Movie Nation

The Hitchcock films that draw me back in, time and again, are the lighter-hearted ones. As much as I relish “Strangers on a Train,””Vertigo,” “Rear Window” or “Notorious,” it’s the murderous, mysterious larks that hold up best for me.

I can’t channel surf past “Saboteur,” “The Trouble with Harry,” or the greatest Hitchcock romp of them all, “North by Northwest,” without stopping and mumbling, “Well, there goes this afternoon/evening/planned bedtime” etc.

“Foreign Correspondent” might be the very lightest, largely because of its sense of play and the defiant optimism built into it. Filmed during the darkest days of World War II, with Hitchcock returning to Britain from America just as the “Blitz” was coming to the skies over 1940 London, the Master of Suspense was determined to do his patriotic duty, even if he was based in Hollywood.

And his duty was to get America ready for the idea of intervening in Europe with a film. There aren’t many similarities with Michael Powell’s similarly-intentioned “The 49th Parallel,” which came out in 1941, but the one important one is tone. Like Powell and his screenwriters, Hitchcock figured the cleverest way to send his “You need to be in this fight” message was in a jaunty, adventurous, fast-moving travelogue with murderous Nazis — the only kind — and their encounters with plucky, human rights-loving anti-fascists of every stripe.

Unlike the darker travelogue “Saboteur” (1942), this time the emphasis would be on optimism even as Hitch’s titular hero, given the All American George M. Cohanesque name “Johnny Jones,” is learning just how evil and treacherous fascist Germany and its treasonously proud fanboys had become.

And if you wanted to print “American Optimism” in large, friendly letters up on the movie marquee, you couldn’t do much better than casting Joel McCrea, just then achieving the stardom that would make him a screen immortal, thanks to his work in the title roles of “Foreign Correspondent” and the next year’s “Sullivan’s Travels.”

McCrea would play the reluctant American, a city reporter unconcerned about events “over there,” a guy who regarded the job of “foreign correspondent” much the way his editor/boss (Harry Davenport) does, as over-educated swells too delicate to get the ‘real’ story.

— “Foreign correspondent! I could get more news out of Europe looking in a crystal ball…I don’t want any more economists, sages, or oracles bombinating over our cables. I want a reporter!”

Thus is our “crime” reporter summoned and sent, against his will, into the diplomatic thick of things. He wants instructions, and gets almost none. Jones wants to know who he should interview. And that tone Hitch was going is given away in that very scene.

— “Well how about Hitler? Don’t you think it would be a good idea to pump him? He must have something on his mind.”

That’s our movie, an American smart aleck abroad, fretting over this famous diplomat (Albert Basserman) he just happens to run into and the world of secret treaties, intrigues, war plans and assassinations that spin around him.

Laraine Day, most famous for this film but who worked into the “Murder, She Wrote” era, plays Carol, the daughter of the head of the Universal Peace Party. She is with our correspondent, who figures he needs a bowler hat and high-class moniker — “Huntley Haverstock” — for this new assignment, and a British reporter friend she knows when that pivotal assassination happens and the murderously merry chase begins.

That British “reporter friend” of Carol’s is an ever-so-suave, too-too-droll Continental whom Haverstock/Jones throws in with when the chips are down. I’d love to know which credited (or uncredited) writer had the brainstorm of naming George Sanders’ character “Scott ffolliott.”

— “I don’t get the double ‘F.'”

— “They’re at the beginning. Both small ‘F’s.”

— “They can’t be at the beginning.”

— “One of my ancestors was beheaded by Henry VIII. His wife dropped the capital letter to commemorate it. There it is.”

Sanders all but steals the movie with that pre-“All About Eve” snide British savoir faire. Every word out of his mouth has something amused and amusing about it, as if he’s in on the joke and “Look here, you Yanks. You don’t want to miss out on all the fun!”

Stumbling into a nest of spies, ffolliott offers to sell them life insurance policies.

“Now look, I’ll just sit here and you carry on with whatever you were doing. Don’t mind me, I sometimes sit like this for hours.“

“Lonesome” is a danged-near-adorable throwback romance that plays like a love letter to being single and mingling in Milwaukee.

Producer/writer/director Tony K. Hall shot it in black and white — with cotton candy and its effects on the tongue the only splashes of color. He slashes the story down to the barest of essentials and scripts more cutesy inter-titles explaining the stages of a relationship than lines of dialogue.

Obsession!” “Infatuation!” and “The seasons are changing…Weather falls from the memories of warmth and blossoming love.”

“Lonesome” is a screen romance homage to the French New Wave,” only featherweight and cutesy.

