Movie Nation

As we enter another deluge of “holiday” streaming movies, I’d be remiss in not catching on a title or two I missed from assorted streaming services LAST holiday movie season.

“Something from Tiffany’s” comes with a Rotten Tomatoes critics seal of approval and stars She Who Rarely Does Wrong Zoey Deutch.

But it’s a not-remotely-funny/not-that romantic rom-com that just happens to be sprinkled with New York over the holidays tinsel.

Deutch stars as a Bryant Park baker who finds herself with somebody else’s engagement ring. So it’s a “wrong ring from the wrong guy” romance whose complications have to get that wrong ring into the wrong hands and onto the wrong finger, and for true love to bloom in the Big Apple’s loveliest season.

Rachel runs an Italian bakery and restaurant, a busy bee who is happily supportive of tattoo artist beau Gary (Ray Nicholson, you-know-who’s kid), who is always late and if she’s honest, a bit “self-involved.” But he’s “really trying,” she thinks. Hopes.

Gary has a lot of things to “make up for,” which has him thinking “one of those blue boxes (from Tiffany’s) might do the trick.” Earrings it is.

Ethan (Kendrick Sampson of TV’s “Insecure”) is a writer, UCLA college professor and widowed dad in town and in the store at the same time. But he and daughter Daisy (Leah Jeffries) are shopping for an engagement ring for gorgeous west coast publicist Vanessa (Shay Mitchell of “Pretty Little Liars”).

All it takes is for self-absorbed Gary to bump them as he’s leaving the store so that he can get hit by a car for the “little blue boxes” to be mixed up. All it takes is Daisy pestering her dad to see if the injured fellow “is all right” for them to go to the hospital. And that leaves the door open for Rachel to hear them questioning a nurse, realize these folks “helped” (not really, a cop was on the scene) Gary, and to try and reward their gesture with a visit to her restaurant.

Christmas Day means Christmas and “Christmakkuh” gift exhanges (Rachel is Jewish), with “some memory loss” Gary not realizing he’s just gotten himself engaged and didn’t mean it and poor Ethan handing over earrings that he expected to be a ring.

Hilarity, heartbreak and romantic complications ensue. Well, two out of three will have to do.

Deutch’s sparkle and quirky line readings make her credible in most any rom-com situation. We believe most any couple she’s cast in. But she’s swimming against the current here, as the story is painfully contrived and the wit is in short supply.

Jojo T. Gibbs plays the disapproves-of-Gary bakery employee and pal and comic relief.

“I also identify as her best friend.”

“Tiffany’s” has holiday music in the score, an aged street corner doo wop quartet that serenades our fated-to-be-together couple with “I Only Have Eyes for You,” Zoey Deutch and a cute kid.

The ingredients are here. But “Something from Tiffany’s” never feels more than half-baked.

Rating: PG, a little profanity

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Kendrick Sampson, Ray Nicholson, Leah Jeffries, Shay Mitchell and Jojo T. Gibbs.

Credits: Directed by Daryl Wein, scripted by Melissa Hill and Tamara Chestna. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:27

The cornerstone of a good thriller is right there in the title to “Locked In,” a Famke Janssen star vehicle that loses track of the star almost as quickly as it tosses aside that essential building block.

This British thriller from Rowan Joffe, the nepo baby screenwriter who gave us George Clooney’s “The American,” as well as “Brighton Rock” and “The Informer,” sets up as the story of a “has-been” actress and hit-and-run victim who suffers from “locked-in syndrome.” Katherine drifts in and out of consciousness, perhaps “cognitively intact,” perhaps “vegetative,” and either way with no powers of movement, speech or telling anyone what happened to her.

But there’s this Irish nurse, Nicky (Anna Friel) who is assigned to Katherine (Janssen). She assures Katherine’s former ward, Lina (Rose Williams) that “if she’s in there, I’ll find her.”

As the first scene, which we see through Katherine’s blinking “one good eye,” has her code-spelling out “M-U-R-D-E-R” for Nurse Nicky, we know a mystery’s to be solved, and suspect young Lina might not want that to happen.

