Movie Nation

A July 7 doc about “cat fanciers?” Ok.

The Sharkfin Soup fetish that is pointing “Jaws” towards extinction, courtesy of the inventor of “Torture Porn.”

July 13 “Fin” comes to Discovery +.

This has a life and wit and energy to it that grabs you. Slam poets as performers in a street musical, “Summertime” opens July 9, expanding the following week.

Showbiz is littered with “make your deal with the Devil” allegories, a lot of them with Harvey Weinstein as the punch line.

And that’s what the horror comedy “Too Late” toys around with, that “You came into this with open eyes” proviso attached to every horror tale about “what I had to do to get my start in show business.”

More a cute idea for a horror comedy than one that pays off with laughs, “Too Late” is about an “assistant” who works for a comedy “legend” who turns out to be a monster, and not in the Scott Rudin sense.

Vi, short for Violet (Alyssa Limperis, a bit player making the move to leading lady) works for Bob DeVore (Ron Lynch), a grizzled “entertainer” who hosts and books a night club variety series that’s both a star showcase and a place where up-and-comers hope to land their big break.

Violet does menial things like stock Bob’s backstage bar, hoping to make contacts through him that will take her places. She scribbles ideas into an omnipresent notebook, something the other comics there recognize as “You’re a comedian.”

But Bob is an ungenerous C-list jerk, never introducing her, always berating her after using her for everything he finds too unpleasant to deal with himself.

That’s why she also books her own stand-up showcase, never appearing on stage, just providing “a spot” to comics who want to work on their act, polish new material, or even “get discovered” at the coffee shop where “The Death of Comedy” takes place.

Violet’s somebody comics feel the need to kiss up to, even harass, to get on stage at “Too Late.” The women (Kimberly Clark, Mary Lynn Rajskub) are fine. But the guys aren’t above crossing lines, getting abusive or drunkenly angling towards sexual assault. That’s when she gives them their wish — that coveted “spot” on Bob’s show.

Bob even meets them in his well-appointed dressing room afterwards. That’s where he will kill and devour them.

Violet? She’s knows this. That’s how bad she wants a leg up in show business, she sets up (“deserved it”) comics for “dark of the moon” dining where they’re the main course.

“I could make things happen for you!” is Bob’s go-to promise. If only she keeps his secret, sticks with him and toes his line.

Her first qualms about what she does arrives in the person of charming comic Jimmy (Will Weldon). He’s funny, she clicks with him romantically. If only she can keep him away from Vampire Bob.

Directed by D.W. Thomas and scripted by Tom Becker, “Too Late” gets in some amusing stand-up bits about “birth control shoes” (Clark’s bit about women’s footwear that sends non-sexy signals) and the like. As whole though, the film is more light in tone than laugh-out-loud funny.

Bob’s monster make-up is worth a smirk. His lines? Not even that. Perusing his centuries of family photos is almost amusing. Wait, vampires can’t be photographed! Rules are rules!

But the film does a great job of immersing us in a tiny corner of the West Coast comedy subculture — seedy, self-contained, with sometimes arrogant, sometimes talented and always desperately needy stand-ups struggling to work their way up the “paying gig” ladder.

At this level, stand-up is “going on between trivia nights and music open mikes” in bars with disinterested listeners. Self-esteem is hard to come by in this world, especially for Violet, whose roomie (Jenny Zigrino) is constantly ordering her to “value yourself.”

Others, without prompting, ask the hard question. “Why are you booking but not performing?”

The answer is obvious in our leading lady’s presence. Limperis is lightly engaging, but not an outgoing, magnetic or charismatic performer. When a cross Bob barks “Maybe you’re funnier than I thought,” he’s reading a scripted line, not reacting to anything he or we have seen in “Too Late” that suggests that’s the case.

Limperis doesn’t have the presence or comic (or straight woman) chops to carry this.

