NOW IN THEATERS
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
This sequel to the 2010 smash Alice in Wonderland doesn’t have director Tim Burton, but many cast members return — most important, Johnny Depp reprises his Mad Hatter role. James Bobin directs this installment, set three years after the first film, in which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) learns that the Mad Hatter is getting madder and sets out to travel through time to save him and all of Wonderland. In his final production credit, Alan Rickman once more voices the Caterpillar. Rated PG. 113 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal DeVargas; Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE
It might seem as if there is little movie material in the Angry
Birds mobile app and video game, which allows users to catapult cartoon birds into various structures in order to eliminate pigs. Don’t underestimate Hollywood’s ability to make a movie out of anything that’s been on a T-shirt at Target. This adaptation centers on three misfit birds (voiced by Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, and Danny McBride) who must stop the pigs that have taken over their island. The trailer features jokes about vomit and drinking urine, and Sean Penn voices one of the pigs, so all bets are off as to what you can expect. Rated PG. 97 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
A BIGGER SPLASH
Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love) has taken his title from a 1967 David Hockney painting and his plot from the 1969 Alain Delon thriller La Piscine. Tilda Swinton is Marianne Lane, a rock legend whose onstage persona seems lifted from
The Lord of the Rings. But we hardly get to hear her — she’s blown out her voice and is recovering mutely from a throat operation. She’s gone to ground with her lover Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) on Pantelleria, a windswept island in the Strait of Sicily. Who should show up but her former lover and record producer, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), an ebullient, coke-fueled force of nature, with his Lolita-ish daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson) in tow. Who does not want to do what to whom? That’s the question that hangs over this atmospheric, carnal, scenic adventure. Flecks of information from the past are doled out like fish food, the bare scenery (human and island) is inviting, and the plot surges and drags through a little too much time. Rated R. 125 minutes. In English and Italian with subtitles. Regal DeVargas. (Jonathan Richards)
THE CONJURING 2
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as the real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who in the 1970s and 1980s, looked into a number of spooky happenings — including, most famously, the Amityville Horror. In this dramatization of a 1977 investigation, the couple travels to the U.K. to look into poltergeist activity at a council house in North London. Rated R. 133 minutes. Regal DeVargas; Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
DARK HORSE
Around the turn of the millennium, Janet Vokes, a barmaid in an economically depressed Wales mining town, convinced her friends and customers to pitch in together, purchase a thoroughbred, and pay for its training. They bought and bred Dream Alliance, and the horse eventually enjoyed success on the racing circuit in the U.K. — attracting a good deal of media attention for how the story upturned class-structure norms. Through new interviews, dramatic recreations, and archival footage, this documentary tells Dream Alliance’s story. Rated PG. 85 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Not reviewed)
DOUGH
“A Jewish baker and an Muslim refugee walk into a bakery” sounds like the setup to a corny old joke, right? It’s also the beginning of a plot summary for this light-
the hard-boiled cinematic aesthetics of that time. Writer and director Shane Black has had a hand in buddy-crime films from
Lethal Weapon to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and he’s so smart that he can’t help but satisfy. Ryan Gosling (never funnier) and Russell Crowe play a private investigator and thug-for-hire, respectively, who reluctantly team up to puzzle out the apparent suicide of a porn star and uncover a plot much deeper than they were expecting. Their camaraderie is endearing, the jokes land, the plot twists are occasionally shocking, and expectations are turned on their head when the smartest person in every room is a teenage girl (Angourie Rice). Rated R. 116 minutes. Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
NOW YOU SEE ME 2
In 2013, Now You See Me — a relatively unheralded movie about four magicians who are framed for theft, pull off a series of unbelievable tricks, and fool a master (Morgan Freeman) — broke through the blockbusters of summer and found an audience. Those illusionists (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and now Lizzy Caplan) are back, and this time are forced to pull off their greatest heist yet by a crooked techgenius mastermind (Daniel Radcliffe). Freeman, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Caine also return from the first film. Rated PG-13. 129 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS
The 2014 Michael Bay-produced reboot of the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles franchise gets a sequel, as the four heroes must once more save New York City and chow down on pizza, dude. This time, the CGI effects that animated the turtles are applied to a wider array of their villains, including the warthog Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams), the rhinoceros Rocksteady (Stephen Farrelly), and the alien Krang (Brad Garrett). Megan Fox reprises her role as April O’Neil, the turtles’ human friend. Rated PG-13. 112 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
VITA ACTIVA: THE SPIRIT OF HANNAH ARENDT
A movie about Hannah Arendt is a movie about the power of thought. One of the outstanding philosophical and critical minds of the 20th century, she achieved her greatest popular (or unpopular) fame with her coverage for The New
Yorker magazine of the 1961 war-crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. And she came up with the tag “the banality of evil.” But this documentary from Ada Ushpiz covers a lot more ground than the Eichmann trial. It has footage of Hitler, correspondence with her teachers Martin Heidegger (also her lover) and Karl Jaspers, and film clips of the era in which Arendt was maturing as a thinker, expertly edited in to give a you-arethere context to the post-WWI world that was developing in Europe. Ushpiz suggests an unsettling correlation between that world and our world today. If thought is action, as Arendt proposed, then this is an action movie to rival anything from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not rated. 125 minutes. In English, Hebrew, German, and French, with subtitles. The Screen. (Jonathan Richards)
WARCRAFT
If you’re one of the millions of subscribers to the World of Warcraft MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), then it’s time to leave the PC for the multiplex, as the big-screen adaptation is here. If you’re of the billions who have never joined an online guild to complete a quest (or never heard the term MMORPG), don’t fret — the movie is just your basic effects-heavy, orcs-and-warriors fantasy flick. Duncan Jones
(Moon) directs. Rated PG-13. 123 minutes. Screens in 3-D and 2-D at Regal Stadium 14. Screens in 2-D only at Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
WEINER
Anthony Weiner was a New York City congressman, a rising star in the Democratic Party, and a frequent guest on news and late night shows. He was connected to the top tier of political power — his wife, Huma Abedin, is a close aide to Hillary Clinton. And then the roof fell in. He was, it seems, given to sexting and sending pictures of his bulging underwear to strangers via social media. He resigned. And then a few years later he announced his comeback by filing to run for mayor of New York City. Enter filmmakers Josh Kriegman (a former Weiner staffer) and Elyse Steinberg, with a proposal to follow the candidate through the campaign. The result is one of the most fascinating and excruciating political documentaries you will ever see. At the end of the film, Kriegman asks him, “Why have you let me film this?” Weiner can only shrug. Rated R. 96 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jonathan Richards)
XMEN: APOCALYPSE
This year, superhero films have gotten much darker and overstuffed with characters, and the worst offender yet is this entry in the X-Men series, the fourth to be directed by Bryan Singer. The mega-powerful villain Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) has awakened from centuries-long slumber and has a plan to destroy the world that is so complex that it takes an hour to set up without ever totally making sense. He enlists Magneto (Michael Fassbender), along with other mutants who are given about eight lines of dialogue each, to fight the X-Men (led by Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique) in a duel in which the fate of the planet is on the line, though it also weirdly feels like there’s nothing at stake. An excellent scene with the speedy Quicksilver (Evan Peters) marks the only point of levity in this mostly Wolverine-free movie. Some insider nods to longtime comic-book fans can’t compensate for the movie’s crushing self-seriousness and spotty special effects in what seems like a franchise-killing dud. Rated PG-13. 144 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)