OPENING
Ace (NR) VIjay Sethupathi stars in this action-comedy as an Indian criminal who’s caught up in a heist plot in Malaysia. Also with Rukmini Vasanth, Yogi Babu, B.S. Avinash, Babloo Prithiveeraj, and Divya Pillai. (Opens Friday)
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (R) Camille Rutherford stars in this comedy as a frustrated French writer who wins a writing fellowship in England. Also with Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn, and Frederick Wiseman. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Kapkapiii (NR) This Indian horror-comedy is about a group of friends who summon evil spirits with a Ouija board. Starring Tusshar Kapoor, Shreyas Talpade, Siddhi Idnani, Jay Thakkar, Sonia Rathee, Varun Pandey, and Abhishek Kumar. (Opens Friday)
Kesari Veer (NR) Sooraj Pancholi stars in this historical thriller about a warrior protecting Hindus against foreign invaders. Also with Suniel Shetty, Vivek Oberoi, Akanksha Sharma, Barkha Bisht, Aruna Irani, and Kiran Kumar. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
The Last Rodeo (PG) Neal McDonough stars in this Christian drama as a cowboy who comes out of retirement because of his family’s financial need. Also with Mykelti Williamson, Sarah Jones, Graham Harvey, Irene Bedard, and Christopher McDonald. (Opens Friday)
Lilo & Stitch (PG) Beyond the technical skill of integrating a CGI-generated Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders) with live actors and scenery, this remake follows the animated original so closely that you wonder what the point is. Maia Kealoha portrays the little Hawaiian girl being raised by her older sister (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) when the chaotically destructive space alien crash lands near her and she adopts the alien from the local animal rescue. Director Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On) makes it all seamless, but the familiar story beats aren’t any more moving now than they were in the 2002 original. The additions of Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen as the aliens trying to capture Stitch bring surprisingly little. Also with Tia Carrere, Courtney B. Vance, Amy Hill, Kaipo Dudoit, Jason Scott Lee, and Hannah Waddingham. (Opens Friday)
Narivetta (NR) This Malayalam-language drama is about a group of villagers trying to protect their town from corporate and government interests. Starring Tovino Thomas, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Cheran, Arya Salim, Priyamvada Krishnan, and Jithin Eden. (Opens Friday at AMC Parks at Arlington)
The New Boy (NR) Cate Blanchett stars in this Australian film as a 1940s nun who takes in a runaway Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid). Also with Deborah Mailman, Shane McKenzie-Brady, Tyrique Brady, Tyler Spencer, Kyle Miller, and Wayne Blair. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Trail of Vengeance (NR) This Western stars Rumer Willis as a 19th-century widow seeking revenge for her husband’s murder. Also with Jeff Fahey, Graham Greene, Eric Nelsen, and Gbenga Akinnagbe. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
The Accountant 2 (R) Ben Affleck reprises his role as an autistic accountant who launders money for dictators and terrorists. In this sequel, he has to team up with his estranged brother (Jon Bernthal) and a Treasury Department official (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to solve the murder of his former boss (J.K. Simmons). It’s not that the action sequences are dull, it’s that the character bits in between are also dull. The comedy doesn’t work, the main character can’t evolve, and the plot about human trafficking has been done to death. Most of the story takes place in Los Angeles, but the bad guys do travel to Fort Worth to kill a witness. Also with Daniella Pineda, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Alberto Manquero, Michael Tourek, and Yael Ocasio.
The Amateur (PG-13) Rami Malek is miscast in this action-thriller, and that’s sort of the point. He stars as a CIA intelligence analyst who seeks revenge after his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered in a terrorist attack. Based on Robert Littell’s novel (which got made into a Hollywood spy thriller back in 1981), the story specifically takes as its protagonist a man who can’t look a bad guy in the eye and then pull the trigger on him. Even though the action hero is highly intelligent and highly motivated, the movie knows that it takes more than that to make a viable operative. Unfortunately, the movie around our unconventional hero is too conventional, and his eluding of his own agents in European backwaters isn’t handled creatively enough. Also with Laurence Fishburne, Julianne Nicholson, Holt McCallany, Danny Sapani, Adrian Martinez, Evan Milton, Barbara Probst, Marc Rissmann, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Clown in a Cornfield (R) Katie Douglas from Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia makes a lively slasher-flick final girl in this horror movie based on Adam Cesare’s novel. She portrays a Philadelphia native who moves to a Missouri small town after a family tragedy, only to find multiple serial killers dressed as the same clown butchering all her new teenage friends. Director Eli Craig (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) could have done better with the look of the film and with the murders, but the identity of the killers is a pretty funny joke, and there’s a gay subplot in here that you wouldn’t ordinarily find in a slasher flick. Douglas holds the thing together as someone who’s hurt and sarcastic and trying to adapt to her new surroundings. Also with Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Vincent Muller, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Alexandre Martin Deakin, Bradley Sawatzky, Catherine Wreford, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso.
