Movie Nation

This Jan 27 B-movie release has a battle-tested villain, Arnold Vosloo, with Jacob Keohane as the lead, and Jackson Rathbone, Michael Ironside, Bruce Davison and Jorge Garcia in the supporting cast.

And it features James Urbaniak as…HIMMLER?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

P.T. Barnum was 60 when he first took his “emporium,” oddities exhibition and giant circus on the road in 1870. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and his “Wild West Show,” with its cast of several hundred people, hundreds of horses and a small herd of buffalo, debuted and hit the road in 1883.

And while Barnum was practically the inventor of “ballyhoo” and hype, and was the first to proclaim he was putting on “The Greatest Show on Earth,” anyone alive in the late 19th and early 20th century who saw both spectacles might beg to differ. “The Greatest Showman” is a matter of some debate.

There were few spectacles outside of the Roman Colosseum to rival the “Wild West Show,” a grand, chaotic pageant of “the taming of the frontier,” with famous cowboys, famous Indians, sharp shooters, lawmen and trick riders by the score.

And if there’s one thing filmmaker Robert Altman was known for in those heady days of his “M*A*S*H” to “Popeye” peak, it was pageants — sweeping, overpopulated tableaux of Americana that said something about the American psyche.

America’s politically-dubious modern wars to America’s “HealtH” fads, country music conservativism to the American way of “Wedding,” if it had a big theme and a lot of actors willing to play all the moving parts, Altman was in. It wasn’t the only sort of film he’d make over the course of his career, but it why we remember him, and how he bowed-out, with one last all-star spectacle, “A Prairie Home Companion,” in 2006.

“Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” was an ambitious attempt to recreate the man, the myth-making and one of the defining spectacles of what people back then, and in the film, called “The Show Business.”

It’s got Paul Newman in the title role, with Joel Grey playing Bill’s partner, producer and “MC” of course. The big themes are the myth that was already settling in about the country’s noble struggle to “tame” the frontier, about the Natives slaughtered and displaced by that, the wildlife and ecosystems nearly wiped out, historic American racism and how all of that could be encapsulated in a single Big Show.

The film, which I must’ve seen in part or as a whole a dozen times on TV as it was a cable staple in the ’80s, never quite comes off. Nobody describes it as their favorite Newman film or the best of Altman. But channel surfing by a Buffalo Bill documentary sent me down the rabbit hole of wondering which towns I’ve lived in hosted “Wild West Show” visits while it was touring, and curious enough to make me want to see this 1976 epic again.

Homeless teens leave the mean streets of Medellin for the promise of a far-off plot of land in “The Kings of the World,” director and co-writer Laura Mora Ortega’s dark, picaresque odyssey through Colombia’s half-abandoned interior.

It’s a dreamlike journey into the hopes of reckless, under-educated kids who have nothing but each other, that piece of land and their “freedom.” And their concept of that seems borrowed from Kris Kristofferson, “just another word for ‘nothing left to lose.'” That’s what sends this broke, oft-injured and sometimes-quarrelsome quintet on their quixotic quest.

Ortega, who directed the gritty crime drama “Killing Jesus,” introduces these lads in their element in a opening act of nervous energy filmed with a jarring hand-held camera.

Bryan Andre, “Ra” (Carlos Andrés Castañeda) is 19, living on the streets, pilfering and begging and hustling, the magnet for several friends who ride busted, chainless and DIY modified “coasting” bikes, three-to-a-seat, as they look out for each other and keep each other company.

There’s safety in numbers, they must think. Because the lives of homeless kids like them are the cheapest of the cheap. Any bravado they think they’re showing by their mock machete fights won’t do them much good when they’re out of their element.

But that’s where these “Kings of the World” (“Los reyes del mundo”) are headed when Ra gets a letter from the national Land Restitution Agency. His late grandmother’s claim that she was involuntarily and illegally “displaced” from her home in rural Nechi has been heard and granted.

Ra’s dream of “a place” for them to live and make something of themselves and “be free” is coming true. Sere (Davison Florez), Nano (Brahian Acevedo) and Winny (Cristian Campaña) are up for this trek in an instant.

They don’t really know where Nechi is or how long it’ll take to get there. They’re not exactly rolling in cash. But hey, they have their bikes.

