Movie Nation

You’ve been hearing about it for decades, the amateur musicians’ version of various sports “fantasy camps,” but for rock and roll fans.

Pay $5000 (at first, now $5499, plus extras), jam and learn from your aged classic rock or metal heroes, hang with them in a nice hotel for a few days, soak up a little of the rock’n roll lifestyle. And in this version, you don’t have to take a “fan” cruise to get up close and personal.

“Rock Camp: The Movie” is yet another informercial for manager turned promoter David Fishof, 90 minutes of assorted people with the disposable cash to live out their fantasy — an accountant singing with Paul Stanley of KISS and an impromptu band campers and experienced rockers have formed for a weekend — Jurassic Waste, Stack of Yokos or Motley Jue.

Over the past 23 years, every network morning show, every cable network, even “The Simpsons” and “Bones” and other TV programs hyped this amusing, harmless indulgence into the popular “vacation” for well-heeled adults and the children of the equally well-heeled that it is today. It’s a movie that feels like a sales pitch, a hollow glossing of a Baby Boomer indulgence that doesn’t amount to much more than glimpses of scores of famous rockers who sell-their-services to this camp — Daltrey to Meat Loaf, Nancy Wilson to Rob Halford and other members of Judas Priest, Vince Neill to Lita Ford — and quick, dull sketches of those who buy their way into one weekend of the camp.

Filmmakers Renee Barron and Douglas Blush tell the story of how David Fishof went from being a Catskills resort kid to New York sports agent for the likes of Phil Simms and Lou Pinella, to an “outside the box” rock promoter whose brainstorms were all nostalgia tours, reuniting the Monkees, the Happy Together Tour and helping create and promote Ringo’s All Starr Band.

His friends, possibly parroting something Fishof himself says, credit him with “taking the yarmulke to a new level,” a smart promoter who used those oldies acts to create a camp for the now-well-off fans who grew up loving these musicians.

No, it’s “not hip,” Fishof jokes. But helping fangirls and fanboys (mostly) live out their dreams, if only for a weekend, is just good clean wish fulfillment, if a little pricey.

But listening to the assorted rockers fluff the experience in varying degrees of sincerity, meeting a cross section of campers for a recent Las Vegas Rock Fantasy Camp — a singing-drumming real estate trust’s accountant, a guy who seems to work for a church, parents of a teen with autism who comes out of his shell with his Gibson Les Paul guitar — one never shakes the feeling that this entire enterprise is seriously tone deaf.

It’s not their fault that this comes out in the middle of a pandemic and the recession it caused. But even without that, it’s nigh on impossible for anybody in this to not come off like a total douche. And no, I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in a review before, but it’s almost unavoidable here.

The kid with autism gets off lightly, and considering the other and better “kids learn to rock” camp documentaries, that’s a given. And not all the A, B and C-list musicians ooze bottom-line insincerity. Tony Franklin, former bassist with the ’80s super group The Firm, takes a moment to remember the lifestyle and how much the partying and touring failed to fulfill him, and that stands out.

California camper Scott “Pistol” Crockett, a drummer who was a high school bandmate of Lenny Kravitz and turned to religious work (It’s not clear what exactly he does.) has to learn to hang “with the metal guys,” and master the cowbell for his camp band’s cover of “Mississippi Queen.” He does, but truthfully, none of these “ordinary fans” has a back story compelling enough to hang the movie on.

Then there’s the dominant figure here, Fishof, a guy Simmons jokingly suggests “could be a recurring character on ‘The Goldbergs'” ( A Jewish showbiz stereotype?) When Fishof refers to himself as “Jewish Santa Claus” for doing this, Fishof’s not just confirming how tone-deaf this all feels (What’s Santa’s cut from the $5,499?). He’s proclaiming himself King of the Douches.

MPA Rating: unrated, pretty darned clean

Cast: Paul Stanley, Nancy Wilson, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, Gene Simmons, Roger Daltrey, Sammy Hagar, Tony Franklin, Spike Edney and David Fishof.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Renee Barron and Douglas Blush. A Madpix release, on Amazon, etc. Jan. 15.

Running time: 1:28

That 2018 Taiwanese film about a cursed hanging rope has a sequel, “The Rope Curse 2,” and a whole lot more plot and ritual, and many many more characters, although a couple are holdovers from the original.

Do you need to see the first film to make sense of the second? I’d hate to put you through that, and this is such over-plotted nonsense that virtually nothing could render it sensible.

The new wrinkle this time — the “cursed” rope has a Thai Demon origin, a demon favored by “Thai drug dealers,” we’re told.

