Movie Nation

You can fight back the grin that wants to creep onto your face, every so often, during “In Like Flynn,” the good-natured, not-totally far-fetched Aussie film based on the early life of Australia’s first and greatest screen icon — the swashbuckling rake, Errol Flynn.

It’s a patchwork affair — with four credited screenwriters, including a “Flynn.”

There’s not a lot of star power in the cast and Aussie director Russell Mulcahy’s big-screen career went off the rails with “The Shadow” and “The Real McCoy” nearly 30 years ago.

But Mulcahy, who did a few “Highlander” pictures and a “Resident Evil,” knows how to shoot action. And as long as “In Like Flynn” is playing up the two-fisted, devil-may-care bravado of its subject, it’s on solid ground — brawling, dodging straight razors, daggers and bullets in the days before he “went Hollywood.”

That Hollywood trek could have happened earlier than it did, according to this “mostly true” movie based on Flynn’s memoir, “Beam Ends.” We meet him in the bush of Papua New Guinea in 1930, leading a Hollywood producer (Dan Fogler) on a trek to secure grisly footage of the victims of the primitive natives fighting off a new gold rush, and the intruders that come with it.

The politically correct Flynn (Thomas Cocquerel of “Kidnapping Mr. Heineken”), all of 21, may not be as seasoned as he makes out. But as he fires warning shots into the air rather than at the murderous tribespeople, dodges arrows and a hail of blow darts (which kill a native guide and friend), crossing a croc-infested river to make his Indiana Jones getaway, he shows manliness and star quality to that producer.

“You find yourself in Hollywood, come find us.”

But Flynn has that gold on his mind. He recruits a couple of pals — the tough, hard-drinking cynic Rex (Corey Large) and pedantic, posh-accented Dook (William Moseley) — to join him. They outfight/outwit Achun (Grace Huang, venomously sexy), the Dragon Lady of the Sydney waterfront in stealing her boat — the first Flynn sailing schooner to be named Sirocco (“desert wind”) — and make their way up the wild and wooly coast of Oz.

The previous owner of the boat, a weepy, violent old salt named Charlie (Clive Standen of TV’s “Vikings” and “Taken”), muscles his way into their partnership.

There are prize fights and shootouts when they aren’t threatened with dying of thirst, starvation or drowning by sinking.

Death hangs over the story and marks Flynn’s life, this version of his biography tells us. “Beam Ends,” the sailing slang title of that book, hints at despair, desperation and life of narrow escapes that Flynn says he was living at the time. “Beam Ends” means a boat that’s heeled so far over in a strong breeze that it’s about to capsize.

As we know he got his start in Australian films shortly after this period and that he wasn’t a literal Hollywood “discovery” (“He’s a headliner and doesn’t even know it!”), it’s hard to say where the truth ends and the Flynn memoir and four-screenwriters-adapting-it fiction begins.

The good parts of “In Like Flynn” make you wish there were more of them, and that the movie’s modest budget and modest ambitions weren’t slowing it down, thanks to a screenplay that serves up dead stretches in the midst of action picture cliches.

Digitally recreating Sydney Harbor in 1930 is fine. Digitally adding dolphins to the Sirocco’s wake? Less so.

The Indy opening sequence is quickly topped by a short, riotous, dodge the razors, punch the thugs and kiss the girl brawl that gave me high hopes for the picture. Dropping in on the opium den/brothel HQ of Achun didn’t dim those hopes. Much.

The idealistic young Flynn crows about relishing the moment, as “We will never be these men again,” and expectations rise.

“The sirens of the sea beckon!”

And then the movie unfolds in an updating of the corniest, old-fashioned two-fisted balderdash that Flynn’s movies, way back when, used to be.

Only less fun.

Standen has the best lines and the best role, warning the lubbers on board his boat — “Thievin’ sissies” he calls them — to brace for “Cyclones that’ll blow your foreskins off.”

“Won’t be long before y’get yourselves dead.”

But as the young Flynn revels in the low-rent adventure he’s dragging them all into, the old salt makes him consider his lack of ambition and the future (which Charlie is sadly living).

“You need to hoist your sail a little higher, mate.”

The handsome Cocquerel has an athletic grace and just a hint of the bravado that suits the role, and it’s no surprise to see him standing in the bosun’s chair on the top of one of the schooner’s masts. Young, relatively unknown guys are the easiest to talk into doing their own stunts. But he’s merely adequate in the role, with nothing that suggests Flynn’s brash physical presence or the wicked glint Flynn brought to his camera-loving grin.

