Movie Nation

Characters have a blase, matter-of-fact acceptance of the central premise of the horror video game turned film “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” that a threadbare animatronic band of characters from a long-closed pizza joint have supernaturally come to life.

You can see it in the unanimated wooden delivery of Josh Hutcherson as his character announces this discovery, the flat matter-of-fact way “Mike” lies about a fellow character coming to the same conclusion.

“I saw your eyes,” he says to Officer Vancessa (Elizabeth Lail), almost dozing off as he speaks. “You were terrified.”

The crimes associated with these mothballed machines are bland and perfunctory, the direction dull and the script inept in the extreme.

It’s an adaptation that fails in the most matter-of-fact ways, a horror movie that doesn’t frighten, a script that feels like an idea Stephen King tossed in the fire, a cast that underwhelms and a story that forgets where it’s going, where it’s been and every detour that’s trotted out to distract us.

Emma Tammi’s kiddie horror film — she did “The Wind” a few years back — tries to tell the “story” of this video game in cinematic terms, and doesn’t come anywhere close to working.

Apparently inspired by ShowBiz Pizza’s “Rock-afire Explosion” 1980s animatronic character band, “Five Nights” is set in a tumbledown Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Palace in BFE, Midwestern America. Freddy’s “was big in the ’80s,” the guy in charge of the property (Matthew Lillard) explains to his new night watchman, Mike (Hutcherson, of “Hunger Games” fame).

Mike is “Mister Doesn’t Work Nights” until the threat of a court date from his aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson, a stand-out in the cast) who wants to take custody of the little sister (Piper Rubio) Mike is raising on his own.

Mike is a would-be parent and a “hero” with “issues.” He sleeps. A lot. He’s haunted by a trauma from his past, the abduction of a younger brother. He is reading a book on “Dream Theory,” and taking sleeping pills to ensure he sleeps so that he might remember that Nebraska pine forest kidnapping, maybe recover a detail that will lead him to this brother’s kidnapper.

No wonder his aunt figures a “criminal endangerment” rescue of little Abby is in order. But Abby isn’t having it.

“She’s mean and she smells of cigarettes.”

That’s why Mike needs this night-watchman job to work out, sleep or no sleep. The quartet of bug-eyed animatronics include a “Fazbear” bear, a dog, a duck and “Foxy.”

One even holds an animatronic eyeballed cupcake. Mike is a bit spooked. And that’s before he sees the creatures, who aren’t nailed to the floor but have the “lithium” battery powered ability to wander about, give him the narrowed-eyes of menace. That’s before he finds blood on their animatronic plush-toy hands.

The script clumsily tries to “explain” Freddy’s crew in electronic and augmented human-costumed terms. It struggles to hide who the villain might be.

And it makes a hash out of the GFPD (Great Falls, Grand Forks?) cop (Lail) who shows up to explain the place’s troubled history, to flirt with Mike, or threaten to shoot him after she’s already tossed his presecription sleeping meds into the river.

Hutcherson has been in good movies, but judging by what we see here, he’s an actor who hasn’t improved on his limited child actor repertoire. It’s not a good role, another kids’ film for him, despite the efforts to make Mike a mental mess, and Hutcherson is just terrible in it. Every non-reaction plays false.

I hate singling out actors because bad movies are rarely their fault, but Hutcherson’s performance is right at home in this stuffed dog of a thriller.

They shoved seven obscure-to-anyone-over-20 youtubers into bit (or costumed) parts to ensure the picture would have a social media footprint, even if the plot and acting weren’t all there.

Every now and then, you get the sense that Tammi and the other writers figured that making this laughable might be the safest route to take. Not that any of the five folks credited with cooking up the game and trying to turn a “story” idea into a script shows any flair for comedy.

About the only laughs here are unintentional ones, as in “These fools thought that would be funny.” It never is.

Rating: PG-13, graphic, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizzabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard.

Credits: Directed by Emma Tammi, scripted by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddeback, based on the video game by Scott Cawthon. A Blumhouse/Universal release.

Running time: 1:50

Yeah, not every movie critic would spend a year on refresher Spanish courses and a week in Panama just to “research” a review on John Cena’s Banana Republic action comedy “Freelance.”

A movie about a Central American country going through an attempted coup, with mineral rights and the rich and the powerful having their way of things going back hundreds of years? Ask Dole why they call them “Banana Republics.”

Panama was going through a fresh round of street protests over a bad mine deal that smacks of corruption, protests that blocked some intersections during my visit, denying access to some museums (which closed) and stirring up tear gas battles some nights.

