Movie Nation

Every generation in the history of the Western World figures it’s the one that has mastered bringing up babies, that the difficulties it tackles are “new” and not as old as time itself.

And there’s always a raft of movies and TV series that reflect this, each introducing the new wrinkles to this process that the modern world has caused — “Baby Boom” to “Parenthood,” “thirtysomething” to “Kramer vs. Kramer” and on and on it goes.

“The Wonder Weeks” is a Dutch dramedy that follows three couples through the minefield of modern problems. They’re coping with traditions and inlaws from a different culture, the rights and place of a biological father with regards to the kids he fathered for a lesbian couple, and a two-career marriage struggling to care for a baby during a “boom” caused by “everybody” getting pregnant during the COVID lockdown, which strains even a nanny state’s childcare system.

The film has little in the way of “edge,” a few lighter moments, some eyebrow-raising judgements and the hopeful tone of a tale set in a recently-diversified but always modern culture, that “We’ll figure this out” Dutch pluck.

Titled “Oei, ik groei!” in The Netherlands (and possibly 20 minutes longer when it premiered there), “Wonder Weeks” introduces us to Anne (Sallie Harmsen) as she’s grimacing through childbirth and threatening her clueless husband Barry (Soy Kroon) for videotaping it.

But on getting home, they run afoul of the nurse/social worker who nags them about their “fat baby” and insults/guilts them because little Mia “hasn’t rolled-over-yet.” They can find no vacancy in their local daycares, and Barry quickly proves to be even more tone deaf as he slacks-off taking turns when the baby awakens in the night and thinks nothing of leaving partner-track lawyer Anne holding the bag, and the bottle.

Ilse (Yolanthe Cabau) didn’t marry her Moroccan mate Sabri (Iliass Ojja), something that irks his “traditional” mother. And apparently they didn’t have the circumcision and circumcision ceremony argument before the little boy was born. There’s a party involved? All his relatives will come over for an extended visit in the middle of the most stressful months of their lives? There’s a sheep in the tub, a special “guest” for the party?

Roos (Sarah Chronis) has her second baby with bossy, dictatorial Kim (Katja Schuurman) thanks to the sperm of never-grown-up Kaj (Louis Talpe). But now he’s ready to get involved with “his” kids’ lives. Kim isn’t having it.

The targets for jabbing here are mostly on-the-nose — secular vs Islamic culture clashing, a “cult” like “Moms 4 Moms” group that corners the market on childcare vacancies and trots out absurdist “Baby yoga,” “baby guru/healer,” “Mommy self-care” fads, for a profit.

And then there’s the marriage neglected because of work and a new baby and the temptations of a nanny.

The men are generally presented in an unfavorable, uncommunicative, abdicate responsibilities light. One member of the stereotypical lesbian couple has to be the “ball breaker” (A “Friends,” era rule.) and the Muslims are annoying, inflexible primitives.

All these stereotypes and all this new parent/different culture/gender “judging,” and barely a laugh or original thought enters into it.

But the players are good and the situations became cliches for a reason — because millions have dealt with variations of these issues in their own child-rearing years.

No, the “problems” aren’t new. The depiction of them and attempted solutions aren’t something this generation “discovered,” and the dramedy about that non-discovery isn’t all that.

Rating: TV-MA, masturbation, profanity, poop jokes

Cast: Sallie Harmsen, Yolanthe Cabau, Katja Schuurman, Sarah Chronis, Louis Talpe, Soy Kroon and Iliass Ojja

Credits: Directed by Appie Boudellah and Aram van de Rest, scripted by Appie Boudellah, Mustafa Boudellah and Maikel Nijnuis, based on a book by Frank Plooij and Hetty van de Rijt. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Pixar is as entitled to a swing and a miss as any studio. But the lovely-looking miscalculation that is “Elemental” stands out on the CGI animation house’s resume as a rare swing-and-almost-completely-miss.

It’s sentimental slop with a shiny, polished sheen. The film hangs on unlikable characters almost no one will connect with, dullish voice casting, a mostly mirthless script and a squishy, pointless plot with a vague anti-prejudice/follow-your-heart/bliss messaging.

