OPENING
The Cat in the Hat (PG) Inspired by Dr. Seuss’ children’s book, this animated film has the titular cat (voiced by Bill Hader) trying to keep his job by helping out a new family. Additional voices by Quinta Brunson, Matt Berry, Xochitl Gomez, Giancarlo Esposito, Bowen Yang, Titus Burgess, Paula Pell, and America Ferrera. (Opens Friday)
De Gaulle: Résistance (NR) This historical drama stars Simon Abkarian as the French resistance leader who flees to the U.K. during the Nazi takeover. Also with Simon Russell Beale, Benoît Magimel, Anamaria Vartolomei, Florian Lesieur, Kacey Mottet Klein, Grégoire Colin, Niels Schneider, Karim Leklou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Daniel Betts, and Campbell Scott. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Disco (NR) This Malayalam-language crime thriller stars Dev Mohan as a man who enters organized crime. Also with Femina George, Kalyani Anil, Meera Vasudevan, Sreenath Bhasi, Gayathri Suresh, Chemban Vinod Jose, and Antony Varghese. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Drummer Boy (PG-13) This Revolutionary War drama focuses on three characters dealing with the war for American independence. Starring Joel Smallbone, Ioan Gruffudd, India Brown, Melora Hardin, Lucas Leach, Beverley Knight, Charles Esten, Beth Easdown, and Iain Glen. (Opens Friday)
Godzilla Minus Zero (R) The sequel to the 2023 monster movie features various characters trying to cope two years after Godzilla’s first appearance off Tokyo. Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hanabe, Min Tanaka, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masami Nagasawa, Yuki Yamada, Sakura Ando, and Jun Kunimura. (Opens Friday)
Jimmy (PG-13) K.J. Apa stars in this biography of Jimmy Stewart, focusing on his military service during World War II. Also with Max Casella, Neal McDonough, Rob Riggle, Jason Alexander, Sarah Drew, Jen Lilley, Marc Malkin, and Christopher McDonald. (Opens Friday)
Littermates (NR) This British horror film stars Joey Bader and Kaylee McGregor as a couple taking refuge at a cottage during wartime. Also with Oliver Woolf and Jack Redmayne. (Opens Friday at Alamo Drafthouse Denton)
Mookuthi Amman 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2020 fantasy film has Nayanthara reprising her role as a queen taking on a new evil. Also with Duniya Vijay, Regina Cassandra, Yogi Babu, Ramachandra Raju, MG Abhinaya, and Hiphop Tamizha. (Opens Friday)
Paradise Lost (NR) This thriller by Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) stars Kim Hyun-joo as a mother who feels threatened when her son (Bae Hyun-sung) returns to her nine years after he went missing. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Ramayana (PG-13) A rare Indian movie with an English-dubbed version, this adaptation of the epic poem stars Ranbir Kapoor as the prince who’s deprived of his rightful inheritance. Also with Yash, Sai Pallavi, Sunny Deol, Ravi Dubey, Lara Dutta, Arun Govil, Indira Krishnan, Sonal Jhal, Vivek Oberoi, Rakul Preet Singh, Kajal Aggarwal, Kunal Kapoor, Adinath Kothare, and Anupam Kher. (Opens Friday)
Scene (NR) Suriya stars in this Tamil-language action-comedy as a cop forced to take up a cold case from his past. Also with Naslen, Nazriya Nazim, Anandaraj, Lal, and John Vijay. (Opens Friday)
Summer Holidays (NR) This Telugu-language kids’ movie stars Rohan Roy Gunti as a city boy who befriends a village paperboy (Arun Dev) during the summer of 2000. Also with Kushi Soni, Jayasudha, Rajeev Kanakala, and Harsha Vardhan. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Aadarsha Kutumbam: House No. 47 (NR) This Telugu-language action-comedy is about a family whose secrets come to life after an accident in their house. Starring Venkatesh, Srinidhi Shetty, Nara Rohith, Nivetha Pethuraj, Yuvina Parthavi, Rao Ramesh, Brahmaji, Vennela Kishore, and Raghu Babu.