There’s a pretty good movie in the idea of a curious, slow-to-catch-on nurse helping her trapped patient cry for help and justice in piecing together blinked “alphabet board” coded messages about who put her in this spot. There are plenty of places for suspense, surprise twists and with our disabled “heroine,” perilous threats which she’s helpless to fend off.

Joffe and director first-time feature director Nour Wazzi instead give us endless flashbacks, most of them of Lina, the “heroine” of her own version of events, relating the story of how she came to be in the care of widowed Katherine, how Lina married Katherine’s seizure-prone, inherited-all-Daddy’s-money stepson (Finn Cole), and the doctor (Alex Hassell) who came into this world and played a role in the intrigues and tragedies to come.

“Locked In” struck me as one blown opportunity after another. The nurse is instantly suspicious and so brazen in her voicing of those suspicions that the film loses any sense of mystery about where it is going. We never fear the nurse, nor do we fear for this apparent “truth seeker.”

Yes, there are twists. But taking this tack eliminates one potential suspect and reduces the nurse’s role in the plot. As there are only three other characters, that’s going to be an issue.

Hassell, Cole and Williams stand out in the cast. But not much.

The snobby, fox-hunting country setting and haves-vs-have-nots friction are introduced but underdeveloped as the picture stumbles through longer and longer flashbacks to cast suspicion and aspersions on everybody we meet.

And the climax is so anti-climactic that twists or no twists, it just leaves the viewer frustrated that we didn’t get a tale of rising suspense, rising stakes and increasing peril instead of the movie they chose to muddle out of this promising premise.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex

Cast: Rose Williams, Alex Hassell, Anna Friel, Finn Cole and Famke Janssen

Credits: Directed by Nour Wazzi, scripted by Rowan Joffe. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

Michael Fassbender doesn’t do much that’s comic. But this Taika Waititi production looks hilarious, and putting ABBA on the trailer just doubled down on the adorable.

Last I checked, “Next Goal Wins” opens Nov. 17.

I’m hard-pressed to think of a screen role Aaron Eckhart didn’t commit to, heart and soul. A-pictures and B-movies, bit parts or leads, he’s present, prepped and accounted for every time somebody yells “Action!”

For his latest, he’s hit the gym, mastered a faint drawl and studied that confused, punch-drunk look of a veteran fighter whose memory and very consciousness comes and goes as he staggers towards 50. Stoop-shouldered, he leans so far into his gait that it’s like he’s stalking a foe, or about to fall down in the process. It’s a lovely, lived-in performance.

“Rumble Through the Dark” is a Bayou brawler noir, a film about a back alley fighter who never really “put on the gloves.” Anybody who keeps brass knuckles in his pocket isn’t a “boxer,” and probably never was going to be.

Jack Boucher’s last name isn’t the only source of his nickname. “The Butcher” the Cajuns and their neighbors call the guy with the French surname to suit his profession. Jack makes a mess out of his foes, except when he’s paid to take a dive. And even then, he makes a punishing show of it, making them pay to “fix” the fight.

Jack’s in hock to the madam and bookie they call Big Momma because of course they do. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who broke through with Mike Leigh’s “Secrets & Lies” nearly 30 years ago, brings a world weary/worldwise menace to a character others speak of warily, as she has a habit of branding a “$” sign on those who owe her money.

Jack fights and he gambles. He wakes up and passes back out again. He’s spending an awful lot of time trapped in memories of childhood abandonment, experiencing flashbacks of the stepmother who took him in and who taught him to stand up to bullies with extreme prejudice.

In Louisiana, having a “lesbian mom” is going to get you teased. Got to be tough to deal with that.

Just as Jack thinks he’s going to get square with Big Momma thanks to a lucky turn or ten of the roulette wheel, he loses the cash. Annette the Tattoo’d (fleshy, inked-up Bella Thorne) lady in a traveling carnival is the one who finds his winnings.

Filmmaking siblings Graham and Parker Phillips take their movie’s sweet time getting the carny with the cash and “lots of questions” in the same truck with the bloodied, broke brawler who might have the answers.

