Movie Nation

Hiring the editors from “Searching,” the sleeper hit of a few years back about a father (John Cho) hunting for his missing daughter via her digital/social media footprint, pays off with “Missing,” a sort of sequel from the same studio, Screen Gems.

If you were paying attention to that fascinating “work the problem online” thriller, you noticed it was a triumph of gimmicky computer screen mirroring, letting us see what every clicked link, every typed-in search turned up in real (screen) time.

How’s that achieved? Through editing, kids. So, congratulations to Will Merrick and Nicholas D. Johnson for making the jump from editing that film to directing in this screens-within-screens, blizzard-of-cuts technical marvel of a movie. There are thousands of edits in this sequel.

But it also points at what’s missing from “Missing.” What happens when we spend too much time on our screens? Disconnection. This overly-complex, relatable but bizarrely set-up missing person hunt stumbles in its human elements, and falls apart if you give the overall plot any thought at all.

The idea here is to flip the script about who’s doing the “searching.” A teen, played by Storm Reid of “A Wrinkle in Time,” is left alone in Van Nuys whilst her single mom (Nia Long) takes a long-weekend romantic vacation to Cartagena, Colombia with her new beaut (Ken Leung).

The kid searches “How to throw a rager on a budget” while Mom is gone, and cleverly taskrabbits the after-party cleanup as she dashes to the airport to pick them back up on Sunday.

But Mom and Kevin are no-shows at the airport. They never got on the plane. What happened?

The genius of these movies is in their “work the problem online” primers. What can a tech-savvy teen turn up about Mom and Kevin, their itinerary, whereabouts, purchases, communications and what-not just by figuring out their (too easy to crack) passwords?

“Kevin seem like a ‘one-password’ guy to you,” daughter June queries her rager-planner bestie Veena (Megan Suri, reduced to set dressing here)?

June communicates with the hotel where they were staying via online Spanish translation, hacks into email and even the dating website where the adults met so that she and the movie audience can see the nature of their video messaging courtship and get to know our two lovebirds.

“Junebug,” as her Mom calls her, back-engineers ways of getting into this account or that one, grabs credit card numbers, accesses “live cams” in tourist locations, tracks phones, pokes around Google Street View, Google Maps, and on and on in her typo-free keyboard hunt.

The FBI agent on the ground in Cartagena (Daniel Henney) is just here to remind us of what he can’t “legally” do. Mom’s lawyer best-friend (Amy Landecker) is just here to remind June of what SHE can’t legally do.

And Joaquin de Almeida is the cheapest “task rabbit” proxy June can find to do her legwork in Colombia, tracing her mother’s footsteps.

The far-fetched stuff comes from the amount of media coverage these missing-in-Colombia (I don’t care WHAT year it is, think about that.) generate, the layers of contrived “conspiracy” June starts to believe she’s digging into and the mental math one can’t help but do to wonder, aside from governments, oligarchs and narco-terrorists, who has the time and MONEY to make all this happen?

However neatly these contrivances may seem to fold in and wrap up — not all THAT neatly — a certain amount of “Now come ON” factors into the viewing. And not just from the fact that Junebug almost never hits an errant key.

Reid is more solid that compelling as the face captured in cell or laptop screen-cam closeups for much of the movie. The performance has no grace notes because there isn’t any room for them. That goes for everybody in “Missing,” with lots of characters shortchanged and any emotional moments that are set up simply allowed to fizzle in the payoff.

John Cho didn’t let that happen in “Searching.”

This picture’s just a clockwork contraption of clever “tools” used cleverly and little more, none of them more than Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere or whatever editing software they used to cut this sterile jewel into shape with.

Rating: PG-13 for some strong violence, language, teen drinking, and thematic material.

Cast: Storm Reid, Joaquin de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Tim Griffin and Nia Long

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick. A Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:51

A gimmicky, obscurant and clumsy style of storytelling spoils what could have been gripping story about a young Russian figure skater who “jumps” across the border to Finland in “Free Skate,” a film written by and starring Finnish actress Veera W. Vilo and directed by her husband Roope Olenius.

