Movie Nation

Edie Falco plays the hovering/mothering type in this comedy with Bradley Whitford, Michael Rapaport, Jeanie Berlin, Charlie Tahan, Kayli Carter, Michael Beach and ex-Congressman/ex-“Love Boater” Fred Grandy.

This just came off the film fest circuit, so look for it to sneak into release any minute now.

Years of experience teach you to set your sites low for some movies. An ambitious, combat-heavy WWII RAF bio-pic with no big names in the cast, no major distributor behind it, a modest-budget film that premieres and reaches much of the world on Tubi?

That’s “The Shamrock Spitfire,” the story of an Irish ace in the “British Oppressor’s” Royal Air Force during World War II. Tubi got it, and it’s a sturdy, sentimental period piece with decent performances, excellent production values and great special effects.

I don’t know how the Higgins brothers, Dominic and Ian, got their dazzling aerial combat sequences, which can be Heironymous Bosch freeze-frames of planes, clouds, tracer bullets, pilots, explosions and fire. Sampling, compositing and layering combat footage, repurposing clips from “The Battle of Britain,” whose collection of airborne Spitfires, German bombers and ME-109s have turned up in decades of RAF stories since?

But those scenes serve as foundation to a solid, if somewhat dramatically flat and generally unsurprising genre picture on the order of “Mission of Honor” (about Polish pilots in the RAF) and “Dark Blue World” (about Czech pilots in the RAF).

Brendan Finucane was a Dublin native, son of an Easter Uprising revolutionary and an English mother. After Irish independence, his father’s work took them to London, where Brendan (Shane O’Regan), long fascinated by flight, answered the call to join the Royal Air Force just before World War II.

His father (Eoin Lynch) may not approve, fretting over what the folks “back home” would say about an Irish patriot’s son serving in the “Royal” anything. But young Mister “head in the clouds” confers with his priest, whose advice about “the cost of not following your heart” sways him.

Young Brendan is determined to succeed, even though he has trouble with the “landing” part of flying — lots of trouble. But his instructors see the “fight” in him.

And as he notes later in the film, once he’s won his wings, “‘Fighter’ always comes before ‘pilot,’ doesn’t it?”

The film follows Finucane’s tough-minded career, from training to glory as the pilot of the “Shamrock Spitfire,” which wore that green symbol on its fuselage once he became famous.

The Higgins are British filmmakers (Birmingham born) whose earlier feature films had faith-based themes (“The 13th Day,” “All That Remains”). They cover a parade of tropes and cliches in this script, from the “lass back home, waiting” (Bethany Billy), the taunting and bullying the pilot they nickname “Paddy” which his English comrades serve up — sometimes leading to fisticuffs, the twinkling Catholic priest and the “Battle of Britain” “finest hour” newspaper headline montages.

Only two Brits would try to soften the “Paddy” business by referring to this infamous, ancient ethnic slur as an “affectionate” nickname in an opening title. But Finucane could have taken it that way, one supposes — after a few fistfights over it.

What’s novel here is the attention to detail in the training sequences, the combat and the in-the-cockpit actions of a flyer frantically looking all around him for enemy planes, working the controls, trying to stay alive to fight another day, even when he’s been hit.

In that regard, “The Shamrock Spitfire” holds its own, and then some, with big-budget films such as Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.”

The many obvious moments of foreshadowing, the first sight of the squadron dog, first words about “my lucky (cigarette) lighter,” the lager-fueled esprit de corps with his British comrades and later the Australian-piloted squadron “just call me ‘Paddy'” commands, are common currency in such films, so common that Monty Python mocked these cliches fifty years ago.

Still and all, “Shamrock Spitfire” more or less gets the job done, with or without surprises. O’Regan shows promise and the cast is competent, even without the sparks.

