Movie Nation

Here’s an Around the World with Netflix first, a rom-com about a cooking show contestant who wants to better her life by winning a TV “Cook Off.”

It’s the first feature film from Zimbabwe purchased and distributed by Netflix, and thus the rarest of peeks into life in the little-filmed country southern African country.. And if it meanders through a formula that’s seriously played-out in the West, at least it serves up from faces, fresh places and fresh foods as it does.

Tendaiishe Chitima plays Anesa, a single-mom and short-order cook. By day, she makes the best sadza in Budiroro, running a dollar stall diner for the demanding Mai Shupi. But as home, her tweenage son Tapiwa (Eugene Zimbudzi) both critiques her food, and times her cooking.

He’s putting her through her paces in daily imaginary run-throughs of her favorite TV show, “Battle of the Chefs.” If you’ve ever seen anything competitive involving Gordon Ramsay, or turned on The Food Network, you’ll recognize the format — lots of frazzled cooks, snooty judges, occasional tears.

They’re holding auditions for the next run of the series in Harare, but Anesu’s always-negative church-goer mom figures her daughter isn’t good for anything and Anesu herself wonders if her cooking isn’t anything special.

But her sassy BFF Charmaine (Charmaine Mujeri) gives her pep talks, and son Tapiwa and her supportive grandma secretly enter her in the auditions, which are for a contest with a $10,000 prize.

That good ol’Yankee greenback, good anywhere.

Anesu finds herself scrambling to whip up fancy, improvised dishes with salmon, eggs and local ingredients and hears herself called “amateurish” for the first time.

But no matter. She’s young and pretty and good enough and her “story” will make a compelling plotline. She wants to “show what single mothers are capable of,” open her own dollar sadza stall and maybe take her boy to see glorious Victoria Falls.

She’s made the cut. A fellow chef, the handsome “Prince” (groan) played by Tehn Diamond takes an interest in her. But what food show or movie rom-com would be complete without a Mean Girl villain? That would be snippy, sneering Milly Ann (Fungai Majaya).

As the story simmers through the usual contest rounds, we learn the connection between Milly Ann and Anesu’s family strife. The Mean Girl married Anesu’s baby daddy. As he’s the preacher’s son, it’s no wonder she never told her Bible-thumper Mama that.

The judges and fellow-competitors on the show are thinly sketched-in, although it’s worth noting that the white Zimbabwean JJ is played by the film’s writer-director, Tomas Brickhill.

The finished film is neither amateurish nor unpolished. The acting is tentative, but convincing enough. What gives it a New-to-Cinema veneer is the thin, obvious plot, bland lighting and tentative editing, which fails to give it much pace and exposes less-experienced actors to dead-spots at the beginning and end of takes. It’s on the level of an attempted Hallmark TV movie that didn’t quite make the cut.

The food is almost as generic and elementary as the production. Hollandaise sauce? The ingredients offered here would make your average foodie grouse. Lots of prepackaged imported supermarket salmon and the like. A bit more cooking of local dishes was called for, and even if one doesn’t have the resources of The Food Network, you’ve got to sex up and jazz up the production of the show within the movie, especially if your film seems designed to travel.

The entire affair plays like an attempt to pander to the North American market. But if we wanted to see a slick wish-fulfillment rom-com about a single mom finding success and love on a cooking show, we’d watch The Hallmark Channel and not bother traveling Around the World with Netflix.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Tendaiishe Chitima, Tehn Diamond, Tomas Brickhill, Fungai Majaya, Charmaine Mujeri and Eugene Zimbudzi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tomas Brickhill. A Netflix release.

Running time:

The longest film I ever reviewed was “La Belle Noiseuse, The Beautiful Troublemaker,” a near real-time Swiss drama about a famous painter whose creative energy returns when he meets the beautiful girlfriend of a young protege. It plays out in a painterly real-time — sketching to drawing to shaping and then painting a finished portrait.

Four hours of watching paint dry is the short review, although it was interesting — up to a point — and featured a beautiful nude in most of its scenes. It’s the movie that made me figure “Maybe the New York Film Festival isn’t my best value as traveling film critic.”

