Movie Nation

The irresistible off-the-cuff Canadian quips of Ryan Reynolds are unleashed in an inside-video-game comedy from the director of “Night at the Museum,” “Free Guy,” an amusing variation on what is by now a well-worn plot.

The new twist here? Our “Tron/Wreck it Ralph/Ready Player One” hero doesn’t know he’s in a game. And gosh, he’s fine with that, until that moment when he wonders if there might be “something more” to this life of same blue shirts, same espressos at the same cafe and work at the same bank, which is robbed multiple times every day because that’s what happens in your more violent video games.

“Free Guy” traffics in tired gamer/gaming types — that too many of “them” live with their moms or congregate in super-spreader-sized Asian game rooms, glued to their screens, addicted to both their favorite games and those enterprising nerds who’ve made online careers out of playing and commenting on others playing, making a living off fans who “watch” them online.

And as such its another commentary on gaming’s downside, the predatory nature of online game operations which, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, hunt for that perfect algorithm that gets us addicted, and keeps us logged in.

Nametag-wearing Guy (Reynolds) is a digital watch-wearing dork, relentlessly upbeat, chums with the security guard (Lil Rel Howery) who cowers on the floor with him during every robbery at the Free City bank where they both work.

“Don’t have a good day, have a GREAT day,” Guy gushes to one and all, which may be the most Ryan Reynolds line ever, delivered with an extra helping of sugary maple syrup.

But maybe one day he wants a different coffee drink. Maybe “normal” isn’t what he thinks he is. And maybe accepting that Free City is full of villains and heroes in sunglasses, and bystanders/victims like himself, has an expiration date.

He’s about to learn he’s living in a hellscape of a game, and learn what an NPC is, a “non-playable character.” He’s about to don…sunglasses.

Naturally, it’s a hottie heroine in a faux Tomb Raider get-up who triggers this epiphany. MolotovGirl is her online handle, a pretty cool avatar for Millie (Jodie Comer), who is shooting and punching her way through Free City with an agenda all her own.

Pretty soon Guy is a spanner in the works, a “trash-assed noob” thwarting robbers, disarming trigger-happy mass shooters and generally mucking up everybody on the outside’s games, game strategy and gaming life.

Guy’s epiphanies are many, some imparted by the puzzled MolotovGirl, who can’t figure out what he is, some which he arrives at all by himself.

“Life doesn’t have to be something that just happens to us,” he muses. And this AI creation is growing a soul, something the gamers themselves prefer to abandon once they log on.

“I’d never hurt innocent people.”

The script cuts between Guy’s new eyes on the mayhem all around him (often invisible, without the game character glasses) and the players themselves, profiled as “sociopathic manchild” types, and intrigues at the game corp where Millie once worked, Soonami. Her former partner and game developer Keys (Joe Keery) is still there, trouble-shooting this “noob” who is somehow mucking up the game and getting global attention for doing it.

Director Shawn Levy has done a lot of comedies, but “Night at the Museum” is the right comparison here. He stuffs the screen with game action, game characters and game tokens. He . and Reynolds recruited legions of cameos, some of whom you’ll recognize, some only here as a voice.

Listen for somebody Levy directed in “Date Night” and somebody Reynolds has an epic celebrity feud with.

Comer, of TV’s “Killing Eve” and various series in her native Britain, makes a reasonably convincing badass in Free City, and a winsome idealist in her quixotic battle with Soonami and its manic man-child owner (Taika Waititi).

Whatever its loftier existential ambitions, “Free Guy” is never much more than big screen eye candy with Reynolds’ grinning deadpan anchoring it with his amusing over and under reactions to all that befalls Guy.

And if you love Reynolds — And seriously, who doesn’t? — that’s enough.

MPA Rating: PG-13, (fantasy) violence, language (profanity)

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Lil Rel Howery, Joe Keery, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Taika Waititi, along with many cameos.

Credits: Directed by Shawn Levy, script by Mark Lieberman, Zak Penn. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 1:55

The year’s second Capote doc, after “Tennessee and Truman,” is due out Sept. 10 and seems to lean heavily on interview excerpts from his very life, heavily televised life.

I can’t say everything I know about modern Japan I got from anime. Because, you know, “Iron Chef,” “Godzilla,” J-horror, “Hello Kitty,” etc.

Japanese history, Japanese folklore, Japanese fads like steam punk, styles of dress, teaching methods and styles, cuisine, you can get a pretty good taste of the culture through the animated art form they call their own.

“Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” isn’t an instant classic and doesn’t have the bloodlines of the anime greats, filmmakers mostly associated with Hiyao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.

Like a lot of midrange anime, it’s a tale that more easily have been told in a conventional feature film, with actors and sets and no animators. But this featherweight made-for-Netflix film gets by on charm and “cute” and the water colorish pastels the medium is famous for.

“Bubble” folds cherry blossoms, haiku, self-consciousness, “communication disorders,” sentimental memories, old age and J-pop into its teen romance tale set in modern day Oda City. We’ve seen prettier animation and stories with a more vivid sense of place. And they should more with the pop music element, seeing as how an old record store and a missing record are big parts of the plot.

But this simple story told simple engages and and should keep you — and perhaps the Young Adult audience its aimed at — interested, start to finish.

Yui is the boy all the kids call “Cherry.” He’s obsessed with haiku, the simple, minimalist Japanese poetry that has a lot in common with anime itself. Anime is typically under-animated, leaning heavily on drawn and painted images and thus a tad less fluid in character movements and the like. Often the poetry in it is in images and word pictures drawn by characters, not in “action.”

Yuki is the ever-grinning, always-upbeat “Smile,” a social influencer on Curiosity, a social network. She takes selfies and live-streams, squeezing products into her postings, with “Smile for me!” as her bubbly catchphrase.

They “meet cute” at the mall, a collision generated by graffiti artist, prankster and all around punk Beaver. That’s how their phones are mixed up.

Smile goes into a panic. Cherry, who is “on the spectrum,” given to wearing headphones to block the noise of the world, is a put out in a more low-key way.

But hey, she’s a cute girl who wants to talk with him, or at least get her phone back. And he’s just as “cute,” a word that Japan didn’t coin, but should have. Her sisters go back to the mall, where Cherry takes the old residents of a nursing home out for walks, and eventually, they made the switch and take in each other’s passions.

He is impressed with her social media presence, but tactless enough to blurt out “braces” when he sees her without the mask she wears to hide them.

“Buck teeth” used to be her trademark, but she’s having them corrected, and she’s embarrassed about it.

He keeps a special haiku dictionary in his phone case, because inspiration strikes him everywhere.

“Lights in summer’s eve, winning with a false start, against the sunset.”

The translations for the English language soundtrack miss a syllable, a break from the “five-seven-five” syllable format of haiku.

But his passion and her branding “work” take a back seat when they take on the quest of finding a missing record whose empty sleeve a very old nursing home resident clutches like it’s his last piece of an earlier life — because it is.

Kyohei Ishiguro’s film of Dai Satô’s screenplay unfolds at a sedate, civilized pace, allowing the story’s mystery to settle in and the uncertain courtship — if you can call it that — play out in unhurried time.

There’s a lot of poetry here, haiku painted and edited (in Japanese calligraphy) by Cherry and his friends Japan and Beaver. The movie’s connection to pop music could have been emphasized and underscored (with actual J-pop) a bit more, and every coming-of-age romance could use a little more humor.

But as the words do indeed “Bubble Up Like Soda Pop,” this plain but pretty story draws you in, the movie weaves its spell and Japan’s fixation of anything and everyone that can be called “cute” is evident in scene after scene.

MPA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: The voices of Hana Sugisaki, Ivan Mok (English language version)

Credits: Directed by Kyohei Ishiguro, script by Dai Satô. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:28

You see a straight razor in a movie, your first thought is “Sweeney Todd.” Even when the movie’s about online voyeurism, you know that straight razor is coming out, and if somebody’s REALLY unlucky, the “stew” is going to have “something special” in it for dinner.

“Eye Without a Face” begins with a tilted camera watching a brunette stalk into the frame, her bloody hand holding such a razor. So we know what we’re getting into, even if it plods its way back to that moment “one week” later.

Dakota Shapiro plays Henry, an agoraphobic with daddy issues, stuck inside the junk-filled/half-ruined LA house he inherited, staring at a whole collection of young women’s intimate lives as he’s hacked their PC webcam.

“I’m their guardian angel,” Henry confides in his Aussie actor renter (Luke Cook). Sure he is.

There’s Sky (Evangeline Neuhart), an unhappy singer-songwriter living with a brute, and Tessa the online sex worker, the over-eager blonde Ella (Sarah Marie) and, oh yes, that brunette.

