OPENING
Accidental Texan (PG-13) Mark Lambert Bristol’s comedy is about an itinerant teen (Rudy Pankow) and an old wildcatter (Thomas Haden Church) who hatch a plan to take revenge on the corrupt oil industry. Also with Carrie-Anne Moss, AnnaClare Hicks, David DeLao, Brad Leland, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Jake Ryan, and Bruce Dern. (Opens Friday)
Agastya — Chapter 1 (NR) This Nepalese drama stars Saugat Malla as a mentally disturbed homeless man whose family tries to find him. Also with Najir Husen, Malika Mahat, Nischal Basnet, and Pramod Agrahari. (Opens Friday at Cinépolis Euless)
American Dreamer (NR) Peter Dinklage stars in this comedy as an economics professor who seeks a way out of his middling existence. Also with Shirley MacLaine, Danny Glover, Danny Pudi, Kimberly Quinn, Rebecca Olson, Donald Heng, and Matt Dillon. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Ballad of Davy Crockett (NR) This biographical film stars William Moseley as the American pioneer. Also with Colm Meaney, Jesse Hutch, Valerie Jane Parker, Wyatt Parker, and Tommy Kramer. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Bheema (NR) Duniya Vijay writes, directs, and stars in this Indian film about a gang boss who goes on a personal quest for revenge. Also with Ashwini, Kalyanee Raju, Gili Gili Chandru, and Black Dragon Manju. (Opens Friday)
Cabrini (PG-13) Cristiana Dell’Anna stars in this biography of the 19th century Italian nun who crusades for housing for the homeless in New York City. Also with Giancarlo Giannini, David Morse, Jeremy Bobb, Federico Castelluccio, Sean Cullen, and John Lithgow. (Opens Friday)
Call Me Dancer (NR) Pip Gilmour and Leslie Shampaine’s documentary profiles Manish Chauhan, a street kid from Mumbai with dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Freud’s Last Session (PG-13) Thirty years after he portrayed C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, Anthony Hopkins portrays Lewis’ adversary in this low-temperature historical drama based on a meeting that may or may not have happened in real life. He plays a dying Sigmund Freud in exile in London in 1939, who receives the Oxford don Lewis (Matthew Goode). Freud’s experiences with the Holocaust and losing his daughter and grandson to illness have taught him that there can’t be a God, while Lewis’ experiences in the foxholes of World War I have taught him that there must be one. The professional quality of the acting and the writing (by director Matthew Brown, based on his own stage play) can’t quite convince us that anything is really at stake here. Chalk up another British drama that’s as dull and gray as a rainy English day. Also with Orla Brady, Jodi Balfour, Liv Lisa Fries, Pádraic Delaney, Tarek Bishara, Rhys Mannion, Peter Warnock, Jeremy Northam, and Stephen Campbell Moore. (Re-opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Gaami (NR) This Indian film stars Vishwak Sen as a wounded warrior who treks deep into the Himalayas to find a cure for his ailment. Also with Chandini Chowdary, Abhinaya, Harika Pedda, Mohammad Samad, Rajnish, and Sharath Kumar. (Opens Friday)
Imaginary (PG-13) This horror film stars DeWanda Wise as a woman who returns to her childhood home and finds her imaginary friend still haunting it. Also with Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Veronica Falcón, and Betty Buckley. (Opens Friday)
Kung Fu Panda 4 (PG) If this is the last installment of the animated series, it’s ending at the right time. Po (voiced by Jack Black) has to choose a successor for the title of Dragon Warrior while also teaming up with a street criminal of a fox (voiced by Awkwafina) to take down a villainous chameleon (voiced by Viola Davis) who wishes to steal the souls and kung fu skills of every villain Po has ever faced. The martial arts sequences are still well-filmed and capture stunts that couldn’t be done by human performers, but the wit in the script and the humor in the original premise have leaked away over the years. The film still has a few cinematic references to Stephen Chow’s films and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but it’s time for the warrior panda to lay down his weapons and spend his retirement eating all the dumplings he wants. Additional voices by Dustin Hoffman, Bryan Cranston, James Hong, Ian McShane, Lori Tan Chinn, Ronny Chieng, Seth Rogen, Harry Shum Jr., and Ke Huy Quan. (Opens Friday)
