Movie Nation

Wanna feel old?

HBO Max is guessing you do. Still, looks kind of cute. May 27.

This mystery thriller comes our way July 2.

The word “uneven” is built-into any anthology film, and “The 100 Candles Game” is no exception. But here, the least interesting “story” of the eight sampled, is the framing tale, four people gathered in a candle-lit room telling tales of terror, then sent off to see if they see something spooky in a mirror in the next room.

Dumb. Not scary at all. Nothing the four leads (Magui Bravi, Clara Kovacic, James Wright, Agustin Olcese) do changes that.

That’s not true of any of the tales the four “tell” here, of child witches, a boy hunted by the “fog demons,” “black-eyed child” demons, a pregnant woman’s exorcism, a “buried alive” story with a cell phone twist and “Mom sees monsters when she’s off her meds” tale brought to alarming life by Amy Smart (the “Crank” movies, “Seventh Moon,” TV’s “Justified” and “Shameless”) and the like.

But none of them are stop-this-ride-I-wanna-get-off scary. They’re all too short, with the linking story playing like the dull filler it is.

The look, with seven directors signing on, is quite consistent. The effects are generally impressive.

And aside from the always-good Smart, I was most impressed by the Argentine Eugenia Kolodziej, who plays the hell out of that “waking up in a coffin” nightmare.

The brevity of the stories allows them to exit with an abrupt kick, a mild twist here and there. But most of them feel half-baked — punchy, going somewhere, until they don’t.

MPA Rating: Amy Smart

Cast: Magui Bravi, Clara Kovacic, James Wright, Agustin Olcese, Eugenia Kolodziej and Amy Smart

Credits: Directed by Victor Català, Brian Deane, Oliver Lee Garland, Guillermo Lockhart, Tony Morales, Nicolás Onetti, Nicholas Patterson, Daniel Rübesam and Christopher West, scripted by Mauro Croche and Guillermo Lockhart. A Devilworks release.

Running time: 1:38

The tropes of the big screen boxing drama were basically chiseled in stone in the Hollywood of the 1930s and ’40s, set up and recycled — with some variations — by “The Champ” and “Golden Boy” and “Body and Soul,” and repeated ever since.

“American Fighter” is built on those traditions, a “tough kid” with “big obstacles” to overcome if he wants to win the “big rematch” and solve his “big problem.”

Except this kid is named “Ali.” He’s a Persian immigrant in 1981 America, college wrestler tough, but with bigotry and hustlers surrounding him everywhere he goes and a sickly mother back in Tehran who needs American medical attention to survive.

His dad? He was executed on the tarmac before the parents could fly out.

George Kosturos (“A California Christmas,” “The Ride”) steps into the spotlight here, playing a fighter who could only exist in B-movies. He learns “underground” no-holds-barred fighting on the fly, punches way above his weight or the laws of physics, lands scores of knuckle-breaking haymakers and endures just as many as he scrambles to raise the cash to smuggle his mom out of Revolutionary Iran.

He’s scored a back-door college wrestling scholarship on the West Coast, but privileged or not, he doesn’t have the cash or the means of making it to save his mother.

Until his wrestling buddy (Bryan Craig) notes how Ali handles one racist “camel jockey” (and worse) insult too many from their teammates.

“That punch you threw in practice, you think you could do that again?”

Ryan is thus Ali’s entre to the underground fight scene of Northern California, booked and gambled-on 15 minute bouts staged in basements, hay lofts and the like for a few hundred bucks a throw.

Tommy Flanagan (“Sons of Anarchy,” “Braveheart”) is the ever-so-Irish promoter/profiteer who smells money in people betting against the hated “Muslim.” Sean Patrick Flannery (“Dexter,” “Assault on VA-33”) is the sage and boozy trainer the kid won’t give the time of day to, until he figures out he’s in over his head.

And Allison Paige plays the cute coed who digs Ali’s curly locks and exotic accent.

