Movie Nation

“Limbo” is a darker-than-dark Hong Kong serial killer thriller in the “Se7en” mold — formulaic, but brutish and bleak and bloody-minded.

Veteran director Pou-Soi Cheang (the “Monkey King” action pics were his) shows us a Hong Kong rarely seen on the screen, an underbelly of poverty, crime, trash and murder, all of it captured in lurid, dank black and white.

An adaptation of a novel by Lei Mi, “Limbo” is a standard new-detective-assigned-to-jaded and heavy-handed-old-pro when bodies and body parts start turning up anywhere people dump garbage in the Pearl of the Orient. In Hong Kong’s case, that’s almost anywhere, including a statue-covered shrine where Cham Lau — played by “Ip Man” veteran Kat-Tung Lam — frets and sniffs over the first corpse.

Women drug abusers, sex workers and thieves are dying. Female hands are turning up here and there.

Young detective Will Ren (Mason Lee of “Dead Pigs”) is expected to “learn from” the grizzled Cham. But as the older cop slams a car hood down on one person of interest’s hand, and shows a willingness to get down and dirty in the shoe-leather work that is the biggest part of the job, the younger man tries to rein him in.

Cham also seems distracted, a brooding man relentlessly hunting for this petite street urchin/car thief, Wong To (Yase Liu). When Cham beats the hell out of her, his new partner tries to put a stop to the abuse, to no avail.

This side case is personal, and of course will somehow eventually tie into the serial killer who is priority one in their precinct.

There’s a breathless chase with the seemingly-possessed Cham hounding Wong To through every back alley and parking garage in the city, her gasping and on foot, him relentlessly running her down in his ancient Mitsubishi Pajero, Will Ren sprinting in pursuit, trying to keep his partner from executing this always-apologizing (in but unreformed ex-con.

The grunt work is depicted as so grisly you can almost smell it, cops in face masks fumbling through refuse and waste and body parts.

And the settings are so grim and foul that you’re grateful “Limbo” was filmed in black and white. Color would render this squalor Third World vivid. This film is the polar opposite of a “postcard picture” that might entice visitors to Hong Kong.

The performances are buttoned-down, with Liu inviting sympathy just because of the amount of abuse Wong To endures, and the characters are never much more than cop movie archetypes, including the villain and his depicted “motivation.”

The dialogue is limited, hardboiled, and delivered in Cantonese, Japanese and snatches of English when Will Ren wants to REALLY get Cham Lau’s attention.

“I’m TALKING to you!” “You’re f—–g CRAZY.”

But director Cheang keeps this brutal movie on the march, stomping through the sordid side of a city he knows well, giving up his story’s twists grudgingly and keeping us engaged no matter how ugly things turn.

Rating: Unrated, graphic violence, dismemberment, rape, profanity, smoking

Cast: Kat Tung Lam, Yase Liu, Mason Lee

Credits: Directed by Pou-Soi Cheang, scripted by Kin Yee Au and Kwan-Sin Shum, based on a novel by Lei Mi. A Capelight release.

Running time: 1:58

Quick show of hands, anybody frightened, shocked or spooked by the tenth torture porn tale in the “Saw” franchise?

Sure, it’s great seeing Tobin Bell back as the original “moral” judge, jury, torturer and exucutioner Jigsaw, aka John Kramer, here seen in a story set between two early installments (II and III, some say, but I couldn’t tell you) in “Saw X.” And I guess it’s fine that Shawnee Smith returns as the “assistant” and “protege” punisher of the morally/ethically lacking, as decreed by John Kramer.

But another two hours into the “Saw” franchise and we still don’t figure out how these insanely baroque torture-dismemberment “trap” games are engineered, or how Kramer developed the skills to whip them up in a flash, after getting the drop on this or that quarry.

The whole affair has a whiff of “Going through the motions” to it, as the self-butchery and slaughter visited upon “guilty” victims is handled without suspsense or pathos. One pitiless, perfunctory murder follows the next with a sort of shrug.

