OPENING
Altered (PG-13) Tom Felton stars in this science-fiction thriller as a man fighting against a future dystopia where genetically enhanced people are the norm. Also with Elizaveta Bugulova, Aggy K. Adams, Aleksey Filimonov, and Richard Brake. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Eko (NR) This Malayalam-language thriller is about a couple of investigators looking into a crime lord (Sandeep Pradeep). Also with Biana Momim, Sim Zhi Fei, Vineeth, and Ashokan. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Jay Kelly (R) Noah Baumbach’s latest comedy stars George Clooney as a Hollywood movie star confronting issues from his past. Also with Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Patrick Wilson, Isla Fisher, Jim Broadbent, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Emily Mortimer, Eve Hewson, Patsy Ferran, Alba Rohrwacher, Lenny Henry, Josh Hamilton, Louis Partridge, Stacy Keach, and Greta Gerwig. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Mastiii 4 (NR) This Indian comedy is about three husbands who hatch a plot to escape their unhappy marriages. Also with Riteish Deshmukh, Vivek Oberoi, Aftab Shivdasani, Elnaaz Norouzi, Sammy Jonas Heaney, and Tara Summers. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
120 Bahadur (NR) Farhan Akhtar stars in this Indian war film as an army captain whose regiment fights against a much larger Chinese force in the Himalayas during the Sino-Indian War. Also with Raashii Khanna, Ankit Siwach, Vivan Bhatena, Dhanveer Singh, Ajinkya Deo, and Eijaz Khan. Narrated by Amitabh Bachchan. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Premante (NR) This Indian romantic comedy stars Anandhi as a woman who becomes suspicious of her new husband’s behavior. Also with Priyadarshi Pulikonda and Vennela Kishore. (Opens Friday)
Raju Weds Rambai (NR) This romantic tragedy stars Akhil Uddemari as a traveling musician who falls in love with a local girl (Tejaswini Rao). Also with Chaitu Jonnalagadda, Anitha Chowdary, and Kavitha Srirangam. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Rebuilding (PG) Josh O’Connor stars in this drama as an American rancher who temporarily stays in a FEMA camp after losing his ranch to a wildfire. Also with Meghann Fahy, Lily LaTorre, Callie Reis, and Amy Madigan. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Rental Family (PG) Brendan Fraser’s performance does a great deal to keep this Japanese drama from collapsing. He stars as an American actor in Tokyo who gets on with a theatrical agency that sends him out into the real world to impersonate people in real life for the benefit of unsuspecting people, so he poses as the father of a mixed-race schoolgirl (Shannon Gorman) and a film journalist interviewing a legendary actor (Akira Emoto) who’s suffering from dementia. Director/co-writer Hikari manages to keep the pathos from becoming too overbearing and inserts some bits like a toothpaste commercial that take advantage of Fraser’s comedy skills. This is uncannily like Lost in Translation, except the main character has been immersed in Japanese culture. Also with Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shohei Uno, Bun Kimura, Misato Morita, Shino Shinozaki, and Helen Sadler. (Opens Friday)
Reverence (R) This thriller stars Adam Hampton as a traumatized veteran whose teenage daughter disappears. Also with Ryan Francis, Connie Franklin, Whit Kunschik, Gattlin Griffith, Mary Buss, and Kenny Pitts. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Sentimental Value (R) Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) reunite for this Norwegian drama about an actress dealing with her issues with her famous filmmaker father (Stellan Skarsgård). Also with Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleeas, Jesper Christensen, Lena Endre, Cory Michael Smith, and Anders Danielsen Lie. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Sisu: Road to Revenge (R) The sequel to the 2023 Finnish thriller stars Jorma Tommila as a soldier seeking revenge on the Soviet army officer (Stephen Lang) who killed his family. Also with Richard Brake. (Opens Friday)
Vilayath Budha (NR) This Malayalam-language action-thriller is about two criminals (Prithviraj Sukumaran and Shammi Thilakan) who engage in a deadly conflict over a sandalwood tree. Also with Priyamvada Krishnan, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Anu Mohan, and Teejay Arunasalam. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
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.
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.
De De Pyaar De 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2019 romantic comedy has Ajay Devgn reprising his role as a businessman trying to get permission to marry his much-younger girlfriend (Rakul Preet Singh). Also with R. Madhavan, Jaaved Jaaferi, Gautami Kapoor, and Sanjeev Seth.
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.
Die My Love (R) Jennifer Lawrence gets naked and loses her grip in a major way as a mother whose postpartum depression is shading over into postpartum psychosis. Based on a Spanish-language novel by Ariana Harwicz, Lynne Ramsay’s film has a squarish frame and numinous cinematography that gives the movie the appearance of a fable, though having Lawrence lose her mind in a remote house also makes this movie reminiscent of mother! Lawrence does some good work here, but Ramsay appears to have removed too much of the source material and other recent films like A Mouthful of Air have been better about its subject. Even so, the mixture of chaos and control that Ramsay and Lawrence bring to this is compelling. Also with Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Gabrielle Rose, Sarah Lind, Nick Nolte, and Sissy Spacek.
