Movie Nation

Dame Helen Mirren sits at a desk and begins reading aloud from a book — a diary. The desk is in the room in “The Annex” in Amsterdam, the very room where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis and the teenaged Anne wrote one of the most important books of the 20th century, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Later in the documentary “#AnneFrank: Parallel Stories,” the Oscar-winning Mirren puts the book in its cultural context. Generations of teenagers who have read it in countries where it is on the curriculum, as Mirren narrates, are “forced to grow up.” Reading of Anne’s privation and teen rebellion, coming of age in history’s most horrific era and yet maintaining optimism, a lot of teenagers gain a new perspective on humanity, cruelty and the big wide world they’re about to enter as adults.

That’s the hook with this latest take on “The Diary.” The # gives it away. The film follows a young, Uggs-wearing/nose-ringed European girl, #KaterinaKat (Martina Gatti). She visits Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne died, and other memorials, museums and historic sites. Through social media posts directed at #AnneFrank the way Anne composed her diary to the imaginary friend “Kitty,” #KaterinaKat brings up the questions a modern teen has of this girl who bore witness, but more importantly, has felt so contemporary and connected to generations of young people who read her book.

“Anne, who were you? What were you dreaming of? Where are you taking me?”

This is a film that tries to recreate Anne’s experience of The Holocaust or Shoah through the voices of contemporaries, very old women who were very young when they, like Anne, were arrested, deported and confined to German concentration camps. They’re the last of The Survivors, and their experiences mirror her own enough that they offer more insight into what she lived through in hiding, and what she and her sister Margot went through in those last, imprisoned months of their lives.

“I want the diary to be my friend,” Anne began. So she called it “Kitty,” with entries about her routine, her dreams, her fears, even her budding sexuality all beginning with “Dear Kitty.”

Going back to the book, she reminds us that anybody in Europe with access to a forbidden radio (as the Franks and their fellow Annex tenants did) knew what was coming. “The English radio says they (Jews, Roma and others being “deported”) are being gassed!”

Historians and curators of various Holocaust memorials provide the historical background as “#AnneFrank” visits a rail car museum exhibit, or the Czech Pinkas Synagogue, where the names of all the Czech Jews murdered in the Shoah are written on the walls.

The young person “experiencing” this world gimmick is expanded later, as other teens talk about Anne along with the actress playing #KaterinaKat. But the gimmick isn’t really what this is about. As the last of the survivors die off, one more film gets their voices, their memories of “seeing Anne” as she was pointed out by somebody else in the camp who knew her, down on film.

Descendants, including an accomplished violinist, talk about how they view their great grandmothers, knowing what they know about the ordeal they survived. One has gotten a forearm tattoo with his great granny’s German ID number. And feisty survivor Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard speaks of her generations of descendants as “my revenge” on her Nazi persecutors.

The most striking “new” location covered here is the Terezin (Theresienstadt) camp where one survivor managed to live through the horrors by being a shepherd — and now collects sheep dolls from admirers all over the world.

And the most interesting new fact (Well, new to me.) is the revelation of why Anne’s writing had such a poetic touch, something Holocaust deniers have used to insist her father wrote the book to profit from her death. No, she rewrote it herself, with an eye toward publication. The Dutch government in exile was telling residents of Occupied Holland (by radio) that their memoirs and witness stories would be published after the war. The writer in Anne wanted to be included in that.

The “young people” angle or gimmick if you will doesn’t make or break “#AnneFrank.” So don’t get hung up on the cute teen musing, via social media posts, about “what it all means.” Generations of kids have figured it out, and the cell-phone addicted won’t be any different.

Filmmakers Sabina Fedeli and Anna Migotto have created a “pop” cinematic take on Anne Frank, sober and serious and haunting at times. But it’s also topical and an earnest attempt to keep this story relevant for another generation.

It’s a hard story to screw up, and appreciating its simple authority, how quickly this film breezes by and how moving it is in the end, they didn’t.

