Movie Nation

Evangelos Odysseus Papathanassiou was born in Greece, sought pop stardom in Paris before his mastery of synthesizers got the attention of major film studios.

As Vangelis, he scored “The Bounty,” “Blade Runner,” “1492,” “Alexander” and this film, whose opening is such a perfect synthesis of image, motion, memory and emotion that it became a touchstone and then a cliche and finally a cultural punchline. It’s that ingrained in any filmlovers’ psyche.

Honestly, I remember seeing this film in a preview in Charlotte, NC, and just weeping at how perfect this is.

Well done. Rest in peace.

There are so many film and TV versions of Ip Man, the legendary Hong Kong martial arts guru who taught Bruce Lee, that it’s pointless to try and keep track of them all.

So let’s not even try. Life was simpler when I thought that this growing subgenre of martial arts action was sci-fi and skipped it. But eventually, one realizes the great Donnie Yen played this character multiple times, and he’s fun even in sci-fi (“Rogue One”). So you watch and you lose the misconception and maybe you get hooked.

Yen has moved on, but that doesn’t mean the character has to. As Ip Man learned Wing Chun kung fu and first practiced it in the 1920s and ’30s, that makes for some great period piece settings for his feet and fists of fury to be on display.

Hong Kong veteran Tse Miu takes over the role for “Ip Man: The Awakening,” another “origin story” that parks our hero as a young man in 1930 (or so) Hong Kong, someone who awakens the human trafficking and British misrule — got to pander to those People’s Repubilicans — and stands up for friends and his people in a battle of Wing Chun vs “The Gentleman’s Martial Art” practiced by Sherlock Holmes, especially the Robert Downey Jr. version of him — “Bartitsu.”

Young Ip Man likes traveling the streets, resplendent in all white suits, and mixing it up with ruffians and bullies who try to rob the “weak” and the innocent in broad daylight.

Busting up a street car when a gang tries to rob Miss Chan (Zhao Yuxuan) is how he falls in with her brother, rickshaw driver Buefeng (Chen Guanying), whom he knew in childhood. And it’s while hanging out with Feng that he becomes aware of all the kidnappings of young women all over the city, something the Chinese/British police force turn a blind eye to and something that’s making a Euro-crime lord (Sergio Deieso, I think) rich.

Mr. Starke has the cops on the take or intimidated, so his version of “peace makes prosperity” holds sway. Take a little cash, look the other way, or somebody will find your pinky ring in their soup — that sort of thing.

If Mr. Starke and his countless minions out “rounding up piglets” are to be confronted, Ip Man will need to teach Feng and his fellow rickshaw drivers the ways of Wing Chun — “Sinking Bridge,” position, “Thrusting Fingers” and “Little Idea.”

The genre story’s simplicity is kind of mucked up by promising more than it delivers. Of course, Feng’s little sister Chan is kidnapped and of course this matter will have to be settled with a champion vs. champion martials arts prize fight.

Of course the “foreigners” will cheat. No, none of them speak good enough English to pass for “British.”

The big brawls are impressive enough, and Tse Miu is a competent if not the most compelling Ip Man ever to come along.

So unless you’re an Ip Man completist, “The Awakening” sits among the Ip Man movies you don’t bother with unless you’re behind on your sleep.

Rating: unrated, lots of violence — fists, knives and guns

Cast: Tse Miu, Chen Guanying, Hou Tongjiang, Sergio Deieso and Zhao Yuxuan

Credits: Directed by Li Xijie Adam and Zhang Zhulin, scripted by Fang Lan and Liu Bayin. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:17

You’d be hard-pressed to think of a darker or more delicate subject for a “dark comedy” than a double-suicide. “On the Count of Three,” the debut feature of comic turned comic actor/director Jerrod Carmichael manages to pull that off. It’s a hilarious comedy built around two adorable doofuses that somehow feels pro suicide and pro “sticking around” at the same time.

