Movie Nation

There are those for whom “Borat 2” was too subtle, that it didn’t have enough bodily function or inappropriate sexual “chemistry” jokes.

Have I got a movie for you.

“Call Me Brother” is a raunchy, screwball stoner farce about teen siblings fighting that urge to be more like “kissing cousins,” and not willing to stop as “kissing.”

Houston native Christina Parrish wrote and co-stars in this quasi-queasy comedy about incest. Because that’s the gag that hangs over every goofy moment Lisa (Parrish) is back in the company, bedroom and bathtub of brother Tony (“Saturday Night Live” writer and actor Andrew Dismukes).

Their Texas parents split a decade before, with Lisa sent to live with her selfish harridan of a mother (Kim Lowery) and Tony growing up with his unfiltered Dad (Asaf Ronen). Now Mom’s off on vacation, and Lisa’s sent to stay with Dad and Dad’s new gal, Doris (Danu Uribe).

Lisa won’t mind sleeping in Tony’s room will she? I mean, he’s the “roomie you can never have sex with,” so no worries, right?

“Call Me Brother” chases these two childish teens — she’s 17, he’s a year older — as they bike, tickle-fight, play on the monkey bars and even romp in the tub, just like their childhood.

Flashbacks show us their tight connection back then, parents bickering in the background, tuning them out with play, cooking and sibling bonding.

But now, Tony’s in the habit of doing something that makes his future step-mom joke about “I clean your sheets.” He hangs with other sex-obsessed dorks over at Brian’s (Nick Saverino), who all want to know about “that hottie glazed in a sweet layer of polyester and insecurity.”

That would be Lisa, young enough to get upset at her brother killing chickens on his old school (block graphics) video game, who seems naive enough to not get the knack of the pot-smoking banter at parties or master the “just kidding” punchline Dad has with his dinner table tampon and menstruation jokes.

Bike rides and parties, it’s a carefree summer for the long-separated siblings, prancing about in slo-mo — so that Tony’s obsession with Lisa’s panties can be captured on camera.

It’s scripted as something of a tease, although things come to something of a head (Sorry!) at a big party that is like a gross, no-budget parody of every such scene in every teenage sex comedy to come before it.

Some of the shock-value banter is close to funny, and the sibling relationship bits are cutesie/goofy, and somewhat disarming even if the leads do look like real siblings.

Maybe it’s the fact that the “kids” all look closer to 30 that defuses that.

There’s not much to this other than the “let’s make a teen rom-com about incest” hook. But if they figured that would at least get “Call Me Brother” noticed, they seem to have miscalculated. No major distributor would touch it, so heaven knows what content they edited out in their “festival” cut of the film.

This kinky “SNL” incest sketch-run-amok used to be 30 minutes longer. Ick.

MPA Rating: unrated, crude sexual content, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Christina Parrish, Andrew Dismukes, Asaf Ronen, Danu Uribe, Kim Lowery, Nick Saverino

Credits: Diorected by David Howe, script by Christina Parrish. A Leomark release.

Running time: 1:17

Nine friends gather in the woods for a campout on the weekend of “the big game” at their high school alma mater. Only one is meant to walk out.

That’s the weary premise of “Triggered,” a grisly, gory variation on a timeworn horror tale theme, a movie characterized not so much by its characters — stock “types” — but by the one-liner-littered dialogue.

The nine — Suraya Rose Santos, Steven John Ward, Paige Bonnin, Russell Crous, Kayla Privett, Michael Lawrence Potter, Cameron Scott, Liesl Ahlers and Reine Swart — are connected. They were high school friends, several have coupled up and swapped about romantically.

They all bitch about “camping,” are prone to reopen old high school woulds, and all miss “Caleb,” the member of their crew who died.

Then they wake up with laser tag/bomb vests on, complete with timers. Mr. Peterson (Sean Cameron Mitchell) has a beef with these “reckless, entitled de-sensitized” 20somethings.

This must be a nightmare, right? One “where my high school science teacher stitched my a– into a metal vest, downloaded all the ‘Saw’ movies, bitched about ‘millennials’ for a hot second, then blew his f—–g brains out!”

That’s right.Peterson just said something about “only one will survive,” didn’t really explain “the rules,” and killed himself.

This “worst reunion ever” is a fairly unpleasant blend of giggles and geysers of blood. The “friends” reveal their secrets and their personality flaws as they stab, bludgeon, shoot and hack their way through the middle of the woods in the middle of the night.

