OPENING
Close (PG-13) Nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature, this Belgian drama stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav de Waele as two 13-year-old boys whose friendship comes apart. Also with Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker, Igor van Dessel, Kevin Janssens, Marc Weiss, and Léon Bataille. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (PG-13) With Michelle Yeoh in the running for an Oscar, now’s a good time to revisit this heavily influential 2000 hit in which she and Chow Yun-Fat play Qing Dynasty kung fu masters who try to safeguard a jade sword from robbery. The film is a feast for the senses, between Ang Lee’s breathlessly romantic direction, Peter Pau’s photography of different parts of China, Tan Dun’s Oscar-winning score, and especially Yuen Woo-ping’s wirework-enhanced fight choreography, which showcases the incredible martial-arts skills of Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. This old-fashioned epic has even more impact on the big screen. Also with Chang Chen, Lung Sihung, Cheng Pei-pei, Wang Deming, Li Li, Hai Yan, Li Fazeng, and Gao Xi’an. (Re-opens Friday)
Fulbari (NR) This Nepalese film stars Dayahang Rai, Bipin Karki, and Priyanka Karki. (Opens Friday at Cinepolis Euless)
Hidden Blade (NR) This Chinese World War II spy thriller overly complicates itself. Tony Leung plays a Chinese collaborator with the Japanese invaders, a counterintelligence director in Shanghai who executes both Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists and the Communists while secretly planning to betray the Japanese himself. The story starts in December 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but writer-director Cheng Er constantly flashes back to the 1937 invasion of China and the days in 1945 leading up to Japan’s surrender, interrupting the stories of minor characters to take us to other minor characters. All the switching among locations and storylines is confusing even if you’re familiar with the history of the region, and it’s done at a glacial pace. It’s all very handsomely appointed, but too fragmented to make much of an impact. Also with Wang Yibo, Hiroyuki Mori, Da Peng, Eric Wang, Jiang Shuying, Zhang Jingyi, Huang Lei, and Zhou Xun. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War — The First Kiss That Never Ends (NR) In this Japanese anime film, Kaguya (voiced by Aoi Koga) and Miyuki (voiced by Makoto Furukawa) have to confront their feelings after they share their first kiss. Additional voices by Konomi Kohara, Ryota Suzuki, Miyu Tomita, Yumiri Hanamori, Momo Asakura, Rina Hidaka, Taku Yashiro, and Yutaka Aoyama. (Opens Friday at Cinemark North East Mall)
Marlowe (R) Adapted from Benjamin Black’s The Black-Eyed Blonde rather than any of Raymond Chandler’s novels, Neil Jordan’s film-noir thriller stars Liam Neeson as the hard-boiled private detective who’s hired to find a missing boyfriend. Also with Diane Kruger, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Colm Meaney, Daniela Melchior, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, Ian Hart, Seána Kerslake, and Jessica Lange. (Opens Wednesday)
Ping-Pong: The Triumph (NR) Chao Deng stars in and co-directs this sports drama about a table tennis coach who’s tasked with bringing China’s team back to glory in the early 1990s. Also with Li Sun, Timmy Xu, Bowen Duan, Cai Yida, Ding Guansen, Sun Xilun, Wu Jing, and Alan Aruna. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Shehzada (NR) This Indian comedy stars Kartik Aaryan as a boorish young man who reforms when he discovers he’s the biological son of a billionaire (Ronit Roy). Also with Kriti Sanon, Paresh Rawal, Manisha Koirala, Rajpal Yadav, Debattama Saha, and Sachin Khedekar. (Opens Friday)
Vaathi (NR) Also released under the English title Sir, this Indian film stars Dhanush as a lecturer who rebels against the for-profit college that he works for. Also with Samyuktha, P. Sai Kumar, Tanikella Bharani, Samuthirakani, and Thotapalli Madhu. (Opens Friday)
Vinaro Bhagyamu Vishnu Katha (NR) This Indian romantic thriller stars Kiran Abbavaram, Kashmira Pardeshi, Subhaleika Sudhakar, Dayanand Reddy, and Murali Sharma. (Opens Friday)
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (NR) This is not a Saturday Night Live parody: Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s horror film has Winnie the Pooh and Piglet (Craig David Dowsett and Chris Cordell) going on a murderous rampage after Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) leaves them for college. Also with Maria Taylor, May Kelly, and Natasha Tosini. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
The Amazing Maurice (PG) Based on Terry Pratchett’s children’s book, this animated film is about a cat (voiced by Hugh Laurie) who seeks to con a kid and his horde of rats. Additional voices by Emilia Clarke, David Thewlis, Himesh Patel, Gemma Arterton, Joe Sugg, Rob Brydon, Peter Serafinowicz, Hugh Bonneville, and David Tennant.
