OPENING
Broken Bird (R) This British horror film stars Rebecca Calder as a bereaved woman who takes a job at a funeral home. Also with James Fleet, Paul Kampf, Jay Taylor, and Kerry Doyle. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Desert Warrior (R) Anthony Mackie stars in this thriller as a Bedouin warrior who aids a fugitive princess (Aiysha Hart) in the desert. Also with Sharlto Copley, Numan Acar, Géza Röhrig, Ghassan Massoud, Sami Bouajila, and Ben Kingsley. (Opens Friday)
Fuze (R) The latest thriller by David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a British military officer in charge of defusing an unexploded World War II bomb in the middle of London. Also with Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Honor Swinton Byrne, Luke Mably, Dragos Bucur, and Sam Worthington. (Opens Friday)
Gedela Raju Kakinada Taluka (NR) This Indian drama is about the forces leading up to the assassination of a rising politician (Raghu Kunche). Also with Teena Sravya, Ravi Anand Chinnabilli, Mahaboob Basha, Sri Divya, and Ramchandram Punyamanthula. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Ginny Wedss Sunny 2 (NR) The extra “s” is part of the title. The sequel to the 2019 comedy stars Medha Shankr, Avinash Tiwary, Sudhir Pandey, Govind Namdev, Rohit Chaudhary, and Lillete Dubey. (Opens Friday)
I Swear (R) The subject of controversy during awards season, this British film stars Robert Aramayo as John Davidson, the real-life activist who educated the public about Tourette’s syndrome. Also with Maxine Peake, Shirley Henderson, Sanjeev Kohli, Steven Cree, and Peter Mullan. (Opens Friday)
Kangaroo Island (NR) This Australian drama stars Adelaide Clemens as a struggling Hollywood actress who returns home to sort out her family issues. Also with Rebecca Breeds, Erik Thomson, Nicholas Hope, Joel Jackson, Lauren Koopowitz, and Julie Wood. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Maitighar (NR) This Nepalese comedy stars Kedar Ghimire, Dhiraj Magar, Buddhi Tamang, Prakash Saput, and Upasana Singh Thakuri. (Opens Friday at Cinepolis Euless)
Mermaid (NR) This fantasy film stars Johnny Pemberton as a Florida drug addict who finds a mermaid (Avery Potemri) and must protect her. Also with Robert Patrick, Kevin Dunn, Kevin Nealon, Kirk Fox, and Tom Arnold. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Mistura (NR) This Peruvian film stars Bárbara Mori as a divorced woman overcoming social stigma to open a restaurant for Lima’s high society. Also with Cesar Ballumbrosio, Stefano Meier, Juan Pablo Olyslager, Hermelinda Luján, Vanessa Saba, Marco Zunino, and Christian Meier. (Opens Friday at America Cinemas Fort Worth)
Original Sound (NR) David Lambert stars in this drama as a struggling music producer whose beat is stolen by a pop singer (Laura Marano). Also with Bridget Moynahan, Roscoe Orman, Constantine Maroulis, Ted King, Jasmin Walker, and Eric Stoltz. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Over Your Dead Body (R) This comedy stars Jason Segel and Samara Weaving as a married couple who secretly plan to murder the other during a weekend getaway. Also with Timothy Olyphant, Paul Guilfoyle, Kayla Radomski, Keith Jardine, and Juliette Lewis. (Opens Friday)
Ram Naam Satya (NR) This Nepalese thriller is about a mysterious killer who assassinates corrupt politicians. Starring Biraj Bhatta, Sunil Thapa, Sushil Shrestha, Prashant Tamrakar, and Aayush Singh Thakuri. (Opens Friday)
Ricky (NR) Stephan James stars in this drama as a man in his 30s who’s released from prison after spending his entire adult life there. Also with Titus Welliver, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Imani Lewis, Sean Nelson, and Sheryl Lee Ralph. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Saint Joseph: Guardian of the Family (NR) This Polish film stars Rafal Zawierucha as a radio reporter who copes with a crisis by telling the stories of people visiting a nearby shrine. Also with Karolina Chapko, Radoslaw Pazura, Karol Biskup, Lech Wierzbowski, Aleksandra Palka-Lopatka, and Maja Barełkowska. (Opens Friday at America CInemas Fort Worth)
Whisper of the Heart (G) This is the anniversary re-release of the 1996 anime film about a girl (voiced by Yoko Honna) who investigates a boy (voiced by Issei Takahashi) who has checked out all her library books. Additional voices by Shigeru Muroi, Takashi Tachibana, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Keiju Kobayashi, and Maiko Kayama. (Opens Friday)
The Wolf and the Lamb (NR) Adrianne Palicki stars in this Western as a Montana widow whose son disappears from a remote mining camp and returns terribly altered. Also with Zach McGowan, Q’orianka Kilcher, James Landry Hébert, Cassandra Scerbo, Clint Howard, and Angus Macfadyen. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
NOW PLAYING
Bhooth Bangla (NR) Akshay Kumar stars in this horror-comedy as a man who encounters supernatural spirits while planning his sister’s wedding. Also with Tabu, Paresh Rawal, Manoj Joshi, Manu Menon, Vindu Dara Singh, and Shehnaaz Gill.
