Chile Pages
OPENING THIS WEEK
BECOMING ASTRID “You can do this,” urges Astrid’s father before the young woman boards the train for Stockholm, where Astrid (Alba August) is to spend the more visible portion of her pregnancy at secretarial school. The braided teenager at the beginning of the film — who entertains her siblings in a horse-drawn carriage ride home from church with quips on Sodom and Gomorrah and regularly invites her mother’s pious disapproval — awakens painfully to womanhood in 1920s Scandinavia to become Astrid Lindgren, the creator of Pippi Longstocking. August is stunning in her richly dimensional portrayal of a strong-willed independent thinker driven by a steadfast commitment to truth and justice — qualities that characterize the freckled heroine of Lindgren’s beloved children’s book series. Not rated. 123 minutes. In Swedish and Danish with English subtitles. The Screen. (Taura Costidis) DRIVERX Patrick Fabian (best known for playing Howard Hamlin on
Better Call Saul) plays Leonard Moore, a man going through a midlife crisis and about to go broke. He starts making money by driving for an Uber-like service called DriverX, and in the process of earning some dough and connecting with people, he begins to acquire new vigor and reimagine his life. Fabian appears in person and hosts a Q&A at the 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, screening. Not rated. 98 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Not reviewed) THE FAVOURITE Opens Wednesday, Dec. 12. Rated R. 119 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. See review, Page 49. MARIA BY CALLAS Rated PG. 118 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts; Violet Crown. See review, Page 48. SCHINDLER’S LIST Steven Spielberg’s black-and-white Holocaust-set epic returns to theaters on the 25th anniversary of its 1993 release. Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler, a German businessman and member of the Nazi party who enlists the help of a Jewish official named Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to finance a factory in Kraków. When a Secret Service officer (Ralph Fiennes) arrives with the intention of emptying out the city’s Jewish ghettos, sending the population to concentration camps, Schindler and Stern work together to create a list of Jewish citizens to instead work for a factory of his in the Czech Republic, saving the lives of more than a thousand people. The film won seven Academy Awards in 1994, including Best Picture and Best Director. Rated R. 195 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
NOW IN THEATERS
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY In 1991, Queen singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS-related complications. With this biopic, the band’s surviving members attempt to do right by his legacy while also watering it down, settling petty scores with former management and reminding the public that they were there and contributed a great deal, too — as when guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) informs nobody in particular that he wrote the solo in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The results are grandiose, goofy, and largely entertaining. While a bit more energy would have gone a long way, the film dutifully hits the benchmarks of the band’s rise to fame without fussing too much over details, and Rami Malek embodies the larger-than-life lead singer Mercury with particular relish. Concerns from the gay community about the surface-level treatment devoted to Mercury’s sexuality are well noted, but for what the film is — a nearly family-friendly overview of Queen’s career — it delivers crowd-pleasing results. More importantly, the filmmakers also know when to foreground Queen’s eternally vibrant music and just get out of the way. Rated PG-13. 134 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker) BORDER Director Ali Abbasi’s romantic thriller about a Swedish customs officer who possesses a preternatural sense of smell is a genre-defying tour de force. Tina (Eva Melander) uses her keen faculties to sniff out the fear of would-be smugglers. After she helps bust a child pornographer, the ensuing investigation into a suspected pedophile ring — along with the introduction of a stranger named Vore (Eero Melinoff), who bears eerie similarities to Tina — challenges her sense of identity. Tina is mysteriously drawn to Vore, who has a similar stocky build, catlike face, and pronounced brow. Shunned and feared by others, the two outcasts find love and comfort in one another. But Vore has a secret that he keeps close to his chest until a stunning reveal. Based on a story by Swedish novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), Border explores themes of alienation and longing. As a love story, it’s tender, and as a thriller, it’s a fascinating blend of fantasy and the everyday that draws on Scandinavian myth and folklore. It’s one of the most imaginative and unusual films of the year. Rated R. 110 minutes. In Swedish with subtitles. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Michael Abatemarco) BOY ERASED This movie is based on the memoir by Garrard Conley, an Arkansas pastor’s son. Here he’s called Jared (Lucas Hedges), and when he admits to his very devout parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) that he has homosexual feelings, they send him off to Love In Action, a heterosexual boot camp run by Victor Sykes (director Joel Edgerton), a tough but apparently square shooter who preaches that sexuality is a learned attribute, like playing football or practicing dentistry. There are no out-and-out monsters here, although Victor builds toward that neighborhood. Crowe and Kidman portray loving parents, but the pastor can’t accept that God condones this sort of thing. It’s when Jared cries out for help and his mother’s protective instincts kick in that the movie realizes its most affecting moments. Kidman, up till then a bit of a cipher, seizes the narrative. Rated R. 114 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Jonathan Richards) CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? Director Marielle Heller builds this true story of forger Lee Israel around a revelatory performance from Melissa McCarthy, who strips away any shred of comedic
glamour to get inside the antisocial, acerbic writer who parlayed a talent for literary mimicry into a whimsical career faking signed celebrity letters that enjoyed a successful, if increasingly stressful, run at the end of the past millennium. You can’t quite like Lee, but McCarthy makes her achingly human and touchingly real. Richard E. Grant provides the perfect foil as her gay sidekick Jack Hock, a flamboyant extrovert who matches her drink for drink and note for note. The fascination of Can You Ever
Forgive Me? (the title is from a forged Dorothy Parker letter) is the sense of dread it weaves upon the basic human fear of being found out. If it occasionally meanders toward the borders of sentimentality, McCarthy’s uncompromising crustiness keeps this criminal enterprise honest. Rated R. 105 minutes. Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards) CREED II The Rocky film franchise has perfected a formula of equal parts sports, melodrama, and romance. When the filmmakers lean heavily on one element, it throws the equilibrium off, but when they nail the balance, it couples with decades-long nostalgia and American mythmaking to produce something akin to blockbuster euphoria. This sequel to 2015’s Creed, which once more stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, works well, even if it falls short of the surprises and lived-in vibe of the 2015 film. This time, Adonis is out to make his name and avenge his father Apollo Creed — who died at the hands of Soviet fighter Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) back in 1985’s Rocky IV — by defeating Ivan’s son Viktor (Florian Munteanu) in the ring. Along the way, he and his beau Bianca (Tessa Thompson) have a baby and reconsider their priorities, while a grandfatherly Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) hovers over everything, dispensing goofy charm and sage life advice. The acting is strong all around (Lundgren in particular delivers startling depth), and the boxing scenes excel. The film follows predictable beats and rehashes Cold War-era Athens-Sparta tropes to awkward effect, but it also delivers a strong left hook to the heartstrings, particularly for longtime fans. Rated PG-13. 117 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker) FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD The more distance we travel from J.K. Rowling’s seven
Harry Potter books and their eight film adaptations, the more it becomes clear that Hogwarts was the true star of the series. The wizarding school bursts with wonder and teems with life, while both post-Potter films in the Fantastic Beasts series feel empty and lifeless. This point is driven home in this sequel to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, when we briefly return to Hogwarts to spend time with a young Dumbledore (played by a dapper Jude Law) in scenes that rekindle Rowling’s old magic. In these scenes, Dumbledore tasks the magical zoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) with stopping the sinister Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) in his plot to have wizards take over the world. It’s a passable good versus evil story, yet the telling is bogged down by exposition, depictions of bureaucracy, and subplots involving characters we’re barely introduced to. Longtime franchise director David Yates supplies the predictably stellar visual effects, but never has he had worse material to work with. Rated PG-13. 134 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker) FREE SOLO Few people would ever think of climbing steep rock faces without a rope, supports, a helmet, or anchors — “free soloing,” as the practice is known. And yet that’s what thirty-three-year-old Alex Honnold has done in more than 1,000 solo climbs around the world. “I feel like anyone could conceivably die on any given day,” Honnold says, which could explain the risks he takes. According to this documentary, fewer than 1 percent of climbers attempt these feats. Produced by National Geographic Documentary Films and directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the film chronicles Honnold’s 2017 ascent of mighty El Capitan at Yosemite National Park. With all the peaks in the film itself — watching Honnold’s dexterity, the sheer artistry of his free-solo climb, and the vertigo-inducing images of the thousand-plus-foot drops — most viewers of Free Solo will experience fear in a way that Honnold appears not to. The final 20 minutes will leave you speechless. It’s wonderful to see how far one man has gone to live on the edge, where one false move could mean game over. He never bats an eyelash. Not rated. 