Movie Nation

I doff my fedora at any indie filmmaker with the wherewithal to take a shot at making a period piece with little or no money, rather than going the slasher/spatter film route like everybody else.

But if you’re letting actors complain, in a 1933 gangsters-in-the-sticks thriller, about “Bogarting” a bottle of Virginia Dare wine, if you’re not just leaning on voice-over narration as a crutch, but as a genuine FDR vintage wheel chair, if you’re pretentious enough to name your slow-talking, slow-moving movie “Whelm,” maybe slasher is the safer way to go.

When a character labels another a “more of a pencil, he’s not the muscle,” and gets chewed out, take your own scripted criticism to heart.

“What’re you writing, a play? Nobody talks like that.”

“Whelm” is a reasonably good looking thriller about rural brothers getting mixed up in a nasty cat and mouse game between a famous gangster and his biggest fan, a pompous, pitiless fanboy who spells his name out so all will know who is messing around with bad boy “Jimmy.”

“Alexander Aleksy,” he (Delil Baran) intones. “Spelled A.L.E.K.S.Y.”

That sets the tone for this portentous, obscurant and meandering movie that skirts the edges of the Dillinger legend. We are not at all surprised when Alexander starts speaking German, not Russian, to a woman whom we’ve heard ID herself as “Edie” and “Polly” at various points.

Just picking up on who is named what is a chore in this laborious “film festival movie.”

And it’s also no surprise when Alexander gets his hands on a fencing mask and an épée, which becomes his weapon of choice later on.

“Jimmy” (Grant Schumacher) is our gangster, a guy with some cash stashed in the safe of a rural Midwestern inn. Alexander gets to that cash first in the most bizarre and pointless way, a talkative robbery that involves torture, a big block of ice and an old innkeeper (Mark Hoover).

The brothers, who are mixed up in moonshining, are bearded tough-guy August (Ronan Colfer) and the fellow who does most of the not-quite-constant sleepy narrating Reed (Dylan Grunn), whose name I didn’t pick up until very late in the picture, not that it matters.

Reed drawls through florid narrated passages meant to illuminate the proceedings and flesh out the other characters, but make you wonder if ol’Tennessee — Williams, or Ernie Ford — is takin’ his mint julep on the VERANDA in the cool of this evening.

“He had a way of wrapping you in words so tight, you didn’t know which way was up.”

Indeed.

“Our man was a Grade A mystery, but he had a shine for low company.”

There’s a little gunplay, a lot of walking and a lot more talking in this tale that unfolds in thirteen slowly slow-walked chapters.

Odd twists aren’t wholly explained, relationships are uncertain, characters flip from antagonists to trusting confidantes with no more motivation than the expediencies of the script. Most of the performers struggle to find their footing, and when in doubt, walk even slower and talk even slower still.

But praise be, a Ford Trimotor airplane is trotted out among the period-correct firearms and motorcars and Virginia Dare win. It’s still a shame “Whelm” is a period piece gangster “thriller” that drowns in its own murk.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sex and profanity

Cast: Delil Baran, Dylan Grunn, Ronan Colfer, Grant Schumacher, Mark Hoover and Francesca Anderson.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Skyler Lawson. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:56

Netflix has this different spin on 9/11, a movie about the quantifying of the value of a life that went on after 3000 Americans were murdered by Saudi financed hijackers while George W Bush napped.

“Ema,” the latest film from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, is about interpretative modern dance, so naturally it’s “open to interpretation.”

The director of “Jackie” and “Neruda” has conjured up a fever dream of tragedy, the “monster” who feels responsible for it, egos and fire. And if I can’t say it comes off in any simple, fulfilling way, it’s quite the lovely, sexy show and leaves you with a lot to chew on.

Chilean actress Mariana Di Girólamo turns dancer for this film, the bleached blonde gamine at the center of a company run by her choreographer husband, Gaston (Gael García Bernal). And when we meet them, they’re coming apart.

They had a child, a boy. But Ema, twelve years his junior, flatly notes that “You’ll never give me a son, a real one,” (in Spanish with English subtitles). And Gaston’s response to this cruelest of accusations about their briefly-adopted boy Polo, gets at the nature of their rift.

“I gave you a son, a REAL one. And you threw him away.”

This self-described “bad mother” turned their child back over to family services after an act of violence, a fire. The victim was her sister, and it’s just like this movie to ignore discussing “motivations” for the boy or any sense that he was responsible for awful this thing he did.

