Movie Nation

Vampire flick aficionados should definitely drop in on “Climate of the Hunter,” a stylish, chatty and camp blood-sucking homage to “Dark Shadows” and the pretentious British films in the genre from the 1960s.

Prolific Oklahoma indie filmmaker Mickey Reece even managed to make this period piece look as if it was shot on grainy celluloid.

But it’s most valuable as a tutorial on the difficulties of creating “camp,” as this film festival favorite is the sort of airless enterprise you end up with when camp doesn’t quite come off.

The first hints you have that this isn’t all that serious come from the characters with what look like spray-on tans. An homage to George Hamilton in “Love at First Bite,” perhaps?

Alma (Ginger Gilmartin) and Elizabeth (Mary Buss) are two sisters with 40 fast receding in the rear view mirror, competing for the attentions of this older man they’ve known for years. Wesley (Ben Hall) is a well-heeled, well-traveled writer, prone to pontification, dropping Goethe and Baudelaire into dinner conversation.

He’s also dapper, rolling up to their vacation home in the woods in a 1970 Mustang convertible, leisure-suited, his spray-tan and dye-job varying just enough from scene to scene to suggest “vanity.”

Elizabeth works in DC, and Alma is more wrapped up in “aging gracefully.”

“How’s that?” her sister cattily wonders.

One of the sisters’ name was on a mental hospital report in the film’s opening image. But here, that’s not a disadvantage.

“He’s clearly into sick women.”

Over the course of a couple of days, they chat and flirt and take strolls with Wesley. Alma’s married daughter Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger) comes in, gripes a bit and distracts Wesley. And his resentful son, aspiring writer Percy (Sheridan McMichael) shows up and drops a lot of hints.

“Mom’s gone, you’ll live forever and I’ll never have children.” The ladies speak of Wesley being “a little long in the tooth,” but Percy is even less kind about “his twilight years, or whatever these are to him.”

Alma has vivid dreams about vampires gathered for poker games. That could be a byproduct of hanging with local “character” and aged pothead BJ Beavers (Jacob Ryan Snovel).

It’s a film of long dinner chats with classical music warhorses playing in the background, Wesley dropping Pere Lachaise cemetery anecdotes and Percy serving dear old-or-ageless Dad a salad.

“Is there GARLIC in this?”

The tidbits above are the lightest moments in this, although I was amused by Dad’s endorsement of Percy’s prose, “though it lacks subtlety, taste and style” and a random flash of nudity in one dinner chat. Insert shots, with narration, of ’70s style dishes being served, like other “comic” attempted comic touches, left me cold.

Gilmartin’s Alma is the centerpiece here, and while a perfectly natural actress, she looks just enough like Molly Shannon that one is disappointed when nothing all that funny ever comes out of her mouth. Hall (he played an FBI agent in the abortion drama “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer”) is properly oily, and overall, the cast is as intentionally arch as the material demands.

But for all its virtues — the ’70s take on “pretentious” is spot-on — it didn’t amount to many laughs, any frights or much of all that would provoke more than a “Look at that apparition in a Nosferatu mask” and other DIY low-budget novelties.

Yes, Reece has been doing this for years and his films have taken on a nice polish. And I dare say this one would “play” in the right group setting, with proper alcoholic lubrication.

But from its nonsensical title to the inconsequential plot behind that title, “Climate for the Hunter” doesn’t have enough to offer to make it worth recommending, save for members of the vampire camp cognoscenti. And even they might prefer seeing it tipsy.

MPA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, nudity

Cast: Ginger Gilmartin, Mary Buss, Ben Hall, Jacob Ryan Snovel, Danielle Evon Ploeger and Sheridan McMichael.

Credits: Directed by Mickey Reece, script by Mickey Reece and John Selvidge. A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:28

Netflix’s efforts to steal Hallmark Channel’s “Christmas wish-fulfillment romance” thunder get a boost from “A California Christmas,” a pleasant little nothing that would be right at home among Hallmark’s holiday flirtations-over-fruitcake romances.

It’s the seriously good-looking stars of “Roped,” now married in real life, in a sweet, obvious little fish-out-of-water romance set in California ranch country. And if it’s only marginally better than much of the holiday-oriented fare of Netflix or Hallmark, that just means it fits right in.

