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Annihilation Science fiction drama about an expedition that enters an environmental disaster zone to save the life of a soldier. With Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh. Rated R. 115 minutes.
Are We Not Cats Horror/ romantic comedy about a young man who starts a relationship with a woman who eats her own hair. Not reviewed. Not rated. 78 minutes.
Black Panther This Ryan Coogler film, about a young African king (Chadwick Boseman) with special powers, breaks the pattern of most Marvel superhero movies, with its leisurely opening, story-driven plotting and general aura of seriousness. There’s probably less action in this film than in any other recent Marvel movie, and the change is welcome. Rated PG-13. 134 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
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
Detective Chinatown 2 More interesting as a cultural product than as entertainment, this action comedy from China features a detective duo trying to solve a case in New York City, so we get lots of gags that show what the Chinese think of us. (Two clues: They think we’re all carrying guns, and they don’t like Trump.) Rated R. 121 minutes. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
— M. LaSalle
Double Lover Another audacious entry from French filmmaker Francois Ozon, this tells the story of a woman who is having an affair with her boyfriend’s evil twin, or maybe she’s just imagining it. Clever and outrageous, it also loses steam halfway in, seeming more like a provocation than an emotionally engaging experience. Not rated. 107 minutes. In French with English subtitles.
— M. LaSalle
Early Man The new stop-motion animated caveman/soccer comedy by “Wallace and Gromit” creator Nick Park is filled with disarmingly funny moments and lacking in narrative sweep, as if the story team came out of a long brainstorming session — and then just decided to use all of their ideas. But the film is charming throughout. Rated PG. 89 minutes.
— P. Hartlaub Every Day Fantasy drama about a teenager who falls in love with someone who becomes a new person every day. With Angourie Rice and Justice Smith. Not reviewed. Rated PG-13. 95 minutes. A Fantastic Woman Chilean trans actress Daniela Vega delivers a stunning performance as a trans singer named Marina Vidal whose older lover (Francisco Reyes) dies suddenly. She battles grief, but more to the point, hatred from her lover’s family out to erase her from their late husband and father’s memory. Director Sebastián Lelio does a solid job with a somewhat predictable script, but Vega elevates the film to fantastic heights. Rated R. 103 minutes.
— D. Wiegand
15:17 to Paris Director Clint Eastwood overwhelms the extraordinary with the mundane in this fact-based tale of three young men from the Sacramento area who in 2015 helped thwart a gun attack on a Paris-bound train. The trainattack scenes thrill and fascinate but take up only a fraction of the film’s run time. The rest is all lead-up, filled with banal dialogue and familiar tourist spots revisited for Eastwood’s cameras by the real train heroes, who play themselves. Rated PG-13. 94 minutes.
— C. Meyer
Fifty Shades Freed Unless you’re determined to be in a bad mood, it’s hard to see what’s not to like about this jolly sex romp, in which Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Jamie Dornan) get married and continue their frisky ways, in between getting stalked by a murderous psycho. Rated R. 105 minutes.
Game Night Friends who get together for a night of games get more than they’ve bargained for, when they find themselves dealing with international criminals. The movie manages the balance between comedy, absurdity and thrills fairly well, and it keeps the audience amused and interested from beginning to end. Rated R. 100 minutes. — M. LaSalle 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 splendor and gloriousness. It’s a conspicuously bad mix of old and modern. Rated PG. 105 minutes.
— M. LaSalle
Half Magic Heather Graham wrote, directed and stars in this comedy about female empowerment. Also with
Angela Kinsey and Stephanie Beatriz. Not reviewed. Rated R. 94 minutes.
Have a Nice Day Liu Jian’s Chinese animated noir about a bag of stolen money and the lowlifes drawn into its orbit is visually interesting in its depiction of a small industrialized town and its hard-scrabble citizens, but it’s slow moving with a paperthin screenplay. Not rated. 77 minutes. In Mandarin Chinese with subtitles.
— G. Allen Johnson
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
In Between This engaging slice of life follows three Palestinian women in Tel Aviv — kind of a “Sex and the City” and “Girls” for the Arab set. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes dark and always absorbing in illustrating the budding societal changes in the Middle East. Not rated. 103 minutes. In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles. — D. Lewis 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, wellobserved and intelligent film, nominated for a foreign-film 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 action scenes are decent, but 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
Loveless A relentless and chilling portrait of spiritual vacuity, this intense drama by Andrey Zvyagintsev is a clinical examination of a dreadful married couple, united only by their mutual disdain, searching for their 12-year-old son, who has disappeared. Zvyagintsev is the director of 2014’s very fine “Leviathan,” which takes a similar scathing view of the malaise of 21st century Russia. Rated R. 127 minutes. In Russian with English subtitles
— W. Addiego
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 Nostalgia Director Mark Pellington tries to create a sense of loss and mystery, with this rambling story of various people suffering from grief or catastrophe, but while the attempt is occasionally effective, the story becomes grim and lugubrious. Starring Jon Hamm, Ellen Burstyn and Catherine Keener. Rated R. 114 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 warmhearted 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
The Party Writerdirector Sally Potter creates a seriocomic pressure cooker, using her story — about a party celebrating the promotion of a woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) to Shadow Minister of Health — as a gauge for pressures outside the compressed setting. It’s a movie about the collapse of idealism and the dawn of uncertain, brutal age. Rated R. 71 minutes. — M. LaSalle
Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter would undoubtedly hate this sarcastic/slapstick-filled update of her classic picture books. But if you’re mandated to update early 20th century children’s literature for shortattention-spanned 2018 families, “Peter Rabbit” is a pretty good template. The film is clever. It has a brisk pace. And the physical comedy, involving live action and animated characters, is wellexecuted. Rated PG. 94 minutes. — P. Hartlaub
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
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 over-fictionalized 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
Winchester Like the spirits in the senseless corridors of Sarah Winchester’s never-ending Victorian construction project in San Jose, the movie is stuck in its own limbo. It’s not an atrocious film — it just can’t pick a side. Does it want to be a haunted fun house full of jump scares? Does it want to be a gothic period piece with a romantic message? “Winchester” is both, and neither. Rated PG-13. 99 minutes.
— P. Hartlaub