Well, using intestines as a lasso and other gory moments can be added to the “horrors we can’t unsee” that the “Saw” franchise has served up. But big deal.

John Kramer has just gotten his cancerous death sentence in this tale, and has crossed into Mexico where a Norwegian doc (Synnøve Macody Lund) has a new chemical cocktail and surgery regimen that should fix him right up.

Yeah, we know where this is going the moment that set-up is engaged. It’s just a matter of time before a group of those who tricked Mr. Kramer learn the many uses of the word “Jigsaw.”

The creepiness of the early films hung on the mystery of Kramer, the dispassionate hiss of his (unseen) pronouncements and the alarming doll/marionette he used as his avatar.

Merely seeing that revived here is worth little more than a shrug.

Hearing Kramer describe his “work” as “I help people overcome inner obstacles” isn’t clever or particularly cryptic.

And the death-dealing is just doing a gorier version of what we’ve seen in the earlier films.

Not casting bigger names than this lot doesn’t help, either. We’re light years away from an original film that made us care what happened to Cary Elwes and Danny Glover’s characters because of the agonizing dilemmas they faced.

Here there’s no empathy behind the camera or from the viewer. It’s just “Here’s another one. What can we do with her intestines that people haven’t seen in horror before now?”

If it wasn’t for the actors screaming — some of it more convincing than others — I swear I’d have dozed off before this hit the halfway mark.

Rating: R, graphic violence and lots of it, profanity

Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojosa, Paulette Hernandez and Steven Brand

Credits: Directed by Kevin Greutert, scripted by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:58

If Oprah taught us anything, it’s that we’re all the heroes of our own narrative and entitled to speak our “Truth.”

So let’s give Louisiana’s Robertson clan, who brought camo, duck calls, huntin’ and fishin’ and Z.Z. Top beards into vogue during the run of their sometimes controversial 2012-2017 TV “reality” series, a movie to spin their own origin myth.

It’s hard to overstate the impact this rowdy crew of “redneck millionaires” and swamp s—kickers had on pop culture — at least for a spell. Fans tuned in each week to a white Southern Protestant family’s “Beverly Hillbillies” nouveau riche cavorting with cash, with its patriarch’s duck call and Duck Commander brand the source of their wealth

The show had its critics, especially when that patriarch, Phil Robertson, let his “traditional” Southern Christian conservative beliefs get out off camera — homophobia and patronizing racism included. That didn’t get the show canceled, but it made the decision easier to wrap it up and usher them more or less off the air in 2017.

“The Blind” lets Phil and matriarch Kay tell their stories — mostly Phil’s — as related in a mid-life chat held with a friend in a duck blind, years before TV entered the picture.

It’s a fictionalized, family-authorized “true story” that’s equal parts “Where the Crawdads Sing” and classic Christian redemption story of the “Sergeant York/Apostle” variety.

The film, which ends with a post-sermon homily by Robertson himself, let’s us see the irresponsible, selfish, childish hellion he was before alcoholic rages and the near end of his marriage led him to Jesus.

Movie versions notwithstanding, this is a classic narrative of white Southern culture and remains wildly attractive to people with hard lives who recognize the turning point faith might have offered them and other “lost souls” they know.

The film, a choppy, sometimes amateurish affair that stumbles into as many questions as it answers, lets the Robertsons have it both ways. It establishes Phil’s s—kicker bonafides, which is a vital part of the family brand, and ties his success in life to his Baptism, also a big part of the family brand.

There was a lot of talk about the “fake” nature of reality TV when this series was at its peak, with every week serving up a “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” “Honey Boo Boo” or “Duck Dynasty” “what they’re REALLY like off camera” scandal. So one can’t vouch for the veracity of the Robertson family lore related here.

But here’s what they, or the screenwriters and the actors playing younger versions of them, tell us happened.

Black-beared Phil (Aron von Adrian) relates to a friend the hardscrabble life he (Ronan Carroll plays him as a tween, Matthew Erik White plays Phil as a teen) and his siblings endured, daddy “away on a job” (oil rigs in the Gulf), mom (Kerry Knuppe), stressed, broke and furiously losing her grasp of reality in their dire situation.

