Movie review by Greg Carlson

Greta Gerwig continues to exercise her command of cinematic storytelling with “Little Women,” a perfectly wrapped and beribboned Christmas gift as welcome as a steaming cup of cocoa after a frosty skate around the local frozen pond. Proving wrong many skeptics who initially questioned her choice of post-”Lady Bird” material, Gerwig deftly adjusts the contents of Louisa May Alcott’s much-loved, oft-filmed tale through a skillful chronological reorganization that allows her to expand and contract story points as desired. The result is a handsome and heartfelt edition destined to take a rightful place alongside the very best adaptations.

Collaborating again with “Lady Bird” lead Saoirse Ronan, who plays the titanium-willed central character Jo March, Gerwig draws on the talents of Eliza Scanlen as the tragic Beth, Emma Watson as the domestically-inclined Meg, and Florence Pugh as the sometimes prickly and always self-possessed Amy. Pugh, unsurprisingly for anyone who saw “Lady Macbeth” and “Midsommar,” walks off with all her scenes, embracing along with her director all of Amy’s vanity, petulance, and jealousy. She communicates through these ugly traits not a mean girl, or a failure, or Jo’s foil, but a fully recognizable human being.

For many, myself included, the 1994 translation of “Little Women” directed by Gillian Armstrong is a considerable achievement. Gerwig undoubtedly agrees, as that version’s screenwriter Robin Swicord joins producers Denise Di Novi and Amy Pascal on the new film. The two movies make excellent companions in multiple other ways. Both draw on delightful casting choices that capitalize on the cool factor of in-the-moment movie royalty (Laurie then: Christian Bale, Laurie now: Timothee Chalamet). But Gerwig’s version surprisingly, refreshingly considers events from the wiser lens of adulthood instead of focusing on and following the coming-of-age pathway through adolescence.

Gerwig’s affinity for moviemaking is on display in the film’s extremely contemporary feeling for physical movement. This kind of action propels the trailer and carries over into the feature, and is especially vivid in the dancing of Jo and Laurie that happens, so tellingly, outside the party. The nearly anachronistic amount of affection and comfort Laurie is allowed to share as a member of the March sisters’ theatrical and artistic troupe is another example. More than once, the filmmaker pulls off some editorial sleight-of-hand that toys with the untrustworthiness of reality versus fantasy and imagination.

Gerwig makes her most indelible mark with an ongoing conversation between author Jo and publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts, who played the father of Ronan’s character in “Lady Bird”). Dashwood insists on preserving some of the conventions and expectations of many readers then — and now. The back-and-forth mirrors Gerwig’s interest in drawing out and exploring Civil War-era realities for women, and as Alison Willmore notes, the director “treats the sisters’ diverging paths as a prism through which to look at larger themes of marriage, artistic validity, and financial constraints.” Dashwood argues that any main female character must be either married or dead by the last page. How Gerwig manages the “requirement” in her vision depends on a beautiful metanarrative twist that redefines the contours of a happy ending.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Sophia Takal’s reimagining of Bob Clark’s 1974 slasher classic “Black Christmas” improves on a tepid 2006 remake by Glen Morgan without finding the weird alchemy of the original. Sharing screenplay duties with April Wolfe, Takal may not have managed a definitive version, but she should be credited with constructing a genre entry interested in the feminist exploration and expression of ideas that reach beyond superficial blood and gore exploitation. Playing with of-the-moment vocabulary familiar on college campuses, the latest “Black Christmas” upends several slasher conventions, even if the film is a step down from the director’s excellent “Always Shine.”

Imogen Poots plays Riley, a sorority sister and apparent Final Girl. Preparing for winter break like her cinematic predecessors, Riley — still reeling from a sexual assault committed by an unpunished and unapologetic student who stands defiantly before her — reluctantly participates in a holiday-themed “Up in the Frat House” sketch that parodies “Up on the Housetop” with verses calling out a variety of coercive, unethical, and criminal behaviors stereotypical of booze-soaked brotherhoods. That eye-opening musical number succinctly encapsulates the filmmakers’ thematic agenda.

Prank phone calls are updated to app-based direct messages, and “Black Christmas” initially teases the possibility that the quiet Landon (Caleb Eberhardt), who takes a liking to Riley, may not be as kind and sensitive as he first appears. Throughout the film, Takal takes aim at misogyny in its multiple guises. Whether aggressive and out in the open or hidden behind a mask, the insidiousness of rape culture is investigated through “good girls,” “nice guys,” not-all-men arguments, and a Hawthorne College literature curriculum that name-checks Camille Paglia but excludes anything not written by a white male.