Aside from that…

Actually, there is more. Even the Pixar short, “Carl’s Date,” a can’t-miss jokey heart-tugger “Up” sequel with Carl (the late Ed Asner) accepting his first date since being widowed and getting advice from the dopy dog “Dug” with the canine-translator collar, has barely a laugh in it. It may be the most dispirited short I’ve ever seen from them.

“Elemental” is an immigrant story about two flames from Fireland who leave their storm-tossed home to face discrimination in Element City, where cloud people, waterfolk and earthy vegetation have built a utopia for themselves. But as fire is quenched by water and fire torches trees and such, foreign-speaking Burnie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) have to set up shop in a ruined house in what comes to be called Fire Town.

They sell firebaby formula (lighter fluid), coal nuggets and other delicacies and fiery (lava) drinks to their “kind.”

Everybody else they mistrust, and the feeling is mutual as “the city isn’t made with Fire People in mind.” The elevated train is basically a boat in a canal, waterfalls are a favorite architectural feature and the most popular sport, Air Ball, involves cloud people puffing around a not-fire-friendly stadium.

Burnie dreams of passing his popular shop down to daughter Ember (Leah Lewis), who seems enthusiastic but is a literal hothead. She loses her temper with annoying customers, and her tantrums are firestorms.

Imagine her fury when one such hissy fit wrecks the ancient plumbing in their building, and weepy Waterperson code inspector Wade (Get it?) shows up to shut them down. Mamoudou Athie voices this lower-level bureaucrat, who dodges Ember’s efforts to waylay him on his way to file the paperwork.

Events conspire to throw them together to solve her problem, and his — the city has a potentially-catastrophic leak somewhere in the sytem. And thrown together, they must fall in love, even though simple contact could douse out her life and she could boil him into steam without really trying.

The “love will find a way” here, meeting the potential in-laws and the like (Catherine O’Hara voices Wade’s weepy mom) isn’t very funny and never quite overcomes the nonsensical premise in play. We don’t see much of a live connection, just a hint here and there. It’s the script that forces this issue, not anything organic about the relationship.

The “Get off your lazy ash” and “Make like a stream and flow away” jokes are rare and kind of gasp their way into a screenplay that was plainly lots of workshopping away from being anything Pixar should have ever put into production.

The “Go back to Fireland,” and “Never let them water us down” racial symbolism is more of a wince than a metaphorical wake-up call. The parent company beat them to that, didn’t they? Did no one at Pixar see “Zootopia?”

There are some lovely images and fanciful design elements. But the animated “element” characters are something of a bust, too. I can’t imagine kids wanting to take anybody here home as a plush toy.

Pixar used to have the independence and the luxury of honing their scripts until the pictures made from them had every chance to be an instant classic. In recent years, that process has been disrupted, the content treadmill has taken over and hit-or-miss sequels and shlock like “Onward” and miscalculations like “Elemental” and “Turning Red” get into production without proper vetting, workshopping or rewriting.

Let’s hope “Elemental” is a misstep that isn’t repeated, and while they’re at it, that we’ve seen the last “Cars” movie, too.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Catherine O’Hara.

Credits: Directed by Peter Sohn, scripted by John Hoberg, Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh. A Disney/Pixar release.

Running time: 1:43, with a short film attached

You’ve spent years writing and making short films, working your way towards that “feature writing and directing debut.” And then some smug critic comes along and dismisses it with a “The longer ‘Bone Cold’ goes on, the worse it gets.”

I feel your pain, writer-director Billy Hanson. Didn’t care for your movie, but there’s effort in it and an idea or three. Not really good ideas, not packaged together, but anyway.

“Bone Cold” is a low-urgency, slowfooted sniper thriller that morphs into a creature feature horrorshow with a suggestion of “PTSD” about it. The first act is passably rendered, although we’ve had lots of sniper movies and most of them were better than this. The second direction the story takes is confused and confusing, as we wonder if our triggerman is hallucinating, or if his comrade and others might share that spectral Nosferatu image he’s haunted by.

