OPENING
Andaaz 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2003 Indian romantic film stars Aayush Kumar, Aakaisha, Natasha Fernandez, Parmarth Singh, and Javed Akhtar. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Athadu (NR) Theatrical re-release of the 2005 Indian action-thriller about a hit man (Mahesh Babu) who is framed for a murder. Also with Trisha Krishnan, Sonu Sood, Prakash Raj, Rahul Dev, Sayaji Shinde, Kota Srinivasa Rao, and Rajeev Kanakala. (Opens Friday at Cinemark Tinseltown Grapevine)
Ebony and Ivory (NR) Jim Hosking’s drama depicts a meeting between Paul McCartney (Sky Elobar) and Stevie Wonder (Gil Gex) that results in their musical collaboration. Also with Carl Solomon. (Opens Friday at Alamo Drafthouse Denton)
Freakier Friday (PG) At least this time it isn’t some stereotypical Asian lady making the body switch happen. The sequel to the 2003 Disney comedy has Anna (Lindsay Lohan) falling in love with a British chef (Manny Jacinto), but when their respective teenage daughters (Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons) detest each other, it’s once again time for body switching. This time there’s two switches, once again involving Anna’s mom (Jamie Lee Curtis), which makes it harder to keep track of who’s in whose body, but that would matter less if the scenes were funnier or if the plot points didn’t come so haphazardly and without logic. Lohan can still bring it and Butters displays some good comic timing, but after 22 years, you’d think the sequel would have better ideas. The only time the nostalgia pays off is at the end, when Anna reunites with her ex-bandmates (Christina Vidal Mitchell and Haley Hudson) and they perform songs from the first movie. Also with Chad Michael Murray, Vanessa Bayer, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Rosalind Chao, X Mayo, Lucille Soong, June DIane Raphael, Stephen Tobolowsky, Sherry Cola, George Wallace, Chloe Fineman, Elaine Hendrix, and Mark Harmon. (Opens Friday)
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (NR) The latest documentary from Amy Berg (West of Memphis) profiles the short-lived musician. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
My Daughter Is a Zombie (NR) The latest South Korean box-office smash is this horror-comedy about an animal trainer (Jo Jung-suk) whose teenage daughter (Choi Yoo-ri) is infected during a zombie pandemic. Also with Lee Jeong-eun, Yoon Kyung-ho, and Cho Yeo-jeong. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
My Mother’s Wedding (R) Kristin Scott Thomas stars in her own directing debut as a woman whose three adult daughters (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham) reunite for her wedding. Also with Freida Pinto, James Fleet, Joshua McGuire, Mark Stanley, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths. (Opens Friday)
Sketch (PG) This fantasy film is about a little girl’s sketches which come to life after her sketchbook falls into a magic pond. Starring Tony Hale, D’Arcy Carden, Bianca Belle, Kue Lawrence, Kalon Cox, Jaxon Kenner, and Genesis Rose Brown. (Opens Wednesday)
Strange Harvest (R) Stuart Ortiz’ slasher film is about a serial killer terrorizing San Bernardino. Starring Peter Zizzo, Terri Apple, Andy Lauer, Allen Marsh, Matthew Peschio, Roy Abrahmsohn, and Brandon Christensen. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
The Bad Guys 2 (PG) Better than the first movie, actually. The gang (voiced by Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Marc Maron, and Craig Robinson) has trouble landing jobs after getting out of prison, so a rival gang frames them for their own crimes and forces them to commit additional crimes to clear their names. The climactic sequence is a bit drawn out, but until then the movie has a nice time mocking tech billionaires who want to go into space and the tropes of heist movies, as well as a nice interlude at a lucha libre wrestling event. Mark this down as an above-average animated kids’ film. Additional voices by Danielle Brooks, Maria Bakalova, Zazie Beetz, Jaime Camil, Richard Ayoade, Lilly Singh, Alex Borstein, Omid Djalili, and Natasha Lyonne.