Laura (Vlada Verevko) has an Eastern European accent, a nice apartment and a lot of dates. Funny thing. Henry sees the dates come in, sees her serve them drinks. But he never notices them leave. And hearing an electric carving knife and seeing how much Laura likes red meat, he has his suspicions.

“I, I…saw it. I’ll show you!”

Vain, shallow womanizer Eric is flippant and skeptical. But he’s just a little bit curious, too.

Writer-director Ramin Niami (“Shirin in Love”) has been making movies few see for years. Here, he’s teamed with (I guess) his daughter/cinematographer Tara Violet Niami for a bit of slumming in horror.

The project is credited as “a film by Ramin Niami and Tara Violet Niami, so perhaps she co-directed. The movies have a rich tradition of “buying your son/daughter their first big screen credit,” so perhaps that’s what’s going on here.

They know what to do with the camera, tilting it, giving us first person stalker’s-eye-view sequences as Henry’s worst fears, that the “angels” he’s guarding are stalked by a Devil-masked slasher.

But the acting’s perfunctory and unaffecting. There’s not much story here, and nothing that’s all that original. There’s virtually no building of suspense, just a lot of Peeping Henry behavior and signs of his quick mental decline, thanks to what he’s experiencing voyeuristically through his PC.

Once the straight razor comes out, we know what’s coming. Just a question of who’s wielding it. The hard work is making us care who that is, and “who’s next.”

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, sexual content, profanity

Cast: Dakota Shapiro, Luke Cook, Vlada Verevko, Ashley Elyse Rogers

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ramin Niami. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:38

A few obstacles remain before James “Guardians of the Galaxy” Gunn is officially canonized for pulling “The Suicide Squad,” the DC universe and Warner Brothers out of the comic book movie doldrums.

Firstly, there’s the undebatable fact that Warners/DC has set the bar so low. Everybody watching the non “Dark Knight” films sits with fingers crossed, hoping that “THIS time” they won’t “Jonah Hex/Zack Snyder/David Ayer” up the works.

“The Suicide Squad” reset is a big step up from the 2016 film, a slight improvement on “Birds of Prey” and more watchably “fun” than “Wonder Woman 2,” “Aquaman,” or any recent “Justice” this or “Super” that. Gunn gets what a giggle these “dark” endeavors should be and proceeds accordingly.

Yet this “Squad” has an indifferent villain, somnambulant middle acts and violence so glibly gory it’d made Deadpool wince. The time shifts in the story are handled with cute animated “titles,” but are still clumsy. And sure, the carnage is played for comedy. See enough of it and you start to feel numbed to it, as if the movie is sucking out a little piece of your soul.

But Gunn brings a playfulness to the entire genre every time out, and that’s the saving grace of his “Squad.” Take the best thing about the first two entries in this universe — Margot Robbie‘s Harley Quinn — and reduce her number of scenes to punch up her impact. She dazzles in this part, a callous, coarse, kewpie doll with “killing” on the brain, and a tween urchin’s view of the mean streets.

“I love the rain, it’s like angels are splooging all over us!”

The shift in tone is embodied by Oscar winner Viola Davis‘s performances in the 2016 “Squad” and now. Now she is WAY over the top as Amanda Waller, the Project X/”Dark Ops” chief with a murderous temper and a fanatic’s commitment to “mission.” She doesn’t care how many she kills or gets killed, has little concern for “collateral damage” and gets into shouting spit-rages with the guy she wants to “lead” this latest mission, gadget-packed marksman and prison inmate Bloodsport (Idris Elba).

“You fail to follow my orders in any way, and I detonate the explosive device in the base of your skull.”

Make her character funny and you change the tone and the franchise.

This “mission” assembles two teams for an assault on the Caribbean island nation of Corto Maltese, where a coup has put a dangerous top secret facility and its head scientist, The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) in play. “Terminate with extreme prejudice” it and maybe even him at all costs.

One team includes Harley Quinn, the sadistic Savant (Michael Rooker), Mongal
(Mayling Ng), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Blackguard (Pete Davidson) and others.

As much as I’d like to joke that the picture peaks with Blackguard/Davidson getting his head blown off (talk about “fan service”), it doesn’t.

