OPENING
Across the River and Into the Trees (NR) Based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel, this drama stars Liev Schreiber as a World War II hero who travels to Venice while gravely ill. Also with Josh Hutcherson, Matilda de Angelis, Enzo Cilenti, Sabrina Impacciatore, Laura Morante, and Danny Huston. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
AfrAId (PG-13) John Cho and Katherine Waterston play a married couple who worry that the AI system that runs their new house might be taking over their family. Also with Havana Rose Liu, Riki Lindhome, Lukita Maxwell, Isaac Bae, Wyatt Lindner, Keith Carradine, and David Dastmalchian. (Opens Friday)
City of Dreams (R) This thriller stars Ari Lopez as a Mexican boy whose desire to travel to America results in him being kidnapped and trafficked. Also with Jason Patric, Paulina Gaitan, Renata Vaca, Samm Levine, Nicole Andrews, and Diego Calva. (Opens Friday)
Great Absence (NR) This Japanese drama stars Tatsuya Fuji as a father trying to re-connect with his long-estranged son. Also with Mirai Moriyama, Yoko Maki, and Hideko Hara. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Lost in the Shuffle (NR) Jon Ornoy’s documentary profiles magician Shawn Farquhar. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
1992 (R) The plot of this action-thriller is pretty decent, but the execution turns it bad when it could have been terrific. Tyrese Gibson stars as an ex-convict who is trying to raise his teenage son (Christopher A’mmanuel) when the L.A. riots happen. He takes his son to the metalworks factory where he works in maintenance, just at the same time as a group of thieves try to take advantage of the chaos to rob the factory of $10 million worth in platinum bullion. It is more than a workable premise, but director Ariel Vromen (The Ice Man) takes this at a leaden pace, and Tyrese is a wooden presence in the lead. At 96 minutes, this movie still feels like it lasts an eternity. Also with Scott Eastwood, Clé Bennett, Dylan Arnold, Michael Beasley, Ori Pfeffer, Oleg Taktarov, and the late Ray Liotta. (Opens Friday)
Reagan (PG-13) Dennis Quaid stars in this biography of the former movie star-turned-U.S. president. Also with Penelope Ann Miller, Mena Suvari, C. Thomas Howell, Justin Chatwin, Amanda Righetti, Kevin Dillon, Xander Berkeley, Lesley-Anne Down, Jennifer O’Neill, Robert Davi, Mark Moses, Nick Searcy, Kevin Sorbo, and Jon Voight. (Opens Friday)
Saripodhaa Sanivaaram (NR) Also titled Surya’s Saturday, this Indian action thriller stars Nani as a man who seeks vigilante justice against a police inspector (S.J. Suryah) who brutalizes civilians for fun. Also with Priyanka Mohan, Abhirami, Aditi Balan, P. Sai Kumar, Murali Sharma, Ajay Ghosh, Subhaleka Sudhakar, and Harsha Vardhan. (Opens Friday)
Slingshot (R) Casey Affleck stars in this science-fiction thriller about an astronaut trying to stay sane aboard a mission to one of Saturn’s moons. Also with Laurence Fishburne, David Morrissey, Tomer Capone, and Emily Beecham. (Opens Friday)
Take My Hand (NR) Radha Mitchell stars as an Australian expat who returns to the country of her birth after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. Also with Adam Demos, Bart Edwards, Meg Fraser, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, and Darren Gilshenan. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
You Gotta Believe (PG) The filmmaking team of Ty Roberts and Lane Garrison (12 Mighty Orphans) reunites for this baseball drama about the real-life Texas team that made the final of the Little League World Series. Starring Luke Wilson, Molly Parker, Sarah Gadon, Lew Temple, Patrick Renna, and Greg Kinnear. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Alien: Romulus (R) Not as good as the first two movies in the series, but better than the last two. Some years after the events of the first Alien movie, the story is about a miner (Cailee Spaeny) and her android protector (David Jonsson) who fall in with a group of young space pirates looking to ransack a space station before it self-destructs, not knowing that the aliens are waiting for them on board. The film fills in some bits of knowledge about the alien mythology, and new director Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe) does much to bring the franchise back to its horror roots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t point the series in any sort of new direction, although Spaeny has the emotional depth to be the heroine of any future installments. Also with Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.