As Professor Gelson, Cary Elwes is the academic who openly cultivates a sexist teaching agenda, and his performance stands in for a wide variety of false victimhood narratives. Unable to accept even the slightest whiff of equality and egalitarianism, Gelson’s overreactions — even as they occur within a system designed to favor the men credibly accused of committing rapes — will remind viewers of any number of high-profile office holders perpetually outraged when confronted with facts, logic, and the truth.

Not all of the mechanics of the storytelling work, and Takal and Wolfe aren’t quite sure how to resolve some clunky elements that veer out of realism and into sorcery and the supernatural. But “Black Christmas,” despite the earnestness of its admonishment of entitled patriarchy (Takal, rather brilliantly, has claimed that she drew on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings), never takes itself too seriously. Like many genre exercises, the characters function with a level of self-awareness that flirts with metanarrative.

Smartly, Takal doesn’t always do away with the most obviously “expendable” characters, particularly the women who would traditionally be victimized by the relentless killer, and “Black Christmas” refreshingly subverts Old Dark House math to reinforce the punch of the trailer’s highlight line: “You messed with the wrong sisters.” It is on this count that the director makes her boldest and shrewdest move by sending her young women into literal battle against the privileged bros being groomed to perpetuate white male power as future brokers in education, business, law, and politics.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale” will not attract the same cult following or breadth of widespread fan devotion as “The Babadook,” but her latest marks significant progress in the filmmaker’s command of story and cinematic language. Harrowing, painful, and — for those viewers who walked out of festival screenings — unrelentingly bleak, “The Nightingale” draws from a number of inspired sources in Kent’s original tale of Irish convict Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi). The movie might be categorized as a rape-revenge odyssey, but unlike its exploitation kin, “The Nightingale” carefully examines the nightmare of colonialist oppression, misogyny, and racism with a steady, measured, and unblinking gaze.

Set in Australia’s Tasmania in 1825 during the period when the island was more commonly known as Van Diemen’s Land, “The Nightingale” efficiently communicates the impossible situation of Clare — twenty-one, married to another convict, and the mother of an infant daughter. Bound to humiliating servitude under the eye and thumb of British Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), the young woman begs the officer to sign the overdue release papers that will free her and husband Aidan. At the start of the movie, our heroine sings to a group of hard-drinking, leering soldiers in a haunting moment that echoes the conclusion of Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory.”

We realize she’s caught between those men and the “protection” of Hawkins, who uses his position and rank to bully and rape. What follows is a stomach-turning sequence of events that sets up a physical and emotional journey as Clare seeks to confront her tormentor, who has left with a small number of companions to secure a promotion at the nearest post. Clare hires an indigenous guide who uses the English name Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help her track Hawkins. Billy’s own feelings about the British occupiers correspond to Clare’s, but the two have a long way to go to establish the unlikeliest of alliances.

While comparisons have been made between “The Nightingale” and “The Revenant” — extensive exterior settings, the beautiful but unforgiving natural world, and the levels of brutality and violence on display — Kent’s movie is spiritually closest to Jim Jarmusch’s acid Western masterpiece “Dead Man.” Parallels to Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout” cannot be discounted, but the intersection of cultures experienced by Kent’s two principal characters matches closely the movements of Johnny Depp’s William Blake and Gary Farmer’s Nobody.

In his monograph on “Dead Man,” Jonathan Rosenbaum devotes a section to Jarmusch’s use of violence. Comparing and contrasting the ways in which onscreen violence in Jarmusch’s films, particularly “Dead Man” and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” embody the opposing poles of gracelessness and grace, Rosenbaum writes of the former title, “Every time someone fires a gun at someone else in this film, the gesture is awkward, unheroic, pathetic; it’s an act that leaves a mess and is deprived of any pretense at existential purity…” He could just as easily be describing Kent’s approach in “The Nightingale.”

