor the picture causes his movie to drift by, never unpleasant, but not particularly compelling either.

Ming Wang (Terry Chen) is a press-conference-after-surgery-famous Nashville eye surgeon known for restoring sight to “impossible” cases, and noted for his worldwide philanthropy — accepting cases from the young and the blind, or their advocates, from all over the world.

An Indian child (Mia Swamination) becomes a great test for him. Blinded by her mother to give her an edge begging in her corner of Calcutta, Dr. Wang’s skills, invention, and that of his colleague, Dr. Mischa Bartnovsky (Greg Kinnear) are pushed to their limits with this case.

That causes the obsessed surgeon to hallucinate a tween girl from China back into his life. That leads to flashbacks, a crisis in confidence and confiding in a pretty Chinese-American bartender (Danni Wang) as he struggles to remember why he’s driven to do this, and to find a way around the damage this little girl suffered to her eyes.

We see Ming’s 1970s Chinese childhood — Jayden Zhang and Ben Wang play younger versions of him — a doctor’s son growing up in Mao’s People’s Republic, facing assaults on his school, his person and his adored childhood friend, Lili (Sara Ye), whose grandfather happens to be blind.

Bits of Wang’s back story are filtered into his present day dilemma as we learn the trauma of his youth, the fate of those who knew him and his roundabout path to America, college and success.

Hewing to what we can assume is pretty close to the truth doesn’t rob the film of its drama. But the lack of highs and lows become a real issue as tiny conflicts are blown out of proportion and the big one — dealing with the anti-education “uprising” of the Cultural Revolution — is watered-down to a frustrating degree.

The “true” story seems more compelling than how it is presented on screen. The picture’s old-fashioned nature suggest we’d get more conventionally “Hollywood” triumphs and turnabouts than are served up here.

Chen is stoic in the lead role, and Kinnear — “faith-based” is kind of his brand now — is reliably supportive in a co-starring role.

But there’s little sizzle to any of this. The performances are flat, top to bottom and the script struggles to wrong pathos out of even the saddest plot elements.

We’re all heroes of our own story, and Dr. Wang’s took a more trying journey than most, or so the film suggests. Overfamiliarity with this sort of immigrant’s journey and the tentative nature of the storytelling — even keeping the “faith-based” elements at arm’s length (Fionnula Flanagan plays the nun who brings the Indian child to America) — mute the impact of “Sight,” which is a shame.

Even the Chinese sequences (in Chinese with English subtitles) have their edges rubbed-off as the script goes to some pains to avoid criticizing the government there, past or present. Lacking that edge, any “miracle of faith” or a story arc with obvious ups and downs, “Sight” fails to move, with only the closing credits — showing the real Wang’s achievements — coming anywhere near to living up to what we’re assured, in the opening credits, is “an incredible true story.”

Rating: PG-13, violence

Cast: Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear, Ben Wang, Danni Wang and Fionnula Flanagan,

Credits: Directed by Andrew Hyatt, scripted by Andrew Hyatt, John Duigan and Buzz McLaughlin, based on the autobiography of Dr. Ming Wang. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 1:42

Based on a manga that has led to several anime treatments in recent years, “Golden Kamuy” struggles onto the screen in live action feature film form as a cartoonish curiosity.

A post Russo-Japanese War period piece about a treasure hunt involving tattooed ex-convicts, with soldiers, an ex-soldier, an aged ex-samurai, mobsters and an Ainu huntress, it features action and supernaturalism and enough exposition and characters to fill three two hour movies.

Ainu mores and customs are glimpsed in the midst of a lot of chasing and fighting in pursuit of 24 convicts, each of whom has clues from a puzzle tattooed on their torsos by an inmate who hid a cache of “cursed” gold after that 1904-1905 war.

It’s very “manga” in look and feel, more steam punk than period-perfect. Despite efforts to recreate the battlefields of northeastern China, near the Russian-held city of Port Arthur, and the wilds of wintry, primitive Hokkaido, this Shigeaki Kubo film never shakes the feeling of “fan service” in its plotting and a not-quite-whimsical enough “anime rendered into live action” tone.

Being ever so Japanese, there are pauses for food and discussions of food at the damnedest times — minced squirrel here, skewered dumplings there, otter served the traditional Ainu (a hunter-gatherer subculture) way, and miso which the main Ainu character amusingly describes as having the texture and smell of “feces.”

