Movie Nation

“American Dreamer” doesn’t so much end as peter (Ahem.) out, with a finale that feels like a series of compromises which no one wanted to winnow down.

But if you skip the movie leading up to that, you’ll be missing a lot of laughs and a tale that takes that “Peter Dinklage as sex symbol” thing about as far as it can go.

He plays a grumpy, broke non-tenured college economics professor who is obsessed with the only real way to accumulate wealth and security in capitalist America — real estate — especially real estate he can ill afford.

First time feature director Paul Dektor and screenwriter Theodore Melfi of “St. Vincent” and “Hidden Figures” tell us a “true story” “sort of” about an economist who knows a great deal when he sees one in the classifieds, but who doesn’t wholly consider the fine print.

It’s a comedy about capitalism as it relates to the Big Questions in Life — “What do we need to be happy? What do we want?” and “How far” is “one willing to go to get it?” It’s about the fantasies we lose ourselves in.

And it’s about the animal magnetism of Dinklage, linked to another amusing turn in a long career of them by Oscar winner Shirley MacLaine, with very funny supporting work by an ensemble that includes Matt Dillon, Danny Pudi and Danny Glover.

Dinklage is Dr. Phil Loder, unhappily teaching “Cultural Economics” to “spoiled d–k weasels” at Massachusetts’ Brockton U., a drinker and frustrated novelist surrounded by “twat waffles” in the faculty and pestering his department chair (Pudi) for a parking spot for his aged Saab, the car of choice of academics all over America in the ’80s and ’90s, and in movies about academics forevermore.

Phil, we learn, has this long-running relationship with a man he calls “Ass—e,” who refers to him by the same contemptuous nickname.

Dell (Matt Dillon, in grand form) is his reluctant real estate agent. Phil shows up for every high end open house on Dell’s client list, with every mansion millions of dollars beyond Phil’s modest price range.

To Phil, Dell is a lowly “dirt pimp,” someone built to be abused. “Everything about me screams SUCCESS,” Dell counters to Mr. “No equity, no money, no tenure,” who seems born to waste his time.

Phil fantasizes about living in these palaces, and imagines a beautiful wife (Rebecca Olson) and her sister there with him. It’s his “American Dream.”

And then he spies the classified ad for a $5 million dollar mansion available for $240,000 if you take it “with live-in.” The “live-in” turns out to be the rich old lady (MacLaine) who owns it.

The real-estate savvy filmgoer may wonder about this screenwriterly fantasy “deal.” Elderly Astrid doesn’t expect care-giving. She doesn’t seem cash poor. Why would she “sell” this house for so little just to have a stranger move in with her? It never makes sense.

Phil sells everything he owns — grumpily — cashes in his 401K and unloads the car. He may have to eat sandwiches the rest of his life, and ride a scooter to work. But now he’s got his piece of that “dream” he’s only been able to dream about.

The script, from this point on, veers back to and fro with accounts of Phil’s sex appeal to one “consenting adult” student (Michelle Mylett), to a probate lawyer who turns out to be one of Astrid’s “kids” (Kimberly Quinn) and examples of the sorts of clashes we might expect anyone to have when living in a house with Shirley MacLaine or a character she plays.

Phil has lots of accidents on the property. Astrid’s “kids” mean he has “a contested WILL in my future,” and not a clean path to ownership.

A wisened, too old for this you-know-what private detective (Glover) gets involved and the accidents pile up and where WILL they take this narrative before all is said and done?

The screenplay has much that’s fun about it, with zippy one-liners, droll aphorisms and sharply-drawn characters who clash and crack-wise with one another. Dinklage wears this role as easily as any he’s taken, and he clicks with Dillon, Glover, Quinn, Pudi and especially MacLaine.

But there’s real indecision on screen here, as if no one could quite decide where to take things, what would feel “true” vs. what might be “satisfying.” And the organizing device of writer Phil word-processing his “novel,” chapter by chapter, is even more lame here than in the other 754 movies its turned up in.

And yet there’s just too much fun here to miss, even with “Dreamer’s” flaws. Dinklage savors every man-of-letters zinger, and gives a toast for the ages as a kicker. Remember this one, because Phil did, and Dinklage performs it like a lad who appreciates a great Irish toast his own self.