Moseley manages a few moments of comic relief. What sort of ‘bath house’ is this?” Dook asks those in the Townsville (Queensland) brothel they’ve ducked into.

“The good kind,” a lady of the evening informs him.

David Wenham (“300”) plays the crooked priest/mayor of Townsville, Callan Mulvey the not-nearly-writerly-enough writer marooned there, and Isabel Lucas of TV’s “MacGyver” is a cunning, brawling hooker/ex-girlfriend of Flynn’s, sort of the Karen Allen to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones in this picture.

“In Like Flynn” would probably benefit from lowered “cut-rate Indiana Jones” expectations. But Mulcahy is too visual (a music video vet) and visceral a director to not lift them, just a bit, in the best of those early scenes, before the weary screenplay limited supply of charisma in the cast let him and the movie down.

MPAA Rating: R for some violence, drug use and a brief sexual reference

Cast: Thomas Cocquerel, Corey Large, Costas Mandylor, Isabel Lucas, William Moseley, Grace Huang, Nathalie Kelley, David Wenham, Dan Fogler and Clive Standen

Credits: Russell Mulcahy, script by Marc Furmie, Steve M. Albert, Luke Flynn, Corey Large, based on the Errol Flynn memoir. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:46

“He won’t hurt us, right?” the husband of the conjuring woman wants to know, asking about the monstrous entity his wife has summoned with mud and blood and a parchment of secret letters.

“Of course not! He’s here to PROTECT us!”

You know better. I know better. You don’t have to know Jewish folklore or have a grasp of Kabbalah to know “The Golem” may have been brought to life to protect and avenge, but that he — It — won’t limit his vengeance to murderous, Pogrom practicing Gentiles in 17th century Lithuania.

This English language Israeli production makes its moral lesson in the plainest terms. An oppressed people — raped, murdered and exploited for being apart, different and mysterious to the superstitious Russian Orthodox locals– learns the true price of vengeance in this parable.

For the horror fan, there’s grisly violence but little in the line of suspense, terror or performances that embody anything like that.

It begins with a narrated lie — “In Jewish folklore, it’s impossible to separate the truth from myth.” Nah.

A prologue traces the first Golem to ancient Prague, where a rabbi summons a mud monster of Hulk/Thing/Batman’s bad guy Bane proportions to protect his people, who are being murdered for all the usual hate-mongering reasons.

This Golem “must only be used for protection, for the greater good of all.”

It never works out that way.

Centuries later, a small shtetl in Lithuania enjoys relative tranquility, isolated from the Gentile world, its men spending their days in prayer and Torah study, the women raising babies and doing more than their fair share of work.

For Hannah ( Hani Furstenberg of “The Loneliest Planet”), that isn’t enough. She isn’t willing to go full “Yentl,” but she wants the education the men are getting. She slips under the floor of the rabbi’s school and listens, gets her husband Benjamin (Ishai Golan of “The Island”) to sneak a Torah out for her to pore over at nights.

They are childless, so anything he can do to keep her happy and willing to perform her wifely duties (complete with post-coital incantations) is fair game. The rabbi might be lecturing Benjamin that “seven years” without a baby is long enough, but Benjamin is devoted. He knows Hannah’s pain, even if he doesn’t know about her trips to the village “healer” for birth control.

A chance encounter lets the villagers know that plague has broken out among the Gentiles. And you know Gentiles and their ability to find somebody to blame.

When Vladimir (Alex Titenko), cruel on a good day but driven mad by his daughter’s infection, shows up to demand the mystic Jews “cure” his little girl, the unarmed villagers have no choice but to pray and make their best effort.

“Fail, and I will burn this place to the ground.”

But his minions don’t wait for a prognosis. They single out villagers for raping and pillaging, starting with Hannah’s sister. Unlike the passive men, she won’t let this go unavenged. She uses her biblical knowledge to perform the ceremony that summons the avenger from Hell, who might be either a heartless monster or a “savior to us all.”

The pitter-patter and clumsy thumps she hears in the attic tip her that she’s succeeded. But it’s not until she’s dangling from a rope for being caught outside the village confines by the Gentiles that she has her proof.

