Movie Nation

Mississippi-born filmmaker Jaclyn Bethany tells a story of love, madness and betrayal in “Indigo Valley,” adapted from her short film of the same title.

The original film was set and shot in Iceland. The feature-length version, alas, is not.

Bethany starred in both films as well, and uses the feature film to give herself many, many more brooding closeups capturing the mania her character — apparently a former child actress — lives with.

Closeups reveal many things; like an actress who telegraphs her gestures, so mannered in that every sense-dulling second, with every glower in a mirror, every theatrical splashing of water in her face, every over-considered, halting line reading, an inescapable truth faces her and anybody sitting through the 75 minutes of “Indigo Valley.”

She’s a bad actress.

And all that screen time she gives herself, all those close-ups? It’s all for tone and does nothing in terms of telling or advancing the paper-thin story.

Impulsive, sad Isabella (Bethany) is just the person you want to check out of rehab and take with you on your honeymoon to a dude ranch out West. That’s what her estranged sister Louise (British actress Rosie Day of “Outlander”) does, with the blessing of her new husband, John (Brandon Sklenar of “Mapplethorpe” and recently, “The Big Ugly”).

Isabella fumes and tries to push the sister propping her up away. She picks up an employee of the ranch. She has a lot of flashbacks, as do Louise and John. We see how the painter Louise met the violinist John. And we see Isabella’s troubled connection to their early days together. She is obsessed with…somebody.

Isabella, as a character, is damaged, dazed and frankly dull. The lack of conversation in the film masks this only so much. Montages of her pink-haired youth — whispered madness or mournful pop underscoring them — don’t further illuminate the character, or explain her supposed appeal, sexual or otherwise.

“Life is made up of these kinds of moments,” she intones, at her most profound. “Sometimes we don’t understand them. Sometimes we do.”

Damn. I’m hustling across the bar to meet up with this Algonquin Roundtable conversationalist. Yes, the delivery of that line is as flat as the line itself.

There’s the germ of an idea here, about a short film’s worth. A full-length feature only exposes a sea of shortcomings. This is a “vanity project” in the worst sense of the phrase.

Cast: Jaclyn Bethany, Rosie Day, Brandon Sklenar

Credits: Written and directed by Jaclyn Bethany. A Giant Pictures release.

Running time: 1:14

“Wan” and “bloodless” are the first words to leap to mind about this online dating/lawsuit-over-online-dating romantic comedy.

“Love Guaranteed” starts out on life support and never comes out of the coma.

It’s a creaking and sentimental followup by the screenwriters who gave us “Falling Inn Love,” and a star-vehicle for Rachel Leigh Cook, who broke into films with “She’s All That” in the last millennium.

A few promising gimmicks, a wilted one-liner or two, an easy rapport that never quite achieves “chemistry” between the leads, Cook and Damon Wayans, Jr., and a well-cast villain are what it has to offer.

Nothing funny or particularly charming is made out of any of those ingredients.

Cook is a crusading and struggling Seattle “civil litigator,” plucky but a little slow to figure out “sticking up for the little guy” isn’t all that lucrative when you’re not a megafirm of “ambulance chasers.” She drives a salmon-and-rust colored Karmann Ghia and her staff is always job hunting. Broke.

Wayans is Nick, the client who could change that. He’s been spending good money on this dating site, Love Guaranteed. He’s gone on 986 dates, spent money on decent restaurants for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. “Love” may be “Guaranteed,” but it hasn’t worked out for him.

Let’s sue!

Nick comes off as an “obnoxious, gross…shameless opportunist.” But hey, Mama’s Karmann needs work. Pay the bills.

The cleverest conceit here is how Nick, “dating in bulk,” names those dates “like ‘Friends’ episodes.”

“The One Who Talked About Cats,” “The One Who Brought her Parents” and “The One Who Got Drunk and Tried to Fight the Bus Boy” weren’t winners. Love Guaranteed, part of the “lifestyle empire” of influencer Tamara Taylor, has “guaranteed” right in its name. Slam dunk lawsuit, right? And Heather Graham plays Tamara. She’s sure to bring laughs, right?

Cook comes off as game but out of new ideas for how to make “plucky” and “idealistic” and “lonely” fresh.

Wayans has been cruising along on the famous name for a decade and has yet to make any sort of impression on the screen. Inoffensively bland, “safe,” and not able to land a punchline have become his screen persona.

Only Graham has the chance to cut loose, let her “spiritual seeker” Buddha-misquoting Bethenny Frankel-wannabe stick and jab. It’s the most colorful character here, and there’s not enough on the page for her to play.

It turns out “Love” isn’t “Guaranteed,” any more than laughs, relatable characters or anything else.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Rachel Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans, Jr., Heather Graham

Credits: Mark Steven Johnson, script by Elizabeth Hackett, Hilary Galanoy. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

It will be hard to top Rose Byrne’s canny, sexy take on the feminist icon Gloria Steinem, one of the standout performances in Hulu’s “Mrs America” series this past spring.

Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore, and two younger actresses will take a shot in Julie Taymor’s “The Glorias” bio pic, coming to theaters and streaming on Sept. 30.

Janelle Monae and Timothy Hutton also star.

Bette Middler as Bella Abzug? On. The Nose. Not a pun, either.

In the canon, it’s listed with “the problem plays,” those Shakespearean works treated as comedies but with death, troubles and darkness lain o’er the “true love tested” proceedings.

Resetting “Measure for Measure” in modern day Australia, in the gangland apartment projects of new immigrants and old hoodlums, may not be the most graceful adaptation of the Bard’s works. But if nothing else, it captures the melancholy, the later-life appeals for mercy and tolerance that crept into Shakespeare’s thinking and writing.

So no, the poetic turns of phrase aren’t literally here — “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall…Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?” No “Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.,” either.

