Category Archives: Now Showing

Now Showing

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Producers: Robert Ogden Barnum, Greg Lauritano, Daniel André, Lucas Jarach and Luke Daniels   Director: Daniel André   Screenplay: Daniel André   Cast: Keir Gilchrist, Lucy Hale, Francesca Eastwood, Rhys Coiro, Jay Pharaoh, Dylan Flashner, Lisa Yaro, Annie Abbott, Monica Potter, Leslie Stratton and Jim Gaffigan   Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: D   

When a comedy just doesn’t work, it can be well-nigh excruciating to watch.  That’s the case with writer-director Daniel André’s feature debut “Running on Empty,” a quirky jumble of genres and tones that’s as awkward as its lead character.

He’s Mort (Keir Gilchrist), who works at the “adventure” funeral home that his late father owned and is now run by Mort’s desperate skirt-chasing uncle Barry (Jim Gaffigan), a guy who’s constantly, and futilely, trying to link up with pretty young things online.  Mort, whose job involves posing the corpses to reflect what they enjoyed doing in life (the place’s specialty), is engaged to beautiful but vain and self-absorbed Nicole (Francesca Eastwood), though how that implausible coupling came about is never made clear.

As part of the process of trying to buy a house, he and Nicole hope to persuade the sellers, who prefer young bidders planning to have families, to choose them by enrolling with an outfit called Life Day Count, or LDC, which uses unexplained scientific methods to determine precisely when each client is going to die (unless murder, suicide or accident intervenes).  When it turns out that Nicole has sixty years left on her countdown clock and Mort less than one, she unceremoniously dumps him.

Presumably depressed, though it’s hard to tell since his dour, deadpan manner hasn’t changed much, Mort decides to hire a dating service called Till Death Do Us Part, which caters to LDC clients who have come up short in the longevity department.   After taping a video self-introduction with sympathetic camerawoman Kate (Lucy Hale), he goes off to a bar, where Rita (Leslie Stratton), a young woman fending off a pushy patron, pretends that he’s her date and invites him to her room.  To Mort’s surprise she’s not only a sex worker but one whose death date is that very night.  When she suddenly expires while attempting to give him a “free” blow job, her nasty pimp Simon (Rhys Coiro) arrives and demands that he pay for services supposedly rendered.

At this point the movie takes a curious turn, concentrating on Mort’s harassment by the increasingly menacing Simon (who, in all fairness, is in turn being pressured by his boss to collect what’s due, leading him to demand more and more).  But it makes room for digressions like pep talks to Mort by his voluble co-worker Sid (Jay Pharaoh), delivered in the form of profane stand-up riffs; a date montage with the awful prospects the agency provides; and a spectral appearance by Mrs. Harrison (Annie Abbott), a former co-worker who returns from the dead while he’s prepping her corpse to encourage him to live the rest of his life to the fullest.  There’s even a weird episode when Nicole invites Mort to the palatial home she shares with her new fiancé (Dylan Flashner), and they jointly come on to him.  

Then another shift occurs as Kate reappears when Mort goes back to the agency to complain.  With her return the movie turns for a time into a romantic comedy, complete with the sweet montages typical of that genre.  But when Simon threatens her unless Mort pays up, the resultant confrontation between the men turns dark again, though apparently it’s meant to be shot through with humor that never materializes.  The outcome of their fight nonetheless points to a happy ending, which is soon upended by one, briefly foretold at the start, that’s sappily message-oriented instead.

The bumpy plot of the movie, with its jarring transitions, is made even more irritating by the garishly artificial look of Ryan Kaercher’s production design, Susan Doepner-Senac’s costumes and Matt Klammer’s cinematography.  The heightened style is also an integral part of Gilchrist’s stilted performance, which comes off as one long nervous tic; and while the others don’t go nearly as far as he does, they’re basically cartoonish as well; only Hale escapes unscathed, and her role is comparatively brief.  None of them are aided by Ethan Maniquis’ heavy-handed editing, or by a score by Keith Weidner that struggles, in its tinkly way, to emphasize how charmingly odd the entire exercise is meant to be except when it’s supplanted by the obligatory needle drops.

