Movie Nation

Now here’s a proper gore and splatter fest, and from Ireland no less.

“Unwelcome” is a murderous mashup of “Straw Dogs” and...wait for it…”Leprechaun!” It’s visceral (literally) and pulse-pounding on occasion. And as we see the wee creatures making all this mayhem, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny.

Hannah John-Kamen and Douglas Booth play a young couple whom we meet on the day she pees on a stick and delivers the good news. They’re EXPECTING.

But living in a high-rise/low-rent London housing estate, Jamie can’t even pop down to the shop for a bottle of celebratory non-alcoholic prosecco without being hassled by goons. They follow him home and brutally assault the couple.

Jamie was never the most butch lad in the lot, but while both of them are traumatized, he’s haunted by the experience on a primal masculinity-questioning level.

We know the minute he promises “I am never going to let that happen to you again,” he’ll have trouble keeping that promise, even if he does buy a punching bag to work out his frustrations on.

Lucky for Jamie his aunt back in rural Ireland died. They’ve inherited a Place in the Country, where the locals seem welcoming, if a tad superstitious. Maya’s just got to remember to leave a “blood offering” every night at the entrance to their gated forest.

“For the far darrig, the ‘redcaps,'” the helpful local Maeve (Niamh Cusack) says, as if she’s making a lick of sense. But she makes Maya promise promise PROMISE to leave a little raw liver out.

Meanwhile, the house has fallen into “fixer upper” status. Finding a local contractor seems futile until they stumble into the Whelans, an unsavory crew whom the locals raise an eyebrow over.

“Just don’t leave your missus alone with the lads,” the village drunk advises.

So we’ve got “rules” just made for breaking, and the scariest, least-hospitable locals invading their space and bringing to mind every nightmare anybody had engaging the Contractors from Hell.

The Whelans (Kristian Nairn, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Chris Walley) are “English” bashing sociopaths, the lot of them.

But as least their patriarch insists everybody call him “Daddy.” He’s played by Colm Meaney, as if this Mark Stay/Jon Wright (who also directed) screenplay wasn’t menacing enough.

Much of what you expect comes to pass, but there is just enough misdirection thrown in to maintain a little novelty in the mashing up.

The threats are unnerving, the violence brutal and the Red Caps wee and scary cute and plentiful in this horrific lark of a thriller.

Our leads are believable as a couple, convincingly over-matched and just as convincing when they fight back.

And then there’s our Irish MVP, the durable character actor Meaney, who has been Irishing-up TV (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) and movies (“The Snapper,” “Con Air,” “Intermission,” “Layer Cake,” “Marlowe,” “Pixie,”“Seberg” ) for half a century, “fer feck’s sake.”

Meaney instantly amps up the threat level as this bluff, bullying patriarch, the kind who wants everybody to call him “Daddy” because that’s how this relationship is going to be — a “My word is law” thing.

“Unwelcome” may outstay its welcome, reaching its climax with the filmmakers unable to resist going for an anti-climax. One can only take the wee menaces so seriously, looking like “Harry Potter” extras without the budget for “Dobby” CGI.

But it’s fun, the kind of thriller tailor-made for crowd-sourced jolts and laughs. Miss it and there’ll be hell to pay, just you wait.

Rating: R for strong violence and gore, pervasive language, some drug use and sexual material

Cast: Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Kristian Nairn, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Chris Walley and Colm Meaney.

Credits: Directed by Jon Wright, scripted by Mark Stay and Jon Wright. A Well Go USA release in AMC cinemas, coming to Shudder.

Running time: 1:43

When see we Kate DiCamillo’s name on children’s film, we sit up take notice, and keep an eye and an ear out for themes, “life lessons” and the like.

One of the most popular writers of kid-lit in English, she’s been a popular author to adapt for the screen. Books from “Because of Winn-Dixie” to” “The Tale of Despereaux,” “Flora and Ulysses and “The Tiger Rising” have been made into movies. And the latest adaptation, “The Magician’s Elephant,” was turned into London stage musical before Netflix Animation and Animal Logic took a crack at an animated, non-musical version.

It’s a 2009 book that’s about how limiting life is without imagination, how one should never underestimate human possibilities and how you shouldn’t let skeptics and naysayers limit what you try to do with your life. It has a timely and timeless feel, and visual effects artist turned director Wendy Rogers — she worked in Gotham City, Narnia and “Waterworld” — taps into the most famous trait of DiCamillo’s wordy, illustrated novels. They’re meant to be read aloud, parent to child.

