Category: Film Reviews by Amy

Spider-Man: No Way Home (PG-13)

Peter Parker is introduced to the multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a solid third part to the saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s teenage Peter Parker.

The movie more or less picks up where 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home ended, with Peter’s (Tom Holland) Spider-Man alter ego being revealed to the world. Far from becoming a celebrity, a la Tony Stark post-“I am Iron Man,” Peter is suspected of crimes related to his fight with fake hero Mysterio in the last movie and related to missing tech from Stark Industries. On his first day of senior year, he finds himself hounded by news media and phone-wielding fellow students and also learns that not only are colleges reluctant to accept him, but best buddy Ned (Jacob Batalon) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) are also being turned down because of their association with him. Life would be better if he could just go back to a time before everybody knew he was Spider-Man, Peter thinks mopily. And then he realizes that he actually knows somebody who can mess with time: Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the MCU’s New York City-dwelling wizard.

When Peter goes to see him, Strange explains that he doesn’t have the time stone (the doohickey that allowed him to manipulate time) anymore but does think he can conjure a spell to help the world forget that Peter is Spider-Man. Oh, but wait, Peter says as Strange is conjuring, I do want MJ to know, and Ned and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and Happy (Jon Favreau) and…. Too late, Strange realizes all of these last-minute exceptions have caused the spell to go wonky. He thinks he’s contained it before disrupting the fabric of reality but later, while Peter tries to get an official from MIT to reconsider not admitting his friends, he is confronted by Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), looking to fight Spider-Man. Ock, the scientist who went villainous in 2004’s Spider-Man 2 due to a mind meld with his metallic tentacles, knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker but he is surprised when the Peter he sees isn’t the Peter Parker he remembers.

As you may have seen in trailers, more villains appear — the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Electro (Jamie Foxx), others — representing both live-action, 21st-century pre-MCU Spider-Man franchises. They are from the multiverse, Strange tells Peter, and Peter has to hunt them all down and send them back to universes they belong in.

This could have gone a bunch of different ways but in the end I think this element of the movie works. While I didn’t always feel like the road to getting us all these different iterations of the Spider-Man story was particularly smooth (some of the choices the characters here make do not make sense for people with the recent MCU time-related experiences — Thanos and the blip — that these characters have), I felt great affection for how the movie uses the idea of bringing all these worlds together. It manages to bring something to those pre-MCU movies’ story arcs that wasn’t there before and is mostly fun in its own right. As with the (unrelated, so far) animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the different realms of Spider-Man help to examine basic elements of the character — the choices he has to make, the way he wants to live his life.

And I think this movie does right by its core trio of Peter, MJ and Ned and their relationships with each other. They work well together, Scooby-Doo-ing the problem, as Stephen Strange says, and what they’re given to do makes sense with how their characters change and grow as near-end-of-high-school teens.

My biggest problem with this movie is that the mechanics of getting us from this situation to that situation, of bringing in certain sets of characters, is so very choppy. To use Martin Scorsese’s comparison of superhero movies to amusement park rides, this one has that jerky, stop-start feel of something hastily constructed and not entirely passing code. That the movie could feel this way and still basically be fun — and fun for almost all of its nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime — is I think a credit largely to the characters and the way the movie builds its relationships more than the way it builds its story.

Spider-Man: No Way Home does offer the grand blockbuster movie experience that you want from a Marvel movie and that has still been relatively rare since March 2020. Even when the movie’s execution of its story wasn’t perfect, I enjoyed being back in this world. B+

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jon Watts and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Spider-Man: No Way Home is two hours and 28 minutes long and distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Christmas at the movies

Even this year, we’re getting a rush of new releases over the next week.

On Wednesday, Dec. 22, The Matrix Resurrection is scheduled for release in theaters and on HBO Max for 30 days. The movie, the fourth in the Matrix series and the first since 2003, brings back Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss.

Also scheduled for release on Wednesday are the much-rescheduled The King’s Man, the prequel to the Kingsman movies starring Ralph Fiennes and Harris Dickinson, and the animated sequel Sing 2, featuring oodles of big-name voices including Reese Witherspoon, Matthew McConaughey, Taron Egerton and Scarlett Johansson.

Celebrate Christmas Eve, Friday, Dec. 24, with the Adam McKay-written and -directed Don’t Look Up, a comedy about the impending destruction of all life on Earth via comet starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill, which will be released on Netflix.

On Christmas Day, Saturday, Dec. 25, new movies include American Underdog, a biopic of football player Kurt Warner starring Zachary Levi and Anna Paquin, and A Journal for Jordan, directed by Denzel Washington and starring Michael B. Jordan.

The Tragedy of MacBeth, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand and directed by Joel Coen, is also slated to open on Christmas in limited release and will be on Apple TV+ on Jan. 14.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) will screen at the Music Hall in Portsmouth on Wednesday, Dec. 22, at 3 and 7 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $12 for seniors age 60 and up, students, military and first responders.

• The Grinch (2018, PG) will screen at the Music Hall in Portsmouth on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 3 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $12 for seniors age 60 and up, students, military and first responders.

• House of Gucci (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 6 p.m.

• Nightmare Alley (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 6:30 p.m.; Friday, Dec. 24, at noon and 3:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 25, at 4 & 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 26, through Sunday, Jan. 2, 12:30, 4 & 7:30 p.m.

• Last Christmas (2019, PG-13) will screen at the Music Hall in Portsmouth on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $12 for seniors age 60 and up, students, military and first responders.

• Licorice Pizza (R, 2021) will screen at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Dec. 24, 4 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 25, 3:30 & 7 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 26, through Sunday, Jan. 2, 12, 3:30 & 7 p.m.

• The Strong Man (1926) starring Harry Langdon and directed by Frank Capra, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Dec. 26, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Admission is free; $10 donation suggested.

• The Senior Movie Mornings Series at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St., Manchester) presents White Christmas(1954) on Tuesday, Dec. 28, at 10 a.m. Tickets cost $10. Call 668-5588 or visit palacetheatre.org/rex-theatre.

• The Metropolitan Opera — Cinderella on Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022, at 12:55 p.m. at Bank of NH Stage in Concord. Tickets cost $26.

