'First Man'

Damien Chazelle’s “First Man” is everything a good biographical drama should be, and absolutely nothing that one would expect.

In capturing its subject, astronaut Neil Armstrong, the movie respects the emotional reserve Armstrong built around himself. What’s more, it extends that reserve to what one might think would be an easy thing to exploit for tears and cheers: Mankind’s landing on the moon. 

The fact that Chazelle chose this project to follow up his romantic, open-hearted “La La Land” shows some guts — and shows he can work in many more moods than anyone realizes.

For a story about one of humanity’s greatest triumphs, “First Man” is mainly a chronicle of the failures and tragedies along the path. As Armstrong, played with coiled intensity by Ryan Gosling, says after one such failure, “We fail down here so we don’t fail up there.”

The script, adapted from James R. Hansen’s authorized biography by Josh Singer (who co-wrote “The Post” and “Spotlight”), begins in 1961 in the air, as Armstrong works as a test pilot on supersonic aircraft that skirt the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. He’s a good pilot, the powers that be say, but he’s distracted by the health problems of his 3-year-old daughter Karen, who has cancer. Karen’s death is a tragedy for Neil, his wife Janet (Claire Foy), and their other children that colors the rest of their lives.

Seeking a fresh start, Neil enrolls in NASA’s astronaut training program. NASA’s mission, after being beaten by the Soviets at every step of the space race, is to put a man on the moon and bring him back to Earth. We follow the process of the test runs, in the Gemini and early Apollo flights. Sometimes, astronauts were nearly killed — and in one tragic instance, astronauts were killed.

Chazelle also puts the spotlight on Janet, the dutiful wife who works to maintain a brave face in front of the cameras, but privately rails that NASA’s “boys” aren’t as in control of things as they pretend to be. Together, she and Gosling’s Neil are a yin-and-yang of personalities, bringing out the best in each other through adversity.

The movie smartly depicts the hustle-and-bustle of NASA’s astronaut corps, with a solid ensemble that includes Jason Clarke, Patrick Fugit, Christopher Abbott, Lukas Haas, Shea Whigham and Corey Stoll (who plays Armstrong’s abrasive foil and eventual Apollo 11 colleague Buzz Aldrin). Kyle Chandler provides a fatherly oversight as Deke Slayton, the director of NASA’s astronauts.

Chazelle opts to show the space missions not with Kubrickian sterility but with all their rough-and-tumble edge, every shake and shimmy conveyed through wobbly visuals and a sound design that will jiggle the audience’s collective backsides. In many scenes, Linus Sandgren’s handheld camera puts the viewer in Armstrong’s place, feeling every jostle and wobble as it happens. The finale, the depiction of the Apollo 11 moon landing, was filmed using IMAX cameras for maximum detail — and it’s difficult to tell how much of the rocket’s assent is documentary footage of the era and how much is modern visual effects.

It’s probably impossible to re-enact Armstrong’s feat without generating some feeling of pride and accomplishment in the heart of every human who sees it. Chazelle doesn’t deny us that glory, but what he does that’s so remarkable in “First Man” is that he give it a personal meaning — of an astronaut who pushed down his sadness, of a wife who kept her family together through it all, and of a nation that needed a hero.

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‘First Man’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, Oct. 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some thematic content involving peril, and brief strong language. Running time: 138 minutes.

'The Sisters Brothers'

It’s hard to get a handle on what kind of Western “The Sisters Brothers” is trying to be — a revisionist take on frontier violence, an outsider’s metaphor for American brutality, or just an old-school shoot-‘em-up — and that’s part of its charm.

French director Jacques Audiard, who has made such incisive dramas as “A Prophet,” “Dheepan” and “Rust and Bone,” goes to Oregon, circa 1851, for his first English-language feature. There, he introduces brothers Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix), brothers and paid assassins in the employ of The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). Charlie, though younger, is the lead man of the team, and also more comfortable with the killing life. Eli is more reticent about taking life, and puts his priority into protecting Charlie when he’s drunk and unruly.

The Commodore’s assignment to the Sisters Brothers is to rendezvous with a detective, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has been put on the trail of a chemist, Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed). The chemist, the brothers are told, stole something from the Commodore, who dearly wants it back. Morris is under orders to befriend Warm, and detain him until the Sisterses meet them. What Charlie hasn’t told Eli is that he has orders to extract from Warm, to the point of torture, his formula for a process to make gold extraction easier.

Audiard, who co-wrote with Thomas Bidegain (adapting Patrick Dewitt’s novel), spends most of the movie on the trail with Charlie and Eli, as they talk and sometimes bicker about their lethal profession. Eli would rather get out of killing and go open a store somewher, but Charlie enjoys the thrill of pursuing and dispatching people — and, besides, the Commodore would never let them give up the life.

