Movie Nation

I hadn’t seen the absurdly entertaining British WWII film “The 49th Parallel” in ages, probably not since AMC was “American Movie Classics” and showed, you know, movies.

And the first thing that strikes you watching this self-described “propaganda film” today is what HD and a nice restoration job brings back to the glorious black and white cinematography of Freddy Young.

Stunning Canadian locations, from Hudson’s Bay to Niagara Falls, with Banff and the wheat-covered plains of Manitoba, such immaculate compositions that you don’t mind the rear projection/soundstage/water tank fakery that inserted British stars such as Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier into this world.

The second element to stand out is the uproarious fun Laurence Olivier — not quite a film “star” when this film came out in 1941 — has playing a French Canadian trapper. You have to search all the way to his late career vamps like “Sleuth” and “A Little Romance” to find the giddy glee he brings to Trapper Johnny who– only minutes before Nazi submariners storm into the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post where he is having his first shave and bath in a year– learns World War II had started in 1939.

He sings “Alouette,” he lays it on thick as he promises, “We gave you preety good leeking en ze last war. We do it again, eh?”

The best performance in the film is still by Raymond Massey, the most natural and I’d argue most “modern” screen actor in the lot — at home playing a soldier AWOL from the Canadian Army, jocular and friendly to his fellow boxcar tramp until he’s clubbed and figures out the guy’s a Nazi fleeing to the “neutral” United States.

But Olivier provides a fun front bookend to that Massey exclamation point in the coda.

Michael Powell, working with his favorite screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, was years from his Technicolor glories of “The Red Shoes” and “Black Narcissus.” David Lean was the increasingly accomplished editor who kept the action zipping along for this two hour — with the occasional pause for a political sermon — action picture. He’d transition to directing with “In Which We Serve,” and surpass Powell in the directing pantheon with “Laurence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago.”

The idea was that they’d make a patriotic movie about a German U-Boat, sunk off the Canadian coast, with half a dozen ideological Nazi survivors evading capture but picked off one-by-one as they experience Canada’s diverse democracy, decency and intrepid spirit in the face of global fascism.

Timely? Shockingly, yes.

The Nazis want to find safe haven in the still-neutral U.S., and the filmmakers wanted to show America that its values demand that it join the fight against fascism.

Even the film’s edits, when Columbia Pictures distributed it in the U.S., seem timely. Nazi speeches about “Eskimos” and “Indians” and “Negroes” being “apes” and “inferior animals” had to be cut — because the distributors didn’t want Americans, especially in the Jim Crow South, to be offended by seeing their Nazi racial attitudes on the screen.

The sermons about tolerance, democracy, kindness and freedom — delivered by Olivier, Anton Walbrook (“The Red Shoes”), Leslie Howard (“Gone with the Wind”) and Massey (“Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” “East of Eden”) may play as pauses in a film that almost sprints from coast to coast. But they resonate still.

And the depiction of Nazis — fascists, Germany’s Proud Boys — might have seemed cartoonish twenty years ago. But they come off in 2020 much closer to the way they were originally received.

They are cultists, dogmatic, bigoted bullies. They need their guns, and practically cower when they don’t have one. Germany, we are reminded, overran weak, harmless Poland just before the film was shot. The submariners gun down unarmed Eskimos, club or shoot others and kill one of their own for not adhering to dogma.

One (Raymond Lovell) is a Proud Boys plump self-proclaimed know-it-all with “not my fault” and “don’t blame me” — “I take no responsibility” — on his cowardly lips at many a moment.

Eric Portman is perfectly vile as their leader, an officer who feels the need to proselytize when given the chance, always shocked when others — including immigrant German Hutterites (led by Walbrook) — don’t fall for the childish, bullying and racist Make Germany Great Again rhetoric.

