OPENING
Americana (R) Tony Tost’s comic thriller is about outlaws and misfits who are out to buy or steal a Lakota ghost shirt that has come on the black market. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, Zahn McClarnon, Toby Huss, and Eric Dane. (Opens Friday)
Coolie (NR) This Indian crime thriller stars Rajinikanth as a mysterious vigilante who stands up to the mob in a port town. Also with Nagarjuna, Soubin Shahir, Upendra, Shruti Haasan, Sathyaraj, Pooja Hegde, and Aamir Khan. (Opens Friday)
Dead to Rights (NR) This Chinese historical thriller stars Liu Haoran as Su Liuchang, a photographer who secretly documented Japanese atrocities during the 1937 invasion. Also with Gao Ye, Daichi Harashima, Wang Chuan-jun, Wang Xiao, and Yang Haoyu. (Opens Friday)
Highest 2 Lowest (R) Spike Lee’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low stars Denzel Washington as a music mogul targeted in a kidnapping plot. Also with Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Aubrey Joseph, Wendell Pierce, and Ice Spice. (Opens Friday)
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (NR) The latest documentary from Amy Berg (West of Memphis) profiles the short-lived musician. (Opens Friday)
The Knife (R) Former NFL great Nnamdi Asomugha directs and stars in this thriller about a Black family who deal with the fallout after killing a white intruder in their house. Also with Melissa Leo, Aja Naomi King, Amari Price, Aiden Price, Lucinda Jenney, and Manny Jacinto. (Opens Friday)
Nobody 2 (R) The sequel to the 2021 thriller partially but not completely fixes the original’s issues. Bob Odenkirk returns as a hit man who takes his family on a vacation to a water park in Wisconsin, only to discover that smugglers and crooked cops have taken over the surrounding town. Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays) takes over the sequel and brings some personality to the action sequences, but he consistently leaves dramatic material on the table regarding the hero’s teenage son (Gage Munroe) emulating his violent behavior and his wife (Connie Nielsen) knowing about his business. It feels like there’s a better, longer version of this movie that got left on the cutting room floor. Also with Christopher Lloyd, RZA, John Ortiz, Colin Hanks, Lucius Hoyos, Paisley Cadorath, and Sharon Stone. (Opens Friday)
Shin Godzilla (PG-13) This 2016 movie is a hard reset of the series, taking place in 1954 when the monster first appears in Tokyo Harbor. Hiroki Hasegawa stars as a low-level cabinet officer who has to lead a bunch of misfits and loners to stop Godzilla. Director/co-writer Hideaki Anno comes over from anime and focuses on the bureaucratic workings of the Japanese government to accomplish the task, and mines some good dry humor from the setup as well as commenting on the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the monster itself, which has an expressionless design and some stiff puppetry and CGI work. That doesn’t keep this reboot from being a success. Also with Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara, Akira Emoto, Kengo Kōra, Mikako Ichikawa, Jun Kunimura, and Ren Ōsugi. — Cole Williams (Re-opens Thursday)
Vacances forcées (R) This French remake of the Italian comedy I Hate Summer is about three vacationing families who find themselves triple-booked in the same beach house. Starring Clovis Cornillac, Aure Atika, Bertrand Usclat, Pauline Clément, Laurent Stocker, Claïna Clavaron, Lucas Ponton, Thibault Bonenfant, and Gérard Lenormand. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
War 2 (NR) Hrithik Roshan reprises his role from the 2019 thriller as an Indian agent who has gone rogue. Also with N.T. Rama Rao Jr., Kiara Advani, Ashutosh Rana, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, and Alia Bhatt. (Opens Friday)
Went Up the Hill (NR) Dacre Montgomery stars in this horror film as a man who encounters demonic possession when he travels to New Zealand for his mother’s funeral. Also with Vicky Krieps, Arlo Green, Sarah Peirse, and Joel Tobeck. (Open Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Witchboard (R) This remake of the 1986 horror film is about a new group of people who rouse evil spirits by playing with a cursed Ouija board. Starring Madison Iseman, Aaron Dominguez, Charlie Tahan, Antonia Desplat, and Jamie Campbell Bower. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
The Bad Guys 2 (PG) Better than the first movie, actually. The gang (voiced by Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Marc Maron, and Craig Robinson) has trouble landing jobs after getting out of prison, so a rival gang frames them for their own crimes and forces them to commit additional crimes to clear their names. The climactic sequence is a bit drawn out, but until then the movie has a nice time mocking tech billionaires who want to go into space and the tropes of heist movies, as well as a nice interlude at a lucha libre wrestling event. Mark this down as an above-average animated kids’ film. Additional voices by Danielle Brooks, Maria Bakalova, Zazie Beetz, Jaime Camil, Richard Ayoade, Lilly Singh, Alex Borstein, Omid Djalili, and Natasha Lyonne.
