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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘DOCTOR STRANGE’: This latest Marvel Cinematic Universe bid to keep the MCU going until we’re all moldering underground is not business as usual. It is a paradox: a glumly playful experiment in testing the story limits of multiverse travel, while dramatizing all the wrong ways of dealing with grief, guilt and a broken heart (Doctor Strange’s and the Scarlet Witch’s). The script’s a messy sort of mess. There are also clear signs of a nervy director at work. We begin with a bittersweet wedding. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who nearly destroyed our world in order to save it from Thanos, attends the nuptials of his one true love (Rachel McAdams), who is marrying another. All of a CGI sudden, a one-eyed giant octopus from another dimension appears on the Manhattan streets below, in violent pursuit of a new character, young America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez). This teenager is blessed/ cursed with the ability to “dreamwalk” in and out of other universes. And this makes her valuable to Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen, whose grief has turned to monomaniacal rage). In “Doc Strange 2” Wanda has lost touch with her better instincts, having availed herself of the “Darkhold,” which sounds like something Baron von Raschke used to try in the wrestling ring. The antidote to the Darkhold is the hallowed Book of the Vishanti, which is the very thing Strange and America are after in the nightmare vision of the prologue. All this determines the fate of the multiverse, while factoring into an audience’s enjoyment of the movie not much at all. 2:06. 2 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘FATHER STU’: “Father Stu”? He’s not a regular priest, he’s a cool priest. A priest who swears, a priest with a history of boozing and boxing. That’s the story told, at least by the film’s poster, which features a diptych of star Mark Wahlberg, looking rough and rueful in a mug shot, and then beatific in Catholic clergy apparel. The journey between the two photos is the dominion of “Father Stu,” the directorial debut of Rosalind Ross, who also wrote the screenplay, though there’s more to the story of Catholic priest Stuart Long. There is a profound grace to be found in “Father Stu,” when everyone gets out of the way to let the message of suffering as spirituality just breathe. But one can’t help but feel like that comes too little and too late to have any significant impact.
2:04. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Services
‘HAPPENING’: Audrey Diwan’s masterly second feature, “Happening,” is the story of a young woman trying to save her own life; a harrowing, tense and utterly riveting survival story. The question of whether or not our young hero, Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), racing against the clock, will make it out with her future intact is the urgently dramatic question at hand. “Happening” is the story of an abortion, one that the French writer Annie Ernaux underwent in her early 20s as a college student, in 1960s France, when abortion was illegal there. It was an experience that she documented in her 2000 memoir “L’événement,”
which Diwan and Marcia Romano adapted for the screen. “Happening,” which won the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, is a powerful argument for life: for Anne’s life, in fact, and her right to live hers how she chooses. In French with English subtitles. 1:39. 4 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘HATCHING’: In the fantastical Finnish horror fairytale “Hatching,” the directorial debut of Hannah Bergholm, a young girl hatches a murderous bird monster out of an egg that she secretly nests in her bed, and that’s not even the scariest part — her perfectionist mommy blogger mother strikes the truest terror in the film. Like many great monster movies, “Hatching” uses a monster as a metaphor for repressed emotion, and the creature at the center of this film is one of the most uniquely grotesque creations seen
on screen in a long time. In Finnish with English subtitles. 1:27. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘MEMORY’: Back in 2001, Guy Pearce starred in Christopher Nolan’s “Memento,” a film about a man tracking down his wife’s killer while suffering from memory loss, using notes and tattoos on his body to remember clues in his search. In 2022, he’s co-starring in a film in which a contract killer suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s uses similar methods in order to keep track of details. But that’s where the comparisons between “Memento” and Martin Campbell’s “Memory” end. The former was a groundbreaking neo-noir classic; the latter is best forgotten as soon as possible. “Memory” is yet another entry in the Liam Neeson Gets Revenge sub-genre, a sprawling body of work that sprung up after the surprise success
of the 2008 action-thriller “Taken.” You know the drill: a child or some other vulnerable person is threatened, his character has got a very particular set of skills, rescue and/or vengeance ensues. That’s at least one of the plots of “Memory,” a tangled mess of intertwining storylines and too many two-dimensional characters. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. 1:53. 1 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘THE NORTHMAN’: In 1982, “Conan the Barbarian” enticed audiences with a poster promising four phases of a rough man’s rough life: “Thief. Warrior. Gladiator. King.” “The Northman,” which wanders narratively but, as cinema, basically eats “Conan” for breakfast, follows what might be considered a similar career path: Prince, followed by Slave, then Viking Marauder, and finally Newly Sensitized Lover and Potential Family
Man. Alexander Skarsgard takes the title role, as well as taking a fair bit of on-screen punishment en route to a climactic battle at the Gates of Hel. There, at Hel, Amleth, played by Skarsgard, wields his mighty sword against his kingdom-usurping uncle (Claes Bang) surrounded by rivers of flaming molten lava. They’re nude, discreetly silhouetted, and as in much of “The Northman” the scene’s melding of digital and practical effects and design strategies doesn’t lead to the usual fantasy generica. Robert Eggers creates worlds that used to be, or never were, but thanks to his chosen medium, there they are, vivid and alive. 2:16. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.