Carmichael’s debut feature is an almost jaunty “last day” romp through two guys who seem ready to end it all and willing — eventually — to do it together. It ridicules a “system” that’s “obsessed with keeping everybody alive” and America’s easy access to the suicide, murder/suicide and double-suicide instrument of choice — firearms.

“How are these LEGAL?” dopey/mopey Kevin (Christopher Abbott) bellows, after one impulsive misuse of a firearm — one among many, I should add. “Read the CONSTITUTION. It’s my RIGHT, for some reason, to ‘bear’ this ‘arm.'”

The performances have a making-it-up-as-we-go-along familiarity. The messaging of Arit Katcher and Ryan Welch’s script has the simple profundity of the obvious. Of course America has a “gun problem.” Of course America has a “mental health problem.” And of course one problem makes the other that much worse.

Abbott (of “Black Bear” with Aubrey Plaza) plays the easier role. We meet Kevin in a mental hospital, because he’s already made up his mind, already attempted suicide once. He’s so anxious to get on with it that he lies to his counselor/”assessor” (Sydney Van Delft) about how eager he is to “start living life again” just to get out and end it all.

Val (Carmichael) is just now getting there. Something about shoveling mulch at a groundcover supply business in wintry Ontario and the prospect of a “promotion” has him yanking off his belt in the bathroom stall and taking his first stab at “not waking up in the morning,” which he tells Kevin is “the most beautiful thought I’ve had in a long time.”

He visits his friend just to break him out. And after he does, Val shows Kevin and us his solution — two pistols. But Kevin, shockingly, needs a “last day,” a chance to “leave this world a better place” because “There’s no point in living a last day if we’re gonna live it like the rest.”

Kevin has an idea — ideas — about how each can make this day count. There’s a score from Kevin’s past he’d like to settle. And Val could take the day to reconcile with his dad (JB Smoove) and his ex (Tiffany Haddish) before saying farewell to all this.

“On the Count of Three” — that’s how they’ll do it when the time comes, each shooting the other in the head. But first they need to make and act on “last day” plans and have those plans go awry — sometimes grimly, sometimes hilariously.

For a comic, Carmichael’s damned good at playing the wacky Abbott’s straight man, still slipping in digs at his “white trash EMO POS” and “angry white boys shooting up high schools” in the middle of mocking Kevin’s on-the-nose choice of music (Papa Roach) for this odyssey.

Haddish, Smoove, Lavell Crawford and Henry Winkler make vivid, amusing and/or irritated impressions in small supporting roles.

Suicide isn’t dwelt upon even though it’s always present. The writers ensure that “On the Count of Three” never descends into a glib treatment of a potentially triggering subject. Kevin is one kind of potential victim, Val is another. They can joke around all they want, but hearing each out on his reasons allows the viewer to judge if, philosophically speaking, either or both make a good argument, pro or con.

Neither the subject nor the movie is for everyone. But “On the Count of Three” is a fascinating variation on a dark comedy theme, and its light touch with hidden depth is one of the most worthwhile farces about “the only serious question,” as Albert Camus famously put it — “whether or not to kill oneself.”

Rating: R for violence, suicide, pervasive language and some sexual references

Cast: Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Tiffany Haddish, JB Smoove, and Henry Winkler.

Credits: Directed by Jerrod Carmichael, scripted by Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch. A United Artists release.

Running time: 1:23

The full trailer to this eye popping thriller drops Friday. But there’s enough in this teaser to get one all worked up by the latest from Mr “Mad Max.”

The dystopian thriller “Mondocane” has the intentional misfortune — “unforced error” — of sharing its title with one of the most infamous “snuff” films of all time, 1962’s “Mondo Cane.”

Get past that and this grim slice of sci-fi — the title means “Dog’s World,” by the way — delivers violence, suspense in a Dickensian “Oliver Twist” package that maybe needed a few more days of workshopping the screenplay.

