Starplex Cinemas - Mesquite Cinemas 10

A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a spectacular Titanic-by-way-of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone. It's no shock that Ang Lee... More »

A stacked-deck theological inquiry filtered through a spectacular Titanic-by-way-of–Slumdog Millionaire narrative, Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone. It's no shock that Ang Lee brings to his high seas adventure graceful and refined aesthetics devoid of any unique signature or pressing emotion, as the director has proved himself a skillful craftsman without an imprimatur to call his own. Here, that anonymity results in slavish, proficient devotion to his source material, Yann Martel's 2001 novel. The story concerns the upbringing of Pi (newcomer Suraj Sharma) in India, his unbelievable experiences surviving a shipwreck aboard a life raft also occupied by a Bengal tiger, and his post-rescue efforts to convince Japanese officials that his tale is true—a three-part structure that's framed by the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan), recounting his tale to a nameless Writer (Rafe Spall). A struggling Caucasian American novelist who has been told that Pi's saga will convince him of God's existence, the Writer-- who looks like he just came from a Banana Republic modeling shoot-- is a colonialist appropriator of Pi's story, which he plans to turn into his own novel. Lee ignores such thorny sociopolitical dynamics, opting instead to couch this framework as further proof of the divine magic of storytelling. Lee stages the freighter's demise with a thrilling immediacy, taking full advantage of 3-D, and culminates with a shot of an underwater Pi gazing at the vessel as it descends to the bottom, its lights twinkling like flickering eyes. Still, the story's relentless articulation of its thematic aims proves a buzz kill, and the film spoon-feeds rather than enlightens. « Less

2:45 PM, 9:50 PM

Steven Spielberg and his jaunty little apologue about the 16th President of the United States aside, it's no longer enough in movies for an historical figure or literary character to do simple stuff like abolish slavery or find a man of... More »

Steven Spielberg and his jaunty little apologue about the 16th President of the United States aside, it's no longer enough in movies for an historical figure or literary character to do simple stuff like abolish slavery or find a man of intelligence and character. Abraham Lincoln is reduced to slaying vampires. Elizabeth Bennet is stuck fighting off zombies. And Hansel and Gretel can’t just kill off one cannibalistic witch and call it a day: In Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, they've grown up to become bounty hunters who must roam the land, kicking gnarly witch butt. Actually, according to this assertively revisionist reading of the Brothers Grimm, young Hansel and Gretel were led into the woods by their parents for a very good reason, having to do with the naked ambition of a very bad witch, Muriel (Famke Janssen). As it turns out, the grown versions of Hansel and Gretel, now celebrity witch hunters-- they're played by Gemma Arterton and Jeremy Renner-- have been brought to a small village to find the crone who's been snatching the local children, and damned if it isn't Muriel herself, accompanied by a whole coven of evildoing uglies in makeup left over from The Devil's Rain. There's actually no pleasure at all to be had in this humorless Hansel & Gretel, which was directed by Tommy Wirkola, whose previous credits include the 2009 Nazi-zombie horror comedy Dead Snow. But there is a truly intriguing mystery here: What on Earth are Renner and Arterton doing in this godforsaken thing? « Less

3:10 PM, 7:45 PM

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey... More »

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey facilitated by the eponymous Jack (Nicholas Hoult), the naïve farm boy who trades his horse for magic beans that sprout up like some unholy tincture of Miracle-Gro and HGH, putting both Jack and an intrepid princess (newcomer Eleanor Tomlinson) face to face with mankind's potential extinction. The story is hardly original or surprising, but the supremely confident Singer lends Jack an enjoyably old-fashioned showmanship that recalls a time when movie illusions were created by hand rather than by computer. Hoult (Warm Bodies) makes for an appealing lead, with the hesitant milk-fed smile of the young Tom Cruise and an unforced chemistry with Tomlinson. Simply put: Any five minutes of this is preferable to all of The Hobbit. « Less

12:10 PM, 2:40 PM

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey... More »

There are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky-- and, eventually, on earth-- in Jack the Giant Slayer, X-Men director Bryan Singer's big-budget, gently revisionist, 3-D spin on "Jack and the Beanstalk." It's a journey facilitated by the eponymous Jack (Nicholas Hoult), the naïve farm boy who trades his horse for magic beans that sprout up like some unholy tincture of Miracle-Gro and HGH, putting both Jack and an intrepid princess (newcomer Eleanor Tomlinson) face to face with mankind's potential extinction. The story is hardly original or surprising, but the supremely confident Singer lends Jack an enjoyably old-fashioned showmanship that recalls a time when movie illusions were created by hand rather than by computer. Hoult (Warm Bodies) makes for an appealing lead, with the hesitant milk-fed smile of the young Tom Cruise and an unforced chemistry with Tomlinson. Simply put: Any five minutes of this is preferable to all of The Hobbit. « Less