Night Shift NR) This horror film stars Phoebe Tonkin as a woman who suspects that the remote motel where she works might be haunted. Also with Lamorne Morris, Madison Hu, Christopher Denham, and Patrick Fischler. (Opens Friday)
The Piper (NR) Charlotte Hope stars in this horror film as a young composer assigned to complete her recently deceased mentor’s concerto. Also with Kate Nichols, Alexis Rodney, Oliver Savell, Pippa Winslow, and the late Julian Sands. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Premalu (NR) This Malayalam-language romantic comedy stars Naslen K. Gafoor as a college student carrying a torch for his platonic friend (Mamitha Baiju). Also with Shyam Mohan, Sangeeth Prathap, Akhila Bhargavan, Meenakshi Raveendran, Althaf Salim, Mathew Thomas, and Syam Pushkaran. (Opens Friday)
Shaitaan (NR) Ajay Devgn stars in this Indian horror film as a man battling the forces of evil. Also with Madhavan, Janki Bodiwala, Jyotika, Anngad Raaj, and Pallak Lalwani. (Opens Friday)
YOLO (NR) Jia Ling directs and stars in this Chinese drama as a shut-in case who seeks to cure herself by taking boxing lessons. Also with Lei Jiayin, Zhang Xiaofei, Zhao Haiyan, Zhang Qi, and Zhu Tianfu. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
American Fiction (R) One of the year’s funniest comedies is this delectable bit of Black literary satire based on Percival Everett’s Erasure. Jeffrey Wright plays a struggling novelist who adopts a pseudonym and writes a novel filled with the most insulting stereotypes of Black people he can think of, then is chagrined to see it become a huge hit among white readers. First-time filmmaker Cord Jefferson composes scads of smart, snappy dialogue about Black artists trying to reach white audiences and our antihero impersonating some uneducated street thug. Jefferson does write himself into a corner — the movie seems to leave no room for Black creators to be successful without selling out — but he gets career performances out of Wright and Sterling K. Brown as a gay brother, and his movie raises enough laughs to make us yearn for Jefferson’s next piece of fiction. Also with Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross, Adam Brody, John Ortiz, Keith David, Miriam Shor, Michael Cyril Creighton, Patrick Fischler, Issa Rae, and Leslie Uggams.
Anatomy of a Fall (R) If you see this Best Picture nominee from France with a companion, the two of you will have some hot topics of discussion coming out of it. Sandra Hüller portrays a famous German writer in France who’s arrested and indicted for the death of her French husband (Samuel Theis) in a fall at their chalet in the Alps. Much like Anatomy of a Murder, this is a film where a homicide trial exposes only ambiguities instead of hard facts. Much like Decision to Leave, the search for truth is complicated by slippery language, as the protagonist is more comfortable in English than in French, so much of the movie is in our language. Director/co-writer Justine Triet does superbly to take in the noise surrounding the trial and lay bombshell revelations left and right until we don’t know where to turn. It’s a vivid portrait of an unhappy marriage and the wreckage it leaves behind. Also with Milo Machado Graner, Swann Artaud, Antoine Reinartz, Jehnny Beth, Anne Rotger, Saadia Bentaieb, and Sophie Fillières.
Argylle (PG-13) I really hope Taylor Swift didn’t write this action-comedy that’s overlong and not as clever as it thinks it is. Bryce Dallas Howard stars as a famous spy novelist whose quiet life in Colorado is upended when the plot of one her novels comes true in real life, and a bumbling agent (Sam Rockwell) has to prevent her from being assassinated. A couple of the plot developments in the middle of the piece are truly ingenious, but the action sequences are goofy where they were funny in previous films by director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, the Kingsmen films). The cheesy scenes from the novels aren’t handled any differently from the scenes with the terrified writer running for her life, the stacked supporting cast isn’t given enough to do, and even Rockwell seems off his best. The central conceit with the novelist being trapped in one of her own plots should have generated more laughs than it does. Also with Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Henry Cavill, Ariana DeBose, Jing Lusi, Stanley Morgan, Tomás Paredes, Sofia Boutella, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Richard E. Grant, and Dua Lipa.
