Movie Nation

Beware those who haunt the seedy motels of America. They’re not just the traditional hunting grounds of the Norman Bates/Aileen Wuornos crowd.

That’s where Riz tumbles ashore, a new  arrival from India who never plans on going home.

She may be naive enough to let the too-helpful desk clerk and owner take her passport –“We get you AMERICAN one!” — and shove her into a job, cleaning the rooms. But it wasn’t just fate and desperation that brought Riz (Geetanjali Thapa) here. And the first predators she meets — that Russian owner (Cynthia Nixon), the 20ish maid/hooker she makes Riz room with (Olivia DeJonge) or the other Indian (Samrat Chakrabarti) staying there — had best keep a watchful eye.

This prey has a past. And this place, the Tides Plaza Motel in Poughkeepsie, isn’t the trap it first seems — for her.

“Stray Dolls” is a bracing if uneven debut feature by editor-turned-director Sonejuhi Sinha, a seedy crime story of the “Motel Noir” genre.  We can tell that by its opening moments, Riz and her roomie Dallas (DeLonge), dressed in cheap blonde wigs, their faces giving away in an instant that they’re not headed out for a night of fun, or even trolling for Johns. There’s bad intent in those scowls.

The long flashback that follows shows that they didn’t start out that way. Riz is shoved into a room with her fellow maid, only to be robbed by the girl with the stripper/hooker name the moment she walks in on her.

Dallas is quick to pull a knife, quicker with a threat. She wants “OUT of here,” and Riz might be her latest ticket of escape. Rob the customers and she’ll “give you your stuff back.”

Can she do that? As she cleans one patron’s room, we realize she can. So does she. Sal (Chakrabarti) speaks to her in Hindi and offers her chai. Then he gets down to business.

“How much to see you in one of those towels?”

In the Tides Plaza, there are no “predators” and “prey.” Only predators. And when Dallas turns friendlier and asks Riz about her past, her scars, we stop fearing for the illegal immigrant — just a little.

Una (Nixon) may coo motherly nothings about having a “big heart” and wanting to help. Dallas may talk tough, but she’s waiting for her sometime squeeze Jimmy (Robert Aramayo) to make that one drug deal that will rescue her.

And they may be two diminutive young women swimming in a motel pool full of sharks. But nobody should underestimate their survival instincts or survival skills.

Young film school trust fund filmmakers make movies based on other movies, and that’s what “Stray Dolls” feels like. It’s gritty reality grounded in cinema.

One thing that works against Sinha’s film is that we don’t buy that Thapa’s Riz is “fresh off the boat,” not for a second. Her calls home, lying about “I love it here, the skies are so blue” (it’s winter, and “grey” is a good day) and swimming in the pool that’s “shaped like a…kidney bean” (the pool was paved over years ago) are the most innocent moments she can manage.

Riz led a hard life to get here, and whatever street life she led back home makes the “sweet innocent” plays plays with her mother on the phone her best acting job.

DeJonge plays a discount motel cliche — a closet full of fishnets, hot pants, and rage. She makes enough money for cheap clothes and a phone. The cocaine she craves and slips into Riz’s milkshake? She must score that from Jimmy.

Nixon’s Russian accent goes and comes — mostly goes. And Aramayo’s “Jimmy” is every dead-ender who chose to get a snake tattooed on his neck without a thought for the life that sentenced him to.

But the violence, when it comes, is shocking. The native cunning, when it makes itself known, is chilling.

And the American dream of the dead broke “huddled masses,” symbolized by a brochure for Niagara Falls, is a lot further away than the Tides Plaza Motel’s owner lets on.

How’re two broke hustlers supposed to cover 375 miles with no money, no car and no passports?

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Olivia DeJonge, Geetanjali Thapa, Robert Aramayo,  Samrat Chakrabarti and Cynthia Nixon.

Credits: Directed by Sonejuhi Sinha, script by Charlotte Rabate, Sonejuhi Sinha.   A Samuel L. Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:37

The action set piece is prefigured the moment we see the business our crusty hero runs for a living.

The shoot-out, brawl, blaze and saw-off in the FORESHADOWED sawmill eats up over half of “Earth and Blood.” So the action around that silent-movie era thriller setting had better be good.

It is. But it’s not quite potent enough to get us past how abrupt events were that brought us there, the thin back-story on that owner, Said (Sami Bouajila) and the unlikely dominoes that fall which put him in the position of defending himself, his deaf daughter (Sofia Lesaffre) and his business from a vicious drug gang out to retrieve some stolen cocaine.