That’s the thing about classic films. They keep talking to you long after the language of the day — cinematic, dramatic and rhetorical — has changed and the world has moved on. Here’s a classic that reminds us that we used to know Nazis aren’t “very fine people.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Eric Portman, Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Glynnis Johns, Raymond Lovell, John Chandos, Niall MacGinnis, John Chandos, Finlay Currie, Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey

Credits: Directed by Michael Powell, script by Emeric Pressburger and Rodney Ackland A General Film Distributors/Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 2:03

Variety_Film (@Variety_Film) Tweeted: Film New Roundup: Animated Movie ‘The Queen’s Corgi’ Fetches North American Distribution https://t.co/f0nCkUKi6e https://t.co/2nYT9Bl0FB https://twitter.com/Variety_Film/status/1243706128694784000?s=20

“Uncorked” pops, straight out of the bottle. A culture-clash comedy that throws African American Memphis BBQ culture into the snooty world of fine wines and the ordained high priests of that world — sommeliers — it has laughs and just enough edge and Courtney B. Vance at his drollest.

And then, it all but seizes up, its heart clogged up with pork fat, soapy melodrama, unnecessary characters and improbable plot twists.

Writer-director Prentice Penny, a producer on TV’s “Insecure,” has everything he needs for a frothy, fun film about worlds washing over each other, and then some. It’s the “then some” that lets him down.

That, and a foolish over-reach aimed at “keeping it real.”

Mamoudou Athie, who played Grandmaster Flash on TV’s “The Get Down,” is Elijah, the third generation of his family to take up the knife, the sauce ladle and the smoker at the family ribs joint Daddy (Vance) runs with Mom (Niecy Nash).

But that’s not where Eli’s heart is. He’s learning wine at his other job, a wine shop, where he’s absorbed enough from the boss to impress the pretty young nurse (Sasha Compère) who comes in knowing nothing about the grape.

He starts comparing wines to pop stars, and she wisely ignores Kanye (chardonnay) and goes home with Drake (Pinot Grigio). Yes, she’s smitten.

Trouble starts when Eli starts skipping BBQ work, which includes learning the biz from his Pops, to hit wine tastings.

Penny contrasts the all-black clientele of the BBQ eatery with the all-white gathering at wine tastings, and makes a choice not to make his movie about “THAT.”

Alas, it’s not about much else either. The “edge” devolves to the hip hop soundtrack, which augments the Memphis flavor that the picture aims for. It’s jarring to be hearing about “b—-es” and “n—ahs” as Elijah tastes this Malbec or that Shiraz.

The wine “study” element is routine in the extreme, an academic “Paper Chase” with study groups, competitive classwork “identification” tests — “Paper Chase” with “Pinot Noir.”

Eli’s classmates are a collection of stereotypes, not characters.

Vance is far and away the best element in the picture, and becomes its sole saving grace as Eli is suddenly shipped off to France, with his entire somm class, for months of study and polish.

Vance’s Louis travels from joking about his boy’s dream — “If you wanna tell people what to drink with their chitlins…” — to indulging his trek to Paris, answering the “How’s it going?” question with “Oh, you know…Black folks still eatin’ pork,” which he pronounces “poke” for authenticity.

Big family meals crack up when the relatives learn of Elijah’s dream — “Sommelier? Like the pirates?”

“No, that’s SOMALIA.”

“You know, Kelly MARRIED a Somali…”

There’s a lot that’s agreeable about “Uncorked,” but this overlong movie loses its fizz pretty much when Eli goes abroad. And as any oenophile will tell you, you can’t get that fizz back once the bottle’s “uncorked.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, lots of profanity

Cast: Mamadou Athie, Sasha Compère, Niecy Nash, Bernard David Jones, Kelly Jenrette, Gil Ozeri and Courtney B. Vance

Credits: Written and directed by Prentice Penny.  A Netflix Original.

Running time: 1:44

While most film buffs have seen the post-war classic “Whisky Galore!”, a later comedy by Ealing Studios’ acknowledged Master of Twee and Laird of Laughter, Alexander Mackendrick, might have slipped by you.

“The Maggie,” cleverly re-titled “High and Dry” when it was theatrically released in North America, is a daft and deft 1954 farce newly-restored and paired with “Whisky” as a two-disc BluRay release by Film Movement.

It’s every bit as silly and Scottish as “Whisky Galore!,” boasts an impressive cast and plays like a lighthearted black and white travelogue, seeing the coast of Scotland via a “puffer.”

That’s what has the title role. The Maggie is an ancient coaster, a coastal waters/canal friendly freighter that the locals label “puffer.” She was ancient even at the time the movie was made, which is why maritime inspectors board and declare her unfit for further duty, sending her skipper, the rascal MacTaggart (Alex Mackenzie), into what amounts to a tizzy.

