Movie Nation

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

Here’s a French road dramedy that points us in one direction, turns in another and finds a little heart and charm, almost in spite of itself, along the way.

“Ulysses & Mona” is about a pretty art student, Mona (Manal Issa) who is “tired of naked men (artist models), bowls of fruit and Byzantine mosaics.” She wants inspiration, mentoring.

The celebrated artist Ulysses might fill that bill. He retired from painting some years back, but he’s put some symbolic conceptual pieces (him, in an African mask, posing in a plastic bubble) up on the Internet.

Let’s see if he’ll be my mentor!

She tracks Ulysses (Eric Cantona) down at a remote estate, living alone with his dog, playing tennis against himself, pestered by an inquisitive neighbor boy (Mathis Romani). What Mona doesn’t know is that Ulysses has lost his wife, disconnected from his family and shut off the world.

“I admire your work” isn’t going to change that.

Mona is not used to being put off (see “pretty art student” reference above). She dons her cutest tennis skirt and shows up with a racket. No match today. She finds him bloodied, lying on the court, knocked out by his tennis ball machine.

Rushing him to the hospital changes everything. That’s where he gets the x-ray that tells him he has a brain tumor. That’s where he decides he has use of “an assistant.” That’s when he talks her into joining him on the road, helping with the driving, documenting what she sees.

Mona’s art takes a back seat in the old Volvo they travel in as Ulysses visits and connects with those he’s estranged from. She picks up on how this is a “farewell” trip, and takes on a new role — calming troubled waters, prodding those he’s hurt into giving him a last chance. She helps the grumpy artist soften, just a smidge.

It’s only occasionally cute and rarely unpredictable. And despite the film’s scenic format and brevity, none of it feels of much consequence. Losing the “art” thread was a poor choice on er-director Sébastien Betbeder’s part.

But a few standout moments stick with you and the afterglow is warm. You won’t mind spending time with “Ulysses & Mona,” even cooped up in a car.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Manal Issa, Eric Cantona, Mathis Romani

Credits: Written and directed by Sébastien Betbeder. A Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:22

May, direct to streaming
Looks better than one might have hoped, but almost certainly not commercial. VOD is not a bad move, all things considered. Sitting on it was not the smart play

Timothee Chalamet, in full desert-gear as described by sci-fi pilferer of Bedouin culture Frank Herbert.

He looks a LOT like young Kyle MacLachlan. Which fits.

Oscar Isaac, as many have suggested, could be in different and a full beard in a new “Star Wars” outfit. He’s got the Jürgen Prochnow role, that of Daddy Atreides,in this latest version of a book first filmed in 1984,with visionary David Lynch behind the camera.

The one overriding gripe many of us had, watching that original film lo those decades ago, was that Lynch & Co. realized they’d barely gotten into the book and thus had to cram everything that happens in most of it into a truncated 30 minute blur to finish the job.

It was still two hours and 17 minutes long, and felt like they’d skipped over half of it.

We knew somebody would come along and try to better “Dune.” Like Ralph Bakshi’s abortive “Lord of the Rings,” fans recognized this as maybe more of a mini series than a single movie.

But the SyFy Channel didn’t have the oomph to do it justice in three installments in 2000.  William Hurt played the Duke/Dad in that one, Alec Newman was son Paul.

We later learned how close Alejandro Jodorosky came to getting a version off the ground a decade earlier, pre “Star Wars,” when the sci-fi stakes were lower and artier.

Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”) brings the “visionary” back to the project. But all those stills floating around the Internet — released to this outlet and that one — don’t make the case that we’re going to see anything new.

Herbert’s desert culture/blood feuds and “jihad” and worms and “Spice” book came out before the West had paid much attention to the Islamic world, desert culture and tribal mores. It read as kind of “old hat” by the time I got around to it in the ’80s (Herbert was coming to a sci-fi writer’s conference at my college).

This December, we’ll find out if there’s anything new under the “Dune.”

The mother’s angry retort to her college-age daughter is accusing, questioning and pleading all at once.

“Do you want to leave?”

There’s an ironic “all this” missing in that bark. They’re Bedouin, goat farmers, living in Israel. They re-purpose shipping palettes as fencing, keep that beater Toyota diesel pickup with mismatched body parts well past its expiration date and they live in a country where they’re an abused minority within an abused minority, apt to lose their home to government seizure, fines or suspicions of disloyalty.

Jalila (Ruba Blal), the mother, just told her husband “Have fun” as he departed with his new, younger second wife for a honeymoon. This was after she loaded a new bed into Suliman’s new house, much more nicely appointed than the one Jalila and their three children together share.