The presence of Fred Armisen in a bit part, playing the long-suffering lighting director, suggests a “Portlandia” kind of deadpan was what the wits behind the camera were going for. Unfortunately, “Too Late” is more “dead” than “deadpan.”

MPA Rating: unrated, grossout horror violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Alyssa Limperis, Ron Lynch, Will Weldon, Kimberly Clark, Brooks Weldon, Jack De Sena, Jenny Zigrino, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Fred Armisen

Credits: Directed by D.W. Thomas, script by Tom Becker. A Firemark release.

Running time: 1:19

July 6 home video plays host to “evil has a new queen.” https://youtu.be/V-I4XuPlNVo

That first encounter with your new neighbors, after you’ve bought that new-to-you house, is always a little fraught. Especially when this is their introductory line.

“You know what happened there, right?”

No. And where were you BEFORE we made our offer?

“The Evil Next Door” is a perfectly conventional, somewhat serviceable Swedish horror tale in the haunted house genre, the “something is after our kid” subgenre and the characters-yanked-out-of-the-frame, monster-skitters-around-upside-down school of effects.

It finishes with a nice flourish even if everything that comes before is “seen it before” overfamiliar.

A new family moves into a new house in the suburbs. Shirin (Dilan Gwyn, a dead ringer for Imogen Poots) is newest of all. She’s the new woman in Fredrik’s (Linas Wahlgren) life, and new to motherhood. As they’re picking out this new place, little Lucas (Eddie Eriksson Dominguez) puts two-and-two together and wants to know if she’s to be his “new mommy.”

Shirin hems and haws something like a “yes.” But she has no answer to the five-year-old’s followup.

“Does that mean you’re going to die, too?” Photos of him with his bald mother tell us that story.

The new place is a duplex with an empty half next door. And right from the start, Lucas picks up on something. Doors open by themselves when he’s the only one around. Whispers come from the walls.

As a prologue has shown us a previous “event” in this “inspired by true events” tale, we know what’s coming. Sadly, that goes for pretty much everything about “The Evil Next Door.”

The mechanics of such movies demand that A) Fredrik be out of town working, on weekends, leaving “mother” and child alone, that B) Shirin get hints that something is going on with the kid, who’s bragging about his “new friend” at pre-school, who is talking…to SOMEone, when he doesn’t think she is listening.

Thus, Fredrik doesn’t take Shirin seriously when she raises mild alarm, — “Something is seriously F—ed up around here!” And he and starts to blame her for the fact that his little boy is getting traumatized and physically hurt when Dad isn’t around.

Predictable as it is, the effects and co-writers/directors Tord Danielsson and Oskar Mellander serve up and how they serve them deliver some decent hair-raising moments. It’s just that the movie leading up to them is so generic as to defy accusations of plagiarism.

So many B-movies have used this very plot that “The Evil Next Door” is pretty much in the horror movie public domain the moment it opens.

.MPA Rating: unrated, violence, horrific images, profanity

Cast: Dilan Gwyn, Eddie Eriksson Dominguez and Linus Wahlgren.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tord Danielsson, Oskar Mellander. A Magnet/Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:28

“Security” is an Italian mystery stuffed with enough characters — each with a “secret” — that it’s a wonder Stephen Amidon‘s novel wasn’t turned into a limited streaming series instead of a movie.

It’s a wholly Italian tale — in Italian, with English subtitles. But its British screenwriters and director mean that any commentary it slyly makes on Italian “justice” is almost certainly intentional and cleverly cutting. A film of CCTV cameras, a tendency to rush to judgment and off-season small-town gossip, indiscretions and politics, it can’t help but bring to mind the infamous Amanda Knox case, even though there’s no murder and the resemblance is more in its callous disregard for “truth,” or police vigorously pursuing clues, no matter where they might lead.

