Movie Nation

Tony quaint and upscale Windermere, in Orange Co. where Orlando is, made the news as the planned retirement retreat for the apparently overpaid cop who murdered George Floyd, set America on edge with protests and finally got people made enough to do something about the seditious bigot in the White House.

Today, Roger DVDseed had to stop here and write a bit, so MovieNation and Indie Pix donated a DVD of a drama about a Muslim woman fighting for her rights after being fired for making colleagues uncomfortable by her presence…in France.

Yes, we’re spreading cinema all over the southeast, one movie and one public library at a time.

Donate your DVDs to libraries, kids.

“I Want You Back” is a rom-com that sort of drifts along, not quite petering out, not exactly sparking to life, until that magical moment when Pete Davidson shows up.

No, nobody said that. Ever. But with the Lorne as my witness, it’s true.

Davidson shows up at a girls-pick-up-guys party, a punk given to dating well beneath his age. And with a little “molly,” a hint of edge and a dose of gonzo, he helps the film earn its R-rating and find something like its mojo. There are laughs, and a little sexual slapstick enters the picture.

It doesn’t save this “let’s break up our exes’ new relationships” rom-com, a variation on an “Addicted to Love” model. It’s not down and dirty, and not remotely as sophisticated as its “When Harry Met Sally” soundtrack suggested they wanted it to be. The pace is New Orleans brass band procession funereal, and it goes on well past its payoff. But it does give us a taste of what could have been, before the bitter aftertaste sets in.

Jenny Slate is Emma, and we meet her just as personal trainer beau Noah (Scott Eastwood) is dumping her in the middle of her second Lover’s Punch. On the other side of Atlanta, Anne (Gina Rodriguez) is giving bubbly Peter (Charlie Day) the heave-ho at her nephew’s birthday party.

Emma and Peter “meet cute” in the stairwell of the building where both work, where he catches her weeping, and she notices he’s doing the same.

Over drinks, cell phone video reminiscences of their “couple” days and drunken karaoke, they become each other’s “sad sister,” the one they call when they’re tempted to call their ex. And at some point during their dinners, nights at the movies and such, a “Strangers on a Train” plot is hatched. She’ll “seduce” the middle school drama teacher Logan (Manny Jacinto, pretentiously funny) whom Anne took up with. And he’ll befriend Noah to trash talk his new lady love, the fetching pie maker Jenny (Clark Backo). What could go wrong?

“This is like ‘Cruel Intentions,’ only sexier!”

The former stand-up comic Slate banters well, and still can do the cute and “nobody loves me” thing with panache, if not a lot of laughs. Day’s lost some of his “Always Sunny in Philadelphia/Horrible Bosses” fastball and aged out of that manic screeching thing he does when he’s put out.

Together, they set off so few sparks that you remember why legacy studios gave up on each of them (Slate fares better in indie films) years ago. They’re cute support, not leading lady/man material.

Eastwood and Rodriguez aren’t known for comedy…with good reason.

Which leaves the picture’s light touch in the hands of screenwriters who don’t have enough jokes and a director who lets things go on and on when somebody should have said “FASTER” to the cast and “FUNNIER” to the writers.

So Davidson comes in and kills. And that’s after Jamie Gertz, playing Peter’s penny pinching nursing home conglomerate boss, has landed the only decent laugh in the first act.

“These people are at death’s door and we are spending WAY too much money to feed them!”

If they’d workshopped this to figure out more to do with Day, or simply made the film from Slate’s point of view, things might have improved. Slate has some sweet scenes befriending a depressed middle school kid.

And when Slate’s Emma is corralled into subbing for Audrey in the middle school’s “Little Shop of Horrors” because she lied to director Logan about having “played” her in high school, all part of her planned “seduction,” “I Want You Back” shows everybody involved and everybody watching it could have been funnier, sweeter and darker at the same time.

Rating: R for language, sexual material, some drug use and partial nudity

Cast: Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Gina Rodriguez, Scott Eastwood, Clark Backo, Manny Jacinto and Pete Davidson.

Credits: Directed by Jason Orley, scripted by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger. An Amazon release.

