Movie Nation

It would be hard to understate how intensely lovable “Scrambled” is.

Writer, director and star Leah McKendrick has made a scruffy, raunchy, rough-and-ready comedy about a Millennial whose biological clock has been sped up to the point where she puzzles over past loves and realizes she has quite a pile of regrets and a limited supply of eggs — her own — at 34.

McKendrick invites mockery for a generation that’s become a cultural punching bag. But she slips in reasons, explanations and the occasional legit or lame excuse for this particular demographic’s struggles at this particular time in America’s history.

And while “Scrambled” has sympathy for at least some of its Millennial characters, it’s as close to a cinematic “self-own” as that much-maligned generation has ever given us.

We encounter Nelly (McKendrick) at a wedding, not her own but somehow her natural environment. Jewelry-making (“Nellery” wearables), hard-partying ditz Nelly is that take-a-bullet for the bride bridesmaid that every young woman wants on her wedding day — at least in TV and the movies.

Bride/bestie Sheila (Ego Nwodim) insists Nelly do “a shot” for her. She’s having the mother of all “I’m not a WIFE”” panic attacks of wedding day jitters. Sheila wants to know if Nelly would be content to have sex with the her groom and only her groom “for the rest of your life?” Sheila demands coke, and not the “diet” kind.

All Nelly has is “molly,” which she shares. Yes, she’d totally “do” that groom forever and ever, amen. Marriage or no marriage, she reassures Sheila, “We’re gonna stay like this forever!” And when she hears that the reason Sheila’s tripping is that she’s secretly pregnant, she makes her spit out that damned pill.

But that the fact that Nelly’s living through a parade of baby showers that has more or less replaced the procession of weddings she’s been invited to as her peers reach “that age” and some version of maturity, as anyone and everyone is consoling her over the recent-enough break-up with the beau everyone thought was “The One,” Nelly has to take stock.

“Your thirties” are supposed to be “just your twenties with money.” No, she doesn’t have any. And yes, she’s not yet 40 but there’s this “smorgasbord of sausage” she envisions as her near future, “all love in this club” and whatnot. But another friend at the wedding wakes her up to how hard it was to conceive after 40.

Her Irish-American Dad (Clancy Brown) is more tactless than her Latina Mom (Laura Ceró) about “I want GRANDkids” and when is she going to pop them out? Her wealthier douche bro older brother (Andrew Santino) is still in his dating-children phase, so it’s on her.

How can she make this all work out?

“I don’t even KNOW if I want kids! I’ve seen ‘Euphoria!'”

She will beg that richer sibling for the money to grow, harvest and freeze some of her eggs. Of course he’s considers that a loan with the eggs as collateral.

And our libidinous redhead will trip through bar pick-ups and hook-ups with exes — we’ve already seen a careless, condom-losing encounter with a waiter at the wedding — as she gives “plan A,” a “real baby” made the “real” way one or five more tries as she’s taking the shots and cooking those un-“Scrambled” eggs.

McKendrick, a perky actress/writer turned writer-director, serves up a colorful but mostly nameless series of exes, “types” and would-be baby daddies labeled “The Prom King” who peaked in high school, the hippy “Burning Man,” “The Cult Leader,””Peter Pan,” “The Nice Guy” who unloads on her callous mistreatment and dumping, and an instant “Nope.”

“My probation officer is SUPER chill” is that last “type’s” best line.

All along the way, as we hear of the dreams she had and the delusions she clings to — donning her prom dress and “high school goggles” to troll for ex-classmates, getting her “Britney” on to forget the wasted, indulgent years she’s blown through — Nelly is forced to take stock and “see” herself and diminishing “thirst trap” status.

And through it all, McKendrick makes this hot-but-cooling-off-fast mess an object of ridicule and pity, easy to judge, but just as easy to empathize with.

As a filmmaker/storyteller, McKendrick gives off an Amy Schumer generation Jennifer Westfeldt/Nicole Holofcener energy — funny, topical and biting.

“Scrambled” is not getting as wide a release as this “Bridesmaids Lite” comedy deserves. But there’s an amusing “voice of her generation” vibe in this have-her “sausage” and eat it too farce, a movie about growing up and facing adulthood, at long last, and better late than never less those unscrambled eggs go cold.

