Movie Nation

A chiseled cowboy between jobs and a newly widowed farm wife he takes a message to means a ranch in need of tending and a woman in need of a man around the house in “Where the Wind Blows,” a handsomely mounted Western shot on Montana’s Yellowstone Film Ranch.

It’s a good thing the visuals in this John Schimke horse opera are striking. There’s not much else to recommend a sloppily-plotted meander through Western tropes and cliches which pedestrian direction, shooting and editing do nothing to rescue.

Trevor Donovan, best known for the “90210” reboot of a dozen years back, is our blond hunk on horseback, named Chase (of course) and charged with taking care of a fellow ranch hand’s “heirloom” and cash roll. Because when ol’Nathan (C. Thomas Howell) sits down to gamble at the local saloon/brothel, he’d hate to get rolled.

Gunshots awaken chaste Chase — he’s fended off the advances of the prostitutes — and he finds Nate dead, caught cheating at cards. There’s nothing for it but to take that news to far-off Jessie (Ashley Elaine).

He’s not much on comforting someone who learns her husband is dead, although he’s considerate enough to lie about Nathan’s cause of death.

“These things have a way of working themselves out” isn’t what you say to a woman left to fend for herself on the wild frontier.

And that roll of cash and “heirloom?” That becomes one of the more clumsily-handled plot devices I’ve ever seen in a Western. Did Chase “forget” to give it to her? Is he keeping it for his own use? Motives and “secrets” don’t take us toward any satisfying answers.

All we know is that Jessie has a girl from the orphange she herself came from on her way with a guardian (Don Swayze) to see if she’s fit to raise the child. Will Chase pretend to be Nathan, just long enough to ensure the adoption?

Events contrive to make the possibly thieving cowboy do just that, and accept a teen orphan boy (Cole Keriazakos) in the bargain, with the promise that he’ll skeedaddle as soon as the guardian leaves. Jessie is supposed to manage this place with two kids, no livestock and the kindness of her intrepid storekeeper pal (Michelle Hurd).

And then there’s the creepy, sunglasses-wearing drifter (Rob Mayes) with a rapist vibe who has taken to stalking her with a vengeance.

Will Chase stick around? Is he up for a showdown with rapey Lonnie? And how many chores can he do with his shirt off as he does?

Based on what I am guessing is a romance novel by Caroline Fyffe, “Where the Wind Blows” has the tone and light messaging of a faith-based romance. Characters are sketched in as archetypes, most every turn of events leans on coincidence and cliche and the picture never lets us forget that director Schimke is out of his element, if he has one.

The cast is game but rather drab — even the villains.

And we never doubt for a second that as messy and violent as this tale turns, “these things have a way of working themselves out,” and not in any way a more cleverly plotted script would have delivered.

Rating: PG-13, bloody violence, attempted sexual assault, prostitution

Cast: Trevor Donovan, Ashley Elaine, Michelle Hurd, Rob Mayes, Cole Keriazakos, Lochlyn Munro, Don Swayze and C. Thomas Howell.

Credits: Directed by John Schimke, scripted Mike Maden and John Schimke, based on a novel by Caroline Fyffe. A Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:31

Rush, The Police, Rick Springfield anyone?

How can you tell someone you crush on them without a cassette deck?

Oct. 14.

Briarcliff has this widowed dad psychological thriller based on Max Porter’s novel “Grief is the Thing With Feathers.”

David Thewlis is this father’s all-too-real-tohim feathered beast haunting him.

This comes out Oct. 24.

One’s a homebody, one’s adventure-bound.

“Platonic traveling companions” my Aunt.

Could be cute. Worth a Netflx peek if nothing else.

Jan. 6.

“Running on Empty” is a dark comedy that tests the comic limits of the infamous “Gen Z stare.”

A deadpan rom-com about death, it has reliable comics in supporting roles and co-stars Lucy Hale. And it is stillborn thanks, in part, to the expressionless turn by Keir Gilchrist, our leading man, who plays a young mortician (“post-mortem artist”) who would like to find one last love before his impending death.

Gilchrist, also star of “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” (It wasn’t.) is Mortimer Mortensen, a 30ish bore trapped in the black suit he wears everywhere and every day, even when he’s not prepping corpses in “How they lived their life” poses — skiing, parasailing — for death photos.

“Adventure funerals” is how he and his uncle (Jim Gaffigan) pitch this concept to their Sherman Oaks and Greater LA patrons. And it’s a hit. What movielover or critic wouldn’t want to be captured, post mortem, in a mock up of a cinema, wearing 3D glasses as the way they’d like to be remembered?

Mortimer is engaged to Nicole (Francesca Eastwood, you-know-who’s kid) and house shopping. He’s the practical-minded one. But when she can’t talk him into a house just beyond their means, they’re persuaded to get their “LDCs” to ensure they’ll have decades and decades together to justify this expense.

Your “Life Day Count” is a service provided by a medical science startup that will tell you, with “97.9%” certainty, the day of your death.

No, they can’t anticipate accidents, murder or suicide.

So “How exactly do you figure that out?”

“We just do.”

Nicole has a death date over half a century into the future. Mortimer? He’ll be dead within the year.

Writer-director Daniel André takes a sort of “We just do” to this fanciful conceit, and that spills over into the rest of the movie. Neither we nor Mortimer are told of how he’ll die. No medical condition is mentioned, no treatment suggested. And as André has already scripted himself into a corner — no “accident, murder of suicide” is predictable — he just skips by that.

“Skips” is entirely too merry a word for anything that happens in this stiff of a comedy.

Awkward meals with Mortimer’s family (Monica Potter, Dustin Milligan and Clara McGregor) have no pulse.

There’s not much amusing about the dating service that’s set up to take advantage of this new “We know exactly when we’re going to die” world. Til Death Do Us Part’s interviewer/videographer Kate (Lucy Hale) allows herself to connect with the colorless Mortimer. But not before we endure a generally joyless bad-dates montage of women who either share Mortimer’s predicted-death situation, or who just aren’t interested in “commitment” or anything um, long term.

The film’s big “obstacle” to Mortimer’s dating-until-death plans is a misunderstanding with a sex worker that leads to endless, escalating threats from a pimp (Rhys Coiro). That story thread — which begins with the hooker reaching her “death date” — has promise that the script never realizes.

Comic Jay Pharoah, playing the hearse driver for Uncle Barry (Gaffigan) patters away for laughs that never come. Gaffigan is pretty good at deadpan, but there’s not much funny to work with here.

Mortimer’s profundities about reasons not to fear death aren’t even worth quoting, much less packaging in a fortune cookie.

And through all this humorless flailing in front of and behind the camera — you’ll notice shots literally repeated (the same sailboats pass by Mortimer and Kate as they chat on a Marina del Rey pier) — Gilchrist never delivers more than a shrug or that generational stare.

It’s not wholly his fault that “Running on Empty” is comically empty. But he does nothing to compensate for the inadequacies of script or direction, not that anyone else in the cast could.

Rating: R, slapstick violence, “sexual content,” profanity

Cast: Keir Gilchrist, Lucy Hale, Jim Gaffigan, Rhys Coiro, Jay Pharoah and Francesca Eastwood was

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Daniel André. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:31