Movie Nation

Today, we take a break from sight seeing in Panama to revel in an IMAX 3D summation of Panama,the nation created so that Teddy Roosevelt could build a canal, a tale that can only be told by Morgan Freeman.

I’ve long enoyed the standup stylings of grinning but grumpy Bill Burr. I’ve even followed him on social media, just for the odd tirade or epic download of “You people” complaints about those less politically astute than he.

But never have I ever been more relieved to hear someone sniff, “Okay, BOOMER” at a character, and hear Burr’s let-my-demographic off the hook comeback in his film, “Old Dads.”

“GENERATION X!”

Burr plays an amped-up version of his public persona in this starting-a-family-at-50 comedy about an unfiltered vulgarian, “toxic” rageaholic and judgemental jerk who takes 90-plus minutes of screentime to finally take a hard look at himself in the mirror.

It’s funny, here and there. Burr’s not a bad actor, and he surrounds himself with better ones. But this “Last Man Standing” is a smug, presumptuous, pose for any funnyman, even if you are slightly more evolved than Tim Allen.

As Jack Kelly, he’s got a crew, two lifelong friends (Bokeem Woodbine and Bobby Cannavale) who have stuck with him through thick and thin. Their vintage athletic jersey reproduction company did well enough to be bought out, and as Jack has a little boy and he and wife Leah (Kate Aselton) have another on the way and private school is ruinously expensive in SoCal, he agreed.

The script briskly sets us up for a movie where working class/outspoken Jack is at odds with his performantive, buzzwording touchy-feely new Gen Z boss (Miles Robbins), and his kid’s school’s pretentious, even more touchy-feely Generation X principal, “Dr. L.” (Rachel Harris)

Let the f-bombs fly as Jack tears through coddled kids (“Just rub some dirt on it!”), indulgent parenting, smirking, ageist Millenials (“How f—–g self-inolved ARE you?”), rants at “the United States of Gender” and blasts at the legions of “snowflakes” among his true peers, sometimes to his amen chorus of friends, often directly to the faces of permissive parents and judgmental, bullying-obsessed mothers and educators Jack finds himself at odds with.

“I’m paying you to educate my KID, not me,” he barks at his academic nemesis, Dr. L., a character drawn in to make one realize that the decade-long obsession with “bullying” isn’t so much to end the practice, just to change who’s allowed to do it. Harris, by the way, is wonderfully loathesome as Dr. L.

The waypoints of the plot have only limited promise and little originality. Post-vasectomy lawyer Mike (Woodbine) has to face a fresh pregnancy and possible marriage with his uncomplicated, much younger girlfriend (Reign Edwards) with his pals counseling “Just flush it,” a refreshingly blunt blast at the abortion debate. Pretending he’s younger and hipper Connor (Cannavale) has to grapple with the fact that he’s not young and hip, and that he’s letting his younger wife (Jackie Tohn) empower their out-of-control preschooler by refusing to correct or restrain the tantrum-tosser’s impulses.

Business “issues” come to a head in an impotent generational clash.

The best reason to reset movies like this Burbank/Pomona picture to the Pacific Northwest, the northeast or southeast is to avoid the laziest trap “Old Dads” falls into, the inevitable “guys roadtrip to Vegas” to escape all these feelings and complications. Nothing like gambling, coke and a strip club brawl to sort it all out, eh, Gen X?

Woodbine and Cannavale do decent. energetic work in support. And screen legend Bruce Dern shows up for some third act giggles as Jack meets Future Jack in the most obvious way.

Burr has a few ideas, none we haven’t seen before, and one can appreciate his rants while recognizing that there’s nothing subtle about them, no pre-cancelation Louis C.K. nuance.

What we’re left with is the spectacle of watching a “bully” punch down at assorted cultural straw men, with his “boys” there to high five him after he does. That gets old fast, “Dad.”

Rating: R, drug abuse, fisticuffs, profanities by the bucketful

Cast: Bill Burr, Bokeem Woodbine, Bobby Cannavale, Katie Aselton, Reign Edwards, Rachel Harris, Miles Robbins and Bruce Dern.

Credits: Directed by Bill Burr, scripted by Bill Burr and Ben Tishler. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

Writer-director Christopher Kahunahana made this “Lynchian” thriller which made the festival rounds a few years back and just now is getting a theatrical release.

Danielle Zalopany plays a hula dancer who goes through some things after colliding with a man on the non-touristy side of “Waikiki.”

“Waikiki” opens Oct. 27.

“Soul Mates” is a “Saw” styled torture-then-kill thriller that hangs on an online dating hook and the cackling menace of Mr. Blond Bad Guy Neal McDonough.

A tale of obvious twists and traps and under-reacting performances, about the best one can say about it is that there’s an underlit gloom to the production design that lets McDonough’s sequined-tux turn as “The Matchmaker” pop out.

