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“Railway Children” has more hugs in it than any British movie this side of “Love, Actually.” So much for chilly, oppressed English reserve — then or now.

This treacly trifle is the latest version of an E. Nesbit novel from 1905, a tale of city kids sadly separated from their parents and sent to live in the country.

This period-piece has been turned into at least three TV series and many movies, most famously a film from 1970. That movie’s Yorkshire locations, and one of its child stars — Jenny Agutter, who also starred in a 1960s TV version — are revived for this film, which wore the title “The Railway Children Return” at one point.

Setting this “reboot” of the tale during World War II, when British cities were being bombed and parents were urged to ship their kids off to the country, often to live with complete strangers, is such a clever touch that it’s shocking no one thought of it adapting it before. Perhaps one of the post-war versions did. That adds pathos and a hint of tragedy to the story, and raises the stakes.

Picking 1944 as the year when the sisters Lily (Beau Gadsdon) and Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and their little brother Ted (Zac Crudby) are packed off to stay with strangers is odd. The London Blitz was years before, and the big exodus of kids came earlier. But that’s a plot contrivance that makes another subtext fit.

Their nurse-mother takes them to their tearful farewell at the train station, sending them off with “Look after them, you’re the parent now” instructions to Lily.

They steam from Manchester (which was only bombed twice, in 1940) into the country, to scenic, quaint Oakworth where school teacher Annie (Sheridan Smith), her son Thomas (Austin Haynes) and Annie’s mother (Agutter) show up at the school to see who needs to be taken in.

A sweet touch — grandma remembers when she came to the country, a reference to Agutter’s film of 50 years ago. Another? Granny advises them to “wait” and see who can’t be placed. Most families would blanch at having to feed three extra mouths. “There’s a war on,” as folks said back then.

But they take on the three kids, keep calm and carry them home.

Life here is all schoolwork, “sweets” and precious few chores. Annie shows them how to run after they’ve fetched the morning’s eggs from her hens, so that they drop and break a few. The kids cut loose during a bread-making lesson by having a flour fight.

Not to be a fussbudget, but wasting food was a cardinal sin on an island that was rationing everything and worried about being starved out is a detail that some born-yesterday screenwriter should have looked up.

The three new kids join Thomas for rambles in the countryside, and playtime at the local railyard. That’s where he’s turned an abandoned trolley car into a clubhouse. It’s there, after tall, plucky Lily has handled a local bully, that they stumble across a deserter.

It’s wholly worthwhile for a film about Britain in World War II to introduce African American characters and the Jim Crow racism that the U.S. military dragged with it as it sent troops overseas. But this slight, unevenly-acted children’s film handles it rather clumsily.

AJ Aiken plays Abe, a teen who has been beaten by racist MPs (we see this happen several times) for fraternizing with the white local girls and who has decided to try and find his way home. The kids try to help, and bond with the stranger as they do.

That’s a well-intentioned but somewhat wan attempt to add a little gravitas to the “children’s war movie” proceedings. One other bit of military melodrama is introduced when a stray bomber looses a stray bomb. Not to worry. Manchester Lily knows just how to react.

“If you’re still alive after the noise is gone, you’re OK!”

Tom Courtenay shows up to twinkle through a moment or two, a visiting uncle relating news about the war, about “Rommel” and his army being “crushed” in North Africa. That was in 1942-43. Is this supposed to be before D-Day, or shortly after in 1944? One wonders just how much history those who scripted it dug into.

The World War II material carries a lot of the emotional and action weight in this “Railway Children,” with parents missing or actually missing in action, an air raid and American GIs bringing their problems from home with them. That stuff is simply handled, and rendered into thin drama. One wonders what on Earth Nesbitt’s novel had in it that carried the story along and gave it drama without WWII. And the epilogue that wraps this entire enterprise up is so namby pamby as to make one wonder why The War was used if they weren’t going to treat it as the perilous and sad event that it was, for adults as well as children.

Still, it’s all harmless enough, and a lovely Yorkshire travelogue if nothing else. Gadsdon (“The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” “Rogue One” and young Princess Margaret in TV’s “The Crown) is the stand-out performer. Try not to notice how distracted the other kid-players seem in group scenes.

Rating: PG

Cast: Beau Gadsdon, Austin Haynes, KJ Aikens, Eden Hamilton, Sheridan Smith, Zac Cudby, Tom Courtenay, John Bradley and Jenny Agutter.

Credits: Directed by Morgan Matthews, scripted by Daniel Brockhurst and Jemma Rogers, based on the 1970 film which was based on a novel by E. Nesbit. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:35

Jake Gyllenhaal, Gabriel Union, Dennis Quaid, Lucy Liu — few big voice names, a Thanksgiving release. Looks ok, derivative but OK.

