OPENING
Beast (NR) This Indian action-comedy stars Vijay as a spy who becomes a hostage when terrorists take over a shopping mall in Chennai. Also with Pooja Hegde, Selvaraghavan, Yogi Babu, and Redin Kingsley. (Opens Wednesday)
Dual (R) This science fiction-comedy stars Karen Gillan as a woman who’s ordered by a court to fight her genetic clone to the death. Also with Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale, Kristofer Gummerus, and Theo James. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Father Stu (R) Mark Wahlberg stars in this drama based on the life of Fr. Stuart Long, a self-destructive boxer who found salvation in the priesthood. Also with Mel Gibson, Jacki Weaver, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Annet Mahendru, Winter Ave Zoli, Teresa Ruiz, and Ned Bellamy. (Opens Wednesday)
K.G.F.: Chapter 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2018 period action film stars Yash as a hero who fights against the exploitation of India’s gold miners. Also with Sanjay Dutt, Srinidhi Shetty, Raveena Tandon, Prakash Raj, Ramachandra Raju, Achyuth Kumar, and Rao Ramesh. (Opens Friday)
Memoria (PG) Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes his English-language debut about a Scottish woman (Tilda Swinton) who experiences a strange sensory syndrome while traveling in Colombia. Also with Daniel Giménez Cacho, Elkín Díaz, Juan Pablo Urrego, and Jeanne Balibar. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Room 203 (NR) This horror film stars Francesca Wuereb and Viktoria Vinyarskaya as roommates who are terrorized by the evil spirits lurking in their new apartment. Also with Eric Wiegand, Scott Gremillion, Rick LaCour, Quinn Nehr, Timothy McKinney, and Cameron Inman. (Opens Friday at América Cinemas Gran Plaza)
To Olivia (NR) Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes star in this biographical drama about the tumultuous marriage between children’s author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal. Also with Bobby O’Neill, Michael Jibson, Isabella Jonsson, Darcey Ewart, Geoffrey Palmer, and Conleth Hill. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
Ambulance (R) Michael Bay still makes movies the same way, with cameras wheeling around the actors when not photographing them from low, heroic angles. Staying true to his style is either a mark of artistic integrity or a sign that he has run out of ideas. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays a hard-up Marine veteran who turns to his shady adoptive brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) for a loan, only to be roped into acting as getaway driver for a bank robbery, then hijacking an ambulance with an EMT (Eiza González) and a wounded cop on board. This is a remake of a similarly titled 2005 Danish thriller, and it goes bigger in all the wrong ways, losing the original’s focus and brevity in favor of making every shot look like it’s from a TV commercial. Even the meatheads in the audience have moved on to other things. Also with Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell, Cedric Sanders, Wale, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and A Martinez.
The Batman (PG-13) This reboot’s biggest achievement might just be forcing us to take the Riddler (Paul Dano) seriously as a villain. Robert Pattinson takes over the role of Bruce Wayne as he deals with a villain who murders Gotham’s fantastically corrupt city officials and leaves behind clues and severed body parts. Director/co-writer Matt Reeves does his finest work to date, especially with a great car chase when the Penguin (Colin Farrell, unrecognizable under a prosthetic fat suit) causes a chain-reaction pileup to deter the pursuing Batman. The film has terrific supporting turns from Farrell, John Turturro as an icy mob boss, and Zoë Kravitz as a slinky bisexual Catwoman pursuing a grudge. Still, it’s the Riddler who captures your attention as an incel torturer with a gruesome sense of humor who undermines faith in Gotham’s institutions that makes this a Batman movie for our time. Also with Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, Jayme Lawson, Peter McDonald, Con O’Neill, Alex Ferns, Rupert Penry-Jones, Charlie Carver, Max Carver, Barry Keoghan, and Peter Sarsgaard.
The Contractor (R) Chris Pine stars in this thriller as a U.S. Special Forces soldier who joins a private contracting firm. Also with GIllian Jacobs, Ben Foster, Eddie Marsan, Florian Munteanu, Fares Fares, Nina Hoss, Amira Casar, and Kiefer Sutherland.
