Movie Nation

If your favorite band gets labeled “the voice of a doomed generation,” maybe you figure you’re winning that debate over “the only band that matters.” Then again, if the rest of music fandom doesn’t agree, if that very band acknowledges “The World Won’t Listen,” what then?

“Shoplifters of the World” is a musical coming-of-age comedy for Generation X, a derivative but alternately sweet and edgy homage to fans of Manchester’s The Smiths. They were a twangy, tuneful and gloomy rock ensemble that flashed by in the post-New Romantics ’80s until they abruptly hung it all up.

Music documentary veteran Stephen Kijack tries for a sort of R-rated John Hughes vibe, a movie with a little “High Fidelity,” a bit of “Pump Up the Volume” and a taste of “Airheads” about it. It’s a story set on the day in 1987 that The Smiths announce their breakup. And their Denver fans — disaffected, despairing, down for “Meat is Murder” the LP and the lifestyle — do not take it well.

Whatever you do, don’t call Cleo (Helena Howard of Amazon’s “The Wilds”) a “poser.” She’s got the “Meat Is Murder” vanity plate on her ancient VW and a dead-end future staring her in the face. This is NOT the day to test her.

“I f—–g HATE Molly Ringwald...’Pretty in Pink,’ what is THAT about? That freckled freak should try living with MY mother!”

Dean (Ellar Coltrane of “Boyhood”), clerk of the only record store that lets her shoplift Smiths cassettes, takes the news just as badly. But he’s the quiet type, a brooder.

“I really do wonder what’s left to live for these days?”

Cleo’s pals include Sheila (Elena Kampouris), a Madonna wannabe who eschews “that whole ‘boy toy’ thing,” Sheila’s “vow of celibacy” British boyfriend, Patrick (James Bloor) and their pal Billy (Nick Krause), “about to make the biggest mistake” of his young life. He reports to the Army the next day.

Billy crushes on Cleo, Patrick isn’t sure if he digs girls, Sheila is sexually frustrated and Cleo won’t stop bemoaning The Smiths. Sounds like a fun evening. Let’s hit a party!

But Dean? He’s got a gun, a box of Smiths LPs and a beef. He takes Full Metal Mickey at KISS-101-FM hostage and forces him to lay off the Ozzy and “Judas F—–g Priest” and spend an evening spinning “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable” and “I Know it’s Over” and “Girlfriend in a Coma” and their ilk.

As Full Metal Mickey is played by manic man mountain Joe Manganiello, you can imagine how that goes down. No “pansy-ass records” for Mickey. He won’t be responsible that “spike in the suicide rate,” nossir.

Except the kid’s got a gun. “Hair bands, BOY bands, endless loops of moldy ‘classics.’ This station vomits CHEEZEwhiz all over Denver!” The kid won’t be dissuaded.

“Shoplifters” is a parade of ’80s MTV fashions — proto-Goths and dueling Madanna wannabes, androgynous eye-liner for the sexually uncertain guys. Nobody wants to admit that EVERYbody is a poser at that age (early 20s), and their musical tastes reflect that.

The cool kids are into Morrissey and The Smiths, might consider Happy Mondays, and wear the uniforms of their tribe accordingly.

Coltrane is getting a lot of shots at stardom, but he lacks the screen presence to carry off a major comic role like this off. He needed to watch the radio station held hostage comedy “Airheads” to get an idea of how to hold his own with Manganiello in this tense and presumably hilarious situation.

Come to think of it, that’s not a very “Smiths Fan” thing to do — taking a gun into a radio station. Perhaps that’s an unsolvable acting dilemma.

Howard has screen presence but needs a role that calls for her to do more than rant and take dramatic, inexperienced drags on various cigarettes.

There are little flashes of fun in all this — a Thomas Lennon (record store owner) cameo here, a Manganiello rant there. But the whole is so overfamiliar that “Shoplifting” never gets over being a drag.

