Movie Nation

“Sentinelle” is a French vengeance tale that dispenses with developing peripheral characters and concentrates solely on its long she-wolf heroine.

But even she is short-changed in this tight but illogical skips-a step-or-three thriller.

The Ukrainian model-turned actress Olga Kurylenko, of “Quantum of Solace,” “Johnny English Strikes Again,” “Seven Psychopaths,” “The November Man” and lots of other thrillers, has never shed her runway-thin build.

That doesn’t mean she can’t be lethal. Dress her in camo, gear her up with belts and body armor and she’s still the skinniest commando in the French Army, which is what she plays in “Sentinelle.”

Klara is a translator/interrogator trooper helping extract info from prisoners in the Middle East when we meet her. But she’s slow to pick up the suicide bomber they’ve just taken into custody, slower to react when she realizes the peril.

So she’s re-assigned to domestic duties, gearing up as part of the four-trooper patrols that have become part of French life — armed military snooping around, trying to head off the next terror attack on French soil.

They’ve even re-assigned her to the Côte d’Azur, Nice, where he mom and sister Tania (Marilyn Lima) live.

But Klara is haunted, easily triggered, in counseling and on medications. And when the meds run out, she knows where to score them on the street just as she knows which woman in the club that her gaydar tells her would be up for a little after hours action.

That’s how she gets separated from Tania, and that’s when her sister is assaulted and left for dead on the beach. Klara isn’t a cop, but she knows how to get information, and how to handle herself in a fight.

So this already-unstable drug addict puts on her uniform and arms herself and heads out to figure out who did this to her sister so she can kill him or them.

Kurylenko handles the fight choreography with style, even if we don’t want to ponder the physics of someone this willowy taking a beating and dealing one out to people much heavier.

This French film has no “I’m coming for you” threats, the hallmark of your typical Hollywood treatment of revenge. Klara just targets her man, adjusts the target for new info, impulsively tries to take care of it in a flash, and when she’s interrupted by her comrades in arms, schemes a better idea to get a dirty job done.

Ignoring “physics” is optional here. Ignoring “logic” a little less so. There’s no intervention from the superiors, who let her and us know they see her unraveling. There is no wariness of letting her patrol, after she’s shown a tendency to freeze in the clutch, even after they and we get the sense that she’s out for something “personal” and bloody.

At 80 minutes, “Sentinelle” is seriously biff-bam “Thank-you, ma’am.” It has to be. Any pauses to let us think it through might prompt laughter, and nobody wants that, especially not the skinny broad with the assault rifle.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, drug abuse, nudity

Cast: Olga Kurylenko, Marilyn Lima, Michel Nabokoff 

Credits: Directed by Julien Leclercq, script by Julien Leclercq,  Matthieu Serveau. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:20

Damn.

No over-budgeted, under-scripted thirty-years-too-late Eddie Murphy sequel should EVER deliver as many smiles as “Coming 2 America.”

Not enough funny lines? Maybe a miscalculation, setting most of this “fish out of water” story in Africa instead of Queens?

But here’s Wesley Snipes, cleverly recast as the villainous General Izzi dance-stepping into the royal court of Zumunda at the head of an armed entourage drill team. His eyes are laughing. And so were mine.

This high-tone farce has song and dance, dirty and lowdown and Eddie and Arsenio Hall — at their best in bit parts covered in old age makeup — revisiting a character comedy that wasn’t much of anything except a BLOCKbuster, a movie humorist Art Buchwald took Eddie and Paramount to court over.

But nostalgia is designed to give you the warm fuzzies, and “Coming 2” has those, and how.

Back to that Queens barbershop with Murphy and Hall playing geezers, back to church with Arsenio killing it as a sexist, greedy old preacher, back to McDowell’s with John Amos insisting his joint is “NOTHING like McDonald’s.”

Throw in Morgan Freeman narrating a funeral — in person — cameos by En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa and Dikembe Mutumbo, Colin Jost sending up his “privileged-racially-clueless” persona, Trevor Noah in a mustache as a TV anchor for the Zamunda News Network and James Earls Jones intoning “This…is ZNN!”

It doesn’t add up to much. But this little “80s night” on the big screen delivers.

