Movie Nation

Ready to head down the rabbit hole of the unsolved murders of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur? Well, so am I.

Let the author of a book that investigated the crime,”LAbyrinth,” and the director of “The Lincoln Lawyer” take us into a “J.F.K./Kill the Messenger” deep dive into these cases and “theories” on what happened, and who caused it.

They were wildly famous people murdered in front of witnesses in two jurisdictions with a big LAPD connection to them both, especially the killing of Christopher “Biggie” Wallace in downtown Los Angeles in 1997.

“City of Lies” is another lone-investigator-pursues-a-truth-others-don’t-want-to-see narrative, this one built around an LAPD detective, Randall Poole (Johnny Depp) and a reporter, Jack Jackson (Forest Whitaker) digging into this “cold case” decades after the killings went down. Jackson is based on investigative reporter Randall Sullivan, who collaborated with Poole in writing “LAbyrinthe.”

Director Brad Furman starts with a peripheral crime set-up to make us believe one thing, but which unravels the larger tale as we see it from another angle. That’s kind of how the entire film plays as well, a lot of info, some of it misdirecting our attention.

He lets his film debunk the “Biggie put out a hit on Tupac” myth — again — and concentrates on the killing of Christopher Wallace.

We see the crime scene modeled in Matchbox cars and meet the faces of the the byzantine world of off-duty cops aligned with Death Row Records or entangled in the Rampart corruption (and worse) scandal.

Here it is, 24 years later, and we don’t know why this case/these cases were never solved, don’t know whether Los Angeles police officers are implicated and hear only “I can’t comment on an open investigation” from that circle-the-wagons department, a dodge even Joseph Heller (“Catch-22”) would admire.

But as the film carries out a public service, renewing interest in shamefully unsolved crimes, as we hear the mantra “A detective says ‘I don’t know until I can prove it,'” and as the cast of characters grows even as interest in the case wanes, “City of Lies” loses its way as only a story without a satisfactory ending can.

An opening road rage incident seems to point to an armed, undercover cop (Shea Whigham in full redneck mode) gunning down a fellow officer (Amin Joseph), also undercover, and uses his “team” to cover up the crime.

But Officer Gaines (Joseph) was notorious in his own right, and driving a vehicle connected to Suge Knight’s record-label-as-street-gang, Death Row.

And that’s how Det. Poole gets sucked into “the labyrinth,” asking questions, collating stories, stumbling into this or that “undercover” law enforcement officer doing this, or that “off-duty” cop up to no good in some other regard.

Whitaker’s reporter shows up 18 years after the crime to badger the now-retired and reluctant Poole into downloading everything he learned in the case, which points us away from the “record label beef” that was quickly attached to the murders, and towards renegade police, Fruit of Islam “security” folk, Suge Knight and the uncomfortable post-OJ/post-Rodney King LAPD facing the spectacle of “white cops accusing Black cops” in two high profile murders.

The performances are solid, and the early scenes — recreating the crimes, etc. — are fascinating at a documentary level. Setting up the context is useful, a PD under a cloud and determined to avoid race riots that might return if dirty cops were in on all this.

But the rabbit hole closed in for me about an hour in. One too many “informants,” two or three too many police (Michael Pare and Toby Huss are cast as a couple of them), the bizarre media entity that this Jack Jackson is allegedly reporting for make the movie a spider’s web of competing, confusing threads.

And Depp’s “I’m obsessed with the truth” crusading detective, disillusioned with the idea of righteous “brother officers,” takes on a whiff of prosecutor Jim Garrison’s deluded, self-righteous crusade at finding the “conspiracy” that murdered Kennedy in “J.F.K.”

Yes, we can believe Poole’s “The only cases like this (high profile) that aren’t solved is because the police don’t want” to look, or have others look, at that solution. You don’t have to be downwind to think this whole affair smells to high heaven.

But you can’t just throw a lot of characters and facts and suspicious connections and theories at the viewer and have us made sense of it for you.