MPA Rating: unrated, gunplay, drug abuse, sex and profanity

Cast: Ellar Coltrane, Helena Howard, Elena Kampouris, Nick Krouse, James Bloor, Thomas Lennon and Joe Manganiello.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Stephen Kijak. An RLJE release.

Running time: 1:31

“Six Minutes to Midnight” is the sort of high gloss “programmer” Hollywood and Pinewood (and Shepperton, etc.) used to turn out by the dozens.

The plot has Nazis, spies, action and preposterous coincidences and improbabilities, a “talks too much” villain, cheap thrills and sentimental sop. But thanks to a game cast and a clever and historically-accurate hook, it’s poppycock that plays.

Eddie Izzard co-wrote and stars in this story of murderous intrigues at Victoria Augusta College in Bexhill-on-Sea, a finishing school for the daughters of the German elite. We meet them as they march, exercise and sing like the good little Nazis they are. For fun, they like nothing better than listening to Der Furher on der wireless.

Miss Rocholl (Oscar-winner Judi Dench), their English governess, dotes on her charges and teaches poise, manners and comportment while almost-an-Olympian Ilse (Carla Juri) ensures they’re properly exercised.

But they have a problem keeping English teachers. We meet the first as he comes to an unfortunate end. He was onto something at the school.

It’s August of 1939, the world is teetering toward war and the English are enjoying the last days of peace and summer at the beach. But Mr. Miller (Izzard) needs a job, and “journeyman teacher” or not, Miss Rocholl needs that post filled. He’s hired.

He, like his predecessor, is a spy. And these girls? “

“Every chess game has its pawns.”

If they’re smuggled out, it means war is imminent. If the Brits seize them first, “we could start the whole bloody thing ourselves.”

Can Mr. Miller, who shocks the little Eva Brauns when he answers their German insults in German, find out what’s going on? Will he meet the same fate as his predecessor, and at whose hand?

What we have here is a bit of history with a couple of classic films mashed up around it. This is “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” grafted onto “Eye of the Needle.” Nazi plots and intrigues swirl around the indoctrinated students.

“We shouldn’t apologize for passion,” Miss Rochell rationalizes, “or a country that strives to be great.” But despite such Furher-apologia, not all of the students are obedient mistresses of the Master Race.

Izzard makes a plucky hero, an Everyman a bit long in the tooth for derring-do. But it helps to think of the comic-turned-actor as the obsessive marathoner (for charity) that he’s become in each of Miller’s many far-fetched escapes.

A second Oscar winner, Jim Broadbent, shows up as a local bus driver who cracks “Auf wiedersehen” to anybody getting getting off at “that school,” and James D’Arcy (“Dunkirk”) plays a cop a little too fond of saying “Old boy.”

“I don’t like your tone!”

“Quite all right. I get that a lot.“

It’s a trifle silly. But you don’t have to take “Six Minutes to Midnight” seriously to lose yourself in the pleasure of some very fine actors having a go at an old fashioned B-movie, poppycock included.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for some violence

Cast: Eddie Izzard, Carla Juri, Tijan Marei, James D’Arcy, Jim Broadbent and Judi Dench

Credits: Directed by Andy Goddard, script by Eddie Izzard, Celyn Jones and Andy Goddard. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:40

“Experimental films” rarely make it beyond film festivals, or college cinema societies, but “My Mexican Bretzel” gained enough notoriety in that world to achieve DVD and streaming release.

It’s an exercise in social commentary and memory, embracing the nostalgia of watching soundless old home movies with friends and family, and the modern improv comedy gimmick of inventing a story to fit the images.

If one of the cardinal rules of cinema is that the story can be approached and understood simply by what we see on the screen, writer-director Nuria Giménez fails utterly. The project makes little sense without reading up on its back story, even if it makes obvious points about our narcissistic need to film where we are and what we’re doing and the fact that this predates the cell-phone selfie era.

