Movie Nation

“Out of Darkness” is a foundational myth horror tale, a grisly and grim narrative about a time when early humanity could first rightly refer to itself as “humanity.”

In cinematic shorthand, this Scottish production is “Quest for Fire” meets “A Quiet Place” or “The Thing” — any movie where The Deadly Unknown is picking off cast members one by one.

And for a genre piece that hews to and takes a good shot at transcending “formula,” it’s quite good.

A distant blot of yellow light pierces the pitch blackness of 45,000 years ago. As Ben Fordsman’s camera closes in on it, we see it is a campire and we hear a child, in a prehistoric dialect (with subtitles) ask, “Tell me a story.”

This is an extended family band of six. The boy, Heron (Luna Mwezi) has reached his tweens. His mother, Ave (Iola Evans) is heavily pregnant with a sibling. His father, Adem (Chuku Modu) is the alpha male leading them into this wilderness. Geirr (Kit Young) might be Adem’s brother. The storyteller is “a stray” they took in — Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green).

And the elder, the skeptic they don’t listen to, is Odal (Arno Lüning).

“The danger in bringing light to a dark place,” Odal intones, is that “You find out what lives in the darkness.”

That’s prompted by an inhuman screech they hear, which makes all but Adem question why he brought them “across the great sea” to this “cursed” land where the only trees are firs, and damned few of them — a wind-blasted heath with no sign of “prey” game.

Until they find a mammoth, devoured right down to the tusk.

Andrew Cumming’s debut feature immerses us The Great Unknown, before understanding, before anything mysterious that couldn’t be passed down orally could be understood by the primitive people in their furs and superstitions.

A “demon” is out there? When it yanks someone away from that campfire, they will hunt it and they will turn on each other, essentially “inventing” the venal, paranoid side of human nature we know today.

The alpha couple and their son get priority treatment. The “stray” is odd girl-becoming-a-woman out.

Something happened to the migration of the herds where they came from. Perhaps the climate was changing in the midst of the last ice age. Adem chose to take them across the sea instead of “South,” seeking the herds that never came north.

Odal never lets him forget that.

When they are attacked, they respond in the range of ways we expect them to. They won’t be able to avoid the perilous and dark forests any more. Their priority won’t be finding food in this place seemingly berefit of animals of any sort.

The production design is state-of-the-art period-correct and the thesis the film was built on sound — new evidence keeps turning up about how much prehistoric humans migrated, and to where.

And the fear is — in this case — literally primal. Something’s in the dark, something that will kill us.

“We light a fire or we die in the dark.”

The frights may be standard issue, but that novel setting, the ways characters rise to or shrink from their greatest tests, and the grim nature of human life in this most fragile of ages make “Out of Darkness” a winner, right down to the minimalist pun of its title.

Rating: R, graphic violence, gruesome images

Cast: Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Safia Oakley-Green, Iola Evans, Luna Mwezi and Arno Lüning

Credits: Directed by Andrew Cumming, scripted by Ruth Greenberg. A Bleecker Street release.

Running time: 1:27

“The Tiger’s Apprentice” is an action adventure fantasy for the elementary school-age movie audience, a two-fisted martial arts fighting film taking place in the real world of modern San Francisco, and not the mythical China of “Kung Fu Panda” or “Mulan.”

It’s not on a par with either of those in entertainment value, fun or animation (Think “Pixar 1.5”). But there are lessons about having the courage to stand up to bullies and the discipline to be above seeking revenge on bullies-who-have-been-bullied, and compassion.

The Laurence Yep novel the film is based on is listed as being for “ages eight to 12.” So it’s not “Young Adult” fiction, despite having teen heroes.

At least it’ll save parents the trouble of trying to explain the Chinese zodiac, which the film amusingly notes is emblazoned on every placemat in almost every Chinese restaurant in North America.

Tom (Brandon Soo Ho) has been raised by his grandma (voiced by Kheng Hua Tan) from Hong Kong. They weren’t fleeing totalitarianism. Granny was trying to protect her late daughter’s baby from the threats posed by dragon demons and a witchy villain, Loo (Michelle Yeoh).

