Movie Nation

Generational ennui and existential angst is pretty much universal. But today’s Around the World with Netflix offering puts it in a uniquely Japanese context.

“We Couldn’t Become Adults” is based on a popular novel published in the island country, whose boom years are decades past and whose population is shrinking as marriage is delayed, suicide it up, immigration limited and calamities economic, cultural, seismic and nuclear buffet it. Japan, social observers tell us, is struggling with an existential crisis.

Yoshihiro Mori’s film of Moegara’s novel isn’t about narcissistic infantilism and economic stagnation, two glib labels flung at the phenomenon. It’s about one man’s journey from his teens to almost 50, a post-“salaryman” worker bee and his depression at becoming as “ordinary” as everybody else, when that was the country’s middle class goal for half a century.

In an opening scene, Sato (Mirai Miriam) trips and tumbles into a trash pile with a homeless man. The other man’s drunken fury suggests they have history, especially when the guy (Shinohara Atsushi) cries “I’ve got nothing! You’ve all left me behind!” (in dubbed English, or Japanese with subtitles).

Sato’s downcast look lets us know that this fellow isn’t far from the mark. He just doesn’t realize how little life has to offer a still-employed/not-homeless 45 year-old who never thought he’d end up this “ordinary.”

Sato’s a graphic designer who can afford one nice item of clothing — a trench coat — keep a decent apartment and buy all the cigarettes he dramatically smokes between glances at his latest cell phone.

But he has a question most everyone who hits 45 asks. Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?

The film takes us on a meandering journey through Sato’s past — 2015 to 1995, a tale told in chapters dated and titled, i.e. 1995, “Reach Out of the Dark.” That was the year he jumped from packing cakes for shipment to landing a job, with no skills or experience, working with Photoshop and the other tools of a modern computerized graphic designer’s trade.

New Millennium Eve in 1999 might have been the most pivotal of all. That’s when “she” (Ito Sairi) ditched him, with just a “I’ll bring the CDs next time!” as her parting words. Kaori was the One Who Got Away.

Mori’s film boils Sato’s life down into the workaholism that is the Japanese brand, revisiting the early days when his Great Love, met when they were teen pen pals, could yank him out of work for a day of rental car driving and sight-seeing.

The many points in time our hero revisits ensure that the story isn’t simplistic enough to suggest an abrupt day when it all went wrong. And Charles Dickens and Rod Serling covered that “job became more important than living life” ground long before this.

What we see instead are the waypoints to ennui, that “ordinary” and lonely life that Sato figured he wasn’t destined to lead. He wanted to be a novelist, but overwork and its steady soul-sucking impact on the psyche, after-hours karaoke and a vain effort to “settle down” with a woman (Yuko Oshima) who was never going to be The One Who Got Away defeated him.

The episodic structure shows the people Sato left behind at the dead end cake shipping job, and the devolution of a fellow idealist and boss (Higashide Masahiro) who once punched-out a bullying, cheapskate TV news director (Japanese TV news is big on animated graphic recreations of items in the day’s news) for barking, one time too many, to “take 30% off the bill!” By the end of his storyline, which is close to the film’s beginning, that boss has sold out, “started over” and become as ordinary as everybody else.

“I can’t laugh at other people’s misfortune any more,” another character says, capturing the resignation of middle age in a single sentence.

That episodic structure — bopping from 2011 to 1998, 2007 to 1995 and so on — makes the film hard to follow, although the sad drift from hope to shrugging, solitary despair is clear, first scene to last.

And if you miss the connections, Mori summarizes them all in the final sequences, another way “We Couldn’t Become Adults” tests the viewer’s patience.

The film’s depiction of tech hints at its role in crushing the life out of people. Love letters replaced by beepers replaced by the constant distraction of a cell phone. Progress.

I’ve seen the source novel’s title translated as “Not Everybody Gets to Grow Up,” which seems a fairer way to look at Sato’s journey. He attends corporate celebrations and retirement parties for firms because his company is doing the graphics that decorate these extravaganzas. A drunken mid-level manager bellows “Live each day like it’s your last!” and you get the feeling that Japan cuts loose and celebrates in a way that defies the practical low-risk savers (another reason people put off marriage) that is the national identity.

His live-in lover leans on Sato to marry in 2011, which he dismisses with a blend of fatalism and commitment phobia, wrapped up in his personal ethos.

“A lot of people are getting married after the (Tōhoku) earthquake,” tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. “So ordinary.“

The film takes so much in — gay bars and a workmate crush, first-time sex in a “Love Hotel” — that it tends to wander. The women in it are perpetually in the background, forever waiting for men to grow up, make things easier, make up their damned minds or move on. Sexist and patriarchal? Yes it is.

Even without that, “Adults” isn’t the easiest watch on Netflix.

But I’ll bet a lot of people can connect with the weary disappointment with life that Moriyama (“Love Strikes”) conveys with every head-shaking drag off a cigarette. We feel you, man.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, nudity, smoking, some violence

Cast: Mirai Moriyama, Ito Sairi, Higashide Masahiro, Yuko Oshima, Shinohara Atsushi

Credits: Directed by Yoshihiro Mori, scripted by Ryo Takada, based on a novel by Moegara. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:04

If the Brits didn’t invent “nostalgia,” you can bet your bollocks they perfected it.

Case in point, “The Pebble and the Boy,” a sentimental comedy about a college lad who takes his Dad’s old Lambretta scooter from Manchester to Brighton to scatter the his father’s ashes.

