Movie Nation

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

A huge chain that grew and grew and had no plan for facing the unfaceable.

Or might bankruptcy be a dodge to get out of leases, etc? As happened the LAST time North America shed thousands of theaters, back in 2000?

I would not put it past AMC.

This long shutdown — even if they’re not paying salaries — is going to cripple virtually every cinema chain. This one is particularly vulnerable.

Beanie Feldstein, Emma Thompson, Chris O’Dowd, Paddy Considine, based on Caitlan Moran’s novel of reinvention and rock/pop culture.

Bloody delightful, innit?

May 8, from IFC — of course!

We throw that phrase “Hallmark Movie” around like it’s a sweeping indictment, as if all comfort food romances and tear-jerkers were set at Christmas, or any film rated PG or PG-13 should simply be consigned to its own cable channel and forgotten.

But it’s a descriptor that needn’t carry all those connotations. Every now and then, a “Lost Husband” comes along, tells a simple story simply, with good actors and a director who know the virtues of having a light touch.

“The Lost Husband,” based on a Katherine Center novel, plays like the good pilot of a family-friendly TV series, a breakout for a couple of criminally-underused players, and rides the considerable charms of Josh Duhamel all the way to the finish line.

It’s a “fish out of water” dramedy about a widowed mom (Leslie Bibb) from Houston who takes her two kids and moves to a farm to get re-acquainted with the estranged aunt (Nora Dunn) she lost touch with long ago.

Libby’s putting on a brave front in that minivan, but the the wound is fresh, one she can help but cover in euphemisms. She “lost” her husband. A nosy and tactless feed store clerk (Herizen F. Guardiola) wants to know “where?” And of course, “How?”

“He’s just gone!”

Aunt Jean is the bluff, no-nonsense type. Never married her late “husband,” kept the farm. Libby has no money and no plan, which allows Jean to make her move.

“We don’t call’em pets. On a farm, they’re animals, and they all have a job!”

She railroads Libby into “her” plan. Her hired man “will teach you how to run the farm.”

“But it’s NEW Years’!”

“No holidays on a farm.”

Libby may be desperate, but she’s scrambling for an escape clause as she’s “not cut out for this.” And that “farm manager” is awfully quick to agree.

Here’s where “The Lost Husband” leaps from “OK, sure” to “I’m all in.” Duhamel is the very picture of gruff, dismiss-with-his-mouth-full charm as James O’Connor. We know the character’s function in all this — put the city girl down as he shows her the animals, be the manly “stick up for yourself” presence in her kid’s life, teach “skills to help’em survive the Apocalypse” and make all the other women jealous at the attention he pays Libby, at the very moment she most needs it.

If you’ve never seen him in this guise — the classic “romantic lead” in “Life as We Know It,” “Safe Haven” — bearded, gruff and cute — you’ll wonder where he’s been all these years. Hollywood doesn’t do romances or rom-coms, not much and not anymore. He’s been wasted in thrillers and garbage “Transformers” movies, when he should have been bearded and twinkling in movies and series like this.

The money moment — teaching libby how to milk the goats. She hears him singing, half-under his breath, and he flat-out tells her, “You gotta SING to’em.”

Oh no. Not happening. OK. Maybe. Eventually. When Libby finds her song and sings to the goats, picking Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” to sing to the Nubians and La Manchas (goats) may be entirely too “on-the-nose.” But it’s perfect, and almost poignant as the film comes out a week after Withers’ death.

“The Lost Husband” takes on “forgive yourself” and “talk to your dead husband” messaging, as that impertinent cashier (Guardiola) turns out to have some California (psychic mumbo jumbo) about her, and her drawling, “I do hugs” dad (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) happens to be Aunt Jean’s longterm suitor.

There’s “closure” coming from big secrets about what was “lost” and Libby’s connection with her mom (Sharon Lawrence).

But the lightly abrasive way Bibb and Duhamel connect and the hurt hanging over most everybody lift this predictable dramedy out of the goat corral, pig pen and barn and into something perfectly serviceable and sweet and a cut or three above what you find on The Hallmark Channel.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive references

Cast: Leslie Bibb, Josh Duhamel, Nora Dunn, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Herizen F. Guardiola

Credits: Written and directed by Vicky Wight, based on a novel by Katherine Center. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:48

A couple of things make the lovely and entertaining “Dolphin Reef” stand out among the deep-sea documentaries DisneyNature has served up on previous Earth Days.

We see dolphins engaged in an underwater brawl, something Disney, BBC and other docs on dolphins have missed.

And we witness that rarest of underwater tussles, two green sea turtles feuding over a spot on an underwater outcropping where they need to wait their turn to have their shells and unreachable bits “cleaned” by helpful turtle-waxing fish.

Add to that Oscar winner Natalie Portman‘s enthusiastic narration, and you’ve got the kid-friendliest of the salt water films DisneyNature has served up, anthropomorphized and light — with just enough peril to keep it “real.”

Director Keith Scholey’s team did a “Diving With Dolphins” film concurrently with this one, and served up “Blue” a few years back.

This one takes us to a gorgeous, still-unruined reef in Polynesia to tell the story of Echo, a three year-old still learning dolphin-lore, and his mother, Kuma, who tries to teach him to herd fish via mud circles (stirring up a corral of muddy water on the bottom), or echo-locate tiny, “tasty” razor fish, who burrow into the bottom sand to hide.