Christmas at the Kringles (R) Not as good as Christmas With the Kranks, regrettably. This horror-comedy stars Ron Livingston and Rachel Bilson as a couple who move to the suburbs and discover that their next-door neighbors (Thomas Lennon and Arden Myrin) are insane people who celebrate Christmas year-round and may be trying to murder them. What seems like a premise that might work gets bollixed from every angle, as the comedy isn’t funny and director Kevin Lewis can’t hit the right balance of scares and laughs. Avoid this one. Also with Rob Riggle, Donald Faison, Alexis Kemp, Zeke Jones, Jack Jewkes, Elliott Egler, David Wain, and Beverly D’Angelo. (Opens Friday)
Clayface (R) Adapted from DC Comics, this supervillain origin story plays like a male version of The Substance and is better for it. Tom Rhys Harries portrays a big-time Hollywood movie star whose handsome face is ruined by a mob boss (David Dencik) and becomes a monster because of an experimental treatment that’s meant to restore his beauty. The Welsh newcomer Rhys Harries doesn’t quite convince as an A-lister, but director James Watkins does not spare the gore in depicting the changes to the protagonist’s body, and uses it to good advantage when Clayface realizes that he can change his appearance to impersonate other people. The movie establishes its villain, ends without tipping over into bombast or sentimentality, and distinguishes itself from the tamer DC superhero movies. Also with Naomi Ackie, Eddie Marsan, Joshua James, Joana Ribeiro, Corey Johnson, Jake Curran, Wil Coban, Ruby Sear, Rob Brydon, Max Minghella, and an uncredited Aaron Paul.
#Cult (NR) Vishwak Sen directs and stars in this Telugu-language horror film about a group of young people whose night of partying turns deadly. Also with Gayatri Bhardwaj, Tarak Ponnappa, Srikanth Iyengar, Vivek Chepuri, Kabeer Bhartiya, Yagnya Turlapati, and Murali Sharma.
Digger (R) I always hate myself while watching Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s movies, and you may hate yourself too if you watch this gruesome environmental satire. Tom Cruise portrays an elderly Texas oilman whose drilling in Greenland creates an environmental disaster that’s set to kill millions in Northern Europe. The opening half-hour plays like the Coen brothers at their cartoonish worst before the movie introduces a framing device that adds on a layer of metafiction. This actually works better than the main story, because it addresses the continued usefulness of making art when the world is literally falling apart. The sad part is, you have to sit through so much cack-handed buffoonery to get to it. The role chimes with Cruise’s gonzo side, but he can’t make this movie into the statement about American hubris that Iñárritu means it to be. Also with John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, Emma D’Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Burn Gorman, Robert John Burke, Pip Torrens, Stephen Wight, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Everest: The Other Side (PG-13) It’s IMAX or bust with this one. No regular format can give you an idea of the scale of Mount Everest, so you’ll have to catch Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary on the biggest screen possible. The Oscar-winning filmmakers (Free Solo) profile Jim Morrison and his wife Hilaree Nelson and their dream of climbing the mountain’s treacherous north face and then skiing down. Their cameras are rolling when Nelson is killed in an avalanche on another Himalayan peak, and so Morrison aims to complete the quest to scatter his wife’s ashes on the peak of Everest. These filmmakers never neglect the human side of their subjects, and they spend as much time with the Sherpas who assist with Morrison’s feat, because none of them have ever climbed the north face themselves. It makes for a handy companion piece to Chai Vasarhelyi and Chin’s other films about mountain climbing. They are experienced climbers themselves, and Chin made it to the top of Everest along with Morrison. (Opens Friday)
Heart of the Beast (R) Watchable, though no more than that. Brad Pitt stars in this survival drama as a Special Forces veteran and bush pilot who suffers a heart attack in mid-flight and crashes his plane in the Alaskan wilderness. With the help of his dog (like him, a PTSD-suffering veteran of the Iraq war), he has to make his way to civilization. The simple story and lack of dialogue helps protect writer-director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) from the worst of his melodramatic excesses. The new Shaun the Sheep movie is better at depicting our bonds with dogs, but the wild backdrop is imposing on the big screen, and the way the soldier passes on his combat-trained dog to a new owner is moving in the end. Also with Anna Lambe and J.K. Simmons.