Allison (Annie Ilonzeh of TV’s “Arrow” and “Person of Interest”) wakes up shackled to Jason (Charlie Weber of TV’s “How to Get Away with Murder”) in a dungeonesque bedroom, neither of them knowing who the other is.

Someone “jumped” them and put them there together. Someone has pictures, phone recordings and video of their lives, knows all their associations, past lovers. Someone is playing “a game” with them, someone whose ads are scored to the ear-worm “Getting to Know You” from “The King and I.”

They ponder their fate but never “work the problem” as they’re led from one room to another, facing touch screen commands and horrific dilemmas that begin promisingly enough.

They’re quizzed “about” each other, which is a way of “getting to know you,” albeit it under duress. And they’re forced to sing karoake to save a gagged and tied stranger dangling over a big meat grinder.

Allison struggles through Jason’s beloved “In the Air Tonight” (Phil Collins). Jason has no prayer of pulling off Allison’s “How to Love” (not a Lil Wayne fan, I guess).

Strangers, loved ones and people from their past turn up as victims they must try to save. A shock collar is among the instruments of torture introduced as they’re lectured about what it’s going to take for The Matchmaker “to make an honest man and woman out of you” “before the walls of loneliness close in on you.”

Cue the walls, closing in like a “Star Wars” trash compactor.

Binge eating and showers and having sex to save themselves all hurl at this hapless duo, who can’t excuse their numbed reactions to all this trauma with “shock.” Leading lady and leading man have got to give us more than this.

The script, like the villain, is pitiless and the pawns in the “game” not remotely interesting enough to invest in.

And just when you think it can’t fail any further, they “explain” what we figured out two acts ago. And explain it some more.

McDonough is always a good bad guy for the money. But not very suspenseful or scary, and somewhat soulless, that’s the bottom line on “Soul Mates.”

Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Annie Ilonzeh, Charlie Weber and Neal McDonough.

Credits: Directed by Mark Gantt, scripted by Chris LaMont and Joe Russo. A Faith Media release.

Running time: 1:26

Northern Australia on the cusp of World War II is the backdrop for this cattle station tale of a woman come to the Outback and the hard times and tough men she encounters there.

A few familiar Aussie faces in that supporting cast.

Hulu has this one, which begins streaming in late November.

We’ve had a few films about Elvis Presley told from his point of view, and one from that of his controlling huxter manager, Col. Tom Parker. So it’s long past time for one from that of his longtime love and ex-wife, Priscilla.

Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” is a mildly lurid, creepy and wholly credible account of the life of Priscilla Beaulieu, groomed from age 14 to be the literal “little” woman who kept “the home fires burning” for the King of Rock’n Roll.

Cailee Spaeny delivers a suppressed and yearning to break free performance in the title role in a movie that doesn’t give Mrs. Presley much in the way of fireworks as she struggles to gain agency in her life from a man who was, from her early teens (14) her entire life.

Spaeney, who gained some attention from TV’s “The First Lady,” is the breakout star here. But Coppola’s cleverest touch was casting Jacob Elordi of TV’s “Euphoria” as Elvis, who literally towers over the “little girl” in pretty much every scene.

Elordi and Coppola’s version of Elvis smoked and cursed a lot more than we might remember. But he was eight inches taller than even the fully grown Priscilla, whom the 20something pop superstar and Army private courted from junior high past graduation before finally marrying her when she was 22 and he was 32.

Elordi grows into the part, mastering the stammering, disarming drawl in later scenes, capturing the mercurial temperment, Elvis’s childishness, competitiveness, his disatisfaction with the trap of fame, his passion for guns and martial arts. But that all-important visual touch — the height difference — underscores the vast power imbalance in the relationship. Elvis makes Priscilla over, gives eye makeup advice and has her dye her hair. She’s his project, his pet, his plaything.

Elvis is in control from the start, working out ways to get around her military parents’ (Ari Cohen, Dagmara Dominiczyk) objections, charming her with a little gallantry, warning her about “getting carried away” in the sexual clenches.

His previous flings he discounts, newer flings (with Ann-Margret) he denies or downplays. And as he’s already developed the Army-bred habit of taking uppers to stay awake and downers to sleep, he’s the one who chillingly feeds her that first pill.

This Elvis dabbles in spiritualism, plows through books on it and tries to interest his project future wife in them and LSD and curses the bad movie scripts Col. Parker pushes on him. As Elvis manipulates Priscilla, he is at his most submissive in dealing with the unseen and unheard Parker. And every so often he lets flashes of abusive temper and rage show, a petulant, born-poor but always spoiled child now wholly unrestrained by his wealth and celebrity.

