Movie Nation

“Pagglait” is a somewhat cheerful Indian dramedy about female empowerment set against the backdrop of a traditional Hindu funeral.

With its many characters, intrigues and generous servings of rituals and traditions, it could have been a “Monsoon Wedding” for funerals, offering the rest of the world insights into the culture and psyche of the people it is about.

But “Pagglait,” whose title translates as “follow your heart,” almost certainly will seem more “empowering” to Indian audiences. It’s tame and retrograde by Western standards, a meandering soap opera with most of its rough edges worn off. And it finishes with a sell-out that robs it of much of what its overt messaging purports to be.

An opening disclaimer chases off any hope that this will be a rude “Loved One,” or even “Darjeeling Limited” styled romp. “We respect all faiths, religions, communities and races,” the filmmaker (Umesh Bish) and producers want us to know. As if that excuses all that’s soft and mushy that follows.

A young Lucknow professional has died mere months into his marriage. His family throws together a funeral in haste, not bothering to invite or even inform everyone. That doesn’t keep others from showing up. When you have 13 days between cremation and that moment, by the River Ganges, when “the spirit sets off on its journey,” good luck keeping this “private.” Lots of opportunity for mischief.

Just getting anyone to focus on the deceased and on mourning proves to be a trial.

Younger brother Alok (Chetan Sharma) has his head shaved for the very specific duties he has over these two weeks, and he’s a bit put out.

The late Astik “is a nuisance, even after his death (in English, or in Hindi with English subtitles).”

His father (Ashutosh Rana) seems distraught, flipping out at their goofy doorbell chime, which is totally inappropriate for a somber occasion like this. But he’s not too upset to haggle over the price of rented mattresses for all the guests pouring into their house.

And the widow, Shandya (Sanya Malhotra)? Everybody can see there’s something not right with her. Is she in shock, in a deeper grief than anybody else?

Is THAT why she keeps asking for “Pepsi” and “snacks” when that simply isn’t done in a time like this?

Nope. It was an arranged marriage. She’s from a bigger city and never even got used to the old fashioned “Indian toilets” here. Thank heavens her Muslim pal Nazia (Shruti Sharma) shows up, someone she can complain to, an excuse for her to sneak out and get some real food and not this funerary “traditional” tasteless fare.

Over the course of those 13 days, family grudges will erupt, a tug of war over the widow sets up and hard feelings over an insurance policy beneficiary come to light as Sandhya struggles to get a handle on what she’s not feeling and what she wants to do next.

The chief complication for her? A photo that suggests that her loveless marriage had something to do with her husband’s true “sweetheart” (Sayani Gupta).

However Indian audiences take all this, what I’ve listed above are the classic ingredients of a funeral farce in Britain or the US. Being Indian, events are dragged out over two weeks when “Death at a Funeral,” either version, condensed them into a single over-the-top day.

A couple of emotional scenes add pathos. But much of what we’re shown — a mob of officiants, shouting and haggling, bazaar style, for the chance to run the family’s riverside ceremony and boat ride to spread ashes — is plainly meant to be funny, and doesn’t quite get there.

The acting is pretty good, even if there are too many characters for the script to adequately service. Malhotra, a top tier actress (“Photograph”), is solid as the lead. But much of what the script has her doing dilutes the performance and robs her character of impact. Shandhya’s outrage is muted, her hurt never quite makes it to the surface, her cunning — hiding her cards as she makes her decisions — underwhelming.

The third act twists and turns never throw us off the path that we know this story will take. Eventually.

So while the detail is utterly fascinating to an outsider and the tone is light, “Pagglait” not only feels like its cheated and shortchanged us, it’s also left out much of the heart we expect its “marry for love/not family finance” messaging to deliver.

MPA Rating: TV-14, adult themes

Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Sayani Gupta, Sheeba Chaddha, Ashutosh Rana, Chetan Sharma, Shruti Sharma

Credits: Scripted and directed by Umesh Bist. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

That big opening would be impressive even without the pandemic depressing turnout.

By Friday, “Kongzilla” will be on hundreds more screens and ready to accept big Easter weekend crowds. Still limited capacity, still wear your mask inside. But this is within striking distance of what we used to call a blockbuster.

Producer Sam Raimi helped lure some big names to “The Unholy,” a Catholic “Our Lady’s no ‘lady'” thriller timed to hit theaters for Easter. Biggest and best of all is the lead, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, cast as a cinematic cliche but delivering the goods as the latest take on the jaded, liquor-loving journalist trope, this time a disgraced reporter who specializes in the paranormal who stumbles across “real miracles.”

