Movie Nation

If you’ve ever seen a Kevin Costner interview or heard an acceptance speech from him, you know his “movie that changed my life” was the big, bloated Cinerama Western “How the West was Won,” an all-star epic that took viewers from the post-War of 1812 frontier to a final showdown, “High Noon” style, at the closing of the frontier.

I’ve interviewed him a few times, and it’s never far from the conversation, especially when he’s talking about anything with horses and bad hombres.

This movie event from Warners, slated for next summer, will be released in two parts and will give the “Yellowstone” icon one last swing for the fence.

Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Giovani Ribisi, Sam Worthington, Jeff Fahey, Dale Dickey, Luke Wilson, Danny Hiuston and Thomas Haden Church saddle up for this pre and post Civil War “saga.”

Fingers Crossed. But that…title. Ugh.

That’s Willa Holland, Dermot Mulroney and Shane West starring in a honky tonks and Chevy Chevelles and small town corruption and cover-ups.

“The Dirty South” indeed.

Mesmerizing from its crypto-poetic opening to its drop the mike finale, “Candela” is a thriller as exotic and mysterious as its locale, a brisk and atmospheric tale bathed in drugs, sex and corruption.

First-time feature director Andrés Farías and his award-winning film’s co-writer, adapting a novel by Rey Andújar, give us a daring and dark fever dream of the Dominican Republic, a film that is as quintessentially Caribbean as any in recent memory.

A drag performer — Candela (Cesar Domíngue) — in native garb, bathed in black, intones that there’s a hurricane coming, but not to worry, that it will “fall in love with us,” and only kill a few thousand. Such is the fatalism of the poor islands off the Fodors Guidebook to the Caribbean.

An inutterably gorgeous woman — Sera (Sarah Jorge León) — in impossibly high heels and an erotically short skirt begins and ends her days with “a bump” of cocaine, her very essence reminding us that around the world, there’s no substitute for being young and beautiful and incredibly rich. She quietly bridles at the corporate “merger” facing her senator-father’s company and another, one that entails her marrying the boor-heir to the other firm. She acts-out through bar pick-ups and furtive infidelities in the alley behind The Remora, the toniest night club in the Caribbean.

Sera’s most reckless act that night sets our plot in motion and her in collision with working poor Lubrini, the gay drag performer Candela who utters poetic pronouncements from the stage between lip-synced Latin pop.

Because who does Sera stalk, kidnap at gunpoint and demand sex from? That would be the college-educated poet, Renate Castrate (Richarson Díaz), Candela’s lover. When Renate doesn’t come home, Lubrini gets a lady friend to summon her estranged father, the cynical loner Lt. Perez (Félix Germán of “The Projectionist”).

And even though his captain assures him that this body below the open window of the rich brat’s penthouse will be a matter “Everyone’s going to drop…like nothing happened (in Dominican Spanish with subtitles),” even though the dazed coronor (Pepe Sierra) would rather watch Internet porn on the clock than do a job the “higher ups” want dropped, Perez is determined to stay in his daughter’s good graces by pursuing something like “justice” here. More or less. And up to a point.

“It’s too soon to be tired,” he tells the losing-faith Lubrini. “That’s how things are in this country.”

The story, divided into narrative “chapters” like the book, takes some effort to grab hold of early on. Farías and co-adaptor Laura Conyendo cast us into mystery and slowly lead us out into something more conventional than it looks at first glance.

The exotic drag act and glimpses of extreme wealth, isolation and privilege in a poor country misdirect us from the only-in-the-movies nature of the crime and death, the inevitable attempt at a cover-up, the insertion of “drugs” and a Jabba-the-Hutt sized drug dealer — all elements of a much more ordinary thriller.

But “Candela” isn’t ordinary. It’s smart and strange and damning and frustrating, immersive in the ways it layers in Perez’s only friend, a hooker (Ruth Emeterio) who sees him as her lifeline as he should see her as his, in the details about the coronor, the rich bride-to-be’s bodyguard.

