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Guy tumbles under a damaged parachute, a skydiving blur, and wakes up the in the middle of the desert. He doesn’t know how he got here. He only knows he’s got no cell service.

And then he (Hugo de Souza) meets the more sedentary stoner (Vig Norris) who wakes up in his bathrobe. And then they’re hailed by another stoner (Cameron Dye) who’s even more demented.

This stranger and that one cross their paths. They all speak in the gobbledygook of self-absorbed unself-aware California-ese. Or maybe they’re quoting that song by Lauryn Hill.

“Everything is everything!”

The only food seems to be in the guys’ hallucinations. Their water? Long gone. Days and days pass.

Sounds like hell, right? Or maybe purgatory?

“The 4400!” the bathrobed fellow who decides he seems like a “Craig” declares. He starts laying out the plot to the skydiver and they debate its similarities to their as they aimlessly trek, trying to figure out where they are or even who they are.

So, “The 4400” it is? Nah, it’s even less interesting than that. Call it “Mister Limbo.” No wonder the other stoner wanders off.

Whatever promise there is in this well-worn existentialist premise starts to dissipate once the first guy meets the second, and the attention steadily fades the more characters in search of an exit — or a GPS fix — that they meet on their journey.

On their walks, and at night around a campfire, the skydiver who might be called “Enrico” thanks to the accent that comes and goes and Craig ponder life and God and self-worth and goodness and failings, theirs and others’ in a not-quite-definable accent that comes and goes.

“I went to church,” Craig recalls. “What does that say about me?”

“I tried like hell to do the right thing,” Enrico fruitlessly offers.

There’s nothing more to “Mister Limbo than that. And even a glib faux Pirandello swipe at the meaning of life and the life summation that comes with death should be deeper or at least more engrossing than this.

Rating: unrated, profanity, drug use discussed

Cast: Hugo de Souza, Vig Norris, Cameron Dye, Amy Hoerler, Jennifer Kennedy and Heidi Luo

Credits: Scripted and directed by Robert G. Putka. A Terror Films release.

Running time:

The images are stark, often silent snippets of little-remembered American history. And they offer a fresh view of the burning summers of 1967 and ’68, when American cities erupted in civil rights protests that quickly crossed over into riots.

“Riotsville, USA” isn’t a recycling of the oft-repeated footage of Detroit, Newark, Watts and elsewhere in flames, of troops fanning out across littered streets in front of shattered and torched storefronts. This documentary is built entirely from archival news footage, U.S. government training films and long unseen programming from the pre-PBS Public Broadcast Laboratory related to the unrest and televised efforts to get at and discuss its root causes and possible solutions.

Who can forget the iconic and ugly images of the “police riot” that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago? What filmmaker Sierra Pettengill shows us instead is the tightly-controlled, sanitized and “disciplined Republican Convention in Miami that preceded it, and how compliant the media were in covering it the way the Republicans wanted.

“We’ve heard about Chicago, ” Charlene Modeste dispassionately narrates. “But we’ve been living through Miami Beach.”

“The Southern Strategy” and Republican race-baiting, a party whose 1968 state delegations were whitewashed, a party whose standard-bearer, Richard Nixon, would make “law & order” a cornerstone of his campaign, and who would cast Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running to appeal to “the George Wallace” vote, all were trotted out in authoritarian lockstep contrast to the soul searching, debate and hand-wringing over the unrest, riots and assassinations of the previous two years.

“Law and order,” NBC anchor David Brinkley would drawl. “Everyone is free to interpret that however he likes.”

The film shows NBC’s coverage of the convention discussing the rioting that went on in nearby Liberty City, but never once cutting away to show disaffected American Americans protesting a convention that refused to meet or even acknowledge them miles away because the GOP had parked their fete on an island only accessible by drawbridges.

“Riotsville” takes its title from two U.S. Army Bases in Va. and Ga. which built fake city streets to train soldiers, National Guard and police forces in how to regain control of riot-torn streets, places to test tactics, weapons, and train helicopter pilots to make low sweeps spewing tear gas, all while Army and civilian brass took in the action — soldiers played the “professional agitator” rioters — from covered observation bleachers.