MPA Rating: R for language throughout, some violence and drug use 

Cast: Johnny Deppy, Forest Whitaker, Shea Whigham, Xander Berkeley, Michael Pare, Toby Huss

Credits: Directed by Brad Furman, script by Christian Contreras, based on a book by Randall Sullivan. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:52

March 27 this doc comes out.

HBO is showing this, and while they’re usually good at promoting/pitching their docs to critics, I haven’t heard a peep out of them about this one.

Figures. The one EVERYbody is anxious to see, and…crickets.

So much for “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm,” right? Well, a screenplay (!?) nomination and best supporting actress nod will do.

The screenplay nomination was for a LOT of writers, which helps explain it.

And Sacha Baron Cohen was nominated as an actor — for his dazzling if a bit long in the tooth Abbie Hoffman turn in “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

But after the Golden Globes, after the Producer’s Guild tapped it as “awards worthy,” it was not unreasonable to expect a Best Picture nomination. Thankfully, that minor catastrophe was avoided.

“Mank” made a splash, “News of the World” not so much.

“One Night in Miami” barely made a stir, Spike Lee’s popular buzzed bust “Da Five Bloods” was a no-show, almost completely a no-show.

“Mank,” which barely merited a mention earlier this awards season, came up with a whopping 10 nominations. Meh.

Nothing much for “emma.” nothing at all for “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” as stodgy old Brit lit is now officially “out.” I guess. Pity.

“The United States v. Billie Holiday” scored an acting nomination for Audra Day. And that’s pretty much it.

A whopping 35 nominations went to Netflix, 12 more to Amazon. Apple got it’s first ever, for the animated “Wolfwalkers” and “Greyhound” (sound).

Not a terrible field, considering some of the international contenders were from 2019, release slates were wrecked and nobody went out to the movies last year.

Weakest film to do well? “One Night in Miami.” Best film nearly shut out? “News of the World,” along with “emma.” and Mr. Copperfield.

Asian actors, women directors, African American (and Afro-British) actors and actresses? A VERY diverse Oscar night is in store.

Your best supporting actress contenders…

Maria Bakalova – “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
Glenn Close – “Hillbilly Elegy”
Olivia Colman – “The Father
Amanda Seyfried – “Mank”
Yuh-Hung Youn – “Minari”

If Hollywood is EVER going to honor Glenn Close, this is her shot. Crappy memoir, annoying Netflix movie, but damn she’s good in it. Colman, Seyfried should be contenders, Yuh-Hung Youn has a good shot, VERY good. Bakalova could easily happen and would be a crying shame, but everybody loves what she did to Rudy.

Best supporting actor contenders?

Sacha Baron Cohen – “The Trial of the Chicago 7”
Daniel Kaluuya – “Judas and the Black Messiah”
Leslie Odom Jr. – “One Night In Miami”
Paul Raci – “Sound of Metal”
LaKeith Stanfield – “Judas and the Black Messiah”

I barely recall Paul Raci’s work in “Sound of Metal,” Kaluuya should be the favorite, but he has to compete with LaKeith Stanfield in the same category. Unfortunate. Cohen could win this. Odom made little impression working with a preachy, starchy script.

Best actors?

Riz Ahmed – “Sound of Metal”
Chadwick Boseman – “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Anthony Hopkins – “The Father”
Gary Oldman – “Mank”
Steven Yeun – “Minari”

So they made Boseman the favorite in this field, when they could have nominated him as a supporting player and put Kaluuya here and made DK of “Black Messiah” the favorite.

Does Riz have a shot? Hopkins dazzled, Oldman underwhelmed and Yeun was OK in a movie that’s got a lot of cultural currency, but seems a tad over-hyped at this point.

No Mads Mikkelson for “Another Round?” Peasants. No Hanks for “News of the World” either. Oh well.

Best Actress

Viola Davis – “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Andra Day – “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday”
Vanessa Kirby – “Pieces of a Woman”
Frances McDormand – “Nomadland”
Carey Mulligan – “Promising Young Woman”

If this doesn’t go to McDormand, it’s anybody’s call. Day, a standout in a middling film, is the longest shot. Kirby was good, Mulligan much better. Viola has made “dazzling” and “real” trademarks. She gave the best performance in this field, I say.

