Movie Nation

You’ve got a good thing going. The picture is clicking. Kind of. The stars have chemistry. OK, a little bit.

The bad guys are SCARY. And mouthy.

Because the dialogue? It’s got bite.

“You’re messing up my life!”

“What life? You collect records and KILL people!”

But the odd lapse in logic, here and there, doesn’t prepare us for the loopy, dopey, drooping finale to “Love Shot,” a hit-man romance set “Once upon a time in Koreatown.”

That’s the hook in writer-director Steven Fine’s amiable, if violent, action rom-com. Everybody is all about Koreatown — Korean mobsters, Korean doumi “karaoke hostesses,”Korean BBQ.

“Try the BiBimBap!”

“Can we get some soju?”

Mobsters are fighting over who can land the right TV contest-winning chef for their Koreatown restaurant, and nobody is going to outfox the Jewish mobster Tony (John Kapelos, a veteran character actor immortalized as the “cokehead” investment advisor Barry on “Seinfeld”).

Tony’s got a numbnuts assistant (Cruz Kim) who is always mistaking the boss’s intention, always a step behind the boss in conversation. They look at video of a mob massacre in an eatery Tony has subsequently taken over. One minute, he’s wondering who this “VERY professional triggerman” is, the next, whether or not he can keep the chef on after this violent night.

“Wonder if he’s got a signature dish?” A pause for Slim (Kim) to figure out who he’s talking about. “The CHEF!”

The movie’s about the triggerman. Max (Dakota Loesch of “Buzzkill” and “Scraper”) is a soul and funk fanatic. Forget the unkempt stubble, the omni-present hitman’s black stocking gap, the gapped teeth. Or at least look past them.

The most lovely 60s-90s soul is seeping through the ear buds. A stranger on the street (Amy Tsang) recognizes The Turner Brothers. They end up taking the same commuter train. He dozes off, she leaves her number.

And wouldn’t you know it? Max’s next job, the tiny red dossier he’s handed at a Korean convenience store, along with a fresh pack of cigarettes, is a picture of her — Karen.

Max is to “hit” this woman whose soul-music loving soul makes her his soul mate. Or so he thinks.

He sees and hears her at a karaoke bar, where she’s a doumi (sometimes spelled “domi”), a karaoke bar-girl/hostess, your “company for the night,” singing to you, drinking with you, encouraging you to run up a tab.

But when Max asks her out, he decides to come clean. It wasn’t fate or “kismet” that sent him to that bar. Who, exactly, wants her dead? And would she like to come over and listen to his record collection while they figure that out and he protects her from her fate?

“I met you, and it was like gettin’ shot — shot in the stomach. Now I’ve got this heaviness there and I don’t want it to go away.”

The whole set up, kind of “High Fidelity” meets “Grosse Point Blank,” to go all Cusack in high concept-ese, is so cute you want to pinch its cheeks.

Tsang (“Shameless”) has a beguiling mystery about her. I don’t know for sure that the crackling, sultry Patti Smith voice she “sings” her sultry “I Think We’re Alone Now” in is actually her voice. But I hope so.

Loesch is merely OK in their scenes together, trying to impress her with his music, his quick-draw (acted out in the mirror). His real chemistry is with Kapelos.

Hit-man movies are a genre unto themselves, and “Love Shot” relies on decades of tropes — Max stalking quarries who carry 1980s style aluminum drug dealer briefcases, Max scoping out Karen through the scope of his sniper rifle.

Writer-director Fine struggles to make this murdering — there is blood, one grisly strangling — cute. We can root for Max (kind of) as he finally meets a contract he cannot carry out.

His low-voiced exchange of questions, obfuscations and threats with the Korean Koreatown mobsters who wrote the contract, all his contracts, “10 years and nothing” but the hits, has a tetchy edge.

“You can’t get rid of me. I know  too much.”

“You don’t talk to us like that!”

On the way out, the mass murderer stops to compliment the chef — “That was a great job with the bibimbap!”

