Movie Nation

“The Wolf and the Lion” may be cloying, kid-friendly claptrap, a “nature” film about the unlikely upbringing of a couple of cubs on an idyllic island in Canada. But kids under the age of six won’t mind most of the stuff their parents — some parents, anyway — will roll their eyes at.

But ohmygodohmygodohmyGOD! The lion cub and the wolf pup in this are get-them-their-own-Youtube Channel adorable.

There’s little that’s serious about this cutesy “road comedy.” Let’s label it that, because all the raised-as-brothers business and back-story about how the lion and the wolf came to life with ringleted redhead Alma (Molly Kunz) on an island in the North Woods is just a prologue for the two siblings, all grown up, going on the lam.

A hunters shoots the mother of the lion cub in Africa, just to fetch the cub and fly him off to be in the circus. The snow wolf pup has an easier time of it. His “she wolf” mom brings him to stay at Alma’s place because she was kind enough to free her from a net meant to trap her.

It takes a miracle to pair these critters up, and that’s just what this dizzy script provides. The cub’s plane crashes and he winds up in an eagle’s nest. When the eagle shoves him out, Alma (Molly Kunz) just happens to be taking a nature walk right beneath the tree and catches the kitten.

She’s come to her late grandpa’s island after his death to reflect, just a pit stop on her way to a future as a concert pianist with the L.A. Philharmonic, she hopes. But the off-the-book animals thrown into her care change that. She won’t let Wildlife Protection have them, even though they’re looking for the missing lion.

She won’t let the obnoxious, dorky city-boy wolf-researcher (Charlie Carrick) dart and tag or remove snow wolves from her island. And she won’t admit to godfather Joe (the Great Graham Greene) that she’s doing this, or that she’s in over her head. She’s got “control” she figures.

“Holy dancing and whistling Jesus!” Joe replies, speaking for the audience. “You ain’t in control of squat!”

Events conspire to prove him right.

French director Gilles de Maistre started his career in conventional dramas but migrated to nature-friendly kiddie fare at some point. He is on his most entertaining ground just following his feline/canine stars around, letting them tear up the book-and-art covered cabin in the woods, helping each other out of jams as they run from circus and Federal hunters who would trap them.

The human stuff is entirely too predictable. And the whole thing is so Disney sweet and cutesey it’ll make your teeth hurt.

The comedy comes from the self-described “very important scientist” and his feud with the “nutcase” who kept a lion and a snow wolf in her house. It’s seriously lame. The drama comes from the hunt, the abuse circus animals face (drugs, declawing, etc).

There isn’t much here, but what’s the cardinal rule of filmed entertainment for kids? “First, do no harm.”

Unless your child is inclined to run up and hug wild things in the woods, or at the zoo, mark “The Wolf and the Lion” down as “harmless” and let the kids have at it.

Rating: PG for thematic elements, language and some peril

Cast: Molly Kunz, Charlie Carrick, Rhys Slack, Evan Buliung and Graham Greene

Credits: Directed by Gilles de Maistre, scripted by Prune de Maistre. A Blue Fox release of a Studio Canal film

Running time: 1:39

Ready for a little Sundance Film Fest-approved “surreal?”

“Strawberry Mansion” is a 2035 tale of mice and men…and women. Weird, wacky, DIY cultish stuff.

This one opens in limited release Feb. 18.

A disaster movie in every sense of the word, “Moonfall” instantly becomes the biggest swing-and-a-miss of Roland Emmerich’s popcorn packed career. And yes, I saw “Anonymous,” his “Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays” debacle, and the better-intentioned bust “Stonewall.”

“Moonfall” is too big to be a bad B-movie, too malnourished to pass for an A-picture and not bad enough to even amount to campy fun.

What’s wrong with it? Start with the cast’s commitment to the nutty “moon is actually an alien mega-structure” whose warranty has just expired plot. Halle Berry has an Oscar and just looks dazed, first scene to last. Patrick Wilson wholly bought into “The Conjuring” universe but can’t even summon up a wink to the camera here. Even Donald Sutherland’s cameo in his latest “Here’s the cover-up” conspiracy buff is as half-hearted as we’ve ever seen him.

“Game of Thrones” alumnus John Bradley, as the REAL conspiracy buff, the one with the mad orbital math skills, is not ready for his close-up. And Charlie Plummer seems confused about why his presence was required.

The bit players surrounding them are, to a one, underwhelming — zero charisma in the lot.

Only the durable Michael Peña comes off unscathed, largely thanks to the small scope of his role.

