Movie Nation

With women’s rights and leadership role in society under assualt in many corners of the world, the time seems right for a fresh look at Egypt’s “Queen Cleopatra,” an “iconic” woman “who bowed to no man,” as producer/narrator Jada Pinkett Smith says in the opening narration of the new Netflix docu-drama series.

The historical record leaves little doubt. Cleopatra she was smart, cunning even, a shrewd operator in a politically-turbulent time.

“Vixen or strategist, collaborator of maverick,” the actress and podcaster/influencer Smith wonders in that narration? Whatever “her truth,” this much is undeniable. She “walked through the sandstorm of history and left footprints so deep that no man could ever erase them.”

This four part biography — tracing her from the day she took the pharoanic throne with her “husband/brother” Ptolemy XIII through her trials, alliances and dalliances with first Julius Caesar and then his protege Mark Antony (whom she married) and to her fall and death — recreates the key moments in her life and career in a modern vernacular with a British headed by Adele James, a Black British actress who backs up a central assertion of this series.

Cleopatra wasn’t just a tough, brilliant woman. She wasn’t just “Egyptian.” She was Black. And rolling this out now not only refutes “traditional” Western depictions of the queen (Liz Taylor et al), it beats the big screen “Cleopatra” starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot of all people to the punch by a year or more, Egyptian lawsuits be damned.

That assertion of her racial heritage, like much of what’s in this account of Cleopatra’s life, seems perfectly defensible. Let’s bring out the historians, air that thesis out and let young Cleo tame the epic Afro she’s wearing when we meet her into something more regal when she dons the crown.

But that’s where “Queen Cleopatra” trips up.

The Oprah-acolyte Smith’s assertion that this is “Her Truth” is telling. So is the first assertion of Cleopatra’s race introduced in the series.

“My grandma told me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school. Cleopatra was Black!”

Oh really? Professor Shelley P. Haley is the retired Hamilton U. academic who says that, and who has to know granny isn’t exactly an unimpeachable authority on the matter. It’s not the last “Oh really?” this “history” runs up against.

“Everyone can imagine her in their own way,” another of the six-and-only-six experts appearing on camera here asserts.Oh really?

Still, the series does a decent job of making the case that since we don’t know who Cleopatra’s mother was, only that her father was the Macedonian descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Ptolemy XII Auletes. So it’s possible and indeed acceptable, based on the little contemporary art and few contemporary accounts describing her, that she was of Nubian/Macedonian (Greek) descent and darker skinned than your average Egyptian of the day.

But the approach here is limited, more History Channel (“History Channel lite”) in its authority than your typical PBS or BBC produced history.

The historians and authors — one is a “PhD candidate” — are almost all women and their use of “emojis” and “ghosted” and other Twitter vernacular in making sweeping statements about “the Egyptian people LOVED her” and “the Roman elite were DISGUSTED by her” can’t help but make them come off as lightweights.

The titles that list their credentials leave off where most of them teach, giving the impression of the producers cherry-picking “performers” without necessarily having the imprimatur of “tops in their field.”

That’s VERY History Channel, BTW.

The settings for the reenactments are decent if inexpensive. The reenactments themselves are a tad stiff, occasionally perfunctory, not quite “The Tudors” sexual, but with the stilted (Brit-accented) Speech of History sprinkled with more approachable, common usages.

“You can’t share my bed and LIE to me!”

While “Queen Cleopatra” can be relied upon to relate her Greatest Hits — the smuggled-in-to-an-audience-with-Caesar-rolled-up-in-a-rug business “probably never happened,” but hell, let’s re-enact anway — it lacks the gravitas to come off as anything that truly rewrites her story.

The scripts set up a thesis — that she was an agent of her own destiny, not just swept along with it, that she was accomplished, learned and cunning and Black — and never quite closes the deal.

If you’re going to make a Big Assertion about her race, even one that’s more generally accepted now than ever before, why not hunt down more historians to talk about that? If Rome was “DISGUSTED” by her, why doesn’t one of these academics ponder the notion that plebian Rome might have been, you know, racist?

Limiting your scope, cheaping out on the research and then cutting corners on the least expensive part of the production — “experts” — just makes us wonder if you had trouble finding lots of accomplished historians to back you up. And no, they don’t have to be old, white men to be “accomplished.” I was waiting for that one voice pushing back against this or that, and it never comes.

