Movie Nation

Maggie Q makes a pretty good surrogate for the audience in the horror tale “Death of Me.”

As Christina, a tourist trapped by on an Thai island about to take a typhoon hit, struggling to get around the not-wholly-hidden agenda of the simple, happy natives, Q (for Quigley) is quick to lose her patience, quick to realize danger if not what to do about it, and quick to anger.

“I’m so sick of this cryptic bull—t!”

Perhaps if this multi-handed script hadn’t been so caught up in rituals, hallucinations and attempts at explaining its illogical “logic,” and just focused on one pissed-off American tourist determined to get away from a deadly “paradise,” this mildly-chilling horror tale would have found its proper thriller footing and sprinted by.

Christina came here with her travel-writer husband Neil (Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam). They wake up after their “last night” there, dirty and confused. They need to catch a ferry, but don’t. They need to remember what happened the night before, but cannot.

In maybe the biggest eye-roller among the film’s too-obvious plot devices, Neil “recorded” everything that happened the night before on his phone. Hours of it.

A willingly-gulped spiked drink, an amulet of local origin, and Christina finds herself puking up dirt and grass in the morning. Because the video showed her murdered and buried the night before. By Neil.

Their quest to flee or find out what’s going on hurls frustrating scenes at them which strip away their sense of urgency, and the film’s. Language barriers, side-eyes from locals who don’t seem intent on “help,” reminders that there’s no typhoon danger here because “no storm hit this island two hundred years.”

Maggie Q gives Christina a nice mania that she lets go of too quickly, as her character’s panic gives way to cool-headed — TOO cool-headed — fury. She takes Neil’s phone, to call her parents, her sister, “the FBI.”

“Who’d the guy in ‘The Wicker Man’ call?”

“Nobody. He got burned to death.”

Separated from Neil, Christina questions everybody and everything. Locals, including the helpful American AirBnB hostess (Alex Essoe) try to steer her clear of…danger? Answers?

“This is the part where I tell you not to go in.”

“This is the part where I don’t listen.”

That self-awareness gives this Darren Lynn Bousman (“Repo! The Genetic Opera,” “Saw II”) film a light moment or two, but nothing more.

The confusion between reality and hallucination absolutely butchers the film’s forward momentum. Pausing to see this grisly vision (Or IS it?) or that one doesn’t fool Christina, or the viewer into believing “It’s all in your head.”

Being told that by a Thai cop, doctor or whoever doesn’t muddy the waters either. That misdirection squanders the film’s suspense and urgency.

Hell, you referenced “The Wicker Man.” Were you paying attention to how and why it worked or more recently DIDN’T work?

MPAA Rating: R for violence, gore, sexual content and language

Cast: Maggie Q, Luke Hemsworth, Alex Essoe, Kelly B. Jones and Kat Ingkarat.

Credits: Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, script by Ari Margolis, James Morley III and David Tish. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:34

This looks lovely, but when I saw the trailer in a theater it reminded me of a “King of the Hill” episode. A lot.

Mike Judge always gets there first. Oct. 9.

Glen Keane, from Disney Animation’s Second Golden Age, directed, and Pearl Studios, aka “Oriental Dreamworks” (“Kung Fu Panda”) did this, which looks several cuts above the usual mixed bag of Netflix animated films.

Coming shortly to Netflix, and to the Oscar race?

A Cold War period piece starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Bill Camp. Looks delicious.

Read my review of “The Queen’s Gambit” here.

He’s twice her height, but sure, this could work.

Feb. 10, just in time for Valentine’s.

Fight me.

There’s a fast-food analogy for writer-director Andrew Cohn’s “The Last Shift” that’s too obvious to pass up.

It’s gassy, not as nutritious as advertised, and in the end not at all filling.

This is the debut fictional feature for the documentary filmmaker, and he found a little-filmed blue collar milieu and a winning cast to tell his story of marginal lives and “white privilege” at the lower end of the economic spectrum. But he blows it.

