Movie Nation

Georgian Scott Teems, who first gained notice with the Faulkneresque Southern Gothic “That Evening Sun,” gives the genre a Hispano-Southern Gothic updating with “The Quarry,” a dark and blood-stained morality tale set in remote, rural “Reconquista”Texas.

The script, with its Biblical parable story arc and pithy monologues peppered with sharp observations about humanity, the changing world and changed South, attracted a dazzling trio of leads. And the result does not disappoint — well, not much anyway.

A priest (Bruno Bichir, brother of Demián), interrupts his wine-swilling drive through the barrens of East Texas when he spies a body beside the road. It’s a man, passed out and broke. He does the priestly thing. He picks him up, loads him into the old van, drives him down the road and feeds him.

He also offers him a drink, because “I am an alcoholic,” he confesses. “Confession” saves the soul, he counsels. And he gets a little pushy about it.

But the sour-faced drifter (Shea Whigham) isn’t having it — isn’t having it with EXTREME prejudice. That’s how Father David winds up dead. An impulse killed him, and then a practiced panic kicks in. The drifter dumps the body in an abandoned quarry.

For reasons only a novelist (Damon Galgut wrote the book this is based on) can justify, the drifter drives the van to the village where they’re waiting on their new priest.

He takes up the stole and vestments, cracks open the priest’s Bible to Timothy, Chapter One.

“I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.”

His humorless, deadpan sermon — in English, which few of his congregants speak — touches the faithful in its lack of judgment, forcing them to read passion and life lessons into it because the priest isn’t providing those. He’s an instant hit.

“I just say the words. It’s not me that you’re here for. It’s the words, the Book.”

But when he arrived in town, his van was ransacked. Apetty drug dealer, Valentin (Bobby Soto) got hold of wheels, a suitcase, and stuff the cops call “evidence.”

So maybe reporting the crime to the police chief (Michael Shannon) isn’t the smartest play. The lady who runs the rectory (Maria Sandino Moreno of “Che” and “Maria Full of Grace”) insists on it.

Just hope the drawling good’ol boy doesn’t eyeball the “Wanted” posters on the wall behind him too carefully.

Shannon eats characters like this bad-“good” man cop alive. A prisoner gripes, “Gimme a CIGARETTE, Chief.”

“Naaw, you know me. I don’t SMOKE, ‘cabrón!'”

Whigham and Shannon go way back — “Boardwalk Empire,” “Take Shelter,” etc. Whigham’s work in their scenes together largely consists of keeping a guilt-ridden poker face, and under-reacting to Shannon.

“Not much in the collection plate? Maybe you should watch them TV preachers, get some tips.”

Nothing.

“You’re not much on smilin’, are ye?”

Everybody, from the congregation to the chief, reads more into the “priest” than this unGodly man has in his background. It’s “I know what you’re thinking…’Turn the other cheek. (But) forgiveness only works in a world where people learn their lessons.”

“The Quarry” stumbles and shows its malnourished nature in the third act, when little conveniences like the lack of a courtroom (“hold it in church”) and lack of an actual local prosecutor (Let the Chief prosecute the case?) are explained away in a most half-assed way.

The sordid underbelly of this recently-Hispanized town is touched on, the Chief’s “not entirely legal” methods, etc., are but background to the relationship dynamics that are hinted at but somewhat undeveloped.

But Teems and his team get a nice spin on Southern Gothic tropes and types, and “The Quarry” makes for a slow, simmering tale that has glorious performances and rewards, even in its noticeable shortcomings.

MPAA Rating: R for some violence and language

Cast: Michael Shannon, Shea Whigham, Maria Sandino Moreno, Bobby Sotoa and Bruno Bichir.

Credits: Directed by Scott Teems, script by Scott Teems and Andrew Brotzman, based on the novel by Damon Galgut.  A Lionsgate release

Running time: 1:38

Forget the “Parks & Rec” and “Master of None” credits on “Tigertail” writer-director Alan Yang’s resume. Don’t put too much stock in the more downbeat and thoughtful “Forever,” either.

With this short but plays VERY long Netflix drama, he takes his shot at a memory play. It’s a story of Taiwan and America, first love and regret and the chill that pragmatism can cast over life, and pass from generation to generation.

It’s doesn’t wholly come off, with ambitions exceeding its reach. But it has enough of that “How my family got here” “Joy Luck Club” essence to make it worth checking out.

