Movie Nation

“Hostage House” is a half-speed thriller about a real estate agent trapped in the “open house” from hell.

Stop grinning and clapping with glee. Yes, I know that “she probably had it coming” is a lot of people’s first reaction to that scenario. But let’s be bigger than our worst or most annoying “realtor” experiences, shall we?

Jennifer Taylor of “Shameless” and “Two and Half Men” is struggling agent Susan Daniels, trying to get her smart-mouthed daughter (Julia Terranova) out the door to college so that she can sell their house, and maybe sell this Everett Canyon mansion, with “70 fenced in acres” she’s just landed as a listing so that she can get them out of debt.

We see the “5/4” with its “game room,” in-house theater, CCTV cameras and lockdown systems via Susan’s tours on open house day.

Heather drops by to surprise her at day’s end. But they can’t get out the door without noticing the police sirens, lights and helicopters. And that last car pulling up the drive might be that one “over asking price” offer. Or it might be just who the cops are looking for.

The blood on Keith’s hand, which we see even though Susan doesn’t, answers that question. Bleeding Keith (Justin C. Schilling) and trigger-finger Natalie (Emily Sweet) tie Susan up, and figure out Heather’s there, too. Eventually.

It’s not just the threat of violence that turns this into torture. It’s Natalie’s mealy-mouthed lectures on the “entitled” class, “the haves and the have-mores” that she’d like to be robbing.

“Folks like you, your idea of being broke is having to skimp on your yearly trip to Cabo!”

There’s often a little DIY surgery in such pictures, and inevitably somebody says “the good news is the bullet went right through” and “this is gonna hurt.” You hear that often enough and you’d swear screenwriters are recycling from the same worn out source.

The movie is flatly-acted, blandly plotted and pretty much stillborn until we’re treated to a flash of what real estate hustlers are supposed to be good at shows itself — negotiating, getting “a deal.” But even that never heats up to lukewarm.

The “escapes” and “near escapes” are dull versions of such situations seen in many a tepid thriller that preceded this one.

“Hostage House” makes the viewer feel like the hostage.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, some profanity

Cast: Jennifer Taylor, Emily Sweet, Julia Terranova, Justin C. Schilling, Richard Neil

Credits: Directed by David Benullo, script by Daniel West. A MarVista release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:26

“Naked Singularity,” Chase Palmer’s film of lawyer/novelist Sergio De La Pava’s book, makes a single self-conscious reference to “The French Connection.”

A New Yorker in the film notes the criminal enterprise that involves smuggling drugs inside a Lincoln and describes it as “some Popeye Doyle level s–t,” a similarity that most any film buff has picked up on already.

William Friedkin’s “French” masterpiece was a methodical, blunt-force trauma account of a drug investigation and bust with a soul-sucking suggestion that the “real” criminals, the rich and the well-connected, never get caught.

“Naked Singularity” makes exactly the same point in a far more clumsy, ham-handed fashion. Its “two systems of justice” parable is coated in a sense of doom, of multiverses playing out their plots and signs of the “End Times” all around for the conspiracy-minded and those willing to connect the dots.

Power outages, futility rising up in the throats of one and all with a growing dread, a “justice” system rightly regarded as malevolent and uncaring by its practitioners, especially idealistically cynical public defender Casi (John Boyega) as he deals with a prickly, pedantic and dispassionate judge (Linda Lavin) — this is Dystopia Today.

But this “singularity” business, ranted about by Casi’s chalkboard-scribbling scientist/landlord (Tim Blake Nelson)? Strictly an afterthought, dabbled in just enough to suggest more was in an earlier draft of the script or a flabbier, even less coherent cut of the film.

We’re starting to “see the unseeable” Angus the scientist sputters, a “ripple” in time and space that shows “the bindings of our universe are unraveling.”

Damn. Sounds fascinating. And no, that’s not what this movie is about, not even with “chapters” counting down to The End — “8 Days until the Collapse,” and the like.

Olivia Cooke dresses down and Tinders-up as Lea, a window clerk with the city’s impounded vehicle lot. That’s where the Lincoln Navigator has been towed. A rough-trade fellow (Ed Skrein) brazenly offers her a bribe to pick the SUV up, but she doesn’t bite.

That doesn’t mean she won’t right-swipe the pushy, flattering hunk “Craig” on her next outing at the club. And that doesn’t mean she won’t hear his Lincoln loot pitch in full as a sort of pillow talk.