The old man was a Mod, and as they’ve said over the decades and say again many times in the film, “Once a Mod, always a Mod.” Brighton was the Mods’ Mecca.

The 20ish kid isn’t a “Mod,” per se — sort of Mod adjacent, sporting the ’80s fashions now called “Casual Classics” (Izod, Fila, Fred Perry and Sergio Tacchini sportswear). That makes him a “Module,” he’s told.

The son, John (Patrick McNamee) meets Dad’s Mod support system, people who got on their Vespas, Lambrettas and what not back in the ’80s during the Mod Revival. John later runs into an OMG — Original Mod Gangsta (just made that up, copyright pending) — from the ’60s, when Mods and Rockers took their fashion (pre-preppy vs. leather) and music (The Beatles, Who, et al vs. rockabilly) and two-wheeled (scooters vs. motorcycles) clashes to the streets for brawls.

So “Pebble and the Boy” is modern kids nostalgic for ’80s Mods who were mimicking ’60s Mods. That Mod Mobius loop is nostalgia perfected.

The film takes its title from a song by Paul Weller of The Jam, a punk era outfit with Mod in its DNA. Most North Americans might only recall this culture through the movie “Quadrophenia” and by that famous Beatles press conference quote when Paul McCartney refused to take sides in the Mods vs. Rockers conflict.

“We’re Mockers,” he quipped.

“Pebble” is contrived, obvious and kind of a geezer’s wish fulfillment fantasy in its depiction of a new generation embracing the fashion, music and motor-scooters of their parents and grandparents. I see the British press mostly lambasted the film. The British press can blow it out their Lambrettas. I found it just as contrived and obvious, but cute and fun enough to get by.

John figures he’s been to his dad’s funeral and that’s the end of it. His mother (Christine Termarco), who long ago divorced his dad and remarried, certainly hopes so.

But that’s before John pokes around Dad’s wardrobe, his record collection (The Jam, Paul Weller, etc.) and newspaper clippings (Mods protest Thatcher, etc.). And that’s before the slightly-damaged Lambretta is delivered from the police impound lot. Dad died on it. Fila-favoring John decides he’ll take the urn and the blinged-out scooter to Brighton, and live out a little adventure as a last tribute.

He has to make a break for it, over his mother’s objections. When he breaks down as we knew he would, Mum points him to the first connection in his dad’s old Mod/scooter support system. But the repairer is set to keep John there until he can be taken home. The man’s Mod-mad daughter (Sacha Parkinson) has other ideas.

The first laugh in the movie comes when we see the simpler-than-simple stunt Nicola, who goes by “Nickers” (tee hee), pulls to make their getaway. Parkinson, of TV’s “Coronation Street” and “Mr. Selfridge,” provides a lot of the laughs in “The Pebble and the Boy.” She’s a manic pixie Mod girl.

As they make their way South towards a beachside ashes-scattering and Paul Weller concert (Dad had tix), they run into the Mods’ traditional rivals — leather-clad bikers — meet up with other Mod-friends of Dad’s and take on a third scooter companion — leering, Mod-mocking Logan (Max Boast). His Mod Mum (Patsy Kensit of “Absolute Beginners”) and Dad (Ricci Hartnett) figure he could learn a thing or two from the pilgrimage.

Every so often, John loses the will or his nerve. Bullies, would-be scooter thieves and beer busts test him. Nickers is there to badger him back on-task, whatever it takes. Almost.

“I’m not the kind of girl who gets shagged in the alley…Not in daylight, anyway.”

Road comedies are universal cinematic comfort food, and this one wears that label easily. The leads are engaging, the “obstacles” not-wholly undemanding and the whole enterprising Mod and modest — just light enough to skip from plot contrivance to contrivance.

It may not be as instructive to the UK generations who grew up with this cultural phenomenon. But to outsiders who missed even the early 2000s scooter revival, it’s a trip. The wheels, the slang, the camaraderie, the soundtrack (songs by The Jam, Paul Weller, Style Council, The Chords) and even the “You look like a deck chair” fashion statements are revelatory and fun.

Rating: unrated, some violence, put smoking, alcohol and profanity

Cast: Patrick McNamee, Sacha Parkinson, Christine Termarco, Max Boast, Ricci Hartnett and Patsy Kensit.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chris Green. A NOW Films release.

Running time: 1:41

One of the many metrics my web server provides at the end of every day’s readership is a list of the most common search phrases that bring first-timers to this site. One that stands out is the phrase X, Y or Z movie-title “explained.”

I get a lot of that SEO traffic because I tend to go into more detail than most anybody else reviewing movies these days. Not “spoilers” so much as details — dialogue quoted, interpretations, plot points.

And if you’re coming here to have Onur Tukel’s bizarre mental meltdown tale, “That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes,” “explained,” I’m not sure I’m going to have an answer.

But let’s start typing and see if the details bring the intent of the quirky filmmaker who gave us “The Misogynists” and “Richard’s Wedding” into focus.

“Cold Dead Look” is a sometimes hallucinatory sci-fi/zombie picture plunge into guilt and remorse. We watch a fellow who’s girlfriend has kicked him out on a Life in New York death spiral. His love life, his living situation, his job, his motorcycle and his psyche are pounded by all comers in a paranoid, stricken black and white nightmare.

Tukel creates a Francophone bubble for this story, a film set largely among French speaking expats in New York city.

Lovers Marie (Nora Arnezeder) and Leonard (Franck Raharinosy) cuddle and chat and love-language each other over a couple of scenes, shot in color. The apartment is Marie’s, and as we meet them, she is decorating it with the photos of her father, a once-famous photographer.

