Movie Nation

Damn this is fun.

“Mucho Mucho Amor” is a documentary that takes many of us back to that first time we caught a load of Walter Mercado, Puerto Rico’s astrologer to the masses, a Liberace/Elton/Cher flamboyant showman who brought old school TV theatricality to telling the world its star-sign forecast.

No matter who you are — Hispanic, Anglo, African American or Brazilian — if you channel surfed your way past a Mercado appearance, all capes and robes and jewels and hair, you stopped. And you remembered.

“What? The? Hell?” you’d ask, or maybe your jaw would just drop, because words failed you.

I distinctly remember stumbling across a newscast, “Primer Impacto,” and watching to test my Spanish comprehension. “Time for the forecast,” I think I understood. But wait, this isn’t WEATHER? They’re giving us a little “Walter Mercado y los Estrellas? (Walter Mercado and the Stars?)”

“It’s Paddy Chayevsky’s ‘NETWORK’ prediction come true!” I thought. A journalist couldn’t help but bemoan that a whole “newscast” was being undercut by cheesy “star sign” forecasting hokum.

But isn’t any sports fan tracking “betting picks” on an NFL preview show consuming the same sort of piffle?

And Mercado — florid, theatrical gestures and magnificent ’70s red hair flaming out of the screen — was just hilarious, if also relentlessly upbeat.

“Mucho, mucho MUCHO amor!” he’d say, piling on “muchos” to his sign-off and catch-phrase. There truly was nothing on TV like him. Not even in Japan.

This “Legend of Walter Mercado” film by Cristina Constanti and Kareem Tabsch begins with a tease, a “Whatever happened to” mystery that isn’t all that mysterious.

No, he isn’t dead. No, he didn’t go into hiding in Mexico, “closing the door” as one said of Garbo, “not wanting to grow old on camera” the comic Eugenio Derbez speculates. But we know what happened, and the gossip and conspiracy theorizing is just for the forgetful.

“The Legend of Walter Mercado” tells his life story, a rural Puerto Rican kid who didn’t “do what the other boys did,” who went to college in San Juan to study dance and acting.

He’d been thought of as something of a faith-healer in his hometown after miraculously breathing “a dead bird back to life.” “Discovered” on a San Juan stage, turned into a telenovela actor, and then, as a one-off promotional gimmick — becoming a TV astrologer — the arc of a life traced here is both unique and familiar.

No, no one went as far and fast and high as he did as an astrologer. But yes, there were familiar pitfalls along the way, the stereotypical predatory manager who got him rich and then tried to take it all.

Forgotten. And then, wouldn’t you know it? Those damned Millennials rediscover him!

And who’s the most famous Puerto Rican Millennial of the moment? Actor, dancer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda is the starstruck fanboy whose meeting with Mercado, and subsequent collaboration, would lead to a big public celebration of this aged/ageless icon via a fashion show (his vast wardrobe, some capes designed by Mizrahi and Versace) and dance exhibition.

Gay activists talk about Mercado, defying Latin machismo and homophobia, as “a (caped) superhero” who “gave me hope.”

Derbez, the Mexican comic and film star, is unashamed about owing much of his fame to a swishy Mercado impersonation he did on his TV show.

And there, at the center of it all, put-together (he does have one moment, bald, sans wig) and overdressed in his deliriously over-decorated San Juan home, is Mercado himself.

His private life he always kept private, aiming all his efforts at his face — Botoxed to the max –his image (“glamorous…mesmerizing”) and his shtick.

“To serve, to give the beautiful message of love and peace” to his “disciples.”

Such is his sweetness and lack of guile that among the many friends, relatives, colleagues and fans interviewed here is Guillermo “Bill” Bakula, the manager who tricked Mercado into signing away his name, back catalog and image to him. He doesn’t own up to doing anything wrong, but he won’t say a discouraging word about his former employer, either.

The film runs out of things to say in its latter third as it gets caught up in Walter’s “appreciation” staged in Miami. That tends to bog down what can only be appreciated as a lovely, loving “victory lap” for an icon of Latin America and Puerto Rican culture.

Cast: Walter Mercado, Bill Bakula, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Eugenio Derbez

Credits: Directed by Cristina Constanti and Kareem Tabsch.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:36

Jesse Williams and Jordana Brewster also star in this thriller about comic book writers who wonder about the connection between their work and“Random Acts of Violence.”This one opens Aug. 20.

