Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

The Light Between Oceans From Derek Cianfrance, director of The Place Beyond the Pines, this is a tale of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who find a baby washed up in a boat and take it in as their own. Set Down Under, starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. PG-13

Little Men Two 13-year-olds become fast friends in a Brooklyn apartment building in writer-director Ira Sachs' much-praised follow-up to another New York story, Love Is Strange. With Jennifer Ehle, Greg Kinnear, Alfred Molina - and newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri in the leads. PG

Morgan Bio-engineering thriller with Kata Mara as a corporate risk officer who pays a visit to a top-secret lab where "the next step in our evolution," raised from an embryo and now wearing a hoodie and an ominous scowl, is wreaking havoc. Anya Taylor-Joy has the title role; Paul Giamatti, Toby Jones, and Jennifer Jason Leigh run for their lives. R

Complete Unknown

While a man contemplates a life-altering move with his wife, an old flame arrives to complicate matters.

Mia Madre A middle-age director facing a midlife crisis must cope with the impending death of her mother.

No Manches Freda This comedy centers on an ex-con who takes a job near where he stashed the loot from an earlier robbery. Spanish with subtitles.

Patient Zero After a global pandemic turns most of mankind into a violent new species, one man sets out to find a cure before it's too late.

Reviewed by staff critics Steven Rea (S.R.), Tirdad Derakhshani (T.D.), David Patrick Stearns (D.P.S.), Molly Eichel (M.E.), and Ellen Gray (E.G.) and contributing art critic Edith Newhall (E.N.). W.S. denotes a wire-service review.

Anthropoid Director Sean Ellis impressively brings to life the World War II assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the German architect of the Final Solution, by Czech resistance fighters. 2 hrs R (graphic violence, disturbing thematic material) - W.S.

Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle's debut, released two years before Godard's Breathless, anticipates the French New Wave and celebrates noir traditions at the same time. With Jeanne Moreau, dauntingly beautiful, and Maurice Ronet, tough and poised, as an adulterous couple plotting the murder of her spouse, his boss. A pristine restoration, in black and white. Killer. 1 hr. 32 No MPAA rating (violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Hell or High Water Jeff Bridges is a soon-to-retire Texas Ranger teamed with his Native American partner (Gil Birmingham) as they crisscross west Texas on the trail of two desperate bank-robbing brothers (Ben Foster, Chris Pine). A contemporary western that goes way beyond being simply satisfying genre fare. Written by Taylor Sheridan, directed by David Mackenzie, a soulful, jolting, "sharp-eyed affair. 1 hr. 42 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Dheepan

Jacques Audiard's 2015 Cannes Film Festival winner follows a pretend family - a man, woman, and child, refugees of the Sri Lankan civil war - as they try to make a new life in a grim, graffitied housing complex on the outskirts of Paris. It's tough, sobering stuff, with a heartbreaking performance by Antonythasan Jesuthasan, himself a veteran of the Sri Lankan conflict. 1 hr. 50

R

(violence, profanity, adult themes) -

S.R.

Don't Think Twice A love letter to the art of improv comedy from writer, director, and actor Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk with Me). Featuring a superb cast of comics - including Key & Peele's Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs (Netflix's Love), Inside Amy Schumer writer Tami Sagher, and Garfunkel and Oates' Kate Micucci - the showbiz satire is about an improv group torn apart when one of the members wins a big TV role. 1 hr. 32 R (profanity and some drug use) - T.D.

Florence Foster Jenkins Meryl Streep is achingly good in director Stephen Frears' latest piece de resistance as Florence Foster Jenkins, a Wilkes Barre-born heiress and amateur vocalist who was dubbed the world's worst singer. Simon Helberg all but steals the show as her pianist, and Hugh Grant is lovely as her husband. Set in the 1940s, when Florence was in her mid-70s, the film follows her preparations to hold her first performance at Carnegie Hall. 1 hr. 50 PG-13 (brief suggestive material) - T.D.

Indignation This adaptation of a Philip Roth coming-of-age novel - a Jewish student from New Jersey accepts a scholarship to a college in small-town Ohio instead of going to war in Korea in 1951 - is beautifully acted, with Logan Lerman as the inexperienced boy and Sarah Gadon as the shiksa goddess. 1 hr. 0 R (sexual content, some language) - W.S.

Kubo and the Two Strings American animator Travis Knight's directorial debut is a gorgeous, memorable 3D animated saga made with a mix of computer animation and stop-motion photography. Set in feudal Japan, it's about a young boy who goes on a quest to avenge his father's death. The great voice cast includes Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey. 1 hr. 41 PG (thematic elements, scary images, action and peril) - T.D.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World The latest doc from the indefatigable German filmmaker and intellectual Werner Herzog is a clever, playful look at the origins of the internet and how profoundly it has changed human life. Though he can get a little apocalyptic at times with prophetic pronouncements about the dangers of technology, Herzog is at his best here. 1 hr. 38 PG-13 (brief profanity and some thematic elements) - T.D.