The second through tenth longest films I’ve reviewed are all Indian, starting with #2, “Lagaan,” an epic about an interminable (3:44 running time) 19th century cricket match in which the locals show those British imperialists a thing or two on the cricket grounds, a blow struck for equality 70 or so years before Gandhi and his movement achieved it.

I say that as a preamble to reviewing “RRR,” the popular and gonzo Indian action pic that Netflix has unleashed upon the world. It’s over three hours long, which in itself is no criticism, as that’s a hallmark of Indian cinema in general and films with Bollywood touches (song and dance numbers, including one sung mid-public-flogging) in particular.

Inside or outside of the culture, the excesses are part of the fun, and writer-director S.S. Rajamouli pulls out all the stops on this pipe organ opera of revenge, revolution and ridding India of its racist imperialist oppressors (the Brits).

Wirework stunts, big explosions, scenes stuffed with a sea of extras, “bullet-time” effects adding to the over-the-top feel of the piece, topped by a menagerie of Indian animals CGI’d into the frame.

That’s all in service of a tale of kidnapping and murder, rescue and revenge in the 1920s Raj. It’s a classic quest, with two competing super-cut/supermen, played by N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan, brawling and teaming up, enduring horrors and serving justice to scores upon scores of scornful Brits and their armed and uniformed Indian underlings.

The hook? The two unkillable fighters are from opposite sides, with only one of them realizing their competing agendas. Clever.

But the fourth “R” in this title might have been “repetitive,” as this popcorn-or-its-Indian-equivalent action picture runs out of gas an hour before it runs out of movie.

The biggest set-piece among the score or so of them here creates a climax that proves un-toppable. And yet, “RRR” persists. On and on it goes, giving us backstory, making us think this combatant or that one is dead when they aren’t, finding new ways to slaughter His Majesty’s hapless pith-helmeted minions, all of it to free a stolen child (Twinkle Sharma) and avenge earlier deaths.

All of this fictional mayhem is somewhat pointless, except as “wish fulfillment fantasy,” as we know how India really won its independence and became a non-violent revolution example to the world. Gandhi’s ashes must be rolling over in his Ganges grave (one of several places his remains were scattered).

Malli (Sharma), a child of the Gond people, enchants some imperious Brits with her singing and henna tattooing during an official visit. The wife (Alison Doody, imagine the tough time she had in school) purrs to her governor/husband (Ray Stevenson) that she wants to have this little girl “on our mantel piece.”

Coins are dropped, a language barrier exploited, and next thing we know, the child is stuffed into a car, the frantic mother murdered when she protests and one of the kid’s “brothers,” Bheem (Rao) is tracking her, plotting her escape and an apt punishment for the governor who stole her.

It is a time of unrest, one of many in India during its long occupation, and a riot has broken out near an Army post. One agitator, clad in red, seems responsible for an escalation. Only one soldier, Ram (Ram Charan) has the guts to vault the fence, leap into the crowd and literally pummel his way to the man and thrash his way through the teeming thousands to take him into custody.

It’s not overstating the case to say that director Rajamouli — he did the “Baahubali” films — stages one of the epic fights in cinema history with this scene. You think Ram is overwhelmed, think he’s down and maybe even dead, time and again, and up he pops, Superman with a stick, clubbing his way to safety, his man in custody.

But racism means you can’t acknowledge real history, or the deeds of an “inferior” race come promotion time. Ram is passed-over. Given another chance at advancement, he takes on the next job, infiltrating resistance ranks (his mustache transforms into a beard), identifying and arresting this Gond man (Bheem, who disguises himself as Muslim) who is supposedly “hunting” the governor in search of “the missing lamb,” his sister.

Another set piece lays out just how tough that mission will be. Bheem serves as bait, first for a wolf, then for the tiger he and his brothers trap for sale to get them closer to their real quarry, the governor who stole their sister. Bheem outmuscles the (digital) tiger, because he’s Superman in a loincloth.

