OPENING
Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (NR) Trivikram Srinivas’ thriller is about the family entanglements of an Indian billionaire (Jayaram) and his driver (Allu Arjun). Also with Pooja Hegde, Tabu, Nivetha Pethuraj, Rajendra Prasad, Samuthirakani, Murali Sharma, Rahul Ramakrishna, and Sachin Khedekar. (Opens Friday)
Bad Boys for Life (R) The fourth and presumably final entry in the buddy-cop series reunites Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as the Miami cops on one last case. Also with Kate del Castillo, Vanessa Hudgens, Charles Melton, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Nuñez, DJ Khaled, and Joe Pantoliano. (Opens Friday)
Disturbing the Peace (R) Guy Pearce stars in this thriller as a small-town sheriff who has to make a stand against a gang of outlaw bikers trying to pull a heist. Also with Devon Sawa, Barbie Blank, Dwayne Cameron, Michael Bellisario, Kelly Greyson, and John Lewis. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Dolittle (PG) About as bad as you’d expect. Robert Downey Jr. plays the doctor who can talk to animals as a Welsh-accented misanthropic shut-in widower before he’s summoned to voyage to Africa to save the life of the young Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley). The Hugh Lofting novel has been pared away in favor of generic adventures with the doctor encumbered by numerous cute animal sidekicks as well as a cute kid (Harry Collett) just so that we can avoid looking at things that are not cute. The script isn’t funny, and the occasional wilder edges of Downey’s performance are the only things to engage a viewer over the age of 4. Also with Michael Sheen, Carmel Laniado, and Jim Broadbent. Voices by Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, John Cena, Kumail Nanjiani, Selena Gomez, Marion Cotillard, Craig Robinson, Frances de la Tour, Jason Mantzoukas, and Ralph Fiennes. (Opens Friday)
The Host (R) This thriller stars Robert Beckingham as a British banker who has to pull a job for Chinese cartel in Amsterdam to start a new life. Also with Maryam Hassouni, Dougie Poynter, Nigel Barber, Togo Igawa, Tom Wu, Jeroen Krabbé, and Derek Jacobi. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Intrigo: Death of an Author (R) Benno Fürmann stars in this thriller as a Swedish book editor who receives a manuscript from a presumed-dead famous author that comes with strange conditions and circumstances. Also with Ben Kingsley, Tuva Novotny, Michael Byrne, Veronica Ferres, Sandra Dickinson, and Elizabeth Counsell. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Invisible Life (R) Karim Aïnouz’ Brazilian epic stars Julia Stockler and Carol Duarte as two sisters separated during their teen years who both believe that the other is adventuring in Europe. Also with Flávia Gusmão, António Fonseca, Hugo Cruz, Nikolas Antunes, Maria Manoella, Gregorio Duvivier, and Samuel Toledo. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Jojo Rabbit (PG-13) A strange and compelling failure. Based on Christine Leunens’ much more serious novel Caging Skies, this satirical film stars Roman Griffin Davis as a 10-year-old boy in Nazi Germany who is such a fanatical Nazi that Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi) appears to him as an imaginary friend. Waititi also writes and directs this film, and the early scenes at Hitler Youth camp play like Moonrise Kingdom with more swastikas. Waititi’s hand for comedy makes this more watchable than other films that try to take in the Nazi horror from a child’s limited perspective, but the filmmaker loses his footing when the proceedings turn serious and characters start dying. As failures go, this is brave, ambitious, somewhat insane, and aiming at a worthy target. You can see the better film that Waititi was trying to make. Also with Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Rebel Wilson, Alfie Allen, Stephen Merchant, Archie Yates, and Sam Rockwell. (Re-opens Friday)
Joker (R) What could have been a dark satire on society and its cruelty instead exploits mental illness. Joaquin Phoenix stars as an aspiring comedian with a socially inconvenient mental condition that makes him a target for bullies, which in turn makes him turn into the clown makeup-wearing supervillain. The film is angry, mean-spirited, plodding, joyless, depressing, and entirely derivative of Taxi Driver. Worse, it stigmatizes mental illness by taking one such character and raising him up as an antihero for killing rich people. Phoenix does give one of the best performances of his career, but everything else is just background noise. Also with Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Zazie Beetz, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Marc Maron, Josh Pais, Douglas Hodge, April Grace, and Brian Tyree Henry. — Chase Whale (Re-opens Friday)