He needs cargoes to pay for repairs (the boat’s a real beater) and feed his crew of three, the Mate (James Copeland), the Engineer (Abe Barker) and “Wee Boy” (Tommy Kearins).

Maybe a loan from the local shipping broker (veteran character actor Geoffrey Keen)? Aye, but he’s too busy and wouldn’t be interested. Fortunately, there’s an attorney/aid (Hubert Gregg) to a wealthy American trying to get tubs, a stove and sundry other home renovation materials up to Kiltarra. Mr. Pusey is anxious because his airline-chief boss is in a hurry.
Always.

He hires the Maggie on the spot, but quite by mistake, mind you. He’d not heard of MacTaggart or the man’s reputation, which any Glasgow cabbie could pass along.

“Aye, there’s a man for you. Seen him drunk TREE times in one day!”

The rest of the movie is MacTaggart and his crew trying to dodge the rules and the long arm of “The American” (American character actor Paul Douglas of “Angels in the Outfield” and “It Happens Every Spring”) who is understandably upset that his pricey home appointments are being shipped by a con artist in a rust bucket.

The misadventures include running aground “on the subway” (the newly-built tunnel roof) on the River Clyde before they’ve cleared port, poaching pheasants from a “laird” who owns land along the Crinan Canal, a detour to a birthday party, assorted beachings and dockside mishaps.

The underlying theme here is as timeless as it is “Mayberry” old fashioned. Slow down, take an interest in people. What’s your rush? See the sights, have a Guinness!

Boat folks (like myself) will marvel at the delightfully primitive navigation gear that gets them through the fog — a lead line (depth sounder) and “radar” (Throwing coals fetched from the engine room, listening for “the plunk.” No “plunk” means “We’ve all made a big mistake.”).

And any modern viewer should be charmed at the long-lost Scotland captured here,“only pub in town” villages with their docks, their livestock trans-shipment, the homey values.

I’d say this was the best of the Scottish Mackendricks, as it ages better than “Whisky Garlore!” And if you’ve not seen it, put it on your list. Gorgeously shot, whimsically scripted and acted, it’s a dated delight from start to finish.

MPAA Rating: unrated, squeaky clean

Cast: Alex Mackenzie, Paul Douglas, Hubert Gregg, Geoffrey Keen, James Copeland and Tommy Kearins.

Credits: Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, script by William Rose. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:32

If the production design of the modest-budget space thriller “3022” is particularly impressive — an underlit space station of worn gear, lived-in living spaces and a touch of grime — that’s no accident. David Dean Ebert, art director on TV’s “Gotham,” knows his stuff.

And cinematographer Will Stone’s work here is a lot more impressive than it was in the daft “Faith Based” indie comedy.

Yes, their work won’t be seen by many, although with much of the world in isolation, “3022” will lure a few eyeballs via Netflix. They’ll see an impressive looking, glum, gloomy and stumbling space opera of the “tragic opera” genre.

It’s a “Something happened,” “We could be doomed” and “Is it a life worth living?” sci-fi tale about a space station cut off from Earth and everywhere else, with a handful of survivors going mad and/or dying as they try to grapple with that.

Yeah, hard to get happy after this one.

Omar Epps plays the captain in charge of Pangea, a mid-space refueling station between Earth and a Europa terraforming/colony-building project.

Kate Walsh, Miranda Cosgrove and Angus MacFadyen play the other members of a crew committed to ten year service their. The opening credits show their arrival, but we pick up the story five years in. They’re starting to lose it. Some of them, anyway.

Capt. John Laine is having night terrors. Jackie (Walsh), who has become his bedmate over the course of this mission, is on the receiving end of his sleep-violence. A single mom who left a daughter behind on Earth for this 10 year gig, she loses it when the doctor (MacFadyen) pronounces that since Capt. Laine (Epps) is “unfit,” they’re all unfit and have to summon a relief ship from Earth.

It never gets there. Something — some explosive “event” — cuts them off from contact with Earth. Oddly, for a “refueling” station, there is no traffic en route or out bound, to reach.

And we hear no talk of the colony under construction either. Nobody tries to call Europa. Pangea can’t reach “home” and that’s that.

An odd twist in the script — seeing John (above) clean-shaven as the crew tries to cope with calamities, death, “visitors” — alternating with John as a 60 year old version of Omar Epps — grey haired and bearded.

