Movie Nation

They all go Hugh Jackman, eventually. And @vancityreynolds never sees it coming.

So it’s kind of the anti-“Love, Actually?”

Dec. 3, nothing like a little grim death and dark humor about it to celebrate the holidays with.

The Season of Scott Adkins continues as “Seized,” another generic C-movie thriller, makes its way to Netflix.

It’s a shoot-em-up, punch-em-up, kick-em-down picture without much plot, without any pace but with Mario Van Peebles as its villain.

That’s almost a saving grace in a low-energy thriller whose screenplay hits the “stupid” button entirely too hard.

Adkins plays a widowed single dad raising his troubled, spoiled, misses-his-mom tween son (Matthew Garbacz) on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

After five minutes of sent-home-from-school-for-fighting and “Violence never solved anything, son” and OY! Don’t you WALK out on me!” barking, a tranquilizer dart punches through a window, Taylor is kidnapped and Dad wakes up to this creepy phone call.

“I need you for a job…Nero,” tells us Brit Dad used to do things of a deadly nature, and that his code name was “Nero,” as in “burn it all down.”

His kid is “imprisoned in a gas chamber.” But here’s a bullet proof Suburban, a goody-bag filled with guns, a bullet proof vest with a chest camera on it and GPS addresses of these stops Nero will need to make.

Our villain, shortly revealed as Van Peebles in a black cowboy hat and speaking Hollywood Drug Dealer Spanish — “VAMANOS! MATALO! PENDEJO!” — has invited friends and gangsters for a mass-murder watching party.

Nero is sent hither and then yon — a restaurant, a strip club and so on, with just directive.

“Kill everyone in there!”

The shootouts are passable, the fights a little better. Adkins is always good in action.

But the script has nothing inventive to add to the long history of such slaughter scenes, and neither does Adkins.

There’s no invention to Nero’s efforts to find out who has his kid and what he can do about, or the kid’s recognition of his plight and efforts to save himself.

Van Peebles may have softened our heavy’s “motive,” launching into speeches about getting into tech and green energy, cracks about “Making the Cartels Great Again” and having the guy soft-sell his murderous nature.

“Unlike me,” he says of one rival Nero must wipe out, “the world will be a better place without him in it.”

You watch enough Adkins movies and you pick up on why he’s not getting over as an A-list action star. There’s no charisma. He gives you nothing in scenes between fights that capture his worry for his child, his fear for his safety or his hatred of the dude doing this to Nero.

Isaac Florentine, the director, might have watched “Speed” (villain monitoring his crimes via camera) or “Crank” or “John Wick” or “Hardcore Henry” as homework, figured out that he needed to use a LOT more footage from the chest-cam, and make a lot more quick cuts because speed and urgency are of the essence.

This thriller dawdles, loses the thread as intrigues within the villain’s lair are unnecessarily developed, and never has the feeling of life-or-death stakes.

For those reasons — every one of them — “Seized” never grabs you.

Rating: R for violence throughout, sexual material/nudity, and language

Cast: Scott Adkins, Matthew Garbacz, Karlee Perez and Mario Van Peebles.

Credits: Directed by Isaac Florentine, scripted by Richard Lowry. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

The funniest thing about “The Rumperbutts” is its initial, opening act concept. A musical couple, Wiggles-popular children’s entertainers, have to dress up in plush hedgehog (ish) costumes, tour and do their TV show and meet their contract obligations long after they’ve grown fed up with the gig and each other.

Their love has died. They’re cheating on one another, and can barely hide their mutual loathing on stage together. But like The Everly Brothers, they soldier on.

That hook is abandoned all-too-quickly in Marc Brener’s stillborn 2015 comedy, just now making its way to streaming. A “supernatural aid” in the form of a sitcom-pervy guardian angel type (Josh Brener) gives them the means to ditch that career, get back to making music and get back together as a couple.

“I thought you would hate each other more,” Richie complains to Bonnie (Kori Gardner) and Jack (Jason Edward Hummel). So did we. I mean, that’s “conflict,” the stuff of drama and comedy. And there’s precious little of it once Richie’s shown up, sabotaged their careers with a vulgar, drunken kid-bashing video (in costume) that goes viral.

Jack’s ongoing affair with the “princess” (Vanessa Ray) in their stage show is abandoned and forgotten. They’re back to getting along, getting in the studio, and getting down to the business of writing the instantly-forgettable synth pop they used to make (songs here are by Mates of State).

The plot thins, rather than thickens, as musical interludes — recording sessions, etc. — take over.

Dull? You don’t know the half of it. At least the stars can sing and play instruments (with a little post-production help).

Nothing remotely funny happens after their opening act fantasized performance where they sing their true feelings and get (in their minds) their audience of children to sing along to the chorus, “I saw ‘Go to Hell!'” After that, “The Rumperbutts” goes to hell.

Rating: unrated, pot use, profanity

Cast: Kori Gardner, Jason Edward Hummel, Vanessa Ray, Josh Brener

Credits: Scripted and directed by Marc Brener. A Global Digital release.

