Movie Nation

I think my favorite moment in the anti-cell-phone Estonian horror comedy “Kratt” comes when a priest is confronted by a demonically possessed grandmother, and his only prayer is whipping out his phone.

What priest wouldn’t keep an instant crucifix app loaded and ready for deployment at all times?

“Kratt” is a dark, violent not-exactly-kiddie comedy about city children (Nora Merivoo, Harri Merivo), bored when deprived of their cells while staying with their ancient granny (Mari Lill) on her tumbledown farm and too lazy to do their chores. So they summon an ancient mythic creature created out of whatever junk you have lying around the yard — tools, implements, car parts.

A Kratt is depicted here as a demonic helpmate conjured to life in a blood ceremony by the light of the moon. “Give me WORK,” it barks, when it comes to life. And you’d better. When it runs out of work, it’ll turn on you. The kids and seemingly the adults, save for the violent, vengeful and grievance-filled priest, don’t have a clue what to do about this.

Hilariously, if the damned hypocritical grownups had let them keep their phones, the kids could have gotten out of this in a snap. There’s even a youtube tutorial set up to get you out of just this sort of jam.

That’s going to be the only time I use “hilariously” in the review, alas. This Rasmus Merivoo romp-that–never-was is a classic 75-80 minute movie swallowed by a 112 minute long boa constrictor. It takes over an hour just to get the kids the means to create the Kratt, and that’s unforgivably late.

First we have to see the shallow parents — Mari-Liis Lill (Daughter of Mari?) and Marek Temmets — who know they need to keep their kids away from cell phones, but can’t follow their own advice. They drop them off with Granny so that they can go off on an Estonian “AIO Xyacka” (ayahuasca) retreat — God knows what that’ll be like.

Smart aleck daughter Mia has her own Youtube channel. She’s an influencer…at 13. Kevin, a few years younger, is just along for the ride.

The parish governor (Ivo Uukkivi) is caught between a local landowner hellbent on harvesting all the trees in their “sacred forest” and the green activists led by hulking Lembit (Paul Purga) hellbent on stopping him.

Oh, and the wild-haired dwarf (Alo Kurvits, way-over-the-top) running a snack booth on the edge of town? He might be Satan. The kids figure that out when they visit his shop.

“May I interest you in some fentanyl,” he purrs, in Estonian with English subtitles?

“We’d like to buy a SOUL.”

Writer-director Merivoo has lots of amusing sidebars that he throws into this. The kids, when they finally seek help via cell phone, deal with “Vivi,” the Eastern European version of Siri or Alexa. Vivi, how do you trick a Kratt? Vivi is actually child labor online operators working in the back of their Russian mom’s meth lab.

The governor goes a bit mad from the pressures on his chances of being reelected. There are flashbacks to the “little count” who brought the Devil there in the 19th century, and we see the priest beating Wee Satan over all the evils in the world — war, hunger, “promiscuity, gay propaganda, rock’n roll, contemporary art.”

The problem right from the start is that Merivoo can’t see the Sacred Forest for the trees. The flashback, the whole sacred forest thing, anything to do with the governor is only peripherally connected to the Kratt that the kids build which then falls on grandma, who is trying to destroy it. That’s how she becomes possessed.

“Give me WORK!”

Once it finally got going, I laughed at this. And I shook my head at it every time the filmmaker in charge lost the thread and wandered off, which that was far too often to let “Kratt” catch a break and unleash the crazy.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Mari Lill, Nora Merivoo, Harri Merivoo, Ivo Uukkivi, Mari-Liis Lill, Marek Temmets and Paul Purga.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Rasmus Merivoo. A Red Water release.

Running time: 1:52

Action film fans will forgive a lot if we get enough from “the cool parts” of a thriller. Luc Besson built an entire career out of that.

“Subway” (1985) launched the future director of “The Professional,” “The Fifth Element,” “Nikita,” “Lucy” and “Anna” into the international action spotlight, a thriller with a punchy opening, a punch-drunk finale and a lot of tedium in between. But “the cool parts” are what you come for — a chase or two, the sight of a pre-stardom Jean Reno as a homeless hustler and drummer nicknamed “Sticks,” the vivid depiction of a subterranean underworld beneath Paris.

