'Last Christmas'

If there ever was a movie that was utterly ruined by its own marketing, it’s “Last Christmas,” a warm and winsome holiday romantic comedy that works best if you don’t know too much about it.

Since I’m not in Universal’s marketing department, I can deploy some restraint in synopsizing the movie. It centers on Kate, played by Emlia Clarke, a Croatia native who moved to London as a kid with her parents (Emma Thompson, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Boris Isakovic) and her sister, Marta (Lydia Leonard). 

Now, in 2017, Kate is 26 and something of a train wreck, alienating her friends by couch surfing to avoid living with her parents, getting drunk at night, and having disastrous auditions that do not help her nonexistent singing career. She works as a clerk and assistant elf at a Covent Garden shop that sells Christmas stuff all year long, and barely hangs on thanks to her indulgent boss, a Chinese woman who goes by the name Santa (played by Michelle Yeoh).

One evening, Kate meets Tom — played by Yeoh’s “Crazy Rich Asians” son, Henry Golding — who takes an instant shine to her. Kate is more jaded, but slowly she warms up to his perpetually sunny disposition.

This being a romantic comedy — and, what’s worse, a Christmas rom-com — there are complications in the script, by Thompson and rookie writer Bryony Kimmings (with story credit going to Thompson and her husband, Greg Wise). There’s a big one that would be a “Crying Game”-level shocker, if half the internet hadn’t deduced what it was when they saw the trailer a couple months ago.

But forget about that, if you can, and revel in how director Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids,” “Spy,” “Ghostbusters”) and the writers fill out the story with so many whimsical details — from the postcard-perfect London scenery to the playful use of George Michael songs throughout the soundtrack, including the title tune.

Mostly, the delights of “Last Christmas” are in the cast. Thompson, in heavy Slavic accent, brings some acid wit to Kate’s old-country mum. Leonard is appropriately brittle as Kate’s often-ignored sister. And Yeoh steals her scenes, bringing a comic goofiness to offset her polished screen persona.

And the leads are everything a romantic would want. Golding’s Tom is impossibly handsome and charming, and his effusive optimism is infectious. He’s nicely matched by Clarke, who displays a wealth of comedic skills that didn’t get much play in her last job, as the genocidal Mother of Dragons on “Game of Thrones.” Clarke’s bright smile and willingness to play the fool or the jerk will serve her well, in what could be a promising career as England’s next rom-com icon.

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‘Last Christmas’

★★★

Opens Friday, November 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for language and sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.

'Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound'

For 92 years, since “The Jazz Singer,” movies have been talkies — and the documentary “Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound” is a fond look at the art of melding sound to image and the pioneers who have changed how it’s done.

Even before we’re born, the legendary sound editor Walter Murch says to start the movie, “sound is the first sense that gets plugged in.” It’s a good reminder when talking about movies, because our focus on the visual aspect of filmmaking — the cinematography, the action, the faces — often shortchanges the other half of the equation: What we hear in a movie.

“The Jazz Singer” was a sensation when it debuted in 1927, but the advent of sound also took cinematic art back a step — because studios had to build cavernous sound stages so they could eliminate ambient sound. But soon, sight and sound worked hand in glove, with pioneers like Murray Spivack (“King Kong”) showing what could be done. Another hero mentioned is Barbra Streisand, who as producer of the 1976 “A Star Is Born” insisted on recording in stereo and urging theaters to install stereo speaker systems.

Director Midge Costin focuses largely on three greats in movie sound design. One is Murch, who met up with a guy named Francis Ford Coppola and worked on “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now,” the latter introducing six-track surround stereo. Next is Ben Burtt, who collaborated with George Lucas to make the many creatures and robots of “Star Wars” sound realistic. The third is Gary Rydstrom, who took sound-effects collection into the digital age, working on Pixar’s “Luxo Jr.” and “Toy Story,” and with Steven Spielberg on “Jurassic Park” and others.

The movie then dissects the elements of sound design, from the different types of dialogue to the variety of sound effects, and finally the music. All these elements are then brought together in the re-recording mixing studio, where all the sounds are melded together for maximum emotional impact and to further the story.

Costin draws from dozens of movie clips, and some solid interviews with many sound designers and the directors who rely on their work to tell the story. They share childhood anecdotes and dissect scenes from classic movies to show how the sound changes everything.