We get a taste of the origin story of our hero, the battle-scarred Saichi (Kento Yamazaki) who labeled himself “Immortal Sugimito” after his supernatural survival of battle wounds in the war.

“I just can’t seem to die!”

He hears tell of this gold treasure from a traveling companion as he pans for gold in Hokkaido. That’s when he realizes that 24 escaped prison inmates collectively carry the map to this treasure horde.

Saved from a brown bear attack by the young Ainu huntress Aspira (Anna Yamada), she becomes his new traveling companion guide to all things Ainu on this quest to track down the various inmates — brutes, escape artists, etc.

Meanwhile, The Seventh Division, led by Toshizô Hijikata (Hiroshi Tashu) has turned its post-war mission into one of finding those inmates and that treasure. And he’s not alone.

The story is relatively straightforward, or would be if we weren’t pausing for the inclusion of every supporting character, some of them quite minor, who must be introduced and identified by (inter-titles) name.

That’s “fan service” that does the movie no service.

Still, it’s an interesting peek into a part of Japan, Japanese history and culture — especially the forcibly “assimilated” Ainu — that the movies seldom visit even if the story is pieced together between chases, fights and standoffs.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, off-color humor

Cast: Kento Yamazaki, Anna Yamada, Hiroshi Tashi, many others.

Credits: Directed by Shigeaki Kubo, scripted by Tsutomu Kuroiwa, based ont he manga by Satoru Noda. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:07

A true story about a tropical isle beachcomber who rescues an oil soaked Antarctican in the surf, whose friend “Dimdim” returns, year after year, and whose saga “goes viral.”

That “professional” “cleaner” and “Ronin” Jean R. looks damned adorable paired up with a penguin, I must say.

Jack McBrayer and Celia Weston also star in this big-cast farce about somebody’s “sister is getting married this weekend.” And “somebody’s daughter is getting married.”

Whoopsie, “double booked your weddings” hilarity ensues.

They’re making us wait until January to see Will Ferrel wrestle a gator?

This baby, which also stars Chace Crawford, Jamie Chung and Billy Magnussen, is going direct to streaming — June 28.

As pointless as it is pitiless, “The Strangers: Chapter 1” is one of the most cynical horror reboots in recent memory.

But it’s outperforming the far more entertaining “Abigail” and far better crafted “The First Omen,” and even puts Sydney Sweeney’s “Immaculate” out to pasture at the box office. Just underlines what every new “Planet of the Apes” and “King Kong” and “Fast and Furious” picture says about today’s cinema audience.

They only want to see what they’re already familiar with. So let’s serve up another helping of comfort food.

Two East Coasters (Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez) are crossing Oregon for a job interview in Portland, when their car breaks down in tiny Venus, a one diner, one drive-in, one garage village in “the literal middle of nowhere.”

The judgmental way the folks in the diner (Janis Ahern and Ema Horvath play the staff) treat Maya’s “vegetarian” menu questions, the supremely sketchy mechanic (Ben Cartwright, there’s a name out of Western lore) who just happens to be grinning at the window when their car won’t start should tip them off that this place is nowhere you want to “spend the night,” especially at “one them them Internet houses (AirBnB).”

Once in that remote, rustic rental, things go from bad to worse, but so slowly you almost forget this is a horror film.

Not really. Of all the ways this Renny Harlin (“Cutthroat Island”) thriller lets down the genre, maintaining a feeling of dread isn’t one of them.

The jolts — three masked intruders glimpsed in silhouette, INSIDE the house, in the dark outside, asking “IS Tamara here?” or cutting to the chase and waving an axe/machete/butcher knife — are a bust.

There’s a little suspense, but one can’t help but feel these two, slow to respond to the real threat, slow to put on pants or shoes, slow to “We should find a weapon” and start working the problem, are a lost cause.

Maybe a knife, or sticking together instead of splitting up, or stumbling across a shotgun or a trusty Jeep Cherokee will help. You think?

I remember liking the original “motiveless torturers/murderers” “Strangers” movie, but probably not a lot. The first sequel wasn’t much. But it was better than this.

Sometimes the over-the-top violence can be a saving grace in such genre films. Sometimes the villain makes them worth watching. Occasionally, the suspense atones for a world of shortcomings.

Not here. By the time “Chapter 1” offers up “To Be Continued,” we can’t say we weren’t warned. About the next one, any way.

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez, Ema Horvath, Janis Ahern and Ben Cartwright

Credits: Directed by Renny Harlin, scripted by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland. A release.

