Movie Nation

A grieving, sullen and silent tween is sent off to visit her Thai grandmother for the summer of “My Best Worst Adventure,” a moving and engaging kids’ movie with just enough hard edge to come off.

It has that “Black Stallion” and “The Fox and the Child” novelty of telling its story mostly with pictures, a film of few words. And many of those words are Thai, with not all of them translated with subtitles.

Jenny (Lily Patra), who just lost her mother, has stopped speaking. She’s lashing out, so deep into her anger that she can’t get out of this trip she doesn’t want to take by meeting her father’s (Eoin O’Brien) one condition.

“You don’t want to go, just talk to me. TELL me you don’t want to go.”

Next thing she knows, she’s in Culture Shock rural Thailand, staying with granny “the dictator” (Phanida Suwansaad), typing her complaints onto social media on a tablet that she can’t even recharge.

“Day One: I’ve been abducted by aliens…Day Two of the hostage crisis…They babble at me all the time, like I even know what they’re saying.”

She’s even thrown into a school where she doesn’t speak the language, but where she picks up on the kid the others bully and even the teacher browbeats. Boonrod (Pan Rugtawtr) is also silent. She’s seen the scruffy, grimy kid picking pockets in the temple, scrambling to find enough to eat and doting on Samlee, his water buffalo.

As the opening images of “My Best Worst Adventure” were of boys riding water buffalo in no saddle, no helmet, no-holds-barred races, we pretty much know what the third act holds for us.

The movie’s charms are in the setting and Jenny’s unwillingness to adjust to it. She is bullied, too, over her “manga” art (monsters) and her silence. There’s always a rich kid (Chinnapat Kitichaivaranggoon) ready to lead his flunkies into picking on somebody he figures is weak.

This is B-movie producer and sometime writer-director Joel Soisson’s second attempt to tell this tale and get audiences to watch it, after 2015’s “Buffalo Rider” (story by Chinnapat Kitichaivaranggoon). Perhaps the earlier version had a little more local color and a little less of the water buffalo race.

But what almost certainly separates the two films is Patra and Rugtawatr’s quiet, engaging presence at the center of it, and an action climax that is tough, beautifully moving and yet still kid-friendly.

Rating: unrated, fistfights, animal injuries, alcohol abuse

Cast: Lily Patra, Pan Rugtawatr, Chinnapat Kitichaivaranggoon, Phanida Suwansaad and Eoin O’Brien

Credits: Scripted and directed by Joel Soisson. A KMDG release.

Running time: 1:26

The fundamental problem with any action pic starring Jason Momoa is who can you credibly cast that one could reasonably expect to bring down the Man Mountain?

Making his character a mixed martial artist in “Sweet Girl” just compounds that problem.

It’s a nonsensical thriller whose RIDICULOUS third act twists finish the job that its “reduced expectations” opening moments set us up for.

Getting Momoa to wade through a couple of pages of voice-over narration is a serious misuse of his talents. He’s not a natural at it.

“As the years pass, we realize we are nothing more than the experiences that make us.”

OK, there’s the REAL problem. This dog is on the screenwriters — Philip Eisner, Scott Hurwitz and Will Staples.

It’s a topical tale about Big Pharma skullduggery and lives discarded in its eagerness to put profits over humans. In this case, the lengths such entities go to include hiring kill teams along with the usual buying and selling politicians.

Momoa plays Ray, a Pittsburgh husband and Dad who is losing his wife (Adria Arjona) to cancer. A life-saving experimental drug that was about to come out as a generic was halted.

Ray ends up on the phone on a CNN chat show involving the smug, callous Martin Shkreli clone (Justin Bartha) who made that decision.

“If my wife dies, it’s YOUR death sentence,” Ray threatens. “I will hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands.”

Yes, his wife dies, and no, the FBI doesn’t come knocking at his door. But a reporter calls, draws Ray into a meeting and that’s where he runs afoul of the first hitman (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) who logically shouldn’t be able to take even one Momoa haymaker. There will be others.

Ray and daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced of “Dora and the Lost City of Gold”) are on the lam in his rusty ’72 Cutlass, the most conspicuous get-away car in Western Pennsylvania.

The plot, which has run through three timeframes by this point (Ray and others training Rachel in MMA), unravels from there. Dad gets in fights, Rachel gets in the way, and then passes judgment on what it is they’re doing.

“So all the values you taught me growing up are out the window?”

Merced throws herself into this, despite the fight physics that precludes her character’s ability to clobber guys twice her size.

