Movie Nation

The repeated Russian invasions of Ukraine have resulted in several notable films that have looked at this “situation” through sad, angry and even ironic eyes. And many of them have been acquired by Film Movement so that we can see them all in one place.

In “Reflection,” a Ukrainian surgeon, his daughter, ex-wife and the ex’s new husband cope with the last Russian assault on the Black Sea state, back in 2014. Writer-director Valentyn Vasyanovych (“Atlantis,” “Black Level”) uses irony, horror and a sober-minded, unspoken acceptance of “this is the way our lives are now” to tell a quiet, harrowing story of one extended family’s experiences of the war.

Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi) brings a present and flowers to a birthday outing for his tween daughter Polina (Nika Myslytska). She bubbles with delight as her father, mother (Nadiya Levchenko) and step-father (Andriy Rymaruk) watch her her suit-up, and then join in the mayhem of a short and splattered paint gun battle.

There’s an observation window for adults to watch the action. Polina, not really reading the room, takes her hit and feigns real injury and death to her mother’s “Not funny at all” scolding. Serhiy is a surgeon dealing with wounded the military hospitals cannot handle. Andriy, the step-dad, is a commando about to go back into the field. And Mom is worried sick about all of this.

The child parrots what the stepfather’s said about “If somebody doesn’t go” (in Ukrainian with subtitles) the war will “come home to us” to her father. Perhaps that unjustly shames Serhiy, because when next we see him, surgeon is in an army ambulance, lost on the unmarked snowy backroads with a comrade st the wheel and wounded men in the truck with them.

One wrong checkpoint later, everybody else is dead and Serhiy meets the Russian (Ighor Shulha) who runs the prison where he’s to be kept. The warden seems interested in the fact that he’s a doctor and curious about whether he was conscripted “or volunteered.”

“Check him,” the mild-mannered sadist quietly orders, and just like that, Serhiy is tortured. His life then becomes a series of interrogations where he’s the doctor relied on to tell the torturers if their victim has passed out, or is dead.

The direct horrors end for Serhiy and he struggles to adjust to a return to “life,” where jogging can get you attacked by now ownerless roaming packs of wild dogs and his ex-wife and daughter are wondering if Andriy will come back.

“Reflection” is shot in shades of overcast gray or pools of light in nighttime gloom.

Vasyanovych is a stylish filmmaker of few words and long, deliberate takes. The ride in the ambulance, climaxing with a shooting and a wreck and Serhiy’s jogging encounters with crazed canines are “action” sequences here. The torture scenes — like everything else, lit, staged and blocked in the center of the frame and acted out without a lot of editing — are drawn out enough to make one grimace and squirm.

A giant garage door at the facility slowly opens, and a big truck with “Humanitarian Aid from the Russian Federation” backs in. It’s actually one of Putin’s “cover up our casualties, cover up our crimes” rolling crematoria.

A bird flies into Serhiy’s apartment window, leaving a grim outline on it that haunts Polina, because here’s a tragedy that is directly in front of her, one she can relate to.

The acting is buttoned-down, for the most part, even the interrogation scenes. There’s little bravado and nothing like sadistic glee from “villains” who know what they are.

The Russians here are insensate brutes, “following orders” or not, monsters doing what they’ve done for a hundred years of state-sponsored terror and oppression.

And the scars they leave behind are glimpsed every day, in every “reflection” of life being lived by those traumatized survivors they leave behind.

The old saying that times of great stress and trauma produce great art is being proven with understated minor masterpieces from Ukraine like “Dombass,” “Bad Roads” and “Reflection.” Here’s wishing they didn’t have to endure that, and hoping that they can get back to the business of making Eastern European sitcoms again, and soon.

Rating: Unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Roman Lutskyi, Nika Myslytska, Nadiya Levchenko, Andriy Rymaruk and Ighor Shulha.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 2:05

The striking scenery of Mauritius is the chief selling point of “Honeymoon With My Mother,” a downbeat romantic comedy that tends toward dull.

