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Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘ALICE, DARLING’: The comma makes all the difference in the title “Alice, Darling.” It’s not an endearment, but rather, depending on what’s next, could be a request, a behest, an entreaty, perhaps even a demand, an order or a backhanded compliment. The title’s grammatical structure is a clever bit of wordplay to signify the ways in which words can have different meanings and different results, depending on how they’re used. This is especially apt for this indie drama in which Anna Kendrick plays a woman reckoning with an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship. 1:30. 2 ½ stars. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘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
‘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
‘MISSING’: This movie takes some absolutely wild and crazy twists and turns arriving at its destination. College-bound
June (Storm Reid), 18, just wants to rage with her friends while her mom, Grace (Nia Long), is on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung). But when a hungover June rolls into LAX to pick them up a week later, Grace and Kevin are a no-show. Relying on her impressive Google skills, innate to a digitally native member of Gen Z, June starts searching for her missing mom, combing through tourist live cams, bank statements and hiring a TaskRabbit-type helper, Javi (Joaquim de Almeida), to do footwork on the ground in Colombia. The swift and suspenseful “Missing” plows through nearly two hours of shocking plot twists at a breakneck pace, and while it’s entertaining to be sure, it also takes on a somber tone as it reckons with grief, loss and intimate partner violence in a way that’s very real, backed up by headlines ripped from the news, and yes, those true-crime series and TikToks that are so very compelling. 1:51.
2 ½ 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
‘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
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.