Movie Nation

A near-shooting interrupted by a woman (GW) who knows how to take care of herself triggers a revenge kidnapping and all the mayhem that follows in this June 18 release.

A dinner argument over Middle Eastern politics triggers a Marine vet (Dade Elza) who figures he needs a revolver to settle his dispute with a WEB designer, and shoots him.

The crazed shooter staggers down the street and into an art gallery, taking everyone at an “86 Melrose Ave” photography show opening hostage.

That’s the incredulous premise of this clumsy and atonal thriller, a pokey little flashback-cluttered indie that never remotely gets up a head of steam or amounts to anything.

Writer-director Lili Matta tries to shove a lot into a tepid tale that falls down before it gets up, and staggers into an anti-climax that is dramatic only in the sense that it’s embarrassing to all involved, especially the writer-director.

Travis, the shooter, is a married plumber whose abrupt snap at his wife’s high school pal seems…off. Topping that with a pistol seems insane, as an ex-Marine who works with his hands isn’t likely to figure he needs a gun to snap some tech nerd’s neck like a breadstick.

But “off” is just getting started. The gallery Travis stomps into is run by a gay couple, freshly coked, and features a Lebanese artist (Anastasia Antonia) who left her homeland for “a fresh start for my mind and spirit” away from her “war torn land.”

Naturally, she’s hit on by the only Israeli (Gregory Zarian) to show up for the opening. Her “never happening” rebuffs fall on deaf ears.

There are competing, bickering critics (amateurishly-played) there, and a “collector” for the already-spoken-for gallery owner (Richard Sabine) to flirt with, and a couple of others, all ordered “On the FLOOR” when our active shooter shows up.

As the cops lay siege, Travis fiddles with his pistol and stops and berates each customer in turn, they flash back to a son’s suicide, a therapy session, a traumatic childhood in Lebanon, a heated argument with a parent, and so on.

Travis? He flashes back to his military service, laying out the cause of his PTSD.

The combat flashback is briefly impressive, then hysterically over-the-top. None of the others impress in the least, thanks to unpolished acting and trite dialogue.

There are cringe-worthy flashes of English-as-a-Second-Language screenwriting (Matta is Lebanese-American herself) that sound like blown lines that no one corrected. “Inhabitated?”

And then the story staggers into the most ridiculous police interrogation ever filmed, a pointless third act that one hesitates to label an anti-climax, because that implies there is an actual climax.

There isn’t.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Dade Elza, Anastasia Antonio, Gregory Zarian, Langston Fishburne.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lili Matta. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:24

“Giants Being Lonely” is a dreamy, downbeat portrait of small town Southern teens, an impressionistic portrait of the idea that you never know what somebody’s dealing with.

Although it borrows, in the most overt ways, plot points from “The Last Picture Show” and “Hoosiers,” it paints an engrossing portrait of kids being kids — aimless, reckless and focused on “the now” even with the weight of the world on them.

Bobby (Jack Irv) is the handsome, curly-locked star pitcher of the Giants, his high school team. Everybody in this corner of North Carolina knows him and seems to just adore him. Bobby gets by on natural ability and unaffected charm. He has the confidence of being celebrated and the exhibitionism of toned and fit youth. Skinny dipping with the gang isn’t enough. He’s got to do a nude dive off the nearest bridge, girls trying not to gawk as he does.

But we see the loner in him, his walks along the tracks, sleeping outside in the gazebo in the park, sneaking into a junkyard to steal car parts to resell. We watch him put his drunken, broken father to bed on the couch of their double-wide.

Caroline (Lily Gavin) wears her “hottest girl in school” label with a certain reluctance. She has her posse, and a pretty but embittered divorced mom who rides her constantly. She’s sexually active, searching for some connection, some affection that’s missing in her life.

