OPENING
Bhairavam (NR) This Telugu-language action-thriller stars Sai Srinivas Bellamkonda, Nara Rohith, Aditi Shankar, Divya Pillal, Anandhi, and Vennela Kishore. (Opens Friday)
Bring Her Back (R) The latest horror film by Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me) stars Billy Barratt and Sora Wong as orphaned stepsiblings who may be separated by Australia’s foster care system. Also with Sally Hawkins, Mischa Heywood, Jonah Wren Phillips, Stephen Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, and Kathryn Adams. (Opens Friday)
Detective Kien: The Headless Horror (NR) This Vietnamese horror film stars Quoc Huy as a 19th-century investigator looking into the discovery of a decapitated body. Also with Dinh Ngoc Diep, Doan Minh Anh, Tran Quoc Anh, and My Uyen. (Opens Friday at AMC Parks at Arlington)
Fluxx (NR) This surreal thriller stars Shelley Hennig as a Hollywood actress who becomes obsessed with rescuing her missing husband (Shiloh Fernandez) despite being unable to leave her mansion. Also with Tyrese Gibson, Henry Ian Cusick, Brittney Rae, and Charlotte McKinney. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (R) Camille Rutherford stars in this comedy as a frustrated French writer who wins a writing fellowship in England. Also with Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbairn, and Frederick Wiseman. (Opens Friday)
Saunkan Saunkanay 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2022 romantic comedy stars Sargun Mehta, Ammy Virk, and Nimrat Khaira. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Sister Midnight (NR) This British horror-comedy stars Radhika Apte as a newlywed who keeps blacking out and taking actions while she’s missing time. Also with Ashok Pathak, Chhaya Kadam, Smita Tambe, Subhash Chandra, and Navya Sawant. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
To Live and Die and Live (NR) Amin Joseph stars in this drama as a Muslim American who struggles with his personal issues while settling his late father’s estate. Also with Skye P. Marshall, Omari Hardwick, Cory Hardrict, Dana Gourrier, Maryam Basir, and Samantha Tanner. (Opens Friday at AMC Parks at Arlington)
Tornado (R) The latest film by John Maclean (Slow West) stars Kôki as a Japanese swordfighter seeking revenge on a gang of criminals in 18th-century Britain. Also with Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Rory McCann, Joanne Whalley, Jack Morris, Alex Macqueen, Douglas Russell, and Takehiro Hira. (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.
Clown in a Cornfield (R) Katie Douglas from Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia makes a lively slasher-flick final girl in this horror movie based on Adam Cesare’s novel. She portrays a Philadelphia native who moves to a Missouri small town after a family tragedy, only to find multiple serial killers dressed as the same clown butchering all her new teenage friends. Director Eli Craig (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) could have done better with the look of the film and with the murders, but the identity of the killers is a pretty funny joke, and there’s a gay subplot in here that you wouldn’t ordinarily find in a slasher flick. Douglas holds the thing together as someone who’s hurt and sarcastic and trying to adapt to her new surroundings. Also with Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Vincent Muller, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Alexandre Martin Deakin, Bradley Sawatzky, Catherine Wreford, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso.
Final Destination: Bloodlines (R) I forgot how stupid these movies were. Kaitlyn Santa Juana stars as the granddaughter of a woman (played in flashbacks by Brec Bassinger) who saved hundreds of people’s lives in the 1960s, so the death curse takes all those decades to catch up with her progeny. The film is on a much larger scale than the previous films, especially depicting the disaster averted in the past. However, the Rube Goldberg contrived contraptions that kill the people are just as dumb as ever. The late Tony Todd gives one of his final performances as an old man who’s in line for the death curse, and his speech about the importance of enjoying life is the only thing here with any weight. Also with Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Alex Zahara, April Telek, Tinpo Lee, Max Lloyd-Jones, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, and Gabrielle Rose.
Friendship (R) Feels like Tim Robinson unfiltered, for better or worse. He stars in this comedy as a suburban dad whose life starts to fall apart when he befriends his new neighbor down the street (Paul Rudd), only for the neighbor to unfriend him because he’s a creepy weirdo. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung mostly goes for cringe rather than belly laughs, so your enjoyment of this will depend on your particular taste. Robinson is fantastic as a poorly socialized corporate consultant whose attempts to infiltrate the neighbor’s circle of male friends only succeeds in making them uncomfortable, and Rudd complements him as a guy who’s also a loser but is better at hiding it. These characters probably deserved a movie that had a few more ideas about them. Also with Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer, Whitmer Thomas, Daniel London, Jacob Ming-Trent, Josh Segarra, Meredith Garretson, Omar Torres, and Billy Bryk.