Tsang gives a wary fatalism to Karen. She takes the news that there’s a contract on her as an insult. But thinking for a second further, she accepts it at face value. She knows something, worries she might have it coming.

Karen and Max keep secrets from each other.

The stylistic highlight is a recreation of a doumi hostess confrontation that might play into why Karen has been targeted, a wordless scene with music playing behind it, threats of violence in her gestures and actions.

Kapelos has his finest moment in one of several scenes where Tony plays up his Jewishness, a pissing match with a business rival where fate is tied to a spin of the dreidel.

Max lies about his affection for his new “boss” Tony — “Total mensch. Love’em.”

Tony is touched by Max’s “one last job” promise, giving it all up for the love of a good woman.

“A romantic ronin!” Tony exults, and then ruins it by repeating himself. “How romantic.”

But getting back to the resolution of this all, the finale that seems unearned, tacked on, with characters exhibiting cunning that nothing they’ve done before prepares us for. I mean, Karen seems like an in-the-moment flake, teetering from one mistake to the next.

Max? He has a life, or so this close-but-no-cigar hitman rom-com would have us believe. We, like Karen, know better.

“What life? You collect records and KILL people!”

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, nudity

Cast: Dakota Loesch, Amy Tsang, John Kapelos, Cruz Kim, Victor J. Ho

Credits: Written and directed by Steven Fine. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:21

Cardi B gets billed above Senora Jennifer Lopez on this trailer, at least.

J Lo shows a girl how it’s done.

Madeline Brewer, Keke Palmer, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Mercedes Ruehl, Usher, Frank Whalley…

Sept. 13.

The “news” about what should prove to be the biggest blockbuster of the fall is that Warners set a new record for the number of gallons of fake blood used on a film with this second half/sequel.

Old school huxtering. Gotta love it.

From Ty Burr, even though I am not alone in wishing I had tweeted it first.

Amen.

“This is the exact opposite of why I got into this business.” https://t.co/j1dqPUYaKw https://twitter.com/tyburr/status/1152784807379775488?s=17

A rainy night, a frantic dash into a phone booth a car circling — pursuing. Strings on the soundtrack urge us on.

A woman, pursued. Hiding in a rest stop toilet, breaking into a car.

A guy in a rainproof hoodie, the flash of a blade, a narrow escape. Or not?

“Secret Obsession” is the stuff pure hokum is made of. It’s a humdrum and solidly unsurprising “a woman stalked” thriller, and about the best thing you can say about it is that the leads got to be leads for a change, and that hey, string players need the work — even in Hollywood.

We can hear “I’ll love you forever…and a DAY!” promised on the soundtrack as we ponder the hospitalization and recovery of Jennifer, played by Brenda Song of “The Social Network” and TV’s “Station 19” and “Pure Genius.”

She survived that opening scene, but barely. Nurse Masters (Ashley Scott) is concerned, and blunt.

Because Jennifer’s husband, Russell (Mike Vogel of TV’s “The Brave” and “The Case for Christ”) has shown up.

“My wife was in a car accident.”

“Sir, you CAN’T go in there!”

Her injuries including head trauma. There’s…amnesia.

Russell is handsome, his designer glasses and perfectly-trimmed stubble underlining that he’s “professional” and “concerned.”

Or, you know, a “Lifetime Original Movie” stalker. Serial killer, maybe.

He questions his wife, and he starts explaining — their romance, their life together.

Just. Like. “The Notebook.” Awwwwww.

She keeps smiling, obviously appreciating the life she leads at the “been in the family for years” remote (Pomona) mansion, but frowning in puzzlement when his back is turned.

And sex? Recoiling in terror seems to work

Dennis Haysbert is the long-in-the-tooth detective whose “obsession” with this case is no secret. He’s “compensating,” as they say in Writing Screen Cops 101, “atoning” for an earlier failing. The chief knows. The chief always does.

“Whatever you do won’t make up for what happened…When was the last time you took a day off?”

“This was no accident!”

Jennifer sneaks around, hunts for her phone and picks up hints and clues that something isn’t kosher in Pomona, California.

