Movie Nation

Writer-director Michihito Fujii puts the “sag” back in “saga” with his soapy, melodramatic mob movie “A Family,” originally-titled “Yakuza and the Family.”

It has plenty of the sorts of characters and plot elements you expect when you hear a film described as a Yakuza movie. Lots of Japanese mobsters, laughing too loud, bellowing threats even louder — whole torso tattoos, knives and clubs and the occasional firearm wielded without pity, turf wars with bloody violence, “old men” being told “Your time is finished.”

These are tropes of mob movies, from Sicily to the Jersey Shore, Odessa to Little Odessa to Osaka.

But here, they’re mostly in the first act. “A Family” then takes a shot at showing the trap of “the life,” the price of this loyalty you give to someone, a boss, who may or may not be a blood relative. The picture has little momentum even as its forward motion takes us through the rise and fall of a young gangster, born into “the business” even if he wasn’t born into this particular family.

Gô Ayano is “Lil Ken,” Kenji Yamamoto, and we meet him after his father’s death. “Lil Ken” is his most flattering nickname. “Yamamoto’s brat” is another.

He’s a blond mop-topped motor-scooter punk when we meet him in 1999, a fashion statement in white jeans, shirt and North Face jacket. He’s got boys he runs around with, but the mob life isn’t for him, rejecting his father’s business, as it were.

An impulse robbery of a low-level drug dealer changes that. A moment of bravado, interrupting a hit on mob boss Shibasaki (veteran character actor Hirosihi Tachi, who was Admiral Yamamoto in “The Great War of Archimedes”), cements that change.

When the rival Kyoyo-tai clan takes out him and his boys for stealing their drugs, covering Lil Ken and his all-white ensemble in his own blood, a business card from Shibasaki is what saves his life.

“A Family” follows Lil Ken from his “drink from the family cup” initiation, into mob intrigues some years later and finally takes us to 2019, where he’s now an ex-con, trying to rejoin a society that won’t let yakuza have legit jobs, rent apartments or sign up for bank accounts.

There’s a woman, a “hostess girl” (Machiko Ono) from one of the gang’s clubs, and a relationship that starts with bullying and somehow softens into 20 Questions — “Why do yakuza wear sunglasses at night?”

And there’s a kid, warned as a toddler so that he won’t “turn out like us,” but who (Hayato Isomura) pops back into Lil Ken’s life like a 2019 version of himself (Tommy jacket instead of NorthFace).

The acting is quite good, with Ayano (of “The Promised Land” and the recent “Humunculous”) a charismatic lead. The mob brawls and chases early on are visceral enough to pull you in.

But Ono lets the air out of the balloon of even the action sequences entirely too quickly. The “family” material is less interesting, the “relationship” perfunctory and even acts of vengeance seem rushed so that we can get back to the boring stuff.

Which unfortunately eats up most of the 136 minute run time of “A Family.”

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sex, nudity, smoking

Cast: Gô Ayano, Hiroshi Tachi, Machiko Ono, Yukiya Kitamura and Kosuke Toyohara

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michihito Fujii. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:16

The scandal-torn Catholic Church stops playing politics and trying to spin its endless child molestation scandal, shrinking attendance, etc., to watch young priests play futbol.

This documentary comes around June 29.

This August spin on “In Cold Blood” type of murder in Virginia opens in August.

They’re calling it “Cinema Week.” AMC Theatres is Offering All You Can Eat Popcorn as it unfolds.

https://t.co/y9Dw3NvGHl https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1407112014384730112?s=20

Here it is, at long last, the looniest tune in this “car toon” saga.

More characters, more “Bugs Bunny physics,” more epic stunts, more spectacular nonsense, “F9” roars into theaters the perfect marriage of “fan service” and “character service.” Everybody gets a funny line, everybody gets a close-up or three.

They added another Oscar winner to the line-up, Dame Helen Mirren. They brought in more beefcake — John Cena.

And Universal’s ever-expanding “Fast and Furious” universe brings back most everybody who’s ever gotten behind the wheel in these loopy action extravaganzas, which makes for an insanely cluttered, ungainly movie with a lot of guys, more than a few gals, and a whole lot of cars.

There are supercars and hyper-cars, a few with badges most people will recognize (Toyota, Acura, for instance. Ever heard of an Apollo?). But the only wheels that matter are Dodge Chargers, a Pontiac Fiero and a lowly Chevy Nova .