Veteran character actor Richard Jenkins (“The Shape of Water,” “The Visitor”) has a rare lead role as Stan, “Stan the Man,” an Albion, Michigan legend at Oscar’s Chicken & Fish.

It’s a regional fast food joint that has held on through decades of challenges by every new chain that’s opened in that “strip” that every town in America has — the highway where KFC, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and their ilk peddle their wares, side-by-side-by-side.

Oscar’s has held on by being cheap and never changing. Who knows how long ago their big illuminated marquee blew out? Never got it fixed.

Stan’s a “legend” because he’s held down the graveyard shift, 10-6, “drive-thru only,” for decades. And now, after 38 years, he’s calling it quits.

Little pieces of his character emerge. He grew up here, went to the high school and isn’t above joshing with the winless football team’s slackers who pull up at his window. He knows everybody.

“I didn’t get this smart by being stupid.”

Everybody laughs, and they’re not necessarily laughing with him. He’s a town character, scraping by on a low-paying job because he’s sort of on-the-spectrum.

He’s not smart, never finished high school, and the fact that he hangs with his old high school buddy Dale (Ed O’Neill), and both of them are well over ’60 tells us they never left town, never outgrew the place and that Dale has a lot of tolerance for Stan’s dopiness.

Hanging out with the guys means beer, but not for Stan. He’s a Diet Squirt man.

Shane Paul McGhie of TV’s “Deputy” and “Greenleaf” plays the guy Stan’s supposed to train to take over. Stan’s boss Shazz (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is adamant about that. Stan may have been there forever, reliable to a fault. But he can be replaced. He’s not so sure.

“Some people turn up their sleeves, and some don’t turn up at all.”

The kid, Jevon, is witty and pretty, dropping droll wisecracks as Stan walks him through “where the magic happens,” and stresses strict separation of chicken and fish prep.

“Separate but equal,” Jevon cracks.

Stan’s got a sixth sense about what kind of dipping sauce people will select at the drive-thru window. He’s “the sauce whisperer,” Jevon offers. Nothing. Over Stan’s head.

But Jevon needs this job more than his careless attitude allows. He’s on probation. He did something stupid, and now he’s got a record. He’s also a baby daddy, which at his age and with his promise, counts as a second “stupid thing.”

Birgundi Baker plays Sydney, his girlfriend — just as smart, and years more mature about what they need to do to fulfill their promise and raise their little boy, Carter. Jevon’s still slacking off, hitting the chronic with his boys.

He can dismiss Stan with an, “If I’m still here at your age, put me in the ground.” But what will he do to change his fate? He can’t even pee in a cup without losing his probation.

Jevon tries to alert Stan to the way he’s been exploited all these years. Stan tries to get Jevon to take the job seriously, read the employee’s handbook and get the details right. Don’t serve an undercooked burger. Do be polite.

Their back and forth gets into race and “privilege.” Stan’s under-developed “future plans” and Jevon’s inability to even think about a future collide. And we’ll see where “privilege” gets either of them.

Cohn brings a documentarian’s eye to this humblest of workplaces, but his character development leaves a lot to be desired. Stan is both a “type” and a clumsily articulated version of that “type.” When you cast a 70something as a still-struggling-to-meet-the-rent fast food worker, you’re looking at a tragedy, not a quirky comedy with a message.

Jenkins is one of my favorite actors, but this strikes me as one he should have passed on.

McGhie comes off better, but his character’s background is sloppily sketched-in. Are we laying his missteps in botching a promising future on pot, self-created “pressure” from poor decisions, or being too clever for his own good?

A little of all that is in play, but it doesn’t really work. We can’t figure him out from watching his family dynamic or the way he relates to Miss All Business, Sydney.

