OPENING
Ben-Hur (PG-13) Not the 1959 Oscar-winning epic, but another adaptation of Lew Wallace’s novel about a prince (Jack Huston) seeking revenge for his enslavement during the time of Christ. Also with Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, Pilou Asbæk, Moises Arias, and Morgan Freeman. (Opens Friday)
Imperium (R) Daniel Radcliffe stars as an FBI agent sent to infiltrate a neo-Nazi organization. Also with Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Sam Trammell, Nestor Carbonell, Chris Sullivan, and Burn Gorman. (Opens Friday)
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (PG-13) Based on the video game currently being released in stores, this fantasy film stars Sean Bean as a king who battles a rival empire for a magic crystal. Also with Aaron Paul, Adrian Bouchet, Liam Mulvey, Andrea Tivadar, and Lena Headey. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Spaceman (R) Josh Duhamel stars in this biography of eccentric baseball pitcher Bill Lee. Also with Ernie Hudson, Sterling K. Brown, Blake Lindsley, Peter Mackenzie, Carlos Leal, and W. Earl Brown. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Time Raiders (NR) Han Lu stars in this Chinese fantasy-adventure film as an architect who searches for his uncle (Wang Jingchun) after he disappears. Also with Jing Boran, Ma Sichun, Zhang Boyu, and Daniel Krauser. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
War Dogs (R) Jonah Hill and Miles Teller star as two real-life friends who won a $300 million contract to arm America’s allies in the war in Afghanistan. Also with Ana de Armas, Kevin Pollak, Shaun Toub, Patrick St. Esprit, and Bradley Cooper. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Anthropoid (R) Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy star in this thriller about the real-life World War II plot in Czechoslovakia to assassinate an SS general who’s Hitler’s fourth in command. Also with Charlotte Le Bon, Anna Geislerová, Harry Lloyd, Bill Milner, and Toby Jones.
Bad Moms (R) A profane blast of fresh air compared with the pap that Hollywood usually serves up to older women. Mila Kunis stars as a 32-year-old Chicagoan who snaps under modern parenting culture’s impossible demands of mothers and stages her own rebellion with two other mothers (Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn) against a PTA president (Christina Applegate) who represents everything they hate. Writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore previously wrote The Hangover, and while I wish they’d let their moms cut loose like the guys in that series, they’ve got three brilliant and personable comic actresses on their side, with Hahn giving every scene of hers an electric charge. Also with Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo, Emjay Anthony, Oona Laurence, David Walton, Jay Hernandez, Clark Duke, Wendell Pierce, J.J. Watt, and Wanda Sykes.
Café Society (PG-13) Kristen Stewart’s dazzling performance is the best thing about Woody Allen’s latest. She plays a secretary and secret lover to a high-powered 1930s Hollywood agent (Steve Carell), only to be torn between him and his nephew (Jesse Eisenberg) who’s visiting California from the Bronx. Cast well against type as a bright, snappy, worldly wise operator, Stewart brings notes of softness and vulnerability to the role that other actresses might not think to bring. She’s cast opposite Eisenberg for a third time, and they seem delighted in each other as ever, but Allen loads down his movie with too many extraneous subplots and dead ends. What’s supposed to be a tender little romance of missed connections gets lost, and Stewart’s marvelous performance is wasted. Also with Blake Lively, Corey Stoll, Anna Camp, Ken Stott, Jeannie Berlin, Sheryl Lee, and Parker Posey.
Finding Dory (PG) The advance hype has been adulatory for Pixar’s latest, and I just can’t join in, much as I’d like. In this sequel to Finding Nemo, sweetly forgetful blue tang Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) remembers something about her family and dashes across the Pacific with Marlin and Nemo (voiced by Albert Brooks and Hayden Rolence) in tow to make sure she doesn’t get lost. There’s a nicely ambivalent depiction of the California aquarium that they all become trapped in, but the plot machinery creaks audibly as it strives to separate Dory from everyone else who wants to help her. The story is supposed to be about Dory learning to survive on her own, and this isn’t accomplished in any convincing way. There’s much that’s genuinely entertaining here, but the slippage from Finding Nemo and other Pixar greats is noticeable. Additional voices by Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Idris Elba, Dominic West, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, John Ratzenberger, and Sigourney Weaver.
