Some reviews originate at newspapers that do not award star ratings; some movies are not screened inadvance for critics. Ratings range from zero to four stars.
OPENING THIS WEEK
“Marvel’s The Avengers” * * * ½
Reviewed on Page 1C
“Hit So Hard” * * *
Reviewed on Page 6C
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” * * * ½
Reviewed on Page 7C
“Re-Generation”
Not reviewed
“Elles”
Reviewed at
CONTINUING
Here are selected mini-reviews of films in theaters, listed alphabetically.
“Bully”
Documentary. * * * ½ PG-13. Lee Hirsch’s empathetic, provocative film features five families living with the fallout of bullying. What’s missing here makes the title a bit of bait-and-switch: The so-called bully remains too much a mystery. Still, “Bully” is smart and compassionate must see about the pain of wounded kids and the frustration felt by their parents. (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 98 minutes
“Chimpanzee”
Nature documentary. * * * G.
Having qualms about Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield’s stunningly observant documentary about an orphaned chimp named Oscar might sound a bit like hating puppies. But this film’s astonishing views are too often undercut with a coddling script full of unnecessary anthropomorphic tics meant to rope kids in when the images do the job so well. “The Jungle Book,” anybody? (Kennedy) 78 minutes
“Damsels in Distress”
Comedy. * * * PG-13. It’s delightful and a little bewildering to find a 2012 comedy that evokes a world that exists only in the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. Whit Stillman’s “Damsels in Distress” creates Seven Oaks College, a school so innocent and naive that only it could believe in itself. Its heroine, Violet Wister, is one of the daffiest characters in recent movies, who believes one of the noble callings of women is to date men who are their inferiors and thus lift them up. (Ebert) 99 minutes
“The Deep Blue Sea”
Period drama. * * * ½ R. Terence Davies’ film is set in London “around 1950” and is based on a play by Terence Rattigan, a playwright born 100 years ago this year. It tells the story of Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz), an attractive but inward young woman, who is married to Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale), a judge much her senior. The story all takes place on a single day some 10 months after she left her husband for a young lover (Tom Hiddleston). At the Chez Artiste. (Roger Ebert, Universal Uclick) 98 minutes
“The Five-Year Engagement”
Comedy. * * R. This film is so scattered and over-long, it really feels like it lasts five years, and even the inherent likability of stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt can’t overcome the film’s pervasive sense of strain. It becomes so tortured, it almost gets to the point where you hope these two will break up for good, just because it’s the pragmatic thing to do and because it would finally wrap things up. (Christy Lemire, The Associated Press) 124 minutes
“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”
Animated romp. * * PG. There’s an inviolable law of animated films — the more “names” you have in the voice cast, the weaker you know your film is. Aardman, those meticulous Brits who build clay models and painstakingly animate them into Wallace & Gromit cartoons and the hit “Chicken Run,” tip their hand that way with “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.” A pirate picture that’s entirely too late to the party to have much in the line of fresh pirate gags, it is stuffed with name voice actors, from Hugh Grant as The Pirate Captain to Salma Hayek, Brendan Gleeson, Imelda Stanton, Anton Yelchin and Jeremy Piven. Grant’s Pirate Captain (that’s his name) is something of a bust, even though his crew adores him. He figures he’s due for the “Pirate of the Year” award. But he’s always come up short in the booty and pillaging department. (Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune News Service) 128 minutes
“The Raven”
Mystery. * * R. Edgar Allen Poe, one of America’s greatest literary geniuses, comes to life as a dashing, conflicted writer caught in a series of maddening events shortly before his mysterious death. John Cusack’s accessible, Hollywood-friendly Poe is a charming, penniless rogue and boozer, and Cusack brings an inherent likability to the role. But a lurching plot and director James McTeigue’s (“V for Vendetta”) indecisive tone prevent Cusack from ever rising above a slight portrayal. Think Guy Ritchie’s recent “Sherlock Holmes” movies but less fun, and with a few “Saw”-grade torture-porn scenes. (John Wenzel, The Denver Post) 111 minutes
“Safe”
Violent action. * ½ R. This is the worst Jason Statham movie since the last Jason Statham movie, carrying on the bargain-budget action star’s tradition of building a body of work out of, well, dead bodies. Writer-director Boaz Yakin proves the ideal enabler for Statham’s brand of mindless carnage. Together, they turn Manhattan into little more than a shooting gallery, stacking up corpses in service of a supposed story about one man’s path to redemption. But really, all they care about is stacking up corpses, ripped apart by as many bullets as possible, with a few snapped necks and other more intimate moments of savagery to break up the tedium of the gunplay. (David Germain, The Associated Press) 95 minutes
