Movie Nation

Gambling’s allure as drama isn’t hard to dissect. It’s a lifestyle few of us would have the nerve to attempt, a world of smoky, dimly-lit casinos, back-rooms and bars — crippling hours, crumbling priorities and all manner of bad habits and bad choices driven by an addiction.

“Mississippi Grind” drew Ryan Reynolds, Sienna Miller, Alfre Woodard and Ben “Killing Them Softly/Bloodline” Mendelsohn with its seedy, sordid blend of fatalism, violence and melodrama. It’s a rambling, random, shambolic affair with little logic other than the geography of going from here to there — “here” being Dubuque, Iowa, where the gamblers Jerry and Curtis meet, and “there” being New Orleans, where the “big buy-in game” awaits.

And if it seems, in the end, pretty much pointless, that’s sort of the point. Few gambling tales have captured the masochistic self-destruction, the manic mood swings build on the flip of a card, a spin of the wheel or a dog or horse making the turn at the track as well.

Jerry’s (Mendelsohn) let his addiction take over his life. Surely Curtis (Reynolds) sees that. Curtis plops down at a table at one of those sad prairie-state casinos, starts chattering and sizes up the players. “I’m from all over,” he explains, in between stories and jokes.

Jerry, he’s decided, is a nice guy. And Jerry? He’ll take that offer to buy him a drink.

“Curtis. Like Tony?”

“No, Curtis, like Mayfield.”

Gamblers are on the lookout for signs, little messages from the universe. Curtis keeps talking about this atmospheric spectacle he caught earlier that day.

“Best. Rainbow. Ever.”

They notice a dog racing the next day with a rainbow connection. The University of Hawaii (Rainbow Warriors) are playing Gonzaga the next night. These are “signs.”

And they’re off, Curtis itchy to stay on the move, says “It’s Machu Pichu time.” That’s code for leaving a person, place or game. Jerry? He’s smitten by this stranger who takes an interest in him, even though Curtis won’t say (right away) what we all see.

“Some guys are born to lose.”

As they motor southward, layers peel away from this mismatched pair. Jerry skips out on his job and flees a bookie (Alfre Woodard, surprisingly), Curtis has a stop to make, with his hooker ladyfriend (Sienna Miller, earthy and inviting and needy).

The guys base their trip on fate, making decisions based on whether the “next guy outta the bathroom” is wearing glasses or not.

Filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck built a career in features out of a pretty good documentary about Dominicans trying to make it in the North American minor leagues (“Sugar”). But like their debut feature (“It’s Kind of a Funny Story”), they show a better grasp of milieu and character better than they do of story.

“Mississippi Grind”‘s couple makes little sense as a couple. Is Curtis using Jerry, betting against this “born loser,” or is Jerry to help Curtis on his own path to self-destruction?

The ending feels like a cop-out, the coda doubles down on that shortcoming.

But Mendelsohn, playing another version of the guy you want to sit farthest from at the bar, and Miller and especially the charming, smarmy Reynolds, make this a game we’ll sit through, even if we’re never all in.

MPAA Rating: R for language

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Ryan Reynolds, Sienna Miller,  Alfre Woodard
Credits: Written and directed by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck.  An A24 release.

Running Time: 1:48

M. Night Shyamalan hated being called a one-trick-pony, so he took on “Last Airbender,” “The Happening” and “After Earth.” And proved he has just that one trick.
So he turns back to the formula that made him famous with “The Visit,” a faintly-creepy, lightly amusing horror comedy that promises a surprise twist and a hint of heart.
He’s gotten quite rusty at this, what with the clumsy and (hopefully) humbling fiascoes that preceded it. And truth be told, he took that formula and himself so seriously that he’s still not able to deliver a clean, lean and briskly-paced picture.
But even if this “Over the river and through the woods, there’s something WRONG at Granny’s house” is not particularly scary and only funny in too-obvious ways, its novel touches lift it beyond much of the sausage churned out by the Hollywood Horrorworks.
Mom (Kathryn Hahn) is long-estranged from her parents. But she’s got a new love in her life, and teen daughter Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and 13 year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are more than happy to go spend a week in snowy, rural Pennsylvania with the grandparents they never knew, just to give Mom a shot at happiness.
Becca’s an aspiring filmmaker, and even though Dad fled the family and Mom works at Walmart, she can afford got a two-camera set-up for her documentary tribute to her mother, a project she hopes will bring the estranged back together. If only Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) weren’t so…strange.
The kids are banned from the basement. “Mold,” they’re told. Pop Pop is always skulking off to the shed…for something. Bedtime is 9:30 p.m. — sharp. No leaving your room until dawn.
And Nana? She has spells. She wants Becca to climb into the oven to clean it. She snaps at any mention of their mom, her daughter. And the things Nana does in the dark would give any child the willies.
Here’s what works. The kids, especially Becca, are concerned for their mother. They Skype, and they’re reluctant to share their concerns with her at the risk of ruining her latest chance at love.
“I hate you spoiled brats,” Mom always signs off. “We hate you, too!” Cute.
The boy is an aspiring whitebread rapper, and a smart aleck. Wrong guy to have behind camera two. (And as tired a movie trope as shaky hand-held cameras in a horror movie.)
Random strangers they meet see the camera and share, “I used to be an actor myself,” and launch into soliloquies.
The grandparents, and their mom, keep passing off what’s the kids see happening to old age. And the kids, not knowing any better, buy it. “Confused old fools” and “Sundown Syndrome” make just enough sense to the precocious and very adult Becca. They’re scarred by their father’s abandonment of them, and a little slow to be scared over Nana’s late-night (Yikes!) nudity and Pop Pop’s episodes.
But the kids are too-perfect, pretty little models/child actors who never let us forget that. Becca’s pretentious tinsel talk is grating.
“This is the PERFECT cinematic image to open the documentary!”
Shyamalan has so few frights up his sleeve that his deliberate, portentous pacing gets away from him here. Again. It’s a 94 minute movie that plays much longer. It doesn’t build towards a breathless, violent climax.
It’s all over-explained, more like the deflating coda to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” or the “Yeah, and?” “surprise” of “The Village” than the gotcha of “Sixth Sense.”
The mystery isn’t deep, alas. And neither, as we’ve long suspected, is the filmmaker.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for disturbing thematic material including terror, violence and some nudity, and for brief language

