OPENING THIS WEEK
CLAIRE’S CAMERA
Not rated. 69 minutes. In English, French, and Korean with subtitles. Jean Cocteau Cinema. See review, Page 39.
KING OF HEARTS
This World War I fantasy from French director Philippe de Broca came out in 1966 and won a passionate cult following among opponents to the Vietnam War with its story of a British sapper (Alan Bates) who is ordered to dismantle a bomb rigged by the retreating Germans to blow up a town. The evacuated town has been taken over by the liberated inmates of its insane asylum. They don’t seem much crazier than any troupe of colorful actors, and one of them is an adorable waif (a very young Geneviève Bujold), with whom the soldier falls in love. While this cult film will still warm some hearts, its mannered hijinks will leave plenty of others in straitjackets. The lighthearted moral of the tale suggests that the people on the outside waging war are a lot crazier than the loonies behind the walls of institutions. Not rated. 102 minutes. The Screen. (Jonathan Richards)
LOVELESS
Not rated. 127 minutes. In Russian with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. See review, Page 41.
MIDNIGHT SUN
Bella Thorne plays Katie, a teenager who cannot be exposed to sunlight thanks to a rare skin condition. She remains indoors, practicing guitar and peering out at the daytime world through covered windows in her bedroom. Patrick Schwarzenegger (yes, his dad is who you think it is) plays the hunky neighbor who passes by her house every day. She harbors a deep crush on him, which blossoms into a romance when they meet and he shows her how to truly live over the course of several nighttime dates. Rated PG-13. 91 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
PACIFIC RIM UPRISING
Director Guillermo del Toro did not return for this sequel to his 2013 movie about humankind’s use of giant robots to stave off extinction at the hands of giant monsters, but he remained as producer, putting first-time director Steven S. DeKnight behind the camera. John Boyega (Finn in the Star Wars films) stars as the leader of a new generation of robot-piloting heroes (called “Jaegers”) who must face off against the monsters — and against a rogue Jaeger. Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day return from the first film. Rated PG-13. 111 minutes. Screens in 2-D and 3-D at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
READY PLAYER ONE
Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One centered on a teenager named Wade Watts who enters a virtual-reality simulator — based on 1980s video games and pop culture — to hunt for treasure left by the game’s late creator. The object? To win full ownership of the game and escape poverty. It makes perfect sense, then, that the director who translates Cline’s book to the screen is Steven Spielberg, someone who helped create much of the pop culture that the story references. In this adaptation, Tye Sheridan plays Watts, who teams with a player named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) to outrace the game’s current CEO (Ben Mendeloshn) for the elusive prize. Along the way, they encounter many characters from the fiction of yesteryear. Opens Wednesday, March 29. Rated PG-13. 140 minutes. Screens in 2-D at Jean Cocteau Cinema; in 2-D and 3-D at Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
SHERLOCK GNOMES
This sequel to 2011’s Gnomeo & Juliet has everything that fans enjoyed about the first one: animated garden gnomes, voicework by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt (as Gnomeo and Juliet, respectively), jokes about bodily functions, and music by Elton John. This time, Johnny Depp joins the antics, voicing Sherlock Gnomes, a detective who is called in when garden ornaments begin to mysteriously disappear. Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Mary J. Blige, and Ozzy Osbourne also provide voicework. Rated PG. 100 minutes. Screens in 2-D at Regal Stadium 14; in 2-D and 3-D at Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
UNSANE
Director Steven Soderbergh tries his hand at horror with this story of a woman named Sawyer (Claire Foy of Netflix’s The
Crown) who is stalked by a man named David (Joshua Leonard). This terrible experience consumes her life, until she is committed to a mental institution against her will. When she begins to think every man she sees is David, even inside the facility, the question arises as to whether or not David is a figment of her imagination or if something more sinister is going on. Rated R. 107 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)