It’s just “He’s sick” and “Polo’s parents don’t love him any more” and the dance that Gaston choreographed, inspired by this gutting set of circumstances.

The company performs it despite “hating” Ema, she is convinced. “I’m evil.” Plenty of others chime in on her rash act. A social worker who screams “f—–g psycho” might be on the money.

And with her marriage ending, she does what characters do in movies about the gaping hole guilt leaves in their hearts. She has sex with anything on two legs — female or male, her lawyer or a virile firefighter, fellow dancers, whoever. She accepts the blame, but her self-punishment involves acting out, orgasming her way to a solution to this empty, guilty space in her heart.

That’s “punishment,” “atonement?” Hey, I said “open to interpretation.”

She toys with a flame thrower as part of this interpretive dance, but only loses herself when she and her corps are cutting loose to reggaeton, which is sexy and well within our star’s dancing skill set even if her soon-to-be-ex dismisses it as “prison music.”

The big emotional moments in this come from supporting characters, as our leads are emotionally-stunted (her) or shocked and dismayed (him).

The film has no conventional heroine/hero whom we can “root for,” as even the boy — barely glimpsed until the third act — plainly needs “help” and not unconditional forgiveness (we see the victim’s burns).

The dance is pulsating and fun, well-staged and beautifully shot. The sex is dancer-athletic, titillating and mostly packaged in a montage sure to be a widely-shared Reddit clip any day now.

But the whole is rather an empty experience, something I confess it shares with other Larraín films. “Ema” is pretty, provocative and surprising in ways that are more interesting to chew on than satisfying to experience.

MPA Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity and language

Cast: Mariana Di Girólamo, Gael García Bernal, Santiago Cabrera, Giannina Fruttero and
Paola Giannini

Credits: Directed by Pablo Larraín script by Guillermo Calderón, Pablo Larraín and Alejandro Moreno. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:47

Ady Barkan first gained national notoriety during the 2018 midterm elections, campaigning cross country in Republican-held Congressional districts, going to war over a single issue — health care, and the GOP’s efforts to “destabilize the entire health care system” to finance tax breaks for the wealthy.

His #BeAHero” campaign was very personal. He was just a couple of years into his ALS diagnosis, a lawyer and lifetime activist (Fed Up) watching his body and then his voice fail, while unaccountable “bought and paid for” Republicans busied themselves with gutting Obamacare and stacking the courts with judges just as beholden to their super rich sponsors.

After helping flip the House and turn the tide against Trumpism, Barkan vowed to “give my last breath to save democracy,” badgering Democratic presidential candidates into online interviews with him about the issue that for him and millions of others, was literally about “saving my life.”

“Not Going Quietly” captures Barkan’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moment, when he met campaign consultant and advisor Liz Jaff just as they were about to board an Arizona-bound flight that just happened to also carry then-GOP Senator Jeff Flake. Flake’s grudging and damning “meeting” with Barkan, filmed on board that flight, went viral. And a political star was born.

“Not Going Quietly” lets us see a fierce, and dying, advocate for health care show us what John Lewis meant by “Good trouble.”

Barkan’s messaging about health care rights was simple. His image — that of a dying man first on a cane, then in a wheelchair, first speaking publicly, eventually requiring a voice-synthesizer to testify to Congress — instantly burned into the national conscience.

The film is both a moving and intimate portrait of a passionate political animal in decline, the mundane struggle to just stay communicative enough to carry on, and a fascinating study of what “grass roots” organizing, attention-grabbing and issue-galvanizing can look like in an era of paid GOP “crisis actors,” dark money “Astro turf” politics and assaults on voting rights aimed at securing permanent minority rule by the rich.

Spokespeople with debilitating illnesses or sick family members are coached in the civil way to respond to attempts to keep them from speaking up (politely, firmly, when it’s their turn) at town hall meetings.

Fearful Congressional staffers call the cops when protestors show up, with TV cameras, to confront the unconfrontable and unaccountable. And Congressional careers go down in flames.

The film gives “the other side” its say, but exposes Supreme Court-stacking, tax-cutting for the rich and Republican health care callousness as it does. Even Barkan’s foes — some of them, anyway — express admiration for his zeal and compassion.

All that’s missing from this jeremiad is a visit to another Arizona senator, the one who isn’t giving her “last breath” to save democracy, or even one day of her vacation.

Through it all, Barkan and we see his little boy Carl grow from infant to toddler, his wife Rachel bravely soldier on and his cause resonate with voters similarly trapped in an embattled health care system and a seriously corrupted political one.

