Producers: Poppy Hanks and Jelani Johnson   Directors: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck  Screenplay: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck   Cast: Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Ben Mendelsohn, Jack Champion, Ji-young Yoo, Dominique Thorne, Normani, DeMario “Symba” Driver, Jordan “StunnaMan02” Gomes, Natalia Dominguez, Angus Cloud, Kier Gilchrist, Marteen, Too $hort, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd and Tom Hanks  Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: C-

“Freaky Tales” is set in 1987 Oakland, California, and perhaps you need a personal connection to the time and place to enjoy its grubby in-joke vibe; it depends largely on nostalgia for its appeal, and in this case the nostalgia is of a curdled provincial variety.

For the writing-directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, “Tales” represents a return to their indie roots after a detour into the MCU with the dreary 2019 “Captain Marvel.”  They’ve reached back nearly half a century to construct a celebratory fable of Fleck’s childhood hometown out of four separate but vaguely interlocking chapters, all of which come across as pretty obvious genre rip-offs.  Compared to their powerful 2006 debut “Half Nelson,” which starred Ryan Gosling and Anthony Mackie, this goofy riff is an empty exercise, a sad disappointment.

The first chapter is a tribute to the punk rock movement of the time, represented by a couple of progressive-minded kids, Lucid (Jack Champion) and Tina (Ji-young Yoo).  They enjoy spending time at the local theatre, where the marquee advertises titles like “The Lost Boys,” but are more devoted to a music venue where they and others dance to live local bands; upon entering one sees a placard announcing intolerance of racism, homophobia, sexism and other such social ills within its walls. 

But that just acts as an incentive for a bunch of neo-Nazi thugs who inflict their hatred on the neighborhood, first with drive-by taunts to moviegoers and then with a direct assault on the dancers.  The violence leads to a decision by Lucid, Tina and their like-minded friends to resist, and the result is a street rumble in which the forces of good repel them.

The second installment introduces Entice (Normani) and Barbie (Dominique Thorne), who work at an ice-cream shop where they have to endure the taunts of a racist police detective (Ben Mendelsohn).  A music promoter (Jason StunnaMan02 Gomes) invites them to face off in a rap contest with his boy Too $hort (DeMario Symba Driver), in which they win over the crowd by countering misogynist put-downs.

These initial chapters have lots of energy; the tone grows more somber in the third, which stars Pedro Pascal as Clint, an about-to-retire mob debt collector with a pregnant wife (Natalie Dominguez) whom he leaves outside in a car while he goes into a video store whose back room hosts a poker game.  He’s there to collect from a player, but the person who suffers is his wife.  She’s shot by a man who accosts Clint when he emerges after completing the job, blaming him for killing his father years before.  She doesn’t survive, and whether Clint’s daughter will is uncertain until the final moments in the police station.

The final episode can be dated specifically to May 10, when Golden State Warriors star Eric “Sleepy” Floyd (Jay Ellis) scored a record twenty-nine points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game against the Los Angeles Lakers.  Feted for his feat, he returns home to find it’s been the site of a violent robbery by a gang of thugs.  His revenge takes the form of a martial arts rampage against the villains, who are, of course, the neo-Nazis of the first chapter, led by the racist cop of the second.

Those aren’t the only tie-ins from one chapter to another; and there are other connective devices, including some antic animation, some green rays suggesting a supernatural or extraterrestrial force at work, and periodic commercials about a consciousness-raising system called Psyotics.  Then there are the meta in-jokes—cameos by the actual Too $hort (whose 1987 rap song provides the title) and Floyd.  Topping it all off is an extended cameo by Bay Area native Tom Hanks as the video store clerk in the third chapter, a guy who can’t help blabbing smugly about his encyclopedic knowledge of movies, including what he claims are the five best pictures about underdogs—which, of course, is the category into which “Tales” falls itself.  Hanks’s character is obviously modeled on Quentin Tarantino, whose style and attitude Boden and Fleck are trying to mimic here—without much success.

Hanks is slumming, and his performance shows it.  Of the others Pascal comes off best with his gruff understatement, and Mendelsohn the worst with his lip-smacking viciousness.  The rest are okay, though amateurishness infects some of the lesser roles.  The tech team—production designer Patti Podesta, costumer Neisha Lemle, DP Jac Fitzgerald—obviously relish the garish possibilities, and Fitzgerald and editor Robert Komatsu happily embrace the opportunity to play around with different formats, frayed image edges and the like.  It’s all part of the desperate desire to be cool, something the needle drops—and Raphael Saddiq’s score—aim for too.