It doesn’t identify characters by name, doesn’t lay out exactly what’s happening and jumps back and forth between figure skating training in Finland and nightmarish flashbacks to such training and the underworld connections to the sport in Russia.

It’s a good yarn that’s harder to get into than need be because of that, and dialogue that shifts from Russian to Finnish and then to English so abruptly it takes some getting used to, and even then seems a blunder — gracelessly executed.

The acting is uneven, too, with our star graceful and at home in the athletic scenes, unemotional when she needs to be and a little less than convincing in at least one of the three languages “The Figure Skater” speaks. Intense scenes have a flat quality that robs the heroine of the built-in pathos the character is entitled to.

We’re hurled into the story when we see a cop come up on the crumpled body of a young woman, lying on a snowy road. Her red jacket has Cyrillic type, so we’re guessing she’s Russian. The cop’s radio call doesn’t have nearly enough spit per syllable, so we’re guessing she’s been found somewhere across the border — Finland, it turns out.

The Skater is reassured in the hospital (in English), and the contrasts with her old life are laid out as the flashbacks begin. She didn’t end up dumped on a snowy road without help.

In the first flashback, we see a blonde skater — Or is she a coach? — brutalized in front of her before we’ve had a chance to figure out who it is we’re following. The brutes who come in are Russian, but unidentified.

Are they from the figure skating ministry, alliance, directorate? Or just thugs? What’s the mob’s angle in all of this?

The girl had a phone number in her jacket, and that’s who the Finns call. A much older woman (Leona Uotila) takes her in. We eventually discover she’s her Finnish grandmother, who speaks no Russian.

When we see VHS tapes the old woman plays for the skater, we realize that’s the skater’s mother. Eventually.

The whole movie is like this, second year film school “Let’s pointlessly make the audience work to figure out the basics” nonsense.

There are great shots and good editing and parallel story construction that let us contrast Finnish coaching, laid back and humanistic, and the unabandoned and cruel Soviet model — bullying, yelling, weigh-ins, “fat” shaming of some of the fittest athletes on Earth.

Make’em stand out in the snow in their underwear. They’ll SHIVER off the kilograms, comrades!

We get a dose of the pressure the new skater (she isn’t in school, the actress playing her was 30 at the time, even if she doesn’t look it) is under, desperate to sort her paperwork, to not be sent back, to find sponsors.

“F—-n’ Rooskie!” some Finns snap at her in the rink.

The skating is quite good and the depiction of the milieu is interesting, if simplistic — butal Russians contrasted with sweetness-and-light Finns. Sweetness and light. Not saying that’s not accurate, but it comes off as heavy-handed here.

The film’s third act turn towards graphic violence and ugly revelations is handled with a clinical, chilly remove that again, tends to spoil the effect Olenius was going for. The can’t-miss finale is botched, too.

But let’s not create a rift in the marriage. The lovely, athletic star — she used to be a gymnast — isn’t the best actress, either. And if this style of storytelling was her idea, she got in her movie’s way there, too.

A more conventional approach would have gone a long ways towards making “Free Skate” less of a “free form” experiment in needlessly convoluted screen storytelling.

Rating: unrated, violence, rape, drug abuse, nudity, profanity

Cast: Veera W. Vilo, Leena Uotila, Karolina Blackburn, Saara Elina and Miikka J. Anttila

Credits: Directed by Roope Olenius, scripted by Veera W. Vilo. A Bright Fame/Fizz-E-Motion/IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:58

March 10.

“Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman,” is a classic culture clash melodrama, one of the most celebrated works (a play) by Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.

It comes to the screen with all of its rhetorical power and a lot of its theatricality intact, thanks to Nigerian filmmaker Biyi Bandele. It’s a pointed and poignant if somewhat static adaptation set in the last years of British colonial rule in Western Africa, placing ancient tribal customs in conflict with British mores and notions of “civilization.”