5:20 PM, 7:50 PM, 10:20 PM

Gross-out horror is never far from comedy, and The Host, Bong Joon-ho's giddy creature feature, is a broadly played clown show full of lowbrow antics -- itself a sort of monster as the top-grossing movie in South Korean history. The main... More »

Gross-out horror is never far from comedy, and The Host, Bong Joon-ho's giddy creature feature, is a broadly played clown show full of lowbrow antics -- itself a sort of monster as the top-grossing movie in South Korean history. The main attraction is a killer tadpole: It's an "It." Bong's allegory is deliberately free-floating; still, that the thing has its origins in American hubris is made clear in the prologue, set in a morgue on a U.S. Army base, where an overbearing American officer orders a hapless Mr. Kim to dump gallons of toxic chemicals down the drain and into the Han River. Cut to picnickers on the riverbank, transfixed by something suspended beneath the bridge. The "It" falls into the water and swims over. Ordinary people, being what they are, merrily pelt the unknown creature with garbage until, with projectile force, it bounds ashore, grabbing the 11-year-old Park family granddaughter in its fishy clutches. From then on, it's personal. For the Parks, the monster comes to embody whatever irrational forces oppress them. Meanwhile, authorities explain (rather illogically) that the creature was carrying a mysterious virus. But is it the It or South Korea who is really the host? As amorphous as its creature, The Host has an engaging refusal to take itself seriously -- and yet, however funny, it is hardly camp. The emotions that The Host churns up, regarding idiot authority and poisonous catastrophe, are raw. Is revulsion a form of revolt? « Less

12:40 PM, 3:20 PM, 7:05 PM, 9:45 PM

12:35 PM, 5:30 PM, 7:40 PM

Here's how dumb things get in A Good Day for Die Hard–Related Media Product, which is being sold as a bang-bang movie sequel so that nobody catches onto its true nature: a black-ops experiment testing the human faculty for discovering coherent... More »

Here's how dumb things get in A Good Day for Die Hard–Related Media Product, which is being sold as a bang-bang movie sequel so that nobody catches onto its true nature: a black-ops experiment testing the human faculty for discovering coherent patterns in unrelated shards of image. Late in the film, as their brains jigsaw director John Moore's shots into their own individual narratives, audiences might discern that the heroes have leapt from a building without first looking down. As a helicopter crashes around them, they splash into the cheapest of fall-breaking contrivances: a well-maintained swimming pool. What makes this so risible is that the building they've jumped from is a long-abandoned military structure on the grounds of the Chernobyl nuclear plant—just the place for a refreshing dip. Welcome to Die Hard 5: You Thought Surviving a Nuke in a Fridge Was Stupid? One of those heroes is purportedly "John McClane," a human male we've seen before. But time and indifferent scripting have streamlined him for nothing but brute, relentless motion, leaving us with an engine part we may as well just call Die Hard (Bruce Willis). The other hero is Die Hard Jr. (Jai Courtenay), a CIA agent undercover in Moscow. What exactly happens in the story I couldn’t say; no two viewers will assemble the same narrative from this Rorschach of running men, crashing glass, and hollered exposition. This least of all possible Die Hards is constructed like a window some kid broke and then tried to glue back together. « Less

5:15 PM, 9:40 PM

Here's a breakthrough, of a sort: The funniest scenes in Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy-- playing a multi-named serial liar and credit-card fraud artist we'll call Diana--... More »

Here's a breakthrough, of a sort: The funniest scenes in Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy-- playing a multi-named serial liar and credit-card fraud artist we'll call Diana-- clocks Jason Bateman with a vicious neck punch. Bateman-- as yet another sane fellow whose life is infested with plot-driving crazies--clocks, tackles, and even brains her with the stolen bric-a-brac that clutters Diana's home. I'm not going to argue that this man hitting this woman for laughs is a progressive triumph. But it is at least a victory for whatever is the opposite of sexism. McCarthy gets bashed about like a Stooge, and she bashes back with riotous abandon. Sadly, the rest of the movie is a shambles. So, let it be said, this one time only: Here is a comedy that really could use more inter-gender violence. (I’ll leave it to you to parse the sexual politics of McCarthy's insult after Bateman beans her with a knickknack: "You throw like a fuckin' girl!") The rest of the film, they’re solo acts, each doing what audiences expect: She yells and exhibits an unsocialized horniness; he regards her with dismay and disgust. Yes, disgust. There's no way around it: The producers of Identity Thief seem to find McCarthy's real-world body loathsome. Her big comic sex scene is ruined by director Seth Gordon's refusal to shoot her below the chin, and her Diana is later freighted with a sad-clown back story and given a princess makeover—penance, perhaps, for having roughhoused like the boys in the first reel. « Less

