Movie Nation

Journeyman indie filmmaker Wayne Wang had already enjoyed a break-out indie hit (“Chan is Missing”) and followed it with “Slam Dance” and “Dim Sum” when he and Spencer Nakasako set out for Hong Kong in the late ’80s to capture a manic, madcap capitalist culture before the freewheeling territory was absorbed back into totalitarian China in 1997.

“Life in Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive” is unlike any other film on his resume. He co-directed it with producer and screenwriter Spencer Nakasako. It came out with an X rating. “Life” has a loose narrative and a frenetic, in-your-face energy that mimics the chaotic clash of Chinese culture and unfettered capitalism. “Hong Kong,” more than one local muses (in English, or Cantonese with English subtitles), “where anything” “and everything happens.”

The film is also, and I cannot stress this enough, seriously triggering. The guerilla filmmaking crew not only stage scenes with a blind “Hong Kong (fake) Rolex” street seller (the great Victor Wong), and with a grizzled guy only credited as a “duck killer” (Wan Ken Cheng) in the aptly-named “wet markets” of the place, the perfect setting for him to mutter the film’s joke title — “Life is cheap, but toilet paper is expensive!” Wang shows us chickens and clusters of white ducks, writhing and dangling, tied in a bunch, spattered with the blood of those who have already suffered the fate that faces them.

All these decades later, that’s still pretty rough to sit through, and it scared off audiences — even at film festivals — when this dark comedy made the rounds in 1989-90.

In all the years since its release, I’ve never heard Wang explain what the poor dog running itself breathless on a treadmill (decades before “exercise” treadmills) is being subjected to. Powering a machine? Conditioned for other word? Muscled up for culinary purposes?

So there’s fair warning. If you wouldn’t see “Inside Llewyn Davis” because of what happens to the cat, move along.

Wang, like Spielberg and Lucas, has messed around with this film over the years. He had to delete Disney Mouse ears from one ironic scene thanks to legal threats. And he shot fresh footage in 1996 which he’s added to this newly-restored print being re-released by Arbelos. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, the literary concept of a “final” version of a book, the “copy-text,” does not exist in film. Even after the director’s death, movies get tampered with.

The story — a Man with No Name (screenwriter/co-director Nakasako) who works in a San Francisco stables and favors cowboy boots, hat and bolo tie, is given a message to take to a “Big Boss” in Hong Kong. It’s packed in what was known in the day as a “drug dealer’s briefcase” — brushed aluminum, popularized on “Miami Vice” and wherever drug deals were depicted on screen.

Once in Hong Kong, he has trouble reaching the Big Boss, and even after meeting him (Wei Lo), has more trouble getting him to accept that briefcase.

Our “man with no name” (Dennis Dun provides his voice in the narration) is left with nothing to do but “explore” Hong Kong.

A subjective camera ventures into the markets, on the streets and into a sound booth at a foley studio where men do voice-looping for porn films and sound out martial arts fights. That noise Hong Kong kung fu fighters make when they throw a punch while wearing long sleeves? It’s just a guy with a pillow case, yanking and snapping it for emphasis.

Our narrator meets an aged dance teacher who randomly serves up the “rules” for success in life and encounters the Big Boss’s…mistress? Film starlet? The ill-tempered “Money” is played by Cora Miao, who is always seen in a crimson ensemble. A one-armed pianist wearing a medal pinned to his chest relates how he held onto his principles in communist China, and how that cost him that arm.

A hand is chopped off in assorted cut-aways throughout, symbolizing our narrator’s peril if he fails to fulfill his mission.

Almost everyone he meets is irritable, vulgar and coarse. Wang noticed the Chinese passion for spitting and love of the phrase “Gweilo,” which some apply to any “foreign devil” they meet.

A film lover approaches “Life is Cheap,” which I missed on first release (though God knows I heard enough about it) by marveling at the permit-free foot chase our narrator is forced to make when the briefcase is snatched. It leaves us as breathless as the (celluloid) camera operator. Wang looks in on the open-air butchery stalls and doesn’t turn away from the baleful stares of the locals who don’t know what the hell he’s up to.

As Man with No Name dances with a hooker sent to him by somebody in the Big Boss’s entourage (perhaps the ever-angry ex-Red Guard gang lieutenant), the theme music of “The Magnificent Seven” wafts into the score, emphasizing how out of place our not-a-cowboy is here, and the tectonic collision of East and West in Hong Kong has its recurring musical motif.

