Movie Nation

National foundation myths are dearly held, but the more recent the “foundation,” the trickier it is to get a myth out of the cold hard facts.

On its surface, “Image of Victory” is a piece of Israeli agitprop, a triumphalist/martyred take on one corner of the first Arab-Israeli War, the one fought when Israel declared its independence as a “Jewish state” in 1948.

But in framing its story within an Egyptian journalist’s memory of the battle for the coastal Nitzanim kibbutz, writer-director Avi Nesher (“The Matchmaker”) pays just enough lip service to the opposing points of view about this conflict to make it interesting.

Israeli actor Amir Khoury, who played a terrorist in “Seven Days in Entebbe,” is Hassanni, an aged Egyptian journalist embittered at the news of the Camp David Accords, furious that his president, Anwar Sadat, has signed a treaty with “the enemy.”

Hassani thinks back to the decades of strife and slaughter, the lives lost “in vain.” Oddly enough, it’s a defiant Israeli Jew from that kibbutz battle he covered that sticks in his mind.

“It’s her I cannot forget.”

Back in 1948, Hassani was summoned to a new gig, as the reporter sent along with a cameraman to film newsreels for Egyptian cinemas. A hardcase producer wants him on the ground, covering the strife between the new kibbutz (Israeli communal settlement) and the neighboring Palestinian village of Hamama, many of whose poor farmers lost their land when the landlord sold it to well-financed Jewish settlers.

With Cairo street agitators preaching (in Arabic) that “These foreigners colonized our sacred land in order to expel (our) brothers,” and raging at Egypt’s playboy King Faruk’s impotent reaction to the mass Jewish migration to Palestine, this is the story of the hour.

Hassani and his photographer embed in the village, watching the locals, with a little training from a professional soldier, undertake sniper attacks on settlers planting orchards.

Platoons of Jewish convicts were brought in as soldiers to help protect Nitzanim.

The film limits its depictions of the Egyptian and Palestinian Arab point of view to Hassani having to learn to toe the propaganda line, universal dismay at Faruk and annoyance by the local fighters at being filmed — in “our humiliations” and even possible “triumph.”

That’s why “Image of Victory” is an ironic title. Hassani may have visions of Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” documentaries, humanizing conflict with these films, and bucking up Egyptian morale. Events and censorship might not allow that.

Most of the movie is about life inside that kibbutz, the toughness of the new or newish settlers, some with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms. None is tougher than the one Hassani “cannot forget.”

Mira (former child actress Joy Rieger of “The End of Love”) is an earthy true believer of the kibbutz “way,” the mother of a small boy (who sleeps in the communal “children’s barracks”) who has no more use for the boy’s father.

If Mira takes a shine to the new army brigade captain (Tom Avni), her less butch not-quite-ex had best just step aside.

We hear the chatter of many languages, not just Hebrew, as new settlers come from all over Europe and engage in group sing-alongs, communal swims at the beach, bickering over the group showerhouse, gathering around the radio to hear Israel declare its independence at the end of the British Palestine mandate.

There’s even lip service paid to the touchiest subject at hand, then and now — land and land-ownership and the intentional displacement and violence it brings — in one of the communal (some are communists, many are socialists) debates.

“All lands in the world used to belong to someone else,” a political commissar huffs. “When we crawled out of the crematoria chimneys,” he fumes, “we paid the landlord good money” and that settles that.

Yes, that’s glib, and I was reminded of the shock I had watching a documentary about Israel’s founding a while back, with British officials expressing concern in correspondence — in 1919 — of Jewish migration and settlement strategy that seemed like “apartheid.” No, former President Jimmy Carter wasn’t the first to label the efforts of the “monoethnic state” of Israel to separate, sequester and disenfranchise Palestine’s Arabic majority that way. It’s been the plan from the start.

The combat sequences are straightforward and well-handled, with the settlers having the upper hand with a machine gun, mines and professional soldiers (and ex-convicts), then the Arabs gaining an artillery battery, with the climax a final assault that gives Hassani his memory “I cannot forget.”

Nesher can be praised for at least attempting to show two views of that fateful founding back in 1948. This isn’t “Exodus” or “Cast a Giant Shadow,” Hollywood’s celebrations of Israeli statehood and the blood that was spilled to gain it.

