Movie Nation

The one real surprise in the Netflix romance “The Life List” is a somewhat logical twist in the finale, one that finishes this Sofia Carson star vehicle with a solid-enough tug at the heartstrings.

It doesn’t wipe away the watchable schmaltz that permeates the picture’s three, slow-to-unfold acts or give us insight on true love or the human condition. But it’s still a nice wrap up, and would’ve made the movie sit easier on the memory had they not slapped a bland anti-climax on after of it.

It’s about a dying mother’s parting gift to her only daughter, an adult challenge to “complete” a life list of things thirteen-year-old Alex reasoned-out in and wrote down in middle school.

“Learn to drive.””Get a tattoo.” Make the most of a “mosh pit.” Read “Moby Dick,” the whole novel. No cheating. Learn to play “Clair de Lune” on the piano. Oh, and “Find true love.”

Sofia Carson (“Carry On,” “Purple Hearts”) is Alex, 30ish and adrift. She lost her teaching job, so she took on a nepotism gig at Mom’s Rose Cosmetics firm. She’s living with a lovable lump (Michael Rowland) who might has well have “dead end” tattooed on his chest. Estranged from her dad with siblings married and making babies, Alex is taking her sweet time to grow up.

That is what’s behind mother Elizabeth’s (Connie Britton, excellent as always) decision to carve out a corner of her will to deal with Alex’s indecision. Elizabeth was late breaking the news to her three kids that “It’s back,” the cancer that will kill her this time around. But she went beyond being fair with her will and left Alex DVDs with instructions about how she can collect her share of the inheritance.

“I may not be able to dig you out” of any more messes, Mom assures her. “But I can sure as hell leave you a shovel.”

Alex will be rewarded with fresh DVDs from mom every time she crosses a threshhold and checks off an item among the twelve on the list — “Become a great teacher.” “Reconcile with your dad (José Zúñiga).” And there’s the promise of a bigger payoff at the end.

Can she accomplish this in twelve months? The family’s young pup lawyer (Kyle Allen of “West Side Story”), executor of Elizabeth’s will, seems on the fence.

But he’s there when Alex comes to grips with “Do stand-up comedy,” if not checking her worth regarding Herman Melville’s epic novel of the sea and a great white whale.

The cute lawyer is in a relationship, but not to worry. There might be true love with the handsome, rich Brit (Sebastian De Souza of TV’s “The Great” and “Fair Play”) who volunteers at the women’s shelter, where lawyer Bradley fixes Alex up with a job.

The narrative is Hallmark Channel worthy in its “Rich, entitled New York beauty’s problems” plot and solutions. “Play one-on-one with a New York Knick” is possible when you’ve got access and money.

The sentimental stuff — some of it anyway — lands well enough, reconnecting with that childhood piano teacher to learn Debussy’s most famous composition for that instrument, for instance.

But there’s little humorous here that manages to much as a chuckle. The stand-up comedy bit, the tendency to want to dance and sing along whenever “That’s Not My Name” pops up on the radio or jukebox, are presented as funny but “cute” will have to suffice.

This seriously slight film from the director of “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” struggles and strains and fails to justify its 123 minute running time, as in “It’s on Netflix, nobody will notice the funereal pacing.”

Theatrical cinema has had an awful time trying to remember how to write, act and film romances or romantic comedies. Netflix has had better luck in the genre by aiming young.

But “The Life List” is as bland as its title, a movie unworthy of comparison to most any “Bucket List” movie you can think of. Well, exxcept for that dramatic climax, the one that comes before the fender-bender of an anti-climax.

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

Cast: Sofia Carson, Kyle Allen, Sebastian De Souza, José Zúñiga,
Jordi Mollà, Michael Rowland and Connie Britton

Credits: Scripted and directed by Adam Brooks, based on a novel by Lori Nelson Spielman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

On the many islands and languages present in the Philippines, there are a couple of widely accepted words for transgender and transexual — bakla and asog or “tomboy. That suggests that there’s less mussing about with pronouns and somewhat less debate about the legitimacy of such people in the population.