“Don’t Worry Darling” did preview numbers that matched those of “The Woman King” a week ago –about $3.1 million.

But Olivia Wilde’s critically-panned, bad-buzzed sci fi “Stepford” thing had IMAX previews earlier in the week, and opened earlier on Thursday afternoon to boot

They were expecting Harrymania and the curious Looky Loos to push this one to $27 million plus.

It’s opening a third or so below that, very close to “Woman King’s” $19 million. Figure $21 million, or a smidge more or less, based on Friday’s take.

“The Woman King” is heading towards a $10-11 million second weekend. Always happy to see a good movie hang around.

Like a bad green-with-age copper penny, “Avatar” has earned a re release with a sequel due out over the holidays. With a preview for the next film slapped on in front of the James Cameron epic, it added $9 million to it’s overall take.

“Barbarian” is adding another $4.75 million to the kitty.

“Pearl” and “Bullet Train” and “See How They Run” are in the $1.9 to $1.7 million range.

Not quite enough to chase “Top Gun” out of the top ten. But any day now…

Peter Farrelly’s luck had to run out.

The director who made his name with farces, who got Oscar glory for turning sentimental, serious and only occasionally silly with “Green Book,” gives us his take on Vietnam with another dramedy inspired by a true story in “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.”

It’s about a New Yorker who sets off on a quixotic quest bring his pals “from the neighborhood” a beer. It’s the middle of the Vietnam War. They’re serving. He’ll do his part by delivering Pabst Blue Ribbon to a combat zone.

This “beer run” from Inwood, Manhattan, to Saigon and “up country” environs starts jaunty, gets somber and sentimental and then goes oh-so-very-wrong. You’ll feel it the instant it happens, just as I did. And when the ironic, tone-deaf tune that accompanies this eye-opening (to our hero) murder is reprised in a more emotional setting in the film’s finale, we’re all allowed to wonder if this Farrelly fellow ever had a clue.

Zac Efron stars as John “Chickie” Donohue, an oiler (engine maintenance) in the merchant marine, who travels for work and between voyages lays around his parents’ house when he’s not down at the the local pub. It’s a working class neighborhood — white, blue collar and patriotic. In 1967, Inwood was the sort of place you didn’t want to be questioning the war, the government running it or America in front of the locals.

Especially “The Colonel” (Bill Murray), the barkeep/owner of their favorite watering hole.

“War is NOT a TV show,” he grouses at the negative coverage that was just starting to take hold in ’67. Chickie agrees, which makes for spirited debates with his younger, peace-protesting sister (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, quite good). Guys from their neighborhood — friends — are dying. They’ve all been to the wakes and the funerals.

But it’s one thing to wave the flag and support the troops from 12,000 miles away. If only there was something they could do. You know, buy’em a beer or something.

“I could do that,” Chickie declares. He can’t be serious. Or sober.

“”The man’s stone sober. That’s his fifth beer...tops,” the Colonel avows. Yeah. It’d be great to “bring our boys some good Ol’ American beer” in Vietnam.

The screenplay’s brightest moments are the ways fate and Chickie’s big mouth contrive to hold him to that vow. It’s not just his pals ribbing him over drinks. Mothers start showing up at the door, asking him to deliver some socks to this guy, take a rosary to that one. And damned if the fellow down at the Seafarers union hall doesn’t have a ship Vietnam-bound “in three hours.”

It’s right on the edge of hilarious that Chickie gets bum-rushed on board with a duffel full of PBRs and addresses of a handful of guys he knows to track down “in country.”

That first beer delivery, to an MP in Saigon, goes exactly as Chickie had hoped — a look of delighted surprise, brewskies all around, and dressed as he is, Chickie finds himself mistaken for “a tourist” — ‘Nam slang for “CIA.” That’ll facilitate his travels around South Vietnam to make his rounds. No American questions a “civilian” dressed like that.

But the jolly, jaunty mood of “Beer Run” ends the moment the guy has to wait for bodies to be off-loaded before boarding a transport. The good cheer he senses from this local bartender or that friendly, “Oklahoma” fan Vietnamese traffic cop fades as Chickie hits a firebase and sees things Americans at home weren’t seeing or hearing about — not yet. Not pre-Tet.

As in “Green Book,” the arc of the story is the naive, knee-jerk hero’s eyes being opened — here by violence, seemingly pointless sacrifice and war crimes.

Efron gamely plays-up Chickie’s ebullience at “surprising” this soldier or that one, only to be the last one to figure out that he’s risked his life for nothing, and his presence puts their lives at risk as well.

