“The Martian” opens Friday at Point, Palace, AMC Fitchburg and Sundance Cinemas. PG-13, 2:22, three and a half stars out of four.
I’m going to be a sucker for any movie that includes a shoutout to ’80s Infocom text adventures. But, “Leather Goddesses of Phobos” aside, “The Martian” is a terrific piece of entertainment, awe-inspiring and suspenseful in all the ways you would expect, funny and loose in all the ways you wouldn’t expect.
“Eden” has its Madison premiere at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. The screening is free for museum members and $7 for non-members. R, 2:11, three stars out of four.
Those expecting “Eden” to be a joyful paean to EDM and rave culture will be disappointed. Those expecting “Eden” to be a sensationalized cautionary tale of the toll that the drugs-and-sex culture surrounding dance culture will also be disappointed.
Instead, Mia Hansen-Love’s film finds a bittersweet middle path, following the gentle rise and fall of a moderately-successful French DJ. “Eden” was co-written by Hansen-Love’s brother Sven and based on his own life as a musician, and has the ring of authenticity in its portrayal of the practical side of creating killer beats.
FILM STILL – PAWN SACRIFICE – Liev Schreiber (left) stars as Boris Spassky and Tobey Maguire (right) stars as Bobby Fischer in Edward Zwick’s PAWN SACRIFICE, a Bleecker Street release. Date Added 8/4/2015 3:25:00 PM Addtl. Info Credit: Takashi Seida
“Pawn Sacrifice” is now playing at Sundance, Point and Palace Cinemas. PG-13, 1:54, three stars out of four.
Two guys in suits stare at a wooden board may not be the most cinematic of circumstances. So the “Pawn Sacrifice” makes the safe and smart decision to spend as little time on the chess pieces as possible, instead focusing on the minds of the players.
And, in the case of Bobby Fischer, there is plenty to focus on.
“Grandma” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:22, three stars out of four.
“Time passes. That’s for sure.” The epigram from poet Eileen Myles opens writer-director Paul Weitz’s comic drama “Grandma,” and the film doesn’t get much more profound than that in exploring its themes of aging and regret. But Weitz (“About A Boy”) isn’t aiming for sweeping profundity, instead making a character study that’s small, sour and sweet — like one of those hard candies your grandma had in a bowl by the front door.
“7 Chinese Brothers” has its Madison premiere Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Union South Marquee Theatre, 1208 W. Dayton St., as part of the UW-Cinematheque fall series. Not rated, 1:16, three stars out of four.
There’s a scene in “7 Chinese Brothers” where somebody tips over a barrel of loose change. As the pennies, dimes and nickels go cascading across the cement floor, I thought to myself “Yikes, that could be the movie’s entire budget, right there.”
“Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. PG, 1:25, three stars out of four.
“Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” is a movie made by people under a spell. The spell was cast by “The Prophet,” a slender volume of poetry written by Lebanese author Kahlil Gibran in 1923 that became an international sensation, especially when the counterculture picked it up in the 1960s.
The animated film “inspired by” the book is clearly a labor of love for all concerned, an attempt to both bring Gibran’s words of wisdom to a new audience and to celebrate them with gorgeous animated visuals from a host of top independent animators. The film succeeds wildly at the second goal. Achieving the first is a little trickier.
“Meru” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:27, three stars out of four.
“Meru” opens with a shot of three of the world’s best mountain climbers, sleeping in a giant bag hanging off the side of a cliff thousands of feet in the air. You don’t see that on the cover of Outside magazine.
While “Meru” has jaw-dropping visuals to rival that of fictional mountain climbing films like the upcoming “Everest,” it has a lasting impact because of how it digs into the hard work of climbing, and the psyches of those willing to to devote their lives to. Co-directed by legendary climber Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, “Meru” brings us closer than any other documentary to understanding what it’s like to be up hanging out the side of a treacherous mountain. But the more I understood what it was like, the less I understood what drove people like Chin to go back up there again and again.
“When Marnie Was There” gets its FREE Madison premiere (and only theatrical screenings) on Saturday, Sept. 6 at the UW-Cinematheque screening room, 4070 Vilas Hall. The 2 p.m. screening will be dubbed into English (with voice acting by Hailee Steinfeld, John C. Reilly and others) and an English-subtitled version at 7 p.m. This review is taken from the subtitled version. PG, 1:43, three and a half stars out of four.
Studio Ghibli films like “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke” can take audiences seemingly anywhere. But they are cherished because they always stay tethered to the real world of children, creating emotional textures as rich and deep as their visual ones.
“Diary of a Teenage Girl” opens Friday at Point Cinemas, Star Cinemas and Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:42, three and a half stars out of four.
Don’t be too fooled by the Sundance-y quirky look of the poster for Marielle Heller’s terrific film, with the protagonists sitting in front of wallpaper that Wes Anderson might have picked out for them. Although Heller’s debut does have some stylistic flourishes, this is not an exercise in style, but a refreshingly honest film, both funny and sad, about growing up female in all its messy complexity and wonder.
“Phoenix” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. PG-13, 1:38, three and a half stars out of four. I’ll be doing a post-shot chat after the Tuesday 7 p.m. show at Sundance Cinemas.
The title “Phoenix” may evoke images of the mythical bird rising from the ashes, but the Berlin depicted in Christian Petzold’s film is not so much rising as crawling out of the ruins, dazed and guilty. The haunting thriller looks as much at the intimate interior damage wrought upon by World War II as the physical damage.
Madison Movie 