So he’s grown up in San Francisco, in a colorfully-decorated Painted Lady house covered in the Chinese charms Grandma makes and sells. That’s “weird” enough to get him bullied at school.

As you might guess, fighting back against a bully is how Tom discovers he’s “not normal.” The whole school discovers it. And his cracks about “Must have been that protein bar I had” don’t fool anybody, even the cute new foster child classmate Ra (Leah Lewis). They’ve already cell-phone-broadcast his “special powers.”

Grandma barely has time to explain “Our entire FAMILY is not normal” when A), her “old friend, Hu (Henry Golding) drops by to see that they’re OK and B) demonic dragons — whom we’ve seen attacking them when Tom was but a baby back in Hong Kong — show up, and because evil Loo has come for the Phoenix amulet for which Granny is “guardian.”

One Obi Wan Kenobi sacrifice later and Tom is wearing the necklace, and Hu — who turns out to be one of the “zodiacs” sworn to protect The Guardian, shape shifts into his Tiger avatar and spirits the kid to safety.

Tom discovers the “team” of protectors he must train with and depend on — Year of the “Rabbit,” “Pig,” “Dog,” Dragon,” “Rooster,” “Ox,” “Goat,” “Monkey,” “Snake,” “Horse,” Tiger and “Rat.”

Protectors? Those are “barely a petting zoo!”

But transforming into their animal form, each has powers that come in handy in a fracas.

“SNL’s” Bowen Yang, as a pizza-toting (New York subway joke) rat, stands out in the voice cast, as he must. Sherry Cola (“Joy Ride”) has fun voicing a short-tempered Chinese granny/dim sum cook. Yeoh is properly menacing as the villain, Golding properly no-nonsense — save when he’s caught in a debate with the rowdy rooster (Jo Koy).

Whatever, “Whiskers.” Back atcha “Drumstick!”

Tom must learn to “feel the Qi inside you” to be an effective guardian of the all-powerful Phoenix, use the dreams he has of his family and figures of myth, and come up with proper expletives for a family-friendly film.

“Holy shrimp-friend rice!”

There isn’t much to “The Tiger’s Apprentice,” but the fight sequences have a little pop, and I was struck by one lovely image — the fog-shrouded Golden Gate bridge at night, parked far in the background. The rest is a tad on the bland side in terms of visuals and content.

It’s not goofy, original or clever enough to dazzle and hold the attention of anyone over 12. But then, it’s not designed to.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Brandon Soo Ho, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, Jo Koy, Sherry Cola and Bowen Yang

Credits: Directed by Raman Hui, Yong Duk Jhun and Paul Watling, scripted by David Magee and Christopher L. Yost, based on the novel by Laurence Yep. A Paramount Animation/Paramount+ release.

Running time: 1:24

This one looks fun. And dammit, Henry Cavill deserves to be in something fun. For once.

Sam Rockwell, Samuel L., Katherine O’Hara and Bryan Cranston bring the PARTY with them, every time out. John Cena is always down to get down. Bryce Dallas Howard is just tickled to be here.

But Henry? He needs it. He’s about as uninhibited as I’d be under those circumstances, swapping screentime with DeBose and BG and His Excellency, Nile R.

They’re going fast, says the studio still drowning in “Barbie” money.

I’d hate for anybody to miss out.

March 1.

“Song of the South” is a patriotic and picaresque Vietnamese parable set just as the French occupation (“Protectorate,” they called it.) was winding down in Southeast Asia.

A newly-orphaned but timid and coddled ten year-old comes of age on a quest to find his long-absent father in the South of the country that the French considered part of French Indochina.

So it’s a “road picture,” taking us through 1940s Vietnam, a history lesson about the brawling factions simmering their way towards unity and a fight for independence, and a thriller with violent clashes, prison escapes and just a hint of magical realism.

Based on a 1957 novel “Đất rừng phương Nam” by the late Đoàn Giỏi, “South” is a sprawling but intimate vehicle for relating Vietnamese history, traditions and country and city life during those years. But it’s also a ripping good yarn, with action and suspense, humor and pathos.

