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View reviews of new films, including “Phantom Thread,” with Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis.

‘12 STRONG’

R 2:10

In the days and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a small U.S. Special Forces unit led an offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They worked in harsh conditions alongside a local warlord and his men, an uneasy alliance at best, and, even with all the technology and money of the U.S. military, executed the successful mission largely on horseback.

The operation — Task Force Dagger — was classified for years and explored later in Doug Stanton’s 2009 book “Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.” It provides the basis for “12 Strong,” a long-in-the-works adaptation from producer Jerry Bruckheimer (“Black Hawk Down”) and director Nicolai Fuglsig, a Danish photojournalist who has shot the War in Kosovo, a Levi’s short film, and a Coca-Cola spot in his eclectic career.

Films about U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have a somewhat dicey track record. They can veer from too sentimental to too macho and bloviating depending on who’s in front of and behind the camera. But “12 Strong” is, while perhaps not the deepest entry, a very solid movie with an engaging story, script and cast led by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth.

Hemsworth is Capt. Mitch Nelson, who is on leave with his young daughter and wife (played by his real-life spouse Elsa Pataky) but springs into action at the sight of the World Trade Center falling on the news. He raises his hand to assemble a team and get over to Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Before that happens, however, we must sit through another obligatory farewellto-the-families sequence to remind us that many of these guys have wives and children to get back to. (There must be a way to make these scenes feel less rote.)

It’s when the men get to the Middle East that the film becomes truly gripping, thanks to an ominous score, a hair-raising helicopter ride that rivals moments in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” and the inherent tension of a mission that, as Nelson puts it, has no playbook. Their task is to meet up with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum (an excellent Navid Negahban) who may be equally motivated to fight the Taliban if properly persuaded.

Dostum and Nelson form a tenuous bond that is tested throughout the film, as they trade the shield of modern technology for horses and mules to cross the treacherous landscape (New Mexico plays Afghanistan here). The action sequences are riveting, if a little numbing at times, and their evolving mission is engaging throughout.

What separates

“12 Strong” from the pack, however, is its ability to introduce and stay with a band of brothers worth caring about. In addition to Hemsworth, they are played by Michael Shannon, Michael Pena, Trevante Rhodes, Geoff Stults, Enid-born Thad Luckinbill, Austin Stowell, Ben O’Toole, Austin Hebert, Kenneth Miller, Kenny Sheard and Jack Kesy. The dialogue (Ted Tally and Peter Craig have screenplay credits) is more crackling than standard wartime action pic fare, and actors like Hemsworth, Shannon and Pena make it their own too. Stirring and solid, “12 Strong” is the kind of film that might make you think twice about January releases, and spotlights a riveting story in our recent history that many Americans might not know.

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena and Trevante Rhodes. (War violence and language throughout) — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

‘CALL ME BY YOUR NAME’

R 2:12

The pleasures of art, music, food, natural beauty and sexual awakening are evoked and celebrated in “Call Me by Your Name,” an almost sinfully enjoyable movie that both observes and obeys the languid rhythms of a torrid Italian summer.

Set in the early 1980s, Luca Guadanigno’s adaptation of André Aciman’s 2007 novel barely counts as a period piece, although the short shorts and tube socks Armie Hammer wears to play his smart-jock protagonist put the story squarely in the past. Still, the themes of longing, desire and self-definition are nothing if not timeless. Here, a young man’s coming-of-age is given such tactile, emotionally resonant immediacy that it would be recognizable in any country, of any era.

The young man in question is Elio (Timothee Chalamet), the 17-year-old son of an archaeology professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) who has hired an American student named Oliver (Hammer) to be his assistant for the summer. As a typically self-absorbed teenager, Elio at first seems barely aware of Oliver’s presence, being far more interested in his on-and-off girlfriend, reading and pursuing compositional musings on the guitar and piano.

For his part, Oliver embodies a purely American brand of unbridled appetite and unselfconscious confidence that strikes an immediate awkward note within Elio’s casually cosmopolitan family. Soon, though, the household reaches its own pleasant rhythm, with the two young men — about seven years apart in age — gravitating toward one another as friends and, eventually, more.