Only when the brothers meet Morris, an intellectual taken to flowery prose, and Warm, whose belief in a utopian future is almost evangelical, do they see the possibilities of life away from the endless bloody trail. The fact that the story would entertain such a departure from the familiar Western scenario is remarkable, and transports, if only briefly, the movie to dizzying heights.

The movie is blessed with a tight ensemble, with all four main men adding subtle shades to the mix. Phoenix and Reilly are believable as irascible brothers, and their differences — Charlie’s mean streak vs. Eli’s gentleness — are set in relief by Gyllenhaal’s gentlemanly Morris and Ahmed’s idealist Warm.

The conclusion is as unexpected as what came before, but in a different way. In a movie so punctuated with gunfire and violence, the ending is oddly muted. The payoff is big, just not in the way a Western usually ends.

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‘The Sisters Brothers’

★★★1/2

Opened Sept. 21 in select cities; opens Friday, Oct. 12, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for violence including disturbing images, language, and some sexual content. Running time: 121 minutes.

'Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween'

As I sat about to watch “Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween,” I thought about all the questions I had after 2015’s “Goosebumps.” Questions like: What happened in the first “Goosebumps” movie? Did I even watch it? Why can’t I remember it?

Turns out, I did see it, and kind of liked it — and I wish I had those fond memories to console me through the force-fed hijinks and special-effects overload of this charmless sequel.

You’ll recall, as I barely did, that the first movie involved some high-school kids who encounter the reclusive writer R.L. Stine (Jack Black), creator of the “Goosebumps” book series. He has the original manuscripts all locked away, because when they’re opened, the monsters within leap off the page and into the real world.

In the sequel, there’s a new town, new kids and a new scary old house. Middle-school buddies Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor, from “It”) and Sam (Caleel Harris) rummage around the scary old house, and happen upon a treasure chest with a mysterious book inside. Before they can investigate, the book is stolen by bullies — but not before the evil ventriloquist dummy Slappy is released to wreak havoc.

It’s up to Sonny’s college-bound sister Sarah — played by Madison Iseman, who, ironically enough, turned into Jack Black in the “Jumanji” reboot — to help Sonny and Sam keep Slappy in line. That’s not so easy when they figure out that Slappy, following the plot of R.L. Stine’s first book, has a plan to make Halloween come alive, and that part of the plan involves Sarah and Sonny’s mom (Wendi McLendon-Covey, from “The Goldbergs”).

Director Ari Sandel (“The Duff”) can’t do much with Rob Lieber’s undernourished script, even when he adds a couple of comedy ringers in the form of Ken Jeong as a decoration-obsessed neighbor and Chris Parnell as an awkward pharmacy clerk. All the humor and charm that anyone tries to muster gets sucked into the whirlwind of animated monsters thrown at the screen.

Lastly, “Goosebumps 2” deploys a strategic cameo — you may have seen it in the ads — for what could have been a clever finishing gag. Unfortunately, the filmmakers undercut the set-up, so the joke falls flat. It’s unlikely the gag would have redeemed this sequel, but it would have helped.

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‘Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween’

★1/2

Opens Friday, Oct. 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for scary creature action and images, some thematic elements, rude humor and language. Running time: 90 minutes.

'Jane and Emma'

The drama “Jane and Emma” takes an intimate and intense approach to a historic event — the 1844 slaying of Joseph Smith, founder and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — through the eyes of two women close to the scene.

One of the women is Emma Smith (played by Emily Goss), the first wife of the prophet, who watches over Joseph’s body in the family’s hotel in Nauvoo, Ill., pistol at the ready, in case an angry mob comes to cart him away. She dreads the public viewing his followers will demand and seeks just a moment to mourn in private.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'A Star Is Born'

No, the contours of the new “A Star Is Born,” starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, don’t veer too far from the 1937 original with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. Or the 1954 version with Judy Garland and James Mason. Or the 1976 version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

It doesn’t take long in Cooper’s soulful directorial debut to realize how little that matters. After all, most movie adaptations of “Romeo & Juliet” tell the same story, and what’s important is the care given to the characters within it.

In Cooper’s version (he shares writing credit with Eric Roth and Will Fetters), those characters are Jackson Maine, an alcoholic country-rock singer, and Ally, a hotel waiter who moonlights as a singer at a drag bar. It’s when Maine, out of booze and looking for a drink, enters that bar and hears Ally singing a sultry take on “La Vie en Rose,” that a connection sparks.