Busboys (R) David Spade and Theo Von star in and write this comedy about best friends who believe that becoming restaurant waiters will solve all their problems. Also with Jimmy Gonzales, Leah McKendrick, Arturo del Puerto, Michelle Ortiz, Tim Dillon, Lindsey Normington, and Jay Pharoah.
The Drama (R) You’ve seen movies about weddings where everything goes to hell, but never one quite like this. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play an engaged couple who are slated to get married in a week, but she throws a wrench in the works during a party game when her friends reveal the worst thing they’ve ever done, and she comes up with a topper that horrifies everyone. Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli previously did Dream Scenario, but this is closer to the edgelord stuff he did in his native Norway. While he fails to comment meaningfully on America’s gun culture, he does make the film succeed as a cracked sort of romance between two appalling human beings whose flaws complement one another, and Pattinson steals away acting honors as an overwhelmed guy with an epic case of pre-wedding jitters. Also with Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Benton Gates, Sydney Lemmon, Hannah Gross, Anna Baryshnikov, and Damon Gupton.
Exit 8 (PG-13) Unusual enough to stand out. Based on the recent video game, this Japanese horror film stars Kazunari Ninomiya as a nameless young man who becomes trapped in the subway, with signs that point him toward the exit but instead lead him in a big circle where he repeatedly passes by the same people and landmarks. The movie is actually about deeper psychological issues, as the hero finds out that he’s about to be a father and has to work through his own trauma from being an abandoned child. Director Genki Kawamura rings enough changes on near-identical subway halls to prevent this from becoming too monotonous. Also with Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma, Nana Komatsu, and Hirota Ōtsuka.
Faces of Death (R) Too meta for its own good. Barbie Ferreira stars in this horror film as a social media content moderator who comes across videos that appear to be imitating the fake murders in the real-life 1978 horror film by the same name, except with actual deaths. The original film is a fascinating artifact, but this movie referencing it doesn’t do enough with the source, nor does it offer up much commentary on what it is to watch violent videos all day for a living. The heroine would do a lot more to stop the murders going on in her real life if she would just stop acting crazy, something that the backstory about her traumatic past doesn’t explain. Director/co-writer Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) needs to stick to low-budget thrillers, it appears. Also with Dacre Montgomery, Jermaine Fowler, Josie Totah, JD Evermore, Aaron Holliday, and Charli XCX.
Fireflies at El Mozote (NR) Based on historical events, this drama stars Juan Pablo Shuk as a 10-year-old Salvadoran boy seeking justice for the murder of his entire village in 1981. Also with Paz Vega, Jeff Fahey, Yancey Arias, Diana Aboujian, Gabriel Pinto, Mateo Honies, and Mena Suvari.
A Great Awakening (PG-13) Thoughtful enough to be the next great Christian drama, but taken down by other issues. The film follows both Benjamin Franklin (John Paul Sneed) as he sets up a printing business in the American colonies and George Whitefield (Jonathan Blair) as he turns his ambitions from acting to preaching the Word of God in Britain. The two men meet before the American revolution, and the deist Franklin finds inspiration in Whitefield’s speeches. It’s a good story, but director/co-writer Joshua Enck takes too long building things up — we’re more than an hour into the story before our two main characters finally meet. The writers (who also include Blair) do well to traverse the limits of religious faith and the need for human action based on that, but the whole thing has too many stops on the heroes’ journey. It needed some neater editing. Also with Russell Dean Schultz, Robert Bigley, JT Schaeffer, Josh Bates, Carson Burkett, Stephen Foster Harris, Ryan Jameson Hippe, and Daniel Stargel.
