NOW IN THEATERS
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
Divisive director Zack Snyder returns for what could be considered the sequel to his 2013 Superman movie Man of Steel but is, more accurately, a prequel to 2017’s
The Justice League Part One. As such, he crams in a lot of set-up, introducing Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) to Batman (Ben Affleck), Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) in a world that is trying to figure out what to do when a being of Superman’s capabilities touches down. This is all too much plot for the style-over-story filmmaker to bear, and the movie collapses before the heroes come to blows in the finale. There’s much to like: Gadot steals the show, Affleck is the best Batman yet, the score by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL offers wonders, and the effects and action are all top-notch. It doesn’t fully come together, however, and the dour tone will serve as many viewers’ Kryptonite. Rated PG-13. 153 minutes. Screens in 3-D and 2-D at Regal Stadium 14. Screens in 2-D only at Violet Crown, DreamCatcher. (Robert Ker)
THE BIG SHORT
Adam McKay’s movie is by turns funny, frightening, suspenseful, informative, and tragic. It examines the 2008 near-collapse of the world financial system from the perspectives of four analysts, or teams, who had the vision to recognize what nobody else saw coming: the rottenness of the system, the worthlessness of the pack-
aged mortgages on which the economy was gliding, and the inevitable devastating crash when the bubble burst. They bet against the economy. They bet big. And they won. That McKay is able to explain the financial collapse that cost so many people their homes and savings — and make it entertaining — is a remarkable achievement. Terrific performances come from a cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Christian Bale. Rated R. 130 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
THE BOSS
In Melissa McCarthy’s latest comedy, she plays a Martha Stewart-like mogul who is recently released from prison after serving a sentence for insider trading. Eager to mend her image while contending with a lot of angry friends and associates, she moves in with an employee named Claire (Kristen Bell) and finds a way back to the top through Claire’s daughter (Ella Anderson). Peter Dinklage and Kathy Bates also star. Rated R. 99 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
CITY OF GOLD
This accessible, enlightening documentary by Laura Gabbert profiles Los Angeles–based Jonathan Gold, the only food writer thus far to win a Pulitzer. A plainspoken, unpretentious, well-informed, and generous champion of the taco truck, the hot-dog stand, and the stripmall curry house, Gold navigates the streets of Los Angeles in his pickup truck, visiting Tehrangeles, Little Ethiopia, Koreatown, and his favorite spots for Thai coffee, mole, and doro wat. We spy on him as he writes on his laptop. We learn a little about his upbringing and meet his wife and two children. The film is loose, relaxed, and admiring, which means it’s also short on emotional stakes, but it succeeds in its mission: to paint a picture of Los Angeles as a microcosm of America and the American dream. Rated R. 96 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Laurel Gladden)
CONCERTO: A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY
Director Phil Grabsky may be one of cinema’s hardest-working documentarians. His “In Search Of” series on the great composers and “Exhibition on Screen” series about major art exhibits engage the audience with stories set in the present that illuminate and offer insight on the past.
