Movie Nation

The Cold War ’60s were the golden age of espionage thrillers and spy spoofs. And full disclosure here, you don’t find yourself sharing a name with a guy who played James Bond without seeing them all — the the good, the bad and the ones starring Dean Martin or John Phillip Law.

Here’s a Swiss bon bon that I missed, 1967’s “L’inconnu de Shandigor (The Uknown Man from Shandigor)” from the under-employed — he made just four films — Swiss director Jean-Louis Roy.

It’s a deadpan “Doctor Strangelove Meeets Doctor No” thriller about a misanthropic “mad scientist” who has conjured up a formula that “sterlizes” atomic bombs.

Dr. Van Krantz (Daniel Emilfork, wheelchair-bound and irate, first scene to last) was “trying to save the world,” and he’s ever-so-pissed that “they are not relieved” by his efforts.

“I don’t like humankind. Well, I do…in a jar of arsenic.”

Multiple spy agencies — the Russians, the Americans, “the Baldies” — want to grab this formula and attain a terms-dictating edge over everybody else. Dr. Von Krantz, his daughter Sylvian (Marie-France Boyer) and assistant, “the Albino” (Marcel Imhoff) hole up in his remote, modernist lair/mansion and wait for the spies to make their move.

Among the spies are the Soviet chief, Shostakovich (Jacques Dufilho), the “Baldies” led by their music-minded boss (singer, composer, actor and father of Charlotte, Serge Gainsbourg) and the German double-agent working for the Yanks (Howard Vernon).

The Baldies are a generally mute quintet who have mastered classical music just to get close to their quarry, whip out machine guns and execute him. The ex-Nazi prefers a knife, and can scuba dive to get the drop on foes. And the Russian is furious at the whole dust up, hoping to let the others screw up before he and his swoop in to claim the prize.

Director and co-writer Roy chooses such gorgeous (and under-filmed) Swiss locations and stern-faced character actors that you’d swear he’s playing this straight. But when a firing range/martial arts training session in a vast Swiss quarry is interrupted, and a clumsy spy chooses to hide behind the TARGET on the firing range, the joke’s on us.

There’s a bloody dust-up in a museum of natural history, acid and gas attacks, chases (not really) and kidnappings. And spies die.

Being the boss, of course, Gainsbourg sits at the organ and sings (in French, with English subtitles) as the body is prepared, “tears from Lucifer, the veils of mystery, Mister Spy, Bye Bye.” Yes, the rhymes work…in French.

Von Krantz’s daughter only wants to run away to the beach with her beloved Manuel (Ben Carruthers), to ride in his E-Type Jag and forget all this mayhem.

It’s not a laugh riot, but this new 4K restoration, now being distributed by Deaf Crocodile, leaves the mouth agape at how damned beautiful the whole thing is. The architecture, the characters in close-up, the “Baldies” acting, playing and sitting and staring in unison, the “beach” (a Swiss lakeshore with fog added), the classic Jaguars, Rovers, Citroens, a Jeep for the Yanks and a Tatra for the Bolsheviks (of course), all of it looks fine-grained, contrast-rich and gorgeous.

If you’re a fan of the genre, or even if you’re just well-versed in the Sean Connery Bond era, “The Unknown Man from Shandigor” is sure to impress and amuse, shaken or stirred.

Rating: unrated, with violence, murder and suicide, partial nudity

Cast: Marie-France Boyer, Daniel Emilfork, Serge Gainsbourg, Marcel Imhoff, Jacques Dufilho and Howard Vernon.

Credits: Directed by Jean-Louis Roy, scripted by Jean-Louis Roy, Gabriel Arout and Pierre Koralnik. A Deaf Crocodile release of a 4K restoration

Running time: 1:31

Relocate to South of France for a prequel, Downton turned over for film shoot, wrap everything up with this cast with a classic “out of ideas so let’s throw in ‘They’re making a movie here.'”

Looks lush and fun and pandering and…well, let’s hope for the best. May 20.