Before readers look up the Italian word for “problematic,” let it be noted that it is Elio, not Oliver, who is the pursuer in “Call Me By Your Name,” which was written for the screen by James Ivory. Balancing the objectification of its leading men with discretion and delicacy, this is a film that acknowledges the purity and sculptural beauty of youth — Greek aesthetics, philosophy and ideals of male friendship are invoked early and often — but never at the expense of a character who, on the cusp of manhood, possesses his own agency and desires, despite their sometimes shaky parameters.

Portrayed with a noteperfect combination of cocky self-assurance and wary naiveté by Chalamet, Elio is something of an extension of the actor’s hilariously pretentious character in the recent film “Lady Bird” — another teenager with pedantic ideas about his own depth and seriousness. But while Ivory and Guadanigno aren’t afraid to wink at Elio’s youthful lack of self-awareness, they never stoop to ridiculing it.

“Call Me By Your Name” finds the director marshaling those gifts in service to a spellbinding, almost ecstatically beautiful movie that gains even more heft and meaning in its final transcendent moments. What had been a two-hander featuring sensitive, flawlessly judged performances by Chalamet and Hammer expands into something more, and the audience realizes that the entire film could be interpreted as an elegant exercise in misdirection.

“Call Me By Your Name” may exemplify well-tempered cinema at its most balanced and attractive, but it’s far more than just a pretty face.

Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg. (Sexual content, nudity and some language)

— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

‘DEN OF THIEVES’

R 2:20 Not screened for critics Every day, $120 million in cash is taken out of circulation and destroyed by the Los Angeles Branch of the Federal Reserve — unless a notorious, elite crew of bank robbers can pull off the ultimate heist and get to the money first, right under the noses of LA’s most feared division in law enforcement.

Starring: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (Violence, language and some sexuality/ nudity) — Rottentomatoes.com

‘FOREVER MY GIRL’

PG-13 1:44 Review not available

“Forever My Girl” tells the story of country music super-star Liam Page (Alex Roe) who left his bride, Josie (Jessica Rothe), at the altar choosing fame and fortune instead. However, Liam never got over Josie, his one true love, nor did he ever forget his Southern roots in the small community where he was born and raised. When he unexpectedly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his high school best friend, Liam is suddenly faced with the consequences of all that he left behind.

Starring: Alex Roe, Jessica Rothe and Abby Ryder Fortson. (Thematic elements including drinking, and for language)

— Rottentomatoes.com

‘HOSTILES’

R 2:15

Enemies are thrown together for a perilous journey in “Hostiles,” an unforgivingly violent and sparse revisionist Western set in 1892 that explores the traumas of American westward expansion.

There’s hardly a soul in writer-director Scott Cooper’s ambitious odyssey who isn’t haunted by some gruesome incident of the past, whether it’s the cavalry officers who slaughtered and scalped untold numbers of natives, the natives who slaughtered untold numbers of cavalry officers, or the young settler family that goes from five members to only one in the distressing opening scene of the film. To say this is a grim and difficult watch is an understatement.

Christian Bale, who also starred in Cooper’s gloomy “Out of the Furnace,” leads a formidable ensemble cast as a U.S. Cavalry Officer, Captain Joseph J. Blocker, who is ordered to lead an aging Cheyenne chief, Yellow Hawk (Tahlequahborn Cherokee actor Wes Studi), and his family from a base in New Mexico to their homelands in Montana. Having had encounters with this man before, Blocker has no interest in embarking on this endeavor, convinced that Yellow Hawk could only be a safe and trustworthy companion dead. But this choice isn’t up to him and he’s going to have to go through with it whether he likes it or not — so they assemble a crew (including Jonathan Majors, Jesse Plemons and Timothee Chalamet) and head off on the trail.

It’s a premise that lends significant and compelling tension to every scene. Although not much is happening early on, it’s the threat of what might happen that keeps you glued to the screen and worried for all involved. Will there be a misunderstanding? A mistake? A scuffle that escalates too quickly? Things are further complicated when group encounters a burned down settlement and a grieving woman shuttered inside. She is Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) and has suffered nearly unspeakable loss. Blocker, likely not knowing what else to do with the possibly suicidal woman, takes her along with them.

“Hostiles” takes its time getting its characters across the over 1,000-mile stretch of the United States, but it is a gorgeous journey thanks to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi. His camera makes even the most familiar western milieus looks splendidly fresh and invigorating. If only the meandering story and dialogue were matches for the pure poetry of the scenery.

While she isn’t given all that much to do, it is a treat to see actress Q’orianka Kilcher, who played Pocahontas opposite Bale in “The New World,” back in a mainstream film.

