OPENING
Bonjour Tristesse (R) Based on Françoise Sagan’s novel, this movie is about a teenager (Lily McInerny) whose parents’ old friend (Chloë Sevigny) suddenly interrupts her vacation in the south of France. Also with Claes Bang, Naïlia Harzoune, Aliocha Schneider, and Nathalie Richard. (Opens Friday)
The Dumpling Queen (NR) Li Ma stars in this historical drama as Zang Jianhe, the single mother who started one of Hong Kong’s biggest food companies. Also with Kara Ying Hung Wai, Zhu Yawen, Tai-Bo, Tat-Ming Cheung, Michael Tse, Fiona Sit, and AJ Donnelly. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Guru Nanak Jahaz (NR) This Indian historical drama is about the Komagata Maru incident, when a Japanese boat filled with Indian immigrants was refused entry into Canada. Starring Tarsem Jassar, Balwinder Bullet, Gurpreet Ghuggi, and Mark Bennington. (Opens Friday at Cinemark North East Mall)
HIT: The Third Case (NR) The third film in the series stars Nani as an Indian homicide detective trying to stop a group of serial killers working together. Also with Srinidhi Shetty, Surya Srinivas, Adil Pala, Rao Ramesh, and Brahmaji. (Opens Friday)
Holy Night: Demon Hunters (NR) Don Lee a.k.a. Ma Dong-seok stars in this Korean horror film as the leader of a team of superheroes against a cult of Satan-worshipping gangsters. Also with Seohyun, Lee David, Kyung Soo-jin, and Jung Ji-so. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
A Normal Family (NR) The fourth film version of Herman Koch’s novel The Dinner, this Korean drama takes place at a dinner party attended by two wealthy families whose teenage children are accused of collaborating on a serious crime. Starring Sul Kyung-gu, Jang Dong-gun, Kim Hee-ae, Claudia Kim, Hong Ye-ji, and Kim Jung-chul. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Raid 2 (NR) Not a remake of the Indonesian martial-arts film, this Indian crime thriller stars Ajay Devgn as a revenue officer tracking white-collar crime. Also with Riteish Deshmukh, Vaani Kapoor, Rajat Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Supriya Pathak, Tamannaah Bhatia, Jacqueline Fernandez, and Yo Yo Honey Singh. (Opens Friday)
Retro (NR) This Tamil-language action-comedy stars Suriya as a gangster who promises his wife (Pooja Hegde) that he’ll go straight. Also with Jayaram, Joju George, Karunakaran, Prakash Raj, Singampuli, Nassar, Shriya Saran, and Santhosh Narayanan. (Opens Friday)
Rosario (R) This horror film stars Emeraude Toubia as a Colombian woman who’s attacked by supernatural spirits after her grandmother passes away during a snowstorm. Also with David Dastmalchian, Paul Ben-Victor, Diana Lein, Nick Ballard, and José Zúñiga. (Opens Friday)
The Surfer (R) Interesting, but muddled. Nicolas Cage stars in this thriller as an American businessman who wants to buy up the Australian beachside house where he grew up so he can take his teenage son (Finn LIttle) surfing. However, he encounters violence from the locals, who are led by a CEO (Julian McMahon) who’s all into men’s rights. Director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Thomas Martin start making you wonder whether the protagonist is actually a homeless man or whether the surfers are engaging in a massive act of gaslighting. It’s a promising idea, but it doesn’t lead anywhere interesting, and making the main character into some suffering Job soon becomes the point of the film rather than saying something new about toxic masculinity. Also with Rahel Romahn, Alexander Bertrand, Michael Abercromby, Rory O’Keeffe, Nic Cassim, and Justin Rosniak. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
The Accountant 2 (R) Ben Affleck reprises his role as an autistic accountant who launders money for dictators and terrorists. In this sequel, he has to team up with his estranged brother (Jon Bernthal) and a Treasury Department official (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to solve the murder of his former boss (J.K. Simmons). It’s not that the action sequences are dull, it’s that the character bits in between are also dull. The comedy doesn’t work, the main character can’t evolve, and the plot about human trafficking has been done to death. Most of the story takes place in Los Angeles, but the bad guys do travel to Fort Worth to kill a witness. Also with Daniella Pineda, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Alberto Manquero, Michael Tourek, and Yael Ocasio.
The Amateur (PG-13) Rami Malek is miscast in this action-thriller, and that’s sort of the point. He stars as a CIA intelligence analyst who seeks revenge after his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered in a terrorist attack. Based on Robert Littell’s novel (which got made into a Hollywood spy thriller back in 1981), the story specifically takes as its protagonist a man who can’t look a bad guy in the eye and then pull the trigger on him. Even though the action hero is highly intelligent and highly motivated, the movie knows that it takes more than that to make a viable operative. Unfortunately, the movie around our unconventional hero is too conventional, and his eluding of his own agents in European backwaters isn’t handled creatively enough. Also with Laurence Fishburne, Julianne Nicholson, Holt McCallany, Danny Sapani, Adrian Martinez, Evan Milton, Barbara Probst, Marc Rissmann, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie (R) Even if you’re not smoking weed, this documentary is engrossing and enjoyable. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong reunite for a road trip where they discuss their career as a comedy team, their childhoods growing up in South Central Los Angeles and Vancouver respectively, and how they first met doing improv on the West Coast. The history is intercut with some new comedy bits, as Cheech and Chong find themselves in the middle of the desert with no marijuana and cameo appearances by their ex-wives and their record producer Lou Adler, who directed them on Up in Smoke. The old stoners are cool company as they describe making their way to the top of the entertainment industry as a nonwhite team in the 1970s.