The title refers to something that’s the biggest concern of the rich of tony Forte dei Marmi, a beach city at the foot of the Apuan Alps. That’s why so many of them have Roberto Santini (Marco D’Amore) on their payroll. He’s an insomniac who always seems to be on the job, checking the beachside, doorlocks or the scores of TV cameras that watch over mansions in the off-season, fielding calls from the well-to-do who winter in Barbados.

“Security” is also what Santini’s wife, Claudia (Maya Sansa) is selling. She’s running for mayor, focused on appealing to wealthy donors and playing to their fears of “undesirables” and “invaders.” Yes, “dog whistle politics” is an international thing.

A teenager (Lavinia Cafaro) popping up on one of those cameras, beaten and bloodied, is our “mystery” here. What happened, who did it, and where was it done?

The carabinieri are a collection of Italian cop stereotypes –immaculately turned-out, stylishly groomed and uniformed, utterly disinterested in “the case,” which they insist is “closed” because of what they interpreted as a “confession” from the girl’s father (Tommaso Ragno), an aged outcast who has a “history” of sex crime in the town.

Santini, without anything resembling jurisdiction or governmental sanction, digs into his videos, wonders what’s been erased from those videos, starts interrogating people and tries to piece together what really happened and what the rich and the lazy cops are covering up.

Henceforth, almost every “break” in this “case,” aside from the girl changing her story and exonerating her father, comes from Santini, a native son of Forte dei Marmi who knows the history and the gossip, and is part of that gossip as well.

He’s got an ex (Valeria Bilello) whose 20ish son might be implicated. That “ex” might not be as “ex” as we first suspect.

He’s got a teen daughter (Gaia Bavaro) who is a classmate of the victim, a kid with her own troubled connection to that family and someone in what amounts to a full revolt against her parents. She’s having a fling at school, and it’s not with a classmate.

And Sabatini’s wife’s political sponsor (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), ridiculously rich with a phobia about being touched, was throwing a party the night of the crime. What will the cameras show about that?

Can Sabatini keep personal prejudices, biased hunches and the like out of his thinking as he tramples privacy rights — as a private security consultant/guard — in pursuit of “the truth?”

The co-writer and director of this is Peter Chelsom, whose best credits have been more comic (“Funny Bones,” “Hear My Song,” “Serendipity”), but who gives these fascinating, tainted characters room enough to make impressions and lets the mystery slowly unravel.

The commentary on Italian justice has to do with conclusions leapt to long ago, something we see happen all over again. The rich play by different rules, the locals have long accepted it and the police and courts are mere functionaries, easily dismissed by the wealthy.

Sabatini? He’s playing outside the rules, “private” security who can look at any video he wants, without legal standing. If there’s one thing the story lacks, it’s overt pressure on this compromised character to do what his paying masters tell him.

“Security” isn’t brisk enough to be a thriller, and the stakes never seem that high. But it walks that tightrope between intriguing and “Well, we HAVE to see how this turns out” without ever losing the plot or turning boring.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Marco D’Amore, Maya Sansa, Gaia Bavaro, Valeria Bilello, Silvio Muccino, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Tommaso Ragno

Credits: Directed by Peter Chelsom, script by Amina Grenci, Michele Pellegrini, Peter Chelsom, Tinker Lindsay, based on a novel by Stephen Amidon. A Sky Cinema/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:59

Aug.6, Viola and Idris and Cena and Margot and…Pete Davidson?

Aw hell naw.

There’s cultural homage, and the much-reviled “cultural appropriation.” And then there’s whatever the hell it is that Riley Keough, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, puts on and pulls off in “Zola,” a hilariously dark and dirty road comedy built on a stripper’s “my hand to God this happened” tweets.

Janicza Bravo’s film is a Taylour Paige (the “younger woman” in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) star vehicle. And she gives it her savvy, sassy, side-eye best as the title character, a Midwestern waitress who gets mixed up with wild child Stefani (Keough) only to tell us the story of how “me and this b—h here fell out“.”

