Movie Nation

Victor is having an argument with a wife who isn’t at home. What’s with this? Where’s that?

It takes him a couple of minutes to see the half-empty shelves and closets. It takes him a minute more to see the note.

“When I’m back from work, I want you out of here.“

He calls his agent, who is of little help. Get a hotel room. He rings up his adult son, and catches him in the middle of the same predicament. Amisha — whom Victor hasn’t met, whom son Zach has been living with for months, whose name Victor can’t get right to save his life, is tossing the lad out the very same day.

Zach (Tim Linde) is gutted. Victor, (Leopold Witte), a best-selling mystery writer, is resigned, bemused and “Well, I’ve got a new publisher and book signing in Scotland.” Zach is crushed, coddled and lacking in confidence in ways only a guy whose girlfriend calls him a “wimp” can be. Better come with me, kiddo.

“Waterboys” is an adorable, tetchy Danish comedy about belated parenting, the arrested development and pathological “bullsh—–g” that is a writer’s MO and trying to find your feet again amongst a cheap, cranky people who aren’t into whining — the Scots.

Dutch writer-director Robert Jan Westdijk (“The Dinner Club”) piles cute characters and culture clashing on top of heartbreak, guilt and loss for a warm comedy that hits you in unexpected ways.

There’s the shock Zach experiences at seeing that his mother has moved everything his father owns into the garage, and the pain of having him help with the move out, only to have highly-strung Amisha go all fangirl and flirty on his Dad, right in front of him.

“Would you sign my book?”

Victor is incorrigible and self-absorbed enough to let that roll off his back. Grab that cello and a bag and shove’em into the Saab and let’s roll.

Because Zach is A) lost, B) like Victor, not getting through to his mother and C) still afraid of flying. The fact that he wears his bow arm in a cast is his mother’s solution for carpel tunnel he’s picked up playing his instrument. The fact that he doesn’t drive is because he’s just a little bit timid and withdrawn from the world.

A running gag — Dad’s constantly giving him bad advice on how to approach his Amisha problem. Zach desperately wants her back, and Victor knows how that looks and that pleading will never work. A little “tough love,” maybe cussing her out by text message on Zach’s phone?

Another running gag, Dad’s undying love for “The Waterboys,” a Scottish band that he and his about-to-be-ex-wife saw in concert. By coincidence, they’re doing a “homecoming show” in Edinburgh when they arrive in the city to meet Victor’s new Scottish publisher and do a few media events and public readings.

Pity it’s sold out. Pity that asking the PR lady (Helen Belbin) to look into that gets little more than a laugh. Rhona’s the sister of the publisher, brusque and not the least bit star struck. She insults Victor, his books and his inability to follow instructions, right in front of the kid.

All Dad’s charm, his spoiled impulsiveness, the way he flirts on the kid’s behalf with the cute hotel maid (Julie McLellan), that doesn’t work on Rhona. No drive home after a dinner meeting, either. Here’s change for two bus tickets. SEE ya.

Westdijk finds laughs in throwing Victor’s hedonism into the insular macho gloom of Scotland. Salmon fishing, since your detective hero (17 novels worth) is an accomplished angler? SURE, Victor knows all about it. Cough cough.

Witte, who has been a mainstay of Dutch TV since the ’80s, throws himself into Victor’s exaggerated sense of self with the confidence of blithe ignorance. He wants to “research smuggling,” so he hides cocaine in the kid’s cello case on the car ferry over to Britain. He corrects everybody’s grammar, makes up stories to try and score Waterboys tickets and does everything he can to pretend this break-up hasn’t hit him.

Did his wife have a “reason” for kicking him out?

“No more than usual,” he says (in Dutch with English subtitles). “It was my STUFF she threw out, not me!”

But she’s left him a letter in an envelope, “In case you want to know ‘why.'” He won’t open it.

Linde’s job is to make Zach less pathetic and whipped than he seems, which he does by bouncing off his irritating father — sometimes literally.

Through them, and a sparkling supporting cast, Westdijk gives us a little bickering, a little bonding, a little personal growth, a bit of Scotland and a lot of “Waterboys.” And if that’s not enough to add up to a comic winner, I don’t know what is.

MPA Rating: unrated, sexual and, drug content, profanity

Cast: Leopold Witte, Tim Linde, Helen Belbin and Julie McLellan

Credits: Scripted and directed by Robert Jan Westdijk. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:33

This looks good. Epic. Another chance to revel in the glory that Jack Thompson, too.

A May 14 release.

This is a big departure for Elba, a father-son drama about healing and child rearing in a better late than never sense. Lee Daniels had a hand in it, and could use a winner. https://youtu.be/utFcqVy0FtI

It’s an animated short that will be unleashed on the world April 6.

Taika W. voices the rabbit, Gervais is the director we hear.

Olivia Munn, Zac Efron and Tricia Helfer are also in Spencer Susser’s short film. Take a look at this teaser.

UPDATED: The complete film has since been posted. You can find it here. It’s still a short film, but it’s longer and harder to watch than the teaser, which is still posted below.

This thriller stars Anson Mount as a shooter who creates “collateral damage,” Abbie Cornish as a waitress he’s sweet on and David Morse as a nosy cop.

“The Virtuoso” is an April 30 release, and reminds us that roles like “The Father” don’t come along often, even for the very best actors alive.

Christopher Lloyd is 82 years young, still getting laughs with the wild hair and his way with a punchline.

Jean Smart? The “Designing Woman” is 69, and still getting the guy.

William Shatner has them both beat. He gets online just long enough to thank fans for birthday wishes, and damned near breaks Twitter. He turned 90 just the other day. And yes, he’s still a headliner.

“Senior Moment” is a thin, faintly amusing spin in the late life romance lane, a Palm Springs rom-com about a guy finally finding a woman he loves more than what looks to be a ’59 Porsche 356. It’s one of those movies that’s more “Well, thank heavens somebody made a movie for that demographic” than entertaining, but we don’t pick on stars chasing Betty White past 90.

Shatner’s Victor Martin, a retired Air Force major who likes his freedom and loves his trophy Porsche. He and pal Sal (Lloyd) tool around town, ogling women who’d be too young to date their grandsons, if they had grandsons.

“Like two hard-boiled eggs doing the salsa,” Victor purrs at one young lady entirely too young to be caught dead using a crosswalk in Palm Springs.

Victor’s a character around town, a “host” at their favorite piano bar and a guy the cops keep giving warnings, because 80something or not, he’s still a speed freak.

But one stoplight joke-off with a “cholo” in a lowrider later, all that goes away. The car’s impounded and license-free Victor’s stuck in Ubers, taxis, on foot or traveling by bus.

“Only losers ride the bus.”

Naturally, that’s Victor stumbles into Cuckoo Cafe owner Caroline. As he drops his groceries, fends off heat stroke by sticking his head in the supermarket ice cream cooler and tries to find his mojo without the car he always thought of as a you-know-what magnet, Victor has an epiphany.

He’s sweet on Caroline.

Sure, “I like fast cars and you like tortoises (desert tortoises, which she’s trying to save).” He’s into junk food and she’s Ms. Organic.

“I thought ALL wine was organic!”

But maybe, is this artist-rival for her attention (Esai Morales) can be fended off, they can find a middle ground. Maybe there’s time for a little romance and a bed where she can share a joint with him and he can force down a little blue pill.

There are a few jokes in the script, but even though director Giorgio Serafini is no old hand at comedy (he’s a veteran of B-movies like “The Good War” and “Game of Death”), he has to realize he left a lot of laughs one the table.

There’s a bit of goofy fun in the shyster lawyer, driving test instructor and “life coach” Don McManus prepping Victor to re-take his driving test with a video game, two-on-two basketball and playing three-card monte at poolside, where Victor has to fight the “distraction” of young women in swimsuits.

Profanity and sexual joking around aside, “Senior Moment” suffers from that “It’s harmless enough” label easily slapped on too many “comedies for seniors.”

The lecherous old guy stuff may play to Shatner’s demo, but feels kind of winded and out of date here.

There’s some cute bonding with the “cholo,” Pablo (Carlos Miranda) who tricked Victor into the drag race that cost him his license. And a sentimental story about a cuckoo clock in Caroline’s cafe isn’t quite the groaner it almost becomes.

But giving Lloyd too little to do, and not having funnier players in Victor’s posse are both lost opportunities. Smart can still hit a punchline and isn’t given anything amusing to play or say here.

And when Victor is introduced at Captain Hook’s piano bar, we face the biggest comic letdown of all. Nobody begs him to sing.

If there’s anything an old trooper like Shatner knows, it’s how hilarious the culture thinks his singing is. Come on, Bill, give the people what they want!

MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, profanity, marijuana, alcohol

Cast: William Shatner, Jean Smart, Christopher Lloyd, Carlos Miranda and Esai Morales.

Credits: Directed by Giorgio Serafini, scripted by Kurt Brungardt, Christopher Momenee. A Screen Media release.

Running time: 1:32

Good Friday will be VERY good for horror movies this year.

At least in terms of volume. Here’s another April 2 release.

April 2 this one, which also stars Michelle Monaghan.

April promises a horror tsumani, with this April 2 thriller coming in with the tide.

This April 15 release, a horror period piece, landed a few famous British character actor faces — Jessica Brown Findlay, John Lynch, Sean Harris among them. Shudder has it, so we’ll see what they’ve come up with. I prefer my horror British period piece oriented.