Movie Nation

Everybody’s picture of “The Ideal Indie Film” is different, but here’s mine.

It’s got to have a human story, preferably about humans and human activity (professions) Hollywood doesn’t make movies about.

It should be witty. Crackling dialogue adds nothing to the budget.

And it has to have a sense of place, preferably a place far away from the Lands of the Over-Filmed — LA, New York.

“Buffaloed” ticks off those checkboxes. It’s set in Buffalo, the dump down the road and up the river from Niagara Falls. It looks like Buffalo and sounds like Buffalo. It’s about the working poor and the amoral hustle of debt collecting. And it’s funny, as any movie starring the fast-talking pixie Zoey Deutch ought to be.

The actor-turned-screenwriter Brian Sacca had a bit part in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” He may not have had many lines in that one, but brother-man was taking notes. He’s produced a fast, flippant mashup of “Wolf” and “Boiler Room,” a lightweight story with a dark undercurrent.

And Deutch, of “Set it Up” and “Zombieland: Double Tap,” gives it the zingy underdog such a tale needs to come off.

Our heroine/narrator is Peggy Dahl, a member of the working poor in “the epicenter of the Rust Belt.” That would be Buffalo, New York, which shows its seedy despair in every scene in this Tanya Wexler (“Hysteria”) comedy.

Peggy adored her late hustler/dad, so that’s who she aims to become. Her mother (Judy Greer, perfect as always) may be buried in debt, running a cut-rate hair salon out of their shabby house. Her brother JJ (Noah Reid) may have simpler dreams — open his own bar, get by just well enough to say he’s “fine.”

“Fine” won’t do for Peggy. Not since she was a child.

“‘Fine’ is like mediocrity’s DUMB cousin!”

Peggy is a hustling prodigy, smart enough to be admitted to an Ivy League school, practical enough to know they’ll never be able to afford it (and that the student loans would bury her), naive enough to think she can shift from hustling cigarettes to high school classmates to scalping counterfeit tickets to Buffalo Bills games so that she can afford to go.

Busted. For sacrilege.

Jail isn’t as much of an education as you’d hope. But when she answers one of her mother’s calls from a collection agency after getting out, she finds “my true calling.”

Fast-talking, charming, cute and cutthroat — Peggy dives deep into the shadowy industry that seems right at home in a withering factory town that no longer stinks the way it did when it had factories, a baseball and a basketball team to go with its hard-luck Bills and hapless hockey team, the Sabres.

And once she’s established, under the hulking crooked collection king “Wizz (Jai Courtney, terrific), she breaks free and sets up a shop of her own — rounding up the usual misfits that movies like this people “the team” with.

To Wizz, this means war. To Peggy, that means she can’t date the cute prosecutor (Jermaine Fowler) who put her in jail the last time, and just might lock her up again.

Deutch is is just-short-of-dazzling as the persuasive opportunist who convinces one and all that “debt is JAIL,” and what they’re selling to debtors is the chance to “break these people OUT.”

The script is littered with boiler-room collection agency slang, the ethos among collectors that “debt never dies” and the assorted approaches of Peggy and her team  of ex-phone sex operators, Indian restaurant street-pitchmen and Bible salesmen — distinct and distinctly funny “types,” to a one.

But the type that tickles the most is the “Buffalo” type — a sea of “jagoffs” who live for Sunday, “dem Bills” and the libations of choice — “A case of Genny (Genesee Ale/Lager),” or — for special occasions “Crown (Royal) all around!”

A judge shows up for court covered in Buffalo wing sauce, a brawl breaks out over “Anchor Bar, or Duffs?”

Yeah, they’re lowbrow regional stereotypes. But they’re funny, and they’re adorable.

Much like Ms. Deutch, who makes this ideal indie film, this “Wolf of Wall Street Lite” come off, with just her fury, her charm and the acting evidence that this broke cookie is too smart to stay here, too desperate to ever pull off her Great Escape.

MPAA: unrated, some violence, sexual situations, profanity, smoking

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Judy Greer, Jai Courtney, Jermaine Fowler

Credits: Directed by Tanya Wexler, script by Brian Sacca. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:35

Pietro Marcello’s lush working class take on the Jack London novel has been reset in Naples. It comes to America April 17.

I’m not sure how much urgency many of us will attach to watching the Netflix documentary “The Edge of Democracy,” now that it’s been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.

I knew what it was about and held off watching it until after it nabbed the Oscar nomination.

It’s about an American democracy under assault by the rich and their democracy-averse-racist, fascist, fundamentalist-homophobic supporters. Do we need a two hour film to see that? Doesn’t everybody already have CSPAN?

But Brazilian journalist/interviewer/filmmake Petra Costas has crafted an exceptional film, a downbeat funeral dirge for her country’s much younger democracy, a blow-by-blow of how it all went wrong.

The daughter of leftists and lifelong democracy advocates in a country whose military junta imprisoned them and forced them underground for years, Costas was named for a murdered activist. But her family’s history has crossed that democratic/totalitarian divide more than once, with various branches and generations embracing free speech or military takeovers that might benefit them.

She is white. In Brazil, labor, the underclasses and uneducated who are kept in poverty by the oligarchy, are of the darker races — indigenous or descended from African slaves. White liberal academics and leftists joined with them to pull the country toward democracy. And for successive administrations, they seemed to succeed.

Then, “at the peak of optimism” that Costas would live in a country governed the way her parents had dreamed of, “the foundation of democracy itself would begin to crack.”

Her movie — using first-person eyewitness filming — talking to men and women on the streets during demonstrations, archival news footage and close-access interviews with the two democratic politicians her movement identified with, presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his hand-picked successor, Brazil’s first woman president, Dilma Rousseff — shows us point by point, how a democracy is killed.

Years of progressive rule move millions out of poverty, but the moment the leaders pushed for corruption investigations of the state run oil company, and into bank practices, right wing movements found financial backing, social media support and leaders suddenly rising up in classic “bandwagon effect” propaganda fashion.

Defeated candidates use mob incitement to contest election results. “Guns” are promised to the impressionable, the under-informed and the rural.

“Lock him up! Lock her up!” chants at big, widely and uncritically covered rallies, an impeachment, activist judges twisting the law to suit the needs of the oligarchs, feckless ex-military members wrapping themselves in the flag, glorifying violence, torture and appealing to bigotry — that sounds nothing like what’s happened anywhere else, does it?

In Brazil, the monied and the corrupt used impeachment to halt an investigation. In America, the monied and the corrupt are the ones fighting impeachment.

Nothing in common, right?

Costas notes how the country’s schism “runs directly through the center of my family” without interviewing any members of that family other than her mother. But she gets at important truths about democracies in general — be they Chile, Britain, Brazil or the United States.

“Our democracy was founded on forgetting.” They are sustained, reformed and menaced by “forgetting,” too. People Costas records arguing on the streets or in congress seem clueless about the dangers of their “military takeover” pleas and the like. People who can’t remember history vote to tragically repeat it.

With the death of the myth of “American Exceptionalism,” we can’t help but feel, while watching “The Edge of Democracy,” that yeah, it could happen here.

I remember interviewing the great Chilean writer, playwright/screenwriter (“Death and the Maiden”) Ariel Dorfman, who saw his country’s democracy ended by a CIA backed coup. He was pretty quick to disabuse me, and any American he met, that the United States was no so special, so united, so vigilant that we couldn’t take a seriously wrong turn after a few modest mistakes that preceded it.

“The Edge of Democracy” won’t convince that “It CAN happen here.” It’ll make you wonder how far down the hole we’ve already tumbled.

A final thought about this riveting, sometimes confusing and always dispiriting film — don’t be a martyr. Remember to change the language to “English” on your Netflix settings for this film (unless you’re fluent in Portuguese). At least the narration, still by Costas, won’t require subtitles.

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Dilma Rousseff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Marisa Letícia Lula da Silva

Credits: Directed by narrated by Petra Costa.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:01

Disney will expand Fox’s FORD V. FERRARI from 567 to 1,069 screens this Friday, January 17.
#FordvFerrari https://twitter.com/BoxOffice/status/1217901407027654656?s=20

Sony will expand ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD from 54 to 705 screens this Friday, January 17.
#OnceUponATimeInHollywood https://twitter.com/BoxOffice/status/1217903295684984832?s=20

Sure. Try to make us root for Russians.

We’ll see, Marvel.

A simple, downbeat and taut-as-a-drum vengeance thriller, “Eye for an Eye”(Quien a hierro mata) lives up to the promise of its simple, evocative title.

It’s about a crime family in Cambadoas, in Spanish Galicia, the northwest coast of the country facing the harsh Atlantic. And it’s about drugs, double-crosses and a thirst for revenge that lingers for years and years.

The Padín brothers are heirs to an empire that includes seafood fishing, processing and restaurants — and drugs. But they’re anxious to expand. It’s just that ruthless Toño (Ismael Martínez) and hotheaded Kike (Enric Auquer) can’t get their old man to sign off on it.

Old Antonio (Xan Cejudo) is in prison, about to get out. He wants nothing to do with a deal that includes the murderous Colombians and Chinese dealers he knows nothing about. And he wants nothing to do with his family, either. When he’s out the enfeebled old man wants to live in the state nursing home.

That’s where Mario (Luis Tosar) is head nurse. He’s good with patients, happy that he and his wife Julia (María Vázquez) are expecting their first child.

He gives nothing away when his infamous new patient shows up. He not only knows who Antonio is — he jokingly calls him “mayor” — he has an idea of why he’s there. He wants to die in peace.

“Better a little indifference” to the indignities of old age, Mario speculates (in Spanish with English subtitles), “than pity?”

And he meekly takes the gruff threats of Kike when the two sons show up to try and get the old man to sign off on their plans. But in between Lamaze classes, patient care and staff meetings, Mario is thinking something through. What is he up to?

Horror director Paco Plaza (“Veronica”) steadily builds the suspense tucked into the Juan Galiñanes and Jorge Guerricaechevarría script, and he and his production team add generous helpings of dread. This is an overcast place, a town small enough where people know each other, especially those with any dealings with the underworld.

