'The Lion King'

Every time Disney has produced “The Lion King,” it’s been a stylized rendition, and the question becomes whether the particular style — hand-drawn animation in the 1994 film, puppet performance in the Broadway production, or now photo-realistic computer animation — works for the story of a young cub maturing into a leader.

With director Jon Favreau and an army of animators and artists arranging pixels into realistic-looking African landscapes and talking animals, the answer is, yes, this lion still roars.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Stuber'

Every time critics are ready to declare the hyper-violent buddy-cop movie is dead, along comes a movie like “Stuber” to show the genre is still alive, though just barely.

Wrestler-turned-actor Dave Baustista, so funny as the overly serious Drax in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, stars here as super-serious cop Vic Manning. He’s every ‘90s cop cliche rolled into one beefy burrito: He drives a vintage muscle car, he lives alone in an unkempt apartment, he has terrible communication skills with his daughter Nicole (Natalie Morales), and he’s hunting down the drug kingpin, Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais), who’s responsible for the death of his partner (“Guardians” co-star Karen Gillan) in the movie’s prologue.

When his boss, Capt. Angie McHenry (Mira Sorvino), tells him the feds are taking over pursuit of Tedjo, Vic reluctantly lets it go. Since Vic is near-sighted — and losing his glasses in the prologue contributed to Tedjo getting away — he takes a day off to get Lasik surgery. That afternoon, though, he gets a tip about a big drug deal Tedjo is orchestrating. Barely able to see, Vic is forced to find alternate transportation, through the Uber app Nicole conveniently set up on his phone that same day.

This is how comedian Kumail Nanjiani enters the movie, as Stu, an Uber driver in a leased Nissan Leaf, desperate to get a five-star rating from his next fare. That, in writer Tripper Clancy’s connect-the-dots script, is how Vic ends up riding shotgun — and other weapons — in Stu’s car, following a thread of clues and leaving behind a trail of bodies.

Director Michael Dowse (‘What If,” “Goon”) takes Clancy’s script through its paces, never leaving in doubt that bullets and one-liners will be speeding past by the dozens as it moves toward a predictable outcome. Unlike an Uber ride, in “Stuber” it’s the journey not the destination that matters.

Bautista and Nanjiani turn out to be an effective comic pairing. Vic bemoans Stu’s thwarted ambitions — there’s a running subplot about Stu’s pining for his business partner, Becca (Betty Gilpin) — and Stu mocks Vic’s larger-than-life physicality. (Stu’s first words to Vic are: “Let me guess: You want me to drive you to all the Sarah Conners in the city.”)

Only toward the movie’s conclusion, as the characters’ nerves are frayed to the breaking point, does the comic chemistry really kick in, and Nanjiani and Bautista unload on each other to hilarious effect. If there’s a sequel to “Stuber,” one hopes the filmmakers skip the cop cliches and explosions, and just train the camera on these two for 90 minutes. 

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‘Stuber’

★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and language throughout, some sexual references and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 93 minutes.

'The Fall of the American Empire'

In “The Fall of the American Empire,” Quebecois director Denys Arcand looks at capitalism eating itself, and finds the only moral people left are a depressed philosopher, a high-class call girl and a just-paroled fraudster.

The movie is not a direct sequel to Arcand’s 1986 comedy-drama “The Decline of the American Empire,” a roundelay of academics and their lovers talking about themselves, their sex lives and their scholarly pursuits. That movie spawned a follow-up, 2003’s “The Barbarian Invasions,” with the same characters, one of whom is dying.

In “The Fall of the American Empire,” the story starts with Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry), a philosopher who knows too much about everything to be happy. His job as a Montreal delivery driver just adds to his depression, as does a break-up with his girlfriend Linda (Florence Longpré), a bank teller.

One day, someone robs the store where Pierre-Paul is delivering packages. There’s a shoot-out, with a mafia thug killing one robber and injuring another, who runs away. The thug is also killed, and there are two duffel bags filled with cash lying in the parking lot. Pierre-Paul impulsively grabs them and takes them home.

Pierre-Paul seeks advice on how to deal with such a large amount of cash. He finds Sylvain Bigras (played by Arcand regular Rémy Girard), aka “The Brain,” who just got out of prison after a fraud conviction. Sylvain is well-connected in Montreal’s criminal element, so he knows the money was stolen from the mob — and Pierre-Paul could get killed if anyone connects him to it. Sylvain’s advice is to bury it, and not draw attention by spending any of it.