Prince Akeem is still married to his Queens girl Lisa (Shari Headley), but closing in on Charles of England as the oldest prince in the pack. But King Jaffa Joffer (James Earl Jones) knows the end is nigh. And despite having three smart and brave daughters (Kiki Layne plays the oldest), to his “shame and disappointment,” Akeem and Lisa haven’t produced a son to pass the kingdom on to.

Sexist as that is, it also could mean trouble from General Izzi and his minions from the covetous neighboring land of Nextdooria.

But wait! The court shaman (Guess who?) had a vision, and royal aide Semmi (Hall) confirms it. Akeem had a hook-up in Queens before he met Lisa. And that produced a “bastard” son.

Everybody in this enjoys saying “bastard.” Especially Akeem. He and Semmi flit off to New York to find the 30 year-old fatherless, unemployable ticket-scalper “bastard” Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler), round him and his Mom (Leslie Jones) and maybe even his no-good uncle (Tracy Morgan) up and bring them back to Africa.

Only a royal wedding to Gen. Izzi’s bombshell daughter (Teyano Taylor) can save the day.

Craig Brewer of “Hustle & Flow” and TV’s “Empire” wasn’t the obvious choice to direct this comedy. But with lavish sets and funny people, many of them obviously thrilled to be in a project this high-profile again all these decades later, doing the heavy lifting, “Coming 2” never grinds to a halt.

The African setting — digital elephants and lions — is Georgia generic. And the young leading man barely holds his own with this august cast, even if the older returning characters are a little joke-deprived, .

But “Coming 2 America” still provides enough smiles to make up for the lack of belly-laughs. And if you miss hearing Murphy’s famous “heh-heh-heh” laugh, stay through the credits.

MPA Rating: PG-13, violence, sexual jokes, “herb” jokes, profanity

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Shari Headley, Kiki Layne, Nomzamo Mbatha, Wesley Snipes, Teyano Taylor, Tracy Morgan and James Earl Jones.

Credits: Directed by Craig Brewer, script by Kenya Barris and David Sheffield. A Paramount/Amazon Studios release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:49

“Xico’s Journey” is a cheerful, colorfully-animated and culturally-aware Mexican cartoon about legend and myth and two kids and a dog who want to save their picturesque village from fracking.

Although it scores points for tapping into Mexican heritage and myth and takes on a reckless, people-and-planet-killing energy industry practice, an indifferent script does it no favors.

It’s one of those cartoons where a lot of characters cackle, long and hard, of collapse into guffaws or in the villain’s case, tosses back his head in maniacal, evil laughter. And viewers, young and old, wonder what the heck it is that they’re laughing at as there aren’t any funny lines or even particularly funny situations.

The village of San Jaime de las Jaibas earned its name because in prehistoric times, there were crabs there. Now it is a quaint, cute and sleepy town sitting at the foot of the mountain people like Nana Petra call “mother.”

Copi, who was raised by her grandmother after her parents died, and her pal
Gus frolic in its streets and stir up a little trouble as they do, chased all the time by her dog Xico (“HEE-co”).

But greedy Mr. Frevler, who likes his laughs maniacal, and his board of directors see that mountain as “a literal gold mine!” All the minerals they can extract from it, if only they can con the mayor, take over the town and do what they like to the land, aquifer and people.

Very norteamericano.

The mayor preaches “progress” and “jobs,” but a company official makes a quick note of the fine print, the “worst that can happen” when you pump “methanol, benzene, ethylbenzene and toluene” into the ground.

Careful. Some states, like N.C., have made it illegal to report on the poisons frackers pump into aquifers.

Nana Petra is outraged, starts muttering about a legend, the need to “reunite the three stones” and hinting that Copi’s mom might be where those three stones have to be reunited — “in the heart of the mountain.”

Darned if Copi, Gus and little Xico don’t take off to see what’s what before Nana Petra can convince creaky Don Viejo and another elder to undertake the quest.

The kids encounter creatures of Mexican myth and folklore, and wouldn’t you know it? Her dog starts talking. No matter what language you watch this in, turn the subtitles on. Otherwise, how’ll you know how to spell the breed Xico is when he says it out loud?

“Xoloitzcuintle.” Say it with me!

