Movie Nation

With Godard as my witness, I swear I remember Roger Corman’s “The Raven” being more subtle than this. And funnier.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still amusing — here and there — and a treat for classic horror fans seeing Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre in the same movie.

The future star of “The Shining” “Wolf” is here, stifling a grin as he got to share scenes with guys whose glories dated back to the silent film era. Jack Nicholson had to play the straight man here, pretty much, saving his loonier turns for “Batman” and “The Witches of Eastwick.”

Indie icon Corman, who gave so many future filmmakers their start, knew that having Vincent Price recite the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven” was practically a movie all by itself (James Mason had narrated a classic animated short, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a decade before). He had novelist and “Twilight Zone” veteran Richard Matheson vamp up a story that has Price play a sorcerer grieving over his lost “Lenore,” longing for her return when a raven comes tapping, gently rapping at his chamber door.

“Are you some dark-winged messenger from beyond?  Shall I ever hold again that radiant maiden whom the angels call Lenore?”

Turns out, the raven talks.

“How the hell should I know? What am I, a fortune teller?”

The raven has clues about what happened to Lenore, and Dr. Erasmus Craven first has to be persuaded to help the bird transform into Peter Lorre, then round up his daughter (Olive Sturgess) and the beautifully chapeau’d son (Nicholson) of Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) to seek answers from the sinister-sounding Dr. Scarabus (Karloff) in his castle.

Lenore’s got to be around this dank dungeon somewhere, you figure.

Legend has it that John Waters saw this film as a young Baltimorean and said, “Well, the only word for this is ‘camp.'” True? Who’s to say?

This was one of eight films Corman made from the works of Poe, and it is far and away the silliest. Truth be told, the “Treehouse of Horror” episode of “The Simpsons” that had James Earl Jones reciting the poem while Bart and Homer acted it out was scarier. And funnier.

As a “romp,” this classic isn’t really holding up. Whatever glory it enjoyed in its initial run, its peak era was during the college film society days when tipsy coeds could hoot and holler at its dated jokes and its soundstage bound goofy gloom.

“I am Doctor Bedlo’s son!” Rexford (Jack) declares.

“I am sorry,” Lorre’s Doctor Bedlo apologizes…to Dr. Craven, Rexford, the audience. Who knows?

The effects are adorably cheesy, but the performances are muted. Only Price is truly up to snuff, as Karloff settled into the grandfatherliness that made him the perfect narrator for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” a couple of years later. Watch the way the camera regards Karloff as he keeps his robe from tripping him as he descends a steep flight of stairs. It’s as if Corman was waiting for something dangerous to happen.

Scary? Not a bit. And camp value only takes it so far, these days.

Even Price was far better in “Tales of Terror” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” But watch how delighted he is interacting with that real, live bird.

At this stage, if you want to see “The Raven,” make it a Halloween party activity. Watching it cold, and sober and alone robs it of whatever communal glee it once had.

Rating: G, of course

Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess and Jack Nicholson.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Roger Corman. An American International release on Tubi and many other streaming platforms.

Running time: 1:26

Was there a groundswell of support welling up for a sequel to 2017’s D-movie slasher pic, ”The Wicked One?” Asking for a friend.

Still, here it is, “Wicked Ones.” Hell, it’s not like these nice folks had better things to do in the interim, is there? And there’s always an audience for the “so bad it’s a good…or a potential drinking game” horror movie. It’s a genre where the cheese never spoils. Apparently.

So here we go, back to Carpenter Falls where our “Wicked One” masked serial killer is apparently not dead, and apparently played by Richard Leon Hunt this time.

Years have passed, and now he’s not just back, he’s got masked cosplayer killers (Roni Jonah and Jason Crowe) emulating his butchery.

A survivor (Katie Stewart) from the killing spree years ago accompanies her husband and kids back to town. Her son’s in a band, her daughter’s a groupie for another member of the band. But the place has bad memories for her.

A local cop (James Tackett) never let go of the old “Colin Miller” case.

Let the sad, seriously over-acted slaughter start.

The actors often sound off mike, which does really bad performances no favors. The killings are drably set-up and staged and the script sounds like an incel’s idea of how horny teenagers about to be stabbed talk dirty to each other. I’d quote from it but it’s utterly unquotable.

Director and co-writer Tory Jones opens his picture with a painfully inept podcast interview, setting an amateurish tone that the picture never shakes.

If indeed anybody “demanded” this sequel, leave it to them, I say. Life is too short to watch awful movies not awful enough to be laughed at.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Katie Stewart, Richard Leo Hunt, Skyler Guthrie, Dale Miller, James Tackett, Brandi Botkin, Roni Jonah and Jason Crowe.

Credits: Directed by Tory Jones, scripted by Tory Jones and Nathan Thomas Milliner. A WildEye release.

Running time: 1:44

“Gratitude Revealed” is a feel-good documentary from the director of “Fantastic Fungi,” a broad, random collection of “grateful” people ranging from the somewhat famous to the not-really-famous stringing together empty platitudes about appreciating what you have, the miracle of life, and how the good vibes you send out shine back in your direction.

