Movies still screening in Bay Area theaters
“American Made”:
Tom Cruise cranks up his badboy charm starring as Barry Seal in a fact-based story about the former TWA pilot’s off-the-record work for the CIA in themid ’70s — doing airborne surveillance of the leftist Sandinista army fomenting revolution in Central America, then delivering AK-47s for the agency and returning to the States with thousands of kilos of cocaine while authorities looked the other way. ★ ★½ (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) R, 1:55
“The Big Sick”:
The screenplay, written by star Kumail Nanjiani and his real-life wife, Emily V. Gordon, was inspired by their courtship. Zoe Kazan brings intelligence and believability to the Gordon role, but the romance is almost derailed because Kumail can’t bring himself to tell his traditional Pakistani parents he’s in love with an American. Soon Emily comes down with a debilitating disease, and she’s in a medically induced coma when Kumail finally visits the hospital and meets her parents. Fortunately, this film transcends the clichés of each of the formulas it flirts with. ★★★½ (Bob Strauss, Southern California News Group) R, 2:00
“Blade Runner 2049”:
While hunting a replicant who “wants more life” in 2049Los Angeles, police officer K (Ryan Gosling) stumbles upon mindblowing secrets, and sets off to try to find the original “Blade Runner’s” Detective Deckard (Harrison Ford) — who, it turns out, has been in hiding for 30years. Director Denis Villeneuve conjures a dystopian future that seems less fantastical than the one three decades ago, where the privileged live off-world, while the other humans and androids rot amid the wreckage of Earth. K’s boss is perfectly played by Robin Wright, and Ford is at his most poignant here. As a parable about a populace so obsessed with virtual reality that it completely loses touch with nature, this “Blade” slices deep. ★★ ★ (Karen D’Souza, Bay Area News Group) R, 2:43
“Brad’s Status”: Ben Stiller excels at playing Brad Sloan in Mike White’s wonderful middle-agecrisis comedy, about a father worried about money and the future and troubled by what he suspects is his own mediocrity. All this comes into sharp focus as Brad travels with his college-age son, Troy, to check out Harvard and Tufts University, where Brad senses his child may soon eclipse him. ★★ ★½ (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:41
“Columbus”: This beautifully photographed drama from debuting KoreanAmerican writer- director Kogonada follows two lovely young strangers — Seoul-based 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 a friendship develops. They spend time exploring Casey’s hometown, Columbus, Indiana — the setting for several mid-20th- century buildings designed by internationally renowned architects of the day — while each grapples with strained parental relationships. ★★ ★ (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) Unrated, 1:44
“Dunkirk”: Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama is a stunning, immersive survival film that puts viewers in the midst of the action, whether on the beach with the 400,000Allied soldiers hoping 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 Nolan’s best. ★★ ★ (Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press) PG13, 1:46 “The Florida Project”: In this heartwarming, heart- wrenching tale of childhood poverty set at a cut-rate extended-stay motel near Walt Disney World, young Moonee lives a charmed life of freedom, friends and devilish fun under the watchful eye of the manager (Willem Dafoe), while her single mom resells inexpensive perfume outside a nearby resort hotel. Director Sean Baker (“Tangerine”), co-writer Chris Bergoch and their wonderful young actors get this slice of childhood just right, while illuminating the lives of people for whom one missed payment would spell disaster. ★★ ★ ★ (Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press) R, 1:55
“It”: Stephen King’s sneering clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) once again stalks the misfit children of the “losers club” in a small Maine town in Andy Muschietti’s remake of the 1966horror novel. Skarsgård grounds the villain with an intellectual depth that’s disturbing, despite some moments when the tale lapses from shudderworthy into schlock. ★★ ★ (Karen D’Souza, Bay Area
In this flashy follow-up to the 2014spy caper “Kingsman — The Secret Service,” that film’s stars — Colin Firth, Taron Egerton and Mark Strong — are joined by stateside counterparts played by Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry and Pedro Pascal for more cloak-and- dagger- on- crack shenanigans, as they deal with a smiling drug lord (Julianne Moore). Though just as hyperactive, the second film lacks the originality of the first. ★½ (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) R, 2:21
The late Harry Dean Stanton plays a 90-year- old former U.S. Navy man, longtime desert dweller and hardened atheist contemplating mortality in this insistently low-key and dryly funny valentine to Stanton’s life and career. ★★ ★½ (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) Unrated, 1:28
“Marshall”:
Chadwick Boseman plays future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the 1940s, near the beginning of his work as a leading attorney for the NAACP. The case dramatized here involves an alleged sexual assault of a white Greenwich, Connecticut, socialite by her black chauffeur, and the news accounts prompt white employers in the Northeast to start firing their black help. Director Reginald Hudlin combines courtroom drama with snapshots of Marshall in his early 30s — as a red-hot fighter for justice, a witty, charismatic regular at Harlem nightclubs and the smartest guy in the room wherever he went. Josh Gad plays another defending attorney, Sterling K. Brown the accused and Kate Hudson the socialite. ★★ ★ (Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune) PG-13, 1:58
“The Mountain Between Us”:
Kate Winslet (as a photojournalist heading to New York City to be married) and Idris Elba (as a doctor rushing to the Big Apple to perform brain surgery on a child) give strong performances. But the screenplay for Hany Abu-Asad’s drama stretches credibility, as the two strangers struggle for survival and fall in love on a remote snow-covered Utah mountain after the crash of their chartered plane. ★ ★ (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) PG-13, 1:50
“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”:
In her beautifully made drama, writer- director Angela Robinson spins the littleknown tale of the creator of the Wonder Woman comic books, Dr. William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) — a developer, with his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), of the lie- detector test. It’s through their joint research with one of Marston’s undergraduate students, Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), involving human emotion and theories of dominance and submission, that they decide to live as a threesome. Marston draws on the women’s traits and experiences to create his iconic female superhero, and after Marston’s death the women continue living together for 38years. ★★★★ (Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service) R, 1:48
“Victoria & Abdul”:
In this crowd-pleaser from Stephen Frears, Judi Dench plays England’s Queen Victoria, and Bollywood star Ali Fazal plays Abdul Karim, a handsome 24-year-old Indian Muslim clerk who travels to London to present a ceremonial gold coin to the queen at her Golden Jubilee. Victoria appoints him her servant and then her tutor in Urdu and Indian culture, much to the chagrin of jealous courtiers. ★ ★ (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) PG-13, 1:52