Jailer 2 (NR) Rajinikanth stars in this Tamil-language action-comedy about a retired prison guard trying to protect his family from criminals. Also with S.J. Suryah, Mithun Chakraborty, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Ramya Krishnan, Vidya Balan, Yogi Babu, Shiva Rajkumar, Mohanlal, Nora Fatehi, Vijay Sethupathi, Hrithik Roshan, and Jackie Shroff.
Kabaddi 5 (NR) Dayahang Rai stars in the fifth installment of the Nepalese sports series as the kabaddi player seeking a new challenge after winning his greatest triumph. Also with Bijay Baral, Rishma Gurung, Bipin Karki, Buddhi Tamang, Puskar Gurung, Miruna Magar, and Shishir Bangdel.
The Mongoose (R) Liam Neeson stars in this thriller as a Special Forces veteran who flees police after being wrongfully accused of a murder. Also with Marisa Tomei, Michael Chiklis, Brett Tucker, Maurice Marvel Meredith, Dor Gvirtsman, Stella Stocker, and Ving Rhames.
The Mosquito Bowl (R) There are some good battle sequences in here, which increasingly seems like the only thing that director Peter Berg does well anymore. Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis portray four All-American college football players who give up their careers to enlist in World War II and participate in a football game for soldiers at Guadalcanal before the Battle of Okinawa. Aside from the electrifying scenes of combat, the story is a wearying collection of cliches about the manly courage of soldiers and football players. You’re better off waiting for this to hit Netflix, which produced the movie. Also with Brent Comer, Ella Newton, Stacy Clausen, and Pat McAfee.
The Odyssey (R) Not free of flaws, but a cogent modern interpretation of Homer’s epic poem. As you might guess, this epic needs the biggest screen you can find so that you can properly appreciate its natural vistas and visual set pieces like the boat steering between Scylla and Charybdis. Writer-director Christopher Nolan is too scrupulous when it comes to the violence in the epic poem; more blood would have brought home the movie’s point that Odysseus (Matt Damon) won the Trojan War by violating sacred values and is trying to restore them. Some of the actors in this cast laden with A-list stars do get lost, but Anne Hathaway finds the rage beneath Penelope’s regal exterior and Lupita Nyong’o pulls off an impressive double role as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. Instead of a turgid homework assignment, this earns its epic status thanks to Nolan’s contemporary angle on the story. Also with Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, Elliot Page, Samantha Morton, James Remar, Mia Goth, Corey Hawkins, Bill Irwin, Benny Safdie, Jovan Adepo, Logan Marshall-Green, Will Yun Lee, Ryan Hurst, Shiloh Fernandez, Rafi Gavron, and Travis Scott.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (R) Deeply sad, in a good way. John Turturro portrays an aging career criminal who steals the key to a cryptocurrency account belonging to a mobbed-up family and has to get it back to save the life of his catatonic wife (Karina Arroyave). Actor Noah Segan makes a sparkling debut as a writer-director, adopting the viewpoint of his pickpocket as he finds things to steal amid cluttered surroundings. He does lose a step toward the end, but this brief film has very little fat on it, and Turturro gives a shabby elegance to this man, whose sleight-of-hand is highly practiced and who has survived for far longer than he should have. Gary Lionelli’s melancholy jazz score fits well with the story of a smart and talented man whose time has come to an end. Also with Giancarlo Esposito, Steve Buscemi, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, Victoria Moroles, Lori Tan Chinn, Kelvin Han Yee, Aida Turturro, John Gallagher Jr., and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Other Mommy (R) The premise of this horror film is a sound one, but the finished product is massively disappointing. Arabella Olivia Clark portrays a 7-year-old girl who is haunted by a demon that looks exactly like her mother (both played by Jessica Chastain). Based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House, the film throws us in the deep end with the demon making itself known to the girl’s parents within the first 15 minutes of the movie. That may seem like the movie being bold and dispensing with buildup, but it turns out that director Rob Savage (The Boogeyman) is just sloppy. Jump scares quickly become wearisome when a movie has no other way to scare you. Savage reveals himself to be a one-trick pony, and he’s not even good at that one trick. A nice performance by Clark gets wasted. Also with Jay Duplass, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Sean Kaufman, and Karen Allen.