Jackson and Ally spend the night together, driving around in Jackson’s town car and talking about music and songwriting. He gets her to sing a song she wrote. She talks about how she’s uncomfortable singing her own songs onstage, and that talent experts have told her she’ll never be famous because her nose is too big. In the early morning, he takes her home, where she lives with her dad, Lorenzo (Andrew Dice Clay), who runs a chauffeur service and talks about his days as a crooner.

The next day, Jackson invites Ally, and tagalong pal Ramon (Anthony Ramos), to take a private plane to his next gig in Phoenix. In the wings during Jackson’s performance, Ally is shocked when he starts playing the song she wrote, and urging her to sing with him. She does, and it becomes a viral sensation.

What Ally doesn’t see at first is the tension in Jackson’s rock-star life, much of it fueled by alcohol. There are his arguments with his road manager, and older brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott). And there is Jackson’s tinnitus, a condition he refuses to treat, making his hearing only get worse. In spite of the warning signs, Ally falls in love with Jackson. But as she becomes a fast-rising star and Jackson declines into alcoholism and drug dependency, will their live survive?

Cooper shows, both as director and in his hangdog performance, that he’s not just the pretty face of “The Hangover.”His Jackson Maine looks and feels like a washed-up music legend, from his guitar riffs to his choice of friends — namely, a sage old cohort in Memphis played by Dave Chappelle. Cooper also synthesizes the alcoholism tropes of the past “A Star Is Born” iterations and a thousand other movies and gives them a bone-deep authenticity. 

But, unlike Jackson, Cooper knows when to turn the spotlight over to his leading lady. Given the theatricality of her musical persona, it’s no surprise that Lady Gaga makes an impression in the film. What is surprising, and revelatory, is how the woman born Stefani Germanotta channels both the Gaga glamour and the earthy, real human being behind it. The glory of this version of “A Star Is Born” is in how this movie star is born through the deconstruction of the pop star playing her.

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‘A Star Is Born’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, Oct. 5, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, some sexuality/nudity and substance abuse. Running time: 136 minutes.

'Monsters and Men'

Reinaldo Marcus Green’s probing drama “Monsters and Men” could easily get lost in a crowd of movies about police-initiated violence and the Black Lives Matter movement — between its Sundance Film Festival stablemate “Blindspotting” and the big studio entry “The Hate U Give.”

That would be a shame, because Green, as writer and director, takes on a police shooting from several different angles. Each is fascinating and powerful on their own, and together the results are shattering.

The movie begins with a white New York police officer shooting an unarmed black man who was selling loose cigarettes outside a Bed-Stuy bodega. (Eric Garner, who died in a police chokehold in Staten Island, was selling loosies before he was killed.) From that incident spin out three stories about men reacting to that death, having to make a choice, and dealing with the consequences.

First is Manny (Anthony Ramos, who plays Lady Gaga’s pal in “A Star Is Born”), a Latino who witnessed the shooting, and captured the moment on cellphone video. Manny is confronted with a choice: Make the video public, or keep quiet to avoid bringing heat on himself and his young family. 

Next up is Dennis (played by “BlacKkKlansman” star John David Washington), an NYPD officer who has experienced institutional racism himself. When we first see him, he’s in civilian clothes on his way to work, and he gets pulled over for “driving while black.” As the shooting case becomes a media spectacle, Dennis is eyed with suspicion both by his black friends and by white cops, even his partner (played by “Stranger Things” mom Cara Buono). Dennis must decide whether he can remain part of a system whose institutional racism always lies just below the surface. 

The third figure is Zee (Kelvin Harrison Jr., from “It Comes at Night”), a high-school baseball star who experiences a political awakening when he sees Manny’s video. For Zee, the question is whether he follows the advice of his father (Rob Morgan) to stay focused on school and sports, or fans the spark of activism and join those marching in protest.

Except for a cathartic, dynamically staged final scene, Green doesn’t push these issues too forcefully. He makes a tougher choice, to let the emotions and conundrums these characters face play out quietly, not so much with loud speeches than with contemplation and thought. It’s an effective tactic, and one that makes “Monsters and Men” a moving and thought-provoking drama. 

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‘Monsters and Men’

★★★1/2

Opened Sept. 28 in select cities, opens Friday, Oct. 5, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language. Running time: 95 minutes.

'Shine'

To paraphrase a lyric from “A Chorus Line,” the salsa-saturated melodrama “Shine” can be summed up as “dance: 10; plot: 3.”

The movie is set in New York’s Spanish Harlem, a place — as the heavy-handed opening narration by club owner and drummer Ramon (David Zayas) states — where “our souls are united by the same beat.” Ramon teaches his young sons, Junior and Ralphi, to dance salsa, in a studio downstairs from his nightclub. And he regularly turns down offers to sell his building to gentrification-minded developers.

