Movie Nation

God help me, but I laughed a few times at “Down Low,” a glib, nasty and triumphantly transgressive comedy about a dying gay man’s off-the-bucket-list last big adventure.

Zachary Quinto plays that dying gay man, whom we don’t know is dying when he summons a masseuse (Luke Gage, who co-wrote this) whose specialty is “happy endings.”

The indignities of a hand-job interrupted by a debate over music — Leo Delibes vs. “Deep Throat” by CupkKake — and performed by a chatty, out-and-LOUD-about-it gay “bro” are just the beginning of this comedy’s “No they DIDN’Ts.”

It’s a rude and raunchy farce whose reason for existing is that rudeness and raunch. As such, it’s superficial and kind of dumb. But give these line-crossers their due. They find some laughs.

Quinto is Gary, as blandly suburban and polite as his name, a fellow who finally told his wife and family of his “true” nature, and then let devout churchgoer Patti (Audra McDonald) send out this snippy, over-decorated embossed “announcement” about it to all their friends and family.

Gary has never been around somebody like Kory, “like the long lost Kardashian,” an out and outspoken and oh-so-gauche gay hunk who peppers Gary with questions, suggestions, gay slang and gay-icon references.

“Sex and the City?”

“You are SUCH an Aidan and I NEED you to be Mr. Big!”

Kory, whose real name is “Cameron,” which comes out as he and Gary become “friends,” is a nonstop blast of nasty boy sexual frankness and gay sex-and-drugs analogies, “like a gay popper. People just ‘open up’ to me.”

Cameron sets Gary up with a blind hookup on PLUNGR, only to have the closeted bohunk (Sebastian Aroyo) balk at the “Mister Rogers-looking-ass dude” who is to be their “third” — 50ish Gary.

That sets Cameron off, and long silly story short, that’s how they end up with a body. The first one, anyway.

“Down Low” transitions into something like a “What do we do with the body/bodies?” stage comedy as an Ambien-blasted neighbor (Judith Light, of course) walks in, and a crime-scene-cover-up specialist (Simon Rex of “Red Rocket”), also on PLUNGR, is summoned for being the only person “sick and twisted” enough to give them a way out of their dilemma.

Quinto does well enough as the “straight man” (ahem) for all these buzzy.funny folks mild-mannered/cancer-dying Gary must cope with. Gage, of “White Lotus” and “Euphoria,” is a stitch, and Rex pushes things to the next level, as one might expect.

But the main reason the frank rawdog sex talk is here is to set up how outlandish what to follow will be. A crack-fueled sing-along (“Higher”) bubbles up but doesn’t distract us from the greater comical outrages to come.

Still, one can’t help but notice that “shock and ‘ewww'” is mostly what this is about. You don’t have to be homphobic to grasp the film’s cliched associations and eye-rolling gay lifestyle tropes.

“Down Low” starts tacky and then proceeds to look for lower low-downs, one right after the other, before finishing sweet. A little of all of that goes a long way, but take away the raunchy and there is no movie.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, sex and profanity

Cast: Zachary Quinto, Lukas Gage, Judith Light, Simon Rex, Sebastian Aroyo and Audra McDonald

Credits: Directed by Rightor Doyle, scripted by Phoebe Fisher and Lukas Gage. A FilmNation/Sony release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:34

“The Legionnaire” is a riveting topical drama “torn from today’s headlines” and set on the front lines of the global migration and housing crisis.

The plot is another cop must choose between “families” dilemma — his blood relatives versus his comrades in arms. But the novelty is in seeing racist Italy’s “immigrant problem” through the eyes of a riot cop of African descent who dons his helmet, gasmask and shield and does his job, evicting immigrant squatters. Until, that is, the squatters are his relatives.

Director Hleb Papou’s execution in telling that simple story is damned near flawless. It’s a sleek, lean and involving drama with thriller and melodramatic elements that make for smart, thoughtful entertainment.

The Legionnaires here are an elite riot squad which finds itself carrying out a lot of mass evictions all over Rome, where squatters from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa have taken up residence in otherwise abandoned buildings.

We meet police in dramatic fashion, a phalanx of club-weilding warriors in helmets and gas masks emerging from the smoke and fog of tear gas. At the end of a day’s eviction, they put down their billy clubs, take off their helmets and masks and ride back to the office — just another day’s work.