Director and co-writer Julien Leclercq (“The Crew,” “The Assault”) makes rough, tough and abrupt thrillers that get down to business and get that business over with — often in 80 or so minutes. Not much time for niceties or preliminaries.

Widowed Said gets out of an MRI, decides to sell the mill, lets his family know, and then figures out that one of his employees (Samy Seghir), an ex-con, was strong-armed into holding some drugs for somebody.

The drugs came from a police station evidence vault. And the ruthless crew that took them, led by Adama (Eriq Ebouaney), shot up the station and a bunch of cops, and isn’t going to be in a bargaining mood when they show up.

In a flash, Said transitions from depressed, concerned father and businessman to tough guy, slapping the ex-con kid Yanis around, barking out orders, sign-languaging his daughter and loading his shotgun.

Actually, I kind of like that. None of this “very particular skills/ex-Special Forces/Jason Statham” nonsense. Just a man in a pinch working a deadly problem on the fly — with his trusty over-under shotgun.

The mayhem that follows is as predictable as that “Perils of Pauline” era setting.

Bouajila is a veteran of gritty action pictures (he even played a guy named “Yanis” in “The Crew”) and throws his weight around like a Franco-Algerian Ron Perlman.

Ebouaney, seen in the recent thriller “Domino,” carries his “heavy” weight with skill.

If there’s a fault to the movie around them it goes back to that word — “abrupt.” We need more to connect us with the characters, pull us into the situation, reason our way out of it as Said must do.

And “abrupt” goes for the ending as well, which is as predictable as any thriller with a sawmill in it that doesn’t have somebody tied to a log at some point can be.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, drug content, profanity

Cast: Sami Bouajila, Eriq Ebouaney, Samy Seghir and Sofia Lesaffre

Credits: Julien Leclercq, script by Julien Leclercq and Jérémie Guez. A Netflix Original.

Running time: 1:22

Those ancient puppet punching bags, Punch and Judy, still have lessons to pass on five hundred years after their birth.

“Judy & Punch” is a darker-than-dark comedy that takes us back to those early days, the 16th century. A puppeteering couple struggles to win an audience in an age of ruff-collars and rougher justice, of superstition and mob rule and hanging, beheading, drowning, burning or stoning “heretics” — basically anybody seen by the mob as well, “unusual.”

One lady is accused of “staring at the moon for a suspiciously long time.” That’s all the  good, ignorant citizens of Seaside (“nowhere near the sea”) need to commence to stoning.

“The theaters are reopening,” and that means Judy (Mia Wasikowska) and Punch (Damon Herriman, Charlie Manson in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”) can return to their local stage, “the greatest puppeteer of our time” and uh, the guy who claims that billing.

Judy is the one who mends the puppets, cleans the theater and dazzles with her use of strings. Punch is the one who hisses “I’m an ARTIST” when Judy complains about how “smashy” the show has become.

He insists on giving the mob what it wants — violence.  As long as he stays sober and they have enough to care for their baby, she goes along with it.

Wouldn’t you know it? The one day she needs to go clean the theater and prep for the next performance, the easily-distracted Punch gets distracted — and then drunk. That baby’s a goner.

Punch goes all “Dr.” Phil, “Dr.” Oz” and “Dr.” Drew and mumbles “What’s done is done. I suppose we just move on with our lives.” And when Judy isn’t hearing it, he gives her the “smashing” we’ve always suspected he’s capable of.

Dispose of the bodies, and commence to accusing the elderly couple (Brenda Palmer, Terry Norris) who cook and take care of their house for them. That’s Punch.

“Heretics! They cooked and ate my baby, and moidered me wife!”

Actress turned writer/director Mirrah Foulkes introduces a constable (Benedict Hardie) very much a novelty for Seaside. He may be hapless, but he wants to “investigate” the crime.

“We should be guided by reason and justice!”

The locals call that his “outlandish social experiment,” and insist “Lock them up” and “We’re overdue for a hanging!”

Punch cheerleads all of this. He’s “projecting,” casting the blame for his crimes elsewhere, like certain politicians we could name.

Will there be justice? Will the short arm of the (constable’s) law deliver it? Can we expect Divine Intervention? Will it come via the town’s “heretic” outcasts, the ones who weren’t stoned to death but live like Gypsies in the Black Forest?

Or will the mob and the villain have their way?

The violence is a bit of a tune-out (the director, producer and some in the cast were in the movie version of “Animal Kingdom”). But even if we can guess some of the places “Judy & Punch” will take us to, that doesn’t mean the journey — back to the 16th century, taking a hard, serio-comic look at the 21st — isn’t worthwhile.