But despite the occasional laugh (the sound-looping sessions, etc), there isn’t much more to this than an ironic slice of life that now plays as a period piece, “Hong Kong as it used to be.” There’s ironic humor is some of the semi-random scenes — a daughter of the Big Boss pouts and lies she’s interviewed about her arranged engagement with a effete Chinese-American paleontologist.

“I’m going to help him dig up bodies,” she says, summing up her future.

The new 4K restoration plays up the lurid vitality of the life, city and people Wang was capturing.

But coherence is an ongoing issue, which might explain why Wang keeps tinkering with this picture, decades after flirting with mainstream Hollywood (“Maid in Manhattan,” “Because of Winn-Dixie”), even after returning to the indie-and-little-seen sorts of films where he got his start.

If you’re a Wang-completist, “Life is Cheap” is a must-see. For the rest of us, it’s a mildly-transgressive/still-triggering blast from the past that has lost some of its glow, if none of its mystery.

Rating: Originally an X, due to violence, graphic animal slaughter, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Spencer Nakasako, Cora Miao, Wei Lo, John Chan, Cinda Hui, Wan Ken Cheng and Victor Wong, narrated by Dennis Dun.

Credits: Directed by Wayne Wang, co-directed by Spencer Nakasako, scripted by Spencer Nakasako. An Arbelos 4K restoration re-release.

Running time: 1:25

“To the Moon” is a psychological/psychedelic thriller that has a lot of trouble coming together and more trouble getting to its fairly obvious point.

Writer, director and co-star Scott Friend’s movie leaves “clues” hanging, drags out it supposed mystery and ends on a predictably perfunctory note.

A film star (Scott Friend, again) and his figure skater wife (Madeleine Morgenweck) show up at his grandfather’s hunting lodge with a mission.

Dennis has just been fired from his TV show. He has a drug problem, and sneaking off to big pine country “upstate” will help him kick, cold turkey. Wife Mia is his rock, the one who “won’t leave you.”

“I would kill for you,” she declares, out of nowhere. “You know that, right?”

OK.

Dennis is having just enough withdrawal symptoms to pass for “junkie,” and it’s causing hallucinations and nightmares.

But as Dennis starts his sober life walking the dog in the woods, he spies a monk in a red habit across the lake. The next day, they awaken to a bearded, yellow-jumpsuited kook doing a Maori Hakka exercise in the yard. Not to worry. Much.
“It’s my brother!”

Dennis isn’t thrilled to see him, and the babbled self-help nonsense that that passes for wisdom coming out of brother Roger’s mouth makes little sense. Dennis has heard this shtick before. Some of it, anway. But Mia? She seems impressed. I mean, the guys knows all about her crystals.

“I sensed that you’re not...in full.”

Husband and wife close their eyes and chew a berry that their new guru says “will ease the withdrawal.” Is it some sort of “natural” hallucinogen? They trust this loon?

And thus begins Roger’s move-in/take-over of their withdrawal week. Is he having them on, with his dropping the phrase “in the hospital” (As a patient, or janitor?), leading them through “cleansing poses” and generally getting all up in their business.

Dennis can’t be sure of what he’s really seeing and experiencing — Roger coming on to Mia through a window, etc. — and what he’s hallucinating.

“He’s gonna ruin the whole trip. Just watch.”

There’s not a lot to grab hold of, here. The mind games aren’t that convincing or interesting, the interloper is more of an embarrassing goof, at first. Is there menace afoot? Enabler or figment of Dennis’ imagination, monkey on his back? The demon he must slay?

Just an opportunistic jerk/escaped mental patient here to bring his envied brother down?

The acting isn’t particularly convincing, which hampers any “buy in.” The writer-director-star isn’t exactly a poster boy for “in demand actor/TV-star.”

Whatever’s going on with those “monks,” whatever Roger’s real agenda is, whatever Dennis settles on as “This is my reality” or “Maybe it was all in my head,” “To the Moon” — as in “How much do I love you? To the MOON!” — keeps running into the same brick wall that the plot, the annoying/rarely emotional characters and blase dialogue and situations have built.

Who cares?

Rating: unrated, violence, drug abuse, sexual situations

The polite, kind and considerate are forever at the disadvantage when dealing with boorish, brutish bullies. That’s the message in “Speak No Evil,” a taut, pitiless Danish/Dutch thriller that unfolds as a series of cringe-worthy moments, one right after the other.