One wishes Costin didn’t feel the need to cram everything about sound design into 95 minutes, and could linger with some filmmakers and scenes. Frankly, I could hear Murch talk about “The Godfather” for the entire run time. Even so, “Making Waves” is a great primer for the up-and-coming armchair film scholar, and you’ll never listen to a movie the same way again.

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‘Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound’

★★★

Opened October 25 in select cities; opens Friday, November 8, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for depictions of violence. Running time: 95 minutes.

'Playing With Fire'

There’s dumb, there’s really dumb, and then there’s a movie directed by Andy Fickman — like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” or the new “Playing With Fire,” which depends on the subtle comical stylings of John Cena.

Cena plays Supt. Jake Carson, the big guy in charge of a U.S. Department of Forestry (no such thing) smokejumper crew in central California. He is heroic when facing down a raging forest fire, leading his men (played by Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo and Tyler Mane) in their lifesaving missions. He’s a shoo-in to replace the retiring fire commander (Dennis Haysbert), to bring honor to his late father, who ran the smokejumpers’ depot before him and died in the line of duty.

In areas of human contact, though, Jake’s skills are lacking. This is clear when he walked out on a date with Dr. Amy Hicks (Judy Greer), a charming scientist doing field research on toads in a nearby lake. And it’s even clearer when Jake rescues three siblings — teen Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand, from the “Deadpool” movies), 9-year-old Will (Christian Convery), and pre-schooler Zoey (Finley Rose Slater) — and has to house them at the depot.

Fickman and screenwriters Dan Ewen and Matt Lieberman go for the cheapest laughs, whether they involves changing Zoey’s diaper or letting Will go crazy with the soap suds. But the script seems to have left actual punchlines unwritten, and relies on its cast to ad-lib the funny. That’s marginally OK when it’s Leguizamo or Key (who’s quickly becoming the Garfunkel to Jordan Peele’s Simon), but when Cena tries to be funny, it sticks out more than his bulging biceps.

Here’s the thing, though: At the Saturday morning screening where I was suffering through this vast wasteland of labored gags, the audience around me was laughing fairly consistently. I had a moment like Principal Skinner on “The Simpsons” did, where I wondered if I was out of touch — but then, after the 14th lame “fire” song on the soundtrack, I decided that, no, it’s the audience that was wrong.

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‘Playing With Fire’

★

Opens Friday, November 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for rude humor, some suggestive material and mild peril. Running time: 96 minutes.

'Parasite'

When a movie arrives with as much hype as Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite” — after winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes, stirred up Academy Awards talk, and had impressive opening box office numbers — there’s always the worry that the movie can’t live up to it.

No such worry here. “Parasite” is entertaining and shocking, a thought-provoking examination of class differences that shifts effortlessly from comedy to social commentary to something approaching horror.

The Kim family lives in a semi-basement apartment that always smells vaguely of something unpleasant. They are on the low end of the economic spectrum, partly through bad luck and partly through their own lackluster ambitions. The four of them — Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song), the patriarch; his wife, Chung-Song (Hye-Jin Chang); and adult children Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi) and Ki-jung (So-dam Park) — are usually unemployed, and when they do find jobs they do them as lazily as possible.

One night, Ki-woo’s university friend, Min (Seo-joon Park), mentions that he’s leaving Korea to study abroad, and he won’t be able to tutor Park Da-Hye (Jung Ziso), the teen daughter of a rich couple, Dong-ik (Sun-kyun Lee) and Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo). Min suggests Ki-woo take the job while he’s gone. After an interview, augmented by university records faked expertly by his sister, Ki-Jung, Ki-woo has an interview — and a foot in the door of the Parks that could benefit all of the Kims.

First, he helps Ki-jung finagle a job as an “art therapist,” to help Da-Hye’s rambunctious little brother, Da-song (Jung Hyun-jun). Then Ki-jung helps get the Parks’ driver fired, and Dad takes that job. The toughest nut to crack is figuring out how to get rid of the housekeeper, Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee), who has been in the house longer than the Parks have, and talks glowingly of the architect who created such a gorgeous home.

At one point, everything seems to be going the Kims’ way, and they’re finally getting everything they think they deserve. Then, something happens that sends the Kims reeling, putting their hard work — or their hard avoidance of work — into jeopardy.

