Movie Nation

Grier is great in “The Color Purple.” And here he is again, in something more off-center and sly.

Limited release March 22.

Thirty-six times over the past 65 years Egypt has submitted films to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in the vain hope of winning an Oscar. And 36 times, Egypt has come up short, not even earning a nomination for what once was called “Best Foreign Language Film” and is now labeled “Best International Feature.”

“Voy! Voy! Voy!” should change that. It may not, Academy demographics and Middle Eastern geopolitics being what they are. I have seen deeper, more serious films in contention for this year’s field.

But damned if I’ve seen a funnier submission than this slow-set-up caper comedy, a movie you figure you’ve figured out until you haven’t, a staid and cynical story until it turns dark and laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s about a ringer getting onto a local blind soccer club’s team so that he can travel to a European tournament, his shady means of escaping a life of little hope and limited expectations. Writer-director Omar Hilal, making his feature filmmaking debut, takes his sweet time setting that up, dragging characters into the story, one by one.

But once that unsavory scheme is set in motion, the complications and silly, utterly unexpected surprises make this a feel-good delight.

A laugh out loud comedy from the Middle East? Go figure. And did I mention this is “inspired by a true story?”

Hassan (Mohamed Farrag) is desperate to get out of Egypt. He’s taken to seducing elderly foreign women to achieve that goal. One almost paid off, he tells his smoking buddies, the cynical Amr (Amgar al Haggar) and idealistic Saeed (Taha Desouky), until she dropped dead after sex.

Hassan is a security guard with zero prospects, a pretty woman (Passant Shawky) willing to ignore her mother’s warnings about “that bum” she’s fallen for and to wait for him. He doesn’t think of her or his aged mother (Hana Youssef) as he dreams of escape and even visits a smuggler to check the going rate for a perilous boat journey to Italy.

He’d have to fake “a Syrian accent” once he gets ashore. But never mind. It’s too expensive.

Adel (Bayoumi Fouad) is a portly 50something P.E. teacher at a middle school, losing all hope he’ll ever land a decent coaching job in Egyptian soccer. When he hears about an opening on a club team that has a shot at going to a world championship tourney, he’s leery. But his wheelchair-bound son begs him to take that shot.

The team is made up of visually-impaired players. The games are played on fenced-in outdoor concrete courts, or in gymasions. And when blind players run towards the rattle of the ball, players the world over shout out the Spanish word for “Here I come” so as to avoid colliding with each other at speed.

“Voy! Voy! Voy!”

It’s in the rules.

Hearing about that team gives Hassan a plan. Fooling and charming the new coach isn’t an issue. Nor is playing in matches that will let them qualify for a visually-impaired World Cup tourney in Poland. Hassan isn’t exactly scrupulous.

But as things take first one turn, then another and then another after that, we’re going to find out how low he’ll go and just what lines his friends will cross to help him realize his dream of a new life.

“Women on the Edge” is a cheerfully dumb Argentine riff on agism, sexism and the horrors of cosmetic surgery that seems inspired by a pretty famous film by Pedro Almodóvar.

Take away the heart, gay content, much of the edge and most of the laughs and you’ve got an Argentine “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

The premise is that a group of women with “impulse control” and “anger management” problems meet at a support group. They all have issues with men. It’s just that they’re the ones forced to seek help.

One knocked a couple of teeth out of the male boss who dared “grab my ass.” Angela (Carla Peterson) is a famous TV actress who found out her co-star and younger lover (Esteban Lamothe) is expecting a baby during a humiliating live TV chat-show appearance.

And Vera (Julieta Díaz) is an overwhelmed mother of two trying to market her own organic cosmetics line with no help from her disinterested, forgetful breadwinner husband (Alfonso Tort). Ramiro didn’t bother to tell Vera that his new boss is his old flame Paola (Claudia Fernández) who has had lots of work done and shoves her nose in it.

As a rule of this support group, they’re each to take on a “partner” who acts as their sponsor, shadowing and calming irritated nerves, Vera and Angela are paired up.

Angela may have injured her ex on a TV set. All she requires is a new love, and maybe “having a little work done.” But Vera put her husband’s new boss in the hospital, so she’s in legal trouble.

The movie is about the source of Angela’s paid endorsement cosmetic surgery and Vera’s belief this hustler (Salvador del Solar) isn’t just putting the moves on the TV star. He’s about to disfigure her with his quack treatment and “toxin,” and he may be the reason Paola’s in the hospital.

“You’re not old yet, but you’re about to be” was Dr. Leven’s cautionary come-on to Angela (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed). And there’s the theme of the movie.

Everywhere they turn, women are being dismissed, ditched, overlooked and underappreciated by men who only have eyes for youth. And these ladies are pissed. They’re out for revenge.