Make your assertion, then make your case, covering as many sides of the debate as possible. Because the rest of us aren’t going to take grandma’s or Jada Pinkett Smith’s word for it, even if we never miss an installment of her podcast.

Rating: TV-14, violence, sexual situations

Cast: Adele James, Craig Russell, John Partridge, Andira Crichlow, Callum Banforth, narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith.

Credits: Created/produced by Ben Goold, and Jada Pinkett Smith and Jimmy Abounouom. A Netflix release.

Running time: 4 episodes @50 minutes each.

“The Wind and the Reckoning” is the poetic title of a modestly-budgeted but informative and sometimes moving historical thriller set during the days of The Republic of Hawaii.

That was the government set up by an American-backed coup in the 1890s that ousted the island chain’s traditional rulers in favor of an non-native Hawaiian oligarchy that would run things while lobbying Washington to claim Hawaii as a territory.

The film, a history lesson written by the screenwriter of “Hidalgo,” “The Forbidden Kingdom” and “The Highwaymen,” tells the true story of a Leper War which errupted in 1893, a fight over forced resettlement of those infected with the disease — imported to Hawaii by foreigners in the mid-19th century.

The new “white” government took policies meant to curb leprosy — one of several imported contagions which the natives had no immunity against — to draconian extremes, arresting people thought to be infected via a “bounty” system which had armed men looking for lepers to ship off the the colony set up on the remote, almost unreachable Kalaupapa peninsula.

The story is told by Pi’ilani (Lindsahy Marie Anuhea Watson), the young bride of a native Hawaian cowboy, Ko’olau, played by Jason Scott Lee. They work on “Uncle” Sinclair’s (Patrick Gilbert) ranch until that day that word gets out their young surfer son (Kahiau Perreira) is sick. Ko’olau is breaking out, too, but not Pi’ilani.

They make plans to flee, but the sheriff (Matt Corboy) and a posses of ruffians (one of them is played by the late Lance Kerwin) charge in before they can escape, a stand-off over “legitimate” authority ensues, shots are fired and “haole” blood is spilled.

The family is on the run into the jungles and up the cliffs of Kauai. The new government decides to make an example of the trio and sends a mercenary force led by an Army beteran (Henry Ian Cusick) and a Hawaiian-born tracker and marshal (Johnathan Schaech).

The family throws in with other fleeing locals, who could prove to be a thorn in the side of a new “republic” whose legitimacy is very much in doubt, with a Democratic president and much of the U.S. decrying “imperialism,” and not just the version practiced in Europe.

That’s an awful lot of baggage for this slim script to tote, and with a lot of Hawaiian language sequences (with subtitles) further complicating matters. So screenwriter John Fusco skips over some of it and leaves out much more.

Getting into the whole business of the connection between the “President” Dole running the new “republic” and the big fruit concern that would begin just as the U.S., under a new Republican president, would take possession of the islands, would be messy, so that’s probably wise.

But lacking some of that context robs the picture of the stakes of this uprising, and leaves us with a simple on-the-lam-from-the-law pursuit through some of the most gorgeous scenery on Earth.

And director David L. Cunningham may know Hawaii (“Running for Grace” was his). But the guy who made “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising” has a very hard time keeping this picture on the run. It sort of stumbles from fight to fight.

Lee makes a sturdy lead, Watson a passionate keeper of the family faith and Cusick a fine racist, murderous and alcoholic villain. But the confrontations turn repetitive and the connecting scenes lack the urgency of “running for our lives.”

Other characters (Kelemete Misipeka plays “the judge”) give the film local color, as if the cliffs, jungles and farmland of Hawaii wasn’t enough.

But a few emotional moments, a couple of exciting firefights and a lot of murky debate about the issues, the politics and the morality of what’s happened to the government and what could happen to the people leave “The Wind and the Reckoning” with an incomplete feeling.

Which is why I’ve provided “for further reading” links. The story absolutely demands them.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Jason Scott Lee, Lindsay Marie Anuhea Watson, Ron Yuan, Kahiau Perreira, Matt Corboy, Kelemete Misipeka, Lance Kerwin, Henry Ian Cusick and Johnathan Schaech.

Credits: Directed by David L. Cunningham, scripted by John Fusco. A Lynmar release.

Running time: 1:34

“Velvet Jesus” is an indie melodrama that tumbles into the obvious trap, the one symbolized by its title.

It’s so slow it’s static, like watching the paint dry on a paint-by-numbers “velvet Jesus” kit that a little boy, seen in flashback, wanted for Christmas back in the 1960s.