Bursts of intense violence are punctuated with sometimes tedious blocks of speeches and silence, but “Hostiles,” despite its posture of brutal amorality, has a goodness at its core, of understanding and empathy. It also has something that so many sequel and franchise-hungry studios today wouldn’t dare show — an actual ending.

Starring: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Jesse Plemons and Wes Studi. (Strong violence and language)

— Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press

‘PHANTOM THREAD’

R 2:10

Daniel Day-Lewis resembles an Easter Island sculpture crossed with a handsomely groomed Adonis in “Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s ode to extravagance, texture, tyrannical auteurism and its most ingenious subversions.

Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a sought after dress designer in 1950s London whose clientele — comprising mostly wealthy matrons — see Woodcock’s creations less as pretty dresses than a crucial part of their female armamentarium: “I feel like it will give me courage,” one of his customers says of an evening gown. To unleash and fuel his inspiration, Woodcock has amassed a collection of daily rites, habits and superstitions: a strict regimen of silence, meticulously prepared meals and hushed concentration that has made marriage an impossibility. He lives with his devoted sister and factotum, Cyril (Lesley Manville), and a series of women who tend to be quietly eased out when they demand too much time and attention or — heaven forfend! — dare to speak during Woodcock’s monastic creative routine.

The world of Reynolds Woodcock — its silky elegance, focused discipline and fetishistic attention to sartorial and ritualistic detail — is captured behind a scrim of nostalgia and romance by Anderson, who invites viewers to luxuriate in the creamy interiors of Woodcock’s town house and atelier, the dreamy mood heightened by Jonny Greenwood’s jazz-inflected musical score. Although Woodcock has disposed of his latest romantic liaison as “Phantom Thread” opens, his next conquest presents herself when he stops for a meal in the country and orders a ploughman’s breakfast from a bright-eyed waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps). By the time he’s completed his compulsively specific order, the mutual seduction is complete, and the stylish, enigmatic, ultimately perversely playful game is afoot.

What ensues is a delicious slice of teatime gothic reminiscent of “Rebecca” and “Suspicion,” wherein love and sexual attraction become vectors for mistrust, battles of wills and power dialectics of Hegelian proportions. Vicky may initially present herself as mere odalisque to be molded and shaped by the Great Man. But soon enough, she has invaded the sanctum sanctorum of Woodcock’s self-absorbed genius, engaging in the kind of subterfuges and small rebellions that are so often the only recourse of someone relegated to the role of muse, and little else.

As a commentary on the despotic male artistic gaze, “Phantom Thread” will no doubt remind several viewers of “Mother!,” Darren Aronofsky’s hallucinatory journey to the dark side of auteurist obsession. Anderson — a master of conjuring atmosphere, environment and anthropological fascination — creates a far more pleasant sensory experience in a film that, between the rose-tinted visuals, rich brocades, laces and velvets, and Greenwood’s alternately dissonant and delicately lyrical music, exerts an irresistible sensuous pull.

Having announced his retirement last summer, Day-Lewis would have us believe that “Phantom Thread” marks his final screen performance, which is a shame. The movie serves only to remind audiences what a monumental talent he possesses, being able to communicate vision, tetchy temperament and just a glimmer of Freudian angst simply by holding his sharply faceted face in profile. Krieps and Manville deliver similarly accomplished supporting performances, with Manville especially bringing tart, knowing alertness to her role as a latter-day Mrs. Danvers.

“Phantom Thread” is such an indulgence to watch — it’s such an ode to pleasure and beauty, cinematic and otherwise — that it’s difficult to pinpoint why it isn’t necessarily satisfying. It might simply be that Anderson’s surpassing strengths as a filmmaker don’t necessarily serve the psychodrama on offer. He’s never been particularly plotty, thank goodness, but this story entails reversals and twists that demand structural and subtextual craftiness — Hitchcockian turns and feints — that play second fiddle to mood, tone and extravagant, admittedly deeply expressive pictorialism.

If “Phantom Thread” isn’t exactly a narrative triumph, it still manages to deliver, especially as a haunting evocation of avidity, appetite and aesthetic pursuit at its most rarefied. It’s an enchanting, eventually mischievous meditation on the lengths to which we go to control and camouflage our most intimate, undefended desires.

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps. (Strong language)

— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post