Netflix’s “Wu Assassins” return with their very own Bangkok misadventure movie in “Fistful of Vengeance,” a violent and cheesy follow-up to the TV series.

Another “save the Earth” conundrum faces Tommy (Lawrence Kao), when all the skinny “smart one” wanted was to avenge his murdered sister. So he and the last Wu Assassin, “the special one,” Kai Jin (Indonesian martial artists Iko Uwais) and towering pal Lu Xin Lee (Lewis Tan), who’s just “really good at kicking ass,” must battle mobsters from assorted Triads, a soul-sucking Chi vampire and others seeking a magical talisman to secure supreme power and take over the world.

Let’s just say “something like that,” as the plot is convoluted and an excuse to set up a string of brawls — in night clubs, a mobster-packed hotel, a riverside house — a Thai long tail powerboat chase along that river.

The ethics of the piece veer from We must fight with fists, knives and meat cleavers because “There is no honor in guns,” to the arrival of an Interpol agent (Pearl Thusi) who joins in to empty clip after clip into bad guys when fists simply won’t do.

The dialogue is of the “I don’t mind a little action” and “Assassin STRIKE!” variety.

The fights are generally fun, although there’s a rushed-production half-speed feel to much of the fight choreography.

The effects are just special enough to earn that label.

But the gloss, the exotic location, the sex amongst the sexy never really adds up to anything more than a background noise movie, junk that you sort of half-watch because paying close attention just exposes flaws and how rushed this feels. One character is called several different names, including, I’m pretty sure, the name of the actress playing her.

Leave this one to fans of the series, because as a stand-alone movie, it’s a dud.

Rating: TV-MA, nonstop violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Lawrence Kao, Lewis Tan, Iko Awais, Pearl Thusi Francesca Corney and Jason Tobin

Credits: Directed by Roel Reiné , scripted by Cameron Litvak. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

A full on “Moulin Rouge” era and genre bending take on The King.

Remember, Col. Tom was a Dutchman who wouldn’t let Elvis tour overseas because of his shady past and immigration status. This, the accent. Tom Hanks in thick prosthetics? That’s…different.

Austin Butler of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” and TV’s “Arrow” drawls his way through Mr. TCB.

June 23, Elvis is back in the building.

There are times when watching “Dog” that one wonders if the directors realize who the star is and who has the title role.

Because there are shots in the film where Channing Tatum, the co-star and second banana, is in focus, and the Belgian Malanois named “Lulu” isn’t. As Tatum co-directed the film, that’s plainly on purpose. He knows that no one will be paying his muscular mug any mind if the gorgeous, expressive war dog Lulu is in the frame with him.

Whatever your “Turner and Hooch” expectations, “Dog” is an unadulterated delight. It’s an out-of-control dog/hapless dog handler comedy, sure. But any film with a cross-country trip involving a damaged vet and a traumatized war dog, a trip destined to end at the dog’s real handler’s funeral, is going to be a weeper.

PLATOON. Deploy HANDERCHIEFS! “SIR yes SIR!” Out-STANDING.

What this script, co-written by Tatum’s co-director Brett Rodriguez, manages is a subtle blend of genres and mashup of movies. It’s “Turner & Hooch” on “The Last Detail,” two wounded warriors stumbling and comically detouring their way to a grim, preordained reality.

Soldiers get wounds that never heal. Soldiers die. And when the Army Rangers have no more use for a combat dog…

The whole movie is set up in quick, sure strokes in an opening credits montage — pages of photos and letters from the dog’s “I Love You” book of combat duty, shots of the combat duty of Briggs Jackson (Tatum), now a hard-drinking, blackout-prone loner who “just wants back in the game” as a mercenary (“contractor”) or “diplomatic security” specialist.

A song sets the tone under those credits, the late John Prine’s “How Lucky Can One Guy Get” mournful duet with Kurt Vile.

Briggs Jackson fought his war and bears the physical scars and CTE from it. He’s reduced to making subs at a Montana service station and literally begging his former CO (Luke Forbes) for a recommendation for a high paying civilian gig. Capt. Jones knows the guy blacks out and is heavily medicated. No dice.

