Movie Nation

Every movie opens with a world of possibilities and steadily, one by one, closes off those directions it might take. A good film is one that presents promising options, picks a more intriguing and perhaps less expected one, and maybe trips up our expectations along the way.

Russell Crowe‘s new writing, directing and starring effort “Poker Face” opens with piece of Aussie childhood that climaxes with a teenaged poker bluff that foils a bully. We then meet the adult poker player (Crowe) as he’s losing himself in the paintings at a museum. His sad-faced guise intrigues an attractive artist who furtively snaps pictures and clumsily tells him “I want to paint you.”

In in the third scene, our rich gambler drives his black Rolls Royce out into the country to consult a sage old shaman (the great character actor Jack Thompson) who “reads” him, figures out our hero’s state of mind and his health, reassures him that “You will know when it’s time” and passes on something that might give him “comfort” knowing that he has “some means of control.”

Three sequences set up a man with a past full of childhood friends, a gambling “career” that paid handsomely, a terminal illness and the interest of a painter, who might like more than his face, his “story” for instance.

From that collection of possibilities, “Poker Face” draws to an inside straight — a straight-up heist picture. And what’s the first rule of poker, mate?

Never draw to an inside straight.

Liam Hemsworth, the rapper turned writer-director-actor RZA, Aden Young, Steve Bastoni and Daniel MacPherson play the adult “oldest friends” who race a Roller, a Bentley and a Maybach to rich host Jake’s clifftop modernist mansion for one last poker game.

Molly Grace plays the widowed Jake’s daughter, who doesn’t know, and Brooke Satchwell plays an ex-wife who does.

And Paul Tassone is the fiery, ruthless leader of the gang that busts in on the festivities.

Crowe isn’t a first time director, but this heartless bore of a thriller makes one forget the pleasures of “The Water Diviner.” He leans on voice-over narration to deliver attempted profundities.

“If luck is leaving you, apply what you can to change its motion…Maximize your wins, minimize your losses.”

He tries to animate the poker game itself with extreme close-ups of players, chips and cards, and never makes the stakes seem high or the results remotely interesting. Even the in-game banter is shockingly mundane. But then, this isn’t “Rounders” or any of a slew of better gambling pictures. Crowe is rarely dull as an actor, but his poker-faced turn in “Poker Face” proves the exception to that rule.

The shifts in tone, stakes and genre are abrupt and so clumsily-handled you’re allowed to wonder “What just happened?” And the heist is such a non-starter as to leave one at a loss as to what the Oscar winning actor, one of my favorites, ever saw in this.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Russell Crowe, Liam Hemsworth, RZA, Aden Young, Brooke Satchwell, Molly Grace, Steve Bastoni, Daniel MacPherson, Benedict Hardie, Paul Tassone, and Jack Thompson

Credits: Directed by Russell Crowe, scripted by Stephen M. Coates and Russell Crowe. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:35

The new film from award-winning Venezuelan filmmaker Lorenzo Vigas is a lean, quiet and disturbing parable about global capitalism as it is practiced in much of the Third World.

With “The Box” (“La Caja”), the director of “From Afar” pulls us into the sad, mysterious plight of a boy dispatched to the world of giant sweatshops and ruthlessly exploited workers of northern Mexico. And through this poker-faced child, we get a brutal taste of the grim cost of a system still stuck in a Darwinian Wild West era in much of the world.

Hatzín (Hatzín Navarrete) has been sent north by his grandmother to retrieve his father’s body. A bus deposits him at a site where trailers have been set up and officialdom is IDing corpses and turning over remains to next of kin in large, coffin-shaped urns.

We can see where the bodies have come from, and it’s too small and tidy a space for a plane or bus crash. What happened? Hatzín asks no questions, and seems strangely unmoved by the process.

“I’m not crying, grandma,” he tells her by phone (in Spanish with English subtitles). He is young, maybe 13, and apparently estranged from the man whose body is in “La Caja.”

