Movie Nation

The tone is set with the odd, edgy “meet cute” for the young lovers. It’s on an Australian train platform where the tattooed, punk druggy bumps the girl in her school uniform aside so he can get close enough to feel the train pass by.

And then there’s the nosebleed she gets when he deigns to chat with her, his near-tackling way of “treating” that nosebleed. Of course she’s smitten.

But “Babyteeth” really begins when 16 year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen) brings self-administered rat-tail cut 23 year-old Moses (Toby Wallace) over for dinner. Dad (Ben Mendelsohn) is a psychiatrist, inclined to sort of roll with this, even the fact that Moses took the dog-trimmer clippers to Milla.

But Mum, played by Essie Davis?

“I’m a bit FREAKED out by that,” she smiles. “But, um, lucky for everyone I forgot, when I took a Zoloft, that I took two Xanax while I was WAITING for you at the hairdressers, to show up, thinking you must have been ABDUCTED, because why ELSE would you not even call?”

Characters circle around this notion of “normal” in the debut feature of Aussie TV director Shannon Murphy. But everybody, from rebellious and naive Milla to Toby to half-tuned-out, prescription-happy Dad and heavily-medicated Mum, is just plain “off.”

The first act is built on an almost giddy collection of introductions that includes “Anna and Henry’s Tuesday Appointment” (screenwriter Rita Kalnejais likes “chapter headings”), the afternoon sex break for Dad Henry and manic mother Anna.

Henry takes business calls, mid-coitus, and hands out pills afterward.

Moses, by rights, should scare Milla off. But she has her reasons. A big early “reveal” is coming, but downplayed — almost disguised. And then we see her bald.

The new neighbor (Emily Barclay) is very pregnant, dizzy and has a dog named “Henry.” And even though Henry works from home, we see him walking by her “to work” appointments, striking up conversations. Maybe he’s seeing people at the hospital. Or maybe he’s just…interested.

And there’s the whimsically cranky violin teacher (Eugene Gilfedder), who chews on Milla with “Everything you touch, you destroy.”

“Go to hell!”

She doesn’t shout it. He doesn’t take it personally. But when you’re the kind of sick that makes you bald, your patience for Mozart isn’t what it used to be.

Milla thinks she’s in love, even if she’s not stupid enough to be sure it’s reciprocated. Moses has figured out a shrink’s house is a good place to find drugs.

Anna is on so many pills that she’s both pathetic, and something of a riot to have around.

“Feeling very relaxed...right now. I hope it isn’t...a stroke.”

Davis (of “True History of the Kelly Gang” and “The Babadook”) is a marvel, so needy, broken, miserable and hilarious as Anna that we never know if pity, fury or giggles is the right response to her.

The often showy Mendelsohn recognized this and makes Henry a contrasting study in sturdy, with the hint of something disturbing underneath.

You don’t have to have seen TV’s “Sharp Objects” to pick up on the open-face, open-heart qualities that Scanlen shares in common with her co-star on that show, Amy Adams. She is a revelation here; amusing, infuriating and then heart-breaking.

Because you know, at some point, the giggling fades, the magical first-visit-to-a-rave and sneaking out to see the boy (man) Mom has warned to “stay away from my daughter” ends. The string runs out.

Like many a first film from someone experienced in episodic TV, “Babyteeth” gives us a lot to chew on. But in this case, that turns it into the very best kind of emotional roller-coaster, one that wins its laughs and earns its tears.

In a year without blockbusters, this Aussie indie marvel stands out — one of the best films of the summer.

MPAA Rating: unrated, drug abuse, sex, profanity

Cast: Eliza Scanlen, Essie Davis, Toby Wallace and Ben Mendelsohn

Credits: Directed by Shannon Murphy, script by Rita Kalnejais. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:58

The air traffic control code for a hijacking in progress is “7500,” “seven five zero zero,” a fact that comes out in a white-knuckle-tense thriller that marks a return to the screen for Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

He plays the bloodied, wounded and generally by-the-book co-pilot of a Berlin to Paris flight seized by Muslim terrorists just after take-off.

The twist in first-time feature director Patrick Vollrath’s script is that everything is “seized” save for the cockpit. The bolted-doors every jetliner had installed after 9/11 pays off in the bloody opening act of what becomes an intimate, real-time and brutally gripping tale headed by an actor who generates instant empathy.