We come back to this color “flashback” timeline many times in the film. But for the story of Leonard’s breakdown, the film becomes, like the still photos — black and white.

We see Leonard at work, in a dying French restaurant where his cooking is insulted, sauces compared to “puss oozing from sores” or “tastes like prostate cancer.” Leonard is driving every customer the place once had away, and the furious waitress (Barbara Beddouk) is sure the owner (Max Casella) is going to figure that out any minute now.

Marie is similarly “over” Leonard, giving him the “I want you gone when I get back” (in French, with English subtitles) as she leaves.

Panhandlers and tough looking characters get in his face about money or his motorcycle.

And then the once-famous photographer (Alan Ceppos) shows up, firmly puts Leonard in his place and proceeds to crash at Marie’s apartment, fill it with gay men he photographs in the nude and clog the toilet, which he refuses to unclog himself.

“These hands…are for making ART!”

Periodically, we see this electronic gadget with a flashing “I” light — on walls, power poles, in Andy the restaurateur’s office. “Super high speed Internet” is all anyone’s being told about it. “Theta waves” that aren’t good for you is the whispered word among the public.

As Leonard flashes back to moments of truth with Marie and senses this world closing in around him, as he hallucinates an ability to lay his hands on people, rolling their eyes into the white-showing backs of their heads in zombie-like convulsions, we figure he’s buying into the conspiracy theory as well.

Whatever else he’s going for, Tukel manages to thoroughly disorient the viewer. An obscenely sarcastic street mime, all these New Yorkers speaking French, this French-speaking panhandler needing money to get back to Brooklyn, shots of Leonard on The Battery on the greyest, loneliest New York day imaginable.

Leonard’s despair crosses into desperation as he wrestles with the reason he and Marie broke up and pauses, mid-plunge, to see what rock bottom looks like down below.

He can fantasize an alternate reality where his transgression never happened and love is his, but the most “real” reality might be the world where his touch is literally toxic — with food, with other people.

All that said, I can’t say I liked “That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes.” Appreciated the attempt, sure. It’s a disintegration that isn’t viewed and considered at arm’s length. We’re IN it with Leonard. We just can’t decide if we want to be, or if we like him any more than the people abusing him at every turn.

And being that close, we can tell what’s happened, but not what’s happening now or what will happen in the future.

Maybe the “Theta waves” get in the way.

Rating: unrated, nudity, horror violence, profanity

Cast: Franck Raharinosy, Nora Arnezeder, Alan Ceppos, Candice Jean-Jacques, Barbara Beddouk and Max Casella.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Onur Tukel. A Darkstar release.

Running time: 1:31

Muddled, murky and a little hard to follow, “The Accursed” is low budget horror with a Croatian-American twist. It’s got a grabber moment or two, a lot of characters and a lot of actors tripping from that vague, “Balkan” accented English that the story calls for, to Croatian. But when all is said and done, it’s doesn’t deliver on the creepy premise it promises.

An opening credit talks of sisterly “clans” that once existed in the Balkans, conjure women the script goes to great pains not to call “witches” or “Gypsies,” although the viewer could leap to one conclusion and mistakenly stumble to another.

Three such “sisters” emigrate to America. One catches another cheating with her man, a curse is invoked, somebody gets killed and the “cover-up,” Balkan style, kicks in.

Naida must chop off cheating, accidental murderess Hana’s hand. Because “the hand that takes a life HOLDS a life.”

They will bury the dead Aishe (Jena Carpenter), and leave Hana’s severed hand covering her mouth so that even after death, she won’t be able to finish uttering “The Abolishment Curse.” Aggrieved Aishe was about to curse Hana’s entire bloodline to extinction.

Decades pass, and one-handed Hana (Yancy Butler) is presiding over the wedding of son Petar (George Harrison Xanthis) and his beloved, Sunny (Izabela Vidovic). But it’s tempting fate to do such a wedding in the garden where Aishe’s cursing corpse was interred.

And Sunny? She’s got a secret.

Melora Walters plays Miss “I Told You So,” the scolding Naida. Zara (Maiara Walsh) is…somebody’s daughter. I couldn’t figure out whose. Hana’s? Naida’s? Anyway, the daughter has “the gift,” too. If the wrong guy, one who jokes about the family history of “witches” and gets too fresh, she can sic a swarm of bees on him with just a glare.

But Hana and Petar’s problems are more immediate. Something has switched on the Firethorn bushes of that garden, which entangle and slice up those who don’t know the Croatian version of “I am family, let me pass.” And Aishe’s uneasy ghost is stalking the woman who wronged her, Hana all her kin.

This convoluted thriller never seriously gets down to getting revenge. Not quickly, anyway. And that matters when you’ve got 80 minutes of screen time to tell your story.

Screen veteran Butler — I remember interviewing her when the John Woo/JCVD thriller “Hard Target” came out in ’93 — commits to the part, even in a cut-rate thriller which has her trying to hide her lopped-off hand rather than solving that problem with prosthetics or digital effects. She lets us buy into Hana’s fear at her son and her family facing a reckoning for her transgressions long ago.

And she drops a little Croatian folk wisdom — in Croatian — here and there.

“What is found downstream comes from upstream…You can’t hide a cat in a sack. Its claws will reveal them!”

Put that on your daily Croatian curse affirmation calendar.

