Movie Nation

As pandemic break-up romantic comedies go, “The End of Us” isn’t half-bad. It turns out “less is more” in such films, and “End” scores over the big-budget “Locked Down,” the British “Together” and the French Netflixer “Stuck Together” by getting the simple things right.

Chemistry is paramount, and little-known stars Ben Coleman and Ali Vingiano have it, especially in their just-broke-up-and-quarantining-together brittleness.

The situations are simple in the extreme — impatiently seeking match.com matches while still sharing a house with your ex, “dating” during social distancing, quarrels over petty nothings, childish “I’m prepping for the L-SAT. I think I want to be a lawyer” and “I’m finishing my ‘Einstein’ screenplay delusions.

And the conclusion is more logical than satisfying, much like “the end of COVID” which we all looked forward to before certain governors and gubernatorial candidates with dreams of political superstardom made prolonging COVID-19 their brand.

Nick is an LA actor who can’t get busy live-in love Leah to put-aside her brokerage firm’s homework long enough to get her to run lines, undistracted, with him. Put another way, she’s the breadwinner propping up this “leech” who is “still working on himself” into his 30s, a grown-ass man still part-time bartending, still scrambling to find enough acting work to justify his effort.

The first real “joke” here is how self-absorbed (LA draws them like flies) they both are, and how they pretty much miss the coming shutdown/lockdown that is days in the making. She’s puzzled when the parking lot at her office is empty. He’s put-out that his audition is canceled, then his bartending gig is gone.

That’s the perfect time for her to chew him out and for him to storm out. But he can’t. And she’s not shocked to find him back “home,” either. He’s heard of a succession of “immuno-compromised” and the like excuses by phone. She’s getting a lot of cheerleading from friends for kicking him out, stuff of the “FINALLY” and “about damned time” variety.

That’s not the way it actually is. But there’s no taking back what’s already been said, no mending that which is permanently shattered. They’re stuck together, with him annoyingly-playing assorted keyboards and her struggling to hang onto her job and seeking further counsel from friends about this “ex” of four years still living under her roof.

The twists in the story include attempts to date while still trapped with each other, the form such “dates” took under lockdown and the slimmest glimmer of residual feelings emerging within a parade of google searches for “COVID-19 deaths,” Fauci press conferences and — lest we forget — montages of TV coverage of the inept lies, whining, blundering and attempts to cash-in on the crisis by the TPG, the fellow in the White House in America’s darkest hours.

Vingiano does a fine job of suggesting that Leah’s “needs” are battling, hammer and tong, with her sense of pragmatism as she tries to “maintain boundaries” with Nick and take up with an online connection (Derrick Joseph DeBlasis) without Nick finding out about it.

Coleman gets across confusion, hurt and little self-reflection as he brings a little something extra to the proceedings by providing much of the forlorn, pseudo-Parisian score by playing the harmonica-like mouth-blown keyboard called a Melodica.

The arguments are testy, but not nuclear. The “history” is sentimental and palpable, but with no promise of a “future.”

And the production is no more ambitious than working conditions would allow, serving up little reminders of lockdown lunch-dates — car-to-socially-distanced-car — and early COVID paranoia.

Joggers got no peace running down the wrong street. Someone was sure to yell out, “Could you put on a mask, please.”

Someday, we’re going to be nostalgic over all this, as one character suggests. Of all the movies made under COVID conditions and about COVID conditions, I have to say “The End of Us” is the one that hits closest to home.

Rating: R for language and sexual references

Cast: Ben Coleman, Ali Vingiano, Derrick Joseph DeBlasis and Gadiel Del Orbe

Credits: Scripted and directed by Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner. A Saban Films release

Running time: 1:32

He never finished it in his lifetime, but Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick…BOOM” might be the ultimate “Let’s put on a show!” musical. The guy whose grand achievement was “Rent,” the “musical for the MTV generation,” lays bare his struggles to get started, get on his feet and get a show on stage with a years-in-the-making musical he is about to workshop in New York.

If you’re putting that sort of plucky, Broadway Babies Make It Happen production on the screen, you could do worse than having the musical theater Man of the Moment, Lin-Manuel Miranda, directing it to life.

Miranda gives us a revised but affectionate, intimate and respectful adaptation of a stage show about one man’s deadline-obsessed creative process and how impossibly difficult it is to write and mount a musical and launch your career in the priciest, cruelest crucible of them all, The Big Apple.

And Miranda serves up a grand showcase for a singing Andrew Garfield, playing Larson and for rising star Alexandra Shipp, and a pointed reminder of the dazzling talent of Vanessa Hudgens.

It’s about a composer, author and lyricist stressing towards a deadline, struggling to put the finishing touches on the show — about to be “workshopped,” sung-through without sets or a full cast — for potential producers/investors.

He’s upset and frantic about that. But he’s even more freaked out by the fact that all this is coming to a head smack dab on top of his 30th birthday. He’s burned through his youth, his youthful potential and energy waiting on tables at the Moonrise Diner in Soho, living in an unheated flat with a string of indulgent roommates as he takes eight years writing and composing a sci-fi musical called “Superbia.”

I’m…running out of TIME!” he shouts at one point, as if we haven’t gotten the message long before then.

Garfield’s Larson is a Broadway “type,” relentlessly upbeat, a “show must go on” smile as his “public” face, even as the clock is “tick, ticking” away on his dream and the confluence of events piling on top of this one approaching morning in January of 1990.