GIs barking “What the hell are you doing?” and “You think this is FUNNY?” are speaking for themselves, and for the viewer, who is treated to a CIA murder, a traumatized Vietnamese child weeping at seeing another Ugly American, coffins and a tactless search “for my friend” by the frivolous, tactless guy in the plaid shirt in a triage tent full of the dead and wounded in the middle of the Tet Offensive.

Farrelly and the screenwriters take another stab at making conservatives understand the role of a free press, serving up the always-cynical press corps, which Chickie rages at for not being “patriotic” and reporting this war in more flattering terms. The whole “stabbed in the back by the press” trope, “letting the troops down/bad for morale” argument gets one more airing.

“The truth doesn’t hurt us,” the veteran Look Magazine writer/photographer played by Russell Crowe lectures. “It’s the lies.“

I dare say the real Donohue, whose memoir this is based on, might be a little surprised at how unflattering this portrait of his exploit turns out to be.

Farrelly struggles to strike the right notes, and he finds them, here and there. A lot of the sentimental moments play, and several laughs land. This is one daft idea, a fool undertaking a fool’s errand (What do you think GIs drank off duty “over there?” “Good ol’American beer.”) that sobers up a naive, flag-waving joker with a simplistic world view and glib take on the violence of being in combat.

But “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” falls to Earth the moment someone “falls” out of a helicopter. All the PBR in the world can’t make anybody watching it forget that. And setting that incident to the easy listening hit “Cherish” — and then reminding us you did it in a tender moment at the end — is as big a miscalculation as any Farrelly has ever made. And remember, Peter and his brother thought a reboot of “The Three Stooges” was a good idea.

Rating: R for language and some war violence

Cast: Zac Efron, Russell Crowe, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Kyle Allen, Jake Picking, Will Ropp and Bill Murray.

Credits: Directed by Peter Farrelly, scripted by Brian Hayes Currie, Peer Farrelly and Pete Jones, based on the memoir by John “Chickie” Donohue and J.T. Molloy. An Apple+ release.

Running time: 2:07

It’s a Vietnam War movie, so of course there’s a soundtrack packed with 1960s pop and rock — “Cherish” (badly used) to “Let It All Hang Out,” it’s not “Good Morning, Vietnam,” but “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” does blow through some cash on music rights.

No, Zac Efron doesn’t sing in it. Or dance.

Set in 1967, here’s a song that we haven’t heard in any of the scores of films set in and during the Vietnam War. Remember, many Vietnamese spoke French, as the French had just been forced out in the previous decade. So if the locals were jamming to The Beatles, they just might have preferred the French version, also a hit, recorded by this legend.

There’s a sweet twist to this sad news, that James Earl Jones has retired.

Vanity Fair makes it official, the great man with the singular voice is hanging it up at 91. But Lucasfilm is passing a last big check his way as he signs over rights to the voice of Darth Vader forever.

Well done all around. Great actor, a fun and fascinating interview. Caught him on a bad day once and he was still more interesting than half the actors you meet. Caught him on a great day and he could not have been kinder or grander.

I remember reviewing this one, but I had to look it up before passing it on to a public library that I either pass, visit or stop to do some writing in. came out early last summer. And while I didn’t warm to a Greek tale of a daughter coming home to Athens to care for her aged, inform father, we can all identify with some of what’s depicted, if not now then soon enough.

“Moon 66 Questions” came out early last summer. And while I didn’t warm to a Greek tale of a daughter coming home to Athens to care for her aged, inform father, we can all identify with some of what’s depicted, if not now then soon enough.

MovieNation, spreading quality international cinema over the Southeast, one DVD, one public library at a time.

Remember to donate yours to your local library, fighting the good fight and beating back the darkness of ignorance and censorship for 200 years, and maybe a little while longer.

The beloved children’s film earns a reboot, with original star Jenny Agutter back some half a century later.

Let’s hope this sentimental WWII era drama still plays.

A couple of things stick in the memory about “Oklahoma Crude,” a downbeat Western “action comedy” (lots of shooting and blowing stuff up) from the cinema’s filmmaker of conscience, director and producer Stanley Kramer.

The “boomer” theme music by Henry Mancini was one of the most borrowed instrumentals of the ’70s, used in commercials, TV football highlights shows and the ads for other films. I dare say you recognize it, too.

Neither the stars nor the director are well known for their comedies.

And watching “Oklahoma Crude” anew, you can’t help but remember that movies often had offbeat or even downbeat endings in the Hollywood that “Jaws” and “Star Wars” changed forever — the 1970s.

