Movie Nation

Fans of the famed Disney “Haunted Mansion” will pick up on all sorts of easter eggs and visual nods to the theme park attraction — sets, gimmicks, props, etc. — in the new film based on a beloved piece of Disneyana.

The rest of us will be the ones who notice how generally fright-free it is, how thin the laughs are and how too much of its two-hours-plus runtime is a bit of a letdown.

It begins with great promise, a spooky tale built around a non-believer (LaKeith Stanfield) and “ghost tour” guide in “the most haunted city in the world,” New Orleans. And then it leaves New Orleans for a remote antebellum mansion/set-piece filled with theme park cutesiness and mostly undistinguished and indistinguishable ghosts. The picture promptly loses its mojo.

Stanfield, of “Get Out” and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” is Ben, a sad and solitary loner who’s crawled into the bottle after losing a loved one. We get a glimpse of the charming love-affair in the prologue and can guess what happened after that.

Now, this one-time man-of-science wakes up late enough in the day to lead people around “haunted” New Orleans. But no matter what his shtick to the tourists, he’s not changed his mind about the subject.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

A visit from a dapper priest (Owen Wilson, in hat and gloves) lures Ben with some ghost-hunting gear to Gracey Manor, where a single mom (Rosario Dawson) and her little boy (Chase W. Dillon) are at their wits’ end. Some presence or presences are conspiring to chase them out of their new home.

An exorcism won’t do. They need a ghost buster. Ben isn’t shy about taking their money, no matter how foolish he thinks they are. A few encounters and one “spectral photograph” later, and he’s starting to believe.

A local “cut-rate psychic” (Tiffany Haddish) is hired. An expert on the ghostly history of the mansion (Danny DeVito) will be consulted as they seek answers and solutions to this mad infestation of the dead-but-not-gone. And a long-dead psychic (Jamie Lee Curtis) will be summoned.

“We’re called MEDIUMs.”

Stanfield throws himself into this, even though he’s nobody’s idea of naturally funny. Ben is here to be the straight-man/skeptic, underreacting to what other folks are seeing or saying they’re seeing until he starts seeing things himself.

“I probably just need to calm down, don’t I?” Dawson’s Gabbie gripes, as well she should.

Haddish, Wilson and even DeVito are strangely subdued, muzzled perhaps by a screenplay (by Katie Dippold) that is mostly filler between digital spooky effects, which aren’t all that spooky.

“Zillow” and “Yelp! score” jokes are the humorous order of the day. “Parks and Rec” veteran Dippold wrote the female “Ghostbusters” and the Goldie/Amy Schumer flop “Snatched.” So…

Even the flashbacks to the mansion’s violent past (not slavery) fail to make much of a connection in the stalled middle acts.

Eddie Murphy’s “The Haunted Mansion” was more childish, broader and goofier, but having a famous comic at the heart of the cast makes a difference in that regard as jokes and gags are kicked up a notch. The scary stuff can’t be amped up to “horror” standards because this is a kids’ film, and “harmless” is always your default mode for those.

But “harmless” is a hard sell to hang on a two hour comedy with too-few laughs and a scary movie with no edgy frights. Still, fans of the various Disney Haunted Mansions around the world may get something out of it, even if nobody can tell the spooky digital ghost-in-chief is Oscar winner Jared Leto.

Rating: PG-13 (Scary Action|Some Thematic Elements)

Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, Danny DeVito, Chase W. Dillon, Jared Leto and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Credits: Directed by Justin Simien, scripted by Katie Dipold. A Walt Disney release.

Running time: 2:02

The great character actor Ron Perlman has his best big screen role in many years in “The Baker,” a thoroughly satisfying two-fisted B-movie carved out of classics of the genre and carried on the broad, brooding shoulders of “The Perl.”

I must use the phrase “B-movie” thirty times a month in reviews, rarely disparagingly but often in disappointment. Lots of filmmakers try their hand at straight-no-chaser genre pics, and fail. Let The Perl and director Jonathan Sobol, writers Paolo Mancini and Thomas Michael and their canny producers show you how it’s done.