Your Best Picture field is…

“Judas and the Black Messiah” — “The Father” — “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” — “Mank” — “The Sound of Metal” — “Minari” — “Promising Young Woman” — and the favorite “Nomadland.”

No “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?” No “News of the World?” Do “best directors direct best pictures?” Why not put “Another Round” in this field? Come on, now.

At least it’s up for Best International feature.

“Soul” got some “best picture” buzz, which was…misguided.

Best International Feature? 

“Another Round”
“Better Days”
“Collective”
“The Man Who Sold His Skin”
“Quo Vadis, Aida?”

I liked “Collective,” REALLY liked “The Man Who Sold His Skin.” LOVED “Another Round.”

It’s good that they nominated “Collective” here and for best documentary. Because “Crip Camp” seems like the best doc favorite.

Best Documentary

“Collective”
“Crip Camp”
“The Mole Agent”
“My Octopus Teacher”
“Time”

Best directors?

Thomas Vinterberg for “Another Round,” Lee Isaac Chung for “Minari,” David Fincher for “Mank,” Chloe Chao for “Nomadland,” Emerald Fennell for “Promising Young Woman.”

No George Wolfe for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom?” Two women in that field make this a landmark year for inclusion. With the buzz she was getting, I thought Regina King was in.

Aaron Sorkin didn’t get a “Chicago 7” nomination either.

.

The Best Animated Feature field this year is a tad bloated. I love “Sean the Sheep” as much as anybody not from New Zealand or “Montaaaaaaaaaahhhhna.” But come on.

“Sean the Sheep: Farmageddon.” “Onward,” (UGH) “Over the Moon,” “Soul,” “Wolfwalkers”

If it was up to me, “Wolfwalkers” would get it. “Soul” will, as it’s not up to me.

Best Adapted Screenplay

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
“The Father”
“Nomadland”
“One Night In Miami”
“The White Tiger”

“The White Tiger” Netflix movie was an interesting choice. I think the stagey (mediocre theater) script for “One Night in Miami” was an obstacle Regina King and her cast never quite overcame, but OK.

“Ma Rainey” was FAR better source material, and a fine adaptation. This isn’t just an Oscar “snub.” It’s a blunder.

Best Original Screenplay

Judas and the Black Messiah
“Minari”
“Promising Young Woman”
“Sound of Metal”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7”

A very good field in this category, “Mank” is conspicuously missing only in the sense that Fincher was directing his Dad’s long unfilmed screenplay. Which wasn’t one of the year’s best, TBH.

Best Cinematography

Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
News of the World
Nomadland
The Trial of the Chicago 7

A top flight field. I found the digital
B&W of “Mank” washed out. “Nomadland” should win, but “Judas” and “News” were striking tooling, too.

Best Costume Design

Emma.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
Mulan
Pinocchio

Best Film Editing

The Father
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

“Emma.”
Hillbilly Elegy
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
Pinocchio

Best Original Score

“Da 5 Bloods”
Mank
Minari
News of the World
Soul

Best Original Song

“Fight for You” – Judas and the Black Messiah
“Hear My Voice – The Trial of the Chicago 7
“Husavik” – Eurovision
“Io si (Seen)” – The Life I Had
“Speak Now” – One Night In Miami

Best Production Design

The Father
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
News of the World
Tenet

Best Sound

Greyhound
Mank
News of the World
Soul
Sound of Metal

Best Visual Effects

Love and Monsters
The Midnight Sky
Mulan
The One and Only Ivan
Tenet

Best Documentary (Short Subject)

“Colette”
“A Concerto Is A Conversation”
“Do Not Split”
“Hunger Ward”
“A Love Song for Latasha”

Best Short Film (Animated)

“Burrow”
“Genius Loci”
“If Anything Happens I Love You
“Opera”
“Yes-People”

Best Short Film (Live Action)

“Feeling Through”
“The Letter Room”
The Present”
“Two Distant Strangers”
“White Eye”

It begins with mercenaries massacring a village in the Republic of Georgia, because they won’t accept a gas pipeline scheduled to pass through it. It prematurely climaxes with an attack on a Eurostar Chunnel train, passengers popped without pity by smirking “contractor” villains.