“The Accursed”– co-written and co-directed by Kathryn Michelle and Elizabeta Vidovic — never gets up a head of steam, never delivers a genuine fright and in the end, never adds up to anything.

No picture this short should dawdle and dwell on the convoluted relationships amongst all these characters. Pace matters, suspense is important and you ignore the pact you make with the horror viewer at your own peril.

Make it scary, make the violence alarming and make it quick. “The Accursed” lets us down on all three counts.

(Looking for the 2022 film “The Accursed” starring Mena Suvari? Here’s the link to that one.)

Rating: unrated, violence, sex

Cast: Yancy Butler, Melora Walters, George Harrison Xanthis, Izabela Vidovic and Maiara Walsh

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kathryn Michelle and Elizabeta Vidovic. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:24

This isn’t a good sign.

The first Christmas movie of this year’s online holiday onslaught is rubbish wrapped in tinsel from Blighty.

Is there a laugh in it? Feel free to check behind me, because if there was, I missed it.

It’s a boorish “sex” comedy without a line or sexual situation that amuses, an all-star all-in-one-house holiday romp that never romps and a Britcom-ish farce that would never make it to British TV, even boiled down to a half hour of its “best” bits.

The Christmas family is all wrapped up in having another “perfect” holiday at Dunnock Manor.

Caroline Christmas-Hope (Nathalie Cox) wears the perma-smile of the wrapped-too-tight/keeping up appearances crowd. Husband “PEEE-tah” (Kris Marshall) endures her overdoing it, tries to keep their two kids involved and accepts his lot. Because he gets to live in Dunnock Manor, after all.

But the annual gathering of “The Christmas Sisters” at the manor will be a smidge more fraught this holiday season. Yes, older-sister-pretending-to-be-young fashion editor Joanna (Liz Hurley) is going to brawl with promiscuous slacker Vicky (Talulah Riley), pick on perpetual grad student Paulina (Naomi Frederick) and insult Caroline to her face.

“Nice outfit. Sexual repression is ‘in.’ You’re ahead of the curve…for once.”

Mum (Caroline Quentin) isn’t up for being the one who keeps the peace. Neighbor squire John (John Cleese) drops in to bat his eyes at her again.

And they’re all about to put on a show for Joanna’s latest beau, Felix (Ray Fearon), who replaced Hamish, the beau they thought she was bringing.

“Are you at the beginning or end of a three month relationship with my sister?” Vicky wants to know. That’s Joanna’s average.

But the sisters have barely had time to bicker and bond over their hatred for the father who “abandoned us at Christmas” 27 years before, when Father Christmas (Kelsey Grammer) returns to the fold and to his family’s historic pile, flying in from Miami.

He’s shed his British accent and taken on the latest of his 30ish bimbo American girlfriends (April Bowlby).

“This castle is ADORABLE! How could Princess Meghan EVER leave it?”

Screenwriters David Conolly and Hannah Davis have “Mothers and Daughters” and some episodic British TV under their belts — nothing produced in the past decade, according to IMDB. It’s not like they were stockpiling funny situations and killer one-liners in the interim, either.

Few of the players have had much luck in comedy in recent years, but they can’t make funny that which isn’t on the page.

Grammer has yet to make a movie for Netflix that wasn’t a stinker. And I take it as an indicator of his degree of commitment that they wrote his character’s “accent” away, rather than having him trot one out. I dare say he can manage one that would fool Dame Judi or Dame Maggie

And one last lump of pertinent coal before I take my impertinent leave. Co-director Mick Davis keeps getting work, and has never made a good movie. Not one. You can look it up.

Rating: PG-13, sexually suggestive material, language (profanity)

Cast: Elizabeth Hurley, Nathalie Cox, Talulah Riley, Kris Marshall, John Cleese, Ray Fearon, Naomi Frederick, Caroline Quentin and Kesley Grammer

Credits: Directed by Mick Davis and Philippe Martinez, scripted by David Conolly and Hannah Davis. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

“Clifford the Big Red Dog” is simple, a sometimes silly little nothing of a kids’ movie, lightweight and harmless and of no great consequence whatsover.

But it’s got sight gags and giant dog slobber jokes, giant dog farts and giant dog weeing-on-trees humor. So the littlest viewers, for whom it is intended, will find a laugh here and there.

It’s based more on the version of Clifford from Norman Bridwell’s 80 books aimed at not-quite-readers and the parents who read to them. Clifford doesn’t speak, as he did in the PBS TV series or assorted videos made about him over the years. Because having a gigantic, bright red digitally-animated dog also speak would have been…too far-fetched?

Emily Elizabeth, the little girl who adopts him, lives on Manhattan, not Bridwell Island, and is 12 — a sixth-grader — not an eight year-old as in the books. But much of the humor still comes from Clifford’s enormous size and how others adjust to that, reinforcing a message of “It’s OK to be different and stand out.”

What Paramount, “Van Wilder” director Walt Becker and screenwriters who have “Norbit,” “Vampires vs. the Bronx” and “I Spy” among their credits give us is a standard issue “origin story,” telling the tale of how Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp), here a Harlem-dwelling white child with a British paralegal Mum (Sienna Guillory), came to have The Big Red Dog in her life.

Emily Elizabeth is bullied at the posh private school Mum sends her to. “Food Stamps,” the richer mean girls call her. In her neighborhood, the married couple Black lawyers (Bear Allen-Blaine, Keith Ewell), the Anglo-Indian neighbor who wants to be a magician (Russell Peters) and guys at the bodega (Horatio Sanz and Paul Rodriguez) may adore her. And her building’s cranky super (David Alan Grier) might tolerate her.

