Movie Nation

The most impressive thing about the “Transformers” franchise is how this film series, built to cater to fans who grew up with the ’80s TV cartoon, has endured and apparently connected with a fresh generation of young filmgoers.

Well, Paramount certainly hopes so. And judging from the fan comments on the trailers, noting the ongoing vocal presence of Peter Cullen, a lot of those First Gen fans are sticking with this, through thick and thin, from Shia to Wahlberg, and ever onward.

This one takes the metallic toys into the wild. So one assumes it’s less about cars and trucks that metallically shape-shift into sentient robot-beings than usual.

We’ll see.

Hell, there’s an “origin story” starring ScarJo and Chris Hemsworth due out next year. Johansson and “Thor,” adding franchises to their collection, cashing those checks.

“Rise of the Beasts” opens Friday, or Thursday night for those who can’t wait.

Well, perhaps the production team behind Brazil’s Around the World with Netflix offering “Rich in Love” took criticism of their “series of limp mistaken identity mixups” rom-com to heart.

They got to make a sequel with the same beautiful, rich-but-earnestly-trying-to-contribute characters and tried to put them in a story with some cultural relevence and headline news import.

“Rich in Love 2” isn’t just about the further up-and-down romantic adventures of rich tomato empire heir Teto (Danilo Mesquita) and med-student-of-substance, now Dr. Paula (Giovanna Lancellotti).

A quartet of screenwriters, including director Bruno Garotti, take our “farmers tomato coop” organizers into Amazonia, where they meet and learn from the indigenous peoples, folks who know where the first tomato came from (Not “Italy,” kids.), see their struggles and get mixed-up in the illegal mining that threatens the rainforest, the river and everyone who eats fish that come from the Mighty Amazon.

There’s a pregnancy, a secret family legacy and a budding gay romance, too. And they pack all this onto a 90 minute movie. No, it doesn’t necessarily fit together and the serious subjects are paid lip service and little else. But there are worse subtexts to slap onto a Hallmark quality romance set in exotic Amazonia.

Tomato heir Teto is still impulsive, still casually rich and still self-absorbed, even when it comes to his doctor girlfriend. But Paula’s going on an extended medical mission deep into the Amazon, bringing health care to the remote tribes with the earnest and righteous Dr. Tawan (Adanilo Reis).

Teto is jealous. Teto is stricken. Teto has taken his eye off the ball with regards to the coop he developed with pal Monique (Lellê) and the farm employee son he grew up with and calls his “brother,” Igor (Jaffar Bambirra). His tomato barron father’s about to stop buying their produce, which will put Teto Fresca out of business.

Well, Paula’s off to the interior. Why not…move our operation there, to Porto Romansa, line up farmers and buyers, maybe Dad’s old pal/rival (Roney Villela)? It turns out, Everaldo has an interest in Teto Fresca — as a company for his daughter (Aline Dias) to run.

With their coop about to go bust, Igor and biz-partner wife Alana (Fernanda Paes Leme) expecting a baby and Monique fretting about wasting years on a project and having nothing to show for it, the incentive to sell is there. Just not for Teto.

The rich boy, fond of big, tin-eared gestures for his beloved Paula, needs to Jetski after her as she and her colleague boat off on rounds. Teto must run out of gas, get lost and get hurt so that the Hipanaa people and no-nonsense Wunin (Kay Sara) can heal him and, help him “connect with the forest,” with his non-rich fellow Brazilians and “understand yourself better (in Portugeuse, subtitled, or dubbed).”

Paula, in turn, will learn about Native cures and medicines as she and Dr. Tawan try and find out what’s making people sick. Could it be something getting in the water from the illegal mining going on right under their noses?

Somebody’s going to have to dress up as a macaw costumed folk dancer to get into a gala in Manaus. Somebody’s going to overhear dirty deals in the making. Somebody will need to pretend to be Teto and Paula to convince Everaldo to buy them out.