That’s when his showcase “workshop” will be read/sung-through for a select audience of what he hopes will be Broadway luminaries. The film is framed in Larson singing and narrating from that showcase’s stage, with flashbacks taking us back to much that led up with what’s coming to a head right at that moment.

We meet the dancer girlfriend Susan (Shipp, of “Love, Simon,” “Shaft” and “All the Bright Places”) who is both his muse and about to leave for a job out of town, somebody who needs “an answer,” which is why she’s constantly telling him “We need to talk,” one of a sea of distractions he’s batting away.

“Everyone’s unhappy in New York,” he shouts at Susan, mid-argument. “It’s what New York IS.”

Debtors, an AWOL agent, the producer of the showcase (Jonathan Marc Sherman) and old roommate Michael (Robin de Jesus) are also among those yanking on his sleeve, needing his time.

And he needs a “second act” song for his character Elizabeth. Only he’s “blocked.”

As it’s implied that Michael, a high school classmate and actor who gave up his dream and went corporate, might offer an office job way out and that he might have been Larson’s lover and AIDS is the subtext of anything “Broadway” in 1990, we can see the distractions he faces are close to overwhelming.

He’s manic at times, extravagant — throwing a birthday party for his girlfriend when he can’t afford it, over-doing and over-spending on his workshop presentation. He’ll take “focus group” market research money, and the cash he can round up from selling his record collection, just to add another musician to the workshop band.

He works on that “missing” song, even as he’s having what could be a break-up argument with Susan.

“Scenes from a modern romance, as told in SONG” might work.

As we jump back and forth from Larson singing and telling the story of this showcase, and the tension mounting as he was struggling to keep all his juggled-balls in the air, “tick, tick…Boom!” makes us feel his pain and anxiety, if not share his suspense.

No, nobody ever heard of a Broadway musical called “Superbia” because it never happened. And we all know what’s coming for the whirling dervish of musical energy named Jonathan Larson.

As the show opens with a string of what could be called “affirming” tunes in the power pop modern musical style, it took a while to draw me in.

But Miranda turns the “What am I doing with my life in this diner?” number “Sunday,” a soloist-plus-chorus-piece inspired by Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” into a show stopper. The annoying New York customers in the crowded diner are Broadway royalty who join Jonathan’s vocalized gripes and dreams. Even a casual Broadway fan will recognize Bernadette and Bebe, Chita and Joel Grey. It’s downright thrilling.

Shipp and Hudgens have a lovely duet, “Come to Your Senses,” with “the one who got away” (Shipp’s Susan) and the singer/actress (Hudgens) hired to “sing” her part blended together in Larson’s mind.

Another showpiece is a rap number “Play Game,” about the compromises and demands made on artists just to get their play in front of an audience, knocked out of the park by Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter. It’s one of the tunes added to the stage musical, which itself had to be pieced together and finished and made Off Broadway-ready by Tony winning playwright David Auburn (“Proof”) back in 2001.

The funniest scene is the moment Larson treasured forever, a hilarious “public reading” endorsement by Stephen Sondheim himself (Bradley Whitford), batting away shallow complaints from a never-humbled blowhard of a Broadway colleague (Richard Kind, always good for a laugh).

Miranda keeps all this engaging, even if becomes difficult to keep all of it straight in your head. Garfield lets us see a man keeping “overwhelmed” at bay. But it’s difficult for the audience to share his (relative) calm.

The songs range from beautiful and fun, to generic and forgettable filler, tunes serving their purpose in the narrative, but little more.

There’s no getting around the places all these stresses, characters and juggled balls can make the show drag, here and there.

But “Tick, Tick…Boom!” is still essential viewing for “Rent” fans and devotees of Larson’s legend, and an impressive audition for more musicals from the likes of Garfield, Hudgens and Shipp. And Miranda fans? He did a much better job than the crew that filmed “Rent.”

Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Bradley Whitford, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Richard Kind, Judith Light and Vanessa Hudgens

Credits: Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the musical by Jonathan Larson and Steven Auburn, adapted for the screen by Steven Levenson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:00

“Writing with Fire” is an Indian documentary of citizen journalism at its most elemental and vital.

It’s about Khabar Lahariya, the Northern Indian activist newspaper wholly staffed by “lower-caste” women who teach each other the journalism basics and then go out among the people, politicians and police and confront the neighborhood’s, region’s and culture’s most pressing issues with hard-hitting stories aimed at instigating change.

It’s what all journalism is supposed to be and once was — grassroots. And the women of Khabar Lahariya, “Waves of News,” practice it with a passion that’s inspiring and in ways that would make much Western mainstream media blush in shame.

In a patriarchal country where “rape culture” is a national tragedy shrugged off by men at every level of power, these women — some educated, others trained on the job — doggedly question India’s do-nothing because “Nothing can be done” police and politicians and ask questions at press conferences that have their male press counterparts patronizingly scold them for their impertinence.

Indian filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (“Dilli,” “Timbuktu”) take us into the staff meetings and training sessions of this Uttar Pradesh (northern India) enterprise, and then follow some of the star journalists of the paper as it transitions into a digital media enterprise, gathering news far and wide via cell phones.

