Movie Nation

There’s not a lot about Burhan Qurbani’s updating of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” that declares itself “adapted from one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.”

It’s stately and long — nearly three hours. But Rainer Werner Fassbender’s definitive 1980 version, for German TV, ran for over 15 hours and was shown in theaters over multiple nights in the US.

Reduced in scale and stripped of the moment-in-time poignancy of Alfred Döblin’s Weimar (“Cabaret” without Liza) gangland morality tale, it seems more run-of-the-mill than intended.

But Qurbani — “We Are Young. We Are Strong” was his — gives his version a cable-news-headlines currency, making our anti-heroic hero “Franz” into “Francis (Welket Bungué), a traumatized immigrant from Bissau on the west coast of Africa.

His transition, from troubled, exploited and unwanted Francis to gangland player Franz may seem genre picture routine, with grim flashbacks and overt oxen symbolism reminding us that Döblin set his 1920s story in a poor neighborhood previously known for its cattle pens. But it’s still an arresting slice-of-underworld-life tale, as lurid and seamy as ever.

Francis loses his unpermitted subway building job thanks to his temper and morality. He insists on summoning a doctor to help a gravely injured colleague. It’s what the man falls into that makes his story interesting.

His journey began “washed up on the shores of a new life,” as the unnecessary voice over narration notes. But it truly picks up when he hears the pitch of fey, faintly insulting and almost thoroughly-corrupt Reinhold (Albrecht Schuch). Others may tell Francis “This isn’t for you” or “You’re not a real man.” Reinhold tells all the Africans crammed into their apartment, “You deserve more from life.”

Francis finds himself cooking meals for Reinhold’s vast drug-trade street team, a well-oiled machine consisting of “the cash boys,” “the stash boys,” “the couriers” and “the scouts,” moving from group to group with a baby stroller filled with today’s freshly-cooked African cuisine.

As he is befriended, used and abused by Reinhold, he faces up to sexual guilt and uncertainty (someone drowned with him on the way to Europe) dealing with Reinhold’s “girls,” and earns some standing with the racist boss-of-bosses, the much-older Pums (Joachim Król).

Francis completes his journey to Franz when he meets the successful, imperious but sympathetic Nigerian club-owner/madam Eva (Annabelle Mandeng) and is “saved” by the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Mieze (Jella Haase).

But are there ever happy endings in “Berlin Alexanderplatz?”

Bungué makes a compelling, confused lead. We spend much of the first two “parts” of this five-part story wondering if he’s gay and confused or guilt-ridden by the drowning-nightmares that fill his nights.

Haase and Mandeng make terrific female foils, women with agency and the smarts to see what Francis/Franz may not, that Reinhold is nobody’s friend.

But if this tale depends on a complex, cruel-to-be-kind villain, Schuch more than fills the bill, an Iago to Franz’s Othello. His affected, effeminate stoop and way of keeping one hand on his hip suggests “underestimate me.” His motivations aren’t the clearest, based on the movie.

Which underscores the film’s overarching weakness. As familiar as such rise-and-fall tales are, “Alexanderplatz” leans on the invisible novel that’s not entirely lost in this adaptation. It’s as if Qurbani expects the viewer to know Döblin and Fassbender’s texts as canon. In Germany, this may very well be the case.

But it’s been a long time since I plowed through the Fassbender film, and two generations have come along, outside of Germany, who have no acquaintance with it or the novel (recently given a readable and faithful English translation).

That renders this saga into a skimming of that book, and a rehash of dozens of Hollywood films of the same genre and structure. Its power to move and shock is reduced accordingly.

The filmmaker has boiled it down to make it practical and watchable, and updated “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to make it topical. But he’s lost too much of what made it special.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, nudity, drug abuse

Cast: Welket Bungué, Albrecht Schuch, Jella Haase, Annabelle Mandeng and Joachim Król

Credits: Directed by Burhan Qurbani, script by Martin Behnke and Burhan Qurbani, based on the novel by Alfred Döblin. A Kino Lorber (April 30) release.

Running time: 2:55

Sure, I’m as done with vampire movies as anybody. But a Bram Stoker riff in thick Irish brogues? Let’s have it, then.