Florence Foster Jenkins (PG-13) This biopic perversely casts Meryl Streep as one of recorded history’s worst opera singers, a New York City septuagenarian who deluded herself into thinking herself a great musician and made a private recording in the 1940s that found a not-always-appreciative audience in the wider world. The comic notes in her bad singing are rather predictable, and the movie doesn’t find anything of note in Florence’s English common-law husband (Hugh Grant) and his affairs with other women, necessitated by the syphilis that afflicted Florence since her teens. Nicholas Martin’s script does hit some marks when it comes to Florence’s unfulfilled dreams of musical glory, but there are better, funnier movies about the nobility of making bad art. Also with Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, Stanley Townsend, Allan Corduner, Christian McKay, and Nina Arianda.
Ghostbusters (PG-13) Paul Feig’s reboot of the 1985 comedy isn’t as funny as Bridesmaids or Spy, but it’s still quite a bit of fun.Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy play the leaders of this group of paranormal investigators who go into business just as a bullied bellhop (Neil Casey) tries to take over New York City at the head of a ghost army. Wiig and McCarthy seem hamstrung by their straitlaced characters and the PG-13 rating, so the hijinks fall to the other two Ghostbusters: Leslie Jones gets some good lines as an MTA worker who joins up, but Kate McKinnon walks away with the movie as a tech genius who takes a psychopath’s joy in causing spirit-world havoc and is scarier than some of the evil spirits that the group faces. Chris Hemsworth scores, too, as the Ghostbusters’ dim-bulb receptionist. The main actors from the original Ghostbusters all show up here in different roles from the ones they played. Also with Andy Garcia, Ed Begley Jr., Cecily Strong, Charles Dance, Matt Walsh, Michael Kenneth Williams, Nate Corddry, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and Bill Murray.
Ice Age: Collision Course (PG) The prehistoric animals go into space! Well, one of them, anyway. You may be surprised by that, but you won’t be surprised by the desperation that drives the makers of this fifth installment in the series to such a plot twist. Manny, Sid, and Diego (voiced by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary) have to save the entire world this time by locating a meteor crash site while Manny also deals with his daughter (voiced by Keke Palmer) getting married. The movie ventures into musical numbers, a cameo by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and a utopian society with eternal youth. Nothing works. Additional voices by Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Adam Devine, Nick Offerman, Max Greenfield, Josh Peck, Seann WIlliam Scott, Wanda Sykes, Jennifer Lopez, Jessie J, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.
Jason Bourne (PG-13) The superspy has recovered all his memories now, and yet it’s the movie he’s in that’s forgettable. Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass return to the spy series, as Bourne tries to avenge the long-ago murder of his father (Gregg Henry) and the more recent murder of CIA analyst-turned-hacker Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). Greengrass brings his familiar proficiency to a riot in Athens and a high-collateral-damage car chase in Las Vegas, but Bourne’s search for the killer and his encounters with the changing face of spycraft don’t lead anywhere rewarding. Also with Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Bill Camp, and Tommy Lee Jones.
Lights Out (PG-13) This above-average horror film stars Teresa Palmer as a directionless young woman who acts to save her young half-brother (Gabriel Bateman) and her mother (Maria Bello) from the monster that haunts them all but disappears whenever lights come on, only able to hurt people where there’s darkness. Swedish director David Sandberg adapts this from his own short film, and the best thing here is how the monster works as a metaphor for the mother’s mental illness and the damage it wreaks on her family. If Palmer didn’t give such a flat performance, this would be excellent. Also with Alexander diPersia, Alicia Vela-Bailey, Andi Osho, Emily Alyn Lind, and Billy Burke.