Meera Davi is the top reporter there, and we see her example spreading among the other staff. She is, she tells us, “Dalit,” lower-caste in a culture where the accident of birth is still everything. But Meera is, we learn, educated and had several jobs that used that education before.

Stepping into journalism, which she describes as “an upper caste profession,” she found her place in the world and started making her mark.

The camera crew follows her and fellow journalists Suneeta Prajapati and Shyamkali Devi as they interview rape victims, one of whom tells of repeated assaults by a local gang — “These men can do anything,” she complains. She is taking a terrible risk even speaking out.

“I am giving you this interview now. Who knows what will happen to us tonight?”

Then we follow the reporter to the police station, where the smirking, sunglasses-indoors Indian police of legend and international stereotype face their first-ever journalistic reckoning.

“Why was no report filed? Why have you done nothing?” wipes the smirks away with persistence and steady exposure via the spotlight of media attention.

This “afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted” ethos and “Why is nothing being done?” advocacy is applied to every story they report — illegal “mafia” gravel pit mines where child labor is employed, workers are injured or killed and villages swallowed up, helpless because the local authorities look the other way. Another village is decimated by a tuberculosis outbreak until reporting shames the government into action.

Violence against journalists in that part of the world is touched on, every so often, and emphasized with graphics.

As these women courageously step into situations, we wonder about their safety and if the size of the documentary camera crew following them might protect them. There’s always a mouthy local man emboldened by the local men around him into insulting the reporter, a woman alone, telling her to “know your place” or some variation.

What’s startling is seeing that behavior in press conferences where Meera, Suneeta and others politely ask blunt, hard-hitting questions and are chided by a scrum of media men who suggest emphasizing “the positive,” complimenting these political hacks, sexist, lazy public servants and openly corrupt louts.

One even takes his “mansplaining” to the street afterward, lecturing a Suneeta (in Hindi, with English subtitles) in what’s “simply not done” in such public press events.

A politician dismisses “rapes” as “mistakes made by silly boys” and describe rape as “a mental health issue,” code-language for “Do nothing about rape/poverty/guns” the world over. He is taken aback when there are follow-up questions.

The film’s third act shows the daunting task of facing the thuggish, racist conservatism of Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP Party at the local level — politicians and local leaders exposed as advocating violence, and the “protect our (literally) sacred cows” distractions the party’s backers fall for, take to the streets and riot over.

Meanwhile, the protestors have no indoor plumbing at home and bleak lives with limited futures, all a product of their gullible political choices and the cynical oligarchs who lead them.

And through all this, Khabar Lahariya “goes digital,” with its reporters not only learning and teaching each other the basics — just enough English to be able to use a cell phone, which many of them have never had access to, how to gather cover-footage, video inserts and the like.

The reporters find themselves patiently explaining video journalism to local politicians, who wonder why they’re videoing their entourages, getting shots of their homes and the like. The reporters listen to “send me your story before publishing” demands that they’ve learned to ignore, even if the American term “prior restraint” isn’t something they’ve heard or feel the need to explain to bullying officials.

Meera clucks at “self-styled religious gurus” who “exploit people,” and lectures her fellow reporters to ensure that they don’t simply uncritically amplify unsupported claims of such political-religious charlatans, but fact-check, dispute and confront them.

Wonder if she’s available for DC Press Corps workshops?

We see the skyrocketing impact of the newspaper’s new digital reach, its Youtube channel’s exploding popularity, the women doing “promos” familiar to any local TV station viewer, where the journalists herald their triumphs at “bringing change” to a ruined road long-ignored, epidemics responded to and the like.

Filmmakers Ghosh and Thomas give us a glimpse of the women’s home lives, the supportive (and not so supportive) spouses, the pressure from families to “not bring shame” on their Dalit lower caste status, as if either concept is anything but ludicrous.

We don’t get any notion of the newspaper’s business model, the way it pays its bills through the digital transition (a Youtube channel and a lean staff are but a good start). We only glimpse the training, and see none of the stumbling efforts to learn to be at ease doing TV stand ups, walking and talking reports and the film.

The film makes such “digital transition” stumbling blocks look as effortless as taking your first selfie. Having worked at newspapers going through that “change,” I can tell you, it’s not.

And for all the emphasis on “rape culture,” we never ever see a rapist brought to justice thanks to their efforts.

But “Writing with Fire” still a shock-to-the-system reminder that, as Meera says, “Journalism is the essence of democracy,” how “the People” get “justice in a democracy.” It’s not about click-baiting the most reliable if ignorant and “wrong” audience, trolling and “both-siding” issues as fundamental as the human rights, voting rights, right and wrong and the rule of law.

Let’s hope it “inspires” those who really need to see it.

Rating: unrated, discussions of violence, rape

Cast: Meera Devi, Suneeta Prajapati and Shyamkali Devi

Credits: Directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:32

There are moments — whole stretches even — in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” where I thought, “If I was 10-12 years old, I’d love sitting through this.” The rest of the time I couldn’t imagine anyone OVER 10 wanting to.

A sometimes dark, occasionally warm revisiting of the franchise, it turns into a love letter to the late Harold Ramis, sweetest of the original “Ghostbusters” and the filmmaker who gave us, and Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day,” the romantic comedy that keeps on giving.

Whatever the stars, studio and director say about this project’s provenance, I’ll bet the Ramis resurrection was the deal-maker that finally got these “busters” back together. That, and the fact that original director Ivan Reitman’s son Jason REALLY needs a hit.

