Movie Nation

Billy Eichner came close to killing the gay rom-com back in September with “Bros.” Which was at least funny, even if nobody saw it. Now, here’s Jim Parsons driving a stake through the doomed gay romance.

Quite the fall. Pun intended.

“Spoiler Alert” is a weeper without tears, a dramedy with the dramatic edges rubbed off and nothing particularly funny about its “Disease of the Week” tragedy. It’s based on a memoir by a former TV Guide writer, and structured for the screen as a flaccid, endlessly voiced-over stunt in which our melodramatic memoirist remembers his childhood as the unhappiest sitcom this side of “The Conners.”

The great love of his life has died, but this is all about “me.”

And Parsons, lacking the “ba-DOOM-boom” rhythms of sitcom writing, is outclassed by “Fleabag” alumnus Ben Aldridge most of the time, even as he holds his own opposite Sally Field, who is off her game playing the mother of is character’s love interest.

It tells the story of a tepidly romantic thirteen-year love affair from the starting point of the our narrator’s other half dying. And here’s the spoiler alert about “Spoiler Alert.” It just doesn’t work.

Parsons plays Michael Ausiello, a TV Guide writer immersed in his craft — pitching “Every ‘Gilmore Girls’ character” in reverse order of obnoxiousness stories, “listicles” we call those in the trade.

Oddly, for a guy with a USC degree (we learn) he’s constantly having to have words like “chattel” and “atelier” explained to him by the hunky, “confident” ad man Kit (Aldridge) whom he meets at a gay club.

Lucky for Michael he’s “totally “Kit’s type,” a pale skinny dweeb.

They hook up and then date, and eventually Michael cannot put off inviting Kit to see his Jersey City apartment. It’s stuffed with Smurf collectibles.

“Oh God, it’s not a fetish,” is just what a guy who collects this stuff would say.

This relationship’s second biggest test will be Kit finally coming out to his parents — played by Bill Irwin and Sally Field. He’s pushing 30 and he’s never told them.

That’s another big moment of drama that isn’t in a movie that isn’t dramatic, a serious failing in a film in which we’re meant to invest in a relationship, see it tested and go “Terms of Endearment” tearful when cancer enters the picture. It doesn’t get us there.

Periodic flashbacks which can’t have worked all that well on the page take us back to Michael’s FFK (formerly fat kid) and gay childhood, sit-com scenes with a laugh track because nothing sentient would find so much as a chuckle in them.

And don’t get me started on the interminable fiasco of a third act.

Parsons was better in the sharper if dated “Boys in the Band” remake of a while back, but here he’s exposed as a classic TV “waist-up” actor, not knowing how to give us something in a close-up, but not bad at playing ungainly, seeing as how many years he had to master that via “The Big Bang Theory.” There is a romantic sparkle in his eyes you never picked up on the sitcom, and he sells his character’s attraction to the pin-up gym rat that Aldridge is typecast to play.

I’d be inclined to cut this picture some slack, as I enjoyed Parson’s run with “Big Bang,” and if anybody can make a mainstream, PG-13 gay romance palatable to the public at large, it’d have to be him.

But with every “No Longer Young Sheldon” dollop of voice-over, every moment that summons up memory’s of Cher’s greatest and most narcissistic “performance” — at Sonny Bono’s funeral — every place conflict was called for (Kit has a wandering eye, the parents potential disapproval)”Spoiler Alert” fails.

By the time the interminable finale reaches, over-reaches and gracelessly makes its exit, we’ve lost track of anything we found sweet, funny, charming or touching that came before it. Which is why I take notes, which in this case didn’t help.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug use and thematic elements

Cast: Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Bill Irwin and Sally Field

Credits: Directed by Michael Showalter, scripted by David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage, based on a memoir by Michael Ausiello. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:52

“Jumping from High Places” is a sugary sweet, lightweight take on living with anxiety, a movie that gets credit for tackling the subject and showing off pretty people in a very pretty place — Bari, in Apulia on the very heel of the boot of Italy.

But as its framed as a 25 year-old’s decision to check off a bucket list of phobias left to her by her best friend, we know better than to expect anything particularly deep or wrenching, whatever the gravitas of Alice Urciuolo’s source novel.