Keep it simple. There are other films built on the unwilling but tough-as-nails care-giver forced to protect a mob-wanted child. But to do it right, lean on John Cassevettes’ “Gloria,” with Gena Rowlands, and Luc Besson’s “The Professional,” with hit-man Jean Reno keeping tween Natalie Portman safe.

Cast with older character actors with modest quotes, bumping them up to leads. If possible, hire somebody beloved. Perlman, the only “Hellboy” or “Son(s) of Anarchy” that matters, fills that bill.

Hustle up incentive money to film it somewhere unusual. We’re never told the location of “The Baker” and his bakery, but it was filmed in the Cayman Islands.

As The Perl might put it, “Who wouldn’t like a working vacation in the f—–g Cayman Islands?”

The story — a solitary baker tends to his shop, methodically bakes his bread and seems to have few customers to interrupt his solitude. Then his sketchy, estranged son (Joel David Moore of the “Avatar” movies) shows up, out of the blue, takes a call about this “bag” he’s got in his car and abruptly ditches his ever-silent eight-year-old (Emma Ho of TV’s “The Expanse”) with the old man he hardly knows.

“I’ll be back before you guys can form a lasting bond!”

Delphi, the kid, won’t talk. She won’t stop raiding the baked inventory. She steals. She won’t follow instructions. She stares at her unknown grandpa as he does a bit of welding (!?).

“What, you wanna be blind as well as mute?”

He offers her goggles. She keeps them. She’s going to need them.

Because limo-driver dad witnessed a drug smuggling ambush. He’s got the packets they call “pink.” And the guy they belong to (Harvey Keitel) wants them back. His lieutenant (Elias Koteas) wastes no time in finding Delphi’s dad, Pete.

“You know why I’m here?” Pete shakes his head. “And yet, here I am.”

Pete gets to make a call to save himself, but he makes it a warning to Delphi and his father. She can’t eat peanuts. She likes green grapes. She wants a treehouse.

Now grandpa’s got to do what he did before he was a baker to find his son. He sleuthes, he asks around, he puts it together. And when the need arises, he tells the granddaughter to listen to music through her earbuds and pull those dark goggles over her eyes.

“Some things might happen,” he growls. “Some things you don’t wanna see.”

The script is packed with spare, pithy lines like that. And the movie is all about Perlman, lumbering into a club, an addicts’ shooting gallery, a public bathroom or dry cleaners, wherever bad men can be found.

Vincent Bouillon did the fight choreography and plays to Perlman’s strengths. The brawls are epic and more or less believable in that old-man-of-violence using his muscles and muscle memory to kick ass and leave no witnesses.

Koteas is given interesting shades to bring to his hired killer, a man whose own boss might cause him to have pangs of conscience.

Keitel brings the impatience and the irritation to a hoodlum who focuses on one wrong at a time, determined to get what’s his and get even with those who wronged him.

The kid sells the “cute” in scenes where Delphi tries to share her sundae with this strange grandpa she’s trapped with, her shifty eyes setting the stage for her next act of pilfering or shoplifting. Grandpa spies her stealing the money left for a diner check.

“Lunch is on you,” the old man growls. “I know you’re good for it.”

There’s a little here that I didn’t buy into, but none of that comes from the performances, the tight direction or the hardboiled dialogue. The plot has moments where you can feel an over-reach coming on.

But “The Baker” delivers on all the promise of its premise, all the salesmanship it took to get it cast, financed and filmed in the lovely Caymans.

You want to make a signature, possible break-out B-movie? See or stream the latest from the The Perl and the guy who directed “The Art of the Steal.” Save that film school money. This is how it’s done.

Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Ron Perlman, Elias Koteas, Emma Ho, Joel David Moore and Harvey Keitel.

Credits: Directed by Jonathan Sobol, scriped by Paolo Mancini and Thomas Michael. A Falling Forward release.

Running time: 1:44

“Love Tactics” was a Turkish rom-com that borrowed from a lot of Hollywood films of the “Failure to Launch” variety for a showcase of some of the most beautiful actors in Turkish cinema.

You know the drill — the guy “plays games,” and plots his strategy for winning-over or brushing off or hitting it and quitting it with one particular woman with his bros, while she is counter-scheming her own agenda with her besties.

