Movie Nation

Cutesy, corny and little-kid friendly, “Wish Upon a Unicorn” manages just enough goofy laughs to avoid “insipid,” no matter how hard everybody involved tries.

It’s a bit like that holiday evergreen “Prancer,” without the sophistication and sentiment of that reindeer-loses-his-sleigh kiddie comedy.

Chicago kids Mia (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Summer Fontana) move to the country to help with grandma’s ranch. Rose (Chloe Webb of “Sid & Nancy”) is losing her memory and fading a bit, but barking “Time for chores” to a couple of tweens brings back her spirit.

Classmates include bullies, and the teachers there drawl — “What’s a HUCKLEberry?” The general store is straight out of “Green Acres,” with cornpone “regulars” and a conspiracy-nut proprietor. Crazy Willie (Kevin J. O’Connor, not bad) will tell you Bigfoot stories.

“You need a new cow. Cuz’ we’re TIRED of your BULL!”

But Willie sees in Mia a fellow traveler, “a believer…someone who knows the impossible is always possible.“

When Mia spies a sparkly horse with a horn in the woods, bathed in a rainbow of light, nobody believes her. They can’t even see the yearling she calls Rocco. Doubting Dad (Jonathan Lajoie) laughs it off, an and even Emma has her doubts.

“I hear their farts smell like cotton candy!”

But Mia and her eventual convert Emma discover that Rocco is about to change the family luck. It’s just that SOMEbody knows unicorn lore that makes him covet the critter for nefarious means.

The action is “E.T.” lite, the effects modest, but there are gags that land and one-liners that score.

“Maybe it”s time to rethink the Easter Bunny!”

Mia does research to argue that unicorns have to exist — “They’re in the Bible like NINE times!” Mis-translation from Hebrew, but OK.

She reads that “a pure and innocent damsel in a white dress” can attract them. Dad’s confused.

“Wait, where are you GOING? Did you get MARRIED?”

There’s not a lot to this. And it’s entirely too undemanding for anybody over the age of eight.

But if you’re in the target audience…what are you doing reading movie reviews on Mom’s iPhone?

MPAA Rating: PG, a little violence, a “hella” here, a “fart” joke there

Cast: Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Summer Fontana, Kevin J. O’Connor, Tait Blum and Chloe Webb.

Credits: Written and directed by Steve Bencich. A Universal/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

It’s often said that if you examine an individual life closely enough, you’ll find the makings of universal tragedy, comedy and mystery.

Directed and co-writer Cristóbal Serrá Jorquera gives that thesis a serious test in the Costa Rican drama “El Calor Después de la Lluvia,” “The Heat After the Rain.” It’s a quiet, contemplative look at one young woman’s literal and emotional journey after a miscarriage.

We aren’t told much, and aren’t shown much more, a serious shortcoming in this minimalist tale in a seldom-filmed setting.

For 30ish Juana (Milena Picado), the chill set in on her relationship with Gustavo (Luis Carlos Bogantes) after she lost the baby. His aimlessness grates, his inability to provide words of comfort hurt.

He’s content to carry on as always, poking around San José, never letting her know where he’s off to, who he might be with. “Why do I have to have a job?” (in Spanish with English subtitles).

And yet he’s the one who wants closure when the inevitable happens. Running into him on the seasonal religious pilgrimage she undertakes is just salt in the wound.

Juana is drained by the ordeal and joyless in the pilgrimage. Winding up at her parent’s house in a small town is her chance to finally have someone to talk to about this most personal of tragedies. But she won’t.

And the bearded guy (Arturo Pardo) who meets her in a cantina probably isn’t up to it, either.

Jorquera puts so few cards on the table that the viewer’s left to fill in around the edges of this simple, potentially sad story. I say “potentially,” because there’s precious little emotion expressed here, and you can guess where it turns up.

Waiting for that, we’re left to ponder the emptiness Juana feels and the subject Juana avoids in a conservative Catholic Central American country.

“El Calor Después de la Lluvia” is lovely to look at, which is some consolation. But for people who look for, you know, more overtly dramatic things to happen in their dramas, who like a little more explanation (What pilgrimage is this? Where is the town Juana ends up in? Etc?), it’s a dull exercise in guess what’s in the character’s head.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult themes

Cast: Milena Picado, Luis Carlos Bogantes, Arturo Pardo, Rodrigo Duran and Ana Ulate.

