Movie Nation

They blow the “meet cute.” But that’s never the actors’ fault, and since the leads are Ana de Armas and Chris Evans and they ARE cute, and we all know they’ve already met with their “Knives Out,” that’s no biggie.

Our story takes over a half hour to set up, which is right on the cusp of unforgivable. And it drifts on after the climax, and actor turned director (“Rocketman”) Dexter Fletcher (he also plays a scruffy “contact”) ought to know when to drop the mike by now.

But that’s quibbling when your product is a big and noisy, scenic and messy action comedy that delivers laugh-out-loud sight gags, punch lines and star cameos — most of whom play characters with all the screen life span of Tom Cruise’s character in “Edge of Tomorow.”

You can’t and probably shouldn’t say this about many movies, but the bad guy deaths in “Ghosted” are often slapstick hilarity incarnate — machine-gunning motorcycling mugs staring in shocked slo-mo as they hurtle past the window of the Pakistani jitney bus de Armas has just used to run them right off a cliff.

But how does a college-educated organic farmer serving the street markets of D.C. meet a C.I.A. agent masquerading as an “art consultant?” At a street market, where she’s trying to buy a houseplant even though she “travels” a lot and can’t offer anything like “love” to it, or anything.

That’s just Cole Turner being instantly judgy. “Cactus,” he figures, suits the beautiful woman whose phone number he would love to get. Something prickly and that can live through her neglect is all she deserves.

Yes, there’s a succulent used as a metaphor, and eventually a running gag.

Sadie sizes-up this good-looking Gomer as a provincial who’s never even traveled outside of the country.

But something makes her serve up that phone number, and then suggest coffee as a first date becomes an afternoon, an evening and even a following morning in our lovely nation’s capital.

He sends her a text or two…or more, the next day or so. His mom (Amy Sedaris) is comforting, his dad (Tate Donovan) thinks he needed to mention he “wrestled in high school.”

Kid sister (Lizze Broadway) is the one who figures he’s blown it, and that he’s been “Ghosted.”

But in the strangest “stalker” via technology turn ever, Cole figures out where she’s gone and figures she’ll be up for his “grand (romantic) gesture” of just showing up in London and tracking her down.

Nope. Following her around just gets him nabbed by bad guys. They think he’s “The Tax Man,” a notorious assassin who must be paid and must have “the pass code.”

The first villain he meets is a Russian who purrs “It truly eees an honor to torrrrture you today” and slaps him because that “hurts me, a leetle,” and “I’m all about sharing the exPERience!”

Borislov is played by that walking, talking “Buster Scruggs” drawl, Tim Blake Nelson, the only cameo I’m going to give away here. And with his amusing arrival, and Sadie’s abupt rescue attempt, “Ghosted” gets up and gets going.

We dash from the Khyber Pass and bazaars of Pakistan to The Arabian Sea, having already been treated to the most scenic spots in Washington (a romantic walk along the Patowmack Canal, a sprint up “The Exorcist” steps) and a spot of London.

The shootouts are staged in an epic, effects-heavy jitney bus vs. pickups and motorcycles chase through that famous pass, in a villain’s lair, on a private jet and in a very distinct sky-high restaurant.

The bad guy in pursuit of the MacGuffin of the tale is played with a venomous French-accented edge by Oscar winner Adrien Brody. His badass/bad jokes henchman (Mike Moh) is the first guy to sing a bit of The Beatle’s tune, “Taxman.”

But of course we hear that again, of course there are romantic montages and action beats set to pop music and of course we never ever really fear for our heroes, because Hitchcock only killed his leading lady once. And that’s the tone here — jokey, on the move, sometimes surprising, violent with a big ol’body count and still not all that serious.

Because no movie which serves up a sea of “bounty hunters” with names like “The Serpent” and “The Grandson of Sam” and played by a lot of people you know is going to be anything but a bloody lark.

Evans, playing a Chris Pine role — a guy repeatedly saved by a more heroic woman — is light on his feet and quick with a quip. And let’s just say that as furious as the fights get, every time “high school wrestler” foreshadowing is made good, that’s a big laugh.

