June 2, 2016
A guide to movies playing at theaters in the New York City area, as well as select festivals and film series. A complete list of new releases is at nytimes.com/intheaters[1].
Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases: nytimes.com/movies.
'Alice Through the Looking Glass' (PG, 1:48) The best, and maybe the only, way to appreciate "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is to surrender to its mad digital excess and be whirled around through time and space in a world of grotesque overabundance. This sequel to Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is so cluttered with an unwieldy mixture of Victoriana and digital gadgetry that every nook and cranny is crammed with stuff. There's more to gape at than the eye can take in. Otherwise the movie, with its stale inspirational clichés, is a dud. (Stephen Holden)
'The Angry Birds Movie' (PG, 1:37) A superficially amiable ball of fluff based on the spectacularly popular video game. Jason Sudeikis gives voice to an irritable red bird who's suspicious when his homeland is visited by some cheery green pigs. Slapstick, body humor and unsettling possible allegories ensue. (Glenn Kenny)
★ 'April and the Extraordinary World' (PG, 1:45) A tricky, eccentric, visually ravishing alternative-history animated sci-fi film from France. Marion Cotillard voices the title heroine, an intense young woman trying to find out who is abducting the great scientists of early-20th-century Europe. (Kenny)
'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' (PG-13, 2:31) They fight. You lose. (A. O. Scott)
★ 'A Bigger Splash' (R, 2:04) Tilda Swinton stars in Luca Guadagnino's seductive, reluctant thriller about a rock star, her lover, her former lover and a pretty young thing vacationing under the beautiful Italian sun. Bad things happen, because, you know, life is pain. In the meantime, do enjoy the magnificent digs, the designer threads and the frolicking nude stars. (Manohla Dargis)
'Captain America: Civil War' (PG-13, 2:27) More of a collegial misunderstanding, really, but this episode in the lavish workplace sitcom known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which the Captain (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) quarrel about United Nations policy, does have some amusing banter and a few entertaining superhero brawls. (Scott)
'Chevalier' (No rating, 1:39, in Greek) The latest film from the Greek writer and director Athina Rachel Tsangari is a sly satire of masculinity, in which a group of men on a boat turn everything into an elaborate competition. The potential for either violence or farce lurks just under the surface. (Scott)
★ 'Dheepan' (R, 1:49, in French) A former Tamil Tiger militant finds asylum in a French housing project in this film by Jacques Audiard ("Rust and Bone," "A Prophet"), which is both an exercise in topical realism and a tense, western-tinged action drama. (Scott)
'Dough' (No rating, 1:34) All sorts of bridges are built in this pat but pleasant film about an aging Jewish baker who takes on a young Muslim apprentice and sees business boom after marijuana finds its way into the dough. Racial, religious and generational stereotypes are overcome, mutual respect is earned, and traditions are preserved. Yeah, it's fiction. (Neil Genzlinger)
★ 'Everybody Wants Some!!' (R, 1:56) The last weekend before the start of classes at a Texas college in the fall of 1980. Weed is smoked; beer is drunk; skirts are chased. This rambling, nostalgic excursion, courtesy of Richard Linklater, is sweet and wholesome and surprisingly absorbing, given how little of consequence seems to happen. (Scott)
'Green Room' (R, 1:35) A punk band on a hand-to-mouth tour of the Northwest falls afoul of a gang of white supremacists in this nasty, witty siege movie, craftily directed by Jeremy Saulnier ("Blue Ruin"). Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and Imogen Poots are all good, but Sir Patrick Stewart steals the movie as a menacing skinhead graybeard. (Scott)
'Hello, My Name Is Doris' (R, 1:30) An irresistible, stealthily touching Sally Field plays an outwardly ridiculous woman in her 60s who falls in love with a much younger man (Max Greenfield). The director Michael Showalter oversells the goods, but resistance is futile. (Dargis)
'The Huntsman: Winter's War' (PG-13, 1:48) Maybe not the worst movie of the year, but an impressive anthology of all the ways a movie can be bad in an age of soulless franchise entertainment. With Chris Hemsworth in the title role, and a lot of other people we can look forward to seeing in other projects. (Scott)
