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Gina Rodriguez (GLORIA) Matt Lauria (BRIAN REICH) star in MISS BALA.

OPENING 

An Affair to Die For (NR) Jake Abel and Claire Forlani play adulterous spouses whose affair leads to violence. Also with Nathan Cooper, Melina Matthews, and Titus Welliver. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Braid (R) Mitzi Peirone’s thriller stars Sarah Hay and Imogen Waterhouse as fugitives who conspire to rob their rich, reclusive friend (Madeline Brewer), only to discover terrifying implications to her mental illness. Also with Scott Cohen, Mauricio Ovalle, and Mary Looran. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Capernaum (R) Nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, this movie by Nadine Labaki (Caramel) is about a 12-year-old Lebanese boy (Zain al-Rafeea) who sues his parents for neglect while in prison. Also with Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Kawsar al-Haddad, and Fadi Yousef.

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Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (NR) Sonam Kapoor stars in this Indian (and possibly LGBT) musical comedy as a young woman searching for love. Also with Anil Kapoor, Regina Cassandra, Rajkummar Rao, Juhi Chawla, and Madhu Malti. (Opens Friday)

Extreme Job (NR) This Korean comedy is about a group of detectives whose undercover drug sting is jeopardized when they accidentally develop a wildly popular fried chicken recipe. Starring Ryu Seung-ryong, Lee Ha-nee, Jin Seon-kyu, Lee Dong-hwi, Gong Myung, and Shin Ha-kyun. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Free Solo (PG) The most visually breathtaking documentary all year profiles Alex Honnold, the professional rock climber who becomes the first person to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan “free solo,” meaning without ropes, harnesses, or safety gear. Co-director Jimmy Chin is a climber himself who assembles a film crew of other climbers, and with the help of ropes, drones, and other equipment, they capture the tiny handholds and toeholds that Alex uses to keep himself up, as well as how precarious his position is on the mountain. Yet Chin and co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi also draw a picture of a shut-off man who has to learn how to navigate the first serious relationship in his life, and whose desire to scale these heights is driven by his inner torment. The film achieves sublimity as it details how its protagonist expands the boundaries of what we think humanly possible. (Re-opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

The Gandhi Murder (NR) This historical drama posits a conspiracy behind the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi. Starring Stephen Lang, Vinnie Jones, Luke Pasqualino, Bobbie Phillips, Rajit Kapoor, Mark Moses, Joseph K. Bevilacqua, and the late Om Puri. (Opens Wednesday)

The Least of These: The Graham Staines Story (PG-13) This Christian film stars Sharman Joshi as an Indian journalist investigating the real-life Australian evangelist (Stephen Baldwin) for possible charlatanism. Also with Shari Rigby, Manoj Mishra, Prakash Belawadi, Aditi Chengappa, and Aneesh Daniel. (Opens Friday)

Miss Bala (R) Gina Rodriguez stars in this American remake of a Mexican thriller about a woman who’s caught between the DEA and a Mexican drug cartel. Also with Anthony Mackie, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Aislinn Derbez, Thomas Dekker, and Matt Lauria. (Opens Friday)

Outlaws (R) This Australian biker film stars Ryan Corr as a young man who must go against his gang leader to save his family. Also with Abbey Lee, Simone Kessell, Josh McConville, Aaron Pedersen, and Matt Nable. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Pegasus: Pony With a Broken Wing (G) Eliza Jarrett stars in this film as a girl who finds an injured winged horse and determines to nurse it back to health. Also with Jonathan Silverman, Charisma Carpenter, Jordan Elsass, Johnny Sinclair, and Tom Arnold. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Peppa Celebrates Chinese New Year (NR) The British TV show celebrates the holiday in this animated film. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Piercing (R) This thriller by Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother) stars Christopher Abbott as a serial killer who targets an unsuspecting prostitute (Mia Wasikowska) during an encounter. Also with Laia Costa, Marin Ireland, Maria Dizzia, and Isiah Whitlock. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Then Came You (NR) This British romantic comedy stars Asa Butterfield as a hypochondriac airport baggage handler who falls for a terminally ill teenager (Maisie Williams). Also with Nina Dobrev, Peyton List, Tyler Hoechlin, Sonya Walger, David Koechner, Tituss Burgess, and Ken Jeong. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