She’s in the middle of cleaning up from the wedding banquet. The generator quit — the food left in the tiny fridge spoiled, and the washing machine won’t work without power. She’s about to clean every linen and article of clothing in the house, by hand.

And her pretty college girl daughter, Layla (Lamis Ammar), has just told her that she’s “in love” with the boy Mom caught her swapping phone messages with at school, a guy outside their tribe and one who will never earn Suliman’s approval…just because.

Jalila isn’t just having a bad day. She’s pissed. And how her pride and joy, the college girl, the one her father lets drive — when the rest of the village can’t see them — has gone and fallen in love against a list of mores and traditions that all point to one thing. There’s going to be hell to pay.

“Sand Storm” is a tempest in a teapot, an intimate domestic drama that can feel alien to Western eyes — until the daughter starts acting out. If feels even more relatable when Layla’s little sister starts mouthing off, too.

Boorish, selfish Dad (Hitham Omari) seems disconnected from this world, either lost int the arms of the new brokered bride (Elham Araf) or off with the men — male bonding that we never really see.

Because this Elite Zexer film is a women’s world. Layla’s dreamboat (Jalal Masrwa) may make with the moon-eyes, suggest they “run away” and fret over her father “cutting my head off” (in Arabic, with English subtitles) because “that’s what I would do” in his shoes.

But it is Jalila and Layla who have to work this out, through fights with all the violence of sullen silence, acts of defiance, a marriage imperiled and a daughter’s future on the line in a culture struggling to hang on to its theocratic patriarchy just a little bit longer.

“Sand Storm” builds a sense of dread into the proceedings. It’s not literal “head cut off” violence that we fear. It’s the victims getting nothing out of all this acrimony and negotiation. It’s knowing this film will never deliver “a Hollywood ending.”

Dad is the offender, the oppressor, the symbolic enforcer of their ties to the past.

“Didn’t you embarrass me enough for one day?

He’s a real piece of work, wearing out the phrase “I have no choice” when no, it’s his wives and daughters who have no choice.

The women, including Jalila’s mother, do every thing they do out of fear of the recriminations that come with not keeping up appearances, adhering to traditions.

Blal tumbles deep into character as Jalila, furious and fearful and hoping for better things for her daughter.

Ammar ably tightrope-walks Layla through her cusp of womanhood passage — young enough to be impulsive, but old enough to weigh all the outcomes of her actions and what they will mean for her mother.

They make “Sand Storm” a subtle tug-of-war, a peek into a fenced-in world of frustration and limited horizons. We viewers have the luxury of shouting an instant answer to Jalila’s big question.

“Do you want to leave?”

Layla’s options are far more circumscribed. Her mother knows it, too. And it’s infuriating them both.

MPAA Rating: TV PG-13, profanity

Cast: Lamis Ammar, Ruba Blal, Hitham Omari, Jalal Masrwa and Elham Araf.

Credits: Written and directed by Elite Zexer A Kino Lorber/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:27

The single mom (Lois Wilkinson) has seen enough — accidents, deaths, a baby imperiled, a Jack Russell terrier alarmed at the spooky noises coming out of this “Witchboard” he dug up in the back yard.

Something supernatural is happening in her new flat. Mum (Lesley Scoble) puts down her “cuppa” and chirps, “I’ll ring Father West. Ask him to pop round!”

Father West is scared and attacked when the trash compactor eyeball monster sticks its head out the sink. Better fetch the Bishop (Nigel Buckley)! He’s got all the answers.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” he says, then pauses for a beat. “‘The Usual Suspects,’ 1995. Of course, they were BORROWING it from a higher source.”

“Ever see ‘Poltergeist?'” Very informative, he insists. But when he comes over to intervene, “Don’t expect ‘Power of Christ commands you/Father Merrin stuff.”

Isn’t that “The Exorcist?”

“TWO points,” bubbles the Bishop. He’s gotten ALL his knowledge of demonic possession from the talking pictures. But with the turn this one is taking, I mutter in frustration that he leaves out the killer quote, the one that will make this incompetently-written, ineptly-acted horror show memorable.

“No one ever expects…the ‘OUIJAGEIST!”

“Ouijageist” –– yes the title’s a mashup — is a disastrously daft horror tale of a possessed whispering, muttering Witchboard “game” that makes its way from the Swiss Alps to Dudley, in the English Midlands.