• Girl Shy (1924), a silent film starring Harold Lloyd, on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester, featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission costs $10.

• Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ(1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, April 21, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex in Manchester. Tickets cost $10.

Featured photo: Spider-Man. Courtesy photo.

West Side Story (PG-13)

Get Maria and Tony, the Sharks and the Jets, the dance-fights and the love songs plus Rita Moreno in West Side Story, the Steven Spielberg-directed film adaption of the 1957 stage musical.

If you are totally new to West Side Story in any form, it is basically Romeo & Juliet with New York City-born Tony (Ansel Elgort) and recent arrival from Puerto Rico Maria (Rachel Zegler) as the star-crossed lovers and the gang of angry nativist boys calling themselves the Jets and the Puerto Rican gang called the Sharks standing in for the Montague and Capulet families. Here, racial animosity, economic fears and encroaching gentrification in the Upper West Side of mid-century New York City form the basis of the resentments between the opposing camps, instead of whatever the beef was back in fair Verona.

In Maria’s corner: her older brother Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the Sharks; Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose), and Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), a nice boy with a good future in accounting whom Bernardo is shoving at Maria.

In Tony’s corner: Riff (Mike Faist), head of the Jets, and Valentina (Rita Moreno), widowed owner of corner store Doc’s, who is letting Tony work and live at the shop. Valentina, who has sort of adopted Tony, is also Puerto Rican, which is perhaps why Tony seems less focused on the turf struggles than Riff. Well, that and the fact that he’s had a good long while to think about the nature of violence while serving time for his part in a previous brawl.

I’m not at all objective about this movie or this musical; it is one of my longtime favorites. So even when the movie felt a little flat in the opening few scenes, I was always having a good time. But, happily, it grew on me. The more we got of Anita, Bernardo, Valentina and even Riff, the more interesting I found this movie’s take on the material and the more I generally liked the movie. The movie sort of rides the line between seeming like it’s in a real place and feeling like a stage set. Scenes in the Puerto Rican neighborhood approached a kind of reality (or, at least, golden age Hollywood musical reality) but other scenes, particularly some of the scenes set amid the construction rubble of half-demolished slums, felt more like an excellent tech crew was working with a very large budget.

The least interesting thing about the film is probably the Tony-Maria love story. Elgort is mostly fine, Zegler is quite good, bringing more depth to the occasionally drippy-seeming character of Maria. Their relationship had more oomph than I remember from the 1961 movie — more actually than most Romeo & Juliet stories I’ve seen. But all the stuff going on around them and all the supporting characters — to include smaller roles like Anybodys (Iris Menas) or Valentina or Chino or the storyline about the urban renewal projects displacing many neighborhoods — are more interesting than the two people who “love at first sight” during a dance battle. (A well-staged dance battle. All of the choreography here is electric and has that “big Hollywood musical dance number” showmanship, all bright colors and screen-filling extras.)

As with the 1961 movie adaptation of West Side Story, Anita is the movie’s standout character, followed here by Valentina (which feels fitting, since Moreno won an Oscar for playing Anita in the 1961 movie). Anita is awesome, her showcase song “America” is the banger it always is, her wardrobe is a costume-y delight and she gets the movie’s most complex (if super downbeat) arc. DeBose brings all the energy and stage presence the role calls for and absolutely shines throughout. I also appreciated the movie’s take on Anita’s personal goals and the relationship between Bernardo and her, and their different experiences with trying to make it in New York. This movie doesn’t modernize the play’s politics, necessarily, but it does bring some 2021 awareness to the racial and economic issues in the story.

This adaptation of West Side Story doesn’t explode its box or do something entirely new, but it adds enough little details or tweaked elements that it does feel like its own thing while still presenting you with the songs and characters you know and love. A-

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, strong language, thematic content, suggestive material and brief smoking, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, West Side Story is two hours and 36 minutes long and distributed by Twentieth Century Studios in theaters.

Being the Ricardos (R)

A series of potential calamities hits the I Love Lucy show during one week in the early 1950s in Being the Ricardos, an Aaron Sorkin-written and -directed movie that is in theaters now and slated to stream on Amazon Prime on Dec. 21.

On Sunday, Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) gets an early peek at a tabloid story alleging that her husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), is a serial cheater — worse, she’s getting the story after he’s been gone for a couple of days. After he comes back, claiming he spent the time playing cards on his boat and swearing that he’s been a faithful husband, the two start to make up — only to have their making out interrupted by Walter Winchell’s radio report of a blind item about the most popular woman in television being a secret communist. Maybe he means Imogene Coca, Desi tries to calm her by saying, but Lucy knows he’s talking about her.

On Monday, Lucy and Desi meet with officials from CBS and Philip Morris (the show’s largest advertiser) to explain the situation — or rather, to sort of explain the situation. Desi tells them she checked the wrong box when registering to vote decades ago, though privately Lucy says her one-time communist party affiliation was a tribute to the grandfather who raised her. The story hasn’t hit the papers yet, but Lucy and Desi work to reassure their show’s staff, the network and Philip Morris that Lucy’s no communist and that this hit show, now in its second season, will go on.

Monday’s craziness pushes their intended big news of the week back a day: Lucy is pregnant and, rather than hide that fact on TV with laundry and giant chairs, Desi wants Lucy Ricardo, her onscreen persona, to be pregnant on air as well. Of course, pregnant women are indecent (somehow) and shake the very foundations of society (or something) and aren’t to be shown on television, is the network’s position, which the couple will have to work to change.

Will the show last long enough for Desi to get his boundary-breaking pregnancy storyline or will news of Lucy’s recent appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee sink the show before Friday’s tape time? This is the most urgent part of the story, but Lucy’s fears about Desi’s infidelities and the possible breakup of their marriage also bubble steadily in the background. Then there’s the ongoing, very active dislike between costars William Frawley (J.K. Simmons) and Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda), who is bristling at her character’s dowdiness being a running gag (and a likely bit of typecasting from which she won’t escape). We also watch writers Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) and Bob Carroll (Jake Lacy) jostling for position with executive producer Jesse Oppenheimer (Tony Hale).

