OPENING
Close to You (R) Elliot Page stars in this drama as a trans man who returns to his Ontario hometown after transitioning. Also with Wendy Crewson, Hilary Baack, Janet Porter, Daniel Maslany, Alex Paxton-Beesley, and Peter Outerbridge. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Consumed (NR) Devon Sawa and Courtney Halverson star in this horror film as a couple who battle a skin-eating monster in the wilderness. Also with Mark Famiglietti. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Deliverance (R) Lee Daniels’ horror film is about a family who discovers that their house may be a portal to Hell. Starring Mo’Nique, Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Anthony B. Jenkins, Caleb McLaughlin, Demi Singleton, Omar Epps, and Glenn Close. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Dìdi (R) Sean Wang’s autobiographical film stars Izaac Wang as a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy coming of age in the summer of 2008. Also with Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Zhang Li Hua, Raul Dial, Joshua Hankerson, Chiron Cillia Denk, Sunil Maurillo, and Joziah Lagonoy. (Opens Friday)
Double iSmart (NR) The sequel to the 2019 film iSmart has the villain (Sanjay Dutt) transferring his memories to the hero (Ram Pothineni). Also with Kavya Thapar, Sayaji Shinde, Bani J, Getup Srinu, and Makarand Deshpande. (Opens Friday)
Khel Khel Mein (NR) A remake of the 2016 Italian film Perfect Strangers, this Indian film is about a group of friends who unveil secrets about one another during a game night at someone’s house. Starring Akshay Kumar, Ammy Virk, Vaani Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu, Pragya Jaiswal, Aditya Seal, Gaurav Manwani, and Fardeen Khan. (Opens Friday)
The King Tide (NR) This thriller is about an island plunged into civil war after a child (Alix West Lefler) with mystical powers washes up on the shore. Also with Frances Fisher, Clayne Crawford, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Aden Young, and Michael Greyeyes. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Mr. Bachchan (NR) This Indian historical drama is based on an income tax raid on steel mogul Sardar Inder Singh. Starring Ravi Teja, Bhagyashri Borse, Sachin Khedekar, and Jagapathi Babu. (Opens Friday)
My Penguin Friend (PG) Based on a true story, this drama stars Jean Reno as a bereaved Chilean fisherman who determines to save a penguin caught in an oil spill. Also with Adriana Barraza, Rochi Hernández, Nicolás Fracella, Alexia Moyano, Pedro Urizzi, and Pedro Caetano. (Opens Friday)
Rob Peace (R) Chiwetel Ejiofor directs and co-stars in this biographical film about a young man (Jay Will) who turns to dealing drugs to help his family pay for emergency medical treatment. Also with Mary J. Blige, Camilla Cabello, Curt Morlaye, Caleb Eberhardt, Michael Kelly, Mare Winningham, and Gbenga Akinnagbe. (Opens Friday)
Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure (PG) Ryan Kaji stars in this kids’ movie as a boy who has to save his twin sisters (Emma and Kate Kaji) after they’re sucked into a comic-book alternate universe. Also with Jack Reid, Scott Whyte, and Albie Hecht. (Opens Friday)
Sing Sing (R) Colman Domingo stars in this drama as a convicted murderer who starts a theater program for his fellow prison inmates. Also with Clarence Maclin, Johnny Simmons, Brent Buell, Sean San Jose, Sean “Dino” Johnson, Mosi Eagle, David “Dap” Giraudy, Patrick “Preme” Griffin, James “Big E” Williams, and Paul Raci. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Skincare (R) Elizabeth Banks stars in this comic thriller as a famous beautician whose life becomes sabotaged by a mysterious enemy. Also with Lewis Pullman, Nathan Fillion, Ella Balinska, Erik Palladino, and Luis Gerardo Méndez. (Opens Friday)
Stree 2 (NR) This Indian horror film is about a village where a headless spirit is abducting women. Starring Shraddha Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee, Tamannaah Bhatia, and Varun Dhawan. (Opens Friday)
Thangalaan (NR) Vikram stars in this Indian film as a 19th-century gold mine worker in Karnataka who tries to protect his village from a sorceress. Also with Parvathy Thirovothu, Malavika Mohanan, Pasupathy, and Hari Krishnan. (Opens Friday)
Vedaa (NR) Sharvari stars in this drama as an Indian woman fighting against systemic injustice. Also with John Abraham, Abhishek Banerjee, Abhishek Deswal, Kapil Nirmal, and Tamannaah Bhatia. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Borderlands (PG-13) They took 15 years to make the popular video-game franchise into a movie, and they needed 16. Cate Blanchett stars as a flame-haired interplanetary bounty hunter who’s sent back to her home planet to recover the abducted teenage daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) of a wealthy mogul, only to become caught up in a treasure hunt conducted by murderous rogues. The movie remains watchable with Blanchett doing her damnedest to elevate this junky sci-fi thriller, but the supporting characters make little impression and the action set pieces by director/co-writer Eli Roth never raise the pulse. Also with Kevin Hart, Edgar Ramírez, Florian Munteanu, Janina Gavankar, Gina Gershon, Haley Bennett, Bobby Lee, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Voice by Jack Black.