The culinary term “Nose to Tail” is a philosophy — a chef who turns her or his talents to finding a use for everything in a purchased carcass in the food served at the restaurant.

You don’t have to go to Spain any more to be served a bull’s tail, ears and snout, for instance.

In the Canadian dramedy “Nose to Tail,” Chef Daniel, taken to sweaty, intense self-absorbed extremes by Aaron Abrams, applies that philosophy to people, too. He uses them up entirely, leaving little to waste in pursuit of what his ego convinces him is his “vision.”

His unnamed Toronto fine dining establishment is underwater and almost beyond resuscitation. But he’s convinced this one day will make or break him. IF he can put off the landlord a little longer. IF he can hang onto staff. IF he can get his hands on the finest ingredients available — the freshest carrots, talk his supplier down on the price of that prime, Mangalitsa hog. IF he can avoid childcare issues pushed by his French Canadian ex-wife (Carolina Bartczak). IF he can brush off his hostess/lover Chloe (Lara Jean Chorostecki), who is trying to give him PR info he needs to know, and get an idea of what the nature of their “relationship” is.

IF he can only plan, polish, cook and serve the seven course meal of his life to a group of well-heeled investors, each course paired with wine, the entire presentation introduced by him in his minimalist, “preserve the mystery” style, entrees that “have stand-alone integrity.”

That “one meal that can save my business” trope is as old as “Big Night,” and it turns up everywhere. What makes or breaks “Nose to Tail” will be the details of the milieu, and our fascination with the egomaniac most at home in it.

Watch Daniel dismember that pricey pig, hear him eviscerate his chef de cuisine (Brandon McKnight) for wanting to move on and run his own kitchen elsewhere.

“JUDAS!” is the printable part of that tirade, and as we’ve seen Dan berate Keith for not being there all night, with the same passing-out-at-his-desk dedication Daniel is convinced he brings to the gig, we can understand why Keith is leaving. As we’ve also seen Daniel still-instructing this dishwasher that Daniel turned into a rising star cooking talent to be reckoned with, we kind of get his point, too.

And on tonight of all nights!

Daniel chews out liquor suppliers, and chews out his trusted sommelier (Salvatore Antonio) for telling him that none of them will extend him credit, any more.

Daniel goes toe-to-toe with a self-important food blogger (Lauren Collins), who seems to revel in baiting him and gives as good as she gets.

And then there’s “the hottest food truck in town,” setting up shop just across the street from his gastronomical Mecca, a poke-in-the-eye reminder that he’s not the young, the new, the hip young trend-setter he once was.

Abrams, of TV’s “Hannibal,” chews up these chewing-outs and plays up all the elements that have made the guy who he is — ego, culinary training, an inheritance-financed eatery that he is slaving over, but raging, drinking, abusing and pill-popping into oblivion.

Chorestecki, who like Abrams had a supporting role on “Hannibal,” suggests someone wise to the ways of this world and the perils of an “office romance” within it, but flinty enough to to endure it, recognizing talent and making emotional allowances for it.

Writer-director Jesse Zigelstein gets points for detail and narrowing the focus of his debut feature. He loses points by covering over-familiar ground in a story whose dramatic arc is as pre-ordained as a menu.

“Nose to Tail” winds up as a mixed-bag, with not enough kitchen detail to reward foodies, an under-developed supporting cast, most of the staff characters reduced to barking “YES chef!” the way we’ve seen them follow orders in scores of kitchen-centric tales that preceded it.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Aaron Abrams, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Salvatore Antoni,  Lauren Collins  and Brandon McKnight.

Credits: Written and directed by Jesse Zigelstein.   A 1091 release.

Running time: 1:22

A young, gay and lovelorn filmmaker tries to confirm he didn’t just die or go into a monastery after making a splash with his debut film, by releasing and publicizing his second.

We finally get Simon Amstell’s“Benjamin” in streaming release July 24.

The comic book adaptation “The Old Guard” is more interesting for its “changing of the guard” politics than anything it puts on screen.

Netflix made it, wrote a big check for a franchise built around Oscar winner Charlize Theron, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Matthiaas Schoenaerts in support. Theron and Netflix put a woman behind the camera, Gina Prince-Bythewood, who hasn’t had the sort of career opportunities a debut like “Love & Basketball” should have given her.