Can Rian (Reine Swart), “the smart one” figure a way out? Don’t count on her beau, PJ (Cameron Scott). Dude’s a drummer with Butthole Equinox.

Maybe the tougher guys, flip sides of the same coin, will master the game. But Ezra (Steven John Ward) spends all his time trying to convince girlfriend CiCi (Kayla Privett) he’s not cheating on her. Raging Kato (Russell Crous) seems the safer bet. He starts with name-calling as if he’s working his way up to ax murderer.

“You’re basic…You’re a LEFT SWIPE on ‘Tinder!'”

Harsh.

It’s the sort of script where characters stumble upon each other, covered in blood and bleeding out, and ask, “Are you OK?”

Somebody’s bomb vest goes off and we hear “F—–g HARDCORE!”

Somebody’s “gay, every now and then.” Somebody has herpes. Somebody has an even bigger secret.

The chases, insults and bloody fights in the gloomy South African forest grow tedious, sooner rather than later. The funny lines are scattered through a movie meant to be deadly serious, maybe even generating a little pathos, here and there.

It’s not the worst movie in that Poe-Christie “kill off characters, one by one” formula. The players do well by their moments of terror or sadistic cruelty. But it’s entirely too obvious to come off, entirely too cluttered to have a character or characters rope us in, and entirely too chatty-jokey to ever be scary.

And it’s not funny enough to work as a sick comedy.

MPA Rating: unrated, gruesome, bloody violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Liesl Ahlers, Reine Swart, Sean Cameron Michael, Suraya Rose Santos, Steven John Ward, Paige Bonnin, Craig Urbani, Russell Crous, Kayla Privett, Michael Lawrence Potter and Cameron Scott

Credits: Directed by Alastair Orr, script by David D. Jones. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:33

One of the many things broken by the COVID pandemic was the covenant between horror movie makers and their audience.

Horror movies just aren’t the same on a small screen once you’ve cleared your tweens. They demand to be seen in a theater with an audience of the like-minded, ready to revel in our communal fright — or derision if the frights aren’t there.

It’s a simple matter of screen size. A big screen sucks you in, overwhelms you. No matter how big your TV, that just doesn’t achieve the same effect at home. Seeing a thriller in a theater, even a nearly empty one, is more overwhelming.

Size matters.

I’ve spent the year reviewing horror movies without those crowd-sourced scares, and it’s left me at a loss as to whether say, “The Dark and the Wicked” really worked.

Conversely, the theatrical release “Come Play” is a Slender Man horror movie with a few genuinely hair-raising moments and some good effects. Writer-director Jacob Chase times out the jolts well.

But the adults involved can’t decide if they’re stunned by their (presumably) first encounter with the supernatural, or if they’ve seen so many horror movies that they just accept this digital (electrical) threat to their child at face value.

The most promising idea, a rigid adherence to experiencing something through the eyes and ears of a speechless autistic boy, is fudged here and there — the “scare him out of it” cinematic cure. And the ending is a cop-out.

Still, that’s a great hook. Lonely little Oliver (Azhy Robertson) communicates via a type-to-speech phone app, and is teased at school over it. He’s sensitive to noise, and damned if his condition isn’t driving his parents (Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr.) apart.

That’s the perfect time for the eBook “Misunderstood Monsters” to viral its way onto his phone. He switches off “Sponge Bob” long enough to swipe a few pages. He starts hearing noises, thumps and footsteps. Lights pop and flicker out. A clever boy, he turns the phone camera-and-light on, and that’s where he sees “Larry.” The book says Larry just wants a friend.

We know better.

Robertson, the kid from “Marriage Story,” whimpers and quakes at what he’s seeing. Mom isn’t much comfort. Dad’s keeping a roof over their heads with multiple jobs, including one as a night watchman/clerk at a pay parking lot. He’s distracted.

Eventually, after the kids who bully Oliver have a sleepover that turns horrific, even his parents catch on. This cadaverous, skinny thing is coming for Oliver.

Writer-director Chase, expanding his short film “Larry,” cleverly gives us Larry’s-eye-view shots of the monster looking through (sometimes busted) cell phone and iPad screens.

I was impressed, for a while, with how closely he adheres to the limitations of autism, and the ways it doesn’t signify low intelligence. Some of Oliver’s clever reasoning his way out of tight spots or how to “explain” what’s going on is beyond-his-years (about 8), but for the most part, there’s not much here a non-expert would quibble with.

