'Down a Dark Hall'

The Gothic haunted-house thriller “Down a Dark Hall” is loaded with atmospheric chills, in service to a story that goes from labored tedium to full-tilt crazy — but not enough of the latter to make up for the former.

Kit Gordy (AnnaSophia Robb) is facing her latest suspension from school for bad behavior, but this trip to the principal’s office has a new feature: The presence of Dr. Heather Sinclair (Jodhi May), who teaches literature at an exclusive girl’s academy, the Blackwood Boarding School. Sinclair says Kit, for all of her discipline problems, is exactly the kind of girl who would do well at Blackwood. Kit’s mom (Kirsty Mitchell), out of options, agrees.

When Kit lands at Blackwood, she meets four other young women in a similar predicament: Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman), Ashley (Taylor Russell), Sierra (Rosie Day) and the toughest of the bunch, Veronica (Victoria Moroles). They are given an odd welcome from the headmistress, Madame Duret (Uma Thurman), who promises a rigorous curriculum in art, music, math and literature.

Soon, each of the girls — except Veronica — finds themselves excelling at one of those four disciplines. Kit, who hasn’t played piano since age 9, discovers her talent returning and then some, as she composes ferocious sonatas on the spot. But there’s something strange, almost sinister about how these new talents are manifesting themselves. The girls are also seeing what appear to be ghosts coming out of the shadows.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, who directed the Ryan Reynolds one-man thriller “Buried,” summons up all the visual touches a haunted-house thriller should provide. From the creaky floors to the burning candles, all the elements are there for a spooky Halloween-level experience.

The script, adapted from Lois Duncan’s novel by Mike Goldbach and Chris Sparling, can’t keep the proportions of explainable weirdness and mystifying oddities in balance. The result is a thriller that takes too long to build up to its climax, which turns out to be pretty psychotic — especially with Thurman, fake French accent and all, attacking it with full force. But Thurman’s efforts come a bit late to rescue “Down a Dark Hall” from its early doldrums.

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‘Down a Dark Hall’

★★

Opens Friday, August 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, terror and violence, some language including a sexual reference, and smoking. Running time: 96 minutes.

'Crazy Rich Asians'

In so many ways — as bubbly romantic comedy, as cultural document, as sharp commentary on the super-wealthy, or as feminist empowerment tale — “Crazy Rich Asians” is a delight, an insightful and most of all funny look at life’s luxury suite.

It’s a life that Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) knows about only from research, as an economics professor specializing in game theory at New York University. As the American daughter of a Chinese immigrant, Kerry (Kueng Hua Tan), she’s had to work to get to where she is in life — which, at the moment, includes a sweet, loving relationship with Nick Young (Henry Golding), a well-to-do businessman from Singapore.

What Rachel doesn’t know is that Nick isn’t just from Singapore, but his family owns a sizable chunk of the country, and is one of Asia’s richest families. How rich? So rich that the family can arrange to have their massive mansion not show up on Google Maps.

Nick invites Rachel to spend spring break in Singapore, where he’s to be best man for his longtime friend Colin Khoo (Chris Pang), who’s marrying the also-rich Araminta Lee (Sonoya Mizuno). Rachel agrees, so she can spend time with Nick, meet Nick’s family, and reconnect with her Singaporean college roommate, Peik Lin Goh (played by the rapper Awkwafina).

Rachel gets her first clue of Nick’s family fortune when they get on the plane, and are escorted to a first-class suite that’s bigger than some New York apartments. When she asks if Nick’s family is rich, he replies, “We’re comfortable.” “That’s exactly what a really rich person would say,” she replies.

It’s Peik Lin, living in Versace-clad luxury with her parents (Ken Jeong and Koh Chieng Man), who gives Rachel the full picture. “We’re rich, but they’re crazy rich,” Peik Lin tells Rachel, who soon learns that Nick is also Asia’s most sought-after bachelor, and that most single women in Singapore have already dissected Rachel’s academic profile and personal information (in a social-media montage that’s quick and delightful).

Rachel makes fast friends with Nick’s sister Astrid (Gemma Chan), and gets the lowdown on Nick’s oddball cousins, the image-conscious Eddie (Ronny Chieng) and the aspiring filmmaker Alistair (Remy Hii). But facing Nick’s mother, the imperious family matriarch Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), is going to be Rachel’s toughest challenge of all.

