Movie Nation

We remember the boy.

Going on seventy years since “The 400 Blows” arrived on screens, one is still hard-pressed to think of a better performance by a child in a film.

James Dean and Jean-Paul Belmondo defined “rebellious youth” on film — the greatest punks in the cinema’s first recognitions of the type. But it took Jean-Pierre Léaud, just 14 when he shot the movie that made him immortal, to show us a punk-in-progress.

Little Antoine is into attention and mischief, an impulse-first/consequences-later child of a servicable if unhappy home, a school system with no tolerance for bad apples and a child welfare system that was nothing of the sort.

Putting a Tony Perkins/Tony Curtis child beauty in a turtleneck as he acts-up in class, cadges smokes, steals from family and strangers and sneaks into cinemas seals the deal. This is what cool looked like and now — an underage rejector of the status quo, a punk living on impulse, wits, passion and lies.

Truffaut’s 1959 masterpiece — recently restored — is appreciated for its sense of heedlessness, a freedom-relishing child rushing into adulthood without a clue what he’s in for but in a hurry to escape an intolerable present.

The kid is what we remember when we think of the title. But director of photography Henri Decaë’s gorgeously filmed snapshot of 1950s Paris wows us visually upon (4K restoration) reaquaintance, a true monochromatic masterpiece filmed in the almost-forgotten CineScope variant DyaliScope.

The critic-turned-director Truffaut made an unsentimental picaresque that can’t help but play as sentimental to a modern viewer, a period piece set, conceived and filmed in the period it sentimentalizes.

Antoine is “last in his class,” a kid who never quite seems to get around to doing his homework but who always has time to cut up to grab attention. He’s the one unlucky enough to be caught when a pinup calendar is passed around by his classmates. He’s the one dumb enough to escalate the matter, writing a bit of doggerel threatening the teacher (Guy Decomble) on the wall when he’s ordered to stand in the corner.

He’s a latchkey kid who takes a shot at his homework before Mom (Claire Maurier) gets home. But first there’s cash to snatch out of her stash. And when his joker of a Dad (Albert Rémy) rolls in, there’s another distraction and reason for not doing the assigned writing punishment.

“Ask your mother if a dish towel is on fire,” Dad jokes when she starts cooking. But some of his jokes have an edge. She’s beautiful enough to be out of his league and he’s suspicious.

The richer classmate René (Patrick Auffay) is his spirit guide to delaying exposure and punishment. They take off for a day of playing hooky, which Antoine explains away by saying “My mother died” (in French with English subtitles).

The reckoning for that and the threat of “military school” as punishment speeds this heedless kid down his Road to Nowhere. Dropping out, dropped into the juvenile justice system, he’s on the path to prison or Cannes Film Festival fame with this bad background in the making.

Truffaut, who co-wrote the script, suggested an autobiographical connection to his pint-sized hero and star, a boy who had his own issues with school at the time the movie was made. I’m guessing Léaud was far more of a punk than his mentor.

The complexities tossed into Antoine’s story veer between picaresque and melodramatic. He hides out in his pal’s father’s printing plant, then in the kid’s room where a pricey, collectible near-lifesize statue of a horse is stored. Antoine subsists on stolen bottles of milk and whatever René can slip under the nose of his rich, older father. Antoine has childish dreams of what one determined to grow up at 14 sees as his future, and thefts in mind to get him there.

Stealing tips from the men’s room attendant at the cinema is a no-no. But swiping a typewriter from his dad’s office is René’s idea. And when it goes wrong, it isn’t René who’s fingered.

Mom? She’s been cheating and the kid knows it. Dad’s gregarious nature can’t bear this suspicion and a “son” who isn’t even his who acts out as much as Antoine does.

Every element, from the daring to the conventional, sentimental and melodramatic, works.

And Léaud’s peformance for Truffaut set the standard for child performances to follow and Truffaut set the tone for how the best directors of children — his fan and “Close Encounters” director Spielberg, for instance — speak to kids and direct them.

Changing attitudes and the passing years make the movie’s frank treatment of the psychology of delinquency and suggestion that this “phase” shouldn’t mark children for life seem less daring than the film was upon release. But the lead performance and ultra-realism of the street scenes and street life captured here, rendered in beautiful images and “How’d they film THAT?” moments, make “The 400 Blows” ageless, a classic that can’t help but age life fine wine no matter how tastes, filmmaking styles and social mores evolve or devolve with the passage of time.

