Movie Nation

An AMC multiplex in Durham, N.C., close enough to shout “Dook SUX” to the children of entitlement  who attend.

I’ve been going to these movies based on the Pierre Boulle parable since Roddy McDowell and Jim Hunter mastered the prosthetic simian suits and masks. I think the first one I attended was the last of the first cycle. 

Half a century later, we’re on the third version of the franchise, the politics are potentially more pointed and the CGI impressive if not nearly as humanoid as it was back when it was all about the masks.

Nearly sold out show on this “preview” of the “preview” night.  Pricey.

I understand why “Fall Guy” and every horror movie this year have underperformed. Ticket prices are too high save for the exceptional “epics” and franchises.

Here we go, “You damned dirty apes.”

Sienna Miller, Danny Huston, Giovani Ribisi, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker, JEna Malone, Abbey Lee, Isabelle Furhman, Owen Crow She, Will Patton and Tatanka Means join Costner in his take on “How the West was Won.”

Looks a tad retrograde, as did the teaser trailer. But it’s big and sweeping.

June 28, Aug 16, the film will be released in two parts.

This one’s all country music and “try that in a small town” vs. “city girl” and “yer fancy tech” “You don’t face your fears, you ride’em” swagger.

Yeah, they rednecked up and dumbed “Twister” down for “Twisters.” Oklahoma “never had a chance.”

Glen Powell, fresh off “Anyone But You,” heads a lesser known cast (Katy O’Brian, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Kiernan Shipka, Maura Tierney) in this July release.

Oh yeah. That’s the ticket.

Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) plays a hustler whose sister goes missing, even though she’d be the last one “to miss a pow-wow.”

The Feds and the State keep kicking the case back and forth. Shea Whigham plays the creepy father who raised them.

A niece’s future is at stake. Nothing for it but to kidnap that niece and take her to a pow-wow.

“Fancy Dance” opens theatrically June 21, and moves to Apple TV+ a week later.

One hesitates to label the latest thriller from Nicholas Tomnay (“The Perfect Host”) “yummy” or “delicious.”

Sure, it’s a culinary tale on the order of “The Menu.” But this most certainly isn’t “The Bear.”

“What You Wish” is a thriller with life or death on the line, with the super rich behaving badly and the people who “serve” them behaving even worse. This is fine dining with a taboo main course. Yeah, “that,” and without the “Twilight Zone” twist of being named for a cookbook.

The movie is about a desperate, broke chef who reconnects with rich culinary school classmate who jets around the world serving the swellest of the swells that which only he can prepare, and at prices that would make even a real billionaire swoon.

Who would’t be jealous of this lifestyle? But whatever Jack’s got going for him — fat bank account, endless upscale travel, free stays at swanky homes in exotic locales — he doesn’t seem all that happy about it. Old pal Ryan should get a clue.

But Ryan, played by Nick Stahl (of the TV version of “Let the Right One In”) with a calculated desperation, accepted this gift trip to an unnamed Latin American “paradise” (it was filmed in Colombia) with creditors on his tail — the kind of guys you deal with when you have a gambling problem.

Whatever it is that has successful chef Jack’s (Brian Groh) top-knot in a twist, serving “a lotta rich people” who “just want an extreme experience” at table, Ryan can only imagine. I mean, loan sharks are a REAL problem, right?

Jack’s “It’s not all glamor” and “the reward always matches the atrocity” warnings fall on deaf ears. When events conspire to put Ryan in Jeff’s chef jacket, in his rented, remote mansion, he figures he can handle impersonating his friend. And he has no qualms at all about trying.

But when “the agency” people show up, Imogen (Tamsin Topolski, giving off Brit-accented Elizabeth Holmes vibes) warns him “a bad dish will completely destroy the agency’s reputation.” That’s not nearly as scary as “a bad dish from you and your life will end.”

Ryan, posing as Jeff, must fool Imogen and her armed-and-dangerous fixer, the callous Maurice (Juan Carlos Messier, scary), and later the clients and still later the federal cop (Randy Vasquez, properly unflappable, up to a point) who shows up. It’s going to take more than Ryan’s grab-my-big-chance culinary skills to save his bacon.

