Movie Nation

It’s only when you spend five minutes on your favorite search engine that it becomes obvious how much of what we in the West believe or known about the Buddhist offshoot, meditation-oriented religion Falun Gong is what the Paranoid People’s Republicans want us to believe.

They’re hellbent on labeling this newish faith-“practice” a “cult,” and hoping like Hell the outside world will conflate it with the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo “doomsday” cult that attacked Japan’s subways with a nerve agent in the mid-90s. Because, I guess, most Westerners won’t know the difference.

So pervasive is China’s communist party’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda and well-publicized efforts to wipe Falun Gong out that you barely here about China’s Uyghur genocide or policy of crushing Tibetan Buddhism and bad-mouthing the Dalai Lama.

All of which I bring up as a preamble to reviewing the terrific animated documentary “Eternal Spring,” about the brutal and sometimes fatal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, which reached a peak after some members of the religion decided to fight back against Chinese propaganda about their worldwide religious movement.

This Jason Loftus film is a part straightforward documentary, following Falun Gong member and Chinese expat Daxiong as he travels from Toronto to New York to Seoul to talk to co-religionists from his hometown, the Chinese city of Chang Chun. But Daxiong is a famous comic book illustrator and artist. So using his storyboards and drawings, the film recreates landmark events from China’s crackdown and takes us back to the late ’90s and early 2000s, letting us meet the people and in some cases hear their accounts and stories, with animated illustration.

What triggered the even-tougher crackdown, mass arrests, beatings and deaths in custody was a caper that the film recreates. Some Falun Gong adherents in Chang Chun decided they’d push back against the relentless state-controlled TV criticism and “hijack” the signal to broadcast the “news” to Chinese people that this condemned and persecuted “cult,” born in China, was Buddhism-based, and had spread all around the world.

Residents watching their evening newscast got treated to the shocking sight of people meditating and doing proscribed exercises in front of the Eiffel Tower and elsewhere. When this event is animated, we see people at home and in restaurants slack-jawed in awe at what they’re watching, the mere idea that some religious minority could fight the totalitarian state and get its message out.

That would make a feel-good caper comedy in the right hands, you’d figure. But s Daxiong and others who fled China relate in the film, they paid a staggering price for fighting back.

“They’d kill a thousand people just to catch one,” one survivor says.

The small group that pulled off this stunt helps Daxiong and Loftus recreate the labor camp “indoctrination,” the police beatings, escape attempts and the like.

And through Daxiong’s vivid and realistic drawings, rendered into mid-grade animation in assistance of a gripping story, we get to know not only persecuted Falun Gong survivors, but those who perished opposing the one-party dictatorship.

The film can be accused of imparting martyrdom on those arrested and killed because of their faith. But those doing the accusing would either being CCP mouthpieces or their online trolls and trollbot supporters.

In any event, “Eternal Spring” makes for an informative and riveting addition to the ranks of animated documentaries, films that have included “Waltz with Bashir” and “Chicago 10.” It’s an engaging way to tell a compelling story that, as Daxiong puts it, makes “art based on shared memory” when live action footage is simply not an option.

Rating: unrated, animated depictions of violence

Cast: Daxiong

Credits: Scripted by and directed by Jason Loftus. A Lofty Sky release.

Running time: 1:26

This New Year’s Eve, revered screen star, Oscar winner, Knight Bachelor of the British Empire and CBE Anthony Hopkins will turn 85. So one always checks to see how many films he has in the can awaiting release when one reviews his latest.

You never know when he’ll hang it up and which film will be his last. But he has three more due out, as of this writing.

That’s worth noting in writing about “Where Are You,” his latest, just now going into limited release. Because even at this late stage of the game, Hopkins is still managing to break new ground on screen, and we’d hate for this fiasco to be his last.

“Where Are You,” a comically-pretentious, artless and yet self-consciously arty dream drama than bends into an inane missing person mystery, is the worst film of Anthony Hopkins’ career.

He’s not barely in it, more of a featured player with what I counted were three scenes or so. He gets top billing, because whatever else filmmakers Valentina De Amicis and Riccardo Spinotti don’t know, they’re not stupid enough to think that having Georgian hunk Irakli Kvirikadze, a bunch of runway beauties and Jack Nicholson’s son Ray topping the credits would sell one ticket.

Hopkins plays the mysterious “Thomas” who narrates as he scribbles away in the opening, pondering how “all the loves dance and completely disappear.”

He serves no discernable function in the narrative.

The film is about smoldering fashion photographer Nicolas (Kvirikadze) who has a new book of art photography out and sits down for a bizarre TV interview that is intercut with scenes of him in his idyllic, privileged life with his “muse,” the gorgeous and willowy Matilda (Camille Rowe).

They make love, frolic and caress each other in their seaside villa, but Matilda narrates in voice-over the trouble on the horizon. “We’ve always been a team, but the artist is nothing without his muse.”

Of course he had other loves before her. He’s even pondering temptations while they’re together, giving credence to the old saying “No matter how gorgeous she is, there’s always some dude tired of waking up next to ‘that.'”

The interviewer (Christopher Ashman) rudely challenges him with “Is this the last gasp of a dying artist?” and “Don’t you see how empty all of this is?” questions. But Nicolas has it all and can’t see it.

