Movie Nation

“Here After” is a a romance premised on the idea that you can’t get into “heaven” without having a “soul mate.”

It is terrible on a lot of levels, a godawful script that was drably-cast and indifferently-directed and passes before the eyes, deathly-dull scene after leaden scene.

Almost everything about it screams “CUT this,” and not with a scalpel either. This two hour indulgent wank needs to be chainsawed. They changed the title from “Faraway Eyes,” but that was no help at all.

Broadway and “SVU” star Andy Karl is Michael, a New Yorker who dies in a car crash after his drunken girlfriend breaks up with him rather than put down the drink and get on a plane to go meet his parents.

Ouch.

This plot-launching moment is drawn out, ad nauseum, in a monologue our hero utters from the gurney as he’s being worked over going into the hospital. Michael relates this long, almost-interesting story from his teens about a redhead and handcuffs. That goes on and on before we realize he’s telling this story to a counselor (Christina Ricci) of some sort. She’s having a hard time getting him “focused” and on topic.

“Can you recall exactly how it was you died?”

She’s in “admissions,” I guess you’d call it. “Heaven” — the director and star (both Jewish) avoid that word — requires that you enter paired-up, with your “soulmate,” and no, don’t ask about “What about if you’re a kid?” or whatever. Michael tries to, and no, the movie makes no sense right from the get-go, so why belabor things?

Michael is given “one last second chance” to wander the Earth — New York — cruise the streets and bars and find “the one.” The whole world is his oyster, but he limits himself to Manhattan. Other souls/ghosts wander there as well. They just don’t want to answer his questions.

“It’s New York. Even when you’re alive, nobody talks to you.”

Michael’s often-drunken approaches to women bring out his “misogyny,” or “woman hating douche” side. The one dead pal (Michael Rispoli) he remembers and consults has a few answers, but no suggestions about sorting out their problem. Angelo’s already given up. At least there’s booze in their shared afterlife.

“This ain’t Hell. But it’s sure doing its best impression.”

Michael and the movie about him fritter away minutes and more minutes, and then he meets somebody (Nora Arnezeder of “The Words”) in a bar. They chat, and however bored their banter might make the viewer, destiny and the screenplay dictate that they “click.”

One problem? She’s not dead.

Writer-director Harry Greenberger did a film called “Staring at the Sun,” which played a few festivals, never got a proper release and isn’t even listed on Rotten Tomatoes. “Here After” should be so lucky.

The most charitable view is that it’s an overreach for something romantic and profound that was a misfire pretty much at conception.

Karl, of Broadway’s “Groundhog Day” adaptation, knows his way around a joke. None scripted here work and he comes off like dead weight trying to make them play. Making his character an actor with dreams of a one-man show just underlines what Karl doesn’t accomplish here — lighting up the screen, or even holding our interest.

Ricci has nothing funny or interesting to play and is absent from much of this interminable, dreamy dramedy. She got off easy.

Arnezeder might be well-cast as a romantic ideal if there was anything to play, and she was better at being more than just a beautiful face. “Honey Bee” is the character’s name, and that’s the most intriguing thing about her.

I don’t know what they were here after but I do know what I was here after. And “Here After” isn’t it.

MPA Rating: unrated, lots of alcohol consumption, profanity

Cast: Andy Karl, Christina Ricci, Nora Arnezeder and Michael Rispoli.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Harry Greenberger. A Vertical release.

Running time:

Ryan Reynolds should just do trailers and TV commercials.

At this point, the “content” is irrelevant. He’s funny mocking pretty much anything, especially his own movies. He’s “meta” incarnate.

The shot at “Cruella,” jokes about Disney+, cracking about the late arrival of “Free Guy,” which finally comes out next month.

Taika Waititi is…KORG.

“Looks fun in a kind of ‘last days of Fox’ firesale way…”

This one looks good. Bizarre. Offbeat. Very…Ell-aaaaa.

August 6 it opens.

“Great White” might be the dullest shark attack thriller ever.

