Movie Nation

“iNumber Number” began life as a South African cop thriller ten years ago, morphed into a single-season cop series and now returns to the screen via Netflix with “iNumber Number: Jozi Gold.”

This genre thriller from Donovan Marsh, who directed by the original film (titled “Avenged” in some countries) manages a few twists and a couple of lighter touches amidst the chases, killings, corrupt cops and CGI hyena scenes. Not enough to wholly recommend it, but it’s not an utter waste of an action fan’s time.

Our Black cop team here is consists of gonzo undercover idealist Chili (S’Dumo Mtshali) who is in his element, all pimped-out in wig (complete with an Afro-pick pistol), garish suit and vintage Dodge Monaco convertible, and his trigger-shy family man partner, Lt. Shoes (Presley Chweneyagae).

We meet them as they fail to bust The Hyena Man, a smuggler of “conflict gold” into the country, a way for Africa’s mineral-backed dictators to launder their blood loot and sell it to unscrupulous jewelers around the world.

It’s all “Jozi Gold” once its been refined in Johannesburg.

The Hyena Man got his nickname because he’s kept a savage hyena as his pet/interrogation tool for years.

“When a hyena laughs, it means the ancestors are not happy!”

Chili and Shoes were paired-up way back in an orphanage, and the frustration of missing that bust (“fool’s gold”) and the fact that their orphanage is running out of money, coupled with the corrupt taunting of their “kickback” prone Brigadier (Brenda Ngxoli) has Chili ready to quit.

But no, they’ll take the demotion to “the basement,” where a 100 percent-success rate all white “Afrikanner graveyard” run by the ancient Van Slys (Deon Lotz) isn’t keen on taking them on.

If the “light skinned” enclave ever wants to catch The Hyena Man and whoever else is mixed up in a big gold smuggling/smelting and trading conspiracy, the streetwise Black guys will have to be a part of it.

Imagine Chili’s conflicted emotions when he stumbles into a family-run gang of Zulu Robin Hoods, stealing ill-gotten gold and spreading cash in the Townships. When push comes to shove, which side will Chili be on?

Marsh stages an epic gasping and Dodge Monaco’ing chase in the opening act, and takes a couple of shots at topping it later. He never does.

The brawls and shoot-outs would pass muster in Britain, Korea, China, Hollywood or Bollywood.

The acting is sharp and more subtle than what you’d see in most African films — Nigeria’s Nollywood fare, for instance. Ngxoli’s brigadier is the most over-the-top character, and she makes this swaggering bully kind of fun.

While I tend to watch films in their original language (Zulu and Tswana here), there’s no reason not to catch the South African-dubbed English tracked onto this import.

But the story is kind of slapdash, with our writer-director not knowing the geological/chemical properties of “fool’s gold” and the whole Robin Hood gand of thieves, gold smelters and activists redistributing wealth is just too on the nose to be plausible or much fun.

Marsh has conjured up a formula action film that could be set anywhere and made it distinctly South African and authentically African, which makes it worth your time even if it isn’t a new touchstone take on the genre.

Rating: TV-MA, violence and oodles of profanity

Cast: S’Dumo Mtshali, Presley Chweneyagae, Noxolo Dlamini, Brenda Ngxoli and Deon Lotz.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Donovan Marsh. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53

Writer-director Kaveh Nabatian’s debut solo feature is a sensual and mystical love triangle tale of self-centered dreams, narcissistic agendas, sex, salsa and Santeria set among the immigrant communities of Montréal.

“Sin La Habana” (Without Havana) is compact and completely immersive, a film that takes us from the impoverished lives and hopes of escape among the accomplished working poor of lovely Old Havana to the limited opportunities and dreams-deferred of French Canadian Montréal.

Thanks to its classical dance subtext and superbly sympathetic performances, it passes before the eyes as a balletic elegy bathed in Santeria ritual and the human foibles that foil the best laid plans.

Leonardo (Yoneh Acosta) is a talented dancer, “the best in the company” in Havana, and damned irked that he didn’t get the lead in his ensemble’s “Romeo & Juliet.” When he’s told “Your lack of humility” and “lack of respect” kept him from the role by the arrogant company director, Leo may be on the money in his translation of that.

