Films out this week.
‘The Space Between Us’
Matt Damon calls himself a Martian, but he’s not from there. Gardner Elliot is, in “The Space Between Us.”
Gardner (Asa Butterfield) is born on Mars during a mission to colonize the planet, but his astronaut mother dies while giving birth and has never revealed who the father is. That leaves the boy to grow up on Mars without ever knowing Earth; although he has encountered a few people during interstellar visits, his only real tastes of the home planet are through online conversations with a girl (Britt Robertson).
So, when he turns 16, Gardner decides to go on a road trip to Earth, only to discover that his internal organs aren’t compatible with the planet’s atmosphere. His mission: Find out as much as he can, including how he came to be, before it kills him.
Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino and Janet Montgomery head up the supporting cast.
Originally scheduled for release in July 2016, “The Space Between Us” was pushed back to Dec. 16 — the same opening date as “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Mercifully, the movie was moved again, to this Friday.
“The Space Between Us” is rated PG-13 for brief sensuality and language. It runs for 120 minutes.
‘Rings’
Once upon a time, there was a movie about a video that, if you watched it, it would kill you after seven days. Then there was a movie about the character in the video coming back to kill you, even after the video was destroyed.
Now, there’s a movie about the cursed video in which ... there’s another movie.
“Rings” is the long-delayed third movie in the “Ring” franchise, itself a remake of a Japanese horror hit.
In Round 3, a young woman, anxious when her boyfriend gets sucked into the whole killer-video cycle, steps in to save him. In the process, however, she discovers there’s a movie within the “movie” on the video that, once seen, unleashes a different kind of horror. Or a similar type of screen horror, if the scares in the trailer are any indication.
For a movie made by a studio that hasn’t been in bankruptcy, “Rings” has had a tortured route to theaters. Originally announced for release on Nov. 13, 2015, it was pushed to April 2016, then to Oct. 28 and then, finally to this Friday.
“Rings” is rated PG-13 for violence, thematic elements, some sexuality and brief drug material. It runs for 117 minutes.
‘The Comedian’
Have you heard the one about Robert De Niro playing an aging stand-up comic?
He does in “The Comedian,” the second-act dramedy directed by veteran Taylor Hackford and co-written by stand-up comedian Jeffrey Ross.
De Niro plays an abrasive comedian with a problem: He wants to reinvent himself, but his audiences just want him to “play” the character he used to play on TV. After getting into a fight with a “fan,” he winds up doing community service and meets the daughter (Leslie Mann) of a real estate mogul, who inspires him to get his act — make that acts — together.
Danny DeVito, Patti LuPone, Edie Falco and Harvey Keitel co-star.
At one point held back to get De Niro’s performance in the awards-season mix, “The Comedian” is not getting raves.
“De Niro may have given one of the defining performances of his career as a talentless comedian (in 1983’s ‘The King of Comedy’), but there’s no doubt he could play a talented one superbly,” Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote. “But it would take a sharper, nervier movie than ‘The Comedian,’ whose promising setup and shambling rhythms are ultimately deflated by a soggy final punchline, to see that promise realized.”
“The Comedians” is rated R for pervasive language. It runs for 119 minutes.