It’s as if the film’s frothy opening — a wedding interrupted by a romantic who hurtles into the ceremony in his vintage Ford Capri, sweeping away the bride as Pat Benatar’s “We Belong Together” blasts out of his radio and the soundtrack — leaves not just the groom at the altar, but the viewer as well.

The movies and TV show this sort of thing all the time, but can you imagine the hurt, shock and shame of that? “Honeymoon” invites us to, and it parks the entire overlong rom-com under a cloud.

Jose Luis (Quim Gutiérrez) is left holding the bag — an expensive ceremony that empties out, leaving just him and a couple of family members forced to cope with all this catered food and a band that won’t stop playing and a priest who reminds him (in Spanish with English subtitles) “I still have to charge you.”

Yes, the bride ran off with the rehearsal dinner DJ. And then there’s this honeymoon she insisted on, resisting Jose Luis’s pleas for a more reasonable “fjords” cruise. It’s “the best resort in Mauritius,” and as much as his mother Mari Carmen (Carmen Machi) argues for a refund, the travel agent is no more understanding that the priest.

Nothing for it but for him to go, and for her to travel as his “wife” on a jetliner filled with other honeymooners, most of whom look like the woman who just dumped him.

As the script abandons the ex and the DJ as plot points, you might wonder how the hell they got 110 minutes of movie out of Jose Luis moping, bickering with mom and slowly coming back to life — with a cute “adventure tour” guide (Justina Bustos) as motivation? I’ve already watched “Honeymoon with My Mom” — titled “Amor de madre” in Spain — and I’m still wondering.

The snarky, jump-to-conclusions desk clerk (Yolanda Ramos) tries to wring a few laughs out of the odd couple, who don’t do a good job of pretending to be what they’re not. Dominique Guillo plays a lounge lizard who takes a shine to Mom, who’s in a marriage to a self-absorbed dullard (Juanjo Cucalón), aka Jose Luis’s dad.

Drinking game scenes, getting “lost” and extorted at the wrong rum bar, an arrest and a stumbling flirtation with the out-of-his-league blonde tour guide, with virtually no scene feeling like the “lift” this thing needed, don’t end up providing any relief from the tedium of it all.

But, you know, the scenery’s nice.

Rating: TV-14, lots of drinking, pot smoking, some profanity

Cast: Carmen Machi, Quim Gutiérrez, Justina Bustos, Dominique Guillo, Juanjo Cucalón and Yolanda Ramos.

Credits: Directed by Paco Caballero, scripted by Cristobal Garrido, Adolfo Valor. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

Is it about some sort of cream-of-the-crop kush altering this actor’s life, or his REALITY?

Hard to tell. But it doth look funny.

“The Polka King” is one of those titles you scroll by because you’re sure you’ve seen it, even if you haven’t.

It stars Jack Black as a loveable, generous but criminal con artist, a real person who used other people’s money to “make music, bring joy.” Change the accent from Polish to Texas and drop the polka band and it’s a lot like “Bernie,” without the whole murder and cover-up thing.

There was a well-traveled documentary based on the guy, Jan Lewan. And the trailer to this movie tells so much of the story and its colorful characters it can make you think you caught this comedy when Netflix unleashed it back in 2018.

Well, that’s my excuse anyway. I was as shocked as anybody that I hadn’t gotten around to it.

Black, co-stars Jenny Slate, Jason Schwartzman and a seriously wound-up Jacki Weaver make this guy worth rooting for even if the can’t-miss movie does miss, here and there, as it covers some fairly predictable ground. It bubbles to life even as it is never quite achieving liftoff.

The story dates from 1990s Pennsylvania, with Polish Jan (Black), ex-beauty queen American wife Marla (Slate) and Jan’s first original musical collaborator Mickey (Schwartzman) telling their back story to one of the legions of little old ladies and gents who packed Elk Lodges and Sons of Poland halls all over blue collar America to hear The Polka King and his band.

Jan is the biggest cheerleader for the “land of opportunity,” where “nothing happen without you believe!”

Jan believes. But pragmatic Mickey hears from his fixed-income/tightwad elderly relatives the crux of the band’s problem. Their trapped-in-time audience won’t pay for a ticket that will cover their expenses.

