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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘80 FOR BRADY’: Tom Brady may have seven Super Bowl rings, but that’s nothing compared to the latest team against whom he’s facing off, the winningest group of legends perhaps ever assembled. Just take a look at the stats: first up, Jane Fonda, with two Oscars, seven Golden Globes and two Tony Awards under her belt. Next, Lily Tomlin, boasting six Emmys, two Tonys and a Grammy; and Sally Field, coming in hot with two Oscars, two Emmys and two Globes. Rounding out the team is the EGOT herself, Rita Moreno.
Count ’em: Oscar, Grammy, Tony, two Emmys and a Golden Globe for good luck. This fearsome foursome star in “80 for Brady,” a tale about a group of octogenarian football fans and a wild weekend at the Super Bowl. 1:38. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA’: Paul Rudd is back as Scott Lang/ Ant-Man, as is secondbilled Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne/ Wasp. Second-billed implies a certain portion of the action and the talking, but Lilly is practically mute in “Quantumania,” and you keep waiting for some explanation for this. A curse? A character grudge we’ll eventually find out about? Aside from the occasional boilerplate (“I’ve got a read on Scott!”), Hope’s strictly sideline material. The plot this time sends Scott, Hope, Hope’s brilliant and nicely coifed parents (Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas) and Scott’s enterprising and socially conscious daughter,
Cassie (Kathryn Newton), into the sub-universe of Quantumville. “Quantumania” also introduces the scowling, fearsome, highly screenworthy revolutionleading warrior, Jentorra, portrayed by Katy O’Brian. She’s a beast, the best kind, and ready for anything. Even when the film itself isn’t much of anything. 2:05. 2 stars. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘JESUS REVOLUTION’: “Jesus Revolution” focuses on the Jesus movement that took place in Southern California in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Jon Erwin co-directs with Brent McCorkle, the writer of “I Can Only Imagine,” the pair working from a script by Erwin and Jon Gunn adapted from a book by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn. Laurie is, in fact, the subject of “Jesus Revolution,” played by Joel Courtney. But the film, which is part biopic, part period piece depicting a larger movement, juggles three different subjects while trying to tell the story of the Jesus movement, including Laurie, Laurie’s mentor, Chuck Smith, played by Kelsey Grammer, and hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie). Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story. 2:00. 1 ½ stars.
— Katie Walsh
‘KNOCK AT THE CABIN’:
“Knock at the Cabin” is a real load — 100 lugubrious minutes of what is intended as steadily mounting dread and apocalypse prevention seminar. It’s frustrating because writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has made
seriously good films and some that go splat. With every new Shyamalan project, moviegoers have a way of holding out hope based on his best efforts and the luck of the draw. This one comes from the 2018 Paul Tremblay novel “The Cabin at the End of the World,” and there are moments when the adaptation by Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman — the filmmaker wrote his version based on Desmond and Sherman’s script — feels as if it might be getting somewhere, albeit slowly. The acting’s quite good. But there is more to filmmaking and storytelling than what the actors can do. 1:40.
1 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips
‘MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE’:
There’s no denying that there is before “Magic Mike” and there’s after “Magic Mike.” One can even point to a specific inflection point in Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 male stripper drama that was lightly culled from star Channing Tatum’s experiences in an “all-male revue”: the scene in which Tatum, as the aforementioned
Mike, performs a solo number to Ginuwine’s “Pony” as Cody Horn’s Brooke looks on from the crowd. It’s not just the hypnotic fluidity of Tatum’s hips and torso, but the way that Soderbergh cuts back to Brooke, our gaze becoming her gaze, her frown offering dramatic irony to the visual splendor that is Tatum’s body in motion. This final installment finds Soderbergh and Tatum toying with audience expectations to disappointing results. There are a few flashes of the original magic, but it’s lacking in the energy that made the first two movies a thrill. After the cultural reset of “Magic Mike,” this last dance just doesn’t bring the heat. 1:52. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘MY HAPPY ENDING’: “My Happy Ending” is written by Rona Tamir, based on a play by Anat Gov. The events unfold over several hours in a single setting, which exposes the theatrical roots of the story, though directors Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon add a touch of magical realism to liberate the film’s cinematic potential. Andie MacDowell stars as Julia Roth, an American mega-star who travels to a small British clinic for chemotherapy. Julia’s star is on the wane, having just endured a West End flop, and she’s attempting to go incognito at the chemo clinic. She hasn’t told anyone, including her manager or daughter, about her diagnosis of colon cancer, and she thinks she can muscle through a few rounds of chemo on her own, without being discovered. The premise of “My Happy Ending,” set in one room over one day, is somewhat slight, but there’s nothing insubstantial about a woman coming to a profound realization about her life thanks to a surprising encounter with unexpected new allies.
“My Happy Ending” may at times feel modest, but the lessons imparted are far from disposable, including the idea that life is too short to deny oneself treats or wear uncomfortable shoes. Those may be surface level messages, but the conversations about our choices in life — or death — are deep and resonant. A happy ending doesn’t always have to look the same for everyone; each one is different and deeply personal. 1:29. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘OF AN AGE’: In 2022, Macedonian Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski established himself as a talent to watch with his daring directorial debut, the folk horror film “You Won’t Be Alone,” about a witch body-jumping through a Macedonian village, experiencing the vast spectrum of love and cruelty life has to offer. His sophomore feature, “Of an Age,” is quite different — a high school coming-of-age story set in 1999 and 2010, about a Serbian immigrant teenager, Kol (Elias Anton), growing up in Melbourne, coming to terms with his sexuality and experiencing first love. Despite the genre contrast, there’s a commonality between the two films in the way that Stolevski captures the aching beauty snatched in life’s darker moments — the heart of the matter remains the same, the bittersweet tone just as poignant. “Of an Age,” which takes place over the course of two 24-hour periods set 11 years apart, is like “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” combined into one film, in which two characters are rocked by a chance encounter and reckon with it years later. 1:39. 4 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘YOUR PLACE OR MINE’: In a funnier world, Zoe Chao and Tig Notaro are starring in their own romantic comedy together. Meantime, in the real world, they’re ringers in support of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, the ones running what we’ll charitably call “the show” in “Your Place or Mine.” No question mark on that title. None needed. It’s a flat business proposition, like the movie. Between Witherspoon, Kutcher and writer/firsttime feature director Aline Brosh McKenna, we’re talking roughly 70 years’ collective experience in the rom-com genre. So why is this one so bleh? Visually, the film is pretty, but also pretty lifeless. Streaming on Netflix. 1:51. 1 ½ stars.
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.