It’s a masterfully unsettling film, letting us be charmed by Presley’s country gentility and chivalry as he’s sweet-talking her and her parents, perversely getting his alcoholic business manager dad (Tim Post) to become this child’s legal guardian so she can move in and become “family,” getting her into “a good (Memphis) Catholic school” so she can at least graduate.

But in this teen girl’s fantasy life in Graceland, the anonymity (she’s kept from the public, mostly) is deflating, the silences are deafening, the tedium of primping for an often absent, sometimes unfaithful and all-powerful man soul-crushing.

The lack of fire in Spaeny’s mostly-passive performance may be accurate. Priscilla Presley supervised her own memoir and has a producing credit here, and in all things, “she should know.” But that choice narrows Priscilla’s story arc. As she grew up too fast (a “kept” under-age child gambling in Vegas with “The Memphis Mafia” as a teen), we never see her truly mature.

Yes, she makes friends and acts the adult as she becomes one. But there’s zero hint of an interior life, of an independent, intellectually curious woman yearning to break free from the tiny role Presley carved out for her.

At its best, Spaeny’s Priscilla shows us the face of a victim of sexual exploitation, objectifed into an underage “marriage” via oppressive grooming. At her worst, she’s a rival for Coppola’s vapid version of “Marie Antoinette,” a superficial and incomplete portrait of someone who, when she had agency, did little if anything to let us see the “real” her with it.

That makes “Priscilla” a film timely in its arguments against sexual exploitation, “grooming” and lowering the age of consent, but only as fascinating as its subject, who isn’t interesting in the least on her own.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity, sexual situations, smoking

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen, Dagmara Dominczyk, Stephanie Moore and Tim Post

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on the memoir by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:53

Christmas Day, a best seller becomes a George Clooney film starring Joel Edgerton and hits the big screen.

Movies like “Crypto Boy” remind us that no matter how current and “hot” the topic, the label “melodramatic” will never go out of style.

Melodramas use exaggerated tropes for plots and lean on character “types” so familiar that the entire enterprise feels comfortably familiar to the point where it’s predictable, beginning to end.

A “virtuous” hero or protagonist faces forces of corruption and is tested and tainted before triumphing over the cynical, the greedy and the venal. Sentiment turns into sentimentality and everybody learns “family” is what matters and life offers no “shortcuts” to happiness.

“Crypto Boy” is about a son of a struggling immigrant who stumbles into a short cut that will solve all their problems. He will be tempted and tested, betray those he loves and be gullibly tricked by those he’s just met. All for a currency and business model that’s been labeled “a Ponzi scheme” so often it should be on the prospectus you’re pitched when you consider investing.

Amir (Shahine El-Hamus) is a Dutch son of an Egyptian immigrant. He’s 20 years old, with friends and a steady job he loathes — making deliveries for his father Omar’s (Sabri Saad El-Hamus) “authentic Mexican” restaurant in Amsterdam.

That’s a dead end, and Amir knows it. The business Dad started still struggles, as he’s still feeding the neighbors as “family” for their many evening soccer-watching parties.

Amir has no education and no money and no prospect for bettering his lot.

But fate has him make a delivery at an office tower where the charismatic Roy Warner (Minne Koole) is preaching to his staff, possible investors and other believers.

“Don’t work for money. Let money work for YOU!” Figure it out, folks. “Hard work is taxed. Wealth ISN’T.”

Fate and coincidence, major elements of melodramas, intervene again when Amir tries to hustle up a job at Warner’s CryCore Capital. An old friend from the ‘hood, a rapper and influencer, is dodging a meeting with Roy. Amir glad-hands him, “old neighborhood” chats him up, and the next thing he knows, he’s “closed” the deal.

Roy gives him a bonus and a job. He’ll join the Dutch bros selling this crypto day trading via app scheme, with money coming in and going out and every day producing a one-to-three-percent return. It’s a million dollar business, Roy crows (in Dutch with subtitles, or dubbed) about to become a BIG business.

Meanwhile, there’s trouble on the farm at the restaurant. Developers want to redevelop Dad’s block and jack up his rent. Amir gets to be the Big Man, paying Dad’s rent and talking up crypto to the Old Man’s friends.

We’ve seen all this coming (the picture is quite slow in getting staerted), and we know where all this is going.

How long before the shifting money from account to account thing starts to look fishy? How long before Roy’s extracurricular pharmaceutical habit catches on with Amir? With older Omar taking over bicycle deliveries, how many minutes will pass before the inevitable happens and Amir’s loyalty is given its ultimate test?

It’s all somewhat watchable and absolutely predictable, and Shahine El-Hamus makes an engaging lead playing a character with no time for love, just a bestie (Isabelle Kafando), no time to truly “study” crypto when all he really needs to know is how to persuade people and spread the Gospel According to Roy.

