Movie Nation

Imagine, if you will, something like a Key & Peele riff on a particularly blasphemous Monty Python Nativity sketch, rendered in the most profane Portugeuse.

That’s “A Primeira Tentação de Cristo,” a comedy special by Brazil’s Portos dos Fundos comedy Youtube channel. The English translation of the title? “The First Temptation of Christ.”

It’s bawdy, crude and manic, and it’s offensive enough to inspire “cancel Netflix” movements in certain corners of the world.

And by the way, it’s pretty damned funny, too. It pokes fun at religions in general, Christianity in particular, with a “people will believe anything” jocularity. It riffs on Brazilian homophobia and a vengeful, irresponsible “absentee father” God Almighty.

“Absent father? I’m OMNIPRESENT!”

Yeah, you’ve got to read subtitles to get the jokes — most of them. But the energy and liberating mockery of it all win you over.

The Three Kings/Wise Men are shlepping back to Bethlehem — “Are they still in that place with the manger?” — OK, NAZARETH then, with more gifts.

They kvetch about all the fun they could be having in Mykonos, on a Greek beach. They’re cheaping out on the gifts — flowers plucked along the way,”Myrrh, again?” Melchior’s brought his famous ham and cheese sandwich. Only an IDIOT woud bring pork as a gift, right?

“I said HAM.”

They arrive and realize this year it’s to be a surprise party for the Son of God. He’s 30. He’s off in the desert, but he’ll be back any minute. Have a drink!

“There’s no wine because Jesus hasn’t got around to doing miracles, yet,” Joseph (Rafael Portugal) complains.

The unruly family mingles and mills about. There’s a synethesizer playing a little dance music. But “Uncle Vittorio” (Antonio Tabet) is here and threatens to ruin the entire evening. He thinks it’s time to have “the talk” with Jesus, tell him that he’s his real father.

That’s right, the guy Mary (Evelyn Castro) has been passing off as an “uncle” is God Almighty. Well, at least he brought cake.

“NO ANGELS were harmed in the making of it,” he jokes. Joseph isn’t having it.

“That joke’s so old Noah told it!”

That’s the tenor of things here, poking, teasing, lightly mocking. Yes, Jesus was just in the desert “finding himself.” Yes, he came back with a special friend, Orlando (Fábio Porchat).

Yes, the family’s entirely too concerned, tactlessly so, about his sexual orientation. Jesus (Gregório Duvivier) is sure they’ve been reading his diary.

“Am I to be the ONLY one who can’t have a relationship? Is it a CRIME for a boy to have dreams? About a cousin?”

Jesus has visions that include a chat with other dieties — Shiva, Buddha, Haile Selassie and a Lizard Man from Scientology (I guess).

That’s the only gutless thing in “The First Temptation.” No ridicule for The Prophet? THAT would be edgy. Next year, take a shot at Ramadan.

“Temptation” is basically an overlong sketch leaning heavily on Christianity, stereotypes — got to convince the Hebrews a ham & cheese is made from soy, slaughtered in the kosher Shechita tradition — and the whole “They can’t SAY that, can they?” incorrectness of it all.

But the pacing, the in-your-face energy of “The First Temptation” put it over. If you’re easily offended about anything described above, it’s not for you. Watch something else.

And Portos de Fundos? We’re waiting for that Ramadan special.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, touchy content

Cast: Evelyn Castro, Gregório Duvivier, Fábio Porchat, Rafael Portugal, Antonio Tabet

Credits: Directed by Rodrigo Van Der Put. An MPCA/Netflix release.

Running time: 46 minutes

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a man who may or may not be a serial killer in “Awake,” a thriller that promises to start quickly and find a fresh twist or two by the end, and fails at both.

We meet his character on a rural Oklahoma road, see him chased by a Land Rover and run off that road. When he wakes up, covered in bandages and in the hospital, he can’t remember who he is.

But a tippling FBI agent (Malik Yoba of TV’s “First Wives Club”) and his old pal, a local sheriff (veteran character actor William Forstythe) find a body in the guy’s trunk. “John Doe” might be the guy killing all these girls along the Texas/Oklahoma border.

“John” barely has enough time to register all this, and certainly doesn’t have the time to charm his nurse (Francesca Eastwood) into helping him escape.

“Whatta you suggest I do? Go to the PO-lice? Oh, they’ll help me…all the way to a lethal INJECTION!”

She becomes his hostage. He forgets his accent. And they’re on the run from the PO-lice, hunting for “the real killer,” just like OJ.

Yoba and Forsythe have an easy chemistry, playing old pals who refuse to judge each other (drinking on the job, etc.).

“What you think of me is none of my damn business!”