Running time: 1:52

No Drew Barrymore this time. But Ryan Kiera Armstrong appears to have what it takes to be very young and scary.

Zac Efron, Gloria Ruben and “Was that Kurtwood Smith?” co-star in this one, in theaters and on Peacock May 13.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan’s pursuit of “Gross National Happiness.” It’s this gloriously progressive ideal aimed at prioritizing well-being and a satisfying, even joy-filled life over international capitalism’s national scorecard — gross domestic product.

But who knew this remote, impassibly mountainous country could export that?

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is a sweet, understated and wistfully beautiful film about an antsy young cynic sent to teach in the most remote schoolhouse on Earth. He is ordered to Lunana to fulfill his national service. What he’d prefer is traveling to Australia to sing English language pop covers in the bars on Bondi Beach.

But what’s a self-absorbed lad to do when the entire village worshipfully welcomes him, pouring respect on a teacher, someone who “can touch the future?” What’ll he do when he sees the eager faces of the moppets who will be under his care?

If he’s like a lot of people who watch this film, Bhutan’s first-ever contender as a Best International (foreign language) Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, he might just cry.

Writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s debut feature starts in the city where Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) is getting a good, old-fashioned chewing-out from his government supervisor. A nation filled with yak herders and monks is a place where most folks would sacrifice everything for a government job. Ugyen would rather play his guitar and sing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” He’s waiting for his travel visa to clear so he and his girlfriend can escape to Australia.

“I have never SEEN anyone less motivated that you” his boss hisses (in Dzongkha, with English subtitles). He’s been a bust at the city schools of Thimphu. As he owes one last year of service, maybe shipping his shiftless behind to Lunana, in the literal middle of nowhere, will change his ways and help the government reopen the school there, passing “gross national happiness” on to the 56 or so souls who inhabit the place.

“I have an altitude problem!” he lies. “Are you Bhutanese? “ATTITUDE problem’ is more like it!”

After a sluggish start, “Lunana” gets on its feet and on the road. Ugyen sets off — a day by bus, seven days of hiking and complaining — just to get to the village 4,800 meters up.

He and his guide Michen (Ugyen Norbu Lhendup) pass through settlements down to their last three residents, wade streams where his market-stall bought “Gortex” waterproof boots turn out to be knockoffs, and climb through some of the most breathtaking scenery on Earth.

Michen has noticed the snow pack shrinking, even though he’s never heard the phrase “Global Warming.” Ugyen barely notices. He’s got his headphones on, listening to his jams on his phone. He may expect his cell service coverage to end, but he has no idea how hard even recharging the thing will be.

“Solar…sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

And that’s the least of his problems. The ancient stone school has no supplies. His living space for the summer and fall — he is due to leave before the snow blocks him in — is Spartan and cold, with only yak dung to burn for warmth and cooking. He meets the respectful head man (Kanzang Wangdi) and the villagers who hike for hours to escort him in, and cannot disguise his dismay or hold his tongue.

He doesn’t want to be here, and is ready to leave. Now.

But as in a thousand other “fish out of water” tales, things change, attitudes soften. The “class captain,” little Pem Zam, is too cute for words, eager to learn and awfully helpful since Ugyen no longer has a cell phone alarm to wake him in time for school.

He finds himself improvising, using charcoal on the walls since there’s no blackboard. He’s bilingual, so he teaches nursery rhymes in Dzongkha, math in English. Might he fit in? Be useful after all?

“Maybe I was a yak herder in a previous life,” he jokes to the head man. “Oh noooo. You could have been a YAK. They are so useful to our people.”

And then there’s this other singer in town, a yak herder with an angel’s voice. She’s cute, too.

Writer-director Dorji has a few stumbling steps out of the gate, with characters’ awkwardly running through paragraphs of exposition filling in Ugyen’s unhappy childhood and his inescapable fate in early scenes. But his debut feature settles down and immerses us in rituals — offering yak milk to shrines in mountain passes, not to the dead but to the spirits of the mountains — and Bhutanese life, which is simple enough to be called impoverished by much of the rest of the world.