But the point remains, even when the Duke, here a sickly old gang boss played by Hugo Weaving, is grumbling about roots and remembering where he came from. He tells a subordinate “People who don’t know where they are can’t know WHO they are.”

Weaving anchors the actor-turned-director Paul Ireland’s film in somber reflection and resignation. And I have to say, after a fashion, he makes it work.

Duke is in the last days of presiding over his empire. But his lieutenant, Angelo (Mark Leonard Winter) has been shifting the focus to meth dealing. And when we meet them, that blows up in their faces. A junkie shoots up the courtyard just below the Duke’s penthouse.

That violence is what throws Claudio (Harrison Gilbertson of “In the Tall Grass”) in the path of Jaiwara (Megan Smart of “Breath”) — literally. He shoves her out of the way of the ranting, racist and stoned shooter. Romance blossoms.

That’s a problem because Jaiwara isn’t just an immigrant, and a Muslim. Her brother Farouk (Fayssal Bazzi) is a gang leader in his own right. He doesn’t know Claudio saved his sister, only that he and his mother (Doris Younane) cannot have Jaiwara stepping out with an infidel. Her confession to her mother is quiet, reluctant and heartbreaking.

“I’m sorry mother, but I love him.”

Retaliation against the unaffiliated kid is swift and brutal, and ongoing. He winds up in prison, framed by the gang-friendly crooked cop (Malcolm Kennard). Somebody needs to step up and save him. Who has the juice, and the mercy hidden deep in his soul, to take pity on an innocent?

There’s no sense at all laying Shakespeare’s work alongside the Damian Hill/Paul Ireland screenplay. But you can sense the Bard in scenes, characters and clever plot twists.

Weaving, now the Grand Old Man of Australian Cinema, with “The Matrix” and “Lord of the Rings” franchises long behind him, gives a tender toughness to Duke, a conniver who pretends to go on vacation, but instead hides out in that penthouse tracking the others’ actions via his CCTV system.

Interesting way to make a character omniscient.

“It’s a bloody castle,” where he lives, he’s assured. “It’s a PRISON,” to him.

But watch him soften, just a little, at seeing young love undone by intolerance, heartless underlings and circumstance.

Winter (“The Dressmaker”) conveys the oily ruthlessness who remains loyal, even as he feels licensed to act with impunity.

The script may have Smart Westernize her Middle Eastern refugee a tad more than can be easily believed. But the guy saved her life and loves Childish Gambino. What’s not to fall for?

I haven’t seen “Measure for Measure” on the stage in years, but the rough shape of it forms in the mind watching this adaptation, its hits (characters) and the reasons it’s called “a problem play.” And those bones, a poignant romance, betrayals and mercy coming from the most unexpected places and vivid characters, pretty much save this film, or at least make it watchable.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, drug content, profanity

Cast: Hugo Weaving, Megan Smart, Harrison Gilbertson, Mark Leonard Winter, Doris Younane and Fayssal Bazzi

Credits: Directed by Paul Ireland, script by Damian Hill and Paul Ireland, based on the play by William Shakespeare. A Samuel L. Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:47

This, from Exhibitor Relations. Go to the link, find your IMAX.
“Every single IMAX theater playing ‘Tenet’ in the US” https://t.co/YAYK0jSrFm via @thisisinsider https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/1301583860988166145?s=20

Mel’s been tested all her life. It started with her Daddy (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) on the track.

“You body always fights against you,” he’d growl, as teen Mel whimpered in pain. “It doesn’t tell you what to do!”

She ran and ran and found purpose. And now, she’s running the (never-named) Appalachian Trail, tearing off 200 mile pieces of it every eight days.

Sister Chloe (Tiffany Renee Johnson), doing her support, catching up to refresh her supplies at every stop on her “grand adventure,” wonders “What’s this about?” And “Mom told me to tell you you’re wasting your life.”

But Mel (a fierce Celeste M. Cooper of “Chicago P.D.”) is focused, when she’s not having flashbacks about those years on the track. She’s pounding out the miles at a dead sprint, and taking the punishment.

That can only be a help when she faces her ultimate test, right? Sure, she misses the obvious warning bells, stumbling into two out-of-their-element criminals (Sean Patrick Leonard and Michael B. Woods) in the middle of nowhere. But if they don’t kill her, she’ll power through this nightmare with sheer will.

There’s a lot that’s entirely too-obvious in “Range Runners,” a trail-\running B-movie thriller with moments that defy common sense and villain’s lines that make you cringe.

“You like playing games, don’t you?“

The flashbacks — Mariah Gordon plays teen Mel — rather pointlessly over-emphasize Mel’s “preparation” for her gravest challenge. What they’re most successful at is stopping Philip S. Plowden’s thriller dead in its tracks. Repeatedly.

The script puts Mel in jeopardy, and sets us up for “the tables have turned.” But she comes off as physically confident, but head-slappingly naive at every turn.

Thuggish stranger meets her on the trail wants to see her prized knife? Sure, hand it over. Gets away from the bad guys, who have weapons and her food and backpack. Sure, let’s not make a quick, injured run to civilization. Let’s chase’em!

Cooper is solid in the lead, the villains are cartoons and any hallucinations that bring her sister into her predicament with her are the sorts of traps they warn you about in Screenwriting 201.

But the movie’s Achilles heel is pacing. Mel’s on a mission, galloping through the Appalachian “range” she’s running. Once the villains show up, the menace increases, but the urgency fades.

And then, damned if another flashback doesn’t show up and bring everything to an utter stop. Again.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Celeste M Cooper, Sean Patrick Leonard, Michael B. Woods and Tiffany Renee Johnson.

Credits: Directed by Philip S. Plowden, script by Devon Colwell. A DarkStar release.

Running time: 1:56

“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