From the mundane, flatly-filmed first scene attack to the contortions it has to go through to put five people into a life raft with no one looking for them off the Great White Land of Oz, to the “one by one” picking off of passengers, the strain to make this terrifying, original or just marginally interesting shows.

A struggling couple (Katrina Bowden, Aaron Jukabenko) running a float plane charter business take a Japanese-Australian couple (Kimie Tsukakoshi, Tim Kano) off to a reef island for the day, find evidence of the first scene’s slaughter-on-the-sailing-sloop, and promptly set off to find a missing body, without “waiting for the Coast Guard.”

The five folks on board each have “issues.” And the instant conflict within the group — Te Kohe Tuhaka plays the charter’s “picnic on the reef” cook, despised on sight by the Japanese husband — is, like most everything else here, forced and inorganic. The husband may be a jerk, but of course he’s the one who says “We need to leave this to the Coast Guard, and is ignored.

They see the wrecked sailboat, SET DOWN, and guess what? They never take off again.

The primal fear that sharks generate kicks in here and there — a nice beneath-the-shark POV shot looking up from the deep at the hexagonal shape of the life raft they’re confined to, a bobbing body (via “Jaws”) suggesting the shark is “playing” with its food/bait.

The tone is set in stone by the first sailboat couple attack, by that first fake fin sighting that will have you humming “Baby Shark, doo doo doo doo doo…”

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Katrina Bowden, Aaron Jukabenko, Kimie Tsukakoshi, Tim Kano and Te Kohe Tuhaka.

Credits: Directed by Martin Wilson, script by Michael Boughen. An RLJE Films/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:31

So how do we compartmentalize and allegorize “Gunpowder Milkshake,” the hit-woman action “comedy” starring Karen Gillan?

“Joanna Wick?” “Gloria” at half speed? “La Femme Samantha?” “Sin City” sans most sins?

Set in a lurid, neon-soaked underworld of gangs, gangsters and “The Firm,” just another mob with a “keep order” ethos, meet-ups are at “The Diner,” a ’50s themed joint that’s been there for ages and the waitress Rose always asks “Can I lighten your load for you?” as a polite way of disarming the armed.

Our hitwoman goes to The Library where mild-mannered “librarians” (Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett) check out Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf classics with pistols hidden in the pages.

“This girl needs to do some READING.” So “Joanna Wick” it is.

Sam, played by Freya Allen as a teen, never quite got over mommy abandonment issues. Splitting milkshakes at The Diner was their routine. Then Mommy (Lena Headey) had to fend off attackers out for revenge for her latest job, and kisses her off with an “I have to disappear for a while.”

Fifteen years later, Sam (Gillan) has taken over Mom’s duties with Nathan, “HR director with The Firm” (Paul Giamatti, of course). But there’s this one job that goes sideways. Some “accountant stole from us.”

“How much did he take?”

“Enough to earn to a visit from you.”

It turns out the guy did the stealing under duress. The villains have his little girl (Chloe Coleman). Shooting him only makes things worse. Motherless/Daddyless Sam has to make this good.

Nothing else goes according to “plan.” Nothing ever does in these movies.

It’d be easy to get behind the movie’s latest twist on empowered equal opportunity mass murder if there was much more to this than the slow-footed slaughter.

The cutesy “mothering” touches are insipid in this setting.

There aren’t many jokes, and most of those don’t land. Gillan’s shown a wry, deadpan side in the “Jumanji” movies. It doesn’t play here. The lack of big ticket charismatic villains, the Netflix thriller brand (alas) is also a minus. The fights have a half-speed, edit-the-fight-choreography-to-cover feel.

I really enjoyed a goofy/bloody slo-mo-due-to-drugs brawl at a spotless white dentist’s office where the doctor (Michael Smiley) is an after-hours mob surgeon. But an underwhelming car chase/shoot-out follows that.

The dialogue is amusing enough, here and there. “”A girl made the three of you look like ‘The Walking Dead.'”

The “give every name actress a big fight moment” pays off, even if it’s kind of spoiled by draping Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” over one brawl, and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” over another. That, like every excessive Bowling Alley Beatdown or Death Comes to the Diner screams “trying too damned hard.”

