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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘BODIES BODIES BODIES’: From the sticky, slippery opening frames of “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” director Halina Reijn lets the audience know that we’re in for one silly-smart and deeply self-aware roller-coaster ride. This blackly comic horror riff is heavy on the social satire and sprinkled with scares, as Reijn, along with writers Sarah DaLappe and Kristen Roupenian (who contributed the screenplay and story, respectively), have intelligently pulled together and reinterpreted traditional horror tropes in order to send up the youth of today. The result is a horror film that’s a true triple threat: stunning, smart and wildly entertaining. “They’re not as nihilistic as they seem on the internet,” Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) reassures her new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova), en route to a “hurricane party” at the mansion of her childhood best friend David (Pete Davidson). Bee, with her quiet demeanor, accented English and humble, tomboyish clothing, is very different from Sophie and her longtime posse of outrageous rich kids. Sophie has her own sordid history with the group, and the tension among them bubbles, roiling to a boil throughout the long, bloody night that ensues. 1:35. 4 stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘BULLET TRAIN’: In “Bullet Train,” Brad Pitt plays a lovable-loser assassin (code name: Ladybug) bent on self-improvement. He’s an easygoing sweetie, in the spirit of John Cusack’s gun-for-hire in “Grosse Pointe Blank,” to name one film you may wish you were rewatching instead of watching this one.
This one’s well made in its chosen attack. It’s fun for a while. And then, not so much. An adaptation of the 2010 Kotaro Isaka novel, one of his popular “Hitmen” series, “Bullet Train” has been cast, deftly, with actors ready to play. Even Pitt, never much in the verbal-facility or quicktime dialogue department, loosens up and finds an effective sweet spot at the intersection of unkillable tough guy and exasperated bad-luck charm. For an Americanized version of Japanese source material (well, internationalized, in terms of casting, but heavy on the Anglos), director David Leitch makes sound business sense behind the camera. 2:06. 2 stars.
— Michael Phillips,
Chicago Tribune
‘DC LEAGUE OF SUPERPETS’:
The DC Comics Cinematic Universe has mostly taken a dark, gritty approach to blockbuster comic book movies. But perhaps there’s another way to explore the world of the Justice League that’s a bit more warm, cuddly and friendly. That’s the thesis presented by the animated movie “DC League of Super-Pets,” which combines several elements that have already proven successful to create a family friendly access point to the worlds of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their gang of superheroes. The voice cast is packed with favorite comedy actors, including Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer, Natasha Lyonne, Jemaine Clement, John Early and Marc Maron.
But most importantly, it teams Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in the lead roles of Krypto the SuperDog and Ace, a rescue mutt. Johnson and Hart have had quite the success in their odd couple pairing in films
such as “Central Intelligence” and “Jumanji,” and “DC League of Super-Pets” relies on their lively banter to sell the enemies-tofriends story at the center of the film. 1:46. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘EASTER SUNDAY’: Years from now nobody’s going to watch “Easter Sunday” for lessons in how to frame and cut visual comedy, or the right number of dumbstruck OMG! reaction shots. And yet, years from now, “Easter Sunday” will still make a lot of people smile. The folks on the screen are the whole show, and this genial showcase for stand-up comic Jo
Koy has the advantage of showing off a wealth of Asian/Pacific American talent, pretty badly undervalued by establishment Hollywood. 1:36. 2 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips
‘MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU’:
I could not possibly begin to explain just how these hot dog-shaped, banana-hued, gibberishspeaking overlords came to infiltrate our culture at every level. The grasp these inexplicable animated creatures hold on cinema is insidious, and they
continue their reign of terror in their latest cinematic dispatch, “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” They’ve overthrown their masters in the “Despicable Me” franchise, wrestling top billing away for themselves. “The Rise of Gru” is just another “Despicable Me” movie, a supervillain origin story for beaky-nosed, scarf-wearing, evil aspirant Gru (Steve Carell). 1:27. 1 star. — Katie Walsh
‘NOPE’: In “Nope,” writer/ director Jordan Peele presents us with a big, shiny summer blockbuster — a cowboys and aliens riff built from the DNA of sci-fi spectacles of yore — and then proceeds to vivisect the very notion of a summer blockbuster before our eyes. He wants us to question the nature of image-making, and he starts at the beginning of film history, with photographer Eadweard Muybridge. In 1878, Muybridge crafted the first known example of the “moving pictures”: a two-second clip called “The Horse in Motion,” made up of sequential photographs of a jockey riding a race horse. That the jockey on the horse — the first person featured in the movies — is
Black, and unknown, is the starting point for Peele’s exploration of seeing and the seen in “Nope,” which interrogates the power of images, who gets to create them, and who gets the credit. These are complex questions, but Peele has wrapped them up in an incredibly original, and entertaining, piece of sci-fi filmmaking that is both unlike, and like, anything you’ve ever seen before. 2:10. 3 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER’:
This is co-writer and director Taika Waititi’s aggressively nutty follow-up to “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). That film zazzed up Thor’s corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe enough to justify more of the same. “Love and Thunder” establishes in the prologue the latest threat to intergalactic extinction: an ordinary soul on a planet far, far away, played by Christian Bale, wandering with his daughter in the desert. He suffers a grievous loss and then transforms into Gorr, the God Butcher, hellbent on wiping out those privileged paragons who, in this outing, forsake mere mortals left, right and center. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is learning, uneasily, to be a more progressive and empathic specimen of godly hunk, a team player instead of a solo act. The storyline concerns, among other things, the children of New Asgard, swept up and kidnapped by Gorr. Their rescue leads the A-team straight to the enemy. 2:05. 2 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips
‘WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING’:
In 2018, retired zoologist Delia Owens, the author of the bestselling 1984 memoir “Cry of the Kalahari,” published her first novel at age 69. “Where the Crawdads Sing” is set on the North Carolina coast in the 1950s and ’60s, threading romance and murder mystery through the life story of a young, isolated woman, Kya, who grows up abandoned in the marsh. The story is a bit far-fetched, the characterizations broad, but there’s a beauty in Owens’ description of Kya’s relationship to the natural world. Her derisive nickname, “the marsh girl,” ultimately becomes her strength. The film is easily slotted into the Southern Gothic courtroom drama subgenre — it’s like “A Time to Kill” with a feminine touch. While the nature of adaptation requires compression and elision, the film dutifully tells the story that fans of the book will turn out to see brought to life on the big screen. But in checking off all the plot points, the movie version loses what makes the book work, which is the time we spend with our heroine, Kya. 2:05. 2 stars.
— Katie Walsh
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.