Morris from America Newcomer Marquees Christmas owns the title role as a 13-year-old African American taken to live in Germany by his recently widowed dad. Craig Robinson, from The Office and those Hot Tub Time Machine pics, delivers a wonderfully pitched performance as the father, struggling with his own grief, his own sense of alienation, and his parental responsibilities. Winner of two Sundance awards, Chad Hartigan's little indie is a big deal: a charming, true-hearted coming-of-age tale. 1 hr. 30 R (language, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

Pete's Dragon In one of the most soulful films of the summer, a woman investigates the dragon that an orphaned boy contends he lives with in the woods. 1 hr. 43 PG (action, peril, brief language) - W.S.

Sunset Song Set in rural Scotland in the years leading up to WWI, Terence Davies' adaptation of the beloved Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel is a lyrical masterwork about the tug-of-war between modernity and tradition as it manifests in a budding intellectual still enmeshed in the farmland where she was born. 2 hrs. 15 R (sexuality, nudity violence, profanity) - T.D.

Bad Moms **1/2

Mila Kunis stars as a stressed-out working mother who teams with two similarly overtaxed women (Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn) rebelling against a hissy PTA prez (Christina Applegate) in a mildly amusing, moderately raunchy, mostly schematic comedy from the writers of

The Hangover

franchise. 1 hr. 41

R

(profanity, sex, nudity, adult themes) -

S.R.

Ben Hur ** Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell are alternately bloodthirsty and cutely soulful as childhood BFFs in first-century Jerusalem who become bitter enemies only to reappraise their lives after each crosses paths with Jesus. Producer Mark Burnett's faith-based remake of Charlton Heston's monumental 1959 action film is a timid soap opera better suited for basic cable. 2 hrs. 4 PG-13 (sequences of violence and disturbing images) - T.D.

Café Society ** Woody Allen's 47th (!) feature is a burnished '30s period piece, shot by master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, but shot through with lazy one-liners and characters of only surface interest. Jesse Eisenberg stars as a kid from the Bronx who makes his way West to work for his big-deal Hollywood agent uncle (Steve Carell). Kristen Stewart is the agent's assistant. Familiar Allen themes - infatuation, infidelity, fate, morality, mortality - superficially ensue. 1 hr. 36 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Central Intelligence **1/2 Kevin Hart follows up the dreadful Ride Along 2 with yet another buddy-action comedy about a mismatched duo who vanquish evildoers. But this one is actually funny. Hart plays an accountant recruited by a rogue CIA officer. Played brilliantly by Dwayne Johnson, the spy was once an obese, geeky, lonely boy victimized by bullies. 1 hr. 54 PG-13 (crude and suggestive humor, some nudity, action violence and some profanity) - T.D.

Don't Breathe *** Horror director Fede Alvarez follows up his fresh take on Sam Rami's Evil Dead with a lean, mean, twisted home invasion thriller about three young thieves who break into the house of an aging blind man (Stephen Lang) who turns out to be vengeful, violent and bloodthirsty. One of the most suspenseful and frightening horror pics of the year, this ingenious thriller is filled with delightful twists. 1 hr. 28 R (terror, violence, disturbing content, and profanity including sexual references) - T.D.

Equity *** Cocreated by Haverford native Sarah Megan Thomas and fellow actor Alysia Reiner from material they gathered from dozens of interviews with women who work on Wall Street, this intelligent thriller tells the story of three women who must make tough decisions to succeed in their careers. Serious, smart, and honest, it's well-tuned social realism for the post-financial-crisis era. 1 hr. 40 R (profanity) - T.D.

Hands of Stone ** An uneven, disappointing attempt to tell the fascinating story of Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán, who won world titles in four weight classes but who was lambasted when he walked out in the middle of a fight with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980. The film moves in too many directions and never really coheres despite great performances by Edgar Ramírez (Carlos) as Durán, Robert De Niro as his trainer Ray Acel, and singer Rusher Raymond as Leonard. 1 hr. 45 R (profanity, some sexuality/nudity) - T.D.

Ice Age: Collision *1/2 A glorified Saturday-morning cartoon, the fifth entry in the animated 3D family adventure reunites its well-known stars, including Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, and Jennifer Lopez for a flat, tired story line that has our early mammalian heroes trying to prevent asteroids from destroying Earth. Rated PG (mild rude humor and some action/peril) - T.D.

