Chile Pages
AFTER LOVE
Not rated. 100 minutes. In French with subtitles. The Screen. See review, Page 56.
BREATHE
Actor Andy Serkis, who is best known for his motion-captured performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings series, makes his directorial debut by telling the true story of Robin and Diana Cavendish (played by Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy). While living in Kenya in 1958, Robin is stricken with polio and becomes paralyzed from the neck down. Rather than succumb to despair, he and Diana become champions for the disabled, developing medical aids for those suffering from paralysis. Rated PG-13. 117 minutes. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
GEOSTORM
The disaster movie returns to theaters courtesy of co-writer and director Dean Devlin, who knows the genre intimately, thanks to his work with Roland Emmerich on movies such as
Independence Day and Godzilla. Don’t expect much logic in the plot, which centers on climate-controlling satellites that are on the fritz and wreaking havoc on Earth’s weather — this film is all about watching giant tornados and tsunamis tear through skyscrapers like tissue paper. Abbie Cornish and Gerard Butler play two of the humans just trying to survive. Rated PG-13. 109 minutes. Screens in 3-D and 2-D at Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
ONLY THE BRAVE
Rated PG-13. 133 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. See review, Page 57.
THE SANTA FE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL
The annual five-day festival that is focused on independent cinema continues through Sunday, Oct. 22, culminating with screenings of the New Mexico-filmed Hostiles, a tribute to actor Wes Studi, and the official closing night film, Arthur Miller:
Writer. Screenings take place at venues throughout town. For tickets and information, call 505-349-1414 or visit www. santafeindependentfilmfestival.com. See film festival coverage beginning on Page 38.
THE SNOWMAN
During the first snowfall of the year, a woman goes missing, leaving behind just one clue: a pink scarf wrapped around a snowman’s neck. Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is on the case, and the more he digs, the more he realizes it’s the work of an elusive serial killer known as the Snowman. He must find the murderer before the next snowfall hits and another woman’s life is claimed. Tomas Alfredson directs this adaptation of the bestselling Jo Nesbø novel. Rated R. 119 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
TIME TO DIE
Not rated. 90 minutes. The Screen. See Screen Gems, Page 55.
TYLER PERRY’S BOO 2! A MADEA HALLOWEEN
Madea is back to stare evil right in the face and shout, “Oh, hell no!” This time around, Tyler Perry’s beloved grandmother character and her family (many of whom, including Madea, are played by Perry), travel to a haunted campground where, amidst a raging weekend kegger, they must avoid all manners of monsters and killers. Rated PG-13. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
AMERICAN MADE
In this action movie loosely based on real-life events from the Reagan era, Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal, a TWA pilot who is contacted by a CIA agent (Domhnall Gleeson) to run spy missions over South America. He accepts and soon finds himself living a dangerous life, smuggling drugs into the country for the Colombian drug cartel and the CIA, and running guns out of the country for the CIA — all while dodging the DEA. Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) directs. Rated R. 115 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
BATTLE OF THE SEXES
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the directing team that brought you Little Miss Sunshine, score with the epic 1973 tennis spectacle between Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) that riveted a national TV audience and gave a boost to the aspiration of gender equality in sports. King accepted Riggs’ challenge after he’d decisively trounced the tour’s no. 1, Australian Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), in an exhibition, and the credibility of women in professional sports was on the line. Riggs was a fifty-five-year-old former champion and inveterate hustler, a self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig; Billie Jean was twentynine, a great athlete at the top of her game. There’s not much suspense, but plenty of fun, spectacle, and emotional resonance as Simon Beaufoy’s script splits its focus between The Match and Billie Jean’s lesbian awakening with her hairdresser, Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough). Excellent supporting work comes from Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, and Alan Cumming. And the tennis, mid-‘70s style with wooden rackets and a lot of net play, is on the mark. Rated PG-13. 121 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
BLADE RUNNER 2049