Directors Anthony Bawn and Spencer Collins and screenwriter Charles McWells dreamed up a period piece of reckoning — a wronged gay man confronting an abusive step father in 1986 Watts. But their dream dramatically flatlines from the opening credits onward.

It’s a two-hander,with most of the action confined to a cluttered, run-down house within sight of the Watts Towers. A Watts Chronicle reporter (Jensen Atwood) shows up to interview an old man (Ernest Harden, Jr.) for a story about “Black veterans.”

But “reporter” Carl takes no notes. He wears glasses and an ill-fitting hat sits atop his ’80s Afro. He may ask Vernon about his early life and service. But Carl isn’t here for that. And when the deception fails, out comes a snub-nosed ’38.

Carl wants to have a conversation with the man who called him “Carol” and worse as a sensitive, effeminate “special” child growing up in the ’60s.

The evening-long “debate” is tepidly written and sluggishly filmed and edited. The dialogue is of the “I was a little tough on you growing up. You NEEDED it” variety, with the stepson’s complaints about Vernon’s drinking “bringing out the EVILness in you” and stepdad dissecting the man he wanted to make out of Carl, his idea of the “N-word” and his “side of the story” every time Carl speaks of a wrong done to him nearly 20 years before.

The acting isn’t great, something partly attributable to the tentative editing, not knowing how to cut for maximum engagement with the characters, and pacing.

Some of the “action” — an escape attempt — is off camera. The violent climax, however, is put on screen, and is so amateurishly executed it too should have been kept off camera.

It’s a story with limited aims and ambitions, although perhaps it has personal and heartfelt meaning to those who created it. No matter what its larger aims, “Velvet” seizes up, right from the start, as we’re treated to four lengthy minutes of Carl getting out of the shower, painstakingly getting dressed for this meeting with his past, actions set to a smoky trumpet jazz score.

The pace never picks up from that slow-walk pedestrian opening, making “Velvet Jesus” a half hour movie stretched to 102 tedious, uninvolving minutes.

Rating: unrated, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Ernest Harden Jr., Jensen Atwood.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Bawn and Spencer Collins, scripted by Charles McWells. A Breaking Glass release.

Running time: 1:42

It seems so long since I’d reviewed a new Woody Allen film that I had to look up to see whether this was related to his long-time-coming “cancellation,” or the fact that his days of having decent distribution passed sometime during the middle years of the Obama administration.

I lost interest in his “movie a year, whether I have a good idea or not” ouevre somewhere around “Hollywood Ending (2002).” You interview him or read others’ interviews with him too many times, hear about his “process” (an idea for a film scribbled on an index card and stowed in desk drawer), listen to enough versions of his Bergman/Fellini et al fixation and see enough of his films and it becomes impossible to not see what shallow, verbose, pretentious twaddle so many of them are.

A “Midnight in Paris” or “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” seem like aberrations in a parade of dull, portentous, famous writer/painter/composer/filmmaker name-dropping screenplays filled with characters who don’t sound or act like human beings, but rather imitations of other writers’ plays.

I think it was the absurdly over-praised “Blue Jasmine” when I had my epiphany. “He hasn’t been out in public with normal people having normal conversations since the ’70s,” I figured. His most arch scripts sound like Tennessee Williams affectations, without the drawl.

Forty to fifty years of the former Allen Konisgberg working out his college dropout guilt and Man of Letters insecurity by littering screenplays with “I can reference Mahler, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Bergman, see? SEE?” grew wearying, to say the least.

His days of A-list actors yearning to be “summoned” to be in a Woody Allen film are mercifully gone. And without any hint of star power and Hollywood’s ensuing Oscar adoration, what you’re left with is “Rifkin’s Festival,” a flat, lukewarm glass of Spanish sidra without anything to recommend it beyond the lovely San Sebastian scenery and the fact that it is what is alleged to be Allen’s next to last film. Ever.

Playwright Wallace Shawn became a film actor in Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979), gained fame with “My Dinner With Andre”(1981) and earned his “In-con-CIEV-able” screen immortality with “The Princess Bride”(1987). But while the gnomish Shawn has made his mark in tasty supporting parts over the decades, and might seem like the perfect Allen Avatar — dressed in the classic Allen “uniform” — he is dreadfully dull, unamusing and unreal as the title character, a college film professor with pretentions of writing “The Great Novel,” and if it isn’t as good as “Chekhov or Sten-DHAL,” among other immortals he name-drops, what’s the point?