Rating:  R for sexual content, nudity, language throughout and some drug use.

Cast: Leah McKendrick, Ego Nwodim, Mimi Kennedy, Andrew Santino, Laura Ceró and Clancy Brown.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Leah McKendrick. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:37

A tale of growing up on the mean streets of Chicago, a loving family at home and family that you make when you make a great friend, this Minhal Baig drama is the embodiment of an Indie Spirit Award nominee.

It’s a social justice character study with heart and warmth, a festival darling. And Sony Pictures Classics has it.

An over-the-top, violent and campy prologue sets us up for the all-star action romp that is “Argylle,” an espionage comedy from the fellow who unleashed the “Kingsman” franchise, Matthew Vaughn.

Brawls and epic shoot-outs break out, droll action heroes and venemous villains smirk and sneer, bodies fly about and the body count soars in a light thriller that begins with great promise and stumbles into ponderous “streaming” pacing before the struggle to rally at the finale arrives.

Sam Rockwell and Henry Cavill shine, Bryan Cranston fumes, Catherine O’Hara kvetches and Sofia Boutella meets her bombshell vixen match in the screen debut of sexy singer Dua Lipa in a tale that almost intentionally makes little sense, and can’t make much use at all out of genre icons Samuel L. Jackson and John Cena.

But I am hard-pressed to think of another movie that literally comes to a complete halt the moment its co-star makes her bow. There’s no getting around the deer-in-headlights bust that Bryce Dallas Howard is — a miscast, unemotive and dull dead weight on a picture that can ill-afford to stop and take stock of how messy it is.

Howard, of the recent “Jurassic” reboot, may look the part of the timid, mousy novelist whose thriller series about an agent named “Argylle” (Cavill) is her way of living vicariously through her wildly popular fiction. I kept thinking of Mormon Mom Stephenie Meyer, author of the “Twilight” series.

But director Vaughn has her do public readings from her books, and writer Elly Conway’s beaming “I’m a hit” smile can’t hide flat recitations of flat prose that sounds like plot summaries cut-and-pasted into an Amazon ad and a question and answer session cringily bad, one that goes on and on until we’ve almost forgotten the over-the-top spectacle of the opening gambit, featuring Cavill and Cena and Dua Lipa shooting and vamping their way through a Greek getaway scene dreamed up by our writer-heroine.

Vaughn saddles nepo baby Howard — daughter of Ron — with an often-digital cat which she tries to dote on, but which none of the spies who try to grab her or the spy who tries to protect her (Rockwell) treats with shall we say “the same affection.”

And while she can’t shoulder all the blame for the bust “Argylle” turns out to be, her leaden turn in the leading role points out how clunky the rest of this Pan European spy vs. spy saga becomes for its long, drawn-out middle acts

Elly Conway is trying to finish her latest book, and please her fiercest critic — her mom (O’Hara) — when her train ride is interrupted by a supremely scruffy and smart-alecky spy (Rockwell) and a sea of would-be assassins.

Turns out, her latest book — unfinished and thus still-unpublished — has “kicked a hornet’s nest” in the spy world. Agent Aidan, whom Elly can’t help but hallucinate her dashing hero Argylle onto as he busts up the train and every bad guy on it before affecting her “rescue,” might be trustworthy. Or he might not.

“Isn’t this fun?” Aidan cracks, and we’d agree. The action beats in Vaughn pictures generally are, with grand choreography and cinematography and digital tricks hiding the stuntwork.

But as the plot thickens, it curdles. As the “Your fantastic imagination is the key” to a spy scandal, treachery and international wrong-doing grows more dependent on Howard’s Elly, out of her depth but expected to pitch-in on the mayhem, “Argylle” grinds to a halt.

Vaughn, who has never quite shed his “Guy Ritchie Lite” label, builds big fight scenes around dance and disco music, with Barry White kicking off the festivities right from the start.

But White’s iconic-to-the-point-of-cliche “We got it together, didn’t we?” lyrics mislead. “Argylle,” which bounces from a Colorado Amtrak ride to London, France, Saudi Arabia and the deep blue sea, mixing real settings with digitally-augmented ones, real actors doing real action with stunt-folk and CGI de-aging and a digital cat, is more a jumble of jaunty, glib set-pieces than a narrative he ever gets his arms around.

