Movie Nation

It’s funny to think about how late Hollywood was in figuring out Walter Matthau was a natural comic actor. For the first couple of decades of his film and TV career, nobody thought to let him go for a laugh.

His most famous early roles were as a club-owning gangster in Elvis’s “King Creole,” the cynical talent agent in “A Face in the Crowd,” mixed with assorted villains and straight dramatic characters on TV.

Even in Andy Griffith’s Naval service comedy “Onionhead,” Matthau wasn’t there to land laughs.

But watch him in the opening scene, and the flirtation with the librarian bit (Carol Grace, the new Mrs. Matthau, played her) in the first and last film the Oscar-winning actor ever directed, “Gangster Story.”

As a two-fisted bank robber who overpowered his guards and escaped on the way to prison, he’s laid back and downright playful as he negotiates ground rules at the seedy, underworld-friendly greater-Anaheim hotel he’s ducked into.

Check out the way he “gets back to work,” casing a bank, pretending to want to rent an office in their building when all he’s doing is waiting to hear the bank president (David Leonard) confess, “Banks rely on vaults, not alarm systems.”

In his later films, after his Oscar for “The Fortune Cookie” and the career-making success of “The Odd Couple,” you saw this wry, whimsical air affected in every Matthau performance, even in the bank robber pic “Charlie Varrick,” the gritty “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” and the like.

He’s a heavy in “Charade,” but he’s still giving the impatient, comic business to Audrey Hepburn in every scene.

“Gangster Story” is a bare bones crime noir tale with bank robberies, a visit to the harness racing track, a car chase and a “let’s lay low with the cute librarian” bit that we know won’t let our anti-hero, Jack Martin, escape his past.

He’s ruthless, never hesitating to conk this car owner or that bank president on the head when it suits his purposes. People die in robberies he masterminds.

But watch Jack don a fake name in calling the cops telling them of a movie shoot’s “bank hold up” scene that he needs a couple of uniforms to monitor, maybe hold back the crowds. The bank president, tricked into being a vault-opening accomplice, says the only thing anybody in his position could say as that’s going on.

“You’ll never get away with this!” It’s such a cliche he can’t resist saying it twice.

Our robber has a background, which he drops into conversation with the librarian. He was on the beach at D-Day. A visit to Huntington Beach makes him remember that. This is after he’s ducked into her library and started putting the moves on the blonde with the glasses.

“Uh, do you have any BOOKS here?”

Jack’s got to worry about the cops, and about the mobster (Bruce MacFarlane) whose “territory” he practicing his trade in.

This film is a seedy no-frills affair and looks it, a $75k non-union shoot with all its exteriors in the bright, just-after-sunup light that washes the black and white out. Characters are “types,” plot elements are cliches and scenes are perfunctory.

But there’s that hint of playfulness, here and there, that prefigures the “Hopscotch” to come. The man is naturally funny.

In chat show interviews over the years, he used to play up his comic “background” in the Yiddish theater. Big deal. He sold tickets there as a kid. But he obviously had an ear and a memory for jokes.

One of the few times I interviewed him was tied to the release of “I.Q.,” in which he played the tallest Albert Einstein on record. As their lives overlapped quite a bit, I asked him what he would have said to the great physicist if they’d ever met.

“He LOVED the Yiddish theater,” Matthau gushed, without a moment’s hesitation. “I’d have told him a Yiddish joke.” He proceeded to do the whole thing in Yiddish with snappy, well-oiled timing because he’d told this one MANY times. And then he translated it, hilariously.

Whatever his career and life came to after “Gangster Story,” you can see hints of what he would be — grumpy, gruff, that honk of a voice applied to faux outrage and skewering one-liners, save for his amusing pick-up lines meant only for the actress and ex-wife of playwright William Saroyan, the woman who would become the second and last Mrs. Matthau.

“Gangster Story” thus becomes the most generic of genre pictures that still has something to dig into, thanks to all it foretold and everything Matthau was just starting to try out as part of his comic persona.

Rating: unrated, lots of violence

Cast: Walter Matthau, Carol Grace, Bruce MacFarlane and Gary Walberg.

Credits: Directed by Walter Matthau, scripted by Paul Purcell. An RCIP release on Youtube, Tubi, etc.

Running time: 1:07

Miranda Otto also stars in this “Time Bandits” meets “The Adjustment Bureau” fantasy about a corporation that fiddles with fate via a sort of “Jumpers” gimmick of a door that parks you hither and yon on demand.

This Sky TV production looks slick and star studded enough for worldwide release, so we’ll see.

“Millennium Bugs” is a murky look back at Y2K Eve, a comedy that struggles to find laughs in end-of-the-90s fashions, slang and panic over what the world might look like when computers glitch as the year 2000 begins.

