Habit: Libby Mintz, Andreja Pejic, and Bella Thorne play nuns on the run from reason.

There was a time in the mid-’90s when it seemed like every other indie release owed a debt of originality to Quentin Tarantino. Hell, he produced half of them! The studio press release for Habit, the latest streetwise and cinema foolish grimefest starring Bella Thorne, pays its dues in the first sentence: “Reminiscent of early Tarantino…” Drugs are once again the subject, only this time they appear to be the ephemeral auteur behind this cloddish frappe of guns, nuns, and jump cuts.

We open with a series of scenes that never quite get past the sketch stage. The flashback to Corpus Christi is brief: inside a pretty pink bedroom tucked inside a pretty pink camper sits young Mads, praying before the seemingly life-size crucifix on the wall. We meet her mother just long enough for her to poke her head through the door and ask, “Can’t you just be a normal kid?” So much for summing up childhood. A jump cut brings us up to date and into Los Angeles, where we find Mads (Thorne) in her natural habitat, parked behind the wheel of her gold 1973 Ford LTD, immersed in thought, sucking back a smoke.

Mads’ first act involves a visit to church; she arrives late to a meeting of SLAA (Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous) held in the basement. Hugging the periphery of the entranceway long enough to have a cheap laugh over one survivor’s testimony, she gets as far as the refreshment table before making off with a fistful of mini-powdered donuts. Little effort is made in seeing the sight gag through to fruition. Why bother? The material is so familiar the audience can supply the incidentals shut-eyed.

Next stop, the pink house on the hill belonging to Eric (Gavin Rossdale), a washed up TV actor addicted to gambling and coke, who entrusts Mads with a teddy bear containing drugs and $20,000 zipped inside its fur belly. (Eric’s Tarantino-esque rant comparing humanity to the LaBrea tar further proves the old adage, “Imitation is the sincerest form of failure.”) Mads has two roommates: Evie (Libbie Mintz, co-writer) and Addy (Andreja Pejic). When Mads took possession of the bruin, she did so as a favor to Evie. Later that night, Evie’s one-night stand makes off with the doll, leaving one to question why Eric didn’t supply a contact name or an address where to drop it off. First-time director and co-writer Janell Shirtcliff tries so hard to be both irreverent and reverent towards Tarantino that she forgets the basic foundation of storytelling.

Throughout the film, Mads is constantly connected to Jesus, frequently conversing with him like Charlie in Mean Streets. (She begins her devotions with, “What’s up, sexy man?”) Rather than pray, she talks God into helping her. In her mind, she’s doing God’s dirty work. Who better than Mads to don the titular tunic and beg for a sign? No sooner do the words pass from her lips than she looks out the passenger window and sees a nun standing before a pink house, ringing her bell. Jesus gives them the plan to masquerade as nuns and start a convent of their own, but it’s a passerby who conveniently hooks them up with a munificent millionairess (Ione Skye) known to take in nuns.

The film turns downright unpleasant with the appearance of Queenie (Josie Ho) — a cross between a Russian nesting doll and Tura Satana — and her confederate Tuff (Jamie Hince), a drugstore cowboy duded up for a night of killing. On his way to Eric’s house to collect the cash, Tuff grabs a young boy off the street, whom he later injects with a hypodermic needle. The next time we see the kid, he’s motionless on the floor. I’ll be the first to agree that the best way to get an audience to hate a character is through pedicide — check out San Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. — but back it up with something other than a nihilistic disregard for humanity. Turning Mads into a junkie nun (a nunkie?) only goes to further prove the filmmaker’s campy inability to recreate drug-induced delirium for the cameras.

It ends in immaculate conception, as in, Mads is with child, but doesn’t know the father is. I generally like Thorne’s choices and the anarchic disregard she brings to movies (and the pages of TMZ.) But that’s nothing compared to my passion for telling a story with pictures, something this film can’t get in the habit of doing. ●

—Scott Marks

Video on Demand and New Release Roundup

CODA — Where do they get off calling it an “Amazon Original” when part of CODA’s (as in: Children of Deaf Adults) premise (and a good handful of its scenes) are lifted from the French/Belgian film from 2014, The Bélier Family? Normally, I’d concede the rationale behind American-language remakes of foreign films based on a cultural prejudice against subtitles. But this is a film about deaf people; large passages of conversation are subtitled as it is. Nor is it a true story, which leads one to question why the casting is so xerographic in nature: bald and grizzly Troy Kotsur is a dead-ringer for Papa Bélier, while Marlee Matlin — America’s most acclaimed deaf actress — dyes her hair blonde to match the fictional Mama. Of the two main subplots put forth in the original, writer/director Sian Heder casts aside the one that concerns dad’s run for political office in favor of propping up a more familiar trope: daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones), the only one in the family of four who is not deaf, flaps the wings of her inner-songbird to participate in a competition. If only the plotting were as compelling as the ensemble performances. As much as I’d love to encourage a visit to your local cinema, you’d be better off staying home and downloading the original. 2021. — S.M. ★★