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.
Keeper (R) Osgood Perkins’ success with Longlegs is starting to look like a one-off. His third horror movie in 18 months stars Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland as a couple who celebrate their anniversary by taking a trip to a posh cabin in the woods, only for her to discover a sinister secret in that house. Maslany’s skill keeps the movie this side of watchable, but Perkins is all atmosphere and no payoff here, and his buildup to jump scares only to cut away to something else turns out to be frustrating in the extreme. Also with Claire Friesen, Christin Park, Erin Boyes, Tess Degenstein, and Eden Weiss.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (PG-13) Entertaining if you don’t think about it too much. The magicians from the original (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Woody Harrelson) come out of retirement and reunite to mentor three younger illusionists (Ariana Greenblatt, Dominic Sessa, and Justice Smith) who are targeting a South African diamond mogul and money launderer (Rosamund Pike). The younger cast are personable enough to inject some new energy into the series, and director Ruben Fleischer keeps things moving so that you don’t notice the holes in the plot. If they want to hand off this series to the younger generation, that would be just fine. Also with Lizzy Caplan, Andrew Santino, Thabang Molaba, Morgan Freeman, and an uncredited Mark Ruffalo.
Nuremberg (PG-13) This logy and fitfully interesting historical drama is based on the story of Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), the U.S. Army psychiatrist who interviewed Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) in prison prior to his 1946 trial for war crimes. Crowe hits the right notes as a charming villain who thinks he can talk his way out of his predicament, and there’s some interesting stuff on the logistics of conducting an unprecedented legal proceeding. Even so, Malek doesn’t capture the tragic dimension of a shrink who thinks he can diagnose evil, and the stacked supporting cast doesn’t add as much as it should. Also with Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks, Leo Woodall, Wrenn Schmidt, Lotte Verbeek, Andreas Pletschmann, Mark O’Brien, John Slattery, and Richard E. Grant.
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.
Predator: Badlands (PG-13) Not as strong as Dan Trachtenberg’s last two movies in the Predator series, but the first one that’s available in multiplexes is worth seeing on the big screen. The movie is told from the Predator’s point of view, as an outcast from his clan (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) travels to an incredibly dangerous planet and teams up with a dismembered droid (Elle Fanning) to hunt a legendary beast that hasn’t been killed. The movie gives us all manner of fanciful animal and plant life without all the fanfare of the Avatar or Fantastic Beasts movies, and Fanning is gleefully annoying as the sidekick who knows more about the planet than the Predator does. Maybe the film could use some more world-building and character work, but Trachtenberg has done yeoman work to revive a franchise that had been effectively dead since the 1990s. Also with Michael Homik, Reuben de Jong, and Cameron Brown.
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)
The Running Man (R) Better than One Battle After Another? I don’t know, but this science-fiction thriller adapted from Stephen King’s novel is certainly funnier. Glen Powell portrays a blacklisted worker who’s persuaded to compete on a game show where he’ll receive a huge cash prize if he can survive being hunted to the death by everyone in America. Director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver) has a taste for mischief and cleverness that acts as a leavening agent for this movie, but he can’t quite square its “fight the power” message with offering up creative violence for mass entertainment just the way the game show does. Then again, the humor, story, and characters in this make it a great time, and Powell does a nuanced turn as someone who becomes radicalized by the people he meets. Also with Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, Jayme Lawson, Lee Pace, Sean Hayes, Emilia Jones, Katy O’Brian, Karl Glusman, Martin Herlihy, and William H. Macy.
Sarah’s Oil (PG) This Christian drama at least doesn’t try to whitewash the racial violence in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. It tells the true story of Sarah Rector (Naya Desir-Johnson), an 11-year-old Black girl who inherited a plot of land in the Sooner State and found it was rich in oil because first God and then the geologists told her it was. The movie does go over white men’s efforts to take her land by legal means and by force, and it doesn’t sugarcoat the role of the Texas wildcatter (Zachary Levi) who gets roped into a legal attempt to steal the land. Unfortunately, the acting by Desir-Johnson and Levi are not nearly up to the standard needed to lift this movie above the dross of forgettable religious dramas. Also with Sonequa Martin-Green, Mel Rodriguez, Kenric Green, Bridget Regan, Jonathan Lipnicki, and Garret Dillahunt.
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.
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.
The Perfect Gamble (R) This thriller stars David Arquette as an ex-convict who runs afoul of the Mafia by opening his own casino. Also with Danny A. Abeckaser, Daniella Pick, Sal Tesauro, and Herzl Tobey.