But at school, she’s alone and lonely.

She has this irresponsible Uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall of “Jungle Cruise” and TV’s “Bad Education”) whom Mom gets to babysit Emily Elizabeth when she has work out of town. Emily Elizabeth doesn’t care for Jack. He’s not good at caring for kids.

“I lost you ONE time! OK, TWICE, if you count ‘Atlantic City. And I won you BACK, didn’t I?”

Casey lives in an old panel truck because he can’t find work as an illustrator. But a weekend of childcare in Big Sis’s apartment? Sure. It’ll be a cinch.

As they pass by Bridwell’s Animal Rescue tent, parked conveniently on the private school’s grounds, the charming Doolittle-eccentric Brit (John Cleese) who invites them in figures a pet is just what Emily E needs. A Capuchin monkey? A snake? A “stand-up chameleon?”

What about this bright red puppy? “How big will be get?”

“That depends on how much you love him.”

I don’t recall that line from the books, so if our trio of screenwriters came up with it, hat’s off to you lads. That’s a lovely, child-friendly way of explaining how the pooch, slipped into Emily Elizabeth’s backpack so that she won’t know and Uncle Jack can’t protest and the super can’t evict them before Mom gets home, grows and grows overnight the very first night he sleeps in his little girl’s bed.

Emily Elizabeth’s heartfelt wish, that she and Clifford could be “big and strong and the world can’t hurt us,” comes true.

The plot from that point on is sight gags involving the over-sized, shoe-chewing puppy and everybody else’s reaction to him, from Casey’s “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to Burning Man” to the locals — “It’s New York. Nobody’ll even notice.“

And it being the 21st century, somebody’s going to get video of Clifford, it’ll go viral and a big genetically-modified-organism (GMO) bio-engineering tycoon (Tony Hale) will want this super-sized dog for “experiments.”

As you can tell from that cast, diversity and inclusion were bywords when turning “Clifford” into a New York story. Emily Elizabeth takes on a Chinese-American sidekick (Izaac Wang) from school, and his rich businessman/father (Russell Wong) has a Chinese solution to their “problem,” moving Clifford to China.

But the script gives a pretty talented line-up of co-stars little that’s cute or funny to say or do. Grier in particular is wasted in his role. Tovah Feldshuh, vamping it up as a Russian neighbor, makes an impression. And Kenan Thompson has a funny cameo as an unflappable vet who needs to “take his temperature,” and tries to get Casey to do it for him.

Cleese twinkles, something no one who remembers his early comedy could have predicted. Hale tries to live up to being the villain. But there’s just not enough there for most of them to work with.

Not enough for “adults,” I’d hasten to add. This movie isn’t for us.

For children ready to grow out of animated kids’ fare, the belches, farts, gigantic-tail wagging out of control of a giant dog in New York might be enough.

Cast: Darby Camp, Jack Whitehall, Izaac Wang, Sienna Guillory, David Alan Grier, Tony Hale, Tovah Feldshuh, Horatio Sanz, Russell Peters, Paul Rodriguez, Russell Wong and John Cleese.

Credits: Directed by Walt Becker, scripted by Jay Scherick, David Ronn and Blaise Hemingway. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:36

“Spencer” is nothing less than the reinvention of Kristen Stewart. Her portrayal of a troubled, mercurial, vain and bitter Diana, Princess of Wales is that startling, that much of a career-reset.

Her performance starts with an uncanny impersonation — the way Diana held her head, the whisper she always seemed to speak in, her carriage, stride and simple “ready for my closeup” beauty. We forget that this is actually the actress-turned-celebrity nicknamed “K-Stew” in a heartbeat. We even see flashes where she looks not just like Diana, but Naomi Watts, who played the princess in “Diana” some years back.

And almost as quickly as we lose the actress in that impersonation, she and the film transcend mimicry and plunge into the psyche of a woman wronged — a rich, powerful and unconcerned family that circled the wagons around the “outsider” to protect the feckless fop and heir to the throne, Prince Charles (Jack Farthing).

If I’ve seen a better performance in recent years than Stewart’s in this “fable from a true tragedy,” I can’t remember it. She’s stunning.

Pablo Larraín — he made “Jackie” with Natalie Portman a few years back — works from a detailed, minimalist screenplay by Steven Knight (“Locke,” “Dirty Pretty Things,” “Eastern Promises”) to produce an up-close-and-personal profile of Diana in her time of trial, the Christmas she reached her limit and ditch Charles and the Windsors, if not her fame.

Like “Jackie” and “Judy” and for that matter this month’s “King Richard,” this is biography as fantasia, a “what should have happened” story with a hint of fact and a whiff of fantasy.

It’s flattering, but nothing like a hagiography. There’s no image polishing, with just the barest mention of Diana’s “ban landmines” activism. She is vain, constantly asking “How do I look?” never venturing out less than stunningly turned out.

Diana is impulsive, lashing out within the strictures of her “duties” as she makes statements with what she wears and gives away what she “knows” about Charles and the old flame he never shook off, and carried on an affair with while both were married, simply by donning a pearl necklace.

Her most passive aggressive act of all is making the smug Corgi-fancier with “HRH” attached to her name, and her untidy family, wait. Stella Gonet has just a few scenes to suggest an Elizabeth that Helen Mirren won an Oscar portraying — emotionally-stunted, rigid and adamant about “tradition” and protocol, the older and more ludicrously out of date, the better.