It’s positively dizzy in its clumsiness. A baby crawls into a bathroom where a scalding hot tub is running. The door slams behind her, and two women slap on the door in frustration, expecting the BABY to open it.

That Bishop, whose own priest was given the willies and fled on “a retreat” after seeing and being spat-upon by a MONSTER upon visiting, chuckles and tries to impress on one and all how URGENT things are.

“I’ll go over tomorrow,” he says with a hint of “there, there.” “This needs to be looked into as SOON as possible!”

Right. As in “Right NOW.” Not “Oh, pop in tomorrow.”

The acting’s often amateurish, with clumsy line-readings, unconvincing expressions of terror. I’m not singling anybody out, but if you’ve just lost your best friend, almost lost your baby and your ex has just been possessed and spat up hot coffee on you, a little more than an “Oh, bother” look is called for, luv.

A stop-motion effect showing a garden hose with a malevolent mind of its own looks like something we’d see in a student film (or Ray Harryhausen outtake).

It’s never “good,” but the awfulness is amusing, here and there. But only here and there.

MPAA Rating: unrated, horror violence, profanity

Cast: Lois Wilkinson, Lesley Scoble, Roger Shepherd,  Nigel Buckley

Credits: Directed by John R. Walker, script by Darrell Buxton, Steve Hardy. A Wildeye release.

Running time: 1:21

The kids had simple instructions growing up.

“Don’t look around, look down at the floor” whenever they had to visit Mom and Dad’s business.

“Don’t ask a lot of questions.”

If other kids or their parents trot out the “So, what do your parents do?” query, “Tell them we own a bookstore.”

Whatever you do, don’t mention the name. Because “Circus of Books” was famous — infamous, notorious — and not just in West Hollywood, not just in Los Angeles. It was a pioneering porn emporium, caught up in legal test cases, an original distributor of “Hustler Magazine” and a producer-distributor of gay porn movies, on Betamax, VHS and later DVD.

It was a landmark “for every pervert in America,” a former employee jokes, a safe space for social gathering and even “cruising” for people who had been mostly underground only a few years before it opened.

And Karen and Barry Mason were the couple behind it. They fell into the business — she had been a journalist who wrote a lot about “smut raids” and even profiled “Hustler” publisher Larry Flynt back in Cincinnati. He was a tinkerer, a one-time movie effects artist who worked on “2001” and “Star Trek.” Up against a wall, with a growing family to support, they took over a dingy bookstore, changed its focus and became famous.

Daughter Rachel Mason, the director of “Circus of Books,” takes a shot at presenting a Jewish West Hollywood version of “An American Family,” the groundbreaking PBS cinema verite documentary series that showed a “typical” family with what seemed quite atypical rifts, roiled by the challenges and changes of the sexual revolution.

But the Masons and their “Mom and Pop” bookstore were anything but typical, although nowadays, the long and seemingly happy marriage, children still speaking to them, you’d be comfortable labeling them “normal.”

The film lacks much in the way of drama. One of their three children came out as gay. It’s hard to expect tension and drama to come from that (no matter what worries that child had) when your parents have a gay-friendly business filled with gay employees, like the drag queen-clerk Alaska.

Homosexuality may have been, as mother Karen (who “wears the pants” in the family) notes, “an abomination in our religion.” But they’re no hypocrites.

Employees, friends and customers find laughs in the promiscuous atmosphere such a  store invited in gay West Hollywood in the ’80s. Uninhibited customers — and some employees — who were a bit fuzzy on decorum and boundaries — would hook up in the stacks of “Blue Boy” and “Mandate” magazines, sex toy collections and videos like “A Rim with a View.”

The funniest moment in the movie might be the tour Barry is giving where he points  and says, “And this is our ADULT section.”

Say what now?

It was all good clean — OK, not so clean — fun, clerk Alaska Thunder—k giggles.

“I’m a weirdo and kind of a pervert, I guess,” Alaska jokes. You couldn’t mind those labels if you wanted to work at a business where the back entrance area was nicknamed “Vaseline Alley.”

AIDS is mentioned, but more or less skipped over. The film is more concerned with the changing economy that dooms bookstores in general, that has wiped out porn as a DVD industry and that “Circus of Books” must navigate. “I kind of wish the movie was over, so I could see how this turns out” Karen notes and she donates (to academic archives) and trashes inventory that no longer sells.

Larry Flynt gives a testimonial to the couple’s “honesty” and guts, their legal struggles mirroring his own (but he was rich) in the days of the  Reagan/Ed Meese War on Pornography.

Porn star Jeff Stryker remembers making movies for the Masons’ video distributing arm.