“Boys from County Hell” is about an outbreak of the undead in the homeland of “Dracula” author Stoker. It’s slangy and profane, bloody and bloody funny, as well.

“Most people don’t even know Stoker was Irish,” Eugene (Jack Rowan) gripes to a couple of Canadian tourists he’s just picked up in The Stoker, the pub in tiny Six Mile Hill, a village connected to Stoker. He’s leading them to see “The Cairn,” a rock pile of local lore that may have something of a bloodsucking variety buried beneath it.

The story is that Stoker got inspired by a local legend, and merely grafted it onto accounts of Vlad the Impaler is much-more-exotic Transylvania.

But Six Mile Hill is due to get a highway bypass. Eugene’s contractor dad Francie Moffat (Nigel O’Neill) has the contract to move the earth, and maybe the cairn.

If only Eugene and his mate William (Fra Fee) hadn’t taken that shortcut home from having a few “scoops” down t’the pub. If only this beast hadn’t charged them and gored poor William to death.

That’s cast a pall over cairn-tearing down day — that, and the warning by William’s under-taker dad (John Lynch).

“Don’t toss that cairn, Eugene. Yer not f—–g cut out for all this.”

All what? The undertaker knows.

And when the blood starts to splatter and the dead won’t stay dead, the Moffats are the first to find out. Will there be enough “Boys from County Hell,” with barmaid Claire (Louisa Harland) pitching in, to stop this?

The story’s another variation on the “‘Dracula is fiction,’ this is real life” vampire formula. As in, don’t expect all the old standbys to “kill this thing.” The violence is just serious enough to pass muster and the effects are quite good.

But it’s the Irishness that sells this, the “craic” and “cute hoor” slang, the effective deployment of beer, profanity and “feckin’ eejit” and the like.

“Is he on droooogs?””Aye took th’coke once. Through six different scraps, didn’t feel a ting”

“The wee f—-r tried t’bite me!” “Bite? Like a…”

“Like a (rhymes with RUNT).”

And on and on it goes, with many “scoops” and slashings, bites and impalings to keep the faithful and the diaspora amused. There’s nothing much you can do with this genre any more except mock it. Mocking is one thing the Irish are quite good at.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody and profane as all get out

Cast: Jack Rowan, Nigel O’Neill, Louisa Harland, Fra Fee, Michael Hough and John Lynch.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Chris Baugh. A Shudder release (April 22)

Running time: 1:29

As tortured hostage in Iraq tales go, “Wildcat” plays as entirely too chatty and slackly-paced. But it has its moments, a middle-sequence turnabout and a finale that has all the urgency missing from the first two acts.

“Black Mirror” and “Broadchurch” veteran Georgina Campbell plays Khadija, a “journalist” taken hostage by a terrorist gang in Mosul. She’s hurled into a cell with Luke, a Marine (Luke Benward of “Field of Lost Shoes” and “Grand Isle”), the only other survivor of the convoy they were in that was ambushed.

They barely have time to bond before they’re separated for interrogations. “Kat” meets a brute (Maz Siam) who promptly pulls out a fingernail, followed by an English speaker (Mido Hamada) who asks the questions.

“What is your name? Are you with State Department? Are you CIA?” He’s never satisfied with her answers.

But when the Marine is tossed back into the cell, he calls her a “lightweight” for answering any question, for pleading “Please, I am Muslim, you don’t have to do this,” etc.

“Wildcat,” as its title implies, is about how wrong our Marine might be.

This is no “particular skills” action hero thriller. Kat’s gifts include memory, details, some sort of training in a “work the problem” vein. They reason out where they are by the sounds of a mosque’s call to prayers. They figure out who has them.

But how can they get out of this?

Writer-director Jonathan W. Stokes (he scripted the Scott Adkins/Christian Bale actioner, “Bullet”) doesn’t shy away from the torture, but the picture dawdles through the middle acts, conversations filled with bonding, interrogations built on debates, with both prisoner and torturer reading the other’s psychological profiles, and threats.

“When I look at you, I see fear…If you act like a victim, people will victimize you.”