The effects don’t look like models or purely digital recreations of a clockwork moon, earthquakes and tidal waves, but digitized models. No Roland “2012/Independence Day/Day After Tomorrow/Midway” Emmerich effects extravaganza has ever looked this fake.

The dialogue is mostly dull variations of “Come on people, think outside the box!” and “We all have our problems now. And the moon falling to Earth isn’t one of them.”

And that story. Oh my stars and garters.

It starts with alternate history, a space shuttle accident that was related to what’s about to go wrong on a bigger scale later on. There’s a cover-up, with Mr. Conspiracy (Sutherland in a wheelchair) setting the record straight about “One giant leap for yadda yadda yadda.”

A disgraced and divorced astronaut (Wilson) is out of the loop. He former shuttlemate (Berry) is still with NASA but…confused.

The only guy with a clue and without “clearance” or secrecy obligations is British crank (Bradley) who supports himself as a custodian and has the wherewithal to impersonate scientists so that he can collect raw data on the moon’s orbit. He’s half-crazy, speaking to an audience of the more completely crazed.

“I love Elon!”

Word gets out just as the moonshine is about to hit the fan.

There are characters and plot devices borrowed from other Emmerich films, the legitimate blockbusters. Charlie Plummer is the estranged son of the disgraced astronaut, trying to get himself and others to safety, for starters.

But with nobody all that committed to playing up the doom, and only the British “megastructurist” having the potential to be any fun, the picture never had a chance.

Bradley is no Jeff Goldblum in “ID4,” no Woody Harrelson in “2112.” To spread the blame around, Wilson is no Kurt Russell, Will Smith or Dennis Quaid, either.

There’s barely a hint of fun and nary a drop of pathos in any of this. And with the effects rarely “special” and never all that impressive, “Moonfall” never rises, never sets and barely distracts one from whatever might be on your cell phone (very rude in a cinema) or endlessly checking your watch.

Rating: PG-13 for violence, disaster action, strong language, and some drug use

Cast: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Carolina Bartczak, Charlie Plummer, Michael Peña and Donald Sutherland

Credits: Directed by Roland Emmerich, scripted by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:00

A bartender and aspiring architect who figures to transform cities with his designs is told he’s about to go blind. His wife is stricken, not just about the disease, but about the failing marriage that she may now be trapped in.

His “I don’t have the will or the time for this” debate on their future earns a “What if you did have the will or the time? Would you still be married to me?”

His glib pal takes the news rather well.

“Come on. Let’s go to the strip club while you can still see.” And later, when our would-be architect begins hallucinating an alternate reality and confesses “I’m seeing things,” his friend quips “I thought you were going blind.”

But a walk in the woods leads the soon-to-be-blind fellow (Jim Sturgess) to the door of a beautiful blonde (Andreja Pejic). What’s her name?

“I have no name…Let us both be called nothing. Believe me, it’s better that way.”

He loses himself in a painting, and when his sight does disappear, the flashbacks/dreams/visions increase. He starts wondering if he’s seeing an alternate reality, the life of “The Other Me.”

“Soon, everything will be revealed,” the blonde lies. “Nothing will be concealed.”

The English language debut feature of Georgian filmmaker Giga Agladze (of “Gogona Slaididan”) is cryptic, quirky and sexy enough to earn the attention of David Lynch, who serves as a producer.

Maybe he liked the mystery of it all, the halting, mobius loop illogic of the dialogue. Sturgess brings a sort of “Wild at Heart” intensity to a few scenes.

But maybe Agladze got Lynch’s attention with the raspberry angel cake he has our blonde temptress offer to our anti-hero in her dacha in the woods. As if anything could beat a really good cherry pie…

The childhood flashbacks suggest our anti-hero grew up bullied by his father and schoolmates somewhere in Eastern Europe. But is that “his” reality? The hallucinations have a spare, painterly quality.

The whole affair makes barely enough sense to bother with. And then you consider the melodramatic plot twists that involve the wronged-wife (Antonia Campbell-Hughes, a delicate and wounded Charlotte Gainsbourg 2.0) and/or the glib best friend (Michael Socha).

There’s the pointless inclusion of an “ambassador” (Rhone Mitra), who hired the wife as her housekeeper.

And whatever attributes the Bosnian actress Pejic brings to the set (she was briefly in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web”), she is a dreadful actress, in English, at least.

Whatever Agladze was getting at about the difference between sight and “seeing,” plumbing the obscurant “Other Me” to discern it isn’t worth the trouble.

Rating: unrated, sexual situations

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Andreja Pejic, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Rhona Mitra and Michael Socha

Credits: Scripted and directed by Giga Agladze. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:39

Yes, the title sounds like a James Bond mashup — “Moonraker” meets “Skyfall.” Might that have been its inspiration?

A decent enough cast, a big disaster surrounding them, and well, let’s just hope for the best.

Halle saves the day, and Halle and Johnny Knoxville save Feb.at the box office?

An unhappy mashup of many horror tales, from “The Village” to “The Wicker Man,” “Ghosts of the Ozarks” has only a few moments that live up to its creepy title.

As you scroll past it on whatever streaming or VOD menu you peruse, you might be tempted by seeing that it’s a period Western as well as a ghost story. The presence of Tim Blake Nelson in the cast should get your attention, prompting you to ignore the fact that the rarely-more-than-middling David Arquette is also here, canceling Nelson’s presence out.

Don’t be fooled. There’s a lot less here than the credits promise.

A young African American doctor (Thomas Hobson), trained in the Civil War, has been summoned to post-war Arkansas where an uncle has been running a near-utopia. Uncle Matthew (Phil Morris) has mastered several “big city” amenities, including natural gas, which gives the people light and heat in their homes, making the white population more tolerant of African Americans than was normal in 19th century Arkansas.

Then again, we only have Uncle Matthew’s word for that. He seems to be the only Black man in town until nephew James arrives.

The first sign that this North Fork might not be the utopia it’s billed to be comes when Dr. James McCune’s horse bolts, just short of his destination. A fraught encounter in the woods ends with monstrous noises, a mysterious red fog and a murderous stranger muttering about “stones” is snatched into the dark. The doctor flees, finds a wooden wall and pounds on a gate. And as he’s welcomed, because he was expected, a local asks the only question that matters.

“You catch a glimpse on the way in?”

The saloon, restaurant and boarding house is decorated with paintings of ghosts. The blind proprietor (Nelson) might dismiss ghosts as “parlor tricks.” But the too-friendly local haberdasher and photo studio operator (Arquette) is less sure.

“This town, they treat these ghosts like some kind of religion.”

What comes out of the town mine? Why is the place walled, and how do those walls keep out “ghosts?” What is Dr. McCune’s “injury?” How is all this gas piped in? And how does a Uncle Matthew, a Black man, no matter how distinguished and accomplished, “run” a town like this in Arkansas in this day and age?

Other characters add to the background — the “hunter” (Tara Perry) who “knows her way around” outside the walls, the blind but almost supernaturally-skilled innkeeper’s wife (Angela Bettis) — but don’t help unravel the mysteries.

The plot has a sort of perfunctory pointlessness that may have you gesturing at the filmmakers and shouting at the screen.

The leads aren’t bad, with Hobson (who starred in the short film this is based on) a TV veteran, and Morris constantly-employed since his breakout as lawyer Jackie Chiles on “Seinfeld.” The bit players surrounding them range from bland to just plain bad.

But if you’re a Tim Blake Nelson fan, you may be lured into sitting through this indifferent script with directors whose previous feature film credit was a comic horror thriller titled “Squirrel.” And if you are, it’s not hard to see how Nelson himself was so enticed.

Nelson plays a variation of the Asian movie myth, Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. “Old Torb” can fight back with whatever’s at hand thanks to his bat-like hearing.

Torb speaks with a Germanic accent, and even sings in that accent with his “darlin'” wife (Bettis), a tune composer-turned-co-director Matt Glass cooked-up that sounds like an outtake from “Sweeney Todd.” It’s dark and morbid and somewhat anachronistic.

But “Ghosts” isn’t “Buster Scruggs” or “Old Henry” or even “Ozark.” It’s just a spooky period piece with some neat red fog effects, tepid dialogue and a mystery so slow to unravel, with so little urgency to it, that simply sticking with it to the closing credits might be the biggest test of all.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Thomas Hobson, Phil Morris, Tara Perry, Angela Bettis, David Arquette and Tim Blake Nelson

Credits: Directed by Matt Glass and Jordan Wayne Long, scripted by Jordan Wayne Long, Tara Perry and Sean Anthony Davis. An XYZ Films release.

Running time: 1:43

Danny Boyle produced, his “Trainspotting” writer co-scripted it and “Spud” from that film, Ewen Bremner, stars as the fellow what founded “Creation Records,” which launched a lot of bands and made them famous. Right?

