Nowshowing ARTHUR THE KING

Movies at local cinemas

1/2

PG-13, 107 minutes. Westbrook, Lisbon.

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

CABRINI PG-13, 145 minutes. Westbrook.

“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. 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

THE FIRST OMEN

R, 120 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

I hate to call “The First Omen” unexpectedly well-crafted and a little bit surprising, even. But for an essentially unnecessary prequel to “The Omen,” the 1976 hit about one satanically minded child, two unfortunate parents and three sixes, its virtues point to an auspicious feature debut from director and co-writer Arkasha Stevenson, a former Los Angeles Times photojournalist with an eye for sinister beauty. That word “unexpected” doesn’t speak well of my occasional pre-judginess. I try not to pre-judge any movie, except an Eli Roth movie, and look where that got me: “Thanksgiving” turned out to be worthwhile! In a more considered vein, so has “The First Omen,” full of splurchy callbacks to various hangings, impalings and characters from the Richard Donner hit but with a visual confidence and personality of its own. Rome doesn’t hurt, although in “The First Omen” it certainly doesn’t help young Margaret (Nell Tiger Free of the M. Night Shyamalan Showtime series “Servant”). An American with a troubled childhood, she’s a novitiate soon to take the veil thanks to her American sponsor, the high-ranking cardinal played by Bill Nighy. Much of the narrative, written by Stevenson, Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, unfolds in the confines of the orphanage to which Margaret has been assigned. The fearsome and very obviously secretive Sister Silva runs the place, and with that role taken by the great, gravel-voiced Sonia Braga,

and with the disgraced Irish priest (introduced in the first “Omen”) played by Ralph Ineson, that’s a helluva pair of basso profundo voices, nicely suited to unholy menace. The story’s 1971 setting introduces a host of societal upheavals that have hurt church attendance worldwide. Without giving the game away, “The First Omen” imagines what a powerful subset of Catholic leadership might resort to in order to get lapsed believers back into the pews and praying for their lives. Haunted by visions of demons, Margaret keeps an eye on the orphanage’s designated problem child, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), a similarly plagued loner. Is she the devil’s child?

— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE PG-13, 115 minutes. Through today only at Mystic. Still playing at Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

It doesn’t feel good to beat up on a movie like “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” which is a film with the right intentions: to entertain families looking for spectacle that will please both kids and their Gen X/millennial parents. It’s at least slightly better than its ghoulish predecessor, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” because at least there aren’t any holograms of deceased actors in this one, which is a relief. Still, there’s very little opportunity for critical examination of this sequel to the “lega-sequel” of the “Ghostbusters” franchise, which already has one failed reboot on its record. What else could one possibly say about “Ghostbusters” in general, and this perfectly fine, but incredibly dull installment specifically? It does exactly what it needs to do for die-hard fans and families seeking a night out at the movies. As a cultural industrial product, it’s emblematic of Hollywood’s obsession with reboots, nostalgia and IP, but that subject has already been talked to death and doesn’t bear repeating. Those arguments aren’t worth making again, especially when “Frozen Empire” is such an uninspiring example. In its favor, it does try to do something that is both familiar and expansive. The script is by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, the son of original “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman, who passed in 2022 (the film is dedicated “For Ivan”). Though Jason Reitman helmed 2021’s “Afterlife,” Kenan (“Monster House,” “Poltergeist”) steps behind the camera here. It may be a new generation of Ghostbusters, but the family of the late Egon Spengler find themselves back in New York, in that firehouse headquarters, following “Afterlife’s” jaunt to Oklahoma. In fact, the whole crew finds themselves in New York, not just Callie (Carrie Coon), and her kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), but also Callie’s boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd), who has joined the phantom-fighting family. Even the kids’ pals Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) are also in New York, interning with the original Ghostbusters, Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson). Yep, the gang’s all here, every last surviving Ghostbuster, including Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), and Annie Potts too, plus a few new characters to boot. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE PG-13, 115 minutes. Through today only at Madision. Still playing at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of people on this Earth: Those who like their movies with a giant evil ape swinging a vertebrae like a lasso while riding a kaiju controlled by a crystal, and those who don’t. The former types will have much to cheer in “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” a ground-stomping, radiation-spewing monster-mash feast. Technically, we are not on this Earth. We’re inside it, in a subterranean jungle world that gives the movie’s filmmakers an exotic, untrampled realm in which they try to chart some new ground for a pair of well-traveled beasts. But aside from the film’s strong Jules Verne streak, “Godzilla x Kong” is no drastic pivot for its long-inthe-tooth monsters. For that, you were better off catching last year’s Toho-made “Godzilla Minus One,” which grippingly returned to Godzilla’s post-WWII origins and in the process won the 70-year-old lizard its first Oscar. Other, less respectable creatures might have used an Academy Award as a springboard for more dramatic roles. But not Godzilla. No costume dramas for him, unless you count the robotic fist that Kong gets outfitted with midway through the movie. No, we are back in the pure spectacle territory that has traditionally been Godzilla and King Kong’s stomping ground. It’s even a very small title tweak from the previous installment, “Godzilla vs. Kong,” to “Godzilla x Kong.” This one promises a team-up, with the frenemies joining forces to fight a mutual foe. If things keep up this way, we can look forward to “Godzilla xoxo Kong.” — Jake Coyle, Associated Press