Injured inside the confines of the dimly-lit cockpit, with his captain out of commission, co-pilot Tobias drags us into his dilemma. The script expertly gets across his few options. The cabin has been seized. The worldwide directive, that the door “under no circumstances” should be opened, tie his hands, no matter what he sees on the CCTV monitor on the other side of that door.

And as we’ve seen in the 20 minute prologue to the attack, his partner (Aylin Tezel) and the mother of his son is in uniform, a flight attendant, trapped in the horrors just a couple of feet away.

Vollrath uses the tight space he had to film in to great, suspenseful advantage. It’s a film of extreme close-ups, low instrument-panel lighting, of checklists, procedures, first aid and in-your-face violence.

There are no glib taunts, threats or macho one-liners. Gordon-Levitt makes Tobias believably human. He’s in shock, in pain, terrified for his partner and mortified at what he sees on the black and white monitor that shows the frantic fanatics pounding at the door, pleading and screaming as they drag hostages before the camera they know he’s watching.

The turns the story takes are quite predictable — melodramatic even. We’ve seen hijacking tales before, and yes, Muslim terrorists are a trope the movies have pummeled into submission.

And as we yell at the screen ideas for Tobias to consider, anything to give the passengers a chance or disorient, rattle or merely toss the hijackers about and slow them up, the only annoying note is Tobias’s weepy fury, punching the seats in helplessness as he tries to lie, trick or use “the system” his way out of this.

But Gordon-Levitt still gives us a master class in screen acting in close-ups, and does that in a thriller good enough to give us more pause before booking that next trip, after the pandemic.

MPAA Rating: R (for violence/terror and language)

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Omar Memar, Aylin Tezel and Carlo Kitzlinger

Credits: Written and directed by Patrick Vollrath.  An Amazon release.

Running time: 1:32

It was headed to theaters. Now this comedy is going to Hulu July 10.

Does it feel big screen to you?

A red balloon plays a pivotal part of “The Luring.”

About an hour in, a stilt-walking clown shows up.

And then there’s the whole boyfriend with a “past” who goes “Shining” nuts on his girlfriend the longer they stay in his family’s remote Vermont vacation home.

You know what they say, “Steal from one, you’re a plagiarist. Steal from many, you’re a genius. Or ‘Star Wars’ composer John Williams.”

“The Luring” owes a bit to Stephen King — lots of bits. But writer-director Christoper Welles doesn’t grab enough of King’s horror leftovers to make a meal.  Still, when you get bored — and you will — the “borrowings” will stand out and sort of accumulate in your mind.

We’re introduced to a house with “a history” when a couple and their little boy are shown it by a realtor (Daniel Marin Berkley) who doesn’t totally creep them out with his story of a kid who “hung himself” there. And then, another hanging keeps him from closing the sale.

Dang it.

Years later, here’s Garrett (Rick Irwin) on the couch, consulting a shrink about his “dissociative amnesia.” It happened when he was a child, got him institutionalized for a bit, and it connects to a birthday party he had in that house when he was ten.

The only thing for it is for Garrett and girlfriend Claire (Michaela Sprague) to head up there, spend a weekend and see what jars loose.

But the weirdness isn’t noises and what not. There’s a twisted woman (Molly Fahey) who likes vamping it up, skulking about in masks and speaking in ominous rhymed riddles.

“We’ll dance under the wind while our souls are cremated with lies and goodbyes.”

That there, folks, is some seriously silly screenwriting.

The bowling alley guy’s “Lane 13, so mean. Last breath under dark trees of green” suggests The Bad Poet’s Society meets there on Thursdays.

Claire seems supportive, if a trifle on the Pollyanna side. She’s the one who gripes “There’s something IN this house!”

Garrett? He’s a bit of jerk. And seeing him in flashbacks at that long-age birthday party we get a clue that he’s always been this way.

There are a couple of decent chills in this no-budget thriller. Fahey has a little fun with her psycho-rhymer, and we’re reminded that children can be the cruelest creatures of all.

Aside from those, we just watch that red balloon, half-expecting Pennywise to make an appearance.

But this is Vermont, not Maine. And Mr. Wells isn’t Mr. King.

Dang it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Rick Irwin, Molly Fahey, Michaela Sprague and Daniel Marin Berkley

Credits: Written and directed by Christopher Wells. A Wild Eye release.