Avatar: The Way of Water (PG-13) I’m not impressed. Picking up some 15 years after the previous film, the story has Jake Sully and Neytiri (Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña) the father of four kids on Pandora when the humans return and force them to take shelter with another clan of Na’vi who have evolved to live in the sea. The visuals are surprisingly not that good, reminiscent of a top-end video game with both human and alien characters moving in unnatural manners and even some motion-smoothing. The Na’vi go from representing Native Americans to Polynesians, and the villains from the original film are resurrected so that they can be evil again. (They’re left alive for that reason and no other, too.) James Cameron’s movies aren’t just dumb, they’re preachy, too. That’s a bad combination. Also with Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Dileep Rao, Giovanni Ribisi, Edie Falco, and Sigourney Weaver.
The Banshees of Inisherin (R) Martin McDonagh’s fourth film is his first that takes place in his native Ireland, and it feels the most like his stage plays in a good way. Colin Farrell plays a farmer on the Aran Islands whose best friend (Brendan Gleeson) suddenly cuts him off, and reacts to the end of their friendship by coming hilariously and dangerously unhinged. The entire island becomes sucked into the friendship drama, and McDonagh’s particular brand of violence in the air keeps the film from becoming a cozy comedy about village eccentrics. Farrell gives the performance of his career as a pathetic man whose quest to find out why leads him to bloodshed, and the underrated Kerry Condon receives a showcase as his sister who’s desperate to escape this island even if it’s to an actual war zone. Underneath the black comedy is the sadness of a friendship ending. Also with Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon, Pat Shortt, David Pearse, and Bríd Ní Beachtain.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (PG-13) Burdened with the difficult double objective of mourning Chadwick Boseman and providing the thrills of a Marvel superhero movie, this imperfect sequel manages better than we could reasonably expect. In the wake of King T’Challa’s death, Wakanda fends off threats to its vibranium supply from an awakened underwater kingdom led by a flying Mayan serpent god (Tenoch Huerta). While Ramonda (Angela Bassett) assumes the throne, Shuri (Letitia Wright) deals with grief in unexpected ways. The film does lag a bit when introducing us to a pre-Columbian ocean city, and the sympathetic villain isn’t quite as resonant as the one in the first movie. Even so, the movie gives us some solid nuggets of action and comedy, and the post-credit sequence does great work at bringing some closure to the story. Also with Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Dominique Thorne, Martin Freeman, Michaela Coel, Florence Kasumba, Richard Schiff, Lake Bell, Robert John Burke, Mabel Cadena, Alex Livinalli, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Trevor Noah, and an uncredited Michael B. Jordan.
BTS: Yet to Come in CInemas (NR) This concert documentary shows the Korean boy band’s post-pandemic concert from last October in Busan.
80 for Brady (PG-13) Look away, Falcons fans. Seriously, look away. Coming out the weekend before the Super Bowl (and just in time for Tom Brady’s retirement), this comedy based on the real-life story of four octogenarian women from Boston who traveled to Houston for Super Bowl LI for their first-ever trip to the big game. They’re played by Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin. The script is more knowledgeable about football than it needs to be, which I appreciate, and the chemistry among the four heavily decorated leads makes this pleasant enough in the early going. The movie only turns truly bad when the women get into the Patriots’ coaching box during the game and help engineer the big comeback against Atlanta. The Super Bowl setting does allow for numerous cameos, and TB12 himself appears to Tomlin’s character and gives her pep talks. Also with Harry Hamlin, Sally Kirkland, Bob Balaban, Sara Gilbert, Glynn Turman, Jimmy O. Yang, Ron Funches, Marshawn Lynch, Patton Oswalt, Billy Porter, Guy Fieri, Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, and Rob Gronkowski.