So there’s a fortune-teller/narrator (Natasia Demetriou) to set the story up and explain things every so often along the way.

It’s a gorgeous looking film, and adds more weight to the argument that Netflix isn’t letting Disney, Pixar, Sony or Dreamworks set the animation standard. Del Toro’s “Pinocchio” proved that they’re raising the bar for everybody else.

But I have to say, it’s a somewhat muted film, almost humorless. Like most of DiCamillo’s works translated to the screen, it has her characters and themes and a little charm, but little else going for it.

Peter, voiced by Noah Jupe of “A Quiet Place,” is a teen growing up in the once-enchanted town of Baltese, which lost its sense of magic thanks to sending troops off to “the great foreign war” long ago. It’s a town that’s “stuck,” with no magic or imagination. Even the clouds, “strange” as they are, are the same — day after day.

Peter’s being raised by an old soldier (Mandy Patinkin) who is training him to be a young soldier — discipline, hardship (he’s only allowed to buy old “hard” bread from the baker) and marching are his life.

“What is the world?” old Vilna drills him. “HARD.” Any idea that it isn’t is just “a fairy tale.”

“Where there is comfort, there is innocence. Where there is innocence, there can never be a soldier.”

So, no comfort for you!

But when Peter takes the day’s coin to go out and buy the day’s hard bread and “tiniest fish” for dinner, he gives way to his imagination by paying our narrating fortune teller, who seems to know a lot about him, to answer just one question. He wants to know about this sister he was sure he had. How can he find her?

“Follow the elephant,” she says. The elephant “will lead you to her!”

But elephants are just another item on old Vilna’s list of “impossible” things. “False hope” that there are such things will serve no purpose. But when a clumsy magician (Benedict Wong, kind of funny) conjures one up in the middle of his flailing act in town, it makes the newspaper. Old Vilna’s “False hope!” starts to sound like “Fake News!” The kid wonders if the old man, who assured him that his sister is long dead, ever “lied to me.”

In any event, Peter seeks out the elephant (the magician was jailed for his stunt as the town fears that which it does not know or understand). And with the aid of his palace guard neighbor (Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry), he prevents the never-laughs Countess (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and her advisors from “getting rid of it.” The good time Charlie king (Aasif Mandvi, flip and funny and all alone in his comic efforts) is notified, shows up and takes charge.

But Peter needs the elephant to find his sister. Sure, the joker with the crown says. Do “Three impossible tasks” and you can have it. The tasks are set up and poor Peter must do what no one thinks is possible three times in order to fulfill “my destiny.”

Miranda Richardson voices an older woman “crushed” by the elephant, and determined to make the magician pay with a daily in-jail harangue. Dawn French voices the nun/nurse who, it turns out, took in Peter’s sister long ago.

Mandvi, always good for a few chuckles (he was Uncle Morty on TV’s version of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”), breathes life into his scenes. But one of his king character’s impossible quests for Peter is, of course, to make the Countess who never laughs laugh. The fact that even that scene is a stiff, even by kid-oriented slapstick standards, points at the principal failing of Martin Hynes’ screenplay.

He’s nailed down the messaging. But he’s trapped in the same somber self-serious fairytale that Camillo ordained. A touching moment plays, here and there. The elephant, trapped in this situation and far from its own kind, deserves better than this, Peter comes to realize.

But as that and the other themes and subtexts here aren’t all that serious or profound, a lighter hearted touch was called for and is sorely missed, scene after static, beautifully-animated scene.

Rating: TV-G

Cast: The voices of Noah Jupe, Brian Tyree Henry, Mandy Patinkin, Aasif Mandvi, Natasia Demetriou, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Miranda Richardson and Benedict Wong

Credits: Directed by Wendy Rogers, scripted by Martin Hynes, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo. A Mar. 17 Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43`

“Daisy Jones & the Six” is a buzzed-about show that’s been on everybody’s radar for a few months for the following reasons. Elvis’s granddaughter, Riley Keough stars as a singer-songwriter in a Stevie Nicks/Laura Nero early ’70s mold.

It’s based on a popular novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

And entertainment editors and most TV and film reviewers are mostly old enough to have a nostalgia for “Almost Famous,” and have a passing interest in “The Laurel Canyon Sound” of the ’70s. Are the kids listening to this music? TBD.