Running time: 1:31

Darn that Sunny Panwar is cute.

Just casting the adorable, empathetic kid from “Lion” as “Chippa,” a Kolkata street urchin probably made first-time writer-director Safdar Rahman think, “My work here is done.” His picaresque story of an orphan’s picaresque adventures and encounters on the night of his tenth birthday was guaranteed to steal your heart.

But then he gives the little boy, searching the streets for someone who can read a letter left for him by his long-missing father (it’s written in Urdu), a puppy. And that, frankly, isn’t playing fair.

“Chippa” is an utterly enchanting fantasy version of an Indian street child’s life. The system and society that failed him and left him homeless is irrelevant.

The dangers and threats facing Chippa were much more obvious in a movie like “Lion.” Chippa gets cussed out and thrown out by his by cranky Aunty (Mala Mukherjee) and takes a pummeling from the neighborhood street vendors and shopkeepers. But otherwise, his night-long odyssey is filled with characters as utterly charmed by him as we are.

There’s the taxi driver (Sumeet Thakur) who listens to his “dream” of driving a taxi. They meet after Chippa has hitched a ride on the fellow’s roof, unbeknownst to the driver. But one smile and that is forgiven.

Chippa meets drunks and a cop (Gautam Sarkar), a wise old sweet shop keeper, mailmen, hookers, a street band and the kids from a super-organized (and illegal) street soccer match, and others.

“Don’t worry, I’m not begging.”

He asks them questions, hears maybe a snippet of  their lives or dreams. And then he asks the only thing he really wants out of this long night on the mostly-empty streets of the city.

“Can you read Urdu?”

“Chippa” is a movie that lets you get ahead of it, so predictable are its story beats and the places it sets him up to tug at your heart.

But Panwar is so beguiling, we don’t mind. The film’s simple artfulness — empty, light-splashed streets, a score so bubbly and wistful that Netflix should be selling downloads, gloriously on-point casting — make “Chippa” one of the hidden gems of Netflix, a charmer well-worth hunting down.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Sunny Panwar, Masood Akhtar, Mala Mukherjee

Credits: Written and directed by Safdar Rahman.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31

Steve Carell and Rose Byrne go at it over Wisconsin man’s man Chris Cooper campaigning for high office in this political farce. Streaming June 26.

Poor Vinnie Jones. He didn’t see wrestler-actor Stu Bennett deliver the big hurt to an ensemble of villains in “I Am Vengeance.”

He was just “John Gold,” Special Forces badass in that film. Now he’s “John F—–g Gold.” He’s been promoted, at least in the eyes of the team he assembles this time.

“Wonder how many people he killed today?”

“FIVE.”

So here Vinnie is, facing off with Man Mountain Bennett, whose needs editing to hide the sheer mass he’s got to move — fast — to be convincing in a movie fight. Alas, the fight choreography is better than the editing in this sequel to the 2018 film about a Brit special forces bloke betrayed and out for, you know, vengeance.

Turns out Vinnie is the guy who did the betraying. “Teague” is his name. And it turns out that the sequel manages some grand fights that don’t even involve the leads. Two words — “Cat fights.”

And it turns out a C-grade action picture, about an agent who’s gone “rogue” and “traitor” who must be caught and whisked to an airport to a secure prison, can almost get by on pithy one-liners delivered in Her Majesty’s accent.

“Assume the position!” the newly-captured Teague is ordered.

“Or WHAT?”

“To be continued…”

Of course he gets loose. Again. Bennett gets off a good one.

“Right. I’m gonna go kill those guys. You go find Teague.”

Vinnie has a few zingers of his own.

“You’re like HERPES. I can’t get RID of you!”

Hell, even the guy you might think of as “villain #5” has a few winners to unleash. Why’s he risking his neck for a baddie?

“I’m a MERCENARY. The clue is in the JOB description!”

The action beats are almost non-stop as Teague’s henchman have to be beaten down or killed for Teague to be caught, and not one but TWO interlopers–groups of villains — try to get to him before the government agents can spirit him away.

One is a lithe, motorcycling martial arts assassin (Katrina Durden). She, of course, is bound to have a throw down with her sister-in-arms, one of John F—–g Gold’s” associates, Lynch (Phoebe Robinson-Galvin).