It’s a dry yet fascinating film that covers a lot of ground between the riots, the creation of the Riotsvilles and the convention where its training was unleashed on first Miami and Miami Beach, and later on Chicago.

There’s flattering TV coverage of the gadgets called “New Weapons Against Crime,” but were mainly modified military gear intended for use against civilians.

We remember the Johnson Administration’s Kerner Commission, a conclave of mostly white elected officials — “the least radical men in America” — who investigated the root causes of the unrest and came to what have been accepted ever since as the right conclusions. America might be splitting into two societies, that a police-backed “Apartheid state” was very much a danger, and that no good would come from suburbia plunging itself into gun culture thanks to the agitated state of a long-oppressed minority.

And most interesting to me, we see a lengthy PBL nationwide televised event that brought police chiefs and civil rights activists, social theorists and others together for a big discussion and debate on what back then was an accepted cause of the riots — “police brutality” — which no police chief or sheriff present would admit even existed.

The larger mission of this film — which is quiet and measured in its presentation, to a fault (“dry”) — is to remind us that over half a century has passed and a lot of those root issues are still open wounds.

One unintentional subtext is to show that despite the racism and myopia of the media of the day — Huntley and Brinkley chuckling off camera as the “demands” of Miami agitators — there’s a shocking maturity to many attempts to grapple with the problem in a televised public forum.

The PBL footage is surprising because it is both well-intentioned, air-clearing and potentially helpful. And we haven’t seen this footage since it was initially broadcast. Whatever their myriad issues with diversity and being tin-eared on the subject of race because they only employed middle aged white them, the limited TV news options at the time took their public service and society-building roles seriously.

Quite the contrast to today, when news organizations are so ratings-and-profits obsessed that they see more value in broadcasting the unnewsworthy ceremonial speech of a British monarch than in carrying an American president’s dire warning against fascist efforts to end American democracy at home.

I dare say the new hopeless tact-to-the-right of CNN means that “Riotsville, USA” won’t turn up there when it hits TV.

Rating: violence

Cast: Narrated by Charlene Modeste.

Credits: Directed by Sierra Pettengill, scripted by Tobi Haslett. A Magnolia release.

Running time:1:31

Jon Hamm makes it look too damned easy in “Confess, Fletch,” a LONG awaited reboot of a franchise that gave Chevy Chase more credit than he deserved for its appeal. Hamm never hits the laughs too hard, lies on the fly like he learned it at birth and leans into the working-hard/hardly working Fletch way of “investigating” in a lightweight comedy that has no guffaws, but a steady stream of chuckles from beginning to end.

Gregory McDonald’s “former investigative journalist of some repute,” a wordsmith always-ready with a comeback, a sly slacker who can’t throw a punch, or take one, fits Hamm like the battered and much-loved Lakers hat that he wears everywhere, with sportscoat and sneakers, no matter what the dress code. He’s white and handsome, so he fits in without fitting in. At a snooty yacht club, for instance, whose commodore regales him on some long ago felony that the old gent brushes off as a lark.

“Nothing like a little consequence-free fun for the idle rich.”

“Confess, Fletch” is a caper comedy/murder mystery that concerns stolen paintings, a kidnapped Italian count, a clever frame-up and a Boston cop hellbent — but also in a laid-back way — on pinning a murder on the insufferable Lakers fan disturbing his piece of Celtic Nation.

Greg Mottola’s film follows Fletch all around Beantown, without voice-over narration, without any overt explanation of what he’s cannily plotting out, what Fletch suspects, or when Fletch first gets in over his head. And Hamm sets the tone with his unconcerned, make-myself-a-drink call to the police when the townhouse his rich girlfriend (Lorenza Izzo) has rented for him to track down her family’s missing paintings turns out to have a dead woman in it.

The precinct insists Fletch call 911. Fletch cannot make the effort.

“Can you just tell homicide? It’s at 5 Union Park. They like murders!”