So it’s dated because we’re dated, and if I had to guess, I’d say the people who pushed the soundtrack of this series to the top of iTunes are some of the same folks familiar with the novel — old enough to get an AARP invitation in the mail.

To use another antiquated reference, that line Wayne used to Garth in a “Wayne’s World” sketch to describe Fleetwood Mac — “Classic ‘older brother’s band.” — still stings, and in this case, fits.

The series? Three episodes in, after The Dunne Brothers Band from Pittsburgh has renamed itself as The Six, taken its shot and been tripped up by drugs, sex and misbehavior on the road, lead singer/songwriter Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) sums up the story thus far, and pretty much going forward as well.

“Same old rock’n roll tale.”

It’s the story of a band with multiple singers and a British keyboards player (Suki Waterhouse). So we’re invited to believe we’re seeing a version of the “Rumors” of Fleetwood Mac. But there’s a hint of Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles and Jackson Browne and maybe CSNY in the sound and the scene.

That “Fleetwood” connection is tenuous. And that rock singer fronting a dreamy, ’60s band that sonically resembles The Jefferson Airplane? The one who date-rapes rich girl/groupie/aspiring singer Daisy at a rock star party when she’s just 15? It’s just a coincidence that he’s a taller, dark-haired version of Marty Balin.

Well, he’s dead so he won’t sue over this dead ringer.

The 10 episode series follows the rise, stumble and rise again and abrupt break-up after a sold-out Soldier Field (Chicago) show in ’77, framed in a 1997 mockumentary, complete with surviving figures from their glory days answering off-camera (and off-mike, to make it “authentic”) questions about their history.

If this series is connecting with a younger audience, that may be because they have a passing familiarity with classic rock (The Dunne Brothers do Credence and Animals covers at prom and graduation parties), vintage California pop and rock and perhaps utter ignorance of the many films this show “borrows” from.

“Eddie and the Cruisers” and “Almost Famous” for starters, a bit of “The Rose” here, a touch of this or that there.

It’s broad enough to fold in a studio scene soul backup singer (Nabiyah Be) who will turn disco diva with a secret later in the series. She’s gay.

Here’s what we look and listen for in such enterprises, that spine-tingling moment when Queen figures out the chorus to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the first time we hear “The Dark Side” thrown together in rehearsal by Eddie and his Cruisers, Brian Wilson fanatically tapping into family and friends harmonies, and the theremin to create “Good Vibrations,” Aretha putting her special touch on “RESPECT” on screen, Carole pounding the piano because she feels “the Earth move under my feet” on stage.

There isn’t a tune here that provides that. Keough (“Zola,” “The Devil All the Time) and Claflin (“Peaky Blinders”) are pleasantly listenable under-trained singers, with him convincing enough as a tries-too-hard front man (in the early scenes) and Keough a natural born “go my own way” spitfire. The music and the band’s performances of it don’t provide the show with any sort of life.

The first few episodes jump right into forming the band, running away to LA where local lass Margaret is evolving into Daisy, a groupie with a notebook she writes songs in. So little of interest happens that when Timothy Olyphant shows up as a jaded road manager who might help them out, you get your hopes up.

Tom Wright, who’s been around since “Seinfeld” and “Barbershop,” plays a seen-it-all producer desperate to stay relevant by finding The Next Big Thing. He’s got the best lines, delivered with a jaded wisdom on an archived (faked) “Merv Griffin Show” appearance, telling the story of “discovering” Daisy, who didn’t want to be discovered or “shaped” by a producer, and thus stomps off.

“Sometimes the back of someone is the best way to see who they are,” producer Teddy Price intones, a line not given any sexual innuendo at all.

When the wary Daisy, facing the same sexism and outright harassment other early women of rock face in “Daisy & the Six,” rebuffs his strictly-professional entreaties again, he drops a quarter in the jukebox, Dusty Springfield launches into “Son of a Preacher Man,” and he tells the impertinent brat, “By the way, THIS is a song.”

He also drives the coolest car — a Maserati Sebring.

There’s enough musical archeology to all of this, the LA “Sunset Strip” scene with The Troubadour, recording studios and the like, the band’s first “stick together” vows after we’ve heard them stumble through “House of the Rising Sun,” to keep some folks interested.

But what this series, with several episodes directed by the gifted writer (not here) and director James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”), immerses us in is the soap opera, the photographer/lover/wife (Camilla Morrone) Billy falls for, bassist Dunne brother Graham (Will Harrison) falling for the sexy, sophisticated Brit keyboardist.

