'Boy Erased'

In “Boy Erased,” his second movie as director, the actor and screenwriter Joel Edgerton illuminates a heartbreaking and controversial subject — the forced “conversion” of gay men and women through prayer and dubious therapy — with sincerity and empathy.

One just wishes the depiction of this true-life story, told by a young man who lived it, came off as more than a sermon-simple lesson in accepting people as they are.

Adapting the memoir of Garrard Conley, Edgerton’s drama introduces us to Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), the dutiful son of Nancy and Marshall (played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe). Marshall Eamons is a Baptist preacher and owner of a Ford dealership in their Arkansas town, and he dreams that Jared will one day follow in both roles.

As the movie begins, we see Nancy driving Jared to a facility that appears to have the trappings of a rehab clinic. In fact, it’s a Christian-based therapy center, where parents pay large sums of money to help their children who have been caught being gay. The lead therapist, Victor Sykes (played by Edgerton), tells his “patients” that there is no such thing as being gay, because it’s not in the Bible. Instead, these young people struggle with “same-sex attraction,” a choice they can un-choose through Jesus.

In flashbacks, Edgerton shows us Jared’s first inklings that he’s gay. There’s the harrowing incident in college in which he’s raped by an older student, Henry (Joe Alwyn). And there’s an encounter with Xavier (Theodore Pellerin), an artist with whom Jared shares a tender evening.

Edgerton also captures Conley’s harrowing descriptions of life inside the therapy center. A picture emerges of a slow-motion horror show, somewhere between quack science and cult teachings, with staffers devoid of qualifications. Edgerton’s performance is particularly good in these passages, trying to convince young patients to stay longer while also hiding his practices from their parents. The rock musician Flea gives a brief, menacing turn as an ex-Marine trying to instill stereotypical manliness through batting practice.

The movie never takes the easy route of demonizing Jared’s parents. Kidman encapsulates the southern belle, caught between maternal protection and obeying her faith’s patriarchy. And Crowe is particularly soulful as the father who wrestles with his status and his pride when confronted with a son who may not be a chip off the block.

It’s likely to become repetitive this fall — with “Mid90s” already out and the drug-addiction drama “Ben Is Back” coming soon — but wow Lucas Hedges is a talented young actor. He cuts through the predictable coming-out tropes and dysfunctional family material of Edgerton’s script, and crafts a sensitive, heartfelt portrayal of a young man weathering a storm of conflicting messages to discover who he really is. From start to finish in “Boy Erased,” Hedges’ performance is indelible.

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‘Boy Erased’

★★★

Opened November 2 in select cities; opening Friday, November 16, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Century 16 (South Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for sexual content including an assault, some language and brief drug use. Running time: 115 minutes.

'Ralph Breaks the Internet'

Where Disney’s 2012 comedy “Wreck-It Ralph” was a delightfully retro dive into video games, the sequel “Ralph Breaks the Internet” is giddily of its moment, a colorfully wacky satire of web culture that doesn’t care whether it’s still relevant in five years or five days.

The new movie returns to the world of the video arcade and the friendship between former bad-guy bruiser Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and candy-coated racer Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman). Ralph thinks life couldn’t get any better, though Vanellope is feeling a little bored winning her races all the time.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Overlord'

One imagines someone walking into J.J. Abrams’ production company and saying “It’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ but as a horror movie” — and then walking out with a deal to make “Overlord,” an erratic but entertaining thriller that starts as a World War II action drama and ends up in a really weird place.

It’s early morning on June 6, 1944, hours before the D-Day invasion, and a platoon of Army Airborne paratroopers have one mission: Get to a church that’s occupied by the Germans and take out the radio tower erected there — or otherwise the Allied troops won’t have the air cover they need at Normandy.

The mission is less simple when the Germans start shooting airplanes out of the sky, and doing significant damage to the one carrying our platoon. By the time it’s all sorted out — in a sequence that  moves to a flaming plane to the French countryside in a way that’s both fluid and chaotic — the platoon is down to four men. 

