Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With: Reviews,
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New This Week
THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH Forty years after the creepy events in the first movie, the same haunted house is unwisely chosen as the new home for a group of children evacuated from wartime London. Helen McCrory, Jeremy Irvine, and Phoebe Fox star. Tom Harper directs. (PG-13) 98 minutes. Starts Friday.
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Now Playing
BIG EYES Time-travel back to San Francisco in the late 1950s and early ’60s in Tim Burton’s vivid, candy-colored homage to the hugely popular big-eyed waifs painted by “Keane.” Why make a biopic about such kitschy work? Because beneath the tale of the work itself lies the incipient women’s empowerment story about a charismatic alpha male who marketed like crazy, passing himself off as the author of work painted by his unsung wife for ten years. Christoph Waltz is effective, if exhausting, as the imposter Walter Keane; Amy Adams evolves nicely, if slowly, as the talented, but subjugated wife, Margaret Keane, he threatened and cajoled into keeping their secret for years, who finally claimed her place in the spotlight. (PG-13) 109 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
FOXCATCHER There’s much to admire in this thoughtful true-crime drama of money and privilege, severe delusions of grandeur, and a murder that rocked the pro wrestling world—although director Bennett Miller’s slow-moving narrative often threatens to sink under its own sense of gravitas. But the film is shored up by three outstanding performances: Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo as Olympic wrestling champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz, and Steve Carrell in the pivotal role of poor little rich boy John du Pont, who inextricably inserts himself into the lives, careers, and destiny of the Schultz brothers. (R) 134 minutes. (***)—Lisa Jensen.
THE GAMBLER Mark Wahlberg stars as a mild-mannered English professor by day and a high-stakes gambler after hours who pits his gangster creditor against the owner of a gambling ring in a risky gamble for a second chance. Jessica Lange, Brie Larson, and John Goodman co-star for director Rupert Wyatt in this update of the vintage James Caan movie. (R) 111 minutes.
THE IMITATION GAME Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, the troubled cipher genius who built the first computer to break the Nazi’s Enigma code during World War II. Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Charles Dance co-star for director Morten Tyldum. (PG-13) 114 minutes.
THE INTERVIEW Courageous blow for free speech and the American Way, or shameless publicity stunt? You make the call, now that this Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy has slipped into theatres (right on schedule), after announcing last week it would be pulled from release—stirring up plenty of media controversy. Franco and Rogen play a celebrity tabloid TV host and his producer invited to North Korea to interview Kim Jong-un, but recruited en route by the CIA to assassinate him. Rogen and Evan Goldberg direct. (R) 112 minutes.
INTO THE WOODS Reviewed this issue. (PG) 125 minutes. (***1/2)—Lisa Jensen.
UNBROKEN Angelina Jolie directs this World War II drama that follows the true story of Louis Zamperini from American distance runner at the 1936 Olympics, to Air Force captain shot down over the Pacific, to survivor in a brutal Japanese POW camp. Jack O’Connell stars, with Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Finn Wittrock, and Japanese actor Miyavi in supporting roles. (PG-13) 137 minutes.