The sight gags work, almost to a one, with Cena grabbing Lupa’s villainess off a moving motorcycle a comical highlight. Stone-faced Cavill almost seems to be having fun. Not as much fun as the dancing, death-dealing Rockwell, who is in fine form, but enough to hint at the James Bond Cavill might have become.

But “Argylle” — note the spelling — is about as fun as a box of socks for Christmas, plaid, checkered or argyle.

Rating: PG-13, action violence, innuendo, profanity

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Sofia Boutella, Dua Lipa and Samuel L. Jackson.

Credits: Directed by Matthew Vaughn, scripted by Jason Fuchs. A Universal release.

Running time: 2:19

A cast of promising and young things flip the cards and flip out at what follows

May.

A lot of people warned about what might happen. But most of America shrugged those warnings off, only to turn on a TV and gape, in shock, at the attack on the United States capital by right wing extremists on January 6, 2021.

And many of the most stunning images from that infamous day feature crosses, Christian flags, religious zealots waving “Jesus Saves” signs as they and their brethren pummeled police and stormed Congress to keep their “savior” from having to admit he lost the election.

“God & Country” is a chilling new documentary about how “we” as a nation got there, about the history of the unholy marriage of white Christianity and conversative politics, a movement born of bigotry, built with dark money and founded in Southern racism — attempts to keep Christian private schools and “Bible” colleges all white and thus tax-free in the 1960s and ’70s.

Director Dan Partland serves up a lot of footage from what really happened January 6, a reality that this movement and its leader have spent the ensuing years distorting and trying to erase from American memory. And he speaks with theologians, Christian journalists, podcasters, researchers and authors about the forces and figures and moments that created this “loud,” “violent” and “intolerant” minority that seems so determined to “overthrow democracy” and create an authoritarian “theocratic state.”

As the film makes clear, much of America had been unaware of this threat, the degree of radicalization and the amount of money invested in creating those radicals and enabling them to pursue their statistically unpopular agenda at the local, state and national level. Historians and experts list the scapegoating, pinpoint the day “abortion” became the cover “cause” for what was always a racist movement partly founded by old school racist Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Most of America doesn’t attend church, and the majority of churchgoers don’t attend the most fanatical churches. But you can sample the rhetoric driving through many a state, especially in the South, tuning into to “religious” licensed radio stations blasting right wing polemics and “news” in lieu of sermons. Not that the sermons I hear, mixed into this programming as I drive through South Carolina, are any less political, heated and tinged with martyrdom and violence.

“Is Christian Nationalism Christian?” is the most pointed question Partland asks, off-camera, in his film. First Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” and then others detail how that simply isn’t the case. “Power” is what these folks want, and they’ll take all the cash they can get from the lower-my-taxes super rich to achieve it.

Former anti-abortion activist Pastor Rob Schenck recalls recoiling from colleagues who flocked to “the incarnation of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,'” Donald Trump, as “the Chosen One.”

Theologians dive into the ways Jesus would have condemned this “violent movement.” Historians debunk the oft-repeated talking points of how America “was founded as a Christian nation,” listing the ways the Founding Fathers avoided religious language. Oh, and George Washington never prayed in the snow at Valley Forge. That’s just a painting, one with an agenda.

And journalists, researchers and others lay out the funding that shows how well-financed Christian nationalist lobbying groups like the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Alliance Defending Freedom and institutions such Hillsdale College create an echo chamber of the “threatened” which entitle affiliated groups like the Proud Boys to take their intimidation to the streets, and eventually the United States Capital, summoned there by their “chosen” leader.

“God & Country” creates its own climate of fear, not by interviewing the organizers, rabble rousers, hate mongers and more fanatical preachers, politicals and opinion leaders. Partland simply plays a barrage of their public statements, calls to organize, calls to “overthrow” and calls to violence.

It’s alarming, and if you hear it often enough you either become indoctrinated, or simply deaf to the sounds of an anti-Christian, anti-democracy, anti-American “loud” minority in their “God, Guns and Trump” hats openly calling for minority rule — theirs — in an America they remake in their backward, bigoted and violent image.