Running time: 1:31

It takes some getting used to the idea of Paul Henreid, icon of indomitable Europe in “Casablanca,” in a Gestapo uniform.

But in “Night Train to Munich,” filmed a couple of years before “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” he’s billed as “Paul von Hernreid,” the shortest version of his Viennese birth name — Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau. So…it didn’t count?

The trains are mostly models, as are a Prague factory, Hitler’s “Berghof” lair and a model ship in a not-foggy-enough sea. The sets are mostly soundstage constructions, blended in with lots of documentary footage of events happening in Europe in the months leading up to the movie’s July 1940 release.

The uniforms are of a “That’ll do” variety, as the film was shot during “The Phony War,” just after the invasion of Poland, just before the fall of France. German officers wave pistols about, but only one Luger was available, so it went to co-star Henreid. And the revolvers were of the “almost never need reloading” variety.

Of course they sent Rex Harrison, playing a British agent disguised as a Wehrmacht major, traipsing around the offices of Nazi Berlin wearing a ceremonial sword.

All the Brits — including actors playing Germans — refer to the Kriegsmarine (German navy) command as “The Admiralty.” Old habits die hard.

And the plot borrowed so heavily from Hitchcock’s comic mystery “The Lady Vanishes” that director Carol Reed & Co. re-enlisted that film’s new screen comic duo, those cricket-obsessed fops Caldicott and Charters (Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford) as a couple of Old School alumni golfers who picked precisely the worst moment in history to have a spot of golf in Berlin.

“I bought a copy of ‘Mein Kampf.’ Occurred to me it might shed a spot of light on all this… how d’ye do. Ever read it?”

“Never had the time.”

“I understand they give a copy to all the bridal couples over here.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s that sort of book, old man.”

For a movie that takes us inside a “concentration camp,” for perhaps the first time in a mainstream motion picture, a film packed with newsreel footage of Nazi domination’s near inevitability, the future director of “The Third Man” manages a to serve up a fun and lightly frightening rail-bound romp.

It’s a film that makes its Czech heroine’s claim that Britain is still a place “where people can laugh and be happy” its ethos. That the Nazi Germans were the era’s villains and humorless “sauerkrauts” to boot is left unsaid.

But from the moment Harrison’s vain, cocksure singing secret agent shows up — he’s posing as a sheet-music plugger in a seaside British resort town — most thoughts of the “real” war going so badly outside the cinema had to recede into the background.

 “You know, if a woman ever loved you like you love yourself, it would be one of the great romances of history!”

It takes several alarming scenes for this tale of a Czech expert in armor plating (James Harcourt) struggling to escape the Germans with his daughter (Margaret Lockwood), complete with a Hitler stand-in smashing his fist down on a map every time he covets another piece of Europe, to turn into a comedy of Gestapo jokes, sexual innuendo and cricket obsession. But it gets there.

The greatest propaganda picture of the era was “The 49th Parallel,” but whatever “Night Train” lacks in pathos and “Keep calm and carry on” patriotism it more than makes up with suspense and gamesmanship and a generous helping of chuckles.

Set in the months leading up to the Germans invading Poland, it opens with scenes of our armor expert and his well-turned-out (a beauty in furs) daughter trying to flee as the Germans occupy Czechoslovakia. He is hustled out, she is captured and tossed in a camp.

Luckily, Anna Bomasch (Lockwood, also borrowed from “The Lady Vanishes”) manages to escape this concentration camp with the help of a too-helpful fellow inmate (Henreid, Victor Lazlo in “Casablanca”) a brave voice of freedom figure whom she sees the Germans torture.

The escape is skipped-over, their rowing ashore in pre-war Britain is not. But handsome escapee Karl Marsen, who insists on laying low, not letting the authorities know they’re here, is not who he seems. He can “Sieg HEIL!” with the worst of them.

Harrison’s seemingly dizzy, self-absorbed singing sheet music salesman is who Anna is sent to in order to track down her expat father. Gus Bennett — not his real name we learn — is in this resort town next to a naval port to “look after” her father for the British government as Mr. Bomasch consults on British armor and ways to improve it.

Marsen’s spies foil those efforts by nabbing father and daughter, taking them aboard a U-Boat and back to Germany.

Agent Gus, aka Dickie Randall, gets permission from the relaxed, distracted professionals of the British Secret Service to “have a go” at getting them back out.

