OPENING
Anemone (R) Daniel Day-Lewis came out of retirement for his son’s directing debut, and while he can still bring it, the project has other problems. He portrays a British Army veteran who has gone off the grid when his estranged brother (Sean Bean) visits his cabin in the forest to convince him to straighten out his eternally angry teenage son (Samuel Bottomley). Director/co-writer Ronan Day-Lewis conjures up some hallucinatory visuals as well as a hair-raising scene when our hermit tells about the revenge he took on the Catholic priest who raped him as a boy. However, there are too many dead spots, and the story is just misery on top of trauma piled on more misery. The young Day-Lewis does show some talent behind the camera, but he needs some seasoning. Also with Samantha Morton and Safia Oakley-Green. (Opens Friday)
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. (Re-opens Friday)
Bone Lake (R) Alex Roe and Maddie Hasson star in this horror film as a couple who discover that their rented mansion has been double-booked with another couple. Also with Marco Pigossi, Andra Nechita, Clayton Spencer, and Eliane Reis. (Opens Friday)
Coyotes (R) This thriller is about a Hollywood family who are hunted by coyotes after losing their home in a wildfire. Starring Mila Harris, Brittany Allen, Norbert Leo Butz, Katherine McNamara, Justin Long, and Kate Bosworth. (Opens Friday)
Hari Bahadur Ko Jutta (NR) This Nepalese comedy stars Hari Bansha Acharya, Swastima Khadka, and Prakash Saput. (Opens Friday)
Jonesing: When Love Is a Habit (NR) This romantic drama stars Aaria as a young woman navigating the dating scene. Also with Kamaj Nixon Myers, Sajda Waite, Lena Benita Jackson, Violet Bennett, and Malik Yoba. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Kantara: Chapter 1 (NR) Confusingly, this is a sequel to the 2022 Indian film, with Rishab Shetty playing a different role in a story about pre-colonial tribes rising up against a tyrant (Jayaram). Also with Rukmini Vasanth, Gulshan Devaiah, Pramod Shetty, Rakesh Poojari, and Prakash Thuminad. (Opens Friday)
Killing Faith (R) Guy Pearce stars in this Western as a 19th-century doctor investigating a child who causes mysterious deaths. Also with DeWanda Wise, Raoul Max Trujillo, Jamie Neumann, Jack Alcott, Joanna Cassidy, and Bill Pullman. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Nikka Zaildar 4 (NR) The fourth installment in the Punjabi-language comedy series stars Ammy Virk as a man whose love affair results in farcical entanglements. Also with Sonam Bajwa, Nirmal Rishi, and Parminder Gill. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
One Big Happy Family (NR) Lumi Pollack stars in this comedy as a woman who goes on a road trip with her mother (the late Linda Lavin) to search for her biological father. Also with Dante Basco, Josh Fadem, Lisa Brenner, Kat Cunning, Dylan Chance, and Hannah Devlin. (Opens Friday)
Peas and Carrots (NR) This comedy stars Kirilee Berger as a teenager who convinces her parents to reunite the band they had in the 1990s. Also with Amy Carlson, Jordan Bridges, Andrew Polk, Talia Oppenheimer, Kelly McAndrew, Callum Vinson, and Ajay Naidu. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Perfect Blue (NR) Satoshi Kon’s animated film still feels as fresh and new as it did when it first came out in 1999. The story is about a J-pop singer (voiced by Junko Iwao) who is stalked by a violent fan while she tries to transition from music to acting. The film’s visuals remain dazzling and the script still has things to say about the unrealistic expectations that fans put on entertainers. This was Kon’s debut as a director, and it is an important milestone in his all-too-brief career as an anime filmmaker. Additional voices by Rika Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji, Masaaki Ōkura, Yōsuke Akimoto, Hideyuki Hori, Emi Shinohara, and Shin’ichirō Miki. (Opens Friday)
Predators (NR) David Osit’s documentary chronicles the history of the NBC show To Catch a Predator. (Opens Friday at Alamo Drafthouse Denton)
Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari (NR) This Indian romantic comedy stars Varun Dhawan and Jahnvi Kapoor as exes who seek new love. Also with Sanya Malhotra, Rohit Saraf, Maniesh Paul, Akshay Oberoi, and Riya Vij. (Opens Friday)
A Writer’s Odyssey 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2021 Chinese drama stars Dong Zijian as a novelist who becomes trapped in the plot of his own novel that he wishes to destroy. Also with Deng Zhao, Lei Jiayin, Chang Yuan, Chang Chen, and Xin Zhilei. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
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Afterburn (R) Dave Bautista stars in this thriller as a treasure hunter who seeks to loot Europe’s art museums after an apocalyptic event. Also with Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, Eden Epstein, George Somner, and Samuel L. Jackson.