“You just want a Romeo who’s white like you,” (in Spanish, with English subtitles).

That gets him fired. And that gets in the way of “our dream,” girlfriend Sara (Evelyn Castroda O’Farrill) lectures him. Hustling salsa lessons and dance tours of the city to tourists won’t get them “out of here.” That’s the “dream.”

Sara is a lawyer, he’s a great dancer and they’re living in a hovel that loses its electricity every time it rains. She’s young and beautiful, and he’s runway gorgeous and accomplished, and Cuban racism and the general poverty of the country will never let them have the lives they feel they deserve.

Sara’s adamant about seducing and marrying a tourist, getting that visa and getting them out — first one and then the other — that way. And if Leo won’t do it, she will.

So he puts the moves on Canadian divorcee Nasim (Aki Yaghoubi). When she flies home to Montréal, Sara coaches Leo on how to email her, what to say that will close the deal.

Yes, that’s every bit as predatory as it sounds.

Leo’s secret edge in all of this is “luck,” something he figures he’s gathering every time he consults with his Santeria shaman. A few beheaded chickens, offered into a jungle river, and a gift of a crystal marble should send him to dance glory, a passport and the money to summon Sara to the capital of French Canada.

But Nasim isn’t just a mark here, someone to be played. She is a Jewish-Iranian immigrant to Canada who fled an abusive marriage over the objections of her “traditional” father. She’s 40ish, her sister has a baby. Nasim is trying her “luck” with a long shot, too.

Nabatian brilliantly bites off just enough of each city to get across its flavor, contrasting the vibrance and sensual pleasures of socialist/impoverished Havana with the chill and haughtiness of classist Montréal, where immigrant communities import their aspirations and their prejudices — racism included — with them.

The story enfolds traditional-jobs-immigrants-take (meat processing, service sector) as they struggle to find a way practice what they’ve trained to do and expect to be able to do in a Land of Opportunity.

Leo rehearses and auditions and puzzles with First World dance ensemble expectations — “improvise.” Nasim is an artist, working in stained glass, house-sitting for a friend and getting handouts from her family to get by.

Every character we meet is looking out for Number One, and nobody is living their dream. Even that’s a common trope of immigrant narratives, lending the entire film a hint of “we’ve seen this before.”

But Nabatian gets an engrossing, involving story out of these familiar themes with artistic interludes via dance, surrealistic flourishes as Santeria flashbacks and en pointe performances.

Rating: unrated, sex

Cast: Yoneh Acosta, Aki Yaghoubi and Evelyn Castroda O’Farrill

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kaveh Nabatian. A Breaking Glass release.

Running time: 1:34

Perhaps the biggest bonus to come from Brian Cox‘s lauded turn in the hit HBO series “Succession” is that it made him just viable enough to get a few indie feature films made, little grace notes added to a career worth celebrating.

One was “Mending the Line,” letting him play a grizzled vet who teaches fly fishing as a way of coping with PTSD in younger men just stepping away from the military. Another is “Prisoner’s Daughter.”

He plays a man of violence who says “I’m not that guy any more,” but who will end his life in detention, sent “home” to live with his estranged daughter when a cancer diagnosis gives him months to live. She’s broke, a struggling single mom with a smart-but-bullied tween and an abusive addict for an ex.

And that simple description tells you everything that’s going to happen in this simple story. But with sensitive direction from “Twilight” survivor Catherine Hardwicke, sympathetic casting and some very good performances, this becomes a poignant tale with bitterness turned into forgiveness, mistakes and misdeeds rendered into redemption.

Max is the old man of the yard, moving among the population with weariness not wariness at his age. There may be others in the Nevada state prison who still carry grudges. But years of surviving, “getting clean” and sober and helping others do the same have made him almost beloved.

So when he gets that pancreatic cancer death sentence, the warden gives him a shot at spending his last months under house arrest, in his old house with the daughter (Kate Beckinsale) who has it now.

And even though he knows “we’re blood, not family,” not any more anyway, he reaches out.

“I’m getting out soon,” he tells her. “Like I give a s—,” isn’t exactly a welcome response. Not that he didn’t expect it.