Because that’s the other take-away from this “Next Generation” reboot. Who would have guessed that Jason Reitman would turn into this sort of mediocrity? From “Juno” and “Up in the Air” to this? Sooner or later, the epic hype for this movie would have to end, we’d see the finished product and maybe for the first time consider that the son is no substitute for his father, “Ghostbusters” director Ivan, especially in a shambolic “romp” like this.

The set-up — the daughter (Carrie Coon) and grandchildren (Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace) of a Ghostbuster have gone broke in New York. There’s nothing for it but to load up the rusty Outback and motor west, to Summerville, Oklahoma, where the Dad who “abandoned” his family just died.

There’s nothing there but a tumbledown house on the prairie, “This is How it Ends” spray-painted on a rotting outbuilding at the farm entrance and “DIRT” sprayed on a collapsed barn.

We glimpsed the old man’s death, and know it wasn’t a quiet one. And it turns out, the eccentric the locals called “The Dirt Farmer” didn’t leave his descendants anything but debt. Well, debt and mothballed gadgets, an underground lair and lab and an ancient Cadillac hearse gone to ruin.

Here is the telling moment in “Afterlife.” If you’re the sort who gets chills just seeing that white Ghostmobile and its “ECTO-1” New York plates, this is the movie for you. If not? Well…

Teen son Trevor takes on a summer job to try and get to know teen temptress Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), brainy nerd tween Phoebe (Grace, from “Handmaid’s Tale” and “I, Tonya”) is packed off to summer school, where her teacher (Paul Rudd, well-cast) is content to babysit the kids with VHS horror movies of the ’80s — “Cujo” and “Chucky” among them.

That’s because Mr. Grooberson is too busy ducking into his office, which he’s turned into a seismology lab. Oklahoma’s earthquake plague isn’t all due to fracking, he thinks. Phoebe picks up on that, too.

“Yeah, I’m not an idiot.”

With her new friend Podcast (Logan Kim) who “named myself Podcast for my Podcast,” Phoebe will do her own research because “maybe” these quakes “are the Apocalypse.”

“Afterlife” skips through how the New York kids decode who their grandpa REALLY was, and figure out how his tech worked and even get the old Ghostmobile in running order. Phoebe’s matter-of-factly taken up a game of chess with a supernatural entity she hasn’t seen. She totally underreacts when she sees her first “ghost.”

“Over-stimulation calms me!”

Her brother gets a load of something demonic in the bowels of an abandoned mine.

But only Mr. Grooberson, who thinks “science if PUNK ROCK,” gives us a recognizable human freak-out when the impossible pops up, right in front of his eyes — green blobs, Stay Puft marshmallow minions.

The kids? They’re locking and loading and taking up where Grandpa Egon left off — saving the world

Whatever the original films meant to you as a child, few adults found much more than high concept, infantile goofs from the all-star cast, sight gags and New York savvy riffs.

“Afterlife” is a laugh-starved, jerry-rigged clunker that finds about one fifth as many laughs as the originals, leaning towards the “dark” side of pretty much exactly the same story as “Ghostbusters” –without New York, college coed giggles, without Sigourney, Rick Moranis nerd alerts or Bill Murray, Aykroyd et al riffing.

The script gracefully brings a couple of characters back and incompetently re-introduces a couple of others. Annie Potts‘ return is handled with particular ham-handedness.

Why the hell is Oscar winner J.K. Simmons even IN this?

“Stranger Things” alum Wolfhard and Grace are good, and easily pass for the grandkids of somebody who looks like Harold Ramis. But none of them, even Rudd, is a fitting comic substitute for the cast they’re meant to replace.

As “Ghostbusters” was a character comedy with action and special effects, but still mostly a character comedy, that matters.

But impressive CGI ghosts stir up a fury, backpack power-beam cannon still make stuff go “BOOM” and “GLOOP,” and every now and again, something funny happens.

It’s not awful, it’s just not all that. Which might be enough. If you’re 10.

Rating:  PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references

Cast: Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Celeste O’Connor, Bokeem Woodbine, J. K. Simmons and Paul Rudd, with Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Bill Murray.

Credits: scripted by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, based on the characters created by Dan Aykroyd. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 2:04

For his latest picture, Paul Thomas Anderson turns picaresque for an unconventional romance parked on Hollywood’s periphery, lightly dusted with glorious pieces of Hollywood lore.

“Licorice Pizza,” like its title, flirts with being treacly sweet and serves up a teens’ idealized eye view of the same era that Tarantino settled into and sent-up with “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

The director of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” riffs on the very early ’70s, back in the seriously unfashionable Encino in “The Valley,” where as “Boogie” reminded us, porn was king and those who never quite achieved Hollywood stardom could afford to live while they longed for the Big Brass Ring. They hustled around the edges, pieced together lives and flitted from fad to fad, always in search of the next Big Thing and a way of cashing in on it.

Characters are more sketched-in than wholly-formed as Anderson emphasizes referencing films as diverse as “Almost Famous” and “Taxi Driver,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Love Story” as well as his own “Punch Drunk Love” and “Boogie Nights.” It’s not about anything so much as youthful longing, and isn’t really organized to take us any place but where Anderson is, right here right now.