That doesn’t mean discrimination and persecution of the country’s LGBTQ populace doesn’t exist. It just signifies a long-term acknowledgement that such people exist and that even scapegoating politicians have lost any war on their legitimacy before they start it.

“Asog” is a Filipino-Canadian docudrama about a transgender teacher’s island-hopping trek to a contest that she hopes will restart her “show business” career. She once co-hosted a regional TV chat show. She ends up taking a former student in search of his father along on the journey from Tacloban City on Leyte Island to Sicogon Island.

As the opening credits tell us, these “actors” are played by real people with the real problems depicted here. Mr. Andrade (Rey Aclao) wears dresses to work at school, but after hours and on stage, she is Jaya, a transgender woman in a committed releationship with Cyrus (Ricky Gacho, Jr.).

There is still debris everywhere, in between the buildings not destroyed by Super Typhoon Yolanda. That disaster, which killed well over 6,000 people, left a generation of Filipino children “traumatized,” Jaya narrates, something she keeps in mind when she’s dealing with her middle school students.

Jaya dreams of returning to (local TV) fame, even as she acknowledges “dreams can become nightmares”(in Spanish and Tagalog with English subtitles). The traumatized Cyrus may be supportive, but when Jaya quits her teaching job in a huff over how much cold, hard reality about how tough life she can share with her students, Cyrus is shaken.

Jaya’s going to be rehearsing and enduring this long, broke journey to Sicogon without him. But traumatized student Arnel is trying to get there to see his estranged father. They’ll travel together by sidecar trike and Jeepney bus, on foot and by undersized, under-regulated ferry boat to complete their respective quests.

They see the ruined but recovering land, hear about lost coconut crops and what it takes to bring orchards of trees back to life. And the viewer learns — from them and from Arnel’s estranged father (Raul Ramos, seen in a separate narrative thread) — about the predatory real estate developers, backed by armed goons and a government that turns a blind eye, who swoop in and displace the storm-impoverished locals by conning or simply strong-arming them off their land.

As you can tell from this long explanation, there plenty of texts and subtexts to this sometimes lighthearted film that sets up as a Filipino “Transamerica” or “Will & Harper,” a simple “road picture” that surveys the Philippines and transgender tolerance there.

Canadian director and co-writer Devlin, who did the dramedy “When the Storm Fades” and the documentary “Whoa Canada,” even has Jaya voice-over narrate this long, convoluted folk tale about the Crab King and his dealings with a frog and a mosquito that loosely ties in to the mythic origins of the word “Asog.”

Obscure touches like that make this cluttered, meandering film hard to follow.

The passing parade of locals, some more tolerant than others, scenes of storm damage and of how the working poor get by and get around are shuffled into scenes of Jaya trying to “teach” Arnel to stand up for himself and a too-brief encounter between Arnel and his dad, who is more concerned with all the friends and neighbors forced off Sicogon Island by rapacious resort developers.

We can see what Devlin saw in Aclao, his leading lady, an outsized “Tangerine” personality with dreams of small scale fame and domestic happiness. The themes and subtexts he wants to work into the narrative are compelling.

But the worthy, watchable and sometimes entertaining docudrama he parks her and all these “issues” in is too messy and voice-over chatty to easily understand or appreciate.

Rating: unrated, adult subject matter

Cast: Rey Aclao, Arnel Pablo, Ricky Gacho Jr.

Credits: Directed by Sean Devlin, scripted Rey Aclao, Sean Devlin and Arnel Pablo. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:44

Mia Sara, Chewitel Ejiofor, Karren Gillan and Mark Hamill also star in this “Truman Show” vibe “genre bender” from the director of “Doctor Sleep” and the guy who wrote the book “Doctor Sleep” was based on.

An “ordinary guy” named “Chuck.” Doesn’t sound like Tom Hiddleston, but the dude did play Hank Williams, you know.

A summer release from Neon.

“The Revolution” doesn’t begin here. It’s ongoing.

Well, it stopped for a while. And now we’ve got to “get the band back together” to save one of their own.