The film invites us to imagine interior lives, a narrowing of the “pursuit of happiness” to tasks at hand, modest goals, music, food and love.

As our pandemic waxes and wanes, “Lunana” becomes one of the great cinematic escapes of recent years.

You go ahead and root for the Japanese “Drive My Car” this Oscar night. I’ve picked out an underdog to pull for, and a bucket list place to visit, “altitude problems” be damned.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Sherab Dorji, Pem Zam, Ugyen Norbu Lhendup, Kelden Lhamo Gurung and Kunzang Wangdi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:50

At this reductivist stage of his career, does Liam Neeson even need to “take a meeting,” look at a script or sign on the dotted line?

It’s not like he’s just remade “Taken” in every movie since 2008, but every CIA, ex-CIA, FBI, ex-FBI or ex-con he plays dresses the same, scowls the same and has identical “particular skills.” The odd digression from formulaic genre action pics arrives as just that — odd. None of us know quite what to make of it.

Reviewing his movies along this path from his late 50s to age 70 (this coming June) is challenging because the siren’s song of reductivism calls to us — well, me — too. I’d love to just post the latest version of the above-photo, say “It is what it is,” and “those who like this sort of thing might find this the sort of thing they like,” to paraphrase pioneering critic Abe Lincoln.

But no. Duty calls.

In “Blacklight” Neeson plays Travis Block, a veteran FBI agent whom you call when you need the man to get you or an endangered uncover agent out of a jam. We meet as he blows up a lot of stuff to distract Confederate flag-fetishist yahoos who have figured out they’ve been infiltrated, and threaten to overwhelm the outgunned local Southern law enforcement to lynch the lady.

Agent Block is the trusted “fixer” for an FBI chief (Aidan Quinn) who seems to be running his own “make America Nazi friendly” op. We’ve seen an outspoken AOC-style Congresswoman assassinated in another opening scene.

There’s a rogue agent (Taylor John Smith) who knows about this super secret death squad operation trying to get the attention of a reporter (Emma Raver-Lampman) at the website Washington News Cycle (the single clever turn of phrase in this script).

Thugs working for that crypto-fascist FBI chief are silencing people like this reporter or that agent.

Will Agent Block finally get to step back, retire, be the doting granddad to his “check the perimeter” obsessed pre-school grandchild (“You’re making her PARANOID Dad!” her mom, played by Claire Van der Boom, complains.)?

Nah.

Neeson always gives fair value in these woebegone, quick-and-dirty actioners. But closing in on 70, the fakery meant to show him brawling or driving too fast and what not isn’t that subtle.

Quinn seems too bored to give this villainous turn much effort, as were the screenwriters, who don’t make that revelation anything resembling a spoiler. We know pretty from the get go that this guy’s a power mad Federalist Society fascist.

After the over-the-top slaughter of “Cop Shop,” co-writer/director Mark Williams practically sleep walks through this — filler scenes, a talkathon through the middle acts, an anticlimactic finale.

The money on the screen was spent on a few action beats and Neeson. Nobody else in this passes for a “name,” and it’s probably to their advantage that none of them make an impression.

But whatever advantage there was to keeping his name out there and his Hollywood quote up has gone South for Neeson at this point. About one in five of these films has anything of a redeeming value in it. The other four are just more “Where’d YOU come from?” complaints from the baddies he’s snuck up on, and more “You’re gonna need more MEN” threats from the ex-boxer who grows a little more grandfatherly and a tad less badass with each passing year.

Rating: PG-13 for strong violence, action and language

Cast: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Emma Raver-Lampman, Taylor John Smith, Claire Van der Boom.

Credits: Directed by Mark Williams, scripted by Nick May and Mark Williams. A Briarcliff Ent. release.

Running time: 1:44

Let’s not think too much about the resolution to Stacey Gregg’s haunting “Here Before.” It’s too pat to feel satisfying after all that we’ve invested in that’s come before it.