Danish actor turned director and co-writer Christian Tafdrup (“A Horrible Woman”) serves up a scary send-up of “United Europe” in the form of a Danish family invited to spend a weekend with a Dutch family they just met on vacation.

Danish Bjørn (Morten Burian) may toast their new friends as “just like us…same humor, same culture,” unlike those damned “Swedes.” But we’ve seen a Dutch horror movie or two. We know the windmills-and-wooden-shoes folks have their “issues.”

Bjørn, wife Louse (Sidsel Siem Koch) and their little girl Agnes (Liva Forsberg) have been in their Tuscan resort just long enough to get bored with their fellow tourists when gregarious Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders) show up. Finally, they have somebody to talk to who isn’t obsessed with food, culinary classes and the like.

Great fun! Let’s keep in touch! Come visit sometimes!

Still, the postcard that arrives some while later surprises Bjørn and leaves Louise a bit taken aback, this invitation from foreigners, “people we hardly know.” But Bjørn won’t be denied his bro-time, and they’re off.

Family dynamics are strained a bit when Louise emasculates Bjørn by suggesting they only got there by GPS. But Patrick’s got his back. Parenting styles are always going to be at odds with one another.

It’s only when the guy’s boorish refusal to accept Louise’s vegetarianism and harsh handling of their mute son that the warning signs come out on Dr. Patrick. Everyone speaks English. Why do their hosts keep switching to Dutch, like some secret code? And that kid? He’s creepy AF.

Still, little confrontations about who disciplines whose child, sticking them with the check at dinner, unhealthy sleeping arrangements and the like have to be ignored or papered over.

Heaven forbid anybody think these Danes are rude! Maybe they should be. Perhaps they should listen to us, shouting at the screen — “Get OUT.”

Tafdrup’s film plays as nightmarish to anyone with real sensitivity long before it turns truly sinister. First Bjørn then Louise sticks up for these creeps, excuses their behavior. At least Louise has lines she’s won’t cross.

“I don’t find them that pleasant to be around.”

“Pleasant” falls by the wayside early. It’s everything beyond that which makes “Speak No Evil” grimly suspenseful and horrifically involving. If you’re sentient and have lived a few years on this Earth, chances are you’ve been in PG versions of this situation — unpleasant, bullying people trying to bully you into accepting their behavior, presence and company.

The acting is organic and realistic. People react to affronts and shocks the way the well-mannered often do, trying to see things from even the most irredeemable ogre’s point of view. Fedja van Huêt’s turn from flattery and charming to monstrous might seem abrupt, but Patrick’s unable to keep his inner ogre out of sight forever.

Tafdrup doesn’t let up the way most Hollywood horror writer-directors would. The universe doesn’t owe the polite anything resembling a happy ending. Will these well-mannered Danes get a clue?

You have to endure this cringe-fest to find out. Just make sure you “Speak No Evil” and “Deliver No Spoilers” after you do.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, nudity, sex, profanity

Cast: Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huêt and Karina Smulders

Credits: Directed by Christian Tafdrup, scripted by Christian Tardrup and Mads Tafdrup. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:37

As some John le Carré  fanatic has uploaded “Smiley’s People” to Youtube (Does Paramount still own this series?), I’ve allowed myself the luxury of revisiting it for the first time since it aired on British and US TV in 1982.

This mini-series, based on a le Carré novel that served as a sequel to “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” was the last great leading man role of Sir Alec Guinness, and makes a grand showcase for one of Britain’s most revered actors. Flush with “Star Wars” money, he’d taken on ensemble work in the British TV “Tinker Tailor” (1979) with the promise of an even bigger showcase to come with the sequel.

“Smiley’s People” turned into an acting master class, and the gold standard for “real” espionage thrillers, films or TV series, to follow. From its opening gambit to the “Bridge of Spies” finale, this is as good as spy thrillers get.

As buttoned-down, retired from the service (“The Circus,” as the characters called British Intelligence, MI6) introvert George Smiley, Guinness impresses and holds our attention and interest for six episodes, some five hours of TV performance.

Smiley is patient and guarded, attentive and quiet — keeping his cards to himself. He is conscious of blending in, commanding when need be, but plainly a weak older man who needs to avoid putting himself in peril or overplaying his hand. He is class conscious above his station, demanding and never once saying “Thank you” to a former contact, subordinate, hireling or waiter.