They Shall Not Grow Old (R) Peter Jackson’s documentary about World War I features black-and-white film footage filled in with computerized color and overdubbed sound, which draws your attention to some details you might miss, like the rueful expression on a serviceman playing an empty bottle as a musical instrument or a wounded soldier trying to shoo away a pigeon that’s perching on him. Still, the real value is the voiceover narration taken from interviews with veterans conducted in the 1960s and ’70s, which give unvarnished accounts of the grossness of war: lice-infested clothes, freezing water in the trenches that caused gangrene, mud made more viscous by corpses both human and animal. The limited scope of the footage available to Jackson means he can’t capture the worst aspects that the soldiers faced, but the film does succeed on the terms the director lays out in his preface, as a film “by a non-historian for non-historians.” (Opens Friday)

The Unicorn (NR) Nicholas Rutherford and Lauren Lapkus star in this comedy as an engaged couple looking for a woman to have a three-way with. Also with Lucy Hale, Dree Hemingway, John Kapelos, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, and Beverly D’Angelo. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

NOW PLAYING

Aquaman (PG-13) James Wan does great with the action and bad with everything else in this comic-book adaptation. Flashing a nice deadpan sense of humor, Jason Momoa plays the half-human, water-breathing superhero who visits Atlantis, the undersea kingdom of his ancestors, to prevent them from waging war against the unsuspecting land dwellers who have polluted the oceans. The director manages two nice one-take shots, one of Atlantis’ queen (Nicole Kidman) fighting off a strike team single-handedly and the other of Aquaman and an Atlantean princess (Amber Heard) being chased over the rooftops of Sicily. However, Wan also mishandles all the emotional beats in this story, and every time two characters stop to have a quiet conversation, they’re interrupted by an explosion. Wonder and beauty are beyond Wan’s capabilities. He’s been miscast as a horror director, and he should stick to action. Also with Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, Michael Beach, Randall Park, Graham McTavish, and Dolph Lundgren. Voices by Djimon Hounsou, John Rhys-Davies, and Julie Andrews. 

Bohemian Rhapsody (PG-13) That PG-13 rating is the first sign that something is wrong with this Queen biopic. Rami Malek stars as Freddie Mercury, who rebels against his Parsi family by embracing rock and roll. The story has all the continuity of a playlist on shuffle, as success seems to come out of nowhere for the band and hit follows hit with little insight into the odd creative process that the band went through. The project appeals to none of the strengths of X-Men director Bryan Singer. This bad movie is almost redeemed by a blazing performance by Malek, who plays the piano and struts around on the stage with Mercury’s particular swagger that’s manly and queeny at the same time. This actor deserves to headline better movies than this one. Also with Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Joseph Mazzello, Ben Hardy, Allen Leech, Aidan Gillen, Aaron McCusker, Tom Hollander, and Mike Myers.

Bumblebee (PG-13) The playful retro approach here is what the whole Transformers series should have taken from the start. Hailee Steinfeld plays a teenager in 1987 who comes across a giant alien robot disguised as a Volkswagen Beetle. Director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) and writer Christina Hodson smartly keep the movie’s focus narrow and turn the whole movie into a cute riff on E.T. The 1980s references are on point and the movie’s humor hits home more often than not, with John Cena chipping in as a bumbling federal agent trying to keep tabs on the robots invading the Earth. This series was in dire need of the restart that this movie gives it. Also with Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider, and Len Cariou. Voices by Dylan O’Brien, Justin Theroux, Peter Cullen, and Angela Bassett.

A Dog’s Way Home (PG) The sequel to A Dog’s Purpose tells the story of a dog (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) who travels 400 miles to find her owner. Also with Ashley Judd, Jonah Hauer-King, Alexandra Shipp, Barry Watson, Wes Studi, and Edward James Olmos. 

Dragon Ball Super: Broly (PG) The 16th animated film in the series is the first to receive a major release in American theaters.

