Movie Nation

“Daft” and “twee” are such hard tones to manage in a farce. But setting it in Ireland gives you a wee bit of a head start.

“Extra Ordinary” is an Irish ghost-busting comedy featuring Will Forte as an American ex-pat one-hit wonder who has made a deal with the Devil to have a “comeback,” Maeve Higgins as a driving instructor/ghost communicator and Barry Ward as a widower coping with a haunting by his meddlesome late wife, a man whose daughter has been snatched for a “virgin sacrifice” by the pop has-been.

So let’s just say this Irish comedy has “daft” covered. The “twee” bit is trickier, but the script throws so many recycled ideas and “ghost comedy” gags at us, that some are bound to tickle.

Rose (Higgins) gave up “tat’ utter ting” side-job when her father, a ghost hunter on Irish TV (Risteard Cooper) “was slaughtered.” Rose blames herself for it. She contents her lonely self these days teaching would-be motorists how to manage a stick shift in early cell-phone era Ireland.

“Now, push down on the clutch…No, with your FOOT.”

But embattled, haunted Martin (Ward) changes her mind. He’s still dominated by his bossy, sometimes violent late wife Bonnie. She writes “You MUST pay…the car tax!” on the foggy bathroom mirror, “Dog has WORMS” on his morning toast.

And if he picks out the wrong shirt, she knocks him about. Their daughter Sarah (Emma Coleman) is done shouting “Why are you HERE, Mom? What do you WANT?” She needs closure.

Rose, taken with Martin, and touched by his plight, grabs her TV with the VHS player combo, confers with her father’s old TV show episodes (these snippets explain “ghosts,” “evil” and people like Rose and himself having “The Talent” in moments throughout the film) and sets out to solve Martin’s problem.

Only a bigger one emerges. That’s rock has-been Christian Winter (Forte), with his bloody-minded and brassy Aussie wife (Claudia O’Doherty) has mortgaged their future, and maybe their “dump” of a castle, for a conjuring book detailing how to make a deal with You-Know-Who.

Christian’s phallic-shaped virgin divining staff has pointed him to Sarah, and by Satan, he will HAVE her for his SACRIFICE.

Higgins kind of underplays Rose to such an extent that she never seems animated in the role. She’s OK with a one-liner, such as her constant quoting of ghost world “rules,” sometimes straight from “The Exorcist,” Martin notices.

“Never met’em.”

Sometimes, as when she and Martin set out to collect ghostly ectoplasm from other ghosts in this ghost-riddled village, she is describing something from “Ghostbusters.”

“Oh, I haven’t read that.”

But Irish TV star Ward is the fall-on-the-floor laughing break-out in “Extra Ordinary.” His Martin becomes Rose’s “vessel” for communing with the dead, taking on the voice of this high-voiced henpecked (dead) husband or that growling dead wife Bonnie that Martin so fears.

Ward transitions from bemused and almost-amusing to slap-your-knees hilarious “in character.” It’s a sight, I tell you. And a sound.

The effects in this Mike Ahern, Enda Loughman comedy range from pedestrian but cute — a toaster cord floating, a whirlpool/vortex in a tiny pothole, a cigarette that magically pops out of Martin whenever “Bonnie” takes over — to some dazzling entities in sheets for the finale.

“Extra Ordinary” is entirely too ordinary too much of the time. But wisps of profane Irish wit intrude and tickle. A haunted garbage bin?

“My Tom passed a few months ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“I’m not. Tha’prick!”

Forte vamps his way through a paid Irish vacation, donning a mustache and old rocker wig and sniffing around for “the faint aroma of purity.”

And all that derivative “Ghost Busters,” “Exorcist,” “Ghost Town” and “Ghost” stuff? It’s given just enough of an Irish twist to induce a smile.

“Have nightmares after eating cheese? You might have EATEN a ghost — bacteria…”

“Based on a true story” indeed.

MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content and some horror violence

Cast: Maeve Higgins, Will Forte, Claudia O’Doherty, Terri Chandler and  Barry Ward

Credits: Directed by Mike Ahern, Enda Loughman, script by Mike Ahern, Enda Loughman, Demian Fox, Mauve Higgins. An Epic release.

