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The Carpenter’s Son (R) At least this bad Christian movie is based on a different part of the Bible. Adapted from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas, this film stars Nicolas Cage as Joseph, who tries to protect his teenage son Jesus (Noah Jupe) from witch hunters and from himself, since the boy doesn’t yet possess full control of his powers. Director Lotfy Nathan makes some effective use of horror-movie imagery, and Satan is embodied by an intense teenage girl (Isla Johnston) who’s covered in mutilation scars. However, everything interesting here is undone by sluggish pacing, bad CGI, general incoherence, and Cage’s worse-than-usual overacting. Avoid. Also with Souheila Yacoub, Elena Topalidou, Orestis Paliadelis, and FKA twigs. (Opens Friday)
Christmas Karma (PG) This British musical by Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) is about a Hindu businessman (Kunal Nayyar) who’s visited by three spirits on Christmas. Also with Leo Suter, Charithra Chandran, Pixie Lott, Danny Dyer, Rufus Jones, Allan Corduner, Shaznay Lewis, Hugh Bonneville, Eva Longoria, Billy Porter, and Boy George. (Opens Friday)
De De Pyaar De 2 (NR) The sequel to the 2019 romantic comedy has Ajay Devgn reprising his role as a businessman trying to get permission to marry his much-younger girlfriend (Rakul Preet Singh). Also with R. Madhavan, Jaaved Jaaferi, Gautami Kapoor, and Sanjeev Seth. (Opens Friday)
Hidden War (NR) Tim Ballard headlines this documentary about the global fight to stop sex trafficking. (Opens Friday)
Kaantha (NR) This Tamil-language satire is about a movie producer (Samuthirakani) who clashes with his star (Dulquer Salmaan) over the direction of their new film. Also with Rana Daggubati, Bhagyashri Borse, Ravindra Vijay, and Nizhalgal Ravi. (Opens Friday)
Keeper (R) The third horror film in 18 months by Osgood Perkins stars Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland as a married couple whose anniversary trip is haunted by an evil spirit. Also with Claire Friesen, Christin Park, Erin Boyes, Tess Degenstein, and Eden Weiss. (Opens Friday)
King Ivory (R) John Swab’s drama tells a series of interlocking stories revolving around the illegal fentanyl trade. Starring Ben Foster, James Badge Dale, Rory Cochrane, Michael Mando, Ritchie Coster, James Whitecloud, George Carroll, Melissa Leo, and the late Graham Greene. (Opens Friday)
Meet, Greet & Bye (NR) This Filipino dramedy is about a terminally ill woman (Maricel Soriano) who wishes to meet her favorite K-pop idol before she dies. Also with Piolo Pascual, Joshua Garcia, Belle Mariano, Juan Karlos Labajo, Kaila Estrada, and Kaori Oinuma. (Opens Friday)
Muzzle: City of Wolves (R) Aaron Eckhart stars in this thriller as a K-9 officer who comes out of retirement to avenge his family. Also with Tanya van Graan, Karl Thaning, Lindy Abromowitz, Adrian Collins, and Grant Ross. (Opens Friday)
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (PG-13) The third installment in the series has the magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Woody Harrelson) tutoring a new generation and targeting a merchant in conflict diamonds (Rosamund Pike). Also with Ariana Greenblatt, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Daniel Radcliffe, Mark Ruffalo, and Morgan Freeman. (Opens Friday)
The Perfect Gamble (R) This thriller stars David Arquette as an ex-convict who runs afoul of the Mafia by opening his own casino. Also with Danny A. Abeckaser, Daniella Pick, Sal Tesauro, and Herzl Tobey. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Santhana Prapthirasthu (NR) This Indian comedy is about a couple dealing with infertility. Starring Vikranth Reddy, Chandini Chowdary, Muralidhar Goud, and Vennela Kishore. (Opens Friday)
Shiva (NR) This re-release of the 1989 Indian film stars Nagarjuna as a young man who discovers and fights corruption at his university. Also with Amala Akkineni, Chakravarthy, Raghuvaran, Murali Mohan, Subhalekha Sudhakar, and Tanikella Bharani. (Opens Friday)
Trap House (R) This thriller stars Dave Bautista and Bobby Cannavale as DEA agents who discover that their own teenage children are robbing drug kingpins by using classified information. Also with Sophia Lillis, Kate del Castillo, Tony Dalton, Jack Champion, and Whitney Peak. (Opens Friday)
Trifole (NR) This Italian drama stars Ydalia Turk as a woman who must help her grandfather (Umberto Orsini) save their family farm by foraging for white truffles. Also with Margherita Buy, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Valentina Nastasi, and Sara Sedran. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Wicked (PG) Better than the Broadway hit in some spectacular ways. Cynthia Erivo portrays the future Wicked Witch of the West, who enrolls at a magical school and is forced to room with the future Good Witch of the North (Ariana Grande). This movie only covers the first half of the show and somehow comes off as maximalist rather than bloated. The vocal contributions come from many different places in the cast, with Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz and Jonathan Bailey showing some springy dance moves in “Dancing Through Life,” performed in front of a rotating bookcase. Grande nails the vibe of a princess with a bitchy “me first” streak, but even she can’t take the spotlight from Erivo. Her skillful handling of the reflective numbers keeps the movie from collapsing, and the climax of “Defying Gravity” blows out the lights in the Emerald City. She doesn’t just sing the showstopper, she is the showstopper. Also with Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater, Marissa Bode, Bowen Yang, Bronwyn James, Andy Nyman, Keala Settle, Kristin Chenoweth, and Idina Menzel. (Re-opens Friday)
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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.