Partland has made a film that lays out the cause, the “thinking” and secret agenda and not-so-secret financiers of this dangerous Christian National movement. But it’s also a clarion call to the “40 to 50 percent of Americans who don’t vote,” a brilliantly-argued, damningly laid-out documentary case for registering, voting and preserving democracy from its most serious internal threat ever.

Rating: PG-13, news footage of violence, profanity

Cast: Interviews with Bishop William Barber, Kristin Kobes du Mez, Simone Campbell, Katherine Stewart, Russell Moore, Jemar Tisby, Skye Jethani, Pastor Rob Schenck, Charlie Kirk, Andrew Seidel, Anthea Butler and others

Credits: Directed by Dan Partland. An Oscilloscope Labs release.

Running time: 1:30

Two hours and 19 minutes of all star action comedy. Ready or not, here we go.

One could swap the title to “Phobias” and change the studio branding to “Pixar” and Dreamworks’ “Orion and the Dark” would fit (somewhat) neatly into that Disney studio’s recent obsession with the metaphysical.

A movie about being afraid of the dark could be part of a quartet of films on “feelings” and emotions (“Inside Out”), the first twinges of adulthood and controlling your emotions (“Turning Red”) and that ineffable something that makes us human — explained, in animated form, as “Soul.”

But the meandering Charlie Kaufman (“Orchid Thief”) adaptation of a slim, illustrated 2015 book by Emma Yarlett has more in common with the diffuse, unsatisfying “Elemental” if I’m sticking with the Pixar comparisons.

Screenwriter Kaufman’s taken the “Christmas Carol” element of The Dark, helping a kid appreciate that which he is most afraid of by showing the Dark and its “entities” over the course of one long night, and run with it. And he’s slapped on a framing device that has this story of a childhood turning point being told by the adult version of the kid, Orion, who experienced all this at age 11.

This Netflix production, scripted by Kaufman and perhaps rendered into something more sensible by co-writer and children’s animation vet Lloyd Taylor (“Nimona”) is fanciful but formulaic, and unlike most of Kaufman’s boundary-breaking writing, it’s downright derivative.

It’s “A Christmas Carol” meets “Monsters, Inc.,” with plenty of drawn and sketched “Diary” entries from another “Wimpy Kid.”

Orion — voiced by Jacob Tremblay — narrates the story of his fraught childhood, how he’s afraid “my parents will move away” while he’s at school, of “the gym locker room,” pf the bully Richie Panichi and being called on in “Early Colonialism and Imperialism” class.

Well, he must not live in Florida.

But the phobia that consumes Orion — so-named by his aged-out-of-being hippies parents (just guessing) — is The Dark. He decorates his room with nightlights, asks for extra stories (he’s in fifth grade) at bedtime and still can’t make it through the night.

It’s no wonder The Dark (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “Richard Jewell”) shows up, a tad digruntled about his rep, and takes the kid through one long night of Sleep, Insomnia, Unexplained Noises, Quiet and Sweet Dreams.

Those are the “entities” of darkness, voiced here by the likes of Angela Bassett, Nat Faxon, Aparna Nancherla and others. They take care of business, putting folks to sleep (smothering one restless old man with a “magic” pillow), driving insomnia, startling in noise, etc.

They’ve got to accomplish all this because of what needs to happen in the dark — rest and resetting the brain, keeping us and our world healthy. And they have only so many hours to do it before sunny, upbeat and not-quite-obnoxious Light (Ike Barinholtz) shows up and breaks the dawn.

Kaufman’s embellishments are imaginative, but not particularly funny or entertaining. The meta story, about adult Orion (Colin Hanks) explaining what he learned from The Dark at age 11 to his own little girl (Mia Akemi Brown) is a cute attempt at sentiment which left me cold.

Hauser’s the only voice actor to pop in this production, giving us a gruff but loveable Seth Rogen-without-the-stoner-edge sound-alike. He elicits a grin, here and there. But the other famous voices barely register, and laughs are as rare as a good night’s sleep here.

“Sponge Bob” veteran and first-time director Sean Charmatz has made a rite-of-passage picture that plays over the heads of its young target audience, and has a hard time finding the humor in any of this, despite the obvious intended light touch.