It begins with the dispassionate professionalism of a military shooter (Jonathan Stoddard) and his wiseass spotter (Matt Munroe) who figures his one-shot/no-waiting sniper is a “You only miss when you want to” guy.

But that’s in the desert of Afghanistan. And even then, CPO Jon Bryant thinks he sees his target standing after he knows he plugged him right in the head. Plainly something about the work he’s been doing gets to him, as it would most compassionate human beings.

That “Thank you for your service” business that Jon and Marco go through on every ride home in uniform only earns their mockery and Jon’s borderline contempt.

“That lady has no idea what she’s thanking us for.”

And then he’s yanked for another mission within a day or so of getting back to his wife (Jennifer Khloe) and daughter. It isn’t just the lack of decompession time that makes this job seem sketchier. An “agency” man is there at the briefing, which is off-base. The intel is limited — some anarchist trouble-maker out to prolong the (now) ongoing Russo-Ukraine hostilities.

They’ll be in the snow, in Russia proper and pretty much on their own. But when you’re a soldier you follow orders.

The mission goes wrong, and the things Jon sees and hears grow more alarming as their support team refuses to extract them until they kill the man they were sent to assasinate.

One thing I’m a stickler for in horror movies is actors giving the viewer something like a realistic reaction when something inexplicable, horrific and/or supernatural happens. Characters should have memories and trauma from what they’ve experienced, and the actors have to convey that, spilling over in every scene after the initial “This can’t be REAL” epiphany.

The director has to ensure that terror and energy carry over, take after take, shot after shot, scene after scene.

There’s little of that here. “Bone Cold” is a movie that feels perfunctory, laid-back when the characters and the viewer should be panicked, on tenterhooks and frantic to get out of a situation they’ve not been trained for.

Every careless “Somebody’s about to get shot/grabbed” moment is telegraphed, given away before the unsurprising surprise happens. Every dismissal of danger is worth an eye roll, every underreaction to wounds, seeing the impossible and getting your mind around it, undercuts the suspense and sense of jeopardy and punches a fresh hole in the film.

The later acts have more histrionics and even less believability. And the damned picture just won’t end, with attempted confrontations and explanations, high stakes moments that lose their nerve and a narrative that tries have it both ways as it wanders off the reservation.

Whatever promise the premise of stranding two snipers in the “Bone Cold” once had is frittered away as the longer this movie goes on, the worse every thing about it gets.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Jonathan Stoddard, Matt Munroe, Jennifer Khloe and Elise Greene.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Billy Hanson. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:48

The gang’s back in business next month, or so they think.

Strange and bizarre and “Lobster” “Dogtooth” Yorgos Lanthimos weird.

Sept. 8.

It’s a tad ponderous, a talkative, exposition-laden tale whose jokes don’t often land. It’s derivative in many obvious ways, as all film fantasies inevitably are.

But “The Secret Kingdom” is ambitious, a tantalizing piece of kid-friendly eye-candy from Down Under that might hold the interest of eight-and-unders just because of the strange and wondrous things it presents.

It’s a kids-on-a-quest narrative that sends siblings into an imaginary underworld of talking pangolins and spectacular caverns, ancient ruins and magical runes that must be read to solve a puzzle.

Writer-director Matt Drummond’s brainchild gives off a strong “Owls of Ga’hoole/Labyrinthe” vibe. It borrows from everyone and everything — “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Golden Compass,” “The Neverending Story,” “The Wizard of Oz” and even “Star Wars.” Even a small child will recognize a “wizard” not literally “behind the curtain” here, played by a creature — the tarsier — who was the wide-eyed inspiration for Yoda.

Does it makes sense? Sometimes. Entertaining? Here and there. The “Owls” comparison is perhaps the most apt. It’s prettier than the tedious, emotionally flat story it tells.

Some time in the ‘1960s, siblings Peter (Sam Everingham) and Verity (Ayla Brown) move into a big house in the country. As only their mother (Alice Parkinson) has a distinct accent (French), we can only figure out where this is set via the car (a Holden?) and its NSW (New South Wales) license plate.

The parents are fighting, but little Miss Verity ignores that and leads her brother into town, to a peculiar store whose exotic proprieter (Gabrielle Chan) sells Peter a strange compass.