This framing device can fool you into wondering if Mr. Night Terrors isn’t hallucinating/”dreaming” everything that goes wrong, and then right and then further wrong.

It isn’t. Don’t be thrown by that. The screenplay doesn’t show that much imagination, and admittedly, that tired direction wouldn’t have been a blessing either.

MacFadyen has the chewiest role and his performance reflects that, the only one to truly stand out.

Conflict, suicide, minimal technical “work the problem” trouble-shooting — “3022” (That ISN’T the date this takes place.) feels like a generic, quick-and-dirty if claustrophobic, deep space thriller that could a little more light.

Not in the cinematography or production design, though. That is first-rate. Well, first-rate on a budget.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some violence

Cast: Omar Epps, Kate Walsh, Miranda Cosgrove, Jorja Fox and Angus MacFadyen

Credits: Directed by John Suits, script by Ryan Binaco.8  A Saban Films release, on Netflix.

Running time: 1:31

May 1…

“Mom’s…weird.”

“Mom’s always been weird.”

It’s easy to see why “Celebration,” an intimate working portrait of fashion designer Yves St. Laurent filmed over the last years of his life, was suppressed upon its completion in 2007.

It jumps out from the behind-the-scenes sketching, sewing, fussing over models, magazine and TV interviews, the birthday luncheon or the fete that honors “the last of the great couturiers,” Yves St. Laurent, and becomes clear long before the lingering image of Pierre Bergé fussily closing the film.

It was the portrayal of Bergé, the by-then former lover but still business partner, tycoon behind Yves St. Laurent Inc., that Bergé objected to.

Shy, soft-spoken and effeminate, St. Laurent (who died a year after the film was finished) is seen much as Bergé wanted him to be remembered, as a creator whose work seemed formed from his dreams, while he was dreaming.

Bergé ‘s mission? “I try never to wake him,” Bergé says to an interviewer.

Bergé is the one who snapped at suppliers on the phone, barked at the sea of publicists managing or mis-managing photo ops for shows and events, who took whatever awards were handed to St. Laurent at every fete, ensuring he’d never have to lug them about.

“Probably, I have a part of that,” he says (in French, with English subtitles), admiring a trophy.

Not invisible, never truly “behind the scenes,”  Bergé managed their philanthropy, financed museums and museum restorations. We see him helping install a “pyramidion” (designer cap) on an ancient Egyptian obelisk installed in Paris, a St. Laurent flourish promoting some show or event.

St. Laurent chain smokes, draws, sits for a long magazine interview (in sequences shot in black and white) and reflects.

Bergé kept the designer’s final, fatal health prognosis from St. Laurent, not letting him know he was about to die — and married him in a civil union just before his death, stage-managing him to the end.

Director Olivier Meyrou had lots of access, but made a film more concerned with artful flourishes than with gritty details. Watching and listening to two former seamstresses as they eagerly talk over one another touring the empty House of St. Laurent (headquarters), we pick up on the theme of “Celebration.”

Yes, we’re celebrating the artist. But everybody wants a piece of the credit, wants to ensure her or his place in the legacy.

Feature films on St. Laurent and other fashion documentaries have flowed into theaters and streaming serves in the dozen years since “Celebration” was finished, making this film feel almost quaint — an artifact. Others’ works have surpassed it, in many ways.

But it remains an eye-opening and artful look at just what it took to create that couture, that image and that legacy and that brand — still vital and popular all these years after the shy dreamer’s death.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some nudity

Cast: Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Berge

Credits: Directed by Olivier Meyrou. A 1091 release.

Running time: 1:13

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg play a young couple trapped in a rabbit maze housing development, forced to raise a child dropped on their cookie-cutter house’s doorstep, in “Vivarium,” a quirky science experiment in drama form.

Like many a genre picture before it, there’s a sci-fi gimmick and little else to prop it up beyond repeating variations on “How do we escape this suburban hell?” ad infinitum.

Jemma and Tom are house shopping somewhere in Northern Ireland when they stumble into a home tour with no way out. The creepy/oily realtor (Jonathan Aris) may seem a trifle inhuman. But that’s not the dead give away you might think.

Describing the place as “near enough” from everything, “far enough” from everything else, as “ideal” and “forever” is just automaton real estate babble, right?

