Movie Nation

If you only see one gonzo fake-priest-trapped-in-a-real-exorcism thriller, make it “The Cleansing Hour.”

An account of a live-streamed exorcism, part of an online show titled “The Cleansing Hour,” it’s a violent and entertaining ride through demonic possession, religious fakery, the perils of Catholic education and the evil power of the Internet.

It takes shots at nuns as teachers, online “programming,” film students and Satan. And it figures that it was directed by a guy named Damien.

Father Max (Ryan Guzman of “The Boy Next Door” and TV’s “9-1-1”) and his old pal Drew (Kyle Gallner of “The Finest Hour”) cooked up this streaming show, an exorcism a week.

Hunky Father Max, in a shower of effects and sparks, gets into it with a demon possessing someone, demanding “Give me your NAME!” as (an actor) spews hate speech in the Regan-in-“The Exorcist” growl back at him.

And once he gets that name, Max spouts the demon-appropriate incantation. Boom! Demon gone, thanks and tears all around. Credits.

“May God bless you and the Devil miss you,” he says. “And don’t forget, follow your faithful servant in a fallen world @FatherMaxTCH.” And “check out our merch” on the website before you log-off.

But as Drew badgers Max to “expand” the brand — “Again, priests don’t do seances. How many times I gotta tell you?” — and Max trades on his hunky fame for bar pick-ups, someone or someTHING is taking note.

A guest star is waylaid en route to the studio, Drew’s Max-hating makeup artist/actress girlfriend Lane (Alix Angelis) is pressed into duty, strapped down on the restraining table where Max confronts the possessed.

And tonight, our faithless “self-taught” lapsed Catholic “priest” will be tested by the real deal, his producer and production crew menaced, torched, stabbed etc. The “truth” will out.

The effects guy (Daniel Hoffmann-Gill) can only shrug when the “effects,” like Lane, go “off script” and the Satanic demon starts in on Max and everybody else in the “studio.”

“You f— with the bull, you’ll eventually get the horns!”

Flashbacks show what Max and Drew endured in Catholic school, explaining why they wanted to get their revenge via this show, and Drew’s ongoing research into their subject. Can he Google he the right prayer/incantation to save them?

“Max, you can’t just read random Bible verses! It won’t work!”

The effects here are largely analog — not digital — and suitably impressive.

The acting is committed and intense, with the odd moment of wit — “I’ll never be high at work again, I swear!” — lightening the mood.

There’s a little “Truman Show” homage in letting us see the audience — on TV, tablets or phones, around the world — and how this scary “real” terror is making them kiss their crucifixes or thank their lucky stars that they’re a long way from America.

Sure, it’s just another exorcism movie, this time with an overfamiliar Internet live-streaming hook. But I was entertained and you might be, too.

Director/co-writer Damien LeVeck? Take a boy, if that’s your real name.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity, sexual situations

Cast: Ryan Guzman, Kyle Gallner, Alix Angelis and Emma Holzer

Credits: Directed by Damien LeVeck, script by Damien LeVeck and Aaron Howitz. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:35

It begins with the voice of a police dispatcher, something about “hunting” and “beheaded” and our “suspect is in a red vehicle,” and “check for pizza signs.”

Our first glimpse of that suspect (David Harper) has him leering and lurching in a red shirt and cap, a pizza delivery guy with a bag full of bloody heads.

Sound promising? Then let’s dish about “Chop Chop,” a slasher film with a meat cleaver edge.

That promising, tense opening gives way to a seriously slow-footed, quasi-incoherent “relationshippy” slasher-thriller-on-the-run.

Because our murderous pizza guy — whose only line is pretty much “I have…abilities” — sort of supernaturals his way into an apartment with Liv (Atala Arce) and Chuck (Jake Taylor). And things don’t go as their frustrating “date” or pizza guy’s murderous “abilities” lead us to believe.

The feature debut of writer-director Rony Patel shoots our anti-heroes in a lot of static close-ups as he puts them in a succession of perilous situations.

He fritters away much of the suspense in these “undramatic-pause” heavy scenes, and repeatedly stages the resolution to a captive situation or torture scenario — this violent narrow escape or that one — off camera.

Why? Beats me.

This “chopper stumbles into choppers” set up is promising, but any hint of “Sweeney Todd” is implied, nothing more.

The performances are either blase’ or over-the-top, nothing in between.