Ana de Armas puts herself in Gal Gadot, Angelina/Halle/Chastain territory as a perfectly credible, adorably pouty action heroine.

And as messy as all this is — it’s more “Bullet Train” than “Extraction,” as far as streaming action epics go — it plays. The laughs land and the crooked corpses pile up and the leads, despite every bit of artifice and clumsiness showing in the “relationship” side of the script (they used Chris McKenna, Rhett Reese and Erik Sommers, but probably needed a good female scripter to take a pass), the leads have chemistry.

“Ghosted” manifests itself as a pleasantly amusing piece of cheese, embraceable for the breezy time-killer it is. But if they dare decide to franchise it, they’ll need a writing upgrade for that to come off.

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence/action, brief strong language and some sexual content

Cast: Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Mike Moh, Amy Sedaris, Lizze Broadway, Mustafa Shakir, Tate Donavan and lots of cameos

Credits: Directed by Dexter Fletcher, scripted by Chris McKenna, Rhett Reese and Erik Sommers. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:56

Some movies you want to hug, just to reward how a film makes you feel and what magic it is when a setting, a character, a star and a story sing together in near perfect harmony.

“Cherry” is an indie dramedy with a simple problem with no easy, unconsidered solution, a charmer with a message that could not have come along at a more perfect time.

It’s about an aimless, carefree 20something Angelena, a street magician and balloon artist who lures customers into a vintage costume shop. One day Cherry shows up for work, ducks into the bathroom and pees on a stick.

Our heroine, the leggy embodiment of the “roller girl” in Dire Straits’ famed music video “Skateaway,” is pregnant. Enchante, honey. What can I say?

“Cherry” takes us through the longest weekend in a manic pixie dream girl’s life. She’s fired for being perpertually late and irresponsible at work, can’t reach her “least effective contraception method” boyfriend to get his reaction, and only through begging, lying and imitating a British tourist can she get into the just-closed free clinic to confirm the test.

Right from the start, director and co-writer Sophie Galibert treats this subject seriously but gently. California is still a “my body, my choice” state. But Cherry, given a winsome ditziness by Alex Trewhitt, is plainly not adult enough to make this decision.

“What would you do?” she asks the doctor (Sandy Duarte), who is…pregnant.

The doctor gets it. “It’s not on our bucket list of things to do in life,” not at Cherry’s age and maturity.

Their conversation is professional, compassionate and despite Cherry’s “I just never thought this would be me” cluelessness, touching, even more so in light of American conservatives’ ongoing war on women and reproductive rights.

“Can I see it?” Show her the sonogram. “What’s it sound like in there?”

As light as it plays on the surface, “Cherry” gets at the momentous, wrenching nature of this “decision” right from the start. She’s far enough along that she has just a weekend to decide if she wants to come back and buy a pill.

She has to talk to the boyfriend (Dan Schultz), and maybe to her mother (Angela Nicholas). It’s Mother’s Day weekend, wouldn’t you know it?

But Galibert and co-writer Arthur Cohen’s script teases out the “news,” finding ways and reasons the childish Cherry can’t tell one and all. Her grandmother (Melinda DeKay) has dementia. Maybe she can keep a secret.

Miraculously, granny has great insights to share, even as she doesn’t realize it. First she, then Cherry’s mom give hints of the life paths not taken thanks to unexpected pregnancies. We even meet Cherry’s divorced, struggling and somewhat absent father (Charlie S. Jensen).

Will she tell any of them? Will they break her or our hearts with their take on the real cost of parenthood in a corner of the world where people still have control over when that happens?

Galibert, Trewhitt and a very good supporting cast conjure up a tale that amiably skates through a jolting moment in any life, not just those still figuring out who and what they are and want to be.

The serious scenes are broken up with chuckles as Cherry tries to rejoin the party-entertainment skate team she was in, struggles to keep her secret and strains to find creative ways to reveal it to those who matter to her.

The magic of this light, almost slight film is that everyone, even those who don’t know, have something to tell her, something to teach and something for all of us to consider about the biggest decision anyone can make — parenthood.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, profanity

Cast: Alex Trewhitt, Sandy Duarte, Dan Schultz, Angela Nicholas and Charlie S. Jensen

Credits: Directed by Sophie Galibert, scripted by Arthur Cohen and Sophie Galibert. An Entertainment Squad release.