Giménez uses home movies shot on 16mm by her filmmaker-grandfather (Frank A. Lorang) to tell the tragic, privileged, Forrest-Gumpish story of Leon and Vivian Barrett, a Swiss couple whose lives are tracked from the 1940s into the late 1960s.

The people “playing” that couple are Giménez’s Mexican grandparents, Isle G. Ringier and Lorang.

Using a little black and white Swiss Air Force footage from the ’40s, “Bretzel” establishes that Leon was a pilot who lost his hearing in a crash. But their upper middle class lives and fortunes are secured when he’s brought in on a sweetheart pharmaceutical deal, a “miracle drug” called Lovedyn.

In glorious time-capsule color footage, we experience (with an occasional sound effect) their extensive travels — Paris to New York, Barcelona in the ’50s, a Grand Tour of France and the Med, Mallorca, train travel, motor yachting the lakes of Switzerland, crossings on the Queen Mary, airline flights from the propeller driven ’40s to the jet age ’60s.

They show off an auto show concourse’s array of the great coupes and roadsters of the era, visit the Italian Mille Miglia road rally and attend the infamous 1955 24 Hours of LeMans, where a crash killed over 80 spectators.

And most of this is experienced in silence, with scattered sound effects and British newsreel commentary on the LeMans disaster.

Vivian “narrates” the story of a fading marriage, dalliances, depression and the many sayings of her favorite pre-Beatles writer-guru, Paravadin Kanvar Kharjappali.

The narration is delivered in subtitles, not voice-over. And that “writer,” the one who serves up “Lies are just another way of telling the truth” and “life is a mixture of play and prison?” Also fictional.

The footage is fascinating in and of itself, and kudos to Lorang for shooting it and Giménez for rescuing it.

The rich hues of the past captured in that footage is the main appeal of “My Mexican Bretzel,” but Vivian’s narrated observations on our need to film ourselves and what we’re doing — constantly — are the heart of the film.

“I don’t know whether we film what we do, or do we do the things we do to film them.” Sounds like a Salon.com essay on selfiedom and social media humbragging in the making. Vivian comes to resent the boat, the lifestyle and the constant filming, declaring decades before vacations became the victim of iPhone obsession that “Leon is only looking at me through the lens.”

Experimental films aren’t for everyone, and I found this one’s silent narration — subtitles only — a serious drawback. How would it have hurt the film to hear a “Vivian” tell her story and make her musings, in English and/or Spanish? Not in the least. It’s an unnecessary extra obstacle to the film being approachable.

As with many films in this broad category of cinema (It’s not really a genre.), once you “get” the gimmick, there’s a little struggle with what comes after — the “Yeah, and?” conundrum.

“My Mexican Bretzel” is minimalist enough that the viewer takes from it some of what she or he brings to it. But like the inane natterings of a philosopher whose gift is stating the obvious in the most obscure way he or she can think of, Giménez’s musings layered on top of her grandparents’ story have the whiff of “emperor’s new clothes” about them.

MPA Rating: unrated, smoking

Cast:  Ilse G. Ringier and Frank A. Lorang

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nuria Giménez. An Indiepix release

Running time: 1:13

Knowing a movie like this is on my calendar is what gets me up in the morning. Opens Friday.

A vegan vampire hunter sits — I’m envisioning the lotus position — on the horns of a dilemma.

Pretty hard to reconcile those competing agendas.

“First of all, no hurting…or killing.” No “stakes,” in other words. Or steaks.

But if mellow, tai chi loving Rev (Ari Schneider) is going to join his paranoid schizophrenic security guard pal Hawk (Ryan Barton-Grimley) in his mania, a” fight against injustice and the supernatural,” killing “blood-sucking allergic-to-sunlight filthy-ass vampires,” well some compromise is in order.

“Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers” is a laugh-littered no-budget vampire slaughter comedy in the tradition of “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.” Over-the-top blasts of fake blood, sight gags by the score, at times jaunty and with many a throw-away funny line, it is tailor-made for a (socially distanced) party of Tommy Chong’s best customers.