And that, friends and music fans, isn’t all that and isn’t remotely as sexy or sordid as the “real” Fleetwood Mac saga. Nor is the soundtrack, I might add. Want to hear a great recreation of that general era, just after Janis? Spotify “The Rose” or buy it on iTunes. That Bette Midler could bring it, break you up with a laugh or break your heart.

There’s little that passes for any of that in “Daisy Jones & The Six.

Rating: TV-MA, drugs, sex, etc.

Cast: Riley Keough, Sam Clalfin, Camilla Morrone, Suki Waterhouse, Will Harrison, Nabiyah Be, John Whitehouse, Sebastian Chacon, Timothy Olyphant and Tom Wright.

Credits: Created by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber based on the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 10 episodes, @44-50 minutes each.  

“The Year Between” is an amusing, infuriating and sometimes touching dance around mental illness. It’s a dry, droll dramedy that dares to show the narcissism that comes with a diagnosis that gives a college coed license to suck all of the oxygen out of everyone around her as she offhandedly and carelessly gets treatment, and childishly mucks it up.

“Today is about me,” Clemence announces, as if her family hasn’t figured that out. “EVERY day is about you,” her younger brother reminds her, and not without a truckload of resentment.

Writer, director and star Alex Heller gives this indie film an a memorably obnoxious heroine, a 20 year old who’d probably be a jerk even without the bipolar mania that is what “The German woman” (Waltrudis Buck) says is what ails her the very first time they meet. Clemence (Heller) calls her psychiatrist “the German woman’ to take away some of her power.”

Clemence (Heller) is unfiltered and unmotivated, self-medicating because “I can’t fall asleep at night and everyone hates me,” shoplifting for a cheap thrill and insulting because she can’t be bothered to be otherwise.

We’ve seen her blithely bully and terrorize her college roommate, who finally has had enough and calls Clemence’s Mom (J. Smith-Cameron), who shows up in an ancient minivan in a fury. She, too, has had enough.

Thus “the German woman.” Followed by “Lithium.” And a therapist. When you’re riding around your home town (Oak Brook, Illinois) and saying the demonic part out loud — “Somebody should BOMB this place,” folks are going to be alarmed.

“The Year Between” is a “true events” inspired account of a mentally ill “gap year.” Clemence needs help and Mom is determined to get it for her, no matter how ruinous it is for the finances of a gift shop owner and her school teacher husband (Steve Buscemi), no matter how disruptive it is for college bound younger sister Carlin (Emily Robinson) or shy, trying to come into his own high school freshman Neil (Wyatt Oleff).

The family moves her into the basement, where if nothing else, her night terrors will be a little harder to hear and her lashing out isn’t likely to break anything valuable.

Her siblings are forced out of the family’s focus as the “mentally ill burnout” takes all the attention and effort. Clemence takes the dog for a walk at down, and doesn’t come back until the wee hours of the following morning. Clemence entertains the attentions of stoner ex-classmate Ashik (Rajeev Jacob).

But she eventually gets a job down at Big Deals, the discount store.

“I don’t have any previous experience, references or emergency contacts.” Her qualifications? “I have a name, an address and a dream!”

There aren’t any real “wake-up calls” with mental illness. If there were, younger Black colleague Beth (Kyanna Simone) would be Clemence’s. Beth is much more adult, organizing and planning her future because if she goes off the rails “nobody’s taking me in to live in their basement.”

Heller is the embodiment of narcissistic deadpan in this role she has scripted and built her movie around. She tests us as the rude and rash Clemence tests her family, daring us to not like her, not root for her, to not wish her away.

Every character is generously fleshed-in, letting us see the problems dogging her neglected siblings, her mother’s determination to do right by a kid who is wrecking their family and Clemence’s dad’s upbeat nature, sorely tested by a child so ill everybody else’s issues take a back seat.

“After a point, chaos sucks.”

Heller details the pitfalls of psychotherapy — it’s expensive and not every shrink graduated in the top half of his or her class — and the side effects of prescription drugs.

And for all of that, she manages to find room for the slightest glimmer of hope.