All that said, if Israeli B-movie maker Navot Papushado (“Rabies,” “Big Bad Wolves”) had kept this thing on its feet and sprinting — fewer pauses for motherly pathos, Spaghetti Western face-offs, etc. — “Milkshake” would have gone down easier, no matter how much gunpowder was used.

MPA Rating: R for strong bloody violence and profanity throughout.

Cast: Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Paul Giamatti, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, Freya Allen and Carla Gugino.

Credits: Directed by Navot Papushado, script by Ehud Lavski and
Navot Papushado A Canal+ film, a Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

When it premiered in 1989, “D-Man in the Waters” was hailed as “dance of the moment,” a symbolic, energetic and balletic piece that “radiates life in the face of tragedy.”

The co-founder of the Jones-Zane Company that created it had died of AIDS. When he passed away, the paramedics that came to pick up his body refused to touch the corpse. One of the stars of that company, the “D-Man” of the title, was about to succumb to AIDS, yet made an brief appearance onstage in that premiere performance.

Can a work so much of its time, “dance of the moment,” live on, stay relevant and inspire young dancers and new audiences decades later?

That’s not questioned in the documentary, “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones & D-Man in the Waters.” The piece endures and the film, shot before another pandemic tore through America, is largely set within the context of a new production of the piece mounted by Loyola Marymount University, directed by a veteran of that Jones-Zane ensemble.

But this sometimes emotional film shows us the struggle of Bill T. Jones and new production choreographer (and co-director of this film) Rosalynde LeBlanc to convey the symbolism and stakes to dancers too young to remember AIDS and all it did to dance, America and American culture.

LeBlanc and co-director Tom Hurwitz get Jones and veterans of his company to remember the crucible the show was created in, finished off as they all witnessed the wasting death of Jones’ “wife, husband” and business partner, half of a couple he describes as “a continent of two.”

“Cathartic” rehearsals altered the choreography of the show and gave it the emotional punch that made it a distinct live dance experience.

LeBlanc, leading Loyala Marymount students in rehearsals, stops to question the ensemble about what they’ve been told about AIDS in school, by parents, friends and relatives. Then she asks them about what crises they feel the show might relate to today — rampant gun violence, etc. — all in an effort to raise the emotional stakes in their performances.

Jones sits in on some of the rehearsals, instructing, encouraging, coaxing — “Don’t think ‘decorative.’ You’re an ATHLETE!”

It’s an intimate film that breaks down sequences of the dance as they’re slowly walked through and then assembled. If the movie lacks something, it’s the outside voices — academics, contemporaries in dance, critics — placing this work within dance history, verifying its importance and significance.

Still, “Can You You Bring It” is a fascinating history lesson, especially to generations that didn’t grow up under the AIDS specter, when sexuality and dating had dire consequences and when the big city worlds of dance, theater and the arts were decimated, almost overnight.

One dancer recalls that “half my phone book” of colleagues and collaborators “had died” before treatments arrived to stem the tide.

Up until then, and all through rehearsals and that premiere production of “D-Man in the Waters,” dancers were struggling to stay afloat, to carry on as almost everyone they knew went under.

MPA Rating: unrated

Cast: Bill T. Jones, Rosalynde LeBlanc, Janet Lilly, Arthur Aviles, Heidi Lasky, Laurence Goldhuber

Credits: Directed by Tom Hurwitz, Rosalynde LeBlanc. A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:34

Dr. Seuss would have loved Peter Wohlleben. The writer who dreamed up the line “I speak for the trees” would appreciate a real, live Lorax among us. “The most famous forester in Germany” has become a worldwide spokesman for what’s really going on in the woods, drawing on research from others and his own decades of experience to declare that trees are “not gigantic robots,” but “sentient beings” that communicate, feel and cooperate as they “pursue their objectives.”

“The Hidden Life of Trees” is a documentary built around Wohlleben’s teaching, lecturing and travels, based on his book of the same title (“Das geheime Leben der Bäume” in German). It’s a lovely blend of science, travelogue and arboreal evangelism.