It’s a mirth-starved “romp” about two friends, hearing “The End is Nigh” and not taking that nonsense literally even as each recognizes they’re at a crossroads, and their lives are due a reset, starting Jan. 1, 2000.

Think “American Graffiti” and “High Fidelity” in terms of themes and genre, without the wit, budget, or cast to pull that off.

Kelly (Katy Erin) is a wild child winding down a year-long-bender, finally at the end of the estate her dead-before-their-time parents left her. She is drunk, irresponsible, a loose cannon whom we meet as the cops pick her up at home, someone who sees rules as for “other” people.”

Michael Lovato plays Miguel, her more-focused friend, a clerk at Vulcan Video who tolerates Kelly’s impositions, ignoring of rules and the fact that she’s been known to stash a joint in DVDs nobody ever rents at the shop.

Miguel is an aspiring stand-up who desperately wants admission to an LA improv troupe. His more traditional Mexican-American parents see grad school in his future.

So here they are, broken Kelly and despairing, just-dumped Miguel, counting down the days, hitting the stand-up clubs and bars of “Duke City” (filmed in New Mexico), night-crawling because stopping and thinking means they’d have to make a decision about where to go and what to do to give their aimless lives direction and purpose.

The script appears to have been researched by binge-watching “Friends,” with the dialogue littered with movie-and TV series title punchlines.

Kelly’s knocking back the drinks, so it’s “Slow DOWN, ‘Leaving Las Vegas.'”

Miguel’s about to go on stage, so knock’em dead, “King of Comedy.”

The had-his-shot headliner at the club is a local who actually landed an HBO series canceled after two episodes. He blames being on opposite “Monday Night Football,” but his name — Jim Dawson — sets up the put-down to come.

“Yeah, that’s what it was, ‘Dawson’s Creek.'”

To be honest, that’s not an inaccurate mimicry of the comedy of the late ’90s, but to quote Chandler Bing channeling Jackie Gleason, “Har-de-har-har.” Not funny.

The “Graffiti-ish” hijinks include scheming to steal Kelly’s Jeep Cherokee from an impound lot, confronting the joke-thief comic, and getting loaded.

One sentimental moments lands, the jokes pretty much never do. The performances are kind of flat, although Erin fights that with over-the-top rants and leaning into that Every Young Brunette Actress These Days Mary Elizabeth Winstead bobbed haircut.

“Millennium Bugs” has a clever hook to hang a comedy on — Y2K — complete with the soundtrack of “bug” TV coverage, “End is nigh” preachers and ’90s video game sound effects. But this script is too pale and wan to attract bigger-name talent and studio backing bucks, and there’s just no de-bugging that will change that.

Rating: unrated, violence, alcohol and drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Katy Erin and Michael Lovato

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alejandro Montoya Marín. An Indican release.

Running time: 1:30

I’ve developed a passion for Spanish police procedurals. Or rather, Netflix’s “What you should try next” algorithm has. And I’m OK with that, as it’s a genre the Spanish cinema has a good handle on, and these “Around the World with Netflix” mystery-thrillers have the novelty of striking, under-filmed Spanish settings as a bonus.

“Infiesto” is a solid entry in the genre, a serial kidnapper tale set against the backdrop of the beginning of lockdown as the COVID pandemic broke out. One striking characteristic of the film is how its two leading characters, cops on the case, are damned reluctant to give in to early 2020 masking protocols.

A boss hands them masks, says “Use these,” which they won’t put on in most situations. One cop has a spouse who catches the virus and is hauled off to the hospital. She still won’t mask up, or obey the physician’s orders that she self-isolate.

It calls attention to itself, and yet writer-director Patxi Amezcua doesn’t do anything with this bit of supposed foreshadowing. That’s a failing of his film, a ticking clock thriller of limited urgency set over 10 days at the beginning of Spain’s battle against the pandemic.

“Infiesto” takes its title from the Asturian town near where federal cops Garcia (Isak Férriz of Netflix’s “Feria: The Darkest Light” series) and Castro (Iria Del Río of “Visitor”) are summoned. A kidnapping victim has escaped her captor and showsnup in a town square, her rope bindings still dangling from her emaciated wrists.

With a pandemic raging and no one yet-knowing how to stop it or save victims of it, they find themselves elbow-deep in a crime that leads to other crimes, suspects who lead to other suspects and the fear that there may be living victims still in their clutches.

It “feels like the end of the world,” the inspectors say to each other, and others suggest this as well. But the first real suspect they confront adds a chilling proviso to that worry.

“This is just the beginning (in Spanish or dubbed into English)!”

Amezcua (“Gun City”) does a decent job of doling out his story’s clues and hiding its general direction just long enough to make a difference. His script has the usual personal issues added to our police inspectors’ burdens, all of them with a pandemic twist — an elderly relative in isolation, separation from children of divorce, a sick spouse.

