Movie Nation

July 29 in cinemas, shortly after on Amazon Prime.

Looks really good.

Wonder if Elon Musk appears in it, calling one of the rescuers a “pedophile?” We’ll have to see.

A cast reassembled for a Disney+ sequel to a popular kids and witches comedy.

Divine, Miss M, just Divine.

A novel horror comedy that pairs-up mortal enemies trapped in a supernatural struggle for their mortal souls, “Revealer” turns out to be a clever idea flatly executed.

It’s spooky, with hellish lighting, nasty underworld worms and a scary-silly demonic costumed beast. It’s political, forcing a sassy, smart-mouthed peep show performer to team up with a “low-rent Tammy Faye” Bible-thumper who leads picketers outside the dirty book store where the stripper works.

And it’s cheap, paring its story down to, well, The Rapture, and trying to escape judgement.

What it isn’t is funny or quick-on-its-feet.

They’re stuck inside, and “The Book of Revelation is happening RIGHT here, right NOW” outside…and sometimes inside the dungeon-like store.

It’s the Madonna Wannabe early ’80s, and Angie (Caito Aase) is a workin’ gal in torn fishnets, leather gloves and heels. Sally (Shaina Schrooten) is the bespectacled book-burner leading the marchers out in front of Revealers Book Store.

Angie isn’t having this nonsense at the start of her workday. “You say one more word and I’ll be SENDING you to Jesus in little bitty PIECES!”

“My inner light gives me strength,” Sally snaps back. But in her most self-aware moments, she admits that “shouting at people is a lot easier than actually talking to them.”

“Revealer” has a few of those “self-aware moments.” Because when Judgement Day or some demonic version of it starts going down, and the owner of the shop (Bishop Stevens) has his tongue yanked out and turns into a demonically-recruited zombie, and Sally is trapped inside, with Angie locked in her booth, these two ladies have a lot of time to talk, when they’re not figuring out a way to dig out of this dimly-lit, sex-stained hell.

There’s an imbalance to the characters’ “journeys,” although each woman will have to face her own hypocrisy and tendency to “judge,” and each has something to contribute to their possible salvation.

Sally has an idea of who and what they’re up against, chapter and verse. Angie is the avenging muscle, handy with a crowbar.

“Revealer” punches above its weight in the production design and acting. But the script needed punching up, with more incidents and more testy one-liners to get through, and the funereal pacing makes what’s here play dull and uninvolving.

Mark this no-budget gambit a “nice try” and leave it at that.

Rating: unrated, violence, stripper content, profanity

Cast: Caito Aase, Shaina Schrooten and Bishop Stevens.

Credits: Directed by Luke Boyce, scripted by Michael Moreci and Tim Seeley. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:26

I know it’s “only a sequel,” and “only” a children’s animated film at that.

But “Minions: The Rise of Gru” is a movie of manic, demented genius. It’s a slapsticky/witty, action-and-sight-gag-packed romp of a popcorn movie, a film that delivers more animated laughs than every other kids’ cartoon this year, put together.

Suck on that, Beavis.

Heck, the string of ’70s pop, rock and soul music cues, puns and “Minions Sing the ’70s” giggles utterly outclass both “Sing” movies while rarely delivering a lyric human ears can decipher. Unless, of course, you speak Minion. Feel free to sing along with Paul Simon’s “Cecilia” or the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” if you do.

Nothing against Steve Carell, but who knew Gru, as an adult or in his learning-the-super-villain ropes years in this prequel, works even better as a supporting player? That’s the breakthrough these Minions movies have managed.

Gru, closing in on 11, longs to join the Vicious Six, the best gang of supervillains on the West Coast. It’s 1976, and Blaxploitation baddie Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson), wimpled menace Nun-chucks (Lucy Lawless), Strong Hold (Danny Trejo), lobster-legged Jean Clawed (J.C. Van Damme) and Svengeance (Dolph Lundgren) work with the wily old Wild Knuckles (Oscar winner Alan Arkin) to steal The Zodiac Stone, a pendant with magical powers.

After their Indiana Jones-style heist, the other five betray Wild Knuckles and leave him for dead. They’ll hold auditions for somebody new to make them “Six” again. Somebody younger. Maybe a lot younger.

They don’t know Gru’s evil plots mostly consist of self-designed stink bombs he tosses into “Jaws” screenings to clear the theater for him and his Minion pals. They might not be impressed with his spray-can cheese gun, used on anybody who stands in their way at the ice cream shop.

“Don’t cheese me, bro!”