But the handsomely-mounted movie– writer-director Evan Spiliotopoulos’ adaptation of a 1983 novel — rather lets Morgan down as his character drifts from cynicism to True Believer. The effects are top notch and there are some chills in it. It’s just that the picture loses itself and any momentum it has in “explaining” these wonders and healings as the work of a Mary who isn’t the “Virgin Mary” all involved assume it is.

Morgan plays Jerry Finn, once a star reporter for a major Boston newspaper, now scraping by on scraps from a website, a freelancer who lost his career in a scandal a decade before. He haggles over pay, tops off his take-out coffee from his flask and heads out to cover a rural New England “cattle mutilation.”

The best scenes in the film are Finn’s jokey, eye-rolling reaction to a farmer’s claims about his cattle.

“Got a son? Sixteen, maybe?”

He’s “fifteen, actually.” And you can finish that joke yourself.

But Finn stumbles across something that might replace the story-that-wasn’t, a “kern doll” buried beneath a gnarled, long-dead tree next to the small town’s Catholic church. It’s wrapped in chains, with a nonsense date attached — “Feb. 31, 1845.”

What Finn doesn’t know is that “Unholy” opens with a grisly 1845 priest-sanctioned execution, seen from the victim’s point of view. When Finn smashes the doll, cooks up some supernatural reason for it, gets a photo and mutters “NOW we have a story,” we know he’s got more of a “story” than he bargained for. And almost running over a barefoot local teen, running down the road in her nightgown, doesn’t wise him up, either. At least “blood alcohol level” threats from the town doctor (Katie Aselton) sober him up.

But that girl? Alice (Cricket Brown) has been deaf and mute since birth. Finn hears her talking to the dead tree. Nobody believes him until she starts talking to everybody — the doctor, her uncle, the priest (William Sadler) and then the masses.

“Mary” has a message. “Mary” can heal. “Mary commands you to walk!”

The church has itself a controversy, and quite possibly a genuine miracle on its hands. Next thing you know, the Archbishop (Cary Elwes) is giving the media slide shows about miracles at Lourdes and Fatima, a Jesuit “inquisitor” (Diogo Morgado) is brought in to “disprove” (or prove) the miracles, according to Vatican doctrine, and Finn has “exclusive” access to the now-talkative young lady whom the locals insist “will be bigger than Taylor Swift” once word gets out.

Finn makes damned sure that word does get out.

Morgan is terrific in showing Finn’s cynicism, the “sell your soul for a story” shortcuts he’s willing to take to get back to where he was a decade ago, and his sarcastic take on faith and “miracles.”

“Does EVERYone quote the Bible around here?”

Finn fends off questions about his reputation with aplomb.

“Isn’t there something in the Bible about ‘forgiving the sinner his sins? Kind of a major plot point?”

But the air goes out of this horror balloon when Finn sobers up and the picture turns all serious, trying to “explain” all that’s going on like the worst parts of most horror movies, losing itself in Catholic Church exploitation of the new “shrine” planned for the village of Banfield.

The rising terror of the wraith that is responsible for all this — a VERY good and creepy effect, BTW — doesn’t “rise” at all. The script fritters away frights and suspense as if that isn’t the whole point of it all.

And Finn needs to hang onto that nasty edge. It’s the “Ace in the Hole” that makes such characters a reliable “type” in any movie where faith, hope and naivete have to confront the cold, hard truth.

The converted “believer” is always more dramatically dull than that the cynic who holds out to the bitter end. That’s an edge Morgan should have fought to keep.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for violent content, terror and some strong language

Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Cricket Brown, Katie Aselton, Diogo Morgado,William Sadler and Cary Elwes

Credits: Scripted and directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos, based on the novel “Shrine” by James Herbert. A Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:39

Inspired by a “true story” documented on twitter (ahem), this has a “Spring Break” vibe — sexual and dangerous and dirty.

“Hoeism” is the word they’re using to market it.

Coming this summer.

Hey, they’re marketing this as a “Good Friday” horror release set to dominate Easter Weekend. Well, everybody who doesn’t go to “Kongzilla” will want to see this, right?

So yeah, I get to use “Maundy” for maybe the first time in my life.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a cynical “Night Stalker” like a tipsy journalist specializing in the supernatural?

Totally down with that. I’d call it a series pilot. Morgan could be perfect for this.

“Entre Nos” presents a fairly conventional view of the American immigrant experience. But the intimacy in its portrayal of co-writer and star Paola Mendoza’s bitter arrival in New York is striking, as is the poignancy in her portrayal of her mother, a classic “against the odds” heroine in a story about playing the hand life deals you.