The sight gags in this comedy — including “deformed” makeup — aren’t anything to brag about. The dialogue relies on random shots of profanity to grab a laugh.

The players do what they can, which isn’t much. The plot is as messy as three screenwriters could make it, with the only things that pass for consistency being the rampant sexism/ageism and an overall vulgar tone.

This subject matter and this set-up could have paid off. But nothing of the sort happens, just a cast soldiering through inferior material based on a solid premise, and a director most intent on getting a Gurinder Chadha (“Bend it Like Beckham”) dance number into the closing credits.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Carla Peterson, Julieta Díaz, Salvador del Solar, Eugenia Guerty, Cecilia Font, Bredna Keizerman, Alfonso Tort and Esteban Lamothe.

Credits: Directed by Azul Lombardía, scripted by Jazmín Rodríguez Duca, Sebastián Meschengieser and Alberto Rojas Apel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Let’s go ahead and call the code on “E.R.” alumnus George Clooney‘s days of serving up nostalgic Americana as a director. “The Boys in the Boat” is that badly-botched.

After “Monuments Men” and “Leatherheads” and a stumbling “Catch-22” series, maybe it’s time to get your head out of the past, pal. You’ve lost your feel for it. Or maybe you’re just too distracted to make these sentimental sagas work.

“Boat” is an uplifting story about the University of Washington’s rowing team’s path to the 1936 Olympics — broke, hungry and (in one case) homeless guys get on the boat, in the middle of the Great Depression, and splash a little cold water on Nazi faces in Berlin.

That’s what it’s supposed to be, what came through in the Daniel James Brown non-fiction book about this tale of pluck and pathos. You figure your director has the good sense to absorb that from the book, and the time to watch “Seabiscuit” and maybe “Chariots of Fire” and triangulate a tone, a story arc and an uplifting Big Finish the way those classics did.

Nah.

Blandly-cast, dully-scripted and flatly-directed, the only moments of life in this story are tucked in that eight-man rowing shell. A diminutive coxwain (Luke Slattery) urges the rowers on. Callum Turner, Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike and the others — who learned to row at a convincing, championship level for the movie — work themselves ragged in the face of high odds, stiff competition and the trials of ordinary life during that perilous age.

But if you can’t get anything emotional of a homeless young man (Turner) eating from a can in a burned-out hulk of a Model A Ford, where he lives, his life and future saved by rowing, maybe the time for trafficking in nostalgia is over.

The rawboned, strapping young Brit Turner (“Fantastic Beasts,” “Emma.”) physically looks the part of Joe Rantz, a struggling young man on his own too early, trying to find enough work to stay alive and plug his way through engineering school at the U. of W. But the character is so underwritten, his scenes so heartlessly scripted and directed, that we don’t identify with the guy, his struggle or his reluctant courtship of the cute coed (Hadley Robinson) who sets her eye for him.

“Take me on a boat ride!”

Not that the love story is supposed to be with her. It’s really on the boat, where Rantz, fellow broke non-athlete Roger Morris (Strike) and the silent, stern and focused Don Hume (Mulhern) bond and battle first the university’s varsity crew (they’re JV), then the best of the collegiate west, all the way to a national championship which will determine who will join Jesse Owens in Berlin.

Aussie Joel Edgerton barely registers as the gruff coach who insists “Rowing is more poetry than sport.” Brit Peter Guinness isn’t given moments to rhapsodize about the love and life he pours into making these slick wooden racing shells, and thus lacks the obligatory twinkle.

Clooney and the screenwriter do a poor job of setting up the “rich kid” rivals that they’re rowing against. Hell, the coaches mention “what money gets you” and “Harvard and Yale” back East, and then never put them in the water against U-Dub.

We get a nice taste of rowing tactics, training and terminology. But the story lacks the Depression Underdog context of “Seabiscuit,” the heart and soul of “Chariots of Fire” and other sports movies of this genre.

Clooney, who sold his tequila brand for a billion bucks a couple of years back, isn’t doing this for money, doesn’t act that much these days and wouldn’t appear to have a lot of distractions keeping him from focusing on more than just how to film the races. He knows what the story’s heart is. And yet he fails utterly in getting that across and saving this “Boat” from sinking.

Which it does. Like a stone.

Rating: PG-13 for profanity and smoking

Cast: Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, Peter Guinness, Hadley Robinson, Luke Slattery, Jack Mulhern and Sam Strike.

Credits: Directed by George Clooney, scripted by Mark L. Smith, based on the book by Daniel James Brown. An MGM/Amazon release.

Running time: 2:04

So will it be “Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse” vs. “The Boy and the Heron” for the best animated feature Oscar this year?