A rhyming rabbit, a prankster possum, a scorpion, a condor and Mexican Pronghorn play their parts as the “journey” progresses and the mystery unravels.

The animation, by Mexican Anima animation house, is a couple steps below the top Hollywood operations, but gives us quality backgrounds, distinct characters and plenty of Aztec iconography. Not bad.

The messaging — “Do you think rich people will consider us before they go and destroy everything?” — is spot on.

A little script doctoring and “Xico’s Journey” could have been a keeper, a movie with laughing characters who have something to laugh at.

MPA Rating: TV-Y7

Credits: Directed by Eric D. Cabello Díaz, script by Enrique Renteria. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:27

In April the weather should be warm enough to make this Antarctic (and Arctic) true story endurable.

Norway’s greatest modern hero gets a bio pic that Samuel Goldwyn’s releasing in the US.

Scan your memory banks and run through the legions of YA sci-fi adaptations that have made it to the screen. Try and conjure up a sliding scale, say “Hunger Games” to “The Giver” or “Ender’s Game” or “City of Ember” or the later “Divergents” or “Maze Runners” and on and on.

I was stunned, during the middle of Hollywood’s “Find me the next ‘Hunger Games'” hunt, at how many were more or less unwatchable, and how all of them were forgettable.

“Chaos Walking,” based on a Patrick Ness novel, directed by Doug Liman (“Edge of Tomorrow”), finished and labeled “unreleaseable,” reshot by Fede Álvarez (“Don’t Breathe”) is now perfectly watchable, if doomed to be forgettable.

Whatever it began life as it arrives as a parable on toxic masculinity, set as it is in a culture where men can’t keep themselves from “saying the silent part out loud.” That’s topical, damning, and in the film (and source novel’s) conceits, kind of funny.

Casting Spider Man-boy Tom Holland makes this work. As a babbling 20ish “settler” on “New World,” a planet generations removed from Earth (a 64 year journey away), Holland plays a variation of his chatty, insecure but good-hearted Peter Parker, a guy who helps the sole survivor of a “second wave” colonial scout ship escape The Patriarchy.

As she’s played by Daisy Ridley of the recent “Star Wars” trilogy, there’s a just hint here and there that maybe she could that on her own.

Holland is “Todd Hewitt,” a name he repeats in his head ad nauseum as a way to “control the noise.” That’s what they call the errant thoughts that every man there spews into the ether. A clever touch? The “thoughts” look like a vaping chain-smoker, with flashbacks and visualizations of what might be projected onto them. The planet causes this.

“Control your noise” well enough and you can keep “secrets,” which no man on this planet can manage all that well. Control it and you can project threats — giant snakes — or traps (imagined fences springing up around a quarry) into the minds of your foes.

Todd is the youngest lad in Prentiss Town, named for the smooth-talking, mind-controlling Mayor (Mads Mikkelsen). The Mayor keeps their history, tells and retells the story of how the native inhabitants of the planet “murdered all the women.”

But when a scout ship crash lands near Todd and the farm of his two dads (Demián Bichir, Kurt Sutter) who raised him, and this young woman (Ridley) is the sole survivor, the mayor can’t hide his intentions.

Todd and the young woman must flee.

The Québec locations give this world of entropy a 19th century Pacific Northwest as it was first being settled feel. It’s a world of farming and fur hunting and “be a man,” as Todd has to remind himself constantly. It looks lived-in, a society that has devolved as its technology broke or the batteries gave out, back on horseback because the ark they arrived on brought them (and dogs like Todd’s Toto-ish Manchee) along with the people and Big Plans.

The core plot elements are cut-and-paste YA dystopia — a quest with villains in hot pursuit, chased on horseback, shot at, rivers to cross and a goal line that seems to move further away despite the best efforts of our intrepid young heroes.

But they get maximum mileage out of the core gimmick, the fact that men can’t hide their thoughts from anyone, and women can. Holland’s Todd thinks/speaks “yellow hair, pretty,” and blurts out “Please ignore that” to “the girl” who has never been on terra firma, born on the space ark that brought her here.

“The civilizing influence of women” may be a trite, tired trope, but Todd embodies this and is as prone to violence as every other man there.