But that drawling, fronting, teasing and “street” sounding Stefani is her own kind of racial riffing, culture appropriating, personal space invading, over-sharing, gum-snapping Queen of Bad Decisions. She’s the perfect foil for no-nonsense Zola’s account of a road trip/”ho’ trip” from Hell.

Because that was Stefani’s doing, what Stefani set up and where Stefani lures Zola, from that first “You dance?” question at the themed restaurant where Zola waitresses, to that farewell drive back over the Sunshine Skyway across Tampa Bay.

It’s “Spring Breakers” with strippers, alleged adults who’re supposed to know better. But Stefani’s sucked Zola in over her head, and over her own childish, dimwitted head as well.

They’re hauled 20 hours down the highway (from Detroit, in the “true” story) to Tampa where a “dancer” can pull in “5Gs a night!”

If you don’t know Tampa as Strip Club Hell, you haven’t been paying attention to why every sports league in America’s Sporting Industrial Complex wants to hold its championships there.

Stefani’s going with her boyfriend, nerdy wannabe-B-Boy Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and the guy (Colman Domingo) who owns the Mercedes SUV, whose name Zola narrates that she doesn’t learn “for two mother (youknowwhatting) days.”

Looking for explanations of this whole…situation? So is Zola.

He “takes care of me” Stefanie euphemizes about the unnamed Mercedes driver. “Stripper translation,” Zola snaps in narration, “He her PIMP.”

There’s a lot of translation, and a lot y’all watching this are just supposed to figure out for yourselves as a weekend for some quick “dancing” cash turns towards an even older profession. Zola, who sexed-up her live-in boyfriend (Ari’el Stachel) so he wouldn’t pout about this “ho’trip”, has to take a hard “pass” on “private dances” and much worse from the charming unnamed SUV dude who turns off the smarmy African American charm and switches on the Jamaican psycho pimp in a heartbeat.

Stefani may think nothing of servicing a Who’s Who of unattractive Tampa rednecks, genitally-deformed “customers.” But Zola?

“No shade. No shame. You do YOU,” but uh-uh. Zola ain’t HAVING that.

Bravo (“Lemon”), who adapted the tweets and the magazine article about them that made them famous, holds a mirror up to downmarket, down-and-dirty American culture in her second feature film, after doing mostly TV — episodes of “Mrs. America” and “Dear White People” and “Divorce.”

The Sunshine State is decorated with strip clubs, Confederate flags and a lot of unseemly things that have little to do with Disney World.

And in Paige, she’s cast an exemplar of “stripper as athlete,” and an adorably deadpan slow-burn reactor to all that is “messy” about Stefani, this situation she finds herself “trapped” in and the Florida and America where all this goes on. It’s not all “money/ti—es” selfies, oh no. There is much that Paige’s Zola is moved to give a side-eye to.

Keough’s Stefani is exhausting, crude, gross and nasty, prattling on in her idea of African American street argot about “dooky-ass” this and “nappy-ass” that. And just for good measure, we see “her” version of the unfolding fiasco, laughable lies, but then again, what’s it say about Zola that she dove into this trip with this foul-mouthed flake she just met?

The soundtrack is peppered with phone-alert “pings” and hip hop road trip sing-alongs (“Hannah Montana” by Migos). There’s a backstage at the strip club prayer that will give you religion.

“Lord, send us NI—S…with culture…and GOOD credit!”

And if it wears you out, just as Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” made you long for spring break to end, that’s kind of on the money, too.

There’s only so much dirty, lowdown Tampa anybody can stand.

MPA Rating: R, for strong sexual content and language throughout, graphic nudity and violence including a sexual assault.

Cast: Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, Nicholas Braun, Ari’el Stachel

Credits: Directed by Janicza Bravo, script by Janicza Bravo, Jeremy O. Harris, based on tweets by A’Ziah King and a magazine article by David Kushner. An A-24 release.