But I dare say this lopsided, somewhat factual take on Israel’s founding myth won’t show up on most Middle Eastern streaming services. Even at its “fairest,” this “Image of Victory” is always viewed through Israeli Haganah binoculars.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, nudity

Cast: Joy Rieger, Amir Khoury, Eliana Tidhar, Tom Avni, Meshi Kleinstein, Ala Dakka,

Credits: Written and directed by Avi Nesher, based on a true story. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:08

You had me at “Irish.” And Olivia Colman. And “Joyriding.”

This has some sort of regional distributor for that corner of Europe, no US one listed yet. They don’t even have Euro release dates.

But again, Olivia Colman, Oscar winner, Irish and “road trip.” Throw in a cute car thief and a wee babe and a ferry ride. Come on, SOMEbody will pick this up in for North America.

The perfect, timeless tune that outlived Bond villains, Bond films and Bonds

RIP, Monty Norman.

Four girls find a body, and try to figure out who he is and what they should do about it over one magical/mysterious and “troubling” summer, in which they “come of age.”

NOT a Stephen King take of the “Stand By Me” variety. Not much, anyway.

Hard to get a bead on “Summering” from the trailer, but Ponsoldt is one of my favorite filmmakers, so I’m guessing it’s good.

Aug. 12, limited release.

The trailers to the documentary “Fire of Love” play up the weirdness, the “obsession” of the husband and wife French vulcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, and suggest that they were dilletantes who died doing something they loved but perhaps didn’t fear as much as they should have.

It’s a “Grizzly Man” styled come-on for a movie that doesn’t need that sort of hype, and a couple who don’t deserve to be taken that lightly — at least in the advertising. All that does is remind us that Werner Herzog (“Grizzly Man”) already made a movie (“Into the Inferno”) about these two, also using their footage and narrating it in that distinct, nihilistic Herzog style.

Sara Dosa’s new film about the Kraffts, who died in 1991 doing what they loved and dedicated their lives to — studying volcanoes, up close and with cameras — doesn’t take that tack. She and editors Erin Casper and Jocelyn Chaput dive into the Krafft’s decades of volcano footage, with the “co-stars” of this movie listed as “Mana Loa, Nyiragongo, St. Helens, Una Una” and others. We hear the Kraffts in samples of their many TV interviews over the years.

And Dosa hired comic actress Miranda July to deliver a deadpan, almost forlorn voice-over narration of the Kraffts, the mystery of their romance.

“In this fire, two lovers found a home,” July intones. “As in love, there are mysteries” about them, how they met and what connected these near-neighbors from Alsace from the 1960s into the 1990s.

Perhaps the answer to those “mysteries” is “You fall for what you know, and for what you don’t.”

Their (European) TV-friendly career that allowed the Kraffts to stay funded and continue their work while others might be left stranded by a lack of grant financing.

The Kraffts came along in the middle of the “plate tectonics revolution,” when understanding of the Earth’s crust, fault lines and the volcanoes and earthquakes along those boundaries was changing overnight. They pitched in, the chemist Katia and the geologist Maurice each doing the science as well as taking the film footage that both made them famous and is probably their lasting contribution to the field.

This footage, rough and tumble — amateurish at times, playful at others — can be breathtaking. And in holding takes of pyroclastic floes, eruptions and steam and smoke venting out of volcanoes for long stretches, “Fire of Love” lets us see why they became transfixed by this deathly-dangerous beauty, mesmerized by the awesome, timeless power they had the privilege of witnessing.

We get a feel for the “ecstasy and loneliness” that drew the Kraffts to each other and to this dangerous work, studying “the archives of the Earth.” And we see the odd moment of recklessness that suggests that yes, maybe they took one, two or three risks too many, some probably just for the cameras.

Animal kingdom fanatic Steve Irwin could have learned from their example.

As beautiful and intimate as “Fire of Love” often is, the sometimes grating, flat and precious narration makes one long for this material to have been folded into Herzog’s superior “Into the Inferno.” Romantic “obsession” is kind of his thing, and there’s not enough new here to warrant expanding on it.

Rating: PG

Cast: Katia Krafft, Maurice Krafft, narrated by Miranda July.

Credits: Directed by Sara Dosa, scripted by Shane Boris, Erin Casper and Jocelyn Chaput. A Neon/National Geographic release.

Running time: 1:33

Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Lee Pace and Rachel Sennott.

Aug 5 and 12, theaters, then streaming platform, then that one.

From A24. Need I say more?

Trigger warning. F——g Pete Davidson’s in it.