Before “Aquaman” made him the star that “Conan” did not, Momoa acquitted himself well in plenty of B-pictures like this — “Road to Paloma,” “Wolves,” “Braven” — and brute force roles in “Game of Thrones,” “Frontier” and the like on TV.

The occasional decently-staged fight or grace note here stands out, because there aren’t many. A story this badly constructed with dialogue this stilted and characters this thin is simply beneath Momoa, at this stage.

Filling your down time between “Aquaman” appearances, and “Dune,” with a movie scripted by the hack who did “Event Horizon” isn’t a smart play.

Rating: R, for strong violence, some profanity

Cast: Jason Momoa, Isabela Merced, Raza Jaffrey, Amy Brenneman, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Adria Arjona, Lex Scott Davis and Justin Bartha

Credits: Directed by Brian Andrew Mendoza, scripted by Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz. A Netflix release.

Running time:

Maggie Q returns to “Nikita” territory with “The Protege,” playing a sexy and exotic assassin not unlike her best known TV role.

It’s her latest lead, part of a run that included “Fantasy Island,” “Death of Me” and “The Argument,” and she almost lets us see herself asking “Is this a step backwards?” in her tentative, blasé performance.

Anna was a Vietnamese orphan raised by the hired killer (Samuel L. Jackson) who found her after walking in late on a scene of mass slaughter. Bad men had killed her family. Little Anna (Eva Nugyen Thorsen) is the last person standing. And she’s holding one of their guns.

Decades later, she and her mentor are a cool, efficient machine, people who “find people who can’t be found,” and often as not, stab, shoot, strangle or kill them with a bomb.

But Moody (Jackson) is getting on up there, even if he claims “70 is the new 30.” And he’s got that tubercular cough that tells us, and anybody who’s ever been to the opera, he’s not long for this world.

And the merest hint of searching for a long-lost child of an infamous oligarch, the subject of an earlier contract, puts Moody in the bullseye and Anna on the lam and on the hunt. Killers are on her tail and must be dispatched. Cities and old “friends” must be visited and outfits must be changed, and often.

Anna’s search for yet another person who “can’t be found” takes her back to her native Vietnam, despite her serious misgivings.

“Our past is never what we left it.”

Michael Keaton plays Rembrandt, a mysterious “security” expert who knows way more about Anna and Moody than she should be comfortable with. He’s menacing — he may be involved with those who are after her — and he’s very flirtatious. She flirts back.

“How long you been doing this?”

“Long enough not to miss.“

Keaton brings a little sparkle to his scenes, but he and Maggie Q have little to no chemistry. The fact that he’s 27 years her senior may have something to do with it. The fight choreography has to hide a lot of stunt doubling accordingly.

Q is runway ready and model thin, and here she lets us see hesitation in every little flash of action. That’s not what we want from an action heroine.

Director Martin Campbell has Bond credits and a resume that stretches back to the ’70s. But his violent, humorless and predictable vengeance reinvention of Jackie Chan (“The Foreigner”) let us know he’s lost his edge and whatever he brings to the fights and shootouts here, he can’t make it all coalesce into a coherent film.

The script is straight-up formula, which suggests few surprises, but also that the component parts should have clicked better than they did. Jackson’s played this sort of guy to death, and can’t find any more fun in such characters. Not without Ryan Reynolds and Selma Hayek around. Keaton (and his stunt double) delivers the goods.

Robert Patrick shows up as the leader of a ‘Nam vets biker gang, in Vietnam, and is so colorful you kind of wish the movie had been more about him.

But our star, framed in many an alluring closeup, gives us nothing here. She’s almost expressionless, and however “true to life” that might be for a cold-blooded killer, that choice makes for a dull, uninvolving performance.

Q was pretty good in “Death of Me,” and “Fantasy Island” wasn’t really her fault. So it’s not that she can’t carry a movie. But she does a damn poor job of hiding her disinterest in this one.

Rating: R for strong and bloody violence, language, some sexual references and brief nudity

Cast: Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Patrick, Ray Feuron, Patrick Malahide and Michael Keaton.

Credits: Directed by Martin Campbell, script by Richard Wenk. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:49

This one streams on Shudder Sept.9, at the start of the Halloween horror season.

Comically flat, emotionally thin but not-entirely-charmless, “Out of My League” is a distinctly Italian take on young love shadowed by terminal illness.

