Now Showing
Some reviews originate at newspapers that do not award star ratings; some movies are not screened in advance for critics. Ratings range from zero to four stars.
OPENING THIS WEEK
“Blue is the Warmest Color” * * * *
Reviewed on page 10C
“The Great Beauty” * * * ½
Reviewed on page 9C
“The Motel Life” *
Reviewed on page 10C
“British Arrow Awards”
Not reviewed
“Oldboy”
* ½
Reviewed on page 1C
“Black Nativity” * * *
Reviewed on page 10C
“Philomena” * * * ½
Reviewed on page 10C
“Frozen” * * ½
Reviewed on page 10C
“Homefront”
* ½
Reviewed on page 10C
continuing
Selected mini-reviews of films in theaters, listed alphabetically:
“Best Man Holiday” Comedy. * * * ½ R. “The Best Man Holiday” is a welcome sequel to the 1999 sleeper hit, “The Best Man,” about a circle of black friends who gathered then for a wedding, now to spend Christmas together. It’s heartfelt and often downright hilarious, and shows off just how canny Malcolm D. Lee’s casting was all those years ago. But when Mia (Monica Calhoun) and her star running back husband Lance (Morris Chestnut) invite everybody to their mansion for the holidays, cracks show in everyone’s facade.
(Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel) 122 minutes
“Black Nativity” Drama. * * * PG. Forget plans silent night, this is a make-a-joyful-noise territory as director Kasi Lemmon (“Talk to Me”) and her star-filled cast update poet Langston Hughes nativity musical. Jennifer Hudson stars as single mom Naima, who sends teen son Langston to spend the holidays with her estranged parents. Forest Whitaker plays Rev. Cornell Cobbs. Angela Bassett is wife Aretha. Tyrese Gibson plays a hustler named Loot that meets Langston in the slammer. Don’t ask. Will this ambitious re-imagining become a holiday must? Time will tell.
(Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 95 minutes
“The Book Thief” Drama. * * * PG-13. It’s 1938 and the wrong time to be young in Germany. A little girl is adopted into a poor family, and the movie traces her trials and adjustments, balancing a personal story with the world going on outside. The resulting film has some wrong notes and touches of preciousness, but mostly it’s a moving and effective presentation of life under Nazism, as seen from an unusual angle.
(Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle) 131 minutes
“Captain Phillips” Drama. * * * ½ PG-13. Director Paul Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray have taken Capt. Richard Phillips’ 2010 memoir, “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS and Dangerous Days at Sea,” co-written with Stephan Talty, broadening and deepening its cultural lessons. Tom Hanks’ Everyman qualities serve his character especially well.
(Kennedy) 134 minutes
“Dallas Buyers Club” Drama. * * * ½ R. In 1985 Texas electrician and sometime rodeo cowboy Ron Woodroof was diagnosed with AIDS and given 30 days to live. “Dallas Buyers Club” is the story of what he did with the extra 2,457 days he fought tooth and nail for. Played with raw, rattling fury by Matthew McConaughey, Woodroof is a tarnished protagonist of the first order. McConaughey’s visceral work is complemented by Jared Leto’s return to the big screen as Ron’s transgender business partner, Rayon. It’s Ron and Rayon’s two-step of machismo and vulnerability and the stars’ shattering commitment to that dance that makes this story, set during the height of the U.S. AIDS crisis, true, rending, at times triumphant. At the Esquire. (Kennedy) 117 minutes
“Delivery Man” Comedy. * * ½ PG-13. Vince Vaughn is an irresponsible oaf who discovers that his sperm-donations-for-money years resulted in 533 kids he never knew he had. As he learns this news — that “his” kids are reaching out to break the anonymity of his donations, just as his “you’re-too-immature-for me” girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) has new for him. (Moore) 105 minutes
“Ender’s Game” Action. * * PG-13. This sci-fi film, based on Orson Scott Card’s novel, is a glossy, humorless march through a future where kids are our best warriors, able to multitask combat duties and reason out strategies for battle success in an instant.
(Moore) 116 minutes
“Free Birds” Animated comedy. * PG.
This is a forgettably mediocre family film that skews darker than necessary. (Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle) 90 minutes
“Frozen” Animation. * * ½ PG. There’s wit and whimsy in this 53rd Disney cartoon, a distant cousin of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale “The Snow Queen.” Broadway star Idina Menzel voices Elsa, the girl with the gift of ice about her, cursed with an X-Men-like ability to freeze things. It’s great for entertaining until it all goes wrong.