“Tigertail” gives a rare (in this country) leading man turn to the formidable character actor Tzi Ma, of “The Farewell” and the upcoming “Mulan” remake.

He is a sad old man, living in a cozy New York brownstone, all alone in a diminished life and surrounded by regrets.

He’s not warm enough to be a comfort to his sad but successful daughter, Angela (Christine Ko), who could use a shoulder to lean on. He didn’t even bother to tell her his mother died. She finds out when she picks him up from the airport on his return home from Taiwan.

He has gone by “Grover” in the United States. He thinks back to his childhood, when he was Pin Jui, raised by his grandmother in the days just after Chiang Kai Shek and his Kuomintang Party and army took over the island of Formosa and made it Mandarin and Chinese.

Pin Jui grew up in the middle of a sea of rice paddies and met the love of his life as a child. Years pass, he moves in with his mother (Kuei-Mei Yang) and works with her in a local factory. But Pin Jui (Hong-Chi Lee) and Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang) are hot are heavy, poor but dating — perfecting the “dine and dash” as they do.

They long to go to America together.

But there is no OSHA to protect workers in Taiwan, and the factory work is dangerous. Pin Jui wants to get his mother out of there, and when the boss suggests he take up with his daughter (Kunjue Li), duty calls. He will marry her, go to America and make enough money to send for his mother.

And he won’t bother telling Yuan this when he does.

Yang sets up a cause and effect — the years and burdens it took for Grover to grow this thick skin and become the emotionally unavailable old man he now regrets being.

The pain of the practical marriage cut both ways, and the years did not lessen it.

That leaves Tzi Ma, screen newcomer Ko (of TV’s “Dave” and “Hawaii Five-O”) and Fiona Fu, as the older wife Zhen Zhen, each one note to play.

Even the blessed third act arrival of the radiant Joan Chen (“Heaven & Earth,” “The Last Emperor”) cannot lift the pall that’s been cast over the picture by the overlying tragedy.

In screen storytelling, there’s “understated” and “subtle” and “OK, we get it, get ON with it,” and Yang’s overly somber memory play, laden with regrets, comes entirely too close to generating that last reaction.

Character arcs are thin to non-existent. Yang gives his fine cast of players too little to play for us to grab hold of, and the leaden pace just highlights that.

It’s beautifully mounted, with lovely recreations of late 1960s Taiwan. But the downbeat story in the present day offers too little, and nothing even remotely as hopeful as Yang seems to think it is.

This isn’t Netflix’s “The Farewell,” which would be expecting too much. But it’s not too much to expect a more revealing and rewarding story than this.

MPAA Rating: PG for some thematic elements, language, smoking and brief sensuality

Cast: Tzi Ma, Christine Ko, Hong-Chi Lee, Yo-Hsing Fang and Joan Chen.

Credits: Written and directed by Alan Yang. A Netflix Original.

Running time: 1:31

The greatest pleasure in the films of Hirozaku Kore-eda is the way they unfold, or rather unwrap. The films — “Shoplifters” is the most famous in the West, but “Our Little Sister” and “Like Father, Like Son” have also reached these shores, come in layers, telling one story, revealing another, another underneath it and so on.

“After the Storm” is one of his subtlest works, a beautifully layered and light, bittersweet and forlorn story built on a phrase anyone over 40 has heard or uttered.

“Why did my life turn out like this?”

When we meet Ryôta (Hiroshi Abe), he’s the second visitor to his mother’s flat after the death of his father. Neighbors treat him like a prodigal son, even though he doesn’t live that many neighborhoods away from Kiyose, Tokyo.

He’s tall, not at all well-dressed. And every time his mother’s back is turned, he’s rummaging through their apartment, hunting for cash or something of value “to remember him by.”

We learn he’s a novelist. He’s won prizes. He was “the star” of his high school class, and almost famous — at least in the old neighborhood. He says he’s fine for money. But he grimaces when all he runs across are pawn tickets. Dad, it turns out, was a gambler.

It turns out, he is, too. A little ready cash and he’s off to bet on the bike races, or buying LOTTO tickets. He lives in a hovel and doesn’t pay his bills. It turns out “he USED to be a novelist.” Now, he’s with a low-rent private detective agency, not above shaking down clients for extra cash.