“Love Tactics 2” (“Ask Taktikleri 2”) changes directors, brings back the gorgeous leads and fleshes out the supporting cast with even more gorgeous players largely unknown in the West.

To which we say, “We approve.” Because we do.

Like the first film, it’s a sexy look at a glossy, affluent and urban Turkey of high fashion, social climbing and liberated women. But like “Love Tactics,” it has a hard time finding much that’s cute, new and surprising in such a tale.

We catch up with fashionista Asli (Demet Özdemir) as she’s adjusting and altering the wedding dress of bestie Cansu (Deniz Baydar) and ranting away about marriage mania, old cultural traditions and the nagging that starts “after you turn 16” in her part of the world.

“WHEN are you getting married?” Better hurry up. Don’t turn THIS or THAT candidate down.

“You don’t want to end up alone, with eleven cats!” (in Turkish with subtitles, or dubbed).

Her “Love Tactics” beau Kerem (Sükrü Özyildiz) is dressing the groom, Tuna (Atakan Çelik) amidst a similar diatribe.

“THIS, my friends,” he barks, pointing at the ring, “IMPRISONS us!”

But the moment Asli doubles down on her doubts about marriage to Kerem, she is put-out that he agrees. “It should be MY decision” whether they take things to the altar, she figures.

So she and her besties scheme (it’s all Asli, as Cansu and Ezgi –– Hande Yilmaz — just gawk and listen) a way to change Kerem’s mind to that at least the ball’s in her court. Meanwhile, he counter-strategizes with his bros Tuna and Emir (Bora Akkas), each of them trying to set the agenda without losing this ideal love match they’re already in.

The stakes are stupidly low, which means the situations each conjures up have to be outrageous for the comedy part of this rom-com to work.

There’s an impromptu meeting with her parents — Dad’s (Kerem Atabeyoglu) going through andropause and is riding a new motorcycle and dropping the word “bro” into conversations. Yes, his wife/Asli’s mom is ready for a divorce.

Kerem arranges a sight-seeing flight to scare the “marriage” thing out of fear-of-flying Asli. The puddle-jumper pilot is new to the job and wants one or more of her anxiety pills.

She borrows the baby of a friend of a friend to “show Kerem how good a mother I’d be” and Kerem just figures out how revolting a diapered little boy can be.

And so on.

New franchise director Recai Karagöz, who has some experience in the genre (“My Name is Farah”) can’t get anything more out of these characters and this situation than his predecessor.

It’s a little lighter than “Love Tactics,” if I can trust my memory. But I can’t, because the original was slick and shiny but instantly forgettable, just as one suspects this one will turn out to be.

Rating: TV-14, hot and heavy makeout scenes, a bit of skin

Cast: Demet Özdemir, Sükrü Özyildiz, Deniz Baydar, Hande Yilmaz,
Bora Akkas, Atakan Çelik, Melisa Döngel, Ceyhun Mengiroglu and Kerem Atabeyoglu.

Credits: Directed by Recai Karagöz scripted by Pelin Karamehmetoglu. A Netflix release.

Running time:

A D-Day veteran and “90 year old coffin dodger” leaves his nursing home and great love for a trip to Normandy to pay tribute to fallen comrades.

A true story — you might remember this sidebar inspired from when President Obama made a trip to France to commemorate the D-Day 70th anniversary — the film is a final bow by the Great Glenda, and features Sir Michael, tugging at the heartstrings.

Two Oscar winners, two legends.

Oct. release in the UK, hopefully coming to The New World shortly thereafter.

One, two three four…slash-mark to denote “five.”

That’s what a B-movie shoot-em-up often invites you to do, just keep track of the body count.

Six, seven, eight, nine, another slashmark — “TEN.”

“Shrapnel” is a straight-up “They’ve taken my daughter” vengeance thriller, less logical and a bit on the absurd side, but a picture that allows Jason Patric to shoot-up black SUV-convoys full of Mexican cartelions as they come to his remote ranch to “send a message” when he has the temerity to appear on TV to ask for his daughter’s safe return.