A random accident brings the hunter and the hunter-of-the-hunter together. A child is endangered by a train crash, and all it takes is a distant wave between supermen for them to team up on a crazy, Bugs Bunny Physics blazing river rescue.

There are chortles and laughs at the sheer excess of it all, the nutty combinations of stunts, wirework effects and digital touch-ups that make this or that brawl/chase/escape/shoot-out bigger than most anything you’ve seen before.

And there are unintended snickers at the overtly homoerotic (to Western eyes) bond between these two Bollywood beefcakes, grinning and romping through a dance-off with some smartarsed “wanker” Brit who thinks “brown rubbish” can’t dance. A lesson must be taught.

And that sympathetic Englishwoman (Olivia Morris) whose attention might make their hunt for the child easier? Let’s stalk her, sabotage her motorcar and see where that takes us.

It’s all in good, violent fun until it gets to be too much and you realize they’re never going to top their big two-hour-mark throwdown.

That’s when you start to notice that all the dialogue sounds looped and a lot of what we’re seeing is just a reprise of what we’ve seen before, and much of the narrative is just folding back into what we already know or that we don’t need to know as the characters seem perfectly well motivated already.

The performances are good to passable, with the Brits reduced to harrumping stereotypes and the Indians righteous or just misguided or perhaps biding their time.

But it’s the brawls that sell “RRR.” And it’s only when they start to repeat themselves that you realize it’s time to check out, because really, enough is enough.

Rating: TV-MA, a bloody lot of bloody violence

Cast: N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Ram Charan, Alia Bhatt, Ray Stevenson,
Alison Doody, Olivia Morris and Twinkle Sharma

Credits: Scripted and directed by S.S. Rajamouli. A Netflix release.

Running time: 3:07

Jurassic World Dominion” pulled in almost $59 million on its second weekend, a 60% decline from its opening. That’s an average drop off, nothing to celebrate but no reason to mourn either.

It has pulled in over $622 million worldwide since opening.

Disney’s Pixar numbers were pretty slow coming in after Universal made its “Jurassic” reporting public this AM. It wasn’t going to be good news.

“Lightyear” underperformed, not even coming close to “Toy Story 4” numbers. A weak Thursday night led into a so so Friday and that produced a $51 million opening weekend.

That’d be great for anybody but Pixar. This was a mistake from the get go — joyless script, no jokes, no Tim Allen. Whoops.

“Top Gun: Maverick” is holding audience and rising up the blockbuster ranks, adding a whopping $44 million this weekend.

“Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” is one of the year’s biggest hits, but now it’s just more roadkill on the “Top Gun” highway. It managed another $4 million this weekend. “Top Gun” lapped it this past week.

“Bob’s Burgers” earned another $1 million, a decent take for a cult hit TV show adaptation.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is finally winding down, having lost screens all along the way. The biggest hit ever for A24 fell short of a million this weekend, just short, and cleared the $65 million mark.

“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” added another $228k, but is finishing short of the $200 million mark, just over $190.

The Bad Guys added another $1 million, just short of it actually. It will finish its run short of the $100 million mark.

“Crimes of the Future” turned out to be a misguidedly hyped bomb, barely clearing the $2.3 million mark thanks to its last $100k+ weekend.

The twee “Brian and Charles” didn’t bust out, just a $198k or so take.

IFC’s Cannes “art film” lampoon, Official Competition,” did very well on just a couple of screens. It will expand in the next few weeks giving more folks the chance to take in Penelope and Antonio’s pandemic movie making satire.

Figures courtesy of Exhibitor Relations and Box Office Pro.

Michael J. Fox had a nice, decade-long run as an “It” star in Hollywood, the Canadian-next-door leading man who got first dibs on a lot of prestige projects.

That wasn’t just due to his TV fame, the sitcom stardom brought by “Family Ties.” His stepping into “Back to the Future” saved the movie, created a franchise, made Universal rich and him one of the most bankable stars of his era.

He took his shot at a Vietnam drama (“Casualties of War”), coming of age as an upper class addict (“Bright Lights, Big City”), an aspiring rocker whose sister (Joan Jett) has her eyes on the prize (“Light of Day”) and comedies and rom-coms of every variety.