Then his BFF the surfer (Ray Nicholson) dies. And Matilda disappears with a “Don’t call, don’t look for me, forget me” note. Nicolas is led to believe that she’s been kidnapped. His search for her takes him to the ends of the Earth — which as U2 taught is, Joshua Tree, California.

“Where Are You” is largely a collection of beautiful people doing beautiful things in beautiful places, gorgeous women and stunning flowers, gorgeous women framed by stunning flowers. It’s all beauty without dramatic form right up to that mid-point, when melodrama — badly-written and acted melodrama — takes over. Think I’m exaggerating?

“The greatest sadness is being unable to kiss an invisible woman.”

I’m not familiar with the works of the co-writers/directors, but checking their IMDb page, this appears to be a reworking of a movie they couldn’t get released three years ago under the title “Now is Everything.” Unlike fine wines, films don’t improve simply by leaving them in a dark, cool place for a few years. And whatever they did to make this sellable didn’t “fix” it.

As for two-time Oscar-winner Sir Tony, one holds out hope for “The Son,” “Zero Contact” or “Armageddon Time,” which are rolling out over the new few weeks and months. Because nobody wants to, as Sean Connery put it, “exit with a stinker, which was “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” in his case.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, profanity, off-camera violence

Cast: Irakli Kvirikadze, Camille Rowe, Madeline Brewer, Angela Sarafyan, Ray Nicholson, Mickey Sumner and Anthony Hopkins.

Credits: Directed by Valentina De Amicis and Riccardo Spinotti, scripted by Valentina De Amicis, Matt Handy and Riccardo Spinotti. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:35

Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s “Utama” is a stark, elegiac memento of a vanishing culture, a way of life dying as our planet’s dry places dry up completely and vulnerable populations stare down their future as climate refugees.

Telling this story with non-actors (mostly), Grisi creates a somber, sad and documentary-real eulogy for the Quechua families facing the stark choices that changing circumstances have handed them.

Each day Virginio (José Calcina) awakens at dawn to the sight of his wife Sisi (Luisa Quispe) arising to start their day. She gives him buns to take out the door as he releases the llamas that are their livelihood from the stone corral behind their stone house, stone shed and outhouse. He will graze them in desert highlands where almost nothing is still green. She will plant beans and potatoes, water them from their well, and cook for when he comes home.

But their well has gone dry. She will have to trek to the village to fill a couple of buckets. The river is but a creek, and a long way to herd the llamas for a drink. They need it, as do Sisi and Virginio.

And then there’s the worrisome tubercular hack Virginio tries to hide from his wife. They are very old. Their burdens aren’t easing. And there is no water.

At some point, the women and men of the village (Chuvica is where this was filmed) of the arid plateau gather to talk about their crisis, the fact that it hasn’t rained for a year, that their wells and their llamas are dying of thirst.

Younger people gave up on this village some while ago, not necessarily with the blessings of their families. Now, the old women say that it’s time to “migrate to the city.” The old men grouse, deny and complain in Quechua and Spanish, with English subtitles.

“If we leave, our land will be left alone in silence.”

And Sisi and Virginio’s grandson Clever (Santos Choque) has shown up, “to deliver a message” from his father, Virginio gripes — “It’s time to move to the city with us.”

Grisi does a wonderful job of getting at just how difficult this decision is. Think of every aged relative you’ve had to take the car keys from or move into assisted living. Multiply that by an entire village, people who have lived, worked and died the same way for hundreds of years, and imagine the shock of what’s happening and the reluctance to accept it.

He immerses us in a world where the menfolk even turn to the old ways to try and “solve” this problem, “sowing” the mountain with water and an animal sacrifice in the hopes of bringing the rains back.

Virginio seems the most stubborn of all, refusing advice from a grandson who “doesn’t know how to read the signs,” the ones Virginio hopes will show that “the rains come and go, and will come again.”

The acting is natural, unaffected. And that goes for the storytelling as well. The first music we hear in this silent landscape is downbeat and dire. It underscores how the “solutions” presented here solve nothing.

The life disruption is borne through gritted teeth, a determination to hold out just a little longer, to make it to the finish line (death) before the other inevitability becomes unavoidable. And as we read between the lines, we can envision older generations worldwide facing this ugly future with the same denial, obstinance and dismay, a “change” that no one wants forced on everyone by the actions and inactions of a few.

Grisi has made a simple parable for life on Earth and the consequences the most remote people face from climate change, and a film that’s worth rooting for as “Utama” is Bolivia’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature competition at the Oscars.

Rating: unrated

Cast: José Calcina, Luisa Quispe and Santos Choque

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alejandro Loayza Grisi. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:28

Glancing at other reviews, “Meet Cute” can definitely be labeled “a mixed bag” and “not for everyone,” although one is sorely tempted to ask some of these reviewing schlumps “where the bad woman/bad man touched you and ruined your capacity for joy” based on their high dudgeon.

Here’s what I got out of this “time travel” “50 First Dates/Groundhog Day” riff. Kaley Cuoco is a superheroine. Her superpower? She humanized and made me give a damn about the professionally-annoying Pete Davidson for like, the first time ever.