Elio (PG) Deserves to be mentioned alongside Pixar’s other Latin-themed films Coco and Encanto, even if it’s the least of those. The Elio of the title is an orphaned 11-year-old boy (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) who’s obsessed with space aliens and spends hours drawing large signs that beg the little green men to come and get him. The movie’s good with the sort of alienation that drives people to give up on Earth and pin their hopes on more evolved alien beings, and Pixar’s trademark visual splendor is in full evidence when Elio is actually abducted by aliens who mistake him for Earth’s leader. It’s all cut with Pixar’s trademark sense of humor, too, but the film starts to lose its shape in its final third when Elio has to travel between Earth and space to avert an intergalactic war. The movie comes frustratingly close to greatness, but it’s better than the live-action remakes that Hollywood has in theaters now. Additional voices by Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Remy Edgerly, Jameela Jamil, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ana de la Reguera, Atsuko Okatsuka, Shirley Henderson, Brandon Moon, and Kate Mulgrew.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (PG-13) Finally they made a pleasing movie about this group. The film plunks us down in the middle of the saga in the early 1960s, when Reed Richards and Sue Storm (Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby) discover that they’re pregnant and, not coincidentally, Galactus (Ralph Ineson) announces his intention to devour the Earth. Director Matt Shakman’s retro-futurist aesthetic distinguishes this from other Marvel superhero movies, and the same goes for the well-oiled banter among the Four (Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach fill out the team). To a surprising extent, this feels like a 1960s movie, albeit one with contemporary special effects. Even the cute robot sidekick (Matthew Wood) isn’t too objectionable, and the movie is unencumbered by story ties to the rest of the Marvel universe. Also with Julia Garner, Paul Walter Hauser, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss, and Natasha Lyonne.
F1: The Movie (PG-13) The best auto-racing film ever made, especially if you see it in a theater with good speakers. Director Joseph Kosinski made you feel the speed and torque of the fighter planes in Top Gun: Maverick, and he uses those same skills to tell the story of a washed-up Formula One racer (Brad Pitt) who’s given one last shot to compete at that level by a desperate former racing teammate (Javier Bardem). The roar of the race cars is so intense that you may walk out exhausted from all the sound energy hitting your body. The subplots about our grizzled veteran mentoring a cocky young teammate (Damson Idris) and romancing his team’s technical director (Kerry Condon) don’t pull their weight, but the script delves deep into racing strategy, and the sound engineering and the cameras mounted on vehicles will make you feel like you’re there on race day. Also with Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Luciano Bacheta, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick, Callie Cooke, Samson Kayo, and Shea Whigham.
Freakier Friday (PG) At least this time it isn’t some stereotypical Asian lady making the body switch happen. The sequel to the 2003 Disney comedy has Anna (Lindsay Lohan) falling in love with a British chef (Manny Jacinto), but when their respective teenage daughters (Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons) detest each other, it’s once again time for body switching. This time there’s two switches, once again involving Anna’s mom (Jamie Lee Curtis), which makes it harder to keep track of who’s in whose body, but that would matter less if the scenes were funnier or if the plot points didn’t come so haphazardly and without logic. Lohan can still bring it and Butters displays some good comic timing, but after 22 years, you’d think the sequel would have better ideas. The only time the nostalgia pays off is at the end, when Anna reunites with her ex-bandmates (Christina Vidal Mitchell and Haley Hudson) and they perform songs from the first movie. Also with Chad Michael Murray, Vanessa Bayer, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, X Mayo, Lucille Soong, June DIane Raphael, Stephen Tobolowsky, Sherry Cola, George Wallace, Chloe Fineman, Elaine Hendrix, and Mark Harmon.