He gives us young people looking askance at those “successes” older than them. And if nothing else, he presents Bradley Cooper in a hilarious, over-the-top turn as ’70s hairdresser-turned-Streisand-lover/producer and epic Hollywood rhymes-with-trick Jon Peters. Cooper’s glorious send-up of Peters is one of the great pleasures of movie-going this year and all but takes over the movie.

And in a film that features an actress (Christine Ebersole) based on the “Godzilla” rep of Lucille Ball, that’s saying something.

Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour H.) plays Gary Valentine, the sort of average 15 year-old you wouldn’t give a second glance back then. Lumpy, with bad skin, untended teeth and that greasy early ’70s mop top that was never fashionable, Gary has just one essential advantage as he navigates life. He’s confident and well-spoken.

That’s how he has the chutzpah to hit on 25 year-old camera assistant Alana (screen newcomer Alana Haim of the band Haim) on class photo day. Leggy and long-haired in that Marcia Brady style, Alana wouldn’t have casting directors rushing to give her their card and scheduling screen tests. She’s ordinary, like Gary, but cute enough to be out of his league.

Only Gary’s almost famous. He was just in a big family ensemble comedy of the “With Six You Get Eggroll/Yours, Mine and Ours” variety. He’s done commercials and bit parts. He’s “known” — in Encino, anyway. And he is politely persistent in his pursuit of the fair Alana.

Theirs will be a long, circuitous courtship made more real thanks to business partnership. Gary will long for her and idealize her backed by the pop of Cher, the singer-songwriter love ballads of Gordon Lightfoot and the testy, brittle break-up rock of Joe Walsh and the James Gang.

He’s telling his kid brother “You’re gonna be my best man” the instant he meets her, throwing “You should be an actress” out there as he name-and-credit-drops his “fame.” She’s not interested, but not walking away from this kid who’ll “be rich and in a mansion by the time you’re 16.” But seriously, “Stop with the ‘googly eyes!'”

His first chance to impress is a dinner date, where we pick up on how every restaurateur in town is on a first-name basis — with a 15-year old. The second time? He needs a chaperone to do a guest appearance with the rest of that ensemble-of-kids-cast and their Lucy-like “star” (Ebersole, blowsy and mercurial) on a New York TV show.

Alana is on a plane, being hit-on by Gary’s smoother co-star (Skyler Gisondo), but the center of “her” teen’s attention and when she isn’t calling him “creep,” she’s impressed.

We follow these two through Gary’s rapidly-ending career and the ventures he has the cash and the wherewithal — Mom (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) runs a cut-rate local marketing/PR firm he finances — to dive into.

He wanders past a wig shop and sees a new “item” the hustler-owner has added to his line — big vinyl bladders, “waterbeds,” and senses the “next big thing ” He hears that the decades-long “pinball machine ban” may end, and conjures up an arcade.

All along the way, Alana keeps rejecting him, fighting with her “former Israeli Army” officer dad and convincing her peers she’s “NOT” dating a 15-going-on-16 year-old at the tail end of the Vietnam War and Watergate all the way through the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.

Anderson recreates this world not just with tunes, cars (Gary bought a ’69 GTO, which he’s not old enough to drive) and the ugliest fashions in American history. He gets the complexions and body types right. Nobody worked out, no one planned very far ahead, the “Adam 12” era LAPD was utterly out-of-control and everybody listened to Vin Scully broadcasting the Dodgers…on AM radio.

I’m always fascinated by PTA’s take on runaway “capitalism,” the entrepreneurial habitues of the shifty side of the spectrum. This film has plenty of that.

John Michael Higgins plays the owner of the Mikado restaurant, marrying a succession of Japanese wives/partners whom he tries to communicate with via seriously offensive sing-song pidgin English, like Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Anderson packs the story with break-out episodes — Jon Peters wants a waterbed, a faded film “legend” played by Sean Penn hits on Alana, mainly to recapture his lost glory and have somebody to show off his fame to — peopled by funny but somewhat disposable characters.

Harriet Sansom Harris plays another agent “type,” an aged, down-market version of a character she memorably played on TV’s “Frasier.” She’s the one who hears the results of Gary’s coaching Alana to “always say ‘yes'” when you’re asked if you can ride a horse, speak a foreign language because “you can always learn something AFTER you’ve gotten the part.”

Anderson favorite John C. Reilly plays Fred Gwynne, dolled up as TV’s Herman Munster, in a cameo.

“Licorice Pizza” entertains lightly and drags along between its best moments (most involving Jon Peters) as Anderson is more interested in tableaux and tone than a straightforward story. By the time he packs in a political campaign with dark undertones, it’s become a movie that has as many moving parts as “Magnolia” when it might have held together better in “Hard Eight” territory.

If there’s a point, it might be that “kids grew up a lot faster” and less supervised back then, especially out there.

For people fascinated by the era, either as nostalgia or a distant past they’d love to know more about, it’s an immersive trip, “Once Upon a Time…” without the violence and with a lot fewer F-bombs. If it’s not one of Anderson’s best, “the good parts” stand out as some of the most endearing moments the movies have given us this year.

Rating:  R for language, sexual material and some drug use.

Cast: Cooper Hoffman, Alana Haim, Skyler Gisondo, Christine Ebersole, Tom Waits, John C. Reilly, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Benny Safdie, Harriet Sansom Harris, Maya Rudolph, Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. An MGM/UA release.