As a woman who hits on “stranger” Pete in an outer-boroughs sports bar, tells him “I come from the future” and that she’s been taking her shot at him, over and over again, via a time-travel tanning bed behind a Chinese American nail salon, Cuoco runs through her perky repertoire.

She is cute and beguiling, forward and impulsive, impatient and “scary Kaley” over the course of this romantic comedy about loneliness, “messiness” and “our pain is what shapes us.”

Yeah, it’s a time travel rom-com, “Safety Not Guaranteed” meets the Cinematic Canon of Drew Barrymore. But there’s a little heavy lifting going on. All you have to do is carry half the weight yourself.

As Sheila, Cuoco shows up at the bar dressed like an Iowa librarian and drinks and swears like a battle-weary Queens queen. And gun-shy Gary — “We both have old timey names!” — is helpless in her hands.

But as she bowls him over with a dinner invitation, pretends to let him pick from a collection of adjacent Indian eateries and listens to his “a real ‘Sophie’s Choice’ kind of decision,” she laughs and says “I love when you make that joke,” and gives away the game.

Time to “Come clean,” about meeting him every night like this, the sarcastic manicurist (Deborah S. Craig, funny) who lets her time-travel in her tanning bed, and the fact that she knows what he drinks (Old Fashioned) and what he’s going to say…because she’s gone back 24 hours to reset this “perfect” night with a “perfect” guy, an endless “Meet Cute” first date.

Over the course of this Alex Lehmann film (the Duplass-scripted “Blue Jay” was his), Sheila will stumble from perky and bubbly to dark, testy and broken. And poor Gary might never be the wiser, because every night is a “Meet Cute” first date. It’s only when Sheila starts trying to “fix” this insecure, fragile, just-got-out-of-a-relationship loner who folds up like a wet napkin at the merest hint of a mistake, that Gary grows an edge and the “pain” that he’s been through becomes an issue. As does hers.

The sitcom-polished Cuoco barrels through her one-liners, “living life to the fullest, just like ‘The Real Housewives of Orange County,” and makes the cautionary slip “I’m about to ruin your life” land.

Davidson dials down his Dead End Pete Persona, cleans up from his usual “Staten Island stoner” look and ably conveys Gary as a deer in Sheila’s headlights for the early scenes, and the angry, more assertive jerk her “changes” turn him into later.

The couple delivers real pathos in the third act, and for all the comic pop of her manic patter and his strangely subdued responses, it’s Craig’s deadpan manicurist who delivers most of the laugh-out-loud moments here.

Kevin Corrigan as a sympathetic/flirty bartender and Rock Kohli, as an Indian restaurant street hawker with insights into relationships — that he might have read from a Chinese fortune cookie — provide solid support.

Not all of screenwriter Noga Pnueli’s ideas work, and some — how one deal’s with an alternate “me” in the same timeline — are tonally off.

But “Meet Cute” makes for an offbeat spin on its titular rom-com convention, and Cuoco and Davidson give it just enough heart to pay off, something I attribute to Kaley C. because on his own, Davidson can be funnier, but he’s usually as warm as refrigerated cod.

It’s nothing we’d call great, but in an era when no one seems to “get” how to make a rom-com work, it’s bad either.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity, adult themes

Cast: Kaley Cuoco, Pete Davidson, Deborah S. Craig, Rock Kohli and Kevin Corrigan

Credits: Directed by Alex Lehmann, scripted by Noga Pnueli. A Peacock release.

Running time: 1:29

A former government wracked by criminality, a fascist coup and a country divided between a majority crying out for justice and a dogmatic minority who won’t hear of it, “facts” and “evidence” be damned.

America, 2022? No, “Argentina, 1985.”

Argentine director and co-writer Santiago Mitre’s engrossing, nervous film takes us back to the troubled days just after Argentina’s latest military dictatorship ended, when fears of violent reprisals or even another coup hung over a new administration and a justice system pondering whether to prosecute the leaders of the military junta who presided over mass kidnappings, torture and murder, “crimes against humanity” in the name of “saving” a country from leftist influence and unrest.

Mitre (“The Summit,” “Paulina”) recreates the unease that lapses into paranoia of the prosecutor fated to take on nine of the most powerful men in the country in a legal move unprecedented in human history — civilian authority taking “genocidal” dictators to court. And Mitre finds the dark humor in that situation in his anti-heroic protagonist, the prosecutor named Julio César Strassera, but who also goes by a nickname — “Loco,” aka “Crazy.”

What makes this skewed take on the man work is Mitre’s choice as star. Ricardo Darín might be the most famous screen actor in Argentina, and with “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “Nine Queens” and “Truman” among his credits, he’s certainly the most accomplished. This is Mitre’s third film with him. He brings just the right blend of determined seriousness and martyred paranoia to a nervous man about to try a case as the whole world watches.

In 1984, the film opens as the nation’s highest court is deciding whether or not to try the nine men who took over the country and taught the world the Spanish phrase “Los Desaparecidos.” That’s they called the women and men snatched by the military’s right wing death squads to be imprisoned without trial, tortured and often murdered — “The Disappeared.”

We meet “Loco” as he’s dodging calls from the bureaucrat who appointed him and accusing questions from his wife (Alejandra Flechner) and tweenage son (Santiago Armas Estevarena). Threatening calls are coming to his house, his wife is baiting him with the accusation that he’s “afraid” the justice system will make him pursue this case because he’s been in the job for years, and never got out of line and took action when the generals and admirals were in charge.

“I won’t be the moron picked to be the face” of a sham trial, he fumes (in Spanish with English subtitles). He might be afraid of “the most important prosecution since Nuremberg.” But he’s damned certain that the high court and justice system won’t have the nerve to prosecute.

His son is trying to figure out if Dad’s worth idolizing. And Julio/Loco is most worried that his teen daughter (Gina Mastronicola) is being seduced by a “spy” from “the services” (the military) sent to “get to me through her.”

As the judicial system decides to proceed and the old friends he figured he could count on as his “team” chicken out, a young assistant prosecutor (Peter Lanzini) shows up, “assigned” to him. And once Julio’s gotten past Luis Moreno Ocampo’s youth, his ties to the military and the well-heeled, fascist-sympathizing rich, the young guy becomes an invaluable sounding board about the optics of this case as they dicker over how to proceed and consider just who in this divided country they stand to win over in court.

A staff of eager and idealistic young lawyers is brought on board via a cute and jokey hiring montage. They’re not needed just for their energy and enterprise as they will be the ones chasing down witnesses, case files and evidence. It is their generation who needs to be convinced this is important. The televised trial, and TV chat show appearances might help make that case.

One of the greatest Argentine movies ever was “The Official Story (La historia oficial),” a so-fresh-the-wound-was-still-bleeding 1985 drama about the covered-up extrajudicial killings. More recently, there’s been a gripping documentary about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the parents of the “disappeared” who started silent public protests in Buenos Aires which unraveled the legitimacy and the support for the dictatorship as they doggedly pursued answers about their missing children and justice for Argentina.

Mitre’s script, co-written with Mariano Llinás, takes care to bring in those mothers, who along with the UN and Organization of American States, took pleas compiled evidence about what was going on in Argentina during its junta and the junta’s “dirty war.”

The mothers and some of the witnesses are shown greeting the case with biting sarcasm about the years nothing was even attempted on a legal front to account for the missing and start accusing the murderously guilty.

All of which informs the character Julio, who no doubt feels guilt over not doing more (he himself might have “disappeared”) and still can’t be as glib about this dangerous and historic undertaking as his wife and kids, who shrug off the ugly phone calls.

“It’s just a threat, Dad!”

Darín brings a befuddled, twitchy energy to “Crazy” — chain-smoking, eyes-darting, fretting over what might happen and yet refusing police “protection” because the cops were in cahoots with the junta. Julio exchanges taunts with the smug, smirking and “patriotic” defense attorneys, and all but flips out over the tricks the defense uses to stall, delay and smother justice before it can be adjudicated and served. The pressure gets to him in serious and amusing ways.

But “Argentina, 1985” earns its gravitas from the gripping testimony of those who survived kidnapping, or who witnessed it. And while the closing argument might not be “To Kill a Mockingbird” poetic, it is blunt and moving, its usage of the simple yet inspiring “never again” standing as a challenge to anyone shrinking from the duty of pressing on with a case, under great duress and in a violently divided land, to bring the criminally powerful to justice.

Rating: R for (profanity)

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Alejandra Flechner, Peter Lanzani, Santiago Armas Estevarena

Credits: Directed by Santiago Mitre, scripted by Mariano Llinás and
Santiago Mitre. An Amazon Studios release (now streaming on Amazon Prime)

Running time: 2:20

The great gift that “Black Adam” offers casual comic book filmgoers is the chance to experience a lesser-known character in a less familiar “universe,” a film you can take in with few expectations.

We know Dwayne Johnson’s in it, and dude is credibly bulked-up and superheroic, just in his street clothes. Aside from that, and the fact that the man’s been hyping the hell out of this for years, we’re walking in with a blank slate.

It has that DC cinematic universe look — soundstagey, filtered lighting, Marvel on an overcast day. B-movies-on-an-A-picture-budget filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan,””House of Wax,””Jungle Cruise”) is behind the camera. Let’s see what they come up with up.

Not much, as it turns out.

It’s a jumbled, cluttered “origin story” whose opening scenes have a “Conan the Barbarian” look and feel. The rest? “Shazam!” with a staggering body count, a jokey, murderous action epic of confused loyalties and uninteresting characters, dull performances and Dwayne Johnson spending a lot of time proving Rocks can fly.

Between “Conan” and “Shazam!” there’s an Indiana Jones interlude, a quick bit of poking around in a ruined ancient crypt, cuneiform-reading clues and intoning an ancient summons to bring a Middle Eastern nation’s ancient “Champion,” “Teth-Adam,” to life.

Kahndaq is an ancient land, the world’s sole source of Eternium (Did James Cameron come up with that, or steal it for his “Unobtainium?”) which led to the people being enslaved to mine it. A young slave strikes a blow to free his people, and vanishes in a flash 5,000 years ago.

A modern day academic Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) is hunting for an ancient crown made from Eternium and containing the magic of six demons, because as her skateboarding son (Bodhi Sabongui) notes, “We could really use a superhero right about now.”