Running time: 1:31

This Apple TV+ premiere gets into the story of one of those “I just LOVE Christmas” over-decorating, traffic-drawing, electricity-wasting, neighbor-infuriating cranks whose “calculated” antics got his neighborhood up in arms.

Nov. 26, we see the brawl break out.

The first time Julia Child appeared on TV, it was on “Educational Television” in Boston in the 1960s. She was to plug her culture-shifting new cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” But what she was most concerned about was having something plugged in for her. She needed a hot plate, and the malnourished TV operation at WGBH wasn’t sure they could provide one.

It was for a book talk program, after all. But she insisted, in that bizarre, fluty/fruity, patrician-accented voice, that it was simply a must.

And when she showed up, a lifelong member of the production crew there recalls, she made an omelet, live on the show. She brought the ingredients, her own pan and walked the program host and the viewing audience through the mesmerizing, mouth-watering process of how to make one perfectly.

“No one had an omelet pan in greater Boston,” that crew member marvels. And if Boston, of all places, didn’t, how many could there have been in all of America?

That’s the country and culinary sophistication that Julia Child, ex-OSS agent-handler and office clerk, rare female graduate of Paris’s famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking academy and new New Englander walked into on that set. A nation of tinfoil-covered TV dinners, SPAM hors d’oeuvres and “convenience” eaters was about to have its taste buds and its mind blown.

That culture shock is the great take-away from the fun and fascinating new documentary, “Julia.” Here’s a film, opening in a nation overrun with cooking shows and entire TV networks devoted to food and a whole section of society labeling itself “foodies.” And bless her big, butter-basted heart, here’s the woman changed it.

Interviewing friends and relatives, chefs from America and France and the World’s Chef, Spanish-born José Andrés, professional acquaintances and TV cooks who followed her, “Julia” digs deeper into Child than the delightful, fictionalized “Julie & Julia” of a few years back, and captures a true pioneer in her element.

Yes, we see that first omelet on the primitive TV of the Kennedy “Camelot” era. We see the accidents, the improvising, the unflappable chattering on that made her “inimitable,” until, well everyone from comedians to cooks to anybody you met on the street could offer a fair imitation of PBS’s first superstar.

“Save the liver!”

Yes, she stumbled into the Dan Aykroyd “Saturday Night Live” sketch in the ’70s, laughed, and proceeded to show it to dinner guests on video for years afterward, a bit of gory, affectionate mockery she wholly embraced.

The film starts with a bracing montage of Julia cooking-on-TV moments and quotes — “I find that if people are not very interested in food, I’m not very interested in them.” — set to Jimi Hendrix’s “Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire.” It takes in her upper class upbringing in Pasadena, her Smith College education and the start of World War II.

That’s where she jumped into government clerical work, and eventually made her way to the OSS, which would morph into the CIA. That’s where she met and fell in love with her greatest influence, the dashing epicurean Paul Child — her tour guide to the finer things, her champion, her TV cue card writer and biggest fan.

Co-directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen are covering a lot of familiar ground in this Sony Classics/CNN Films production, so they make quick work of it. There was already a definitive PBS documentary, and “Julie & Julia” skipped through her life with no less than Meryl Streep putting everyone else’s Julia Child impersonation to shame.

The co-directors of “RBG” come closest to breaking new ground in recalling Child’s old fashioned, ignorant homophobia, something she (like Fred Rogers, as we saw in his documentary) abandoned the moment she learned better. But even Child’s twilight years — bristling at the “farm to table” fuss of those who followed her, refusing to slow down or give up her various TV gigs, her battles with PBS, which took her for granted in ways they never did her fellow Founding Icon, Mister Rogers — have a triumphant air as showcased here.

Here was a “broad” with moxie, staying power and charisma. There would be no dimming of the light, just an ABC’s “Good Morning, America” gig, endless chat show appearances and one last PBS series with Jacques Pepin as a victory lap for the Woman Who Changed Eating in America when no one thought that could be done.

Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language/sexual reference, and some thematic elements

Cast: Julia Child, José Andrés, Ina Garten, Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, Jacques Pepin, Charles Gibson, Ruth Reichl

Credits: Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:35

Weird, twisted stuff coming our way in December. Kathryn Erbe’s in it, and Tonya Pinkins (who wrote and directed it) and Ruben Blades.

My two cents, this is a much better bang for the buck route for Netflix to travel.

I understand that they won’t have access to a lot of Big Action content as Disney and others point their product to proprietary streaming services. But most Netflix actioners suck.

Their best films have been the awards contending dramas. Go for prestige, limit your expenditures on Big Ticket action pics. If you want Big Action, put it out in series form.

This Jane Campion (“The Piano,” “Bright Star”) adaptation of a Thomas Savage novel comes out Nov. 17 and looks like a contender.

The latest from Mike Mills, who directed “Thumbsucker” and “Beginners” and “20th Century Women” is also about family, and is this time a New York tale told in black and white.

Phoenix is back to doing interesting work. Good to see Gabby Hoffman finding her way back in the door this past year or two.

This one drops Nov. 19.

A little patriotism, a little science, a righteous mission — giving families closure.

Abramarama is missing the boat, not releasing this in time for Veteran’s Day, or more appropriately, Memorial Day.

“To What Remains” is due out in December.