Primetime (R) Robert Pattinson portrays NBC journalist Chris Hansen as a preening, stuck-up actor whose every gesture and line reading is overrehearsed and overdone. As a result, he has never been better. The film follows the To Catch a Predator host in the fall of 2006, who works with an aspiring Hollywood actor (Skyler Gisondo) who’s on the show to impersonate 13-year-old boys and lure pedophiles into various trap houses before Chris swoops in. The movie looks like crap because it’s shot on cameras available in the mid-2000s, a deliberate choice by director Lance Oppenheim, who emphasizes the artificial nature of the Dateline NBC segment at every turn. Playing a ten-cent narcissist who preys on even smaller men for ratings numbers, Pattinson manages to be even creepier than the pedophiles. Also with Merritt Wever, Matthew Maher, Phoebe Bridgers, Bokeem Woodbine, Tony Revolori, Bob Ari, Jonathan Lipnicki, Sean Bridgers, Jessica Hecht, Bill Heck, Creed Bratton, Alex Winter, and Anna Faris.
Resident Evil (R) The eighth movie in the series is the one that the video games deserved the whole time. Austin Abrams portrays an organ courier making a delivery to the hospital in Raccoon City on the day that the zombie pandemic breaks out. Director/co-writer Zach Cregger (Weapons) replicates the feel of the games in all the right ways, structuring scenes as puzzles that the main character has to solve and realizing every setting as thoroughly as if it were designed for a game. This may be a paycheck job for him, but he doesn’t treat it like one. Instead, he brings much of his skill to bear so that you don’t feel cheapened for enjoying the zombie shenanigans, and Abrams is a capable lead playing a man who’s not trained for his situation. Also with Paul Walter Hauser, Kali Reis, Will Merrick, Griffin Newman, Johnno Wilson, and Zach Cherry. Voice by Sara Paxton.
Sense and Sensibility (PG) Georgia Oakley films this Jane Austen like it’s a Charlotte Brontë adaptation, which works more or less well. Daisy Edgar-Jones portrays the more sensible of the Dashwood sisters while Esmé Creed-Miles is the more heedless one as they both have differing romantic adventures after their family loses their fortune. Both actresses play their roles well, and Creed-Miles comes close to stealing this one away. The filmmaking may be a bit conventional, but Diana Reid’s script is always intelligent (though it could be funnier) and the eruptions of emotion are well-placed. This admirable film could have turned out much worse. Also with Caitríona Balfe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Stacy Martin, Tom Brooke, Turlough Convery, Herbert Nordrum, Frank Dillane, Chloe Pirrie, Ceara Coveney, Eliot Sumner, Fiona Shaw, and George MacKay.
Street Fighter (PG-13) Brilliantly stupid at times, but just stupid for most of the time. The second film adaptation of the 1990s video game is set in 1993, with Ken and Ryu (Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji) working through their past issues as they compete in a fighting tournament hosted by Bison (David Dastmalchian). The film finds flashes of inspiration in Ken’s period stardom as well as a hotel-room fight sequence where Ryu merely dodges Ken’s blows and gets his nemesis to hurt himself. Elsewhere, the movie suffers from too many characters and poorly lit fights intended to disguise the stunt doubles. Despite the extensive use of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?”, the film’s attempt to mine Gen X nostalgia falls flat. Also with Jason Momoa, Callina Liang, Cody Rhodes, Olivier Richters, Vidyut Jammwal, Hirooki Goto, Mel Jarnson, Orville Peck, Kyle Mooney, Roman Reigns, and 50 Cent.
La venganza del charro negro (NR) This Mexican animated film and eighth movie in its series has the hero (voiced by Benny Emmanuel) fighting demons from his past. Additional voices by Emilio Treviño, Mayté Cordeiro, Paola Ramones, Jesus Guzmán, Eduardo España, and Andrés Couturier.