The film’s theme is hammered and hammered hard — digital devices make even the non-autistic lonely and cut-off from the world (And autistic kids are really into screens, we’ve heard.), so Larry has fertile hunting grounds for “friends.”

Chase wimps out on his whole “bullying” subtext (Winslow Fegley is effectively childish and cruel) and losing the conceit of the kid having to fight this threat on his own is a major blunder.

As impressive as Jacobs’ (“I Used to Go Here,” TV’s “Love”) “fear face” can be, she’s maddeningly inconsistent in her reactions to the menace she and her little boy face together.

One of the stresses on the marriage is their child’s disconnect from each parent, not even making eye contact with his own mother. Even taking that into account, there’s little “mothering” or “fathering” about the relationships.

Gallagher (TV’s “Westworld”) at least manages a proper freak out or two.

The best effect is the wind blowing pieces of paper across the parking lot as husband-dad Marty fiddles with the light in his glassed-in booth, totally unaware that the paper is wrapping itself around the hidden monster in the dimly-lit space behind him.

So yes, there’s good stuff here, mostly in the earlier acts. But even mixed-bag horror flicks like this can work if they’re seen on the big screen. When this virus is finally beaten back, filmmakers and fans have a covenant to renew., fffi

MPA Rating: PG-13 for terror, frightening images and some language

Cast: Azhy Robertson, Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr. and Winslow Fegley

Credits: Written and directed by Jacob Chase. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:37

The Tupac and Biggie murders that the racist, corrupt cops didn’t want solved

A cop comes home, violence ensues. In rural Australia.

Haven’t heard much out of Mr. Bana in recent years. Has he been car racing or doing Aussie TV?

Marc Maron is the record exec who believes, Johnny Flynn is the Spacey Oddity of the pre Ziggy Bowie era. Mixed reviews for this in the UK. Looks a little malnourished compared to most music biopics.

The moral of the French dirty cops thriller “Rogue City” is a familiar one to American crime film fans. The police are a gang, just with different “colors.”

Convoluted, bloody and downbeat, it’s about a Marseilles anti-gang unit that takes extralegal shortcuts until that day they finally cross one line too many and one Corsican mob that isn’t having it.

Actor turned writer-director Olivier Marchal has made police pictures his forte (“Borderline,” “A Gang Story,” “36th Precinct” “Gangsters”), and here he tosses in everything but the évier de cuisine, with so many characters, intrigues and competing agendas that make you grateful Netflix is a streaming service. You can rewind any time you like, because this is kind of hard to follow.

It’s loosely (sloppily) framed within an opening murder-suicide scene, mostly played-out over a black screen. As that’s not enough violence to open the picture, we drop into a massacre at an Arab waterfront club.

Lannick Gautry (a “District 13” thriller sequel) stars as Capt. Vronski, head of a squad assigned to deal with Marseilles’ drug smuggling gangs. Giving him that name allows him to debate Tolstoy with an urbane mobster (Gérard Lanvin) they’re transporting to prison.

That’s the most French thing in this movie. Well, that and characters’ penchant for quoting Biblical Proverbs, and French, Arabic or Corsican proverbs, too.

“Shaving a donkey is a waste of soap and time,” one fellow mutters (in French, with English subtitles). “He who lays a hand on my people should protest HIS people.”

Vronski, Willy (Stanislas Merhar), Max (Kaaris) and Zach (David Belle) have the French version of Internal Affairs on their case, a boss (Patrick Catalifo) who gives them lots of leeway, and a high-minded chief (Jean Reno) to please.

And they have an inter-deparmental rival, Costa (Moussa Maaskri), who turns out to be a dirty cop. Never mind the fact that the turncoat in their ranks is played by an Algerian. Every cop here is compromised, ethnicity be damned.

With the Corsicans and the Arabs fighting over the waterfront and Spanish cocaine business, friends you can count on a lot of shooting.

Gautry’s Vronski is that classic “cool” cop — beautiful, pregnant wife (Erika Sainte) who is introduced because at some point mobsters will threaten her, sailing catamaran as their home. The other guys, barely sketched in, have troubled marriages and loyalties only to each other.

Marchal runs them back and forth across the waterfront, back alleys and hidden coves around Marseilles, slaughtering each other to cover up last crime.

The stand-out character for me is Santu, a Corsican mobster played by Alain Figlarz. And the stand out scene is him being arrested in church, at a funeral.