Elio (PG) Deserves to be mentioned alongside Pixar’s other Latin-themed films Coco and Encanto, even if it’s the least of those. The Elio of the title is an orphaned 11-year-old boy (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) who’s obsessed with space aliens and spends hours drawing large signs that beg the little green men to come and get him. The movie’s good with the sort of alienation that drives people to give up on Earth and pin their hopes on more evolved alien beings, and Pixar’s trademark visual splendor is in full evidence when Elio is actually abducted by aliens who mistake him for Earth’s leader. It’s all cut with Pixar’s trademark sense of humor, too, but the film starts to lose its shape in its final third when Elio has to travel between Earth and space to avert an intergalactic war. The movie comes frustratingly close to greatness, but it’s better than the live-action remakes that Hollywood has in theaters now. Additional voices by Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Remy Edgerly, Jameela Jamil, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ana de la Reguera, Atsuko Okatsuka, Shirley Henderson, Brandon Moon, and Kate Mulgrew.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (PG-13) Finally they made a pleasing movie about this group. The film plunks us down in the middle of the saga in the early 1960s, when Reed Richards and Sue Storm (Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby) discover that they’re pregnant and, not coincidentally, Galactus (Ralph Ineson) announces his intention to devour the Earth. Director Matt Shakman’s retro-futurist aesthetic distinguishes this from other Marvel superhero movies, and the same goes for the well-oiled banter among the Four (Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach fill out the team). To a surprising extent, this feels like a 1960s movie, albeit one with contemporary special effects. Even the cute robot sidekick (Matthew Wood) isn’t too objectionable, and the movie is unencumbered by story ties to the rest of the Marvel universe. Also with Julia Garner, Paul Walter Hauser, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss, and Natasha Lyonne.
F1: The Movie (PG-13) The best auto-racing film ever made, especially if you see it in a theater with good speakers. Director Joseph Kosinski made you feel the speed and torque of the fighter planes in Top Gun: Maverick, and he uses those same skills to tell the story of a washed-up Formula One racer (Brad Pitt) who’s given one last shot to compete at that level by a desperate former racing teammate (Javier Bardem). The roar of the race cars is so intense that you may walk out exhausted from all the sound energy hitting your body. The subplots about our grizzled veteran mentoring a cocky young teammate (Damson Idris) and romancing his team’s technical director (Kerry Condon) don’t pull their weight, but the script delves deep into racing strategy, and the sound engineering and the cameras mounted on vehicles will make you feel like you’re there on race day. Also with Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Luciano Bacheta, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick, Callie Cooke, Samson Kayo, and Shea Whigham.
How to Train Your Dragon (PG) Chalk up another live-action remake of an animated kids’ movie that I can’t see the point of. Mason Thames (The Black Phone) stars in this remake of the 2010 animated film as the Viking who discovers that his tribe have been slaughtering dragons for no good reason. Toothless the Dragon is now generated by CGI and never once convinces us that he’s a real animal, and none of the human actors (not even Gerard Butler, reprising his voice role from the original as the Viking chief) put forward a case that this needed to be fleshed out with human actors. The only good addition here is the joke about the origin of Hiccup’s Viking helmet. Also with Nico Parker, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Murray McArthur, Peter Serafinowicz, Ruth Codd, Naomi Wirthner, and Nick Frost. (Opens Friday)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (R) You can’t make me scared of a killer who dresses like the Gorton’s fisherman. I just can’t do it. For this sequel to the 1990s horror franchise, a new group of young people (Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, and Tyriq Withers) inadvertently causes a fatal car accident outside the North Carolina port town. When they fail to own up to it, the slasher in the slicker starts picking them off one by one, and they have to consult the survivors of the previous attacks (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.) for advice. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) takes over this series, but nothing works, not the murder scenes, not the attempts to incorporate comedy into the film, not the final solution, not the callbacks to the previous movies, and not even the final girl’s bisexuality. The failure here is total. Also with Billy Campbell, Austin Nichols, Gabbriette Bechtel, Joshua Orpin, Brandy Norwood, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (PG-13) More like stillbirth, actually. The series has a new director and a bunch of new stars, and yet it’s still tedious enough to make the last three movies seem like roller-coaster rides by comparison. Scarlett Johansson plays a private contractor who helps get a team of scientists into a dinosaur-populated island for biological samples that could be turned into life-saving medications, only to run into a family stranded there after their boat is sunk by other dinosaurs. Director Gareth Edwards (The Creator) makes the dinosaurs look real enough, but neither the characters nor the action set pieces are memorable in any way. Also with Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Manuel García-Rulfo, David Iacono, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda, Bechir Sylvain, Niamh Finlay, Ed Skrein, and Rupert Friend.
Mahavatar Narasimha (NR) This Indian animated film is about a demon who seeks revenge on the god Vishnu.
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.
The Naked Gun (R) A reminder of why this comedy subgenre died in the first place. Liam Neeson portrays Frank Drebin Jr., investigating a murder linked to a tech billionaire (Danny Huston). There are a few scenes that hit, like the one when an infrared camera makes it appear that Frank is into all kinds of weird sex, but the gags that misfire far outnumber the ones that work, and neither Neeson nor Pamela Anderson as Frank’s love interest have the deadpan style of this comedy down. It’s never a good sign when the jokes in the final credits are funnier than the ones in the movie itself. Also with Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Busta Rhymes, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Priscilla Presley, and an uncredited Dave Bautista.