The one we’ve been following to the ground is Pvt. Ed Boyce (played by Jovan Adepo), an African-American soldier who, we’re told, was too gentle in boot camp. Also surviving the drop are the jaded but war-savvy explosives expert Cpl. Ford (Wyatt Russell), tough-talking Pvt. Tibbet (John Magaro), and nerdy war photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker, from “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”). They get some help from Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), a young woman from the village.

Chloe helps the four American soldiers, because she needs help fending off the German garrison’s nasty commander, Wafner (Pilou Asbaek, from “Game of Thrones”). Chloe also informs them there’s something else going on in that Nazi-occupied church besides radio transmission.

Director Julius Avery moves the action at a dizzying pace. The first half-hour, as the troops land haphazardly in France, is a maelstrom of combat confusion, leaving the audience off-balance as to which characters are going to survive the opening moments and which ones aren’t. It feels a bit like a first-person shooter game, with better effects.

In the second half, screenwriters Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”) and Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) shift into full horror mode, delivering a kinetic story line that Avery augments with some impressive body-horror prosthetic and animated effects. It’s gross, but in a monster-movie kind of way that is more exhilarating than disturbing.

The talented ensemble cast mixes unknowns with kind-of-knowns so that no one has enough star power that the audience is sure he’s not going to meet a gruesome demise. There’s a certain freedom in that, because it means a filmmaker can keep the surprises going pretty much to the end.

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‘Overlord’

★★★

Opens Friday, November 9, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, disturbing images, language and brief sexual content. Running time: 109 minutes.

'What They Had'

Old age is out to get all of us eventually, and one hopes our loved ones have the understanding and wit to handle us the way writer-director Elizabeth Chomko does with her debut feature, ‘What They Had.”

Bert (Robert Forster) and Ruth (Blythe Danner) have been married some 60 years, and despite Bert’s protestations that love “isn’t bells and whistles,” their love has been an enduring one. It’s had to endure a lot in the last few years, as Ruth slowly loses her memory and mind to Alzheimer’s. When the movie starts, Ruth wanders out of their Chicago condo in the snow, and it’s only thanks to luck and a kindly train conductor that she didn’t end up freezing to death in a snowbank.

Bert and Ruth’s hotheaded son Nick (Michael Shannon) knows that it’s time for Ruth to be put in a memory-care facility, but Bert refuses to be parted from his wife or to enter an assisted-living apartment to be near her. After this latest wandering, Nick calls in the couple’s older daughter, Bridget (Hilary Swank), from California to convince Dad of what’s best for Mom.

Bridget arrives, with her moody college-student daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga), and falls into her familiar role as family peacemaker between Nick and their father. Nick is resentful that the parents gave Bridget power of attorney, suggesting they did so because she would never use it. It’s also revealed that Bridget has her own problems, including worries about Emma’s enthusiasm for college and a slow realization that her marriage to boringly reliable Eddie (Josh Lucas) is crumbling.

Chomko, inspired by her own grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, has written a sharply observed look at the family tensions when adult children come to grip with their parents’ mortality. She also delves into Bert’s judgment of his children’s marital choices — Bridget’s obsession with a seemingly “perfect” marriage, and Nick’s fear of commitment to his longtime girlfriend.

The performances are the key here. Swank and Shannon trade some stinging rebukes as the squabbling siblings, both eager to do what’s right for their parents but disagreeing on what that is. Forster, hot off the “Twin Peaks” revival, is touching and aggravating as the siblings’ crotchety dad, and Danner captures with heartbreaking clarity the slow thievery of the mind that Alzheimer’s does on a once-vibrant mind.

It’s possible, in this case, that I’m swayed by my own circumstances. “What They Had” is the first movie I saw after returning from the funeral of my 86-year-old mother, who died last month after a brief illness. While the details are different, the emotions Chomko explores here are many of the ones I’m only beginning to process, both in grieving for my mom and in grasping the demands her death has placed on me and my siblings.

Even so, I think I can say that the family tension and underlying love on display in “What They Had” are sincere and authentic — no matter what one’s family dynamic is.

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‘What They Had’

★★★1/2

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for language including a brief sexual reference. Running time: 101 minutes.