But the most endearing and perhaps most enduring of those was the most easygoing. It’s the movie that best let us see how the with-it TV actor always compensated for his lack of height by bouncing along on the balls of his feet, even when he was walking a pig.

“Doc Hollywood” (1991) took a corny and geographically indefensible premise — young surgeon leaves his DC residency for a prestigious LA plastic surgery clinic, and gets waylaid far off the interstate in rural Grady, South Carolina (never understood this pre-Waze navigation) — and threw a LOT of talent at it.

And the result seems literally effortless, with every single bite of low-hanging fruit delivering a grin.

Director Michael Caton-Jones broke out with the British sex-and-spies-and-politics drama “Scandal,” and was fresh off the sentimental World War II aerial combat thriller “Memphis Belle.” Why anybody thought he was right for a “Mayberry” throwback comedy in an idealized Sleepy Time Down South After Integration romantic comedy is its own story.

But the problem-solving exercise the project presented also serves up an Old School Hollywood solution. Upend stereotypical expectations. And employ every comical character actor and bit player you can get your hands on, the older the better.

Fox’s Dr. Ben Stone’s wrecks his vintage Porsche in the middle of BFE, S.C. But the African American garage owner (Mel Winkler, adorable) has got the hook-up on parts. This newfangled inventory aid called the Internet, y’see.

There’s small town chicanery afoot as the stern, self-serving judge (Roberts Blossom, whose credits went back decades and decades) sentences the doc to public service, filling in for their aged curmudgeon small-town sawbones (Barnard Hughes, who’d played a version of this character in a sitcom in the ’70s). The drawling, oozing southern charm mayor (David Ogden Stiers) makes his pitch, the first of many, for Ben Stone sticking around “The Squash Capital of the South.”

The cute single-mom ambulance driver (Julie Warner) isn’t interested in giving him a reason to stay. The entitled local doofus (Woody Harrelson, hilarious in every scene) labels him “Doc Hollywood” and can’t wait for him to breeze on out of there, and the cranky old doctor’s crankier old nurse (Eyde Byrd, a stitch) isn’t that impressed with him either.

But Southern fried socialite Nancy Lee, vamped up by Bridget Fonda, who started her own run of star vehicles right after this yummy turn, is all over the doctor with the Hollywood dream.

Still, it’s the sassy, hard-nosed ambulance driver who turns Doc’s head, and the sparks set off are screwball comedy classic in style, modern in tone.

“I suspect that your version of romance is whatever will separate me from my panties.”

“No, I am just talking about dinner. Wear make-up, put on a dress. Panties are optional.”

Warner wasn’t just the right height to pair her up with Fox (Fonda also had that advantage). She had a touch of “spitfire” about her that shows up in her work, even today.

With the screen packed with “characters,” as if the film was a sitcom pilot trying to introduce everybody (Frances Sternhagen leads a cadre of familiar-faced townsfolk) in the coming series, the script was engineered to give everybody a funny moment.

Doc finds himself “paid” for his services by a family’s “pet” pig. But he needs cash to pay Melvin the mechanic to get the car fixed.

 “You want to trade, the pig for the part?”

“If you can part with the pig.”

Sure, there’s pop music on the soundtrack, Patsy Cline singing Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” for a slow dance. But the sight gags are lightly underscored with the jovial wedding music from Prokofiev’s “Lt. Kije Suite,” used in literally dozens of comedies, from Alec Guinness to Woody Allen.

Yet the picture’s engaging, ongoing appeal rests squarely on the shoulders of Fox as straight man. He is personable, even at his big city snobbiest. The exasperating moments of his dilemma — played for broad laughs — just sort of roll off the character who’s maybe lost-his-s–t more than his share of times already. We see the people and the place working on Ben Stone in all the most formulaic and familiar ways. He sees it, too, and damned if he knows what to do about it.

Take the pig for a walk, I suppose.