The director of “On the Beach” and “The Defiant Ones” had a late ’60s/early ’70s run of comedies — not all of them with the pointed messaging of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

As a kid, I’d tune into the WWII comedy “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” (1969) starring Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani and Virna Lisa. Italians hiding their stash of wine from the Germans, what’s not to love? I adored Quinn and all the scenery-chewing, larger-than-life actors of that era, including George C. Scott, whose comic turn in “The Flim-Flan Man” (1967) wasn’t great, but he seemed to be having a grand ol’time in a kind of “The Sting Goes to Mayberry” farce. Great car chase, and old confidence man Scott was in his pre-Oscar glory.

Leading lady Faye Dunaway’s comic years would come years later. Neither she nor Scott was particularly light-hearted in this fin de siecle oil fields Western set in 1913. But it’s a generally entertaining curiosity from an era when John Wayne’s Westerns were also about the end of the era (“The Shootist”) and TV Westerns had evolved into “modern” detective shows (“Hec Ramsey”).

Dunaway’s a defiant single woman guarding her drill derrick from all comers in those wildcatting days. If the “message” director Kramer had one in this film, it was about predatory Big Oil and Big Capitalism, crushing the small guy or gal and getting to write history as the heroes of their own villainy.

There’s a bit of what happens in “There Will Be Blood” in this story as trigger-happy Lena empties her Winchester into anybody who approaches her hilltop cabin and drilling rig, even shooting at her feckless father (Sir John Mills). With Big Oil having hired the same murderous son of a bitch that Big Cattle hired in “Shane” (Jack Palance), we see her point. She’s got a right to be nervous.

Dad trolls the hobo jungle where the unemployed roughnecks camp and hires the only man who’ll take the job and the challenge. Mase is a drunk who’d really rather be making his way to Mexico…for a bender. But he needs to eat, so they acquire him cheap firearms and Lena — a loner with no use for men or women save as employees — reluctantly accepts his presence.

Palance is a bowler-hatted menace here, a dapper thug of the type many a coal field of the era would recognize — a man of violence who hires others to join him in crushing the little guy — unionized miners or independent oil prospectors. They didn’t call the bosses of these goons “Robber Barons” for nothing.

What ensues is an infuriating series of provocations and brutal assaults. There is no “getting even,” Mase assures her. But as she’s hellbent on having her well and her revenge, what can he do?

What’s striking seeing this film again after many years is the cavalier level of violence. There are deaths, but the ones early on are mostly off-camera.

Mase, Lena and her father counter attack with rifles and dynamite (the Western movie’s “deus ex machina” courtesy of Alfred Nobel). The scene is epic mayhem, with bombs blowing up villains and shotguns peppering their bums with bird shot. But when you’re firing a Winchester repeating rifle, you’re playing for keeps. There’s no point in trying to keep a body count, as Kramer is intent on keeping it all on a sort of PG-rated good clean fun level.

That’s kind of nuts. As glib as the films of Bruce Willis and others have been about wanton slaughter, “Oklahoma Crude” ventilates or blows up scores, who then get picked up in a pre-triage/emergency room era and dragged off to recover and fight another day.

The chemistry between Scott and Dunaway isn’t necessarily sexual. Not with him wondering if “Maybe you’re the kind who prefers women?” But you have to figure as close as they come to buying it and as much as they depend on each other in matters of life or death, riches or poverty, something might happen.

Scott virtually never played a romantic lead.

The film’s ’70s finale seemed less downbeat then than now, when we’ve come to expect “The Hollywood Ending” almost every time out. But there’s a whiff of “Sierra Madre” in it, grudging respect between bloody foes, because when it’s all said and done, business is business.

That’s Kramer’s message, I think. That buying into getting rich thing is a disease, like gold fever. And with oil, somedays you’re Jett Rink in “Giant,” some days you’re Jed Clampett, and some days you’ve just got yourself a very deep hole.

Kramer’s career wound down in the ’70s, with him dabbling in Vietnam and its aftermath on TV and the big screen, dropping out of the business with a priest/nun murder drama, “The Runner Stumbles,” which did nothing for his reputation and did Dick Van Dyke no favors either.

“Crude” is the operative word for this one. It’s a choppy film with a great sense of its place and time and fine action beats. Anything with this cast is always going to be watchable. But it’s not quite a comedy, not really an action comedy. And the oily Big Eat the Small message is muddled even now. Think of how this must have played during the Arab Oil Embargo, when it came out?