Wandering through the nearby town, he spies a man he is sure is his dad, a man who shrugs off his insistence that he recognizes him. Mario (Hernán Mendoza) is bluff and bearded and patient enough to hear the kid out. There’s a flash of compassion as the boy comes back, still insisting, and Mario buys him a drink and offers him bus fare.

Nothing doing, the kid seems to think. “There’s been a mistake” he tells the forensics team at what we slowly figure out is a mass burial site. Hatzín will dump the box on them and make a pest of himself to this stranger, who indulges, then bristles at and finally takes him in.

Hatzín will discover an underworld of labor recruiting, Amazon warehouse-sized sewing factories and peasant labor coming from near and far for work in what one recruiter describes, over and over, as Mexico’s “war” “with the Chinese,” a war with opportunities for quick cash but sometimes deadly consequences, from deceitful exploitation to truck hijackings and worse.

Vigas and fellow screenwriters Paula Markovich and Laura Santullo limit the dialogue, pulling the viewer in, forcing us to plumb the mystery of this unnamed place much as Hatzin does.

We ponder the kid’s annoying persistence and why this burly stranger is so tolerant of it, until he isn’t.

We hear the pitches to workers, and like Hatzin, observe how the promises differ from reality. Some are smart enough to see they’re being exploited, and start speaking up to others.

And we’re immersed in Mario’s reality a former sewing factory worker who saw the real money was in working with middle men and small-sweatshop owner-operators, filling buses with poor people eager to work, unaware of the trap they’re signing up for.

“Be happy with what you have,” they’re counseled. But if they aren’t?

The kid’s journey will take him from “You’re too honest” into things he’d never think he was capable of. It’s like an initiation into the drug world saga, but with lower cash stakes and cheap, ready-to-wear fashions as its product.

Young Navarette doesn’t give away what Hatzin is thinking, which serves the layers that cover where the narrative is going but robs “The Box” of emotional power. The film can feel documentary-clinical as it lays out this world, this “system” and the gregarious Marios who run it.

Mendoza lets us see the older’s man’s kindly, then cunning sides, and wonder which tack he will finally take with this bright boy he’s brought into his trust.

And through them Vigas shows us what’s behind that Walmart T-shirt that lasts two or three washings, that Target dress that loses its color just as quickly, and the true cost of anything that seems cheap, but really isn’t.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Hatzín Navarrete and Hernán Mendoza

Credits: Directed by Lorenzo Vigas, scripted by Paula Markovich, Laura Santullo and Lorenzo Vigas. A MUBI release.

Running time: 1:33

“Aquaman” and “Dune” hunk Jason Momoa figures prominently in the advertising for “The Last Manhunt.” He’s in just three or four scenes in it, but he co-wrote the story, so fair enough.

And he’s the one who got this new version of the story of “Desert Runner” Willie “Boy” Brown on film. This “true story” Western is a tad malnourished, stolid and depressingly downbeat. But it’s a tragic story. Even if you use a lot of Native American actors and Native American plainsong in the score, it would take a special touch to spruce up the few moments of action, lift the pathos of the couple on the run and make the quarrelsome posse entertaining enough to watch.

That touch is mostly missing here. But the story is still fascinating.

Willie Boy Brown was a Chemehuevi Indian (Southern Paiute) who tried to run off with his distant cousin girlfriend after accidentally killing her disapproving father. He’s been the subject of legend, lore, a book titled “The Last Manhunt” and a 1969 Western — “Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here” — starring Robert Redford as the reluctant sheriff hunting the fugitives, and Italian American actor Robert Blake in the title role.

Set in 1909, “Manhunt” is a “closing of the West” tale, a literal last posse-on-horseback “manhunt” through Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and environs, promising striking scenery, tragic young love, endless searching for water as well as the man the posse is hunting, and violence.

Martin Sensmeier of “Wind River” and “Yellowstone” is Willie, Hawaiian actress Mainei Kinimaka (of the Momoa TV series “See”) is Carlotta, the daughter of a medicine man (Zahn McClarnon) who has to track down the 16 year-old to save her from an “inappropriate” match. “You’re BLOOD,” he reminds them both.

