OPENING
Dreams (NR) Jessica Chastain stars in this drama about a wealthy American socialite having an illicit affair with an undocumented Mexican dancer (Isaac Hernández). Also with Rupert Friend, Magali Hernández, Marshall Bell, Mercedes Hernández, and Wes Chapman. (Opens Friday)
K-Pops! (PG-13) Anderson .Paak writes, directs, and stars in this comedy as a failed musician who finds a chance to mentor his long-lost Korean son (Soul Rasheed) who wants to become a K-pop star. Also with Jee Young Han, Jon Park, Cathy Shim, Will Jay, Kevin Woo, and Yvette Nicole Brown. (Opens Friday)
The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond (NR) A subject of controversy over its story, the sequel to the 2023 Indian film is about forced religious conversions in the South Indian state. Starring Ulka Gupta, Aishwarya Ojha, Aditi Bhatia, Alka Amin, Arjun Aujla, Ramji Bali, Sumit Gahlawat, and Rajiv Kumar. (Opens Friday)
Matter of Time (PG-13) Matt Finlin’s documentary is about a group of people in 2023 searching for a cure for epidermolysis bullosa. (Opens Friday)
Paatki (NR) This Gujarati-language thriller stars Gaurav Paswala as a man concealing his guilt from the world. Also with Shraddha Dangar, Hiten Tejwani, Suchita Trivedi, Nilesh Parmar, and Karan Joshi. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Pegasus 3 (NR) Teng Shen reprises his role in this third film in the Chinese series about a man chasing auto racing glory. Also with Bai Yufan, Duan Yihong, Fan Chengcheng, Hu Xianxu, Johnny Huang, Sun Yizhou, and Aarif Lee. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Scream 7 (R) Neve Campbell returns to the slasher series as a woman trying to save her teenage daughter (Isabel May) from a new Ghostface. Also with Courteney Cox, Mckenna Grace, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Anna Camp, Joel McHale, Jimmy Tatro, Timothy Simons, Ethan Embry, Mark Consuelos, Scott Foley, Matthew Lillard, and David Arquette. (Opens Friday)
Umamusume: Pretty Derby — Beginning of a New Era (NR) Based on a video game, this Japanese anime film is about a group of anthropomorphized racehorses racing for fame and prizes. Voices by Yuri Fujimoto, Sumire Uesaka, Yui Ogura, Haruna Fukushima, Sora Tokui, Eriko Matsui, Kanna Nakamura, and Ken’ichi Ogata. (Opens Friday)
Undercard (NR) Wanda Sykes stars in this drama as a boxing trainer who reunites with the son (Bentley Green) whom she abandoned. Also with Roselyn Sanchez, Berto Colon, Xavier Mills, William Stanford Davis, Danny Pardo, and Sugar Shane Mosley. (Opens Friday)
Vishnu Vinyasam (NR) This Telugu-language comedy stars Sree Vishnu as a man whose numerology obsession interferes with his love life. Also with Nayan Sarika, Brahmaji, Vadlamani Srinivas, Goparaju Ramana, and Murali Sharma. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
Avatar: Fire and Ash (PG-13) Actually more interesting than the first two films, though that doesn’t make this good. Human being Spider (Jack Champion) gains the ability to breathe Pandora’s air, which only creates more problems because it makes him more attractive to the humans as a test subject. The best thing the series could do is kill off both Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who both were wearing out their welcome even before this movie. While this film is beset by many of the same issues as its predecessors, it at least introduces us to a new Na’vi clan who ally themselves with the humans to get their hands on Earth weapons. They make more interesting villains than any this franchise has had before, and their presence lets us know that the Na’vi are not just innocent victims. A better writer than James Cameron might make this world interesting yet. Also with Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Giovanni Ribisi, Jemaine Clement, David Thewlis, and Kate Winslet.