Appropriately enough, the film begins with a card game in their Queens apartment, with their dad (Andres Munar) and his brother (Eddie Martinez) playing, and little son Gabi (Sebastian Villada) sitting in.

“Watch out for your Pop,” mom Mariana (Mendoza) warns (in Spanish with English subtitles). “He’s a cheat.”

Any good natured laughing that crack off has the edge of exchanged half-dirty looks. Dad just brought them here. Before that, he moved them around Colombia a few times.

And before you know it, Antonio is explaining away his latest “got home late” with “I was celebrating. I got a new job. In Miami.” The twist this time? “I’m going alone.”

Whatever Mariana is thinking about his promises to “make some money,” then he’ll send for her, their little girl Andrea (Laura Montana) and Gabi, we know better. This latest move is his way of bailing out altogether.

If there’s an overarching flaw to “Entre Nos,” it’s that it’s bigger plot points are all that predictable, that obvious. Everything about the movie is given away in the foreshadowing in that opening scene — the personalities of the kids, Mom’s one special skill, Dad’s feckless, faithless nature.

What’s arresting here is the details we’re shown in the downward spiral of their experience. The husband’s brother takes some responsibility just long enough to change addresses himself. Their bus tickets to Miami are just out of reach, not that they’d be sure to even find Antonio if they did.

Mariana has no support system, no marketable skills, no family to call on for help. None of them has been there long enough to grasp English, although Gabi, 8 and left to babysit his sister all by himself as Mom job hunts, has mastered American profanity, which he teaches to little Andrea.

No steady job means they lose their apartment. Homeless and totally broke means they start collecting deposit recyclables just to eat, sleeping in the park or wherever they can find cardboard.

The crises pile up, the kids act out, the despair grows. Even those who might help (indie cinema icon Sarita Choudhury plays the manager of a cheap motel) can’t break New York character and make themselves generous.

And yet we sense that this mother will do what mothers do — persevere. She can’t give up, even as layers of her pride and sense of self-worth are stripped away. Because that jerk dumped her with two kids and no money in one of the most expensive cities in the hemisphere.

Mendoza, playing a version of her own mother, doesn’t let the woman come off as a saint. She is naive, trusting and she has a temper. She has reason to expect better. But she can’t wallow in that.

The lack of big twists or even deeper dives into despair park this film in the area of cinematic comfort food. But “Entres Nos (Between Us)” like the characters it portrays, wins you over with its warmth, its pluck and its optimism, that thin hope that brings so many here. Tomorrow things could get better.

MPA Rating: unrated, adult themes, profanity

Cast: Paola Mendoza, Sebastian Villada, Laura Montana and Sarita Chouduury

Credits: Scripted and directed by Gloria La Morte and Paola Mendoza. An IndiePix/Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:20

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison star in this one, which opens April 23.

An Ed Helms comeback?

It’s Sean Patrick Flanery vs Nicolas Cage’s son in “Assault on VA-33,” a half-hearted, half-assed “Die Hard” in a VA hospital shoot-em-up.

“Boondocks Saints” alumnus Flanery, emerging as the ginger-haired B-thriller (sometimes C) rival to Frank Grillo, plays a battered, traumatized and triggered veteran who stumbles into a plot to kidnap a general, shoot a bunch of people and free a Russian mobster/terrorist’s “baby brudder.”

Weston Cage Coppola has little of the “unstable” allure of his crazy-when-he-needs-to-be dad as the villain who has planned this caper to free that sibling, but eez saddled with barely-competent henchmen, and one zeriously zilly accent.

“Eye vish eye vas dealink vith professionals…Eef you are goink to do zis wit brutality, make sure eet ees focused.“

Daddy teach you that?

Gina Holden is the VA psychotherapist wife of our hero, one of the hostages. And Michael Jai White is the skeptical suburban police chief who takes a LOT of convincing before springing into action, if that’s the right word for it. “Black Dynamite” needed a lot more to do here.

And he’s not alone. The fights are walk-throughs, the extras telegraph their beatings/deaths and the director Christopher Ray, famed for “Two Headed Shark Attack” and “Dick Dickster,” loses track of our hero for most of the first two thirds of the movie.

He’s all about the bad guys, who joke around, execute people, are sloppily seal their fates as if they’re upset they were dragged out of the hair salon for this.

Pretty bad show, all around.

MPA Rating: R for violence and language

Cast: Sean Patrick Flanery, Michael Jai White, Gina Holden, Weston Cage Coppola, Brittany Underwood, Rob Van Dam

Credits: Directed by Christopher Ray, script by Scott Thomas Reynolds. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:29

“The Sound of Identity” makes its way to streaming June 1.