Black Phone 2 (R) Deeply confused. Mason Thames reprises his role from the 2021 original as the now-traumatized teenager who has visions of the pedophile serial killer (Ethan Hawke) whom he killed, and whose younger sister (Madeleine McGraw) is now having visions of kids murdered decades before at a Christian youth camp in the Rockies. Set in 1983 as the siblings arrive at the snowed-in camp, the movie purposefully echoes The Shining, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street and also tries to throw in some Christian theology for good measure. It all fails because the underlying horror plot moves so sluggishly and without regard for internal logic. I’m not even sure what this series is supposed to be anymore. Also with Jeremy Davies, Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas, James Ransone, Anna Lore, and Demián Bichir.
Bugonia (R) Emma Stone crushes it yet again in this remake of the Korean movie Save the Green Planet! She portrays a pharmaceutical CEO kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist (Jesse Plemons) who’s convinced that she’s actually a space alien disguised as a human. Despite director Yorgos Lanthimos’ well-earned reputation for weirdness, this offers the old-fashioned pleasures of a kidnapping thriller for a good long while, as the captive proves for weaknesses in her angry and unstable captor. Plemons is really good as a guy who is not just another nutcase and is struggling to keep it together, but he’s still swamped by Stone as a woman who’s willing to say anything that she thinks her captor might want to hear and eventually seizes control of the situation in unforgettable fashion. Also with Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone.
Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc (R) Yet another big-screen anime adaptation that gives nothing to the newcomers who wander in. The half-human who can turn into a chainsaw demon (voiced by Kikunosuke Toya in the original Japanese-language version and Ryan Colt Levy in the English-dubbed version) falls in love with a cafe waitress (voiced by Reina Ueda and Alexis Tipton) before realizing that she isn’t what she seems. There is some visual creativity in the villain traveling on the shock waves of bombs that she makes herself, but the whole affair is just loud noises and whips of color that you can get from hundreds of other anime adventures. Additional voices by Tomori Kusunoki, Suzie Yeung, Shôgo Sakata, Reagan Murdock, Farouz Ai, Sarah Wiedenheft, Natsuki Hanae, Derick Snow, Yuya Uchida, Josh Bangle, Eri Kitamura, and Reshel Mae.
The Christmas Ring (NR) Based on Karen Kingsbury’s novel, this drama stars Jana Kramer as a widow who finds new love while searching for a family heirloom. Also with Benjamin Hollingsworth, Jessie James Decker, Daniel Considine, Megan Ashley Brown, Kyle Kupecky, Austin Robert Russell, and Kelsey Grammer.
Christy (R) There is precisely one good scene in this biopic. It’s when female boxing champion Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney) is attacked by her husband (Ben Foster). There’s no swell of music and no menacing line of dialogue, and Christy barely has time to register the knife in his hand before he’s stabbing her and then methodically taking apart her phone so that she can’t call for help. That scene is chilling in its matter-of-factness thanks to director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom), but everything else in this 135-minute film follows the sports-movie formula, with Christy’s growing attraction to other women muted and her religious mother (Merritt Wever) reduced to a one-note stereotype. Sweeney is a lively presence in the lead role, but the movie around her is so slight that it isn’t worth the investment of time required. Also with Katy O’Brian, Ethan Embry, Coleman Pedigo, Naomi Graham, Jess Gabor, Tony Cavalero, and Chad Coleman.