How to Train Your Dragon (PG) Chalk up another live-action remake of an animated kids’ movie that I can’t see the point of. Mason Thames (The Black Phone) stars in this remake of the 2010 animated film as the Viking who discovers that his tribe have been slaughtering dragons for no good reason. Toothless the Dragon is now generated by CGI and never once convinces us that he’s a real animal, and none of the human actors (not even Gerard Butler, reprising his voice role from the original as the Viking chief) put forward a case that this needed to be fleshed out with human actors. The only good addition here is the joke about the origin of Hiccup’s Viking helmet. Also with Nico Parker, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Murray McArthur, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Naomi Wirthner, and Nick Frost. (Opens Friday)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (R) You can’t make me scared of a killer who dresses like the Gorton’s fisherman. I just can’t do it. For this sequel to the 1990s horror franchise, a new group of young people (Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, and Tyriq Withers) inadvertently causes a fatal car accident outside the North Carolina port town. When they fail to own up to it, the slasher in the slicker starts picking them off one by one, and they have to consult the survivors of the previous attacks (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.) for advice. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) takes over this series, but nothing works, not the murder scenes, not the attempts to incorporate comedy into the film, not the final solution, not the callbacks to the previous movies, and not even the final girl’s bisexuality. The failure here is total. Also with Billy Campbell, Austin Nichols, Gabbriette Bechtel, Joshua Orpin, Brandy Norwood, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (PG-13) More like stillbirth, actually. The series has a new director and a bunch of new stars, and yet it’s still tedious enough to make the last three movies seem like roller-coaster rides by comparison. Scarlett Johansson plays a private contractor who helps get a team of scientists into a dinosaur-populated island for biological samples that could be turned into life-saving medications, only to run into a family stranded there after their boat is sunk by other dinosaurs. Director Gareth Edwards (The Creator) makes the dinosaurs look real enough, but neither the characters nor the action set pieces are memorable in any way. Also with Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Manuel García-Rulfo, David Iacono, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda, Bechir Sylvain, Niamh Finlay, Ed Skrein, and Rupert Friend.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (PG-13) This may not be Tom Cruise’s last outing as Ethan Hunt, but it does feel like a farewell to a franchise’s defining star. He has to reunite with his team members to capture the AI that is currently destroying the world. The result is unfortunately quite a disjointed movie in which Ethan appears to traverse the globe at the speed of light while awkward montages take in all the stars who have graced this series through the decades. The movie’s nostalgia kick does bring back Rolf Saxon as the CIA tech guy whom we haven’t seen since Ethan robbed his office in the original movie, and the stunts feature Cruise hanging off the wing of a biplane as well as a sequence in a sunken submarine that’s excellent suspense. It’s a better goodbye than Jason Bourne got. Also with Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Tramell Tillman, Mark Gatiss, Greg Tarzan Davis, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Katy O’Brian, Cary Elwes, and Angela Bassett.
My Daughter Is a Zombie (NR) The latest South Korean box-office smash is this horror-comedy about an animal trainer (Jo Jung-suk) whose teenage daughter (Choi Yoo-ri) is infected during a zombie pandemic. Also with Lee Jeong-eun, Yoon Kyung-ho, and Cho Yeo-jeong.
My Mother’s Wedding (R) Kristin Scott Thomas stars in her awfully disappointing directing debut as a twice-widowed mother whose third wedding brings together her adult daughters: a gay, commitment-shy Royal Navy captain (Scarlett Johansson), a thrice-married Hollywood star (Sienna Miller), and a hospital nurse (Emily Beecham) whose husband is cheating on her. So little happens in this movie that it bogs down in endless talk about relationships and sibling issues as well as animated interludes whose purpose is hopelessly obscure. All this would matter less if the jokes were funny, but they’re not, and these talented actresses are left with precious little material to work with. Also with Freida Pinto, James Fleet, Joshua McGuire, Mark Stanley, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths.
The Naked Gun (R) A reminder of why this comedy subgenre died in the first place. Liam Neeson portrays Frank Drebin Jr., investigating a murder linked to a tech billionaire (Danny Huston). There are a few scenes that hit, like the one when an infrared camera makes it appear that Frank is into all kinds of weird sex, but the gags that misfire far outnumber the ones that work, and neither Neeson nor Pamela Anderson as Frank’s love interest have the deadpan style of this comedy down. It’s never a good sign when the jokes in the final credits are funnier than the ones in the movie itself. Also with Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Busta Rhymes, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Priscilla Presley, and an uncredited Dave Bautista.
Saiyaara (NR) You can see why this Indian romance is breaking box-office records over there, though that doesn’t make it good. Ahaan Panday stars as a struggling musician with a vicious temper stemming from unresolved trauma. He’s forced to grow up when he meets a woman (Aneet Padda) who yearns to write poetry but is struck by early-onset Alzheimer’s. The individual scenes work well enough, and the newcomers in the lead roles are both fine. Still, the overall story is maudlin, and the movie veers dangerously close to saying that love can cure Alzheimer’s. It still comes out a watchable romance, though your patience for Bollywood sentimentality may vary. Also with Rajesh Kumar, Geeta Agarwal, Varun Badola, Shaad Randhawa, Sid Makkar, Alam Khan, Shaan Groverr, and Neil Dutta.