Federica Torchetti of “Mondocane” is sad and winsome Sole, a young woman whose life is wholly circumscribed by her anxieties. She dropped out of art school because she’s afraid of “water, boats, amusement parks, bicycles, flying on planes, dogs” and so on.

There are levels to anxiety, she informs us — speaking to the camera in Italian, or dubbed into the language of your choice. “And I am proud to report that I am at the very top!

She’s off her meds, in therapy and getting a little better. But the return of the hunky brother, Massimo (Lorenzo Richelmy) , of her the best friend who left her a couple of years before throws anxious Sole for a loop.

A wealthy classmate Miriam (Celeste Savino) who has just gotten her Phd and who barely gave her the time of day back in school takes an interest in her. But Sole can hang with the former cool girls now cool young women all she wants. She has to get drunk to be able to remain at a party, and can’t even watch the region’s famous cliff divers plunge into the azure blue Mediterranean without a mid-level freakout.

When Massimo passes on a note sister Emma left for Sole, she starts thinking. And when Miriam and her crew get hold of it, they have a mission. Help Sole conquer a few fears. Check off this phobias list.

Her shrink endorses the idea. So will she make it on a plane, travel to Rome for art school, show others her sketches and make a pass at her age-old crush, Massimo?

Sole turns to the camera for many deadpan or cutesie reactions to this or that situation or suggestion, not quite minimizing her fears that “everyone is in on a secret” and that secret is judging and mocking her in everything she says or does.

The cutest little neighbor dog sends her fleeing in the opposite direction.

There’s only one attempt to visualize with the camera what’s going on in Sole’s head, to let us see her world upended by being in a crowd, stepping on a boat or the merest frown from a stranger (she takes on a waitressing job…for one scene).

As I noted, the film gets credit for tackling the subject, but not much more than that. This is superficial in the extreme, more of a teen rom-com treatment than a suffering adult’s wrestling with the disease.

Still, the scenery’s swell, the cast is so very Italian — gorgeous and effortlessly stylish. The costumer could only go so far to give Sole a repressed nerdy look — dresses and blouses buttoned to the very top.

I didn’t find “Jumping from High Places” offensive, or particularly illuminating. But it does seem harmless enough for what it is, and that’s not exactly an endoresement.

Rating: TV-14

Cast: Federica Torchetti, Celeste Savino, Cristiano Caccamo and Massimo Di Lorenzo

Credits: Directed by Andrea Jublin, scripted by Chiara Parenti, based on the novel by Alice Urciuolo. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

Let’s find out if James Cameron still has his “King of the world” mojo.

Three hours +, in new immersive 3D, a long long delayed sequel in multiplexes starved for a blockbuster.

Let’s hope it’s not all wet.

This is the Philippine trailer, BTW

“Twisted” is a lukewarm, slow-walking thriller built around a co-dependent relationship between a widowed mother and her troubled, introverted teen daughter.

It’s not helped along its merry way by clumsy plotting, slack direction and stiff performances, which seem more amateurish the further away from the leads that you get. But you can see the promising seeds that gave birth to it, even if they weren’t nurtured all the way to harvest.

Hannah (Madeleine Masson of “Karma”) is 18, trying to find direction, focus and love in a rural town in the timbered far west. Her mother Silvia (Karen Leigh Sharp), dotes on her to the point of clinging. She expects this devotion to be reciprocated. Mom wants a backrub after a hard day working as a doctor in the local clinic.

Is that Mom spying on Hannah as she meets her new beau for a little make-out session under the underpass? And Dr. Mom can get downright crude when questioning her daughter’s sex life.

“I don’t know how many snakes you’ve invited into your cave!”

Lonely Hannah’s making some sketchy friends at school. Raven (Lexy Ronning) and Victor (Joshua Malekos) are awfully keen on getting her to “come hunting” with them. That’ll entail sneaking out and making out, and a bit of drinking as they have fun with firearms and shoot mostly inedible wildlife, apparently for trophy mounting.

That “secret hunting society” means raccoon and pheasant gutting. Good times.

But when the guy Hannah claims she’s “not that close to” winds up dead, she finds herself questioned by law enforcement and having flashbacks to her childhood, which she turns into disturbing sketches for art class.