A naked, skinny mud-covered boy with coal-black eyes dismembers her attackers. She almost thinks it’s her long-dead little boy. But we know it’s “Danny doesn’t live here, Mrs. Hannah.”

It takes a while for the rest of the village to figure out what she’s done, and as she sees the mayhem The Golem unleashes, Hannah has her moment of doubt. The rabbi urges her to get that parchment with the 72 unspoken letters that spell “The Hidden Name of God” that she placed in the child’s mouth and thus kill it.

“It will never die like the rest of us.”

Hannah considers drowning him, but cannot. And to the horror of her neighbors, the avenger has a lot of avenging to do and isn’t picky about who he stabs, whose heart he pulls out of their chest and whose head he makes explode.

“The Golem” is a nicely-detailed period production that reaches a fine climax, where all Hannah and the Hebrews’ and their tormentors’ chickens come home to roost.

It’s a far-from-awful folk tale with a horrific edge. But it’s not suspenseful, and the generally unaffecting performances by the Israeli cast fail to draw us in and create empathy for the endangered.

Hannah is a figure who demands more of a character arc, something more wrenching or embittered or broken or vengeful than what Furstenberg gives us.

The Golem himself? Creepy as only a dead-eyed little boy can be. But scary? Not really. Any number of American B and C horror movies have given us bone-chilling tweenage villains.

But as I said, the parable comes through loud and clear. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. An eye for an eye only makes everybody blind in the end, especially when the eyes look like puddles of crude oil, and just as pitiless.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sex

Cast: Hani Furstenberg, Ishai Golan, Brynie Furstenberg, Alex Titenko,

Credits: Doron Paz, Yoav Paz, script by Ariel Cohen. An Epic release

Running time: 1:35

This horror period piece, set on the coast of Scotland in the mid 19th century, features an unknown-in-the-US UK cast  playing three sailors tossed upon a rocky shore, with just a handful of locals to shelter them, mislead them and…

Well, we can guess but we’d probably be guessing wrong.

“The Isle” opens Feb. 8.

We all have our beefs with Bill Maher. Check out his craven collapse into cowardliness when Julian Assange threatened him on live TV right before the 2016 election.

But he’s not wrong on this “When I was a child…outgrow comic books” take.

Stan Lee was lovable in the extreme, a salesman always on message (I interviewed him several times, nice guy — salesman, cheerleader.)

Comic books? Not great literature. Comic book movies? For the most part, formulaic pap. Junk food.

All modern vampire tales are variations on an “addiction” allegory. The “victim” needs her or his “fix.” Even in the “Twilight” movies, that was what played out — Kristen Stewart was addicted to Robert Pattinson’s pale (literal) sparkle.

“Painkillers” is novel in that it removes the subtlety of that allegory. A victim, not bitten (but infected, via transfusions or something) craves blood. He gets the hollow-eyed shakes without the taste of it.

And damnit, Jim, he’s a DOCTOR! He should be able to figure this out.

“Painkillers” is an indie production that bills Mischa Barton as a “star,” when really, she only had to show up for the opening scene. She plays the nameless victim of a vampiric slasher attack outside of a club.

“See Mischa Barton getting her wrists cut and sucked!” That’s that for Mischa.

Cut to a suburban surgeon dad (Adam Huss, making the most of his first starring role in film), playing with his son (Tate Birchmore), doting on the lad, and then playing the stupidest version of the “Wanna see something scary?” game ever. He turn the headlights off ass they drive home — in the dark.

Stupider still, that isn’t the exact reason they crash. Silly screenplay.

Dr. John Clarke wakes up in a coma and lurches into spasms of grief upon hearing the news that his boy died. He tumbles into the delirium tremens — uncontrollable shaking, alarming.

His Head of Medicine (Debra Wilson) is stumped. “Nothing is physically wrong with you.”

His wife (Madeline Zima), already heartbroken, is gutted that they cannot talk about this and that he is unable to return to work or function in any normal way.

But this Morris fellow (Grant Bowler) sidles up to him at his kid’s funeral and assures him, “I can help.”

And after John cuts his hand and discovers the restorative/curative powers of sucking a little blood, he looks this Morris fellow up.

“You drank your own blood, and the pain went away,” he’s told. “That particular cure works only once.”

How convenient. For the movie, I mean. Morris reassures John that he’s not a “vampire.”

“You’re NOT going to live forever. You can go out and enjoy the sun. Enjoy garlic on your steak and your good looks in the mirror.”

