Movie Nation

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.

“Mr. Malcolm’s List” is a droll 19th century romantic comedy of manners that aims to bridge the considerable chasm that separates Jane Austen from Shonda Rhimes’ sexed-up TV period piece “Bridgerton.”

It’s just as dressy and genteel as Austen, with the color-blind casting that Rhimes brought to Empire bustlines, lords and ladies of the manor and visits to Bath “in season.”

And though Suzanne Allain’s script, adapted from her novel, is never as witty as Jane A.’s polished prose, nor as outrageous as Rhimes’ salacious 19th century follow-up to “Scandal,” it’s charming, and shows off some wonderful actors who’ve never had the chance to play dress-up with bodices, knee britches and elbow-length gloves.

The title character, played with a haughty air by Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù (“TV’s “Gangs of London”), is one of those “20,000 a year” Austen suitors, “the biggest catch of the season” all the ladies of London gossip. All the eligible young women swoon at his dash, his carriage and Hadley Manor, which he stands to inherit. And Mr. Malcolm is making the social rounds, seeking a suitable bride.

But he’s got this checklist he’s confers, all the traits a young lady must possess for him to consider her as matrimony material.

She must be good at “conversing in a sensible fashion,” “handsome of countenance and figure,” “graceful and well-mannered,” someone who “educates herself by extensive reading.” And on it goes.

His chum, Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) wonders if he hasn’t reduced courtship to “horse shopping,” and makes sport of suggesting a “young filly, deep-chested, long legs.”

Heavens!

Cassidy’s cousin was one of those candidates, and summarily dismissed when she didn’t pass muster whilst quizzed at the opera. Julia (Zawe Ashton) failed the “What do you think of The Corn Laws?” question. Julia, we fear, may be a bit shallow and dim.

But Julia, caricatured and made a laughing stock by Malcolm’s rejection, isn’t one to take this insult and not return it. She summons her old school chum, Selina, a parson’s daughter and thus genteel without “fortune.” Selina (Freida Pinto) is beautiful, and Cassidy and Julia scheme to give this “arrogant” Malcolm fellow his “comeuppance.” Selina plays along.

They will make her the embodiment of Malcolm’s list, thrown into his path to lure him and then reject him with a list all her own. Good sport, wot?

Naturally, things go awry as wild-cards arrive — handsome cavalry Capt. Ossory (Theo James) — and affections wander and relatives come into the picture.

With a mostly-British cast, everyone here seems at home and comfortable in their roles, save for the characters meant to stand out as “not” being from “polite society.” American Ashley Park finds laughs as that familiar Austen “type,” the gauche, loud and tactless relation who could muck up the works by making the assorted peacocking popinjays raise disapproving eyebrows.

The charismatic James (from “Divergent” and the PBS Austen series “Sanditon”) rather throws a wrench into things by being the most dashing fellow in the lot, even overshadowing the “catch” himself. As he and Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are the most famous members of the cast, there’s a star power imbalance to who plays whom.

The film’s only serious shortcoming is never quite measuring up to the writer whose iconic works are being sent up. Yes, there’s a hint of “Dangerous Liaisons” here, with all the scheming, but it is plainly Austen that Allain had in her sights.

There’s an untidiness to the character arcs — SOMEbody never actually apologizes for being a snooty, sexy and filthy rich Darcy in need of redemption. Playful moments like discussing wife-hunting in the middle of a horse auction play like blown opportunities, a potential laugh missing a punchline.

There needed to be a lot more of this — Selina gossiping about how the spa town, Bath, has become “quite the destination for septuagenarians.” All the haughtiness in Herefordshire can’t help Julia hide the gaps in her education.

“I quite understand. I find foreigners very tedious, as well!”

As to the race-neutral casting, it’s never an obstacle to the viewer connecting with the story, but it’s still something of a gimmick, at least for now. Malcolm makes only one offhand reference to his “people” and their African origins, but every character has parents who don’t require “explaining.”

Altering the way one casts Austen or Dickens corrects a genuine “erasing” of people of color from history, not just fiction. The true ground-breaking film in this vein is 2013’s glorious “Belle,” with Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing a real figure from the era, raised by a judge who helped to end the British slave trade, no less.

