Movie Nation

One of the great gifts the cinema has bestowed on us has been the lovely third act comeback afforded writer-director Paul Schrader.

A figure from the “Taxi Driver,” “Hardcore” and “Raging Bull” era of iconoclastic American cinema, he was all but left for dead in the age of “content” and comic book cinematic juvenalia.

But here he is, Scorsese’s greatest screenwriter and a damned fine writer-director (“Cat People,” “Light Sleeper,” Light Sleeper”) in his own right, serving up stories with patience, depth, metaphor and moral and cultural topicality, our most Christian filmmaker plumbing the depths of our modern mortal souls.

Religion isn’t in the foreground of the latest from the writer/director of “First Reformed.” But it’s a subtext lying just beneath the surface of “Master Gardener,” a story of redemption and cultivating one’s way towards the renewal that every growing season promises.

The Aussie Joel Edgerton (the film “Animal Kingdom,””The Great Gatsby,” “Loving”) gives one of his finest performances as our narrator and protoganist, a true believer in the nobility of the garden and the power of working with plants to restore the soul.

“Gardening is a belief in the future,” Narvel Roth narrates, floridly filling pages of his journal with reveries of flora and pedantic asides on the history of this hobby, which he treats with the reverence of one newly-converted to the faith that saved him.

The way he talks, we might think he’s a college lecturer on the subject. But the way Narvel carries himself, the cut of his hair and the slicked-down way he wears it, suggests something harder. Narvel is a man with a past, and we know it long before he compares a particular floral scented “buzz” as “like that you get just before pulling the trigger.”

Sigourney Weaver plays his old money boss, the owner and steward of Gracewood Gardens on her family’s estate, where “four generations of curated botany, horticulture and display” is nothing to sneeze at.

Norma is patrician without being patronizing, devoted to an annual charity auction that lets her gardens raise money for Meals on Wheels, and informal enough to relish Narvel’s sarcasm about watching “grown men in pastel pants outbid each other for a flower,” even calling Narvel “Sweet Pea” with more affection than we’d think possible, considering the diffence in their classes.

But Norma needs a favor. Her troubled grandniece, daughter of an addicted daughter of her late sister, needs help straightening out her life. Maya is 20ish, “of mixed blood,” and Narvel is to take her on as a an apprentice.

Narvel asks questions of Norma, and when Maya (Quintessa Swindell of “Black Adam”) arrives, he asks more. He sizes her up, senses her past and her present. He embeds her with the garden staff, teaches and mentors her. And when her messiness cannot be hidden, he asks her a question everyone could stand to hear on occasion.

“Are you satisfied with your life?”

If you’ve read or heard anything about “Master Gardener,” you’ve figured out the pun in its title. Narvel’s big secret isn’t a secret to Norma, his U.S. Marshal Service handler (Esai Morales) or the viewer, the first time we see him peel his shirt off in the comfort of his garden cottage.

Narvel’s swastika tattoos connect with his camo-clad militant white supremacist past which we glimpse in flashbacks. This was who he used to be, a cruel “master race” cultist consumed by hate and the violence that spins out of that.

“I found a life in flowers. How unlikely is that?”

But this isn’t just his road to redemption story. “Master Gardener” is about planting seeds, culling dead or dying branches and making room for new growth. Whatever he’s held onto from that past life, he’s cultivating something in Maya that could save her.

Edgerton gives one of his most compact and introverted performances as this man “saved” by “manure” and what can grow in it. Weaver is similarly quiet, almost subdued, the very embodiment of a widowed woman of property. And Swindell slides easily into the rhythms of the world Schrader conjures up, where even the arguments have a gentility about them.

The grandniece is “impertinent,” a deadly sin in a world this ancient and ordered.

Schrader makes more melodramatic choices in the film’s later acts, some of them unfortunate. Every time you see a 50ish leading man linked romantically with a 20something beauty, the viewer is free to consider that the aged writer-director’s wish fulfillment fantasy.

But he still manages to trip up expectations, leaning into “man of violence returns to violence” genre conventions, even casting his hero and heroine into the wilderness, but letting them and his movie find their footing and their core values as they do.

There can be no renewal, after all, without a periodic and brutally unsentimental cutting, killing or trimming.

Rating: R for language, brief sexual content and nudity

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Quintessa Swindell, Esai Morales

Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Schrader. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:51

I did theater in high school, worked on shows in college.

But plainly I was missing out, not going to “Theater Camp.”

This summer release from Searchlight is so clever and tolerant it could get banned in Florida. See it while you can, boys and girls.

This looks rough and tumble, and a tad edgy.

A Middle Eastern poet and med student who gets a rep as a “Dr. Feelgood,” thanks to his hipper-than-thou, gets-around girlfriend?

As Paris Hilton would say in her day, “Sounds hot.”

June 27.