Stone cold sober? It’s got a few giggles. On the whole, I’d call it a near-miss.

Hawk is living in a tattered pup tent in his parents’ backyard when we meet him. His mood will not improve as he’s late to work and quick to mock how angry he makes his exasperated and religiously prudish boss (Casey Graf).

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell your wives.”

Rev tries to calm Hawk’sconstant “Anger Management” issues. But tai chi on the beach with janitor Rev doesn’t promise any quick fix.

“Take that up with the liberals!”

He spies pasty-faced, bloody-fanged folk he IDs as vampires, and he’s on the case, stake in his back pocket and backup tool/weapon at the ready.

“Good enough for the Swiss Army, it’s good enough for me!”

Soon they add would-be writer/researcher (Jana Savage) to their ranks, with the blessing of Hawk’s Army prison mentor (Richard Gaylor), they take on their quest.

Writer-director-star Barton-Grimley gets a little winded here and there. And pictures this peppered with jokes can be wearing if the plot and the gags — increasingly graphic vampire violence — aren’t all that. Whiplash edits and whiplash sound effects keep it moving, but the drag of repetition sets in.

Cheapness as a virtue is a long-established horror comedy tradition. And you’ve got to appreciate the anger — “What kind of loser-ass vampire lives in a garage?” — and skewering, self-owning Tarantino shots.

Yes, “From Dusk Till Dawn” starred “that handsome TV doctor” and “the director who tries to be an actor.”

Cheese like this is best served with giggly friends. Rent “Hawk and Rev” after “a proper date, dinner in a place named after a ‘garden!'” Just remember to finish off the wine before you do.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, sexual gags, profanity aplenty

Cast:  Ryan Barton-Grimley, Ari Schneider, Jana Savage, Richard Gayler, Jeff Lorch and Casey Graf

Credits: Scripted by directed by Ryan Barton-Grimley. A Loaded Image release.

Running time: 1:25

Deep sea treasure hunters become Bank of Spain robbers in “The Vault,” a heist picture built on “The Italian Job” model, only without the laughs.

The criminal masterminds are British and there’s a hint of jingoism in their quest. They’re trying to recover something associated with privateer/warrior/explorer Sir Francis Drake. There’s no Michael Caine, no jokes and not a Mini Cooper in sight. And it’s in Madrid and not Turin, Italy. But come on. It took five credited screenwriters to come up with this humorless, tepid “Italian Job” knockoff?

Freddie Highmore plays an oil baron’s son just finishing up engineering school. He’s fending off suitors from his father’s world when a mysterious text arrives. The “opportunity of a lifetime” awaits.

The blonde pickpocket who changes hair colors, accents and names? She (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) might have been called “the bait” in a less woke era. But young Thom Laybrick (again, FIVE screenwriters) is more intrigued by the veteran deep sea “salvager” (Liam Cunningham) and his pitch.

There’s something he wants. It’s in the Bank of Spain, in an ingenious, gigantic, overbuilt and “impossible” vault. Are you in?

This strikes me as where “The Vault” starts to go wrong. We’ve been treated to a not-quite-suspenseful prologue where Walter (Cunningham) and his ace diver (Sam Riley) recover treasure that they then legally lose custody of. Lawyer Margaret (Famke Janssen) was no help at all. So this bank job is to recover something they’ve already risked big cash and lives to get their hands on.

Walter makes nothing of that, no “Get back what’s mine” (because it isn’t) outrage, no “England expects every man to do his bank-robbing duty” rubbish. Specifics of the “prize” are sketchy. And we aren’t treating skilled, alluring and amoral young female accomplices as “bait” in such pictures any more.

But the trouble is, there’s too little here that’s supposed to lure this earnest, privileged and dull young engineer into crossing the line and risking prison or worse — just the “problem” of this “impossible” low-tech vault.