MPA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Ady Barkan, Rachel Barkan, Liz Jaff, former Senator Jeff Flake

Credits: Directed by Nicholas Bruckman, script by Nicholas Bruckman and Amanda Roddy. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:36

Creepy looking head-games horror, this festival darling comes our way from Shudder on August 26.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Mosquito/CqMvqmWTjKtDqMkHFSLVfNMdVMGbNKZFzgFSMnjrtRwNzSFZGxGsJdjbDksnHZVWGdfjcBcNxRL?projector=1

“Geez & Ann” is a high school to college romance among young Indonesian Muslims, a movie whose sharp production values can’t compensate for the woefully incomplete love affair it tries to capture.

To Western eyes, at least, this kiss-less, years-long courtship of rich Geez (Junior Roberts) and working class honor student Ann (Hanggini) can seem chilly, almost bloodless. Giving it a quasi-tragic undertones feels pointless. There’s little obvious (again, to a Western outsider) “spark,” much less “heat” to this romance.

Ann organizes and runs the school talent show, where Geez and his band play (Nickelodeon lip-synching, circa 1997) and where the handsome, bespectacled Geez first sets his cap for Ann.

He leans in. He tries to man-splain/dismiss her competence at getting the power back on when they trip a breaker.

The fact that she falls off a chair into his arms reinforces the patriarchal culture’s take on “romance.”

There’s a proposal later in the film where a young man proffers a ring and offers to “be the one who leads you in life.”

Feel free to bristle at that, but remember, that’s why we travel “Around the World with Netflix.” To see other cultures, their mores etc.

Ann’s posse includes girls in hijabs, but they’re all super-enthusiastic about the attentions of the “most famous alumnus” of their school. He’s just dreamy, as he pursues Ann, stalking her on the bus, etc.

Amusingly, she’s not having it. She puts down his band and his music. But as he follows her to the park where she volunteers as an English lessons tutor for less&advantaged kids, he starts the whole “bowl her own with gifts and attention” thing.

Buying all the kids ice cream gets her on his scooter for a romantic ride.

But Geez has a secret. His controlling, demanding divorced mother (Dewi Rezer) is prepping him to go to school in Berlin, where she studied. He will live out HER dream, make HER “investment” pay off. He will NOT “waste time with music,” like his (implied) no-good father.

He can’t let Mom know about his new “distraction” too soon, can’t introduce Ann to her, even after he’s met and charmed Ann’s parents.

And this goes on for over an hour of the film’s 105 minutes.

The little slices of life are more interesting than the tepid puppy love at the heart of “Geez & Ann.” Teen and college age kids attempt stand-up comedy, and by the time they’re in college, it gets racy enough to include bits about catching your girlfriend “red handed,” etc. And when Geez heads to Berlin, he leaves a friend behind as “periscope,” to keep an eye on Ann, look to her needs and it is implied, spy on her.

Geez has to meet Ann’s parents to show his seriousness and somehow state his intentions. But he’s too gutless to confront mean old Mom, and Ann is too smitten and invested to bail, no matter how obvious it is that she should.

I found the leads cute but bland, with at least some of that attributable to cultural differences. Geez’s “emotional” range is restricted. Maybe “real men don’t get emotional” over there.

Nobody in the supporting cast is fleshed out, save for the mother character. Five screenwriters adapting a Rintik Sedu novel, 105 minutes of screen time, and this “Pretty in Pink” basically boils down to two and a half characters.

That makes “Geez & Ann” nothing more than a cultural curio, an artifact illustrating the wide gulf in Eastern and Western populaces and religions and mores and mores that can’t possibly be closing nearly as slowly as this movie makes out.

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Hanggini, Junior Roberts, Dewi Rezer

Credits: Directed by Rizki Balki, script by Bonky, Amit Jethani, Cassandra Massardi, Muthia Khairunissa and Adi Nugroho, based on the novel by Rintik Sedu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45, ,

This September release, about miners ordered to tunnel beneath German trenches to blow them up covers similar ground to “Tunnel Rats” and “Beneath Hill 60.”

Grim business, good ground for a war drama, with class etc. playing a role.

Richard Schiff made a good Jerry Wexler in “Ray,” playing the R&B fanatic record producer and Atlantic Records co-founder earlier in his career.

But Marc Maron’s take on him — the voice, the look (skinnier, yes), the “Do what the artist wants” deference, the flashes of temper — is something approaching definitive.