Escape Room (PG-13) The production design upstages everything else in this stupidly watchable thriller that’s a mash-up of Cube, Saw, and The Da Vinci Code. Taylor Russell is one of seven seemingly random people who gather in a Chicago building to escape a deadly series of rooms for a $10,000 prize and, more importantly, the chance to keep breathing. It is fun watching the survivors enter a library that turns into a giant trash compactor or an upside-down bar with all the furniture on the ceiling. Alas, director Adam Robitel (who also plays one of the shorter-lived contestants) can’t keep the thing turning fast enough. Also with Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, Logan Miller, Nik Dodani, Jay Ellis, and Yorick van Wageningen. 

The Favourite (R) A delectable English trifle with enough liquor to knock you down. Olivia Colman plays Queen Anne of England as a paranoid, gout-ridden, vain, emotionally unstable monarch having a lesbian affair with a duchess (Rachel Weisz) before a fallen aristocrat’s daughter (Emma Stone) starts dangling herself in front of her. Many of the crazy historical details here are true, but wacky Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos throws in his own absurdist touches anyway, like the court dance with some defiantly 20th-century moves. The actors here make delicious stuff out of the catty script — Stone is revelatory as a conniving character, and Colman gives a performance that’s as close as you’ll see to a woman playing King Lear. This cold-eyed study of royalpolitik at a time when women wield unusual power also doubles as a lesbian sex farce full of sinister slapstick. Also with Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith, and Mark Gatiss. 

Glass (PG-13) Not as bad as you’ve heard, though a long way from being good. The final installment of M. Night Shyamalan’s trilogy brings together the protagonists of Unbreakable and Split in a psychiatric ward, where Elijah Price a.k.a. Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) engineers a public showdown between David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and The Beast (James McAvoy). The director puts in two plot revelations too many and too often stops to dissect the tropes of comic-book storytelling when he should be moving the plot along — it’s as if he wrote the script after a night of trawling Tvtropes.com. Still, his immense visual skills are everywhere in evidence, he stages the superhero fights as well as anyone, and he cleverly casts Sarah Paulson as a compassionate psychotherapist with a hidden agenda. Also with Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson, and Charlayne Woodard.

Green Book (PG-13) Peter Farrelly takes an inspiring real-life story and turns it into a white version of Driving Miss Daisy. I didn’t need that in my life. Viggo Mortensen plays an Italian-American nightclub bouncer who takes a job driving an African-American classical pianist (Mahershala Ali) on a concert tour of the Deep South in 1962. And they both learn something from each other. There are some honest observations about the differences between racial experiences, but these are drowned out amid the canned morality and simplistic contrasts between the characters. Mortensen manages some funny moments but his performance is like the rest of the movie, about as authentic as a supermarket jar of spaghetti sauce. Also with Linda Cardellini, Don Stark, Sebastian Maniscalco, Jenna Laurenzo, Dimiter Marinov, Mike Hatton, and Iqbal Theba.

If Beale Street Could Talk (R) More magnificent stuff from the director of Moonlight. In adapting James Baldwin’s novel to the screen, Barry Jenkins captures both the writer’s righteous anger and his rapturous poetry as he tells the story of a 19-year-old girl (KiKi Layne, a newcomer giving an impressive performance) who’s pregnant by her childhood sweetheart (Stephan James) and is trying to free him from prison after a cop with a grudge sends him there on a fabricated rape charge. Jenkins’ usual romanticism and lyricism are undimmed here, but he doesn’t flinch from the story’s harsher aspects, and the scenes with James in prison are cumulatively horrifying as they depict a gentle man being brutalized on the inside. The director draws great performances from his large supporting cast and receives gorgeous cinematography from James Laxton and a great score by Nicholas Britell. Finally, Baldwin has a filmmaker equal to the task of bringing his prose alive. Also with Regina King, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Brian Tyree Henry, Ed Skrein, Pedro Pascal, Finn Wittrock, and Diego Luna.

