Movie Nation

“Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84)” has the air of a watershed movie moment about it.

With Warners and Disney and a pandemic chasing blockbusters out of theaters and onto smaller screens, and even the word “blockbuster” potentially banished from the language, you have to wonder if this woman isn’t heralding the end of the $300 million comic book epic.

Without the widescreen scope, the communal viewing experience with the like-minded and the “fan service” in every gigantic digital effects brawl, every little wink at the fans writ large, what is left?

In the case of “WW84,” the answer is a great big long movie that feels very small.

The most expensive “Be careful what you wish for” fantasy ever made has nods to runaway greed (avarice) and consumerism, a few jokes about ugly ’80s fashions and trends, a backhanded bitchslap at Ronald Reagan and guns and a lot of story beat tips of the hat to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Director Patty Jenkins put a lot on the shoulders of Pedro Pascal as the villain, a con-man/oil scam hustler who isn’t charismatic enough to counter-balance our heroine. Even his maniacal laugh is lacking. Maybe “The Mandalorian” needs his helmet for that.

Gal Gadot handles the fight choreography well enough, but either she’s more model than actress or this hit-your-marks-in-front-of-the-green- screen enterprise bored the spark out of the actress playing the title role.

Little girls stand in slack-jawed wonder as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman lassos bad guys and saves the day, and as with the first “Wonder Woman” film, the cast is an emphatic statement on inclusion.

But the often dry script, funereal pacing and generic spectacle of the digitally-augmented set-pieces makes for a movie that’s like “Captain Marvel,” only about half as much fun.

A long prologue from Diana’s childhood teaches the little Amazon (Lily Aspell) that cheaters never prosper. “That is the only truth and truth is all there is,” Mom (Robin Wright) intones. “No hero is born from lies!”

Decades after her World War I interference in human affairs, Diana has taken a job with the Smithsonian where she meets the easily-ignored gemologist/geologist Barbara Minerva. She’s played by Kristen Wiig, pratfalling off her heels, correcting everyone who’s forgotten her name and harassed by every drunk who figures her for an easy mark on her walks home.

That’s D.C. for you. And that’s Wiig when she’s being typecast.

But a mall jewelry store heist that Diana interrupted had this one unremarkable stone that turns out to be a magic talisman. It grants wishes.

And this overdrawn, pyramid scheme TV pitchman Maxwell Lord (Pascal) knows that, and is willing to woo Wiig’s Minerva to get his hands on it.

That’s how he starts changing history, toying with the whole “Genie in a Bottle” quandary. What should you ask if you’ve been granted “three wishes?” Why, an endless supply of wishes, of course!

But before Lord stirs up Wall Street, the Middle East and the Cold War, Diana’s been around that rock long enough to think an upspoken wish. That’s how her dead WWI fighter pilot boyfriend Steve (Chris Pine) shows up in 1984, marveling over jet airliners, Pop Tarts and parachute pants.

“Does everybody parachute?”

Diana sees the mayhem unleashed and pieces together what caused it, which sends her and Steve half-pointlessly to Cairo (a stolen two-seater jet gets them there) and back to scenic Washington, nicely showcased here as she shows Steve the sights.

Only a showdown with villain Max and power-drunk Barbara will do.

Points about sexual harassment and the rush of sudden empowerment (Minerva wants to be like Diana), and the revenge that follows are among the many obvious sidebars “WW84” takes.

But that material at least relates to today, as on the nose as this opening bit of post-Trump voice over narration.

“Sometimes you can’t see what you’re learning until you come out the other side.”

That said, I think I can sum of this bloated, two and a half hour immersion in superpowers and half-hearted ’80s nostalgia with one comparison.

Remember what “Captain Marvel” crashed into when she showed up in 1995? It was a Blockbuster Video, and yes, it got a BIG laugh.

The biggest sign we’re meant to notice in that DC mall that bad guys rob? J.C. Penney. That’s not funny, that’s just sad. And that’s this somewhat dispirited “blockbuster” in a nutshell.