Honestly, hat’s off for these filmmakers trying to make all the “issue” points, show us this world and make a case for its jeopardy in a fluffy, wish-fulfillment romance.

It doesn’t really work. The happy couple becomes unhappy in exactly the way of 1786 romances that came before “Rich in Love.” Teto’s “transformation” is ordained by the script, not organic to the story. The villains are so obvious they might as well black hats.

“Rich in Love” wasn’t very good. “Rich in Love 2” isn’t either. But at least this time they set out to try and show and say something of import, which makes a decent consolation prize for a movie that will draw viewers based on the pretty people/dull story of the first film.

Rating: TV-MA, threats of violence, sex

Cast: Danilo Mesquita, Giovanna Lancellotti, Lellê, Jaffar Bambirra, Aline Dias, Fernanda Paes Leme, Adanilo Reis, Kay Sara and Roney Villela.

Credits: Directed by Bruno Garotti, scripted by Bruno Garotti, Sylvio Gonçalves, Maíra Oliveira and Jama Wapichana. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

A seasoned cast — with a couple of horror fan faves in its ranks — and a few of cool supernatural effects decorate “Brooklyn 45,” a stodgy, stagey horror tale from the director of “We Are Still Here” and “Mohawk.”

Ted Geoghegan parks five and then six players in a house for this dry drawing room thriller that touches on “the war” and what those there did in the just-ended conflict, war crimes included.

The cast is a bit long in the tooth — most of them are 60 or so — to be cast as mid-level officers, “an interrogator” and a “trigger-man” from the just-ended conflict. The parlor they gather in is too well-lit to ever take on the cachet of “spooky,” and the script — while it has some pithy dialogue — leans on long monologues, reminiscences and judgements, which don’t really deliver suspense or thrills, remorse or pathos.

But again, the few effects are clever enough.

Marla (Anne Ramsay of TV’s “Mad About You”), “the interrogator,” walks with a cane, her reminder of the German bombing that killed many on a base she was stationed at in Europe during the war. She’s escorted in by her mousie Pentagon clerk husband (Ron E. Rains).

They’re joining old friends — HER old friends — all of whom served in the conflict which ended mere months before. It’s just after Christmas, and Lt. Col. Clive Hockstetter, “Hock” (horror darling Larry Fessenden) has called in the couple, and old comrades Major Paul DiFranco (Ezra Buzzington) and Major Archie Stanton (Jeremy Holm) for a between-the-holidays reunion.

Hock’s wife died over Thanksgiving, and they’re there for support. But Hock’s mourning, the manner of his wife’s death and insensitive treatment by a priest has awakened his curiosity about what might lie “beyond.”

He needs them there to have a seance, to see if he can contact the late Susan.

“All you need is a mirror, and a couple of friends who aren’t afraid to hold hands.”

They’re all reluctant, but he’s hurting. And there’s a hint of “pulling rank” to his begging.

But when they do “reach out” and make contact, more questions come up that beg for answers, more complications, more tragedy, all of which must be resolved as they are trapped in that over-memento’d parlor by supernatural forces they can’t overcome.

The group dynamics are interesting, in a dated archetypes bickering over dated grudges way. “Marla the Merciless” interrogator is respected, her “pencil pusher” spouse is not. This one’s facing war crimes charges and that one’s still “following orders.”

And then there’s the German woman (Kristina Klebe) they discover, locked in a cabinet.

Geoghegan may have attracted some decent players and limited the scale and ambition of this piece to something manageably compact. But he doesn’t generate frights or suspense, which are Job One and Job Two in a horror thriller.

The cast does what it can with the material, but their big speeches rarely add up to a “big moment.”

And the debates/discussions here about what soldiers do in war, how soon they can let that war go, attitudes about Germans and homosexuality and those who didn’t take part in combat aren’t exactly novel or deep. Geoghegan didn’t suddenly transform into a deep thinker, an artful screenwriter or a filmmaker to watch.

