Chile Pages,
A new microcosm of human diversity showed up in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious, about a multi-cultural band of brothers and sisters united by their singular inability to drive fifty-five. The Fast series’ casting department struck gold, particularly with the easy rapport between leads Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez, but the films’ scope has expanded to such an extent that the last few entries minimize street racing in favor of cockamamie claptrap about international terrorists and saving the world. The trend is particularly galling in this movie, which opens with an enjoyable romp in Cuba’s classic-car scene and then swerves with zero explanation into a national-security-related heist in Berlin. Did the projectionist skip a reel? By the time we’ve reached the finale, involving vehicular combat between cars and a submarine, it’s clear that the franchise has relegated its likable characters to the back seat. What matters isn’t what’s under the hood, it’s who’s behind the wheel, or so goes the wisdom of Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The Fast movies should take that sentiment to heart and focus more on people and less on things that go boom. Rated PG-13. 136 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown; DreamCatcher. (Jeff Acker)
FRANTZ
Anna (Paula Beer) is a young German woman grieving over the death of her fiancé, Frantz (played in flashbacks by Anton von Lucke), who was killed near the end of the Great War. She lives with his parents (Ernst Stötzner and Marie Gruber), and visits his grave daily to place fresh flowers. One day she finds that someone else has done the same. The mysterious mourner turns out to be Adrien (Pierre Niney), a sensitive young Frenchman. There is a secret that comes out about midway through, and the rest of the movie wrestles with the issue of concealing various truths from various parties. The initial revelation itself may not come as a shock, but the ethics and purpose of its continued concealment are the seasonings with which director François Ozon stirs this pot. Rated PG-13. 113 minutes. In French and German with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jonathan Richards)
FREE FIRE
When one gang meets another gang to buy guns at an abandoned warehouse in 1978 Boston, the resulting conflict is the kind of kinetic, semi-comic, ultraviolent encounter that was common to 1990s indie cinema. With a lot of weaponry and a host of fluctuating allegiances, the gangsters face a struggle just to get out alive. Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, and Cillian Murphy star. Rated R. 90 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
GET OUT
The first directorial effort by Jordan Peele, of the comic duo Key and Peele, is a horror movie about a black man named Chris (a perfect Daniel Kaluuya) who travels to the hometown of his girlfriend (Allison Williams) to meet her parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, both terrific). Once there, he learns that African-Americans have been disappearing from the affluent white community, only to reappear as subservient and docile — and he could be the next to go. The cultural commentary in this new take on The Stepford Wives is rich and thought-provoking, as fans of Peele’s comedy might expect. However, Peele’s directorial sense is a surprise, as his use of foreground and background and his visual and musical clues draw you in, deepen the mystery, and creep you out, recalling (and sometimes paying direct homage to) such slow-burning classics as Rosemary’s Baby. Expect a jarringly violent turn in the third act, but the film is still an engaging delight. Rated R. 103 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
GIFTED
In this brief break between Marvel movies, Chris Evans puts down Captain America’s shield to play Frank Adler, a man tasked with raising his niece (Mckenna Grace), who is a child prodigy. He’s handling the responsibility as best he can, but when his mother (Lindsay Duncan) shows up at his door, she feels she could do a better job, so a custody battle ensues. Marc Webb (who also dabbled in superheroes with the Amazing
Spider-Man films) directs, and Jenny Slate plays Frank’s love interest. Rated PG-13. 101 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
GOING IN STYLE
A buddy-heist movie must deliver two things: good buddies and a good heist. Zach Braff’s remake of a 1979 geriatric caper flick comes through on the first count, bringing together three cinematic treasures — in Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin — who plot to rob a bank. Unfortunately, the caper itself falls flat. We want cleverness in our movie heists, and there’s not enough of that here to knock off a 7-Eleven, much less a bank. The script and direction never rise to the challenge, but the three old pros (plus AnnMargret) still make good on their hour and a half of screen time, displaying a couple of centuries worth of charm and acting chops to make this palatable. Rated PG-13. 96 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Jonathan Richards)
KEDI
Director Ceyda Torun grew up surrounded by the street cats of Istanbul. “They were my friends and confidants,“she wrote, “and I missed their presence in all the other cities I ever lived in.” This warmhearted film, shot partly from human perspective and partly from cat height, is a love letter to the felines and the people who share her native city. “People who don’t love animals can’t love people either — I know that much,” observes one matter-of-fact fishmonger. Yet the film is not sappy, just generous and wise. By the end, you’ll feel as if a cat has been purring on your lap for 80 minutes. Not rated. 80 minutes. In Turkish with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (James Keller)
THE LOST CITY OF Z