Actor and sometime director Odunlade Adekola has the title role, the latest in a long line of men with his name, Elesin Oba,” a sub-chieftain to his king, his “horseman” and ceremonial guard and aide in life. But when we meet him, laughing, reveling in hedonistic excess, he is facing his death.

His king died 30 days before, and by custom, his “horseman” commits ritual suicide on the thirtieth day, the day of the ruler’s burial, so the horseman can lead him into the afterlife.

It doesn’t matter that it’s 1943 and the rest of the world is at war, that a British prince meant to be the abdicated Edward VIII is scheduled to visit. Elesin is “dancing on the narrow path of my forefathers, on a journey to visit my master.” Judging from the women, food and song, he’s fine with it.

But two events will disrupt this “last breath I breathe.”

First, he spies a winsome virgin dancing with her bridesmaids, readying for her wedding. He must have her, someone to ensure that he enjoys “my last moments on Earth.” And even in a patriarchy, he has to win “Mother” Iyaloja’s approval. She is queen of the marketplace, “mother to us all,” and it turns out, mother to the groom, which Elesin doesn’t realize.

She (Shaffy Bello) listens to Elesin’s pleas to “leave my seed behind” and decides she will “let him have his last wish.”

Meanwhile, at the British Residency, the resident (Langley Kirkwood) and his wife (Jenny Stead) are amusing themselves with their procured costumes for the night’s masquerade reception for the prince. The local Muslim policeman (Jide Kosoko) is appalled and alarmed. They are wearing “costumes of the dead,” ceremonial tribal suits that are part of the very rituals about to take place across town.

His superstitions are dismissed as “mumbo jumbo.” But word of a man about to perform a “ritual killing,” even if it’s his, sets the administrative wheels in motion.

“Will of the ancestors” be damned. Arrest that man!

Elesin’s son, sent to London to study medicine, has returned upon hearing of the tribal king’s death. He (Deyemi Okanlawon) may be dressed in a Saville Row suit, but that’s no predictor of how he will respond to his father, the ritual or the British who “dismiss” that which “you do not understand.”

Bandele, who died shortly after finishing this film, preserves the story’s pageantry and the sort of musical theater reality and unreality of it all. The characters are archetypes and information and moral debates are presented in speeches which the various Nigerians (in subtitled Yoruba, or dubbed into English) state their case and argue with their oppressors, men and women so “civilized” that “the whole world” has fallen into war on their watch.

Adekola, Bello and Okanlawon give fine performances passionately articulating the cost these tea-drinkers have exacted upon their people, with Adekola shifting from defiance to desperation in a flash.

It’s a bit stagebound and somewhat heavy-handed at times. But “Elesin Oba” wins us over with that theatricality and the poignancy of its message.

The drama, with characters trying to avert a tragedy under tragic circumstances, is cleverly-constructed, with its contrivances nicely obscured by the glorious sense of place and time seen, in hindsight, as at best another “grey area” moment in the mixed bag of late era colonialism, at worst as another crippling blow dealt to a culture destined to barely survive the experience.

Rating: TV-MA, nudity, smoking, discussion of suicide

Cast: Odunlade Adekola, Shaffy Bello, Jide Kosoko, Langley Kirwood, Jenny Stead and Deyemi Okanlawon

Credits: Scripted and directed by Biyi Bandele, based on the play by Wole Soyinka. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

Of all the tones in all of lightly comic cinema, “twee” has to be the hardest to master.

Documentary filmmaker Derek Shimoda, whose film on the history of fortune cookies I remember, takes his shot at “twee” with “Hank and Jolene,” an aimless, airless slice of black and white whimsy that reaches for twee and falls well short of the mark.

Trying to get a movie out of a young plant nursery worker and potter (Edward Buchanan), the elderly Japanese couple who run it (Saki Miata, Shinichirô Okano), the invasive species Madagascar hissing roach that shows up there one day and the girl who runs the laundromat (Aathira Rajeez) proves to be an empty experience.