Oh, Hi! (R) This problematic and very funny comedy stars Molly Gordon as a woman who goes to a remote Airbnb with the man she’s dating (Logan Lerman) and has sex with him with the property owner’s bondage gear, but when he says he’s not looking for a relationship, she keeps him chained up so that he’ll fall in love with her. Writer-director Sophie Brooks (The Boy Downstairs) leaves very little fat on this film, gets some well-oiled chemistry out of her small cast, and has some jokes land even when they’re not meant to. Gordon (who’s credited as a story writer here) acts up a storm, too, especially in the climactic scene when she finally apologizes to her ex-boyfriend for chaining him up, but the movie too often seems to think her behavior is cute. Still, Brooks and Gordon show that they might well have a truly great comedy in them. Also with Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds, Polly Draper, and David Cross.
Saiyaara (NR) You can see why this Indian romance is breaking box-office records over there, though that doesn’t make it good. Ahaan Panday stars as a struggling musician with a vicious temper stemming from unresolved trauma. He’s forced to grow up when he meets a woman (Aneet Padda) who yearns to write poetry but is struck by early-onset Alzheimer’s. The individual scenes work well enough, and the newcomers in the lead roles are both fine. Still, the overall story is maudlin, and the movie veers dangerously close to saying that love can cure Alzheimer’s. It still comes out a watchable romance, though your patience for Bollywood sentimentality may vary. Also with Rajesh Kumar, Geeta Agarwal, Varun Badola, Shaad Randhawa, Sid Makkar, Alam Khan, Shaan Groverr, and Neil Dutta.
Smurfs (PG) Once again, the charm of this venerable comic series eludes Hollywood’s attempt to bring it to the big screen. When Gargamel and his more evil brother (both voiced by J.P. Karliak) kidnap Papa Smurf (voiced by John Goodman), it’s up to Smurfette (voiced by Rihanna) and No Name Smurf (voiced by James Corden) to unite Smurf Village and bring him back. An all-star voice cast has to take a back seat to Rihanna’s wobbly American accent and No Name Smurf’s flimsy search for an identity of his own. Despite an interlude when director Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) puts the Smurfs through different styles of animation, the gags misfire repeatedly. Our animation industry should give up and let the French have a crack at the Smurfs. Additional voices by Octavia Spencer, Nick Offerman, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Billie Lourd, and Kurt Russell.
Superman (PG-13) The best Superman movie from this century. David Corenswet takes over the title role, as Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) leads a social-media crusade to have Superman treated as an illegal alien. Luthor is reimagined for our time as a libertarian billionaire who feels small and insignificant against the Man of Steel’s superpowers, and a highly dysfunctional trio of superheroes calling themselves the Justice Gang (Nathan Fillion, Edi Gathegi, and Isabela Merced) makes a funny foil to Superman. Writer-director James Gunn doesn’t make the most memorable action set pieces here, but he is willing to use fight sequences in an unorthodox way, like when Clark Kent and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) have an earnest conversation about their relationship while the Justice Gang silently battles a kaiju in the distance. The surprising subplots and the grounding in current events makes this welcome. Also with Skylar Gisondo, Wendell Pierce, Beck Bennett, María Gabriela de Faría, Sara Sampaio, Zlatko Buric, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Mikaela Hoover, Sean Gunn, Frank Grillo, Anthony Carrigan, Alan Tudyk, Michael Rooker, Pom Klementieff, Angela Sarafyan, Bradley Cooper, and uncredited cameos by Milly Alcock and John Cena.
Together (R) The best piece of body horror since The Substance wouldn’t work nearly as well if its lead actors weren’t married to each other, or if they weren’t so well-versed in playing scenes for laughs. Dave Franco and Alison Brie play a couple who move to a big house in the countryside and find that their bodies are fusing together. Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks makes his directing debut and displays some uncanny talent, as in a cavern that appears to be alive as it starts the process of our couple losing their individuality. The actors, too, find humor in the horrifying situation. The final shot is a joke that misfires, but this unique horror film is the best argument I’ve ever seen in favor of staying single one’s whole life. Also with Damon Herriman.
Dallas Exclusives
Cloud (NR) Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film is about a Japanese online entrepreneur (Masaki Suda) who is hunted down by dissatisfied customers. Also with Kotone Furukawa, Amane Okayama, Daiken Okudaira, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Masataka Kubota, and Mutsuo Yoshioka.
River of Blood (R) This action-thriller is about four kayakers who find themselves in the territory of a cannibal tribe in Thailand. Starring Sarah Alexandra Marks, Joseph Millson, Louis James, Ella Starbuck, David Wayman, Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, and Einar Haraldsson.
Trouble Man (NR) Michael Jai White stars in and directs this thriller about a private investigator hired to find a vanished music star (La La Anthony). Also with Method Man, Mike Epps, Gillian White, Orlando Jones, and Keith Sweat.