And at every turn, mercs and the military folk commissioned via “Red Notice” to bring them down — by the same British government that hired the Black Swan “contractors” in the first place — make wisecracks and “switch off” to get on with their lives.

“SAS: Red Notice” is bad by design, stupid in execution and soulless in every important and unimportant way. A terrible script renders respectable actors (Tom Wilkinson, Andy Serkis) terrible, and limited “action” stars (Ruby Rose) unwatchably awful.

It’s no wonder Netflix changed the title to “Rise of the Black Swan” when they got it. The “brand” was tarnished.

The pithy “Die Hard Lite” punchlines don’t help.

“Was it something I said?”

Wilkinson runs the Black Swans as a family business. Ironically named daughter Grace (Rose) is his heir apparent, chosen over his more lunkish son (Owain Yeoman).

A cellphone video of the massacre gets out, the news that they’ll all be arrested (fat chance, “silenced”) is announced on TV long before the raid on their suburban London estate is planned.

Naturally, villains get away. Not to worry. “Posh” Tom Buckingham (Sam Heughan), a commando with an estate of his own, got in his share of kills. He’ll sweep reluctant doctor-girlfriend Sophia (Hannah John-Kamen) off to Paris, let the police and border control folks round the rest up.

How’ll the mismatched couple travel? Train, of course. Before Grace, who sheds the clever disguise that got her on board, can say “There’s a player in the battle space. He’s armed and trained,” the slaughter begins, with passengers murdered left and right as if all on board realize this is a suicide mission.

The train attack details are interesting enough, if you’ve ever wondered how somebody might attempt something like that (surely some groups have given it a lot of thought).

But the action beats are half-hearted, the plot “twists” unworthy of that label and situations and dialogue ludicrous on an English-as-Second-Language level.

“We’re a lot alike,” is a given, something the villainess is sure to say to Tom. As is, “How many people have you killed?”

A favorite moment? Sophie instantly over-shares with a stranger the next seat over, pre-attack.

“He takes lives for a living,” she cracks. “I save them.”

Andy Serkis plays a ruthless SAS leader who knows “politicians come and go,” that he’s the only constant.

“I’m still going,” he purrs to a captive. “You’re about to stop.”

It’s a messy blood-bath with a “Die Hard” sequel death-count, no real heroes and no one to root for. The best one can say for the cast is I hope their checks cleared.

Veteran TV (“Twelve Monkeys,” some “Walking Dead” spinoff) director Magnus Martens, and screenwriter (“Soul Assassin”) Laurence Malkin?

I hope your checks bounced.

MPA Rating: R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout

Cast: Ruby Rose, Sam Heughan, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hopper, Andy Serkis and Tom Wilkinson.

Credits: Directed by Magnus Martens, script by Laurence Malkin, based on a novel by Andy McNab. A Vertical release.

Running time: 2:03

“Happily” is a dark fantasy parable about marriage with a good cast, a little edge but not nearly enough wit or clever twists to come off.

It’s about that “perfect” couple that drives all their friends nuts and the idea that “these people are (secretly) as miserable as everybody else.”

Joel McHale and Kerry Bishé are that couple, the folks given to exchanging randy looks and secret gropes during dinner as restaurants, and locking themselves in their hosts’ bathroom for a little hook-up during dinner parties.

And that’s just in public. The fact that Janet and Tom have been married for 14 years, that they never let an inconsiderate moment pass between them without apologizing, and that their romance has lost none of its bloom drives friends like Karen (Natalie Zea) and Val (Paul Scheer) nuts.

“Everyone hates you!” “You’re f—–g MARTIANS!”

It’s why they’re uninvited to a couples weekend with their “group.” But even though it gives Tom and Janet pause, that’s all it does. They’re back to roses on the bed and candlelit coitus in a flash, convinced them that they’re not the “freaks” here.

When the strange man (Stephen Root, born to be strange) shows up at their door, assures them that they’re outliers, the product of a design flaw in the whole “law of diminishing returns” married sex life thing. They need to take these injections to become like everyone else, and they have no choice. But they do, and ends with them Googling “How to dispose of a dead body.”

