Movie Nation

Ok, maybe now’s not the best time to release a three-years-in-the-can action comedy about an indie film crew trapped in a fight to the death with murderous mobsters in a condemned and about-to-be-imploded building that the crew has no permission to film in, that the mobsters want to use to cover up a murder or three.

“Nightshooters” is violent, spattered in blood, riddled with bullets fired from many a prop gun and is all about a film crew with no money cutting corners and running safety risks in a high rise that’s wired for detonation the next day.

Yes, that sounds like every rushed/tight-budget on-set filmmaking accident you’ve ever read about — from “The Crow” and “Midnight Rider” to “Rust,” which just cost a director of photography her life.

But writer-director Marc Price, who made “Colin” and “Magpie” for a song, knows indie film sets. “Colin” was an indie zombie movie, one of the cheapest genres to dive into. “Dawn of the Deadly,” the zombie film frazzled director Marshall (Adam McNab) is scrambling with a skeleton crew of six to finish up. Price knows this world.

So consider this bloody British romp — laden with F-bombs, covered in C-words — on its own terms, take it for the dark lark it is, and try not to think about “dying for your ‘art.'”

Here’s what you get. One of the stars of “Dawn of the Deadly” is Donnie, played by Jean-Paul Ly. He’s a stuntman, fight choreographer and actor. Ly and Price ensure that whatever else that goes on here, “Nightshooters” will have some of the coolest one-on-one or three-on-one martial arts brawls in recent memory.

How do they come about? Because when our seven film folks, filming “pick-ups,” accidentally witness the bearish Tarker (Richard Sandling, funny and fierce), his brutish lieutenant O’Hara (Nicholas Aaron, even fiercer) and his many mob minions murder a couple of people who have crossed them, the filmmakers are going to need “somebody who can throw a punch.”

Their aging, tipsy and difficult “star” (Doug Allen) isn’t up to that.

“Did you know that I did a film with Scott Adkins? Punched me in the face. It was an accident!”

Director of Photography Jen (Kaitlyn Riordan) is more concerned about “grain” in the images.

“You said you wanted it to look like ‘”John Wick.’ There’s no ‘grain’ in ‘John Wick.'”

Soundguy Oddbod (Nicky Evans) is only good for bitching about cell phone interference. Hapless production assistant Kim (Mica Proctor) is, well, hapless.

That leaves effects whiz Ellie (Rosanna Hoult). And she’s too busy DIYing gadgets, squibs, acids and makeshift bombs to try and save them from summary slaughter by the bad guys whose motto always is “leave no witnesses.”

So it’s down to Donnie, and in a string of set-pieces that would hold their own in any half-decent martial arts actioner, Ly high-kicks ass and takes names.

Actually, the mob is the one that takes names. They grab a call sheet, try to avoid firing their many, many guns in a building loaded with explosives, and hunt down our Microbudget Movie Seven.

The truly “fun” bit is in the opening sequence, loaded with cheesy zombie mayhem from the rough cut of “Dawn of the Deadly.” Exploding heads, C-movie one-liners, it looks like a student film with professional action choreography.

But that’s the movie within the movie. “Nightshooters” proper is darker and deadlier. The disconnect isn’t as pronounced as more heads explode — or melt — and booby-traps and makeshift guns kill with a certain amusing brio.

“Real” guns, which the legions of the lawless tote? They just mean that the film crew isn’t being paid enough to face death on the job, because not all of them make it to “That’s a wrap.”

In a year’s time, when the “Rust” accident has faded from even our long-term memory, “Nightshooters” will play as more fun than it does now.

But its afterlife should include screenings to every incoming class at every film school the world over. Kids, if you’re ever on a set where you see or hear ANYthing that feels like this set, clock out. Totally NOT worth it.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity aplenty

Cast: Jean-Paul Ly, Kaitlyn Riordan, Rosanna Hoult, Doug Allen, Nicholas Aaron, Adam McNab, Mica Proctor, Richard Sandling and Nicky Evans

Credits: Scripted and directed by Marc Price. An IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:45

An armed standoff, men at barricades shout and point semi-automatic weapons. Mohawk Indians scream profanities at Quebecoise, who scream back, spit and hurl rocks, all while smirking Canadian police stand by and do nothing.