'The Idol' (No rating, 1:35, in Arabic) Hany Abu-Assad's fictionalized feature expands on the underdog story of Mohammed Assaf, a Palestinian[2] pop singer from the Gaza Strip who gained fame by winning "Arab Idol" in 2013 after trekking to auditions in Egypt. Mr. Abu-Assad's simple tale becomes an idealistic appreciation of music as a way of bridging boundaries through a unifying appeal to beauty. (Nicolas Rapold)
'The Jungle Book' (PG, 1:46) Stuffed with computer-generated flora and fauna (a real boy plays Mowgli), Disney's latest take on the Rudyard Kipling tales is being touted as a live-action movie but there's scarcely anything alive in it. The whole thing is lightly diverting, and canned. (Dargis)
'Keanu' (R, 1:40) In the first movie to showcase Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele together, they play a couple of regular guys who infiltrate the underworld to rescue a kitten; unfortunately they forget to bring along the big laughs. (Dargis)
★ 'The Lobster' (R, 1:59) Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz star in Yorgos Lanthimos's mordant allegory of managed emotion and mandatory monogamy, set in a chilly, plausibly cruel imaginary world. (Scott)
★ 'Love & Friendship' (PG, 1:32) Whit Stillman takes a minor Jane Austen work and whips it up into a sharp, silly farce, starring Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan Vernon, a Regency schemer on the prowl for money and husbands, some of whom already have wives. (Scott)
'Ma Ma' (R, 1:51) Penélope Cruz is an Oscar-winning actress too infrequently seen in leading roles in the United States. So how disappointing that she must carry this soapy melodrama about a breast-cancer patient (Ms. Cruz) suffering nobly while admired by her ex-husband, a paternal new love interest, her dashing doctor and her fresh-faced son! Does her character aspire to anything beyond her dealings with these males? No. (Andy Webster)
★ 'Maggie's Plan' (R, 1:38) Rebecca Miller's new film is a sharp, genial comedy about Maggie, a young New Yorker (Greta Gerwig) who falls in love and starts a family with an older man (Ethan Hawke), after which things get complicated. Ms. Miller's ear for emotional foibles is acute, and the cast is in good form, in particular Julianne Moore as Maggie's rival, a Danish professor. (Scott)
'The Man Who Knew Infinity' (PG-13, 1:48) Dev Patel (the "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" movies) plays yet another earnest, well-meaning character in this portrait of the early-20th-century mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was mentored by the Cambridge professor G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons) and surmounted racism to become the first Indian to hold a fellowship at Trinity College. The film is tidy, handsome and, yes, earnest. (Webster)
★ 'The Meddler' (PG-13, 1:40) Susan Sarandon plays one half of an insistently winning, hopelessly irresistible mother-daughter duet (Rose Byrne plays the daughter) in Lorene Scafaria's enjoyable, touching comedy. Cecily Strong and J. K. Simmons co-star. (Dargis)
★ 'Miles Ahead' (R, 1:40) In this pleasurably impressionistic movie, Don Cheadle plays Miles Davis as a mercurial fantasy figure who's part boxer, part gangster, part time-traveler and 100 percent enigmatic genius. Purists may howl at the portrait, but Mr. Cheadle — who also directed and was a co-writer — understands that some legends are bigger than any one telling. (Dargis)
'Money Monster' (R, 1:38) An energetic beat-the-clock thriller with vaguely topical overtones (Wall Street is rigged! Cable news lies!) with fine old-school movie star work from George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Directed by Jodie Foster. (Scott)
'Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising' (R, 1:32) Proudly crass and amiably dumb, Nicholas Stoller's gag-crammed sequel essentially takes the bones of the 2014 original and gives them a gender flip, placing Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne's young marrieds at loggerheads with the new sorority next door. (Jeannette Catsoulis)
'The Nice Guys' (R, 1:55) Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe do the buddy thing in this strenuous '70s pastiche, directed by Shane Black. (Scott)