Cuckoo (R) Wow, this plot really spins off the rails. Hunter Schafer portrays a teenage girl who accompanies her family to the Bavarian Alps for the summer offseason. Everything about her body language says “leave me alone,” but nobody can take the hint. The movie starts out being about dealing with a crappy customer service job at the near-deserted hotel, then starts to hint that the protagonist may be severely mentally disturbed, and then writer-director Tilman Singer barrels off into an insane plot about eugenicists breeding a murderous human-cuckoo hybrid species. Schafer’s performance very nearly holds the movie together, but the way it flies apart makes for compelling viewing. Also with Dan Stevens, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick, Jan Bluthardt, Mila Lieu, Greta Fernández, Proschat Madani, Kalin Morrow, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey.
Deadpool & Wolverine (R) The partnership of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman has been teased for so long, it would have been easy for the thing to disappoint. Fortunately, Jackman’s eternally grumpy Wolverine and Reynolds’ Deadpool with his psychological need to make a joke out of everything is comedy gold. Deadpool has to save his world from annihilation, so he teams up with the worst version of Wolverine and goes to The Void, a funny dystopia where superheroes past are banished because their storylines never got resolved. It may not add up to great art, but it is very funny. Also with Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Karan Soni, Matthew Macfadyen, Leslie Uggams, Brianna Hildebrand, Dafne Keen, Tyler Mane, Ray Park, Aaron Stanford, Henry Cavill, Jon Favreau, Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum, and Chris Evans. Voices by Stefan Kapicic, Nathan Fillion, Blake Lively, and Matthew McConaughey.
Despicable Me 4 (PG) Where other long-running movie franchises run out of ideas, this fourth installment has so many ideas that they get in each other’s way. When a cockroach-obsessed French supervillain (voiced by Will Ferrell) busts out of prison and vows revenge on Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), our bald baddie and his family have to go into hiding and pretend to be normies in the suburbs. This would be enough plot for a movie, but this chapter piles on a new baby for Gru, a honey badger, and some of the minions gaining X-Men powers. It’s so much that even Ferrell gets lost in the shuffle, and the only part that works at all is when he and Carell duet on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” This could have worked if it had been broken down into episodes of an animated TV show, but on the big screen, it’s exhausting. Additional voices by Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Joey King, Sofía Vergara, Madison Polan, Chris Renaud, Laraine Newman, Chloe Fineman, Pierre Coffin, Steve Coogan, and Stephen Colbert.
The Firing Squad (PG-13) Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Sorbo, and James Harrington star in this Christian film as three American prisoners facing execution in a foreign country. Also with Tupua Ainu’u, Edmund Kwan, Madeline Anderson, Christian Segura, Nadia Maximova, and Eric Roberts.