What in the name of Ryan Reynolds and Celine, Shatner, Alannis and Drake is going on here?

“Beans” is a jaw-dropping re-evaluation of “nice Canadians,” a docudrama set against the 1990 Oka Crisis, which erupted when a Quebec town decided to build a golf course on Mohawk land, which would entail bulldozing a Mohawk “First Nation” cemetery. The Mohawk occupied the land, and a bloody “siege” ensued, tearing at the fragile “harmony” of Chateauguay, Oka and the Mohawk reserves of Akwesasne, Kanesatake and Kahnawake.

Director and co-writer Tracey Deer shifts from documentaries (“Mohawk Girls”) to features with this unblinking, fictionalized account — complete with inflamed news footage of the crisis — of an event she lived through. A tweenage girl sees the ugliness of not just her racist neighbors, but of her own people in this crisis as it escalates into violence.

Screen newcomer Kiawentiio dazzles as the title character. Her Mohawk name is Tekehentahkhwa, but when we meet her she’s doing what she’s always done. She tells the admissions lady at Queen Heights Academy that “Everybody just calls me ‘Beans.'”

Her executive-assistant mother (Rainbow Dickerson) is raising Beans and little sister Ruby (Violah Beauvais) to aim high, and Beans is determined to get into a good school so she can become a doctor or lawyer.

Her Dad (Joel Montgrand) isn’t keen on the private school idea. But they’re middle class and aspirational. If only Beans would “toughen up,” this decision wouldn’t be so hard.

Her crash course in doing just that begins the moment they see Dad taking his rifle to the barricades at Mercier Bridge. A land dispute going back generations comes to a head with callous plans to build a golf course. The Mohawk rally, take over the bridge and occupy the land in question.

Pregnant Mom is unsettled to hear profane tirades of the other armed Mohawk men as they disrupt a lot of people’s morning commute. The TV news captures bulldozers plowing police cars out of the way as more First Nation protestors push their way in.

“You make sure this doesn’t turn into cowboys and Indians,” Mom warns her husband.

Beans, isolated and camping out in a site that’s cut-off from outside help or food, finds herself growing up fast, and toughening up faster. She falls in with foul-mouthed April (Paulina Alexis) and gets sweet on her militant teen brother (D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai). They start out bullies, but become Beans’ role models.

“I wanna be tough, like you.”

April punches and whips Beans, because “If you can’t feel pain, no one can hurt you.” She challenges her — “You Mohawk or what?”

And before Beans knows it, the “little girl” is dropping F-bombs with the best of them, engaging in dangerous pranks against the “frogs” (French speakers) in uniform. The pranks turn serious, and the town — which they try to sneak into for supplies — turns on them in a flash, refusing to “serve your kind.”

Deer doesn’t flinch from showing the ugliness, the trigger-happy machismo that infects rednecks of every race. The intercut news footage doesn’t subtitle the tirades uttered in French. We and Beans and her family get the idea. Mock racist war whoops require no translation.

And violent words lead to violent actions, which we see play out in a horrific ride “home” through a rain of rocks thrown by their “neighbors.”

Deer skillfully weaves in news footage to underscore the “crisis” that they’re all living through, and the tropes of tween/teen “coming of age” stories to show another side of Beans’ “education.” Drunken parties, “two minutes in heaven,” sexual dares and rage all pile onto a kid who lashes out and gives us a taste of “You’ve become as bad as they are” in her confusion and turmoil.

Deer has made a richly-detailed debut feature about an ugly piece of Canadian history, and it’s to her credit that she lets young heroine see the escalation from both sides, and lets the viewer see what this does to her.

For non-Canadians, the explosions and riots, when they come, are all the more shocking. Maybe we don’t remember, and this certainly doesn’t fit “our” stereotype of a culture many of us idealize in thinking of how divided our own is.

Yeah, this happened, it happened in Canada. And no, it wasn’t that long ago.

Rating: unrated, violence, slurs, profanity

Cast: Kiawentiio, Rainbow Dickerson, Violah Beauvais, Joel Montgrand, Paulina Alexis and D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai.

Credits: scripted by Tracey Deer and Meredith Vuchnich. A Sphere Media release.