12:05 PM, 2:35 PM, 5:10 PM, 7:45 PM, 10:15 PM

12:25 PM, 5:35 PM, 9:55 PM

12:15 PM, 2:40 PM, 5:05 PM, 7:30 PM, 10:10 PM

As an artist, Eli Roth always seeks to elevate the human spirit. Whether he's working as writer-director (Hostel), as producer (The Last Exorcism), or as an actor-producer (Aftershock), you can be confident that characters will be tortured and... More »

As an artist, Eli Roth always seeks to elevate the human spirit. Whether he's working as writer-director (Hostel), as producer (The Last Exorcism), or as an actor-producer (Aftershock), you can be confident that characters will be tortured and gutted with tender loving care. Here, Roth suffers a few physical indignities himself. He plays a tourist who, with two buddies (Ariel Levy and Nicolás Martínez) and three girls they've just met, gets caught in an earthquake in Santiago, Chile. When Levy’s hand is sliced off by falling debris, panicked nightclub patrons kick it around the dancefloor. Should we laugh? Is this a comedy? If so, are we also expected to giggle when a gang of escaped convicts chase down and rape one of the women? (The Chilean tourism board will not be including this movie in its next promo packet.) Director Nicolás López is so tone deaf, and the action scenes so murkily photographed, that it's impossible to gauge his intentions. A weird hybrid of the Final Destination death comedies and the Hostel/Saw cruelty fests, Aftershock is incompetently made and morally muddled, but since talent, morality, and Mr. Roth have never been on speaking terms, we're not exactly surprised. « Less

12:20 PM, 2:50 PM, 5:25 PM, 7:55 PM, 10:25 PM

Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save... More »

Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save his son. Inspired by a real-life incident detailed in a 1999 episode of Frontline, the film tracks construction-company magnate John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) as he offers to go undercover to nab drug dealers in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for his estranged 18-year-old son, Jason (Rafi Gavron). The teenager, still apparently smarting over his parents' divorce, faces 10 years in jail for accepting a package filled with Ecstasy and refuses to concoct evidence against a friend to lessen his time behind bars. In order to assuage the hurt he's caused his firstborn, John, after reading the Wikipedia entry for "drug cartel," first has closed-door meetings with a federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon)-- her villainy signaled by both her childlessness and a snide remark about gay weddings-- then drives 1,000 miles in a semi containing mountains of coke secreted in cement bags. As the plot grows more and more absurd-- Benjamin Bratt shows up as a drug kingpin named "El Topo"-- Snitch reveals another kind of political agenda. After telling his co-conspirator in the blow setup that "there's no way I'm going to let either side dictate our fates," John stands in a gun shop, coolly assessing the arsenal that's his for the taking. « Less

12:00 PM, 2:30 PM, 5:00 PM, 7:35 PM, 10:05 PM

12:45 PM, 3:05 PM, 7:30 PM

WWE Studios, the film production arm of World Wrestling Entertainment, breaks from its usual target audience of guys who like films about shirtless, muscley men with The Call, a suspense thriller starring adequate actress and Academy Award... More »

WWE Studios, the film production arm of World Wrestling Entertainment, breaks from its usual target audience of guys who like films about shirtless, muscley men with The Call, a suspense thriller starring adequate actress and Academy Award recipient Halle Berry as an overcommitted, hotshot 911 emergency operator. When she makes a rookie-level error that costs a teenage girl her life, she opts to hang up her call center headset-- until the girl's killer kidnaps another teen victim. Locked in a car trunk with a prepaid cell phone, she calls 911. The middle third of the film comprises the phone call, a tight 40 minutes in which the girl, guided by Berry, deploys the contents of the trunk (screwdriver, paint roller handle, cans of white matte finish) to make her kidnapper's vehicle more conspicuous while Berry presses her for details she can relate to the police. In a nod to the studio's usual demographic, two-time WWE tag-team champion David Otunga plays officer Jake Devans, though fans hoping for spinning headlock elbow drops or backflip kicks will be disappointed. When the emergency call ends, Berry drives out to the crime scene the cops traced down and goes all Clarice Starling inside the spooky cabin where the bad guy keeps his Saw basement, which has to be seen as a departure from the film's thin blue line of realism, or the workaday reality that WWE became known for when the Undertaker defeated Kane with his signature Tombstone piledriver at Wrestlemania XX. « Less

12:15 PM, 2:25 PM, 4:35 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:10 PM