The Masons never allowed themselves the luxury of being judgmental, although Karen’s eagerness to scurry through a porn industry Expo, making a couple of deals and all but sprinting out, suggests some discomfort with having the world they work in filmed and archived for eternity.

The film doesn’t judge, either. Viewers who might cringe at the subject matter can decide for themselves if the sweeping changes in the culture that the ensuing decades have brought have been glorious, catastrophic or a seriously mixed bag.

An end to “porn” prosecutions and gay civil rights, sure. But let’s not think too much about a coarsening of the culture, with the phrase “I f—-d a porn star” reaching the White House thanks to the Christian Right’s choice for president.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sexual content

Cast: Karen Mason, Rachel Mason, Barry Mason, Larry Flynt, Jeff Stryker, Alaska

Credits: Written and directed by Rachel Mason. A Netflix Original

Running time:

The guy who showed Hollywood and the world all that comic book movies could be, Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi, is stepping back behind the camera for “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.”

He directed the best of the “Spider-Man” movies, the 2002 trilogy starring Tobey Maguire and J.K. Simmons and Kirsten Dunst.

This is no doubt good news for Marvel fans, as the studio has shown an awful tendency to save money on “name” and “prestige” directors and hire place-fillers in their increasingly producer/studio “manufactured” “Avengers” sequels.

Raimi, 60, is the elder statesman of a couple of genres, horror chief among them. In recent years he’s been content to produce horror gems like “Don’t Breathe” and remakes of “The Grudge” and “Poltergeist.”

He’s also done TV series such as “Spartacus.”

Having him step back behind the camera on a comic book movie is a Spielberg-level event.

“Multiverse of Madness,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwitel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong and who knows who all, is due out in Nov. of 2021.

Will the Doctor take the wheel of the Vista Cruiser?

“Code 8” is a “mutants” movie in everything but name, cast and backing studio.

No “Marvel,” no Hugh Jackman and frenemies. Just a lesser known cast in a very familiar scenario, people with “special powers” resented, discriminated against with lots of opportunities to go wrong.

Impressive production values and decent performances justify wanting to watch it, a story with no real new ideas and poor pacing may make you regret the decision.

In Lincoln City, those with “powers” used to be valued and beloved. But that was long ago, when the place was being built, when “The Incredibles” were still in theaters.

Now, they have to have a permit to do anything, even though people with “TK” (telekinetic), “pyro” (fire-fingers), “electric” (lightning bolts), mind-reading and “healer” and the like “gifts” once were handy to have around.

Connor (Robbie Amell from “The Duff”) has a sick mother who works, when she shouldn’t. He has to get by with day labor in construction, and that only lasts until the cops show up — with their robocop “Guardians” (delivered by giant drones) — to check ID.

The tech here, BTW, is almost A-picture level. “Caps off, chins to the sky!” The drone has facial recognition software, among other gadgets, to figure out who has “power” and who has outstanding warrants.

But one day Connor gets into a power company van with a tough crowd inside of it, and finds himself aiding and abetting robberies — “Cut the (electrified) fence. Short out the car alarm.”

Garrett (Stephen Amell) pushes Connor around, but he pays well — when HIS boss (Greg Bryk) pays him, that is.

And big boss Marcus has The Trust to worry about. They’re over his head.

Connor is trapped in the middle of all this, like Nia (Kyla Kane), Maddy (Laysla De Oliveira) or even the stone-cold killer Copperhead (Sarah Hoedlmoser) and everybody else.

Garrett endures being put through “tests,” lots of late night meetings and increasingly violent heists — apparently rounding up the raw materials for the hip street drug of the moment — “psyke.”

I know that drug name, if not that spelling of it, has been used in at least one other movie I’ve reviewed. But as the rest of “Code 8” is pasted together from earlier scripts, whatever.

It’s not a particularly quotable script, in any event — recycled “Normal people have always hated us” and the like.

The bad guys are more interesting than the good ones, the heists — including an armored car — are generic.

And The Guardians are a somewhat interesting variation on “a guy in an armored suit playing a robot” thing.

It’s not terrible. There’s nothing to work up a moment’s hate about. But “Code 8” is more interesting looking than actually interesting, more a sharp prospectus for a movie than one that actually makes great use of its design and ideas, fresh or recycled.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, drugs, profanity

Cast: Robbie Amell, Kari Matchett, Stephen Amell, Greg Bryk and Kyla Kane

Credits: Directed by Jeff Chan, script by Chris Pare.  A Vertical/Netflix release

Running time: 1:38