It turns out he’s divorced, and he’s in the habit of spying on his beautiful, remote and OVER his nonsense ex (Yôko Maki), their ball-playing son (Taiyô Yoshizawa) and the ex’s new beau. About all he truly has left is his pride. One of his many lies is to his publisher, who’d love for him to script a new manga (comic book). But no, Ryôta is still “researching and writing” his latest book. That’s how he explains the private eye work.

He hears a LOT of quotable profundities from his holding-up but broken mother (Satomi Kobayashi), his boss, his younger partner (Sôsuke Ikematsu).

“Men only realize they’re in love after they’ve lost their beloved.”

He writes some of them down, only to ball up the paper. He declares “I didn’t want to turn out like Dad,” but he has, right down to buying his kid his first LOTTO ticket, just as his father did.

Abe is a mesmerizing presence, not entirely stoic as Ryôta hides his pain, strings people along and tries not to show how he’s at the end of his tether.

Kore-eda peels away the layers of this family and Ryôta’s story building towards the latest typhoon headed their way. It is the third act’s riding out of that storm that this light and faintly despairing tale, with its almost-comic anti-hero, turns poignant.

“After the Storm” lacks the deep mystery and hard edge of “Shoplifters,” which rivaled “Parasite” in its bitter, satiric bite. But it heralded Kore-eda’s arrival as one of Japan’s most thought-provoking filmmakers, and most exportable. It should send you, as it did me, into the assorted streaming services hunting down his back catalog and waiting eagerly for his next.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yôko Maki, Satomi Kobayashi, Sôsuke Ikematsu, Taiyô Yoshizawa

Credits: Written and directed by Hirozaku Kore-eda. streaming Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:57

Lemme guess…they”ll leave out the Roger Miller et al songs.

They’re calling it “Live Action.” So.”The Lion King” model it will be.

Soulless CGI animation of a minor classic in the Disney canon? Bring it on.

https://t.co/0MDpDJ4JoC https://t.co/bCXwvfq0zZ https://twitter.com/Variety_Film/status/1248717527863021569?s=20

How do you make an intentionally cringe-worthy if not remotely funny rom-com even more humorless? By doubling down on its theme, “coincidence” and fate intervening, and basically repeating the whole dull thing as “if things had turned out differently.”

Sam Claflin (“Me Before You,” “Peaky Blinders”) ) is the hapless Hugh Grant wannabe in this Endless Wedding that You Wish would add a Funeral. Jack’s a fellow who keeps getting interrupted by boorish Brits every time he’s about to have a moment with the fetching American “war reporter.”

As she’s played by the Her Hopelessly Hotness Olivia Munn, we get his frustration.

It’s the second time they meet that’s the real rub. Jack’s sister (Eleanor Tomlinson) is about to marry a handsome Italian in an Italian villa — gardens, catered, arriving in a vintage Rolls Royce, the works. But every time Jack wants to make time with Dina the Yank, dopey Sidney in the kilt (Tim Key) intrudes, over-eager actor and Maid of Honor Bryan (Joel Fry) has as crisis or his sister Hayley yanks him away.

Because Jack’s favorite cock-blocker, ex-college roomie and cokehead Marc (Jack Farthing) shows up, blitzed and hellbent on pulling “The Graduate” rescue with the unwilling bride.

Hayley’s suggestion that Jack drug Marc with her sleeping drops is just the sort of thing idiot screenwriters dream up to show how little of the actual world they understand.

Accidents, coincidences and hilarity ensues. And then, writer-director Dean Craig (see the paragraph above) does it all over AGAIN.

Love. Wedding. Repeat

This is an adaptation of a French rom-com, “Plan de table,” which is no excuse.

In all fairness, the original cringe-worthy bits of “blocking” do what they’re intended to — make you cringe and snap at the screen. Provided, of course, that you’re rooting for doormat Jack to score points with inutterably gorgeous and probably more interesting Dina.

It’s the do-over, in that cloying narration’s one “coincidence” changes everything — considering various mathematical possibilities about that (switched) drugged drink — that drags the picture underwater.

The only soul swimming to the surface and surviving? That would be hilarious Irish actress Aisling Bea (TV’s “Gap Year”), who gets a chuckle every time she delivers a filthy sweet nothing in that biting brogue.

And Freida Pinto, the other “big name” in the cast, doesn’t humiliate herself as Jack’s ex, bickering all the way through the wedding and reception luncheon with her insecure “soon to be fiancé,” Chaz (Allan Mustafa).

“Love Wedding Repeat” teeters within reach of tolerable, although this cast — Claflin is NOT a funny man, no one EVER gives Munn anything funny to do — and these situations never gave the picture a chance.

