Movie Nation

This look at TV journalism and its fashion model “stars” “chasing ratings,” notoriety and riches looks pointed, scathing and funny.

“France” opens Dec. 10 in LA and NYC.

There are moments — whole stretches even — in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” where I thought, “If I was 10-12 years old, I’d love sitting through this.” The rest of the time I couldn’t imagine anyone OVER 10 wanting to.

A sometimes dark, occasionally warm revisiting of the franchise, it turns into a love letter to the late Harold Ramis, sweetest of the original “Ghostbusters” and the filmmaker who gave us, and Bill Murray, “Groundhog Day,” the romantic comedy that keeps on giving.

Whatever the stars, studio and director say about this project’s provenance, I’ll bet the Ramis resurrection was the deal-maker that finally got these “busters” back together. That, and the fact that original director Ivan Reitman’s son Jason REALLY needs a hit.

Because that’s the other take-away from this “Next Generation” reboot. Who would have guessed that Jason Reitman would turn into this sort of mediocrity? From “Juno” and “Up in the Air” to this? Sooner or later, the epic hype for this movie would have to end, we’d see the finished product and maybe for the first time consider that the son is no substitute for his father, “Ghostbusters” director Ivan, especially in a shambolic “romp” like this.

The set-up — the daughter (Carrie Coon) and grandchildren (Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace) of a Ghostbuster have gone broke in New York. There’s nothing for it but to load up the rusty Outback and motor west, to Summerville, Oklahoma, where the Dad who “abandoned” his family just died.

There’s nothing there but a tumbledown house on the prairie, “This is How it Ends” spray-painted on a rotting outbuilding at the farm entrance and “DIRT” sprayed on a collapsed barn.

We glimpsed the old man’s death, and know it wasn’t a quiet one. And it turns out, the eccentric the locals called “The Dirt Farmer” didn’t leave his descendants anything but debt. Well, debt and mothballed gadgets, an underground lair and lab and an ancient Cadillac hearse gone to ruin.

Here is the telling moment in “Afterlife.” If you’re the sort who gets chills just seeing that white Ghostmobile and its “ECTO-1” New York plates, this is the movie for you. If not? Well…

Teen son Trevor takes on a summer job to try and get to know teen temptress Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), brainy nerd tween Phoebe (Grace, from “Handmaid’s Tale” and “I, Tonya”) is packed off to summer school, where her teacher (Paul Rudd, well-cast) is content to babysit the kids with VHS horror movies of the ’80s — “Cujo” and “Chucky” among them.

That’s because Mr. Grooberson is too busy ducking into his office, which he’s turned into a seismology lab. Oklahoma’s earthquake plague isn’t all due to fracking, he thinks. Phoebe picks up on that, too.

“Yeah, I’m not an idiot.”

With her new friend Podcast (Logan Kim) who “named myself Podcast for my Podcast,” Phoebe will do her own research because “maybe” these quakes “are the Apocalypse.”

“Afterlife” skips through how the New York kids decode who their grandpa REALLY was, and figure out how his tech worked and even get the old Ghostmobile in running order. Phoebe’s matter-of-factly taken up a game of chess with a supernatural entity she hasn’t seen. She totally underreacts when she sees her first “ghost.”

“Over-stimulation calms me!”

Her brother gets a load of something demonic in the bowels of an abandoned mine.

But only Mr. Grooberson, who thinks “science if PUNK ROCK,” gives us a recognizable human freak-out when the impossible pops up, right in front of his eyes — green blobs, Stay Puft marshmallow minions.

The kids? They’re locking and loading and taking up where Grandpa Egon left off — saving the world

Whatever the original films meant to you as a child, few adults found much more than high concept, infantile goofs from the all-star cast, sight gags and New York savvy riffs.

“Afterlife” is a laugh-starved, jerry-rigged clunker that finds about one fifth as many laughs as the originals, leaning towards the “dark” side of pretty much exactly the same story as “Ghostbusters” –without New York, college coed giggles, without Sigourney, Rick Moranis nerd alerts or Bill Murray, Aykroyd et al riffing.