With “There Will Be Blood” still fresh in our minds, I’d say it’s worth checking out just to see George C. Scott chew a little scenery, Dunaway as a fiery brunette and Palance in his pre-lovable Oscar years, one of the greatest sadistic villains the screen Western ever had, even in a West that was drawing to a close by the time “Oklahoma Crude” was a commodities market label of value.

Rating: PG, violence, off color humor

Cast: Faye Dunaway, George C. Scott, John Mills and Jack Palance.

Credits: Directed by Stanley Kramer, scripted by Marc Norman. A Columbia release on Amazon, Movies! many other streamers.

Running time: 1:48

“Mumblecore” as a movie genre is pretty much gone, but it survives in spirit in a daft little laugher titled “Pretty Problems,” a comedy scripted by its cast and that taps into that relative deprivation thing that the social media era just made worse.

Not that Lindsay (Britt Rentschler) and Jack (Michael Tennant) are social media whores, mind you. They’re kind of muddling along, marriage on auto-pilot, accepting the fourth-choice “careers” that they’re in, the last to figure out the spark has gone out of their sex lives.

Jack’s got a probation officer, we learn from their pillow talk. Lindsay keeps calling him a parole officer, like she or any of us would know the difference. Jack does. But he can’t complain about her never getting this right because we get a quick dose of his listening skills.

Another day, another endless procession of doors slammed in his face as Jack tries to sell solar installations. Lindsay at least can sneak sips of wine that the owner of the designer consignment boutique where she works serves And she gets to wear the clothes as part of the job.

That’s how she meets Cat. This force-of-nature customer has the perfect makeup and highlights and supervised fashion sense of money. She sizes Lindsay up and zeroes right in on her insecurities.

“You look amazing, right? SAY it!”

Cat decides they’re to be best friends. Cat spends a pile of cash to get “Lindz” a fat commission. Cat is determined that Lindz and her hubby should come to a gathering at her and her husband’s place up in Sonoma.

Again, they just met. And Jack, well aware that this is not the life they planned to have together can’t afford to say “No” to his generally disappointed life. Even if he figures this is some sort of “purge” trick and that the rich are luring them out of town to kill them for sport.

They join catty Cat, her rich husband Matt (Graham Outerbridge) for the weekend. Lindsay and Jack have no idea how bad they have it until they take in everything that the rich and not-really-famous enjoy.

It turns out it’s Cat’s birthday. It turns out, Cat and Matt’s wealthy friend Kerry (Alex Klein) and Carrie (Charlotte Ubben), his latest squeeze, are already there.

And the house, tucked into vineyards and acreage, turns out to be in Healdsburg, not Sonoma. It also has a…look.

“That’s a murder house, a house where murders happen.”

Maybe. But probably not, as the movie is about two have-nots partying with the casually, irresponsibly rich, people who have servants, guest houses and guests “investigated” before they arrive.

Somehow, Matt knows all about Jack, even his favorite beer. But you can’t get it in the U.S. Matt did.

“He bought my favorite brewery.”

A weekend of indiscretions, inappropriate over-sharing, name-dropping, drinking, drugs, throwing around money and throw-away lines ensues.

“I was a trainer at Sea World…quit that when it stopped being cool.”

“Should we smash John Mayer’s guitar?” “John MAYER’s guitar?” “YES, it’s John Mayer’s guitar. He plainly left it because he didn’t want it!”

Kerry’s new girlfriend Carrie is too drunk and gets sick.

“Turn her on her side,” Kerry says, half-assing his gentleman friend responsibilities.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Lindsay says, impressed with his thoughtfulness.

“I just don’t want her throwing up on those hair extensions” which he must have paid for.

Karaoke and pretentious wine tastings, a shaman session, a staged murder mystery dinner and lots of drinking and “microdosing” and lessons on how the monied look after each other gives Jack and Lindsay’s marriage just the sort of beating you’d expect.

“Pretty Problems” isn’t a laugh riot, but it chuckles along on just-bright-enough dialogue writing and Nolan’s loose and louche way with those lines.

“Wink wink, I am sooooo inappropriate!”

Concerns arise and revelations complicate them, because of course they do because nobody here can keep a secret or figure out when to shut up.

No, this isn’t of the “Frances Ha,” “Jeff Who Lives at Home” or “Drinking Buddies” class. But the chatter is funny and the drunken acting-out just amusing enough to make these “Pretty Problems” pretty cute and easy to sit through.

Rating: unrated, drug references, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Britt Rentschler, Michael Tennant, J.J. Nolan, Charlotte Ubben, Graham Outerbridge, Alex Klein

Credits: Directed by Kestrin Pantera, scripted by Michael Tennant, Britt Rentschler and Charlotte Ubben . An IFC release.

Running time: 1:46