Les Misérables (R) Not based on the Victor Hugo novel or the Broadway musical, this Oscar-nominated French thriller is about three Parisian cops (Alexis Manenti, Djibril Zonga, and Damien Bonnard) who spend a frantic day trying to retrieve drone footage of themselves shooting an unarmed black boy in the face. Also with Issa Perica, Alhassan Ly, Steve Tientcheu, Almamy Kanouté, Nizar Ben Fatma, and Jeanne Balibar. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Midnight Family (NR) Luke Lorentzen’s documentary is about a family that drives a for-profit ambulance in Mexico City’s wealthy neighborhoods, trying to beat other ambulances to patients who need help. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
63 Up (NR) Reportedly the last entry in Michael Apted’s documentary series checking in with a group of British children every seven years. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (R) What I like: the deliberate pace, Margaret Qualley as a hippie cultist, Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading movie star who can still bring it as an actor, the occasionally beautiful notes about aging in a youth-driven industry, the crazed slapstick of the historically inaccurate ending. What I don’t like: the deliberate pace, the loose ends, the general lack of a point, the fact that Quentin Tarantino’s fetish about women’s feet has finally gotten out of control. The latest Tarantino film is set in Hollywood in 1969, where the aforementioned film star lives next to the house where the Manson murders are supposed to take place. As always with Tarantino, there are tasty scenes and great production design, but here he rather loses himself in nostalgia and re-creations of obscure 1960s TV Westerns. Also with Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, Timothy Olyphant, Margaret Qualley, Damian Lewis, Emile Hirsch, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Scoot McNairy, Clifton Collins Jr., Lena Dunham, Dreama Walker, Brenda Vaccaro, Mike Moh, Austin Butler, Nicholas Hammond, Lorenza Izzo, Rumer Willis, Zoë Bell, Al Pacino, and the late Luke Perry. (Re-opens Friday)
The Song of Names (PG-13) Based on Norman Lebrecht’s novel, this drama is about an Englishman (Tim Roth) trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of his childhood friend. Also with Clive Owen, Jonah Hauer-King, Catherine McCormack, Saul Rubinek, Gerran Howell, and Eddie Izzard. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (NR) Ajay Devgn stars in this historical epic as the military leader who fights for the freedom of the Marathi people in the 17th century. Also with Saif Ali Khan, Khajol, Raj Bhansali, Myrah Dandekar, Sharad Kelkar, and Luke Kenny. (Opens Friday)
VHYes (NR) This surreal film stars Mason McNulty as a 12-year-old boy who experiences strange occurrences while taping over his parents’ wedding video. Also with Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney, Mark Proksch, Courtney Pauroso, and Charlyne Yi. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Weathering With You (PG-13) Makoto Shinkai’s anime adventure is about a Japanese teenager who falls in love with a girl who can change the weather. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (PG) The movie’s trailer doesn’t do the film justice, because this film is quite a bit weirder than that trailer makes it seem. Matthew Rhys plays a jaded, angry Esquire journalist who finds ways to cope with his new fatherhood and his broken relationship with his own drunken father (Chris Cooper) when he’s assigned to profile Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks). Casting Hanks as the ultra-nice children’s TV host is a bit on the nose, but the film is about the reporter anyway. Director Marielle Heller makes this more than just another touchy-feely drama by introducing transition shots made to look like the miniature sets on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, as well as a dream sequence in which the writer becomes part of the show’s set. Also with Susan Kelechi Watson, Enrico Colantoni, Wendy Makkena, Tammy Blanchard, Maryann Plunkett, Maddie Corman, Jessica Hecht, and Christine Lahti.
Bombshell (R) A film that succeeds by focusing on the ways that sexual harassment poisons the workplace. The script views the 2016 sex scandal at Fox News from the viewpoints of anchors Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), plus one fictionalized composite character (Margot Robbie) with an entry-level job at the network. While director Jay Roach keeps the tone determinedly light, the actors bring home the seriousness of the stakes, especially in a late scene for Robbie where she unravels over the phone explaining she was victimized by network president Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). The movie perhaps glosses over the hate-mongering of Fox News and its main characters, but this sort of male misbehavior goes on at many places that have nothing to do with conservative news. The movie shows how even the victims of harassment wind up enabling it, and how to navigate a world run by them. Also with Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Rob Delaney, Liv Hewson, Bridgette Lundy-Paine, Mark Duplass, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Nazanin Boniadi, Brooke Smith, Alanna Ubach, Jennifer Morrison, Katie Aselton, Alice Eve, Ashley Greene, Tricia Helfer, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson, Richard Kind, Malcolm McDowell, and an uncredited Brian d’Arcy James.