SOMEbody did his homework. Uncanny.

Granted, this is an arcane corner of music history, a pivotal figure R&B fans know of and few others do. But having interviewed Wexler a few times during his Siesta Key retirement, I felt I was watching the man in his prime in “Respect.”

So much “Respect” Marc Maron. Well done.

A piece of Aussie lore that evolved into slang becomes the title of “Buckley’s Chance,” a lad-lost-in-the-Outback drama that takes a bloody long time to get that lad lost in the Outback.

It’s about Ridley (Milan Burch), a New York city kid whose mother (Victoria Hill) drags him to Australia after his Oz-born firefighter dad dies in the line of duty. This son of a hero has become a discipline problem, so maybe a little visit with the grumpy grandad he’s never met will set him straight.

Bill Nighy plays Spencer, a grouse “trying to run a sheep station” who “doesn’t need a grieving widow” and her “pain in the arse son” around, complicating life.

But guilt over his estranged son forces old Spencer to make an effort, teach the kid a little Outback survival and outback lore — and explain why he pulls out his .30-06 and points it at dingoes every time he spies one, out mending fences and such.

“You’re gonna shoot a DOG?”

“They may look like a dog, Ridley, but they’re more wolf than dog.”

The kid isn’t convinced. So when the chance comes to rescue a fine specimen of the breed trapped in a fence, he makes a new friend. He names it after grandpa’s ranch, “Buckley’s Chance.” Buckley might come in handy when the going gets tough. Which it does, sort of, after a very long set-up.

Repeating the phrase “There’s no strength without struggle” has got to pay off eventually, right?

We sample some lovely and exotic Outback scenery — OK, dry, dusty and forbidding locations, including an abandoned open pit mine — a boy and his dog and Nighy to recommend “Buckley’s Chance.”

But the meandering story, abrupt shifts in tone and character, absurd incidents and plot twists, pauses for flashbacks and criminals who would only “play” here if they were funny let much of the air out of this.

Nighy doesn’t do much of an accent, so it’s up to Kelton Pell and other supporting players to provide the “local color.”

Still, it’s sentimental and kid-friendly, with a couple of decent grace notes. If your kids are at the undemanding age, have at it. Just try not to notice when the plot and incidents in it turn eye-rolling.

MPA Rating: unrated, animals in peril

Cast: Bill Nighy, Milan Burch, Victoria Hill, Kelton Pell

Credits: Directed by Tim Brown, script by Tim Brown and Willem Wennekers. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:36

“Raging Fire” is a Hong Kong cops go rogue thriller, par for the formula course for writer-director Benny Chan, whose resume is filled with its close kin — “New Police Story,” “Heroic Duo,” “Gen-X Cops” and “Gen-Y Cops.”

But it pairs up the great Donnie Yen (“Rogue One,” “Ip Man” and “Mulan”) and Nicholas Tse (“Undercover vs. Undercover”) which leads to just the sort of brawling, chasing, face-off fireworks one hopes for in a Hong Kong thriller.

Yen plays a veteran detective, married with a baby on the way, whose life and career and waylaid by the mass slaughter of several colleagues at a drug raid that went wrong.

Tse plays the leader of the masked quintet that shot up rival gangs and lots of cops in that debacle. Turns out, Inspector Cheung Shung-bong and curly-haired Ngo have history. Once upon a time in Hong Kong, they were partners. But one rainy night on the amber-lit docs, it all went wrong.

Can the ex-cop outfight, outwit, outrun and outshoot the “ethical” cop who let him go to prison, way back when?

The story is a bit of a dawdle, but here’s what we came for — a couple of grand chases, including an epic one involving a motorbike and a car, and a handful of serious, mythic shootouts and brawls.

And those deliver in a big way. Chan, who died tragically young (58) after “Raging Fire” was completed, was no John Woo. But he pays homage to the master in a few scenes (a climatic duel in a church, alas, without white doves) and otherwise lets Yen and Tse and their stunt doubles (Yen is a well-preserved 57, but we all have our limits) and occasional sped-up motion do the rest.

The novel tortures, theatrical gunplay and desperate-intimate fights that are blurs of kicking, punching, shooting and writhing take you back to a time when Hong Kong action pics were all the rage because of their original, operatic take on archetypes and violence at its most personal.

MPA Rating: unrated, lots of bloody action violence

Cast: Donnie Yen, Nicholas Tse

Credits: Scripted and directed by Benny Chan. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:06