THE ADDAMS FAMILY
1/2 PG, 87 minutes. Through today only at Waterford. Still playing at Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The enduring appeal of “The Addams Family” is quite impressive. With only four notes and a couple of snaps, plus a classic black dress, one can instantly evoke the classic American Gothic clan, who are creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. Since Morticia’s 1938 debut on the pages of The New Yorker, in a cartoon drawn by Charles Addams, the unusual family has been iconic in every possible format: a 1960s TV series (thanks to that catchy theme song by Vic Mizzy), two animated series, two wildly popular 1990s feature films, a Broadway musical, video games and now, an animated feature directed by “Sausage Party” helmers Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, written by Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler and Erica Rivinoja. The animated figures hew closely to Addams’ cartoons, imparted in the dry, deadpan, punny wordplay integral to the Addams appeal, upending the idea of what normal looks like. This is all par for the Addams course, so what new territory can be wrought here? There are some supernatural liberties that can be taken, for sure, in this computer animated format, but the core beliefs are in place. The Addams might look, talk and act darker and weirder than most, but what makes them the weirdest is they’re a loving, tight-knit family (with both parents alive, it should be noted). The appeal of this “The Addams Family,” which doesn’t break the mold, is simply to spend some more time in this gently spooky world, which is a gateway for budding creepsters and goths. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
ARCTIC DOGS
PG, 92 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Westbrook, Lisbon. Jeremy Renner, John Cleese, Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Huston and other acting luminaries voice the animal characters in this tale of an Arctic fox who wants to become a Top Dog, the Arctic’s star husky couriers. A review wasn’t available.
COUNTDOWN
PG-13, 90 minutes. Through today only at Stonington, Westbrook. Still playing at Lisbon. When a nurse downloads an app that claims to predict exactly when a person is going to die, it tells her she only has three days to live. A review wasn’t available.
THE CURRENT WAR
1/2 PG-13, 107 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. Two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, a movie about Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla and, for a climax, the dazzling illumination of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, failed utterly to ignite the movie world. Now there’s a director’s cut of “The Current War,” already released in England, featuring newly shot footage, various cuts, reorderings and additions, a new musical score and a 10-minutes-shorter running time. This one remains a bit of a mess but a pretty interesting one, as well as one of the few films this year deserving (in both admirable and dissatisfying ways) of the adjective “instructive.” Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) sweats like crazy to visually energize a story largely about alternating current versus direct current, embodied by the driven, competitive but very different inventors and industrialists at the story’s center. The fictionalized history covered by “The Current War” takes place in the last two decades of the 19th century. Benedict Cumberbatch stews and furrows his way through the role of the perpetually distracted Edison, in a performance more concerned with interior tension than audience love. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
DOCTOR SLEEP
R, 151 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. When we first see little Danny Torrance in “Doctor Sleep,” a crafty and curiously moving sequel to “The Shining,” he is riding his tricycle once more through the serpentine corridors of the Overlook Hotel. The details are uncanny and instantly transporting: the boy’s overalls and red shirt, the hexagonal pattern on the carpet, the gliding virtuosity of the tracking shots. For a moment it’s as though nothing has changed, even though something clearly has. So fully does the writer-director Mike Flanagan commit to the illusion he’s conjured that you may not fully register the difference until Danny stops and turns his head — toward Room 237, naturally — revealing the profile of the actor playing him (Roger Dale Floyd). It’s a deftly timed little reveal: The flashback we’re seeing is not footage spliced in from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film but a fastidious re-creation, an attempt to channel the detail-oriented obsessiveness that defined both that movie and the extraordinary devotion of its fans. Decades after its initially divided reception, Kubrick’s “The Shining” is widely revered as a landmark of modern horror, as well as a useful reminder that a great picture isn’t always a model adaptation (and vice versa). Those legacies account almost entirely for why this new movie exists. Adapted from King’s mythology-expanding 2013 novel of the same title, “Doctor Sleep” follows an older, present-day Dan Torrance (played by a sensitive, fetchingly bedraggled Ewan McGregor) into a world of bright-minded children and nomadic child killers, all of whom share some version of his psychic gift. Flanagan’s movie thus faces the unenviable challenge of both faithfully adapting King’s story and maintaining consistency with the pop-cultural colossus that is Kubrick’s film. — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
DOWNTON ABBEY
PG, 122 minutes. Westbrook. Into our disheveled modern world, run by politically, morally and sartorially sloppy leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, the feature film version of “Downton Abbey” arrives just in time to tidy up. All brand names and franchises lean into the concept of fan service; this one leans so far, it falls forward onto a fainting couch. It’s not a movie, really. It’s a commemorative “Downton Abbey” throw pillow. It’ll no doubt placate millions of fans of creator Julian Fellowes’ global TV smash, which preoccupied much of our own United States in its six PBS seasons from 2011 to 2016. Screenwriter Fellowes keeps things in moderate-to-medium bustle, circling an extremely simple idea. King George V and Queen Mary are coming to Yorkshire (the time is 1927, just after the series’ narrative timeline): They’ve invited themselves, along with an invading army of butlers and cooks, to stay at the pleasantly expansive manse of the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville, who gets weirdly little to do) and his Yankee wife, Cora Crawley, the Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern, same). What else happens? There is a lot, yet it feels like a little. Downton’s retired butler Carson (Jim Carter, he of the gorgeous stentorian voice) swings back into service, gratefully, while Barrow (Robert James-Collier), onetime footman promoted to butler, is introduced into Yorkshire’s gay underground. The depiction is sympathetic, though it will strike some as slightly ahistorical. Meantime the servants are revolting, discreetly. Sidelined by the insufferable royal crew charged with preparing and serving meals and waiting on the king and queen, the Downton staff wages a stealth rebellion. — Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune