Movie Nation

A young opthamologist-in-training is coveted by a suicidal demolition contractor while both are treated by an on-the-spectrum therapist whom the young woman pretends to lust after in “Love is Blind,” a romantic comedy that could not be more “twee” if it tried.

But it does. Try.

The young woman’s condition is a form of perception blindness. She cannot “see” her mother, and hasn’t for years. She argues about this with her Parkinson’s patient father.

“You and your mother are so much alike,” Dad (Matthew Broderick) says.

“Were, Dad,” Bess (Shannon Tarbet) retorts. “WERE.”

Throw in an albino peacock, some unconventional therapy that entails the demo man (Aiden Turner) shadowing Bess, who also cannot see him, and a little “dancing with myself” montage, some charming Disneyesque Hudson, New York settings and there it is — “twee” defined.

It doesn’t amount to much, and don’t bother looking up the medical condition (does not appear to exist), albino peacocks (they do) or any code of ethics that would let a determined, libidinous redhead (Tarbet) crawl all over a “therapist” (Benjamin Walker) who can’t even make contact.

But for a nothing of a movie, the vibe is pleasant and it’s an easy enough sit-through.

We don’t really get what’s made Russell (the Irish Turner, “Kili” in “The Hobbit” movies) suicidal. We hear him narrate/lament that life is “playing out like one of those sad country songs,” and we see him close his eyes to run stoplights.

Bess may not be our narrator, but at least her inability to see or hear her mother (Chloe Sevigny) is visited in a few flashbacks. Neither actress is given much to play, but the British Tarbet has a smorgasbord of issues to toy with, if nothing “real” to sink her teeth into. She comes off dull and uninteresting but pretty.

Walker’s quirky psychotherapist is the most interesting role, even if this “on the spectrum” thing in movie characters is over-used (this was filmed in 2015, came out in 2019). He meets Russell because the pounding the demo man is doing on the walls and floors next door, kicking up clouds of dust, is sending him over the edge.

“I’m on the spectrum, and I was raised Pennsylvania Dutch.”

With movies like this, I find myself looking at what drew some decent players in the first place. Brits love to sling American accents (flawless, here). Sevigny must have seen the many ingredients and thought there was more here.

Broderick, playing a doting and in his dotage Dad, gets to add a little infirm fatalism to his repertoire.

“Everything has an end,” he says of life, especially his. “Only the sausage has two.”

Ba-dum BUM.

Two directors can’t do much with the veteran TV writer’s script save for giving everything a nice sheen, putting their starlet in a series of short skirts and a vintage Dodge Dart and her co-star in Springsteen shirts, working man stubble and dust, and hoping we root for some sparks to fly.

They don’t. Not really. But at least they gave their take on “twee” their best shot.

MPAA Rating: unrated, suicide, profanity

Cast: Shannon Tarbet, Aiden Turner, Benjamin Walker, Chloe Sevigny and Matthew Broderick.

Credits: Directed by Andy Delaney, Monty Whitebloom, script by Jennifer Schurr.  An Uncork’d release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:30

Dreya Weber of “The Gymnast” moves on to aerial work in this romantic drama, coming to video in a couple of weeks.

A few striking images stand out in “Union Bridge,” the debut mystery thriller of writer-director Brian Levin. And he ensures we have lots of time to consider them.

We soak up atmosphere on endless, pointless walks along the railroad tracks, down “to the river.” We squint and furrow our brows at the lantern-lit flashbacks, trying to make sense out of the drawling thugs in Union Army uniforms beating and dealing with a young man for…being a Rebel? Being a Yankee? Knowing what they’re up to?

“What’s in the trunk will help us win the war!”

We struggle to make sense of how this past event formed the tortured present, where the town’s leading family, the Shipes, rule the roost, and the Taylors, probably then and certainly now, live off their scraps.

“You know our family has a long history…YOUR family should have been written off long ago!”