Ditched by a faithless wife who took up with a Soviet mole in his office, he should be shamed and he lets us see how hard it is to keep his poker face when former colleagues drop her name. Which they do, even though they summon him out of retirement when an old contact, an Eastern European expat (Curd Jürgens) asks for him, and is promptly murdered on his way to a meeting.

Smiley must figure out what his long-retired network of aged cold warriors have stumbled into, and why it was worth it for his longtime nemesis, the Soviet spy master Karla, to kill them off to cover his tracks.

When “Tinker Tailor” was filmed and became an Oscar-nominated hit in 2011, everyone, including star Gary Oldman, assumed that a sequel would be forthcoming. But even though the project is still listed as “in development,” there doesn’t seem to be any great impetus to making it.

“Tinker” was first a terrific TV showcase for some of the best British character actors of their era — Guinness, Ian Bannen, Beryl Reid, Ian Richardson, Alexander Knox. The same could be said of the film version, which featured Oldman and Oscar winner Colin Firth and Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch and Mark Strong.

“Smiley’s People” was also a veritable embarrassment of riches in that regard — with Guinness, the great German actor Jürgens, Eileen Atkins, Michael Byrne, Michael Lonsdale, Bill Paterson, Michael Gough (future “Alfred the Butler”) and relative newcomers Patrick Stewart and Alan Rickman turn up in single scene roles.

As no espionage picture or series of the era would be complete without him,
As former spy Otto, Vladek Sheybal has a curiously small role (basically as a corpse). His inclusion gives this series THREE Bond villains.

Could this be the reason “Smiley’s” hasn’t been adapted? The only other holdover from the other novel/series and film is Smiley’s former subordinate Peter Guillam (Michael Byrne on TV), played by Cumberbatch in the “Tinker” movie, a superstar now, and far pricier than Oscar winner Oldman.

David Dencik, who plays the Eastern European British agent Toby Esterhase, would probably love for this sequel to happen. Toby is a key and colorful centerpiece to “Smiley’s People.” And there’s a great part for anyone taking the Lonsdale role, that of a compromised and interrogated Russian.

Lonsdale, Jurgens and Sheybal are your three Bond villains, BTW.

Another issue is that telling any Cold War story outside of the Bond context doesn’t readily lend itself to diversity in representation. The racist, classist Britain of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s can’t have had many gentleman spies from racial minorities. The film of “Tinker Tailor” underscores that. While that might be the true history, or the whitewashed version, ignoring a huge chunk of the potential viewing public plays into marketing and limits such films’ viability.

James Bond got around this with his usual panache. The Bond pictures often had African American, Latin and Asian characters in beefy support roles, and the New Britain was brilliantly represented in the even more diverse Daniel Craig Bond films.

But one has to figure the biggest barrier to putting “Smiley” on the screen is the novel itself. The TV version has a nice autumnal gloom about it, but was almost written with pedestrian “TV” filmmaking in mind. As related on the series’ IMDb page, British radio hosts would go on air and joke about “What the hell” was actually going on in the series after each cryptic installment,  tickling le Carré, who always went for subtle.

The story starts slow and slows down some more before the pieces start popping into place and the trap is set.

This is why I prefer movies to long-form TV or streaming series. A lot of chaff could be whacked out of this for clarity and pacing purposes. There is a 100-125 minute movie in this spy yarn. You just have to be willing to cast familiar faces to help the viewer keep up and willing to whack out some of the texture as you speed things up.

Smiley goes looking for the elusive Otto in a derelict German marina and homeless encampment. The patience of that scene has stuck with me since I first saw it — lots of questions and menacing evasions — before Smiley finally gets to see his man. It is slow enough to savor, but easily twice as long as it needs to be.

With the passage of time, the momentum for doing a big screen version of “Smiley” may be gone. Paramount co-produced the TV series, but Focus/Universal did the big screen “Tinker” and has the rights, although perhaps they’ve lapsed. The author le Carré has died in the interim, and the multiplex universe is so changed that maybe streaming is a safer bet now.

But with Bond in between Bonds and Bourne out to pasture and the Russians back to being history’s villains, I dare say there’s an appetite for this sort of story. Heaven knows I want to see it, and before Oldman’s too old to play Smiley and before Cumberbatch reaches his rich, fat and happy “I’m cutting back” years.

And if not, there’s still the original series, a slowly unfolding puzzle and espionage touchstone as far as great screen acting is concerned.

Plum parts for film actresses over 50 have always been in criminally short supply, and roles “with legs,” as Susan Sarandon likes to say — with romantic, sexual subtexts — are even rarer.

