Movie Nation

“Beauty and the Beast” remains the gold standard for Disney remaking its animated classics as live action, or “looks like live action” (“The Lion King”) feature films.

Stripped of the singing and the comedy that made the animated “Mulan” the exclamation point at the end of a glorious run that began with “The Little Mermaid,” we’re left with a big budget spectacle take on the classic Chinese folk tale of the girl who became a warrior.

It’s a rather dry affair, lacking the wit, warmth and swagger of the cartoon. “Spectacle” applies to this tale of gender role restrictions, war and martial arts. But director Niki Caro (“Whale Rider”) and her team haven’t achieved “epic.” Our best hopes for this kid-friendly action film with a strong female protagonist were a for a story with pathos and scale, dazzling sets and action set pieces, a “Crouching Tiger” or “House of Flying Daggers” or “Hero” without the blood. This doesn’t get there.

The story hews closely to “The Disney Version” conjured up for animation. Mulan, played by willowy screen veteran Liu Yifei (“The Forbidden Kingdom,” “In Harm’s Way”) is the daughter of a former soldier (Tzi Ma of “The Farewell”) and a mother (Rosalind Chao, “The Joy Luck Club”) who have to remind her — constantly — that “a daughter brings honor (to the family) through marriage.”

She’s an athletic, reckless sort who can barely sit still, all dolled up for a meeting with the matchmaker. She’d rather be practicing her martial arts. In Taoist terms, she has a little too much “chi.”

“But chi is for warriors, not daughters. Silence its voice.” Otherwise, all the guys will think you’re a “witch.”

When barbarians, led by Böri Khan (the terrific Jason Scott Lee of “Dragon”), start attacking towns along The Silk Road, the Emperor (Jet Li, of “Hero”) institutes a draft — one man from every family in the kingdom. As father Zhou left the last war with a limp, Mulan figures she’ll spare him death or humiliation by filling in for him, pretending to be a man.

Mulan steals her father’s horse, armor and sword (“a beautiful tool for terrible work”), deepens her voice and, slip of a thing that she is, tries to hold her own among the bigger, burlier recruits in training camp, while hiding her gender.

Donnie Yen (“Rogue One”) is the commanding officer aiming to “make men out of every single one of you.”

But as they train, Böri Khan’s secret weapon, the warrior-witch Xianniang (screen legend Gong Li) is shape-shifting and raising havoc all along the frontier. A burly barbarian army with a witch? What army of men can stop them? Maybe the one with a young woman whose family spirit animal is a phoenix.

That Hollywood cliche “screenplay by committee” applies here, with the screenwriting married couple that wrote a two of “Planet of the Apes” movies and “Jurassic World” adapting the musical cartoon’s story, and two writers with TV Christmas movies to their credit putting their two cents worth in.

The film feels tailored for the all-important Chinese market, but tailored by a bunch of Hollywood folks, and a Kiwi director. There is much much talk of “chi,” the barbarians are given a name I couldn’t place — “Ronan?” Perhaps “Xirong” is what they were saying. Would calling them Mongols have offended Asian audiences?

The female empowerment messaging is more prominent than in the earlier “Mulan,” and hammered home with a new scene that puts Mulan and Xianniang, who briefly compare notes on a woman’s lot in ancient China.

But little hints of the music from the other Disney “Mulan” only make one long for a movie that engaged the viewer on more levels, that lightened the mood here and there.

Lee and Gong Li are the stand-outs in the cast. But then, villains are always more fun. Yifei Liu is better at the martial arts (wire) stunts than at getting across the pathos of a spirited young woman smothered by a patriarchal culture, or the giddy bravado of one who finds a way to express her chi — and how.

I adored the animated “Mulan,” but the best I can say for this one is it’s pretty enough, and watchable. Whatever they market-researched and committee-scripted into this, I wanted something with more heart, better action and at least a hint of fun.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence

Cast: Yifei Liu, Jason Scott Lee, Donnie Yen, Gong Li, Tzi Ma, Rosalind Chao and Jet Li

Credits: Directed by Niki Caro, script Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin, based on the Walt Disney Studios animated film. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:55

Bad guys everywhere…

The edge-of-your-seat climax to “Strange But True” may trick you, for a moment or two, into forgetting how so much of what came before it seems as if it was from another movie.