Rising star KiKi Layne (“If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Native Son”) was cast as the heroine-in-training.

There are gay characters, and maybe a gay-curious one. “Woke?” It’s Red Bull woke.

There’s good fight choreography and the sheen of a generally-polished action/espionage/travelogue about it.

But the movie? A great big fat meh — no men or women in tights and capes, but nothing much new in comic book movie terms.

Theron sports a world-weary resignation under her stylishly butch haircut, jet-black forelock flopped over one eye, as “Andie,” “boss” of a four person commando team.

“I’m just so tired of it,” she narrates under the opening image, of her bleeding out on the floor of some terrorist lair in Sudan. Not her first time, in other words.

That’s the gimmick here — immortality. Shoot her and Booker (Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) to pieces, and it’s to no avail. They Chumbawamba their way back into the fray.

Then, they’re betrayed. A bio-med billionaire (Harry Melling, the most “Meh” of all) is after them for reasons which you don’t have to read a comic book to guess.

Can “The Old Guard” fight its way out? Can this newly-discovered recruit, a Marine named Nile (Layne) who didn’t die after getting her throat cut in Afghanistan, save them?

I hunted through the credits to be sure to throw kudos where they’re due. No, not to the director (drab, flat storytelling and shot selection) or to Charlize’s hairdresser, but to fight choreographer Daniel Fernandez, who gets this cast and their stunt doubles into some wonderful brawls.

A “Let’s introduce ourselves” fight between Andy and Nile on an old propeller-driven cargo plane uses the space and the ladies and their fists to great effect. It’s a movie with samurai and broadsword slaughter, because these people have been doing this a VERY long time, remember.

Check out the designer battleaxe Theron’s Andy sports.

But it’s always much easier and less time consuming to dispatch villains with guns, so that’s what they do. It’s also lazier and less interesting, cinematically.

The screenplay, by one of the co-creators of the comic, hits the “Let us now praise the leading lady” lines comic-book hard. Most of them are delivered by Schoenaerts.

“That woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn.”

Yeah. She bad.

The sexuality stuff is played up to a degree that flirts with pandering. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But here is the empty space in the middle of movies like this. We know they’re immortal. There are no stakes unless — take a guess, ding ding DING — that’s right, there’s a chance they could LOSE that immortality. And, you know, die.

Granted, take away that supernatural nonsense and what you’re left with is a Netflix action movie starring Chris Hemsworth. Franchise-opener or not, this is as forgettable as that one.

There’s a little backstory, with hints of historical righteousness about it.

“Are you good guys, or bad guys?”

“Depends on the century.”

But the entire affair plays as pro-forma, pre-ordained, pre-digested and pre-dictable.

Rating: R (for sequences of graphic violence, and language)

Cast: Charlize Theron, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthias Schoenaerts, Kiki Layne, Marwan Kenzari, Harry Melling, Luca Marinelli.

Credits: Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, script by Greg Rucka, based on the comic book by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:05

Love this guy. I follow him on Twitter. VERY outspoken liberal.

I don’t watch the HBO series he’s currently in. But I recognize him. Do you? Another clue. My name and what an actor who has the same name is most famous for. David Hedison co-starred in his films in this long running franchise. Mr Voice-Over is the new David Hedison.

The new Joe Don Baker and Jack Lord, too.

Got it?

The midway point in the low-budget sci-fi thriller “Volition” is a real make-or-break moment. It’s there that this film about a clairvoyant who tries to avert the doom he sees in his future takes a turn and adds on baggage.

Midway is where director and co-writer (with his brother Ryan) Tony Dean Smith decides to graft on a second sci-fi sub-genre to the whole “sees the future” thing. Of their own volition, they give themselves a “do over” element that could easily derail their lean and gritty tale of a seer who gets mixed up with the mob.

But the performances save it. The pathos of the picture pays off. And the puzzle that the Smiths create doesn’t slow down the panicky pace enough to stop it in its tracks.

Adrian Glynn McMorran (Murmur on TV’s “Flash”) gives a sardonic and scruffy Sam Rockwellish take to our hero and narrator, James.

His life? He’s “stuck, watching the re-run,” the fate of someone who sees snippets of his futur —  if he answers this door-knock, ducks that punch or places what he knows will be the right bet.