Many of Besson’s trademarks — he later wrote (or came up with the stories) and produced “The Transporter” and “Taken” movies — are present in this, his second feature. We see rude French folk, a seedy criminal world policed by brusque, hapless and goofily inept cops, Jean Reno and over-coifed and over-dressed antihero criminals and breathless bits of action set to an electronic funk score by frequent collaborator Eric Serra.

The storytelling can feel haphazard, which may explain why the guy who ventured into a Joan of Arc period piece (“The Messenger”), an utterly mesmerizing competitive free-diving drama (“The Big Blue”) and science fiction has basically settled into repeated versions of “Nikita” starring fetching young actresses in his dotage. Well, that and the creepier side of his personality explain his fixation on young to very young starlets.

The then-unknown Lambert plays Fred, a handsome hustler/safe-cracker who repays the invitation a beautiful woman (Isabelle Adjani) gives him to a posh party by blowing her safe and stealing her “papers.”

When we meet the hair-gelled Fred, he’s fumbling through cassettes in a hurtling stolen Peugeot, trying to find proper tunes to be chased with. He’s in a tux, and four armed goons in tuxes in a big ’80s Mercedes are ramming the tiny Peugeot from behind as he makes his getaway.

He flees into the subway and stumbles into a vast underworld beneath the tracks, escalator motors, plumbing and wiring. He may meet the Skater (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a notorious pickpocket from that pre-rollerblade era, who takes him in and shows him around. But Fred isn’t very good at this extortion thing.

Helene (Adjani), his “mark,” calls his bluff and lowballs him. That’s OK. He’ll hang on to the papers, which include a childhood photo of the woman he decides “I am in love” with.

“You want me,” she asks, in French with English subtitles? “Oui.” “Well, you won’t GET me!”

The fact that a crew of goons chased him should scare Fred off. Helene is married to the mob.

Michel Galabru leads the subway police force, fighting a losing battle against the thieves and squatters who infest the system. He has little faith in his uniformed force, even less in the detectives he’s contemptuously nicknamed “Batman and Robin.”

Fred? He’s just a guy who can’t sing who’s decided to “get a band” together. Reno, as “Sticks,” and assorted other subway dwellers flesh it out as the movie meanders off course through its middle acts.

The plot skips over some things and flat out stumbles into others. The cops who try to help Helene have been hunting this damned “Skater” for almost a year. She marches downstairs and stumbles right into him.

The fake-blind “florist” (Richard Bohringer) figures into the hunt for the underground crooks and the missing “papers.” There’s also a hint of a heist, which Fred may jump into if he gets bored getting the band together.

But whatever failings the story and pacing may have, this much was obvious from the start. Besson has a way with action beats, an eye for striking compositions and exotic — if often seamy locales — and a nose for talent. He went on to write and produce the “District B13” and a lot of the action films that define our times.

Back in 1985, he was all about the hair, making his muse Reno a star and bringing French action films up to date. He did.

These days we can watch “Subway” to marvel over the music, the lighting and the staggering amount of hair product consumed on one film shoot. But we stay for “the cool parts,” which he promises with this film’s opening chase, a promise he only keeps over the course of the decades of films that he was able to make thanks to this quirky, uneven star-making vehicle.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Christopher Lambert, Isabelle Adjani, Richard Bohringer, Michel Galabru, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Jean Reno.

Credits: Directed by Luc Besson, scripted by Pierre Jolivet, Alain Le Henry, Marc Perrioer, Sophie Schmit and Luc Besson. A Gaumont release on Tubi, Amazon, other streamers

Running time: 1:42

But not insipid J-pop ballads. Apparently.

This looks campy enough to be fun. Oct. 21.

Kids movies have to pass what I call “The Jerry Orbach Test.”

Back when the animated “Beauty and the Beast” came out, I interviewed Orbach and he told me what persuaded him to take on the role of Lumiere. He and his wife went to a revival showing of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

He was to voice Lumiere in “Beast” before “The Little Mermaid” came out and revived Disney’s animated brand. And Orbach, a stage song and dance man turned tough guy character actor wasn’t sure he wanted to risk his new brand singing in a cartoon.

He talked about the kid-crowded theater and the chaos that entailed for watching a then 50 year old animated classic. “And then, the movie started and it was dead quiet. They were rapt in awe. I thought, ‘Anything that gets kids to pay that close attention is worth doing. It’s going to last.”