One doesn’t have to see “based on the novel by John Searles” in the opening credits to figure out that this is an adaptation, and a pretty clumsy one at that. “Adaptation” give-aways include a large muster of characters, ungainly synthesizing of themes and ideas and abrupt shifts in tone and focus.

This damned thing is all over the place — warm fuzzies to edge-of-your-seat violence.

For much of “Strange But True,” we’re in mourning with characters who have let that emotion take over their lives.

Former librarian Charlene (Amy Ryan) is wearing this most openly. Brittle, bitter and snappish, we come to see how she lost her career and her marriage, and the last two spun out of losing her oldest son.

Younger son Philip (Nick Robinson of “Jurassic World” and “Everything, Everything”) is on crutches, home from college and still struggling to cope with the death of brother Ronnie.

Husband/dad Richard (Greg Kinnear) has started over, moved to Florida with “his trophy wife,” Charlene fumes.

But the person taking this the hardest might be the very pregnant young woman, Melissa (Margaret Qualley of “Seberg” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”). She shows up at their door with a story about “some strange miracle” that’s happened.

Ronnie’s onetime girlfriend is carrying his baby. Wow. He died, what, five years ago?

“I’m not crazy,” she insists, playing by a psychic reading she recorded on cassette. “I’m not stupid.”

We’re not convinced any more than Charlene.

“Are you looking for money?”

The story that we think we’re watching unfold tells us what happened to the kid and everyone around him via flashbacks, Charlene’s investigation (at the library) of “how this (pregnancy) could be possible” and Philip’s efforts to figure out what’s really going on with Melissa.

There are friendly neighbors (Blythe Danner and Brian Cox) looking out for her, and pieces to a mystery that Charlene and Philip, working independently and seemingly at odds, will pull together.

And that sad, grieving vibe that director Rowan Athale (“Wasteland”) is reaching for? We can’t forget that the first scene of the movie is Philip, hobbling on crutches as he’s chased into the woods. The “mourning” story is a flashback getting us back to that point.

There are some good red herrings here, false leads to pursue fed by casting, the way new information is allowed in, drip by drip.

Ryan is at her most ferocious, stepping into a workplace she was “fired” from years before, sweetly greeted by old colleagues she resents and ready with the perfectly acidic comeback.

“Every day’s a blessing.”

Robinson is more the focus here, but the character and the performance aren’t interesting enough to hang the movie on.

Qualley has a sad sparkle about her that makes us wonder why the entire film isn’t her “journey.” Losing track of her is its fatal flaw.

There’s something to be said for a story that knocks you backwards a few times and keeps you wrong-footed. But the whiplash this somber, intimate tale gives you in its “Wait, WHAT?” third act is another matter altogether.

The logic is strained and the twists so over-the-top that it would pretty much have to be “Strange But True” for us to ever believe a bit of it.

But it’s not. It’s fiction, far-fetched, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, beach-book thriller fiction. It provokes many reactions, but the one that stands out is “cheated.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements, some violence, suggestive material and brief strong language

Cast: Amy Ryan, Nick Robinson, Margaret Qualley, Blythe Danner, Greg Kinnear and Brian Cox.

Credits: Directed by Rowan Athale, script by Eric Garcia, based on the John Searles. A CBS Films release, on Netflix.

Running time: 1:36

I dropped in on the third act of this one on Movies! the other night and was so blown away by the shadows, fog and downbeat tone that I got up at 4 in the morning to watch the whole movie repeated a couple of days later.

“Raw Deal” is a clipped, cutting classic noir from Anthony Mann, who went on to do bio-pics (“The Glenn Miller Story”), epics (“El Cid”) and most of Jimmy Stewart’s best Westerns, notably “Winchester ’73.”

But team him up with DP John Alton, who shot “He Walked by Night” and “Talk About a Stranger” and heck, the original “Father of the Bride” movies, and you’ve got the most literal “film noir” of them all.

Dark in tone, dark shadows, foggy nights, with Raymond Burr and John Ireland as the heavies. This is one of the definitive titles of the genre, and I’m shocked I’ve never gotten around to it.

American Movie “Classics” my butt.

