‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
No jokes about the Force being strong with this one.
But the new installment in the movies’ biggest-ever saga, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” picks up where the seventh movie in the series, 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” left off.
Discovering she may have some Jedilike connection, Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeks out Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) for guidance. “I need someone to show me my place in all this,” she says (at least in the trailers).
As the resistance against the First Order continues its fight, the Order’s dark prince, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) seeks his own path, after killing his father (Han Solo/Harrison Ford) in “The Force Awakens.” His mother, General Leia (the late Carrie Fisher), stands in his way.
There are new creatures, new costars (Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro) and a much longer running time (more than 21⁄2 hours) than the previous editions.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, whose credits include some of the century’s smartest thrillers (”Brick,” “Looper”), “The Last Jedi” is getting mixed reviews.
“‘The Last Jedi’ possesses the same reverence for the galaxy Lucas created (that ‘The Force Awakens’ had), paying homage in all the right places … while barely advancing the narrative,” Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote.
‘The Shape of Water’
You’d be hard-pressed to find a filmmaker with a bigger imagination than Guillermo del Toro. His latest, “The Shape of Water,” just makes the point all over again.
Set in Cold War America in 1962, the fable centers on a lonely worker (Sally Hawkins) in a high-security government lab who winds up bonding with the lab’s prize possession: a Creature from the Black Lagoon-type being that’s part of a super-secret experiment. Their connection leads her to take a stand, and a struggle erupts.
Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones and Michael Stuhlbarg co-star.
“The Shape of Water” is one of the best-reviewed movies of the season, and the movie received a leading seven Golden Globe nominations this week.
“It’s a noir fairy tale that touches on the cruelty of man, as well as the heart wanting what (and who) it wants,” USA TODAY critic Brian Truitt wrote in his 31⁄2-star review.
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Wrestler-turned-actor John Cena voices Ferdinand, in a voice cast that also includes Kate McKinnon, Gina Rodriguez and Anthony Anderson.
“Ferdinand” is rated PG for rude humor and some thematic elements. It runs for 107 minutes.
‘Wonder Wheel’
Woody Allen returns to Coney Island in his latest movie, “Wonder Wheel,” but unlike his visits there in “Annie Hall” and other classic movies, this isn’t a warmly nostalgic trip, even though it’s set in the 1950s.
Kate Winslet plays the frustrated wife of a carousel operator (Jim Belushi) who becomes involved with a handsome lifeguard (Justin Timberlake). To complicate matters, her husband’s estranged daughter (Juno Temple) shows up, looking for protection from gangsters on her trail.
Critics haven’t liked “Wonder Wheel”; in fact, according to movie-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it’s the worst-reviewed movie of Allen’s directorial career. In her 11⁄2-star review, Seattle Times critic Moira Macdonald called it “a flat melodrama in which some lovely camerawork and a ferocious central performance from Winslet can’t conceal the rote tiredness of it all.”
Opening Wednesday ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’
Turns out those warnings about video games were right.
In “Jumanji: Welcome Jungle,” four high school kids stumble on an old video-game console that, when they start up the game cartridge inside it, they find themselves literally
to
the pulled into the video game.
The trouble is: Instead of looking and acting like themselves, they’re the avatars they’ve chosen in the game, in kind of a bizzaro “Gilligan’s Island”: The gamer becomes a super-buff adventurer (Dwayne Johnson), the jock becomes a height-challenged brainaic (Kevin Hart), the school’s hot girl is a middleaged professor (Jack Black) and the shy girl becomes a warrior princess (Karen Gillan). And oh, yeah: They have to survive the game, not just win it.
Inspired by and connected to the 1995 Robin Williams movie “Jumanji,” “Welcome to the Jungle” “aims to please and succeeds, a funny family entertainment product that subverts more expectations than it was obligated to contractually,” The Wrap reviewer Dave White wrote.
“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is rated PG-13 for suggestive content and some language. It runs for 118 minutes.
‘The Greatest Showman’
Remember last year, when “La La Land” had some people talking about the return of the Hollywood musical?
The makers of “The Greatest Showman” hope it wasn’t crazy talk.
The original musical — with songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who shared Oscars for original song and original score last year with Nicolet High School alum Justin Hurwitz for “La La Land” — tells the bigger-than-life story of showman P.T. Barnum. Hugh Jackman plays Barnum, with Michelle Williams, Zac Efron, Zendaya and Rebecca Ferguson.