'Wildlife'

Considering what we’ve seen of the actor Paul Dano — in “Little Miss Sunshine,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Love & Mercy,” “Swiss Army Man” and other subtle, sensitive performances — it’s no surprise that his debut as a director, “Wildlife,” is a perfectly measured drama boasting some powerhouse acting.

This adaptation of a Richard Ford novel is set in the 1960s, mostly through the eyes of Joe Brinson (Ed Oxenbould), a 14-year-old growing up in a Montana town with his parents, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Jeanette (Carey Mulligan). The inequities of the marriage are evident, to us if not to Joe: Jeanette is clearly the sharper half of the couple, but that fact doesn’t benefit her in this pre-feminist era.

Jerry works as a golf pro, but when he suddenly loses that job, he flounders in his efforts to provide for his family. Dead-end salesman jobs are no good, and finally Jerry decides the solution is to sign up for a crew fighting a raging wildfire in the nearby mountains — the smoke cloud of which dominates the skyline and becomes a handy metaphor for the roiling tensions in the marriage.

With Jerry gone with no signs of a fast return, Jeanette must fend for herself and for Joe. She takes a secretarial job, but the real benefit comes when she strikes up a relationship — the contours of which are hidden from Joe — with her boss, Mr. Miller (Bill Camp).

Dana and co-screenwriter (and significant other) Zoe Kazan find a rich vein of emotion in Ford’s novel, and their script is precisely calibrated to reveal only so much of that tension to the audience. The result can sometimes be exasperatingly slow, but there are small payoffs throughout the story, including the gorgeous mountain setting.

Best of all, “Wildlife” gives Mulligan a showcase that she seldom gets, and her quietly devastating performance encapsulates Jeanette’s yearning to be taken seriously and her frustration at a society that doesn’t value her beyond her typing and homemaking skills. There’s heartbreak in every slightest movement or line inflection of Mulligan’s performance here, masking her inner passion like the smoke obscuring the fire at its source.

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‘Wildlife’

★★★

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 9, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated PG-13 for thematic material including a sexual situation, brief strong language, and smoking. Running time: 104 minutes.

'Suspiria'

Putting a label on director Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” a singularly disturbing remake of horror master Dario Argento’s 1977 cult classic, seems to be an exercise in futility.

It’s not really a horror movie, though there are scenes of bloody gore. It’s not really a thriller, because thrillers don’t usually move at such a languid pace and clock in at over two-and-a-half hours. It’s got moments of suspense, but as often as not what gets suspended is never allowed to fall to earth.

Maybe “psychological drama” is closest to the mark, but that doesn’t factor in the supernatural elements or the moments of complete weirdness Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich have devised that make this “Suspiria” such an unsettling delight.

It’s 1977 — funnily enough, the year Argento’s movie was released — in the divided city of Berlin. One of the few constants here is the Markos Theatre Company, which survived World War II and continues to draw female dance students from around the world. And if one is to believe Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), the psychologically damaged dancer visiting her psychologist, Dr. Josef Klemperer, there’s a dark secret lurking within the dance company that needs to be stopped.

Dr. Klemperer is played by Lutz Ebersdorf, according to the credits, but that’s a bit of a lie — because, as was revealed shortly after the movie’s debut at the Venice Film Festival, Ebersdorf is really Tilda Swinton in male drag and old-age make-up. It is, as always with Swinton, an amazing performance to watch, and not the only one she gives here.

Swinton also plays Madame Blanc, the head teacher at the Markos troupe’s academy. Blanc, the audience learns early, is in something of a power struggle with the unseen Madame Markos over the troupe’s direction — with Blanc graciously accepting defeat in a faculty vote.

As this is happening, a new student has arrived amid the imposing Cold War architecture: Susie Bannon (Dakota Johnson), a self-taught dancer from Ohio whose natural instincts intrigue Blanc and fire up her choreographic passion. Blanc and her colleagues also see something else in Susie: A possible vessel to perpetuate Madame Markos’ hold on the troupe.