Dennis O’Keefe stars as a convict who took the rap for others who escaped prison. Now, he’s gotten out and he’s here to collect what’s due him.

“As they say, life begins with 50 G’s.”

Yeah, that’s the plot of “Point Blank” and plenty of other gangland tales, but this was one of the first.

There are “dames” (Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt), double-crosses and pitiless violence.

And hard-boiled dialogue? You bet.

“What do you know about anything? You probably had your bread buttered on both sides since the day you were born. Safe. Safe on first, second, third, and home.“

“Keep your eye on “Miss Law and Order” here. She might go soprano on us.”

“Why don’t you just take that hole in your head and close it?”

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ireland some years ago at a Western film festival. He’s known for “Red River” and “Spartacus,” sure. But noirs like this and “All the King’s Men” and even the original “The Fast and the Furious” were home to his most dazzling turns.

Burr was a good heavy long before Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” before “Godzilla” and before he was the “Perry Mason” generations remembered before HBO went all prequel on the lawyer’s lawyer.

Trevor (“Key Largo,” “Stagecoach,” “Murder My Sweet”) is a screen legend.

O’Keefe is the least familiar member of the cast to me, but he was in the noir “T-Men” (lit and shot by John Alton) and the original “Brewster’s Millions.” He’s hard here. VERY hard.

I never cease to be amazed by the punch a 79 minute movie could pack, back at the end of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”

MPAA Rating: Unrated, violence, and lots of it.

Cast: Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland and Raymond Burr.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Mann, script by John C. Higgins, Leopold Atlas.

Running time: 1:19

The reunion of the old Dartmouth classmates starts with flattery. Lots of it.

“You see through us…You never fail to impress…I’m not as smart as you.”

And let’s not forget my favorite.

“I envy your hands.”

I mean, I’m a straight male. But rarely have I been more disappointed that a movie didn’t turn into some homoerotic “realization” drama than “Up on the Glass.” That’s what the gathering of tipsy, on-his-second-marriage Moze (Steve Holm) and itinerant “carpenter with an Ivy League degree” Jack (Chase Fein) at the Lake Michigan beachfront home of investments manager Andy (Hunter Cross) sets up as.

Come on. All the drinking/bonding, passing out on the beach? Footraces and biting banter? Wrestling?

But alas, no. This dawdling, dramatically flat and drably-acted picture is a thriller, of all things. Because all this frat-bro bonding, seen mainly from brooding, Gyllenhaalish Jack’s point-of-view, is headed for…tragedy.

Jack’s a lost soul, wasting that Dartmouth education on dead-end jobs that he loses over principles, apparently. Andy is the very picture of callow greed and ill-gotten gains.

His wife’s out of town. Let’s pick up two locals (Jessica Lynn Parsons and co-writer Nikki Brown) in “The Inn.”

Ah, but Andy’s wife is the “one who got away” to Jack. And in a heated moment, we wonder just how much Jack resents the life that’s not his. Because Andy winds up dead.

The “thriller” here is meant to come from suspense generated by Jack’s efforts to cover-his-tracks and his ability to show his poker-face to Liza (Chelsea Kurtz), the “one who got away” and married Andy.

The cast is good-looking and nicely-turned-out, but from one end to the other, almost devoid of expression. The boring banter of the boys transitions to the crime and cover-up on the same, flat story trajectory with performances to match.

A moment of remorse here, a failed attempt to showing “panic” there, but mostly this is scene after scene with little urgency and no tension or heat (sexual or otherwise).

You might feel relief that the reunion in the opening act isn’t what this is all about. But everything that comes afterword just makes it worse.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, alcohol, sexual situations

Cast: Chase Fein, Hunter Cross, Chelsea Kurtz, Steve Holm, Jessica Lynn Parsons and Nikki Brown.

Credits: Directed by Kevin Del Principe, script by Nikki Brown and Kevin Del Principe. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:36

Damned considerate of Netflix to trot out this German “X-Men” knockoff just as the latest and perhaps last for a good long while Marvel “X-Men,” “New Mutants” is in theaters.

