(RATINGS: The movies listed below are rated according to the following key: 4 stars — excellent; 3 stars — good; 2 stars — fair; 1 star — poor.)
(This week’s package includes capsule film reviews by Michael Phillips, chief movie critic for the Chicago Tribune, and other contributing writers.)
‘ALL THE BEAUTY AND BLOODSHED’: When director Laura Poitras’ documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” snagged the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, in a field of qualifying titles including “Tár” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” accusations of contrarian virtue-signaling were flung hither and yon, in some cases even by people who’d actually managed to see it. Well, those people weren’t right. The film is a gem — a supple, unpredictably structured and deeply personal portrait of its primary subject, the photographer, visual artist and activist Nan Goldin. And that isn’t all. This portrait belongs to a much larger societal landscape. Poitras’ film expands, naturally, by way of Goldin’s own history and her more recent history of both addiction and effective public dissent, as “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” becomes a tale of the opioid epidemic (roughly 500,000 dead in the U.S. alone), which was and is a human-made tragedy. 1:57. 4 stars. — Michael Phillips.
‘AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER”: As with most Cameron blockbusters, including the first “Avatar,” this film has a way of pulling you in, surrounding you with gorgeous, violent chaos and finishing with a quick rinse to get the remnants of its teeny-tiny plot out of your eyes by the final credits. It’s 10 years later. Sully (Sam Worthington), now blue and 10 feet tall, is full-on Na’vi with a family including his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and three kids. Sigourney Weaver, whose character died in the first “Avatar,” returns in the role of the adopted teenage daughter, Kiri. Death is just a pause for a change of clothes in this universe. Cameron fills three hours of screen time, with another 10 minutes or so for credits, with what feels like a single, extended, not-quite-”real,” not really animated but impressively sustained feat of visual gratification, if you don’t mind the cruelty-to-undersea-creatures parts. 3:10. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips.
‘BABYLON’: Damien Chazelle is writer-director of “Babylon,” which takes place at the intersection of Hollywood dreams and industry realities in a somewhat harsher realm than his massively popular “La La Land.” All three hours and nine minutes of “Babylon” sings a song that says: Praise the art and pass the degradation. The contrasts of lightness and darkness are stark, blunt and finally wearying. Loosely entwining a half-dozen major characters, though two or three get disappointingly short shrift, “Babylon” thins out all too quickly, settling for a strenuous ode to the dream factory and its victims and exploiters, who occasionally make wondrous things for the screen. 3:09. 2 stars. — Michael Phillips.
‘BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER”: A big, rangy Marvel follow-up — made without the grand presence of Chadwick Boseman, who died two years after “Black Panther” came out in 2018 — “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” acknowledges the loss of both King T’Challa and the actor who played him with a grave and moving extended prologue. It’s exactly right, down to the last flip-flip-flip of the Marvel Studios logo dedicated this time to images of the star no longer with us. This is followed by an hour or so of scene-setting, reintroductions and introductions deft and engaging enough to make you think: Can all this really be sustained in the back half? (The full running time is 2 hours, 41 minutes, or 26 minutes longer than the first “Black Panther.”) If the answer is no, well, welcome to the majority of Marvel sequels, and sequels in general. “Wakanda Forever” is not special like the first movie was. The quality of the storytelling and especially the action sequences grows less effective as the film proceeds. That said: It’s still juicier than most Marvels. 2:41. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips.