As for the rest, writer-director Marchal loses track of characters, story threads, mob cash and drugs, impatient as he is to get to the next shoot out.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, drug content, nudity, profanity

Cast: Yannick Gautry, Moussa Maaskri, Stanislas Merhar, Kaaris, David Belle, Patrick Catalifo, Erika Sainte, Jeanne Bournaud Alain Figlarz and Jean Reno.

Credits: Written and directed by Olivier Marchal. A Gaumont film, a Netflix release.

Running time: 1:56

What is it with characters in horror movies and carrots? Always cutting up carrots, always with the same result.

And sheep. If it’s a tale set on a remote farm — heaven knows how often this happens — it’s always a sheep farm. The lambs! The bleating of the lambs! Make it stop!

“The Dark and the Wicked” is a terror tale trope ride from the writer-director director of “The Strangers,” gloomy and creepy and gory, if not exactly surprising or all that suspenseful.

When you’ve got carrots and lambs and crucifixes, you’ve set the table. We know what we’re getting for dinner.

Marin Ireland and Michael Abbott Jr. are siblings who’ve come home to see their bedbound dying father, and maybe help out their overwhelmed mother (Julie Oliver-Touchs). But Mom isn’t exactly welcoming.

“You don’t need to be here” and “I told you not to come” aren’t taken the right way.

“It’s gonna be OK, Momma.”

“WHAT’s going to be OK?”

Something is going on in the house, which is eerily quiet the way houses are in most horror movies. Nobody thinks to turn on “Jeopardy?”

Listening to the moan of the wind and the creaking of the wooden floors and walls would drive anybody nuts. Mom is a case in point. Remember the “carrots.”

The siblings are troubled long before tragedy strikes. A non-religious family, they puzzled by the crucifixes and Catholic votive candles. A clergyman (Xander Berkeley) seems to know Mother well. Or maybe not.

And the howling in the Texas night isn’t their handyman (Tom Nowicki). Something sinister is behind it, behind the visions the siblings see in the mirror, the shadows, on the ceilings.

Writeer-director Bryan Bertino takes a grim situation — a family waiting for a loved one to die — and slowly puts the would-be mourners to the test. What they’re seeing, who they’re hearing, can’t be real.

Ireland (“The Irishman,” “Hell or High Water” and TV’s “Umbrella Academy”) reacts to the supernatural in a way we might expect — profanity and screams, tears and terror. She lets us see Louise flinch at every shock, and unravel a bit with every new one she faces.

Abbott (“Hearts Beat Loud,” “In the Radiant City”) makes a different choice. His Michael recoils, but tamps down the terror. Internalizing it might be what a farm-raised man might do, especially a non-believer.

The leaden pace tends to make “The Dark and the Wicked” a slow-burn of a thriller, easing us into the next grisly shock. I can’t say that works to the film’s benefit, even if it’s been to build suspense, even if we’re meant to be developing empathy for the sister and brother powering through what was always going to be an awful situation, but that has turned demonic.

But the players sell it. And the jolts — an apparition here, a ghost in a shadows there — get the job done.

Leaving the source of this supernatural assault vague is a smart choice, a mysterious horror that can visit anyone, anywhere, especially if you live on a remote Texas farm with sheep and carrots.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Marin Ireland, Michael Abbott, Jr. , Xander Berkeley, Julie Oliver-Touchs and Tom Nowicki

Credits: Written and directed by Bryan Bertino. An RLJE/Shudder release.

Running time: 1:36

I didn’t get to the first season of “The Mandalorian” when it broke last year at this time, but I did tuck into it in the spring, when COVID and the collapse of film release schedules left me a bit at a loss for what to watch.

So I could do little more than raise an eyebrow over the 2019 toy season mania for Baby Yoda and the breathless buzz from the faithful about the serialized, A-list effects-driven treatment of the “Star Wars” universe, after the last Death Star was blown up.

I didn’t bother to review that first season, because zeroing in on the show’s second pass seemed more promising. Once the buzz dies down, we’ll see what we really have. I’d save my powder for that.

Glancing back over my reviews of the J.J. Abrams big screen installments, which were to a one inferior to the stand-alone “Rogue One,” and a little better than the poorly-cast prequel “Solo,” I had to approach “Mandolorian” with an eye for its intended audience, which it almost certainly serves well.