A cultural legend is a tough act to follow, but Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) and his team take the challenge of 1982’s Blade Runner and mostly nail it. The script, by the original’s co-writer Hampton Fancher and Michael Greene, with executive producer Ridley Scott looking over their shoulders, sometimes echoes Dragnet in its dialogue as it wends its way through an intricate story of replicants, humans, and the no-man’s-land between. The work of cinematographer Roger Deakins and production designer Dennis Gassner is flat-out magnificent. The cast, led by Ryan Gosling as K, this generation’s blade-running detective, is solid, although Jared Leto’s blind villain comes across a bit muted. K takes a couple of hours to find his way to the old runner, Harrison Ford’s Deckard, but when he does the movie clicks seamlessly into a familiar yet
satisfying tone, with plenty of time to go. Fans will argue the relative intellectual and thematic merits of this vs. the original, but the spectacle here is extraordinary. Rated R. 163 minutes. Screens in 3-D and 2-D at Regal Stadium 14. Screens in 2-D only at Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
DOLORES
At age eighty-seven, Dolores Huerta is a bona fide civil-rights icon, celebrated for her steely feminism in the face of the male-dominated labor movement, her unwavering belief in nonviolent protest, and her lifelong commitment to workers’ rights. This spirited documentary, executive-produced by Carlos Santana and directed by Peter Bratt, chronicles her extraordinary life and work. As a teenager, she became politically motivated by the social and economic inequities she witnessed in the fields of California’s Central Valley. In 1962, Huerta and César Chávez co-founded what became the United Farm Workers to organize poorly paid laborers who lacked access to toilets, drinking water, and rest periods. The work led to Huerta coining the indelible slogan “Sí se puede,” or “Yes, we can.” La causa became both a labor movement and a cultural revolution, but the toll Huerta’s work took on her and her family is sensitively and movingly chronicled. It’s a fast-paced, engrossing celebration of an unrelenting and truly inspirational woman. Not rated. 95 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Molly Boyle)
THE FOREIGNER
Kung-fu superstar Jackie Chan, now sixty-three, aims to enter a new phase in his career with this action picture helmed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale). He plays a London businessman who loses his daughter in a terrorist attack. He sets off on a revenge mission, hoping to get the names of the bombers from a reluctant government official (Pierce Brosnan) with a shady past in the IRA. A deadly cat-and-mouse game between the two men ensues. Rated R. 114 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
HAPPY DEATH DAY
Life is a series of days that feel roughly the same for long stretches at a time. You pass through them, mired to your routines, making many of the same mistakes over and over, and at the end of it all, death awaits. That could be the subtext of this movie, which takes the concept of Groundhog
Day and fuses it with horror, but it never completely rises above the slasher trope of the sorority girl who is punished for her promiscuity with the business end of a butcher’s knife. College student Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), wakes up on her birthday, treats everyone in her life terribly, and is ultimately murdered by an attacker in a cartoonish baby mask. Then, she wakes up again. She must relive the day repeatedly until she solves the mystery of who her attacker is and how to avoid being killed. Despite the grisly repetition, there are curiously few scares and not many laughs. The movie breezily skates by on the merits of its recycled premise, and as mildly clever October fare, it often passes muster — just not often enough. Rated PG-13. 96 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
IT
In what feels like a limp effort to capitalize on the totally-’80s retro-revival in pop culture, Stephen King’s novel about a circle of childhood friends menaced by an evil clown in the late 1950s has been moved to the summer of 1989 in this adaptation. This gives the tone-deaf filmmaking team of director Andy Muschietti and three screenwriters the opportunity to stylistically crib from The Goonies and other ‘80s hits. (Incongruously, the young characters rib each other with raunchy jibes that seem better suited to a post-South Park world.) The scariest parts are the uncomfortably realistic portrayals of bullying and a controlling father’s sexually charged relationship with his daughter; the jump-scare scenes with the villainous clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) are laughable and annoyingly protracted. The credits suggest that a sequel — presumably telling the part of King’s tale that concerns the adult versions of the kids — is in the works. Oh goody. Rated R. 135 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Jeff Acker)
KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
