HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION
R, 93 minutes. Through tonight only at Lisbon. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas and Mystic Luxury Cinemas. “Eighth Grade” is so spot-on, so painstakingly realistic, you may think you’ve stumbled into a documentary. The credit goes to first-time writer-director Bo Burnham and to whoever the casting genius was who found Elsie Fisher to play lead character Kayla Day. It’s a kick when a director’s vision is so precisely aligned with a performance. Burnham’s script and Fisher’s acting make “Eighth Grade” a compelling tale of a young girl struggling with the adolescent angst of her last few days in middle school. Coming-of-age stories and movies about navigating the pratfalls of classrooms, mean teens, sexual urges, parties and pimples are nothing new. But Burnham offers a twist: Kayla’s life exists in two realms. Confident Kayla posts inspirational videos on YouTube. She offers sound advice to her fellow 13-year-olds about being yourself, trusting yourself, putting yourself out there and brushing off putdowns from negative jerks. But once her laptop camera is clicked off, she becomes real-life Kayla: awkward, shy, clumsy, tongue-tied, a loner but not by choice. Clearly, she has never taken her own advice. — Clint O’Connor, Akron Beacon Journal
THE EQUALIZER 2
R, 120 minutes. Through tonight only at Westbrook. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Lisbon. You won’t usually find Denzel Washington in a movie sequel. He just doesn’t do them. So there must be PG, 97 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It’s all about the zing. If you are not up on monster speak, the term zing refers to what happens once in the life of a vampire, mummy, werewolf, etc. It’s that moment when they know they have found the one true love in their life. In the case of “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) learns it’s possible to zing more than once as he meets the new once-in-a-lifetime love of his life during a monster sea cruise. While Dracula zings again, this third offering in the offbeat look at the world of ghouls and monsters doesn’t come close to having the same zing as the first or second offering. It’s fun, and director Genndy Tartakovsky (“The Powerpuff Girls”) knows how to keep the action moving because of all his work in television animation, but the change of approach when dealing with Dracula coupled with the setting switch leaves the production just a little light on zing. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency
INCREDIBLES 2
PG, 118 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook. After his highly successful feature film “The Incredibles” picked up the Oscar for best animated film in 2004, director/writer Brad Bird (“Iron Giant”) said he would make a sequel once he had the right idea. It’s been 14 years, and Bird finally has hatched an idea that resulted in the follow-up to the tale of the superhero family. Bird should have spent a little less time pondering what