Article 370 (NR) Mariyam Nafees stars in this Indian thriller as a pregnant woman trying to survive in the war-torn Kashmir region. Also with Ghazala Kaifee and Abdul Muqeet.
Barbie (PG-13) This philosophical statement about being a woman in present-day society is likely the strangest Hollywood blockbuster you’ll see all year, and much more than the crass corporate product it could have been. A perfectly pitched Margot Robbie plays a Barbie doll who has to travel from Barbie Land to our reality to discover why she’s having random thoughts about death. When Ken (Ryan Gosling) follows her into our reality, he likes the sight of men running everything and tries to turn Barbie Land into another patriarchy. All this takes place against a backdrop that’s wholly committed to Barbie-ness, with streets lined with life-size Barbie Dream Houses and more pink than you’ve ever seen in your life. If the storytelling loses a bit in its last third, the loose ends fit a story about the messiness of being a woman (or a man). This girly film is also thoughtful, complex, and funny, and will ensure that you never look at a Barbie doll the same way again. Also with America Ferrera, Arianna Greenblatt, Emma Mackey, Issa Rae, Beanie Feldstein, Simu Liu, Michael Cera, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Sharon Rooney, Ritu Arya, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, Emerald Fennell, Scott Evans, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Rhea Perlman, and John Cena. Narrated by Helen Mirren.
The Beekeeper (R) As Jason Statham-shooting-people movies go, this one’s considerably less fun than some of the others. He plays a retired U.S. government hit man-turned-beekeeper who comes out of retirement after his employer (Phylicia Rashad) is scammed out of her life savings and kills herself. The best Statham is the one who’s allowed to flash his sense of humor, and director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) is entirely the wrong filmmaker to bring that out. Our hero kills a ton of bystanders without a thought for the collateral damage, and the film doesn’t have the wit to consider what that means. Weirdly, the only energy comes from Josh Hutcherson as the bratty tech CEO behind it all who radiates scorn for all the tougher and more powerful people around him. Also with Emmy Raver-Lampman, Bobby Naderi, David Witts, Taylor James, Don Gilet, Enzo Cilenti, Jemma Redgrave, Minnie Driver, and Jeremy Irons.
Bob Marley: One Love (PG-13) This biography only pays lip service to the idea that Bob Marley might have been a complicated human being, and instead reduces him to a saintly messenger of peace and love. Kingsley Ben-Adir plays the reggae music legend during a three-year span of his life that includes his survival of an assassination attempt in Jamaica and his cancer diagnosis. The British actor from One Night in Miami and Barbie, Ben-Adir does more than imitate Marley’s onstage mannerisms and Jamaican accent. While his singing is dubbed by Stephen Marley, he conveys the sense of a musician listening to his colleagues and reacting to them. Sadly, the Marley family’s involvement means that the film glosses over the man’s capacity for physical violence and extramarital affairs. Also with Lashana Lynch, Tosin Cole, Anthony Welsh, James Norton, Umi Myers, Alexx A-Game, Naomi Cowan, Micheal Ward, and Michael Gandolfini.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Hashira Training (R) The ratio of flashback to new story is rather too high for me. It’s probably too high for you unless you’re already a fan of this anime series. Following the events of Swordsmith Village and Mugen Train, this latest chapter finds its hero (voiced by Natsuki Hanae and Zach Aguilar) trying to turn his demon sister (voiced by Akari Kitō and Abby Trott) back into a human. More than an hour of this 104-minute film retraces the events of previous installments of the saga. What is new here is worth taking in, especially for fans of the series. Everybody else might want to find a different starting place to get into this series. Additional voices by Kengo Kawanishi, Griffin Burns, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Zeno Robinson, Kana Hanazawa, Kira Buckland, Toshio Furukawa, Koichi Yamadera, and Christopher Corey Smith.