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.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (R) Colin Farrell can dance, at least. The latest film by the YouTube creator who calls himself Kogonada is the first one that he didn’t write the script for, and not by coincidence, also his weakest. Farrell and Margot Robbie play soulmates matched together by a mysterious car rental agency, who take a road trip together that leads them to doors that open onto scenes from their past lives, and occasionally onto a bare soundstage where they act out incidents that they wish had happened. Benjamin Loeb’s cinematography and Joe Hisaishi’s score are lovely, and the film catches fire when Farrell’s character re-enacts his performance in a high-school production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Seth Reiss’ script, however, has arbitrary scene changes, flat humor, and flowery dialogue. The actors deserve better. Also with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Chloe East, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Jennifer Grant, and Kevin Kline. Voice by Jodie Turner-Smith.
The Conjuring: Last Rites (R) Ed and Lorraine Warren finally retire, and it’s at least two movies too late. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take their last turn as the paranormal investigating couple, looking into a haunted mirror in Pennsylvania. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen, but our investigators take forever to actually get to the site. The movie wastes so much time on their backstory, as well as their adult daughter (Mia Tomlinson) getting married and having her own psychic visions. That doesn’t work, and neither does the scary stuff. Also with Orion Smith, Madison Lawlor, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Beau Gadsdon, Kila Lord Cassidy, Elliot Cowan, Rebecca Calder, Peter Wight, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Mackenzie Foy, Lili Taylor, and an uncredited James Wan.
Dead of Winter (R) Emma Thompson’s unlikely presence and Frances McDormand-in-Fargo accent in this wilderness-set thriller gives this movie just enough novelty value to get by. She stars as a widow who ventures to a remote lake in Minnesota to scatter her late husband’s ashes, only to accidentally stumble on the kidnapping of a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) by a couple (Judy Greer and Marc Menchaca). The performances by Thompson and Greer as a desperate villain keep this watchable, even when the plot doesn’t hold up. Just wish that director Brian Kirk (21 Bridges) had done something more distinctive with the material. Thompson’s real-life daughter Gaia Wise appears in the flashbacks here as her character’s younger self. Also with Cúán Hosty-Blaney, Dalton Leeb, and Brían F. O’Byrne.
Demon Slayer — Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Infinity Castle (R) The latest installment of the anime saga has a new look and the same issues. The demon Muzan Kibutsuji (voiced by Toshihiko Seki and Greg Chun) lures the demon slayers into his castle, an impressive looking, Christopher Nolan-influenced fortress where floors and walls are constantly shifting and the crevices between dimensions peek through. This would be a great backdrop for a thriller with horror elements, but as with too many of these adventures, the fight sequences are interrupted by gauzy and overly lengthy flashbacks. Anime fans will be used to this, but this squanders a chance to rope in newcomers to the epic. Additional voices by Natsuki Hanae, Zach Aguilar, Akari Kitō, Abby Trott, Hiro Shimono, Aleks Le, Yoshitugu Matsuoka, Bryce Papenbrook, Reina Ueda, Brianna Knickerbocker, Yuichi Nakamura, and Channing Tatum.