The Conjuring: Last Rites (R) Ed and Lorraine Warren finally retire, and it’s at least two movies too late. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take their last turn as the paranormal investigating couple, looking into a haunted mirror in Pennsylvania. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen, but our investigators take forever to actually get to the site. The movie wastes so much time on their backstory, as well as their adult daughter (Mia Tomlinson) getting married and having her own psychic visions. That doesn’t work, and neither does the scary stuff. Also with Orion Smith, Madison Lawlor, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Beau Gadsdon, Kila Lord Cassidy, Elliot Cowan, Rebecca Calder, Peter Wight, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Mackenzie Foy, Lili Taylor, and an uncredited James Wan.
Demon Slayer — Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Infinity Castle (R) The latest installment of the anime saga has a new look and the same issues. The demon Muzan Kibutsuji (voiced by Toshihiko Seki and Greg Chun) lures the demon slayers into his castle, an impressive looking, Christopher Nolan-influenced fortress where floors and walls are constantly shifting and the crevices between dimensions peek through. This would be a great backdrop for a thriller with horror elements, but as with too many of these adventures, the fight sequences are interrupted by gauzy and overly lengthy flashbacks. Anime fans will be used to this, but this squanders a chance to rope in newcomers to the epic. Additional voices by Natsuki Hanae, Zach Aguilar, Akari Kitō, Abby Trott, Hiro Shimono, Aleks Le, Yoshitugu Matsuoka, Bryce Papenbrook, Reina Ueda, Brianna Knickerbocker, Yuichi Nakamura, and Channing Tatum.
Die My Love (R) Jennifer Lawrence gets naked and loses her grip in a major way as a mother whose postpartum depression is shading over into postpartum psychosis. Based on a Spanish-language novel by Ariana Harwicz, Lynne Ramsay’s film has a squarish frame and numinous cinematography that gives the movie the appearance of a fable, though having Lawrence lose her mind in a remote house also makes this movie reminiscent of mother! Lawrence does some good work here, but Ramsay appears to have removed too much of the source material and other recent films like A Mouthful of Air have been better about its subject. Even so, the mixture of chaos and control that Ramsay and Lawrence bring to this is compelling. Also with Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Gabrielle Rose, Sarah Lind, Nick Nolte, and Sissy Spacek.
Frankenstein (PG-13) Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel is more visually resplendent than anything he has done since Crimson Peak. Oscar Isaac plays the doctor who wishes to reverse death and Jacob Elordi plays the creature whom he brings to life. Unlike most adaptations of Frankenstein, this one depicts the second half of Shelley’s novel, in which the monster tells his side of the story. Elordi gives his first vivid performance for the big screen as a being who moves delicately to avoid hurting the people around him, and the cinematography and costumes give the piece a Hammer Studios-like lushness. Yet the thing is missing the horrifying spiral of destruction between Victor and his creation, despite Isaac’s energy and theatrical flair. This movie is playing on Netflix, but its visuals make it worth experiencing in a theater. Also with Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Ralph Ineson, and Charles Dance.
The Girlfriend (NR) Rashmika Mandanna stars in this Telugu-language romance about a young woman navigating the complexities of love. Also with Anu Emmanuel, Rohini, Dheekshith Shetty, and Rao Ramesh.
Good Fortune (R) Aziz Ansari’s directing debut shows some flashes of promise before falling apart near the end. The standup comic stars as a downtrodden service worker who’s visited by a bumbling guardian angel (Keanu Reeves). The angel then allows him to experience the life of the venture capitalist (Seth Rogen) who recently fired him, except that our guy likes being rich so much that he doesn’t want to go back. The comedy is put together pretty well and offers some trenchant comments on the gig economy, and the lead actors are all on their game. Unfortunately, the film stumbles when it tries to find purpose in the lives of the minimum-wage earners. Ansari has the talent to keep at this, he just needs to give a bit more thought to his material. Also with Keke Palmer, Felipe Garcia Martinez, Matt Rogers, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sandra Oh.
Grand Prix of Europe (PG) This German animated film is about a mouse (voiced by Gemma Arterton) who lives out her dream of driving on the racing circuit. Additional voices by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Lenny Henry, Rob Beckett, Colin McFarlane, Ayesha Antoine, and Hayley Atwell.
The Great Pre-Wedding Show (NR) Thiruveer Reddy and Tinu Shravya star in this Indian comedy as an engaged couple who encounter complications while taking prenuptial photographs. Also with Rohan Roy and Narendra.
Jaari 2: Song of Chyabrung (NR) The sequel to the 2023 Nepalese film has Dayahang Rai and Miruna Magar reprising their roles as a married couple who dispute over a traditional drum symbolizing their love. Also with Bijay Baral, Puskar Gurung, Rekha Limbu, and Kiran Chamling Rai.