There’s a whiff of “Hallmark movie” to this brute brawl of a drama. Outside of the ring, it’s chaste and downright cheesy — a roller rink date, Mom’s worries in Iran, the fatherly way Flanery’s Duke sobers up just enough to teach “the kid” a thing of two.

“It’s the land of opportunity, kid. And yours is just inside that ring.”

One break from formula is that this “teachable moment” comes awfully late, too late to work, really. How did Ali get so good so fast, and carry on all this time without instruction?

The period piece nature of the pic means we get an ’80s synth-pop score and a lot of cornball post-“Rocky” cornerman wisdom about fighting “three-legged donkeys” and “blame makes you weak, son.”

Despite the racism, the budding romance, the pathos of Ali’s “cause” and the under-developed “wrestling” side of things — no, absorbing the ethics of no-ethics brawling isn’t allowed in the NCAA — “American Fighter” never overcomes the perfunctory story and B-movie “types” performing it.

The players give fair value, but not that extra something that would have lent this pathos or made us care. And if you’ve seen one savage beat-down, you’ve seen them all.

MPA Rating: R for violence

Cast: George Kosturos, Tommy Flanagan, Sean Patrick Flanery, Allison Paige and Bryan Craig

Credits: Directed by Shawn Paul Piccinino, script by Carl Morris, Shaun Paul Piccinino. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:38

IFC has this horrific laugher, on its way to you this June 25.

June 1, this “out there” slasher farce makes its public bow.

Wow.

I don’t recognize the listed distributors, but this cast in an action pic? It’ll make it our way.

Suki Waterhouse, a deep-voice/zero-range “model/actress” plays the “new girl” at a “Seance” obsessed boarding school in this week’s classmate killer horror thriller.

While her look, voice and name are distinctive, I don’t recall her standing out in “The Broken Hearts Gallery” or “Assassination Nation” the way she does here. She’s utterly dreadful, but perhaps she hated the material and figured even “phoning it in” wasn’t worth the effort.

Expressionless Camille shows up an Eveldine Academy just after a seance that led to a teen’s suicide. But WAS it? A suicide?

Camille crosses swords with the mean girl clique, led by Alice (Inanna Sarkis) but including Roz (Djouliet Amara), Yvonne (Stephanie Sy), Bethany (Madisen Beaty) and Lenora (Jade Michael), young women of privilege prone to pranks.

“You really don’t want to get on our bad side.”

Luckily, the new girl with the English accent has one friend, Helina (Ella-Rae Smith), even if Helina’s agenda leans towards friend-with-benefits.

But they’re all in the same boat at this “haunted” school, with the recent suicide, which created an opening for Camille, perhaps caused by a ghost and not by the mean girls tricking, scaring and humiliating her into leaping out a window.

“Some people think that it was an accident,” Helina says. She and Camille are interested in finding out. But those scratching, creaking noises in the walls, lights constantly flickering out and apparitions mean that Alice’s seance-strategy is the one everybody pursues.

Is there a dead disgruntled alumna or something/someone else out to “get” the girls — picking them off one-by-one as they conveniently separate and find themselves alone and dead?

There’s a generous sampling of horror “mystery” cliches in this script, plenty of this or that death/disappearance “doesn’t make any sense.”

Writer-director Simon Barrett makes sure that everyone looks fabulous, as most are playing pretty, vain princesses, and those who aren’t immediately fall under suspicion.

The requisite titillation of the dead (female) teenager movie genre isn’t remotely titillating — a shower scene here, a leotarded dance rehearsal there.

And through it all stands Waterhouse, stone-faced and stiff, underreacting to this death or that bit of peril, selling the fight sequence with all she (and a stunt double) have.

At least she’s been cast in a new version of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” so perhaps that’s what was on her mind while Waterhouse was shooting this. But being second banana to the notoriously awful Dakota Johnson (google her and “bad actress”) tells us all we need to know about that. Perhaps Waterhouse realizes that, as well.