'The Ones Below' (R, 1:27) There's much to admire in this thriller, the feature directorial debut of the screenwriter David Farr. Like most effective suspense or horror movies, it is grounded in a potent subtext, in this case childbirth and its stresses on parents. Mr. Farr (aided by his star, an impressive Clémence Poésy, Fleur Delacour in the "Harry Potter[3]" movies) tightens the tension with an almost clinical precision. (Webster)
'Pelé: Birth of a Legend' (PG, 1:47) Jeff and Michael Zimbalist's biopic of the soccer superstar Pelé celebrates his rise from poverty to national-treasure fame, but it's more a familiar tale for fans to nod along with than a sports drama with a real kick. (Rapold)
★ 'Presenting Princess Shaw' (No rating, 1:20) We all know about the expanding musical universe made possible by YouTube, but rarely has its artistic potential been explored in a movie with the inspirational appeal of Ido Haar's documentary "Presenting Princess Shaw." The subject, Samantha Montgomery, a deeply talented aspiring singer from New Orleans, posts videos of herself singing original songs without accompaniment that are doctored by Kutiman, an Israeli electronic wizard, to become fully produced mixes. (Holden)
'Sing Street' (PG-13, 1:45) John Carney, best known for "Once," is a filmmaker with many songs in his heart and his heart on his sleeve. This sweet, rough-edged romance, set in Dublin in the 1980s, stars Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as a teenager who starts a pop band to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton). (Scott)
'Unlocking the Cage' (No rating, 1:31) The case for animal rights, argued by Steven Wise, a lawyer who is the subject of this observant and absorbing documentary from D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. (Scott)
★ 'Weiner' (R, 1:40) "What's wrong with you?" That question, posed to the disgraced New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner in the infuriating and depressing but rivetingly watchable documentary that bears his name, is never answered and only barely addressed in the film directed by Josh Kriegman (a former Weiner aide) and Elyse Steinberg. As almost everyone knows, Mr. Weiner's meteoric political career was ended — or at least interrupted — by a sexting scandal in which Mr. Weiner flirted with and exhibited himself to women online. The movie is also the portrait of a marriage in disarray. His wife, Huma Abedin, a trusted assistant to Hillary Clinton, is present in much of the film, ready to stand by her man but clearly unhappy. (Holden)
'X-Men: Apocalypse' (PG-13, 2:23) A mutant from ancient Egypt awakens in the early 1980s and seeks out some latter-day mutants as end-of-the-world adjuncts; Professor Charles Xavier and his acolytes try to stave off, you know, apocalypse. The filmmaking is sometimes witty, while the emphasis on potential mass death is unimaginative and rote. (Kenny)
Film Series
The Films of Thom Andersen (Friday through June 12) Thom Andersen, a filmmaker who teaches at the California Institute for the Arts, achieved a popular breakthrough with "Los Angeles Plays Itself" (2004), a heady guided tour through cinematic history that examines the way Los Angeles has been portrayed in the movies. Tied to the release of Mr. Andersen's latest film essay, "The Thoughts That Once We Had," Anthology Film Archives is presenting a retrospective of his earlier work, including "Red Hollywood" (made in collaboration with the theorist Noël Burch), which revisits the films of blacklisted directors, and the remarkable "Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer," which animates and dissects motion studies by Muybridge, a groundbreaking pre-cinematic photographer. It shows in Program 1 of the series (Friday and Wednesday). 32-34 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, 212-505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org[4]. (Ben Kenigsberg)
Brian De Palma (through June 23) To settle a debate that has now raged for more than four decades: Brian De Palma is both a genius and a savant, a peerless visual stylist who often seems unable to avoid sabotaging his own thrillers with inane plot twists and miniature remakes of "Psycho." Few directors can match him at his best ("Phantom of the Paradise," "Blow Out," "The Untouchables"), yet even misbegotten efforts like "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "Mission to Mars" include sequences of breathtaking complexity. So expect heated arguments at Metrograph's near-comprehensive survey of the De Palma canon, an appetizer of sorts for "De Palma," Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's documentary profile of the man, which opens next Friday. 7 Ludlow St, Lower East Side, 212-660-0312, metrograph.com[5]. (Ben Kenigsberg)