Cats (PG) A late candidate for worst movie of the year. By the time you read this, a new version with supposedly improved effects will have replaced the one that went out to theaters on December 20, but it’s hard to imagine that fixing all the problems here. Francesca Haywood plays an abandoned cat who finds herself in a colony of London strays deciding which of them will be given a chance to be reincarnated into a better life. This is based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, and the real issue is that the original material sucked back in the 1980s and hasn’t improved with the passage of time. Director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables) does little to help matters, with his static set and lack of wit. The material stubbornly refuses to come to life and looks irredeemably silly on the big screen. This should have been a full-on animated film. It’s the only way it might have worked. Also with Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Jason Derulo, Laurie Davidson, Danny Collins, Naoimh Morgan, Steven McRae, Taylor Swift, and Jennifer Hudson.
Ford v Ferrari (PG-13) Solid entertainment, whether you’re a racing fan or not. This film tells the real-life story of how retired Texan racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and crusty English driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) were brought on by Ford Motors to build a race car that would defeat Ferrari’s five-time champions at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. If you get all misty-eyed for the era when American industrial might and know-how always carried the day, this is your movie. If not, the film still traces how the work away from the racetrack contributes to victories on race day, as well as the clash between Ford’s corporate culture and the freewheeling spirits who drive the cars, all without dumbing down the car talk. The movie runs off the dynamic between Damon and Bale, who make an assured team. Also with Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, JJ Feild, and Tracy Letts.
Frozen II (PG) Not as awesome or ground-breaking as the original film, but then that was never going to happen. Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) journeys into a land shrouded by impenetrable mist to save her kingdom, accompanied by Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven (voiced by Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad). The songs are too close together, and both designated showstopper “Into the Unknown” and comedy number “When I Am Older” would have benefited from having more air on either side of them. Once the royal party goes on their journey, things pick up, with Olaf acting out the story of the first film and Kristoff singing “Lost in the Woods” in the manner of a 1990s boy band. This and the goodwill left over from the first film should satisfy the original’s fans. Additional voices by Evan Rachel Wood, Sterling K. Brown, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, Jeremy Sisto, Ciarán Hinds, Aurora, and Alan Tudyk.
The Grudge (R) A loose sequel to the Japanese horror films, this one is set in America, as the curse follows an American woman (Tara Westwood) from Tokyo to central Pennsylvania and causes a spate of murders. This thing is unrelentingly grim — almost all the characters are dealing with dying parents, spouses, or children, including the widowed homicide cop (Andrea Riseborough) who gets ensnared in the case. Writer-director Nicolas Pesce has made two visually interesting horror films before this (The Eyes of My Mother and Piercing), but here he’s pressed into the template of slasher films where everything looks terrible and the scares are all predictable down to the second. Also with John Cho, Lin Shaye, Betty Gilpin, Frankie Faison, William Sadler, Jacki Weaver, and Demián Bichir.
A Hidden Life (PG-13) At this point, Terrence Malick’s whole filmmaking style is starting to look like a tic. His latest movie is about Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), the Austrian conscientious objector who was tortured and executed for his refusal to fight for the Nazi cause. Despite the film’s setting, most of the dialogue is in English. Besides that, Malick brings his familiar party guests: anamorphic lenses, actors filmed heroically from below, heartbreakingly beautiful shots of the Alpine countryside, and agonized monologues about our purpose on Earth. The film raises the question of what a devout Christian is to do when the government is evil, but despite a running time of three hours, it doesn’t have much in the way of answers. The movie isn’t worth all the time spent sitting down to watch it. Also with Valerie Pachner, Maria Simon, Franz Rogowski, Ulrich Matthes, Matthias Schoenaerts, Karl Markovic, Martin Wuttke, the late Michael Nyqvist, and the late Bruno Ganz.
Ip Man 4: The Finale (NR) The series ends the way it started, with Donnie Yen doing a lot of fight sequences in between bad drama. This final installment ends as the legendary kung fu master travels to America in the 1960s when his student Bruce Lee (Chan Kwok-Kwan) opens kung fu schools on the West Coast. The master immediately runs into static from the Chinese immigrants opposed to teaching barbaric Westerners their martial arts. The film is stolen away by Scott Adkins as a racist U.S. Marine gunnery sergeant, exuding screen presence even in a cardboard villain role, managing the American accent quite well, and demonstrating power, skill, and more quickness than you’d expect in his fight sequences. Whenever Asian martial-arts movies need a white-guy villain, they call Adkins, and you can see why. Also with Wu Yue, Chris Collins, Vanness Wu, Nicola Stuart-Hill, Kent Cheng, and Jim Liu.