The Kid Who Would Be King (PG) The first movie about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that didn’t unintentionally remind me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Joe Cornish’s highly enjoyable kids’ adventure is set in the present day, when a bullied 12-year-old boy (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) finds Excalibur, pulls it out of the stone, and discovers his destiny to save Britain from being enslaved by an evil sorceress (Rebecca Ferguson). Surprisingly, this movie works in Brexit parallels and has Patrick Stewart (as a reincarnated Merlin) spend his screen time wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Cornish (who previously did Attack the Block) knows how to balance effects-heavy action sequences with character moments and some funny gags in this throwback to 1980s movies of its ilk. Also with Dean Chaumoo, Angus Imrie, Tom Taylor, Rhianna Dorris, and Denise Gough.

Mary Poppins Returns (PG) About as much fun as having someone throw glitter in your face and say, “Oooh, magical!” Emily Blunt stars in this sequel set 20-odd years after the events of the original Mary Poppins, as she comes to minister to a grown-up Jane and Michael (Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw) as they’re about to lose the house on 17 Cherry Tree Lane. Not a single moment in this loud, boisterous, overbearing musical feels like it’s spontaneous or unforced, and director Rob Marshall can’t seem to do anything without a giant swell from the orchestra. Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are below their best, and the script hews so closely to the first movie that you wonder why they bothered with a sequel. An excellent cast is drowned out by the production design of this white elephant. Also with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, and Dick Van Dyke.

Mary Queen of Scots (R) Otherwise known as the movie about British royalty that’s not as much fun as The Favourite, this historical epic stars Saoirse Ronan as the doomed 16th-century Scottish queen who’s outflanked by treacherous men in her court and forced into a war against England. The marketing campaign around the film is selling it as a showdown between Mary and Queen Elizabeth I of England (Margot Robbie), but the movie itself stacks the deck against petty, jealous, pockmarked Elizabeth from the start. Robbie does rise to the occasion in the climactic conversation between the queens, but it’s Ronan who walks off with this picture tucked under her arm, fleshing out an underwritten heroine with intelligence, hubris, and royal bearing. Also with Guy Pearce, Jack Lowden, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Adrian Lester, Gemma Chan, Joe Alwyn, Martin Compston, Ian Hart, and David Tennant.  

The Mule (R) People are talking this up as some sort of career resurgence for Clint Eastwood, but don’t believe the hype. The director stars in his own movie based on the true story of a 90-year-old man who went to work as a drug mule for the Sinaloa drug cartel, ferrying shipments of drugs across America and taking advantage of the fact that cops weren’t looking for an old white man. Eastwood does manage some nice self-critique by casting himself as that old dude in a world where Mexican drug lords and younger guys who are more technologically savvy have all the power, but he still gives us clunky staging and bad dialogue and the other faults that have plagued the worse movies he has made over the last decade. You’re better off seeing The Old Man & the Gun. Also with Bradley Cooper, Taissa Farmiga, Michael Peña, Alison Eastwood, Clifton Collins Jr., Andy Garcia, Laurence Fishburne, and Dianne Wiest. 

On the Basis of Sex (PG-13) Mimi Leder turns this biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg into a shallow exercise in rah-rah feminism. Felicity Jones stars as the Harvard Law graduate-turned-Rutgers professor who, in 1971, takes up a sex discrimination case on behalf of a man (Chris Mulkey) who suffers discrimination when he tries to become a caregiver for his mother. Director Mimi Leder and writer Daniel Stiepleman reduce her to a one-dimensional heroine whom we’re meant to cheer for against a bevy of ogre-like white guys, with the notable exception of Ruth’s husband (Armie Hammer). Not a shred of insight comes about the discrimination faced by women in the legal profession or male power. You’re better off watching the documentary RBG again. Also with Justin Theroux, Cailee Spaeny, Jack Reynor, Stephen Root, Kathy Bates, and Sam Waterston. 

Perfect Strangers (NR) The latest Spanish-language black comedy by Álex de la Iglesia is about a group of friends whose secrets spill out when they spend an evening reading each others’ incoming emails and text messages. Starring Belén Rueda, Eduard Fernández, Ernesto Alterio, Juana Acosta, Eduardo Noriega, Dafne Fernández and Pepón Nieto.

Qué León (NR) This Dominican comedy is about two young people (Ozuna and Clarissa Molina) with the same last name who fall in love despite coming from different backgrounds. Also with Raymond Pozo, Stephany Liriano, Christine Marzano, Celines Toribio, Miguel Céspedes, and Frank Perozo.