We see how Phil met the local grocery store owner’s daughter Kay (Scarlett Abinante and Brielle Robinard play her as a tween and teen), the “woman I was gonna marry,” zeroing in on her lack of judgment about their different stations in life and her kind contribution of groceries to the starving Robertsons.

There’s an account of Phil’s athletic prowess, which got him into Louisiana Tech, that seems only slightly exaggerated. No, he probably didn’t tell future Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw “It’s your turn” when he dropped out off the team because “It was huntin’ season,” and he’d married young Kay and started a family.

Years pass, jobs change, and taking ownership of a bar does nothing to help Phil’s yearning for self-employed/self-sufficient “freedom” and indifferent parenting.

The narrative shifts points of view every so often as we see the years and trials caused by Phil’s refusal to stick to school teaching, preferring a life of fishing and hunting, his taking up smoking and drinking thanks to a school administrator buddy (Connor Tillman) and Kay’s struggles with this irresponsible absentee lout who got violent any time his drinking and shiftlessness were brought up.

And then there’s the preacher (John Ales) who gives Kay a lifeline, and eventually reaches out to Phil when he hits rock bottom, as such stories ordain that he must.

The script skips forward in leaps and bounds, leans too heavily on Phil’s voice-over narration, misses some touching moments and fails to move us in others.

The acting is indifferent, the production values single-wide/swamp skiff/wrecked pickup cheap, with a score built on plaintive violin solos and cut-rate covers of pop hits from a couple of eras, with I think Billy Gibbsons covering his “La Grange” for a version for use in the film’s 1970s scenes.

A cynic might note that given Phil Robertson’s unenlightened attitudes on race, the script made sure to get Black folks into two scenes.

And the whole religious part of the Robertsons” “Family, Faith and Ducks” creed reminds one that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” and “Religion is the hustlers’ last con.”

Whatever potential it had, the film just isn’t very good, with or without fact checking. That redemption story arc works for a reason. Done right, it touches people. Director Andreww Hyatt, who did the Caivezel “Paul, Apostle of Christ” picture a couple of years back, can’t make this version work and the script’s humorless, emotionally flat treatment of the material smothers “The Blind” in the crib.

But Robertson clan fans know about it, as a packed matinee showing I caught in rural Florida proved, and a rural Virginia’s ticket seller confirmed by mentioning to me that I could have any seat I wanted at their first “Creator” showing, because “everybody here’s getting tickets for ‘The Blind.'”

And that fanbase, showing up in beards and camo, can’t get enough of whatever the Robertsons are still selling.

Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, profanity and duck shooting.

Cast: Aron von Adrian, Amelia Eve, Matthew Erik White, Brielle Robillard, Connor Tillman and John Ales and Phil Robertson.

Credits. Directed by Andrew Hyatt, scripted by Andrew Hyatt and Stephanie Katz. A Tread Lively release.

Running timer: 1:48

The action auteur returns to theaters Dec. 1.

Let the mayhem begin.

I didn’t bother catching the formerly straight to streaming “Paw Patrol” sequel when it previewed last weekend.  But here it is, dominating Friday and looking like a BO winner, heading to a $22 million+ opening weekend, per deadline.com.

Not great by animated A picture standards, but found money for Paramount.

I probably won’t bother reviewing it, no matter how much the kindergarteners at Rotten Tomatoes rave it up, the dears.

I am on my way to a Sat. screening of “Saw X,” just to ensure Lionsgate and the screenwriters did right by Tobin Bell. It’s on track to come close to $19 million on its opening weekend.

And 20th Century Studios’ “The Creator” is making decent money, maybe $14 by midnight Sunday. Not bad for derivative, shiny and manipulative sc fi. Not nearly enough to justify the budget, but there you go, hiring John David Washington to cut talent costs. That almost never works out.

“The Nun 2” and “Haunting in Venice” are hanging around, $5 and $4 million respectively.

Sony expanded “Dumb Money” into a wide national release, and the fact that it will be lucky to clear $1 million proves they had no idea how to sell it.