This indie outing won’t find a large audience, but that sliver of optimism makes it a must-see movie for anybody dealing with someone on the Clemence spectrum in their life. By giving us a solid if snarky take on the what living with ADHD in its ugliest forms is like, both for the sufferer and those who suffer with her, our first-time writer-director has made a movie that can’t help but be a public service.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Alex Heller, Kyanna Simone, J Smith-Cameron, Emily Robinson, Wyatt Oleff, Rajeev Jacob, Waltrudis Buck and Steve Buscemi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alex Heller. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:34

The voice that giggles off the page in her new memoir is unmistakably Geena Davis — funny, frank, and self-effacing, a tall woman and towering talent with a lifelong girlish streak. She is Thelma without the hellion’s drawl, Dottie Hinson, blocking home plate, daring you to run on her, Barbara in “Beetlejuice” adjusting to her newfound, dead state, with a little Valerie — coy and apple-cheeked cute making one wonder if indeed, “Earth Girls are Easy” — thrown in for sex appeal.

But this just-revealing-enough memoir is designed to make one reconsider her glamorous screen persona, and the offscreen focus that allowed Oscar winning actress, activist and accomplished archer (in her ’40s) to be a success in spite of the self-conscious-about-her-height, self-doubt and enforced humility of her upbringing.

An early anecdote recalls how Davis’ Massachusetts family was so “polite” they’d almost let a distracted, careless-driving relative plunge them into oncoming traffic and fiery deaths rather than speak out and risk being thought of as “impolite.”

The modest, chipper, upbeat image that she trots out for chat shows, book tours and speeches on behalf of her Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is a lifelong construct, and makes her standout in a business bent on rewarding “chutzpah.” Not that she doesn’t have that, too. She arm-twisted her friend Lawrence Kasdan for the role that made her and earned her an Oscar, “The Accidental Tourist.” And Madonna probably never got over her nudging her aside to star in “Angie,” a hot, working class New York script making the rounds as “Angie, I Says.”

But the lady who liked being known as “the nicest person on set” in all her movies — save for “A League of Their Own” (“You simply can’t out-nice Tom Hanks.”) let herself get pushed around a lot over the course of her career– bullying power games with directors and co-stars, harassing come-ons in auditions and the like. That compulsion is to “be nice,” polite, “not cause a fuss” or bring attention to herself gave her trouble, but she never grew out of it.

There’s something vaguely enervating about the Spanish romance “Love at First Kiss.”

It never was a romantic comedy, despite having a situation or two and a character or two ripe for it. And the film rarely crosses the line into “sweetly sad.”

But it’s a dispiriting 96 minutes in any event, and perhaps its the plot and the “hero” that make it so.

Álvaro Cervantes stars as Javier, our hunky narrator who tells his tale with a whiff of resignation in his voice-over.

Ever since he was a teen, Javier’s been able to “see” an entire relationship,” its early heat and romantic peaks and promise and eventual dissolution, just in that “first kiss.”

His superpower does him no good. Because whatever the women he “dumps” think of him, he’s playing for keeps and just now getting a grasp of the patterns that flash before his eyes in that “besame mucho moment. We meet him just as he’s about to have another drink dumped on him at his favorite pub.

No woman wants some jerk to tell her “We have no future,” no matter how certain he is that he’s irrefutably right, because he’s seen it.

Lucia (Silvia Alonso), the live-in girlfriend of his pal Roberto (Gorka Otxoa), has had a few chances to size Javier up, and gets downright mean about Mr. “Commitment-phobic.” Still, she’s got this broken-hearted friend she tries to set him up with, just as her “transition f—,” a guy you meet and exploit for uncomplicated sex, just to get over the last boyfriend.

Javier can see where the fix-up will end up, getting vomited on by a night of clubbing. So he does his best to dodge that bullet. That’s how he ends up kissing his “best friend’s girl,” who “hates” him.

And what he sees when he and Luca lock lips is straight out of a classic Levi’s commercial. This is the happy ending he’s been looking for.

The movie then becomes a coy game of avoiding the inevitable, then trying to not hurt Roberto, then surrendering. But is the inevitable as romantic as it sounds?

Suspenseful but contrived, over-the-top and far from the most “logical” thriller, file “Unseen” under “sloppy movie but a good time.”

It’s a sight-impaired person imperiled thriller, borrowing its can’t-see, a stranger on a cell phone can help plot from “See For Me.” This short, brisk and sometimes cute tale a first for Blumhouse) loses its urgency and sense of logic more than once. But it has its edge-of-your-seat moments. And thanks to stars Midori Francis and Jolene Purdy, we root for our heroines, two strangers linked by a misdial and the frantic effort to save one from her murderous ex.

