OPENING
The Alto Knights (R) Barry Levinson’s gangster film stars Robert De Niro as both Vito Genovese and Frank Costello as the two mobsters vie for control of a New York family. Also with Cosmo Jarvis, Debra Messing, Katherine Narducci, Wallace Langham, and Michael Rispoli. (Opens Friday)
Always Have, Always Will (NR) This Chinese dramedy stars Peng Yuchang as a boy who befriends a terminally ill girl (Yang Enyou). Also with Jane Zhang, Zou Yuanqing, Li Xueqin, Lü Xingchen, and Wu Jinyan. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Artiste (R) This Indian film about an artist who stages an act of personal revenge as a piece of performance art stars Santosh Kalwacherla, Krisheka Patel, Kalakeya Prabhakar, Sonia Akula, Vinay Varma, and Satyam Rajesh. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Ash (R) This science-fiction film stars Eiza González as an astronaut with amnesia who tries to figure out what killed the other members of her crew. Also with Aaron Paul, Kate Elliott, Iko Uwais, and Flying Lotus. (Opens Friday)
Asian Persuasion (R) This comedy stars Dante Basco as an underachiever who concocts a scheme to avoid paying alimony to his rich ex-wife (Geneva Carr). Also with Paolo Montalban, Kevin Kreider, Celia Au, and Tony Labrusca. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
The Assessment (R) Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel star as a couple in a future dystopian society who must undergo a grueling interrogation before the government approves their right to have children. Also with Alicia Vikander, Leah Harvey, Nicholas Pinnock, Indira Varma, and Minnie Driver. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light (NR) Paul Wagner’s documentary profiles the much-acclaimed American painter. Voices by Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Locked (R) Bill Skarsgård stars in this thriller as a car thief who is locked in a new car and tortured remotely by its owner (Anthony Hopkins). (Opens Friday)
Magazine Dreams (R) Convicted felon Jonathan Majors stars in this drama as an amateur bodybuilder trying to gain recognition. Also with Haley Bennett, Harriet Sansom Harris, Harrison Page, Michael O’Hearn, Bradley Stryker, and Taylour Paige. (Opens Friday)
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (PG-13) This film from Zambia stars Susan Chardy as a young woman who unearths family secrets after finding her uncle dead in the street. Also with Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri, Benson Mumba, Doris Naulapwa, Mary Mulabo, Gillian Sakala, Carol Natasha Mwale, Loveness Nakwiza, and Bwalya Chimpampata. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Pintu Ki Pappi (NR) This Indian comedy stars Shushant Thamke as a young man who discovers his superpower while starting a business with his uncle. Also with Vijay Raaz, Jaanyaa Joshi, Vidhi Yadav, Sunil Pal, and Murali Sharma. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Pooja, Sir (NR) This Nepalese thriller stars Asha Magrati as a police detective investigating the kidnapping of two boys near the Indian border. Also with Nikita Chandak, Dayahang Rai, Aarti Mandal, Reecha Sharma, Bijay Baral, and Gaumaya Gurung. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Black Bag (R) This efficient entertainer is another one of Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant thrillers. Michael Fassbender portrays an MI6 analyst who discovers that his own wife (Cate Blanchett) and his personal friends are all among the suspects in a theft of a software program from the agency. Some spy-movie enthusiasts might find this movie light on action sequences. The set pieces are more in the vein of a dinner party where our hero spikes everyone’s food with truth serum, or a montage of him sitting everybody down for polygraph tests. In an environment where everybody is willing to betray everybody else, the question of whether the husband and wife can trust each other takes on an unexpected urgency. This slick exercise unmasks the traitor and then gets off the screen after 93 minutes. Maybe you can ask for more given the star power here, or maybe you can be happy with this as you head home. Also with Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Gustaf Skarsgård, and Pierce Brosnan.
Captain America: Brave New World (PG-13) A lean two-hour Marvel superhero film that yields some decent thrills. Anthony Mackie takes over the shield as the new Captain America working with and then against a new president (Harrison Ford) to avert a war between America and Japan as well as clear Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) of guilt in an assassination attempt on the president. Director/co-writer Julius Onah pares down the scale of the film without sacrificing the maximalist set pieces that Marvel fans are used to. Less successful is the supervillain (Tim Blake Nelson) and his overly convoluted plot to turn the president into the Red Hulk. Mackie well deserves a star vehicle like this and makes for an edgier and more modern Captain than Chris Evans did, and Ford manages to be fully engaged in his role. Also with Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Giancarlo Esposito, Xosha Roquemore, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, William Mark McCullough, Takehiro Hira, Liv Tyler, and an uncredited Rosa Salazar.