No early box office numbers for “The Blind,” which I may get to today as well. It’s selling well in the rural South, as I discovered when I watched “Creator” in a nearly empty house as the camo clad “Duck Dynasty” crowd packed the theater for that one.

I’ll update this post as more boxoffice data rolls in.

It’s a match made in movie heaven, or so one would think.

Apply the twee stylings of America’s most precious and airlessly droll filmmaker, Wes Anderson, to the darkly comic fiction of Britain’s frightener of children, Roald Dahl.

“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is a Dahl parable of wealth, indolence, “true story” magic and life remade with purpose, every bit as stylized as any of Anderson’s cinematic exercises in pointilistically-detailed deadpan.

It’s a short film in narrated-story form, with Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, as well as Benedict Cumberbatch and Dev Patel doing the narrating, a couple of them playing multiple parts.

A film with 75 minutes of narration squeezed into 40, and 20 minutes of “action” padded out to 40, it is a triumph of style even if its dry wit feels slight, even when it’s being performed by such luminaries.

At one point, two Indian doctors are narrating the section of the that tale’s book within a book. Patel is Dr. Z.Z. Chatterjee, who wrote “A Report Imhad Khan: The Man Who Sees Without His Eyes.” They are amazed at having bandaged this would-be yogi and circus sideshow act Imhad Khan (Kingsley) and witnessing him stroll confidently out of their hospital, mount a bike and pedal figure eights in front of them.

Anderson cast the British comic and “IT Crowd” legend Richard Ayoade as Dr. Marshall, just a witness and reactor to Dr. Chatterjee’s vocalized memories of this encounter.

“His whole face was rigid with disbelief,” Dr. Chatterjee recalls of his colleague. Dr. Marshall. Ayoade turns to the camera — like everyone else here — to demonstrate precisely what that looks like.

The whole film is like that, beginning with a writer (Fiennes) meant to be Dahl, garreted in his “Gipsy House” writing hut and telling us the story of rich, “greedy” and unmarried posh Henry Sugar (Cumberbatch), a man of no redeeming qualities until he stumbles across this hand-transcribed “book” by Chatterjee in a wealthy man’s book collection and marvels over the idea of how being able to see “without his eyes” could be deployed in cheating the house at his favorite casinos.

The mildly loathesome Henry will train himself, like a yogi, to read the backs of playing cards.

Like a lot of Anderson’s work, it’s dry to the point of parched, deadpan to a deathly degree.

The motor-mouthed narrations are amusing enough until they’re exhausting, as once we’ve gotten Dahl’s point about “all rich people of Henry’s ‘type'” and fallen into the film’s arch style. It’s the clever scene changes, transitions and under-reactions of the players to every event — astonishment at Imad Khan’s skill, Henry’s blase realization he need never lose at blackjack again, changes of heart and matters of life and death — that entertain here.

It’s not among Dahl’s greatest hits or Anderson’s grand meringue delights, but “Henry Sugar” amuses here and there and passes by quickly, unlike the interminable “Asteroid City” and sometimes strained earlier Anderson outings.

Rating: PG, some smoking

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Ayoade and Dev Patel.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Wes Anderson, based on a short story by Roald Dahl. A Netflix release.

Running time: :40

An “institute” that’s developed a “test to make the bond of love grow stronger.”

Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White and Luke Wilson star in this Oct. 27 release, coming to Apple TV+ shortly thereafter.

Love that cast.

Some entertaining truck stunts are the chief recommendation of “Overhaul,” a big rig racing, big-rig hijacking thriller from Brazil.

This “Around the World With Netflix” outing is a “Fast and Furious” knock-off with dull characters, generic situations and little that makes it “furious,” even when it’s “fast.”

Thiago Martins stars as Roger, a perpetual also-ran in the BR (Big Rig?) semi racing series, driving for his father’s team. He’s forever ignoring race-and-engine management advice from his mechanic, Danilo (Raphael Logam), forever flying off the handle whenever anyone — from his father to the woman (Sheron Menezzes) who is his biggest rival — who dares call him what he is.