The running gag about this never-finished book-in progress is that every acquaintance of this infamous “grinch” of academic film criticism (He loathes “Some Like it Hot”) mocks him for it, refers to the writing as “turgid” and yet somehow expects him to succeed.

He accompanies his publicist-wife (Gina Gershon) to a San Sebastian Film Festival on the gorgeous northwest (on the Bay of Biscay) coast of Spain, where she tends to clients, including the festival darling Philippe (Louis Garrel), whose “Apocalypse Dreams” is all the rage, and who openly comes on to the publicist.

What’s Rifkin to do but make similar attempts to woo the Spanish doctor (Elena Anaya) who treats his various, increasingly imagined ailments of a hypochondria nature?

Allen “logic.”

The only person to legitimize his medical complaints is a Marshall McLuhan-esque medico who ducks into a conversation with his diagnosis. Cute. Woody’s riffing on a famous “Annie Hall” moment.

Rifkin’s San Sebastian odyssey is related to his New York psychotherapist as a framing device, and these flashbacks themselves include dream sequences.

Because Rifkin dreams in cinema. He imagines himself in “Jules et Jim,” “Breathless,” “Two for the Road,” a dab of “8 1/2,” his childhood a version of “Citizen Caine” with Richard Kind and Nathalie Poza as his parents and “Rose Budnik” as his sleigh, and his reckoning a final chess match with a sarcastic-but-no-funnier-than-anyone-else Death (Christoph Waltz).

“Life is meaningless, but that doesn’t mean it has to be empty. There is a difference.”

The colorless leads and utterly tin-eared script force one to reflect on the many calling cards of an Allen film — black and white opening and closing titles, an early jazz age score, the tinnier the better — which start to seem like crutches, the longer he beats these dead horses (“Cafe Society,” “Wonder Wheel,” “Irrational Man,” “To Rome with Love” anyone? Anyone?).

Even the overheard snippets of film festival-speak, sampled to greater effect in his Fellini-esque “Stardust Memories,” are stale and humorless.

“It’s an all-female version of ‘Lysistrata.‘” Snort.

That tall, dare-we-say “Aryan” blonde? She’d be the “perfect” Hannah Arendt for a filmmaker’s planned Adolf Eichmann biopic. Thank heavens Arendt didn’t live long enough to coin the phrase, “The Banality of Allen.”

When you can’t cast Scarlett, Emma, Penelope or this or that year’s Oscar winners, when you’ve reached Steve Guttenberg on your “Let’s try them” list, that’s the Hollywood universe sending you the only message you need to hear.

The screen compositions are OK, the classic film recreations bland, and the editing is perfunctory and only calls attention to how unnatural almost every acted line, gesture and affectation is.

The perilous thing about this “A Rainy Day in New York” anti-climax/post-cancellation career for Allen is the damage it is doing to his earlier work. Bastardizing his own canon and cranking out crap just because, like Mel Gibson, he is Too Big to Cancel just makes me dread going back to see how over-praised “Match Point,” “Blue Jasmine,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” or “Bullets Over Broadway” might have been.

And once the air’s gone out of “Midnight in Paris,” can “‘Annie Hall’ isn’t all that” be far behind?

He’s often said “I just want to make a couple of films as great” as those of his idols. Then why fill decades with work that will only have a shot at being widely seen and disparaged on Roku?

Rating: PG-13 for suggestive/sexual material and some drug use, (profanity) and thematic elements

Cast: Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Louis Garrel, Elena Anaya, Richard Kind and Christoph Waltz.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Woody Allen. An MSP release on Roku TV.

Running time: 1:28

Cillian Murphy gets his Big Deal Big Screen star vehicle with this haunted turn, with Emily Blunt and Matt Damon and Branagh others in support in Christopher Nolan’s second historic epic about a history-shifting event.

July 21. I can hardly wait.

It’s undeniably iconic. Mention the title and an image comes to any film buff’s mind, burnished and burned onto the retina these past 28 years.

Genre-defining, operatic in scope and soap operatic in its domesticity, Michael Mann’s “Heat” is a saga-length heist picture. It is both intimate and sweeping, a John Woo/Howard Hawks “men with a code” epic, with William Friedkin grit, and maybe a pinch of Peckinpah for those who like their gun violence realistic.

“Heat” seems to have grown in stature and reputation since its 1995 release. Like John Ford’s “The Searchers,” at some point that repute took on a life of its own, almost superceding the actual film, a movie that can be relished on all sorts of levels.