Perhaps there’s more life to “Brooklyn 45” in a more natural setting for something this stagey — the stage. No stage director I know would light something supposedly spooky with foreboding like a local TV news set.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Anne Ramsay, Larry Fessenden, Ezra Buzzington, Jeremy Holm, Ron E. Rains and Kristina Klebe

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ted Geoghegan. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:33

In his most manic comedies, the great “reactor,” the unflappable Alan Arkin, looks like he’s on the verge of cracking up and blowing the take — scene after scene. He can’t wholly hide how tickled he is at what’s going on around him. It’s in his eyes, the barely-controlled grin that’s trying to bust out on his face.

You see it, here and there, in “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.” And there’s a moment in “The In-Laws” in which he glances towards the camera in his harrowing ride, clinging to the roof of a taxi he’s just clambered aboard, as if the actor playing the part sees the cameraman laughing at how this looks and wishes he could join him.

Legend has it that Arkin was so broken up by the great character player James Hong‘s improvised chattering Mandarin monologue, adding a magazine to his improv, that he’d run Hong off the set for his close-ups, lest the man break him up even when the camera isn’t on him.

I guess that’s why Arkin never hosted “Saturday Night Live.” They’ve had enough problems with “breaking” in the middle of funny bits over the decades.

Arkin’s “In-Laws” co-star Peter Falk, on the other hand, is Chris Freaking Walken in this movie — a cold-blooded comic assassin surrounded by mortals unable to keep a straight face as he demands “More COWbell.”

Their unlikely pairing paid dividends in this beloved farce from the late ’70s, a movie built on the wit of former Mel Brooks collaborator and future “Fletch,” “Soapdish” and “The Freshman” writer Andrew Bergman, director Arthur Hiller’s eye for a great sight gag and editing for antic energy, and stars and co-stars who knew where the laughs were and delivered them.

Check any list of the “Funniest Films Ever” and “The In-Laws” is on there. If anything, it’s grown in stature over the decades, a legend that was always funnier than “Some Like It Hot,” although perhaps a little shy of the mania of Billy Wilder’s funniest film, “One, Two, Three,” as hilarious as the Best of Peter Sellers or Mel Brooks or “early” Woody Allen.

Arkin plays a New York dentist named Sheldon Kornpett whose daughter (Penny Peyser) wants to marry this nice boy, Tommy Riccardo (Michael Lembeck). Yeah, even the surnames are amusing.

But on meeting the father of the groom, Vince Riccardo (Falk), Sheldon finds himself ensnared in an ever-enlarging fiasco involving stolen printing plates for a high-dollar denomination bill, a Latin American plot to print these and wreck the American economy and the machinations of the CIA, which Vince insists is his employer.

Sheldon is implicated, lured out of his dental practice mid-patient, chased, shot at, taken hostage and taken for a ride by Vince, who seems crazy, inept and yet insanely confident that “It’ll all work out” and that they’ll somehow survive, succeed and make their kids’ deadline-approaching nuptials.

“You were involved in the Bay of Pigs?”

“Involved? That was my idea!”

Their children and wives (Nancy Dussault and Arlene Golonka) are in the dark. The CIA (Ed Begley Jr.) feigns ignorance. The heavies chasing them — thugs, thieves, US Treasury agents, maybe even the CIA — include the most menacing Paul Smith, destined to play Bluto to Robin Williams’ “Popeye” the Sailor.

The New York shenanigans get loud and out of hand as Sheldon melts down, calms down and melts down again as every time he think he’s out, some fresh horror reminds him he’s not.

“Please, God, don’t let me die on West 31st Street!”

Hint — he doesn’t. I mean, they’ve got a date with a Central American firing squad in the third act, after all.

The mayhem begins at a jog, bursts into a sprint and tumbles, head-over-heels into hilarious scene after hilarious scene, with dopey lines fans can quote from memory.

The gunplay is all fun and games until they find themselves delivering the plates to General Garcia (Richard Libertini), dictator of tiny Tijuara, down Central America way. Avoiding assasins will require running “Serpentine, Shelly! Serpentine!” Because Garcia’s killers are not to be discounted.