It’s cringe-worthy, and then some.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, drug abuse, sexuality, a little violence, profanity

Cast: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto,

Credits: Written and directed by Dean Craig. A Netflix original.

Running time: 1:40

Here’s a jewel, hidden in your Netflix menu and well worth digging out.

“Mine 9” is everything you want an indie thriller to be — topical, regional, well-acted and harrowing as all get out. It may be yet another “disaster down below” genre picture, but the tragic tone, the sense of place and the dirty-fingernails reality of the players puts it over.

Writer-director Eddie Mensore takes deep into West Virginia coal country, a struggling older mine where generations of a town have dug deep and “put food on the table.”

It’s what keeps the dying town open for business, what buys groceries or “liver dogs” at the only diner left. And as an establishing scene shows us, it pays for birthday presents for a little boy, even though there’s sure to be at least one bitter widow in every gathering like this.

Zeke (Terry Serpico of TV’s “Yellowstone”) leads a crew that includes his brother Kenny (Mark Ashworth) and seven others. They’re all hardened professionals that see the dangers of overwhelmed pumps, iffy wiring and a groaning mountain above them.

Shift supervisor Teresa (Erin Elizabeth Burns) has an idea of the added risks. There’s no rescue team set up at this mine. Anything goes wrong, they’re on their own, and she still expects “your whole crew” to show up.

Zeke wants to call in Mining Health and Safety, his crew votes against it. They know “shut down” will be the verdict, and then what’ll they do?

“I ain’t blowed up or drowned in 15 years!”

John (Clint James) is prone to prayer. Kenny has a hard time showing up sober. And now he’s strong-armed his son Ryan (Drew Starkey) into taking up the tradition –“almost 200 years, our family’s been underground.”

Ryan will be our surrogate, the fellow the other miners explain the ropes, gear, “escape routes” and procedures to on his first night “underground.”

Writer-director Mensore immerses his movie and us in the whirl of activities carried out by men stooped over thousands of feet below the surface. Grinding diggers kick up clouds of dust and sparks as they chew into a seam. Sump pumps are serviced, ceiling braces and joists set up and when methane gas vents from a seam, fireproof curtains are hastily hung to keep the blaze from reaching them.

The inevitable Big Accident happens. Some men are killed, some survive and the survivors allow themselves mere seconds to show how upset they are. Then they get organized and follow the plan like the professionals that they are.

Even in the cramped, dimly-lit and smokey tunnel, the performers make vivid impressions. The awful choices facing them are reflected in the face of the guilt-ridden but “follow MSHA protocols” supervisor (Burns) on the surface.

Mensore folds in keening Appalachian folk music laments into the tableaux — the songs the men and women here on local radio, the songs they sing, the lore of their profession.

Surprises may be few and far between, with every confrontation and dramatic moment preordained. But “Mine 9” delivers suspense and pathos, geology and geography, and a spot-on cast puts faces and lives behind iconic “types,” and make this one of the most Netflixable films the streaming service offers.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Terry Serpico, Mark Ashworth, Kevin Sizemore, Clint James, Drew Starkey, Erin Elizabeth Burns

Credits: Written and directed by Eddie Mensore. An Alliance/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:23

I have to admit, when Sam Rockwell shows up in “Trolls World Tour,” trotting out his George W. Bush drawl from “Vice,” crooning through a bar or two of “I Fall to Pieces,” I spat up my sangria.

He’s a hoot, and his character’s cowboy hat-wearing country music troll provides a comic kick in the keister for this otherwise candy-colored and James Corden-ized “tour” and lampoon of music styles and preferences.

Throw in a hilarious shot at “Smooth Jazz” — “so smooth and easy and AWFUL!” — a better one at country music, embodied by a big-haired Kelly Clarkson “death ballad” — “They must not know music’s supposed to make you HAPPY!” — and there’s almost enough here for parents to sit through this auto-tuned time-killer.

Featuring a Seussian design and color palette, this sequel to the surprise hit “Trolls” brings back a couple of those pop music Smurfs-by-any-Other-Name characters, and sends them on a quest to prevent the fascist takeover of music by heavy metal — “Rock.”

Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and her adoring aide and advisor, forever in the “Friend Zone” Branch (Justin Timberlake) set out to meet, and then foil the evil plot of punk-metal Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex Girlfriend”). She’s out to steal the other five strings from the Great Guitar of Harmony.