Like more than one Italian film that I’ve taken in as we journey “around the world with Netflix,” it seems quaint, dated and retrograde by North American standards. Would Hollywood serve up a self-described “ugly duckling,” the butterfly who “stayed a caterpillar” heroine we see here, what with all the image-embracing and “shaming” eschewing going on?

But this is Turin, not Tampa. Marta (Ludovica Francesconi) is a perky, petite pixie, a 19 year-old orphaned as a toddler, resigned to her Plain Giada looks. And that’s not all she’s resigned to.

“The worst is yet to come,” she narrates (in dubbed English, or Italian with English subtitles).

She was orphaned at 3, and the two things her parents left her are the family home, which she’s finally taken possession of, and mucoviscidosis. That’s another name for cystic fibrosis. Her lungs fill with mucus under a whole raft of conditions, and her future looks circumscribed and short.

She may have two gay BFFs, one more than the rom-com minimum. And Federica (Gaja Masciale) and Jacopo (Jozef Gjura) may go everywhere with her, even joining her for medical appointments. But they’re not amused by her gallows humor.

“How long have I got?”

Her doctor’s assurances of “What matters is your attitude” seems like a cop out. Because Marta is bubbling over with attitude. Her job at the local food coop includes giving sexy, sensual readings of “Today’s specials” memos over the PA system, so sultry that men and boys are always shoving come-on notes under her door. She pins them to her office “wailing wall,” laughing at her one chance to be the one dismissing potential suitors.

Her BFFs encourage her to scan through Tinder, even as she admits “my sex appeal is best expressed on a keypad.

But there is the one guy, young, rich and handsome, that she has eye for. As there’s no sense waiting around, she proceeds to stalk, pursue and generally get in the sightlines of hunky, arrogant Arturo (Giuseppe Maggio).

There’s a hint of “Sixteen Candles” to this pursuit. The last thing Marta expects is for Arturo to notice her back and call her bluff.

First-time feature director Alice Filippi and screenwriters Roberto Proia and Michela Straniero shove in the usual assortment of “big gestures,” first date makeover montage, the “karoake” moment (he sings “Fly Me to the Moon” in fractured English) and obstacles to love and devotion. Those of course are topped with the with the easily-anticipated “She’s not telling him she’s sick” twist.

Everything we see feels contrived. Nothing we see or hear plays as “funny” and even “cute” seems beyond this flat romance’s reach.

When you can’t make anything funny out of the two gay 19 year-old roommates (they live with Marta in her house) haplessly trying to make a baby for reasons we can never fathom, you ruin the highs before the story’s arc shows you the lows — coughing jags, oxygen tubes up the nose, hospitals and the like.

I never bought into any of this. Maggio is a foot taller and hits the gym, and Francesconi’s best efforts can’t make the scripted Marta witty, funny or charming enough to merit a second glance.

Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, nudity, profanity

Cast: Ludovica Francesconi, Giuseppe Maggio, Gaja Masciale and Jozef Gjura.

Credits: Directed by Alice Filippi, scripted by Roberto Proia and Michela Straniero. An Eagle Films Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Cary Elwes as a New York Times book critic? Will he survive his encounter with the grizzled, grumpy and soused old coot Caine plays in this Sept. 17 comedy?

They gave Oscar winner Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland”) her biggest check, lined up Jolie and Hayek as “names” and pulled together an “X-Men: First Class” sized ensemble of young superheroes to be super-heroic.

Gemma Chan, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington and Kumail Nanjiani ensure this is a seriously diverse cast.

Not the most “box office” ensemble ever assembled, but it’s “Marvel” that sells these things.

“Eternals,” opening in November, promises to be another test of the modern post-“Avengers” pandemic comic book movie marketing model.

Embrace the “Blade Runner” sci-fi noir look, the post apocalyptic gloom and the embittered voice-over of the jaded hero, and you can roll with the punches “Reminiscence” throws at you. For a while, anyway.

“Nothing is more addictive than the past,” the grizzled Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) muses. And that’s what people do, escape to the past — after the U.N. and Al Gore’s long-warned of climate catastrophe.

“When the waters rose and the wars broke out” this combat vet did his part to guard the higher ground. Now, he’s in mostly-flooded Miami, and yes, Miami never looked better — half-drowned, but cooler.

Nick and his former comrade-in-arms (Thandiwe Newton) offer a service here. Reminiscence is tech that might have been developed to augment interrogations. Put people in a (not-so-isolated) isolation tank, wire them up and let them replay the moments of their lives that meant something — falling in love, time with family, playing with a beloved dog.

