OPENING
The Adventurers (R) This Chinese caper film is about a bunch of thieves who pull off their European heist but are pursued by a legendary French detective (Jean Reno). Also with Shu Qi, Andy Lau, Zhang Jingchu, Tony Yang, You Tianyi, and Eric Tsang. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (R) This action-comedy stars Ryan Reynolds as a bodyguard who must protect a contract killer (Samuel L. Jackson) who is turning state’s evidence. Also with Richard E. Grant, Gary Oldman, Elodie Yung, Rod Hallett, Sam Hazeldine, Joaquim de Almeida, and Salma Hayek. (Opens Friday)
In This Corner of the World (PG-13) This Japanese animated film is about a newly married 18-year-old girl (voiced by Rena Nouen) trying to provide for her family in Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. Additional voices by Megumi Han, Yoshimasa Hosoya, Natsuki Inaba, Nanase Iwai, Minori Omi, and Daisuke Ono. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Only Living Boy in New York (R) A bunch of stars cottoned onto this really bad dramedy starring Callum Turner as an irritating pompous teen blowhard of a New York City writer who bemoans the gentrification of his hometown. I’m struggling to come up with a subject I care less about, but the movie agrees with him, as does a reclusive famous novelist (Jeff Bridges) who moves in next to him and gives him advice about his attraction to his father’s new English mistress (Kate Beckinsale). Since the novelist spends most of the movie interacting with only our teen hero and telling him things he wants to hear, I was waiting for the reveal that he was a figment of the hero’s imagination, but instead the final revelation is way cheesier even than that. These characters will make you want to bulldoze all their favorite hipster haunts and put up Starbuckses in their place. Also with Pierce Brosnan, Kiersey Clemons, Wallace Shawn, Debi Mazar, Bill Camp, and Cynthia Nixon.
Shot Caller (R) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars in this thriller as a recently released ex-con who must work with a rival gang to pull off a major crime in Los Angeles. Also with Lake Bell, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Omari Hardwick, Holt McCallany, Emory Cohen, and Benjamin Bratt. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Trip to Spain (NR) This third film in the series reunites director Michael Winterbottom with stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, as they do celebrity impressions and tour the country’s finest restaurants. Also with Claire Keelan and Marta Barrio. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Whose Streets? (R) Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’ documentary about the racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and the beginning of Black Lives Matter. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
Annabelle: Creation (R) Director David Sandberg’s disappointing follow-up to Lights Out is this horror prequel showing how a bereaved couple (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) created the evil doll to deal with their grief, then opened up an orphanage for young girls, unwittingly giving the doll what it wants. Whatever creep factor the doll had in the first movie, it’s lost it by now, and Sandberg’s go-slow approach doesn’t pay off here like it has done for others. This movie makes me yearn for the charisma of Chucky. Also with Stephanie Sigman, Lulu Wilson, Talitha Bateman, Grace Fulton, Kerry O’Malley, Philippa Coulthard, and Alicia Vela-Bailey.
Atomic Blonde (R) A deadly stylish showcase for Charlize Theron. She plays an undercover MI6 agent who is sent into Berlin just before the end of the Cold War to retrieve a list of British agents and operations. As a spy thriller, this is riddled with holes and inconsistencies, as director David Leitch can evoke neither the atmosphere of 1980s Germany nor the paranoid sense of the best spy movies, and the final revelation makes no sense at all. Fortunately, Theron is in top form as this bisexual operative who’ll happily seduce women for the mission. The action sequences are stellar, and the brutal fight against a KGB sniper team on the stairs of an East Berlin apartment is destined to become a classic. Also with James McAvoy, Toby Jones, Sofia Boutella, Eddie Marsan, Bill Skarsgård, Roland Møller, Til Schweiger, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, James Faulkner, Sam Hargrave, Barbara Sukowa, and John Goodman.
Baby Driver (R) A car-chase movie that’s also a musical. Ansel Elgort plays a youthful-looking getaway driver with a passion for music who works off a debt to an Atlanta crime boss (Kevin Spacey) by driving armed robbers away from the police. In his first American movie, writer-director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz) uses his trademark repeated lines and skillfully set-up gags, but also stages car stunts that are all the sicker because you know they’re being performed for real. The supporting cast is terrific, but Elgort owns the show completely as he rocks out behind the wheel to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” and dances to Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle.” The movie’s match of music, editing, and performances makes for a delirious experience. Also with Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza González, Jon Bernthal, CJ Jones, Flea, Big Boi, Killer Mike, and Paul Williams.