Ralph Breaks the Internet (PG) A veritable orgy of product placement, and also quite a lot of fun. This sequel to Wreck-It Ralph has our lovable video-game villain (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman) going into the internet to find a missing part for her game. The movie fires off some funny shots at the experience of being online, and it’s a better field for Easter egg hunting than Ready Player One. Still, two scenes demand to be seen: one in which Vanellope wanders into a dressing room with all 14 Disney princesses (voiced by the likes of Kristen Bell, Auli’i Cravalho, Mandy Moore, Idina Menzel, Irene Bedard, Kelly Macdonald, Ming-Na Wen, Paige O’Hara, and Jodi Benson), and another one in which she stars in her own musical number in a Grand Theft Auto-like video game that’s paradise for her. Additional voices by Jane Lynch, Jack McBrayer, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson, Alan Tudyk, Ed O’Neill, Alfred Molina, Ali Wong, Jason Mantzoukas, Tim Allen, Brad Garrett, Vin Diesel, Anthony Daniels, and June Squibb. 

Second Act (PG-13) No different from any other Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy in the last 15 years. She plays a big-box retail worker who is passed over for promotion for lack of a college degree but then snags a high-end marketing job when her computer-geek teenage godson (Dalton Harrod) invents an online history for her that includes a Harvard MBA and a Peace Corps stint. None of what happens is actively terrible, but it all proceeds without any meaningful deviations from the formula or insights into the modern workplace. Nothing that happens here is particularly funny, and even the big plot twist in the middle is a damp squib. It all just makes Lopez’ movie stardom look ever more passé. Also with Vanessa Hudgens, Leah Remini, Milo Ventimiglia, Freddie Stroma, Charlyne Yi, Dan Bucatinsky, Dave Foley, Larry Miller, and Treat Williams.

Serenity (R) Really odd. Steven Knight’s thriller starts out as a pulpy neo-noir thriller about a reclusive fisherman and traumatized Iraq veteran (Matthew McConaughey) whose ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) tracks him down and pays him to kill her abusive current husband (Jason Clarke). Then there’s a Shyamalan-meets-Inception plot revelation that comes about two-thirds of the way through, though I sniffed it out before that. On its own cracked terms, the movie succeeds at what it sets out to do. The question, though, is what Knight (who also did Locke) was hoping to accomplish by doing it. A massive tuna named Justice become a major character in this drama. Also with Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Charlotte Butler, Rafael Sayegh, and Diane Lane.

Simmba (NR) This Indian crime thriller scores some comic points off the country’s corruption in telling the story of a swaggering cop (Ranveer Singh) who goes into policing expressly so he can shake down all the bad guys and make money. Singh is good at playing a bully who covers his aggressiveness by clowning — he walks into a crime lord’s house unannounced with flowers and gifts for the children, then puts his arms around the guy’s killers and tells them he’s going to be their new brother — and responds to people calling out his venality with a catchphrase repeated in English and Hindi: “Tell me something I don’t know.” (He has several other catchphrases in the bag, too.) The movie loses its edge when the cop goes straight and fights the bad guys. Also with Ajay Devgn, Sara Ali Khan, Abdul Quadir Amin, Sonu Sood, and Amrit Pal Singh. 

Stan & Ollie (PG) There are no better actors around to play Laurel and Hardy than John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan. Too bad the movie they’re in is such a marshmallow. The film takes in the legendary comedy duo as their storied career is winding down with bookings of second-rate venues on a 1953 tour of the U.K. and Ireland. The two stars (with Reilly under mounds of prosthetics to make him look fatter) do expert re-creations of classic Laurel and Hardy comedy routines, but the story of the friendship between these longtime comedy partners is filled with canned conflict and low-stakes decisions. The movie does have a touching portrait of Hardy insisting on performing even while his health gives way, but it could have been so much more powerful. Also with Nina Arianda, Shirley Henderson, Rufus Jones, Stephanie Hyam, and Danny Huston. 

