‘Lego Batman Movie,’ more.
‘The Lego Batman Movie’
Sounds like “The Lego Batman Movie” is built from the same bricks as “The Lego Movie.”
Will Arnett again voices the Lego Caped Crusader, a gruff crime-fighting loner. That attitude is put to the test when the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) strikes, and help comes in the forms of a fanboy named Robin (Michael Cera) and the police commissioner’s daughter (Rosario Dawson).
Critics are loving “Lego Batman” so far. Wrote Stephen Witty in his 3-star review for the Newark Star-Ledger: “Maybe Warner Bros. should make all their DC movies with Legos?”
“The Lego Batman Movie” is rated PG for rude humor. It runs for 92 minutes.
‘Fifty Shades Darker’
When we last left Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, she had left him, not because of his sadomasochistic ways but because he wasn’t letting her close. In “Fifty Shades Darker,” based on the second book in the bestselling, bondage-themed romance trilogy, they reach an understanding — only to have his past return to threaten their future.
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are back as Ana and Christian, respectively.
“Fifty Shades Darker” is rated R for an abundance of sexual content, some nudity and language. It runs for 120 minutes.
‘John Wick: Chapter 2’
The retired hitman played by Keanu Reeves is forced, again, to return to his special set of skills when a world of assassins comes after him in “John Wick: Chapter 2.” Laurence Fishburne, Common and Ruby Rose are among those in on the kill.
The reviews are solid, despite or because of the movie’s high body count. “The biggest compliment I can think to pay ‘John Wick Chapter 2’ is that I lost track of the body count within the first 15 minutes,” Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty wrote in his B-plus review.
“John Wick: Chapter 2” is rated R for pervasive violence, some language and brief nudity. It runs for 122 minutes.
‘Oscar Nominated Short Films’
One of the joys of February is the return of short films to the big screen, with the “Oscar Nominated Short Films.”
This year’s program of eight animated shorts includes Oscar nominees “Blind Vaysha,” about a girl whose left eye can only see the past while her right eye only sees the future; “Borrowed Time,” in which an Old West sheriff returns to the scene of a tragedy from his past; “Pear Cider and Cigarettes,” on a friendship pushed to the limit when one friend needs a liver transplant while overseas; “Pearl,” about a musician who travels the country with his young daughter; and “Piper,” a Pixar short following a sandpiper hatchling as she leaves her nest for the first time to find food.
The nominees in the live-action program are “Ennemis Intérieurs,” a conflict between a police officer and a man seeking naturalization in civil-war-torn 1990s Algeria; “La Femme et le TGV,” a Swiss story about a woman and the conductor of the express train that has zipped by her house every day for years; “Silent Nights,” about a Danish woman who falls in love with an undocumented immigrant from Ghana; “Sing,” in which a Hungarian girl sets out to discover why her school’s choir director is so mean to her; and “Timecode,” about parking lot security guards finding a way to cut through the boredom.
“The Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animation” is unrated, but “Pear Brandy and Cigarettes,” the last movie on the program, includes violence, language, sex and drug use. The program runs for 86 minutes. “The Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action” is also unrated; it runs for 130 minutes.
‘Paterson’
Amid the noise and haste of 2017 rides “Paterson,” a placid story about a placid man whose life is fueled by conversation, poetry and finding love in daily life.
Adam Driver plays the title character, a bus driver in the New Jersey city of the same name. Along his route and in his life, he picks up ideas and snippets of dialogue that fuel the poems he writes in a notebook he shows no one, not even his wife.
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, “Paterson” has quietly received some of the best reviews of the year. Arizona Republic critic Bill Goodykoontz gave the movie 4 stars (out of 5), writing that the movie’s simple approach makes it “a hopeful film.” “Paterson” is rated R for some language. It runs for 118 minutes.