Bendito corazón (NR) This Mexican drama tells the story of various people trying to build lives in the Spanish colony during the 18th century. Starring Frank Rodríguez, Salvador Zerboni, Lisset, Humberto Fuentes, Juan Manuel Azcona, Manjarrez Belinda, and Miguel Angel Pérez.
Clika (R) This drama stars Jay Dee as an aspiring musician who receives a break in his career. Also with Nana Ponceleon, Josh Benitez, James Burbage, Alison Chace, Bourke Floyd, Cory Aycock, and the late Peter Greene.
Crime 101 (R) Very well made, yet weirdly impersonal. Chris Hemsworth headlines this star-studded piece of L.A. noir as a high-end jewel thief eyeing a huge score. Writer-director Bart Layton (American Animals) adapts this from Don Winslow’s novel and is clearly aiming for an epic character study like Heat, but the main character is someone who tries to make himself as unmemorable as possible, and Hemsworth can’t make anything interesting out of that. The anomie spreads to his interactions with a disgruntled insurance executive (Halle Berry), a down-on-his-luck cop (Mark Ruffalo), a psychopathic replacement (Barry Keoghan), and a love interest (Monica Barbaro). There’s a good car-and-motorcycle chase in the middle and a decent hotel showdown at the end, but it’s not enough to give the movie any sort of personality. Also with Corey Hawkins, Payman Maadi, Devon Bostick, Tate Donovan, Crosby Fitzgerald, Andra Nechita, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Nick Nolte.
Dracula (R) A spectacular mismatch of director and material. Luc Besson makes his own adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, with Caleb Landry Jones as the vampire and Zoë Bleu as the wife who’s killed in the 15th century and then reincarnated in the 19th. The filmmakers put a lot of work into re-creating Paris in 1889 but forget about basic stuff like why nobody tells the Romanian soldiers what they’re up against when they raid Dracula’s castle. Jones is charmless and boring as the count, and Besson has no talent either for scaring us or for evoking a love that spans centuries. Even the presence of Christoph Waltz as a vampire-hunting Vatican priest can’t relieve us from the tedium. You wonder why anybody involved with this even bothered. Also with Ewens Abid, David Shields, Matilda de Angelis, and Guillaume de Tonquédec.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (PG-13) Baz Luhrmann’s documentary shows previously unseen footage of Elvis’ performances during his residency in Las Vegas.
A Gift From Heaven (NR) This Vietnamese film is about a mother (Phương Anh Đào) who accidentally meets the sperm donor (Tuấn Trần) who fathered her child. Also with Trung Dân, Quách Ngọc Ngoan, Võ Tấn Phát, Khương Lê, Bích Ngọc, and Tạ Lâm.
GOAT (PG) A better sequel to Zootopia than the actual Zootopia sequel. This animated movie is about a goat (voiced by Caleb McLaughlin) who wishes to play a form of full-contact basketball against much larger animals. The pixelated look of this movie gives it a grungier feel than most other Hollywood animated features, and the Black viewpoint further adds to this film’s uniqueness. I like how the basketball courts each have their own individual features that benefit the home team. The story is based on the life of NBA legend Steph Curry, who is cutely cast against type as the voice of a giraffe. It all makes this an animated sports movie worth cheering for. Additional voices by Gabrielle Union, Nick Kroll, David Harbour, Nicola Coughlan, Aaron Pierre, Jenifer Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Sherry Cola, Andrew Santino, Ayesha Curry, Eduardo Franco, Bobby Lee, Wayne Knight, Jelly Roll, and Jennifer Hudson.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (R) Gore Verbinski’s sense of absurd humor goes missing in this apocalyptic comedy. Sam Rockwell stars as a time traveler from the future who visits the same diner for the 117th time to pick the right combination of customers who will avert an AI-triggered end of human civilization. Despite some worthy performances by Haley Lu Richardson and Juno Temple as two members of his team, the stacked cast appears to be mostly lost. The story becomes stuck in the mud as it approaches the climax and its satire about people becoming smartphone zombies is well wide of the mark. Even a giant kitten-cow monster that eats people and pees out broken glass can’t save this exercise. Also with Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Georgia Goodman, and Mike Gassaway.
