Movie Nation

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

Migrant lives matter in the Naga-Indian dramedy “Axone,” a tale of what a minority community goes through just to pull off a last minute wedding, and party, In New Dehli.

They’re young people who have come to the big city from “The Northeast,” Nagaland. One of their number, Minam, is marrying quickly to fulfill her dying grandmother’s last wish.

But if you’re from Nagaland and living in Dehli, there’s an awful lot of crap you’ve got to put up with. Sexist comments on the street, racist wisecracks when you dress for the big party.

“Is it Jackie Chan’s birthday?”

The insults come in English, a shared tongue, or Hindi.

Even children have absorbed this. “Can you see the entire wall with those tiny eyes?”

And the cultural gulf is at its widest when it comes to cuisine. Whatever the aromatic virtues of Indian cooking, Naga food is world famous for it’s…fragrance.

Writer director Nicholas Kharkongor sets this up in the tense opening scene. Streetwise Zorem (Tenzing Dalha) sneaks Upasana (Sayani Gupta)  and Chanbi (Lin Laishram) up an alley where a fellow countryman has what we might assume is drugs, but is actually the Naga version of “the good stuff.” He sells meats, herbs and ingredients for the one dish no Naga wedding party should be without — “Axone,” which literally translates as “really smelly.” It’s a soybean dish that stinks so bad even the Naga acknowledge it.

“We have a right to cook our food!”

“And they have a right not to SMELL our cooking!”

Much of “Axone,” a tale which unfolds in a single day, concerns the bride’s two best friends, Upasana and Chanbi, trying to clear their Indian-owned apartment building, by hook or by crook, so they can cook there.

The granny (Dolly Ahluwalia) who owns the place isn’t having it — “There will be no bloody wedding or party in my house!” So “Granny, I swear we’re not cooking anything!” won’t fool her.

The grandson (Rohan Joshi) they all nickname “Hyper” is enlisted to help with the lies, but will only start the “The septic tank is being cleaned today” rumor if they agree to set him up “with a Northeastern girl.” Seeing the array of “Northeastern girls” (the location of Nagaland), we have to say — Yeah dude, we GET it.

Through the course of this chaotic day, the absent Minam stresses about the plans, and about her civil service exam (by phone) while those in her orbit move from one apartment, rental hall or kitchen to another, trying to cook this soy stink bomb and prep for her wedding.

There’s a lot of running, cursing and bickering, much of it coming from the put-upon Granny.

“If I curse you, you won’t even find a place in HELL!”

But there’s also racism, vulgar come-ons in the street, constant rebuffs in hunting for a place to cook or throw a party. Chanbi’s boyfriend, the musician Bendang (Lanuakum Ao), seems to have it the worst.

Gupta, Laishram, Dalha and the manic Joshi stand out in the cast, with Ahluwalia doing her loudest granny act, stealing every scene she’s in.

Kharkongor keeps “Axone” on its feet, as if he’s scared that if any of the scrambling stops, the viewer at home will get a whiff of what they’re trying to cook.

He sets this in a colorful world, where even squeals of girlish glee — “Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!” — can seem alien and yet universal, where the daily drudgery of crowded-city life would daunt many a Westerner.

Running out of cooking gas, struggling to mollify neighbors from many cultures, everybody forced to “get along” and yet not-quite-managing it, quarrels breaking out everywhere in a Tower of Babel of languages, cultures (Africans, Sikhs, Naga, Indians, Chinese) brought together in a place where young people move for better jobs and better lives.

You don’t have to speak the myriad tongues (many not translated) to follow the action, fall into the heedless forward momentum, to be outraged at the discrimination, and to be utterly charmed by this winner from the Subcontinent.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity, a slap

Cast: Sayani Gupta, Lin Laishram, Tenzing Dalha, Lanuakum Ao,  Rohan Joshi and Dolly Ahluwalia

Credits: Written and directed by Nicholas Kharkongor, dialogue by Ma Gaurav.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

Malcolm McDowell is the big crime boss, Ron Perlman is the resident badass. Looks rough and tumble.

Imagine growing up in working class South Jersey, struggling with your sexuality in  a world of blue collar jobs, gun clubs, plentiful alcohol and classic rock.

Imagine realizing that “gay” wasn’t going to cut it for you, that you didn’t “want to be somebody’s ‘girlfriend,'” because you don’t feel you belong in the body you were born with.

Now imagine having a neighbor, growing up next door, your lifelong best friend, and that he is as ready to change genders and pronouns as your are.

“Jack & Yaya” is about a Jacqueline who figured he was “Jack” since his family started shortening his name, and a “Christina” who was born Christopher, and realizes that dressing up and winning drag shows as Yaya DaLight and “identifying” as a woman isn’t enough.

Jennifer Bagley’s debut documentary is an upbeat portrait of best friends propping each other up, urging acceptance on each other’s families and ensuring that even as they transition, the road to “it gets better” is a short one. She charts that lifelong connection, a support system of two that, upending expectations and stereotypes, was quickly almost as large as their extended families could make it.