For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close — Del Close influenced generations of comedians, yet his name remains largely unknown to outsiders. Close had a mad love affair with Elaine May and to hear him tell it, instead of Close & May, a fellow comedian named Mike Nichols stole her away and took top billing. It led to a nervous breakdown. For years, he told the story of his father committing suicide by drinking a glass of battery acid in his presence. The events surrounding his death were true, but Close was nowhere in sight. The same man who told L. Ron Hubbard “Go start a Church” helped to form The Compass Players, “the world’s first fully improvisational comedy troupe.” From there on in, improv became a way of life. He helped to develop what came to be known as “The Winchester Kitchen Table Rules of Improvisation”: respect the other person’s reality, remember where the objects were, always play to popular intelligence, take the unlikely choice, and for God sake, no mime! He arrived in Chicago in 1973 to find that Bernie Sahlins, the founding father behind Second City, had little tolerance for extemporaneous comedy. Close was a comedy guru who trained generations of comedians and never got his due. When SNL began, they raided all of Close’s students and left him aside. Filmmaker Heather Ross covers his time spent in and out of mental hospitals as well as his long bouts of drug addiction. Fans of insider comedy will not want to miss this. 2020. — S.M. ★★★

The Last Mercenary — With Eastwood, Stallone, and Schwarzenegger lighting up screens in the ‘90s, one had very little time to devote to the mulletted likes of ancillary action heroes Chuck Norris or Jean-Claude Van Damme. The bar was reset for the latter with the release of JCVD. With one foot extended high over head and tongue firmly planted in cheek, he starred as a broke, out-of-work movie star fighting to gain custody of his young daughter. Thirteen years later, and not much has changed, except this time it’s Archie (Samir Decazza), the son he hasn’t seen in 25 years, who believes dad to be dead. JCVD stars as Richard Brumére, the elusive dog of war known as “The Mist.” He’s been out of touch for so long that his first contact with the outside world is via fax. The mistaken identity angle soon tires, as does our star trying to pull a Peter Sellers by disguising himself as everything from a swimming instructor to Archie’s girlfriend. Like the kid who found out that he was adopted from friends in the alley, Archie learns the truth from a slip of a cohort’s numb tongue. Don’t expect pathos to get in the way of this silly action comedy. Only on rare occasions does the rapid pace gridlock: outside the window, the police can’t be more than twenty-paces from the front door, yet it takes them a minute to finally break it down. Had I known to expect such a glorious third act from the star, I’d have paid closer attention to Bloodsport. David Charhon directs. Catch it on Netflix. 2021. — S.M. ★★★

The Night House — Death looms large. From inside the house, we see two women at the door, one with a tin foil-covered baking dish in hand. Mourners bringing a casserole for the family of the deceased? Not quite: it’s Beth (Rebecca Hall), widowed by her husband Owen’s suicide, returning home from the funeral. She chucks the dish in the garbage, only to dig it out later for a snack while watching her wedding video. A knock on the widow’s door in the middle of the night she buried her husband adds to the unease, but the scenes involving Beth’s grieving process are more nerve-rattling than the series of hallucinations that follow. A teacher, Beth is confronted in the classroom by a mother unable to deal with her son getting a C on his test. Coldly and in no uncertain terms, Beth informs Mom that her husband putting a bullet through his head takes precedence over her baby’s grade. Suddenly, texts are sent from the beyond. The footprints that led to the pier are now pointed in the direction of the house. And in what could be the longest and loudest jumpscare in movie history, the radio turns on by itself playing Beth and Owen’s song. Beth goes through the evidentiary box of Owen’s personal belongings to check the eerie text exchanges from the night before, finding the phone buried beneath his clothes and the revolver. Don’t you hate it when a character goes looking for one thing and along the way discovers another item that is key to advancing the plot? How about the pictures on Owen’s phone of a woman who is Beth’s double? Add to that the titular doppelganger and all that’s needed to fill out the plot is Hall, who also produced, suffering for two hours. 2021. — S.M. ★★

Swan Song — Flash reaction: Udo Kier. Preparing a gall-bladder kabob in Warhol’s Flesh for Frankenstein? How about Johnny Mnemonic’s seedy handler? There’s the criminally connected Friedrich in Dragged Across Concrete. This week adds real-life queer icon Pat Pitsenbarger, the man who put the Pride in the Pride of Sandusky, wasting away in a nursing home. Of the 270 (!) films to his credit, Kier’s latest drops somewhere in the top 5. Like the contract killer pulled out of retirement for one last hit — he was once the most sought after coiffeur in town — Mr. Pat was requested by one of his late clients (“a demanding Republican monster”) to prepare her hair and makeup for the open-casket sendoff. Her lawyer offers $25,000 to do the job. Why the overcompensation? Rita (Linda Evans) wanted to go to her grave with bygones gone. His advice to the lawyer? “Bury her with bad hair.” That soon changes. The minute he gets around people after a flight from his assisted living facility, he reverts to his old flamboyant self. When referred to by his old nickname, “The Liberace of Sandusky” he blushingly replies, “Was I that butch?” A touchingly poignant scene with a one-time client puts Pat in touch with the character-defining getup: a hospital-wall green pantsuit topped by a purple fedora. In the past, Udo Kier dined on heart. This time, he’ll break yours with what could be the performance of his career. Writer-director Todd Stephens (Another Gay Movie) pulls off what could be the surprise hit of the summer. Landmark Hillcrest. 2020. — S.M. ★★★