The idea is to generate interest in a still wildly popular but steadily-fading and over-exposed franchise to a new generation of addicts. So that “intended audience” for Jon Favreau’s spinoff about Boba Fett’s bounty hunter kin, Mandalorians, skews younger.

And if I was an eleven year-old girl or boy, I’d be waiting with bated breath for this Neverending Story to continue. But I’m not eleven. So brace yourself.

The second season premiere episode, “The Marshal,” takes one right back to the era George Lucas conceived his space opera in — the early ’70s. “Marshal” is largely set on the desert planet of Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s dusty stomping grounds. And it is a straight-up early-70s TV Western with space ships.

There was always that element to the original trilogy — the naive hot shot kid on a quest, the grizzled gunslinger, the saloons, evil “bosses” and a faceless enemy — helmeted, not covered in warpaint — who exist simply to be slaughtered. Here, Favreau goes all-in for an installment that will set the tone if not limit the settings of this planet-hopping quest to find kinfolk who can protect this toddler with The Force from the lawless legions that would love to grab him.

Casting Timothy Olyphant, fresh (ish) off his “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” turn as a TV Western star of the late ’60s makes that connection obvious. That’s a valid, if not exactly novel approach to take. “Episode IV” owed as much to “The Searchers” as “The Hidden Fortress,” after all.

And truth be told, the first time I heard the Mandalorian who decides to protect the Baby Yoda speak, I thought Pedro Pascal WAS Timothy Olyphant.

“The Marshal” sends our traveling baby sitter from bar to MMA brawl in search of his kind, those who can join him protecting the tyke in the floating stroller egg. That’s how he’s directed to Tatooine, not to the friendly confines of Mos Eisley, but for the pretty much “wiped out” settlement of Mos Pelgo.

It’s where The Marshal (Olyphant) keeps order, and does it with Mandalorian armor, if not bloodline. Meeting him as he swaggers, bowlegged, into a saloon is laughably on-the-nose, a good kind of laugh.

Familiar creatures (Banthas, Tusken, Jawas) and transport (hover-bikes, Sand Crawler) are here, along with Amy Sedaris’ chatty, “Thank The Force” cliche-spouting comic relief, Peli Motto, complaining about her droids.

“You just can’t get good help anymore!”

The serious “Star Wars” speak doesn’t kick in until The Mandalorian and The Marshal swap Bantha-sized bon mots.

“I guess, every once in a while, both suns shine on a womprat’s tale!”

I like the kid-friendly death-threats doled out by The Mandalorian, safe behind his Batman-utility belt pack of hardware.

“Tell me where the Mandalorians are and I’ll walk out of here without killing you.“

But The Marshal gives as good as he gets, to Sand People, for instance.

“Sit back down before I put a hole inya!“

He gets on just fine with this menacing “new gun in town.” Heck, they team up in that Disney-fied “let’s all work together for a common goal” “Toy Story” way.

You want novelty? You’ll have to wait for later episodes. “The Marshal” is strictly comfort food, unchallenging and unexciting. Olyphant’s line-readings of the somewhat childish trope-trapped dialogue are as flat as the fellow whose face we’re not meant to see. The added length only highlights how repetitive and derivative the whole enterprise is.

Real menace? Giancarlo Esposito is coming. So maybe. Better fights? Former MMA star Gina Carano is due up. So, probably. Real conflict? Don’t hold your breath.

The tone they’re aiming for has been set, and the demographics bar lowered to tweens-and-younger. And no, a story that has lots and lots of locations, many races and character names, bartenders ranging from cyclops to Snivvians, is not necessarily deep.

As Billy or Wyatt or Johnny Ringo could tell you, a saloon’s a saloon, with or without a cantina band.

It’s not my place to dissect this show for those who obsess over it, parsing its minutia, dying for that next moment Baby shows he/she won’t be backed into a corner.

Still, do yourself a favor. Visit your favorite streaming, cable or broadcast “Westerns” channel. Jon Favreau certainly did. Look at what Hollywood was turning out on horseback by the early ’70s; exhausted, cornball rehashes of tales and archetypes that were old hat and worn out long before John Wayne won his Oscar.

Like Western watchers back then, waiting for “The Mandalorian” to get better is like waiting for nostalgia to finally get old.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, violence and lots of it.

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Amy Sedaris, Timothy Olyphant, Giancarlo Esposito, Gina Carano and Carl Weathers.

Credits: Created by Jon Favreau. A Disney+ release.

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