‘BONES AND ALL’: The most romantic movie of the year is a teenage dirtbag road trip featuring a couple of crazy cannibal kids colliding unexpectedly before embarking on a meander across the Midwest. It’s “Badlands” with ’80s punks who feast on flesh, and one of the most moving and authentically beautiful love stories about the rarity that is finding yourself in someone else. Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” is a swoony tapestry of Americana dripping with gore, caked in viscera. David Kajganich, who wrote the screenplays for Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash” and “Suspiria,” has adapted Camille DeAngelis’ award-winning young adult novel to the screen, a coming-of-age tale that just so happens to feature cannibalism, in all its gory detail. The luminous, yet steely Taylor Russell stars as Maren, a teenager “eater” who finds herself abruptly on her own after she’s abandoned by her father (Andre Holland), who simply can’t continue keeping his daughter’s cravings under wraps. 2:10. 4 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘CALL JANE’: “Are you Jane?” It’s a question that Chicago housewife Joy (Elizabeth Banks) repeatedly asks, as she calls a number from a flyer, is picked up, blindfolded, driven to a nondescript office where she receives an illegal, but safe, abortion from an unfeeling doctor (Cory Michael Smith), and is then cared for by an eclectic group of women. In this group, no one is Jane, but they are all Jane, the generic alias that shields their identities becoming the de facto name for this underground network of women providing abortion care in the years before Roe v. Wade. In “Call Jane,” Oscar-nominated “Carol” screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, working with a script by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, crafts an unconventional biopic, not of any real person, but of Jane, the collective. That “Jane” was an alias, an avatar, is part of the problem with “Call Jane,” in which all of the fictionalized characters, from Joy, to Virginia (Sigourney Weaver), the organizer behind the group, to Joy’s husband Will (Chris Messina), to her daughter (Grace Edwards) and neighbor (Kate Mara), never really feel like real people, but indeed, avatars, merely representatives or devices to move the plot along. 2:01. 2 1/2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘DECISION TO LEAVE’: World-weary detective falls for sphinx-like widow in a murder case. Talk about the usual suspects! We have seen this setup once or twice. But “Decision to Leave,” director and co-writer Park Chan-wook’s dazzling, confounding, gorgeously crafted variation on a dangerously familiar film trope, takes its component parts and comes up with something no one has ever built before. Visually it’s alive every second, in ways both considered and imaginative; the story, meanwhile, takes some risky wait-what? detours en route to a surprisingly grave finish. The South Korean genre master, whose films include the feverishly violent “Oldboy” and the ripely seductive “The Handmaiden,” hasn’t ditched either sex or violence for his latest film, co-written by his frequent collaborator Chung Seo-kyung. But both of those primal cinematic ingredients spice the result here in unexpected ways. 2:18. 3 1/2 stars. — Michael Phillips. In Korean and Mandarin with English subtitles.
‘DEVOTION’: J.D. Dillard’s 2016 breakout feature film “Sleight” was a low-budget gem that showcased what this up-and-coming filmmaker could do. Applying an indie sensibility to a gritty, magic-inspired superhero origin story, his focus on character over spectacle made “Sleight” moving, and memorable. In Dillard’s follow-up film (he’s spent a few years directing TV), the Korean War epic “Devotion,” the budget may have gotten bigger, and the sumptuous, soaring visuals more spectacular, but the emphasis on character remains the same. That makes “Devotion” an emotional and fitting tribute to the real men behind the incredible true story: Lt. Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown. Their experiences in the Korean War are detailed in Adam Makos’ 2014 book, “Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice,” adapted for the screen by Jake Crane and Jonathan A.H. Stewart. Glen Powell, who has cornered the market on playing wingmen this year with “Devotion” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” plays Tom Hudner; the remarkable actor Jonathan Majors plays Jesse Brown. 2:18. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘EMPIRE OF LIGHT’: In “Empire of Light,” Sam Mendes casts a nostalgic eye toward the movies. Like several other auteurs this winter season, Mendes has crafted what could be considered a “love letter to cinema” (see also: Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon”), but “Empire of Light” is less of a mash note to moviemaking than a tribute to the theater itself, that cathedral of collective dreams born by a single beam of light. The Empire in question is the fictional Empire Cinema in Margate, a coastal city in England, the year is 1980, and the story concerns the unlikely, and complicated, friendship between Hilary (Olivia Colman), the duty manager at the Empire, and Stephen (Micheal Ward), the new ticket taker. Movies are their business, and the backdrop to their relationship, which blooms among the popcorn and candy, and takes flight in the Empire’s abandoned upstairs club room, a once glorious space now serving as a pigeon roost. We don’t need someone to remind us that movies are magic by stating that up front; usually it’s just the magic of storytelling itself that achieves that, which “Empire of Light” ultimately, and unfortunately, fumbles. 1:59. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘THE ESTATE’: Watching the ensemble black comedy “The Estate,” written and directed by Dean Craig and co-starring Toni Collette, will no doubt draw comparison to another ensemble black comedy co-starring Toni Collette, “Knives Out,” which dwells in the same story milieu of money-hungry family members competing for a mention in a wealthy family member’s will. Of course, “Knives Out” is a twisty whodunit in the vein of Agatha Christie, and Craig’s film is merely an exploration of what depravities people might sink to in hopes of getting a bigger piece of the financial pie. Still, there are enough similarities between the two films, both rife with smarmy, unlikable characters, that one could become preoccupied in wondering why “Knives Out” works and why “The Estate” decidedly does not. The answer lies in what “The Estate” is lacking, which is someone to root for. There might be some actual stakes in the game if we wanted someone, anyone, to win the inheritance that’s up for grabs when it’s announced that the wealthy and childless Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner) does not have long for this world. Watching “The Estate” feels like being gaslit, in attempting to understand the purpose of anyone’s actions, or to find humor at all in these morbidly bleak antics, when there is simply nothing there. It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s. Hopefully it was a nice trip to New Orleans. 1:36. 1 star. — Katie Walsh.