Running time: 1:16

Jason Momoa could be playing the best villain this franchise has ever managed. And they’ve had Theron and The Rock and Statham. And Joaquim de Almeida.

May 19 we finally find out.

It takes a while to get into the screwy rhythms of “Operation: Nation,” a dark and somewhat farcical Polish spoof of the idea of Polish Nazis.

I mean, come on. Historical anti-Semitism notwithstanding, how much do you have to excuse, forget or simply be too stupid to grasp to realize how nuts that sounds?

It’s about an unhappy, aimless 20ish Pole who gets sucked into not a neo-Nazi group, but Nazi Nazis led by his coke-addled would-be fuhrer of an older cousin. He’s a deluded armband wearer who’s taken his name — “Roman” — a tad too seriously.

Straszek (Maciej Musiałowski) is stuck sharing a room with his K-Pop obsessed teen sister, his dreams of “getting out” of sleepy Bialystok torn asunder when he tore up the knee he needs to play soccer. He is trapped in a dead-end job working for a keep-it-all-to-myself parking lot owner with no prospects.

The sports posters have come down in his room. Military ones have taken their place. But it’s obvious he is adrift and unformed.

“I don’t have my own opinions,” he admits at one point, in Polish with English subtitles, or dubbed into English.

Which is why Roman (Borys Szyc) is giving him the hard sell as Straszek comes down to court to pick him and some of his followers up.

Yes, they were throwing a Jew-hating, violence-preaching, white supremacist “Hitler’s 132nd Birthday Party,” complete with a cake with Swastika in every slice, a party which the cops broke up. But the court sees that these idiots can’t draw a legible Swastika, that most can’t answer the question “Is Hitler dead?” or form a coherent sentence and lets them go.

But Staszek might be tempted. Test him by sending him over to punch out a drunken “leftist paparazzi” in the pub.

The trouble is, pretty Pola (Magdalena Maścianica) has just come home from grad school in Warsaw. She mistakes the swing Straszek takes at the drunk for chivalry, and numbers are exchanged.

Pola is the Polish word for “woke” (Obudził) in the flesh — liberal, tolerant, an ally to all the big causes college kids buy into.

Will Straszek follow her down the primrose path to chaining themselves to trees to prevent deforestation (which he envisions the moment he meets her)? Or will he hide his new “gang” from her and join the dunces who try to get attention by going viral burning a homemade Orthodox Jewish doll (it’s made of flame-retardant fabric), who plan “Operation: Bomb a Synagogue” with a code-name that’s a bit of a giveaway, or dream of attacking a Pride parade with “Operation: Blow a Homo?”

Straszek’s parents are MOST concerned that he’s gay. There’s a priest who cluelessly lends the Proud Poles the attic of the rectory as their clubhouse. When they’ve diagrammed their attack on a synagogue on a chalkboard, he’s helpful enough to show the morons how to draw a Star of David. THAT’S what gets his attention.

Director Piotr Kumik and writers Jakub Rużyłło and Łukasz Sychowicz have a seriously topical satire on their hands, with the state of world politics swinging perilously towards the militant right.

Their film is sort of Pythonesque in its attempt at finding fun in the thuggish idiots who populate the international far right. As we hear the group names that Staszek stumbles into on one cannot help but think of the rift between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea in “Life of Brian.”

But this is much darker, and tone is perhaps the place where “Operation: Nation” falls short. It’s not as scary as it might be, and it’s not as funny as it should be.

Nazis, piled into a Mercedes for a trip into the country, with Roman ruling out this gas station (“No, Israel controls it.”) and that one (“They support LGTBQ.”) until they run out of petrol.

He and his minions can’t get the damned gay acronyms right, can’t construct a sentence that doesn’t have a “blow a homo” gaffe built into it. Some of this is laugh-out-loud funny, but it doesn’t all play that way, despite the witty wordplay.

A real spit take? Roman takes a follower’s head in his hands to give him the key-code for something VERY important. But he’s covering the dude’s ears so he can’t hear it.