Running time: 1:31

“Little Big Mouth” is a fizzy little romantic comedy — aimed at kids — about a problem-drinker guitarist falling for an ex-model single mom, and the efforts of her little boy and his problem-gambler grandad to put a stop to it.

The subject matter sounds edgier than it is, which is a relief — considering the movie’s slapstick quality. So yes, there’s a “funny drunk” moment or three that would give some parents pause. But mainly this is about a child pranking mom’s new suitor with bottled mosquitoes, glue in the shampoo and a scorpion down his shorts.

Well, OK. Sure. “Don’t try ANY of this at home” is kind of a given.

Naymaps Maphalal is Ziya, a guitarist with a wedding band when we meet him. He has to assure his bandmates that he’s “not gonna get drunk again,” because that’s happened before. Insisting “that’s a thing of the past” doesn’t mean he won’t ruin another gig for them.

But this little boy (Brady Hofmeyr) is REALLY into Ziya’s drunken shredding guitar solo, “ninja dancing” to it while his mother is distracted. The kids yells out “AXL!” Because he doesn’t realize SLASH was the guitarist for Guns’n Roses.

And the kid’s mom Mel (Amanda Du-Pont of “Shadow”) is f-i-n-e. He’s just too drunk and too busy stage-diving to make a decent impression.

Stumbling into them later, after he’s been kicked out of the band, his flat (which he shared with the band), is fortuitous. Because Siya hasn’t been able to book a gig or even find a place to sleep.

He makes a lousy first impression on adults — especially Mel’s grouchy Dad (James Borthwick), who calls him a “piece of rubbish” and even a “skolly.” Dad’s old enough, white enough and old fashioned enough to have a slur at the ready to describe this aimless musical vagabond.

Dad’s overreaction to Siya’s attentions include pulling a gun. Mel’s counter-reaction is to invite the guy to dinner, be a little charmed, and later to allow the homeless guy to move into a guest apartment out back.

She’s no sooner said “Don’t let me down” than we start to wonder how quickly Siya will. With Luke reacting badly to “Axl” getting Mom’s attention, and with grandpa’s encouragement, let the pranks begin.

The sight gags here include the drunk scenes, squatting in the kid’s “Wendy House” (playhouse), dropping a gun which goes off, the scorpion down the pants and the like.

None of them pay off with big laughs.

The musical scenes, which suggest that’s the path towards allegorical harmony, work. And the leads are pleasant enough, if not a barrel of laughs.

A bit of business with the not-quite-racist grandpa and Siya swapping fanboy references to American blues guitarists, and then swapping licks on guitars, is a nice way to go. The film’s racial politics are not quite post-racial, but Mel is the product of a “mixed” marriage, even if “my Dad is socially crippled.”

Not much comes from all this that anybody over the age of 6 wouldn’t see from a mile off. “Little Big Mouth” isn’t sassy or silly enough to appeal to kids, or adults either for that matter. But this “Around the World With Netflix” rom-com shows the post-Apartheid/post-Mandela state in a flattering light, if a not particularly funny one.

Rating: TV-14, alcohol abuse, adult situations, mild profanity

Cast:  NayMaps Maphalala, Amanda du-Pont, James Borthwick, Brady Hofmeyr and Charlie Bouguenon

Credits: Directed by Gray Hofmeyr and Ziggy Hofmeyr, scripted by Gray Hofmeyr, Ziggy Hofmeyr and Louw Ventor. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35

Michael Caine was at the peak of his post-“Alfie” stardom when he took on one of the darkest anti-heroes of his career in “Get Carter,” a hardboiled 1971 “hunt down the blokes who killed me brother” thriller that launched the big screen career of writer-director Mike Hodges.

Fifty years later, it’s still one of the definitive gangland films — a grim, violent and gritty tale of “dark ages” 1970s Britain.

I first encountered “Carter” prepping for an interview with Hodges in an early 2000s edition of the Toronto Film Festival. He’d gone on to make “Flash Gordon” (he did lots of Queen music videos), “A Prayer for the Dying” and “Black Rainbow,” but had burst back into the limelight for discovering and “making” Clive Owen in “The Croupier” and a lesser thriller which he was promoting in Toronto, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.”

“Last Night in Soho” whetted the appetite for this milieu for me, so when “Carter” popped up on the telly, of course I was lured back in.