Guy (Zach McLain) and Jim (Eric Halverson) are graphic designers and roommates. Jim has a girlfriend (Carolyn Lyons). Guy would like one.

One fine summer’s day, Jim talks Guy into taking a break, ditching social media as a means of “meeting somebody,” and hitting the beach. That’s where he stumbles into Roxy (Amber DeRuyter). She is cute, laughs easily and like Guy, Milwaukee through and through.

“This gin town is fulla cocktail couples!”

They hit it off and spend a day walking and chatting. They chuckle at their shared love of cotton candy (blue tongue vs. pink tongue) and that Wisconsin way of saying “sammiches.”

“D’you work tomorrow?” she wants to know.

“No.”

“Let’s DRINK,” she suggests.

They meet in the same place, beer and shots. He takes a bathroom break that turns out to be more complicated than quick. She wonders where he’s gone. He returns to find her missing.

And they “didn’t exchange information.”

“Lonesome” is mostly about Guy’s futile efforts to track down somebody he got as far as “doggos” or “cattos” and “picket fence” with, a semi-serious connection. But he never got her last name or her number.

He hunts online to no avail. They just miss each other at a slam poetry evening at a pub, or at the street fair. Every so often, she breaks into song, a cappella.

“Lonesome” manages to be a movie long on charm and short on most everything else. The leads are pleasant “real people” and summery Milwaukee is shown off as a real city with a 30-and-under revived downtown, complete with “The Hop,” their Potawatomi light rail system.

But this movie’s shortcomings are kind of obvious, too.

It’s listed on IMDb as running 1:23. But its release length is 1:05. That’s not long enough for anybody to release it to theaters and might even discourage most streamers (Random Media has it VOD/Amazon).

The black and white gimmick is great for standing out from the crowd. One of my favorite romances ever was the 2007 indie “In Search of a Midnight Kiss,” which had edge, poignance and the underbelly of LA flipped onto its romantic head.

Here, the constant intertitles are cloying, the story is too limited to amount to much more than the basic “I hope they find each other.” I heartily endorse movies that escape from LA and feature players that aren’t dividing their time between “acting” and “modeling.” Not everybody in the world looks like a gym rat. Why should people in the movies be different?

That said, our leads are almost pleasant to spend time with, but no one anybody would chat up at a cocktail party. The dialogue, what little there is of it, doesn’t reveal anything that makes either person interesting.

And then there’s the title of “Lonesome,” utterly generic and over-used since the silent cinema era. How is anybody going to find this?

Here’s how I tracked down the photos. Dogpile or Google “Lonesome” and “Movie” and “Milwaukee.”

I liked what I saw, I just needed to see more. This is a somewhat polished “student” level indie that runs a tad long, not a feature that invites us to wholly invest in the thinly-sketched in characters.

It does make one want to Potawatomi one’s way to Milwaukee, though. Maybe wait a few months — six or so — before doing it.

Rating: unrated, squeaky clean

Cast: Amber DeRuyter, Zach McLain, Eric Halverson, Carolyn Lyons and Alexandra Peseri

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tony K. Hall. A Random Media release.

Running time: 1:05

Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and the boys chew on “Train Kept a Rollin'” while David Hemmings searches searches searches for his someone.

Did director Michelangelo Antonioni tell that crowd to stand stock still so that Hemmings could weave amongst them? Or were they just that square?

Rock Hall of Fame member is one thing. Being in one of the greatest films of the ’60s? That’s immortality on a whole other level.

The sets, effects and production design of “The Devil Conspiracy” is damned impressive — huge and gloomy, foggy, Apocalyptic and Hellish.

One would expect no less from a movie that mashes up “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Exorcist” and “The Boys from Brazil.”

“Conspiracy” lets us know it is heavy on exposition, “DNA,” Bond villain labs and Satanic lairs, shoot-outs, stabbings and beheadings and Christian mythology. Satan is something of a smart ass. St. Michael, in his angelic and his human guises, is something of a badass.

Granted, it takes a while before that fateful decision is made to “play this for laughs,” too late to alter the picture’s destiny. But by the “f— around and find out” third act, a lot what comes out of Satan and St. Michael’s mouths is pretty damned and pretty damned funny.

What carnage! What chaos! And all so that Satan can deliver to The Lord God Almighty “the greatest f-you daddy of all time”

Director Nathan Frankowski of “To Write Love on Your Arms” and “Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher” doesn’t have a genre or a “style” per se. So this generously-budgeted/no-“name” stars horror epic is just all over the place; never quite serious, never remotely silly enough.