Lea’s entanglement leads back to her onetime PD, Casi. And Casi’s got a corrupt colleague (Bill Skarsgård) who knows about the Lincoln, the drugs, the “cartel” involved and the amount of money about to change hands. He’s more than happy to mix Casi up in getting their hands on that.

The drug deal may reference “The French Connection,” but the courtroom scenes pay homage to any drama (“And Justice for All…”) where an upstart lawyer gets mouthy enough to be disbarred by his least favorite judge.

“Sending a man to jail because he isn’t dying fast enough seems petulant, even for you, your honor.”

Lavin’s cyanide-laced “and the Constitution survives another day” retorts suggest somebody resigned to being a cog in “the machine,” and willing to erase anyone trying to throw a spanner into the works.

The “singularity” stuff pops up here and there as the clumsy but thorough Craig points to a picture of Queen Elizabeth and identifies her “reptiloid eyes” as amusing proof that SOMEthing is going on. “Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney headlines another seeming digression from the timeline. Let’s just say his character heads another “consortium” mixed up in this, and that he wears Payot in this role.

Boyega impresses as a sleepless, manic young man bent on reforming this system with hustles, work-arounds and off-the-record advice to clients. Cooke is just recognizable enough in big hair, long black fingernails and New York “bureaucratic functionary” indifference in her eyes. She sort of pulls off this wrong-side-of-the-legal-system character with all the character failings included.

But as “Naked Singularity” lurches through its countdown, even the stars seem a little lost in what they’re acting out and how it fits in what many of us would agree is the worst version of “the best of all possible worlds” that everyone is trapped in.

Even Spiderverse-savvy Spiderman might consider this singularly confusing, a botched effort to say something scientific-sound and profound in a story that’s basically a lawyer-novelist riffing on “The French Connection,” and doing it badly.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout, some violence, sexual references and drug use

Cast: John Boyega, Olivia Cooke, Bill Skarsgård, Ed Skrein, Linda Lavin, Kyle Mooney and Tim Black Nelson.

Credits: Directed by Chase Palmer, script by Chase Palmer and David Matthews, based on the novel by Sergio De La Pava. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:33

The “elements” of “Resort to Love” add up to a better movie than this Hallmark-lite romance, a pleasantly-bland star vehicle for Christina Milian.

It’s a “get over that man” romance with Milian starring as a singer who lost her fiance to her career, and then loses her big break in a not-amusing-enough public meltdown that the star (Kayne Lee Harrison) who had her sing on his LP tosses, trashing the release.

And it’s set in the gorgeous, under-filmed island paradise of Mauritius, where shattered Erica (Milian) takes a gig singing at the Mer de Saphir resort, next to the “Jolly Rancher Blue” Indian Ocean.

The set-up? Erica’s ex, Jason (Jay Pharoah, utterly wasted in the part) is there, too. He’s getting married.

As Erica’s social media manager pal got her this “get away” on the condition that she sing in the lounge and at any weddings that come up there, well you see where this is going.

“Going” as onto the beach and across a rope bridge on a hike in the mountains, giving this Netflix movie its “best paid vacation ever” status for Milian (“Be Cool,” Netflix’s “Falling Inn Love”).

Other complications include the would-be groom’s hunky ex-military brother (Sinqua Walls, literally twice as tall as Milian), who might be her new love interest. If she’s up for that. If he was a little more interestingly written, that is.

And then there’s the bride, Beverly (Christiani Pitts), who doesn’t suspect a thing and thus befriends Erica and sets up many an awkward meal and conversation as the Big Secret is kept from her.

Steven K. Tsuchida’s film starts FAR better than it finishes, with broken-hearted Erica vamp-weeping through “I Had the Time of My Life” for another happy couple, and generally coming undone at everything in her life that has her “singing at weddings” on the cusp of 40.

The character’s interesting enough, with a newfound mistrust of men and confusion about lingering feelings for the ex. But there’s not enough for her to work. More scenes of Erica “playing along” yet undermining the upcoming wedding, suggesting inappropriate “our dance” wedding songs — “Unbreak my Heart” by Toni Braxton and Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable,” breakup tunes — would have helped.

Pitts throws herself into this and has the funniest line. “I will give you $200 to throw her OUT of this van…$500 if it’s still moving!”

These two didn’t need a sunnier movie to strut their stuff in. Mauritius is plenty sunny. But laughs and lump-in-the-throat moments are in too short supply for “Resort to Love” to come off.

MPA Rating: PG

Cast: Christina Milian, Tymberlee Hill, Sinqua Walls, Christiani Pitts, Alexander Hodge, Jeryl Prescott, Kayne Lee Harrison and Jay Pharaoh.