The movie is framed with an older trio of actors playing those last three characters as they look back on that week, a conceit that allows for a lot of exposition delivery. It’s not the smoothest bit of scene-setting and character-building ever put on screen, but it gets the job done — which is maybe how I’d describe the movie overall. Nobody blows you away but nobody stinks up the joint, performance-wise. This is neither the most nor the least Sorkiny Sorkin screenplay; I think in the main his writer tendencies work with the material and the story as he’s chosen to tell it.

In addition to directly being told about the volatility of Lucy and Desi’s relationship, we get flashbacks that sort of deepen the exploration of the characters and their motivations. You know, sort of. This movie reminds me a bit of last year’s Mank for how it gives you a picture of an earlier era of showbiz, showing you both the golden public image and the grimier behind-the-scenes happenings. But while that movie was Doing A Thing (giving you the behind-the-scenes of Citizen Kane in the style of Citizen Kane), Being the Ricardos is a more straightforward take that blends network politics, national politics and marriage politics with bits of several people’s biographies. This movie is solid, enjoyable if you are at all interested in TV or Hollywood or any of the big names involved — and the fact that it will soon be available for viewing in your home is all the better. B

Rated R for language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being the Ricardos is two hours and 5 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios in theaters and will stream on Amazon Prime starting Dec. 21.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• The Polar Express (G, 2004) will screen multiple times at all three Chunky’s locations through Thursday, Dec. 16. Tickets cost $5.99.

• The Danish Collector: Delacroix to Gauguin (2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 6 p.m.

• House of Gucci (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Dec. 16, at 3:30 & 7 p.m. and Thursday, Dec. 23, at 6 p.m. (vaccinated guests); Friday, Dec. 17, through Sunday, Dec. 19, at noon, 3:30 & 7 p.m.

• Die Hard (R, 1988) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Dec. 16, at 7 p.m.

• Nightmare Alley (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres on Friday, Dec. 17, through Sunday, Dec 19, at 12:30, 4 & 7:30 p.m. and (for vaccinated guests) on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 6:30 p.m.

• Elf screening at Christmas Break on a Budget on Saturday, Dec. 18, at noon at The Strand in Dover. The afternoon will include storytime, family activities and the movie. The cost is $20 for a family of four or $8 each.

• National Lampoon’sChristmas Vacation (PG-13, 1989) will screen at Regal Fox Run on Saturday, Dec. 18, at 1 p.m. Tickets $5.

• The Polar Express (G, 2004) will screen at the Park Theatre (19 Main St. in Jaffrey; theparktheatre.org) on Saturday, Dec. 18, at 1 p.m. Admission is free but go online to get tickets. Have a photo taken with Santa and Elves in the lobby.

• The Bolshoi Ballet — The Nutcracker A broadcast presentation captured live, Sunday, Dec. 19, at 12:55 p.m. at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord. Tickets cost $15.

• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) will screen at all three Chunky’s locations on Sunday, Dec. 19, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5.99.

• The Music Hall will show a series of holiday movies during Christmas week at its Historic Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth), including White Christmas (1954) on Tuesday, Dec. 21, at 3 p.m.; Love Actually (R, 2003) on Tuesday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m.; It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) on Wednesday, Dec. 22, at 3 and 7 p.m.; The Grinch (2018, PG) on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 3 p.m.; and Last Christmas (2019, PG-13) on Thursday, Dec. 23, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $12 for seniors age 60 and up, students, military and first responders. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• The Strong Man (1926) starring Harry Langdon and directed by Frank Capra, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Dec. 26, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Admission is free; $10 donation suggested.

• The Senior Movie Mornings Series at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St., Manchester) presents White Christmas(1954) on Tuesday, Dec. 28, at 10 a.m. Tickets cost $10. Call 668-5588 or visit palacetheatre.org.

Featured photo: West Side Story. Courtesy photo.

Encanto (PG)

A girl growing up in a magical family with a magical house tries to find her place in the world in Encanto, a lovely new animated movie from Disney.

Mirabel (voice of Stephanie Beatriz) is a member of the “magical Madrigal” family, whose members all live together in a large house in an idyllic Colombian valley. All of the adult members have their own superpowers that they call their “gift.” Mirabel’s mom, Julieta (voice of Angie Cepeda), can heal people with her cooking. Her sister Luisa (voice of Jessica Darrow) has superhuman strength. Her “perfect” sister Isabela (voice of Diane Guerrero) can make gardens of beautiful flowers grow and bloom at will. Her aunt Pepa (voice of Carolina Gaitán) can control the weather. Pepa’s children, Mirabel’s cousins, Dolores (voice of Adassa) and Camilo (voice of Rhenzy Feliz), have superhearing and shape-shifting powers, respectively. Only Pepa’s and Julieta’s husbands (voiced by Mauro Castillo and Wilmer Valderrama) are non-magical, having just married into the family.

Abuela (voice by María Cecila Botero) is in charge of the house and the family and her power seems to be having the triplets — Julieta, Pepa and Bruno (voice of John Leguizamo), “we don’t talk about Bruno” is the family’s position about that brother — that kicked off the family’s magic and caring for the family and the town that grew up around the house.

The house, which has a magic of its own, responding to voice commands and occasionally being a little sassy, and the family get their magic from a long-burning candle that became charmed as a sort of miracle after the death of Abuela’s husband long ago. He died helping his wife and children — and the people who became the townsfolk — escape from the bad guys on horseback who had chased them out of their former hometown and into the jungle. His sacrifice leads to the miracle of the magic-giving candle and a forest that grows to create a hidden valley where the people can live safely.

Abuela is determined to keep the house, the family and the magic going so that they can all stay safe in this green, beautiful and, it’s implied, somewhat hidden valley. But as the years go by, Mirabel never develops her gift. When she starts to see some cracks in the house, Abuela secretly fears that the house, the magic and the family could be falling apart but is determined for the town to see only the strong, magical family they’ve always been.

Mirabel’s quest — because these movies always have a quest — is to figure out what is putting the magic in danger and to save the family’s miracle. To do this, she sets out to find clues about Uncle Bruno, whose power was seeing the future and who vanished years ago.