Breaking sequences into chapters titled “Package” and “Brother” and what-not does nothing for clarity. Having the last villain these two face (Mikael Mattsson) turn into a talker doesn’t help.

“I can’t wait to slice you up into string cheese.”

Talking and pausing, beheadings or slicings aside, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of “Chop Chop.” And I can’t say the filmmaker gave me any reason to try.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic bloody violence

Cast: Atala Arce, Jake Taylor, David Harper, Mikael Mattsson and Jeremy Jordan.

Credits: Written and directed by Rony Patel. A Fairwolf release.

Running time: 1:21

This Dec. 11 release also stars Amy Seimetz, Skylan Brooks and Zolee Griggs.

Does the “moron comedy” have a future? After Adam Sandler ages out of them, I mean?

Sandler’s latest for Netflix, “Hubie Halloween” has him freezing his face in perma-stupor, and doing the dopey dunce voice — just like the old days. It’s a PG-13 childish (kid-friendly-ish, too) spook spoof, and thus is more on-brand than most of his Netflix fare.

A few pranks, some slapstick, some pratfalls, with a modern “Stooge” as the hero. Not many laughs, but hey — he’s keeping the “moron comedy” genre alive.

Everybody in Salem, Mass., “America’s unofficial Halloween Capital,” picks on Hubie Dubois (Sandler). He’s become an expert at ducking everything tossed at him when he bikes to work at the supermarket’s deli counter, and at letting most of the insults that come his way from the likes of Ray Liotta, Kevin James (in a wig, shades and beard as Officer Steve). “Pubie” is one that stings, and sticks, though.

“That nickname spread like warm peanut butter,” he mutters.

Halloween, though, is Hubie’s time to shine. He’s “Salem’s Unofficial Volunteer Halloween Helper,” lecturing school kids, policing trick-or-treating, urging candy-giving generosity, booze-free teen parties and generally being a kill-job/

One big problem with that, aside from the relentless “Watch it, G.I. Jackass” abuse, is he’s easy frightened. Pranking and scaring him is no challenge at all.

And on this particular Halloween, the frights just might be…REAL.

A murderous nut has escaped the nearby asylum, thanks to the new orderly (Ben Stiller). Hubie and his mom (June Squibb) have a new neighbor who warns them to pay no mind “if you ever hear some commotion from over at my house.”

He’s played by Steve Buscemi. Beware. BEWARE.

Is it any surprise that folks start to go missing in Salem? Can Hubie calm his fears and crack the case?

There’s the standard collection of pee-pee and dog poop jokes.

The “out of his league” love interest is a high school classmate (Julie Bowen) Hubie pines for and calls “girl,” even though she — like he — graduated in 1984 (They’re both 54).

“Hubie” is the usual “make-work” project for Sandler’s Crap Pack — Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Rob Schneider, Dan Patrick et al. And four lesser Sandlers and assorted little Quinn, Liotta and James offspring have bit parts.

The best gag has a hint of “American Graffiti” at the radio station to it. And I liked the way the script tries to upend expectations with a goofy turned “and the moral of the story, kids” finale.

It’s less hateful than usual, but not funny at all — pretty much par for the “Happy Madison” course, in other words.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and suggestive content, language and brief teen partying.

Cast: Adam Sandler, June Squibb, Julie Bowen, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Kenan Thompson, Tim Meadows, Ray Liotta, Maya Rudolph, Michael Chiklis, Ben Stiller and of course, Colin Quinn, Rob Schneider and Dan Patrick.

Credits: Directed by Steven Brill, script by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:43

Paul Greengrass is one of the great directors nobody talks about. And should.

He’s behind the camera for this Tom Hanks Christmas movie, a glimmer of hope and compassion slated for release after American cruelty is chased back under a rock this November.

Let’s hope we’ve earned it.

Last year’s release by the Department of Defense of unidentified flying object footage and the seeming admission that there’s “something” to all these decades of sightings, photographs, filmings and conspiracy-mongering about UFOs, gave birth to “The Phenomenon.”

This is the perfect time, veteran UFOlogist/filmmaker James Fox (“I Know What I Saw” and “UFOs, 50 Years of Denial”) suggests, to revisit all the “events” that have become benchmarks in UFO believer circles, and consider them again after what The New York Times reported in the spring of 2019.