Next thing we know, we’re in Madrid to meet the German IT whiz (Axel Stein) and the Spanish procurer (Spanish star Luis Tosar of “Eye for an Eye” and “Retribution”). He can get “whatever you need” — 3D printers have just been invented, “thermal lances, a fire suit and 500 liters of nitrogen” come later.

What follows is a wildly improbable, generally dull attempted heist with pre-robbery robberies, ziplines and water hazards and a fanatical Spanish security chief (Jose Coronado) trying to keep his vast “team” engaged in defending the vault in the middle of Spain’s march to victory in the 2010 World Cup, which has the country transfixed.

I kept groping around for something about this story to latch onto, and finding nothing.

It’s not funny, not romantic or sexy and not particularly colorful. Thom joking that he’s no “Danny Ocean” is the closest “The Vault” gets to that light tone.

Which is fine. There are caper comedies and there are heist pictures, and this is the latter. So it needs to get by on “the plan,” an engaging “team,” suspense and clever improvisation when “the best laid plans” of the burglars “Gang aft a-gley.”

But there’s little tension and a lot of nonsensical tech to “The Vault,” great big sets but not much to the set pieces.

It starts to feel compromised early on, and that costs it a point of view. A Spanish co-production about Brits, a German and Spaniards robbing the Banco de España needs more intense motivation for everyone involved. Every character in this seems blithely unaware of the risk-rewards ratio in this enterprise. The actors reinforce this “low stakes” air. It’s as if they see that there’s not a lot of logic to any of this and the on-screen “planning,” a staple of the genre, feels half-assed.

And when your film’s not a comedy, that matters even more.

MPA Rating:  R for language (profanity)

Cast: Freddie Highmore, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Sam Riley, Luis Tosar, Jose Coronado, Liam Cunningham and Famke Janssen

Credits: Directed by Jaume Balagueró, script by Rowan Athale, Michel Gaztambide, Borja Glez Santaolalla, Andrés M. Koppel and Rafa Martínez. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:58

Man, who had weaselly Bob Odenkirk as The New Liam Neeson in the “savage cinema of the future” pool?

The “Saturday Night Live” writer, “Drunk History” mainstay, dopey “How I Met Your Mother” boss and “Breaking Bad” breakout/spinoff star completes his journey to “fiftysomething dude you don’t want to mess with” in “Nobody.” It’s the latest thriller built out of the suburban Dad, Mom or whoever with “particular skills,” skills that only come to the fore when somebody without a clue does him or her a great wrong.

It’s a little “John Wick,” a bit of “Taken,” a touch of “The Accountant,” and so on. These characters just “want to be left alone.” Thank heavens there’s always somebody not interested in keeping the peace.

Our guy is introduced, bruised and bloodied, in police custody and that immortal question is snapped in his direction by befuddled cops.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Me? I’m NObody!”

It all started with a home invasion. Mild-mannered Hutch (Odenkirk) comes at the intruders with a 3-wood, but holds back. His teen son (Gage Munroe) gets the drop on them, but Dad backs off. The kid shames him. A neighbor gives Hutch the “I wish they’d come in MY house,” a cop rolls his eyes even as he’s saying “You did the right thing.”

His wife? She (Connie Nielsen) gives him a look of pained pity.

But we’ve seen him size the intruders up, notice a tattoo and make note of them. Whatever his “you being you” day job — half-bullied accountant at a machine shop run by his father-in-law (Michael Ironside) — we figure there’s something he’s not telling us, some reason for deciding to “minimize the damage.”

But when his little girl’s kitty cat bracelet goes missing, that’s it. Time to hit the mean streets — of Winnipeg, Manitoba — and take care of business.

“John Wick” screenwriter Derek Kolstad has used Russian villains before, so why not Canadian Russians here? “Nobody” also has much of the savagery and a similarly droll-about-his-skills hero.

“I used to be an auditor” for some agency, Hutch explains, “the LAST guy you want to see” type.