So “Stay off drugs, kids,” and in Taiwan, “Beware those Thai drug dealers” is implied.

That demon is contained in a gnarled, burned statuette. It’s not just the rope that strangled someone who died that could “pass on the curse” (in Mandarin with English subtitles) this time.

And it’s not just ropes that might get you. We see people strangled by necktie and seat belt, noose and whatever’s at hand.

All a drug smuggler hiding heroin in cocoanuts has to do is mutter “I have nothing to tie this up with” and “I think I saw a rope around here somewhere” and damn, the curse is passed on again.

Channel Gray Bear and the live streaming “supernatural hunters” of the first film weigh in, with their eyes on a new “hot psychic (Wilson Hsu) who is extra sensitive to ghostly presences, and afraid of most everything.

Masters of Taoism (Bor Jeng Chen returns) figure into the plot. One running gag is the notion that elected officials summon Taoist priests to “purify” a location or rope, “lift the curse” and that they pay the priests for doing it. There are all these elaborate ceremonies, face-painting rituals, masks and costumes and exorcism dances and parades.

And a prosecutor who stalks in at one point takes the audience’s side when he announces “What a scam.”

Only it isn’t. Assorted “masters” try to stop the spreading, deadly curse — a hanging spree that rips through first the drug dealers, then others in this corner of suburban Taiwan. When one master is possessed (eyes turn blood red), the next master takes on the quest.

Kang Sheng Lee plays the master Miss Teen Hot Psychic (Hey, THEY named her, not me.) turns to as she’s haunted by visions of her dead parents and struggles to save her raging, guilt-ridden and finally possessed and ready to end-it-all Aunt (Vera Chen).

“Are we going to be afraid for a lifetime,” Master Huo-ge asks the girl, Jiachen, “or face this bravely?”

Take a guess which way she’s leaning.

The acting varies between realistically chilling and over-the-top hysterical. The tone is spooky, but never more than that.

This thing is all over the place, and while the violent ends are creative, they lack logic and order after a while. “Rope Curse 2” starts out making little sense, and makes none at all by the time the credits roll.

Maybe “Rope Curse 3” will tidy that up.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence

Cast: Wilson Hsu, Kang Sheng Lee, Bor Jeng Chen and Vera Chen

Credits: Directed by Shih-Han Liao, script by  Tzu-Ming Ma. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

Many movies, animated and otherwise, have been made about the events that inspired Alaska’s famed Iditarod sled dog race.

Disney’s “Togo” is far and away the most factual of all the many movies about the 1925 Nome epidemic and “The Great Mercy Run,” the dog sled relay run that saved it.

There’s plenty of Hollywood hokum, superhuman and supercanine feats, liberties with topography in the film. But “Togo” is the first version of this story that emphasizes that there were many teams, many mushers — most of them Native Inuit — involved, that the much-heralded Balto — object of a fine animated film on the story — wasn’t the only dog of note, merely the most publicized.

“Togo” has drama, heroism and pathos. And it hangs on the grand, craggy and weather-worn features of the great Willem Dafoe, one of the finest actors of his generation turned loose on a role with built-in theatricality.

There aren’t many who could launch into a Norwegian musher’s version of Shakespeare’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech from “Henry V,” epic poetry to inspire his dogs, “we happy few,” and not seem utterly ridiculous. Dafoe makes this corny moment kind of magnificent.

Diphtheria breaks out in remote Nome in the middle of the winter of 1925. Thousands might die, with children the most vulnerable. A serum was available in Anchorage.

But there was no rail line, ice covered sounds preventing shipping and primitive airplanes would never make it to the town in 60 below snow squalls with 50 mile per hour winds. Only sled dogs would do. Only Norwegian immigrant Leonhard Seppala could guide them through 674 miles of frozen, blizzard-blocked wasteland.

And Seppala wouldn’t make the run without his aged lead dog, the “runt of the litter,” Togo.

It wasn’t until days after Seppala took off that the governor came up with the idea of a relay run, using mail carrying mushers (most of them Natives) to rush the medicine through. But Seppala was already crossing frozen Nelson Sound, braving the worst Alaska’s winters have to give with his trusty team of huskies.

He and his dogs endure frigid white hell to make the trip from way station to way station. And as they do, curmudgeonly Seppala remembers the “damned mutt” he hated, tried to give away (and considered worse) whom he’s entrusted with his and his team’s lives.

“St. Francis of Assisi would shoot this dog,” Leonhard grouses at the sickly “runt” wife Constance (Julianne Nicholson) insists on saving, treating and indulging as the little pup grows up to be healthy and seriously rambunctious.