When it becomes obvious that Fletch is the one and only real suspect of “Detective Inspector Monroe,” aka “Slo Mo Monroe” (Roy Wood Jr., superb), our hero has one more thing to add to his “to do” list. Find missing painting or paintings, return one so that rich girlfriend’s dad can be ransomed free of his kidnappers, figure out who the REAL killer is and charming, offhandedly throwing the cops off the trail so that he’s free to dig and plot and banter with his old L.A. newspaper editor (John Slattery, Hamm’s “Mad Men” mate) now struggling to keep a Boston rag from going under.

Hey, “The police are following me around!”

“Oh good. I hope it’s for something serious. I need a pick-me-up!”

Kyle MacLachlan plays a variation of his “How I Met Your Mother” character, a sketchy, patrician art-dealing yachtsman (and germophobe).

Lucy Punch is tagged as a dizzy “lifestyle curator” (interior decorator) for the well-heeled. Marcia Gay Harden slings an Italo-Portuguese goulash accent as the “countess” to the kidnapped count.

Nobody knocks anything out of the park, but this “Fletch” piles up the singles and doubles, an endless parade of funny lines almost always just thrown away, casually.

“My pen name is Ralph Locke.”

“Sounds made up.”

“It’s…a pen name.”

Words of comfort for the grieving Italian daughter?

“I’m sure the Italian police are working around the clock on his case…or at least near a clock.”

Fletch uses a LOT of ride shares, “FIVE stars” he quips as he gets out of every car.

“Person of interest LEAVING the building,” he announces to the cops as he makes an exit, a muttered “I am an idiot” aside makes Det. Inspector Monroe’s day.

“Finally, a consensus,” Wood’s Monroe half-whispers on our behalf.

“Fletch” was such an attractive character that many have tried to reboot this potential franchise. These aren’t deep mysteries or comic thrillers sure to guarantee an all-star supporting cast, although Harden is an Oscar winner, and MacLachlan, Wood, Punch and Slattery are no slouches.

Is this franchise “renewed” with “Confess, Fletch?” Sure. I could totally see more of these if Hamm is game, but probably directed straight to Paramount+.

Rating:  R for language, some sexual content and drug use.

Cast: Jon Hamm, Lorenza Izzo, Roy Wood, Jr., Marcia Gay Harden, Ayden Mayeri, Kyle MacLachlan, and John Slattery

Credits: Directed by Greg Mottola, scripted by Zev Borow and Greg Mottola, based on the Gregory McDonald novel. A Paramount release of a Miramax film.

Running time: 1:38

France’s once and forever cinematic “enfant terrible” has died.

The often controversial, always “revolutionary” director of “Breathless” and “Contempt,” “Weekend,” “Alphaville,” “Bande a part,” “Hail Mary” and “Bridges of Sarajevo” was 91, and got “Sarajevo” onto screens at 83.

Godard was in the vanguard of the French New Wave in the ’50s, the cinema’s embodiment of Marxist chic in the ’60s and a provocateur to the very end.

His films weren’t always the easiest to embrace, but he challenged the art form, the cultural and social norms, himself and the viewer almost every time out. I remember the outrage he stirred up with “Hail Mary” back in the ’80s and the way his films turned up as cutting edge examples of experiments in narrative, camera storytelling technique and the like in every film class I ever took.

Fascinating guy. RIP.

With Godard as my witness, I swear I remember Roger Corman’s “The Raven” being more subtle than this. And funnier.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still amusing — here and there — and a treat for classic horror fans seeing Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre in the same movie.

The future star of “The Shining” “Wolf” is here, stifling a grin as he got to share scenes with guys whose glories dated back to the silent film era. Jack Nicholson had to play the straight man here, pretty much, saving his loonier turns for “Batman” and “The Witches of Eastwick.”

Indie icon Corman, who gave so many future filmmakers their start, knew that having Vincent Price recite the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven” was practically a movie all by itself (James Mason had narrated a classic animated short, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a decade before). He had novelist and “Twilight Zone” veteran Richard Matheson vamp up a story that has Price play a sorcerer grieving over his lost “Lenore,” longing for her return when a raven comes tapping, gently rapping at his chamber door.

“Are you some dark-winged messenger from beyond?  Shall I ever hold again that radiant maiden whom the angels call Lenore?”

Turns out, the raven talks.