“These are the best security men in the world. The used to work for J.C. Penney in Detroit.“

But the General, a goofy madman overly fond of his Señor Wences hand-puppet routine, runs a cut-rate firing squad. A last cigarette, but no lighter? No BLINDfolds?

“We have no blindfolds, señor. We are a poor country!”

The picture started life as a sequel to Hiller’s “Freebie and the Bean,” the first comedy to prove James Caan could be funny. But you can’t top the chemistry of Arkin and Falk, a polished double-act with Arkin amping up his reactor shtick an octave or two, and Falk worrying his Columbo-as-“The Cheap Detective” routine right into our funnybones.

It’s a movie that looks like every shootout and big action beat was filmed at 8 a.m., whose plot seems so shambolic it feels invented, on the fly, on set. The cultural references are as dated as the film stock. Just how fine a line this farce walked became obvious when Hollywood tried to remake it. No Falk. No Arkin. No dice.

Every scene sets up the next, every escalation works and every supporting player adds to the madcap complexity and comic inevitability of it all.

Every time you rewatch it, what you’ve forgotten tickles you again, what you’ve missed gives you a new grin.

Is that character-actor-in-the-making David Paymer as a New York cabbie Vince enlists in their crusade? It was the “Get Shorty” punchline’s first film role.

With the passing of time, the richness of the laughs — simple or exaggerated gestures, rising voices, underreactions and over-reactions — becomes the ultimate compliment for a classic.

It’s hilarious movie comfort food, worth watching again and again.

Some years back, I was grabbing a coffee with my then-brother-in-law at a Brooklyn cafe, when Luis leaned across the table and whispered “The In-Laws,” darting his eyes across the dining room at the one, the only, Richard Libertini.

It took me a minute to remember his name, but indeed, there he was — General Garcia in the flesh. We both glanced back to re-confirm, he caught our eyes and twinkled. We smiled and nodded, as New Yorkers or those impersonating them do. Anything more demonstrative would be uncool.

Luis and I swapped lines from the movie, quietly, giggling just as quietly.

But as he passed our table on leaving, I asked the Great Libertini, “Still no blindfolds?” He looks at Luis, whom he knew had “made” him first, leaned down conspiratorily and hissed “SERPENTINE!”

For actors, classic is any movie you’d love to be remembered for.

Rating: PG

Cast: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Nancy Dussault, Penny Peyser, Arlene Golonka, Michael Lembeck, Paul Smith, Ed Begley Jr., Richard Libertini and James Hong

Credits: Directed by Arthur Hiller, scripted by Andrew Bergman. A Warner Brothers release on Amazon, Movies!, Youtube, etc.

Running time: 1:43

Based on $16 million in previews and Friday’s numbers, which Box Office Pro notes add up to around $40 million, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is heading towards an impressive $113 million+ opening weekend, according to Deadline.com.

With the hype and the long wait since the 2018 first film in the trilogy added to ticket inflation, that adds up to triple the opening weekend take of “Into the Spider-Verse,” which pulled in a healthy $35 at the start of a long and lucrative run.

It seemed preordained to be a blockbuster, but not all the reviews were raptorous. Some of us had gripes about the inane story, the gimmickry and the visual aesthetics. But the fans were serviced, and that’s what counts.

“The Little Mermaid” opened Memorial Day weekend and pulled in $95 million and change over its first three days, scooping up another $23 on Memorial Day Monday. For its second weekend, the live-action remake of a Disney classic is chumming towards a $41 million+ take, and 50-60% falloff from its opening.

The only other wide opening new picture for the weekend is 20th Century Studios’ “The Boogeyman,” a polished and just-creepy-enough-for-the-bigscreen horror tale based on a Stephen King story that Disney had originally planned to ship straight to Hulu.

It’s doing modest business, with all the fangirls and boys amped up for “Spider-Verse,” but $11-13 million in the bank by Monday AM is nothing to sneeze at.

