LITTLE WOMEN

PG, 135 minutes. Westbrook. Fresh off “Lady Bird” (2017), a wonderful movie about a young writer leaving home, the writer-director Greta Gerwig has made another wonderful movie about a young writer leaving home, although she ends up there. Gerwig has taken on Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” which she begins with a title card featuring Alcott’s own words: “I had lots of troubles, so I write jolly tales.” With an established and frequently adapted classic, it’s useful to tip your hand and let the audience know what it’s in for straight away. The new film’s pacing and rhythm reveals Gerwig’s full-gallop approach to the four March sisters, their mother and their intertwining private lives during and after the Civil War. The way Gerwig handles them, the March family’s stories are treated as a disarming comedy of manners under serious, cloudy skies. She doesn’t stop there: By the end of this “Little Women,” freer visually as well as narratively compared to “Lady Bird,” Alcott’s story and Jo March’s story dovetail into a third, hybrid tale of one woman’s freedom from want. “A Very Charming Book for Girls”: That’s how Alcott’s first volume (price: $1.50), clearly unfit for half the planet, sold itself in the October 1868 Chicago Tribune classifieds, promising something “fresh, sparkling, natural and full of soul.” The many previous film versions of “Little Women” include director Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 version, which is better and more moving than people tend to remember. It has a lot in common with Gerwig’s adaptation; it’s full of natural, easy-breathing ensemble work. Gerwig’s comic instincts bubble to the surface more often, though, and I’m grateful she trusted them enough to give us something new, and bracing. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

1917

1/2 R, 119 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Sam Mendes’ “1917” is nothing short of astonishing. Designed as two extraordinarily long, unbroken shots, the film is a stunning feat of cinematography, production design and performance moving seamlessly as one piece. But the most incredible thing about “1917” is how often you forget about the trick of it all, absorbed in character and story rather than any “gimmick.” For Mendes, it’s a deeply personal story, a passion project dedicated to his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, “for the stories he told us,” which places this breathtaking World War I film into a stark and very human reality. Although the cinematic undertaking is complex, the story, scripted by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns from a fragment of a war story told to him by his grandfather, is simple: A message must be delivered. Two young lance corporals, Blake (Dean Charles-Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), are summoned by General Erinmore (Colin Firth) and given the order to deliver a message by morning to a battalion of British soldiers who are walking into a trap if they attack the German line as planned. Blake’s brother is a lieutenant in the battalion, so whether or not he is “good with maps,” as the general mentions, he’s determined to fight his way through No Man’s Land and the occupied French village of Écoust to bring the message in time and save his brother from the massacre. Blake and Schofield are constantly moving, as they wind their way up and down the trenches, and across the razor wire and mud caught with bloated and desiccated corpses both human and animal. The people they encounter along the way will seem to wander into their path almost by happenstance. Over the next eight hours, they’ll creep through deserted German trenches and war fields littered with ordinance. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

PARASITE

R, 132 minutes. Through today only at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington. Still playing at Niantic, Madison Art Cinemas. Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho has steadily built a canon of masterpieces over the past two decades, genre-hopping from mystery to monster flicks, dabbling in post-apocalyptic horror and animal rights action movies, switching between Korean- and English-language films, all while maintaining his signature darkly comedic tone. His longtime collaborator, actor Song Kang-ho, first starred in Bong’s epic, hilarious true crime murder mystery “Memories of Murder.” He’s an integral part of Bong’s unique style, walking the tonal tightrope of tragedy and comedy. He’s starred in every film Bong’s made since, including his most recent masterpiece, “Parasite,” a slick, Hitchcockian family thriller and a class warfare cri de coeur. It would be criminal to describe the details of the plot of this deliciously twisty and utterly unpredictable fable. The Kim family, mother (Jang Hye-jin), father (Song), daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and brother Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), live a precarious existence in a damp basement, taking odd jobs to make enough money to get their cellphones turned back on. One night as they’re celebrating the return of stolen Wi-Fi over beers, Ki-woo’s friend Min (Park Seo-joon) drops by with a gift and a proposition. The gift is a hefty river rock, an imposing charm intended to bring material wealth. The proposition is a job offer: Min wants Ki-woo to take over his gig tutoring the daughter of a wealthy family while he studies abroad. He assumes Ki-woo will be a safe bet around the fetching Da-hye (Jung Ji-so). As Min suggests Ki-woo forge a few diplomas, the lilting, whimsical score by Jung Jaeil kicks in and we see the gears turning in Ki-woo’s head as he considers the scheme. This is the last time we’ll see any real pondering in a film about choices made out of desperation and their consequences. The story tips, then tumbles down a hill like a boulder. Ki-woo begins working for the wealthy Park family. Once he’s in, it’s not long before his “art therapist” sister is too confidently spouting psychobabble that the sweet, gullible lady of the house (Jo Yeojeong) neurotically eats up. She is kind and sweet, “simple” as Min says, and once the scrappy and resourceful Kims understand the cracks in her veneer, they burrow their way deep into their luxurious lifestyle. — Katie Walsh, Tribute News Service

THE PHOTOGRAPH

1/2 PG-13, 106 minutes. Lisbon. In this soulful and adult romantic drama, Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield star as tentative, would-be lovers in modern-day New York. He’s a magazine writer on an assignment and she’s a museum curator. They first connect over a photograph of her mother that unlocks mom’s backstory, set in 1980s Louisiana. Written and directed by