Kahndaq has fallen under foreign occupation as multi-national mercenaries and those who hire them exploit their resources. Asssorted villains want that crown, too, chiefly Ishmael (Marwan Keznari) we figure out is a heavy the moment we see him. There’s nothing subtle, mysterious or nuanced in this film. It’s as obvious can be, which contributes to the mind-numbing dullness.

Summoning Teth-Adam (Johnson) gets the attention of the world’s Justice Society, competing for attention with the Justice League, the Avengers and The Evolution Revolution, no doubt.

These movies — and this isn’t just a DC adaptation problem, although theirs do a worse job at hiding it — are just feeding on each other now, repeating themselves ad nauseum. The result is stunningly-decorated tedium, as boring an experience as any sentient cinema-goer’s going to have at the movies this year.

Pierce Brosnan is Dr. Fate, Aldis Hodge is Hawkman, Netflix “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” hearthrob Noah Centineo is awkward Atom Smasher and Quintessa Swindell is the windswept Cyclone. These members of the Justice Society are sent by the non-nonsense Waller (Viola Davis) to calm the situation in Kahndaq, “peace keepers” who do nothing about the oppression and exploitation that was the reason a desperate Dr. Adrianna summoned the unstoppable killing machine Teth-Adam in the first place.

“Good guys don’t kill people,” Hawkman lectures the out-of-control Adam.

“I’m not a good guy.”

The film’s attempts at the “Shazam!” jokey tone are largely provided by Adrianna’s kid, Amon, who coaches Adam to take on a whole “Man in Black” persona. Adam, glimpsing a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western on the kid’s TV, hears him out. “Catch-phrase, THEN kill them!”

“Tell them that the Man in Black sent you.”

There’s a lot of exposition early on, telling us the prehistory that created Teth-Adam. I was somewhat engaged in the opening slave rebellion scenes, but this fiasco fritters that attention away in a flash, losing itself in an endless series of brawls, shootouts with Black Adam catching the bad guy’s bullets, Black Adam flying and Black Adam crashing through walls because “I suppose you didn’t have doors” in his life, five thousand years ago.

The acting is indifferent, save for the teenager, who has no screen presence and must have been hired for his skateboarding skill rather than any acting training. I hate picking on kids, but he is “Phantom Menace” level awful — dead line-readings, literally wilting in front of the camera.

The best thing in “Black Adam” might be the hairstyling. Brosnan, Swindell and some others have screen-saver-ready locks. Johnson? He’s bigger than we’ve even seen him, and balder.

This picture is Johnson’s baby, talked-up and hyped for years before the cameras finally rolled. Apparently his towering ambition is to get one more franchise on his books while he’s still got the clout to do it. This was a mistake, and it’s all on him.

The cut-and-paste writing and lackluster direction are the main failings. There’s little to this that you’d call a “story,” even less “story” that makes sense. At one point, Black Adam is entombed, locked away, willingly submitting to authority in the service of the greater good, only to be released in the very next scene. Pointless crap like that is scattered throughout this script-by-committee screenplay.

I guess that’s to be expected in any movie whose real catch phrase is “A bad plan is better than no plan at all.”

Rating: PG-13 (Sequences of Strong Violence|Intense Action|Some Language)

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Shahi, Aldis Hodge, Quintessa Swindell, Noah Centineo, Marwan Keznari and Pierce Brosnan

Credits: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, scripted by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani, based on the DC comic book character. A Warner Brothers/New Line release.

Running time: 2:04

As long as there are movies to be made, there’ll be fresh versions of the hoariest thriller plot of all, the one based on a short story with a pun in the title.

Man/human beings are “The Most Dangerous Game.”

“Hunted” was titled “Hounded” (better title) when it was released in the UK. It’s another story about the inbred and entitled rich hunting their fellow humans for sport, another variation of Richard Connell’s classic short story from 1924.

Like every adaptation, it has its unique twists and touches. But this Tommy Boulding tale is depressingly straightforward and generally lacks the urgency of people being chased to death and the menace of upper class twits on horseback dressed for the hunt and dressed to kill.

This time, it’s a gang of young London robbers who find themselves trapped, taunted and released by the family that owns the gigantic and ancient rural brick pile, The Redwick Estate.

Leader Leon (Nobuse Jnr), his getaway driver little brother Charlie — “That’s CHAZZ!” (Malachi Pullar-Latchman), lockpicker Vix (Hannah Traylen) and East European muscle Tod (Ross Coles) figure they’ll do — say it with me — “One Last Job” for their antique-shop owning fence.

But it goes “pear shaped” as they say in Jolly Olde, and they find themselves hogtied, driven into the middle of nowhere, and lectured by the Redwick matriarch (screen veteran Samantha Bond, who played Moneypenny when Pierce Brosnan was 007).

“This country,” she intones, “used to have a natural order…the rulers, and the ruled.”

These impudent breaking-and-entering commoners have upset that order. The four thieves are left on their own, with a lot of questions they need the answers to.

“Why did they let us go? Why did they wish us luck?”

On hearing the sound of a distant horn, the thunder of hooves and baying of hounds — “I thought they banned fox hunting.”