All that first act exposition and action points the viewer towards one conclusion, no matter how many other possible suspects are considered. The movie is about Hannah’s response to all this as she meanders through adolescence with questions about boys, conflicted loyalties and the seriously creepy vibe her hypodermic-happy mother (diabetes) puts out there.

There are night sequences in “Twisted” in which one can barely make out the action, and most every scene that’s meant to build tension and suspense just mopes by until the third act, where we get a taste of competently-handled action.

As I said, the leads are OK, but several supporting players don’t bring enough to the table to make their performances compelling or believable. But that may tie into pacing and filmmaking other issues which point straight at Danish writer-director Sofie Vibeke Muasya.

She did a little-seen kidnapping thriller, “Lost in Africa.” Was it better than this? Because the evidence from “Twisted” is that she’s not very good at the thriller basics, clear and concise storytelling or the craft of directing actors.

Rating: Unrated, graphic violence, sexual situations

Cast: Madeleine Masson, Karen Leigh Sharp, Joshua Malekos, Lexy Ronning

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sofie Vibeke Muasya. An Alarm Films release.

Running time: 1:25

A lot of charm and potential cuteness gets lost in the holiday shuffle and stumbling structure of “Delivery by Christmas,” a light and what could have been more amusing seasonal romantic comedy from Poland.

A lot of packages get delivered to the wrong addresses right before Christmas. And the plucky single-mom delivery lady (Monika Frajczyk) finds herself stuck with an irate customer as passenger (Piotr Pacek) as she scrambles to undo everything the mistaken deliveries have led to.

The gist of what goes wrong in Aleksandra Kulakowska and Maciej Prykowski’s farce is that word “scrambles.” The film has no pace because the script shifts us back and forth in time, “a few hours earlier” usually. Every time we see how this or that delivery mistake had consequences, the picture pauses as it struggles to find what’s funny in those situations.

And every time we step away from our mismatched co-drivers, our investment in them as a couple drops and the stakes get lower.

Marysia (Frajczyk) is so harried at this time of year that she has to drag her pre-schooler (Franciszek Krupowicz) along on deliveries. That’s how he stumbles into Krzysiek (Pacek), a legal exec trying to get some contracts finished before the holiday.

The movie’s “meet cute” is poor little Maks running off to a restroom and realizing he’s too short to manage the man-sized urinals in Krzysiek’s office building. So Krzysiek helps, and finds himself stuck and distracted by a child fascinated by the paper shredder in his office. When Mom finally retrieves him, he’s already made a mess, so she owes Krzysiek a favor.

That’s how she’s arm-twisted into picking up his grandmother’s ring from Krzysiek’s grumpy, practical-joker grandfather (Zdzislaw Wardejn), who sends him a prank gift instead. So much for Krzysiek proposing to his live-in girlfriend on Christmas Eve.

Marysia manages to accidentally offend her new boss, a hard-drinking, unhappy loner, who drunkenly sabotages all her deliveries as revenge. She’s got to make all those botched packages right on Christmas Eve as she A) tries to track down Maks’ present, in transit and B) has to cope with Krzysiek, who for some reason won’t go over and collect the damned ring in person and straighten out this business with his grandfather like an adult.

Over a long, harried day — with repeated pauses to either revisit the original delivery or show us what “really” was dropped off, and how that boo-boo shook up the various folks on the receiving end — the two of them will motor hither and yon in a diesel delivery van as most of Poland stays home and begins celebrating.

“Delivery,” titled “Jeszcze przed swietami” in its original Polish (watch with subtitles or dubbed into English), has a guy get a sonogram photo, learning he’s a dad-to-be, throwing his family into a tizzy and him into a tailspin. Another gets a sex statue intended for someone a woman is trying to come on to, and so on.

And every time the picture stops to tell us those detour stories — only one of which is truly funny — the main narrative thread is left dangling and the romance-to-be is paid short shrift.

Frajczyk (“Leave no Traces”) and Pacek (“Bridget Bardot Forever”) are decent enough performers. Their low energy turns here point to a screenplay and structure that never generates the friction that leads to heat in a romantic comedy.