And the villains are first rate. Mikkelsen has a simmering menace, and David Olyelowo, who once played Martin Luther King Jr. (“Selma”) takes sexist religion to its violent, patriarchal extreme — madness — as “The Preacher,” a man expecting “retribution” for the lives they’ve lived, the lies they tell and the crimes that must have been part of that.

No, you won’t remember this a year from now — just the vapor-thoughts effect, the jokey tone that floats around that and the heroes and villains. But how much of “The Hunger Games” sticks in the memory after four films? Heroes, villains, the train and a bow and arrow? Maybe?

MPA Rating:PG-13 for violence and language

Cast: Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, David Oyelowo, Demián Bichir, Nick Jonas, Cynthia Erivo and Mads Mikkelsen

Credits: Directed by Doug Liman, script by Patrick Ness and Christopher Ford, based on a novel by Patrick Ness. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:49

“Fresh off the Boat” author and producer Eddie Huang makes his feature filmmaking debut with “Boogie,” a fresh and feisty sports dramedy that takes movie formulas and cultural tropes out for a spin.

Sports movie formula? It’s all about “the Big Game” and getting a basketball scholarship. Only that benchmark scene is defanged, knocked off its axis.

Over-achieving Asian immigrants? Our hero, winningly played by Taylor Takahashi, has screaming, brawling parents who guilt him to paper over their own shortcomings. Mom (Pamelyn Chee, scary) is an inept, manipulative control freak and Dad (Perry Yung) has never been more than a town car “limo” driver, partly due to his explosive temper.

Every hint of “a tradition in our culture” that they trot out is “playing the China card.” The film is framed within a flashback of the bickering couple’s pregnant visit to a fortune teller, whose inscrutable advice is laughable, all things considered.

“Love will melt the sharpest sword.” What happens when there is no love, more a partnership?

A key scene is a ritual. Boogie — real name Alfred Chin — sits with his father for yet another viewing of “the greatest moment in Chinese American history,” Michael Chang’s win over Ivan Lendl in the 1989 French Open.

The kid trots out better “greatest” exemplars. NBA hero Jeremy Lin? “He gave the credit to JESUS.” The kid echoes this to friends, “model minority Jesus freak.”

Maya Lin? Yeah, maybe. She was 21 when designed the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.

Dad is supportive but sanguine about the family “plan” — get Boogie, a brawny guard — from high school to the NBA.

“No one believes in an Asian basketball player,” Dad grouses. “We can cook, clean, count real good. Anything else? We’re picked last.”

With scenes like that Huang takes us into a world that feels lived-in and lives that show strain under the weight they carry. Boogie has game, swagger, a mouth and a temper. He’s transferred to City Prep and can turn their “trash team” into winners — if he can learn to play well with others, control his temper and tone down the mouthiness. Heaven knows this ABC (American born Chinese) is going to be reminded of “what we went through” to put you here by his parents. Every damn day.

But his patter might be a help when he swoons into his first big crush. Classmate Eleanor (Taylour Paige of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) is all dreads and eyes and attitude and doesn’t mess around with “ballers.” But she notices the attention.

“He could get it if he stopped STARING.”

Boogie? “I feel like a left-handed layup right now.” Yup. We’ve seen him take them them on the court. He uses his right hand. Big hole in his game, and he knows it and recognizes Eleanor as the same hopeless challenge.

Huang turns their courtship into something young and lightly charming, and their “first time” into lowdown comedy.

That’s the kind of movie “Boogie” is and has to be. Because as “the plan” keeps going off the rails and the biggest challenge looms like a date with a great Black shark. Someday, Boogie will be tested by Monk, the playground courts legend and high school brute who owns this game in its Mecca, New York City.

The Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke (Bashar Barakah Jackson) makes a startling debut as the “best baller in the five boroughs” villain, a bullying b-ball machine on the court. Sadly, that’ll be the only impression he leaves in the movies, as he was murdered in Feb. just before “Boogie” came out.

Huang keeps this world and its problems and complications real as the third act devolves into twists and intrigues we don’t see coming.

And he keeps the dialogue flip and funny, with Boogie upending expectations at every turn. A walk through Chinatown has him turning up his nose at “these ‘Gremlins’ keepers” and woos his lady friend with dates that include a Tai Chi stop, and dominoes, because “I just like countin’ em up.”