“How the hell should I know? What am I, a fortune teller?”

The raven has clues about what happened to Lenore, and Dr. Erasmus Craven first has to be persuaded to help the bird transform into Peter Lorre, then round up his daughter (Olive Sturgess) and the beautifully chapeau’d son (Nicholson) of Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) to seek answers from the sinister-sounding Dr. Scarabus (Karloff) in his castle.

Lenore’s got to be around this dank dungeon somewhere, you figure.

Legend has it that John Waters saw this film as a young Baltimorean and said, “Well, the only word for this is ‘camp.'” True? Who’s to say?

This was one of eight films Corman made from the works of Poe, and it is far and away the silliest. Truth be told, the “Treehouse of Horror” episode of “The Simpsons” that had James Earl Jones reciting the poem while Bart and Homer acted it out was scarier. And funnier.

As a “romp,” this classic isn’t really holding up. Whatever glory it enjoyed in its initial run, its peak era was during the college film society days when tipsy coeds could hoot and holler at its dated jokes and its soundstage bound goofy gloom.

“I am Doctor Bedlo’s son!” Rexford (Jack) declares.

“I am sorry,” Lorre’s Doctor Bedlo apologizes…to Dr. Craven, Rexford, the audience. Who knows?

The effects are adorably cheesy, but the performances are muted. Only Price is truly up to snuff, as Karloff settled into the grandfatherliness that made him the perfect narrator for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” a couple of years later. Watch the way the camera regards Karloff as he keeps his robe from tripping him as he descends a steep flight of stairs. It’s as if Corman was waiting for something dangerous to happen.

Scary? Not a bit. And camp value only takes it so far, these days.

Even Price was far better in “Tales of Terror” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” But watch how delighted he is interacting with that real, live bird.

At this stage, if you want to see “The Raven,” make it a Halloween party activity. Watching it cold, and sober and alone robs it of whatever communal glee it once had.

Rating: G, of course

Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess and Jack Nicholson.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Roger Corman. An American International release on Tubi and many other streaming platforms.

Running time: 1:26

Was there a groundswell of support welling up for a sequel to 2017’s D-movie slasher pic, ”The Wicked One?” Asking for a friend.

Still, here it is, “Wicked Ones.” Hell, it’s not like these nice folks had better things to do in the interim, is there? And there’s always an audience for the “so bad it’s a good…or a potential drinking game” horror movie. It’s a genre where the cheese never spoils. Apparently.

So here we go, back to Carpenter Falls where our “Wicked One” masked serial killer is apparently not dead, and apparently played by Richard Leon Hunt this time.

Years have passed, and now he’s not just back, he’s got masked cosplayer killers (Roni Jonah and Jason Crowe) emulating his butchery.

A survivor (Katie Stewart) from the killing spree years ago accompanies her husband and kids back to town. Her son’s in a band, her daughter’s a groupie for another member of the band. But the place has bad memories for her.

A local cop (James Tackett) never let go of the old “Colin Miller” case.

Let the sad, seriously over-acted slaughter start.

The actors often sound off mike, which does really bad performances no favors. The killings are drably set-up and staged and the script sounds like an incel’s idea of how horny teenagers about to be stabbed talk dirty to each other. I’d quote from it but it’s utterly unquotable.

Director and co-writer Tory Jones opens his picture with a painfully inept podcast interview, setting an amateurish tone that the picture never shakes.

If indeed anybody “demanded” this sequel, leave it to them, I say. Life is too short to watch awful movies not awful enough to be laughed at.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Katie Stewart, Richard Leo Hunt, Skyler Guthrie, Dale Miller, James Tackett, Brandi Botkin, Roni Jonah and Jason Crowe.

Credits: Directed by Tory Jones, scripted by Tory Jones and Nathan Thomas Milliner. A WildEye release.

Running time: 1:44

“Gratitude Revealed” is a feel-good documentary from the director of “Fantastic Fungi,” a broad, random collection of “grateful” people ranging from the somewhat famous to the not-really-famous stringing together empty platitudes about appreciating what you have, the miracle of life, and how the good vibes you send out shine back in your direction.