Echo is a bit of a slow-learner, giving up on the razorfish to go gulp a little air. In a flash, the prey comes out, en masse, as if to taunt him.

“When no one’s around,” Portman narrates, “it’s a PARTY down there!”

We meet a peacock mantis shrimp, humpback whales trying to avoid the predations of orcas, clown fish and rock-chewing parrotfish, whose “sand poop” has a lot to do why some places have sandier beaches than others.

I did not know that.

And then there’s the mesmerizing, bio-luminescent cuttlefish, the most feared predator among the crabs, shrimp and smaller fish on the reef.

“You don’t MESS with cuttlefish!”

The over-arching theme of David Fowler’s script is the “balance” of the reef community that keeps it healthy — fish and turtles that prune it, reef sharks that keep the pruners at bay, tiger sharks that dine on reef sharks, at times, and so on.

Humanity’s impact on that balance — pollution, rising sea temperatures, over-fishing and reef-destroying dynamite fishing in that part of the world — is never so much as brought up. There’s a giant bleaching event going on along the Great Barrier Reef as I type this.

“Dolphin Reef” is content to demonstrate how reefs work, and how they should be allowed to work.

Even without those harsh realities, “Dolphin Reef” is DisneyNature’s best undersea doc ever, and a great reason to sign up for Disney+ all by itself. Leave it on as the credits roll to see how the team got these amazing images and you’ll be even more impressed.

MPAA Rating: G

Cast: Narrated by Natalie Portman

Credits: Directed by Keith Scholey, script by David Fowler. A DisneyNature release on Disney+.

Running time: 1:17

What a delightfully light confection “Abe” is, a family dramedy about food, clashing cultures breaking bread together and the celebrated cosmopolis that might be the only place in the world this story could happen — New York.

Where else could a boy (Noah Schnapp), son of a Palestinian-atheist father and a Jewish mother, whose grandparents re-fight “The Six Day War” at every family get-together, learn to cook at the feet of a Brazilian chef, a master of street cuisine?

Brooklyn, baby.

“Abe” narrates that one side of his family calls him Avraham, or Abraham, the other Ibrahim. He goes by “Abe” just to keep the peace.

But as he turns 12, the quarrels at his birthday dinner start to come to a head. Jewish Mom’s (Dagmara Dominczyk) peace-keeping efforts are failing, the grandfathers (Tom Mardirosian, Mark Margolis) are violating the peace treaty and yes, SOMEbody is going to need a Bar Mitzvah next year. Or celebrate Ramadan instead.

Dad (Arian Moayed) wants everything secular. Mom isn’t commited to that. And Islamic granny (Salem Murphy) insists to the boy “You can TRY both, but you cannot BE both!”

To the boy, an always-online 12-year-old foodie who knows a lot more about cooking than his parents, “fusion” is the natural way of things. Try his “Ramen (noodles) tacos.”

Abe’s food-wanderings take him to a food booth at a weekend street food fair where he seeks out Chico (Seu Jorge, of “City of God,” “The Life Aquatic” and “Marighella”), a darling of the foodie underground.

Abe is a pushy little pissant. And clumsy, not “up to code” in terms of knowing his way around a kitchen, ingredients and disinfectant. He may know the chemistry of cooking, and a lot more than his parents. But Chico is unimpressed.

“Does this look like a summer camp for rich kids?” Abe doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, “mixing up fusion with CONfusion.” But we know that the old master will take him under his wing — AFTER making the kid clean the co-op kitchen where he does his prep.

Abe is supposed to be at a tiny tykes summer cooking camp, but his “Give him space” parents are none the wiser.

The conflicts in “Abe” are cute and funny, but also pointed and real. The grandparents bicker over permissive Jewish parents vs. strict Islamic supervision. The parents, in turn, are sucked into this fight as it’s about them.

And Abe? He wants to learn how to peel and prepare yucca, figure out the right blend of sweet and savory for a fusion taco and whip up the perfect lemonade (with thyme) ice pop.

Like comfort food, it’s not surprises that “Abe” — a Brazilian-American production — is aiming for. We see the conflicts and their resolutions two dinner courses in advance.

There are throw-away moments and lines that work, and a few that sing.

And young Mr. Schnapp, of TV’s “Strangers Things,” is an agreeable tour guide, while Jorge, one of Brazil’s finest dramatic actors, wears this exotic, Afro-Brazilian mentor mantle with a beguiling effortlessness.

Brazilian director Fernando Grostein Andrade, making his North American debut, revels in the foods and the online life of American tweens even as he’s immersing us in a story with a lot of heated conflict built into it.

This moment in time feels as if it could use a little New York state of mind dramedy like “Abe.” It’s not a whole meal, but “Abe” sits easy on the palette and leaves you wanting more.

MPAA Rating: unrated, quite PG

Cast: Noah Schnapp, Seu Jorg,  Dagmara Dominczyk, Arian Moayed, Salem Murphy, Tom Mardirosian and Mark Margolis.

Credits: Directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade, script by Lameece Issaq  and Jacob Kader. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:25

Leslie Bibb has lost her husband, but taken on a farm. North Dakota native Josh Duhamel is just the guy to show her the ropes. And goats. April 10 this family friendly one starts streaming.