“That’s the most Chinese s— you’ve ever said!”

We root for them and pull for Boogie. And every time we figure we know how this will turn out because we’ve seen 74 earlier versions of “this movie,” Huang trips us up.

His flawed hero, more flawed parents and pipe dreams become our dreams, which “Big Game” or not, is all we could hope for in any sports dramedy.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout including sexual references, and some drug use 

Cast: Taylor Takahashi, Taylour Paige, Pamelyn Chee, Perry Yung, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Mike Moh, Domenick Lombardozzi and Pop Smoke.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Eddie Huang. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:29

The title character is never on camera in “Rain Beau’s End,” the most interesting choice in this seasons-in-a-gay-relationship melodrama.

Imagine “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” the searing, seminal 2011 drama about a family overwhelmed by a son whose violent streak and self-control issues reach a crisis, without any sign of Kevin. Lacking the presence of the supposed cause in all the stress in this couple is a palpable absence that the viewer feels, and frankly one the two leading ladies sense as well.

There’s a lot of under-reacting to violent, on-the-spectrum tantrums, lashing out and seriously disturbing behavior mentioned over the film’s two decades or so of personal history.

“Beau,” a boy the gay couple Hannah (Janelle Snow) and Jules (Amanda Powell) adopt at age four, is an eagerly-awaited completion of their dream of “family.” But Hannah, a successful lawyer, is running for mayor in their suburban Chicago town, and Jules has a coffee shop — Sappho’s Cafe — to run.

A friend doesn’t have to be a prophet to wonder “how they’ll have time” to raise a child.”

There’s even a press scrum when the two women go to pick the kid up in the mid-90s, when gay women adopting a boy would be “news.” A right wing columnist lashes out.

And all that comes before they endure Beau’s first blasts of “acting out,” before the first injuries he causes before the violence he almost does to a pet and before his therapist (Andrea Salloum) has him tested and gives them a diagnosis.

Not ADD or anything most of us have ever heard of. “Jacob’s Syndrome.” He will require lifetime of attention, therapy, but “no medication” holistic “Namaste Jules” (her nickname) insists.

Tracy Wren’s film of Jennifer Cooney’s script takes us through the ups and downs brought to the relationship by this unseen and frankly undersold threat to their happiness. As Hannah and Jules, our “Chicago Med” and “Chicago P.D.” leads find each other with fresh bruises, are visited by a school principal at his wit’s end and a cop detailing Beau’s — Jules wants to call him “Rain Beau” — latest violation of public order or school policy.

They describe a nightmare, differ in how they think they should deal with his issues, lightly bicker and move on.

The effect is a serious softening of the body blows this kid is giving them psychically and physically, and we feel it in the leads’ drained performances. Hannah and Jules are rationalizing, denying, avoiding and not really grappling with the fact that they can’t “fix” him or “turn him in for a better one.”

A reasonable person would be a frazzled, nervous wreck. They just go about their days, sip wine and gripe to their mostly-gay friends, who wonder when “you’ll get your life back.”

The kid’s a handful, and I just don’t get that here. It doesn’t help that all these conversations are staged in a deathly-quiet house. A lot of simple tricks would get across that tension and put the viewer on tenterhooks with them — noise, a room being tossed or a kid screaming in fury. Even if you don’t see him, that would seem more accurate and put the viewer right there on harrowing edge with the two moms.

It’s as if Beau is some sort of distraction that even Jules, the supposedly more involved one, isn’t commited to focusing on. The mayor can barely be bothered, “He needs love” falls on deaf ears.

“Do for you,” Hannah’s law partner (Sean Young) grouses. “When you do for others, the pain isn’t worth it.”

Needless to say, nobody involved with “Beau” would want us to extrapolate this into a representation of gay parenting.

Young and Ed Asner (Hannah’s not-quite-estranged homophobic dad) sparkle in small roles. And the film can leave you feeling that you’ve watched something more substantial you have thanks to contrived ending.

But it’s the one role that wasn’t cast that hamstrings “Rain Beau’s End,” a melodrama with an emotional finale that feels like a cheat at the end of a story where the “problem child” feels like an inconvenient afterthought.