He explains the science that’s revealed how trees communicate and cooperate with each other, not so much “competing” for sunlight, water and nutrients, as “sharing,” sending sugars to each other to keep ancient roots alive even after a trunk has fallen.

He makes his own “Ents” from “Lord of the Rings” joke, but that’s after he’s shown us the way fungi — mushrooms, the stars of “Fantastic Fungi” — weave a “wood wide web” under the forest floor, passing on information about stresses, threats and the like from tree to tree.

And he preaches to foresters, timber concerns, politicians and anybody who will listen about the proper care of forests — benign neglect — and the damage done by clear-cutting and mechanized harvesting, of planting one (usually non-native) species on tree farms and acting as if that monoculture is “helping” anyone other than big lumber and pulp paper concerns.

“If we want to use forests in the battle against climate change,” Wohlleben insists, “we have to allow them to grow old.”

Jörg Adolph’s film follows the forester through forests of Germany — “reserves” where “old growth” has reproduced the “virgin” beech forests of ancient central Europe, recent sites of forest fires (where leaving the trees, even the dead ones, standing, is the best practice). He visits the world’s oldest tree, a 10,000 year-old spruce in Sweden. He pitches in on anti-coal mine/clear-cutting protests in Germany and Vancouver.

And nature footage by Jan Haft — extreme closeups and majestic panoramas, time-lapse sequences and slow-motion scenes — fills in the rest, showing us the grandeur and the quiet of great expanses of trees left to do what trees do, the collection of forest creatures who depend on the nuts, cones and seeds of trees to survive.

And that underscores Wohlleben’s main points (either presented on camera, in German, or narrated from his book in English). Deciduous trees, he says, “before they bloom, agree among themselves” about when to do it. They can hold off on dropping seeds for a year or two as a means of preventing the wild boar, squirrel and deer populations from growing too fast and threatening the forest. Smart trees.

He also makes the case for avoiding transplanting trees from nurseries, doomed to “die before their time” because of whacking the roots back to make them easier transport, and against mechanical harvesting altogether. Forest floors are ruined for water retention and life regeneration by the gigantic, automated harvesters that render the work so fast and efficient these days.

A chat with the Canadian scientist/philosopher David Suzuki lays out the shortsightedness of logging and loggers. Wohlleben, like the trees, is thinking in terms of centuries, ecosystems and sustainability. Big Timber is cashing in on the worldwide lumber shortage to clear cut much of North America, all over again. Take any backroad in the rural South and you’ll see this, descendants with little connection to the land selling off timber rights to rape, ruin and run clear-cutters and chip mills.

“The Hidden Life of Trees” won’t change that practice on its own. But if you’re tempted into the woods by this film, maybe you’ll be a little more open to the idea of “individual rights” gathered in number to battle “corporate rights” in search of a more sane and sustainable way of looking at the forest, and the trees within it.

MPA Rating: PG

Cast: Peter Wohlleben, David Suzuki, Markus Lanz, Achim Bogdahn

Credits: Directed by Jörg Adolph and Jan Haft (nature footage). A Constantin Films release.

Running time: 1:24 (North American version)

The “coming of age/first summer romance” hallmarks are all over “Last Summer,” a Turkish take on a Hollywood staple.

Period piece, like “Dirty Dancing” and “The Way Way Back” and many others? Check. Beach resort with lots of skin and a skimpy swimwear? Oh yes. Dance clubs soundtracked with the music of the day? Check. First booze, first cigarette, lots of talk of “virginity” and losing it?

Check, mate.

“Innocent” teen crushing on an older might-be-lover? Sure. Hey, it’s set in 1996, a “pre-Erdogan” secular “sexy” summer, so why not?

But Ozan Açiktan’s film is so chaste it plays as a melodramatic tease. The situations may be familiar, but the payoffs are tepid, the resolution to the romantic threads, too safe and muted.

Deniz (Fatih Berk Sahin) and his family have come to Bodrum for their long, annual vacation. He’s 16 or so, a late bloomer the other kids used to tease as “Pac-Man” for his “baby fat.” Now he’s a tall, lean, athletic swimmer. He’s got peers he can catch up with every summer here.