Encanto is a truly beautiful movie — beautiful all the way around, beautiful music, beautiful songs that play with South American musical elements, beautiful jewel-toned visuals, beautiful characters that display a wide diversity of the people you might find in one Latin American family. And it has some really beautiful messages about being yourself, figuring out your place in the world, loving and celebrating family not for the image we want to project but for what it and its members truly are. And it has a fair amount of humor. There isn’t a wisecracking dragon or snowman but the cousins bring plenty of their own quirky senses of humor to the situation.

I feel like there is a lot here that I appreciated initially and that I will only grow to enjoy more with subsequent viewings (and I’m sure there will be subsequent viewings, as this movie comes to Disney+ on Dec. 24).

But — and it kills me that there’s a “but” — there is also something off about Encanto, like a cake where one layer is way too thick and one layer is way too thin and the whole thing is leveled off with large frosting patches. The movie takes a long time to get to the central problem — and I’m still not entirely certain I understand what that problem was — and rushes through things such as Isabela’s discovery that she can make things other than soft, rose-like flowers and Luisa’s stress at having to carry so much weight all the time. Bruno is a really well-developed and intriguing character that the movie doesn’t always seem to know what to do with. I would have loved Mirabel as a child, with her curly hair and her glasses and her lack of a discernible Thing, and she’s a great character to build an adventure around but, as with so many other elements in this movie, her whole arc seems rushed. We see her worry A Lot about her place in the family if she is not gifted like everyone else but the resolution of this comes very fast and feels unfinished. Maybe there are so many good characters, so many ideas, that the movie spends too long setting up all its pieces and leaves not enough time to play out their stories? So many times it feels like a really interesting point or a fairly big character development is sort of sewed up with one very fast line of dialogue.

I feel like I need to watch Encanto again to really figure out how I feel about this movie. But I guess the best recommendation I can give for it is that I look forward to another viewing. I may not have always understood what Encanto is doing but it’s such a lovely world to spend time in. B

Rated PG for some thematic elements and mild peril, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard and co-directed by Charise Castro Smith with a screenplay by Charise Castro Smith & Jared Bush, Encanto is an hour and 42 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in theaters (and on Disney+ starting Dec. 24).

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• House of Gucci (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres on Thursday, Dec. 9, at 3:30 & 7 p.m. and Thursday, Dec. 16, at 6 p.m. (vaccinated guests); Friday, Dec. 10, through Sunday, Dec. 12, at noon, 3:30 & 7 p.m.

• Elf (PG, 2003) 21+ screening at all three Chunky’s locations on Thursday, Dec. 9, at 7 p.m.

• Straight Is the Way (1921) This silent crime drama set in New Hampshire will screen Thursday, Dec. 9, at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. (for vaccinated guests) at Red River Theatres with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.

• The Polar Express (G, 2004) will screen multiple times at all three Chunky’s locations Friday, Dec. 10, through Thursday, Dec. 16. Tickets cost $5.99.

• Belfast (PG-13, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres on Friday, Dec. 10, at 1 & 4 p.m.; and Saturday, Dec. 11, and Sunday, Dec. 12, at 4 p.m.

• The French Dispatch(R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres on Friday, Dec. 10, through Sunday, Dec. 12, at 7:30 p.m.

• Winter Starts Soon (NR, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Saturday, Dec. 11, and Sunday, Dec. 12, at 1 p.m.

Featured photo: Encanto. Courtesy photo.

House of Gucci (R)

The family behind the Gucci fashion company faces scandal and murder in the 1980s and 1990s in House of Gucci, a movie that doesn’t live up to the promise of its trailer.

The trailer is great, buzzy, maybe just this side of camp, and gives you many of the best lines and displays the “all in” performance by Lady Gaga. The movie — really gave me an appreciation of whoever cut the trailer.

The movie starts in the 1970s, I think, with Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) meeting Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), a law student whose father, Rudolfo (Jeremy Irons), owns half of Gucci along with his brother Aldo (Al Pacino). Maurizio has grown up wealthy but otherwise doesn’t seem involved in Gucci. When Patrizia fails to make a good impression with Rudolfo, Maurizio breaks away from his father (and his money). He goes to live with Patrizia’s family, working for her father’s trucking company, and the two get married.

When Aldo calls Maurizio to congratulate him on his wedding, Patrizia sees an opening to get Maurizio back into the family fold — and possibly to connect with some of that Gucci wealth. Maurizio isn’t entirely comfortable with how Patrizia advises him to play Aldo and his son, Paolo (Jared Leto under so very much makeup), against each other but he seems OK taking advantage of the outcomes, which are more wealth and power in the family business. But the more Patrizia pushes, the more Maurizio seems to grow disenchanted with her.

This movie has some real “but why?” casting (Leto, definitely, but also Irons and Pacino) and some Joey Tribbiani School of Italian Accents accent-work. But Lady Gaga is giving 110 percent all the time, swinging at every pitch, throwing lots of stuff against the wall to see what sticks — all the cliches for just absolutely diving into this thing whether it’s any good or not. I don’t know that the result is a great performance but she’s great to watch. The movie is significantly less interesting when she’s not on screen. I don’t think the story does a particularly great job of making Patrizia into a fleshed out human and not just a cartoon but I think Gaga’s performance does paint a more complex — or at least just compelling — character.

House of Gucci had me thinking about two TV shows. One is Succession, for the way I didn’t actually root for any of the characters. They all seem unlikable, dangerously selfish and the kind of people you’d just generally steer clear of (as portrayed in this movie, I know basically nothing about the real life Guccis). But that’s fine — the way this movie is built, I didn’t find myself needing a hero and got some good soap opera entertainment watching these screw-ups betray each other. If anything, this movie needed to lean in to the jerkishness of these characters more.

The other TV property is the Ryan Murphy-verse of American Crime Story — a series with reenactments of big public crimes and scandals (or Feud, with its focus on golden age of Hollywood gossip). I’ll admit, I’ve probably read more recaps of these shows than I have actually watched them but I found myself wondering why this project didn’t go that route. It would seem to have all the sudsy elements — business machinations, family betrayals, a rocky marriage — to sustain some six to eight episodes. Here, storylines feel like they are being truncated — Paolo and Aldo spend the last hour or more separated from the Patrizia/Maurizio action — even though the movie is more than two and a half hours long (and feels it).