Chhaava (NR) Historical whitewashing by Bollywood. Vicky Kaushal stars in this biography of Sambhaji, the 17th-century Maratha king who fought against the Mughal empire that was ruling India at the time. The film is truthful about how Sambhaji won successes against India’s Muslim rulers and wound up tortured and executed for it, becoming a martyr in the eyes of Hindu nationalists. It doesn’t mention Sambhaji’s numerous failures and the wartime atrocities that his soldiers committed in his name. Writer-director Laxman Utekar does so much pandering to his audience that it overwhelms the modest skill he shows in the combat set pieces, and the last half hour of the film is clearly modeled on The Passion of the Christ. Also with Rashmika Mandanna, Akshaye Khanna, Ashutosh Rana, Divya Dutta, Vineet Kumar Singh, Diana Penty, Santosh Juvekar, and Neil Bhoopalam.
Court – State vs. a Nobody (NR) Priyadarshi Pulikonda stars in this Indian legal thriller as a defense attorney fighting on behalf of a teenage client. Also with Rohini, Sai Kumar, Harsh Roshan, Sivaji, and Subhalekha Sudhakar.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (PG) Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza) headline this animated feature that’s drawn to look like one of Warner Bros.’ vintage cartoons from the 1940s. Unfortunately, stretching out a premise to feature length turns out to be a bridge too far. When aliens invade the Earth, it punches a hole in our heroes’ house, and they have to fix their roof while also saving the world. And Porky meets and falls in love with Petunia Pig (voiced by Candi Milo). The movie is pleasant enough and incorporates a few modern touches (such as Daffy trying to get work as a YouTube influencer) without too much trouble, but too few of the gags hit the mark. The only one that really scores is at the end, when Daffy discovers a home insurance policy that specifically covers alien invasions. Additional voices by Peter MacNicol, Wayne Knight, Fred Tatasciore, Carlos Alazraqui, and Laraine Newman.
The Diplomat (NR) Not based on the Netflix TV series by that name, this Indian film stars John Abraham as a diplomat handling the case of an Indian woman (Sadia Khateeb) claiming she was forced into marrying a Pakistani man. Also with Kumud Mishra, Sharib Hashmi, and Revathy.
Dog Man (PG) Dav Pilkey’s series of children’s books becomes this frenetic but unexpectedly moving animated film. Director Peter Hastings does the voice of a stupid cop and his genius dog whose lives are saved after a bombing when the dog’s head is glued onto the man’s body. Together, Dog Man aims to thwart a cat supervillain (voiced by Pete Davidson) with a lot of abandonment issues. Those lead the cat to ditch his cloned kitten self (voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderon), and the movie has some sweet moments when Dog Man takes in the abandoned kitten. Some better writing and a bit of slacking off with the pace might have made this into a great movie. Additional voices by Lil Rel Howery, Isla Fisher, Poppy Liu, Billy Boyd, Maggie Wheeler, Laraine Newman, Cheri Oteri, and Stephen Root.
The 4 Rascals (NR) This Vietnamese comedy is about a group of troublemakers who decide to resolve a love triangle among their friends. Starring Huynh Uyen An, Tran Quoc Anh, Le Giang, Le Duong Bao Lam, Ky Duyen Cao Nguyen, Tran Thanh, and Tran Tieu Vy.
Heart Eyes (R) Using a horror movie to parody the tropes of romantic comedies is only a great idea if it works, and this just isn’t funny. Olivia Holt stars as a lovelorn advertising executive who meets her dream guy (Mason Gooding) a few days before Valentine’s Day, when a slasher whose mask has heart-shaped eye holes starts targeting couples in the Seattle area. The script does recognize the sort of coincidences that romcoms traffic in, but the jokes simply don’t land and the murders aren’t inventively staged. The leads are pretty flavorless, too. The current Companion does everything this movie is after and does it better. Also with Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa, Gigi Zumbado, Ben Black, Lauren O’Hara, Chris Parker, and Michaela Watkins.