But his ready-for-college sister Ebru (Aslihan Malbora) isn’t as bothered when he hangs with her and her friends. Until her BFF Alsi (Halit Özgür Sari) starts making a LOT of “Lookit you, all grown up” remarks. He is flattered by the attention, and smitten.

Thus begins his summer-long ache, diving off “dangerous” cliffs to impress her and his sister’s crowd, brought into nightclubs with them, getting mixed up in Ebru’s drama over her secret new boyfriend Kaan (Eray Ertüren) and wondering just what Asli’s up to as she invites him everywhere, makes a point of staying behind with him, rubs suntan oil all over his and touches his face–a lot — when they dance.

There’s an innocence to it all, but a slightly-older woman with a belly button piercing is complimenting him, even if there’s a patronizing edge to her “You’re a tiger” (in Turkish with subtitles, or dubbed into English) flirtations.

And then a wealthy pal of Kaan’s (Halit Özgür Sari) befriends him, and starts hanging with the two of them. Burak is 20something, charismatic and masculine in ways Deniz can’t match. Who will be the third wheel, the “go between,” the “chaperone,” as this summer rolls by?

The cast is pretty and polished. “Last Summer” is beautifully shot, showing off Bodrum and the Aegean Coast to great effect. Shimmering, over-the-top nightclubs, rocky shores on “the wine dark seas,” fig orchards and beautiful people recreating and kicking back, this has to be a summer to remember, right?

Only it isn’t. The flirtation has a sexual edge thanks to Deniz ogling Asli (we never see her notice) at every opportunity. But there’s no heat, just hints of his teenage longing. Virtually nothing is going on here, and the filmmakers seem to figure that out too late.

The third act has a whiff of “not growing up to be my Dad” philosophizing, the angst of college entrance exams and the “future” that may be wide open, or may be abruptly shut down for those who don’t figure things out before it’s too late.

Even the reckless behavior of youth seems recycled from every other film in this summer romance genre.

Pretty it may be. But all those elements conspire to make “Last Summer” not one we’ll remember, but one quickly forgotten.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, underage smoking, alcohol, profanity

Cast: Fatih Berk Sahin, Ece Çesmioglu, Halit Özgür Sari, Aslihan Malbora and Eray Ertüren

Credits: Directed by Ozan Açiktan, script by Sami Berat Marçali and Ozan Açiktan A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:42

A $39 million+ Friday (and Thursday night $13.2 million) makes ScarJo the Queen of the post-pandemic box office. “Black Widow” is rolling in the cash, racking up one of the best July opening weekends ever — well, top ten best. $80 million? Not too shabby.

“A Quiet Place 2” continues to roll in the dough, becoming the first pandemic era release to crack the $150 million mark (adding $ million this weekend), all-in. And summer isn’t over yet.

“Widow” did twice the Thursday night business that “F9” managed, proving that this superhero “family” trumps the tuner/heist team “fam” when all is said and done.

“F9,” the tenth film in Universal’s Chrysler/Dodge centric carverse, added another $10.8 million this weekend. It will be over $150 million by next weekend ($141 as of Sunday night).

“Boss Baby” is over $34.7 thanks to another $8.7 million this weekend.

“The Forever Purge” is headed toward black ink, another $6.7 million, over $27 million all in.

“Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is winding up its run, clearing $1.6 this weekend. It’s over $375 overall, and will leave theaters with about $40 million in the bank.

“Peter Rabbit 2” managed another $1.25 million. It’s over $37 and will also finish its run at $40.

“Summertime” did little ($200k) in limited release. “Zola” deserves better than the $600K it managed ($3.5 million total, per Exhibitor Relations).

True confessions time. Be honest. We ALL first heard tell of this Nicolas Cage project “Pig” and thought, “Nic goes John Wick over a truffle pig.” Scan the Internet for postings of the first trailer to Michael Sarnoski’s film. Just about every comment had a chortle over the vengeance thriller B-movie possibilities that presented.

