THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS

acceptance and friendship, but the pleasure of this film is in the larger than life characters created by the two leads and their perfectly askew chemistry. Mortensen is almost unrecognizable as Tony, packing extra pounds and an astute comedic sensibility. He knows just how far to push his caricature without making it cartoonish. And Ali, so memorable and heart-wrenching in “Moonlight,” puts his own stamp on a character who feels alienated from his own race and those he’s performing for. — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

THE GRINCH

PG, 90 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Every Who down in Whoville gets a new Grinch this season. Why, you may ask? The idea defies reason. Does the classic need help from a hot Cumberbatch? Or is this strange union a bizarre mismatch? The Grinch is the story you learned as an infant, starring a Christmas-hating heel and his doggie assistant. The fuzzy green villain hopes to make holiday gloom. Just like a wicked witch, but without the broom. He targets presents intended for tots. Oh, how horrific is this nasty crackpot. Seuss never explained what prompted this act. Perhaps the Grinch wore shoes that were too compact? (Or maybe, just maybe, his head had been whacked?) Should he consult a cardiologist chart? The answer is clear: It’s because of his heart. In “Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch ,” liberties are taken. Some are just padding, some quite mistaken. It’s suggested that our old friend the Grinch is an orphan, as though that excuses inflicting misfortune. There’s a new sidekick, a plump reindeer named Fred, and the remaking of Cindy’s mom as unwed. (Could she be a love for the small-hearted bad boy? Kind of, maybe, but look, this isn’t Tolstoy). Any-who, our Grinch decides to cancel the holiday, or make it as boring as, say, Groundhog Day. He hops inside chimneys to hoover up toys, certain to do it with an insouciant poise. Remember, this guy is the anti-merry — the same one played not long ago by Jim Carrey. Benedict Cumberbatch takes on the part, with an American accent — to give him less heart? — Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

INSTANT FAMILY 1/2

PG-13, 118 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Director/co-writer Sean Anders really takes the “instant” part of his new family dramedy “Instant Family” to heart. The film drops us right into the lives of Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) with little fanfare, as if to say to the audience, “Catch up guys, we’ve got a lot of story to tell.” It’s not too difficult to pick up what Anders is putting down, as Pete and Ellie are the kind of nice, upper-middle class, fast-talking, attractive white couple who frequently populate this kind of film. They’re missing one thing: kids. As business partners who flip run-down houses, they’ve never met a challenge they couldn’t tackle, so off to foster parenting class they go. They just don’t know just how big of a challenge they’re in for. Anders, who is known for the “Daddy’s Home” movies and other broad comedies, drew largely from his own experiences as an adoptive parent for the script, which he co-wrote with writing partner John Morris. He and his wife adopted a set of siblings, and that’s exactly what Pete and Ellie do after cautiously approaching a group of teenagers at an adoption fair. The sassy, defiant Lizzy (Isabela Moner) makes an impression, and it turns out she comes with two incredibly cute and incredibly difficult younger siblings, Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). Anders smartly punctures any representational issues in the tightly packed script. When Pete worries about looking like a “white savior” to kids of color, the sardonic social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) sarcastically offer to write “whites only” on their file, much to the couple’s chagrin. And yet, it does end up being a white savior story in a way — the married, well-off white couple does end up being more equipped to handle raising three kids than their mother, Carla (Joselin Reyes), who struggles with addiction and incarceration and doesn’t feel ready to take on the kids, no matter how much Lizzy wants to be reunited with her. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

1/2

PG, 99 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. Still playing at Waterford. “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms”? What in the cuckoo Christmas blasphemy is this? Disney, continuing on its inexorable death march to add more war to soft and beautiful classic childhood stories, has plucked all the feathers from Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s holiday ballet and tossed a bunch of glitter and circus clowns at its quivering carcass. This is your warning that if you have any affinity for the ballet, avoid this at all costs. This take on “The Nutcracker,” written by Ashleigh Powell in her screenwriting debut, somehow directed by both Lasse Hallstrom and Joe Johnston, takes merely a few key elements of the ballet and then tosses them into a blender, along with “Alice and Wonderland,” “The Greatest Showman” and Stanley Tucci in “The Hunger Games,” to create something wildly kooky and more violent. And yet it’s got incredibly low stakes, and it’s a mere shadow of what “The Nutcracker”

actually is. Sure, “girl falls asleep on Christmas Eve and dreams an awesome dance show” isn’t a whole lot of plot. But the story this team has come up with is rife with insidious Disney story fetishes, including the addition of the requisite dead mother to offer pathos and motivation for our heroine. Clara (Mackenzie Foy) is obsessed with science and an engineering genius, which will come in handy later when facing the other Disney obsession of late (giant clock gears). Set off on a wild goose chase by a mysterious gift from her mother, guided by her godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), Clara happens into a magical passageway and ends up in the snowy world of the Four Realms. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE

R, 86 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Perfunctory B-movie “The Possession of Hannah Grace” isn’t exactly an earth-shattering entry into the wellworn genre that is the exorcism movie. It doesn’t so much as invite attention to itself as it does to the genre itself, allowing viewers to ponder the ways in which it does or does not hew to convention, and what that might mean for the state of the exorcism movie some 45 years after Linda Blair puked pea soup all over our collective frontal lobes in “The Exorcist.” Set in an environment of flickering fluorescent lights and pockmarked poured concrete, “The Possession of Hannah Grace” isn’t really about the possession, nor is it even about Hannah Grace. The film, rather, centers on Megan Reed (Shay Mitchell), a newbie overnight intake assistant at the Boston Metro Hospital morgue whose night is rocked by the arrival of Hannah Grace’s corpse. A prologue offers the kind of exorcism content we’re familiar with: heavy Catholic iconography, chanting priests, a nubile female body writhing and lashed to a bed. Which is why the most interesting thing about the film, written by Brian Sieve and directed by Diederik Van Rooijen, is it abandons all that gothic familiarity for a night at the morgue. Instead of a patriarchal priest compelling demons to get out, a young woman, riddled with PTSD and clinging to 60 days of sobriety, is just trying to get someone to believe her that something’s not right with this body. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET

PG, 111 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. 2012’s “Wreck-It Ralph” felt like a real breath of fresh air. Using 1980s arcade game characters, co-writer and director Rich Moore explored the nuances of heroism and villainy through the surprisingly self-aware video game bad guy Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly), exposing the limitations of the good/evil binary. It was self-reflective, and not afraid to pillory genre formulas, which Disney has been known to employ a time or two. Moore is back to helm the sequel, “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” along with co-director Phil Johnston, who co-wrote the original film. Once again, the team brings a razor-sharp scalpel to dissect the zeitgeist. Although Ralph is perfectly happy with his life hanging with his best pal in the arcade, racer Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) is bored, and nothing fixes boredom like a high-speed Wi-Fi connection. After running roughshod over Sugar Rush, Ralph and Vanellope hit the web to snag a new steering wheel for the console from an eBay auction. Along the way, they discover the risks of online shopping, viral fame, pop-up ads, the dark web and a truly addictive adult racing game in the style of “Grand Theft Auto” called “Slaughter Race.” Headed up by the very cool Shank (Gal Gadot), it’s love at first engine rev for Van, and a cause for concern for Ralph, who doesn’t want to lose his best pal. So while Vanellope follows her heart to the thrills of “Slaughter Race,” Ralph does everything he can to right things in the arcade, which means winning the eBay auction. He becomes a viral video star, doing his best video impressions — makeup tutorials, hot peppers, screaming goats, you name it. The whole film is quite a savvy analysis of how the web works, and it’s cleverly rendered visually. The characters zip around the internet in little flying cars, make queries at a Search Bar headed up by a stuffy know-it-all KnowsMore (Alan Tudyk), and Ralph vacuums up hearts he turns into cold hard cash. “Ralph Breaks the Internet” is a fresh, smart, funny and most importantly, comprehensible analysis of both internet culture and the complexities of interpersonal relationships. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

ROBIN HOOD 1/2

PG-13, 116 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Every generation gets the Robin Hood it deserves, and the 2018 “Robin Hood” is sleek, modern and retrofitted for a radical political landscape. Take in that Shepard Fairey-inspired wanted poster, the woodcut-style closing credits sequence rendered in Constructivist shades of red and black, our masked, hooded hero hurling Molotov cocktails, and you just might wonder: “Is Robin Hood antifa?” But Robin Hood has always been anti-fascist, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, living with his pals in Sherwood Forest while battling against the tyrannical Sheriff of Nottingham and disrupting abusive