Drive-Away Dolls (R) This uneven lesbian caper film just barely gets by on its charm. Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan play friends in 1999 who rent the wrong car for their road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee and find themselves being chased by hit men who want to recover what’s hidden in the automobile. For a movie that only runs 82 minutes, the film has a lot of padding, with acid-trip visuals and a flimsy plot that connects to a right-wing Christian U.S. Senator (Matt Damon). Most of the starry supporting cast ends up wasted, with the notable exception of Beanie Feldstein as a badass Philly cop. Good thing the two lead actresses have enough chemistry that it makes sense when the heroines’ platonic friendship turns not-so-platonic. If this movie is just a vibe, it’s not an unpleasant one. Also with Colman Domingo, Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson, Bill Camp, Pedro Pascal, and an uncredited Miley Cyrus.
Dune: Part Two (PG-13) Not only a better movie than the first part, this sequel makes the original look better in retrospect. Timothée Chalamet reprises his role as the scion of a fallen family who takes up with revolutionaries to help them overthrow their oppressors, while also wrestling with the widely held belief that he’s the chosen one sent to liberate them. The supporting characters come off as more rounded, and while Chalamet is swallowed up for much of the film, he takes charge unambiguously and disturbingly when he goes full cult leader to rally the natives in their climactic battle. Denis Villeneuve does not disappoint in the movie’s two big set pieces, and the movie says some keen things about the advantages and booby traps of religious faith. The film features great turns by Austin Butler as a shaven-headed psychopathic villain and Zendaya as the love interest who is cruelly betrayed. Also with Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Josh Brolin, Léa Seydoux, Charlotte Rampling, Stellan Skarsgård, Roger Yuan, Babs Olusanmokun, and an uncredited Anya Taylor-Joy.
Fighter (NR) This Indian version of Top Gun makes the 1983 Hollywood film look like a marvel of subtlety. Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone play air force pilots who help form a new elite unit to take down Pakistani terrorists. At the very least director/co-writer Siddharth Anand could give us some cool-looking scenes of aerial combat, but no such luck. The story beats are things you’ve seen from a thousand better Western movies, and the movie is so jingoistic that it literally waves the Indian flag in our faces. Surely we could find an Indian war film that doesn’t hammer us with patriotism. Also with Anil Kapoor, Rishabh Sawhney, Karan Singh Grover, Akshay Oberoi, Akarsh Alagh, Vinay Varma, Sanjeev Jaiswal, and Birol Tarkan Yildiz.
Guadalupe: Mother of Humanity (NR) Andrés Garrigó and Pablo Moreno’s documentary depicts the 16th-century apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego.
The Holdovers (R) Paul Giamatti seems to do his best acting for Alexander Payne, and this may be the performance of his career. He portrays a schoolteacher in 1970 who’s stuck babysitting the handful of students at his ritzy all-male New England prep school who have nowhere to go over Christmas break. Screenwriter David Hemingson does an excellent job of capturing the protagonist’s erudite voice as he insults his students’ intelligence and can’t get through a conversation without referencing the Peloponnesian War. When only one student (Dominic Sessa) is left on campus, the movie becomes a piercing but also quite funny portrait of the loneliness of the teacher, the student, and the cafeteria worker (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who has lost her son in Vietnam. Randolph and the newcomer Sessa are both excellent, but Giamatti is fantastic as the man learning to appreciate things beyond the job he hates but has clung to tenaciously. Also with Carrie Preston, Brady Heppner, Ian Dolley, Michael Provost, Naheem Garcia, Gillian Vigman, Stephen Thorne, Andrew Garman, and Tate Donovan.
Madame Web (PG-13) Frustrating, because you can so easily see the better movie that this could have been. Dakota Johnson stars in this superhero movie as an EMT who acquires the ability to foretell danger and has to save three teenage girls (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) from a supervillain (Tahar Rahim) who’s trying to kill them. There’s some decent chemistry among the three girls who are slated to become superheroes themselves, but Johnson is hopeless whenever she’s trying to be funny about her predicament, and the movie’s hundreds of plot holes make it feel like something carelessly tossed together. This blockbuster is weird, but not quite weird enough to be interesting. Also with Mike Epps, Zosia Mamet, José María Yazpik, Kerry Bishé, Adam Scott, and Emma Roberts.