That night the siblings are dropped — in Peter’s bed — into an underworld described in an animated opening credit as a place that separated from “the above” long ago. When armor-plated pangolins roll up like pill-bugs, and serve as wheels for that bed to travel into the labyrinthine caves, Peter fears the worst.

But it turns out the pangolins talk. And when they do, they tell Peter he is their new king, as foretold by prophesy.

“Our king shall not be judged by his years, but by his deeds!”

Peter and Verity, with young Pling (voiced by Darius Williams) as their guide — pangolins sing traveling directions to remember them — they go on a quest to unravel clues, seek magical talismans and foil their nemesis, The Shroud.

They will encounter a two-headed tortoise couple and a scary winged griffin who “doesn’t eat people,” but will give them rides and other such aid as he can.

“I’m an empath. I suppose you could say ‘I eat my feelings!'”

A Luminaire must be consulted, a skeletal army confronted and a legion of armored knight’s gloves must be challenged in the picture’s lone Pythonesque moment.

“Oh, he’s thrown down the GAUNLET!” “You know what they say? ‘Big hands, big gloves!'”

How do you fight giant mailed gloves? By playing rock, paper scissors.

The messaging is of the “All you need is within you” and “Just because youre scared doesn’t mean you’re not brave” variety.

There’s a lot of invention here, a little wit and a touching twist for the finale. But there’s also a staggering load of laws, locations, back-story, creatures and quest stops, most of which need to be explained as exposition. That bogs “The Secret Kingdom” down and it never drags itself out of that mire.

But it’s harmless enough, if you’re looking for something pretty and pretty inane to distract your small children with.

Rating: PG, fantasy violence

Cast: Sam Everingham, Ayla Brown, Gabrielle Chan, the voices of Darius Williams, many others

Credits: Scripted and directed by Matt Drummond. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:38

Science fiction icon H.G Wells’ oft-filmed 1897 novel gets a fresh, gloomy Victorian Gothic adaptation in “Fear the Invisible Man,” a film that is faithful to the style, themes and spirit of the novel without literally being the exact same “Invisible Man” we’ve seen on the screen before.

Mike Beckingham plays Griffin, the scientist whose discovery makes makes him a “mad scientist” here, an obssessed and broke experimenter who can’t pay his rent but whose chemical injection makes that something of a moot point.

He needs somebody who isn’t invisible to make his life work. He needs clothes to avoid freezing to death in the British weather. He needs to steal and decides he must murder to get what he wants in this sci-fi journey to the center of his psychosis.

Graham Foxe plays a homeless drunk Griffin strong-arms into becoming his confederate. When “Marvel” goes on the run and takes Griffin’s scientific papers with him, our invisible anti-hero hunts him and haunts him.

And that’s how they wind up where Griffin’s old university crush Adeline (Mhairi Calvey) lives. She’s a local reformer, and a broke widow living in a failing manor house. That’s where the wounded Griffin — injured in a public brawl in a public house (The Jolly Cricketer Pub) finds her, and she finds him.

She is shocked, and who wouldn’t be? But she hears him out and learns the limitations of this “god” like power.

His invisibility “made it impossible for me to gain wealth and power,” but “made it possible to enjoy them.” He can rob, cause “accidents” and the like. But he can’t do anything in plain sight, can’t go out clothed, unless it’s in a mummified, bandaged state.

But if he had “an army of invisible men under my command,” he could change the world. She agrees to help him track down Marvel, retrieve Griffin’s papers so that he can discover “a cure,” and she keeps his secret from the local police inspector (Wayne Gordon), even as bodies pile up as Griffin ruthlessly pursues his goals, and “helpfully” tries to sway Adeline’s political foes (the grand character actor David Hayman among them), one way or another.

“Fear the Invisible Man” is definitely a thriller on a modest budget. But director Paul Dudbridge (“Frankenstein: Legacy”) and his team manage some fine recreations — digital and otherwise — of Victorian streetscapes. They found a Gothic church that would not have been out of place in David Lean’s “Great Expectations” adaptation and nicely aged manor house that I don’t recognize from other films.