Rating: unrated, TV-14, violence, some nudity, children smoking, profanity

Cast:Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy, Patrick Auffay and Guy Decomble.

Credits: Directed by François Truffaut, scripted by François Truffaut and Marcel MoussyF A Janus Films/Criterion (restoration) release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:39

Amazon tacked the incorrect release date (2024) onto this scurvy dog (2017) which is why I watched it. That, and the sailboating subject matter.

There’s not much to recommend “The Boat Builder” beyond Christopher Lloyd almost colorfully playing a widowed old salt prepping an aged lapstrake wooden sloop for a final trip to sea.

The villainous children — punks who pick on “Crazy” Abner” and vandalize the boat — are over-the-top, leather jacketed preppy tweens — “Newsys” who don’t sing. They don’t exist in reality. The old man’s daughter (Jane Kaczmarek) badgers him by phone but seems to have no clue about his suicide-by-sea plans and no counter-argument at the ready.

And the child (Tekola Cornetet) who also gets bullied and begs the old man to let him help with the boat re-fitting is more makeup and $1600 hair style than performance.

Writer-director Arnold Grossman wrote one episode of “The Love Boat” and supposedly took a shot at landing Bruce Dern for the lead on this, his only feature film credit. He hasn’t been heard from again. I’m guessing this film’s nonsensical finale explains that.

One more time, Amazon (I would’ve known had I turned on Tubi). Put the correct release dates on your titles. Scores of older, unreleasable films passed off as “new.” Bad streamer.

Rating: TV-PG, profanity

Cast: Christopher Lloyd, Tekola Cornetet and Jane Kaczmarek

Credits: Scripted and directed by Arnold Grossman. A Shoreline Entertainment release on Tubi, Pluto, Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:28

The title of the touring exhibition “Giants,” featuring works by Gordon Parks and Jean-Michel Basquit, is a pun.

The musical power couple Alicia Keyes and Swizz Beatz have collected works by those familiar names in art history — “Giants.” And, as evidenced by the collection of statuary, installations, wall-covering paintings, blown-up photos, commissioned self-portraits and historical hip hop musical hardware (pioneer Kool Herc’s sound system), these two like their art BIG.

Vibrant colored paintings in a wide array of artistic styles and “movements” suggest African and African American history and art history in this eclectic collection which screams, “Honey, we’re going to need a higher ceiling” after each purchase.

They are artists and arts supporters and there is nothing here that says “shrinking violet.” Everything practically shouts itself off the walls.

I generally disdain oversized artworks like this, tracing back to my lifelong loathing for the oversized art of Joan Miro. But self-indulgent (Hanging your favorite bikes, Mr. Beatz, as art?) as some of what we see plainly is, there’s an artistic eye in evidence and a mission statement inherent in it.

The Basquiat is a lesser work, a scrawled caricature and “name” painted appreciation of Langston Hughes — probably the cheapest Basquiat any collector could afford these days. Reminded me of what Basquiat mentor Andy Warhol (played by David Bowie) said to young Jean-Michel in the ’96 bio-pic about the mercurial New York artist.

“It’s not very good, is it?”

But the photography is a dazzling showcase of Gordon Parks and one of his heir apparents — Brooklynite and New York chronicler Jamel Shabazz.

And the scale of everything we see, from mural-sized replications of South African township decor to a Nick Cave statue, can’t help but awe.

“Giants” continues at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through March 1.

Actors have an old saying. If you’re not getting work, create work for yourself.

Career bit player Alexi Wasser takes that advice with “Messy,” a comedy about a single thirtysomething sexing her way through many Mister Wrongs in a hunt for Mister Right.

It’s more gutsy than funny, because not many actresses — even youngish and thin ones — would try to make a splash by putting it all out there as a character who has embraced her promiscuity and not quite reconciled to any goal beyond that.

Wasser doesn’t just spend a lot of on camera time nude, in the throes of hook-up passion in a variety of settings, situations and positions and with a wide array of partners. She gives herself monologues in extreme closeup, inane, semi-amusing jump-cut rambles that invite us to give thought to her makeup, her hair style, her dentistry and the general state of her pores.

I couldn’t decide if she was showing us her bravery, brazen self-confidence or a delusional fantasy that she’s living out.