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (PG) Just as with the other movies in this series, this one tries to squeeze a whole season’s worth of drama into feature length, and the result feels rushed. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) becomes a social pariah after her divorce becomes public, so her sister (Laura Carmichael) decides to rehabilitate her reputation by throwing a party with guest of honor Noel Coward (Arty Froushan). That would have been enough for a movie, but these filmmakers can’t leave that alone, so we get Daisy (Sophie McShera) taking over the kitchen and an American con artist (Alessandro Nivola) bilking the family out of its money and Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) being reluctant to hand over control of the estate. Instead of the series pulling out the stops, it just feels like so much padding. More dramatic fireworks would have been better. Also with Jim Carter, Penelope Wilton, Dominic West, Elizabeth McGovern, Joely Richardson, Phyllis Logan, Allen Leech, Michael Fox, Robert James-Collier, Brendan Coyle, Kevin Doyle, Simon Russell Beale, Joanne Froggatt, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Paul Giamatti.
Eleanor the Great (PG-13) Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut aims to be more than the inter-generational friendship comedy that it’s being billed as. Too bad she botches it. June Squibb portrays a 95-year-old Jewish woman who moves to New York after being widowed and then lies to a half-Jewish openly gay journalism student (Erin Kellyman) that she’s a Holocaust survivor, and things snowball from there. The pace moves along at a decent clip, but neither the director nor her cast of actors can quite convince us that the stakes of this story are for real. Also with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Price, Rita Zohar, Stephen Singer, Raymond Anthony Thomas, and Jessica Hecht.
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.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (G) Strictly for fans of the kids’ TV show, I’m afraid. Laila Lockhart Kraner reprises her starring role as a girl whose dollhouse full of cat dolls is stolen by a crazed collector (Kristen Wiig). Despite the celebrities doing the voices of the cat dolls, the separation of them doesn’t lead to interesting subplots, and the songs sung by the cast are less than inspired. All the sparkly stuff on the screen will entertain small children, but even the star seems like she’s outgrown this material. Also with Gloria Estefan. Additional voices by Kyle Mooney, Melissa Villaseñor, Ego Nwodim, Thomas Lennon, Fortune Feimster, and Jason Mantzoukas.
Hamilton (PG) A spike of adrenalin to the heart. Thomas Kail’s concert film of the Broadway musical came out on streaming during the pandemic, and now it’s on big screens. Lin-Manuel Miranda stars as Alexander Hamilton, and his galvanizing performance as the rapping Founding Father is as enjoyable as the endless inventiveness of his songs, which finally brought hip-hop to Broadway. The energy somehow does not flag over the film’s 160 minutes, and the play reframes the story of our nation’s birth for a new era. Also with Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Anthony Ramos, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ariana DeBose, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Jonathan Groff.
Him (R) This unlikely hybrid of football drama and horror film stars Tyriq Withers as a highly touted prospect just out of college who receives an invitation to work out at a remote desert compound with his football idol (Marlon Wayans). The younger man soon starts noticing that his mentor is resorting to weird practices to extend his own playing career. The movie starts out well as an anti-football satire, and Wayans’ comedy experience serves him well as a villain who keeps his charge off balance. Unfortunately, director/co-writer Justin Tipping (Kicks) loses control of his signifiers well before the contract-signing ceremony that includes human sacrifices. This movie is overheated and undercooked. Also with Julia Fox, Jim Jefferies, Maurice Greene, Don Benjamin, Guapdad 4000, Naomi Grossman, Tierra Whack, and Tim Heidecker.
Light of the World (PG) This animated film tells the story of Jesus (voiced by Ian Hanlin) from the viewpoint of John (voiced by Benjamin Jacobson). Additional voices by David Kaye, Jesse Inocalla, Sam Darkoh, Ceara Morgana, Dylan Leonard, Mark Oliver, and Vincent Tong.
