Movie Nation

What’s the best way to make your C-movie instantly awful? Open it with this line in voice-over.

“The lengths we go to for family are infinitely immeasurable.”

Kids, “infinite” is by definition “immeasurable.”

“Emerald Run” is the oddest action picture of the winter, a smuggler-gets-double-crossed tale that tries to get by on a busload of faith.

Our hero (David Chokachi), a “family man” who isn’t “out of work. I’m between jobs,” takes on a “run” from his Italian mob boss father-in-law, played by veteran character heavy Chris Mulkey.

“Customs? They might think we’re smugglers!”

It’s all among good Catholics, here. We visit a church where the priest has a haircut and neck-tattoo that suggest he just got out of the joint. Crufixes abound.

And when the hand-off, cash-for-emeralds, goes wrong South of the Border, John (Chokachi) is given a test in the desert and a shot at redemption by a religious fanatic hermit (Vernon Wells).

Just like Jesus?

The boss? Hey, he was just trying to line up “pentance” for John, who is losing his faith — going through the motion, not paying attention in church, never shaving. John doesn’t even know to correct the father-in-law’s pronunciation of “pennace.”

John and his Mexican (Catholic, family man) guide (Sean Burgos) are wounded and stranded in the border country, hunted by thugs in a Baja buggy with John hallucinating a little bit of everything, including a preacher he once met (Steven Williams).

Wait, is John considering converting to Protestantism?

John “Dukes of Hazzard” Schneider plays a missing man seen only in flashbacks. There’s a teen girl drifting into drugs.

Whatever was going on on the set, incoherence duels incompetence in the finished product.

Technically, the editing plays up the sloppiness of the scriipt, and there’s a scene where there is “hair in the gate” flickering on the screen. I didn’t know that booboo was possible in the age of digital filmmaking.

Tense scenes are undercut by the clumsily telegraphed machinations that will get our heroes out of peril, much of the acting is blase, with one stand-out sing-songy “Never acted in a movie before” flash of utter incompetence.

Something tells me “Emerald Run” won’t be seeing much green.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence, bloody images and drug material

Cast: David Chokachi, Yancy Butler, Sean Burgos, Steven Williams, Michael Paré, John Schneider, Vernon Wells and Chris Mulkey

Credits: Directed by Eric Etebari, script by Anthony Caruso and Marialisa Caruso. A Magnifacat Media release.

Running time: 1:30

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is a sumptuous period piece about passion, feminine independence and painting set in a world of bustles and bodices and ladies wearing Empire waist.

Like the process of portrait painting it depicts, it’s a patient, drawn-out affair, a tale with an ending we see long before the last brush stroke is applied to canvas.

Noémie Merlant is Marianne, a painter we meet as she poses for the young ladies studying under her what to notice, what to sketch next, details they need to pick up on to paint.

Such powers of observation have served Marianne, who learned from her father, well. In a long flashback, we see when those skills of observation served her best — taking on the portrait of a reluctant bride intended for her Italian husband-to-be.

There’s a mystery to this place and this young woman. Marianne arrives by ship’s longboat, having had to rescue her crate of canvases when they fell overboard. Her subject has just come home from a convent. Her subject’s sister just died. And her subject refused to pose for the previous painter who attempted a portrait, which he abandoned — headless — before he disappeared.

“She wore out one painter before you,” the young woman’s mother (Valeria Golino of “Rain Man”) warns (in French and occasionally Italian, with English subtitles). So the daughter cannot know why Marianne is here other than to be a companion. She will have to walk, talk and visit with Heloise (Adèle Haenel) and enlist the help of the only servant (Luàna Bajrami) if she’s to pull this stealth portraiture off.

Heloise is introduced from behind, her head covered on first meeting. Over the course of weeks, Marianne must study her and recite her studies in interior monologues about “the ear, its cartilage” and the like, surreptitiously sketching when her back is turned or sketching from memory back in her room.

When she complains “I haven’t seen her smile,” to Sophie the maid, Sophie’s response changes everything.

“Have you tried to be funny?”

Heloise misses the “equality” of the convent she was yanked out of, is sad that she’s lost her sister but furious that her death means “leaving me her fate” — marrying some Milanese noble she’s never met.

Their interactions grow more sympathetic and unguarded, even as Marianne continues to hide her true purpose. The remoteness of the house, the intimacy of the conversations, the prolonged “study” of each other’s mannerisms, tics and “tells” set the stage for love.