Misbehaving An (Huynh Hao Khang) is yanked out of school by his teacher (Vin Ha Hua), but not because of the ruckus he was stirring. The teacher, who dashes down the street sharing secret hand signals with comrades, is taking the boy to his fleeing mother (Anh Hong).

The jig is up, the soldiers are coming for her. She just has time to grab a couple of things and fling a few bills around their apartment (clever touch) to slow her pursuers. They’re fleeing South.

“If you can’t learn from school, learn from life,” his teacher advises (in Vietnamese with English subtitles) on the way to the station. “Be a sheep if you must, a strong one. Never back down from any wolf.”

The “hero’s journey”has begun.

But there’s nothing heroic about An. He clings to mom, is mortally afraid of snakes and bugs and can’t swim, among other shortcomings. We figure all this out just as he loses his mother in a clash at a bridge checkpoint.

An is on his own, with the chap who picked mom’s pocket (Tuan Tran) the only person who might take him in.

An has to be dragged along by this fellow, who refers to himself as “Ut the Boss.” The boy will learn and resist learning along the way to find the kid’s real father many days journey south.

An will fall in with a healer/chiropractor/busker (Tiến Luật) and his age-appropriate-for-a-crush daughter (Bui Ly Bao Ngoc) and a mudskippers fisherboy in the Mekong Delta. An will drunkenly get caught up in a daring raid to free the hairy and homocidal folk hero/freedom fighter Võ Tòng (Mai Tai Phen).

With or without finding his father, a boy’s sure to come of age after going through all that.

The ambushes and riots that lead to massacres and French-backed executions are furious and visceral, with a little wirework/stuntwork assisting freedom-fighting archers and knife-throwers as they pop up and hurtle down upon their oppressors.

We get a hint of how divided Vietnam was, and not just via the collaboraters who play a role in the plot, propping up French control.

And we see a lot of this picturesque land of rivers and rice paddies, jungles and towns, not all of it torn by war.

Our little leading man is game and believable in the part. Tuan Tran, as an An Giang Province artful dodger, is the scene-and-movie-stealing comic relief.

As the film is titled “Part 1” of this life journey, director Quang Dung Nguyen can be forgiven for not being able to manage a graceful finale. And a lot of the tropes of the genre are a tad too on-the-nose to surprise Western audiences.

But “Song of the South” makes a pretty travelogue, a poetic foundation myth (No sign of “Uncle Ho.” Yet.), a nicely-detailed period piece and a thoroughly entertaining saga.

Rating: TV-14, lots of violence

Cast:Huynh Hao Khang, Anh Hong, Tuan Tran, Vi Van Hua, Tiến Luật, Bui Ly Bao Ngoc, Bang Di and Mai Tai Phen

Credits: Directed by Quang Dung Nguyen, scripted by Tran Khanh Hoang, based on the novel by Đoàn Giỏi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

If you like to watch older films, sometimes you’ve got to bend the parameters of what “classic” means. Because if you’ve ever walked up on a Chevy Nova at a vintage car show, you know — some things are “Classics” and others are just plain old.

“The Fortune” pretty much put an end to Hollywood’s fascination with tales told from the ’20s and early ’30s. “Bonnie and Clyde” kicked off this “Gatsby” era fad. “The Sting” and “Paper Moon” represented its peak. And this Mike Nichols “comedy” and Peter Bogdanovich’s musical “At Long Last Love” drove stakes through its heart.

Nichols’ former comedy partner, Elaine May, had starred in, written and directed “A New Leaf” a couple of years before. Why not get Jack Nicholson‘s old acting class pal, actress turned writer Carole Eastman (“Five Easy Pieces,” “The Shooting”) to knock out another variation on that “marry for money and murder her” “comedy?”

The ’70s were nostalgic that way.

Jack and his Hollywood running mate Warren Beatty would star, and Stockard Channing would play the rich, high-strung and dizzy “victim,” whose mood swings would give the Broadway baby a chance to storm about and sing. Beatty sings, too. Imagine that.