Sketch (PG) Why doesn’t this play better than it does? Tony Hale stars in this kids’ movie as a widowed father whose young daughter (Bianca Belle) draws sketches of hideous monsters. The sketches then come to life when she drops the sketchpad in a pond that has magical powers. The premise has potential and the monsters mostly come off well, but first-time director Seth Worley can’t find anything like the right comic energy for this story. Despite Hale’s best efforts as an overwhelmed dad trying to handle a troubled kid, the drama remains stubbornly inert when the monsters are not on screen. Also with D’Arcy Carden, Kue Lawrence, Kalon Cox, Jaxon Kenner, and Genesis Rose Brown.
Smurfs (PG) Once again, the charm of this venerable comic series eludes Hollywood’s attempt to bring it to the big screen. When Gargamel and his more evil brother (both voiced by J.P. Karliak) kidnap Papa Smurf (voiced by John Goodman), it’s up to Smurfette (voiced by Rihanna) and No Name Smurf (voiced by James Corden) to unite Smurf Village and bring him back. An all-star voice cast has to take a back seat to Rihanna’s wobbly American accent and No Name Smurf’s flimsy search for an identity of his own. Despite an interlude when director Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) puts the Smurfs through different styles of animation, the gags misfire repeatedly. Our animation industry should give up and let the French have a crack at the Smurfs. Additional voices by Octavia Spencer, Nick Offerman, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Billie Lourd, and Kurt Russell.
Superman (PG-13) The best Superman movie from this century. David Corenswet takes over the title role, as Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) leads a social-media crusade to have Superman treated as an illegal alien. Luthor is reimagined for our time as a libertarian billionaire who feels small and insignificant against the Man of Steel’s superpowers, and a highly dysfunctional trio of superheroes calling themselves the Justice Gang (Nathan Fillion, Edi Gathegi, and Isabela Merced) makes a funny foil to Superman. Writer-director James Gunn doesn’t make the most memorable action set pieces here, but he is willing to use fight sequences in an unorthodox way, like when Clark Kent and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) have an earnest conversation about their relationship while the Justice Gang silently battles a kaiju in the distance. The surprising subplots and the grounding in current events makes this welcome. Also with Skylar Gisondo, Wendell Pierce, Beck Bennett, María Gabriela de Faría, Sara Sampaio, Zlatko Buric, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Mikaela Hoover, Sean Gunn, Frank Grillo, Anthony Carrigan, Alan Tudyk, Michael Rooker, Pom Klementieff, Angela Sarafyan, Bradley Cooper, and uncredited cameos by Milly Alcock and John Cena.
Together (R) The best piece of body horror since The Substance wouldn’t work nearly as well if its lead actors weren’t married to each other, or if they weren’t so well-versed in playing scenes for laughs. Dave Franco and Alison Brie play a couple who move to a big house in the countryside and find that their bodies are fusing together. Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks makes his directing debut and displays some uncanny talent, as in a cavern that appears to be alive as it starts the process of our couple losing their individuality. The actors, too, find humor in the horrifying situation. The final shot is a joke that misfires, but this unique horror film is the best argument I’ve ever seen in favor of staying single one’s whole life. Also with Damon Herriman.
Weapons (R) Disquieting. Zach Cregger’s horror film is about a Pennsylvania town where 17 schoolchildren suddenly vanish on the same night, and the community turns on itself for lack of any explanations, starting with the third-grade teacher (Julia Garner) who taught all the missing kids. It all plays like Eddington in that it only takes one unforeseen event to make these civilized people ready to kill each other in the street, but this movie’s inchoate violence makes it more powerful, like a finely honed urban legend. Cregger’s comedy background also brings some unexpected humor to the proceedings, but he also implies that the trauma here will roll on for generations until the town is engulfed in one giant trauma bond. Also with Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, June Diane Raphael, Sara Paxton, Luke Speakman, Clayton Farris, and Justin Long.
Dallas Exclusives
River of Blood (R) This action-thriller is about four kayakers who find themselves in the territory of a cannibal tribe in Thailand. Starring Sarah Alexandra Marks, Joseph Millson, Louis James, Ella Starbuck, David Wayman, Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, and Einar Haraldsson.
Trouble Man (NR) Michael Jai White stars in and directs this thriller about a private investigator hired to find a vanished music star (La La Anthony). Also with Method Man, Mike Epps, Gillian White, Orlando Jones, and Keith Sweat.