Hoppers (PG) Maybe it doesn’t tug at the heartstrings like Pixar’s best movies do, but it’s funny enough that you won’t care. A 19-year-old college student (voiced by Piper Curda) discovers that her biology professor (voiced by Kathy Najimy) has developed a program to temporarily put human consciousness into realistic robot animals, so she uses it to talk to the animals and save a beloved forest glade from being demolished. She does point out that this is the plot of Avatar, but this movie is better thought out than Avatar because it recognizes how complicated the fight for environmental justice can become. This movie delivers on entertainment value better than most recent Pixar entries, making the kids laugh without talking down to the adults. That’s all the animation giant ever needed to do. Additional voices by Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, Dave Franco, Eduardo Franco, Tom Law, Vanessa Bayer, Ego Nwodim, Melissa Villaseñor, Meryl Streep, and the late Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (R) After a promising start, this movie comes apart spectacularly. Jack Reynor and Laia Costa portray an expatriate couple living in Egypt when their 8-year-old daughter (Emily Mitchell) is abducted during a sandstorm. Nine years later, the now-teenage child (Natalie Grace) reappears and is brought back to her parents in New Mexico, but appears to be much altered. The evil from an ancient civilization manifesting itself in the Southwestern desert is a nice touch, but it’s the only one that Cronin has. The attempts at character study in a broken family go awry, and the film loses track of its characters for long stretches. With scares that are more gross than scary, this take on the intellectual property is a loud misfire. Also with May Calamawy, Billie Roy, Shylo Molina, Mark Mitchinson, Hayat Kamille, May Elghety, Jonathan Gunning, and Veronica Falcón.
Lorne (R) Morgan Neville’s documentary profiles Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. Also with Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Colin Jost, John Mulaney, Mike Myers, Andy Samberg, Maya Rudolph, Sarah Sherman, Paul Simon, and Steve Martin.
Mile End Kicks (R) Barbie Ferreira stars in this comedy as a music critic who becomes romantically involved with members of a band that she’s covering. Also with Jay Baruchel, Juliette Gariépy, Robert Naylor, Isaiah Lehtinen, Emily Lê, and Devon Bostick.
Normal (R) Finally, an action-comedy worthy of Bob Odenkirk. He portrays a lawman who becomes a temporary sheriff for a small Minnesota town with a suspicious amount of money and weapons running through the police department and everywhere else. Director Ben Wheatley brings his particular brand of twisted humor and outrageous deaths to the story, as two out-of-towners (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) try to rob the savings and loan and instead find almost the entire town trying to kill them. The script takes time out to characterize the quirky townsfolk, and Odenkirk nicely underplays the part of a law-enforcement guy who’s tormented by a fatal police shooting in his past. This unholy cross between Fargo and Hot Fuzz would be a guilty pleasure, except I don’t believe in feeling guilty about movies that give you pleasure. Also with Lena Headey, Ryan Allen, Billy MacLellan, Peter Shinkoda, Takahiro Inoue, Dan de Jaeger, David Lawrence Brown, Derek Barnes, Megan MacArton, Lauren Cochrane, Jess McLeod, and Henry Winkler.
Pahad (NR) This Nepalese drama stars Arun Chhetri, Panchani Ghimire, Priyanka Karki, Shiva Shrestha, Sunil Thapa, Ankit Khadka, and Rabindra Singh Bhaniya.
Project Hail Mary (PG-13) Based on Andy Weir’s novel, this science-fiction movie is entertaining enough for the price of admission and maybe even an upcharge to a premium format. Ryan Gosling portrays an astronaut who travels to a star light-years away to find a solution to why our sun is dying. He meets an alien being whose world is facing the same problem with its sun. Gosling spends a great deal of time talking to himself, partly because his character is trying to keep from going insane from the solitude and partly because he has trouble communicating with the alien, but if any actor can make this assignment look easy, it’s Gosling. The filmmaking team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) drills down into the trial-and-error that goes into the characters’ scientific work and manages to find both humor and beauty in the vastness of space. The movie earns its uplift because of the way the two life forms are willing to collaborate to save their civilizations. Also with Sandra Hüller, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, Priya Kansara, Orion Lee, and Lionel Boyce. Voices by James Ortiz and an uncredited Meryl Streep.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (R) The sequel was never going to equal Grandma’s splattery and hilarious death in the first movie, but I was still hoping for more. Samara Weaving reprises her role from the original, being placed in a new game with her estranged sister (Kathryn Newton) as they try to avoid being killed by representatives of four families from different countries vying for control of the world. Newton is a nice addition, as is Sarah Michelle Gellar as one of the rich people hunting them, and the movie does have a funny fight scene between two women who have both been pepper-sprayed. Even so, the thriller plot keeps stopping to hash out some uninteresting buried issues between the sisters, and the comedy set pieces are neither as effective nor as frequent as the original’s. The movie really missed a trick not using the Jackson 5 song that shares its title. Also with Elijah Wood, Shawn Hatosy, Nestor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Antony Hall, Dan Beirne, Varun Saranga, Masa Lizdek, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Maia Jae, Juan Pablo Romero, and David Cronenberg.