“Fast X” is fading, dropping to $9 million, behind “Guardians of the Galaxy” adding another $10.5. That long-in-the-tooth Marvel release is hitting the lose-lots-of-screens sag, and “Super Mario Bros.” may be finally tapping out, dropping out of the top five, earning $3.3 million or so, but at way over $560 million, all in.

“About My Father” is proving to have longer legs than the beer bust comedy, “The Machine,” edging it by a $2 million to $1.7/1.8 million margin on both films’ second weekends.

Gerard Butler’s “Kandahar” seriously underwhelmed. I guess nobody wants to see Gerry in Saudi Arabia pretending he’s in Afghanistan. It just opened, did little business and it losing a big chunk of its screens to barely make $750. It’ll be lucky to reach the $7 million mark before disappearing.

Nicole Holofcener’s “You Hurt My Feelings,” starring Julia Louis Dreyfus, might have made more noise in the fall. But it’s scraping by, another $700k or so. It won’t clear $10 million by the time it loses the last of its screens.

I’ll be updating this over the weekend as more figures come in.

When you watch “Mixed by Erry” — it’s adorable, so you should — don’t opt for the English dubbed option on Netflix. Take it in via its native tongue — Neopolitan Italian.

Few movies make it clearer that Italian is the language — hand gestures included — of negotiation, bargaining, hustling, of irritation, panic and pathos. You’re cheating yourself of some of the fun by dodging the subtitles that come with this most musical of the Romance languages.

“Mixed” is the story of three young brothers from Naples who built the second largest record distributor in Italy during the ’80s, surfing the musical curve between New Wave and the New Romantics. And we’re halfway through the story of their unlikely rise to fame and riches before someone uses the word we now know is shorthand for the theft of intellectual property like books, movies, programs and music — “Pirati!”

That’s right, the Frattasio Brothers, the pride of rough and tumble Forcello, the “fell off a truck” district of Naples, were the kings of music piracy during the Golden Age of the Cassette.

Hey, one guy’s “mixtape” is another guy’s under-the-table bargain. “Dimenticallo,” as they say in old Italy. “Fuggedaboutit.”

Sydney Sibilia, who made the equally charming and roguish “Rose Island” a few years back, tells another “true story” of Italian rascals, kids raised by their pops (Adriano Pantaleo) to make a dishonest lira.

Peppe, Angelo and Enrico, aka “Erry,” knew playing with their friends had to end when Mama (Cristiana Dell’Anna) called out, “Time to make the tea.”

Papa was bringing home empty Jack Daniels bottles to refill, and you had to brew the tea just right to match the patina of fine Tennessee whisky in the bottles, which their father would hustle in the open air market next to the train station.

But Enrico dreams bigger than that. He’s obsessed with music, and parlays that into a job at the local record shop. Years later, in 1985, Erry (Luigi D’Oriano) wants to use that encyclopedic knowledge to become a club DJ. All he lacks are the looks, swagger and charisma to pull that off.

It’s his memory for tunes, ear for the Next Big Thing and ability to gauge someone’s tastes by what they’re listening to now that will change their lives. Nobody is better at whipping up romantic, dance, etc. mixtapes than Erry. When the record store closes, he wonders if he can make a living selling those hand-labeled, curated “hits” packages to customers looking for cheap tunes. .

Hustler Peppe (Guiseppe Arena) crunches the numbers and doesn’t see that as a shady business model that works. But his new bride (Chiara Celotto), won over by the mixtape Erry made for Peppe, has heard of this fast-duplicator machine that’s revolutionized the tape business in that pre-digital age.

A visit to their local loan shark, and they’re up and running. When Peppe recruits his fellow cigarette smugglers to “change with the times” and hustle their wares, they have “distribution.”

And when older brother Angelo (Emanuele Palumbo) gets out of prison after hospitalizing a bully beating up Erry, they have their prison-polished “muscle.” The Frattasio Brothers are ready to conquer Naples, Italy and the world, a million “mixtape” cassettes at a time.