Concerto: A Beethoven Journey is no different. Four years in the making, the documentary follows renowned Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who performs Beethoven’s five piano concertos at more than 100 international venues. Ove Andsnes’ narrative is the backdrop for an examination of Beethoven’s relationship to the concertos. Exclusive access to Ove Andsnes on tour means there’s no skimping on the music. When it comes to Beethoven, Grabsky’s film is authoritative but not definitive. He finds an uncommon angle to provide a fascinating glimpse of the subject of a contemporary musician and his source inspiration. Ove Andsnes’ understanding of the composer challenges the notion that Beethoven was a reclusive, antisocial artist. The pianist finds the passion in the music and marries it to his own passion for playing. The result is often beautiful and stirring. Not rated. 93 minutes. The Screen. (Michael Abatemarco)
DEADPOOL
This spinoff of the X-Men franchise thumbs its nose at superhero tropes right from the opening credits, which include a list of stereotypes (a British villain, a hot chick) in lieu of the characters’ names. From there, the indestructible super-antihero Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) breaks the fourth wall and makes crude and self-referential gags while en route to killing the British villain (Ed Skrein) who disfigured him and winning back his hot chick (Morena Baccarin) with the help of some D-listers from the X-Men. The film doesn’t avoid the clichés it lampoons, particularly in telling the character’s origin story — which is like every superhero backstory, only with more cancer and torture — but the jokes often work, even if they can be overly puerile. Deadpool provides an irreverent new angle on the spandex genre, but it’s never quite as madcap as it thinks it is. Rated R. 108 minutes. Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT
Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s film is a mesmerizing tale set in the Amazon rainforest, with outstanding black-and-white cinematography by David Gallego. The story follows two narratives, one set in the early 1900s and the other in the 1940s, and moves back and forth between them to follow the adventures of two men on parallel journeys, each searching for the rare yakruna, a flower with valuable healing properties. Through the movie’s nonlinear structure, we see imperialism’s lasting effects on the rainforest, and how the rise of industry has led to loss of habitat and violence due to the rubber trade. Embrace of the Serpent calls attention to the tremendous loss of knowledge and culture in the Amazon but does so without being didactic. Not rated. 125 minutes. In Spanish, German, Catalan, and Portuguese with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Michael Abatemarco)
EYE IN THE SKY
Helen Mirren plays Katherine Powell, an Army colonel leading a drone mission against a terrorist cell in Kenya. When an innocent nine-year-old girl enters the target area, she must make a difficult decision about whether to proceed or not. Alan Rickman co-stars in one of his final roles. Rated R. 102 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Not reviewed)
GOD’S NOT DEAD 2
In the two years since the breakout hit God’s Not Dead, God still hasn’t died. To prove it, a community stands up for a teacher (Melissa Joan Hart) who lands in hot water when she expresses her faith to a classroom. Robin Givens and Ernie Hudson costar, and Christian rock band Newsboys perform. Rated PG. 121 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
HARDCORE HENRY
The first-person perspective has been very common in actionbased video games for some time now, and this experimental movie attempts to bring that experience to the big screen. Audiences will see the story through the eyes of Henry, an ordinary man who must do extraordinary things when his wife (Haley Bennett) is kidnapped by a group of mercenaries. Tim Roth plays Henry’s father. Rated R. 96 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS
The spunky, capable Sally Field lifts this by-thenumbers romantic comedy with a May-November twist. Doris (Field) is an eccentric sixty-something office worker who is smitten with her company’s new young art director, the handsome if slightly dorky John (Max Greenfield). Inspired by a self-help guru (Peter Gallagher) by the notion that “impossible” can be read as “I’m possible,” she sheds her mousy ways and blossoms into a music hipster, with internet advice from the teenage daughter of her best friend Roz (the great Tyne Daly). Director Michael Showalter puts us through some excruciating bits of comic awkwardness, and gives a nod to the survival of the sex drive in the social security-generation. Sometimes it’s very funny, sometimes it’s moving, but ultimately the movie plays it safe along the generation gap. Rated R. 95 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
I SAW THE LIGHT
We now have our Hank Williams biopic for this generation. And it is dead in the back seat. The brunt of the telling by writer/director Marc Abraham gets bogged down in dreary scenes of alcoholism, bickering, partying, womanizing, divorce papers, and contractual squabbles. None of it feels like much fun. True, Williams (Tom Hiddleston) sang a lot about heartbreak, but he also showed a joy in performing that connected him with his audiences, and that joy seldom makes itself felt on screen. Instead, there seems to be an increasing contempt for audiences, colleagues, concerts, and the music itself as Williams sinks deeper into alcohol and drugs. Williams’ life flamed out early, when he was found dead of heart failure in the back seat of his powder-blue 1952 Cadillac on the way to a New Year’s Day concert in Canton, Ohio. He was twenty-nine years old. Rated R. 123 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
