ARTHUR THE KING nowshowing
movies at local cinemas
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PG-13, 107 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon, Madison.
Move over Messi — there’s a new canine thespian in town. Ukai, the Australian shepherd/border collie/bouvier mix who stars opposite Mark Wahlberg in the new film “Arthur the King,” undertakes a performance that is more physically rigorous, if not dramatically suspenseful, than the one delivered by the French border collie who appeared in the Oscar-winning film “Anatomy of a Fall.” This inspirational film is based on a true story, originally a quirky human interest sports news item about an Ecuadorian stray dog who bonded with a team of Swedish adventure racers in the middle of a grueling six-day trek, following them to the finish line, and eventually back to Sweden with racer Mikael Lindnord. The story became a media sensation. Lindnord’s memoir “Arthur: The Dog who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home” serves as the basis for “Arthur the King,” adapted by screenwriter Michael Brandt and directed by Simon Cellan Jones, who also directed star Mark Wahlberg in “The Family Plan.” This story of perseverance, suffering and salvation though physical challenges is right in Wahlberg’s current wheelhouse. This is fairly standard, and often treacly heartwarming dog fare, calling to mind other adventurous pups in TV and film but edged up with an adventure sports milieu and vibrant, handheld cinematography by Jacques Jouffret that gives the film a more adult, action-oriented look and feel. Suffering may be Wahlberg’s raison d’etre, but this is a lighter and more uplifting mode for the actor, who clearly enjoys the extreme physicality of the performance, even if the emotional tenor is well within his established star persona. And if you’re a dog person, it will be impossible to resist the tale of Arthur and his knights of extreme sports.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE
PG-13, 107 minutes. Through today only at Waterford, Lisbon. Still playing at Westbrook.
Bob Marley was born in 1945, the son of an 18-year-old mother and a much older white man who had nothing to do with his son. As a boy raised in poverty, he often slept on the cold ground. Five years after moving to Kingston’s Trench Town, he made his first record, at 17. Not 20 years later, he was dead. By then, Marley had become the face of not just reggae, Rastafarianism and Jamaica, but of revolution, resistance and peace. He left behind a body of work that has only grown more monumental with time. “Redemption Song.” “No Woman No Cry.” “War.” “Trench Town Rock.” “Get Up Stand Up.” “Lively Up Yourself.” “One Love People Get Ready.” The Beatles could argue they were bigger than Jesus but no one thought — like some did Marley — that they were actually the Second Coming. So, yeah, it’s a lot for a movie. “Bob Marley: One Love,” directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, is a noble but uninspired attempt to capture some of the essence of Marley. Its lived-in textures and attention to Marley’s political consciousness, just by themselves, are enough to make “One Love” something more substantial than many recent, glossier music biopics. But the power and complexity of Marley is still out of reach for “One Love,” which takes a typical biopic framework in plotting itself around the run-up to an important concert with flashbacks mixed in. When footage of the real Marley inevitably plays over the credits, it’s a painful comparison to the ruminative but inert movie that played before it.
— Jake Coyle, Associated Press
CABRINI
PG-13, 145 minutes. Through today only at Mystic. Still playing at Westbrook, Lisbon.
“Cabrini,” an illuminating if workmanlike portrait of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, tells the story of the woman behind the name that has graced hundreds of shrines, hospitals, parks and schools around the world. In this handsomely filmed chronicle of Cabrini’s rise — from a small parish in Lombardy, Italy, to late-19th-century New York City — a woman who at first glance was a modest, physically frail nun emerges as a fiercely determined figure who battled sexism, xenophobia and her own ailments to give radical meaning to the words “on Earth as it is in heaven.” As Pope Leo XIII tells her in one of their several respectful but spiky conversations, “I can’t tell where your faith ends and your ambition begins.” Pope Leo is played in a wonderfully warm performance by the great Giancarlo Giannini, who gives “Cabrini” a jolt of life every time he appears on-screen. David Morse and John Lithgow also show up, as a recalcitrant archbishop and peevish New York mayor, respectively; they, along with various priests and bullying naysayers, exemplify the male power structure that Cabrini routinely confronted and shrewdly disarmed as she sought to treat New York’s impoverished immigrant population with generosity and respect.
— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
DUNE: PART TWO
PG-13, 166 minutes. Through today only at United Westerly. Still playing at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.
There’s a moment late in Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping sci-fi epic “Dune: Part Two,” when the camera lingers on a hand emerging out of desert sand, forming into a fist. It’s a small but apt visual metaphor for this sequel’s story, written by Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, which takes all of the foundational exposition carefully laid in “Dune: Part One,” and kicks the plot of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel into spice-powered motion. In “Dune: Part Two,” power, and violence, rise from the desert sand of the planet Arrakis, where young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) has found his true path among the desert people known as Fremen. This film is a spectacular feat of science-fiction filmmaking, marrying immersive world-building with engrossing storytelling. It thrums and vibrates, the giant booms of Hans Zimmer’s score rumbling underneath the breathtakingly monumental images crafted by cinematographer Greig Fraser. The visual effects and production and costume design are seamless; simultaneously organic and mechanical, both uncanny and utilitarian. The color, the sound, the sheer weight of it makes for a visual and sonic feast laden with lore.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
IMAGINARY
PG-13, 104 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. Still playing at Waterford, Lisbon.
A woman returns to her childhood home to discover that the imaginary friend she left behind is very real and unhappy that she abandoned him. “Imaginary” is directed by Jeff Wadlow and written by Wadlow, Greg Erb, and Jason Oremland. It is co-produced by Jason Blum through his Blumhouse Productions banner and Tower of Babble. It stars DeWanda Wise, Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Matthew Sato, Veronica Falcón, and Betty Buckley. A review wasn’t available.
KUNG FU PANDA 4
PG, 94 minutes. Through today only at Madision, United Westerly. Still playing at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon, Madison.
The “Kung Fu Panda” movies have always been a reliable name when it comes to animated franchises. A distinctive style, star-studded voice cast, and the winning Jack Black voicing Po, the roly-poly, dumpling-appreciating Dragon Warrior, is usually a recipe for success. Or at least it has been. “Kung Fu Panda 2” was even nominated for a best animated feature Oscar in 2012. It’s been eight years since we last saw our old pal Po, in 2016’s “Kung Fu Panda 3,” and this new installment, “Kung Fu Panda 4,” is co-directed by journeyman animation director Mike Mitchell and Stephanie Ma Stine, making her feature debut. Franchise writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger return, with Darren Lemke rounding out the writing team. The film coasts on the elements that have worked before: Black’s vocal charms and the franchise’s signature style, which is inspired by various Chinese arts from painting to music to film. It’s still a fun, beautiful animated world to experience, but the rushed and harried story, over-stuffed with plot and characters, gets short shrift thanks to the brisk 94 minute run time. The film also falls prey to a few well-trodden tropes, so what used to be fresh and singular now feels like every other animated sequel.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
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R, 104 minutes. Starts Friday at Waterford. Still playing at Westbrook, Lisbon.