When we meet Diana, she’s motoring about the countryside in her Porsche convertible, looking for Sandringham House, a drafty royal estate that is, coincidentally, next door to the great house gone to ruin that Diana grew up in, back when she was Diana Spencer.

Diana is so lost she has to ask directions from the gobsmacked inhabitants of a local pub. And failing there, she stumbles into the proud, dutiful and sympathetic royal head chef, Darren (Sean Harris, superb), who points her the right way.

Darren’s big staff prepares one ostentatiously sumptuous feast after another over the 1992 holidays, with him egging them on with a challenge borne of genuine affection and concern.

“I want our Princess of Wales to WANT something.”

Everybody in the Royal household knows of Diana’s eating disorder, and some even see it as a product of the ugly stresses of paparazzi, tabloid journalists, a husband straying with another woman, and his family’s indifference to Diana’s plight.

A sign in that kitchen orders one and all to “Keep the Noise to a Minimum. They Can Hear You.” And they do. For all the “security” surrounding this lot, the dressers, cooks and functionaries are — it is implied — their own gossiping/”reporting” social network.

Another sign is just as telling. The carefully-organized designer wardrobe Diana is to wear to every meal, outing, ceremony and the like carries a tag — “P.O.W.” You can think that stands for “Princess of Wales” if you like. But as we’ve already met the new Master of the Household, a retired Black Watch officer based on an RAF officer who had such duties, we can leap to a more ironic acronym conclusion.

Major Alastair Gregory (Timothy Spall, chilling) can seem sympathetic, but his sternness points to trouble on the horizon. He is there to keep the tabloids at bay, and it is implied, a tight rein on Diana.

“I watch so that others may not see,” he says, trying to curb Diana’s tendency to let the public and the press see more of her — candidly or otherwise — than the royal family would like, another way she fights her treatment and the restraints put upon her by her role, her fame and keeping her “place.”

Gregory cannot abide tardiness, and the admittedly paranoid Diana perceives cruelty and conspiracy in his actions.

Diana’s one confidante in the entire “holiday” travel party is her dresser, played by Oscar-winner Sally Hawkins. Her unguarded and improper bit of advice?

“They can’t change. YOU be the change.”

Over the course of three days, Diana’s “ridiculousness” — “silliness” is how she tells her oldest son William to describe it — rubs the mostly-offstage Royals the wrong way, time and again. We mostly see her, alone in her room or striding down cavernous empty halls, and see and hear servants of varying ranks knocking, calling out “Dessert, madam” or “The Family is waiting to open presents, madam.”

And Diana, finding a conspicuously-played book about the wife King Henry VIII murdered, Anne Boleyn, starts seeing Anne (Amy Manson) in her dreams and visions. Her paranoia and despair grow and grow.

Stewart’s portrayal is so vulnerable and alluring that if you’re so inclined, she could make you fall in love with “The People’s Princess” all over again. And it’s worth noting that the pretty actress has never been filmed in more flattering light. Kids who grew up on “Twilight” are thus encouraged to fall in love with Kristen Stewart again, too.

The movie around her is the damnedest thing, a script that ventures from cracker-jack to kind of crackers in the directions it takes Diana’s psyche and the lifeline it invents for her to grab.

“Spencer” owes a debt to “Jackie,” and to “Great Expectations” (a ruined family mansion, lost connections) and even “Citizen Kane.” Diana has her own “Rosebud,” and you’ll recognize it the moment she dons it.

Sure, it’s a one-sided portrait, although a more complex picture of Charles emerges despite the fact that Farthing (of TV’s latest “Poldark”) has few scenes to make an impression.

And no, it’s not the truth, or even The Gospel According to Diana.

But “Spencer” is still one of the best-written, best-acted pictures of the year. And if there’s any justice, Stewart will get the chance to smile her trademark coy grin and play with her hair, this time for a global TV audience. Oscar night could very well be her night.

Rating: R, for some language (partial nudity)

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Stella Gonet, Sean Harris and Sally Hawkins

Credits: Directed by Pablo Larraín, scripted by Steven Knight. A Topic Studios film, a Neon release.

Running time: 1:57

Medieval combat, “The Battle on the Ice,” music by Prokofiev and the Soviet master of montage (editing) makes a spectacle out of mise en scene (production design, epic shot compositions) — that’s what cinephiles summon up when revering Serge Eisenstein’s 1938 classic “Alexander Nevsky.”

A filmmaker famed for telling his stories and making his (often propagandistic) points with masterful flurries of edits in “Battleship Potemkin” and “October” turns stately and almost grandiose with a large-scale patriotic epic taken from the pages of Russian history.

What sticks in the memory — and it’s been decades since I first saw it — is that famous set-piece, “The Battle on the Ice,” a sweeping scrum of cavalry and infantry set on a frozen lake, action-packed but seen largely through the eyes of a handful of stock character “types” caught up in it.

Watching “Nevsky” again, I can’t help but be struck by how Western it looks, as in The Old West as it was filmed by John Ford. “Stage Coach,” which Ford released a year later, has traces of “Nevsky” that must have been most obvious when seeing them new, in cinemas just a year apart.

They’re totally different movies, but their story structure, character tropes and set pieces are shot and timed in similar enough ways that Ford — acclaimed but not yet “Directed by John Ford” iconic — might have absorbed “Nevsky” in the process of making his Ur Western.

In the divided and conquered Russia of the 13th century, the lands the Mongol Horde wasn’t still holding were fought over by invading Swedes and others. The Rus aren’t quite enslaved, but they must be deferential to their masters.