That’s seriously stupid. And funny.

I wish it all came together better, this blend of violence (a fight, a riot and a stabbing), first blush of romance, mockery of bigots and the dangerous activities which the law (Straszek’s dad is a cop) isn’t concerned about but only Pola and her pals see as a threat.

There’s a big target here, and a lot of funny swings at it. But “Operation: Nation” never quite plays. Or perhaps it genuinely loses something in translation.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, nudity, profanity

Cast: Maciej Musiałowski, Magdalena Maścianica, Borys Szyc, Mateusz Król and Karol Kadłubiec

Credits: Directed by Piotr Kumik, scripted by Jakub Rużyłło, Łukasz Sychowicz. A Canal+ film on Netflix.

Running time: 1:37

A horror icon is interviewed, and others sing his praises.

June 6, streaming.

“Queens on the Run” is a dainty little Mexican marzipan comedy — sort of sweet in the most predictable ways, lighter-than-lightweight and rarely funny.

It’s a “wives bonding” road picture, a little heavy on the “Thelma & Louise,” pero medio culo, as they say in Olde México, in terms of script and execution. “Half-assed.”

Four bored México City women — three of them in marriages of varying degrees of frustration, the other an arrested development case with a Grindr and pink hair dye fixation, pile into a ’64 Ford Fairlane convertible named “Corcholata” (Bottle cap, amigos!) and bomb off for the coast — to Cancún.

Marilu (Alejandra Ambrosi) has two kids and a distracted workaholic husband who has forgotten their anniversary for four years running. So she’s in.

Famela (Paola Núñez) is more happily married, trying to have a baby and wearing out her husband in the process. He, by the way, is in business with Marilu’s husband/marido.

Glamorous writer Paty (screenwriter Martha Higareda) is married to a famous politician and constantly getting botox and “las boobies” worked on, but now her “chi chis” (Mexican slang for “las boobies”) are uneven. Her husband might be cheating.

And single free spirit Estrella (Valeria Vera) is the one who owns Corcholata the red Fairlane ragtop.

Estrella suggests the road trip to her fellow “reinas”(queens). Baby-obsessed Famela has been equally obsessed with her late mother, and thinks scattering Mom’s ashes in the Caribbean would be just the thing. The other two join in with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

They’ have their first mishap during their first sing-along (Shania Twain, of course), are attacked by a chicken truck stampede during a traffic jam, flash a Jeepload of fetching chicos and make their merry way, even picking up a hitchhiker (Claudia Pineda) as if there’s another item to check off their bucket list.

But we’ve seen the heavy-handed forshadowing, all the TV reporting about the drug importer/gun trafficker named El Gavilán or “The Hawk” (Enrique Arreola) like the song. We know they’re about to cross paths. But we have no idea how ham-handedly co-star and screenwriter Higareda will manage that unlikely encounter.

Somehow, these “queens” have to be put “on the run if “Fuga de Reinas” is to achieve its titular destiny.

The screenplay is cut-and-paste, start to finish, with some of the pastes having little connection to logic. The slapstick is OK, what few instances of it we’re treated to. The “girl bonding” stuff is pro forma, and the perils are poorly handled, at least on the page.

But the players are all-in, right through the “impersonate pole dancers” climax, and a couple of moments deliver giggles. Famela is EVER so irked when El Gavilán and his sidekick POINTLESSLY steal the urn with her mother’s ashes. A deranged car chase with gunplay ensues.

And when forgetful hubby Jose arranges a mariachi band at the last minute to serenade his (missing) wife, and the players are all drunk, that’s kind of funny.

The rest? Kind of off-a-cliff, if you know your “Thelma & Louise” analogies.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, near nudity, sexual content, profanity

Cast: Paola Núñez, Alejandra Ambrosi, Martha Higareda, Valeria Vera, Claudia Pineda and Enrique Arreola.

Credits: Directed by Jorge Macaya, scripted by
Martha Higareda. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

The ladies swoon and the clothes, manners and accomplishments make the man as Kelvin Harrison Jr. goes full matinee idol as “Chevalier” de Saint-Georges in a lovely film that is both immaculate period piece and colorfully imagined biography of a music star of pre-Revolutionary France.