Stella Meghie, the film is a gentle and attentive inter-generational tale with a first-rate cast. To the always-charged romantic question “Do I love this stranger?” it adds another equally fraught query: “Am I becoming my mom?” Lakeith (FX’s “Atlanta”) plays Michael as a coiled, watchful and smoldering hunk who seems to be acting from deep within his guts. He’s just as likely to flee as he is of cuddling. Rae’s Mae is luminous and charismatic, with wide eyes that convey so many emotions. When Rae (HBO’s “Insecure”) bursts into a laugh, she seems to tap into that joyful, infectious place that Julia Roberts does. Their initial mating dance is as cute as any rom-com — who’s making the first move? — before they finally get together and have a meal. And how refreshing it is to hear a debate over who’s the better rapper — Drake or Kendrick Lamar — as the first date conversation? But Meghie (“The Weekend”) is not interested in a mere rom-com and “The Photograph “has miles more heft and depth. She’s interested in exploring how behavior can be inherited, how ambition can topple personal lives, how we establish patterns in our love life and how bravery in romance can be just about saying what your heart feels. It turns out that Mae’s estranged mother — a wonderful, haunted Chanté Adams — was a driven photographer who wasn’t always able to convey her feelings.

“I wish I was as good at love as I am at working,” she observes. In death, she leaves behind letters explaining her life, which lead her daughter and her new beau to investigate. The film takes turns switching eras to tell each woman’s story — from New York’s trendy whiskey bars and the sleek leather couches of upscale apartments to the faded grandeur of New Orleans in the 1980s. — Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

1/2 PG, 100 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. I’m as surprised as anyone to report that “Sonic the Hedgehog,” the adaptation of the popular 1990s Sega video game, is actually good. Expectations have been low since the movie’s rocky rollout in its first trailer, with online backlash regarding the look of the computer-generated character requiring animators to go back to the drawing board, completely redesigning the speedy blue hedgehog. So color me surprised to discover that after all of that, “Sonic the Hedgehog” is legitimately funny, heartwarming and entertaining. There are a few hard and fast facts about Sonic: he claims to be a hedgehog, he runs everywhere, he’s

from an idyllic island and he has little golden rings that allow him to transport himself anywhere. Writers Patrick Casey and Josh Miller plug those character traits into a story structure that is well-loved and a bit retro, an odd couple road movie about friendship. Sprinkled with Sonic’s hyperspeedy powers and anti-government messages, it’s a little bit “E.T.,” one part “Harry and the Hendersons,” with a dash of “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” and it’s a fun throwback tale for this little blue ball of energy. As it turns out, if you write a very funny script, and hire very funny people to perform it, it doesn’t really matter if the movie is about an extraterrestrial hedgehog, or even what he looks like. Ben Schwartz voices Sonic, a lonely alien living in exile on Earth for his own safety, where he longs to connect with the humans around him in the small Montana town of Green Hills. The big news here is Jim Carrey’s glorious return to his best rubber-faced, fast-talking form as Sonic’s main antagonist, a secretive government mad scientist named Dr. Robotnik. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE TRAITOR (IL TRADITORE)

1/2 R, 135 min. Madison Art Cinemas. The 1986 Maxi Trial, in which 475 members of the Sicilian Mafia, known as Cosa Nostra, were indicted for their crimes, is an event absolutely ripe for cinematic adaptation. Held in a bunker of a courthouse inside the Palermo prison, the accused Mafiosi watched the proceedings from behind bars, in cells where they smoked, played cards and heckled the judges. They reserved their worst ire for the witnesses though, their former friends, mob bosses-turned-informants. It’s here that director/co-writer Marco Bellocchio and his co-writers Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi, Francesco Piccolo and Francesco La Licata find inspiration for the sprawling Italian gangster epic “The Traitor.” It follows the life, times and crimes of famous informant Tommaso Buscetta, played marvelously by Pierfrancesco Favino, who tears into this meaty role of a lifetime. First and foremost this is Buscetta’s story, a dive into the reasons why a Cosa Nostra lifer, a self-declared man of honor and loyalty, would find informing the most honorable thing to do. Favino’s performance is the center of gravity for the film, which encompasses nearly a century’s worth of Sicilian mafia lore. Without such a compelling lead actor to hold it all together, the focus would be lost. The film opens in the late 1970s, on his waning days as a mobster at a raucous celebration with his nearest and dearest. The photo taken that night will later come back to haunt them as proof that Buscetta was once considered family, a relationship that colors the sickening murders carried out later against his family members. Extradited from Brazil on charges of drug trafficking, Buscetta decides to collaborate with Judge Giovanni Falcone in light of the murder of his adult sons. He claims his own honor and loyalty in the process because he believes the heroin trafficking and child-murdering Cosa Nostra of this era, shepherded by Salvatore Riina, isn’t the Cosa Nostra Buscetta joined as a teenager in Palermo in the 1940s. Favino is magnetic, but there are so many rich characters and storylines to follow in the wild truecrime tale. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

UNCUT GEMS

1/2 R, 135 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. The journey is the destination in the Safdie brothers’ new crime thriller “Uncut Gems,” and there’s almost nowhere this film won’t take you. The mines of Ethiopia, the suburbs of Long Island, inside a human body, out into space — by the time it’s all over you’ll feel less like a moviegoer and more like an unmoored spirit wandering through the wide, weird cosmos. And your guide, unlikely as it seems, will be Adam Sandler. In a ferocious, all-out performance, the comedic actor plays a slick-talking, lovably obnoxious and dangerously dysfunctional man named Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer in Manhattan’s Diamond District. Howard is betting the proverbial farm on something called a black opal — his own Maltese Falcon. — Rafer Guzman, Newsday