Last Breath (PG-13) Alex Parkinson adapts his own documentary into a rather unmemorable fiction film. Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu play two saturation divers repairing an oil pipeline in the North Sea when their fellow diver (Finn Cole) becomes detached from the ship by a storm. Film nerds like me will appreciate the difficulty of the movie’s underwater photography, but it’s not great enough to catch the attention of the ordinary moviegoer, and neither the character bits nor the performances are enough for the human aspect of the story to hook us. Considering the remarkable aspects of the real-life story, this film really should have come to more. Also with Cliff Curtis, Mark Bonnar, Josef Altin, Bobby Rainsbury, and MyAnna Buring.
The Last Supper (PG-13) Less lively than a copy of the Da Vinci painting hanging on some nursing home’s wall, this Christian film depicts the events leading up to Judas Iscariot (Robert Knepper) betraying Jesus Christ (Jamie Ward). Director/co-writer Mauro Borrelli fails to find any dramatic excitement in the setup, and for a filmmaker whose background is in visual effects, you’d think his movie would look better. Even more than that, the bad acting by the principles sinks this Biblical drama. Also with James Faulkner, Henry Garrett, Daniel Fathers, James Oliver Wheatley, Harry Anton, Fredrik Wagner, Marie-Batoul Prenant, and Nathalie Rapti Gomez.
Mickey 17 (R) Bong Joon-ho continues to be his crazy self in this English-language follow-up to his Oscar-winning Parasite. Based on Edward Ashton’s science-fiction novel, this movie stars Robert Pattinson as a future worker who agrees to be cloned repeatedly so that his doubles can get killed doing dangerous jobs on a space expedition to a distant frozen planet. Seeing Bong work on a Hollywood budget alone is worth the admission price, as the Korean filmmaker conjures awe-inspiring interiors for the spaceship and massive herds of giant animals on the planet. His wacky humor also cuts against the visual splendor, as stuff malfunctions constantly in this techno-utopia and the characters’ stupidity keeps them from achieving their dream of colonizing another world. Few other filmmakers would let themselves be this silly on such a big budget. Also with Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Patsy Ferran, Cameron Britton, Bronwyn James, Holliday Grainger, Daniel Henshall, Thomas Turgoose, Anamaria Vartolomei, Steve Park, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo.
Moana 2 (PG) The backwash hits the Disney animated sequel pretty hard. Auli’i Cravalho returns as the voice of our Polynesian heroine, who’s sent back out on the ocean to reunite her scattered people and meet back up with Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson). She’s given a crew this time, but her interactions with them aren’t as interesting as you’d hope for. More grievously, Lin-Manuel Miranda has jumped ship, and new songwriters Emily Bear and Abigail Barlow appear to have been given the assignment too soon. Maui remains the best thing about this sequel, with The Rock getting to wisecrack irreverently and sing the movie’s musical highlight, “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?” The sequel shows flashes of some great ideas like a sea monster that looks like a mountainous island, but those can’t keep this from feeling rote. Additional voices by Temuera Morrison, Rachel House, Rose Matafeo, Hualālai Chung, David Fane, Awhimai Fraser, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Tofiga Fepulea’i, Alan Tudyk, Jemaine Clement, and Nicole Scherzinger.
The Monkey (R) Osgood Perkins follows up Longlegs by trying to make a horror-comedy out of Stephen King’s short story, and the results are very bad indeed. Christian Convery and then Theo James portray identical twins who find a windup toy monkey that causes the deaths of everybody around them. Convery is particularly good at differentiating the twins, one of whom constantly bullies the other. Still, despite the deaths coming about in often farcical ways, Perkins doesn’t have the temperament for staging violent deaths that are also funny, and the supporting cast doesn’t have much opportunity to contribute to this. The director is just terribly miscast with this project. Also with Tatiana Maslany, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Adam Scott, and Elijah Wood.