Director Jon M. Chu — whose credits include two “Step Up” dance extravaganzas, a “G.I. Joe” sequel, a Justin Bieber concert film, “Jem and the Holograms” and the magician thriller “Now You See Me 2” — turns out to be the perfect guy for this job. Capturing the lavish lives of Nick’s free-spending relations requires substantial choreography (Colin and Araminta’s wedding is quite the production number), while distilling the detailed cultural commentary of Kevin Kwan’s 2011 novel (adapted to the screen by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Kim) takes considerable finesse to navigate the financial and family ties.

But it’s not all bling and intellectual observations. “Crazy Rich Asians” is, on top of it all, a charming romance, anchored by Wu’s effervescent presence as a smart, caring woman having to reconcile her image of her suave boyfriend with the spectacular wealth in which he was nurtured. And when she applies her game-theory skills to the cutthroat competition going on around her, we the viewers are all winners.

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‘Crazy Rich Asians’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, August 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language. Running time: 120 minutes.

'BlacKkKlansman'

Spike Lee has been waking up audiences, white and black, for years before being “woke” entered the mainstream (i.e., white) lexicon — so it’s not surprising to see how “woke” his new movie, “BlacKkKlansman,” is in its fascinating and intense depiction of a too-fantastic-for-fiction story of a black police detective infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan.

It’s the early ‘70s, and Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington) applies for a job as a cop in the Colorado Springs Police Department. A city councilman (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) tells him he’ll be the department’s Jackie Robinson, and will endure racist taunts inside and out of the police force.

As a rookie in the records department, Stallworth stands up to the casual racism of an older officer (Frederick Weller), but keeps his cool. Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) assigns him to the undercover unit. His assignment is to attend and monitor a speech by the activist and former Black Panther Party leader Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), who was going by the African-inspired name of Kwame Ture. 

It’s at this speech that Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the proud head of Colorado State University’s Black Student Union. Stallworth and Dumas start dating, having passionate conversations about black liberation and the merits of “Shaft” vs. “Superfly.” What they don’t talk about, because Stallworth doesn’t tell her, is what he does for a living.

One day, reading the classifieds, that he sees a recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan. Stallworth calls the number and makes contact with Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold), the Klan’s local chapter president. The comical opening phone call, in which Stallworth declares his hatred for blacks and other ethnic groups, is reminiscent of the scenes in Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You,” in the way Washington deploys his “white voice” to allay Breachway’s suspicions. Soon, Walter is asking Stallworth to meet in person, to continue the conversation.

For obvious reasons, a face-to-face meeting would be problematic, but Stallworth offers a creative solution: Get a white detective to pose as Stallworth for the in-person meetings. That duty falls on Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who reluctantly takes on the assignment. Zimmerman argues with Stallworth that “to you, this is a crusade; to me, it’s just a job” — to which Stallworth responds that Zimmerman, a non-practicing Jew who wears a Star of David necklace, shouldn’t “act like you don’t have skin in the game.”

As Zimmerman gets inside the homes of Klan members, Stallworth over the phone gets inside their heads. He even gets chatting with the Klan’s top national official, the Grand Wizard, David Duke. Yes, that David Duke. Topher Grace portrays Duke with all the seductive menace and white-supremacist arrogance one would expect in someone who has made a life of trying to intellectualize bigotry and hate.

Lee — partnering again with Kevin Willmott (“Chi-Raq”), rewriting a script begun by first-timers Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz, adapting Stallworth’s memoir — uses Stallworth’s strange-but-true story to explore the struggles of black people navigating a white world, and to confront white viewers with that struggle. Lee doesn’t mince words, as when Stallworth’s sergeant (Ken Garito) suggests that Duke or someone who talks like him someday could harness fear and hatred to win the presidency.

Lee also harnesses a century of racism in film history, from “Gone With the Wind” to “The Birth of a Nation” — which Duke screens at a Klan initiation event, as Klansmen and their wives cheer and chomp popcorn. And for those who would dismiss such images as mere entertainment, he brings out Harry Belafonte — still fighting the good fight at 91 — to narrate the true story of Jesse Washington, lynched and burned in Waco, Texas, which some believe was inspired by “The Birth of a Nation,” released a year before.

John David Washington captures Stallworth’s frustration at the racist system that he has joined in the Colorado Springs Police Department, and his righteous glee at being able to use that system to battle back against white supremacists. Washington’s performance is so good that it won’t be long until critics stop referring to him as “Denzel Washington’s son” and start referring to Denzel as “John David Washington’s dad.”