So the great British beauty Natascha McElhone makes the most of such a unicorn in “Carmen,” a sad-eyed last chance romance set on the scenic isle of Malta. In the title role, she impresses and sometimes dazzles as a downcast local figure of fun, the village priest’s sister who “never smiles and never speaks,” so the locals gossip.

Always dressed in black, always seated at the back of mass, she has been her older brother’s housekeeper since he joined the priesthood. But what’s she to do when he dies?

God never abandons the faithful, the smug bishop tells her, taking care to not use the word “church.” She’s got to move out for the new priest — returning to Malta from abroad — and the new priest’s caretaker sister.

“In prayer you can find your way.”

With no family, no money, no friends and no home, Carmen wanders the streets with her lone suitcase in silence, utterly at a loss. She overhears lover’s quarrels and flashes back to some romantic trauma from her past. She sees the local hooker bow and accept her affectionate catcalls, notes how much the village policeman naps. And she ‘s in the shadows when the new priest’s sister, a local (Michela Farrugia) moves into the rectory, and fights with her lover (in Maltese and English), who wants to take her away from all this.

The lover, the church bellringer, breaks the clapper on the bell as he storms off. And Rita, like Carmen, finds herself alone.

But there are places within the church to hide. A purloined set of keys means she can take a nap in the confessional. When locals duck in, thinking the new priest has arrived, Carmen starts hearing the women’s complaints, darkens her voice (not much), and doles out homespun, blunt advice.

Your dead weight husband won’t leave? “Cook him the same meal, morning noon and night.” The offering box starts to fill up as word gets around.

Carmen may have found her calling. But surely Rita’s going to catch on to this. Eventually.

Maltese actress turned director Valerie Buhagiar (“The Anniversary”) does three things with great elan here. She showcases the beauty of her rocky island home. She gives her leading lady free rein. And she trips up expectations time after time in this quirky 1980s period piece.

A street vendor selling capers from his donkey cart flirts with quiet Carmen with Zorba-like enthusiasm.

“A person can get sick keeping their love to themselves!”

That’s not what the movie’s about, him courting her and leading her back to life. We never see him again.

The whole fake priest in the confessional bit is cute, but more a means to an end. The backstory of a lost love/forbidden love dating from “the war” has more import, but isn’t really the meat of the movie either.

Buhagiar keeps things on the cusp of fantasy as Carmen’s distant past and recent past and simple survival (we wonder how she eats) aren’t fussed over. She just is, and she’s overdue for a makeover. Maybe that cute younger pawn shop operator (Steven Love) in the capital city of Valetta can help.

McElhone mopes in the early scenes and shimmers through the later ones, even as she suffers. “Carmen” becomes a veritable Maltese fashion shoot at times.

But shortcuts and missing details aside, it’s never less than charming and a grand showcase for a busy and beautiful actress whose best roles are on TV (“Hotel Portofino,” “Designated Survivor”) these days.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Natascha McElhone, Michela Farrugia, Steven Love

Credits: Scripted and directed by Valerie Buhagiar. A Good Deeds Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:28

Remember that sequence of scenes in “The Godfather” in which Don Corleone receives visitors who come to ask for favors, make complaints and request justice?

That’s basically the plot for Eduardo Filippo’s play, “Il sindaco del Rione Sanità,” “The Mayor of Rione Sanità.” Director Mario Martone (“The King of Laughter”) may take us to a club, a street shooting and out of doors for more action in the third act. But the film he serves up is a maddeningly talky morning, noon and early evening of a Neapolitan mobster — Antonio Barracano — granting audiences to assorted petitioners on his turf and dealing with the sorts of nonsense a mob boss must contend with because only he can dispense justice in this lawless underworld.

Francesco Di Leva plays Don Antonio, a charismatic and fit 40something who has such a hard time sleeping that his underlings fear disturbing him with whatever goes on in the wee hours in his world or in his Vesuvius villa in the hills overlooking Naples.

Two of his young toughs (Ralph P., Armando De Giulio) joke around about who’s stepping on whose toes, and laughingly pull their pistols in the alleys outside of the club where they grinned and played macho. Joking or not, one dude gets shot, and the villa’s doctor (Roberto De Francesco) has to stitch somebody up.

The don’s wife (Daniela Ioia) comes home late, and the don’s mastiffs attack her and maul her. Somebody’ll have to break the news to the boss that his beloved dogs sent his wife to the emergency room.