Adam (Ben Irving) has it worst of all. He’s another pitcher on the baseball team, but not the star. He’s shy and sensitive. And he’s the coach’s son. Coach (Gabe Fazio) is the first angry face we see in “Giants,” the first profane, bellowing voice we hear, chewing out his “privileged little bastard pipsqueak” team like a redneck who takes the wrong messages from watching John Oliver.

Coach is the sort of rural Southerner who stuffs his Glock in his pants before going out, even to practice, who lets off steam at the firing range and who relentlessly bullies his team, his fragile, sad wife (Amalia Culp) and his kid.

“Giants” isn’t a movie with a big “inciting incident” that prompts everything that happens in the third act. Director Patterson shoots for a dread that sticks to the viewer’s mind as we watch these kids drift toward something or somethings that will eventually go off the rails for them.

Baseball scouts are noticing Bobby. But like the walking cliche that he is, he can shrug that off.

Caroline gets asked to the prom, something that happens shockingly close to the date for “the hottest girl in school.”

And Adam is just about ready to rebel, to start demanding what he wants out of life from parents who either won’t or can’t consider that, because they never have.

This indie outing washes over you in ways that make its many dissonant notes recede into the background. The performances are understated, internalized, even the characters that we know are going to blow up at some point.

Bobby’s Dad looks more like a granddad, and the best way to calm him down is “put the record on.” Dad’s into Lou Reed.

The Coach seems to dote on his wife and is definitely abusing his son. But before we get too comfortable in a stereotype, he’s pushing a Grand Tour of Europe vacation at them, which his boy isn’t having.

“I’m going to prom!”

Adam asking Caroline to prom, in front of all her friends, is novel. So much for bashful. She doesn’t give away any idea that she’s smitten. He’s just the next guy who might get her away from her mother for a bit.

That makes “Giants” feel true to its sense of place at times, but more true to what outsider screenwriters (rarely high school jocks), recycling tropes from other coming-of-age dramas, understand it to be.

That said, the obvious artifice doesn’t change the film’s essential adolescent truth. High school is all about “being lonely.”

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Jack Irv, Lily Gavin, Gabe Fazio, Ben Irving and Amalia Culp.

Credits: Directed by Grear Patterson, script by Grear Patterson and Sam Stillman. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:18

Much of the world has been turning out sparkling, or at least amusing comedies about displaced workers finding the pluck to succeed for years. You’d think the Italian creators of “Beate (Blessed)” could have made a funnier, sunnier film in their sleep.

Consider the set-up. A small lingerie sewing operation on the northeast coast is betrayed by a boss who wants to move their skilled labor to Serbia. The seamstresses team up with an endangered local convent, famed for its lace work, to try and save both institutions.

That’s a funny conceit. But three screenwriters and a director were barely able to get so much as a grin out of it in this sour, sad little “romp.” Shockingly, it never occurred to the producers that making a movie with female heroines and villains could have used a woman or two behind the camera to give it a feminine touch or point of view. That’s no guarantee of laughs, but stuff pops up on screen here that lacks logic, romance, aspiration or heart.

Tone deaf? Si, ragazzo mio!

Donatella Finocchiaro (“Youtopia”) is Armida, floor manager of a dozen or so seamstresses at Veronica, a high end “knickers” factory. They bust their butts to get every order filled, to turn designers’ prototype bras into finished goods.

But the “Veronica” in Veronica (Anna Bellato) is sneaking around, plotting to take their machines and their jobs across the Adriatic to Serbia. A protest at a fashion show won’t save them. Picketing the closed factory isn’t enough.

If only there was something they could cook up with the Convent where Armida’s aunt (Lucia Sardo) lives and works. The sisters, few in number in a vast property the city and the scheming bishop have their eyes on, are famous for their fine lacework.

Heck, Armida is even named after the founder of their order, her 300 year old corpse preserved under glass in the chapel. But all Auntie can say is “Serves you right” to her “trade unionist…communist” niece.

Armida’s had a tough life. Pushing 40, a single mom, she walks with a lifelong limp and has, it’s implied, self-esteem issues. It’s why she has a long-term friend-with-benefits thing with Loris (Paolo Pierobon) that is never going anywhere.