And, in case the audience doesn’t connect the dots or feels complacent about this story being safely tucked in the 1970s, “BlacKkKlansman” finishes with current events. Lee plays back the footage of last year’s white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., the vehicular homicide death of counter-protester Heather Heyer, the hate-spewing rhetoric of David Duke and the equivocation of President Donald Trump declaring that there are “very fine people” among the torch-wielding racists. Lee's scorching conclusion reminds us all of something about which we shouldn’t need to be reminded: Racism isn’t just in the past, but the present.

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‘BlacKkKlansman’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, August 10, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, including racial epithets, and for disturbing/violent material and some sexual references. Running time: 135 minutes.

'The Meg'

Whenever a new innovation hits the movies, there’s a shakedown period where the storytelling is thrown backwards a decade until filmmakers figure out how best to incorporate that new idea into the Hollywood dream machine.

It happened with talkies, it happened with Technicolor, and now — as witnessed earlier this year with “Pacific Rim Uprising,” again last month in “Skyscraper” and now with the hit-and-miss monster movie “The Meg” — it’s happening with the idea of Chinese co-production.

In all three films, having Chinese backers means having the budget to make big-league special effects. It also means setting part of the action in China — whether it’s the Shanghai skyline in “Skyscraper” or Sanya Bay for the climax of “The Meg.” And it means casting actors who are stars in China in prominent roles opposite the American or European stars. (Certainly this is a step up from sticking an Anglo actor awkwardly in an Asian setting, like Matt Damon in “The Great Wall” or Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell.”)

But it also means, so far, sticking to action formulas that feel a bit dated.

In “The Meg,” based on a 1997 beach-read novel by Steve Allen, Chinese actress Li Bingbing is cast alongside Jason Statham. It’s an interesting balancing act, as director Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”) plays them against each other as co-leads. Yes, Statham’s character saves Li’s character from certain death, but she tough and returns the favor when necessary.

Statham plays Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea rescue diver whose career imploded several years back, when he aborted a mission on a submarine — and left two of his colleagues to die — because he saw something monstrous attacking them. But when a submersible from marine research station off the China coast gets trapped in the Marianas Trench, seemingly by the same monster, the station’s boss Mac (Cliff Curtis) calls on Jonas to lead the rescue. Jonas says no, until he learns his ex-wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee), is piloting the submersible.

Li Bingbing plays Zhang Suyin, the station’s marine biologist, mandated by the script to be the one scientist arguing the monster must be kept alive and studied. Suyin gets support for this from her father (Winston Chao), the industrialist who spearheaded the station’s creation. On the opposite side of the argument is Morris (Rainn Wilson), the obnoxious American billionaire who’s bankrolling Zhang’s work — and who wants as big a trophy as harpoons, ropes and depth charges can get him.

Turteltaub assembles an offbeat ensemble around Statham and Li, including Page Kennedy, “Longmire’s” Robert Taylor and “Orange is the New Black” sensation (and future “Batwoman”) Ruby Rose. Of course, we know the cast’s main purpose: Bait for the monster, which is revealed early on to be a megalodon, or “meg,” a supersized prehistoric shark.

Most of the action, despite what you’ve seen in the marketing, is at sea, as the station’s crew tries to subdue the beast before it starts seeking other prey, like tourists. The action is often silly, but not quite silly enough to make a giant-shark movie really fun.

Waterlogged as it is, “The Meg” is crying out for a little Jackie Chan-level comedy or Jet Li acrobatics or Bruce Lee intensity. Maybe future co-productions won’t just take Chinese money and Chinese actors, but some of that wild anarchic spirit of classic Chinese action movies.

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‘The Meg’

★★

Opens Friday, August 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for action/peril, bloody images and some language. Running time: 113 minutes.

'The Cakemaker'

Tender and sensual, “The Cakemaker” mines powerful emotions from an unusual love triangle involving a sensitive German baker, a widowed Israeli cafe owner, and the man who loved them both.

Israeli writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer, making a strong feature debut, begins the story in a Berlin bakery, where Thomas (Tim Kalkhof) every morning makes sweet treats for his customers. One of those customers is Oren (Roy Miller), a businessman visiting from Jerusalem. Oren tries one slice of Thomas’ Black Forest cake and is hooked. 