“If this was simple to explain, I’d do it.”

So he doesn’t. Not even after he’s “rescued” a woman (Magda Apanowicz of “The Green Inferno” and “Caprica”) living in her car from a mugging.

The low-rent mobster Ray (John Cassini) whose front business is a window warehouse? He doesn’t need an explanation. He and James go way back.

“I need you to do that thing you do inside that head of yours.”

He has this diamond score he got from “The Zimbabweans” he needs James to “move” for him. And his cousin Sal (Frank Cassini) will be there to ensure Jimmy doesn’t get any big ideas.

But there are “big ideas” and betrayals. Blood will be spilled, diamonds will disappear, James will consult “Professor Fruitloops,” his “stepfather” (Bill Marchant), and the picture will almost get out of hand, because of that midpoint twist-too-far.

The South African Smith brothers graduate from Canadian TV movies with a film that dispenses with a lot of more conventional elements to zero in on the matter at hand — that awful fate that James sees in his future and how he can avoid it.

It’s a far more interesting film when it’s just focused on the clairvoyant and his machinations to get enough to pay the rent, pay for drinks and generally stagger through life. Even the “big score,” which promises to be a life-changing payout, doesn’t hold that much interest.

James is fascinating in how myopic he is, literally and figuratively. His foresight is narrow in focus, limited enough that he can’t see every ripple that will cross his path from his every action.

The script’s intellectual and moral debate about “fate” and one’s ability to alter or not alter it, is far less compelling than the simple routine of how somebody would use this special talent in unchallenging and limited ways, just to get by.

“All skill and no will,” is Ray’s put-down for the way James lives.

McMorran’s performance suggests the damage this has done to this man’s life, the burdens he carries and the self-medicating he does just to stay in “the present.” Even seeing the near future with an attractive woman is a losing proposition. Where’s the challenge to be at your best when you’ve already seen this play out?

But the Smiths make a classic supernatural thriller mistake with that midpoint twist. “Volition” turns all puzzle and “explanations,” when simpler is always better.

At least they and McMorran keep the focus on James, a character who remains magnetic even if the filmmakers are hellbent on erasing “enigmatic” from his resume.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, alcohol abuse, smoking, profanity

Cast: Adrian Glynn McMorran, Magda Apanowicz, John Cassini, Frank Cassini and Bill Marchant.

Credits: Directed by Tony Dean Smith, script by Tony Dean Smith and Ryan W. Smith. A Giant Pictures release on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, etc.

Running time: 1:32

The Danish mini-series “When the Dust Settles” invites a sweeping generalization, if you compare it to most English language limited-run dramatic TV series. Typically, your average Northern European program of this sort demands more from the viewer.

It’s not just the language barrier and the unfamiliarity of the cast to North American viewers. There’s a density to the writing, a teasing out of facts, a complexity in the plot wrinkles. “Dust,” a ten-episode tale of a Copenhagen terrorist attack, its prelude and aftermath, produces more “Well, I didn’t see THAT comings” that anything I’ve seen this year.

Creators Dorte Warnøe Høgh and Ida Maria Rydén give up their details grudgingly, from the names of the dozen or so principal characters to their interconnections, the things that bring them to that restaurant that gunmen shoot up on that fateful night.

Even the shooting itself, glimpsed in a noisy, horrific blur in the opening episode and revisited, in bits and pieces, until “the night of” five episodes in, has much concealed. Seeing it play out in agonizing real time in that fifth installment is heart breaking. Revisiting the mass murder in the episodes that follow often just as heart-breaking.

Although producers of series everywhere face the common failings of such programs — dragging things out, turning a 4-8 installment serialization into 10, no matter how much filler they have to include — and even the best series stumble into artifice and cheating (not playing fair with the “mystery,” here) “When the Dust Settles” maintains suspense almost to the very end.

It’s the most gripping series I’ve binged this year, and I’ve abandoned far more than I’ve actually deigned to review.

The characters we meet are a wide swath of Danish society.

Elisabeth (Karen-Lise Mynster) is Justice Minister/Attorney General in the conservative Danish government, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor nursing a very liberal, anti-internment camp refugees bill through parliament. She is retirement age, determined to make this bill her crowning achievement before spending her twilight years with wife Stina (Lotte Anderson).