Dennis Protopapa has the title role, not that the tweenaged street urchin gave it to himself. He and his running mate Cristiano (Giuliano Soprano). These “strays” scavenge an over-industrialized/unregulated hellscape of a coastal city. Italy’s near future doesn’t have to be “post apocalyptic” director and co-writer Alessandro Celli reminds us. The rich are exploiting and polluting us into a climate-changed dystopia without any help from a global plague, nuclear war or asteroid strike.

This Italy looks like the poorest corners of any Third World country. Italy has devolved into Bangladesh.

The local gang, The Ants, are the ones who nickname Mondocane. They gave it to him for a piece of work he did on their behalf, something horrific involving a pet store. They call Cristiano “Pisspants (Pisciasotto)” because that’s what he does during the worst of his seizures.

As the lads dive for sellable junk in off-limits polluted lagoons, Cristiano’s seizures could be genetic or pathogen related.

Mondocane longs to join the gang, and its leader, Hothead (Alessandro Borghi) is open to the idea. It’s just that he has no interest in “Pisspants.” Mondocane sets out to change his mind.

A little girl ( Ludovica Nasti) connected with the torched pet store is grilled by a reckless, over-zealous cop (Barbara Ronchi), who then befriends her. Will working class Sabrina fall in with the strays and their forbidden zone anarchy, or will she figure out what these boys did?

Director and co-writer Celli takes us into a world of pistol-packing Artful Dodgers, where no child recruited into the gang is as innocent as Dickens’ Oliver Twist. We see how useful children can be when it comes to breaking and entering, and how awful they turn when they’re armed and turned into child soldiers.

The film loses the thread as Celli can’t decide whether to simply concentrate on the boys, or give Sabrina and the cop Katia some agency in figuring out who these kids are and what they’re capable of.

Mondocane and Cristiano settle into diverging gang paths, as is the way of such screenplays. But Celli works in a fine twist or two to add to the third act’s bullet-riddled mayhem.

The kids are good, holding their own with some seriously hardcase adult characters played by more polished professionals.

But “Mondocane” is a mixed bag, as its sci-fi without really committing to that, “Oliver Twist” without the warmth, entirely too predictable for stretches and entirely too frustrating in its finale.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Dennis Protopapa, Giuliano Soprano, Ludovica Nasti, Alessandro Borghi and Barbara Ronchi.

Credits: Directed by Alessandro Celli, scripted by Alessandro Celli and Antonio Leotti. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:54

“Top Gun Maverick” is movie about how people don’t change, and how hit movie formulas shouldn’t be messed with.

It’s a sentimental stroll through 1986’s “Top Gun” — a sentimental stroll at Mach whatever, pulling seven, eight or nine “G’s” along the way.

Every bit as simply-plotted as the original, it’s built around seriously impressive flying footage involving a lot more stunt work than digital trickery, and the stoic “Let’s make this REAL” presence of Tom Cruise. Starting with “Top Gun,” he set the bar for what movie stars should put themselves through in the “Holy crap, he’s really DOING that” realm of action stunts.

And that spreads throughout the cast of Joseph Kosinski’s adrenalin rush remake. Look at Cruise’s grimace as his character’s F-18 launches from an aircraft carrier, twists, rolls, dives and climbs. Look at the eyes and faces beneath the helmets of young co-stars Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis and Danny Ramirez.

If they aren’t “in there” and “up there” experiencing a version of what their characters go through learning to dogfight and carry out a desperate “Star Wars” bombing mission in a “rogue state” about to start enriching uranium, that’s the most impressive stunt fakery and acting in the picture.

This “Top Gun” shamelessly repeats huge chunks of the original film, and makes no bones about stealing from “The Right Stuff” and every action pic about feuding pilots and zig-zagging through “canyons” to evade radar (“Firefox,” etc.) and strike a target tucked into a mountain (“633 Squadron”) ever. Including “Star Wars.”

If screenwriters Ehren Krueger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie aren’t blushing, that’s OK. Let’s just hope they donated the DVDs of all the pictures they memorized and ripped off to their public libraries.