They figure that has come back to haunt them when they’re re-invited to the couples weekend, that somebody coming to that weekend is behind all this and that maybe a “prank” got murderously out of hand.

Is it Janet and Val, their gay “friends” (Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Shannon Woodward), testy Patricia (Natalie Morales) and Donald (Jon Daly), or the chillingly engaged Richard (Breckin Meyer) and Gretel (Charlyne Yi)?

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski sets us up for a darkly comic Agatha Christie mystery weekend, with intrigues and resentments, betrayals and peril, all packed into an AirBnB mansion with ten couples packed into it. He fails to deliver in almost every regard.

The cutting remarks rarely leave a mark, the mystery is unraveled with little care, and takes on the “Twilight Zone” air of “The Box,” which didn’t work either.

And nobody’s funny. Veteran TV funnyman McHale is given little funny to play or say, and that goes for everybody else. Only a query of the withdrawn, deadpan Gretel offers so much as a chuckle.

“What’s your deal?”

“Extremely high.”

The always-deadpan Root may set the tone, but aside from “tone,” there’s nothing to “Happily.”

MPA Rating: R for sexual content, language throughout and brief violence

Cast: Kerry Bishé, Joel McHale, Natalie Zea, Natalie Morales, Breckin Meyer, Paul Scheer, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Shannon Woodward, Jon Daly, Charlyne Yi and Stephen Root

Credits: Scripted and directed by BenDavid Grabinski. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:36

All over Istanbul, entrepreneurial scavengers pull junk carts, filling the canvas bags on those carts with recyclable cans, liquor bottles and especially cardboard.

A lot of them are orphans, the street children of the city who grew up on this work, running carts for a go-between who pays them for their collections and sells those recyclables on.

In “Paper Lives,” Mehmet (Çagatay Ulusoy) is the Fagan to a gang of these junk-collecting Oliver Twists, feeding the kids and young adults donuts as they head out, paying them off when they return, taking an interest in them because he grew up the same way.

Mehmet is saving up his litter-loot for something, nothing that’s on the “bucket list” he and his best collector Gonzi (Ersin Arici) came up with years back.

“Ride in a convertible,” (in Turkish with subtitles, or dubbed into English), “fly on an airplane…stay in a luxury hotel…find my mother.”

We meet Mehmet knocking on death’s door. A trip to the emergency room reveals that he has kidney failure, has known about it for some time and has been saving up for the day when this rationed health care system finds him a kidney. As it’s his “turn” to get dialysis, he fights off death for another day. But all he frets over is the frantic mother (Selen Öztürk) who dashes into the ER with a little boy who’s stopped breathing.

When he stumbles across a little boy named Ali (Emir Ali Dogrul) stowed away in one of those collection bags, turning him out or calling the cops never figure into his thinking. No, he’s going to “save” this child, maybe get him back to mother the boy claims helped him escape a cruel stepfather.

Screenwriter Ercan Mehmet Erdem and director Can Ulkay introduce us to a fascinating underworld operating in broad daylight of veterans of the carting trade who fend off rival collectors, hide from the cops and know all the tricks for collecting what has value and making a quick get-away when others covet it, too.

Early scenes have a “Man Push Cart” flavor, lots of details of how this off-the-books economy works. Liquor bottles with their caps have value because black marketeers refill them with cheap knockoffs and re-sell them at premium prices, for instance. They carry on with their work as the affluent — locals and foreigners — weave in and out of traffic in luxury cars on their way to chic hotels that the paparazzi stake out for work.

Mehmet is a sort of benign, somewhat shady eminence in his little corner of the world — giving cash to street urchins, making them promise they won’t spend it on glue to sniff.

But “Paper Lives” quickly descends into a sort of overwrought madness the moment the little boy arrives. Mehmet’s behavior is soap opera meltdown over-the-top. He protects the child, lashes out at threats to the child’s wellbeing and threatens even his most intimate friends when they’re not all-in and on-board this little experiment on orphan-raising-an-orphan child rearing.