It made my eyes roll. It made my teeth ache. It made me remember the most productive place to grow fungi — a mountain of BS.

Too harsh? Let’s sample some of what piles up in Louie Schwartzberg’s squishy, insipid TED Talk on the “feels.”

Here’s Jason Silva, “storyteller, “futurist,” TV presenter and double-talker par excellence.

“When I think about connections, I think about intersubjectivity, I think about the human capacity to pierce beyond the veil of individuation and to enter the ‘holy other,’ to blast new tunnels between the mind and ‘the other!.”

No, Jason. For the last time, I don’t WANT the extended warranty.

Then there’s pastor and author Michael Beckwith — “Gratitude is an attitude and a vibrated altitude that we live in.”

Philanthropist (“rich”) and activist Lynne Twist breaks down “gratefulness” as “the great FULLness of our lives.”

Schwartzberg’s movie is 81 minutes of pretty pictures, precocious kids, bits of gorgeous scenery and all sorts of folk talking all the way around that American Thanksgiving table staple, “What’re we grateful for.” A few centerpiece interviews try to zero in on the nebulous nature of gratitude, wandering off into all sorts of detours (“community,” “beauty” etc.) because once somebody’s printed the fortune cookie and then the T-shirt “The Great FULLness of our lives,” what else is there to say?

Schwartzberg appears in his film a lot, beginning with a ritualistic (not really) making of “tea with lemon” so he can point out that his parents survived the Holocaust. He transitions into interviews with TV legend Norman Lear, film producer Brian Grazer, author Jack Kornfield, blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer and Silva, and finally Deepak Choprah shows up, right on cue.

Because what onanistic film flitting through “mindfulness” would be complete without the gibbering DC? And even the filmmaker, who normally works in time-lapse photography taking extreme-closeups of the wonders of nature, had to realize, “Wait, I’m talking to a lot of rich white guys and gurus, and most of them are Jewish.”

Schwartzberg goes on to hang with dancing cliff aerialists and track skateboarders thrill-racing down mountains. We meet this Louisiana bluesman and that African American preacher, author Luisah Teish and chef Rick Bayless, grateful to have come along during the foodie epoch among the well-heeled.

And what emerges is more a “feeling” than a narrative, more a sensation (irritation, in my case) than cinema, and more BS than your average performative, bubbly and empty TED talk held in a stockyard.

At least the fungi will feel at home.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Norman Lear, Jason Silva, Deepak Choprah, Jack Kornfield, Brian Grazer, Lynne Twist, Rick Bayless, Christine Carter, Erik Weihenmayer, Luisah Teish, and Louie Schwartzberg.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Louie Schwartzberg. An Area 23a release.

Running time: 1:21

“The Alternate” shows us how “special” a special effects movie’s effects can be, even on the cheap, and how that’s still no substitute for a sharp, tight and original script or good acting.

A frustrated corporate video director and editor finds a glitch on his monitor, copies and expands it and realizes it’s a portal to another reality. Damned if the Jake in this other reality hasn’t gotten his first script, “Space Drive,” on the screen. He’s a workaholic success and he and his wife got around to finally having that child they’ve long wanted.

Seeing as how the “real” Jake (Ed Gonzalez Moreno) is stymied, not-quite-broke but stuck in a dead end job with his marriage to Kris (Natalia Dominguez) showing the strain, he’s got some thinking to do, once he figures how what this “portal” is. Life’s a struggle, but everything he wants is just on the other side of that swirling vortex screen saver. There might be a short cut. If only he could switch places with clean-shaven Jake over there.

“It this what you dreamed about in film school?” is a question this portal might answer.

There’s promise in this set-up, and the effect — a character stepping through a “Poltergeist” black hole into another dimension — is convincing enough.

But the screenplay doesn’t see anything comic in Jake trying to have it both ways, “cheating” with his happier (Future?) wife, scheming to replace “himself” on the other side. The scheming itself is lame. We’re forced to sit through script-dictated delays in Jake showing Kris this “great discovery” he’s stumbled into.

And the leads are seriously bland and somewhat less subtle at showing us confusion, anger, pain and resentment than we’d like.

