Openingnight
New movies this week
THE FALL GUY
★★★
PG-13, 126 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Madison. Starts Friday at United Westerly.
One of the worst movie sins is when a comedy fails to at least match the natural charisma of its stars. Not all actors are capable of being effortlessly witty without a tightly crafted script and some excellent direction and editing. But Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt seem, at least from afar, adept at that game. Just look at their charming press tour for “The Fall Guy.” Theirs is the kind of fun banter that can be a little worrisome — what if their riffing is better than the movie? It comes as a great relief, then, that “The Fall Guy” lives up to its promise. Here is a delightful blend of action, comedy and romance that will make the audience feel like a Hollywood insider for a few hours (although there are perhaps one too many jokes about Comic-Con and Hall H). Loosely based on the 1980s Lee Majors television series about a stuntman who made some extra cash on the side bounty hunting, Gosling takes up the mantle of said stunt guy, Colt Seavers. Colt is a workaday stunt performer and longtime go-to for a major movie star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Tom is the kind of deeply egotistical and self-conscious A-lister who tells everyone he does his own stunts and worries out loud about Colt’s jawline being distractingly softer than his. I think the word potato is thrown around as a descriptor. Taylor-Johnson has quite a bit of fun playing up all his eccentricities that you hope, and fear, are at least somewhat inspired by real horror stories of stars behaving badly. The film comes from director David Leitch, the Brad Pitt stuntman and stunt coordinator who helped bring “John Wick” to the world and directed “Atomic Blonde” and “Bullet Train.” He’s a guy who not only has the vision and know-how to bring the best in stunts to films and make them pop, but also has a vested interest in putting them in the spotlight.
TAROT
PG-13, 92 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Lisbon. Starts Friday at Westbrook.
Friends unwittingly unleash evil trapped within a cursed deck of tarot cards. A review wasn’t available.
DRAGONKEEPER
PG, 99 minutes. Starts Friday at Lisbon.
A young orphan ventures across ancient China to save the last surviving dragons. A review wasn’t available.
PRASANNA VADANAM
Not rated, 140 minutes. Starts Friday at Lisbon.
Suhas portrays a carefree individual grappling with the challenges of face blindness, a condition that thrusts him into the midst of a murder mystery. It’s directed and written by Arjun Y.K., and it starts Suhas, Rashi Singh, and Payal Radhakrishna. A review wasn’t available.