DADDY’S HOME 2

COCO

1/2 PG, 109 minutes. Waterford, Lisbon. A casual glance at “Coco” might suggest the latest animated offering from Pixar is aimed directly at one culture because the film deeply examines the traditions of the Mexican holiday of the Day of the Dead. Closer examination reveals that while it celebrates the day of honoring and remembering those who have died, it is really a story about family, following your dreams and respect that cuts across all cultures. Add to that a production that is so visually stunning sunglasses should be passed out at the theater and “Coco” is a treat with universal appeal. The broad attraction of the film starts with Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), a young boy who because of an incident that happened generations ago in his family has had music banned from his life. Just like many who have been told they can’t follow their dream, Miguel defies his family and seeks out a way to show at a music competition the guitar skills that he has been secretly developing. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency

1/2 PG-13, 100 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. “Daddy’s Home 2” just might have to meet “A Bad Moms Christmas” outside in the parking lot to rumble over this turf war. Both films are seasonal romps about intergenerational love, acceptance and different parenting styles, but “Daddy’s Home 2” slightly gets the edge. The surreal and silly sequel to the hit 2015 comedy skates on the well-known but still-appealing comic personas of stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and their zany chemistry. Co-writer and director Sean Anders returns to helm the family comedy, and like the moms in “Bad Moms Christmas,” “Daddy’s Home 2” doubles down on the dads. While milquetoast sweetie stepdad Brad (Ferrell) managed to exert his sensitive, progressive influence on tough guy Dusty (Wahlberg), it’s a whole new ballgame when their fathers come to town. Jon Lithgow is brilliantly cast as Brad’s dad, Don, aka Pop Pop, a chatty retired mailman with cookies in his pocket. Then there’s Dusty’s father, Kurt (Mel Gibson), who is a womanizing, virulently macho astronaut. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

DARKEST HOUR

by Joe Wright. Now Wright returns with a fully fledged Dunkirk film: “Darkest Hour” is already receiving awards chatter for Gary Oldman’s deliciously crafty portrayal of the film’s main subject, a newly minted British prime minister named Winston Churchill. But this isn’t just film-as-backdrop for a towering central performance. Wright brings his signature good taste, including sumptuous, jewel-box sets and elegantly staged set pieces, to an enterprise in which Oldman’s hugely enjoyable star turn is equaled by similarly well-judged performances from Kristin Scott Thomas and Ben Mendelsohn. Handsomely filmed, intelligently written, accented with just a dash of outright hokum, “Darkest Hour” ends a year already laden with terrific films about the same subject and ties it up with a big, crowd-pleasing bow. “Darkest Hour” begins in May 1940, when the war is already underway in Europe, accommodationist forces still hold sway in Britain, and German troops have taken France, setting their sights on the island across the English Channel. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is forced to resign, the vagrant winds of fortune blow in Churchill’s general direction: Although he has recently been in the “wilderness” after a disastrous political career, he’s deemed the most acceptable choice among flawed contenders. “It’s not a gift,” he says grumpily when the PM position is dangled before him. “It’s revenge.” Following the template of the most riveting biopics, screenwriter Anthony McCarten eschews the soup-tonuts Wikipedia approach, instead drilling down into the period that would shape Churchill into the iconic figure whose high-toned comportment and rhetoric seem like dimly remembered dreams today. — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post has nothing to do with the cutting of employees that seems to have become a favorite corporate pastime. In this case, it’s very literal. A Norwegian scientist has discovered a way to shrink a person who is 6 feet tall to five inches. A world of Lilliputian-sized people would put less strain on the ecology and be a financial boom because houses, cars, food, etc., would all be so small, a person’s personal wealth explodes to gargantuan size. After living a life of mediocrity, Paul (Damon) and Audrey (Kristen Wiig) Safranek decide to spend the money to be downsized. Things don’t go as planned, and Paul finds himself living a miserable existence in the tiny world. It gets worse when he meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident who was shrunk against her will as punishment for her protests. Now she cleans up after the rich and famous. There are multiple places where the film appears to be ready to take some kind of stand but then crumbles in indecisive writing. Just before Paul and Audrey go for their transformation, they are confronted in a bar by a man who wants to know why people who are only 5 inches tall should have the same right to vote as normal-size people. His argument is those who have been downsized are spending less and killing the economy. Debates on the bigotry of this thinking could have filled the movie, but Payne brushes it off with little discussion. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency

FATHER FIGURES

HZero R, 125 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. “Father Figures” is a movie, ostensibly. I’m pretty sure it is. Moving images were projected, along with recorded sound, which indicates it is a movie, but the effect was so listless, low-energy and profoundly unentertaining that I jotted down in my notes “what even IS this?” It would be more accurate to describe the experience as a nearly two-hour borderline hostage situation, with torture involving bad, offensive and unfunny “comedy.” The protagonists are brothers Peter (Ed Helms) and Kyle (Owen Wilson), who are “twins.” Sure. Peter is a divorced doctor, with a kid who hates him, and a personal life that consists predominantly of “Law & Order: SVU” reruns. He’s deeply envious of Kyle, a beach bum who’s made millions licensing his likeness to a barbecue sauce company. At the wedding of their mother, Helen (Glenn Close), Peter, desperately unhappy with the banality of his cushy upper-middle class life, self-soothes with an episode of “SVU,” when he becomes convinced one of the actors is their long-lost father. He’s not, but it triggers a round of questioning about his parentage, which sets the brothers on a cross-country road trip. Cinematographer Lawrence Sher makes his directorial debut with the film, which is about as captivating as a flaccid noodle. Awkward bits of brotherly rivalry or ribaldry go on for far, far, painfully too long, and all of the energy is strangely subdued and muted. All momentum is sapped from the film, which requires extreme amounts of patience to endure. But the true offense comes from the blinkered and completely tone deaf script by Justin Malen. That it’s not funny and makes no sense would be bad enough, but there’s a virulent strain of sexism, too. Every woman the brothers encounter is evaluated for their sexual potential, not anything else. Their own mother, played the Close, is reduced to a running joke that involves the exes describing her sexual skills of their mother. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

FERDINAND

PG, 106 minutes. Through today only at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The beloved children’s book “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf, with illustrations by Robert Lawson, was published in 1936. But the simple, pacifist story about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight has resonated across generations. It’s a natural progression that this favorite character would find a home on the big screen in an animated feature, “Ferdinand,” but perhaps the filmmakers behind the raucous “Ice Age” movies aren’t exactly the right team to adapt this elegant story to the screen. The peaceful spirit of Ferdinand the bull is celebrated in the film, directed by Carlos Saldanha, but the rather sparse story has been filled out with the typical animated feature fare of manic action, a coterie of wise-cracking animals, body humor, dead parents, car chases, dance-offs and pop music. Elegant and simple, this film is not. To flesh out the story of Ferdinand to feature length, the team of writers has given the protagonist a dramatic upbringing. The young and gentle bull flees his ranch after his father is chosen for a bullfight and never returns. He ends up at the home of a flower farmer and is taken in by his daughter, Nina (Lily Day), where girl and beast grow up together in a perfect harmony. But Ferdinand (John Cena) becomes too large and unruly for his own good, and after wreaking havoc on a flower festival, he’s shipped back to the ranch, where he’s reunited with his childhood friends. They headbutt and tussle to be chosen by the matador El Primero (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), but Ferdinand is the odds-on favorite due to his hulking size and clumsiness that masquerades as ferociousness. When the bulls realize they’re being sent to “the chop shop” if they can’t perform, it inspires an all-out revolt. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

1/2 PG, 105 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. First things first: Though it features a character named “P.T. Barnum,” “The Greatest Showman” is in no way a factual account of the life of the celebrated 19th-century circus founder and huckster. In fact, you’ll have to completely set aside any unsavory stories you may have heard about the real-life Barnum, because this one is played by the ever-charming Hugh Jckman. Resistance is futile. Directed by first-timer Michael Gracey, the musical never aspires to be anything more than a heaping helping of PG-rated holiday cheese, something that the whole family can partake of. For the most part, it meets that low bar, though you’ll have to suspend disbelief at every turn. The story begins during Barnum’s boyhood, when, while working in his father’s tailor shop, he falls in love with Charity, the daughter of a wealthy client who would never let his only child run off with the son of tradesman. But once the girl becomes an adult, played by Michelle Williams, she can’t be talked out of marrying her beloved. (Just forget, for a second, that Jackman is 12 years older than Williams.) Fast-forward a few years, to when they’re parents to a couple of kids and struggling to make ends meet. As if on cue, Barnum dreams up a novel way to make money, via a museum of curiosities, complete with human attractions. After putting out a call for unique individuals, he forms his troupe during a musical montage: There’s the bearded lady (Keala Settle) and tiny Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey), not to mention the sibling trapeze artists W.D. and Anne Wheeler (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Zendaya). When W.D. warns that people won’t like seeing black performers onstage, the showman replies, with a knowing smirk: “Oh, I’m counting on it.” At first, Barnum isn’t entirely sensitive to the needs of his employees. When he tries to recruit the man whom he would christen Tom Thumb (a dwarf who isn’t interested in having people stare at him), Barnum replies, “They’re laughing anyway. You might as well get paid.” But pretty soon, he’s as progressive as a 21st-century Twitter liberal, empowering his group of former pariahs to live their best lives. — Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