But Maxine — and yes, the name’s on her list of grievances — is a 40ish ex-Vegas dancer who has to hustle waitress and strip club custodial work to keep herself and son Ezra (Christopher Convery) housed and fed. When we meet her, her stoned and scary ex Tyler (Tyson Ritter) storms into one work place, demands to see his son, punches her boss and gets her fired.

Yeah, he’s a drummer. And an addict.

If Max has money, he can come stay. But don’t expect a reunion. Don’t expect pity. “I don’t want you bringing your past in my house.” And don’t tell her son you’re his grandfather.

“I’m not interested in making you feel better before you die.”

Ezra’s a mouthy kid with a lot of questions for this new “uncle” he never knew existed. He’s unduly attached to his no-good Dad and facing trouble at school, where it doesn’t matter that a whole gang is bullying and beating him up. He gets suspended, too.

Well, not really. The screenplay, the punishment we see and hear doled out and the editing don’t reflect that.

But maybe the “uncle” who “used to be a fighter” can help the kid with the fresh black eye. Maybe he has favors from “inside” that he can call in “outside.” Maybe he can, you know, have a word with the ex.

Producer and screenwriter Mark Bacci’s script is undemanding redemption story comfort food. But this cast redeems that.

Cox conveys guilt, a desire to “square things” with everyone — old foes and daughterly grudges — in this character and this understatted performance. He makes us believe he’s every inch a guy “who could write the book on ‘sh—y fathers.”

Beckinsale adds “earthy” to her repertoire, a 50ish actress who lets the years denote the hard mileage life the 40ish Maxine has lived.

Young Convery does solid work in support of these two, convincing as a kid with a medical condition, an increasingly dire bullying situation at school and a desperate need for a father figure.

And Ernie Hudson drops in as another of Max’s old friends from his old life, bringing dignity and a modest resolve to do right by his fellow inmate via the boxing gym he runs, started “outside” by Max’s seed money from “inside.”

There aren’t a lot of surprises when characters behave the way a thousand screenplays have ordained they must, but the little moments of indulging their better angels, and their worst, give “Prisoner’s Daughter” a gritty, B-movie authenticity that is intensely satisfying.

And this gives Brian Cox another way to remind us that even though he “died” in “Succession” and that series ended, that’s not all he can do and that’s not all she wrote as far as his lauded career is concerned.

Rating: R for language and some violence

Cast: Brian Cox, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Convery, Tyson Ritter and Ernie Hudson.

Credits: Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, scripted by Mark Bacci. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:40

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has announced the Governor’s Awards for the next Oscars, and a screen queen, a comic king and a celebrated editor will take home honors.

Angela Bassett has two Golden Globes, and she was the favorite for best supporting actress this past Oscars. But the voters elected to not honor her for good work in a mediocre comic book sequel.

This is better. Let’s celebrate her entire career.

Mel Brooks could have copped a best Original Song Oscar at some point. His writing, acting and directing never managed it. But he’s worth celebrating for hilarious, shticky comedies that cut a wide swath through the’70s.

Editor Carol Littleton cut “E.T.” and “Body Heat,” and has been one of the stars of an under appreciated corner of the filmmaking art for half a century.

Ok

Film fanatics don’t need an excuse to re-watch classic films, some of them over and over again across the decades from when we first encountered them. But if you’re a critic, one reason you do it is to check back on the touchstone films of a genre, the movies you consider benchmark Westerns, film noirs, romances, rom-coms, combat pictures and the like, the movies you measure every film against.

“Heist,” “The Score” and “Heat” have long been the yardsticks I’ve measured “heist” thrillers against. I have particular affection for 2001’s “Heist” because it’s David Mamet‘s take on the genre.

It’s as Mamet-esque as anything the celebrated playwright ever concocted for the screen — convoluted, complex, biting, bitter and layered with the repetitive, poetic and profane tough-guy/tough-gal dialogue that became Mamet’s trademark.

“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.“

“Is he going to be cool?” “My motherf—-r is so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count him.“

“She could talk her way out of a sunburn.”

The Mamet machismo, the blunt Mamet Darwinian “truth” telling, the Mamet sexism and misogny, the Mamet love of the sound of his own deep (ish) words — all the stuff that got this increasingly unhinged “thinker” canceled, is in the dialogue in this ornate thriller, a late career highlight for the great Gene Hackman and an early jewel in Sam Rockwell‘s acting crown.