The script gracefully brings a couple of characters back and incompetently re-introduces a couple of others. Annie Potts‘ return is handled with particular ham-handedness.

Why the hell is Oscar winner J.K. Simmons even IN this?

“Stranger Things” alum Wolfhard and Grace are good, and easily pass for the grandkids of somebody who looks like Harold Ramis. But none of them, even Rudd, is a fitting comic substitute for the cast they’re meant to replace.

As “Ghostbusters” was a character comedy with action and special effects, but still mostly a character comedy, that matters.

But impressive CGI ghosts stir up a fury, backpack power-beam cannon still make stuff go “BOOM” and “GLOOP,” and every now and again, something funny happens.

It’s not awful, it’s just not all that. Which might be enough. If you’re 10.

Rating:  PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references

Cast: Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Celeste O’Connor, Bokeem Woodbine, J. K. Simmons and Paul Rudd, with Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Bill Murray.

Credits: scripted by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, based on the characters created by Dan Aykroyd. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 2:04

For his latest picture, Paul Thomas Anderson turns picaresque for an unconventional romance parked on Hollywood’s periphery, lightly dusted with glorious pieces of Hollywood lore.

“Licorice Pizza,” like its title, flirts with being treacly sweet and serves up a teens’ idealized eye view of the same era that Tarantino settled into and sent-up with “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

The director of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” riffs on the very early ’70s, back in the seriously unfashionable Encino in “The Valley,” where as “Boogie” reminded us, porn was king and those who never quite achieved Hollywood stardom could afford to live while they longed for the Big Brass Ring. They hustled around the edges, pieced together lives and flitted from fad to fad, always in search of the next Big Thing and a way of cashing in on it.

Characters are more sketched-in than wholly-formed as Anderson emphasizes referencing films as diverse as “Almost Famous” and “Taxi Driver,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Love Story” as well as his own “Punch Drunk Love” and “Boogie Nights.” It’s not about anything so much as youthful longing, and isn’t really organized to take us any place but where Anderson is, right here right now.

He gives us young people looking askance at those “successes” older than them. And if nothing else, he presents Bradley Cooper in a hilarious, over-the-top turn as ’70s hairdresser-turned-Streisand-lover/producer and epic Hollywood rhymes-with-trick Jon Peters. Cooper’s glorious send-up of Peters is one of the great pleasures of movie-going this year and all but takes over the movie.

And in a film that features an actress (Christine Ebersole) based on the “Godzilla” rep of Lucille Ball, that’s saying something.

Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour H.) plays Gary Valentine, the sort of average 15 year-old you wouldn’t give a second glance back then. Lumpy, with bad skin, untended teeth and that greasy early ’70s mop top that was never fashionable, Gary has just one essential advantage as he navigates life. He’s confident and well-spoken.

That’s how he has the chutzpah to hit on 25 year-old camera assistant Alana (screen newcomer Alana Haim of the band Haim) on class photo day. Leggy and long-haired in that Marcia Brady style, Alana wouldn’t have casting directors rushing to give her their card and scheduling screen tests. She’s ordinary, like Gary, but cute enough to be out of his league.

Only Gary’s almost famous. He was just in a big family ensemble comedy of the “With Six You Get Eggroll/Yours, Mine and Ours” variety. He’s done commercials and bit parts. He’s “known” — in Encino, anyway. And he is politely persistent in his pursuit of the fair Alana.

Theirs will be a long, circuitous courtship made more real thanks to business partnership. Gary will long for her and idealize her backed by the pop of Cher, the singer-songwriter love ballads of Gordon Lightfoot and the testy, brittle break-up rock of Joe Walsh and the James Gang.

He’s telling his kid brother “You’re gonna be my best man” the instant he meets her, throwing “You should be an actress” out there as he name-and-credit-drops his “fame.” She’s not interested, but not walking away from this kid who’ll “be rich and in a mansion by the time you’re 16.” But seriously, “Stop with the ‘googly eyes!'”