Credits: Directed by Steven K. Tsuchida, script by Tabi McCartney and Dana Schmalenberg. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

“Notorious Nick” is a workmanlike, formulaic “overcome all obstacles” MMA fight picture in the classic mold.

But it’s based on the true story of MMA fighter Nick Newell. And the “obstacles” basically boil down to one thing. Nick Newell fought with just one arm. So yes, it’s not just “inspired by a true story.” It’s inspiring.

This bio-pic follows Newell from childhood, where young Nick (William Jackson Kelly) is bullied as “the freak” for being born one with arm. But he makes that friend for life, fellow wrestling fan Abi (Marcellus Maxwell).

They imitate the pro wrasslin’ trash talk of their idol, Bubba “the Bear” Braun and horse around with his moves right up to the day a high school coach (Barry Livingston) taunts the now-teenaged Nick (Cody Christian of TV’s “All American” and “Teen Wolf”) and Abi (Cameron James Matthews of “Freeland”).

“Why don’t you guys stop faking like you’re wrestling and do it for real?”

One plus in this script is that it opens with Nick losing a fight (as an adult) and shows the teasing (“Hey, it’s The Elbow.”) and humiliations he endures on the mat. He loses. A lot. His buddy Abi, the one who talks him into MMA after high school, is a natural.

What just happened? “He kicked my ass.” “The key to getting better, know ‘why.'”

The villains are properly villainous (nobody wants to fight “the gimp”), and the leads — Christian, Matthews and Livingston — are quite convincing.

Elisabeth Röhm plays the supportive single mom who tells him “The only disability in life is a s—ty attitude.” She’s the one who takes him to an inspirational lecture by former major league pitcher Jim Abbott, who pitched for the Angels and the Yankees, with just one arm.

Livingston is a steady presence at the coach who doesn’t care for “quitters.” And Kevin Pollack is the droll promoter who cracks “Good thing you write with your right hand” and endorses Nick as he subdues a foe in his last amateur tryout.

“OK, he’s ‘technically asleep,’ now. Nice going.”

Yes, the training montages are straight-up cliches (This time he loads rocks into that tractor tire he drags around) and the story ventures into what can only be called melodrama, even if the melodramatic elements are largely true, or at least fact-based.

And the fight scenes and strategizing training sessions are well-choreographed and shot, the most instructive I’ve ever seen in an MMA movie. Yes, wrestlers do make some of the toughest foes in the octagon. “Notorious Nick” explains how.

I don’t want to oversell this, but “Notorious Nick” follows a formula and makes it work. Stay through the credits if you want to see the real Nick Newell in action.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for sports action/violence, and language

Cast: Cody Christian, Elisabeth Röhm, Cameron James Matthews, Barry Livingston and Kevin Pollack

Credits: Directed by Aaron Leong, script by Josh Campbell, Darrin Reed and Matthew Stuecken. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:28

Regal Cinemas isn’t relying on Paramount (“Snake Eyes” sank without a trace on its second weekend), Disney (half the money for “Jungle Cruise” went to Disney+) or anybody else to fill seats.

They’ve booked this supernatural thriller as August filler.

Interviewing Amy Heckerling (“Fast times at Ridgemont High,” “Clueless”) we got off topic and recalled “sitting next to the TV, waiting for this damned thing to come on.”

She was in Cali, I was in Alaska, waiting on August 1, 1981 for MTV to strike a blow for youth music culture like no other.

Heckerling remembered it informing her work from thence forward. I remember buying koala bear dolls for a girlfriend who could not get enough of that damned Men at Work video for a song that was plagiarized just a little bit .

This video posted below was MTV to me. Pop rock, models, whimsy and filmmaking that was distinctly “video” in medium and style.

MTV, we hardly knew ye.

The best damned action film of the summer has nothing to do with comic books and does not feature some perfectly-put-together gym rat in tights sticking “the super-hero landing.”

It’s Korean, and before you ask, there’s nary a Busan zombie in sight.

“Escape from Mogadishu” is a nerve-wracking account of diplomats scrambling to escape Somalia just as the 1990 civil war erupted and finished the country’s transition to “failed state.”

They were representatives of the two Koreas, so their harrowing attempt to get out didn’t get much attention in the West. And while I can’t vouch for how much of this Ryoo Seung-wan thriller is the literal truth, what we see is just jaw-dropping. Nothing Hollywood could dream up tops the action climax that real history and Ryoo (“The City of Violence,” “The Battleship Island”) serve up here.

I mean, WOW.

