Movie Nation

A truism at the heart of any affair or breakup is that inevitably one person makes the decision to move on and the other is shocked they weren’t “consulted.”

No matter how long the warning signs have been there, no matter how obvious it might seem to one party, even outsiders looking in, there’s always shock, wounding and a lack of that meaningless cliche “closure.”

That’s the secret sauce of writer-director William Nicholson’s biting but somewhat enervating “Hope Gap,” a very British chamber melodrama starring American Oscar winner Annette Bening and reliable British brooder Bill Nighy.

They’ve been together 29 years, Grace with her passion for poetry, dropping W.B. Yeats on old friends, “Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight,” history teacher Edward adding “wiki” touches to his lectures about Napoleon’s “Retreat from Moscow.”

She misses their adult son (Josh O’Connor), but when he’s summoned from the city, she starts in on him about his non-belief. He was raised Catholic, after all. Dad’s the peacekeeper, looking for some non-confrontational way of letting him off the hook.

Faith is like “love. You don’t tell love, you feel it.”

Her interrogation of Jamie, about his singlehood, his love life, has a kind of relentless quality. The kid says he’s “fine” and it’s “fine isn’t the same as HAPPY,” she says. WE’RE happy, aren’t we Edward?”

Her husband’s eyes-averting agreement is the entire marriage in a sentence.

“Yes. We’re fine.”

Three words give away the game. Edward, who is slapped in the middle of one “Why don’t we ever TALK, the way people do?” tussle, has had enough. He’s talked the son into showing up so he can break the news to him first.

She can’t hear him when he tells her, is taken aback with the key nugget in the declaration, “There’s someone else.” And damned if she’s going to accept this fait accompli. She wasn’t “consulted.”

What follows is a lovelorn son pulled in two directions by parents who are breaking apart. He doesn’t have to choose sides, but he needs to keep his contacts with his father limited in scope (no meeting the new woman) and pretty much secret. Dad is expecting Jamie to deliver this or that bit of bookkeeping business — divorce papers, “You can have the house,” etc.

Mom? She’s furious, as only Annette Bening can make her.

“He’s MURDERING a marriage. Marriages don’t bleed, but it’s still MURDER.”

Screenwriter (“Gladiator,” “Unbroken”) and sometime writer-director (“Firelight”) William Nicholson gets more good lines in than good scenes, here.

The casting makes for a little embrace of this stereotype (Nighy is the very picture of English introversion) and shattering of another. Bening, playing “British,” is more an American cliche — outspoken, angry, demanding answers and/or satisfaction.

The weakest link is O’Connor, kind of squishy in a squishy “Why can’t I make anybody love me?” role. Meeting with a couple who are both friends with him give the film a little variety from its three-hander intimacy (with lovely seaside settings, the “White Cliffs of Dover” included). But they don’t advance the plot or illuminate the battling parents.

Jamie is, therefor, the screenwriterly product of a dysfunctional marriage — unable to speak up (like his Dad), not satisfied enough to leave things be (like his Mother). He’s more his Dad, if one has to put him on the couch.

It’s always lovely to see Bening and Nighy, always a warm delight to set some of this tug of war on the pebbly beaches, rocky crags and chalky cliffs. Otherwise, it’s a “kitchen sink” drama, without many blowups, no big shocks and not a lot that sticks to the ribs after the credits have rolled.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief strong language

Cast: Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor

Credits: Written and directed by William Nicholson. A Screen Media release of a Roadside Attractions production.

Running time: 1:40

As a lifelong Mario Van Peebles fan, let me take a little license as I take issue with his turn as the star of the hostage thriller, “A Clear Shot.”

There’s a difference between acting the line “I’m getting too OLD for this s—,” and letting us see it, first frame to last.

MVP plays Det. Gomez, a burned-out, flask-sipping and under-emoting hostage negotiator tasked with freeing 40 civilians from a Sacramento electronics store after four wound-up Vietnamese teens take it over.

And while it’s no stretch to say Van Peebles the actor/director could have gotten a more suspenseful, more exciting thriller out of this than the director of “Janitors,” Nick Leisure, that’s no excuse for not bringing your A-game to every scene after you’ve been cast.

He gives us flashes of that in the third act. But this picture mopes along on mild-mannered turf war debates, not-that-tense standoffs with the SWAT guys, the ones looking for “A Clear Shot,” and flirting (over that flask) with one of the uniforms (Jessica Meza) on the scene.

Eighty-seven minutes, gunplay and life-and-death consequences, and this feels like a perfunctory drag — a Movie of the Week from back when TV made those.

A jokey opening sets us up for a “Dog Day Afternoon” take on the biggest hostage stand-off in U.S. history. Store managers (including Mandela Van Peebles) josh with each other, insulting customers to their face (Remember electronics stores? Good times.). There’s an extended family (Sandra Gutierrez, Diana Acevedo and David Fernandez Jr.) that’s shopping, and shoplifting

Then POW — a quartet of heavily-armed amateurs storm in and demand access to the safe. They’re big on firing warning shots and screaming, but not the quickest studies. For one thing, these dunces are robbing an electronics store. There’s a reason they’re almost all gone. NO CASH.

The cops show up and they’re trapped, 40 or so shoppers and staff are hostages, a couple of other staff hide out and start helping the police.

Det. Gomez shows up in his beater (“car with character”) and rubs the top cop on the scene (Marshal Hilton) the wrong way. His “under control” laid-back approach gets under everybody’s skin.

“I don’t like chatter,” gripes the SWAT hothead (Rafael Siegel).” It’s a waste of time, in my opinion!”

“I don’t like trigger happy cops,” Gomez half-whispers, because that’s how he speaks. “They get people killed…in MY opinion!”

Inside, the volatile, testosterone-fueled teens turn out to be Vietnamese, and family. Long (Tony Dew) is the oldest and most sociopathic. Loi (Hao Do) is the one who gets on the phone with Gomez, a hothead who calls himself “Thailand.”

He’s the one who screams demands at the sheriff’s deputies and SPD people elbowing each other around outside.

We want vests…leg armor, like ‘Robocop!’ We want million dollars! We want CHOPPER.”

And yes, the “Dog Day” punchline — “We want GINSENG TEA!”

There’s a fine line you walk between tragedy and parody in such stories. Leisure falls off that tightrope, early and often.

The picture’s biggest problems are pace and tension. A hostage thriller has a built-in “ticking clock” for amping up suspense, and easy to exploit elements for reminding the viewer of the stakes.

With hostages who veer between injury and fear, and “These kids are CLOWNS” in their dealings with their captors, a lot of that evaporates.

We’ve seen scores of these movies over the decades. We know how they’re supposed to work. Tight shots, sweaty faces, close-ups of fingers on triggers, criminals whose eyes grow wilder (again, close-up) the closer we get to “Times UP” in the “ticking clock.”

Leisure is entirely too leisurely at tackling those problems. And that pained, weary look Van Peebles wears in his eyes, start to finish? It shows us he realized that, too.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Mario Van Peebles, Jessica Meza, Hao Do, Marshal Hilton, Mandela Van Peebles, Sandra Gutierrez, David Fernandez Jr., Tony Dew, Glenn Plummer and Michael Balin.

Credits: Written and directed by Nick Leisure. An Uncork’d release.

Running time: 1:27

Classics, international and esoteric film distributor Kino Lorber restored this 1982 Western adventure starring Richard Farnsworth. A 4K makeover for one of the best Canadian films ever.

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.

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