But dark as it can be, “Pig,” owes more to “Northern Exposure” than it does any generic thriller, Keanu Reeves A-picture of Nicolas Cage B-movie. It’s a fictional variation on the longer-in-production/first-in-theaters “Truffle Hunters” documentary. This is the story of a hermit who hunts for truffles in remote Oregon with his truffle-snuffling hog his only companion.

Cage is understated, intense and haunted in this seriocomic search for a stolen companion, a man on a quixotic quest through the dark underbelly of foodie Portlandia. Ever few years, the guy reminds us of why he won an Oscar and “Pig” is this decade’s “Joe.”

He lives a Spartan, unwashed existence in an off-the-grid shack deep in the Northwest forest. His only friend is his sow, whom he dotes on when they’re not off hunting pricey, edible fungi. He cooks up some of what they dig up and shares it with the tail-wagging pig, who may not have a name but is as expressive and devoted as any beloved dog.

A battered cassette that he slaps into his ancient boom box suggests his name is “Robin,” and whatever past life he lived, these days he’s down in the dirt, sniffing and even tasting it to get an idea of where the truffles hide.

His buyer (Alex Wolff) is a callow, sarcastic creep in a Camaro, rolling up once a week, bitching about “no cell phone” but offering to set the hermit up with “one of those (propane-fired) camp showers.” The kid may know something of how Robin ended up here, but he doesn’t understand it. And he doesn’t push it, because he has a good thing going.

Right up to the night when locals thugs bust in, club Robin and steal his pig. He is forced to revive his long-mothballed pickup, forced to visit civilization for the first time in years, forced to bring Amir (Wolff) in on his quest.

No cops. No trips to a gun shop. No bloody oaths and threats. “I just want my pig back.”

Thus does the man who eschewed civilized Portland and all its wonders drag Mr. “This isn’t really MY Problem” into his quest, meeting back-to-nature stoners and visiting underworld bumfights involving not just homeless folk, but kitchen staff in the city’s fey, foodie-favored fine-dining eateries.

The script, co-written by Sarnoski and Vanessa Block, gives Cage a few “Nic Cage” moments of rage. I mean, the man was mugged and his pig was pignapped, after all. But “Pig” hangs on Cage’s soulful intensity in the part, a man who used to be somebody who, as one contemptuous old acquaintance hisses “doesn’t exist” now. “You have no value.”

But Robin knows “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about” in this life. And he’s leading by example, showing others that in the long scheme on time, in a place “overdue” for a “city flattened” earthquake or volcanic apocalypse, he’s figured out what has value. We don’t have to agree. We just have to acknowledge where his Zen quest has taken him.

The biggest laugh comes from the reaction of an equally high-mileage fellow truffler at the news of the theft of the pig. “Mac” swears LOUDLY, drops what she’s doing, mid-truffle auction, and stomps off to get some answers and threaten the wrath of God. Damned if she isn’t played by Gretchen Corbett, James Garner’s lawyer/lady friend on “The Rockford Files.”

“Pig” is meant to leave a faintly bittersweet aftertaste. Quests can be fruitless, personal “history” can retain its mysteries and wry, deadpan commentary on foodie culture, “molecular gastronomy” and whatever else sucks the joy out of “The Joy of Cooking” doesn’t make this a comedy any more than a tale of bearded vengeance on the march.

It’s just touching in its approach to the subject, filling in the blanks on the sorts of fellows who truffle hunt, something “The Truffle Hunters” left out. But the human to truffle-hunting companion connection the documentary showed is writ large in “Pig.”

If, like most casual film fans, you’ve skipped the decades of Nicolas Cage’s B and C movies that he fills his every waking moment filming, maybe you won’t be as shocked at the layered tenderness of this performance, with just the occasional reminder, thanks to the actor’s on-screen baggage, of how this saga could turn violent and vengeful.

Final true confession? I’d totally like to see that movie as well. Maybe the sequel?

MPA Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin.

Credits: Directed by Michael Sarnoski, script by Vanessa Block and Michael Sarnoski. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:32