“Freaky Tales” is splashy but vacuous, a gonzo time capsule with a ready audience in Oakland that will have limited appeal elsewhere.

Producers: Collin Creighton, Brad Weston, Poppy Hanks, Jelani Johnson, Mark Anthony Green and Josh Bachove   Director: Mark Anthony Green   Screenplay: Mark Anthony Green   Cast: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Amber Midthunder, Melissa Chambers, Stephanie Suganami, Mark Sivertsen, Tony Hale, Tatanka Means, Aspen Martinez, Peter Diseth and Tamera Tomakili   Distributor: A24

Grade: C-

One can always count on John Malkovich to bring a touch of sinister eccentricity to any role, but in Mark Anthony Green’s “Opus” he’s allowed to go full throttle in that department.  No wonder his character, Alfred Moretti, rattles Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), the young staffer at a music magazine, when the reclusive pop icon unexpectedly invites her to a momentous event at his remote compound in the Utah desert.

Moretti, you see, is a nineties pop idol who mysteriously stopped performing and disappeared from public view nearly thirty years ago.  Now he’s excited not only his fan base but the whole world by announcing his first new recordings in three decades.  And he’s chosen six people to come hear his creations before anyone else at what amounts to a fabulous launch party.

The other five are important people: talk show star Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), prominent influencer Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami), infamous paparazzo Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), podcaster Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen) and Ariel’s editor Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett).  She, on the other hand, is a nobody, Stan’s barely-published lackey.

She’s also the only one of the six who appears nonplussed by the strangeness of the isolated commune where the bus deposits the group after an hours-long drive.  They’re required by Jorg (Peter Diseth), the guy she describes in her handwritten notes as a “creepy greeter,” to surrender their phones for the duration, and the other residents are no less peculiar, from aggressively solicitous Rachel (Tamera Tomakili) to Native American Najee (Tatanka Means).  Even the little girl Maude (Aspen Martinez) who latches onto Ariel is a bit off.

In fact, the place is obviously a cult of Alfred, who has surrounded himself with committed acolytes wearing common garb and plastered-on smiles.  Some are also chosen to serve as personal concierges to the guests, with Belle (Amber Midthunder), Ariel’s, sticking so closely to her, even accompanying her step-for-step on her morning jog, that Ariel is understandably unnerved.

Moretti, on the other hand, dons a variety of outrageous, colorful outfits—including a spaceman suit in which he presents one of his new songs—and shows a special interest in Ariel, even taking her to the shed where the members perform what he describes as their sole ritual—shucking oyster after oyster until they find one with a pearl, the discovery of which gives them high status among their fellows.

The set-up is not an unfamiliar one, with an unsuspecting soul lured to a weird place for some purpose that’s only gradually revealed.  One of the most notable examples of the trope is “The Wicker Man,” but in more recent years Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” gave it a new lease on life, and since that success, it’s served in numerous pictures like “Midsommar” and “Blink Twice.”

The effectiveness of the conceit is determined in each case by how intriguing an ambience a film creates, and how surprising the revelations about the villain’s ultimate aims.  In those respects “Opus” isn’t very high on the list.  Despite Malkovich’s flamboyance, Moretti convinces more readily as an evil cult leader than as a pop music phenomenon (it doesn’t help that the songs we hear from his new album, written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream, aren’t particularly compelling), and the rather rushed, mostly half-baked explanations for his treatment of his invitees—which extend, via a coda, two years into the future, when Ariel has become a best-selling author—seem either banal (simple revenge) or absurd (increased adulation and influence).

Of the others, Edebiri comes across as genuinely concerned, though her unremittingly sour expression gets tiresome.  The rest are mostly over-the-top, with Lewis especially unrestrained and Midthunder notable for the rare case of underplaying.  Technical credits, from Robert Pyzocha’s production design to Tommy Maddox-Upshaw’s cinematography, are generally adequate, but only Shirley Kurata’s costumes—those for Malkovich, that is—stand out.  The background score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans is suitably unsettling, but Ernie Gilbert’s editing struggles with Green’s pacing, which is pretty sluggish until it abruptly goes into chaotic mode for the finale before going lethargic again in the coda.

Green obviously had ambitious goals here, melding a satire of celebrity culture with a thriller about cults, but in spite of Malkovich and Edebiri, “Opus” doesn’t work particularly well as either.