Francesco Di Leva plays the obsesssed financial crimes cop who can’t get any Naples prosecutor interested in cracking down on this crime. Until, that is, the brothers start releasing tapes of performances of the big Sanremo Song festival before it’s aired on TV.

“Pirati!” they yell.

The soundtrack — mixed, apparently, by the real life “Erry” — is peppered with the Euro-pop of the era — Kim Wilde to Eurythmics to early hip hop and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The leads are lightly amusing, with young D’Oriano giving off strong Jay Baruchel energy.

“Mixed by Erry” isn’t an awards contender, just a fun bit of history engagingly related. It’s the situations and the story — told at a bouncing, reasonably brisk pace with just enough voice-over narration to let us keep up — that make this movie.

Scared to death meeting the loan shark, overwhelmed when the big cassette manufacturer wines and dines them, buying a Lambourghini with their illicit cash, Erry wooing the music-loving customer Teresa (Greta Esposito) with his “I know what you’d like” (in Italian with subtitles, or dubbed) superpower, reveling at their peak but seeing the writing on the wall even then — it all plays.

And as anybody who ever made a mixtape knows, it’s not just the perfect songs that make it, it’s the order they’re played in. Sibilia, framing the story as a flashback from prison, gets that and once again delivers.

Ben fatto, signore. Ben fatto.

Rating: TV-MA, some violence, profanity

Cast: Luigi D’Oriano, Giuseppe Arena, Emanuele Palumbo, Chiara Celotto, Greta Esposito, Adriano Pantaleo and Francesco Di Leva

Credits: Directed by Sydney Sibilia, scripted by Armando Festa and Sydney Sibilia. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:49

There’s a moody, intimate and festival-darling short film tucked into the 105 minutes of “Esme, My Love.” But as a feature, this mild-mannered but atmospheric tale of slow-slower-slowest “rising” terror just doesn’t have enough going on to rope the viewer in.

A mother (Stacey Weckstein) drives her supposedly sickly daughter Esme (Audrey Grace Marshall) into the forest “for some fresh air.”

The child is confused and protesting this visit to the place “where we’re from,” mother Hannah’s childhood home out in the country. Mom seems troubled, distracted, with images flashing of a car accident or some other tragedy.

Is this “what happened,” or what might have happened or what might possibly happen? Hard to say.

Because director and co-writer Cory Choy has made his feature debut a film concerned with the mother-daughter dynamic, cryptic clues and a possibly idyllic/possibly-traumatic past, but not with answering questions.

Mom keeps talking about her sister, Emily. Emse looks just like her, but is annoyed with Mom’s “clingy” thing and can only be distracted by backpacking into the woods, nature, the tumbledown house they rummage through and the catamaran Mom won’t launch into the lake with her.

“You won’t be my little girl forever,” Mom tells her. True enough,” Hannah,” how Esme addresses her mother when she’s trying to get her attention. But what’s your point?

Hannah has reveries and nightmares, angelic visions and horrific forebodings.

“My past is connecting with us,” she insists. “The answers, they’re out there!”

“We have to DIG,” she also insists. So they do — in the house, around it, holes in the forest.

One can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on and what Choy and co-writer Laura Allen were going for. And the players can do their utmost to maintain the mystery while slowly ramping up the fear or sense of alarm the viewer is supposed to feel, and this still never amounts to more than a chilly shrug.

The tone is dark, the “jolts” mild and the resolution opaque, not clear enough to justify the 100 minutes that preceded it.

Rating: unrated, disturbing images

Cast: Audrey Grace Marshall, Stacey Weckstein.

Credits: Directed by Cory Choy, scripted by Laura Allen and Cory Choy. A Terror Films release.

Running time: 1:45

There’s a hint of mumblecore about this sci-fi dramedy, a COVID-inspired two-hander built around the great Sterling K. Brown and Mark Duplass.

Edgy, uncertain, cautionary and hopeful and opening July 7, or so IFC tells us.