But none of that strips the fun from this nostalgic, jokey and balls-to-the-wall sequel. It’s pure popcorn fun at its corniest.

Cruise is a wizened if not wiser test pilot Maverick still given to “breaking the rules,” still “just a captain” over 30 years into his career. He gives us a little of the “Right Stuff” as he takes a prototype spy plane to its limits and beyond, inviting a chewing-out and dismissal from “The Drone Ranger,” the commanding officer (Ed Harris) who kills that program on the spot.

“The future is coming, and you’re not in it.”

But Maverick’s Navy flying career has a “guardian angel.” That’s how he ends up back at the dog fighting school he so disrupted during the ’80s. There’s this mission, the CO there (Jon Hamm) informs him, prompting Maverick to leap to the wrong conclusions.

“We don’t want you to fly it. We want you to teach it.“

A brash corps of Navy fighter jocks is to be trained, tested and culled to find the right ones to stop this over-armed and unnamed “rogue state” from going nuclear. One of them has a mustache, just like his old man.

Goose (Anthony Edwards) may be gone. But his kid (Miles Teller of “Whiplash”) is here. And “Rooster” holds a grudge. How will that endanger the mission, and can there be bro bonding between young pilots when not all of them are “bros,” and one of them is a geezer with a flight jacket covered with service patches?

Aside from fighting female Phoenix (Barbaro, of TV’s “The Good Cop,” “Stumptown,” etc) reminding us that the Navy’s not just a boy’s club any more, this “boy’s club” engages in the same camaraderie, hijinks and pilots’ piano bar sing-alongs that every fighter pilot movie since “Hell’s Angels” has showcased.

They’re still playing pool, only the cloth covering the table has fighter plane schematics drawn on it, still singing along to “Great Balls of Fire,” only Rooster’s now tickling the ivories, still pranking “the new guy.” Only now he’s an “old man.”

Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly classes the picture up as the old flame who’s now the owner of “The Hard Deck,” as that bar is named. Penny has her own “need for speed.” She likes bombing around the waters off San Diego under sail in her racing J-boat. When she digs the lee rail in the water and rattles her old beau hanging on for dear life, it may be the most impressive stunt in the movie.

Naturally, she’s reluctant to take up again with hit-it-and-quit-it Maverick. But she looks so natural and at home on the back of his latest Kawasaki.

The wisecracks fly and characters shout out their “issues” mid-dogfight. Everybody takes a break from training for a rough, shirtless but Raybanned game of touch football in the surf.

And the homages to the first film begin with the recycled opening credits (original co-producer Don Simpson, long dead, turns up) and a near shot-for-shot Kenny Loggins-scored carrier flight operations montage remake, and continue through to a moving reunion between Maverick and the Iceman.

It’s all in good fun, even if you’re never really surprised by anything, even if you your eyes roll with every barrel roll of a plot twist in the later acts. The stunts, the knock-you-around-in-your-seat dogfighting, still has “the need for speed” and a license to thrill.

And yet “Maverick” — the character and the film — seems more sober, more reflective. It’s somehow less like the jingoistic “MTV Fighter Jocks” Navy recruiting film that the even shallower (and not aging well) Reagan-era original was.

“Maverick” is a reminder that while his non-action career has petered out, Cruise was and remains one of the greatest action stars ever. And if he’s dyeing his hair and doing stuff most folks pushing 60 shouldn’t or wouldn’t, he’s earned that right because we still believe it — every stunt, every damned time.

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action, and some strong language

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Jay Ellis, Glen Powell, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer

Credits: Directed by Joseph Kosinski, scripted by Ehren Krueger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, based on the film “Top Gun.” A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:11

How on Earth does a movie set amidst the sun, vineyards, food and earthy-sexy sensualists of Tuscany turn out as drab as Helsignor during a mid-winter rain?

“Toscana” is an Around the World with Netflix stab at “Italian for Beginners,” another story of stoic Scandinavians turning lighter and sunnier via exposure to Italy, Italians and the Italian food, culture and lifestyle. It’s a “stab” that mises the mark widely enough to matter.