So here’s Roswell, McMinnville, Socorro, Australia to Zimbabwe, with Fox trotting us through a decade-by-decade, Project Blue Book to the secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

It’s the “Greatest Hits” of UFO fandom, revisited because now we’ve all seen that footage shot by Navy pilots. Something tangible is “out there,” believe it or not, covered-up or not.

This is Fox’s slickest, highest production-value film outing. It’s narrated by Peter Coyote, veteran of many a PBS documentary. There are fresh interviews and excerpts from archival conversations with politicians, military officials, eyewitnesses and experts, some more credibly-credentialed than others.

The extant footage, ranging from grainy and ancient to the newer Navy footage — still not detailed enough for us to make out the actual shape of what we’re looking at — is folded in.

And there are recreations of incidents in New Mexico, Britain and elsewhere, most memorably the 1994 Zimbabwe sightings, which included an alleged alien visit to Ariel School, to buttress the belief that visitors from other worlds are stopping by, scanning our nuclear reactors and missile installations, (in the US and Russia) and/or trying to warn us of ecological catastrophe.

But I have to say, the recycling of old evidence without having fresh “proof” doesn’t make it any more conclusive, no matter how compelling the witnesses. Fox is right that what we know now means that we can’t utterly shrug off the testimony of Patrolman Zamora in New Mexico, way back when, of those apparently still-traumatized school kids from Zimbabwe.

Still, hearing former Senator Harry Reid recall his efforts to dig into government secrets to find evidence of a Roswell coverup, of Australian kids visited and told to shut up about something they saw, and the like, doesn’t constitute “new” evidence and a spike-the-ball “Told you so” moment.

Following around the French computer scientist and UFOlogist Jacques Vallee, real-life model for the Francois Truffaut French UFO expert in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” doesn’t seal the deal either. Yes, he’s fascinating, and he’s got reasons for believing what he does. Fox doesn’t let him get into that (“Paranormal” everything is his hobby.), which might undercut his authority or at least water down his message.

And the film’s alien “debris” analysis scenes with Vallee are laughable and intentionally vague.

That’s also why the phrase “Area 51” doesn’t turn up here. No sense reminding folks of the wild stories and pop culture myths that the credulous have sworn up and down was “proof” but which have been thoroughly debunked in scientific and journalistic circles in recent years. And no, “abductions” don’t come up, either.

Books and documentaries like “The Phenomenon” serve the purpose of keeping the subject alive, even as “momentum” towards a resolution of this fascinating scientific and societal question never seems to develop. “For seventy years,” as Coyote narrates, we’ve been hearing about this, looking at possible explanations, and pondering the oddly America-centric nature of the vast majority of sightings.

Even in an age where some 5 billion of us have cellphones, with cameras, in our possession at all time, filmmakers like Fox are still forced to recycle “Greatest Hits” which have either no footage, or something as inconclusive as Dude-in-a-Bigfoot-suit in quality. At least we’re not looking at cave paintings of flying saucers in this one. But someday, we might have to revisit those as well. Heaven knows the History* Channel will.

Movies like this don’t settle the UFO question, don’t automatically make cherry-picked incidents from this or that “saucer craze” from the past undeniable true stories and there’s no sense pretending the Department of Defense settled it for you when they didn’t.

Fox & Friends may very well get their end zone dance on this subject. But he has to know, as anybody with a lick of common sense does, that when “proof” comes out, true believers like him won’t be the ones to present it to the world.

And repeating past claims ad nauseam doesn’t get anybody any closer to the “UFOs are Flown by Aliens” end zone. That’s as tedious as it is credulous, and that’s “The Phenomenon” in a nutshell.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Christopher Mellon, retired Senator Harry Reid, Gordon Cooper, Dr. Jacques Vallee, John Podesta, narrated by Peter Coyote.

Credits: Directed by James Fox. A 1091 release.

Running time: 1:40

A rare drama from Ms. Plaza, an “inner demons” story co-starring Sarah Gadon.

“Feel good movies” are a balm for tough times, and “Yellow Rose” comes along in one of the darkest falls in living American memory.

It’s an immigrant story with a country music hook, and it taps into our need to see that there are decent people out there, even in the South, even in the most conservative corner of music fandom.

Rose, given a vulnerable, soulful turn by screen newcomer Eva Noblezada, is a Filipina 17 year-old living in rural Texas in the motel where her mom (Prince Punzalan) is a housekeeper.

