Movie Nation

Orlando Bloom frittered away his A-list movie star years acting in action franchises and coupling with models, starlets and pop stars.

But every now and again, usually in a movie nobody gets around to seeing, he reminds us he can be more than tabloid fodder. Once in a blue moon, he takes on a film and a role with substance.

“Retaliation,” which was filmed in 2017, is a drama that presents him as a tormented soul, a man who has squandered whatever potential he might have had for a life in home demolition.

Malcolm, “Malky” to his mates, is a brooding, quiet, ill-tempered mug who wields his sledgehammer with particular relish on his latest work site — knocking down an old church.

He lives with his aged mother (Anne Reid), has a few drinks at the pub with his mates, letting mouthy Jo (Alex Fern) hold the floor, regaling one and all of tales of Malky’s temper.

Every so often, Malky ducks away for furtive, furious fornication with the fetching barmaid, Emma (Jennifer Montgomery).

But left by himself, his usual choice, he rends his flesh and he carves words into his hammer’s handle. He pushes away Emma any time there’s even a hint of intimacy.

“You think I need you? I don’t need anybody.”

And as miserable as he seems, that’s nothing compared to the tailspin he goes into the moment he spies the man who used to be the priest there, white-haired with age but still recognizable.

A reckoning is coming. The man with a violent temper and impulse control wrestles with formless notions of revenge. And the tirades and tender mercies of a street preacher (Charlie-Creed-Miles) foretell violence, revenge or perhaps some other form of redemption.

Bloom does a nice job of expressing, wordlessly, where this man has been, what blend of guilt, fury and obligation drive him and shaped his life. It’s not the most subtle character or film built around an abuse survivor, but there’s substance in the performance that lifts “Retaliation” above its hammered-home metaphors.

Montgomery, an “Entourage” and “This is Us” veteran, brings a fragile earthiness to Emma, and and Fern is given a couple of pub monologues overflowing with color and wit, even if they stop the film.

That’s what first-time feature directors like the Shammasian Brothers do — let themselves get distracted.

Reid-Miles almost steals the picture as an unschooled man-of-faith with the zeal of the “converted,” and just enough of his past poking through to make him fascinating.

The COVID pandemic derailing the theatrical film release model has meant that little films with modest expectations have had a chance to shine — Tom Hardy’s “Capone,” the combat thriller “The Outpost” in which Bloom also appears, and this movie that slips out in between Orlando Bloom/Katy Perry and Baby Makes Three tales from the tabloids.

Here’s to hoping that he and filmmakers looking for a star to carry their indie drama make something of it.

MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent/sexual content, language throughout, and some nudity

Cast: Orlando Bloom, Janet Montgomery, Charles Reid-Miles, Alex Fern and Anne Reid,

Credits: Directed by Ludwig Shammasian, Paul Shammasian, written by Geoff Thompson. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:33

A vacation that goes wrong, a daughter kidnapped.

This one’s due out Aug. 21.

Bloom is in “The Outpost,” which has done quite well as a streaming title.

And now, this Friday, comes “Retaliation.”

Legolas is gone. The tabloid headlines? Fading.

Maybe he’ll start showing us something again, and not his naked butt on a paddleboard on all the gossip sites.

“Fatal Attraction” became such a cinematic touchstone that attempting a screen knockoff of it can’t be judged a crime.

Granted, nobody has pulled off the hot and sexy, creepy and gonzo “my paramour is now my stalker” thing as well. “Chloe” tried, “The Perfect Guy” was another swing and a miss.

As is “Fatal Affair,” a thriller in which the thrills, the threat of violence and the sexy come-on are but tepid imitations of the lurid Adrian Lyne “classic” of 1987.

Fair to say Peter Sullivan (he did Netflix’s similarly lame “Secret Obsession”) is no Adrian Lyne. Not a skilled audience manipulator, not torrid or kinky enough to push people’s buttons, a mediocre movie maker without the nerve to pull something like this off.

Did I leave anything out? Anybody with this many “My Summer Prince” and “Christmas” Hallmark (ish) titles on his resume is aspiring to mediocrity, and lucky to wear even that insult as a label.