No. He’s just another junkie. He’s hooked. But to get his fix, he’s going to need to “adjust your notions of good and evil.” Besides, not everything’s black and white simple. He’ll be living in a “grey” area from now on.

As the stark string duo score (by Dustin Morgan) shrieks its approval, John dodges Morris’s offer to “help” and being a doctor, avails himself of easy access to blood for “my condition.”

Fans of splatter films and bloody vampire pics won’t be bowled-over by these scenes of John collecting surgical leftovers and draining blood bank bags. They’re pretty damned gross, though. Getting a little nauseus here, remembering it to write about it.

But shortcuts like donated blood won’t cut it. No, Morris has an answer. It won’t be “wrong” so long as the people you hunt and drain kind of, you know, DESERVE it.

“What are we doing?”

“Justice!”

The “vigilante vampire” hook for this tale is like Ms. Barton’s brief appearance in it — terribly under-developed.

But what isn’t is Huss’s value-added performance in the lead role. A supporting actor best known for support work in TV’s “Power,” he gives us wrenching grief that bends into withdrawal symptoms. The shakes and twitches, uncontrollable bobbing up and down have you fearing for the character and buying into the notion that the man needs restaints.

No fooling. If Huss ever wants a job playing any other kind of addict, this is the highlight reel he should show the casting director.

“Painkillers” may not be much, and I’d have gladly accepted a longer running time (more vigilante scenes) than the 83 minutes delivered here if it meant the story had more moral dilemma meat on its bones.

Bowler has an understated villainy about his performance, Zima gives wife Chloe a gutted-by-grief cast and Wilson does OK at creating empathy for her character in just a couple of scenes.

But Huss holds center stage with a body-contorting commitment like few actors we’ve seen outside of an A-picture about addiction. It’s great work in a middling movie.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast:  Adam Huss, Madeline Zima, Debra Wilson, Grant Bowler, Tate Birchmore, Mischa Barton.

Credits: Directed by Roxy Shih, script by Giles Daoust. A Vision Films release.

Running time: 1:23

Sorry for the breathless hype headline. But here you are, so now that I’ve got your attention.

Fox is setting up free showings of this Feb. blockbuster. Or what they hope will be a blockbuster.

The screenings for this Valentine’s Day release will be THIS Thursday, Jan. 31.

“The screenings will take place in Dolby Cinema in 3D at AMC, IMAXÔ 3D and other select 3D premium large format theatres. In addition to the film, fans at selected theaters will get to see a conversation with the filmmakers and cast including James Cameron, Jon Landau, director Robert Rodriguez and cast members Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connell, and Keean Johnson and a special inside look at the making of the film.”

Go HERE to sign in for the free admissions. 

It’s not the tried and true framework of romantic comedies that so many get wrong when they’re trying to film one. It’s the vital pieces of that frame — the characters, and who they hire to play them — and all the stuff nailed to that frame that let so many rom coms down.

“The Unicorn” doesn’t reinvent that which The Immortal Bard perfected 500 years ago. But this randy, comically cringe-worthy farce about two not-quite-committeds who test themselves by taking on a threesome, has engaging characters, witty performances and enough laugh-out-loud lines and situations to pay off.

It starts with “can’t quite commit” and climaxes with “the key to happiness.” That’s all you can hope for from any functioning romantic comedy, really.

Whatever Hollywood is imposing on the next upcoming Valentine’s Day as a “date comedy,” this indie comedy from the latest member of the Coppola clan to make movies almost certainly works better and plays warmer than LA assembly line product.

Lauren Lapkus of “Holmes and Watson” and TV’s “Big Bang Theory” and “Crashing” and Nicholas Rutherford (“Brigsby Bear,” TV’s “Dream Corp.”) play Mallory and Caleb. Shorten that to “Mal and Cal” and you get an idea of how connected these two simpatico smart-alecks are.

They’re SoCallers who’ve been engaged for four years, heading to Palm Springs for the weekend to see her mother (Beverly D’Angelo) and amorous stepdad (John Kapelos) renew their vows.

Mal’s sister Katie (Maya Kazan) and her husband (Darrell Britt-Gibson) are expecting twins. So there’s pressure — to be “as fun” as the parents, as together as the sibling.

“Weddings are fun,” Mom teases. “You should try one sometime.  A wedding, with invitations on stationary. And a date we stick to.”