One helmet comes off and reveals their lone Black member. Daniel (Germano Gentile) is “Hot Chocolate” or “Hot Choc” (in Italian with English subtitles) to his mates. They depend on him and he depends on them.

They are disciplined, brawny men, ready to move as one and move mobs as they do. They’re trained to know how far they can go in doing what their jobs, goaded and prodded in their fight-off-rioters rehearsals in a boxing ring.

But Daniel, we quickly guess, has a few triggers to fend off. There’s racial ball-busting from his fellow squad members, but some of it has an edge. And God forbid you taunt at him about his “Mama.”

Daniel is one of them, fluent in Italian, with a wife (Ina Gjika) and baby on the way, and no other family, so he says.

They don’t know his mother (Félicité Mbezele) and agitator brother Patrick (Maurizio Bousso) have been squatting in this one high-rise that’s been “occupied” since the late 2000s. And they’re not quick to figure out that calls to evict those in San Giovanni often wind up with Daniel calling in sick.

The film is about Daniel’s struggles with all the different groups grabbing for his loyalty. The cops expect him to do his job, no questions asked. But he’s tipping his brother and mother about raids, even as he begs them to leave, to come stay with him, at least temporarily.

Patrick is an uncompromising idealist with a little boy and an ex (Hedy Krissane) about to move the child to Milan. He’s an organizer, keeping the building’s routine (residents police themselves, do their own repairs and keep the power on) and looking for political allies (communists and leftists who pass for “half communist) in their struggle.

And that ball-busting and good-natured race-baiting in Daniel’s squad should tip him off that there are plenty of members who wouldn’t hesitate to drop the N-word on him the way other Italians are fond of doing at soccer matches. All these disparate stresses are destined to come to a head.

The script, co-written by director Papou, Giuseppe Brigante and Emanuele Mochi, allows room for a few grace notes between the domestic struggles and scenes of strife. The power is cut-off, and the residents are at a loss as to how they can get it back on without going to jail.

A Polish priest sent “by the Holy Father” shows up, asks to see the junction box, and voila! That’s what a populist Pope will do for you — find a priest who used to be an electrician.

A rally at the residence includes an appearance by populist folk singer Ivan Talarico, whose people power patter tunes would pass muster with Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez.

Some of the action is pre-ordained. We’ve seen lots of versions of this tug of war for a cop’s soul before, after all. “The Departed,” “Brooklyn’s Finest” and the recent TV series “Small Axe” come instantly to mind.

But “The Legionnaire” is fascinating in its details, moving in its understated performances and righteous in its treatment of a cop who puts humanity and family ahead of camaraderie and property rights.

Rating: unrated, violence, nudity, smoking, profanity

Cast: Germano Gentile, Maurizio Bousso, Marco Falaguasta, Hedy Krissane, Ina Gjika and Félicité Mbezele

Credits: Directed by Hleb Papou, scripted by Giuseppe Brigante, Emanuele Mochi and Hleb Papou. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:22

We’ve had a gloves-off documentary about the triumphant and tragically addictive life of singer Amy Winehouse. Here’s a link to my interview with “Amy” director Asif Kapadia.

Now, the same folks who thought the abortion titled “Lisa Frankenstein” was a good idea are releasing a “true story” feature bio-pic of Amy (Marisa Abela) and her toxic, greedy dad (Eddie Marsan).

Focus Features will drop this right as the summer movie season is starting. Buncha rocket scientists, those Focus folks, I tell you what.

To put it delicately, “Lisa Frankenstein,” a new high school romance about an aspiring goth poetess who falls for a long-dead teen with dash and 1830s sideburn, doesn’t play.

A campy, bloody rom-com spin on a “Warm Bodies” theme, it manages a moment, here and there and just a hint of who screenwriter/genuine “character” Diablo Cody (“Juno,” “Young Adult,””Jennifer’s Body”) once was.

Indelicately put, it’s tin-eared evidence that the sparkling, edgy, Oscar-winning wit who wrote “Juno” got old. Not “old” old, but 45-is-too-old-to-be-scripting-teen-comedies old.

Nobody told Cody a 1989 period piece about a magically-animated corpse, who can’t talk until it’s too late, peppered with ’80s pop, quirky ’80s cars and struggling attempts at ’80s slang wouldn’t work. So the fool rushed in where wiser writers with and without Oscars fear to tread.