Credits: Directed by Cristóbal Serrá Jorquera, script by Cristóbal Serrá Jorquera, Felipe Zúñiga. An Indiepix release.

Running time: 1:10

AMC Cinemas, America’s second largest theater chain, has filed to sell more stock shares to raise money in the face of the Covid Collapse of movie going. The stock price is running further as a result

Deceitful red state governors like the one here in Florida may be pushing the narrative that the pandemic is over, nine months in. But moviegoers aren’t buying it and film distributors are pulling product accordingly. I’ve been to a few movies in the past month and been almost all by myself in the multiplex each time.

It’s a damned death spiral for cinema thanks to incompetent and malevolent contagion mismanagement and the gullible who keep listening to the murderous toddler in charge. So sure, thanks for that.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/amc-entertainment-files-sell-stock-162709875.html

“Beastie Boys Story” is a TED Talk with swearing, tales of (faux) debauchery from a couple of 50somethings remembering making music that started as a joke and morphed into something with staying power.

Spike Jonze directed it and it was Emmy nominated, so there’s a little more to it than that. But the format is totally TED Talk, and it works…about as well as your average TED Talk.

The scripted-rehearsed gags, the polished (with seemingly-planned “technical difficulties”) anecdotes, scanning the all-too-familiar pop-star-career arc are all packed into the format of the last of a live series of New York stage shows in which the two surviving members of the trio — Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) — remember the good times.

Adam Yauch, the third member, died of cancer in 2012, and the guys pay affectionate tribute to him every where they can and lots of archival interview footage with him is cut into the show.

In between jokes. In between ancient TV appearances, and in between endless photo montages of these “party bro” punks-turned-rappers. In between jokey chapter headings.

“Chapter 3: The Record that Changed Everything. “Chapter 8: The Record that Changed Everything.”

The pre-history and early years are the fun parts of any such story, and the most informative, especially here. Meeting as early teens, forming a punk combo with friends who included John Berry (who bailed) and drummer Schellenbach (kicked out when they became hyping butch rappers).

As Horovitz admits, in the film’s single-sentence mea culpa — “How f—–d up is that?”

All is quickly forgiven by the King Theater audience’s nostalgic 50something fanbase, so no worries, right?

What was most fascinating to me, who casually let the Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence (“MCA” Yauch’s acronym for BEASTIE) sort of pass by as MTV/”Soul Train”/”American Bandstand”  background noise, was all the recollections of their joint rise to fame with future super producer Rick Rubin, who became “our weird cool older brother” in college when they were still in their mid-teens and none of them were famous.

Old TV footage of Rubin hyping his “creation” is hilarious, and flies in the face of the inscrutable bearded guru he became.

Their Russell Simmons/Rick Def Jam years are amusingly recalled, complete with Russell impersonations, the guys marveling at their luck, the off-the-cuff creative process in those earliest years, opening for Madonna (a mistake), and then their idols Run-DMC made them.

Anarchic music videos, taking on the guise of rude jerks during their ’80s heyday, becoming the “ass—–s” they felt they were mocking in songs like “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” is sober and middle-age reflective.

The bite of Def Jam’s “breach of contract” accusations, and Simmons admitting to them that he “just needed three white rappers so that he could get (Def Jam) on MTV” is allowed to sting, but not smother the feel-good/feel-nostalgic/sentimental-over-Yauch vibe.

Yeah, they went kind of broke, for a while. And then they had a comeback.

But “Story” plays out a bit like the band itself. It peaks early, hits its giddy stride during the blur of sudden fame, notorious personal appearances and all-for-a-goof excesses, and then fizzles out utterly.

Proving themselves “legitimate” in later years is vindicating, but dramatically dull.

And a sometimes charming “victory lap” Brooklyn theater run doesn’t erase the faint odor of privilege and cultural appropriation that always hung over them — punk-rap mashup or not.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and the late Adam Yauch

Credits: Directed by Spike Jonze, script by Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond.  An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:59

Olivia Cooke plays the singer he loves, and Mathieu Amalric is also in the cast of this awards season release.

This hits theaters and Amazon Prime this November.