Migration (PG) This rather perfunctory animated film is about a family of mallards that migrate south to Jamaica after the overprotective father (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) has prevented his ducklings from leaving the pond. Truly nothing works here, not the scenes where the ducks finally take flight, not the detour when they hit a big city, and not the run-in with an evil chef who wants to serve them up with orange sauce. The amount of voice talent in the cast makes this disappointment all the sharper. The film is from Illumination Entertainment, and this film is even less memorable than some of the Despicable Me sequels. The feature comes packaged with a short film that spins off from Despicable Me, which only reminds us that the studio is capable of better. Additional voices by Elizabeth Banks, Tresi Gazal, Caspar Jennings, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, Carol Kane, Isabela Merced, and Danny DeVito.
Night Swim (PG-13) This horror film has the germ of an interesting idea but falls apart long before the end. A family moves into a suburban house that has a swimming pool that kills people. The interesting part is that the father (Wyatt Russell) is a baseball star who’s been struck down by multiple sclerosis, and he doesn’t want to leave because the water in the pool miraculously heals him. Bryce McGuire adapts this from his own short film, and though the aforementioned subplot is a nice stroke, the film isn’t near well-thought-out enough to transcend its clunky gimmick. Also with Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Nancy Lenehan, Ben Sinclair, Jodi Long, Eddie Martinez, and Kerry Condon.
Operation Valentine (NR) This Indian thriller is based on the real-life retaliatory strikes for the Pulwama terrorist attack. Starring Varun Tej, Manushi Chhillar, Navdeep, and Ruhani Sharma.
Oppenheimer (R) This three-hour biographical epic aims to evoke a single mood of guilt-wracked despair, and darned if Christopher Nolan doesn’t almost pull it off. Around the story of how J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) takes charge of the Manhattan project and builds the atomic bomb that ends the war, there are two interlocking framing stories about him trying to renew his security clearance while his former boss Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) tries to be confirmed as the U.S. Commerce Secretary. Nolan gives us precious little time to catch our breath from the start as he toggles between timelines while the supporting characters around Oppenheimer largely get lost. Still, the framing stories snap together in a marvelous way, and the successful atomic bomb test is a splendid set piece. Inside this movie is a better, smaller film that’s trying to get out. Also with Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Alden Ehrenreich, Josh Hartnett, Jason Clarke, Tony Goldwyn, Benny Safdie, James D’Arcy, Harry Groener, Tom Conti, David Krumholtz, Matthias Schweighöfer, Alex Wolff, Michael Angarano, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Josh Peck, Jack Quaid, Gustaf Skarsgård, James Remar, Olivia Thirlby, Matthew Modine, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, and Gary Oldman.
Ordinary Angels (PG) Ordinary movie. Hilary Swank stars as Sharon Stevens, the real-life alcoholic hairdresser from Kentucky who gained the strength to pull out of her addiction by helping a widowed father (Alan Ritchson) whose 5-year-old daughter (Emily Mitchell) direly needed a life-saving liver transplant. The script is by Oscar-nominated actress Meg Tilly and much-feted director Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret), but they can’t break out of the template of inspirational dramas. Considering the wealth of talent that went into this Christian film, you’d expect better than this. Also with Amy Acker, Tamala Jones, Drew Powell, Skywalker Hughes, Nancy Sorel, and Nancy Travis.
Poor Things (R) This zany feminist take on the Frankenstein story has Emma Stone delivering the line, “I will keep my new life and my lovely old clitoris, thank you.” She plays a Victorian Englishwoman who is brought back to life after committing suicide, with her unborn baby’s brain transplanted into her body. Stone reunites with The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos, and this has the weirdness of some of his earlier Greek films. Stone gives her strangest and possibly greatest performance here, initially walking without control of her limbs and then doing a bizarre dance number in a Lisbon nightclub, and her performance makes this sex-positive story of a woman who fucks her way to wisdom and enlightenment into something credible. This lurid fantasia of sexual liberation packs some high comedy. Also with Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Yousseff, Jerrod Carmichael, Suzy Bemba, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Hanna Schygulla, Christopher Abbott, and Margaret Qualley.