In any event, she’s more interesting than her movie, which presents her as Stella, an Angelino just moved to New York, getting over a breakup by blitzing through bartenders and bar-owners, party pickups and street flirters, teenagers and 50somethings (Adam Goldberg) trying to pass for 40somethings.

“I’m just a chunky, texting, phone-calling, deeply-feeling girl in a ‘TLDR’ ‘LOL’ world,” Stella declares, giving a hint of the insecurities driving her lust (She’s about as “chunky” as a swizzle stick).

She overshares with taxi and uber drivers, bar pick-ups and her new friends (Ruby McCollister, Merlot) and with her many temp lovers mid-coitus. She screams about love and desire and particular sexual preferences in the frenzy of the moment, and doesn’t fret about birth control, hygeine or anything else until the trance of passion passes.

“I say ‘Yes’ to what is” sounds like a line cribbed from a women’s mag. “I just wish men would face the fact that all women love Target, ‘Real Housewives,’ crystals, ‘Sex and the City’ and astrology!” Yes, she’s thirtysomething going on AARP-something.

One barfly Stella meets (Ione Skye of “Say Anything”) gives her solid advice about “just meeting the wrong person until you meet the right one.” The “wrong” ones are played by the likes of Goldberg, Thomas Middleditch and Jack Kilmer.

Mario Cantone brings some bitchy flair to the magazine editor Stella tries to impress with her writing when it’s really her “Sexing My Way Through the City” travelogue that’s killer content.

“Messy” lives down to its title in too many ways to recommend it. It’s vulgar in the myriad ways it reaches for coarse laughs. There are several smirks, a couple of near chuckles and nothing more as far as “sex comedy” giggles go.

And I don’t know if it gave Wasser the star vehicle bounce she wanted out of this “put it all out there” project. But give it up to her for swinging for the fence, in close-up or in the nude in a “Sex and the City” that’s carnal, crass and controlled-substance contemporary for a new era. Let’s just hope that her parents were OK with it.

Rating: 16+, explicit sex, drug abuse, slapping, nudity and profanity

Cast: Alexi Wasser, Adam Goldberg, Ruby McCollister, Merlot, Thomas Middleditch, Mario Cantone and Ione Skye.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alexi Wasster. A Vertical release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:22

“The Rip” starts out bloody and gets bloodier.

The dirty cops and drug money plot is messy. And turns messier.

It hits “preachy” hard, and then becomes even preachier.

The copshop cliches, quips and acronyms pass by in a blizzard of blue bloods blather.

And at some point, this “Fast and Furious” meets “Miami Vice” mashup gets in its own way. A drawn-out coda sees some intense and over-the-top performances from a cast headed by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck all but undone by overdone and over-explained final-act twists.

Hey, it’s a Joe Carnahan picture. The carnage and grit always comes with “Smokin’ Aces/A-Team” claptrap.

Damon is Dane, a detective lieutenant in charge of Miami’s TNT — Tactical Narcotics Team. We see his unit’s boss (Lena Esco) executed on the foggy ICW waterfront in an opening scene. That comes right after she assures a tipster that she’s “the only cop you can trust.”

Nobody in her squad seems A) all that surprised by her murder or B) all that torn up by her death.When it turns out Det. Sgt. Byrne (Affleck) was romantically involved with his captain, that seems kind of fishy.

But everybody here falls somewhere on the “sketchy” spectrum. The Major (Nestor Carbonell), detectives Ro (Steven Yeun), Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) and Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno), DEA commando (Kyle Chandler) and FBI hotheads (Scott Adkins, et al) asking the hard questions all come off as defensive — hiding something or fretting that someone else is.

“Snitch” is the dirty word that runs around dirty law enforcement circles. It’s what just broke up another acronym unit (VCAT — Violent Crime Action Team) that crossed lines, took shortcuts and worked for the bad guys — “cops playing robbers.”

An above-the-law afterwork parking lot party of burnouts and drifts and public beer drinking is broken up by a tip. There’s big cartel cash at this “stash house” in Hialeah. Let’er rip, TNT!

We watch the police lie to the woman (Sasha Calle) who comes to the door, get her signature of “consent” to search for drugs, and then unleash Wilbur, the beagle “who only tracks money.” It’s there, millions of dollars in contractor paint buckets. And no, it doesn’t pay to ponder why the seemingly savvy “homeowner” would sign anything or open the door to these people out to lock her

That’s when the paranoia busts out in the open — phones confiscated, loyalties tested, tips passed on and cold hard cash coveted by Miami’s “finest.”