It starts with a frantic phone call, his darling effed-around-and-found-out teen has ducked across the border to lawless Juarez to party. Now, she and her friend have been “taken.” Not that she has time to say that.

Sean Beckwith has to get in his truck, drive over the border to the police impound lot and find the 18-year-old’s car, with only her sunglasses left behind, to confirm his worst fears. The Mexican cop (David DeLao) is too happy to play the racist American card in dismissing Sean’s frantic fury.

“We see this all the time,” Officer Montoya mutters. Then a “gringo” shows up and “points his finger at all the dangerous ‘brown people’ living just across the bridge.”

Well, that tears it. And that settles it. The “cartel” may have taken daughter Leigh and her girlfriend Billie. But the cops are in on it.

It’s not much comfort chatting with the U.S. Consul (Jack Forcenito) or even an old comrade-in-arms (Cam Gigandet) who suggests they “waterboard the cop” and “burn the whole f—–g town to the ground.”

Did I mention Sean’s a retired Marine Corps colonel? Yeah, he has “special skills.” So after he and wife Susan (Kesia Elwin) go on TV and the “Los Mercenarios” cartel kingpin (Mauricio Mendoza) sends his brother (Guillermo Iván) and his minions north in a black SUV convoy to slaughter the impudent gringo, at least the brother knows to be wary.

“Never underestimate a man that spent the majority of his life working in a profession where the men tend to die young.”

Thus, the allegedly “ex-Mexican-military” gangsters approach the log ranchhouse with caution. Too much caution. SLOWLY.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, slash-mark “fifteen.”

The shootouts are illogical and the many deaths perfuctory, save for the odd exploding head. The entire middle of this short thriller is that ranch gun battle, with a house surrounded and covered from every angle, yet wife and younger daughter are able to slip out a window, and a lone sheriff rolls in to fire his shotgun-that-never-needs-reloading.

Sixteen, seventeen…

Director William Kaufman (“The Hit List,” and “The Channel,” which was better than this) makes do with basically four locations plus a pointless car-chase, and saves Gigandet’s character for a glib “payback” third act, which at least looks vaguely military, if as heartless as the everything else.

But there’s little here that isn’t better experienced in a first-person-shooter video game, which at least has an excuse for being pretty much nuance-free and plotless. If you’re bored enough to add up the body count (26, I think), that’s a clue the movie isn’t working.

Rating: R, graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Jason Patric, Kesia Elwin, David DeLao, Guillermo Iván, Mauricio Mendoza and Cam Gigandet.

Credits: Directed by Willia Kaufman, scripted by Chad Law and Johnny Walters. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:31

This indie Franco-African thriller about a refugee finding a criminal from her homeland now employed as a Catholic priest rolls out in limited release at the end of August and first of Sept.

And now for something completely unpleasant.

“Night Explorers: The Asylum” is about streaming channel extrepreneurs who encounter more than they bargained for when they visit “the most haunted place on Earth.”

OK, they’ve probably used that hype line more than once or twice. But these “Night Explorers” are sure this asylum that was “shut down because of satanic rituals by the staff” will produce “real” evidence of the supernatural, and not the “fake” stuff they lean on to keep viewership up in “the time of ‘scripted reality'” TV.

Boy, are they in for a surprise. Boy are we in for an abrupt shift from “Things that go bump in the night in the about-to-be-demolished-madhouse” to “Saw” styled slaughter and “traps” and such.

This British production sets us up for frights, with eight supernaturalists with camcorder and cell cameras, a drone and “spirit box” and EMF meters giggles and “woo woooooos” their way into Pelosi Asylum. I think that’s what it’s called. But they’re British, so it could be spelled Porcestershire.

The cast — Craig Edwards, Hanna Al Rashid, Monte Solomons, Algina Lipskis, Neal Ward, April Luong, Dave Dyer and Charlie Rich — play poorly-sketched-in “types” who make no impression in their introductions or the “party” the night before their latest taping. Then they show up, having paid for the privilege to “investigate” and look for ghosts in the abandoned mental hospital.

They hear noises, decide to split up and gather “evidence” on video in small groups, leaving one hapless bloke behind at the “only entrance” to the place. And just as they’re gearing up for ghosts, figures start lunching out of the dark to stab, bash in skulls and pitilessly puncture them one by one, maybe parking the perforated on a pentagram as the urge arises.