“Get Carter,” which Hodges later remade with Sly Stallone (not awful, just inferior) pops off the screen with its blunt depiction of a society in decay, still clinging to vestiges of grandeur at the pinnacle of civilization, but with the gloom and rot showing everywhere you cared to look.

Aged infrastructure, open corruption, an out of date police force, architecture that was old when “the war” was over and guns were still rare enough that when Jack travels, he shows up with a double-barreled (hunting) shotgun. And even that’s enough to earn “call the cops” threats from the ageing hooker/landlady (Rosemarie Dunham) of his bed-sit.

Jack Carter has done well enough for himself in London as an English version of the “made man.” But he’s come back to his hometown (Newcastle-on-Tyne) to pay his respects to his late brother. Carter establishes his bonafides with the ease with which he lifts a latchlock on the room where his brother’s body was prepped for burial.

But the story of sibling Frank’s demise “don’t add up.” Drunk driving, car ended up in the water?

“Frank was too careful to die like that.”

Jack’s questions are methodical, his march up the hierarchy of his old stomping grounds haphazard but unbothered, confident. It’s as if he’s got some sort of immunity from the London mob. And he’s ruthless about displaying his toughness.

 “You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself.”

There are seductions, young and old, as the dapper Carter works his way from horse races to discotheques to mob mansions and through “birds” who may know something, be of use in some way or simply be unfinished business from his earlier days.

The way he treats men — tough guys or otherwise — will make you flinch. The way he treats women — his mercurial temper explodes into violence — will make you cringe.

Hodges, fresh from British TV, immerses us in this world and showcases it with the usual “I’ve got the time and money to do arresting camera angles, crane shots” flash of a good, experienced filmmaker finally getting the chance to make a feature film.

He sends our hero fleeing two mugs in an uglier-than-ugly Fiat (they’re chasing him in a then ten-year-old Jaguar Mark II), plowing through laundry hung on lines out behind seedy townhouses. Hodges arranges a “rescue” by one of the many “birds” Carter attracts, hurtling around an overcast, half-ruined coal town in a top-down Sunbeam Alpine convertible, “drunk” driving in the days before seatbelts and pretty erotic by the standards of the time.

That was cool, then.

The supporting cast crackles with authenticity. Most of the acting money must have gone to Caine, so the mugs are an impressive gathering of crusty bit players and a very young Britt Eklund.

And Caine, in dark suits and ties, often with a black trench coat, sometimes nude, shimmers with menace — Cool Caine before “Cool Britainnia” caught up with him.

The situations Hodges puts him in are fraught, but Carter is unflappable. The settings he has to revisit are both familiar and distasteful to a bloke who’s living larger in Carnaby Street/”Soho” London. But he does what he has to do.

“Clever sod, you are.”

“Only comparatively.”

“Get Carter” is a movie of its time, with a lot of dated attitudes and crime film tropes. But I was startled at how it still pops, how the time capsule Cockney, visuals and vibe still play fifty years on. With Caine giving hints that he’s “retired” (and then denying them), it’s worth looking back on all he was when he was that., and then some.

Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity

Cast: Michael Caine, Britt Eklund, Ian Hendry, Alun Armstrong, Rosemarie Dunham, Geraldine Moffat

Credits: Scripted and directed by Mike Hodges, based on a Ted Lewis novel.

Running time: 1:52

You remember the six-shooter that magically fired 41 times in Westerns of yore, today embodied by a sloppy movie’s “endless” gun clip in combat or cop thrillers?

“One Shot” throws a fresh goof into the cinema fan’s lexicon. It’s the villain transport clown car. In “One Shot,” a single Eastern Bloc troop truck offloads what seems like 127 mercenary/terrorists onto a stony CIA “black island” in the Baltic, armed men of many cultures and languages there to break an accused terrorist out of a “black ops” prison.

We all laugh at all the clowns that pile out of a clown car. I laughed at all the bulky mugs toting AK-47s pouring out from under the canvas flap on this truck, which is a “Stargate” wormhole into Mercenaries-R-Us, from the looks of it.

The gimmick built into this thriller starring B-movie badass Scott Adkins (“Debt Collectors,” “Expendables 2”) is that it’s filmed in a long of long takes, the film buff’s beloved “One Shot.” on display in the movie’s trailers, too, but taken to its logical extreme in a few films over the years, most recently “1917.”