The Big Sick (R) The romantic comedy of the summer is this one based on the autobiography of Kumail Nanjiani, the Pakistani-American stand-up comic and actor who fell for a white American woman and was wondering how to tell his parents when she became desperately ill and was placed in a coma. The film bolts out of the gate thanks to a script by Nanjiani and his real-life wife Emily Gordon, with jokes coming from all directions, including Emily’s fictional alter ego (Zoe Kazan), the Chicago stand-up scene where this is set, and Kumail’s Muslim family. The movie loses some of its surefootedness in the second half, as the filmmakers have trouble keeping the laughs going while Emily continues to lie in a hospital. Still, this is likely the first comedy from a Muslim perspective that most Americans have seen, and the more charming because of its real-life story. Also, Kumail’s joke about 9/11 is the most outrageous one I’ve heard all year. Also with Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Zenobia Shroff, Adeel Akhtar, Aidy Bryant, Bo Burnham, Kurt Braunohler, Vella Lovell, David Alan Grier, Linda Emond, and Anupam Kher.
Cars 3 (PG) Basically, this is like Creed with talking cars. In this latest Pixar installment, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) faces his sporting mortality after a bad run of results and makes drastic changes to his training regimen thanks to a new billionaire sponsor (voiced by Nathan Fillion) who’s so nice that he can’t possibly be a good guy. Once Lightning’s new young trainer (voiced by Cristela Alonzo) is shown topping out over 200 on a racing simulator, we know where this is going. Even so, the base material has a power of its own as the old veteran finds he has to dig into a bag of tricks to stay competitive with the younger racers, and Pixar’s customary in-jokes and throwaway gags help it all go down easy. Check for F1 champion Lewis Hamilton as an electronic assistant named Hamilton. Additional voices by Larry the Cable Guy, Chris Cooper, Bonnie Hunt, Armie Hammer, Tony Shalhoub, Lea DeLaria, Margo Martindale, Kerry Washington, Bob Costas, Darrell Waltrip, Richard Petty, Kyle Petty, Cheech Marin, John Ratzenberger, and the late Paul Newman.
The Dark Tower (PG-13) Like a fever dream — an exceptionally boring fever dream. Tom Taylor stars in this Stephen King adaptation as a New York boy whose nightmares about a gunslinger (Idris Elba) battling a Satanic overlord (Matthew McConaughey) in a barren wasteland turn out to be real. The plot is squashed down from various books in King’s epic series, which is probably why events unfold with no discernible logic or cause. Everything looks gray because director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) can’t think of another way to portray dystopia, and the actors are restricted to a single note for their characters. This isn’t as bad a King adaptation as Dreamcatcher, but it’s not far off. Also with Jackie Earle Haley, Claudia Kim, Abbey Lee, Katheryn Winnick, Fran Kranz, José Zúñiga, and Dennis Haysbert.
Despicable Me 3 (PG) There are all sorts of things going on in this third installment, what with Gru meeting his long-lost twin brother (both voiced by Steve Carell), Lucy (voiced by Kristen Wiig) learning to be a mom, the minions (voiced by Pierre Coffin) exiled to their own subplot doing God knows what, and a 1980s kid actor-turned-supervillain (voiced by Trey Parker) trying to destroy Hollywood. All of it fails because the filmmakers behind this seem to have run out of ideas sometime during the last movie. It’s time for Gru to retire and spend more time with his family, away from our screens. Additional voices by Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel, Steve Coogan, Jenny Slate, and Julie Andrews.
Detroit (R) Flawed and powerful. Kathryn Bigelow does this dramatization of the 1967 Detroit race riots and the resulting police brutality incident at the Algiers Motel that year, when city cops tortured guests and eventually murdered three while searching for a gun that they never found. As usual, Bigelow excels at depicting the chaos in the streets and evoking slowly unfolding dread, and while the first half of the movie depicting the riots unbalances the film, it also provides valuable context. However, while her approach has value, it also has limitations. All the suffering she depicts here requires an equally great catharsis, and the bit with the soul singer (Algee Smith) leaving his band and joining a church choir isn’t enough of a counterweight to all the white mendacity here. The film will still be timely as long as white cops kill unarmed black men and get away with it. Also with John Boyega, Will Poulter, Jacob Latimore, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben O’Toole, Jack Reynor, Nathan Davis Jr., Malcolm David Kelley, Jeremy Strong, Samira Wiley, Laz Alonso, Anthony Mackie, and John Krasinski.