Wasikowska’s character arc is fun, Herriman makes a perfectly charming and vile villain, and the period detail in this Aussie production — more Brothers Grimm 16th century than the real thing — gives “Judy & Punch” the perfect stage to tell their satiric story without having to pull any you-know-whats.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Damon Herriman, Benedict Hardie, Virginia Gay, Lucy Velik, Gillian Jones, Tom Budge, Brenda Palmer, Terry Norris

Credits: Written and directed by Mirrah Foulkes. A Samuel L Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:45

Proceeds from your streaming the doc will benefit indie record stores.

The film was supposed to premiere at SXSW. Now, you can see it at home instead and help out local businesses as well.

OK, there’s a chuckle or two in this trailer for the Quibi Original “Dummy.”

Love that Anna. But hey…

Now that the Academy has seen to it that Julianne Moore and Viola Davis have Oscars, perhaps they can turn their attention to a new “best actress to never win an Oscar.”

That would be Maggie Gyllenhaal, the always provocative, endlessly inventive, empathetic even at her edgiest Queen of Memorable Performances. It would be nice if the star of “Secretary,” “Sherrybaby,” “Away We Go”and  “Crazy Heart,” America’s answer to Helen Mirren in the fearless-fierce-sexy lead or character lead, won that recognition before she’s Mirren’s age.

We can’t call “The Kindergarten Teacher” her masterpiece, because she’s dazzling, even in pedestrian films. But this nuanced Netflix Original should have led to an Oscar nomination, at the very least.

In this remake of an Israeli film, Gyllenhaal has the title role, that of an artistically-minded woman, a devoted kindergarten teacher of 20 years whose after hours passion is poetry. But she’s just good enough, with effort, to recognize genius when she hears it.

And she hears it out of a five year old boy in her class.

Lisa Spinelli lives on Staten Island, relatively content with her still-attentive husband (Michael Chernus) and two teenage kids. But she’s been going to a night school poetry class taught the ever-enthusiastic Simon (Gael Garcia Bernal).

But the first poem that has him enthusiastic about her work is one she overheard tumbling out of the tiny tyke Jimmy (Parker Sevak) in her kindergarten class.

Jimmy paces, stares at the floor, and the words pound out with every footstep — rhythmic, allegorical, cryptic. Gyllenhaal lets us see the full flood of emotions in Lisa’s reaction — wonder and awe, envy and resignation.

“The Kindergarten Teacher” makes it her mission to get down Jimmy’s words, to enlist his young and distracted nanny into doing the same. She’s committed her favorite poems (Robert Frost’s “Lodged”), so she knows talent when she hears it. She tries to reach the boy’s bar-owner father, to get across to him “how rare this gift is.

She devotes down moments in class — naptime and playground time — to Jimmy, prodding him to do it again.

And she starts passing off Jimmy’s work as her own to her once-dismissive night school teacher and classmates.

The genius of this script is where it takes us from there, into places too predictable and occasionally, disturbing. Gyllenhaal’s “dangerous” vibe — a career-long attribute — make us fear for the child and fear for her as this obsession, her mania for nurturing Jimmy’s talent, takes over.

It spills over into her home life, the disappointments her promising kids are turning into.

We can see where this is going, but so can Lisa. It’s fated, operatic. All she can hope to do is get someone — the world — to focus on this ephemeral miracle she’s stumbled upon in the brief time she is sure it will last.

“The Kindergarten Teacher” is a great performance, the latest from an actress with a reputation for giving them. Watch it on Netflix and see what the Academy missed.

MPAA Rating: R for some language and nudity

Cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gael Garcia Bernal, Parker Sevak

Credits: Directed by Sara Colangelo, script by Sara Colangelo, based on the Nadav Lapid script to the Israeli film of the same title.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

There’s an added poignancy, the wince of too-familiar recognition in seeing “I, Daniel Blake” in the midst of a pandemic-caused global depression.

This Palme d’Or winner from Cannes a couple of years back is a sort of ultimate UK “kitchen sink” melodrama. A working man with 40 years experience in construction and woodworking, sidelined by a heart attack, trapped in a hostile Catch-22 of conservative social safety net destruction.

Dave Johns buries himself in the title role, all thick Newcastle-on-Tyne working class accent, a bluff “Don’t cry for me” widower who is told by one doctor he can’t go back to work, and is undercut by another faceless medical bureaucrat that he must go back.

But to where? Pushing 60, listening to one doctor’s advice, unable to draw disability because of another, unable to draw unemployment unless he’s computer savvy enough to fill out all the forms and meticulous enough to document and “prove” every application for work, Daniel is Exhibit A in what’s been done to “the welfare state.”