Hamnet (R) Beautifully crafted, occasionally crushing, and based on Maggie O’Farrell’s work of speculative fiction, Chloé Zhao’s film is about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) dealing with the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) from the bubonic plague. The film is quite different from O’Farrell’s novel; instead of adopting different characters’ viewpoints and jumping around in time, the movie proceeds in a linear fashion and sticks with Agnes as she raises the children in Stratford while Will goes off to London and catches on with a theater company. Much like Shakespeare in Love, this movie truly takes flight during a production of a Shakespeare play, when Agnes travels to London and sees her husband’s Hamlet as an expression of his grief over their lost son. Great performances by both leads bring this Hamlet to tragic life no matter how many Hamlets you’ve seen. Also with Joe Alwyn, Freya Hannan-Mills, David Wilmot, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, Noah Jupe, and Emily Watson.
The Housemaid (R) Based on Freida McFadden’s best-selling novel, this thriller is a throwback to 1980s psychological thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, but from a female point of view. Sydney Sweeney portrays an ex-convict who takes a job as a live-in maid in a Long Island mansion, only to find her employer (Amanda Seyfried) behaving like such a psycho that it puts her in greater danger than she was in prison. The film ups the book’s violence considerably, which would be great if the acting were better. As it is, Seyfried blows away her co-stars as a wealthy housewife who’s simmering with rage and whose erratic behavior is cagier than it appears. She and Paul Feig’s direction make this about as good an adaptation of the novel as we could have expected. Also with Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Indiana Elle, Alexandra Seal, and Elizabeth Perkins.
How to Make a Killing (R) This unofficial remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets removes everything that made the 1949 British comedy so delightful and doesn’t do near enough to replace it. Glen Powell portrays a man who decides to claim his family’s $28 billion inheritance by murdering all the relatives in his way as revenge for them disinheriting his mother. Powell provides some lift as a homicidal psychopath whom we can root for, especially when he’s reacting to some outrageous victims like a pretentious photographer (Zach Woods) and a crooked megachurch pastor (Topher Grace). The material isn’t funny enough, though, and writer-director John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) mysteriously dials down the class warfare element here. This could have been so much more. Also with Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Grady Wilson, Nell Williams, Adrian Lukis, James Frecheville, Raff Law, Bianca Amato, Alexander Hanson, and Ed Harris.
I Can Only Imagine 2 (PG) The sequel to the 2018 Christian music biopic continues the journey of MercyMe lead singer Bart Millard (John Michael Finley) as he takes his teenage son (Sammy Dell) on tour as well as terminally ill singer-songwriter Tim Timmons (Milo Ventimiglia). Even if you’re not familiar with the Millard family’s story, none of the plot developments here will be remotely surprising, as Bart works through his issues with his own deceased father while trying to parent a kid whose medical condition needs constant supervision. Ventimiglia provides some comic snap as a musician who’s embarking on his first nationwide tour as MercyMe’s opening act, but this boilerplate Christian drama is beyond saving. Also with Sophie Skelton, Arielle Kebbel, Trace Adkins, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, and Dennis Quaid.
Iron Lung (R) A case against YouTube creators making films, I’m sad to say. Mark Fischbach a.k.a. Markiplier stars in his own adaptation of the video game as a convict who’s promised freedom in exchange for undertaking a dangerous mission where he pilots a solo submarine in an ocean of blood on an alien planet. Markiplier also distributed the movie himself without a studio, and it’s a great story that he’s able to take in so much money and leave such a cultural footprint that way. However, I can’t ignore how he fails to generate a sense of claustrophobia, provide convincing hallucinations of a man losing touch with reality, or deliver a coherent story about the human race facing extinction. It’s all just tedious close-ups of antiquated machinery and pipes dripping water. Also with Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock, Caroline Kaplan, Elle LaMont, and Seán McLoughlin.