Just like Nobody in “Dead Man,” Billy can speak English as a result of being kidnapped as a child. He may not utter a comic catchphrase like the colorful epithet-laced refrain delivered with perfection by Farmer, but his observations of white people are no less critical, no less perceptive, and no less skeptical. The horrorshow dystopia encountered by Clare and Billy burns images of genocidal atrocities into their brains and ours, linking the historical landscapes and grisly pasts of Jarmusch’s America and Kent’s Australia.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The politics of race in contemporary America inform the text and subtext of “Queen & Slim,” a vivid feature debut from music video director Melina Matsoukas. Described so often in “The Player”-style shorthand as “Bonnie and Clyde meets Black Lives Matter” that the tag unfairly deflates some of the character-based nuance surrounding the love-on-the-run tragedy of the central duo, Matsoukas’ stylish road movie should be destined for cult status as an object of cool. Unlike the famous Depression-era outlaws, Queen and Slim elude authorities following an act of self-defense; during a traffic stop gone sideways they miraculously avoid becoming another statistic in the ledger of killer cops punishing unarmed Black victims.

Before the audience gets to the confrontation with the hotheaded officer played by Sturgill Simpson, Matsoukas teases out a seductive and unhurried prologue. The film’s opening scene — a Tinder date, crackling with anticipation, that takes place in a greasy spoon  — introduces controlled attorney Angela Johnson/Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and God-fearing Ernest Hines/Slim (Daniel Kaluuya). Their conversation, with words carefully-chosen by both parties, touches on attitudes about romance and loneliness, among other things. When one makes a good point, the other says, “touche.”

Like so many visuals-first commercial makers, Matsoukas freely references a dazzling range of popular culture. From Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” to Ernie Barnes’ “The Sugar Shack” to Colin Tilley’s “Alright” for Kendrick Lamar and A. G. Rojas’ “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)” for Run the Jewels, “Queen & Slim” makes the most of its intersections. The score, by Devonte Hynes, is predictably fantastic. Karen Murphy’s production design finds an ideal companion in the costuming by Shiona Turini, particularly following a visit to the home of Queen’s Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine, stealing everything he plays and then some), where the fugitives are reborn via hiding-in-plain-sight fashion makeovers and a fresh set of wheels.

In the road movie, the central odyssey of the traveler is marked by a series of single-scene encounters. Some result in setbacks, some reveal unlikely helpers, and all contribute to the education, spiritual growth, and maturation of the protagonist or protagonists. Matsoukas plays a distinct variation on Joseph Campbell’s articulation of the hero’s journey, regularly surprising Angela and Ernest along with the viewer. Several interactions introduce curious threshold guardians, and Lena Waithe’s screenplay, from a story she developed with James Frey, aims for a bold statement about solidarity and community.

The dreamlike space in which Queen and Slim elude not just law officers but an entire system designed to disadvantage and criminalize is where Matsoukas deliberately chooses to defy logic. Not all viewers or critics have bought into the moments that function as symbolic “gifts of the goddess” to keep the hero and heroine afloat, but it is through those unbelievable twists of fate and conscious decisions that one of the movie’s strengths unfolds its wings. Angelica Jade Bastien nails it, writing, “In a world and a country that is built on Black suffering, is it not radical to find happiness wherever you can?” The desperate need to locate hope and light and maybe even love where those things are in short supply recommends “Queen & Slim,” especially at a time of frustration and division.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Of the three feature films directed by Marielle Heller, all of which are based in one way or another on biographical source material, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is the least successful. But that opinion doesn’t mean her newest work is a bust; the movie’s curiosity about the blurry lines between childhood innocence and grown-up cynicism rhymes with similar themes in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” And the exploration of authenticity and role-playing, central to “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” lives in all three movies. Despite misperceptions that “Neighborhood” is a biopic of beatific children’s television host and icon of kindness Fred McFeely Rogers, Heller makes the bold choice to cast the famous personality as a supporting player in the story of another.

Mister Rogers probably would have supported the decision.

“Neighborhood” is inspired by journalist Tom Junod’s 1998 “Esquire” cover story “Can You Say … Hero?,” although Heller’s film, written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, only loosely commits to fact-based storytelling. Instead, the filmmaker invites us to visit someplace parallel to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe to participate in a cathartic Mister Rogers experience expressly designed for adults, or those who might have forgotten what it is like to see the world through the eyes of a very young person. In this sense, Heller’s movie is perhaps more aligned with Rogers’ 1978 series “Old Friends … New Friends” than with the more famous and familiar “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

The central Junod-esque protagonist, christened Lloyd Vogel, is played by Matthew Rhys. Rhys occupies the unenviable position of portraying the Ebenezer Scrooge-like writer as a wounded and distrustful pessimist with serious daddy issues. Vogel’s reputation precedes  him, and we discover that Rogers is the only candidate on a list of subjects willing to be profiled by the sharp-edged Lloyd. One need not even watch the trailer (“Lloyd, please don’t ruin my childhood”) to guess that the skeptic will be a believer before the end credits. Rogers, we already know even if Vogel has yet to learn, isn’t capable of faking anything.