Co-star Lauren Swickard, doing farmwork in full makeup, cut-off shorts or yoga pants, model-actor-husband Josh Swickard managing a shirtless moment or two?

She’s the bitter, loveless ranch daughter, struggling to hang on without her late father, with her mom (Amanda Detmer) struggling with cancer. He’s the rich, playboy son of a real estate tycoon (Julie Lancaster) sent north to “get her to sign,” only to be mistaken for a ranch hand, do his first-ever “manual labor,” getting his first callouses, getting into his first honky-tonky fistfight?

This thing writes itself, or would have if Lauren Swickard hadn’t managed it. I mean, it’s got no pace, but that’s the way of these holiday rom-coms. The laughs are a bit thin, but that’s a given, too.

If Netflix hasn’t signed these two to do a holiday movie a year until yoga pants are out of fashion, I’ll eat my cowboy hat.

The laughs here come from almost entirely from two supporting players. Ali Afshar plays Leo, the driver for love’em and leave’em Joseph, the “fixer” who, when Callie confuses him for this ranch hand her mother hired sight unseen, has to find the “real” Manny (David del Rio) and pay him not to show up.

But Leo ends up having to room with Manny in a rental house while Joseph, given “one last chance” by his rich Mommy to close this real-estate deal, tries to cozy up to Callie, using what his mother figures is his only “skill, getting young women to do whatever the Hell you ask them to.” They need Manny around, because Joseph has no idea what to do on a dairy farm, these “chores” and what not.

“What is ‘muck the pens?”

Manny, sleeping late, zoning out on video games, will be Joseph’s life coach.

Del Rio scores laughs playing a goofball with hidden skills only oenophile Leo can appreciate.

The leads are pretty and a tad bland, a curse of this genre of rom-com. The “holidays” barely figure into anything. It doesn’t snow in that part of California, for starters.

And the plot gives away the game entirely too easily for this thing to run on and on getting to a finale we see from miles off.

But if you’re looking for something to watch with older relatives, something with a smidgen more edge than say a faith-based holiday romance, you could do worse.

MPA Rating: PG-13, some sexuality

Cast: Josh Swickard, Lauren Swickard, Amanda Detmer, Ali Afshar, David del Rio.

Credits: Directed by Shaun Paul Piccinino, script by Lauren Swickard. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

There are outtakes at the end of “Skylines,” aka “Skylin3s,” cast members crack up at all the silly, pithy, cliche one-liners common to the sci-fi action genre.

That’s fitting, because there’s no sterner test than keeping a straight face while delivering the following.

“No rush. Just the end of the world.”

“We’re not in Kansas any more!”

“Wormhole travel is extremely dangerous!

“Oh, so you have HALF a plan!”

“No one’s talking to YOU, honey!”

“Death or glory, corporal!”

“Brace yourself! HOLD ON!”

The third film in this decade-old franchise is slow. So slow. It’s a joked-up mash-up of “District 9” and “Starship Troopers.” The buggy “harvesters” who invaded, and whose “pilots” split from them in “Beyond Skyline” to live with us on Earth and help keep the harvesters at bay, must be dealt with one more time. They’ve got to be attacked on their home planet.

Let’s call it “Cobalt One,” because it’s so blue.

The human/alien hybrid Rose (Lindsey Morgan) who “froze” in mid-attack during “Beyond Skyline” is tracked down to add to this combat team. The object is retrieving “the core drive” something-or-other which will keep the pilots from dying off, and lashing out to “harvest” the planet again as they do.

Complicated? Enough. But there’s more. Rose has “powers.” And she has a full-on alien brother, thanks to the way their dad (Frank Grillo, seen in flashbacks) rolled. Rose and bug pilot Trent are on the team together, classic bickering siblings.

“Need a hand? I brought thumbs!”

While this team, led by General Radford (Alexander Siddig) with Col. Owen (Daniel Bernhardt) providing the boots-on-the-ground firepower, transits the wormhole and hunts for the magical talisman, Dr. Mal (B-movie queen Rhona Mitra) is living among the starving masses, working on a serum that would, apparently, accomplish the same thing. No wormholes needed.

Huh.

Say it with us, Doc. “I just need…a little more time!”

So the away team shoots, slashes and flame-throws its way towards The Core Drive while Dr. Mal and pals (James Cosmo, Naomi Tankel) try to fend off the “pilot sprawl” attacking them in the blasted wasteland of suburban London.