Laura (Alice Ewing-Orr), an American art history student in Turin, doesn’t believe in “evil,” but she’s fascinated by images of St. Michael fighting the devil. That’s how she comes to be in the cathedral museum where The Shroud of Turin is back on public display. She’s been sketching Satan’s face on a sculpture so long she’s locked inside at closing.

That’s when the wraith (Eveline Hall) strides in and beheads the guards, allowing mugs in a G-Wagon to roll in and help her snatch the shroud.

A prologue has shown us Satan’s fall and sentence to hell, put there by St. Michael (Peter Mensah). These modern day minions have it in mind to get him out by helping Lucifer be reborn. They’ll use the DNA from the shroud to clone a Son of God for Satan.

Idiots. Only rubes and fanatics don’t realize the Shroud of Turin is fake.

But Dr. Laurents (Brian Caspe) is a man of science, someone who has been raiding crypts in this cathedral, using DNA to bring back the composer Vivaldi, painter and sculptor Michelangelo, all the best Italians. He sells the rights to raise these “Boys from Bologna” (close enough) to the super rich, who would love having a genius bear their surname.

The priest (Joe Doyle) who got Laura into this special exhibition and is killed by the wraith makes his dying wish that “St. Michael use” his body to come back to Earth and stop Team Lucifer. When he does, it’s game on.

This is no Travolta “Michael.” This is Mel Gibson’s idea of an archangel.

This movie might have been more fun had it not lurched along, with all these kidnapped prospective surrogates (including Laura) fighting to avoid insemination rape, Michael visiting a local expert who provides him with everything he needs to visit Satan in hell (flares, a torch, and a pump shotgun) and Laura’s traumatic impregnation and takeover by the strong and mighty, if not righteous, special effects fetus in her womb.

Doyle brings a little swagger to Michael, shaking his head at the sorts of econoboxes “priests” have to drive, setting off explosions like a droll, clerically-collared Bond. And Ewing-Orr, of “The Courier,” “The Theory of Everything” and “Atonement,” commits to Laura’s rage and terror like a real pro.

But Frankowski can’t quite decide how seriously to take this Veering between existential faith-based terror and trying to get Laura’s attention, only to be told in a Satanic voice coming out of the pregnant woman’s mouth, “Laura isn’t here right now,” makes for a generally unsatisfying bit of nonsense that never frightens and never quite makes it as a comedy.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Alice Ewing-Orr, Joe Doyle, Eveline Hall, Peter Mensah, Brian Caspe and Joe Anderson.

Credits: Directed by Nathan Frankowski, scripted by Ed Alan. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:50

Netflix has this teen rom-com thing down.

Joey King or Ava Michele or Anjelika Washington or Camila Mendes, the leading ladies may change. But the aspirational wealth-and-bling settings don’t.

The vocal fry sass, the best Hollywood dentistry money can buy and makeup that banishes freckles from memory, designer school uniforms accessorized to impress, the total absence of “rich” parents who are just mentioned as providers of affluence — cars, mansions for parties, “Ivies” for college — it’s a formula, bitches, and they’ve mastered it.

It all kind of comes home with “Do Revenge,” the most excessive Netflix teen romantic comedy of them all. The kids are coiffed and ready for the runway. The school is affluence itself. The cars are classic, the stakes are high(ish) and the thrills include drugs.

So let’s push the language envelope, too. The c-word makes its bow, and not just dropped by this or that random British accent in a South Florida private school setting.

“Do Revenge” is awash in excess, a “Mean Girls” married to a “Strangers on a Train” plot designed to bend towards “Heathers” until the little dears who filmed it lose their nerve.

It’s hip, quippy and quotable, a self-referential riff on “’90s teen rom-coms,” right down to the Le
Tigre, Harvey Danger, Third Eye Blind, Meredith Brooks, Fatboy Slim soundtrack.

“I’m sorry, ‘Schoolhouse Rock.’ Are you dragging my SENTENCE structure?”

That no one involved recognized when enough is enough, not only losing their nerve to go straight to the edge, but not knowing when to wrap it all up, is its own college transcript tragedy. The film is flip and fun right up to the moment it tries to outsmart itself.

Camila Mendes trots out her “Riverdale” fangs out one more time as Drea, super-cute, super-popular and totally together queen of Rosehill School. She dates the popular, politically-connected rich boy Max (Austin Abrams), hangs with “The Royal Court” of entitled beauties and has Yale in the bag.

Not bad for a scholarship girl whose never-seen mom is a nurse.

But one leaked sex video later and it all comes crashing down. Slapping that ass Max for letting or making it happen makes “him” the victim, at least to the school’s lady head master (teen queen Hall of Famer Sarah Michelle Gellar). Drea is on probation and is shunned for her entire pre-senior-year summer.