Alas, There is Only One Jeep. OK, there’re two, but I just wanted to use the line.

Anything to avoid talking about the plot, which involves more supervillainy, a stolen gadget, a satellite, trips to Central America and Edinburgh, London to Tbilisi, car chases out of “Speed Racer” and action beats out of bad Bond films.

“Moonraker,” are you blushing?

There’s more back story on the importance of “family” to Dom Torreto (Vin Diesel) in an opening flashback where we see the day his dad died on the track.

“It’s not about being the stronger man, it’s about being the bigger one.”

Nobody’s bigger than Diesel, although Cena makes a fitting foe, throw-weight wise. A paler version of The Rock.

Dom’s always telling biker brawler Letty “Be careful.” Letty (Michelle Rodriguez, the emotional and acting “heart” of this franchise) always laughs that off.

“Careful’s when you get HURT!”

Tyrese Gibson‘s Roman states the obvious, that nobody on their team ever gets “so much as a scratch” in these movies. “We’re not NORMAL.”

He’s leaving out the fact that nobody — almost nobody — ever dies in the damned movies. Villains (Charlize Theron) never go away, dead characters (Sung Kang is back on the payroll, and back among the living as Han) rarely stay dead. And if there was a way they could bring Paul Walker back to life, they sure as shooting would.

Ludacris is back as tech-nerd Tej, bouncing jokes and ideas off of Roman.

Jordana Brewster returns, and Tokyo drifter Lucas Black, and on and on it goes. Which is literally the case in a movie with all these characters, all these closeups and little “real” action in the middle acts. Even fans who can’t get enough will be tested at this leaden-not-lead-footed running time.

Like the lesser Bond films, there’s little point in beating this up for having mediocre acting, a crap script but wonderful stunts and chases. “F9” is what it is.

I laughed at some of the lunacy, found myself checking my watch by the third act’s inevitable overkill. But if you can’t see the fun in Helen Mirren taking the wheel of a purple Noble supercar and one-handing it — backwards — through the darkened streets of Olde London Towne, this isn’t for you.

As they must have taught her at the New College of Speech and Drama in London, or in St. Bernard’s High School for Girls, “Drive it like you stole it,” sister.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and language

Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, John Cena, Charlize Theron, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Helen Mirren and Kurt Russell.

Credits: Directed by Justin Lin, script by Daniel Casey and Justin Lin. A Universal release.

Running time: 2:25

This Apple release comes to Apple TV Nov. 12.

Anybody know the “true story” this is based on? A podcast inspired it.

The early reviews for the NINTH “Fast and the Furious” movie have been mostly upbeat.

As it’s opened in the rest of the world before its native North America, those are are easy-touch Australian and New Zealand critics. So the jury’s out until today. That’s when critics across this hemisphere will weigh in. We’re all seeing it at more of less the same time.

The movie’s already in the black before it opens in the US, as the Chinese market has taken in over $200 million, all by itself.

As audiences didn’t flock to “In the Heights” or “The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife” or anything other than “Kongzilla” and the only true blockbuster of 2021, “A Quiet Place Part 2,” there’s a lot riding on this movie really, truly, finally and once and for all “opening the theaters back up.”

No Disney, Apple, HBO or Netflix streaming option. Ya wanna see Vin, you need a big screen.

The only other time I can remember previews for critics being handled this way — everybody seeing the film at the same time, nationwide, was when Sony screened “The Da Vinci Code” at the same time as the Cannes premiere.

Every critic around the world hated it. And said so.

We in the US are just the BO icing on Universal’s Chrysler/Dodge product placement pictures. But here we go. Fingers crossed for “F9: The Fast Saga.”

Sylwia Zając, by any reasonable measure of this cliche, appears to “have it all.”

She is young, beautiful, blonde and famous. And thanks to her choice of career, she’s insanely fit.

That career — as an exercise guru and social influencer — means products are given to her to endorse, so she gets mountains of free stuff and is paid for using it. She is a Polish celebrity, largely self-made, a one-woman social media “brand” (“Sweat”) on the rise.

But there’s “a dark side” to this, Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) hints in her more private moments, as if she has many of those. She’s practically living her live via vlog posts and selfies.