The doctor is held in virtual involuntary servitude and wants to travel and visit his brother in America. The don may smile and joke around about who he will ask to “greet” him (in Italian with English subtitles) in the U.S. But that’s a threat. And that trip? No dice.

This man with a debt, that one with a beef with his rich baker father, approach. A young pregnant woman is here with her boyfriend, another petitioner, all of them wanting the favor of/a favor from Don Antonio, whom one and all know is a “sincere man,” a reasonable man, if not someone to be trifled with.

The fact that one hand is bandaged up speaks volumes. The way the don wears his hoodie and does sit-ups — boxer-style — lets us know he’s tough. And he’s smart. The two pot-shot taking underlings get a good beatdown — with his good hand — when they come to beg his forgiveness.

“He has his own take on the law,” his wife admits as the doctor tries to get her on board the idea of sending those dogs into quarantine.

The little bits of action are well-handled. The setting is less striking than the dimly lit office of Don Corleone, but interesting in a “This is how the Naples mob lives” way. But the movie’s theatrical origins — stagey and talk-talk-talkie– weigh it down and render it too boring to justify an investment of two hours.

“Basta,” as the Italians say. Enough is enough. Give us some ACTION.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Francesco Di Leva, Daniela Ioia, Roberto De Francesco, Ralph P., Armando De Giulio and Francesco Di Leva.

Credits: Directed by Mario Martone, scripted by Mario Martone and Ippolita Di Majo, based on the play by Eduardo De Filippo. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:57

The tamest movie ever made about dabbling in LSD and Riot Grrrl culture has to be “Acid Test,” a non-prescription sleep aid of a movie.

Here’s a PG rated treatment of an R-rated subject.

It’s about a high school senior rebelling against her conservative, Harvard alum dad by being hesitant to become a “legacy” applicant to his alma mater. Nothing says “Viva la REVOLUCION!” like attacking the patriarchy on your Harvard admission essay.

 Juliana Destefano is Jennifer, wearing the Harvard hoodie and all-in on her father’s (Brian Thornton) dream of her following him into the Ivy League and all the doors it could open for her. We meet her at her pre-admission meeting with a counselor, follow her and her kid brother to the movies with Dad and pick up on the dynamic of her home life. Mom (Mia Ruiz) is Latina, and that’s another leg-up for getting into Harvard.

It’s 1992 in Texas, and her senior year begins with civics class focusing on the election — lots of Clinton, Bush and Perot news coverage in montages — and “Hamlet.” Does Dad, who doesn’t seem all that unreasonable at first, know what he’s doing when he quotes “To thine own self be true” to Jennifer?

It turns out she’s not sure of her life direction. Her BFF Drea (Mai Le) is headed to UT-Austin. That gives Jennifer her first second thoughts. Then they duck out to catch a live show and are introduced to estrogen-powered punk rock and the Riot Grrrrl Manifesto.

“What is a girl?” Jennifer wonders. Here, in Bikini Kill pamphlet form, is an answer.

“BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.”

Next thing we know “straight edge” Drea is debating her supposedly straight edge pal’s decision to accept a tab of acid from the flirtatious hunk Owen (Reece Everett Ryan). Everything that follows — the shift in Jennifer’s music tastes, the decision to lop off her hair, the “SLUT” magic marker tattoos she and Drea don to join the Riot Grrrl scene, sex with Owen — flies in the face of Drea’s seemingly sound advice before that first tab is dropped.

“Rich kids are the worst!”

The club scenes, capturing what I assume are real bands in real performance, are shot and edited so flatly that you’d swear we were seeing a Three Tenors show.

The acid trips are no-budget DIY dull, the “romance” isn’t remotely romantic and the character’s story arc isn’t A-to-Z, passing through a hell of self-discovery. It’s A to B. Yawn.

Writer-director Jennifer Waldo grew up in DC and went to USC, so whatever “memories” she was tapping into for this just-short-of-“true” story (per the opening credits) are seriously mild-mannered.

She must’ve forgotten that “acid” added or not, “Riot Grrrl” is more than a haircut and a bit of magic markering.

Rating: unrated, drug content, profanity

Cast: Juliana Destefano, Brian Thornton, Mia Ruiz, Reece Everett Ryan and Mai Le.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jennifer Waldo. A Giant Pictures release.

Running time: 1:43

If it was a “spoiler,” I wouldn’t use the word. And the word for “Don’t Worry Darling” is “Stepford.”

I mean, read and comprehend the title. There it is.