That hurricane we hear is coming is just another spiritual cleansing, another punishment for a place set up to serve the needs ot the very rich and which keeps everybody else blaming Haitian immigrants for their troubles.

What Farías and Conyendo conjure out of Andújar’s novel is a poetic allegory wrapped around an ordinary murder mystery thriller, and one of the best films ever to come out of the Dominican Republic.

Rating: unrated, violence, drug abuse, sex, nudity

Cast: Cesar Domínguez, Sarah Jorge León, Félix Germán, Ruth Emeterio, Pepe Sierra and Richarson Díaz

Credits: Andrés Farías, scripted by Laura Conyendo and Andrés Farías, based on a novel by
Rey Andújar. A Breaking Glass release.

Running time: 1:29

The best survival narratives, from “Robinson Crusoe” through “The Martian” all focus on “work the problem” details.

How do you survive a shipwreck or sailboat sinking (“All is Lost,” “Dead Calm”), being trapped in a forest fire, being marooned on Mars or kidnapped by murderers? The most fascinating part of such films are their “MacGuyver” DIY, reason-it-out elements.

In “Nowhere,” a new Spanish film (dubbed into English if you prefer) on Netflix, Anna Castillo plays Mia, an expectant mother, an emigrant fleeing a draconian “auesterity regime” Spain and mainland Europe.

“Governments are falling everywhere,” she and husband Nico (Tomar Novas) know. They’ve already had a child snatched from them as fascist “Not Enough for All” measures are enforced. She and Nico have paid a smuggler for their escape. But they are separated and she finds herself trapped in a shipping container that was washed overboard, supposedly on its way to safety, sanctuary and civilization — Ireland.

Mia must fight back her terror, find out what’s in the few crates in her floating coffin that might be useful, and reason and work her out of a deadly dilemma to save herself and their baby.

That’s what’s fascinating in this Albert Pintó (“Money Heist”) thriller. But in a bold and misguided move, we see a lot of the backstory that puts Mia in that predicament in a drawn-out opening act that explains the political situation spreading across Future Europe, lets us meet the murderous goons doing the enforcing and the pitiless predators smuggling people out — for a price.

The typical way to handle that sort of back story is to dole it out in quick impressions and slightly longer flashbacks. This straight-forward narrative is dull enough for long enough to make us ponder a much bolder take on this subject — casting a native African or Arab, setting her story in the present day, and daring the viewership, many of whom are going to be anti-migration, to root against her.

We see the ontrived way the couple is separated, get a glimpse of the authoritarianism, riots and chaos, and pause for a long “search the false-walled container” and government massacre that is more momentum killing than riveting.

But four screenwriters serve up all manner of melodramatic menaces facing the lone survivor in that container, from machine gun bullets to whales, leaks to the impossiblities of breaking out of it at sea. That’s all with a baby in her belly or in her care, because you just know her water’s going to break before the waters rise inside that metal box and add even mure urgency to the need to escape it.

The film’s problem-solving is mildly inventive, when it isn’t being creatively lazy. And Castillo maintains a plucky determination that hardens into resolve, with the occasional lapse into despair throughout.

If survival against the odds tales are your thing, it’s worth a watch despite the occasional eye-roll.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, childbirth

Cast: Anna Castillo, Tomar Novas and Tony Corvillo

Credits: Directed by Albert Pintó, scripted by Indiana Lista, Ernest Riera, Seanne Winslow and Teresa de Rosendo. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:49

Oct 13, a bunch of streaming ghost hunters get more than they bargained for.

A lush and savory period piece about a love affair, perhaps unconsummated (Over the consumme? Mon dieu!), this “Best International Feature” submission from France will hit theaters in Feb.

I remember liking the book, about rowing and the 1936 Hitler Olympics that Jesse Owens ruined for the Austrian corporal.