Final Destination: Bloodlines (R) I forgot how stupid these movies were. Kaitlyn Santa Juana stars as the granddaughter of a woman (played in flashbacks by Brec Bassinger) who saved hundreds of people’s lives in the 1960s, so the death curse takes all those decades to catch up with her progeny. The film is on a much larger scale than the previous films, especially depicting the disaster averted in the past. However, the Rube Goldberg contrived contraptions that kill the people are just as dumb as ever. The late Tony Todd gives one of his final performances as an old man who’s in line for the death curse, and his speech about the importance of enjoying life is the only thing here with any weight. Also with Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Alex Zahara, April Telek, Tinpo Lee, Max Lloyd-Jones, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, and Gabrielle Rose.
Friendship (R) Feels like Tim Robinson unfiltered, for better or worse. He stars in this comedy as a suburban dad whose life starts to fall apart when he befriends his new neighbor down the street (Paul Rudd), only for the neighbor to unfriend him because he’s a creepy weirdo. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung mostly goes for cringe rather than belly laughs, so your enjoyment of this will depend on your particular taste. Robinson is fantastic as a poorly socialized corporate consultant whose attempts to infiltrate the neighbor’s circle of male friends only succeeds in making them uncomfortable, and Rudd complements him as a guy who’s also a loser but is better at hiding it. These characters probably deserved a movie that had a few more ideas about them. Also with Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer, Whitmer Thomas, Daniel London, Jacob Ming-Trent, Josh Segarra, Meredith Garretson, Omar Torres, and Billy Bryk.
Hurry Up Tomorrow (R) Exhibit A in the case of why pop music stars shouldn’t write and star in their own movies. Under his given name of Abel Tesfaye, The Weeknd stars as an insomnia-afflicted pop star who’s in a downward spiral. Nothing much happens. As himself, The Weeknd throws tantrums and cries a lot. As his ex-girlfriend, Jenna Ortega drives across the country and cries a lot. As The Weeknd’s chief enabler and leech, Barry Keoghan at least gets something to play, although his character doesn’t do much, either. Trey Edward Shults is a terrific director (Waves, It Comes at Night), but he can’t make sense out of any of this. Even The Weeknd’s songs do little to liven up the proceedings. This is enough to give a bad name to celebrity vanity projects.
The King of Kings (PG) Leaden in both visual and narrative terms, this animated Christian film has the story of Jesus Christ (voiced by Oscar Isaac) being narrated by Charles Dickens (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) for some reason. Neither the telling of the Passion story nor the framing story in Victorian England are interesting in itself, and the intersections of the two don’t work. The opportunities for great visuals from the animation are there, but the filmmakers don’t take any of them. It’s hard to tell what the purpose of all this is. Painters and other visual artists have done much better at making Christian art. Additional voices by Uma Thurman, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Jim Cummings, Fred Tatasciore, Roman Griffin Davis, and Forest Whitaker.
A Minecraft Movie (PG) The charm that has won the video game millions of followers around the world is little in evidence in this film version. Jack Black stars as the ruler of the Overworld, who has to prevent the queen of the Nether (voiced by Rachel House) from taking over, with the help of a group of visitors from Idaho (Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, and Sebastian Hansen) who have accidentally been pulled into the Minecraft world. Director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) finds a nice comic groove in Idaho, but once everybody goes into the game, his sense of pacing and timing deserts him. The writers frantically move these characters back and forth to make up for the fact that the game famously has no story, and the actors scream their lines. Making an intellectual property into a good movie requires a filmmaker with peculiar talents, and this movie doesn’t find one. Also with Jennifer Coolidge, Bret McKenzie, Matt Berry, Jemaine Clement, and an uncredited Kate McKinnon.
