Streaming non-recommendation: Netflix's crappy German time-travel series, DARK

Yes, I know that conventional wisdom  has long insisted that Germans (and German movies) have no sense of humor. But Look Who's Back, to use just one recent example, disproves that theory entirely. Unfortunately, the idea bounced back into my mind while viewing the dismal new Netflix-produced German series entitled DARK, which is now available pretty much worldwide via the cable behemoth. There's not a moment of levity, lightness or anything approaching humor anywhere to be seen in these ten tiresome, derivative and annoying 50-minute episodes.

This is one of those series chock full of pseudo-science, pseudo-religion, pseudo-philosophy, and pseudo-entertainment that keep promising some kind of coalescence that never arrives. Worse, it consistently trips over its own ideas. All about time travel, supposedly made possible every 33 years via our not-quite reliable calendar, it posits a bunch of kidnapped children used in some experiment (above) to facilitate this time travel who keep turning up dead (the experiments evidently continually fail).

And yet, as we see throughout the series, time travel in this sodden little German town is not just possible but is increasingly discovered by a number of its citizens (the one above, for instance), who simply open a couple of doors in a cave beneath the earth (see poster, top) and find themselves either backward or forward in time by those 33 years.

Yet the movement of those citizens is certainly well known to the "experimenter," so what's the point of keeping up the experiments on that rather silly-looking machine? This piece of nonsense is only the worst example of stupid plotting that relies completely on the viewer's inability to stop and "think" for a moment or two. There's so little logic in so much that happens here (the dead come back to life, along with other nonsensical dreck) that you might as well place your brain on hold as you watch.

Yes, the series offers its titular "noir-ish" themes, cinematography, ugliness and gloom. All this is offered up with the kind of expert professionalism we now expect out of Netflix. But then it merely keeps repeating the stuff, over and over, until one has to ask (to quote Peggy Lee), Is that all there is?

Nuclear energy is also on view here, and is part and parcel of the town's problems, as are other things like lust and love (unrequited, of course). The characters are as sullen and sodden a bunch as you will have ever seen in any TV or cable series. The only humor finally arises mostly from how utterly lacking in any the series actually is. It almost becomes something of an inside joke. You can image the producers, writers and directors watching the day's shoot and suddenly saying, "Oh, my god -- that actor just smiled. Delete that moment immediately!"

The performers are mostly good-looking and get the job done, but as we keep moving from 2019 back to 1986 and then (in the last three episodes) 1953 and piecing together exactly who is the grandfather of this one or the mother of that one, not only our interest but any chance to care much about these people dissipates. Also, the series lasts twice as long as it needs to, thanks to its very slow pacing and the camera constantly stopping to focus on a character's angst for maybe two to three times as long as necessary to get the point across. (Were the filmmakers worried that we might miss the abject "seriousness" of all their fine work?)

The finale helps in no way whatsoever, except to begin a whole new section in what I imagine is the year 2052. The series keeps promising some closure, none of which ever arrives. Dark exists to simply string us along. Perhaps that's its point, but if so, then it's mostly for folk who enjoy being diddled without ever reaching a climax. (Think of it as the television equivalent of Tantra Yoga.)

Netflix has just announced that it is renewing Dark for a second season. Good luck -- but count me out. These eight hours-plus have now taken their place as my biggest waste of time this year.

Amateur night for satire and fun -- Kevin Willmott's DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO!

There are enough clever ideas and saucy dialog in the new comedy from Kevin Willmott (Chi-Raq and CSA: The Confederate States of America) that one wishes the actual movie experience were better than it is. There is an amateurishness in DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! that goes beyond the fact that the film intends to spoof the old and often silly space-travel movies from the 1950s (do you recall Rocketship X-M?). Instead, there is something amateur in the entire execution of this film that keeps holding it back from being as all-out enjoyable and funny as it should be.

