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Woman Walks Ahead, directed by Susanna White (R, 1 hour, 41 minutes) Based on true events, this heavily Hollywood-style frontier bio-pic brings glamour, good looks, and youth to a pair of what are actually aging historical characters whose relationship wasn’t nearly as flirtatious and wink-worthy as that portrayed on the screen.
Woman Walks Ahead tells the story of Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain), a widowed feminist artist from New York who, in the 1880s, travels to North Dakota with her 12-year-old son to paint a portrait of Lakota Sioux chief Sitting Bull (Canadian actor and ballet dancer Michael Greyeyes), whose former grandeur has been reduced to slogging through life as a potato farmer as his tribe suffers at the hands of the government and white settlers.
Her arrival at Standing Rock is met with a lack of cooperation by bigoted U.S. Army Col. Silas Graves (Sam Rockwell), who has stationed troops around the Lakota reservation to undermine American Indian claims to the land. As Catherine and Sitting Bull grow closer and his life is threatened by government forces, Catherine chooses to stand up and fight.
Blu-ray bonuses include deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, and audio commentary with the director.
American Animals (R, 1 hour, 56 minutes) Clever and precise, this conniving caper concerns four young men, determined to make their lives extraordinary, who plan what they intend to be a perfectly executed art heist. All goes well, until the plan takes on a life of its own. With Barry Keoghan, Jared Abrahamson, Blake Jenner, Evan Peters, Ann Dowd, Udo Kier; directed by Bart Layton.
Mary Shelley (PG-13, 2 hours) This drama proves to be ineffective in its effort to reveal the spirit of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Elle Fanning) — author of renowned Gothic novel Frankenstein — that leads to her her relationship with romantic poet and fellow progressive thinker Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth). With Maisie Williams, Stephen Dillane, Joanne Froggatt, Bel Powley; directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour.
Tag (R, 1 hour, 40 minutes) A so-so comedy, aided by a terrific cast, in which a sophisticated month-long version of the game of tag brings ever-increasing challenges to the five competitive friends who take it on every year. With Ed Helms, Rashida Jones, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Isla Fisher; directed by Jeff Tomsic.
RBG (PG, 1 hour, 38 minutes) This highly touted documentary inspects the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 84, who has served with distinction and style as a respected and accomplished Supreme Court justice for decades, the second woman to do so. With Gloria Steinem, Antonin Scalia, Bill Clinton, Orrin Hatch, Nina Totenberg of NPR; directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen.
Upgrade (R, 1 hour, 40 minutes) A cleverly designed, gore-dripping action/horror thriller in which a violent mugging leaves a woman dead and her husband paralyzed; a billionaire’s invention leads to a chance for revenge via the use of a technological development that allows the man to become a physical phenomenon far beyond normal capabilities. With Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Benedict Hardie; directed by Leigh Whannell.