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movies at local cinemas ANYONE BUT YOU

R, 104 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. “Anyone But You” isn’t much of anything but “eh,” and “eh” is a mere two-letter word. Based, loosely, on some old play by Shakespeare, director and co-writer Will Gluck’s “Much Ado About Nothing” riff was filmed in Australia and stars Glen Powell as Ben and Sydney Sweeney as Bea, the Benedick and Beatrice equivalents. They meet cute at a coffee shop, have a lovely getting-to-know-you evening, separate at dawn under tense, hurtful circumstances, and then reunite uneasily when the Sweeney character’s sister announces a destination wedding near Sydney (Australia, not Sweeney), to which both Bea and Ben are invited. Ben works at home (something to do with money, never explained) and lives in what Bea notes is the kind of sleek, un-mussed condo favored by sociopaths and serial killers. Bea is a conflicted lawyer-in-training who recently dumped her longtime boyfriend (Darren Barnet). Bea has dropped out of law school but hasn’t yet told her parents (played by Dermot Mulroney and ensemble highlight Rachel Griffiths). Deceptions multiply at the coastal house they’re all sharing for the weekend, family and American guests of the family alike. Exes pop up, both Bea and Ben’s (Charlee Fraser plays Ben’s summer-fling surfer lover). The brides-to-be — played by Alexandra Shipp and Hadley Robinson — don’t want the squabbling Bea and Ben to mess up their nuptials, so “Anyone But You” sets up strategically overheard conversations, a la Shakespeare, designed to make Bea and Ben think they’re secretly sweet on each other. They’re onto it soon enough, but decide to play along and pretend they’re a couple after all just to avoid trouble.

— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM

1/2

PG-13, 124 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

It’s perhaps appropriate that the latest Aquaman movie is about a lost kingdom. In many ways, this mini-franchise is just that, a Jason Momoa kingdom that could just quietly sink below the cinematic waves. At least Momoa is going out swinging in “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” an overstuffed tale that goes from desert to ice, steals from other movies like a coked-up magpie and says goodbye at the near-operatic level of a mid-franchise Marvel flick. Much of it doesn’t happen underwater at all. “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is likely the final installment of the King of Atlantis’ storyline for a time. The new heads of DC Studios plan nearly a dozen film and TV comic book projects in the next decade and none have Aquaman front and center. Holding it all together is Momoa, and it’s hard to overstate his charisma, humor and presence. DC Studios may regret deep-sixing this franchise if it doesn’t find a home for an actor who actually looks like a real-life superhero. But, then again, they bungled it with Dwayne Johnson, too. “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is equivalent to “Thor: Love and Thunder” or “Fast X” — an attempt to raise the level of the last decent entry by keeping the same overall plot but just throwing money at it — more locations, more fights, more armies led by commanders in medieval-looking suits of armor riding underwater beasts.

— Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

THE BOY AND THE HERON

1/2

PG-13, 124 minutes. Through today only at Waterford.

Hayao Miyazaki faced an impossible task with “The Boy and the Heron,” which comes 10 years after his contemplative and staggering masterpiece, the Oscar-nominated “The Wind Rises” — which the master of Japanese anime said at the time would be his final feature. What can a director do after already saying goodbye? Miyazaki’s 2013 film — a fictionalized version of the life of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi — felt like his last. It dealt with the complex life of an artist and the consequences, both intentional and unintentional, of creativity. If “Wind” was Miyazaki’s swan song, then “Heron” is the old master bursting back into the room to tell one more beautiful, otherworldly tale. Set during World War II, the film follows Mahito, a Japanese teen who moves with his father from the city to the country after the death of his mother. While struggling to fit in at his new school, Mahito becomes fascinated with a gray heron living near the river. There begins the boy’s journey into a magical world lurking just below the surface of our own. Mahito, a character on the cusp of change, is a classic Miyazaki character: someone looking to find his place in a new and confusing world. Mahito enters the movie as a nearly silent protagonist, occupying the corner of scenes, a passive observer of events. Over the course of the plot, though, he changes. Mahito never becomes an action hero, but his choices are important, causing ripple effects throughout his world and the larger universe.