‘THE FABELMANS’: “I need to see them crash.” These are the first fated words of a future filmmaker, Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), whispered to his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) after he’s crashed his toy train after bedtime, inspired by his very first big-screen cinematic experience, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Mitzi instantly recognizes that re-creating the train crash is a way for young Sammy to exert some control over the fear he felt during the movie, and so she presents him with his father’s 8mm camera to capture, and replay, the crash. With this lesson on art as catharsis imprinted in his young mind, a movie director is born. In the deeply personal “The Fabelmans,” legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg applies his artistic instincts to his own familial catharsis, turning his lens on his own upbringing, his childhood journey to becoming a filmmaker, and his parents. What could have been some kind of auto-hagiography is a playful, honest and ultimately gracious childhood memoir that derives its universal lessons from its specificity. 2:31. 4 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘GOOD NIGHT OPPY’: Great true stories about space exploration don’t come around too often anymore. Our pop cultural representations about NASA’s achievements (or failures) tend to be period pieces and retreads of the greatest hits. But the new documentary “Good Night Oppy,” directed by Ryan White, is an exciting and fresh story about a very recent mission to Mars, one that exceeded all expectations and then some, thanks to hard work, ingenuity, a lot of luck and dogged perseverance. Produced by, among others, Amazon Studios, Amblin Entertainment and Industrial Light and Magic, “Good Night Oppy” is a documentary that aims to capture the sense of childlike wonder and expansive, imaginative scope akin to the films for which Amblin and ILM are known. It’s a documentary recounting the amazing story of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission that manages to feel emotionally like “E.T.”, and look like “Star Wars.” 1:45. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh. 1:45. In theaters now and streaming on Amazon Prime Nov. 23.
‘GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO’: All that’s missing is Tom Hanks. Landing on Netflix almost exactly three months after Disney’s live action-meets-computer animation update of its 1940 animated classic, “Pinocchio,” debuted on Disney+, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is at least a little stronger in just about every way but one. With apologies to David Bradley, who voices Master Geppetto in the new version — recently released in select theaters — we really liked what “America’s Dad” brought to the role in the film helmed by his “Forrest Gump” director, Robert Zemeckis. Bradley (the “Harry Potter” movies) is perfectly fine, though, and so much of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is more than that, a work of stop-motion animation (enhanced by topnotch digital elements) that constantly astonishes visually while providing a few chuckles and heartwarming moments, along with some life lessons for young viewers. 2:01. 3 stars. — Mark Meszoros. Streaming on Netflix.