The players give it their best, as tedious exercises like this are rarely the fault of the cast. The fight choreography rises to “adequate.” The effects are OK — mostly — a planet overrun with “pilots,” another filled with semi-visible alien versions called “shadow creatures.

But there’s so much exposition, and writer-director Liam O’Donnell (“Beyond Skyline”) has little sense of how to pick up the pace and amp up the urgency aside from adding new tech, new “powers” or many, many pauses for one-liners.

The best of which has to be an ad lib, directed at “Beyond Skyline’s” one holdover character (aside from Grillo), Morgan’s Rose.

“I really like what you’ve done with your hair!”

MPA Rating: R for violence and language

Cast: Lindsey Morgan, Alexander Siddig, Rhona Mitra, Daniel Bernhardt, Cha-Lee Yoon, James Cosmo and Frank Grillo.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Liam O’Donnell, based on previous “Skyline” screenplays. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:53

In “Tiger Within” Edward Asner plays a Holocaust survivor who takes an interest in and eventually takes in a runaway, a Midwestern teen punk who drew a swastika on her leather jacket for shock effect.

The product of a broken home, Casey (newcomer Margot Josefsohn) was told the Holocaust is a “myth” by her drunken, disinterested mother. So old Samuel is here to teach her otherwise, and share a few 90something profundities with the obnoxious, angry-at-the-world 15 year-old.

“Your Mom is wrong,” is the first. “Nazis make bad company” is another.

She spies his tattoo, so at least “that’s something we have in common.”

Her utter ignorance of Jews, the Holocaust and history in general suggests she’s not just been kicked out of every school she attended back in Ohio, but that she’s been under a cultural rock her entire life.

That makes “Tiger Within” something of an R-rated primer, an “After School Special” on some very serious subjects — aimed at a teen audience. And like much of this stumbling, wrong-footed effort, it’s just…off.

The entire enterprise, written by Gina Wendkos and directed by Rafal Zielinski, begs the question, “Did you folks think this through?”

-An opening title suggests the time frame is “a number of years ago.” That feels like an afterthought, like something a film distributor gave them as a reason for not picking it up. Making a period piece involves more than visiting a vintage punkwear store and taking away everybody’s cell phones. The cars are modern. They didn’t shoot this as a period piece.

But that’s the only way to make this Midwestern punk runaway with a swastika on her back run into a Holocaust survivor who lost his children in the Death Camps. Samuel would have to be 100+ for that math to work in the 2010s.

We see the kid put on a train and sent to her father, but she departs from an Amtrak station in the sun-kissed mountains of the desert Southwest, not far from Los Angeles.

There are little grace notes in Asner’s German-accented performance, truisms in the dialogue.

“You heading to church?” “Temple, yes.” “Sorry. I keep forgetting the difference.”

“So should everybody!”

The scene where they meet, a kid with a swastika on her jacket curled up against a tombstone Samuel visits to lay a rock on the memorial to his wife, should have been a winner. It falls flat.

Josefsohn makes a perfectly plausible crude, unfiltered and clueless teen. But cutting straight to her job in as a sex-worker is jarring. No friends, never had a boyfriend, never heard of the Holocaust but she figures out to land a “safe” sex work job in massage, at 15? OK.

Casey, like the film itself, feels out of her time — an early ’80s torn-fishnets, tattoo-covered jerk (again, 14 or 15) who’d be a lot more naive about everything, not just history and Jews (“I’ve never met one before.”), no matter what magazines she’s read.

Samuel gets her into school, and being the first person to take an interest in her, makes Casey more open to other people. So let’s graft a first junior-high crush onto this, the most “After School Special” touch of all.

But again, we’ve already seen her as a punk sex worker. So…

Whatever its scattered virtues, “Tiger Within” never shakes that “didn’t think this through” vibe, poor choice of titles included.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, simulagesex work, profanity

Cast: Edward Asner, Margot Josefsohn

Credits: Directed by Rafal Zielinski, script by Gina Wendkos. Film Art release.

Running time: 1:39

They’ve sunk everything they have into their latest “fixer upper.” It’s a big, remote manor house in Spain, and it’s their biggest project, if not their first.

But their angel-faced son Eric (Lucas Blas) is spooked. His toys are switching on by themselves. And he’s hearing things, “voices” in his head, in radios, in the walkie talkie he uses to keep in touch with Dad (Rodolfo Sancho) and Mom (Ana Fernández).