“Do you trust our command structure?” “Do YOU?”

And those acronyms tattooed on Dane’s hands — “A.W.T.G.G.” (“Are we the good guys?”) and “W.A.A.W.B” — are explained and embraced, or exposed as the biggest lie of them all.

Artists who make their mark on the world are the ones who dare to experiment, who take big chances in the belief that they can show us something new.

Werner Herzog’s “Heart of Glass” was such an experiment, a hypnotic Bavarian period piece about prophecy, class, tradition, lost knowledge and the fragility of existence. Herzog, at the peak of his art cinema early career, took a shot at having most of his cast hypnotized for their scenes, which gives the film a disorienting, mesmerizing quality thanks to the achingly slow, sometimes random, off-center nature of the performances.

It doesn’t really work. At its worst, it’s like a period parody of the art cinema of the day, “Pythonesque” without the laughs. Herzog prefigures David Lynch’s filmed invitations to enter his dreams. But whatever message this brooding sleepwalk is sending, it’s simply unsatisfying as a narrative. “Glass” is indulgent in ways that make one wonder about the artist’s own state of consciousness at the time.

A stoner period piece nightmare? Something like that. As striking as some scenes and images are, how was this ever supposed to “work” as cinema?

A lonely prophet (Joseph Bierbichler) speaks his truths to whoever will listen in the late 18th century village he has settled in.

Hias is a doomsayer. “I look into the distance to the end of the world,” he narrates (in German, subtitled). “Before the day is over, the end will come.”

He makes his pronouncements to any who ask, or any who will listen. “They come to pass,” he insists, no matter what the listener believes.

This Alpine town is full of believers. A crisis is upon them. Their only industry is imperiled. The foreman at the glassworks has died, and with him, the secret to making the town’s famous “ruby red glass.”

Some become manic at Hias’ pronouncements about their gloomy fate. Others are resigned to drinking their fears away. But the baron who owns the glassworks (Stefan Güttler) is obsessed with finding the formula. He puts glassblowers to work experimenting, badgers the dead man’s widow and even sends off for her sofa when he becomes convinced that foreman scribbled the recipe down and hid it inside the cushions.

Hias, who takes the time to dispell local fears that “giants” will awaken and reconquer the Earth, wades through this madness, observes some of it from afar and continues to prophesy doom. As if that’ll help.

Herzog opens the film in fog and hits us with striking images of the waterfalls and gorges of the Swiss borderlands with Bavaria. He stages forlorn arguments over beer — with a stein slowly broken over a drinking partner’s head. The baron’s high-handed obsession turns murderous.

And still the glassblowers blow and work their glass as if the end isn’t nigh. These scenes are the film’s most visually arresting, a veritable ballroom dance of blowers and globs of molten glass weaving amongst each other as they approach the furnace and ply their trade.

It’s a real relief to know that these real-life artisans — like Bierbichler, playing the prophet — were not hypnotized while making the movie. Other scenes involving drunks, corpses and a dog goaded into waking the “dead” with a pitchfork, were.

The dazed, surreal and slow-walking performances of the hypnotized reminded me of Hitchcock’s “Rope,” an experiment in storytelling with long takes without edits. The Master of Suspense realized, only afterwards, that editing is the essence of cinema, the way suspense is created and heightened. He never did it again.

Herzog almost certainly learned to never try hypnotizing his actors again. Klaus Kinski, for one, would have disemboweled him for trying. Whatever he learned from this experiment he internalized in his own persona.

The bold adventurer who made “Aguirre” and “Fitzcarraldo” became a mesmerizing screen presence, voice-over narrator and interview subject. He was and remains a fascinating character, a philospher of film and the human condition. If he needed to try something “out there” to get where he was going, “Heart of Glass” was worth the gamble. Without that gimmick, it’s questionable whether this folk parable oddity would merit mention in the long course of his career.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Güttler, Clemens Scheitz, Volker Prechtel, Wilhelm Friedrich and Sonja Skiba.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Werner Herzog, based on a story by  Herbert Achternbusch. A New Yorker Films (US) release on Tubi, Mubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:35

Every year or so I am moved — by WordPress’s lack of movement to fix glitches or eagerness to make an almost unending series of changes for the worse — to point out this Automatic blog provider’s unsuitability, if you’re new to blogging, vlogging or what have you and shopping for a site.

