Movie Nation

It takes a good 70 minutes for Danish filmmaker Bille August’s period piece “Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction,” to get through its talk-talk-talk opening acts, on its feet and find its fun and its purpose. It’s a 94 minute film, so you see the problem in that.

While it’s grand that Netflix provides work for the esteemed director of “Pelle the Conqueror, “House of the Spirits” and “Night Train to Lisbon,” this adaptation of a Karen Blixen novel (“Our of Africa” was hers), sort of a Danish take on “Dangerous Liaisons,” doesn’t quite pay off. But it comes close.

It’s a gorgeously set and costumed early 19th century tale of royal succession and birth lines in an imaginary duchy, where a seductive painter finds himself commissioned not just for portraits, but to arrange palace intrigues so that a royal heir can be provided.

Cazotte, played by Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (“Land of Mine”) at his most dashing, is a rakish portrait painter to the great royals of Europe. He’s brazen enough to flirt with those sitting as his subjects. The Grand Duchess (Sidse Babett Knudsen of “Limbo”) flushes and blushes and reciprocates his attentions.

But she has a problem. Her boyish teen son and heir (Emil Aron Dorph) doesn’t seem interested in girls. Yet. Perhaps Cazotte can instruct him in the allure of l’amour and the ways of love?

Sure. And while he’s at it, he’ll arrange to put the lad in the company of an eligible royal teen of a nearby duchy (he will paint the family, the boy will pose as his assistant).

But that’s just the start of the “complications” of this affair of the heart, inheritance and a “wager” that the painter can seduce the lovely, aloof and vigorous “maiden in a long line of warriors,” Ehrengard (Alice Esther Leisner).

The performances have a mostly stately nature, rarely hinting at the playfulness we get the feeling the material called for. Every variation of “Dangeous Liaisons,” even one based on a Karen Blixen novel, should be fun.

August, using a script by his son, takes his sweet time setting all this up, as if he’s got “Out of Africa” as his subject matter and planned run time. The better model for him to lean on might have been Orson Welles’ poignant, unhurried and masterfully short film of Blixen’s “The Immortal Story.”

Because once this picture finally rises out of its torpor, it’s damned delightful. The third act has action, intrigues, comedy and a jaw-dropping surprise or two. More’s the pity since the opening acts are such a sexless, humorless drag.

Rating: TV-MA, some nudity, adult situations, mild violence

Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Alice Esther Leisner, Emil Aron Dorph, Sara-Marie Maltha and Jacob Lohmann.

Credits: Directed by Bille August, scripted by Anders Frithiof August, based on a novel by Karen Blixen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

Payne and his “Sideways” star/muse take us to a boarding school over the winter holiday of 1970, a student whose parents don’t seem to have time for him, a teacher (Giamatti) no one likes and a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) are stuck together and forced to get along and get real with each other.

The trailer to this Nov. 10 release mimics the style of ’70s movie trailers, graphics included. Cute.

Vampires, lest we forget, are very old. How old? Grandma’s Consumer Cellular flip-phone-using old.

Some of them could stand to do some situps. And given their druthers, when they “vant to drink your blood,” they’d prefer to serve it to themselves in shot glasses.

Those are just some of the insights in the horror comedy anthology “Satanic Hispanics,” which turned five horror directors — “Blair Witch” icon Eduardo Sánchez serves us the chapter titled “El Vampiro” — loose on Latin legends and lore, with a little Tex-Mex mayhem to tie it all together.

Like all such anthology packages, “v.h.s.” and its sequels being the most famous horror collection of such short takes, it’s uneven. But when it’s good, it’s chilling, or in the case of “El Vampiro” and “The Hammer of Zanzibar” (directed by Alejandro Brugués), a guaranteed spit-take or two.

Cops roll up on a crime scene in El Paso, a scene of Mexican-American slaughter with a lone survivor. Call him “The Traveler” (“Napoleon Dynamite’s” Efren Ramirez). He’s the fellow two Texas detectives (Sonya Eddy, Greg Grunberg) interrogate, and that’s the connecting thread here.

The Traveler tells the skeptical, impatient cops that they have to let him go, that there’s a demon on his tail and that they have maybe 90 minutes to free him and/or prepare for the worst.

“You have no idea what is coming.”

Every time the police think they have him pinned down as to his name, his actual age and what really happened, he launches into another anecdote that becomes a flashback in the film. The Traveler has seen horror and its many Latin American faces.