Before they can go, a first sign of trouble. Their in-again/out-again “friend” and supposed relative Culebra (Cristian David Duque) storms up full or threats and accusations. No, they’re not trying to “ditch” him. Sure, he can come.

There’s not much point in pleading the case that “SOMEone should offer Michael Jai White better roles” any more. He’s all but given up on that himself, and is back to writing his own vehicles.

White, always and forever “Black Dynamite,” proves just as bad at whipping up a decent story for his muscle-bound martial artist persona as anybody else with “As Good as Dead.”

It’s a stumbling, illogical and silly genre thriller that calls attention to its tropes and its shortcomings, and not in a fun “Black Dynamite” (White also scripted that) way.

A former agent “hiding out in Olde Mexico” thriller of the “We’re in Mexico, so every character we meet speaks English” variety, it features a script that has our hero tell his “story” — in detail to a new acquaintance — only to have them start arguing about which Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Stallone or whoever picture that “story” sounds like.

“Raid 2?” Hell no. “Rambro?” OK, maybe that floats.

That “story” opens with our man on the down-low in Mexico, working on a road surveying crew and not speaking any Spanish. Apparently. Not that he stands out or anything.

Every morning, he strips that shirt off to go through his martial arts workout with his DIY kicking/training post (with car tires), noting only in passing that this skinny Mexican teen (Luca Oriel) is on the hill behind his travel trailer home, mimicking those moves.

Oscar is bullied. Oscar has a brother in prison. Oscar needs to know how to fight. Mr. Davis takes him under his beefy wings.

“When you get hit first?” he recites, “It’s my fault,” Oscar responds.

Bloody nose from a punch? “Never wipe it in battle! It’s a sign of weakness!“

One easy martial arts training montage later, and Oscar is whining about “competition,” which Davis dismisses.

But when brother Hector (Guillermo Iván) gets out of prison, Oscar takes on a big bruiser at a bareknuckle prize fighting competition, Cobra Kai’s a guy three times his size, and gets on youtube.

That’s how the bad men in LA — the golfing goon (Louis Mandylor) and corrupt and imprisoned ex-cop (Tom Berenger) find out where “Davis” is. Because “nobody else fights light that. And they want to get even with the big man South of the Border.

“Renfield?” He’s got issues. He’s in a support group.

Can they work these toxic workplace issues out? April 14, we’ll see.

Rampling plays the retired war correspondent who has to take the troubled offspring of a sibling in this period piece, coming out Feb. 24.

Looks lovely.

French action auteur Romain Gavras turns a racial flashpoint and riot in a suburban Paris high rise housing complex into a Medieval siege in “Athena,” an epic in unrest painted with a camera.

It’s a film of beautiful images and stunning tracking shots — long takes weaving and hurtling through the chaos of the violence that breaks out when video of police murdering a young man of Algerian heritage there emerges.

Roman candles and stun grenades, smoke and Molotov cocktails streak across the screen as armor-plated shield-bearing riot police evoke memories of “300” as they use a Testudo formation try to break through the blocks of the (fictional) Athena estate.

Gavras, who did the jolting drug-dealing/car-chase thriller “The World is Yours,” knocks us back in our seats from the start. He climaxes a stunning opening with this film’s lone motorized moment — rioters parading on motorbikes and the police van they’ve captured — and wades into the semi-organized mayhem of enraged, untrained but motivated youth scrambling to face the armed force of the police state.

It’s a tale of four brothers from that estate and the powder-keg that France sits on with a permanent, disenfranchised Arabic minority comprised of citizens from its former colonies.

Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is a decorated soldier brought before the cameras by his family, his community and his country. His brother Idir was murdered, apparently by cops, and Abdel’s in uniform as he’s trotted out to demand justice via legal means (a lawyer is with him), and plead for calm and patience as “the system” works this out.

But his ponytailed younger brother Karim (Sami Slimane) is seething in that crowd in front of the police precinct. He tosses the first Molotov cocktail, signaling his track-suited “soldiers” for the assault in which they rout the cops, overrun bystanders and sack the station, gathering weapons — guns and grenades and ammo and gun-safes where more guns are kept.

This assault is the moment “Athena” first bowls us over, and we track in one long take from dismayed Abdel to enraged Karim and charge through this station with the brawling rioters, piling into that stolen van and careening, with their spoils, back to Athena.