I’m not sorry I watched House of Gucci, particularly for everything to do with Lady Gaga (her character’s so-of-the-times hair, her wonderful glamorous-tacky wardrobe). I kept waiting for the movie to really take off, really go for the moon with its general craziness, but it frequently felt bogged down. Lady Gaga and the trailer are a solid B+, everything is maybe generously a B-.

Rated R for language, some sexual content, and brief nudity and violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ridley Scott with a screenplay by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna (based on a book by Sara Gay Forden), House of Gucci is two hours and 38 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures.

Belfast (PG-13)

Belfast of 1969 is seen through the eyes of a young boy in Belfast, a semi-autobiographical story written and directed by Kenneth Branagh.

The opening scene is an encapsulation of Buddy’s (Jude Hill) life in 1969: he’s a young boy — young enough to be learning multiplication tables, old enough to have a crush on the girl who is often the head of the class — whom we meet playing knights with a homemade sword and a trash can lid as a shield. He’s called home by his mother (Caitríona Balfe), a call that is repeated down the street by neighbors and cousins and a slew of people that have known the family as long as any of them can remember. Heading home in the middle of this busy street full of friendly hellos, Buddy suddenly finds himself stuck between two quickly approaching gangs about to battle and riot. His mother rushes out to grab him, using his shield to protect them both from thrown rocks, and then pushes Buddy and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) under the table in their home as she crouches by the window watching the chaos outside. This neighborhood, as we learn, is a mix of Catholics and Protestants, and has lived peacefully, but now there are barricades, soldiers and a local gang that is pressuring Catholics to move out and Protestants (like Buddy’s family) to become active in their cause.

Buddy’s dad (Jamie Dornan) is eager to keep himself and his boys, particularly teen Will, out of all this and to try to exist in peace. But this task is harder because he is only home every other weekend, spending most of his time in England, where he works in construction. He sees no good future for the family in Belfast and wants them to move to England. Buddy’s mother, meanwhile, doesn’t want to leave everyone and everything she’s ever known and the community that she feels cares for and supports her boys.

We see all of this from a kid’s perspective, both figuratively (the attempts to talk to the girl he has a crush on are at least as important to Buddy as the social unrest) and literally, as many scenes show us the world (predominately in black and white) from Buddy’s height or peering-around-a-corner location. It works as a way to tell this story and helps to put us in Buddy’s situation — terrifying things are happening but this is also a rosy memory about childhood.

This also allows us to see Buddy’s story without always putting all the weight of a scene on child actor Jude Hill. The movie gives us a nice balance of Hill’s genuinely strong performance with the performances of the grownups around him, including his grandparents, played by Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds. We get to see a slice of the prickly relationship between his parents, Dornan and Balfe, but we don’t know their whole story, in the way we seldom really know the story of our own parents’ relationship, particularly during our childhood.

I suppose I could quibble with some of the choices the movie makes with its use of black and white and occasional color (which appear when the family is watching a movie or live theater — a hint maybe that we’re seeing young Kenneth Branagh experience the world of acting), or its occasionally overwhelming, Van Morrison-heavy soundtrack. But these elements weren’t really flaws. This movie is fairly immaculately crafted, with the kind of compelling specificity that comes with someone telling their story. A

Rated PG-13 for some violence and strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, Belfast is an hour and 38 minutes long and distributed by Focus Features in theaters.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• House of Gucci (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Dec. 2, and Thursday, Dec. 9, at 3:30 & 7 p.m. (vaccinated guests) as well as Friday, Dec. 3, through Sunday, Dec. 4, at noon, 3:30 and 7 p.m.

• Belfast (PG-13, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Thursday, Dec. 2, at 3:30 & 7 p.m. (vaccinated guests) as well as Friday, Dec. 3, through Sunday, Dec. 5, at 1, 4 & 7 p.m.

• 21+ “Christmas Vacation Ugly Sweater Party” will be held on Thursday, Dec. 2, at all Chunky’s locations. The event will start at 7 p.m. in Manchester and Pelham and 8 p.m. in Nashua. The PG-13 1989 movie will screen during the event, where people who wear ugly Christmas sweaters get extra prizes. Tickets cost $5.99. (Take notes — there will be a 21+ Christmas Vacation trivia night on Thursday, Dec. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Manchester.)

• The Metropolitan Opera Live — Eurydice Saturday, Dec. 4, 12:55 p.m. at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord. Tickets cost $26.

• Gremlins (PG, 1984) will screen at Regal Fox Run on Saturday, Dec. 4, at 1 p.m. Tickets cost $5.

• National Theatre Live The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time A broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• Elf (PG, 2003) A family-friendly screening will happen Wednesday, Dec. 8, at all three Chunky’s locations — 6 p.m. in Manchester and 7 p.m. in Pelham and Nashua. On Thursday, Dec. 9, at 7 p.m. at all three locations there will be a 21+ Elf screening.

Featured photo: House of Gucci. Courtesy photo.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (PG-13)

Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace and the spirit of the late Harold Ramis star in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a distant sequel to the 1980s Ghostbusters movies.

Ramis was Egon Spengler in those movies, the most nerd-minded of the Ghostbusters. Here, the movie opens with Egon, seen in shadowy profile and from behind, running from some supernatural thing and holding a clearly full ghost trap. He meets some kind of end at the claws of a spooky something — but his adult daughter, Callie (Carrie Coon), believes he has died of a heart attack.

Callie is not super broken up about her father’s death; he abandoned her family as a child, she says. But as she is being evicted from her apartment, she decides to take her two children —15-year-old Trevor (Wolfhard) and 12-year-old Phoebe (Grace) — to the rickety farmhouse where Egon had been living. In the middle of Oklahoma, the town would seem to be unremarkable except for a mine (that secretly houses an ancient temple) and loads of scientifically inexplicable earthquakes.