— Lucas Trevor, The Washington Post

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

PG-13, 124 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic. Still playing at Westbrook, Lisbon.

When we see a story onscreen that’s one of our own, it can be a little hard to get lost in it. George Clooney’s film adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s bestselling nonfiction book “The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics” — the movie’s wisely just called “The Boys in the Boat” — is a story set (though not filmed) in Seattle’s backyard, and one that many of us have taken to our hearts. Brown’s book, written with palpable awe and affection for the nine University of Washington student-athletes who overcame enormous hardship and long odds to succeed at an Olympics taking place in the shadow of the Third Reich, is special to many in the region, and during the long wait for the movie (the book came out a decade ago), a lot of us have replayed the movie version that lives in our heads — which is, of course, perfect. So let’s get the local gripes out of the way at the onset: Clooney’s film, shot in the U.K., uses some technical wizardry to suggest some local landmarks, to uneven effect. A shot of 1936 Seattle’s Hooverville, a shantytown in what’s now Sodo, looks eerily right, with the Smith Tower looming in shadow; the Montlake Bridge is nicely rendered (though the backdrop behind it seems flip-flopped); and a constructed replica of the original ASUW Shell House looks nostalgically spot-on. Conversely: Students attend classes in a building that has never been seen on the University of Washington campus, await a train in a station that’s nothing like the one here and practice on a body of water that clearly is not the Montlake Cut. Of course, most viewers of the film won’t notice any of this, and there’s a certain pleasure in complaining about it; we are, after all, the ones who know. Other than that, how’s the movie? It’s good. It’s sweet. It’s very, very old-fashioned, full of swelling music and amber light, and people making folksy speeches, and that feels right, both for the time period and the tone of the book.

— Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

THE COLOR PURPLE

PG-13, 140 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

Like its central character, Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple” has had a long journey. Published in 1982, this lyrical story of a poor Black woman’s eventual triumph over an abusive husband and a seemingly uncaring world became a movie directed by Steven Spielberg in 1985, and then a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical in 2005. And here it is, transformed again: a new movie, based on the stage musical but featuring some new songs, directed by filmmaker/musician Blitz Bazawule. Let me just repeat a key word in that previous sentence: This is a capital-M Musical, complete with big songs and enormous dance numbers and larger-than-life emotions — and it’s often irresistibly exhilarating, as the best musicals can be. I haven’t seen the stage version of “The Color Purple,” but I can absolutely imagine what an impact it would have on an audience, how Miss Celie’s journey would sweep you up and carry you to a higher, more joyful place. That’s basically what happens here: Bazawule slowly but surely lifts us up, letting us soar with the cast by the end. Not that it’s an easy road to get there. Set in the American South beginning in the early 1900s and extending over several decades, “The Color Purple” has at its center a deeply troubling story: Celie, a teenager when we meet her (she’s played in the early scenes by Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and later by Fantasia Barrino), is a victim of sexual assault by her father; her two babies have been taken from her, and she’s forced to marry a cruel older man known to her only as Mister (Colman Domingo), who beats her viciously and attempts to assault her beloved sister Nettie (Halle Bailey), who flees their town. Within this nightmare, two women arrive to change Celie’s world: She finds friendship with bold Sofia (Danielle Brooks) and love with confident nightclub performer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) — and ultimately, movingly, learns to love herself.

— Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

movies at local cinemas FROM D8 FERRARI

R, 130 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon, United Westerly.