If that sounds vague, that’s by design. Explaining further would be a bit of a spoiler, but also would make no sense without context — because it barely makes sense with context. Guadagnino, shifting gears radically after his languid sun-dappled films “Call Me By Your Name” and “A Bigger Splash,” is after a darker tone here, a vibe of menace and impenetrable mystery.

It’s also a women’s-only space. Besides Swinton’s Dr. Klemperer, there are only two male speaking roles in “Suspiria,” two police detectives who don’t realize how much they’re in over their heads. The women are in charge, with Swinton’s Blanc serving as the imperious mother hen to them all.

Blanc may be in command, but in performance Swinton shares the crown with Johnson, who takes over the movie by slow seducing the audience. Johnson has been dismissed as an actor because of her involvement in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy, but those who don’t conjure with her ability to command the screen need to see this and “Bad Times at the El Royale” for a refresher.

From its captivating first moments to its mind-bending conclusion, “Suspiria” shows Guadagnino is deliberate in his desire to unsettle the audience and rewrite the rules of supernatural horror. His movie messes with a viewer’s mind; it just takes its sweet time doing it.

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‘Suspiria’

★★★1/2

Opened October 26 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Cinemark Jordan Landing (West Jordan). Rated R for disturbing content involving ritualistic violence, bloody images and graphic nudity, and for some language including sexual references. Running time: 152 minutes.

'The Nutcracker and the Four Realms'

The Halloween hangover has barely begun and Hollywood is thinking about Christmas — with Disney leading the way with the new adventure “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” a colorful and frenetic adaptation of the perennial classic.

The movie starts with the basics of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story and Marius Petipa’s ballet: A girl named Clara (Mackenzie Foy) arrives at a Christmas party thrown by the eccentric inventor Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), whose gift transports Clara to a magical world of snow and fairies and the menacing Mouse King.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Can You Ever Forgive Me?'

It’s a mind-expanding exercise to watch “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” a fascinating and emotionally direct “based on a true story” drama about somebody who learned how to manipulate true stories and the words of the witty writers who create them.

Director Marielle Heller, who wowed Sundance audiences with her 2015 debut “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” plunges us into the dreary life of Lee Israel (played by Melissa McCarthy), a morose and misanthropic writer who has seen better days. She’s a barely functioning alcoholic, broke and behind on her rent, hasn’t had a hit book in years, and can’t get her agent (Jane Curtin) to return her phone calls.

When Lee stumbles on a never-seen letter from the comedian Fanny Brice, she has what Dr. Seuss would have called “a wonderful awful idea.” After embellishing Brice’s typed words with a jokey fake P.S., Lee decides she can write faked letters from celebrities — and write bon mots from the likes of Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker that are as authentically witty as the real thing.

Lee’s new career as a forger is a lucrative one, but brings her in contact with memorabilia traders who are sometimes sweet — like Anna (Dolly Wells), a bookstore operator who takes a shine to Lee — and sometimes unsavory, like the skeevy guy (played by Ben Falcone, McCarthy’s husband) running a shop in the East Village. Along the way, Lee also befriends Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), who becomes her enabling drinking buddy and sometime accomplice when the FBI starts sniffing around.

Heller, working off a martini-dry script by Nicole Holofcener (“Enough Said”) and rookie Jeff Whitty, sets a bleak mood that turns out to be completely appropriate to Lee’s self-loathing and her aversion to emotional connection. When her agent tells Lee to write more about herself, it takes a few minutes to realize that she doesn’t because spending time with long-dead writers is preferable to spending it with herself.

McCarthy jumps into Lee’s skin with both feet, again proving herself one of our most fearless actors. McCarthy channels the pugnacious anger of some of her comic characters into Lee, and it turns out to be a perfect fit. She’s particularly good pairing off with Grant, whose scene-stealing turn reveals depths of pain below the cheeky facade.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” also speaks volumes about our collective need for connection to famous names, and the lengths people will go to get it or fabricate it. Lee’s writing may have been faked, but her story’s ragged heart is all too real.

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‘Can You Ever Forgive Me’

★★★1/2

Opened October 19 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language including some sexual references, and brief drug use. Running time: 106 minutes.