His first chance to impress is a dinner date, where we pick up on how every restaurateur in town is on a first-name basis — with a 15-year old. The second time? He needs a chaperone to do a guest appearance with the rest of that ensemble-of-kids-cast and their Lucy-like “star” (Ebersole, blowsy and mercurial) on a New York TV show.

Alana is on a plane, being hit-on by Gary’s smoother co-star (Skyler Gisondo), but the center of “her” teen’s attention and when she isn’t calling him “creep,” she’s impressed.

We follow these two through Gary’s rapidly-ending career and the ventures he has the cash and the wherewithal — Mom (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) runs a cut-rate local marketing/PR firm he finances — to dive into.

He wanders past a wig shop and sees a new “item” the hustler-owner has added to his line — big vinyl bladders, “waterbeds,” and senses the “next big thing ” He hears that the decades-long “pinball machine ban” may end, and conjures up an arcade.

All along the way, Alana keeps rejecting him, fighting with her “former Israeli Army” officer dad and convincing her peers she’s “NOT” dating a 15-going-on-16 year-old at the tail end of the Vietnam War and Watergate all the way through the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo.

Anderson recreates this world not just with tunes, cars (Gary bought a ’69 GTO, which he’s not old enough to drive) and the ugliest fashions in American history. He gets the complexions and body types right. Nobody worked out, no one planned very far ahead, the “Adam 12” era LAPD was utterly out-of-control and everybody listened to Vin Scully broadcasting the Dodgers…on AM radio.

I’m always fascinated by PTA’s take on runaway “capitalism,” the entrepreneurial habitues of the shifty side of the spectrum. This film has plenty of that.

John Michael Higgins plays the owner of the Mikado restaurant, marrying a succession of Japanese wives/partners whom he tries to communicate with via seriously offensive sing-song pidgin English, like Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Anderson packs the story with break-out episodes — Jon Peters wants a waterbed, a faded film “legend” played by Sean Penn hits on Alana, mainly to recapture his lost glory and have somebody to show off his fame to — peopled by funny but somewhat disposable characters.

Harriet Sansom Harris plays another agent “type,” an aged, down-market version of a character she memorably played on TV’s “Frasier.” She’s the one who hears the results of Gary’s coaching Alana to “always say ‘yes'” when you’re asked if you can ride a horse, speak a foreign language because “you can always learn something AFTER you’ve gotten the part.”

Anderson favorite John C. Reilly plays Fred Gwynne, dolled up as TV’s Herman Munster, in a cameo.

“Licorice Pizza” entertains lightly and drags along between its best moments (most involving Jon Peters) as Anderson is more interested in tableaux and tone than a straightforward story. By the time he packs in a political campaign with dark undertones, it’s become a movie that has as many moving parts as “Magnolia” when it might have held together better in “Hard Eight” territory.

If there’s a point, it might be that “kids grew up a lot faster” and less supervised back then, especially out there.

For people fascinated by the era, either as nostalgia or a distant past they’d love to know more about, it’s an immersive trip, “Once Upon a Time…” without the violence and with a lot fewer F-bombs. If it’s not one of Anderson’s best, “the good parts” stand out as some of the most endearing moments the movies have given us this year.

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

Cast: Cooper Hoffman, Alana Haim, Skyler Gisondo, Christine Ebersole, Tom Waits, John C. Reilly, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Benny Safdie, Harriet Sansom Harris, Maya Rudolph, Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. An MGM/UA release.

Running time: 2:13

In the interest of not discouraging a nascent filmmaker from taking on the herculean task of getting his second feature film made, let’s focus on the positives of “Autumn Road,” a belated Halloween horror story built around twins and their family’s “haunted house” attraction.

The father figure in Riley Cusick‘s debut feature lectures kids –one of them his son — about the secret to setting up and presenting an annual haunted house, something he’s been doing for years.