Fox was headed back to TV shortly after this film outing, and five Emmys suggest that was always his first, best destiny. I recall driving down to Atlanta to interview him shortly before “Doc Hollywood” came out, getting up to leave, and stopping in the door on the way out, overcome by the “Hey, you’re done for the day, wanna grab a beer?” impulse. That’s never happened to me, before or since. That’s TV for you. The “stars” start to seem like people you know, just because of that boob tube’s intimacy.

The film’s giggles carry on right up to the picture’s finale. A perfectly-cast shallow LA aesthetic surgeon cameo, then Harrelson, in an over-the-top bit part, nailing “Cheers” star Ted Danson with one last one-liner, and love and squash triumphing in the end.

It may have been lightly regarded when it came out, but I think you can make the case that “Doc Hollywood,” a throwback comedy even then, stands the test of time better than most any rom-com of its era. And for all the Marty McFly love that’s clung to Michael J. Fox over the decades, this might have been his best outing, the epitome of his appeal and a movie he’ll be remembered for.

Rating: PG-13, a little racy, here and there.

Cast: Michael J. Fox, Julie Warner, David Ogden Stiers, Woody Harrelson, Eyde Byrd, Frances Sternhagen, Mel Winkler, Roberts Blossom, Barnard Hughes and George Hamilton.

Credits: Directed by Michael Caton-Jones, scripted by Laurian Leggett, Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and Daniel Pyne, based on a novel by Neil B. Shulman.

Running time: 1:44

Jamie Foxx may be an Oscar winner, and an accomplished musician, singer and stand-up, too. But he’d seem an unlikely candidate for a book on fathering.

Not Herschel Walker unlikely. But a party animal, good-time TV and movie star with two daughters by two different women unlikely.

So his book is about what he learned about staying in his kids’ lives, getting along with their mothers, a working class kid raised by his spare the rod (NOT) grandparents who tried to figure out how to not “ruin” or “spoil” his girls, who would grow up rich.

The book’s like Foxx himself, born Eric Bishop in downscale suburban Terrell, Texas. He’s a scamp and owns it, unfiltered and proud of it, and charming and self-effacing enough to pull it all off.

He charts his the ways his grandmother set him up for success — piano lessons, strict discipline, not letting him run with “no count hoodlums” or miscreants he knew, letting his granddad administer the whippings.

“My grandmother taught me that even if I wasn’t married, I had to be a gentleman and take care of mine.” The baby might be unplanned, but committing to “take care of” mother and child, support the children well into adulthood, is simply the right thing to do.

Seems like a no-brainer, but plenty of men don’t grasp it and don’t act like they’ve “got some sense” in such matters. His own, for starters. His grandparents, Estelle and Mark Talley raised him because his mother couldn’t and his father, an ex-con who did not grow paternal by joining the Nation of Islam, wouldn’t.

And he talks about his rise through the showbiz ranks, figuring out stand-up was a gift that could open doors when the piano could not.

But that’s all folded in with fathering advice, which as he points out in the book’s title, the “things My Daughters Taught Me.”

“Dad Rule No. 1, You Gotta Show Up.”

Some of these pearls are #JamieFoxx problems, a tad rich and entitled, like learning that letting your kid tag along to a party weekend in Miami or Vegas, with “Leo” and the other skirt chasers, isn’t the equivalent of spending quality time with them.

Any dad who drags the kids fishing if they don’t like it, to ballgames they’ve lost interest in or what have you might get something from that.

He tells tales about growing up in Terrell, thanks Miss Reese, the teacher who “made a deal” with the class cut-up, who’d taken to disrupting the class with routines he’d memorized from “The Tonight Show” comics. She gave him ten minutes at the end of class on Friday if he’d give her a week of peace.

The best Hollywood anecdote might be the former high school footballer’s memories of trying out for “Any Given Sunday,” getting brushed off by Oliver Stone more than once, an antic, mugging “TV sitcom comic” who got told “You’re no good” to his face.

Foxx dialed it down, got some pals to shoot a little football play-running and on-field trash talking, and Stone was won over.