IMMACULATE

R, 89 minutes. Through today only at Waterford. Still playing at Lisbon.

Blood-soaked and candlelit, Michael Mohan’s “Immaculate” disabuses the notion that any conception is ever without sin. Starring Sydney Sweeney (who also produced the film), this cheeky, freaky, lushly designed horror movie presents as a giallo nunsploitation riff, but the script, by Andrew Lobel, is much more “Rosemary’s Baby” than it is “The Devils.” Still, Mohan wants “Immaculate” to be an exploitation flick, and so it is an exploitation flick, which means he has adorned Lobel’s script in texture, atmosphere and viscera, taking the genre seriously while also applying an ironic wit. He skews toward modern horror filmmaking, but has the references and deep film knowledge to make “Immaculate” feel more like a long-lost video nasty dredged up out of an obscure archive. Sweeney stars as Sister Cecilia, a doe-eyed and docile devotee from Detroit who has traveled to Italy at the behest of a Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) to take her vows at a secluded convent where she will care for elderly nuns. Soon, shockingly, she’s exhibiting pregnancy symptoms, her womb thrumming with a whooshing heartbeat under a sonogram machine. Her spontaneous conception is seen as a miracle, the resurrection of God. She has no choice but to carry this pregnancy to term, surrounded by jealous novitiates, senile nuns, controlling male leadership and a secret sect of the sisterhood who wear crimson shrouds over their faces. It’s something of a wonder to watch Sweeney as she undertakes Sister Cecilia’s journey, transforming from a meek naif into something unexpected and wild, her pious discipline falling away with every indignity. As this swift, 89-minute film builds to an absolutely feral climax, we do believe her, perhaps most of all in the film’s final, jaw-dropping moments, as she embodies a pure animal honesty.

— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

KUNG FU PANDA 4

PG, 94 minutes. Through today only at Madison. Still playing at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. 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

MONKEY MAN

R, 113 minutes. Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

Dev Patel’s got something to say, but he’s going to let his fists do the talking. With his directorial debut, the wild action revenge flick “Monkey Man,” the Oscar-nominated actor makes a bold statement with this one-two punch of a film that asserts himself as both an action star and promising genre director. Having achieved his fame in more serious dramas like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Lion,” Patel’s passion project “Monkey Man” is a big swing, and a big swerve for the actor. Luckily, it connects, landing with a satisfyingly bone-crunching intensity. And if the movie is intended as Patel’s calling card, he leaves the whole damn deck on the table. “Monkey Man” is a love letter to East Asian martial arts movies, and to Indian folklore and culture. The monkey in question is both Hanuman, the Hindu god of wisdom, strength, courage, devotion and self-discipline, and it is also the face of the dingy rubber mask that the Kid (Patel) dons for his underground boxing matches, which are announced by a delightfully slimy Sharlto Copley. This is a revenge picture, and so the Kid, who sometimes goes by the alias “Bobby,” must get revenge, driven by his fiery blood-soaked memories, and the sound of his mother whispering Hanuman’s legend in his ear. He wheedles his way into the kitchen of “Kings,” an upscale restaurant, and then, alongside the in-house drug dealer, Alphonso (Pitobash), upstairs into the VIP club, where corrupt cops and powerful politicians party with a harem of international escorts. The Kid wants to get close to Chief Rana (Sikandar Kher), a cruel police officer, whose bloodied knuckles haunt his nightmares. But Rana is only part of the food chain of money and power in this city — there are far bigger predators to fight if he does manage to send murderous greetings from his dead mother.

— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

PERFECT DAYS 1/2

PG, 123 minutes. Starts Saturday at United Westerly.

A German-Japanese co-production, Wim Wenders’ Academy Award-nominated “Perfect Days” boasts an absolutely beatific performance from its lead actor Koji Yakusho (“Shall We Dance?”), winner of the best actor prize at Cannes. In the film, which is in Japanese with subtitles, Yakusho plays Hirayama, a Tokyo sanitation worker, whose daily routine is cleaning the toilets of public bathrooms in the city. Awakened from his sleep by the rustle of his neighbor’s broom, Hirayama rises from his narrow futon in his narrow duplex. He waters his potted saplings, puts on the blue (almost purple) “The Tokyo Toilet” uniform and rides to his jobs in his tiny van, listening to a tape of The Animals singing “House of the Rising Sun.” We watch Hirayama, who takes great pride in what would appear to be demeaning work, go through the motions of his job – cleaning toilets, urinals, sinks, floors and other spaces inside the facilities – with an almost religious devotion, precision and vigor. With his white towel scarf, the soft-spoken Hirayama is the samurai of the latrine, the Zen master of Tokyo sanitation. In his free time, Hirayama indulges passions for music and photography, He photographs the city’s trees. Although his life appears to be lonely and monotonous, Hirayama revels in it. He is the master of his soul. After his work, Hirayama goes to the public baths and ends his day with a drink at a commuter bar. Then, it all begins again, and, of course, complications set in. One is in regard to Hirayama’s young colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto), a less disciplined Tokyo Toilet worker involved in a relationship with a young woman named Aya (Aoi Yamada), who works in a bar. Another thing involves Hirayama’s niece Niko (Arisa Nakano), who runs away from his estranged sister Keiko’s home. “Perfect Days” is about the importance of beauty and art in the lives of even the most humble among us.

— James Verniere, Boston Herald

SOMEONE LIKE YOU

PG, 118 minutes. Through today only at Mystic, Waterford. Still playing at Westbrook, Lisbon.

After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister. A review wasn’t available.

WICKED LITTLE LETTERS 1/2 R, 100 minutes. Madison, United Westerly.

The “Wicked Little Letters” start arriving even before the dark comedy has begun. The movie is about the escalating battle between prim Englishwoman Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), who is given to remarking that suffering is a gift because it strengthens her, and new neighbor Rose (Jessie Buckley). Edith pretends to like Rose, in the same way she pretends to like suffering, but there are plenty of reasons to feud with her neighbor: She is Irish. She is a single mother who lives with a Black man. She is loud (some of that involves the man). She swears like a sailor would if he dropped an anchor on his foot. She drinks. And she isn’t especially tidy. Inspired by events that happened in an English village in the 1920s, “Wicked Little Letters” is an “Odd Couple” situation and the two leads are spectacular. The stakes get high quickly — someone (possibly Edith) reports Rose to child protection authorities, which leads to her being jailed. Meanwhile, the acts described in the profane letters Rose receives, and seems to relish reading aloud, get increasingly vile and physically impossible. A big part of the appeal of “Wicked” is its leads, who also shared billing (and Oscar nominations) in “The Lost Daughter” but did not share the screen, since they played the same woman at different stages of life. Both actors are adept at cluing us in that there’s more to their characters than what’s on the surface, which makes their many scenes together especially good. Buckley’s ferocity often hides her characters’ vulnerability, which Rose eventually reveals. And Colman’s half-concealed smiles let us know Edith, who still lives with her domineering parents, gets a bang out of the nasty language.

— Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune