OPENING THIS WEEK
COLD PURSUIT
Liam Neeson plays Nels Coxman, a gentle snowplow driver who lives high in the Rocky Mountains, loves his wife (Laura Dern) and leads a simple, contented life — until his adult son turns up dead of an apparent heroin overdose. After some digging, Nels learns that his son was mixed up with a drug cartel run by a criminal named Viking (Tom Bateman), who arranged his son’s murder. Despite having no background in combat or any real idea how to pull off a crime, Nels goes on a violent rampage of revenge. Rated R. 118 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE LEGEND OF THE DEMON CAT
Not rated. 129 minutes. In Mandarin and Japanese with subtitles. Jean Cocteau Cinema. See review, Page 30.
THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART
This sequel to the 2014 animated adventure The LEGO Movie picks up right where the original left off: with the cuteseeming Duplo blocks invading from space and laying waste to Bricksburg, the home of Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) and Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). When General Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) announces that Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) intends to marry Batman (Will Arnett) and kidnaps the heroes to outer space, the heroes must team with Rex Dangervest (also Pratt) to save the day. As with the first film, expect to see many figures from history and pop culture rendered in LEGO form. Rated PG. 106 minutes. Screens in 3D and 2D at Regal Stadium 14. Screens in 2D only at Regal Santa Fe 6; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE PRODIGY
Sarah (Taylor Schilling) should be proud of her young son, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott), who shows signs of intellect well beyond his age. Unfortunately, he also has far more sinister tendencies. Sarah brings Miles to a therapist (Colm Feore) to figure out what the deal with the spooky behavior is, and they begin to suspect that Miles’ smarts can be credited to the supernatural force that possesses him. Rated R. 100 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
SANTA FE FILM FESTIVAL
Beginning Thursday, Feb. 13, at venues around town. See coverage, beginning on Page 22.
THE 2019 OSCARNOMINATED ANIMATION SHORTS
This year’s crop of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts includes three from the United States: Bao, the Pixar short that preceded Incredibles 2; Weekends, about the effects of divorce on a young boy; and One Small Step, about a young girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut. These nominees are joined by Ireland’s Late Afternoon, about an elderly woman who uses her memories to reconnect with the present, and Canada’s
Animal Behaviour, in which six animals meet for group therapy. Not rated. Approximately 75 minutes. The Screen; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE 2019 OSCARNOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS
Important, topical issues are once more explored in this year’s crop of Academy Award-nominated documentary shorts. Black
Sheep looks at immigration in the United Kingdom through the eyes of a Nigerian mother who moves her family from London to Essex, where they encounter racism in their housing estate.
End Game takes viewers to the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, where it explores issues of end-of-life care. Lifeboat introduces audiences to the German nonprofit Sea-Watch, which aids refugees crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Europe. A Night at the Garden takes us back to a proNazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, where archival footage shows the group urging its thousands of supporters to not believe the media and to free America from Jewish influence. The film Period. End of Sentence. transports viewers to rural India, where women install a machine in the local school that makes sanitary pads available, with hopes of ending the stigma around menstruation. Rated R. Approximately 137 minutes. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE 2019 OSCARNOMINATED LIVEACTION SHORTS
Once more, audiences can preview the live-action shorts up for Academy Awards through this annual program of films from throughout the world. Spain’s Madre centers on a woman who receives a disturbing phone call from her vacationing son and must figure out what’s wrong. Ireland’s Detainment focuses on two boys who are brought to the police station for questioning in a kidnapping case. Skin, from the United States, looks at what happens when a child of white supremacists is friendly with an African-American man in front of his parents. Canada offers two entries: Fauve, in which two boys run wild in an abandoned mine, and Marguerite, about the relationship between a nurse and her elderly patient. Rated R. Approximately 108 minutes. The Screen; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
WHAT MEN WANT
This remake of the 2000 Mel Gibson comedy What Women
Want flips the gender and stars Taraji P. Henson as Alison Davis, a sports agent who is repeatedly passed over for promotions. When a fortune teller (Erykah Badu) grants her the power to hear the thoughts of men, she uses the gifts to get ahead, while pushing out all of the disgusting thoughts that now infiltrate her brain. Throughout the comic moments, she also learns to grow as a human being. Rated R. 117 minutes. Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
NOW IN THEATERS AQUAMAN
This premiere solo outing for DC comics’ Aquaman is as big and (occasionally) dumb as its hero, but it can also match the weird charm of Jason Momoa’s performance. The story takes us to Aquaman’s beginning as a half-human, half-merman kid who can speak to marine wildlife (he gets that from his mom, an Atlantean queen played by Nicole Kidman). When Atlantis threatens war on the land dwellers, Aquaman must realize his destiny as the underwater kingdom’s leader and usurp his hot-headed half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson). Much of the dialogue lands with a thud, and the acting could be stronger (Amber Heard, playing Aquaman’s love interest, is the biggest offender), but as effects-laden spectacles go, director James Wan delivers the goods and then some. Rated PG-13. 143 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
AT ETERNITY’S GATE
Julian Schnabel’s wildly uneven account of the feverish last stretch of the life of Vincent van Gogh is largely about ways of seeing. The portrait that Schnabel has put on film is in many ways as much about his own way of seeing as van Gogh’s. Willem Dafoe captures the artistic intensity and emotional instability that seem to have characterized the fateful months in the spring and summer of 1890 that preceded the artist’s death. The main drawback to Dafoe’s casting is that he’s about 30 years older than van Gogh was when he died.