Running time: 1:27

Their eyes lock across a crowded Dakar bar. ‘s She is an exotic Senegalese beauty, he a fit professional athlete from Belgium.

But Fae (Fatou N’Diaye) has something to reveal to the Belgian (Vincent Rottiers) and his brother (Paul Bartel). She is a sex worker, a prostitute, a “whore,” a word we hear bandied about in “Angel (Un Ange),” a tragic Belgian/Senegalese romance about two ships that collide in the night.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he notes (in French with English subtitles), after a moment’s thought. What does he do for a living? He’s a professional cyclist, training and drugging his body “for the fans.” Thierry declares that Fae is no different from him. “We’re all whores.”

“Angel” is a self-consciously arty fever dream about their affair, their very different “but not that different” lives, and that word. We hear “putain” in French and Senegalese and ponder what it means today, and what it might mean to a beautiful woman who prefers to see herself “as a gazelle,” but accepts it. Fae has no other obvious means of supporting herself in a Muslim country where she is harshly judged but tolerated. She can’t come into his hotel without her sex worker “health card.

Thierry and brother Serge have come to Senegal to escape prying eyes, to live it up, await that next contract, hopefully with the team Thierry made his name with.

It’s not a movie about characters with hope, not until they’ve come together. She is trapped, avoiding getting that health card as it puts in writing what she does for a living. That’s not who she is.

Thierry talks about his dreams, and the film takes us into them. Some are nightmares, others mere flashbacks — of trauma, accidents, suicide attempts and doom. Thierry has been a star, but his little bump of coke before boarding the flight tells us that the elaborate blood doping gear he’s somehow gotten into Senegal isn’t his only encounter with controlled substances.

Serge? He’s the crude, on-the-make enabler, carrying drugs for his brother, tempting him with questions about sex with “an African woman.” Serge is white colonialist “privilege,” here to basically let Thierry as a character off the hook in that regard. Thierry is the one who sees “no difference” between himself and Fae, racially, personally or professionally.

Through their night together, Fae finds herself thinking beyond “tourist girl” status, this life where she and her colleagues have sex with foreigners “who are older than we will ever be,” who takes care of her body every bit as carefully as Thierry, because while he is doing it “for the fans,” her diet, attire, braids and make-up are “for me, but also for you.”

And impulsive “wired” Thierry? He’s babbling on extravagantly and oh-so-romantically. She might be his escape, their future might be “together.”

The writer-director Koen Mortier takes great pains to emphasize that “Angel” is a work of “fact mixed with fiction,” in an opening title. That’s understandable, seeing how it’s not-that-loosely based on a up and down life of a real Belgian cyclist.

Mortier uses a fluid sense of time and narrative — events lapse into flashbacks without warning — and the effect is quite dreamlike, with harsh intrusions of reality.

If there’s anything we know about cocaine users, it’s that elation is always followed by a bottoming out, that paranoia often accompanies that, and that there’s little an addict won’t do to instantly “fix” that feeling.

So Rottiers (“Renoir,” “Pompei”) veers from reflective to manic in this performance. His character’s nickname in the cycling world may be nicknamed “The Angel,” but it is N’Diaye’s Fae who is the otherworldly presence, here. Earthy and practical, exotic, fatalistic and ever-rationalizing, N’Daiye (“Metamorphoses”) turns Fae into a cypher, someone we can project a vast variety of values and character traits on.

Because that’s what sex workers do, sell a fantasy.

The cryptic storytelling style makes “Angel” test your patience. But I think it works, a tragic story given a wish-fulfillment fantasy underpinning, and a film that doesn’t flinch from letting harsh reality show its face. That’s the thing about dreams. They never last past the moment we open our eyes.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, nudity

Cast: Vincent Rottiers, Fatou N’Diaye, Paul Bartel

Credits: Scripted and directed by Koen Mortier, based on a book by Dimitri Verhulst. An Oration release.

Running time: 1:47