Campbell makes a solid lead, the captor/villains are passable stock “types.” But entirely too little is done to up the pace, raise the stakes. These characters should be in pain as they struggle to figure out why they were taken. Their captors need to be in more of a hurry to get what they want out of them.

The best dramatic moment, when Kat starts to intellectually turn the tables, is a great place to “cue rising suspense.” Nobody behind the camera took that cue.

MPA Rating: R (Language|Violence/Torture)

Cast: Georgina Campbell, Luke Benward, Mido Hamada, Maz Siam and Ibrahim Renno

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jonathan W. Stokes. A Saban Films release (April 23)

Running time: 1:33

It’s coming in mid May. He’s been a “Star Wars” hero, a Bond villain and a teacher with a drinking problem.

Why not a vigilante?

It’s one of those pieces of early football history, like the legends of Pop Warner and Jim Thorpe and Knute Rockne and “The Gipper.”

“12 Mighty Orphans” recalls a Depression Era football team of over-achievers from a Texas orphanage.

Like Wilson, Vinessa Shaw, Martin Sheen, Treat Williams and Robert Duvall star in this June release from Sony Pictures Classics.

The dark Swiss chocolate analogy fits the Swiss comedy “My Wonderful Wanda” to a T, a bitter, wincing farce with an aftertaste that leaves you with a smile.

Death and new life, cultural prejudices and that Swiss obsession with money play into a film that is Germanic in its darkness, as subtle as a wet slap and funny? Eventually.

Wanda, played by Agnieszka Grochowska, is a Polish 30something, a single mother of two who travels by bus to her three month-long shifts with the German Swiss Wegmeister-Gloor clan. They’re rich, living in a lakeside manse. But the patriarch of their engineering firm, Josef (André Jung) had a stroke and is confined to his bed. Wanda is his favorite in-home caregiver.

His imperious wife Else (the great Marthe Keller) may feign warmth, now and again, to this woman who “works for us.” But she isn’t shy about brusquely setting boundaries.

When she asks Wanda to take on housekeeping duties, two things emerge. First, this family is a bit of a nightmare. Wanda simply won’t take her first offer for the added workload. And second, the fact that Wanda’s Polish speaks volumes. These rich cheapskates hired a bargain. they’re sure they can push around.

Son Gregor (Jacob Matschenz) still lives at home with his parents, the engineer-heir to the family firm but very slow to graduate from college. His real passion is birding, and he serenades Wanda — whom he’s sweet on — with a mockingbird’s repertoire of bird calls.

But Josef’s attachment is deeper. He, after all, has the money. And he’s not shy about bellowing “WANDA” in the middle of the night, summoning her for a “happy ending,” which supplements her income.

Josef tends to pout when she’s not at his beck and call. And when his daughter, Sophie (Birgit Minichmayr) barges in for his 70th birthday party and insists on assigning him therapy and pushing “my wonderful Wanda” into the background, things turn testy.

That’s when we pick up on how awful the Wegmeister-Gloors can be. Their offenses range from selfishness and rudeness to open hostility, their acting-out begins with insults and crescendos with screaming tantrums.

Wanda, who needs the cash, just has to take it.

And then a complication enters the picture, one that involves a Frühschwangerschaftstest — German for “peeing on a stick — and changes the dynamic in a big way.

Director and co-writer Bettina Oberli is slow to give away the tone she’s shooting for here. Some scenes make you cringe and the upper class cruelty can make you wince.

The matriarch laments old age, how “friends disappear, and with them, their occasions” (in German and Polish with English subtitles). But Josef fields birthday cards with gruff bemusement. “They’re still alive?”

We know it’s a comedy because a cow becomes a plot point, covering up shenanigans and revealing deep cultural prejudices.

And then daughter Sophie arrives — callous, mistrusting and spiteful — and we have a villain we can sink our teeth into. The Austrian Minichmayr (“Downfall,””The White Ribbon,” “Perfume”) puts on an audition for Nazi concentration camp guard roles with her bravura bullying and repertoire of petty humiliations.

She is so over-the-top you keep waiting for somebody — preferably a woman — to slap her. And when it happens, you eagerly hope it happens again.

