Movie Nation

A Sundance Film Fest darling comes out July 7, from A24.

Reason #19 you don’t want to sit next to Rodg at the movies. There’s always the chance I’m going to mutter the movie critic’s “quiet part out loud” judgement despite my best efforts not to.

“Boy, this has absolutely nothing that holds my interest” I found myself grumping very early in “Assassin Club,” an opinion that the remaining 100 minutes did not change.

It’s another star vehicle for hunky leading man Henry Golding, a “Crazy Rich Asian” with a seriously uneven post-“Crazy” track record in movies. “Snake Eyes?” “The Gentlemen?” “Last Christmas?” “Persuasion?”

Here, he’s a hired-killer who finds himself hunting and hunted by his fellow assassins as someone is putting out contracts on everybody who keeps a roof over her or his head via murdering people for money.

Sam Neill plays the glib, posh, harpsichord-playing epicurean who chatters away on the phone as “Morgan” (Golding) lines up his next shot.

“You love the sound of your own voice, don’t you, old man?”

When Morgan himself takes a bullet, handler Caldwell barely interrupts his latest pricy glass of wine to quip “little flesh wound, here and there, part of the job” before bringing up the next assignment.

It’s a multi-hit, multi-million dollar contract, a sort of “game,” really. But Morgan wants out of what Caldwell insists is still “good, necessary work,” taking out arms dealers, human traffickers and the like.

As Caldwell knows there are but “three reasons” people like his “gold standard” killer end their careers — “They find God, they find a woman” or they “die.” — we guess it’s the Italian school teacher Sophie (Daniella Melchior), who knows nothing of her lover’s injurious and deadly line of work, who motivates Morgan’s desire to be done with killing.

Noomi Rapace plays an Interpol-ish exec trying to track down the killers and those who are killing them.

Because whoever paid that big contract apparently offered it to others. Every hired killer in Europe (lots of second unit footage takes us from Prague to Paris to Portugal) is killing off every other hired killer.

It’s kill or be killed, with Caldwell giving the cell phone delivered resume of each target.

“Yuko is a martial arts master most feared for her bladework, with perhaps some lingering ‘Daddy’ issues.”

The fights are OK, the shootouts nothing to remember, the chases are passable and the killings themselves perfunctory.

In the pre-TV era mediocrities like “Assassin Club” were labeled programmers. Get a few stars featured in a generic plot and it might look like an “A-picture” but the studios, which then owned their own theater chains, knew better. It was just to keep lower-cost fresh content on their screens so that they didn’t lose their shirts between hits.

Those lesser films became “direct to video” in a later era. “Straight to streaming” we call them today.

The screenwriter of the Wes Bentley bomb “The Perfect Witness” plotted this one, and hasn’t improved in the decades since that barely-released “programmer” came and went. The indifferent direction here has neither flare nor signs of rank incompetence.

So the only reason to see it is the cast, right? But in or out of action, Golding isn’t anybody’s idea of a big draw, and pitting him against “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Rapace, and pairing him up with Neill as the upper class Brit who gives the assassin his assignments doesn’t change that.

Rating: R, lots of violence, some profanity

Cast Henry Golding, Sam Neill, Daniella Melchior, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Anastasia Doaga and Noomi Rapace.

Credits: Directed by Camille Delamarre, scripted by Thomas Dunne. A Paramount+ release.

Running time: 1:51

Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, “Under the Sea.” Mon.

Let’s see what the fuss is about

Every now and then, a film comes along that could pass for the quintessence of what we used to mean when we invented the phrase “indie cinema.”

That label implies personal stories, an intimacy created between characters and the viewer, a talented cast that can be from “Hollywood” but rarely “OF” Hollywood, and locations off the cinematic beaten path.

“Stay Awake” is a soft, sentimental stroll through a “coming of age” story, a film that could have been inspired by “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” for reasons both obvious and more subtle.