Grasping for meaning I was struck by the scene in which blankfaced blank slate Hank (Buchanan) sits staring at clothes spinning in the big commercial dryer, mesmerized. That’s not unlike the effect the film achieves.

Hank’s routine, chatting with the moaning oil well pump he named “Boyd” each time he passes it is cute. The two-spout smiley-face pottery pieces Hank makes for Aki (Miata) to decorate the nursery with become romantic and animated at one point, for some reason.

A bit of musing about tree rings in the logs to be turned into firewood is a non-starter. We never see customers at the nursery. There are a lot of cats hanging around, grooming themselves, presumably where Hank lives.

And then Hank finds the roach. At least we have something to watch and talk about, right? Maybe a Don Marquis reference is in order? Nah.

Te finale of this black and white film is a semi-animated, mostly color collection of Japanese illustrations used to relate folklore figures which tie into the preceding movie (perhaps), but don’t serve much in the way of purpose to this meandering gambol of a indie “comedy” either.

At least Sam (Rajeev), the laundromat manager who tries to make conversation with the cultural-and-socially stunted Hank, has seen “Seinfeld.”

“You ever wonder where the missing socks go?”

Rating: unrated, squeaky clean

Cast: Edward Buchanan, Saki Miata, Shinichirô Okano and Aathira Rajeev

Credits: Directed by Derek Shimoda, scripted by Scott Carroll. A Fish Grenade release.

Running time: 1:19

Today’s Around the World with Netflix offering demonstrates that South Africans are just as capable of wasting money and effects on a sci fi comedy with barely a laugh in it.

And the phrase “lost in translation” isn’t limited to projects translated from another tongue. “Office Invasion” is an English-language romp that wouldn’t romp in any language.

An opening scene sets us up for a sci-fi “aliens invade and slaughter” action farce as a guard at this AMI mining corporation facility is lured through the fog of the company’s zolconoid depository — that’s a magical mineral, like vibranium or unobtanium — by a sexy Russian (Aimee Ntuli) in leather lingerie, and promptly killed and devoured.

“You know vot de call me beck on my plenet? ‘De Devourer.’ Sometink like dat.”

The movie then takes us back to “one month earlier,” and proceeds to bore the living crap out of viewers whilst we await the return of “De Devourer” and her comrades so that they can commence the “invasion” and “de devouring.”

An hour of backstory sets up the company’s inept, inherited ownership, ill-treated and unmotivated employees, its “foreign” takeover and the decision by a geologist (Rea Rangaka) who needs the health insurance the new owners take away, a lazy trust fund accountant (Kiroshan Raidoo) about to be cut off from his inheritance and a hapless security guard (Sechaba Ramphele) who just wants to be able to afford to kick out his white co-playing roomies to rob the place.

By the time they’ve bought ridiculous masks and accessed a clapped-out VW Beetle for the caper, we’ve practically forgotten the aliens who (Ntuli, Greg Viljoen and Stevel Marc) who have taken the joint over with for the mineral, but who eat humans in a pinch.

Game on? Not hardly.

Bodily function jokes and exploding bodies, alien “powers” gags, cos-playing nonsense and the only funny ting in de whole movie is de alien (Marc) who decided a Jamaican accent was de right way to go to “blend in,” mon.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations and bodily function jokes, profanity

Cast: Rea Rangaka, Kiroshan Raidoo, Sechaba Ramphele, Aimee Ntuli, Greg Viljoen and Stevel Marc

Credits: Directed by Gareth Croker and Fred Wolmarans and Gareth Crocker. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

Pixar’s “Turning Red,” Henry Selick’s “Wendell & Wild ,” DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and “The Sea Beast” are destined to lose to Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” when the Annie Awards are handed out.

Unless the fact that three Netflix titles (“Wendell,” “Seabeast” and “Pinocchio”) somehow split the vote.

They had the grace to break out an indie category for films loke “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” to have a shot in.