Dog (PG-13) We should give Channing Tatum credit for trying to make a comedy that’s more than just him and a cute dog. At the same time, he’s taken on more than he can handle. The star makes his directing debut (with Reid Carolin as co-director), portraying a traumatized Army Ranger veteran who’s tasked with transporting an even more traumatized war dog from the Pacific Northwest to its handler’s funeral in Arizona. The film wants to be a serious look at PTSD amid its hijinks with the animal tearing up furniture and chasing people. The writers aren’t afraid to portray the soldiers as less than saintly, which leads to the funniest set piece when the main character pretends to be a blind veteran to score himself a nice hotel room. The film also has a fine performance by former pro wrestler Kevin Nash as a veteran who takes care of animals. The material presents tonal challenges that are too much for these filmmakers, but there’s something here. Also with Q’orianka Kilcher, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Nicole LaLiberté, Aqueela Zoll, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Jane Adams.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (R) The Being John Malkovich of our generation. Michelle Yeoh stars in this surreal martial-arts drama as the owner of a Southern California laundromat who discovers the existence of an infinite number of parallel universes and has to access the skills of her more accomplished alternate selves to stop them from being destroyed. This film has the wackiest fight sequences since Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, as all the different characters instantly acquire kung fu proficiency at one point or another. The filmmaking team The Daniels (Swiss Army Man) stages all these scenes fantastically, working endless variations inside an IRS office building. Much like Scott Pilgrim, the brilliance eventually becomes exhausting, but the film deserves all kinds of props for their ambition and expanding the philosophy of martial-arts movies beyond the traditional Buddhist koans. Also with Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Tallie Medel, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff, Jenny Slate, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong.
Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie (PG-13) The “0” in the title indicates that this is a prequel to the story outlined in the manga series and its film adaptations. The film is about a boy (voiced by Megumi Ogata) who attends a special school for kids with superpowers, along with the spirit of a girl he loved (voiced by Kana Hanazawa), who haunts and protects him after being killed in a car accident. Some of the flashbacks are too sentimental for the movie’s good (a common failing in these Japanese anime films), but the film makes a good introduction to the environment and the characters that our hero works alongside. Additional voices by Koki Uchiyama, Tomokazu Seki, Yȗichi Nakamura, Marina Inoue, Shin’ichirô Miki, Aya Endô, Kotono Mitsuishi, Takahiro Sakurai, and Satoshi Hino.
The Lost City (PG-13) The stars are upstaged by the supporting players in this comic adventure-romance that has too little comedy. Sandra Bullock plays a best-selling romance novelist who is kidnapped by a bratty British billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) because he thinks she knows the location of a buried treasure on an island in the Atlantic that looks like a generic jungle set. The man who poses as a model on the cover of her books (Channing Tatum) pursues them in a mostly ineffectual attempt to rescue her. Radcliffe makes a funny, sputtering villain and Brad Pitt has a great time in a brief cameo as the ultra-manly operative who accompanies the cover model. A comedy about these two going up against each other would have been better than this one that spends too much time going into the characters’ backstories and has too few funny bits from the leads. The film runs out of power way before its ending. Also with Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Patti Harrison, Héctor Anibal, Thomas Forbes Johnson, Oscar Nuñez, Bowen Yang, and Stephen Lang.
Morbius (PG-13) Better than the reviews, which is to say this is just this side of watchable. Jared Leto stars in this superhero film about a Nobel-winning research biologist whose attempt to cure his own lethal blood disorder turns him into a vampire. The climax is limp and the antagonist (Matt Smith) goes too quickly from being the hero’s best friend to a power-drunk enemy, but the film goes down easily enough, and Leto’s macabre sense of humor helps distinguish him from the cookie-cutter nice guys who are often at the center of these movies. Smith is well-matched as a campy bad guy against the hero, too. Also with Adria Arjona, Tyrese Gibson, Al Madrigal, Jared Harris, Charlie Shotwell, and Michael Keaton.
