Movie Nation

I got eight episodes into “Only Murders in the Building,” the comic mystery series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as aspiring “true crime” podcasters trying to solve a mysterious death in their New York apartment tower. That’s all that Hulu provided for reviewing the ten episode series. And I still have no idea who “the killer” or “killers” are.

That’s partly a tribute to craftsmanship, and at least somewhat owing to the fact that co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman (“Grace and Frankie”) don’t play all that fair with their twists and turns and red herrings and what-not. But they make it so much fun that the mystery becomes almost immaterial, which is what matters in a show like this.

As comedy’s oldest unmarried couple, Martin and his frequent collaborator Short, playing a has-been TV cop show star and flop-friendly Broadway director, bump into each other in the elevator of The Arconia, their tony Upper West Side apartment complex, they deliver their brand of light, bitchy and intimate fun with the best timing in show business.

“Oh hello,” extravagant director Oliver Putnam (Short) bubbles to Charles Haden-Smith (Martin). “FILMING something today?”

“Sorry?”

“All the MAKEup, I just assumed…”

Yeah, it’s like that.

This isn’t “Truth Be Told” — the podcaster murder drama starring Octavia Spencer, which preceded “Only Murders.” A comedy co-starring Tina Fey, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane and a deliciously over-the-top Sting (playing himself) isn’t just about the amateur sleuthing. It’s another laugh at the expense of “Everybody has a podcast” America’s latest audio fad, and a series that jokes that suggest that every network or streaming service will have its own series about “true crime” podcasters.

That’s what the onetime star of TV’s long-running “Brazzos” cop drama (glimpsed in goofy flashbacks) and the director of “Splash: The Musical” are into these days, one podcast in particular. “All is NOT OK in Oklahoma” and its sleuth (Fey) keeps them glued to their iPhone, or laptop.

They don’t know this about each other until a fire alarm kicks them out of their roomy, beautifully appointed condos and forces them to share a booth at local bar. That’s where they finally meet the building’s mysterious youngest tenant (Gomez), another devotee of that show.

And when the new acquaintances can’t go back into The Arconia because, it turns out, some neighbor they saw in passing in the lobby or elevator shot himself in the head, their curiosity is piqued and their podcast, legitimate theatre and TV cop show savvy is trotted out to poke around and decide that the victim didn’t pull the trigger on himself, no matter what the grumpy detective (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) says.

“Goddammit, what mother-f—–ng podcast are y’all hooked on? Swear to God, if I meet one more ‘true crime’ nut…”

The game is a afoot and the tone is set. They’ll do their own “investigation,” start their own podcast and gather their own evidence (not sharing it with the cops, who open-and-shut this case).

And every so often, some character self consciously will make it rain F-bombs, because that’s how America (and New Yorkers) talk these days.

It’s a series built on characters, the leads and assorted “suspect” neighbors (Sting, Lane, etc.) and running gags.

The ex TV cop is forever trotting out his catch phrase from the series — “This sends the investigation into a whole NEW direction.” He’s “not a tipper” and is hated by the apartment building staff, arrogantly never remembering anyone’s name.

“Do you appeal to ANYbody?”

“Not for years.”

The stage director is always giving “notes,” coaching the “performances” of the podcast — “Too…PBSy! — even people they’re interviewing, and recalling this or that epic flop he steered into Broadway oblivion.

At a couple of points, Short’s Putnam imagines himself as the “director” of this investigation, lining up suspects he berates and dismisses in “A Chorus Line.”

And the keeps-her-secrets Millennial absorbs their shots, and gives as good as she gets.

“I guess old white guys are only afraid of colon cancer…and societal change.”

One artful episode is dialogue-free. One lovely moment has smitten Charles listen to this oboist (Amy Ryan) practice through an open window, and join her in a love duet, because that too-damned-musical Steve Martin can play the concertina, too.

Listen carefully and you’ll hear the flirting as they ease into Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

It’s all more a series of chuckles and surprises than farcical big laughs, with only as much melodramatic menace as Woody Allen’s similar “Manhattan Murder Mystery.” But this trio clicks, and everything “Only Murders in the Building” lightly mocks — New York living, New Yorkers, modern “relationships,” podcasters, podcast fanatics, snooty celebrities, snootier wannabes — is funny because we’ve been laughing at this or that for decades.