Mr. Willmott (shown at left), who wrote, produced and directed the film (and also turns in one of its better performances) is a smart fellow, all right, and his satire/spoof of how were were back in the day (the 1930s, when this black-and-white film begins) and our current decade (when it changes to "color," as someone so nicely puts it), has a lot of clever riffs on current and past people and events. What's missing is the kind of tonal consistency needed to make the satire zing and the performances sing. Some of the actors seem to be on different pages at the same time so that necessary connections, including performance style -- too broad, too laid-back -- are not being made. There is also a matter of the screenplay, which is awfully expository without being consistently funny or clever enough to compensate for this.

The film begins with a meeting of cream-of-the-crop black leaders in the 1930s (above) as they decide how the black race can better prosper, with an array of ideas being tossed about from back-to-Africa to revolution to finally leaving for a better place -- which turns out to be... Mars.

Yes! So the usual group of intrepid explorers man (and woman) up for the ride, which includes a rip-off of Robby the Robot (above, left), speaking in a voice and dialect that are more grating and less amusing than Willmott probably wanted. Where this group ends up is not quite the place it expected: It turns out to have time-traveled rather than space-traveled. But the return to earth some 80 years later gives Willmott the opportunity to talk about everything from politics and elections to music and fashion (the film's funniest line has to do with a theory of why the modern black man cannot keep his pants up around his waist).

Selling out and the venality of politics, then and now, comes into play, too, but interestingly enough, the film's most incisive and thoughtful points regard homosexuality and blacks, with a young actor named Trai Byers (above) the standout who gives the film a much-needed shot of professionalism and sex appeal with his several appearances.

It all comes out (mostly) all right, with a finale that is romantic, as well as a bit moving and charming and even history-changing -- usually a no-no in time-travel movies but evidently A-OK here. (That's Wes Studi, above, who adds the theme of additional "others" -- Mexican immigrants and Native Americans -- into the film.)

Made back in 2013 and having played a film festival or two in the intervening years, Destination: Planet Negro! is at last being distributed, via Candy Factory Films, beginning tomorrow, Friday, June 10, to VOD and Digital HD -- on all leading platforms.

We are all one: another early "best" for 2015 -- on Blu-ray/DVD/digital -- the Spierig brothers' profound and nifty sci-fi, PREDESTINATION

Here's a movie that joins all of society -- men & women, young & old, good & bad -- in a manner that seems, on film at least, to be original. The new work from Australia's Spierig brothers, Peter and Michael (shown below, left to right, respectively), is their third full-lengther, after Undead (all about zombies) and then Day-breakers (all about vampires). PREDESTINATION (all about time-travel, and by far the brothers' best) touches the profound, then actually seems to go a bit beyond that into the mind-bending.

With a screenplay adapted (by the Spierigs) from a story by master sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein, the film features a cast of three lead actors who together manage almost all of the story between them. The remainder of the cast is just fine, but it is rare to see a movie with this big a budget (for an independent film, of course) that relies so heavily on the acting skills of just three people.

The threesome -- Ethan Hawke, above; Sarah Snook, at left; and Noah Taylor, below -- comes through on all counts.

Mr. Hawke keeps quietly growing as an actor from film to film; Ms Snook has what may be the role of her lifetime, and she runs with it all the way; and Mr. Taylor uses his dour face and thin body  to maximum effect, as the more-or-less leader of the pack.

All three performers, in fact, are so right for their roles that it is difficult to imagine other actors taking their place.

The story, at its beginning and well into things, seems like simplicity itself. Easy to follow yet constantly intriguing, it grows more and more complex as the elements of identity and time travel come to the fore.

Though the movie butts up against everything from a mad bomber and his relentless tracker to orphaned children and sex change, the less said about plot, the better -- for in its unravelling, Predestination appears to embrace the We-are-all-one theory, among other mind expansions.

Although there are action scenes and special effects, certainly, the movie's real pleasure derives from the quiet, thoughtful, almost tender and affecting tone with which it views its threesome. Going out of this movie, you'll have been taken places you could hardly have imagined going in.

Predestination -- released theatrically from Arclight Films, with DVD and Blu-ray via Sony, and running a just-right 97 minutes -- is available now. For genre fans, and even those who think they're not, this one constitutes a must-see.