Dunkirk (PG-13) Not a masterpiece, but it gets the job done. Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic tells the story of British civilians rescuing more than 300,000 soldiers from the French beach where they were trapped by the Nazis. Nolan tells the story in three overlapping timelines, from the viewpoints of an RAF pilot (Tom Hardy), a private (Fionn Whitehead), a boat owner (Mark Rylance), and others. Nolan probably should have gone with a more straightforward approach; the temporal dislocation doesn’t increase the chaos of the battle or the story’s forward drive. Luckily, this movie does much better at the small-picture level, conveying the analog nature of aerial combat back then and the private’s series of brushes with death as he tries to flee. This movie may not have the emotional impact that it’s looking for, but it succeeds thanks to Nolan’s assiduous application of his craft. Also with Cillian Murphy, Jack Lowden, Aneurin Barnard, Tom Glynn-Carney, Barry Keoghan, Tom Nolan, Harry Styles, and Kenneth Branagh.
The Emoji Movie (PG) Crying face emoji. Angry face emoji. Poop emoji. Nauseated face emoji. Skull and crossbones emoji. Bomb emoji. Wastebasket emoji. Dagger emoji. Anger symbol emoji. Radioactive sign emoji. Biohazard emoji. Thumbs-down emoji. Exclamation question mark emoji. Stop button emoji. Voices by T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Coolidge, Christina Aguilera, Sofia Vergara, Sean Hayes, Rachael Ray, Patrick Stewart, and Steven Wright.
Finally Found Someone (NR) Sarah Geronimo stars in this Filipino romantic comedy as a woman who is left at the altar by her groom and consults a therapist (John Lloyd Cruz) to help her move on. Also with Joey Marquez, Christian Bables, Yayo Aguila, Tetchie Agbayani, and Dennis Padilla.
47 Meters Down (PG-13) Since The Shallows became a hit last summer, everybody else has to have a shark flick. This one can’t hold a candle or even a shaky flashlight to that film. Mandy Moore and Claire Holt star as sisters who are trapped in a shark cage that comes loose from the boat and hits the ocean floor. English director Johannes Roberts (The Other Side of the Door) can’t think of anything inventive to do with the situation or with the open ocean and limited visibility that the setting offers. The acting from the two actresses is undistinguished at best as well. Look elsewhere for your B-grade thrills. Also with Matthew Modine, Yani Gellman, Chris Johnson, and Santiago Segura.
Girls Trip (R) In the “raunchy summer female comedy” tournament, this one defeats Snatched and Rough Night. Regina Hall stars as an Oprah Winfrey-like lifestyle guru who invites her college friends (Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Tiffany Haddish) for a weekend of partying at the Essence Festival in New Orleans. The raunchy summer female comedies tend to be for the white women, so it’s gratifying to see the black women get in on the action, and do it to hilarious effect. Some of the subplots play out predictably, but who cares when you’ve got set pieces like a zipline ride across Bourbon Street that goes wrong? Haddish winds up upstaging her more famous co-stars repeatedly, especially during a sex demonstration with a grapefruit and a banana. Also with Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Mike Epps, Lara Grice, and Kate Walsh.
The Glass Castle (PG-13) Woody Harrelson steals the show in this film adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ memoir as the author’s damaged, drunken, abusive dad who’s always planning to build his children a glass house when he’s not picking up the family and running from the law. Walls’ life story is packed with incredible incidents, so much that the movie even leaves out the one where she was thrown from her parents’ moving car and her parents didn’t notice, but director/co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12) has trouble wrangling all of it into proper shape. Brie Larson does all right by the lead role, but it’s Harrelson, brimming with shame, regret, and an anger that he’s powerless to control, that you’ll remember more than anything. Also with Naomi Watts, Ella Anderson, Chandler Head, Max Greenfield, Josh Caras, Sarah Snook, and Robin Bartlett.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (PG) This follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth is rather missing the excitement that the original had. Back in 2006, former Vice President/Oscar winner/Nobel Laureate Al Gore was conveying information that was mostly new to the public, but he’s got nothing new here, just more evidence that the Earth is indeed getting warmer. A concerted pitch to the denier crowd might have been interesting, if nothing else, but Gore’s self-aggrandizing streak (evident in the first film) takes over here, as the movie shows him heroically struggling to get the Paris climate accord done, only for our idiot president to pull the rug out from under him.
