Movie Nation

“My Donkey, My Lover & I” is one of the unexpected filmgoing delights of this summer. It’s a French road comedy in which the “road” is a famous French hiking trail pioneered by a legendary Scottish writer, the vehicle a donkey and the journey one of romantic self discovery through beautiful scenery, cozy hostels and homey dining rooms..

So, “Eat, Bray Love” it is, then.

Titled “Antoinette dans les Cévennes” when it came out in France, it’s about a French fifth grade teacher out to meet a lover in the The Stevenson Trail, a multi-day trek through the Cévennes region along a route Robert Louis Stevenson took with a donkey named Modestine, from Puy-en-Velay to Ales.

Antoinette Lapouge (Laure Calamy) wasn’t planning on taking this trip, at least not alone. When we meet the vivacious 30something she is changing into a fancy costume in her classroom, and topping that inappropriate overexposure by leading her kids in an end of year performance of a too sexy love ballad.

Parental eyebrows are raised, especially when Antoinette, in a fit of passion, takes over the singing at the end. And then we see who this exhibition was for. Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe) is the father of one of her students. The second they can grab a moment alone, they’re going at it.

But their little “vacation” together is off. He’s married and he’s taking a donkey hike with the wife and daughter. Antoinette may not be a hiker, or an experienced donkey handler, or even somebody who knows how to tie a proper slipknot. That doesn’t keep her from impulsively booking such a trip on that same trail herself.

We’ll see who ruins whose vacation, won’t we?

A Hollywood version of this story would have played-up the mayhem Antoinette causes or might cause by finding and crashing her lover’s family vacation. It would have leaned hard on the quirky eccentrics she meets on the trail and milked stubborn donkey jokes for all that they’re worth.

Writer-director Caroline Vignal, inspired by Stevenson’s “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” goes for something gentler, if just as light. It’s a quirky spiritual journey in the tradition of “The Way,” whimsical and soulful, but with swearing and braying.

Right from her first meal with a table full of strangers in a hostel, Antoinette is interrogated, mocked for doing things the Stevenson way with a donkey, which is an added hassle, and gently-and-not-so-gently judged for her life choices, her affair with a married man — the father of a student, no less.

“You’re right,” she giggles, in French with English subtitles. “Shame on me.”

Her over-sharing that first night sets up a running gag. Antoinette makes this trek in notoriety. Her plans to “stumble into” the lover and his family are widely known, and sometimes scorned. Almost every hostel keeper and many others on the trail know her story.

And if you don’t know how to curse in French, her interactions with Patrick the Irish donkey are a great primer and another running gag.

The donkey is just enough of a character in this film to register, a critter who only walks when she talks to him. Her talking, on these 20 or so kilometer a day hikes, is filled with chatter about Vladimir, what she loves and what she hopes, her anger and her despair and longing for this unavailable mate.

Naturally, when the donkey finally meets Vlad, his wife (Olivia Côte) and child, he’s had time to form an opinion of them.

“My Donkey” is a travelogue with weepy moments and grace notes — Antoinette breaking down at the sight of a loving, hostel-running couple and their kids, and then comforted by the story of why Stevenson took his own solitary trek told to her by sympathetic husband Idriss (Denis Mpunga).

The picture gets by on such moments, but even the meandering that goes on between them is cute and has its own charm.

If you’re looking for low-exertion a summer escape movie with a bucket list travel destination as its setting and a donkey and the hapless, lovelorn sap who rides him as its stars, “My Donkey, My Lover & I” certainly fills the bill.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Laure Calamy, Benjamin Lavernhe, Olivia Côte and Denis Mpunga

Credits: Scripted and directed by Caroline Vignal. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:36

Kevin Hart‘s always good for a few manic, exasperated laughs. Laid back Woody Harrelson adds value to pretty much anything he’s in.

Both are experts at “buddy pictures.” “The Man from Toronto” should be a pretty safe bet.