“Here’s to a long life, and a merry one. A quick death, and an easy one. A pretty girl, and an honest one, a cold pint, and ANOTHER one.”

Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Peter Dinklage, Shirley MacLaine, Matt Dillon, Danny Pudi, Kimberly Quinn, Rebecca Olson, Michelle Mylett and Danny Glover.

Credits: Directed by Paul Dektor, scripted by Theodore Melfi. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:38

This looks cute and funny and smart and useful to kids, as indeed “Inside Out” was. Now the kid’s a little older.

June 14, “Anxiety” and “the Sar Chasm” and “suppressed emotions” enter the picture for this Pixar sequel.

There are echoes of a lot of “Making it in Nashville” tales in “The Neon Highway” — “Crazy Heart,” “Honky Tonk Man” and “Tender Mercies” among them.

There’s a singer with a song he can thinks can change his life, a tune composed in optimism but tainted by tragedy. And there’s an unpleasant burnt-out has-been, a “country music legend,” who might be able to make it happen.

That fellow, named Claude Allen, is played by Beau Bridges here, further reinforcing the connection to his brother Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-winning turn in “Crazy Heart.” Beau, you might remember, can sing a bit, too. His weathered, cracking and “out of practice” old man’s voice is put to great use here.

But director and co-writer William Wages’ “Neon Highway,” formerly titled “Unsung Hero,” is a mopey affair, and some of that moping includes missteps, twists that stop the picture cold and make it drag through the middle acts.

A fine finish earns it a “nice try” review. But a couple of the tunes, a few scenes and the lead performances hint at a better movie that was lost in the bargain.

Rob Mayes, a singer and sometime actor (of TV movies like “Just Jake,” “The Christmas Edition”) stars as Wayne Collins, whom we meet as he and his brother (T.J. Power) take their shot at the big time at Bobby’s Nashville roadhouse, where stars are discovered.

A Jeep wreck later that night shatters those dreams.

Years afterward, Columbus, Georgia family man Wayne has a son ready for the University of Tennessee, but his telephone repair contract work and his teacher-wife’s (Jennifer Bowles) salary won’t get him there.

Lo and behold, a slovenly old coot moves into an old farm and needs wifi help. And his fancy, old-school electric guitar gives him away as Claude Allen (Bridges), a Nashville icon.

The best scenes in “Neon Highway” show the wary way the two men size each other up. Claude is dismissive and ornery and isn’t impressed until Wayne mentions playing at Bobby’s in Nashville. Claude will remain unimpressed — “Just what the world needs, another picker” — by Wayne’s country wannabe work-partner, the boss’s son.

Wayne presses a song on the old man, refusing to hear Claude’s “done with all that, now” protests. Claude takes the song, makes it “better,” and next thing we know, he’s talked Wayne into taking off for Nashville.

Beau has always been the better Bridges at playing unlikeable, and that pays off as Claude seems downright shifty. He wants to do things “my way,” even if his way includes reaching out to Music City contacts who are no longer working, or who hold grudges about the past.

Wayne, like the viewer, suspects Claude of attempting to steal his song.

Not enough is made of that tension. And nothing much fun comes from the odyssey of their drive to Nashville, checking in at a weather-beaten and familiar (to Claude) motel run by picker pal Ray (Sam Hennings) and his sister (Sandra Lee-Oian Thomas), an old flame of Claude’s.

A lot of these Nashville scenes and situations have “Thing Called Love” comic potential, and seem dull if not downright pointless without that touch.

There are also underdeveloped characters and plot dead ends, which make the picture drag. And one big “twist” is just dead weight on the entire enterprise.

The song, “Neon Highway,” isn’t bad. But one that The Collins Brothers sing in that opening scene, a dopey ditty about “I need dirt on my truck, I need dirt on these roads…I need dirt on my toes,” sounds like a hit.

That was your movie, guys. That sets a tone that would have played better than this fumbled melodramatic reach for “maudlin.”

Still a “nice try,” though.

Rating: PG-13, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Beau Bridges, Rob Mayes, Sandra Lee-Oian Thomas, Jennifer Bowles, Sam Hennings and Wilbur Fitzgerald.

Credits: Directed by William Wages, scripted by Phillip Bellury and William Wages. A Mountain Pictures release.

Running time: 1:52

“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