And the effects are pretty good. Cinema has a century of experience making characters “invisible.” The first filmed version of this novel was a silent short made in 1909. The transition effect here — the skin disappears, then the blood vessels and muscles and finally the skeleton — is novel and impressive.

But for all its psychological weight and cleverness, the novel is showing its age, and summoning up hoary dialogue and situations straight out of Victorian melodrama only lets us hear and see how creaky, dated and quaint this all feels. The movie bears the burden of every film adaptation of it that preceded it, and groans under the weight.

“Here I thought you were a woman of science!”

The performances are modest, at best, and generally unaffecting. There’s pathos in this story and we don’t feel it in this version.

As the recent Elisabeth Moss riff on the idea showed us, this gimmick can still terrify. But not in this adaptation, not this time.

Rating: unrated, violence, some nudity

Cast: Mike Beckingham, Mhairi Calvey, Wayne Gordon, Graham Foxe and David Hayman

Credits: Directed by scripted by Paul Dudbridge, scripted by Philip Daay, based on H.G. Wells’ “The Invisible Man.” A 101 Film release.

Running time: 1:40

So Pixar is talking about what tolerance and relationship compatibility in an animated metaphor built around the ancient base “elements” of science?”

Their latest has an *Inside/Out” and “Soul” vibe and the trailer doesn’t necessarily give away what they’re doing here.

“Elemental” opens opposite “The Flash” on June 16.

Actress turned director Eva Longoria’s “Flamin’ Hot” is a lightly charming love letter to Mexican-American pluck, resolve and grace in the face of every obstacle that one’s adoptive country throws in your path.

Longoria and screenwriters Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chávez package that positive message of achievement against the odds in a story about the transformation of an American snack food and a Latino triumph in the war for the American palate.

And as I like to say when a movie is warm and cute and not literally the Gospel historical truth, if it’s not the way it really was, it’s the way it should have been.

Richard Montañez didn’t “invent” Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and the the world of “picante” food and drinks that swept the country years back and shows no signs of abating. “Flamin’ Hot” is not a true story in that sense.

But seeing as how the snack food giant Frito-Lay gave permission to use their brands, logo and factory processes in the film, I think they’re OK with this adorable mythologization of that “Eureka” moments in junk food. The product placement sealed the deal.

Jesse Garcia of TV’s “Snowfall” and “Narcos: Mexico” gives a charismatic performance playing a man who grew up farm labor poor, struggled to be accepted in school and when life wasn’t working out, got into drug dealing in his corner of SoCal.

Abused and put-down by his dad, profiled by white police and bullied at school, Richard learned an important life lesson in his elementary school cafeteria. If they’re calling you by ethnic slurs and berating your food, let the Palate of Your People speak for itself.

“Show them what the burrito’s worth.”

What child, biting into a savory Mexican delicacy for the first time, will ever settle for a bologna sandwich again? Maybe he’ll even figure out what the ingredients are and realize “Beaner” isn’t the insult he thinks it is.

“Flamin’ Hot” depicts Richard as a hustler from childhood, and a guy who made the right choices when the right girl — childhood sweetheart Judy — becomes the right woman and demands it of him.

A former fellow drug dealer (Bobby Soto) helps him land a job at Frito-Lay — with Judy (Annie Gonzalez, good, and in one magic moment, great) helping the high school drop-out fill out an application. His reading and writing in English isn’t up to par.

Once on board at the Rancho Cucamunga plant, janitor Richard makes the most of the opportunity by making a pest of himself. He “breaks the chain of command” by badgering and befriending (and bringing burritos to) the plant’s equipment engineer (Dennis Haysbert). Bigotry and the low expectations of his superiors don’t discourage him.

And when that plant is endangered during the Snack Wars of the ’90s, Richard shows his loyalty and pluck by enlisting his wife, their kids, his colleagues and his community in a Big Idea that might save it. He’s not shy about getting the president of the gigantic Pepsi/Frito-Lay parent company (Tony Shalhoub) on the phone to make his pitch.

Market to Mexicans! And give them red-hot chile chip options!