Elba handles the comic requirements of his part and the picture well, bouncing off Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), playing up his character’s “thing” about rats (“She controls rats? What a REVOLTIN’ superpower!”), squabbling with his fellow “marksman,” the ironically murderous Peacemaker (John Cena, hilarious) and rolling his eyes at Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian, almost the funniest of the lot) and the profoundly dim but almost unkillable beast, Nanaue, aka “King Shark,” the “I am Groot!” dolt in this “Galaxy.”

Sylvester Stallone voices the shark, which is all you need to know.

Joel Kinnaman (“For All Mankind,” “House of Cards”) returns to the unenviable, somewhat thankless role of Col. Rick Flag, “straight man” to this crackers crew.

The mission is launched, mayhem ensues and mistakes are made — a LOT of them. Waller’s bureaucrats take it in the ‘nads as being apathetic office drones, careless about other people’s lives and sloppy in their “research” that built this comically-mismatched “team.”

The dialogue is comic-book punchy and funny. “Nothing like a bloodbath to start the day.”

“I don’t like to kill people,” Polka Dot man confesses. “But if I pretend it’s my mom, it’s easy.” That sets up the funniest running gag of the picture. And Gunn loves his running gags.

I thought the film started strong and finished with a whimper, with flashes of fun standing out in draggy middle acts that play like boring filler. Despite dabbling in Banana Republic politics and American “meddling,” it’s not really “about” anything.

Robbie, Cena, Davis and Elba stand out, Capaldi looks annoyed at showing up in heavy makeup and not having anything funny to play.

This makes for a just-fun-enough, perfectly-serviceable sequel and reset of the “Squad,” and best wishes for Warner Brothers to make a mint with it. But unlike “Guardians of the Galaxy” or anything with the almost-as-violent “Deadpool” in it, I can’t say I’d ever care to sit through it again.

MPA Rating: R for strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and brief graphic nudity

Cast: Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, John Cena, Daniela Melchior, Alice Braga, Joel Kinnaman, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Pete Davidson and the voice of Sly Stallone.

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Gunn. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:12

As if “Groundhog Day” wasn’t creepy enough.

“6:45” is a “live the same day over” tale in mystery thriller form. But the perils we see on screen pale with those facing any filmmaker who tells a story that circles around and repeats itself. How do you keep that repetition from turning monotonous and boring?

Director Craig Singer’s latest horror B-movie is a step up from his usual fare (“Dark Ride,” “A Good Night to Die”), a moody, meditative and murderous account of a couple’s weekend getaway that turns terminal. As in, “You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Jules (Augie Duke of “Burning Kentucky,””Antidote”) and Bobby (Michael Reed of “Wild Boar”) take an off-season make-up trip to an island named Bog Grove, a “quaint” village with lots of Mackinanac Island-styled wedding cake houses.

The place is largely empty, and the reason for that isn’t something that the nail-clipping weirdo (Armen Garo) who runs the hotel where they’re staying gives up easily.

They walk the empty streets, boardwalks and beaches, hit the local bar where they run into oddball locals. Jules has no sooner said “I wish this day could last forever” when something awful happens. And when the alarm clock wakes them up at 6:45 the next day, they live it all over again.

It’s just that bobby is the only one getting “serious deja vu.” Jules writes that off as a dream, and when they argue, she’s the one who quips “How many times are we going to do this?”

“Good question.”

There are strange goings-on at the hotel, and creepy occurrences at the local bar. Seeing a ghostly-pale, hooded stranger staring at them gives Bobby a clue. And seeing the fellow more than once, he Bill Murrays a plan. He will switch up their routine, avoid repeating the “same day,” foil that stranger and change their fate.

Easier said than done.

Other clues are hinted at and eventually examined in the film’s dreamy revisitings of their day, with time tracked as “Day 8,” and ever onward.

Reed adds a few shadings to the performance as Bobby’s past is peeled away, his “problems” (jealousy, a temper, etc.) touched on.

And Jules? She’s just along for the ride, questioning Bobby anew with each day’s repetition, diving into their “Let’s stay in today” sex scenes. Hey, anybody to “break the cycle,” right?

Singer’s solution to the “repetition” problem, slowing things down for a slo-mo packed third act, doesn’t solve the film’s quest to maintain interest in this story. And the over-explaining that fleshes out the finale is redundant. We’ve already guessed most of what’s revealed by the very bad supporting actors playing stereotypical bar tender, cops, etc.

I found this more “interesting” as a problem-solving exercise than entertaining, more “watchable” than “good.”