Stopmotion (R) This horror movie cannily harnesses the obsessiveness of filmmakers to its own ends. Aisling Franciosi plays an English stop-motion animator who spirals into madness as she embarks on her own horror film project, with a story by a little girl (Caoilinn Springall) who may or may not be a figment of her own imagination. The way her film bleeds into her reality offers shades of Repulsion, Black Swan, and The Blair Witch Project. First-time feature director Robert Morgan has an extensive background in animation and makes the film within the film an unnerving piece, especially with its wax heroine’s face frozen into a rictus of fear. Yet the live-action parts of the movie are no less harrowing thanks to the performance of Franciosi, especially during an unforgettable scene when she mutilates her leg because she’s convinced a foreign object is in there. The convulsive visuals make for a horror movie of rare power. Also with Stella Gonet, Tom York, Therica Wilson-Read, and James Swanton.
Trolls Band Together (PG) At this point, reuniting with *NSYNC is the best career move possible for Justin Timberlake. In this most watchable of the Trolls movies, his Branch is discovered to have four long-lost brothers (voiced by Eric André, Troye Sivan, Daveed Diggs, and Kid Cudi) with whom he used to be in a boy band. His attempt to save one of them leads Poppy (voiced by Anna Kendrick) to discover her own separated-at-birth sister (voiced by Camila Cabello), and Tiny Diamond (voiced by Kenan Thompson) asks, “Am I the only one without a long-lost sibling?” The movie doesn’t belabor any of its points too heavily and gives us an enjoyable batch of cover songs plus the first original *NSYNC song (“Better Place”) in more than 20 years. Nostalgia has given us worse than this. Additional voices by Amy Schumer, Andrew Rannells, Zooey Deschanel, Patti Harrison, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kunal Nayyar, Zosia Mamet, RuPaul, Ron Funches, Jungkook, Anderson .Paak, Lance Bass, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, and Chris Kirkpatrick.
Wonka (PG) Timothée Chalamet’s performance as a younger version of Roald Dahl’s candymaker is more than good enough to carry this prequel through its wobblier patches. He arrives in the big city ready to make chocolate but instead is turned into an indentured servant by a shady landlady (Olivia Colman) and kept out of business by a cartel of evil chocolatiers (Paterson Joseph, Mathew Baynton, and Matt Lucas). Director/co-writer Paul King (from the Paddington movies) brings a much-welcomed light touch to the material, and the Oompa-Loompa (Hugh Grant) is handled about as dexterously as modern audiences could hope for. When Willy Wonka finally opens his chocolate shop and welcomes in his customers by singing “A World of Your Own,” that’s when the film truly takes on a magical quality. Also with Calah Lane, Tom Davis, Keegan-Michael Key, Jim Carter, Natasha Rothwell, Rich Fulcher, Rakhee Thakrar, Freya Parker, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Simon Farnaby, Rowan Atkinson, and Sally Hawkins.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Baltimore (NR) Also entitled Rose’s War, this biographical drama stars Imogen Poots as a wealthy 20th-century American socialite who rejects her upbringing and joins the fight for Irish independence. Also with Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Lewis Brophy, Jack Meade, Patrick Martins, John Kavanagh, Andrea Irvine, and Dermot Crowley.
Io Capitano (NR) Nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature, Matteo Garrone’s drama is about two Senegalese boys (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall) who undergo great trials and tribulations to migrate to Italy. Also with Issaka Sawadogo, Hichem Yacoubi, Khady Sy, Doodou Sagna, Oumar Diaw, and Bamar Kané.
Perfect Days (PG) Nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature, Wim Wenders’ Japanese film stars Kōji Yakusho (Shall We Dance?) as a Tokyo man who finds spiritual meaning in cleaning the city’s public toilets. Also with Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, and Min Tanaka.
Tótem (NR) The latest film by Lila Avilés (The Chambermaid) is about a Mexican girl (Naíma Sentíes) who slowly learns the truth about her family during her 7th birthday party. Also with Montserrat Marañon, Marisol Gasé, Saori Gurza, Mateo García, Teresa Sánchez, Iazua Larios, Alberto Amador, and Juan Francisco Maldonado.
Who Can See Forever (NR) Josh Sliffe’s documentary profiles Sam Beam, the musician behind Iron & Wine.