That gets your attention, although in the hands of director James Nunn (sequels to “The Marine” and “Green Street,” “Tower Block”) it is used in ways that doesn’t put the viewer on edge by building suspense.

It’s still impressive, here and there, the sweeping hand-held tracking shots that brings Lt. Harris and three other SEALs and a CIA analyst (“Twilight” alumna Ashley Greene, billed as Ashley Green Khoury here) to “Black Island” to retrieve a detainee (Waleed Elgadi) who might know something about an imminent terrorist attack.

What’s more impressive is the gunplay choreography that sees Adkins shoot his way through scores and scores of villains — first-person shooter video game style — rolling, falling down, tumbling out of explosions, popping this guy and that guy in the head, this other fellow in the knee first so that his head drops down to Lt. Harris’s level for the kill-shot.

The story? It’s a patchwork mess about Lt. Harris and Analyst Anderson running afoul of the base director (Ryan Phillippe) who is hell-bent on not releasing his prisoner to him.

And then the burly bad guys (Jess Liaudin plays their leader) pile and pile out of that clown truck, and the base is mostly wiped out, the survivors holding out with the “person of interest” that both sides covet.

The acting is somewhat indifferent, a risk you run when your technical concern, “How do we get this scene in one long take?” is paramount.

The film stumbles to a halt several times, for arguments, complaints, silly pauses for this or that SEAL to do a Tarantino speech about “When I’m in heaven, before my God” as he’s shooting this bad guy and then that one. And one half in the forward momentum comes when the terrorist leader convinces one of his underlings to Take One for Allah and strap on a suicide vest.

The dialogue is hard-boiled combat film cliches warmed over — “We ain’t leaving any more people here today,” “Nothing wrong with being scared, OK? It’s what you DO with the fear that really counts.”

I could have done without the base second in command (Terence Maynard) sneering about “new administration, new priorities — ‘domestic terrorism,'” as if Jan. 6 and events like it weren’t happening. When everything goes down, he blurts out “Just like Benghazi,” like John Boehner weeping that he’ll die on that phony scandal hill.

But that’s a handy dog whistle for the “One Shot” target audience, I guess. The B-movie they’re targeting for them? Not all that, “one shot” long takes and clever combat choreography notwithstanding.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Scott Adkins, Ashley Greene Khoury, Ryan Phillippe, Waleed Elgadi, Jess Liaudin and Terence Maynard

Credits: Directed by James Nunn, scripted by Jamie Russell. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:37

Halle and Patrick Wilson, with Donald Sutherland narrating, give us a preview of a mass extinction event, as visualized by Roland “Independence Day” Emmerich.

Feb. 22.

 Whatever the failings of the Polish monster thriller, “Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight,” it’s sequel plunges straight into a goof — an amusingly-gory slice of oscypek or twaróg, the delicacies of the Polish cheese shop.

And then, just as we’re getting a giggle out of the broad characters and ditzy disembowelings, it goes all “Walking Dead,” with monsters who have a “point of view.” The jokes wither as the story goes gooey, touchy and feely. The picture stops dead in its tracks and twaróg goes rancid on the shelf.

“Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2” picks up the story the day after the night of the “cabin in the woods” slaughter of the innocents. Incel cop Adam (Mateusz Wieclawek) shows up at his dilapidated rural station where two carbuncled-monsters, creatures created by an oozing meteorite the night before, are locked up.

Zosia (Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz), sole survivor of the massacre, is locked up next door.

Not to worry, the gruff sergeant (Andrzej Grabowski) assures the kid. “Special Forces” are coming down from Warsaw. Eventually.

Inexplicably, the Sgt. then takes the shackled survivor to the scene of the “crime.” Inevitably, the Sgt. takes an outhouse break from getting Zosia to walk him through the night’s killings. The meteor oozes some more and the slaughter begins anew.

Adam, who dreams of being a swaggering gunslinger who saves fair Wanessa (Zofia Wichlacz) in his dreams, now faces his cowardice as fellow cop Wanessa rashly sets out to kill their sergeant’s killer and he’s all about “waiting for (backup) Special Forces.”