Running time: 1:34

Dolly Parton’s corner of the East Tennessee woods — and mountains and hollers — has benefited from her largesse over the decades.

In April, a documentary about one such act of philanthropy makes it to theaters.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” writer-director Benh Zeitlin gained glory, honors ( three Oscar nominations) and filmmaking capital from that 2012 indie jewel.

And he knew just what he wanted to spend that capital on. He’d make his version of “Peter Pan.” No music, no posh British childhoods interrupted. He’d tell the story from heroine Wendy’s point of view and set it the “real” world — working class bayou, and actual deserted isle of “Lost Boys.”

He shot on the volcanic wasteland of Montserrat, used “natural” actors — untrained kids.

It took seven years for “Wendy” to make it to the screen, and he’s taken criticism for the dreamy, sensory and immersive childhood adventure that he conjured up. It’s a challenging film, I thought,but worthwhile.

Other reviews have been varying degrees of harsh. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis found him “more sentimental (than “Peter Pan” author J.M.) Barrie,” and that he “keeps the parts whirring, casting about for meaning that never fully comes.”

I caught up with Zeitlin, 36, for the first time since “Beast,” and asked him the obvious questions, and a few less obvious ones.

Question: What was the difference between “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Wendy” in terms of simple “degree of difficulty?”

Benh Zeitlin: “We did things the old fashioned way, and really challenged ourselves to make a film under circumstances that any practical person would tell you are impossible.

“Part of the fabric of the film is defying what is possible in terms of where you can make a movie.

“Crazily enough, it wasn’t a hard sell to the studio. We made ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ in a totally unconventional way. We’d invented our own process.

“When you’re doing things that far off from the way a studio would make a movie, once they sign off on it they kind of have to have faith that we would be able to do what, on paper, was completely undo-able.”

“We took the success of ‘Beasts’ and said ‘Let’s really challenge ourselves on an exponentially more difficult level.’ So we thought we’d make a film we always dreamed of without compromising.”

Q: What lessons from your no-budget/tiny (non-professional) cast “Beasts” served you best in “Wendy?”

Zeitlin: “All the work with non-professional actors that we did in that film was a learning experience. Especially working with non-professional kids. We had a lot more kids, seven — and that is, as any parent will tell not just seven times as tricky, but the chaos is seven squared.

“Every kid is their own volatile universe that you have to figure out how to wrangle on the set when you’re making a film.”

Q: The first time you mentioned this film aloud, in interviews, was back in 2013. What took you so long?

Zeitlin: Hahaha! The mere process of making the film took most of those years. It was always going to be a very circuitous, protracted adventure where we changed what we were doing — threw it out the window — and how we were doing it as we went along.

“Crazy twists and turns, which is what you get when you choose to film the places we filmed.

“We shot in a volcanic exclusion zone on an ‘active’ volcano — Montserrat. Just the locations required us to build roads (through the ash/magma field), building ziplines to move people and gear. It was an expedition, one where you take along REALLY young kids. We wanted to film a ‘Peter Pan’ where the kids were really children and not teenagers playing younger.

“We met our Peter when he was five years-old. Barely able to read. He didn’t know how to swim. It took time to get the kids ready just to bring them to the location.

“The time it took was the adventure of it. Everything was unexpected, but we had to expect the unexpected. It was going to take as long as it needed.”

Q: I travel the Caribbean a bit, and even I know not to hazard a trip to Monserrat!

Zeitlin: “I could write a book on all the reasons NOT to make a movie on Montserrat, and another book on all the reasons TO make a movie there. It’s an extraordinary place, a singularly incredible film location. Casting a place is similar to casting a person. Not only was the volcano there, and sometimes you just know — THIS is our Neverland.

“You rewrite the film to express the place you’ve decided to film it.

Q: If we can assume you’re settling into a niche, your niche is working with children. What do you get out of these experiences working with untrained kids as actors?