Mario knows this world. And when a junkie cryptically remembers, “You were dead,” we start to understand.

I love the way the script grapples with its subtext, losing control of one’s life, senses and bowels in extreme old age. “We think we can control everything, and in the end, just nothing.”

And the film’s somber, almost funereal tone beautifully builds the dread that a ticking clock third act — when plans are set, and undone.

Tosar’s beard helps him maintain a poker-face in most of his dealings with the increasingly frantic mobsters, Martínez and Auquer amp up their agitation as their scheme unravels and Vázquez evolves from a giddy and playful mother-to-be to a wife who knows her husband too well to not know something is up.

If nobody in Hollywood has snapped up the rights to this for an English-language remake, they’re missing the boat. “Eye for an Eye” is a simple sharp Spanish thriller that rarely blinks.

MPAA Rating: TV:MA, violence, profanity, drugs

Cast: Luis Tosar, Xan Cejudo, Ismael Martínez, Enric Auquer, María Vázquez

Credits: Directed by Paco Plaza, script by Juan Galiñanes and Jorge Guerricaechevarría.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47

The chemistry’s still there. A lot of years, a few pounds and some suspicious hairlines don’t change that.

Maybe the idea of a wheezing foot-race to settle a bet is laughable. But as the jokes don’t land the way they used to — maybe 20%, now — that’s fine.

And some people are going to be nostalgic for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as “Bad Boys,” misty-eyed for the sorts of glossy, glibly-ultraviolent action comedies that were the norm in the ’80s and ’90s.

So “Bad Boys for Life” is sure to be a hit, recycling that bullets, blood and bagpipes formula, topped by two good buddies saying “Bad Boys.”  A LOT.

But man oh man…

“Look at this mess,” the funniest guy in the movie (Joe Pantoliano) fusses. “It’s…it’s CARNAGE.”

Indeed it is. A sloppy script with the dumbest “surprise twist” tacked on as a punchline, a poorly-developed villain (Jacob Scipio), hot cars hurtling through a neon-glow, “Merry Old Land of Oz” version of Miami Beach (Ocean Drive? A parking lot!), that’s for starters. Then there are the buckets and buckets of blood — blood bursts, arterial spray, characters joking about “muscle shirts and body counts,” eye-rolling at a beloved snitch who’s just landed on Marcus’s (Lawrence) minivan.

Bagpipes? You know what they mean in a cop picture.

It’s not just the carnage. It’s the cliches.

Settled family guy Marcus (Lawrence) has become a granddad. He’s talking “retirement.” Swinging single Mike (Smith) won’t hear of it.

“Bad Boys for Life!” As if that ends the argument.

Only Mike getting shot will bring Marcus back, and even then it’s only after Marcus has prayed Mike back to life and made a bargain with the Almighty.

“I will put no more violence in this world!”

Fat chance.

Eventually, working with a task force for named “AMMO” and run by one of Mike’s exes (Paola Nuñez), including the shortest cop ever — Vanessa Hudgens — rocking the coolest cop hair ever, they stumble their way through nightclubs, stoned accountants, arms dealers and snitches towards La Bruja (the witch) running it all (Kate del Castillo), a Mexican mobster who escapes from prison, bathed in blood, in the film’s opening scene.

What you come for here, aside from nostalgia, is the excess, and “Gangsta” directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah serve that up in heaping helpings. Characters topple into pools of blood, all manner of vehicle is raced and blown up. And Miami has never looked sexier on the screen.

Smith may be nearing his expiration date as an action star — not so much due to age as to his own inability to work up the enthusiasm — and let us see it — in these roles. But Lawrence is that can of Spam that you’re afraid to open 26 years after the Zombie Apocalypse — WAY past expiration. He’s still not much of an actor, but he doesn’t let down the side the way he did in the last decade of his faded film career.

“Sorry rich white people!” Perfect line to shout as you’re racing a Porsche over the sand of South Beach.

The big chase and big shootout are WAY over the top, but few age gags work, Joey Pants (Pantoliano, as their captain) works up a fine rant or two, no-talent self-promoter DJ Khaled gets the ass-kicking we’ve all been waiting for and Mike makes the worst wedding toast in human history.

“We ride together, we DIE together!”

But it’s not as if “Bad Boys” (1995) and “Bad Boys II” were all that. Three movies in, and we know less about these two than ever. Still, lower the expectations bar enough and you won’t be disappointed.

MPAA Rating: R, or Strong Bloody Violence, Language Throughout, Sexual References, and Brief Drug Use

Cast: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Kate del Castillo, Jacob Scipio, Paola Nuñez , Vanessa Hudgens and Joe Pantoliano

Credits:Directed by Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, script by Chris Bremmer, Peter Craig and Joe Carnahan.  A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 2:03

Looks a bit like “Crank.” I loved “Crank.”

This one opens Feb. 28.

Radcliffe is pursuing an Elijah Wood post franchise career. When are those two teaming up on a fanboy fangasm of a genre film?