She’s got “Rock.” She takes the “Techno” string from the deep-sea bio-luminescent trolls without a fight (Too stoned?) and “Classical.” She wants “Pop” and “Funk” and “Country.”

Barb wants to hit that one “Power Chord” that unites the world under the tattoo and Gibson Flying V electric guitar banner of “Rock.”

And once you hear Bloom’s cover of “Crazy Train” and the amusingly enfeebled mumbling of its author, Ozzy Osborne (playing her dad), you get it. Nobody would listen to this unless it was their only choice, right? Although, truth be told, she makes “Crazy Train” almost listenable.

So we drop in on Symphonyville, Lonesome Flats, Funkytown, etc., with dips into K-Pop, Reggaeton and yodeling — as high-handed Poppy tries to head off disaster and Save the Strings without listening to a word of protest from Branch.

A tag team of screenwriters came up with this scenario, a kiddie movie that debates “What’s more important than harmony?” and accepting “differences” in music taste, “Violence never solves a problem” but “How’re we gonna HUG our way out of this?”

It’s utterly harmless, even in its subtexts — that hip hop and funk are where ALL music comes together. If the kids are going stir crazy, give it a download.

Grown-up viewers? We’re allowed to grind our teeth on the annoying omnipresence of autotune — occasionally played for a laugh, often a crutch to get our leads on the same pitch — and James Corden, who is becoming a brand name for bloke-who-shows-up-everywhere and insists on singing.

He doesn’t do for “Trolls” what he did for “Cats.” But…

MPAA Rating:  PG for some mild rude humor

Cast: The voices of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Rachel Bloom, Keenan Thompson, Kelly Clarkson, James Corden, George Clinton, Mary J. Blige, J. Balvin, Ozzy Osborne, and Sam Rockwell

Credits: Directed by Walter Dohrn and Daniel B. Smith, script by Jonathan Aibel, Maya Forbes, Glenn Berger, Elizabeth Tibbett and Wallace Wolodarsky.    A Universal release.

Running time: 1:31

“Handia” or “The Giant” is a visually stunning Basque fable about sibling rivalry, show business and the curse of gigantism set in mid-19th century Spain.

It’s about two brothers from a tiny village — Altzo– sons of a tenant farmer. Martin (Martin Eleizegi) is the eldest. And while he’s close to brother Joaquin (Eneko Sagardoy), he’s understandably put-out when soldiers from the Carlist army come to conscript one son from every family for the 1838 civil war, and their father (Ramón Agirre), without a moment’s thought, serves him up as cannon fodder.

He survives the grim savagery of the conflict, losing the use of an arm. And that doesn’t salve the grudge he still carries. Three years pass before he returns home, the Carlists having lost this war of Spanish royal succession to the Isabelinos.

When he returns, the winsome Maria (Aia Kruse) is still there and still single. But brother Miguel Joaquin? He towers over the town. He’s two-and-a-half meters tall (over eight feet). And he’s still growing. The priest keeps measuring him.

Miguel Joaquin may be Daddy’s favorite, but he’s eating them out of house and home. They barely make the rent. One-armed Martin won’t make that any better.

But an “impresario” (Iñigo Aranburu, colorless in what should have been a colorful role) comes to check out the legendary giant, and makes a pitch to their father. Martin has to convince his sibling that it doesn’t matter if they laugh at Joaquin, that “people will pay to see something they’ve never seen.”

Mr. Colossus, as he’s billed, can eight eight cutlets at a time and down “20 liters of cider a day.” He has to be the tallest man in the world. Yes, he speaks Basque, but the show doesn’t have him talk — just appear from behind a shadow curtain — all eight feet of him.

They appear before the queen in Madrid, and tour Paris and even see Stonehenge, many of the great sights of Europe. But the younger brother’s resentment simmers, the older brother’s desperation to get together cash to go to America, a marriage and mishaps and quarrels complicate the relationship.

A few good scenes lift a fairly desultory story — Queen Isabella’s impertinent demand to know if he’s “completely in proportion” (the film is in Basque, Spanish, French and English) — physicians hiring the act to study him, humiliating Joaquin with their laughter and questions.

Even that scene lacks much surprise or spark, as we saw it done better in “The Elephant Man.” And while the effect of transforming an actor into a giant is convincing, there’s not enough pathos in the performance to make him sympathetic.