Verity (R) The best-ever movie adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel, for what that’s worth. Dakota Johnson plays an unsuccessful novelist who’s hired to complete a series of popular crime novels by a best-selling author (Anne Hathaway) who’s now paralyzed and catatonic because of a car accident. Our heroine comes across a draft of the author’s memoir where she appears to confess to murdering her child, or does she? Hathaway gets to play a mother wrestling with her impulses to do the unspeakable, and the movie does best with its Gothic-horror touches as our heroine sees the patient walking around the palatial house in rural Vermont. Yet there are too many holes in the plot, and director Michael Showalter is a comedy filmmaker who doesn’t have the instincts to give this movie the zip of a good thriller. Hoover’s readers deserve better craftsmanship than this. Also with Josh Hartnett, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko, K.K. Moggie, and Ismael Cruz Córdova.
Whalefall (PG-13) The special effects people here deserve Oscar consideration. Based on Daniel Kraus’ novel, the film stars Austin Abrams as a man who searches for the remains of his abusive father (Josh Brolin) who committed suicide in Monastery Bay off central California. While scuba diving, the young man gets swallowed by a sperm whale along with a seriously pissed-off giant squid and has about an hour’s worth of air to work his way out. The re-creation of the inside of the whale is good enough to send claustrophobes running for the hills, and Abrams emerges with much credit in a role that no actor could adequately prepare for. The father-son stuff, however, gets heavy enough to derail the last third of the movie. The film’s achievement is more technical than anything else. Also with John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd, and Elisabeth Shue.
Wicker (R) This extremely bizarre minor masterpiece stars Olivia Colman as a lone fisherwoman in a fairy-tale village who hires a master basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband out of wicker. The man (Alexander Skarsgård) appears and they have mind-blowing and very creaky sex that makes all her village’s women jealous and all the men feel inadequate. Adapting Ursula Wills’ short story, writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson do more than just stage really strange sex scenes, they carefully track the social upheaval that results from this unconventional arrangement. Skarsgård is weirdly appropriate in the role of a magical being who has to learn how human beings behave and idolizes his wife who is literally his reason for living. As cinematic fairy tales go, this is unique. Also with Elizabeth Debicki, Ella Bruccoleri, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Phil Daniels, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Emily Lloyd-Saini, Daniel Bellus, Gustav Lindh, Ben Ashenden, and Richard E. Grant.
Wildwood (PG-13) Laika Studios’ stop-motion animated film is visually splendiferous, though it never quite reaches the same level in terms of story. It’s about a girl (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) whose baby brother is kidnapped and has to discover her magical powers while she ventures into the forest outside Portland to confront the sorceress (voiced by Carey Mulligan) who took him. The film is full of wonders from a giant bird (voiced by Angela Bassett) that aids her quest to the army of coyotes working for the sorceress. The different factions of animals and bandits coming together to rise up against their ruler is fairly inspiring as well. It’s better than any of Disney or Pixar’s animated efforts so far this year. Additional voices by Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Charlie Day, Jake Johnson, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Amandla Stenberg, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Rob Delaney, Richard E. Grant, Len Cariou, and Blythe Danner.
You Can See Everything (R) Possibly the best documentary of the decade. The first third of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film has the filmmakers moving in with convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans at their rented San Diego beach house in the days before she’s scheduled to report to prison. The levels of self-delusion and gaslighting are compelling as everybody insists that she did nothing wrong and that Theranos worked like it was supposed to. Even so, the film only cracks open after Elizabeth goes inside and Amanda Seyfried (who portrayed Holmes in TV’s The Dropout) joins the investigative team while also reprising her role as Elizabeth in re-enacted scenes. The layers of reality become kaleidoscopic in their complexity and Evans reveals himself to be a genuine piece of shit. It all frequently plays like one of Fielder’s televised comedy bits, gives a good name to access journalism, and invents a whole new form of documentary film. Also with Christopher Abbott.
Dallas Exclusives
Fatherland (NR) This historical drama by Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida) is about Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his sister Erika (Sandra Hüller) returning to Germany after the Nazis’ defeat. Also with August Diehl, Devid Streisow, Anna Madeley, David Menkiri, Joachim Meyerhoff, Enno Trebs, Theo Trebs, and Joanna Kulig.