The screenplay and Stahl let us see the calculations going on, the alarming problems back home and the horrific turn of events that makes Ryan’s abrupt and heartless decision to “take over” Jack’s gig and life logical. Or logical enough.

There’s a callous disconnect that I found less convincing as Maurice takes Ryan out to procure “produce” for this beyond-exclusive meal. You’d think Ryan would at least start to flip out at the monstrous turn of events, the lines he must instantly cross, the horrors he must tolerate and participate in. Stahl gives us little of that.

The second and third acts are about bloody meal prep, the barely-sketched-in rich diners, seeming bystanders and police who may not be as backward or as easily thrown off the scent as “the agency” expects.

Sometimes the suspense pays off and the movie’s twisted internal logic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Stahl doesn’t always allow the character human reactions to what he’s gotten himself into and what others may be dragged into with him.

But there’s suspense in more than one situation, and a darkly humorous seasoning to the later acts.

Sure, it’s easy to see this as a companion film from the guy who gave us “The Perfect Host.” But Tomnay throws in a couple of twists that pay off and puts us in Ryan’s shoes and chef jacket, trying to work out how in the hell he will get out of this meal-of-his-life alive

Will he skip out before dessert?

Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Nick Stahl, Tamsin Topolski,
Juan Carlos Messier, RandyVasquez, Penelope Mitchell and Brian Groh.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nicholas Tomnay. A Magnolia/Magnet release.

Running time: 1:41

Historically, “Machine Gun Kelly” is about as accurate as the proverbial “two dollar watch.”

The movie about the infamous 1930s Memphis gangster was shot on the cheap in Southern California, with nothing that looks like Tennessee, not a trace of any Southern accent and a lot more violence than was ever attributed to the real George Kelly Barnes.

But 1958’s “Machine Gun Kelly” captures filmmaker and “indie” icon Roger Corman at his breakthrough moment, a screen story told — at least in the early scenes — in brisk brush strokes, ominous shadows and bursts of violence, a film acted with real heat and a screenplay — by R. Wright Campbell (“Man of a Thousand Faces,” “The Night Fighters”) — that plays up the cowardly sadism of its hero and features some of the flintiest dialogue of its day.

“I’m gonna carve a map of Hell right across your kisser!”

“You know, Kitten. I’m gonna get you a nice little white mouse for you to play with.”

“He’s awfully cocky for a man who can’t even crack a hick town bank.”

“Tell your old lady to keep her wise cracks behind her teeth or she’s gonna be wearing false ones!”

“I already do, smart aleck!”

The jazz score by Gerald Fried (“Killer’s Kiss,” “The Killing,” TV’s “Roots”) swings and sizzles so insistently that it carries the picture right up to the point the movie bogs down with a fictionalized version of the kidnapping that put Kelly behind bars.

Charles Bronson pops off the screen in the title role, a star-to-be playing up the sadism and woman-slapping bullying of this character, built up in history thanks to the “machine gun” moniker he wore and F.B.I. chief hypeman J. Edgar Hoover’s exaggerations, a mobster turned in the movie into a craven coward who fears anything to do with death — coffins, floral arrangements, etc.

If there’s anything this “Untouchables” era gangster picture has to say to the modern viewer, it might be that it takes a special kind of warped fraidy cat to covet the no-skills “power” of a machine gun.

But I have to say the picture promises more than it delivers. A bravura dialogue-free five minute opening shows us an early heist in quick, sure strokes. The robberies here are perfunctory, but beautifully framed and shot — shadows of gunplay, etc. It is the getaways that are elaborate, with Kelly and gang (Wally Campo, Jack Lambert, etc.) breaking down his Thompson Submachine Gun, tossing clothes and pistols, handing off the loot, splitting up and swapping cars.

Susan Cabot is the sexy, malevolent manipulator Flo, who shames her beau’s phobias, nags him into jobs, builds his myth and can take a punch or slap herself, because she has to.