But another thing that trips up these imitations is that nobody has the all-in gusto that Glenn Close brought to the stalker in “Fatal Attraction.” Mike Ealy has the crazy eyes, but not much else in “Perfect Guy.” Omar Epps is no Glenn Close, either.

Folks, you got to “sell” the sexy and charming and “normal,” and those throw caution to the wind and go NUTS in the third act to make pictures like this pay off.

Nia Long is the object of the stalking, a married mother of a coed, a lawyer starting her own practice in tony beachfront country north of San Francisco. So yeah, we get it. The hot and heavy “meet for drinks” that leads to all this…misunderstanding is lukewarm in the extreme.

Long doesn’t sell the over-40-and-hungry thing her character is supposed to experience. Her fear at the threat she starts to recognize is weak, too.

The ludicrous bits here are her character’s ability to hack the “hacker” that Epps’ David is supposed to have mastered, her “Stay away from me” threats and “Let’s leave the past where it is” pleas don’t convince us, much less a guy obsessed with her.

Epps? Blandly engaging, never-quite-alarming.

It doesn’t work. Considering its mediocre director’s resume, maybe it would’ve played better as a Christmas comedy.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, violence, sexual situations.

Cast: Nia Long, Omar Epps, Stephn Bishop, Maya Stojan

Credits: Directed by Peter Sullivan, script by Peter Sullivan and Rasheeda Garner. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

The producers of “Most Wanted” struggled over the title of their Canadian film “inspired by” the true story of a junkie and a reporter caught up in the fallout of a police drug sting that went wrong — VERY wrong.

“Target Number One” was its Canadian title, and that’s as vague as the one slapped on the U.S. release of this engrossing but messy true-crime/true cover-up thriller.

Twenty-five year old junkie Daniel (Antoine Olivier Pilon) is scrambling from gig to hustle to score. He once got some heroin from Thailand, once. Can he get some more?

“Sure,” he over-promises.

The dealer he mentions this to (Jim Gaffigan) is also a police department “snitch.” Can you sell us the name of key member of the Thailand to Canada heroin connection?

“Sure,” he exaggerates.

A task force cop (Stephen McHattie) gets passed over for promotion. Can he justify his job and the budget he’s being given for what would come to be called “Operation Goliath” to the superior who just passed him over?

“You betcha,” he lies.

And a hustling Toronto reporter (Josh Hartnett), a star at the Globe & Mail newspaper who has added an investigative TV crime gig to his plate, needs to justify his two gigs to two bosses. Can he give them a big expose about “Goliath?”

“Sure. Fly me to Thailand.”

Writer-director Daniel Roby struggles and mostly-succeeds in wrestling these disparate agendas into a coherent narrative. Telling the story via two timelines — a “present” that is post-Goliath, and flashbacks that tell you how this player came into the mix, how that piece of the puzzle fits — we see hapless French Canadian Daniel Legner do what junkies do.

He moves around a lot, calls home trying to lie his way into some cash from his parents. Gas-and-dash fills up his motorcycle for a trip West. That’s where he tracks down a junkie who owes him money. That’s where he’s meets the guy on a boat, Glen (Gaffigan).

That’s where he makes his Thai heroin promise. We’re shown the police desperation to make a big bust as well, the arms twisting arms twisting arms that builds this 25 year-old bottom feeder into a veritable one-man cartel.

Pilon is utterly convincing as a young man who should see the signs that he’s being set up, because there are many of them. He’s not making good decisions, and when the “dealers” you’re working with are the police, sneaking out of this entrapment is not an option.

Gaffigan is nobody’s idea of a “dealer” you wouldn’t make for a Narc. But the Vancouver charter fishing boat captain cover? That works. McHattie also seems miscast, but then — an older cop playing at being a drug buyer implies desperation on several levels.

Hartnett brings a convincing mania to the “job first, family second” reporter on the make. His interactions with various corrupt or covering-up police officials are fascinating even if his tantrums with TV or newspaper editors echo every journalism movie cliche under the Sun (or Globe & Mail).