I could not WAIT to get to the Norwegian “Royalteen” sequel, “Royalteen: Princess Margrethe,” (he lied). I mean, what could top that soapy “going to high school with royalty and falling for a prince” fairytale with “real teen” sex and profanity and every other “issue” under the sun complicating the affair?

“Princess Margrethe” leaves young lovers Lena (Ines Høysæter Asserson) and the curly prince Kalle (Mathias Storhøi) behind to tell the story of the Mean Girl half of the royal Norwegian high school twins. What made her mean? What keeps the meanness going? Let’s find out!

This sequel, also based on the YA novel by Randi Fuglehaug and Anne Gunn Halvorsen, is marginally more interesting because of all the things that hang over someone labeled “Miss Perfect” and “The Most Beautiful Woman in Norway” by the European press.

Margrethe, as interpreted by Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne, has family responsibilities and a paranoia borne of a press and culture that’s just waiting for her and others in her family to take a wrong step.

That’s one reason why she was so freaked out by her brother’s crush on the “experienced” and complicated commoner Lena. But that’s not why Margrethe fainted at the prom in the last scene of “Royalteen.”

The opening of “Princess Margrethe” shows her being wheeled into the hospital and a doctor telling her and her parents about all the drugs in her system.

“Keeping this quiet” is only going to cover up so much. Flashbacks to that night remind Margrethe how she got so messed up, and the overly-attentive boy who got her that way.

Margrethe spends this sequel fretting over video that creep recorded that might get out, over the flirty Prince of Denmark not named Hamlet (Sammy Germain Wadi), whether to carry on with aspiring DJ Arni (Filip Bargee Ramberg), her brother’s pal and a guy who knows her better than anyone and pondering the state of the monarchy, her image and what is going on with her parents’ marriage.

Margrethe feels pressured by the one friend she has in the world (Amalie Sporsheim) to do what teenagers do and lose her virginity. But to whom? Prince Alexander of Denmark? Arni? Gustav the possible blackmailer?

Getting drunk widens her playing field to a stranger who protectively takes her home.

“You know, you HAVE to sleep with me,” she hiccups. “It’s in the con…consti…constiTUtion.”

Through it all, her depressed and often bedridden mother’s (Kirsti Stubø) words of warning hang over her (in Norwegian with subtitles, or dubbed into English).

“It’s not like we’re normal people.”

But in most ways, they are.

The misunderstandings are just as lame as in “Royalteen,” the “mysteries” are just as contrived and guessable.

But there are a few cute, if seriously cliched moments. As blah as it all seems to the jaded adults in the room, “Margrethe” might fill the bill for teens who want to see that “royalty has the same issues everybody else does” and live vicariously in this milieu, a “teen princess” movie with a profane, sexual and pharmaceutical edge.

Rating: TV-MA, substance abuse, sexual situations, a little nudity, profanity

Cast: Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne, Filip Bargee Ramberg, Sammy Germain Wadi, Frode Winther, Amalie Sporsheim, Kirsti Stubø, Mathias Storhøi and Ines Høysæter Asserson.

Credits: Directed by  Ingvild Søderlind, scripted by Marta Huglen Revheim, Ester Schartum-Hansen and Per-Olav Sørensen, based on the book by Randi Fuglehaug and Anne Gunn Halvorsen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

Holofcener made Catherine Keener a star, and gave Jennifer Aniston one of her best roles.

This looks wonderful.

“Knights of the Zodiac” is an adequately-budgeted action fantasy about young warriors recruited to protect or attack the reincarnation of the Greek goddess Athena, warriors identified by their connection to an inner power/”Force” called Cosmos.

No, it has nothing to do with the science TV series based on the book by Carl Sagan. Yes, it has a lot of similarities to every other YA sci-fi/fantasy thingamabob that’s ever come down the pike.

Based on a manga/Japanese comic book series, it isn’t cast and played as “young” as say “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.” But it’s still pretty childish in its setting, derivative plotting, actions beats, heroines and heroes.

Japanese American singer-actor Mackenyu — please don’t make fun of the name, or the fact that this chap figures he gets to go by one name when his level of fame suggests maybe that’s an overreach — stars as Seiya, whose older sister was snatched when he was a child.

He got a hint of her “Cosmos” power when he grabbed at her magic medallion necklace one time. As a haunted adult, he’s still looking for her, and of course cage-fighting in an underground octagon to make ends meet.

Just as he’s getting his butt whipped by the brute Cassios (Nick Stahl), he summons up that dormant power. That alerts rich-guy recruiter Alman Kido (Sean Bean) to his existence and whereabouts, and summons the minions of Alman Kido’s sinister ex-wife Vander Guraad (Famke Janssen).

In a flash, our hero has to choose a side, which of course means he’ll be taken in by the guy protecting the new goddess Athena, born Sienna (Madison Iseman), a spoiled “rich girl” to Seiya. He’ll have to train, learn to use his powers, ponder the mystery of his missing sister, resist the temptations of Vander Guraad and eventually “save” Athena when the chips are down.