And it is. Safe. There’s a little energy and the tiniest hint of edge to this hit-man meets the guy confused for a hit-man action comedy. But as likable as the two stars are, as experienced as each is at sharing the screen this way, they barely make this “Man” worth your trouble.

Hart’s a fumbling promotions manager at a friend’s gym. Or was. We see him get the sack. His “big ideas” weren’t big enough, or smart. He’s always been like this, creating DIY Youtube exercise videos for the “Teddy Burn” and “Teddy Boxing” (no punches land).

“All the ‘WOW without the ‘ow!'”

“Teddy” has a reputation, which even his wife Lori (Jasmine Matthews) has heard of. His name has “become a verb.” Everybody knows what it means to “Teddy something up.”

They’re getting away for the weekend, to scenic Onancock, Virginia. But after dropping Lori off at a spa, Teddy rolls up to the wrong address for their AirBnB. They two guys there are waiting for someone else. As one guy is tied up and the other has failed to get some needed information out of him, we can guess what “The Man from Toronto” will do.

Especially since we’ve seen this shaved-head, black-hat, shades, overcoat and gloves “specialist” at work.

“When you beg for your life,” The Man tells the first victim he tortures on behalf of a mobster, “I’m not gonna hear your screams.”

But since no one’s ever SEEN this “Man from Toronto,” that’s who they think Teddy is. A nice bit of business — Teddy sees the guy tied up, spins on his heels with a “Oh hell n…..” He’s stopped, and instantly he starts to wing it.

Some mysterious someone from Venezuela has hired this expert “in 23 martial arts,” “a ghost.”

“They say he filleted an entire poker parlor in Minnesota!”

Teddy’s mix-up becomes a government problem when they bust in. He’s been photographed, and now all these mobsters and bad faith/bad state actors think he’s the real “man.” In a “North by Northwest” twist, Teddy is forced to continue the charade. He’s been through some things. He’s about to go through some more.

“The Man from Toronto” only finds its first laughs some minutes in, when Hart and Harrelson’s characters meet for the first time. The “real” man tests the fake one by using his trademark. He quotes s 19th century poets as a code. Lay some Keats on me, little man.

“You wanna hear her old stuff or her new stuff?”

“Well, HE…died at 25.”

“You got some SACK to come with no gender etiquette! ‘He’ may not IDENTIFY as ‘he!'”

It wouldn’t be much of a movie if the “real” man executed the fake one straight off. The script turns itself inside out to keep them paired up, hunted by the Feds and those who hire guys like “The Man from Toronto.” They send “The Man from Miami” (Pierson Fode) after him.

A couple of half-decent escapes and stunt-double-assisted brawls pay off. The whole “Man from” gimmick has promise, because every city has its “man,” apparently. Some one-liners land, such as the way Teddy takes what he’s heard from the Feds and other thugs to relate how he became a hit-man.

“Are you stealing my origin story, now?”

The pretend “relationship” has Teddy and Lori double-dating with his “friend” and hers (Kaley Cuoco).

Cuoco’s presence in this points to a general gripe about Netflix “star” comedies. They spend all their money on the stars (Jason Statham originally had the title role, and Sony set this up for theatrical release). And there’s nothing left for the supporting players.

Sitcom-sharp Cuoco registers and manages a funny moment, but no other supporting players in this thing is famous or funny or was given anything amusing to do.

The leads click well enough. But every moment Hart and Harrelson aren’t on the screen, the film dies. The real torture in this torture comedy becomes the too-long wait for it to end.

Rating: PG-13 (Some Strong Language|Violence Throughout|Suggestive Material)

Cast: Kevin Hart, Woody Harrelson, Jasmine Matthews, Pierson Fode and Kaley Cuoco

Credits: Directed by Patrick Hughes, scripted by Robbie Fox and Chris Bremner. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

Here you go. Yes, you have to wait until Sept. 30 to grow your own grin.

The South African actress Alice Krige first gained notice in America in a sprawling “Tale of Two Cities” TV adaptation that broadcast in 1980. But her fate was ordained by her big screen debut.