Genre Is a Woman (Friday through June 16) This Film Forum retrospective aims to correct the supposition that pioneering female directors limited themselves to melodramas and comedies; it celebrates women who made genre movies going back to the beginning of the medium, starting with Alice Guy-Blaché in the 1900s and 1910s. Representing a wide range of styles and approaches, the filmmakers include Ida Lupino ("Not Wanted," "The Hitch-Hiker"), the exploitation director Doris Wishman ("Nude on the Moon," "Bad Girls Go to Hell") and more contemporary figures like Mary Harron ("American Psycho," "The Notorious Bettie Page") and Kathryn Bigelow (whose five films in the program will all screen on 35-millimeter). 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village, 212-727-8110, filmforum.org[6]. (Kenigsberg)
Tales of Cinema: The Films of Hong Sang-soo (Friday through June 19) Depending on your point of view, the South Korean director Hong Sang-soo is either a master of theme and variation or a film festival darling whom critics have somehow given a pass for making the same basic movie over and over. (This is true even if he sets the action in Paris, as in "Night and Day," showing June 11, or casts an international star, like Isabelle Huppert in "In Another Country," screening June 17.) His chief ingredients are a moviemaking protagonist, tone-deaf flirtations and free-flowing soju. Often, there's a mid-movie rupture in which the first half is recontextualized. Of the 16 features in this series, several of which have never opened in the United States, "Woman on the Beach" (June 10) is an archetypal place to start. Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria, Queens, 718-784-0077, movingimage.us[7]. (Kenigsberg)
'Kamikaze '89' (Friday through Thursday) In a totalitarian future, a police lieutenant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, exuding a peculiar form of dapperness in a leopard-patterned suit) finds his unblemished investigation record tested when he tries to locate the source of a bomb threat at the country's centralized media corporation. Wolf Gremm directed this 1982 West German feature — a science-fiction-tinged noir awash in attitude, neon colors and Tangerine Dream riffs — which is showing in a new restoration. Günther Kaufmann and Brigitte Mira, mainstays in Fassbinder's own films, appear in supporting roles. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, bam.org[8]. (Kenigsberg)
Modern Matinees: Fifteen by Otto Preminger (through June 30) The Museum of Modern Art dusts off its collection of prints by the director Otto Preminger, who could infuse nearly any genre with a prickly ambiguity. Several of his greatest works ("Advise and Consent," "Bonjour Tristesse," "Bunny Lake Is Missing") play alongside titles ripe for re-evaluation ("Daisy Kenyon"), although there are also notable omissions. (Where is "Anatomy of a Murder"?) The program includes "Laura," Preminger's sort-of ghost story from 1944, in which Dana Andrews, investigating a murder, begins to fall in love with the dead woman (Gene Tierney). Clifton Webb has a memorable turn as a newspaper columnist who writes "with a goose quill dipped in venom." 11 West 53rd Street, 212-708-9400; a full schedule is at moma.org/film[9]. (Kenigsberg)
Universal Pictures: Restorations and Rediscoveries, 1928 to 1937 (through June 15) The current climate of Hollywood studios' staking their bets on comic-book movies would probably have puzzled Carl Laemmle Jr., who became head of production at Universal when he was 21 and had a reputation for taking chances. The Museum of Modern Art is bringing back many of the most significant movies from this underscreened period; some of the titles have been out of circulation since then. The lineup includes work by John Ford ("Air Mail") and Frank Borzage ("Little Man, What Now?") as well as several films each from James Whale and John M. Stahl. 11 West 53rd Street, 212-708-9400, moma.org[10]. (Kenigsberg)
References
- ^ nytimes.com/intheaters (nytimes.com)
- ^ More articles about Palestinians. (topics.nytimes.com)
- ^ Recent and archival news about Harry Potter. (topics.nytimes.com)
- ^ anthologyfilmarchives.org (anthologyfilmarchives.org)
- ^ metrograph.com (metrograph.com)
- ^ filmforum.org (filmforum.org)
- ^ movingimage.us (movingimage.us)
- ^ bam.org (bam.org)
- ^ moma.org/film (moma.org)
- ^ moma.org (moma.org)
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