Soon, Oren is in Thomas’ apartment, and a romance ensues, rekindled once a month when Oren flies in for work from Israel. Oren tells Thomas he’s married with a son back in Jerusalem, and that she will never learn of this affair.

After a year, Oren’s visits suddenly stop. Thomas visits the Berlin branch of Oren’s company and learns that Oren was killed in a car accident in Jerusalem. Thomas is devastated by the news, but decides on a risky course: To go to Jerusalem, and try to meet Anat (Sarah Adler), Oren’s wife.

Thomas finds Anat running her cafe, sweating over the details of a rabbi’s inspection to have her kitchen certified kosher. Thomas, in English because he doesn’t speak Hebrew, asks Anat if she needs any kitchen help. One day, as she’s juggling the cafe with taking care of her son, Itai (Tomer Ben Yehuda), she gives him a job washing dishes, over the objections of Oren’s brother Motti (Zohar Strauss). 

Soon, though, the baking urge is too great, and he starts making cookies and cakes. His pastries are delicious, but Anat warns they may not be kosher, and his baking them in the cafe could risk her certification —and with it, her business. 

The one fault in Graizer’s story, and it’s a big one, is that we know what Thomas knows about Anat and her deceased husband — and we know it’s inevitable Anat will eventually find out, because all the clues are there. Heck, Oren’s mother Hanna (Sandra Sade) meets Thomas for all of five minutes and she intuitively knows he’s got a connection to her late son.  

Delaying the inevitable reveal, Graizer provides space for his characters, notably the shy Thomas and the harried Anat, to show themselves to each other — two people with the same Oren-shaped hole in their hearts. Kalkhof, a relative newcomer with quiet charm, and Adler, who impressed as the grieving mother in “Foxtrot,” have an unhurried chemistry that makes their intertwined grief palpable and gives “The Cakemaker” a sweet finish.

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‘The Cakemaker’

★★★

Opened June 29, 2018, in select U.S. cities; opens Friday, August 10, in Salt Lake City, at the Tower Theatre. Not rated, but probably R for sexuality and some language. In Hebrew and German, with subtitles. Running time: 105 minutes.

'Christopher Robin'

From “Mary Poppins” to “Freaky Friday” to “The Santa Clause,” Disney’s movie library is filled with stories of work-distracted parents learning that family is more important than career — but it’s jarring to see that idea applied to Winnie the Pooh’s human friend in the live-action tale “Christopher Robin.”

It’s jarring in part because of Disney’s interpretation of A.A. Milne’s stories and Ernest Shepard’s drawings that usually put Christopher Robin on the sidelines, gently tut-tutting the “silly old bear” after one of his misadventures. Here, he’s front-and-center, a harried adult played by Ewan McGregor.

Read the full review on sltrib.com.

'The Spy Who Dumped Me'

There’s a void at the core of the action-comedy “The Spy Who Dumped Me” that a joke-heavy script and the always-hilarious Kate McKinnon busting her butt in the sidekick role can’t quite overcome. Maybe it’s me, but I think what’s lacking is the “me” of the title.

The “me” is Audrey, an organic-foods store clerk in L.A., played by Mila Kunis. Audrey is such a bland drip of a character that even if you put a comedic spark plug in the role, like Melissa McCarthy or Kristen Wiig, you wouldn’t get much for the effort. Giving the role to Kunis, the least funny performer in “Ted” and two “Bad Moms” movies, is a portent of doom.

Audrey just recently got a break-up text from Drew (Justin Theroux), so she’s in the dumps on her birthday. Audrey’s live-wire best pal Morgan (that’s McKinnon) suggests they ceremonially burn all of Drew’s stuff, and Audrey does the courtesy of texting Drew to tell him. What Audrey doesn’t know is that Drew is at that moment in Lithuania, killing and trying to avoid being killed by some nasty customers. Still, Drew calls back to apologize, and to beg Audrey not to burn his stuff until he can talk to her.

The next day, Audrey is put into a mysterious van, where two intelligence operatives — Sebastian (“Outlander” star Sam Heughan), who’s with Britain’s MI-6, and Duffer (Hasan Minhaj, from “The Daily Show”), who’s in the CIA — to ask what she knows about Drew. Not long after, Drew shows up in Audrey’s apartment, follows by a lot of bullets and a naked Ukrainian assassin (Dustin Demri-Burns). Drew gets shot, but not before telling Audrey to take an item to Vienna immediately.