The grace notes in Ericson Core’s film, based on a romantic Tom Flynn script, begin with the depiction of Seppala’s marriage. Nicholson lends heart and whimsy to this partnership. She and Dafoe make it a warm relationship with spark and wit.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I won’t even make the bed.”

Constance keeps the faith, saves the dog and rolls her eyes at every escape he makes from the kennel, every time he comes back after Leonhard tries to give him away. And when people later question what her husband and his fellow mushers will do under these conditions, Nicholson puts a lump in your throat when Constance declares that none of them would “sit in front of a warm fire while children are dying,” and you remember the stakes involved.

Sentiment could easily overwhelm the picture, and make no mistake — you will cry over this one.

But in setting out to get it right, in not going the ridiculous “Call of the Wild” Harrison Ford with digital dogs in digital landscapes route, Disney’s made a kid-friendly/dog-loving epic that harks back to some children’s classics of the genre.

MPA Rating: PG for some peril, thematic elements and mild language 

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Julianne Nicholson, Nive Nielsen, Michael Greyeyes, Christopher Heyerdahl

Credits: Directed by Ericson Core, script by Tom Flynn. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:53

Adding “Alaska” to most any screenplay brings with it the promise of quirky. The place and the people may be ruggedly rural, with more than a few “sourdoughs” believing themselves self-reliant — especially the state’s infamous remote cabin loners. A lot of genuine characters wind up there by choice or by disposition.

Its reputation is that its where people go who don’t necessarily fit in with other people. Having lived in Kodiak for a while, covering the local eccentrics, free spirits, predators and scoundrels, I experienced it first hand.

But while I ran into the gay community in my corner of the state, I never stumbled across drag queens. Not in public, anyway.

“Alaska is a Drag” is about a gay teen (Martin L. Washington) slopping through the smelly drudgery of a salmon cannery by day, dreaming of mirror ballroom runways and strutting his stuff in gowns and party wear at night. Even though Leo never really does.

His thick-as-thieves sister Tristen (Maya Washington) is his sole audience.

They live in a travel trailer, sometimes with their religious fanatic/gambling addict dad (Kevin Daniels). But usually, he’s off on a bender — preaching or hitting the casino.

And they dream their dreams. Leo? He dreams of drag stardom in LA, which is why Maya keeps him posted of which day the latest cruise ship dump of “lost and found” items (they live in an Inside Passage port town where cruise vessels stop) goes on sale.

“Save me the ball gowns!”

“I always do!”

Writer-director Shazz Bennett had in mind a story that sends up some gay stereotypes, and clasps many others close to its bosom. That makes for a sometimes likable, often grating affair with charm and promise and some fun characters, but that in the end leaves a lot to be desired.

Leo needs to be there for Tristen when she has her chemo. She’s a teenager fighting with cancer. No idea how they’re covering that expense, but they are.

Tristen needs to ask Leo if she should “pick you up after work?” Because in this corner of a redneck-majority state, being that rare Black kid in town isn’t enough. Being Black and “fab-ULOUS” puts a target on his back. There’s always time for gay bashing. Bullying co-worker and former friend Kyle (Chris O’Shea) is usually the ring-leader.

The film’s first twist? Leo can take care of himself — martial artsing the hell out of Kyle and several of his buddies, even if eventually they usually overwhelm him.

A second twist? He’s good enough to get the attention of his boss Diego (Jason Scott Lee, who once played a super charismatic Bruce Lee in the bio pic “Dragon”). Diego runs an informal boxing gym in the back of a dockside boat storage shed.

That, by the way, is VERY Alaskan — getting double use out of the few usable structures in any given town “way out there.”

First big cliche? There’s a hunky new guy at the cannery (Matt Dallas). And they exchange smiles in that simpatico gaydar way gay coming of age romances do.

Bennett’s story proceeds through a blase narrative with a possible romance, cancer and “a big drag contest” in LA, getting a sympathetic hand from The Fish Hook, the only gay bar (not that it makes that claim) in a hundred miles, and from its proprietor — Jan (Margaret Cho).

Leo and Tristen are the soul of this piece, sharing a love of each other, a mutual love of martial arts and the odd movie quote which they turn into catch phrases.

“No matter where you go, I WILL find you!”

Memories of Mom (Nia Peeples), who abandoned them long ago, is a bond and a punchline.

“Remember what Mom used to say?”

“Get me another drink?”

Martin L. Washington’s Leo holds what there is here — which isn’t much, to be honest — together with a winning portrayal of someone who doesn’t fit in and can’t, and longs to “get out of here.” That’s a sentiment shared by most of the young people we meet.