Start with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro near their peaks, LAPD Lt. “HOO Hah” squared off with the soft-spoken Neil, a greedy goateed sociopath with a plan. Throw in a gruff turn by fellow Oscar winner Jon Voight and stellar support by a dozen other “names,” including future Oscar winners Wes Studi and Natalie Portman, and featuring character acting stalwarts like Danny Trejo, Jeremy Piven, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Haysbert, Mykelti Williamson and Ted Levine and you’ve got an embarrasment of character-acting riches.

There’s a loud and just-real-enough and get over-the-top LA street shootout that starkly predicted the machine-gunning of America, a cat-and-mouse plot with two cats/no mice, two loners recognizing the “I do what I do best… you do what you do best” fatalism in each other in a tale of two rival “gangs,” often framed in “West Side Story” Jets vs. Sharks compositions.

It’s a movie of “meets” — in diners, an abandoned drive-in, dockside, a string of houses and beach bungalows that could fill an issue of Architectural Digest, most every location coming with a stunning LA view.

And that dialogue — Mann channeling Mamet in flinty, florid flourishes.

“A guy told me one time, ‘Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat…'”

“He knew the risks, he didn’t have to be there. It rains… you get wet.”

“For me, the action IS the ‘juice!'”

“Ain’t ‘hard time’ that’s ever been invented that I can’t handle.”

For a film fan, especially “guys who love movies for guys,” “Heat” is practically comfort food, excessive running time be damned. There’s just so much to relish, a Tarantino trilogy of cool characters, chewy dialogue and “cool moments,” all more grounded in reality than your average QT exercise in excess.

It’s so good you wish Mann had been a more prolific director, that he hadn’t spent so much of his energy on “Miami Vice” on the small screen, and then the big one. His “Collateral” was impressive, “The Insider” and “Ali” assured his place in the pantheon. And he’s making a sequel to “Heat.”

But here’s the thing. “Heat” isn’t even Michael Mann’s best picture. It’s the gloriously excessive indulgence he allowed himself after his brisk, bracing masterpiece, “The Last of the Mohicans.”

I mean, just the cast here has a Coppola/Wellesian “EVERYbody eats” scale. Here’s William Fitchner as a corrupt tycoon running afoul of DeNiro’s “crew,” Ashley Judd tearing the roof off her married-to-a-crook (played by Val Kilmer) turn in just a few scenes, Diane Venora going toe-to-toe with Pacino, Tone Loc playing the snitch’s snitch, Hank Azaria smacking a small part out of the park.

Is that Martin Ferrero, fresh off a BIG break in “Jurassic Park,” playing a sales clerk at a building supply store in a single scene? Bud Cort as a crooked diner-owner? Almost everybody has a moment or three to show what they’re made of.

It’s almost too much because it is too much. The movie becomes unwieldy thanks to all that excess star power.

There’s a whole serial killer secondary plot that’s introduced and abandoned. And “Heat” has one of those “Raiders of the Lost Ark” lapses in logic that unravels the whole affair in the middle of the second act, something Mann doubles down on when he has Pacino’s bellowing, eye-bugging cop sit down for a friendly, respectful, legend-to-legend “chat” with DeNiro’s pitiless murderer.

“You know, we are sitting here, you and I, like a couple of regular fellas.”

They talk about their dreams and their lonely lives. It’s a star moment and it comes so far AFTER we’ve seen goateed goon Neil OK the slaughter of the armed truck guards in the film’s opening heist that we almost forget how absurd it is.

I wouldn’t cut a second of it, but every time I see this sequence I need a little lie-down, just to recover from the exertion of rolling my eyes into the back of my head. It’s a grandiose flourish more at home in “Miami Vice.”

So no, not all this ballyhoo that’s piled up around “Heat” is justified. It’s a “To Live and Die in LA” to Friedkin’s “French Connection,” a stunning genre piece that isn’t as singular as its creator’s true masterworks.

Mann recognizes it as a critical and box office highlight of his storied career. It’s good and stands up to repeat viewing thanks to the players and the Big Moments. But even Mann knows it’s not some “singular” achievement in crime thrillers. Otherwise, he wouldn’t risk its reputation by making a sequel.

Rating:  R for violence and language

Cast: Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Amy Brenneman, Diane Venora, Tom Sizemore, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Danny Trejo, Natalie Portman, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Hank Azararia, Ted Levine, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Gage and Jon Voight.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Mann. A Warner Brothers release on Amazon, Netflix, etc.