And that shrink (Beatriz Arjona) they’ve called in? She’s not getting answers to her “What do the voices want?” queries.

“I’m not allowed to tell you,” Eric mumbles (in Spanish with English subtitles.

But the static-filled whispers go on, Eric draws pictures of what he hears and the flies — the FLIES! They’re always buzzing around.

When one flies into the psychotherapist’s ear on her static-filled drive home, that’s all she wrote. And she’s just the first grisly fatality in “Voces,” retitled “Don’t Listen” for North American Netflix.

This latest H-Horror (Hispanic Horror) film is a real kitchen-sink ghost story. As in the script throws in everything but the kitchen sink.

Flies, scratchy voices, apparitions, a father and daughter team of scientists investigating that big, old house and…wait for it — The Spanish Inquisition even figures in.

Because to this day “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

It’s an ungainly affair, not at all a graceful film. We lurch from the kid hearing the voices to a shocking death or two, a brief mention of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) when the parents see this writer and expert on the subject (Ramón Barea) interviewed on TV and before you know it, he’s been dragged out there, with his sonic engineer daughter (Belén Fabra) for a little infrared camera/microphones all around investigating.

Because Dani (Sancho) is hearing dead people. Does that mean they’re not really dead?

“You’re clinging to something that can’t come back.”

I tend to like haunted house tales built around “investigations” — the “experts” shocked and awed by encountering the reality of the supernatural, often for the first time. But “Don’t Listen” left me cold. And the deeper we get into “explanations” that are more just revelations about the house’s past, the duller it gets.

A surprise twist or two is nice. But the many people with a hand in feeding ideas to screenwriter Santiago Díaz and director Ángel Gómez Hernández missed the obvious and break a couple of cardinal rules of horror.

They set up stakes, and then remove them by killing off somebody we’re supposed to care about in the first act. And then they expect us to shift alliances and root for the investigators, who aren’t remotely as engaging as say the daffy ghost hunters of the “Insidious” movies.

It’s nicely shot and cut together, but the disconnect from the characters makes “Don’t Listen” too easy to tune out.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence

Cast: Rodolfo Sancho, Ana Fernández, Ramón Barea, Belén Fabra and Lucas Blas.

Credits: Directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández, script by Santiago Díaz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

A supernatural thriller also starring writer/director Derek Ting, it’s about ancient “dust” conferring superpowers. And we’ll see exactly what that leads to in January when “Agent Revelation” (formerly titled “Agent II”) comes our way.

The teaser trailer only gives away a little — Nov. 21, a Caribbean/South American setting, a seriously salsa-flavored beat.

Wait, didn’t “Ip Man: The Finale” come out just last year?

Ip Man, that martial artist who never fails, the movie hero with more farewell tours than Cher, is back for “Ip Man : Kung Fu Master,” a solid set of martial arts brawls in a plot stitched together with soggy Ramen noodles.

Whatever resemblance these films have to the real life of “The man who taught Bruce Lee” is somewhat incidental, if not downright accidental. But the real Ip Man (Yip Man, “Man” being his name) was a policeman in Foshan in the 1930s. And that’s the jumping off point for this Dennis To “Fists of Fury.”

The most famous alumnus of the Wing Chun school of kungfu is a captain in the years between the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937.

Foshan (just north of Hong Kong) is a city all but run by the Axe Gang and its charismatic, briarwood-pipe smoking leader, San Ye (Michael Wong). Our captain takes his force’s “Protect the people, vanquish crime” motto seriously. There’s nothing for it but for him to march into the courtyard of the multi-story house where San Ye plays Xiangqi with one of his subordinates, and beat the hell out of the hatchet-and-axe-wielding “Axe Gang” minions who don’t want their boss arrested.

Axe murderers vanquished, San Ye comes along quietly. He is described as “honorable,” a “patriot.” He’s just killed somebody who is collaborating with the Japanese, smuggling opium to the masses.

Which is why San Ye dies in custody. The chuckleheaded chief, under the thumb of the Japanese — who haven’t yet invaded — fingers Ip Man for the murder.

Nothing for it but to grab the family, lay low with this mysterious “uncle” and master of Wing Chun (Dongfeng Yue) they just met, conjure up a “black knight” mask and fight the real enemy — the Japanese.