Gru is dismissed as a “punk kid” at his job interview, but decides to take Belle Bottom’s sneering “Come back when you’ve done something to IMPRESS me” to heart and swipes the stone.

A Minion loses that stone as they’re making their wild and crazy getaway. The next thing Gru knows, he’s been snatched pretty much right out of his mother’s (Julie Andrews) Tupperware party, with the still-living Wild Knuckles wanting the Zodiac Stone, Belle Bottom and the other Vicious Five also on his trail and the Minions haplessly trying to track kidnapped “Mini-Boss” and hunt down the misplaced stone.

Their efforts will take in a chase-and-then-road trip with a hip biker (RZA), a stolen jetliner to get to San Francisco and martial arts training by acupuncturist and Kung Fu Master Chow (Michelle Yeoh), who is NOT to be taken lightly, in spite of her short, plump appearance.

Her scenes, beating up “bullies” and training the little yellow “tater tots,” steal the picture.

As I mentioned, Gru is kind of sidelined in this outing, which turns out to be a blessing. Most of those big name voice actors aren’t recognizable and have too few lines to register, even if they were.

“Rise of Gru” is kind of frantic and over-the-top violent. But that’s something to embrace. This may be the most wound-up, slo-mo, cartoonish slapstick animated film since the golden Looney Tunes age of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Bodies and faces distorted by collisions and kicks, eyes bugging out in terror, all vintage Looney touches. The animators even steal gimmicks and action poses/freeze-frames from anime action pictures to make the action even more jaw-dropping and hilarious.

The setting is the campiest decade of them all, and that explains all the “Kung Fu Fighting,” Blaxploitation references and the like. But it also leads to joke after joke made out of the music.

The villains’ lair is beneath a record store cleverly labeled “Criminal Records,” and the password is a Linda Ronstadt hit of the era, “You’re No Good.” But Sunshine Band disco, funk, soul, Carpenters pop, “Fly Like an Eagle” and Rhymin’ Simon all fold into the soundtrack and find a comic foothold here.

The Beastie Boys may not fit, but they’re made to.

It all swirls together in a riot of color, action, deadpan gags and musical and martial arts mayhem, a kids’ movie that rushes by you so fast you won’t want to take a concession stand break. And if you do, you might want to avoid the sugar. The tots, tykes and tweens will be wound up enough without that added pre-diabetic buzz.

Rating: for some action/violence and rude humor

Cast: The voices of Steve Carell, Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, Russell Brand, Pierre Coffin, Lucy Lawless, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Danny Trejo, Dolph Lundgren, RZA, Julie Andrews and Alan Arkin.

Credits: Directed by Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val, scripted by Matthew Fogel. A Universal release, an Illumination film.

Running time: 1:27

I’ve always had a soft spot for Beavis and Butt-Head.

Or maybe that was just the Dulcolax doing its job.

But here they are, 29 years after their MTV debut, moronically sniggering and slap fighting their way through their second feature film.

“Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe” rips off the plot to “Space Camp,” and slaps a dab of “multiverse” on it to let us and all those Marvel suits know that particular sci-fi plot twist is officially “played.”

Yes, our two “heroes” have gotten up from the couch, stopped calling David Lee Roth “fat boy” and Ozzy “an old fart” to set out on an epic journey through space and time, “a quest to score.”

It’s about as funny as your average episode — OK episode and a half — of their long-running, on and off series. Except it’s padded with 45 minutes of “We’ve lost our fastball.”

“Ball… hehehehehe.”

They’re back and Butt-Head wants us to know where they’ve been since 1998 (the series came back in 2011, briefly). And therein lies the tale. It begins with a ruined Highland High science fair which earns them a misguided stint at Space Camp as “two at-risk youths.” Their days at Johnson Space Flight Center — “Hehehehehehehe…’Johnson’ — let them show that they’re really good — obsessed — with uh, “docking procedures.”

“Huhuhuhuhu…”

So the next Endeavor shuttle mission brings them along. Mayhem ensues, people die and these two — sure this is all just foreplay from the mission commander (voiced by Andrea Savage) who “wants to score” — wind up drifting into a black hole.

No, neither Beavis not Butt-Head (both guys are still voiced by creator Mike Judge) can’t let “hole” can let that pass without sniggering notice. Or misunderstood panic.

“I don’t want to die in a Butthole! I have dreams about it all the time!”

They find themselves in 2022, with cell phones, the sexy-sounding Siri app, Kia Souls and college gender studies classes, where they do a broad wingnut-friendly “teachable moment” riff on “white privilege.”