I’ve been dealing with WordPress, via newspaper-anchored blogs and private ones, almost since its inception. Years and years. And the take-away from those many years of experience is that owner Mark Wullenweg’s operation has grown more automated, less accountable and more cumbersome to use by the year.

Recently, I’ve had to restore broken connections that cross-publish this blog onto social media, an occasional aggravation that comes without warning and is almost always due to a bungle or botched “upgrade” at Wullenweg World HQ.

At present, I am ten days FIFTEEN DAYS into a glitch that knocked the hilariously inequitable and unjust (“a class action suit waiting to happen”) Wordads-provided advertising from this site.

This may have to do with WordPress’s demand that customers now much use their EXTORTIONATE and data stealing/losing “Stripes” payment plan. I have gotten repeated pitches for this instead of replies from “Happiness Engineers” about the status of my increasingly profane and furious demands that they FIX WHAT THEY BROKE.

As I deal with an array of chatbots that do nothing and are named “Happiness Engineers” with the bot-ish/bot-built? names Rhys Marine (LOL) and Mohammed Something Arabic, I can’t help but feel extorted. “Service” supposedly improves with every up-purchase this shit-show site provider rolls out and pitches to “customers.” I seriously doubt that.

Does that mean a human being gets involved? Might there even be a PHONE NUMBER to call? Probably not, because this “company’s” business model is all chatbox/AI.

Users have been complaining about WordPress forever, and nothing changes.

The company was ahead of the curve in its dealings with customers. A hallmark of Trump era interactions with all manner of service providers is a “Try and make me” do what they contracted and used to be legally obligated to do.

A simple matter like a refund for service not provided is taken right off the table when you’re this unaccountable. Basically, you pay them money, they take it and irritate the hell out of you with everything that they do rather than PROVIDE that service and accountability for NOT providing it.

Again FIFTEEN DAYS without them fixing what THEY broke. It’s like dealing with a Mickey Mouse version of Big Cable and Big Telco from days of yore. “Bad Service is our Brand,” but let’s call them “Happiness Engineers” because we’re sure they haven’t read “1984.”

Years of highhanded “improvements” that glitch and add workflow-killing keystrokes and drop menus and prompts and “features” (photo publishing is an ongoing death-march to oblivion) to what is still a simple cut-and-dried write and publish process come to mind every time some new affront of this nature happens.

The fact that migrating all my years of work — which WordPress swears it will preserve “forever” when they are actually deleting reviews from years and years of archived and supposedly “live” content, with no apology, explanation or compensation– to a more complex site-provider seems too onerous to consider.

So I am in the process of demanding a refund for the two years of stewardship these bots are supposed to be providing, as the month since I paid for that “service” into the future now has made this endless parade of cut-rate, short-changed workarounds more than I can stomach.

If you see fewer posts here, I’m just givng up. Zuckerberg Lite Wullenweg has just about killed the experience for me. Two weeks of no service is deliberate, a “business model” choice and a “What are you gonna do about it?” middle finger to customers.

And if you’re thinking about blogging, Bluehost, Wix or Square seem like the less extortionate, more user/customer-friendly options. WordPress has engineered “happiness” out of the picture.

Whatever is going on around her and whoever else is in the overripe Netflix murder mystery “His & Hers,” Marin Ireland is the one who gets it.

The latest project from the director of the feature film “Lady Macbeth” is straight-up trash. Ireland, who dresses down as fearlessly (“Dope Thief,” “Hell or High Water”) as any of her peers, is the foul-mouthed bug-eyed fury of this grisly “Mean Girls Grow up Meaner” series — nowhere near top-billed, but lowdown and “out there” in ways that more than do justice to the pulpy source material.

She doesn’t just play trashy, she revels in it.

Based on a novel by Alice Feeney and well-acted by a cast headed by Tessa Thompson, Jon Bernthal, Sunita Mani (“GLOW,” “Death of a Unicorn” and “The Roses”) and Pablo Schreiber, this is an infectious page-turner of a six-part series. Red herrings abound. “Oh no she/he DIDN’T” moments are tucked into laughably far-fetched plot twists and a sixth episode that so over-explains the last of those twists (clumsily given away earlier) that it waters down the impact of everything that came before.