Anders Matthesen stars as Theo, a hard-driving 50ish chef whose famous attention to detail extends to the table settings he triple checks and his kitchen, which he guards like a hawk because no matter how big his kitchen “crew,” “nobody cleans up after me” (in Danish, or dubbed into English).

But on the make-or-break day Theo must deliver and dazzle to a gauche, new-money investor-bro, he gets the news that his estranged father has passed away in far-off Tuscany. Buttoned-down, repressed Dane Theo keeps it together only so long before that arbitrary moment when he snaps and cusses out that “bro” (Sebastian Jessen) and lets down his crew and his manager (Lærke Winther).

Their last hope of fresh cash must be in Italy. His dad left the worn villa and “ristorante” Ristonchi” to him. A “quick sale” and they’ll be flush enough to carry on.

But “quick” anything is going to be a problem in Italy. And that would be funny in any other film covering this very familiar “Under the Tuscan Sun” transformation storyline.

But writer-director Mehdi Avaz, apparently new to comedy, can’t manage it.

Theo can’t find the lawyer/executor of the estate Pino (Andrea Bosca). Theo visits the ristorante, and Gordon Ramsay-fashion, finds everything there lacking. Throw in a little Northern European “don’t drink the water” prejudice, among other prejudices (the kitchen is filthy), and watch the sparks fly.

Only they don’t. Not for a moment.

His sarcastic, seen-it-all waitress Sophia (Cristiana Dell’Anna) dismisses him until she learns who he is. But there’s no apologizing. She grew up here, under Theo’s father Geo’s roof, raised like his daughter. She is Roma, but “feisty” barely figures into it. She may not be thrilled Theo is set to sell the place, but Dell’Anna plays that with resignation, not resistance.

The “magical” conversion scenes, where Theo tastes the olive oil and bread, the only thing Ristonchi has going for it, visits the vast aging warehouse for the local cheeses and such aren’t magical in the least.

Matthesen doesn’t play a single moment in this light and “fun.”

And the wedding banquet, which Theo decides to cater, partly to impress a potential buyer for the Italian property, and partly to impress, honor and “repay” Sophia (it’s her wedding), has a few mouth-watering moments, but no funny, sunny or even sweet ones.

The big emotion here is melancholy, shocking for a Dane I know, but ill-suited to the subject matter and aims of “Toscana.” Theo’s daddy issues have to be resolved, along with him surrendering to Italy’s charms, pace and ethos.

I didn’t buy that transition for a minute.

All “Toscana” has to offer is some decent (limited) scenery, a little taste of high-end cooking, and a love story that’s about as romantic as the one The Bard set in foggy Helsignor.

At least nobody kills herself this time round.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Anders Matthesen, Cristiana Dell’Anna, Lærke Winther and Andrea Bosca

Credits: Scripted and directed by Mehdi Avaz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Here’s the stand-out moment for many people who fondly recall 1988’s sometimes dazzling blend of live-action and animation, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

It’s the long-awaited teaming up of Warner Brothers’ wise-quacking anti-hero Daffy Duck with Disney’s sputtering, exasperated and always put-upon Donald Duck.

But it’s not just the startling sight of seeing them both on the screen at the same time that made it work. It’s the idea of them being a nightclub act, furiously pounding through a dueling pianos routine. It’s the funny lines they exchange, in growing exasperation with each other.

“I’ve worked with a lot of withe-quackerth, but you are dethpicable! Thith ith the latht time I work with thomeone with a th-peech impediment!”

That’s a key lesson ignored in Disney’s Chip’n’Dale version of an animation-in-a-live-action-setting comedy, an extension of their beloved-by-90s-kids “Rescue Rangers” TV show. You can round up “the old gang,” make one of the chipmunks — Chip — “tradigital” animated, the way we remember them from TV. You can make the other an “upgrade.” Dale’s “had the CGI (plush, textured 3D) surgery done.”