Bong (“Snowpiercer,” “The Host”), who directed and wrote the screenplay with Han Jin Won (an assistant director on Bong’s “Okja”), sets up his story as a gradually intensifying comedy of manners between the blithely wealthy Parks and the conniving lower-class Kims. The differences are literally from the gutter to the stars, with a whole lot of resentment and condescension in between. The humor in the early part of the film slowly makes way for a nail-biting thriller, and Bong balances both moods in a delicious tension.

The particulars — Jo’s comic performance as the clueless Mrs. Park, cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo’s precise images of the ultra-modern Park house and the shabby Kim apartment, Bong’s sly commentary on the haves and have nots — are calibrated perfectly, all building to a conclusion that will make audiences choke on the laughter that so easily escaped them in the early going. “Parasite” is the sort of movie that shows much in the moment, and reveals more as it rattles around in the viewer’s brain.

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‘Parasite’

★★★★

Opened October 11 in select cities; opens Friday, Nov. 1, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content. Running time: 132 minutes; in Korean, with subtitles.

'Harriet'

It was only a matter of time before Tony winner Cynthia Erivo found the starring movie role she deserved: Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became helped lead many other slaves to freedom, in the riveting biographical drama “Harriet.”

Director Kasi Lemmons (“Talk to Me,” “Eve’s Bayou”) introduces us to Tubman as Minty, a slave on a Maryland plantation in 1849. Her husband, a free black man named John Tubman (Zachary Momoh), tries to assert his and Minty’s legal rights to the plantation owner, Edward Brodess (Michael Marunde), but he won’t let Minty go. When Edward dies, leaving the plantation to his wife, Eliza (country singer Jennifer Nettles), and their son, Gideon (Joe Alwyn), who has lusted after Minty since childhood.

Fearful of what Gideon might do with his father gone, Minty makes a harrowing escape north, finding helpful people along the way. She eventually walks across the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania, and lands in Philadelphia at the offices of William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), an abolitionist and author. Still interviews Minty about her ordeal, takes down the horrific details, and suggests she give herself a new name — her freedom name. She chooses Harriet.

Still introduces Harriet to Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monaé), a fiercely independent black woman who owns a boarding house. Harriet gets Still’s help to go back and rescue some of her family, garnering a reputation as a fearless emancipator. Still hooks Harriet up with the Underground Railroad, and soon becomes one of the group’s most successful “conductors.” It’s a tribute, or sorts, to Harriet’s skills and bravery that Gideon and his fellow slaveholders think the mysterious “Moses” must be a white male Northerner, not a petite black woman like her.

Lemmons, rewriting a script by Gregory Alan Howard (“Remember the Titans”), creates a refreshingly old-fashioned biopic. Lemmons doesn’t shy away from the horrors of America’s slave trade and the racist laws that propped it up, but she’s willing to shape the details of history a bit for dramatic effect.

Tubman is a complex character, driven by love of family as much as lofty ideals, and subject to spells and occasional visions of the future — the result, we’re told, of a brutal skull fracture when she was young. Erivo, acting in her third movie (she had supporting roles in “Bad Times at the El Royale” and “Widows,” channels those contradictory threads of Tubman’s life into a strong-willed yet sensitive woman who fights because that’s the only way to survive.

Because of Erivo’s performance, and strong support from Odom and Monaé, “Harriet” becomes a forceful portrait of an American hero. Maybe it will be enough to finally get Tubman on the damn 20-dollar bill.

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“Harriet”

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic content throughout, violent material and language including racial epithets. Running time: 125 minutes.

'Terminator: Dark Fate'

When you see James Cameron’s name on the poster for “Terminator: Dark Fate,” don’t get your hopes up — the franchise’s creator is only a co-writer and producer here, director Tim Miller (“Deadpool”) doesn’t quite have the stuff to replace him, and we’re still getting those dumb “Avatar” sequels.

The first thing we see is Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton), in footage from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” warning disbelieving shrinks of the pending apocalypse. It’s an apocalypse she prevented, in a timeline that never comes to pass, though there’s an unexpected tragedy that drives Sarah underground.

In the here-and-now, we see two figures from the future arrive in Mexico City. One, we learn quickly, is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an augmented human sent to protect a young woman, Danielle Ramos (Natalia Reyes). The other is what’s trying to kill Danielle: A Terminator, a new Rev-9 model (played by Gabriel Luna), who has the same liquid-metal capabilities as “Terminator 2’s” T-1000, and the same blandly unemotional expression as he slices through anything in his way.