Nichols, who’d helped found the Second City comedy troupe and taken New York by storm as half of the Nichols & May comedy act, already had “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” “The Graduate” and “Catch-22” on his resume. He’d make “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Working Girl” and “The Birdcage” in his later years.

I once sat a few rows over from him and May in the back of the theater in a theatrical out-of-town tryouts city in the South as they pondered a stage dramedy being rehearsed and performed, looking for ways it could be “fixed.” They provided that service a lot, because nobody knew comedy better.

But “The Fortune,” while light and kind of antic, barely has a laugh in it. Brisk and occasionally loud, the script never quite hits the funnybone and the players can’t compensate for that.

Where it went wrong, I think, is in the very conceit that “sells” it. It’s a Mann Act comedy.

The joke is that because transporting (women, at the time the act was written) “across state lines for immoral purposes,” aka prostitution or sexual reasons was illegal (ask Chuck Berry, Jeffrey Epstein or Matt Gaetz about that), “the lengths some people would go to” in order to run off with a woman might be funny.

It turns out, it isn’t. In our human-trafficking/child-trafficking obsessed era, nobody would have dared to make a comedy out of this.

All that follows happens shortly after the Mann Act was passed, and just after Lindbergh’s “lucky” flight across the Atlantic.

Beatty plays Nicky Wilson, a married man who can’t get a divorce and be with his beloved, Freddie (Channing). So he gets lowlife embezzler Oscar Dix (Nicholson) to join him and her as they flee “back east” for “out west.” Oscar will marry Freddie as a cover story and all three will start over in the Land of Opportunity — California.

Oscar seems like an agreeable oaf in all this. But he knows that Freddie’s real name is F.Q. Bigard, “Fredrika Quintessa Bigard.” And all the bullying and “Do you wanna go to jail or do you wanna go to California” bluster from mustachioed Nicky can’t throw dim-Oscar off the scent. This broad comes from money.

She may wail how “daddy” has disowned her by this rash act. But Oscar turns on the charm because Oscar doesn’t trust Nicky, and not just because of the mustache.

“You know a man of means and a mean man oftens means the same?”

They travel by Ford Trimotor plane, train and automobile to sundrenched SoCal. And that’s where things really go wrong. Because bitter Nicky is losing faith, and Oscar finally gets the “money” admission out of him. With Nicky’s divorce never quite coming through and Oscar suddenly reluctant to get out of this arranged marriage, can these two dolts go through with what they back into as a solution — murdering Freddie, faking her suicide, to collect the surviving spouse inheritance?

The few chances “The Fortune” has to be madcap is in the botched efforts to do away with the annoying but undeserving-of-this Freddie. She can’t handle her booze, so that’s how they’ll make her “manageable” so that they can pull off her untimely demise.

Nicky might be the mastermind, but he’s no Einstein. And Oscar? He’s a wild-haired, impulsive liability. Hilarity ensues, except it never quite does.

Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler and Andrew Santino play friends who need a ready-made lie/excuse to carouse without their spouses/in-laws knowing about it. So they invent an imaginary pal that they’re constantly having to attend to — poor Ricky Stanicky.

Cena plays the stripper who is their only hope of pulling off being Ricky when the jig is up.

William H. Macy and Lex Scott Davis are also in the cast of this Peter Farrelly farce. If you want a laugh, look at how many people are credited as writers on this thing.

Amazon has this one — March 7.

It takes a while to get one’s bearings with “The Modern Way,” a drama set among Britain’s working class “Mods,” famed for the scooters, sharp dress and passion for The Who and Rod Stewart’s Faces.

The Mods’ traditional rivals were the Rockers, greasers in blue jeans, white T-shirts and leather biker jackets.

But in Jake Henderson and Giuseppe Monticciolo’s “The Modern Way,” the Mods’ rivals are Skinheads, who favor acid-washed jeans (?!). Space Invaders was all the rage and the band Madness was on the way up.

And lo and behold, there’s a bloke with a Ford Cortina equipped with a cassette deck.

