Movies still screening in Bay Area theaters
“13 Minutes”: In director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s drama, inspired by an actual but little-known November 1939 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Christian Friedel plays Georg Elsner, the Bavarian carpenter and clockmaker who hatched the plot and acted alone planting explosives in a place where Hitler was supposed to appear. But his timing was off by 13 minutes. The film’s unanswered question is how this nonpolitical German became so radicalized to attempt a final solution for der Führer. ★★★ stars (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:50 “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”: This passionate, involving, climatechange documentary, with former Vice President Al Gore, is at its best as it follows him around the globe taking stock of the continued rise in carbon dioxide levels and the melting of glaciers, but also finding that investments in solar and wind power have gone through the roof. If the trip has an emotional high point, it’s during Gore’s visit to conservative Texas, where Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross explains that a decision was made to power the city by 100 percent renewable energy, not for ideological reasons, but because it simply makes sense economically. 3 stars, (Kenneth Turan) (PG) 1:40
“Atomic Blonde”: Director David Leitch updates the Cold War thriller by transforming it into an action flick with a female star — Charlize Theron, playing MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, on a mission in 1989 Berlin as the wall is coming down. The story itself is superficial, leaving plenty of room for former stuntman Leitch to show off his talent for choreographing action and mayhem. The film’s most formidable asset, though, is Theron, whose spy doesn’t so much dominate, as subjugate, every other character on the screen. 2 stars (Jake Coyle, Associated Press) R, 1:54 “Detroit”: Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow revisits the racial tension, violence and institutionalized police brutality that erupted in July 1967 in the country’s auto capital, ranging from intimidation of the city’s black residents to the tragic killing of three black teenage boys by authorities who were later acquitted. Those killings were triggered by the firing of a blank in a pistol used at the starting line of track and field events, which ignited an outlandish and illegal show of force by racist police officers and National Guardsmen, as they tried to find a sniper rifle that didn’t exist. The thoroughly researched “Detroit” illuminates both the overarching picture and the individual stories that help us understand what happened and why — and that remind us how little the racial dynamic in this country has changed over the past half century. 2 ½ stars (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) R, 2:23 “Dunkirk”: Christopher Nolan’s WWII drama is a
stunning, immersive survival film that puts viewers in the midst of the action, whether on the beach with the 400,000 Allied soldiers waiting for a rescue that may never come, on the English Channel in a little civilian ship with only an aging man and two teenage boys aboard, heading into hostile waters, and in the air above the beach in two lone Spitfires that are about to run out of fuel. “Dunkirk” ranks as the best film of 2017 so far and as the director’s best, too. 4 stars (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press) PG-13, 1:46 “From the Land of the
Moon”: Marion Cotillard, Louis Garrel and Alex Brendemühl star in a 1940s-set drama from Nicole Garcia about a woman in a loveless marriage, who visits a spa in the Alps and falls for a man she meets. Despite some beautiful cinematography, the story falls short of the intended emotional heights. 1 star (Alan Zilberman, Washington Post) (R) 1:16 “Kidnap”: Halle Berry plays a woman who pushes her minivan — and her psyche — to the limit while trying to get her young son back from abductors through a solo chase of their car. Not only is the script horrendous, but many opportunities for interesting twists and turns are squandered. 1 star (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) R, 1:22
“Lady Macbeth”: This icy, unnerving tale revolves around the spectacular rebellion of a teenage bride (Florence Pugh, in a breakthrough performance) against a horrific marriage to a man twice her age. While her husband and father-in-law are away from the remote English manor house where she is essentially a prisoner, she starts a passionate affair with a new groomsman (Cosmo Jarvis) on the estate. The mood created by director William Oldroyd is so intense you can hear a pin drop as the complications unfold. Alice Birch adapted the screenplay from an 1865 Russian novella. 3 stars (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:29
“Landline”: In filmmaker Gillian Robespierre’s 1995 New York nostalgia fest, Jenny Slate and Abby Quinn play sisters who
suspect their father (John Turturro) is cheating on their mother (Edie Falco). The insight of the movie is that lust, dissatisfaction and restlessness manifest themselves at every age and stage of life. The family dynamics are persuasive enough, but the techiness of those involved becomes monotonous well before the final scene. 2 stars (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:33
“The Midwife”: Two great Catherines — French actresses Frott and Deneuve — star respectively as the long-suffering, nurturing middle-age midwife of the title, and the aging former mistress of this first woman’s late father — who become unlikely allies against the odds. 3 stars (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) Unrated, 1:57
“Step”: Amanda Lipitz’s blink-away-the-tears documentary is less about a Baltimore high-school’s step-dancing team than about three remarkable young women on a far more complicated road — to college and to their dreams. 4 stars (Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times (PG) 1:23