The unemotive animation makes the faces in the “babies with superpowers” comedy “Fe@rless” look like CGI botox. And the disinterested “Has the check cleared?” voice acting seems to match in this cartoon quicky made for Netflix.

It’s an incredibly dull “Incredibles” variation with British origins and a video game framework that adds little, and doesn’t distract from the “Southpark” construction-paper cut out (digitally mimicked) backgrounds or “story.”

A “gamer” with the online moniker “Fe@rless” is master of the online contest “Planet Master.” Reid (voiced by Miles Robbins, who sounds bored) manipulates the hero Captain Lightspeed (Jadakiss, who sounds like Danny DeVito taking his first voice-acting job) upward, level after level.

Oddly, Captain Lightspeed has to contend with dropping his toddler off at deep space day care in one game level. Entry to the next level feeds Fe@rless Reid a warning.

“Do you accept the consequences?”

Sure. Ok. But just as science project partner Melanie (Yara Shahidi) shows up, the game’s villain Arcannis (Miguel no-last-name, bland) kidnaps three superpowered babies, they escape through a wormhole and show up at Reid’s house.

Worlds collide, aliens invade and super-strong baby mayhem ensues, with the military getting involved in the person of General Blazerhatch (Gabrielle Union, disguising her voice big time) on the case.

“Send those diapers to the CDC!”

Teen search histories, baby drivers, toddler sing-alongs and the mellow sounds of Lionel Ritchie are tossed our way in search of laughs.

The action isn’t particularly noisy or attention-grabbing.

Still, the disinterested voice actors won’t be a bother to the teeny-tiny target audience for this pablum. They need a nap, anyway.

Robbins’ moment of “realization” speech line-reading in monotone would put anybody to sleep.

“The whole Earth is doomed, and it’s my fault.”

MPAA Rating: TV-Y7, “ripe” diaper jokes

Cast: Miles Robbins, Yara Shahidi, Jadakiss, Gabrielle Union and Susan Sarandon.

Credits: Written and directed by Cory Edwards. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Another vacation gone-wrong tale, with murderous and supernatural elements. Luke Hemsworth, older brother of Chris and Liam, co-stars with Maggie Q as the husband who might have murdered her (his wife) the night before.

“Saws” sequel director Darren Lynn Bousman directed this Oct. 2 release.

My stars and garters, I cannot remember a generally thoughtful science fiction film going completely go off the rails in its finale the way “LX 2048” does.

What begins as a gloomy commentary on a world dialed-in and “tuning out” reality, a reality in which atmospheric damage and sunspots have rendered going outside in daylight toxic and the cost of people living “virtually” in human emotional terms, ends in a long, loopy scene that can only be described as clone camp.

And even that’s missing the one thing that camp cannot live without. It’s not funny.

James D’Arcy (“Dunkirk”) stars as Adam Bird, a highly-strung VR firm vendor/planner/consultant who disconnects from the goggles everybody lives behind to visit his doctors in “daylight hours” and actually show up at staff meetings in the company conference room.

No one else bothers to come. They’re all there virtually. So all his shouting is via VR goggles. All his dire warnings that their pricey specialty business, providing the gear that gives people access to “The Realm,” and its “real buddies (friends)” and avatar lovers is about to become obsolete because “chip” is coming, promising everybody implanted instant access and thus instant escape, and providing that service much cheaper.

Adam is raging against the machine, and against public compliance. But his doctor (Gina McKee) has bad news. His heart’s giving out. This insurance policy “Premium 3” promises that he’ll be replaced by a clone, who’ll continue supporting his estranged wife (Anna Brewster) and three kids. But what’s that do for Adam?

He’ll track down this genius scientist (Delroy Lindo) who might be able to give him some answers. Donald Stein shows up with a pistol, crazy eyes and a dark vision of the world they’re in and how its promise may have missed a few things — “instinct,” “compassion,” a soul, etc.

As Adam’s virtual lover Mia (Gabrielle Cassi) puts it, her “five senses” test out fine. She just can’t “feel.”

Writer-director Guy Moshe (“Bunraku”) sets all this up well enough. Sure, the scientist introduction is comically abrupt, but Lindo’s Donald Stein is convincing at getting across the “existential dread” of our current (future) times, all while being Delroy Lindo cool.