It made my eyes roll. It made my teeth ache. It made me remember the most productive place to grow fungi — a mountain of BS.

Too harsh? Let’s sample some of what piles up in Louie Schwartzberg’s squishy, insipid TED Talk on the “feels.”

Here’s Jason Silva, “storyteller, “futurist,” TV presenter and double-talker par excellence.

“When I think about connections, I think about intersubjectivity, I think about the human capacity to pierce beyond the veil of individuation and to enter the ‘holy other,’ to blast new tunnels between the mind and ‘the other!.”

No, Jason. For the last time, I don’t WANT the extended warranty.

Then there’s pastor and author Michael Beckwith — “Gratitude is an attitude and a vibrated altitude that we live in.”

Philanthropist (“rich”) and activist Lynne Twist breaks down “gratefulness” as “the great FULLness of our lives.”

Schwartzberg’s movie is 81 minutes of pretty pictures, precocious kids, bits of gorgeous scenery and all sorts of folk talking all the way around that American Thanksgiving table staple, “What’re we grateful for.” A few centerpiece interviews try to zero in on the nebulous nature of gratitude, wandering off into all sorts of detours (“community,” “beauty” etc.) because once somebody’s printed the fortune cookie and then the T-shirt “The Great FULLness of our lives,” what else is there to say?

Schwartzberg appears in his film a lot, beginning with a ritualistic (not really) making of “tea with lemon” so he can point out that his parents survived the Holocaust. He transitions into interviews with TV legend Norman Lear, film producer Brian Grazer, author Jack Kornfield, blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer and Silva, and finally Deepak Choprah shows up, right on cue.

Because what onanistic film flitting through “mindfulness” would be complete without the gibbering DC? And even the filmmaker, who normally works in time-lapse photography taking extreme-closeups of the wonders of nature, had to realize, “Wait, I’m talking to a lot of rich white guys and gurus, and most of them are Jewish.”

Schwartzberg goes on to hang with dancing cliff aerialists and track skateboarders thrill-racing down mountains. We meet this Louisiana bluesman and that African American preacher, author Luisah Teish and chef Rick Bayless, grateful to have come along during the foodie epoch among the well-heeled.

And what emerges is more a “feeling” than a narrative, more a sensation (irritation, in my case) than cinema, and more BS than your average performative, bubbly and empty TED talk held in a stockyard.

At least the fungi will feel at home.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Norman Lear, Jason Silva, Deepak Choprah, Jack Kornfield, Brian Grazer, Lynne Twist, Rick Bayless, Christine Carter, Erik Weihenmayer, Luisah Teish, and Louie Schwartzberg.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Louie Schwartzberg. An Area 23a release.

Running time: 1:21

A Disney+ series with Nick Fury? Cash that check, Mr. Jackson.

“The Alternate” shows us how “special” a special effects movie’s effects can be, even on the cheap, and how that’s still no substitute for a sharp, tight and original script or good acting.

A frustrated corporate video director and editor finds a glitch on his monitor, copies and expands it and realizes it’s a portal to another reality. Damned if the Jake in this other reality hasn’t gotten his first script, “Space Drive,” on the screen. He’s a workaholic success and he and his wife got around to finally having that child they’ve long wanted.

Seeing as how the “real” Jake (Ed Gonzalez Moreno) is stymied, not-quite-broke but stuck in a dead end job with his marriage to Kris (Natalia Dominguez) showing the strain, he’s got some thinking to do, once he figures how what this “portal” is. Life’s a struggle, but everything he wants is just on the other side of that swirling vortex screen saver. There might be a short cut. If only he could switch places with clean-shaven Jake over there.

“It this what you dreamed about in film school?” is a question this portal might answer.

There’s promise in this set-up, and the effect — a character stepping through a “Poltergeist” black hole into another dimension — is convincing enough.

But the screenplay doesn’t see anything comic in Jake trying to have it both ways, “cheating” with his happier (Future?) wife, scheming to replace “himself” on the other side. The scheming itself is lame. We’re forced to sit through script-dictated delays in Jake showing Kris this “great discovery” he’s stumbled into.

And the leads are seriously bland and somewhat less subtle at showing us confusion, anger, pain and resentment than we’d like.

“Primer” is the benchmark I’ve long used when considering how good a sci-fi film with almost no budget can be. Time travel or alternate universes can be faked with similar cheap effects. What matters is the sharp focus of the screenplay, witty dialogue, cleverly-set-up moments of suspense, and execution.

“The Alternate” has the effects and a plot that could work, but falls short in pretty much every other regard.

Rating: unrated, violence, nudity, some profanity

Cast: Ed Gonzalez Moreno, Natalia Dominguez

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alrik Bursell. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:28

A little power pop from 1981 is the big musical moment in Kevin Smith’s farewell to the 1994 movie and characters that made him famous.

The song’s messaging fits into the film’s sentimentality. But it’s not exactly hip or cutting edge. Jay would have bitch-slapped Silent Bob for hauling out the boom box for this golden oldie, back in the day.

A real dance challenge for a couple of 50 year olds channeling their trip hop past. But it’s the upbeat highlight of the film, a song Smith might’ve loved as a tween. Maybe he just liked the lyrics as they pertain to the film. Or maybe it’s all he could afford, rights wise.