Rose-Marie Perreault plays a pawn-shop under-the-counter dealer as a walking tattoo, one bad life decision after another advertised in ink and career choices. Amanda Crew is the wife and mother of a newborn upset at the risks her reporter-husband, Victor Malarak (Hartnett) is exposing himself, her and their baby to.

Cinematographer-turned-director (“Louis Cyr”) Roby makes it all coherent, as I said. But “tidy?” No. This story is a mess to wrap up, and he’s cluttered it up — justifiably, perhaps — in an effort to weave all the threads into a finished tapestry.

Giving equal weight to the four different points of view is one thing. Give us multiple timelines on top of that and you lose focus to the point where everything turns fuzzy. Focusing on the reporter and the junkie and narrowing the scope (shrinking the cop and informant roles) would have helped.

It’s still a solid “How it all went wrong” police procedural and a real eye opener who thinks cops only lie, cover-up and manufacture cases south of the Canadian border.

MPAA Rating: R for drug content, language throughout and some violence

Cast: Antoine Olivier Pilon, Josh Hartnett, Stephen McHattie, Rose-Marie Perreault, Amanda Crew and Jim Gaffigan.

Credits: Written and directed by Daniel Roby. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 2:09

The great Italian director Luchino Visconti made films across a variety of genres, some of them “neo-realistic” and contemporary, such  “Rocco and his Brother” and “Sandra.”

But like other Italians of his generation, his passion was opera — working in it, directing for it and transferring its production values into the opulent period pieces that became his late-career calling card. A lifelong communist, he set the standard for lush, ornate depictions of the Gilded Age affairs of the late 19th and early 20th century Europe.

“The Leopard,” “Death in Venice,” “Ludwig” and “L’Innocente” were so extravagant looking that they inspired documentaries, just for their costumes. When others made films from that era — “1900,” “Russian Ark,” “Nicolas and Alexandra” and even Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” — they were paying homage to his eye for detail.

“L’Innocente” (1976), his final film, shows us an awful lot of money on the screen — in silk and taffeta, lace and and leather.  The film, re-issued and restored by Film Movement Plus, touches on the amorality of the super-rich, the vapid hypocrisy they wrapped in stunning clothes, grand villas and shared evenings at the opera.

It’s low melodrama among the highborn, a “second-rate novel” that the characters are living through, as the anti-heroic aristocrat Tullio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini) muses.

And as it wanders through salons and recitals, chauvinism and infidelity, it pierces the viewer with its one major point. There’s little “noble” about the “nobility.”

The movie? It’s stately and dated. The following decades would see the producer/director/screenwriter team of Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala invigorate overwrought, over-costumed melodramatic period pieces with films such as “Howard’s End.” By comparison. “L’Innocente,” based on a Gabriele D’Annunzio, is something of a stiff.

The plot is much simpler than the luxurious trappings. A rich womanizer (Giannini, of “Seven Beauties,” the original “Swept Away” and a couple of recent James Bond films) carries on an affair with the Contessa Raffo (Jennifer “O’Neill of “Summer of ’42”).

His wife, Guiliana (Laura Antonelli) suffers this in quiet shame, accepting his “explanation” in this most sexist of countries in a most sexist era.

“Love is only while it lasts,” he muses (in Italian, with English subtitles). After a while, marriage devolves into “respect, common interests…You’ve been my wife, my sister, but never my mistress.”

We meet his mistress as she is yanking him about like a lapdog on a leash.

“I don’t share a man with another woman, even if she’s his wife!”

The Contessa shamelessly flirts with an older, wealthier man, right in front of Tullio at the piano recital where Rome’s elite have gathered to be seen, and pretty much ignore the Mozart and Liszt virtuoso.

But Tullio’s fury at Count Egano (Massimo Girotti) for cutting in on his paramour is deflated when his wife locks eyes at the brooding novelist d’Arborio (Marc Porel).

All of a sudden, his wife’s attention and bed is what he craves. Her confession that she’s gotten even isn’t backed up with evidence. We don’t see her affair. Is she playing him?

But then the rabbit dies, and the sordid melodrama has higher stakes.