Fair enough. Just not as funny as them, with Beavis shifting into his Cornholio guise, winding up in prison.

Beavis: “That youth pastor always said we’d end up in here some day!”

Butt-Head: “The system works, Beavis.”

The “two idiots” are chased by Men in Black and the former shuttle commander, now a sinister Texas governor with a dirty secret — she “killed” them — she is determined to keep.

And there are smart “alternate universe” versions of the characters that pop up with an urgent plea, which falls on dim and deaf ears. Because stupid Beavis and Butt-Head are as stupid as ever.

Despite making an effort to offend, here and there, the characters have lost some of their edge and Judge can’t help but suggest “old fart” in still attempting to manage those grating, giggling pubescent voices.

Will this movie be enough to create a new generation of fans? No. That’s why it ended up on Paramount+, where we old farts can get nostalgic and remember funnier moments from them, their earlier movie and their heydays in MTV’s golden age, with or without the Dulcolax.

Rating: TV-14, profanity, toilet humor, innuendo

Cast: The voices of Mike Judge, Andrea Savage, Tig Notaro, Gary Cole and Chi McBride

Credits: Directed by John Rice and Albert Calleros, scripted by Mike Judge and Lewis Morton, based on characters created by Mike Judge. A Paramount + release.

Running time: 1:26

This Swiss co-production features teens making bad decisions, using each other and abusing social media and (when they’re in the picture) their parents.

I rather liked “Lovecut,” which narrowly avoids the label “exploitation” in its portrayal of the shortsighted, irresponsible “free range” adolescence. I hope Maitland Library patrons do as well.

MovieNation, spreading fine cinema far and wide, one DVD at a time.

Box office actuals, reported via studio receipts added up this AM.

“Elvis” wins the weekend, for those who keep track. With “Minions” and “Thor” on the way, The King will have a short reign. But does he have legs? Will more folks find this eye candy bio pic?

Elvis comes to mind whilst watching the shoot-em-up “Code Name Banshee.”

“A little less conversation, a little more action, please,” he’d sing. “All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me. A little more bite, a little less bark…”

After a couple of opening shoot-outs, this straight-up C-movie — directed by Jon Keeyes, scripted by Matthew Rogers — flops into lots and lots of cliche-riddled conversation, some time line stumbles (“Five years earlier,” or is it?) and finishes with a whole lot of gunfire, most of it by The Character Who Never Reloads.

That would be the title character, played by “Sin City” and “Pearl Harbor” alumna Jaime King. In a short haircut punching way above her model-slim bodyweight, she has the Ruby Rose role in this implausible and mostly-dull actioner about CIA assassins, high-priced “contracts,” accused “traitors” going off the grid and our heroine hunting for them, because one is or was her dad and the other was her mentor.

Banshee beats up and threatens her apparent CIA “control” (Kim DeLonghi) in an opening scene — in the woman’s OFFICE, mind you. Her father was either killed or went dark after passing on “assets” to the Russians, or so she’s told. His partner and her mentor (Antonio Banderas) disappeared as well.

Funny thing about this screenplay, it never actually clears the whole “treason” thing up. That just sits there, uninvestigated and unresolved. Perhaps Merrick Garland is “on it.”

Banshee works with the modern action pic’s laziest deus ex machina, the all-knowing, all-systems-controlling hacker (Aleksander Vayshelboym). He tracks down the untrackable and guides her into villains’ lairs, where they’re aced out of a contract by some under-explained goon (Tommy Flanagan) and his huge payroll of armed thugs.

The only thing that can solve and settle all this is finding her former mentor.

Naturally, Caleb (Banderas) has slipped into some old, suburban town where he runs a bar. Naturally, he is widowed, with a teen daughter (Catherine Davis) who doesn’t know his past, but should suspect something, as Dad has trained her in martial arts and with his arsenal of firearms.

“Construction?” Sure.

Naturally, Caleb doesn’t want to be found, doesn’t want to get involved and has no interest in clearing his name because, again, that whole “treason” plot thread has been pretty much abandoned.

“There eees mooooooooooore to life than contract killing,” he purrs. But that wisdom comes too late. If she can find him, so can the Irish Eliminator that Flanagan plays.

The story beats are strictly formula, with a few ingredients missing. Somehow, there’s always time to gawk at and fetishize some “professional’s” vast arsenal of weapons, and joke about them.

“Trust issues.”

Truth be told, no action picture with Banderas and the always-working Flanagan (“Westworld,” “There Are No Saints,” “Sand Castle”) in it is a total write-off. Banderas makes every line a world-weary Spanish-accented thrill. And Flanagan breaks out his most his menacing brogue for every syllable.