It’s an easily-grasped and obvious analogy for this satiric thriller from director Olivia Wilde and screenwriters Karen Silberman and Carey and Shane Van Dyke, and any filmgoer should pick up on it early on.

What matters is what they and the cast add to that sort of framework, the other possibilities about where this is going and why. A little whiff of “The Master,” a bit of “The Matrix,” a taste of “Truman Show” and a hint of “Twilight Zone” all enter into Wilde’s oddly unaffecting overreach of a Statement on Women in a War-on-Women/Age-of-Incels and the End-of-Roe era.

“Handmaids” much? “Logan’s Run,” anyone?

Forget the bad buzz surrounding the film, meet it on its own terms and it’s a chilly-not-chilling story set in a desert. Avoid the gossip about the actors and you’re still stuck with how uninteresting pop moptop Harry Styles is as an actor, how much Chris Pine leans into his inner Shatner and how unflattering the light or the way the cinematographer lights them makes Pine, leading lady Florence Pugh, the director/co-star Wilde and others look.

Lose yourself in a story that’s cryptic, but not so cryptic that one cannot figure out that it’s all about the wives, and whatever’s going on they’re kind of “Stepford” about it.

Pugh and Styles play “perpetual newlyweds,” a young couple in a 1950s oasis of middle class privilege — a mod ranch-style house in a posh, uniform subdivision, “Victory Town,” in a Palm Springsish corner of the desert.

Alice and Jack don’t need an excuse to go at it, and vigorously, morning noon and night. But dutiful and sexually-fulfilled housewife Alice can’t keep Jack from his clockwork AM departure for work, popping into his T-bird along with all the men in the neighborhood, convoying into the desert to work at “The Victory Project” run by the mysterious, cultish Frank (Pine).

Every day, Alice drinks and gossips in the sun, at the local pool or shopping with her posse (Wilde, Kate Berlant) between bouts of maniacally cleaning the entire house.

At night, rowdy cocktail parties rotate through town, with everybody showing off their Mid Century Modern decor and 1950s pre-rock record collections. Lots of Mel Torme and hepcat jazz-pop and martinis and Tom Collins highballs and cigarettes, even for the ever-pregnant Peg (Berlant).

Whenever the mysterious Frank is around, he praises those willing to “join this mission” to “change the world,” and Frank’s wife (Gemma Chan, chilling), who teaches the ladies’ dance class, compliments one and all for realizing “how extraordinary (Frank) really is.”

But something’s going on, something the wife (Kiki Layne) in the only Black couple of note seems to notice. And Alice can’t help but notice Margaret’s confusion and growing dismay.

“I’m not fine,” Margaret snaps at those who try to comfort her. “Nothing is fine.”

The immaculate design allows us to pick up on “signs” of what’s happening, the daily “radio” chats from Frank that the wives tune into, the buzz words in most every sentence he speaks, the calculating eye contact Pine makes with one and all.

The parody of 1950s life is so on-the-mark that the occasional anachronistic haircut and scripted line doesn’t so much break the movie’s spell as make you ponder what it will do as it takes you where you know it must go. It gets so invested in the women that next to no time at all is devoted to the “providers,” the men also trapped in gender roles in what older, conservative Americans (and Britons) seem to regard as “the good ol’days.”

Pugh, who came to fame in period pieces, seems out of place here, and that could be by design. Alice is an interesting choice for her first real star vehicle. The character is a passive, compliant “team” player waiting for her call to action, and we have to patiently wait with her. Pugh might have had more chemistry with Styles if he didn’t seem like a tall, gawky forelock and a child hanging with the grownups.

Wilde lets herself be filmed and made-up in a way that emphasizes the severity of her features, the “TRON” beauty with a Cruella in her future. I shouldn’t even get into how Nick Kroll, as one of Jack’s colleagues, is lit and framed.

But the original sin of “Don’t Worry Darling” might be how drunk the filmmakers get on the universe they create, dragging and dragging a less and less interesting pastiche of ’50s life — a drunken office party with a stripper, because we’re all so liberal and “modern” — on for so long that the more exciting third act comes as a refreshing jolt.

Sure, it’s as predictable as scores of science fiction finales. But the viewer’s big gripe at this point has to be, “OK, but what TOOK you so long?”

Rating: R for sexuality, violent content and language

Cast: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll, Timothy Simons, Kiki Layne, Gemma Chan and Chris Pine

Credits: Directed by Olivia Wilde, scripted by Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:02

Well, there’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.