Mufasa: The Lion King (PG-13) More interesting, though not necessarily better, than any of Disney’s recent live-action remakes. This prequel shows the young Mufasa (voiced by Aaron Pierre) being orphaned at an early age, taken in by a rival pride, then sent away as a bodyguard to the king’s son (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who will betray him and become Scar. Much of the humor comes from the framing story, as Rafiki (voiced by John Kani) narrates the tale along with Timon and Pumbaa (voiced by Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen). We get to see Rafiki prove his mettle as a sage, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song for the villainous lion (voiced by Mads Mikkelsen) gratifyingly dings Mufasa’s circle-of-life philosophy. However, director Barry Jenkins seems miscast and uncomfortable with the big climax during an earthquake, and the romantic triangle that drives Mufasa and Scar apart doesn’t land. Still, this seems like a direction Disney should pursue, using these live-action films to continue the animated movies’ stories instead of remaking them. Additional voices by Tiffany Boone, Kagiso Lediga, Preston Nyman, Blue Ivy Carter, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Braelyn Rankins, Theo Somolu, Donald Glover, and Beyoncé.
Ne Zha 2 (NR) This movie became one of the highest-grossing films in world history before anyone had seen it outside of China, and now you can get an idea about why. Our heroes from the 2019 animated film (voiced by Joseph Cao and Han Mo) are reincarnated and sent to protect Chentang Pass from dragons of the sea, who have betrayed the humans. Like the original, this sequel is a not-always-steady mix of action and humor, and there are serious issues with the pacing of this 148-minute epic. However, the set pieces are pretty spectacular, as armies of demons invade the seacoast, clouds of angel-like demon hunters fly overhead, characters visit the next world and gain additional powers, and farcical battles against beavers and deer take place. For all its flaws, this is worth seeing for its aesthetics and the box-office history that it made. Additional voices by Wang Deshun, Lü Qi, Lü Yanting, Yang Wei, Yu Chen, Zhou Yongxi, Li Nan, and Zhang Jiaming.
Novocaine (R) If this is a one-joke movie, Jack Quaid makes sure that the joke works. He portrays Nathan “Novocaine” Caine, a San Diego credit union assistant manager who can’t feel pain. When some armed bank robbers take hostage a teller whom he’s in love with (Amber Midthunder), he steals a police cruiser and goes after them. The film starts more interesting than it ends, as it depicts Novocaine’s life with his condition — he can ink large tattoos on himself, but he also has to stick to a liquid diet and remind himself to urinate or else his bladder will burst. As the movie goes on, it takes too long to reach its end and fails in its attempts to connect Novocaine’s pain-free life with his unwillingness to seek romance, and it doesn’t come off. The main thing to see this for is Quaid, whether he’s expressing terror at being in the middle of an action-thriller plot or not reacting to being kicked in the testicles. His lightness and comic skills show he can carry a movie. Also with Jacob Batalon, Ray Nicholson, Conrad Kemp, Evan Hengst, Lou Beatty Jr., Craig Jackson, Betty Gabriel, and Matt Walsh.
One of Them Days (R) Keke Palmer and SZA make a capable comedy team in this film that occasionally catches a groove. They portray two women in L.A. who are hard up when one’s boyfriend blows their rent money, so they have nine hours to come up with $1,500 or face eviction. Despite the clock that these characters are on, I really wish director Lawrence Lamont had generated a sense of the time crunch and increasing desperation as the hours go by. Still, the movie has a white woman (Maude Apatow) who moves into this Black apartment complex as part of the gentrification process, and when the women try to take out a payday loan, everything about the business is funny, from the 1,900 percent interest rate to the homeless man (Katt Williams) who begs customers not to take the loan. Also with Vanessa Bell Calloway, Patrick Cage, Joshua David Neal, Gabrielle Dennis, Janelle James, Amin Joseph, Aziza Scott, Dewayne Perkins, Rizi Timane, and Lil Rel Howery.
Opus (R) The film starts off well before losing its focus. Ayo Edebiri stars as a New York music journalist who travels to a private compound in Utah owned by a reclusive pop star (John Malkovich) to hear his first new album in 27 years, only to find that he is running his own religious cult. Writer-director Mark Steven Johnson makes the point that pop-star fandoms are like cults, but then doesn’t expand on this familiar point in any creative way. The songs by Nile Rodgers and The Dream manage the considerable feat of making Malkovich seem like a credible pop star. Yet the film can’t even function on the basic level of a prison-break thriller because it has so many targets in the music industry, journalism, social media, and religion that it can’t hit any of them. Also with Juliette Lewis, Amber Midthunder, Tatanka Means, Murray Bartlett, Melissa Chambers, Mark Sivertsen, Stephanie Suganami, Young Mazino, and Tony Hale.