I’ve dropped in on an Ip Man or two over the years of this franchise, which started in 2008. There’s a lot of Chinese jingoism in this incarnation.

“If all Chinese were like you, we’d only be trampled by others,” Ip Man hisses (in Mandarin with English subtitles). “We Chinese would rather die than surrender!”

The Japanese make cartoonish villains, the sorts who show up in bad movies and want to stage a “martial arts…exchange.”

Because “They are not equal to our karate!”

To owes his career to the fact that he looked like martial arts star Donnie Yen, the original “Ip Man.” The replacement Ip is more competent than charismatic.

Like everybody else who works the martial arts movie trade, co-writer/director Li Liming builds his film around set-pieces — axe murderer mayhem, a mid-childbirth (for Ip Man’s wife) throwdown, a “rescue” of Fan Ye’s feisty, kungfu-fighting daughter (Wanliruo Xi) and a Sino-Japanese bout in the ring.

The script’s a mess, the fights solid (a little wirework, not much) and the costumes — black minion-wear, Japanese black leather overcoats (Nazi iconography) — first rate.

Only one moments stands out, though, a little over-the-top Japanese cruelty, deserved, all historical things considered. That involves “executing” a dead man by firing squad, shooting the ropes that hold up his coffin so that it’ll crush a child plucked off the street for this demonstration.

That Sino-Japanese hatred just doesn’t let up. Sadly, the movie’s one long let-down.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, bloodshed

Cast: Dennis To, Michael Wong, Wanliruo Xi, Dongfeng Yue

Credits: Directed by Li Liming, script by Shi Chingshui and Li Liming. A Magnet release.

Running time: 1:24

Alicia Silverstone has her best big screen role in ages in “Sister of the Groom,” a “big fat Jewish wedding” comedy in which she has the title role, but which she apparently had to soldier through in the last stages of laryngitis.

She plays Audrey, just turning 40, proud mother of twins, still so embittered by the stomach they left her with ten years before. The mere touch of her round, stretch-marked belly by husband Ethan (Tom Everett Scott) makes her recoil and shriek.

“I HATE MY BODY!”

She’s struggling to relaunch herself as an architect — the career she never quite got off the ground before the babies came. And now she’s got to pour her 40-year-old body into a dress that flatters her for her brothers’ wedding, moved up to fall on “Jewish Valentine’s Day,” the “Holiday of Soulmates.”

She’ll meet rich-developer little brother Liam’s French bride-to-be. Clemence (Mathilde Ollivier) is a willowy, vain demanding pop-star-in-the-making. Liam (Jake Hoffman) is utterly in her thrall, and that’s bound to rub Audrey the wrong way in this wedding at their family’s old home on Long Island, which Liam bought and plans to live in after the wedding, after renovations.

Husband Ethan and Audrey’s dad (Mark Blum) keep the piece as the French folk — Ronald Guttman is father of the bride — prove to be a bit rude, a tad coarse, and unapologetically demanding. There are Israelis on that side of the family, too. Thus, an Israeli rabbi has been flown in.

The house their late mother adored will be renovated, but not via Audrey’s submitted plans.

“We’re thinking, it’s better not working with family.”

As the slights cross into humiliations and the insults spread from the challah to the chuppah, Audrey and Clemence cross the line from putdowns and testy exchanges to open warfare.

The situations set us up for a funnier movie than Amy Miller Gross gets out of this material. Old flames, drugs, ruined dresses all rude new in-laws piled on top of “This is 40” take-stock moments should have produced more laughs. There aren’t a lot of overtly Jewish wedding comedies, so novelty works in Gross’s favor, just not enough.

The assorted heart-to-hearts play well, and Silverstone still shows some (limited) comic chops. But there’s no flow, no scene-topping-scene build-up of laughs, heart, etc.

Having characters watch “My Best Friend’s Wedding” at one point isn’t helpful. Leaving the sole profundity expressed here to die of loneliness is a sin.

“It’s the people who trigger us most who are our greatest teachers.”

Write this one off as a “nice try,” and too bad about the laryngitis Ms. Silverstone.