Who is going to argue with the casting of Tom Hanks? Even so, the reason I don’t care for most fictionalized biopics lies in the imitation of one well-known person by another. No matter how flattering the inhabitation or the mimicry, my mind wanders to the “real thing.” Morgan Neville’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” with the genuine article front and center for the duration of the show, is more transcendent and transformative than Heller’s experiment, despite Hanks’ skillfulness, the facsimile of Rogers’ signature sweaters, and the replica sets rebuilt at Pittsburgh’s WQED, with studio footage captured on vintage Ikegami television cameras.

The music, including Rogers’ own beautiful compositions, factors significantly alongside a rather lovely complementary score by the director’s brother Nate Heller. Some tear-jerking, nearly obligatory Nick Drake and Cat Stevens, going to town like a waterworks insurance policy, also makes the soundtrack. Cameo appearances by several Rogers family members, friends, and collaborators will be spotted by sharp-eyed fans. Whimsical miniatures and shifting aspect ratios further evoke the oddity of the earnest Rogers and his limitless interest in the well-being of others. Heller even embraces some of the master’s own techniques honoring presence, patience, and quietude — including a nod to a legendary 1972 episode and Rogers’ brilliant “gift of a silent minute” to think about those who have helped us and “loved us into being.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Parasite” will be the top-grossing foreign language film at the 2019 American box office, and deservedly so. Joon-ho Bong’s most satisfying and accomplished movie since “Mother” in 2009, “Parasite” is the first Korean film to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. A perfectly-tuned, midnight-black fairy tale of two families — one wealthy, one struggling — Bong’s story treats poverty, class, and class warfare in parallel brushstrokes to the literal upstairs/downstairs and aboveground/underground picture painted by Jordan Peele in “Us.” The two movies would make a terrific double feature.

A deceptively simple infiltration plot explains the choice of title, as one by one, the brother, sister, mother and father of the just-scraping-by Kim family enter the employ of the wealthy Parks. The initial trick, of course, is that the Parks don’t know that any of the Kims are related to one another. Bong does Hitchcock proud by nudging us at first toward a sympathetic impression of the manipulators, convincing the viewer to excuse the violations of honesty and ethics in part because of the wide gulf between the haves and the have-nots. To Bong’s great credit, however, a dynamic begins to unfold that complicates any black and white stereotyping of rich and poor.

Bong is also a master builder in the specialties of composition and atmosphere, and one of the visual delights of “Parasite” is a study in contrasts framed by the massive windows in the two featured dwellings. The cluttered, garden-level rooms inhabited by the members of the Kim family look out past a clothesline of drying socks into a dirty street where a stumbling drunkard often relieves himself in full view. At the impossibly clean, architect-designed Park house, the living room also faces a huge glass wall, but this one observes the manicured lawn and sculpted hedge of a private backyard. Both of those giant rectangles are like movie screens, and what they reveal to the characters is as entertaining as any cinema.

Bong has many delicious surprises in store, and along the way stuffs “Parasite” with scenes that add wonderful little twists to well-worn tropes. Characters quickly scurry and scramble under beds and tables to avoid detection, and we hold our breath and remain perfectly still in solidarity with the hidden. In one such bravura moment, a horny Dong-ik Park (Sun-kyun Lee) initiates some hilariously specific carnal contact with wife Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Cho) on the sofa while son Da-song (Hyeon-jun Jung) camps just outside in a tipi. Bong ratchets up the fear of getting caught by doubling it, and then tripling it, with some gonzo “Mission: Impossible” flair.

Like the Master of Suspense before him, Bong effortlessly blends the horrific and the comic en route to the icebox talk that has us questioning our own attitudes and beliefs through the unanswered mysteries of the story. The ridiculousness of the Kims folding pizza delivery boxes to make ends meet while a chemical spray of insecticide fogs them with “free extermination” contrasts sharply with the shocking events that will later release so much tension (and the toilet that will release so much sewage). Despite an overwhelmingly positive critical response to the movie, some writers have taken Bong to task, ala Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” for making a simplistic faux-cautionary tale that cloaks aspirational fantasy in the guise of a more rebellious takedown of capitalism. Fortunately, “Parasite” is sophisticated enough to support more nuanced interpretations.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Nearly forty years after Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film conjured thousands of nightmares, director Mike Flanagan wakes up belated sequel “Doctor Sleep,” the strongest work of his promising career. Smartly striking a balance between the iconic status of Kubrick’s sound and vision and the Stephen King signatures that spread out to connect many people, places, and things — as seen, for example, in Andy Muschietti’s sprawling telling of “It” — Flanagan threads the needle to please more than one group of emotionally-invested followers. The filmmaker also wrote the screenplay, and despite significant changes to the story told in the novel, he honors the spirit of King’s spirits as well as Kubrick’s restless demons.