Hackman plays Joe Moore, grizzled leader of a small but skilled crew that includes Bobby (Delroy Lindo), Pinky (Mamet regular, the magician/actor Ricky Jay) and Mrs. Moore, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon, Mrs. Mamet), aka “The girl.”

“What’s the girl do?”

“The girl gets us in the door.”

“Gets us in the door ‘How?'”

She “gets us in the door.”

A “perfect” jewelry store heist goes just wrong enough when one employee doesn’t drink the coffee that Fran — as a waitress — drugged, and forces Joe to enter the premises without a mask. He can’t get to the CCTV system and swipe the tape.

So much for “one last job” before sailing south into the Caribbean. Their mob go-between (Danny DeVito in RARE form) figures that gives him an excuse to screw them over.

“You screw me on Wednesday, you screw me on Friday,” Joe barks. “I gotta go, I got my picture on a cereal box.”

That leverage forces the crew to do “the Swiss job” that mob-made Bergman has in mind. And take along “my boy” (Rockwell), sort of as security.

So now Jimmy, a mouthy, careless and dangerous punk, is in “the crew,” asking questions, keeping an eye on his uncle’s investment, pitching in to steal Swiss gold. His favorite questions are about one person in particular.

How do you spell trouble? “G.I.R.L.”

Mamet mocks the “plan the heist” conventions via Jimmy, the punk. Try to illustrate the moves they makd with toy cars on a makeshift map? Mamet wants to know who, outside of heist movies, ever does that? Crooks are rarely smart and generally not all that meticulous.

Steps in the process are under-explained. How’s the uniformed airport security guard (Patti Lupone) figure into this? This “tow-truck” they keep calling and timing?

The characters are straight-up “types,” with little twists. Joe is “old,” we’re constantly-reminded. And “smart.” But so is Bobby, who might ordinarily be cast as “the muscle.” Pinky would seem to be a tech whiz, conjurerer of misdirections and distractions.

“The girl” is ruthless, mercenary, more than ready to “suit up” (short dresses, cleavage) for her much-older husband when he asks her to. What that might entail is anybody’s guess.

The plot leans on that hoariest of heist picture tropes — the omnipotent, all-seeing, all-knowing leader. Joe is so many moves ahead in this chess game of double and triple crosses that even when he seems to have misjudged his rivals and taken a beating or a bullet, we wonder if he anticipated even that.

The “professionalism” of almost one and all is admired, the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance of criminal goons trotted out and skated over.

Why do creeps who wrong you figure they get to play the offended party when you fight back?

And the dialogue gets to be a bit much, florid and feral, even though that’s what we come to Mamet plays and Mamet pictures for, the iambic pentameter of the profane.

 “Never liked the Swiss. They make them little clocks, these two c–ksuckers come out of ’em with these little hammers, hit each other on the head. What kind of sick mentality is that?”

But as heist pictures go, “Heist” is still a benchmark — tough, unsentimental, stacatto and satisfying.

Its problematic creator was always controversial, with little red flags littering his theatrical outspokenness long before his works were turned into movies. He’s long flirted with contrarian conservative extremist, so nobody should be shocked at how he curdled into a Dennis Prager-quoting fascist in his dotage, with only Fox News anchors and a Jewish apologist sticking up for him.

He was mostly forgotten by Hollywood after the ill-considered “Redbelt” 15 years ago.

But “Heist” still stings and still ticks over like a fine-you-know-what watch, a genre defining work of art even if we have to hold the artist at a sort of Woody Allen-arms length in his last years.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, Patti Lupone and Danny DeVito.

Credits: Scripted and directed by David Mamet. A Warner Bros.

Running time: 1:49

Two grannies try to throw together their good-looking-but-still-single grandkids in “Make Me Believe,” a seriously bland, barely comic rom-com from Turkey.

It’s a formula film that stumbles badly when it strays from the formula. But it has three stand-out features working in its favor. The 30ish leads — Ayça Aysin Turan and Ekin Koç — are simply beautiful . In the case of TV actress Turan, “unutterably gorgeous” almost covers it. They’re filmed in front of some striking vistas on the vacation-friendly coast near Istanbul.