Despite its flaws, this version of van Gogh’s endgame packs plenty of power and character as it takes Vincent from failure and depression in grey, grimy Paris to Arles after meeting Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac). There’s plenty to annoy you in this latest addition to the well-stocked van Gogh cinema shelf, but also plenty to admire, including Dafoe’s performance, which was nominated for Best Actor. Rated PG-13. 110 minutes. In English and some French with subtitles. The Screen. (Jonathan Richards) BUMBLEBEE In this first entry in the Transformers franchise not to be directed by Michael Bay, the year is 1987, and Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) is a misfit teenage girl with a single mom (Pamela Adlon). She fishes a canary-yellow Volkswagen Beetle out of a scrapyard with the intent to fix it up, and discovers that it’s a robot from a distant world named Bumblebee, who was rendered mute in a battle. The two bond over their shared outcast status and soon must defend themselves from the evil Decepticons, as well as some army bros (led by an agent played by John Cena) who want the alien gone. It’s all capably crafted by director Travis Knight, and includes several scenes that exude a tangible warmth. But there isn’t an original bolt in the frame of this movie, which apes E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial down to almost all of its details, and that familiarity can be charming at some times and boring at others. Rated PG-13. 113 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Santa Fe 6; Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker) COLD WAR Set in the years between 1949 and 1964, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s romantic drama, loosely based on the real-life experiences of his parents, is a passionate, turbulent story of star-crossed lovers told in a minimalist style and shot in luminous black and white by cinematographer Lukasz Zal. It is a riveting film about a handsome musician named Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) who falls for Zula (Joanna Kulig) an ambitious young singer, during her auditions for a state-run folk ensemble. Sparse in dialogue, Cold War is driven by the mesmerizing music of numerous song and dance numbers as Wiktor and Zula’s on-again, off-again romance stretches across Cold War-era Europe. Kot and Kulig give tourde-force performances in a story about love, longing, and desire against the odds. Rated R. 89 minutes. In Polish, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Croatian with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Michael Abatemarco) DESTROYER Nicole Kidman delivers a compelling, downbeat, and nihilistic performance as a bitter and broken detective in this ponderous crime drama from director Karyn Kusama. Kidman plays Erin Bell, an alcoholic detective who is haunted by the memory of a botched assignment from years earlier when she went deep undercover infiltrate a gang of bank robbers led by the murderous Silas (Toby Kebbell). Bell suspects that Silas, who disappeared without a trace after the heist, has returned to settle old scores and she’s determined to track him down and exact her revenge. Kidman inspires sympathy for Bell, whose self-harm and dissociative psychological states are a case study in the effects of trauma. But Destroyer suffers from its drawn-out revelations and excessive flashbacks, which bring the movie’s pacing to a grinding halt. Rated R. 121 minutes. Violet Crown. (Michael Abatemarco) 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). 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The actors are all superb, with Layne’s Tish growing into a woman before our eyes, and a terrific Regina King as her 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. Rated PG. 132 minutes. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed) LEAVE NO TRACE Through films such as 2010’s Winter’s Bone, director Debra Granik has studied American poverty of varying degrees. She immerses viewers in lowerclass struggles, particularly through the eyes of women who must bear the emotional labor of handling broken men. In
Leave No Trace, she tells the story of a veteran (Ben Foster) who suffers severely from PTSD, and his attempts to live precariously off the grid with his teenage daughter (Thomasin McKenzie). He has chosen the life of a vagrant; she has not, but loyally and
lovingly goes along with him. Granik so effectively transports viewers into their alternative lifestyle that you begin to see the whole world through their eyes. Rated PG. 109 minutes. Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
MISS BALA
Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) turns to action as Gloria Fuentes, a Los Angeles makeup artist ensnared in the cross-border drug trade. Fuentes, who travels to Tijuana to help her childhood friend Suzu (Cristina Rodlo) prepare for a beauty contest, is basically in the wrong place at the wrong time, something that might be said for everyone involved with this movie, audience included. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, Miss Bala has pretty solid DNA. It’s more or less based on the 2011 Mexican film of the same title, which used action-thriller techniques and moods to explore the corrosive effects of narco-trafficking on the lives of ordinary Mexicans. This version, in the dreariest Hollywood-remake tradition, turns a grim, morally ambiguous story into a fable of empowerment. Rodriguez shows a little spark early and late, but mostly she is stricken, scared, and shut down. Which is understandable given the character’s predicament, but the movie itself exists in a similar state. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (A.O. Scott/New York Times)
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. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
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)
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 outside her locked house, so they scoop her up and bring her home. When they notice scars on her body, they decide to keep her. So begins Shoplifters, the Palme d’Or-winning film from Hirokazu Kore-Eda, who pulls back curtains and reveals 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 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. Center for Contemporary Arts. (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. In keeping with the youthful vibe, the protagonist is not your grandfather’s Peter Parker — it’s 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 SpiderVerse, a range of Spider-Man-like characters from alternate 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. Violet Crown. (Robert Nott)
THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD
To commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, director Peter Jackson crafted this documentary about the conflict. To make the film, he and his team of technicians dug up grainy archival films from Britain’s Imperial War Museum and painstakingly restored and then colorized the footage. He paired the footage with audio testimony from the era to paint a portrait of British soldiers on the front lines. Rated R. 99 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
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. 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; Amy Adams plays Cheney’s wife Lynne; and Sam Rockwell is George W. Bush. Sometimes the humor may go a little over the top, but a lot of it is needlesharp, 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. 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. 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. 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. Close snagged a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role. Rated R. 100 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jonathan Richards)