MPAA Rating: TV-14, graphic imagery of genocide

Cast:Helen Mirren, Arianna Szorenyi , Fanny Hochbaum, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Andra Bucci, Helga Weiss and Martina Gatti.

Credits: Directed by Sabina Fedeli and Anna Migotto. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32

This August release looks simply amazing. Ambitious, too.

A mystery about who she really is and whose life she is really living emerges in this July 10 release.

About “Desperados,” the played-out sex farce Netflix wants to foist on the unknowing — don’t find yourself annoyed and muttering, as I am.

“Damn. I wish I had that 100 minutes back.”

You shouldn’t watch it just because SOMEbody thought it’d be cute to stage a sort of “New Girl” supporting players reunion (Nasim Pedrad, Lamorne Morris) as a glossy, foul-mouthed rom-com. The the universe was calling for that.

Just because Netflix figured the TV director who goes by “LP” (Lotsa Pretension?) was ready to make a feature film, after shooting episodes of the “Mr. Mom” TV series nobody watched and “Tacoma F.D.,” which, ‘Is that really a thing?”

Just because the screenwriter hasn’t had much luck since, oh, “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment” 15 years ago and the abortive feature “The Starlet,” and Netflix has this “Make Work for Mediocrities” program in place and uh, going strong.

But, you know, dildo falling out the purse, 30something woman mistaken for a pedophile attraction to a tweenage boy jokes never get old, right?

Pedrad stars as the most hapless of a trio of pals — high-strung and high-maintenance, over-sharing, sexually, in a job interview at a Catholic School (she wants to be a guidance counselor), lovelorn and DONE “being myself.” Wesley is ready to accept that “personality is an acquired taste.”

She’ll try that out on Jared (Robbie Amell), her knight in shining armor after a disastrous blind date gone bust, ending with a concussion.

It’s not like Brooke (Anna Camp), separated from her husband, single-mothering, has any reason to look down on Wesley’s “NOT being myself” strategy. And Kaylie (Sarah Burns) is so wrapped up in “my pregnancy journey” (She and hubby cannot conceive.) that she’s not judging Wesley, either.

Wesley’s so good at being “the perfect girl,” as in not-at-all-herself, that she and Jared connect. Until he goes five days without calling, and the three BFFs get drunk and drunk text a tirade to him that burns that bridge to the ground.

Only he’s been in a car wreck in Mexico, in a coma for a few days. No, he hasn’t been able to read his messages.

There’s nothing for it but to fly to Cabo San Lucas, break into Jared’s hotel room and erase that message before he can see it, in the manner of “Seinfeld” and several other comedies that have covered that ground first.

The running gag — Wesley’s stumbles into this kid (Toby Grey) who thinks she’s INTO him, with his mother (Jessica Chaffin) lighting her up as she cusses her out — is kind of funny, and the only place this wilted daisy of a farce feels edgy.

Whatever screenwriter Ellen Rapoport’s strong suit, vulgar gags aren’t it. Wesley is humped by a dolphin on a “swim with the dolphins” encounter, there’s an unfunny “naked and locked out of my (Jared’s) room” gambit, a bar pick-up scene where Brooke and a guy totally out of his league see how nasty they can get with the masturbation insults, all point to one lesson.

Shock value has no value if it’s not shockingly funny.

Meanwhile, Sean (Morris), who takes his “automatic out” (escape clause) from his one blind date with Wesley, keeps popping up and charmingly rolling with Wesley’s increasingly desperate, generally unfunny antics trying to get to Jared’s email before he gets released from the hospital.

There’s a little chemistry between Pedrad and Morris, not nearly enough to compensate for every tired obstacle (Mexican jail, anyone?) the script throws at Wesley and every weak witticism Rapoport gives her to say.

“I swear to GOD when I get OUT of here (Mexican jail) I’m going to TAKE this to social media!”