MPA Rating:  PG-13 for sequences of action and violence

Cast: Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Chris Pine, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen and Lily Aspell

MPA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action and violence

Credits: Directed by Patty Jenkins, script by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham. A Warner Brothers release.

Running time: 2:31

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” comes to Netflix with all its poetry, theatricality, fire and guts intact.

It’s always been a showcase for the right cast, and stage and screen director George C. Wolfe and stars Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman more than do justice to August Wilson’s most approachable, entertaining play.

Awash in African American history, grievance, fury and the blues, a viewer — remembering how “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” beat it to the screen — might fairly wonder “What took so damn long?”

Wolfe, one of the great stage directors of our time but a generally pedestrian screen director (“Nights in Rodanthe,” “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”) opens the show up even as he brings the action, arguments and Big Themes right into our face.

And Davis and Boseman do the rest, with the Oscar winner milking Wilson’s greatest female role for all it’s worth and Boseman making us sad at all he was and all we lost much too soon, all over again.

A late 1920s recording session in Chicago is the crucible that grinds these characters together. The historic Ma Rainey (Davis) is an older jazz singer, already a legend in some quarters, and well paid for it on her many tent tours of the South. She’s not shy about flaunting it, or about showing off her latest girlfriend (Taylour Paige). And she’s got no patience for recording studios, the white man (Jonathan Coyne) who runs it or the manager (Jeremy Shamos) who begs her to cut a few sides.

But here she is, at Hot Rhythm Records, ready to record a few songs. Maybe they won’t be the songs Sturdyvant (Coyne) wants. Maybe they won’t be performed the way Irvin (Shamos) believes would turn them into hits. As they have to be cut in one take in this pre-mixing board/tape-or-digital-recording era, things are more likely to be tense than fun.

And then there’s the band, led by conservative trombonist Cutler (Coleman Domingo) but fired by hot new trumpeter Levee (Boseman). Whatever the imperious, insecure and ever-tardy “Mother of Blues” has on her agenda, the bickering that goes on in the band room is next-level heated.

Levee’s annoyance with “old jug band music” and fondness for dance tempos and solos rub Cutler the wrong way.

“This ain’t one of them ‘hot bands,'” he grouses. Levee needs to remember his place, that he’s in an “accompanist band.” What Ma wants is what Ma gets.

Levee wants to play his own songs, or at least his own arrangements. He’s ready to start his own band. And he’s been making eyes at Ma’s latest, Dussie May (Paige). Nothing like a hot day in a recording studio to bring the resentment, disappointment and competition to a head.

Michael Potts is Slow Drag, the reliable bass player. The delightful Glynn Turman (co-star with Davis of “How to Get Away With Murder” and famous for “A Different World”) is Toledo, the bookish, folksy old piano player. He’s the philosopher of this ensemble, a bit put out at Levee’s bragging and upset-the-apple-cart behavior.

“That’s the trouble with colored folks, always trying to have a good time.”

Levee talks a good game, all “If my daddy hadda knowed I’s gonna turn out like this, he woulda named me Gabriel!” But it doesn’t take much scratching to bring out the burdens he and the rest of them carry in lives circumscribed and threatened because of race.

Davis, dressed down, channeling a call to perform and a life of grievance and humiliation, makes Ma a diva we can identify with — masking insecurity with assertions of “MY way” control.

“I ain’t doing nothing without my Co-Cola!”

She delivers the story’s bigger theme with somber resignation in between takes of recording her signature song, Ma Rainey’s “Black Bottom.”

“White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there.“

Everybody here absorbs the music in August Wilson’s ear, the poetry of the lines and the history and psychology he touches on through them.

Davis may have to lip-sync the songs, and the play’s darkest turn still feels abrupt, if dramatically defensible. But “Ma Rainey” honors Wilson and plays in this year of strife and division like THE African American Blues, reminding us of the origins of the musical genre, the singers and players who embodied it and the suffering of “how it got there.”