“‘Haunting,'” he says, “is all about the right mood.” He’s talking about tone, getting people in the right frame of mind to be receptive to frights.

“Autumn Road” gets that right. It’s somber and sad and the deaths, when they come, are shocking enough and downright depressing.

But that isn’t a product of character development and building empathy so much as simple surprise. We really don’t see most of them coming.

The movie’s a wash, and worse — too slow, not particularly well-acted or scripted. But there’s a little something to it, so no quick write-off here.

That fatherly “haunting” advice sets up a night of trick-or-treating for little Winnie (Maddy-Lea Hendrix) and twin brothers Charlie and Vincent (Ranger Lerway and Jonas Lerway).

But shy, bespectacled Charlie bows out, and Vincent takes over the night. Only later does Winnie reconnect with her tweenage crush Charlie to show off the pocket watch she got instead of candy at one house. Only later does her nut allergy kick in from the treats, which she was being super-selective in picking out. Not careful enough.

Charlie panics, and Vincent steps in with an “I’ll take care of it.” Winnie is never seen again.

Years later, failing actress Laura (Lorelei Linklater, daughter of famed filmmaker Richard Linklater) is just getting a handle on making her own break in show business when her best bud dies. She flees back to her hometown.

That’s where she reconnects with Charlie. And that’s where she runs afoul of Vincent. Laura was Winnie’s older sister. And the brothers (both played by writer-director Cusick) have grown up to be even more nervous and/or creepier than she remembers them.

Vincent’s the sort that earns words of warning from mutual acquaintances.

“There’s something seriously wrong with him, Charlie.” Like they’re telling Charlie something he doesn’t know.

In town, Vincent’s remembered for killing a bird, which explains his favorite haunted house mask, an owl. He’s hotheaded, impulsive. And since we remember that first scene, we know what the beady-eyed creep is capable of.

Most of what’s here sits on a sliding cinematic scale of “Well, that doesn’t quite work.” The snail’s pace at which this new threat to Charlie and Vincent’s “secret” is identified and attacked is sleep inducing.

Whatever cleverness floats through “Autumn Road,” Cusick’s middling performance in the co-leads undermines it. He doesn’t have that charisma that the camera brings out, either as a wuss or the neighborhood psychopath.

The screenplay toys with supernaturalism (What IS the deal with the watch?) and settles for something even less interesting. The best line concern’s “nice twin” Charlie’s choice of libation.

“Bad people drink hot chocolate, too.”

“No, they don’t.”

And the violence, sometimes foreshadowed, sometimes seemingly random, is jolting. And that both fits the picture’s forlorn mood, and shakes it up.

So no, the picture isn’t a total write-off. Even dead ends like “Autumn Road” can have their moments.

Cast: Lorelei Linklater, Riley Cusick, Maddy-Lea Hendrix

Credits: A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:33

A pop star on her “Marry Me” (named after this very song) tour finds romance?

A Valentine’s Day release.

“Just Short of Perfect” is an Around the World with Netflix romantic comedy from Brazil, a sentimental but clumsy search for laughs in pairing up a tall bombshell and an exceptionally short but rich suitor,.t.

Or as they say in Hollywood, “How things work out here.”

I’ll limit myself to one bad but unavoidable pun by saying as “low” farces go, this one falls short. OK, that’s two but I got them both into a single sentence.

Juliania Paes, whom you might remember from the Brazilian drama “Farewell” or one of the remakes of “Dona Flor and her Two Husbands,” plays Ivana, a vivacious 40something attorney in the middle of divorcing her bullying law firm partner Danilo (Marcelo Laham).

Danilo fights her over their dog, their offices, everything. We can guess, from his priorities (money), that he’s about to have second thoughts about breaking up the “partnership.”

But Ivana loses her phone, and this charming stranger calls her house to offer it back. He makes jokes about his last name, “Leão” — Portuguese for “lion, — and agrees to meet her and return the cell.

He’ll recognize her, he assures her. Which he does. But when Ricardo Leão (Leandro Hassum) introduces himself, she cannot help but notice he’s half her size.