And it’s all to no avail. This may be the slowest 91 minute movie in screen history, a film wrought with pictorial care, too little dialogue to allow a viewer to make heads or tails out of it, of long stretches of silent unemotive acting and the odd burst of cursing fury that comes, out of nowhere, out of the Ship matriarch (Elisabeth Noone).

Her husband’s dead, with some unnamed shame attached to his name. The son (Scott Friend) has returned to town after misspent years (it is alleged) in The City.

Will’s big concern, asked of every local he happens upon?

“How’re things at the factory,” the Shipe works towering over the town at the top of a hill. Will gets reports, of the trouble his mentally-unbalanced old friend (Alex Breaux) fighting with colleagues and brooding as he walks the woods and fields near Union Bridge (a real Maryland town) with a pick or a shovel, digging holes, looking for “answers.”

Funny thing about Will. He asks about “the factory” a lot. He never goes to the factory.

He’s more interested in looking up an old flame, Mary Burke (Emma Duncan), who is pretty, pained, mysterious and like everyone and everything else in this one-“factory” town — dull.

Scene after scene does nothing to advance the “story,” an almost endless succession of screen-time-eating “moments that just lie there, excuses for setting up the lights and camera in a different location and nothing more.

It’s the digging that has everybody in a lather, or what passes for a lather in this corpse of movie. “Secrets” are buried, something that could upend the natural order of things. Maybe the Shipes, who have produced titans in the state, a governor even, are about to be found out. Maybe the Taylors will finally have their moment in the sun.

As I waited and waited, for answers, explanations, solutions or just for this gopher tortoise of a movie to um, MOVE, all I could think about is what must have been a frustrating festival life this self-distributed picture must have had.

Having sat on juries and been on selection committees, I’ve learned the dirty little secret to that sausage factory’s process. NOBODY has this much time to wait for a film to start, or get to a point that it never does.

Throwing “They say she practices witchcraft” into it (the “digging” is by divine, or infernal inspiration) in the late stages is just desperation, a cheat, a plot twist for a movie with little or no plot.

MPAA Rating:unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Scott Friend, Emma Duncan, Alex Breaux, Elisabeth Noone

Credits: Written and directed by Brian Levin. A Breaking Glass release.

Running time: 1:31

Bit of a different look for both James and McHale, a horror revenge thriller.

There’s not a lot of wit or menace in this first trailer to “Becky,” which stars Lulu Wilson as the 13 year old who is more than the bad guys (James, in a James Harden beard) are counting on. Quiver has it, so the “might work, might not” tilts toward the latter.

David Spade tries to be the funny (ish) straight man to a funnier co-star one more time in “The Wrong Missy,” a Lauren Lapkus star vehicle so vulgar it’d make Mindy Kaling blanche.

It’s as polished as an oil spill, as subtle as the Khia hit (“My Neck, My Back”) that underscores its “threesome,” the raunchiest, crudest movie ever to wear the Happy Madison (Adam Sandler’s production co.) label.

But funny? Well, no. Not even. A throw-away line here, a public display of lap-dancing there, a grimly-underplayed “mile high club” (“Jergens jerk.”) gag, it’s aggressively coarse and depressingly mirth-free.

Not that Lapkus doesn’t leave it all on the field, in the tub, on the beach or in the sack. She hurls herself at this as if it’s got to put her kids through whatever college Felicity Huffman’s couldn’t get into.

He’s the mopey sales team leader at Credit of America, the over-50 loser who never got over losing his fiance. Tim’s sad enough to be set up on a date by his grandma with the loud, foul-mouthed and manic Melissa, “Missy” (Lapkus, of “Orange is the New Black” and end-of-run “Big Bang Theory”).

She gives him the “testicles test,” sending him up to the wrong woman on their blind date. She gushes “feels like fate” and “Mr. Perfect” and “I LOVE you” before their drink orders arrive. Not that Tim drinks.

“Totally OK. I’m a certified substance abuse counselor. I know how to HANDLE an alcoholic.”

No, he’s not, but at least we’re on to the funniest line of the movie, right here in the opening scene.

“What are you, 65?”