MPA Rating: unrated

Cast: Janelle Snow, Amanda Powell, Andrea Salloum, Sean Young and Ed Asner

Credits: Directed by Tracy Wren, script by Jennifer Cooney. A LesFlicks release.

Running time: 1:43

A multi generational journey across goes wrong in this April release.

In adapting the novel “Moxie” into a film, Amy Poehler takes a stab at a generation-defining teen comedy like “Mean Girls,” the one her BFF Tina Fey wrote.

It’s an of-its moment movie, hip and flip and “Woke” with a capital “W.” “Moxie” is less comic and more ambitious than “Mean Girls,” which leads it into darker places and a little length-padding mission creep.

But its still an uplifting celebration of Gen Z female empowerment, a nice little pat on the back for Poehler’s own Generation X and big step up from her directing debut, “Wine Country.”

Hadley Robinson plays Vivian, who starts her junior year at Oregon’s Rockport High School with purpose — get admitted into Cal — and a best friend, her fellow “INTJ” (introvert), Claudia (Lauren Tsai).

They show up at school, eagerly awaiting and half-dreading the publication of “The List.” That’s a rating system cooked up by unknown jocks and bros that labels classmates “Designated Drunk,” “Best Ass,” “Most Bangable” and the like.

But by the time this list is texted, en masse, to the entire student body, Vivian’s had her eyes opened. The bluff bullying of entitled star jock Mitchell Wilson (Patrick Schwarzenegger, perfectly loathsome) has crossed into “dangerous” harassment which new girl Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Pena, terrific) isn’t having.

Reporting this to their Baby Boomer principal (Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden) gets a boys-will-be-boys response, and “that word (harassment) — it means I have to do…a whole lot of stuff.” Principal Shelly is all about students with “moxie,” who let stuff like this roll off their backs.

Like that works with bullies — ever.

Lucy is black and already woke. Vivian wakes up herself, takes the Riot Grrrl recollections of her still-tattooed divorced mom (Poehler) to heart, and starts a secret “Zine.” She draws, clips out photos Old School, literally cutting-and-pasting the artwork together — as if any kid today wouldn’t do that all on a smart phone — gets it photocopied and spreads it around the school.

“Moxie” catches on, and together with some outspoken soccer girls, a “dress code” victim and a trans girl looking for acknowledgement, a movement is made and a “revolution” at this toxic school begins.

The English teacher (Ike Barinholtz) quickly learns that he can’t sit this one out.

“If you’re doing nothing,” he’s lectured, “then you’re part of the problem.”

And the only person to figure out that Vivian is behind all this is “not a shrimp anymore” boy-ally, Seth (Nico Hiraga of “Booksmart”). She’s giving skateboarder Seth the eye, and he’s giving it back.

“Secret identities are objectively rad.”

“Moxie” charts a revolution from its birth to the points where “it goes too far,” “blowback” and beyond and delivers positive messaging pretty much all along the way.

It’s a high school comedy that hits all the waypoints of such movies — “Big Party,” “First Boyfriend,” pep rallies and conflict with parents. But there are more uplifting moments than funny ones, and that’s by design. And the film’s turn toward the dark side may be defensible, but stops it cold.

“By design” also gets entirely too close to “on-the-nose” for its own good. The students of color are the first to see the problem and embrace the solution. The schism that opens between Vivian and pal Claudia has “Tiger Mom” stereotyping, and the mother-daughter conflict that Vivian and mother Lisa fall into feels contrived.

The entire affair seems pre-digested and somewhat “sanitized for your protection.”

Robinson (“Little Women”) pleasantly embodies that “nice girl next door” spectrum that Vivian falls on, a perfectly acceptable tour guide for One Teen’s Journey to Feminism. But few of the performances really pop, and that goes back to the screenplay created from Jennifer Mathieu’s novel. You wish it was wittier.

It’s still an intensely likable and watchable dramedy, even if it never quite reaches that “generation defining comedy” thing.

MPA Rating:  PG-13 for thematic elements, strong language and sexual material, and some teen drinking 

Cast: Hadley Robinson, Lauren Tsai, Alycia Pascual-Pena, Amy Poehler, Nico Hiraga, Ike Barinholtz, and Clark Gregg.