Hurry Up Tomorrow (R) Exhibit A in the case of why pop music stars shouldn’t write and star in their own movies. Under his given name of Abel Tesfaye, The Weeknd stars as an insomnia-afflicted pop star who’s in a downward spiral. Nothing much happens. As himself, The Weeknd throws tantrums and cries a lot. As his ex-girlfriend, Jenna Ortega drives across the country and cries a lot. As The Weeknd’s chief enabler and leech, Barry Keoghan at least gets something to play, although his character doesn’t do much, either. Trey Edward Shults is a terrific director (Waves, It Comes at Night), but he can’t make sense out of any of this. Even The Weeknd’s songs do little to liven up the proceedings. This is enough to give a bad name to celebrity vanity projects.
The Last Rodeo (PG) Neal McDonough stars in this Christian drama as a cowboy who comes out of retirement because of his family’s financial need. Also with Mykelti Williamson, Sarah Jones, Graham Harvey, Irene Bedard, and Christopher McDonald.
Lilo & Stitch (PG) Beyond the technical skill of integrating a CGI-generated Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders) with live actors and scenery, this remake follows the animated original so closely that you wonder what the point is. Maia Kealoha portrays the little Hawaiian girl being raised by her older sister (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) when the chaotically destructive space alien crash lands near her and she adopts the alien from the local animal rescue. Director Dean Fleischer Camp (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On) makes it all seamless, but the familiar story beats aren’t any more moving now than they were in the 2002 original. The additions of Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen as the aliens trying to capture Stitch bring surprisingly little. Also with Tia Carrere, Courtney B. Vance, Amy Hill, Kaipo Dudoit, Jason Scott Lee, and Hannah Waddingham.
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.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (PG-13) This may not be Tom Cruise’s last outing as Ethan Hunt, but it does feel like a farewell to a franchise’s defining star. He has to reunite with his team members to capture the AI that is currently destroying the world. The result is unfortunately quite a disjointed movie in which Ethan appears to traverse the globe at the speed of light while awkward montages take in all the stars who have graced this series through the decades. The movie’s nostalgia kick does bring back Rolf Saxon as the CIA tech guy whom we haven’t seen since Ethan robbed his office in the original movie, and the stunts feature Cruise hanging off the wing of a biplane as well as a sequence in a sunken submarine that’s excellent suspense. It’s a better goodbye than Jason Bourne got. Also with Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Tramell Tillman, Mark Gatiss, Greg Tarzan Davis, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Katy O’Brian, Cary Elwes, and Angela Bassett.
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.
Thunderbolts* (PG-13) Several shades darker than your typical Marvel superhero movie, which is part of what distinguishes it from the pack. When the CIA director (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries to take complete control of the U.S. government, a group of mercenaries in her employ (Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan) band together to stop her. The villain’s secret weapon is a mentally ill drug addict (Lewis Pullman) who can trap people in their worst nightmares. The film is wobbly on the subject of toxic masculinity and occasionally plays like a derivative of Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it sometimes achieves a power of its own. Pugh delivers a precisely pitched performance in the lead, and Louis-Dreyfus makes a terrific foil to her as someone who hides her lust for power behind her precious wisecracks. The Marvel series is morphing into something new, which is better than repeating itself. Also with Geraldine Viswanathan, Olga Kurylenko, Chris Bauer, Violet McGraw, and Wendell Pierce.
Unko Sweater (NR) This Nepalese comedy stars Maotse Gurung, Bipin Karki, Miruna Magar, Sunil Pokharel, and Wilson Bikram Rai.
Dallas Exclusives
The New Boy (NR) Cate Blanchett stars in this Australian film as a 1940s nun who takes in a runaway Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid). Also with Deborah Mailman, Shane McKenzie-Brady, Tyrique Brady, Tyler Spencer, Kyle Miller, and Wayne Blair.
Trail of Vengeance (NR) This Western stars Rumer Willis as a 19th-century widow seeking revenge for her husband’s murder. Also with Jeff Fahey, Graham Greene, Eric Nelsen, and Gbenga Akinnagbe.