Zeitlin: “Children have an incredible freedom of thought and imagination, especially when you turn them loose, as we did. You can learn a tremendous  amount about the characters by watching and playing with the kids and going on adventures with them. They’re not guarded. They’re not self-conscious.

“That can lead to incredible acting. This film is about never letting go of that pure freedom that you have when you’re that young. Your kids teach you how to tell your story and teach you the themes that you want in the script. They dictate the film and hopefully their spirit is what’s in it, as much as mine.”

Q: What has “Peter Pan” meant to you?

Zeitlin: “It’s changed over time. He was a figure that haunted my whole life. Not the story, just the idea of eternal youth and this kid that lives in a state of ultimate freedom. He never has to compromise, never has to change. He never has to make practical choices.

“Becoming a filmmaker, in a way, is dodging the world and creating your own reality. You live in Neverland, in your own imagination.”

Q: You made Wendy, who has always been central to the story, the controlling focus of this version. Her point of view is how we experience it. Why?

Zeitlin: “I told the story from Wendy’s point of view because I wanted to tell the story of somebody who visits Neverland, and then has to leave. How do you deal with loss of freedom and wildness? How do you keep that spirit when the world wants to change you?”

Q: How do you cast kids, especially non-actors, and especially this young?

Zeitlin: “You’re looking for someone who you feel would actually run away with Peter. You need that spirit, that imagination. The wildness, spontaneity and courage that it would take to do that has to come across on screen, just in how they are. You want this un-selfconscious openness that lets them drop into character, that they feel it when  they do.

“For kids, there isn’t really an external motivation factor. They don’t care that they’re getting paid. They don’t, in the moment, care that they might become an actor later in life. They’re just in the joy of playing make believe and being on an adventure. I look for raw talent and passion for play acting.”

Q: I dare say it takes a special parent to let you work with their kids on something like this. Those sets (volcanic rocks, hopping a freight, swimming in the bayou, clamboring over a rusted out shipwreck) look like one giant tetanus shot waiting to happen for a bunch of barefoot children.

Zeitlin: Hahahaha! We have great set painters who are really good at making everything look rusted, like a ‘tetanus shot waiting to happen.’

“But with parents on a film like this, it’s one big family, because the parents make the journey with us. They become part of the team, part of the experience of making the movie.

“We’ve gotten good at making what the kids do look incredibly dangerous. But it has to be incredibly safe. We can make it feel like they’re in harms way.”

Q: What’s next on your filmmaking itinerary?

Zeitlin: “Hopefully, it won’t take another seven years to make a movie.

“But I don’t think there’s a right amount of time. I always have a sense of where I’m starting, but I don’t want to make a film where I know the destination. I’m always thrilled to start something new.

“This movie is about another time, when children weren’t as coddled and kept at a distance from the risks of life.

“For me, when I was a kid, an adventure was a chance to go out, get dirty, take chances and maybe get a little hurt. That’s what having fun meant, being out in our world and touching it.”

“That’s what I love to make movies about, real adventure and real connection with places, objects in our lives.”

Haley Bennett lays it all out there in “Swallow,” a quietly disturbing, hard-to-watch psychological drama about an unhappy woman in a controlling marriage whose unhappiness manifests itself in the compulsive disorder, pica.

And even if this dark film hunts for what seem to be simplistic cause-and-effect solutions to its heroine’s plight, it still makes for a tense and intimate thriller. Because pica, as our heroine Hunter demonstrates, is a harrowing form of self-harm.

Meek, mousey housewife Hunter is treated with little respect or deference by her rich husband Richie (Austin Stowell of “Fantasy Island”) and his richer, condescending parents (Elizabeth Marvel, David Rasche).

Bennett, of “The Red Sea Diving Resort” and “The Girl on the Train,” shows us a world of hurt in her eyes. Hunter speaks quietly, makes sure she is beautifully turned-out at all times, prepares gourmet meals for her star-in-daddy’s-business husband and hides whatever emptiness or pain she’s carrying around.

Her mother-in-law is Mrs. “You would look so pretty with long hair. You should grow it out. Richie likes his girls with long beautiful hair.”