“They did.” Wait for it. Wait. Wait. “RUN!”

Interestingly, the class consciousness has always been a subtext of the “Game” story, although many films avoided that because the filmmakers/producers were afraid of pointing out how the robber baron rich would just as soon kill us as let The People exercise power.

Decades of “Well, there’s no sense letting them label us communists” thinking prevailed in Hollywood if not everywhere.

Here, it’s introduced and joked about but somewhat lost in the search for inventive ways to kill the hunted and clever twists that let the prey become the predators.

As I mentioned at the outset, there’s a serious lack of menace among the horseback riders. They have four servants working with them, so they may have access to guns, but only carry “ceremonial” knives with them. Damned if I couldn’t overcome an old man, an OAP-aged woman, a daft 50ish father or his skinny inbred punk son. Maybe not all at once, but one on one.

The hounds, tails a-wagging and whatnot, come off as big ol’boo-boos and not killers baying for blood.

Some of this is rectified for brief moments, but the overall feel is of a chase that has low stakes until we see our first victim killed.

Bond gives fair value as the most entitled of the entitled, a woman with lots of miles and plenty of resentment for her inferiors.

“”This country used to be ruled by lions. Now it’s led by LAMBS.”

The rest of the cast? Adequate to a one. That doesn’t quite go for the picture, which has a fine moment here and there, and begins and ends well enough.

It’s all the not-that-scared slow-walking-escape that kicks off and finishes off the middle acts that blow this “game” before it really gets started.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Samantha Bond, Malachi Pullar-Latchman, Nobuse Jnr, Hannah Traylen, James Lance, Nick Moran, Ross Coles, Louis Walwyn and James Faulkner

Credits: Directed by Tommy Boulding, scripted by Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:34

There’s a stately, old-fashioned gentility to “My Policeman,” a period piece romance from the days when homosexuality was “The love that dare not speak its name” in the United Kingdom.

It’s the sort of tragic gay melodrama that stood out in many a fall film festival in Toronto and New York, not quite Douglas Sirk era guarded and 1950s oblique, but something that would have been considered sexually “daring” as recently as Todd Haynes’ homage to Sirk, 2002’s “Far from Heaven.”

As dated as it is, I expected the source novel to be antiquated, and not a relatively recent publication. The story arc has a familiarity and the tropes trotted out are tried and true. Seeing Linus Roache as a sexually-conflicted retiree here reminds us he first gained notice playing a tormented and closeted “Priest” back in 1994, and the presence of Rupert Everett pays tribute to his role in making gay characters mainstream, and the career price he paid for being out and the leading man roles he probably lost, handsome as he was in his youth.

All of which is a way of saying that this overfamiliar and somewhat predictable tale from the 1950s (and today) has value. At a time when gay rights are under renewed assault at home and abroad, it’s worth remembering “the bad old days” and the rippling pain of relationships that could never be, and the hurtful, stifling influence of “the norm.”

A very old man (Everett) is delivered, by wheelchair, to a home by the sea in Brighton. A retired school teacher (Gina McKee) is taking him in, and gets cursory instructions on how to handle him. “No cigarettes,” no matter how much he badgers you, for starters.

Is this some program in which the public is paid to take in the elderly and infirm? Are they related? No to both.

The fact that her retired husband Tom (Roache) has turned to long dog walks along the sea-lashed breakwater rather than meet this failing old man speaks volumes. They have history — all of them.

In flashbacks, we meet Marion (Emma Corrin) just as she’s finishing school and about to start teaching, and Tom (Harry Styles) as he’s just finished his military service and started police work. They meet through a friend of hers, and she is quite taken.

Tom is kind, considerate and curious, a “copper” who would love book recommendations from Marion. But just as they’re starting to become a couple, he introduces her to a museum curator (David Dawson) who’d love to give them a private tour.

Tom met him at work, and the cultured, worldly Patrick becomes a third in their couple — inviting them to recitals, proffering tickets to the opera, leading them in restaurant sing-alongs. He’s the life of the party, a tour guide to life on a higher place. He’s also a third wheel. Her friends think the educated Patrick might be smitten with Marian. She’s sure Tom’s the one for her.

As Patrick is setting off the viewers’ gaydar, the question the picture asks becomes “How did Marian find out, and when?”

“My Policeman” backtracks to Tom and Patrick’s meeting, which is a cliche. And it fills us in on clues Marion is given and misses or grasps, colleagues she confides in, as this “third wheel” enlivens their cultural and social lives, but who invites himself for a visit at the country cottage where Tom and Marion honeymoon.

As I type that, I am wondering anew what publisher took on a typescript that is this far from the social/sexual cutting edge — in 2012. Perhaps there is subtext that the film adaptation lacks. Then again, Bethan Roberts went on to write an Elvis novel (“Graceland”). So maybe not.

Director Michael Grandage did the nicely-realized publishing period piece “Genius,” in which Colin Firth played the Golden Age literary editor Maxwell Perkins, who made Fitzgerald, Wolfe and Hemingway legends. “My Policeman” shares that film’s attention to character and setting, and its quiet tone, with flashes of melodrama and splashes of not-quite-explicit sex.