The detective keeps raising his eyebrow as he computer-searches while driving. I think that’s illegal.

The script, by Kraig Wenman and director Peter Sullivan, gives away its “surprises” with ridiculous ease. They decided to go for suspense instead. Abandoning mystery hurts their case, even if they manage some tense moments as Jennifer makes the Heroine’s Journey from pretty but passive pawn to proactive “How do I get out of this?”

But drawn out? My stars and garters! This is a 60 minute episode (52 plus commercials) of a hundred episodic TV plots dating back to the ’60s, padded and padded — always underscored with urgent strings — to 1:37.

It’s good that everybody, including Netflix, is leaping into that “Crazy Rich Asians” driven “Let’s try to tell more stories with Asian characters/actors” trend. Song has screen presence and has earned her shot, and Haysbert is criminally underemployed.

But “Secret Obsession” never looks like anything more than the quick, cheap and under-developed hack job that it is.

MPAA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Brenda Song, Mike Vogel, Dennis Haysbert

Credits: Directed by Peter Sullivan, script by Kraig Wenman and Peter Sullivan.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37

I can’t say I saw this as “a series” when a friend loaned me the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic n./comic book many moons ago.

But when the movie is sort of right but not quite…it’s the natural way of things for cable or streaming (“Catch-22” for instance, “Dune”) to take a fresh shot at it.

So here we are.

The cast has a few highlights, dazzling names, but is overall, underwhelming. At least on paper.

Radicalization via run-ins with the State and its suspicions about his associations, recruitment, notoriety, TV “popularization” that turns into global infamy.

Britain’s “Jihadi John,” TV beheader, explored and maybe…explained? July 31?

Absolute peers, known each other from their beginnings, a chat among equals in every sense. Funny bits, and the show is generally at it’s best when Jerry isn’t higher status than his guest. Tries harder, let’s them be them.

Murphy? Relaxed. Lying about planning to get back into standup. Comfortable in his own skin, no “uncomfortable” questions.

Nice cars, as always. I must say, the tendency towards newer Porsches and Rolls Royces seems a tad…product placement.

More comics, Seth Rogen chuckling over moving off the Sony lot by because “They hate us” after the whole Kim Jung In movie and hack, much more.

Ricky Gervais, back and in a Roller, no less. Cackling.

“Not shy about the fact that we’ve done well.”

Matthew Broderick, disarming and charming and walking his old neighborhood — DENIED entrance to a pretentious NYC coffee shop.

Driving Melissa Villaseñor around in the personification of Seinfeld’s view of collectible cars, that they’re “like toys from when you were a kid.” He puts her in a Nissan Figaro, the most toylike car of its day.

Seinfeld’s most human moment? Showing his prickly side (journalists have seen it, and Ke$ha), fuming about an unnamed comic who criticizes him to Bridget Everett. Gottfried? Goldthwait? Kindler?

Best show of its type. Why waste time with Leno? Or for that matter, Letterman?

New season’s on Netflix.

It’s subtle enough that you might not notice it while “Wild Rose” is telling its story on the screen. Maybe it’ll hit you later, on the ride or walk home.

This is a world of women, succeeding or failing, aiding or hindering, self-helping or self-destroying, where the men are in the background — drinking/sex buddies, house band members, all-but-anonymous stepping stones or obstacles to a woman obsessed with achieving her dream — becoming a country music star.

That’s what Rose Harlan, played in a break out performance by Irish-born actress Jesse Buckley (Marya in British TV’s “War & Peace”), covets above all. If only she could stick to it, put the effort in, maybe learn to play an instrument and write songs, sober up.

If only she wasn’t in prison when we meet her. Of course, that wasn’t a hindrance for  Merle or Johnny Cash. But still, everything we learn about her in a brisk opening montage — exuberant on release, stopping for a quick drink and a shag with an old beau — points to “This is NEVER happening.”