Dressed as a Wehrmacht engineer and armor expert “from the Siegfried Line,” Dickie will play a former paramour of Anna and “seduce” her into persuading her father to work for the Germans. What he really has in mind is getting them out — by plane, train or automobile.

The Germans are portrayed as officious, almost inept thought police, fussing over the way a Good German should avoid turns of phrase that can be misinterpreted.

“This is a FINE COUNTRY to live in” could be heard as “This is a FINE country to live in,” or “This is a bloody AWFUL country to live in!”

Nazi double-speak is ridiculed for the lie that it is.

“We don’t hate Czechs! We only want to PROTECT them!”

“As you’re protecting the Poles?”

Harrison is in fine form, fresh off the Orient Express thriller “Continental Express” and never-missing a rail travel beat. Lockwood is sexy, intrepid and properly put-out about all of Dickie’s “spend the night together” espionage innuendo.

And Henreid, an Austrian Jew working his way west to Hollywood and screen immortality, makes a perfectly refined, perfectly vile Nazi, an archetype that was chiseled in stone by the time Conrad Veidt played Major Strasser hunting Victor Lazlo all the way to “Casablanca.”

“Night Train to Munich” isn’t one of the great films of its day. Its effects, characters and situations can seem quaint, hasty and cut-rate. There’s an air of “artifact” about it, thanks to its production and release timing.

But Reed showed Britain that he could manage a Hitchcock thriller almost as well as the master. The framing, editing and conspicuous use of shadows sampled here would be put to great use on the streets of Vienna, and below them, in his “perfect thriller,” “The Third Man.”

What makes this an early classic on his resume is his sure hand with comedy and the graceful way he begs, borrows and steals from Hitchcock and even shoehorns in characters from “The Lady Vanishes” into a version that lands bigger laughs as it aims its barbs at the Nazi menace, even as a backs-against-it Britain braced to face that menace alone.

Rating: “approved,” violence, innuendo

Cast: Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Henreid, James Harcourt, with Basil Radford and Nauton Wayne.

Credits: Directed by Carol Reed, scripted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. A 20th Century Fox release streaming on Tubi, Criterion, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:33

The trailers to the kid-friendly, PG-rated “action” fantasy “IF” suggested that this might not be a Ryan Reynolds comedy for adults, and that it might be a hard sell for families, thanks to its star’s potty-mouthed rep.

Director John Krasinski, branching out from big-budget horror (“The Quiet Place”), was due for a fall. And oh, the trailers to this “imaginary friends are real and SOMEbody can see them” failed to make the sale. One’s instinct was “This may very well suck.”

So perhaps projections of “IF” opening at $40 million were a bit out of line. It had an underwhelming Thursday night, and Friday added in its millions to push it to $10 million. Projections dropped as low as $30 million is the projected opening weekend take from Deadline.com and others. Not terrible, but like “The Fall Guy,” seriously below what was hoped for/needed for “IF to break even.

The Numbers is reporting that it rallied to reach  $35. Reviews didn’t t help it. But Ryan Reynolds is box office, Ryan Gosling isn’t.  Not yet.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is falling off its second weekend, a steep (ish) 60% drop — $24l5 million or so. It may clear $100 million by midnight Sunday, if not, by Monday.

Lionsgate rebooting “The Strangers” horror franchise is paying off. A $12 million+ opening is still at the lower end of the scale for a familiar title (“The Strangers: Chapter 1”). That’s not huge, but considering the slack horror turnout this year, it’s not bad.

“The Fall Guy” is holding a decent percentage of its audience, week to week. But an $8 million take and a slim chance of making it to $100 million suggest stuntman-turned-director David Leitch is a safer bet for Netflix (“Bullet Train” was his) than for big budget theatrical release gambles. “Fall Guy” will be over $60 by Sunday night, and may hit the $80 million mark before it loses most of its screens. Bit of a stretch, but it could happen.

There’s been a critical divide over the Amy Winehouse bio pic “Back to Black.” The Brits bashed it about, as they’re closer to the story and have already made up their mind about her talent, victimhood and Dad (played by Eddie Marsan). Reviews on this side of the Atlantic have been more mixed, with a few over-the-moon about it and Marisa Arabela’s performance as Winehouse, singing her songs in as close to Winehouse’s distinctive style as she can.

It’s not making any money, because even if it was “The First Oscar contender of the year,” Focus Features has it, and they’re still “The Witness Protection Program of Film Distribution.” If it clears much more than $3 million on its US opening weekend, it’ll be lucky.