Jerry on Top (NR) This Nepalese thriller stars Anmol KC as a rich man’s son who aims to prove himself by climbing Mount Everest. Also with Aanchal Sharma, Jassita Gurung, Kedar Ghimire, and Bhuwan KC.
Long Shadows (R) This Western stars Blaine Maye as a man who must choose between love and revenge. Also with Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Cortez, Dominic Monaghan, Chris Mulkey, Anthony Skordi, Ronnie Gene Blevins, and Jacqueline Bisset.
Nuremberg (PG-13) This historical thriller stars Rami Malek as a U.S. Army psychiatrist who’s tasked with interviewing an imprisoned Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) before he’s put on trial for war crimes. Also with Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks, Leo Woodall, Wrenn Schmidt, Lotte Verbeek, Mark O’Brien, John Slattery, and Richard E. Grant.
One Battle After Another (R) One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s more purely enjoyable movies stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former anti-ICE revolutionary who has to save his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a supersoldier (Sean Penn) who has reason to think the girl is his own biological daughter and kill her to destroy evidence of his sexual preference for Black women. The story is loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland and set in the present day, which brings out the antic, puckish side of Anderson’s filmmaking. The film has nerve-frying action sequences, including an inventive car chase in the California desert with the cars appearing and disappearing from view because of the hilly terrain. The film also gets great performances from the newcomer Infiniti, DiCaprio as a father who realizes he’s not doing so good as a parent because he’s drunk and stoned all the time, and Penn as a villain brimming with hatred for this girl he has never met. It’s not as tidy as I’d like, but it’s great anyway. Also with Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Kevin Tighe, D.W. Moffett, and Tony Goldwyn.
Pets on a Train (PG) This English-dubbed version of a French animated film is about a group of animals who must save the passengers on a runaway train. Voices by Damien Ferrette, Hervé Jolly, Kaycie Chase, Frantz Confiac, Emmanuel Garijo, and Nicolas Marié.
Predator: Badlands (PG-13) Not as strong as Dan Trachtenberg’s last two movies in the Predator series, but the first one that’s available in multiplexes is worth seeing on the big screen. The movie is told from the Predator’s point of view, as an outcast from his clan (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) travels to an incredibly dangerous planet and teams up with a dismembered droid (Elle Fanning) to hunt a legendary beast that hasn’t been killed. The movie gives us all manner of fanciful animal and plant life without all the fanfare of the Avatar or Fantastic Beasts movies, and Fanning is gleefully annoying as the sidekick who knows more about the planet than the Predator does. Maybe the film could use some more world-building and character work, but Trachtenberg has done yeoman work to revive a franchise that had been effectively dead since the 1990s. Also with Michael Homik, Reuben de Jong, and Cameron Brown.
Regretting You (PG-13) Grapevine’s own Mckenna Grace is the only reason to watch this weeper based on Colleen Hoover’s novel. She portrays a high-school theater kid in North Carolina whose father (Scott Eastwood) and mother’s sister (Willa Fitzgerald) are killed in the same car accident, and her mother (Allison Williams) tries to keep the knowledge from her that the two were having an affair. The dramatic messiness of this situation gets sanded over at every turn by director Josh Boone and by the decorating-magazine interiors that it all plays out in. The only thing that keeps this from inducing sleep is the spiky turn by Grace as a girl who’s looking at colleges while finding first love with a movie nerd (Mason Thames) in her class. Her performance does North Texas proud. Also with Dave Franco, Sam Morelos, Ethan Costanilla, and Clancy Brown. (Opens Friday)
Roofman (R) Derek Cianfrance’s charming but oh-so-slight caper film stars Channing Tatum as an escaped convict who spends more than a year hiding from a manhunt by living in a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Charlotte. The film has some good material about how the protagonist keeps tabs on the goings-on in the store and avoids detection by the customers and employees, and Tatum does some good work when his character falls in love with a downtrodden toy saleswoman and single mother (Kirsten Dunst). Still, the film is unwilling to explore the darker implications of its story and its main character, and the stacked supporting cast looks way overqualified for what they’re given to do. For good and bad, thiss movie feels like something that the filmmaker tossed off. Also with LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Ben Mendelsohn, Tony Revolori, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Molly Price, Emory Cohen, Lily Collias, Punkie Johnson, Jimmy O. Yang, and Peter Dinklage.