Ireland sets it off every time her character, Zoe, appears. Thompson transforms into a TV anchor-beauty with cunning and “issues.” And Bernthal drawls through his turn as a north Georgia sheriff’s department detective whose true expertise isn’t really crime solving. His Jack Harper is a poster boy for Southern sheriff department policing, a man who like many of his peers truly expert in one thing — knowing just how much a compromised cop can get away with.

Thompson is a “leave of absence” Atlanta TV anchor who returns to her tony hometown of Dahlonega just in time to spy her not-ex-husband Jack cheating, with that cheating preceding the murder of his sex-in-a-truck-in-the-woods paramour. Ex-anchor Anna knows things, so many things that the “story” that erupts around her seems to be manipulated by her.

Her “There are at least two sides to every story” voice-over narration underscores this.

Jack’s enthusiastic sex partner (Jamie Tisdale) is a former private school classmate of Anna’s. Twenty years ago, Rachel was queen bee — the meanest and prettiest of the mean girls. She married money, settled into an “open marriage” and never had to give up her mean girl games.

As Det. Harper gasps at not just the murder of someone he was having a fling with, but a crime whose crime scene is covered with his DNA, he finds himself endlessly swatting away leads, queries and theories of the fresh-out-of-school partner Priya, (Mani) whom he nicknames “Boston.”

But is his not-quite-ex setting him up? The way she side-eyes him, smirks and ignores his many demands to “not report” this or that detail that she seems to know before him sets us up to believe that.

We know that in pulp fiction murder mysteries, it’s never the “obvious” first suspect we’re presented with, is it?

We meet the blonde anchor-woman (Rebecca Rittenhouse) who angled her way into the chair in Anna’s absence, and that bitter, cutthroat rivalry is renewed. Anchor-lady Lexy’s news videographer husband (Schreiber) is lured into that.

We hear of what sent Anna into her spiral and probably contributed to her husband losing an Atlanta PD job. We meet his boozy, broke, single-mom sister (Ireland) and Anna’s neglected, dementia-suffering mom (Crystal Fox).

And flashbacks take us back to St. Hilary’s School, where the rich girls and Anna mingled and Rachel’s corps included future school headmistress Helen Wang (Poppy Liu).

“His & Hers” is basically a slow-walked/series-length variation of “Out of Time,” the Carl Franklin-directed Denzel Washington/Eva Mendes thriller about a corrupt but not murderously dirty cop covering his tracks and his ass in a similar (enough) situation in South Florida, not North Georgia.

The sordid goings on, intimate connections and dirty secrets of a town where everybody knows everybody else make an inbred, over-the-top backdrop for a thriller that often shortchanges the stakes, the ticking clock element and “clues” that might come from the victim’s phone, the detective’s history, the reporter’s seeming manipulations and a junior detective who may at some point put a lot of pieces together.

Ireland, Chris Bauer as the less-than-grieving rich widowed husband and a few others take this script at its over-the-top face value. Bernthal is deliciously desperate and despicable as another unaccountable cop who assaults persons-of-interest and blurts accusations at others when where’s no one there to rein him in or correct his over-reaching lies.

The drawl grows more pronounced the more desperate Jack gets. Ireland gets her Cracker Dander Up. But most characters in this world would shed the accent — especially those in TV — and that’s the case here.

Thompson does a decent job of suggesting sinister and cunning in a character we’re ordered to misjudge and convict, based on the script.

Creator, writer and (in some episodes) director William Oldroyd works in “Twin Peaks” and “Chinatown” needle drops or overt references which underscore the lethal, blood-spattered playfulness he was going for.The lone “Southernism” in the dialogue also hints at the tone he was reaching for, a line uttered by a sheriff’s deputy to the detective.

She was “smilin’ like she got the last parkin’ spot at Cracker Barrel.”

But as a series, “His & Hers” is best at luring us in. The payoffs are consistently disappointing and the final episode basically an eye-roller, start-to-finish — all filler and “explanations” and “You didn’t see THAT coming” when we most certainly did and a long time before.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic bloody violence, explicit sex, profanity

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Jon Bernthal, Marin Ireland, Sunita Mani, Pablo Schreiber, Crystal Fox and Rebecca Rittenhouse

Credits: Created by William Oldroyd, based on a novel by Alice Feeney. A Netflix release.

Running time: Six episodes @ 40-47 minutes each

If you see enough movies, attend enough plays and make it through enough literature, you earn the license to say you’ve “seen’em all.” There are only so many basic plots, with a vast but still finite number of variations on the many themes, after all.

