Movies: In theatres this week

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This article was published 09/03/2017 (3496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RECOMMENDED

LOGAN
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A. 137 minutes.

This X-Men entry, set in a future in which the world’s mutants have largely died off, centres on the bleak life of Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan (Hugh Jackman), living with a dementia-addled Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and trying to lay low until a gifted young girl (Dafne Keen, delightfully badass) with Wolverine-like powers falls under his reluctant care. Because this is reportedly Jackman’s farewell to the role, and because the filmmakers have followed the R-rated precedent of last year’s Deadpool, the film makes the most of its licence to crank up the mayhem. Wolverine isn’t merely inflicting flesh wounds, but at the same time, accommodates something no one expected: a richly elegiac superhero movie.

★★★★ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

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NEW IN TOWN

TONI ERDMANN
Cinematheque. 14A. 162 minutes.

See review.

 

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STARTING FRIDAY

HELLO DESTROYER
Cinematheque. Subject to classification. 110 minutes.

A junior hockey player (Jared Abramson) finds himself in the position of a pariah after a hockey fight has a tragic outcome and he finds himself on the outside with both former teammates and family.

 

KONG: SKULL ISLAND
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 119 minutes.

A team of explorers (including Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman and Samuel L. Jackson) explore an uncharted island in the South Pacific that is home to the titular giant ape and a host of other man-eating behemoths.

 

 

A UNITED KINGDOM
Grant Park. PG. 110 minutes.

Prince Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) of Botswana causes an international crisis at his home and in England when he falls in love with a white Londoner (Rosamund Pike) and vows to marry her against the wishes of his own family and the British powerbrokers seeking a foothold in his country.

 

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NOW PLAYING

BALLERINA
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G. 90 minutes.

This French-Canadian animated musical adventure centres on a poor orphan girl (voiced by Elle Fanning) who dreams of becoming a ballerina and gets a chance to audition for the celebrated school of the Paris Opera Ballet. The movie’s ballet, translated from actual dancers at the Paris Opera, is quite beautiful. Unfortunately, Ballerina is too clunky and uncoordinated to be a classic, settling for cute when it could have been charming.

★★★ (Reviewed by Jill Wilson

 

BEFORE I FALL
Polo Park, Towne. PG. 100 minutes.

This variation of Groundhog Day follows Sam (Zoey Deutsch) a young woman apparently living a charmed life, especially when she awakens after what should have been a fatal car crash to discover she’ll have another chance to live the day, again and again, until she gets it right. Boasting themes that are both cerebral and philosophical, this young-adult thriller goes far beyond surface level, reminding us how growth, change and breaking with norms can bring us to our truest selves.

★★★½ (Reviewed by Katie Walsh, Tribune News Services)

 

BITTER HARVEST
McGillivray. 14A. 103 minutes.

Set in 1930s Ukraine, this historic drama examines the fiendish workings of the Holodomor, Stalin’s death-by-starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians, as one young artist (Max Irons) battles to save his lover from the purge. A serious historic tragedy is given schmaltzy, soap opera treatment. This is a history lesson that deserves a much better vehicle.

★★ (Reviewed by Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press)

 

A DOG’S PURPOSE
Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 100 minutes.

Adapted from W. Bruce Cameron’s bestselling novel, this film by Lasse Hallström follows a dog named Bailey through various incarnations, interacting with humans and all the while questioning his purpose in the universe. Hallström, who has directed a couple of dog-themed movies before this one, is a seasoned hand at tear-jerking melodrama (Dear John, Safe Haven) but less assured in the realm of comedy, which is one reason why the film’s frequent moments of canine slapstick tend to fall flat. The movie requires an even ratio of laughter to tears, but it weighs heavier on the melancholy side. But the film’s good intentions count. Without unduly anthropomorphizing its multiple canine heroes, the film succeeds in giving the audience a way to deeply consider canine consciousness.

★★★½ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

FIFTY SHADES DARKER
McGillivray, Polo Park. 18A. 117 minutes.

In this sequel to the sado-masochist romp Fifty Shades of Grey, kinky billionaire Christian Grey (Irish dreamboat Jamie Dornan) attempts to woo the scared Anastasia (a pretty adorable Dakota Johnson) back into his life. The more playful, flirtier Darker is actually lighter than its predecessor. Christian seems like a human being, not a handsome chilly automaton, and there’s some semblance of a real relationship between him and Ana, which naturally translates to a sexier vibe. Their relationship, however, still suffers from all kinds of ick that prevents the film from being enjoyed as escapist entertainment. It makes Christian a deviant and Ana a sexual saint who, merely through the force of her pure love, transforms him into something “better” than he was. If you need to make such fundamental changes to your Prince Charming, maybe he’s not meant to be your happy ending.

★½ (Reviewed by Jill Wilson)

 

FIST FIGHT
Kildonan Place, Polo Park. 14A. 91 minutes.

A well-meaning high school teacher (Charlie Day) is forced into an after-school fight when he gets a hot-headed fellow teacher (Ice Cube) fired. Day is usually hilarious as a comedic instigator, but he’s less effective as a straight man in this boilerplate raunch-fest.

★★ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

GET OUT
Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 104 minutes.

Key and Peele comedian Jordan Peele segues into an auteur with this horror film in which a young black student (Daniel Kaluuya) accompanies his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) to her affluent parents’ upstate community, inadvertently entering a nightmare as the interracial relationship spawns a sinister reaction. Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, writer-director Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results.

★★★½ (Reviewed by Jake Coyle, The Associated Press)

 

THE GREAT WALL
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 103 minutes.