Harold and the Purple Crayon (PG) I really don’t think they had a script in place when they started shooting this. That’s how slapdash this movie version of Crockett Johnson’s beloved children’s book is. Zachary Levi plays a grown-up version of Harold who draws a portal into our reality so that he can find his creator. There is a funny villain in Jemaine Clement as a librarian who writes unpublished and incredibly homoerotic fantasy-adventure fiction, but that’s not nearly enough to make up for the misadventures in reality that remind you of the most amateurish 1980s children’s movies. The book, its legion of fans, and anybody who wandered into this movie at a multiplex deserved so much better. Also with Zooey Deschanel, Lil Rel Howery, Benjamin Bottani, Tanya Reynolds, Ravi Patel, and Pete Gardner. Narrated by Alfred Molina.
Inside Out 2 (PG) This sequel does not reach the heights of the original Pixar animated film, but it does have some rewarding points. Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) turns 13, and puberty brings on a host of new emotions led by Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke). When Riley gets invited to a hockey skills camp, Anxiety leads a coup against Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) and the other four emotions, literally bottling them up so that Riley can impress the right people. Even with Hawke missing some of the comic potential in the role, Anxiety is still the best thing about the film, drafting an army of storyboard artists to draft every scenario that could derail Riley and inducing a panic attack in her that will feel horribly familiar to anxiety sufferers. The jokes don’t land as consistently as in the original, nor are the emotions in the story as piercing, but the mindscape remains a nice place to be. Additional voices by Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Lilimar, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ron Funches, James Austin Johnson, Paula Pell, June Squibb, John Ratzenberger, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan.
It Ends With Us (PG-13) Blake Lively’s performance is the best thing about this too-cozy movie about cycles of abuse. She portrays a small-town Mainer who flees her abusive dad to set up a flower shop in Boston, only to repeat the cycle by falling in love with a neurosurgeon (Justin Baldoni) who hits her. Baldoni also doubles as the director here, and while he starts off well, he becomes bogged down as he tries to toggle between the present day and flashbacks to the teenage protagonist (Isabela Ferrer) and her first love (Alex Neustaedter). Based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, this movie takes forever to get to the subject and then eagerly waves a magic wand to make everyone into some endlessly forgiving saint. Hate to say this, but a movie about domestic abuse really needs to be harder-hitting. Also with Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar, Hasan Minhaj, Amy Morton, Robert Clohessy, Robyn Lively, and Kevin McKidd.
Kneecap (R) A reminder of what a good musical biopic looks like. The members of the Irish rap group called Kneecap (Liam Óg “Mo Chara” Ó Hannaidh, Naoise “Móglaí Bap” Ó Cairealláin, and JJ “DJ Próvaí” Ó Dochartaigh) portray themselves as two dead-end Catholic kids and their former music teacher who band together to rap in the Irish language about sex, drugs, and hating the British. Writer-director Rich Peppiatt does not water down the references to Irish culture and history in his script and peppers the film with animation on top of the filmed image, hand-drawn English subtitles, and an interlude in claymation. Underneath all the gimmicks, the writing is solidly funny and profane as the group makes art out of their surroundings and strikes a blow for the visibility of their language. Also with Josie Walker, Fionnuala Flaherty, Jessica Reynolds, Adam Best, Simone Kirby, and Michael Fassbender.
Longlegs (R) Osgood Perkins’ storytelling improves markedly in his latest horror movie that owes a great deal to The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files. Maika Monroe portrays an FBI agent in the early 1990s who’s assigned to a cold case in Oregon involving a serial killer (Nicolas Cage) who induces fathers to murder-suicide themselves and their entire families. The sound design is terrific and the prosthetics team manages to make Cage look fundamentally unlike himself. Monroe contributes a tightly wound turn as an agent tormented by her past, and Alicia Witt is almost scarier than the serial killer as the agent’s hoarder and Christian zealot of a mother. The craftsmanship that Perkins brings to this story creates a dread that will make you sweat even through the movie’s Pacific Northwest winter. Also with Blair Underwood, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Lauren Acala, Ava Kelders, Carmel Amit, Jason Day, and Kiernan Shipka.
Pilot (NR) This Korean thriller-comedy stars Jo Jung-suk as a famous air force pilot who must disguise himself as a woman after his reputation is tarnished. Also with Lee Ju-myoung, Han Sun-hwa, Shin Seung-ho, Kim Ji-hyun, Oh Min-ae, Seo Jae-hee, and Lee Chan-won.