The setting is the “Killing Fields” anarchy that set in the instant Somali civilians rose up to overthrow their dictatorship, thereby inviting rebel militias to charge in and overwhelm the army and police of the capital. The story has a hint of “Argo” about it, as the South Korean and North Korean embassies, blood enemies, have to cooperate to get their tiny staffs out before the slaughter reach them.

This is pre-“Blackhawk Down,” before U.S. intervention in the humanitarian disaster, and long before lawlessness settled into an equilibrium where militias and war lords ran everything and piracy (“Captain Phillips”) became a leading export.

Ryoo introduces us to the players, overwhelmed South Korean Ambassador Han (Kim Yoon-seok, amusingly flustered), hopeful that he can “gift” and negotiate his way into favor with the Somali President Barre, and new enough to the job that he still frets about why the North Koreans “can’t play by the rules.”

South Korea was courting many countries in Africa, looking for the votes for U.N. membership. North Korea’s cunning Ambassador Rim (Heo Joon-ho, deliciously aloof and arrogant) is hellbent on stopping that.

There’s just enough of the diplomatic struggles, the spy game played out by each ambassador’s young, thin and Raybanned “intelligence” counselor (Jo In-sung plays the upstart South Korean, Koo Kyo-hwan is his runty, short-tempered North Korean counterpart) to give an idea of the stakes and the place this “game” is playing out in.

Double-crosses, double-dealing when it comes to arms sales, the North was eating the South’s lunch.

A CIA memo and an Aussie journalist might say of the Somalis that they “don’t think they’re ready for a civil war, yet,” but events quickly prove them wrong. The riots turn into an armed insurrection, the power goes out, communications crash and looting and rebel infiltrators turn the entire city into a free fire zone.

The tiny Korean consulates don’t have guards to protect them, the means of getting out and can’t even call home for fresh orders. They’re on their own, with undisciplined, trigger-happy child soldiers holding their fate in their Somali hands.

Can the two hated enemies “steel” their “hearts” and help each other out of this fix?

Ryoo gives us one tense standoff after another at embassy gates, government ministries (abruptly abandoned as the “real” looters — the government — fled), in the streets and in the consulates once the shooting and looting begins.

The story is related through parallel characters. The ambassadors must save face, follow protocols or agree to break them “through (personal) negotiation.” Their mistrust is amplified in their subordinates, with one intelligence agent demanding that his boss not approach “those South Korean bastards” and the other insisting they can’t trust “those commie bastards.”

The humor in the story — and yes, there’s humor even in Dante’s Inferno playing out in the Horn of Africa — comes from that mistrust and hatred. The North Korean children of the staff have their eyes shielded from the decor in the dark, shell-shattered South Korean embassy. Too many Seoul Olympics posters and pictures of prosperity are capable of corrupting their young minds.

An awkward shared meal is tense right up to the moment Ambassador Han realizes the commies fear the food is poisoned.

And we’ve seen how Han’s wife (So-jin Kim), a pious Christian, imposes her “Let us pray” on even the Buddhists in her husband’s staff. But when it comes to breaking the ice, it is wives and families who make the first progress. But “pathos” of the “Why can’t we get along?” variety never settles in. Relations range from hostile to frosty to grudging, but never further.

The sets are a sea of fires and firefights, as impressive as anything Ridley Scott managed for “Blackhawk Down.” But the struggles here aren’t so much heroic as just human, flawed people under pressure struggling to improvise their way out of a life-or-death jam, and bitching about who used the toilet after the water was cut off.

It’s not giving too much to say that the movie’s climax involves a convoy, and I’ve never been more nostalgic for my 1980 Mercedes 240D, thanks to these scenes of overbuilt German cars rumbling through a hail of lead and Molotov cocktails.

You want great action? Eschew the comic book movies and read a few subtitles. “Escape from Mogadishu” is in a league of its own this summer.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, profanity

Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, In-Sung Jo, Huh Joon-ho, So-jin Kim, Kyo-hwan Koo, Man-sik Jeong

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ryoo Seung-wan. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:01

As MMA has supplanted “the sweet science” of boxing in the sporting world, so the MMA melodramatic thriller has replaced “the fight picture” as a genre staple.

Everything we see in the Polish made-for-Netflix thriller “Bartkowiak” we’ve seen in half a century of boxing movies. Gangsters masquerading as “entrepreneurs,” a beaten fighter struggling to regain his manhood by defending the family, intimidation and murders aimed at securing coveted Polish real estate, the ex-girlfriend who is the daughter of the hero’s trainer.