The authorities use it as a threat against high-placed criminals who answer “I don’t recall” too many times. But Nick and Watts (Newton) sell it to the general public, with him hypnotically leading each client through a “Twilight Zone” narration that takes them “on a journey through memory.”

There’s always a dame in such film noirs, and this one (Rebecca Ferguson) says she’s just trying to find her lost keys. But as Nick and Watts watch Mae’s memories unfold (cool effect), the sultry nightclub “chanteuse” gives away that she’s mixed up in things, things which might connect her with a corrupt cop (Cliff Curtis) and one of the “barons” that runs this Waterworld.

Nick is intrigued, and smitten. “Reminiscence” is about his hunt for Mae, for answers and for closure — romantic, legal, etc.

“Westworld” producer and writer Lisa Joy scripted and directed this film, which is memorable only for a couple of acting moments, and the striking images of what Miami looks like when it’s half-drowned. Pedestrians wade the streets in Wellingtons, dinghies putter about as taxis, as some of the high rises are still inhabited with waves lapping at the ground floor.

The rich have “dammed” their way to safety and comfort, walled-off islands that keep the waters from their door, but flood everyone else’s. In light of recent a recent Miami building disaster (a subplot here) and the more recent IPCC report on the unfolding climate catastrophe, “Reminiscence” seems downright timely.

But this story, this plot? It goes off the rails faster than a Miami commuter train scooting over half-flooded tracks.

The third act’s twists and wrinkles aren’t worth the brain power it takes to sort them out. The scheme uncovered plays as low stakes, the violence simply an admission that “We need to give the audience something for their money.”

The film is forgettably similar to Neill Blomkamp’s “Demonic” in its “travel through memory/dreams” theme. His misfire also opens this week. But he didn’t spend Warner Brothers’ millions upon millions on his picture.

“Reminiscence” is the sort of flop that can make one appreciate the series-length hollowness of the Joy’s most famous work, “Westworld.” Yes, the acting’s good, with Newton showing us more shades of her much-deserved comeback. The themes engaged with are intriguing and the world created is arresting.

But what do you do with it? Joy, aka Christopher Nolan’s sister-in-law, has no idea. That makes “Reminiscence” a classic “August” movie, a high-priced all-star dud dumped in cinema’s slowest month and forgotten by Labor Day.

Rating: PG-13 for strong violence, drug material throughout, sexual content and some strong language

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Daniel Wu and Cliff Curtis

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lisa Joy. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 1:56

True confessions time.

Netflix has decided “hot for teacher” movies fit my algorithm. I don’t know why, as most of the movies of this warped little corner of thrillerdom that I review aren’t on Netflix, although many turn up there eventually.

And they’re pitched to me by film distributors, not films that I hunt down by subject matter.

But somehow, Netflix has ID’d movies about students getting romantically/sexually involved with a teacher as something they expect me to like. Ick.

Granted, they are popular, as I searched that phrase on this blog and several movies a year wear that genre label (with apologies to Van Halen, copyright pending). And I know for a fact that reviews of such movies are real reader magnets.

So yeah, I’m a little embarrassed. Maybe you should be, too.

“Black Island,” titled “Schwarze Insel” in its original German, is an erotic mystery thriller set on an unnamed Frisian Island. It’s a somewhat suspenseful tale of an old grudge and revenge that’s best served seaside.

I say “somewhat suspenseful,” because co-writers Miguel Alexandre (who also directed) and Lisa Carline Hofer give away parts of the game too early, and make another misstep or two on their way to a satisfying finale. Somebody should remake it and make the necessary adjustments as they do.

A brief prologue shows us a tragedy that happened on this island. And the funeral connected to that tragedy has an unhappy ending as well. But “tragedy” implies “accident.” And these “accidents” were planned. We see who carried those plans out.

Teenaged Jonas (Philip Froissant) is newly-orphaned. His friends are his only real comfort, especially Nina (Mercedes Müller) who might be a little sweet on him.

She’s depressed about the idea of him moving away to live with distant relations. But his estranged grandfather (Hanns Zischler), a retired schoolteacher, invites him to stay on and live with him.

A year later, a new German language and lit teacher takes over, midterm. Jonas, Nina and their friends are taken with Rilke buff Helena Jung (Alice Dwyer of “The Invisibles”). She even invites them over to put together her new IKEA furniture and install a little flooring.

She gives them beer. She tells them to call her “Helena.” Jonas seems to get her special attention. And that puts Nina, who doesn’t want the competition, on her guard.