Too late, as Pierre-Paul took some of the cash to hire a prostitute (Maripier Morin), who goes by the name Aspasie, a reference to ancient Greece that appeals to Pierre-Paul’s intellectual side. Her fee is more than a delivery driver makes in two months, which piques the interest of two police detectives (Maxim Roy and Louis Morissette) investigating the botched robbery.

Aspasie, who’s kind of falling for Pierre-Paul, becomes a third member of his and Sylvain’s plot to handle the money. Good thing, too, since she’s got a big connection: One of her former clients, Wilbrod (Pierre Curzi), is a highly placed financier, just the guy who knows how to move money to offshore accounts without anyone knowing. The rich are very different from the rest of us, Sylvain notes, because they have the most efficient crooks.

As the plot unspools, and these three small fish work their way past the mob, the cops and the super-rich, Arcand unloads his thoughts on the state of the world. It’s a cynical view, where stealing a little gets someone in prison but stealing a lot gets them set up on their own private island somewhere.

Arcand’s message is as blatant as his heist plot is subtle, and perhaps that’s the point. In “The Fall of the American Empire,” the biggest crimes are in plain sight, and the little criminals have to fly under the radar.

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‘The Fall of the American Empire’

★★★

Opened May 31 in select cities; opens Friday, July 12, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some strong violence, sexual content/nudity and language. Running time: 127 minutes; in French with subtitles.

'Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable'

Bethany Hamilton doesn’t really want to talk about when a tiger shark bit her left arm off when she was 13. This is understandable, since she’s been telling and retelling the story — on talk shows, in her autobiography, and in the fictional film “Soul Surfer” (2011) — since it happened in 2003.

The problem that documentarian Aaron Lieber faces, and fails to overcome, in his film “Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable,” is that most everything that has happened to Hamilton since is linked to that shark attack.

The movie shows Hamilton’s life before the accident, using home movies and interviews with friends to describe her childhood in Hawaii and her love of surfing. Even at 13, she was winning surf competitions and being scouted as a budding professional prospect.

Then the shark attack happened. The movie doesn’t spend much time detailing that moment, assuming that anyone buying a ticket for this documentary probably saw “Soul Surfer” and knows the details.

The movie then jumps into Hamilton’s rehabilitation, and figuring out how to surf again, now with only her right arm. But she did, and worked to become a pro again — though, as the documentary tells it, the strain of being a sudden media star and role model for perseverance made it difficult to focus on surfing.

The bulk of the documentary focuses on Hamilton’s life in the last decade or so. She met, fell in love with and, in 2013, married Adam Dirks — with whom she is now raising two small boys. (The second, born in March 2018, wasn’t born yet when the documentary was filmed.) Together, they have continued their charity work, and competed as a team on “The Amazing Race” in 2014.

Dirks has also encouraged Hamilton as she has tried to rebuild her pro surfing career, and Lieber dutifully details the competitions and the different styles of surfing Hamilton is crossing off her checklist. These passages are more like an extreme-sports movie than a personality-driven documentary, and only hardcore surf fans are likely to enjoy them.

By the end credits, “Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable” feels less like a documentary than a collection of infomercial material to promote Hamilton’s charity, her motivational speaking gigs, and her surf-product sponsors. There’s no doubt Hamilton has a fascinating story to tell, but this movie shies away from telling the most important parts.

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‘Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable’

★★

Opening Friday, July 12, in theaters nationwide, including Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated PG for some thematic elements. Running time: 99 minutes.

'Stockholm'

If not for the title, and its connection to the real-life psychological condition derived from the real-life incident depicted within, “Stockholm” would be a complete snooze, a hostage drama that spins its wheels and squanders some talented actors.

It’s 1973, and a man — played by Ethan Hawke — in leather jacket, leather pants and a cowboy hat enters a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. In his duffel bag is a radio, set apparently on an all-Dylan station, and a semi-automatic weapon. He gives his names as Kaj, born in Sweden and raised in America. He takes three of the bank employees hostage, and demands that police bring him Gunnar, another bank robber now in prison.

The police chief (Christopher Heyerdahl) finds Gunnar (Mark Strong), and makes a deal to turn him into a go-between for Kaj and the police. Turns out Gunnar and Kaj are ex-cellmates and best friends, and Gunnar talks Kaj through the hostage situation.

As the days stretch out, Kaj — if that is his real name — starts showing some empathy and tenderness to one of the bank hostages, Bianca Lind (played by Noomi Rapace). Bianca, who has a husband (Thorbjørn Harr) and kids at home, but she also starts feeling sympathetic toward her shaggy-haired captor. This is, as the title reminds us, where the phrase “Stockholm syndrome” was invented, after all.