Wait, you can smoke? How? (Must’ve been banned.).

“I’ve got a guy who’s got a guy.”

D’Arcy slings an American accent and does quite a bit of shouting here. You’d think the guy was dying, running out of time, too impatient to worry about hurting the feelings of clone-doctors.

“I just can’t relate you people…your kind.”

Brewster, of TV’s “Versailles,” gives a performance of eccentric, theatrically metallic line-readings — not just an angry ex-wife, but one down the digital rabbit hole of “The Realm” so deep that she sounds like a clone.

The picture’s got a vivid vision of the future — vivid on a budget. Adam’s defiance includes driving his Mercedes with the top down — in his haz-mat suit. Everybody else gets around via elevated pneumatic tube-trains. When they bother to go out at all.

This “virtual” instead of “real” world, with its toxic environment and compliant, drugged and plugged-in populace, feels insanely topical at times.

But damned if “LX 2048” doesn’t go completely crackers at the end, with D’Arcy there as both eager participant and appalled eyewitness.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, some nudity, sex, profanity, alcohol, smoking

Cast: James D’Arcy, Anna Brewster, Gina McKee, Juliet Aubrey, Gabrielle Cassi and Delroy Lindo

Credits: Written and directed by Guy Moshe. A Quiver release.

Running time: 1:42

You can tell, almost on sight, that they’re brother and sister — and couldn’t be anything but that.

Sarah (Katherine Fogler) is impatient and getting more so, waiting at this chilly train station in the middle of nowhere, in the gathering gloom.

Her impatience is for brother Aaron (Douglas Nyback) to DO something — ask for directions, transport, to ask if that ancient Russian car with the stout woman sitting in it is a taxi. “Use your POLISH,” Sarah kvetches, betraying a lifetime of practice. As if her brother’s quick “study” of the language will get them anywhere. As if the timid Aaron will actually go and ask ANYbody for help.

Here they are, a couple of not-that-tight siblings, Canadian Jews in “The Old Country” on a fool’s errand for their “bubbeh” (grandmother).

“The Dancing Dogs of Dombrova” is a feather-weight “film festival” comedy layered with menace but buoyed by the built-in whimsy of that most reliable of comic formulas.

Not knowing the land or the language, blithely ignoring Poland’s infamous reputation for Anti-semitism, especially during the Holocaust, they are two Canadian Gefilte fish out of water, strangers in a strange land.

The “menace” here begins with that cabbie (Doroftei Anis), a silent, stoic type who putters along in her car and it’s overwhelming odor of gas (design flaw), stopping for a wedding party, never speaking as they call out directions and ask where they’re going.

“What’s the Polish number for ‘911?'”

Grandma’s old address is hard to pinpoint, and the locals seem sketchy, if not downright hostile.

They’re delivered to “the only (hostel) in town,” where pregnant Karolina (an earthy and radiant Silva Helena Schmidt) interrupts her arguments with a neighbor who she says fathered her child to take them in.

“You are being some Canadians?”

Tuck them into rooms, serve them sausage and potatoes — “Probably not even kosher.” “Who’s kosher?” The next day, here’s a map. Yes, there are many “Birch Streets.” Try the town hall, and good luck!

Director Zack Bernbaum (“And Now for a Word from Our Sponsor”) and screenwriter Michael Whatling immerse our two travelers in a world where even the English speakers are reluctant to reveal that fact right away. Feigning a communication barrier is easier.

The cabbie’s teen son (Stefani Vizireanu) deadpans his solution to every obstinate bureaucrat, property owner or priest who might help them find their bubbeh’s old house, but won’t.

“I will say he (or she) touched me ‘down there.'” Immovable objects are only moved by threats in historically backward places like Dombrova.

The siblings bicker — Sarah’s guileless optimism smashing up against Aaron’s “get on with it” pessimism. Their secrets explain their relationship, just as the town’s secrets get in the way of their quest.

There’s a light dose of “Everything is Illuminated” in “Dancing Dogs,” the North American Jewish outsiders returning to a place their family was chased out of and finding screwballs, petty corruption and lethargy, but also more charm than they have any reason to expect, considering. Simple houses, many of them hovels, are all the place ever could boast of — and an ancient synagogue and seen-it-all rabbi, and an equally ancient church where the priest (Adrian Matioc) isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity.

