OPENING
Abhimanyu Chapter 1 (NR) Gaumaya Gurung stars in this Nepalese drama as a man who returns to his village and is ensnared in an ethical dilemma. Also with Sarita Giri, Kameshor Chaurasiya, Shishir Bangdel, Laxmi Bardewa, and Prakash Dahal. (Opens Friday)
Annagaru Vostaru (NR) This Telugu-language action-comedy stars Karthi as a movie fan who raises his grandson to be an action hero like his favorite movie star. Also with Krithi Shetty, Sathyaraj, Raj Kiran, Madhur Mittal, and Shilpa Manjunath. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Dust Bunny (R) The directing debut of Bryan Fuller (TV’s Hannibal) is this horror film about an 8-year-old girl (Sophie Sloan) who hires her mysterious neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster under her bed. Also with Sigourney Weaver, Rebecca Henderson, Sheila Atim, and David Dastmalchian. (Opens Friday)
Eastern Western (NR) Igor Galijasevic stars in this drama as a Bosnian refugee trying to raise his son in Montana. Also with Leonardo Galijasevic, Shawn Perkins, Caleb Zeller, Luka Strkalj, and Walter Runningcrane Jr. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Goodbye June (R) Kate Winslet co-stars in her directing debut about a group of estranged siblings who reunite when their mother (Helen Mirren) becomes gravely ill. Also with Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Stephen Merchant, Jeremy Swift, Raza Jaffrey, and Timothy Spall. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
La Grazia (R) Paolo Sorrentino’s political drama stars Toni Servillo as a recently widowed Italian president who must decide whether to pardon convicted murderers while dealing with his wife’s death. Also with Anna Ferzetti, Orlando Cinque, Massimo Venturiello, Milvia Marigliano, Giuseppe Gaiani, Giovanna Guida, Alessia Giuliani, and Roberto Zibetti. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon 2 (NR) Kapil Sharma stars in the sequel to the 2015 comedy hit as a man who’s secretly married to three different women of various religions and plans to take on a fourth wife. Also with Hira Warina, Tridha Choudhury, Ayesha Khan, Parul Gulati, Akhilendra Mishra, and Sushant Singh. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Lone Samurai (R) This Japanese film stars Shogen as a 13th-century warrior who’s shipwrecked on an island populated by cannibals. Also with Yayan Ruhian, Rama Ramadhan, Fatih Unru, Faisal Rachman, and Sumire Ashina. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Mowgli (NR) This Telugu-language action film stars Roshan Kanakala as a jungle villager who fights to save his deaf-mute girlfriend (Sakshi Mhadoikar) from a corrupt cop. Also with Bandi Saroj Kumar and Harsha Chemudu. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Not Without Hope (R) Based on true events, Joe Carnahan’s thriller is about a group of friends whose fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico. Starring Zachary Levi, Josh Duhamel, Quentin Plair, Terrence Terrell, Marshall Cook, James Martin Kelly, and JoBeth Williams. (Opens Friday)
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. (Re-opens Friday)
Rebuilding (PG) This modest but sturdy contemporary Western stars Josh O’Connor as a Colorado rancher who loses all his property in a wildfire and has to stay in a FEMA trailer while getting back on his feet and raising his young daughter (Lily LaTorre). Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman makes some sharp observations about the bureaucratic processes that our man has to go through and the bonds that form among the impromptu community of other newly homeless people living in a makeshift trailer park. The main character is sharply drawn, too, as a man who can’t imagine living another way other than off his own land. The way he comes up with a solution to both his and his neighbors’ attachment to their Rocky Mountain homeland is quite affecting. Also with Meghann Fahy, Kali Reis, Jefferson Mays, Jules Reid, David Bright, Nancy Morlan, Zellyanna Martinez, and Amy Madigan. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (NR) This remake of the 1984 horror film stars Rohan Campbell as the revenge-obsessed killer who dresses up as Santa Claus. Also with Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, and Cora Matheson. (Opens Friday)
Sirāt (NR) Sergi López stars in this drama as a Spanish man who travels to the Moroccan desert to search for his missing teenage daughter. Also with Bruno Núñez Arjona, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard “Bigui” Bellamy, and Jade Oukid. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
67 Bombs to Enid (NR) Kevin Ford and Ty McMahan’s documentary interviews survivors of the U.S. nuclear bomb testing in the Marshall Islands, who are now living in Oklahoma. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Thieves Highway (NR) Aarn Eckhart stars in this Western as a rural lawman who has to stop a group of cattle rustlers. Also with Lochlyn Munro, Brooke Langton, Lucy Martin, Darin Cooper, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Devon Sawa. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Turbulence (R) This thriller stars Jeremy Irvine and Hera Hilmar as a married couple whose trip in a hot-air balloon turns lethal. Also with Olga Kurylenko and Kelsey Grammer. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
Akhanda 2: Thaandavam (NR) The sequel to the 2021 hit stars Nandamuri Balakrishna as the warrior who battles to restore peace to the natural world. Also with Samyuktha, Aadhi Pinisetty, Harshaali Malhotra, Kabir Duhan Singh, Saswata Chatterjee, and Ronson Vincent.