But that can be a curse. I could see where the German thriller “The Tank” was heading within minutes of its opening titles. Chances are, many of you will as well. I won’t spoil it for you but I will throw a few names out there that the savvy will recognize and nod their heads at the drift of it all — Serling, Hitchcock, Bierce, Tim Robbins and Danny Aiello.

Classic plots get to be classics because they’re clever, poignant and even surprising the first few times you see versions of them. So its no sin to try your own variation of one. But for the viewer who picks up on where it’s going too soon, well…

“Der Tiger” as it was titled in German is a sometimes suspenseful, only occasionally far-fetched fascist “Fury” tank crew at war tale that’s pretty much wholly undone by not just driving down a plot path many have traveled before, most notably the short story author who was the subject of “Old Gringo.” The filmmakers feel the need to explain the hell out the finale, so whatever anti-war war film novelty they were going for is spoiled if not exactly undone.

We meet our Tiger tank crew on a bridge over the Dneiper River in the fall of ’43, a few months after Stalingrad, when the German army has tumbled into a terminal retreat.

The last of their infantry has crossed, but as Russian tanks and troops close in, tank commander Lt. Gerkens (David Schütter of Netflix’s German “Barbarians” series) keeps ignoring pleas (in German or dubbed) to fall back before the bridge is blown up.

His driver (Leonard Kunz) and gunner/second-in-command (Laurence Rupp) shout and plead and fire as the dutiful radio-man/machine-gunner (Sebastian Urzendowsky) and boyish cannon-loader (Yoran Leicher) fight back the panic and follow orders.

But they survive for Gerkens to get new orders, a “secret mission” to rescue a Colonel trapped behind Russian lines. The crew will “obey” and drive “the greatest tank ever built” in their own “Saving Col. von Hardenburg” quest through the hell of the Eastern front no man’s land.

They will witness war crimes that remind them that “The Reich has developed such an appetite for killing.” They will overhear Catholic mass in Latin on their two-way radio. They will face dire odds, fire and flood and superstitions as they do the bidding of “Our friend Adolf, the Austrian.”

Above all else, they will “follow orders.”

Director and co-writer Dennis Gansel wrings a bit of pathos about the moral quandary and cost of such misguided loyalty. But the picture’s heavy-handed way with allegory make it about as realistic as a “Sisu” thriller.

The trek is hardly hidden from view, but we only see Russian (CGI) fighter bombers at night, not in the daylight when anybody with one good eye could spy the cloud of smoke and road dust these V-12 behemoths churned out. The crew stops for a campfire, muses on family and girlfriends and their lives “before the war.” The front lines are largely depopulated, with set-piece confrontations and genre tropes nakedly borrowed from “Fury” (and other tank tales).

Watches stop ticking and surreality pokes its nose around the edges before elbowing its way to center stage.

But the tracks and the wheels underneath them truly come off in a “What was it all for?” finale, a real teeth-grinder of unreality, illogic, cliches and German soul-searching about what they once went through which the rest of the world seems to have forgotten.

“The Tank” isn’t inherently terrible. The actors are game, the allegory timely and the action sequences — including one straight out of a hundren U-Boat movies — play. And helpfully, the cinema usually goes a few decades between versions of the story that was its framework and inspiration — early ’60s, early ’90s — allowing new generations to experience it.

But the execution of this well-worn plot device begs for mystery, not over-explanation. The finale isn’t just obvious, it’s obtuse. If you’re going to explain your movie’s ending, it’s usually a good idea not to botch the explanation so badly that anyone who’s ever seen a variation on this plot is given license to shout at the screen.

Ratng: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: David Schütter, Laurence Rupp, Leonard Kunz, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Yoran Leicher and Tilman Strauss.

Credits: Directed by Dennis Gansel, scripted by Dennis Gansel and Colin Teevan. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:56

clumsy arrival

One of the pleasures of youth is experiencing the stages and phases and Big Moments of life for the first time. And one of the indulgences of being pre-“thirtysomething” is the feeling that you’re “discovering” or reinventing things earlier generations got to before you.

Netflix has had pretty good luck on teen and collegiate romances — rom-coms, mostly. Hollywood lost its way in that genre and the streaming service has had such films all to itself.