But the Daughters of the Holy Cloak lose their Mother Superior to injury in a fire, so young Sister Caterina (Maria Roveran) takes over with the job of running the place, and saving it. She proves more pliable.

The script gives the ladies cast here precious little that’s funny to say or do. The story has all these possibilities, of a “Gung Ho, “Made in Dagenham,” “Calendar Girls” or “Potiche,” to name similar feel-good wish-fulfillment fantasies that have come out of Hollywood, Britain or France. The screenwriters commit to basically no clear idea of where to go.

The direction by Samad Zarmandili, a veteran assistant director on Italian TV, is similarly lackluster, with glimpses of a cute coast side town (never identified) that he doesn’t exploit, and much of the potential fun to be had in a world of frilly women’s “knickers” simply squandered.

Even the nuns making “sinner garments” for “the Devil’s money” idea is left hanging. Instead we fret over their underground underwear not selling because it doesn’t have a famous “label,” and women don’t buy such clothes in flea markets.

The one character given a little edge is the one — just guessing here — that the three credited writers and credited director identified with, the womanizing, smooth-talking Loris, making amusing sales pitches to women of a certain age, “fearless women…cougars without scruples” or young women who dig older men and earn the label “pussycats.”

Rare is the female-centric movie so blatantly smothered in the crib by “boys club” timidity behind the camera. It’s as if they didn’t have a clue what to do with women, and were afraid of burning the Catholic church with too many jokes as well.

Was Finocchiaro’s Armida meant to seem this sad, or was the actress just bummed because she knew the guys had screwed this up?

MPA Rating: unrated, adult situations

Cast: Donatella Finocchiaro, Paolo Pierobon, Lucia Sardo, Maria Roveran

Credits: Directed by Samad Zarmandili, script by Antonio Cecchi, Gianni Gatti and Salvatore Maira. A Corinth Films release.

Running time: 1:35

Jerry O’Connell is the villain in this version of “The Most Dangerous Game” plot, a poacher hunting humans.

Please tell me that isn’t a CGI rhino that attacks Rebecca Romijn and family’s SUV? June 1, the humans are the “Endangered Species.”

There’s nothing for it but to call the contemplative Swede Roy Andersson’s “About Endlessness” the fourth film in his “trilogy” about the futility/banality/hopelessness of life, “Living,” which supposedly ended with. “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.”

And if you’re reading beyond that first paragraph, that must mean you give a damn about this philosopher filmmaker’s brooding collections of tableaux, characters illustrating whatever point he wants to make about human existence under the perpetual “dream like” gloomy grey of Swedish interiors and exteriors.

So I won’t limit this review to “only Andersson could contemplate infinity and get across the idea of its endless tedium in a mere 76 minutes of screen time.” While I like the challenge of his self-conscious cinema, I find the urge to go glib every time I encounter one of his films almost too hard to resist.

My take on “Endlessness” is that he’s illustrating the banality of existence and how it distracts us from perhaps appreciating life on its own terms.

As the weeping man on the Stockholm street tram whines to one and all in the film, “I don’t know what I want.” Who does?

Using a little irony and just a smidge of drollery, Andersson makes this Deep Thought argument via vignettes about blind dates that don’t show up, a woman who “doesn’t expect anyone to meet her” at the train, an irritable, hard-drinking dentist and Adolf Hitler (Magnus Wallgren), ” “a man who wanted to conquer the world and knew he’d fail.”

The linking device in all of this is a couple, floating in the clouds over a ruined city, with a female narrator (Jessica Louthander) introducing the various tableaux with “I saw a man who did not trust banks, and keeps his savings under his mattress” or “I saw a woman communications manager incapable of feeling shame.”