(Moore) 102 minutes
“Gravity” Space drama. * * * ½ PG-13. Nerve-wracking, sentimental and thrilling, director Alfonso Cuarón and co-writer and son Jonas Cuarón’s stellar achievement honors terra firma even as it reaches for the stars with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. In 2-D, 3-D and IMAX 3-D at area theaters. (Kennedy) 97 minutes
“Homefront” Action. * ½ R. Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay for “Homefront,” the story of a former DEA agent who quits his job and moves to a small town under a new identity. Jason Statham plays Phil, the retired narc who has set up home in a remote Louisiana town with his 10-year-old daughter. The boy’s angry drug-addict mom (Kate Bosworth), indignant and wanting payback, sets off a series of events that brings Phil to the attention of the local meth lord Gator (James Franco).
(Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald) 100 minutes
“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” Dystopian sequel. * * * ½ PG-13. Michael Corleone would relate: In the well-paced, opt engrossing second installment of “The Hunger Games” franchise, based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are pulled back into the death-match fray by Panem prez Snow and latest Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman).The 75th edition of the titular competition requires past winners to vie. So while denizens of the districts are beginning a revolt with Katniss as their beacon, the heroes of District 12 must seek new allies in the Capitol’s cruel and televised contest. If her Oscar didn’t cement it, Jennifer Lawrence continues to prove what a big-screen phenom she can be.
(Kennedy) 146 minutes
“Kill Your Darlings” Drama. * * * ½ R. Daniel Radcliffe plays 19-year-old Allen Ginsberg who is still finding his footing while attending Columbia University. He is establishing friendships with the writers who would become known as the Beat Generation while dealing with his mentally ill mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Dane DeHaan stars as Lucien Carr, his schoolmate and dashing ne’er-do-well and fellow aspiring writer who quickly becomes Ginsberg’s crush and tour guide to the literarily and sexually transgressive world of 1940s Manhattan.
At the Mayan. (Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post) 100 minutes
“Last Vegas” Comedy. * * ½ PG-13. You’ll want to PARTY with these seniors. Especially since they’re played by Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, Morgan Freeman and Michael Douglas.
(Moore) 100 minutes
“Nebraska” Dramedy. * * * ½ PG-13. Bruce Dern and director Alexander Payne give us a character in Woody Grant who’s hardened by booze, hard to like and — if his bad-dad tendencies don’t cut too close to your bone — pretty durn amusing. We meet the codger as he’s headed, by foot, from Billings, Mont., to Lincoln, Neb. There, he plans to collect winnings he learned about in a Mega Sweepstakes Marketing letter.What begins as a road-trip dramedy becomes a homecoming tale when Woody and younger son David (a lovely Will Forte) stop in the town Woody grew up in. June Squibb swings between shrewish and just plain shrewd as Woody’s wife.
At the Chez. (Kennedy) 115 minutes
“Oldboy” Pulp thriller. * ½ R. Drunken lout, accused murderer and absent father Joe Doucett finds himself held captive in a hotel-like cell for 20 years. When he’s released — as mysteriously as he was imprisoned — he has two aims: to find out who tormented him and to learn why. Make that three goals: to also exact revenge. One of the things that makes director Spike Lee such a vital cultural figure is that he has never been a style-over-substance kind of guy. Until “Oldboy. This pulpy fable written by Mark Protosevich started out a Japanese graphic novel (manga) before director Park Chan-wook made it the second installment in his vengeance trilogy. Lee’s talent for getting a harrowing turn from a lead actor is what distinguishes this otherwise inconsequential, at times preposterous outing. (Kennedy) 104 minutes
“Philomena” Dramedy. * * * ½ PG-13. Director Stephen Frears tackles a story based on the 2009 investigative book “The Lost Son of Philomena Lee,” by Martin Sixsmith. Judi Dench portrays Lee (still living today), an Irish teen who became pregnant during a fairground tryst. Rejected at home, she was sent to a convent where she endured a painful birth — and told the pain was penance for her sin — then forced to work in the laundry with other “fallen women” for years, allowed only one hour a day with her son. Worse yet, the convent sold babies to wealthy Americans, and Philomena’s son, Anthony, was carried off one day as a toddler. The movie begins on Anthony’s 50th birthday, with Philomena still desperate to find out what happened to him.
(Joceyln Noveck, The Associated Press) 98 minutes
“Thor” Action. * * PG-13. As Marvel’s latest 3-D behemoth, this film isn’t so much a sequel as the latest plug-and-play into the comic book company’s blockbuster algorithm. Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman are in the lead roles. (Jake Coyle, The Associated Press) 111 minutes
“12 Years a Slave” Drama. * * * * R. Director Steve McQueen’s much-talked-about “12 Years a Slave” is more than a beautifully shot art piece. It’s history made violently real and feels uncomfortably real. “12 Years” starts with a different figure: a black man born free in North America who has no first-hand knowledge of slavery. An ardent violinist, he is lured to Washington, D.C., by two men with the promise of a big payday for his musical skills. That’s when his dream of a life turns into a nightmare. Starring Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o and Chiwetel Ejiofor. (Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram) 133 minutes
