Movie Nation

“The Soul” is a murder mystery wrapped in medical sci-fi, with a tragic, prosecutor-dying-of-cancer romance/pregnant cop-wife melodrama thrown in for good measure.

It offers up a lot to chew on, but a lot left undigested as well, all served up in a “thriller” that doesn’t really deliver and a mystery that isn’t exactly solved.

A Taiwanese industrialist is ritualistically murdered, with pentangle-like symbols scrawled on walls and doors in his mansion and a vajra club found in his MUCH younger second wife’s (Anke Sun) unconscious hand.

The scene is grisly enough to almost make the first police on the scene faint.

An investigating prosecutor (Chen Chang) gets more bad news from his oncologist, but decides — with his wife (Janine Chun-Ning Chang) pregnant and his next course of treatment promising to be a long shot, to go back to work.

But Liang doesn’t tell his wife, Ah-Bao, of his plans. That’s a problem, because she’s on the job a bit longer during her pregnancy. And she’s a detective who works with him, co-investigators digging into a very convoluted case, interrogating the same suspects.

Whatever is going on with Li-Yan, the widow of the dead man, the house’s extensive closed circuit TV cameras will reveal, right? Only they muddy the waters. Maybe she did it. Something supernatural might be involved.

Or perhaps the dead man’s estranged son and deranged heir (Hui-Min Lin) did it. His body covered in tattoos and his mind warped by the death of his mother, he’s into the same bizarre satanic religion she espoused. He’s got to be the likeliest suspect.

But the story was never going to be that neat and direct. The dead man’s medical company had financed RNA cancer-fighting research, which extended his life until he was clubbed to death. The doctor behind it is sketchy and secretive and played by an actor named “Christopher Lee,” for Pete’s Sake (Christopher Ming-Shun Lee).

This transfer of genetic material experiment, might it pass “souls” from person to person, in addition to removing cancer risks from their DNA/RNA?

There’s a lot of watching sometimes bizarre video recordings, interrogating this or that suspect or maid, and dealing with the manic, over-the-top acting kid, who seems to have motive in addition to an apparently murderous religious fanaticism.

Is the 20 year-old replacement wife in on all this, or merely a pawn?

Meanwhile, the cop/prosecutor couple is having weepy debates about what lies just ahead for them without a miracle, medical or otherwise.

Native Mandarin speakers may get more from this Around the World with Netflix mystery than I did. I found the acting either comically broad or frustratingly under-played.

There’s a little bit of metaphysical debate, about the “living” having to “carry on” with their grief and regrets, while “the dead just get to walk away.”

Perhaps the English subtitles are missing some nuance with that “walking dead” translation.

The forensics are feeble, the couple of blasts of action horrific enough, but the science fiction entirely too clinical and close to current science to generate much interest. And the whiff of supernaturalism is just that, only a whiff.

As ambitious, twisty and soulful as “The Soul” sets out to be, I found it left me cold. And as a whodunit, it’s a little confusing and a tad boring. Not exactly a recipe for a “riveting” 130 minutes of viewing.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, nudity

Cast: Chen Chang, Janine Chun-Ning Chang, Anke Sun, Christopher Ming-Shun Lee and Hui-Min Lin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Wei-hao Cheng, based on a novel by  Jiang Bo. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:10

“Port Authority,” a somewhat affecting New York transgender romance, is a little late to the “guy doesn’t realize the performer he’s attracted is transgender” party. “The Crying Game,” and “Victor/Victoria” are ancient history, after all.

But writer-director Danielle Lessovitz’s debut feature has New York grit and some new genre wrinkles that make it work. It’s “Midnight Cowboy” by way of “Paris is Burning,” and far more interesting than its ludicrous “How could you not know?” Achilles heel.

We meet Paul, played by Fionn Whitehead of “Voyagers” and “Dunkirk,” at the titular bus terminal in Manhattan, a hapless 20 year-old from Pittsburgh who gets his first taste of the city asking for help finding his “half-sister,” who was supposed to pick him up.

New Yorkers don’t want to know, don’t want to know you. They don’t even want to help when he’s mugged on the subway. At least Lee (McCaul Lombardi) is man enough to interrupt the beating.

He’s outgoing enough to offer advice — “The 2-Train isn’t any good for sleeping on. Try the A-Train next time.”

Before this bloodied first night in the city is done, Lee has gotten Paul into a shelter and hooked him up with “moving” work.