The sight gag, repeatedly endlessly in this strained “cute” romance, is achieved through forced perspective, simply filming Hassum, last seen in the Brazilian holiday farce “Just Another Christmas,” separately when need be. He’s always seen with tables, chairs, car seats, Ivana and everything else practically towering over him. The effect isn’t seamless — we can see he’s lit differently in the trick shots — but it’s more than convincing enough.

Ricardo’s size does not reflect his confidence. He jokes, pulling out his ID “to show you I’m a grown man (in Portuguese with English subtitles).” He boldly takes her out sky-diving, lets her know his profession (cardiac surgeon), and talks her into a second date, and a third.

We’re supposed to buy his “charm” as winning her over. Maybe we can. Maybe not.

But when the Pope has heart problems on his way to a visit to Brazil, it is “world famous” Dr. Leão they call. As if Ivana isn’t impressed enough, her diminutive suitor grabs the mike post-surgery and gives the world the word — in Latin, just like they do when they’re naming a new pope in Vatican City.

“Habemus papam!”

Him taking her to an exclusive dance club where he takes the stage to sing and play the upright bass on Bamboleo seals the deal. Well, after a club creep hits on her and he’s challenged to a “Macarena” dance-off, which Ricardo naturally wins.

But just as Ivana is falling for Ricardo, the big obstacles make themselves heard and seen. Her ex unloads a tirade of “runt” jokes. Ricardo shows up, as her date, for her brother’s same-sex wedding and he’s confused for being the “dwarf” in their wedding song and dance entertainment.

And when that ridiculous mixup is settled, her mother (Elizângela) can’t stop blurting out short jokes and tactless “dwarf” references, one after the other.

“Is he old enough to drink? Is he old enough to drive?“

Hassum is a big star in Brazil, but anybody viewing this from the rest of the world might wonder if height is the biggest reason “She’s out of his league.” He’s not the prettiest matinee idol, and his comic gifts aren’t showcased very well here.

The movie’s “We are what we are” messaging has some heft to it. Dr. “Very Short” isn’t shy about dropping “Fatty” on an omnipresent pizza delivery guy.

But recycled “little man sex” gags, too-obvious fart-jokes and unfunny “translation” blunders — explaining what’s going on at the wedding for the least convincing “Alabama in-laws” this side of Reese Witherspoon’s little comedy of a few years back — limit the appeal and entertainment value in this “break stereotypes” tale.

Rating: TV-14, sexual situations

Cast: Juliana Paes, Leandro Hassum, Elizângela and Marcelo Laham.

Credits: Directed by Ale McHaddo, scripted by Michelle Ferreira. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Career bit-players Stephanie Lynn and Alexandra Case wrote themselves into leading ladies with “Soulmate(s),” a rom-com in which they play the two best-looking single thirtysomethings in all of Vermont, “besties” with a pact that one won’t marry without the other marrying the same day.

It’s every bit as cutesy as that sounds. “Vermont” alone could be the giveaway, promising a movie of maple sap-sucking and roadside syrup stands, cow-milking, bell choirs, string bands, covered bridges and tiny houses. Yup, so “sweet” it makes your teeth ache.

Guitar-picking farm daughter Jessie (Lynn) and blogger, notary and aspiring op-ed writer Sam (Case) have been friends since five, share a tiny house and pretty much everything else in their lives.

But Big Maple is moving in and squeezing out small farmers, and that’s the perfect reason for Jessie to fall for a Peterson Maple exec, hunky Landon (Mark Famiglietti). But that “pact” gets in the way of her future happiness. Or so Sam hopes.

Sam aims to be “Vermont’s Erin Brockovich,” sounding the alarm about this corporate takeover and the “shortcuts” that could undermine “real” maple syrup. Think “Chinese honey.”