“Right. That’s it. No more splitting up!”

Yes, they’re “locked in here like some s–t horror movie” because, truth-be-told, they’re locked up in “some s–t horror movie.”

There’s an odd attempt at artfulness in this John K. Webster film, which relies on found-footage-style swish-pans, quick cuts and the like until we see things from the attackers — supernatural or otherwise — eye-view — a camera hurtling headlong down hallways, from room to foyer to stairwell, hunting for “investigators.”

And the violence can have a jolting, suspenseful edge as we wonder who will try to fight back, and when, and who among these attention-craring/perform-for-the-camera millenials will be any good at fighting back.

But all things considered, “Night Explorers” — some windows show their all-nighter-in-the-asylum is taking place in daylight — doesn’t manage its bait-and-switch plot well, doesn’t give itself time to let the characters connect with the viewer and doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before or need to see again.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Craig Edwards, Hanna Al Rashid, Monte Solomons, Algina Lipskis, Neal Ward, April Luong, Dave Dyer and Charlie Rich

Credits: Scripted and directed by John K. Webster. A Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:36

The stuff I’ll sit through for a little primo surfing footage, an Aussie accent or three and Temuera Morrison going bloody psycho killer on everybody.

“Sons of Summer” is a sentimental “surfie” bros tribute trip tale that crashes up against a drug heist that goes deathly wrong. The movie never lets those two threads mesh, as the surfies continue their VW Microbus camping trek to a great surfing spot on Australia’s Gold Coast (Austinville) despite the body count they learn is piling up behind them.

It’s an out-of-its-time sequel to an Australian B-movie surf thriller, “Summer City” notable only for being a pre-stardom vehicle for a very young Mel Gibson. That was about the fathers of the bros of this film getting mixed-up in something that got one of them killed. Three of them survived, and Mel’s role was mercifully recast.

But not because he’s been “canceled” (he hasn’t). It’s because that first film came out in 1977, and they’re trying to pass off this “tribute trip” as happening “30 years later.” No, changing the dates and recasting “most” of those guys (co-writer Phillip Avalon returns as Robbie) is fooling no one.

Those Aussies. Too many Fosters and they’re all “flamin’ galahs” at math. And it’s no wonder the “fathers” are quickly shuffled into the background.

Sean (Joe Davidson) is the blond Adonis son of Boo, the surfer murdered all those years ago. He and his mates, the sons of the survivors of that long-ago quartet, decide to head down the coast to Austinville for a tribute to Sean’s dad.

Jack (Matao Boosie) isn’t that close to Sean, but Kane (Matthew McDonald) and Clay (Jonathan Weir) take no convincing.

It’s just that Sean’s got his own “past” that’s catching up to him, with Rick (Alex Fleri) and Pete (Steve Nation) calling in favors for that “last one, for me. Promise!”

Sean doesn’t realize that he’s about to grand-theft-auto the wrong Mustang, belonging to the wrong hood (Christopher Pate), and that those drugs in the trunk will not help them “get ahead.” Not with ferocious Frank (Morrison, the Once and Always Boba Fett) on their trail.

The project’s clumsy grasp of math and re-casting means that not much effort is put into tying the old guys and their long-ago misadventures with today. That wrong-foots the picture from the start, as getting us up to speed as to what this is all about — the connections, their shared past, the tragedy that binds them — takes forever and is botched in the process.

Sean’s long-suffering girlfriend (Isabel Lucas) doesn’t flee the moment he breaks his promise about leaving “that life” behind, and only considers it when Frank the thug busts into their house.

And if learning of that first “like a father to me” murder isn’t enough to derail their plans, their surf addiction must be a longer stronger and less moral than we’ve been led to believe.

Davidson has a hint of Chris Hemsworth about him — good lucks and hunky screen presence. But this isn’t a film to get a guy noticed outside of Oz.

Veteran B-movie director Clive Fleury (Burt Reynolds’ “Big City Blues”) finds himself clumsily alternating between graphic violence and goofy surfing mating rituals, 30 year-old “boy bonding” and the like. Logic aside, the picture is off-key pretty much from the start.

