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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED’: When director Laura Poitras’ documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” snagged the top prize at this year’s Venice film festival, in a field of qualifying titles including “Tar” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” accusations of contrarian virtue-signaling were flung hither and yon, in some cases even by people who’d actually managed to see it. Well, those people weren’t right. The film is a gem — a supple, unpredictably structured and deeply personal portrait of its primary subject, the photographer, visual artist and activist Nan Goldin.
And that isn’t all. This portrait belongs to a much larger societal landscape. Poitras’ film expands, naturally, by way of Goldin’s own history and her more recent history of both addiction and effective public dissent, as “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” becomes a tale of the opioid epidemic (roughly 500,000 dead in the U.S. alone), which was and is a human-made tragedy. 1:57. 4 stars. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER’:
As with most James Cameron blockbusters, including the first “Avatar,” this film has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits. It’s 10 years later. Sully (Sam Worthington), now blue and 10 feet tall, is full-on Na’vi with a family including his mate, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and three kids. Sigourney Weaver, whose character died in the first “Avatar,” returns in the role of the adopted teenage daughter,
Kiri. Death is just a pause for a change of clothes in this universe. Cameron fills three hours of screen time, with another 10 minutes or so for credits, with what feels like a single, extended, not-quite“real,” not really animated but impressively sustained feat of visual gratification, if you don’t mind the cruelty-to-undersea-creatures parts. 3:10. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips
‘EMPIRE OF LIGHT’: In “Empire of Light,” Sam Mendes casts a nostalgic eye toward the movies.
Like several other auteurs this winter season, Mendes has crafted what could be considered a “love letter to cinema,” but “Empire of Light” is less of a mash note to moviemaking than a tribute to the theater itself, that cathedral of collective dreams born by a single beam of light. The Empire in question is the fictional Empire Cinema in Margate,
a coastal city in England, the year is 1980, and the story concerns the unlikely, and complicated, friendship between Hilary (Olivia Colman), the duty manager at the Empire, and Stephen (Micheal Ward), the new ticket taker. Movies are their business, and the backdrop to their relationship, which blooms among the popcorn and candy, and takes flight in the Empire’s abandoned upstairs club room, a once glorious space now serving as a pigeon roost. We don’t need someone to remind us that movies are magic by stating that up front; usually it’s just the magic of storytelling itself that achieves that, which “Empire of Light” ultimately, and unfortunately, fumbles.
1:59. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO’:
All that’s missing is Tom Hanks. Landing on Netflix almost three months after Disney’s
live action-meets-computer animation update of its 1940 animated classic, “Pinocchio,” debuted on Disney+, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is at least a little stronger in just about every way but one. With apologies to David Bradley, who voices Master Geppetto in the new version, we really liked what “America’s
Dad” brought to the role in the film helmed by his “Forrest Gump” director, Robert Zemeckis. Bradley is perfectly fine, though, and so much of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is more than that, a work of stop-motion animation (enhanced by digital elements) that constantly astonishes visually while providing a few chuckles and heartwarming moments, along with some life lessons. Streaming on Netflix. 2:01. 3 stars. — Mark Meszoros, the Willoughby News-Herald
‘PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST
WISH’: Eleven years after the “Shrek 2” spinoff “Puss in Boots,” the sassy Spanish feline voiced by Antonio Banderas has returned for another fairy-tale-busting adventure, directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, and written by Paul Fischer (with a story by Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler). Crawford, Mercado and Fischer all worked on the DreamWorks Animation favorites “Trolls” and “The Croods: A New Age,” and the trio bring a similar “chaotic good” energy to “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which remixes a new set of familiar nursery rhymes and beloved children’s fables to entertaining ends. 1:40. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘THE WHALE’: In “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese online writing instructor confined to his apartment in what seems to be a dreary stretch of Idaho. Charlie is suffering from congestive heart failure, and over the course of a week, as his best friend, Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse, implores, demands and shouts at him to seek medical attention, he reckons with some of the unfinished business of his life while committing a slow suicide. He reaches out to his estranged daughter, the prickly Ellie (Sadie Sink), and by extension, her mother, Mary (Samantha Morton). A young missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins), keeps stopping by, hoping to save his soul. Fraser, who through the prosthetics, both physical and computer-generated, delivers a performance suffused with warmth, empathy and love that cannot be denied. “Write me something honest,” Charlie demands of his students. “The Whale” may not be as honest as Charlie demands, but Fraser is, and that is the film’s saving grace. 1:57. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY’: When remembering the iconic life and career of Whitney Houston, there are many defining moments that instantly spring to mind: when she obliterated the “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, thereby rendering all other versions subpar; her soaring rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from “The Bodyguard;” or even her concert at Wembley Stadium in honor of Nelson Mandela. In the new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” those moments are acknowledged, albeit briefly. Instead, writer/ producer Anthony McCarten has chosen to bookend this slog through Houston’s career and all-too-short life with … her performance at the 1994 American Music Awards? Indeed, the 10 minute medley, which is re-created in full, was a virtuosic vocal performance of which only Houston was capable, but this deep cut seems an odd choice to open and close the film. It’s the kind of choice that makes one start to question everything in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” a film that is not engrossing enough on its own to prevent one’s mind from wandering toward the nagging questions about who made these decisions and why. 2:26. 1 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.