The fathering stuff? Getting in the faces of boys dating his daughters and not treating them with respect, the warnings about ulterior motives of some such guys, the perils of social media exposure that enables stalkers, may have “rich guy problems” on the veneer. A boyfriend taken on a father-daughter trip to Paris who then ditches a daughter at the Louvre is gonna get some Texas style Black dad threats unprintable here.

But as Corrinne and Anelise never make the scandal sites and rarely even turn up as gossip, even though neither has gotten famous in her own right, despite some serious showbiz dabbling, you have to appreciate the results.

“Act Like You Got Some Sense, and Other Things I Taught My Daughters My Daughters Taught Me.” By Jamie Foxx. 221 pages. Grand Central Publishing. $30.

A college age daughter returns to Athens to care for her emotionally-distant, now-infirm father in “Moon, 66 Questions,” the latest teaming of writer-director Jacqueline Lentzou with her on-screen alter ego, Sofia Kokkali (“The End of Suffering”).

It’s a self-consciously-filmed soft-spoken drama about family, family responsibilities and family secrets, and truthfully a rather drab affair where the stakes are low and the emotions kept in check for the most part.

Set in the 1990s, so that we can wonder if there’s any autobiography in Lentzou’s script and so she can show off those ugly home video aspect ratios in “home movies” voiced-over to establish Artemis (Kokkali, also seen in “Digger”) has been away, that she’s not close to her father, that he’s gone through something that traumatized him and contributed to a stroke which is what brought her back and yet that doesn’t move her emotionally.

Paris (Lazaros Georgakopoulus) is going to need care and rehab, and that’s largely going to fall on Artemis — getting him about, encouraging him to try to do things for himself, engaging him in conversation and changing his diapers.

It’s the conversation that seems trickiest, but the only person Artemis complains to about her new burden is her mother (Maria Zorba), strangely absent and refusing phone entreaties to come see him and maybe help.

The movie tips the viewer that something’s up, and we spend the last 80 minutes of the film figuring out what that might be as Artemis hangs with family, frolics with old friends and overhears her grandmother and aunts and uncles interrogate home health-care workers, a “Last Supper” lineup of chain-smoking Greeks kvetching about “language barriers” when most of the people they interview are Bulgarian or Romanian.

Artemis voice-over narrates “on today’s date” snippets, “Cleopatra was born….’Catcher in the Rye’ was published” and the like. Periodically, chapters of the story are marked by a Tarot card — “Strength,” “The Magician,” etc. Cryptic? A bit. Self-conscious? Annoyingly so.

“Moon” doesn’t necessarily make sense, even if the narrative is perfectly easy to follow and just as easy to “decode,” in terms of guessing “the secret.”

Kokkali is front and center throughout, and doesn’t give us a whole lot to latch onto in her characterization. Artemis doesn’t act like a martyr, even if she seems to struggle with what she’s supposed to do to care for this man she was never all that close to.

A couple of scenes interrupt the care-giving and coeds exercising in the pool, cutting up as they act out scenes from movies for Charades or play ping-pong. Artemis gets into her father’s ancient Jeep Grand Cherokee, and after some driving difficulties, rams it into the apartment garage’s wall — hard.

It’s meant to be a cathartic moment of discovery, but all I could think was “DAMN, they didn’t fake that. How’d they get her to agree to do her own stunt in a no-airbag SUV?”

The film handles accounts of the routine in the father and daughter’s days — he’s very dependent, yet she has time for all this other stuff outside the apartment — in unconventional, non-linear ways. Time passes, nurses are questioned, meals are consumed and a not-so-big-secret is revealed that might bring father and daughter closer.

This story may be more personal to Lentzou than I’ve heard — and really, that doesn’t matter as much as what’s actually on the screen. But if so, my heart goes out to her for how dull this stretch of time was in her or her character’s life, even as my teeth grate at her need to recreate that tedium for moviegoers.

“66 Questions?” If you say so.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Sofia Kokkali, Lazaros Georgakopoulos and Maria Zorba

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jacqueline Lentzou. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:48

Creepy and atmospheric and coming to Shudder July 14.

I can name this movie in one scene.