Mohenjo Daro (NR) Hrithik Roshan stars in this Indian epic as a farmer in 2016 B.C. who falls in love with a high-status woman (Pooja Hegde) in the largest city of the Indus Valley. Also with Kabir Bedi, Arunoday Singh, Suhasini Mulay, Nitish Bharadwaj, and Sharad Kelkar.
My Best Friend’s Wedding (PG) What I wouldn’t give for Rupert Everett leading the cast in a rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer.” This Chinese remake of the 1997 Hollywood comedy replaces Julia Roberts with Shu Qi as a woman who realizes she’s in love with her best friend (Feng Shaofeng) only when he gets engaged to another woman (Victoria Song). The movie is missing the eccentricities and the comic bits involving the minor characters that made the original so winning, the gay best friend character is predictably changed into a straight romantic lead, and Shu’s comic stylings remain a taste that I haven’t acquired. The London setting gives the movie a different feel from other Chinese films, but this is a pale copy indeed. Also with Rhydian Vaughan, Jessamine Bliss-Bell, Alice Lee, Li Kunjue, and Ye Qing.
Nerve (PG-13) Emma Roberts stars in this watchable thriller as a straightedge Staten Island teen who gets roped into playing an online game in which she performs initially harmless but increasingly dangerous stunts for increasing amounts of money. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman previously made the documentary Catfish, so they’re pretty savvy about depicting the interaction of the online world and the real world. The film motors along reasonably well until the end, when its condemnation of the internet lynch mob falls flat. Roberts’ acting remains like well-chosen house paint: just sort of there. Also with Dave Franco, Emily Meade, Miles Heizer, Kimiko Glenn, Marc John Jeffries, Colson Baker, Samira Wiley, and Juliette Lewis.
Nine Lives (PG) Kevin Spacey stars in this comedy as an uptight businessman who becomes trapped in the body of his family’s cat. Also with Jennifer Garner, Robbie Amell, Cheryl Hines, Mark Consuelos, and Christopher Walken.
Operation Chromite (NR) This Korean war film brings in Liam Neeson to play Gen. Douglas MacArthur, but most of the film takes up a South Korean operative (Lee Jung-jae) who leads a unit of spies who go undercover to infiltrate Communist-controlled Korea leading up to the Battle of Incheon. Neeson gets saddled with the worst of this war film’s melodramatic speechifying and the supporting characters are a faceless blur, but director John H. Lee knows how to direct an action sequence, and Lee Beom-su makes a hissable villain as a borderline unkillable North Korean colonel who kills almost all the hero’s men by himself. Also with Jin Se-yeon, Jung Jun-ho, Park Cheol-min, Kim Byeong-ok, Jon Gries, Dean Dawson, and Justin Rupple.
Pete’s Dragon (PG) David Lowery turns the near-unwatchable partially animated 1977 Disney musical into a gem of a live-action fable. Oakes Fegley stars as an orphaned boy who survives in the woods with a dragon that he meets living there. The North Texas filmmaker takes a huge gamble by bringing out the dragon early, and his animators conjure a creature that can look cuddly or fierce as required. Lowery assimilates into the Disney house style without surrendering his unique qualities, drawing lyrical performances from his actors and never losing control of the fragile tone. His mastery is awe-inspiring; this filmmaker has all the tools he needs to become one of cinema’s greats. Also with Bryce Dallas Howard, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Robert Redford.
Sausage Party (R) There’s something to offend just about everyone except atheists in this scattershot but occasionally inspired animated comedy about a supermarket hot dog (voiced by Seth Rogen) who thinks that food items go to a heavenly afterlife when they’re purchased, only to discover that their destiny is to be eaten. Too many of the sex jokes are obvious, but the movie does better when the humor comes from the visuals, as in the demented food-item sex orgy that climaxes this thing. Watch for the running joke that features bickering between a Jewish bagel (voiced by Edward Norton) and a Muslim lavash (voiced by David Krumholtz) over aisle space. Additional voices by Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Salma Hayek, Nick Kroll, Lauren Miller, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Anders Holm, Craig Robinson, and Paul Rudd.