Not Prince Alexander Nevksy (Nikolay Cherkasov). A broad-shouldered man’s man, we meet him when he stops tending his fishing nets to break up a passing Mongol raiding party’s stop-and-humiliate-the-locals pause in their ongoing marauding.

“Fight not more!” He does this merely with his commanding presence.

“Was it you who defeated the Swedes?” the Mongol leader wants to know. Yes, Nevsky admits, squaring his shoulders to the camera like a Victorian stage hero. “A person of importance” like you should join the Horde, then.

My people have a saying, Nevsky intones, his eyes cast upon the distant horizon. “Better to die in your own land than to leave it!”

When word later comes of Teutonic invaders rolling up cities on their march to the East, Nevsky ignores calls to be the one who rids Mother Russia of the Mongol menace. He will deal with them later (or leave them to Ivan the Terrible). First, I will smite the Germans.

The conflict is thus set in motion — unruly, brawny and brave Russian nobles and peasants battle disciplined, better-armed and better trained Teutonic knights, invaders who aim to conquer their land and divide it among themselves.

The propaganda value of the film, with Nazi Germany re-arming to their West, was undeniable, so much so that when Stalin gullibly took a Nazi peace pact at face value, he ordered “Nevsky” pulled from distribution.

Because the iconography of the Hated Invader who would knock down their door three years after its 1938 release is undeniable.

Killing two Enemies of the People with one stone, Eisenstein (who co-directed and co-wrote “Nevsky”) locks the monolithic German aggressor arm in arm with the Holy Church, hated by the Bolsheviks and feared by their leaders.

The Germans are clothed in crosses, have cross-shaped slits in their helmets, and are guided, guarded and egged on by Catholic priests.

“All who refuse to bow to Rome must be destroyed,” the sinister archbishop (Lev Fenin) growls.

Look at the symbol on his miter and see Eisenstein’s welding of Church and (Nazi) State in the decoration. See the hated Huns literally toss Russian babies into a bonfire.

Nevsky himself slips into the background once he’s rallied the troops and set his trap. The battle itself, haphazard and not the least bit bloody by historical and modern cinema standards, is broken into set pieces of its own.

The grizzled, whimsical Maste Armorer (Dmitriy Orlov) is full of patriotic promises and amusing aphorisms.

“Every bird pecks with its own beak,” he chuckles (in Russian with English subtitles) about his constant salesmanship.

Two nobles — Vasili and Gavrilo (Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov) battle to prove who is the most valiant in the eyes of the noblewoman (Valentina Ivashova) they’re competing for. That’s echoed in the battle scenes of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and scores of Westerns and combat films.

A woman warrior (Aleksandra Danilova) dons chain mail and is welcomed, another Comrade wielding Arms in the Struggle.

Only the “monied men” of pre-united Russia’s Novgorod beg for appeasement, not a “patriot” among the bourgeois lot.

The style of acting isn’t aging well. You’d never know Russia is also the birthplace of The Method from most of Eisenstein’s films. He liked casting amateurs who looked the part a bit too much for his own good.

And the great battle scene, despite the stirring (and oft-borrowed) music by Serge Prokofiev, seems more the inspiration for all that came after it than anything that stands the test of time. The silent “Napoleon” was more impressive, and Eisenenstein’s “Ivan the Terrible” bested “Nevsky” in this regard a few years later.

But I’d still place this 1938 classic as one of the two great films of the Russian cinema pioneer, second only to “Potemkin” in its art, cohesion and lasting impact and import.

If you want to call yourself a cinephile, “Alexander Nevsky” remains a must-see film in your cinematic experience.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Nikolay Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov, Valentina Ivashova, Aleksandra Danilova, Dmitriy Orlov, Lev Fenin and Vladimir Yershov

Credits: Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitriy Vasilev, scripted by Sergei M. Eisenstein and Pyotr Pavlenko. A MosFilm production, a Corinth release.

Running time: 1:48

“Red Notice” doesn’t go to hell straight away. Oh no.

The first act is “Thomas Crown Affair,” witty and caperish and fun. The second act is “National Treasure” warmed over — a treasure hunt with lots of Big Budget action derring-do. Meh.

The third act? “Indiana Jones’ Greatest Hits.”

Zzzzzzzz… No. Literally.

You start with FBI profiler Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) chasing “the world’s second best” art thief (Ryan Reynolds) through capers and quips.

“That was a fun foot chase, right? Lots of twists and turns. Who knew it’d end like this?”

“I did.”

It forces these two to team up against The Bishop, the world’s greatest art thief (Gal Gadot), hunting down “Cleopatra’s Eggs” (invented, no such thing) from Spain to Argentina.

And it climaxes with Ed Sheeran as a punchline.

Let down? Yeah, a bit.

The first act’s gags had me giggling — a Reynolds riff or three, Johnson commandeering a Product Placement Porsche for a chase — and wrecking it three seconds later.

The second act grinds to a halt, the third takes on delusions of theme park rides and a franchise.

Nope and nope.

Just spitballing here, but I’m guessing his “Skyscraper” and “Central Intelligence” director talked Johnson into taking Netflix Bitcoin for this, and DJ hustled up DC queen Gadot and Every Action Comedy’s Best Friend, Canada’s second sweetest export, Reynolds.

And if they don’t regret it, maybe The Wrestler Formerly Known as The Rock can drop all the “MCU and DC Universe” crossover talk. Because this bust pretty much stops payment on that check.