Leo’s a stereotype, sure. He’s the theatrical, screen-writerly over-the-top gay narcissist that decades of “out” cinema have served up.

“I wish people would love everybody else the way I love me,” he says, quoting Muhammad Ali.

The players in “Alaska is a Drag” make the scattered jokes land and the cliches and stereotypes land softly, at least. Cho and Lee score laughs, Washington and Washington score more and we have hope that all the “cute” touches and quirky characters and “local color” will amount to more than it does.

Sadly, it doesn’t. But almost.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, alcohol abuse, slurs, profanity

Cast: Martin L. Washington, Maya Washington, Matt Dallas, Chris O’Shea, Kevin Daniels, Nia Peeples, Jason Scott Lee and Margaret Cho.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Shazz Bennett. A Filmbowl Films release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:23

Boy, did we need this one.

“Herself” is an uplifting real world drama in classic weeper/wish-fulfillment fantasy clothes, a story of pluck and heart, violence and sadness.

And if you ever needed a good cry…

The latest film from the great Phyllida Lloyd (“The Iron Lady”) opens with near unspeakable sadness. A young Irish mother, dancing with her kids in the kitchen, is interrupted by their dad who wants the girls to go outside.

Mom (Clare Dunne) whispers two words to her oldest (Ruby Rose O’Hara), and the child takes a wicker lunchbox and heads out the door. When she hits the yard, she breaks into a sprint.

It’s a “safety box.” There’s a desperate message taped inside the lid. And little Emma, who looks about 7, runs into a nearby newstand, opens the lid and shouts at the clerk.

“Call the GUARDS!”

The address and her mother’s words that she’s in danger are on that message. Dad (Ian Lloyd Anderson) is beating up Mom, and this time it could be fatal.

We have just enough time to take a breath in this wrenching moment to consider what just happened, the awful situation that causes a woman to have to come up with that desperate lifeline and the terrible responsibility a mother has had to give her child. The youngest (Molly McCann) can hang onto her innocence a little longer, perhaps. But older Emma has to know that this time, the cops are coming.

Sandra is saved, out of that environment, taking her kids with her. “Herself” is about her daily scramble to work two jobs, get her oldest to school, complain about the long wait on state’s “the housing list” while sharing custody with the cowardly thug who beat her and wants to get her and them back.

No, she doesn’t let word get around which hotel social services is putting them up in. Three year “safety order” (restraining) or not, Sandra is scared to death, with a permanently-injured hand and a scarred psyche. All sorts of things trigger her.

As she dashes from her bar job to cleaning a disabled doctor’s house, looking in on her (Harriet Walter) being part of the deal, she researches options. There’s this Internet architect who’s come up with this super cheap small (not “tiny”) house design he shares for free. It’s “DIY” friendly, if you can just get some land, some permits and a little bit of expertise.

Sandra, obstacles and logic be damned, has her purpose and we’ve got ourselves an inspiring up-by-your-bootstraps movie.

Dunne, something of a discovery here, co-wrote the script and goes easy on the sugar-coating. Yes, Sandra will require “the kindness of strangers” and acquaintances. But with the tone set early on, we can only wait to see the first thing that goes wrong, and then the second and third.

And we never lose the fear of the worst that might happen.

Dunne’s sweet way with the kids is just magical, light-heartedly repeating the story of her birth mark (under one eye) as put on her by the Almighty to recognize her, “because there’s LOOooaaaads’a Sandras in Dublin!”

The way she plays Sandra’s reactions to her trials and triggerings is a marvel of injury and empathy. Gentle, proud but pleading for help, hiding her awful history as she does, we root for Sandra “Herself” so hard it hurts.

The kids are adorable, smiling imps who either forget or forgive Dad, depending on how much they know and how close they were to the violence.

And Anderson makes a fine villain, not a cartoonish ogre but a working class brute who might have come by his behavior honestly, if unforgivably.

The only shortcomings here are the “wish fulfillment fantasy” corners of this story, the cast of “types” who help Sandra in her quest. But even they are only worth half an eye roll, because we could all use leg up, kindness from a near stranger, every now and then.

MPA Rating:  R for language and some domestic violence 

Cast: Clare Dunne, Molly McCann, Ruby Rose O’Hara, Ian Lloyd Anderson, Conleth Hill and Harriet Walter

Credits: Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, script by Malcolm Campbel and Clare Dunne. A BBC Films/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:38

The sorts of screen comedies that “travel” well — that play well pretty much anywhere — are slapstick and slap-happy, quick with a gag and quick witted.