You can give “Chip’n’Dale: Rescue Rangers” a Roger Rabbitish quest/plot. Somebody’s kidnapping cartoon characters and forcing them to work in pirated versions of their films.

And you can throw The Simpsons and Flounder, Batman and Baloo the Bear and even Roger Rabbit himself into the mix, with either mentions, appearances and jokes about scores of other animated characters.

But if you don’t come up with gags and funny lines for them to say and amusing situations to stick them in, that’s all you’ve got — a “stunt.”

Cast comics Andy Samberg as Dale and John Mulaney as Chip, our lead chipmunks and leaders of the Rescue Rangers, but failing to give Mulvaney a single line that might merit so much as a grin is the epitome of missing the point.

Seth Rogen as a Viking king with a hilariously over-used laugh? Ok. But Aussie-accented Eric Bana, as kidnapped “Ranger” Monterrey Jack is wasted in a role that’s largely absent, as his character’s being held hostage.

Animated or live action, you can’t do better than hiring Will Arnett as your villain. He barely registers.

And on and on it goes.

Yes, the cop the chipmunks team up with (Kiki Layne) is a plucky young woman. But female cartoon inclusion comes up SERIOUSLY under-represented in the film, which had a male director and male writers and it apparently never occurred to them that little girls loved that TV show, too.

Still, the “Rescue Rangers” is technically impressive enough to be worth a look. And if you’re of a certain age, it might give you a bit of the warm fuzzies.

Me? These two just remind me of how much funnier the Warner Brothers gay gophers Mac and Tosh were and still are, lo these many decades later.

Rating: PG for mild action and rude/suggestive humor

Cast: The voices of Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, Dennis Haysbert, Will Arnett and Eric Bana, with Kiki Layne

Credits: Directed by Akiva Schaffer, scripted by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. A Walt Disney/Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:37

The sinister side of that British passion to “Escape to the Country” is the font of horror in “Men,” a genuinely hair-raising thriller from the director of “Ex Machina.”

Alex Garland puts Jessie Buckley in jeopardy in a quiet country village, and makes her plight a universal statement on men’s mania for controlling women as she is judged, menaced and imperiled by every bloke she meets in tiny Cotson, where she’s rented a house to be alone with her thoughts and recover from trauma and tragedy.

Buckley, of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and “The Lost Daughter,” gives a tense, troubled performance that leans into one of her great acting gifts — her ability to look stricken without saying a word.

Harper may put on a brave face on the phone with her best friend (Gayle Rankin) and give the chatty, “very specific ‘type'” Wellington’d landlord (Rory Kinnear of “Penny Dreadful” and the James Bond franchise) of Cotson Manor a smile. But she’s come here to escape something awful that haunts her. Her husband (Paapa Essiedu) killed himself, jumping off their apartment building, leaving her with the image of James staring her in the eye as he plummeted past her window to his death.

The toothy, jocular country squire Geoffrey might ask, “Where’s hubby?” of his renter “Mrs. Marlowe” in all innocence. That doesn’t mean she has to answer, or tell him the truth about anything — whether or not she plays the piano, for instance, as this 500 year old house with the bright red walls is equipped with one.

“I’m just going to have to learn to deal with it,” she tells her chum Riley.

But the moment she takes a bite out of the apple from the tree in the front yard, we don’t have to be reminded of “forbidden fruit” by Geoffrey to sense her unease or what this is about. That first long walk in the lush, dense woods cast in overcast English gloom hits us with other creepy metaphors. That long, echoey old train tunnel might make Harper giddy at its magical, musical properties. We see the danger before the silhouette of a strange man appears on the other end.

And there’s nothing like ending your near-panicked run back home like glancing back and seeing a naked, nicked-up and muddy man staring out of the gloom at you.

This “Escape” and recover idyll is going to be nothing of the sort.

Garland hurls assorted creepy local oddballs at Harper — an unfiltered, on-the-spectrum mean boy, a male cop given to shrugging off her concerns when his female partner takes her seriously, the comforting-and-helpful-until-he-judges-her priest.