Yes, their picture dawdles. They give screen time for supporting players like Ritchie Coster, as Baron, who runs the seedy carnival, Mike McColl as a greedy carny/mechanic and Christopher Winchester, as Big Momma’s muscle, to make their marks.

And they give Jean-Baptiste almost all the best lines.

“I wish you knew how bad I wanna put you outta your misery.” Fight or don’t fight. You might get hurt if you do, you WILL get hurt if you don’t.”

“I can’t figure out whether you’re gettin’ braver or dumber.” To her, he’s just a guy prone to “rumble through the dark, chasin’ something he ain’t never gonna catch.”

The Phillips (“The Bygone” was theirs) allow director of photography David J. Myrick the time to light for mood — gloom, poverty, downmarket despair — and compose one immaculate shot after another. This modestly-budgeted indie is so gorgeous to look at you hope Martin Scorsese doesn’t see it. “Killers of the Flower Moon” has the air of a movie shot on a cell phone by comparison.

That “dawdling” thing gets in the way of this simple, sometimes trite and even corny narrative. This is a B-movie by genre — a “Big Fight” picture — by tropes and by design. Yet the Phillips never let a single spare scene get across a plot point when five long, often wordless and evocative ones will do.

But it’s never less than watchable. And Eckhart rewards the obvious care and time it takes to make a film look this polished, gritty and immersive by giving these young filmmakers every penny’s worth in every take. Thorne makes the most of a role that’s downmarket, but sentimental.

And Jean-Baptiste takes a stereotypical character and makes her pop off screen, playing a woman with agency, an eye for spectacle, an unforgiving streak and a branding iron she’s not shy about heating up when the need or the sadistic urge arises.

Rating: R, grisly, graphic violence, profanity, smoking

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Bella Thorne, Ritchie Coster, Christopher Winchester, Mike McColl and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Credits: Directed by Graham Phillips and Parker Phillips, scripted by Michael Farris Smith. A Lionsgate/Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:54

“Sayen: Desert Road (Sayen: La Ruta Seca)” is a Chilean B-movie thriller about the further adventures of activist/investigator and freedom fighter Sayen, a two-fisted Mapuche woman plunging into a Big Conspiracy destroying her people and and enriching the corrupt in her native Chile.

We met the title character, played by Indigineous action heroine Rallen Montenegro, in “Sayen,” the story of how she was radicalized when murderous multinational corp-hired goons killed her wise grandmother, sending the title character on a quest for revenge and justice.

“Desert Road” has her breaking and entering, torturing, fighting and digging her way towards the top of this water-stealing, lithium-minining, politician-buying pyramid. She is a woman who has shaved her head to show us how serious she is on this mission. She has her grandmother’s spirit, embodied in an Andean Condor, to guide her.

Sayen has been labeled a “terrorist” by the compliant media, which buys into the spin that GreenCorp, its villainous boss Maximo Torres (Enrique Arces) and bought-and-paid-for Chilean senator (Alfredo Castro) are putting out there. Disappearances and murders are laid at her feet, not theirs.

Hunted and hounded by company muscle, chased on foot, motorcycle and ATV through the Atacama Desert, she relies on her native wits, stamina and fighting skills to save her.

There is help along the way — her Mapuche researcher friend Jose (Camilo Arancibia) is back from the first film. Another woman, Quimal (Katalina Sánchez) pitches in on getting Sayen safe houses and getaways as she sniffs around for the truth.

The villains call her “the Indian” (“dusky woman,” in Spanish, but this is dubbed on Amazon) as she tries to foil their plans for sucking up the desert’s aquifer to mine lithium for the batteries that will power the “green” or at least “greener” future.

Director Alexander Witt’s sequel never feels like anything more than a placeholder film for I guess a third installment in this trilogy.

The action beats are solid, but character development is pared down from the introductory film. Unseen third act “allies” and the elusive, still unseen Mr. Big (Fisk) are hinted at.

But for everything resolved here — and precious little is — more that must be resolved in the finale is introduced and left hanging.

The dialogue, situations and heavies are B-movie formulaic and utterly unsurprising.