MPA Rating: R for language, drug use, some sexual content and brief nudity

Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Mathilde Ollivier, Mark Blum, Jake Hoffman, Ronald Guttman, Julie Engelbrecht, Noah Silver and Charlie Bewley

Credits: Scripted and directed by Amy Miller Gross. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:32

The voice is one long never-sobered-up slur, and the appearance — wheelchair-bound, face in need of spittle, spilled-booze or what-have-you removal — frighteningly like another modern icon.

Can it be that Irish singer singer, songwriter Shane MacGowan come has come to a “Stephen Hawking after a bender” stage in his life?

The on-the-nose title of Julien Temple‘s documentary portrait of The Pogues frontman, poet, argument-against-English/Irish dentistry and infamous Tipperary tippler is “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.” Temple takes the endless brush-offs, barks of “stop INTERROgatin’ me” and insults. He summons MacGowan friends like Johnny Depp to pitch in and try and coax answers out of the crusty curmudgeon.

That merits a “Y’think I didn’t sleep tru dose ‘Pirates’ movies?” To which Depp, also in his cups, slurs back “You think I didn’t?”

“Yer so cute y’make me SICK, actually!” Roars of hiccuping laugher all round.

Yes, a lot of what we’re hearing is smart, sarcastic, passionate and profound. And a lot of it isn’t about his life’s pursuit of the “Crock’o Gold.” It’s the other kind of “crock.”

And oh my, do they all go through “a few rounds” in every sense of that phrase.

Using animated and live-action flashbacks to MacGowan’s childhood in Tipperary (He was born in the UK to Irish parents and spent his early years on a family farm in Ireland.), an extensive archive of decades of TV interviews, chats with his father Maurice and journalist-sister Siobhan, a Pogues biographer and a bandmate, Temple teases the man’s story out of him over two lively, subtitled (mostly) hours.

From an early age, he was exposed to Irish Nationalist writing, thinking and music. He idolized Brendan Behan and Dan Beard, James Mangan and James Joyce, and NOT W.B. Yeats, Bob Geldolf or Elvis Costello. Oh no.

He claims his first nervous breakdown hit him at age six and his first beers and whiskeys, offered by the adults surrounding him, at three.

Mental institutions, dry-outs, he claimed to be “sending up the stereotype” of the tipsy “Paddy” when he was the staggering, slurring sometimes-brawling embodiment of it.

“The oldsters thought, ‘If ye give’em enough when they’re young, they won’t get out of hand with it when they’re older.'”

And yet he was “The Man Who Saved Irish Music,” the one performer to give its sentimental “diddley aye” ballads and jigs “a kick in the arse.”

He had to go back to Britain to reinvent the sound, take up the cause of Irish suffering and the subjugation of Northern Ireland, and find his way back to the faith of his childhood.

“Roman Catholic mass is one the most beautiful experiences a human being can be subjected to.”

He was an avid punk fan and published a fanzine (“Bandage”) before writing songs and taking the stage with The Pogues because “in punk, it didn’t matter if you were ugly.”

MacGowan launches into long, informed discourses on Irish history and the Irish diaspora, noting “There are 45 million people in America who should still be in Ireland.”

And he freely admits that the thing he loves about the Irish poets and writers he idolizes is partly the work of the likes of Flann O’Brien, and partly their fearless/careless way with whiskey.

Temple, who’>s been connected to film and the punk scene since the ’70s, gets what he can out of MacGowan, and leans on older interviews and others to fill in the missing bits, to place the man on the pedestal earned by his body of work — not just the sentimental, biting hits such as “Fairytale of New York” or “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”

Temple’s made a fascinating film that sets the record straight — in a lot of slurred words — about MacGowan while he’s still able to do it. Because, let’s be blunt, he’s in pretty rough shape. Claims on his Wikipedia page that his wife Victoria makes about his sobriety seem laughable when we see her sitting in as he knocks a few back with Depp.

And if Temple needs an idea for his next doc, he should re-watch “Crock of Gold.” There’s a fascinating psychological profile of Johnny Depp’s fanboy efforts to become drinking buddies with famous drunks, punks and journalists alike, and then produce docs about them. A Temple “INTERRogation” might do the newly-canceled star a world of good, at this point.

MPA Rating: unrated, alcohol abuse, smoking, profanity

Cast: Shane MacGowan, Johnny Depp, Siobhan MacGowan, Gerry Adams, Victoria Mark Clarke, Ann Scanlon and Maurice Mac

Credits: Written and directed by Julien Temple. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 2:04