systems of power. He’s the very definition of a radical leftist activist. The new iteration maintains the medieval setting while bringing the classic story to a contemporary thematic landscape, using a street art aesthetic and early Soviet cinematic references to position the landed lord of Loxley as a proletarian hero. Played by the beguiling Welsh actor Taron Egerton, this Robin Hood is younger than most actors who have taken the hood, suited in trim quilted leather and minimalist robes, sporting a clean, sharp ‘do. He also has a traumatic backstory, having been conscripted to fight in the Crusades, taken from his land and love, Marian (Eve Hewson). The holy war also gets the modern treatment, as soldiers engage in guerrilla street warfare against their enemies. There are no pitched battles in sight — this looks more like the cinematic depictions of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but with bows and arrows. It’s in battle that Robin meets his best ally, who starts as an enemy. Jamie Foxx plays a Moor warrior who stows away to England to enact revenge for his son’s death, and engages Robin to help him do it. He lets Robin call him John and trains the young lord to infiltrate the inner circle of the Sheriff (Ben Mendelsohn) while robbing the coffers blind, disguised as The Hood. The idea is to take the whole enterprise down from the inside, choking off the church’s funding of the war earned through brutal taxation. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

A STAR IS BORN

R, 135 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook. With pop superstar Lady Gaga as his muse, legendary cinematographer Matthew Libatique behind the camera, and a well-worn, beloved Hollywood fable to work with, the cards are stacked in favor of star/co-writer/director Bradley Cooper for his directorial debut, “A Star is Born.” And yet, his film is frankly startling in how assured, artful and emotionally authentic it is. This is finely-tuned precision filmmaking — genuine artistry on display in a huge, prestige studio movie. It’s a blockbuster romance that looks and feels like an indie film, all in service of an expression of pure love. In a physically and vocally transformed performance, Cooper stars as country rocker Jackson Maine, with an Arizona origin story right out of an epic western melodrama. His ears ringing from chronic tinnitus, and at the bottom of his bottle after a show, he stumbles into a drag bar for a drink and encounters Ally (Gaga). She’s singing an Edith Piaf number, with painted hair and stick-on eyebrows. Sprawled on the bar, she locks eyes with Jackson, and with us, and instantly both he and we have fallen for the impish singer. After a few rounds in a cop bar, a fistfight and an impromptu intimate songwriting session in a supermarket parking lot, she’s fallen too. Fundamentally, “A Star is Born” is a movie about love — love that shines in the best of times, persists in the worst — but truly, it is about falling in love with Ally’s face. The moment that’s been in every version of the movie, where Jackson says he “just wants to take another look” at her, is the thesis, the spine around which the story rotates. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the stars of “A Star is Born,” but there’s so much more to love too. The supporting cast is dynamite, from Anthony Ramos as Ally’s best friend to Sam Elliott doing career-best work as Jackson’s older brother and embattled tour manager, Bobby. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

WIDOWS

1/2 R, 129 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Steve McQueen wants to make you look. His achingly long takes in “Twelve Years a Slave” forced viewers to confront the harsh realities of slavery; his gaze teased and tortured us in equal measure in the sex-addiction drama “Shame.” With “Widows,” a masterfully made female-driven heist film, McQueen’s camera both directs and distracts the eye, connecting characters with long takes while lulling viewers into a trance before an explosion of violence. In this genre exercise, McQueen seems to be saying look again, look harder, because underneath the roiling tension of big money heists and the crunching of political gears is an examination about the ugly machinations of power, money and patriarchy. McQueen has teamed up with “Gone Girl” and “Sharp Objects” writer Gillian Flynn to adapt the 1980s British TV crime series written by Lynda La Plante for the big screen. Flynn’s story trademarks are in place: flinty yet vulnerable women, story twists galore. Fused with McQueen’s unflinching eye, the pulpy political thriller is elevated to high art, while the bold, brash criminal capers inject a shot of adrenaline into the British auteur’s style. A heart-stopping opening heist sequence toggles between extreme violence and intimate sensuality, laying the blueprint for the pattern that repeats throughout the film. The widows in question are Veronica (Viola Davis), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Amanda (Carrie Coon). Their husbands are killed during a sloppy, bloody run from the police after stealing $2 million, leaving their women adrift, penniless and with no means of generating their own income. Harry (Liam Neeson), Veronica’s late husband, has left her a ledger with notes for his next heist, so she assembles her team of hapless wives and mothers. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service