“Band too big,” “booking fees, too small.”

They can sell merchandise at shows and Jan can peddle Polish nostalgia at a strip mall gift shop that Marla runs. But Jan is delivering pizzas to and the like to make ends meet. And his increasingly shrill mother-in-law (Weaver) is barking “get realistic, get a stable job.”

Jan figures his “25 year plan” to “build empire” doesn’t allow for that kind of concession, and Marla is in his thrall and can’t see “writing on wall.”

But a solution might be to get their fans to “invest” in Jan, the band and his “empire.” He offers “promissory notes” to such backers, promising a whopping 12 percent return. He gets enough backers that he’s able to pay the band, beef up the show and deliver spectacular entertainment at senior citizen’s prices.

He’s delusional, of course, buying air time for DIY TV commercials, setting up his own polka record label and dreaming of the day “we get TV show, like ‘Sonny & Cher.'”

Of course it all depends on friends getting other friends to invest. It’s a Ponzi scheme, something pointed out to Jan by the Pennsylvania SEC investigator (JB Smoove) assigned to his case.

“No worry, I stop. I no know!” is all it takes for Jan to reboot the enterprise, to add “Jan Lewan Tours of Europe” and a pierogi shop to his portfolio.

“In Poland, everybody do bribes,” he queries the SEC guy. “You do bribes?”

No, he doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean Jan won’t resort to that to pave the way for getting rich and famous, making others dreams come true and getting his tour group “audience with the (then Polish) Pope.”

“Polka King” is a movie with the occasional giddy high — that “Pope” moment — a few predictably touchy and even more predictably touching scenes, and a lot of pleasantly goofy polka music by this America-loving, gregarious and generous goof who just wants to take care of people — his family, his fans, and his employees.

Schwartzman underplays his voice-of-practicality partner in crime — who is actually in the dark on these chained and padlocked filing cabinets and Jan’s mysterious “books.” Slate’s Marla is equally delusional, craving identity and generally more passive and less interesting than you’d figure a role written for Jenny Slate would be.

But Weaver, as the “I always KNEW something was up” raging, mistrusting mother-in-law, brings the heat and the laughs to her testy turn.

It’s Black’s movie, and his polished stage-mugging is used to great effect, just as his general likability will have you rooting for this not-quite-victimless-crime and the open-hearted, if devious, criminal behind it.

How Jan kept all those “investors” happy has to be one of the great books-juggling acts this side of Bernie Madoff. His secret, as Black suggests in every scene, might have been his charm.

You meet Jan Lewan and you ask him, “Is it pronounced ‘Yan’ or ‘JAN?'”

“Whichever you want,” he replies. And when you insist, he insists. He’s that eager to please, to fit in, to “be just like you.”

The film’s striving immigrant subtext kind of overwhelms the knowledge that somewhere down the line, a lot of people are going bust over this guy’s hustle. When Black’s Jan says he’s doing it because “I play the polka music for the smiles,” you believe it because he believes it.

And even when shoe drops and the music’s over, you can’t help but root for the lovable, grammar-mangling, old-lady-fleecing mug.

Rating: TV-14

Cast: Jack Black, Jenny Slate, Jacki Weaver, Jason Schwartzman, Vanessa Bayer and JB Smoove.

Credits: Directed by Maya Forbes, scripted by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Check out the look, tone music and graphics to the “true story” about an entrepreneur who cleaned up an oil spill and created a place at the table for himself and all who followed.

June 10, we’ll see if the movie measures up to this inspired, witty trailer.

The concept of “public intellectual” never enjoyed the status in the United States that it’s long had elsewhere. We can label a Noam Chomsky, Betty Friedan or Henry Louis Gates as such, but even they’re not venerated the way a David Suzuki has been in Canada or Richard Dawkins is in Britain.

France, of course, flatters itself on making genuine celebrities out of such figures. Bernard-Henri Lévy has been so famous for so long — a near constant presence in French media, public affairs and life — that he’s referred to just by his initials — BHL.

