NOW PLAYING
Reviews of movies showing in theaters or streaming online
‘ANNETTE’: Director Leos Carax’s “Annette” proved a sensation at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. This was for many reasons, one being a scene where Adam Driver’s character, a lacerating stand-up comic/ performance artist, sings a lyric or two of a song while his head is between the legs of his opera star wife, played by Marion Cotillard. With sternly catchy songs of love, contempt and regret by the Sparks duo of Ron and Russell Mael, “Annette” is doggedly intent on putting you inside the mental cauldron of the Driver character, as he rails against his own fame, his perceived ugly duckling/ fairy princess relationship with his wife; and the birth of their phenomenal daughter, who is played by wooden puppets of varying sizes. 2:20. 3 stars. Streaming Aug. 20 on Amazon Prime Video. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
‘THE GREEN KNIGHT’:
Who’s the green knight here? When we first spy Dev Patel tumbling out of bed in “The Green Knight,” after a night with his sweetheart played by Alicia Vikander, the movie’s title seems to be referring to him — Sir Gawain, that is — and not the hulking, mossy-toned forest creature who later tests the young man’s mettle. Gawain, King Arthur’s impetuous nephew, is one of the Knights of the Round Table. Though he’s ripe for “adventure, brave and bold,” up until now life in Camelot has been a royal slacker’s breeze. The strategy behind writerdirector David Lowery’s quietly arresting medieval fantasy is simple: Gawain is a vessel, waiting to be filled with life’s challenges. 2:05. 3 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips ‘JOE BELL’: “Bullying and intolerance can have a deadly effect,” Mark Wahlberg says at the beginning of “Joe Bell.” The title character of this movie speaks, uneasily, to a group of high school students somewhere out West about his ambitious walk across America. The Oregon native undertook his bullying awareness campaign in 2013 to draw attention to his 15-year-old son Jadin’s experiences as a target of relentless harassment, at school and online, after he came out as gay. This early scene is framed as a sincere but not particularly effective interaction between Bell and the students. “Just be yourself,” reminds son Jadin (Reid Miller, very good). The movie tries to take that advice. But it’s like that scene with the students: sincere, but something’s missing. 1:30. 2 stars. — Michael Phillips ‘JUNGLE CRUISE’: One surefire way to know a film isn’t working the way it’s intended is if you notice yourself pondering each individual element rather than being swept away by how they’re working together. That’s the problem with Disney’s new adventure film inspired by a theme park ride, “Jungle Cruise.” Directed by Jaume Collett-Serra and starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, “Jungle Cruise” should be a stew of flavors perfectly blended together, but instead, it’s a salad, each discrete element tossed together, and tossed, and tossed, and tossed again. 2:07. 2 stars. Streaming on Disney+ Premier Access. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
‘NINE DAYS’: Japanese Brazilian writer-director Edson Oda has imagined something both small and tantalizing. His film operates as a drolly sustained and plaintively moving fable, in which unborn souls in human form go through a nine-day audition process, for a literal role of a lifetime. The movie proceeds in quiet, reflective tones, subtly energized by a fully realized visual environment and a clever variety of editing rhythms. “Nine Days” transcends the potential limitation and occasional strain of its premise. If you’ve seen the Anthony Minghella film “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” the mood and pacing may be familiar, though the two films travel in different metaphysical directions. 2:04. 3 ½ stars. — Michael Phillips
‘OLD’: For about half of “Old,” I was thinking “Yes, intriguing,” “Creepy, sure,” but, by the end, it was “Wait. All that was for this?” Although he adapted the screenplay from a graphic novel by Pierre-Oscar Levy and Frederick Peeters, “Old” is comfortable territory for director M. Night Shyamalan: Unsettling behavior. Dead folks. Ostentatious camera moves that remind us every frame includes exactly what he wants it to contain and nothing else. Given the title and the advertisements, virtually everyone who attends “Old” will go in knowing it’s set on a sunny, secluded beach where, for mysterious reasons, everyone ages rapidly. Shyamalan, who’s always been adept at knowing how much information to give to or withhold from audiences, capitalizes on our advance knowledge by making every detail in the first half of “Old” fraught with meaning. 1:49. 2 ½ stars. — Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune ‘SNAKE EYES’: That action figure you played with as a kid is not just an action figure, it’s intellectual property. And that intellectual property has a back story. Are you ready to hear it? “Snake Eyes” tells the story of G.I. Joe’s stealthy black-clad ninja character, one of the coolest-looking characters in the G.I. Joe line. It has the expanded title of “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins,” implying there will be more G.I. Joe origins stories. Hopefully those future installments will be less dull than this flat actionadventure, which takes its hugely charismatic star and renders him all but plastic. 2:01. 2 stars. — Adam Graham, Detroit News ‘STILLWATER’: “Life is brutal.” If there’s a kernel of hard-earned, if blunt, wisdom to be gleaned from Tom McCarthy’s latest film, “Stillwater,” this is it. It’s a sentiment repeated by both father (Matt Damon) and daughter (Abigail Breslin) with a resoluteness that comes from experience, but it’s unclear if “Stillwater” has anything other to impart than this defeated sentiment, even after 2 ½ hours of twisty, tabloid-inspired plot. “Stillwater” refers to the Oklahoma town where Bill Baker (Damon) is from; it also ostensibly refers to stoic roughneck Bill himself. “Still waters run deep,” as they say, so we are to understand that there’s more to Bill than just his solitary existence picking up manual labor gigs while in between oil jobs. There is much more to Bill’s life, as we discover when he jets off to Marseille, France, moving about the city with a practiced sense of routine. He’s visiting his daughter in prison. 1:28. 2 ½ stars.
— Katie Walsh
‘THE SUICIDE SQUAD’:
After David Ayer’s much lambasted “Suicide Squad” bowed to critical disdain in 2016, it seemed the gleefully chaotic crew of DC Comics anti-heroes were done for. Then, lauded “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn was fired from “Guardians
3” by Disney after a rash of unsavory tweets were turned up, and DC/ Warner Bros. snapped him up to direct the “Suicide Squad” sequel, “The Suicide Squad.” Though Gunn has since been reinstated on “Guardians,” his turn with the bad kids of comics feels like the writer/director has been unleashed in the best way. The team that we end up following is comprised of Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), and King Shark (Sylvester Stallone). They link up with Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) in an effort to infiltrate a South American island nation, Corto Maltese, which has just been taken over in a military coup. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) wants the Suicide Squad to destroy a former Nazi experimentation site in Corto Maltese, where an extra-terrestrial beast is rumored to reside, and contain all threats to the U.S. 2:12. 3 stars. Streaming on HBO Max. — Katie Walsh
‘VAL’: “My name is Val Kilmer,” the voice says, but it’s not Val Kilmer speaking. It’s his son, Jack, who narrates “Val,” the deeply moving and profoundly intimate documentary about the enigmatic actor and movie star. Val Kilmer no longer sounds like you remember him sounding, and he no longer looks like you remember him looking. After a bout with throat cancer, he lost his voice and now speaks in a raspy croak with the assistance of a tracheostomy tube. But he has a story to tell, and “Val” opens him up through his own lens. 1:49. 3 stars. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video. — Adam Graham
RATINGS: The movies listed are rated according to the following key: 4 stars, excellent; 3 stars, good; 2 stars, fair; 1 star, poor.