Kinda looks it, I have to say.

Spade semi-gamely buckles up for the ride as Tim later meets “The Right Missy” (Molly Sims), a beauty queen who isn’t totally out of his league — noooooo — fending off the intrusive, privacy-invading counseling by his HR director pal (Nick Swardson, the least funny member of Sandler’s circle of jerks).

Yes, Tim’s lonely and living the sads. He’s binge-watched and can quote lines from the soapy sexed-up melodrama, “The Affair.” No judging!

And yes, they’re all being flown to Hawaii as their company is taken over by this foul-mouthed corporate raider (Geoff Pierson). But a texted invite to “The Right Missy” goes instead to “The Wrong Missy.” Let the fun and games begin.

All these corporate bonding moments — parties, a real-life “shark tank” (prove your worthiness) excursion (Rob Schneider plays the fingerless galoot running the boat) and a “talent show” — all to impress the New Boss and keep The Barracuda (Jackie Sandler, aka Mrs. Adam Sandler) from getting that promotion Tim is counting on.

If only the needy, over-sexed “blab-a-lanche” will shut up and not ruin it for him. Keep the tub water hot, dear.

“Have some champagne, throw in some more bubbles…a toaster, maybe.”

A running gag — The Wrong Missy’s endless collection of “certifications.” “It’s OK, I’m certified in CPR.” She’s giving suicide-inducing “psychic readings,” unlicensed couples therapy and getting to know Tim’s ex (Sarah Chalke), also at the retreat.

Spade practically cringes through this thing, not a good look when you’re a high-mileage 55. And a little of Lapkus, shrieking profanities at children, lap-dancing at the luau, goes a long way.

Still, it’s Netflix. Not like you paid for a ticket and would have to sneak out and into a better movie in another theater once you peg this as “awful.” Switch over to “Never Have I Ever.” Mindy Kaling’s almost-as-coarse kids’ comedy is like “Sense and Sensibility” compared to this.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, sex, profanity, vomiting, drinking and profanity

Cast: David Space, Lauren Lapkus, Sarah Chalke, Nick Swardson, Molly Sims, Geoff Pierson and Rob Schneider

Credits: Directed by Tyler Spindel, script by and Kevin Barnett. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Here’s the thing, the only thing, that got me through “Don’t Run,” 78 minutes of bad-flirting-with-merely-mediocre horror from writer-director Ben Rood.

His leading man, Danny Irazarry, looks and sounds a lot like Hal Hartley’s deadpan muse, James Urbaniak.

It helps to think funny thoughts, or that there’s funny intent, when you’re watching a thriller where the faceless, talking villain calls himself “Chester” and likes to make his threats in allegory form.

“A badger and its mate are living in the forest…”

“Don’t Run” is about 15 year-old fraidy-cat Peter (Irizarry), starting a new school and utterly deaf to Mom’s (Wendy Keeling) “I think you’re awesome” encouragement.

He’s a nervous wreck and a bully magnet, as his abortive “first day in your new school” demonstrates. He cowers, pops prescription pills for his phobias and pays no heed to Mom’s “This is NOT the way to solve your problems.”

But Pedro the Pomeranian (mix) smells something amiss in the closet. The dog always knows. A boarded up “passage” is the first hint that there’s someone — someTHING — downstairs, under the bed or wherever, always making itself known when Peter wants to leave the house.

Growls, threats and whispers, “Come on down and say HI,” follow the sock-faced “Chester” and his “badger” story.

Irizarry treats these threats with a sort of droll terror — hiding under the covers, protecting his dog. He knows the Urbaniak style.

Then Mom is out of the picture, and the aunt sent to care for him is snatched. Peter won’t let the social worker in, the bearded hipsters calling themselves cops show up, the bullies bully him INSIDE the house until one of them is nabbed and there’s nothing for it but to Google his dilemma in search of help.

You can see why I thought this was aiming for “comedy,” as it has just one mildly scary moment and one really well-composed good image. Imagining the kid as Urbaniak UNDER-reacting to all that occurs is one’s only salvation.