“You must wonder how you drove him to it.“

And all the while, our heroine is remembering the grisly details of her last day with her husband, the horrific nature of his injuries, the reason she’s “haunted” by what happened to him, and to her.

Garland uses simple casting and makeup tricks and elaborate and gory childbirth effects to raise Harper’s threat level from troubled to alarmed about this conspiracy of “Men” — starting with her husband — who seek control over her, physically, psychologically and socially.

And Buckley gives us a stoic woman whose strong self-assurance is attacked and eroded by man after man in assaults that range from mental to physical, with a heady dose of the supernatural compounding her terror.

The writer-director and his star manage several chills, a bit of breathless suspense and some eyes-averting gore as they challenge us to stare down the threat of “Men” their EveryWoman faces and confronts. And they put us in her shoes, shaken by their violence, handicapped by her own empathy and guilt until she sees the Big Societal Picture — the cruel manipulation of a system engineered to keep her from “the forbidden fruit” and under control.

Rating: R for disturbing and violent content, graphic nudity, grisly images and language.

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu and Gayle Rankin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alex Garland. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:40

Perhaps the best representation of the tediously-over-titled latest installment in the “Ghost in the Shell” media vortex –– “Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Sustainable War” — is that hideously over-loaded title itself, translated from “Kôkaku kidôtai SAC_2045 Jizoku kanô sensô.”

Three directors, six credited screenwriters, vividly-animated characters with rigidly immobile faces, exteriors that have some of the most realistic CGI “sunshine” ever coupled with generally dull and dark eye-straining interiors, endless low-stakes action buried under endless exposition masquerading as dialogue from an infantry battalion of “characters” — some of them kewpie-doll voiced robots — one hardly knows where to begin.

How about at the end? This two hour movie never, for one second, lets your forget that it’s “content” — manufactured, formulaic piffle with a fixed set-price/run-time that’s been filled with material that feels more like something generated by an algorithm than anything humans put any heart and soul into.

With manga, TV series, video games and the occasional movie assembly-lined into existence over the past three decades, it’s damned near impossible to drop in and out of “Ghost in the Shell,” film by film. You don’t so much absorb the blizzard of words, the sea of characters and ever-deepening pile of backstory and exposition as let it wash over you. It’s a little like having your brain buried in sand.

The big idea here is that the “Ghost” mercenary team — with many members, vehicles and a robot or two — are treated as pawns by competing billionaire-run global conglomerates which came up with the concept of “sustainable war,” manufactured conflict designed for maximum profits, only to turn civilization into a few fortified citadels, cities and billionaire compounds separated by a near-wasteland on its way to “Mad Max” status.

“Even Japan’s dangerous now,” the ex-detective/ex-“Ghost” team member Togusa mutters.

One billionaire has been nicknamed “The Good One Percenter.” Random remarks reveal where this or that mercenary or “amateur” gang came from — ex-college athletes “bankrupted by student loans” created one.

Chases, chases and more chases end in fights, with characters chattering away to each other in future combatspeak that resembles telepathy because nobody’s lips move…much.

I guess adding that to the “content” would’ve cost too much. The entire affair looks pricey but cut-rate at the same time, like a Tesla… The Budweiser product placement does nothing to dispel that.

If you’re way down the rabbit hole of “Ghost,” you will almost certainly get more out of this than the rest of us. I guess my question, repeated too often when I dip back into this franchise, is “Why would anyone bother?”

Cast: Cherami Leigh, Michael McCarty, Dave Wittenberg, Laura Post, Keith Silverstein, Roger Craig Smith, many others

Credits: Directed by Shinji Aramaki, Michihito Fujii and Kenji Kamiyama, scripted by Ryô Higaki, Harumi Doki, Kenji Kamiyama, Daisuke Ohigashi, Kurasumi Sunayama and Dai Satô, created by Shirow Masamune. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:00