But the “grandmothers” who set the plot in motion are more or less forgotten, and rather clumsily so, by the filmmakers, who never seem to grasp “The reason we make rom-coms according to formula is that the formula works.”

Sahra and Deniz find themselves summoned to the the Çanakkale coastal homes of their respective grandmothers’ homes (Zerrin Sümer, Yildiz Kültür), ostensibly because of some emergency — “Palpitations!” — or other.

But the upshot is, “You never have time for us any more, unless we say we’re dying!” (in Turkish with subtitles, or dubbed into English).

It’s pretty obvious pretty early on that they’re trying to throw these two, who sort of grew up together, into each other’s arms. Well, it’s obvious to everybody else, but not the two hotties.

They haven’t seen each other “since we were 15,” and judging from the brusque way Deniz speaks to, disdains and ignores Sahra, there’s bad blood, perhaps a failed romance in their past.

He’s irked that she doesn’t remember his name, annoyed at calamities that seem to hit every time he’s in her presence and seriously judgmental about every word out of her mouth or flip of her too-perfect hair.

Sahra starts out with “jerk” and works her way up to “asshole” and finishes with “I hope the likes of you die out.”

Can these two crazy cover models ever make it work?

She’s a fashion mag journalist hoping for a promotion and in need of a Big Win to get it. Landing the elusive photographer who just turned down a big international prize for a cover story might do it. He’s world famous but apparently...never photographed.

His name is “Deniz,” and yet Sahra takes a good, long time to figure out it’s the same guy. Huh.

Sahra launches “Operation Trojan Horse” with her subordinate and bestie (Cagla Imak). Let’s use Deniz’s man-bun bartender pal (Çagri Çitanak) to inveigle our way into Deniz’s good graces and talk him into the gig.

Co-directors Evren Karabiyik Günaydin and Murat Saraçoglu have no flair for staging “Impulsive Romantic Gestures” or making “My Big Secret” scenes pay off.

But they make our stars look stunning, and serve up just enough scenery to remind us of this lovely, underfilmed tourist magnet filming location.

Oddly, not every scenic shot is all that scenic. If you’ve seen one functional, rocks-and-concrete seawall to a working port you’ve seen them all.

The “meet cute” is kind of cute here. But whatever potential our cute couple has in acting cute is nothing compared to what was possible with the abandoned grannies.

As lame as a “Come over and get my kitten out of the tree” scene is, there’s more potential in that than in the many boring arguments contrived and shoved in here to keep our future lovers apart.

Rating: TV-14, a little profanity

Cast: Ayça Aysin Turan, Ekin Koç, Zerrin Sümer, Yildiz Kültür, Çagri Çitanak and Cagla Irmak

Credits: Directed by Evren Karabiyik Günaydin and Murat Saraçoglu, scripted by  Selen Bagci. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

We were prepped for Robert Duvall’s Big Moment for a decade before it happened.

From “The Godfather” (1972) through “Network” (1976), “The Great Santini” (1979), “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “True Confessions” (1981), people who knew acting and film scholars with an eye for the long game were in lockstep.

“WATCH” this guy, they all said. This is how it’s done.

Then “Tender Mercies,” the validation of an Academy Award, and everything that came to DeNiro in a blinding blur — the acclaim, the Oscars and Oscar nominations, “legend” status — finally came to Robert Duvall just as he entered his 50s.

Glory and the decades of acclaim-as-his-due that followed arrived on the back of a small, intimate film from the Aussie director of “Breaker Morant” and the playwright and screenwriting legend who adapted “To Kill a Mockingbird” and wrote all versions of “The Trip to Bountiful” — play and screenplay.

The memory has been conditioned to recall only what became the signature scene of this film, the clip that ran when Siskel & Ebert praised it on their view show, wherever Duvall showed up on TV to promote it and which remains its iconic moment to this day.

He plays Mac Sledge, a country music has-been, a Willie Nelson singer/songwriter type who let the bottle and heartbreak get the better of him, but who sobers up for a good woman (Tess Harper), a widow, and her little boy. Duvall as Sledge gets across the gift, art and craft of songwriting as he strums out the bones of a tune to the kid, Sonny (Allan Hubbard) as Mom watches on, a homey scene set in a rural Texas kitchen with just actors, a simple melody and heart.