But what we’ve seen and settled into up to that climax is another sublime performance from Andrea Riseborough, one of the subtlest and most expressive actresses working today. Playing a mother who carries on with her life, her marriage and with raising her teen son after the death of her younger daughter, Riseborough (“The Grudge,””Battle of the Sexes”) gives us documentary-real grief, the kind that you’re supposed to shoulder and soldier through without anybody else seeing it. She makes us understand that grief is a form of haunting.

Laura is in a place where she won’t even let herself be triggered. Finding a tattered pinwheel in her wintry, over-grown Northern Irish garden might give her a moment’s pause, a reverie. But she’s so compartmentalized her thoughts of Josie that she limits her flashbacks to silent memories of adjusting the child’s hairband.

Son Tadgh (Lewis McAskie) may be ruder than usual, and sleepwalking on occasion. But husband Brendan (Jonjo O’Neill) is more about keeping a wary eye out for how his wife is taking it than examining his own feelings.

Only Laura is rattled, in only the most subtle ways, when new neighbors move into the other half of their bedroom community duplex.

“Wee girl puts me in mind of Josie, that’s all.” Megan (Niamh Dornan) resembles the dead girl, and a couple of times, when they’re alone and then when she’s over to dinner, she startles Laura with things she seems to recognize in this strange new town. Serving her a fishsticks sandwich leaves Megan puzzled.

“Are you gonna do the ketchup face?” Josie liked her ketchup drawn in as a smiley face on her sandwiches.

The conflict that’s set up here is between Laura and her family, with Tadgh particularly furious at what he thinks is going on, Laura and Megan’s mom (Eileen O’Higgins) and Laura and her own fragile psyche.

Is she imaging this connection, this ghostly reincarnation that’s moved in next door? And if she isn’t, is she prepared to accept some supernatural explanation?

Riseborough underplays every moment Laura lives through in this spare, moody, perpetually-overcast drama. She not just a mom, living in the reality of keeping their lives going. She’s a woman struggling to do the most basic things to put unbearable grief behind her, wearing a brave face for husband and son.

The grief, “It gets in there and won’t go away,” she explains as more than one person in this compact tale starts to wonder if she’s losing it. Only her mother-in-law seems wholly sympathetic.

“If she’s with you, that’s your business.”

Veteran British TV writer Stacey Gregg, making her feature writing/directing debut, maintains a glum tone throughout “Here Before,” occasionally flirting with spooky, sometimes leaning towards sinister.

Yes, she finds a way to resolve this mystery that makes sense — barely. But she wisely makes this ghost story without ghosts, horror tale without frights, something subtler, more real and disturbing in its own way.

And it helps that “subtler” and “real” are the specialties of her leading lady, who makes Laura as convincingly broken as she is tonally and most assuredly Irish, right to the bone.

Rating: R, for language (and violence)

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Jonjo O’Neill, Niamh Dornan, Lewis McAskie and Eileen O’Higgins

Credits: Scripted and directed by Stacey Gregg. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:22

One of the undisputed masters of special effects during the celluloid film era has passed away.

From “2001” to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” with “Blade Runner” and so many other titles added for impact, if it looked other worldly and spectacular, chances are Trumbull came up with the effects.

The future wizard of FX and “Close Encounters” genius was second generation Hollywood, the son of “Wizard of Oz” FX man Donald Trumbull.

There’s imagery in films like “Brainstorm” that will pop your eyes out, even today. That was the movie Natalie Wood was about to finish when she drowned.

He invented stuff and directed a cult film that may be Bruce Dern’s finest hour, the sentimental and moving environmental epic “Silent Running.”

“Donkeyhead” might be the best indie dramedy on Netflix right now.

Intimate and funny, touching and set in a place and a subculture mainstream cinema never ventures — the Sikh community of Regina, Saskatchewan — it’s great example of “write what you know” and “don’t overreach.”

Writer/director Agam Darshi created a star vehicle for herself, and gives plenty of scripted room for her co-stars to shine in this story of a scattered family facing their patriarch’s impending death in the snow-covered house they all grew up in.

Mona (Darshi) lives with and cares for her grumpy, cancer-stricken dad, rides her bike in the snow, drinks a bit and inhales a bit and carries off a weekly assignation with a married man (Kim Coates).