Ever since, I’ve watched to see how much children act out and seem distracted by kids films. The good ones sit them down and shut them up, except when it’s time to laugh.

“Lyle” looks jaunty and juvenile. I’m totally down for that. It opens this coming weekend.

Well shoot. I was all set to catch a Sunday matinee of “Smile,” as Hurricane Ian washed away my Wed. preview of it last week. I get to my closest AMC, an older cinema (AMC Classic). And they’re closed. The power is on and every store around them is open.

I wonder if this is one of those theaters AMC will sneakily bail on its lease and close. This is the way movie theaters disappeared @2000-2001 by the hundreds. Was the hurricane a mere coincidence, convenient moment to pull the plug?

We’ll see. Meanwhile, 20th Century’s Disney-owned reboot of “Hellraiser” beckons. I’m on…pins and needles over this one. Streams later this week.

“Red River Road” is a dramatically-flat paranoid thriller about an isolated family unsure about the reality of the pandemic that put them there.

Sources of paranoia? Start with an enforced lack of information, a “box” that brings them food, a ban on cell phones and Internet usage, which is blamed for the contagion, and an assault on memory that could be described as “gaslighting” in a more sinister light.

The Cape Cod filmmaking family of writer-director and star Paul Schuyler made this, a reasonably polished (the odd “off mike” moment) but dully-scripted affair that taps into conspiracy theories that date back decades. No, not “contrails” and “vaccines” and the like, but that ’80s “The Government is planning to ENSLAVE us with barcodes” mania. “They’ve even got them on the HIGHWAY signs!”

And “chips,” or course. No meal for the paranoid in America is complete without implanted “chips.”

Stephen and Anna (Paul and Jade Schuyler) and their sons Wyatt and Shawn (Quinn Schuyler and Shaw Schuyler) fled Boston for “the summer house” some while back to escape a plague.

“The less people the better,” Stephen declares. “It’s safer here.”

Anna laments that they have “no life to go back to…’Someday’ has no meaning for me” any more.

Whatever this contagion is, it bends people’s perception of reality. Just like social media? And it’s killed people they knew. Just like…

But as we yawn through the banalities of their daily existence, we see how this isolation works, and works on them.

They get a tense, scheduled phone call which requires that they answer it with ID numbers and order necessities in the most curt fashion possible. A green barcoded plastic bin arrives when they’re sleeping with old movies (“The Ninth Configuration,” the John Carpenter version of “The Thing”) and food.

There are finite limits to their world — cell phones, etc., banned, sharply-defined borders to how far beyond the edge of their yard they can go. And as they follow the rules, their memories start to work on on. Some of them start to wonder what is real, and what all this obedience is gaining them.

The acting is drab, save for the inevitable third act meltdown when the picture pokes around for a resolution. The shot selection, overly-urgent score and editing hypes this bland affair into something it decidedly is not — exciting.

Whatever the messaging, it’s just not very interesting or compelling. “Red River Road” is more a movie that putters along, not really going anywhere, not taking any time to create suspense until very late in the game, not conjuring up a mystery most would care to solve before the characters do.

Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Paul Schuyler, Jade Schuyler, Quinn Schuyler, Shaw Schuyler and Art Devine.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Schuyler. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:31

Lee Jung-jae parlays his “Squid Game” notoriety into a star vehicle and a directing gig.

Spy thrillers are a face on the Korean Peninsula.

Looks good, if a tad talky and convoluted. Smart espionage tales are often tricky to edit into a compelling trailer.

Dec. 2 from Magnet/Magnolia.

Looks and sounds credulous. It’s from James Fox, so if you’re looking for Occam’s Razor, don’t hold your breath.

Mournful, ethereal and chilling. Hey, you could do a lot worse than set the tone with this under your opening credits.

If “satire,” as playwright George S. Kaufman famously opined, “is what closes Saturday night,” where does “surrealism” sit on your average film consumer’s palate?

Writer-director J. Rick Castaneda’s oddball career of web series (“Coma, Period,” which helped launch Rob Delaney) and TV shows like “The Sushi Dragon Show starring TheSushiDragon” and “The Sushi Dragon After Party Hosted by TheSushiDragon” that presumably someone out there is watching doesn’t really answer that question with his first feature film, “All Sorts.”