Dhurandhar (NR) Ranveer Singh stars in this crime thriller as a secret agent who infiltrates India’s underworld. Also with Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, R. Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, and Krystle D’Souza.
Eternity (PG-13) Diverting. An octogenarian couple (Barry Primus and Betty Buckley) pass on in the same week and are reincarnated as their younger selves (Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen) in the next world, only for her to discover that her first husband (Callum Turner) has spent the last 67 years waiting for her. Irish filmmaker David Freyne (The Cured) scores a bunch of good laughs depicting the afterlife as a mid-grade convention center and hotel where people have one week to decide where they want to spend the rest of eternity, and he almost pulls this off because Teller and especially Olsen play the reality of the conceit for all it’s worth. Unfortunately, the movie unravels in its last third when the wife has to make her choice. It’s clearly the work of a talented filmmaker who will go on to make something better. Also with Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Danny Mac, Christie Burke, and Olga Merediz.
Fackham Hall (R) Every bit as bad as the Justin Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer parodies of old, this spoof of Downton Abbey and the like stars Damian Lewis and Katherine Waterston as the lord and lady of a country estate whose hosting of a family wedding goes murderously wrong. For all the star power on display here, the only actor who gets anywhere near the broad comic tone that the material requires is Tom Felton as the puffed-up groom who is also the bride’s first cousin. The tropes of this sort of upstairs-downstairs drama are overripe for parody, yet somehow the filmmakers manage to come up empty. Jason Done portrays J.R.R. Tolkien as an unpublished writer who bores the pants off the other party guests by describing the plot of the novel he’s working on. Also with Thomasin McKenzie, Lee Boardman, Emma Laird, Ben Radcliffe, Tim McMullan, Tom Goodman-Hill, Ramon Tikaram, Lily Knight, and Anna Maxwell Martin.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (PG-13) Did they throw this together at the last minute? It sure feels that way, and not in a good way. The sequel to the 2023 horror hit has Abby (PIper Rubio) enabling the animatronic animals to leave Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and wreak havoc on the surrounding town, partly because both her dad (Josh Hutcherson) and his girlfriend (Elizabeth Lail) are too damaged to divulge key pieces of information. At one point there are three sets of the animals wandering about, and still Emma Tammi can’t make any of them scary. The actors give slapdash performances, which is only one reason why the story clanks even louder than the robots do. Also with Mckenna Grace, Wayne Knight, Han Soto, Teo Briones, Freddy Carter, Skeet Ulrich, and Matthew Lillard.
