Movies: New and Noteworthy

Ben-Hur

Jack Huston stars in the title role of this remake of the 1959 epic about a falsely accused Jewish nobleman who takes vengeance on the onetime Roman friend who betrayed him.

Hell or High Water Brothers resort to extreme tactics to save their family farm. Ben Foster, Chris Pine, and Jeff Bridges star.

Kubo and the Two Strings A Japanese boy's quiet life is turned upside down by a spirit from the past in this animated feature.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World Werner Herzog leads a journey that reveal ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works.

A Tale of Love and Darkness Based on the best-seller by Amos Oz, the story of his youth, set against the backdrop of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel.

War Dogs Miles Teller and Jonah Hill star in this true story of two Americans who receive a massive weapons contract from the military with the aim of arming our allies in Afghanistan.

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.

Gleason This documentary began as a video journal for Steve Gleason, a former NFL player who, at 34, was diagnosed with ALS and given a life expectancy of two to five years. Weeks later, Gleason found out his wife was expecting their first child. 1 hr. 50 R (profanity) - W.S.

Our Little Sister After the death of their father, three adult sisters invite the 14-year-old half-sister they've never known to live with them. Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's latest is a lovely, gentle family portrait. Succumb to its slow rhythms. This is the kind of movie that will leave you feeling restored, maybe a little misty-eyed, too. 2 hrs. 06 PG (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.

Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil Documentary on the making of an international art show is remarkably candid and rapid-paced, with charismatic art-world personalities and fascinating, insider detail on the process of authenticating masterpieces. 1 hr. 26 No MPAA rating (Images in paintings show nude figures, a man being flayed, various grotesqueries) - E.N.

Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You The All in the Family producer, now in his 90s, looks back on a game-changing career in television and the difficult childhood behind it. 1 hr. 32 No MPAA rating - E.G.

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.

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.

Equity *** Cocreated by Haverford native Sarah Megan Thomas and fellow actor Alysia Reiner from material they gathered from dozens of interviews with woman 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.

Finding Dory *** The cheery, royal-blue, yellow-finned sidekick of 2003's Pixar smash Finding Nemo gets a movie of her own, in which Dory - who suffers from short-term memory loss - finds herself separated from her family, trying desperately to remember where they might be. Aquatic adventures ensue, along with life lessons and swell moral messages, but there's a slightly disturbing, dreamlike thread running through the computer- animated feature, too. 1 hr. 37 PG (adult themes) - S.R.

Ghostbusters *** Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones star in the distaff reboot/remake of the 1984 paranormal smash comedy about a squad of proton-packed spectral exterminators. Under the leadership of director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Spy), the gender-flipped cast proves more than a gimmick. Girl power and ghoul power - it's a winning combination. PG-13 (scares, supernatural violence, adult themes) - S.R.

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 try to avert asteroids from destroying the 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, too. 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.

The Legend of Tarzan ** After spending time in London, Tarzan returns to the jungle. Alexander Skarsgård and Margot Robbie star. 1 hr. 49 PG-13 (violence, sexual situations, profanity) - M.E.

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.

Miss Sharon Jones! **1/2 Documentary on the exuberant Grammy-nominated soul singer. 1 hr. 33 No MPAA rating (strong language, adult situations) - W.S.

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, while Damian Lewis strains credulity as their case officer. One of the very 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 Kevin Spacey and 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.

Star Trek Beyond ** 1/2 Fast & Furious director Justin Lin takes over from rebooter J.J. Abrams, but while 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.