AT ETERNITY’S GATE

1/2

PG-13, 111 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas. Julian Schnabel’s movie about Vincent van Gogh, “At Eternity’s Gate,” gives us long, enormous close-ups of Willem Dafoe’s wonder-filled eyes. It’s a brilliant strategy because it makes us want to see what the painter is seeing. Like all movies about van Gogh, including last year’s “Loving Vincent,” 1956’s “Lust for Life” and Robert Altman’s 1990 “Vincent and Theo,” this one zeros in on the fact that the Dutchman is now universally acknowledged as one of the greatest artists of all time but, while he was alive, couldn’t get a gig painting a fence. A painter himself, Schnabel hits that point often — maybe too often? — in scenes such as one in which a bar owner rips down a wall of van Gogh paintings, many of them among the most famous artworks in the world today. What distinguishes “Gate” from its predecessors are its intimacy and intensity. In addition to Dafoe, Rupert Friend as loving brother Theo and Oscar Isaac as painter Paul Gaugin are showcased in straight-up-the-nostril close-ups, as if cinematographer Benoit Delhomme is trying to peer into their brains. Likewise, Tatiana Lisovkaia’s score follows the trend of in-your-face music that functions almost like a character. Mostly, it’s rhythmic, piano-heavy music with a melody that recalls Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends,” but one remarkable scene makes a shift: Van Gogh stares at a tree, sketching it with tiny crosshatches. Suddenly, a violin takes up the melody, the switch to the more ethereal instrument making it feel like the movie is shifting from inside van Gogh’s head into his soaring heart. Dafoe’s elegiac quality hints at why the artist was ahead of his time: because he saw more than anyone else could. It’s a towering performance in a movie that casts a magnetic spell. — Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

PG-13, 134 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The challenge for any director putting together a biopic is to find the balance between making sure the audience has been given every moment they want to see and hear in regards to the subject’s public persona while pulling back the curtains enough to delve deep into more personal matters. Bryan Singer has found that razor sharp edge with “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Singer’s examination of the creative and destructive nature of genius through Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) and Queen offers insight into both the musical madness of the band and the emotional insanity that Mercury dealt with during his short-lived career. He died in 1991 at the age of 45 from bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. “Bohemian Rhapsody” starts with Mercury (who was still going by his given name of Bulsara) as he takes over as lead singer of a local bar band in 1970 and continues through the biggest performance by the band playing Live Aid in 1985. The time in-between was a supersonic rise to fame and glory built around Mercury’s incredible vocals and the band’s demands to be innovative. The film looks at the band but its deepest and darkest core is the tale of Mercury. Malek faced his own challenge in playing the singer as he had to show both the bigger-than-life moments in Mercury’s life coupled with the times that sent him into a deep melancholy. Malek has captured the essence of Mercury with so much power that he commands the screen. This is the kind of work that should get attention from Oscar voters. — Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service

BOY ERASED

R, 114 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Starts Friday at Lisbon. For much of “Boy Erased,” we are watching the face of 19-year-old Jared Eamons as he takes in his surroundings. It’s a handsome, intelligent face — it belongs to the actor Lucas Hedges — and its range of expressions subtly distills the drama of this somber, coolly appalled and appalling movie. You note Jared’s dutiful attentiveness as his father preaches a sermon, his furtive downward glance in the company of a boy he likes and his quiet anguish when he finally approaches his parents and disgorges the long-held secret of his homosexuality. Some time later — or perhaps earlier, given writer-director Joel Edgerton’s deft shuffling of time frames — Jared will find himself with a group of people, mostly young men, dressed in white button-up shirts that suggest a declaration of collective purity. At times he scans the room to see if anyone else shares his skepticism, despair and growing alarm, but those who enter the Christian ex-gay program known as Love in Action are generally advised to keep their eyes off each other and on the program’s strict director, Victor Sykes (Edgerton). Hedges’ silent scream of a performance, more internalized than his excellent work in “Manchester by the Sea” and the recent “Mid90s,” both complements and counters the soul-smothering heaviness of Sykes’ agenda. “Boy Erased” is based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir about his experience as an Arkansas teenager, when his Baptist parents sent him to Memphis for gay conversion therapy. Edgerton, always a superb actor, is also a shrewd and attentive filmmaker. Jared’s parents, Marshall and Nancy, are played by Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman. Kidman’s steely grace illuminates the plight of the doting, sympathetic Nancy, who responds to her son’s admission by sadly closing her eyes but not, crucially, her mind or heart. Crowe, meanwhile, conveys Marshall’s natural affection for his son but also his willingness to suppress it and demand answers in lieu of listening. — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

R, 106 minutes. Westbrook. Marielle Heller’s second feature film, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” is an interesting companion piece (and mirror) to her debut, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Both films are adaptations of women’s memoirs, and both carefully inspect the ways in which women navigate and survive with regard to their age and sexuality. As writers, the characters are aware of this, and aware of how they can create their own reality with their words. While “Diary” followed a nubile young ‘70s sex object, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” based on the book by author Lee Israel, adapted for the screen by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, is about an older queer woman, overlooked by society, creating her worth with her words using libertine and actually illegal methods. Lee Israel, played by Melissa McCarthy, is an author in early ‘90s New York struggling to make ends meet. Although she once had a New York Times best-seller, her agent (Jane Curtin) has no interest in her long-gestating Fanny Brice biography

SCHINDLER’S LIST: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

R, 195 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. “Schindler’s List,” which won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director for Steven Spielberg, is being released in a remastered version on its 25th anniversary. The drama follows the enigmatic Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.

and writes Lee off because she’s not a “name” author like Tom Clancy or Nora Ephron. Lee is too prickly and drunk to play well with others, and she finds herself in dire financial straits. When she sells off a personal note from Katharine Hepburn to Anna (Dolly Wells), a friendly bookshop owner and purveyor of rare literary memorabilia, Lee discovers her salvation: forgery. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

CREED II

1/2 PG-13, 128 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The weight of legacy hangs heavily over “Creed II.” Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories. But also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one. “Creed II” pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the luster of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honor its past, resurrecting unfinished business from “Rocky IV” and adding a dash of “Rocky III.” Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor. Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa. Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as color commentator. The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in “Rocky IV.” That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise. Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos. This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and — laugh if you must — it feels sort of right here. Desire — or lack of it — plays a key role in “Creed II” since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top. Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption. — Mark Kennedy. Associated Press

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD

PG-13, 134 minutes. Through tonight only at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. “Bunty, the baby nifflers are loose again.” And with that, the hero of “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” signals to his housekeeper — and to the audience, really — that this new chapter in the adventures of magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, as mumbly and bumbly as ever) will have at least one antic chase scene featuring CGI critters. (Nifflers, which resemble platypuses, are the ewoks of the 21st century. Every appearance by a niffler in this film was met by a chorus of “awws” at a screening, and that was from grown-ups. Keep your eyes on them, though, and not just because they’re cute. One of them plays a significant role.) But there’s something — or, rather, someone — far less adorable that has also escaped in this Harry Potter prequel, which takes a turn for the dark side that will satisfy the franchise’s adult fans even more. As the film opens, in a bravura, wham-bam prologue that combines action with shivery terror, the title character, an evil wizard played by Johnny Depp, is seen escaping from detention while being transferred from a New York prison to face punishment for unspecified crimes in Europe. What crimes? Possibly his haircut: a peroxide-blond brush cut that makes Depp look like a scoutmaster for the local chapter of the Hitler Youth. More seriously, he wants power. Once