“Noryang: Deadly Sea,” is a slow-start/big finish epic about Korea’s years-long 16th century conflict with Japan, the Imjin War.

Director Kim Han-min’s CGI-aided sea spectable is the third film in a trilogy about that struggle, following “The Admiral: Roaring Currents,” and “Hansan: Rising Dragon.” This is top-down history that evolves, over the course of this long final film, into combat at its most personal.

We view the conflict from on high, through the Byzantine intrigues of the Japanese court, an uneasy Korean (Joseon) alliance with the Chinese Ming Dynasty. We see the sea battle from the bridge as the commanders test each other over a night-long climactic action in rowed war galleys, which by the time of this conflict — the 1590s — were being superceded by warships powered exclusively by sail, in Europe, at least.

The recently unified Japanese, here referred to by their ancient name, the Wae, invaded Korea with an eye towards marching directly on the Ming on the Chinese mainland. That didn’t work out, and the unifying Japanese warlord, “chief counselor” realizes this on his deathbed.

“Withdraw” their last remaining garrisons on the south of the peninsula is among his final words.

But with the passing of the “unifier,” Japan has both an inherited ruler, and factions vying for power. That “withdrawal,” it is implied, would change the status quo. Some want to fight on, some want to negotiate an exit to preserve land and sea forces, and depending on which day you’re asking them, the Chinese and the Joseon Koreans are willing to listen or are more interested in playing the angles.

That scheming and negotiating eats up the first hour of the film. And for all that, little is made as clear as that last paragraph’s summary.

Putting fleets to sea, plotting strategy, setting traps and springing them on each other takes up most of the latter two acts of “Deadly Sea,” which is a good thing. The swirl of characters and the chaos of combat is where this historical thriller gets its sea legs.

Our three antoganists are the celebrated Korean Admiral Yi Soon Shin (Kim Yoon-seok), the Japanese fleet commander Shimazu (Baek Yoon-Seok) and the Ming military leader Chen Lin (Jeong Jae-yeong).

Complicating matters, Yi Soon Shin lost his son to a Wae massacre, and everybody is sure he and his surviving family want “revenge.” Shimazu is depicted as cagey, determined not just to arrange an evacuation of Japanese invaders, but to “win the war” at sea, gambling that an allied Japanese fleet will join the action in time to impact the outcome.

And Chen Lin has decided that the war is over, the Wae/Japanese have lost, and that no more bloodshed will be necessary. A mere “show of force” will do.

The battle to come will be fought with gigantic armored “turtle ships,” and smaller galleys, with cannons and rockets and muskets and bombs and archery and swordfighting. And drums. There was lots of drumming in rowing galleys, if you remember your “Ben-hur.”

Kim Han-min lets us see maps and war planning, and uses establishing overhead (CGI) shots of fleets in action to recreate the flow of battle in the inky darkness, and then zeroes in on commanders waving swords and shouting “Charge” (in Korean, mostly, with English subtitles) or “ROTATE” or “Withdraw!”

We only glimpse the rowers once, but there’s fierce deck combat — fires and explosions and hailstorms of musketballs or arrows — and all that’s before the order “Prepare to BOARD the enemy!” is barked.

The action sequences make the movie, but it’s also interesting for a non-Asian viewer to take in this picture’s attitudes about its source culture and its neighboring rivals. The Koreans are intrepid, brave and sage, recognizing that the Japanese cannot be trusted and that they will never surrender. The Japanese are cunning, stoic and arrogant, with the battle perhaps avoidable if they’d just “apologize” for their first and not last invasion of Korea.

The Chinese? They’re cagily playing the odds, willing to listen to bribes, honoring their alliance with Korea only up to a point. No, the Koreans can’t trust them, either. Neither can the Japanese.

Performances tend to get lost on canvases this broad, but the leads register, even if the heroic or cowardly offspring and members of the lower ranks get short shrift.

And that first hour and eight minutes of backstory, debates and scantily-detailed planning burdens “Noryang” to an almost unforgivable degree.

I don’t recall whether I reviewed the first film in this trilogy when it came out. But remembering the “turtle ships/secret weapon” nature of “Hansan,” this film’s shifting fortunes, surprise turnabouts and sheer spectacle make it a fine finale, not so much an argument for Korean nationalism as a call to arms to resist the Chinese and Japanese versions of it in a roiled world whose politics are in flux.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, Jeong Jae-yeong, Baek Yoon-Seok, Yeo Jin-goo, many others

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kim Han-min, scripted by A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:32