The King’s Warden (NR) This Korean historical drama stars Park Ji-hoon as a young 15th-century king who hides out in a remote village after being overthrown by his uncle. Also with Yoo Hae-jin, Yoo Ji-tae, Jeon Mi-do, Park Ji-hwan, and Lee Joon-hyuk.
Kokuho (NR) This Japanese drama stars Ryô Yoshizawa as a gangster’s son who must choose between his family’s business and a career as a kabuki actor. Also with Ryûsei Yokohama, Mitsuki Takahata, Shinobu Terajima, Nana Mori, Takahiro Miura, and Ken Watanabe.
Midwinter Break (PG-13) One of those carefully repressed British dramas that isn’t worth sitting through. Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds portray a Northern Irish couple living in Scotland who take a January getaway trip to Amsterdam. Her secret is that she vowed to devote her life to God many years ago in exchange for saving her baby’s life, and now she feels like she hasn’t held up her end of the bargain. Somehow no one tells her that she still has time to help out her neighbors and doesn’t have to join a religious order in the Netherlands. Maybe the Bernard MacLaverty novel that this is based on works better, but given that the author himself helped adapt this to the big screen, one can’t help but wonder how this would have worked on the page. Also with Ed Sayer, Julie Lamberton, Tim Licata, and Niamh Cusack.
The Moment (R) Charli xcx tries to go all Spinal Tap in this mockumentary. It doesn’t work. The British pop star portrays herself in the summer of 2024, as her label executives try to keep the “Brat Girl Summer” going. The most fully realized character is Alexander Skarsgård as a famous documentarian who’s hired to direct the concert movie of her upcoming tour and winds up getting her friends fired and making wholesale changes to her choreography, setlist, and staging. The germ of an interesting idea (conceived by Charli herself) is here, but neither the material nor the pop star are funny, and the movie doesn’t include enough of her music. This movie wants to puncture the pop-star mystique around Charli xcx, but it botches the gimmick. Also with Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Rish Shah, Hailey Gates, Trew Mullen, Kylie Jenner, Julia Fox, and Rosanna Arquette.
Psycho Killer (R) A generic title for a generic horror movie. Georgina Campbell portrays a state trooper who becomes obsessed with tracking down the masked, Satan-worshipping killer (James Preston Rodgers) who murdered her fellow trooper and husband (Stephen Adekolu) in front of her as part of a cross-country killing spree. The pace of this thing will put you to sleep, and our law-enforcement heroine is remarkably bad at her job and blames the FBI agents around her for failing to stop the murderer. When she finally does catch up to him, neutralizing him turns out to be way too easy. Andrew Kevin Walker wrote this as well as the new Scream movie, and let’s hope that that took up so much of his time that he seemingly wrote the script for this on some cocktail napkin. Also with Logan Miller, Grace Dove, Aaron Merke, Michael Antonakos, and Malcolm McDowell.
Send Help (R) For all of us who needed the feral, unhinged, blood-soaked version of Rachel McAdams in our lives. She stars as a strategist for a corporate consulting firm who can’t break the glass ceiling until she and her horrible boss (Dylan O’Brien) are the sole survivors when the corporate plane crashes on an uninhabited tropical island. McAdams’ balls-to-the-wall approach works less well in the middle but better at the beginning (when she’s playing someone who’s too poorly socialized to make friends in the office) and at the end (when the violence takes the movie into Evil Dead territory). Speaking of which, director Sam Raimi can’t keep the movie from falling apart at the end, but the film is still blackly funny and memorable for McAdams’ berserk turn. Also with Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, and Dennis Haysbert.
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.