Like many a coming-of-age tale, it’s about growing up in a provincial place and resolving to get out even as obstacles to that tug at the heart and soul. Here, the anchor that’s holding back two brothers — one an aspiring actor, the younger an aspiring writer with Ivy League dreams — is their depressed, morbidly obese and overdose-prone mother.

She’s sensitively played by Chrissy Metz of TV’s “This is Us,” cast for the first time as someone whose appearance betrays our baser instincts when we see someone that overweight. She’s got a problem.

They title “Stay Awake” comes from brothers Derek (Wyatt Oleff) and Ethan (Fin Argus). It’s what they shout whenever they’re pleading with their mother, singing songs from movies and begging her to ID “Everybody’s Talking” from “Midnight Cowboy” or “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“Look at me! Look at me. Stay AWAKE!”

One brother or the other has found Mom Michelle unreponsive. Again. The other brother’s been fetched to help get her in the car for yet another urgent dash to the small Virginia town’s emergency room, where everybody knows their name.

Older brother Derek is the one inclined to be supportive and cut the woman some slack. He works at the bowling alley, and having graduated a couple of years before, goes out on auditions with dreams of landing a big TV commercial — Virginia Tourism in particular. Derek is still dating high school “girls” in his 20s, and that’s not good. Melanie (Cree Cicchino) sees through him.

“Why do you always gave to put a ‘bow’ on everything?”

Ethan is the brother willing to put his foot down, making “rehab” and “psychiatric commitment” threats. He is the more “parentified child,” the audience’s “tough love” surrogate.

“We’re DONE. We’re not searching for you ANY more!”

Ethan’s ready to go to college, has good news from two schools, one of which he never told his “We’ll go to (Virginia) Tech together!” girlfried at the Jolly Cow Drive-in (Quinn McColgan) about.

But here’s another and then another triggering moment for his mother, another trick she’s played to get her couldn’t-care-less doctor to refill her prescription, another controlled-panic race to the hospital.

She isn’t able to control herself enough to stop torturing her sons.

As you’d expect, “Stay Awake” is a soft-spoken film. The rare outburst can be jarring, or comical, as in the tirade Ms. Va. Tech Hokie launches into when she discovers Ethan’s “secret.”

First-time feature writer-director Jamie Sisley, expanding on a earlier short film, keeps the tone quiet and kind of exhausted. Everybody here is spent. And the narrative is given just enough problem-solving to keep the story honest about the limited and limiting choices everyone in this family faces thanks to Mom’s illness.

Yes, it’s sentimental and leans towards the soft side, even in its edgier moments. But “Stay Awake” is more about a situation and a story that will resonate with a lot of people than it is a New Direction in Indie Film.

That’s what intimate cinema like this has always done best — put believable characters in “lived in” places, in real world situations where the stakes are small but terminal and pretty damned important to those affected.

Whatever happens to this family, you can bet your last dollar that one and all who survive will damned sure “come of age.”

Rating: unrated, adult addiction subject matter, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Wyatt Oleff, Fin Argus, Cree Cichino, Quinn McColgan and Chrissy Metz

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jamie Sisley. A Mar Vista release.

Running time: 1:33

Laure Calamy and Olivia Cote co star with French speaking Brit queen Kristin Scott Thomas.

July 14, a mid summer vacation at the movies.

I wasn’t inclined to truth “Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway,” a somewhat soapy and heavy-handed drama about a child welfare case that turns into an international incident as it slow-walks towards the cliche that “No one can love a child as much as its mother” conclusion.

It’s a movie overrun with villainous archetypes — from an abusive husband to patriarchal in-laws, patronizing, sexist lawyers and smirking and inhumane Norwegian child welfare workers.

But it’s based on a true story, and if it’s told from an Indian perspective, its biases are understandable and defensible. If you’ve ever been a parent, it’s almost guaranteed to outrage you and sometimes tug at the heartstrings.

We meet Debika Bannerjee, played with great empathy and heart by Rani Mukerji, on her Worst Day Ever. She’s a traditional Indian wife who has made a life for herself in Norway with her shipping port executive husband Anirban (Anirban Bhattacharya).