The “explainer” here is somebody the kid finds on Google. “Jack” is similarly trapped, and has been for years — “It knows EVERYthing….Welcome to your new life.”

Amy (Charlotte Arnold), the cute girl next door, decides bespectacled cowards who skip school are her “type,” people keep knocking at the door, the food runs out, the lights are switched off…

And why? Because SOMEbody isn’t facing his fears.

A few decent frights and a couple of intentional laughs would have gone a long way towards pulling this up to the bottom rung on the horror (or horror comedy) ladder.

James Urbaniak, at any age, would have made “Don’t Run” (he never does) worth watching.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some violence

Cast: Danny Irizarry, Wendy Keeling, Charlotte Arnold, Grant Brooks

Credits: Written and directed by Ben Rood. A Roundhouse release.

Running time: 1:18

That’s the gist of this Hollywood Reporter piece.

“A theatrical release increases the value of a film, throughout the value chain,” says Christian Bräuer, president of European art house cinemas group CICAE.

https://t.co/X2QifYJU4T https://twitter.com/THR/status/1260574005863514120?s=20

The documentary as memoir may be the trickiest to pull off.

In an era when obsession with “personal story” and “personal struggle,” it’s difficult to make one that stands out from what sounds like a chorus of Pavorittis warming up — “Me me me me MEEEEEEEE.”

And if you can’t relate to the person making it on virtually any level, well, it’s tune-out time.

I’ve liked some of Judith Hefland‘s work when I’ve run across films of hers on the PBS “POV” documentary series, “Blue Vinyl” (about the toxic plastic all around us) stands out. I can’t recall if she was there the day I hung out with veteran director George Stoney as he traveled my corner of North Carolina to talk up and do some interviewing for the labor history of the South film “The Great Uprising of 1934.” She co-directed that.

But “Love & Stuff,” her second doc feature about close relationship with her mother, left me cold.

She revisits — at length — the trauma covered in “A Healthy Baby Girl” (Hefland had cervical cancer at 25 caused by a miscarriage-prevention drug her mother was given). “The camera helped us stay connected,” she says of her incessantly videotaped moments with mom, decades-worth, but it’s obvious they were ridiculously tight, with or without “documenting” visits to the beach, meals, etc.

“Love & Stuff” covers that relationship’s end, her mother’s death and dispersal of her “stuff,” much of which Hefland ended up stuffing into her otherwise roomy Upper West Side apartment. Scores of elephant figurines, tchotchkes of every description, used lipsticks and dental appliances — she wanted to save it all to keep that connection with Mom.

It’s punctuated by Helfand’s adopting a baby girl at 50, and her efforts to lose weight so that she will make it to 90, when baby Theodora will be 40.

“How do you live without your mother?” she wonders, weeping, after her own mother dies.

The film is all over the place, like life — messy. But boy, this memoir got on my last nerve.

Maybe it’s the timing, seeing this in the middle of a pandemic, with much of the country out of work, millions upon millions without health care. Try to “connect” with a woman who only pulls the trigger on an adoption when a Jewish baby girl is available, who hires a nurse to get her through the first few days of motherhood, the nanny she brings in to do childcare afterwards, the shrink she consults when trying to take off the weight she put on in the decades after her hysterectomy, the personal trainer, the elective surgery to shrink her stomach.

The privilege and indulgence would have stood out at any time. Mid-pandemic? Eye-rolling is the only polite response.

Perhaps others will find points of connection that make this worthwhile to them. Not me. Some people you have to let “speak my truth, recount my struggle” to somebody else.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Judith Helfand

Credits: Written and directed by Judith Hefland. A Medalia release.

Running time: 1:19

Even indie films can be “high concept,” a movie whose premise can be summed up in a single, short sentence.

“Phoenix, Oregon” is “Big Night” in a bowling alley.