If the filmmakers had told this story in order, they might have picked up on how the picture lacks the pacing it takes for comedy to work. The filmmakers might also have realized that some of their side trips should have wound up on the cutting room floor.

Some passages engage, and many more just stumble along, halting the film’s flow as they needlessly and charmlessly delay this “Delivery by Christmas.”

Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations

Cast: Monika Frajczyk, Piotr Pacek, Franciszek Krupowicz

Credits: Directed by Aleksandra Kulakowska and Maciej Prykowski, scripted by Alexsandra Kulakowska, Maciej Prykowski and Maria PulawskaA Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

A trippy trip of a picture from Neon and directed by a Cronenberg, but not THAT Cronenberg. Check it out.

“Shook” is a half-hearted attempt at a moral parable wrapped in a standard-issue “She’s all alone” and “She has to complete all these tasks/puzzles/challenges” horror film.

It’s a gimmicky thriller hung on the “influencer” hook. Seems like every other film has that marketing fad tied into its story some how, and not just Hollywood.

A beauty vlogger (Genelle Seldon) is the curtain-raiser here, a vapid living doll who has an accident with her not-toilet-trained puppy as she’s being interviewed on yet another red carpet.

The most ingenious gag in director and co-writer Jennifer Harrington’s film might be having the camera pull back to show just how “fake” “red carpet” events are these days. This isn’t a movie premiere, an “exclusive” party or fundraiser. No, it’s just a backdrop, lighting and fake celebrities interviewed by a fake interviewer on a 20 foot swatch of carpeting, all of it ginned up for online consumption.

But cleaning herself up in the bathroom — down to her Spanx — is where this makeup influencer runs afoul of “The Southland dog killer.” Only the dog gets away this time, and influencer Genelle is the one who gets it.

That invites a whole lot of online tributes from her fellow red carpet mavens, with #MakeupByMia (Daisye Tutor of “Come as You Are” and “Funny Story”) winning the virtue signaling sweepstakes by skipping a live-streaming event to dog-sit for her sick sister Nicole.

Big sister (Emily Goss) cared for their mother while busy-busy Mia was “in school” and sharing her pretty girl life online for cash and Internet fame. Now, little sis is giving something back to her sickly sister.

But she can’t focus on her self-promoted good deed and the dog in peace because she’s constantly logged-on, badgered by her partying influencer pals Lani (Nicola Possner) and Jade (Stephanie Simbari), with Jade very much a threat to hook up with Mia’s “super-hot” beau, Santi (Octavius J. Johnson) if she does join in their promotional party.

That’s when the friend request and the text messages start to come in from the stalker next door. That’s when Nicole asks to see a photo of her beloved pug before bedtime, and Mia can’t instantly provide it. Because Chico has disappeared.

Mia finds herself juggling calls, getting a more and more creepy vibe from this neighbor and growing more and more concerned about the missing dog.

It isn’t long before the calls turn menacing, everybody in Mia’s world seems to be in peril, and no, she cannot call the cops, even if 911 picked up by the 25th ring.

“Why are you DOING this?” never gets an answer, but all will become clear as this villainy grows murderous and the inevitable “explanations” flood into the third act.

You know how these things are constructed — texted threats, “voice changer” apps, harder and grimmer “challenges” facing our “good girl” branded heroine.

Tutor isn’t bad, but the way the plot set-up is scripted and acted by her co-stars gives away too many secrets too early. Long review short — ok, LESS long — “Shook” is a gimmicky ticking clock horror thriller, some of whose gimmicks work, with that ticking clock never quite driving the action as fast as one would like.

A little urgency here and there, a heroine’s believable panic and terror over the grisly dilemmas she finds herself facing, lashed to some seriously lame payoffs to the assorted mysteries keep “Shook” on shaky, not scary ground.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Daisye Tutor, Emily Goss, Nicola Possner, Stephanie Simbari, Octavius J. Johnson and Genelle Seldon

Credits: Directed by Jennifer Harrington, scripted by Alesia Glidewell and Jennifer Harrington. An RLJE film released on Shudder.

Running time: 1:29

Data and graphic from @boxofficepro.