And when we see them, their children are being spirited away by blonde Scandinavian welfare workers. Debika is beyond shocked and distraught, as most any mother would be.

The director and co-writer Ashima Chibber, a veteran of hundreds of episodes of Indian TV, then shows us how it came to this.

He works, she stays at home. He’s distracted by his job and the Norwegian citizenship he’s sought since he moved there long before marrying Debika. He dotes on his kids, but child -rearing, house cleaning and meal prep aren’t a man’s job, Anirban figures.

The social workers who spend months observing immigrant families notice that, and wonder if that is Debika’s “choice.” They hear that he has a temper and can see the house is cluttered with toys. And we see their noses turn up and the edges of their mouths turn down when they see Debika mix up some dairy curd dish with her fingers and feed it, with those same fingers, into her five year-old’s eager mouth.

The boy and their baby sleep in their bed with them. And when Anirban’s temper leads him and his wife out of the room to bicker, in Hindi (subtitled), about all the ways she hasn’t assimilated and is thus triggering much scribbling on clibboards by the Norwegian “Velferd” ladies, their kids are grabbed and hustled into a state-owned SUV.

Our jaws, as viewers, drop. But Debika flips out, chasing the car, pounding on windows, falling down in the street with those inhuman Norske automatons videoing her “unstable” and “unbalanced” behavior, which they’ll use against her in justifying this kidnapping.

The film proceeds from what looks like “just a misinderstanding” through the many months Mrs. Chatterjee fights this seeming injustice as her already-strained marriage unravels, she refuses to abide by Norwegian decorum in and out of court and takes extreme “Not Without My Daughter” and then international incident measures to retrieve her children when the system refuses to let them go.

In reserved, buttoned down and accept authority Norway, she has to seem like the hysteric they label her to be.

The seemingly “open and shut case” has all these revelations that turn a black and white story into shades of grey. When we see how her husband turns on her with a “This is all YOUR fault,” we can guess just how ugly things have been how much uglier they can get.

The system, which pays for foster care and pays for lawyers to supposedly represent those caught up in that “system,” is ripe for corruption. European Union laws and regulations may also come into play. Debika buys into the conspiratorial side of what is happening and as The State refuses to back down, listen to reason or have a heart.

“We want your children to have the best opportunities available to them in Norway” (in Norwegian, with English subtitles) gives voice to the implicit bigotry of a Western culture imposing its values on Easterners who believe in ancient homeopathic medicine, a more patriarchal society and feeding your child with your hands, which the screenplay suggest is what REALLY got the Norwegians’ dander up.

But a host country insisting that she “Be more integrated with Norwegian society,” is making a reasonable request. Debika is told this by the courts and chewed-out even by her own court-appointed lawyer (Jim Sarbh) when she protests at this injustice.

“Let’s just follow the rules,” her citizenship-obsessed spouse advises.

In Hollywood genre-speak, this is a “Stella Dallas” variation, a tale of how far a mother will go and just what she’ll sacrifice to make a better life for her child. And aside for that occasionally heavy-handed moment, and being a tad slow, with four or five musical flashback interludes that pad the running time, it’s not bad.

Mukerji and the screenplay let us consider this woman’s flaws, her humanity and her fury, and then upends our “close call” judgments as we learn more about her and come to see her point of view.

If The System’s best evidence is video of someone freaking out because an uncaring, overreaching entity is grabbing her children, they’ve already lost. And if her own family can’t see that, they’re just as lost.

This Around the World with Netflix tale succeeds on the most basic level every imported international feature film must, by letting us see a story we can take sides on, and forcing us to see another culture’s point of view as we do.