Or not.

The fight scenes have cool slo-mo effects, and the best of them come from the pre-“Knights of the Zodiac” armor that Seiya acquires as he masters his powers. The octagon action has some decent wirework — spinning, floating kicks and what not.

The acting is never really bad, just indifferent. Even old pros Bean and Janssen can’t summon up much enthusiasm for this silliness. Mackenyu shows off a few martial arts moves early on. But once you’ve got magic powers and armor, the brawls turn “Transformers” dull and CGI.

The running “gag” is “You don’t know when to quit, do you?” And the rest of the dialogue is either too bland to bother quoting or standard issue “You should have DIED when you had the chance!”

The limited sci-fi “tech” we see is mainly this Opsrey-styled jet-powered transport.

Fans of the comics will certainly get more out of it than newbies like me. All we see is all the other middling YA sagas it resembles, borrows from and fails to match or improve upon.

Rating: PG-13, violence

Cast: Mackenyu, Famke Janssen, Madison Iseman, Nick Stahl, Diego Tinoco, Caitlin Hudson and Sean Bean

Credits: Directed by Tomasz Baginski, scripted by Josh Campbell, Matt Stueken and Kiel Murray based on the manga/comic series by Masami Kurumada. A Sony release.

Running time: 1:5

Based on a video game, inspired by themed restaurant nightmare palaces like Chuck e Cheese and Showbiz Pizza, home of the Rock a Fire Explosion.

Got to like the horror hooks built into this one.

“Faithfully Yours” is a Dutch thriller about wives who cheat and what the almost-as-dishonest mistrusting men who married them might be capable of if they find out. It’s a subtly-acted slow-starter, with a fine, flashy finish, a “solid” genre piece that never quite crosses over into riveting.

Bracha Van Doesburg plays Bodil, a no-nonsense domestic court judge who lives for her weekend’s away from it all. Or so we gather.

She’s got a little boy she dotes on and a husband who indulges (Nasrdin Dchar) her getaways. They drop her off at the train station, and we start to figure out something is up.

She and her pal Isabel (Elise Schaap) go over their elaborate schedule for this little Belgian (Ostend) get away. But as they pass intructions over this lecture, that play, etc., they share burner phones. They discuss timing, places where “I’ll do your social” media while “I’ll be seen” here.

They’re plotting their latest little “fling.” Or “flings.” They’re supposed to be in the beach house Bo inherited from her aunt. But Isa checks into a hotel, bedazzles herself and hits the club for a little easy interaction and uncomplicated intercourse.

Bo? The judge who decides who is “fit” to have child custody, and the like? She picks up strangers, including the somewhat famous “philosopher” (Matteo Simoni) who gives a talk about how “To Lie the Truth” which she attends.

It’s all modestly kinky right up to the moment Bo comes in from a swim and finds a bloody crime scene — with no body — in the beach house.

Yes, she calls the cops. No, she doesn’t tell them the whole truth, or really much of it all. The blood was Isa’s, and when her clingy and neurotic novelist husband (Gijs Naber) and Bo’s other half Milan show up, keeping her story straight with each of them, and with the leery lady cops (Sofie Decleir and Anna De Ceulaer) is going to be a challenge.

When will she have the time to figure out what’s happened to her friend, and if it was something awful, whodunit?

Director and co-writer André van Duren — “The Fury” and “Gang of Oss” were his — doesn’t get all the paranoia he might have wrung out of this material and Doesburg’s performance of it. Bo doesn’t seem much more than puzzled by all this confusion, all the fingers pointing in this or that direction.

If this poker-faced turn is meant to keep the viewer confused about what she’s confused by, and what she might be in on, it doesn’t allow for much viewer investment in the character or rising suspense in fear for her fate.

We never get a hint that she’s frantic to keep her secret, and her friend’s, never fret when she’s a suspect, when the menfolk seem to start figuring out what’s really been going on during these junkets to Belgium.

That softens the impact a bit when the film’s third act starts to deliver some real punches.

Still, “Faithfully Yours” is mysterious enough and thoughfully plotted enough to hold one’s interest. I know it held mine.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Bracha Van Doesburg, Elise Schaap, Nasrdin Dchar, Gijs Naber, Matteo Simoni, Hannah Hoekstra, Anna De Ceulaer and Sofie Decleir

Credits: Directed by André van Duren, scripted by  Elisabeth Lodeizen, Paul Jan Nelissen and André van Duren. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

Are you sold on this dark horror comedy with a “Get Out” racial edge?

Here’s your deal closing trailer.

June 16.

That epic motorcycle stunt Tom Cruise was showing off last year? It’s here.

Lot of names in the cast, aside from the usual suspects.

The villain? He’s an anti-vaxxer. Not the character, the actor. Used to follow him on Twitter.

July 12.