Montenegro helps make Sayen a compelling character with an unusual, seldom-filmed point of view. But the movie pulls her punches. I’d love to see her as a more ruthless avenger, frankly.

In any event, if all involved were hoping they’d serve up enough to keep viewers interested enough to await the third film in this saga, they failed.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Rallen Montenegro, Enrique Arce, Katalina Sánchez, Camilo Arancibia, Eyal Meyer and Alfredo Castro

Credits: Directed by Alexander Witt, scriped by Leticia Akel and Paula del Fierro. An MGM/Amazon Prime Video release.

Running time: 1:33

It was never going to be pretty.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” set all sorts of records on its opening weekend, blowing up to a Halloween Eve $80 million take that told us

It has a huge teen fanbase and they were masterfully hyped into a frenzy to see it by Universal.

Reviews were bad to brutal, and if nothing else, they foretell of a steep falloff once the fans — enthusiastic as they were — have seen it. Once or twice, in many cases.

Box Office Pro was projecting a $25 million second weekend, “Tyler Perry plunge” steep in and of iteself. The Numbers was figuring $29 million.

But Deadline.com crunched the Friday numbers and all but buried the “news” that Freddy’s is going straight over a cliff. $17 ($19.3 is the Sunday update) million? I guess the Freddy’s folks aren’t Swiftie loyal. That’s damned near 80% lower than it opened if that holds true over the weekend.

Yes, they did day and date with Peacock streaming, so it’s all found money. But that’s not pretty, anyway you slice it. So Deadline didn’t to soften the blow by writing a “Didn’t they market this crap beautifully?”

It’s also possible Deadline’s projections are way off. BO Pro and The Numbers certainly think so.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” will put Apple in a happy place thanks to it clearing the $100 million mark at the global box office before it streams on Apple TV+. It is set to clear another $7 million this weekend, pushing it over the $50 million mark at the domestic box office.

That won’t be good enough for second place, which will be held by “Taylor Swift–The Eras Tour,” which is projected to manage $13.5 even as it fades to black, and it will end up over $162 million by midnight Sunday.

That “After Death” documentary is still doing brisk business, another $2-3 million coming its way.

There are three new wide (ish) releases opening — Sofia Coppola’s pointed, believable but chilly and superficial “Priscilla” is going to do over $2 million. Meg Ryan’s directed and stars-in rom-com “What Happens Later,” with David Duchovny, could clear $1.

I keep poking Bleecker Street as “the witness protection program of film distribution,” as their movies aren’t so much released as smuggled into theaters, daring you to find them. I knew this was coming, but not exactly when. They didn’t pitch or push this to most critics, and they can’t be shocked when it bombs.

Maybe “The Marsh King’s Daughter” will clear $1 million, on just over 1,000 screens. Maybe not. Decent picture. Probably deserves better, certainly worthy of cracking the top ten.

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

Before the words “cultural appropriation” and Western filters through which to view the “exotic East” fell out of fashion, the TV version of James Clavell’s epic novel “Shogun” was a major mini-series event of the TV of 1980.

Mini series romantic lead Richard Chamberlain starred alongside the iconic Toshirô Mifune. Yôko Shimada, Michael Hordern, Vladek Sheybal and the larger than life John Rhys-Davies were also stars of that nine hour TV event.

Hulu is taking a fresh look at the material, using Clavell’s novel for only part of the story (per IMDb), some of the main characters, etc. This Feb. streaming event — 10 episodes long — is built around the formidable Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis — a more recognizable Japanese cast this time, with the colorful Portugeuse Captain Rodrigues turned into a Jesuit priest this time — there really is no John Rhys-Davies replacement floating around the profession these days.

Karen Dionne’s Crimson Scribe-award winning, best-selling novel “The Marsh King’s Daughter” earns a sturdy, suspenseful big screen treatment by the director of “The Illusionist” and “The Upside.”

Neil Burger benefits from having a compelling lead — Daisy Ridley — and one of the Best Villains of Our Time, Ben Mendelsohn, as her antagonist teacher/father, a back-to-the-woods murderer and kidnapper.