A man’s car breaks down in a striking piece of wilderness, mountains behind him, geese flying overhead. But he’s stuck, as are we all, bogged down — facing some fresh aggravation instead of stopping to take in the beauty. Same with the tippling dentist who won’t look up from his drink at the “marvelous” snowy Christmas season scene unfolding outside the bar window.

A distracted waiter overpours wine all over a white table cloth where his customer, who has just walked in from his latest brush-off in some decades-long grudge against a man he knew long ago, finally is focused on “the now.” And yet even that’s a mess.

A “sad” mandolinist who “lost his legs to a land mine” plays “O Sole’ Mio” on a public sidewalk, perhaps musically lamenting that we never see the sun here. Andersson’s films all share the same color palette and thus even the exteriors have a whiff of soundstage about them.

The stand-out story thread here concerns a priest (Martin Serner), who is having a recurring nightmare. He is flogged, kicked and taunted as he is forced to carry a cross up a narrow street.

“Crucify! Crucify!” the Swedish punters shout (in Swedish with English subtitles).

As he relates this to his wife and later a shrink, he has two questions. “What have I done to them?” Yes, that’s the lone instance of “humor” here, and if you wonder why Swedish comedies aren’t exported the way their Strindberg/Bergman worshipping dramas are, there’s your answer.

The priest gulps sacramental wine before facing his congregation, tearfully muttering the same second question he’s asked his wife and his therapist.

“What am I to do now that I’ve lost my faith?”

The shrink may be making Andersson’s point in “About Endlessness” when he suggests one be “content with being alive.”

As that, like Andersson’s latest lovely but dense and ponderous film, isn’t much help to the suffering person it is spoken to, it’s as good an analog for the movie and its musings as any.

MPA Rating: unrated

Cast: Martin Serner, Tatiana Delaunay, Jan-Eje Ferling, Magnus Wallgren, narrated by Jessica Louthander.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Roy Andersson. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:16

No Milla Jovovich? No “Resident Evil.” Raccoon City or not.

Let’s trot out that $7 word we use for movies like “Honeydew” — “obscurant.” As in “Let’s control the release of information, futz around with the frame, the soundtrack and the editing to see if we can lure folks into the mystery.”

But here’s the cheaper description — “twisted,” “creepy,” and “seriously unsettling.”

It’s a vague David Lynch variation on the sort of films Sid Haig has shown up in over the decades — strange for strange’s sake, and kind of sick.

Devereux Milburn uses every trick in his ’70s-cinema-inspired-book to tart up this threadbare 75 minute horror thriller into a 107 minute evening gown.

Malin Barr and Sawyer Spielberg are a mismatched couple heading into the New England countryside so that she research some sort of wheat disease that’s killing cattle. Rylie’s a Phd candidate in botany.

The ill-tempered, distracted mutterer in the driver’s seat of their ancient Saab? Sam is a “waiter/actor” with memory issues and a restricted diet. Rylie’s the one doing the restricting.

They get lost when they lose their cell phone GPS signal, get chased off their unpermitted campsite in the dark. And then the Saab dies, as they were wont to do.

There’s nothing for it but to hoof it to something Rylie spies in the darkness.

“What, the light?”

“No, the darkness SURROUNDING the light.”

Sarcasm is wasted on Sam.

Every encounter they’ve had with the locals has been bizarre, but that’s nothing when compared with the dotty little old lady (Barbara Kingsley) who “Where are my manners?” them through her door, feeds them and lets them wonder just what the hell is going on around here.

There’s no cell service. Her landline only goes so far as “Pete,” an aged peer she summons to give them a jump-start. The family photos on the walls show aged Karen pushing around Cousin It in a wheelchair, and her son (Jamie Bradley) is mute, bandaged and morbidly obese.

“He might look like a chunky monkey now, but time was he’d come in at an even 400!”

Writer-director Milburn hurls every ounce of “technique” he can think of at the screen to dress up this “trapped in the dark” tale into something flashier.

The split-screens, screen wipes and moaning, layered, chanted incantations sound-effects and electronica score scream “70s Cinema.” The random XCU edits and gruesome closeups of bloodied bear traps and weird injuries have “David Lynch” written all over them.