Good prep for reviewing a John Cena movie about a Latin American “president for life” dictatorship hinging on foreign mercenaries, mineral rights, revolutionaries and “American Intervention.”

Commitment, or as they say in the movie, “embrace the suck.” Not that Panama sucks. Gorgeous country, lovely people, great imperialist canal and what not.

Doolin, Ireland is a village of 300 souls that you pass through on your way to the County Clare’s famed Cliffs of Moher on the stark, windswept and treeless west coast of the country.

You might notice Doolin, ponder its tiny gathering of old, spare houses, the harbor where a ferry and tour boats set off for the Aran Islands, and consider the presence of not one for four pubs in the place. But if your rental car windows are rolled down and it’s the right time of day, you can’t help but pick up on the reason the place is famous. It’s the epicenter of “trad” or traditional Irish music.

“The Job of Songs” is a warm, intimate documentary that celebrates Doolin, Ireland’s musical reputation and history through the performers who keep traditional Irish music alive there, who sing and play and relate the history of the music, the songs that are mostly passed down “from the ancestors” for hundreds of years and the performers that came before them.

In modern times, it was the Russell brothers made Doolin famous and a magnet for the music sometimes labeled “diddley-aye” by some who see it as an Irish stereotype. But to the fans and practicioners here, it’s a connection to the past and a universal bond.

“We’re only carrying music. It ain’t ours.”

Lila Schmitz’s film has locals describe the quiet and loneliness of the place, which was even more remote before the Cliffs became one of the world’s greatest tourist attractions.

Traditional music DJ Eoin O’Neill, host of “The West Wind” show on Clare-FM (and online) speaks of “the sadness” that lingers from the long British occupation of Ireland, “the great famine” and the wrenching uprooting of Irish migration.

Several generations of fiddlers, flutists and tin whistlers, drummers and concertina players such as singer/flutist Kate Theasby, recall their “I heard a tune and had a go” learning process.

Others write songs and gather in a recording studio to jam and perhaps lay down a track. And all find themselves evenings, either as a steady gig or just informal gathering, at one of those four pubs or down the road in Lisdoonvarna’s music pubs, playing.

The singer-songwriter Luka Bloom, who changed his name as he’s the younger brother of modern Ireland’s most famous folk singer, Christy Moore, breaks down the function of music in society as it plays out in Ireland, “the job of songs” to “entertain,” touch, to move and spark memory.

Schmitz’s film breaks down the risks of this obsession with music, the solitary melancholy of the place and the alcohol consumption that can accompany a “session” of players jamming at Gus O’Connor’s, Fitz’s Bar, McGann’s or McDermott’s Pub on any given evening.

But for those who overcome that, or avoid that trap altogether like the ancient one-legged wonder, Ted McCormac, performing this music becomes a life-affirming mission, one that no passing tourist or appreciator of the “job” songs perform, will ever forget.

Rating: unrated, discussion of alcoholism, suicide

Cast: Luka Bloom, Eoin O’Neill, Kate Theasby, Christy Barry, Ted McCormac and others

Credits: Directed by Lila Schmitz. A Lila Schmitz release available on iTunes, etc.

Running time: 1:13

He went for grandeur, the artist as emotionally needy being, and “larger than life” with this trailer for the holiday release/Oscar contender “Maestro.”

Cooper’s got the voice, the walk, the bravado down pat. Maybe people will stop talking about the prosthetic nose, now.

Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, SARAH SILVERMAN? — Matt Bomer and Maya Hawke star in Netflix’s best hope for Best Picture, a Dec. 20 release.

I’d lost touch with “The Ring” universe, assuming, like most Western filmgoers, that 2017’s failed reboot “Rings” was the end of the hairy horror harpy from the well tale.

Silly me. The “cursed video” whose viewers die mysterious deaths within 24 hours of watching it lives on in Japan. I count 14 film incarnations of the story first spun by actor and novelist Kôji Suzuki, and a TV series.

Of late, this creepy and influencial “J-horror” franchise has wandered into the area of camp, rebranded under the name of the demon/witch “Sadako” who appears on the vhs tape that gets handed around and copied, killing all — or almost all — who dare to view it.

“Sadako DX” is the latest film, now on Netflix, a variation of the story long after the letters “vhs” disappeared from the ranks of watchable media. Yes, the kids joke about that here. But the movie? It’s a goof that isn’t that goofy, and a horror film that fails utterly to horrify.

Our witch has lost her ability to shock, thanks to inept editing. We see too much of her to be scared. And it’s obvious witchy demon Sadako has learned to use conditioner, removing the fearsome frizziness that made her so terrifying to Japanese audiences, and Naomi Watts in the first Hollywood adaptation.

