Who's Game? 

SELF RELIANCE. Having not yet watched Minx — the Starz smut-mag series — I last checked in with multi-hyphenate Jake Johnson for Ride the Eagle (2021), a charmingly unassuming indie throwback from a time when, still in the throes of the plague, we could be forgiven for thinking the movie business might be in for a reckoning. Studio cataclysm mostly averted, the revolution seems as if it will likely not see a theatrical release. But, maybe as a sop to the recluses and the nerds, weird little movies are still trickling out on streaming services, albeit mostly without any appreciable marketing push.

Case in point: I was made aware of Self Reliance by a fellow Biff Wiff appreciator (look him up and thank me later). I would not have known to seek it out, otherwise. But seek it out I did, finding a pleasant and imaginative, if not groundbreaking, amusement that has something to say about loneliness, paranoia and, offhandedly, the perverse inhumanity of internet culture.

Tommy (Johnson), a creature of habit and something of a corporate drone, is clearly alone. He is also probably lonely, as evidenced by his self-stifled attempts to knock on a certain door (occupant at this point unknown). One day, a limousine replete with Andy Samberg as himself appears mysteriously at Tommy's side. Samberg, a shill, pitches our hero on the opportunity of the lifetime. Which opportunity turns out to be participation in a dark-web bloodsport conceived (or at least helmed) by a couple of Greenlandic weirdos. Pending his decision to take part, Tommy will be pursued by hunters for one month. If he can survive for 30 days, he wins $1 million. Most importantly, the game contains what Tommy sees as a loophole: He can only be killed when he is alone. Simple enough, then; he'll just enlist the help of family and friends and skate through to a windfall. Except he has no friends and his family thinks he is quite insane.

Over the course of four weeks, Tommy will hire an unhoused man named James or Walt (Wiff) as his "aid," come into contact with other purported participants in the game (Anna Kendrick and Gata) and flirt with death at the hands of a cowboy and "Ellen DeGeneres," among others.

It's debatable whether the tone and aesthetic of the piece rise to the dark absurdity of the screenplay (Johnson wrote and directed), but it does maintain a balanced, guarded innocence throughout. It's shot through with questions of appearance versus reality and the need for connection; it's also got jokes and little to no pretension. While I might lament the absence of a more profound darkness at the movie's heart, I still find it satisfying for its earnestness and invention. R. 85M. HULU.

THE BEEKEEPER. Being of a certain age, I have an inescapable — if lamentable — affinity for dumb action movies. Or, more precisely, for action movies that handle dumb material with an inordinate degree of fun and professionalism. This is thin line territory, I know, considering my ceaseless hectoring of late-stage comic bookery/superhero adaptations. There is a clear and present difference, though, between the current (and currently dying) species of superhero nonsense and the erstwhile, would-be real-world ridiculousness of the action genre as perfected by Hollywood in the 1980s and '90s; call it self-awareness.

Jason Statham, the self-appointed standard bearer of a bygone sort of cinematic ass-kicking, seems to be one of the last stars standing who understands the difference between an action movie that's trying to be serious and one that's trying to have a seriously good time. This might be a logical leap on my part, given the number of sheer clunkers with which he has been associated. But to his credit, he keeps climbing the mountain. And in director David Ayer, he may have finally found the right co-conspirator.

Ayer, something of a confounding figure in contemporary movies, is a large-scale popular artist with something to say. End of Watch (2012) and Fury (2014) are both major achievements, difficult stories told with a sensitivity and respect for moral ambiguity that strive to at least some part of the truth about front-lines violence. But the movie business punishes as much as it rewards, and after the "failure" of Suicide Squad (2016) — which, in the aftermath, seems entirely attributable to studio interference — Ayer has fallen back into the role of director for hire. And maybe it's not the worst thing. Because The Beekeeper, a patently absurd story about a retired ultra-secret operative taking on elder abuse in the phishing industry, hits all the notes it needs to. R. 105M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.

THE BOOK OF CLARENCE. I make a practice of giving movies the benefit of the doubt. And what appeared, at least in the early going, to be a comic-satire about Jesus and the apostles, with an almost all Black cast lead by the great LaKeith Stanfield, felt worth a look. And when the affair started with a chariot race between Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor) and Clarence (Stanfield), a hustler who sells weed in lower Jerusalem, I thought maybe I was receiving the gift of a Mel Brooks-Blaxploitation hybrid.

Instead, I ended up with a pretty straightforward Christian story, sodden with orchestral score and off-key ballads, where the occasional joke feels more like a suggestion of another movie than comic relief. PG13. 129M. BROADWAY.

John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.

NOW PLAYING

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Fortuna Theatre is temporarily closed. For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.