They’ve lived in this country seven years, but Rose’s dad — an American citizen — died sometime before. And her strict Catholic mom has been keeping a secret. ICE is onto them, and Dad’s status won’t protect them.

Not knowing that lets Rose hold on to her dream. She loves country music, has a lovely voice and a cheap guitar and child’s cowgirl hat — the works. Let her classmates nickname her “Yellow Rose.” If there’s one thing country music’s taught her, it’s that pluck and determination can get you through hard times.

The college-bound kid at the music store is kind of sweet on Rose. And persistent. Elliott’s (Liam Booth) the guy who takes her to Austin for the first time, serves her that first Lone Star, and arm-twists her into singing for him.

One night at the legendary Broken Spoke listening to the twangy honky-tonk crooning of Dale Watson (playing himself) change’s Rose’s life. Just not in the ways we expect.

They get back home in time to see Mom hustled away by ICE. Rose’s tears and confusion aren’t allayed by her emergency Plan B– “Go stay with your tita (aunt).”

Aunt Gail (Lea Salonga) has married well enough to have a nice house, and a new baby. But the reason she’s estranged from her family might be her husband, who doesn’t want the drama.

The Broken Spoke becomes Rose’s refuge, thanks to owner Jolene (Libby Vallari) and the white-haired, side-burned icon leading the house band, Mr. Watson.

“Honey, I don’t know anythin’ about law, other’n RUNNING from it!”

Co-writer and director Diane Paragas goes heavy on the sentiment with this homespun tale, getting drama out of Rose’s quick temper and her talent, and the ways other folks — old and young — are eager to help out.

“Let me know if you’re needin’ a safe place. That’s what they’re callin’ it now, right?”

The story is both familiar and unpredictable, tracking two points of view — Rose’s, trying to write songs to express her hurt and longing, and her mother’s journey through immigration enforcement.

Every good thing that happens we see from a long ways off, every setback is abrupt. But the whole affair ambles easily down a well-trod path and makes for a very pleasant and emotionally satisfying experience.

The songs are sweet and authentic-feeling, and authentically tentative in that “just starting out” way.

Casting Salonga, a singing actress best known for Disney’s animated “Mulan,” and not letting her sing is a cheat. But Watson is a laid-back delight and makes Rose’s odyssey make sense musically and emotionally.

Take a tip from a classic song and make sure this “Yellow Rose” of Texas is a movie you are going to see.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, and teen drinking

Cast: Eva Noblezada, Liam Booth, Princess Punzalan, Libby Vallari, Lea Salonga, and Dale Watson.

Credits: Directed by Diane Paragas, written by Diane Paragas, Annie J. Howell, Celena Cipriaso. A Sony Classics release.

Running time: 1:36

Fernando Botero stood out as “a figurative artist in an abstract era.”

Everybody wanted paint spatters, stylized geometric forms or soaked paper or cracked porcelain on their canvases. Here was a Colombian inspired by Renaissance masters painting people, animals and still-lives with a vivid color palette and in forms that didn’t require the viewer to do all the “interpreting.”

Then again, there was his “style,” which anyone recognizing his name instantly attaches to his name. “Volumetric” he calls it. He likes the fruit he paints in the bowl, the mandolin on a table, the cats, cardinals and canaries he paints and sculpts to have “volume.”

They’re fat. Round, rotund, comically exaggerated and often carrying the sting of satire, Botero’s style is a brand, as recognizable “Big Eyes” painter Margaret Keane’s. And yet, few treat his work as kitsch.

There’s a lone critic carping at the “cartoon” style of the “world’s most famous living painter” in the documentary “Botero,” an otherwise adoring biographical portrait of Latin America’s greatest artist. Dealers and curators and family members dominate this affectionate homage to a prolific artist who has dominated his era the way Picasso dominated his.

The film is built around an entertaining lunch with his three surviving children, laughing over wine, talking about his childhood and the many moves of his life, often accompanied by the sale of this or that work that financed his moves, from Medellin to Madrid, Madrid (by Vespa) to Florence, where he discovered deadpan Renaissance minimalist Pierro della Francesca, whose 15th century works he idolized and imitated.

Adding “volume.” Always more “volume.”

He went to Mexico City where the vibrant colors of Kahlo and Diego Rivera worked their way into his psyche, to New York where Museum of Modern Art curator Dorothy Canning Miller championed him — “THIS is ‘modern art!'”