At the beginning of “Running on Empty,” Mort remarks in voiceover narration that most of life seems pointless and absurd to him.  Most viewers will feel that those adjective aptly describe the movie, too.

Now Showing

ONE FAST MOVE

Producers: Bill Bindley, Mike Karz, Matt Luber and Lena Roklin   Director: Kelly Blatz   Screenplay: Kelly Blatz   Cast: K.J. Apa, Eric Dane, Maia Reficco, Edward James Olmos, Jackson Hurst, Austin North, Adam Thomas Ziemba, Libby Blake and Rose Bianco   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios/Prime Video

Grade: C-

It’s difficult to say which are more numerous—the cycles or the clichés—in Kelly Blatz’s movie about a young biker who aims to become a pro in the motorcycle speedway circuit.  Blatz, an actor whose writing-directing debut “Senior Love Triangle” (2019) won some praise, stumbles in his second turn around the track, offering a warmed-over retread of the kind of sports story we’ve seen many times before, souped up with a heavy-handed message about how lusting after glory can undermine one’s chance at real happiness.

Wes Neal (K.J. Apa) is introduced at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he and the other soldiers engage in macho competition.  Challenged to a street motorcycle race, he jumps at the chance, but things go badly and he’s forced to flee from the cops, doing a lot of damage in the process.  He’s arrested, and after six months in the brig is dishonorably discharged. 

His one desire is to race professionally, so he seeks out his biological father Dean Miller (Eric Dane), who abandoned his mother when she was pregnant because all he wanted to do was race, and believed that families held racers back from following their dream.  Dean actually achieved some success in the sport, but a back injury hobbled him, and now he’s a has-been, wallowing in booze and one-night stands while eking out a living working in a cycle shop owned by grizzled Abel (Edward James Olmos) near the Road Atlanta speedway (the shoot was in Georgia). 

Dean initially puts Wes off, telling him he’s just too old to hone his skills for the rigors of pro competition.  But eventually he agrees to train the boy (predictable push-ups and other exercises ensue), and avuncular Abel takes him on in the shop too, even though he never seems to have any customers.  The ensemble is completed when Wes meets Camilla (Maia Reficco), a pretty waitress who’s also a single mom with a darling boy (Adam Thomas Ziemba).

Blatz tries to invest the character relationships with some depth, and he succeeds to some extent with Dean, simply because Dane works hard to make the physically and emotionally broken man a genuine person, imperfect and not terribly likable.  But Apa prefers posing to acting, sporting a perpetually glum look; and it doesn’t help his performance that Blatz treats him as beefcake, overlooking no opportunity to have Wes strip off his shirt so viewers can see his impressive physique.  (Fans from the actor’s run as Archie Andrews on “Riverdale” will probably appreciate that, though.)  Meanwhile Olmos shambles about with long white hair, spouting words of supposed wisdom and eventually doubling down on the movie’s moral by telling Wes that he neglected his family too, and feels guilty about it. 

There’s occasional racing action—the script introduces another coach (Jackson Hurst) and young rider (Austin North) to serve as rivals to Dean and Wes.  And in the end, “One Fast Move” ends up exactly where you expect it will—at the track, and the finish of a make-or-break race against formidable opponents—Wes’ conflicting desires, on the one hand, and a racer we won’t identify here on the other.  By then, of course, Dean has become his son’s biggest booster, even offering him one of his treasured classic bikes; but Wes has come to realize that his dad is trying to achieve his dream of glory vicariously through him, which causes a rift.  And the boy must decide whether to make the same mistake as his father did (and has been pushing him toward)—choosing the single-minded pursuit of racing fame over the possibility of a fulfilling family life by leaving Camilla behind.

In technical terms the movie is decent enough for a moderately-budgeted flick.  Freddy Waff’s production design is at best functional, but Nami Melamad’s music is propulsive, especially in the racing sequences that are nicely shot by Luca Del Puppo and edited by Seth Clark (elsewhere the framing can be pretty bland and the pacing lethargic).  The crowds of spectators at the track, however, are pretty small.

One expects that, except for Apa devotees and motorcycle enthusiasts, the number of viewers for “One Fast Move” will be modest, too.