An OCD Rubik’s cube champ (Demián Salomón) has a brain wired in such a way that he can “see” beyond, or perhaps open a portal that allows the dead to poke back into the world of the living just by manically waving his cell-phone flashlight and chanting an incantation at the colored glass that separates the rooms in his grandmother’s house South of the Border.

A murderous politician finds himself holed-up on his rural estate, waiting for the revenge and judgement of a witch (Gabriela Ruíz) from the Nahual native people of his region.

A portly vampire’s (Hemky Maera) Halloween bacchanal in a border town is interrupted by his longtime love (Patricia Velasquez) ringing him up and chewing him out for not grasping the Gringo concept of “Daylight Savings Time,” and what that means to someone who needs to be in his coffin and out of the prematurely returning daylight.

And a battered dude (Jonah Ray) meets his documentary filmmaker ex (Danielle Chaves) in “the restaurant where we broke up,” to find a little closure that gets out of hand.

The connecting interview segments are probably the weakest links here, lacking urgency on the part of the time-pressed Traveler and police who should be getting more anxious themselves. Other pieces seem so stand-alone they barely “fit” in the story the Travelor is weaving.

The jolts may be few, as most chapters focus on the don’t-look-away gruesomeness of what they serve up. But almost all of the jokes land, because when you’re trying to buy “The Hammer of Zanzibar” “We don’t really have time for a back-story, man,” which is exactly what they and we get, time after time after time.

Rating: R, bloody gore, sexual content, profanity

Cast: Efren Ramirez, Hemy Madera, Patricia Velasquez, Gabriela Ruíz, Demián Salomón, Sonya Eddy, Greg Grunberg and Jonah Ray

Credits: Directed by Alejandro Brugués, Mike Mendez, Eduardo Sánchez, Gigi Saul Guerrero and Demián Rugna, scripted by Peter Barnstrom, Alejandro Mendez and Lino K. Villa. An Epic release.

Running time: 1:50

The time-honored “summer camp” kids comedy earns a most innocuous treatment with “Camp Hideout,” an almost faith-based take on a subject that “Meatballs,” “Ernest Goes to Camp,” an “Addams Family” movie and many others got to before it, almost always more amusingly.

One plus in this Sean Olson project was landing the great Christopher Lloyd as the cranky, armed hard-case camp director, not Lloyd’s first time riding herd on kids in the Great Outdoors. Remember “Camp Nowhere?” No?

Well, this one isn’t much less forgettable than that ’94 Disney outing. As in that one, Lloyd’s the one real “plus” in it.

We think it’s going to be about a social worker (Amanda Leighton) taking a problem orphaned teen Noah (Ethan Drew) to camp and out of trouble over the course of a summer. But Leighton’s Selena character falls almost completely into the background.

Noah, who gets on the camp bus right after escaping from the law and the guys (Josh Incola, Joshua Childs) he helped steal a Gameboy-like gadget from some tech company for, will be in the care of counselor Jake (“High School Musical” alumna Corbin Bleu).

Jake’s the movie’s connection to “faith based” as a genre, as Camp Deer Run is wholesome with a capital “W,” and Jake’s sing-alongs and meditative moments with what we take to be his Bible are meant to be an example to all, especially parentless and directionless Noah.

Camp manager Falco (Lloyd) has only to bellow “Stay OUTTA the woods at night! Stay outta the LAKE at night! And no gadgets. NO electronics!” for us to wonder what rules Noah will flout first.

Noah occasionally turns to the camera to give us a “Can you believe this place?” sneer and put-down. Hilarious.

Olson — “Max Winslow and the House of Secrets” and “F.R.E.D.I.” were his — and three credited screenwriters split screen time between camp activities like ziplines and paintball, camp flirting (Jenna Raine Simmons plays the girl who likes “bad boys”), camp bullying from the rich jock (Luca Alexander) and the hapless crooks anxious to get in and grab whatever Noah was supposed to hand over to them.

For the crooks to be foiled, Noah has to make friends and build teamwork, not easy for a guy with his temperament.

“Can you not be angry for like ONE MINUTE?”

There’s a chuckle or two from Lloyd, another couple from the crooks, and Noah’s dorky, over-eager, over-sharing “bladder control” issues roomie (Tyler Kowalski) lands one all by himself.

“Can you help me with the rubber sheets?”

There isn’t much here, and there’s absolutely nothing here we haven’t seen in every other summer camp comedy — on film or on TV — that preceded this one, including the fact that Christopher Lloyd’s on board.