Guilty pleasure picture or a bucket list movie for Robert Mitchum completists, Don Siegel’s “The Big Steal” is a must-see for film buffs who like their tough guys tough, their dames mouthy and their action lean and mean — simple like, see?

It’s a chase, fight and shoot-out story down Old Mexico way starring a screen icon in the making and directed by the gritty guy who would one day bring “Dirty Harry” to life. And whatever its shortcomings, minute for minute it’s as much fun as any Bogie/Huston film noir of the era, a thriller whose Mexican settings, cast and crackling dialogue make it a must-see classic.

The plot is penny-plain. An Army base payroll has been robbed and a woman (Jane Greer, from “Out of the Past,” “Twin Peaks”) robbed and wronged.

But Joan Graham isn’t the only one who’s followed the linen-suited heel Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles) South of the Border. There’s this tall, lean, no-nonsense fellow (Mitchum) with a pistol dogging Fiske’s footsteps.

Whatever name and purpose this guy gives Joan, she and we know he means business. He barges in, tosses her room, wants to know where Fiske is and where “the money” is.

She’s out of her depth but tougher than she looks. So he drags her along on Fiske’s trail, which she doesn’t seem to mind, seeing as how he stole from her and keeps making romantic promises she knows he won’t keep. But this “Blake” guy? He’s getting on her nerves.

“Stop calling me chiquita. You don’t say that to girls you don’t even know.”

“Where I learned Spanish you do.”

She’s fluent, he’s not. She’s got a convertible and they’re off, down broken highways and dirt paths, chasing the guy who knows he’s being chased, who gets caught and gets away — repeatedly.

And then there’s the trigger-happy mug (William Bendix) who appears to be chasing them, but might be after Fiske, too. After all, there’s a lot of money involved.

It wasn’t common for Hollywood to do a lot of filming in Mexico in the ’40s. Even Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flat” and Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” used mostly-California locations.

But Siegel and his cast and crew scurry through multiple Mexican cities and settings, with the usual close-to-Hollywood film ranches blended in, seamlessly scaling down the travel budget. It shows. The film looks, feels and sounds like a Mexico filmgoers didn’t see or hear in the movies of the era.

Spanish and Spanglish are mangled, and silent screen icon Ramon Novarro shows up as a charming, cagey and always-underfoot Mexican Inspector General who knows all these gringos are up to something, if only he can buy them enough drinks to get them talking.

John Ford rep-company regular John Qualen plays a rare villain — a fence out to buy the stolen Army “script.” It’s one of the few times I can remember him in a role that doesn’t require him to sling a Scandiavian accent, “by yimminy!”

But colorful supporting players and short run time aside, this is a Mitchum movie. And he serves up tough guy brawls and tough-guy talk in tasty, one-sitting servings.

“I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to turn around, Chiquita. Besides, that there’s a guy behind me with a gun. Remember?”

The car chases give rear-projection effects and dubbed tire screeching a workout, and still dazzle for all the dated fakery involved. Siegel takes the screenplay’s obstacles and finds amusing and occasionally creative ways to work the problem and get his hero and heroine in and out of jams.

Even if “The Big Steal” didn’t have a star and future star behind the camera pedigree, it would get by just on adrenalin and fun. In other words, you have your “classic” criteria, and I have mine.

Either way, this is one you don’t want to leave off that film buff’s bucket list.

Rating: “approved,” violence and quite a bit of it

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Ramon Novarro, Patric Knowles, John Qualen and William Bendix.

Credits: Directed by Don Siegel, scripted by Daniel Mainwaring and Gerald Drayson Adams. An RKO release on Amazon, Movies!, Youtube, Tubi et al.

Running time: 1:11

One of the illusions fed by the old, Darwinian model of cinema distribution was the notion that every “foreign” film must be good, if it made it all the way to North America.

A film that stirred up attention and won acclaim in Spain, France, China, Australia or Vietnam and got the attention of a distributor here, who thought it could find an audience in the U.S. and Canada, had already cleared several gatekeepers and faced judgement in a number of ways before the risk of an expensive North American release was risked.