Then “the new girl” shows up. Eleanor (Maya Hawke, Uma and Ethan’s kid) is gender fluid, into her dad’s classic car collection and forced to come to a new school where her own gay tormentor resides.

One or two complaining conversations later, it’s resolved. They will “do each other’s revenge,” like in that Hitchcock movie nobody references, the one about the strangers and the train.

Reputations will be savaged, hypocrisy exposed, an aspiring chef’s menu will be mushroomed.

And Max? He can found the “Cis Hetero Men Champion Identifying Female Students League” if he wants. He’s still got a bullseye on his “carefully curated image.”

Jokes like that fake organization don’t quite land, but a lot of the zingers do. Eleanor feels “like Billie Jean King in a sea of Maria Sharapovas.”

Ever since the Golden Age of John Hughes, “Sixteen Candles” through “Pretty in Pink,” teen movies have been instantly, adorably dated because no matter how current a filmmaker like director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson makes the dialogue, it’s her “’90s kid” tastes that adorn her movie.

Sure, play a little Billie Eilish, maybe her most f-bombed song, just to establish your campus cred, but that soundtrack is not what 2020s kids are jamming to. Reference “’90s teen rom-coms” as you “tour” the campus.Here are our “Instagram Bitches,” over there is the environmental “Greta Thunberg Brigade,” “Horny Theatre Kids, etc.”

But as each new friend undertakes to “destroy” the other’s nemesis, “Do Revenge” grinds its gears. There’s a solid 90 minutes of fun movie here, 100 tops. And this thing just goes on and on, that “Neflix editing” that doesn’t take into account how quickly-paced screen teen rom-coms need to be.

Mendes projects confidence and charisma, but it might be that “Veronica” on “Riverdale” will be a hard acting habit to break. She never gives us that beautiful-but-vulnerable Vanessa Hudgens side, not convincingly anyway. Hawke has become the Nepo Baby poster child and “Do Revenge” feels like the movie that inspired that whole Hollywood trend story and its offshoots, thanks to her lack of presence and middling performance.

The ’80s comedies that inspired the ’90s ones and gave birth to the current crop found a little heart and delivered at least one adult to “talk some sense” into kids teetering onto the wrong path — “revenge,” for instance.

And the kids weren’t all vapid consumerists aspiring to Kardashianhood. Back then, such girls were always Ms. Perfect Rachel McAdams, and the rich future frat-bros were often played by James Spader, typecast as a blond bastard for a reason. There’s barely a hint of Drea’s disadvantaged status here. She’s “thrift shopping,” the mean girls all say. We never see it, or evidence of it. Her hair style costs more than that late model Mitsubishi Evo she’s driving.

But “Do Revenge” is worth doing for a bit, anyway. Feel free to drift over to the lower right of your Netflix screen and change the speed to 1.25 times “normal” after about the midpoint. This thing drags.

Rating: R, mild violence, drugs, sexual content, profanity

Cast: Camila Mendes, Maya Hawke, Austin Abrams, Rish Shah, Talia Ryder and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Credits: Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, scripted by Celeste Ballard, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:02

Feb. 3, this lovely looking dramedy hits theaters.

If chemistry were all, then the sparks Amy Adams and Matthew Goode set off might be enough in ‘Leap Year,’ a romantic comedy in which those sparks never quite ignite.

Wrapped too tight American meets louche, world-weary Irishman? Add Guinness and a few laughs and at LEAST a PG-13 rating and we’ll talk.

She plays Anna, an over-organized real-estate “stager,” that person who comes in before an open house, puts out flowers and bakes cookies, all to trick prospective buyers into thinking they’re “home.” She and long-term beau Jeremy (Adam Scott), the cardiologist, have a shot at getting into Boston’s exclusive “Davenport” luxury apartment building. What they don’t have is a date — for a wedding, or even plans for a date. Four years in and workaholic boyfriend can’t pull the trigger on this “convenient” romance.

But when he is off to a conference in Dublin, her dad (John Lithgow) reminds her of the Irish tradition that grandma used to snare grandpa. On leap day in a leap year, the ladies in Ireland get to do the proposing.

Anna leaps on a plane to go and close the deal. “I’m on a schedule,” she snaps when weather re-directs her to Wales. But her dangerous crossing of the Irish Sea isn’t the worst of it. Once she shows up in Dingle, the only person who can get her to Dublin in time is the cynical, financially-strapped pub owner, Declan (Goode), who isn’t keen to go to “a city of chancers and cheats.” But he does.

