Movie Nation

My hat is off to any filmmaker who attempts a period piece, and the look and feel of “The Riot Act” is striking and believably late 19th century.

A tale of love, murder and revenge that borrows from “Hamlet,” it’s a bit of a stiff as a thriller, despite the attention to detail, the lovely pools of light much of the action (onstage and off) is photographed in.

Veteran character actor Brett Cullen stars as Dr. Pearrow, who lords over the small  city (Arkansas, Missouri would be a fair guess) where his stern word is law and his money talks.

He owns the local opera house, thanks to his lucrative practice. And when we meet him, he’s bawling out a tenor (Brace Harris) who has had the temerity to come-on to the doctor’s daughter. Jamison, the singer, is married, just another actor passing through town.

“If I were you, I would catch that late train tonight!”

Yeah, he will. But Allye Pearrow makes her getaway to join him, only to be wounded when her monstrous father guns down Jamison in her arms.

Two years later, a mysterious vaudeville troop has been booked at the opera house, where jack-of-all-trades “foreman” August (Connor Price) is good enough to do everything from book acts to sweeping up, but not good enough to warrant free passes to the shows he books.

And his grudge against the boss is nothing compared to the one a masked member of a “dumb” (no dialogue) act in the show carries. She’s got a British accent that comes and goes. Arkansas finds its way in there, now and then.

It’s ALLYE! And as she’s part of an act in which a duo carries out a very realistic shooting, we can see where this thing is going WAY too early.

Lauren Sweetster of “Winter’s Bone” and “Get Happy!” plays Allye, and the fact that she’s a dead-ringer for Cybill Shepherd probably gets her plenty of call-backs.

The script doesn’t give her a lot of chances to show us much, and she makes little of those opportunities. It’s a glum character given a one-note (and a dull note) performance.

There’s this very theatrical storyline that has Dr. Pearrow tormented by anavenger, masked in burlap, backstage at the theater. A “ghost” is haunting a guilt-ridden man, and there’s a show going on with a play within the play promising a finale we’ve seen set up far too early for its own good.

“Hamlet.”

Which suits, because this is a very stagey show — actors “speechifying” because that’s what the script gives them to perform.

“My father has never seen far enough past himself to SEE his daughter!”

Writer-director Devon Park, who still counts his internship in the camera department on “The Help” as a highlight among his credits (short films), even filmed this like a play — that “pool of light” thing I mentioned.

There are non-starter script elements about “the progressive agenda” of this color blind vaudeville troupe (an African American strongman) and a potential love story between Allye and August.

A modicum of suspense, a lot of clever period props (a single-horn telephone, ancient light bulbs, vintage backstage gear) and a certain inevitability inform “The Riot Act,” a title which referred then, as now, to a British sedition law (I cannot find it was ever used as theater slang the way “dumb act” was).

Those virtues or at least characteristics don’t add up to much of a movie, which is a pity. That’s a lot of good period detail wasted.

Cast: Brett Cullen, Lauren Sweetser, Connor Price, Brandon Keener

Credits: Written and directed by Devon Park.  A Giant Films release.

Running time: 1:38

As New Zealand is a “bucket list” country for me, I’m always on the lookout for movies that show the islands, sans hobbits.

“Falling Inn Love” is a Christina Milian comedy about a San Francisco architect and “green” designer/builder who wins an inn on North Island in an Internet lottery.

Hey, they’re always giving away pubs in Britain and Ireland. Why not?

Thus, the stage is set for a fish-out-of-water comedy of the romantic sort. It has a few laughs, and even if the romance doesn’t have the sort of sparks that the best Netflix rom-coms manage and the supporting cast isn’t “colorful” enough to carry it, it’s just Kiwi enough to plow through.

I mean, how else are we going to get a load of idyllic New Zealand scenery, served up with a blast of Kiwi slang —“yakka,” “footie,” “The Wops,” “a squizz” — used, correctly, in sentences?

Gabriella (Milian, of “Be Cool” and TV’s “Grandfathered”) isn’t happy at work, dismissed at her firm, and uphappy in love. Longtime-beau Dean (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) is commitment-phobic.

And then, the company folds and Dean rebuffs her ultimatum. Winning this inn in Beachwood Downs sounds like the ideal rebound.

“Your dream life awaits you in New Zealand!”

And as she’s a “Leap, and a net will appear” type — she’s off. But on arrival, she’s put out that some random hunk (Adam Demos) keeps running into her and trying to sweep “in and save the day.”

Not having it.

The Bellbird Inn? “What the…dumpster?” Yeah, the internet lottery was a bit of a scam.

So we’re set up for a comedy of DIY home (“inn”) improvement set in “The Wops” (boondocks), clumsily driving the beat-up manual transmission Land Rover, with the most competent contractor in town that very same hunk whom she keeps running into.

“Why are you everywhere I am?”

I laughed at the odd moment, here and there. There’s a goat who figures he owns the place, a rival B & B owner and assorted hardware, plant nursery, cafe (a gay couple) folks who trot out that delightful slang people like me put so much stock in.

It’s shot and cut like a TV movie, with no real edge, a dollop of sentiment and generic obstacles and objects (old love letters) to move the story along. Milian remains an engaging screen presence, if not anything like a great comedienne.

A less bland script would have helped. More edge, more slang, more contrast between the city girl (woman) and the country film.

“Falling Inn Love” isn’t unpleasant. It’s only problem is that it’s not enough of anything else, either.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Christina Milian, Adam Demos, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman

Credits: Directed by Kumble, script by Elizabeth Hackett, Hilary Galanoy. A Netflix/MarVista release.