Kolstad and “Hardcore Henry” director Ilya Naishuller don’t bother to hide the borrowings from “John Wick.” No Lance Reddick or Peter Stormare here. We have Christopher Lloyd (Hutch’s nursing home-bound Dad) and RZA (as Hutch’s advisor and tie to his old life) instead.

RZA is a fair action director himself. Wonder if he took notes on set? Because Naishuller puts on a clinic on how to give a formula thriller violence that pops and comedy that takes a little of the edge off.

Musical counterpoints to the brawls and shootouts range from Tchaikovsky and Pat Benatar to Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Gerry and the Pacemakers and…Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme’.

And Odenkirk, far more EveryMan than say, Man Mountain Liam Neeson in the “Taken” films and their variations, does what he does in most of his screen appearances. He under-reacts. He’s capable in the fight scenes and deadpan everywhere else. His best lines are growled in voice-over.

“I hope these ass—-s like hospital food.”

Our villain (Aleksey Serebryakov) is just good enough, even if he’s playing a Russian mob “type” that’s been worn out over the past 20 years of action pics.

“Eeef you cannot recognize wolf eeen sheep’s clothing, I kvestion the viability of your EMPLOYMENT here.”

There may be nothing new to “Nobody.” But Odenkirk & Crew make sure that this mass production action movie has plenty of bespoke fun stitched in.

MPA Rating:  R for strong violence and bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use 

Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Aleksey Serebryakov, Michael Ironside, Christopher Lloyd and RZA.

Credits: Directed by Ilya Naishuller, script by Derek Kolstad. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:32

So many (rhetorical) questions. What DID bad guys look like before three-day stubble was perfected by Don Johnson? What did they drive in the years before the black Excursions and Escalades?

“Enhanced” is a unimaginative and generally drab sci-fi thriller about experimental “enhanced” humans on the run and those from SAISEI who hunt them.

The “enhanced” live as off-the-grid as they can, sleeping in vans, doing menial work.

The simple act of defending themselves gets people killed. They can summon up this psychic EMP that knocks electronics out and knocks their adversaries for a look.

They don’t realize they should worry that one of their own might be out hunting and killing them. But there also might be someone from their ranks looking to save them.

No, he’s not bald, not named Xavier and doesn’t have any “special school.”

Anna (Alanna Bale) is our heroine, lying low as a mechanic who needs fewer power tools than most who do that job. George (George Tchortov) is a SAISEI operative, “just following orders…I’m protecting people from their mistakes…try not to take it personally.”

The “subjects” are classified as “Delta, Charlie, Echo and Bravo” class “enhanced.” What about Alpha?

“Enhanced” is the sort of script (James Mark of “Kill Order” wrote and directed it) where a character says “Alphas don’t exist,” and we know before seeing one (Chris Mark) that they do.

There’s a cool bright-blue-eyeball effect that the “enhanced” exhibit before they show how “enhanced” they are. There are cheesier effects — little arm-shield gadgets the SAISEI agents wear over their matching Old Navy pea coats, retractable nightsticks with bright blue bulbs on the tip.

The fights are staged at not-quite-full speed, the dialogue is cheesy and of the “You have what belongs to me” variety.

The performances? Perfunctory.

People put up money for this, other people put in effort. It’s always a shame to write off a picture with “nothing new to see here,” but that pretty much covers “Enhanced.”

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Alanna Bale, George Tchortov, Chris Mark, Adrian Holmes

Credits: Scripted and directed by James Mark. A Vertical Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:40

Still mystified at all this support of the script for the mockumentary “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”

But Emerald Fennell’s scalding script for “Promising Young Woman” is the real deal amd worthy of its Oscar momentum, even if I would’vd voted for several alternatives.

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/wga-awards-winners-2021-writers-guild-1234935361/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The Rodrigo Garcia addiction drama opens May 21.

Https://youtu.be/Tb42RG3T1uk