Eastwood makes a pretty convincing nurse, earthy and warm. The part is undemanding, even when the script makes far-fetched leaps for her character to cross. She’s a bit too “real” though — bland. There’s little here that suggests the intuition that must be why she buys into this guy’s “I can’t have done this.”

Meyers generally gives fair value, and he does a passable job of suggesting “frantic” even as this “John” fellow betrays an instinctive revulsion for harming others. There’s no chemistry between the two. Perhaps Meyers is wary of her old man.

“Awake” serves up a decent tussle or two, an awful murder and a few righteous kills. As the picture progresses, it almost draws one in — eventually.

But then the finale, all flashback “explanations” and actions we see coming long before they play out, finishes the job the dead early chapters started.

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Francesca Eastwood, Malik Yoba, Jamews Austin Kerr and William Forsythe

Credits: Directed by Aleksandr Chernyaev, Fedor Lyass, script by Elana Zeltser. A Cinedigm release.

Running time: 1:30

If he is making just one more feature film, he doesn’t want it to be a franchise popcorn pic based on a TV series.

R-rated or not, “Tarantino-esque” Trek. Not happening.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/quentin-tarantino-backs-away-his-star-trek-movie-1263001

A young violinist comes to terms with her estranged father’s past in this Jan. 10 release.

The recent “Star Wars” reboots have left me a bit cold — delighted by “Rogue One,” well-cast, a story with real life-or-death stakes — unimpressed by “Solo,” underwhelmed by the J.J. Abrams storyline and casting.

But I’m optimistic. I tend to like concluding chapters if they give us a fond farewell.

Wonder if (a) Baby Yoda will make an appearance? Because “giving the people what they want” is paramount in this Disney series.

One rabbit hole that the shift of movie reviewing to an online profession can send you down is Google letting you know what questions people are asking when they track down a film review.

The most common? “X, Y or Z movie ending explained.” Lots of movies confuse people, and if you’ve invested the time in watching it, by George SOMEbody better be able to explain it.

My reviews contain a lot of details so I get this a lot. No, they aren’t “spoilers” if you’re summarizing the overall plot, and give away as little as possible from the last half to two-thirds of a movie. So I no doubt have disappointed readers trying to track down clues to unraveling “Beneath the Leaves,” to mention one title that I’ve seen this tracking data on. A LOT of people were thrown by that one.

“She’s Missing” is another that’s going to frustrate viewers. It’s a vague, dreamy missing person thriller that doesn’t really belong in any of those genres. And its finale can be taken in Depeche Mode terms (“Your own…personal…JE-sus!”), as a control/power trip exercise or something more hallucinatory and existential.

Beats me. And I’ve been doing this since LAST LA Olympics.

Willowy Lucy Fry from TV’s “Godfather of Harlem” and “11.22.63” miniseries dresses down as Heidi, a truck stop waitress in the middle of nowhere in the desert Southwest. Heidi’s a shrinking violet in the presence of her best friend, the vivacious and outspoken Jane (Eiza González of last summer’s “Hobbes & Shaw”).

“Heidi’s a YES girl,” Jane teases.

Heidi has settled here for reasons unknown. Jane sure as hell doesn’t get why ANYbody would want to live there. She’s got plans — small plans — to get out.

“I’m gonna be rodeo queen! I’m gonna marry Taylor…get a big house…travel the world!”

Jane proceeds to do almost exactly what her determined little heart desires. She gets into the pageant, where her speech has fire to it. “Who thinks they were born for MORE than this?”

She closes the deal with Taylor, because he’s enlisted and is about to deploy. We join Heidi at their wedding as she and we pick up on Jane’s mercenary side. Him saying “It’s YOU I’m going to be fighting for” isn’t anything she takes seriously. Jane has base housing and that’s what matters to her. She even brushes off Heidi.

Heidi is challenged by the same false duality on several occasions, the “two types of people in this world” trope.

And then, as the movie’s title implies, Jane goes missing.

Heidi’s odyssey in search of a missing person has a languid quality which tells us this hunt isn’t really what writer-director Alexandra McGuiness is interested in making her movie about.

Heidi’s personal journey begins as that “yes girl” who backed into a “relationship” with an older man (Christian Camargo) who was/is married and is VERY touchy about what he does for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (“You set up those camps? Why do you DO that job?”).

She’s concerned about Jane because she’s had encounters with people looking for missing daughters. There’s even a billboard for some missing “some rich girl” right next to the truck stop where she works.

She can’t get anybody else interested or alarmed, not even Jane’s estranged mother, who calls her own flesh and blood a manipulative “little switch” and dismisses Heidi’s concerns.