Paddington in Peru (PG) Paul King left the series to work with Timothée Chalamet on the Willy Wonka movies, and he seems to have taken everything good with him. This brain-dead and unwatchable third installment has our marmalade-loving bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw) traveling with the Brown family to the Amazon jungle to locate his missing aunt (voiced by Imelda Staunton), only for the trip to turn into a quest to find El Dorado. The movie introduces Olivia Colman as a guitar-strumming nun and Antonio Banderas as a riverboat captain, and both of them are particularly badly served. The same goes for the Brown kids (Samuel Joslin and Madeleine Harris), who are now teenagers and much less interesting. The only time this movie even raises a laugh is during the post-credit sequence, when an uncredited Hugh Grant pops up. He only serves to remind you how much better the last movie was than this slog. Also with Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Carla Tous, Julie Walters, Joel Fry, Robbie Gee, Jim Broadbent, and Hayley Atwell.
Rule Breakers (PG) The title is ironically funny, since this movie couldn’t feel safer. Nikohl Boosheri portrays an Afghan woman who defies Taliban rule in the 1990s and starts educating women about how to use computers and the internet. The English-language script makes Afghanistan seem a lot more familiar than it should, and the Christian studio that put this movie out soft-pedals the fact that all these characters are Muslim. This movie wants to salute the courage of the women who did this work in secret at great risk to their lives, but they deserve a more memorable cinematic experience than this. Also with Christian Contreras, Ali Fazal, Sara Rowe, Nada El Belkasmi, and Nasser Memarzia.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (PG) About what you’d expect, and not in a good way. When an evil superpowered hedgehog (voiced by Keanu Reeves) breaks out of his prison on Earth, Sonic and his friends (voiced by Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, and Idris Elba) have to do the unthinkable and team up with Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to stop him. Unfortunately, the mad scientist betrays them when he’s reunited with his long-lost grandfather (also Carrey). The hedgehogs go to Tokyo and London as part of their fight, but the movie bogs down in so many platitudes about family that it could qualify as an installment in the Fast & Furious franchise. Even the movie’s left turn into a clone of The Shape of Water can’t save it. Also with James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Lee Majdoub, Adam Pally, Shemar Moore, Natasha Rothwell, Alyla Browne, Tom Butler, Jorma Taccone, and Krysten Ritter.
The Unbreakable Boy (PG) Based on Scott LeRette and Susy Flory’s book, this film stars Jacob Laval as a 13-year-old autistic boy who also suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta a.k.a. brittle bone disease. I like how this Christian film does not undersell the challenges of raising a child with this condition, as his parents (Zachary Levi and Meghann Fahy) are driven to distraction by the boy’s constant talking, while the medical expenses end up driving the father to alcoholism. Even so, director/co-writer Jon Gunn can’t resist tying things up with an overly tidy moral or flattening out his main character into some paragon of living life in the present. Also with Pilot Bunch, Gavin Warren, Bruce Davis, Peter Facinelli, Patricia Heaton, and Arianne Martin.
Dallas Exclusives
High Rollers (R) This thriller stars Gina Gershon, Lukas Haas, Kelly Greyson, Swen Temmel, Natali Yura, Korrina Rico, Demián Castro, and John Travolta.
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story (NR) Bruce David Klein’s documentary profiles Liza Minnelli. Also with Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, Michael Feinstein, Alan Cumming, Darren Criss, John Kander, Lorna Luft, Ben Vereen, Billy Stritch, George Hamilton, and Mia Farrow.
Raging Midlife (NR) Rob Taylor and Nic Costa co-write and co-star in this comedy as wrestling fans who plot to steal 1980s memorabilia after they’re outbid in an online auction. Also with Danielle Vasinova, Emily Sweet, Eddie Griffin, Walter Koenig, and Paula Abdul.
We’re All Gonna Die (R) Ashly Burch and Jordan Rodrigues star in this science-fiction comedy as two drifters who decide to get their possessions back after aliens invade the Earth. Also with Willow Hale and Alexander Chard.