The cast is also quite good. I wasn’t wholly on board the Harry Styles as cinema star bandwagon with “Don’t Worry, Darling.” In this period piece, he leans into his still boyish looks (grease on the celebrated forelock) and plays up the character’s lack of sophistication but desire to acquire it. He works in the part.

Corrin, who played Princess Dianna on “The Crown,” strips away a half century of sexual sophistication playing a wife of the one of the last “the last to know” generations.

Dawson, who was the skinny, over-matched and yet cunning King Alfred in TV’s “The Last Kingdom,” has an Alan Cumming vibe about him — “dashing,” worldly, sophisticated and not boorish about it.

There are but glimpses of the closeted gay life of the era — the furtive back-alley assignations that begin in the one gay bar in town, brutal police abuse.

The film’s core is the war of wills that emerges, competing agendas, everybody selfishly wanting what’s best for themselves. Marion and Patrick are destined to be hurt. But what about Tom? Who gets to be selfish, who faces consequences?

As familiar as much of this can seem, the players draw us in and make us invest in it. Even if the resolution is entirely too pat and emotionally lacking, the mere casting of the legendary Everett, the quintessential “Gay Best Friend” in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” McKee (“Notting Hill”) and Roache, most recently a regular on TV’s “Vikings” and “Homeland,” gives the present day scenes the weight they need to work, even if that part of the story is given short shrift.

They ensure that whatever its shortcomings, “My Policeman” is never less than watchable, a frustrating romance from an era when same sex love affairs were, by law, bound to frustrate, curse and wound the lovers. Remembering that simple fact, and that this wasn’t that long ago, has value far beyond what might be just another gay romance with “tragic” undertones.

Rating: R, for sexual content (nudity)

Cast: Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, Gina McKee, David Dawson, Rupert Everett and Linus Roache

Credits: Directed by Michael Grandage, scripted by Ron Nyswaner, based on a novel by Bethan Roberts. An Amazon Studios release.

Running time: 1:53

Julia Roberts and George Clooney wring every last drop of good will and good humor out of their long friendship and screen personas as estranged exes who join forces to stop their daughter from marrying too impulsively and too young in “Ticket to Paradise.” They’re charming together, and they almost win us over in a generally sweet if not exactly hilarious romantic comedy from the director of “Mama Mia! Here We Go Again.”

That’s basically the film Ol Parker — who co-wrote this scenic and utterly inconsequential laugher — remade, “Mama Mia!” without ABBA. Or songs. Or big romantic emotions. Or a star-studded supporting cast.

At least Bali makes a decent alternative to Greece as a setting. Only “Ticket” wasn’t filmed in Bali. Queensland, Australia, with a few Balinese sets and bit players and some digital help, stands in for the “Island Paradise” here.

Clooney plays David, a Chicago builder. Roberts is Georgia, his LA art gallery-owning ex. They married right out of college, regretted it and were divorced within five years. But they have this thing in common — a child.

“The last time David was actually help was the night we made Lily!”

Lily (Kaitlyn Dever of “Booksmart” and “Rosaline,” now on Disney+) has just finished law school (“college” is how the script refers to it), and somehow got through it with a hard-drinking, man-crazy roomie (Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s kid, also of “Booksmart”). Wren is this comedy’s comic relief, always ready with a zinger, a bottle or a “pleasure pack” box of Trojans.

The feuding parents have to sit together at graduation, shouting “Love you!”/”Love you MORE!” as Lily gets her diploma. They put her and wild child Wren on a plane to Bali for a few weeks to unwind before starting real life, and that’s that.

In an unfortunate departure from the “Mama Mia!” model, much of the first act is spent with the two graduates as they snorkel, get in trouble and are rescued by a hunky “seaweed farmer” Gede (Maxime Bouttier). We’re subjected to a drab courtship (no sparks here) in a stunning setting that leads to “37 Days Later,” the text that Georgia and David’s go-getter lawyer is about to ditch it all and marry too young and “make the same mistake we did.”

Thrown together on a flight to the wedding, they start cooking up a “Trojan Horse” plan that takes shape after landing. They’ll break up this premature couple-ation, get their girl on the right path and cheat themselves of the charms and quirks of a Balinese wedding.

The scenes that made you perk up in the trailer to “Ticket to Paradise” are the ones that pop in the finished film — Clooney and Roberts bitching/bantering on the plane, getting into a beer pong (Arrack is used instead) contest with the youngsters, which leads to a lot of uninhibited Mom and Dance dancing to ’80s pop.

They click like the old “Oceans” couple that they are, Roberts flinging her hair and barking “You need to calm down,” Clooney unloading “Your telling someone to calm down has never calmed anybody down in the history of the universe!”

But once they’re out to sabotage this “bad decision,” they are in “lockstep.” Only they’re not.

Clooney has some sharp-edged scenes in which he tries to scare off the would-be groom. Roberts is given a boy-toy younger Frenchman (Sean Lynch), an airline pilot, as a dopey, moon-eyed paramour.

It’s just that every situation everybody gets into is a cliche (“stranded” for the night, etc). Throw in the fact that the movie’s on life support when the leads aren’t on screen, and you see the problem.