Oscar winners DiCaprio, Penn and del Toro are joined by Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Wood Harris.

And Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”) is in this nearly three hour epic to remind us that sometimes, Paul Thomas Anderson swings and misses.

Sept. 26, this awards-bait comic thriller opens wide and invites us in.

Lot of Brits in this May 2 wide release. Truth in a time of conflict and fascist propaganda comes at a cost.

Muay Thai master Tony Jaa is back in action in “Striking Rescue,” a clumsily titled, ineptly subtitled and generically plotted Chinese thriller where the fights are to die for, the characters and plot not so much.

Twenty-plus years since his break-out in “Ong Bak” and Jaa still brings the muscle to brawling martial arts revenge thrillers like this one. Thicker and more solidly built, when he throws a punch drops a kick these days, we believe the damage it’s going to cause. And how.

Jaa plays Ann Bai, whom we meet as Kun Tai, as the Chinese media and authorities have named him, a wanted man in connection with events that killed his wife and child.

But he wasn’t the killer. And naming him Kun Tai, from Tai Chi, is a blunder. An Bai, from the punching martial art Baji Quan, is closer to who this real “wanted man” must be.

A street level mobster may have some answers about who killed his wife and child. That’s where Ann Bai’s hunt begins. He stalks the sunglasses-and-cigarettes villain through the market, only to have the guy’s whole gang descend on him with machetes and fists.

“Don’t grill the fish,” Boss yells at his lunch hour mob in Chinese (with subtitles, and a smattering of English). “Grill the guy coming up behind me!”

That’s kind of how the movie goes. A bigger boss, Yinghua (Philip Keung) is ID’d and pursed and targeted, with mobs of henchmen to overcome. Then a bigger boss (Michael Mao). And a cackling martial arts minx (Wang Chenxim) sizzles her way towards a showdown.

Yinghua has a rebellious teen daughter (Chen Duo-yi) whom Ann Bai locates, then tracks to get to her dad. But before he can set off his planned roadside bomb and tear through Yinghua’s gang to get to him, others ambush the mobster and Ann Bai finds himself rescuing the punk daughter, who has a grudge against Daddy.

“We can work together,” Te Hing teases. “Don’t you want revenge?”

Junjia Hong plays the dashing, two-fisted bodyguard who lets the teen Te Hing slips out of his protection. Bo Peng plays the boss’s trusted number two, who might be his older daughter. A lot of stuff like that is as muddy as the translation.

“Follow me or die here,” Ann Bai snaps at the girl when he just wants her to jump in his pickup. “I told you to fight back and NOT cause trouble,” dad Yinghua contradictorally snaps at Te Hing when he sees she’s been brawling at school again.

“Now you are getting more NONSENSICAL” he barks when she talks back.

Wang Chenxin is the standout of the supporting cast, a stylish dragon lady with rose colored glasses and a taste for blood, a harpy handy with ice climbing axes in a fight.

I pretty much checked out of the story, which presents Ann Bai a master of martial arts master, a master of surveillance, unraveling criminal conspiracies and whiz with electronics, the moment he beats “Tell me the LICENSE plate number” of a car out of a thug who has mentioned Te Hing has a regular ride home.

Who remembers their own plate number, much less another?

But the fights, choreographed by Guo Yu Long, are brilliantly staged, shot and cut-together. We see blows delivered from a fist-eye-view, from shoulder shots and everywhere else, all of it cut into a visually coherent blur of blows. Brilliant.

Lashing a camera to a motorbike’s front fork is a great way to amp up a chase scene, and director Chen Si Yu — the martial arts fantasy “Fists of Fure: Soul” was his — takes care to at least showcase the action if not the logic and suspense in the “nonsensical” story.

Somebody killed his wife and kid. Tony Jaa is on their trail and out for revenge. A little back story and a parade of bigger and bigger villains to fight through is all that’s necessary beyond that.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence, drugs

Cast: Tony Jaa, Chen Duo-Yi, Philip Keung, Michael Mao, Bo Peng and Wang Chenxin.

Credits: Directed by Chen Si Yu, scripted by A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:48