RRR (NR) Released in Hindi- and Telugu-language versions, this Indian historical thriller is about a village vigilante (N.T. Rama Rao) and a soldier working for the British (Ram Charan) in 1920. The soldier takes up the task of catching the vigilante, but they eventually team up and fight the British Raj together. They aim to distribute British weapons to the Indian people, but why would they need weapons when these two guys slaughter about half the British Army by themselves? Director/co-writer S.S. Rajamouli tries to make every scene into some iconic badass moment for one or both of the heroes, and that’s just not how action thrillers are supposed to work. The laughable CGI doesn’t help, either. Also with Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Samuthirakani, Shriya Saran, Chatrapathi Sekhar, Makkarand Deshpande, Rahul Ramakrishna, Edward Sonnenblick, Olivia Morris, Ray Stevenson, and Alison Doody.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (PG) Running away from a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style rolling boulder, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) says, “I don’t want to die this way! It’s derivative!” How would that make it different from the rest of the movie? The doctor finds his way back to Earth for revenge on Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) and opens an interdimensional door that lets in Sonic’s ally Tails (voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessy) and enemy Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba). Why did this film need to be two hours long? It’s bright, loud, and colorful, and I can’t remember a single funny bit or a single salient trait about the main character. Taking your kids to this is like feeding them Chocolate Frosted Flakes; it’ll make them happy while you feel terrible about yourself. Also with James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Shemar Moore, Adam Pally, Tom Butler, Lee Majdoub, and Natasha Rothwell.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (PG-13) Fanservice done more or less right, this movie has Peter Parker (Tom Holland) trying to reverse time and instead creating portals to parallel universes where villains from other Spider-Man movies (Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Thomas Haden Church, Rhys Ifans, and Jamie Foxx) line up to fight him before realizing that he’s not the same Spider-Man that they faced earlier. The real reason they’re all brought together is so that all these great actors can get in the same room and bitch at each other, which they do to great comic effect. Peter does indeed pay a heavy price for messing with the time-space continuum, and if the storytelling only occasionally reaches the heights of Into the Spider-Verse, it does retcon some fixes for the previous movies about the web-slinger. Not a bad trick to make its predecessors seem worthier in retrospect. Also with Marisa Tomei, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Tony Revolori, Hannibal Buress, J.B. Smoove, Martin Starr, Angourie Rice, Benedict Wong, Charlie Cox, J.K. Simmons, Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire, and an uncredited Tom Hardy.
Uncharted (PG-13) Tom Holland’s lightness is about the only thing that keeps this action-adventure film watchable. He portrays a bartender and amateur treasure hunter who is recruited by an older man (Mark Wahlberg) who believes he possesses the key to finding a lost Spanish treasure. Based on the video game series of the same name, the film feels like it was cobbled together from rejected bits of the National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean films. Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) can at least cobble with some skill, but the whole affair feels half-assed. The only bit that brings a smile to your face is Holland showing off some flair tricks behind the bar. Also with Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Steven Waddington, Tiernan Jones, Rudy Pankow, and Pilou Asbæk.
X (R) Ti West does some of his best work in this trashy horror film about a Houston strip club owner (Martin Henderson) who takes a crew of actors and filmmakers to rural south Texas in 1979 to make their own porn film. They rent a boarding house at a ranch without telling the elderly owners (Stephen Ure and Mia Goth, both under heavy old-age makeup) what they’re doing, which turns out to be a big mistake. West indulges in some horror-movie tropes so old that you think he’s trolling us, as well as some ostentatious displays of technique. Still, he delivers some great slow-burn thrills like one where one of the young actresses (Goth again) is stalked by an alligator while skinny dipping in a pond. Goth does tremendous work in her double role as well. See this film in some low-rent theater with sticky floors to fully appreciate its disreputable thrills. Also with Kid Cudi, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, James Gaylyn, Simon Prast, and Jenna Ortega.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Agent Game (R) Jason Isaacs stars in this thriller as a CIA agent who becomes a fugitive after being framed for an interrogation subject’s death. Also with Mel Gibson, Katie Cassidy, Dermot Mulroney, Adan Canto, Annie Ilonzeh, Rhys Coiro, and Barkhad Abdi.
Aline (PG-13) Valérie Lemercier directs, co-writes, and stars in this biography of a singer who’s a lot like Céline Dion. Also with Sylvain Marcel, Danielle Fichaud, Roc Lafortune, Antoine Vezina, Pascale Desrochers, and Sonia Vachon.
As They Made Us (R) Mayim Bialik’s directing debut is this drama about a divorced mother (Dianna Agron) who tries to make peace with her dysfunctional family. Also with Dustin Hoffman, Simon Helberg, Charlie Weber, Julian Gant, and Candice Bergen.
Coast (NR) This drama is about a teenage girl (Ciara Bravo) whose life changes when a traveling rock band is stranded in her small town. Also with Melissa Leo, Cristela Alonzo, Mia Rose Frampton, Kane Ritchotte, Fatima Ptacek, Andres Velez, and Mia Xitlali.