It’s a star vehicle for “Ant Man’s” Kathryn Newton, who wears Madonna Wannabe-wear and lots of Goth makeup and strains to find laughs when the screenplay cannot provide them.

Lisa is our teen scream queen, the “smart one” in a newly-formed family that includes a judgmental, figurine-collecting step-mom (Carla Gugino, not bad), the best dad the budget would allow (Joe Chrest, at least he looks like a “Dale”), and a pretty/vapid/dumb cheerleader sister named Taffy (Liza Soberano).

Taffy likes hunks, and is puzzled to hear Lisa is into the dreamboth editor of the school “lit(erary) mag,” Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry).

“He doesn’t play sports. He’s cerebral.”

“He’s in a wheelchair?”

There’s a lot of Diablo dialogue like that, a little of which is cute, a lot of which just isn’t.

Cole Sprouse plays the soulful statue in an abandoned (Louisiana) cemetery whom Lisa pines over until that fateful day something brings the pre-Emancipation young gent back to life.

Cody and actress-turned-director Zelda Williams (“Kappa Kappa Die”) wring a laugh out of our accomplished young Southern gentleman showing off at the keyboard, sight-reading a tune that Lisa knows and sings by heart.

REO Speedwagon never sounded so…Antebellum. Newton sings just like an enthusiastic but almost tone-deaf teen, which adds to its charm.

But the killings that follow, the bodies that must be disposed of and lack of anything like chemistry between our lead characters (it’s the writing, not the acting) fail to deliver anything remotely resembling a story that needed telling or a movie one feels the need to stay through to the bitter — and I do mean bitter — end.

Rating: PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, sexual material, language, sexual assault, teen drinking and drug content.

Cast: Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano, Cole Sprouse, Henry Eikenberry and Carla Gugino.

Credits: Directed by Zelda Williams, scripted by Diablo Cody. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:41

Romain Duris and Paul Kircher stars in this festival-acclaimed French sci-fi fantasy about family, evolution and a magical transformation of the human species.

It’s from the director of “Love at First Fight,” and this version of “The Animal Kingdom” — a very common title — opens March 15.

“Lost in Perfection” is a generally straightforward melodrama with thriller elements, or maybe a simple thriller with lots of melodrama (contrived plot twists and character “complications”).

But every so often, one is allowed to ponder if it isn’t some sort of Taiwanese dark comedy, with suicide, political intrigues, the manipulative media being manipulated and a “Black Widow” having one over on one and all.

Our alleged villainess is billed “The Unattractive Femme Fatale.” Kudos to zaftig co-star
Mei-Hsiu Lin for signing on and leaning into that label, that of a dowdy rural masseuse who acquires a small fortune from older Taipei men seduced by her magic fingers and whatnot.

Our heroine (Yu-Wei Shao) is an “eat a cookie” skinny TV anchor used to doing anything for clicks — fluff pieces on the politically-embattled premier’s dog-rescuing hobby, for instance, at the behest of the politician’s handlers. Even Li Mei’s choice for a husband (Figaro Tseng) seems focus-grouped.

She’s all about their wedding — the perfect photos, the media coverage, pleasing her doting dad (Tien-Chu Lee). She obssesses about her weight, her image, her work promotion and her daddy. Too bad if the groom gets pushed aside. But then, he’s into sex and she just isn’t.

And then there’s the opportunistic prosecutor who is sure he’s on the track of a master scammer who turns out to be Hsu Liang Ho, who just happens to be Li Mei’s dad’s neighbor and new paramour, and our “Unattractive Femme Fatale.”

What’s amusing about Prosecutor Lee isn’t his eager pursuit of fame and promotion, or his willingness to play ball to manipulate public opinion for his case, and perhaps away from the scandals about to envelope the government.

Prosecutor Lee is played by Rhyian Vaughan, an actor of Chinese and Welsh heritage who is a dead ringer for Tom Cruise. Every time I see him I expect him to jump out of a plane, on a bike or into an impossible mission and I chuckle. Look at that bottom photo and tell me I’m wrong.

Hsin Yin Sung’s latest — she did “On Happiness Road” — isn’t the most graceful weaving of all these disparate threads into a streamlined movie. Subplots drift into the background only to abruptly return to the foreground. Li Mei’s on-and-off engagement is the biggest one of those to lose in the mix.