He’d have spared himself and any potential viewers that whiplash by taking the awful reviews of 1977’a “Summer City” to heart. This didn’t deserve a sequel, mate. You’re just recycling a plot that was crap the first time around.

Rating: R, violence and profanity

Cast: Joe Davison, Isabel Lucas, Jonathan Weir, Alex Fleri, Matao Boosie, Matthew McDonald, Christopher Pate, and Temuera Morrison.

Credits: Directed by Clive Fleury, scripted by Phillip Avalon and Greg Clayton. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31

This quirky country life close encounter comedy co stars Jane Curtin, Zoë Winters and the delightful Harriet Samson Harris of “Frasier.”

Bleecker Street has this Marc Turtletaub comedy slated for Aug.11 release.

Some movies come to you, passing on their insights directly, underlining their message and themes. More challenging films make you come to them.

Morissa Maltz’s “The Unknown Country” is a rare example of the latter made even rarer by the fact that it’s a docu-drama.

Real people narrate anecdotes, truths about their lives as a waitress, a motel operator or a Texas dance hall owner, as our protagonist makes her way across the vast middle of America, from Minneapolis to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to Dallas and Big Bend, Texas.

Something, some trauma, put Tana (Lily Gladstone, star of the upcoming Scorsese epic “Killers of the Flower Moon”) on the road in a thirty year-old Cadillac DeVille, cracked windshield and ever-present cigarette, a sad woman with a story to tell that she’s not telling.

“You never know what’s going on in somebody’s life,” real-life waitress Pam Richter tells us, which is why she practically gushes over every single customer she serves, including Tana.

Tana was living in Minneapolis, we gather. She’s “just kinda floating” down the Blue Highways, convenience store to diner to motel, when she checks in with a relative, and next thing you know, she’s heading for a wedding.

She mixes with the happy couple (Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux and Devin Shangreaux), plays with their daughter and the kids of others gathering for the nuptials. And she chats with acquaintances and relatives she hasn’t seen since she was a child. Everybody wants to know if she’s “been to the Rez,” Pine Ridge (also the setting of the colorful “War Pony”) and “How long are you gonna be here?”

Not long, of course. Just a taste of her past and a few folks gently boosting her sense of who she is thatnks to her heritage. But it’s not like she’s going back to where she started, Minneapolis, her home since she was eight years old. That ancient Caddy gives a hint of why she was there and who must’ve owned it before her.

Tana faces a traffic stop and a nervous, wordless moment of fear with a creeper at a remote gas station, but mostly just a lot of encounters with just folks — most of them perfectly nice, and much better company than the soundtrack of NPR stations and reactionary red state talk radio.

We get a better handle on Tana when she finally reaches a city. She’s a Native American woman whose “tribe” — people her own age, people who go out to honky tonks and dance halls — are outsiders who understand something of her outsider heritage.

The most direct comparison this film invites is to William Least Heat Moon’s best-selling road trip memoir of self-discovery, about the world he encountered off the interstates and along the aforementioned “Blue Highways.”

Tana’s trauma — a recent loss and the older dislocation from her home, perhaps with good cause — is internalized and not something she speaks about. Her “road trip” has a purpose, which we can guess once we get a handle on her destination. But her interior life is mostly just that as she takes in the family lives she grew up apart from and the family she’s never made for herself.

Gladstone carries the picture as a reactor — to the stories she hears from this waitress, that grandfatherly distant relative, the bride-to-be. But even those reactions are subdued.

“The Unknown Country” avoids melodrama and some obvious turns the story could take, but doesn’t. Truth be told, it could use more incidents, more drama, more insights into Tana’s journey, what she’s escaping and what she’s looking for.

It’s still a sweet, meditative drive through the flatlands across America’s middle, snowy north to line-dancing south.

Rating: unrated, smoking

Cast: Lily Gladstone, Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Richard Ray Whitman, Devin Shangreaux, Pam Richter and Raymond Lee

Credits: Directed by Morissa Maltz, scripted by Morrisa Maltz, Lily Gladstone and Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:25