Chile Pages,
THE FAVOURITE
All politics is sexual in the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), in this ravishingly entertaining costume romp as imagined by director Yorgos Lanthimos. Anne ruled England for a seven-year stretch in the early 18th century. Her closest advisor and confidante was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. When that relationship soured, Sarah (Rachel Weisz) was replaced in Anne’s affections by Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), Sarah’s poor relation. Both were Ladies of the Bedchamber to the Queen, and in this movie’s deliciously bawdy take, they lived up to that title in more ways than one. Everything clicks in this darkly funny satire. The costumes are rich, as is the production design in which palace intrigue swirls and wars are alternately launched and halted, funded and starved, and ministers come and go. The humor is sometimes sophisticated, sometimes slapstick. Weisz and Stone duel for Anne’s affections with wit, charm, deceit, and other, more sinister weapons. And Colman is transcendent, creating a doughy, gouty, self-pitying egotist with occasionally glimpsed reserves of nobility and steel. The Favourite is nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Supporting Actress (Stone, Weisz), Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Olivia Colman), and Best Director. Rated R. 119 minutes. Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
GLASS
Two M. Night Shyamalan movies converge in his sequel to both 2016’s Split and 2000’s Unbreakable. When Split’s multiple-personality villain Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) is put into the same psychiatric hospital as
Unbreakable’s devious Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) and heroic David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Glass sees this as an opportunity to break free and prove to the world that superhuman people do indeed exist. Expect Shyamalan’s requisite twists, with some fun and some telegraphed too heavily, a script with smart, engaging stretches, and a craftsman’s eye for direction (even if Shyamalan has lost his sense of nuance from his early career). However, Shyamalan financed the film himself on a reported $20 million budget — paltry for a superhero film — and it shows. The film’s front half is padded with exposition, and by the time we get to the action, it seems like the bank account ran dry. It’s wonderful to revisit the characters from the great Unbreakable, but McAvoy’s bizarre and overly affected character gets more screen time than Willis and Jackson combined. Rated PG-13. 129 minutes. Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
GREEN BOOK
This “inspired by a true story” tale follows a wellworn formula: an odd-couple pairing of polar opposites who take a while to warm up to each other, but when they finally do, it’s as cozy as Christmas (where the movie ends). The mismatched pair is Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a brawling goombah from a Bronx Italian neighborhood, and Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a fastidious African-American concert pianist who lives high atop Carnegie Hall. The year is 1962. Dr. Shirley and his trio are embarking on a concert tour of the Deep South, and he requires a driver who can double as enforcer. Mortensen warms into the role after laying the boor on a bit thick in the establishing scenes. Ali, too, has to play through a stereotype, but he emerges triumphant, and he ices the deal with superb piano work. There is scarcely a scene that you don’t see coming, scarcely a button that is not pushed. Yet they are pushed and executed so winningly that in the end you’d be inclined to forgive the movie even if an angel got his wings. Nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Mortensen), and Supporting Actor (Ali). Rated PG-13. 130 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) has fashioned painfully beautiful cinematic poetry from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel of young love and racial injustice. Jenkins moves slowly, building scenes, revisiting them, and weaving in new threads to tell the story of Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (KiKi Layne), two sweet and sensitive young people. They fall in love and make a baby before Fonny is locked away on a false rape charge and left to wither in prison without a trial. Baldwin’s story is about love, family, support, and endurance against crushing odds. It takes place in 1970s New York, with Memphis’ Beale Street plucked for the title from the W.C. Handy classic song “Beale Street Blues” to represent the bleak opportunity a racist society offers African Americans. The actors are all superb, with Layne’s Tish growing from a nineteen-year-old into a woman before our eyes, and a terrific Regina King as her loving, indomitable mother. If the film has a flaw, it lies perhaps in a shade too much lyrical sensitivity, but that sensitivity also serves the atmosphere of contrasts that Jenkins so powerfully creates. Beale Street is up for three Oscars, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, and Supporting Actress (King). Rated R. 119 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Jonathan Richards)
THE KID WHO WOULD BE KING
In 2011, British director Joe Cornish offered the world Attack the
Block, an action-comedy about a group of London kids tasked with staving off an alien invasion. He applies the same formula to the King Arthur legend in this film, which is set in modern times and stars Louis Ashbourne Serkis as Alex, a boy who fishes the sword Excalibur from a stone in a construction site. When the evil Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson) sends her forces of darkness to retrieve it, Alex must rally his mates into a new Knights of the Round Table and save the world. Merlin is played by three actors of varying ages, including Patrick Stewart. Rated PG. 132 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 sci-fi classic, based on the novel by Walter Tevis, stars David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, an interstellar traveler who is stuck on Earth and trying to get back to his family. The film — which also features Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn — is a surreal odyssey that tells a very human story. Newton’s allegorical fall is tragic, leaving viewers to question his very nature. Bowie played memorable roles in Basquiat, Labyrinth, and other films, but Newton, an alien who succumbs to human vice, is perhaps his most iconic. New Mexico is among the film’s settings (Fenton Lake is where Newton crash-lands) and the movie was shot at locations in Jemez Springs, Madrid, Belen, Artesia, Alamogordo, and Roswell, among other places. Roeg died in 2018; Jan. 10 marked the three-year anniversary of Bowie’s death. The cinema is showing a new high-quality DCP digital print of the film. 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. Rated R. 139 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Michael Abatemarco)