He’s not just an academic, not just a specialist in one field. BHL is a citizen of the world of ideas and in France, often serves as the conscience of the country, a figure who weighs in on ethical and social concerns and calls attention to humanity’s moral responsibilities to others.

That’s the role highlighted by “The Will To See,” a documentary Lévy co-directed to use his globe-trotting life as observer –“bearing witness” to the world’s conflicts to call attention to humanitarian crises and “bad actors” on the world stage.

Lévy does so often under assignment to the famed French magazine “Paris Match,” but he’s not exactly a journalist. His essays read like the carefully composed words of his voice-over narrations in the film, musings on the state of inhumanity and the plight of the weak. And he doesn’t just travel — often in what appear to be diplomatic convoys — a Frenchman in a suit in Nigeria or Kurdistan, Ukraine or wherever men with guns are imposing their will on others. He intervenes, arranges meetings and gives speeches celebrating liberty and the struggle for it in long-embattled (pre-current Russian invasion) Kiev and in newly-liberated Tripoli, proclaiming France’s and his admiration for people who struggle against oppressors.

“I remember Rwanda,” he narrates (in French with English subtitles). “I remember Darfur…I remember Cambodia.”

He started doing this as a young man, inspired by writer, leftist and public intellectual André Malraux’s call for the international community to intervene or at least focus its eyes on civil-war, poverty and cyclone-stricken Bangladesh back in 1971. He revisits Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and even Lisbon (which had its own revolution which he observed in 1974).

Returning to Somalia, even with lots of protection, doesn’t turn out to be a good idea. In Nigeria he details Boko Harum’s Islamo-fascist efforts to “wipe out Christianity” in that corner of Africa. In Afghanistan, he was there just before the West pulled out, lamenting the fate of a local woman he hired for a magazine he started in Kabul after the US and its allies liberated the city from the Taliban.

Lévy is particularly taken with the plight of the Iraqi Kurds, who have a hard time answering his questions about who their biggest threat is — ISIS, whom they have been fighting, or “Erdogan,” the Turkish ruler who turned on them with the West more or less permitting an alleged ally to slaughter a valued partner in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

He hears stories of massacres and meets an African village’s sole survivor, revisits the infamous Baba Yar Holocaust massacre site, shows us the armed thugs of this corner of the world or that one preying on and “ethnic cleansing” the unarmed, and notes drolly, “Isn’t war grand?”

All that said, I came away from the film with mixed feelings about the man. His compassion is unquestionable, but his methods have a patronizing, self-aggrandizing “show the flag” effect. A French Jewish intellectual telling homeless, broke young Muslim refugees that “Christians, Muslims and Jews are brothers,” when he’s in a designer suit and they’re in donated clothes is painfully tone deaf. They’re too in need of help and too polite to roll their eyes at that.

He complains about COVID lockdowns and is downright contemptuous handing out face masks in Lesbos, Greece, where the “there is no COVID” he says, noting that the kids will make theatrical masks out of them.

He stops by Gaza, highlights his lifelong support for Israel “which was born the same year as I,” and dismissively declares “But I don’t want to deal with Hamas,” and abruptly leaves. WTH BHL? The optics on that are just awful, suggesting his compassion not only has limits, but that they can be tribal.

A film that has a whiff of ego trip about it lets the guy show off his own petard, and lets us see him hoist himself by it.

Still, even if he’s only bringing these global trouble spots to the French and only hoping that “we do something” about it, he’s doing some good, one supposes. And as he notes of Somalia, “the world forgets” about these places after a while, even though the conflicts burn on and the tide of refugees ebbs and flows, even though most of us have lost “The Will to See.”

Rating: unrated, images of massacres, victims of war

Cast: Bernard-Henri Lévy

Credits: Directed by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Marc Roussel. A Cohen Media Group release.

Running time: 1:38

This show has Mike Myers taking on multiple roles in a multinational plot to take over the world, or some such.

Keegan-Micheal Key, Lydia West, Jennifer Saunders and Ken Jeong are among the co-stars.

It premieres May 5, and not to punch a guy(s) when he’s/they’re down, but there isn’t a laugh in the preview. Is there one over the course of six episodes?