He’s stuck grousing with short-tempered guards at social services, the “good cop” counselor Ann (Kate Rutter) and the “bad cop” Sheila (Sharon Percy).

And that’s after he’s gone through the on-hold hell of trying to get a bloody appointment.

Circular logic attacks him at every turn — humiliating interrogations covering the same facts that he’s filled out on forms.

“It’s me f—–g heart!”

Every manner of “I can’t help you unless you fill this out online…”

“Give me a plot’a land and I can build you a HOUSE,” he gripes. Computers? “I’m dyslexic, where they’re concerned.”

He has too much time on his hands, yelling at neighbors who don’t clean up after their dogs, good-naturedly ribbing the knock-off sneakers-dealing neighbor (Kema Sikazwe) who has packages left at Daniel’s door and not his own.

Daniel collects scraps from his old workplace to carve into decor or saw into shelving. But his real purpose doesn’t arrive until he sees the even greater outrage heaped on poor Katie (BAFTA nominee Hayley Squires), a single mom new to town and getting the “I’m sorry” runaround from the same functionaries who are driving Daniel mad.

He makes himself useful, fixing up her apartment, watching her kids as she struggles to find work.

Ken Loach has made a career out of these working class/underclass stories, films from “Kes” and “Bread and Roses” to the recent “Sorry We Missed You.” Films on leftist themes such as Republicans fight in the Spanish Civil War, Irish struggling against British occupation and the like pepper his resume as well.

“Daniel Blake” is simple right to the edge of simplistic, but never crossing that line, focusing on the man struggling to his feet against a faceless system.

We only see the functionaries Daniel must contend with, dogmatic “Just doing my job” types. He never gets his day with the doctor and bureaucrats who gummed up his legitimate disability claim. He never gets past the cubicle clones.

It’s a touching story, and a deflating one. And Johns (“Fishermen’s Friends”) makes Daniel Blake Everyman and Everywoman, stoic and hard-working, overwhelmed by a system that’s been rigged to prevent claims, to make the “safety net” not all that safe at all.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast:Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Kate Rutter, Sharon Percy and Kema Sikazwe

Credits: Directed by Ken Loach and Laura Obiols, script by Paul Laverty. A Sundance Selects release on Netflix, Amazon etc.

Running time: 1:40

“FX” and “First Blood,” “Cocoon” and “Silverado.” Loved that guy.

A great gruff villain, a grand grandfatherly sort, hale fellows well met and working men, Brian Dennehy played Clarence Darrow and Bobby Knight, acted in Chekhov and for Terrence Malick.

A Tony winnig tyro of the stage, a Golden Globe winner, an actor’s actor.

I chatted him up a few times over the years and he always came off as the real article. He always ended the chats with “When’re we gonna go get that beer?” What a sweetheart.

What a character. Rest in peace, big guy.

The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) Tweeted: “Larger than life, generous to a fault, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed,”: #BrianDennehy ‘s oldest daughter, actress Elizabeth Dennehy, wrote in a heartfelt Twitter post https://t.co/oGk3EcQli7 https://twitter.com/THR/status/1250871159203258370?s=20

I’d lost track of those filmmaking Carolina siblings, Josh and Jonas Pate, since they transitioned from movies (“Deceiver”) to TV (“Surface”).

Born in N.C., they’ve made Charleston, S.C. and environs their stomping grounds. So they may title their latest venture “Outer Banks” and set it on the barrier islands of North Carolina, but nobody should be surprised that they shot this 10 episode series in and around Charleston and the South Carolina Low Country. The landscape is similar enough — beaches backing on marshes and estuaries (SC), islands backing up to shallow water sounds (NC) as to not be worth quibbling over.

But the series? Well, let’s quibble. It’s “Bloodline” with its training wheels on, “Scooby Doo” with swearing, “Siesta Key” with a plot.

It’s a tale of a shipwrecked treasure, a “lost at sea” father, mansion-living rich kids (“kooks”) vs. working class/working poor (“pogues”) fishing shack dwellers and “marina rats.”

The drug smuggling trade made infamous in Florida — “square groupers” (named for bales of pot dumped overboard by smugglers) — figure into this, as do corruption, surfing, a concerned sheriff and “It’s my DAD’s handwriting” clues sending our intrepid quartet and their Mystery Machine (OK, it’s a ’60s VW Microbus.) out, one step ahead of guys with guns and bad intent.

The whole affair is kind of laughable, but the milieu — coastal country in the aftermath of a hurricane — and cliffhangers may pull in the youth vote. It has potboiler/”page-turner” qualities, and an absurdly attractive cast to build and audience with.

