Fire of Love
★★★★
This awe-inspiring documentary “has an impact few blockbusters can hope to match,” said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal. Maurice and Katia Krafft married in 1970 and spent the rest of their lives studying and filming erupting volcanoes, marching right up to smoking calderas and rivers of lava until a 1991 eruption took their lives. The “purity of their focus” was “as remarkable as the gorgeous, awful films they shot of nature at its angriest,” and despite the distractingly wobbly voice of its narrator, Fire of Love delivers thrills on multiple levels. “Picture Twister with volcano eruptions substituting for cyclones, except it’s a true story with a shattering final act.”The film at times plays like a romantic comedy, thanks to the “TV-friendly chemistry” between gregarious Maurice and timid Katia, said Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times. We see the play of their personalities when a young Maurice sails a rubber dinghy into a lake of sulfuric acid, incurring Katia’s wrath. With no talking heads interrupting the couple’s story, Miranda July’s lyrical narration “works beautifully” to steer a viewer’s moment-to-moment engagement. Director Sara Dosa also shows “a deft touch in tackling esoteric ideas,” said Brent Simon in The A.V. Club. This is a movie not just about nature, science, and one couple, after all, but also about a different way of living. “It’s the type of film that leaves the trajectory of your day inarguably changed— colors a little brighter, feelings a bit rawer, reflections a bit heavier.” (In theaters only)
Other new movies
Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
If reimagining Blazing Saddles as a samurai-themed animated kids movie sounds like a misguided idea, “that’s because it is one,” said Thomas Floyd in The Washington Post. Michael Cera voices Hank, a dog who’s appointed to defend a town of cats, and Hank is soon being trained by a washed-up feline samurai voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. “Contrived but cute,” the resulting comedy adventure “makes for a breezy diversion,” but its few biting barbs “get lost in a barrage of fart jokes.” (In theaters only) PG
The Deer King
This “visually stunning” anime adapted from a Japanese fantasy-novel series “has a profoundly pacifist streak,” said Richard Whittaker in The Austin Chronicle. In the aftermath of a war and the outbreak of a plague, a former soldier takes an orphan girl under his wing and survives with strangers’ support. A doctor, meanwhile, races to find a cure, even as warlords foment fear. As the film edges toward a moving conclusion, “there’s something heartening about its message that kindness may just save us all.” (In theaters only) R
Gone in the Night
Winona Ryder “has only gotten better with each decade she’s spent in the industry,” said Kate Erbland in IndieWire. “A consummate performer no matter the material,” the 50-year-old star carries this “overcooked, underbaked, and needlessly tricky” thriller about a woman whose younger boyfriend seems to have run off with a stranger. Despite the screenplay’s transparent attempts at cleverness, Ryder delivers “a real, lived-in, fully fleshed out performance.” (In theaters only) R
She Will
This hallucinatory movie produced by horror master Dario Argento “has its creepy moments, but it’s more thoughtprovoking than scary,” said Sheila O’Malley in RogerEbert.com. Alice Krige plays an aging film star who is recovering from a double mastectomy when she starts having vivid dreams of witch burnings. “The most interesting thing is that, when faced with the horrors of the past, she is strengthened; she is not at all afraid.” (In theaters or $7 on demand) Not rated