Two-time Oscar winner Horton Foote’s screenplay has a few grace notes like that, and some hard-won Texas working class country music suffering simmering beneath the surface as Sledge begins his unlikely path to redemption. He gets left behind by a friend, post-bender, at the tiny Texas filling station/store and motor hotel run by Rosa Lee (Harper), widowed by the Vietnam War some ten years before.

Foote, who also had a Pulitzer Prize attached to his reverent obituaries back in 2009, gets at the heart of Texas, rural folks of a certain generation, and at the despairing working class soul of country music with this simple redemption story.

Mac finds himself singing in church, watching over Sonny as Rosa Lee sings in the choir, trusted to run errands and expected to do the right thing — stop drinking — without her having to ask.

That he does, with no judgement coming from her, is as country music as it gets, “Good hearted woman lovin’ a good timin’ man” and all.

Betty Buckley plays the bitter country star ex that Mac finds himself trying to reconnect with, if only to get her manager (the great Wilford Brimley) to show his new songs around Nashville.

Mac isn’t looking for notoriety, a “comeback.” Otherwise he wouldn’t blow off the reporter (Paul Gleason of “The Breakfast Club”) twisting his arm for a “star now pumping gas” story. Whatever he’s doing — sobering up, walking the line, trying to make some real cash — is for “her” and “the boy.”

Ellen Barkin was just a babe in the biz playing the sad, needy daughter Mac never got to know. Buckley brings her Broadway voice to a country chanteuse who has started to feel the miles.

And Harper, making her big screen splash in this 1983 classic, dazzles by doing as little as possible — an understated performance of dignity, pragmatism and love that isn’t gushed or even admitted out loud.

The film’s quiet authenticity made it something of a watershed, and most everybody in it went on to do great work — Foote turning his play “The Trip to Bountiful” into an Oscar winning movie, Beresford helming “Driving Miss Daisy,” Harper enjoying a long, widely-admired career than included “No Country for Old Men,” “Crimes of the Heart” and indie films and more episodic TV than a body can recall.

Duvall? He took his new status and made indie films with Oscar potential (“The Apostle”), showy turns in the odd blockbuster, and work that ensured Billy Bob Thorton’s “Sling Blade” was Oscar worthy, that Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart”) got an Oscar, too, and that Bill Murray (“Get Low”) at least had a shot at one.

“Tender Mercies” became something of a landmark in all their careers, and you can see Duvall’s considered introspection in every film he’s done since, from TV’s “Lonesome Dove” to “Open Range,” to films he’s directed himself — “Wild Horses,” “Assassination Tango” and “The Apostle” among them.

But the best thing about this classic is you can watch it now and wonder, even all these years later, what took Hollywood so long to realize that the best among them was the one player who never called attention to himself. He let you find him, and feel all the richer for it.

Rating: PG

Cast: Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Ellen Barkin, Wilford Brimley, Allan Hubbard, Paul Gleason and Betty Buckley

Credits: Directed by Bruce Beresford, scripted by Horton Foote. A Universal (EMI) release on Youtube, PosiTV, etc.

Running time: 1:32

If a “twee” falls in the woods, would anyone hear it?

“Asteroid City” is the latest from the Tsar of Twee, Wes Anderson. It’s an all-star, pull-out-all-the-stops “comedy” that wrestles existentialism, Group Theatre, “The Twilight Zone,” 1950s paranoia and 1950s sci-fi, Theatre of the Absurd, Scarlett Johansson and uh, “The Big Bang Theory” into one movie.

Love Wes Anderson movies? This is as Wes Anderson as they get. Well, if Wes Anderson was outsourcing his screenwriting, production design and casting to AI.

It is all style over substance, casting over acting, immaculate screen compositions with the odd strained sight gag and the occasional flash of wit over heart.

A newly-widowed photographer (Jason Schwartzman) with the surname of the editing table used back when movies were made on celluloid (Steenbeck) breaks down midway between Arid Plains and Parched Gulch.

It’s 1955, and Asteroid City — pop. 87 — is host to a teen “brainiacs” science honors ceremony. Fittingly enough, the mesas and flatlands there are within sight of the explosions of an atomic bomb testing grounds.