She’s of the opinion that Hunter had little going on in her life, so “Lucky break, you meeting my son.”

Her father-in-law doesn’t even bother to insult her.

So Hunter starts eating things she shouldn’t — a little dirt here, a lot there, testing the idea of swallowing a marble, a thumbtack and worse.

She fastidiously (and grossly) “collects” the items after they’ve passed through her system successfully. Yes, it is painful.

But as she’s pregnant, sooner or later a doctor is going to figure out what she’s doing. A shrink is consulted. And still she cannot stop. With every fresh exercise of control, every perceived betrayal, Hunter seems more desperate and lost.

Writer-director Carlo Mirabella-Davis, who directed by “Once” sequel “The Swell Season,” keeps the focus on Hunter and the camera tight as she ponders this lock, that battery, “the textures” of things she puts in her mouth.

Yes, it is squirm-inducing.

Bennett, who produced “Swallow,” keeps her character’s suffering and emotions submerged, but close to the surface. And every now and then there’s an explosion.

There’s a touch of “The Invisible Man” to this unsettling story of the misery of being married to a cruel control freak.

But “Swallow,” for all its People Magazine psychoanalysis, is harrowing in different ways and gripping in its myopia. All Hunter has is this mania for “control” of one thing in her life — what she puts in her mouth. All we have is worry over her mental health, and discomfort in confronting it.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexuality and disturbing behavior.

Cast: Haley Bennett, Austin Stowell, Denis O’Hare, David Rasche, Elizabeth Marvel and Zabryna Guevara

Credits: Written and directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:35

A new apartment, a suicide cult connection.

Looks wacky and dark, with Taika Waititi, Kate Micucci and other proven laughs in the cast.

Finally earning release?

Olivia Coleman Maya Rudolph and you recognized Danny McBride as adult voices in the trailer for this Sept. animated comedy.

A family road trip to bond with the cell addict daughter as she starts college, interrupted by future tech.

Note the Corona Virus savvy “hand washing” joke. Sony Pictures Animation can see the FuTURE.

What an unalloyed delight “Emma.” is. As “Emma” always is, and indeed, as most Jane Austen adaptations are.

Unless you try to add zombies.

This time, Anya Taylor-Joy of “Thoroughbreds” and “Glass” has the title role, and turns her big expressive eyes on the mean girl arrogance of Austen’s heroine.

The comedy is frothier than most recent versions of the story have managed, which makes the lump-in-the-throat romance of the third act more of a teary-eyed surprise.

Bill Nighy makes Emma’s dad adorably distinct, thanks to a script that emphasizes the droll, lean clothes horse (Bill N. was BORN to wear these costumes) as a hypochondriac.

Neighborly Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn of TV’s “Vanity Fair”) is a more rough-hewn voice-of-conscience for meddling match-maker Emma. He even has a facial scar that suggests he’s dueled with foils on occasion.

The dizzy, simple “companion” Emma is so set on pairing up “above her station,” Harriet (Mia Goth) is dizzier than ever. The snobby vicar Mr. Elton (John O’Connor) as pitiably repellent as usual, the dashing Frank Churchill (Callum Turner) makes the most of his belated entrance and everybody else whom you remember from every other “Emma” carries her or his weight.

And how easy is it to come off as witty and refined with lines like these?

“There is one thing a gentleman can always find time to do — his duty.”

“Do not attempt, with your good nature, to understand a bad one!”

“I am ready to die if you refuse me.”

Emma is a young woman about to turn 20 who has just formed her latest “match,” that of her governess (Gemma Whelan) to a wealthy neighbor-widower (Rupert Graves).

“I must admit I have not yet been proven wrong,” she boasts. She’ll set up her poor, fatherless friend Harriet with Mr. Elton, the vicar. No, she won’t hear any protests from her grumpy lifelong friend, George Knightley.

“She is pretty and she is good-tempered,” he pleads. “And that is all…Nobody within her reach will ever be good enough for her.”

Emma keeps Harriet away from a handsome farmer who loves her as she hurls Harriet and Mr. Elton into situations.