Well, except for podcasts. But we used to call that “radio,” back when you had to be good enough to get someone to let you on the air and the “shows” weren’t recorded in your walk-in closet.

Rating: TV-14, some violence, and lots and lots of F-bombs

Cast: Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, with Tiny Fey, Nathan Lane, Sting, Aaron Dominguez, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Amy Ryan

Credits: Created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman. A Hulu release.

Running time: 10 episodes @ 33 minutes each

Shuya Chang stars in this violent, drugs-and-human-trafficking underworld thriller.

It’s an Oct 29 release from Samuel Goldwyn and Roadside Attractions.

“Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt)” is so gossamer-light and cute that you don’t realize how good it is until it punches you, right in the heart.

Monica Zanetti’s Aussie LGBTQ coming-of-age romance never lets us see her, or her cast, trying. It sort of stumbles along, every bit as awkward as its leading lady, teenaged and just-figured-out-her-sexuality Ellie (Sophie Hawkshaw). And then, voila, race and heart and romance make their way past the chuckles and take center stage.

Ellie is one of those super-into-school over-achievers, a model student. But she kind of blows the “big reveal” to her single mum (Marta Dusseldorp).

“I’m asking a girl in my class to the formal,” she blurts, scrambling to get the old family video camera ready for an Aussie imitation (frankly admitted) of the American social media mania for “The Big Gesture” prom date invitation. And as an afterthought? “I’m gay.“

When her mother smiles, sweet and gobsmacked, for a tad too long, Ellie isn’t having it.

“Moooooooom! You’re such a bigot!”

She’s not serious, and nothing about this comedy’s first two acts is. The silliest twist of all? Ellie is visited by “your FAIRY godmother. Get it? FAIRY?”

That’s ponytailed, jeans-jacketed Tara (Julia Billington), an enthusiastic ghost who relates some sort of “coming out” rule, that if you had a gay relative who died before you knew them, you qualified for this sort of help.

Tara is a walking, talking anachronism, a bit too ’80s for the Lady Gaga era. Ellie freaks out a bit about the whole “ghost” thing, and rolls her eyes at the over-eager godmother’s dated suggestions.

Need to figure out if a “girl plays for the same team?” Ask her about her favorite (Australian rules football, aka “footie” players). Need tips for that even more awkward “second conversation?”
“Who do you you prefer, k.d. lang or Melissa Etheridge.”

Ellie’s already figured out the girl she’ll ask, the sexy, confident and outspoken Abbie (Zoe Terakes, terrific). Terakes makes Abbie someone Ellie doesn’t have to sweat getting her “gaydar” license for. The way Abbie carries herself, the ease with which she chats up Ellie up when Miss Goody Goody crashes detention, just to be around the foul-mouthed object of her anonymous desire, tells her and us which “team” Abbie’s aligned with.

What Ellie can’t seem to do is get anything out of her mouth that sounds like an invitation or any other type of overture.

Abbie’s friendly “How’s your day going?” earns a nervous “You, too!”

“Ellie & Abbie” never seems more effortless than in the unforced awkwardness of their first chats — in detention, at lunch. The leads click, even if their characters can’t figure out how.

It never seems more contrived than in the over-eager-to-help Godmother Tara moments with a teen who doesn’t want her help. It’s a relief the picture isn’t solely about that.

But that character, Ellie’s mother and Ellie’s mother’s BFF (Rachel House of “Whale Rider,” “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” etc) pay serious dividends when Zanetti’s film turns on an Australian dime and finds its heart.

Zanetti sketches in “high school” in quick strokes, leaving little to distract us from her leading characters and the subtexts the adult supporting players are toting around with them. For a such a short movie, “Ellie & Abbie” never seems to pass by at more than a slow saunter.

But that beautifully disguises the fact that Zanetti’s packed a lot of living, a lot of growing up and plenty of heart and plot into a story that’s really “first romance” simple.

Rating: TV-14, adult themes, profanity

Cast: Sophie Hawkshaw, Zoe Terakes, Marta Dusseldorp, Rachel House and Julia Billington

Credits: Scripted and directed by Monica Zanetti. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:22

That’s some first-rate comedy casting right there.

Throw in Justin Long, as the academic “nerd.” And because Justin Long and I guess his brother co-wrote and co-directed this.

September 17, the catfight begins.

The triumph of Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman” is the sense of occasion the director and her co-writer/producer Jordan Peele bring to this reboot.