“L’Innocente” just floats along, with a sort of high-toned soap opera drift from bed chambers to salon to fencing academy, where Tullio and his Army officer brother (Didier Haudepin) vent their frustrations with foils.

The lack of pace tends to highlight the peacocking nature of the class that dresses for dinner, dresses for recitals, dresses for a carriage ride and undresses for arid delights of the boudoir.

Giannini simmers and sulks in high style.

O’Neill apparently wasn’t the first choice for the Contessa, and while she can strike a pose with the best of them, her vamping leaves a lot to be desired. Her voice is dubbed by an Italian actress.

Antonelli’s lack of status on the set is reflected by the film’s selection of nude scenes. Those are limited to her and a supporting actor in the fencing gym.

Visconti’s points about the emptiness and tawdry nature of the lives of Europe’s elite feel contemporary to anyone following decades of decadence among Europe’s surviving royals (“Prince” Andrew, are you blushing?).

But “L’Innocente,” despite some beautifully grim moments in the third act, never lets us forget it comes from an era when image was all among directors celebrated as artists or that the Italian master behind the camera would have been happier directing another opera.

MPAA Rating: R, sex, nudity, violence

Cast: Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli and Jennifer O’Neill

Credits: Directed by Luchino Visconti, script by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, based on a novella by Gabriele D’Annunzio. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 2:09

This looks imaginative and quite good. Will it actually open in a theater?
“This Sumner?”

I’m from Florida, and even we have a hard time saying his name right.

Just remember “Rhymes with runt.”

You could do a LOT worse when casting your horror movie than parking Corbin Bernsen and Judd Hirsch as village elders caught up in battle between good and “the spiral stone” evil.

And let’s not forget the Once and Future “Tank Girl,” Lori Petty.

“She’s looked better.”

“That’s not all on me,” screenwriter Eric Wolf says, in a line he gave Eric Wolf/actor. “She let herself go.”

“A Deadly Legend” is a laugh-out-loud Z-movie about haunted land being profaned by developers somewhere in the Northeast, and not in Florida, where such cursed happenings are common.

And Wolf, a bit-player (“Shopper #2 in “Daddy’s Home 2”) turned producer and screenwriter, is a big reason why. As madman Mike, the backhoe/bulldozer operator hired to clear a “mound” in a controversial redevelopment on the outskirts of Small Town, Adirondacks, he’s got the eye-bugging drollery thing down pat.

I mean, I laugh when Judd Hirsch, as the town character, an antiques dealer who interrupts a planning board meeting with “You will unearth what had been dead for CENTURIES,” goes all Old Testament.

Corbin Bernsen, playing a local seller of crystals and knockoffs of Gandalf’s wizard’s staff, goes off on “HALF off” sales to anybody gullible enough to drop by.

And Petty? She’s doing the same antic “Tank Girl” shtick she did back in the last millennium, flailing her arms around, improvising nonsense, looking 25 years older.

“All it takes to make me HAPPY” she bellows at beau Mike (Wolf) on the backhoe, “is beer.” And no, she’s not find of the low-cal kind.

But Wolf goes OFF, and is a hoot to watch as a guy who turns possessed, digging up and bleeding on “the stones,” which open “the gate,” and for which he should feel honored and thus work off-the-clock.

“NO BREAKS!”

The film’s a daffy, no-budget riff on the “ancient spirits disturbed” and “every fifty year curse” thing. Digging up an Indian mound awakens Luci, the ghoul (Tatiana Szpur), who caused a wreck that killed the developer’s (Kristen Anne Ferraro) husband, years before.

Now, Developer Joan is making a mess out of the place where “the stones” preside, a “gate” where “the chain witch” rules — once the chain has chosen Eva (Jean Tree) for her bitchin’ bikini bod out on Lake Ancient Curse.

This is the sort of bad horror that is best experienced with a crowd of fellow aficionados, maybe over the favorite beverage of Wicked Wanda (Petty). Maybe social distance with a few friends?

There’s  a single effect, a pale blue light taking over the eyes.