If the story feels cinematically familiar, perhaps you’re thinking of “Where the Crawdads Sing” when you’re also remembering “Leave No Trace.” A child, brought up Davey Crockett style, “raised in the woods so’s (she) knew every tree,” finds herself calling on that knowledge when tested by a life-and-death situation that also reveals much about the woodsman who raised her.

We meet Helena when she’s ten, growing up off the grid in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, played by Brooklynn Prince (“The Florida Project”) at this age, is an impressionable Daddy’s girl who skips homeschooling and housework with mom (Caren Pistorious) for any chance to wander the woods with Dad.

Father Jacob is a gentle but unsentimental teacher and taskmaster.

“If you were afraid, running for your life, where would you go?” “Where no one could see me.”

Giving her the shot at a deer they’ve been stalking makes her ask, “What if I miss?” “Then we go hungry tonight.”

A hungry mother wolf eyes her as the meal she might very well be and earns Father’s sternest lesson.

“You must always protect your family.”

These often wordless reveries in the woods come with a lesson, and often with a test. Pass or fail, “Little Shadow” earns a Native style tattoo about the experience from her dad.

And then the day comes when she might start to figure things out, why her mother is so unhappy and distressed, why her father gets rough with her. A stranger sees them and that triggers a getaway. Mom has to blurt out “I was kidnapped” and incapicate the confused and furious child to escape the marksman/monster who has held them both captive.

Years pass, and Helena (Ridley) has a little girl of her own, a college professor husband (Garrett Hedlund), a Jeep XJ, cinematically appropriate transportation for a U.P. college professor’s family and an anonymous life in the same corner of the world where she grew up.

Even her husband doesn’t realize she’s the notorious “Marsh King’s Daughter.” And then the Marsh King busts out of prison.

Burger and screenwriters Elle Smith and Mark L. Smith abandon some of Dionne’s novelistic devices, giving “Him” and “The Daughter” names straight away, etc.

The story’s contortions to avoid being predictable often come to naught in the film, as there’s only path this tale can take and still deliver something like “The Hollywood Version.” But Burger & Co. maintain suspense and make us guess at how far they’ll take things, as a coyote who chews off his own leg is laid out as allegorical foreshadowing and the ultimate endorsement of the father’s “There’s nothing more pure than the instinct to survive” lesson.

Ridley is properly alarmed, brave and stoic as Helena. The accent may not be “U.P.” if there is such a thing. But she’s credibly American and properly rawboned, woodlore competent and understandably secretive. Gil Birmingham stands out as the sheriff who had a hand in “rescuing” Helena and her mother, and became a big part of her life. Hedlund makes do with a largely thankless role, a husband with no “agency” in his wife’s severest trial.

But this is Mendelsohn’s movie. Whenever he goes a stretch without playing a big screen heavy, it just underscores how good he is at it when he returns to the Dark Side. Here, his father-figure is a man of mystery. We don’t know how he came to be the woodlands incel who kidnapped a woman and raised a daughter to be just like him.

Mendelsohn makes us believe in this roughhewn Jacob every second he’s on the screen. We don’t need to know his back story. He just “is.” Never over-the-top, always cold-blooded and rational, this is a role all but novelized with Mendelsohn in mind.

The predictability of much of what we see unfold here isn’t an asset. “Marsh King’s Daughter” can feel perfunctory, lacking the interior life that a novel gives characters. But the settings, the striking cinematography, sharp, suspense-heightening editing of the action beats and the stars lead this Marsh King’s Daughter out of the swamp.

Rating: R, violence

Cast: Daisy Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Gil Birmingham, Brooklynn Prince, Caren Pistorious and Garrett Hedlund.

Credits: Directed by Neil Burger, scripted by Elle Smith and Mark L. Smith, based on the novel by Karen Dionne. A Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:48

I HATE Bon Jovi. Just...hate.

But there’s something kinda right about using a Pop Hair Metal (shudder) Hall of Famers’ tune to score this action comedy reboot of the ’80s TV series about a stunt man who hustles a little “fixer” and retrieval and detective work on the side.

Cheese on cheese, amIright?

