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 TODAY
“Adult Beginners” R. Not reviewed.
“After the Ball” Not rated. Not reviewed.
“Avengers: Age of Ultron” * * * ½ PG-13. Reviewed on 1C.
“Clouds of Sils Maria” * * * R. Reviewed on 6C.
“Dior & I” Not rated. Reviewed on this page.
Selected mini-reviews of films in theaters, listed alphabetically:
“The Age of Adeline” Aging drama. PG-13. Daisy Miller meets Dorian Gray — or perhaps “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” meets Nicholas Sparks — in this sensitively directed slab of romantic hokum that wrings an impressive amount of emotional conviction from a thoroughly ludicrous premise. A dab hand at invigorating conventional material with storytelling smarts and strong performances, director Lee Toland Krieger elicits a moving central turn from Blake Lively as a woman for whom eternal youth turns out to be a decidedly mixed blessing — one that plays out in ways both poignant and preposterous, sometimes simultaneously, over the course of her 100-plus years on Earth. Viewers seeking a pleasant alternative to the early-summer blockbuster barrage could do far worse than this genial high-concept romance. Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford and Ellen Burstyn also star. (Justin Chang, Variety) 112 minutes
“Danny Collins” Dramedy. * * * R. The beginning of the new Al Pacino flick has a familiarity that teases contempt. Oh no, please, not another aging rock-star saga, not another post-midlife-crisis tale. And while director-writer Dan Fogelman’s movie is in many ways just that, hang with Danny on his conscience-cleansing sojourn. At the Chez. (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 105 minutes
“Ex Machina” Sci-fi drama. * * * R. In writer-director Alex Garland’s absorbing sci-fi drama, a bright programmer at the world’s biggest search engine wins a contest and is helicoptered to company founder’s home. (Or is it compound?) There Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from the protean, unpredictable Nathan (Oscar Isaac) his real mission: to administer a Turing Test to Ava, the robot Caleb has engineered. Strong, stylistically different performances by Gleeson, Isaac and Alicia Vikander as well as engaged ideas about the ethics of and advances in artificial intelligence infuse Garland’s exploration of authentic human ambitions and anxieties. At the Mayan. (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 110 minutes
“Furious 7” Action. PG-13. “Furious 7” provides both a satisfying chapter in the movies’ pre-eminent gearhead soap opera and a tactful, touching memorial to the late Paul Walker. (Scott Foundas, Variety) 137 minutes
“Get Hard” Comedy. * ½ R. Goofball Will Ferrell and the appealing, ascendant Kevin Hart are sure to survive the idiocy of this triple R-rated comedy about a fund manager sentenced to hard time who seeks out a black tutor in prison survival before he heads to the pen. Are there laughs? Some. (Kennedy) 100 minutes
“Home” Children’s adventure. * * PG. In “Home,” the latest adventure from DreamWorks Animation, the misfit alien protagonist is called Oh (“The Big Bang Theory’s” Jim Parsons) simply because that’s the resigned reaction everyone has when he’s around. (Lindsay Bahr, The Associated Press) 112 minutes
“Insurgent” Dystopian sequel. * * ½ PG-13. While “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” is shorter than the original — which introduced us non-readers to Tris Prior, a Divergent in a five faction, post-cataclysmic world — it is not better. The essential thematic tensions remain. How does one understand oneself within society’s many hierarchies and then be true to that self? In 2-D, 3-D, IMAX 3-D. (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 115 minutes
“Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” Adventure. PG-13. Our desire that life should be more like it is in the movies beats at the heart of “Kumiko the Treasure Hunter,” a wonderfully strange and beguiling adventure story. With its Midwestern setting, its quixotic, fortune-seeking protagonist and the presence of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor as executive producers, “Kumiko” will inevitably draw some comparisons to Payne’s own recent “Nebraska,” though in actuality the Zellners have been trying to make this movie for the better part of a decade, inspired by the urban legend surrounding Takako Konishi, a young Japanese woman found dead in a snowy field in northern Minnesota in 2001. Rinko Kikuchi is cast in the title role. At the Sie FilmCenter. (Scott Foundas, Variety) 104 minutes
“Little Boy” Drama. PG-13. God helps those who help not only themselves, but also the less fortunate in their midst — or so goes the tidy moral logic of this cloying and callous WWII-era parable about how faith can move mountains, overcome prejudice, and even rob death of its sting. Writer-director Alejandro Monteverde brings a sledgehammer touch to the story of a small-town runt who hopes that his string of good deeds will bring his beloved father home from the front lines. Michael Rapaport, Emily Watson and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa are among the cast. (Justin Chang, Variety) 106 minutes
