Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan and Justin Chang.
Battle of the Sexes
This enjoyable and entertaining film, with the gifted and innately likable actors Emma Stone and Steve Carell as Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, is most involving when it deals not with sports or society but with the personal struggles both players, especially King, were going through in the run-up to their 1973 tennis match. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.
Blade Runner 2049
You can quibble with aspects of it, but as shaped by Denis Villeneuve and his masterful creative team, this high-end sequel puts you firmly and unassailably in another world of its own devising, and that is no small thing. (Kenneth Turan) R.
Brawl in Cell Block 99
Starring Vince Vaughn in a transformative turn as a man on a mission behind bars, this grimly mesmerizing pulp powerhouse from S. Craig Zahler (“Bone Tomahawk”) takes its time steering us toward its violent and entirely satisfying destination. (Justin Chang) NR.
Dunkirk
Both intimate and epic, as emotional as it is tensionfilled, Christopher Nolan’s immersive World War II drama is being ballyhooed as a departure for the bravura filmmaker, but in truth, the reason it succeeds so masterfully is that it is anything but. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.
The Florida Project
Absorbing us in the day-today rhythms of life at a dumpy Florida motel complex, home to a wildly spirited 6-year-old girl named Moonee (the startling Brooklynn Prince), Sean Baker (”Tangerine”) goes to a place few of us know and emerges with a masterpiece of empathy and imagination. (Justin Chang) R.
Girls Trip
Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and a revelatory Tiffany Haddish play four women renewing the bonds of friendship on a New Orleans weekend getaway in this hilariously raunchy and sensationally assured new comedy from director Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man”). (Justin Chang) R.
Lucky
As a small-town curmudgeon contemplating his own mortality, Harry Dean Stanton gives one of his final and greatest performances in this insistently low-key, dryly funny valentine to the actor’s life and career. (Justin Chang) NR.
mother!
Jennifer Lawrence plays the young wife of a poet (Javier Bardem) besieged by a number of unexpected visitors in this darkly exhilarating house-of-horrors thriller by writer-director Darren Aronofsky. (Justin Chang) R.
Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
Even if surfing is not a major interest, Hamilton’s personal journey is extraordinary enough that we feel privileged to have such an intimate documentary glimpse into how it all went down. (Kenneth Turan) NR.