Shadow Force (R) Writer-director Joe Carnahan can’t seem to settle on what kind of action film this is supposed to be. Kerry Washington and Omar Sy portray a couple who are separated and in hiding because they were private soldiers who broke the rules by falling in love and having a son (Jahleel Kamara). When their comrades come after them, they have to reunite to protect him. Even if the comic interludes were better integrated with the action, Carnahan still doesn’t know how to be funny, and the plot that gets our main characters to this point is all over the place. Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph turns up as their best friend, but the role is something that a thousand other actresses could easily play. The action itself isn’t up to scratch, either. Also with Mark Strong, Ed Quinn, Marshall Cook, Natalia Reyes, Marvin Jones III, Jénel Stevens, and Method Man.
#Single (NR) This Telugu-language comedy stars Sree Vishnu as a bachelor who’s determined to stay single despite two women being in love with him. Also with Ketika Sharma, Ivana, VTV Ganesh, Kalpa Latha, and Vennela Kishore.
Sinners (R) Ryan Coogler’s foray into Jordan Peele territory is wild and wildly original, even when it doesn’t make sense. Michael B. Jordan plays identical twins who return from Chicago to their Mississippi hometown in the 1930s to open a blues joint with their cousin (Miles Caton) who happens to be an otherworldly musician. Jordan gives two bracing performances as brothers with different jobs and temperaments, the Mississippi town is more layered than we usually see in Hollywood movies, and there’s a great sequence with the blues musician delivering a song so powerful that it opens a rift in time and space as well as attracting vampires. Coogler winds up with a few too many ideas in his intellectual stew, but it frames Delta blues in a wholly unexpected way and emerges as a worthy vampire movie. What other movie can say that? Also with Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li, Jack O’Connell, Lola Kirke, Jayme Lawson, Saul Williams, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Peter Dreimanis, Omar Miller, Yao, Delroy Lindo, and Buddy Guy.
Thunderbolts* (PG-13) Several shades darker than your typical Marvel superhero movie, which is part of what distinguishes it from the pack. When the CIA director (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries to take complete control of the U.S. government, a group of mercenaries in her employ (Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan) band together to stop her. The villain’s secret weapon is a mentally ill drug addict (Lewis Pullman) who can trap people in their worst nightmares. The film is wobbly on the subject of toxic masculinity and occasionally plays like a derivative of Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it sometimes achieves a power of its own. Pugh delivers a precisely pitched performance in the lead, and Louis-Dreyfus makes a terrific foil to her as someone who hides her lust for power behind her precious wisecracks. The Marvel series is morphing into something new, which is better than repeating itself. Also with Geraldine Viswanathan, Olga Kurylenko, Chris Bauer, Violet McGraw, and Wendell Pierce.
Unko Sweater (NR) This Nepalese comedy stars Maotse Gurung, Bipin Karki, Miruna Magar, Sunil Pokharel, and Wilson Bikram Rai.
Until Dawn (R) Pretty much everything goes wrong in this horror movie adapted from the video game of the same name. Ella Rubin stars as a young woman tracking the disappearance of her sister (Maia Mitchell) when she and her friends become stuck in a time loop where they relive the same night over and over in a ghost town, being killed off by different monsters each night. The setting of a town that’s inside a crater because of a coal mine cave-in is a golden opportunity for some great production design, but this cheap-ass film can’t pull it off. The video game’s undercurrent of guilt gets lost, as does its use of Native American wendigos, and the acting by much of the cast is just bad. Happy Death Day treated this concept with a lot more inventiveness and humor. Also with Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Yoo Ji-young, Belmont Cameli, and Peter Stormare.
Dallas Exclusives
A Breed Apart (R) Grace Caroline Currey stars in this horror film as an influencer whose trip to a private island turns into a deadly survival game. Also with Hayden Panettiere, Virginia Gardner, Troy Gentile, Zak Steiner, and Riele Downs.
Desert Dawn (R) Kellan Lutz and Cam Gigandet star in this Western as a sheriff and his deputy who investigate a murder in their small town. Also with Chad Michael Collins, Texas Battle, Mike Wolfe, Mike Ferguson, Niko Foster, Helena Haro, Chris Maher, and William Christopher Watson.
Queens of Drama (NR) This French musical stars Louiza Aura as a pop singer whose career spirals during a destructive 50-year relationship with a rival (Gio Ventura). Also with Alma Jodorowsky, Nana Benamer, Dustin Muchuvitz, Raya Martigny, Thomas Poitevin, and Asia Argento.
Things Like This (NR) Max Talisman writes, directs, and stars in this gay romance as a man who falls in love with another man who has the same name (Joey Pollari). Also with Charlie Tahan, Jackie Cruz, Margaret Berkowitz, Cara Buono, and Eric Roberts.
