Movie Nation

The two most beaten-to-death tropes in thrillers? “Serial Killers” and “Hit Men.”

Here’s a Richard Linklater “true story” movie about a college prof (Powell of “Anyone But You,” “Top Gun: Maverick”) whom the police use as a play-acting fake “hit-man” for would-be criminals trying to hire somebody as their murderer-for-hire.

This could be really clever, playing with the MOVIE stereotype of what a hit-man is like — urbane or Eastern European and soulless, world traveler or low-rent sociopath.

The most “accurate” hit man movie is probably “The Iceman,” a true story that depicted a dull, cruel and soulless mob murderer and “family man” played by Michael Shannon.

But the dunces hiring “a hit man” only know the hit-men in the movies — the Pierce Brosnan, Liam, Jean Reno “cleaners” and killers. That’s where “Hit Man” sets up shop.

June 7, the suddenly hot Powell makes his mark on Netflix.

The blood flows, “Swan Lake” plays on 78 rpm records and “tiny dancer” jokes abound in the revolting and funny “Abigail,” a “dead before dawn” thriller about a kid ballerina kidnap victim who turns out to be a vampire.

One and all mutter and even sometimes shout “WTF?” or the words that acronym stands for, and repeatedly, as that’s a natural human response to “What do we know about vampires?”

“That they aren’t real.”

Entirely too much of the tale is given away in the trailers, which causes this Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett film, scripted by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, to lumber out of the gate and take a while to get going. And there’s a lot of momentum-killing “explaining” in the second and third acts that stops the gory fun in its pointe-shoes tracks.

But as little Alisha Weir jetes and pirouettes through a kidnappers’ hide-away mansion that has become “a trap,” a mansion supposed to be somewhere in New York state but which the six kidnappers (Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, William Catlett and the late Angus Cloud) plainly race by the unique Samuel Beckett Bridge (in Dublin) in their getaway van to get to, one and all are reminded of the simple fact that there are few things on this Earth as terrifying as an entitled twelve year old girl.

And this one can’t be killed, or so it is said of the toothy undead.

We meet the kidnappers, “professionals” of varying degrees of professionalism, as they pull off the complicated kidnapping of a child, all alone in her mansion after she’s been deposited there by her chauffeur-driven Rolls after an evening of dancing “Swan Lake” in an empty and ornate opera house.

The man who hired them (Giancarlo Esposito) gives these “rats” “Reservoir Dogs” style nicknames — straight out of Sinatra’s “rat pack.”

There’s the “brains,” Frank (Stevens, just seen in the “Kong X Godzilla” movie), the blonde hacker Sammy (Newton, “Ant-Man’s” daughter, all grown up), the cluelessly hitting-on-the-women driver Dean (Cloud, of TV’s “Euphoria”), the dim-witted French Canadian muscle Peter (“Locke & Key” character actor Durand) and the sniper Rickles (Catlett of “Constellation”).

The only one with empathy has to be the ex-Army nurse, Joey (Melissa Barrera of the recent “Scream” reboot), in charge of sedating their quarry.

“It’s a 24 hour job,” Lambert (Esposito) reassures one and all. That $50 million ransom is as good as in the bag as “the hard part’s over.”

But we know it is. Oh yes we do. We’ve seen the trailers.

Referencing the Agatha Christie book originally titled “Ten Little Indians” is a cute inside joke, as all thrillers of this sort spin out of that killing-off-the-kidnapper/victims one by one, “And Then There Were None” formula.

The overarching joke is how this “tiny dancer” is such a monstrous, unstoppable killing machine. Kudos to Ms. Weir for getting across a personality in between the effects that give her oh-so-many teeth and cover her in gore. She’ll never be unemployed, from this day forward, so long as there are fan conventions where she can sign autographs and grin for selfies.

“I’m sorry about what’s about to happen to you.”

Stevens, the most oft-employed of the class of “Downton Abbey,” brings a snippy impatience to his “leader” role, with Durand grand at playing “dumb” muscle and the late Mr. Cloud rendering another version of an amusingly-dopey and tone-deaf stoner-villain.