Grochowska, of the recent singing competition drama “Teen Spirit,” gives away Wanda’s powerlessness in just her eyes. She has to sneak off to Facetime her children back in Poland. And whatever Josef’s affection for her or Gregor’s attentions might bode, it is women who either tolerate her or instinctively mistrust her who hold her fate.

Grochowaska’s turn strikes an awkward balance between how much Wanda can endure, and making us guess what upside she sees in all of this.

Like us, her Wanda is taking a tiny bite of this bitter chocolate with a grimace, hoping that something sweet kicks in eventually.

MPA Rating: unrated, sex, profanity

Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, André Jung, Birgit Minichmayr, Jacob Matschenz and Marthe Keller

Credits: Directed by Bettina Oberli, script by Bettina Oberli, Cooky Ziesche. A Zeitgeist release.

Running time: 1:51

Today on “Escape to Horror Country,” we visit a haunted parsonage in Essex, a manor house that in a prior life, was home to a burned-out Christian sect, and the period perfect setting for “The Banishing,” a pre-war British period piece, because aren’t they all?

Christopher Smith’s thriller (now on Shudder) is proof that if you get the gloomy tone, the production values and period polish perfect, your haunted house tale is halfway there. But it’s that other half that’s that separates the terrifying from the travelogue.

Something’s going on in Morley Hall. A prologue shows us a vicar who descends into murder-suicide madness, obsessed by First Thessalonians 4:5, warnings about avoiding “lustful passion,” as St. Paul put it, “like the Gentiles.”

Hey now.

“Three years later” a new vicar (Paul Heffernan) is on the job and in the house. Bringing his wife (Jessica Brown Findlay) and daughter (Anya McKenna-Bruce) and their troubled marriage into it can’t be a good idea.

The bishop (John Lynch, good casting) didn’t warn him. He’s the one we saw walking in on the murder suicide, and promptly pouring himself a whisky in his best “nothing to see here” nonchalance.

But there’s this wild-eyed visitor (Sean Harris, great casting) who has…answers. It’s about the house, the “sect” that had a monastery on this land, what happened to them and what happens there now.

“Is the house playing games with your wife’s head?”

It is — visions, mirrors that don’t perform to spec, thump and moans, and these creepy dolls that little Adelaide finds and plays with, a girl doll that looks like “Annabelle” prototypes, and tiny cowled monks who watch over her.

The basements in these British fixer-uppers always look like dungeons, and that’s always where little girls wander and their guilt-ridden mummy’s see the awfullest things when they set out in search of their child.

That’s the state of the horror, here, a child menaced, perhaps possessed, a husband in denial and a mother under supernatural assault because of her childcare skills.

The kid is properly creepy, and Findlay (“Brave New World,” “Harlots,” “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”) does a fine job of testily judging her repressed and somewhat shamed husband and increasingly alarmed mother not able to process the threats to herself and a little girl who stops acknowledging her as her mother.

Hefferman’s vicar in meltdown mode passes muster. And there’s value in putting the sinister, whispering Harris and menacing Lynch into opposition, playing two men at odds over “the secret” of the house and maybe the politics of Britain on the cusp of a World War where you were either fascist or anti-fascist.

That last element is handled quite clumsily. The story’s dawdling pace works against it, and attempts at injecting urgency into the third act seem too chatty and explanatory for suspense to build.

The effects are more interesting than chilling –sequences in which the vicar’s wife sees different versions of herself in various states of terror over what she’s experiencing, or fears she’s caused.

I have to say I like this sort of 1930s Gothic horror, even though I’m generally more impressed by the detail than jolted by the frights. But the cast and the period piece pall they perform under make this mixed-bag of a thriller worth a look.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Jessica Brown Findlay, John Heffernan, Anya McKenna-Bruce, Sean Harris and John Lynch

Credits: Directed by Christopher Smith, script by  David Beton, Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Bogdanovich. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:37

It’s coming to Amazon Prime in mid May. Perhaps Amazon will have stopped advertising on Tucker Carlson’s racist, treasonous TV show ny then.

Looks daft, and diddley aye.

“Home Alone” with an evil spirit/genie?

Looks enterprising and alarming.

May 14, “The Djinn” comes to us in theaters or on demand.