Movie Nation

“Saturday Night Live” alumnus Julio Torres makes his feature filmmaking debut with “Problemista,” a twee and willfully eccentric comedy about a foreign kid with Big Dreams he’s brought to the Big City.

It’s quirky throughout, funny and so oddly obscurant that it has to be saved from itself, which is exactly what Oscar winning furiosa Tilda Swinton does.

Her hair dyed pretentious New-York-art-critic red, the Celtic accent of her youth slipping through (maybe more Irish than Scots, here), she is a tyro of a terror, an ever-enraged complainer, the “Karen” to end all Karens in a comedy that would never get the kind of attention it merits if she wasn’t in it.

Her Elizabeth is a parade of cringey, explosively-amusing moments who rages at the world as her default mode, a Ms. “Always send food back,” never let an IT “help” line operator get in a word edgwise bully, and simply hilarious to behold.

“Do I need to SPEAK SLOWER?” “I’ve been waiting a VERY long time” (upon just entering a cafe) and “Why are you SCREAMING at me?” are her go-to assaults.

Torres plays Alejandro, the child of a Salvadoran artist (Catalina Saavedra) who raised him as “a project” in a “safe world” with fanciful playhouses and playgrounds of her creation.

When he comes of age, this creative kid wants to make toys for Hasbro. But to get into their online “talent incubator project,” he must move to America, get a visa and repeatedly apply, pitching his ideas for Cabbage Patch doll cell-phone gags and a “Slinky that refuses to walk down steps,” forcing the child to walk for it.

Alejandro has some seriously eccentric notions of what toys should be, that “fun” maybe shouldn’t be a priority.

The only job he can get is at a cryo lab where Elizabeth’s artist-husband (RZA) has been “frozen.” That’s how Alejandro is sucked into her life, falling headfirst into orbit around a “monster” who rages at service sector employees, “the good doctor…Pace (University) was it?” who runs the cryo company, her cell phone provider and art collating software vendor and Alejandro, when the self-perceived need arises.

This walking, fuming “Problemista” is Alejandro’s only hope to get a work visa sponsor, a foot in the door at Hasbro and a chance at his dream. “Managing” the woman those who know her call “The Hydra,” a grieving widow whose tirades are her mourning language, is key for her new chief enabler, Alejandro.

As Alejandro deals with the injustices, Catch-22s and the indignities of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world in a bureaucratic country where “customer service” has become a dirty word and cell companies and Bank of America (an apt name-check) abuse and misuse “customers” because they can, maybe he can learn from this Celtic Woman with a Temper.

“Get a name,” she counsels on every interaction with someone who isn’t serving you up to your standards or is blocking your way. “Become a problem for them.”

Torres, a sort of Latino Justin Long, develops a tiny-steps walk that suits Alejandro here, a foreign-born innocent abroad who doesn’t want to rush into any unfamiliar and possibly hostile encounter, so he covers ground in teensy increments.

He makes Alejandro fluent in pretentious, inane “art world” speak. His character has hints of that classic “do anything” (weird sex work included) to stay in New York “type.”

And he scripts Elizabeth’s one goal as getting her late husband — late until he is theoretically “unfrozen” — recognized for his art. As the man did paintings of eggs in various settings, that may be an overreach. But it’s the New York art world. Stupider styles and more unworthy artists triumph in it every day, often thanks to ethically-compromised, self-important poseurs like critic Elizabeth.

“Problemista” would be lightweight and “twee” taken as is. But to underscore that as a goal, Torres got the great Isabella Rossellini to narrate the tale.

Torres based Alejandro’s Kafkaesque struggles with immigrating to the U.S. on his own experiences, and his novel touch on that worked-to-death subject is having fellow immigrants — at his immigration lawyer’s office and elsewhere — literally vanish on screen as their application is rejected and their “status” in this hostile city and country is dismissed.

He can’t legally “work, but “You must find a sponsor, and pay fees to earn money,” our narrator reminds us as Alejandro crawls through a Spike Jonze/”Being John Malkovich” office “maze.” “The maze (of American immigration) is impossible to navigate.”

It’s a serious subject given a delicate takedown here.