MPA Rating: R, sex, fisticuffs, profanity

Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Coleman Domingo, Michael Potts, Taylour Paige, Jeremy Shamos, Dusan Brown, Jonathan Coyne and Glynn Turman

Credits: Directed by George C. Wolfe, script by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, based on the play by August Wilson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

Oscar winner Hilary Swank adds “femme fatale” to her resume with “Fatale,” a torpid, twisty thriller in the “Fatal Attraction” mold.

But watching Swank play sexually aggressive, chemically off and ruthlessly violent can’t help but remind the savvy viewer how much better Glenn Close, Sharon Stone, Kerry Washington and others were as sexually assertive women with a hint of predator about them.

Michael Ealy is the successful sports agent whose marriage to a high flying LA realtor (Damaris Lewis) has seen better days. Workaholics, we figure. She’s lost interest or has somebody else on the side is his guess.

A weekend in Vegas, partying and networking with the NBA puts him in the path of Val (Swank). He sees her brush off one come-on. His biz partner (Mike Colter) has yanked his ring off for the night, so she sees him as someone not unlike herself — “an unaccompanied adult.”

A little liquor, a little dance, a little get-this-guy-out-of-his-pants.

But whatever regrets he may have as he tries to slip out the door in the AM, she’s not hearing them. She’s locked his phone in the room safe.

“I’m not done with you.” Oh, if Derrick only knew.

Back home, a “date night” of guilt cooking and getting “reacquainted” with wife Traci ends with a break-in. And who shows up to their swank LA McMansion to investigate but Det. Val. Let the suspicions, cover-up and turn towards a famous Hitchcock thriller’s plot commence.

Ealy’s played both sides of the predator/prey sex thriller formula, and still so underplays everything that you wonder if he’s got any setting other than “simmer.” He was better as “The Perfect Guy.”

Swank’s more comfortable playing cold and cunning — not prone to panic — than at anything else Val is supposed to bring to the table. Damaged, desperate, sexy without warmth all feel shortchanged in her flat performance.

The David Loughery script — he wrote Ealy’s “The Intruder” — wins points for attempted twists, but frankly they don’t build suspense or deliver shocks, so what’s the point?

The most interesting element to “Fatale” is its portrayal of that widely-held view of cops — that their real expertise is in knowing what they can get away with. But that’s not enough to put it over.

MPA Rating: R, violence, sex

Cast: Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy, Mike Colter and Damaris Lewis. Credits: Directed by Deon Taylor, script by David Loughery. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:43

In military terms, “flak” is the product of anti-aircraft artillery, exploding shells hurled skyward, not so much aimed but designed to rattle, disrupt and misdirect enemy aircraft.

A “Flack” is the nickname journalists give publicists, professional image managers whose job is to guide flattering coverage of their clients, shoot down or at least misdirect and bury image-shattering news that careless, clumsy and oh-so-human “stars” cannot help but generate about themselves, their lives and their careers.

The British dramedy “Flack” stars Anna Paquin, an Oscar winner (“The Piano”) and TV mainstay (“True Blood”) as a troubled but never rattled American PR queen in scandal-sheet/gossip-crazed London. That where armies of women just like her — shock troops in Little Black Dresses — try to keep TV, music and film stars and pro athletes from losing it all after one indiscretion too many.

We meet Robyn as she’s purposefully pounding on the chest of a rent boy hired by a closeted famous person, a lover who has overdosed in a swank suite at a posh hotel.

“Purposefully” describes her work, not frantic. She’s not panicking. The star (Lloyd Everitt) is doing enough of that for them both. She literally has to drop her resuscitation efforts to peel pills out of the naked hunk’s mouth as he’s sprinted to the bathroom screaming “I’m finished.”

“If you kill yourself I’ll f—–g KILL you” she barks. And then finishes what she started, deals with threats by the prostitute and stops to take a little coke toot herself before leaving.

In that one scene, series creator Oliver Lansey answers decades of questions the public has, establishes Robyn as “the best” at what she does and adds a “Nurse Jackie” edge. She’s messed up, too.

Want to know why so many celebrity deaths recount the first person who finds this or that overdose victim calling their publicist? This is why. Helpless famous people don’t know who to call and who’d be discrete rounding up medical help.