Cast: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Kathryn Hahn
Credits: Written and directed by M. N ight Shyamalan. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:36

First Principle. No Jason Statham? No “Transporter.”

Sure, Clive Owen managed a fair impersonation of one in those BMW commercials (short movies) that came out shortly after Statham and Luc Besson’s Man-of-Few-Words getaway driver in France film opened. But could anybody else have managed the martial arts brawls, the scowls, the growl?

So Ed Skrein, from “Game of Thrones,” “The Sweeney” and “Northmen — A Viking Saga,” is up against it right out of the gate.

Then there’s the way editor-turned-director Camille Delamarre introduces him. Sunglasses, sure. But it’s the CAR, a James Bond-modified Audi S8 that gets the heroic entrance, a fetishized 360 pan straight out of a TV commercial — or “Top Gear” wet dream.

There’s no mention of previous Transporters, just a new guy playing Frank Martin, ex-British military, making a very nice living in the nice confines of Nice, Monte Carlo and the French Riviera.

“People always need guys like me,” the Transporter grins.

A gang of impossibly skinny stiletto-heeled hookers needs a driver to pull off heists against their Eastern European pimp ( Radivoje Bukvic).

“I’m a LEGITIMATE businessman!”

The blonde-bewigged black mini-dressed hookers kidnap Frank’s ex-spy dad (Ray Stevenson). Not much of a spy, if Robert Palmer’s backup bandcan get the drop on him.

But don’t think about this one too much. Or at all. That field-improvised trauma surgery on one leggy larcenist is quickly forgotten. Yeah, she was bleeding out and all they managed to do was patch the surface wound. She’s back in action in a flash.

The hookers’ “All for one and one for all” “Three Musketeers” quotes are…laughable.

Some actors show signs of being dubbed into English. Skrein’s entire voice track feels removed from the others sharing scenes with him (“Ed, please, another loop and MORE HOARSE whispery!”). Skrein isn’t bad. He’s just boring.

The villain’s a non-entity, or a collection of non-entities.

And the car? Yaaaaaawn. Eight-speed Triptronic transmission? A “Transporter” who doesn’t drive a stick? The chases are nothing special, with the exception of one bit of business involving drifting and setting off fire hydrants. The poor police of Monte Carlo are all stuck in Renault and Peugot econo-boxes.

That makes for a car movie that’s stuck in neutral, low octaned to death.
MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, sexual material, some language, a drug reference and thematic elements

Cast: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright,

Credits: Directed Camille Delamarre, script by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Luc Besson. by Max Joseph, script by Max Joseph, Meaghan Oppenheimer and Richard Silverman. A Europa release.

Running time: 1:36

From the earnest and environmentally righteous story to the profanity re-dubbed into “friggin’,” “Chloe and Theo” feels like Dakota Johnson’s atonement for the meretricious slime that was “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Sure, this indie fish-out-of-water dramedy about an Inuit (Eskimo) in New York was almost certain filmed before Johnson’s “big break.” The film was originally titled “Theo,” named for its Inuit hero. But that changed and Johnson’s voice took over the narration, and her face became the one we see on the poster after the groping/grappling of “Grey.”

Theo Ikummaq is an Inuit hunter summoned by his tribal elders to carry a message “to the Southerners.”

Since they live above the Arctic Circle, everybody is a Southerner to them.