That message might have gotten lost or passed-over in an otherwise lightweight and too-precious narrative. But “Problemista” becomes the Great Tilda’s grandest playground, a chance to wear the wacky fashions, keep her hair at its unruliest and let her furious freak flag fly in the best “I want to speak to the manager” send-up ever.

Rating: R, sexual situations, some profanity

Cast: Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA and Catalina Saavedra, narrated by Isabella Rossellini.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Julio Torres. An A24 release

Running time: 1:38

Orlandoans know, if you don’t visit Disney Springs every three months, you have no idea what you’ll be dealing with traffic control wise, or where what you’re looking for is now tucked behind.

AMC 24, lots of security just getting out of the parking decks, then a Long March from this or that garage to the Cineplex.

America’s Vactionland is filled with vacationers thanks tp Bidenomics.

Let’s hope the movie is worth it. (My review is here.)

He’s well into his ’70s, and it’s time for a victory lap for one of the most beloved comics ever.

This looks cute, with just enough Martin Short to take the formerly “wild and crazy guy” down a few notches.

I interviewed Martin a few times over the years, mostly after his “Three Amigos” era peak (didn’t like any of his movies until the less sophmoric fare started turning up — “Pennies from Heaven,””Roxanne,” “All of Me,” “Grand Canyon,” “Bowfinger.” Laid back, sure of himself, a comic who had already made it in ways no one — himself included — could ever have dreamed, a pretty good actor when the chips were down. Very good at playing unlikable, which seems to be a stretch because he isn’t.

Apple TV has this. March 29.

An “actor” in prison.

The arts as rehabilitation.

“Uplifting” by design, and another feather on Mr. Domingo’s accolade-bedecked hat.

The ’70s, man. You had to be there. The disco. The drugs. The cheesy TV chat shows.

And the Devil! He might just show up as a guest on Merv or Mike Douglas or Cavett’s or Carson’s couch.

Love the ’70s look of this trailer, and those David Dastmalchian sideburns. Too much? Just right.

March 22.

I like the locations, the shot framing, the lighting and some of the action beats previewed in this March 19 release.

The cast looks literally wet behind the ears — green, unknown and too-freshly-scrubbed to be convincing Westerners of the late 19th century. But maybe it’ll live up to its convincing locations.

(Update: Here’s my review.)

The Amazon folks who loaded the Italian rom-com “Pensati Sexy” on Amazon Prime under the title “Still Fabulous” did this teetering sex farce no favors. None.

The proper translation of the title is “Think Sexy” as this “Think Sexy, Be Sexy.” As the film is the tale of an Italian 30something with low self-esteem, a “wallflower,” at least in her mind, it’s also accurate.

“Still Fabulous” means nothing in itself, and makes it sound like a further reboot of “Absolutely Fabulous,” which it most certainly is not.

It’s a clumsy, never-quite-humorous attempt to show our heroine discovering her “sexy” and learning to work it and to value herself by developing the confidence to “pick yourself” rather waiting for some man — “always the wrong guy” — to pick you.

Diana Del Bufalo of “My Big Gay Italian Wedding” stars as Maddalena, a temp — contract worker — at a quick-and-dirty publishing company. Easy Edizioni specializes in “ghost written” bios of actors, jocks, pop starlets, influencers and others too busy to write their own quick-turn-around autobiographies, which, as the publisher puts it, are sold “at truck stops” all over Europe.

Influencers like one-named beauty Lara (Jenny De Nucci) become their star “authors.” She wants her fans to know “all of the obstacles…brittle fingernails, oily scalp, split-ends are their vapid bread and butter.

Maddalena is the star ghost writer, a wit (barely demonstrated) who can get the flavor of the client, write a hit and in no time flat. Only the boss cannot recall her name and won’t promote her to staff, and the chief editor (Raoul Bova) only recalls her name because he’d like to sleep with her.

Her low self-esteems means that’s exactly what Maddalena agrees to do with the married Donato, only to discover that she’s no good at flirting, seduction or the nuts and bolts of being “sexy” at sex. He tells her so.

Add to that the anxiety of her prettier, more popular, happily married and very pregnant younger sister, their mom’s “favorite,” and Maddalena would seem a prime candidate for therapy.