And damned sporting of Netflix not to stream “Freaks: You’re One of Us” LAST week, killing any reason for audiences to go to a quarantined cinema to be reminded of how played out that franchise and this concept — that there are “superhumans” among us, and they have to hide because we’re so afraid of them we’ll HUNT them — really is.

“Freaks” is practically a commentary on the whole sci-fi superhero genre. But as “German” and “comedy” are still tricky to park in the same sentence, it’s not the send-up of the caped comic-book characters it could have been. Without that, it’s entirely too cut-and-dried to add anything new to the “mutants among us” genre or the conversation.

Wendy (Cornelia Gröschel) was spotted as “special” as a child. We meet her, huddled in a corner of a school she’s just emptied and done major structural damage to, hiding out listening to Roxette on her portable CD player.

As an adult, Wendy is a working-class wife struggling to get by. She’s a cook at the service station diner (Chop Heaven Patio?), desperate for a promotion and hike in pay. Because she and security guard husband Lars (Frederic Linkemann) have a house they’re about to lose and a tweenage son to take care of.

Wendy is dismissed by her boss and ill-mannered customers, harassed by skinheads on her nightly walk home, and medicated at bedtime — four “little blue pills.” All that starts to change when a homeless guy (Wotan Wilke Möhring) tells her (in German, with English subtitles) “You’re one of us!”

Marek (Möhring) has answers that her lifelong shrink, Dr. Stern (Nina Kunzendorf) does not. 

Throw those pills away, he pleads. “See who you really are.”

Wendy does, and we know without her saying, “There’s going to be some CHANGES around here” and every punk who crosses her or her bullied kid is about to get schooled.

And damned if a rich guy she works with, Elmar (Tim Oliver Schultz) isn’t “one of us,” too. Wendy has no idea what to do with her new strength, other than settling scores and getting some quick cash. Elmar’s into comic books. He’s in the mood for a caped costume. He’s hunting for a name.

“Ich bin ELECTRO MAN,” he says, which is sillier in German than it is in English, if that’s possible.

Gröschel, who got her start playing “Heidi” because of course she did, gives a nice working-class pluck to Wendy and takes a shot at giving her an internalized moral struggle over what she does with this “power.” That’s barely in the script, though.

Screenwriter Marc O. Seng (of Netflix’s “Dark”) has nothing new to say here, nor do his characters. The “What do we do with this power” question doesn’t automatically lead to “origin story” vigilantism. The villain is a tad too obvious, and the story arc borders on trite.

I like the way director Felix Binder keeps some of the Feats of Strength off camera, minimizing the on-camera violence.

But after “Chronicle,” after ALL these “X-Men” movies, every comic book superhero origin story put on film, anything less than a reinvention of the genre, or ridiculing of the whole film fad is just treading water.

Which is all “Freaks” ever does. 

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Cornelia Gröschel, Tim Oliver Schultz, Frederic Linkemann, Wotan Wilke Möhring and Nina Kunzendorf.

Credits: Directed by Felix Binder, script by Marc O. Seng. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Yes, I pointed out in my review that actors trying to make themselves heard through masks was a “thing” with Christopher Nolan. Practically a fetish.

Yes, there are plenty of other places we can’t hear what the characters are saying to each other. Best reason to wait and watch it at home, really the only reason, is closed captioning. It’s a big movie, needing a big screen. But don’t expect to make out every line. Nolan must be embarassed by his way with dialogue.

Here’s Variety reporting that “Tenet” audiences are complaining “that the dialogue is inaudible. Is Christopher Nolan making an artistic choice or is it a mistake?” https://t.co/vvRFzNbyc1 https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1301155332660563968?s=20

Andrea Riseborough stars in this tale of cooperate assassin’s using brain imprint tech to convert associates of their targets into proxy killers. October.

The latest leggy bombshell female assassin is a redhead and hits theaters and streaming Sept. 25.

The way various TV chat shows have coped with quarantine during the pandemic has been fun to watch play out, with Seth Myers and Samantha Bee thriving, Bill Maher and John Oliver barely missing the live audience and the rest basically lost in the ether, making little or no impression for weeks and months at a time.

So I was intrigued at the Disney/Jim Henson Co. pitch “Earth to Ned.” It’s a special effects and puppet-centered chat show, with a single guest each week, lots of produced bits, and is thus somewhat more scripted than spontaneous.