Ditching them at unit/house #9 in “Yonder,” the development they’ve driven into, leaving them only a welcome basket of champagne and strawberries after they spend hours trying to drive or parkour their way out? That’s not the worst of it.

A baby is dropped in their laps, packed in the sort of box Amazon might leave on your stoop. And the longer they have to “Raise the child and be released,” the more hellish their lot is.

The little creep (Senan Jennings) speaks in a disembodied  adult voice, impersonating what his “parents” say, shrieking when he’s ready for bed, hungry, etc.

Poots gives us a lot of responses — fear, resignation, fury and hatred. Eisenberg’s Tom just hits a couple of notes — rage and madness. It would kill the love in any couple, much less one that hasn’t made that final leap to marriage.

And there’s another shriek. Let’s deal with this thing imposed on us because we dared to house shop.

The opening credits give away what the game will be. We see a cuckoo imposter hatch in a nest, and push other chicks out, forcing the hapless mama bird of another species to raise him instead.

Does that sound like a clever “Twilight Zone” episode? Sure. An entire 95 minute movie? Not so much.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some sexuality/nudity.

Cast: Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Senan Jennings, Eanna Hardwicke and Jonathan Aris

Credits: Directed by Lorcan Finnegan, script by Garret Shanley.  A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:37

“Ultras” is a bloody-minded Italian melodrama that asks the eternal question, “Can this soccer hooligan be saved?”

For North American viewers, it answers a more important outsider-looking-in query. “What’s all this got to do with futbol (calcio, in Italian), anyway?”

“Ultras” are ultra-fanatical soccer fans, the ones who live, breathe and bleed for their local team, in this case, Naples, in the poor redneck south of Italy.

The Apaches long ago took their fandom to a new level. They’d rather spill the blood of fans of opposing teams, invade a stadium and start a riot, than weep at the cry of “Gooooolll!”

Francesco Lettieri’s film has as its bookends the biggest church events in any Italian’s life — a wedding, and a funeral. Both are rendered in Viking ritual by the presence of the Apaches, there to support this comrade as he weds, that one as he is buried.

Sandro (Aniello Arena of the Neopolitan thriller “Dogman”) still sports the tattoos and the cut-off jeans jacket (with a Confederate flag patch on the back), still gets around by motorbike, and still rumbles with the lads. He has a protege, young Angelo (Ciro Nacca), a thin, pretty teen who doesn’t look nearly tough enough for this life.

Sandro is high up in the hierarchy of the Apaches, there when they paint their DIY blue and white team banners, leading the songs where they bellow about their hearts being blue and white, these “sons of Vesuvius” who add, menacingly, that “maybe one day it’ll explode.”

They explode at the slightest provocation.

“Did you hear about Florence?” founder and ostensible leader Bara (Salvatore Pelliccia) bellows (in Italian with English subtitles). “We need to go kick the s— out of them!”

What’s telling in that question is the assumption that an ultra-Naples fan wouldn’t know the score and probably wouldn’t care. It’s the fight that the Apaches probably started, in an away game at the Florence stadium, that’s their only concern.

This isn’t about futbol in the least. The Apaches, with their Spartan “AAa-OOOOO” chant from “300,” their arm salutes, ink-covered skin and dead-end lives, are a fascist sports cult. And a changing of the guard is underway, with 30ish organizer Pechengo (Simone Borrelli) and hotheaded thug Gabbi (Daniele Vicorito) ready to take things to another level.

But as “the kids” are indoctrinated, smoke bombs sourced and smuggled into stadiums and brawls provoked, Sandro starts to wonder what we do.

Isn’t he getting “Too old for this s–t?”

Can he escape from this family, explain away “my past is a bit…unusual” to the pretty, rough and ready bar pick-up Terry (Antonia Truppo)? Is there life beyond soccer rioting?

Angelo has a mother furious that she’s about to lose another son (Angelo) to Sandro and this horrific lifestyle. There’s a hint of the working life outside of the Apaches, even though his every outing — pool hall to swimming picnics off the breakwater — involves his fellow neo-skinheads.

Our Neopolitan director knows this territory and immerses us in it, showing us far more than he has any character explain. It’s a beautiful but depressed and somewhat ruined place, the Dead End of Italy, where all the Italian films and TV shows that want to show crime emerging from a place with no opportunities set their stories.