It looks and sounds big and stupid. And that damned Emily Blunt has chemistry with EVERYbody.

March 1.

“Fingernails” is a romantic curiosity with a touch of sci-fi, a film that puts The Observer Effect in a human relationships context. That’s the physics phenomenon/theory that you change something merely by the act of studying or “observing” it.

This Christos Nikou tale imagines a not-really-alternate reality in which loneliness has reached the “crisis” stage, science has allegedly discovered a chemical compatibility test that requires a full, yanked-out fingernail to be processed and two co-workers at a counseling “Love Institute” start to wonder if they’re with Mr. or Ms. Right, thanks to mutual attraction, no matter what science tells them.

Can “true love” be tested by yanking and cooking fingernails? Can any romance stand up to cold, hard scientific or pseudo scientific scrutiny?

It’s the sort of movie you get when an off-center Greek filmmaker co-writes and shoots an Anglo-American produced romance in the overcast fall of Ontario. It’s just a tad…off.

Only the players give it any hint of warmth or heart, because this dry-to-the-point-of-parched “love story” is hellbent on avoiding that.

Jessie Buckley stars as Anna, a school teacher who some while back “tested positive” with her longtime beau, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). But as their relationship has settled into routine, he feels the freedom to unemotionally note anything he doesn’t like. And when he’s not around, she’s free to admit that she’s “sacrificing” little things about herself to indulge him.

They mix and mingle with other couples, the “tested” and the untested. Although the movie limits this alternate reality by leaving out all of the reasons for our global epidemic of loneliness and romantic ennui — “media” is limited to nature documentaries and old movies, “social” media apparently doesn’t exist — Nikou immerses us in a world of brittle relationships and the fragile people trapped in them, or struggling to find one that “tests positive.”

Anna’s journey truly begins when she abandons her chosen profession for a job at The Love Institute, whose founder (Luke Wilson) wants to go beyond the breakthrough fingernail-testing that takes “the risk out of love” and do therapy and exercises with couples that “make the bond of love stronger.”

The “tests” would be amusing bits of comic quackery in another filmmaker’s hands. The “smell” test has couples urged not to bathe for a day or two, show up, strip to their underwear and wear a blindfold to discover if they can work the room, and sense their beloved through smell.

Underwater “one minute of eye contact” while holding one’s breath in a pool? Measuring partners’ reactions to “Notting Hill” in a local cinema (with Our Founder wanting to amp that up by staging a fake fire in the theater to gauge reactions and whether or not partners put their lovers ahead of themselves) is another.

Tandem skydiving? Sure

But Anna is paired-up with the cynical, wry trainer Amir, who seems to see through the crackpottery of it all. He notes precautions to take with the underwater exercise.

“Don’t want anyone dying on us...again.”

As Anna loves to ask people about their romances, their “how you met” stories, Amir invents a corny one about how he met his Natasha, and admits the joke. Because that’s what cynics do.

We can see Anna break out in Buckley’s adorable crooked smile, the spark between them as they work with inspiringly-devoted young lovers and worrisome, untested other couples. And that’s contrasted with the drab, incurious love life Anna faces at home at the end of every day.

She even tries to trick Ryan into taking this or that test, a trite sitcom plot device, but at least one that promises something lighter.

But Nikou — you just knew a “Dogtooth” trained Greek whose quirky first film was titled “Apples” was going to make a movie for Apple — isn’t having it. There’ll be little lightness here, and when there is, it’s as if he resents having to include it.

The entire production feels a tad stiff, as if he’s scientifically market-tested how he can approach this (a LATE third act single moment inclusion of a same-sex couple) and just checking off boxes along the way, making a movie that feels like a product of the alternate reality he’s presenting.

But Buckley, of “Lost Child” and “Wild Rose,” and Ahmed (“Sound of Metal,” “Nightcrawler”) make the characters more interesting than the scripted story they appear in. There is a hint of romantic warmth here, and it all comes from them.

Rating: R, a bit of violence, profanity

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White and Luke Wilson

Credits: Directed by Christos Nikou, scripted by Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner and Stavros Raptis. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:53