And when this one gets in the air, it’s a cinematic textbook on how to create suspenseful dogfights, how to fake, shoot and edit convincing aerial combat on a tighter-than-tight budget.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, mild profanity

Cast: Shane O’Regan, Bethany Billy, Chris Kaye, Eoin Lynch and Emily Outred

Credits: Scripted and directed by Dominic and Ian Higgins. A Tubi release.

Running time: 1:48

When Frederick Forsythe wrote “The Day of the Jackal” in the early ’70s, professional assassin tales were a relatively rare thing.

Likewise, when Fred Zinneman made his 1973 benchmark Euro-thriller film of the story of a killer rogue French right wingers hired to kill French President Charles De Gaulle in the early ’60s, the cinema hadn’t been exposed to scores of versions of this sort of stupidly-pricey lone gunman tale.

We’ve had every male star of recent decades — Jason to Bruce to Forest to Liam to Antonio to Cuba to Pierce to Benicio to everybody who played Bourne to Fassbender, and plenty of female ones, from Bridget Fonda to Taraj P. Henson, Saoirse (“Hannah”) to Saldana (“Colombiana”), and even comic tales that paired up Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” uniting the Pitt-Jolies.

So the novelty’s gone, even if the cat-and-mouse classic of the ’70s still stands above the rest.

Now, here’s a third “Jackal” — Edward Fox had the title role in the original, Bruce Willis starred in “The Jackal” remake of ’97 — with Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne pursued by a dogged, crafty cop (Lashana Lynch in the Michael Lonsdale role) in a mad dash to stop the worst from happening.

Eddie’s Jackal drives a later model Alfa Romeo roadster than Fox’s did. Otherwise, the beats look the same for a story set in the present, and it looks as if no expense was spared in the action sequences sampled in the trailer.

Will its rising suspense and compact thriller punch work as a drawn-out series? Nov. 7, we’ll find out if the Intellectual Property still clicks — on Peacock.

Crackling dialogue, bluff, brittle performances and a plot riddled with “coincidences” and saddled with clumsy, chatty villains characterize “Nightfall,” a fin de noir thriller from Jacques Tourneur.

It features linebacker-in-a-suit Aldo Ray as a commercial artist fleeing two murderous bank robbers, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond as the trigger-happy dopes who keep letting him get away and Anne Bancroft as a woman our hero figures is a femme fatale but who may have other reasons for cadging $5 from him at an LA bar.

Tourneur, whose best films were stamped with his painterly way with shadowy film noir monochrome (“Out of the Past,” “Cat People”) takes us into a bars and dimly-lit rooms, out to the LA oil patch and the Tetons of Wyoming in a thriller best remembered for having it’s snow-covered finale cribbed by “Fargo,” and for the script and dialogue by the prolific and piquant Stirling Silliphant (“In the Heat of the Night,” “Village of the Damned,” TV’s “Route 66”)

“Guys have probably been swarming around you since your second teeth came through.”

That’s how James Vanning (Ray) — Or his name Rayburn? Or something else? — talks no-nonsense to the beauty (Bancroft) who sits next to him at the bar, claiming she didn’t bring cash. She works in fashion.

“I should have figured your being a model. I mean, believe it or not, I’m an artist”

“Soup cans or sunsets?” she cracks.

As this was 1956, how’d she or the screenwriter know what Andy Warhol would become famous for painting…in 1962?

Vanning’s guarded with the model Marie, but sure to get her number so that she’ll “pose” for him. He’s not that forthcoming with the stranger James Gregory) who stops stalking him long enough to strike up a chat, where we learn “Vanning” is a vet who fought on Okinawa.

The stranger? He’s got a wife (Brando’s big sister, Jocelyn Brando) and a secret of his own. He’s an insurance investigator with an interest in Vanning.

Whatever the two mugs who seem to have bribed model Marie to distract Vanning are mixed-up in is sure to involve that insurance detective. The talker (Keith) has to go to some pains to rein in his Colt 45 packing mug of a partner, Red (Bond).