“Grey’s Anatomy” alumna Francis plays Emily, who wakes up tied-up in the Michigan hunting cabin of her psychotic “trust fund baby” ex-boyfriend (Michael Patrick Lane).

Purdy, of “Orange is the New Black,” is Sam, a rural Florida convenience store clerk bracing for another day of hell-on-the-job. It’s her number that blind-without-my-glasses Emily rings when 911 reassures her that they’ll get permission to figure out where she is and save her in “an hour.”

Emily’s overpowered her “talks-too-much villain” captor — “Remember why we were together?” But she breaks her glasses, and the world’s a blur, from her cell screen to the woods she lunges into in attempting her escape.

Sam, a plump, quivering mass of insecurities bullied by her redneck boss (Nicholas X. Parsons) — “You smell like failure!” — is thus given the responsibility of directing this stranger to safety by narrating what she sees on Emily’s phone to her, looking up problem solutions (how to bust out of zip ties) on Youtube and by getting woodlore tips from the least hostile customer to stop into Gators Galore Gas and Convenience.

The cellphone as “work the problem” tool has been a feature of a few films now, including the recent “Missing.” “See for Me” was better and more believable at making the gadget a literal lifeline.

But this script finds a lot of mischief and mayhem to visit on our two linked-by-T-Mobile strangers. Emily’s ex is hunting her, and since he kidnapped her on her morning jog, she’s wearing the least-camouflaged track suit imaginable. Meek Sam, already coping with an abusive absentee boss and a busted squishy/Icee/Slurpy machine, finds herself forced to help Emily, but facing off with the Rich Bitch Customer from Hell.

Tell the truth. You pictured Miss Pyle when you read that.

As Emily’s plight grows more dire, Sam’s situation escalates in the most Missi Pyle way ever.

There are a couple of gonzo moments in that convenience store that could have set the tone for “Unseen.” Pyle typically appears in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” fish-eye lens close-ups, exaggerating her over-the-top menace.

Some of Emily’s confrontations with rich nut job Charlie have an almost comical “couples therapy” edge.

And there’s a bit of bonding between the two women — who cannot KNOW both are Asian-American — over the racism of “Breakfast at Tiffany;s” (Mickey Rooney’s “white guy in ‘yellow face'” stereotype) and the way cruel kids use “Power Rangers” insultingly on Asian classmates.

There’s good stuff here, not all of it lost in a sometimes illogical, often slow-footed 76 minute (with credits) thriller. Engaging leads aside, this never quite “gets there.” But at least the story doesn’t waste a lot of anybody’s time in the attempt.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity, pot use

Cast: Midori Francis, Jolene Purdy, Michael Patrick Lane, Nicholas X Parsons and Missi Pyle.

Credits: Directed by Yoko Okumura, scripted by Salvatore Cardoni and Brian Rawlins. A Blumhouse film, a Paramount Home Entertainment/MGM+ release.

Running time: 1:16

Here’s a Polish romance whose title is a promise about what it provides. “Tonight You’re Sleeping With Me” is an invitation to a nap.

A corny melodrama with the classic “neglected” wife, “self-absorbed” husband and irresistible “old flame,” the screenwriters throw this thing together without a lot of attention to particulars.

Everything that happens feels contrived. Every character is more sketched-in than fleshed-out. Hell, the two ladies who wrote this give their male leads the first names of actors in the cast in other roles — Janek and Maciej. I’d say “coincidence,” but judging from the product of their typing, the safer bet is that they were that unimaginative and lazy.

Nina (Roma Gasiorowska of “Lesson Plan”) is a working mother of two, a journalist with a lifestyle website. She has a husband (Wojciech Zielinksi) who sloughs off almost all parenting and domestic responsibilities on her, and after nine years all he’s really up for is “a quickie.”

But at least he has his annual solo backpacking trip through Iceland to look forward to.

Her Dad (Jacek Koman) sees it, the way Maciej has “his” car, his work and his life.

“If only only half of the couple sacrifices…”

Her judgmental martinet of a mother (Ewa Wencel) is less understanding. About everything.

And then an old flame is hired to be a reporter under Nina, apparently without her being consulted or even knowing about it. Jacek (Maciej Musial) just shows up and rocks her flashbacks. It won’t be long, we know, before this underling is under him.

Every script twist throwing them together is as obvious as every character trait/action that points to a doomed marriage. Every line of dialogue is as bad in English as it was in the original Polish.