But the bigger ideas resonate — a scandal blown-up without direct evidence, a “woman’s wiles” and agency overstated or discounted, the “unattractive” woman underestimated but having something she can teach the “perfect” one, the fragile manhood in this culture (the “victims” commit “suicide by charcoal” — lighting fires in closed spaces) and the media’s complicity in what we learn about and what gets covered up.

And a couple of scenes have a seriously twisted humor about them, not just the ones involving the look-alike for Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes’ ex.

Rating: TV-14, explicit sex, nudity

Cast: Yu-Wei Shao, Mei-Hsiu Lin, Rhydian Vaughan, Figaro Tseng and Tien-Chu Lee

Credits: Scripted and directed by Hsin Yin Sung. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

It is a dreadful oversight on someone’s part that the picture of Audrey Tatou as “Amélie” doesn’t adorn the Wikipedia page for the word “coquette.”

Wide-eyed and adorable, with a pixie haircut emphasizing her youth and that dimpled smile evoking a sunny, sweet and sexy innocence, she embodied her career-defining role in a quirky Parisian romance that merits re-release this Valentine’s Day.

Because it’s not like the cinema — Hollywood or elsewhere — is cranking out anything as light and sweet and romantic as this to compete with its memory.

Nominated for five Oscars, this 2001 classic was a peak moment for the whimsy of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose wildly-eccentric “Delicatessen” announced him to the world (co-directing with Marc Caro) and who was fresh off the dark wonders of “Alien: Resurrection” when he and co-writer Guillaume Laurent concocted this confection.

“Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain” as it is titled in French, is a Parisian romance set just after the death of Princess Diana, a quirky story of a waitress who has given up on love who decides to start interfering in the “messy lives” of others — mostly the lovelorn.

There’s a stranger in this dusty, 1870 New Mexican town. But as it’s just after the Civil War, this stranger, packing a Remington six-shooter, is Black.

Rail thin, served, but “barely,” in the log-cabin excuse for a saloon, asked for “papers” just to board the stagecoach, even though “I’m free,” glared at and hounded, Mo Washington is inclined to cynicism in voice-over narration form.

“We were free, but we had no place to be free.“

This stagecoach ride to Colorado will test Mo’s mettle and underscore Mo’s worth. Road agents will attack, kill and wound and crash the coach. Commanche will pick over the wreckage. And Mo —“Surrounded” — ” will need that Remington, that Civil War experience, to get out of this fix alive and make it to Colorado.

This sturdy and nervy Western punches through a checklist of tropes and conventions of the genre, and throws in a cross-dressing twist. Because while the hard men and harrumping women Mo runs into might think little of Mo’s thin frame and that more Michael Jackson than Chris Tucker high voice, we recognize Letitia Wright from “Black Panther,” “Black Mirror” and “Death on the Nile.”

Mo has passed herself off as a man to fight in a war, get good with a gun and get her hands on a deed to a piece of property in Colorado “for my people.” And damned if desperados, Indians and garden variety Old West racists are going to keep her from her destination.

Jeffrey Donovan plays the one man on that coach willing to look past race and the “Is that a man or a boy?” questions others have about Mo. When the infamous Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell) and his gang attack and the attack goes wrong — Guess where the stagecoach winds up? — the survivors tie him up, Wheeler (Donovan) will go for help and guess who is left behind to watch the prisoner?

Bell is in fine form here, an outlaw given to violent, spitting rages and sweet-talking negotiations.

“I fought for your kind in the war,” holds no truck with his guard, whose “secret” Walsh is the first to figure out.

With the threat of the rest of Walsh’s gang coming to fetch him in “Commanche country,” the possibility that nobody will return to take him off her hands and the extent of her plight becoming plain, Mo isn’t hearing it. “You the one in chains,” “white boy.” Don’t try to make that “We’re a lot alike” speech in a country where they “hang a Black man from a tree cuz he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The middle acts of “Surrounded” see less pounding through Western tropes and more grinding through two-hander “debates,” with the occasional escape attempt and encounter with the natives to break up the monotony.

Michael Kenneth Williams made his last performance memorable as a stranger who comes in the dead of night “to help,” but whom Mo and especially Walsh regard with suspicion crossing over into malice.