Asteroid City and its science fair is where Augie Steenbeck was taking teen son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), anyway. Maybe Augie will work up the guts to tell Woodrow and his three tiny-terror little sisters, Pandora, Andromeda and Cassiopia, that their mother died...three weeks ago.

He’d better get that out of the way before his pistol-packing father-in-law (Tom Hanks) Cadillacs over to take them to his golf-community-in-the-desert home.

Other parents here for their kids to show off their science wizardry include the glamorous actress with the stage-makeup black eye (Johansson), a no-nonsense, patent-protecting dad (Liev Schreiber) and a supportive mom (Hope Davis) and a similarly supportive dad (Steve Park).

A Christian elementary school teacher (Maya Hawke) will show up with her field-tripping, prayerful brood, who will deliver the picture’s biggest laugh.

A posse of cowboys (including Rupert Friend and Jarvis Cocker) are sidetracked there and act folksy and play a little music.

A general (Jeffrey Wright) and his aide (Tony Revolori) will present the prizes. An astronomer at the local observatory (Tilda Swinton) is also present for Asteroid Day, a celebration of the meteorite that crashed and created the crater there.

The kids will bond over nerdy science and nerdy wordplay, and maybe flirt. The newly-widowed Augie will unemotionally flirt with the actress, who won’t break character to acknowledge the flirtation.

An alien will show up to snatch the town’s coveted asteroid, forcing everybody to stay there under quarantine.

And none of it is real because none of it is meant to be real. The opening scene is a framing device in which a Rod Serlingesque TV show host (Bryan Cranston) introduces us to the artifice, and the artificialist who created it — the playwright (Edward Norton).

A celebrated stage director (Adrien Brody) bucks up the performers.

A famous acting teacher (Willem Dafoe) will instruct the actors who later appear in the (tele) play. Augie and the actor cast to play him deconstruct the character he’s about to play, and makes out with the playwright.

Yes, we have all the characteristics of a Wes Anderson film, and then some — eccentrics played by a Who’s Who of Hollywood, everybody speaking in a staccato deadpan.

“If you wanted to live a quiet, peaceful life, you picked the wrong time to get born.”

Characters like the motel clerk (Steve Carell) and others pointlessly say “I understand,” a lot, another Anderson trope.

But here’s the thing. It’s so airless no oxygen gets in. The laughs are few, and as dry as the fake desert this is meant to be.

Anderson serves up so many stars he barely uses some (Dafoe, Matt Dillon) and ill-uses others. The great character actor Bob Balaban is reduced to a simple silent sight gag. Not a funny one.

Some viewers will get the many cultural references, the Anderson rep company cameos, and maybe grin. Some will enthuse over the rigidly-enforced style, the totality of WesWorld.

Yet there’s no getting around that two tiered canon of Anderson’s filmography. There are films like “The Royal Tennenbaums” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and maybe his breakout cult film, “Rushmore,” that you can watch and revel in over and over, and that list includes his two animated hits “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Isle of Dogs.” And then there’s “Darjeeling Limited, “Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” maybe “The French Dispatch” and almost certainly “Asteroid City,” movies that don’t beckon one to “enjoy” them again.

“Asteroid City” is like a stop-motion animated Anderson film, in which he uses real actors in stop-motion. How is indulging oneself in that reductive, self-defeating cleverness a good idea?

Whatever the twee-tempted target audience hopes to get out of Anderson’s latest, this Easter-egg-packed still-life doesn’t play.

Rating: PG-13 on appeal for brief graphic nudity, smoking and some suggestive material

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Edward Norton, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Adrien Brody, Matt Dillon, Sophia Lillis, Jake Ryan, Maya Hawke, Grace Edwards, Steve Park, Steve Carell, Willem Dafoe and Bryan Cranston.

Credits: Directed by Wes Anderson, scripted by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. A Focus Features release.

Running time:

Dreamworks cleverly timed the release of “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken,” to follow Disney’s live action “Little Mermaid” remake into theaters and into the hearts of parents and children everywhere.

OK, maybe not. A movie in which mermaids are vain, murderously power-mad villains of the deep, and the “protectors” of the oceans are the sea “monsters” known as kraken? Who’ve been the victims of bad PR?