Whatever the designers had in mind for this lower-caste/low-cost housing block, they built a highly-defensible fortress, with apartment towers, raised and walled walkways and courtyards, a concrete Bauhaus-inspired living space that would look right at home with catapults and pots of boiling oil on its battlements.

Karim storms through plans for the defense, delegating “harki” (troops) and weapons. Meanwhile, older brother Moktar (Ouassini Embarek) has his own problems. He’s a drug dealer trying to get his latest score out of the place with his small posse of armed goons. Good luck with that.

Abdel’s efforts to calm troubled waters — from outside — get nowhere because Karim won’t take his calls. Even his hopes, and those of the religious leaders of this Islamic community, to evacuate non-combatants living there to safety seem futile.

And then a young cop (Anthony Bajon) gets separated from the phalanx and captured. Even in his distraught state and confused loyalties, Abdel might be the only man in a position to save him.

So the franchise that made Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell household names is revived, a state-of-the-art horror thriller about mothers and daughters and “maggots.”

Lee Cronin, who dug “The Hole in the Ground,” scripted and directed this reboot, with a nod to Mr. Raimi.

I don’t know. No Raimi behind the camera. No Bruce in front of it. No Morristown, Tennessee “cabin in the woods” setting? Doesn’t seem all that “Evil” without the basics.

April 20.

I only knew this guy from “Top Gear,” this appearance especially. YouTube star as well

Quite the drifter, Ken Block taught the world the meaning of Hoonigan.

A co founder of DC shoes, which I’m wearing right now.

Died the way he lived, no doubt. Balls out. Ken Block was 55. RIP.

“M3GAN” is a fierce and fun thriller about a doll that develops a murderous mind of its own. Sure, that’s as tired a trope as there is in the horror realm. But this laugh-out-loud dark comedy flirts with being THE murderous doll movie.

With a brilliant melding of child-in-a-suit and CGI, hints of satire and grim, knowing laughs about tech addiction and the death of human connection, this pretty good film could have been great.

A little girl (Violet McGraw) loses her parents in a car accident and is sent to live with her toy company robotics whiz Aunt Jemma, played by Allison Williams.

Thirtysomething Jemma isn’t exactly “mother” material. She has toys, but they’re “collectibles.” She doesn’t have a job, she has an all-consuming career. When it comes to responding with compassion and empathy to a child who’s just lost her parents, Jemma can’t even seem to manage the human touch, much less a hug.

And it’s not like she’s weeping herself at the loss of her sister and brother-in-law. Talk about “robotic.”

Jemma’s real passion is a robot doll she and her team (Jan Van Epps and Brian Jordan Alvarez) have been secretly prepping for their robotics play-pal toy company. She’s even hidden “M.3.G.A.N.,” the “Model Three Generative Android,” from their deadline-obsessed/cost-conscious boss (Ronny Chieng, damned funny) who dismisses the prototype as a “cyborg puppet show” — at first.

But Jemma is hellbent on swinging for the fences, and realizes that the doll can be programmed to do a lot of things she’s too far down the Sheldon Cooper spectrum to manage — childcare, child instruction, and simply listening and paying attention.

A demonstration lets M3GAN show off her ability to learn from nine-year-old Cady, pick up on her unhappiness and both comfort her in her grief and distract her from her lonely, loveless misery.

But as the two are “paired,” Jemma’s level of control slips. And as we’ve heard “keep Cady from harm” is M3GAN’s prime directive, we can see what’s coming, even if clueless Jemma cannot.

In the later acts, the doll takes on standard double-jointed monster motion straight out of “The Ring” and scores of skittered, body-contorting menace imitations — really over-the-top stuff. But the best effects might be the simplest — a plastic-faced doll with human-eye shaped cameras silently following Cady and potential threats around her, judging and perhaps plotting.

The doll’s design might seem to be guided by the young actress cast to “play” her, Amie Donald. But to me she looks like Chloe Grace Moretz did when she first started turning up in films. And that’s just...creepy. Moretz could seem a little scary in her tweens. And she might have a good name-image-likeness licensing case, if she were to pursue one.

The movie’s jokes are fangirl and fanboy-friendly jabs at pop culture, tech-obsession and people’s shock at “meeting” this “toy” for the first time.

The frights are mostly jolts that come from the viewer realizing this or that deadly thing the doll can do and how it’s “learning” to do even more.