Ginger (Katinka Lærke Petersen) is a homeless addict lost in “the system.” Yes, she’s got a “story.”

Nikolaj (Peter Christoffersen) is a meticulous, callous chef from Greenland (ethnically Inuit/Danish) whose empathy issues scream “on the spectrum.” He’s just taken over the restaurant in a kitchen coup, renamed it “Hog” and centered it around pork.

Jamal (Arian Kashef) is a rattled, impressionable and bullied young member of Denmark’s Muslim community, which may see an eatery focusing on pigs and named “Hog” as an affront.

Morten (Jacob Lohmann) is the plumber who charges into Hog in his underwear, frantic to find his self-absorbed druggy son Albert (Elias Budde Christensen) who works there.

Marie (Viola Martinsen) is a child who turns nine on the night of the attack, a little girl already afraid of being alone, a real trial for her waitress/single-mom Louise (Filippa Suenson).

Lisa (Malin Crépin) is a Swedish pop star reaching an age where she wants something more than touring, recording and a marriage of professional convenience.

Holger (Henning Jensen) is a grumpy old nursing home resident, estranged from his children. His answer to “Anything else you need (in Danish, with English subtitles)” from the staff there is his mantra.

“Get me a gun so I can blow my brains out!”

The series reveals how these characters connected or stumbled into one another in the days leading up to the shooting and revels in the issues each is wrestling with.

Every character has an arc. They begin in one place, personally, and find themselves changed — sometimes for better, often not — by the terror and trauma they experience.

As stories unfold in flashbacks and flash-forwards, we see the extremes the justice minister will go to in order to protect her “bill,” the trials of the plumber, whose school-teacher wife (Julie Agnete Vang) is more worried about chasing their no-good son away than in reining him in, the long list of enemies the emotionally-lacking chef has made, the pressures Jamal faces in a stressed, scrambling-to-get-by Palestinian family run by his tyrannical brother (Manmeet Singh) and the nightmare homelessness is, even in a socialist state where housing will be provided, so long as you’re “in the system.”

Ginger seeks companionship, maybe even affection, from Elliot (Simon Bennebjerg).

“Me? I’m an addict,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I’ll be dead in a few years. You need to get back to your real life.”

Some of the Danish “police procedural” stuff can feel a bit clumsy and theatrical. If you mutter “They can’t be that naive” here and there, you’re not alone in that reaction.

But the writing is crisp, clean and quotable. It’s all beautifully played, with even characters far down the credits given nuance, complications and agendas.

A lot of the most intriguing European series are turning up on First Look’s Topic. “When the Dust Settles” is another argument for adding that network/streamer to your video menu.

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

Cast: Karen-Lise Mynster, Jacob Lohmann, Malin Crépin, Peter Christoffersen, Katinka Lærke Petersen, Arian Kashef, Henning Jensen, Filippa Suenson, Viola Martinsen and Lotte Andersen

Credits: Created by Dorte Warnøe Høgh, Ida Maria Rydén. A Topic release.

Running time: 10 episodes @56 minutes each

Maybe it was my recent viewing/reviewing of the “‘Showgirls” Reconsidered documentary “You Don’t Nomi” that stopped me in my channel-surfing tracks when I saw the name “Joe Eszterhas” on the credits to a movie I’d missed.

Yes, “Telling Lies in America” has Kevin Bacon in it, and yes, it’s about radio in the Golden Age of disc jockeying (the early ’60s), both of which pique my interest.

But for morbid fascination, there’s nothing quite like reconsidering the blustery, BS-flinging, self-promoting Hollywood “type” that Eszterhas, who scripted “Showgirls” and “Jagged Edge” and “Basic Instinct” and “Flashdance” and “Sliver” and “Jade,” might be the best representative of.

His scripts were “high concept” gimmicky, often violent, drenched with “forbidden fruit” sexuality and lurid settings and/or characters that various directors exploited to the hilt in the vapid ’80s lingering into the ’90s. And Eszterhas made sure we knew who “wrote” them, a self promoting blowhard in the Bret Ratner/Weinstein/Bigelow/Seagal/Wahlberg or Cameron mold, a “type” that’s been obvious in Hollywood since being fictionalized in “What Makes Sammy Run?” way back in filmdom’s “Golden Age.”

A little talent, a lot of bragging and an endless blizzard of often self-mythologizing lies can take you far in showbusiness. Always has, always will.