King is nothing if not handy with the clever moniker, and the title of the book and the movie refers to the macabre nickname of the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), an alcoholic with some daddy issues and serious PTSD. The adventure, however, is shared by two key protagonists. Arguably, the most important character is Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a girl with the same kind of supernatural “shining” gifts as Dan. The powerful penpals form a bond through psychic communication while a dangerous gang of scream-eating, pain-drinking, vampire-like predators known as the True Knot draws ever closer. In a weird way, Flanagan might have inadvertently made the best X-Men movie to date.

The True Knot is led by seductive child-killer Rose the Hat, and she is played by the wonderful Rebecca Ferguson as a rather spectacular mashup of Kiefer Sutherland’s Lost Boy David and Mathilda May’s relentless “Lifeforce” essence-drainer — with a dash of Anne Rice and at least a hint of Lena Olin’s fellow bohemian in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Like all appealing villains, Rose manages to project enough familiar longing for the viewer to be able to relate to her desire to live, even if we don’t condone her evil means. Ferguson just about walks off with the whole works.

King’s longtime disdain for Kubrick’s brilliant film is the stuff of horror movie legend, and a number of pieces have already outlined the careful manner in which Flanagan honors both entities (as well as the less essential, three-episode, 1997 ABC miniseries). Cinematically speaking, Kubrick’s genius and influence persist. Rodney Ascher’s documentary “Room 237” is must-watch, film geek, conspiracy theory territory. In a big red valentine from Steven Spielberg, “Ready Player One” swapped out the “Blade Runner” sim of the novel for a thrilling Overlook dark ride. And just this year, the Pixar team squeezed several references into, of all things, “Toy Story 4.”

Flanagan always does his homework, and our return visit to the scariest hotel in Colorado is a wonderland of reconstruction. When Rose gazes upon those gushing elevator doors, her face lights up with awe, a smile curling her lips. Many viewers will share that look. Hallorann, Wendy, Jack, the Grady twins, and many more remind us why it’s so hard to quit roaming those halls — Danny Lloyd even makes a cameo appearance — and why Flanagan reconfigured King canon to make his version. That “Doctor Sleep” doesn’t in any way detract from or diminish the 1980 masterwork is a genuine compliment.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Fans of Robert Eggers’ brilliant feature debut “The Witch” have been waiting impatiently for “The Lighthouse,” and while the filmmaker decidedly avoids any kind of sophomore slide, the new movie will probably not attract the widespread fervor and devotion bestowed upon Black Phillip, Thomasin, and company. In “The Witch,” Eggers applied dialect evoking 1630s New England, and “The Lighthouse” follows suit with some wonderfully inscrutable 19th century nautical nonsense. Brother Max Eggers co-wrote the screenplay, and a note in the end crawl acknowledges the variety of sources for the idiosyncratic vocabulary of Willem Dafoe’s Thomas Wake and Robert Pattinson’s Ephraim Winslow, the tortured souls whose sanity starts to leak at the coastal Maine location of the title.

While “The Witch” included well-placed smatterings of macabre humor, “The Lighthouse” will play as an outright comedy for many. The change in tone turns out to be Eggers’ finest trick, freeing the filmmaker from expectations to stick with the formula of serious, mounting dread. Fully committed, Dafoe and Pattinson are terrific fun together. The former’s Wake is an absolutely delightful caricature of every pipe-chomping, pop-eyed sea dog from Ahab to Horatio McCallister, and the latter’s “timber man” Winslow slow-boils to perfection at each new indignity and humiliation leveled at him by his superstitious, flatulent boss.

I certainly won’t be the only observer to wonder whether Eggers should be publicly thanking Guy Maddin for having already concocted the ultimate hallucinatory, black-and-white, silent film-inspired, lighthouse-set fever dream of mania and madness, but I gotta spill my beans: “The Lighthouse” owes a deep, seagull-fouled cistern of gratitude to “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). In a perfect world, some future programmer will set up a double feature and invite guests to attend in costume. Additional influences already identified by Eggers and others include Herman Melville (obviously), Ingmar Bergman, Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Jean Epstein, Jean Gremillon, and Sarah Orne Jewett. It’s a deep bench.