Not much happens here, even when “the mob” emerges and a firearm comes out. The moral of the story is obvious but sweet. And eventually, we get a dose of why this fish-out-of-water tale is thus-titled.

These “Dancing Dogs” get by on recognizable characters and stereotypes that even those stereotyped embrace when it suits their purposes, especially the “Rocky & Bullwinkle” accents.

“Always ending what starting” is a motto even Boris and Natasha would endorse.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, alcohol, sexual situations

Cast:Katherine Fogler, Douglas Nyback, Doroftei Anis, Silva Helena Schmidt, Stefan Vizireanu, Adrian Matioc

Credits: Directed by Zack Bernbaum, script by Michael Whatling. A Film Movement+ release.

Running time: 1:42

“GIMS: On the Record” is a quick-study immersion in the French pop hero of the moment, Maitre Gims, a singer-rapper born in the Congo, raised in Paris, with an “operatic” voice that separates him from his contemporaries at home and abroad.

Famous for his omni-present sunglasses, for hits such as “Caméléon” and “Brisé” and for selling lots of records and dominating French radio in recent years, “On the Record” promises a peek behind the glasses, or at least a superficial gloss on his carefully constructed public persona.

This documentary tracks GIMS (how he’s billed sometimes) from France’s big music NRJ awards show of 2017 to a 2018 career-pinnacle concert at the vast Stade de France, outside of Paris.

We see him cope with fans, work on songs, show off his manga (he likes to dabble in comics), sing in the studio and in concert, chill at home in Marrakech (where he now lives) and travel by private jet in this “business sprinkled with fantasy” life “in a cage” that he leads.

Friends and colleagues, like his singing protege and younger brother Dadju, talk of the “two Gims,” the one everybody sees and the ones only his family gets to see — the one who isn’t in sunglasses all the time.

“Will we get to see his eyes?” Gims jokes (in French with English subtitles) to the camera, giving his documentary a little mystery.

He started out as a rapper, and realized “he had a legitimate voice,” one management team intimate explains. That gave him “an advantage over everybody else” in French pop and rap, certainly. As the son of a fairly famous Congolese singer Djanana Djuna, a vocalist in Papa Wemba’s band and a favorite of the late Congolese dictator Mobutu, of course he had voice.

Dad, shown in old clips and interviewed fresh here, says that he fell afoul of the Mobutu regime and that’s why they moved. When the family split up, as a boy Gandhi Bilel Djuna (his birth name) was homeless, a squatter with his siblings, for a time.

About that birth name, Gims jokes, “Dad was a (Gandhi) fan,” and “The Congolese are the best with names!”

The guy comes off as utterly charming and disarming, perhaps the secret to his great success. The French, one record exec mentions, rarely take to “arrogant” wealth-flaunting pop stars, which holds back many rappers. The “masculine aggression” so associated with rap here and there isn’t an issue with Gims.

But as Gims warms up backstage with a little art song (opera), as we see him in a hoodie with the English slogan, “I am NOT a Rapper” emblazoned on it, we realize we’re not dealing with some mere mortal here.

“Just because you’re a rapper doesn’t mean you can’t sing,” says no less than Sting, the English rock star who never found a “new” singer from an exotic culture that he wouldn’t want to duet with. (He did.) “Just because you’re a singer, doesn’t mean you can’t rap.”

“On the Record” treats us to Gims’ peak — a joyous return to Congo (he moved away aged two), and the Stade de France show, fussed over by his mate and image consultant and fellow sunglasses fan, Demden every step of the way.

We hear him speak of his quick embrace of French art, culture and values as a child, plan an awards show appearance that will be “the second most expensive (single song) performance (after Rihanna),” and show a little competitive side about his brother doing well in the awards department, “maybe someday surpassing me.”

And then he leads Demden down a boulevard in Cannes, acting as “security” for his “Beyonce,” barking “NOT allowed” at the parade of paparazzi that accompany them, snapping away, goofing on all this fame nonsense even as he dutifully stops for plenty of selfies with fans along the way.

“Wonder if there are American singers and rappers watching this?” you think. “Are they worried about him learning English? Maybe they should be.”

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Gims, Djuba, Sting, Vitaa, others

Credits: Directed by Florent Bodin. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36