Trevor doesn’t care about any of that but he is quickly interested in the local drive-up restaurant and roller-skate-wearing server Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). Phoebe is interested in the strange seismic activity and in the odd devices she finds lying around her grandfather’s home. She finds a science buddy in Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), her summer school teacher who keeps his class busy with VHS movies like Cujo so he can spend his time monitoring the town’s earthquakes on his geological equipment. Together with Podcast (Logan Kim), a fellow student of Phoebe’s who is always working on getting audio for his show, Grooberson and Phoebe investigate old equipment Phoebe finds, with Grooberson explaining its 1980s origins.

Along the way, Phoebe finds herself communicating — first via a chessboard and then through the movement of items throughout the home — with the grandfather she never knew but quickly feels a lot of commonality with.

This movie has moments of charm, most of them related to nostalgia and good will toward Harold Ramis, but it’s not nearly as charming as it thinks it is. Without getting into the whole thing of the 2016 remake of Ghostbusters (where the Ghostbusters were ladies and I thoroughly enjoyed it), this movie shows more reverence to the source material — too much reverence, in my opinion. In my review of 2016 Ghostbusters, I compared it to the joyful Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This movie feels more like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, where the canon of the previous movies doesn’t get out of the way enough to have fun in the present. This movie is at its best when it boils down to the oddball foursome of the confident Lucky, the tries-to-be-cool Trevor, the self-assuredly nerdy Phoebe and the podcast-star-wannabe Podcast realizing they have to actually fight supernatural beings to save the town and possibly the world. These personalities are maybe not actually big enough to carry the whole film, but they are at least sort of organic together. When a bunch of original Ghostbusters stuff is layered on top of this, we just get what feels like “nostalgia product,” like we’re watching the movie version of one of those reissued 1980s toys you sometimes see at Target.

A bigger problem is that Ghostbusters: Afterlife is short on a sense of fun. The original movies and the 2016 reboot realized the inherent goofiness of the movie’s premise and its non-horror-film approach to the whole ghosts thing. Here, the zaniest energy is coming from Paul Rudd, who is an entertaining character but isn’t central enough to carry the energy of the movie on his own. I almost felt like this movie — which is rated PG-13 and very much feels like a movie for teens and up — maybe should have skewed younger if it was going to play things this straight and gone for more of a tween-friendly/whole-older-family film. Ghostbusters: Afterlife feels like it has a good premise and some interesting ideas but it needed to be smarter or sillier to really stand on its own. C+

Rated PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Jason Reitman with a screenplay by Gil Keenan & Jason Reitman, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is two hours and four minutes long and is distributed by Columbia Pictures in theaters.

King Richard (PG-13)

Richard Williams is a man with a 78-page plan for turning his daughters Venus and Serena into tennis superstars in King Richard, a middle-of-the-road biopic with a solid Will Smith performance.

Richard Williams (Smith) will tell anybody who listens about his big and detailed plans for his two young daughters. He and wife Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis) work long hours at their jobs and then spend their off hours pushing Oracene’s three older daughters at schoolwork and Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) at schoolwork and on the tennis courts, even if those courts are in a rundown Compton, California, park. But Richard spends his time at his job going through tennis magazines to find coaches, later traveling to pitch each one with homemade brochures about his daughters. His ask is big: for these famous (and expensive) coaches to take on his daughters for free. But the exchange is a piece of their future earnings, which Richard confidently believes will be astronomical.

Eventually the undeniable talent of the girls is able to get them coaches, first Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), who only coaches Venus much to Serena’s disappointment, and then Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who brings both girls — and their sisters and parents — out to Florida to live and train. What the coaches may not realize at first is that in taking the Williams girls they are also taking on Richard, who is nearly as confident in his own abilities to coach and manage the girls’ careers as he is in their greatness.

While Venus and Serena are the big names, Richard, as the title implies, is the movie’s focus. But though the movie is a biopic, I’m not sure how thoroughly we know him by the end of the movie. We see how he pushes his daughters but we don’t ultimately feel like we know the man himself outside the tennis context. Is he a self-promoter, is a question the movie asks but doesn’t really answer. The movie drops in biographical information — his upbringing in a racist southern town and a father who was absent as he got older; Richard and Oracene having both been athletes in their youth; Richard’s other children, whom Oracene mentions during a fight. But it both seems to be more interested in the personality of the man than a Wikipedia-like recounting of facts and feels more slight on that interior stuff than I was expecting. (And the movie still goes through a lot of timeline, resulting in a more than two-hour runtime.) The result is a totally fine performance by Will Smith, one that I can completely see in the mix for awards-season discussion but that didn’t have me thinking “role of a lifetime!” either.

I can see why in this story about two very young athletes you’d pick the adult to make the movie about. But everything we see of the girls and the pressures they’re under (the movie gives us quite a few scenes of other tennis children berating themselves when they lose), especially in this moment of wider cultural conversation about top-level sports and mental health, makes their situations seem like the more interesting story. This movie only really covers the earliest stages of Venus’s career and I ended the movie wishing I knew how they felt about Richard’s plan and the course of their careers.

King Richard seems like a perfectly adequate prestige fourth-quarter film but for a movie about such dynamic and culturally significant athletes it is lacking a certain bit of sparkle. B

Rated PG-13 for some violence, strong language, a sexual reference and brief drug references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green with a screenplay by Zach Baylin, King Richard is two hours and 18 minutes long and is distributed by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max through Dec. 19.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• House of Gucci (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Tuesday, Nov. 23, at 7 p.m.; Wednesday, Nov. 24, and Thursday, Nov. 25, at 3:30 & 7 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 26, through Sunday, Nov. 28, at noon, 3:30 & 7 p.m.

• National Theatre Live No Man’s Land A broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• Paths to Paradise (1925) and Hands Up! (1926) Silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Nov. 28, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Admission is free; $10 donation suggested.

• The Metropolitan Opera Live — Eurydice Saturday, Dec. 4, 12:55 p.m. at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord. Tickets cost $26.

• National Theatre Live The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time A broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).

• An evening with Chevy ChaseA screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989, PG-13) plus Q&A with audience on Saturday, Dec. 11, 7 p.m. at the Cap Center. Tickets start at $59.50.

Featured photo: Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Courtesy photo.