Jumanji: The Next Level (PG-13) Best you can say about this is that this is a slight improvement on the original. When Spencer (Alex Wolff) goes back into the video game, his friends go in to retrieve him, only a couple of older relatives (Danny DeVito and Danny Glover) are accidentally sucked into the game as well. Sadly, too much of the humor relies on Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart impersonating DeVito and Glover and not understanding how video games work. We’re supposed to be hooked by the young characters coping with college life and the older ones trying to repair their broken friendship, but why on earth don’t we just play these out with the original actors instead of their video game avatars? The next level seems to be distinctly the same as the last one. Also with Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Awkwafina, Madison Iseman, Ser’Darius Blain, Morgan Turner, Rory McCann, Rhys Darby, Dania Ramirez, Colin Hanks, Nick Jonas, and uncredited cameos by Bebe Neuwirth and Lamorne Morris.
Just Mercy (PG-13) This foursquare biopic manages to convey its point without hammering it. Michael B. Jordan plays Bryan Stevenson, the Harvard-trained lawyer who established a legal foundation in Alabama in 1989 to assist prisoners on death row. The film also has Brie Larson as the office manager who helps Stevenson set up his workspace, but somehow it’s Jamie Foxx who steals the show as the innocent and wrongly condemned prisoner who is among their first clients, a man whose faith and personality give strength not only to the other prisoners but also to his young lawyer. Director/co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton could use a bit of storytelling or visual distinctiveness to tell this story. There’s a fine supporting performance by Tim Blake Nelson as a prisoner who helped convict an innocent man and wants to undo it. Also with O’Shea Jackson Jr., Rob Morgan, Rafe Spall, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Tonea Stewart, and Michael Harding.
Knives Out (PG-13) Rian Johnson revives the lost art of the cinematic murder mystery with this enormously entertaining whodunit. Armed with a thick-as-Nawlins gumbo accent and an array of “look at me” tics, Daniel Craig plays a private investigator who is hired by an unknown client to investigate the apparent suicide of a world-famous mystery novelist (Christopher Plummer) at a family gathering. The film is plotted within an inch of its life, as throwaway details resurface with grave implications, or simply to pay off some devastatingly funny jokes (as with the film’s final shot). A deluxe cast is used mostly efficiently, with Chris Evans standing out playing a real bastard in the victim’s grandson. The detective, who may or may not know what he’s doing, is a fun character, and the twists will keep even seasoned detective fiction fans guessing. Also with Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Edi Patterson, Frank Oz, K Callan, Noah Segan, M. Emmet Walsh, and LaKeith Stanfield.
LIke a Boss (R) Occasionally stuff breaks loose and raises laughs in this comedy. Rose Byrne and Tiffany Haddish star as lifelong best friends and roommates who launch their own cosmetics business, but whose lack of business acumen attracts an orange-haired cosmetics mogul (Salma Hayek) who invests in their company and then tries to break up their friendship so that she can take over. Miguel Arteta directs smoothly but can’t seem to decide whether this is a workplace comedy or a comedy about two best friends. The film is dependent on stray jokes scoring, like the drones flying around the mogul’s corporate headquarters or Hayek’s bitchy lines: “My head is not little. It’s just that my breasts are humongous.” Also with Billy Porter, Jennifer Coolidge, Ari Graynor, Karan Soni, Jessica St. Clair, Jacob Latimore, Ryan Hansen, Jimmy O. Yang, and an uncredited Lisa Kudrow.
Little Women (PG) Even intolerant partisans of Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 movie will have to admit that this new version is really good. Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel plunks us down in the middle of the story and uses flashbacks to tell the first part. This allows Gerwig to juxtapose different scenes to good effect, and even better, to cast Jo (Saoirse Ronan) as the New York writer who finally finds success by mimicking Alcott’s life story and writing about her sisters. All this freshens the story without going so far as a postmodern riff on the 19th-century book. The mix of personalities among the actors means the performances add up to more than the sum of their considerable parts, with Ronan’s rambunctiousness playing off Emma Watson’s cool radiance (as Meg) and Florence Pugh’s willfulness and exuberance (as Amy, who is handled in much greater depth here than in other versions of this story). Gerwig’s fidelity to the written word becomes something moving here. Also with Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern, Eliza Scanlen, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, Louis Garrel, James Norton, Chris Cooper, and Meryl Streep.