That bloke would be Alan McGee, and this is his biopic.

Colin Farrel’s found a new home in the indie arthouse distributor A24.

This latest AI/robot teaches us “what it means to be human” drama was supposed to come out last year, but the new trailer has it “coming soon” as in this year. So we’ll see.

The director Kogonda was behind the John Cho mournful and meditative small-town drama “Columbus” a few years back.

Sean Payton’s abrupt “retirement” from the head coaching job of the New Orleans Saints this week can only mean one thing. Somebody let him screen “Home Team,” the Happy Madison (Adam Sandler’s production company) comedy about how Payton spent that year when he was suspended from coaching for Bountygate.

The shame of that scandal, paying players to “target,” hit and injure opponents, didn’t amount to much. But this “coach my son’s pee wee team” kiddie movie? Being portrayed by Kevin James? He may never live that down.

A fictionalized account of Payton’s real-life time spent coaching his son’s 6th grade team, the film gives us a “winning is everything” coach who has to relearn “this game is supposed to be fun” from a bunch of pre-CTE 12 year-olds.

“Home Team” sticks strictly to formula, with the usual Happy Madison touches. Except for the PG rating, I mean.

There’s a leering sexual come-on and a “barfed their way to victory” vomit fest. There are Sandler family members in the cast, Sandler’s old “SNL” mate Rob Schneider shows up, and the Sand-man’s favorite sportscaster, Dan Patrick takes on another cameo, this time as himself.

I think I laughed once.

This NFL-approved picture whitewashes the scandal even as it pays lip service to a version of Payton who long-ignored his son and talks about “accountability” but doesn’t live up to it. Yes, it’s fictionalized, and yes, the movie skirts the very issue the screenplay hints it might play up. Gutless.

Kevin James plays Payton, on the sidelines for the joyous post-Katrina Super Bowl victory in 2010, and then suspended as the scandal breaks a couple of years later. There’s good footage of the TV news and ESPN coverage of that dangerous and despicable debacle, just not that much of it.

Next thing we know, Payton’s in Argyle, Texas, taking way too long to check into the nicest hotel in town, trying to get back in his 12 year-old son’s life. Connor (Tait Blum) may not want anything to do with him. But his mo,. Sean’s ex (Jackie Sandler) just says “give it time” and the like. Her new husband, man-bunned vegan Jamie (Schneider) is OK with it, too.

And there’s a possible window into Connor’s life, his godawful football team, the Warriors. Coach Troy (Taylor Lautner) is in over his head, and boozing Coach Bizone (Gary Valentine) is no help.

Jamie?

“These kids are 12 YEARS OLD! What are we teaching them about violence and conflict resolution?”

It isn’t long before Payton’s instant-reads of the Warriors’ shortcomings, passed on to Coach Troy via sign language (at first), leads to the Saints’ coach’s jumping in and shaking things up, creating a playbook “even my Dad can’t understand,” over-working the boys and generally not picking up on the fact they’re kids and that, as Coach Troy reminds him, the object isn’t to “get them a trip to the emergency room.”

James plays this pretty straight, which is unfortunate but understandable. He’s playing a real person, and the script doesn’t really give him anything funny to say or play. Payton is basically all-business/all visor here.

The kids are a motley crew of bumbler, an over-eater, a distracted, lovesick kicker and the “contact” avoiding meek lineman who hasn’t figured out “This is TEXAS,” where football, Tex-Mex and incompetent governance are in the DNA.

The cute touches — the plays have to be reduced to picnic-table condiments-at-the-taco-truck simplicity, “two limes, one hot sauce” formation — are few and far between.

The “redemption” message is printed in BOLD FACE, but not borne out by the plot.

And it doesn’t so much end as just peter out. Much like this review.

But as I’ve already said, “I laughed once.”

Rating: PG

Cast: Kevin James, Taylor Lautner, Jackie Sandler, Ashley D. Kelley, Rob Schneider, Tait Blum, Isaiah Mustafa, Manny Magnus, Sunny Sandler and Dan Patrick

Credits: Directed by Charles Kinnane and Daniel Kinnane, scripted by Christ Titone and Keith Blum. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

I’ve always had a soft spot for these guys. Which is why one makes sure to wear a cup whenever reviewing a new “Jackass” movie. One must.

“Jackass Forever” is a valedictory victory lap for the scruffy little troupe of “stunt” dudes who risk almost certain injury — and certain humiliation — for laughs, lowbrow fame and cold-hard-cash.