And Lettieri takes us inside the riots, which seem planned but have little strategy other than smuggling a chain under that team scarf, and wearing a wide belt with a sharp buckle — for weapons.

Italian riot cops are overrun and pummeled because these rioters have more experience at these brawls than the guys with the shields. How there aren’t staggering body counts all through the endless soccer season is a miracle. Perhaps discouraging police shootings is the reason for that.

The film’s story, a hoary melodramatic parable long before “The Godfather” complained “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” is a simplistic necessity. Lettieri wants us to feel the pull of the “group,” the simple physics that drive these conflicts. No time for thinking, here.

Thus, we catch the occasional lapse in narrative logic.

When you’re telling a story about futbol that has nothing much to do with futbol, that’s just the way things play out.

MPAA Rating:  violence, nudity, sex, drinking, smoking

Cast: Aniello Arena, Ciro Nacca, Simone Borrelli, Daniele Vicorito, Salvatore Pelliccia   and Antonia Truppo

Credits: Written and directed by Francesco Lettieri. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:48

The big moment of pathos in “Justine” comes courtesy one of the best character actors in the business — Glynn Turman.

He’s a supporting player, as he often is, the father of a Marine killed in the Middle East. His daughter-in-law hasn’t come to grips with that, and has utterly shut down — barely talking to her two grade school kids, brusquely leaning on “Papa Don” to do the child care, keep a roof over their heads and make their new life living with him work.

The widow won’t allow pictures of the deceased in the house, won’t let her kids even mention the man they call “you-know-who…’D.A.D.'”

And Papa Don is worried for her, the children and himself, concerned enough to take the kids with him for an impulse visit to a Veterans Administration grief counselor. It’s a subtle yet fraught scene, and Turman, 60 years into a career of making little moments click, sing or sting, gives us just a hint of tears and a tiny choked-up moment in his voice.

“Girl like a robot,” Don says to the counselor (Cleo King), explaining why Lisa (writer-director Stephanie Turner) isn’t here to talk, and let her kids talk to a mental health professional.

Movies can be a treasure trove of such riches, and if you watch a lot of them, you may find yourself rooting for a veteran player like Turman — who had too little to do in Ben Affleck’s “The Way Back” — to have a great moment.

He does, and “Justine” is the richer for it. The film isn’t about him, or for that matter the title character, a tween (Daisy Prescott) with spina bifida whose too-busy parents hire Lisa for the only job she can get in a tight California work market — nanny/caregiver to their special needs child.

It’s about Lisa, broken, chilly and shut-off from everything except the anger over her husband’s death, the “open investigation” the military is carrying out into that death.

The job is pushed on her, even though she’s looking for one of those rare-than-rare low-impact “receptionist” gigs. “I really don’t think I’m care-takerish,” she complains.

But the Greens have a lot of money, and are willing to pay top dollar to have somebody do what they, too-conveniently we think, are too busy to do themselves — raise their house-bound, home-schooled child.

Allison (Darby Stanfield) and Mike (Josh Stamberg) live in a McMansion, but speak only of Justine’s “needs” and “surgeries.” It takes a realtor (her) and a builder (him), working seven days a week, to pay for all this. Just keep Justine on her schedule. Oh, and by the way — don’t let her get too close to you.

And even if they give off a frosty vibe, even though Lisa is barely warm enough to have a pulse, the job is hers.

I don’t want to make too much of the movie writer-director-star Turner has cooked up, here. Kudos for not letting it lapse into “lonely/smart special-needs girl melts cold hearts” trap. “Justine” rarely touches us that way. And the confrontations — with mean kids and their “Are you like, retarded?” mouthing off at the park, Lisa vs the “What kind of people ARE you?” parents — are strictly pro forma.

But the performances are just winning enough to lead us down this familiar, formulaic path, one more time. And Turman, as he has pretty much every time the role is worthy of his talents, stands out, giving “Justine” that extra dose of humanity and heart that makes it worth your while.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Stephanie Turner, Daisy Prescott, Darby Stanfield, Josh Stamberg, Bridget Kallal, Ravi Cabot-Conyers  and Glynn Turman

Credits: Written and directed by Stephanie Turner. A Netflix Original.

Running time: 1:46