“Brat!”

An argument with Dad directly contributes to the old man’s death in an accident. The next thing the brat figures out is that the racing team is bankrupt, the sponsors are fleeing and this shady fellow Odilon (Evandro Mesquita) is aiming to collect on some debts.

There’s nothing for it but for Roger to take on a bunch of truck-hijackings as the “pilot” of the chase and getaway semi, with his pal Danilo coming along to figure out ways to improve on this “side market” business of a “slightly illegal” nature.

Actually, it’s totally illegal and dangerous, and the cops are interested in all these trucks filled with cell phones and what-not are going.

Tomas Portell’s film — in Portugeuse or dubbed — gives us only tiny glimpses of a Brazilian underworld and a racist culture where Danilo faces more severe punishment because he’s Black. Maybe making a statement on that world in a film for the domestic market isn’t something most Brailian films do. But the memorable ones always immerse us in settings, people and the flavor of that criminal subculture.

Leandro Soares’ screenplay is strictly formula, from its first races to it’s “Who will be kidnapped the moment Roger says ‘I want out’?” third act, with dialogue just as unsurprising.

But some of the truck stunts are cool and believable.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, adult situations

Cast: Thiago Martins, Milhem Cortaz,
Raphael Logam, Sheron Menezzes, Vitoria Valentin and Evandro Mesquita

Credits: Directed by
Tomas Portella, scripted by
Leandro Soares. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

How does this Nov. 22 Mouse House offering sound to you, look to you?

“Bland beyond belief” was my first take on it, seeing this trailer in front of “The Creator” last night.
“Cutesy” Happy Meal toy characters.

Generic story elements, flat, direct-to-video animation.

And does this voice cast light up the marquee?

• Angelique Cabral as Queen Amaya, the wife and sounding board of King Magnifico;
• Victor Garber as Asha’s grandfather, Sabino, who—at 100 years old—is patiently waiting for his wish to be granted;
• and Natasha Rothwell as Asha’s loving and supportive mom, Sakina.

Plus, Asha’s tight-knit group of confidants, protectors and forever friends:

• Jennifer Kumiyama as Asha’s dearest friend, Dahlia, who’s an accomplished baker and unofficial leader of their group; 
• Evan Peters as the strong guy with a big heart and bigger yawn, Simon; 
• Harvey Guillén as Gabo, who may be cynical, but he has a heart of gold; 
• Ramy Youseff as Safi, who’s plagued by allergies;
• Niko Vargas as Asha’s joyful, always smiling buddy, Hal; 
• Della Saba as the seemingly shy teenager, Bazeema, who’s full of surprises; 
• and Jon Rudnitsky as Asha’s rosy-cheeked, wiggly-eared pal, Dario

The timing could not be more perfect for a thriller flipping the current AI debate on its head, an updating of everything “Blade Runner,””A.I.” and “The Terminator” wrestled with in action epic form.

“The Creator” is derivative, but inventively so, a dazzling platform for state-of-the-art sci-fi tech impressively parked in a post-nuclear Los Angeles, or the terraces, future cities and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

The director, Gareth Edwards, did my favorite of the recent “Star Wars” installments, “Rogue One.” And co-screenwriter Chris Weitz once wrote “About a Boy.”

But somewhere around the time we see metallic robotic refugees from the “Star Wars” design studio warming their articulated metal, wire and gears “fingers” over a campfire, I muttered my first “WTF?”

Why...never mind.

Right about the moment when one of these two-legged vacuum cleaners talks through pointlessly flanged and hinged lips covering an equally pointless machine-tooled mouth, “The Creator” started to feel like the dumbest AI movie since “Short Circuit.”

The humans have no trouble tracking, chasing down and surprising their AI foes on the battlefield. It’s as if the machines are all operating on Windows 95.

In an alternate future set up with a vintage “robots and you” styled newsreel opening (robots on the Space Shuttle, etc.), America is leading the West in the fight against artificial intelligence which the East has embraced, and apparently allowed to nuke Los Angeles.