That said, “The Last Shift” is still an intriguing failure, a project that started with good intentions, the KFC Cheeto’s sandwich of indie cinema.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some drug use

Cast: Richard Jenkins, Shane Paul McGhie, Birgundi Baker, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Ed O’Neill

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Cohn. A Sony release.

Running time: 1:30

This fall release covers some of the same ground as “Monuments Men” and the documentary “The Rape of Europa.”

Looks intriguing.

Writing for a newspaper in Disney Town, aka Orlando, the company’s long filmmaking history became one of my beats.

If an animated classic was being re-released or offered up in a new medium (DVD, BluRay), I’d knock out a story — often getting some of the surviving legends, suggested by the studio, on the phone for a quick chat.

The composing duo “The Sherman Brothers” Roy E. Disney and other veterans of the studio’s Golden Age, its formative years from the ’30s’ to the ’50s, would offer insights and anecdotes.

Any time one of Walt’s famed “Nine Old Men,” animator-loyalists there from the beginning, and men who crossed picket lines to stick by him during Disney’s labor disputes in the ’40s died, I’d get Frank and Ollie (Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston) to offer their memories of what made that Disney Legend special.

But the company’s history, still being peddled until quite recently, had been scrubbed of the vast contributions of women artists who were on the payroll, overshadowed, underpaid, resented when they dared to shine. Nathalie Holt’s “The Queens of Animation” is the latest book to tackle this discrepancy, and it’s an eye opener.

Others have written about the Ink & Paint Dept., overwhelmingly female, with artists there sometimes promoted into higher status jobs. Holt grabs onto the stories of a series of pioneers — stand-outs whose huge contribution wasn’t credited on screen or in their pay envelopes.

She tracks these women from “Fantasia,” “Dumbo” and “Bambi” to “Brave,” “Mulan” (the superior animated musical) and “Frozen.”

A lightly-regarded ballet by Tchaikovsky had made its North American premiere, with little fanfare, in the early ’30s. But it was Bianca Majolie who latched onto the enchanting “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” and had a huge hand in shaping the stand-out sequence in Disney’s concert cartoon, “Fantasia.” You can trace the Christmas tradition that ballet enjoys to that film popularizing the music, and right back to her.

Majolie worked on “Pinocchio,” and her work on a short about “Elmer Elephant” put her in an important position on “Dumbo.”

Artists like Majolie and Retta Scott, Grace Huntington, Sylvia Holland and Mary Blair broke into “the boy’s club” at Disney, adding grace notes, character depth and novelty to the studio’s great films during its early years.

A deer at the San Diego Zoo is about to give birth? Send Bianca down there with a sketch pad! Cinderella needs a fashion-forward “modern” look? Leave that to Mary Blair.

And on and on it went, women playing key roles in making some of the most beloved films ever released, unheralded and almost unknown, laid off and rehired, struggling to get by on vastly inferior salaries, but making themselves seen, and eventually heard.

Holt uses personal letters and access to Disney’s famous, stenographer-covered story meetings — long, hash-out the plot, problems with characters and design sessions — to build this story.

It’s not the most complete history of Disney animation. She only focuses on some of the big female names left out in “Nine Old Men” oriented accounts. But it’s hard to see how any future books on the decades of struggle, triumphs, flops and comebacks that marked what is now one of the world’s most valuable companies and brands will be able to omit these Disney Legends.

“The Queens of Animation,” by Nathalia Holt. Published by Gale/Thorndike Press, 541 pages, $15 via Amazon, eBay, online.

Here’s a short video of Disney Legend Mary Blair’s vast impact on the studio’s look, from animation to theme park rides.

In a half-dead mall, with a long-on-life-support Regal Cineplex let’s catch “Late Shift” in the town where star Richard Jenkins’ sister lives, scenic Oviedo, Florida.

I’ve profiled RJ a few times, never fails to mention his sis, though her name escapes me at the moment.

Maybe I’ll catch “Infidel” too. Not if I have to pay for it, though. I have a firm “No Dollars to Dinesh De Douche” rule.