The scenario is filled with laughs intentional and unintentional laughs. Joan and her daughter — Andee Buchari — need to have the “it gets better” talk with her fey son (John Pope). I mean, he’s willing to take on “the chain witch,” even if he’s about as butch as Billy Eichner.

The director has given herself the moniker “Pamela Moriarty.” But as my mother noted as the credits rolled, maybe the nom de réalisatrice (director) suggests sinister skills not yet acquired.

“This must have been her first go at it.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Kristen Anne Ferraro, Eric Wolf, Dwayne A. Thomas, Jean Tree, Corbin Bernson, Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Credits: Directed by Pamela Moriarty, script by Eric Wolf, and no, I don’t believe those are their real names either.   A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:36

The resolution to the mystery of “The Rental” tends to spoil the suspenseful thriller that comes before it. It’s generic, as so many horror movies are. What we’re told and shown that’s “really going on?” It’s been done before and done better.

The finale? Seriously unsatisfying.

But rather than give away the game straight-off and earn a “spoiler alert” rep, let’s just say “mumblecore” master Joe Swanberg (“Drinking Buddies,” “Nights and Weekends,” “Happy Christmas”) should at least blush when you confront him over his “story by” credit. A guy named Victor Zarcoff got there first.

The directing debut of Dave Franco, the “Franco brother we’re still allowed to talk about,” is moody and paranoid horror of a non-supernatural variety. The terrors here are “being found out,” being watched and being treated badly by a racist you’ve just met.

The setting is yuppie lush — a cliffside/seaside showplace that two couples decide to rent for a weekend getaway.

The threats there are existential, familial and pharmaceutical. Arabic-looking Mina (Sheila Vand of TV’s “Snowpiercer”) tried to rent it, but it was her tech start-up partner Charlie (Dan Stevens of TV’s “Downton Abbey” and “Legion”) whose credit card got processed.

He’s with Michelle (Alison Brie “GLOW”). She’s taken up with Charlie’s aimless, police-record brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White of TV’s “Shameless”).

Charlie gives up a little too much praise when talking about Mina to Michelle. “She’s the whole package,” he says. Josh “hit the f—–g jackpot” with her.

Duly noted. And once they arrive at the house, a few more personality quirks rear their heads. Mina isn’t shy about confrontation. A rude question of the “racist” guy who rented them the place (Toby Huss) isn’t softened by “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Taylor (Huss) gives as rude as he gets, and his sarcastic “didn’t mean anything by it” is the perfect punchline.

Michelle is there to recreate and hike. Mina and Josh just want to hide their dog from Taylor (“No pets allowed.”), get loose and stay loose.

“So…shall we do some drugs?”

There’s a clockwork compactness to the plot that you can’t help but notice and appreciate. Michelle wants to be fresh the next day’s hike, so she abstains with a promise to imbibe “tomorrow night.” All the bad decisions thhis first evening are made by the other three.

And that sets up the next night, as Brie gets to play semi-insensate and clueless as the previous night’s transgressions and mistakes come home to roost for the now-sober Josh, Charlie and Mina.

“Hey you guys, where’s the Molly?”

She’s wasted, and if drugs contributed to everything that went wrong before, drugs will trigger a lot of day-late/dollar short responses when the rising paranoia turns out to be justified on “the last night of our weekend.”

That’s not a new twist in horror, that “See where drugs’ll get you?” messaging. But damn, seeing “The Beach House” and “The Rental” use very similar settings and this Big Bullet Point in their plotting, back to back, is jarring.

Just say no, already.

The younger Franco doesn’t reinvent the genre or advance it in any way. But horror, as always, proves a nice proof-of-directing-chops test case, and he passes with flying colors. The performances are pitch-perfect, the picture opens with dread and the suspense builds nicely.

Sure, the foreshadowing is too-obvious (dogs make it into screenplays for a reason), the actual menace trite and the ending nothing novel. But “The Rental” is promising enough to put down a deposit on “the other Franco” and his directing future.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexuality

Cast: Dan Stevens, Allison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White and Toby Huss

Credits: Directed by Dave Franco, script by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg. An IFC release.

Running time: 1:28