Reynolds’ Nolan Booth isn’t just a master thief, he’s an escape artist — “six for six…One more, and I get a ‘Shawshank’ jacket.”

Johnson’s profiler seems to get the drop on him almost as often as the Italian Interpol cop (Ritu Arya) who busts in on most every heist and locale they wind up in, and the movie winds up in a lot — Rome, Bali, etc.

When she packs BOTH of them off to Interpol prison in snowy Siberia, the viewer is given pause.

“Forget Guantanamo! INTERPOL has RUSSIAN prisons?”

Gadot glams up the joint as the fly in the ointment, and is most impressive not in mimicking her Wonder Woman moves in “trophy room” fights. The twinkle in her eye in a few moments of sadism is some of the best acting we’ve ever seen her do. We hope it’s acting, anyway.

Johnson has evolved into a first-rate straight man and bulk-rate punchline. And Reynolds makes everything, even middling pix like “Red Notice” — the title is Interpol’s “highest” warrant, the script claims — bubbly enough to endure.

There’s no sense pummeling a popcorn picture whose greatest sins are running out of new ideas, running out of gas and running through Reynolds’ repertoire of riffs as it does.

But this is by far the worst Rawson Marshall Thurber outing to star Dwayne Johnson, and even though it’s made for Netflix (briefly in theaters as I type this), the Big Guy always with a Big Plan for What’s Next has got to be thinking maybe it’s time to change phone numbers.

Because when you hit that wall in the third act, it’s not just ginger pop Ed Sheeran staring back at you. It’s what a certain Canadian wit would call “resting failure face.”

Rating: PG-13 for violence and action, some sexual references, and strong language

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Ritu Arya and Chris Diamantopoulos

Credits: Scripted and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:57

“Lokillo,” aka “Lokillo en: Mi Otra Yo” is a Colombian comedy about a sexist TV chat show host forced to dress as a woman and hide out in prison after he crosses a Colombian drug lord.

This “Around the World with Netflix” offering is seriously malnourished as comedy. There’s barely a chuckle in it, at least for anyone who’s been enjoying cross-dressing comedies since “Some Like It Hot.”

What it has going for it is its messaging. An unrepentant misogynist bonds with the other inmates in a women’s prison, hears their stories and wonders if maybe his “punching down” at women isn’t satire, but just bullying.

Does Dave Chapelle watch movies with subtitles?

Yedison Flores is a Colombian comic whose name seems to be a goof on a famous Peruvian soccer star, Edison Flores. The comic nicknamed “Lokillo” (a little loco/crazy) also got a Netflix standup special that the streamer just added to its lineup.

Here he plays Jimmy Barón, host of the popular “L Hora Menos Pensada” (The Least Expected Hour) where he danced with the band, interviews guest and jokes around about women. Constantly.

“Jesus Christ should have been a woman,” he riffs (in Spanish with English subtitles). “‘Rise up Lazarus! Make your bed!'” Stuff like that.

His fans eat that up, but not professional women. A female presidential candidate doesn’t take his whole “Women should be in every high office…sweeping up” joke well. Neither does a woman in his studio audience (Jessica Cediel) who’d love to get him to visit her little sister, a big fan dying of cancer in a hospital.

But there’s this drug dealer, “The Boss,” who would love for him to come and give a command performance. Jimmy shrugs these entreaties off until the moment he’s kidnapped by two-fisted Sizu (Shirley Gómez) and her minions, who pile out of their Dodge Ram, knock Jimmy out and present him to the kingpin.

For some reason boss Agustin (Javier Gardeazábal) wants one of the most famous comics in the country to perform in drag. But just as Jimmy’s about to launch into his traumatized act, there’s shooting, Agustin flees and Jimmy is the only outside witness to his crime.

Guess who the prosecutor is who has to keep him alive to testify? That would be Lili, the woman with the sick sister, brushed off by Jimmy just the day before.

Her idea? Summon some Hollywood makeover experts, doll Jimmy up as a gender he hates and “hide” him in a women’s prison. While he’s in there, maybe he can let them know about an attempted jailbreak that’s coming soon.

Jimmy finds himself getting slapped around by the “Naranja es las nueva Negra” crowd, and bonding with them. He hears their “stories,” why they’re incarcerated. To a one, they’ve been victimized or even abused by men.

Four credited screenwriters couldn’t find a laugh in that odd set up, not a giggle in the simple logistics of shaving, showering etc and keeping Paola’s — as the female Jimmy is named — secret from the prison population.

The sentimental stuff here kind of plays, and there’s a cute Paolo-leads-dancercise class in “The Yard” bit.

But the script meanders through the lamest set-ups, from the guard (John Jairo Rodriguez) who develops a crush on ultra-feminine Paola to the snazzy, hand-held-camera prison break.The makeover and “act like a woman” lessons are handled in an unfunny montage.

And Jimmy’s act, his stage bits, aren’t the least bit funny. That’s not political correctness talking, that’s comedy savvy weighing in. Surely our star could come up with wittier bits than these.

If you want to see Flores funny, the stand-up special might be your better bet. The only characters to register as amusing here are a couple of brawling inmates, and Gomez’s punchy mob “fixer,” a tough broad in a murderously male milieu.

There’s nothing else loco or “Lokillo” about it.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Yedison Flores, Jessica Cediel, Javier Gardeazábal, Carla Giraldo, Shirley Gómez and John Jairo Rodríguez

Credits: Directed by Julian Gaviria, scripted by César Betancur, Yedison Flores, Dago García and Juan Pablo Martínez. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29