One sobering piece of knowledge worth considering every time you hear the “official” version of something deadly involving a police officer is the one thing almost every cop is a genuine expert in.

They know just what they can get away with, and how to get away with it.

That truism hangs over “Unidentified,” the first film in a planned “Romanian Trilogy” by “Miracle” (the second film) filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri. Because from the minute we meet detective/inspector Florin Iespas (Brogdan Farcas), he seems off.

Florin is haggard and unshaved, like a young Liam Neeson staggering through a long bout of insomnia. He’s bickering his his chatty boss (Vasile Muraru) about a case he wants to take from another cop. A couple of hotels have burned down. The same guy owned them. Florin in sure he can “close this case in two days.”

The first thing that strikes you about his chief is how much he loves hearing himself talk. He’s got all these jokes he likes to trot out to the never-laughing Florin. The second thing is how unconcerned he is over justice, whether or not someone getting away with murder (two cleaning women died in the hotel fires).

So what if the detective on the case is on vacation? He’s not reassigning it. If it’s “cleared,” or not, so what? Go get some sleep, and put in a good word for my niece who wants to attend your fiance’s music conservatory.

“Unidentified” is a thin mystery barely concealed by a character study of a cop’s obsession. Florin copies the file on the sly and starts sweating the “Gypsy” he’s fingered as a suspect (Dragos Dumitru). Florin trots out his “theory” about what’s happened, makes threats and “sweats” the guy — breaking all sorts of protocols in addition to violating the guy’s civil rights.

When we see Florin visiting the service station where this suspect works, and then staking out the last hotel in the chain that had two other properties catch fire, we start to ask questions. When we see him hit himself in the face with his gun butt, we have our first answer.

Somebody’s in for a railroading. But to what end?

Apetri takes into a corner of never-filmed Romania (Piatra Neamt, his hometown) for a story of a man unraveling right before our eyes. Farcas gives Florin a sort of sedated mania, a tall man capable of things, dodging calls by creditors, ignoring orders and off on a vendetta with his own agenda.

We hear him ask if the lives of those killed were worth nothing, and the emotion feels forced, manipulative. The clever conceit of this character and Farcas’ performance of him is the viewer suspects things even as the grounds for those suspicions comes at us unexplained and piecemeal. Florin seems sketchy from the get-go.

Apetri shows us plenty of actions that aren’t explained, that keep the viewer wondering “What’s this guy’s game?” But we have enough to piece it together, and pretty early on.

As a mystery thriller, “Unidentified” plays a tad draggy and sluggish. Apetri, working in the style of those old “Columbo” TV movies, squeezes a simple, obscure whodunit/who’s doing it with 90 minutes worth of incidents into a slack two hour movie.

We have the clues. We’ve even got a hint of how everything will turn out based on the laissez faire attitudes, prejudices and tribalism of the police we meet.

Apetri still does a good job of not letting the obviousness weigh his story down.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Brogdan Farcas, Dragos Dumitru and Vasile Muraru

Credits: Directed by Bogdan George Apetri, scripted by Bogdan George Apetri and Iulian Postelnicu. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 2:03

A semi autobiographical version of a great filmmaker’s childhood, with Michelle Williams, Paul Dano and Judd Hirsch playing the adults in a sensitive, cinematic kid’s life.

Thanksgiving.

Creepy, psychological, and opening Sept. 30.

The post summer hangover at the box office continues, with numbers further deflated by the hole COVID punched into the movie-going habits of millions.

Horror used to be the most reliable, if never the biggest audience at the cineplex. Endless “Saw,” “Halloween” and “Insidious” sequels could always count on an $18-24 million opening, with occasional breakouts like “A Quiet Place” becoming blockbusters.

COVID has flattened that turnout. Even a terrific film like “Barbarian,” a real creeper, with horror in its DNA and a few minor names in its cast, should have managed $15-20. It did not. A $10 million opening is about half what it might have pulled in.

Will that audience find it next week? Maybe. Maybe not. Horror fankids tend to chomp at the bit and bite off their tickets opening weekend.

“The Black Phone,” just as good, had Ethan Hawke and a King family horror franchise tie-in and opened at pretty much what it would have earned pre-COVID — just under $24.

Indian imports have done unusually well in the American marketplace post-COVID. An audience returning to theaters quicker than other segments of the culture? Disney released “Brahmastra Part I: Shiva” on 810 theaters and it ended up earning about $4.4 million. Nothing great, but considering how poorly everything else is performing.

“Bullet Train” added another $3.2 million. It’s at $92, and should reach the $100 million mark.

Waiting on other figures to come in via Exhibitor Relations, and this will be updated as they do.

“Top Gun: Maverick,” finally slid off steeply enough to drop into the $3 million range ($3.1), $705 million four months into its North American run.

“Medieval” opened wide but not well, an $810 weekend take for this Avenue release starring Ben Foster, Michael Caine and Sophie Lowe.

“Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul” deserved better. It added another $225k, $2.4 million taken in this far.

The hostage drama “Breaking” was a bust, dropping to $225k its third weekend.