The Long Walk (R) Stephen King’s ageless wonder of a novel becomes a powerfully tragic film. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson play two young men in a dystopian future America who enter a contest where 50 males walk along a predetermined highway route and are executed when they can walk no more, with the last kid walking receiving a fortune. The most Hunger Games-ian of King’s books is adapted by Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, who follows the author’s relentless focus on what a forced march like this does to the human body. Amid a landscape of cruelty inflicted on young men, the friendship that forms between the two main characters (who still know that one of them is destined to wind up dead) shines like a beacon of humanity. Their performances turn this into nothing less than this generation’s The Shawshank Redemption. Also with Judy Greer, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Tut Nyuot, Garrett Wareing, Joshua Odjick, Jordan Gonzalez, Roman Griffin Davis, Josh Hamilton, and Mark Hamill.
Mirai (NR) Teja Sajja stars in this Telugu-language film as a warrior safeguarding a holy relic that can turn anyone into a superhero. Also with Manoj Kumar Manchu, Ritika Nayak, Shriya Saran, Jayaram, Tanja Keller, and Jagapathi Babu.
One Battle After Another (R) One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s more purely enjoyable movies stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former anti-ICE revolutionary who has to save his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a supersoldier (Sean Penn) who has reason to think the girl is his own biological daughter and kill her to destroy evidence of his sexual preference for Black women. The story is loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland and set in the present day, which brings out the antic, puckish side of Anderson’s filmmaking. The film has nerve-frying action sequences, including an inventive car chase in the California desert with the cars appearing and disappearing from view because of the hilly terrain. The film also gets great performances from the newcomer Infiniti, DiCaprio as a father who realizes he’s not doing so good as a parent because he’s drunk and stoned all the time, and Penn as a villain brimming with hatred for this girl he has never met. It’s not as tidy as I’d like, but it’s great anyway. Also with Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Kevin Tighe, D.W. Moffett, and Tony Goldwyn.
The Senior (PG) This Christian football drama is put together well, but stubbornly refuses to raise the pulse. Michael Chiklis plays Michael Flynt, the real-life middle linebacker at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Tex., who was kicked off his team for fighting in 1971 and then returned 37 years later at the age of 59 to complete his studies and play his last year of eligibility. Also with Mary Stuart Masterson, James Badge Dale, Brandon Flynn, Corey Knight, Chris Becerra, Shawn Patrick Clifford, and Rob Corddry.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 (R) It says something that the best sequence here is not when the heroine (Madelaine Petsch) is attacked by the Strangers, but rather by a warthog. After the events of the original movie, she is still being hunted by the Strangers, and the movie turns into a survival thriller as she hides in the wilderness from the killers. However, the set pieces that don’t involve the warthog are dull, and the main character goes from being really clever to being really stupid and back without any logic. When she kills the warthog, the movie passes up the chance to make her into a less fearful fighter on her own behalf, and the attempts at giving the killers backstory are little less than disastrous. Also with Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Richard Brake, Pedro Leandro, Ella Bruccoleri, and Lily Knight.
They Call Him OG (NR) A cut above the usual Indian thrillers, this one stars Pawan Kalyan as a vigilante who grows up and learns to fight in Japan, but returns to India after the businessman (Prakash Raj) who has his loyalty is suddenly besieged by gangsters and crooked cops. The hero is more interesting, the villains are tougher, and the action sequences are more down to earth than usual. No wonder this is one of the bigger Telugu-language box-office hits in history. Also with Emraan Hashmi, Priyanka Mohan, Arjun Das, Sriya Reddy, Sayesha Shah, Rao Ramesh, Venkat, Shaam, Tej Sapru, Sudev Nair, Harish Uthaman, Abhimanyu Singh, Neha Shetty, Jackie Shroff, and Kazuki Kitamura.
Dallas Exclusives
Brownsville Bred (PG-13) Elaine del Valle’s autobiographical drama stars Nathalia Lares as her younger self coming of age in Texas. Also with Karina Ortiz, April Hernandez Castillo, Javier Muñoz, Jon Freda, Jonathan James Rodriguez, and Lyla Rose Castillo.