Running time: 2:13

In the interest of not discouraging a nascent filmmaker from taking on the herculean task of getting his second feature film made, let’s focus on the positives of “Autumn Road,” a belated Halloween horror story built around twins and their family’s “haunted house” attraction.

The father figure in Riley Cusick‘s debut feature lectures kids –one of them his son — about the secret to setting up and presenting an annual haunted house, something he’s been doing for years.

“‘Haunting,'” he says, “is all about the right mood.” He’s talking about tone, getting people in the right frame of mind to be receptive to frights.

“Autumn Road” gets that right. It’s somber and sad and the deaths, when they come, are shocking enough and downright depressing.

But that isn’t a product of character development and building empathy so much as simple surprise. We really don’t see most of them coming.

The movie’s a wash, and worse — too slow, not particularly well-acted or scripted. But there’s a little something to it, so no quick write-off here.

That fatherly “haunting” advice sets up a night of trick-or-treating for little Winnie (Maddy-Lea Hendrix) and twin brothers Charlie and Vincent (Ranger Lerway and Jonas Lerway).

But shy, bespectacled Charlie bows out, and Vincent takes over the night. Only later does Winnie reconnect with her tweenage crush Charlie to show off the pocket watch she got instead of candy at one house. Only later does her nut allergy kick in from the treats, which she was being super-selective in picking out. Not careful enough.

Charlie panics, and Vincent steps in with an “I’ll take care of it.” Winnie is never seen again.

Years later, failing actress Laura (Lorelei Linklater, daughter of famed filmmaker Richard Linklater) is just getting a handle on making her own break in show business when her best bud dies. She flees back to her hometown.

That’s where she reconnects with Charlie. And that’s where she runs afoul of Vincent. Laura was Winnie’s older sister. And the brothers (both played by writer-director Cusick) have grown up to be even more nervous and/or creepier than she remembers them.

Vincent’s the sort that earns words of warning from mutual acquaintances.

“There’s something seriously wrong with him, Charlie.” Like they’re telling Charlie something he doesn’t know.

In town, Vincent’s remembered for killing a bird, which explains his favorite haunted house mask, an owl. He’s hotheaded, impulsive. And since we remember that first scene, we know what the beady-eyed creep is capable of.

Most of what’s here sits on a sliding cinematic scale of “Well, that doesn’t quite work.” The snail’s pace at which this new threat to Charlie and Vincent’s “secret” is identified and attacked is sleep inducing.

Whatever cleverness floats through “Autumn Road,” Cusick’s middling performance in the co-leads undermines it. He doesn’t have that charisma that the camera brings out, either as a wuss or the neighborhood psychopath.

The screenplay toys with supernaturalism (What IS the deal with the watch?) and settles for something even less interesting. The best line concern’s “nice twin” Charlie’s choice of libation.

“Bad people drink hot chocolate, too.”

“No, they don’t.”

And the violence, sometimes foreshadowed, sometimes seemingly random, is jolting. And that both fits the picture’s forlorn mood, and shakes it up.

So no, the picture isn’t a total write-off. Even dead ends like “Autumn Road” can have their moments.

Cast: Lorelei Linklater, Riley Cusick, Maddy-Lea Hendrix

Credits: A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:33

“Just Short of Perfect” is an Around the World with Netflix romantic comedy from Brazil, a sentimental but clumsy search for laughs in pairing up a tall bombshell and an exceptionally short but rich suitor,.t.

Or as they say in Hollywood, “How things work out here.”

I’ll limit myself to one bad but unavoidable pun by saying as “low” farces go, this one falls short. OK, that’s two but I got them both into a single sentence.

Juliania Paes, whom you might remember from the Brazilian drama “Farewell” or one of the remakes of “Dona Flor and her Two Husbands,” plays Ivana, a vivacious 40something attorney in the middle of divorcing her bullying law firm partner Danilo (Marcelo Laham).

Danilo fights her over their dog, their offices, everything. We can guess, from his priorities (money), that he’s about to have second thoughts about breaking up the “partnership.”

But Ivana loses her phone, and this charming stranger calls her house to offer it back. He makes jokes about his last name, “Leão” — Portuguese for “lion, — and agrees to meet her and return the cell.

He’ll recognize her, he assures her. Which he does. But when Ricardo Leão (Leandro Hassum) introduces himself, she cannot help but notice he’s half her size.

The sight gag, repeatedly endlessly in this strained “cute” romance, is achieved through forced perspective, simply filming Hassum, last seen in the Brazilian holiday farce “Just Another Christmas,” separately when need be. He’s always seen with tables, chairs, car seats, Ivana and everything else practically towering over him. The effect isn’t seamless — we can see he’s lit differently in the trick shots — but it’s more than convincing enough.

Ricardo’s size does not reflect his confidence. He jokes, pulling out his ID “to show you I’m a grown man (in Portuguese with English subtitles).” He boldly takes her out sky-diving, lets her know his profession (cardiac surgeon), and talks her into a second date, and a third.

We’re supposed to buy his “charm” as winning her over. Maybe we can. Maybe not.

But when the Pope has heart problems on his way to a visit to Brazil, it is “world famous” Dr. Leão they call. As if Ivana isn’t impressed enough, her diminutive suitor grabs the mike post-surgery and gives the world the word — in Latin, just like they do when they’re naming a new pope in Vatican City.

“Habemus papam!”