Clifford the Big Red Dog (PG)

A girl having a rough time adjusting to a new school adopts a dog in Clifford the Big Red Dog, a live-action movie based on the books.

Clifford is a photorealistic CGI Labrador-ish puppy movie-magicked red. When 11-year-old Emily (Darby Camp) first meets him, he is a just nameless small weirdly red dog — so small that he sneaks into her backpack unnoticed. Her mother, Maggie (Sienna Guillory), is out of town for a few days for work and Emily’s somewhat aimless Uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall), who would like it to be known that he has only lost her twice while babysitting her, is watching her. He demands they take the dog back to the strange animal rescue where they first saw him but she turns her sad girl eyes on him and he says they can keep the dog for the night but look for the mysterious Mr. Bridwell (John Cleese), the rescue’s manager, in the morning.

But in the morning, Emily wakes to find that the tiny puppy she’s named Clifford is now very large — still a puppy but more the size of a medium elephant. Emily, who has recently started at a new private school where the kids are snotty and she is lonely, is desperate to keep the puppy. Casey is desperate to keep Maggie from learning that he’s let her daughter adopt a minivan-sized animal. So they set off to try to find someone — Mr. Bridwell, a veterinarian, the wealthy father of Emily’s friend Owen (Izaac Wang), who appears to own an animal sanctuary — who can help Clifford. And, help them before the family’s landlord (David Alan Grier), with a very strict no-pets policy, finds out that Clifford is living in their very small New York City apartment.

But Clifford quickly becomes a bit of a viral star, getting the attention of Tieran (Tony Hale), an evil tech guy from a company seeking to make bigger organisms with the goal of growing more food more quickly. So far, all they’ve managed to engineer are giant chicken eggs, a two-headed goat and a very mean sheep. But Tieran thinks that if his company captures Clifford, they might unlock the secrets to giant cows.

A neighborhood full of characters quirky enough that you feel like you’re supposed to get to know them rallies to support Emily, who learns how to stand up for herself against bullies and how to make friends. It’s all done very softly, with lessons easily learned and most people basically friendly. Even the moments of Clifford in peril are very mildly perilous — all of which made the movie perfectly palatable to my young elementary school kids. But also relatively mild were the animal hijinks — and as big-dog silliness gave away to more emotional stuff, the movie lost them somewhat. My more middle-grade-aged kid seemed more engaged in the story-telling, more entertained by the “pleasant family sitcom”-level of humor.

While Clifford is somewhat visually distracting in the uncanny-valley sense, the movie was overall inoffensive. And, sure, “inoffensive and fine, I guess, rave critics!” is not something you’re likely to see in movie trailers. But that is where this movie landed, and I don’t think that is necessarily a knock on it. Sometimes a movie just being watchable by kids of varying ages and something their parents can stomach having on without paying too much attention is exactly the kind of entertainment the whole family needs. B- Rated PG for impolite humor, thematic elements and mild action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Walt Becker with a screenplay by Jay Scherick & David Ronn and Blaise Hemingway (based on the books by Norman Bridwell), Clifford the Big Red Dog is an hour and 37 minutes long and distributed by Paramount Pictures via Paramount+ and in theaters.

Passing (PG-13)

Two childhood friends reconnect as married women in 1920s New York City in Passing, based on a novel by Nella Larsen with an adapted screenplay by Rebecca Hall, who also directed the movie.

When we first see Irene (Tessa Thompson), she’s out shopping on a hot summer day — being sort of quiet and deliberate in the way she walks, surveys a room and talks to people. What we realize she’s doing before every interaction is figuring out what the other person — fellow well-heeled shoppers, store clerks, hotel doormen — sees when they look at her. Irene is, as she later explains, “passing,” for the convenience of not being recognized as African-American in these predominantly white spaces in the 1920s.

Clare (Ruth Negga), also hanging out at the hotel, does give Irene a second look — and keeps looking until she comes over to reintroduce herself. Irene is rather shocked to realize that this blonde woman with a white husband — John (Alexander Skarsgard) — is her girlhood friend from the neighborhood. She is even more shocked to learn that John, whom she meets and quickly gathers is quite the racist, has no idea that Clare (or Irene) is Black.

Irene’s encounter with Clare seems to sort of shake her. She leaves with little intention of talking to Clare again; Irene’s husband, Brian (Andre Holland), even makes fun of Clare’s shallow-sounding apology letter (Irene was clearly appalled by John’s casual racism) that she sends later on. But then months later Clare shows up at Irene’s house and the women rekindle their friendship.

The movie leaves a lot ambiguous about what is happening between Clare and Irene. Both are well-off women, but living in different worlds with different levels of freedom in different circumstances because of how they present themselves to their worlds. Both seem to have tensions in their marriage — Clare’s more obvious than Irene’s but Irene also seems to have a wall between herself and her husband. We never really learn what their relationship was like in their youth and it’s never completely clear what each woman is looking for from the other now. At one point Irene tells a white writer friend, Hugh (Bill Camp), that everybody is passing in some way — one of many times when we wonder if the devoted wife and mother Irene seems to be working so hard to present herself as is her cover, of sorts, for other internal conflicts and frustrations. When she seems to push Clare and Brian to spend more time together, is she defeatedly accepting an attraction between them that she senses or is she doing it as a way to avoid thinking about her own attraction to Clare? There’s a lot that happens in the silences here, in the way Thompson and Negga look at each other, in the way the movie lights a scene, that leaves you to fill in the blanks of what you feel it all means. This even carries through to the way the movie ends. At times, I felt some frustration with this — exactly what does this movie want me to think I’m seeing? But Passing has stuck with me and, if anything, the ambiguity has left me thinking more about what’s going on with the people than strictly about the movie’s plot points.

Perhaps because it leaves so many things gray — both figuratively and literally, as this movie shot in black and white seems to most often play, beautifully, with grays — the movie is also able to touch on a lot of issues without it seeming like “Issues Related to Race: The Movie.” We see moments of Irene’s marriage, her interactions with her housekeeper, her parenting, her social life that all get to different elements of socioeconomic status and gender roles and hint at the tensions between the things she may want in her life and the things she feels she’s expected to do.