100 minutes. Violet Crown. (Thomas M. Hill) GREEN BOOK This “inspired by a true story” tale follows a wellworn formula: an odd-couple pairing of polar opposites who take a while to warm up to each other, but when they finally do, it’s as cozy as Christmas (where the movie ends). The mismatched pair is Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a brawling goombah from a Bronx Italian neighborhood, and Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a fastidious African-American concert pianist who lives high atop Carnegie Hall. The year is 1962. Dr. Shirley and his trio are embarking on a concert tour of the Deep South, and he requires a driver who can double as enforcer. Mortensen warms into the role after laying the boor on a bit thick in the establishing scenes. Ali, too, has to play through a stereotype, but he emerges triumphant, and he ices the deal with superb piano work. There is scarcely a scene that you don’t see coming, scarcely a button that is not pushed. Yet they are pushed and executed so winningly that in the end you’d be inclined to forgive the movie even if an angel got his wings. Rated PG-13. 130 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards) THE GRINCH When directors Chuck Jones and Ben Washam adapted Dr. Seuss’ book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! into a 1966 television special, they had to add songs and other silliness to pad the book’s length to a TV-friendly 26 minutes. To expand the story to feature-film length, you need a great deal of imagination and innovation. It’s a pity, then, that this task was given over to Illumination, the animation studio most famous for the mediocre Despicable Me series, and which botched Dr. Seuss’
The Lorax back in 2012. Pharrell Williams narrates, and Benedict Cumberbatch voices the Grinch in a nasally, American-sounding accent (which raises the question, why hire an actor if you don’t want him to use his real voice?). The results are pointless yet harmless. The running time is brisk, and younger kids should like it. To elongate the story, the filmmakers introduce a subplot about the attempts by Cindy-Lou Who (Cameron Seely) to thank Santa for being so good to her single mother (Rashida Jones). In a worse move, however, they also provide the Grinch’s childhood backstory to impart how he got so grouchy. Can’t the Grinch just be the Grinch? Rated PG. 90 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker) INSTANT FAMILY Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne play a couple who decide to adopt a child. While at the adoption center, they become enamored with a spunky teenager (Isabela Moner), who happens to be the oldest of three kids. They decide to adopt her and her two siblings at once and soon find themselves transitioning from being a childless couple to being the heads of a large family. Director and co-writer Sean Anders based this dramedy loosely on his own personal experiences. Rated PG-13. 119 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed) MEOW WOLF: ORIGIN STORY This documentary looks at the Santa Fe arts institution Meow Wolf, from its scrappy beginning as a makeshift alternative to the city’s more traditional Canyon Road arts scene to its current status as an internationally recognized organization that is in the process of expanding into Denver and Las Vegas. The film gets its local debut in the theater owned by George R.R. Martin, who also helped Meow Wolf grow its wings at a pivotal moment in its development and who is prominently featured in the film. Not rated. 88 minutes. Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Not reviewed)
MIRAI
The latest animated film by Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda exchanges fantasy and action for a gentle tale of domestic life with a dash of whimsy. The story centers on a four-year-old boy named Kun (Jaden Waldman) who struggles to adjust to the arrival of a baby sister (named Mirai). He initially copes by acting out and then retreats into his imagination, where he visits family members in the past, including his mother at a similar age (Sakura Saiga), and in the future, especially Mirai as a young adult voiced by Victoria Grace. These fanciful sequences make Mirai unique, but what makes the film special are its keenly observed familial relationships, particularly regarding Kun’s mom and dad (voiced by Rebecca Hall and John Cho) and their own adjustments to being new parents of two children. As with all Hosoda works, the film is visually striking, and the storytelling is fluid and elegant. The story itself may be slight for some, but the thin surface hides depth and rewards. 12:55 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, only. Rated PG-13. 98 minutes. Dubbed in English. Regal Stadium 14. (Robert Ker)
THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE
Shay Mitchell plays Megan Reed, a policewoman who takes on the graveyard shift at the hospital morgue. One night, the corpse of a young woman by the name of Hannah Grace (Kirby Johnson) comes in. It turns out that Hannah died in the middle of an exorcism, and as the evening at the morgue progresses, Megan realizes that the demon inside Hannah is still alive. Rated R. 85 minutes. Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET
This sequel to the 2012 animated comedy Wreck-It
Ralph finds the video-game hero Ralph (John C. Reilly) and his buddy Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) venturing into the internet via a Wi-Fi router to try to save Vanellope’s game from destruction. They join a hardcore online game called Slaughter Race, where Vanellope finds a greater sense of purpose and a potential new bestie in Shank (Gal Gadot), one of the game’s drivers. Ralph grows concerned that he’s losing his friend, and his insecurities deliver what the film’s title promises. It’s a lot of plot for one animated film to handle, but there’s nothing to fault with the cast — playing the lovable bruiser is right in Reilly’s wheelhouse, and Silverman complements his lead efforts nicely with her own chirpy charm. The film includes many in-jokes about the internet and Disney films, but a prolonged game of “spot the reference” doesn’t add up to a totally satisfying experience. Fortunately, the two stars supply enough heart to carry the movie through its stilted patches. Rated PG. 112 minutes. Screens in 2D only at Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Robert Ker)
ROBIN HOOD
Because the character of Robin Hood exists in the public domain, giving all production companies access to this established property, there seems to be a new movie about him every few years. The latest adaptation imagines the fable as a high-octane adventure, in which Robin (Taron Egerton) and his sidekick John (Jamie Foxx) lead a revolt against the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn). As usual, the romantic story figures heavily into the plot, and Eve Hewson plays Marian here. Rated PG-13. 116 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Not reviewed)
A STAR IS BORN
Big, gorgeous, and packed with terrific music and charismatic star power, this fourth edition of one of Hollywood’s most enduring origin stories starts off so well that its momentum almost carries it through a somewhat more labored finish. Lady Gaga rediscovers her inner Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in creating the title character, Ally, a big-hearted aspiring singer who captures the heart of Jackson Maine, a country-rock superstar played soulfully by Bradley Cooper (who also co-wrote and directed). The tale, best remembered in the 1950 Judy Garland version, is familiar, tracking the opposite trajectories of the two stars — one blazing upward, one blazing out. Cooper’s pacing gets a little choppy, but for the most part the film is assured. The supporting cast is stocked with sometimes-surprising choices, like Andrew Dice Clay as Ally’s dad and Dave Chappelle as Jackson’s friend. Sam Elliott is reliably gravelly as Jackson’s much older brother. But the revelation is Lady Gaga, who nails the wide-eyed kid drawn into the world of superstardom, finding love and tragedy along the way. Rated PG. 96 minutes. Screens in 2D at Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
WIDOWS
In this crackling heist movie from British director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) is the widow of Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson), a high-stakes criminal and leader of a gang of crooks who get spectacularly blown up in the movie’s opening sequence. When she finds herself not only bereaved but in serious debt, she turns to crime as the solution to her immediate problem and recruits her fellow gang widows to pull off a $5 million heist. The movie’s idea comes via an old British TV series, processed through the fertile minds of McQueen and co-writer Gillian Flynn. The twists make up a satisfying stew of cleverness, violence, betrayal, a little sex, and a feminist stamp on the crime genre. McQueen is interested in more than just thrills, twists, and shocking violence. He blurs the line between good guys and bad and uses a drive through changing Chicago neighborhoods as a powerful commentary on race and class in America. Viola Davis commands the movie with fierce power. Rated R. 129 minutes. Regal Stadium 14; Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)
WILDLIFE
This finely directed debut feature film by writer and director Paul Dano is a period piece set in 1960s Montana about a fourteen-year-old boy named Joe (Ed Oxenbould), who spends the fall watching his parents’ marriage disintegrate. Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) stops caring about conversational boundaries with her son after Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) loses another gig as a golf pro and leaves the family to fight a wildfire. All of the performances are excellent, as is the cinematography by Diego Garcia. Rated PG-13. 104 minutes. Center for Contemporary Arts. (Jennifer Levin)