“The Longest Ride” Drama. PG-13. As spring perennials go, a new Nicholas Sparks movie has come to seem as inevitable as tax day. Though the character names and faces may change, the place (coastal North Carolina) remains the same, as do the trials facing the star-crossed lovers who traverse its shores. “The Longest Ride” parallels the fates of two couples from different eras navigating the gauntlet of war, class relations, cataclysmic accidents and life-altering medical conditions. Scott Eastwood, Lolita Davidovich, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda and Oona Chaplin star. (Foundas) 129 minutes
“Monkey Kingdom” Docu-fiction. G. The eighth entry in Disney’s eco-minded Disneynature series may well be its cheekiest, funniest and most purely entertaining. Tracking a tale of forbidden love and literal social climbing amidst a macaque clan in Sri Lanka, this Mark Linfield-directed docu-fiction contains typically top-shelf nature photography, an uncannily relatable cast of primate characters, and an anthropomorphic narrative. (Andrew Barker, Variety) 82 minutes
“True Story” Crime drama. * * * ½ R. Whether you’re a James Franco-phile or a hater, this drama based in on former New York Times journalist Michael Finkel’s memoir “Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa” is worth seeing. Franco portrays Christian Longo, an Oregon man accused of killing his wife and their three children in 2001. Jonah Hill proves once again his dramatic mettle as Finkel, who is alerted to the fact that when Longo was apprehended in Mexico he was using his name. An interesting choice on Longo’s part, not least because Finkel had been fired from the Times for cooking facts in a piece on slavery in Mali. His reputation had taken a grievous, self-inflicted wound. Brit theater ace Rupert Goold directs this engrossing story of ambition, psychological transference and malevolence with gravity and a telling respect for subtlety and for the moral hazards of true crime tales. Felicity Jones portrays Finkel’s wife, Jill, who, less enamored with Longo, delivers one of the most satisfying moments in “True Story.” (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 100 minutes
“Unfriended” Thriller. R. A victim of cyberbullying gets her revenge on the teens responsible for her suicide in “Unfriended” (originally titled “Cybernatural”), a horror movie distinguished by the device that everything takes place on one character’s computer screen. Simultaneously clever and exasperating, the film puts a novel spin on the genre Roger Ebert dubbed “the Dead Teenager Movie,” wherein frustratingly dim adolescents defy even the most obvious survival instincts, getting themselves eliminated in a series of creatively gory ways. Here, rather than shouting, “Don’t go up those stairs!” at the screen, audiences may find themselves screaming, “Don’t click that button!” as the characters make ill-informed decisions on their computers that lead to death by handgun, knife and blender. Our vision is limited to whatever a character named Blaire (Shelley Hennig) sees on her Mac laptop. (Peter Debruge, Variety) 82 minutes
“The Water Diviner” Drama. R. An often capriciously mixed cocktail of war film and cross-cultural family melodrama, “The Water Diviner” marks an ambitious if emotionally manipulative directing debut for Russell Crowe. Playing the titular Australian farmer who journeys to Turkey four years after the WWI battles at Gallipoli in search of his three missing soldier sons, he has crafted the film to play to his strengths of stoicism, determination and aw-shucks mateship at the expense of deeper truths about war and tolerance. Jack Patterson, later Ryan Corr, Ben Norris/Ben O’Toole and Aidan Smith/James Fraser star as his sons and Jacqueline McKenzie plays his grief-stricken wife. (Eddie Cockrell, Variety) 111 minutes
“What We Do In the Shadows” Comedic horror. * * * R. You’ve got to love a thing to skewer it as well Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement do in their delightfully silly vampire mockumentary. The film’s writers, directors and stars lovingly impale bloodsucker mythology with the sharpened stick of comedy. At the Chez. (Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post) 86 minutes
“While We’re Young” Comedy. * * * ½ R. Writer-director Noah Baumbach works wonders with actor Ben Stiller’s more prickly qualities in this charmer about generational envy and affection. Sure, New York documentary filmmaker Josh Srebnick (Stiller) can be difficult but his self-doubt is touchingly believable. Even more poignant and just as amusing is Naomi Watt’s portrayal of Cornelia, Josh’s wife. When the pair meet and fall for 20-somethings Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), their routine takes a holiday, for better and complicated. Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia) play Josh and Cornelia’s best friend couple and brand spanking new parents Fletcher and Marina, whom they basically begin to cheat on with the hipster young ‘uns. (Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post) 94 minutes
“Woman in Gold” Art drama. PG-13. Director Simon Curtis’ “good taste” account of how a determined Jewish exile (played by Helen Mirren) sought the restitution of a Gustav Klimt painting seized by the Nazis. This compelling true story forbids any room for reasonable audiences to question Maria Altmann’s case, striking back at the anti-Semitism of the time with a oxious caricature of modern Austrians as law-bending, art-thieving monsters. At the Esquire. (Debruge) 111 minutes