Helena coyly defuses that with her “Are you guys an item?” queries (dubbed, or in German with English subtitles). But sooner rather than later Jonas takes the bait, and lets Helena’s “We’re both adults” rationalization ease his conscience.

Poor Nina. But she’s a smart kid, and a sly one. Nina, we suspect, is going to figure some things out.

“Black Island” finds charm in the way Nina courts Jonas, and sad resignation in the way he betrays her.

And in Dwyer, it has a first rate villainess, a schemer with just enough “crazy” behind her eyes to make this character work. She is subtle enough to never let us see the Full Glenn Close, but never leaves any doubt that she’s a woman with a mission and a grudge. Dwyer and Helena take over the film, which takes on her “Talented Mr. Ripley” point of view.

Whatever she’s done and she’s going to do, we’re privy to it, and to Helena’s efforts to tidy up in the aftermath.

I have to say the film’s set-up is more interesting than the resolution, which is seriously straightforward.

But the violence isn’t “Hollywood,” it’s human. And the remote, windswept setting has its chilling pleasures as well.

That makes this mixed bag of a movie a little more than “exploitation,” a little less than a fully functional thriller.

And if your algorithm tags you as a “hot for teacher” genre completist, it’s worth a look.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, some nudity, teen drinking

Cast: Alice Dwyer, Philip Froissant, Mercedes Müller Hanns Zischler

Credits: Directed by Miguel Alexandre, scripted by Miguel Alexandre, Lisa Carline Hofer. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

First comes the gimmick. It looks like a green screen in need of a tune up, actors superimposed on a set, their images translucent and staticky, little bits of the set show through their bodies, clothes, etc.

As that effect, used to visualize characters being inserted into “the dreams” of someone, is not all that impressive, writer-director Neill Blomkamp had to find his frights elsewhere, anything that might give his latest, “Demonic,” a reason to exist.

From the crow-headed “demon” to various “demonic possession” tropes, “science” tackling the “problem” with Vatican-approved hardware, and a heroine who can seem put out — but never really terrified — it’s the conventions of the genre that let Blomkamp (“District 9”) down.

Or maybe Blomkamp simply has no flair for this genre.

The pandemic-filmed “Demonic” is about Carly (Carly Pope), a 30something who has returned to the place (in Canada) where she grew up for reasons the movie wastes zero time detailing.

She catches up with her self-identified “BFF” (Kandys McClure) and makes noise about shrugging off a text from an old acquaintance, Martin (Chris William Martin).

With his “insane theories,” she figures “I can’t go back there.” But of course she does.

Martin’s news is that he’s seen Carly’s imprisoned murderer Mom (Nathalie Boltt). She’s in a coma and being treated at some experimental facility run by Therapol.

Before she knows what’s hit her, Carly is contacted and summoned there and offered the chance to commune with her estranged, comatose mother via some new tech the company is testing. “The simulation” can insert Carly into her mother’s memories, “kind of like a dream,” the “physician” she meets with explains. Why not give it a try?

The guy (Michael Rogers) may be a tad pushy and look like horror icon Sig Haig in a suit. But sure, why not?

Her reasons become clear once she “contacts” her mother in some digital facsimile of the house where she grew up.

“I never got the chance to tell you how much I hate you!“

But something’s off about Mom. Something’s invading Carly’s own dreams. And this Therapol? Martin has some (conspiracy) theories about what they might be up to.

Pope’s character is so passive that it’s a relief to the audience’s sense of outrage and simple movie logic when she finally flips out at these tech-villains, whose “simulations” leave her haunted and even result in a nasty injury.

“We don’t have answers” is not what you want to hear from the “experts.”

“I’m talking DEMONS” is what you expect to hear from Martin, the conspiracy crank.

And “It’s COMING for you” is exactly what anybody who’s ever been to a demonic possession thriller is waiting to hear, as it sets up the showdown in the third act.

This is Blomkamp’s first feature since 2015’s “Chappie” debacle, something I hadn’t realized until I dug into his credits to see why he might be taking a shot at something this modest in scope and intellectual ambition, aside from the limitations the pandemic put on filmmaking.

If this is meant as a “comeback,” it doesn’t cut it. If there’s money for a possible “District 9” sequel, he’d better grab it.

“Demonic” just makes you wonder whatever possessed Blomkamp in thinking it would work.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Carly Pope, Nathalie Boltt, Michael Rogers, Kandys McClure, Chris William Martin and Terry Chen

Credits: Scripted and directed by Neill Blomkamp. An IFC Midnight release.

Running time: 1:44