There are giggles and a few decent laughs here. And it’s as funny seeing Clooney throw himself as bug-eyed mugging (on the dance floor) as it is seeing Roberts shake her groove thing like no one’s watching.

But when the credits roll, there’s nothing here we haven’t already forgotten. Which is why they slap some outtakes under those credits, showing us the way these two click, even between takes. It’s not enough.

Rating: PG-13 for some strong language and brief suggestive material.

Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Billie Lourd, Maxime Bouttier and Sean Lynch

Credits: Directed by Ol Parker, scripted by Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:44

The great New Orleans trumpeter Wynton Marsalis remembers the times his father Ellis suggested he take another look and listen to the jazz of “Pops,” Louis Armstrong. To Wynton and generations of African Americans who only knew Armstrong through is smiling public persona, not being political, never making waves despite the racism he faced from his first breath to his last, Armstrong was best at “Uncle Tomming,” playing the role that pleased white folks who thought he’d accepted his “place.”

But then his dad pushed recordings at his son and suggested trying to match the man’s trumpet and cornet solos. He couldn’t. And Marsalis the younger heard a bit of Armstrong’s vast archive of private conversation recordings, chats he’d have with friends, contemporaries and folks who’d stop by his house in Corona, Queens, New York. Here was the man the public didn’t hear as much of — defiant, salty, angry and frank, not an icon but a human being. Marsalis was turned around.

“I could not appreciate Louis Armstrong,” he admits in the new documentary, “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.” He does now.

With all that’s been said, reported and written about Louis Armstrong over the decades, it’s shocking how eye and ear-opening Sacha Jenkins’ new documentary about him is, what a revelation and re-assertion of the man and his place in the culture it turns out to be.

Jenkins — who has the civil unrest in LA doc “Burn Motherf—-r Burn,” and films on Rick James and Wu Tang clan in his credits — lets us hear from those candid tapes, and they humanize Armstrong and give this revolutionary figure in music his due as a Black man who was the very first to push through a lot of doors in segregated America, and bore the scars for it.

Anecdotes start with “This ofay motherf—-r” comes up to shake his hand and drops the N-word when he does, or that Hollywood “callboy” (production assistant who fetched talent to the set) disrespected him on the set and got an earful that everyone else heard too, blistering and sometimes hilarious exchanges he’d relate to his friends.

Jenkins reminds us that in a few interviews in his later years — with his friend Orson Welles, who was sitting in for David Frost on his chat show, or Dick Cavett or even Mike Douglas — Armstrong let loose on the abuse and insults and racism he faced throughout his career.

“Uncle Tom?” Not hardly.

Armstrong called out then-President Eisenhower for not doing something about the white unrest in protest against integration in 1950s Little Rock, another piece of Armstrong lore that Jenkins jogs our memory’s with.

And that’s just addressing the “Uncle Tomming” rep that “Satchmo” wore by smiling and being America’s greatest musical goodwill ambassador at a time when “I played 99 million hotels I couldn’t stay at.”

As to the music?

He “hit notes” nobody else could, took over and popularized jazz and made it America’s music and made it matter for decades.

“He totally changed the way people sing,” another e expert weighs in. “Jazz, pop, rock, soul,” country, you name it — the way he attacked a phrase, his role in the invention of scat singing.

Touring and singing duets with white trombonist Jack Teagarden, pretty much mentoring his white copycat, Bing Crosby, crowning his many featured Hollywood appearances by singing with and to Streisand for the finale of “Hello, Dolly,” and topping the damned charts with “What a Wonderful World” well into his last decade of life, there is literally no one who comes close to Armstrong’s impact on music and culture and America’s self-image.

Jenkins has the rapper Nas read from Armstrong’s autobiography, “Satchmo,” and makes ransom-note cut-out word collages into subtitles, doubling the impact of Armstrong’s words (Nas sounds nothing like Armstrong. No one does.).

And the filmmaker taps into decades of personal appearances, a filmed TV concert in black and white, a European tour, chats with Steve Allen and Carson and everybody else who wanted the good vibes that an Armstrong appearance brought their talk and variety show, decades after jazz had fallen from its status as America’s favorite.

He was hilarious, joking about racism, poking prejudices and getting big laughs in the same breath.

The Armstrong of the personal tapes renews our appreciation for Armstrong the TV raconteur. The man was candid at home. “Let’s talk about pot,” he says on a tape. And on TV’s “What’s My Line?” a whole string of riffs on “high” and “higher” went right over the host’s head. Or so it would seem.

Jenkins has made a film that does exactly what Ellis Marsalis wanted his brilliant son to recognize, that we haven’t “appreciated” Louis Armstrong, a multifaceted entertainer whose place within the culture and the racial politics of his day have never been given their due.

In this Golden Age of biographical musical documentaries, the filmmaker who is now working on an Ed Sullivan doc has taken a subject we thought we knew all we needed to know about, and all but re-introduced him to a new age. Well done.

Rating: R for language.

Cast: Louis Armstrong, Lil Armstrong, Lucille Armstrong, Wynton Marsalis, Leonard Feather, Jack Teagarden, Orson Welles, Dick Cavett, Steve Allen, Mike Douglass and David Frost.

Credits: Directed by Sacha Jenkins. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:45