“Bartkowiak” opens with our hero, the champ, Tomasz (Józef Pawlowski) losing his title to a tattooed brute. It ends with our hero, beating his way up through the ranks to get to the evil developer (a “redundant” description, even in Poland) who wants to get ahold of the family nightclub.

Almost everything in between is dead screen time as the movie utterly flatlines without high stakes, life and deal brawling.

Tomasz’s manager/brother (Antoni Pawlicki) barely has time to gift his sibling with a vintage Mach One Mustang before he dies in a wreck. Tomasz will have to give up his job as head bouncer at a swanky club and take over the siblings’ nightclub.

That means another run-in with the punk rapper Sleepy D (Rafal Zawierucha) and his entourage of bodyguards. That means facing down the guy (Bartlomiej Topa) who covets this whole part of their beloved city for his new office tower project.

Zofia Domalik is the lawyer once-and-future girlfriend, Janusz Chabior is her dad, the bald trainer/corner man who lost everything when the champ lost his last fight.

I’d say more about this, but there’s no dialogue (in Polish, with English subtitles, or dubbed into English) worth quoting and the assorted assaults — threatening a butcher in the deli with butchery, a beat-down on the exclusive golf course — are by-the-book basic and boring.

Cast: Józef Pawlowski, Zofia Domalik, Janusz Chabior, Bartlomiej Topa and
Rafal Zawierucha

Credits: Directed by Daniel Markowicz, script by Daniel Bernardi and Monika Slawecka. A Neflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Pablo Schreiber makes the most of a rare leading man turn as a biker and ex-con who dives into an instant family with “Lorelei.”

Schrieber (“Orange is the New Black,” “Den of Thieves,” “13 Hours”) is playing yet another tough guy, and with the right haircut and stubble, he’s as “biker” as they come. But here he plays a biker sentimental enough to want to recapture the great love of his pre-prison life, and sensitive enough to try and make it work, despite the long odds.

Wayland just did 15 years, giving up most of his youth for “not squealing” on his Night Horsemen brethren. They come to pick him up when he gets out, take him drinking and laud his sacrifice. But the Lutheran pastor (Trish Egan) who runs the halfway house he checks into in his corner of the Pacific Northwest gives him the simplest warning — “They’re trouble.”

Another sign of trouble? Running into lithe blonde Dolores (Jena Malone) at her support group meeting.

She’s picking up charity food donations for her family. No shame in that.

But she’s stuck with an ancient, battered Chevy Nova for a ride, movie shorthand for “bad judgement.” She’s wearing a lot of ink, and in the most personal places.

She has children. And if Wayland’s warning bells don’t go off when he hears their names, ours do. “Denim Blue” is the youngest, “Periwinkle Blue” is the responsible one and “Dodger Blue” is the oldest. Any woman who would name her kids that doesn’t need to tell us she doesn’t know all of their fathers.

A single visit to a roadhouse, where they’re too broke to have more than a drink or two, hits the reset button. They lose themselves in their youth, when he was a 20something hustler trying to get something going and she was a star high school swimmer, begging him to take her to LA.

As they tumble into bed and into a relationship, the forks in their road together are revisited, Wayland’s crime is uncovered and Dolores starts to come out as rash, impulsive and barely suitable to baby sit her kids, much less raise them.

That’s a hard thing to realize AFTER you’ve moved in with somebody.

First-time feature writer-director Sabrina Doyle makes the most of this hardly-working class milieu, the bars and the sorts of jobs available to an ex-con, the limitations of a low income future that “ex-con” status dictates.

The script rounds out Wayland’s life with work, family loss, the cost of ignoring that pastor’s advice and the pressures of a new “family,” money, old ties and a probation officer who’s just waiting for him to screw up.

Malone (“Antebellum,” “Batman vs. Superman: The Dawn of Justice”) makes Dolores more than just a collection of stereotypes. We can see the nostalgia that’s playing in Wayland’s decisions working on her, too. Our leads do an excellent job of keeping us guessing about who “impulse control issues” half of the couple will screw up next.

There’s little here we haven’t seen before, with the novel moment here and there, and worn out tropes (getting pulled back into biker drug-dealing) played down, and easy “answers” (A new business opportunity?) tripped up.

But Schreiber and Malone leave it all on the set in this sad but wistful romance, a movie about teen dreams that lose all meaning if they’re deferred too long.

MPA Rating: unrated, some violence, drug content, sex, profanity

Cast: Pablo Schreiber, Jena Malone, Ryan Findley, Trish Egan, Chancellor Perry,
Parker Pascoe-Sheppard and Amelia Borgerding

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sabrina Doyle. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:51