That won’t stop Willie Boy. His second meeting with the father over his beloved leads to an argument and a shooting. Tribe members, who tracked them down when they tried to run off the first time, are ready to do it again. But a shooting means the recently-widowed, depressed and crawling into a bottle sheriff (director Christian Camargo) is involved now, with an armed posse of men of varying abilities and tolerance.

A reporter (Mojean Aria) cynically tries to join their crew, willing to manipulate the story which he recognizes needs some sizzle — an editor lowers Carlotta’s age to 14 — and that “You lack a great ending.”

The opening acts have the novelty of filming an under-filmed part of the desert southwest, with palm trees and Joshua Trees and deep canyons adjoining the vast expanse of desert. But the leads are just bland and there’s no sugar-coating that.

The middle acts, posse-centered, are talky and argumentative and don’t have quite enough conflict to engage the viewer.

And the finale can’t get here soon enough.

Momoa, playing a Native named Big Jim, turns up here and there, not enough to add spark to a picture whose score sets the tone, and is eventually overwhelmed by funereal strings — lots of cellos in tears.

I appreciate the effort it took to get a Western made in this day and age. It’s a good story. Redford knew it. So does Momoa. And there are some scattered stand-out moments.

But the relative poverty of the production shows in every too-clean-to-have-been-hiking-through-the-desert costume, every wish-they-could-have-cast-a-pricier, showier actor or actress, every “Let’s hire a script doctor to tighten/quicken/juice-this-up” suggestion ignored.

Rating: R for some violence and language

Cast: Martin Sensmeier, Mainei Kinimaka, Raoul Max Trujillo, Brandon Oakes, Amy Seimetz, Mojean Aria, Christian Camargo and Jason Momoa.

Credits: Directed by Christian Carmago, scripted by Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, Jason Momoa. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:43

It’s the”Yellowstone” origin series. Paramount+ cannily cashed I’m on Kevin Costner’s star power among over 50s, and now they’ve talked their Indiana Jones into tackling this prequel, set in…”1923.”

A woman with a baby, an under-age car thief…Dec. 23 in limited release.

As tales of a family holed up after an apocalypse go, “Shadows” isn’t particularly bad. Carlo Lavagna’s thriller has a decent sense of isolation and a time-tested source of conflict.

But the director of “Ariana” commits two cardinal sins in showing the lives of two teen girls and their all-knowing, self-sufficient mother. One is that is that where he’s taking us is laughably obvious. And the second is this obvious tale is so drawn-out as to give away the fact that he knows it’s stunningly predictable, but he figures that by padding out the story and the running time, he can fool the viewer and create a hint of suspense.

He can’t.

Mia Threapleton (Kate Winslet’s daughter) and Lola Petticrew are Alma and Alex, two teens who live in a room in the Stardust Hotel, not that long abandoned, but certainly going to seed. They keep each other entertained during the day in in a building whose windows are all covered over, sharing a room at one end of the place while Mom (Saskia Reeves) has her quarters at the other end.

“What’s the first rule?”

“Don’t go out during the day!”

Their lives are lived by lantern light, as their mother has told them of the dangers of daylight, of the perils of being out in it. She hunts and checks traps by night and keeps them fed. And they study the plants in the greenhouse, Mom’s school of nature, and other home school-able subjects.

All they know of the outside world they pick up from their mother, who has responded to whatever calamity has befallen civilization by going full naturism.

“Forgive us, Mother, for breaking the sacred bonds,” she prays to Mother Earth. “Thank you, Mother, for giving us everything.”

But young Alma is starting to have questions, and sister Alex is closing in on outright defiance. Mom goes off and leaves them on their own for days, and that fires their curiosity and creates opportunities for mischief. Going into the forbidden “cloak room,” where the detritus of “The Before” years are stored sets Mom off and pushes the girls towards open revolt.

So, Garden of Eden, Fall from Paradise parables anyone?

The acting is as effective as this simple script requires, with the odd animated or attempted emotional moment, most of which don’t land. As slow as it is, it feels as if there are details that’ve been left out, motivations under-motivated.

And it takes so long to get going that any delay in delivering us to the inevitable conclusion is downright interminable.