But one of their comrades in arms has died, in that “Rangers find a way to die” ethos. The “guest of honor” for that funeral is at Fort Lewis, in Washington. Deliver that guest, who is too traumatized to fly, to Nogales, Arizona. That guest is the late Sgt. Rodriguez’s war dog.

The medicated veteran with no affinity for animals is paired with an impossible-to-handle tracking, sniffing and attacking dog for one long drive, through the pot farms of Oregon to the posh hotels of San Francisco, sometimes sleeping in that former (the badges have been removed) Ford Bronco, sometimes cussing it because it’s a 50 year old truck that isn’t meant for 1700 mile drive.

One word of advice? “Don’t touch her ears.” Another? “Don’t be late.”

How much trouble could one vet, one dog and one worn-out truck get into over that distance?

The cute scenes here are a mix of no-brainers (dog needs a bath) and inspired touches. Let’s stop and see if musclebound Ranger Briggs can pick up a babe in a bar…in “Portlandia.” What “buds” might a dog who’s jumped out the truck stumble into amongst the tall trees of the Pacific Northwest?

The script is always upending expectations, sometimes in startling ways. “Thank you for your service” becomes a running gag, a former soldier cop who might take pity and let Briggs continue his sacred mission turns out to be a power-tripping bigot. One thrilling bit involves another former comrade (Ethan Suplee) who demonstrates Lulu’s superpower after the Bronco is broken into.

Sure, there’s a lot of talking to the dog, who seems to be listening if not necessarily comprehending the banter. Q’orianka Kilcher (“A New World”) was cast as Brigg’s ex, and is all but edited out of the picture. Maybe for the same reasons the co-director made sure he was the one in focus in those canine-two-shots.

But the trip is amusing enough, the doggy excesses funny and the climax, pre-ordained by their destination, will punch you right in the heart — not hard, just enough to deploy that hanky.

In these days when Hollywood shortcuts include using digital dogs in far too many movies to suit any thinking person’s taste, you have to hand it to Tatum for committing to this gig and putting in the work to make the real dog (three of them) the star, the story honest and grounded and the star heroic.

The combat-vet dog isn’t the only one deserving a “Thank you for your service,” this time.

Rating: PG-13 for language, thematic elements, drug content and some suggestive material

Cast: Channing Tatum, Ethan Suplee, Luke Forbes and Q’orianka Kilcher.

Credits: Directed by Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum, scripted by Reed Carolin and Brett Rodriguez.

Running time: 1:41

If you watch enough movies, you can spot a promising one in its opening scenes. And if it looks like it might be following a too-conventional path, you can’t help but wonder “How’re they going to make this surprising?”

“Streamline” is a sleek and surprising Australian coming-of-age drama set against a backdrop of competitive swimming. It lulls you into thinking “It’s all about sticking to the tried and true,” but twist after twist cleverly upsets our expectations.

It’s about a broad-shouldered 15 year-old destined for Olympic glory, or so everybody says. And insists. And badgers the living heck out of him about.

Benjamin Lane (Levi Miller of “A Wrinkle in Time”) hears it from his trainer-of-champions coach (Robert Morgan), who comes close to the “bullying” line before actually crossing it. Benjamin gets it from his mother (Laura Gordon), who is structuring their lives around his “big meet” and the chance to make it to the Olympic trials. There’s even a sports academy ready to “test” him and make him an offer — an education and the best coaching money can by, on scholarship.

It’s his “ticket out,” Mom reminds him. And herself. Because we’re getting hints that he must “Leave whatever’s going on at home — at home!” His mother takes calls and storms out of the house to finish them, always with a flourish of shouting. His girlfriend (Tasia Zalar) is the daughter of the “You can talk to me, any time” guidance counselor. But whatever’s going wrong in his life, Ben’s taking this all on himself.

We get hints about the rest of the family, but not enough to wholly explain his mother’s mania and his coach’s pressure packing.