MPA Rating: R, for strong violence and gore, sexual content, nudity, and language throughout

Cast: Augie Duke, Michael Reed, Armen Garo, Sasha K. Gordon, Thomas G. Waites and Remy Ma

Credits: Directed by Craig Singer, script by Robert Dean Klein. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:36

Well, we’re into August. So I guess I can say, with all confidence, that “CODA” is the feel good movie of the summer.

It’s a plucky and poignant coming-of-age romance about a teen who loves to sing. But as a “Child of Deaf Adults” (CODA), that’s not something this Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing family values. If Ruby, played by British actress Emilia Jones (“PATrick the Pug,” T’s “Locke & Key”), is going to do something with her talent, she’ll have to manage that on her own, and squeeze it in between all the responsibilities she has in her insular, tightknit family.

Writer-director Sian Heder (“Orange is the New Black”) builds her story on that foundation, how Ruby, had to grow up entirely too fast. She is her family’s interpreter of the hearing world, signing everything from negotiations over the price of flounder to Mom and Dad’s (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) urgent and embarrassing visit to the doctor.

Who knew “jock itch” could be transmitted via sex? What teen would want to hear that, or for that matter her parents’ uninhibited, cacophonous coitus?

But we also learn how Ruby, born with hearing, endured teasing from the very start of school because she didn’t have parents who could teach her to speak. The mean girl insults aren’t just “Do you smell fish?” in Ruby’s case. “Freak” is a hard label to shake.

But on the boat, where she’s just as vital to the family’s ability to function as everywhere else, Ruby belts out soul of the ’60s. That’s not why she signs up for choir. She sees cute Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) join up, and picks her junior year elective accordingly.

Lucky for Ruby ’60s soul, Marvin Gaye and Motown, is also the jam of choir director “Berrrnarrrrrrrrrrrdo Villalobos,” played with flamboyant, theatrical glee by Mexican star Eugenio Derbez, who finally has a North American role worthy of his talents.

Because “Dios mio,” this “Mister V” is unconventional, from his “Little Dog, Big Dog” panting (breath control) exercises to choosing the nakedly sexual “Let’s Get it On” for their repertoire.

And Mr. V. “hears something” in Ruby, a talent that could change her destiny.

Heder decorates this intimate, lived-in world with little flourishes of color. Ruby’s true-blue friend Gertie (Amy Forsyth) is on a bit of a sexual tear, one that might make its way into Ruby’s family.

“Leo got HOT,” Gertie coos about Ruby’s deaf fisherman brother (Daniel Durant).

“Ewwwwwwww!”

“What? He can’t HEAR me!”

Miles, from a musical family, is picked to duet the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell “You’re All I Need to Get By” with shy Ruby. But how will her family, especially Dad and brother Leo, “get by” on the trawler Angela Rose without their hearing shipmate?

The songs were carefully selected to mirror the dramatic situations we see unfolding. Ruby is literally seeing and hearing life from “Both Sides Now,” and “It’s Your Thing” and “Let’s Get It On” need no explanation.

Heder serves up the stand-bys of such musical dramedies with skill. The audition for choir bit amuses even before the cherubic James Corden look-alike pipes up. We know there’ll be a scene when the family has to sit through a concert they can’t hear, and Heder tugs at the expected heartstrings, and finds clever ways to pump up the poignancy built into the moment.

There’s a hint of edge to the nature of the family’s dependence on their child, with Oscar-winner Matlin playing the hell out of Mom’s focused myopia. Her demands, and the family’s, are always going to come first. Veteran bit player Kotsur’s animated signing can be furious or hilarious, and he and Matlin comically click as a couple.

Jones has a winsome screen presence and a pleasant, lilting voice that may not sell Ruby as “Berklee School of Music” material, but thin or not, it gets by.

As does “CODA.” If the advertising doesn’t lean on that old standby, “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry,” somebody at Apple is missing the boat.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for strong sexual content and language (profanity) and drug content (pot use)

Cast: Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Daniel Durant, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Amy Forsyth and Eugenio Derbez

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sian Heder. An Apple (August 13) release.

Running time: 1:52

“Hostage House” is a half-speed thriller about a real estate agent trapped in the “open house” from hell.

Stop grinning and clapping with glee. Yes, I know that “she probably had it coming” is a lot of people’s first reaction to that scenario. But let’s be bigger than our worst or most annoying “realtor” experiences, shall we?