Solo Mio (PG) Surprisingly not terrible. Kevin James stars in this comedy as a man whose Italian wedding is ruined after his bride-to-be (Julie Ann Emery) leaves him at the altar. With the rest of his honeymoon non-refundable, he stays in Tuscany and enjoys grappa and gelato, makes friends with the other honeymooning couples from America, and even falls in love again. If the movie is too postcard-pretty and the laughs could come more frequently, the pace doesn’t drag. Also with Jonathan Roumie, Kim Coates, Nicole Grimaudo, Julee Cerda, Caterina Silva, Alessandro Carbonara, and Alyson Hannigan.
The Strangers: Chapter 3 (R) The third movie in the slasher series reveals that there wasn’t enough story for one movie in the whole trilogy. Madelaine Petsch returns as Maya, who’s prepared to take revenge on the masked killers only to find that the killers want to recruit her instead. All the scenes play out at a glacial pace, and it makes no sense that Maya might be tempted to join the killers. What the hell was all this for? Also with Richard Brake, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Hannah Galway, George Young, Miles Yekinni, Janis Ahern, Pedro Leandro, Dani Klupsch, and Ella Bruccoleri.
Wuthering Heights (R) This bodice-ripper about two insanely hot people and their forbidden love doesn’t work on Emily Brontë’s terms, but works on its own. Director Emerald Fennell’s visual sense operates at an astonishing pitch, which is crucial in preventing this movie from turning into some museum piece. The occasionally garish visuals are always a treat to look at, and Fennell infuses this movie with more S&M-laced sex than any other adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The marriage between Heathcliff and Isabella (Jacob Elordi and Alison Oliver) is deeply icky. Elordi is no slouch, but Margot Robbie owns the show as a conceited Cathy who’s brought to a tragic end by thwarted love. Fennell pares away all the silly stuff that makes the novel a literary classic, and I’m rather enamored of her trashy mind. Also with Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Charlotte Mellington, and Owen Cooper.
Zootopia 2 (PG) Not as good as the first one, I’m afraid. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman) have to deal with a new case involving the family of snakes who founded the city and were screwed out of their inheritance by the mammals. Some of the jokes do land like they should, but the metaphors are not as resonant, and the new supporting characters aren’t as well drawn as they were in the original. The fraying partnership between our two cops doesn’t throw up anything new, either. There is a funny subplot with a TV actor stallion (voiced by Patrick Warburton) becoming Zootopia’s new mayor, but it’s not enough to recommend the film. Additional voices by Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Quinta Brunson, Danny Trejo, Nate Torrence, Don Lake, Bonnie Hunt, CM Punk, Stephanie Beatriz, Alan Tudyk, Macaulay Culkin, Brenda Song, Tiny Lister Jr., John Leguizamo, Tommy Chong, Auli’i Cravalho, Tig Notaro, Ed Sheeran, Cecily Strong, June Squibb, Michael J. Fox, Josh Gad, Idris Elba, and Jenny Slate.
Dallas Exclusives
Aida y vuelta (NR) Based on the Spanish TV series by the same name, this movie is about the cast of a popular TV show struggling to stay united amid controversy. Starring Carmen Machi, Paco León, Miren Ibarguren, Marisol Ayuso, David Castillo, Eduardo Casanova, Melani Olivares, Mariano Peña, Pepe Viyuela, and Canco Rodríguez.
All That’s Left of You (NR) Cherien Dabis writes, directs, and stars in this Jordanian film as a mother recalling her teenage son (Adam Bakri) being swept up in an anti-Israel protest. Also with Saleh Bakri, Maria Zreik, Hayat Abu Samra, Ramzi Maqdisi, Muhammed Abed Elrahman, and Mohammad Bakri.
A Poet (NR) This Colombian drama stars Guillermo Cardona as a writer who finds a talented teenager (Rebeca Andrade) to mentor. Also with Alisson Correa, Humberto Restrepo, Ubeimar Rios, and Margarita Soto.