But Jessamine’s swooning over the hunk who lives on a 40 foot ketch on Lake Champlain interrupts their idyll. Sam desperately realizes that the only thing that can slow-Jess’s roll to the altar is invoking their “pact,” and the only thing Jess can do is resolve that she’s “gonna find you a man.” Queue the “speed-dating” montage. If only the “speed-dating montage” was the sum total of it.

“Soulmate(s)” is a Hallmark Channel holiday romance without the snow, aka “insipid. The jokes are treacly, the situations warmed-over from scores of better movies and the whole thing plays kind of 1943.

“This is Vermont. It’s always a bit ‘1943.’”

There’s a protest, a brief mention of “GMO” battles and the region’s ever-widening “warm spells.” At least those causes don’t face the sell-out the script seems to be angling for.

The perfectly-turned-out (Such hair!) leads give themselves a fine showcase, if they’re angling for recurring roles on a sitcom. Case’s drunken, interrupt-a-string-band with her rap about “used to have a buddy, now she’s a duddy” is one of the least cringe-worthy moments in it.

The supporting players are experienced and professional, but not people who add spark to a movie that sorely needs it.

It’s a little late to be pointing this out, but just because your romantic comedy’s set in Vermont is no reason to make it sappy.

Rating: unrated, inoffensive in the extreme

Cast: Stephanie Lynn, Alexandra Case, Mark Famiglietti, Di Quon, Zachary Spicer and Alice Barrett.

Credits: Directed by Timothy Armstrong, scripted by Stephanie Lynn and Alexandra Case. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:32

The phrase “Maze Brothers,” as in “A Maze Brothers Film,” appears four times in the opening credits to the thriller “La Flamme Rouge.” Brent Scott Maze and Derek Maze wrote it, directed it, produced and split editing and cinematography credits on the film, which stars Balthazar Getty as a retired cycling champ who drunkenly and half-accidentally kills his fiance and the new cycling team captain our killer discovered was having an affair with her.

Here’s what the Maze Brothers so desperately want to get credit for.

Every instance of foreshadowing is fixed with an extreme close-up — a whiskey glass, a bolt-action rifle over a mantel, a CCTV camera, a pill bottle and an Uzi caught in XCU and a freeze-frame, to boot.

The detective (George Griffith) who sets out in pursuit of our cyclist-on-the-lam likes playing with his cigarette lighter, featured in so many close-ups that you’d swear there was product placement involved.

He should have an easier job of it than he does, because the fleeing Rick Van Pelt (Getty) lays low at a stoner pal’s luxurious pad. And Rick forgets to turn off the lights of his vintage Stingray when he ducks inside.

No way that geriatric Chevy”ll start when Rick needs it.

One of the unsavory people mixed up in this mess is a threatening, trash-talking art dealer played by Clint Howard. He likes playing with ball bearings. You know, like Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny.”

“I’m LOSING my patience!” Ron Howard’s cooler-brother exclaims.

French “steroid” mafiosi have our former cyclist’s doctor (Todd Lowe) in their sights. But a local mobster (Josh Martin) is way ahead of them. He sends his favorite hitman, motorcyclist Nacho (played by Nacho Picasso…LOL). Nacho either goes shirtless or wears tattered tank tops underneath his biker gear. Because he wants us to notice his tats.

The title? It’s got nothing to do with the lurid color palette they take a shot at creating for the picture, the blood on the crime scene and what not. Well, maybe in the lamest symbolic sense it does. It’s a Tour de France term, the red flag that signals there’s one kilometer to go before crossing the finish line.

Did I mention the movie has godawful dialogue, is badly-acted, dully-plotted and slower than Sacha Baron Cohen on a tricycle?

Yeah, it sucks — pretty every way a film can suck. But at least the Maze Brothers made sure they got credit for it.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Balthazar Getty, Nicole LaLiberte, Todd Lowe, George Griffith, Sebastian Quinn, Nacho Picasso and Clint Howard.

Credits: Scripted, produced, directed by Brent Scott Maze and Derek Maze. Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:34

The smart little girl is about eight when she starts seriously questioning her mother.