In “Ghost Story,” she was the young woman once coveted young men, who now haunts the old men — Fred Astraire, Melvyn Douglas and John Houseman — who caused her death half a century before.

Although she has enjoyed a grand run in film and on TV in a great variety of roles, playing up her scary side has proven her secret to longevity.

“She Will” gives her a fine showcase, a horror movie without the frights, but with creepy, gloomy style to burn as any picture “presented by Dario Argento” would have to be. Charlotte Colbert’s debut feature is a reclamation of the lost art of montage. Extreme close-ups and images shrouded in fog of horrors of the distant past and recent surgery, witch burnings and filmmaking trauma blend together in chilling and gorgeous sequences that are a credit to the entire production, but particularly to editors Matyas Fekete and Yorgos Mavropsaridis.

You watch this film and never, for a second, do you forget you’re seeing art in motion.

Krige plays an aging screen diva, fresh off a double mastectomy, haunted by what happened on her big break film over 50 years before. As she travels in a private train coach north through Britain, it all comes to a head as news of a “sequel” to that long-ago film, “Navajo Frontier,” breaks.

Veronica Ghent has a hint of Norma “Sunset Boulevard” Desmond to her — aged, infirm and damaged. She travels with a personal healthcare worker, Desi (Kota Eberhardt), whom she barely tolerates.

“That haircut, ‘Anarchist with a Day Job?'”

Her trip is to a “solitary retreat” in the forests of Scotland, but which turns out to be anything but solitary.

Her “I don’t do groups” protests are to no avail. It’s off-season, and everybody else is there for the activities organized by this crystal pyramid-gazing seer and charlatan, given a playful, boozy touch by Rupert Everett. Some of his cultish followers, young and old, are big Veronica fans.

Holing up in a remote cabin on the site won’t save Veronica from their lectures and painting lessons.

But there’s something about the place, the soil and the vibe of it. They used to burn witches there, and perhaps that gave the earth curative properties. It’s certainly giving Veronica, and even Desi dreams.

Veronica’s nightmares have her confronting an old co-star, a screen icon constantly working into his dotage, headed for a knighthood and much more in the public eye than her.

Malcolm McDowell and Krige only have a single scene where they’re in the same frame together. But these two screen legends, horror mainstays in their later years, make it a juicy one.

Colbert uses her stars to great advantage and her film to weave a spell around them. Krige’s turn as Veronica has a valedictory air, a celebration of her skills at turning a two word phrase into as succinct a description of old age as any ever uttered.

“Any pain,” her caregiver wants to know?

“Every pain.”

As for the film itself, it takes predictable turns, lacking only the predictable shocks that usually accompany those to make it something more than merely chilling.

Colbert emphasizes “local color” as the ashes flaked off a wood fire are “witches feathers” in this part of Scotland and the only pub in town is the only place to get wifi and be plied with drinks and other exotic substances by the retreat’s hunky handyman (Jack Greenlees).

“She Will” is so well-acted and so visually sophisticated and striking that I didn’t mind the missing “terror” in all this. Like Krige’s horror debut, it’s more about the story than the “ghosts” — witches, in this case.

And if anybody deserves a smart supernatural thriller that pays homage to her horror bonafides, it’s the witch from “Gretel & Hansel,” the matriarch of the most recent “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the Queen of Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise enemies, the Borg.

Rating: unrated, violence, substance abuse

Cast: Alice Krige, Kota Eberhardt, Rupert Everett, Layla Burns and Malcolm McDowell/

Credits: Directed by Charlotte Colbert, scripted by Kitty Percy and Charlotte Colbert. An IFC Midnight/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:36

A tsunami of good vibes rolls over “Trevor: The Musical,” an upbeat, kids-friendly tale told in song about a bullied but hopeful middle school boy who is sorely tested by and abused for his just-emerging sense of his sexuality.