Jack’s great uncle Eddie laughs and takes a break between pulls on his Bud bottle to lay it all out there for Jack, the neighbor kid, and Chris, his niece, and anybody else who’d care to listen.

Chris deserves his unconditional love and support. And “I loved him (Jack) ever since before he was NOT a him!”

“All you need is frickin’ love!”

It hasn’t been utterly painless, especially for Chris. A mother who cried “I don’t want no one to kill you,” had nervous breakdowns and died young of cancer, a father who bristled (at first) at the “tranny” Chris/Yaya became.

But we hear testimonials from family, going back generations, including two understanding grandmas. Yaya’s Catholic grandma Patsy just shrugs and notes, “I had a lot of gay people in my family.” She had little trouble accepting Yaya or Jack as they were.

“Put yourself in their place.” Sure, she worries about “where’s he gonna go when he dies?” But she can’t imagine a hell for someone “doing what comes natural.”

It’s funny hearing Jack’s mother Jo Ann go on and on about “It was right there in front of me,” all the “signs.” “But I didn’t have a CLUE.”

Yaya and Jack recall swapping presents at Christmas with the line, “Santa got the wrong house” as their excuse. Jack didn’t want dolls and purses, he wanted “a billfold, like his daddy.”

The serious side of “Jack & Yaya” details the barriers to transitioning — medical to simple name-changing (far easier in many states than it is in New Jersey).

Jack, who moved to Boston, notes running into homophobia and trans-phobia “even in a big city.” And Yaya, filmed mostly in front of her makeup mirror, laments having to “fight with your body every single day.”

And the two of them are managing all these struggles on service sector wages,  which can’t make it easier.

But the take-away from generally sunny “Jack & Yaya” is, despite Yaya’s occasional protests to the contrary, that it’s gotten “easier.” Decades of families confronting these issues have broadened acceptance, from “hiding” or simply not talking about “funny” relatives, to accepting kin for who they are, making that leap to “All you need is ‘frickin’ love.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, some profanity, alcohol.

Cast: Jack, Yaya, their families.

Credits: Directed by Jennifer Bagley. A Hewes Pictures release.

Running time: 1:23

Best friend Alice comforts her British stand-up comic pal Henrietta, “Henri,” the heroine of “Daddy Issues,” with one lie. But it’s such whopper that it the whole movie spirals down the drain with it.

“Aww, Henri,” she says, “You’re ALWAYS funny.”

No. She isn’t. Henri, played by Kimberley Datnow, isn’t ever funny on stage. The canned laughter at her appearances implies much more forgiving and drunken viewers than anyone watching “Daddy Issues.”

Henri has one almost-moment, after she’s skipped her Dad’s funeral, after she’s moved to LA to “take over” his design firm there. She treats her first board meeting as a stand-up gig. Holding a pencil like a mike, she works the room. And she hasn’t got one bloody funny thing to say there, either.

This woebegone comedy is about not living up to expectations, refusing to grow up, struggling in LA and “I’m here because I can’t afford therapy right now” stand-up.

Moving back to LA, Henri catches up with her Loyola Marymount classmates, people who have started lives, grown up. Well, most of them.

Nolan (Tanner Rittenhouse) is living in her Dad’s house, works in her Dad’s firm and hasn’t ever gotten around to restoring the deck — which was their deal.

Alice (Alice Carroll Johnson) may work in a well-known talent agency. But what her pals don’t know is that she’s on the bottom rung of the ladder, makes no money and is drowning in student loans. She sneaks around, driving for a rideshare company. And in a bizarre twist, seeing as she’s gay, she surfs a Sugar Daddy app, hunting for someone to pay her bills for “companionship.”

Yeah. Right.

We’re meant to giggle as Henri throws herself at an old flame who turns out to be a self-absorbed anal-retentive jerk. Giving him the name “Hunter” (Francis Lloyd Corby) is a tad “on the nose.”

There are other dates with other guys, a potentially amusing ride-share with a bachelorette party that turns into a “let’s get even with Hunter” vendetta. Meanwhile, she’s bonding with Nolan over the cutest ping pong match ever.

Yes, that’s me throwing a feeble comedy with a duller-than-dull script, colorless characters and a posh-accented “star” who seems like a born bit player, nothing more.

The titular “bit” almost works, and as that’s in the film’s first five minutes, it fills one with false hope. Henri jokes that she’s developing an app called “Daddy Issues. It’s a destructive way to search for love you never got as a child.”

Everything that follows? It’s worse.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, some profanity

Cast: Kimberley Datnow , Alice Carroll Johnson, Tanner Rittenhouse, Francis Lloyd Corby

Credits: Directed by Laura Holliday, script by John Cox and Laura Holliday, A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:20

Little known cast, daffy fairytale premise, a guy so pretty people drop dead at the sight of him.

Did they try to get Timothee Chalamet?

Dan Myrick, co-director of “The Blair Witch Project” is behind this docu/mocku thriller, headed to a drive in bed you. And me.