Sarah’s Oil (PG) This Christian drama is about an 11-year-old Black girl (Naya Desir-Johnson) in early 20th-century Oklahoma who discovers oil underneath the land that she has inherited. Also with Zachary Levi, Sonequa Martin-Green, Mel Rodriguez, Kenric Green, Bridget Regan, Jonathan Lipnicki, and Garret Dillahunt.
Shelby Oaks (R) YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann directs his first feature film, and while there are some admirable points to it, it falls down at the most important junctures. Camille Sullivan portrays a woman whose sister (Sarah Durn) is the host of a YouTube paranormal events channel who goes missing while investigating a haunted house. The movie blends found-footage and more classical narrative pretty effectively, but Stuckmann fails to deliver just when the movie should be scariest, and the overarching plot makes no sense. Quite how this movie got picked up for major distribution is beyond me. Also with Charlie Talbert, Eric Francis Melaragni, Caisey Cole, Anthony Baldasare, Brendan Sexton III, Robin Bartlett, and Keith David.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (PG-13) Depression sure is dull in this biopic about one of America’s great musicians. Jeremy Allen White looks dead on as the young Boss and does an acceptable job of singing Bruce Springsteen’s songs, but can’t force any life into this rote film that covers the rock legend’s life in the early 1980s, when he’s already famous but not yet the megastar that he would become. Writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) goes through Springsteen’s family history of mental troubles and his relationship with a diner waitress from Jersey (Odessa Young), but the movie yields less insight into the musician’s body of work than Blinded by the Light or High Fidelity. Unlike Springsteen’s songs, this fails to take you anywhere transcendent, or even interesting. Also with Jeremy Strong, Stephen Graham, Gaby Hoffman, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, Matthew Pellicano Jr., Grace Gummer, and Marc Maron.
Stitch Head (PG) What’s supposed to be a kid-friendly version of the Frankenstein story only ends up being a defanged one. This British animated film based on Guy Bass’ children’s book is about a stitched-together boy (voiced by Asa Butterfield) who escapes the lab of his mad-scientist creator (voiced by Rob Brydon) and then falls into the hands of a circus owner (voiced by Seth Usdenov) who shows him off as his latest freak. The movie isn’t offensive and doesn’t drag, but the songs are unmemorable, the satire of show business isn’t pointed enough, and the jokes don’t hit the way they should. Director Steve Hudson manages some cool shots, but fails to make Stitch Head’s attempts to protect his fellow lab creations into something compelling. Additional voices by Joel Fry, Tia Bannon, Ryan Sampson, Rasmus Hardiker, Jamali Maddix, Fern Brady, Paul Tylak, and Alison Steadman.
Tron: Ares (PG-13) The best of the Tron movies, for what that’s worth. The third film stars Jared Leto as a computer-engineered super-soldier who’s sent by his tech CEO creator (Evan Peters) to kill a rival CEO (Greta Lee). Norwegian director Joachim Rønning manages to conjure up some genuinely cool-looking action sequences both in cyberspace and in the real world, and nostalgists for 1980s tech will love the scene when the soldier goes into the world from the original movie and meets Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Unhappily, the movie misses its chances to either comment on the evolution of technology or make its human characters’ emotional longings feel real. The series continues to be an aesthetic rather than a story. Also with Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Hasan Minhaj, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, and Gillian Anderson.
Unexpected Christmas (NR) This comedy is about a family that has drama during a holiday reunion. Starring Lil Rel Howery, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Cecelia Friday, Tabitha Brown, Terrence Terrell, and Anna Maria Horsford.
Dallas Exclusives
Exit Protocol (R) Michael Jai White stars in this thriller as a hit man who only kills other hit men. Also with Dolph Lundgren, Charlotte Kirk, Scott Martin, Stephanie Beran, and Christian Cardona.
I Wish You All the Best (R) Based on Mason Deaver’s novel, this coming-of-age film stars Corey Fogelmanis as a teen who is thrown out of their house after coming out as non-binary. Also with Alexandra Daddario, Cole Sprouse, Amy Landecker, Lisa Yamada, and Lena Dunham.
It Was Just an Accident (PG-13) Jafar Panahi’s latest film is about a group of Iranian former political prisoners who must decide whether to torture the jailer who tortured them in prison. Starring Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afhari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, and Majid Panahi.
Lost & Found in Cleveland (PG-13) Keith Gerchak and Marisa Guterman’s dramedy is about five people whose paths cross at an antiques appraisal show in their city. Starring Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, Liza Weil, Loretta Devine, Jeff Hiller, Dot-Marie Jones, Santino Fontana, Esther Povitsky, Stacy Keach, and Jon Lovitz.
