At the outset, the true story of Nicky Winton feels like it might be something akin to Schindler’s List if Oskar Schindler had already been a saint at the outset—a narrative about atrocities without much of a character arc to pursue—but director James Hawes’ drama eventually carves out its own unique tale about the aftermath of a large-scale rescue effort. It opens in 1987 England, with Winton (Anthony Hopkins) going through old mementos and flashing back to 1938, where as…
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Arthur the King 2024
It’s hard not to feel like there’s a little bit of a bait-and-switch in the marketing of this odd drama, which suggests a “dude and his dog” story that takes forever to materialize. The fact-based narrative focuses on Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg), a veteran adventure racer who’s in semi-retirement circa 2018, never having won the world championships of his sport. He puts together a team (Simu Liu, Nathalie Emmanuel and Ali Suliman) for one last run at the championships in…
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Love Lies Bleeding 2024
Where writer/director Rose Glass tried to walk a line between horror and psychological thriller in her 2019 debut feature Saint Maud, here she fully embraces exploitation cinema with more than a touch of the surreal. In 1989 New Mexico, Lou (Kristen Stewart) is running a small-town gym where she meets new-girl-in-town Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an aspiring bodybuilder. The two quickly begin an affair, which is complicated by steroids, the FBI, Lou’s gun-running criminal dad (Ed Harris) and the abusive husband…
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Frida 2024
An artist-bio documentary really needs to accomplish two things—provide a vivid sense of its subject as a person, and celebrate the subject’s work—and director Carla Gutierrez finds a terrific approach to succeeding at both in her profile of Mexican-born artist Frida Kahlo. Gutierrez focuses almost entirely on Kahlo’s own words from journals and personal correspondence, with actor Fernanda Echevarría del Riviero giving voice to subjects like the bus accident that affected the rest of Kahlo’s life, her marriage to Diego…
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Knox Goes Away 2023
Michael Keaton has only one previous feature as a director under his belt—The Merry Gentleman 15 years ago—but he deftly provides a distinctive sensibility to a story that could have felt extremely familiar. Keaton also stars as John Knox, a veteran contract killer who has received a diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fast-moving degenerative brain disorder. As Knox prepares for his inevitable decline, he gets a visit from his long-estranged son Miles (James Marsden), who needs help after impulsively killing…
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Road House 1989
I was getting ready to take my senior-year college finals when this hit theaters, and subsequently I was getting into my "too serious to waste time on that kind of movie" years. So yeah, first-time viewing. And this movie is kind of awesome, while simultaneously being not very good. Which is not entirely the same as "so bad it's good." It just leans into so much weirdness, like the idea that there is somehow this nationwide network that turns bouncers…
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Imaginary 2024
It has become kind of a movie-critic punch line how many contemporary horror films are Actually About Trauma, but I’ll be honest: This one would have been in much better shape had it not swerved so violently out of that lane. It’s the story of Jessica Barnes (DeWanda Wise), a children’s-book author moving back into her childhood house with her husband Max (Tom Payne) and stepdaughters Taylor (Taegan Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). There Alice finds an old teddy bear…
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Cabrini 2024
Director Alejandro Monteverde’s previous film about a real person on a single-minded quest to save children—last year’s surprise hit Sound of Freedom—had to deal with some unpleasant revelations about its subject. At least that problem is unlikely to face this historical biopic about Francesca Cabrini (Cristiana Dell’Anna), which plods through the life of a literal saint, but with the same self-righteousness about its message as Sound of Freedom did. The story begins in 1880s Italy, as they physically frail but…
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Damsel 2024
Streaming services are creating an entire sub-genre built on solitary women confronting mortal peril—The Princess, Prey, No One Will Save You, etc.—so that idea alone isn’t going to be enough to carry a movie without some real creativity. This one casts Millie Bobby Brown as Elodie, daughter of a feudal lord (Ray Winstone) in a long-ago time, who is married off to the prince (Nick Robinson) of a distant kingdom. But only too late does she realize that her real…
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Kung Fu Panda 4 2024
It’s been 16 real-world years since Po the panda (Jack Black) first became the “Dragon Warrior,” and somehow he’s still bumbling and insecure, and no longer the most entertaining thing in the franchise’s entries. In the latest entry, Po is informed by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) that he soon must relinquish the role of Dragon Warrior to a successor, but Po is more interested in continuing his heroic exploits, including challenging a sorceress called The Chameleon (Viola Davis) with plans…
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Ricky Stanicky 2024
I’m 100 percent all-in on John Cena as a comic actor, even when the stuff surrounding him isn’t as inspired as he almost always is. That material here focuses on three friends-since-childhood—Dean (Zac Efron), TJ (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler)—who have spent years building the legend of Ricky Stanicky, a non-existent buddy who could always get them out of trouble or provide an excuse. But when the time comes to put up a real-life Ricky, the friends hire Rod…
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