Chile Pages
BEL CANTO
Paul Weitz’s film adaptation of the Ann Patchett bestseller opens with a lavish dinner party in an unnamed South American country. The after-dinner entertainment is Roxane Coss (Julianne Moore), a celebrated operatic soprano (think Renée Fleming, who supplies the voice). The guests are a glittering assembly of politicians, diplomats and business heavies, including Katsumi Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe), a wealthy Japanese industrialist. As Roxane is singing, gunwielding guerrillas break into the mansion and take everybody hostage. The crisis goes on for weeks and romances blossom, including one between Coss and Hosokawa. We come to see the strengths and weaknesses of captors and captives and we are shown the underlying humanity of these gun-toting terrorists, though we can never forget that their upper hand is based on their willingness to slaughter innocent people to achieve their goals. The more human and friendly and sympathetic everyone gets, the more certain we become that this is a standoff that cannot end well. Not rated. 102 minutes. In English, Spanish, French, and Japanese with subtitles. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
BLACKKKLANSMAN
Director Spike Lee’s career is full of peaks and valleys, and his latest film finds him reaching crowd-pleasing heights once more. It’s a dramedy based on the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African-American detective in 1970s Colorado Springs who goes undercover to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Using the phone most of the time — and sending a proxy (Adam Driver) when face time is required — Stallworth does such a good job that he becomes close with national Grand Wizard David Duke (an oddly cast Topher Grace). Because it’s a Spike Lee joint, all of the filmmaker’s strengths and weaknesses are on display. There are bold creative choices and excellent work by supporting cast members (watch for Harry Belafonte’s powerhouse turn), yet an excessive amount of cuts make even simple scenes feel busy. Lee’s toolbox is full of nothing but blunt objects, so don’t go in expecting subtlety; however, it’s refreshing to see racial divisions in America addressed so directly. The plot is gripping and there are funny jokes, but brace yourself for the gut-punch connection to modern times that closes the film. Rated R. 135 minutes. Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
CRAZY RICH ASIANS
Based on the bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians crosses a classic fish-out-ofwater romantic comedy with a fun millennial sensibility. NYU
economics professor Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) is head over heels in love with her dashing boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding), who has been hiding a very big secret — he’s the filthy rich scion of a Singapore real estate dynasty. When Nick invites her to accompany him to the lavish wedding of his best friend in Singapore, Chu is thrust into a glaring spotlight, scrutinized by Nick’s snobby mother (Michelle Yeoh), grandmother (Lisa Lu), and a passel of jealous onlookers, none of whom think an ordinary Asian-American girl is good enough for the Prince Harry of Singapore. Using all her charm and wit — as well as the support of her wisecracking college roommate (Awkwafina) — Rachel does her best to win over Nick’s family and friends, with mostly disastrous and hilarious results. Chockablock with breakout performances, the film is a dizzying, madcap cultural immersion. It should serve as a reminder to Hollywood that when it’s executed with a sense of ingenuity and an emphasis on diversity, the old-school rom-com marriage plot always makes for a damn fine movie. Rated PG-13. 120 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Molly Boyle)
FAHRENHEIT 11/9
With a Republican president in the White House after eight years of Obama, it’s time for Michael Moore to surface with a documentary that pokes and prods him. His latest documentary references several of Moore’s pet topics: He calls back to Fahrenheit 9/11 with the title (taken for 11/9/16, the day Trump’s electoral college victory was announced), revisits the gun control debate of Bowling for Columbine by tracking the school-shooting survivors-turned-activists David Hogg and Emma González, and returns to his Michigan hometown setting of Roger & Me by exploring Flint’s current water crisis. Rated R. 125 minutes. The Screen; Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS
Filmmaker Eli Roth rose to prominence with punishing horror movies such as Hostel. Here, he tries his hand at catering to the Goosebumps crowd, adapting the 1973 novel by John Bellairs into a movie about a young orphan named Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) who moves in with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black), only to find that his uncle is a warlock and his house has a ticking clock in its walls. When it counts down to zero, something wicked this way comes. Unsurprisingly, Roth has a good feel for the frights, even with the PG rating. He has less of a handle on the humor and scenes that convey the characters’ emotional arcs. What hurts matters is that while Vaccaro excels and Cate Blanchett is reliably exquisite as the witch who lives next door, Black is oddly cast and never quite hits the right chord between whimsy and gravity. Rated PG. 104 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
LIFE ITSELF
In this lifetime-spanning romance, Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde play a couple who fall in love, get married, and have children. Writer and director Dan Fogelman uses this story to jump backward and forward in time, and even take viewers to Spain (for a love story headed by Antonio Banderas) to show how events echo and reverberate through time and space. Mandy Patinkin, Annette Bening, and Olivia Cooke also star. Rated R. 118 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
THE MEG
You’re going to need a bigger boat to land the latest shark to stalk summer cinema: It’s the Carcharodon Megalodon, a 75-foot-long behemoth that was long thought to be extinct. This monster is so massive and dangerous that a hero no less rugged than Jason Statham is required to stop it. Statham is Jonas Taylor, a rescue diver who attempts to save the trapped crew of an undersea observatory when he encounters the shark. Li Bingbing plays his young daughter, and Rainn Wilson plays the billionaire who accidentally unleashes the Megalodon with his ambitious underwater observation program. Rated PG-13. 113 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
THE NUN