Robyn’s the best because she’s unflappable. Over the course of the pilot, she will deal with that, join her sister (Genevieve Angelson) for a sad personal memorial, not bother hiding her drugs from that sister, put out the fire a womanizing chef (Max Beesley) has started with his latest family-man-TV-star “fling,” and ignore warnings from her sexy, amoral colleague Eve (Lydia Wilson), who never takes her own advice.

“Don’t shag him!”

We learn about Robyn and her business via her interactions with clients and snarky exchanges with Eve, her explanations to her very young and new intern (the viewer’s surrogate), Melody (Rebecca Benson) and her empress of a boss (Sophie Okonedo), a sage in the mold of “The Devil Wears Prada.”

“The world keeps turning, Robyn. We just help push.”

So that’s the high concept pitch of the series, “Devil Wears Prada” meets “Absolutely Fabulous” by way of “Nurse Jackie.”

“Flack” has a knowing amusement with all things PR — journalists who can be bought off, or convinced to bury a bad story if you give them a juicy enough “positive” story to take its place; the errands, big and small, veteran publicists and the low-woman-on-the-totem pole (Intern Melody) are forced to perform for clients who pay them a lot of money to not let on how awful, corrupt or just plain stupid they are.

I’ve heard a flack relate having to fetch a traveling action star’s herpes medicine from the pharmacy, listened to an entire team of theme park Little Black Dress warriors relate how each and every one of them was hit on and surrendered her phone number to a “family man” baller who cheated at sport and life and still isn’t in the Hall of Fame.

The action star who insisted on multiple hotel rooms on a tour, all the easier to abandon a one-nighter and slip off to get some sleep down the hall, and on and on — stories that never made the light of day.

Word gets out, and some version of empress Caroline (Okonedo) is there to order “get this in the ground. Today!”

The show is new to Amazon, but the British audience for this blend of gossip, sex, drugs and “issues” ate “Flack” up. It was just renewed.

Look forward to a nice long wallow with the formidable Anna P. coping with the shallow and the surreal, and messing about with her own issues (she’s not “single”) as she flings up the “Flack.”

MPA Rating: TV-14, drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Anna Paquin, Sophie Okonedo, Lydia Wilson, Rebecca Benson, Genevieve Angelson, Rufus Jones.

Credits: Created by Oliver Lansey. Now on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 12 episodes @42 minutes each

It’d be cruel to single out an actor for the performances, each worse than the next, in the amateurish horror outing “Occurrence at Mills Creek.”

A simple “haunted by causing my sister’s death” drama with a dose of “family curse” ladled on to give it the “horror” label, this a cringe-worthy, eye-rolling, drinking-game bad. Is it a student film? If so, I apologize for being mean.

The makeup is off, the music doesn’t fit the material, the pace is funereal and all of that comes to a head in a semi-intentionally hilarious “create a disturbance at a funeral” scene, non-professionals trying to act coy, furious, stricken or flirtatious and doing their best, but gosh darn it…

Our heroine, Clara (Ava Psoras) buries her mother (Betsy Lynn George), younger sister Cassandra (Alexa Mechling) and alcoholic, abusive father (Joe Fishel) in very short order. No wonder we see scars on her wrists.

She’s in therapy, which is a blessing. But as she caused Cassie’s death, Dr. Vicki (Dana Langshaw) is having a hard time assuaging her guilt. And in her guiltier moments, Clara sees and hears dueling Dr. Vickis (Grace Langshaw joining her twin sister) hissing “Maybe you’re just BAD” and “Maybe you should just GIVE IN.”

Seeing visions of dead family members (“How beautiful you are, how beautiful you’ll stay!”), finding a 100 year old diary, a house haunted by memories of a slaughter, the picture doesn’t turn supernatural slasher pic until late in the third act.

But the mere fact it does will attract the chosen few.

And through it all, the expressionless, unemotional and unempathetic acting, serving up heaping helpings of exposition when the “What’s real? What’s she dreaming?” story drifts off the coherent path into something even duller.