The film so focuses on these two that the other “Desperados” are shortchanged. As both Brooke and Kayleigh are destined to encounter Heather Graham, playing a guru running “The Heart Sanctuary,” a sort of ashram run by a “Goop wannabee,” that’s probably for the best.

Graham’s presence in a comedy often a dead giveaway that your sex farce isn’t going to be sexy or farcical.

Exercise your “automatic out,” avoid the desperation of all involved.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sex, pedophilia jokes, near nudity, lots and lots of profanity

Cast: Nasim Pedrad, Lamorne Morris, Anna Camp, Sarah Burns, Robbie Amell, and Heather Graham.

Credits: Directed by LP, script by Ellen Rapoport.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

“The Runners” is a low-budget rural Texas riff on child sex trafficking, with a rural Texas take on “how we deal with’em, down in Texas.”

It’s a straight-up C-movie that reaches its climax, and then stumbles towards a far bigger one because, well, we’ve got to get more guns and a Mexican drug cartel involved.

It’s bad. And as that climactic shootout arrives, with a villain who brings a bolt-action rifle to a gunfight to take on a hero’s shotgun, you chuckle and think, “This can’t get worse.” And then it does.

Older brother Ryan (writer and co-director Micah Lyons) has been raising sister Zoe ever since their parents died. But now that she’s a teen (Netty Leech), rebellion has set in.

She’s been cutting classes, dating a popular jock on the Hallsville High football team, talking back to her “guardian.”

That’s what puts her at the after-game party. That’s where she figures out the jock isn’t faithful, which leaves her there alone. And that’s when she’s grabbed.

Ryan flips-out when she doesn’t make it home, and frantic calls to the cowboy hat sheriff’s department doesn’t even get their boots off their desks. A tip here, an hunch there and he stumbles into a mass kidnapping. The rescue fails, but the otherwise ruthless and murderous kidnapper (co-director Joey Loomis) lets him live.

In bad thrillers, they always let the hero live. They don’t always leave a Polaroid of the gagged victim, and a ROAD MAP of where they’re a-going. But that’s the difference between a B-movie and a C, D or Z one.

Ryan rounds up his bearded doofus pal Kooter (Jason Peter Kennedy) and sets off after an RV loaded with bound teens, held by a Ms. Nasty Braids, Cash Money (Rhoda Morman), a skinhead to provide the muscle and mastermind Marty (Loomis).

The interlocking pieces of how a no-budget film is planned, financed and cast are laid bare in movies like “The Runners.”

Lyons is producing, writing and acting in movies in and around his tiny hometown, Hallsville. He knows the lay of the East Texas land.

He’s making thrillers on hot-button topics. There’s a “COVID-19: Invasion” movie in production.

And he landed an actual movie star for a bit part. That helps get the movie financed. Tom Sizemore plays the preacher a couple of characters consult, the only guy who can get lazy, dimwitted but armed-to-the-teeth law enforcement off its collective butts.

The fights aren’t awful, although the first big shootout is laughably under-armed, by Texas standards and by career-criminals-in-the-movies standards. They saved all their cash for an over-ordnanced finale, which is a Sig-Sauer slaugherhouse of assault rifles.

But the script ranges from bad to worse, with generic character melt-downs and amateurish plot lapses. Why kill a “problem” when you can leave him to keep chasing you, and later capture and then torture him, with a little trash-talk tossed in?

Here’s a tip to film financiers. If the script you’re being pitched has the tritest thriller line of them all in it — “We’re a lot alike, you and I” — drop it and run. Run away like “The Runners.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, sexual assault, profanity

Cast: Micah Lyons, Netty Leech, Joey Loomis, Rhonda Morman, Jason Peter Kennedy, and Tom Sizemore

Credits: Directed by Joey Loomis and Micah Lyons, script by Micah Lyons. An Uncork’d Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:38

Robots and Theo James and Stacey Martin and Rhona Mitra, with Toby Jones as the heavy.

July 10 it streams.

The singer Duffy experienced something akin to the perverse kidnap/rape fantasy depicted in this Italian Netflix “romantic thriller.”