A clever touch in the screenplay has the ever-narrating Richard imagine board room battles at the company, translating those fights into cholo/gangster speak. Shalhoub is hilarious mouthing these “pendejo” throwdowns.

The voice of authority Haysbert plays the mentor who puts up with our irritating lead, bucks our hero up when he’s down and gives the movie a bit of gravitas.

And Gonzalez plays the woman of faith — in Richard, in the candle she lights and keeps burning after he lands the job that will transform them from poor-and-food-insecure to the working class. She stands up for him when he stands up to his found God/still-a-bully Dad (Emilio Rivera, excellent).

Longoria keeps her directing eyes on the “feel-good movie” prize, which limits the film’s ambition as we bounce from scene to uplifting scene, many of them involving adorable moppets taste-testing very hot chili sauces to bake into the Cheetohs.

The one real failing behind the camera is the film’s over-reliance on voice-over narration, the lazy screenwriter’s best amigo. Quotable, amusing and authoritative at times, here it’s so incessant that it practically turns “Flamin’ Hot” into a 100 minute version of those patriotic/ethnic-pride restoring Modelo beer commercials.

I mean, I love those commercials, with their proud and sentimental push-back against conservative prejudice and xenophobia. I even love the beer. But 100 minutes of that? Aye mami!

Rating: PG-13, profanity and brief drug material

Cast: Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez, Emilio Rivera, Vanessa Martinez, Dennis Haysbert and Tony Shalhoub.

Credits: Directed by Eva Longoria, scripted by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chávez. A Searchlight release on Hulu and Disney+.

Running time: 1:39

“The Tank” is a polished period piece thriller set in the 1970s Pacific Northwest, but filmed in New Zealand, with a mostly-Kiwi cast-and-crew. Because nothing looks like the undeveloped past of Washington and Oregon’s coasts like the rocky shores of “The Land of the Long White Cloud.”

The film is a creature feature, just the sort of thing New Zealand has a natural advantage in producing, with all those special effects shops that spun out of the “Lord of the Rings” universe. The creature, when we see it, is pretty good. We’d expect no less.

But film schools far and wide should pick up copies of this Scott Walker (the Cage and Cusack thriller “The Frozen Ground” was his) B-picture, just to demonstrate how you should never wait this long to get a genre piece like this going, and to point out the perils of too much foreshadowing.

Our heroine, Jules (Luciane Buchanan) is in veterinary school and running a pet store with her husband Ben (Matt Whelan). Their seven year-old daughter Raia (Zara Nausbaum) is here for her screams, later. But her function in the first act is to give somebody for mum to explain the animals to, and to get into the details of just what sort of creature they’re going to find themselves confronting when they drive north to check out some coastal property Ben’s inherited from his mad-but-now-dead mother.

But we’ve seen a 1946 prologue in which a man was snatched and dragged into a huge cistern on the property, the “Tank” of the title. I dare say that word was chosen because who remembers what a cistern is these days?

An endless build-up towards the bloody finale includes Ben’s share of the foreshadowing, laying out in detail what he’s found in the old shed on the long-abandoned property. “Convenient” items, to say the least.

And then WHAMMO, we’re in the action and hanging with Ben as he tries out some silly man stuff and with Jules as she identifies their threat and works the problem towards a way of fighting and defeating it.

The dialogue is bordeline Bot-created — generic in the extreme.

“Doesn’t this place make you uneasy? Are you SURE about this?”

There’s an old diary, a too-helpful real-estate agent, no phone service and on and on the checklist of weary horror tropes goes.

But “The Tank” wouldn’t have been half-bad if they’d moved the imminent peril to earlier in the second act, wouldn’t have been borderline-awful if Walker had worked out a more original or exciting finale, if somebody’d talked him out of trying to give his starlet a Sigourney-in-“Aliens” catchphrase.

At least New Zealand, the specialest special effect of them all, comes out of this lovelier and more rainforest lush than ever.

Rating: R for some violence/bloody images and (profanity)

Cast: Luciane Buchanan, Matt Whelan, Zara Nausbaum and Ascia Maybury

Credits: Scripted and directed by Scott Walker. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:32