But “People We Meet on Vacation” is confirmation that as much as they’d like to exploit the dirth of (somewhat) more adult romances and rom-coms from theatrical studios, their magic touch doesn’t translate.

“People” is a Sony production without the star power, spark, wit or edge to draw viewers to a cinema. It’s so humorless its “meet cute” is a “meet bored.” The dull narrative meanders through “When Harry Met Sally” imitation flashbacks-through-a-friendship-that-becomes-a-romance structure. It slow walks us through genre cliches towards a finale with a climax confessional — cue the rain — followed by four anti-climaxes because three anticlimaxes weren’t enough.

The leads — Emily Bader (“Fresh Kills” and TV’s “My Lady Jane”) and Tom Blyth (TV’s “Billy the Kid”) — are pretty but stunningly bland, with a director (Brett Haley did “The Hero” and hit a personal best with “Hearts Beat Loud”) who can’t steer them or this lumbering beast clear of the schmaltz that often trips him up.

So whatever the “It’s a MOVIE. Let’s LOVE IT” fankids over at Pubescent Tomatoes say, it’s a drag. That’s also a handicap of youth. The little dears haven’t seen enough good romances to know what works.

The script, based on an Emily Henry novel of a couple of years back, follows small-town Ohio girl Poppy through her years-long connection to hometown boy Alex.

A present day “destination wedding” in Barcelona which travel-writer Poppy may skip because she’ll run into Alex prompts a parade of voice-over-narrated flashbacks that tell of their connections and trips together as “just friends.”

They meet cute (not in the least) when she’s late for the ride-sharing trip home from Boston while both are in college. Half a dozen sitcoms and the late Rob Reiner’s “The Sure Thing” got more heart and humor out of that trapped-in-a-Subaru-together situation.

A college kid of the mid 2010s is into…Paula Abdul?

Somehow, they overcome their disconnection — she’s free spirited and ditzy in an inconsiderate way, he’s predictable and “small town” in the usual uninteresting ways.

As her dream is to travel, she becomes a travel journalist — jetting hither and yon and writing advertiser/destination friendly prose tantalizaing enough to make the reader envious and want to go there herself/himself.

His dream is “home” and “family.”

Over the years, they reconnect and we catch up with their annual friend-trip travels to Canada (Alex is that boring), New Orleans, Prague and elsewhere. We re-meet them and their potential mates. And we ponder why these two good-looking Boston College buckeyes can’t make a love connection.

The overarching theme of the story, postulated by Poppy, is that people “vacation to get away from their lives,” that “Vacation Alex” is thus a lot more interesting — skinny dipping, posing as a married couple, etc. — than “real life” Alex.

Except he isn’t. His declaration that he “doesn’t do stupid s—” ever, much less on vacation, can be taken to heart as the skinny dipping is Hallmark Movie with a hint of Nudity tepid.

Poppy is on a journey to overcome the boredom of perpetually traveling. And another generation discovers that making something you love and dream about your vocation strips some of the joy out of it.

Alex needs to get out of himself and won’t, because tiny Linfield, Ohio beckons, with or without the PhD he works his way into. Poppy? She needs to park her luggage and take care of “life” outside of the jetway.

Haley and three screenwriters neglect the “best friend/sounding board” roles — Alex doesn’t get one at all, basically — overdo the motherly, hip and concerned “fan” travel mag editor/boss role (Jameela Jamil) and leave her promisingly adorable, annoying and sexually hip parents (Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck) behind too soon.

It all feels and plays recycled and watered-down — the longing, the testy edge that’s supposed to signal “sparks,” the heartache of indecision.

The writerly narration is travel-blog bland, and nothing in Poppy’s “written” words tell us she’s the new Hemingway, Bourdain or Pico Iyer.

Maybe Poppy’s got a point, resisting being attracted to this unsurprising, “reliable” and unsophisticated, untraveled potential beau. The fact that the script simply isn’t having it is no reason to sit through this if you’ve ever seen another screen romance.

But if you’re young enough that you haven’t viewed the “modern” benchmark movies of the genre — “The Sure Thing,” “French Kiss” and “When Harry Met Sally” for starters — and you think “Anyone But You” is your high bar, by all means have a go.

Rating: PG-13, nudity, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Emily Bader, Tom Blyth, Sarah Catherine Hook and Lucien Laviscount, with Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon.

Credits: Directed by Brett Haley, scripted by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo, based on the novel by Emily Henry. A Sony release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:58