Anybody who really thinks “Elemental,” “Super Mario Brothers,” “Trolls Band Together,” “Wish” or “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget” deserve Oscar glory must be nine years old.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?” There’s a possibility.

Maybe Illumination has a shot.

“Migration” has a good look, a few good ducks-on-vacation gags, some funny voices. Could it be a contender?

“The Boy and the Heron” is going to be the sentimental favorite. But nothing I’ve seen from a major studio or that got a decent release is screaming “Instant Classic” to me.

“Merry Little Batman?” Not really seeing that.

Let’s see what the birds tell us.

Cute and quippy, “Merry Little Batman” is an adorably silly holiday goof on DC/Warner Brothers’ most valuable comic book franchise.

It’s light and fun enough that it has to be giving the Warner suits staring down “Aquaman” and “Suicide Squad” red ink the notion that maybe Warner Animation should get a crack at all these “intellectual properties.”

The hook — Bruce Wayne (voiced by Luke Wilson) is now an overprotective single dad of lad named Damien (Yonas Kibreab), whose Christmas wish is to Be Just Like Dad, a superhero.

Dad’s more worried if the eight-year-old’s got a fresh “boo boo” from all his ninja, bat-roping antics. Selina the cat has got to be traumatized.

Eight years-old is too young to absorb the “focus, responsibility and sacrifice” it takes to be Batman, Dad figures. To say nothing of the “high pain threshhold.”

But showing the kid his many busted rib scars is to no avail. The father — who frantically and violently cleaned-up Gotham’s crime before his child’s birth — is lured off for some Justice League work in Nova Scotia. House-breakers (Natalie Palamides and Michael Fielding) get around to Wayne Manor, and even though they lose most of their loot in the fracas the kid starts, they get away with Damien’s trainer-utility belt.

“Crime must be back in Gotham! It’s a Christmas Miracle!”

There’s nothing for it but to ditch aged butler Alfred (James Cromwell), lose the Batman pajamas and grab a “real” batsuit, borrow Dad’s wheels and pursue the thieves, who turn out to be minions of…Joker, of course (David Hornsby, a cackling hoot).

For all his giggles, Joker hates when anybody else is happy. He’s out to ruin Christmas.

“That does it. I’m moving to Metropolis.”

Production designer Guillaume Fesquet concieves a sort of Cartoon Network (Remember “Dexter’s Laboritory?”) world with comically-drawn characters that look and act a lot more Tim Burton or Adam West than Christopher Nolan.

And director Mike Roth and screenwriter Morgan Evans take their best shot at laughing and brawling their way through that world.

Batman has left recorded video instructions for the day Damien might have to put on the Batsuit — instructions laced with fond memories of the kid’s birth.

“Your mother was a total smokeshow!”

The villains — because of course many of them have to team up — curse the child with “hellion” and “turdmuffin” insults.

The movie kind of drags through the middle acts. The violence is on a par with the animated TV show, which is what kids expect and have always expected, “Peppa Pig,” “Spongebob” and “Dora” be damned.

But the tone is always campy, and that carries the day here, all the way through to “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Dark Knight.”

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Luke Wilson, James Cromwell, Yonas Kibreab and David Hornsby.

Credits: Directed by Mike Roth, scripted by Morgan Evans. A DC/Warner Bros. Animation/MGM/Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:36

Neil Simon co-wrote it, Burt Bachrach and Hal David composed the jaunty music, Vittoria De Sica directed it and Peter Sellers starred in it.

But when “After the Fox” came out in 1966, this sly farce about The State of the Cinema didn’t get a lot of love.

Simon and Sellers might have been at their peak — the first of a couple of creative and popular “peaks” for the famous playwright. And the cleverly-conceived and structured script had a few topical laughs and a lot of Italian and film business lampooning that played. But nobody wanted to see it.

Thankfully, this not-quite-romp has improved with age. We can appreciate a wholly-engaged Peter Sellers at his most animated, his wife Britt Ekland at her most coquettish and the great character ham Victor Mature coming out of retirement to send-up his entire tanned, grinning and “handsome” career.

And every single silliness-of-the-cinema and the chimeric delusions of the starstruck fans lands. Here’s a comedy that plays like a snapshot of Italy and Italian cinema in the ’60s, and an amusing sendup of stereotypes and the self-seriousness of art films of the era.

It’s not the best comedy of the era, the best Sellers comedy (Blake Edwards’ “The Party” gets my vote) of the time or Neil Simon at his wittiest. But it’s fun, especially if you’re old enough to remember Sellers or just now discovering the greatest screen comedian of his age.