Her off-camera workouts, getting in shape to lead her smiling, affirmation-filled exercise classes in malls, on TV or wherever, are brutal. She may preach “Work with the body you have, not the one you want,” but the one she “has” she pushes until she’s in near-agony.

It’s a cutthroat business, where every TV morning show booking is fought over, every appearance fraught with brand-damaging dangers.

She’s lonely, has no one to really confide in. Even the mother (Aleksandra Konieczna) she spoils with pricey birthday gifts lets her down, lets her see that she doesn’t approve of her daughter’s “job” or sympathize with her problems.

And she could use a confidante, a mother to cry to. Because she’s just figured out she has a stalker.

Writer-director Magnus von Horn (“The Here After”) dances around the edges of melodrama in “Sweat’s” story of the downside of Internet fame. We get a sense of Sylwia’s isolation, with only her Jack Russell and her online “loves” for company. We see her vulnerability and maybe fear for her safety.

But von Horn isn’t inclined to follow that pervert-in-a-Volvo-wagon threat down a predictable path. He’s more interested in what all this is costing Sylwia, her self-aware acceptance that she could “shut down my Instagram” account (in Polish, with English subtitles) and “no one would really miss me.”

The perfectly made-up blue eyes, stunning exercise ensembles and pasted-on smile may prep her for “work,” which includes simple random encounters with fans. But it leaves her alone, unsocialized, with only B-movie ideas of how one deals with a stalker.

Kolesnik’s performance is perfectly superficial, but she gives us an idea that Sylwia understands the illusion any stalker, including hers, lives with. She knows she’s entirely too “perfect” to be real.

There’s not much more to “Sweat” than that, a perfectly-toned prime specimen of Western standards of beauty seeing that there’s not much more to this life than the superficial one she creates for her “followers,” whom she calls “My loves.”

Coming to a too-obvious conclusion aside, if there’s a better minimalist parable for “living on line,” I’m hard pressed to think of it.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sexual situations

Cast: Magdalena Kolesnik, Aleksandra Konieczna and Julian Swiezewski

Credits: Scripted and directed by Magnus von Horn. A MUBI release.

Running time: 1:47

Putting out a Ryan Reynolds, Salma Hayek, Samuel L. Jackson and Antonio Banderas action sequel on Father’s Day didn’t pay off, as “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” did middling business as a mid week opening.

An $11.67 million weekend, over $15 or so since midweek? The box office in the US still isn’t quite “back.”

“A Quiet Place II” added another $9.4 million, just stomping along, making mint. A genuine blockbuster, pretty much the only one this year, bigger
than “Kongzilla,” closer to normal.

“Peter Rabbit 2” managed another $6 million this weekend. That’s 20 million for the much delayed sequel. Oh well.

“Cruella” did over $5 million, not bad for an all star jam that lacks much in the way of fun. Word of mouth didn’t kill it.

“In the Heights” plummeted to $4.3 million. That’s a 63% plunge. No movie stars, nobody shows up.

The football drama “12 Mighty Orphans” added screens and more than doubled its opening weekend take, well over $800k, $1.25 total.

Focus made little effort to promote “Sparks Brothers” and paid the price. Under $500 a screen limited release. Esoteric, obscurish band doc? Might help to return my emails, marketers. Zero visibility.

“F9” opened overseas and blew up, almost $300 million, well over $200 in China alone.

“Conjuring 3” is over $142 million internationally.

Context is everything in taking in the oddest film in British director Michael Apted’s career, this early drama from the TV director (transitioning to film) who went on to director “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” a Bond film, movies in most every genre under the cinematic sun.

Apted, who died this past January, was already making his name through his landmark “Seven plus Seven” (later “28 Up,” “42 Up,” etc.) documentaries dissecting British lives, expectations, class foibles, etc. But here was a film, made for British television, that was part of this “discovering alternative sexualities” that were all the rage in the UK thanks to the plays of Joe Orton (“What the Butler Saw”) and others, and films like “Sunday Bloody Sunday;”

“The Triple Echo” even cast Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, two of the stars of Ken Russell’s notoriously homoerotic “Women in Love” (1969). The story told in “Echo” toyed with gender identity and toxic masculinity in a World War II setting, part of Britain’s post-war obsession with “their finest hour.”