I also remember when “George Clooney directs” ginned up a lot of buzz. He’s taken on another history lesson, but after bombing out with “Catch-22” and underwhelming with “Monuments Men,” “Suburbicon,” “Midnight Sky” and “The Tender Bar,” the bloom is off the Amalfi Coast rose.

That’s a lot of misses or near misses in a row.

Still, we’ll see.

The most chilling consideration in “The Royal Hotel,” a tense tale of two Canadian 20somethings stuck in a mining town bar in the middle of Toxic Masculinity, Australia, is how nothing that happens there seems the least bit far fetched.

There’s nothing melodramatic about Kitty Green’s latest feature with her muse, Julia Garner. Garner’s performance has a “seen this” and “on the lookout for that” wariness, making her something of an Everywoman wading through the minefield of A Man’s World. Whatever Hanna wants out of life, a free-spirited trip with her bestie Liv (Jessica Henwick of “Game of Thrones”), sight-seeing, partying, maybe even a little romance on the road has to be pursued or practiced with an eye peeled for threats.

The threats can be almost any man she meets, given the right “wrong” circumstances.

Garner plays a young Canadian leery and weary of male privilege, men taking liberties and masculine loutishness trapped in the Armpit of Oz because her traveling companion didn’t budget for the trek. Next thing Hannah and Liv know, they’re broke and have to take temp “travel” jobs as barmaids/waitresses at what probably isn’t the roughest roadhouse in the Outback. “The Royal Hotel” is just rough, retrograde, unenlightened and in all likelihood “typical.”

They could use a translator and the viewer wouldn’t mind subtitles for their communications with their boss, Billy (Hugo Weaving). His accent’s thick, his business practices simple and his bar a worn institution he inherited from his father. Carol (Ursula Yovich) cooks for the joint, tolerates Billy’s brusqueness and watches his alcohol intake.

He lives in a travel trailer out front, and most nights, he passes out before he gets there.

The one thing the Canadians figure they understand is what sounds like the ugliest insult they’ve heard in years. But maybe “Smart c–t” is just “a cultural thing,” Liv offers. Hanna is a tad appalled at the setting, the work and the miners, alkies and “sh–kickers” who frequent the place. Liv has a lot of get along to get by about her.

“It won’t be so bad.”

But they can’t help but notice the drunken send-off the English barmaids who precede them get, the liberties taken and alcoholic “consent” and risks involved. And we can’t help but notice what the customers gripe about and their new boss raises hell about.

“What, no smile?”

We see the harassment, hear the off-color come-ons and catch the leers. There’s a lot of testosterone and an air of violence about the place and most every man in it.

Hanna and Liv pick up on that. And seeing their far-more compliant predecessors leave under than safe circumstances has Hanna suspicious even of a guy (Toby Wallace) she might be interested in and Liv careful in how she rejects one (James Frecheville) interested in her.

Because they’re all potentially future Billies, and possibly present variations of the menacing Incel Dolly (Daniel Henshall). Staying safe long enough to save up to flee is going to be tricky.

Green and “Ozark” alumna Garner made “The Assistant” together, another sly and unsettling look at a powerless young woman in toxic male work environment.

Hanna here is aware of her surroundings, cautious when it comes to the situations she allows herself to get into, capable of being charmed but always guarded enough and assertive enough that we don’t naturally fear for her.

Unless, that it, we consider how the willowy, pale blonde could stand up to the brute force on display all around her. And trying to look out of Liv in all this alcohol and testosterone may be Hanna’s riskiest undertaking. Because Liv is forever minimizing the risk.

Green and Henwick never let Liv become just a “type,” the looser, more careless one less suspicious of the motives of men. But we can see Liv is the weakest link in situations that will require them constantly on guard for each other to survive.

Weaving looks like himself but is almost unrecognizable in a boozy, slang-slurring fury. It’s a marvelous turn, even if the character’s function is to play up the “harmless” self-destructiveness of the male culture.