There are just enough clues, or at least introductions, to push us towards what really happened here; the odd crowd Jane was mixed up with (Sheila Vand, Josh Harnett), the last places she was seen, drugs, other missing women.

But the payoff that Irish writer-director McGuinness (“Lotus Eaters”) gets around to — eventually — is hazy, cheesy and frustratingly abrupt. She has no idea how to resolve all this, so she has everybody pontificating, theorizing and psychoanalyzing.

Still, the leads are compelling and the emptiness of the milieu tells its own story of frustrating isolation and thwarted dreams and ambitions.

McGuiness, the daughter of U-2 impressario Paul McGuiness, got Irish Film Board money to make this, and that was money flushed down an Irish drain. Whatever she was getting at, she doesn’t really get at it.

And if you’re here looking to unravel “What this was all about,” I feel your pain.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with substance abuse and sexual content

Cast: Lucy Fry,  Eiza González, Christian Camargo and Josh Hartnett

Credits: Written and directed by Alexandra McGuinness.  A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:40

“Good Sam” is a “Pay it Forward” style “feel-good” weeper that lacks only the weeping — and the feeling good — to come off.

Unemotional, mostly uninvolving and seriously underwhelming, it takes a mild-mannered story about an anoynmous good Samaritan and renders it into flavorless mush.

Tirya Sircar stars as Kate Bradley, a third-generation Indian-American TV reporter in NYC, daughter of a state senator, a real go-getter who will grab the camera herself when she’s the only one who can sneak past police lines to get footage of the Big Fire.

That recklessness alarms the boss (Mark Camacho), who assigns her to the puff piece beat. And that’s where she’s tipped into this “feel good story.” SOMEbody is giving New Yorkers in need bags of $100,000.

The first lady, a good Catholic, wants “everyone to know miracles happen!”

Another wants to share her story, only “If you bring a camera, I won’t open the door.”

FYI, TV reporters and reporters-in-general HATE that.

The donations get publicized, the “good people” who receive the cash start paying it forward.

“It’s like Good Sam’s generosity is contagious!”

But who IS he? Fakers show up, cynical copycats.

Kate cannot let this go, even as she gets the attention of a serious-minded fireman (Chad O’Connell) and a stiff politico (Marco Grazzini) from her senator-father’s world.

Long review short here, “Good Sam” doesn’t make the mystery compelling enough to stick with the picture. And yeah, it’s obvious.

And it doesn’t make the romance romantic, the “Who WILL she end up with?” part. Yeah, that’s obvious, too.

Bland performances of bland characters in a bland story. Not so “Good,” this “Good Sam.”

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Tiya Sircar, Chad Connell, Mark Camacho, Marco Grazzini

Credits: Directed by Kate Melville, script by Dete Meserve, Teena Booth, based on a Dete Merserve novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

Kind of pins you back in your seat. Little bit.

“Spies in Disguise” is an animated action comedy, “Mission: Impossible” with one-liners and sight gags galore.  It’s a violent film with “there’s got to be a better (non-violent) way” messaging, a pretty funny torture joke and lots of written graphics.

So, maybe it’s not for LITTLE kids.

The casting for such a genre picture is “on the nose,” as we say. Will Smith as a suave, tux wearing spy? Sure. EveryVillain Ben Mendelsohn as the bad guy? Tom “Spider-Man” Holland as a manic gadget guru? Rashida Jones as leader of the team chasing the “gone rogue” spy around the world? You could leave out the animation and totally sell this package.

The only part that really needs animation is the fact that agent Lance Sterling (Smith) gets turned into a pigeon.

The plot — Sterling is trying to keep this super-secret/hunter-killer drone out of the hands of supervillains. He’s framed as a guy trying to steal it for himself, and that puts Marcy Kappel (Jones) and her Eyes (Karen Gillan of “Jumanji”) and Ears (DJ Khaled) team on his tail. His boss (Reba McEntire) can’t save him.

In the Bond-by-way-of-Tarantino opening gambit, Sterling takes on legions of Yakuza in a Japanese mobster’s lair. So he’s going to be difficult to catch.

Still, he has to turn to the gadget guy he got fired after the yakuza fight. Walter (Holland) has been inventing spyware since childhood, the film’s prologue shows us. His big ideas are all non-violent violence — a Kitty Glitter bomb to distract, well, EVERYbody because it’s a kitten image painted in glitter, air-bag gadgets to protect you when threated, etc.

That’s the conflict here. Sterling, with his “Evil doesn’t care if you’re nice” and “Can’t save the world with hugs” ethos, Walter with his “When we fight fire with fire, we both get burned” morality.

“Millennials!”