But it’s learning that “they like to PARTY” (as in have the occasional threesome) is how the older folks keep it fresh is a bit daunting to nebbishy Cal and quirky Mal. It’s what sets them off.

“We’re like, a fun couple, right?”
“We’re FINE, right?”

Maybe they’re fine. And they’re kind of fun. Cal gives Mal a new “re-engagement” ring with his wisdom tooth mounted on it. Mal encourages little bar pick-up games (as Canadians) to rattle complete strangers and give themselves a laugh.

Then she meets drink-stealing wild-child Jesse (Lucy Hale of “Truth or Dare” and TV’s “Pretty Little Liars”) in cut-off shorts and an open blouse. And the vibe this “energy mixing” expert — “energyologist” — puts out is on the make and up for a little action.

“Does she WANT us? Is Everybody having a threesome BUT us?”

We can smell the sandalwood as Mal and Cal enter Jesse’s hippy den of sin. Her shadow screen striptease has them debating going through with this, carrying out hasty genital grooming and hunting for “safe words.”

“Wait — my CAR!”

So begins an almost-wild night in pursuit of “The Unicorn,” what they assume “EVERYbody” is doing (even the older folks), but is virgin territory for the pragmatic couple in the practical Honda Element.

There will confusion about who has what fantasy, revelations about things you’d think a couple engaged for four years and together for years longer, might have worked out.

They encounter Tyson (Beck Bennett of “Saturday Night Live”),  a gay strip club gay bouncer– or NOT gay…or Bi or…

“I feel sorry for people like you. So…limited.”

And there’s this gorgeous “massage therapist” (Dree Hemingway).

“Is she a prostitute?”

“Not a ‘tute!”

True confessions, titillating descriptions of their sex lives at home as threesome foreplay, an impromptu Uber evening (Cal’s job?) trolling for prospects and a lot of “Don’t fall for her/Don’t YOU fall for her” moments flesh out this evening long test of their love for one another.

And there’s just enough witty banter to put this over.

“Julia Roberts cost $3,000 a night!”

“Julia Roberts?”

“In ‘Pretty Woman.'”

“OK, we’re losing focus here…”

The trigger word launching barside every encounter?

“Shots!”

The leads are delightful together, perfectly believable as a couple and amusingly authentic as 30ish lovers desperate to be in on what the cool kids are up to.

Director Robert Schwartzman keeps the tone light and the pace between funny scenes and cringe-worthy moments quick. He’s the brother of actor/director Jason Schwartzman and son of Talia Shire and, with them and Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage, part of the extended family of Coppola filmmakers.

Schwartzman came up with the story here and had the good sense to get other writers (including co-star Rutherford) to liven things up and turn this script into, if not rom-com gold, at least rom-com silver.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, drug jokes, alcohol consumption, profanity

Cast:  Lauren Lapkus, Nicholas Rutherford, Lucy Hale, Beck Bennett, Dree Hemingway, Kyle Mooney and Beverly D’Angelo

Credits: Directed by Robert Schwartzman, script by Nicholas Rutherford, Will Elliott and Kirk C. Johnson.  An Orchard release.

Running time: 1:29

Maisie Williams is the spark and spunk, the light and the dark of “Then Came You,” a montage-happy “terminal teenager” romance with enough twists and turns, laughs and near-tears to make it work.

Williams, of “Game of Thrones,” has to do the heavy lifting because her co-star is Asa Butterfield, over ten years into his career, as pretty as ever, and unfortunately just as bland.

Director Peter Hutchings of “The Outcasts” cleverly picks up some of Butterfield’s slack with musical montages  — two young people getting to know one another, enjoying a party together, one of them taking his first flight, the other — with his help — polishing off her “To Die List” of things she wants to accomplish before shedding her mortal coil — set to sensitive, bouncy pop.

The rest he leaves to Williams, and she doesn’t disappoint.

Skye is a Brit living in Albany, and we meet the 17 year-old as she’s getting the worst news you can get. “The tumor hasn’t responded to treatment,” her doctor tells her and her parents. The kid accepts the gravity of the situation, but she cannot change who she is.

“You win some, you lose some.”

She meets brooding loner Calvin (Butterfield) at a cancer support group. He’s a college drop-out who works with his dad and brother (David Koechner and Tyler Hoechlin) as a baggage handler at the local airport. He never sees what hit him.