Or maybe just a bite or two of her gay roomie’s (Fabrizio Colica) hashish-laced cake. That’s what gets her online, sampling porn for “research,” accosted by online sex star Valentina (Valentina Nappi) who sees her as a potential customer.

The screwy logic of dim-witted screenwriters dictates that Maddalena have hash “flashbacks,” that she start hallucinating Valentina, who offers advice about oral sex, about owning your femininity — “All women are beautiful!” — dressing sexier and asserting herself with men and with her bosses.

That’s a simple and workable plot for a formulaic rom-com. It should work. But this meandering, stumbling narrative wanders from attempted self-empowerment to the cliched “going viral” moment to unlikely “better offers,” little of it resonating, almost none of it funny.

Alessandro Tiberi plays the bearded hipster stand-up comic she meets at her sister’s mildly grotesque “gender reveal” party. Leonardo tries to talk Maddalena into taking up stand-up as a way of developing material for her own comical self-help book. He’s Mr. Right, we realize before she does, which is pretty much how the formula works.

Del Bufalo is cute and game, and entirely too reserved in this part to ever be funny. Nappi steals the picture, but even her role is limited and somewhat muzzled. Lurid tongue-licking and various vulgar suggestions are always good for a smirk, if not a wholehearted laugh.

That suggests that the title translation from Italian to English was nothing more than a dispirited compromise. “Pensati Sexy” promises more sex and sexiness than the filmmakers have the nerve to attempt. And “Still Fabulous” suggests laughs and fabulousness that is nowhere to be found.

Rating: 16+, nudity, sexual situations, profanity, drug abuse

Cast: Diana Del Bufalo, Valentina Nappi, Alessandro Tiberi, Raoul Bova, Fabrizio Colica and Jenny De Nucci.

Credits: Directed by Michela Andreozzi, scripted by Michela Andreozzi and Daniela Delle Foglie. An MGM/Amazon release on Amazon Prime

Running time: 1:32

A lot of the charm has been deep fried out of “Kung Fu Panda,” a not-uncommon malady among successful kids’ cartoon franchises that have produced multiple films, and multiple seasons of a TV series.

Three credited writers and the vocal stylings of Jack Black and Awkwafina can’t render “Kung Fu Panda 4” into anything but semi-organized repetition, recycling and random riffs that rarely manage to interrupt the tedium or flatlining one-liners.

“I wish I had a dumpling for every time a villain told me ‘how much we have in common.'”

It’s like a later “Transformers” or Marvel movie, an umpteenth installment of your average action anime, where fan service and endless fights are all anybody involved can dream up.

Our Dragon Warrior, roly poly panda Po (Black) is in his prime, cocksure in fights and enjoying his celebrity. That makes this the perfect time to “Choose your successor,” Master Shifu the wee red panda (Dustin Hoffman) intones.

Po is reluctant to take “the next step in your journey,” senior spiritual management for The Valley of Peace. But that’s of little consequence when old foes like the tiger Tai Lung (Ian McShane) come back from the spirit world, because a new foe, The Chameleon of Juniper City (Viola Davis) is summoning them and adding to her powers to theirs to take down The Dragon Warrior.

A thieving ninja fox (Awkwafina) is arm-twisted into helping Po. His two dads (James Hong and Bryan Cranston) whine and fret over that. But there’s nothing for it but to face a new enemy by making their way to Juniper City.

That “choose a successor” business, all about “You know when you know” you’ve found the right warrior, will have to wait.

Fortune cookie one-liners abound. “Every step leaves a footprint, no matter how small.” “It is easier to hang onto the life you know than reach for the life you don’t.” “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

There are a few chuckles, here and there, but “the right thing” as far as this movie is concerned is more and more comical brawling. It’s never quite a nine year-old’s idea of “cool” and never as funny as one would hope.

As Black’s Master Po asks in the film’s most telling line, “Where’s the skadoosh?”

The biggest laugh comes from the skipper whose Chinese junk sails to Juniper City on a regular run. Po negotiates with the pelican in charge. He thinks. Then the pelican opens its mouth and the “real” captain turns out to be a fish floating in seawater in the bird’s bill. The comic Ronny Chieng, voicing the fish, makes more amusement out of that sight gag than anybody else here manages.