Director-writer Robert Budreau worked with Hawke quite successfully in “Born to Be Blue,” in which Hawke played the trumpeter Chet Baker. Their rapport then seems to have flown the coop here, and Hawke falls back on his worst impulses of lackadaisical hipster anti-heroics. Budreau also seems cowed by the strained comic elements of the story and stymied by the conventions of the heist thriller, scared perhaps of the looming ghost of “Dog Day Afternoon” and other superior hostage movies.

Still, Hawke and Rapace (the original Lisbeth Salander) manage some chemistry in their scenes together, when not being held hostage to the creaky plot mechanics. Maybe they even learned to love “Stockholm,” which is more than I could say.

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‘Stockholm’

★★

Opened April 12 in select cities; opens Friday, July 12, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language and brief violence. Running time: 92 minutes.

'Midsommar'

It’s best to enter “Midsommar,” director Ari Aster’s sunlit yet creepy follow-up to his dark and creepy “Hereditary,” knowing as much as the young Americans at its center do about the mysterious events they are about to witness. That is, not much.

The prologue establishes Aster as a master of dread-filled atmosphere. It starts with the anxiety-ridden Dani (Florence Pugh) desperately trying to reach her disturbed sister, who sent an ominous email suggesting she may end her life. While Dani’s at home, her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) is at a bar with his buddies, confiding to his boorish buddy Mark (Will Poulter) that he’s thinking about breaking up with Dani.

Then comes a horrible, and horrific, set piece that rattles Dani to her core — and puts off any discussion of a break-up. And that’s before Aster reveals the movie’s title. (Some of these early scenes were shot in Utah, where Aster shot “Hereditary.”)

Cut forward a few months, and a still-fragile Dani hears Christian and his grad-school pals talking about a summer trip to Sweden — with their pal Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) acting as tour guide to his home village in the country’s far north. Dani invites herself along, which annoys Mark, who was counting on a guys-only week of Scandinavian debauchery.

The group — Dani, Christian, Mark, Pelle and Josh (William Jackson Harper), who studies ancient European rituals — arrives at the village of Harga, where they are welcomed with smiles, hugs and tea made with hallucinogenic mushrooms. That turns out to be one of the least strange things these Americans witness during what they’re told is a nine-day festival held once every 90 years.

Aster, who wrote and directed, reveals the strangeness slowly, carefully, with great deliberation. Hints are released bit by bit, as Aster ratchets the fear minute by minute. Aster doesn’t traffic in jump-scares or quick tricks, preferring to lure viewers in with the morbidly alluring “Wicker Man”-like scenario and then hooking the audience with the bizarre and dread-filled atmosphere.

What’s more is that Aster does this in broad daylight, so close to the Arctic Circle. Aster uses the whites and floral colors of Harga to build tension and a sense of doom the way John Carpenter used shadows and darkness, a photo-negative of terror that surprises at every turn.

Pugh goes beyond scream-queen expectations as Dani, as her vulnerability turns into a type of armor, her personal pain transmuted to a dance of death. It’s proof, alongside the wrestling comedy “Fighting With My Family” earlier this year, that Pugh is one of the most dynamic and fascinating young actors working today.

As with “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” will leave some people scratching their heads, particularly with an ending that is as weird as it is terrifying. Those who pick up on Aster’s wavelength will be rewarded with a psychological thriller that disturbs the soul like no other.

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‘Midsommar’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, July 3, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for disturbing ritualistic violence and grisly images, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language. Running time: 140 minutes.

'Yesterday'

It’s important to know that the romantic comedy “Yesterday” is written by Richard Curtis, who also gave the world the strangely beloved Christmas romance “Love Actually” — and that the new movie, like the old one, falls apart if you think about it even slightly.

Jack Malik (played by newcomer Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician in Suffolk, England, who plays his original songs for tiny and inattentive audiences at pubs around the area. His biggest fan, and really his only fan, is his manager, Ellie Appleton (Lily James). The two have been friends since childhood, though Jack tells people they aren’t romantically inclined toward each other — though Ellie’s forlorn looks say she wishes it were otherwise.

After one disastrous gig, Jack is ready to give it up and go back to teaching, which is also Ellie’s paying job. As he’s riding his bicycle home, a power outage hits the entire globe — because director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “127 Hours”) can’t do things halfway — and Jack is hit by a bus.

When Jack wakes up in the hospital, minus a couple of teeth, everything seems fine. Gradually, though, he realizes something is amiss: Nobody around him, even Ellie and his friends, has ever heard of The Beatles. A Google search confirms that The Beatles never existed (and, in a cruel dig, Jack also learns the band Oasis was never a thing, either).