Ulusoy’s near-hysteria in many moments reminded me of Italian neo-realism pictures like “Bicycle Thieves,” the least realistic parts of those films.

The hero’s histrionics and the fact that the viewer can guess the solution to the “mystery” too soon lessen its impact. But the attention to detail, taking us into this world of Artful Istanbul Dumpster Divers, holds one’s interest throughout.

Little Ali may drive the plot and present obstacles to Mehmet’s life-saving kidney surgery. But one can’t help but think his story, and the movie about him, would have been more interesting and less maudlin and melodramatic had the screenwriter found something more interesting to do with the child.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking, glue-sniffing and lots and lots of profanity

Cast: Çagatay Ulusoy, Emir Ali Dogrul, Ersin Arici, Selen Öztürk and Turgay Tanülkü

Credits: Directed by Can Ulkay, script by Ercan Mehmet Erdem. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

I’ve interviewed Olympia Dukakis a few times over the years, but let me tell you about catching the Oscar winner, stage legend and TV acting icon on a bad day.

She was just recovering from an injury, but had gamely agreed to show up at an acting conservatory I covered to talk to the students, buck them up and give them the lowdown on “the craft” and “the profession. She was a bit wary when I showed up. I think the school sprang the “reporter here to talk to you and listen in” thing on her, literally over lunch, so she was taken aback and withdrawn.

But then she sat down in front of the assembled thespians and the performer kicked in. She was gregarious, uproarious, loud and a laugh riot. “It’s not a competition,” she said of acting, a mantra based on a personal epiphany. She was mesmerizing and moving. What kid with greasepaint dreams could not be inspired?

THAT’s the Olympia Dukakis the public loves, larger-than-life, fervently urging Sally Field to punch out Shirley MacLaine in “Steel Magnolias,” giving Cher (playing her daughter) the business in their Oscar-winning turns in “Moonstruck,” swearing like a sailor on leave in “Tales from the City.”

That’s the Dukakis of Harry Mavromichalis’s “Olympia,” an adoring portrait of a brassy woman made of bronze.

She may reflect on her wayward, rebellious youth, her down times, and guiltily ponder her (sometimes absentee) parenting.

She describes the mother hellbent on making a “traditional” Greek-American woman out of her, the New York casting folks who wouldn’t even audition her based on her surname.

“Too ETHNIC…But who in America DOESN’T have an ‘outsider’ feeling?”

And then Armistead Maupin, author of “Tales from the City,” the TV mini series that provided one of her iconic roles, shows up at her hotel after she’s been grand marshal of San Francisco’s Gay Pride parade.

“Sit DOWN and have a drink!”

First-time documentary director Mavromichalis follows her from the Toronto Film Festival, there for a “Moonstruck” anniversary celebration but where she’s quick to comically chide the festival director for not admitting her latest film, to New York, Hollywood, Cypress and Greece, where her mother was born and where Dukakis shares the books she’s read that changed her perspective and pointed toward the lie that the past couple of thousand years has sold humanity.

“For 25,000 years, God was a woman,” she declares as we see her duck into the Tomb Clytemnestra, as good a place as any to make that point.

She waves from the grand marshal’s convertible in that San Fran parade, smiles and mutters to the camera “These people don’t know who the f— I am!” Oh, but they do.

Colleagues from Laura Linney and Lainie Kazan to Austin Pendleton and Lynn Cohen sing her praises. Ed Asner was there to unveil her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“This is TALENT up the WAZOO,” he enthuses.

The film, largely filmed a decade ago (2011 Toronto FF, etc.), captures Dukakis as she turned 80, speaking frankly about her marriage to actor Louis Zorich (“Mad About You”), her struggles with self-image and drugs (briefly), the determination it took to launch Whole Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey, where she and her company tackled the classics and she played the Great Roles of the Stage.

Norman Jewison caught her in the comedy “Social Security” on Broadway and cast her in “Moonstruck.” And suddenly, the struggle for recognition and parts was over.

“Olympia” has been finished since 2018, Zorich has since died and Olympia will turn 90 this June. It may be that this film sat on the shelf for years because that struggle to recognize her is ongoing, or that the film is a bit fawning and the questions tossed at her from behind the camera can be inane and/or random in the extreme.

