Selma (PG-13) This civil rights drama is a tad square and conventional, but is it ever so timely. Ava DuVernay’s film tracks the efforts of Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) and his fellow ministers to enshrine voting rights for African-Americans by demonstrating in Selma, Ala. The movie succeeds gloriously at its hardest task — making King come alive as a dramatic character — by focusing on the details of his life and by a grand performance from Oyelowo. DuVernay succeeds both at epic sequences like the re-creation of the “Bloody Sunday” march and at small, domestic scenes. She also pays tribute not just to King but to the movement around him, with its other leaders and philosophical differences. After a year when America has been roiled by racial issues, this movie is a rousing call to thought and action. Also with Tom Wilkinson, Carmen Ejogo, André Holland, Colman Domingo, Common, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Tessa Thompson, Lorraine Touissant, Dylan Baker, Niecy Nash, Wendell Pierce, Stephan James, Trai Byers, Giovanni Ribisi, Tim Roth, and Oprah Winfrey.
Seventh Son (PG-13) This embarrassing fantasy film stars Jeff Bridges as a medieval witch hunter who only takes seventh sons of seventh sons as his trainees. There’s some potentially fruitful stuff in the material adapted from Joseph Delaney’s novel The Spook’s Apprentice, as the newest apprentice (Ben Barnes) starts to realize that his mentor might not be all-wise and might have helped bring about the latest crisis, but Sergei Bodrov isn’t the director to find emotional subtlety in this or any other script. The costumes and scenery all look straight out of RenFaire, and the actors all look like they’d rather be somewhere else. The only exception is Julianne Moore as the witch queen who can turn into a dragon, proving that she can elevate even this piece of junk. Also with Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Antje Traue, Olivia Williams, Jason Scott Lee, and Djimon Hounsou.
Spare Parts (PG-13) Yet another inspirational teacher movie, this one stars George Lopez as the leader of a real-life group of Hispanic high-school students from Phoenix who entered a robotics competition and defeated teams from the country’s most prestigious colleges. The real-life story is pretty good, and while the movie isn’t unwatchable, Lopez’ humor is tamped down in a buttoned-up role-model type of character. Everything unrelated to the engineering competition, including the romantic subplots, is dull, dull stuff. A story like this deserved an odder, less conventional, more inspiring movie. Also with Marisa Tomei, José Julián, Carlos PenaVega, David Del Rio, J.R. Villarreal, Steven Michael Quezada, Alexa PenaVega, Esai Morales, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (PG) The last SpongeBob SquarePants movie back in 2004 tried to be an episode of the TV show writ large. Instead, this film embraces the big screen as a way of changing things up. As SpongeBob (voiced by Tom Kenny) and Plankton (voiced by Douglas Lawrence Osowski, who’s billed as Mr. Lawrence) journey to the surface to recover the recipe for Krabby Patties, the movie shifts visual registers to take in a traumatizing journey into SpongeBob’s brain; a conversation with a persnickety, universe-controlling dolphin (voiced by Matt Berry); and the heroes becoming 3D superheroes on the surface. The jokes are just stupid enough to raise a laugh, and it all keeps you from boredom even if you’re neither a small child nor stoned. Additional voices by Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Paul Tibbitt, Carolyn Lawrence, Riki Lindhome, and Kate Micucci. Also with Antonio Banderas.
Still Alice (PG-13) Julianne Moore won a long-overdue Oscar for what is nevertheless one of her least effective performances. In this overly cozy drama, she plays a linguistics professor in New York struggling with her mental decline after being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland adapt this from Lisa Genova’s novel and don’t bring any sort of insight into the mechanics of living with mental decline at such an early age. Nor do they find much meaning in their heroine’s struggle to keep hold of her faculties. Moore’s reduced to an exercise in technique as she captures the stages of her character’s decline. This movie could have been more. Also with Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Shane McRae, Hunter Parrish, and Alec Baldwin.