1917 (R) Remarkable though this is in stretches, this isn’t anything close to the best movie of the year. Sam Mendes’ World War I film stars Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay as two British lance corporals sent on a dangerous mission to relay a message to call off an attack by their own forces. The film is edited to look like a single unbroken take, and Mendes uses the tactic to come up with some remarkable incidents like one of the soldiers running down the British line perpendicular to the direction of the charging soldiers. It’s technically dazzling, yet Mendes never quite goes beyond his storytelling gimmick to bring home the emotional cost of war. This bland tribute to military heroism and the twilight of the British Empire is a war film for Downton Abbey fans. That doesn’t make it a great film. Also with Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, Richard Madden, Daniel Mays, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Pain and Glory (R) This superior effort from Pedro Almodóvar stars Antonio Banderas as an extremely Almodóvar-like world-famous filmmaker who looks back on his childhood while dealing with physical ailments that have stopped him from making films. The movie has two great scenes, first when the director pens an anguished autobiographical monologue about a heroin-addicted boyfriend for an actor friend (Asier Etxeandia) to deliver, and then when the boyfriend in question (Leonardo Sbaraglia) happens to be at the performance and reunites with the filmmaker. Banderas’ performance reminds you of what a great actor he was for Almodóvar, showing the shrinking of a man holed up in his Madrid mansion with his books and artworks as well as a guy who’s too ashamed to tell his recovering heroin addict friends that he’s on the stuff himself to alleviate his pain. The layer of metafiction as the protagonist recovers his health enough to make films gives this the feel of an intricate puzzle. Also with Penélope Cruz, Nora Navas, César Vicente, Asier Flores, Cecilia Roth, Susi Sánchez, and Julieta Serrano.
Parasite (R) This delirious, dark Korean farce helps make a case for Bong Joon-ho as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time — not today, all time. It’s about a family named Kim that lives in urban squalor until their teenage son (Choi Woo-shik) fakes his way into a job as an English tutor to a wealthy family’s daughter. He then conspires with the rest of his family (Song Kang-ho, Jang Hye-jin, and Park So-dam) to get the rich family to fire the rest of their domestic help and install the other Kims in those jobs, with everyone pretending not to know one another. Bong pulls some dazzlingly dexterous comedy from the Kims operating beneath the notice of their employers, with help from great comic performances across the board from his cast, and he takes the film into darker territory with one of the great “oh my God” plot twists in this year’s movies. The film’s indictment of capitalist society is savage, compassionate, and terribly funny. Also with Lee Sun-kyun, Jo Yeo-jeong, Jung Ji-so, Jung Hyun-jun, Lee Jeong-eun, Park Myeong-hoon, and Park Seo-joon.
Richard Jewell (R) As the real-life security guard who was wrongly accused of planting a bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Paul Walter Hauser does admirable work portraying a law-and-order type who is a hero precisely because he’s a pain in the ass. It’s too bad that director Clint Eastwood uses him to pen an angry screed about how the FBI and the press are the enemies of us all. Cardboard villains abound here, and the whole thing suffers from a lack of energy like too many of Eastwood’s recent films. If this is what we can look forward to from him, he can’t retire soon enough. Also with Sam Rockwell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Nina Arianda, Ian Gomez, and Kathy Bates.
Sarileru Neekevvaru (NR) This Indian action film stars Mahesh Babu as an army officer deployed to a dangerous area to keep the country safe from foreign threats. Also with Aadhi, Vennela Kishore, Vijayshanti, Subbaraju, and Rashmika Mandanna.
The Sonata (NR) Freya Tingley stars in this horror film as a professional violinist who starts to unravel while going through the inheritance left her by her father. Also with Simon Abkarian, James Faulkner, Catherine Schaub-Abkarian, and the late Rutger Hauer.