Josephe Bologne was the “bastard” son of a French West Indies plantation owner and his slave who gained fame as a fencer, a musician and composer in the last years of the French court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Emmy winning TV producer and director Stephen Williams (“Watchmen”) and screenwriter Stefani Robinson (TV’s “Atlanta”) conjure up a story that’s both amazing and mostly true, tracking the dazzling career of someone whose father’s lone righteous act was recognizing his talent and putting him in an exclusive French boarding school, which gave him entry into the very heights of French society.

“You must be excellent,” the barely fatherly father (Jim High) counsels. “Always excellent. NO one may tear down an excellent Frenchman!”

We see the boy fence and fiddle his way to the top, making his name in both fields and challenging the aged-out-of-boy-wonder Mozart (Joseph Prowen, terrific) to a (fictional) “Devil Went Down to Grenoble” fiddle-off in front of an astounded, palpitating audience of new (mostly female) admirers.

Even Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton, a vision) becomes a fan girl and names young Joseph Bologne “Chevalier” du St. Georges.

“What will you do now that the world is yours, Chevalier?”

But he is black, “mulatto,” and there are limits to his professional life and personal prospects. Marry a black woman and he will lose his status. Cast his eyes at the wrong white woman of his station and he will face the wrath of France.

Professionally, he’d love to lead the faded Paris Opera. Personally, he’d love to take up with the beautifully-voiced beauty Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving) and cast her in his new opera “Ernestine.” Her stern, military man of a husband (Marton Csokas, fearsome as always), won’t have any of that.

And making an aging opera diva (Minnie Driver, in full Kristin Scott Thomas mode) jealous isn’t a smart play.

Harrison — he was B.B. King in the recent “Elvis” movie — brings a playful, debonnair touch to this character, a dandy who loved showing off his talents and his manners in his fancy blue suits.

The film necessarily over-simpliflies and condenses this not-quite-forgotten man ahead-of-his-time’s life. His reunion with his mother (Ronke Adekoluego) is given short shrift, as are his dalliances in the politics of that day. Attempting to have this story climax during the French Revolution is an overreach, leaving the later acts looking malnourished and playing as perfunctory, soap operatic and incomplete. The last third of the film drags accordingly.

But Harrison dazzles in a vehicle in which Robinson and Williams present him as a real life T’Challa, smarter, more accomplished, braver and better in a sword fight than any white man in his world. His story makes a fascinating reminder of all the history we’ve forgotten, or been made to forget, and returns an “erased” figure to his rightful place as one of the celebrated men of his age, someone whose long and complex story would take a mini-series to be done justice.

Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, some strong language, suggestive material and violence

Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr. Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Ronke Adekoluego, Sian Clifford, Minnie Driver and Marton Csokas.

Credits: Directed by Steven Williams, scripted by Stefani Robinson. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:47

“Herstory” is a gripping and revealing account of a handful of Koreans’ attempt to take Japan to court to secure damages and get an apology for the war crimes they experienced under Japanese occupation before and during World War II.

Director Kyu-dong Min (“Memento Mori”) and his screenwriters, who are also three of the stars of the movie, turn a spotlight on Japanese guilt and Japanese justice for a moving and yet sometimes funny film that might glibly be described as “Erin Brockovich Goes to Nuremberg.”

Our crusading “Erin” this time is a single-mom travel agency owner whose legal troubles in the early ’90s shutter her business just as Korea experiences another wave of revulsion over what its people suffered under Japanese occupation (1910-1945).

Moon Jung-sook (Kim Hee-ae, in a sensational turn) is a mouthy, brusque and no-nonsense businesswoman who looked the other way at how a subordinate was luring foreign tourists to her Busan agency (“prostitution tours”) and got jailed for it.

She’s the mother of a rebellious teen whom all her business Women’s Association friends see as a girl she’s neglected in her relentless pursuit of businss.

She’s the one who figures their Women’s Association should set up a non-profit agency where former comfort women — Koreans forced into sex work by Japanese officialdom — and those sent to forced labor camps by the Japanese Army can report their experiences and seek justice. She’ll run it out of her temporarily-closed travel agency offices.