Newton, Catlett and Esposito deliver what limited goods their characters are charged with carrying.

But Barrera, bringing back the ’70s shag haircut all by herself as “Joey” accidentally sets the horror in motion, and then tries to work-the-problem their way out of it, carries the picture. She is an arresting presence and a serious candidate for horror’s new “Scream Queen.”

Out of all the comical, panicked and despairingly serious “WTFs” delivered in this revolting romp, even after it stops romping, Barrera’s are the ones that make you go “indeed. What the eff can they do now?”

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Kathryn Newton, Giancarlo Esposito, Alisha Weir, Kevin Durand, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Will Catlett, Matthew Goode and Angus Cloud.

Credits: Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, scripted by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick. A Univeral release.

Running time: 1:49

A driven and heartless tabloid photographer finally grasps why some cultures believe a photograph steals part of your soul in “Disappear Completely,” a cerebral and seriously stylish thriller from Mexico.

It’s a tale of supernatural comeuppance for a do-anything-for-the-shot mercenary who takes one scandal/tragedy/crime-scene photo too many.

Santiago (Harold Torres) is the first guy the cops he bribes calls when there’s a gory traffic crash, a murder with the corpse still warm or a scandal involving a public figure.

Their rule, thanks to the palms Santiago keeps greasing, is call Santiago, and once he’s on site THEN “call it in.”

He’s the guy who ducks under the crime scene tape, or climbs in through a window. Because even when he’s late getting there, he’s not leaving without a shot, the gorier the better.

His glib labels for the photos often make it into the headlines on the cover story his photos generate. An aged senator finds himself eaten alive by rats? Senator “Cheese Man” (in Spanish, with English subtitles) it is.

Nurse Marcela (Teté Espinoza), his live-in love of 14 years, can’t break his mania for staying on call, even on a supposed date night. Even their dog Zombie takes a back seat to Santiago’s hours sitting overnight in his VW Golf, listening to the scanner or waiting for cops Lupe or Catoche (Vicky Araico, Fermin Martinez) to call.

Sometimes, he’s beaten-up for doing his job. As long as he’s got the negatives — he shoots on film and digitally — that’s no great bother.

But that senator? That’s a body, a story and a scene that haunts Santiago. His first hallucination about it happens while he’s shooting it. That’s his first clue that it’s all about to come apart for him.

Director and co-writer Luis Javier Henaine (“Ready to Mingle” was his) puts a lot of craft and ambition on the screen with this story, which immerses us in Santiago’s twisted soul. He spies on Marcela at work comforting a teen suicide survivor, and photographs them. Then Henaine shows Santiago grappling with the consequences for what he’s done, that one photograph that he never should have taken — one of many he shouldn’t have taken.

When the police can’t help and the medical profession has no answers, Santiago takes advice from a superstitious policeman. And that’s when things turn seriously weird.

Henaine treats this entire tale as an odyssey, following Santiago through the looking-lens and into the dark corners of his psyche and the worst things he imagines might happen to him, some of which really do happen to him.

Torres (“Silent Night” and “Memory” were two Hollywood credits) makes Santiago compelling without being sympathetic, an ambitious man consumed by his art and his competitive drive, a guy who doesn’t want children but who doesn’t screw around when his livelihood — to say nothing of his physical well being — is threatened.

One clever conceit — an assault, by bug or “beast,” on his hearing is accompanied by an increasingly distorted and eventually even silent soundtrack.

The film, titled “Desaparecer Por Completo” in Mexico, mimics its director/co-writer’s ambition as Santiago dreams of his lurid night shots of the dead being shown in a gallery. Henaine has made a self-consciously artsy thriller, a Mexican “Night Crawler” with the supernaturalism and search for a “cure” a nasty new wrinkle in this study of the media creatures of the night.

Is “Disappear Completely” art? Sure. Kind of. Close enough.

And if its jolts are few, the chilling tone sells it as one of the smarter horror tales to come along of late, north or south of the border.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, horrific images, sex

Cast: Harold Torres, Teté Espinoza, José Manuel Poncelis, Vicky Araico, Fermin Martinez and Norma Reyna

Credits: Directed by Luis Javier Henaine, scripted by Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes and Luis Javier Henaine. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

“The Big Bend” is a classic “film festival movie.”