And then we get a glimpse of the father (Jason Isaacs), we see how he affects the kid, and get another dose of how much Mom hates him. But we take our cues from Ben, and he’s on the fence about the man.

Writer-director Tyson Wade Johnston’s debut feature trips up expectations as we wander, like a confused kid, through Ben’s thought processes, pressures and responses to those pressures. I was reminded of two films that “Streamline” and its big themes graft together — the “ticket out” Tom Cruise sports drama “All the Right Moves,” and the Aussie kid-amongst the predators saga “Animal Kingdom.” Because whatever his out-of-control mother and over-the-top coach are pushing, “the rest of the family” might not be the escape Ben needs from this regimented, chlorinated nightmare his life has become.

I like the way Johnston teases out the clues about what the “troubles back home” might be, how he (and Miller) show us not just the emotional cost, but the physical one. Ben gets cupping treatments and physical evaluations, all pointed at one goal, a goal he seems disinterested in, in light of everything going on “back home.”

Miller delivers a poker-faced turn as a kid who has absorbed the dogma “Never let them see you sweat/struggle” even as the script never lets us forget that he’s just 15, forced to make decisions that will alter his entire future.

All kids are impulsive, rash and under-informed about consequences at 15, especially athletic ones. Think of the Russian skater pushed to cheat by her cheating-is-our-culture Olympic medal-factory.

If there’s a fault to “Streamlining,” it’s that the surprises don’t continue, start to finish. There’s an aversion to being honest about what big distractions, huge mistakes and breaks in training can do to an athlete’s chances in such movies, all the way back to “All the Right Moves.”

But a stellar cast makes us invest in this tragedy-in-the-making, because it’s the rough patches and detours that let “Streamline” find its way to clear water.

Rating: unrated, violence, teen sex, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Levi Miller, Laura Gordon, Tasia Zalar, Jake Ryan, Robert Morgan and Jason Isaacs.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tyson Wade Johnston. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:26

The gloriously human “CODA” comes back to theaters nationwide the weekend of Feb. 25-27, Apple announced today.

In Orlando, this moving, funny, Oscar nominated coming of age as the hearing daughter of deaf parents tale will be the star attraction at the Cinemark Festival Bay.

Check with your local cinemas to see who’s got it.

“Love and Leashes” is the K-pop of BDSM comedies. It’s cute (ish), innocuous and so sexless as to seem neutered, in case you wondered how movie about bondage, leather and sado-masochistic “release” could garner a TV-14 rating.

A demure Korean “explainer” of a film, it dives into a workplace relationship that turns towards dominance and submission when a stands-up-for-herself subordinate inadvertently opens mail intended for her new “superior,” and finds a bedazzled dog collar in it.

Yes, their names are similar — Jung Ji-woo and Jung Joon-hi — so you could see how that sort of thing could happen. But the guy had SEX toys shipped to his OFFICE address. Perhaps that fits into the whole surreptitious lifestyle. Or maybe the screenwriter is lazy and figures anybody watching this is an idiot.

Jung Ji-woo (Seohyun) lives with her mom and suffers under a sexist, harassing, homophobic dullard of a boss, until that day a new immediate supervisor, the “boy wonder” of the company’s PR, shows up. He’s named Jung Joon-hi (Joon-Young Lee).

Joon-hi is instantly an ally, heading off the boss’s insistence on hiring a Youtube star with a homophobic past as the face of an educational product. And while Ji-woo is always being told to “smile” and “be cute” by the boss and colleagues, Joon-hi seems into her whole Miss Bossypants, push-back act.

When she opens that package by mistake, her curiosity about him grows. He leaps to the conclusion that she’s “one of us,” and before you know it, “experimenting” or not, she is.

She’s not into being dominated. A collar and “dog play” will never do.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t even like turtle-necks” she imagines herself saying (in Korean, or dubbed English), should he approach. She doesn’t have to imagine. All she has to do is take the initiative, and the next thing we know, she’s ordering him about and he’s ordering red stilettos for her so she can walk on her back.