Film festivals might tip film buffs that every movie to come out of France isn’t a masterpiece, that German comedies are rare for a reason and that Fellini, Rosellini et al are no longer the lords of Italian cinema. But some folks could say “Hollywood movies just aren’t on a par” with X, Y or Z cinema, just based on the rare jewels that every year delivered as a film import.

The content-starved streamers disabused us of that. Traveling Around the World with Netflix serves up second rate cinema from Spain, flops from France, Italian embarassments and, this month, a dog from Denmark.

The production may be polished and the cast attractive, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Danish movie as insipid and inane as “A Beautiful Life.” Even the banal title is enough to put one on notice and one’s teeth on edge.

It’s a star vehicle for Danish singer Christopher — Christopher Lund Nissen — a model/movie-star handsome pop idol with a lovely, expressive voice and — just judging by the material his character sings in the movie — a sensitive, Ed Sheeranish taste in tunes and subject matter.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But the arbitrary, illogical and contrived script tailor-made for his talents is jaw-dropping in its inanity.

“Elliott” is the hunk of the fishing docks, a reliable mate who lets his hard-pressed boss (Paw Henriksen) know that he doesn’t need that pay envelope his colleagues gripe about after every day’s catch. He lives on a roomy hulk of a boat, and when his “best friend” calls, picks up his guitar and accompanies the ambitious but musically-limited Oliver (Sebastian Jessen) at a local showcase.

When Oliver freezes-up at the indifference of the famous musician’s widow (Christine Albeck Børge) in the audience, Elliott takes over, blows everybody’s socks off, and a star is born.

Because rock-widow Suzanne ordains it. And when she comes to bail Elliott out of jail for beating an ill-tempered shipmate half to death (don’t ask), she not only vouches for him, she puts him on the payroll and summons him to the studio.

With her star-maker/manager partner (Ardalan Esmaili) and this aimless, finding-her-own-way young woman, Lilly (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) as producer, they’ll turn this bearded beauty into a pop idol.

What this really is might be described as a make-work project for Lilly, who happens to be Suzanne’s daughter with the late rock star Vincent Taylor.

Lilly has absent “Daddy” issues. Elliott has a “secret sadness.”

But they must make beautiful music together. It’s in the stars script!

Every abrupt stop on this shortcut Road to Stadium Shows is just tossed in. No decision or part of the process seems like anything more than a mandatory waypoint ordained by a checkbox screenwriting app.

Lilly falls for Elliott? Oliver returns and is just “no good” for the kid?

The songwriting “process” rendered here is laughable, although the one intended laugh lands, ever-so-lightly. As she’s sounding out the reluctant Elliot’t’s talent and tastes, Lilly asks Elliott to play something “that gives you joy.”

He picks up her legendary dad’s electric guitar, and like generations of aspiring white boy rockers before him, strums out the most basic chords in rock — the opening to Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

Every obstacle is preordained, every distraction summarily dismissed, every other step in “the process” simply skipped-over to make our boy “viral” and jump ahead to “stadium ready.”

The performances are uniformly bland. When you’re stuck playing a watered-down version of an archetype, it’s hard to give your best efforts.

The filmmakers’ indifference to anything about such stories that would make this plausible or at least interesting is astonishing. Let’s just jump right from “Smoke on the Water” to Elliott and Lilly picking out a post-coital tune on the piano he keeps on his boat (!?) and then go, pretty much, straight to the bus tour where Lilly and Elliott can get busy in the back.

But if you’ve never seen a bad Danish film, “A Beautiful Life” is reassuring at least in that regard. The Denmark of Dogme 95 cinema can produce dogs, just like everybody else.

Rating: TV-MA, some violence sex, profanity

Cast: Christopher, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas,
Christine Albeck Børge and Ardalan Esmaili and Sebastian Jessen

Credits: Directed by Mehdi Avaz, scripted by Stefan Jaworski. A Netflix release.

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