Sellers dons an earnest, almost breathless Italian accent — not that different from his French one in the Inspector Clouseau movies — as Aldo Vanucci, aka “The Fox,” an honorable and famous thief seven months in prison for his last caper.

Having his prison wired — catering to his comforts — he’s content to finish his sentence. But his Mama (Lydia Brazzi) is unforgiving about his abandonment. And his younger sister (Ekland) is going wrong. She’s “on the streets,” his old cronies (Tino Buazzelli, Mac Ronay and Paolo Stoppa) tell Aldo. That moves The Fox to act.

“If only I could steal enough to beome an honest man!”

His services are needed to help crooks who stole gold bullion from Cairo get their haul ashore somewhere in Italy.

Dodging the carbineri (cops) and finding Gina “on the streets,” trying to become a movie star, inspires our Fox to come up with a plan. Making a movie would be a great cover for a caper, explaining away a crowd of crooks, winning the enthusiasm of the locals who won’t interfere because they all want to be “in the movie,” and even getting the cooperation from the cops.

All The Fox and his minions need is a cover-story/plot about the Cairo Gold, filmmaking gear (stolen from the set of a Biblican epic being directed by Vittorio De Sica) and a “name” for the cast.

Hollywood has-been Tony Powell (Victor Mature of “My Darling Clementine,” etc) is in town, not-quite defying age and Hollywood ageism, and not getting a lot of work in the process.

They have their cover story. They find a location — tiny Selvio, on the Neopolitan coast — and they have a date to shoot there. But delays at sea mean that great Italian auteur Federico Fabrizio (Sellers) will have to fake it until the bullion makes it…ashore.

Script? Plot?

“Een HERE (pointing to his head) ees my screept,” he bellows. “Een HERE (pointing to his heart) ees my plot!”

Mads is an 18th century dreamer/doer intent on building “The king’s first settlement on the heath” of Denmark’s Jutland on “The king’s land” on behalf of the king.

Who “doesn’t know you exist.”

Ummm…

A February release from Magnolia.

Ryan Reynolds stars, with the voices of Steve Carell, Emily Blunt, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina and many others voicing those imaginary childhood friends who need a new kid to work with.

“IF” is coming our way in May.

It was a blockbuster when it opened on the Subcontinent. But as in North America, being a big box office hit isn’t necessarily a qualifier for Oscar glory.

India’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature competition is a sentimental, feel-good and quite old-fashioned disaster movie.

“2018: Everyone is a Hero” is about the cyclonic monsoon floods that covered Kerala state in August of that year, an epic disaster compared by locals to the biggest flood of the previous century. It adheres to the time-established formula of disaster movies — following assorted characters, inside and outside of officialdom, as they face the calamity unfolding around them.

Some will step up. Some will underestimate the risk. Some will live and some will die.

The new wrinkles in the plot are the role climate change is playing in rising sea levels, making such coastal events far worse, something more than one character mentions. And there’s a novel way a Keral Emergency Operations Center calls for volunteers — via WhatsApp. A legion of young people on mopeds show up for duty in one of Jude Anthany Joseph’s films best scenes.

“2018” takes as its motto an opening aphorism — “Every calamity is just ‘news’ until it hits us.”

We meet Anoop (Tovino Thomas), a young man who’s come home after deciding the army’s “not for me,” all that getting up early in the morning nonsense and all. He tries to fit in back home, takes a fancy to the cute new school teacher (Tanvi Ram), and hopes to shed his self-confessed reputation as a “coward.”

Shaji (Kunchacko Boban) is a mid-level adminstrator with the state’s emergency preparedness center, fretting over his wife and child as he tries to nudge his dismissive superior into taking preventative measures.

“Is it better to save people after trapping them, or to save them before they are trapped,” he wants to know (in Malayam with English subtitles)?

Government higher-ups fret over panic, but TV, crowd-sourced websites and others are already raising the alarm about doomed dams, the higher sea levels and the downpour that’s just beginning.

The handsome chap his dad named “Nixon” (he has a brother named “Winston”) has dreams of being a famous model. But handsome or not, Nixon (Asif Ali) from a working class fishing family, which suggests to his intended bride’s father that they’ll all end up in a relief camp every time the water rises. At least the hunk has the good sense to go by the nickname “Popeye.” That creates expectations about what he’ll do when the chips are down.

And Aju Varghese plays a tour guide stuck leading a dopey Polish vlogger and his girlfriend around Kerala, showing off canceled boat races and the like in the middle of a torrential downpour.

A pre-disaster near tragedy at sea amongst the fishermen prefigures what is to come. And when the worst arrives, the effects take us into a massive flood, with rising water threatening all, daring underwater swims to save this person or that one and fishermen rising to the occasion amidst a chorus of weeping panic.