Passing is a quiet movie that leaves a bigger impression than it initially seems. Strong performances by Thompson and Negga and interesting choices in the way the movie was shot made this movie feel like a surprise masterpiece — something that had me invested and enthralled before I realized how much I liked what it was doing. A Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some racial slurs and smoking, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Rebecca Hall with a screenplay by Rebecca Hall (from the novel by Nella Larsen), Passing is an hour and 38 minutes long and available via Netflix.

Red Notice (PG-13)

Get cops, thieves and quips in Red Notice, a broad mostly fun adventure comedy starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds.

A nice fast food fried chicken sandwich with pickles, a side of fries and maybe a shake or some lemonade: Is it, you know, good? No. But is it good? Yes! Yes, so delicious even though you know it has very little nutritional value and is possibly contributing to long-term health problems. Likewise, is Red Notice contributing to the decline of theatrical distribution by providing, directly to your home, widely appealing or at least widely tolerable entertainment potentially in that four-quadrant sweet spot with big-name stars? Er, possibly. But is this movie good like a hot and crispy meal that comes in a paper bag and doesn’t require any work on your part? Yes, yes it is. Greasy, a little much, but satisfying.

After some extensive exposition explaining the fabled (and fictitious) three bejeweled eggs of Cleopatra, a fancy wedding present from Marc Antony back in antiquity, we meet FBI profiler John Hartley (Johnson) on the trail of Nolan Booth (Reynolds, playing the Ryan Reynolds Character TM that has become his whole shtick), an internationally known luxury-items thief. When Hartley’s paths cross with Booth’s, Booth has just stolen one of those eggs from a museum in Rome. We learn that all of art-thiefdom is likely looking for these eggs, one of which has never been found in modern times, because a wealthy Egyptian is looking to give them to his daughter as a wedding gift and he’s willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to whomever can bring them to him.

After some fighting and some quipping, Hartley nearly has Booth but then Booth is able to slip away — only for Hartley to follow Booth to his fancy home in Bali and take back the egg. Too easy, thinks Interpol agent Urvashi Das (Ritu Arya), who turns around and arrests Hartley. It seems that his identity, including proof that he works at the FBI, has been erased, possibly the work of The Bishop — a rumored but never identified thief even more successful than Booth. (I’m going to spoil it right now and tell you The Bishop is Gal Gadot, which is only a spoiler if you haven’t seen any movie-related images and have never seen a movie before.) Both Hartley and Booth wind up in a Russian prison and decide that the only way out is to work together to help Hartley catch The Bishop. If he turns her in, Hartley hopes he can restore his good name and Booth hopes that there may be just enough wiggle-away room to score the three Cleopatra eggs himself.

This movie checks all the boxes for this kind of treasure-hunt-with-hot-people affair: We get a variety of international locales, cat-and-mouse scenes between thieves and cops and sometimes between thieves and thieves, and an unlikely partnership in Booth and Hartley leaving room for lots of physical comedy as well as rat-a-tat quips. This movie even has a secret art cache that blends ancient artifacts and stolen-by-Nazis loot. Does this movie underline what it’s doing by having Ryan Reynolds whistle the Indiana Jones theme music? Yes it does. But did I laugh when he and the Rock hunt for the egg and he advises to “look for a box that says ‘McGuffin’”? Yes, yes I did.

Red Notice does not exceed exceptions; it does not do any extra credit with the performances or dialogue or cleverness of the action or plot. But it delivers on the kind of National Treasure-y level (with just enough swear words that I probably wouldn’t show it to a kid younger than 13 or so) that I think it’s aiming for. Red Notice is easy watching and just fun enough to justify the low-bar effort involved in finding it on Netflix. B-

Rated PG-13 for violence and action, some sexual references and strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, Red Notice is an hour-and-58- minute-long break from serious thought and is available on Netflix.

FILM

Venues

AMC Londonderry
16 Orchard View Dr., Londonderry
amctheatres.com

Bank of NH Stage in Concord
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com

Capitol Center for the Arts
44 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, ccanh.com

Cinemark Rockingham Park 12
15 Mall Road, Salem

Chunky’s Cinema Pub
707 Huse Road, Manchester; 151 Coliseum Ave., Nashua; 150 Bridge St., Pelham, chunkys.com

Dana Center
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester, anselm.edu

Fathom Events
Fathomevents.com

The Flying Monkey
39 Main St., Plymouth
536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com

LaBelle Winery
345 Route 101, Amherst
672-9898, labellewinery.com

The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org

O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com

Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org

Regal Fox Run Stadium 15
45 Gosling Road, Newington
regmovies.com

Rex Theatre
23 Amherst St., Manchester
668-5588, palacetheatre.org

The Strand
20 Third St., Dover
343-1899, thestranddover.com

Wilton Town Hall Theatre
40 Main St., Wilton
wiltontownhalltheatre.com, 654-3456

Shows

• The Big Parade (1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Tickets start at $10.

• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. at the Colonial Theatre in Keene (thecolonial.org). Tickets $15 (free for veterans).

• Spencer (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord Friday, Nov. 12, through Sunday, Nov. 14, at 1, 4 & 7 p.m.

• The French Dispatch (R, 2021) screening at Red River Theatres Friday, Nov. 12, through Sunday, Nov. 14, at 1:30, 4:30 & 7:30 p.m.

• Gojira (1954) the Japanese-language kaiju film introducing Godzilla, will screen with subtitles at Wilton Town Hall Theatre on Friday, Nov. 12, and Saturday, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m.

• Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) will screen at Wilton Town Hall Theatre on Friday, Nov. 12, and Saturday, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m.

• The Littlest Rebel (1935) starring Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, will screen at Wilton Town Hall Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 13, at 2 p.m.

• Hot Water (1924) starring Harold Lloyd, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Nov. 14, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Admission free; $10 donation suggested.

• Sunflowers (2021) screening at Red River Theatres in Concord on Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 6 p.m.

• Warren Miller’s Winter Starts Now at The Music Hall, Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 19, at 6 and 9 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 20, at 4 & 7 p.m. Tickets start at $28.

Featured photo: Clifford the Big Red Dog. Courtesy photo.