As everyone is prone to sharing letters from relations, Emma gets to read up on the mysterious and absent heir, Frank Churchill, and side-eye the “accomplished” Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson of “Black Mirror”), who also could return at any moment.

Knightley fumes and her father whimpers about each and every “terrible day” in his gorgeous, baroque mansion where he feels perpetual drafts, fretting about even a hint of over-exertion. A little snowfall sends him into a panicked retreat to the warm (but drafty, apparently) comforts of home.

First-time feature director Autumn de Wilde gives us the lush lives of leisure and “making a good match” that Austen adaptations on the big screen are famous for. And she underscores the class distinctions and the barely-seen/never-heard army of servants it takes to live these Austenesque lives of privilege.

Two valets dress Mr. Woodhouse (Nighy), one for each shoe they slip on him in silence. No brow must be furrowed pulling off a stocking or tightening a bodice. There’s “a girl for that.”

Care was exercised in costumes — fine fabrics and custom cuts for all the wealthy folks who live in houses grand enough to have names like Hartfield, Donwell Abbey, Randalls. The simpler folk have simpler cuts from rougher cloth.

And every so often there’s a reminder of what might not be under those luxurious, immaculate costumes — underwear. Yes, this is Austen with bare bottoms.

The director keeps her ringleted star in tight shots, emphasizing her most expressive eyes as they express contempt, pity, dismay and hurt. Taylor-Joy makes a mean coquette here, and it takes a little humiliation — botched matchmaking, thwarted courtship with a suitably rich (and mean) equal, and of course her inevitable recognition that gallantry and kindness matter — to allow love and vulnerability into her life.

The value in a sexy dueling scar is not to be discounted, either.

I can’t say this is head and shoulders above any other “Emma.” to come along. But de Wilde, her leading lady and her production team have made the matchmaker in need of her own match fresh and modern in a period piece detailed — right down to the acapella folk tunes and hymns sung on the soundtrack.

Indeed, right down to the underwear, or lack of it.

MPAA Rating: PG, for brief partial nudity.

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Callum Turner, Amber Anderson, Miranda Hart, Josh O’Connor, Rupert Graves, Gemma Whelan and Bill Nighy

Credits: Directed by Autumn de Wilde, script by Eleanor Catton, based on the novel by Jane Austen. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 2:05

Anime films based on popular manga are the ultimate filmgoing “Stranger in a Strange Land” experience. They’re an alien movie outing that doesn’t abide by normal rules of plot, logic and story and an animated experience which you can’t measure against other animation.

So dropping in on one, as I tend to do, can seem unfair to aficionados, as the films are a bit of a head-scratch to anybody who isn’t invested in one of these “DragonBall” or whatever money makers.

To those not deep into the genre, the films look choppy, under-animated, and if not “cheap” then kind of sketchy, stylized in a way that looks unfinished. They are the closest to a comic book that a “comic book movie” ever comes.

While most movies — even five-or-more sequels into a franchise — need to stand alone as their own story with a beginning, middle and end with characters introduced and taken through character arcs, that doesn’t apply here.

The movies are for fans only But let’s see what the kids are burning their hours on these days.

“My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising” is the second feature film based on the long-running manga series, which has also spawned TV and video games. Fans deeply invested in the characters hoot and holler back at the screen when this or that hero makes a dramatic entrance or reemergence, this magic power is shared, that miraculous “He’s not dead after all” resurrection arrives.

I didn’t see this in an empty theater, and the box office receipts prove the franchise has a fanbase. But as a movie, is the story or the animation worth a 104 minute investment in time?

Maybe if you’re really young and time is something you’ve got a lot of. Yeah, you can pick up on (more or less) what’s happening within a few minutes. But I can’t say it’s really worth it.

Here is a tale of a future where humanity has acquired “quirks,” super-human powers. There are kids who want to be superheroes. A pair of feuding friends — Izuku Midoriya and Katsuki Bakugo — are role models to the kids.

And they themselves idolize All Might, whose All-for-One powers are what our hero apprentices will need when League of Villains member Nine (Johnny Yong Bosch) threatens Nabu Island, where kids — including hero-in-training Deku — are holed up.