Hamnet (R) Beautifully crafted, occasionally crushing, and based on Maggie O’Farrell’s work of speculative fiction, Chloé Zhao’s film is about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) dealing with the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) from the bubonic plague. The film is quite different from O’Farrell’s novel; instead of adopting different characters’ viewpoints and jumping around in time, the movie proceeds in a linear fashion and sticks with Agnes as she raises the children in Stratford while Will goes off to London and catches on with a theater company. Much like Shakespeare in Love, this movie truly takes flight during a production of a Shakespeare play, when Agnes travels to London and sees her husband’s Hamlet as an expression of his grief over their lost son. Great performances by both leads bring this Hamlet to tragic life no matter how many Hamlets you’ve seen. Also with Joe Alwyn, Freya Hannan-Mills, David Wilmot, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, Noah Jupe, and Emily Watson.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution (R) I’m getting weary of these anime adaptations that assume that everyone who walks in the door is intimately familiar with the bits of the saga that have gone before. This film recaps Season 2 of the TV series and then includes the first two episodes of Season 3, as Satoru Gojo (voiced by Yūichi Nakamura in the Japanese-language version and Kaiji Tang in the English dub) tries to save civilians from an evil veil that descends on the Shibuya district over Halloween. Don’t bother ponying up for tickets if you haven’t seen the first two seasons, or else all these striking images will just wash over you without leaving an impact. Additional voices by Asami Seto, Anne Yatco, Yuma Uchida, Robbie Daymond, Jun’ichi Suwabe, Jun’ya Enoki, Adam McArthur, Daisuke Namikawa, Ray Chase, Megumi Ogata, and Kayleigh McKee.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (R) Quentin Tarantino said he broke the original saga into two films because a 4½-hour revenge thriller was too self-indulgent. You can judge whether he was right for yourself. Uma Thurman gives the performance of her career as the blood-spattered bride who aims to kill all the crime bosses (Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, and the late Michael Madsen) who wronged her. Fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and the performers make every fight sequence here into a highlight, and nothing tops the Bride’s fight in the Japanese nightclub against the Crazy 88. The latter sequence is shown entirely in color, which is among a few minor changes from the original films. Also with Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama, Gordon Liu, Julie Dreyfus, Michael Parks, James Parks, Michael Bowen, Jonathan Loughran, Jun Kunimura, Sid Haig, and Perla Haney-Jardine.
Merrily We Roll Along (PG-13) The concert movie of the year captures the 2023 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s show, which makes a forceful case for this musical flop of his as a forceful and vital piece of theater. The story is told in reverse order, as a Broadway songwriter (Jonathan Groff) becomes a great success in Hollywood by selling out his family, his loyal friends, his youthful ideals, and even his music. Maria Friedman directs both the stage production and this film adaptation, and she knows when to pull back and when to go close in on something, which makes this into a dynamic filmed stage production. Groff got the lion’s share of the good reviews in New York, but under the camera’s gaze, it’s Daniel Radcliffe who holds the lens whether he’s doing the comedy song “Franklin Shepard Inc.” or the contemplative “Good Thing Going.” Some of Sondheim’s greatest songs are here, and they’re worth the price of admission alone. Also with Lindsay Mendez, Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke, Talia Robinson, and Reg Rogers.
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.
Paran (NR) This Nepalese drama stars Neer Shah as a family patriarch who cherishes the love of his family. Also with Anjana Baraili, Mahesh Tripathi, Keki Adhikari, Madan Krishna Shrestha, Prabin Khatiwada, and Buddhi Tamang.
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.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (R) Daniel Craig’s third outing as Benoit Blanc finds a fascinating religious angle. The great detective investigates the murder of a fire-breathing Catholic monsignor (Josh Brolin) that appears to be physically impossible, and in clearing the name of the priest who’s the main suspect (Josh O’Connor), he gains a newfound appreciation for religious faith and what it can do. O’Connor is unfortunately not up to portraying a man whose violent past may not be in the past, but writer-director Rian Johnson devotes a great deal to his daily struggle to do good and keep his Christian faith. We can overlook the somewhat labored ending in light of the cast of supporting characters that Johnson dreams up and the tasty satire of right-wing social-media influencers. Also with Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Thomas Haden Church, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Annie Hamilton, Noah Segan, and Jeffrey Wright.
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.
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.
Dallas Exclusives
Frontier Crucible (R) Armie Hammer stars in this Western as a soldier trying to keep a group of travelers alive in the Arizona desert in the 1870s. Also with Thomas Jane, Mary Stickley, Myles Clohessy, Zane Holtz, Joshua Odjick, and William H. Macy.
Hunting Season (R) This thriller stars Mel Gibson as a reclusive survivalist who rescues a woman (Shelley Honig) from a group of criminals. Also with Jordi Mollà, A.J. Buckley, Sofia Hublitz, Rob Moran, Rocky Myers, and James DuMont.
