OPENING
All Is Merry and Bright (NR) Emily Rose stars in this Christian drama as a disabled mother and hypercompetitive pageant director who must discover the true meaning of Christmas. Also with Eric Close, Nancy Stafford, John O’Hurley, Ava Jean, Vanessa Benavente, Desiree Ross, Shari Rigby, and Sally Struthers. (Opens Friday at B&B North Richland Hills)
The Christmas Ring (NR) Based on Karen Kingsbury’s novel, this drama stars Jana Kramer as a widow who finds new love while searching for a family heirloom. Also with Benjamin Hollingsworth, Jessie James Decker, Daniel Considine, Megan Ashley Brown, Kyle Kupecky, Austin Robert Russell, and Kelsey Grammer. (Opens Friday)
Christy (R) There is precisely one good scene in this biopic. It’s when female boxing champion Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney) is attacked by her husband (Ben Foster). There’s no swell of music and no menacing line of dialogue, and Christy barely has time to register the knife in his hand before he’s stabbing her and then methodically taking apart her phone so that she can’t call for help. That scene is chilling in its matter-of-factness thanks to director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom), but everything else in this 135-minute film follows the sports-movie formula, with Christy’s growing attraction to other women muted and her religious mother (Merritt Wever) reduced to a one-note stereotype. Sweeney is a lively presence in the lead role, but the movie around her is so slight that it isn’t worth the investment of time required. Also with Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry, Coleman Pedigo, Naomi Graham, Jess Gabor, Tony Cavalero, and Chad Coleman. (Opens Friday)
Exit Protocol (R) Michael Jai White stars in this thriller as a hit man who only kills other hit men. Also with Dolph Lundgren, Charlotte Kirk, Scott Martin, Stephanie Beran, and Christian Cardona. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
The Girlfriend (NR) Rashmika Mandanna stars in this Telugu-language romance about a young woman navigating the complexities of love. Also with Anu Emmanuel, Rohini, Dheekshith Shetty, and Rao Ramesh. (Opens Friday)
Grand Prix of Europe (PG) This German animated film is about a mouse (voiced by Gemma Arterton) who lives out her dream of driving on the racing circuit. Additional voices by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Lenny Henry, Rob Beckett, Colin McFarlane, Ayesha Antoine, and Hayley Atwell. (Opens Friday)
The Great Pre-Wedding Show (NR) Thiruveer Reddy and Tinu Shravya star in this Indian comedy as an engaged couple who encounter complications while taking prenuptial photographs. Also with Rohan Roy and Narendra. (Opens Friday)
Happy Khush Ho Gaya (NR) This Indian comedy stars Nareh Kathooria as a con artist who poses as a dead rich man for his latest con. Also with Dender Gill, Honey Mattu, Gurpreet Kaur Bhangu, Jatinder Kaur, Gurmeet Sajjan, Guridai Paras, and Misha Sarowal. (Opens Friday at Cinemark North East Mall)
Haq (NR) Based on a real-life case, this Indian legal drama stars Yami Gautam as a Muslim woman who sues when her ex-husband (Emraan Hashmi) refuses to pay child support. Also with Sheeba Chaddha, Aseem Hatangady, Danish Husain, and Rahul Mittra. (Opens Friday)
I Wish You All the Best (R) Based on Mason Deaver’s novel, this coming-of-age film stars Corey Fogelmanis as a teen who is thrown out of their house after coming out as non-binary. Also with Alexandra Daddario, Cole Sprouse, Amy Landecker, Lisa Yamada, and Lena Dunham. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Jaari 2: Song of Chyabrung (NR) The sequel to the 2023 Nepalese film has Dayahang Rai and Miruna Magar reprising their roles as a married couple who dispute over a traditional drum symbolizing their love. Also with Bijay Baral, Puskar Gurung, Rekha Limbu, and Kiran Chamling Rai. (Opens Friday)
Jatadhara (NR) This Indian film is about people who experience the supernatural powers of Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple. Starring Sonakshi Sinha, Divya Khossla, Sudheer Babu Posani, Shilpa Shirodkar, and Subhalekha Sudhakar. (Opens Friday)
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (PG) This animated movie is told from the viewpoint of a Belgian girl (voiced by Loïse Charpentier) celebrating her third birthday in Japan. Additional voices by Victoria Grobois, Yumi Fujimori, Cathy Cerda, Marc Arnaud, Laetitia Coryn, and Haylee Issembourg. (Opens Friday)
Long Shadows (R) This Western stars Blaine Maye as a man who must choose between love and revenge. Also with Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Cortez, Dominic Monaghan, Chris Mulkey, Anthony Skordi, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Jacqueline Bisset. (Opens Friday)