“How do you feel about death?”

But she finds something to grab hold of and conjures a response worth remembering every time. And injured (she’s in a cast for part of the film, too) or exhausted, exasperated (tech rehearsals for a show) or chatting with fans in English or Greek in a Cypriot supermarket or a Greek village, Olympia Dukakis is sure to never come off as anything less than larger than life.

MPA Rating: unrated, smoking, drinking and lots of profanity

Cast: Olympia Dukakis, Ed Asner, Laura Linney, Lanie Kazan, Austin Pendleton, Michael Dukakis and Louis Zorich.

Credits: Directed by Harry Mavromichalis, script by Sam Eggers and Harry Mavromichalis. An Abramorama release.

Running time: 1:40

The best moments in the Netflix comedy “Yes Day” don’t involve slapstick — although there’s some of that. They don’t come from the list of scenes that include the big water balloon fight, driving through the car wash with the windows down or a tween’s baking soda volcano experiment that gets out of hand.

It’s the singing that sells it and the leave-it-all-out-there commitment of the leads in those moments that makes this otherwise forgettable kids’ pic memorable.

What parent hasn’t had an over-the-top sing-along with the kids in the car on their way to school? The window for that is narrow, getting them to do it before they’re too embarrassed by “the very IDEA.”

Edgar Ramírez, a mainstay in dramatic roles such as Gianni Versace in “American Crime Story,” leaves nothing in the locker room when he and little Everly Carganilla start a drive with a kiddie song about gummy bears but sing their way to an encore, which is “Epic.”

Jennifer Garner and Ramírez star in this uneven but occasionally giddy family farce about a fun-loving, impulse-indulging couple who said “Yes!” to everything when they dated and married, only to evolve into the Empress and Emperor of “NO” when they had three kids.

“NO is part of the job,” Mom narrates. But as their teen (Jenna Ortega of TV’s “Stuck in the Middle” and that “Babysitter” horror sequel) hits “I wanna go to Fleekfest (a concert) with FRIENDS” age and son Nando (Julian Lerner) bridles at the limits put on his science experiments, they realize they’ve turned into no fun.

The goofy guidance counselor (Nat Faxon) has a suggestion — a “YES day,” where they say yet to everything the kids pitch. There can be limits to that, too — long term consequences, cost, something all three, ages five to 14, can partake in and agree on.

Sure, raising children is just an 18 year-long suicide watch. But it’s just one day. What can go wrong?

Director Miguel Arteta has become a reliable go-to filmmaker for kids’ films (“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”) in between the edgier fare (“Duck Butter”) he got his start with (“The Good Girl”).

But what sells this comedy is the way the two leads are all-in on it. Garner produced it so it’s no surprise that she’s committed, first scene to last, to this harassed “No” mom forced to revisit her fun past. Ramírez is the real surprise, pulling out all the stops in a genre where you’d think he was a bit at sea.

ACTORs. I tell you what.

Some of the “say YES” gimmicks are funny, some lame. And there’s down time between them and before a sweet “teachable moment” finale that makes “Yes Day” play like a two hour drag (it’s under 90 minutes long).

But Garner, Ramírez and the kids never let on that this isn’t “Epic,” and that maybe this is one screen comedy where you can get away with “Go ahead, try this at home.”

MPA Rating: PG, scatological humor

Cast: Jennifer Garner, Edgar Ramírez, Jenna Ortega, Tracie Thoms, Nat Faxon, Julian Lerner, Everly Carganilla and H.E.R.

Credits: Directed by Miguel Arteta, script by Justin Malen, based on the book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26

It’s “Italian for Beginners” for Danish foodies? Who aren’t “beginners?”

This looks adorable. And mouth watering. “Food Club” is due out March 19 in the US of A.

I’m fixing to have a problem with this if it turns out “Krypton’s” Georgina Campbell, in the title role, is a CIA agent masquerading as a journalist.

More than a few reporters have been kidnapped and a few killed by “freedom fighters” who make that assumption. Even the CIA knows that “cover” is murderously unethical.

“Wildcat” opens April 23.