“We’re the police, aren’t we?” shames him into joining her for an ill-fated night of teaming up with the Polish Proud Boy volunteer “Territorial Guard,” and the folks who run the survivalist Camp Adrenalin.

The cast is game enough, until most of them are buried, or buried under boil-covered prosthetics (the “metamorphosis” scenes are a cool effect).

But we know how all that will turn out.

Director and co-writer Bartosz M. Kowalski sets out to trip up expectations. But he gets so caught up in that he neglects to make any of the gruesome deaths suspenseful or meaningful. Characters are introduced and die — by accident or monstrous heart-snatching — in the most pathetically perfunctory ways. It’s as if he’s gotten the go-ahead for “a franchise,” and is cashing the checks without bothering to concentrate on the film at hand.

This has flashes of “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” and a few other comically-gory creature features. But Kowlaski loses the thread. Considering the ways the popular-enough-for-kids-watching-Netflix original film went wrong, no one should be surprised at that.

Rating: TV-MA, gross gory and graphic violence, monstrous sex, lots of profanity

Cast: Mateusz Wieclawek, Zofia Wichlacz, Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz, Andrzej Grabowski, with Sebastian Stankiewicz, Robert Wabich, Izabela Dabrowska, Wojciech Mecwaldowski and Lech Dyblik

Credits: Directed by Bartosz M. Kowalski, scripted by Mirella Zaradkiewicz and
Bartosz M. Kowalski. A Netflix release

Running time: 1:37

Before his Oscar nominated indie hit “Minari,” Korean-American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung put in his years of making thoughtful, micro-budget indies that played the festival circuit and rarely made much of an impression beyond that.

The streaming/DVD service Film Movement has taken the trouble to acquire the trio — “Abigail
Harm,” “Munyurangabo” and “Lucky Life” — for belated but informative release, giving us the chance to chart the University of Utah alum’s progress up the movie making mountain.

“Lucky Life,” his second feature, is a contemplative, understated drama “based on the poetry of Gerald Stern.” It takes its title from a Stern collection, which Mark (Daniel O’Keefe, who hasn’t made a movie since) narrates from and occasionally reads from to his new wife, Karen (Megan McKenna, whose only other film credit is “Booty Cakes”).

“Dear waves,” Mark reads, “What will you do for me today? Will you drown out my scream? Will you steer me through the fog?”

An apt poem to quote if you’re turning in a seriously conventional “beach house reunion” tale.

Mark and Karen join their friend Alex (Richard Harvell) for the long drive from Brooklyn to North Carolina’s serene and still somewhat uncrowded Outer Banks. Their friend Jason has gotten some bad news, and is in the “quality of life” stage of his cancer. They’re traveling down to say goodbye, for “probably the last time we’ll have together.”

The Christian subtext that is evident in “Minari” turns up here, with the friends talking about praying for Jason, a familiar clerk at a local shop chiming in and Jason himself hitting his knees on one occasion.

The dinner conversation turns from Mark questioned about getting an agent who is pitching his first book, a hint that Mark and Karen are trying to get pregnant and Jason serio-comically complaining that “It’s so sick that people call me because they think that it’s the last time they’ll talk to me.”

There are candlelit ghost stories that wouldn’t pass muster on a Boy Scout campout, subdued beach frolics and “a trip to Ocracoke,” the touristy island only reachable by ferry.

Mark narrates from a poem — “I like to think of floating again in my first home (the womb),” voices are never raised, tragedies occur mostly off camera, the time frame shifts here and there and dinner is served, much later.

And that’s all there is to it. As I said, it’s the epitome of a quiet, thoughtful “film festival” movie.

“Minari” was a worthwhile film that gained added notoriety in a many-titles-delayed/lockdown-COVID year. I thought it good, a heartfelt and in some ways novel take on The American Immigrant Experience, but breathlessly over-praised.

But the fun for a film buff in watching the movies that led up to Chung’s Oscar nominated (it won a Best Supporting Actress honor for Youn Yuh-jung) is seeing a young (he was 30ish when he filmed “Lucky Life”) filmmaker finding his voice, the “same nail” that an artist pounds, over and over, and the lessons Chung learned along the way.

“Lucky Life” lacks the incidents that comprise good drama. It’s so subdued and internalized as to be boring.