MPA Rating: R for bloody horror violence, language and some drug use 

Cast: Suki Waterhouse,  Madisen Beaty, Inanna Sarkis, Stephanie Sy, Ella-Rae Smith, Jamde Michael, Seamus Patterson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Simon Barrett. An RLJE/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:33

Algar, of “Wrath of Man” and “The Last Right,” is Ireland’s cinematic flavor of the moment and takes the spotlight in this horror mystery opening June 11.

“You were always quiet,” the old flame says of the big city cop who’s come home for a funeral.” “You always saw everything.”

That’s Eric Bana’s character in “The Dry,” a solid and engrossing police procedural from Down Under. He plays Aaron Falk, a detective who grew up in remote, drought-stricken Kiewarra, but left long ago, and under a cloud.

Now he’s been summoned home for the funeral of a former friend, a guy who killed his family in a murder-suicide. And that has the entire town furious. Aaron knew Luke. And Aaron and Luke lied about another death twenty years before. Now Luke’s gone and killed his wife and son and then himself. If only Aaron had told the truth back then, they think.

But Luke’s family (Julia Blake, Bruce Spence) want Aaron to clear his name, once again.

“Obviously, Luke didn’t do it,” his mother declares. Nobody else in town buys that. They’re pretty damned sure Luke, or Aaron or both of them had something to do with a girl’s drowning when they were teens. The harassment, led by the girl’s hard-drinking redneck brother (Matt Nable) turns from testy to ugly in a flash.

In scenes set in the present day, Aaron watches and listens. Unarmed, supposedly off-the-clock as a Federal police detective who just broke a big finance scandal case, Aaron avoids confrontations. He takes care to include the out-of-his-depth local police sergeant (Keir O’Donnell) as he follows leads and patiently asks questions.

There are no obvious answers, but suspects start to pop up and the town’s secrets start to emerge, one clue at a time.

Aaron meets up with former classmate, now a single-mom Gretchen (Genevieve O’Reilly) and there are sparks, even if he’s asking everyone questions, including her.

“Can’t we just sit and drink our body weight?”

In scenes set in the past, the teen Aaron (Joe Klocek) is just as subdued, the quiet partner to brash, abrasive and charismatic pal Luke (Sam Corlett), the handsome one that turned all the girls’ heads. And he’s just as observant, scenes the adult Aaron replays in his mind as he rethinks that “mystery” from long ago.

Ellie (BeBe Bettencourt), a haunted beauty who guards her secrets even if her unhappiness shows, had both boys’ attention.

What happened back then, and is it “connected,” somehow, to what’s happening now?

Aussie director Robert Connolly (“The Bank”) takes his time with this material, slowly building up characters, layer by layer. The stresses of the drought are stated overtly at first, and slip into the background. A visit to “the ol’swimmin’ hole” shows it to be dry, as is everybody’s favorite fishing lake.

“Shooting rabbits,” the European imports that overran Australia in the 19th century whose presence is even less welcome in times of drought, has become a local routine. “Can’t have’em on my property.”

Aaron doesn’t have the stomach for that. But we have to wonder how much abuse Aaron will take from a very hostile town where he’s no longer welcome. And while clues start to pop up, which he and we notice at the same time, the false leads outnumber the real ones for much of the picture.

The film’s downbeat tone suits its sedate pace. There’s room for characters to breathe and develop, and O’Reilly, Nable, Bettencourt and others play people with flaws and quirks and secrets insofar as anyone can have such things in a town this size.

Bana makes Aaron the most intriguing and “real” feeling character of all — troubled by guilt and questions he may not want the answer to, stumbling in the wrong direction, here and there, but never breaking stride, never panicking, never blowing up or melting down in that way “Hollywood” cops so often do.

The film’s resolution leaves something to be desired, but Bana pulls us in even and gets us past even the moments when “The Dry” threatens to leave us high and dry.

MPA Rating: R for violence, and language throughout 

Cast: Eric Bana, Genevieve O’Reilly, Keir O’Donnell, BeBe Bettencourt, Matt Nable, Miranda Tapsell, Julia Blake and Bruce Spence.

Credits: Directed by Robert Connolly, script by Harry Cripps, Robert Connolly and Samantha Strauss, based on a novel by Jane Harper. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:57