Nine wants them because he can acquire nine quirks to complement his own power, and Deku has access to All-for-One.

The animated effects — battle royales of the “Transformers” variety, only in drawn animation — are tolerable.

The dialogue is peppered with “hero” rules and codes of honor of the “A real hero will always find a way for justice to be served!”

The villain is all “Why won’t you weaklings DIE already?” Classic villain trash talk.

And there’s a smattering of profanity mixed in with the epic fights to let us know how adult this all is. Sure.

There are a lot of characters to invest in, too many for a single feature film to allow that to happen. The running gags provided by returning characters are a big way “Heroes Rising” is a movie that panders to the fanbase and does nothing at all to lure in newcomers.

If you haven’t been playing along, watching along or reading along, you’ll still recognize the archetypes and story tropes. The arc here is folk-tale ancient, at its bare bones. It’s all the clutter dressing that simple story up that is what the fans are here for and anybody else will regard as supernaturalist jibberish.

A single movie as part of this long continuum won’t give you much that doesn’t feel puerile or incoherent or unoriginal. And I can’t see enough in this junk food film that would send anybody new to “My Hero Academia” (love those Japanese titles) back to “catch up” on the origin stories.

Still, it takes all types.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and language (dubbed)

Cast: The voices of Felecia Angelle, Christopher Bevins, Johnny Yong Bosch, Justin Briner, Clifford Chapin and Dani Chambers.

Credits: Directed by Kenji Nagasaki, script by Yôsuke Kuroda, based on the manga by Kōhei Horikoshi. A Funimation release.

Running time: 1:44

“Mistaken” is a story of one woman’s torment in the weeks and months after 9/11.

Laila Besheer was interrogated repeatedly by the F.B.I. after the hijackings, once grabbed and grilled in an airport basement office for hours — while pregnant — because of her married name. Laila, a native of Morocco and a longtime American citizen, was married to a fellow named Muhammad Atta.

No, it wasn’t “THE” Muhammad Atta. That should have been obvious fairly early on. But as she and HER Muhammad Atta had flown to New York the week before 9/11, and stayed at a hotel at the World Trade Center, well, you can understand the confusion.

Nadia Kounda plays Besheer as an increasingly alarmed and rattled wife who can’t really say she knows everything about her architectural engineer husband’s past. The agent grilling her (Chantal Nchako) has to restrain her fellow agents and the armed guards outside the door.

Not that she’s all that restrained herself.

“How about a trip to QUANTICO?”

That’s a lot to process for a very pregnant, very uncomfortable Muslim (not devout) woman being subjected to a strip search, dehydration and no bathroom breaks.

Writer-director Alfred Robbins’ mostly-bland by-the-book bio shows us Laila’s middle class childhood in Morocco, a near-fatal accident that set her on her life’s path early, her nursing school education in Baltimore, a failed marriage to a local (Jonathan Regier) and remarriage to an Egyptian named Muhammad Atta.

The interrogation scenes are over-the-top, bordering on violent and all but crossing the line into parody.

But in the days after 9/11, that was probably not inaccurate. The “There’s something else planned” panic of those days got plenty of civil rights trampled on.

The confusion is somewhat understandable, and the threatening phone calls and life-shattering prejudices that followed would have been a test for anyone. There’s a Laila Atta who is an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts. She probably had a few ugly days with that surname.

But true story or not, “Mistaken” is a fairly blase and stiff recreation of one woman’s life and trials, padded out with more background that we don’t need (childhood) because giving more of her American years would give away the feeble attempt at mystery here. We’re meant, I assume, to wonder if she was indeed married to “THAT” Muhammad Atta.

That explains the film’s own tortured life. It began life as a 2013 drama “Raljat,” was revived under the title “Mistaken” in 2017 and is only now gaining release.

All that trouble for an interesting 9/11 story broadly-acted and rather flatly told.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Nadia Kounda, Chantal Nchako, Jonathan Regier

Credits: Written and directed by Alfred Robbins.

Running time: 1:24

Ian Daniels directed this film about environmental racism…in Canada, too.