Kidnap (R) Laughably bad. Halle Berry stars in this thriller as a single mother whose 9-year-old son (Sage Correa) is forcibly kidnapped from the park, and who chases after the kidnapper in her car after she loses her phone. Nothing that happens here is remotely believable, not the police ignoring the high-speed chase through the city, not the mechanics of the chase itself, not the way the kidnappers work, and certainly not the mother’s lengthy monologues to herself while she’s driving. This is so actively terrible, you’ll wonder how it got into the movie theaters at all. Also with Chris McGinn, Lew Temple, Dana Gourrier, and Jason George.
The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (PG) Less interesting than the original, maybe because it has the same plot. Will Arnett reprises his role as the antisocial squirrel named Surly who has to learn once again to work with the other animals in order to survive after a greedy mayor (voiced by Bobby Moynihan) decides to pave over the city park where they all live. The whole enterprise seems to lack inventiveness and even energy. Additional voices by Katherine Heigl, Maya Rudolph, Peter Stormare, Bobby Cannavale, Isabela Moner, Jeff Dunham, Gabriel Iglesias, and Jackie Chan.
Once Upon a Time (NR) The sets and costumes are jaw-dropping, while the CGI is jaw-droppingly bad in this Chinese fairy tale epic about an immortal empress (Crystal Liu) who is sent to the mortal realms to undergo a trial that will make her into a full-blown goddess, though she spends much of her time fretting about the 90,000-year age difference between her and the sea emperor (Yang Yang) who’s interested in her, a relative youngster at 50,000. Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding (House of Flying Daggers) makes his debut as a director with Anthony LaMolinara, and this epic comes out like a school play envisioned by a 6-year-old on hallucinogenics and an unlimited budget. Gawk at an early scene’s re-creation of a coral reef on a soundstage. Groan at the swordfight that erupts there out of nowhere and looks like it was choreographed 10 minutes before it was shot. It’s really remarkable how a movie can look so lavish and yet so cheap at the same time. Also with Luo Jin, Yan Yikuan, Li Chun, Gu Xuan, and Peng Zisu.
Rough Night (R) This raunchy comedy is agreeable enough, but given the talent onscreen and off, it should have come to more. Scarlett Johansson stars as a state-level politician who gets away for her bachelorette party in Miami with her friends when they accidentally kill the male stripper (Ryan Cooper) whom they’ve hired. TV’s Broad City contributes director Lucia Aniello and co-writer Paul W. Downs (who also plays Johansson’s fiancé), and there are scene-stealing bits from Jillian Bell as the needy best friend and Kate McKinnon as a New Agey Australian. As many funny bits as there are, the filmmakers can’t generate any momentum to give us the sense that these women are careening into further comic peril. The movie winds up going in frantic circles. Also with Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Ty Burrell, Enrique Murciano, Dean Winters, Karan Soni, and Demi Moore.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (PG-13) The best high-school movie so far this year. After a bunch of angst-ridden Spider-Men, Tom Holland headlines this relatively and invigoratingly carefree outing. Director/co-writer Jon Watts (Cop Car) keeps the whole thing from Peter Parker’s teenage perspective, where participating in the academic decathlon looms as large as battling the villain (Michael Keaton), a screwed-over salvage worker now making weapons for the supervillain. The supporting cast is subtly loaded, but the best parts go to Peter’s school friends, and the most rewarding scenes are him interacting with his Star Wars geek pal (Jacob Batalon), the pretty girl he wants to ask out (Laura Harrier), the cool loser chick (Zendaya), and the nerd bully (Tony Revolori). A predictable third-act twist notwithstanding, the web-slinger’s latest reboot is well worthy of him. Also with Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Donald Glover, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, Martin Starr, Hannibal Buress, Kenneth Choi, Garcelle Beauvais, Michael Chernus, Selenis Leyva, Abraham Attah, Angourie Rice, Tyne Daly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Evans, and Jennifer Connelly.
Step (PG) Amanda Lipitz’s crackling documentary follows the founding class of a Baltimore inner-city girls’ school during that class’ senior year, and the travails of its step-dance team. This film won awards at Sundance and elsewhere, but her storytelling isn’t the best. One of the girls goes from pulling her grades together to spiraling down again without any prelude or explanation, and though the footage was shot during the immediate aftermath of the Freddie Gray murder, we don’t get much sense of what these girls make of the city’s racial turmoil. Good thing the subjects themselves leap off the screen, especially introspective class valedictorian Cori Grainger and Blessin Giraldo, a ball of energy dealing with a family legacy of depression and abuse.