“Is it true they killed Mr. Pancho?” No, mother Rita (Mayra Batalla) tells little Ana (Ana Cristina Ordóñez González). He had to leave. His whole family, including your classmate Juana, left.

But why did they leave their cattle, their clothes, everything in their house and Juana’s bicycle?

“People leave everything behind as if they’ll come back for it some day,” Rita says, in Spanish with English subtitles. And enough with the questions.

“Prayers for the Stolen” is about the modern day slavery of mountain villages in modern Mexico. Living where poppies grow is a life sentence for the women and men there, intimidated into continuing the menial work of cutting the poppy buds and later harvesting their nectar for heroin.

The masked soldiers may come and spray with their helicopters, and make their presence felt for a few days here and there. But they always “spray everywhere except” where they’re supposed to. And when they leave, the goons in the SUVs and pickups, with their automatic weapons, roll in to renew their enslavement, extort their teachers, and take their girls when they’re of age.

“Prayers,” based on a novel by Jennifer Clement, is a richly-textured, slow-moving saga set over several years of young Ana’s life (Marya Membreño plays her as an adolescent).

It captures a tense mother-daughter relationship, fraught because of the film’s opening image. We see Rita and little Ana hand-digging a hole for her. She will hide in this any time the cartel goons show up. School is fine, her estranged father might be a lifeline if she needs to escape. But the here and now is that a mother of very limited means must worry every day for her child’s safety and the circumscribed future she faces.

But I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t tell you what a lot of critics now on Rotten Tomatoes won’t. “Slow-moving” is this movie’s Achilles heel. Screenwriter/director Tatiana Huezo drifts from patience-testing to maddening in the film’s funereal pace, from childhood into adolescence.

There are incidents here and there, but she’s made a film almost wholly out of texture. We see texture well past the moment where we get the point — Ana, Paula (Camila Gaal) and their pal with the cleft palette Maria (Blanca Itzel Pérez) are thick as thieves, almost from birth. They’re equally under threat, equally let down by a corrupt government that has ceded this section of the Sierras to bride-paying cartels.

But Paula and Ana’s mothers lie when they take their little girls in to have their hair cropped short. “Lice” has nothing to do with it, and the fact that Maria doesn’t face that is a growing-up moment for them all. Ana and Paula will have targets on their back by puberty.

From childhood, Maria’s enterprising brother Margarito has had his eye on Ana, roughhousing and teasing the way boys do. He works in the quarry with the men, and eventually in the poppy fields. As he grows up (Julián Guzmán Girón plays him as an adolescent), Ana may see his virtues, but also his shortcomings. His “trap” is different, but just as deadly.

A movie that progresses at this rate gives you a lot of time to pick over what it’s really getting at. The defenseless locals hide when trouble comes, lie to save themselves and flee if they get the chance. They make no moral judgments about the only decent paying jobs for unskilled laborers, although they have to see they’re in a cage they’re locking behind themselves.

First-time feature director Huezo — and three cheers for Netflix for giving so many the chance to get a feature film made — keeps the melodrama to a minimum and the confrontations mostly off camera. We hear shouts and shots. We and the locals see bodies.

The new teacher, who takes over when the previous one flees the threats and extortion, is something of an activist. Mister Fernando (Memo Villegas) sees promise in Ana, and convinces the locals to rig an impromptu warning bell, although he’s careful not to call it that. How long will he last.

This is what Third World autocracies look like, people in virtual chains, schools threatened by armed rednecks rolling in by the pick-up load. America’s days of looking down at this as “those people’s problem” may be over for good, thanks to the past five years.

I’m recommending this patient, immersive drama from South of the Border, but with a proviso. Don’t be shy about adjusting the playback speed in your Netflix settings. Huezo may not have a grasp of how waiting over an hour to get around to what your movie about is abusing the audience. Maybe by her second film, she’ll figure that out.

Rating: R for some language, implied violence, sexuality

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tatiana Huezo, based on a novel by Jennifer Clement. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50

This could be cute. No. Seriously.