This is horror with grandeur, a movie that pays homage to history and feels so of-the-moment as to seem fresh out of the lab.

“Candyman,” the glossiest horror movie in ages, isn’t just horror. It’s horror that reaches for the Latin in that MGM (which produced the original film and gets co-credit here) logo we see in the opening credits — “Ars gratia artis,” “art for art’s sake.”

We’re treated to Tony Todd’s iconic boogeyman, the gentrification of Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green projects by not just yuppies, but art-world Black buppies, the long history of lynching African Americans, then and now, “extra judicial killings” by a callous, trigger-happy police force and one great big unintentional metaphor for America deluged by Delta.

If there’s a lesson about tempting fate in any story that invokes “Say my name (five times),” it’s right out in the open and said out loud to the militantly anti-vax and anti-mask moronocracy.

“F–k around, see what happens.”

DaCosta (“Little Woods”) conjures up a story about stories, having characters, from our artist Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II of “The Get Down”), “researching” the legend for inspiration, to the Cabrini refugee (Colman Domingo of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) who runs a laundromat, grab us with just their voices. We hear how grad student Helen Lyles (Virginia Madsen, heard on tapes from the original 1992 film) played a part in summoning up the Halloween season horror long ago.

These chilling scenes, just an actor telling a tale, are brilliantly illustrated with creepy-as-all-get-out shadow puppetry. The cut-out stick-puppets match this art-world thriller’s self-conscious sense of “artistry,” pretentious poseurs dabbling where they shouldn’t, gentrifiers blind to their role in cultural destruction.

“The Great Black Hope of the Chicago Art Scene” lives with polished curator Brianna (Teyonah Parris of “The Photograph,””If Beale Street Could Talk” and TV’s “WandaVision”), and desperately needs “the new, the now.” Thanks to a spooky story told by her brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), Anthony finds himself stumbling into the Candyman tale while digging around the ruins of Cabrini Green.

He titles his “didactic cliche” (everybody’s a critic, especially the critic — Rebecca Spence) show “Say my Name.” Uh. Oh.

We see the first wrapped candy hit the floor, we cringe. We hear the first bee, we wince. We get our first glimpse of the man with the candy in one hand and a hook for the other, we rejoice.

DaCosta serves up a few of “Candyman’s Greatest Hits” amid the violence she unleashes here. It’s a spatter film that goes to some pains not to show the slashing. We hear it, see flashes of bloody mayhem from inside a locked girls’ bathroom stall in the inevitable “high schoolers summon Candyman” moment.

It may not deliver the edge-of-your-seat gulping terror or pander to the “gore uber alles” corner of horror’s fanbase. But catching just enough of a mass slaughter through a dropped teen’s compact mirror is smart, sophisticated storyboarding and framing.

The acting is more solidly-grounded than dazzling, but Domingo stands out, a character actor taking his place among the greats.

The script is on a whole new horror level, weaving in the themes, subtexts, history and social commentary together so artfully that you might not notice until you see how Anthony’s body, rotting under the weight of the curse he’s unleashed, evolves into the most horrific lynching victim you’ve ever seen.

And kudos to whoever cooked up Troy’s bitchy gay put-down of “Basquiat ass…Sun Ra” pretentious artiste Anthony.

DaCosta, along with cinematographer John Guleserian, gloss-and-grit production designer Cara Brower and art directors Jami Primer and Ines Rose, ensure that fans are served, and fed something that feels — first frame to last — classy, upscale, an homage that delivers that “sense of occasion.”

Rating: R, for bloody horror violence, and language (profanity) including some sexual references

Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyona Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Rebecca Spence and Tony Todd

Credits: Directed by Nia DaCosta, scripted by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and Nia DaCosta, based on the 1992 MGM film. A Universal/MGM release.

Running time: 1:31

“Flag Day,” director and star Sean Penn’s painterly but somewhat perfunctory tale of toxic parenting, was intended as a star vehicle for his daughter Dylan Penn. And he makes sure it fills the bill, in that regard, a movie of striking landscapes and beautiful silhouettes, but whose “money shot,” first scene to last, is close-up after lingering closeup.

All Dylan has to do, playing the teen and then adult journalist Jennifer Vogel, child of a con artist and counterfeiter, is hold her own in scenes with one of the finest screen actors ever. And the model-turned-actress daughter of Robin Wright more or less does, giving us a flash of temper here, weeping despair there and a lot of stoic disappointment in between.