The Oscar will almost certainly go to “Pinocchio,” but it’s nice that animators have their own means of recognizing all levels of work and a wide range of short and feature films and TV series.

A lot of good animation showed up on screen this year, so there were snubs. Here’s Variety’s roundup.

https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/annie-award-nominations-netflix-guillermo-del-toro-pinocchio-1235491353/

Alice meets two friends for drinks after work. But there’s a nervous edge to the evening, something about the repeated “ping” alerts from her cell phone that her friends exchange a resigned look over.

Is her job that essential, her work that demanding? No. It’s “Simon,” her longtime beau.

When she ducks into the restroom, it isn’t to powder her nose or return a call. It’s the rearrange her decolletage. A cleavage “selfie,” is it?

The friends gush over the hunky waiter they instantly insist is “obsessed with you.” Alice is flustered, but she doesn’t smile. And as one of their number is about to turn 30, they try to rope Alice into plans for a week at the other’s family cottage in the woods. Alice can’t commit to that.

“Simon needs me,” she begs off, adding that he’s “got a gallery opening” and that they’re invited.

When we see her go to great pains to destroy the waiter’s phone number when she gets home, our suspicions grow. When we see her fantasize about the sexy server, we wonder. And when we hear her rehearse a “You know that business trip to Minneapolis” lie, we guess ahead.

Is Alice deciding to have an affair?

“Alice, Darling” teases out what’s going on in in intimate, slow-burn drama that’s a reminder that not all abuse is physical. Anna Kendrick stars as our victim/co-dependent in what is often a point by portrait of the shame and self-loathing that batter the psyche in a toxic relationship.

We can see the clinginess. And over the course of that week in the woods with her friends and their “You’ve changed” accusations, through flashbacks that tell her and us the depths of “control” in play here, Alice is given the reasons to do something about it.

It’s a female empowerment story with a whiff of “Lifetime Original Movie” about it, a tad too on the nose, a drama that’s something of a tease that builds towards minor melodramatics, not major ones. But Kendrick is riveting in this simple, old fashioned “star vehicle” that focuses wholly on the star.

Wunmi Mosaku of TV’s “Lovecraft Country” and Canadian actress Kaniehtiio Horn — this was filmed in Ontario — play the BFFs sketched-in and then called upon to either make Alice see what they see, or make us question their motives in tossing jabs at what they view as her more limited life. We see the dynamic of their week together, Anna’s remoteness from their trio, and wait for the fireworks.

Simon, played by Charlie Carrick of TV’s “Departure,” is a tall, handsome, accented artist. He seems a success, a “catch.” But for all his dash, swagger and attentiveness he’s insecure enough to make us wonder if he’s taking that out on Alice, or simply annoyingly needy.

And then there’s the script’s heavy-handed allegory. The trio has arrived in this corner of the boondocks as a teenaged girl has gone missing. Alice overhears the worry and the judgmental local gossip, and even agrees to pitch in with the search parties, in between sessions of ignoring her friends and brooding over her own circumstances.

“Alice, Darling” has a compactness and narrowness of focus that gives this low-heat story the illusion of pace, even as we’re watching not-much-at-all happen. Alanna Francis’ script concentrates on Alice, and the power imbalance of the casting — Kendrick is the only “name” in this — contributes to our identifying with Alice and her plight. That’s all we have to focus on.

Fortunately for us, Kendrick delivers. She immerses us in Alice’s efforts to keep her secrets and avoid sorting anything out even if she suspects the status quo is everything her friends seem to suggest it is.

Alice as a character has the agency to do something about her situation. Or does she? Is there anything that can move her to act?

Director Nighy, the daughter of acclaimed British actor Bill Nighy and a reminder that the British practically invented “Nepo Babies,” allows us the luxury of guessing where this is going and what role the missing girl plays into all this in ways that underscore that word “tease” that I keep coming back to.

But when the third act arrives like a hard slap on a cold day, we identify with Alice, fear for her and cling to the hope that some sort of intervention will shake her, move her and deliver her, if she’s willing to accept it.

