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Wesley Morris
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Unambitious ‘Journey’ sinks like a Rock
*1/2 Journey 2: The Mysterious Island There isn’t much here to like: an enormous electric eel that powers a sunken ship, Dwayne Johnson sitting on a log next to Michael Caine and breaking into song, closing credits. Even by the unambitious standards of some children’s movies and many that star Michael Caine, this one has a difficult time making a case for itself as anything other than an adventure in babysitting. With Vanessa Hudgens, Josh Hutcherson, and an embarrassing Luis Guzman. (94 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)‘Safe House’ plays it a little too ‘Safe’
** Safe House Denzel Washington plays one of those misunderstood CIA operatives who’s “gone rogue.’’ But even before he’s tortured for information, Washington’s pulse never rises. His calm is absurd. Yet it’s exactly what’s needed in a by-the-numbers chase-’em-down and shoot-’em-up movie with lots of intentionally sea-sickening camerawork: confidence. With Ryan Reynolds as the young agent responsible for bringing him in. (115 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Radcliffe doesn’t stray far from pained Potter role in ‘Woman in Black’
** The Woman in Black How frustrating to be Daniel Radcliffe. One movie after Harry Potter vanquished Voldemort, and it’s like he’s anticipating having to do it all over again. Here he is in this blah ghost story searching a big, dreary house for the source of off-screen sound effects. Radcliffe has an exuberant side, and some of us are getting desperate to see it. (95 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)“The Innkeepers’’ is a movie with too many vacancies
*½ The Innkeepers One problem with a movie devoted to the boredom of two hotel employees is that it risks contagion. Here the employees - played by Sara Paxton and Pat Healy - might be involved in a ghost story. They’re certainly starting in a very dull CW drama. Written and directed by Ti West. With a small, thankless role for Kelly McGillis. (106 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Movie review: ‘Man on a Ledge’ should just jump
*1/2 Man on a Ledge People cheer the plot twists in this lousy movie about a fugitive (Sam Worthington) threatening to jump off a building. None of the actors has anything to do. You could cast this movie with potato chips and still get cheers when one of the bad guys is cuffed. With potato chips, you understand. With Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, and Ed Harris. (102 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)Movie review: Wolves at Liam Neeson’s door in ‘The Grey’
** The Grey It’s cheap the way this movie wants to be both a Liam Neeson “Quit Taking My Stuff’’ movie and an existential thriller about survival. We’ve come to see Neeson danse-macabre with wolves. Instead, we get a lot scenes of men being sad that they have no idea where they are and that there are no women to have sex with. Those moments aren’t bad, but they’re not enough, either. (117 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Movie review: ‘Separation’ anxiety to spare in superb double Oscar nominee from Iran
**** A Separation A superb work of realism by Asghar Farhadi about a youngish middle-class Iranian woman (Leila Hatami) who leaves her husband (Peyman Moaadi), putting his sick father and their studious and astute 11-year-old daughter (Sarina Farhadi) in the uncertain middle. The request for a divorce sets in motion a chain of small domestic events whose dismaying implications accrue. In Farsi, with English subtitles. (123 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)Gina Carano packs a punch in ‘Haywire’
*** Haywire The new Steven Soderbergh film puts at its center the martial-arts star Gina Carano as a covert operative trying to solve her double-crossing. The movie is playful, but its naturalness is also cold and no-frills. Soderbergh wants to get close to how these chases and fist-fights might happen in everyday life. So it’s less a thriller than a kind of documentary. With Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, and Michael Douglas. (106 min., R) (Wesley Morris)‘Red Tails’ tends to stall when it is in the air
** Red Tails George Lucas produced this action movie about Tuskegee Airmen stationed in Italy during World War II. This is a story people have waiting decades to see, so it’s no fun feeling responsible to run out and see a movie that isn’t very good. It means well, but it’s too basic to be rousing or even heartening. Directed by Anthony Hemingway. With Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Tristan Wilds, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Terrence Howard. (125 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)‘Flowers of War’ blooms with jarring, beautiful colors
**1/2 The Flowers of War. The new Zhang Yimou film is set during World War II not long after the Japanese have devastated the former Chinese capital, Nanking, and stars Christian Bale as an American who tries to rescue Chinese orphans from randy Japanese soldiers. It’s lovely when loveliness is beside the point of all this atrocity. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. (145 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)A wounded walker in the city in ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’
*** Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close The 9-year-old protagonist (Thomas Horn) of Stephen Daldry’s movie is a handful. Mostly for an audience tasked with watching him whirl across seemingly every inch of New York’s five boroughs. The film’s whimsy and cuteness should exasperate, but there’s great, poignant urgency at its center, much of it courtesy of Horn and Max von Sydow, who plays his elderly sidekick. With Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and Viola Davis. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. (129 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)Movie review: Maggie Thatcher meets Meryl Streep in ‘The Iron Lady’
** The Iron Lady The best way to appreciate the high-ludicrousness of Meryl Streep’s Margaret Thatcher might be to watch this thin, conventionally structured movie with the sound down. It’s good acting. It’s great kabuki. The movie, meanwhile, lacks the gumption to damn Thatcher solely on the terms of her decade-long prime ministership. Unfairly, too much of it gawks at her while she’s doddering and deluded in old age. (105 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)Movie review: ‘Contraband’ cashes in with plenty of Mark Wahlberg
**1/2 Contraband Mark Wahlberg, money, guns, grime, shipping containers, violence, and several plot holes: It’s a better time than you’d think. With Ribisi, Ben Foster, J.K. Simmons, and Kate Beckinsale. (109 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Movie review of ‘The Divide’: Xavier Gens’s fallout shelter drama is a bomb in its own right
*1/2 The Divide A handful of strangers flee into a fallout shelter after a nuclear attack. Eventually, all the sitting and wondering about exposure to radiation starts to make the men do such increasingly crazy things as turn one of the women into their sex slave. It’s doom that we’re meant to feel here. Really, it’s all just tedious. With Rosanna Arquette shamelessly committed to another out-there part. Directed by Xavier Gens. (125 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)Reeling in ‘The Story of Fishbone’
*** Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone The best thing about this film is that it really is the story of Fishbone. It’s a hearty, smartly assembled, seemingly complete documentary about a rock band that, even by the standards of out-there musical acts, seemed out there both in the early 1980s and even now. (107 min., unrated)Review of ‘Pariah’: Rare, revelatory film is a coming-out to be embraced
*** Pariah Dee Rees’s first dramatic feature is a coming-of-age and coming-out drama centered on a 17-year-old Brooklyn lesbian (Adepero Oduye). It’s a movie that feels in all its vividness, specificity, and honesty - and in its amateurish screenwriting, too - like something found from the early- to mid-1990s when American independent moviemaking encouraged far more conversations than it currently does about the sexuality of young, brown girls. (88 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Review of ‘Hell and Back Again,’ a documentary that presents war flashbacks from a different perspective
***1/2 Hell and Back Again With some documentaries, you can feel the filmmakers hit a wall. Danfung Dennis doesn’t appear to have a limit. He’s made a combat film essentially about a wounded Marine and his flashback to Afghanistan. It’s as if Dennis has seen (or knows we’ve seen) some of these movies and understands that the flavorlessness of even the most well-meant, clearly articulated filmmaking can leave you undisturbed and indifferent to what you’re being told and shown. This, on the other hand, is an ingenious artistic disturbance. (88 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)‘A Dangerous Method’ review: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen shine in David Cronenberg’s film
***1/2 A Dangerous Method The insinuation in David Cronenberg’s sex drama is strong, the acting stronger. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his play, the film focuses on the professional and emotional bond between the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), his mistress and patient, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). With Cronenberg, devilishly, the sex proves more curative than the talking. (94 min., R) (Wesley Morris)Video: Movie reviews
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Take 2 reviews and podcast
Look for new reviews by Ty Burr and Wesley Morris at the end of each week in multiple formats.
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