French writer-director Céline Sciamma doesn’t rush any of this, but that doesn’t keep us from leaping ahead in the story. Heloise declaring she likes to “bathe” in the sea, but doesn’t know if she can swim adds a touch of danger, but just that — only a touch.

She’s trying to create a sensual experience, but her shot selection doesn’t emphasize and aid that until the film’s third act. We watch Marianne paint, but the camera doesn’t mimic her eye for Heloise’s eyebrows, neck and eyes.

The painting stays in the foreground, even as the masquerade breaks down. Marianne has trouble getting her countenance just so, and Heloise knows it.

“I didn’t know you were an art critic!”

“And I didn’t know you were a painter!”

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” spreads its “independence” and “equality” messaging over several characters and gives these themes many forms. As you’ve probably heard, the 18th century’s methods for abortion come into play.

But even those scenes lack much in the way of emotion. Drama is here. You just have to concentrate to pick up on it.

The performances are subtle, rarely giving in to simmering. That and the film’s literal reliance on art, as it is made, slows the picture to a crawl.

It’s still a lovely character study in a lovely setting, even if the romance rarely achieves the urgency or heat to truly animate this “portrait.”

MPAA Rating: R for some nudity and sexuality

Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami and Valeria Golino

Credits: Scripted and directed by Céline Sciamma. A Neon release.

Running time: 2:01

Another version of “The Most Dangerous Game” with “liberal elites” hunting “red state conservatives” for sport.

It was delayed after assorted gun nut mass shootings last year. “Conservative” elites?

It’ll dominate Fox “news” coverage in March. Betcha money.

Film critics and other “elites will be spending the weeks after March 13 explaining “satire” to the uninitiated. And repeating the fact that this is a fictional movie, not a documentary.

A robust holiday weekend at the box office is mostly due to video game nostalgia as “Sonic the Hedgehog” pulls in kids, parents and sentimental gamers. A decent Thursday night and a big Friday point to a total of $55-$60 million by end of business Monday.

“Birds of Prey” will clear the $55 million mark…total…on its second weekend as it adds another $19 or so. Over $61 by midnight Monday.

Blumhouse’s horror (PG-13) take on “Fantasy Island” is on its way past $15 million, with the romance “The Photograph” clearing $13 and probably edging the blockbuster “Bad Boys for Life” for fourth place.

“Downhill” has an uphill battle to reach $7 million. $6.5 maybe.

ttps://deadline.com/2020/02/sonic-the-hedgehog-birds-of-prey-will-ferrell-downhill-valentines-day-box-office-1202860119/

“Fantasy Island” is showing in a Florida beach town cinema filled with retirees.

It doesn’t matter that they don’t know from “Blumhouse,” and have no idea what they’re in for. This is the way it meant to be seen, not so much because they’re old enough to remember the soapy, has-been star-studded TV show of the ’70s, but because horror studio Blumhouse has re-imagined it as a grim tale of grappling with regrets.

“Regret is a disease,” our host, Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña) tells his guests.

And whatever young horror fans have among the things in life they wish they could do over, it takes some years to compile genuine remorse over misdeeds, paths not taken and the like.

I didn’t hate this slaughter-at-the-soap opera reboot. Not until it goes seriously off the rails in the third act, anyway. But don’t get your “torture porn” hopes up with the word “slaughter.” It is PG-13, after all. And this isn’t “Hostel.”

The guests are a lonely woman (Maggie Q) dwelling on the man she turned down and the life that got away, the cop who was a soldier’s son and longs to play-act like he’s in the military (Austin Stowell), two brothers by different mothers (Jimmy O. Yang and Ryan Hansen) who want to sample the hedonism and excess of great wealth with an epic pool-party filled with models and the embittered 20something (Lucy Hale) who wants revenge on her high school tormentor (Portia Doubleday) ten years after the fact.

The rules are that they must “see the fantasy through.” They can’t bail, even as they find themselves learning things they don’t want to know about who they are.

“I’m sorry, is this a vacation or a therapy session?”

“It can be BOTH…This is Fantasy Island. It’s as real as you make it.”

What they experience are a collection of fairly humdrum life do-overs or facile dreams of excess. Mr. Roarke is always there, hands in his white linen pockets (Peña has none of Ricardo Montalban’s smarmy, menacing elegance), offering pithy aphorisms as teachable moments.