Could there be anything more exotically romantic than a century-old real-life adventure down the uncharted wilderness of the Amazon? It’s a tale that seems ripped simultaneously from newspaper headlines and from the pages of Boy’s Own Magazine. And it’s all true. Or most of it. Or some of it. Col. Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) was an adventurer who made a number of expeditions down the Amazon in search of a rumored lost civilization near the turn of the 20th century. Fawcett’s adventures must have been incredibly challenging, dangerous, and exciting. Writer-director James Gray, adapting David Grann’s 2009 nonfiction bestseller, captures some of that, but he surrenders too often to the clichés of the movies. Rated R. 141 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG
In the 1990s, author Kent Nerburn was contacted by a Native American elder named Dan to help him write a book that conveyed Dan’s wisdom, political opinions, and social commentary. That collaboration became the 1995 book Neither
Wolf Nor Dog, and now Nerburn has adapted the book into a screenplay about the journey the two men undertook. Christopher Sweeney plays Nerburn, and Dave Bald Eagle plays Dan, in this telling of how Nerburn accepted this responsibility while traversing Lakota country. Not rated. 110 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Not reviewed)
PHOENIX FORGOTTEN
The low-budget, “found footage” style of horror film that was popularized with 1999’s The Blair Witch Project will never go out of fashion as long as the return on investment remains so high. This latest take on the trope focuses on a UFO sighting in Arizona, which three teenagers (Florence Hartigan, Luke Spencer Roberts, and Chelsea Lopez) decide to investigate on their own with nothing but a video camera. They don’t return, and their footage surfaces 20 years later. Rated PG-13. 80 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
THE PROMISE
Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, and Charlotte Le Bon play the corners of a love triangle in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Isaac portrays a man in a small Armenian village who travels to Constantinople to study medicine. He falls in love with an Armenian woman (Le Bon) who is involved with an American reporter (Bale). Soon after, however, the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and World War I drastically complicate what is already a difficult situation. Rated PG-13. 132 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
THE SHACK
William P. Young’s 2007 self-published faith-based novel, which has sold millions of copies and dominated bestseller lists, comes to the big screen. Sam Worthington plays a man whose daughter is murdered in a shack on a camping trip. Struggling with grief, he returns to the shack and meets a woman named Papa (Octavia Spencer) and two other strangers, who ease him into a spiritual world where he reconnects with God and heals himself. Rated PG-13. 132 minutes. DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE
Anyone who has ever watched The Smurfs — either the 1980s cartoon series or the most recent films — has probably wondered why there is only one female in the village, the heels-wearing Smurfette (voiced here by Demi Lovato). This
movie seeks to answer that question by sending a handful of Smurfs to a lost village, which is presumably where Smurfette came from. Julia Roberts, Rainn Wilson, and Mandy Patinkin also supply voicework. Rated PG. 89 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
THEIR FINEST
By turns funny, romantic, moving, and harrowing, this movie about movies, war, and female empowerment hits every note with the exquisite ping of a fork struck to fine crystal. Gemma Arterton is Catrin Cole, a young woman who in blitz-ravaged London unexpectedly finds herself hired by the British Ministry of Information’s film division as a screenwriter to handle the “slop” (women’s dialogue) for propaganda movies. The assignment is to find real wartime human interest stories and turn them into morale-raising potboilers. The perfect casting includes Sam Claflin as her writing partner and perhaps more, Bill Nighy as an aging star, Eddie Marsden as his agent, plus Helen McCrory, Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Irons, and many more. To see Nighy raise an eyebrow, or sing an Irish air in a pub, is pure cinema magic. Impeccably directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Sherfig (An Education) and adapted by Gaby Chiappe from Lissa Evans’s 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half (a title they should have kept), this is certainly one of the year’s finest to date. Rated R. 117 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
UNFORGETTABLE
Longtime producer Denise Di Novi (partially responsible for Heathers and many of Tim Burton’s 1990s films) makes her directorial debut with this thriller that appears set on bringing back steamy pathological-woman thrillers such as Fatal Attraction and The
Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Katherine Heigl plays a woman, consumed by jealousy, who is determined to destroy the life of the new wife (Rosario Dawson) of her ex-husband (Geoff Stults). Rated R. 100 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; DreamCatcher. (Not reviewed)
THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE
In this drama based on Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book, Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh play Antonina and Jan Żabiński, the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo in 1939. Antonina in particular holds all life in high regard, caring for the animals in an almost maternal way. When the Nazis invade Poland, she takes the lead in using the zoo grounds and resources to help save hundreds of Jewish people. Rated PG-13. 124 minutes. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)