John B.  (Chase Stokes) is our orphaned hero and incessant narrator (BAD Filmmaking 101), our tour guide and storyteller, the kid who lives in Dad’s old fishing shack,  joyriding in Dad’s old fishing skiff, working on the docks for a rich boat owner and [pining for the guy’s almost-attainable “queen of the kooks” blonde daughter (Madelyn Cline).

Which is a pity, because the fair Kiara (Madison Bailey), daughter of the owners of a popular local restaurant, is one of his crew and cute, too.

Then there’s hothead JJ (Rudy Pankow) and “the brains” of the outfit — college bound Pope (Jonathan Daviss).

A carefree “We do what we want, when we want” lifestyle is barely established when Hurricane Agnes blows through (surfing during a hurricane, totally a thing). And in the detritus left in the storm’s wake, they stumble across a wrecked fishing boat with cash and clues on board.

Cops, including the sheriff (Adina Porter) are suspicious. Tough out of towners are, too.

And we’re off on an adventure that anyone who’s ever seen any “found money/treasure/treasure map” story will be two episodes ahead of, start to finish.

Setting is almost everything on “Outer Banks,” as it figures into the lifestyle, the architecture and the value systems we sample. The sunken boat they found was a Grady White — the Caddy of inland and coastal fishing boats. How did the poor, drowned local they knew have the cash for that?

“Salt life” is everything — fishing, diving, surfing.

The local lighthouse has been turned into a museum and is thus a resource on all manner of wrecks and local sea lore — a common occurrence all along the coast of the Southeastern U.S., from Maryland to Texas.

And the aftermath of that hurricane is impressively rendered — boats hither and yon, some sunk, some washed inland. Buoys washed ashore, wreckage everywhere making this the perfect time for a bonfire/kegger of the storm-littered beach.

The story, on the other hand, is on the very cusp of “childish.” That lowers the stakes, lessens the drama, removes the surprises and narrows the demographic appeal of “Outer Banks.”

Leave this one to the kids.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug content, teen drinking, profanity

Cast: Chase Stokes, Madison Bailey, Jonathan Daviss, Rudy Panko, Adina Porter and Austin North.

Credits: Created by Jonas and Josh Pate, and Shannon Burke. A Netflix Original.

Running time: 10 episodes, @50 minutes each

“A Champion Heart” is a bland, harmless little nothing of a “girl and her horse” tale, predictable family-friendly comfort food with little that’ll impress or surprise anybody over the age of eight.

Mandy Grace plays Mandy, a teen who’s moved to Sunset Valley after losing her mother. Her Dad (director David de Vos) was laid off after that, so it’s time for a fresh start in a tony locale — horse country. Yeah, they live in a trailer, but the school’s full of rich kids.

And they seem friendly. Mandy’s invited into a study group with pretty rich girl Zoey (Isabella Mancuso). A little group four-wheeling at the rich girl’s house leads to some spirited competition, and that’s how Mandy crashes into a fence and shed at a local farm.

Winds of Grace is an “equine sanctuary,” where people leave horses they can’t keep or don’t want any more (#whitepeopleproblems), a non-profit.  Temperamental, dodge-blame Mandy has enough character not to run out on her responsibility for this.

So the owner (Donna Rusch) and her dad come to a — say it with me — “She’ll work if off” solution. None of this “I’m not giving up my Saturdays to pick up horse poop!” That’s exactly what she’s doing.

That’s how she comes to bond with the “impossible” pinto she names “Tuxedo.” That’s how she gets into show-jumping with “Tux.” That’s how she gets to hang out with the mysteriously desirable (to her high school classmates) beanpole Bradley (Devan Key).

The cast ranges from competent on down the scale, with the director/actor being the weakest link. At least Mancuso manages the “mean girl” basics as Zoey — sexy sneer, evil glint in her eye. And the horse — whom they keep calling “he” and “him” when she PLAINLY is not — has lots of personality.

The script works in “faith” messaging, as Mandy learns how you don’t give up on someone, or some horse, and how if your “faith is stronger than your fear,” you have succeed at show jumping.

The jokes are of the bad pun variety — “What do horses eat on their pancakes? Maple stirrups!”

“Bland” isn’t the worst thing your family-friendly movie can be. “Predictable” can be comforting.

“A Champion Heart” may not be a blue, red or whatever ribbon-winner. But it is a perfectly safe Netflix title to park small children in front of when they’ve gotten on your last nerve.

MPAA Rating: G, general audiences

Cast: Mandy Grace, Devan Key, Donna Rusch, David de Vos and Isabella Mancuso

Credits: Directed by David de Vos, script by David de Vos, Stephanie de Vos  A DeVos/Devotion/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:28