The first time we glimpse Jackie (Katy O’Brian) on screen in “Love Lies Bleeding,” it is not particularly auspicious. But we haven’t yet seen Jackie through the eyes of Lou (Kristen Stewart), and that’s the only gaze that matters in this film. When Lou — the manager at a muscle-head gym — catches sight of Jackie prowling among the weight machines, skin gleaming, her powerfully muscular body reflected in the mirror, almost glowing, it’s like director Rose Glass is letting us in on a lusty little secret. Lou’s desire is so palpable you can smell it, and lucky for her, the feeling is mutual. It’s 1989 in an anonymous Southwestern town, and Jackie is only drifting through on her way to a bodybuilding compe
tition in Las Vegas. She’s seemingly dropped from the galaxies like one of the shooting stars that streaks across the vast night sky, and even in the desolate gym parking lot, their chemistry is supernova explosive. But the reality of life in this small, rough town has an insistent, inevitable darkness. There’s Lou’s battered sister Beth (Jena Malone), and her philandering, abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco). There’s the FBI agents who would really like to talk to Lou about her estranged father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who owns the gun range where Jackie has picked up a few waitressing shifts. There’s Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a ditzy, nagging townie, who pops up, keening for attention, at the worst times. There are too many connections and coincidences swirling around them, and as Lou and Jackie collide, sexually, there looms a bloodier collision on the horizon: sheer ominousness telegraphed in Lou’s red-drenched flashbacks. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
MADAME WEB
H1/2
PG-13, 117 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. There is a lot of pretty niche comic book mythology swirling around “Madame Web,” the inspiration for the newest of Sony’s “Spider-Man” spinoffs. This is a character who goes back to 1980 and whose powers of clairvoyance helped Peter Parker at some point. She’s elderly and blind and sits atop a web throne that keeps her alive. But to be honest, reading about her didn’t help give any more meaning or urgency to the Dakota Johnson movie that’s heading to theaters Wednesday. You’ve been warned. “Madame Web” is striving to be
a classic superhero setup movie, about how the future Madame Web — now just single gal paramedic Cassie Webb — comes to terms with her newfound power that allows her to see the future. Well, sometimes at least, when it involves a death or something extremely violent. It’s also about the origins of a few other Spider-Women who are now just a couple of teenage girls, played by 20-somethings Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin. — Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
OPPENHEIMER
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R, 180 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. Winner of 2024 Oscars for Best Picture (directotr Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy) and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), “Oppenheimer” tells the story of the “father of the atom bomb.”
ONE LIFE
PG, 114 minutes. Starts Friday at Madison. Still playing at Westbrook.
The cinematic image of children boarding trains in World War II is typically a traumatic one. But in “One Life,” directed by James Hawes, it is a wildly, blindly hopeful image, as children board trains in Prague, bound for England, escaping dire conditions in refugee camps and the encroaching Nazi occupation, seemingly just steps away. “One Life” is the story of Sir Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, a British stockbroker and humanitarian, who in 1939, helped to arrange the escape of 669 children from Czechoslovakia. Written by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, the film is based on a book by Winton’s daughter, Barbara Winton, “If It’s Not Impossible … The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton.” The film marks the feature directorial debut of Hawes, who directed the first season of the Apple TV+ spy series “Slow Horses.” “One Life” weaves together two periods in Winton’s life, 50 years apart. Sir Anthony Hopkins plays Winton in 1987, enjoying a life of peaceful retirement with his wife, Grete (Lena Olin), in Maidenhead. At the behest of Grete, while cleaning out his office, he uncovers his old scrapbook containing the records and remnants of his pre-war endeavors helping refugee children. His efforts have gone unrecognized in the years since, the children scattered to foster families across Britain, but he remains haunted by their faces, snapped in photographs that he pores over with a magnifying glass. Johnny Flynn plays Winton five decades earlier, a stern and quiet young man, the son of German Jewish immigrants who converted to Christianity and changed their last name in order to assimilate in England. Concerned with reports from occupied Sudentenland, he takes a leave from his banking job and meets a friend in Prague in order to assist with the refugee efforts. He immediately becomes taken with the cause of evacuating as many children as he can to England. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
POOR THINGS
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R, 141 minutes. Through today only at Mystic, Westbrook.
Emma Stone goes for bawdy, boundary-pushing broke in this funny, unsettling, ugly, fantastically constructed cabinet of cinematic wonders. This time-traveling picaresque about a woman’s striding awkwardly — then fearlessly — into the modern age is a tale that begins as an off-putting exercise in fetish, only to blossom into something revelatory and meaningful.
— Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post