Despite being overstuffed and overproduced, Emma Watson is by far the best special effect in Bill Condon’s live action Beauty & the Beast (B-) as the luminous leading lady who enlivens the fairy tale proceedings with enchanting radiance. Attempts to color outside the lines of the 1991 animated musical’s story and to lovingly re-create iconic classic sequences are both a mixed bag: the opulent “I want” song called “Belle” is simply smashing, awash with propulsive joy and resplendent color, but by the time an awkwardly unappetizing “Be Our Guest” is served up by curiously stilted anthropomorphic antiques, it’s more of a test of endurance than the whimsical showstopper that played out as a cartoon. A star-studded cast is squandered; set pieces seem limited to one village, one castle and one CGI forest; and the awkwardness of an inter-species romance feels a little strange when everyone isn’t rendered in line art. Luke Evans is quite good as Gaston, and there’s some new back story that provides intrigue for those concerned this will simply be a shot for shot remake. It’s good source material, so the original Alan Menken/Howard Ashman tunes are a delight (the new Alan Menken/Tim Rice song snippets aren’t as good). See it mainly for Watson’s game take on a Disney heroine (better still, see this actress in Perks of Being a Wallflower). Otherwise, there’s not much here that wasn’t there before.
It’s an encore from a legend worthy of the bows and two-clawed applause. And although it may not quite justify its extended running time, James Mangold’s Logan (B+) is elegiac and electric, giving Hugh Jackman’s blade-limbed hero a fitting farewell. It’s the first superhero of the sandwich generation as Boomer Wolverine becomes dual caretaker for a senile Professor Xavier, gamely reprised by Patrick Stewart, and a pint-sized mutant played by Dafne Keen. The film is largely a chase movie from a Mexican border town upwards through the U.S. to a Canadian outpost called Eden. Set in a dystopian future, the film features X-Men comic books as clues to part of the story. There’s intriguing background mythology, high stakes action, graphic violence, exciting fight choreography and a badass villain played by Boyd Holbrook. The film absolutely delivers the goods for fans of the X-Men movie franchise and of the Wolverine character in particular. In fact, it’s the dramatic high point for the series. Jackman is wonderful, and Mangold gives the film magnificent lived-in flourishes.
Prepare your senses for the clock-woke orange pulp confection of audacious moviemaking to hit a nerve in some time. Funnyman-turned-first-time-director Jordan Peele’s psychological thriller Get Out (A-) is a suspenseful and lively tale of a twentysomething black photographer (Daniel Kaluuya) visiting the suburban family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams), and the maiden voyage is a mindbender. Let’s just say that after the home tour, the events that follow will leave you guessing about a whole lot more than who’s coming to dinner. From the spot-on casting of Williams’ ultra-progressive parents to the sustained sense of dread around the townspeople and groundskeepers, Peele depicts the mounting terror that may be afoot in the neighborly facade. It’s like Shining-era Stanley Kubrick got an all-out David Lynching. Themes about the appropriation of race and culture are seamlessly marinated into a savory stew of a storyline; and the acting, music, sounds and setting all work in harmony to incredible effect. Catherine Keener is a standout as a therapist with unconventional hypnotic techniques, brilliantly rendered. As a horror film, it’s less gory and more allegory. But it’s edge of your seat material and sure to be the conversation starter of the year!
Director Chris McKay shows audiences exactly where a famous caped crusader gets those wonderful toys in the whimsical mini-fig laden animated feature The LEGO Batman Movie (B). A spinoff of 2014’s similarly hilarious 
John Hamburg’s Why Him? (B-) is an amusing entry into a fairly tired “family versus fiancé” formula, thanks to strong casting in plum parts for the Christmas-set comedic ensemble. James Franco plays the Silicon Valley mogul at the film’s heart, relishing the role with his trademark wide-eyed wit and devil-may-care vulgarity. Enter the nuclear family as fish-out-of-water in his world: Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally as the parents, Griffin Gluck as the impressionable little brother and Zoey Deutch as the daughter smitten with Franco’s man-child but still loyal to her pop. Keegan-Michael Key also has a funny role as Franco’s assistant/sherpa, trying to keep the rejuvenile in line. There are a variety of inventive gags, several somewhat believable set-ups and laughs aplenty as the holiday gathering culminates into full-scale calamity. Cranston and Mullally are fun in the straight man roles; and although the story gets a bit belabored, it’s generally the definition of “a fun rental.”
Regaining his strut as a writer/director of modern-day suspense films, M. Night Shyamalan has crafted an entertaining psychological thriller and met an acting match for his cinematic chutzpah in James McAvoy headlining Split (B+). The film is above all else a showcase for the considerable acting talents of McAvoy as a man with 23 discrete personalities (Dennis, Patricia, Barry and Hedwig among the most notable). McAvoy uses some pretty sly ticks and tricks to bring brilliant life to his menagerie of characters. What starts as an abduction and escape room type movie in the vein of the recent 
In John Lee Hancock’s biopic of McDonald’s executive Ray Kroc, The Founder (B), the hunger of the protagonist is so palpable you can almost taste it. It’s a rather ruthless portrait of a business tycoon with Michael Keaton in fine serpentine form, part Midwest milkman charm, as wily as a Music Man, relentless as a cattle driver. While it’s ironic a man named Hancock fails to leave much of a signature in his ambivalent lens on the historical figure responsible for spreading the world’s most famous hamburger stand beyond its humble California origins, it is a fascinating business case and mostly compelling in its story (gulp) arch. As the humble and inventive McDonald’s brothers, Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch are fabulous foils to Keaton’s Kroc. The film’s best sequence, although awkwardly placed in flashback, depicts the McDonald’s brothers designing a kitchen schematic in chalk on a blacktop, with crew “blocking the scene” like theatre directors would do. Kroc’s troubles on the domestic front including an estranged marriage (Laura Dern simply has to look sad a lot) and a fixation on a bottle of his own form of special sauce get short shrift as business machinations take center stage. The cynical themes about persistence and ambition trumping actual genius or invention, juxtaposed against sunny nostalgic art direction, are timely and prescient; but after more richly textured tales such as 
Oh, coming-of-age ensemble dramedies: let me count the ways I love them! Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical 20th Century Women (A) is a blissful slice of life as characters on the cusp of change in freewheeling 1979 Santa Barbara craft an unconventional family. Central to the film is the relationship between never-been-better Annette Bening as an eccentric divorced chain-smoking single mother and her only son, played with perception by Lucas Jade Zumann. Buoyed by before-their-time left coast sensibilities, Bening’s character enlists three kindred iconoclasts as spiritual guardians of her son’s angsty adolescence. Elle Fanning is brittle brilliance, Greta Gerwig a luminous and tender spirit and a weathered Billy Crudup an unlikely boon companion. Mills intersperses flashbacks, flash-forwards, historical archives and literary snippets, coloring the story in lovely context. There are sequences of majestic intimacy between characters as they tumble, stumble, dance and glance through life’s foibles. The film is a tribute to the mother-son bond, anchored by resplendent female performances and a lens into the many portraits of womanhood. Bening centers the film with a marvelous mix of misanthropy and repartee; she is perfection in the role. Roger Neill’s spry music, plus songs showcasing the rise of an emerging West coast punk scene, accent this love letter to shifting mores and the enduring power of familial love.
Welcome to Silver Screen Capture’s latest crossover with Ashley Williams of 
A peculiar fugue for both a nation in mourning and for a woman having a near out-of-body crisis to preserve the legacy of her slain husband, Pablo Larrain’s Jackie (B+) is a film that moves in mysterious ways. In the central role of Jacqueline Kennedy played out in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, in flashbacks to an awkward White House tour and in a guarded interview framing device, Natalie Portman is perfection. The actress conveys urgency and dignity in her rigorous pursuit to control the narrative, preserve the majesty of the POTUS office and bottle the enduring notion of “Camelot.” All the while she internalizes her grief and personal needs in a complex performance of considerable modulation. Portman’s Jackie is keenly aware of history and that all eyes are on her. It’s a wondrous lead performance wrapped in how’d-they-do-that historical reenactments. Overall the film is an artsy, absorbing character study that gets richer as it reaches final act crescendos. Lorrain surrounds his solid lead actress with superb period detail, lush costuming and natural supporting players including Greta Gerwig as loyal assistant Nancy, Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy and John Hurt as an otherworldly priest. Ultimately it’s all about that classic American tenet of meeting the moment when challenges arrive that are bigger than ourselves.
Damien Chazelle’s kaleidoscopic modern musical La La Land (B+) explores the eternal question of whether you should put your art or your love life first. Or maybe you can have both! OK, it’s not exactly a universal question – and possibly a first-world problem at that – but in the hands of starry-eyed and fleet-footed leads Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, they surely confront these themes with a spectacular charm offensive. After an impressive musical number atop and around cars stopped on the Los Angeles freeway (west coast Fame meets West Side Story), the film riffs into Meet Cutes and Meet-Not-So-Cutes, ups and downs and very few surprises aside from it all being a musical. Much is done in an Umbrellas of Cherbourg type leitmotif, but it doesn’t necessarily rain with consistent results. The songs are enjoyable, and Stone is luminescent in a big audition number. The Technicolor dance sequences are quite whimsical and wonderful. Gosling gets his best role yet, with the film exploiting many of his dapper deadpan assets. Stone is a radiant delight, with note-perfect expressions and game takes on a sometimes