June 10, you will believe dinosaurs like snow!

Turning the dark children’s fantasy “The Little Mermaid” into science fiction seems kind of pointless, but as they say in Japan, “Anime’s gonna anime.”

The Japanese WIT studio works primarily in TV. But when Warner Brothers Animation gets a commission from Netflix, “Bubble” becomes their chance to make a (streaming) feature film.

It’s set in a literal bubble in a dystopian Tokyo. A “gravity anomaly” heralded by bubbles that rained down on the planet left buildings half-collapsed, suspended pieces of them floating around with trains, rusting out buses and bubbles — always more bubbles

The only people living in this flooded, ruined Tokyo are hardcore parkour teams who take advantage of the glitches in gravity to compete in streamed and gambled on “Battlekour” games.

The Blue Blazers are the best, thanks to their loner parkour ace Hibiki (voiced by Zach Aguilar in the English dub of the film). He trains, blocks out the world via his headphones and leaves his four teammates, their “supervisor” Shin (Keith Silverstein) and the scientist that lives with them on this rusting out Japanese Coast Guard ship in the half-submerged city to their own devices. Makoto (Erica Lindbeck) is studying “the anomaly” and the its impact on the “lost boys” (they’re orphans) who risk their necks leaping from building to rubble to bubble in the battlekour contests.

Hibiki doesn’t hear music through his Beats. He picks up something musically strange and ethereal emanating from the mostly-disintegrated Tokyo version of the Eiffel Tower. And one day, nosing around there, he falls into one of the “ant lion trap” vortexes that bedevil this Water World. That’s when the feral pixie he comes to call Uta (Emi Lo) comes to his rescue.

She doesn’t speak, doesn’t appear to have any origin story, and seems to possess magical powers. Hibiki mentors her to repay his debt to her. But it’s Matoko’s reading of “The Little Mermaid” to Uta that triggers her desire to speak, and her eagerness to state the obvious.

Hibiki, my wide-anime-eyed lad, you’re the “prince” and I am the Little Mermaid!

Because those songs he’s was hearing from that tower? That was her singing.

The animation is closer to classic anime in its underanimated jerkiness, the Big Eyed characters and the post-apocalyptic punk milieu. Boy band wannabes and pixies populate this universe, with rival parkour teams including the cyborgish “Undertakers.”

This world will be turned upside down by Uta’s presence in it, and gravity’s increasing unreliability.

This isn’t the least interesting story I’ve ever seen told in anime, but it’s right up there. The dialogue’s of the “I wish I had parents! To talk me OUTTA things like this!” school.

There’s a lot of shouting in anime, and the worse the anime, the more shouting there is.

As a film subgenre, anime’s hits-and-misses batting average is no better or worse than any other film genre. There are rare great films, a few good ones, and a lot of brainless filler like “Bubble” that’s perfectly representative of the art form, but nothing that would hook most first-time viewers on it.

Rating: TV-PG, action violence

Cast: The voices of Zach Aguilar, Emi Lo, Erica Lindbeck, Keith Silverstein, Robbie Draymond and Laura Stahl

Credits: Directed by Tetsurō Araki, scripted by Gen Urobuchi, Noako Sato and Renji Ōki. A WIT Studios/Warner Brothers Animation film for Netflix.

Running time: 1:41

Boy, if Disney really wants to get Wuhan Ron’s “Don’t Say Gay” Goat, they should buy him a subscription to Hulu. With “Crush,” Hulu serves up the gayest gay vulgarian heroine in a gay fantasia of a high school ever…since “Glee!” anyway.

How gay? They cast Megan Mullally as the kid’s indulgent, supportive and overly “helpful” mother. Who better to pass along “glow in the dark dental dams” and toothbrush-as-vibrator advice? Well, if Harvey Fierstein isn’t available?

“Crush” is a formulaic high school rom-com with one great big out and over-powering gay twist. First-time feature director Sammi Cohen and screenwriters Kirsten King and Casey Rackham park this version of the virginal teen trope — starring Rowan Blanchard of TV’s “Girl Meets World” — in a school so gay-friendly that “coming out” is no longer an issue, “acceptance” is a given” and the toughest decision might be which of Miller High’s many alluring little lesbians to focus her attention on.

