The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I (PG-13) The latest installment does a perfectly fine job of setting us up for the series’ end. Newly installed as the face of the anti-government rebellion, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) leverages her position to get the rebels to rescue Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and the other captured former Hunger Games winners. Director Francis Lawrence botches the climactic scene and runs into trouble with pacing early on, but the filmmakers keep adding telling details to Suzanne Collins’ novels that deepen our understanding of her fantasy world, and Julianne Moore is a nice addition as the rebels’ leader. Bring on the big finale. Also with Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Natalie Dormer, Mahershala Ali, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Jena Malone, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The Imitation Game (PG-13) Like The Social Network with British accents and Nazis, this biography of Alan Turing posits its hero as a computer genius who’s driven by memories of lost love. Brooding like Hamlet, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing, who was persecuted by the British government for his homosexuality. His awkwardness and self-contained fury are the best reasons to see this movie. The rest of it isn’t nearly as substantive, despite Keira Knightley’s strong turn as Turing’s fiancée who knows about his orientation. Also with Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Mark Strong, and Charles Dance.
Into the Woods (PG) Stephen Sondheim’s musical is unforgiving on inadequate performers, so it’s good that the singing actors come through splendidly here. James Corden and Emily Blunt play a baker and his wife who try to lift a witch’s curse by getting things from Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack. Director Rob Marshall can’t make the forest setting look enchanted and seems uneasy adapting a show without much dance. Still, Blunt is an unexpectedly fine singer, Meryl Streep is both powerful and achingly vulnerable as the witch, and Anna Kendrick does a crushing version of “No One Is Alone.” With even the tiny roles so well cast, it’s hard to complain. Also with Chris Pine, Mackenzie Mauzy, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford, Billy Magnussen, Tammy Blanchard, Lucy Punch, Simon Russell Beale, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp.
The Loft (R) Erik van Looy’s first Hollywood movie is a remake of a thriller he made in his native Belgium, and it makes me want to see the original. Five married guys (James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eric Stonestreet, and Karl Urban) rent a loft apartment so that they can cheat on their wives with impunity, but the fun comes to a screeching halt when a party girl winds up dead in the room. The guys aren’t nasty enough; if they were, it’d be more fun when they start turning on one another after realizing one of them must be responsible. Van Looy treats this with high seriousness; somehow I think the same filmmaker would have brought a looser approach in his homeland. Also with Isabel Lucas, Rachael Taylor, Rhona Mitra, Valerie Cruz, Kali Rocha, Margarita Levieva, Kristin Lehman, and Robert Wisdom.
Mortdecai (R) Playing like the fourth Austin Powers movie that no one was clamoring for, this weirdly mustache-obsessed caper comedy stars Johnny Depp as an eccentric English lord who’s asked by MI5 to recover a stolen Goya painting. His wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) does most of the actual crime-solving while Mortdecai bumbles around like Inspector Clouseau. The story is supposed to be set in the present day, but the fashions and décor suggest the mid-1960s. Director David Koepp has no feel for the sort of stylized comedy that’s demanded here, and Depp mugs relentlessly until any joy is sucked out of this. The songs over the closing credits by Miles Kane and Rose Elinor Douglas are the best thing here. The movie is adapted from Kyril Bonfiglioli’s novel entitled Don’t Point That Thing at Me. Also with Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany, Jonny Pasvolsky, Olivia Munn, Ulrich Thomsen, and Jeff Goldblum.
A Most Violent Year (R) Evoking the feeling of a man sinking in quicksand, this drama stars Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) as a corrupt businessman in 1981 New York during a make-or-break period in his heating-oil business. Filmmaker J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost) gives this austere, superbly controlled direction, especially in an action sequence when the hero chases down two thieves driving away in one of his stolen trucks. Accompanying the technical skill is Chandor’s customary attention to character and performances, with Isaac conveying the unslakable ambition and increasing desperation behind his smoothed-out exterior. He stakes his claim to be cinema’s next great Latino leading man. Also with Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Elyes Gabel, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Peter Gerety, Christopher Abbott, Jerry Adler, and Albert Brooks.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (PG) In its third iteration, the series looks ready to be put in mothballs. Ben Stiller returns as the New York museum security guard who has to travel to London to figure out why the magic in his own museum is fading. The series picks up Dan Stevens as Sir Lancelot and Rebel Wilson as a British museum guard going insane from her job’s solitude, but the special effects rob them of the chance to contribute as much as they should. The only thing really worth seeing is Teddy Roosevelt’s farewell bit, which functions as a valedictory for the late Robin Williams. Also with Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Ben Kingsley, Rachael Harris, Mizuo Peck, Skyler Gisondo, Rami Malek, Bill Cobbs, Dick Van Dyke, and the late Mickey Rooney.
Ode to My Father (NR) Korean soap opera played out on an international scale. Hwang Jung-min portrays a man whose father and sister are separated from the rest of the family in a panicked mass evacuation during the Korean War. His promise to take care of his remaining family leads him to work jobs abroad and survive a coal mine collapse in West Germany and bombings in South Vietnam. The material is boilerplate, but the foreign locations give this movie some heft that it wouldn’t otherwise have. Also with Kim Yun-jin, Jung Jin-young, Jang Young-nam, Ra Mi-ran, Kim Seul-ki, and Oh Dal-su.
Paddington (PG) Michael Bond’s beloved children’s stories are adapted into this harmless live-action movie. The talking, marmalade-loving, unfailingly polite but accident-prone bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw) makes his way from Peru to move in with a London family. The comic hijinks are entirely predictable except for a few throwaway lines, and watching a sterling cast go through them is like watching bodybuilders lift toothpicks. Still, director/co-writer Paul King makes a few pointed and entirely appropriate parallels between Paddington’s situation and those of other immigrants in the U.K. This movie probably means more if you’re British. Watch for Bond’s cameo as a loiterer in Paddington Station. Also with Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Matt Lucas, Samuel Joslin, and Madeleine Harris. Additional voices by Imelda Staunton and Michael Gambon.
Project Almanac (PG-13) Yet another teen movie that uses the found-footage style as a mere gimmick, though a more conventional treatment probably wouldn’t have helped this soppy sci-fi romance. Jonny Weston plays an engineering student who figures out how to build a time machine and unintentionally wreaks havoc on world events when he uses it to visit Lollapalooza and buy winning lottery tickets with his friends. The thing is made so indifferently, you wonder if anybody involved with the movie actually gave a crap. Also with Sofia Black-D’Elia, Amy Landecker, Virginia Gardner, Katie Garfield, Adam Evangelista, and Sam Lerner.
