Movies

45 years later, 'Grease' movie rocks again

More Friday openings: fall of a smart phone

There’s something strange about “Hypnotic,” the new action thriller from writer/director Robert Rodriguez, starring Ben Affleck. There’s a sheen of inauthenticity to the trailer for this film, in which Affleck stars as a detective working a bank robbery while wracked with guilt over the kidnapping of his young daughter. Indeed, for the first 30 minutes or so of “Hypnotic,” there’s something that rings false — it feels like Rodriguez sloppily executing a sketchy exercise in the tropes and aesthetics of a detective noir. But then you realize that’s by design.

"Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie" opens with a reenactment of the moment when the film's subject, the star of the "Back to the Future" film trilogy and the sitcoms "Family Ties" and "Spin City," experienced the first symptom, while filming "Doc Hollywood" in 1990, of what would come to be diagnosed as Parkinson's disease.

'R.M.N' hits issues beyond Romanian borders

It seems like everyone’s going to Italy these days. Thanks to a strong dollar and pandemic-induced wanderlust, it’s not just influencers, old friends and exes filling up their Instagram feeds with gelato and pasta. “Succession” Season 3 took to a trip to Tuscany for a wedding, “The White Lotus” Season 2 checked in for a stay in Sicily, while Toni Collette landed in Rome to become the “Mafia Mamma.” And now the “Book Club” gals — Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton and Candice Bergen — take off for a wine-soaked adventure off the page in the fluffy and fantastical “Book Club: The Next Chapter.”

Friday's openings: Book clubs and road races

It was a Chris Pratt versus Chris Pratt showdown at the box office this weekend as “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” finally dethroned “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” in a promising lead-up to this year’s summer movie season. 

That time when missionaries toiled as spies

“They have scoliosis from constant slumps in misery” is one of the many lyrics that leap from the voice of Karly Hartzman, who is adept at creating vivid imagery. Wednesday’s singer-songwriter has no problem hooking listeners with clever wordplay as with a guitar line.

Still waiting? Try two at the Magic Lantern

An album featuring John Williams conducting the Boston Pops changed Justin Freer’s life.

As a critic, it has long felt futile to critically engage with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. By the end of Phase Three, with “Avengers: Endgame,” it was clear that these movies were less discrete pieces of cinematic art than they were puzzle pieces of content made to fit into a sprawling, interlinked multimedia experience. Crafted with a house style that only sometimes allows for the emergence of an auteurist point of view, the narrative emphasizes surprise cameos and crossover multiverses. The movies of the MCU dominate the box office no matter what critics think, sometimes in spite of reviews (no spoilers!). Now, two movies into Phase Five, it can be a challenge to muster the enthusiasm to even watch these films, to say nothing of generating new thoughts and ideas in reaction to them.

At the beginning of “The Eight Mountains,” the stunningly beautiful and deeply affecting adaptation of the award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, our narrator, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) describes a unique kind of friendship, one that has offered him “a place to put down roots.” Roots and rootlessness are at the core of this simple, yet complex tale, one that drives at the very heart of existence, our connection to others and to the world around us. This French/Italian/Belgian co-production is written and directed by the Belgian husband and wife filmmaking team of Felix van Groeningen (“Broken Circle Breakdown,” “Beautiful Boy”) and Charlotte Vandermeersch, who delicately balance the earthiness, effervescence and emotional highs and lows of this story.

Trailing after Harriet Tubman ... on a bike

Newly streaming this week on Netflix is a bold one-shot thriller, “Soft & Quiet,” written and directed by first-time filmmaker Beth de Araújo. Released theatrically last fall, “Soft & Quiet” is daring in both form and content, as de Araújo utilizes the real-time conceit to tackle a real-world problem. Centering around a meeting of female white supremacists that devolves into violence, “Soft & Quiet” is anything but. Star Stefanie Estes anchors the film with a chilling multifaceted performance, and de Araújo’s script doesn’t pull any punches.

Friday's openings: 'Guardians' and love songs

At a preview screening of "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" a couple of weeks ago, I walked into the theater and counted two dozen women and precisely zero men. Some did eventually show up, but the vibe of the gathering can best be captured this way: When I complimented another attendee's dress, she immediately showed me that it had pockets, and then her friend offered to share a coupon code for the store that sold the dress, and then her friend's friend said she actually owned the dress in blue but it never fit right so she was happy to just give it to me - what was I, 5-foot-5?