“I am afraid that the problem with ‘having it all’ is that other people want to take it!”

I am afraid the biggest problem with “Fantasy Island” is the screenplay’s fixation on EXPLAINING how all this is possible. The arriving guests may speculate on drugged drinks and LARP (live action role-players) and “holograms, just like Tupac!” The “answer” is far dumber and eats up the entire third act.

The characters are blandly interesting, the engineering of how their fantasies might overlap is clever right up to the moment it isn’t, but the dialogue is flippant and often funny.

“Oooo, a ‘panic room.’ I feel like Jodie Foster in that Jodie Foster movie!”

The moments of peril seem like “Saw” outtakes, and the big “EXPLANATION” could bring Harlan Ellison back from the grave for another lawsuit.

Will there be a sequel? Don’t bet against it. Me? I’m just waiting on Blumhouse’s “The Love Boat.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, terror, drug content, suggestive material and brief strong language

Cast: Michael Peña, Lucy Hale, Maggie Q, Austin Stowell, Portia Doubleday, Jimmy O. Yang, Ryan Hansen and Michael Rooker

Credits: Directed by Jeff Wadlow, script by Jillian Jacobs, Christopher Roach and Jeff Wadlow  A Blumhouse/Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 1:50

Silly Germans. Don’t they know only Judd Apatow can get away with a comedy with a two hour run time?

And even he only pulls it off every third or fourth movie.

“Isi & Ossi” is an old fashioned screwball romance about two crazy kids from different classes who “date” to rub her rich parents the wrong way.

That’s straight out of 1930s Hollywood. And in case you’ve forgotten what was going on in Germany in the 1930s, the older characters in this farce remind you.

“Democracy is crap, and I was around for Hitler!” is slightly funnier in the original German, although you can watch/listen to this dubbed, if you so choose. It’s disorienting to hear African-American English speaking voices dubbing the Aryan rappers in a Mannheim rap battle, but to each her/his own.

Isi (Lisa Vicari) is a pretty young rich thing — real name, Isabel — who “has the brains of a gummy bear.” She’s just finished high school and is resisting her “trust fund” parents’ efforts to shove her into college. Her only talent is cooking, which she picked up from the staff at home.

Finding out Mom Felicity Huffman’d her high school degree and her admission to college settles it. She’s in open revolt. She takes a job at Tommy’s Burgers, where “It’s been proven our food makes people blind and impotent.”

That’s where she meets Osi — real name, Oscar (Dennis Mojen) — a brutish working class East German who sees a way out of his family’s money-losing gas station with his fists. He’s a boxer who needs sponsor cash to get his “big break” fight.

Isi comes on to him to rattle her folks and open their wallets for New York culinary school tuition. She’s not very good at this throwing herself at a guy thing, and he’s no good at courtship. Too crude, coarse, profane and hot-headed.

His Arabic pal (Walid Al-Atiyat) counsels the “Rocky” approach — “Can you give a compliment? Rocky smothered Adrian in compliments! ADRIAN!”

But when Isi and Ossi come clean with their schemes, the die is cast. They’ll scam her parents by being the Couple from Hell, scaring them into paying him off and sending her to New York.

How you stretch that thin, worn-out comedy concept to two hours is you let almost every scene go on past its comic payoff, you shove in a little tender confessional moment or two with the parents, and you remember the best thing about The Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night.” You add a hilarious grandpa.

Ernest Stötzner plays Oscar’s Gramps, fresh out of prison, hellbent on becoming a rapper.

“Didn’t you SEE ‘8 Mile?'”

Give the old man a shot at a rap battle, find your movie’s biggest laughs. Get Grandpa drunk and ranting about “Hipsters” and “A-rabs” and “that fairy, Hitler,” and at least you’ve got what passes for comedy here.

The bull in the China shop Ossi “courtship” stuff has a chuckle here and there — Tschüchin, the Arab friend, turns an art gallery show inside out in the crudest “Everybody’s a critic” way.

But mostly, “Isi & Ossi” is a reminder that the Germans aren’t famous for their sense of humor, even if they have finally gotten around to making their own Hitler jokes.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Lisa Vicari, Dennis Mojen, Ernest Stötzner and Walid Al-Atiyat.

Credits: Written and directed by Oliver Kienle. A Neflix release.

Running time: 1:53

The fanatic is unyielding in his beliefs, unbending in his attention to religious edicts and prayer-time.