Elvis (PG-13) Baz Luhrmann dares to take on the entire peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich of Elvis Presley’s life, but this grand opera comes and goes without leaving much of an impact. Tom Hanks stars as Col. Tom Parker, who narrates the story of how he discovered the young country-blues singer (Austin Butler) and made him a star while also suffocating him creatively and stealing his money. Seeing the film through the prism of this con artist’s self-justifications is an interesting idea that only serves to turn Hanks (under a mountain of prosthetic fat) into a puppet, lacking the grifter’s snaky charm. Opposite him, Butler does remarkable work capturing the King’s stage presence in his early, middle, and late years, and his performances of some songs blend seamlessly with the original Elvis songs on the soundtrack. Still, the movie too often resorts to music-biopic cliches, and all of Luhrmann’s skill can’t make it fresh. Also with Kelvin Harrison Jr., Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Luke Bracey, Dacre Montgomery, Yola, Alton Mason, Shonka Dukureh, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
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 filmmakers deserve 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.
The Fabelmans (PG-13) Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film is highly likable, if not exactly ground-breaking. His fictional alter ego (played by Mateo Zoryan as a small boy and Gabriel LaBelle as a teenager) is captured by the magic of cinema at a young age and seeks to become a filmmaker while growing up in New Jersey, Arizona, and northern California. Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner draw a complicated portrait of the former’s childhood, with his father (Paul Dano) not understanding the ways of arts while his mother (Michelle Williams) is the fun parent, but emotionally unstable. The loose, baggy structure allows for some great set pieces ranging from a monologue by an old Jewish great-uncle (Judd Hirsch) to a sex scene with a Christian girl (Chloe East) who has pictures of Jesus on every surface of her bedroom. Also with Seth Rogen, Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley, Keeley Karsten, Julia Butters, Sophia Kopera, Robin Bartlett, Jeannie Berlin, and David Lynch.
Infinity Pool (R) This starts off so well before it collapses. Brandon Cronenberg’s horror film starts out like a Patricia Highsmith novel, with Alexander Skarsgård as a rich American on a beach vacation in an Eastern European country when he accidentally kills a local. In exchange for a hefty bribe, the government creates an exact double of him and forces him to watch the double being executed for the crime. The trippy visuals and the mood at a resort that’s hidden behind razor wire is promising, but Cronenberg hopelessly scrambles his themes and can’t decide whether this story is about the gap between rich and poor or the humiliation of a weak man. A coherent subject remains frustratingly out of reach. Also with Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, Amanda Brugel, John Ralston, Caroline Boulton, Jeff Ricketts, Adam Boncz, and Thomas Kretschmann.
Knock at the Cabin (R) Adapted from Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest has an intriguing premise but goes wrong playing it out. The film is about a gay couple (Ben Aldridge and Jonathan Groff) and their adopted Chinese daughter (Kristen Cui) who rent out a remote cabin in the Pennsylvania countryside when a group of fanatics forces their way in, takes them hostage, and says that the family can only prevent the world from ending by killing one of their own members. The conventional plot has a same-sex couple at its center, and their homosexuality is not incidental to their situation. All this is enough to keep the film going for a while, but the clumsy denouement and some bad writing sink it in the end. Dave Bautista steals the movie as the head of the home invaders, who genuinely doesn’t want violence but does it anyway. Also with Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (R) Steven Soderbergh and Channing Tatum return to the series, as the male stripper heads to London to set up a show like his Florida shows. Also with Salma Hayek, Caitlin Gerard, Nancy Carroll, Gavin Spokes, Juliette Motamed, and Ayub Khan-Din.
A Man Called Otto (PG-13) This remake of the Swedish comedy A Man Called Ove isn’t nearly as good as the original. Tom Hanks is terribly miscast as a grumpy, prematurely old man who decides to kill himself after his wife dies and he’s pushed into retirement. Instead, he’s pulled out of his misanthropy by the Latino family from California who move in across the street. Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) has little feel for the gentle comedy in this story and fails to turn the snowy Iowa setting into a suitable backdrop for it. Hanks also misses the simmering anger underneath his character’s fastidiousness and love of engineering. The whole thing just subsides into tasteful Hollywood melodrama. If the Swedish movie was a little bit too sentimental, this is a lot too sentimental. Also with Mariana Treviño, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Truman Hanks, Rachel Keller, Mack Bayda, Cameron Britton, Juanita Jennings, Peter Lawson Jones, Kailey Hyman, and Mike Birbiglia.