Drop (PG-13) There are several plot contrivances too many in this thriller. Meghann Fahy stars as a psychotherapist and widowed mother who goes on a blind date at a fancy Chicago restaurant, only for a mysterious caller to keep sending digital drops to her phone threatening the lives of her family if she doesn’t kill the man she’s dating (Brandon Sklenar). The movie has some intrigue in narrowing down the perpetrator to somebody in the restaurant, and Broadway star Fahy does some good work as someone who’s haunted by a previous abusive relationship. However, the puppetmaster who’s trying to manipulate her remotely is too absurd to be credible. Christopher Landon previously directed Happy Death Day and Freaky, and he did wittier work in those than he does here. Also with Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Reed Diamond, Gabrielle Ryan, Jeffery Self, Sarah McCormack, Ed Weeks, Travis Nelson, and Ben Pelletier.
The King of Kings (PG) Leaden in both visual and narrative terms, this animated Christian film has the story of Jesus Christ (voiced by Oscar Isaac) being narrated by Charles Dickens (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) for some reason. Neither the telling of the Passion story nor the framing story in Victorian England are interesting in itself, and the intersections of the two don’t work. The opportunities for great visuals from the animation are there, but the filmmakers don’t take any of them. It’s hard to tell what the purpose of all this is. Painters and other visual artists have done much better at making Christian art. Additional voices by Uma Thurman, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Jim Cummings, Fred Tatasciore, Roman Griffin Davis, and Forest Whitaker.
The Legend of Ochi (PG) This kids’ movie looks and sounds just as weird as you’d expect from an A24 film. It’s a shame about the rest. Helena Zengel stars as a young girl whose people near the Black Sea hunt a race of orange-furred primates with fangs. When she finds a wounded baby primate, she vows to take it back to its community. The plot is basically How to Train Your Dragon without much connective tissue. First-time director Isaiah Saxon convinces us of his fantasy world around the edges, with the wilderness being filmed in unreal orange and green tones and David Longstreth’s score featuring ocarinas and panpipes. Yet the girl seems to change little because of the story, and even her reunion with her long-lost mother (Emily Watson) comes out flat. The creature effects and soundtrack overwhelm the story. Also with Willem Dafoe and Finn Wolfhard.
A Minecraft Movie (PG) The charm that has won the video game millions of followers around the world is little in evidence in this film version. Jack Black stars as the ruler of the Overworld, who has to prevent the queen of the Nether (voiced by Rachel House) from taking over, with the help of a group of visitors from Idaho (Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, and Sebastian Hansen) who have accidentally been pulled into the Minecraft world. Director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) finds a nice comic groove in Idaho, but once everybody goes into the game, his sense of pacing and timing deserts him. The writers frantically move these characters back and forth to make up for the fact that the game famously has no story, and the actors scream their lines. Making an intellectual property into a good movie requires a filmmaker with peculiar talents, and this movie doesn’t find one. Also with Jennifer Coolidge, Bret McKenzie, Matt Berry, Jemaine Clement, and an uncredited Kate McKinnon.
On Swift Horses (R) On the scale of gay Westerns, this ranks above National Anthem but below The Power of the Dog. Based on Shannon Pufahl’s novel, this movie takes place in the 1950s with a Korean War veteran (Jacob Elordi) falling for a co-worker (Diego Calva) in Las Vegas while his married sister-in-law (Daisy Edgar-Jones) has her own gay awakening via an affair with a neighbor (Sasha Calle) in San Diego. The movie loses the book’s neat structure of alternating chapters between the two protagonists, although it thankfully soft-pedals the theme of love = gambling, as the housewife starts betting on horse-racing and gets good at it. Neither romantic plotline works well enough to carry the film, and director Daniel Minahan has trouble coming up with any memorable visuals, unless you count the faces of the British lead actors, which you could stare at for days. Also with Will Poulter, Don Swayze, and Kat Cunning.
Pride & Prejudice (PG) The grit and sweat in this 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel was what made it feel different from the Austen adaptations that came before it. Joe Wright gets the atmosphere right, but he can’t keep the comic energy up all the way through, and Keira Knightley isn’t funny enough as the heroine of the piece. The script by Deborah Moggach is intelligent, literate, and occasionally too wordy, but Matthew Macfadyen manages to make Darcy starchy and brusque without seeming constipated, and Judi Dench makes a formidable Lady Catherine. It’s not a world-beater, but it is worth a look. Also with Rosamund Pike, Brenda Blethyn, Jena Malone, Tom Hollander, Carey Mulligan, Simon Woods, Penelope Wilton, Peter Wight, Pip Torrens, Rupert Friend, Kelly Reilly, and the late Donald Sutherland.