There’s the Wiccan, the “horse skank” (into dressage), the short-haired influencer, or the sporty-hotty Gabriella (Isabella Ferreira) whom out-but-never-been-kissed Paige has crushed on since elementary school.

Gabriella was the classmate who first gave her the tinglies, prompting Paige to come out to her mom.

Only Miss Popular Gabriella barely knows Paige exists. Despite the support of Dillon (Tyler Alvarez), Paige’s straight-best-friend — upending THAT “gay BFF” trope is as edgy as this gets — and Dillon’s girlfriend (Teala Dunn) and opponent in the class president election, Paige seems too shy and inexperienced to make a play for the princess.

“Am I at least a ‘top?'”

“Bottom…POWER bottom.”

That’s pretty much the tone of “Crush,” something that casting Mullally tips off. This is “Will & Grace” in-your-face sitcom gay, where the slang, the (girls) locker room talk, even the “I’ll finally learn to to insert a tampon without the end sticking out” banter passes “frank” on its way to “coarse.”

Mom’s raised Paige in a “sex positive house,” and as Dillon’s on a first name basis with his pal’s mother, their exchanges are bitchy-witty and sit-commie unreal in the extreme. Mom is flushed and responsive to Paige’s authoritarian track coach’s (Aasif Mandvi’s) advances.

“I guess the ‘promiscuous gene’ skips a generation,” Dillon quips. “That’s what they SAY,” Mom quips back.

The plot is just as obvious. Gabriella has a sportier, more introverted and more butch sister, AJ (Auli’i Cravalho). Isn’t she fated to be the one Paige falls for, playing by “Breakfast Club/Pretty in Pink” rules?

“Obvious” is where “Crush” goes a little wrong, and that’s just the start. The story has no real villain, just a quest to discover who “Kingpun,” the school’s graffiti artist/prankster is. Paige is the one the principal (Michelle Buteau, trying too hard) is prepared to suspend over this not-the-least-bit-amusing prank/vandalism, and on the flimsiest of evidence.

Paige’s “goal,” aside from first love, is to get into a Cal Arts summer program for budding artists this coming summer. We see nothing of her art that suggests she’s Cal Arts material, and the journey to creating more “personal” work is one of the movie’s non-starter plot threads.

The “kingpun” bits produce zero giggles. Track pratfalls — Paige joins the team just to be closer to Gabriella, to add an extracurricular activity and to avoid suspension — land just as flat. Thus all the laugh laughs must come from the shock-value frankness of the foul-mouthed kids and adults, the assorted high school (student and adult) “types” and the way tolerance run amok has shaped this high school’s conversations.

Yes, the kids are into”edibles” and drinking. But there’ll be no “Seven Minutes in Heaven” make-out sessions on the track team’s road trip, thank you very much.

“Noooo, that perpetuates a Christian narrative!”

The leads have little chemistry, something enough re-takes and clever editing can usually overcome. Cravalho (TV’s “Rise”) has a camera spark that veteran child actress Blanchard may have lost.

And I dare say none of those shortcomings will matter to the kids who relish the film’s inclusive vibe.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the filmmakers hope, that you’ll be so swept up in “representation” that you won’t notice how generic the story is, and how dull and drab and laugh-starved its execution turns out to be.

They went to all the trouble of nailing their “messaging,” and forgot to put it in a comedy that’s romantic or a romance that’s comic.

Hardly the sort of thing that will convert the Republican homophobes of Florida and their dear leader.

Rating: TV-MA, lots of profanity, frank talk about sex

Cast: Rowan Blanchard, Auli’i Cravalho, Megan Mullally, Aasif Mandvi, Isabella Ferreira, Tyler Alvarez, Teala Dunn and Michelle Buteau.

Credits: Directed by Sammi Cohen, scripted by Kirsten King and Casey Rackham. A Hulu release.

Running time: 1:33