Josh Brolin, Dale Dickey and Eddie Marsan lend effortless support, with Penn’s son Hopper Penn playing the other child of lie-spinning, Chopin-listening Minnesota “entrepreneur” John Vogel, a guy who is in and out of his kids’ lives over the 17 years the story covers.

But Penn the elder has made a movie more concerned with grainy images captured in twilight than pace, more wrapped up in picture-postcard cinematography than a plot that surprises or dialogue that rings true.

“Flag Day” is framed within the real-life journalist-daughter’s meeting with a law enforcement official (Oscar winner Regina King), who fills her in on her father’s latest brush with the law.

The story-proper is told in flashback, with Jennifer (played by Jadyn Rylee as a tween) remembering her “reckless” and dishonest father as the family bounced around, ran up debts and ran out on those debts, sometimes before and occasionally after a beating when he hustled the wrong guy, often torching the house or business he couldn’t make the payments on as he fled.

He’d put Jennifer, his oldest, behind the wheel in his lap on long overnight drives, “because you’ve got to learn to drive if you want to see the world,” and he needed a little shuteye.

Seriously.

John runs out on wife Patty (Katheryn Winnick), tells his brother (Brolin, understated and stoic) “I’d do ANYthing for those kids.”

“Prove it,” his younger brother growls.

Patty crawls into a bottle, and then into a marriage to a creep who takes his best shot at molesting Jennifer during her punked-out teens. And despite all of Patty’s warnings about who and what her father is, that’s her escape.

The child grows into young adulthood, hearing her father spin this or that attempt at “going straight,” debating him on their matching drug-abuse habits, struggling to reconcile her love for him with her desperation for a normal, supportive role-model parent.

Dickey does a short, earthy turn as John’s mom, calling her son “a bad penny…
born on Flag Day” who would “burn down the world if he thought it’d put him in a white mansion.” And Marsan has a cameo playing a polluter the adult Jennifer confronts in an interview.

What Penn was shooting for here is a far softer-edged “At Close Range,” a career-making coming-of-age picture about that moment when a child realizes they’ve been worshipping a false idol.

But “softer” in this case means the arc of the story is pre-determined and dramatically flat. The stakes seem lower, right up to the moment in the third act when they’re not.

Jennifer’s “finding herself” years are covered in a montage of hitchhiking hippy excesses. And there’s not much detail or color to her father’s myriad schemes (a “jeans stretching” device) to keep things interesting.

Their shared scenes have some meat to them, but the content around them is so thin that we’re relieved when John pulls a bank robbery and disappointed when it’s handled so flatly.

Penn the younger just turned 30, and is thus less convincing as a teen than as an adult. And the “model” in her (she’s done a little acting, here and there) might explain some of the grammatically clunky lines she spouts (Blown takes?) as Jennifer tries to get into journalism school, and then becomes a journalist, one lacking an alacrity with the language when asking questions, arguing with an editor or facing off with a polluter.

The problem with “Flag Day” isn’t that she doesn’t measure up to the material. It’s that a pretty promising story (the “Ford v. Ferrari” Butterworth brothers scripted it) rarely measures up to the damned fine cast her father rounded up for it. He’s made a film that may look as painterly as Penn’s best directing job, “Into the Wild,” but never measures up to it.

Rating: Some Drug Use, Violent Content, language (profanity)

Cast: Sean Penn, Dylan Penn, Regina King, Dale Dickey, Hopper Penn, Eddie Marsan, and Josh Brolin

Credits: Directed by Sean Penn, script by Jez Butterworth and John Henry Butterworth. An MGM release.

Running time: 1:49

There are “film festival” movies, pictures so odd that there’s no audience for them outside of “The Festival Circuit,” and there are student films, which are unpolished and indulgent for a reasons, and there are even student “film festival” films — indulgent onanism somehow interesting enough to gain entry to a film fest, here and there.

“Like a Dirty French Novel” is almost a whole new thing, a nonsensical mishmash in the episodic, possibly interconnected “stories” mold. “Pulp Fiction,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” “Sin City” were examples of this that worked, some more than others.

“Like a Dirty French Novel” doesn’t.