He has heard the word “apostate” and the word “bitch.” And he’s taking matters into his own hands.

He is methodical as he wraps paper towels in tape, a DIY sheath for the paring knife he stuffs into his sock. He’ll knock on her door and…problem solved!

But this dead-eyed, dogmatic would-be killer is young. “Young Ahmed” looks to be about 15.

The latest thriller from Belgium’s Dardennes Brothers (“Two Days, One Night,” “The Promise”) is quietly chilling and subtly disheartening. It’s about a radicalized child, a state and a “system” that does everything “right” to compassionately change his heart. And time and again, we see those interventions just aren’t working.

The Dardennes discovered Idir Ben Addi who becomes EveryTeen in this, his debut film. Ahmed is dyslexic, so he requires after-school tutoring from Madame Ines (Myriem Akheddiou). His single mom (Clair Bodson) dotes on him. His older sister loves him.

But he’s spending all his time with the fiery young Imam (Othmane Moumen) and is almost wholly indoctrinated to the Islamic fundamentalism — no kissing or saying goodbye to women or girls, harsh judgement for “infidels” and “apostates.”

That he’s able to manage this in spite of every woman in his life reaching out, begging, arguing and even (in the case of sister Yasmine) pummeling him is a wonder.

Calling his mother “askarji” (a drunk) isn’t the last straw. She doesn’t even speak the language, but she knows an insult when she hears is. And that darned nuisance Madame Ines is starting an Arabic class so that Belgian Muslim kids can learn their parents’ language without getting that indoctrinating instruction “through the Koran” has Ahmed, his somewhat less fanatical brother and “plants” in the community meeting about the class pushing back against this blasphemous act. Ahmed puts the exclamation point on the debate.

“Your new boyfriend is a Jew!”

That’s when the kid crosses over, procures that paring knife and sets out to silence Madame Ines, if not every every woman who doesn’t adhere to his and his Iman’s doctrinaire idea of Islam, Arabic and women’s role in it.

“Young Ahmed” is mostly about what happens after that attempt — the detention center where he’s sent, the counselors and psychologist who try to accommodate his beliefs while teaching him empathy — getting him to tutor another boy in French, putting him to work on the farm dealing with animals, with a farm family and with their cute farm daughter Louise (Victoria Bluck).

Filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne set us up for predictable twists, and don’t always avoid delivering the expected payoff. Mostly, they do, maintaining suspense, keeping us guessing about whether or not any of this compassion is rubbing off on the kid.

Addi plays Ahmed as poker-faced, avoiding eye contact, on-task and losing himself in the structure and narrow path his passion for Islam gives him. He is every “rebellious” teen you’ve ever dealt with — with the stubborn certitude of one too young to know all that he doesn’t know.

Like its anti-hero, “Young Ahmed” is narrow in focus, intimate in detail and troubling in its monomania. Start to finish, it forces one despairing question on us, one it cannot answer.

Can “Young Ahmed” be saved?

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Idir Ben Addi, Clair Bodson, Myriem Akheddiou, Victoria Bluck, and Othmane Moumen

Credits: Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne A Kino Lorber release.

Running time: 1:24

Projections are for the video game adaptation “Sonic the Hedgehog” to draw in gamers and parents with small kids to the tune of $50 million this weekend. As we got no data on Thursday night previews, we will not have a better idea until late Friday.

That’s good news for Paramount, which sets this one up as a franchise, thanks to a teaser at the end.

Mixed Reviews greet this crap script, James Marsden reprising his “get this animated costar to safety” turn from “Hop,” but at least Jim Carrey lands a much needed hit.

The soulful Buppy romance “The Photograph” is the best date movie option this Valentine’s Day. It’s on a lot of screens and could clear $12-15 according to Deadline.com

Good reviews should help.

“Fantasy Island” was hidden from critics, and a torture porn riff on an ancient TV series isn’t a sure thing at the box office. Maybe $7.

Mixed reviews for the remake of “Force Majeure” starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Dark comedy about a marriage wrecked on a ski trip? “Downhill” is hard sell on V Day.Maybe $4 or $5 million is the best they can hope for.

How far will “Birds of Prey” plummet? Are “Bad Boys” finally aging out of cineplexes? Stay tuned.

https://deadline.com/2020/02/onward-invisible-man-sonic-the-hedgehog-fantasy-island-ben-affleck-way-back-1202859288/