A quick shout out here to the unheralded hero of many a movie, the casting director.

That person is responsible for populating the background faces in group scenes, and in bringing in the right folks for smaller supporting roles.

Not an easy job for a bloke like Colin Jones, charged with finding villains big enough to be menacing to that round mound of muscle, Dave Bautista.

Sure, veteran heavy Ray Stevenson towers over most mere mortals. But rounding up monstrous gym rats like Martyn Jones was a must for “Final Score,” a Dave-against-Terrorists tale set in a soccer stadium.

This 2018 release tapped into the ongoing repression/invasion politics of Putin’s Russia for a sort of “Sudden Death” remake with “football” instead of hockey and Van Damme instead of Bautista –“”Die Hard’ on the Soccer Pitch.”

It’s got some cool action beats and epic brawls, the occasional clever bit of work-the-problem life-or-death situations, and one of the funniest third act racial gags in the history of action cinema.

The story? Could’ve been written by a cheap phone app.

Bautista plays an ex-military chap who constantly checks in on the family of a fallen London comrade. Teenaged Danni (Lara Peake) has braces and a passion for tantrums and rash decisions and could use a little “Uncle Mike” father figure help.

So, a little bonding at the West Ham vs. Russian champs “Dynamo” match it is. Until Danni sneaks off to be with her jerk boyfriend, and Mike’s gimlet-eyed attention is diverted by the beefy guys and gal in too many tattoos and Eastern European accents who seem to be everywhere they shouldn’t be in the stadium.

There’s a dastardly plot, a lot of explosives, some seriously fanatical terrorists and a hunt for Pierce Brosnan (taking a shot at speaking Eastern European) in the stands, with a stadium in lockdown and the hapless cops outside slow to figure all this out.

As if anybody hasn’t seen “Die Hard.”

Stevenson plays the mastermind, accenting his way through “Clearly you are a man of skeel and talent. I yam a man of WEEL. Do not TEST me!”

Amit Shah is the stadium security employee “Faisal” who deals with BREXIT racists every day, but a terrorist incident and the “lone hero” out to stop them on this one special day.

The violence is next-level when it comes to a savage fight in an elevator, a brutal beatdown in a kitchen and a ground level to rooftop motorcycle chase.

Helicopters, and “Take the SHOT!” are involved. Not that the stadium crowd ever notices a thing. Those Brits and their football.

Director Scott Mann did the all-star but little-seen “Heist” a few years back, and wrings what he can out of this tired plot. For me, the picture started with a bang, leveled off and then gently nose-dived in the third act. A few fun bits, only one truly funny line (It is a DOOZY.) and a couple of decent performances are what recommend this.

And again, kudos to the casting director, the guy who gave us hulking villains, a believably awkward punk teen or two and sadly a whole lot of cops and “SAS” folks who wound up making almost no impression at all.

Rating: R for strong violence and language throughout

Cast: Dave Bautista, Ray Stevenson, Lara Peake, Alexandra Dinu, Amit Shah and Pierce Brosnan.

Credits: Directed by Scott Mann, scripted by Keith Lynch, David T. Lynch and Jonathan Frank. A Saban Films/Lionsgate release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:44

Allison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Alessandro Nivola, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Tim Heidecker…

A work trip to Italy turns romantic, and then goes ever so wrong.

This looks edgy and fun, from IFC Aug. 19.

“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” is so much bubbly, frothy fun that it makes you wonder how “feel good movies” ever got a bad name.

Director Anthony Fabian and a team of co-writers make this glorious, feather-light period piece effortlessly amusing and above all, sweet. The best “feel good” movies do a little something to restore our faith in humanity, and this one does that, time and again.

This sentimental adaptation of Paul Gallico’s oft-filmed novel reminds us that Gallico’s mid-20th pop fiction turned up on screen about as often as Stephen King’s does today — from “Lili” and “Thomasina” to “The Poseidon Adventure.” It makes a grand showcase for Lesley Manville, best known in recent years for playing Princess Margaret in “The Crown,” but a favorite of director Mike Leigh and an Englishwoman who has no trouble playing roughhewn American (“Let Him Go”) when the needs arises.

Mrs. Harris is a simple, widowed cleaning woman who manages a penuriously comfortable life in 1957 London, working for multiple clients — a posh bachelor (Christian McKay), a lord and lady (Anna Chancellor) who won’t pay her on time, and a more-self-absorbed-than-the-rest young actress (Rose Williams).