As adults, Junior (Gilbert Saldivar) and Ralphi (Jorge Burgos) are the star dance duo in papa Ramon’s club. Ralphi also dances with Josie (Kimberli Flores), his boyhood crush. But their romance takes Ralphi away from the club at the worst time, when a fire destroys the club and kills Ramon. 

Flash-forward seven years, and the brothers are divided. Junior stayed in New York, running a clothing store for hip urban kids. Ralphi lives in London, working for the same real-estate conglomerate that wants to put a high-rise yuppie apartment building in Spanish Harlem. The project’s construction sites have been hit by a rogue arsonist.

Ralphi is sent home to New York to try to convince the Spanish Harlem locals to sell their homes and businesses. He tries to reconnect with the old neighborhood, but finds resistance from his brother and from Josie, who is keeping Ramon’s dance studio afloat. Ralphi, under pressure from his boss (Alysia Reiner) to bring results, finds himself torn between his job and his family ties.

This rehash of save-the-neighborhood cliches — devised by first-time director Anthony Nardolillo and co-writers Corey Deshon and Ahmadu Garba — is instantly forgettable, except for the ridiculous use of F-bombs. (Some producer was asleep at the switch, not reminding Nardolillo that less profanity means a tamer PG-13 rating and a bigger potential audience.) 

The script’s only use is as a clothesline, on which Nardolillo hangs a series of dynamic dance sequences. Flores really shines on the dance floor, in powerful solo numbers and sexy duets with Burgos. The salsa music and dancing have plenty of spice, which nearly make up for the bland story around them.

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‘Shine’

★★

Opens Friday, Oct. 5, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language. Running time: 97 minutes.

'Smallfoot'

The animated musical tale “Smallfoot” sneaks up on a viewer, presenting at first as a simple fish-out-of-water story but slowly revealing its true intentions as a clever morality play about the costs and benefits of telling the truth.

Up on a lonely mountain in the Himalayas, a village of Yeti live a blissful existence. They believe their mountain is an island floating in the clouds, supported by giant mammoth who must be fed ice every day — which is the villagers’ main employment. Every morning, the gong ringer, Dorgle (voiced by Danny DeVito), wakes the great glowing snail, which then crawls across the sky bringing the Yeti daylight. The Yeti’s leader, the Stone Keeper (voiced by Common), wears a robe of stones, each one imprinted with one of the village’s unbreakable laws, which are never to be questioned, so (almost) no one ever does.

Dorgle is ready to pass on his gong-ringing job — which involves catapulting himself to strike the gong with his head — to his son, Migo (voiced by Channing Tatum). While practicing, Migo gets distracted by the Stone Keeper’s pretty daughter Meechee (voiced by Zendaya), and is thrown to the edge of the mountain. There, he sees a giant silver bird (we’d call it an airplane) crashing nearby, and depositing a tiny creature, a Smallfoot, that the stones say doesn’t exist. The Smallfoot goes over the edge before Migo can show him to the rest of the village, so nobody believes him.

Well, almost nobody. Migo learns there’s a group of Yeti, disregarded as cranks by the rest of the village, who have formed the SES, the Smallfoot Evidentiary Society, to prove that the Smallfoot exist. Doing that, though, could endanger the carefully ordered way of life of the Yeti villagers — and the Stone Keeper will go to great lengths to keep that from happening.

Meanwhile, below the clouds, we meet Percy (voiced by James Corden), a nature-show host who is panicking that his ratings and social-media clicks are in the basement. He’s so desperate that he considers faking a Yeti sighting, but his unflinchingly honest assistant Brenda (voiced by Yara Shahidi) refuses to wear the Yeti costume and stilts Percy brought on the trip. When Percy meets Migo, the encounter rattles both of them, and leaves each with a moral dilemma about whether to tell the truth, no matter the consequences.

Director Karey Kirkpatrick (“Over the Hedge”) has a droll sense of humor — his writing credits include “Chicken Run” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — and it’s well deployed as Percy and Migo’s worlds ultimately collide. There are plenty of songs dotting the narrative, but the radio-friendly ones (like Zendaya’s early track, or Niall Horan’s folksy number over the closing credits) aren’t as interesting as Corden’s nervous rap to “Under Pressure” or Common’s intense number in which the Stone Keeper explains the harsh realities of Yeti life.

With inventive visual gags and an oddball voice cast (which includes Gina Rodriguez and LeBron James), “Smallfoot” turns out to be a free-wheeling comic delight. There’s also a well-delivered lesson about the importance of truth, but you don’t have to tell the kids that.

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‘Smallfoot’

★★★

Opens Friday, Sept. 28 at theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some action, rude humor and thematic elements. Running time: 96 minutes.