A Star Is Born (R) There’s stuff in this remake that the previous versions of this story don’t have. Bradley Cooper stars in this show-business tragedy as a country-rock star on his way down who falls in love with and marries a pop star (Lady Gaga) on her way up. Making his filmmaking debut, Cooper directs this with more competence than flair, but he’s quite good with atmosphere (whether he’s in a cramped drag bar or on a dusty ranch in Arizona) and he sings well enough to be credible as a music star who fills up arenas. The movie misses a chance to comment on how stardom is different now than in previous years, but Lady Gaga turns out to be a trump card. Casting a first-time movie actor as a character much like herself is no guarantee of a good performance, but she delivers both on the humor and the tragedy of the role here, as well as the character’s musical chops. Also with Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Rafi Gavron, Anthony Ramos, Ron Rifkin, Eddie Griffin, and Dave Chappelle.

The Upside (PG-13) A movie made for backhanded compliments: This dramedy isn’t that bad. It’s not as pandering as Intouchables, the French comedy that it’s a remake of. It’s better than Green Book. Kevin Hart plays an unqualified ex-convict who’s hired to be a full-time caregiver to a wealthy quadriplegic (Bryan Cranston). Hart is deferential — probably too much so — to the high-powered cast around him, including Nicole Kidman as the boss’ Harvard-educated business manager. The film occasionally flirts with commenting meaningfully on the class and race differences in play, but too often it’s content to coast on its charm and likability. Also with Golshifteh Farahani, Tate Donovan, Aja Naomi King, and Julianna Margulies. 

Vice (R) I like Adam McKay better when he’s making comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers. Not that this scabrous biography of Dick Cheney doesn’t have some laugh-out-loud funny moments, but McKay too often tips over into angry polemic and chastising his audience for watching reality TV while the world burns. Christian Bale gives a fairly miraculous performance as Cheney, disappearing underneath a ton of extra weight (both gained and prosthetic) and capturing both the man’s droning speaking voice and his insatiable lust for power, but it’s too bad that the movie gives us scene after scene of this heartless bastard shanking people around him, including members of his own family. The casting is remarkable; Steve Carell is so well-cast as Donald Rumsfeld that you just want to cry. Also with Amy Adams, Sam Rockwell, Jesse Plemons, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, Alison Pill, Bill Camp, LisaGay Hamilton, Don McManus, Lily Rabe, Shea Whigham, Stephen Adly Guirgis, and Tyler Perry.

The Wife (R) Glenn Close’s performance redeems this otherwise bland adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s novel about a woman who travels with her husband (Jonathan Pryce) to Sweden so he can receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her marriage and the proceedings are upended when an unauthorized biographer (Christian Slater) confronts her with his theory that she actually wrote all the novels that her husband is famous for. Swedish director Björn Runge has a feel for his homeland and the pomp and ceremony accompanying the Nobel Prizes, but he can’t inject much energy into the proceedings, and the flashbacks to the 1960s are dead weight. The sole glint of humanity comes from Close as she conveys a lifetime of frustrations and compromises boiling over. Also with Max Irons, Harry Lloyd, Annie Starke, and Elizabeth McGovern. 

DALLAS EXCLUSIVES 

Canal Street (PG-13) This legal drama stars Mykelti Williamson as a lawyer forced to defend his son (Bryshere Y. Gray) when he’s suspected of murder. Also with Michael Beach, Lance Reddick, Jon Seda, Will Yun Lee, Juani Feliz, Jamie Hector, Nora Dunn, William R. Moses, Harry Lennix, and Mekhi Phifer. 

Cold War (R) Nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, this black-and-white Polish drama by Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida) is about a composer and a singer (Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig) who live on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Also with Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Adam Woronowicz, and Jeanne Balibar. 

King of Thieves (R) James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) directs this crime thriller about a group of real-life English seniors who pulled off a jewelry heist, only to have it go horribly wrong. Starring Michael Caine, Michael Gambon, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, Francesca Annis, Tom Courtenay, and Charlie Cox.

Roma (R) The latest film by Alfonso Cuarón chronicles one year in the life of a middle-class Mexican family in the 1970s. Starring Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, and Nancy García García.

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