Running time:

It’s what you do until the power and wifi go out.

On a holiday weekend.

Christina Milian, Marlon Wayans, take me…away? From Dorian, at least.

That’s right, cramming screeners in between stripping the boat for a blow, searches for open restaurants and gas stations.

Nobody else on the Tomatomter or Metacritic or MRQE reviewer sites is as dedicated. Or as salty.

For those of us who a long way from Coney, baby.

Florida.

Recovering from injuries, becoming the greatest, strongest athletes or fighters — historical evidence, Schwarzenegger, the whole nine yards.

Every argument, in short, that suggests “meat builds strength” is “just marketing,” as Ahhnuld says.

Here’s a counter-argument to “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” and “MAN food” etc.

“The Game Changers” opens in New York and LA in late Sept.

Classes on “JK Living, y’all! Grades are on the ‘Awright awright awright’ scale.

“Matthew McConaughey joins University of Texas as faculty professor”

https://t.co/Aa5Uk95JE9 https://twitter.com/HoustonChron/status/1166770659126599680?s=17

Deaf kid befriends a fugitive in frigid North Dakota.

I used to live in North Dakota. This sort of “Great Expectations” thing happens all the time up there. The deaf twist offers interesting dramatic possibilities.

“The Parts You Lose” opens in theaters and VOD on Oct. 4.

A tale of Panama financial chicanery, with Streep as a widow investigating insurance fraud for personal reasons, and Oldman/Banderas as the rascals up to no good. A mid-Oct. release.  In theaters, and on Netflix.

Did I mention Steven Soderbergh directed it?

“Spider in the Web” is a well-crafted, reasonably cunning spy thriller starring Ben Kingsley as an aged Israeli agent on the hunt for proof of a company’s complicity in helping arm Syria with chemical and biological weapons.

It hangs on the urbane, wily charms of its star, on Kingsley’s ability to sell a warm anecdote, to look at home in any sophisticated setting, to play the man who knows a good Cohiba, a good cognac and a good intel “asset” when he sees one.

As he’s played such men, of varying degrees of cunning, since “Pascali’s Island,” it comes as no surprise that he pulls off this Antwerp antiques dealer-by-day, master spy-by-night chap with his usual aplomb.

A tale “inspired by true events,” this Israeli production is set during the period of the Syrian civil war when President for Life Assad was bombing his own people with chemical weapons.

Simon Bell, the cover name for Avram (Kingsley), is working his favorite source, an expat Syrian general. When the source says “The woman will lead you to it,” Avram/Simon takes it seriously.

“Forty years on the job, I don’t go looking for sense any more.”

His boss (Itzik Cohen) figures “It’s time to call it a day,” meaning Mossad has lost trust in the old spook’s sources and skills. But sending an escort, Daniel (Itay Tiran) to fetch him, at gunpoint, only shows how sharp Avram’s spycraft still is.

He sniffs out a hostile on a train with just a conversation over a John LeCarre novel, and dispatches him. He can still jump off a moving coach (the most far-fetched thing in the film), still flag down a farmer for a ride, and so knows the lay of the land he remembers a cozy hotel nearby.

Daniel, the son of a former colleague, watches as Avram works the desk clerk for a room, and listens to how one can tell if the restaurant’s chef’s food is up to snuff.

“You should be able to stand your spoon upright in a good pea soup!”

Turns out the owner (Hilde Van Mieghem) is an old source, too.

As Avram gives Daniel a tour of Belgium’s dining and spying hot spots, he is also working Daniel — seducing him — just as he works his latest contact, a doctor with ViRobe, the company the Israelis are investigating. Angela (Monica Bellucci) is not immune to the old master’s charms.

“You make love like you live life.”

“How’s that?”

“In despair!”

That’s your touchstone moment in “Spider in the Web.” Either you cringe at that corny old line and figure, “I’ll pass,” or you buy in. Sure, it’s dated. But so is most of the cast, the genre, the whole nuts-and-bolts of espionage on the big screen.

Even the plot device driving the story is WWI vintage — chemical warfare. It’s no surprise that Avram is a WWI era history buff. That late German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empire era was also the setting for “Pascali’s Island,” by the way.

This Eran Riklis (“Lemon Tree,” “Syrian Bride,” both worth Netflixing) film is a tale of tinkling cognac glasses, savored cigars, of squealing BMW tires, the “thunk-snap” of rounds being chambered, the “p-tiff, p-tiff” of pistols with silencers silencing this rival, that “traitor.”

The script gives Kingsley scene after raconteur scene, telling Daniel stories of his late father, the no-mistakes-allowed politics of Mossad, which can be fatal for non-Jews like Avram. He plays the “instinct” scenes like an old master, keeping a bottle handy for any security guard he sizes up as a Foreign Legionnaire, reciting the Legionnaire’s creed like the old comrade he can pretend to be.

If you love Kingsley, and you should, these moments are to be treated the way he treats that Cuban cigar — savored.

It’s a story too reliant on those moments, too dependent on coincidences and overfilled with examples of Avram’s hunches, instincts, back-engineered canniness and double-dealing. It all gets a bit murky by the third act.

But Sir Ben sells it and faithfully maintains our interest in what happens, and what happens to Avram, from first scene to last, a spy in his element, a “Spider in the Web.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Ben Kingsley, Monica Belluci, Itay Tiran, Itzik Cohen

Credits: Directed by Eran Riklis, script by Gidon Maron, Emmanuel Naccache. A Vertical release.

Running time: 1:53

Creepy and funny.

Fascinating.

October.