The Shrouds (R) David Cronenberg’s latest film stars Vincent Cassel as a recently widowed inventor who creates a device that allows people to talk to the dead. Also with Diane Kruger, Sandrine Holt, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Jennifer Dale, Erin Weinthal, Jeff Yung, and Guy Pearce.
Sinners (R) Ryan Coogler’s foray into Jordan Peele territory is wild and wildly original, even when it doesn’t make sense. Michael B. Jordan plays identical twins who return from Chicago to their Mississippi hometown in the 1930s to open a blues joint with their cousin (Miles Caton) who happens to be an otherworldly musician. Jordan gives two bracing performances as brothers with different jobs and temperaments, the Mississippi town is more layered than we usually see in Hollywood movies, and there’s a great sequence with the blues musician delivering a song so powerful that it opens a rift in time and space as well as attracting vampires. Coogler winds up with a few too many ideas in his intellectual stew, but it frames Delta blues in a wholly unexpected way and emerges as a worthy vampire movie. What other movie can say that? Also with Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li, Jack O’Connell, Lola Kirke, Jayme Lawson, Saul Williams, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Peter Dreimanis, Omar Miller, Yao, Delroy Lindo, and Buddy Guy.
Snow White (PG) If this Disney live-action remake is too flawed to drown out the noise around it, it’s good enough to obscure that noise for a long stretch. Rachel Zegler plays the orphaned princess whose wicked stepmother (Gal Gadot) orders her killed for the crime of being more beautiful. Despite a darker color palette that distinguishes this from other Disney remakes, this film’s initial dramatic setup is flat, and the CGI dwarves are a huge distraction. Even so, the movie kicks into life with the villain’s aria “All Is Fair” and the romantic interest (Andrew Burnap) busting Snow White on her royal privilege in “Princess Problems,” and Zegler herself brings the appropriate energy in an expanded version of “Whistle While You Work.” If only the story of Snow White taking her kingdom back worked on any level, we could call this a success. Also with Hadley Fraser, Lorena Andrea, Emilia Faucher, Ansu Kabia, George Appleby, and Samuel Baxter. Voices by Patrick Page, Jeremy Swift, George Salazar, Andrew Barth Feldman, Martin Klebba, Jason Kravits, Andy Grotelueschen, and Titus Burgess.
Until Dawn (R) Pretty much everything goes wrong in this horror movie adapted from the video game of the same name. Ella Rubin stars as a young woman tracking the disappearance of her sister (Maia Mitchell) when she and her friends become stuck in a time loop where they relive the same night over and over in a ghost town, being killed off by different monsters each night. The setting of a town that’s inside a crater because of a coal mine cave-in is a golden opportunity for some great production design, but this cheap-ass film can’t pull it off. The video game’s undercurrent of guilt gets lost, as does its use of Native American wendigos, and the acting by much of the cast is just bad. Happy Death Day treated this concept with a lot more inventiveness and humor. Also with Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Yoo Ji-young, Belmont Cameli, and Peter Stormare.
Warfare (R) Too focused for its own good, this war film sets out to change the way war is depicted in a movie, and fails. Set in 2006, the film is about a platoon of Navy SEALs in Iraq who become trapped in a house after the locals figure out where they are. This is based on a real-life incident lived through by Ray Mendoza, who co-directs the movie with Alex Garland (Civil War). The movie does some good work building anticipation as the Navy SEALs await the attack, but it’s so hellbent on removing anything extraneous to the action that it falls flat utterly as a piece of storytelling. The characters are interchangeable and the action itself doesn’t do anything that other war movies haven’t already accomplished. Starring Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Joseph Quinn, Alex Brockdorff, Aaron Mackenzie, Finn Bennett, Michael Gandolfini, and Charles Melton.
Yadang: The Snitch (NR) This smash-hit crime thriller from South Korea has plot twists galore. Kang Ha-neul stars as an ex-convict who has become a professional police informant, brokering drug deals and leading both buyers and sellers into stings set up by a prosecutor (Yoo Hae-jin). However, when his boss betrays him, he teams up with other people whom the prosecutor has screwed over to take him down and the presidential candidate who’s backing him. There are so many double- and triple-crosses here that you can’t tell which betrayals are real and which are just for show, but the raffishly handsome Kang (who’s currently on Squid Game) anchors the proceedings and director Hwang Byeong-guk renders all the action clearly despite its breakneck pace. Also with Park Hae-joon, Ryu Kyung-soo, Chae Won-bin, Yoo Seung-joo, Kim Geum-soon, Lim Sung-kyun, and Oh Wan-ki.
Dallas Exclusives
It Feeds (NR) This horror film stars Ashley Greene as a psychiatrist who must protect her daughter (Ellie O’Brien) after a demonic entity breaks into her home office. Also with Shawn Ashmore, Juno Rinaldi, Mark Taylor, Scott Baker, and Dave Dewar.
