Christmas movies at a glance
A look at the four movies opening tomorrow. Since all four either had early screenings or limitedrelease openings, the critics have already weighed in. So the Tomatometer scores and crticial consensuses are included.
LITTLE WOMEN
“Saving Private Ryan,” only instead of a team of soldiers tasked with saving one man, two soldiers must save an entire battalion. The setting is the horrific trenches of World War I, where British soldiers (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay), must race through German territory to deliver a message calling off a potentially suicidal assault. Mendes has said that his film is based on his grandfather’s trench-warfare experiences. latest invention caused Smith’s fowl play.
Tomatometer score: Rotten Tomatoes consensus: “A cheerfully undemanding animated adventure that’s elevated by its voice cast, ‘Spies in Disguise’ is funny, fast-paced, and family-friendly enough to satisfy.”
UNCUT GEMS
Drama from rising indie stars Josh and Benny Safdie stars Adam Sandler as an over-extended Manhattan jeweler who makes deals with NBA stars and rappers (The Weeknd and Kevin Garnett make appearances) — and who is up to his neck in debt to the Jewish mob. His pursuit of a big score could make him whole — or bring his house of cards crashing down. and quieter than his brother. Josh, 35, is bearded, wears a baseball cap and is an exuberant talker. He downed a cup of coffee he didn’t seem to need.
Just like Howard, the Safdies are basketball superfans. They’ve rooted for the underdog New York Knicks their whole lives.
“There’s a strong correlation between Judaism and Knicks basketball,” Josh recently told the Ringer. “And it has to do with suffering and trying to understand your life.”
The Safdies’ 2013 documentary “Lenny Cooke,” about the fate of the high school phenom once hyped as the best young player in the country, “helped humanize these titans of basketball,” Benny said. “That element alone was huge for the development of this movie,” which includes footage from real games, including Garnett in the 2012 playoffs.
Critics deploy all kinds of spirited descriptors trying to convey the gist of what it feels like to watch a Safdie movie. It’s sensory overload. Controlled chaos. Choreographed bedlam.
The Safdies call their aesthetic, their approach, “maximalist.”
“We constructed a film that is a reflection of the lifestyle of a gambler, where every second is an opportunity,” Josh said. “When you couple that with crushing debt, it becomes a thriller, and I mean this concept of a thriller that’s actually thrilling, in the true sense of your body being thrilled.”
They also compare the risky business of filmmaking to “the romanticism, the nauseating optimism, that drives a gambler.”
“I don’t think of myself as a gambler, but do you know how many times I’ve said (about a movie project), ‘This is the one?’ ” said Josh. “We literally put everything we had into each of the movies before this. We’re rolling the dice every single time.”