And don’t expect Olson to wring laughs from mediocre material. His on-screen track record shows “harmless” is the main saving grace about his children’s films.

Rating: PG, some fisticuffs

Cast: Corbin Bleu, Ethan Drew, Amanda Leighton, Tyler Kowalski, Zion Wyatt, Jenna Raine Simmons, Luca Alexander, Josh Incola, Joshua Childs and Christopher Lloyd

Credits: Directed by Sean Olson, scripted by Kat Olson, C. Neil Davenport and Dave DeBorde. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time:

With many distributors scaling back promotion and previews for their movies, and refusing to pay their actors and writers, this appears to be the new movie reviewing paradigm.

Thursday afternoon I’m catching a Roadside Attractions release that wasn’t announced, pitched or near as I can tell, even advertised.

Let’s see what the (lack of) fuss is about. I hear Christopher Lloyd is in it.

Netflix has this star spangled adaptation of “several” Edgar Allan Poe stories, slated for eight episodes.

Love that Carla Gugino. Willa Fitzgerald, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish, Zach Gilford, T’Nai Miller, Henry Thomas, Mark Hamill, Rahul Kohli, Mary McDonnell and Kate Siegel are also in the cast.

Next month, I think?

The idea isn’t the worst Netflix ever had.

Crank out an “Into the Woods” and “Wicked” riff on fairytales teaming up Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and give it a mystery for them to solve. Call it “Once Upon a Crime.”

But this tedious, tin-eared Japanese take on The Brothers Grimm finds almost nothing funny in that, just a lot of cute Japanese actresses and actors flippantly making light of Western fairytale tropes and characters, only not light enough.

At least that handsome prince “really knows how to pull of a red jacket and white pants!”

Red Riding Hood (Kanna Hashimoto) is minding her own business on her overdressed way to Spenhagen when a witch (Midoriko Kimura) cackles and taunts her over her shoes and won’t let her pass until she’s “fixed” that.

“In this country, beauty is the only thing that matters,” she hoots (in Japanese with subtitles, or dubbed). But she’s not very good at conjuring up the whole footwear makeover thing.

Red barely has time to get used to whatever’s happened to her comfy boots when she runs into Cinderella (Yûko Araki) who has problems far beyond footwear. She’s being bullied. Red Riding’s first clue?

“Your name literally means ‘covered in ashes.'”

A second witch is summoned –“What’s with all the witches today?” And the footwear matter is cleared up thanks to some glass slippers. Turn a pumpkin and mice into a coach and four, with coachman, and they’re all set for the ball, makeovers complete.

Running over the king’s favorite hairdresser on the way doesn’t cast as much of a pall over the evening as you might think. Until, as the heroines get a gander of the handsome prince (Takanori Iwata), dance with him and compete with Cinderella’s evil stepsisters for his attention, word gets out that the hairdresser is dead.

Who did it? Who hid the body? And why? Nobody is LEAVING This castle until…

Director Yûichi Fukuda (“Black Night Parade” and “Psychic Kusuo” were his) found out the hard way that the surest means of snuffing the light out in a comical fairytale is to burden the middle acts with witnesses, accusations, a dry mid-ball interrogation to figure out “Who killed that hairdresser, and why?”

While the production design is sparkling and the costumes impressive, there’s little here that might have given this corpse signs of life. The jokes in the dialogue are flat, the sight gags almost non-existent and the murder mystery barely worth labeling that.

It’s impossible to make some point about shallow “beauty” being the arbiter of citizenship and a means of getting one into the palace of Claire de Lune when literally everybody in the cast is inutterably gorgeous.

When every character is Milan or Paris runway ready, who gets to call whom “ugly” anyway? Even a six year-old could see through that, and as they’re the target audience here, well…

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Kanna Hashimoto, Yûko Araki, Takanori Iwata, Natsuna, Miki Maya and Midoriko Kimura

Credits: Directed by Yûichi Fukuda, scripted by Aito Aoyagi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

Rainn Wilson, Beau Bridges and Kevin Sussman are in the supporting cast of this series adaptation of the feminist novel by Bonnie Garmus.

Looks very good.

October 13, this premieres on Apple TV+.

BAFTA winner Monica Dolan stars in this amiable, moving road picture/”artist in the moment of discovery/re-discovery” drama from director Carol Morley of “The Falling.”