Jennifer Taylor of “Shameless” and “Two and Half Men” is struggling agent Susan Daniels, trying to get her smart-mouthed daughter (Julia Terranova) out the door to college so that she can sell their house, and maybe sell this Everett Canyon mansion, with “70 fenced in acres” she’s just landed as a listing so that she can get them out of debt.

We see the “5/4” with its “game room,” in-house theater, CCTV cameras and lockdown systems via Susan’s tours on open house day.

Heather drops by to surprise her at day’s end. But they can’t get out the door without noticing the police sirens, lights and helicopters. And that last car pulling up the drive might be that one “over asking price” offer. Or it might be just who the cops are looking for.

The blood on Keith’s hand, which we see even though Susan doesn’t, answers that question. Bleeding Keith (Justin C. Schilling) and trigger-finger Natalie (Emily Sweet) tie Susan up, and figure out Heather’s there, too. Eventually.

It’s not just the threat of violence that turns this into torture. It’s Natalie’s mealy-mouthed lectures on the “entitled” class, “the haves and the have-mores” that she’d like to be robbing.

“Folks like you, your idea of being broke is having to skimp on your yearly trip to Cabo!”

There’s often a little DIY surgery in such pictures, and inevitably somebody says “the good news is the bullet went right through” and “this is gonna hurt.” You hear that often enough and you’d swear screenwriters are recycling from the same worn out source.

The movie is flatly-acted, blandly plotted and pretty much stillborn until we’re treated to a flash of what real estate hustlers are supposed to be good at shows itself — negotiating, getting “a deal.” But even that never heats up to lukewarm.

The “escapes” and “near escapes” are dull versions of such situations seen in many a tepid thriller that preceded this one.

“Hostage House” makes the viewer feel like the hostage.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, some profanity

Cast: Jennifer Taylor, Emily Sweet, Julia Terranova, Justin C. Schilling, Richard Neil

Credits: Directed by David Benullo, script by Daniel West. A MarVista release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:26

“Naked Singularity,” Chase Palmer’s film of lawyer/novelist Sergio De La Pava’s book, makes a single self-conscious reference to “The French Connection.”

A New Yorker in the film notes the criminal enterprise that involves smuggling drugs inside a Lincoln and describes it as “some Popeye Doyle level s–t,” a similarity that most any film buff has picked up on already.

William Friedkin’s “French” masterpiece was a methodical, blunt-force trauma account of a drug investigation and bust with a soul-sucking suggestion that the “real” criminals, the rich and the well-connected, never get caught.

“Naked Singularity” makes exactly the same point in a far more clumsy, ham-handed fashion. Its “two systems of justice” parable is coated in a sense of doom, of multiverses playing out their plots and signs of the “End Times” all around for the conspiracy-minded and those willing to connect the dots.

Power outages, futility rising up in the throats of one and all with a growing dread, a “justice” system rightly regarded as malevolent and uncaring by its practitioners, especially idealistically cynical public defender Casi (John Boyega) as he deals with a prickly, pedantic and dispassionate judge (Linda Lavin) — this is Dystopia Today.

But this “singularity” business, ranted about by Casi’s chalkboard-scribbling scientist/landlord (Tim Blake Nelson)? Strictly an afterthought, dabbled in just enough to suggest more was in an earlier draft of the script or a flabbier, even less coherent cut of the film.

We’re starting to “see the unseeable” Angus the scientist sputters, a “ripple” in time and space that shows “the bindings of our universe are unraveling.”

Damn. Sounds fascinating. And no, that’s not what this movie is about, not even with “chapters” counting down to The End — “8 Days until the Collapse,” and the like.

Olivia Cooke dresses down and Tinders-up as Lea, a window clerk with the city’s impounded vehicle lot. That’s where the Lincoln Navigator has been towed. A rough-trade fellow (Ed Skrein) brazenly offers her a bribe to pick the SUV up, but she doesn’t bite.

That doesn’t mean she won’t right-swipe the pushy, flattering hunk “Craig” on her next outing at the club. And that doesn’t mean she won’t hear his Lincoln loot pitch in full as a sort of pillow talk.

Lea’s entanglement leads back to her onetime PD, Casi. And Casi’s got a corrupt colleague (Bill Skarsgård) who knows about the Lincoln, the drugs, the “cartel” involved and the amount of money about to change hands. He’s more than happy to mix Casi up in getting their hands on that.