The action sequences are well-shot and edited, as Wright handles pistols and fight choreography almost well enough for us to discount her model-thin throw-weight’s impact on the physics of a punch.

But her performance has a simmering inner fire that balances nicely with Bell’s over-the-top panic and fury.

Donovan and Williams give the picture gravitas and instant credibility as entirely convincing Western “types” — men of violence with a hint of humanity.

Although some discount this thriller for its simplicity and middle act shortcomings, genre fans will relish its grit, grim dilemmas and period-perfect detail, all in service of an entertaining and believable yarn that honors both the history and the erased history of the American West.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Letitia Wright, Jamie Bell, Augusta Allen-Jones, Brett Gelman
Michael Kenneth Williams and Jeffrey Donovan.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Mandler, scripted by Justin Thomas and Michael Pagana. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:41

Got to get Krasinski back into the story, if only briefly.

So…prequel time, back to the days when the sound-sensitive alien beasties first dropped in.

Krasinski didn’t direct. He just gets a story credit, a brief appearance and a fat check as The Franchise rolls on.

Good replacement cast, though — Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou

June 28.

You can see the seeds of a decent modern day Western in “The Stolen Valley,” a thriller about Native American land theft, vanishing heritage, blood ties and the Old West delusions of Southwestern gun culture.

First-time writer-director Jesse Edwards’ script needed workshopping to clear up all the “Why the hell would anybody do THAT?” moments. The pacing is tentative and sluggish.

But the leads click, the shootouts are well-staged and a stand-out scene that blends action with comedy suggests the sort of “Thelma & Louise” variation this might have been.

Lupe (Briza Covarrubias) and Maddy (Allee Sutten Hethcoat) first cross paths at the payout for the Cedar City (Arizona) Rodeo. They just don’t know it.

Lupe is an honest mechanic, helping her mother (Paula Miranda) save up cash to get them “a place of our own.” They’re of Mexican/Navajo heritage, and work in their extended family’s taco truck for extra money.

Maddy is a rodeo rider, not even scraping by, in hock up to her eyeballs and living in her ancient pickup. Maddy’s debts are held by the gangster Antonio (Ricardo Herranz), who has his fingers in a lot of pies locally, including the pawn shop where Lupe goes to sell her Navajo jewelry to pay for medical care for her mother.

As Maddy shares the cowboy cosplaying fetish so many locals are into, she shows up to pay off her debt with Ricardo with a six-shooter strapped to her big-buckle belt. All heck breaks loose, Lupe gets roped into it, and next thing we and they know they’re on the lam together to see Lupe’s long-lost-now-rich Dad to beg for money.

“He owns half of Alta Valley” is Carl’s calling card. Maybe he’ll be warm and compassionate and reasonable and generous. Sure he will.

We get one look at this ornery, pistol-packing cuss and his band of armed ATV-riding hired-hands and we know better. This SOB (Micah Fitzgerald) is just here to make matters worse.

The pop-out scene in “Stolen Valley” comes during Lupe and Maddy’s getaway from Ricardo’s henchman. They barge into the weathered Buckskin Tavern biker bar on “Mexican Heritage” night. OK, afternoon.

Hey, it’s July 4. Why not?

Lupe yanks Maddy into the proceedings as they pose as “folklorico” dancers. Everything about this scene works — the way Lupe “Oye, hermanas” their way into an ensemble, her practiced ability to “fit in” with the dancing to the rude way the patrons treat bar owner and MC Bill (David Ogle, a hoot).

It’s like a piece of “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” tucked into a grimly self-serious B action picture, and it works.

Some of what follows does, too. But he performances are uneven in skill and effectiveness. Attempts at the occasional one-liner hit-or-miss.

“Can we shoot our way out of this now?”

Still, the racism is palpable and time-proven, the greed realistic and the threats mortal.

It’s just that the coincidences and unlikely resolutions to this or that fix the ladies find themselves, the slippery grasp of the law, real-estate transactions and corporate alarm at people they’re doing business with turning trigge- happy and mass-slaughter tolerant make this potential B-picture slide down the scale towards C and D.

“Stolen Valley” drifts into “lost potential” and never recovers.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: Briza Covarrubias, Allee Sutton Hethcoat, Micah Fitzgerald, Ricardo Herranz, Paulette Lamori and Paula Miranda.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jesse Edwards. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:44