Rating: unrated, some violence, a sexual image

Cast: Mia Threapleton, Lola Petticrew and Saskia Reeves

Credits: Directed by Carlo Lavanga, scripted by Damiano Bruè, Fabio Mollo, Vanessa Picciarelli, Tiziana Triana A Red Water release.

Running time: 1:42

Fun, flamboyant enough to remind us of all the gossipy speculation that used to follow him around, and cool.

Because that’s one part of his image Daniel Craig won’t want to shed.

When you boil a thriller down to the bare essentials, you realize just how many of them get by on one killer gimmick. Jimmy Stewart, busted leg, trapped in his apartment watching a murder and cover-up through his “Rear Window” or Glenn Close falling for her possibly murderous client in “Jagged Edge,” any hook that distinguishes your film from the pack is a good thing.

The Spanish thriller “The Chalk Line” lays out a pretty good hook right there in the title. A lost, disturbed child who refuses to speak was somehow conditioned to live her life within the confines of chalk lines that circumscribe her world. What monster abused her to live life this? Or what manner of monster needs those boundaries to protect others from her?

The debut feature of Spanish director and co-writer Ignacio Tatay doesn’t limit itself to those two possibilities, which is both an asset and a hindrance in this moody but frustrating mystery. And the more answers it provides in the third act, the more frustrating it becomes. Simply put, it doesn’t play “fair” by thriller rules, and fizzes out in a formulaic denouement.

Paula and Simón are driving to their remote Spanish home when they see a child wandering in the middle of the road at night. She survives the accident she causes, but neither the police nor the medical authorities charged with treating “Clara” (Eva Tennear) can get a word out of her.

And there’s this thing she does with chalk…

The couple (Elena Anaya, Pablo Molinero) takes an interest in what happens to her, the hunt for her family and her well-being. The child screams, lashes out and has to be restrained in the hospital. But the fact that she responds just a bit to Paula means they’ll take her home and attempt some sort of extreme “fostering” to keep her calm until she gets better and/or they discover who she belongs to.

“Simón and I will make sure nothing bad happens to you,” Paula assures the child, who may not even speak Spanish (you can also watch this dubbed into English). But first we, and then husband Simón, wonder if the source of anything “bad” might be Clara herself.

The script teases that something supernatural could be afoot, something innately sinister in the blonde girl whose first words seem random noises, unless you speak German.

And then the film abruptly turns in an entirely more conventional and less satisfying direction and the movie lost me.

Still, this idea of a scared or scary child who can be limited in her access to freedom, weapons or threats — either received or delivered — by chalk lines she draws, erases and redraws, is an intriguing twist that held my attention through the first act and again in the finale.

Anaya has to carry the movie, and she struggles to keep her all-trusting character interesting as Paula does her own digging into where this child came from and what made her this way. Bigger emotional moments were called for, better manipulations of suspense in the script and choosing shots and edits that heighten this alarming moment or that revelation would have helped.

“The Chalk Line” is never a complete write-off, but there is no getting around that it isn’t what it could have been.

Rating: TV-14, violence

Cast: Elena Anaya, Paulo Molinaro and Eva Tennear

Credits: Directed by Ignacio Tatay, scripted by Isabel Peña and Ignacio Tatay. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

Every few years, Disney likes to remind a new generation of fans that this global entertainment colossus was “all started by a mouse,” as founder Walt Disney used to say.

“Mickey: The Story of a Mouse” is such a reminder, a Disney+ history of Mickey, his visual and psychological evolution over the almost 100 years since his creation. It’s a slicker version of similar works that Disney has produced, mainly for television, as that was Walt’s original vision for how to use the medium — promoting his animated brand.

Filmmaker Jeff Malmberg interviews animators and animation historians, artists and art historians, Walt biographers and Disney archivists and fans young and old, folding that fresh material in with snippets of Walt’s earlier TV, big screen and oral history accounts of how the Mouse that Made Him and his company came to be.

