New reviews
Bilal: A New Breed of Hero: There are positives to be found in this unusual animated historical action film, about a slave who resists wealthy rulers in his Arabian Peninsula village. It’s filled with torture, suffering and some inconsistent visuals. But the sound design is strong, and the messages of religious hypocrisy and government responsibility resonate. PG-13. 105 minutes.. — P. Hartlaub
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children Spanish animated horror drama about characters stranded on an island in a post-apocalyptic world. Not reviewed. Not rated. 76 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Call Me by Your Name This is an emphatic celebration of the mystery and power of sexuality, set in a small Italian town, where the sun, the water and the surrounding beauty reinforce lust and longing. Timothée Chamalet and Armie Hammer are superb in the central roles, and despite an unignorable bathetic turn in the supporting performances, this is an important film. Rated R. 132 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Coco Pixar’s new Dia de los Muertosthemed animated movie crams the first sequences with exposition, and then takes a colorful yet light spin through the land of the dead. But everything is leading up to a powerhouse finish. The success of this final act, and the way it transforms the entire film, is remarkable. A strong second movie from “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich is one of Pixar’s better productions. Rated PG. 105 minutes. — P. Hartlaub
The Commuter This follows the usual Liam Neeson pattern of a decent downtrodden guy who finds redemption and glory while facing great odds, but this transcends formula, with genuine thrills and a complicated and interesting story. It all takes place on a train. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Darkest Hour Gary Oldman gives the performance of his career as Winston Churchill, fighting to rally his country and inspire a War Cabinet bent on surrender, in this dramatic study of a crucial month during World War II. If Oldman doesn’t win an Oscar for this, something is very wrong around here. Rated PG-13. 125 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Den of Thieves A complete mess, the film attempts to involve audiences in both a cop’s effort to track down murderous thieves and the thieves’ attempt to steal millions from the federal reserve. The result instead is an uninvolving, 140-minute ordeal, with an unkempt Gerard Butler as the detective looking like he’s auditioning to play Steve Bannon. Rated R. 140 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
The Final Year If you love Obama, you will find this documentary — about the Obama foreign policy team’s last year in office — seriously depressing. And if you don’t like Obama, you won’t want to see it. Still, it’s a good documentary and will be even more interesting in a decade. Not rated. 89 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Forever My Girl This romance about a country music star and the girl who got away is not always a bad movie, but it’s a poorly made film, with rough edits, distracting staging and plot contrivances that can be predicted to the moment. Alex Roe is decent as the singer, but he has more chemistry with his movie father than co-lead Jessica Rothe. Rated PG. 104 minutes.
— P. Hartlaub The Greatest Showman It’s huge(ly awful)! It’s colossal(ly) lousy! It’s the story of P.T. Barnum (except it’s fictionalized), with Hugh Jackman heading a magnificently idiotic musical, featuring bad Pasek & Paul songs. The story seems intended as a plea for inclusions, with circus oddities such as the bearded lady singing about their own spendor and gloriousness. It’s a conspicuously bad mix of old and modern. Rated PG. 105 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Happy End Writerdirector Michael Haneke’s latest provocation is this opaque, hard-to-watch film about an industrialist family in Calais, dealing with a number of internal crises. These could have been dramatically handled, but aren’t, as Haneke insists on only filming the boring moments in between the drama. It’s a strange and sleep-inducing strategy, despite the presence
of heavy hitters Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert in the cast. Rated R. 107 minutes. In French with English subtitles. — M. LaSalle
Hostiles Director Scott Cooper infuses this Western tale, set in 1892, with so much reverence that the film is weighed down by long, long pauses and excessive gravity given to every encounter. This makes the film a long slog, despite the intelligence and thought behind one or two strong scenes. Rated R. 133 minutes. — M. LaSalle
I, Tonya Craig Gillespie delvers a tonally brilliant mix of caustic comedy and genuine pathos in this uncompromising story of Tonya Harding, an Olympic skater implicated in a conspiracy to maim her chief rival. Featuring standout performances from Robbie, as Harding, and Allison Janney, as Tonya’s terrifying mother, this is one of the best of 2017. Rated R. 121 minutes.