Skye interrupts his scribbling an answer to the group’s sort of “fondest wish” exercise.

Don’t write “going to Disneyland,” she confides. “It sucks and there’s like thousands of ‘dying kids’ there,”  so you’re not special.

Better idea? Write “Ask whatshername on a date.”

Or steal one of the other items on Skye’s “To Die List” — “Fight fire, Perform Shakespeare, Vanquish a Foe, Win an eating contest (Nope, she’s already done that and x’ed it out), Demolish a Car, Get a Job, get Fired, Get Arrested.”

Whatever resistence Calvin shows to falling under this girl’s spell, we KNOW they’re going to connect and by cracky he’s going to help her with that list.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to DRAG you to Amsterdam!”

Yeah, she’s seen “The Fault in Our Stars.”

The list? It’s handled with one bit of shoplifting and a cutesie musical montage of most of the rest, sparing us the Teen Take on “The Bucket List.”

Still, the shoplifting leads to a running gag. Ken Jeong plays a cop whose father is in the cancer support group, Briana Venskus his “F— cancer!” partner. They let these “dying kids” get away with a LOT and even pitch in on a few “list” items.

One problem with all that? Calvin isn’t dying. He says “I am NOT A hypochondriac!” but he pretty much is. He keeps a “My Symptoms Journal.” No, you don’t want to be in the waiting room with him when he thinks he has testicular cancer.

He was in the support group because his frustrated doctor wants him to “Get a little perspective.”

We all know that perspective will from Skye. But “Whatshername” turns out to be a pretty, lonely stewardess with a regional airline (Nina Dobrev).  He’s younger than her and no matter how much her fellow flight attendant (Tituss Burgess) wants her to do something about that, it takes Skye’s interference to move that ball down the field.

“You have a lot of living to do, Calvin Lewis.”

As familiar as the path “Then Came You” generally takes might be, it’s got lots of clever laugh-at-death touches, a few sparkling surprises and a gut-punch third act “reveal.”

Skye brings Calvin a gift as she is reaching out to him, a goldfish in an IV bag (hanging from a drip stand, no less). She dresses as ‘Death’ for a costume party.  Williams makes this pixie, as such pixies often are in movies with terminal teens, a force of nature — a lifeforce.

“But I’m dying” is her comeback for anything she’s denied. And there’s no point in Calvin trying to get his “big confession” out. she just bowls him over with words blurted out in her “no time left to lose” rush.

Her mania makes “Then Came You” play lighter and go down easier than “The Fault in Our Stars.” But that’s a shortcoming, too. “Fault” and many other movies of this sub-genre work when they tear tears out of us, and “Then Came You” just deflates big emotions.

It could use a few more of them, to be honest.

Butterfield sets off no real sparks with screen veteran Dobrev (“Vampire Diaries,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”). She’s not up to the heroic task of turning “The Space Between Us” star into an object of desire, or even romantic curiosity.

Perhaps Netflix’s “Sex Education” series will do what none of his big screen romances have managed.

But quirky Brit girl next door Williams is the reason to see this, and she’s as delightful as the role demands — a perky, funny, sweet and romantic kid that we’ll be sad to see go when the inevitable happens, as it does in all terminal teen romances.

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Maisie Williams, Asa Buttefield, Nina Dobrev, Peyton List, Ken Jeong, Tituss Burgess, David Koechner

Credits: Directed by Peter Hutchings, script by Fergal Rock. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:37

My hat always comes off in the presence of filmmakers daring enough to take on a period piece with their indie film.

They’re invariably passion projects with a capital “P.” Because you’re not cranking out some attention-grabbing/career-starting horror-zombie or romantic comedy quickie. If you’re making a movie on a tiny budget, and have to add-in Civil War uniforms and battle reenactments (“Field of Lost Shoes”) or vintage clothes, cars, settings and gear for a movie like “The Iron Orchard,” you’re committed. 

“Iron Orchard” is an unconventional, fictionalized tale of Texas oil’s peak “wildcatting” years — the 1920s through the 1950s. Enterprising gamblers with a thin stake, some gear and chancy leases on (mostly) West Texas land where no known oil reserves existed, risked all for a chance to strike it rich in “Black Gold,” “Texas Tea.”

It’s the subtext many a Texas/Oklahoma story (“Giant,” “Oklahoma Crude”) and there’s no reason to not tell another one.