The Spanish farces of Pedro Almodovar are hilarious around the world, for instance. Tyler Perry’s made “Madea” money overseas, because who doesn’t like a big Black man in drag playing a smart-assed Granny?

The Turkish comedy “Stuck Apart” has an absurdly bratty kindergarten-age kid, a dotty old man who argues with a photo of his dead wife (who argues back) and a leading man trying like heck to break up with his girlfriend but can’t because she morphs into a broken record, literally bleating “You said you’d never take it off!” about a necklace she gave him untold thousands of times, even after he’s left the cafe where she’s flipped out, even after the cafe is closed.

Remembering Albert Brooks’ “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World,” you have to appreciate that it is a seriously transgressive film to come out of a somewhat autocratic Islamic Middle Eastern state — with swearing, liquor jokes, bits of blasphemy, more swearing, suicide, rowdy parties with scantily-clad women and still more cussing, much of it by that aforementioned bratty kid.

What it doesn’t have is pace. A rare Middle Eastern comedy, sure. It’s a promising but deathly slow, stumble-footed farce that can’t get out of its own way and for whatever its message — 50ish online marketing guy in mid-existential crisis — “Stuck” never manages much more than “cute” as it stumbles between almost-amusing moments.

But let’s cut filmmakers Durul Taylan and Yagmur Taylan some slack. They didn’t make this Netflix comedy for Western audiences, necessarily. And there’s a way the average home viewer can “fix” is for them. In the lower right corner of your screen, there’s a “playback speed” adjustment. “Stuck Apart” never quite works, but it comes closer to Western comic sensibilities when you play it back at 1.25 times normal speed.

Because, again, comedy is QUICK.

Aziz (Engin Günaydin) is an exasperated EveryMarketingMan, hoping to keep his younger boss Alp (Öner Erkan) happy with his editing and effects use in viral videos, but going a bit crazy.

“I need some time alone” he whines (in Turkish) to his girlfriend Burcu (Irem Sak). That’s what sets her off on her whole “Where’s the necklace I gave you?” tirade.

Aziz is pals with older colleague Erbil (Haluk Bilginer) who stumbles about in a daze of non-sequiturs, widowed and alone and plainly past the point where most online marketing firms would have put him out to pasture.

Everybody in this story is lonely, and the widowed Erbil is loneliest of all. That’s why he chats with his dead wife’s photo. That’s why he’s always begging Aziz to come over. He should get a cat, he figures.

“Either a cat or a Ukranian. They say you can order them online. The good ones are like, $750. The best ones are $1,000!”

Alp is also always begging for Aziz’s company. He finally gets his subordinate to come to a party as his house — a full bar, DJ, “beautiful girls” all around. And when Aziz abruptly leaves, it turns out the whole mob was cast, hired and summoned for the night to put on the appearance of Alp having a swinging, happy life.

“Lonely” means something different to the rich.

It’s not like Aziz can get any peace at home. He’s housing his sister and her lummox husband, and everybody under his roof is under the thumb of their punk child, Caner.

The kid (Göktug Yildirim, pouty and dead-pan) is a constant loop of “Hey UNCLE,” waking him up in the morning with a lighter and a threat.

“Get up or I’m BURNING this BED!”

The tyke is a tirade of F-bombs, threats, demands and growls. He’s also blasphemous, holding a slice to his forehead and mimicking some ritual he probably saw on TV as he demands his uncle eat his mother’s cooking.

“Listen, in the name of this bread, if THEY (his parents) weren’t here, I would KNOW what to do with you!”

Scary. A shrink diagnoses the child as “a bloody jerk,” and Uncle has a suggested use for his manic, violent energy.

“Maybe he can work in the auto industry — as a child laborer.”

You can see the comic potential in most of the cast, but that’s pretty much all we see, save for the funny child — “potential.” There’s funny material — a hallucinated Imam joke here, a “Do you serve alcohol?” gag with a waitress there.

“Whoa,” she says, blowing her breath into her hand. “Is it that OBVIOUS?”

It’s just that the gags are scattered — WIDELY — across a 96 minute movie that meanders through Erbil’s crisis — flashing back to let us see him before he “lost it” — and slowly dances around Aziz’s “issues.” The laughs die lonely deaths when they play out this leadenly.

That’s why, if you’re reading this review in English, I’m suggesting you cheat. Adjust the playback speed. You still get the picture’s big message, a quote from an Islamic philosopher. You just get to it a lot quicker.

“Life is a long walk. If you don’t want to be out of breath, you need to find a new childhood.”