A seriously random, badly-acted (as a rule), with lines recited rather than “performed,” “stories” that lead nowhere with characters that aren’t relatable — to the viewer or reality in general, here’s a “film” that has it all. Or nothing to recommend it, to be more precise.

Sex and sex work and phone sex and porn kind of weave through it, not so much a “theme” as well, “something to put in our movie.”

Florid, deranged monologues, random action — a kidnapping, mistaken identity, car theft, “It’s quicksand, it’s QUICKsand!” — feigned “erotic” dancing, a mysterious phone-sex caller, Halloween-masked “observers, all set against a “vertiginous pandemic.”

All these “stories,” not one of them worth following, not a one amusing, titillating or remotely entertaining. “Tied together?” Not really.

The upshot? Unwatchable twaddle. Clever title, though.

Rating: unrated violence, sex, nudity

Cast: Laura Urgelles, Amanda Viola, Jennifer Daly, Brittany Sampson, Robby Valls, Aaron Bustos, Dan Rojay, Arko Miro

Credits: Directed by Mike Cuenca, script by Mike Cuenca, Ashlee Elfman, Dan Rojay. A Bldv. du Cinema release.

Running time: 1:18

The teaser trailer to the next Tom Holland web-slinger installment is…a bit of Doctor Strange, a lot of Peter Parker summing up “the story so far.”

Twitter is all aflutter over how Benedict C sounds like James Franco in this trailer. Ahem.

And then there’s our old friend from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Younger old friend…

A notorious counterfeiter and his daughter bond or break apart in this “true story” directed by Penn.

“PAW Patrol: The Movie” is not for anybody old enough to read a movie review — even “Young Sheldon” in his nappies.

With animation a little more “Jimmy Neutron” polished than TV, an infantile story and no jokes that play to anybody over say, six, it’s also not a movie worth wasting a disposable facemask on at the multiplex.

But how does the Hungry Hungry Hippocratic Oath of children’s entertainment begin?

“First, do no harm.”

It’s a seriously inoffensive confection about facing one’s “issues” and fears and helping people. And if Paramount wants to move a little toy merchandise in the process, why not?

In Adventure Bay, ATV and motorcycle teen-rescuer Ryder (voiced by Will Brisbin) “and his team of pups” can always be counted on showing up to save the day.

A sea turtle’s trapped on a road, or a Canadian trucker (Tyler Perry) dangles his rig over a bridge because he swerved to avoid that turtle (“Canadian”), the PAW Patrol howls into action.

And lead dog in all their rescues is Chase (Iain Armitage), as in “Chase in ON the case!”

But when they’re summoned to Adventure City, Chase has flashbacks to his abandoned pup childhood. He loses his edge and freezes up in dangerous situations.

And with the new Mayor Humdinger (Ron Pardo) in charge, it’s no longer a dog-friendly city. Dogs are being rounded up. At least they’re not taken to the “Isle of Dogs.”

“He’s into cats.” Yes, Humdinger had to run unopposed to get elected.

How will these Can-Do Canines — Marshall, Zuma, Rubble, Chase, Skye and Rocky — and new friend Liberty the dachshund (Marsai Martin) set this world to right? With gadgets and transforming cars, trucks, bikes and boats and an “Oww owww AROOoooooo.”

This “Patrol” is sort of “Thunderbirds” (puppets) and “Superfriends” for a new and quite young generation, with just enough positive messaging to merit mentioning that.

“What kind of leader gives up on someone the second things get hard?”

And the jokes are of the “This is OFF the LEASH” and “What’s got HIS leash in a knot?” variety.

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel plays a wigged TV reporter named Marty Muckraker. Kim Roberts and Dax Shepard voice supporting players. And Adam Levine, Alessia Cara, Kiki Riggs, Spilt Milk, Fifth Harmony, Isabela Merced and Eiza Gonzalez turn up on the soundtrack.

If the kids are into the TV show and you already have Paramount Plus, or want to give the streamer a trial run, have at it. But it’s nothing special, and it’s not worth going to a theater to see.

Rating: G.

Cast: The voices of Iain Armitage, Will Brisbin, Lily Bartlam, Marsai Martin, Ron Pardo, Keegan Hedley, Shayle Simmons, Jimmy Kimmel and Tyler Perry

Credits: Directed by Cal Brunker, scripted by Billy Frolick, Bob Barlen and Cal Brunker. A Paramount/Paramount+ release.

Running time: 1:26