NOW PLAYING
PG, 1:46
Emmet, the chipper construction worker, is again voiced by Chris Pratt. Emmet’s sense of self-worth is tested, severely, in “Lego Movie 2.” The innocent-looking Lego Duplo characters introduced at the end of the first movie turn into invading space aliens in the sequel. Under siege, the town has morphed into “Apocalypseburg,” two roads down and to the right of “Mad Max: Thunder Road.” In this exceptionally well-cast ensemble, Pratt also voices a second character, Rex Dangervest, conceived as a mixture of every action hit Pratt himself has starred in lately.
R, 1:57, comedy
Taraji P. Henson kills with ferocious, every-which-way comic relish in this amiably raucous remake of the 2000 comedy in which Mel Gibson gained a temporary ability to read women’s minds. As the sassy gay sidekick of Henson’s she-wolf Atlanta sports agent Ali Davis, Josh Brener gets laughs.The film leans into its sincere side effectively. It offers lessons in three father figures played by Tracy Morgan, Aldis Hodge and Richard Roundtree. Add a little raunch; a supporting ensemble to steer around the potholes; finish with a rousing comeuppance; and there it is: A likely hit.
R, 1:58, thriller
A beat-by-beat remake of the 2014 Norwegian thriller “In Order of Disappearance,” director Hans Petter Moland’s “Cold Pursuit” puts Liam Neeson behind the wheel of a snowplow with vengeance on his mind. In the fictional ski town of Kehoe, Colo., taciturn Nels Coxman (Neeson) keeps the roads clear. Nels’ grown son turns up dead, the apparent victim of a heroin overdose. The rest of the movie follows Nels as he dispatches round after round of low-level drug dealers, en route to nailing Mr. Big, the tightly wound sociopath known as Viking. The movie delivers, in its chosen way. But it’s a soulless way.
PG-13, 2:05, comedy
“The Upside” stars Kevin Hart as a lazy, skirt-chasing ex-con hoping to reconnect with his estranged wife and son. He accidentally gets a job taking care of an obscenely wealthy New York businessman (Bryan Cranston) who became a paraplegic while hang gliding. The movie is based on a true story — and lifted from the 2011 French film “Les Intouchables” — but no one really worked on the shaky racial angle for an American audience. Hart, a comic force, reveals his limits as a dramatic actor in his fish-out-of-water role, while Cranston shows only a few glimpses of his formidable skills, especially when he turns steely. —
PG-13, 2:09, thriller
“Glass” is a plodding M. Night Shyamalan lecture on the meaning of superhero origin stories. In “Unbreakable” (2000), Bruce Willis played David Dunn, the mysteriously durable survivor of a train derailment masterminded by Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), whose lifelong case of brittle bone disease positioned him as the opposite of Dunn’s indestructability. “Split” got around to linking these two archetypes with the James McAvoy character(s). “Glass” sets up a showdown between the do-gooder vigilante, Willis, and one of the McAvoy character’s so-called “Hordes.” But however often Shyamalan references superhero tropes, his latest movie struggles to gather momentum.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