MARY POPPINS RETURNS
Emily Blunt blows into London via the umbrella of Mary Poppins, the whimsical British nanny famously portrayed by Julie Andrews, for this sequel to the 1964 film. The Banks siblings, now adults played by Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, find themselves at risk of losing their childhood home. Poppins appears in order to help them, as well as the next generation of Banks kids, through this rough patch, getting them back in tune with the magic of life. The plot is clichéd, but director Rob Marshall nails the tone perfectly, portraying London with a small-town friendliness and utilizing classic-style animation for Poppins’ flights of fancy. Lin-Manuel Miranda plays the Dick Van Dyke-like sidekick, a singing street lamplighter, and Miranda’s experience with Hamilton lends a polished air to the delightful (and plentiful) musical numbers. Blunt is charming in the lead role, threading the needle between stern nanny and bighearted magician perfectly. While the running time is too long for some toddlers, this movie finds Disney recapturing the effortlessly warm feeling of their classic live-action movies, right down to the appearances by Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury. Rated PG. 130 minutes. Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
ON THE BASIS OF SEX
A young Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) is the focus of this biopic, which centers on an early case that helped her gain esteem while her career was struggling. When a man named Charles Moritz (Chris Mulkey) fights the tax laws for a deduction for the nurse he has hired to help him care for his aging mother, Ginsburg takes the case, knowing that a victory could challenge many laws that assume that men are the heads of households, while women are confined to domestic spaces and child raising. Armie Hammer plays her husband, Martin, and Kathy Bates plays noted attorney and activist Dorothy Kenyon. Rated PG-13. 120 minutes. Regal Santa Fe 6; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE RIDER
A young bucking bronc rider from the Pine Ridge Reservation suffers a near-fatal injury that curtails his rodeo career, forcing him to accept new limitations, some challenging his deepest notions of manhood. This sophomore film by writer-director Chloé Zhao is one of the year’s most bravura features, delivering a stunning and radiant lyricism out of the most hardscrabble and realistic background. The actors are all non-professionals, making this accomplishment all the more heartfelt and honest. Starring the Jandreau family — son Brady, tough-minded father Tim, and spritely autistic sister Lilly. Rated R. 104 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jon Bowman)
ROMA
Cinephiles will find much to cherish in the latest picture by director Alfonso Cuarón, who returns to his indie roots with this black-and-white ode to his childhood in 1970s Mexico City, and in particular to his family’s housekeeper. He uses a wide array of cinematic tools to transform a domestic drama into a visually thrilling feature chockablock with how-did-he-do-it shots. The story centers on a maid named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who works in a middleclass household, managing the family’s four rambunctious kids and comforting their mother Sofía (Marina de Tavira), who is going through a rapidly fraying marriage. Cleo has her own problems outside the house. Issues of class and race bubble just below the surface, which all share the commonality that if you’re a woman, then men will treat you terribly regardless of your background. At times the film can feel like it contains a bit more style than substance, but with such care, imagination, and virtuosity devoted to the style, it stands above the currently crowded field of prestige pictures. Roma has received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Foreign Language
Film, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress (de Tavira), and Director. Rated R. 135 minutes. In Spanish with subtitles. The Screen. (Robert Ker)
SALVADOR DALÍ: IN SEARCH OF IMMORTALITY
Director David Pujol takes an exhaustive look at the famous Surrealist Salvador Dalí. Featuring many of the painter’s lesser-known works, previously unpublished photographs, and rare archival footage of the artist at work, this documentary reaches beyond a portrayal of Dalí as the larger-than-life figure he was. It presents him, ultimately, as simply a man. Much of the film’s strength lies in its focus on the Spanish painter’s relationship with his wife Gala, a Russian beauty who was his muse. This insightful documentary traces the artist from the year he joined the Surrealists through the decades until his death, covering his major periods and emphasizing his lifelong quest to create a legendary persona. Not rated. 105 minutes. In English and Spanish with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Michael Abatemarco)
SERENITY
Matthew McConaughey plays Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain who has removed himself from society to a secluded island with his romantic partner, Constance (Diane Lane). When his ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) appears and asks him to kill her new husband (Jason Clarke), he is thrust back into the life he left behind. Rated R. 106 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
SHOPLIFTERS
Osamu (Lily Franky) is the patriarch of the Shibatas, a Tokyo family scraping out a marginal existence. They have day jobs, but for the balance of life’s necessities, they turn to shoplifting. We meet Osamu and the preteen Shota (Kairi Jyo), as they execute a well-grooved run on a grocery store. On their way home they hear five-year-old Juri (Miyu Sasaki) crying and shivering outside her locked house, so they scoop her up and bring her home with the groceries. When they notice scars on her skinny little body, they decide to keep her. So begins Shoplifters, the Palme d’Or-winning film from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-Eda. The appealing family includes mother Nobuyu (Sakura Ando), her younger sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), and Grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki, who died in September). But Kore-Eda starts pulling back curtains and revealing multiple layers of character and backstory that build from unsettling to devastating. The actors, from the little girl to the grandma, project a warmth and humanity that give the seismic revelations of the movie’s endgame a touching and lingering resonance. The movie garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Not rated. 121 minutes. In Japanese with subtitles. The Screen. (Jonathan Richards)
SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE
The wall-crawling superhero Spider-Man makes his feature-length animated debut, and the result offers vibrant visuals that make most superhero and animated films look conservative by comparison. With bold action that seems to leap from a comic book, Into the Spiderverse boasts a refreshing style that borrows from anime, graffiti art, and other sources, and is accompanied by a lively hip-hop soundtrack. In keeping with the youthful new-millennium vibe, the protagonist is not your grandfather’s Peter Parker — it’s the wonderful Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), the teenage, African-American version of Spider-Man that debuted in the comic books in 2011. Morales runs into Parker (Jake Johnson), however, when he stumbles into the Spider-Verse, a range of Spider-Man-like characters from alternate dimensions, which include a female version of Spider-Man (Hailee Steinfeld), a Depression-era pulp hero (Nicolas Cage), and a pig (John Mulaney). Together, they must stop the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) from destroying all of their dimensions. The film is nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at this year’s Oscars. Rated PG-13. 117 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
STAN & OLLIE
Director Jon S. Baird’s affectionate retelling of Laurel and Hardy’s last theatrical tour, in 1953, is both entertaining and touching. As the comic duo play to small houses and face the reality of a future in which the laughter will die, they learn just how much they really love one another as both friends and professional partners. Steve Coogan (Stan Laurel) and John C. Reilly (Oliver Hardy) fully inhabit their characters, making you forget they are actors and believe they are the legendary comedy duo. Rated PG. 97 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Robert Nott)
THE UPSIDE
In this loose remake of the 2011 hit French film The Intouchables, Kevin Hart plays Dell, a down-and-out man who is desperate to find work. When he approaches an extremely wealthy quadriplegic named Phil (Bryan Cranston) for a reference, he ends up getting a job as his personal caretaker. Although Dell is unqualified for the position, the two men develop an unlikely friendship and help each other find renewed joy in life. Nicole Kidman plays one of Phil’s assistants. Rated PG-13. 125 minutes. Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
VICE
Adam McKay has been criticized for trivializing the legacy of former vice-president Dick Cheney. But the goofy side of McKay’s portrait of the man who rose out of a boozy gutter to become the most powerful second banana in our nation’s history is there to counterpoint a deadly serious story. Christian Bale is nothing short of jaw-dropping in his embodiment of Cheney. It’s not just the weight he gains during the course of the picture, it’s everything about him — the slouch, the walk, the tilt of the head, the hunch of the shoulders, the sneer, the stare. Amy Adams plays Cheney’s wife Lynne, who turns him around from a wastrel and onto the path of power. There are entertaining performances from Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, though the movie misses a chance to explore more meaningfully the relationship between Cheney and Dubya. And sometimes the humor may go a little over the top. But a lot of it is needle-sharp, and driven by Bale’s extraordinary performance, it hits with the force of a weapon of mass instruction. Bale earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and the film picked up three more: Director, Supporting Actress (Adams), and Supporting Actor (Rockwell). Rated R. 132 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY
This movie is drawn from a treasury of eyewitness records of life and death in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw that were committed to paper following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. The reports were created by a clandestine team assembled by a young Jewish historian, Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum. The group, to which its founder gave the code name Oyneg Shabes (“the joy of Sabbath”), recognized that history is written by the winners, and it was determined to present the truth of what was really happening to the Jewish population of Warsaw. The goal was to create a paper trail that would survive the war even if its creators did not. On the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of ‘43, they buried some 60,000 pages that were recovered after the war, and those papers provide the story and the text of this remarkable film. Who Will Write Our History reminds us that the unthinkable happened, that it was committed in a civilized society, and that it took place within still living memory. Not rated. 95 minutes. In English. Polish, and Yiddish with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jonathan Richards)
THE WIFE
Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a world-famous novelist who has just won the Nobel Prize, is boyish, vain, impulsive. Joan (Glenn Close), his wife of 40 years, is mature, self-effacing, long-suffering, and wise. A lot of this melodrama, directed by Björn Runge, is both heavy of hand and puzzlingly unconvincing as regards its insights into a writer’s life. Its main thrust is the lack of respect and opportunity for a woman in the writing field, and Joan’s sublimation of her own talent to the role of the Great Man’s Wife. The performances of its three leads lift this story from a self-pitying potboiler to a film to be reckoned with. Pryce and Christian Slater as Joe’s would-be biographer are nuanced and excellent. But it’s Close’s picture, and the close-ups of her face reveal many-chaptered novels of hidden emotion playing out beneath a carefully composed surface as she endures her husband’s peccadilloes and his fawning tributes. Close snagged a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role. Rated R. 100 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)