Within minutes, for reasons that only make sense in a comedy like this, Audrey and Morgan are on their way to Vienna. But the drop is interrupted by Sebastian and more gunplay.  (Have I mentioned this is an incredibly bloody movie for a comedy?) The chase continues through Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, with Audrey and Morgan unsure who to trust — though they figure out quickly that Nadedja (Ivanna Sakhno), a gymnast-turned-supermodel who’s also a ruthless assassin, is definitely on the “don’t trust” list.

Director Susanna Fogel (creator of the ABC Family series “Chasing Life”), who co-wrote the script with prolific TV writer David Iserson, stuffs her movie with plenty of solid gags, like the left-field lines about Edward Snowden and Nadedja’s thwarted Olympic dreams. She’s also particular in her supporting casting, like hiring Jane Curtin and Paul Reiser, and choosing Gillian Anderson as Sebastian’s no-nonsense boss.

But for all of the funny bits, many of them pulled off with childlike delight by McKinnon, “The Spy Who Dumped Me” is dragged down by Kunis’ humorless vibe. She’s a comedic black hole, sucking the funny out of too many moments of a movie that could have been an enjoyable late-summer surprise.

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‘The Spy Who Dumped Me’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, language throughout, some crude sexual material and graphic nudity. Running time: 116 minutes.

'The Darkest Minds'

Remember when dystopian young-adult action franchises — like “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent” and “The Maze Runner” — were supposed to make us forget about our real-world problems? No such luck with the hit-or-miss “The Darkest Minds,” which starts with scenes of children separated from their families and held in detention camps.

The set-up for this uncomfortable scenario is that, in the very near future that too closely resembles “Children of Men,” a mysterious disease strikes all of America’s children. Most die, but a small percentage survive with heightened abilities. The government starts to color-code children by their new powers: Green for super-smart kids, gold for ones who can manipulate electricity and blue for those with telekinetic powers are deemed safe. The reds and oranges are considered a threat, and are killed immediately.

Ruby Daly (played as a 10-year-old by Lidya Jewett) is an Orange. She soon figures out what that means: She can, like The Shadow, cloud men’s minds and make them do her will. She also can, with a touch, walk around in another person’s memories. She survives her first exam by making the doctor (Wallace Langham) classify her as a Green.

Fast-forward six years, and Ruby — now played by Amandla Stenberg, who made a splash as innocent Rue in the first “Hunger Games” movie — is about to be discovered as an Orange. A kind-appearing doctor, Kate (Mandy Moore), helps her escape the camp, under the nose of the nasty Capt. McManus (Wade Williams), whom Ruby hits with a “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”-level mind trick.

Kate tells Ruby about a support network, The Children’s League, that is rescuing children and training them to fight the oppressive regime of President Clay (Bradley Whitford) that is imprisoning all the children. But Ruby’s not sure to trust Kate, especially when she runs into a trio of rogue kids — Liam (Harris Dickinson), a Blue and a natural leader; Charles, aka Chubs (Skylan Brooks), a brainy Green; and Zu (Miya Cech), a mute Gold. Liam used to train with the League, and convinces Ruby they’re bad news.

So Ruby joins up with Ruby, Chubs and Zu, and hits the road. Their goal is East River, a rumored safe haven organized by a mysterious figure known only as the Slip Kid. To get there, though, they must avoid the government forces and the Tracers, bounty hunters like the scarily tough Lady Jane (“Game of Thrones’” Gwendoline Christie).

There are plenty of twists on the road to East River, but they — like the attraction between Ruby and Liam — feel all-too-predictable in Chad Hodge’s script (adapted from Alexandra Bracken’s novel). Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, making her live-action debut after helming the second and third “Kung Fu Panda” movies, has a solid sense of action pacing, but her real strength is fostering a strong chemistry among her teen actors.

“The Darkest Minds” is the first installment in what Bracken wrote as a trilogy, but I have a sneaking suspicion we won’t see the second and third movies come to fruition. There’s not quite enough oomph to sustain this story into more chapters. Besides, it’s hard to get excited about end-of-the-world scenarios when we see them playing out on the news.

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‘The Darkest Minds’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence including disturbing images, and thematic elements. Running time: 105 minutes.