John David Washington plays Joshua, a man whose seemingly idyllic life with his very pregnant wife (Gemma Chan) is interrupted by an attack from the NOMAD (North American Orbital Mobile Air Defense) combat platform on their corner of New Asia (Southeast Asia, judging from the Thai islands and Vietnamese fields and rice paddies).

It turns out Joshua is a sergeant working undercover in search of the Nirmata, the brilliant Asian creator of much of the new AI that’s coming out. They’re packaged as “Simulants,” sentient robots with human features and skulls with visible holes through them (For…ventilation?). The US Army in the persons of Gen. Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Col. Howell (Oscar winner Allison Janney) want this creator dead.

The raid is premature and a debacle, leaving Joshua embittered and widowed. But years and many fruitless debriefings later, he is ordered on a new mission to find this Nimrata, the creator’s new superweapon, and perhaps the missing wife Joshua was sure was dead.

A new team is NOMAD delivered to a new strike zone because the East is helpless against the giant, IUD-shaped “Avengers” aircraft carrier in the sky. All that AI tech and the robots and Simulants living in harmony amongst the simple, happy natives can’t even spot armed commando teams marching down ridgelines, lit up with flashlights and assorted mobile assault vehicles in the pitch dark.

You’ve seen the trailers to the film. You know that the “secret weapon” is a Simulant in the form of an adorable, seemingly omnipotent child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles Alphie), and that Joshua finds himself trying to smuggle her to his bosses, to get her to lead him to his long-lost wife, or to a future where “robots can be free.”

It’s kind of clever, putting the ultimate threat to human civilization in the form of a little girl. Awww, who’d want to hurt her? She’s harmless and helpless and cute. I guess making her a cocker spaniel would have been too on-the-nose.

But among the script’s many lapses in logic, her omnipotence has its limits. And even so, it’s hard to feel for her, identify with her and root for her despite how cute this “Alpha O” (“Alphie” for short) is.

Joshua is stuck babysitting this “Little Sim,” explaining “death” and its electronic equivalent (“On,” “Off” and “Standby”) to a computerized child who wonders about heaven and if robots can be free there?

It’s all just too precious. Throw in hilariously illogical (talking suicide robots shaped like oil drums) bomb-delivery systems and tech, the undermotivated expectation that we’ll “root” for AI, and the under-explained heedless Asian embrace of this tech future.

OK, maybe that last one makes sense in a racially stereotypical way.

Director Edwards imagines this as a clumsy Vietnam War analogy, with armed and murderously heavy-handed America imposing its bloody will on foreigners who don’t “look like us.” There are hints of “Apocalypse Now” in a few sequences.

But the nonsensical nature of much of this took me right out of the movie. It’s one thing for “Star Wars” to see the need for gold-played British butler robots that look like walking Oscar statuettes. It’s another to think computered-assisted efficient design wouldn’t see the need for moving lips (there are no “eyes” on the metallic ones), for hand-held radios (comms would be built in) or hand-held laser rifles (ditto).

As the picture careens around towards its anti-climactic climax, one really does wonder about the point of it all.

If you aren’t reading the words “John David Washington” with an involuntary “Uh oh” on your lips these days, you haven’t been paying attention to the parade of piffle this most famous of “nepo babies” has turned up in since “BlackKklansman.” He’s not a bad actor, no matter how little training he got. He’s just a consistently uninteresting one, no matter how handsome he might be.

If he’s starring in the movie, it means they couldn’t get anybody better to take the lead.

And here he is, giving another colorless leading man turn in a movie that desperately could use a big dose of charisma, which only mean-Ms. Janney and noble-but-underwritten “Sim” leader Ken Watanabe provide.

Clumsy efforts like make one wonder if AI editing software wouldn’t have asked a lot of questions and demanded better results than this screenplay delivers.

Rating: PG-13 (Strong Language|Some Bloody Images|Violence)

Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Madeleine Yuna Voyles Alphie, Ken Watanabe and Allison Janney.

Credits: Directed by Gareth Edwards, scripted by  Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz A 20th Century release.

Running time: 2:13