It’s not a deeper than deep dive into Mickiana, even though it does mention the shared credit for creation (with animator Ub Iwerks), Mickey’s racist cartoons in the ’30s, Walt’s increasingly conservative politics and the like. “Mickey” is fittingly built around another reboot of the mouse — a new hand-animated short, “Mickey in a Minute” — a cartoon that takes us through many (not all) of the looks that the mouse has had on screen, from the 1920s to today. That short film — included here — isn’t the whole story, or even that satisfying. But it gives us the general idea, with a few new flourishes, just like the documentary it inspired.

For my money, the entire film could have taken place in the Disney Archives in Burbank. Still drawings from the earliest Mickey cartoons, including the breakout sound film “Steamboat Willy,” flip books illustrating every change in Mickey’s design — “Fantasia” Mickey, “Mickey Mouse Club” Mickey, “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” Mickey even the more recent “Ren & Stimpy” ish Mickey for more anarchic TV appearances — it’s all here.

The studio that owes it all to a mouse has been quite the packrat when it comes to preserving its history and that of its most important intellectual property.

Malmberg & Co. take us to the Disney family farm in Marceline, Missouri and to “Mouse Heaven,” one fan’s collection/shrine in Beacon, New York. Great animators from the late Ward Kimball, one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” to Andreas Deja and Mark Henn and Eric Golberg, who animated and coordinated with other animators the “Mickey in a Minute” short film., weigh in on the character, whom we see being drawn, “inked” and animated. They break down the “personality” and character traits that come from the seemingly simple choice of how Disney and others decided he should walk (confident, bouncy, nimble enough to respond to any circumstance), react and interact with the world.

There’s also a lot of talk of the global phenomenon Mickey Mouse quickly became, his iconic status at home and abroad during World War II (fascists banned him), and the seeming simplicity of his design, just “a few circles,” that made him easily identifiable the world over and triggers such a loving response from literally billions of people, young and old.

A joke about what future archeologists might make of our worship of the mouse, an entire civilization’s “shrine to the Great God Mickey,” rings a lot truer that you’d think.

No, “The Story of a Mouse” doesn’t get definitive answers that cut through Walt’s penchant for “tall tales” about the Mouse’s origin, or avoid repeating Disney lore about this and that. It’s still an eye-opener, especially for the casual fan who hasn’t devoured all the many books on Early Disney as a subject and Mickey as a character, a corporate brand and a cultural touchstone.

Rating: G

Cast: Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, Mindy Johnson, Rachel Cline, Carmenita Higgenbotham, Bret Iwan, Floyd Norman and Walt Disney.

Credits: Directed by Jeff Malmberg. A Disney+ release.

Runing time: 1:30

We love Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer. We all do, and I know I’m not speaking out of turn when I say “we” here.

And that’s a big help when diving into the musical “Spirited,” a musical “Christmas Carol” updating that uses “Scrooged” as its guiding star.

When Ferrell turns to the camera in the middle of singing “That Christmas Morning Feeling,” and flips us all the bird, that’s what they were going for here — juvenile, PG-13 “naughty” with an Oscar winner and two bromantic comedians not known for singing and dancing joining in on the singing and dancing.

So it’s a sort-of “family” musical with very dark and up to date undertones and a little edge, augmented by a smattering of profanity. Any thoughts of this being Ferrell’s follow-up to the sweeter-than-sweet modern holiday classic “Elf” go right out the door long before he’s flipped us all off.

The tunes have “Dear Evan Hansen,” “La La Land” and “Greatest Showman” composer/lyricist authorship. But the director, Sean Anders, who co-wrote it, did Ferrell’s “Daddy’s Home” buddy comedies with Mark Wahlberg. So no, he’s not known for musicals either.

And you just knew from the amusing, snappy trailers, promotional gags and the like that Reynolds and Ferrell have plunged intot o promote this that the movie wasn’t going to be as funny or as much fun as they promised. It isn’t.

But it starts giddy and finds a few moments to shine. The dancing and production numbers are close to dazzling. Reynolds, Ferrell and especially Spencer sing well enough that one listens for autotune touches and is tempted to look-up if they actually did their own singing. Yes. Yes they did.

And again, we LOVE those guys. So there’ll be no incineration of “Spirited” here. Everybody involved took a lot of Apple’s money and took career risks and they kind of, sort of pull it off.

Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, a veteran in service of a sort of Santa’s Workshop as Silicon Valley cloud tech start-up that sets out to give one HOA Nazi/neighbor from Hell (Rose Byrne) or “rat bastard hotel manager” or other stinker that one Christmas night of “visits” that change them for the better each year.

Just like Mr. Scrooge.

Patrick Page is Jacob Marley, director of this operation, where they save-one-soul-at a-time and create “ripples” of kindness and righteousness through the culture. And yes, two screenwriters spent time on the clock coming up with all this logistical, expositional claptrap.

Reynolds plays Clint, a nasty, negative-ad mastering media consultant deemed “unredeemable” by the higher ups. But Mr. Christmas Present insists they try, joined by Christmas Past (Sunita Mani) who can’t keep her tongue in her mouth while lapping up all there is to see of the handsome, flippant and shallow Clint.

Christmas Future? He’s voiced by Tracy Morgan and is as tall and scary as the Specter of Death Itself. He scares the hell out of Karen (Byrne) anyway. Great effect.

Can Clint, who introduces himself by singing to a Christmas Tree Growers’ convention that they’re doomed, but that he can negative advertise them back to glory, be saved?

“Every Facebook loving Boomer wants to fight a culture war,” he croons. “So tell your core consumer what the hell they’re fighting for!”

Clint even wants to help his neglected eighth grade niece (Marlowe Barkley) win her school election by “going negative.” He puts his ace executive vice president (Spencer) on the case doing the oppo research that will destroy young Josh’s candidacy.

Past, Present and Future set out to change Clint, who is so snide and cynical that he makes them question why they even bother. “People are selfish and awful and never change” is what has made him rich, after all.

“Is mankind getting any mankinder” thanks to their efforts?

He’s got a point.

“Spirited” wanders hither and yon, with clever effect/set changes to show Clint flashbacks to his troubled childhood, and early career success. He even persuades his “Present” guide to go back to Dickensian English where the guide-ghost was last alive himself, producing an “Oliver!” styled number in an English eatery and pub that is the musical, costume and dancing highlight of the film. Of course they reference “Oliver!” in it. They know what they’re mocking as well as we do.

Spencer sings a soul-searching ballad or two and Ferrell and Reynolds share some song and dance duets that are delightful, if you give yourself over to them as musicals demand that you do. I got a “Dear Evan Hansen” instantly forgettable vibe from most of them.

When pondering why this wasn’t taking flight more often, I settled on how produced, rehearsed and directed a musical has to be, and how warm and loose and adorable those online bits that Reynolds and Ferrell come off. They’re played as throw-away gags, and no matter how scripted and rehearsed his fake feud with Hugh Jackman might be, Reynolds and Jackman make it seem like effortless comical antipathy.

“Spirited” it too long, self-serious and tidy to feel that spontaneous and goofy.

But it’s novel and kind of cute cute, and when it isn’t you just grit your teeth and recall how morbid “A Christmas Carol” really is, and if the screenplay is going to modernize that, death and the unpleasant facts of modern life are fair game, Jimmy Fallon cameo included.

The best idea here is but a single sequence, those singing and dancing Dickensians insulting each other with a phrase the movie insists we’ve twisted away from the profane put-down it was 200 years ago.

“Good afternoon!”

So there’s just enough novelty and fun to recommend “Spirited” — something I’ve never done for the sour “Scrooged” — with Reynolds and Ferrell hoofing and singing like this is what they’ve wanted to do all their professional lives.

And it’s just off-color enough to encourage 12 year-old boys to laugh at hearing their playground profanity thrown back at them, sending them back to school with fresh insults that this time, at least, won’t make their teachers blush.

“Good afternooon!”

Rating: PG-13 for (profanity), some suggestive material and thematic elements.

Cast: Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Sunita Mani, Tracy Morgan, Patrick Page, Joe Tippett, Andrea Anders, Marlowe Barkley and Rose Byrne

Credits: Directed by Sean Anders, scripted by Sean Anders and John Morris. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 2:06