Their debate moves to the next level when Sterling, looking to “become invisible,” accidentally swallows Walter’s genetic mutation serum and becomes a version of Walter’s beloved pet — a pigeon. Sterling, who must circle the globe, knock heads and hunt down robot-handed heavy Killian (Mendelsohn), is appalled.

But Walter is an encyclopedia of counter-arguments. Pigeons ARE invisible. They’re everywhere, Mexico to Venice, “rats with feathers” who can reach speeds of 90 miles an hour, have 360 degree vision and are a lot smarter than you think.

It’s funny how the animators set out to do exaggerated versions of the “real” people voicing the characters, for the most part. The caricatures of Smith, Holland, Mendelsohn, McEntire and especially Rashida Jones are spot on, right down to eye color.

And like a live action spy comedy, there’s Audi product placement shoved in there, in cartoon form.

The violence isn’t entirely slapstick. And the jokes have an adult edge that will fly right by most kids. Walter, who accompanies Pigeon Sterling on his quest, comes up with his own spy name — “Bond. HYDROGEN bond!”

Sterling, Mr. “I fly SOLO,” isn’t keen on “team.”

“READ what used to be my LIPS!”

Battling the killer drone plays on a cute design similtarity, especially after Sterling’s covered its electronic eye.

“Not so easy NOW, is it Roomba?”

And then there’s the comic suggestion of water-boarding, served up when Sterling needs to extract information out of someone.

“I need a funnel, jumper cables and a NICKELBACK album!”

Smith’s easy way with a joke keeps the tone light, and for all the mayhem, this is still pretty fluffy and cute. It’s not “The Incredibles,” but it’s a reasonable and quite amusing facsimile.

And if the wee ones are going to grow up to be “Bond, JAMES Bond fans,” they’ve got to start somewhere.

MPAA Rating: Rated PG for action, violence, and rude humor 

Cast: The voices of Will Smith, Tom Holland, Rashida Jones, Reba McEntire, DJ Khaled, Karen Gillan and Ben Mendelsohn.

Credits: Directed by Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, script by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor.  A Fox release, a Blue Sky film.

Running time: 1:41

Well, isn’t this the most adorable damned concert doc you ever saw?

“Spirits of the Forest” captures Depeche Mode at the finale to their 2017-18 “Global Spirit” in Berlin. It’s a multi-media spectacle in the modern concert style, with the fellows showing their years and miles, but still tight and lead singer David Gahan still in fine voice.

But it’s a show basically as seen by a chosen half-dozen of their most devoted fans, people mostly in their 30s and 40s who relate what the music has meant to them, music they’re passing on to their children or in one case, have passed down by their Internet concert-watching dad in Outer Mongolia.

They are from France and Berlin (by way of Brazil), Colombia, Romania, Los Angeles and Mongolia.

One had grueling bouts of depression and even amnesia. Another had a breast cancer scare, after growing up as the only black kid in her school who listened to Depeche Mode.

One had to leave his homeland to find the courage to come out. Another group up under totalitarianism. One divorced and saw his kids move far away.

And did I mention on is in Mongolia, for Pete’s Sake?

The thing that connects them, got them through, is the music of the band whose dark, electronic-flavored tunes range from cute (“Just Can’t Get Enough”) to droll and edgy (“Personal Jesus”).

A Depeche Mode show “is like going to the best church you’ve never been to,” one of our narrators declares.

Colombian Dicken bonded with his kids over their cute Youtube covers or the band’s songs done on toy instruments, which gave them a global following.

LA Liz endured her chemo with the New Wave faves of her youth.

Concert doc vet turned feature director (“Control,” “The American”) Anton Corbijn captures the drama of a show in Berlin, “the Depeche Mode capital of the world,” epic sing alongs to “Never Let Me Down Again,” “All I Ever Wanted” or “People are People.”

The concert footage is very much of a piece with all the other New Wave bands still touring, with Gahan’s theatricality making up for bandmates who were never all that animated when they were young rock stars.

I was never much of a fan of that whole synth-drenched era, to be honest. But their songs stand out enough to make them worth revisiting for their sophistication, dark sexuality, depth and occasional political relevance. Gahan singing their recent single, “Where’s the Revolution, come on people you’re letting me down” stings.

The tunes hold up and these fans, in Corbijn’s brisk, short and sweet film, give you a hint as to why they’re still a big deal and what they get out of a band that makes them relevent enough to keep them coming back, and to want to pass that passion on to their kids.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Indra Amarjargal, Daniel Cassus, Cristian Flueraru,Carine Puzena, Dicken Schrader and Depeche Mode

Credits: Directed by Anton Corbijn, with John Merizalde and Pasqual Gutierrez. A 1091 release.

Running time: 1:20