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Aftershock: The Nicole P. Bell Story (R) So indifferently acted and put together that its message gets lost. Rayven Symone Ferrell portrays the real-life woman whose unarmed fiancé (Bentley Green) was killed by NYPD officers at his bachelor party mere hours before their scheduled wedding in 2006. When the guilty officers went free, Bell’s organized protests birthed the Black Lives Matter movement, so the film claims. The problem is, director/co-writer Alesia Glidewell films it with such a lack of urgency that you’ll get bored by a story that should not be boring. Of all the BLM movies that have come out since the George Floyd murder, this is the least of them. Also with Richard Lawson, Essence Renae, Frank Adkinson, Miles Stroter, Myles Grier, Jazsmin Lewis, Byron Kenneth Brown Jr., Kevin Jackson, Malik Barnhardt, Michael Rubenstone, Anthony Darrell, and Richard T. Jones. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Andhra King Taluka (NR) This Indian comedy stars Ram Pothineni as a man whose life is devoted to his fandom for a movie star (Upendra). Also with Bhagyashri Borse, Rao Ramesh, Murali Sharma, Rajeev Kanakata, and VTV Ganesh. (Opens Friday)
Another Sweet Christmas (NR) Candace Cameron Bure and Cameron Mathison star in this comedy about a couple whose real-life romance is turned into a movie. Also with Stephanie Bennett, William MacDonald, and Marnie Mahannah. (Opens Friday at Premier Cinemas Burleson)
Gustaak Ishq (NR) Vijay Varma stars in this Indian romance as an aspiring writer who’s mentored by a great poet (Naseeruddin Shah). Also with Fatima Sana Shaikh, Sharib Hashmi, and Rohan Verma. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Hamnet (PG-13) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Chloé Zhao’s drama is about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) dealing with the death of his son. Also with Jessie Buckley, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lynes, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, David Wilmot, Freya Hannan-Mills, Noah Jupe, and Emily Watson. (Opens Wednesday in Dallas)
Neelofar (NR) This Pakistani romance is about a writer (Fawad Khan) who falls in love with a visually impaired woman (Mahira Khan). Also with Madiha Imam, Samiya Mumtaz, Faisal Qureshi, Behroze Sabzwari, Rashid Farooqi, and Gohar Rasheed. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Revolver Rita (NR) Keerthy Suresh stars in this Indian crime comedy as a village woman whose family is caught up in organized crime. Also with Radhika Sarathkumar, Sunil, Redin Kingsley, Sendrayan, Super Subbarayan, and Ajay Ghosh. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Tere Ishk Mein (NR) This Indian romance stars Dhanush, Kriti Sanon, Prakash Raj, Maahir Mohiuddin, Sushil Dahiya, and Redin Kingsley. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
The Thing With Feathers (R) Benedict Cumberbatch stars in this drama as a bereaved man who suffers terrifying visions after his wife’s sudden death. Also with Richard Boxall, Henry Boxall, Sam Spruell, and Jessie Cave. Voice by David Thewlis. (Opens Friday)
Zootopia 2 (PG) Not as good as the first one, I’m afraid. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman) have to deal with a new case involving the family of snakes who founded the city and were screwed out of their inheritance by the mammals. Some of the jokes do land like they should, but the metaphors are not as resonant, and the new supporting characters aren’t as well drawn as they were in the original. The fraying partnership between our two cops doesn’t throw up anything new, either. There is a funny subplot with a TV actor stallion (voiced by Patrick Warburton) becoming Zootopia’s new mayor, but it’s not enough to recommend the film. Additional voices by Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Quinta Brunson, Danny Trejo, Nate Torrence, Don Lake, Bonnie Hunt, CM Punk, Stephanie Beatriz, Alan Tudyk, Macaulay Culkin, Brenda Song, Tiny Lister Jr., John Leguizamo, Tommy Chong, Auli’i Cravalho, Tig Notaro, Ed Sheeran, Cecily Strong, June Squibb, Michael J. Fox, Josh Gad, Idris Elba, and Jenny Slate. (Opens Wednesday)
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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.
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)
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.
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.
Sisu: Road to Revenge (R) Instead of Nazis, the badass Finnish commando (Jorma Tommila) fights Soviets in this sequel to the 2023 action-thriller after the Soviet officer (Stephen Lang) who killed his family is sent after him to prevent him from taking revenge. Our hero dismantles his log cabin and doghouse in Soviet-controlled Karelia, so he spends the entire movie driving a heavy truck loaded with wooden logs and carrying a Bedlington terrier in the passenger seat. From there he even manages to take down two dive bombers. The film has nothing on its mind other than having our hero shoot and drive his way through enough Red Army soldiers to invade the Eastern bloc. As long as you don’t pay too much for your ticket, this is suitable entertainment. Also with Richard Brake.
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.
Wicked: For Good (PG) Not so good as a stand-alone movie, but aces as a conclusion to the two-part saga. Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) becomes a fugitive from Oz’ flying monkeys while Glinda (Ariana Grande) finds her popularity being used to prop up the corrupt regime. The whole movie is a case study in good intentions gone awry, as various characters’ attempts to prove themselves backfire disastrously. This back half spotlights Grande as much as the first half did for Erivo, and the pop singer comes through whether she’s betraying her best friend or wresting control of Oz from its rulers. All the show’s best songs were in the first film, and the ones newly written for this movie aren’t up to scratch, but the story of the popular girl learning how to be good is deeply moving. Musical fans now have their own multi-part fantasy series to cherish. Also with Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, Marissa Bode, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang, and Bronwyn James. Voices by Peter Dinklage and Colman Domingo.
Dallas Exclusives
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.
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.
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.
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.