“Look, Red, tonight’s his night. Might be a short one. Might be a long one. But he’s gonna keep breathing until we get an answer out of him. You got that?”

They robbed a bank. Somehow, “Vanning” or Rayburn or whoever ended up with the cash. They want it back. Flashbacks tell us the story of how they crossed pathsjust before a blizzard rolled into the Wyoming Tetons.

The Burnett Guffrey cinematography is as crisp as the dialogue, and beautifully complements the flinty, unfussy performances. It’s a short, brisk thriller, which accounts for the lack of back-story most of the characters warrant, even at their chattiest.

Silliphant writes past a lot of lapses in logic. Not only do the bad guys think of every way under the sun or moon to let their quarry get away, but they talk a lot as they do.

 “Well, maybe we can get this thing straightened out, and everything will be fine.”

“And “dandy.” Don’t forget the ‘dandy.'”

The dialogue is so sharp that you almost don’t notice how EVERYbody talks too much. Vanning and Marie get into a taxi where he unloads a lot of “wanted for murder” exposition on her. As if the cabbie couldn’t hear. As if the viewer isn’t wondering why the cabbie hasn’t heard.

That goes for the finale, too, which invents another colorful, verbose argument that defies logic and stands-out as the most contrived moment in a fairly contrived plot.

But that post-war “noir” era of cynical anti-heroes randomly targeted by evil was winding down. Why not unload every thing you ever wanted a tough guy — and Ray was one of the toughest — to say to another tough guy in your script?

“Nightfall” still makes a fine late-career showcase for Tourneur’s visuals, a showcase for Ray, Bancroft and Keith, an early example of Sillphant’s ear and a reminder of just what we’d miss when color totally supplanted the symbolic shades of darkness that monochromatic film stock provided.

Rating: “approved,” violence

Cast: Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith, Jocelyn Brand, Rudy Bond and James Gregory.

Credits: Directed by Jacques Tourneur, scripted by Stirling Silliphant, based on a novel by David Goodis. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi, Amazon, et al

Running time: 1:22

The packed Thursday night preview in Durham NC I saw “Deadpool & Wolverine” should have been the tell.

It’s on thousands of screens, some 3D, many IMAX, and thanks to that and the fact that theaters nationwide gave it just under half of all the Thursday evening showings the “preview” record fell as the movie that will eat the second half of the summer took in about $38.5 million in afternoon and evening showings.

Friday’s take, Deadline.com says, puts this bromance at million for its Thursday-Friday opening “day.”

So, for the weekend, maybe $185 million? Maybe $200? $200+?

It’ll clear “Captain America,” “Black Panther” and “Doctor Strange” sequels,, in any event — BIG. Considering it’s R-rated and making a lot of that money from late LATE night showings, that’s Epic.

Not quite plotless, and certainly built for fan service, “Deadpool & Wolverine” earned mixed reviews. The fans don’t care.

Everything else in theaters will be picking up crumbs.

“Twisters” will pull in a LOT of crumbs, some $36 million, based on the $10 million this movie made Friday, despite round-the-clock “Deadpool/Wolverine” showings at every multiplex.

“Despicable Me 4” will add another $10-11 million, will clear the $290 million mark domestically and has earned over $630 million internationally, so far.

“Inside Out 2” will collect $8-9 million, and is over $600 million DOMESTICALLY.

“Longlegs” is horror with legs, as it will clear $6, close to $7 and will hurdle past the $60 million mark all-in by Wed.

I’ll be updating this all weekend as more numbers come in.

“The Arctic Convoy” is a taut, old-fashioned World War II thriller detailing the grim realities of civilian merchant seamen sent in harm’s way to deliver supplies to the Soviet Union to ensure Nazi Germany would be fighting a two-front war it could not win.

It’s a fictional account based on the ill-fated Convoy PQ-17 saga with ships, many of them Norwegian, under escort in the deadly summer of ’42 when their escort was removed and they were ordered to “scatter” and try and make their own way, each alone, to the northern Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk.