That’s a quirky indie with several elements that land it in lots of film festivals, where audiences who are down for anything new and novel might find and embrace it. Such movies often lack “name” stars, and generally find it hard to get the public’s attention outside of the rarefied air of Festival World. Many can’t even find distribution. But within their natural environment, word of mouth about their novelty gets around.

Brett Wagner’s movie has an arresting setting, the titular “Big Bend” region of Texas, a bucket list National Park for those of us into nature, scenic vistas and quiet. Into that gorgeous, forbidding and dangerous world, our writer-director tosses two families, each with their own “crisis,” and an escaped convict.

What Wagner finds to do with all this can be predictable and almost too-patiently presented, or surprising enough to make you go, “Wait, THAT’S an interesting turn. Where IS this headed now?”

Jason Butler Harner and Virginia Kull play Cory and Melanie, the “city” parents of two little girls, driving to the Big Bend to meet up with old college friends, Georgia (Erica Ash) and Mac (David Sullivan).

They’re all in their 30s, with Cory and Mel parenting two little girls and Mac and Georgia trying to tame two little boys.

Mac has fixed up a remote homestead in the park-adjacent middle of nowhere, with big dreams of renting it out, buying more land and duplicating that “off the grid” vacation experience “for Austin hipsters.” Mac has a lot of “big dreams,” we gather.

Cory and Melanie have a secret or two they’ve decided not to share as it might spoil this pleasant visit. Georgia and Mac might have a secret as well.

Unbeknownst to them all, a bearded convict (Nick Masciangelo) has escaped from prison, wounded and on the run, or on a canoe, which is where we first see him. There’s a region-wide manhunt underway.

Foreshadowing? Well, this very nice remodel is hobbled by an ancient, thumping water heater. There’s “no cell” out here, which is why when they venture out, walkie talkies are the comms of choice.

“Is there a gun in the house?” Melanie asks, a tad too obviously thanks to the screenplay.

And then there’s the list of all the things to “watch out for” in the desert. “Snakes and cacti,” Mac’s list begins. “Scorpions,” a child pipes up. “Mountain lions” another adds. “Black bears!”

This screenplay is textbook — create characters, flesh them out, set up a smorgasbord of jeopardies facing them, then picking and choosing which ticking time bombs to set off.

Not every idea pans out and not every scene reaches a payoff that we see on camera.

But this film’s slow, deliberate opening acts immerse us in this beautiful place and the somewhat troubled people in it, and then finds a way to throw into crisis and conflicts that can be surprising, or at least narratively defensible and somewhat satisfying.

Not bad. And now you don’t even have to go to a film festival to visit “The Big Bend.”

Rating: unrated

Cast: Jason Butler Harner, Virginia Kull, Erica Ash, David Sullivan and Nick Masciangelo.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Brett Wagner. An Eammon Films release.

Running time: 1:43

Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a jaunty burlesque of the conventions of the combat commando film.

Peopled with genuine characters, in every meaning of that phrase, and a piece of the real history that inspired Ian Fleming to create James Bond, it’s a light, bloody-minded vamp of 007, and maybe the closest we’ll ever get to seeing Henry Cavill, at his dashing, flippant best, in a James Bond film.

The history is, well, close enough to get by. The militaria is just off enough for ordnance and tactics buffs to turn the anachronisms and far-fetched derring do into a drinking game.

Think of it has a more lighthearted “Dirty Dozen,” a “Navarone” tale with laughs, a “Kelly’s Heroes” with a character who likes to carve the hearts out of his Nazi prey.

Set in early (but never wintry) 1942, the last year the outcome of the war was really in doubt, it’s about a Churchill (Rory Kinnear) backed acknowledgement that “Hitler does not play by the rules, so neither are we.”

Over the objections of defeatists in his war cabinet (?), he pushes Brigadier Gubbins, aka the first “M” (Cary Elwes) to form a team to disrupt the Germans’ plans to resupply their U-Boats and turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic.