Rating: R for language and some sexual content.

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Wunmi Mosaku, Kaniehtiio Horn and Charlie Carrick

Credits: Directed by Mary Nighy, scripted by Alanna Francis. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:29

Neil Jordan directs Liam, who performs William Monahan’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s most famous creation.

Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Danny Huston, Alan Cumming, Ian Hart, Francois Arnaud, Daniela Melchior and Colm Meaney star in this Feb. 15 release.

My favorite scene in the heist thriller “Out of Exile” takes place in an arthouse cinema, supposedly in Dallas.

An FBI agent (Ryan Merriman) meets a biker-looking “CI” (confidential informant) played by Jake Roberts.

You think to yourself, “Hey, I don’t see his python, but isn’t that wrestler Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts? Never pictured him for a…silent cinema buff.”

Hand it to Oklahoma filmmaker Kyle Kauwika Harris. I have never ever seen an informant meet-up staged at a showing of a silent film. Sure, it makes no damned sense, if anybody else shows up for the movie. I mean, they’d hear every word these two mugs said.

On the other hand, getting Texans to show up for a silent film outside of The People’s Republic of Austin might be the point. Meet in a place nobody goes to? An art cinema!

That’s kind of par for the course for this uneven to barely-watchable “one last job” genre thriller. A couple of half-decent scenes pass — of an armored car robbery, an argument at a strip club, a session with a parole officer — and then something so clumsy invades your field of vision that you shake your head.

It’s bad. The plot is strictly formula. The dialogue averages a cringe every five minutes.

“Why are you referring to him for?” may be a blown line. But “Are we not the F.B.I.?” was bad on the page. Not as trite as “The man, the myth, the legend.” But close.

Our writer-director gives deep thoughts to bit players and terrible lines to weak actors or non-actors. But even the experienced pros oversell, overplay and ruin Southern fried fortune-cookie quotes.

“The past ain’t never where you think you left it, boy.“

The lead is almost a non-presence. Adam Hampton is big and bearded and intimidating. Until he opens his mouth. “Soft spoken” tough guys need a bit of a growl to work, there hoss.

He plays an ex-con leader of a crew of three. Kyle Jacob Henry plays his combat vet younger brother, the “hothead” new to this robbery business, and is so over the top that he just BLOWS UP at least once in almost every scene.

And the F.B.I. agents played by Merriman and Karrie Cox don’t have the presence to compensate for bad dialogue, stupid scenes stuffed with badly-handled exposition and the like.

Agent Solomon (Merriman) is hailed at the F.B.I. office by an older higher-up that he’s on a first-name basis with. They chat for a few seconds, before the older non-actor explains to THE AUDIENCE that “I was a friend of your father,” as if his pal Merriman forgot, and goes into some nonsense about “bitter lesson learned at Waco,” just long enough to make one wonder, “Is that dude one of the investors in this stupid movie?” He gets punched-out later, so maybe not.

Pointless scenes are scattered in with those that advance the plot, but even the ones designed to flesh out the characters via cliches — the abused daughter our gang leader lost track of in prison — just set one’s teeth on edge.

The most experienced actor of the lot is veteran heavy Peter Greene (“Pulp Fiction”) and he’s as oily and menacing as ever.

But truth be told, I started scratching my head right from the start of “Out of Exile,” when three gangsters with the showiest assault rifles this side of “Flash Gordon” rob an armored truck, get the drop on the guard with the bag coming out of the bank, load the bag into their getaway SUV ONLY to have the lowly-paid guard pull a small pistol out of his ankle holster on THREE GUYS WITH MACHINE GUNS.

Makes about as much sense as everything else. But hey, at least Jake “The Snake” got to see a silent movie.

Rating: R, violence, profanity, smoking

Cast: Adam Hampton, Ryan Merriman, Kyle Jacob Henry, Karrie Cox, Hayley McFarland and Peter Greene.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kyle Kauwika Harris. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:47