Chile Pages
film, which will please kids more than adults, and attempts
to muster up fresh energy never quite take off. Rated PG. 103 minutes. Screens in 3-D and 2-D at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. Screens in 2-D only at DreamCatcher. (Robert Ker)
GENIUS
Jude Law plays Thomas Wolfe in this movie about the writing of his 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel, and focuses on his relationship with his editor, Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth). Perkins, the famed Scribner’s editor who oversaw work by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others, attempts to coax a great novel from Wolfe. Laura Linney and Nicole Kidman also star. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Not reviewed)
THE JUNGLE BOOK
This adventure film is not so much an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 original as it is a live-action take on Disney’s 1967 animated version of the story — with a darker tone and more action. Neel Sethi (a little hit and miss) plays young Mowgli, the human raised by wolves who must escape the deadly tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba). On his journey, Mowgli is guided by the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), befriends the bear Baloo (Bill Murray), and faces off against both the monkey King Louie (Christopher Walken) and the snake Kaa (Scarlett Johansson). Some themes get repetitive, and the tiger is too scary for the littlest ones, but Jon Favreau directs with a sure hand; the film is gorgeous, and the animals are wonderfully animated and voiced. Rated PG. 105 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
THE LOBSTER
Gorgeous cinematography and a fascinating premise anchor this dystopian film about love and romance. David (Colin Farrell) has lost his wife, so he is sent to a hotel, where he has 45 days to find a new partner or be turned into an animal. Residents of the hotel hunt a tribe of loners who live in the nearby woods, where coupling is punishable by maiming. Many high-level actors — including Rachel Weisz and John C. Reilly — contribute intensely controlled performances, but there is more style than substance to this story. Rated R. 119 minutes. Regal DeVargas. (Jennifer Levin)
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
This delicious comedy of manners has the exquisite flavor of a scrumptious high tea at Harrods. It’s based on Lady Susan, a little-known comic novella that Jane Austen wrote when she was about eighteen. At the center of it all is Lady Susan, played to conniving perfection by Kate Beckinsale. She is a beautiful widow described as “the most accomplished flirt in all England,” who has little trouble wrapping men around her little finger as she begins shopping in earnest for a rich husband for herself and one for her daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). Wit is often present in Jane Austen adaptations, but it generally plays a supporting role to romance. Here, it’s front and center. American director Whit Stillman and his marvelous cast have more fun than should be legal with this material. Rated PG. 92 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
MAGGIE’S PLAN
People keep trying to hand the screwball comedy baton to Greta Gerwig, and it has never seemed a comfortable fit. Writer-director Rebecca Miller has built her movie around Maggie (Gerwig), a thirtyish New York college administrator who plans and plans, and discovers that the best laid plans, and vice versa, can oft go astray. Just when she’s on the verge of artificially inseminating herself, romance intrudes in the form of John (Ethan Hawke), a college professor and aspiring novelist. John is married to high-powered Danish author Georgette (Julianne Moore), but she doesn’t understand him, at least in the way Maggie claims to. They marry and have a daughter. But the marriage doesn’t work out. So Maggie makes another plan: She will get her husband back together with Georgette. This plan doesn’t work out much better than the first. Maggie is a control freak with poor control. “I’ve made a big mess,” she confesses to her best friend Tony (Bill Hader), and it’s no overstatement. Maggie’s Plan is pitched in the Woody Allen vein, but it doesn’t rise to that level. Rated R. 98 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
ME BEFORE YOU
Emilia Clarke plays Lou, a young woman who takes a job as a caregiver for a recently paralyzed man (Sam Claflin). As their time together passes, she becomes the source of inspiration through his hard times, and a romantic relationship blossoms. Screenwriter Jojo Moyes adapted the script from her own novel. Rated PG-13. 110 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
THE NICE GUYS
The 1970s is the setting for this crime film, but it is also an excuse to tell an R-rated story with 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. (Not reviewed)
PATHS OF THE SOUL
This movie has many of the same elements as an Andrei Tarkovsky film: ravishing natural landscapes, lifelike rhythms, multiple characters, and spiritual clarity. A group of people from the village of Myima decides to undertake the Buddhist “bowing pilgrimage” to the holy Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Chinese filmmaker Yang Zhang directs this sensitive film about the spiritual life of Tibetans. Cross-cultural pollination between the Chinese and the Tibetans is still rare, and the film is a lighthouse that shows how illuminating such collaborations can be, not only for those in the region, but also for the rest of us. Not rated. 115 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Priyanka Kumar)
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; 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