You can almost predict just when one of our law enforcement officers will snap and turn to extra-legal means in a rush to save possible surviving kidnapping victims and catch those responsible.

The villains are colorful but generic in their MO and motivation. The confrontations are tense and the shootouts handled with harrowing professionalism by our well-matched leads.

And the novel setting of it all, dreary, wintry northwestern Spain, with abandoned factories and mines and rain-drenched gone-to-seed farms, gives it a timeworn yet unfamiliar look, just the sort of place where it’s easy to wonder if the world’s about to end.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Isak Férriz, Iria Del Río

Credits: Scripted and directed by Patxi Amezcua. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

Deadline.com is seeing the box office race this first of Feb. weekend as too close to call, as of Sat. AM.

And for the first time since Christmas, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” won’t swim away as the winner.

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest cryptic horror mystery, “Knock at the Cabin,” is winning the nights, and discounted matinees — arranged by Paramount on Tom Brady’s behalf — are luring in the older viewers during the day.

Both films are heading towards a $13-17 million opening, $15 being the their likely landing spot. That often means premature claims of victory in a close-close race.

As Paramount is already cheating, a bit, to rack up volume sales, I absolutely expect that.

Funny how no sports reporters made the connection between #12’s announcement of his retirement this week to the fact that a movie he’s producing opened Thursday night. Hey, it wouldn’t be Tom Brady if there weren’t allegations of cheating, right?

As “Knock” will benefit from up charged tickets on IMAX and premium experience showings, that’s probably a wash. It should edge out the win, probably in the $15 range, with “Brady” staying with it thanks to undercounted Sunday matinees.

We won’t know for sure until Monday.

Neither “Knock” nor “80 for Brady” is all that as a movie, but it’s good to see studios making an effort to reach beyond the franchise business model for a change.

“Avatar” should enjoy one last three day weekend over $10 million. “Puss in Boots” is on track to clear the $150 million mark, which might help its Oscar chances.

A couple of big screen “events” that aren’t really movies, “Chosen” and a BTS “comes to cinemas” concert doc, also crack the top ten this weekend.

I’ll update this as new data becomes available.

As you can tell from her photograph, actress Nell Barlow exudes Big Mary Elizabeth Winstead energy in “Sweetheart,” a light British rom-com about coming of age when you’re gay, confused and in your teens.

It’s a pity her character April, or “AJ” as she’s now billing herself, can’t see that. That’d be a great confidence booster for someone at her age, when self-loathing is our default setting.

AJ is the caustic, hyper-critical narrator of her summer vacation/summer romance story, a reluctant hostage to her mother’s “caravan resort” (RV trailer rentals) family holiday somewhere near Bridport, Dorset, another piece of Britain’s White Cliffs coast.

That not-quite-incessant narration is a rare misstep in writer-director Marley Morrison’s sympathetic comedy about being at that “experimenting” age in life, something parents have even more trouble with than their confused, fumbling-about-in-the-dark kids. AJ is at her most quotable when speaking aloud, often arguing with her Mum (Jo Hartley).

“Why can’t I just do what I want?”

“Because it CHANGES every five minutes, April!”

To her credit, her mother is supportive of her middle daughter, even if she’s seeing a long list of passions, phobias and dreams that all look like “phases” to her. April abruptly decides to become “AJ.” April’s chopped off her own hair, which better suits her shapeless, fashion-free wardrobe. April wants to quit school, not go back for her senior year (she’s 17).

“AJ” plans to go to Indonesia to volunteer to “knit jumpers for elephants,” who are “freezing to death” due to climate change.

The dear. It’s no wonder so many parents are dismayed when we hit our middle to late teens. We’re all head cases.

But this trip to the caravan resort will be her chance to “switch off” her phone and her head for a few days. The family has long come here, although this year, Dad’s “not invited,” and maybe never will be again.

What Mum really needs is April’s baby-sitting help with her eight-year old sister, Dayna. What Mum really wants is bonding time with her oldest, 29 year-old Lucy (Sophia Di Martino), who is very pregnant, with laid-back boyfriend Steve (Samuel Anderson) in tow.

What AJ needs, she quickly figures out, is a girlfriend. But even if lifeguard Isla (Ella-Rae Smith) is a sexy combination of Scary Spice and Sporty Spice, even if she’s quick with a friendly smile, “Girls like her like boys.” Or so AJ believes.

This looks like a real Rod Serling/Stephen King freakout. And in a good way.

Feb. 10

There are dramatic moments, stretches of action and snatches of pithy dialogue that suggest there’s a half-decent thriller inside the ungainly, frustrating mess of “Among the Beasts.” But it goes wrong, right from the start, in an unnecessary, uninteresting story set-up that eats up a whopping 40 minutes of screen time.