— M. LaSalle Insidious: The Last Key The latest installment in the “Insidious” horror franchise is serviceable, thanks to a stellar performance by Lin Shaye, who plays a demonologist with guts, guile and good humor. Rated PG-13. 103 minutes. — D. Lewis
The Insult A minor dispute between a Christian Lebanese man and a Palestinian construction worker spirals into a court case with national implications, in this tense, well-observed and intelligent film, nominated for a foreignfilm Oscar. Rated R. 112 minutes. In Arabic with English subtitles. — M. LaSalle
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle A nominal sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams movie, this fun film is more like a mash-up of ’80s John Hughes teen films and wrong-body comedies like “Big” and “All of Me.” Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan play avatar versions of four detention-doing teens who get sucked into a video game. The film’s entertainment value comes from seeing adult stars playing teens very different from themselves. Rated PG-13. 119 minutes.
— C. Meyer
Lady Bird Greta Gerwig’s debut as a solo writer-director is this unconventional coming-ofage tale about an extroverted high school senior (Saoirse Ronan), clashing with her mother and wanting to leave her native Sacramento. This is a warm, good-hearted, intuitive movie that could be the start of an exceptional filmmaking career. Rated R. 94 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Molly’s Game Jessica Chastain is superb in this fact-based account of a young woman who becomes rich by hosting highstakes poker games. But at well over two hours, the unimportance of the story, the essential emptiness of the central character and writerdirector Aaron Sorkin’s attempt to steamroll over plot problems with dialogue make this a break-even proposition at best. Rated R. 141 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Mom and Dad Nicolas Cage is wasted in this one-note, one-idea thriller, in which parents everywhere are seized by a sudden, irresistible urge to murder their children. The movie overstays its welcome with 45 minutes left to go. Rated R. 83 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Paddington 2 A sequel to the charming 2015 children’s live-action film featuring a computeranimated bear (lent sweet voice by Ben Whishaw) lacks some of its predecessor’s spark. But it is so warm-
hearted and well-acted (and animated) that a slight drop in quality hardly matters. Plus, the sequel features a delightful goof of a performance by Hugh Grant as a vain thespian. Rated PG. 103 minutes.
— C. Meyer
Phantom Thread Daniel Day-Lewis stars as a dress designer in 1950s London, whose obsessive work habits distort every relationship. This film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, traces the trajectory of one such relationship — with a waitress (Vicky Krieps), who comes into his life wanting something more. One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s best films, his first success in a while. Rated R. 130 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Pitch Perfect 3 The second sequel to the a cappella choir comedy feels less like a movie than a bunch of deleted scenes strung together in the guise of a plot. Anna Kendrick leads a cast that is still committed and some of the performances (“Let Me Ride,” “Freedom! ’90”) still soar. But the script is rushed and lazy, and the singing often feels like an afterthought. Rated PG-13. 94 minutes. — P. Hartlaub
Proud Mary Action film about a hit woman coping with the results of an attempted killing gone awry. Not reviewed. Rated R. 88 minutes.
The Shape of Water Visually brilliant and psychologically strange, this Guillermo del Toro film, starring Sally Hawkins, is essentially about the power of love, but it functions as another of its director’s indulgences in cruelty, with Michael Shannon as a sadistic government agent. Still, the set design and cinematographer make this film impossible to dismiss. Rated R. 123 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Star Wars: The Last Jedi Mark Hamill takes the all-time “Star Wars” acting prize, as a jaded man confronting a life of failure, in this latest installment, in which Luke Skywalker (Hamill) is asked by the new guard to lead the Resistance. At a certain point some battle fatigue settles in, but this is an appealing entry in the series. Rated PG-13. 152 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Frances McDormand has one of her career-best showcases as a woman, mourning the murder of her daughter, who tries to prod the local police by renting three billboards criticizing them for their slow investigation. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the movie is both funny and sad, with brilliant performances by McDormand and by Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson as local policemen. Rated R. 115 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
12 Strong This telling of a remarkable military campaign, in which Americans joined forces with the Northern Alliance to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban, suffers from an overfictionalized story and the length and sameness of the scenes. But Chris Hemsworth is an appealing hero and Navid Negahban is superb as the Northern Alliance General. Rated R. 130 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Vazante This savagely lyrical drama offers a harsh, impressionistic take on slavery in 19th century Brazil, and though the storytelling is opaque, the film has a sense of authenticity and power that keep it interesting. Not rated. 116 minutes. In Portuguese with English subtitles. — D. Lewis
Winchester Horror fantasy about Sarah Winchester, the firearms heiress who built what became the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Rated PG-13. 99 minutes.
Window Horses This nicely made Canadian animated feature — subtitled “The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming” — celebrates the virtues of multiculturalism as it recounts the coming of age of a young Vancouver poet, the child of Chinese and Iranian parents, invited to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran. With voices of Sandra Oh, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Don McKellar. Not rated. 89 minutes.
— W. Addiego