At some point the administrator in charge of a Sicilian witness protection program has to admit to the slushie vendor who witnessed a Mafia hit and was spirited off to the Swiss Italian alps that yes, the hitman our witness fingered turned state’s evidence. Yes, he had to be put into protection as well. And yes, they did send him to the same tiny village our slushie vendor will never be able to ply his trade in.

And yes, they uh, gave him the same last name.

“Are you SH—–g me?” is funny in English, or Italian with English subtitles.

Well, you know how Italians do things, the administrator shrugs, and we all have a chuckle at the oxymoron Amanda Knox remembers as “Italian justice.”

That’s the gist of “Paradise,” or “Paradise: Una nuova vita,” a deadpan Italian farce in the tradition of most every other “witness protection” comedy — from “Sister Act” and “My Blue Heaven” to “Lillehammer” and “The Family.” There’s a little “fish out of water,” a bit of made man “bull in a china shop” mayhem, and that fateful day when the mobsters figure out where our heroes are and come looking for them.

Vincenzo Nemolato plays Alfio, whose life running his pushcart business forever changed when a sicario (hitman) decided to carry out his latest contract right in front of him, barely noticing he was there.

The cops want Alfio’s testimony, but his gorgeous, pregnant Sicilian wife (Selene Caramazza) counsels “schtum.” Keep quiet. It is the way they do things in mafiosa-land. “Trust your family, not ‘them.'”

“NO,” he mans up. He will do this for themselves, for their unborn child, their non-mobster neighbors and their way of life. He will go into witness protection, and Lucia, you’ll join me. Right? Right?

Alfio is spirited off the some place alpine and moved into a disused apartment building called “Paradise.” Lucia remains behind. And the mob makes a big show, rolling around their small town in a pickup with loudspeakers on the roof, playing music to get everyone’s attention, tossing an empty coffin in front of their apartment.

Alfio’s earned a mob funeral. He’s just not dead yet.

Things aren’t going great up where the snowy season really cuts into slushie sales. Our witness, renamed Calogero (a nakedly Sicilian name, apparently) tries to fit in, joining the parish priest’s (Branko Zavrsan) folk dancing troupe, catching the eye of fetching blonde single mom barmaid Klaudia (Katarina Gas).

And then this grizzled, serious-looking fellow (Andrea Pennacchi) shows up. Could he be? No, surely not. Paranoid Calogero makes frantic calls to his contact, who brushes off his concerns. So our hidden witness must take matters into his own hands.

I mean, Mr. Menacing Stalker Vibe has ALSO moved into the Paradise, after all.

Maybe Alfio can get some shotgun lessons from Klaudia. Google “Ways to kill somebody without a gun” on the Italian Internet. Practice “Are you talkin’ to ME?” in front of the mirror.

Director Davide Del Degan and screenwriter Andrea Magnani manage plenty of amused chuckles, with a couple of decent belly laughs in this over-familiar laugher. Nemolato, who has a clown’s features, something played-up when Alfio dyes his curly hair reddish, has done his share of thrillers and plays it pretty straight, which makes his double-takes land.

Pennacchi looks and sounds like a seasoned, salt-and-peppered killer, which allows his “secrets” to pay off comically.

And the picture practically skips by, with a little scenery, a little local color, some goofy costumes and dancing and a hint of bloody menace hanging over it all.

“Paradise” doesn’t reinvent “witness protection” as a comic concept. But it get the basics just right, which is enough to recommend it.

Rating: unrated, a bit of shooting

Cast: Vincenzo Nemolato, Selene Caramazza, Andrea Pennacchi, Katarina Gas

Credits: Directed by Davide Del Degan, scripted by Andrea Magnani. A Film Movement+ release.

Running time: 1:25

“Burning Patience” is a Chilean romance that comes to your Netflix queue saddled with some baggage.

You have to ignore the fact that this is the third film based on the very same source material. The Chilean screenwriter and novelist Antonio Skármeta first scripted a Chilean film titled “Ardiente paciencia” (“Burning Patience”) in 1983, and turned it into a novel in 1985.

You have to get around memories of Michael Radford’s Oscar-winning film 1994 “Il Postino/The Postman,” about a simple Italian postman learning how to express the poetic language of love from Chile’s greatest poet, Pablo Neruda. You must erase any thought of how the story was reset on a sleepy sundrenched Italian island, Neruda during his exile years. And you have to forget French actor Philippe Noiret’s charismatic, bemused and blustery turn as the poet in that film, and the sad, simple turn that earned Massimo Troisi a posthumous Oscar nomination — he died before “The Postman” came out.