Jason Bourne **1/2 "I remember everything," says the formerly amnesiac spy guy played by Matt Damon in his return - along with director Paul Greengrass - to the Bourne series. His CIA cohort Julia Stiles is back, too. Alicia Vikander signs on to show off her tradecraft, also. The movie spans the globe and has the great action scenes you'd expect, but now that Bourne knows who he is, the existential underpinnings of the great franchise concept are MIA. 2 hrs. 03 PG-13 (violence, action, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Lights Out *** Teresa Palmer and Maria Bello face our most elemental fear, darkness, in this effective, scary, gore-free creepfest from Swedish-born director David Sandberg. Bello plays an unbalanced mother of two who neglects her kids to pursue an obsessive friendship with an imaginary creature who has wild hair and claws. Then one day, the friend becomes real and people start dying. 1 hr. 21 PG-13 (terror throughout, violence including disturbing images, some thematic material and brief drug content) - T.D.

Nerve **1/2 Emma Roberts and Dave Franco have great chemistry in a romantic thriller about a game hosted on social media that dares teens to complete dangerous stunts around New York City. 1 hr. 36 PG-13 (dangerous and risky behavior, sexual content, profanity, drugs, drinking and nudity - all involving teens) - T.D.

Our Kind of Traitor **1/2 Ewan McGregor is likable as a Hitchcockian Everyman in this adaptation of the man who is sucked into a dangerous spy game when a Russian mobster (a hulking, over-the-top Stellan Skarsgård) hands him evidence against his bosses to pass on to British intelligence, and Damian Lewis strains credulity as their case officer. One of the few John le Carré adaptations that doesn't quite hold together. 1 hr. 47 R (violence, profanity throughout, some sexuality, nudity, brief drug use) - T.D.

Nine Lives (Not previewed) Kevin Spacey stars as an uptight businessman who finds himself trapped in the body of the family cat. With Jennifer Garner. 1 hr. 27 PG (thematic elements, language, some rude humor).

Sausage Party *** Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg follow up their vicious satire The Interview with an even more extreme, explicit, offensive, and obscenely funny comedy, an animated actioner about the products in a supermarket who rebel against their human consumers. The all-star voice cast includes Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Salma Hayek, Paul Rudd, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson. 1 hr. 39 R (strong crude sexual content, profanity, and drug use) - T.D.

The Secret Life of Pets *** Directed by the Despicable Me franchise's Chris Renaud, a pet lovers' loving salute to the domesticated animals we rely on to bring us comfort, companionship, and triple-digit veterinary bills. Louis C.K. gives voice to a needy Jack Russell, and Kevin Hart is a white bunny named Snowball (talk about color-blind casting!). An extremely animated animated romp. 1 hr. 30 PG (some scares for little kids) - S.R.

Southside With You *** Writer-director Richard Tanne's feature debut is a charming, modest indie drama about Barack Obama's first date in 1989 with his wife-to-be, Michelle Robinson. Decidedly apolitical, it follows the young Chicago lawyers as they fall for each other during a daylong excursion. Newcomer Parker Sawyers effortlessly embodies the role of Barack, but the film belongs to producer-actor Tika Sumpter, who soars as Michelle, a strong, deeply intelligent and capable woman with a hint of vulnerability. 1 hr. 24 PG-13 (some profanity, smoking, a violent image and a drug reference) - T.D.

Star Trek Beyond ** 1/2 Fast & Furious director Justin Lin takes over from rebooter J.J. Abrams, but although the action is turbocharged, the story line - Enterprise crew stranded on hostile planet ruled by reptilian warlord (Idris Elba) - feels less epic than episodic. With Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, and company. 2 hrs. PG-13 (intense sci-fi action, violence, adult themes) - S.R.

Suicide Squad **1/2 Superman is dead. To protect America, a Defense Department guru (Viola Davis) forces a group of condemned metahuman killers to join a special-forces team. Jared Leto and Margot Robbie steal the show as the Joker and his lover. A schizoid tale that's absurdly dark one minute, ridiculously funny the next, the movie also features Will Smith, Common, and Joel Kinnaman. 2 hrs. 03 PG-13 (sequences of violence and action throughout, disturbing behavior, suggestive content, and profanity) - T.D.

A Tale of Love and Darkness **1/2 Natalie Portman makes her directing debut, adapting Amoz Oz's autobiographical novel about a family in Jerusalem during the tumult and tragedies of the birth of Israel. Wheeling with flashbacks, dreams, allegorical reenactments, slow-motion shots and painterly tableaus, Portman's ambitious film strives for a mood of elegiac grace. The striving shows. 1 hr. 38 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) - S.R.

War Dogs **1/2 Jonah Hill and Miles Teller are a couple of clowns from Miami who figure out how to sell guns and ammo to the U.S. military in Todd (The Hangover) Phillips' gonzo take on a true story. Stop the presses: war makes people rich. Stop the movie: these people, who cares? 1 hr. 54 R (violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes) S.R.