Movie Nation

Jharrel Jerome stars as Anthony Robles, an amateur wrestler who fought to fame despite being born with just one leg.

Don Cheadle, Mykelti Williamson and Michael Pena also star in this January release from Amazon/MGM.

The trailer to this 19th century age-of-sail horror tale plays like an oft-told tale of the sea. A snowy Icelandic fishing village fails in its responbility to its brother mariners, and is “damned” for it.

Odessa Young stars in this Icelandic production.

Looks brilliant.

Bethany Brown, JayR Tinaco (Um, how DO you pronounce that?), Brooke Nevin and Haley Victoria Hunt empty out Hollywood’s supply of Pretty Young Things for this cast.

“Serial dating” features in what turns out to be another “true crime podcast as hook” screenplay. And you guys…it’s set in BOULDER!

“Coming soon?” Maybe Dec.

This espionage thriller series was created by the fellow who gave us “The Lazarus Project,” and co-stars Ben Whishaw and Tracey Ullman.

Kind of bummed its not a feature film, as I was wondering where Knightley had got off to, and streaming series have so much dead-time and filler in their makeup.

Dec. 5 on Netflix.

A just-clever-enough conceit and generally cheerful performances are almost enough to put over “The Gutter,” a coarse and comically crude bowling farce featuring an Oscar winner and a Black bowler who just might take over “the whitest sport” while no one is watching.

Shameik Moore brings Kevin-Hart-selling-something-on-TV energy as Walt, a self-absorbed and perpetually unemployed dope who finds himself and his calling when he takes the job spraying roach killer into the shoes at the tumbledown alley known as AlleyCatz Lanes.

And no less than Susan Sarandon, well-preserved and everybody’s idea of the perfect villain but no one’s idea of a convincing bowler, is summoned to play Linda Curson, a legend of the lanes who comes out of retirement to make sure this pipsqueak savant doesn’t break her long-standing records.

D’Arcy Carden of TV’s “The Good Place,” “Barry” and “A League of Their Own” plays the ex-pro/alcoholic washout who takes an interest in “training” our champion-to-be.

And sibling filmmakers Isaiah and Yassir Lester talked Jackée Harry into playing the owner of the aged alley, Kim Fields to play Walt’s broke momma and Paul Reiser to be the venerable TV face and voice of SLOB, the Super League of Bowling for their comedy.

The idea was to vamp on “Kingpin,” throw a lot of talented folks telling PG-to-R-rated jokes against the wall and see what sticks. Not enough does, but there are scattered laughs, even if the Lesters lost their nerve about how far “out there” to take this thing.

Walt is dopey enough to manically overshare his many firings in his job interview with Mozell (Henry), misguided enough to figure he can sex his way into the gig.

“This is how you get a job…in the movies that I watch!”

But she’s desperate — for an employee, not sex. And he’s down for any gig where he can go shirtless.

It’s when he first picks up a ball that his “bowling savant” skills become obvious. Rolled behind his back, over his shoulder or all the way from the concession stand, Walt scores strikes.

That sobers up Skunk (Carden) just long enough to take an interest. She sees the novelty of it all.

“There hasn’t been a Black pro (bowler) since…”

And since Mozell’s about to lose AlleyCatz, “an institution in the Black community,” to code violations, everybody could use the prize money.

Walt, shirted or shirtless and wearing “Porn Hub” stickers in the hope of landing sponsors, charges into the pro bowling circuit — Indianapolis to Tulsa to Houston to Atlanta — with Skunk as his cheerleader/”coach.”

He has a hard time selling the world on his “stage name” for the tour — “Nygga Thyme.” Maybe one of his catch phrases will catch on.

“It’s Walt LIQUOR time!”

But we know he’s never going to win over Linda Curson, or Angelo (Reiser), the over-the-hill insult-comic TV announcer, who refers to him as “the Michael B. Jordan of bowling.”

The whole funny people-given-“funny” characters and lines strategy here doesn’t really land, although a few of the jokes do.

“I wanna wrestle with that dude from ‘Dune,’ Timothee Chalamet. Just to see…what happens.”

Moore and Carden’s chemistry is tentative, and the script teeters between going gonzo and raunchy and timidly reaching for PG-13. Pretty much everybody here has been brassier in other roles and other films.

You can pull for Walt/Moore, who starred in “Dope” and who gives voice to the animated “Spiderverse” movies. You can hope the Lesters get their shot at becoming “The New Farrelly Brothers.”

But the characters are never more than caricatures, the set-up is too conventional and the payoff doesn’t pay off at all. As for the jokes? Too many are awaiting that next rewrite or polish. But not this one.

“And now, just like racism in America, this is over.”

Rating: unrated, sexual humor, profanity and smoking

Cast: Shameik Moore, D’Arcy Carden, Jackée Harry, Kim Fields, Paul Reiser and Susan Sarandon

Credits: Directed by Isaiah Lester and Yassir Lester, scripted by Yassir Lester. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:32

Teri Garr, a character actress always good for a giggle, who always won our sympathy and who even collected an Oscar nomination for her comedic skills, has died.

A scene stealer from the mid-career films of Elvis Presley, to TV’s “Star Trek” through “Young Frankenstein,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” an Oscar nominee for “Tootsie,” she was one of the most familiar faces on film in the ’70s and ’80s, pairing-up with Richard Dreyfuss (“Let It Ride”) more than once, appearing Coppola’s “The Conversation” and a couple of Altman films to boot.

An Ohio native and the daughter of show people, she did Broadway, the Monkees’ movie “Head,” played John Denver’s wife in “Oh, God!” Michael Keaton’s breadwinner wife in “Mr. Mom” and the mother in “The Black Stallion. In her prime, she was everywhere. And on “Letterman.” A lot.

Dreyfuss, who played her spouse twice, described her as “vibrant, playful and so funny. Her essence created an ease in every scene we did together” today on Twitter.

Here she is, all worked up, playing the Mrs. to Mr. Dreyfuss for the second time, in the gambling farce “Let It Ride.”

She had survived a brain aneurysm some years back and had struggled with mutiple sclerosis for decades. I remember chatting with her at the New York Film Festival in the early ’90s — she came to press screenings during the day — and I caught up with her after an Orlando appearance, speaking on behalf of MS awareness a few years back.

She was a real sweetheart, wistful about her salad days, plucky about her medical challenges, as disarming as she came off on the screen. Nobody did “sexy” and perky and a bit rattled better. She was Judy Holiday without the kitsch or “dim blonde” stereotyping, someone who “created her own sublime archetype,” screenwriter and wit Paul Rudnick (“In & Out”) said on Twitter.

In my era, if you didn’t have a little bit of a crush on her, funny blondes must not have been your thing.