So she’s naturally a little peeved Netflix would finance an Italian thriller in the “50 Shades” veinan Italian thriller in the “50 Shades” vein that turns kidnapping and rape into something potentially romantic, and then put that on American Netflix, where we take #MeToo issues more seriously.

From The Hollywood Reporter

Duffy is reportedly criticizing Netflix for its “irresponsible” decision to stream the controversial film ‘365 Days’ https://t.co/PNn1ngGcMH https://twitter.com/THR/status/1278824134911365126?s=20

Plenty of Brits have mined this video material to settle arguments about the happy not-quite-accident that brought together the ensemble that became “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

But now Americans can renew that debate as Tubi, one of the free TV channels you can stream through Roku and other means, has the prehistory of Python up for some fun “compare and contrast” bingeing.

The sketch shows that most of the members of the “Flying Circus” appeared on, in competition, in the last two years before they wear teamed up, are paired up on Tubi, which you an watch for free on any Smart TV, Roku equipped set or digital device with online access.

There are traces, rough versions of personas, voices, gags and sketches recycled and polished and made world famous on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” in the 1967-69 series “Do Not Adjust Your Set” and “At Last the 1948 Show.”

“Set” starred and was partly written by future Pythons Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin.

“1948” was built on similar double duties performed by John Cleese, Graham Chapman and break-out (non-Python) funnyman Marty Feldman.

The absurdist humor was there, the obsession with vicars, chartered accountants, cross-dressing, Aussies, “knickers” as a punchline, but spread out over two shows of uneven quality where the stand-outs in each cast were obviously the fellows who’d go on to team up and one-up one another on a series that became a global comedy brand and a calling card for British humor for generations.

Here’s a “1948” sketch you’ll recognize, in slightly more rustic (Yorkshire) form from its later Python version.

“Set” has the musical stylings of Eric Idle and Michael Palin playing annoying shopkeepers who never give the customer what he wants, and plenty of Jones pratfalls.

A key element of the “Adjust Your Set” outings was the participation (once in blackface) of the comical Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

“1948” had Cleese, far and away the most comfortable and hilarious performer, paired with his longtime writing partner Chapman, who finds laughs in sketches that probably wouldn’t have passed “Python” muster.

Most of these programs were thought lost, as they were recorded on videotape and Thames TV “wiped” the masters. But damned if dogged researchers haven’t turned up plenty of them to show how the Pythons journeyed from college “Cambridge Footlights” phenoms into confident TV comedy creators and performers.

Cleese, sitting at a moderator’s desk hosting absurd riffs on schoolkid quiz competitions, newscasts, etc., Chapman’s constantly-ruffed feathers at various affronts to his bowler-hatted, bobby-suited dignity, make “At Last the 1948 Show” the more daft and enduring, in terms of its ability to generate laughs.

But Idle and Jones performing Scottish folk songs in kilts is a bit that could have been recycled to greater glory a few years later.

If you’ve memorized their legendary bits, know “The Lumberjack Song” by heart, have read any of their autobiographies, these competing programs are worth checking out to see them as the budding talents before Minnesotan Terry Gilliam became the glue (I jest. A little.) that turned the two “teams” into one.

Many a thriller has hung its hat on a “big reveal” that was only suitable for hanging itself out to dry.

So it is with “Ingenium,” a tense-if-not-exasperating sci-fi mystery from Germany. You pay attention. You follow the clues. You try to piece it together.

And when you do, you think, “Well, Joseph Gordon-Levitt got there first, didn’t he? And that Hayden Christensen fellow?” And no, I’m not going to explain that any further. Film fans can do the math.

Two little German girls meet in an orphanage, tiny tots who can’t remember exact details of how their parents died.

Years later, one of them says “I can’t remember anything much these days.”

“Sometimes, it’s better that way,” she’s told.

In adulthood, Felicitas (Esther Maaß) is in therapy, undergoing hypnosis to try and pull her past together. Maybe a solo trip to Thailand is just what she needs!