PG-13, 118 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Twenty-two years later — and many leaps forward in video game and movie technology — comes a sequel to “Jumanji.” “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” a souped-up follow-up to the 1995 film starring Robin Williams, also shares as its source the surreal 1981 picture book by writer and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, about siblings who open a board game that brings jungle animals careering through their house. The new film, di-

rected by Jake Kasdan, is a genuine hoot and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is smarter and more humorous than the first movie, and its digital effects — which include stampeding albino rhinos and mountain-scraping aerobatics — are far snazzier, as one would expect. It also delivers a message, geared to teens, about overcoming their insecurities to participate fully in life, without pounding the lesson into the ground. The film’s stars — Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan -—are darn near impossible to dislike, in roles that require them to play teenagers trapped in adult bodies. Some explanation is necessary. In a prologue set in 1996, an abandoned copy of the Jumanji game from the first film is found on a beach. A teen rejects the old carved box, preferring his video game. But he hears the sound of drums coming from the box, opens it, and cut to a present-day high school where four kids have landed in detention: neurotic nerd Spencer (Alex Wolff); hunky football jock Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain); shy brainiac Martha (Morgan Turner); and Instagram selfie queen Bethany (Madison Iseman). Left to tidy up a storage room as part of their punishment, the four discover the Jumanji box, inside which is an antique video game. The original board game, it seems, has evolved. The teens select avatars and accidentally, in a molecule-scrambling instant, beam themselves into the game’s jungle -— not as themselves, but as their digital alter egos. Spencer is now Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Johnson), a muscle-bound adventurer (though inside he’s still a worried kid). The handsome Fridge learns he is now Franklin “Moose” Finbar (Hart), a diminutive zoologist who whines a lot. Martha is now martial arts dynamo Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan). Best of all, the self-absorbed Bethany has turned into Dr. Shelly Oberon, a paleontologist and cartographer played by Jack Black. — Jane Horwitz, The Washington Post

JUSTICE LEAGUE

1/2 PG-13, 121 minutes. Lisbon. So what’s it going to take to get Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and the zombie corpse of Superman together at last? The end of the world, of course. The story is an old beloved superhero chestnut: a space monster needs a thingamajig in order to end/conquer the world. If he gets all three thingamajigs, it’ll be bad. Which is why it’s so frustrating when the Justice League just leaves the very last one just sitting on top of a Gotham police cruiser while they try and calm down the Franken-Superman they’ve reanimated. Obviously, the space monster gets it. Batman (superpower: rich) is the ostensible leader of this team, recruiting his pal Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, as well as newer friends Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman — a long-haired ocean bro who swills whiskey and swims

Habout in his aqua jeans, Barry Allen, aka The Flash — a neurotic, chatty, socially awkward and very fast teen — and Victor Stone, aka Cyborg — a brooding former football star brought back from the dead by his scientist father who turns him into man-machine. Snyder brought a level of darkness and nihilism to this franchise, so it’s very, very strange that “Justice League” is as quippy as it is. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

PITCH PERFECT 3

1/2 PG-13, 93 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. When the a cappella-themed comedy “Pitch Perfect” debuted in 2012, its success proved audiences were hungry for the style of raucous yet decidedly feminine humor it served up. The inventive musical numbers didn’t hurt either, and suddenly, the niche singing style most often seen on college campuses went mainstream. With “Pitch Perfect 2,” the franchise went bigger and broader, to mixed results. In the final farewell of the trilogy, “Pitch Perfect 3” jettisons the body humor for action-adventure, and leans so far into the weird that it’s very, very strange, yet sometimes amusing. At least the music’s fun. The film, written by Kay Cannon and Mike White, directed by “Step Up All In” director Trish Sie, follows the Bellas (formerly of Barden University) as they struggle with life after college. No longer able to perform regularly with their best friends, they’re creatively stymied and nostalgic for their collegiate prime. For one last hurrah, they decide to hop on a USO tour, which bizarrely takes place in Spain, Greece and the South of France — not Fallujah. There’s a streak of self-reflection throughout “Pitch Perfect 3,” pointing out the formulaic tics of the franchise. “Is there a competition? There always has to be a competition,” a manic Chloe (Brittany Snow) breathlessly asks. Of course there is. On the tour, which is somehow sponsored by DJ Khaled (playing himself), four groups will compete to open for him on the last night. The Bellas are feeling insecure when they check out their competition, who all play instruments. They find their rivals in the all-girl rock group Evermoist, headed up by a perfectly smarmy Calamity (Ruby Rose). And yet, a competition just isn’t enough. Adding to the drama are some serious daddy issues. Fat Amy’s (Rebel Wilson) long-lost father (John Lithgow) turns up for reconciliation, but he’s got more nefarious ulterior motives, and the girls have to put their special aca-skills to work to thwart him. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

THE SHAPE OF WATER

1/2 R, 123 minutes. Madison Art Cinemas and Mystic Luxury Cinemas. “The Shape of Water” is a sexy, violent, preposterous, beautiful fantasy, co-writer