Running time: 2:50

“Employee of the Month” is a dark Belgian workplace comedy in the tradition of “Nine to Five” and “Horrible Bosses.”

Yes, the title’s been used to death, even in French — “L’employée du mois.” But this crisp and ever-co-conveniently murderous farce demonstrates that revenge can be served hot or cold, and as messy as is necessary, just so long as you have the proper cleaning products at hand to tidy up afterwards.

Inès has been with EcoCleanPro so long she’s on her seventh pet goldfish named Jean-Pierre, each succeeding fish kept in the tank in her office. She practically runs the place, which is as unjust as the misnomer of calling the foyer where she takes calls and solves all problems an “office.”

Inès, played by Jasmina Douieb, used to have a real office. But somebody brought in above her took that. She started as a secretary and has the title “paralegal,” and does much more than that. She’s gone 17 years without a raise, as the patronizing men who run the place, and even the custodian, do quite well for themselves.

She is ignored, dismissed, pranked and has every menial job dumped on her, even by the custodian. Sure, she’s noticed it and borne it all with an even temper and tidy (she’s always cleaning) efficiency.

But the presence of a new college intern, Melody (Laeticia Mampaka), daughter of the former cleaning lady there, kind of throws the injustice of it all into sharp relief.

She can’t expect her smarmy, lazy boss (Peter Van den Begin) to do right by her, as she’s cheapened herself — in his eyes — for too long. The honcho from corporate may be a woman (Laurence Bibot), but she’s just as venal, callous and greedy as the men.

If we know our downtrodden working woman/man tropes, we just know this tyranny will not stand. But…but…but, it was an ACCIDENT. I SWEAR.

Now this fastidious, cleaning-obsessed “employee of the month EVERY month (in French with English subtitles)” has a body and blood stains to remove and a scheme to hatch with her incredulous, faintly contemptuous and yet culpable intern.

Inès, who lives her life by the Latin motto, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” has to put all she knows about EcoCleanPro’s product line to work as her office devolves into a body count.

Director and co-writer Véronique Jadin is covering familiar ground — injustices and humiliations pile up, rough JUSTICE is comically served. So she doesn’t waste any time getting around to it. This vengeance comedy practically skips by. Sure, she leans on plot conveniances and contrivances to facilitate that, but that’s of little consequence.

Douieb makes Inès a loyal company woman to the core, even as bodies and complications pile up, infuriating Melody even as she’s mentoring her.

“Even in times of crisis,” she teaches, picking up another call in mid-body-disposal, “remember, the CUSTOMER always comes first.”

Jadin and co-writer Nina Vanspranghe go Neanderthal in their depictions of the rank sexism of this workplace, the dated “men get to go to lunch and drink, Inès must eat at her desk” abuses, which cross over into sexual harassment.

The caricatures are almost cartoonishly broad and there’s little else that’s subtle happening here.

But Douieb, Mampaka, Begin and Philippe Résimont — as the smug, late-to-the-scene sexist cop who takes over the case and brings his patronism with him — make murder comic and help this “Employee” get a dirty job done, and tidy up afterwards.

Rating: unrated, violence, vulgarisms

Cast: Jasmina Douieb, Laetitia Mampaka, Peter Van den Begin, Alex Vizorek, Laurence Bibot and Ingrid Heiderscheidt

Credits: Directed by Véronique Jadin, scripted by Véronique Jadin and Nina Vanspranghe. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:17

“The Breaker Upperers” is a rude and rowdy Kiwi comedy about two friends who run a service that helps people get out of hard-to-end relationships.

Written, directed by and starring by Madeleine Sami and Jackie Van Beek and a crew that have the deadpan drollery and imprimatur of Taiki Waititi — who produced — and Jemaine Clements –who’s in it — these “Upperers” are pretty much guaranteed to amuse, in that “Failure to Launch” way, scheming to trick lovers into doing things at least one member of the couple isn’t down with. At all.

Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you’re too kind to end things the old fashioned way. Maybe you’re a bloody coward who can’t face confrontation or its consequences.

Never fear, Jen (Van Beek) and Mel (Sami) are here to role play, do the dirty work, take charge and take your money as they lie, bully or do whatever it takes to get the message across and the break-up finalized.

They are, the bossy and 40ish Jen assures one and all, “simply guiding two souls towards inevitability.” No sense wasting months or years making a break when these two can come to He Who Must Be Jilted’s door and deliver a singing (C&W), stinging telegram, ensuring that you’re done-baby-done.

Disguised as cops to tell Anna (Celia Pacquola) that her lover’s gone missing after a swimming accident seems a little extreme. But sure, whatever it takes to help “people escape dysfunctional relationships” is what they’ll do.

Only Jen, bitter over a breakup from her early 20s, is the one who is really into it. Mel, bisexual, younger and still into the idea of falling in love, may not have her heart wholly committed to what they do.

Anna’s case is the first place this comes to light. A dopey teen rugby player and food deliverer named Jordan (James Rolleston) is another test.

When Jen’s ex Joe moves back, married with a wife and three kids, and 30something Mel feels the urge to erase boundaries with first one client, whom she befriends, and another, who comes on strong enough to give her the tinglies, trouble comes to Olde Auckland and “the past” will come back to bite them both on the bum.

The banter, as you might expect, crackles with cuteness.

“Who’s this?” quizzes Mel, nicknamed “Melon,” who starts warbling a singing imitation.

“Prince? Kermit?”

“Nooo, that’s Celine DION!”

“That sounds like a sea lion being strangled!“

“Yeah, that’s what she sounds like.”

There’s coke-snorting over at Jen’s Mum’s house — well, they hope it’s cocaine — and the “cop” disguises blow up on them when a real cop, and a lesbian to boot, thinks they’ve shown up as her birthday “strippers” present. And the duo must cope with a lot of Maori anti-“white girl” rage as they get to know Jordan’s angry, assertive not-quite-ex (Ana Scotney, fierce and hilarious) and her Maori posse who will not take being dumped without violence.

The fact that Mel’s Maori isn’t the help you’d expect.

Can this business survive? Can Mel and Jen make things work, as a team? Or, you know, “bi-curious?” Just how much fakery can you get away with on a tiny island nation with its compact, laid-back populace?

“See you around!”

“Noooooo…”

“I will…see you around. It’s New Zealand!”

If you’ve liked “What We Do In the Shadows,” “Eagle vs. Shark” and anything with “Wilderpeople” in the title, you’re on the same wavelength as these “Breaker Upperers,” even if it’s hard to believe this lot gave us more Hobbit movies and America’s Cup defeats than we’d care to remember.

Rating: unrated, rude and a little raunchy

Cast: Madeleine Sami, Jackie Van Beek, James Rolleston, Celia Pacquola and Ana Scotney

Credits: Scripted and directed by Madeleine Sami and Jackie Van Beek. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:22

When one refers to the sequel “The Book Club: The Next Chapter” as “creaky but charming,” one must hasten to add that one is referring to the groaner laughs, gear-grinding situations and dated plot, and not the engaging ladies of a certain age who star in it.

One must.

Oscar winners Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen and Diane Keaton and Emmy winning legend Candace Bergen deserve our respect, and deserve better than this winded farce that takes our LA bookclubbers through COVID lockdown and over to Italy for a last hurrah, a bachelorette party and a bit of almost-amusing mischief in Rome, Venice and Tuscany.

The ladies who read have been maintaining their club via Zoom all the way through COVID, and just as they’re polishing off “The Alchemist,” New York transplant Vivian (Fonda) lets them know that at long last she’s ready to that walk down the aisle with her hunky beau Arthur (Don Johnson).

“In another 50 years, I might not find him as attractive as I do now!”

Diane (Keaton) is still with Mitchell (Andy Garcia), and fretting that “I’m too OLD to be somebody’s girlfriend!” Carol (Steenburgen) had to give up her restaurant, thanks to COVID. And her husband Bruce (Craig T. Nelson) has just had a nasty health scare.

Semi-retired judge Sharon (Bergen) is still alone, still sarcastic and still a stick in the mud.

But even though not all of them are on board, the idea of “one last fling,” reviving plans for a long-postponed group trip, sends them off to sunny Italy to celebrate the end of isolation and the end to Vivian’s lifelong single status.

Blunders pile up. They run afoul of Italian law enforcement (Giancarlo Giannini) and into new flames (Hugh Quarshie) and old ones (Vincent Riota). Sightseeing, a motorboat makeout session in Venice (nudge nudge wink wink), jail, a fabulous meal or two and a few double entendres ensue. “Hilarity” does not.

The jokes are of the “Everything is sexier in Italy,” variety, affording plenty of chances for Bergen to trot out her sitcom timing. “I know I am.”