“Telling Lies,” a semi-autobiographical tale of an immigrant lad (Brad Renfro) coming of age in Cleveland in the early 1960s, was pretty much the end of the line for “the highest paid screenwriter in America,” as Eszterhas billed himself then and even now.

The career-crippling debacle of “Showgirls,” his infamous feud with the then “the most powerful man (agent) in Hollywood,” Michael Ovitz, meant that the hustling newspaper reporter turned screenwriter could only land a no-name director and almost zero distribution for this self-indulgent “portrait.” Nobody saw it.

Eszterhas had only the ignominy of the self-produced “Burn, Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film” yet to come, putting the final nail in his Hollywood coffin while at the same time once and for all puncturing the balloon of the myth he’d invented to surround himself.

But here’s the script where he tried to “explain” himself — foreign-born striver, a bullied nobody who wants to be somebody, a teen who has a little trouble with English (something Renfro, playing the Eszterhas-ish Karchy Jonas, fails to get across) and absolutely no trouble at all lying on the fly.

This is the “real” Eszterhas? I can totally see it.

Karchy’s dream is to get into the “Students Hall of Fame” that new DJ in town Billy Magic (Bacon) pushes on his radio show, a popularity contest that a kid like Karchy was born to “fix.” As we’ve seen Billy skulk into town like a snail leaving a slime trail, we know they’re destined to be together.

That’s the way of Eszterhas scripts. Things just “are.” They’re fated. They don’t have to make any sense. A dirty DJ fired from stations all over America? Sure, fella. Take evenings and weekends in a powerhouse station in the Birthplace of Rock’n Roll.

Karchy’s dad, the woefully miscast Maximilian Schell (25 years too old to be this kid’s dad, and acting like it), used to be “a doctor” back in the Old Country (Eastern Europe). Now, father and son dream of passing the test to become American citizens.

One person standing in the way of that is the priest (Paul Dooley) of the pricey Catholic school Karchy attends. He’s wise to the kid’s endless lies. It doesn’t help that the rich jock (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) mercilessly bullies the kid. Karchy cuts classes and is on the verge of flunking out.

He’s equally sloppy at his after-school job, in the poultry department at a big market, where he pines for “slightly” older woman Diney (Calista Flockhart, on the cusp of “Ally McBeal”) and ignores the hectoring of his boss (Luke Wilson).

Karchy’s go-to bluff; at school, work or being interviewed for an “assistant” job with Billy Magic, is “Sure, LOTSA times.” Ever had sex? Ever been on a date? Ever been in a Cadillac? Ever driven a car?

“Sure. LOTSA times.”

The corrupt Karchy, newly-nicknamed “Chucky,” falls in with the corrupt and corrupting Billy and all of a sudden the world is his oyster.

Eszterhas revisits the Bill Cosby-approved “Spanish Fly” aphrodisiac of the era. The kid tries it on Diney, gets her sick and damned if she doesn’t brush that off and remain “friends.” A lot of film critics rolled their eyes at sleazy, sexist garbage like this that turned up in film after film with the Eszterhas name on the credits. A lot of female critics, actresses and others, loathed him for that very reason.

His hero stands up to the bully just once, and we’re treated to the sad spectacle of Rhys Myers and Renfro tangling in the boy’s room. Film buffs will remember that one pugilist-actor killed himself a few years later, and the other tried to kill himself a few years after that.

Bacon is at his oiliest here. He had a nice run of villains in the ’90s, and while this isn’t one of the great ones — Billy is just taking money under the table from record companies and pop star managers, signing talent to one-sided contracts to make them “a star” — Bacon makes sure we smell the excess cologne and hair product.

The seeds of the screenwriter’s destruction were planted long before this attempt at turning “sentimental.” Audiences tired of the irrational characters, over-the-top sexuality, ludicrous turns of phrase in the dialogue. These “characters” could only exist in an Eszterhas world, and that world was changing.

He would’ve been crucified on the Hollywood sign had he stuck around into the #MeToo era. “Sleazy” doesn’t quite cover his films’ reputations. “Rapey” is closer to the mark.

Still, if you know his canon and remember his headline-grabbing rep — the Madonna, Roseanne and Kanye of screenwriting — “Telling Lies in America” kind of explains it all.

