9 movies open Nov. 10; our reviewers weigh in
Nine new movies will be showing in the Seattle area this week. Here are snapshots of what our movie reviewers thought of some of them.
★★★★ “Lady Bird” (R; 93 minutes): Thank goodness writer/director Greta Gerwig talked Saoirse Ronan into doing one more teenage role. “Lady Bird” is a joy, from its start (a teenager and her mother, sleeping face to face on a hotel bed on a college trip) to its finish, when that ever-so-slightly older young woman takes a breath and looks out — hopefully, nervously, excitedly — into a limitless future. Full review.— Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times arts critic
★★★ “Faces Places” (PG; 90 minutes; in French, with English subtitles): Filmmaker Agnès Varda, 89, hits the road with a much younger colleague, the French photographer and artist JR, taking pictures of the locals and leaving behind huge blowups of the images on various structures. Because of age and illness, “Faces Places’” could be Varda’s last film. If so, she’s going out on a high note. Full review. — Walter Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle
★★★ “Murder on the Orient Express” (PG-13; 114 minutes): Festooned with a mustache that looks as if an eel is dancing across his face, Kenneth Branagh plays famous detective Hercule Poirot in this cheerily uneven but enjoyable adaptation of Agatha Christie’s blockbuster novel. Full review. — Moira Macdonald
★★★ “The Square” (R; 145 minutes; in English and Swedish, with subtitles): Claes Bang and Elisabeth Moss star in Ruben Ostlund’s latest film, in which the enlightened and well-heeled seldom even try to live up to their own ideals. The satire, set in the contemporary art world, is as entertaining as it is damning. Full review. — Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
★ “Daddy’s Home 2” (PG-13; 100 minutes): A colossal waste of time and the moviegoer’s dollars. That’s the bottom line for this crass comedy starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson and John Lithgow. Full review. — Soren Andersen, Special to The Seattle Times
“BPM (Beats Per Minute)” (not rated; 140 minutes): This engrossing film, about Parisian activists fighting the AIDS pandemic in the early 1990s, recently won the Grand Prix at Cannes and will represent France in the Oscar race for foreign-language film. Full review. The Los Angeles Times does not provide star ratings with reviews. — Justin Chang
Also opening
“Mansfield 66/67” (not rated; 84 minutes): Directors P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes look at the last two years of movie star Jayne Mansfield’s life and the speculation swirling around her untimely death. It blends classic documentary interviews and archival materials with experimental dance numbers, performance art and animation. Grand Illusion, through Thursday.
“My Friend Dahmer”(R; 107 minutes): Before Jeffrey Dahmer became a notorious sex offender, serial killer and cannibal, he was — according to Marc Meyers’ film, adapted from a graphic novel memoir by Derf Backderf — a withdrawn teenager who dissolved roadkill in acid and indulged in attention-getting classroom antics. Says Glenn Kenny of The New York Times: “The acting is excellent throughout, and Ross Lynch in the role of Dahmer elicits genuine sympathy for an increasingly lost but not yet monstrous soul. But in abandoning the subjective perspective of the graphic novel, ‘My Friend Dahmer’ feels a little lacking in purpose.” Meridian.
“Amazon Adventure 3D” (G; 45 minutes): Based on a true story, this IMAX film follows explorer Henry Bates (Calum Finlay) through the Amazon rain forest in the 1850s, where he discovers the phenomenon of mimicry — animals adopting the look of others to help them deceive predators. Boeing IMAX Theater at the Pacific Science Center.