But Paul’s head has been turned by the street dancers putting on a show on Times Square. A lithe group of athletic, focused and seriously effeminate Black men, they have a “sister” that gets his attention. “Wye, like the letter,” she calls herself. And soon Paul doesn’t just have steady work, but a woman (Leyna Bloom) to shower his attention on.

Her brothers call him a “chaser,” but he’s tolerated, hanging around “House McQueen” rehearsals choreographed and coached by “Mother,” aka “Ma Queen,” (Christopher Quarrie). Wye?

“Single, but unavailable.” Her words say “Not interested,” but every toss of her braids and moment of shy, lingering eye contact suggest she’s getting into his “white boy realness.”

Pulling Paul is an altogether different direction is Lee, whose “job” is leading his fellow homeless toughs on eviction visits. They check out of the shelter, get in a moving truck and perform a “service” for New York’s slumlords. He yells “IMMIGRATION” and pounds on the door, they barge in and start moving delinquent tenants out.

Not exactly righteous work. But Paul’s head and heart aren’t in it. And he’s not picking up “I was in the Navy” and other clues from Wye, such as the company she keeps, the drag contest she and her brothers are rehearsing for.

Wye’s first big romantic gesture? Sharing a Nicoderm patch, to help the kid cut down on his smoking. Paul’s? He tells her “the truth.”

“If somebody doesn’t really tell you ‘good-bye,’ it’s kind of like you’re waiting for them to show up, even though you know they won’t.”

But Paul’s “truth” leaves an awful lot out.

The kid’s naivete is “Port Authority’s” toughest sell, first scene to last. He lurches into New York without even a phone number of this “sister” he hasn’t seen in ages, doesn’t know better than to sleep on the subway, and can’t figure out the “femme” he’s smitten by isn’t on the part of the sexuality spectrum he thinks she is.

Puh-LEEZE.

Far more interesting is the homoerotic nature of Paul’s connection with the seemingly-homophobic Lee, who drops the F-slur at every provocation and yet seems awfully attentive, handsy and fond of mixing it up with the boys — wrestling and what not.

The third act has a soap opera month’s supply of melodrama. But “Port Authority” overcomes this and its more eye-rolling “suspend disbeliefs” with engaging performances, lived-in characters and violent, run-down settings straight out of New York’s “verge of collapse” era.

It’s been a minute or decade or three since we’ve seen urban homelessness put on display with this level of detail in this blend of pathos and judgement.

MPA Rating: R for pervasive language, some offensive slurs, sexual content, nudity and violence

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Leyna Bloom, McCaul Lombardi

Credits: Scripted and directed by Danielle Lessovitz. A Momentum/Mubi release.

Running time: 1:42

Coming in October. You had me at “Anya.” And “Edgar.”

The delight of discovery and element of surprise were all used up on “A Quiet Place.” And that’s not just true for viewers. In the sequel’s prologue, the cast gives us the distinct impression that they can’t “unring” that bell, either.

As you’ve seen in every trailer, “A Quiet Place Part II” opens with a short, punchy “Day 1” prequel — the Day the Monsters Came and wrecked the world, Millbrook, New York and a tense little league game underway there.

From the instant, reflexive reactions of parents Evelyn and Lee Abbott (Emily Blunt and writer, director, husband John Krasinski), you’d swear it was Day 201, as they seem to “know” more than their characters should about the crab creatures who track them by sound and inefficiently slaughter the human race for reasons which are never crystal clear.

The cowering-in-place is true to life, but the muffled silence is not just shock. Everybody in the cast saw the first film, apparently.

But Krasinski still manages to back-engineer a tight, affecting sequel that is even quieter — brilliantly using the silence that deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) experiences this horror in — and even noisier.

Where the first film dropped us into the cleverly under-explained “world” this family was struggling to survive in, this one picks up the survivors — who barely have time to mourn the death of Dad, which ended the first film — on “Day 474” as they flee the farm they’ve been hiding out on, taking what Dad learned about the invaders and what Mom figured out about keeping her now-three (don’t forget the baby) kids alive with them.

Daughter Regan is her Dad’s child — intrepid, a tween who understands the DIY engineering that gave them the answer to fighting back, “feedback,” manufacturing “tinnitus.”

Mother Evelyn is still bandaged, battered and barefoot, as are they all.

And middle-child/oldest son Marcus (Noah Jupe) is still the accident-prone one, the one not-at-all cut out for surviving this, a simpering, whimpering child who seems doomed to a Darwinian reckoning.