There’s this Spanish possession off West Africa, Fernando Po, where a merchant ship, the Duchesa, and two tugboats are stocking up to head out to resupply wolf packs of submarines. “M” figures he has just the man for the job…in prison.

Captain Gus March-Philips (Cavill) is a bearded rogue and a charmer, who cadges cigars and good whisky and the privilege of hand-picking his team from M and M’s assistant, young Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox, of “Black 47,” son of famed British actor Edward Fox of “Day of the Jackal”).

He’ll need an arsonist-turned-underwater-demo expert (Henry Golding), an Irishman with sea experience (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and a hulking sadistic brute of a Swede (Alan Ritchson, who all but steals the picture).

That guy with inside knowledge of U-Boat ops and this resupply mission (Alex Pettyfer)? They’ll have to break him out of a German jail on the Canary Islands on their way, sailing a two-masted schooner south to the equatorial island.

March-Philips is so persuasive he has but to note “I’ve got to get a coat like that” for it to magically turn up in his possession. Friend or foe are helpless to his persuasion, whatever form it takes.

Eiza González of “Baby Driver” is a female spy of allure and nerve, and Babs Olusanmokun of the first “Dune” movie and TV’s “Star Trek” Strange New Worlds” is the African casino/club owner who works with her on the island to pave the way for the commandos.

Til Schweiger is the particularly sadistic German in charge of the resupply base.

“The only thing worse than a Nazi is him.”

This crew must shoot, with silenced Bren guns and bow and arrow, and punch and kick and stab-stab-stab their way through a lot of Nazis. Somebody’s going to sultrily croon “Mack the Knife” to entertain the “sausage and sauerkraut and black bread” eaters. And somebody’s on the lookout for a Gestapo overcoat in just his size.

Here we are and here we go. Review to post by 11 Eastern if I’m lucky.

(The review is now live, posted here).

“Deadly Justice” is a C or D movie thriller so badly scripted, amateurishly-acted and stridently-scored that you wonder where the money to make it, or make it all better, went?

It was shot and set in Biloxi. Didn’t the state pitch in on it? Did Brett Favre steal that cash, too?

There are a couple of pseudo Southern accents, all of them from the locals brought on board as supporting cast in a tale of a judge in jail, “revenge” on the prosecutor and police chief who put him there and who might be behind it.

Actor Corin Nemec scripted this story about Deep South “justice” and a true crime TV interview series whose host tries to “gotcha” his way into getting that case reopened. It’s riddled with ludicrous plot twists, hilariously tone-deaf reactions to crimes and lunk-headed attempts at humor.

The players, even the professionals in the cast, can’t fix it. The amateurish bit players? They didn’t have a prayer.

Kelly Sullivan plays Holly, the former DA now entering private practice who makes the mistake of showing up on Dale Jones’ (Brian Krause) “Real Crimes” expose show. A judge went to prison for stalking and murdering his wife, a case so notorious a TV movie (sampled here, a film even worse than the “real” movie) was made from it.

“Real Crime” seems to think Holly and her retired police chief Dad (Marco St. John) railroaded that judge.

The show doesn’t go well, and as a bonus, the creep host asks Holly out afterwards. Worse still, when she gets home, somebody tases her and leaves a note telling her it’s “Your turn to lose someone.”

Holly, the ex-DA, doesn’t report this assault to the police. “Logic” goes out the window, never to return, as we’re treated to a mad taserer who comes for Holly’s assistant (Christiana Leucas), her Dad and others.

That new guy in town, the second man to hit on Holly the first time he meets her? Maybe over-concerned Theo (screenwriter and “Stargate” veteran Nemec) is involved. Maybe the “Duck Dynasty” looking judge (Billy Miller) is pulling strings from inside the penitentiary.

As more things happen to Holly, we kind of hope she eventually calls the cops, or that Dad does. Not that we expect that to help.

Penn’s not box office any more, if he ever was. Wildly unpopular with a certain political fringe, not all that popular with any other political fringes.