Martin similarly is just there, but barely present. The film finds some heart for the finale, but the period detail, stunning scenic cinematography and generic incidents aren’t enough to pull the viewer into this Basque fable.

The conclusion lacks much in the way of a fable’s moral twist, but we do feel the brothers connect there.

The sense of myth that “The Giant” should have throughout arrives, at long last. Although there are flashes of the exploitation he should be bristling at from the start, bits of well-staged action, the sense of theater of “the act” and the wonders of the time (photography was very new), the spectacle of “The Giant” doesn’t add up to much for the viewer to care about.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sex

Cast: Joseba Usabiaga, Eneko Sagardoy, Iñigo Aranburu, Aia Kruze and Ramón Agirre

Credits: Directed by Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño, script by Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño , Jose Mari Goenaga and Andoni de Carlo. A Film Factory/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:54

There’s not a lot of audio of the New York native’s accent — unERRINGLY copied by Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (President Merkin Muffley sounds JUST like STANLEY) — because Kubrick didn’t like doing interviews.

Think Mike Myers doing Lorne Michaels TO A T as “Doctor Evil.” THAT close.

But here he is, on tape. With Malcolm M., Shelley Duvall et. al…

Tribeca Film Festival is premiering this documentary –– online (probably, as the festival itself has been pushed back)– in May.

“The Dalai Lama: Scientist” is a Buddhist-sanctioned and produced documentary about the leader of Tibetan Buddhism’s lifelong fascination with science, and how he’s brought scientists and Buddhist scholars together to highlight shared ways of thinking, philosophizing and looking at the world.

These “dialogues” involve leaders in everything from physics and neuroscience to quantum computation and psychology summoned to an audience with the Dalai Lama, public discussions (videotaped) going back decades.

Scientist after scientist speaks about the stereotype he (almost all are men) had in their mind about what this meeting and chat would be like — a mystical religious figure from the Far East, “transcendental…inscrutable,” a man who claims (the film leaves no room for doubt on this) to be the reincarnated Dalai Lama, chatting about atoms, The Big Bang Theory and the mind.

The credentialed experts all profess to be impressed, and if there’s one overriding positive message of “The Dalai Lama: Scientist” it’s the celebration of lifelong learning. Since childhood, the Lama says he’s been curious about the world, tinkering by taking apart his toys, challenging his tutors about cosmology and the like once he was selected to be the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. He makes observations and asks questions of the scientists of a caliber that don’t embarrass him. And he seeks common ground — places where Buddhist teachings (at least under his regime) jibe with The Scientific Method.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner muses that he might have been an electrician or some sort of engineer had fate not intervened. With that laugh and that curiosity, he’d have been a helluva talk show host.

But this Buddhist-sanctioned hagiography, using animated and news footage flashbacks, complete with history of every Chinese assault on Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s reputation, puts you on your guard early on.

As a teen, he visited a Chinese hydro project in the early 1950s. He asked questions there, he recalls.

“I think I was the only person there who fully understood how it works.”

Say what? Where’ve we heard that, on a daily basis, over the past four years?

Try to verify some of the claims made here, the Power Point connections between science’s view of how the universe began and how it works and how, “Hey, that’s what the Buddha/BUDDHISM teaches” connects to that, and every online search leads you to some officially sanctioned Buddhist website, some of the pieces written by Uma Thurman’s dad (highest ranking American Buddhist).

I kept thinking of Michael Constantine’s character in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Magically, EVERY thing in science is verifiable by Buddhist teachings.

So take a lot of what this dry, somewhat pedantic film asserts with a grain of salt. Or two. He seems like a decent man, and there’s genuine research grappling with how the mind functions under Buddhist meditation and the psychology of compassion, which has long been his Message to the World.

But “Scientist” comes off as something of an over-reach. Dawn Gifford Engle’s film never, for more than a few seconds, lets us forget how self-serving it is. Its many “See? Buddhism has the same answers, Buddhism has ALL the answers” moments feel contrived. However benign the intent — getting science added to monastery curricula, turning out Buddhist science teachers for India and Asia — there’s still self-serving lily-gilding going on here.

And while “Deep thinkers meet and discuss deep thinking” feels like a more accurate title, getting that to fit on a DVD box was always going to be a graphic design challenge.

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Cast: The Dalai Lama, David Bohm, Paul Ekman, Steven Chu, Arthur Zajonc, Francisco Varela

Credits: Directed by Dawn Gifford Engle. A Gravitas release.

Running time: 1:34