There’s just enough left over at the end of the week for a night at the pub or even the dog track with her fellow cleaning woman Vi (Ellen Thomas) and the aging, working class Irish lady’s man Archie (Jason Isaacs, adorable).

But there are shadows hanging over this limited life. There’s not a lot of cash on hand for a woman in her 50s and working this hard. It’s a limited life.

Mrs. Harris is “widowed” in that her husband was missing in action in “The War.” She’s superstitious about “My Eddie,” not wanting to do anything to imply she’s given up hope he’ll show up over a dozen years after his disappearance. And she’s always looking for “signs” that Eddie is looking over her.

The day her life changes is the one she spies a new dress the Lady Dant (Chancellor) has purchased for her daughter’s all-important wedding. It’s glorious. It’s from Christian Dior in Paris. And even though this one-percenter can’t pay her employee on time, she had 500 pounds sitting around to purchase a piece of haute couture.

Mrs. Harris swoons. Mrs. Harris has a goal. She must have such a dress. A life of labor and penny-pinching will have its reward. As she doubles up work, takes in sewing and the like, scrimping and saving, she shrugs off every obstacle that gets in her way, and sees every boon as a sign.

“It’s my Eddie, my angel!”

And damned if events and her friends don’t conspire to make sure this unassuming woman’s one, all-consuming dream comes true.

But one first-ever plane ride to Paris later presents a new set of obstacles. Dior’s overlord (Isabelle Huppert, magnificently maleficent) dismisses her with an “I fear you have the wrong address” as a showing for the rich and richer is beginning. A sea of snobs and an officious, rude staff could end this dream right now.

Because it’s not like she can just buy a dress off the rack. But the sight of her rolls of cash wins her one champion — the cash-flow fixated bookkeeper (Lucas Bravo). And a simple act of courtesy by Mrs. Harris has made “the face of Dior,” the model Natasha (Alba Baptista) another fan.

The magnanimous Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson) insists she sit with him as his guest, and shows her the ropes of such exclusive private showings. Oy, oo’s that over there? Why, Monsieur Dior, my dear woman.

“‘e looks like my milkman!”

Manville keeps the character just this side of Eliza Doolittle, and Fabian (“Skin,” “Louder than Words”) lets the obstacles arrive, one after the other, followed by the working class woman’s plucky work-arounds. There’s delight in this story thanks to just the right proportion of heartaches and heartwarming mini-triumphs.

Much attention is paid to the milieu, with 1957 Paris in the middle of a sanitation workers strike, Dior in dire financial straits and London a lot more integrated than the whitewashed movies of the day let on.

Manville perfectly captures this throwback character, a member of the “Keep calm and carry on” generation inclined to be of service to one and all, but awakened to something of the bum deal the working class has been dealt by the rich as she’s schooled by the striking French.

A little romance, a little match-making, a trip to the Folies Bergere, a first-ever ride on a Vespa, a few fittings as part of bespoke dressmaking and an awful lot of twinkling put the frosting on this cake.

And this cast, from top to bottom, adds to the sense of the effortless charm of it all, so much so that you just know herculean labors must have been involved to make it so.

Not to gush or go too far overboard, but the warmth of a movie like “Mrs. Harris” is downright restorative in the viewing, two escapist hours that remind us that everyone is entitled to courtesy, a fair shake and a little beauty and luxury, and most of all, the hope that life can get better.

Rating: PG

Cast: Leslie Manville, Alba Baptista, Anna Chancellor, Ellen Thomas, Rose Williams, Jason Isaacs, Lucas Bravo, Lambert Wilson, Christian McKay and Isabelle Huppert.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Fabian, scripted by Anthony Fabian, Carroll Cartwright, Keith Thomas and Olivia Hetreed, based on a novel by Paul Gallico. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:55

The DVD cover is much more lascivious than the documentary it contains, or the tepid movie that inspired it, and apparently a generation of South American filmmakers who saw it and thought, “I can do that.”

That’s what the Spanish language “Straight to VHS” is about, a cult film that made a mark far beyond its distribution.

And yes, I have to worry about DVD covers and movie subject matter in terms of donations these days, as Florida’s governor is a book banning homophobe, a Nazi who has found his “Jews” to campaign against.

Can’t have a library get in trouble for renting out material that the local brownshirts will use as an excuse to cut off their funding.