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‘ANTLERS’: Filmmaker Scott Cooper makes his first foray into the horror genre with the creature feature “Antlers,” co-written with C. Henry Chaisson and Nick Antosca, and produced by monster maestro Guillermo del Toro. Adapted from a short story, “The Quiet Boy,” by Nick Antosca, the setting of “Antlers” has been moved from West Virginia to a foggy small town in Oregon. While the mythology and psychology remains frighteningly vague in Antosca’s story, in the film it’s made more explicit, to largely frustrating results. Our heroine is Julia (Keri Russell), who has returned home to Oregon to live with her brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons), the local sheriff, after the death of their abusive father. As a teacher at the local elementary school, she takes a special interest in one of her students, Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas), a bullied boy who is seemingly suffering from neglect. Lucas writes terrifying fairy tales with accompanying illustrations, depicting the harrowing lives of Big Wolf, Middle Wolf and Little Wolf. Worried about his welfare, and especially interested in saving a kid from an abusive situation, Julia follows Lucas around town and visits his home looking for his father, Frank (Scott Haze), and younger brother. In poking around trying to save a vulnerable kid, she unwittingly unleashes an ancient evil, which had only been precariously kept at bay by young Lucas’ efforts.
1:39. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune news service
‘DUNE’: On screen, Frank Herbert’s Baron Harkonnen-sized 1965 novel “Dune” best suits a director operating in a pre-“Star Wars” mode of storytelling. The patient, densely embroidered narrative invests heavily in themes of environmental, ecological and colonialist exploitation. Earnest sentiments such as “When you take a life, you take your own” go against the grain of most successful Hollywood-financed science-fiction forays. Even in a post“Star Wars” smash such as “Avatar,” still the biggest hit in the universe, the point — setting aside the anguish over genocidal imperialist conquerors — is how many enemies a noble warrior can kill under pressure, in a hurry, so that we feel good and (per “Star Wars”) wouldn’t mind putting quarters in the same game again right away. “Dune” defies all that. So does its latest screen adaptation, a lot of which I love. 2:35. 3 stars. Streaming on HBO Max. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘ETERNALS’: “Eternals” introduces a slew of Marvel Cinematic Universe firsts. First same-sex kiss. First tender love scene between two hetero superheroes — discreet, brief but enough to remind you how much of the comic book genre is about looking good, alone, instead of quality time in pairs. Unfortunately, another first: “Eternals” is co-writer and director Chloe Zhao’s first dull movie. After “Songs My Brother Taught Me” (2015), the sublime neo-Western “The Rider” (2017) and her Oscar-winning “Nomadland” (2020), nearly as good as “The Rider,” this movie is more risk-prone than the majority of Marvel titles. Yet it frustrates, even beyond a screenplay full of self-competing interests. And as far as MCU fatigue goes — well, at this point, it goes pretty far. On the other hand: There’s a series waiting to be built around Lauren Ridloff ’s superspeedy cyclone-generator Makkari. Like Ridloff, this female iteration of the male character introduced in the 1976-78 “Eternals” comic books is deaf. In a packed ensemble, in which even Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek struggle for some real estate, Ridloff emerges as the poetic lifeline. Zhao clearly responds to both the performer and the character, taking the extra beats to establish Makkari’s presence in this paradox: a leisurely scrum. 2:37. 2 stars. — Michael Phillips
‘FINCH’: A surprisingly upbeat apocalyptic tale, “Finch” stars Tom Hanks in the title role as a man who, sensing his days are numbered, builds an android to look after his dog. Judging by the barren landscape empty of life (human or otherwise) and his own wheezing and coughing, Finch’s last breath probably isn’t too far off. But until then, it’s Hanks versus the elements — including his own frazzled psyche — and if that sounds familiar, like a dystopian version of “Cast Away,” well, the film itself doesn’t offer many counterpoints in this solo survival story of a man who manages to retain a modicum of humor and ingenuity even as he stares down
his own mortality. 1:55. 2 ½ stars. Streaming on Apple TV+. — Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune
‘THE FRENCH DISPATCH’: The great Hollywood film composer David Raksin said it: “None of my music should ever be played for the first time, since it only confuses people.” I’ve read several colleagues (who traveled the festival circuit earlier this year) say something similar about Wes Anderson’s new film, “The French Dispatch” — that it doesn’t benefit from a second viewing, it requires one, so elaborate is its visual construction and production detail. That’s another way of saying there’s a lot going on, and you won’t catch it all the first time. But in his fastidious, exacting, extraordinarily blinkered creation, writer-director Anderson this time has driven straight into a cul-de-sac, stranding every sort of good and great actor in the cinematic equivalent of a design meeting. 1:48. 2 stars. — Michael Phillips
‘LAST NIGHT IN SOHO’:
Nostalgia can offer history a brighter, more exciting
and decidedly rose-colored sheen. This is the question filmmaker Edgar Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns pick up in “Last Night in Soho,” a neon-drenched, blood-soaked trip through the swinging ’60s of Soho, London, as experienced through modern eyes. In this giallo-inspired psychological slasher film, Wright and Wilson-Cairns explore the psychic connection between the past and present, investigating the spirits that haunt the spaces we occupy. It’s a colorful, hallucinatory throwback, and a wild ride through the mind. 1:56. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘PASSING’: The closing shot of “Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s sleek and transfixing adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, peers down from a great height at a courtyard on a cold December night, a vision partially obscured by falling snow and set to the graceful tinkling of piano chords. The image has a hushed, frozen-in-time loveliness that feels faintly unreal. You almost expect the camera to pull back and reveal that this piercingly sad story has been unfolding inside a snow globe, trapping its characters in exquisite clothes, repetitive motions and the slow-shifting mores of a society that has left them scant room to breathe. That society is 1920s New York, a world that Larsen rendered in deft, economical strokes but which emerges here in a blur of cloche hats and flapper dresses, and also in the blasts of jazz and snatches of gossip swirling around a crowded dance floor. Against this backdrop, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and her doctor husband, Brian (Andre Holland), are the very picture of Black uppermiddle-class propriety. They have two young sons, a stately Harlem brownstone and a stable marriage, though not too stable to be knocked off-balance by Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga), an old friend whose sudden reappearance in Irene’s life dredges up long-hidden anxieties and closely guarded secrets. 1:38. Not ranked. Streaming Nov. 10 on Netflix. — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
‘SPENCER’: “Spencer” labels itself “a fable from a true tragedy,” which means it’s a biopic unafraid of acknowledging its speculative inventions. Director Pablo Larrain’s coolly compelling chamber drama — dominated by royal chambers perpetually in need of better heating — tips you off at the start as to its central tragedian’s frame of mind, and spirit. Lady Diana Spencer is played by Kristen Stewart in a performance surprising in its precision and quality only to those who’ve underestimated her since “Into the Wild.” 1:51. 3 stars.
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.
WWE Friday Night SmackDown Live on
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