“Primer” is the benchmark I’ve long used when considering how good a sci-fi film with almost no budget can be. Time travel or alternate universes can be faked with similar cheap effects. What matters is the sharp focus of the screenplay, witty dialogue, cleverly-set-up moments of suspense, and execution.

“The Alternate” has the effects and a plot that could work, but falls short in pretty much every other regard.

Rating: unrated, violence, nudity, some profanity

Cast: Ed Gonzalez Moreno, Natalia Dominguez

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alrik Bursell. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:28

A little power pop from 1981 is the big musical moment in Kevin Smith’s farewell to the 1994 movie and characters that made him famous.

The song’s messaging fits into the film’s sentimentality. But it’s not exactly hip or cutting edge. Jay would have bitch-slapped Silent Bob for hauling out the boom box for this golden oldie, back in the day.

A real dance challenge for a couple of 50 year olds channeling their trip hop past. But it’s the upbeat highlight of the film, a song Smith might’ve loved as a tween. Maybe he just liked the lyrics as they pertain to the film. Or maybe it’s all he could afford, rights wise.

One sobering piece of knowledge worth considering every time you hear the “official” version of something deadly involving a police officer is the one thing almost every cop is a genuine expert in.

They know just what they can get away with, and how to get away with it.

That truism hangs over “Unidentified,” the first film in a planned “Romanian Trilogy” by “Miracle” (the second film) filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri. Because from the minute we meet detective/inspector Florin Iespas (Brogdan Farcas), he seems off.

Florin is haggard and unshaved, like a young Liam Neeson staggering through a long bout of insomnia. He’s bickering his his chatty boss (Vasile Muraru) about a case he wants to take from another cop. A couple of hotels have burned down. The same guy owned them. Florin in sure he can “close this case in two days.”

The first thing that strikes you about his chief is how much he loves hearing himself talk. He’s got all these jokes he likes to trot out to the never-laughing Florin. The second thing is how unconcerned he is over justice, whether or not someone getting away with murder (two cleaning women died in the hotel fires).

So what if the detective on the case is on vacation? He’s not reassigning it. If it’s “cleared,” or not, so what? Go get some sleep, and put in a good word for my niece who wants to attend your fiance’s music conservatory.

“Unidentified” is a thin mystery barely concealed by a character study of a cop’s obsession. Florin copies the file on the sly and starts sweating the “Gypsy” he’s fingered as a suspect (Dragos Dumitru). Florin trots out his “theory” about what’s happened, makes threats and “sweats” the guy — breaking all sorts of protocols in addition to violating the guy’s civil rights.

When we see Florin visiting the service station where this suspect works, and then staking out the last hotel in the chain that had two other properties catch fire, we start to ask questions. When we see him hit himself in the face with his gun butt, we have our first answer.

Somebody’s in for a railroading. But to what end?

Apetri takes into a corner of never-filmed Romania (Piatra Neamt, his hometown) for a story of a man unraveling right before our eyes. Farcas gives Florin a sort of sedated mania, a tall man capable of things, dodging calls by creditors, ignoring orders and off on a vendetta with his own agenda.

We hear him ask if the lives of those killed were worth nothing, and the emotion feels forced, manipulative. The clever conceit of this character and Farcas’ performance of him is the viewer suspects things even as the grounds for those suspicions comes at us unexplained and piecemeal. Florin seems sketchy from the get-go.

Apetri shows us plenty of actions that aren’t explained, that keep the viewer wondering “What’s this guy’s game?” But we have enough to piece it together, and pretty early on.

As a mystery thriller, “Unidentified” plays a tad draggy and sluggish. Apetri, working in the style of those old “Columbo” TV movies, squeezes a simple, obscure whodunit/who’s doing it with 90 minutes worth of incidents into a slack two hour movie.

We have the clues. We’ve even got a hint of how everything will turn out based on the laissez faire attitudes, prejudices and tribalism of the police we meet.

Apetri still does a good job of not letting the obviousness weigh his story down.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Brogdan Farcas, Dragos Dumitru and Vasile Muraru

Credits: Directed by Bogdan George Apetri, scripted by Bogdan George Apetri and Iulian Postelnicu. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 2:03