“How Dark They Prey” is a quartet of ineptly-scripted, randomly-assembled, adequately-shot but amateurishly-acted short horror films that fall under the broad horror subheading of “claptrap.”

They include the worst written, acted and envisioned World War II short I have ever seen. And I’ve judged student films, “48 Hour Film Project” saps and worse. There’s a demonic slaughter opener that slices up some UFO hucksters. That could have been funny. A black and white finale that begins with a traffic stop isn’t quite up to “student film,” unless we’re talking “middle school” students.

There is absolutely nothing anyone writing, directing or appearing in any of these has to say that would amount to a defense. It’s just rubbish, and never should have seen the light of day. But here it is, pushed by a publicist (waste of money) and rendered legit by its own page on Rotten Tomatoes.

Wait’ll they find out.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Names withheld to protect their acting conservatories, or online thespian courses.

Credits: Scripted and directed Jamison M. LoCascio and Adam Ambrosio. A Film Valor release.

Running time: 1:12

Long before they shot the serio-comic transgender odyssey “Tangerine” on a cell phone, over a decade before “The Florida Project” became an Oscar-buzzed drama about the transient-hotel homeless of Orlando, Sean Baker and producer Shih-Ching Tsou co-directed a gem about the dark underbelly of Chinese diner workers in New York.

“Take Out,” like the later documentary “The Search for General Tso,” sees America’s Chinese fast food world underpinned by illegal immigrants, often trapped in onerous “loans” that paid for their transit into the country, working as virtual indentured servants because it’s not like they can go to the police and complain about their plight.

Using the jumpy, fly-on-the-wall camera work that gave “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project” their intimacy and immediacy, they take us into one tiny eatery in New York and the big debt that faces kitchen worker, cook and delivery guy Ming Ding, played without a hint of affectation by Charles Jang.

“Take Out” is documentary-real as we see a couple of enforcers show up at the flop house when Ming Ding lives, shake him down for a 30% loan he’s behind on, and once they’ve cleaned him out and kidney punched him, ask for the $800 he’s still behind by tonight or “your debt will double.” “Mind your own business,” they tell his many roommates, who look on. Never once do they raise their voices.

Ming Ding’s options are limited. He speaks little English, has few relatives he can tap for loans. The fact that he’s still $300 short at the start of work drives our narrative. Can he make enough in tips to avoid the worst?

This simple scenario makes a great framework for giving us a little slice of urban working class life in New York City. Each brief interaction, often in an apartment doorway, could get Ming closer to his goal. Some customers are rude, a couple are hostile, and almost all are distracted. Speaking no English and being Chinese, he’s not inclined to smile and hasn’t mastered the “Thank you” that might boost his tips.

His chatterbox pal Young (Jeng-Hua Yu) passes along his wisdom — “Rainy day means more deliveries, more deliveries mean more money!” He gives Ming all of his deliveries to him to help him out, and tries to coach him on the niceties of getting a tip out of New Yorkers. No dice.

“I could’ve mail-ordered Chinese food faster’n this!”

And God forbid the kitchen, or the friendly owner and chef, Big Sister (Wang-Thye Lee) mess up an order.

What little dialogue there is is mostly Mandarin, with smatterings of English and Spanish from the customers. In the kitchen, the employees swap “How I got here” stories, make trips into storage to fetch more MSG and slice, pound, boil and fry their way through the day and night’s orders. Young provides non-stop banter as Big Sister gruffly handles counter customers, some of whom flirt in the hopes of getting a discount.

Even she doesn’t smile. This next order? “That bitch at 845 West End,” again, the young woman who complains about the order every single time. Yeah, “Seinfeld” got that right, too.

“Take Out,” beautifully shot and coming to a Criterion DVD, makes a gritty, intimate portrait of working life on the struggling end of the spectrum as we see Ming grind through a day of tip stiffers, bicycle flats and meltdowns over the stress he won’t talk about with just anyone, a debt that stands in the way of him ever getting his “You need to focus” wife and child into the U.S.

The plot has built-in melodrama, and the co-writers/directors add more, giving the story a glum inevitability. But if you’ve liked anything they’ve produced since, it’s well worth seeing this anchor title for that boxed set to come, The Real America of Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou.

Cast: Charles Jang, Jeng–Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee, Justin Wan, Jeff Huang

Credits: Scripted and directed Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. A Criterion re-release, also on some streaming platforms.

Running time: 1:28