‘LYLE, LYLE CROCODILE’: “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is indeed a strange beast, both the animal — a city-dwelling croc with the voice of an angel — and the movie, which is also a sort of monstrous hybrid of unexpected tones. Based on the children’s book series by Bernard Waber, adapted by Will Davies, “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, who are known for more adult comedies like “Office Christmas Party,” “The Switch” and “Blades of Glory,” and they bring a bit of that ironic sensibility to the film, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s clear every adult in the room is in on the joke in the over-the-top “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” including Gordon and Speck, as well as Scoot McNairy and Constace Wu, who play Mr. and Mrs. Primm, the gobsmacked couple who find themselves cohabitating with Lyle in a Manhattan brownstone, after their son Josh (Winslow Fegley) befriends the creature. “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” goes for a kind of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” vibe, with the whole “fantastical pet in New York City” plot, but there’s not enough connective tissue in the writing, which feels choppy and abrupt. Pasek and Paul’s songs end up having to do much of the emotional heavy lifting, and the rest of the film feels cobbled together from random parts scavenged from other kids’ movies and pop culture ephemera. 1:46. 2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘THE MENU’: An elite, motley crew assembles for a very special dinner in the deliciously dark thriller satire “The Menu,” a philosophical deconstruction of artists and their enablers. Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, of “Succession” and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” and directed by Mark Mylod, who has made his name in prestige television, directing episodes of “Game of Thones” and “Succession,” “The Menu” is a tightly wound, sharply rendered skewering of the dichotomy between the takers and the givers, or in this case, the eaters and the cooks. The recipe for “The Menu” is: one filet of bloody class warfare a la “Ready or Not,” a dash of cultish folk horror in the vein of “Midsommar,” a puree of “Chef’s Table,” dusted with a sprinkling of “Pig,” spritzed with an essence of “Clue.” We go along for this ride through the point of view of a classic Final Girl, the spunky, sarcastic and street-smart Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), a late addition to the guest list who is an unexpected and unpredictable element in the sauce. 1:46. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘NANNY’: Some movies, mostly to do with how they’re marketed, keep the audience guessing as to what the hell it is, exactly, right up until the moment the lights go down or they click the play button. Horror movies do better business, so the ads tend to play up the horror element in movies that aren’t really horror movies. Take, for example, “Nanny,” an eerie, assured debut with a terrific central performance from Anna Diop. It’s no horror film. Rather, it delves into genuine psychological thriller territory, grounded in a character study of the American immigrant experience. Now: Many if not most films broadly describable as psychological thrillers are about as psychological thriller-y as a chainsaw massacre. Rarely does a legit example of the genre lay off the brutality and bloodshed long enough to get under a character’s skin, or behind a customarily marginalized character’s eyes, to imagine unsettled interior states of being. “Nanny” is one of those exceptions, written and directed with supple authority by first-time feature writer-director Nikyatu Jusu. 1:38. 3 stars. — Michael Phillips. Now in theaters; on Prime Video Dec. 16.
‘PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH’: Eleven years after the “Shrek 2” spinoff “Puss in Boots,” the sassy Spanish feline voiced by Antonio Banderas has returned for another fairy-tale-busting adventure, directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, and written by Paul Fischer (with a story by Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler). Crawford, Mercado and Fischer all worked on the Dreamworks Animation favorites “Trolls” and “The Croods: A New Age,” and the trio bring a similar “chaotic good” energy to “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” which remixes a new set of familiar nursery rhymes and beloved children’s fables to entertaining ends. 1:40. 3 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘SHE SAID’: When the allegations of sexual harassment and assault against super-producer Harvey Weinstein were published in The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017, it hit Hollywood like a bomb. The stories ignited the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement, prompted an industrywide reckoning with a culture of harassment, bullying and silence, and ultimately led to Weinstein’s conviction for rape and sexual assault in New York in February 2020 and his subsequent imprisonment. Weinstein is currently on trial for rape and sexual assault in Los Angeles, where his victims have been offering gut-wrenching testimony about their experiences with him. Though it’s recent history, the incredible bravery of the women who came forward and the journalists who told their story bears repeating, as in Maria Schrader’s “She Said,” the film adaptation of the book based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who broke the Weinstein story after months of investigation and decades of Weinstein successfully silencing his victims. 2:08. 