The performances are competent, but pitched at a near whisper, and thus come off dull.

There have been stories about AIDS victims, the newly-widowed and the dead-and-dying summoning friends or family for “one last weekend” in the country, at the manor house or on the beach, and “Lucky Life” isn’t a standout of the genre by any means. I thought “Minari” similarly drew on its many predecessors in its subgenre, with enough incidents and colorful characters to make it stand-out.

“Lucky Life” wasn’t so lucky. It’s a classic “film festival” phenomenon, a movie that cinephiles see and give extra attention to simply by virtue of its curated inclusion in “the festival.” The buzz around it is all the more upbeat because of the fest circuit bubble it lives and dies in.

It taught Chung to work his way towards more accomplished actors, people who bring more to a script than they take from it. And he seems to have gotten the hint that basing a movie on poems is a good way to never make it out of “the festival circuit.”

Rating: PG

Cast: Daniel O’Keefe, Megan McKenna, Kenyon Adams, Richard Harvell

Credits: Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, scripted by Samuel Gray Anderson and Lee Isaac Chung, based on the poems of Gerald Stern. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:37

“Hypnotic” isn’t the first movie about hypnosis and murder. That would be “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which hit theaters back in 1920.

And it’s not the worst, which has too many candidates to choose just one “winner.”

But while it intrigues and has just enough going to lure one in, it fails to startle, surprise or engage as it trots through every trope common to such thrillers, and reruns every bad line beaten to death by a thousand earlier unworthies from the School of Trite Screenplay cliches.

When a cop character says “Just WAIT for me,” the only response allowed is “We don’t have TIME.”

If the heroine calls her endangered friend with a begging “I need you TURN AROJND, go home and wait for me there,” such friends never do.

And this has to be my favorite, “the Miracle Eye-to-Eye Cure” for  hemorrhaging gunshot wounds and such.

“Look at me look at me LOOK at me!”

It’s a medical miracle that works every time.

It begins with a frightened woman entering an elevator, getting an “unknown” call, and hearing the words “This is how the world ends.” Her worst elevator nightmare ensues. More nightmares will follow.

Jenn (Kate Siegel of “Hush” and a “Ouija” sequel) is drinking and biting her nails, depressed over a breakup with her fiance (Jaime M. Callica) and the reasons for that breakup. Then her bestie Gina (Lucie Guest) introduces her to her therapist at a dinner party.

Dr. Meade changed Gina’s life. Why not give him a try?

“He’s MAGIC!”

Jenn, a computer programmer, can’t help but notice the “therapist” at a patient’s party red flag.

“I follow the rules 99 percent of the time,” Dr. Meade purrs, “Maybe 95 percent.”

As he’s played by Irish actor Jason O’Mara, who voices Batman in all the DC cartoons, he’s forgiven. And eventually, Jenn finds herself in his posher-than-posh office, listening to his pitch. His “magic?” Hypnotherapy. She rolls her eyes.

“Why the judgement?”

But she submits, and as his soothing voice and the pulsing lights he’s set up in his office cast their spell, time flies by.

Soon, she’s got a new job and the “vortex of crap” that Gina used to describe her life seems over.

But she has these dreams, waking up in bed with Dr. Meade. She starts to wonder about “triggers,” even as she’s been reassured that “Only you can control your subconscious.”

Jenn snoops around on the Internet, reaches out to a cop (Dulé Hill of “Psych” and its offshoot movies) who handled the case of a mysterious death of one of Dr. Meade’s patients, and that’s when Jenn starts to “go through some things,” as we say these days.

The mystery isn’t mysterious enough. The threats are palpable but oh-so-predictable. But the manipulations are inventive enough to to pass muster.

If only the dialogue wasn’t so…sleep inducing.

Rating: TV-14, violence

Cast: Kate Siegel, Jason O’Mara, Dulé Hill, Jaime M. Callica and Lucie Guest

Credits: Directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, scripted by Richard D’Ovidio. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Asghar Farhadi earned an Oscar nomination for “A Separation.”

His latest is a tale of debtor’s prison and a two day leave aimed at getting a debtor to wipe away that debt.

“A Hero” comes to North American cinemas Jan. 7, then transitions to Amazon Prime.