MPA Rating: TV-MA, smoking, suicide, lots of profanity

Cast:  Engin Günaydin, Haluk Bilginer, Binnur Kaya, Öner Erkan, Gülçin Santircioglu and Göktug Yildirim

Credits: Directed by Durul Taylan and Yagmur Taylan, script by Durul Taylan, Yagmur Taylan and Berkun Oya. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

They meet in a minor act of gallantry. Both are to pile into a pickup truck that will smuggle them deep into Thailand. One will ride in front, others have to hide, lying flat, in the false bed in the truck’s back to avoid detection.

Even though Guo has paid the higher priced fare to the mule, he will swap places with Lianqing.

At the end of their harrowing journey of checkpoints and bribes, he urges her to take a ride into Bangkok with his sister. She declines, but accepts his phone number and his gallantry, and gives him hers.

After all, they’re both from the same city in Myanmar. They’ve shared an ordeal together. Little do they realize that they’ve just finished the easy part.

“The Road to Mandalay” is a quietly understated and cautionary migration drama, two people cross a border on their way to better lives. Lianqing (stoically played by Ke-Xi Wu) hopes to make it to Taiwan. But she has a support system in Thailand. Maybe things will work out well enough here, as she tries to work and raise the money to move on. Things don’t.

This Taiwanese/Thai co-production carefully observes a working underworld in a country where fake work permits are expensive to come by, and useless — and real ones impossible to get. Those in the know — Chinese expat business folk and locals — have mastered the way to get by — bribery.

A checkpoint inspection of the mule’s pickup? Fixed with a bribe. A police raid/roundup of all of Lianqing’s friends and relatives, sharing an apartment? Fixed with another.

She is 23, innocent to the point of naive. Helpful colleagues and roommates guide her, but a couple of acquaintances embittered and frustrated by the barriers to getting by here are just as instructive.

Sure, learn the language, ride the bus, hit the markets, take any job that will hire you (most won’t).

“But don’t wear a (Burmese) sarong,” in Burmese with English subtitles). “It’s a dead give-away.”

Guo (Kai Ko) has made his interest in Lianqing obvious. But she is focused enough to want to stick to her plan, ands wary enough to decline Guo’s help and almost rebuff his advances. She’s scrubbing dishes at a busy restaurant, not quite off the books, but close. She is paying the restaurant owner rent, and sending much of the rest of her cash home to her impoverished mother.

Guo, who has taken a job in a cousin’s textile factory, shows up at her work, gathers her pack and possessions and insists she quit and join him there.

She declines.

But as the narrow path to success in this new life turns out to be a dead end, Lianqing faces unspoken choices — tie her fate to Guo’s, or join some of her roommates in Thailand’s most infamous trade — sex work.

Writer-director Midi Z lets his camera linger over details of this world — the inflatable raft that takes Lianqing across the Moei River into Thailand, which turns out to be a brief journey made utterly routine by the first team of human traffickers she has to pay off on her trek. Then, a motorbike ride, then the pick-up, then piling into a three-wheeled Tuk Tuk (taxi).

Meals are viewed in real time — Liannqing brings jars of Burmese pickles and hot peppers into Thailand in her pack, and virtually no clothes. Conversations are spare and work is tedium itself — cleaning dishes and washing them, dozens at a time, clearing the threads on a loom.

There may be subtexts on ethnic ties and Taiwanese involvement in the larger trade and smuggling schemes that I didn’t pick up on. But Guo’s behavior is redneck patriarchy at its most universal.

He has a crush, a motorbike and family connections. Lianqing should embrace all that and cling to the piece of “home” he represents, or so he thinks.

Midi Z’s symbolic/dream rendering of sex work for a virginal innocent like Lianqing is symbolically blunt — a water monitor lizard crawling over her.

But that at least is dramatic and earns a reaction from the poker-faced Ke-Xi Wu. Incidents are few and far between in this movie of “situations” our heroine finds herself in.

“Road to Mandalay,” which has nothing to do with a Hollywood silent film of the same title, is slow cinema — lingering takes to set a scene, put us in a factory of in the rural town Lianqing travels to to bribe a local Army officer for fake ID papers.

The pace makes the few things that “happen” feel more dramatic, and heightens the reaction to the final act, which is tense and fraught.

I found this parable a tad pokey for my tastes, almost sleep-inducing in the middle acts. The title promises a picture with more momentum, a longer “road” journey, and I was disappointed when it settled into how hard it is to get work and get by in Bangkok.