Dreamworks built its animation empire out of smart-mouthed, sight-gagged character comedies like “Shrek” and “Puss in Boots” and “Madagascar.” It’s not shocking that they came back to the “Kung Fu Panda,” as, like Pixar, they’ve hit the wall when it comes to new ideas. But even they’d have to admit that cashing-in on a time-tested intellectual property may make business sense, and that Po and Co. deserved better than this.

Rating: Cartoon violence, “rude humor”

Cast: The voices of Jack Black, Awkwafina, Viola Davis, James Hong, Bryan Cranston, Ronny Chieng, Ian McShane, Ke Huy Quan and Dustin Hoffman.

Credits: Directed by Mike Mitchell and Stephanie Stine, scripted by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Darren Lemke. A Dreamworks/Universal release.

Running time: 1:34

Slow moving and unmoving in the bargain, “The Parades” is a sentimental Japanese exercise in world building in the supernatural.

There’s a taste of “The Sixth Sense,” a hint of Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” and a lot of Rod Serling’s “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” in this downbeat fantasy about purgatory and the unfinished business, the “regrets” of the dead.

Writer-director Michihito Fujii (“A Family” is his best-known credit) emphasizes tone over pace and creates a movie of gently challenging twists, wish fulfillment fantasy and characters and performances so flat that there’s little incentive to finish “Parades,” or stay awake through it as you do.

Masami Nagasawa, star of “Mother,” is Minako, a woman we meet in the middle of a beachside reverie. She is abruptly swallowed by the sea. A “tsumani” we figure.

But she wakes up and starts searching for her little boy, Ryo. We learn she’s a single mom. We figure out she is a TV reporter. We’ve guessed which earthquake and tsumani hit her.

And by noticing her immaculate outfit that somehow survived, unblemished, by the second or third rescue worker who ignores her pleas, people she cannot grab to get their attention, we’ve figured out she’s dead. She quicky reasons out that she’s not the only ghost wandering the ruins of this disaster’s aftermath.

It’s only when she flags down a van driven by Akira (Kentarô Sakaguchi) that Minako starts to piece things together. He drives her to a ruined amusement park, with a functioning bar and tiny bungalows for living space. It’s an emcampment of the undead, dead people with “regrets.”

There’s the filmmaker (Lily Franky) who failed to complete his final film, set against student protests in Okinawa during the Vietnam War. A yakuza (Ryûsei Yokohama) didn’t live long enough to inherit his father’s gang or make a life outside of it with his bride. The upbeat bar owner (Shinobu Terajima) sadly checks in on her many children, the pregnant daughter whom she hopes to see give birth, even if she’s not literally “alive” to savor it.

A banker (Tetsushi Tanaka) is cagier about his past. And the newcomer (Nana Mori) with a schoolgirl’s uniform and a slit wrist barely needs to tell us her story. We can guess.

Every so often, these ghosts join others in “parades” to recognize their plight.

Minako has a hard time fitting in, because these people are “lazy” and incurious — stuck in place, some of them for years and years. They’re not settling their “regrets,” not moving on, not that curious about “What’s on the other side.”

But the filmmaker Michael has thoughts of finishing his final film in the afterlife. Akira is taking extensive notes about their netherworld, hoping to pass them on to the living. Minako is just looking for answers, hoping to find her boy still alive and figure out a way to speak to him.

There is most definitely a movie in this material, even if it’s mostly recycled afterlife fantasies — a “Sixth Sense” without the scares or big twist, “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Heart and Soul” without the humor, joy or heartbreak.

Scene after scene drags on past its usefulness. We “get” the tone, and yet are then subjected to 132 minutes immersed in that tone telling about 90 minutes worth of story.

Hell isn’t serenely dull films like “The Parades.” But I’ll bet purgatory is.

Rating: TV-MA, adult themes, suicide

Cast: Masami Nagasawa, Kentarô Sakaguchi, Ryûsei Yokohama, Nana Mori, Shinobu Terajima, Tetsushi Tanaka and Lily Franky.

Credits: Scripted and directed by  Michihito Fujii. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:12

Julio Torres is writer, director and star, Tilda Swinton the eccentric life of the party, Isabella Rossellini and RZA are along for the ride in this March 22 release.