There have been decades of versions of this sort of story for filmgoers to appreciate, most of them concentrated during and in the decade or so after the war ended. The recent “Greyhound” showed the murderous cat-and-mouse destroyer vs. U-Boats view of the Battle of the Atlantic. “Arctic” is the second Norwegian film to focus on conquered and occupied Norway’s greatest contribution to the war effort, following Netflix’s excellent three-part series “War Sailor.”

Like the sailors who endured this deadly service, the viewer knows the drill in such cinematic recreations.

“Convoy” has a grizzled skipper, Skar (Anders Baasmo) and a seasoned but jumpy new first mate, Mørk, played by Tobias Santelmann of “In Order of Disappearance.”

It doesn’t matter that the crew grouses about the Russians being Nazi allies until Hitler sent his legions in search of more “living space.” Skar is a dogged and dogmatic skipper determined to do Norway’s “part” in this fight and supply their allies. Mørk just survived a ship he captained that was sunk out from under him on this very duty — Iceland to Murmansk. He might be a gunshy.

There are frightened green “kids” aboard, a female radio operator (Heidi Ruud Ellingsen), a nervous wreck of an engineer and a tough Swede, Johan (Adam Reier Lundgren), who mans the 20mm anti-aircraft gun during air raids. He’s got his reasons.

For convoys passing north of Norway and the arctic circle, every menace facing a merchant mariner during the war came into play. Summer or not, it was cold and/or foggy, with icebergs a menace the further north you went. They were in range of German Ju-88 bombers for much of the voyage. U-boats were a near constant menace. The Germans dropped mines.

And tucked into Norwegian anchorages were the last major German warships, including the feared Tirpitz. The mere hint that the Bismarck’s sister-ship might put to sea gave the British escorting convoys the jitters.

That’s what happened with PQ-17.

“The Arctic Convoy” puts its unnamed Norske freighter through the wringer with all of those menaces, a power struggle developing between the captain and first mate, a crew ready to mutiny over a “suicide mission” and an engineer who has to drink to keep his nerves and stay at his post below when he’s sure he’ll be trapped when — not if — they sink.

The skipper? He’s resigned to his fate every time he boards.

“I consider this a coffin,” he shrugs (in Norwegian, with English subtitles). As for the crew, “I don’t know any of their names.” Makes it easier to send me to do deadly work, to keep going when a crewman falls overboard (there’s no turning back).

Netflix has this fractious, sentimental dramedy — “Awards Season” ready — which premieres in Sept.

Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo and “The LEGO Movie” and scores of other film scores, did the fine electronic-flavored score for the new series “Time Bandits.”

But while the opening credits are passable, in a sort of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” way, he should have considered the jaunty tune, “Dream Away,” that the 1981 movie “Time Bandits” rolled under the closing credits.

Sure, licensing a George Harrison song, even an obscure one, isn’t free. But a new cover of this would send viewers off on a higher note. I remember staying through the credits, trying to ID it when the original Handmade Films movie came out. And then having no luck tracking it down at the record store.

But Youtube is where all recorded music lives on.

It’s worth noting, right up top, that the many actors who turn up in “Deadpool & Wolverine” let us know — in big moments and small ones — that they’re better than this movie, this genre and this universe.

And not just the always-Oscar-eligible thunder from down under. The high-voiced chatterbox who thinks it’s all “aboot” him may be paid by the word — many of them four letters long — but he’s damned funny in the role he was born to play.

Bringing in Emma Corrin from “The Crown” as a villainess pays dividends, and classes up the joint. And Matthew Macfadyen leaves “Succession” and a lifetime of “Pride & Prejudice” and “Operation Mincemeat” period pieces to vamp up a villain who could not be funnier if he’d played the cad in culottes.

The players are fun and have fun in what a few of them, plied with enough glasses of Aviation Gin, would admit is a pretty entertaining bad movie.