They’ve been this for over 20 years. They’re all getting on up there, and as Indy Jones reminded us, “It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.”

The movie they came up with is sentimental. And of course, kind of gross.

Intrepid prankster Johnny Knoxille jokes about “don’t show my bald spot (prompting a quick spray from producer Spike Jonze), and even shows off the snow white locks of his Appalachian elders in a few scenes. Everybody else let’s us see their missing teeth, past pain added to their fresh collection of bruises, bites, and scrotal overexposure that every new “Jackass” film promises.

They’ve finally diversified the cast, essentially setting up a new generation of Jackasses including Erik Manaka, comic Rachel Wolfson, walking co-morbidity Zach Holmes and Sean “Poopies” McInerney, whose nickname makes telling us that he “grew up watching ‘Jackass'” totally redundant.

One and all return for a few new epic stunts more or less under-designed to go wrong, and a nostalgic recycling of some of their most infamous pranks — the exploding outhouse among them.

A new bit favorite might be “The Quiet Game,” which involves pranking guys into waiting in a pitch-dark room that they assume has a loose rattlesnake in it, and Knoxville & Co. poking, cattle-prodding and abusing the hell out of them with the added terror of them never knowing what’s coming.

There are gags involving bees on a naked Steve-O, a honey-and-salmon-covered Jackass and a bear, a Wee Man baited for a vulture, snakes, a scorpion and of course a bull, although not the same one who’s given AARP-eligible Knoxville a violent toss in essentially the same gag, over many Jackasses over many years.

It’s no wonder PETA called for a criminal investigation of the picture and the animal handling practices of Team Jackass. I wonder, did PETA see this crew’s much more alarmingly animal-packed “Action Point?” That one that gave me pause.

Let’s hope for the best and assume “no animals were harmed,” because the same can’t be said for the principals. We’re here for the harm — theirs. And they don’t disappoint.

A snake or a scorpion bite to the face, bee stings all over Steve-O and little steve-o, “The Cup Test” involving a man-mountain from MMA (Francis Ngannou) delivering a knockout punch to the crotch, with many other variations of the crotch shot to follow, this crew brings the pain and suffers for their art.

The Spider Helmet gag has two men (Dark Star, the father of one of the new players, is one) in bubble helmets trying to keep a giant spider from traveling down a transparent tube into THEIR helmet to deliver a bite.

Wee Man — “Look at those FANGS!”

Ehren McGhehey: “I don’t wanna see the fangs!”

Johnny Knoxville: “Make SURE Ehren sees the fangs!”

It’s not the most original of these films, thanks to the re-enacted gags. And watching a cameraman and others vomit isn’t the most nauseating stuff they serve up. These arrested adolescents love their bodily fluids/bodily functions gags, and I’d say there are about three bodily fluids, two bathroom accidents and a half a dozen scrotum exposures I could’ve done without.

These movies don’t fit into any one, neat film category, and are so intentionally scruffy, sloppy and DIY looking that endorsing one is generally out of the question. It’s junk, sado-masochistic and lowbrow in the extreme. A perverse part of me was delighted when director Jeff Tremaine got tased (Knoxville tases almost everybody) and I held out the hope that Knoxville would give concept co-originator and producer Spike Jonze a zap. Note for “Jackass Continues” — I’d pay to see THAT.

The bonhomie and breaking each other up can seem genuine, or forced, like members of a “morning zoo” radio ensemble making themselves laugh at the less-than-hilarious.

High art this isn’t. The human grotesques may not be “Felliniesque.” And yes, that bear looks forlorn.

But in a climate where everybody else pulls their movies and hopes things will get better for moviegoing in the future, the COVID-protocols-conscious Jackasses went out there and did their thing, and are serving up their movie at a time when movie theaters are hurting.

That’s kind of noble, adding a financial risk to all the physical risks they gladly, or reluctantly, or with the assistance of “liquid courage” off-camera, take on.

And there’s white-haired Old Man Knoxville, dressed like a Cretan cretin, flying out of a cannon in tribute to Icarus. If that’s not art, I’ll eat my hat. Or have a Jackass eat something even less palatable in my place.

Rating: R for strong crude material and dangerous stunts, graphic nudity and language throughout

Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Rachel Wolfson, Chris Pontius, Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuña, Ehren McGhehey, Erik Manaka, Zach Holmes, Eric Andre, Tony Hawk, Dave England, Preston Lacy, Francis Ngannou and Machine Gun Kelly.

Credits: Directed by Jeff Tremaine. A Paramount release.

Running time: 1:36