Him taking her to an exclusive dance club where he takes the stage to sing and play the upright bass on Bamboleo seals the deal. Well, after a club creep hits on her and he’s challenged to a “Macarena” dance-off, which Ricardo naturally wins.

But just as Ivana is falling for Ricardo, the big obstacles make themselves heard and seen. Her ex unloads a tirade of “runt” jokes. Ricardo shows up, as her date, for her brother’s same-sex wedding and he’s confused for being the “dwarf” in their wedding song and dance entertainment.

And when that ridiculous mixup is settled, her mother (Elizângela) can’t stop blurting out short jokes and tactless “dwarf” references, one after the other.

“Is he old enough to drink? Is he old enough to drive?“

Hassum is a big star in Brazil, but anybody viewing this from the rest of the world might wonder if height is the biggest reason “She’s out of his league.” He’s not the prettiest matinee idol, and his comic gifts aren’t showcased very well here.

The movie’s “We are what we are” messaging has some heft to it. Dr. “Very Short” isn’t shy about dropping “Fatty” on an omnipresent pizza delivery guy.

But recycled “little man sex” gags, too-obvious fart-jokes and unfunny “translation” blunders — explaining what’s going on at the wedding for the least convincing “Alabama in-laws” this side of Reese Witherspoon’s little comedy of a few years back — limit the appeal and entertainment value in this “break stereotypes” tale.

Rating: TV-14, sexual situations

Cast: Juliana Paes, Leandro Hassum, Elizângela and Marcelo Laham.

Credits: Directed by Ale McHaddo, scripted by Michelle Ferreira. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Career bit-players Stephanie Lynn and Alexandra Case wrote themselves into leading ladies with “Soulmate(s),” a rom-com in which they play the two best-looking single thirtysomethings in all of Vermont, “besties” with a pact that one won’t marry without the other marrying the same day.

It’s every bit as cutesy as that sounds. “Vermont” alone could be the giveaway, promising a movie of maple sap-sucking and roadside syrup stands, cow-milking, bell choirs, string bands, covered bridges and tiny houses. Yup, so “sweet” it makes your teeth ache.

Guitar-picking farm daughter Jessie (Lynn) and blogger, notary and aspiring op-ed writer Sam (Case) have been friends since five, share a tiny house and pretty much everything else in their lives.

But Big Maple is moving in and squeezing out small farmers, and that’s the perfect reason for Jessie to fall for a Peterson Maple exec, hunky Landon (Mark Famiglietti). But that “pact” gets in the way of her future happiness. Or so Sam hopes.

Sam aims to be “Vermont’s Erin Brockovich,” sounding the alarm about this corporate takeover and the “shortcuts” that could undermine “real” maple syrup. Think “Chinese honey.”

But Jessamine’s swooning over the hunk who lives on a 40 foot ketch on Lake Champlain interrupts their idyll. Sam desperately realizes that the only thing that can slow-Jess’s roll to the altar is invoking their “pact,” and the only thing Jess can do is resolve that she’s “gonna find you a man.” Queue the “speed-dating” montage. If only the “speed-dating montage” was the sum total of it.

“Soulmate(s)” is a Hallmark Channel holiday romance without the snow, aka “insipid. The jokes are treacly, the situations warmed-over from scores of better movies and the whole thing plays kind of 1943.

“This is Vermont. It’s always a bit ‘1943.’”

There’s a protest, a brief mention of “GMO” battles and the region’s ever-widening “warm spells.” At least those causes don’t face the sell-out the script seems to be angling for.

The perfectly-turned-out (Such hair!) leads give themselves a fine showcase, if they’re angling for recurring roles on a sitcom. Case’s drunken, interrupt-a-string-band with her rap about “used to have a buddy, now she’s a duddy” is one of the least cringe-worthy moments in it.

The supporting players are experienced and professional, but not people who add spark to a movie that sorely needs it.

It’s a little late to be pointing this out, but just because your romantic comedy’s set in Vermont is no reason to make it sappy.

Rating: unrated, inoffensive in the extreme

Cast: Stephanie Lynn, Alexandra Case, Mark Famiglietti, Di Quon, Zachary Spicer and Alice Barrett.

Credits: Directed by Timothy Armstrong, scripted by Stephanie Lynn and Alexandra Case. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:32

The phrase “Maze Brothers,” as in “A Maze Brothers Film,” appears four times in the opening credits to the thriller “La Flamme Rouge.” Brent Scott Maze and Derek Maze wrote it, directed it, produced and split editing and cinematography credits on the film, which stars Balthazar Getty as a retired cycling champ who drunkenly and half-accidentally kills his fiance and the new cycling team captain our killer discovered was having an affair with her.

Here’s what the Maze Brothers so desperately want to get credit for.

Every instance of foreshadowing is fixed with an extreme close-up — a whiskey glass, a bolt-action rifle over a mantel, a CCTV camera, a pill bottle and an Uzi caught in XCU and a freeze-frame, to boot.

The detective (George Griffith) who sets out in pursuit of our cyclist-on-the-lam likes playing with his cigarette lighter, featured in so many close-ups that you’d swear there was product placement involved.

He should have an easier job of it than he does, because the fleeing Rick Van Pelt (Getty) lays low at a stoner pal’s luxurious pad. And Rick forgets to turn off the lights of his vintage Stingray when he ducks inside.

No way that geriatric Chevy”ll start when Rick needs it.

