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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER’:
As with most James Cameron blockbusters, including the first “Avatar,” this film has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits. It’s 10 years later. Sully (Sam Worthington), now blue and 10 feet tall, is full-on Na’vi with a family including his mate, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and three kids. Sigourney Weaver, whose character died in the first “Avatar,” returns in the role of the adopted teenage daughter, Kiri. Death is just a pause for a change of clothes in this universe. Cameron fills three hours of screen time, with another 10 minutes or so for credits, with what feels like a single, extended, not-quite-“real,” not really animated but impressively sustained feat of visual gratification, if you don’t mind the cruelty-to-undersea-creatures parts. 3:10. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘HOUSE PARTY’: Fun fact about Reginald Hudlin’s 1990 classic comedy “House Party” starring comedic duo Kid ’n Play: It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant,” no doubt referring to the high-top fad and iconic kick-step dance that it popularized. It’s no wonder that New Line and Warner Bros. fired up the reboot machine for this title some three decades later to give the concept a fresh new 2020s spin, especially with basketball superstar LeBron James on board to develop, produce and appear in the project. The good news is that after a few delays, the “House Party” remake, directed by acclaimed music video and commercial director Calmatic in his feature debut, is in theaters. The bad news is that this one is definitely not headed for the Library of Congress. This comedically and narratively muddled take on the title (not even the original premise) is deeply unfunny and downright tiresome. 1:40. 1 ½ stars.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘A MAN CALLED OTTO’:
The “Grumpy Old Men” era seems to come for all of our lovable movie stars, including Tom Hanks, who easily slides into this new phase with “A Man Called Otto,” a remake of the Oscar-nominated Swedish film, “A Man Called Ove.” It’s not easy to translate the famously dry and somewhat bleak Scandinavian humor to a sunnier, more optimistic American worldview, but writer David Magee and director Marc Forster manage to maintain the melancholy of the original film, which is based on the book by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. Set in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, “A Man Called Otto” is a story about the loss of human connection in a modernized and rapidly changing world, and the effort it takes to knit a community through the ties that bind: personal ones. It is also a story about the transformative nature of grief, and the beauty and cruelty of life lived in moments both mundane and monumental. 2:06. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh
‘M3GAN’: A straightforward
horror flick that doesn’t blink while simultaneously jabbing the audience in the ribs, “M3GAN,” more often than not, and indeed, right away, is a comedy before it’s a horror movie. It opens with a guffaw, teasing the audience with a laugh before a jarring smash to violence and trauma. The unique tone is anchored by star Allison Williams, who has surprisingly become one of our best horror leading ladies, bringing her signature brand of eerie camp to such films as “Get Out,” “The Perfection,” and now “M3GAN.” Williams’ skillful intentional affectlessness renders her characters slippery, difficult to pin down into preordained binaries of good and evil. In “M3GAN,” Williams is a Dr. Frankenstein type, playing Gemma, a toy designer with a savant-like skill for robotics. She’s toiling over a Purrpetual Petz prototype for her demanding boss at Funki Toys, when she receives the call that her sister and brother-inlaw have died in an accident and she’s to assume guardianship of her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Career-oriented Gemma
isn’t quite sure how to connect with a kid, and so she revives her scrapped project, M3GAN (played physically by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis) as a sort of pal for her lonely, grieving niece. 1:42. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘PLANE’: In the pitch meeting stage, “Plane” carried the title “The Plane,” and now it doesn’t. All excess cargo, even if it’s three letters — out the window! There’s too much to handle with this thing already! Extreme turbulence, a lightning strike, a crash landing onto the bulletstrewn island of Sulu in the Philippines … a commercial airline pilot teaming up with his toughest passenger (a former French Foreign Legion, wanted for murder) to deal with militant separatists and soar once again to freedom … who says they don’t give you anything when you fly basic economy? It’s the junky, janky mid-winter Liam Neeson thriller we used to get with that first flip of the calendar, only this one stars Gerard Butler and is directed by Jean-Francois Richet, whose two-part gangster biopic “Mesrine” was pretty juicy. This one’s more pulp than juice, but it’s enjoyable. 1:47. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips
‘THE PALE BLUE EYE’:
Based on Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel of the same name, “The Pale Blue
Eye” involves the disturbing murder of a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1830 and the involvement of a fictionalized version of a young Edgar Allan Poe. Christian Bale portrays Augustus Landor, a local detective with a reputation for favoring a drink who is recruited to investigate the death, which involved the skillful removal of the young man’s heart. To say any more about what unfolds in “The Pale Blue Eye” would be doing a disservice to viewers, but, as you may have guessed, it goes to some strange and dark places. Streaming on Netflix. 2:08. 2 stars. — Mark Meszoros, the Willoughby News-Herald
‘PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH’:
Eleven years after the “Shrek 2” spinoff “Puss in Boots,” the sassy Spanish feline voiced by Antonio Banderas has returned for another fairy-tale-busting adventure, directed by
Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, and written by Paul Fischer (with a story by Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler). Crawford, Mercado and Fischer all worked on the DreamWorks Animation favorites “Trolls” and “The Croods: A New Age,” and the trio bring a similar “chaotic good” energy to “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which remixes a new set of familiar nursery rhymes and beloved children’s fables to entertaining ends. 1:40. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh
‘SKINAMARINK’: The creepiest moments in the horror genre often come down to a single question provoked by slowly dawning terror, a certain degree of visual frustration, or a bit of both. Wait. What am I seeing here? That is the question. With the Canadian nano-budget paranormal film “Skinamarink,” the answer’s a bit of both, and the movie’s casting a spell more than it’s causing a lot of screams. Writerdirector Kyle Edward Ball’s hazy, grainy childhood reverie of nocturnal fear draws on memories and images familiar to millions whose early years were lit by the cold, clinical glow of a TV surrounded by a dark house. More directly, “Skinamarink” comes from a 28-minute short film
Ball made in 2020 called “Heck,” which led to this expanded 100-minute work after he crowdfunded $15,000 to make it happen. Shot digitally and then manipulated for maximum fuzz, grain and a complex variety of darkness with some life to it, the movie is a patient exercise in teasing out some common nightmare themes. Is it the new “Paranormal Activity” or a “The Blair Witch Project” for the pandemic shut-in generation? No. But it’s not about that. It’s a low-fi rumination on inexplicable and gradually more threatening loneliness — the sort of childhood trauma typically explained to death by horror movies less interesting than this one. 1:40. 3 stars.
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good;