Hey, I’m a professional. I’ve been doing this for decades. You think I can’t spot a clumsy South African “Crash” knockoff in thirty seconds or less?

“Collision” is the title of this South African variation on an Oscar winning theme. It’s a slow-footed, convoluted “coincidence” riddled take on the movie in which all of LA’s problems are laid bare thanks to a traffic pileup. So it’s not like director and co-writer Fabien Martorell was hiding his cards or anything.

South Africa’s growing pains, prejudice against “foreigners” from Nigeria and Zimbabwe are brought up. Corruption and the old (Apartheid) way of doing things are confronted. Generational schisms, a gangster lying to his mama about doing good by financing a school, a white teen rebelling about “What YOUR people did to this country” to her white father, human trafficking, protection rackets, a kid trying to make his break in the music business all are connected, and rather clumsily brought together at that one fateful intersection in the film’s opening scene.

This Around the World with Netflix film is, of course, a string of flashbacks that connect every story thread to every other one as they stumble towards that pile-up and the pistols that come out after it. That story structure can make a short movie — this one’s only 93 minutes are so plus credits — play as lumbering and slow, because we know what’s coming, and everything that keeps us from getting to that finale can feel contrived.

But here are the threads that must be stitched together, or left hanging.

Bra Sol (Vuyo Sneedon) is a gangster, collecting protection money from businesses and in debt to bigger gangsters, which is why he’s counting on a deal that this Afrikaner Johan (Langley Kirkwood) might make if he gets the Big Promotion. Johan’s under a bit of pressure.

Johan’s teen daughter (Zoey Sneedon) is acting out against her parents (Tessa Jubber plays her mom) and her white privilege by sneaking around with a handsome aspiring singer, Cecil (Siphesihle Vazi).

Palesa (Samke Makhoba) is the daughter of a shopkeeper who is being shaken down by Bra Sol, but who is taking out his frustration on “foreigners.” She’s sweet on a Nigerian cook.

Thando (Mpho Sebeng) is pals with Cecil, but too-eager to get his hands on some money by any means necessary. He’d love to do a solid for Bra Sol and get in with the gangster scene.

Not every thread is resolved in that car crash, and some seem to run straight into the brick wall of the limited imagination of the screenwriters.

Guns are a favorite “end this/resolve this” solution to lazy writers.

The picture staggers and stumbles towards its climax via board meetings and mobster threats, teen sex and club singing debuts and the like.

There’s a lot here to work through and work out, and too much is left feeling unfinished or not wholly thought through.

It’s OK to copy “Crash,” one of the most controversial Best Picture winners in recent Oscar history. That formula, strangers (or connected acquaintances) pre-dates that all-star melodrama by a century. But you’d better back-engineer your story thoroughly once you’ve borrowed a time-honored framework for a thriller.

Because it’s worked before. And when it doesn’t work for you, that’s on you, not on the folks you borrowed from.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Vuyo Dabula, Zoey Sneedon, Langley Kirkwood, Samke Makhoba, Siphesihle Vazi, Mpho Sebeng and Tessa Jubber

Credits: Directed by Fabien Martorell, script by Fabien Martorell and Sean Cameron Michael. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

It opens with the sounds of thumping and a camera tracking through a gloomy, cluttered apartment.

Our protagonist is slowly, rhythmically beating his head against a load-bearing pillar.

A radio suggests a new therapy for the viral, planet-wide outbreak of amnesia. Give up on trying to recover old memories, With clinical help, just start over, make new memories, “manage a new life.”

“Apples” is the debut feature of filmmaker Christos Nikou, who picked up experience as a second unit director for Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) but also Richard Linklaker (“Before Midnight”). There’s a hint of both in this contemplative, obscure and somewhat droll trip into identity and the screwy ways “science” tries to reestablish it, or reinvent it, in this Greek comedy.

Aris Servetalis is our hero. There’s an amnesia pandemic going on all around him, but even without it, we can see just how limited his life is. We see no friends, no relatives. A neighbor’s dog seems to be the only living thing delighted to see him.