The popular Conjuring franchise hasn’t produced a classic horror film, but several of its entries have offered some reliable scares and solid filmmaking. The Nun, a prequel based around the creepy nun who has periodically appeared in other installments, is not one of those films. It takes us back to a convent in 1950s Romania, where Father Burke (Demián Bichir) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, sister of series star Vera Farmiga) travel to investigate the apparent suicide of a young nun. They don’t find many people there, but soon discover that something evil is afoot and the demon Valak is responsible. Director Corin Hardy tries to pack the movie with scares for the full running time, whereas most good horror movies let viewers spend much of the time in the normal world while slowly introducing the awful into the everyday. A whole film of two people wandering a dark, empty monastery with a jump scare thrown in every couple of minutes gets boring very quickly. Rated R. 96 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
PEPPERMINT
In 2008, Taken reinvigorated the action genre by applying a well-known middle-aged actor (Liam Neeson) to a hardcore action movie. This formula has since been replicated many times, but rarely by the Taken director, Pierre Morel, himself. Here, Morel tells a revenge story about a woman (Jennifer Garner) whose family is murdered by gang members. When a corrupt legal system refuses to give her justice, she takes it into her own hands, disappearing for years and re-emerging as a highly trained killing force. Rated R. 102 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
PICK OF THE LITTER
There’s an ominous Orwellian term for the dogs who wash out of the Guide Dogs for the Blind seeing-eye program: “Career changed.” And the odds are tough. Less than 40 percent of the 800 puppies born into the program each year make the final cut. Directors Dana Nachman and Don Hardy trace the process from whelping to pairing with selected blind recipients, with more than 1,000 annual applicants hoping to be partnered with one of the 300 or so dogs who make the grade. It’s not exactly “Chopped,” but there is a reality show sense of suspense and rivalry that extends to the trainers and the viewers, if not to the competitors themselves. If it were enough to be cute, they would all pass with flying colors, but the evaluators look for much more. The program is inspiring, the dogs are remarkable, the results are extraordinary; but as a movie, though Pick of the Litter does its job, it doesn’t rise to the emotional level to which it aspires. Still, there are plenty of “awwww” moments, and dog lovers will find much to melt over. Not rated. 81 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
THE PREDATOR
Filmmaker Shane Black returns to his roots with the
Predator franchise (he got one of his big breaks playing a role in the original 1987 film), co-writing and directing a story about a military sniper (Boyd Holbrook) who encounters a spaceship with a predator alien. When he mails some of the extraterrestrial tech back to his kid (Jacob Tremblay), the two discover that more predators are coming, and that they’ve evolved to become even more dangerous. Despite the fact that Black’s trademark humor and devil-may-care characters are all in place, his plot tries to do far too much, attempting to expand the hokey mythology about the Predator aliens and giving the players so much to do that their motivations aren’t clear. The franchise’s whole concept is in the title: Aliens try to kill humans, and humans try to survive. The more thought you put into a Predator movie, the worse it will end up. Black put a lot of thought into this movie. Rated R. 107 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
A SIMPLE FAVOR
Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) turns his lens from comedy to this thriller based on Darcey Bell’s novel. When Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), a widowed mommy vlogger, meets Emily (Blake Lively) at their sons’ elementary school in the Connecticut suburbs, sparks of insta-friendship fly. To Stephanie, Emily seems to have it all — a top job as PR head for a Tom Ford-esque designer, a bestselling novelist husband, Sean (Henry Golding), and a beautiful home. When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie plays detective, suspecting Sean of
foul play even as she finds herself becoming intimate with him. There’s plenty to like about this campy and byzantine plot, and both actresses clearly have a ball, with Lively mostly reprising her “Gossip Girl” role as a rich bitch with a black heart and Kendrick overplaying the role of the seemingly mousy best friend. But the movie has a genre identity crisis, never fully committing to either dark comedy or semi-cheesy psychological thrills. As we delve deeper into the question of just who Emily actually is, the film begins to feel dumber than it should, given the compelling material and the cast’s talents. It’s a fun ride, to be sure, and never dull, but A Simple Favor feels overshadowed by missed opportunities. Rated R. 117 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Molly Boyle)
THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT
This fable filmed at the Arctic Circle centers on Lia (Devery Jacobs), a teenager who is forced to spend the summer with her Gwich’in grandmother (Sarah Jerome) in a remote town in Canada’s Northwest Territories after her mother’s death. When she tries to flee, she becomes lost until she runs into Alfred (Duane Howard), a Gwich’in hunter. The two reluctantly bond, and Lia grows closer to her ancestral heritage — and soon, it is Alfred who must rely on her to survive. Not rated. 93 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Not reviewed)
WHITE BOY RICK
In 1980s Detroit, Richard Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) became the youngest FBI informant ever at age fourteen. He also trafficked drugs and became an influential drug dealer before getting arrested in 1987, while still a teenager. This movie tells the story of those busy years, with Matthew McConaughey playing his father, who was a hustler himself. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Piper Laurie, Bruce Dern, and a few people from the rap community (including YG and Danny Brown) also star. Rated R. 110 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
THE WIFE
The family dynamic is evident from the start. Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a world-famous novelist who has just won the Nobel Prize, is boyish, vain, impulsive. Joan (Glenn Close), his wife of forty years, is mature, self-effacing, long-suffering, and wise. A lot of this melodrama, directed by Björn Runge, is both heavy of hand and puzzlingly unconvincing as regards its insights into a writer’s life. Its main thrust is the lack of respect and opportunity for a woman in the writing field, and Joan’s sublimation of her own talent to the role of the Great Man’s Wife. Its three leads lift this story from a self-pitying potboiler to a film to be reckoned with. Pryce, along with Christian Slater as Joe’s would-be biographer, turn in nuanced and excellent performances. But it’s Close’s picture, and the close-ups of her face reveal many-chaptered novels of hidden emotion playing out beneath a carefully composed surface as she endures her husband’s peccadilloes and his fawning tributes. It’s a career performance, and one that’s already generating Oscar buzz for this six-time nominee who’s never landed the prize. The film may not be worthy of her, but she makes it worth our while. Rated R. 100 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)