Cillian Murphy is the neighbor, whom we meet at the Day 1 ball game, who has survived the death of his entire family, embittered and cowering in the abandoned steel mill where he used to work.

“There’s nothing left,” he whispers after watching-not-helping them escape a fresh, noisy calamity. And “the people that are left, what they’ve become, they’re not the kind of people worth saving.”

We wonder how much he’s talking about himself.

But a chance scan of the family radio reveals that a Bobby Darin fan is still out there, broadcasting “Beyond the Sea” over and over again. Regan has to know if there are others, if they can help and if they’ve found a way to get life back to “normal.”

Yes, there’s a pandemic subtext, right out in the open, in that land where FM radio lives on and they still play 45s over and over again.

Krasinski’s set-piece this time is a neatly intercut three places people in this story are in peril, each facing a nearly insoluble and potentially fatal dilemma. And he gives the picture a sweet coda that is as emotional as anything in the first movie.

That, and bringing on two fine actors — Murphy and Djimon Hounsou — to supplement an already stellar cast — make “Quiet Place II” worth watching.

It’s more slackly-paced than the original, lacks its surprises and the terrifying peaks that the first script hit. The “back-engineering” and “suspend disbelief” science and technology and character behavior shows, often to clumsy effect.

But the “Quiet” once again drowns out the “noise” in this, the best creature feature of our times.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for terror, violence and bloody/disturbing images. 

Cast: Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Cillian Murphy, Noah Jupe, John Krasinski and Djimon Hounsou.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Krasinski. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:37

Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, Lena Headey, Carla Gugino and Paul Giamatti also star in this hit woman action comedy.

A “Shoot em Up” or “Harley Quinn That doesn’t suck?”

Angelino grandson, a workaholic who toils in finance, is told “Let’s go for a drive” by his grandpa, who takes him out to the desert. He speaks of Old Mexico, or at least the Mexico he left to emigrate to the United States. The kid may speak Spanish and be close with his large extended family. But he doesn’t know his roots.

Grandpa mentions a couple of places in Mexico City that he remembers fondly, and gives the kid an order.

“Go back and take a look,” he says. And then, he dies.

That’s the launching point of “Tell me When (Dime Cuándo Tú),” a tepid romantic comedy built around a bucket list that Grandpa Pepe (screen veteran José Carlos Ruiz) kept in his diary. Grandson “Will,” who needs to go by Guillermo (Jesús Zavala) or “Guillermito” when he’s with family, will leave his seven day a week job and follow that list as he is forced to “experience” the things in life he’s missed.

“Get drunk on mezcal.” “Sing with mariarchis.” Visit the Fine Arts Palace, see the Main Square, the Blue House and the Satellite Towers.

You’ll stay with Danielle (Ximena Romo) his grandma and her friend Luci, Danielle’s granny, dell him. She’s show him around.

Guess what else is on Grandpa’s list?

There are little chuckles around the edges of this limp noodle of a comedy, and just a hint of romance to it. It should be bubbling over with both.

I only laughed at the crude and profane advice naive Will gets from older relatives back home and the daft attempts of Dani’s relatives in Mexico City — the gay restaurateur Beto (Gabriel Nuncio) included.

The leads are cute, but don’t have much chemistry, with Zavala especially coming off more dull and charmless than the role requires.

Ideas such as the bucket list, grandpa’s fondness for capturing memories on Polaroids and the like are introduced and forgotten as the no-heat-here romance takes center stage. A weaker plot point, Danielle getting her big “break” as understudy when the leading lady (real stage actors and directors plays themselves), is played-up, to little effect.

Veteran producer and first-time director Gerardo Gatica González even shortchanges what should be the movie’s no-brainer subtext, the sights of Mexico City.

Without that, “Tell ME When” doesn’t even work as travelogue.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Jesús Zavala, Ximena Romo, Gabriel Nuncio, Juca Viapri, Verónica Castro, José Carlos Ruiz

Credits: A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

Whatever else this fellow Will Smith — no, not THAT Will Smith — has going on in his life, he tells a helluva yarn.

And that “yarn,” about a mysterious neighbor he barely knows leaving a large and expensive stamp collection with him with an “If anything should happen to me” proviso, instantly drew in documentary filmmaker William Saunders & Co. It sent them on a four year odyssey, with Smith, to track down where these stamps came from, their value, and who this Russian accented fellow, Roman No-Last-Name might be and how he came to have them, and stash them with a near-stranger.