Our core quartet are a well-preserved and still charming lot, with each giving a glimpse of their comic specialties. But like that spring fling, “80 for Brady,” the material here just isn’t up to the legends being paid to perform it.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, “suggestive material.”

Cast: Jane Fonda, Candace Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia, Hugh Quarshie, Craig T. Nelson, Vincent Riota, Giancarlo Giannini and Don Johnson.

Credits: Directec by Bill Holderman, scripted by Bill Holderman and Erin Sims. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:47

If you’re casting a movie about a business tycoon who basically launched a car company in a fit of pique, you could do worse than parking veteran screen heavy Frank Grillo in the title role.

Grillo can be menacing. Grillo can do slow burns. Grillo can fly off the handle, when the need arises.

And there might be a movie in the life of Ferruccio Lamboughini, the mechanic turned tractor builder who — insulted by the imperious Enzo Ferrari — bullheadedly set out to make “the most beautiful car in the world, and the fastest,” using a Spanish bull as his badge and the names of bulls or breeds for the cars’ model names.

But “Lambourghini: The Man Behind the Legend” doesn’t make that case.

It’s a truncated, somewhat sanitized bio pic of the “Tucker: A Man and his Dream” and “Ford v. Ferrari” school. Humorless and unexciting on every level, about the best you can say about it are you get to see a few cool cars.

Young Ferruccio (Romano Reggiani) returns to Cento, Italy, after World War II with his mechanic/driver pal Matteo (Matteo Leoni) and big plans.

He will marry the woman (Hannah van der Westhuysen) who waited for him and break the monopoly on tractor manufacturing in Italy, building a smaller, cheaper machine to cash in on the post-war “boom.” He and Matteo will modify an old car and win a big race to start the tractor concern with the prize money.

That doesn’t happen, and the script immediately sets the tone for the “biography” we’re to be served up. Events are conflated, chunks of history erased, details large and small bent and twisted and made to fit, much like the first car Lambourghini hastily pieced together for the Turin (not Geneva, as the film suggests) car show in the early ’60s.

The story is framed inside of an imaginary drag race between older Ferruccio (Grillo) and his nemesis, Old Enzo Ferrari (Gabriel Byrne) which Lambourghini imagines, sitting at his desk with toy cars. Kind of corny, but OK.

We’re dealing with a bit of balderdash, perhaps because the guy just wasn’t interesting enough to merit an American-made bio-pic featuring a trio of Hollywood stars. Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino plays the long-suffering, cheated-on second wife. She weeps a lot.

Maybe an Italian production that gets more into his childhood, his transformation from son of a grape-growing farm family into a mechanic for Mussolini’s air force who comes home from the war with big ideas and maybe a chip on his shoulder would have come off.

What we get instead is a fairly corny, utterly-conventional story of a proud, stubborn and womanizing business owner who succeeded with tractors, HVAC manufacturing and a luxury car marque, which is still around today, but owned by VW.

“You don’t believe in me,” Ferruccio complains at more than one point, at more than one age. “Life is short,” he says more than once, so why not build “the best cars in the world?”

He will develop a hand-built sports touring car “as strong as Hercules, as beautiful as Sophia (Loren).” He will do this because Ferraris are notoriously unreliable and he’s constantly burning through clutches on the ones he buys from Enzo’s motorworks.

But Italian cars in general and bespoke high-end Italian cars in particular are as famous for their looks as well as their fragility and stupidly expensive and laughably frequent repairs. Lambourghini did nothing to dispel that.

Casting the colorful Grillo (rent “Wheelman” or “Little Dixie” or even “Ida Red” to see him at his best) is probably the best thing that ever happened to the late Signor Lambourghini. But if you’ll recall, they didn’t put a lot of effort into depicting Enzo Ferrari in “Ford v. Ferrari,” and he was one of the villains of the piece. And by all accounts, he was much more of a character than his striving, bullheaded nemesis.

If Grillo can’t make the guy interesting to watch, and writer-director Bobby Moresco (he shared the screenwriting Oscar for “Crash”) can’t fudge Ferruccio’s life story into something more involving than this, I dare say that some suit at Lionsgate sat in a screening room at some point and wondered aloud, “Well, what was the point of THAT?”

Rating:  R for some language including a sexual reference

Cast: Frank Grillo, Mira Sorvino, Romano Reggiani, Patrick Brennan and Gabriel Byrne.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bobby Moresco. A Lionsgate release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:37