Five credited screenwriters filled the soundtrack with jokes and sight gags about Disney buying Fox and “Hugh’s divorce” and whatever happened to Daredevil and Elektra and how ridiculous the concept of “multiverses” is and how hilarious it is that comic books and comic book movies are the only places they’re taken seriously.

No, Einstein didn’t sign off on them but Stephen Hawking was um, multi-curious.

Having your characters break the fourth, fifth and sixth walls commenting on a coming “third act flashback,” and the endless pauses for repeated slo-mo musical montages set to AC/DC, Madonna, et al, how “the nerds” are being fan-serviced to orgasm with this character’s revival, that “epic” meeting/confrontation and the like doesn’t let you off the hook. By anyobjective measure, this is a cut-and-paste “assembly” — not a screenplay with a coherent plot and anything like a point.

Mocking “Mad Max” and “Furiosa” is funny, and only flirts with “I.P. infringement.”

“Pegging” might not new “new” for Deadpool, “but it is for Disney.”

When the masked visage of Reynolds looks at the camera 446 times, you can hear the wink, even if you can’t see it.

I laughed and laughed at the jokes, and looked and looked at my watch long before “Marvel Jesus” turned to the camera to assure fans that “we’re almost there” — that the finale was beginning.

When you’re not really going anywhere, time stands still. And when all involved are telling you they’re all out of ideas, you should listen.

Take away the Easter Eggs and cameos and fun performances and there’s no “there” here. And they’re totally OK with it, because no matter what new Captain America trailer is slapped on before the opening credits, the idea is something along the lines of “let’s burn this bitch down and giggle at the flames.”

Four brassy broads roll up their sleeves and do the heavy lifting in “The Fabulous Four,” an old friends reunite for a Key West wedding comedy from the director of “How to Make An American Quilt.”

Their efforts are largely for naught as this turns out to be yet another underscripted comedy for players who have their AARP cards, aimed at an audience that also has theirs.

If you can’t get laughs out of Bette Midler, Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Susan Sarandon, that’s on you, Anne Marie Allison and Jenna Milly (they wrote “Golden Arm” together).

But director Moorhouse, who first gained notice as a producer on her husband’s “Muriel’s Wedding,” finds some heart and room for tunes in this story of strained friendships, bad behavior and last chance romance set in Key West, but largely shot in Georgia.

And if you don’t grin at the sight and sound of Midler, Ralph (a “Sister Act 2” veteran now seen on TV’s “Abbott Elementary) and Mullally singing Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now” while parasailing above the Hawk Channel, that’s on you.

Marilyn and Lou (Midler and Sarandon) were roomies in college and afterwards in New York City, where Kitty (Ralph) and Alice (Mullally) were their neighbors.

Decades have passed, with Lou becoming a hyper-focused and still-single surgeon, Alice a backup singer who never grew up, Kitty a widowed organic pot farmer and Marilyn a newly-widowed housewife of means.

Moving from Atlanta to Key West after her husband’s death did Marilyn more good than she’d expected. Now, she’s summoning her posse from way backwhen to her hastily-arranged wedding.

Free spirits Alice and Kitty are happy to oblige. But there’s been bad blood between Marilyn and Lou. So the other two have to trick her into making the trip by telling cat lady Lou she’s won a Hemingway polydactyl (six-toed) kitty, one of the descendents of Hemingway’s own cats from the Hemingway House, now a museum in Key West.

Once there, fences can be mended as they’ll all stay at Marilyn’s beachside mansion and the two feuders will be forced to make nice for dress-fittings, dinners and entertainment Marilyn has lined up.

The script’s logic flies out the window with all this as Lou simply ignores — or seems to — the fact that her friends lied to her and Marilyn was the offending party and isn’t apologizing for her offense. Still. Marilyn is all “Everything’s fine, now” even though she only planned for two guests, and that leaves Lou as odd-woman out in things like “three person parasailing.”