Matt Damon plays a European mercenary embroiled in the defence of the Great Wall of China against a horde of monstrous creatures in this fantasy-adventure from director Yimou Zhang. Is it good? Well, no. But at times it possesses the kind of nutty magnificence you might expect from Chinese master Zhang lending his practiced, elegant hand to what is essentially a hyper-inflated B-grade monster-movie.

★★½ (Reviewed by Alison Gillmor)

 

HIDDEN FIGURES
Grant Park. PG. 127 minutes.

This drama is based on the true story of the female African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and her two colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), whose groundbreaking calculations helped NASA catch up in America’s space race against the Soviet Union, allowing John Glenn (Glen Powell) to become the first American astronaut to successfully make a complete orbit of the Earth. Unlike many sob-inducing holiday releases, this gets off to a spirited start and rarely lets up, sharing with viewers a little-known chapter of history as inspiring as it is intriguing.

★★★★ (Reviewed by Ann Hornaday, Washington Post)

 

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
Grant Park. PG. 94 minutes.

Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions an unfinished book by James Baldwin turning the lives of three assassinated friends — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers — into a searing picture of black history. Considering Baldwin’s ideas were too densely worded for the book of quotations or the bronze plaque, it’s an illuminating look into the author’s world view, and Peck’s cross-cutting of footage of old civil rights battles with comparatively fresh film documents of racial brutality — from Birmingham to Ferguson — speaks volumes as to how little has changed.

★★★½ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2
Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A. 122 minutes.

In this sequel to the stylish killfest John Wick, Keanu Reeves’ reluctant assassin must return to his career when a shadowy figure from his past calls in a marker, meaning Wick must carry out an especially difficult execution. The movie has the same lovingly designed mayhem as the first film, but scriptwriter Derek Kolstad offers up enjoyable variations of the assassin movie tropes. The action itself, usually shot in long takes, is impressive enough to take the irony out of the term “fight choreography.”

★★★½ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

LA LA LAND
McGillivray. PG. 128 minutes.

This wistful musical directed by Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a jazz pianist and an actress who fall in love while struggling to find success in Los Angeles. It’s a slight, often affecting story that mixes the confusion of contemporary life with nostalgic yearning for a time when the whole boy-meets-girl thing was less complicated. Beautifully shot and elegantly choreographed, the film’s last, perfect moments are a seamless swell of pure emotion.

★★★★ (Reviewed by Alison Gillmor)

 

THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 104 minutes.

In this animated comedy, Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) must get past his lone wolf habits if he hopes to defeat the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), forcing him to lean on sidekick Robin (Michael Cera) and butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes). In Lego movie terms, this sequel doesn’t have the bite of the first, which somehow managed to be a toy-based neo-Marxist critique of consumer capitalism. As a Batman movie, however, this smart, self-aware, fast and very funny outing is just made to puncture the self-serious, overinflated mythos of the post-Nolan Bat.

★★★★ (Reviewed by Alison Gillmor)

 

LION
Grant Park. PG. 119 minutes.

A vulnerable boy becomes hopelessly lost when he is trapped on a train that transports him to the other side of India. When he is adopted by an Australian family, he grows up haunted by his previous life and becomes obsessed with tracking his journey via Google Earth. Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) gives a star-quality performance in this drama that embraces the good technology can do.

★★★½ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

THE SALESMAN
Grant Park. PG. 120 minutes.

This Oscar-winning drama from Iranian director/writer Asghar Farhadi is as tense as a horror movie, despite its small domestic story. Rana and Emad, married actors, have moved into a new apartment, which is still filled with the previous tenant’s belongings. After an inexplicable and never fully spelled-out act of violence against Rana (which may have been intended for the previous tenant, whom neighbours hint was a prostitute), their relationship begins to show cracks until Emad righteously, but unwisely, chooses to take matters into his own hands. Farhadi’s meditation on the emptiness and futility of vengeance is sometimes hard to watch, but it rings with authenticity, as bad decision piles on bad decision. This is not John Wick-style hail-of-bullets revenge, of course. It’s sad and wrong-headed and destined to fail, but no less devastating for that.

★★★★½ (Reviewed by Jill Wilson)

 

THE SHACK
Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 132 minutes.

A father (Sam Worthington) grieving the abduction and assumed murder of his youngest daughter receives a letter inviting him to the titular scene of the crime to meet God, who presumably has some explaining to do.

Not reviewed.

 

SPLIT
Polo Park. 14A. 117 minutes.

James McAvoy stars in director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest as a kidnapper who slowly reveals his extreme personality disorder to the three teen girls he has locked up in his windowless lair. You might describe this as Shyamalan’s ponderous homage to Psycho, except his psychologically fractured antagonist has not two, but 23 personalities. The plot would actually be a rich premise for a decent science-fiction movie, but unfortunately, Shyamalan is very much stuck in the mode of lurid horror, complete with three terrified heroines in various stages of undress, undercutting the movie’s thematic ambitions with Slumber Party Massacre trappings. But to give credit where it’s due, McAvoy sells it. The actor manages to invest each of his characters’ personalities with laudably complex shadings of mannerism.

★★ (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

TABLE 19
Grant Park, McGillivray. PG. 87 minutes.

Eloise (Anna Kendrick) is relieved of her maid-of-honour duties after being unceremoniously dumped by the best man via text, but decides to attend her oldest friend’s wedding anyway. She finds herself seated at the random table in the back of the ballroom with a disparate group of strangers, likewise cast off by the head table. The crucial problem with Table 19 is you never fall for the misfits, or fall for them falling for each other. They remain, even after a brisk 87 minutes, those annoying strangers you can’t wait to never see again.

★★ (Reviewed by Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press)