Jack tries to remember The Beatles’ songs as best he can — the imagery of “Eleanor Rigby” is especially difficult to piece together — and perform them in his club set. Suddenly, Jack’s music gets noticed, from a local TV show to Ed Sheeran (playing himself), who hires Jack to be the opening act in his European tour, starting in Moscow. (Cue “Back in the U.S.S.R.”)

Sheeran’s American manager, the appropriately named Debra Hammer, starts circling Jack like a shark in stilettos. She’s played by Kate McKinnon, and her moments of oily sweet-talking are the only genuinely funny parts of the movie.

But it’s too good to last. Curtis (sharing story credit with Jack Barth) drags us back to Jack’s singular determination to miss Ellie’s signals, which are bright enough to prevent shipwrecks, as he dodges the effects of his one-man Beatle-mania.

Most of the supposed joy of “Yesterday” is squeezed from the elbow-in-the-ribcage references to the Fab Four, both in song cues and visual references (like when Jack is chased by fans, a la “A Hard Day’s Night”). But if appealing to Beatles fans was the goal, there’s a bit near the end that will likely anger and sicken those same fans.

Before that happens, the audience will already be turned off by Patel, a veteran of the UK soap “EastEnders” and a completely charm-free romantic lead. Even Ed Sheeran is more appealing than this guy, and he’s a Hobbit. It’s just one miscalculation out of many, but one that makes “Yesterday” not half the movie it wants to be.

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‘Yesterday’

★★

Opens Friday, June 28, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for suggestive content and language. Running time: 116 minutes.

'Ophelia'

If you can appreciate a movie that swings for the fences, even if it doesn’t always knock it out of the park, director Claire McCarthy’s female-fueled take on William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Ophelia,” might be for you.

“Star Wars” jedi-in-training Daisy Ridley plays the title role, written by Shakespeare as a delicate flower who goes mad when Hamlet uses her in his game of revenge. But in McCarthy’s version, scripted by Semi Chellas (a writer and producer on “Mad Men”) and based on Lisa Klein’s 2006 novel, Ophelia is not mad — north-northwest or any other direction.

“I was always a willful child,” Ophelia tells us in voice-over, before we see her as a child (played by Mia Quiney) sneaking into the court at Elsinore. She’s soon taken under the wing of Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts), to be trained as a lady in waiting. She grows into womanhood, and attracts the attention of the prince, Hamlet (George MacKay), and there are romantic sparks. A marriage would be forbidden, because Ophelia, as the daughter of the king’s advisor Polonius (Dominic Mafham), is not a member of nobility.

When Hamlet goes to Wittenberg for his studies, tragedy strikes the castle with the sudden death of the king. The king’s brother, Claudius (Clive Owen), quickly weds Gertrude — but Ophelia knows there’s nothing sudden about it, because she spotted them at the start of their affair. It’s Ophelia, not a ghost, who tells Hamlet that Claudius poisoned his father. 

When her brother Laertes (Tom Felton) warns her Claudius might take her head, Ophelia and Hamlet devise a plan to escape Elsinore, whispering the details while Hamlet shouts nonsense to make the others think the Danish cheese has slipped off his cracker.

The revised story borrows a plot point from “Romeo & Juliet,” by adding an apothecary, exiled deep in the woods. The character, Mechtild, provides Gertrude her regular tonic to get her through the day, and as their go-between, Ophelia learns the connection between the two women. (Hint: Mechtild is also played by Naomi Watts.)

McCarthy finds a colorful feast as Ophelia darts between the floral beauty outside — flowers, of course, being a centerpiece of Ophelia’s doomed character — and the finery of court life. The most stunning moment may be the play within a play, a beautifully photographed and choreographed shadow play that all Shakespearean stage directors should study.

The liberties taken with Shakespeare’s story are fascinating, as the women become chess players rather than pawns, even if the rewritten storyline doesn’t hold together. McCarthy’s sharpest weapon here is Ridley, who captures Ophelia’s vulnerability and the steel that emerges when lives are on the line.

“Ophelia” may not match the greatest “Hamlet” spinoff, Tom Stoppard’s acerbic comedy “Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” but the women behind the story — McCarthy, Chellas, Klein, Watts and especially Ridley — certainly strive to catch the conscience of the title character.

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‘Ophelia’

★★★

Opens Friday, June 28, in select theaters. Rated PG-13 for a scene of violence/bloody images, some sensuality, and thematic elements. Running time: 106 minutes.