JOURNEY IN SENSUALITY: ANNA HALPRIN & RODIN
This documentary shows one of the great 20thcentury dance artists, now ninety-five, creating a new work. The dances, inspired by Rodin statues in Paris, are developed mostly outdoors at the beach on the Mendocino Coast, in California. Journey in Sensuality is concerned with process and will fascinate those interested in the artistic way. While images of bodies moving in slow motion may not seem like exciting dance, the cinematography and musical score help to promote a kind of Zen state, and the combination of sand, tidewater, and naked skin on film seems a fitting tribute to both choreographer and sculptor. Not rated. 52 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Michael Wade Simpson)
LONDON HAS FALLEN
This sequel to 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen takes the action from the White House to the United Kingdom. Gerard Butler is once more Secret Service agent Mike Banning, in London for the funeral of the prime minister. When Banning discovers a shadowy plot to kill all of the world leaders at the funeral, it’s up to him to save the day. Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, and Aaron Eckhart are among the returning cast members. Rated R. 99 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
MARGUERITE
French movie star Catherine Frot finds many dimensions in the title character, a wealthy baroness with a laughably awful voice who nurtures her delusion that she is a formidable concert singer. Egged on by sycophants, she sets her sights ever higher and achieves a sort of transcendence that overlaps with derangement. Inspired, at some distance, by the life of the American singer Florence Foster Jenkins, the film is handsome to behold, and the scenes are consistently interesting in their details. Rated R. 129 minutes. In French with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (James M. Keller)
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
Alton Meyer, a child with supernatural abilities, has been abducted from a cult in Central Texas. He’s in the backseat of a getaway car hurtling toward an
undisclosed location and an unknown mission, his escape aided and abetted by his father (Michael Shannon) and a family friend (Joel Edgerton). Meanwhile, an NSA agent (Adam Driver) is quickly figuring out both the child’s destination and his potential for destruction; the cult’s leader (Sam Shepard) just wants the kid back so Alton can save the religious group from its impending doomsday; and Alton’s mother (Kirsten Dunst) is beginning to think that he might not belong in this world at all. Midnight Special is writer/director Jeff Nichols’ (Mud, Shotgun
Stories) most mainstream and well-financed feature yet, and displays Nichols’ signature propensity for grace juxtaposed with inexplicable strangeness. But the filmmaker’s habit of keeping his audience guessing by revealing only the most essential mechanisms of the plot works against him here. Since we are mostly blind to the stakes, the otherwise-powerful finale is tempered by distance and mild confusion on the part of the viewer. Still, the images are indelible, and Dunst and Shannon movingly embody the parent-child bond in the face of sci-fi interference. Rated PG-13. 112 minutes. Violet Crown. (Molly Boyle)
MIRACLES FROM HEAVEN
This adaptation of the faith-based memoir by Christy Beam (Jennifer Garner) examines an event in the life of Christy’s daughter, Anna (Kylie Rogers). Anna suffers from a digestive disorder that forces her to use feeding tubes. When she falls down the hollow of a cottonwood tree and survives a neardeath experience, the disorder disappears from her body. Rated PG. 109 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2
It’s been years since Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) tied the knot in the indie smash My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Their marriage is on the rocks, as their daughter (Elena Kampouris) prepares for college. Meanwhile, Toula’s parents (Lainie Kazan and Michael Constantine) discover they’ve never legally been hitched, leading to another big fat Greek wedding. Rated PG-13. 94 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
MY GOLDEN DAYS
The French title of writer-director Arnaud Desplechin’s film says it better – Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse (Three Memories of My Youth). Those memories are recalled by a middle-aged Paul Dédalus, played by Mathieu Amalric, as he returns to Paris from Tajikistan after many years abroad (Amalric first played Paul, Desplechin’s alter ego, 20 ago in My Sex Life, or ... How I Got Into an Argument). His first two recollections are of childhood trauma and an adventure during a class trip to the Soviet Union. The dominant one is of a romance, beginning when he is nineteen (and played by newcomer Quentin Dolmaire) with Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet, another enchanting newcomer, reminiscent of a young Jeanne Moreau), a preternaturally sexy schoolgirl. The film circles back at the end to the present-day Paul, and gives Amalric a remarkable scene of fierce intensity that knocks the film clear off its tracks, in a good way. Rated R. 120 minutes. In French with subtitles. The Screen. (Jonathan Richards)
