Movie Nation

She tried to get away, they shot her.

Now Mel and his daughter are mixed up in their “business.”

Callum Turner, Tim Blake Nelson and Jane Levy also star this is goof on a nation atrophying in a forever war, training its troops in a pricey simulation Iraqi town in the California desert.

Might have had promise, but Tim Heidecker’s in it. Dead give away only Vertical would release it.

Based on a memoir and thus a “true story,” this Jan. 23. release punches a lot of feel-good buttons, if the trailer’s any indication.

Title to subject matter, casting to setting, “Die Like a Man” is a by-the-numbers LA-gangland tale that takes its best shot at leaving no “number” out.

Latin teen who celebrates his 17th birthday by “becoming a man” with a gang initiation shooting? Mentor who “knew your dad” in Chino or some such? Latin teen who has to choose between his mother, his girlfriend and a gang?

What writer-director Eric Nazarian’s debut feature lacks in originality it somewhat compensates for with grit.

But it’s a pokey affair, a slow saunter down a path many movies have walked before. There’s little urgency to the action of the character’s “decision” or the over-familiar arc of story that this few-days-in-the-life story tells. It’s uncertain grasp of ages and timeline make it feel out of its date, or just plain dated.

Miguel Angel Garcia of “The Long Game” stars as Freddy, a kid who narrates that he’s nicknamed “Casper, like the ghost” by his friends, even if we never hear anybody call him by that name. “Ghost” or not, he’s growing up fast on the mean streets of “the Four Corners, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Culver City and Sawtelle” and the concrete canyon of the LA River.

His working mom (Berenice Valle) may wonder what he wants for his 17th birthday, but she hasn’t a clue. Today’s the day he gets wings tattooed on his back. Today’s a day girlfriend Luna (Mariel Moreno) has ordained that he get lucky. And today’s the day his dreadlocked mentor, Solo (Cory Hardrict) has set aside for him to “be a man” and learn the rule of “the threes and fours.”

Those are the caliber bullets you use if you’re trying to kill someone. Solo has the target picked out and the snub-nosed .38 ready. All Freddy needs to do is show up and pull the trigger.

The kid voice-over narrates like the hardcase he longs to be, even after his latest bloody beating.

“Only two kinds of people out there. Those who lost and those who lose.”

He inherits his father’s prison crucifix necklace and a legacy. “Everything (his father) schooled me on I’m a’teach you,” Solo sermonizes.

But will his mother, Luna and others be able to intervene so that he can break the cycle?

Pacing is a real problem with this picture as it’s the main reason we notice a screen story has no “urgency.” Nobody ever breaks their slow stride. The choices that show up are stark and abruptly introduced. The moment his mom sees his tattoo she lays down her cards.

Choose. “You Mom or your friends.”

As for Solo?

“Why don’t you stop hangin’ around him?”

She’s not very convincing, nor are pleas from Luna or man-to-man chats with Mom’s latest beau (Frankie Loyal).

Leads Garcia, Moreno and Hardrict are sharp, and Cesar Garcia brings gravitas to the role of the intended shooting victim. The supporting players mostly have one note to hit — angry and “hard.” Curiously, no Spanish and almost no Spanglish is spoken by the locals, young and old, or the gang-bangers.

But the film’s primarcy shortcoming is that “Die Like a Man” meanders when it should stomp. It’s a day-in-the-life story that should march towards deathly inevitability or the inevitable it avoids. It doesn’t.

With a story, setting, characters and even dialogue this over-familiar, the best favor you can do your movie is to plow through these paint-by-number touches at speed, giving our hero barely a moment to catch his breath and reconsider his choices.

“Die Like a Man” takes entirely too long to bleed out.

Rating: Unrated, violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Miguel Angel Garcia, Mariel Moreno, Cory Hardrict, Cesar Garcia, Frankie Loyal and Berenice Valle

Credits: Scripted and directed by Eric Nazarian. A Gravitas Ventures release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:59

“Off the Record” is a drab little “cautionary tale” of the music business about how a whirlwind courtship could cost you your publishing rights.

The low-stakes, with mostly forgettable tunes and a meandering narrative make it a film that doesn’t need showy, “Isn’t that Billy Gibbons/Peyton Manning?” cameos to feel half-assed.

Throw in a nepo baby star of the “Too pretty to bother with acting lessons” school and you’ve just wasted 95 minutes of your life on a “Star is Born” where nobody drinks himself to death. Dammit.

Rainey Qualley, Margaret’s older sister and Andie MacDowell’s other daughter, is Astor Grey, a Los Angelina with dreams of pop stardom. She’s 25 (Qualley was born in 1990) and living on a boat, making ends meet with gigs at the Silverlake Lounge and the odd bit of acting in TV commercials.

And then this big but never quite “huge” big-timer Brandon Verge (LOL), played by Ryan Hansen of the rebooted “Night Court,” takes notice of her and gives her a little social media boost.

He shows up in his Porsche to sweep her off her feet, take her to “the weirdest place on Earth” (the Salton Sea), boost her ego, sex up her love life (kinda icky) and open doors for her.

Red flags? He drinks. A lot. He’s clingy. He’s older and bossy and plays the “I kinda need to know if you don’t wanna have an adult relationship” card awfully quikcly.

He has a reputation, an ex to point out how toxic he is and fans that Astor might not want to cross.

The needy drunk dialing begging for her rescue, the flashes of temper, the record deal he bum rushes her into all scream “Run girl RUN.”

But la di dah, Astor’s not hearing it. Until she can’t NOT hear it.

Stuntwoman turned writer-director Kirsten Foe’s narrative doesn’t so much pass by as stagger, with the cliched plot points joined by random ones.

Let’s have the rock star with the top end Porsche “run out of gas,” only to be picked up by a local Salton Sea beardo (Gibbons, of ZZ Top). In case there’s any doubt who that sage of the Salton Sea, let’s needle-drop “La Grange” in there.

Rebecca DeMornay’s the older agent who tries to bring Astor to her senses. Olivia Sui is her gay Asian BFF. Montanna Gillis is the vamping pop starlet Mr. Verge would like to give Astor’s songs to. And Julia Campbell is Astor’s mom, who figures everything that ails her can be fixed with the right dose of lavender.

It’s inane, innocuous and random enough to feel as if it was scripted on the fly. And while it’s almost never the star’s fault when a picture stiffs like this one, one has to think back to all the not-wholly-justified abuse Qualley’s mom went through during her peak years to find a comparable leading lady turn as flat and free from sparks.

The message, about the predatory nature of the music business — stars-preying on wannabes — has been sent via letter, telegraph, film, TV and a few songs over the decades, a couple by Loudon Wainright III (“Ingenue” and “Aphrodisiac”) come to mind.

It’s as valid as a critique of creepy/clingy older men as it ever was. But you need a film less half-assed than “Off the Record” if you want to bring new insights to singing Svengalis in the cinema.

Rating: R, sex, substance abuse, profanity

Cast: Rainey Qualley, Ryan Hansen, Olivia Sui, Rebecca DeMornay, Montanna Gillis, Billy Gibbons and Peyton Manning.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kirsten Foe. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:35

Palestine’s hopes for an Oscar — Best International Feature — ride on this historical drama starring Hiam
Abbas and Jeremy Irons.

Land buys/land grabs, displacement by mass immigration, statehood and the long march towards apartheid and then genocide of an increasingly desperate and militant minority, not just a product of the Balfour Declaration or the Zionist movement that preceded it.

If it gets nominated — a long shot — we’ll find this one in theaters early in 2026.