Composer-beau Titus (Adrian Topol) is OK with that. “Just be sure to take your pills.” Naturally, she doesn’t.

But being a pretty young Euro-tourist, she’s offered a tour by the cute local Thai woman who speaks English and German. But when “Feli” nervously returns home, there’s video Gai (Jan Yousagoon) left on her phone, a message straight out of “Ghost.”

“You in danger, girl!” Go find this photo of you and BFF Natascha back at the orphanage. It’ll help.

Dr. Jung’s (HAH!) hypnosis unravels part of the mystery, a murderous attack in a Bangkok alley that Feli has survived but suppressed. Does away with the messy memory of killing somebody.

But now she’s got to go visit the friend who, it turns out, is in a mental hospital. Natascha (Judith Hoersch) is borderline catatonic, easily “triggers” and when she’s triggered, she always escapes to the ruins of the old orphanage.

The homeless sage there (Tony De Maeyer) gives away this. But how does she escape, why is she battered and bloodied every time she shows up?

And why are Feli’s shrink and boyfriend so worried about her and her “pills?”

“Ingenium” talks and talks and never quite trips over itself as it stumbles toward delivering its major revelation. The cast is more competent than compelling (performing mostly in German, with English subtitles).

But truth be told, the tight, effects-driven action sequences in the third act are a nice payoff. It’s just that whole premise, the way it comes out and the muddled manner the story is resolved all but talk “Ingenium” right out of its selling points.

And covering ground Joe Go-Lev and Hayden Christensen have already crossed doesn’t help. “Ingenium” works better as a mystery than as a mystery solved.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Esther Maaß, Judith Hoersch, Jan Yousagoon, Adrian Topol, Tony De Maeyer and Augustin Kramann

Credits: Directed by Steffen Hacker, script by Michael Knoll.  A Level 33 release.

Running time: 1:27

Here’s a tepid little “Sex in the Chilean City” that has the odd amusing moment, thanks to a game cast that’s better than the lame script.

“Mujeres Arriba (Women on Top)” is built around sexually frustrated Teresa, “Saint Teresita” as her boyfriend calls her.

That would be the same boyfriend she’s bought sexy lingerie for to try and spice up their two year romance, the same beau Teresa (Loretto Bernal, who co-wrote the script) walks in on as he’s sexing up a younger woman.

Pobrecita Teresita!

Luckily, she has two pals to confide in.

But Maida (Natalia Valdebenito) has been married, with kids, long enough for the spark to gone out of her and Ignacio’s sex life, a spark snuffed out by exhaustion and responsibility.

“Getting ‘hot’ at this point is a job!”

And Consuelo (Alison Mandel) is finally about to marry. But Manuel doesn’t do it for her in bed, no matter how much puppy-dog whining she does to beg him to up his game.

Mierda! Where can a single 30 year-old woman turn when her friends’ best advice is “Have a one-night-stand,” (in Spanish, with English subtitles). “For us! Please!”

That would be sex therapist (Consuelo Holzapfel), whose advice is why Teresa takes up with not one but TWO hunks, one of them her new boss.

“Your boss saw your ‘HOT face?'”

The film is a shiny, silly sex farce where the “walk of shame” the morning after a hook-up becomes a dance, where scaring off Mr. Right is a form of foreplay and where every single move every single character makes is pre-ordained, predestined and damned predictable.

Starting with who Teresa walks in on in the opening scenes.

The coitus is more cute than “hot” or “funny.”

Valdebenito is the stand-out in the cast, a “Samantha” for you who follow the “Sex and the City” analogy. The funniest bits are Mandel’s spot-on puppy dog whine.

The rest? Despierta, chicas!

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sex, sex and more sex

Cast: Loretto Bernal, Natalia Valdebenito, Alison Mandel and Consuelo Holzapfel

Credits: Directed by Andre Feddersen, script by Loretto Bernal, Andres Feddersen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38