Shiver me Hans Christian Andersen!

Maybe the racists who ranted about “The Little Mermaid” will be tempted — North American bigots, Southern white supremacists and, you know, China.

But the diverse high school and girls asking other girls to the prom and affirming don’t-let-others-define-who-you-are and “You can never outswim your destiny” messages are sure to trigger the snowflakes and Moms for Liberty book-banners who never go to movies, anyway.

The movie’s “Shrek” inspired “Ogres get a bad rap” conceit is clever enough, and some smart decisions in voice casting give “Ruby Gillman” a swimmer’s chance. It’s the candy-colored gloom of the production design (dark undersea sequences, etc.), stumbling comedy-by-committee script and general joylessness that let it down.

Ruby, voiced by Lana Condor, the Vietname-American starlet of Netflix’s “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” romances, is a kraken kid raised on dry land by her similarly assimilating parents.

She wears turtlenecks to hide her gills (“Gillman,” get it?), hangs with her high school mathlete “squad” and hasn’t a clue about what realtor mom Agatha (Toni Collette) and ships-in-a-bottle builder and online instructor Arthur (“Walking Dead” alumnus Colman Domingo) haven’t told her.

Anybody asks, they’re Canadian, eh? By the way, what human parent wouldn’t want a kraken real estate agent on their side when the knives come out?

They may live in scenic Oceanside, but Mom’s imparted a mortal fear of the sea to Ruby. And even though the prom’s coming up and Ruby would love to ask-or-be-asked by Connor (Jaboukie Young-White), the skateboarding hottie boy she’s tutoring in Algebra, that may be a non-starter.

He’s the “Alge-bae” of her dreams, “Alge-bro” if “bae” gives away too much. But the prom is being held on an excursion yacht, and “Mom would kill me” if the sea didn’t get to Ruby first.

One clumsy teen prom-posal later and Ruby has to ignore a lifetime of advice, plunge in and save Connor. The problem with that is that A) “The New Girl,” a confident, cocky redhead named Chelsea van der Zee (Annie Murphy) steals credit. B), In the water, Ruby transforms into this giant thing with three tentacles and a tendency to glow in the dark. And C), Mom’s hints that she’s estranged from her family as well as the sea bear fruit as a dorky uncle kraken (Sam Richardson) suddenly shows up.

Ruby’s puberty includes salt-water transformations into “the Monster” that her human friends and neighbors — especially the peg-legged old salt (Will Forte, the standout in the cast) who leads sea monster tours around town — warned her about.

“You’re not a monster, not even close” is no consolation. There’s nothing for it but to swim out and find grandma, our story’s narrator (Jane Fonda), the queen of the Kraken matriarchy, and realize “You’re meant for bigger things,” literally.

The high school humor here is seriously slight. Ruby’s “squad” includes a “catastrophist” Goth girl and a bestie (Liza Koshy) prone to bubbling “GASP of exclamation,” because a mere gasp of exclamation isn’t enough.

That new girl? She’s a mermaid, and her reaching out has a hint of “Mean Girl” about it.Something about the way she tosses “rando” around.

And there’s this trident weapon that the creatures of the deep covet, especially the mermaids.

There’s nothing tone-deaf or inherently-flawed about any of this. Forte brings his “Aaaaarrrrr” game to the seafarer who suspects those “Gillmans” aren’t as “Canadian” as they sound.

But there’s little wit to this, and not enough spark to the story to overcome the tepid jokes.

The animation is good, but underwhelming.

You want to like “Ruby Gillman.” But if you’re having to elbow the kids to keep them awake, maybe this trip “under the sea” will work better as something you stream for them at bedtime.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Lana Condor, Will Forte, Liza Koshy, Toni Collette, Sam Richardson, Annie Murphy, Blue Chapman, Colman Domingo and Jane Fonda.

Credits: Directed by Kirk DeMicco and Faryn Pear, scripted by Pam Brady, Kirk DeMicco, Elliott DiGuiseppi and Brian C. Brown. A Dreamworks/Universal release.

Running time: 1:30

Ask anybody appearing in this violent Ethan Coen road picture romp and they’ll tell you.

Things go to hell in a hurry when you’re Tallahassee bound.

Sept. 23 is this comedy drops.