Napoleon Bonaparte. Leonard Bernstein. Willy Wonka. Aquaman — there are a ton of Guy Movie Heroes out there as 2023 ends. And yet up zooms another — in “Ferrari.” Director Michael Mann has put his stylish spotlight on yet one more stoic, brilliant and broken uber-masculine dudes, Enzo Ferrari. The movie is set during a turbulent few months in 1957 when the Italian automaker’s private and professional lives threatened to careen out of control. It’s a solid vehicle but it will leave you, well, unmoved. “Ferrari” has excellent work by Adam Driver as Ferrari, aged up two decades with grey at his temple, sunglasses clamped to his head at all times and a frosty demeanor. When we meet him, Ferrari is at a crossroads. He needs to ramp up production and sell hundreds of cars a year or risk bankrupting the company that he and his wife, Laura, have built from the ashes of world war. Enzo and Laura are still recovering from losing a son to muscular dystrophy but she doesn’t know that Mr. Ferrari has another family — a girlfriend (Shailene Woodley, great but wrong here) who has given birth to a secret son. Laura is played by Penélope Cruz, whose grief is profound, her eyes heavy and her gait plodding, possibly overacting. Laura knows her husband is a cad but the rule is he must be home before the maid arrives with the morning coffee. It’s a signal that the surfaces of things matter. The private and public lives of Ferrari will ultimately come to a head with the results of the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia. If Ferrari has a good showing — and embarrasses competitor Maserati — he can fill orders and everything is buono. If not, disastro. Most of Mann’s toolkit is here — slick and moody camerawork, a poetic surrounding and heightened use of music, even the car porn of “Miami Vice.” But “Ferrari” — despite Mann’s leaning on Italian opera — fails to ignite.

— Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES

1/2

PG-13, 157 minutes. Lisbon.

Two hours and 37 minutes is pretty long for a “ballad,” but you can’t call it “The Hunger Games: The Three-Cycle Opera of Songbirds and Snakes” now, can you? Concision was never much in favor in the four “Hunger Games” films, which reached a seeming finale with 2015’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2.” The intervening years have done nothing to shrink the ambitions of this unapologetically gaudy dystopic series where the brutal deaths of kids are watched over by outrageously styled Capitol denizens with names like Effie Trinket. That clash of YA allegory and color palette is just as pronounced, if not more so, in “The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel set 64 years before the original books, adapted from Suzanne Collins’ 2020 book of the same name. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which opens in theaters Nov. 16, is an origin story of the Hunger Games, themselves, as well as numerous characters — primarily the devious President Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland in the first four films. Here, Snow is an impoverished but opportunistic 18-year-old student played by Tom Blyth.

— Jake Coyle, Associated Press

THE IRON CLAW

1/2

R, 130 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

Filmmaker Sean Durkin is interested in exploring the dynamics of dysfunctional families, particularly ones with imposing, controlling or otherwise distrustful father figures. In his 2011 directorial debut, “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” the family is a cult, with John Hawkes playing a Charles Manson-like figure. In the semi-autobiographical “The Nest” (2020), Jude Law portrays a pathologically lying cad whose compulsion for keeping up appearances almost destroys his family. The patriarch in Durkin’s latest film, “The Iron Claw,” is also obsessed with controlling and maintaining an image of his family, one of powerful masculinity. But this is a true story, the tale of the Von Erich clan, a wrestling dynasty who ruled the rings in the 1980s and ‘90s. It’s an almost unbelievably devastating fable of young men crushed under the expectations of their demanding father Fritz (Holt McCallany), who served as the coach, mentor, employer and the overseer of a Texas wrestling promotion that churned through his brood of boys. Durkin has wanted to make a film about the Von Erichs for as long as he has wanted to make films, since he was a kid obsessed with wrestling. He applies his signature sensibility to this epic melodrama, which has been condensed in some parts to manage the size and scope of this sprawling American tragedy, but is no less affecting. Zac Efron stars as Kevin Von Erich, a brilliant bit of casting, and this is Efron’s best screen performance yet. He conveys an inherent sweetness, a sense of guilelessness and innocence that serves his portrayal as the protective eldest brother, and provides a contrast to his bulkedup physique. His tender, good-humored nature also stands in opposition to Fritz’s tough expectations.

— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

MIGRATION

1/2

PG, 92 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon, Madison, United Westerly.

You can learn a lot about yourself — and those closest to you — on vacation. That’s the animus behind the blockbuster HBO series “The White Lotus,” and it’s also the major theme of the new family animated film “Migration.” An odd comparison, perhaps, but it all makes perfect sense when you consider both projects happen to be written by Mike White. He’s taken this notion about the transformative power of travel from his award-winning prestige TV series and transplanted it to a kid-friendly animated film about a family of ducks who finally decide to take an annual migration away from their cozy pond to see what they can see. Kumail Nanjiani voices Mack, the anxious and overprotective patriarch of the Mallard family, content to let his family stay put in the safety of their pond, far away from sharp heron beaks. He emphasizes his paranoid worldview with terrifying bedtime stories for his kids, Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), but when a family of seabirds traveling south to Jamaica for the winter alights in their pond for a layover, Dax develops a crush on Kim (Isabela Merced) and becomes fixated on taking a migration. Terrified of turning into his decrepit Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito), and wanting to impress his wife Pam (Elizabeth Banks), Mack decides to take off with his family for parts south, despite his inhibitions. What could go wrong? Oh, everything. But what could go right? So, so much more. “Migration” is swift and appealing, a high-flying jaunt that doesn’t need to break the mold on these kinds of family adventure movies.

— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

POOR THINGS

1/2

R, 141 minutes. Westbrook.

Emma Stone goes for bawdy, boundary-pushing broke in “Poor Things,” a funny, unsettling, ugly, fantastically constructed cabinet of cinematic wonders. Adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel by Tony McNamara (“The Great”) and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (who collaborated with McNamara and Stone on the antically anachronistic “The Favourite”), this time-traveling picaresque about a woman’s striding awkwardly — then fearlessly — into the modern age is that rarity among movies: a tale that begins as an off-putting exercise in fetish, only to blossom into something that’s not just shocking for its own sake, but genuinely revelatory and meaningful. Stone plays Bella, who for mysterious reasons seems to be a child trapped in a grown person’s body. In the opening sequences of “Poor Things,” filmed in chiaroscuro black-and-white, Bella is living with her surrogate father, Godwin Baxter, who has invented her, a la Frankenstein, as a case study in brain transplants. A doll-like automaton who can barely form words and plays piano with her feet, Bella is a blank slate reminiscent of Helen Keller; the dubious miracle worker here is Godwin, played by Willem Dafoe with a monomaniacal gleam in his eye and a crazy quilt of scars across his face. Bella calls Dafoe’s character “God,” a bit on the nose for someone who initially seems to be so creepily controlling that he might as well have “Toxic Man” tattooed on his stitched-up forehead. But nothing is as it seems in “Poor Things,” especially when it becomes clear that Bella won’t stay a wide-eyed naif for long. In fact, she’s learning at a canter-like pace, especially when it comes to her body’s most primal urges. It turns out that Bella enjoys physical pleasure, an impulse that sends her on a journey halfway across the world: Lisbon, an Oz-like garden of earthy delights she visits with an amoral popinjay named Duncan Wedderburn (played with hilarious bumptiousness by Mark Ruffalo); Alexandria, where Bella encounters poverty, injustice and perfidy for the first time; and Paris, where she finds sexual self-discovery and financial autonomy in a whorehouse run by an eccentric madam named Swiney (the fabulous Kathryn Hunter, last seen deploying her incantatory powers in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth”). This is Hollywood, after all, so “Poor Things” demands to have its kinky cake and feminist allegory, too. The film’s central contradiction is that the more outlandish the story becomes, the more grounded it is in women’s seemingly eternal struggles around power, selfhood and constricting social norms. As Bella careers into a new century, her journey morphs into a fable about the getting of wisdom — along with pleasure, empathy and joy.

— Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

TROLLS BAND TOGETHER

1/2

PG, 92 minutes. Lisbon.

“Trolls Band Together” is a glitter-encrusted variety pack of a movie. Packed with millennial boy-band humor, sibling love and snippets of pop songs, the third film in the Trolls franchise is an explosion of color tailored to a new generation of parents and their Gen Alpha kids. An advance screening was attended by what appeared to be many novice moviegoers. Some hadn’t seen either of the two earlier Trolls films, a fact they delighted in sharing with their young friends while demonstrating how to make theater seats recline. And therein lies one of the film’s biggest strengths: You don’t need to know the lore. What little background you do need to know is laid out in a flashback prologue, set before the action of the first film: BroZone, a group of five singing brothers, implodes due to the controlling behavior of the oldest, John Dory (voice of Eric André). The baby of the group, Branch (Justin Timberlake), is left to fend for himself. Fast-forward to the present day. Branch, now grown, has put his boy-band days behind him, hiding his siblings and his past from his effervescent girlfriend, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) — until John Dory shows up pleading for help: Their brother Floyd (Troye Sivan) has been kidnapped. Through magical means that are never fully questioned or explained, it seems that Velvet and Veneer (Amy Schumer and Andrew Rannells), a talentless brother-and-sister singing duo, have managed to literally bottle Floyd up in a diamond spray container, spritzing his musical gifts on themselves to advance their careers. (Please don’t ask this to make sense.) The only way to shatter the diamond and save their brother is for BroZone to reunite and hit the perfect, harmonious note, as a family.

— Olivia McCormack, Washington Post

WONKA

PG, 116 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon, Madison, United Westerly.

“Wonka,” the new musical origin story of everyone’s favorite mischievous chocolatier, is a lot like the creative confections our protagonist conjures — we don’t need chocolate, but how can we resist such a tantalizing treat? It’s the same quandary with this movie: we never needed a musical origin story of Willy Wonka, but how can we resist this whimsical and wonderful tale crafted by “Paddington” and “Paddington 2” auteur Paul King and starring Timothée Chalamet? Don’t even try to resist, just enjoy the indulgence. Working with “Paddington 2” writer Simon Farnaby, King puts his own stamp on the lore of Willy Wonka, much in the same way that Tim Burton applied his sensibility to his own “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 2005, with Johnny Depp in the Wonka role. That performance was a departure from the representation of Willy Wonka with which we are most familiar — Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” directed by Mel Stuart, adapted from the beloved Roald Dahl novel. And Chalamet delivers his own version of Wonka here as well. Chalamet’s Wonka is innocent and deeply earnest. He is mischievous, like Depp and Wilder’s depictions, but while Depp’s Wonka was quirky and fey, and Wilder’s was sly and somewhat sarcastic, Chalamet’s Wonka doesn’t have an ounce of guile. His guard isn’t up yet when he lands in an unnamed European city, which is seemingly equal parts London, Paris and Geneva, or maybe even Brussels. Willy Wonka arrives singing, an announcement that this is, in fact, a straight-faced movie musical. The songs are by Neil Hannon, though none quite reach the heights of “Pure Imagination,” the song sung by Wilder in the 1971 film, which we wait and wait for Chalamet to sing (don’t worry, he does). He dreams of making his fortune as a chocolatier in the Galeries Gourmet, delighting patrons with creative concoctions that have wild side effects. But a cartel of candymen have throttled the competition in the Galeries Gourmet, where they bribe law enforcement with treats to keep Wonka from operating, and control the flow of chocolate in the city. He’s also trapped in a disastrous contract at the local lodging house, run by a Mrs. Scrubbit (Olivia Colman), whose predatory terms and conditions on her loans result in her guests becoming indentured servants in the laundry, including Wonka, and an adorable poppet named Noodle (Calah Lane).

— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service