Lost & Found in Cleveland (PG-13) Keith Gerchak and Marisa Guterman’s dramedy is about five people whose paths cross at an antiques appraisal show in their city. Starring Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, Liza Weil, Loretta Devine, Jeff Hiller, Dot-Marie Jones, Santino Fontana, Esther Povitsky, Stacy Keach, and Jon Lovitz. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Nobody (NR) Not a remake of the thriller with Bob Odenkirk, this Chinese animated film takes up the legend of the demon spirits who journey west. Voices by Chen Ziping, Lu Yang, Liu Cong, Dong Wenliang, and Zhang Wentian. (Opens Friday)
Nuremberg (PG-13) This historical thriller stars Rami Malek as a U.S. Army psychiatrist who’s tasked with interviewing an imprisoned Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) before he’s put on trial for war crimes. Also with Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks, Leo Woodall, Wrenn Schmidt, Lotte Verbeek, Mark O’Brien, John Slattery, and Richard E. Grant. (Opens Friday)
Sarah’s Oil (PG) This Christian drama is about an 11-year-old Black girl (Naya Desir-Johnson) in early 20th-century Oklahoma who discovers oil underneath the land that she has inherited. Also with Zachary Levi, Sonequa Martin-Green, Mel Rodriguez, Kenric Green, Bridget Regan, Jonathan Lipnicki, and Garret Dillahunt. (Opens Friday)
Train Dreams (PG-13) Based on Denis Johnson’s novel, Clint Bentley’s film stars Joel Edgerton as a railroad worker in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. Also with Felicity Jones, Clifton Collins Jr., Kerry Condon, Alfred Hsing, Paul Schneider, and William H. Macy. Narrated by Will Patton. (Opens Friday)
Unexpected Christmas (NR) This comedy is about a family that has drama during a holiday reunion. Starring Lil Rel Howery, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Cecelia Friday, Tabitha Brown, Terrence Terrell, and Anna Maria Horsford. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Anniversary (R) Overheated family drama disguised as anti-fascist rhetoric. Diane Lane stars in this film as a prominent Georgetown law professor whose loser son (Dylan O’Brien) marries a former student of hers (Phoebe Dynevor) who full-on wants to repeal the U.S. Constitution so that America can be cleansed of dissidents and educated people. Polish director Jan Komasa (who was Oscar-nominated for Corpus Christi) knows about societies with thought police, but his depiction of America’s descent into fascism isn’t thought through well enough. The same is true for the fracturing of this family despite some terrific performances by O’Brien as a guy who blackmails his own family members after he becomes a government big shot and Mckenna Grace as his biology genius sister. The whole affair is a parade of misery. Also with Kyle Chandler, Zoey Deutch, Madeline Brewer, Daryl McCormack, Flavia Watson, Selda Kaya, and Sky Yang.
Baahubali: The Epic (NR) This double feature is a recut re-release of the 2015 historical epics about a warrior (Rana Daggubati) who protects his homeland in the Indus Valley. Also with Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan, Tamannaah Bhatia, and Prabhas.
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.
Black Phone 2 (R) Deeply confused. Mason Thames reprises his role from the 2021 original as the now-traumatized teenager who has visions of the pedophile serial killer (Ethan Hawke) whom he killed, and whose younger sister (Madeleine McGraw) is now having visions of kids murdered decades before at a Christian youth camp in the Rockies. Set in 1983 as the siblings arrive at the snowed-in camp, the movie purposefully echoes The Shining, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street and also tries to throw in some Christian theology for good measure. It all fails because the underlying horror plot moves so sluggishly and without regard for internal logic. I’m not even sure what this series is supposed to be anymore. Also with Jeremy Davies, Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas, James Ransone, Anna Lore, and Demián Bichir.
Bugonia (R) Emma Stone crushes it yet again in this remake of the Korean movie Save the Green Planet! She portrays a pharmaceutical CEO kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) who’s convinced that she’s actually a space alien disguised as a human. Despite director Yorgos Lanthimos’ well-earned reputation for weirdness, this offers the old-fashioned pleasures of a kidnapping thriller for a good long while, as the captive proves for weaknesses in her angry and unstable captor. Plemons is really good as a guy who is not just another nutcase and is struggling to keep it together, but he’s still swamped by Stone as a woman who’s willing to say anything that she thinks her captor might want to hear and eventually seizes control of the situation in unforgettable fashion. Also with Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone.
Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc (R) Yet another big-screen anime adaptation that gives nothing to the newcomers who wander in. The half-human who can turn into a chainsaw demon (voiced by Kikunosuke Toya in the original Japanese-language version and Ryan Colt Levy in the English-dubbed version) falls in love with a cafe waitress (voiced by Reina Ueda and Alexis Tipton) before realizing that she isn’t what she seems. There is some visual creativity in the villain traveling on the shock waves of bombs that she makes herself, but the whole affair is just loud noises and whips of color that you can get from hundreds of other anime adventures. Additional voices by Tomori Kusunoki, Suzie Yeung, Shôgo Sakata, Reagan Murdock, Farouz Ai, Sarah Wiedenheft, Natsuki Hanae, Derick Snow, Yuya Uchida, Josh Bangle, Eri Kitamura, and Reshel Mae.
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.
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.
Frankenstein (PG-13) Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel is more visually resplendent than anything he has done since Crimson Peak. Oscar Isaac plays the doctor who wishes to reverse death and Jacob Elordi plays the creature whom he brings to life. Unlike most adaptations of Frankenstein, this one depicts the second half of Shelley’s novel, in which the monster tells his side of the story. Elordi gives his first vivid performance for the big screen as a being who moves delicately to avoid hurting the people around him, and the cinematography and costumes give the piece a Hammer Studios-like lushness. Yet the thing is missing the horrifying spiral of destruction between Victor and his creation, despite Isaac’s energy and theatrical flair. This movie is playing on Netflix, but its visuals make it worth experiencing in a theater. Also with Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Ralph Ineson, and Charles Dance.
Good Fortune (R) Aziz Ansari’s directing debut shows some flashes of promise before falling apart near the end. The standup comic stars as a downtrodden service worker who’s visited by a bumbling guardian angel (Keanu Reeves). The angel then allows him to experience the life of the venture capitalist (Seth Rogen) who recently fired him, except that our guy likes being rich so much that he doesn’t want to go back. The comedy is put together pretty well and offers some trenchant comments on the gig economy, and the lead actors are all on their game. Unfortunately, the film stumbles when it tries to find purpose in the lives of the minimum-wage earners. Ansari has the talent to keep at this, he just needs to give a bit more thought to his material. Also with Keke Palmer, Felipe Garcia Martinez, Matt Rogers, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sandra Oh.
Jerry on Top (NR) This Nepalese thriller stars Anmol KC as a rich man’s son who aims to prove himself by climbing Mount Everest. Also with Aanchal Sharma, Jassita Gurung, Kedar Ghimire, and Bhuwan KC.
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.
Pets on a Train (PG) This English-dubbed version of a French animated film is about a group of animals who must save the passengers on a runaway train. Voices by Damien Ferrette, Hervé Jolly, Kaycie Chase, Frantz Confiac, Emmanuel Garijo, and Nicolas Marié.
Regretting You (PG-13) Grapevine’s own Mckenna Grace is the only reason to watch this weeper based on Colleen Hoover’s novel. She portrays a high-school theater kid in North Carolina whose father (Scott Eastwood) and mother’s sister (Willa Fitzgerald) are killed in the same car accident, and her mother (Allison Williams) tries to keep the knowledge from her that the two were having an affair. The dramatic messiness of this situation gets sanded over at every turn by director Josh Boone and by the decorating-magazine interiors that it all plays out in. The only thing that keeps this from inducing sleep is the spiky turn by Grace as a girl who’s looking at colleges while finding first love with a movie nerd (Mason Thames) in her class. Her performance does North Texas proud. Also with Dave Franco, Sam Morelos, Ethan Costanilla, and Clancy Brown. (Opens Friday)
Roofman (R) Derek Cianfrance’s charming but oh-so-slight caper film stars Channing Tatum as an escaped convict who spends more than a year hiding from a manhunt by living in a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Charlotte. The film has some good material about how the protagonist keeps tabs on the goings-on in the store and avoids detection by the customers and employees, and Tatum does some good work when his character falls in love with a downtrodden toy saleswoman and single mother (Kirsten Dunst). Still, the film is unwilling to explore the darker implications of its story and its main character, and the stacked supporting cast looks way overqualified for what they’re given to do. For good and bad, thiss movie feels like something that the filmmaker tossed off. Also with LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Ben Mendelsohn, Tony Revolori, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Molly Price, Emory Cohen, Lily Collias, Punkie Johnson, Jimmy O. Yang, and Peter Dinklage.