Frank DeKova plays Harry, a “big game hunter” accomplice who keeps a menagerie of dangerous critters at his gas station, including a mountain lion he’s trapped. The comic Morey Amsterdam, later to gain fame via “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” is the treacherous weasel Fandango, aka “Fanny,” a weakling Kelly pushes around, tortures and costs an arm.

But Bronson and Cabot set off the real sparks, and even as the story shifts from bank robbing to kidnapping, our anti-hero’s undoing, they keep it watchable as the action subsides and the settings become various interior hideouts, with cops and the parents of a kidnapped little girl (never happened) working with the Feds (Michael Fox) to ensure that the world closes in around Machine Gun Kelly & Co.

The future mentor to generations of film folk, Nicholson and Coppola among them, Corman was supposedly fascinated by the gutless way Kelly went down, and built this film’s psychological portrait around that. He learned that timeless lesson from “Destry Rides Again,” that bullying monsters look awfully small when trapped, stuck in court, trying to stay awake, lying and lying about their exploits until no one believes they’re anything but what they really are — cowards without an audience, a gang or a machine gun to compensate for all the toughness they lack.

Rating: “approved,” violence

Cast: Charles Bronson, Susan Cabot, Morey Amsterdam, Connie Gilchrist, Richard Devon, Frank DeKova, Jack Lambert. Wally Campo and Michael Fox.

Credits: Directed by Roger Corman, scripted by R. Wright Campbell. An American International Pictures release on Tubi, Youtube, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:23

“Black Panther” star Leticia Wright turns off any hint of glamour or “extrovert” in “Aisha,” a sublimely-understated drama of a young woman struggling with her past, her family obligations and “the system” as she tries to obtain emergency “self protection” status so that she can stay in Ireland.

She is living in a refugee hostel, working as a sympathetic hairdresser’s assistant, hoping her solicitor (Lorcan Cranitch) can deliver some good news about her efforts to make her move to Ireland permanent.

Something happened back in Benin City, and her mother back in Nigeria needs money. But even with a job, a lawyer and an ever-changing community of fellow immigrants who are shuffled in and out of the hostel as support, she can’t get her hopes up. And the unit director (Stuart Graham) is a stickler for rules and who doesn’t like back-talk when others lose their appeal and Aisha sticks up for them as they’re deported.

That could be trouble. The fact that she doesn’t trust the hostel’s “Halaal” certified meats also could get her labeled a trouble-maker.

But the new security guard (Josh O’Connor of “Challengers”) takes pity on her and lets her use the kitchen, after hours, to prep meals that conform to the tenets of her religion. .

As Aisha’s prospects dim, their bond grows stronger, although it may all come to naught if her “status” is denied.

Writer-director Frank Berry (“I Used to Live Here”) shows us his “homework” in one sequence of this “inspired by true” cases story. We and Aisha hear testimonials in conversation form from others residing at her hostel. The film makes it easy to sympathize with migrating people and their plights, but also appreciative of the lengths the EU — at least — has gone to treat people humanely and legally, providing them with legal counsel, housing them and propping them up until they get the chance to plead their cases.

Berry gives Wright and O’Connor some quietly wrenching moments, long interludes where Aisha is silently fighting back the tears and the guy who is sweet on her despite being unable to make eye contact struggles to say or do something to comfort her.

The script lets Wright hide her cards, not revealing everything about Aisha and her situation at once, letting us see the comfort of a new routine in an alien land, even if that “routine” is mere weeks or months old.

O’Connor is likably humble in the presence of this beautiful woman who has been tested in ways Conor could never imagine. But Conor the security guard has his “story,” too. Is she interested enough to let him tell it?

The stakes could not be more intimate and personal here, but as reassured as we might be that something like “due process” and “common sense” will prevail, Wright and O’Connor do a good job of playing people who aren’t so sure, whose faith in people — not the state — to show compassion has its limits.

The journey “Aisha” takes after the more perilous one our heroine undertook doesn’t cover a lot of ground. But Wright makes us, Aisha’s lawyer and Conor the security guard invest in this story and hope for an outcome out of step with our xephobic. immigrant-bashing times.