3 1/2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘SPOILER ALERT’: In the summer and fall of 2022, “Bros” and “Fire Island” made inroads as high-profile gay rom-coms, queering the familiar genre. Now, arriving just in time for Christmas, we have “Spoiler Alert,” a heart-rending holiday weepie about two men in love, facing cancer together. Based on the memoir by TV journalist Michael Ausiello, “Spoiler Alert” tells the story of Ausiello’s marriage to Kit Cowan: how they fell in love and forged a partnership, with all the attendant struggles of a long-term relationship, and then walked together through Kit’s battle with a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer. 1:52. 2 1/2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘VIOLENT NIGHT’: “Violent Night” stars David Harbour from “Stranger Things” as a puking, sledgehammer-swinging Santa on a righteous killing spree. The setup of the film, directed by Norwegian Tommy Wirkola, is simple, though the screenplay, by “Sonic the Hedgehog” writers Patrick Casey and Josh Miller, makes it needlessly sludgy and given to indulgent monologues about everyone’s torturous relationship to Christmas. The movie begins with a prologue set in an English pub, where Santa’s getting drunk and bemoaning the state of things. He has had it with his job, and can barely stomach another year of delivering video games and money to everyone on the “nice” list. His belief in himself, and in Christmas, is restored through bloodletting. (He’s a former Viking warrior, and not a nice one.) At the remote, lavish Lightstone family mansion (Beverly D’Angelo plays the greedy matriarch), a dysfunctional family gathering is interrupted by sadistic mercenaries looking for hidden millions. The bad people are led by John Leguizamo, playing it straight, which isn’t much fun in the context of a vicious black comedy. The hostage situation leads to a huge body count even before Santa shows up to save 7-year-old Trudy (Leah Brady), reunite her estranged parents (Alex Hassell and Alexis Louder) and revive his mojo. 1:52. 1 1/2 stars. — Michael Phillips.
‘WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY’. It only makes sense that Al Yankovic’s biopic would be a parody of biopics. So “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is anything but the A-Z story of the song parodist who is perhaps not technically the best but arguably went on to become the most famous accordion player in an extremely specific genre of music. Take any music biopic, whether it’s “Walk the Line,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Ray,” and give it the “Weird” Al treatment, and you’ve got this absurdist, playful, self-aware send-up of the man who took a gamble and risked it all to turn “Like a Virgin” into “Like a Surgeon.” Yankovic, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Eric Appel, isn’t much interested in mining the dramatic gold from his process of flipping pop songs into comedy songs. So he instead lampoons himself — a kid who “dreamed of making up new words to songs that already existed” — and turns his life into an over-the-top fantasy where he’s not only climbing the charts but dating the world’s hottest musician and knocking off Colombian drug lords while he’s at it. 1:47. Not ranked. — Adam Graham. Streaming on The Roku Channel.
‘THE WHALE’: In “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese online writing instructor confined to his apartment in what seems to be a dreary stretch of Idaho. Charlie is suffering from congestive heart failure, and over the course of a week, as his best friend Liz (Hong Chau) a nurse, implores, demands and shouts at him to seek medical attention, he reckons with some of the unfinished business of his life while committing a slow suicide. He reaches out to his estranged daughter, the prickly Ellie (Sadie Sink), and by extension, her mother, Mary (Samantha Morton). A young missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins), keeps stopping by, hoping to save his soul. Fraser, who through the prosthetics, both physical and computer-generated, delivers a performance suffused with warmth, empathy and love that cannot be denied. “Write me something honest,” Charlie demands of his students. “The Whale” may not be as honest as Charlie demands, but Fraser is, and that is the film’s saving grace. 1:57. 2 1/2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
‘WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY’: When remembering the iconic life and career of Whitney Houston, there are many defining moments that instantly spring to mind: when she obliterated the “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, thereby rendering all other versions subpar, her soaring rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from “The Bodyguard,” or even her concert at Wembley Stadium in honor of Nelson Mandela. In the new biopic “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” those moments are acknowledged, albeit briefly. Instead, writer/producer Anthony McCarten has chosen to bookend this slog through Houston’s career and all-too-short life with … her performance at the 1994 American Music Awards? Indeed, the 10 minute medley, which is re-created in full, was a virtuosic vocal performance of which only Houston was capable, but this deep cut seems an odd choice to open and close the film. It’s the kind of choice that makes one start to question everything in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” a film that is not engrossing enough on its own to prevent one’s mind from wandering toward the nagging questions about who made these decisions and why. 2:26. 1 1/2 stars. — Katie Walsh.
XXXXX