A pre “It gets better” era period piece anchored in the music of gay icon Diana Ross, it’s based on the Oscar-winning 1994 short film “Trevor” and the outreach-and-counseling non-profit that the film inspired, The Trevor Project.

The composing/writing team of Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis (“Southern Comfort”) walk a delicate line. They’re trying to tell a story about an eighth grader so humiliated and shunned after being labeled “a pansy” that he attempts suicide, and tell it in a way that won’t be harsh, adult and kid-unfriendly, so that kids Trevor’s age can see it and see that there’s hope, that people do get through this and that suicide isn’t the answer.

Tricky.

Their musical doesn’t quite commit to its subject matter, and rarely dazzles as it dances its way around it. “Trevor: The Musical” has pluck and real kids with just-hit-pubertyish voices and kid-simplified choreography awash in positive messaging in a show that feels seriously dated, if worthwhile in the attempt.

The film, basically a filmed production of the play just after closing night this past April, preserves the stage show and celebrates its one glorious conceit. Trevor (Holden Hagelberger), a small town kid all about “making daydreams out of dust,” gets counsel and comfort from 1981 era Diana Ross, played with a slinky, all-embracing vivaciousness by Yasmeen Sulieman.

So the score’s syrupy, instantly-forgettable solos, duets and anthemic chorus tunes “My Imagination” and how Trevor “Can’t Wait” for the “day of my destiny,” are utterly outclassed by Sulieman’s lovely renditions of snippets of “Do You Know?,” “It’s My Turn,” “Upside Down,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Remember Me,” “Endless Love” and “I’m Coming Out.”

The story has Trevor, unable to get in the school talent show by acting/singing out all the parts of “Fame,” stumbling into the idea of choreographing the annual drag turn in “tutus” by the school jocks. Out go the tutus, in come the lads in a white tie and tails, hat and cane chorus line straight out of a ’30s musical.

That effort, working closely with star jock Pinky (Sammy Dell), trying to convince the jocks that “Men dance — Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Tommy Tune!” turns out to be Trevor’s undoing. Because every school has its homophobes, and some of them are also Mean Girls.

Two actors (Sally Wilfert and Jarrod Zimmerman) play all the adult roles — the homophobic PE coach, the less-than-understanding talent-show coordinating teacher, the Reagan Assassination Attempt-obsessed parents, and the Catholic priest Trevor is forced to consult. Not one of these characters makes an impression.

The best things about the show are Sulieman’s singing, and how Diana-mad tween Trevor interprets the songs and uses them as holy texts giving guidance to his confused sexual feelings, which he’d rather ignore because of an “artistic” bent that craves the spotlight.

“Diana says ‘Get back up and try….” “Diana says. ‘I can’t lay down and die!'”

Disney’s even-more-tentative film of “Better Nate than Never” avoided even using the word “gay” in describing its narcissistic hero, so filming “Trevor” and releasing this during Pride Month has merit. Their corporate timidity, which hasn’t protected them from Florida’s “Don’t say gay” free-speech quashing governor’s rage, means they’re never going to be guilty of “recruiting” by simply telling this story, or having a same-sex couple in “Lightyear.”

But as mere inclusion in their films and the musicals they choose to present is earning the otherwise gay-friendly company abuse from bigots and bigotry-exploiting politicians, the time for timidity is past. Well-intentioned and “inoffensive” by design content as namby-pamby and entertainment-thin as “Trevor: The Musical” isn’t accomplishing much of anything.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Holden Hagelberger, Sammy Dell, Isabel A. Medina, Aryan Simhadri, Alyssa Emily Marvin, with Yasmeen Sulieman as Diana Ross

Credits: Directed by Robin Abrams, based on the stage production by Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis, choreographed by Josh Prince, directed on stage Marc Bruni, A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:54

An exiled CIA agent can only trust…her.

July 1.

A July 15 release from Lionsgate on Amazon.

GWAR has had one of the longest, strangest trips around the fringes of punk and heavy metal music notoriety of any cult band.