The Durden/Robinson-Galvin brawls are high-kicking, head-butting beauties, and writer director Ross Boyask shoots them in full frame, little editing. Just gasping, punching, choking fury by two ladies-who-lacerate, dressed in leather jumpsuits.

It’s all a noisy, no-budget goof — limited explosions, a car wreck here, a hail of bullets there. Many a clip is emptied into the ether.

There’s a lot of pistol fire, and when Bennett’s Gold is the one doing the shooting, you kind of wish they’d sprung for a more masculine firearm report sound effect. Mr. G. sounds he’s toting Lady G’s pink purse .22.

“Pew pew” the pistols go.

No, it’s not very good. Neither was “I Am Vengeance.” But the redeeming qualities of any C-movie are that it doesn’t waste time, and gives you a few laughs in between the neck-snappings.

“I Am Vengeance: Retaliation” manages that, time and again.

MPAA Rating: R for violence and language throughout

Cast: Stu Bennett, Vinnie Jones, Phoebe Robinson-Galvin, Katrina Durden

Credits: Written and directed by Ross Boyask. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:21

A darling of the festival circuit, this is one trippy trailer.

OK, with most theaters closed and major studios pulling everything from their release slate, this has been the Summer of Indie Outfits, none shining more brightly than IFC.

“The Wretched” has owned the box office, and “The Trip to Greece” has benefited from the lack of competition.

But damn, TEASING your TRAILER to the NEXT horror offering? Chutzpah, boys and girls. Only word for it.

“Ode to Passion” — the title bespeaks heightened romance, lofty ambition and poesy. And in Jack Danani’s musical with rhyming dialogue, that’s truth in advertising.

There’s something more than a little mad in trying to tell a modern romance, in New York, with swooning “love at first sight,” pretty creatives spending all their time on love (and not creating), and “partying” just short of addiction, in verse.

But if writer/director/lyricist/composer Danani was worried about how it would come off, and with that title, a film straddling that middle ground between pretentious and cornball, the picture doesn’t let on. It’s as self-aware as a blind narcissist.

What one realizes, damned quickly I have to say, is that when you’re hearing a show in verse and the verse isn’t clever or funny or fun or Shakespeare (aka “good for you”), that’s a device that grates.

And when, 15 minutes in, the verse blends into a forgettable “I Met a Girl/I Met A Guy” song, the first of many which will be forgotten over the 2:05 running time of the picture, you know you’re in trouble.

He’s a young writer. She’s an aspiring actress. He’s pals with with a priest (Al Pagano). She likes to paint the town red, with a nice dusting of snow — Cocaine, you silly. It’ll never work out.

The pleasantly bland (thin-voiced) leads — Giuseppe Bausilio, Julia Nightingale —  court and couplet away, and sing when the need arises. But the romance fails to take flight, the conflicts fail to engage, the obstacles to love necessary in such romances neither surprise nor come off as anything other than contrived.

And…those…rhymes — archaic, stilted, purplish nonsense, “inane” by any other name.

“So much to saaaay, but where to start…

“It matters not, just speak your heart.”

On her first magical moments with Michael (Bausilio), Sarah (Nightingale) ticks off a quick CV of likes and dislikes.

“DaVinci, shockingly ahead of his time, ‘Pretty Woman,’ I forget the line…”

I mouth a slow, gobsmacked and profane question, in the form of an acronym — W.T.F?

But seriously, why use a look, a gesture, a light in the eyes to touch the heart or make a cogent point when 216 words will do? I mean, who cares that film is a visual medium?

The glossy sheen this one puts on New York — parks by day, tony bars and MGM streetlights by night — never lets us forget “There isn’t much going on here but rhyming.”

There’s a girls’ night out number carried off by Victoria Meade, who has the meatiest singing voice in the cast, and plays the “bad girl” vamp as if it started as a hobby. Build a movie around her, her character, not the colorless characters and those cast to play the characters.

The intentions weren’t bad, just misguided. And a lot of effort shows, even if interest in the gimmick dies an early but lingering death.

The ambition of it all is daunting. But of “Ode to Passion” — ugh, that title — is “form over substance” at its most elementary. And that form…

MPAA Rating:

Cast: Giuseppe Bausilio, Julia Nightingale, Jeff Smith, Victoria Meade, Al Pagano and Marcus Harmon.

Credits: Written, directed and scored by Jack Danani. A Jack Danini Productions release.

Running time: 2:05