So this genre drama about gangs, drugs, Vespas and Lambrettas and age-old blood feuds is set during a brief “Mod Revival” that peaked with the release of The Who’s album and the film “Quadrephenia” in the late 70s.

It’s a tale with “back in the day” Mods and Rockers still existing in a state of unease, but now older, working and running businesses. Some of those pre-Thatcher-era businesses — in the case of Rockers turned Skinheads — are illegal.

The kids coming up are the source of much of the drug trade — pill-popping and other “gear” — and the violence.

Frankie (Ashley Hodgson) hangs with his mates Leon (Leon Dean) and Millie (Alice Handoll). He’s sweet on Millie, and she might actually return the affection if he ever “makes his move.”

But Frankie has other concerns. He makes his living dealing street drugs on behalf of aged Skinhead Harvey Grey. And on the night we meet them all, somebody sees Frankie pick up drugs from some goons, stash them on his scooter, and go back to drinking in the pub.

His Lambretta is stolen and torched and the drugs disappear. He’s in deep trouble with scary Harvey (Nick Cornwall) and his scarier lieutenant, Jerry (Jordan Louis).

The Skinhead hanger-on Danni (Grace Long) is the one who set the conflict to come in motion by fingering Frankie’s Lambretta as the one to steal. She’s living with her ever-blitzed mother and mum’s junky-beau, so she’s got her own problems.

Jack Parr of “Peaky Blinders” shaved his head to play Mason, Danni’s controlling tormentor, who stops sniffing glue long enough to lead his mates in stealing those drugs and torching that Lambretta.

And co-screenwriter Jake Henderson, in his first starring role, plays Terry, the “adult” Mod in the room, friend to Danni’s family, gainfully-employed but still tough enough to hold his own if the wrong sort get in his face.

The disorienting nature of the early scenes, with their ’60s music and actors poorly made-up to cover the holes from era-inappropriate nose piercings (and those damned acid-washed jeans) distracted me into ticking off anachronisms early on.

Once it becomes clear (ish) what the real era is, the generic story and plot complications and underwhelming set pieces reminded me of “Northern Soul,” another intriguing glimpse into a corner of Brit pop culture history botched in the execution.

There’s no tension and rising suspense over Frankie’s ticking-clock debt. The much-discussed Mod scooter convoy down to Bristol for a weekend of partying is set up and talked-up, briefly-shown, and that’s the end of that.

Violence finally comes and the instigator of all that goes wrong is brushed-over, forgotten and left unpunished, just like in real life.

While some effort is made by the geezers to “explain” the Mod/Rocker rivalry that goes back decades, it’s still a head-scratching dead end.

The picture winds up being such an uninteresting shrug that one is reminded of what Ringo said in “A Hard Day’s Night,” when asked if he was a “Mod” or a “Rocker.”

“Um, no. I’m a Mocker.”

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Jake Henderson, Grace Long, Ashley Hodgson, Leon Dean, Alice Handoll and Jack Parr.

Credits: Directed by Giuseppe Monticciolo, scripted by Jake Henderson and Giuseppe Monticciolo. An Indican release on Tubi, et al.

Running time: 1:30

This weekend won’t set any records — even bad ones — for the motion picture box office in North America. COVID and the slow start-up after it lowered the bar on that.

But lacking fresh wide theatrical releases, theaters are returning to “social distancing,” if wholly by accident.

“Mean Girls” and “The Beekeeper” are both earning in the $6.5 million range, with Deadline.com having the edge by midnight Sunday, says Deadline.com.

“Wonka” will earn just under $6, “Migration” will clear $5 million and the $100 million mark by the end of this weekend.

The season’s sleeper hit, the sexy rom-com “Anyone But You,” adds another $4.5-4.7 to push it over $70.

As I’ve been griping, theaters need more titles on their screens because Oscar nominees aren’t packing people in and there’s only so much that specialty programming and Indian films and Spanish language releases can do to help.

As always, I’ll be updating these figures as more data comes in.