Movie and video game appearances, a Grammy nomination, embraced by Beavis and Butthead even though MTV wanted nothing to do with them, arrested for on-stage obscenity in Charlotte, reviled by generations of culture warriors, poster freaks for rock against censorship — yeah, they “peaked” in the ’90s.

But they’d been around for a decade before all that happened. And they’re with us still, bringing their gory spectacle — an NC-17 rated sci-fi/horror/fantasy burlesque of heavy metal — to clubs and venues and closing in on their fourth decade.

Generations have embraced them, or at least shown up to see what all the blood-and-semen-spewing fuss is about.

“This is Gwar” interviews scores of members, past and present, to guide us on their journey, from the art collective of Virginia Commonwealth University students who founded it, through the decades on the road, an attempted robbery that turned into attempted murder, deaths and endurance, often flirting with great fame and riches but never quite getting there.

It’s a fascinating, funny and occasionally sad, but not “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” sad. Because GWAR, a novelty act that never stopped being novel, lives on, changing and replacing members, “never getting rich,” but putting on these unforgettable comedy, slaughter, satire and guitar solos shows.

Some 42 members and former members are listed in the closing credits of Scott Barber’s film. But more than one survivor suggests “there must have been a hundred” people playing, singing, vamping or play-acting in this outfit over its nearly 40 year existence.

You have to love their origin story. Artist and aspiring filmmaker Hunter Jackson started building props and costumes for this gonzo film he was planning, “Scumdogs of the Universe.” Dave Brockie was a theatrical, wild-eyed guitarist and singer for a popular Richmond, Va. punk band, Death Piggy. They decided to don Jackson’s costumes and perform, with Jackson joining this performance art theater onstage for comical dismemberments, decapitations and “spewings” performed by an”alien” band that somehow ended up on Earth.

It was a little Conan the Barbarian, a lot of KISS, with a whiff of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” slaughter amidst all the music. A grand experiment was born and took off, playing local then touring far and wide.

Weird Al Yankovic recalls the numbers of tour dates that he and his band were delayed in playing because the venue “was still cleaning up the GWAR show” from the previous night, or several nights before. They made and continue to make such a mess.

Actor Thomas Lennon and others marvel at the musicianship that guys and GWAR Woman (Collette Miller and later Danielle Stampe) wore while performing.

And then they got (almost) big, found their music or music videos included in movies and “Beavis and Butthead” and got the attention of the Parents Music Resource Center and censors and obscenity law enforcers. Their show is nothing if not lewd, crude and lascivious.

“Shut down in Athens (Ga.),” “arrested in Charlotte (NC),” headlining MTV News, even though the network never really accepted them, despite Mike Judge’s embrace in “Beavis and Butthead.”

I recall interviewing them right around the time of their Charlotte arrests. But the fact that I asked the same question many of you have points to their ultimate “cult band” fare.

“Are they still around?

“This is GWAR” — aptly set to premiere on horror’s Shudder streaming service — is a generally upbeat and exhaustively-thorough film, with seemingly everybody who ever played in GWAR or participated in the Slave Pit art collective that keeps them costumed and theatrical interviewed, a tale with hear triumphs and near tragedies, and then a real one, climaxing with a funeral fit for a Viking — or a founding member of GWAR.

Rating: unrated, simulated sex and violence, profanity

Cast: Hunter Jackson, Danielle Stampe, Pete Lee, Mike Derks, Chuck Varga, Don Drakulich, Brad Roberts, Collette Miller, Michael Bishop, Matt Maguire, with Alex Winter, Ethan Embry, Thomas Lennon and Weird Al Yankovic.

Credits: Directed by Scott Barber. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:53

This Claire Denis menage a trois thriller has sex and betrayal and lots of other stuff our filmmaker is famous for.

Denis gave us “I Can’t Sleep,” “White Material,” and “Beau Travail.” “Both Sides of the Blade” was titled “Fire” in France, which is entirely too generic for North American audiences.

This IFC release comes to theaters July 8.