What’s up: This week in movies

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This article was published 12/01/2017 (3545 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RECOMMENDED

TAMPOPO 
Cinematheque. 14A. 114 minutes.

Juzo Itami’s 1985 “ramen western” returns to Canadian screens in a new 4K restoration. The primary plot is about a truck driver’s efforts to help a widow reinvent her failing noodle shop, but the story encompasses a series of delicious if unrelated subplots to spice things up. One of the great food films, its dizzy deliciousness predates our addiction to the Food Network, celebrity chefs and exquisite plating. Ends Saturday, Jan. 14. ★★★★ (Reviewed by Alison Gillmor)

 

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STARTING JAN. 12

THE HANDMAIDEN
Cinematheque. 14A. 144 minutes.

Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) directs this erotic thriller set in Japanese-occupied Korea, where conman Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) hires pickpocket Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri) to become the maid of the mysterious Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-he), whom Fujiwara plans to marry and to commit to an asylum in a plot to steal her inheritance.

 

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STARTING JAN. 13

THE BYE BYE MAN
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Towne. 14A. 96 minutes.

Three college students move into an old house off campus and come face to face with the titlular supernatural entity, who preys upon them once they discover his name. The friends must try to save each other, all the while keeping the Bye Bye Man’s existence a secret to save others from the same deadly fate.

 

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LIVE BY NIGHT
Grant Park, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 128 minutes.

Ben Affleck directed this crime thriller in homage to the Warner Brothers gangster movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Affleck also stars as Joe Coughlin, a Boston mobster with a conscience whose efforts to earn a pile of illicit bucks takes him to Florida.

 

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MONSTER TRUCKS
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 104 minutes.

Car-crazy high school senior Tripp (Lucas Till), in the course of trying to build a monster truck, discovers a friendly subterranean monster who forms a symbiotic relationship with Tripp’s vehicle. 

 

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PATRIOT’S DAY
McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A. 133 minutes.

Mark Wahlberg stars as a Boston cop who witnesses the worst and best of human nature while on duty during the 2013 Boston Marathon, an act of terrorism that sends a shockwave through the city as police and FBI launch a manhunt to find the perpetrators. Directed by Peter Berg. 

 

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SILENCE
Grant Park. 14A. 161 minutes.

In the 17th century, two Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their missing mentor (Liam Neeson). Directed by Martin Scorsese.

 

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NOW PLAYING

ASSASSIN’S CREED
Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 116 minutes.

A death-row inmate (Michael Fassbender) is saved by a shadowy organization because they need him to unlock the memories of his 15th-century ancestor, Aguilar, to find the location of an apple that contains the genetic code to free will… because Marion Cotillard wants to end violence… or something. Yes, Assassin’s Creed is attempting to give a serious narrative origin story to the popular video game, ostensibly setting up interest in possible future films. But it’s hard to even feign interest in this one, let alone what might come next. Director Justin Kurzel’s film embodies the worst tendencies of modern blockbusters to feel not like a full movie, but a tease for what’s to come — a television pilot on the big screen.

★1/2 (Reviewed by Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press) 

 

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
Polo Park. PG. 133 minutes.

This prequel to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is set in the year 1926 when the zoologically minded wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is obliged to capture a case full of the titular creatures after they escape into New York City. David Yates, who directed four of the eight Potter films, employs the same language of visual effects and narrative devices to cue viewers that we’re in the Potter wizarding world. Still, Yates doesn’t have an easy time establishing a connection, partially because of Redmayne, who plays Newt as a socially inept misfit — a creature geek, if you will — with such pronounced eccentricity, it’s a bit of a task to relate to him. To employ an appropriate sports metaphor, this first film of five planned movies doesn’t exactly capture the Golden Snitch. But it puts some numbers on the Quidditch scoreboard, with the promise of better things to come.

★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

FENCES
Grant Park, McGillivray. PG. 139 minutes.

Denzel Washington gives a powerful, leonine performance and takes on directing duties as well for a film that was adapted by playwright August Wilson before he died in 2005. As a piece of cinema, Fences doesn’t swing for the go-for-broke limits suggested by the title. Stagy, speech-y and limited mostly to the scruffy backyard of a working-class house in 1950s Pittsburgh, it often feels confined. But the constricted atmosphere is precisely what is called for in a rich character study of a man bursting with pent-up resentment, thwarted potential and masculine pride. As his wife, Viola Davis is magnificent, rooted in stillness but bursting with passion and life.