That’s a lot to forget. But if you can, you can take this latest version, a lightly charming romance, on its own terms.

Here, as in the novel, it’s a Chilean story with Chilean settings and that famed politician, diplomat and poet — and hated communist in some quarters — living on Isla Negra. Pablo Neruda (Claudio Arrendondo) might have Nobel Prize thoughts in the back of his mind (he’d win two years after this film’s summer of ’69), but mainly he’s hoping to spend his last years writing. Instead, he’s being recruited, possibly even drafted to run for president of Chile. And he’s being distracted by this kid, Mario (Andrew Bargsted), a fisherman who becomes a postman with but one patron to deliver to. This lad wants to woo the fair newcomer in town, Beatriz (Vivianne Dietz) with his words. He could use some help.

This version of Mario is just out of his teens, not “simple,” merely under-schooled and unworldly, telling his father he has no interest in carrying on the family fishing tradition. Whatever he plans to do with his life, first he needs a job. The post office is hiring.

“Are you a mailman?”

“No. But I have a bicycle.”

That’s how he lands the gig, a postman with but one special client to deliver to, a great poet he’s always interrupting in thought as he gazes at the sea or writing at his desk.

That new waitress turns Mario’s head every time he passes her at the hostel and cantina she and her mother (Paola Giannini) have taken over. He stares at lovely Beatriz, and Beatriz stares back at lovely Mario. Too bad her mother isn’t having it.

Her efforts to keep them apart inspire him to write Beatriz love poems. But he has the cheek to plagiarize Neruda. This is Chile, chico. EVERYbody knows Neruda. By HEART.

That’s a cute conceit, the way so many people know their poet/activist. He drew crowds in the hundreds of thousands to his readings, which doubled as political events. And Beatriz knows his words when Mario’s passing them off as his in his letters.

The actor playing Neruda looks a bit like the famous poet, and if you watch this in Spanish (with subtitles) and not in dubbed English, Arrendondo does a good job of getting across the florid phrasing of a great poet, if not all of his charisma.

But I dare say even if you’ve never read the book or seen “Il Postino” you’ll realize that there needs to be a lot more comical exasperation over the constant interruptions. Noiret gave Neruda a cuddly, irritable edge, the first person Mario must win over before even thinking about wooing Beatriz.

That’s missing here, and sorely missed.

But letting the love story between two poets take center stage kind of works. She catches him in his lies (plagiarism) and they exchange notes, with a young nun passing them back and forth as Beatriz poetically puts Mario down and challenges him to write and create and express himself like a real poet.

“Your smile spreads like a butterfly on your face,” is a good start.

The funniest stuff here is the mother who just isn’t having this. In a movie about young love, poetry and a great poet’s intervention, it’s the disapproving mom who gets the best lines.

“All men who first touch you with their words will go much further with their hands later!”

“Rivers carry stones. Words carry PREGNANCIES!”

Our beguiling leads ensure that we’ll maintain interest as they move beyond the nun-o-grams and start passing messages along on the dedication line of the local radio station. But will her mother finally figure out a way to keep her treasure from marrying a postman?

Director Rodrigo Sepúlveda (“My Tender Matador”) and screenwriter Guillermo Calderón separate their film from the earlier and better British-directed Italian version. But they never improve on it, and their movie seems almost self-consciously aware of that.

“Burning Patience” is not nearly as winning and bowl-you-over romantic as “Il Postino,” but it works well enough at times and it finishes wonderfully. The acting is generally good, with Giannini the stand-out. If our Neruda had been more bluff and blustery and larger than life, this could have really been something special.

Rating: TV-14, suggestions of sex

Cast: Andrew Bargsted, Vivianne Dietz, Claudio Arredondo, Paola Giannini, Rodolfo Polgar, Trinidad González, Pablo Macaya and Amalia Kassai.

Credits: Directed by Rodrigo Sepúlveda, scripted by Guillermo Calderón, based on the novel by Antonio Skármeta. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30