It’s a movie about child trafficking, about an ex-Marine and a mob daughter tracking down the traffickers, off the books and beyond the reach of the cops.

But we don’t even meet the mob daughter — played by Libe Barer — until we hit the film’s halfway mark, which tells you all you need to know about the need for editing in the SCREENWRITING stage, and how NOT to give your thriller even the most remote sense of urgency.

We’re shown a little girl and a man (Tory Kittles) at the veterinarian’s office. Their relationship isn’t clear, but there’s an asthmatic pug involved, so there’s that.

It turns out the 40something guy, who goes by “Paul,” but whom a lot of people call “LT,” helps run a mixed martial arts gym. It turns out he’s pretty tough, very handy with his fists. And he’s coldblooded in his threats.

“You’re making a mistake,” he growls to one fool who tests him. “You. All by yourself.”

Another mug hears “Go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done,” and does exactly that.

When the little girl he was with at the veterinary clinic is snatched, the viewer must figure out the relationship Paul had with her, her family and the like. The clues to that are stupidly slow in coming.

“LT” stands for “Lieutenant.” Lt. Paul is connected to little Kayla’s family because he served with her late father. Her mother’s a mess, so Kayla’s teenaged sister is the one who slaps him and gives him his orders when someone abducts Kayla.

“I’m just asking you to do what you always do. Bring. Her. Home.”

LT asks around, calls in cop favors and tosses the bar facing the sidewalk where the 12 year-old was abducted. No dice. A year later, he’s crawled into a bottle and up his own nose out of guilt.

That’s when the mob daughter Lola shows up with a story of a missing cousin, and a grudging “No cops, for obvious reasons” partnership forms.

It feels like the sort of film where you keep an eye peeled for light switches on the walls in every interior scene. Didn’t see one, though. Well done!

Feb.21.

Sure, you can give your movie a rapacious Viking prologue to a modern day werewolf story.

But it’s not until the new-to-town cop meets the grizzled, loony one-armed werewolf hunter whose name is Lars and not Quint, and the young academic wolf expert/veterinarian is consulted, and the locals attempt their own hunt — which goes badly — and the Norske blonde mayor tries to calm fears that this “Jaws” with fur has a shot at coming off.

“Viking Wolf” is a Norwegian werewolf movie that traffics in the tropes of the genre, from that first bloody attack to the “infection” that no rational person believes in, but which strikes a pretty teen who’s been bitten.

But it’s the amusingly obvious “Jaws” references that tickled me. The rest of the movie’s a muddle, with this back story under-explained and that empathetic thread not satisfyingly unraveled. But the moment Mr. “I’ve been hunting this my entire life” shows up, the picture becomes promising.

Thale (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne) is the new teen in town, pretty enough to find herself invited to hang with the gang down at “The Bay,” a fjord-side beach where teenagers party. She’s arrived, mid-schoolyear, with gossip about her past. “Drugs” and stuff from Oslo, her classmates think. “I killed a man,” Thale says.

Wait, what? Perhaps her father, as we’ve seen she’s got a stepdad? I don’t think that’s ever explained, certainly not before some beast bursts out of the woods, bites Thale and then yanks the mayor’s screaming daughter into the inky black night.

Finding her body only gives the sheriff’s department more trouble. If it was a wolf, there are “local concerns” to be dealt with, the sheriff tells his newest deputy, the Swede Liv (Liv Mjönes), who happens to be Thale’s mom.

We’re allowed to wonder if the locals know all about what’s going on, some of them anyway. But that’s not developed any more than Thale’s “I killed a man.”

As she recovers, bullied by classmates who think she could have “saved” the dead girl, Thale notices her hearing getting sharp and her hallucinations turning “Norwegian Werewolf in Nybo.”

Mom is visited by the one-armed Lars, whom she dismisses, but not before he’s given her a silver bullet. They call in wolf expert William (Arthur Hakalahti), who has to abandon his “Wolves don’t kill people” education to help battle the beast.

There’s a bond that’s introduced between Thale and her deaf little sister, but that’s not built up into anything that generates pathos when it’s called for. The family dynamic is frayed, as mom has remarried and Thale is acting out, either through resentment or guilt.

The “Jaws” plot might have been the most entertaining direction this could have taken. You’d lose the teen “Twilight” hook, but enjoy a hunt with a cop, a wizened hunter and a callow, scientific method “expert,” battling the beast and bantering old werewolf tales rather than recounting the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. “Viking Wolf” commits to some of that, but not nearly enough.

Write this one off as an interesting attempt to find a salty-fresh angle to the werewolf genre, but a “‘Jaws’ with Claws” that ends up being mostly toothless.

TV-MA, violence

Cast: Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne, Liv Mjönes, Arthur Hakalahti and Ståle Bjørnhaug

Credits: Directed by Stig Svensen, scripted by Espen Aukan and Stig Svendsen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38