Between the Temples (R) The Jewish comedy of the season would have been better sticking closer to its premise. Jason Schwartzman stars as a recently widowed rabbi and cantor who has lost his ability to sing. Pulling him out of his professional crisis is his old music teacher (Carol Kane), who wants his help preparing for her bat mitzvah. The comic chemistry between the two leads is more than watchable, and Schwartzman’s turn as a guy who’s always about to burst into tears is more effective than his similar performance in Asteroid City. I just wish first-time filmmaker Nathan Silver wouldn’t get sidetracked with drug-trip sequences, shaky camerawork, and detours into some uninteresting supporting characters. The talent behind the camera could be really good with some seasoning. Also with Dolly de Leon, Madeline Weinstein, Caroline Aaron, Pauline Chalamet, Matthew Shear, Lindsay Burdge, and Robert Smigel.
Blink Twice (R) The scariest villain in this year’s movies is here, the more terrifying for being so ordinary. Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat play waitresses who are invited by a tech billionaire (Channing Tatum) to his private island. The place seems like paradise until someone disappears and all the other guests swear that she was never there. Zoë Kravitz makes her directing debut and scatters clues well throughout the early going to lay the groundwork for the M. Night Shyamalan-like plot twist. Tatum is the wrong actor to portray someone who’s hiding sinister underneath his charm, but that’s a minor flaw in the face of the twist. This is a rare horror film that becomes more horrifying once you know everything that’s going on, and it’s the sort of evil that will make you want to curl up in a ball. Also with Christian Slater, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex, Levon Hawke, Liz Caribel, Trew Mullen, María Elena Olivares, Cris Costa, Kyle MacLachlan, and Geena Davis.
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.
Coraline (PG) This animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s subtly terrifying 2002 novel is about a bored, frustrated 11-year-old girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who discovers a secret world with cooler versions of her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) who turn out to be monsters who want to sew buttons over her eyes. The stop-motion animation by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) is just glorious in the film’s middle section, presenting Coraline and us with a fantasy world that’s just a little bit too shiny and perfect to be believable. The film could have been scarier, but it’s still intense stuff, with bounteous amounts of imagination, wit, and beauty to go with its amazing hand-crafted technique. Additional voices by Keith David, Ian McShane, Robert Bailey Jr., Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders.
The Crow (R) This sure feels like something that they dug up after it was dead for 30 years. Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) directs this energy-free adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic series about a man (Bill Skarsgård) who’s murdered along with his girlfriend (FKA twigs) and is given a chance to return from the dead to take revenge on their killers. Sanders gives us plenty of rain-soaked nighttime streets, but the two lead actors don’t have the chemistry needed to carry this. Danny Huston is phlegmatic as the Luciferian mob boss at the center of the evil plot, and the movie takes forever to get to the plot that we already know about. The climactic fight sequence in an opera house ignores how the acoustics of opera houses work, too. The original film formed part of a tradition of Goth-y, doom-laden thrillers with The Matrix and the Batman films of Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. This is just a dead end. Also with Josette Simon, Sami Bouajila, Laura Birn, Jordan Bolger, David Bowles, Isabella Wei, and Sebastian Orozco.
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.
Dìdi (R) A precise sense of the time period helps this movie achieve an unusual power. Sean Wang’s drama stars Izaac Wang as a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy who comes of age in 2008, when communicating with friends means MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger rather than text messaging and Instagram. What the writing lacks in sharpness, it makes up for with honesty as our hero gradually realizes his friends are full of crap and falls in with a group of skateboarding kids and films their tricks. Joan Chen also gives an understated and brilliant performance as the boy’s overwhelmed mother who has to handle everything because the kids’ father is working his job in Taiwan. Also with Shirley Chen, Zhang Li Hua, Raul Dial, Aaron Chang, Mahaela Park, Joshua Hankerson, Chiron Cillia Denk, Sunil Maurillo, and Stephanie Hsu.