One day, he doses off on the bus, and when the driver awakens him, he can’t answer the basics — “What’s your name? (in Greek, with English subtitles) Where do you live?”

The “system” is still functioning, and he’s taken to a hospital. That’s where we see just how little he can retain. He flunks even the most basic short term memory tests.

But the therapy program directors ( Argyris Bakirtzis and Anna Kalaitzidou) decide he’s a candidate for their little “start your life over” project.

He’s assigned an apartment, given a Polaroid camera and a cassette player. The program entails taking instructions from the cassette — going out in public, go places where you can meet people, take pictures of what you do and make a photo album.

New life? New memories.

Find a bike, “try doing a wheelie. No one forgets how to ride a bike.”

Go to the movies. As a revival of a certain “Chainsaw Massacre” picture is playing, that’s his choice. But he’s distracted by the striking stranger (Sofia Georgovassili) who shrieks and cowers behind the seats as if she can’t separate reality from the horrors seen on the screen. It’s like she’s never been to a movie before. Whatever “Aris” is experiencing, “Anna” has it bad.

It’s not until they’re outside the theater and he sees her taking a Polaroid selfie next to the movie poster, just as he’s done, that he recognizes that she’s in the same program as her. And she’s taking it even more seriously.

Thus they meet and meet up, and she drags him along to assorted fresh assignments. Does she remember how to drive? “I think so,” and they’re off. But with the radio on, he can sing along with “Sealed with a Kiss,” in English.

And we sense reluctance to get any more deeply involved with her on his part. He’s hearing “use her” instructions on his tape. No doubt she is, too. He doesn’t want to be her “assignment.”

Maybe this “new life” isn’t all that? What’s going on? Let’s just say the dog knows.

Nikou, credited as co-writer as well as director, keeps the mood quiet, sad and almost somber. But there’s a wink in here somewhere as “Apples” — which takes its name from a purchase Aris makes and the shopkeeper’s question, “Have you ever had tastier apples?” — is making a commentary on how disconnected modern life is.

The picture’s a bit dry and too quiet for my taste. The puzzle at its center is funny and intriguing, and hardly enough to drive the narrative.

The tapes instruct recipients to visit dying people in the hospital, befriend their families and even attend their funerals. That could be a comment on the basic courtesies and empathy of life that our logged-on but checked-out era is missing, although we never see or hear a cell phone.

Aris wasn’t in the best place before his amnesia. You wonder if he needed this socialization therapy — sexist and self-serving as it can be — with or without the disease.

And you know who hasn’t been isolated, changed for the worse and made lonelier by modern life? Let’s just say that sometimes he’s on his leash, and sometimes he isn’t and leave it at that.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Aris Servetalis, Sofia Georgovassili, Anna Kalaitzidou and Argyris Bakirtzis

Credits: Directed by Christos Nikou, scripted by Stavros Raptis and Christos Nikou. A Cohen Media Group release.

Running time: 1:30

It’s starting to look as if Pixar and Disney should leave “Toy Story” alone. They’ve ridden that mule to death.

A decent but underwhelming Thursday night of $5.2 million, and a $20 million Friday (including Thursday) point to a big but not epic $55 million opening weekend for “Lightyear.”

Earliest predictions pointed a lot higher. Reviews aren’t helping. Indifferent at best. “Humorless and joyless” I thought. This is underperforming the opening of “Toy Story 4.”

Considering that “Jurassic World Dominion” is on track to do $53-55 this weekend, that could point to an epic Pixar slapdown. Take away the Thursday “previews” numbers, and “Jurassic” and “Lightyear” had identical Fridays.

“Jurassic” is down 74%, Friday to Friday tho.

Sunday is Father’s Day, so we’ll see if Sat. and Sunday turn that around. But right now, it’s anybody’s weekend to take.

A $10 million Friday points to “Top Gun: Maverick,” sweeping up another $40 million this weekend. It’s blown by “Doctor Strange” and will clear the $500 million mark by late next week.

So the top three films will pull in $150 between them? Maybe the movies are back!

More will be added to this post as other figures come in.