Shelby Oaks (R) YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann directs his first feature film, and while there are some admirable points to it, it falls down at the most important junctures. Camille Sullivan portrays a woman whose sister (Sarah Durn) is the host of a YouTube paranormal events channel who goes missing while investigating a haunted house. The movie blends found-footage and more classical narrative pretty effectively, but Stuckmann fails to deliver just when the movie should be scariest, and the overarching plot makes no sense. Quite how this movie got picked up for major distribution is beyond me. Also with Charlie Talbert, Eric Francis Melaragni, Caisey Cole, Anthony Baldasare, Brendan Sexton III, Robin Bartlett, and Keith David.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (PG-13) Depression sure is dull in this biopic about one of America’s great musicians. Jeremy Allen White looks dead on as the young Boss and does an acceptable job of singing Bruce Springsteen’s songs, but can’t force any life into this rote film that covers the rock legend’s life in the early 1980s, when he’s already famous but not yet the megastar that he would become. Writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) goes through Springsteen’s family history of mental troubles and his relationship with a diner waitress from Jersey (Odessa Young), but the movie yields less insight into the musician’s body of work than Blinded by the Light or High Fidelity. Unlike Springsteen’s songs, this fails to take you anywhere transcendent, or even interesting. Also with Jeremy Strong, Stephen Graham, Gaby Hoffman, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, Matthew Pellicano Jr., Grace Gummer, and Marc Maron.
Stitch Head (PG) What’s supposed to be a kid-friendly version of the Frankenstein story only ends up being a defanged one. This British animated film based on Guy Bass’ children’s book is about a stitched-together boy (voiced by Asa Butterfield) who escapes the lab of his mad-scientist creator (voiced by Rob Brydon) and then falls into the hands of a circus owner (voiced by Seth Usdenov) who shows him off as his latest freak. The movie isn’t offensive and doesn’t drag, but the songs are unmemorable, the satire of show business isn’t pointed enough, and the jokes don’t hit the way they should. Director Steve Hudson manages some cool shots, but fails to make Stitch Head’s attempts to protect his fellow lab creations into something compelling. Additional voices by Joel Fry, Tia Bannon, Ryan Sampson, Rasmus Hardiker, Jamali Maddix, Fern Brady, Paul Tylak, and Alison Steadman.
Tron: Ares (PG-13) The best of the Tron movies, for what that’s worth. The third film stars Jared Leto as a computer-engineered super-soldier who’s sent by his tech CEO creator (Evan Peters) to kill a rival CEO (Greta Lee). Norwegian director Joachim Rønning manages to conjure up some genuinely cool-looking action sequences both in cyberspace and in the real world, and nostalgists for 1980s tech will love the scene when the soldier goes into the world from the original movie and meets Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Unhappily, the movie misses its chances to either comment on the evolution of technology or make its human characters’ emotional longings feel real. The series continues to be an aesthetic rather than a story. Also with Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Hasan Minhaj, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, and Gillian Anderson.
Truth & Treason (PG-13) This Christian historical drama works reasonably well to start with before it falls apart. Ewan Horrocks stars as Helmuth Hübener, the real-life teenager who was a devoted Hitler supporter in Hamburg in 1941 before the arrest of his Jewish friend (Nye Occomore) made him realize that supporting the Nazis was incompatible with his Christian faith. The movie’s first half depicts Helmuth typing up anti-Hitler leaflets and distributing them by hand to mailboxes and parked cars in the city’s neighborhoods while an SS officer (Rupert Evans) tries to track them down, and it’s all fairly well done by director Matt Whitaker. Unfortunately, after Helmuth is caught, the suspense leaks out of the proceedings as the film becomes another tale of martyrdom. Also with Ferdinand McKay, Daf Thomas, Sean Mahon, Joanna Christie, Dominic Mafham, and Sylvie Varcoe.
Dallas Exclusives
It Was Just an Accident (PG-13) Jafar Panahi’s latest film is about a group of Iranian former political prisoners who must decide whether to torture the jailer who tortured them in prison. Starring Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afhari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, and Majid Panahi.
Nouvelle Vague (R) Richard Linklater’s historical drama is about Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) as he prepares to transition from film criticism to making a film. Also with Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Adrien Rouyard, Bruno Dreyfürst, Antoine Besson, Jodie Ruth-Forest, Benjamin Clery, and Alix Bénézech.