You glance at the credits to “Bitter Victory,” a World War II in the Libyan desert thriller starring Richard Burton, Curd Jürgens, Ruth Roman, Nigel Green and Christopher Lee, the only true “war” movie of director and co-writer Nicholas Ray, and you wonder, “Wait, how’d I miss this?”

The answer turns out to be, “Just lucky, I guess.”

Ray owes his screen immortality to “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) and much of his reputation as an auteur to the films that led up to it — “They Live By Night,” “Johnny Guitar” and “In a Lonely Place.” But everything changed for him after “Rebel,” and he found himself working on a larger canvas, for higher stakes for much of the rest of his career.

The telling title on his post-James Dean resume is the other “war movie” he was on board to direct, the bloated 1960s epic “55 Days in Peking,” which he quit days into production, and finished off with a heart attack a short time afterwards. He handled the epic scale of “King of Kings” as well as could be expected. But “combat” and wasn’t his thing, unless it was limited to a simple gunfight or knife fight.

“Bitter Victory” is a groaning psychological thriller wrapped in a desert commando mission package. It opens with a string of tedious, unhurried, cinematically and militarily slack “assigned a mission” scenes confined to soundtstages meant to pass for Cairo and improves only somewhat when it moves out of doors for its trek through the Libyan Desert.

Ray handles firefights with so little care that they had to be replayed in fast-motion. He fretted not at all at how “tiny smoke bomb” every grenade explosion looked and was so careless with little matters like big explosions used as “a distraction” not distracting the hapless German guards from marching their rounds at their Benghazi headquarters, the object of this commando raid.

But stabbings and summary executions the filmmaker tackled with a bit more relish.

Curd Jürgens is cast against type as British Major Brand, a desk officer assigned a mission to retrieve “documents” from Gen. Erwin Rommel’s HQ. It’s the low ebb of the North African campaign, with the Brits who aren’t retreating on the front lines (too) comfortably cosseted in Cairo.

The reality was a bit more panicked, history told us.

Ray directs us through an enthusiastic training gym where soldiers are going at it with stylized dummies, tackling, stabbing and choking them with gusto.

Major Brand has no combat experience, doesn’t speak Arabic or German and isn’t someone who’s ever commanded men in the field. Not to worry, his second, Captain Leith (Burton) is similarly inexperienced. He’s a pre-war archaeologist who speaks Arabic, a “volunteer,” but also “an…intellectual.” And “Welsh,” the commanding officer (Anthony Bushell) huffs.

That’ll work out, we’re sure.

Why, let’s have Leith meet Brand’s wife (Ruth Roman). Turns out Leith and Jane have history, which enflames Brand a bit.

And thus the real reason Ray took this job comes to light. This will be a to-the-death slap-fight through the desert, with Leith questioning Brand’s bravery aka “manhood” and Brand failing tests of that, but cunningly pondering ways to get rid of Leith.

This French co-production betrays a certain sloppiness, pretty much start to finish. “Bitter Victory” predates the golden age of “military advisors,” and bears little resemblence to the better combat films of the era.

Ray dispensed with sequences like the parachute behind the lines business but never spared a moment of bare-teeth snarling between the subordinate officer (Burton) and his inferior superior.

The supporting cast was pretty unhappy, as casting, according to Christopher Lee (one of the sergeants in the 30 man commando unit), who said the men all drew lots as to who would play what.

Thus variety show ham Harry Landis got a few closeups, acting out a combat mission with his fingers on a table, accompanied by vocal sound effects, and Nigel Green, at his best in “Zulu” a few years later, stands out as the unit sadist. Nobody else got a chance to make his mark.

Burton gets all the good lines — “You have the Christian decency that forbids killing a dying man but ignores the work of a sharpshooter…You’re afraid to go in and kill with your bare hands. That’s what makes a soldier and destroys you as a man…The fine line between war and murder is distance.”

That makes the war of wills that supposedly drives the picture lopsided. Jürgens has a shifty-eyed close-up or two, Burton explodes or suffers mightily and “Bitter Victory” staggers onward ever onward in faint hope of a draw but always destined to fall well short.

Rating: “approved,” violence, innuendo

Cast: Richard Taylor, Curd Jürgens, Ruth Roman, Nigel Green, Christopher Lee, Harry Landis, Anthony Bushell and Raymond Pellegrin.

Credits: Directed by Nicholas Ray, scripted by René Hardy, Gavin Lambert and Nicholas Ray. A Columbia release on Amazon, Tubi, etc.

Running time: 1:41 (1:22 in the first U.S. version)