Movies still screening in Bay Area theaters
“Columbus”:
This beautifully photographed indie drama from debuting Korean American writer-director Kogonada follows two lovely young strangers — Seoulbased book translator Jin, played by John Cho (Sulu in the “Star Trek” films), and recent high-school graduate Casey, played by Haley Lu Richardson (“The Edge of Seventeen”) — as their friendship develops. They spend a few days talking and exploring Casey’s hometown, Columbus, Indiana — an unlikely setting for several mid-20thcentury buildings designed by internationally renowned architects of the day — while each tries to come to terms with strained parental relationships. ★ ★ ★ stars (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) Unrated, 1:44
“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 starter’s 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. ★ ★ 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 and hopeing 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 Nolan’s best, too. ★ ★ ★ ★ stars (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press) PG-13, 1:46
“The Glass Castle”: Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts star in director Dustin Daniel Crettin’s screen version of a 2005 memoir by journalist Jeannette Walls, about her freewheeling, nomadic upbringing in a dysfunctional family. 2 ½ stars (Stephanie Merry, Washington Post) PG-13, 2:07
“Good Time”: Robert Pattinson (“Twilight,” “The Lost City of Z”) is all but unrecognizable giving a virtuoso performance as an inept bank robber who gets
into, and improvises ways out of, one hair-raising situation after another. The cast features Ben Safdie — who co- directs with his brother Josh — plus Jennifer Jason Leigh and Buddy Duress. With its originality, unpredictability and lightning pace, “Good Time” delivers precisely that. (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) R (1:40) “The Hitman’s Body
guard”: A hitman (Samuel L. Jackson) must testify at a court in the Netherlands about military crimes committed by a notorious Belarusian dictator (Gary Oldman). But getting the witness to the Hague becomes a big problem after an Interpol transfer goes awry. Called in to help is the world’s top bodyguard (Ryan Reynolds), and his 24-hour trip with the hitman, a former adversary, becomes quite eventful. It’s no surprise the most magnetic character is Jackson, whether singing folk songs with nuns or doling out romantic advice via speakerphone during a high-speed chase. A close second
is Salma Hayek playing Jackson’s feisty wife. But the action gets tedious well before the credits roll. ★ ½ stars (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) R, 1:58 “Ingrid Goes West”: In her richest performance yet, bad- girl comic Aubrey Plaza plays a social-media stalker who moves from the East Coast to the West so she get close to her role model, Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), an attractive young woman who makes a living documenting her restaurant meals and shopping sprees online. Director Matt Spicer and Branson,his co-writer,nail the celebrityDavid culture, L. A. airhead and cellphone generation stereotypes so precisely that the satire comes across as fresh and timely. ★★ ★ stars (Bob Strauss, Daily News, Los Angeles) R 1:37 “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 opportuni-
ties for interesting twists and turns are squandered. ★ star (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) R, 1:22
“The Little Hours”: In Jeff Baena’s cheeky adaptation of parts of Boccaccio’s 14th- century story collection “The Decameron,” randy nuns run amock, especially after the arrival of a young hunk of a gardener- caretaker (Dave Franco). The nuns — played by Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci and Alison Brie, among others — speak in anachronistic 21st- century slang. With hardly any jokes in the screenplay, the language gimmick and the genre itself are the punchlines, as such. ★ ½ stars (Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:30
“Logan Lucky”: Channing Tatum plays laid-off West Virginia coal miner Jimmy Logan, whose wife (Katie Holmes) has traded up for a middle- class husband. Jimmy’s brother Clyde (Adam Driver), now a bartender, lost an arm while serving in Iraq, and their sister (Riley Keough) works as a hairdresser. For this family, the American dream has pretty much evaporated. So with help from an incarcerated explosives expert (Daniel Craig), they decide to take something back from institutions that have let them down by intercepting the cash flow at a big NASCAR race. Though in some ways more trivial than its theme, Steven Soderbergh’s heist flick will put a smile on your face. ★★ ½ stars (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press) PG-13, 1:59 “Menashe”: Director Joshua Z. Weinstein’s drama focuses on a teenage Jewish boy named Rieven and his recently widowed father, Menashe, a grocery clerk in an ultra- orthodox Yiddish-speaking Brooklyn, New York, community, where tradition mandates that youngsters be raised in a two-parent household. Will custody of Rieven be
given to his insufferable uncle and spouse, or will Menashe prove himself worthy of parenting the boy to adulthood? ★★ ★ stars (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times) PG 1:21 “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature”: In an animated sequel — voiced by Will Arnett, Katherine Heigl, Jackie Chan and others — the city-park homes of Surly the Squirrel and his animal friends are threatened by the plan of the Oakton City mayor and his greedy daughter to evict the wildlife and build a shoddy for-profit amusement park on the site. ★ ★ stars (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) PG, 1:31
“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. ★★ ★ ★ stars (Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times (PG) 1:23
“Wind River”: Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (“Sicario,” “Hell or High Water”) makes his feature directing debut with an atmospheric murder thriller set on the Wyoming Native American reservation, of the title. A teenage girl has been killed, and the richly layered story explores tribalism and gender relations within and across Indian and Anglo lines, as a trackermarksman from the Fish and Game Service (Jeremy Renner) helps a greenhorn FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) investigate. Sheridan crafts solid drama from the battle between community law and the feral law of the frontier, and unspools shocking sequences that turn the story’s character focus and timeline in unexpected directions while bodies pile up. ★ ★ ★ ½ stars, (Colin Covert, Star Tribune, Minneapolis) R, 1:47