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The great ones make it look effortless, with their mere presence in a role affirming the story’s unimpeachable reality.

Charlotte Rampling started her career in the ’60s, came into her own in the ’70s (“Farewell, My Lovely”) and by the early ’80s (“The Verdict”) any sense of artifice had vanished from her performances.

Her subtlety, unhurried timing and understated performances invite us in, getting across the verisimilitude of every classic character from Dickens or Chekhov, making us come to her and believe her as a Russian spy trainer in “Red Sparrow,” callous abbesse or inscrutable conjure woman of “Dune.”

We see her play with sensitivity and the assurance of a legendary Chopin concert pianist in “Two Pianos.” We don’t need to see her fingers soulfully manipulating the keys, but we do. Her eyes and expressions have already made the sale.

Rampling never strikes a false note, even if the multi-handed and frankly melodramatic script of Arnaud Desplechin’s (“My Golden Days,” “King and Queen”) latest, has its atonal and dischordant moments.

The screen legend plays the aged mentor of a once-promising pianist who returns from teaching in Japan to join her for what she’s decided will be her “farewell” concerts.

Mathias (François Civil, D’Artagnan in the recent French “Three Musketeers” movies) is the brooding sort, devoted to his demanding, self-described “monster” of a mentor Elena and to his long-suffering agent Max (Hippolyte Girardot) but someone who walked away from it all to teach.

He’s barely renewed both acquaintances when a chance encounter with a former lover (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) makes him faint and her flee the scene of the fainting.

As Lyon isn’t a gigantic city, he is later haunted by the sight of her little boy, a dead ringer for Mathias at age eight.

We start to get a sense of why he says (in French with English subtitles) “I broke my life in two.” The imperious Elena’s orders that he “focus” and Max’s pleas that this “full house, cloaked in contempt” that awaits him means he has to be good enough to “crucify them” will be ignored as fragile Mathias crawls into a guilty bottle or three.

The sensitivity of the performances adorn this coincidence-riddled romance with some magical moments in between the eye-rolling turns of the plot.

A sudden trauma, a Jewish funeral, misguided sex, a concert that may or may not come off and the bizarre suggestion there might be a happy ending in all this messiness are folded into a scenario that is far less convincing than the actors starring in it.

Civil, a composer and actor, looks comfortable at the keyboard even as Mathias struggles with guilt, the knowledge of unfulfilled potential and hangovers when he is supposed to perform.

Tereszkiewicz struggles to master the script’s tricky demands of playing a flighty woman ill-prepared for reopening old emotional wounds or facing new ones.

But old pros Girardot (“The French Dispatch,” “Mama Weed”) and Rampling renew the tale’s connection to reality and our commitment to “Two Pianos” every time they join a scene.

It may be straight-up melodrama, from its lone, corny, over-explaining flashback to the cliched drunk tank our hero finds himself in to the grim hysteria of an ambulance ride. Desplechin’s film still strikes enough of the right notes to be entertaining.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Hippolyte Giradot, Jeremy Lewen, Alba Gaïa Bellugi, Anne Kessler, and Charlotte Rampling

Credits: Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, scripted by Arnaud Desplechin, Kamen Velkovsky, Ondine Lauriot dit Prévost and Anne Berest. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:55

There’s something almost criminal about Amazon acquiring the 2020 immigration “comedy” “Deported,” and passing it off as a “new” “2026” release on their streaming service.

There hasn’t been a good time to unleash a raunchy, tone deaf and whitewashed farce about immigration in the past decade. But putting this Trump I era disaster in front of eyeballs in the middle of the murderously inhumane Trump II regime is damned near criminal.

It’s a familiar-faces/little-known-names romp buried under f-bombs, coarse sex jokes and a cascade of cameos. It’s tooth-grindingly bad, so much so that even Sandler hanger-on Nick Swardson seems embarassed in his scenes in it.

Robert Davi as a customs agent? He seems disappointed the guy isn’t more sadistic.

Director and co-writer Tyler Spindel (“The Wrong Missy”) chickened-out straight away by making this about a Canadian blonde (Megan Park) our “illegal” — “Deported” and banned for messing up some paperwork.

So rather than something edgy, like Cheech and Chong’s decades old “Born in East L.A.,” he makes an unromantic and almost wholly unfunny “Green Card,” about blonde Harper’s dizzy-but-not-nearly-dizzy-enough beau Ross (Whitmer Thomas) refusing to commit to marrying her so that she can finish chef school and, you know, take a chef’s job from an “American” so that she can realize her dreams.

Threatened by his girlfriend’s hunkier and more eager to help friend (Greg Sulkin), Ross’s plan involves marrying her off to this slovenly lout (Mickey Gooch, Jr.) who crashed the Halloween party where Ross and Harper first met.

The odd early tasteless joke has promise — one costumed partygoer shows up nude and years past her last sit-up.