M3GAN (PG-13) A lesser film would have coasted on that creepy doll, but this horror movie does better. Allison Williams plays a robotics scientist who’s given custody of her freshly orphaned niece (Violet McGraw) and invents a robot doll (Amie Donald, with voice by Jenna Davis) to help the girl through her grief. It does such a good job that it starts killing everyone who’s a threat to the girl. This movie features a ton of bad parenting, and part of what M3GAN scary is that she steps in to fill the void. She’s capable of caring, and even more scary than her murders is the song she sings to console her primary user when she misses her parents. We’ve been pigeonholing horror flicks as either “elevated horror” that traffics in big ideas or schlock horror that only aims for your id, but this movie manages to do both. Also with Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Lori Dungey, Amy Usherwood, Jack Cassidy, Stephane Garneau-Monten, Kira Josephson, and Ronny Chieng.
Michael (NR) Sundeep Kishan stars in this Indian film noir action thriller. Also with Vijay Sethupathi, Divyansha Kaushik, Gautham Vasudev Menon, and Varun Sandesh.
Missing (PG-13) Another thriller that takes place on computer and phone screens, this is not as good as Searching but still diverting. Storm Reid plays a Southern California teenager who has to coordinate an investigation from 3,100 miles away after her mom (Nia Long) and her mom’s new boyfriend (Ken Leung) disappear on a romantic vacation in Cartagena. The stuff with our investigators doing clever and downright illegal things to find out what has happened to the vanished adults is still pretty nifty as the teens find out increasingly shady information about them. However, the plot contains one twist too many, and what happens in the last 20 minutes or so makes very little sense. There’s a nifty running gag in which the main character watches a Netflix adaptation of the events depicted in Searching. Also with Joaquim de Almeida, Megan Suri, Amy Landecker, Tim Griffin, Daniel Henney, and Jasmin Savoy Brown.
Pathaan (NR) Inspired by the Marvel series, this movie is the fourth in a cinematic universe that connects it to other Indian spy thrillers. A terminally ill Pakistani general (Manish Wadhwa) decides to take a chunk of India with him by hiring a former Indian agent-turned-terrorist for hire (John Abraham) to launch a bioweapon at a major city, so an exiled agent (Shah Rukh Khan) comes in from the cold to stop him. A full hour of this is an extended flashback, and action scenes are shot in Dubai, Ibiza, Paris, Moscow, and Afghanistan. Abraham does make a properly formidable villain. Also with Deepika Padukone, Ashutosh Rana, Dimple Kapadia, Prakash Belawadi, Prem Jhangiani, Shaji Choudhary, Rajat Kaul, Nikhat Khan, and Salman Khan.
Plane (R) Mostly very plain indeed. Gerard Butler stars in this action-thriller as a commercial airline pilot flying 14 passengers from Singapore to Tokyo, and there is one great scene when the plane is hit by lightning and has to make an emergency landing on a jungle island in the Philippines. After that, though, this subsides into a boilerplate exercise, with the pilot having to free an accused murderer (Mike Colter) so that he can help save the other passengers from militant Filipino separatists. Butler is better than usual here because he’s playing a Scotsman instead of chewing on his American accent. Other than that, there’s not much distinctive about this. Also with Yoson An, Daniella Pineda, Paul Ben-Victor, Remi Adeleke, Joey Slotnick, Evan Dane Taylor, Claro de los Reyes, Lilly Krug, Oliver Trevena, and Tony Goldwyn.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (PG) This better-than-you-might-expect sequel has the Spanish-accented cat (voiced by Antonio Banderas) losing the eighth of his nine lives and facing the end of his adventure-hero career. A quest for a star that grants wishes brings him up against obese crime boss Jack Horner (voiced by John Mulaney) and a wolf (voiced by Wagner Moura) who is Death incarnate. The stereotypes are unfortunate, especially when Puss’ retirement home is run by a crazy cat lady (voiced by Da’Vine Joy Randolph), but his climactic swordfight against the wolf is boss, and Florence Pugh has a great time voicing Goldilocks with a trashy London accent. The studio makes an effort to make the movie look different from the Shrek films, and Puss’ confrontation with his mortality gives the character new dimensions. Additional voices by Salma Hayek Pinault, Harvey Guillén, Anthony Mendez, Kevin McCann, Samson Kayo, Ray Winstone, and Olivia Colman.
Seriously Red (R) Krew Boylan stars in this comedy as a Realtor who takes up a second career as a Dolly Parton impersonator. Also with Rose Byrne, Daniel Webber, Celeste Barber, Thomas Campbell, and Bobby Cannavale.
Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive — Scherzo of Deep Night (NR) This does a better job at introducing newcomers to its series than most anime films. Two freelance players (voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and Haruka Tomatsu in the Japanese version and Bryce Papenbrook and Cherami Leigh in the English-dubbed version) decide to take possession of a rare artifact to prevent a war from breaking out between the two major alliances of players. The film doesn’t fall too deep into backstories or sentimental melodrama, and the swordfights are pretty cool. The movie tells its story and then gets off the screen without any fuss. Additional voices by Shiori Izawa, Kimberly Anne Campbell, Kaede Hondo, AmaLee, Yusuke Kobayashi, A.J. Beckles, Inori Minase, and Anairis Quiñones.
Tár (R) Cate Blanchett gives perhaps the performance of her career in this drama as a world-famous composer and orchestra conductor whose history of sexually harassing her female students and protégées catches up with her in Berlin. This is Todd Field’s first film since his 2006 drama Little Children, and he has his classical music references are crushingly on point as well as a fix on how that world makes it particularly easy for sexual predators. He accompanies this with some dazzling camerawork as well, capturing the gloss of its main character’s rarefied world. The actors are all playing their own instruments, and Blanchett is conducting the Berlin Philharmonic for real. The star, her killer tailored suits, and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s music all convince us of the protagonist’s musical genius without excusing the harm she does to the people around her. The balancing act this movie pulls off is worth a shout of “Bravissimo!” Also with Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Mark Strong, Allan Corduner, Sophie Kauer, Zethphan Smith-Gneist, and Julian Glover.
Top Gun: Maverick (PG-13) The sequel improves on the 1986 original while removing the camp element, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. After spending his Navy career pissing off too many officers to be promoted, Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) returns to Top Gun in San Diego to teach a new generation of pilots to carry out a mission to bomb a nuclear plant somewhere. The younger pilots aren’t the most interesting bunch, but the training and combat sequences filmed in real F-18s are snazzy, and Jennifer Connelly makes an apt foil as an ex-girlfriend of Maverick’s who reunites with him in the present day. This may just be a nostalgia exercise, but it’s crisply done without overdosing on the past. Also with Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Bashir Salahuddin, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Danny Ramirez, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Lyliana Wray, Jean Louisa Kelly, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer.
The Whale (R) Torturous, like the best Darren Aronofsky movies. This adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play stars Brendan Fraser as a 600-pound gay man who tries to reconcile with the daughter he abandoned (Sadie Sink) by saving her from failing high school. If you’re wondering whether this is just so much fatsploitation, you’d better believe it is. When the main character first gets up from his sofa, it’s shot like a horror movie, and too often the movie revels in creating disgust for the guy who’s trying to eat himself to death. The flaws in the play have been exacerbated here, but Fraser’s performance is one for the ages, as his initial play-it-cool demeanor with his child gives way to desperation to make things right with her before he dies. Also with Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, and Samantha Morton.
Women Talking (PG-13) A deserving Best Picture Oscar nominee, Sarah Polley’s drama is adapted from Miriam Toews’ novel, which in turn is based on a real-life case when seven Mennonite men were convicted of raping more than 150 girls and women at their colony in Bolivia. Rooney Mara plays the moderator and clarifying voice who calls the meeting as the women try to decide whether to leave the colony or go to war with the elders who are trying to force them to forgive the assailants. If the movie is lacking in visual flair, the writing and acting are top-drawer, and the film keeps true to the women’s Christian perspective as they ponder the limits of forgiveness and the faults of the men who have made the rules on God’s behalf. Seeing these women think through the aspects of making their own world that’s closer to God is thrilling in an unconventional way. Also with Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, August Winter, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand.
Writer Padmabhushan (NR) This Indian dramedy stars Suhas as a man who dreams of becoming a famous writer. Also with Tina Shilparaj, Rohini, Ashish Vidyarthi, Goparaju Ramana, and Gowri Priya.
DALLAS EXCLUSIVES
One Fine Morning (R) The latest drama by Mia Hansen-Løve stars Léa Seydoux as a Frenchwoman who embarks on an ill-advised affair while trying to sort out her father’s living situation. Also with Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia, Sarah Le Picard, Pierre Meunier, Fejria Deliba, and Jacqueline Hansen-Løve.
The Outwaters (NR) Robbie Banfitch stars in his own horror film as one of a group of friends who discover terrifying phenomena while camping the Mojave Desert. Also with Angela Basolis, Scott Schamell, Michelle May, Aro Caitlin, and Leslie Ann Banfitch.