MPA rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Ava Psoras, Mary Sack, Betsy Lynn George, Alexa Mechling, Joe Fishel

Credits: Scripted and directed by Don Swanson. An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:22

JT plays an ex con who takes a helpful interest in a troubled teen in this Jan. 29 drama. Juno Temple, June Squib and Mr. Mayhem from the car insurance commercials also star.

Today’s dose of Around the World with Netflix takes us to Christmas in Colombia, a manic, noisy farce that begins on the Day of the Little Candles and ends on Christmas Eve — “An Unremarkable Christmas (¡Qué chimba de Navidad!).”

Never heard of the Dia de las velitas? That’s why we watch international films, isn’t it? We learn about other cultures, their traditions and we wonder if they laugh at the same things we do.

This antic comedy, a stand-alone Christmas movie with characters from a Colombian TV series (“Chichipatosis”) is an exercise in excess — so many characters, so much…decor. That’s one of the reasons “noisy” suits it. It’s not just the characters who’re loud, it’s the over-decorated holiday-ready houses we’re treated to.

Yes, the gaucherie is a gag and yes, we’re allowed to laugh at that sight-gag in this broad goof on a family’s holiday blundering into a money laundering scheme. Other laughs, too few in number alas, concern a college kid’s crush on a novitiate nun, a daughter’s love for a mohawked punk, mother-in-law gags and gigolo jokes.

Nothing like a little cleavage for Christmas, eh? Viva la diferencia!

Juan (Antonio Sanint) is a hapless accountant with an insurance company whose boss (Luis Eduardo Arango) longs for the “family” Christmases he spent at home growing up.

Invite him to the Day of the Little Candles party, then! Maybe Juan can show off his magic act, if he can just get a rabbit who’ll cooperate.

Wife Margot (María Cecilia Sánchez) and daughter Monica (Mariana Gómez) take the news in stride, because son Sami (Julián Cerati) is home from music school in Argentina. Apparently, he picks up the accent of wherever he goes (a running gag from the TV series, I take it).

And that’s not all he picked up in Argentina. He’s in love. Rosalba (Majo Vargas) is quite the looker. But uh, son, that pink outfit? It says she’s a nun.

That’s OK. Sami has written her a song to convince her to give up the Mother Church.

“Let me see the treats you hide under your habit,” he calls it (in Spanish with English subtitles). That should cinch the deal, right?

Let’s ask Grandma (Aura Cristina Geithner), or better yet, her rich, younger model/chef boyfriend (Martin Karpan).

A couple of cops (Júlio César Herrera, Cristian Villamil) are on the trail of an infamous money launderer, but aren’t letting that interfere with their Day of the Little Candles celebration.

And the money launderer’s son (Biassini Segura) has been summoned from his marshmallow business to take part in the family’s bigger enterprise. And guess what? His Dad, the “infamous Orduz” mob boss/money launderer is actually…Juan the accountant’s boss.

There’s a lot of shouting, a bit of arguing, and every so often this character or that one stops to pray/make a wish to the Immaculate Conception.

Monica’s punk beau isn’t impressing Dad. Oh yeah?

“Destroyer (Fredy Morales) will be your grandchildren’s FATHER!”

“Unremarkable,” a silly story spun off a sitcom and narrated by the family cat, doesn’t include many translatable laughs. The speed and energy are there, but the Colombian TV movie budget was mostly spent on actors — there are many — and decorating the sets with Christmas crap.

No money for a good car or foot chase, no cash to hire a couple of comics to joke this thing up. The players have a moment here and there, a good line or broad over-reaction. But as farces go, this one is more promising than hilarious.

It’s not terrible, but it’s not nearly funny enough to sustain this much story, caper, family dynamics and the like.

MPA Rating: TV-14, threats of violence, sexual situations, rude language

Cast: Antonio Sanint, Luis Eduardo Arango,  Mariana Gómez, Júlio César Herrera, Biassini Segura, María Cecilia Sánchez, Lina Tejeiro, Cristian Villamil, Julián Cerati, Majo Vargas, Fredy Morales and Aura Cristina Geithner

Credits: Directed by Juan Camilo Pinzon, script by Dago García. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:22

As I download the Warner Brothers app, required to preview “Wonder Woman ’84,” and watch the back and forth over the studio’s decision to move its entire lineup to HBO Max for the foreseeable future, and browse the menu of Netflix, Disney+ etc. titles available online, I am starting to wonder if there’ll ever be a day or indeed a need to go back into a movie theater at any point down the road.