But this is Garner’s vehicle, and it helps to remember her flinty, opportunistic turn in “Ozark” when we see Hanna veer from gentle mollifying to bluff and blunt “Last call” in a bar where the burly clientele might not want to leave, and what’re YOU going to do about it?

Green takes some pains to avoid letting this story play out in tried and true “ladies face perils” or “women finally have had enough” fashion. She skips over moments that seem fraught in their build up — that tiny women “clearing the bar” at closing time (there is no law enforcement in this corner of Oz, even if the menfolk are forever wary of DUIs — or say they are) for instance.

But filmmaker and muse/alter ego have put recognizable, human characters in an extreme situation and dared us to guess how they’ll exit it. And no matter how they might leave, we absolutely believe every possibility of what might come, because that just comes with being a woman in a world that’s more hostile to them than you think.

Rating: R, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, James Frecheville, Daniel Henshall, Ursula Yovich and Hugo Weaving.

Credits: Directed by Kitty Green, scripted by Kitty Green and Oscar Redding. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:31

Phylicia Rashad is his neighbor.

Presented without further comment. January.

“Story Ave.” is a Bronx tale about graffiti, growing up and coming to grips with grief.

The debut feature of commercial director Aristotle Torres, it’s immersed in street life, a vivid portrait of gangs — “crews” — that spread their name and mark their turf with “bubble letter” art and logos, and occasionally defend it with pistols.

It sets up as a “life choices” lecture and relationship between a teen street artist (Assante Blackk of “This is Us”) trying to pass his “initiation,” and the widowed MTA (trains/transit) lifer he tries to rob, played by the terrific and instantly-recognizable character actor Luis Guzmán.

But as good as the leads are in what is written and cast as a star vehicle for them, Melvin Gregg (TV’s “Snowfall”) almost walks away with the picture as the charismatic, “prophetic” leader of the OTL (“Outside the Lines” gang) and mentor to young Kadir, the artist.

As “Skemes,” he has a lot of the best lines, maybe even the best advice.

“You know writers is fighters,” he preaches. Life is all about “family,” “the one you’re born into, or the one you choose.”

Kadir (Blackk) has chosen the OTL, thanks largely to his running mate, graffiti assistant and “twin” Mo (Alex R. Hibbert). He’s just got to pay attention to Skemes’ guidance.

“Know your role,” the streetwise poet, artist and straight-up thug counsels.

Kadir, aka “Kid,” just lost his brother. His mother’s (Olivia Grayson) inconsolable. And Kadir, a smart kid, is acting out, at least in part as a response to this trauma and his role in it.

He accepts the pistol Skemes gives him, takes on the “stick-up” as initiation rite and after a false start, picks his victim — the older man on the train (Guzmán). Yeah, that’s going to change his life, and in all the predictable ways.

Director and co-writer Torres milks sequences, scenes and relationships for all they’re worth in this ambling, downbeat drama. There’s violence and the threat of it, but Torres is more interested in the kid’s missteps, in Luis (Guzmán), his waitress friend (Coral Peña) who also happens to be a photographer and the kid’s journey — through them — to see that there’s more to life than his “hood.”

The narrative starts out immersing us in this world, challenging us to cut through the slang and street enunciation of the characters, and finishes with something of a flourish. But the stumbling middle acts kind of hit the wall, making me wonder if some critics were seeing a shorter cut of “Story Ave.” (it’s listed as 12 minutes shorter than it really is on IMDb) than the one reviewed.

It’s still a sharp portrait of a world we don’t often see on screen, the art and art pretentions of those in it and the violence that hangs over their work, especially if they paint over a rival gang’s handiwork.

Rating: unrated, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Assante Blackk, Luis Guzmán, Melvin Gregg, Olivia Grayson, Alex R. Hibbert and Coral Peña

Credits: Directed by Aristotle Torres, scripted by Aristotle Torres and Bonsu Thompson. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:46