The Secret Life of Pets (PG) Not as deep as Zootopia, but better than Finding Dory.Louis C.K. voices a neat-freak terrier in Manhattan whose jealousy over his owner bringing home a sloppy mutt (voiced by Eric Stonestreet) leads both of them to become stranded in Brooklyn and forced to cooperate to get back home. The lead characters are boring; Louis C.K. doesn’t adjust well to the kiddie environment. Still, there’s a funny subplot where the dogs fall into the hands of an underground movement of stray animals whose bunny rabbit leader (voiced in manic, scene-stealing manner by Kevin Hart) dreams of overthrowing the human race. He and the other supporting characters are funnier than the leads. Additional voices by Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, Steve Coogan, and Albert Brooks.
Star Trek Beyond (PG-13) The U.S.S. Enterprise gets broken into pieces in this latest episode, which sees the crew stranded on an alien planet while trying to stop an enemy (Idris Elba) who has hacked all the Federation’s records and knows all their tricks. Even though Simon Pegg is now a co-writer in addition to portraying Scotty, the movie could badly use some humorous touches, and its layers on the familiar characters are mildly interesting rather than compelling. Still, Justin Lin (from the Fast & Furious franchise) is a steadying hand on the tiller. Oh, and Mr. Sulu (John Cho) is gay. Also with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, and the late Anton Yelchin.
Suicide Squad (PG-13) Maybe Warner Bros. should get out of the superhero business entirely. What they’re doing sure isn’t working. Viola Davis stars as a U.S. government honcho who proposes to battle the next world-threatening baddie by forcing imprisoned supervillains to work for them, including a contract killer (Will Smith) and the Joker’s girlfriend (Margot Robbie). The plot is weak and writer-director David Ayer (Fury) has neither the sense of humor nor the flair for camp that this material demands. The group chemistry is nonexistent, and Jared Leto does little but rip off Heath Ledger’s old moves as the Joker. If this movie can’t lighten up, what chance to Warners’ more iconic superhero movies have? Also with Joel Kinnaman, Jay Hernandez, Jai Courtney, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Cara Delevingne, Adam Beach, Ike Barinholtz, David Harbour, Common, Ezra Miller, and an uncredited Ben Affleck.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Abortion: Stories Women Tell (NR) Tracy Droz Tragos’ documentary about women seeking abortions in rural Missouri and Oklahoma.
Blood Father (R) Mel Gibson stars in this thriller as an ex-convict who reunites with his troubled teenage daughter (Erin Moriarty) to protect her from drug dealers. Also with Diego Luna, Michael Parks, Miguel Sandoval, Dale Dickey, and William H. Macy.
Don’t Think Twice (R) Mike Birbiglia writes, directs, and co-stars in this comedy about an improv comedy troupe whose dynamic changes when one of their members (Keegan-Michael Key) lands a coveted spot on a national comedy TV show. Also with Gillian Jacobs, Kate Micucci, Chris Gethard, Tami Sager, Emily Skeggs, and Richard Kline.
Equity (R) Anna Gunn stars in this thriller as a Wall Street investment banker who’s threatened by a financial scandal on the cusp of her biggest deal. Also with Alysia Reiner, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Craig Bierko, Margaret Colin, Tracie Thoms, Carrie Preston, James Naughton, and Nate Corddry.
Ghost Team (PG-13) Jon Heder stars in this comedy as an obsessive young man who launches his own business investigating paranormal activity. Also with Justin Long, David Krumholtz, Melonie Diaz, Paul W. Downs, and Amy Sedaris.
Indignation (R) This adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel stars Logan Lerman as an East Coast Jew who attends college in Ohio in 1951 to get away from his upbringing. Also with Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Ben Rosenfield, Linda Emond, and Bryan Burton.