But you’ve got to do a better job than this. It’s a duller “Dallas,” a diminutive “Giant,” an “Oklahoma Crude” that isn’t crude enough.

All these oil wells, all those cars and trucks dating from the 1930s to late ’50s, period costumes, etc. And in service of what? A murky, anachronistic “Dallas” soap opera that struggles to find someone — anyone — for the audience to identify with as it perfunctorily skips through time following the sorry saga of one Jim McNeely (Lane Garrison of “Camp X-Ray” and TV’s “Prison Break”). 

We meet him as he shows up in the Permian Basin in the late 1930s, a young man chased away by the parents of the well-to-do Mazie Wales (Hassie Harrison, who makes a fine blonde hussie) because he just didn’t have good enough prospects. At least they hooked him up with a job.

He begins work as a roughneck for Bison Oil in 1939. He is bullied, hazed and ridiculed from Day One.

Not that he isn’t warned. The guy bringing him in, Dent Paxton (Austin Nichols), has nothing but blunt warnings for him.

“My advice to you is run…go back to where you came from.” He is just “one of them college boys” whom the other roughnecks will “run off in the week..”

“All hopes are illusions are blasted to pieces out here”

But McNeely won’t be dissauded. The greater part of the film is him being beaten, forced to do backbreaking labor (ditch digging, laying pipe, wrestling with heavy oil pumping valves) and finally fighting back enough to retrieve a little dignity.

The locals curse him (several sound like profane versions of characters from TV’s “King of the Hill”) and call him “Boll Weevil” (as in “useless insect” and a blight on their lives) at every chance they get. There’s a nephew (Temple Baker) of the company owner who shirks work, and a brute of a crew leader (Gregory Kelly) who must be faced down with fists. 

This is smelly, dirty authentic-feeling male bonding and is the best thing in the movie. 

Flashbacks to days with the comely blonde Mazie remind him of his goals — save money, get “into” the business, win back Mazie.

Then he lays eyes on an engineer’s unhappy wife, played by Ali Cobrin of “Neighbors” and “American Reunion” and “Lap Dance.” She’s miserable to the point of self-destructive, and given to offering rides to McNeely.

“You’d better get out here. You know how people talk.”

He thinks nothing of making his move on the married woman, and the film perfunctorily leaps into their happy lives together, Jim spending his stake money on wildcat leases, taking the risks and seeing them pay off, thanks to inside tips from a geologist-friend (Allan McLeod) and his own folksy charm. 

But the “hero’s journey” wouldn’t be complete without him ruining his own success, over-reaching, drinking, inviting Mazie back into his life.

Director and co-screenwriter Ty Roberts has ties to Midland oil folk, and got financing from others in West Texas oil for the film. The 1966 novel this is based on is a roman a clef Texas Van Zandt family history, according to the son of the novelist, character actor Ned Van Zandt (who plays a Van Zandt in the movie).

 Which is all well and good.

But “The Iron Orchard” — a vividly poetic titular image of a field of derricks, I have to say — lacks such fundmentals as a dynamic of conflict. McNeely drifts from hero to villain, with no other character save for the wife he lured away from her first husband, developed to an extent that she could be his foil.

Which she isn’t, even though the film desperately needs that balance — that conscience (Dent?) or outside person or force that pushes back against Dent’s ambition. 

Think of “Giant,” where Rock Hudson’s easy wealth is clashes with James Dean’s hunger and class resentment. 

Garrison is game enough at giving us the drive that young men of intelligence and limited means brought to such 1930s oil patch stories, but out of his depth at showing Jim’s rising arrogance, foolish indiscretions and financial desperation over the following decades. 

Indie period pieces are always too “clean” — the classic cars and trucks, that in reality would be dirty, dented and beaten up from working lives in the wasteland of West Texas, are always spotless, down to their whitewalls. Only the language is soiled and worn, here. 

Songs turn up in the wrong decades (Willie Nelson’s “Hello Walls,” recorded by Faron Young in 1960, shows up in 1948 or so) as the story advances by uninteresting spasmodic leaps.

The fact that author Tom Pendleton (Van Zandt) saw this tale “really happen” to his family doesn’t mean the story doesn’t need dramatic license to work. Because that’s why you’ve never heard of Tom Pendleton as a novelist.

I tipped my hat at the outset of this review at the effort all involved made here, and it stays off in respect for what Roberts et al were going for in this project that perked to life in 2011 and took until now to reach the screen.