“Sorts” is surreal, bizarre, satiric and plucky — a crowd-funded indie farce that became a make work project for greater Yakima, Washington, apparently. It’s willfully weird, in your face and slapdash, flinging a lot of curiosities and would-be jokes, punch-lines and eccentric characters at the screen in pursuit of laughs. And it doesn’t quite coalesce into anything that would make it past opening night in terms of audience appeal, or anything a viewer can really sink one’s teeth into.

Imagine “The Office” remade as a no-budget feature by Terry Gilliam during his “Brazil” phase. There’s some seriously silly and offbeat world-building going on, here. But to what end?

Diego (Eli Vargas) lives in his car, heating his coffee and making his toast with a (presumably) 12volt iron as a hotplate, even keeping a plastic bin in the backseat to use as a tub. He applies for a job through the classifieds. And as oddly as the interview goes with the dizzy Mr. Vasquez (Luis Daveze), when he learns that Diego can type “55 words a MINUTE” that closes the deal.

Diego has the job, his own cubicle and his own uninspiring “inspirational” thought-a-day calendar.

“Nov. 4…Wednesday is for Losers.”

But there’s no computer at his desk. As the company he’s joined is called “Data Mart,” that’s going to be a problem. He gets assignments he can’t finish, not that anyone other than Vasquez seems to care. And the person he’s replacing has “disappeared.” People disappear from the windowless cubicle forest of Data Mart, devoured by filing cabinets, something we see and yet never see explained.

Diego’s co-workers respond to him with dismissal, disdain and — for the most part — silence. That might be due to the fact that almost everybody is an incorrigible goof-off, which could be because a lot of them don’t seem to know what the hell it is they’re supposed to be doing or what’s really going on.

Data Mart works with outdated computers and mountains of paper files. Diego’s “supervisor” snaps “I’m not your friend, I’m not your supervisor.” Inanimate objects like paper clips crawl off as if they have a mind of their own.

And Mr. Vasquez is so clueless that he has CCTV installed to spy on his lazy workforce, and when he spies video of himself staring at the screen, looking for employees who aren’t working, he fires himself and the tech guy who is looking at the monitor with him, checking to see if the cameras are working.

That sort of deadpan take on office life is taken to the next level when Diego is tipped that the way to get a computer is to leave 20 Paydays inside a ventilation vent. He comes to learn that a fellow who claimed to have been “transferred” is living in the bowels of the building, doing other people’s work, stealing office supplies and computers and ransoming them for Payday candy bars out of the vending machine.

And then there’s the manic filing cabinet pixie, June Yuh (Greena Park). She keeps an octopus cartoon in her cubicle as inspiration and nickname. June’s a filing fool. When Diego sees a flier for an underground filing competition, he simply has to drag June into the “Office Space” underworld to do battle in WWE-styled file-offs.

“He’s STYLIN’, profilin’ and CATEGORIZING” our ring announcer/color commentator for the “Filing League” bellows as a cacophony of collating goes on in bouts that cubicle drones from all over cheer on and wager over.

June could dominate this world, but she needs Diego as her manager, and maybe more than just her “manager.”

The world-building here is absurdist in the extreme, with all sorts of promising story threads tossed out there and either left under-developed or abandoned altogether.

Some of the characters register, but none of them really connect.

As cute as the office of oddballs might be, as semi-inventive as their many strategies for fooling the boss into thinking they’re working (one guy keeps a cardboard cut-out of himself ready for when he takes off for endless breaks), with an elaborate string-with-jingle-bells system for signaling each other that Vasquez is making his “How hard are they working?” rounds, the cute and quirky “All Sorts” runs up against a wall it can’t punch through.

Surreal it most certainly is. It’s just not all that funny. The reaction writer-director Castaneda reaches for and achieves, time and again, is “Well, that’s cute/interesting/weird/downright daft.” But all this eccentricity, all this world-building and all these sight gags never manages more than a chuckle.

Rating: unrated, a little slapstick, no profanity

Cast: Eli Vargas, Greena Park, Luis Daveze and Mike Markoff

Credits: Scripted and directed by J. Rick Castaneda. A Vibrant Penguin release.

Running time: 1:34