Rating: TV-Y7, scary images

Cast: The voices of Jacob Tremblay, Paul Walter Hauser, Angela Bassett, Carla Gugino, Natasia Demetriou, Ike Barinholtz, Nat Faxon, Aparna Nancherla and Werner Herzog

Credits: Directed by Sean Charmatz, scripted by Charlie Kaufman and Lloyd Taylor. based on the book by Emma Yarlett. A Dreamworks production for Netflix.

Running time: 1:33

Lionsgate has this “true story” (Perhaps merely inspired by?) Action epic.

They’ve had good luck with WWII films, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

“Deep Fear” isn’t a straight-up “Dead Calm” knockoff, despite the similarities in these waylaid-at-sea stories.

It’s still about a sailboat hijacked by a person or persons the skipper stopped to rescue. The nautical props and “weapons” are going to be the same and some of the story elements are over-familiar.

But this Caribbean thriller has sharks and some impressive underwater footage of dealing with those killers while trying to get someone out of a sunken boat. So they’ve got that going for them, if nothing else.

Mãdãlina Ghenea plays Naomi, whom we thought drowned when her family’s sailing yacht sank off the Bahamas in a storm 15 years ago. But here Naomi is, on a high-end 50 foot sailboat, diving off Guadelope with her nephew (Ibrahima Gueye) and beau/business partner (Ed Westwick), sailing past Dominica for her home island of Grenada.

She’s done all right for herself. Insurance settlement?

The trio are separated due to an impending business deal, which is puzzling because why wouldn’t vacationing nephew Barny stay to help sail the boat home? Jackson has a meeting, but Barny?

Anyway, that’s why she’s alone at sea, racing ahead of a coming storm, fielding worried sat phone calls from Jackson but sure of her solo seamanship.

She lets Jackson know when she sees people adrift on wreckage, but doesn’t alert the Coast Guard. The castaways (Macarena Gómez, John Paul Pace) are grateful but frantic. Somebody else is trapped in an air pocket in the trawler that went down.

The fact that they insist Naomi dive down without calling for assistance or alerting the authorities to a sinking should be her “tell.” But never mind.

She and survivor Tomas dive down and fetch Jose (Stany Coppet). Damned if Tomas doesn’t get eaten by a shark on the way back up.

Gloves are off, cards are on the table. There’s something on that sunken boat that a suddenly menacing and all-business Maria and Jose want. Storm be damned, sharks be damned, Naomi is going back down there to get it.

Even hearing “We have no idea how to sail a boat” doesn’t alert Naomi to the leverage she has in this situation. In a panic she gives in. Jackson, who has been tracking her progress, is increasingly alarmed at her radio silence.

The screenplay by Robert Capelli Jr. and Sophia Eptamenitis is mostly dull and almost always predictable. There’s an idiotic bit of Naomi flashing back to the trauma of her near-death at sea decades ago. And yet, here she is, sailing and diving without a care or a hint of PTSD about her, aside from those flashbacks.

But the French cable network Canal+ put money into this, so the digital sharks and underwater calamities in Marcus Adams’ film are slick and convincing. It’s just that Adams had a couple of poorly-received thrillers — “Long Time Dead” and “Octane” — that bombed over 20 years ago, and virtually no credits since.

However exciting the underwater bits are, the film’s lack of urgency kills any sense of suspense. Star Ghenea may be a looker but has little presence and never seems comfortable doing much more than posing on camera and rarely sounds at ease delivering the screenplay’s inane dialogue.

Any movie with a taste of “The Islands” and the gin-clear waters of the Caribbean will always have some allure. But this one just reminds us of all the superior thrillers with similar stories, characters and settings that came before it.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug content

Cast: Mãdãlina Ghenea, Ed Westwick, Macarena Gómez, Ibrahima Gueye, John Paul Pace and Stany Coppet

Credits: Directed by Marcus Adams, scripted by Robert Capelli Jr. and Sophia Eptameniti. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:25

A martial arts period piece set during the Sino-Russian tensions of the early ’70s.

This looks…nuts.

Feb. 23, Kino Lorber does what it can for US/Estonian relations. Russia mocking? One can only hope.