And then, as he was on the rise, he left New York and took up sculpture, moving from Paris to Tuscany, just down the street from the marble quarries and bronze foundries that Michelangelo and his contemporaries made famous.

“A good artist looks for solutions,” one son remembers Fernando saying. “A great artist looks for problems.”

Director Don Millar’s film uses archival footage or Botero working, cut in with fresh interviews and chats with others in his circle, documenting his travels, his rise and his ways of repaying his home city — the formerly drug war zone Medellin — and Colombia’s capital, Bogota. Each is home to one of the two most important art museums in Latin America, both built by Botero, featuring centuries of great art (much of it he bought) as well as his own works.

A more critical eye might have noted how these monuments have a hint of vanity project about them. But as an artist, he sees himself “in conversation” with the great artists represented there, with Picasso and cubists, Rubens and El Greco.

But there’s no getting around how this workaholic’s audience-accessible oeuvre will endure after he’s gone (he’s pushing 90), and how these museums have permanently altered the cultural life in the cities that host them.

If you’ve ever been in the presence of a street display of his massive bronzes, and they graced Fifth Ave. and Madrid, Paris and pretty much anywhere you traveled to in the ’90s and early 2000s, you get it.

It’s all about “volume,” and Botero cranked that up like no artist of his time.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Fernando Botero, Lina Botero, Juan Carlos Botero, Dorothy Canning Miller, Rosalind Kraus, Fernando Botero Zea

Credits: Directed by Don Millar, script by Don Millar and Hart Snider. A Corinth Films release.

Running time: 1:22

You like your horror in mashup form? 

“Vampires vs. the Bronx” is “Attack the Block” meets “Do the Right Thing” in a lyrically (and amusingly) Latinized setting.

An activist teen (Jaden Michael) named Miguel, but who goes by “Lil Mayor” is the first one in his corner of The Bronx to figure out that the predatory (white) developers, Murnau Properties, that’s buying up every business in the ‘hood is actually a nest of vampires.

His pals, the hustler and the nerd (Gerald Jones III, Gregory Diaz IV), are slow to catch on. His priest (Method Man, LOL!) won’t hear it. His mentor, the bodega owner (The Kid Mero) has to see for himself…and rewatch “Blade” to be convinced.

All the while, Frank (Shea Whigham) is closing deals and assorted follow-up visits by whiter-than-whiter neck-biters finish off the sellers. 

“Man, nobody’s gonna care…He’s (or she’s) from THE BRONX.”

Director Osmany Rodriguez and screenwriter Blaise Hemingway narrow the plot to the basics, dress up the proceedings with a generous helping of “flava” — street argot, slang, flippant under-reactions to extraordinary events — and let this genre goof of a comedy sprint by.

A major “Do the Right Thing” borrowing? Having the neighborhood “news” related by live-streaming blogger girl Gloria (Imani Lewis, sassy and hilarious) of “GloTV.”

“Sleep with one eye open and don’t get got,” she counsels, at one point.

Nerdy pal Luis (Diaz) is the “expert” on vampires of Lil Mayor’s crew, and as “Puerto Rican Harry Potter” gets no respect at all. 

Bobby (Jones) has been kicked out of school, is trying his hand at rap and is flirting with the idea of joining Henny’s gang.

Henny (Jeremie Harris)? He’s not impressed by all these pale, long-haired white dudes in their 18th century overcoats.

“Yo, Hamilton! You LOST or something? Stop RIGHT there, Mozart!”

The kids have to figure out what’s behind the string of disappearances (Zoe Saldana, Latina nail salon spitfire, is the first victim) and take advice from Luis, who brings them up to date on vampire lore and vampire fighting, “stuff he read in a comic book.”

“It’s a GRAPHIC novel!”

There are no surprises left in the genre, so don’t expect any here.

Nobody should be making serious vampire or zombie movies at this stage of the horror cycle, so this riff on the genre absolutely fills the bill. And making it a commentary on gentrification? Inspired. 

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, language and some suggestive references.

Cast: Jaden Michael, Gerald Jones III, Gregory Diaz IV, Sarah Gadon, Shea Whigham, Method Man, Coco Jones, The Kid Mero and Zoe Saldana

Credits: Directed by Osmany Rodriguez, script by Blaise Hemingway. A Universal/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:26