Credits: Directed by Amy Poehler, script by Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer, based on the novel by Jennifer Mathieu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

“Yalda: A Night of Forgiveness” is a riveting and thoroughly engrossing satire of Iranian culture and the work-arounds built into a theocracy, ways of ignoring calls for reform and the shedding of “tradition.”

Tehran filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi’s Sundance-honored second feature is an international production whose puzzles begin with the alien culture he immerses us in and ends with “Wait, Iran let him get away with that?”

“Yalda” is about patriarchy, “temporary marriage,” an “apology culture” that’s become embedded in Sharia law and the legal system and the entrenched “eye for an eye” and “blood money” side of that justice system.

And it’s about a (fictional) TV show, “Joy of Forgiveness,” where the condemned can get legally-binding “forgiveness” via a live on-air apology to the injured party or their family.

The film is set in real time as that show’s producer (Babak Karimi), crew and host (Arman Darvish) frantically prep for and then broadcast their Yalda (a Winter’s Solstice holiday) episode.

There are many moving parts that have to fall into place, a lot of people to placate and masters to serve on this show, which has a musical guest, an in-show lottery, a text-in reality TV poll element and its dramatic main event, a live, Jerry Springer-style (but well-mannered) confrontation.

Producer Ayat (Karimi) has an in-control-room censor from the State, a woman who objects to how downbeat and depressing this holiday episode is. Ayat has to get a condemned woman (Sadaf Asgari), the night’s star, to the studio from prison. He’s scrambling to ensure that the woman whom that condemned “star” wronged (Behnaz Jafari), someone who may not want to accept an apology or even participate, shows up. Tonight’s special guest, an Iranian film star, has to be accommodated for her appearance where she’ll read a poem appropriate to the holiday and “forgiveness.”

But Maryam (Asgari) is young, desperate and hellbent on telling her “truth” to the live audience and the woman who will be sitting opposite her. She denies the crime, that she “murdered” Mona’s father, even though she was convicted and sentenced to the gallows. Her manic mother arranged this TV pardon, but Maryam demands “Let me speak for MYSELF!”

Ayat tries to talk her down (in Persian with English subtitles). But dammit, woman, this is TELEVISION.

“You can ruin your life if you want, but I won’t let you ruin my show.”

When Mona (Jafari) shows up, Ayat won’t let Maryam meet her and re-plead her case. He’s keeping this confrontation on set and fresh for his audience.

It’s just that with live TV, with a near-hysterical condemned woman facing a stone-faced, unforgiving daughter, things are sure to go wrong. And this story, unfolding in 89 tightrope-walking minutes, reveals a complicated familial connection, hidden agendas and the cruelty of the patriarchal power imbalance between Mona’s wealthy father and the much-younger woman he (and Maryam’s mother) talked into a “temporary marriage.”

When Westerners get worked-up over the traditions and sexist loopholes of the Muslim world and Sharia law, things like that — a short term “arrangement” for a man who doesn’t want to commit to a woman, to create offspring with her or be charged with soliciting prostitution — are what they point to.

Bakhshi, whose feature debut was”A Respectable Family,” bends reality just enough to make this satire sting. He takes an outsider-looking-in peek at how Iranian justice looks to the outside world and serves up a movie that plays as “Network” meets “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Ayat’s slick, modern Western-style show, with its woman director and gender-mixed crew, goes off the rails during the confrontation and “show more commercials” isn’t enough of a stall. “Let’s have another song.”

“We don’t have PERMITS for that,” his censor barks. Wait. What?

The on-camera pressure on both women — Maryam feels showing clips of her trial and the crime being reenacted are “humiliating,” Mona’s stubbornness faces commercial-break arm-twisting — mounts as the plot twists on this secret or that veiled threat.

“Yalda” exposes a messy system where the weakest elements of a theocratic patriarchy are vulnerable to a sexist unbalancing of the scales of justice and subject to public shaming. But damn, it makes for fascinating television and a movie that will pull you in, first scene to its harrowing finale.

MPA Rating: unrated, smoking, profanity

Cast: Sadaf Asgari, Behnaz Jafari, Babak Karimi, Arman Darvish

Credits: Scripted and directed by Massoud Bakhshi. A Film Movement release

Running time: 1:29