Taken 3 (PG-13) Everybody is an idiot in this movie. Yes, that includes indestructible hero Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and the supposed genius cop (Forest Whitaker) who pursues him after Bryan is framed for his wife’s murder. Once again, Bryan uses his particular set of skills to take revenge on a bunch of faceless tattooed bad guys — Russian, this time — and while the movie tries to make use of the villain’s knowledge that Bryan is a mindless killing machine who can be pointed in the wrong direction, the filmmakers here aren’t nearly clever enough to make something meaningful out of it. Oh, and Bryan’s hovering over his daughter (Maggie Grace) is starting to look downright creepy. Also with Dougray Scott, Leland Orser, David Warshofsky, Jon Gries, Don Harvey, Dylan Bruno, Sam Spruell, and Famke Janssen.
The Theory of Everything (PG-13) A failure, despite two terrific performances. Eddie Redmayne stars in this biography of Stephen Hawking, as he meets his future wife Jane (Felicity Jones) when they’re still attending Cambridge, then finds her indispensable after he’s diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Director James Marsh is a brilliant documentarian (Man on Wire) who seems to lose his storytelling instincts in fiction. Though he tries to make Jane as fascinating as Stephen, the script renders her as yet another self-sacrificing supportive wife. Redmayne does a superb job of depicting Stephen’s physical deterioration, and Jones is even better as a frustrated, overshadowed spouse. Still, this movie’s imagination is way short of its subject’s. Also with Charlie Cox, David Thewlis, Christian McKay, Simon McBurney, and Emily Watson.
The Wedding Ringer (R) Paging Adam Sandler. Kevin Hart stars in this comedy as a man who hires himself out as a best man to grooms who have no male friends to serve as one. Hart does a nifty dance routine with Josh Gad as a new client who needs seven groomsmen on short notice, but they can’t cover up the tedious predictability of the gags or the fact that all the women here are either psychotic or dispensable. Hart’s a funny guy, but I wish he would make better movies. Also with Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Jorge Garcia, Affion Crockett, Alan Ritchson, Corey Holcomb, Dan Gill, Colin Kane, Aaron Takahashi, Jenifer Lewis, Ken Howard, Olivia Thirlby, Nicky Whelan, Josh Peck, Mimi Rogers, Whitney Cummings, and Cloris Leachman.
Whiplash (R) A soft-headed melodrama that’s redeemed by its performances. Miles Teller plays an aspiring jazz drummer who gets into music school only to discover that the top professor (J.K. Simmons) is a classic bully who runs his band by humiliating his musicians. The movie is full of bromides about musical genius, and the romance with a movie theater employee (Melissa Benoist) is particularly badly handled. However, Simmons is fearsome as a man raging at the world’s embrace of mediocrity, and Teller does well in an atypically reserved, sensitive role. Writer-director Damien Chazelle takes a cubist approach to life at music school and crafts a climactic drum solo that will lift you out of your seat. Also with Paul Reiser, Austin Stowell, Nate Lang, Chris Mulkey, Damon Gupton, and April Grace.
dallas exclusives
Ballet 422 (PG) Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary follows choreographer Justin Peck as he creates a new work for the New York City Ballet. Also with Tiler Peck, Sterling Hyltin, and Amar Ramasar. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Last Five Years (PG-13) Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan star in this adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s musical about a couple’s marriage and breakup over the course of five years. Also with Sherie Rene Scott.
Leviathan (R) Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s drama stars Alexei Serebryakov as a Russian man who fights back when a corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov) tries to take his house. Also with Elena Lyadova, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Anna Ukolova, Sergei Pokhodaev, and Alexei Rozin.
Mr. Turner (R) Timothy Spall stars in Mike Leigh’s biography of the 19th-century British painter J.M.W. Turner. Also with Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Martin Savage, Karina Fernandez, Joshua McGuire, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths.
Song of the Sea (PG) Nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, this Irish film by Tomm Moore (The Book of Kells) is about a selkie (voiced by Lucy O’Connell) who determines to return her fellow fairy creatures to the sea. Additional voices by Brendan Gleeson, David Rawle, Lisa Gallagher, and Fionnula Flanagan.