Netflix is heavily-invested in Josephine Langford, Inc. The latest unutterably gorgeous Australian faux blonde willing and able to sling a perfect North American accent put out a whole series of “After” romances on the dominant streaming service, each of them more limp and lame than the one that came before it.

Amazon Prime? They didn’t get as much “content” out of her as Netflix. But “The Other Zoey,” a rom-com of hers that they picked up, is measurably better than anything with “After” in the title –“measurably” if not entirely “markedly” better.

Zoey is a college coder and general smarty-pants with grad-school-at-MIT dreams. Anything to get her out of a school with dorks who read their reports on The Story of Valentine’s Day in class.

Salty Zoey calls “Bull—t” on such malarkey, labeling the mythic “holiday” of love a “capitalist invention,” among other crimes. But she has this “compatibility” app she’s working on. Wanna “GoFundMe?”

Her roomie and bestie Elle (Mallori Johnson) isn’t quite as cynical. But then, she’s a poet. And fittingly enough, she’s there the day Queens University campus hunk Zach (Drew Starkey) bonks our heroine in the head with a soccer ball. The “star player” on the team has ball-control issues.

Zoey finds him attractive, just not as “compatible” and alluring as the “nerd hunk” (Archie Renaux) who asks the right questions at a brainiac lecture they both attend. But gorgeous Zoey can’t flag him down or get his attention, which makes us wonder if he’s vision-impaired.

As fate would have it, it’s Zach she meets again and accidentally insults at the bookstore where she works. She doubles-down on that by causing an accident which lands him in the hospital with a concussion. He’s confused enough to call her his “Zoey,” lying there concussed, and guilts her into coming with him to the hospital.

Try not to have the promising thought that he’s faking that and all the chicanery that might entail. That would be…different.

But Zach actually has a girlfriend named Zoey. She’s off on spring break in the Bahamas. He’s experiencing memory loss and a doctor’s orders “no screens.” Our Zoey is ordered not to “stress” him.

She plays along, even when his parents (Andie MacDowell and Patrick Fabian) show up, even when she’s invited to dinner, then a family “ski trip” (with a recovering CONCUSSED son).

Wouldn’t you know it? Cousin “Miles,” the tech-nerd-hunk, is coming along, too.

I guess Zoey won’t be telling anybody who she really is and what’s actually happening, even in the hot tub. And Zach doesn’t remember enough to catch on/contradict her.

One can appreciate the efforts to upend the “grand gesture” and “meet cute” “love triangle” rom-com conventions that screenwriter Matthew Tabak and director Sara Zandieh attempt here.

But basically this script just plays lip service to twisting those cliches. The picture is so burdened with them that any sparks Langford might set off with first this guy and then the other are lost in the Black Best Friend who should be Your Conscience convention, the obnoxious kid-sister (Olive Abercrombie), Zoey faking being “The Other Zoey” (who is a soccer star herself) by stumbling through snowboarding and the like.

The ethical, intellectual and sexual issues with her behavior are only half-explained by casting Heather Graham as Zoey’s mom.

There are a few smirks here and there, but only a single actual laugh emerges from the PG-save-for-a-little-cussing script.

“They’re poly” is how someone describes someone else’s lack of romantic fidelity. “What’s ‘poly'” the precocious 10 year-old wants to know?

“It’s math, honey” Mom Andie Mac instantly snaps, ending that line of inquiry.

The film’s “chemistry” is manufactured, but engaging enough. Langford has settled on a hair style and accent that work and a vocal tone — a Lake Bell/Lauren Bacall growl — that serves her well.

But with all these films in the can, it’s time to start exercising a little clout. This script was saveable. An emerging “star” of streaming romances and rom-coms should be able to tell what works and what doesn’t by now, and make her opinions matter until there’s a rewrite/change-in-director or whatever that would help this pay off and satisfy more than “The Other Zoey” can manage.

Rating: PG-13, profanity

Cast: Joesphin Langford, Drew Starkey, Archie Renaux, Mallori Johnson, with Andie MacDowell and Heather Graham.

Credits: Directed by Sara Zandieh, scripted by Matthew Tabak. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:33