“I feel so...valued by you.” “I like your driving. It’s…gentle.“

The attractive leads have chemistry and the potential for sparks, but there’s no getting past the naps before and after that moment when somebody insists “Tonight, you’re sleeping with me.”

Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity

Cast: Roma Gasiorowska, Maciej Musial, Wojciech Zielinski, Jacek Koman and Ewa Wencel

Credits: Directed by Robert Wichrowski, scripted by Anna Janyska and Anna Szczypczynska. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Yeah, I’ve got a couple of movies that just came in to review. “Urgent” the last minute publicists say.

“Manana,” I say.

Why?

#ItHappensEverySpring.

A spring training break at the Trop in the Banana Republic of Florida. And no movie fan would be fully dressed without his Durham Bulls cap.

Unfortunately titled, not quite as polished, shot, edited and “expert” driven as you might hope, “American Bolshevik” begins with a wealthy Newport, Rhode Island philanthropist recounting stories of dogs she’s lost to coyotes. It features more disturbing still photographs and scenes of wanton slaughter and animal cruelty than the average viewer would find tolerable.

But this documentary about the durability and brutally, expensively and stubbornly-pursued efforts to wipe-out North America’s most populous and successful canine predator, the coyote, is certainly an eye opener.

It’s titled from a phrase that Western nature writer and folklorist Dan Flores, the anchor interview in the film, coins to describe these ultimate survivors, predators who have thrived despite backward, “official” and special interest-driven efforts to exterminate it the way species from wolves and grizzlies to buffalo and bighorn sheep were almost wiped out.

Like “Bolsheviks,” the Red Menace pursued with a murderous, extermination-minded zero tolerance in from the 1910s onward, the canis latrans has endured. It has survived trapping, bounty-hunting “contests,” mass-poisoning, shooting from helicopters and snowmobiles and government-backed planned-extinction efforts. Much of this has been conducted out of public sight, with public money and largely at the urging of “lazy,” shortsighted and stubbornly misguided and misinformed Western ranching interests.

An Eastern sheep farming wildlife biologist is the one who characterizes the 150 years of ranchers this way in a film that makes the case that bad human practices are always what leads to “bad” coyotes, who adapt to prey that’s made easily accessible by “open range” grazing, to suburban human “feeding nature” practices, critters who react murderously to any other canine that comes sniffing around their cubs.

“They don’t call them ‘wily’ for nothing!” one coyote-studying expert enthuses.

Being a species of dogs, there’s always the danger of sentimentalizing a predator ferocious and clever enough to hunt and kill sheep, and in its larger Eastern wolf-interbred incarnation, take down deer. But even folks who have lost pets to them — leash-law violating dog and cat owners — confess a fascination with these new “neighbors who migrated north and east from the American Southwest, west and prairies to tip over their garbage can and eat the dog and cat food left out for their household companions.

Flores, a Louisiana native now living in New Mexico and professor emeritus with the University of Montana-Missoula, collects stories and Native myths attached to coyotes, stories that pass on the intelligence and foibles they seem to share with humans in fable form, and marvels at their adaptability.

Others note the long road traveling from officially-sanctioned slaughter and the long road to turning away from it. A lot of this still goes on thanks to ranchers and their livestock associations, whose business models were built on free access to public land for their own personal use and cheap meat made possible by a 150 year long government handout. Their practices get backhanded more than once in the film, which suggests that corporate mentality drives coyote killing simply to save Big Ag and entitled fat cat ranchers from the bother and expense of fencing in their four-footed assets.

But “American Bolshevik” isn’t likely to change that mindset, or end the pointless (“Hunting them NEVER works” is explained in blunt, biological and mathematical terms.) and destructive practices in the land of “Money talks.” Nor is the film likely to reach a wide audience thanks to its title and sometimes graphic imagery and harsh subject matter.

Still, if you’ve ever stumbled into a coyote on a hike or checking out your yard or patio in passing, the film is worth a look just to familiarize yourself with what you’re seeing and dealing with and what you’re doing to enable or encourage the stigma of a “menace” laid upon a singing wild dog who’s just doing what comes naturally.

Rating: unrated, disturbing images of animal cruelty and mass slaughter

Cast: Dan Flores, Numi Mitchell, Camilla Fox and Chris Schadler

Credits: Scripted and directed by Julie Marrron. A Lemon Martini release on Apple TV, Amazon and Vudu

Running time: 1:24