★★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Ann Hornaday, Washington Post)

 

HIDDEN FIGURES
Grant Park, Polo 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 with 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)

 

LA LA LAND
Grant Park, McGillivray, Polo Park. 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)

 

LION
Grant Park, McGillivray. 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.

★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
Grant Park. 14A. 137 minutes.

This film by Kenneth Lonergan stars Casey Affleck as a Boston janitor obliged to return to his hometown when he unexpectedly finds himself given custody of the teen son of his recently deceased older brother. Lonergan’s third film as a writer-director, Manchester by the Sea is a difficult, delicate, almost unbearably affecting drama about men not talking about stuff. Lonergan’s approach to his characters is sensitive and sincere but never sentimental. These are suffering, inarticulate people who don’t suddenly find words for their pain or ways to overcome it just because some screenwriter wants them to.

★★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Alison Gillmor)

 

MOANA
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. G. 107 minutes.

This animated film centres on Moana Waialiki, a high-spirited 16-year-old who seeks the help of an almighty demigod (Dwayne Johnson) to help save her tribe from annihilation. This is a classic Disney pic to the core, bursting with stunning visuals, adventure, good-hearted humour and some truly catchy songs.

★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press)

 

A MONSTER CALLS
Grant Park, Towne. PG. 109 minutes.

Twelve-year-old Connor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall), already suffering because of his mother’s (Felicity Jones) worsening illness, and constant bullying by classmates, finds an unlikely ally in a tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) that appears to him. Based on the 2011 Carnegie Medal-winning children’s fantasy novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, this is a rare film that considers children’s feelings as real and multifaceted as anyone else’s, deserving a place in the canon of artistic explorations of grief.

★★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Sandy Cohen, The Associated Press)

 

PASSENGERS
Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG. 116 minutes.

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are two of a few thousand people in suspended animation on a spiralling starship hurtling through space on autopilot, headed towards a distant colonized planet when they are woken from hibernation 90 years too soon. There’s room in the galaxy for less thoughtful forays into deep space, especially ones that pair such engaging actors. But what has ultimately self-destructed in Passengers is its central metaphor. It’s about how the act of falling in love dooms companions to a single fate, sentencing them, for better or worse, to a lifetime together. It’s a clever enough conceit, doomed by a bungled meet-cute.

★★1/2 (Jake Coyle, The Associated Press)

 

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG. 133 minutes.

For the geeks, this film by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) answers the question posed between the events of Star Wars: Episode III (including the destruction of the Jedi Order) and the beginning of Episode IV: how did the Rebel Alliance get their hands on the plans for the Death Star? The answer involves a young rebel (Felicity Jones) with a personal connection to the Death Star’s architect. By the time it all plays out, Rogue One stands as a serviceable entry in the Star Wars franchise, but it adds unexpected notes of maturity in taking on some of the less fantasy-based aspects of war.

★★★1/2 (Reviewed by Randall King)

 

SING
Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. G. 108 minutes.

In this animated feature set in a candy-coloured world populated by animals, koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) tries to save his crumbling theatre by staging a singing contest. A menagerie of contestants turns out, including Rosita the housewife pig (Reese Witherspoon), Mike the surly mouse (Seth MacFarlane) and Ash the punky porcupine (Scarlett Johansson). The film combines “Let’s put on a show” enthusiasm with an over-the-hill American Idol concept, but the result veers between manic and dull. The singing is on-key, but the animation is flat and the plot is tone-deaf.

★★ (Reviewed by Jill Wilson)

 

UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS
Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A. 92 minutes.

In the fifth instalment of the vampires-versus-werewolves franchise, Kate Beckinsale returns as Selene, whose own vampire blood is being sought by a new Lycan leader in a bid to make the lupine marauders invincible. (Not reviewed.)

 

WHY HIM?
Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A. 111 minutes.

Bryan Cranston risks typecasting as a middle-class Everyman who loves his family. His daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) is his jewel, so he is shocked when she announces she will not be returning home for Christmas. Instead, she suggests the family fly out to meet Laird (James Franco), the tech mogul she’s dating.

Despite flashes of brilliance, Why Him? is perfunctory and boorish; although family and acceptance are themes of the film, it’s not for all ages, with a steady stream of obscenities and gross-out gags that make the humour in Bad Santa 2 seem tame by comparison.

★ (Reviewed by Alan Zilberman, Washington Post)