There’s nothing remotely that serious here, which was never the aim. And what is here –a good if not “all star” cast, colorful characters, the settings and the story — has charm enough to get by even if no one will ever confuse “Mr. Malcolm’s List” for “Sense & Sensibility.”

Rating: PG

Cast: Freida Pinto, Zawe Ashton, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ashley Park and Theo James

Credits: Directed by Emma Holly Jones, scripted Suzanne Allain, based on her novel. A Bleecker St. release.

Running time: 1:56

A few words of praise for an under-appreciated corner of the cinema are in order when talking about “The Black Phone.” Because if there’s anything that “The Quiet Place” taught us, it’s that sound, and the lack of it, is a key component of horror. And D. Chris Smith’s sound design for this Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange,” “”Sinister”) film is perfection itself.

The music is sparing, the best sound effect the simple land-line static of the movie’s titular gimmick, crackling that continues as we see who that disembodied (special effect) voice belongs to.

But the silences — the speech of warning and perhaps comfort that a principal gives her school but which no one hears, the long pauses our villain takes to let the aural void sink in — are epic. There are stretches in this movie, which I saw in a crowded preview last night, where you literally could hear a pin drop. The silence on the soundtrack is breathless, the held breaths of the audience deafening.

And then there’s the sound of the voice of Ethan Hawke, cast as “The Grabber,” the man who kidnaps children in this corner of North Denver (actually N.C.) in the late 1970s. Hawke’s speech has two timbres — the light, sensitive and soulful tones of his poetic and romantic roles, and a guttural growl he summons up when he goes dark.

The story, another mash-up from Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill, might generously be called another homage to his father. The balloons are black, the masked villain isn’t actually a clown in this “It” meets “The Shining.” And father and son’s “Twilight Zone” (“Long Distance Call”) obsessions are evident. too.

The best “chip off the old block” mimicry is channeling the master’s fondness for the bitter, sometimes violent sweetness of childhood, as this story is about sibling devotion in an abusive household, the loss of a valued friend and childish initiative, taken when the adults can’t see the threat or are the threat themselves.

King mostly romanticized the “Stand By Me” early ’60s. “Secret Phone” taps into the “Free Ride” ’70s.

All of these components mesh nicely in Derrickson’s affecting and frightening film, a story not of innocence lost, but of surviving when there was never any real innocence to begin with.

Somebody is grabbing kids in suburban Denver. It’s the pre-Internet/pre-milk carton era, and cops have few clues while children are scared to even mention the nickname the police have given the person making children disappear — The Grabber.

That’s hanging over young Finney (Mason Thames of “For All Mankind”) and his tougher-minded sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw of Disney TV’s “Secrets of Sulphur Springs”). And it’s not like childhood is all that rosy for them as it is.

Their widowed dad (Jeremy Davies) drinks and uses his belt. Finney may be a pretty good Little League pitcher, but he’s bullied. Being told “Someday, you’re gonna have to stand up for yourself” by a friend (Miguel Cazarez Mora) is cold comfort.

Mouthy Gwen is entirely too unfiltered and foul-mouthed around the grownups to have an easy time of it.

And then the tall, muscular classmate Finney gave up a home run to vanishes. He’s just the latest and he won’t be the last.

The snatchings may be cliches — a black van, a magic act suggested by a logo, “Abracadabra” written on its side. But they’re sudden and horrific, a swirl of black balloons and a boy disappears, gone forever.

This is Finney’s fate. And once he’s trapped in a dungeon by a man in a Satanic mask, assuring him “I’m not going to hurt you again,” the kid has to realize that the police won’t save him, his little sister’s “dreams” didn’t prevent this and it’ll be up to him to work the problem, maybe with the help of whatever is on the other end of that “disconnected” old phone on the wall, the one that keeps ringing, the voices that keep warning, encouraging and trying to save another boy from their fate.

Derrickson, returning to the genre that gave him his break (“The Exorcism of Emily Rose”), pins us in our seats with that first jolt of savagery, a brutal and bloody no holds-barred fight between two tweens. And then he repeats it.

