THE GLASS CASTLE

PG-13, 127 minutes. Opens tonight at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Opens Friday at Westbrook, Lisbon. No standard horror film delivers as many battles with demons, showdowns with the unknown and confrontations with emotional and physical struggles as the family drama “The Glass Castle.” The film, based on Jeannette Walls’ memoir about her life growing up with an alcoholic father, Rex (Woody Harrelson), and out-of-touch mother, Rose Mary (Naomi Watts), puts the four children in the Walls family in proximity to an evil that is deeply rooted in reality. That’s why the film from director-writer Destin Daniel Cretton is such a strong story of the power of the human will, the strength that comes from family and the endless protection from human evil provided by hope. There’s a separation that never goes away when it comes to horror films because no matter how good the writing or powerful the special effects, the audience will never completely be able to relate to a world where zombies, aliens or supernatural creatures prowl the planet. It’s that thin red line of blood that serves as a reminder than no matter how scary the events, there’s no way it could happen in the real world. There’s no such division with “The Glass Castle.” What Jeannette and her brother and sisters faced is deeply rooted in society. They had to contend with a father who was himself broken early in his life while growing up in an environment where love was shown with a back of the hand. Couple that with his efforts to dull his pain through unfettered drinking and the children had to face a world where the man who was supposed to be their protector continuously failed as a provider. “The Glass Castle” begins in 1989 where Jeannette (Brie Larson) has escaped a draining life of poverty and disappointment that haunted the family because of her father’s inability to hold a job or stay out of trouble with the law. She’s found a job as a writer and is engaged to a successful man (Max Greenfield) who loves her enough to lie about her family. She hasn’t fully escaped because her parents have moved to New York where they have gone from homeless to squatters. Her father believes that Jeannette may think she has found happiness but in truth misses the adventure of the life she left behind. The script bounces through time periods in Jeannette’s life with her as a 10 year old, teen and young woman. This shows how the admiration Jeannette had for her father when she was young has become tarnished with each violent, abusive or hurtful act he commits. Jeannette finally comes to the realization that while the four children have been able to survive by supporting each other, the only hope they have is for each of them to move away when they are teens and start better lives as adults. — Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service

MENASHE

Not rated, 81 minutes. Opens Friday at Madison Arts Cinemas. Yiddish is a language without a homeland. Once spoken by Jews almost everywhere in the world, it’s used today largely by the ultra-orthodox in hermetic communities that insist on keeping outsiders at arm’s length. Which is one reason why “Menashe” is such an unusual accomplishment. Starring nonprofessional Yiddish-speaking actors from haredi communities in Brooklyn’s Borough Park and Crown Heights neighborhoods, “Menashe” is filmed in that language, though director/ co-writer Joshua Z. Weinstein did not speak it. It’s a gentle, melancholy father-and-son story that’s as notable for an evocation of its self-contained world as it is for its drama. As written by Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed, “Menashe” is loosely based on the life experience of its star, Menashe Lustig, who has something of a YouTube presence in the Hasidic world. The film’s Menashe is a man of a certain age, not exactly svelte as he strides into the frame headed for work as a cashier and man-of-alljobs at a small local supermarket. Though he is diligent and sincerely religious, Menashe is also hot tempered and disorganized, with the look and attitude of an unmade bed about him. If there is a way to screw up a situation, Menashe will find it. Menashe prays at a small neighborhood stiebel, and the word of his rabbi (convincingly played by Meyer Schwartz, a taxi driver in real life) is law to him. Though Menashe is hardly a rebel, there is one area where his life goes against the grain. For in a world where family is paramount, Menashe is a widower, and the film introduces him almost a year after his wife, Leah, has died. Despite pressure from the rabbi, who reminds him that “the Talmud says beginnings are hard,” he is, as an abortive arranged meeting with an eligible woman points out, completely uninterested in remarriage. Which is where things get complicated. For Menashe is also the father of a pre-teen boy named Rieven (Ruben Niborski), and the cultural norm of this community mandates that children be raised in two-parent families. — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

THE NUT JOB 2: NUTTY BY NATURE

PG, 91 minutes. Opens Friday at Niantic. Opens tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. You never know where you’re going to find the most radical ideas. Somehow, a sub-par animated film sequel intended to quiet the kids for a few hours on a weekend afternoon burns with a proletarian rage. You’d never expect that from “The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature,” but somehow, it’s true. First, a warning about truth (or lack thereof) in advertising. In “The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature,” there is no job that involves nuts, as promised by the title. The first “Nut Job” may have involved a nut heist, and the city-dwelling rodents around whom the story revolves may indeed be described as “nutty by nature,” in reference to their predilection for the crunchy, protein-packed treats, but most of the nut-related content of this film falls only in the first few minutes. These moments are a celebration of the nut-based life, as Surly the Squirrel (Will Arnett) and his rodent palls enjoy a Dionysian feast of nuts, seeds and legumes in the basement of a closed nut shop. This plentiful abundance of free food, however, is all too easy, and soon, the entire shop has been blown to smithereens, the result of an errant boiler valve. At any rate, the moral of “The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature” is that there is very little value in “easy” — no hard work, no character building, no wild animal instincts. So in the wake of the nut shop explosion, it’s back to the scrounge n’ gather way of life for Surly and Pals, if that way of life even exists anymore. “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature,” directed and co-written by Cal Brunker, is a searing indictment of capitalistic government corruption, embodied by the cravenly criminal Mayor of Oakton City (Bobby Moynihan). When the rodents resist against this development, the Mayor unleashes exterminators to violently suppress the uprising. This is a film of excesses and extremes. From the orgiastic festival of nuts that the film opens with, to the violent mayhem that it descends into, “Nutty by Nature” is a relentless melee. It’s a tornado of whirling dervish rodents battling ham-fisted humans over the sanctity of their land, which has been turned from a verdant paradise into a dark and hellish landscape of repurposed goods and shoddy craftsmanship, intended to drop every excess dollar in the Mayor’s pocket. It’s an unexpectedly radical, if otherwise rather rote animated sequel. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

ANNABELLE: CREATION

R, 109 minutes. Opens tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. A nun and several girls from a closed orphanage move in with the bereaved dollmaker, his wife and the possessed doll in this horror sequel. A review wasn’t available by deadline.