“The Lighthouse” explores several classic themes of maritime literature: the burden of isolation from community, the dynamics of a complex superior/subordinate relationship, and the homoerotic impulses common to spheres from which females are excluded. The path connecting sexual fantasy and any-port-in-a-storm actuality is beautifully blurry. Both men express themselves in several ways as carnal creatures, and Ephraim’s vigorous, animalistic masturbation while fondling his hand-carved mermaid fetish is one of many ways Eggers expresses an almost tactile fascination with fluids. Spittle, vomit, fecal waste, and tears (from within) join nature’s lashes of rain and seawater (from without) as a constant threat to order and equilibrium.

“The Witch” may be the superior film, but “The Lighthouse” sees Eggers growing by leaps and bounds as a storyteller and visual stylist. The squarish frame magnifies the escalating emotional tension. Inky details and shadings of grayscale are intensified with the application of a custom orthochromatic filter. Dreamlike imagery hovers in the liminal passageway between ecstatic religious/mythological iconography and literal nightmare visions. Eggers is a major talent, and “The Lighthouse” — like his feature debut — inspires much conversation and invites multiple viewings.

As the story unfolds, Eggers almost effortlessly conveys our curiosities about the veil separating the corporeal and the ethereal. It doesn’t matter whether the film’s many supernatural encounters exist only in the imaginations of the lighthouse keepers. If we were in their place, Eggers argues, wouldn’t we also be as attracted to the dazzling illumination flooding from the Fresnel prisms in that tower’s carefully-guarded lantern room?

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Ten years later, Ruben Fleischer returns to the apocalyptic landscape of his funny, fresh, and winning feature debut “Zombieland,” but the “Double Tap” fails to live up to the quality of the inaugural outing. The principal quartet of performers — three Oscar nominees and one winner — are game, but the screenplay by Dave Callaham and original writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, leaves Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) stuck in a familiar loop. Despite the warmed-up leftovers, the movie manages to locate a few bright spots, and none are more appealing than Zoey Deutch. As pink-loving, mall-dwelling moron Madison, Deutch manages the near impossible: she adds empathy and wit to what would otherwise be a broad stereotype.

The first “Zombieland” based much of its successful formula on self-awareness, and the sequel continues in that vein. Logic, however, is another matter entirely. Does it make sense that Wichita and Little Rock would pull up stakes and abruptly forge ahead on their own (making off with Tallahassee’s custom ride no less)? If belief is to be suspended, the now-grown younger sister seeks her first taste of romance while Wichita flees from a marriage proposal and the stale routine she shares with the safe and predictable Columbus. The couple’s bed barely has time to get cold before convenient placeholder Madison arrives to keep Columbus company.

The ensuing triangle mimics many of the tried and true conventions of the 1930s screwball comedy, especially its interest in the complications and/or love-and-hate riffs played out in classics like “Trouble in Paradise” and “Libeled Lady.” It may be a stretch to link a contemporary zombie trifle to the work of Lubitsch and Conway, but Deutch and Stone deliver their respective jabs with arch comic timing that often channels originators like Jean Harlow, Miriam Hopkins, and Myrna Loy. Some of the most entertaining scenes in “Double Tap” capitalize on Eisenberg’s hangdog expressions of guilt. Breslin, meanwhile, is treated as an afterthought. Separated from the core group, she disappears for long stretches.

In 2009, “Zombieland” already owed something significant to “Shaun of the Dead,” and the appearance in “Double Tap” of Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch as dead ringers for Tallahassee and Columbus ranks among the movie’s least inspired choices. Even worse is the inexplicable decision to set some of the action at the White House without even a trace of the kind of political satire that should have been centralized. Harrelson’s “nut up or shut up” barbarian so readily suggests a kind of Second Amendment MAGA parody that “Double Tap” practically begs for some kind of pertinent commentary that never materializes.

Most curious of all, “Double Tap” spends more time ignoring the clear and present danger of the undead to focus on the rambling road trip undertaken to retrieve Little Rock from a neo-hippie enclave called Babylon (pronounced Baby Lon by Madison). The safe haven is run by nitwits who inexplicably melt down any gun that makes it to the front gate. We are told that a new strain of resilient zombie poses a grave threat, and we witness one shoot-’em-up set piece to visualize that risk, but “Double Tap” is unconcerned with reanimated corpses until it reaches the expected conclusion.