Shahine’s brother Shady El-Hamus directed and co-wrote this immigrants-and-crypto melodrama. And their father, Sabri El-Hamus, a veteran Egyptian-Dutch actor, brings gravitas and heart to Omar, a classic self-made immigrant success story whose success is both limited, and an object lesson in “there are no shortcuts.”

Koole is a rough and menacing Zuckerbergesque villain.

But the predictability becomes a real problem as the narrative dawdles before getting to its crypto point, and meanders a bit as it drifts towards its predetermined finale. More “local color” and “scheme explained” scenes and a little less melodrama would have made all the difference in this crypto variation of an age-old formula.

Rating: TV-MA, drug abuse, some violence, brief nudity, profanity

Cast: Shahine El-Hamus, Minne Koole, Sabri Saad El-Hamus, Loes Schnepper and
Isabelle Kafando

Credits: Directed by Shady El-Hamus, scripted by Shady El-Hamus and Jeroen Scholten van Aschat. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

Shailene, Penelope Cruz, and Italian cars — racing ones.

Dec. 25, Neon releases this epic in the States. But I’ve shared the longer, cooler “Sky” Brit trailer, for your motoring, Enzoing pleasure.

Titillatingly transgressive and deliriously blasphemous, “Dicks: The Musical” barrels through the “Oh no they didn’ts” fast and furiously, a movie so self-conciously gay, outrageous, rude and gay again that one wonders if only George Takei should be allowed to review it.

But we all know “Oh MY” would never do.

Raunchy, vulgar, campy and lower-than-lowbrow, it’s a cult film based on a cult musical and decidedly not for every taste. It’s the sort of spoof that religious cranks could embrace because it plays with their darkest “projected” phobias. No, not the pizza parlor thing.

“Look, Ethel! ‘They’ ARE into bestiality, incest and a Gay and Gay Friendly ‘God!'”

But get past the shock value of it all, the jolt of having “SNL” standout Bowen Yang lead one and all in a closing chorus of “God is a (gay slur that starts with “f” and sounds like “maggot”), and just one question hangs over the afterglow, or if you prefer aftertaste.

Is it funny?

Yeah, it pretty much is. Spit-takes, giggles, guffaws and airless, jaw-dropping “Oh no they DIDN’Ts” are scattered throughout this film starring the guys who conceived it — Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. It’s brought to the screen by the cinema’s reigning shock jock, Larry Charles, who graduated from “Seinfeld” to “Religilous” and assorted “Borat” outrages, a director who knows where the laughs are and never ever hesitates to step over the line.

“Dicks” is about two big city sales “bros” — womanizers, woman-users, gauche yard dogs in every meaning of the word. But Craig (Sharp) and Trevor (Jackson) are but filling a void at the center of their empty lives. One grew up without a father, the other without a mother.

Yes, they’re twins, separated at birth. And it takes several minutes, a couple of double entendre production numbers about how “I’ll Always Be on Top” and a vamp by Megan Thee Stallion, their new “lady boss,” because such creatures now exist to them, before they figure out all this singing about how “No one understands what I’ve been through” is in vain.

Craig and Trevor know exactly what each other have been through because they’re “identical” (ahem) twins.

Once they figure that out, there’s nothing for it but to find a way to reconnect their parents “Parent Trap” style. The problem is, Evelyn (Megan Mullally SINGS!) is a wheelchair-bound ditz who probably doesn’t need a wheelchair. And Dad (Nathan Lane at his Nathan Laniest) realized he was gay, “queer as a three dollar bill,” a long time ago.

The movie, with a few sidebars into the realm of “sewer boys,” is as simple as that — comically misguided parental match-making, which with sexuality now being embraced as a “fluid” thing, isn’t all that far-fetched, a lot of sight gags (fake movie/play posters with a gay bent — “Lube!” is the word now that “Grease!” isn’t) — and a flurry of funny outtakes under the credits.

But Sharp and Jackson, wholly immersed in characters they’ve been taking over-the-top for years, are a hoot. Lane is a hoot-and-a-half, especially in the outtakes. Yang reminds us he will say, do or sing anything to get a laugh. Ms. Stallion leans into her raunchy brand with brio.

And Mullally, a gay icon among gay icons, all but steals the show — singing with a lisp, mastering the electric wheelchair as sight gag, indulging in all the openly-expressed vulgarisms network TV didn’t allow her to vamp on “Will & Grace.”

If you’re easily offended, or even have a modest vulgarity/raunch threshold, “Dicks” isn’t/aren’t for you. But in a midnight showing amongst the also-not-easily-shocked lovers of cult comedy dirty laughs, “Dicks” would be hard to beat. Ahem.

Rating: R, for all the reasons you’d expect, and then some, honey

Cast: Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson, Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane, Megan Thee Stallion and Bowen Yang

Credits: Directed by Larry Charles, scripted by Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. An A-24 release.

Running time: 1:26