The drug deal may reference “The French Connection,” but the courtroom scenes pay homage to any drama (“And Justice for All…”) where an upstart lawyer gets mouthy enough to be disbarred by his least favorite judge.

“Sending a man to jail because he isn’t dying fast enough seems petulant, even for you, your honor.”

Lavin’s cyanide-laced “and the Constitution survives another day” retorts suggest somebody resigned to being a cog in “the machine,” and willing to erase anyone trying to throw a spanner into the works.

The “singularity” stuff pops up here and there as the clumsy but thorough Craig points to a picture of Queen Elizabeth and identifies her “reptiloid eyes” as amusing proof that SOMEthing is going on. “Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney headlines another seeming digression from the timeline. Let’s just say his character heads another “consortium” mixed up in this, and that he wears Payot in this role.

Boyega impresses as a sleepless, manic young man bent on reforming this system with hustles, work-arounds and off-the-record advice to clients. Cooke is just recognizable enough in big hair, long black fingernails and New York “bureaucratic functionary” indifference in her eyes. She sort of pulls off this wrong-side-of-the-legal-system character with all the character failings included.

But as “Naked Singularity” lurches through its countdown, even the stars seem a little lost in what they’re acting out and how it fits in what many of us would agree is the worst version of “the best of all possible worlds” that everyone is trapped in.

Even Spiderverse-savvy Spiderman might consider this singularly confusing, a botched effort to say something scientific-sound and profound in a story that’s basically a lawyer-novelist riffing on “The French Connection,” and doing it badly.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout, some violence, sexual references and drug use

Cast: John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgård, Ed Skrein, Linda Lavin, Kyle Mooney and Tim Black Nelson.

Credits: Directed by Chase Palmer, script by Chase Palmer and David Matthews, based on the novel by Sergio De La Pava. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:33

The “elements” of “Resort to Love” add up to a better movie than this Hallmark-lite romance, a pleasantly-bland star vehicle for Christina Milian.

It’s a “get over that man” romance with Milian starring as a singer who lost her fiance to her career, and then loses her big break in a not-amusing-enough public meltdown that the star (Kayne Lee Harrison) who had her sing on his LP tosses, trashing the release.

And it’s set in the gorgeous, under-filmed island paradise of Mauritius, where shattered Erica (Milian) takes a gig singing at the Mer de Saphir resort, next to the “Jolly Rancher Blue” Indian Ocean.

The set-up? Erica’s ex, Jason (Jay Pharoah, utterly wasted in the part) is there, too. He’s getting married.

As Erica’s social media manager pal got her this “get away” on the condition that she sing in the lounge and at any weddings that come up there, well you see where this is going.

“Going” as onto the beach and across a rope bridge on a hike in the mountains, giving this Netflix movie its “best paid vacation ever” status for Milian (“Be Cool,” Netflix’s “Falling Inn Love”).

Other complications include the would-be groom’s hunky ex-military brother (Sinqua Walls, literally twice as tall as Milian), who might be her new love interest. If she’s up for that. If he was a little more interestingly written, that is.

And then there’s the bride, Beverly (Christiani Pitts), who doesn’t suspect a thing and thus befriends Erica and sets up many an awkward meal and conversation as the Big Secret is kept from her.

Steven K. Tsuchida’s film starts FAR better than it finishes, with broken-hearted Erica vamp-weeping through “I Had the Time of My Life” for another happy couple, and generally coming undone at everything in her life that has her “singing at weddings” on the cusp of 40.

The character’s interesting enough, with a newfound mistrust of men and confusion about lingering feelings for the ex. But there’s not enough for her to work. More scenes of Erica “playing along” yet undermining the upcoming wedding, suggesting inappropriate “our dance” wedding songs — “Unbreak my Heart” by Toni Braxton and Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” breakup tunes — would have helped.

Pitts throws herself into this and has the funniest line. “I will give you $200 to throw her OUT of this van…$500 if it’s still moving!”

These two didn’t need a sunnier movie to strut their stuff in. Mauritius is plenty sunny. But laughs and lump-in-the-throat moments are in too short supply for “Resort to Love” to come off.

MPA Rating: PG

Cast: Christina Milian, Tymberlee Hill, Sinqua Walls, Christiani Pitts, Alexander Hodge, Jeryl Prescott, Kayne Lee Harrison and Jay Pharaoh.

Credits: Directed by Steven K. Tsuchida, script by Tabi McCartney and Dana Schmalenberg. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41