But all those years, and you didn’t workshop the daylights out of this script, with others pointing out the holes? It plays like a TV mini series chopped to fit into a theatrical film, with a lot of “good stuff” and connections lost in the editing. 

All that money for music rights and Willie’s reps didn’t tell you “You shouldn’t have ‘Hello Walls’ playing during the (earlier) heyday of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys?”

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, sexual situations, fist fights, deaths

Cast: Lane Garrison, Ali Cobrin, Austin Nichols, Hassie Harrison, Lew Temple

Credits: Directed by Ty Roberts, script by Gerry DeLeon and Ty Roberts, based on the  Tom Pendleton novel. A Santa Rita Films release.

Running time: 1:58

There’s a lot of salesmanship that sits, obvious to the naked eye, in “Serenity.”

Here’s how “Serenity” was sold to overseas investors, and then to nascent studio Aviron, and how they in turn are selling it to us.

Matthew McConaughey skinny dipping, Anne Hathaway as a femme fatale, Oscar winners and “Interstellar” co-stars sharing sex scenes in a Virgin Islands (actually, Maritius in the Indian Ocean) setting.

Sell the all-star cast on a paid Mauritius working vacation. and voila, you’ve got yourself a movie.

It’s not much of a movie, an overboiled, rum-and-sex-soaked neo-noir about deep sea fishing, predestination and murder. And just as its not amounting to much, writer-director Steven Knight’s script (he wrote “Dirty Pretty Things” and “Locke”) takes a deep dive into flipping genres and reframing the narrative.

With plot contrivances piling up alongside McConaughey nude scenes, interrupted by moments where he tosses back his head and howls, Hathaway vamping up the ex lover who tries every argument in the book to talk this charter fishing boat captain into killing her brutish husband (Jason Clarke, perfectly vile), one is tempted to say that the only thing that worked here were the sales pitches.

McConaughey is Baker Dill, a hard-drinking hard-luck charter captain on tiny Plymouth Island, which has but one bar — The Rope and Anchor — and one cougar (Diane Lane) to keep him afloat. She loans him money after sex.

“You’re a hooker,” she cracks.

“A hooker who can’t afford his hooks,” he agrees.

His righteous, works-with-nuns first mate (“Amistad” co-star Djimon Hounsou) cannot cure Dill of his obsession, his Great White Whale. It’s a giant tuna he keeps hooking and never landing. “Justice” he calls it. He pulls a knife on two customers who try to take the rod and fight the fish onto the boat on THEIR charter in an opening scene.

“I fish tuna,” Dill growls.

“You fish for ONE tuna,” one and all agree. Everybody knows Dill’s story, knows who he sleeps with and the state of his finances because “Down here, everybody knows everything.”

They see the new blonde (Hathaway) who shows up, even if they don’t know Dill and Karen’s shared past. She’s got a proposition. Think “Palmetto” or “Body Heat.”

She uses their history. She shows a little leg and comes on to him. She plays the pity story, claims she’s being beaten. She wants her husband to go fishing, and not come back.

Dill is also being pursued by this mysterious nerd in a business suit (Jeremy Strong of “The Big Short” and “Detroit”). The guy keeps running down the dock, just seconds late in catching Dill, or taking off his expensive shoes to wade into the surf after him.

Weird.

The setting, the sexy tone, the cast and snippets of sharp dialogue tamped down my eye rolling through the film’s first half. McConaughey, who has mad more than his share of seaside tales, gives fair value in delivering salty lines.

“Who owns your boat?”

“Me’n the bank take TURNS.”

But it’s at that midpoint that Knight, an accomplished writer who let his director of photography talk him into a few too many pointlessly showy circle-the-character pans, takes a turn towards the desperate and turns his plot and his movie inside out.

Playing it as a straight noir wasn’t impressing anybody. Screenwriters and directors over 60 are have to try tricks to keep themselves relevant in a film industry driven by childishness.

But this twist popped whatever bubble of believability that makes “Serenity” watchable.

Still, you’ve got to hand it to any salesman who sold this cast, these producers and this studio on this project. Must have been a pitch for the ages, with “Mauritius” to seal the deal.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, sexual content, and some bloody images

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou, Jason Clarke

Credits: Written and directed by Steven Knight An Aviron release.

Running time: 1:46