A Taxi Driver (NR) A Korean history lesson told with enough skill to make it go down easy. Jang Hun’s thriller tells the true story of a West German journalist (Thomas Kretschmann) and a Seoul taxi driver (Song Kang-ho) who risked their lives to document the 1980 Gwangju Massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators by South Korea’s new military dictatorship. The movie delicately balances the grim historical situation with the comedy of the early going between a cabbie with little English and a reporter with no Korean. Some of the action is historical liberty; it’s not true that the journalist got out thanks to a fleet of Gwangju cabdrivers who covered their escape. Still, the whole thing is anchored by the great Song, who couldn’t be a better choice to play an ordinary man who becomes a hero. Also with Ryu Jun-yeol, Yoo Hae-jin, Park Hyuk-kwon, Um Tae-goo, Yoo Eun-mi, Ko Chang-seok, Jeon Hye-jin, and Daniel Albright.
Toilet (NR) Akshay Kumar stars in this Indian comedy as a man from a rural village whose new wife (Bhumi Pednekar) refuses to live with him when she discovers that his house does not have a toilet. Also with Rajesh Sharma, Mukesh Bhatt, Sudhir Pandey, Sana Khaan, and Anupam Kher.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (PG-13) Stupid fun. Luc Besson adapts this space opera from the beloved series of French comic books from the 1960s, starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as undercover government agents trying to rescue their commander (Clive Owen) from a terrorist plot in a giant floating world that’s home to aliens of all races. Besson’s sexual politics are stuck in the 1990s, and his script’s moral message basically boils down to “genocide is bad.” Still, he does tremendous work evoking the dozens of sub-worlds that exist inside this space and the nonlethal weapons used by the characters, and the statuesque Delevingne looks like a future star, able to deliver a spinning roundhouse kick and a sarcastic joke with equal ease. Also with Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Sam Spruell, Kris Wu, Herbie Hancock, Alain Chabat, Ola Rapace, and Rutger Hauer. Voices by Elizabeth Debicki and John Goodman.
War for the Planet of the Apes (PG-13) These movies continue to wash over me without making much of an impact. Andy Serkis reprises his role as Caesar in this third installment that’s also a retelling of the Book of Exodus, as Caesar has to lead his apes from their jungle home to a new place in the desert when they start being terrorized by a ruthless military colonel (Woody Harrelson). The biblical parallels are pretty exact — we get a mountain avalanche instead of a parting of the Red Sea — and they’re filled out with Holocaust parallels, as the colonel winds up imprisoning the apes in a concentration camp. The CGI effects are done well enough, but they can’t quite cover up how run-of-the-mill this story is. Also with Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller, Karin Konoval, Michael Adamthwaite, Gabriel Chavarria, Terry Notary, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer, and Ty Olsson.
Wolf Warrior II (NR) Wu Jing stars in and directs this thriller sequel about a former special-ops agent who must come out of retirement when mercenaries start killing civilians on the Chinese coast. Also with Celina Jade, Zhang Han, Shi Zhaoqi, Heidi Moneymaker, and Frank Grillo.
Wonder Woman (PG-13) Not all that good, but still yards better than the other DC Comics movies. Gal Gadot plays the warrior princess who gives up her birthright and leaves her island to help an American spy (Chris Pine) bring a successful end to World War I. The origin story means that the other superheroes don’t get awkwardly shoehorned in for cameos, Wonder Woman has a character arc (wobbly though it is) that’s more satisfying than any of those superheroes have had, and the film owes a great deal to Pine and his comic instincts to keep the story grounded. The movie does leave all sorts of things on the table and doesn’t appear to leave the heroine with much place to go as a character, but the good outweighs the bad, on balance. Never send a Man of Steel to do a Wonder Woman’s job. Also with Robin Wright, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, Elena Anaya, Lucy Davis, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Danny Huston.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Pilgrimage (NR) Tom Holland stars in this thriller as one of a group of 13th-century Irish monks trying to transport a holy relic across dangerous territory. Also with Richard Armitage, Jon Bernthal, John Lynch, Tristan McConnell, David O’Reilly, Hugh O’Conor, and Donncha Crowley.