It’s been obvious to me that studios regard theaters and the cinema experience as a bloody nuisance. Whatever they had to do to invest in digital projectors back in the early 2000s, covering the ShowEast cinema owners and operators convention that used to take place here in Orlando, you always got the feeling they were doing it grudgingly. It would save them money, in the long run. But they held out as long as possible to see if they could sucker the cinemas into spending the money by themselves.

Go to any film festival where “industry” folks congregate, and the people with the most contempt for sitting in the dark, undistracted, watching a film on the big screen stand out — cell phones out constantly, bouncing in and out, ruining the experience for others because they’re above that.

Filmmakers have always been the ones lobbying for prestige presentations, for their work to be seen on the big screen in a communal setting. Christopher Nolan is merely the newest and most vocal to state that case. Everyone from Spielberg and M. Night to Campion on down the line has made the case for the magic of the cinema.

But I can tell you where most viewers have migrated over recent years, and it’s no news flash. Much of my traffic in readership comes from reviews of Netflix titles — films, not series, BTW.

HBO Max getting on Roku is a big deal for PPV/VOD and “trial offer” subscriptions, and gives them a chance to compete with Disney, which pulled in millions of subscribers with “Hamilton” and “Mulan” and everything else they’ve pushed into streaming (“Soul” had a theatrical run weeks ago, and shows up on Disney+ in days).

Amazon is pouring money into production, not nearly as much as Netflix. Paramount has its own network, bundled into a Roku “free” (commercials included) channel, and others are following suit.

CBS has puts its failed film distribution attempt behind it and is going all in on Pluto TV, a free streamer of archival movies and TV shows downloadable to your PC and loaded onto Roku TV sets.

Meanwhile, the big theater chains — AMC, Regal, Cinemark — and their smaller rivals are struggling to stay in business long enough to “come back,” although mass bankruptcies, lease lapses and nationwide theater closings on the order of what we saw in the late 90s seems inevitable.

Since March, I’ve seen maybe four films on a big screen — “Tenet” being the big deal, a horror title here and there. I’ve missed more films that went theatrical only from smaller distributors this year than I’ve seen. I don’t need to see Jim Caviezel’s latest, distributors that make no effort to get their product reviewed (Bleecker Street, Roadside Attractions) are slow to pick up on how little anybody misses their product.

If I can get Amazon theatrical to be as diligent at promoting their fare as their series division (I have access to every series and doc they offer), I’ll be covered, accessing every movie that’s a part of the online film conversation. And as much as I’ll miss communal ritual of the Church of the Cinema, I won’t miss the drives to the theater, boorish fellow patrons and sheer inconvenience and inefficiency of me going to the movies rather than having the movies come to me.

In other words, I’m just like everybody else in that regard.

Will it mean an end to $300 million franchises, particularly the comic book ones? Possibly. Disney’s not going to let Marvel die, and we’re seeing a rise in the buzz about Marvel “series” in recent weeks, but tentpole movies seem to be receding into the horizon — pushed further and further back.

We won’t know how all this shakes out until next summer, when the Trumpdemic will be less of a worry and more people risk going out to do things we used to do in indoor group settings. But I can see a day when the cinema is like a concert hall, visited only on special occasions for pricey special events. It’s just a question of whether there’ll be cinemas open to upsell this new business model and make it work.

I’m not a folklorist, so I’m not sure how common “The Blind Swordsman” story is across Asia. But the most famous films about such a character are about Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman. Those go back decades, and even inspired a Denzel sci-fi version, “Book of Eli.”

This new Korean thriller is a younger “origin story” of sorts about a Korean warrior, blinded after siding with the losers in an attempted coup, using his other senses to wield his blade.

Looks good, if not remotely as bloody as the many Japanese films about such a character.