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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘THE BLACK PHONE’: Adapted from a short story by Joe Hill (the son of Stephen King), “The Black Phone” sees “Doctor Strange” director Scott Derrickson reunite with his “Sinister” co-writer C. Robert Cargill, and star Ethan Hawke, under the Blumhouse production banner, known for its low-budget, high-return horror flicks. Mason Thames stars as Finney Blake, a kid just trying to make it through middle school in 1978 Denver. His dad (Jeremy Davies) is a drunk, and the bullies are brutal (the beatdowns on screen are astonishingly bloody). Plus, all of his friends keep disappearing at the hands of a kidnapper known as “The Grabber,” who leaves black balloons at the scene of his crimes. It’s only a matter of time before the vulnerable loner Finney gets snatched too, and considering neighborhood stud Bruce (Tristan Pravong), and tough kid Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora) didn’t escape the Grabber, Finney figures he’s a goner. Much of “The Black Phone” takes place in the drab basement where Finney is kept by the terrifyingly masked Grabber (Hawke), who occasionally shows up to thoroughly creep him out and make vaguely menacing threats. On the wall is a black rotary phone with a cut cord, but it keeps ringing, and Finney keeps answering. Through the static, voices come through, and Finney realizes these are the voices of the boys who have disappeared before him, coaching him through this experience, giving him tips and tricks and guidance to survive the Grabber’s clutches, if not for him, for them. 1:42. 2 ½ stars.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘ELVIS’: Why hasn’t there been a great Elvis biopic yet? Well, Austin Butler wasn’t around to star as the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. At the center of Baz Luhrmann’s sprawling pop epic “Elvis,” a film as opulent and outsize as the King’s talent and taste, Butler delivers a fully transformed, fully committed and star-making turn as Elvis Presley. The rumors are true: Elvis lives, in Austin Butler. Swirling around Butler’s bravura performance is a manic, maximalist, chopped-and-screwed music biopic, in which Luhrmann locates Elvis as the earth-shaking inflection point between the ancient and the modern, the carnival and the TV screen, a figure of pure spectacle who threatened to obliterate the status quo — and did. Luhrmann takes Elvis Presley’s legacy, relegated to a Las Vegas gag, and reminds us just how dangerous, sexy and downright revolutionary he once was. He makes Elvis relevant again. 2:39. 3 ½ stars.
— Katie Walsh
‘JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION’:
The “Jurassic Park”/“Jurassic World” franchise always favored a janky, what-should-wetry-this-time approach. Fans of dinosaurs (and who isn’t?) and the 1993 Steven Spielberg original based on Michael Crichton’s novel, have been forgiving enough to show up for most or all of the sequels, with their new batches of dinosaurs and hilariously secondary humans. As I took my seat for a recent preview screening of “Jurassic World Dominion,” the family on my left was debating which was the worst in the series so far: the second movie in the first trilogy or the second in the second. Well, it’s neither. I’m afraid it’s this new one, “Jurassic World Dominion,” and neither its blobby story structure nor a frenetic running time of nearly two and a half hours (longest in the franchise) is the problem, really. The problem is filmmaking craft, and how little director Colin Trevorrow (who made “Jurassic World”) brings to bear on the project. Something’s off here, all the way through the film’s warring personalities and wan subplots. The results may enjoy a big haul this summer, given the film’s nostalgic Grand Finale trappings and the melding of the first trilogy’s headliners — Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum — with the second trilogy’s nominal leads.
But you know how it is with brand-name blockbusters. Whether they personally bust your blocks means nothing. The IP is everything. 2:27. 2 stars.
— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON’:
At an Airbnb rental home somewhere in Los Angeles, documentary filmmaker Dean, played by Marcel’s creator Dean Fleischer-Camp, discovers Marcel and Marcel’s grandmother, Nana Connie, living there, too. They are tiny, hardy Lilliputians, cleverly adapting to and in most ways improving on their human-scale environment. Marcel sleeps in his “breadroom,” which is a bedroom with a bed made out of two slices of bread. Nana Connie tends a huge garden, pops popcorn kernels with a magnifying glass and, as the narrative proceeds, copes with forgetfulness and Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.
Not long ago, Marcel and Connie were surrounded by family and friends, and as Marcel tells us early on, it takes 20 shells to make a functioning community. This one’s down to two. With the help of filmmaker Dean, Marcel sets out on a quest to find out what happened to that community, and how it might once again give Marcel what he misses so badly. Limited release in theaters. 1:29. 4 stars. — Michael Phillips
‘MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU’:
I could not possibly begin to explain just how these hot dog-shaped, banana-hued, gibberish-speaking overlords came to infiltrate our culture at every level. The grasp these inexplicable animated creatures hold on cinema is insidious, and they continue their reign in their latest cinematic dispatch, “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” They’ve overthrown their masters in the “Despicable Me” franchise, wrestling top billing away for themselves. “The Rise of Gru” is just another “Despicable Me” movie, a supervillain origin story for beaky-nosed, scarf-wearing, evil aspirant Gru (Steve Carell). 1:27. 1 star. — Katie Walsh
‘SNIPER: THE WHITE RAVEN’:
The world has watched in shock and horror at the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine this year, but the conflict between the countries has been ongoing in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine since 2014, when the “Revolution of Dignity” sent former President Victor Yanukovych into exile, and Russia invaded Crimea. During the past eight years, Ukrainian filmmakers have grappled with the war in the east. Marian Bushan’s film “Sniper: The White Raven” joins the ranks of Ukrainian films confronting the events of the past eight years, and though the tone is far more patriotic war movie than existential exegesis, it captures the determination and spirit that has given Ukrainian soldiers — and thereby the country itself — a fighting chance. In Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles. Streaming on demand. 1:51. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’:
It couldn’t outmaneuver the pandemic enemy that delayed its release for two years, but “Top Gun: Maverick” can’t lose, really. It’s a pretty good time, and often a pretty good movie. It’s cozy. And it’ll be catnip for those eager to watch Tom Cruise flash That Look. What is That Look? It’s the half-smile of insubordination when a superior officer (Ed Harris or Jon Hamm this time) busts test pilot and congenital speedneeder Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s chops, ineffectively. It’s The Look that goes with an eternally boyish voice and demeanor. Capt. Mitchell, who lives alone in the desert with his beloved Kawasaki motorcycle, is called to a new and time-sensitive duty by his old cohort Iceman (Val Kilmer), now a U.S. Pacific Fleet commander. Maverick has three weeks to train a group of new
Top Gun aces to destroy a uranium enrichment plant in an unspecified but assuredly Slavic location. One of the trainees is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the grudge-laden son of Maverick’s late radar intercept officer, Goose, played by Anthony Edwards back when. It’s silly-rousing enough to satisfy younger and older audiences alike. It may help to have hated the original, but I liked this one, even though it’s not so very different from the first. Thirty-six years from now, we’ll probably be watching Cruise teaching a new cadre of flying aces. Only the planet will have changed. 2:17. 3 stars.
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.