Rating: unrated, discussion of rape, other violence, smoking

Cast: Leticia Wright, Josh O’Connor, Stuart Graham, Lorcan Cranitch and Denis Conway

Credits: Scripted and directed by Frank Berry. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:31

Critics use the term “film festival movie” to describe an indie title too narrow in appeal or twee in nature to ever thrive in the big bad world of studio-marketed, wide release cinema.

“East Bay” is such a movie, a Frisco film about a frustrated Korean American (writer-director Daniel Yoon) working out his “not a success” by 40 and Asian-but-maybe not-Asian-enough angst making film festival movies that at least some film festivals would accept, even if no studio deal is ever put on the table.

It features a few ironic laughs, a couple clever conceits, some fun amateur hockey action, and a pair of showcase roles for the female leads. But its mopey, meandering narrative isn’t helped by a choppy, navel-gazing nature, and its black-and-white-flashbacks and shifts in point of view slow its forward motion to a crawl.

Jack Lee’s biggest fear, he confesses in narration to a short-film-in-progress, is “failure.” He doesn’t want to let his Korean immigrant parents down. As they (Chung-Bin Yoon and Taek-Soon Yoon) are always dropping the “grandchildren would be nice” hint, he is reminded that he is not a “success” in their eyes.

Showing up for work in the “custodian” corner of computer programming, hanging with his similarly self-absorbed and at-a-dead-end colleagues — the stoner (Edmund Sim) and the tuned-out video game addict (Destry Miller) — underscores the extent of his “failure.”

But at least he makes his short films, about hockey or fake TV hunting show hosts, with a highlight an “ironic” zinger titled “Korean Comfort Man” that sends-up Japanese aggression and sexual predation during World War II. Such films sometimes get into festivals.

And at least he has a cute girlfriend (Melissa Pond) some slim hopes for the future. Then she gets pregnant. It’s not his. His new film may not make any sense.

If Jack isn’t going to resign himself to his fate — he fantasizes suicide — he’s got to reach out, aim higher with his feature length film, get into festivals, especially the Dim Sum Dance (Get it?) Film Festival, presided over by the fetching fangirl Sara (Constance Wu of “Crazy Rich Asians” and TV’s “Fresh off the Boat”).

And then there’s this distracting “guru” he’s been interviewing about happiness, success, “god” and the like, for a film. Vivacious Vivanti (Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier) bubbles over with affirmations, the kind of dizziness that passes for profound in your lesser known cults, especially ones led by self-help goddesses.

“She is not completely bonkers, unless you take everything she says 100% literally.”

“East Bay” pokes fun at racial and cultural stereotypes, and at how film festivals can seem to prefer films that reinforce those stereotypes.

It’s about family and professional expectations, with Yoon the very face of disappointment as Jack cannot see how he sabotages his possible paths to success in life and work. Wu sparkles, and Ladnier plays the hell of out “hot, dizzy, self-important mess.” Sim also stands out as a classic stoner — using a bear-shaped honey bottle as a bong, etc.

But a lot of what we’re taking in here is surface gloss — the unexplored lives of Jack’s ancestors, the cultural emnity that much of Asia holds against Japan, the cliched “nerds” who play hockey to escape that label, only to get bullied as they do, the shallow pursuit of the exotic when the more apt love connection that’s right there, championing your films in the face of public and selection committee disdain.

Whatever existential angst this slight, perhaps semi-autobiographical story — his first film, “Post Concussion,” hit festivals in 1999, “East Bay” is his second — beats around the bush addressing, “East Bay” never quite crosses that line between “I didn’t mind it” to “I liked it.”

Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Daniel Yoon, Constance Wu, Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier, Destry Miller and Edmund Sim.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Daniel Yoon. A Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:31

If you have to ask “Which bay,” well this still may be the romantic dramedy for you, because geography lessons as they relate to the Korean, Chinese, India etc diaspora are a bonus in this new release, opening Friday.

Could be cute.