Director Park Hyeonjin and her co-writer Lee Da-hye go to great pains to separate the “pleasure from pain” aspect of these practices from anything seriously sexual. As psychologists are on the fence about a lot of issues, motivations and forms this practice takes and what people get out of it, there’s no quibbling with that.

So this isn’t “Fifty Shades” of anything. It’s a simplistic story of the journey from role-playing to romance, with rope, duct tape, leashes, collars and hot candle wax dripping on a fellow’s back. The fact that BDSM learning curve is playing out in an OFFICE environment should make this somewhat tiresome tutorial must-see TV for any HR department.

As a “comedy,” “Love and Leashes” seems more interested in explanations than laughs, though there are a couple. And it’s more interested in DS (dominance/submission) scenarios, the role-playing games that add on a level of danger when played in a locked office at work.

We don’t really see the characters softening for each other. He’s given to weeping and has ongoing submission issues with an ex. She’s doing homework, playing more elaborate games with more elaborate controlling/pain-inflicting “toys” (the film makes a point of having her lash a table, and not her submissive partner), and it’s hard to discern exactly what she’s getting out of this.

Well, the fact that he outranks her could be part of it.

“Love and Leashes” seems far more intent on explaining and removing “fear of the unknown” and the label “pervert” from BDSM than it is in actually titillating, amusing or entertaining as it does. It’s probably more valuable in a “What’s the harm, then?” sense than in any other.

Rating: TV-14, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Seohyun, Joon-Young Lee, Sanyee Yuan

Credits: Directed by Park Hyeonjin, scripted by Park Hyeonjin and Lee Da-hye. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:57

The signs are all there — aggressive, hair-trigger-tempered creep comes on entirely too strong with women, bullies his friends.

He demonstrates that rape is most definitely a crime of violence, the victim “falls” and the fact that she survives that doesn’t matter. She’s a goner. One of his pals states the obvious.

“I TOLD you he’d do it again!”

“The Ledge” is a visceral, wildly implausible and all-too-obvious rock climbing thriller about a grieving woman chased up the face of Mount Anteleo, “The King of the Dolomites” (northern Italy) by a psychotic and his three friends.

Brittany Ashworth plays Kelly, mourning her late fiance and climbing mentor who died making this climb, witness to the murder of her climbing partner (Anaïs Parello), hounded up the rock face by homophobic, sociopathic and murderous Josh (Ben Lamb) and his reluctant accomplices.

Lamb makes a perfectly loathsome villain, and Ashworth is plainly fit enough to pull off the basics of the insanely unlikely stunts/predicaments her character is trapped in.

But this thriller lacks the breathless suspense of the chase. Most of it is static, Kelly trapped on “The Ledge” without what it takes to safely climb back down, with the bad guys on the ledge above her, taunting her and trying to kill her.

The villain may threaten, “I’m COMING for you, b—h!” He’s all talk, and standing around figuring out fresh ways to torment her rather than climbing down to “get” her

Ashworth dangles from this or that and catches her tumbling backpack with her foot, but we see little in the way of using “your mind, not your body” (advice from a flashback) to work the problem and pick off these “bros” one by one.

“The Ledge” has a simple set-up, a naturally perilous setting, a convincing heroine and a whole lot of hanging around, waiting for the next “That could never happen” narrow escape. The openly-foreshadowed payoff isn’t worth the viewing effort it takes to get to it.

Rating: R, violence including attempted rape, gore, profanity

Cast: Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Nathan Welsh, Louis Boyer, David Wayman and Anaïs Parello

Credits: Directed by Howard J. Ford, scripted by Tom Boyle. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:26

It’s a redemption story about a mug with dreams of stardom, who calls for a Catholic woman…and decided to become a priest?

This is what we call “The Big Mistake Theory.” You make a big enough mistake (Charles Colson, et al) or make enough of them, you grasp at religion.

Not shocking to see Mel Gibson is involved in “Father Stu.”

As redemption narratives go, this looks dubious, but may be there’s an audience for it.