Gwen is sassy and brave and more confident than her big brother, who can’t even protect her from their dad’s beatings when she lets slip that she has “dreams” and that “sometimes, they come true.” That gets the attention of desperate police, who’re sure she “heard” the crime scene details that she describes from somebody else, somebody who knows something.

Her foul mouthed insistence that she didn’t covers for the fact that she prays, profanely, to Jesus for these dreams, more fervantly after her brother disappears.

The kids are great, if a tad broadly drawn, more mature than they should be (another King trait), sentimental and sometimes resigned to their fate despite their hopes to get this cute classmate to notice or that adult to take them seriously.

Hawke is so menacing and evil in these masks and in this guise that he’s sure to haunt a few childhoods of kids whose parents ignore the R rating of “The Black Phone.” But as the movie points out, protecting your children from screen violence is no guarantee you’re not a bad parent yourself.

As with most films in the genre, a certain inevitability is built into the story’s tropes, and that contributes to the dread that hangs over the good ones. We’ve been shown how violent kids can be with each other and parents can be to their children. We don’t know what Hill and Derrickson might have in store for our victim, just that what they’re capable of.

And for all the breathless sound and fury of the clock-ticking-down climax, it’s the sound of “The Black Phone” that sticks with you and creeps you out, because you know that sometimes silence is just as menacing.

Rating: R for violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, E. Roger Mitchell and Ethan Hawke.

Credits: Directed by Scott Derrickson, scripted by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, based on a short story by Joe Hill. A Universal/BlumHouse release.

Running time: 1:42

I mean, considering all the movies he’s smoked in, you’d think he’d look like that Gibson fella. Or, you know, a well used catcher’s mitt.

Quentin Tarantino has mentioned the down-and-dirty Outback thriller “Fair Game” as one of his inspirations for his “Grindhouse” segment, “Death Proof.” With cinemas starved for content, why not pull this woman-hunted-by-bogans (Aussie for “redneck goons”) out of cold storage for a little visceral vengeance?

Mind you, Tarantino improved on just about everything about “Fair Game” for “Death Proof.” He had Kurt Russell as his pitiless thrill-killer, real stuntwoman Zoe Bell along with Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson playing the “victims,” as in “Guess he picked the wrong broads to mess with.”

He focused on the cars, the antagonists and the nearly relentless terror and suspense of the chase.

There’s a little of that in “Fair Game,” which is about a trio of strangers, kangaroo bounty killers who torment, threaten, chase and torment a woman (Cassandra Delaney) who runs a remote, run-down wildlife sanctuary.

Within the first half hour, tough-enough Jess (Delaney) is being stalked through the waterless Outback by Sunny, Ringo and Sparks (Peter Ford, David Sandford and Garry Who). This comes 15 minutes after they’ve used their big Ute (a modified Ford F-150 of the day) to run her tiny ancient Falcon Ranchero off the road.

Telling the local law (Don Barker) about that led nowhere. “Ha’dly what I’d call a hangin’ offense!” And what happens when people with badges don’t do their jobs? Bad guys are emboldened.

Next thing she knows, Jess is running, riding or hiding for her life. She’s slow on the uptake. Her Australian shepherd Kyla — Do they just call them “Shepherds” Down Under? — figures it out before she does.

These brutes kill her sheep, sneak into her house at night with their Polaroid and photograph her sleeping…in the buff, because, you know, it’s hot.

What’s maddening about the movie is the way the script has somebody hard enough to live in the Outback (her “man” is away) respond — or FAIL to respond — to a clear and present and REPEATED danger.

They come damn near to killing or hurting her, time and again. And she still runs home, or confronts these heavily-armed marauders unarmed and shouts “Leave me ALONE!” as if she thinks that’ll work.

“Don’t think you can scare ME with your sick, pointless game!”

Even after she’s recognized her peril, she repeatedly gets the drop on bad guys and fails to drop the hammer. So naturally they take things up a notch, time and again. And God forbid she actually fight back, because all of a sudden all their sniggering previous thuggery is forgotten and they deserve to “even the score a bit,” classic redneck grievance signaling.

The action is brisk and brutal, the scripted “problem solving” not the worst I’ve seen in such movies. Jess has to use what she’s got on hand as they steadily demolish her ranch and kill the wildlife she’s been trying to save, and some of the “traps” she sets are plausible and interesting, perhaps most interesting when they don’t work.