“How many ye’got,” he growls to a minion? “Enough,” the minion underestimates.

It’s never enough, especially when the Big Finish features 110 pound women throwing 190-220 pound goons around, especially when one of those women Never Ever Reloads.

Stupid movie.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Jaime King, Antonio Banderas, Catherine Davis, Aleksander Vayshelboym, Kim DeLonghi and Tommy Flanagan

Credits: Directed by Jon Keeyes, scripted by Matthew Rogers. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:32

When it comes to cult films, ours is not to reason why they gain that status. Ours is but to shrug and marvel that this rare phenomenon has occurred, again, and perhaps laugh or cringe along with the cultists, which may give us all the clues we need.

“Straight to VHS” is about Uruguay’s first direct-to-video thriller. “Act of Violence in a Young Journalist” suddenly appeared on video store shelves there in 1988, and copies of it entered legend — at parties, family and friends’ New Year’s tradition, clung to by film school students much the way Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” inspired a generation of American indie filmmakers.

“Hey, I can do that,” would-be Coppolas and Kubricks said, sometimes going to far as to brag, “Hey, I can do BETTER than that.”

With “Act of Violence,” a bizarre, often inept thriller involving a radio reporter and her work, conversations and relationships, they had to be right. It has hints of “The Room” in its inane storytelling, incompetent editing and weird characters. All anyone knows about the filmmaker, Manuel Lamas, is that he’s obviously “self taught.”

“Straight to VHS” director Emilio Silva Torres sees the movie as “a punk rock call to grab a camera and film your world.”

Torres, whose own filmmaking bonafides are skimpy in the extreme, set out to find Lamas and the people who made this film. Talking with fellow filmmakers, critics and fans from all over South America, using too-few snippets of “Act of Violence” to truly give us the flavor of it, “Straight to VHS” becomes a mystery and a manhunt, as well as a search for Lamas’ other titles.

We hear from people who sold or rented him video gear, learn about the primitive high-end camcorder and video-deck-to-deck editing conditions Lamas worked under. Torres learns, through newspaper and magazine archives, of other films.

But getting people to tell him about Lamas and give away where he is proves nearly impossible. Long hunts for the stars prove almost fruitless as the survivors prove to be reluctant to be interviewed on camera. It is people on the technical side who have more to add. And with a few news clips here, some “personal VHS tapes” of Lamas there, and a couple of interviews, a portrait emerges.

Lamas was an arrogant know-it-all who knew little and wouldn’t listen to advice or accept simple gear upgrades that would have polished his productions. As to why his stars won’t talk about the experience, clues emerge from his personal tapes, which an old colleague held onto. We see him experimenting with shots and framing and scenes, and then rehearsing a sex scene.

“Selfish,” one colleague recalls, in Spanish with English subtitles. “A misogynist,” a former actor allegedly says.

“He was a sadist,” Torres, who worked in the camera and electrical department of a single documentary, diagnoses. “I get why everyone wants to forget him.”

Torres’ film has moments when it’s a fun man-hunt movie, and the footage he uncovers can be chilling, in a rambling confessional (actual footage of Lamas) or control freak “directing” a rehearsal sense.

But as each and every on-camera interview rambles on — too long — and the film itself winds and wends its way towards its quarry, a nagging feeling overwhelms the non-Lamas-cultist that Torres has never answered question one.

“Why is this guy worth hunting down, again?” There’s so little of “Act of Violence” included here, with its fuzzy video transfers and static-blur effects used to show its age, for us to form an opinion on it.

It’s not as obviously-demented and wrong-headed as “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” not kitschy/revolting like “Pink Flamingoes,” not as amusingly, instantly incompetent as “The Room.”

Torres has plenty of fellow aficionados on camera telling us that they “get it,” but not really why. And he samples so little of the actual film that we’re kind of left in the dark.

He’s made a documentary that investigates a cult filmmaker who had a big influence without unraveling that influence, a period piece that visits many a former (now empty) video store, that catches up with that VHS generation and a few hardcore fans who fling to VHS, who prowl social media pages hunting for those long lost actors. But in not showing enough telling samples of Lamas’ films, he never really lets us in on the joke.

Rating: unrated, nudity, sexual situations

Cast: Manuel Lamas, narrated by Emilio Silva Torres.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Emilio Silva Torres. An IndiePix release.

Running time: 1:17

Who doesn’t love a little gibberish from the cockpit?

July 1, Steve Carell gets upstaged…again.