“I’m LENA DUNHAM! I’m COMFORTABLE with my body?”

The “GET it?” is implied in this and most every other “joke” rolled out from here on out.

Ross’s big tech idea is a “Dick Face” app he’s pushing, which adds a penis cap to any photo you post in it.

His sort-of-separated-under-the-same-roof parents (Brenda Strong, Kurt Fuller) trot out testiness about “getting married too young” and intolerance of this would-be-chef who was caught re-entering the country from an Indian cooking school’s seminar.

“She got a dot?”

That much of the movie’s messaging seems on the mark, the idea that America is a nation of descendents of immigrants but roiling with casual, off-the-cuff bigots.

As “there is no such thing as a fake marriage in a REAL relationship,” as on-the-make lesbian and Ross pal Tammy (Fortune Feimster) declares, this is where Doug Lipinski (Gooch) fits in.

He may be a walking, belching, unbathed butt-crack. He may not know how to pronounce his own name (first or last). He may be “definitely on the spectrum.” But he’s willing to sneak into Canada for a quickie fake wedding just to get Harper back across the border.

Conchata Ferrell (“Two and a Half Men”) is his brassy, bare-knuckled, not-quite-disapproving mom. Swardson plays his jealous, over-bearing brother.

Jokes about women as “fire breathing whore dragons,” life onboard Doug’s barely-floating converted-tug houseboat’s resident lava-lamp-humping rat, “butt chugging” and the like don’t move any thinking or sentient person’s needle.

Clint Howard, Missi Pyle, Steven Bauer and others trot by in unfunny cameos.

And the attempted story “arc,” where we glimpse Doug’s unhappy humanity and Ross grows a pair while Harper considers her options but not really, are all clumsily handled

“Cringe comedy” is one thing, and raunchy fare like this still plays to sensory-deprived stoners.

But this is just bad, and Bezos & Co. know it. Which is why they tried to pass it off as “new.”

Rating:

Cast: Whitmer Thomas, Megan Park, Mickey Gooch, Jr.,Fortune Feimster, Kurt Fuller, Brenda Strong, Steven Bauer, Missi Pyle, Clint Howard, Nick Swardson, Conchata Ferrell and Robert Davi.

Credits: Directed by Tyler Spindel, scripted by Tyler Spindel and Dean Ward. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:31

Any team-up of one of the cinema’s most enduring off-camera couples, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, should be cherished. They’re both so very good and “natural” doesn’t begin to describe their onscreen chemistry together. They’re as close as Hollywood gets to a Lunt & Fontanne, these days.

And if their latest film outing as a couple, “The Best You Can,” isn’t all it might have been, they’re still grand in it.

It’s a lurching, cloying and uneven romance that folds in a lot of drama — some of it organic, much of it contrived — as it tosses in the odd tone-deaf scene, moment or performance.

Written and directed by sitcom vet Michael J. Weithorn (“The King of Queens”), it bears the trademark of sitcom writer/creators adapting to the big screen. A TV season’s clutter of characters and situations and story arcs are crammed into a 100 minute film.

Sedgwick plays Cynthia, a New York urologist finally facing the end game of marrying an older spouse. Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch) was a legal tyro in his day, a government attorney who held Nixon and his criminal crew accountable for Watergate. Now, he’s forgetting things, having “episodes. He’ll gregariously go to the wrong table in a restaurant and continue an earlier conversation or anecdote — sometimes from MUCH earlier — with strangers.

“He’s older than me,” 60something Cynthia keeps telling folks. “Older than most people.”

The 25 or so year age difference is taking its toll and rattling her.

Bacon plays Stan, an ex-cop and divorced dad coping with his first blast of prostate issues. His constant need for pee breaks makes his night patrolman for a home security company job an ordeal. And that’s not going to make his casual sex and sexting affair with a cashier (Olivia Luccardi) with a “hot old guy thing” any easier.

Cynthia meets Stan when somebody tries to break into the Rands’ townhouse. The way she chatters away tells us she’s a bit rattled, and maybe grateful to have a conversation with somebody who can stay on topic. She babbles on even after Stan begs to use their bathroom.

Yes, the urologist asks him to “call my office.” Yes, there’s an exam. But an informal friendship blooms from this unlikely meet up. They have the same birthday, and now each has a contemporary to talk to.

The text chats are intimate without intimacy. They share jokes about “fragile” Gen Z, as he has a troubled but talented daughter (Brittany O’Grady). She shares her efforts to get her husband to write a book about his colorful life while he still can, hiring a grad student researcher, with Warren able to remember a lot even as he forgets they’re “working” and wanders off.

It’s all very sweet and innocent. How long can that last?

Weithorn shoehorns in lines, dialogue exchanges, characters and situations you usually see in broadly played sitcoms — a lurch or two into sex talk, a two couples dinner conversation in a restaurant that turns to “My first time” — a sitcommy/joky “consulation” with an old colleague (Ray Romano) who is so tactless in discussing her husband’s dementia that you’d swear he’s a surgeon and not a neurologist.