And if she’s feeling particularly worthless, she’ll look over the letter that arrived with the advance for a book she never finished, an advance paid out a dozen years ago.

After Dad (Marvin Ishmael) delivers his latest “You should get married, become someone else’s problem” to his 30something “writer who doesn’t write,” he has a stroke. It’s time to “call your family,” his doctor declares, gently at first, and then more firmly a second time.

Mona the “failure” has to summon her married real estate entrepreneur brother Rup (Huse Madhavji), married-doctor/sister Sandy (Sandy Sindhu) and “golden boy” London doctor Parminder (Stephen Lobo) for a bedside death watch.

She has to fend off or surrender to the pushy Sikh aunt (Balinder Johal) who wants to bring the gigantic book of scriptures and much of her congregation into the house for Paath, praying over the sick man.

Words will be exchanged, old wounds redressed and new ones opened as Mona, or “Manjit,” wrestles with what became of her life in the face of all the “success” of her siblings. Everybody needs to “let go,” some more than others. You can guess who’s deepest in denial.

“Why don’t we see how he does before planning a funeral?”

Not every scene sings, but Darshi gets laughs out of a taxi ride with a fellow distracted, music-video-watching Desi who sees cash for his catering business in the return of the prodigals, and pathos out of every intervention and sad moment of grappling with their father’s fate.

Lobo, playing “Dad’s favorite,” stands out among the supporting players, giving us a convincing take on “the empathetic one” among the siblings, reminding us that even the empathetic have their limits. And veteran character actor Coates, just seen in “See for Me” and TV’s “Van Helsing,” is nicely cast against type as a professional man, and a cheating husband.

“Donkeyhead” has heart and humor in nicely matched doses, and is good enough that you hope Darshi has another movie in mind as a follow-up, and that Netflix has the sense and Canadian dollars to let her make it.

Rating: TV-MA, sex, profanity, smoking and drinking

Cast: Agam Darshi, Stephen Lobo, Sandy Sindhu, Huse Madhavji, Marvin Ishmael, Balinder Johal and Kim Coates

Credits: Scripted and directed by Agam Darshi. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

An animated action comedy coming to screens, large and small, this June. Chris Evans and somebody voicing a robotic cat are featured. And Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, James Brolin…

First Oscar thoughts, well HEY, they nominated Ciaran Hinds for “Belfast.” And Judi Dench! Pair up two scene stealers, let’s see if it pays off.

And there’s Kirsten and Kristin and Jessica Chastain, LOADED Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress fields.

There’s Denzel, but no Best Pic, best director love for “Macbeth?” Plenty of Oscar attention for “King Richard,” and Will Smith finally gets his shot at the big brass ring.

Andrew Garfield was MUCH better in “The Eyes of Tammy Fay” than in that instantly-forgotten “Tick tick…BOOM.”

“CODA” becomes the little picture that could, “Drive My Car” makes noise outside the Best International Feature category, and “Don’t Look Up” elbows its way in.

“House of Gucci” got almost no love at all. Lady Gaga hype smothered that, I figure.

Kathryn Hunter, embodying all three “witches” in “Macbeth,” and Cairtrona Balfe (“Belfast”) can be considered acting snubs. “Cyrano” did about as well as “House of Gucci.”

While “Power of Dog,” “Belfast,” “West Side Story” and others clean up.

I’d call “Drive My Car” and “CODA” the big winners, four and two nominations and in the conversation for good.

It’s been hard to work up any enthusiasm for the Academy Awards during the Pandemic Years. They always seem trivial and self-congratulatory, never more so than with the even more insipid than usual “announcement” ceremony this AM.

Going to do a few running counts here to see where everything stands, and update this as the AM progresses. Looks like “Dog” pulled in seven, as did “Dune,” which cleaned up in the tech categories. “Belfast,” “West Side Story” and “King Richard” nabbed six nominations.

They hand these statuettes out this year, at the 94th Academy Awards, on March 27 on ABC.

The full list of nominees is after the break.

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