Before we get too impressed in “ahead of its time” and all that, though, it’s worth recognizing that it makes rather a hash of things. A tale of a married farm wife (Jackson) whose husband is a POW, captured by the Japanese in the Far East, who meets, befriends and takes as a lover a young recruit (Brian Deacon) whom she convinces to dress as her sister after he decides to go AWOL, it has comic elements that never play as funny, melodramatic touches that deliver eye-rolls and a tone that never matches the absurdity of its scenario.

God only knows how Brits took it at the time. Sure, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was reveling in comical cross-dressing. But this wasn’t “Dad’s Army,” after all. And it wasn’t exactly “The Crying Game” either.

Jackson, already an Oscar winner for “Women in Love,” on her way to winning another for “A Touch of Class” (1974), was the biggest female star in Britain, a sexy/smart/flinty presence which made her well-suited to Alice. A stiff-upper-lip, self-reliant farm wife keeping calm and carrying on even though her husband — probably captured at Hong Kong or Singapore — might never come home, she meets the rambling Barton as she’s shouldering a shotgun, hunting rabbits.

Barton is young, handsome, handy and not the sort that she’d perceive as a threat. A friendship of the “nice to have a man around the house” turns serious when they become lovers and he decides to abandon his Army training and desert. Out of the blue, she decides that he needs to grow his hair, wear her clothes and pass for her sister, just in case anybody drops by.

He puts up little resistance as he “reluctantly” agrees. What drives her insistence is something she sees in him, we can surmise. He may be able to fix her tractor, but he’s entirely too delicate for Army life. She can sense it.

Things take an even odder turn as a passing tank crew stop by, and its gruff and bullying Sgt. (Reed) takes an unwelcome interest in the “sister” he barely glimpses and the POW widow someone with scruples would have respected and left alone.

He drags a mate along as he proceeds to barge in — literally — uninvited and unwelcome. Alice tries to brush off these advances, and finds herself alone, forced to confront brute masculine force with “sister” in her room with a “sore throat.”

Every turn that comes along is a lot more predictable today than it would have been in 1972, but there’s a lot of “come on, now” about the entire plot.

Jackson displays nice pluck as Alice, the person who takes the lead in her illicit affair, unrattled at the danger these intruding soldiers represent to her, Barton and their little mid-war idyll. But at least she recognizes it.

Reed is perfectly loathsome, imposing his will, misreading every situation.

Apted, working from a Robin Chapman script, gets at the coarseness of a time romanticized by Britain’s Greatest Generation, the sexual mores of soldiers and the nuts-and-bolts of hiding someone in a time of food rationing in a village of busybodies with a soldier who could face the worst consequences if they’re found out.

“The Triple Echo” has an R-rated edge, but looks like what it is — a TV movie. The visuals are washed-out, with natural “documentary” lighting, inside and out. The performances have a perfunctory quality, although Reed sinks his teeth into his villainy the way only he could.

The “triple echo” of the title is literal — the sounds of a shotgun echoing through the hills — and symbolic. Hints of other lives, false lives and consequences live in it.

But as a lifelong fan of Apted, a cinematic generalist who excelled at documentaries, got Sissy Spacek her Oscar and did a passable Bond pic as well as “Thunderheart,” “Amazing Grace” and “Enigma,” and finished his career with “63 Up,” capping the finest human potential/human life documentary series ever, I have to say “The Triple Echo” doesn’t work.

The performances have a flatness we don’t associate with Jackson. There’s no “heat,” and the central situation never loses the air of “absurd.” Not that there weren’t men who put on dresses to escape service.

In the context of its time, I am sure it was daring. Not today. And its resolution was entirely too of-its-day, when anyone who strayed from the straight-and-narrow, sexually, seemed to welcome their on-screen doom as if it was their due.

Still, Apted managed to give us a strong sense of a place and a time and held his own (more or less) with top-flight actors. His curiosity about people and their “roles” in his society would find other outlets.

And he would go on to bigger and better things, and keep making his “Seven Up” films every seven years, exploring human lives predestined by class to play out within the narrow confines his culture laid out for them.

MPA Rating: R, sexual situations, violence, profanity

Cast: Glenda Jackson, Brian Deacon and Oliver Reed

Credits: Directed by Michael Apted, script by Robin Chapman, based on a short story by H.E. Bates. A Hemdale film on Roku.

Running time: 1:30