“The Penny Black” is an utterly-engrossing might-be-true-crime docu-mystery, a film laid out like a private eye thriller (they even hire an Archer Agency detective in LA, shades of Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer), a story with big money, competing agendas, shady characters and a classic “unreliable narrator.

I mean we think, as the filmmakers do, that we can trust this Smith fellow. But can we? The fact that he has no visible means of support in a crazily expensive city, that his dad was a document forger/embezzler and that Will uh, goes through some cash, makes us wonder.

Everything about the film — from its shadowy recreations of what could be home movies of Will’s past to the score (dulcimer plunks that sound like we’re watching an espionage thriller) — screams “Trust NO ONE,” no matter how honest they seem.

The world’s first postage stamp, a British “penny black,” is among the collectibles in the big albums that this Roman fellow dropped in Smith’s lap. According to Smith, anyway. But that 1840 marvel isn’t close to being the most valuable stamp in the collection.

“The Penny Black” lets Smith tell the strange story of how he got the stamps, and then follows efforts he (and the filmmakers) undergo to ascertain their value at stamp shows and auctions, their provenance and just where this “Roman” fellow got off to.

Smith’s matter-of-fact disclosure of how he came into possession of them all gives him a “sketchy” vibe, one that he never quite shakes as months and years go by, he moves a couple of times, takes up with and breaks up with a girlfriend and reveals “gifts” he’s received to prop him up.

“I sold a few stamps,” he jokes, reading the film crew’s mind, and ours. “A gift,” he corrects.

As the years go on and they hire that “Archer Agency” PI and track a down folks who reported a big stamp heist years back, Smith and Saunders build the unseen “missing” Roman into a Harry Lime of “The Third Man” sort of figure — larger than life.

And Smith, who rather casually dismissed the shady seeming nature of their original exchange and shrugged off any idea he might have taken possession of something that could get him arrested or killed, finally seems to fret and worry over what he’s done and what they might uncover.

“I’d hate to put myself in mortal danger over some f—–g stamps!”

Has he?

Dive into “Penny Black,” before somebody options this for a feature film noir, and find out.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity

Credits: Directed by William J. Saunders. A 1091 release.

Running time: 1:38

Nov. 5, lots of new superheroes for those who need them.

Sometimes, they lose you in the finale. They over-explain their “motiveless murder” thriller, and the explanations don’t add up to anything other than “pitiless psychopath” or the filmmakers do something else to show they don’t know when to call it a day.

“Stalker” is a half-decent iteration of the popular “identify theft” thriller, starting with “pranks” and transitioning to house breaking, thefts, and utter identity destruction, all of it with a side order of murderous stalker.

It flirts with “stylish,” and is just paranoid enough — if a little slow — as we watch our new-to-California teacher/tutor (Vincent Van Horn) meet somebody nice in a bar (Christine Ko), take a rideshare back to her place, and see his life steadily unravel as the Ryde dude (Michael Lee Joplin) befriends him, clings to him and then turns on him.

Director and co-writer Tyler Savage samples all manner of ID theft horrors and pitches his movie somewhere in the “Cape Fear” to “Cable Guy” as B-movie range, switching points of view from hapless Andy (Van Horn) to predatory Roger (Joplin) as he does.

Van Horn’s Andy experiences the downward spiral of a life he’s lost control of, a wrong he cannot rectify. The performance captures a little sense of the despair (crawling into a bottle), a hint of the rage. Portraying a teacher, it’s a toned-down turn that feels something like a cheat.

The inevitable “I didn’t mean to trigger you” and Why are you doing this?” get our victim nowhere. The cops seem amused at the destructive “pranks” the apparent master criminal is able to pull on Andy. And cell phone expert gives him the “see this all the time” shrug.

“You got sim-swapped.”

All of which is set up in a workaday Los Angeles firmly rooted in reality. How would you “punish” a freelance tutor? Send him to bogus “appointments” (a drug dealer’s house) for starters.

But the “reality” and the suspense and the narrowly-defined “entertainment value” dissipates in an ending that talks its way out of any sense the story might have made and any sense of satisfaction the viewer might have hoped for.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, sexual situations, profanity, alcohol abuse

Cast: Vincent Van Horn, Christine Ko, Michael Lee Joplin

Credits: Directed by Tyler Savage, script by Dash Hawkins, Tyler Savage. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:26

A dark comedy about serial killers and a support group, led by David Koechner.