I mean, only in the movies is Rambo sitting in the very tree above the cop he wants to drop down and clobber from, only in “Home Alone” does an elaborate booby-trap trap the boobies the first time.

I can’t really endorse “Fair Game.” But there’s enough good stuff in it — “Mad Max/Road Warrior” mimicking stunts, etc — that you can see what QT saw in it and why he figured he could “improve” on a good idea whose execution wasn’t all it might have been.

Check it out at a Grindhouse (July 8) near you.

Rating: R, violence, nudity

Cast: Cassandra Delaney, Peter Ford, David Sandford, Garry Who and Don Barker.

Credits: Directed by Mario Andreacchio, scripted by Rob George. A Dark Star release, in theaters and on demand.

Running time: 1:25

The director of “Sinister” and the first “Doctor Strange” movie is behind the camera for this. Looks a bit like “It” and a lot of “Call from the Other Side” thrillers.

Opens Friday.

A young gymnast focused on getting to the Olympics faces the serious and deadly-personal distractions of unrest in her native Ukraine in “Olga,” an intimate and moving drama starring real-life Ukrainian gymnast Anastasiia Budiashkina.

The first feature film from Swiss director and co-writer Elie Grappe takes us inside a sport and into a historical flashpoint — Ukraine’s 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” — for a gripping story at the intersection of sports and politics.

Olga is having enough pulling off her Jaeger release on the uneven bars, when her country’s turmoil and her mother’s place in it become a life-and-death “distraction.”

She’s a muscular, hyper-focused Kyiv teen prepping for the European championships, self-involved and resentful for her widowed mother’s inattention when it comes to her passion. But Mom (Tanya Mikhina) has her own all-consuming life’s work. She’s a journalist covering a corrupt, Russian-backed regime in a country on the precipice. It’s 2013, and Mom’s work gets her attention, some of it unwanted.

She and Olga are rammed with murderous intent on their drive home from gymnastics practice and Olga is cut up in the crash.

Months later, she’s having to adjust to an abrupt change in her life. She’s in Switzerland, a part of a team there, trading on her late father’s Swiss citizenship and leaning on his family for a place to stay as her mother’s gotten her out of the danger zone.

Olga speaks a little French, which doesn’t mean her unfriendlier teammates can’t get away with a little smack talk in German or Italian in trilingual Switzerland.

She’s stubborn, ignoring direct instructions to stop trying to master that Jaeger by her new coach, ignoring his “No practice alone” edict, neglecting her studies. She misses her friends, isn’t all that welcome in her grandfather’s house, and then Ukraine bursts into violence. Not only does she have to rethink her application for Swiss citizenship. She adds “guilt” to the swirl of emotions she’s got to tamp down to make it in the sport that has dominated her life thus far.

Grappe and co-writer Raphaëlle Desplechin narrow the frame of the film, concentrating only on Olga, her trials and her reactions to every bit of Internet bad news from home. Her best friend Sasha (Sabrina Rubtsova) had been Facetiming her accounts of what’s going on with the old team. Now, she’s all about Maidan Square, ground zero for the uprising, and what life is like on “the barricades,” questioning Olga’s priorities and patriotism.

Olga is rattled, lashing out at her mother who keeps cutting her off as she puts herself in danger to cover the huge and violent story that is exploding around her. And her new teammates aren’t all fans. Things are sure to come to a head in that locker room, sooner than later.

Casting Budiashkina pays dividends all around as she shows us a poker-faced competitor with a vulnerable side. She’s utterly credible on the uneven bars and other gymnastics competition categories. A lot of screen time is spent establishing her personality on the bars, refusal to give up on something difficult, sucking it up when it counts, in or out of the gym.

It’s a near perfect performance in an intensely myopic movie, a film that narrows our focus to what matters much as it does Olga’s, and lets its protagonist and star surprise us more than once along the way.

Rating: unrated, violence, teen smoking, profanity

Cast: Anastasiia Budiashkina, Tanya Mikhina, Sabrina Rubtsova, Théa Brogli and Caterina Barloggio.

Credits: Directed by Elie Grappe, scripted by Raphaëlle Desplechin and Elie Grappe. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:25