RAMS
Two brothers in a sheep-raising community — the film is set in Baroardalur, Iceland — have nurtured a frigid silence for 40 years, despite being neighbors. The bucolic lifestyle of the villagers is shattered when a veterinarian determines that a dreaded disease has infected some sheep and all of their herds must be destroyed. The catastrophe intensifies the enmity of the brothers, but before the end they must cooperate to survive ... but do they? Rated R. 93 minutes. The Screen. (Paul Weideman)
10 CLOVERFIELD LANE
This follow-up to the giant monster film Cloverfield may confound anyone expecting a traditional sequel. The movies are like two long episodes of The Twilight Zone, both shepherded by producer J.J. Abrams, sharing a supernatural slant — and that’s it. This time, a woman (Mary-Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up from a car accident in a cellar. The strange man with her (John Goodman) insists that an apocalyptic event has occurred outside and that he is keeping her safe, but she’s not so sure. It mostly plays out as a claustrophobic horror film, and Goodman is menacing in one of his darker roles, but it’s hard to stay invested in the basement drama with the lingering mystery above. When that mystery is finally revealed, it’s too silly to truly satisfy. Rated PG-13. 105 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Robert Ker)
THE WAVE
“We have registered 300 unstable mountainsides in Norway today. It’s only a matter of time before the next big rockslide.” Thus begins the Norwegian flick The Wave. This story is a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller that boasts amazing special effects and beautiful scenic photography. It’s set in the town of Geiranger, nestled among Norway’s mountains and fjords. Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is a geologist monitoring unstable areas in the region for impending rock slides. The town was devastated by one such event in 1905, which resulted in a massive tsunami, and it wouldn’t be a disaster movie if such a thing didn’t happen again. The Wave grabs you from the opening scenes and doesn’t let up. It’s a simple story, and while it doesn’t escape genre clichés, it’s effectively told, with some fine acting by the cast and a realistic look and feel that puts most Hollywood disaster films to shame. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun. Rated R. 105 minutes. In Norwegian with subtitles. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Michael Abatemarco)
WHERE TO INVADE NEXT
In this good-hearted documentary of ideas, Michael Moore sets off for Europe to see what other countries have that we don’t, and he claims what he can for the Stars and Stripes. He invades Italy first, then France, and cuts a swath through other European countries, with a side trip to North Africa. In each place he focuses on an aspect of the culture — political, economic, or educational — that he can bring home as booty. On one level, this movie might seem to smack of wide-eyed naiveté. But Moore’s thrust is subversively canny. He hasn’t invaded Europe to expose its rotten underbelly; he’s there to capture the best of its ideas. In doing so, he provides for all of us — whether we’re liberal, conservative, libertarian, or marching to the drummer of our choosing — a smorgasbord of ideas to chew on. Rated R. 110 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
The wonderful Tina Fey has accumulated a lot of goodwill for her witty television work, but she has trouble shedding that image when she takes to film and tries to disappear into a character. This messy vehicle isn’t much help. As Kim Baker (shortened by an “r” from the real-life model, Kim Barker), a desk jockey at a New York news station who volunteers for on-camera reporter duty in Afghanistan in 2003, she plunges into a chaotic war-zone frenzy of action and partying. It’s at least an hour before you care what’s going on. It’s nominally a comedy, but the laughs are rare enough to remember them individually. New Mexico stands in for Afghanistan, and does well. There are good actors on hand, but all of them, including the ones playing Afghans, are Anglos (Alfred Molina, Christopher Abbott) with facial hair and accents. The title is from the military phonetic alphabet for WTF, a sentiment that applies here. Rated R. 112 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
ZOOTOPIA
Disney’s latest animated comedy takes place in the town of its title — an impressively realized and visually clever city full of talking animals. It is here that a rabbit police officer (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), fresh from the country on her first day on the job, learns that certain animals are disappearing. She forms an unlikely alliance with a fox (Jason Bateman), a small-time con man, to blow the lid off the conspiracy. The trail perhaps takes them on one plot turn too many, adding to a slightly bloated running time. However, the mystery is satisfying, the animation is extraordinary, the jokes are cute and funny, and the moral — about trust, understanding, and not judging others or letting yourself be judged based on race (in this case, animal species) — is touching and timely. Rated PG. 108 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Robert Ker)