Here, a very smart Japanese coed and quiz show champ, Ayaka (Fuka Koshiba) matches wits on TV with spirutalist Kenshin (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi of “Ip Man” and “Limbo”) as they banter about this wave of “unexplained deaths” sweeping Japan.

“Curses are real,” says the showman/charlatan. Not so fast says Ms. Smarty Pants.

Of course he’s right and she’s wrong. Ayaka’s “200 IQ” take on the problem is to treat this original “viral” video like any other virus. Block its spread, or dilute its effects. “Herd immunity.” Something like that.

Director Hisashi Kimura can’t find a fright to save his life. So he infects his film with mousy-voiced pixie characters, mugging screen veterans, with cheap jolts involving the station’s plush character mascot and deaths that aren’t moving, alarming or amusing.

“Sadako DX” is so bad one wonders if “The Ring” franchise fell off, film by film, or if those recent Japanese “Sadako” movies were all awful, and Netflix is just now getting around to licensing one thanks to that October demand for horror.

hewrd immunity

Rating: TV-14, horror

Cast: Fuka Koshiba, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Mario Kuroba and Yuki Yagi

Credits: Directed by Hisashi Kimura, scripted by Yuya Takahashi, based on the novel by
Kôji Suzuki. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

Erivo is a refugee who has made it to a Greek island, Shawcat is a tour guide she meets and befriends in this film festival darling, a February release.

Boudica, the wronged-woman turned warrior queen heroine of Roman era British history, has been featured in lots of movies over the decades, pretty much all of them B-pictures.

“Boudica: Queen of War” doesn’t break that curse. But as B-movies go, this just-stylish-enough Roman-gutting Olga Kurylenko star vehicle is the most fun of the lot.

Writer-director Jesse V. Johnson — “Hell Hath No Fury” was his — bathes his action scenes in the literal fog of pre-history. Kurylenko, the Ukrainian model whose turn as a “Bond Babe” 15 years ago led to a lucrative career in modest-budget action pictures, handles fight choreography well enough that one isn’t allowed to dwell on the dainty throw weight the willowy runway-ready brings to a fight.

Well, she IS Ukrainian.

And her reaction to this Roman outrage or that Roman garrison awaiting her vengeance is downright quotable, in impolite company.

“F–K them!”

Before she was labeled “Boudica” (Victorious Queen) she was the First Century wife of the king of the Iceni tribe (Clive Standen), doting mother of twin tween girls (Litiana and Lilibet Biutanaseva, who have worked with Kurylenko before and it shows), resigned to paying tribute to the occupying Italians, but not thrilled about it.

When her husband is killed, she signs over half her kingdom to the Roman procurator (Nick Moran, terrific), whose name is given a Monty Pythonesque pronunciation here — Catus Decianus.

But he barks about the rules of Roman patriarchy and the “insult” of her female-in-power status, takes her kingdom, has her stripped, flogged and branded in the face, her girls (history tells us) raped.

She recovers with the help of fierce Celtic woman warrior Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who was the first to call her “Boudica” as the embodiment of a Druid prophecy, the one who would “free” her people.

Boudica’s fury accompanies training with a bronze sword — mocked in this Iron Age world — she inherits, which appears to have magical powers. She wins over other tribes led by warriors like Wolfgar (Peter Franzén), drops a few Celtic f-bombs about the Romans, and there is hell to pay in this corner of the empire mismanaged by the fey, decadent emperor Nero, a loinclothed hedonist given a Chalamet softness by Harry Kirton.

Yes, there are elements and moments that we’re pretty much invited to laugh at here. But much of the history (three Roman historians wrote about Boudica, Tacitus the most famous) checks out. The supernatural sequences have a Joan of Arc edge. I like the foggy almost “300” netherworld Johnson creates for the action scenes and the way the script connects mother with her daughters.

It’s a B-movie, not “Killers of the Flower Moon,” even if it is somewhat better looking than that overlong streaming epic.

And Martin, Moran and our leading lady bring fair value to a picture that struggles to be respectful but never wholly escapes camp.

Rating: R, bloody violence, Celtic F-bombs

Cast: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Nick Moran, Leo Gregory, Rita Tushingham and Lucy Martin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jesse V. Johnson. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:41

Interesting then and now blend by the always daring and cutting edge McQueen.

“Coming Soon,” from A24.

A little pre-British history about fighting the Romans starring ex-Olympian, action heroine and much more than a Bond accessory, Olga K.

This opens Friday.

A Brit-flavored Hulu series with promise. This one premieres on Nov. 8.