Dakota Johnson is a much-abused and rightly-so nepo baby star without a whole lot in the tool bag.

So, this is a redemption story…for the actors?

Aaron Eckhart throws himself and some mid-fight grace notes at “The Bricklayer,” another CIA agent brought back in to “fix” a screw-up run amok within and without The Agency.

It’s not “The Beekeeper,” but Eckhart commits to the part and he and the fights in it are some compensation for a pretty silly plot and clumsy “Will this never end?” story structure.

It’s the latest B-movie by Renny Harlin, who once filmed a “Die Hard” sequel way back in the last millenium.

Eckhart plays a meticulous retired agent who brought his detail-oriented skills back to his pre-CIA profession — bricklaying. But somebody agent Steve Vail used to “run” when he was stationed in Greece has gone rogue. His former boss (Tim Blake Nelson) and the agent (Nina Dobrev) who discovered that the assassin Victor Radek isn’t dead are the ones who track Vail down.

“This is your f–k-up,” bossman barks. “And you need to fix it.”

Clifton Collins, Jr. plays the most conspicuous professional assassin in screen history as Radek — black outfits, black turtleneck, Homberg hat. He’s an aged hipster hitman, standing out in every crowd in sunny, touristy Greece.

These days, Radek is luring journalists with some sort of “doomsday file” that could expose decades of CIA misbehavior. He then kills them and makes it look like The Agency did it.

But back in the day, Vail and Radek were pals. Flashbacks show us a family, sailing vacations along the Greek coast, the promise of identity-changed “retirement” in Pine-something-or-other Montana.

Now, Radek wants blackmail money or he’ll keep killing journalists and creating anti-CIA/anti-American headlines all over Europe.

There’s nothing for it but for Vail to go back to Greece, dragging Agent Bannon (Dobrev) along as he reconnects with his “outfitter” (Oliver Trevena), his CIA station-chief ex-girlfriend (Ilfenesh Hadera) and invents a new “cover” as he tracks his old friend.

Bannon will pretend to be “my wife.” “You’re too old to be my girlfriend,” he explains.

He quotes Miles Davis whenever she catches him in contradictions.

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.”

And Balkan men?

“They never really die. They just smell that way.”

“Sting” is a solid no-big-stars B-picture thriller about an itsy bitsy spider who gets chatty, then awfully big as it tears through a New York apartment building in the middle of a blizzard.

Naturally, it was filmed in Australia. The magic of the movies, amIright?

A meteor shower that coincides with a storm is our “How this happened.” A child obsessed with sneaking through the airvents into other apartments has a thing for tiny arachnids. But one that doubles in size, night by night?

Bugger that.

Alya Browne plays Charlotte, a tween living with her architect mom Heather (Penelope Mitchell of “Star Trek: Picard” and the recent “Hellboy” remake) and trying to bond with her comic book illustrator stepdad (Ryan Corr of “The Water Diviner” and “Ladies in Black”).

They’re sort-of collaborating on a spidery comic that is set to go into production. But he’s got to draw that in his spare time. Stepdad Ethan is also the building super in an old apartment house owned by the two elderly sisters upstairs (Noni Hazelhurst and Robyn Nevin), with the one suffering from dementia Heather’s grandmother.

They have a new baby in the house and a lot of things tugging the adults in different directions. No wonder young Charlotte is out crawling through the air ducts, finding things and that unusual spider.

She loves “The Hobbit,” so “Sting” shall be the spider’s new name. Not “Shelob?” Maybe she hasn’t gotten to “The Lord of the Rings” yet.

Feeding Sting roaches helps the spider grow big and fast and strong. The clicking noises Sting makes tell Charlotte she’s hungry, or that she sees her in the room.

It isn’t until Charlotte tries to buy an extra aquarium out of the experiments-obsessed biology student (Danny Kim) upstairs that she gets a clue.

“Charlotte, spiders don’t have vocal chords.”

The opening scene has us watching a hapless exterminator (Jermaine Fowler of “Sorry to Bother You” and “Coming 2 America”) staring death in the face upon first encountering Sting. We know how bad things will get. The movie is about getting us there.