But every immigrant taking such a journey, courageously dealing with unsavory characters every step of the way, is inherently fascinating, and “Road to Mandalay” benefits from that. As “real” as this is, a heroine proactive and assertive enough to take these risks would certainly be more interesting than the passive way Ke-Xi plays her, or that Midi Z paints into this woebegone dilemma.

MPA Rating: unrated, adult situations, violence

Cast: Ke-Xi Wu, Kai Ko

Credits: Scripted and directed by Midi Z. A Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:48

Murder, pedophilia, blackmail and morbid obesity figure into the plot of “Wade into the Water,” an odd and intriguing debut feature from director Mark Wilson and screenwriter Chris Retts.

It’s “Taxi Driver” meets “Napoleon Dynamite” — a quirky, dark mystery-thriller. And it’s a poster movie for the genre known as “Film Festival Movies,” as in distributors wouldn’t rush to buy it because “What theater would book it?” or know how to advertise it.

Veteran bit player Tom E. Nicholson plays our grumpy loner “hero,” an overweight giant in tent-sized shorts, beard and glasses. And when we meet him, he’s wheezing, covering his face in a mask and his head in a hoodie, pulling out a pistol and breaking in.

Our unnamed protagonist is a work-at-home medical billing specialist, alone save for his pet guinea pig and his TV, where he consumes a steady diet of free TV old movies. He has a “usual” at the local Chef Burger, a bad temper and a court-ordered shrink that he’s got to see about that.

But the thing that triggers that opening breaking-and-entering is a misdelivered piece of mail. It’s a DVD. And on it, child pornography.

For reasons he doesn’t reveal at first, our plump dyspeptic digs into who that disc was intended for and what sort of “monster” that person might be.

Every transaction in this guy’s life, from mental health center receptionist to the fellow who serves him his burgers to a mail clerk to the fellow behind the counter at the gun shop, is fraught. We never know what will set our man off, even if we know his four favorite profanities.

“Gun shop,” you say? Why yes, there’s that “Taxi Driver” thriller element here, remember.

“What’s it for?” “What the f–k does THAT matter?”

And that’s what throws him in the path of the strange young woman named Tilly (Danika Golmbek, odd and interesting).

Retts’ script has edge, a hint of blackmail and perversion and guilt and a troubled past for these two to talk about, or around.

But the center of this, its core appeal, is in Nicholson’s low-grade irritation at life, how every little thing — just getting in and out of a compact car, just getting his burger the way he likes it — is maddening.

Whatever made him this way might be what he wants the gun for, after he’s done his detective work — approaching possible victims of a pedophile, narrowing down his options, avoiding “the cops.”

And the girl? She’s no slouch as a gumshoe herself.

“Thriller” doesn’t quite fit here, because no matter what the stakes, nobody seems that worked up about them. It’s more disquieting than fun, but more amusing than troubling.

And Nicholson makes this Incel life of quiet, slovenly desperation fascinating to look in on, if not embrace.

MPA Rating: Unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Tom E. Nicholson, Danika Golombek, Samuel Whitehill

Credits: Directed by Mark Wilson, script by Chris Retts. An Indie Rights release on Amazon Prime, Tubi TV.

Running time: 1:28

Here’s a charmless little nothing riff on “Sweet Home Alabama” starring nobody you ever heard of and filmed in everybody’s second-favorite Beaufort, the one in South Carolina.

“Stars Fell on Alabama” takes its title from a Big Band era ballad, its plot from every laugh-and-heart-starved “high school reunion” romance.

Set in a filmmaker’s fantasy version of Alabama, where line dancing and “breaking into the old school” and racial harmony are plot points, it makes the journey from indifferent to intolerable at a slow saunter.

A Hollywood agent (colorless James Maslow), given to casting “fans” to interrupt Zoom meetings to create buzz around his rising-starlet client (Ciara Hanna, Kaley Cuoco-lite), is taking a weekend to go home to Willow Valley, Alabama for his 15th reunion.

Drawling classmates jab Bryce, aka “Dixie,” for being “33, not married, no kids” and thankfully don’t jump to any same sex conclusions. But Dixie takes the bait, lies about bringing a “famous actress” girlfriend, and next thing you know he’s begging starlet Madison to “play the part” for the weekend.

This timeworn comic situation is hard to screw up — the “begging” bit, I mean. The script and actors render it so bland as to not be worth the bother.

Madison is a good sport about giving up her “Yoga Boxing” for a couple of days, teases Bryce — who is Mr. “Never Mix Work with Pleasure.” She flirts, half-heartedly.

And they go through the generic, never-been-to-Alabama rituals filmmaking outsiders associate with “LA, lower Alabama.”

