MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN
PG-13, 114 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Welcome back to the magical island of Kalokairi, a sun-strewn rocky outcropping in the azure Aegean Sea. The sequel/prequel hybrid “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” arrives a decade after the bonkers filmed adaptation of the stage musical “Mamma Mia!” Vehicles for ABBA’s songs, the films perfectly reflect the music: guileless, emotionally raw and unabashedly cheesy, wrapped in miles and miles of colorful synthetic fabric. This many lovelorn ABBA songs requires quite a story into which to shoehorn the tunes, and “Mamma Mia!” tripled down on love lost and found with three spurned lovers, Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth), returning to Kalokairi for the wedding of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who hoped to find her father. Now, she’s accepted all three men as adopted dads, and she’s reopening the hotel after her mother’s death (there’s almost no Meryl Streep here). While she gives tours to visitors around the property, she reminisces about her mother’s journey to the island. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
THE MEG
1/2 PG-13, 113 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook. It’s loosely based on Steve Alten’s 1997 book “Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror.” Its premise is that prehistoric marine predators lurk in the ocean’s subbasement, and they are either very hungry or very angry. Call it “Jurassic Shark.” The fish in question is the Megalodon, a 70-foot behemoth with a mouth that could swallow a school bus and gigantic teeth even more impressive than star Jason Statham’s. He plays Jonas Taylor, a specialist in deep-water rescue. The role is a stretch for Statham because it gives him zero opportunities to squeal a car around crowded city streets like a deranged Formula 1 driver. In addition, Jonas gives us a Statham who is holding his cynical bad-boy charm tightly under control. — By Colin Covert, Star Tribune
MILE 22
Zero R, 69 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. If you think I am going to call “Mile 22” a bad film, you are wrong. It’s not a film at all. It is a cringe factory working on overdrive to churn out sadistic shocks and a generally malevolent tone. Roughly fashioned as an action thriller set in the spy world, it contains minimal espionage but nonstop scenes of brutality presented with incoherent handheld camerawork and editing that is jerky in every sense of the word. The film is set in a collapsing Asian nation at a time of increasing U.S.-Russian tensions. Mark Wahlberg plays James Silva, a top field operative America turns to when diplomacy and the military can’t handle a tough job. He is tasked with transporting a man who knows an all-important secret to the distant airport. They run a nonstop gauntlet of hit men along the way, with more in pursuit. This all-guilt, no-pleasure slaughter gives us six gruesome corpses burned, stabbed and shot all before the opening credits, so what happens next doesn’t require explanation. — Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — FALLOUT
PG-13, 147 minutes. Stonington, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. Is it even summer without a “Mission: Impossible” movie? Hardly. Thankfully, another installment of the Tom Cruise-starring action franchise, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” is as sturdy and reliable as ever. This is the kind of action filmmaking that proves to be an effective antidote for superhero fatigue, with a sense of realism baked into every shot. There’s no messy digital CGI here as our heroes try to stop explosions from happening with their fists and bodies. “Fallout” may be the sparest and most efficient — not counting the truly wild and gasp-worthy stunts. It’s taut and unadorned; there’s very little flash or distraction in the form of eye-popping costumes or exotic locations or gadgetry. It’s pure action wrapped around a twisty tale of terrorism, covert ops and the one man who stands between the world and nuclear destruction, Ethan Hunt (Cruise). — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
SLENDER MAN
H1/2 PG-13, 93 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook. Unfortunately, this profoundly notscary horror film completely misses the mark about what makes its subject matter interesting. A group of small-town, lightly goth teenage girls stumble upon Slender Man during a sleepover — Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles) jokingly tells her mother “we’re going to drink vodka and meet guys on the internet,” in the film’s only winking line of dialogue, and that they do. Soon, the friend group is disappearing, and the girls are beset with heinous visions of Slender Man, a tall, faceless man in a black bespoke suit. What does he want? Them. What’s he going to do once he gets them? We’re not exactly sure.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service SEE