Warn them that the ice is melting, that walrus hunting is getting too difficult. “Tell the elders” there about their dream. A boiling sun devours their ancestral home in that nightmare.

Theo was “educated by the Southerners,” he speaks their language and has some clue about their ways. They put him on a plane and he heads for New York.

Chloe is one of the first people he meets. After he’s mistakenly emptied the donations hat of a street mime. She’s a homeless hustler, a petty thief and grubby urchin in fishnet stockings. She’ll help him — for a price. You want elders? She takes him to a retirement home.

“They look like prisoners,” he protests.

Her crazed roommate Tyler (Ashley Springer) and streetwise pal Mr. Sweets (Andre De Shields) pitch in. That brain trust is the one that could get him to the U.N., to speak to “all the elders” of the peoples of the South.

Writer-director Ezna Sands (“Tontine”) has no surprises up his fur-covered sleeves, here. The tundra footage is pretty, the Quixotic “warning” story covers every base you’d expect — Youtube viral video plays a part.

Ikummaq is natural on camera, if not terribly charismatic. The most emotional, or at least lively scenes involve the supporting players. Oscar winner Mira Sorvino is an empathetic U.N. official, for instance.

Johnson, an actress whose “real” big break was genetic (her parents are Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson), dirties up and dresses down, playing a runaway with a hint of rage beneath her stringy/dirty blonde locks.

“It’s time for a REVOLUTION!” she fumes.

“No, it ain’t,” says the pragmatic Mr. Sweets.

And while one can applaud the effort to recut this to give “Chloe and Theo” a decent shot at commercial appeal, the brief movie that they whittled this down to is neither cautionary nor hopeful, a feel-good film with a perfunctory, bitter and misguided aftertaste.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief violence

Cast: Theo Ikummaq, Dakota Johnson, Mira Sorvino, Andre De Shields
Credits: Directed by Max Joseph, script by Max Joseph, Meaghan Oppenheimer and Richard Silverman. An Alchemy release.

Running time: 1:21

They’re just a couple of sway-backed, high-mileage actors, each a dozen years older than their characters and showing it.

They cuss and fuss and reminisce and make all the same mistakes Reese Witherspoon’s character made in “Wild.” And then some.

The annoying “trail mate” shows up at the right time, the fetching innkeeper a little later and the bear a little later still. All very predictable when you take “A Walk in the Woods.”

But God help me, I grinned from beginning to end.

Bill Bryson’s hiking the Appalachian Trail memoir becomes a Robert Redford/Nick Nolte vehicle, an amusing and light “Slightly Grouchy Old Men” aimed squarely at an older audience.

Redford is Bryson, an award winning travel writer reaching retirement age, and the age when you spend too much time going to friends’ funerals. On an impulse, he decides that this Appalachian Trail that runs through the woods in the New Hampshire town where he lives just might be one last challenge to tackle.

His wife (Emma Thomson) is not keen on the idea, but resigned to it. His son is full of the “at your age” warnings. And the hiking gear salesman/trail nerd (Nick Offerman, on the nose) sees him coming. No matter. Bill will get out there and see the forests, the eastern wild “while there’s still some left.”

But rounding up a peer to go with him gets nowhere, until his estranged hometown pal Katz (Nolte) gets wind of the quest. They once backpacked and bickered through Europe. But that was 40 years ago. Bygones, right? Let’s “sneak in one last adventure before it’s too late,” he growls, and Bryson agrees.

Here’s how Nolte steals the movie. He once voiced a bear in a cartoon. With good reason. He wears a fedora that could be a leftover prop from “Cannery Row,” which he filmed 30 years ago. He looks, shambles along and talks like a guy who has crawled in and out of the bottle, gargled with gravel and stopped way too many right hooks with his cheekbones. For decades.

Katz growls, grumps and slows the pair down. Every funny episode, like encountering the nerdy know-it-all (Kristen Schaal) that they then must ditch — lest she chatter-nag them to death — earns a “Can’t WAIT to read about this in the book” from Katz.

And an “I’m not WRITING a book” from Bryson.

Mary Steenburgen, every senior citizen comedy’s go-to love interest, is the twinkling owner of a trailside inn. Because that’s all this pretends to be, a codgerish-comedy. None of the profundity of “Into the Wild” or “Wild.” Whatever these two backpacking old men learn — and the puffy, pink Nolte/Katz seems to look healthier, the more miles they cover — it’s not deep.

But it is funny, and Redford, gracious as ever, makes a wonderful straight-man for a comic co-costar who has the face, voice and posture of a geezer who probably should have tackled this healing hike 20 years earlier.

MPAA Rating:R for language and some sexual references

Cast: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thomson, Mary Steenburgen, Kristen Schaal, Nick Offerman
Credits: Directed by Ken Kwapis, script by Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman, based on the Bill Bryson book.  A Broad Green release.

Running time: 1:44