Will these two crazy LA transplants find a love connection amid all the covers of Philip Phillips’ “Home” and The All-American Rejects’ “Gives You Hell,” “beer chugging, annual tradition” flag football, all the “Welcome to the South” and “ROLL Tide” drawling and boundaries-blind pals of Bryce’s not-remotely-funny classmates?

When Bryce isn’t being pitched scripts or “my granddaughter” the actress, “a natural?”

Even the “twists” in the plot are tired — “TMZ photos,” Madison’s Brit-rocker ex (Zebedee Row, almost funny)., the “big dance.”see

The differences between pretty actors and “stars” are many, but all spin out of charisma and that ability to make a half-written, half-improvised, half-assed scene play cute, funny and/or romantic.

Tell your players stop at a costume shop to do competing Charlie Chaplin impressions, hope for the best and get...nothing at all. Zero spark. No whimsy. No laugh. Not even competent.

“I can’t forget the glamor,” the title tune (never played in the movie) goes. “Your eyes held a tender light, and stars fell on Alabama last night.”

But they never do.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive material 

Cast: Ciara Hanna, James Maslow, Andrew Rush, Lesa Wilson, Jaclyn Betham, Johnnie Mack

Credits: Directed by Sourav Kumar and V.W. Scheich, script by Robert Windom. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:43

A young woman’s flinty, brooding recovery from the devastation of losing a baby is the beating heart of “Pieces of a Woman,” an intimate if somewhat problematic melodrama from the Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó (“White God”) and his frequent collaborator, Kata Wéber.

It lives on a riveting, introverted turn by Vanessa Kirby and a bravura early scene — a single-shot “long take” that captures a home childbirth that goes wrong. “Problematic” and “melodrama” fits most everything else.

Kirby is Martha, very pregnant when we meet her, making her goodbyes at an office baby shower, heading home to give birth soon with maternity leave to follow.

Shia LaBeouf is her rough-hewn partner, Sean — a bearded, blustery construction worker building a Boston bridge, somebody we instantly sense is beneath Martha’s class. Her mother (Ellen Burstyn) buying them a minivan reinforces that.

The birth scene that follows is a quiet exercise in rising, single-shot tension. The planned midwife can’t make it. A substitute (Molly Parker) arrives and things progress, in realistic detail, to that instant when it all goes wrong.

Months later, Martha is back at work, brushing off Sean, who insists “We’ve gotta FINISH this,” and pushing back at her pushy, controlling mother.

“Don’t you want someone to answer for this monstrosity?”

They’re arguing for a civil suit. They want the midwife to pay. Martha, still in shock, still silently grieving, seethes at their interference. The viewer is naturally on her side.

But as months pass and the pressures mount, we see Martha withdraw more and more from the event even as she never really comes to grips with it. And even as she doesn’t, the wheels of justice are turning. Sean and her mother and their lawyer are getting their way.

Mundruczó and Kata Wéber, reworking a stage piece they did and based this on, give the film a European flavor, a disconnect that mirrors Martha’s own unmooring. She is pulling away from Sean and her mother, even her sister (Iliza Shlesinger) as this dark winter of her life passes.

But other issues introduced here play like the naked plot contrivances they are, twists and layers to the melodrama that feel like afterthoughts.

And then there is the casting, which makes it hard to lose oneself in her story in some cases.

LaBeouf’s trademark antic aggression paired with his dressed-down/grunged up look and mien feels off. What’s this tall, willowy blonde from money — Jewish to boot — doing with this “rough” and “poor” and “boorish” — words he’s heard from her mother and Martha herself — doing with her?

Everything we learn about him adds to that impression.

Burstyn is an 88 year-old screen legend, and she’s supposed to be this 30ish woman’s mother? That bit of tricky math is ignored to accommodate a Holocaust survivor speech, which Burstyn knocks out of the park, in the shaky voice of very old age.

But come on.

Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb deserves kudos for that single-shot that doesn’t look like a single-shot childbirth scene, a camera in close and backing out, following the stages of labor from room to room with realistic interior lighting.

Montreal, and Oslo and other Norwegian locations substitute for Greater Boston in a mildly disconnecting way.

It’s Kirby who makes this worth watching, and even that performance is nothing anyone would call “warm.” If “The Queen” and a “Mission:Impossible” villain didn’t make her a star, this certainly will.

It’s all the “pieces” around Kirby that let down this “woman.”

MPA Rating: R for language, sexual content, graphic nudity and brief drug use

Cast: Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Iliza Shlesinger, Benny Safdie and Molly Parker.

Credits: Directed by Kornél Mundruczó, script by Kata Wéber and Ansuman Bhagat . A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:07