Rating: TV-14, profanity, domestic violence

Cast: Rani Mukerji, Anirban Bhattacharya,
Balaji Gauri, Barun Chanda, Sara Soulié and Jim Sarbh

Credits: Directed by Ashima Chibber, scripted by Ashima Chibber, Rahul Handa and Sameer Satija .A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:13

Are they finally wrapping this decades-dominating franchise this time out? Because how do you top Jason Momoa, EGOT/Goat Rita Moreno and Her Majesty, Helen Mirren, all in the same film?

It opens Friday.

A lightly fiesty performance by Leslie Uggams in the title role and a general feel-good vibe are the chief recommendations of “Dotty & Soul,” a plucky but corny comedy from actor turned writer, director and star Adam Saunders.

The movie’s got some clever plot ideas and the odd moment of amusing sass from Uggams, a veteran of 1960s TV who’s had a career renaissance thanks to a killer recurring character in “Deadpool” and TV’s “Empire.” The reliably vile David Koechner makes an amusing fat cat villain. But the script doesn’t have much spark, and Saunders, writing himself a co-starrring role, never rises above “bland” as a screen presence and comic foil.

Saunders plays Ethan Cox, a hotshot Dallas tech entrepreneur whose Big Idea is a self-driving luxury car non-sharing ride-share company. Private Car will pick you up and deliver you in style in a Ferrari, a high end Beemer or in Ethan’s case, a vintage self-driving Bentley.

Now a big ride-share operator wants to buy him and his venture capital backer Brannigan (Koechner) out.

Uggams is Dotty, a 71 year-old vending machine franchisee and general fixer for her wide circle of mostly elderly, working class friends, including the residents of Creekside Nursing Home, where Ethan’s mom (dementia) lives and old Mr. Eichelbaum (M. Emmet Walsh) pushes her wheelchair and nurses his diabetes between Dotty’s snack-machine replenishings.

The great coup that makes Private Car so valuable and a company for “the future” is a local ordinance Ethan and Brannigan pushed through in a tony Dallas suburb, banning “public transportation.”

His high-end ride share service just might be the only game in town, thanks to that. And if that ordinance isn’t the most Texas thing ever, I don’t know what is. And like other legislation from that bad idea incubator state, it could catch on.

Dotty can’t get around without buses, and nobody in her income bracket could afford Private Car or any other pricy ride share alternative. She and her aspiring clothier daughter (Margot Bingham) are already way behind on the rent.

Not Ethan’s problem. He’s too busy wearing bedazzled cowboy pimpwear in the company of his influencer and “future trophy wife” (Alexis Ren), hitting the clubs, dropping the Benjamins.

Until, that is, a private party that he shows up for in Hammer pants sees him tempted to don blackface to complete the M.C. Hammer impersonation. He goes viral in a bad way, and could lose it all if he can’t find a “person of color” to be his “stooge” to front the company so that it can sell.

Hey Dotty, ol’ buddy, ol’pal!

She’s down to cover for his “tired ass white boy ignorance.” But it’s going to cost him.

And being a savvy businesswoman from an era when Black women didn’t get the same opportunities as Jewish frat-bros who change their name to “pass,” she’s got ideas and she’s not shy about shaking things up.

The banter here goes down easily — too easily.

“You’re faker’n a Chinatown handbag” is kind of “racist,” and worse, it’s as edgy as this thing gets. Even Koechner can’t kick things up to the notch they need to reach for “Dotty & Soul” (pun titles are almost always a mistake) to come off.

Saunders is never as colorful as his costumes and never lifts his performance to the height of his hairdo, making him the dead weight at the heart of a movie he wrote and directed as a stardom-making vehicle.

Which is a shame, because the movie has an earnest, class-divide/transportation “future” message. The packaging that message comes in is so watered-down it lands like a raindrop, not a comically cold ice bucket challenge shock.

Rating: unrated, PG-ish

Cast: Leslie Uggams, Adam Saunders, David Koechner, Margot Bingham, Alexis Ren and M. Emmet Walsh.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Adam Saunders. A Quiver release.

Running time: 1:28

Yeah. “Inspired by a true story.”

Djimon Hounsou and Archie Madekwe co-star.

August.