In 2014, director Matthew Vaughn adapted writer Mark Millar’s comic book and introduced the dapper special agents known as the Kingsmen in an irreverent, over-the-top take on the spy genre. This sequel attempts to go even higher over the top — within half an hour, a man is ground into a hamburger and Elton John appears as himself, in full regalia, as a captive who is forced to perform for a supervillain named Poppy (a delightful Julianne Moore). Poppy’s mission is to poison the world’s supply of narcotics and sell the antidote at a marked-up price, and it’s up to Eggsy (Taron Egerton), and his American compatriots known as the Statesmen (Channing Tatum and Jeff Bridges), to stop her. After his memorable death in the first film, Colin Firth’s Harry returns for no good reason, and his extended bout of amnesia — one of several extraneous subplots — weighs the movie down. Director Matthew Vaughn still does kinetic, cartoonish action as well as anyone, but what he lacks here is a sense of concision and good taste. Rated R. 141 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE
The second LEGO movie of the year (after The LEGO Batman
Movie) stars the Ninjago line of toys and TV shows. The story centers on a young ninja named Lloyd (voiced by Dave Franco) who, along with his friends, must defend Ninjago City from the evil Garmadon (Justin Theroux), who is commonly known as The Worst Guy Ever. Complicating matters is the fact that Garmadon is also Lloyd’s dad. Jackie Chan and Fred Armisen also contribute their voices. Rated PG. 100 minutes. Screens in 2-D only at Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
MARSHALL
Chadwick Boseman plays Thurgood Marshall in one of the judge’s career-making cases, years before he became the first African American on the Supreme Court. The year is 1940 and the case is Connecticut v. Joseph Spell, which finds Marshall defending a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) who is accused of the rape and attempted murder of his white employer (Kate Hudson). Rated PG-13. 118 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
MAUDIE
Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) is one of those British actors who is so good most people here don’t even know who she is. In this film, inspired by the life of Maud Lewis (1903-1970), she gives an Oscar-caliber performance as the Nova Scotia folk artist whose hand-painted cards sell for nickels and dimes, mostly to the clients of her fish-peddler husband (a very good Ethan Hawke). Eventually she moves on to paintings, and her price rockets to $5, and then $10. Local television does a story on her, and everyone, including Lewis, begins to show her a little respect. Gnarled and scrunched from childhood rheumatoid arthritis, Maudie maintains a cheerful demeanor. As much as it is the story of her painting, director Aisling Walsh’s biopic is about survival and positivity in the face of crippling adversity. The real Maud Lewis died in poverty, but her paintings now sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Screens at 7:15 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 22, only, with Ethan Hawke on hand for a Q&A session. Not rated. 115 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jonathan Richards)
THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US
In this adaptation of Charles Martin’s romance novel — which sounds a bit like if Nicholas Sparks had written Alive — Kate Winslet stars as a photojournalist who needs to fly across the country for her wedding the next day. Idris Elba portrays a surgeon heading to Baltimore to perform an emergency surgery. Flight delays force the two of them to take a small aircraft to make their appointments, but when the plane crashes in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, they must rely on each other to survive. Rated PG-13. 103 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
MY LITTLE PONY: THE MOVIE
Bronies of the world, unite! The My Little Pony property, which relaunched with wildly expressive animation in 2010 and now enjoys a cult following of fans of all ages and genders, arrives in theaters. For the big event, Ponyville is invaded by the Storm King (voiced by Liev Schreiber) and his sidekick Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt), and the Mane 6 — which includes Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity — must save the day. Rated PG. 99 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN
After Wonder Woman’s blockbuster this past spring and before her next appearance in the upcoming Justice League film, this movie lets you learn more about the superheroine’s creator, William Marston (Luke Evans). In an era when comic books were thought by many to be corrupting youth, Wonder Woman was known for its depictions of sadomasochism and bondage (there’s a reason she carries a lasso). This movie centers Marston’s creative inspiration in his personal life with regard to what the filmmakers suppose was a polyamorous relationship between him, his wife (Rebecca Hall), and another woman (Bella Heathcote). Rated R. 108 minutes. Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)