That 1996 dramedy, with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub playing two brothers rolling the dice, trying to make a splash with their “traditional” Italian restaurant in small-town New Jersey, is a landmark in independent cinema, a template for what a good indie film can be. Under-utilized actors invest their hearts and souls in a film that touches viewers, finds its audience and changes their career trajectories.

“Phoenix, Oregon” has a bit of that about it, a quintet of all-in performances by James Le Gros, Lisa Edelstein, Diedrich Bader, Kevin Corrigan and especially Jesse Borrego that render an intimate but predictable story so engaging we don’t mind getting ahead of it.

Writer-director Gary Lundgren (“Redwood Highway”) has conjured up another penny plain story with a vivid sense of geography and just-colorful-enough characters, a film about abandoned dreams awakened in a new form, old wounds finally forgotten in spite of the scars they’ve left.

Veteran character actor James Le Gros (currently on “Hunters”) has been around since “Night Rider,” and lands a rare lead here. He’s “Big Time Bobby” Hoffman, a guy well over 40, living in an Airstream trailer his mother left him, still tending bar.

A one-time art school kid, he dreamed of comic book glory, drawing and writing stories he can’t find the gumption to pitch to publishers. His life’s highlight might have been the night he bowled 300 at the local lanes. Or maybe it was his marriage, which ended and which he cannot keep from obsessing over, rehashing it in his head and on the drawn page.

He puts up with the “douche” of a boss (Diedrich Bader, amusingly despicable) who steals his staff’s pooled-tips at the town’s one quasi-pretentious eatery (This was filmed in Klamath Falls, as Phoenix, Oregon is but a wide spot on I-5).

But the chef there (Jesse Borrego) thinks “there’s passion still swirling beneath all those failures, all those regrets” Bobby wears in his scowl. He’s got an idea to reopen the town’s bowling alley, calling it “Rising Phoenix,” and sell high-end pizzas of his creation along with the finest craft beers, wines and boozes that liquor dealer Tanya (Lisa Edelstein of “House”) can provide.

Chef Carlos is the sort of guy who tells people to “close your eyes and imagine…” A lot. But he’s a seductive pitchman and Borrego (“Fame,” “Dexter,” “Fear the Walking Dead”) is just mesmerizing in the role.

They’ve got some of the cash needed for start-up. But Tanya’s working with this hot-shot venture capitalist (Reynaldo Gallegos), one of those high-fiving “types” who uses the phrase “At’s what I’m talking about” and is all about a local legalized weed outfit he wants to take public.

Sure, he’s in, the “angel” investor that puts the dream within reach.

Grizzled screen smartass Kevin Corrigan (“Pineapple Express”) is the only guy in town who can fix the ’60s vintage lanes and repair the pin machines. He reams them on the cost, and rides Bobby like a hobby horse over his long-ago bowling glory.

“You haven’t seen the ACTION on my ball! You’re going WAY downtown, where the HEDGEhogs frown!”

The story’s predictable path gives us romantic entanglement, idealism facing pragmatism, a “Big Game” (opening night bowling tourney)  and nothing at all that we don’t see coming five ways from Sunday.

Some of the wrinkles in Bobby’s character feel contrived to fit the needs of the script. Edelstein’s Tanya likewise has a hint of “that doesn’t feel organic and authentic to the character” about her.

Le Gros has some bowling form, as does “Dreey Carrey Show” vet Bader. Corrigan? Well, it was nice of them to introduce him to the sport.

I’ll bet the “how this movie got made” story is interesting, too. Le Gross was in Lundgren’s “Redwood Highway,” and in the last episode of Edelstein’s series “House.”

What they collaborated on has an easygoing charm that puts it over, even if we remember the films that inspired it a little too well for its own good.

MPAA Rating: R for language.

Cast: James LeGros, Jesse Borrego, Lisa Edelstein, Diedrich Bader and Kevin Corrigan

Credits: Written and directed by Gary Lundgren.  An Aspiration Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:48

July 1, a pic about a crowded freeway and Russell C. as that a-hole in a pick-em-up truck you don’t want to be tangling with. Will theaters open in time for this?