Rose is in her mid-20s, with two kids she gave birth to before she turned 18. Her mum (Julie Walters) has been raising them — because Rose was in prison, and Rose took care of her own impulses and “needs” before coming “home” to her plainly-traumatized, almost-strangers children, aptly named Wynonna and Lyle.

With an ankle monitor keeping her at home between 7pm and 7am, how will she make time for honky-tonking?

And hell, Rose lives in Glasgow. “Whoever HAIRD of a country music star from Glasgooooooo?” she purrs in that lovely burr.

Screenwriter Nicole Taylor, who did that wonderful Dominic West/Romola Gary/Ben Whishaw Cold War TV series “The Hour,” cooks up a marvelous portrait of self-destruction that at times feels like an homage to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s indie cinema finest hour, “Georgia,” at other times a bit like “The Thing Called Love,” seeing the Nashville Dream through an outsider’s eyes.

But the “tell” here is the casting of Walters as Rose’s long-suffering mother. “Educating Rita” introduced the world to Walters, and Buckley’s Rose sounds just like her with her “Maybe 20 years at the bakers’ was good enough for you, but not for me” defiance.

Taylor lets us fall-in-hate with Rose, who is, by any yardstick, a terrible mother. Her bipolar temperament — drinking, laughing, the life of the party when she’s onstage or at the pub, exploding at those who have replaced her as “the star” of the Glasgow Grand Ole’ Opry, at her mother for not dropping everything to help out with the kids — makes us fear for the children.

Wynonna (Daisy Littlefield) is bookish and won’t speak to her mother. Little Lyle (Adam Mitchell) is acting out, furious at the world and the only parent he’s ever had a chance to know, but wasn’t interested in knowing him.

Taylor introduces a veritable fairy godmother into this circle of dysfunction. Sophie Okenedo (“Hotel Rwanda”) is sweetness, light, enthusiasm and wealth, the woman whose house Rose takes over cleaning. Susannah doesn’t know about the prison record or the kids, doesn’t keep track of Rose raiding her liquor cabinet.

But she is given a tour of Rose’s favorite tattoo — the most flattering and pithy definition of country music ever put in ink.

“Three chords and the truth.”

As Rose loses herself in her headphones, belting out country classics, dancing and imagining the house band at the Opry backing her whilst she vacuums, Susannah’s kids are smitten. And soon Susannah is as enthused about “Country and Western” — “It’s just COUNTRY. There ain’t no ‘Western.'” — as Rose.

And she starts helping.

film wild rose with Julie walters

I love the way Taylor and Buckley set us up for disappointments, the way Rose is always disappointing her mother and children. A chance to meet BBC Radio’s legendary country music program host (Bob Harris plays himself)? Rose gets drunk on the train and has her money, phone and bag stolen.

Buckley is a gloriously earthy presence at the heart of “Wild Rose,” so much so that you can’t help but root for this reckless wreck. We can see that the white leather jacket and omnipresent white cowboy boots and star spangled stage blouse aren’t enough. Freckled, uninhibited and unexercised Rose tends more towards Celtic “cute” than pretty, her voice a tad thin and undistinguished to stand out in an industry/art form of bombshells and belters.

Buckley never lets us see that Rose sees this, and takes us on this drive down Delusional Dreams Blvd. with her. Walters brings a feisty sobriety to her mother, and Okenedo an indulgent understanding that’s plainly based on misunderstanding.

I wasn’t keen on the tacked-on finale, part of a third act collapse that dings but doesn’t utterly derail the picture. But “Wild Rose” is still a vivid, estrogen-charged charmer, a winning twist on “chasing your dream” and “You can have it all” with just enough sober slapdowns to keep it honest.

MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexuality and brief drug material

Cast: Jesse Buckley, Sophie Okenedo, Julie Walters

Credits: Directed by Tom Harper, script by Nicole Taylor.  A Neon release.

Running time: 1:41

With Jesse Eisenberg as the high-voiced “femine name” hero-dweeb, and Alessandro Nivola as his scary foil and karate “sensei” (teacher/master), “The Art of Self-Defense” is the very picture of “on the nose casting.”