Maybe the next time he grabs a headline — which he does by announcing a “comeback” in faith-based films (HAH), or wants to revisit his infamy by reviving “Showgirls” or the talking up the Ovitz feud anew — nobody will fall for it.

Same old Eszterhas. Same line of “Sure, LOTSA times” BS.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sex related situations

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Brad Renfro, Calista Flockhart, Maximilian Schell and Luke Wilson.

Credits: Directed by Guy Ferland, script by Joe Eszterhas. A Shout! Factory release.

Running time: 1:41

There’s something about the rugged, rawboned Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau that says “ex-con.” We see it, when we can get past the “Game of Thrones” persona HBO made for him. And he sees it, which is why he’s made a couple of movies playing just that sort of character.

“Shot Caller” was, if not a break-out, at least a streaming hit that cashed-in on his “GOT” fame and fan club. Not all that, but being the hot new premium TV star of the moment, it proved he can draw an audience and good actors to be in his supporting cast.

“Small Crimes,” the ex-con noir that preceded that, was a proof-of-concept picture, and something of an over-reach. It’s dark and twisted, and his character is thoroughly amoral. Coster-Waldau can pull the man-of-violence capable of superficial charm thing off.

But one gets the impression this E.L. Katz (“Cheap Thrills”) adaptation of a David Zelxterman novel is supposed to be funny, here and there. It, and Coster-Waldau, aren’t, despite his best efforts.

It’s right there in the opening scene, a convict we can see right through bluffing his way through remorse, repentance and rehabilitation in a meeting with the prison chaplain.

One last thing. Want to take confession before you go?

“Nah. I’m good.”

Just like that, Joe Denton is back out in the world, back in Bradley County (filmed in suburban Montreal), back with his wary parents (the wonder Jacki Weaver and Robert Forster), ready to reconnect with his ex-wife and two-daughters.

They’ve dropped out of sight, although a quick trip to the library lets him track them down. No, they’re not interested. Yes, there’s a restraining order.

A glimpsed headline suggests the main reason — “Slash cop goes free.” He was a police officer who cut somebody up. And that wasn’t the half of it. As former colleagues spit on him in public, as his father seems reluctant to embrace him and his own mother questions “whether you’ve changed,” as dirty detective Gary Cole (quite good) tasers him, makes threats that push him towards violence, we get the picture.

Joe Denton wasn’t just a violent, dirty cop. He was the most violent, the dirtiest. And now the district attorney (Michael Kinney) that he went after with a razor is snooping around, questioning the aged mobster (Shawn Lawrence) who used to pull Joe’s strings.

The dirty detective wants to just-served-six-years dirty cop to “DO something.” Otherwise, “You’ll be back inside so fast your bunk’ll still be warm!”

The DA’s daughter (Daniela Sandiford) lures him into an ambush. His only friend in town (co-screenwriter Macon Blair) is asking questions about an “accidental” death. And the mobster, on his death-bed, isn’t cooperating.

“You know, sometimes when I’m sleeping, I think I see what hell looks like… And it ain’t fire, and it ain’t devils. You know what it is? It’s just me.”

The trouble with Joe is, everybody knows how awful he is and sees right through him. He rehearses what he’s going to say to “make amends” to someone he’s wronged, “I am profoundly sorry,” and we know he’s not. He’s “working the (AA 12) steps,” he says. But he’s getting picked up in the local bar, doing shots at the strip joint.

The old mobster’s hospice nurse (Molly Parker) should see through him, too. We can see his manipulations — getting close to somebody who nurses a guy he needs dead, somebody with access to all sorts of drugs. But her? Sure, he looks like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, but as we’ve established, he looks like an ex-con, and acts like one, too. What’s her angle?

That’s a big shortcoming in the ironically-titled “Small Crimes.” As the filth and corruption spread far and wide, as the walls close in on Joe, we don’t don’t empathize with his plight or believe anybody could fall for his various attempts at BS.

And there just aren’t enough surprises in the plot to make up for that. Too few people have “an angle.” Too many coincidences drive the story, especially the finale.

Too many moments that should play as darkly-funny just don’t.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, drugs, nudity

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jacki Weaver, Gary Cole, Robert Forster and Molly Parker

Credits: Directed by E.L. Katz, script by Macon Blair and E.L. Katz, based on a novel by David Zeltserman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35