Two things immediately happen. They hear from women and get media attention for that. And the pushback, the shaming, from patriarchal Korean culture, explodes.

Ms. Moon finds herself in furious debate with sexist, quick-to-judge men, even cab drivers, who want this “story” and these women, whom they see as compliant sex workers and a national embarassment, to go away.

But the story gets personal when she finds herself having to hire a new housekeeper because the timid, downtrodden woman (Yong-nyeo Lee) who had been doing the job stops showing up. And visiting her, seeing her disturbed, pushing-50 adult son who beats her up, she learns that her own housekeeper was a “comfort woman,” one of the more eye-rolling euphemisms for “sex slave” in the history of Japanese deflection.

Much of Ms. Moon’s time will be spent convincing each of these women she meets to go public and agree to tell their terrible, heartbreaking stories in court.

Another piece of blowback comes from the assorted Japanese businesses and businessmen whom every businesswoman in her Women’s Association wants to keep as clients. They get outraged.

When the Japanese consulate in the city cancels its big account with Ms. Moon and the consul launches into “I can’t accept your blaming Japan without evidence” and then, right on cue, flips into Japanese victimhood, which is always punctuated with “not to mention the atomic bomb,” the viewer is entitled to get just as furious as Ms. Moon.

Busan is a port town, and she can curse like a sailor.

Having the country that started World War II, conquered much of Asia and occupied it under the most brutal conditions officially deny any responsibility for this and the uncountable war crimes committed by the country, is a bit much. Failing to accept culpability, refusing to apologize for the Rape of Nanking on down to refusing to let films about their WWII barbarism show in what is widely accepted as the most racist country in Asia, is maddening.

Ms. Moon controls her temper — she’s not shy about dropping profane tirades about what she’s learning, nor are some of the more outraged comfort women — and resolves to get Japanese lawyers and take the “damned samurai” to court.

“Herstory” features moving and vexing courtroom scenes as the aged and understandably fearful and furious “grannies” and their champion — who serves as an over-the-top translator in court — are bullied and brushed-off by the judges in Shimonoseki, the Japanese city where some of the women were shipped and where the case must be tried.

The women themselves range from damaged to defiant to mentally ill, with differing stories and degrees of effectiveness as witnesses. Their lives were broken and everything that happened afterwards bears those scars. Anything can trigger flashbacks, some of which are wrenching.

Suk Mun, who co-wrote the script, plays the most convincing witness, Seo Gwi-soon, a woman so determined to get an apology (cash settlements are secondary to most) that she’s willing to show the physical scars and obscene sex-worker tattoos visited upon her by the Japanese.

The most apalling thing about this for many American viewers is seeing the right wing outrage in Japan about this trial and the court’s dogged embrace of Japanese victimhood and Japanese determination to refuse to accept responsibility. Japanese apology culture simply won’t allow it to apologize for the worst things the people and the country ever did?

An American viewer can’t help but see this in the light of America’s hand-wringing over dropping the Atomic bomb on the refuse-to-surrender aggressors in the war, and eventual American acceptance of guilt for the justifiably-condemned racist internment of Japanese Americans during much of the war, guilt which is constantly revived and yet always reported out of context.

Although “Herstory’s” lighter moments are welcome, they can be a bit jarring in a movie whose tone is serious and sad.

But it’s eye opening and heart-breaking, beautifully-acted and another compelling argument for Japan to do what Germany did long ago, accept, admit and apologize for its many cardinal sin war crimes in the first half of the last century. And more’s the pity that it’s just another film on the long list of movies Japan doesn’t allow into the country.

Rating: unrated, war crime and sex crime subject matter, profanity

Cast: Kim Hee-ae, Suk Mun, Kim Hae-sook, Soo-jung Ye, Yong-nyeo Lee, Yeong-ih Lee and Jun-han Kim

Credits: Directed by Kyu-dong Min, scripted by Kim Hae-sook, Soo-jung Ye and Suk Mun. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:00

Your childhood fears writ large. June 2 in a Cineplex near you.

This action pic starring Mr. “Crazy Rich Asian” “Gentleman,” drops digitally for streaming May 16.