So writer-director Riley Stearns, of the little-seen “Faults,” makes it his mission to have that be the only thing that’s predictable in this quirky, violent satire of “toxic masculinity” and revenge in a culture where the affronts to one’s manhood lie around every corner. And for the most part, he succeeds.

Eisenberg is Casey, mild-mannered accountant and loner in an unnamed city, for an unnamed firm where there’s no point to him trying to squeeze in to the “hate the boss” chatter among the guys in the coffee break room.

Like a lot of Eisenberg characters, there are traces of “on the spectrum” to his awkwardness. And meek? A blunt “get out” ends those conversation overtures. A sad look from his dachshund guilts him into a late night walk to fetch dog food.

That’s the walk that changes his life. He is accosted and savagely beaten by visored-helmet hoodlums on motorcycles, the sort of thing that happens mostly in the movies and not in, say, Louisville, the unnamed city where this is filmed.

Stearns uses indistinct license plates to mask that, and leaves most characters’ names out, or delays their revelation. We’re meant to focus on the satire, the droll send-up of aspects of masculinity, bullying, violence and gun ownership.

Because that is Casey’s first solution to his “I can’t go back out there” after dark, the fear and humiliation that accompanies the physical injuries.

A TV newscaster has warned people not to venture out “without a weapon,” thanks to these motorbike muggings. Casey takes that as his cue to visit that museum of fetishized manhood, his local gun shop, where the owner takes a sadistic liberal’s delight in citing statistics about suicide and accidental death risks, joking about the vastly heightened danger to having children in a house with guns, but “if you’re having kids, we sell child-safety locks that are reasonably effective.”

But it is the macho bellows and grunts emanating from a local dojo that lure Casey in. A woman (Imogen Poots) is teaching small children in fairly graphic terms the sorts of pain, injury and even death they can hope to achieve by mastering this move or that “choke hold,””closing the carotid artery, cutting off oxygen to the brain,” etc.

Hilarious.

The “rules” of the dojo are on the wall. No shoes on the mat, and “Guns are for the weak.”

The sensei, played by that face of beady-eyed malevolence, Nivola (“American Hustle,” “A Most Violent Year”) is dry, blunt, obsessed with his version of honor and martial arts respect, and yet seductive. He seems to understand Casey more than he should, sizing him up, challenging him but also gently flattering him. Why is he here?

Forget the answers Casey gives most easily. There’s only one that counts.

“I want to become what intimidates me.”

For a guy teaching himself French, mastering “I want no trouble, sir. I am but a tourist” just in case, this is a giant step.

Dojo becomes not just therapy, but his obsession. And “The Art of Self-Defense” drags us down that rabbit hole with him. This is “The Social Network” with “use your foot as your fist, your fist as your foot” solving a smart, wimpy guy’s shortcomings.

We can guess what’s coming, though Stearns puts in admirable effort at twisting up expectations, or at least delaying them.

Stearns could be getting at the notion that it’s not a coincidence that America’s feminine obsession with “bullying” and ways to deal with it that don’t involve the age-old rule of “always confront, always fight back” that boys have had hard-wired into them by fathers, movies and TV, preceded by a couple of years the election of the most stereotypical bully ever to hold the presidency.

“The Art of Self-Defense” struggles, in a clumsy or at least problematic third act that takes us to its darkest corners, to have it both ways — a world where somebody else does the confronting before the way is cleared for a more enlightened and yes, feminine and peaceful future.

Perhaps that’s what Nancy Pelosi is waiting for.

Discounting that, Stearns has still made us laugh through the grimaces for much of “The Art of Self-Defense,” and if nothing else, has given anyone — “Karate Kid” parents or adults — a veritable checklist of the warning signs that maybe this dojo isn’t for you, signs that perhaps the sensei doesn’t use the word “teacher” because what he really wants aren’t classes, but a cult.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, sexual content, graphic nudity and language

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots

Credits: Written and directed by Riley Stearns. A Bleecker St. release.

Running time: 1:44