The Forge (PG) While other Christian movies are getting better, the ones by the Kendrick brothers are getting worse. Aspen Kennedy plays a young Black man in Charlotte who goes to work for a fitness equipment manufacturer and winds up learning lessons about manhood and Jesus Christ from the company’s CEO (Cameron Arnett). The lack of pace and dramatic tension in this thing makes you wonder whether the filmmakers have ever seen a movie before, and the acting is too embarrassing even to trash in this space. Whatever lessons this movie is trying to teach about what makes a boy into a man, they get lost amid this movie’s amateur theatrics. Also with Priscilla C. Shirer, Selah Avery, T.C. Stallings, Ben VanderMey, Tommy Woodward, and Karen Abercrombie.
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.
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.
Maruthi Nagar Subramanyam (NR) This Telugu-language comedy stars Rao Ramesh as a middle-aged family man who comes into a large sum of money due to a bank error. Also with Ankith Koyya, Indraja, Ajay, Ramya Pasupuleti, and Harsha Vardhan.
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.
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.
Sing Sing (R) Good enough to make you wish it had been better. Colman Domingo stars in this drama as an upstate New York prison inmate who runs a theater program for his fellow inmates while also being a jailhouse lawyer and working for free on his fellow inmates’ appeals. The story of the performing arts helping prisoners achieve individuality and dignity in a place that’s designed to rob them of those things should be uplifting, and yet Greg Kwedar’s film stubbornly refuses to budge because it’s so tied down to feel-good formulas. The film is worth seeing for the performances by Domingo and Clarence Maclin as a hard case who takes to Shakespeare, but too much of the movie glosses over the harsh realities of life in prison. Also with 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.
Strange Darling (R) Clever, but shallow. JT Mollner’s horror movie tells its story out of sequence Pulp Fiction-style in order to generate suspense and lead us down false alleys. The film initially appears to be about a woman (Willa Fitzgerald) who’s fleeing a serial killer (Kyle Gallner), but the line between victim and predator becomes blurry real fast as the backstory is filled in. It all works the way it’s supposed to, but the final result comes to considerably less than the hype around the movie promises. Actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi gives the movie the grainy look of a 1970s exploitation film even though the story takes place in the present day. That and the score by Z Berg are the best things here. Also with Ed Begley Jr., Barbara Hershey, Steven Michael Quezada, Madisen Beaty, Bianca A. Santos, and Giovanni Ribisi. Narrated by Jason Patric.
Stree 2 (NR) Yet more proof that Indian horror movies are incompatible with Western tastes. After exorcising the demon from the original movie, the hero (Rajkummar Rao) of this sequel has to bring her back in order to stop the evil spirit who is abducting women from his village. There’s an interesting undercurrent here with the victims being all modern women who want to leave for the big city and the demon being a female avenger against male predators, but the scares simply don’t work for audiences brought up on Hollywood fare, and the attempts at comedy are truly groan-worthy. I will say this: The visual of the heroes fleeing down a country road on motorcycles pursued by a flaming severed head is pretty metal. Also with Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee, Atul Srivastava, Anya Singh, Tamannaah Bhatia, Varun Dhawan, and Akshay Kumar.
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.
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.
200% Wolf (PG) This German animated film is about a poodle (voiced by Ilai Swindells) who wishes to become a werewolf. Additional voices by Samara Weaving, Elizabeth Nabben, Janice Petersen, Heather Mitchell, Michael Bourchier, and Jennifer Saunders.
Vaazhai (NR) This Tamil-language drama is about a 12-year-old boy who sees a plantain tree become central to the village’s life. Starring Dhivya Dhuraisamy, Kalaiyarasan, Nikhila Vimal, and Priyanka Nair.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
Greedy People (R) Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this thriller set in a small town where a murder and the discovery of $1 million in cash set off a string of crimes. Also with Lily James, Himesh Patel, Tim Blake Nelson, Simon Rex, Uzo Aduba, Jim Gaffigan, Nina Arianda, José María Yazpik, Joey Lauren Adams, and Traci Lords.
Place of Bones (R) Heather Graham stars in this Western as a woman who must protect her daughter when a gang of outlaws lays siege to their home. Also with Tom Hopper, Corin Nemec, Brielle Robillard, Ray Abruzzo, and Donald Cerrone.