Reminders of Him (PG-13) This sleep-inducing adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel offers considerably less entertainment value than either It Ends With Us or Regretting You. Maika Monroe stars as an ex-convict released from prison after her driving while high results in a traffic accident that kills her boyfriend (Rudy Pankow). She returns to her hometown in Laramie to see the daughter (Zoe Kosovic) whom she gave birth to inside, only to fall for her ex-boyfriend’s best friend (Tyriq Withers). Withers holds up his end, but Monroe’s idea of playing someone traumatized and grieving is to deliver a bunch of flat line readings. Also with Lauren Graham, Lainey Wilson, Monika Myers, Nicholas Duvernay, Jennifer Robertson, and Bradley Whitford.
Scream 7 (R) Can this series die already? This latest installment is certainly bad enough to kill it. Neve Campbell returns as Sidney Prescott, who has moved to a new small town and opened a cafe when a new Ghostface claiming to be original movie killer Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) targets her teenage daughter (Isabel May). Writer-director Kevin Williamson’s script is witless, and this new town has cops who disappear for long stretches without any explanation. The same goes for Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), to the point where I started to think she was the killer. Nostalgia is all this series has left. At least Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega got out of this. Also with Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Anna Camp, Joel McHale, Mckenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Asa Germann, Kraig Dane, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Timothy Simons, Ethan Embry, Mark Consuelos, Scott Foley, Laurie Metcalfe, and David Arquette.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (PG) The Mario brothers (voiced by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day) rescue Yoshi (voiced by Donald Glover) while Bowser Jr. (voiced by Benny Safdie) kidnaps Princess Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) in this sequel. While there’s entirely too much going on, this is still better than the first movie. The new voice talent gives the thing some new energy and the filmmakers inject some visual wit that wasn’t there in the original, such as interludes made to look like sock puppet theater and Japanese anime, as well as a casino whose gaming floor extends to the walls and ceiling. Some Mario-fied Minions make an appearance as well. There’s certainly worse stuff made for the little ones out there. Additional voices by Jack Black, Anya Taylor-Joy, Keegan-Michael Key, Issa Rae, Luis Guzmán, and Glen Powell.
You, Me & Tuscany (PG-13) Pleasant enough, I guess. Halle Bailey stars in this comedy as a thwarted chef-turned-professional New York housesitter who finds herself temporarily homeless until an Italian businessman (Lorenzo de Moor) tells her about a family villa that’s sitting empty in his absence. She travels to the Italian countryside and crashes at his place without permission, but when his family discovers her, she lies and tells them that she’s his fiancée. To complicate matters further, she falls for his cousin (Regé-Jean Page). The farce here is leaden, but Page’s charm helps to smooth over the bumpy parts. The novelty of a Black American woman finding herself at home amid Italy’s sun-dappled scenery and fine food is enough to put this across. Her Italianized recipe for shrimp and grits sounds like it would work, too. Also with Isabella Ferrari, Marco Calvani, Stella Peccolo, Paolo Sassanelli, Tommaso Cassissa, Desirèe Pöpper, Stefania Casini, and Aziza Scott.
Dallas Exclusives
Brothers Under Fire (NR) This thriller stars Kiefer Sutherland as a U.S. military officer whose squadron is pulled into drug cartel violence while attending a wedding in Mexico. Also with Ashton Sanders, Flora Martínez, Omar Chaparro, Laura Osma, Solly McLeod, Laird Akeo, Orlando Pineda, and Sebastián Sierra.
The Christophers (R) Steven Soderbergh’s drama stars Michaela Coel as a young artist who visits an old, reclusive painter (Ian McKellen) to forge some of his most famous paintings. Also with James Corden, Jessica Gunning, and Daniel Fearn.
Our Hero, Balthazar (R) Jaeden Martell stars in this comedy as a rich New York teenager who travels to Texas for an online crush. Also with Asa Butterfield, Noah Centineo, Anna Baryshnikov, Will River, Avan Jogla, Chris Bauer, Pippa Knowles, and Jennifer Ehle.
Palestine 36 (NR) This historical drama is about various characters during the Palestinian revolt against British rule in 1936. Starring Hiam Abbass, Robert Aramayo, Karim Daoud Anaya, Liam Cunningham, Billy Howle, Saleh Bakri, Yasmine al-Massri, and Jeremy Irons.
Panda Plan 2: The Magical Tribe (NR) Jackie Chan stars in this comedy as a man taking care of a giant panda when they stumble on a lost tribe. Also with Ma Li, Qiao Shan, Pan Binlong, Song Muzi, Wang Yinglu, Yu Rongguang, and Zhang Zidong.