Spies in Disguise (PG) It’s not saying much to call this the best film that Blue Sky Animation has ever made, but it did make me laugh out loud on occasion. A superspy (voiced by Will Smith) finds himself having to work with a tech geek (voiced by Tom Holland) who advocates using his nonlethal gadgets to achieve his aims without hurting people. When the spy is framed as a traitor, he tests out one of the gadgets and is turned into a pigeon. The metamorphosis works better than it should. The movie plays the James Bond-like gadgetry for laughs better than other animated films like the Despicable Me series has done. Additional voices by Rashida Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Rachel Brosnahan, Karen Gillan, DJ Khaled, Masi Oka, and Reba McEntire.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (PG-13) For reasons that are never fully explained, Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) returns from the dead and quickly becomes the subject of manhunts by both the good guys and by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who wants to protect his own power. The problems here seem to stem from Palpatine, who is as uninteresting as he was 36 years ago in Return of the Jedi. His attempt to turn Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the Dark Side falls flat, and the massing of forces against him is weak compared with the equivalent scene in Avengers: Endgame. The movie does have a lightsaber duel on a wrecked spaceship with both combatants being soaked by ocean surf, but it suffers in director/co-writer J.J. Abrams’ rush to get through the proceedings. Also with John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Ackie, Kelly Marie Tran, Billie Lourd, Dominic Monaghan, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Billy Dee Williams.
Uncut Gems (R) Not bad by any stretch, but it got on my nerves. Adam Sandler plays a scuzzy jeweller in New York’s Diamond District who comes into possession of a rare uncut black opal and tries to sell it to NBA superstar Kevin Garnett (who portrays himself — brilliantly, too) over a frantic few days to pay off his numerous debts. Writer-directors Josh and Benny Safdie know how to fashion thrillers about desperate New Yorkers running pell-mell over the city, but their main character doesn’t just have a void at his center, he is the void. While Sandler disappears into this role, he and the filmmakers share in the blame of turning this character into a one-note gambling addict who never considers the possibility that any of his schemes might fail. I recommend that you see it, even though I don’t like it very much. Also with Idina Menzel, Julia Fox, Eric Bogosian, LaKeith Stanfield, Keith Williams Richards, Tommy Kominik, Mike Francesa, Judd Hirsch, and The Weeknd.
Underwater (PG-13) This movie isn’t sure whether it wants to be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Poseidon Adventure, Alien, or Gravity, but it’s watchable thanks to Kristen Stewart. Sporting a bleached buzz cut, she plays a mechanical engineer working on an oil drill seven miles underneath the ocean surface when it’s suddenly compromised by causes unknown. The character beats are less convincing than the bits of science that director William Eubank and his writers drop on us about the extreme water pressure on the ocean floor. If they had concentrated on that instead of veering off into dopey plots about merfolk, this might have been good. Also with Vincent Cassel, John Gallagher Jr., Jessica Henwick, Mamoudou Athie, Gunner Wright, and T.J. Miller.
Waves (R) Trey Edward Shults ditches the rigor and austerity of his horror film It Comes at Night for a return to an out-of-control quality in telling the story of a middle-class black teenager (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) whose debilitating high-school wrestling injury sends him on a downward spiral. Shults goes for sensory overload in capturing the kid’s adolescent hormones, and the result is comparable to Barry Jenkins’ films in its lyricism. Harrison is good, as is Sterling K. Brown as a father who has even less idea than his son about how to cope with his son’s athletic career ending. Still, the film is stolen away by Taylor Russell as the kid’s sister, who takes over the film’s second half as a girl who has to find her own way in the aftermath of her brother’s tragedy. Also with Alexa Demie, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Clifton Collins Jr., Neal Huff, Harmony Korine, and Lucas Hedges.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Apparition (NR) This horror film is about a group of people who experience dire consequences when using a smartphone app that allows them to talk to the dead. Starring Mena Suvari, Jon Abrahams, Annalisa Cochrane, Grayson Russell, Megan West, and Kevin Pollak.
The Dawn (NR) This horror film stars Devanny Pinn as a young woman living in a convent who’s haunted by the demons that drove her father to murder her family. Also with Stacey Dash, Jonathan Bennett, Teilor Grubbs, Susan Slaughter, Scott C. Roe, Amanda Day, Rachel Grubb, David Goryl, and Heather Wynters.
Inherit the Viper (R) This crime thriller is about three siblings (Josh Hartnett, Margarita Levieva, and Owen Teague) trying to avoid the violence that comes with being opioid dealers in the Appalachians. Also with Valorie Curry, Dash Mihok, Brad Henke, Chandler Riggs, and Bruce Dern.
Reality Queen! (NR) This comedy is about a spoiled heiress (Julia Faye West) who uses a reality TV show to prove that she is a person of substance. Also with Denise Richards, Mike Tyson, Kate Orsini, Charles Fleischer, and the late John Witherspoon.