Unlike say, “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” or “Mystery Science Theater 3000” or even “The Muppet Show” or “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (puppet-happy),” it’s aimed at kids. There’s no edge, no innuendo, just very adult guests and the occasional zinger — some off-the-cuff — that will fly over the heads of the intended audience.

Chat shows in general always take a while to hit their groove, and one where there’s a lot of technology is sure to have its human-connection hiccups.

But one truism that comes to mind watching “Animaniacs” voice actor Paul Rugg, as the titular reptilian host “Ned,” and his anteaterish alien sidekick Cornelius (Michael Oosterum) interact and hunt for laughs, is that networks put in ALL that time trying to line up the perfect host for a reason.

And they cast stand-up comics, female or male, black or white, Asian or Scottish, because being quick-on-one’s feet is JOB ONE, even when you’re sitting at a desk with a four-armed alien puppet as your avatar.

There are moments when Rugg is interacting with horror director Eli Roth, or “Get Out” funnyman Lil Rel Howery, or Gillian Jacobs or Andy Richter,  Rachel Bloom, where something funny comes out. Talking about music with Bloom, Ned, from a species that typically invades and takes over planets it has an interest in, laments that there is “No music, no art, no lacrosse, nothing” entertaining on the planet where he’s from.

Bloom, pretty far removed from TV’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” explains the 12-tone musical scale (It’s an educational show, kids!) and Ned comes back with “I’m sort of an alto, with a baritone rising.”

He tries to make jokes over the culture clash (the set is an environment “buried deep in the Earth’s crust”), or being as ill-informed as say, Zach Galifianakis in “Between Two Ferns.” Gillian Jacobs is “a woman of a thousand voices.”

“I don’t do impressions…at all.”

And they try to make a game out of her impersonating his favorite alien entities. Are there crickets in space? You’d hear them during that bit.

Asking a star “How much money do you make?” seems unrehearsed, as Jacobs bats that away as if she’s teaching the kids at home, and the childish or at least new-to-Earth host, “it’s rude” to ask that.

Richter, Conan O’Brien’s sidekick, is the first episode’s guest and advises sidekick Cornelius (there’s also a female computer voice/CGI screened “mask” face) on what’s required in the job.

“Only swing at the pitch that you think you can hit.”

Roth lists his reasons for getting into horror, his favorite scary movies, and  jokes that aspiring filmmakers in the audience need to master “the point” and “The Claw.” Those are the two gestures every director has to make the most on the set, pointing to something that needs to happen, giving notes to actors making this “claw” shape with your hands, as if you’re molding your words into the clay sculpture you want them to become.

The guests talk about “formulaic” college drama programs, how to make any name sound sinister (Hiss-whisper it, “Jesssssssssicaaaaaaa!”) and other tidbits about pop culture on Earth.

“Oh, is that sarcasm? Teach it to me!”

The special effects are more polished than is absolutely necessary. Cheapness and obvious fakery is always funnier. The recorded bits have the occasional Disney Channel (“High School Musical” the latest iteration) plugs, as indeed is Roth’s first “scary” movie experience (“Pinocchio”). 

But far too much of the banter is of the “Sorry, sir. I’m still getting the hang of this” variety. The educational material, teachable moments, stand out more than the comic ones. Not that there are many of those, either.

The last time I interviewed Frank Oz we talked of whether those old “Muppet Shows” would play to new, 10-and-under audiences. He didn’t think so. And the last version of “Muppets” to make it on the air, via Disney/ABC and “adult” in tone, was a bust.

“Earth to Ned” may click with kids. But are they really going to sit still for a chat show? Even if the not-that-kid-centric guests have something interesting to say? Even if there are rubbery or computer-generated aliens interacting and attempting wisecracks with them?

I doubt it. If this was a regular network and the first shows landed with the thud that these do, there’d be panic and a mad hunt to recast. Round up a list of funny stand-up comics who might be willing to work a puppet. Josh Robert Thompson (“The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson”) can’t be the only one.

Cast: Paul Rugg, with Gillian Jacobs, Eli Roth, Taye Diggs, Lil Rel Howery,

Credits: A Disney+ release.

Running time: Episodes @:23 minutes each.