But whizbang editing aside, it’s a slow slog of a movie with a seriously obvious destination.

In his first leading role, Spielberg — you know who’s son — proves adept at acting really annoying. The Swedish-born Barr is properly immersed in her role, such as it is.

There’s just not enough movie surrounding them to make “Honeydew” worth your trouble.

MPA Rating: unrated, blood, sex, profanity

Cast: Sawyer Spielberg, Malin Barr, Barbara Kingsley, Stephen D’Ambrose, Jamie Bradley

Credits: Directed by Devereux Milburn, script by Dan Kennedy and Devereux Milburn. A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:47

Today’s journey Around the World with Netflix lets us see how an Indian team approaches the classic “three hander,” the time-worn stagebound thriller with only three principal characters.

“Irul” is a chatty, twisty and overwrought “dark and stormy night” tale that almost drowns in its cornball theatricality. But like all such tales, it can be fascinating in the ways a different culture approaches dramatic conventions and claustrophobic screenplay problem solving.

Soubin Shahir is Alex, a novelist with a hit murder mystery on the shelves. Darshana Rajendran is Archana, his steady date, a big time lawyer who is addicted to her cell phone.

One dinner date interrupted by an endless succession of calls later, she lets him guilt her into a weekend getaway. “No cell phones,” he decrees, and she agrees (in Malayam with English subtitles, or dubbed).

Then that “dark and stormy night” sets in, the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere on a stunningly scenic and twisty mountain road that “Top Gear” and “The Grand Tour” should take note of. Nothing for it but to hike to a nearby mansion in the downpour and call for help.

Nobody answers the pounding on the door, or the ringing doorbell. They’re all but resigned to look for a Plan C when a tall man (Fahadh Faasil), answers, dramatically sucking down cigarettes in his elegant bathrobe.

Got a cell? A landline? Can we use it? What’s your name?

“As your host, I reserve the right to ask questions!” And no, the land line is down and “I don’t believe in cell phones.

“How convenient,” our couple must wonder — in Malayam or English or any language where common sense and theatrical conventions are spoken.

Let the evening’s intrigues begin. The power goes out, as does the cork.

“In vino veritas,” the shady host purrs as he pours out a little truth serum.

Damned if he doesn’t know Alex’s book. And before you know it, we’re in a heated discussion of serial killing, justice, “facts” vs. “truth” and lawyers — “who convert lies to truth for a living.”

Game on? What’s everybody hiding?

The incessant dialogue, dithering through the obvious, is wearing and the first sign this movie isn’t going to amount to much. Rajendran’s Archana is forced to blabber away constantly, and in the most inane way.

Car’s broken down, “Alex, should we call for help?” YA THINK?

Things go further awry, “Alex, should we call the police.” “Alex, we should DO something!” “Alex!” “ALEX!” “ALEX!”

Is she worried she or the viewer will forget the protagonist’s name?

The chatter doesn’t paper over the logical holes in the script, the far-fetched spin on a most conventional plot set up. Anything that we don’t see coming in this story trips us up because it is the least logical solution to the mystery placed before us, as in “That’s ridiculous.”

And the coda is downright laughable.

Still, there’s enough here that “Irul,” which means “darkness,” would be a fun, moody movie for a screenwriting class to pick apart and try to workshop into something better.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Soubin Shahir, Darshana Rajendran 

Credits: Directed by Naseef Yusuf Izuddin, script by Sunil Yadav, Naseef Yusuf Izuddin, Obeth S. Thomas, Anaz Bin Ibrahim and Abhiram Pothuval. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

June 21, Meyers brings one of the obscure legends of British colonialism, Sir James Brooke, to life. His visit to 1849s Borneo inspired “Lord Jim” and “The Man Who would Be King,” tales of a white man ruling native kingdoms, which is what he did.

Politically correct? Not a chance.