Will mishap-prone Anna get them killed? Will she ever get past his nickname for her (“EEED-jut”) and see his charm?

Anand Tucker (“Shopgirl”) is not the first, or fourth name that comes to mind when you’re looking for a romantic comedy director. He gives us a generous selection of heart-melting Adams close-ups. But his touch is heavy-handed, the pacing is sluggish and he doesn’t know how to use the locations for warmth or how to cast the standard issue Irish bit players for “local color.” Romantic comedies should sparkle. Tucker doesn’t do “sparkle.”

Irish character actors abound, but are given entirely too little to do. There’s barely a hint of “diddley aye” music.

The “Made of Honor” screenwriters don’t deliver enough jokes or feisty exchanges between the ill-matched traveling companions. The PG rating robs the picture of that well-placed curse that lets us laugh at the obstacles to love the couple encounter on their quest.

It’s a romantic comedy. We know where this is going. Tucker & Co. don’t seem to realize that it’s not the destination, it’s the witty, winsome journey that counts.

Rating: PG for sensuality and language

Cast: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, ADam Scott, John Lithgow,

Credits: Directed by Anand Tucker, scripted by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. A Universal release, now on Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:40

First of all, “Virtually Heroes” wasn’t really lost. It was sort of abandoned back in 2013. Finished, but not even released that I’m aware of.

It’s a “Roger Corman” film in that he produced it, and his name got Mark Hamill for an on-the-nose cameo that lasts about six minutes and shows up at the beginning of the third act. Corman produced ten times as many movies (515) as he directed (56). So, something special? Something rare? Not really.

Corman was famous for giving generations of filmmakers their start, from Coppola and Demme and Scorsese and Sayles to Cameron and Dante and Ron Howard. G.J. Echternkamp, who directed this, made less than a handful of execrable flops. Suffice it to say he’s no Joe Dante.

There are glimpses of actors Jan Michael Vincent and Robert Patrick, archival footage from some earlier Corman productions from when Patrick was just about ready to shave for the first time and Vincent was still alive.

But setting out to make a “cult” film rarely pays off. We can always tell when folks are trying too hard, and that’s what’s happening in this attempt to spoof the video game experience.

It’s a Vietnam War action picture about two self-aware video game characters (Robert Baker and Ben Chase) who try and try and try again to complete their “mission,” rescuing hostages from the North Vietnamese Army. Or is it the Viet Cong?

“These guys are wearing tan. That means they’re a LOT tougher than the guys in black!”

At least, that’s the way it plays out in the game, which freezes up (“LOADING” graphics), features acres of dusty Southern Cal locations doubling for humid Southeast Asia and has our “heroes” shooting up legions of brown folks and shouting “USA! USA!” right up to the moment when they’re “killed” again, and have to restart the game and try once more.

That’s the funniest conceit here, that this is a “this time we win” Vietnam fantasy. And the two supermen can’t quite manage it.

Katie Savoy plays the shapely, anti-war photographer grizzled Books (Baker) can never wholly “save,” never quite steal a “kiss” from.

Humans mostly behave like “humans” in this gamescape. Save for Lt. Ho (Sam Medina), a bullet-dodging martial arts master who dispatches his victims with a Bond villain golden luger.

“That dude was like a Vietnamese Spider Man!”

There are NPCs (“non-player characters”) and jokes about NPCs, and by the commanding officer NPC (Gregory North).

“The terrain makes the Ozarks look like Busch God-D—-d GARDENS!”

And Mark Hamill shows up as “The Monk,” offering fortune cookie wisdom about how never finishing the game helps the character (or player) “perfect himself.” I’d quote more of him, but he has most of the good lines, and there’s no point in robbing you of the pleasure of Master Mark’s moments of wisdom.

The tone is jokey enough, a few of the gags land. When our two man rescue squad runs to the edge of their “map,” they’re about to leave the gamescape. Their faces mash up against unseen glass.

Cheap, funny and effective, kind of the hallmarks of a Robert Corman production. If only they’d had more of those.

Still, I suppose if you’ve quaffed a few, edibled a few others and what not, this could be a nonstop giggle.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Robert Baker, Ben Chase, Katie Savoy, Kevin Trang, Theo Breaux, Ben Messmer, Sam Medina and Mark Hamill

Credits: Directed by G.J. Echternkamp, scripted by Matt Yamashita. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:23

April 28, one of the hit books of the ’70s becomes a major and probably very cute motion picture.

They got the music right.

The fight as it played out underground it the setting of this Feb. 24 thriller. Genre film, but the trailer suggests it could be good.