One of the unsavory people mixed up in this mess is a threatening, trash-talking art dealer played by Clint Howard. He likes playing with ball bearings. You know, like Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny.”

“I’m LOSING my patience!” Ron Howard’s cooler-brother exclaims.

French “steroid” mafiosi have our former cyclist’s doctor (Todd Lowe) in their sights. But a local mobster (Josh Martin) is way ahead of them. He sends his favorite hitman, motorcyclist Nacho (played by Nacho Picasso…LOL). Nacho either goes shirtless or wears tattered tank tops underneath his biker gear. Because he wants us to notice his tats.

The title? It’s got nothing to do with the lurid color palette they take a shot at creating for the picture, the blood on the crime scene and what not. Well, maybe in the lamest symbolic sense it does. It’s a Tour de France term, the red flag that signals there’s one kilometer to go before crossing the finish line.

Did I mention the movie has godawful dialogue, is badly-acted, dully-plotted and slower than Sacha Baron Cohen on a tricycle?

Yeah, it sucks — pretty every way a film can suck. But at least the Maze Brothers made sure they got credit for it.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Balthazar Getty, Nicole LaLiberte, Todd Lowe, George Griffith, Sebastian Quinn, Nacho Picasso and Clint Howard.

Credits: Scripted, produced, directed by Brent Scott Maze and Derek Maze. Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:34

The smart little girl is about eight when she starts seriously questioning her mother.

“Is it true they killed Mr. Pancho?” No, mother Rita (Mayra Batalla) tells little Ana (Ana Cristina Ordóñez González). He had to leave. His whole family, including your classmate Juana, left.

But why did they leave their cattle, their clothes, everything in their house and Juana’s bicycle?

“People leave everything behind as if they’ll come back for it some day,” Rita says, in Spanish with English subtitles. And enough with the questions.

“Prayers for the Stolen” is about the modern day slavery of mountain villages in modern Mexico. Living where poppies grow is a life sentence for the women and men there, intimidated into continuing the menial work of cutting the poppy buds and later harvesting their nectar for heroin.

The masked soldiers may come and spray with their helicopters, and make their presence felt for a few days here and there. But they always “spray everywhere except” where they’re supposed to. And when they leave, the goons in the SUVs and pickups, with their automatic weapons, roll in to renew their enslavement, extort their teachers, and take their girls when they’re of age.

“Prayers,” based on a novel by Jennifer Clement, is a richly-textured, slow-moving saga set over several years of young Ana’s life (Marya Membreño plays her as an adolescent).

It captures a tense mother-daughter relationship, fraught because of the film’s opening image. We see Rita and little Ana hand-digging a hole for her. She will hide in this any time the cartel goons show up. School is fine, her estranged father might be a lifeline if she needs to escape. But the here and now is that a mother of very limited means must worry every day for her child’s safety and the circumscribed future she faces.

But I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t tell you what a lot of critics now on Rotten Tomatoes won’t. “Slow-moving” is this movie’s Achilles heel. Screenwriter/director Tatiana Huezo drifts from patience-testing to maddening in the film’s funereal pace, from childhood into adolescence.

There are incidents here and there, but she’s made a film almost wholly out of texture. We see texture well past the moment where we get the point — Ana, Paula (Camila Gaal) and their pal with the cleft palette Maria (Blanca Itzel Pérez) are thick as thieves, almost from birth. They’re equally under threat, equally let down by a corrupt government that has ceded this section of the Sierras to bride-paying cartels.

But Paula and Ana’s mothers lie when they take their little girls in to have their hair cropped short. “Lice” has nothing to do with it, and the fact that Maria doesn’t face that is a growing-up moment for them all. Ana and Paula will have targets on their back by puberty.

From childhood, Maria’s enterprising brother Margarito has had his eye on Ana, roughhousing and teasing the way boys do. He works in the quarry with the men, and eventually in the poppy fields. As he grows up (Julián Guzmán Girón plays him as an adolescent), Ana may see his virtues, but also his shortcomings. His “trap” is different, but just as deadly.

A movie that progresses at this rate gives you a lot of time to pick over what it’s really getting at. The defenseless locals hide when trouble comes, lie to save themselves and flee if they get the chance. They make no moral judgments about the only decent paying jobs for unskilled laborers, although they have to see they’re in a cage they’re locking behind themselves.

First-time feature director Huezo — and three cheers for Netflix for giving so many the chance to get a feature film made — keeps the melodrama to a minimum and the confrontations mostly off camera. We hear shouts and shots. We and the locals see bodies.

The new teacher, who takes over when the previous one flees the threats and extortion, is something of an activist. Mister Fernando (Memo Villegas) sees promise in Ana, and convinces the locals to rig an impromptu warning bell, although he’s careful not to call it that. How long will he last.

This is what Third World autocracies look like, people in virtual chains, schools threatened by armed rednecks rolling in by the pick-up load. America’s days of looking down at this as “those people’s problem” may be over for good, thanks to the past five years.

I’m recommending this patient, immersive drama from South of the Border, but with a proviso. Don’t be shy about adjusting the playback speed in your Netflix settings. Huezo may not have a grasp of how waiting over an hour to get around to what your movie about is abusing the audience. Maybe by her second film, she’ll figure that out.

Rating: R for some language, implied violence, sexuality

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tatiana Huezo, based on a novel by Jennifer Clement. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50