But there are still lovely moments — Cynthia hiring a nurse (Meer Rohit Kumhbani) whose compassion extends to letting Warren tell her his life story, for posterity, hot-tempered Stan finally “hearing” his nervous, afraid of performing daughter and doing something more than play his ukulele in support.

The picture is — like life itself once you’ve gotten that “Welcome” letter from the AARP — a mixed bag. The supporting characters are less fleshed-out, so much so that when Stan’s daughter shows us her many “triggers,” we scratch our head.

And when Luccardi’s gum-snapping 20something throws her “hot old guy” thing out there, it plays like it sounds — like an older screenwriter’s male wish fulfillment fantasy.

But Bacon plays a little and sings a little, Sedgwick handles jokes and pathos and in the scenes that count and turns “professional” in a heartbeat. And each gets across a shared empathy and humanity that bridges any gap in class and life experience.

They’re the reasons to watch “The Best You Can.” The writer director? Well, let’s just hope this wasn’t his “best.”

Rating: R, sexual situations, some drug use, profanity

Cast: Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon, Brittany O’Grady, Olivia Luccardi, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Ray Romano and Judd Hirsch

Credits: Directed by Michael J. Weithorn. A Sony Pictures release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:43

The latest Peter Farrelly of The Farrelly Bros. comedy is a tale of condoms, testicular protection, the South American cocaine trade, the World Cup and two doofuses who find one “fine mess” after another to get themselves into.

“Balls Up” is a buddy picture that leans hard into vulgar laughs and finds even them hard to come by. Shockingly.

I was impressed by Mark Wahlberg‘s commitment and energy level in a movie where over-acting is demanded by the lumbering, nearly lifeless script. Take away the usual Farrelly shocks — penises, alligator corpse desecration and Molly Shannon showering the soundtrack with F-bombs — and there’s a whole not of nothing funny or even all that interesting going on in this never-quite-promising farce that gets worse the longer it goes on.

Buddy comedy pro Wahlberg is paired with slow and slow-talking sight-gaggy Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “BlackKlansman” and that just doesn’t pay or play.

Hauser plays Elijah, a pedantic, humor-impaired and risk-averse designer at a condom company that hopes to become the official prophylactic of the (fictional) World Cup 2025, slated for Brazil.

Wahlberg’ is ace salesman Brad, who might save Royal Blue Condom Company’s “Testicle Sentinel” innovation and its very existence by closing this deal.

Watching Elijah’s pained and off-color/over-sharing”presentation” of this innovation to the corporate higher ups (Molly Shannon is CEO) makes that seem like its own Project Hail Mary. Even the introduction of a blue dildo vibrator doesn’t help.

But Brad aces his “Let us cup you and yours at the next World Cup” pitch to Brazilian honcho Santos (Benjamin Bratt, a hoot) and his South American underlings. If only they’d stopped there, and not talked “nine years sober” Santos into celebratory drinks at the sort of vast, production-designed nightclub you only see in the movies.

The cheap shots and mockery of Alcoholics Anonymous are vintage Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin”). Peter and his brother Bobby invented “Oh no they DIDN’T” sacred-cow mockery.

“Joo know what aye haven’tried een a long time,” Bratt purrs?

“Skee-ball,” Brad guesses?

“CRACK!”

But the evening and the movie slip into a coma after that early transgressive buzz as our “heroes” get fired and the company closes, only to have uncanceled tickets arrive months later for the condom designer and “Brad from Sales,” who get to fly down to see Brazil battle Argentina for the title.

There’s an “incident.” The game is compromised and a whole country wants the blood of “os estupidos,” as they call the Ugly Americans.

Screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese cut and paste together a story of “You’re free to go…be lynched by Brazilians” official corruption, a more sympathetic and comically-accented drug lord played by Sacha Baron Cohen who has something else in mind for those condoms these two are responsible for, and a visit to Amazonia, where cultish environmentalists do ayuhuasca and protect native species by killing anybody they think is a poacher.

Chelsy Crisp and Eric André try to breathe life into those latter scenes. And a little of S.B. Cohen goes a long way.

Depending on your sense of humor and chemically altered state, there might be half a dozen chuckles in “Balls Up” — less if you’re sober.

The movie and time itself slows to a crawl through the excruciatingly unamusing latter acts. And just when you think it can’t fall more completely to pieces, here comes a finale that further lowers the bar.

Farrelly’s movie, like his comic shock-shtick, gets old in a hurry.

Rating: R, violence, nudity, drug content and profanity

Cast: Mark Walhberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Molly Shannon, Daniela Melchior, Eva de Dominic, Chelsey Crisp, Eric André, Sacha Baron Cohen and Benjamin Bratt.

Credits: Directed by Peter Farrelly, scripted by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. An MGM release on Amazon Prime

Running time: 1:45