A Quiet Place: Day One (PG-13) Michael Sarnoski (Pig) takes over the franchise and makes it into something his own. Lupita Nyong’o stars as a terminal cancer case who visits New York with a bunch of fellow hospice patients on the day of the alien invasion. Having given up on her life, she now has to save her emotional support cat and a young Englishman (Joseph Quinn) who has no one in America to turn to. Sarnoski’s action set pieces are perhaps not as memorable as John Krasinski’s, but he finds some lovely character bits in the moments when his heroes are not running from the aliens. Nyong’o, too, brings her character to vivid life as a woman who’s hellbent on finding the last slice of New York-style pizza in the apocalypse, and her chosen method of death from blasting Nina Simone is about as good a death as you can expect in this fictional world. The series evolves enough to stay fresh. Also with Alex Wolff, Eliane Umuhire, Alfie Todd, and Djimon Hounsou.
Trap (PG-13) M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is full of his typical plot twists, except the plot twists become less believable as the story wears on. Josh Hartnett portrays a Philadelphia serial killer who takes his young daughter (Ariel Donoghue) to a pop concert, only to discover that the police have set a trap for him at the venue. Hartnett is the best thing about this movie as a firefighter who can fake good cheer or quivering fear as the occasion calls for. Even so, I don’t believe the law enforcement would set up a sting operation like this, nor that the killer would be able to move so freely around the arena without being seen, nor that he would have no confidence in his ability to lie his way past the police checkpoints, nor that he could slip the dragnet in the way that he does. Shyamalan’s real-life daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan portrays the pop star who effectively gets taken hostage as part of the plot, and she sounds like a pop singer without producing any memorable music. Also with Alison Pill, Kid Cudi, Jonathan Langdon, Mark Bacolcol, Vanessa Smythe, Russ, Kid Cudi, and Hayley Mills.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (NR) This Hong Kong thriller stars Raymond Lam as a young man who lives life inside the walled city of Kowloon. Also with Louis Koo, Richie Jen, Philip Ng, Lau Chun-Him, Aaron Kwok, Cecilia Choi, and Sammo Hung.
Twisters (PG-13) An agreeable sequel to the 1996 blockbuster. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a meteorologist from Oklahoma who’s coaxed back home years after a tragedy in the field to kill tornadoes with an ex-colleague (Anthony Ramos) and a YouTube influencer (Glen Powell). From such a splendidly stupid premise, the movie wades hip-deep into so much weather jargon that it becomes so much noise for those of us who don’t have meteorology degrees. Fortunately, director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) keeps the narrative from dragging. Powell is no slouch here, but you may be surprised to find Edgar-Jones carrying this movie effortlessly, conveying her character’s guilt without harshing the fun popcorn vibe that the movie is going for. The country music-laden soundtrack helps this movie lift off, too. Also with Maura Tierney, Sasha Lane, Katy O’Brian, Brandon Perea, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, Tunde Adebimpe, Harry Hadden-Paton, Daryl McCormack, David Born, David Corenswet, and James Paxton.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Girl You Know It’s True (NR) This musical biopic tracks the rise and fall of Milli Vanilli (Elan Ben Ali and Tijan Njie) in the 1980s. Also with Matthias Schweighöfer, Bella Dayne, Graham Rogers, Darlene Tejeiro, James Flynn, and Natasha Loring.
The Instigators (R) Matt Damon and Casey Affleck star in this thriller as two criminals who go on the run after a planned heist goes wrong. Also with Hong Chau, Jack Harlow, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ron Perlman, Toby Jones, André de Shields, Owen Earls, and Alfred Molina.
Running on Empty (R) Daniel André’s romantic thriller stars Keir Gilchrist as a dying young man who tries to avoid being killed while wooing a dying young woman. Also with Lucy Hale, Dustin Milligan, Monica Potter, Francesca Eastwood, Rhys Coiro, Jay Pharoah, Clara McGregor, Dylan Flashner, and Jim Gaffigan.