Miller creates some solid action set pieces, with Davis’s Grace fighting fiercely against Luna’s Rev-9. The momentum shifts sharply when another player enters the game: Sarah Conner, and darn if it isn’t great to see Hamilton, weathered but still a bad-ass at 63, back after what seems forever. (In the process, Hamilton’s presence retcons away at least one sequel, if not everything since “T2.”)

If you’ve seen any publicity material, you also know that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the original Terminator, shows up along the line. Giving away that plot point is a spoiler, for sure — one that will cause eyes to roll from coast to coast.

And therein lies the problem with “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Sure, the action sequences are ridiculously entertaining, but they’re driving the story, rather than the other way around. The much-handled script — David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes wrote the screenplay, with a rewrite by Billy Ray, and Goyer, Rhodes and Cameron are three of five sharing story credit — turns out to be a flimsy clothesline on which to hang the action.

But darn if everyone doesn’t look cool doing it. Hamilton and Schwarzenegger are fun to watch in their golden years, still fighting evil. Luna (who played Ghost Rider on a season of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) displays catlike smoothness as the robot killing machine. Reyes, a Colombian actor who shined in “Birds of Passage,” blossoms in hero mode. But the stealth MVP is Davis (“Halt and Catch Fire”), whose lean frame and haunting eyes make her the most effective Terminator hunter since — well, since Hamilton.

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‘Terminator: Dark Fate’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity. Running time: 128 minutes.

'Motherless Brooklyn'

Edward Norton, the director and screenwriter, is the best thing about “Motherless Brooklyn,” a strange yet compelling noir drama. Now if only he could rein in his over-the-top star, Edward Norton.

Norton plays Lionel Essrog, who works as eyes and ears for a private eye, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) in late-1950s New York, despite Lionel suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. It’s the Tourette’s, and the cascade of tics and blurted-out phrases, that makes Norton’s performance so annoying — and, for a guy who made his bones playing characters with perceived mental disabilities, in “Primal Fear” and “The Score,” it’s also easy to see why Norton wanted to do it.

Frank, Lionel explains in a too-thick narration, rescued Lionel and the other guys at the agency — Tony (Bobby Cannavale), Gilbert (Ethan Suplee) and Danny (Dallas Roberts) — from the orphanage and gave them a job and a purpose. That starts to crumble when, after a busted stakeout, Frank is shot by some thugs and dies. Lionel, who saw Frank as a mentor, decides he’s going to find out what Frank was up to, and see if that can lead Lionel to Frank’s killers.

The trail of clues leads Lionel into a battle over the soul of New York City, being fought on one side by civic activist Gabby Horowitz (Cherry Jones) and on the other by the imperious city planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin). These characters are only lightly fictionalized takes on the journalist and firebrand Jane Jacobs and the city builder Robert Moses, and their presence will surprise anyone who read the 1999 Jonathan Lethem novel on which Norton adapted his screenplay.

While digging, Lionel finds two other important figures in the story. One is Paul (Willem Dafoe), a brilliant but unstable engineer with many secrets. The other is Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who rails against Randolph’s so-called “slum clearance” and joins Horowitz’s cause.

Norton steeps “Motherless Brooklyn” in the details of ‘50s New York, where guys in fedoras drive their  tailfin-heavy cars to Harlem clubs to hear bebop jazz. (Michael Kenneth Williams plays a jazzman who befriends Lionel, though the music coming out of his horn is from Wynton Marsalis.) Norton also paces the action well, as Lionel doggedly follows the bread crumbs to an ending that’s not as surprising as a viewer might wish it would be.

Getting past Norton’s tic-filled performance, “Motherless Brooklyn” boasts a strong ensemble, with Baldwin standing out by playing his best role: The power-hungry authoritarian. (It’s not far off from “30 Rock’s” Jack Donaghy or his Trump impersonation.) “Motherless Brooklyn” works better as a meditation on the dangers of limitless power than when Norton remember he’s supposed to be telling a detective yarn.

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‘Motherless Brooklyn’

★★★

Opens Friday, Nov. 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout including some sexual references, brief drug use, and violence. Running time: 144 minutes.

'First Love'

The freakishly prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike throws his all into his latest blood-drenched gangster drama, “First Love,” whose title isn’t as ironic as you might think.

In the darker recesses of a city, Monica (Sakurako Konichi) is trapped. She’s forced to pay off her father’s debts by selling her body to the yakuza, and she’s kept as a slave by Yasu (Takahiro Miura), a drug dealer who keeps Monica high on his product.

Elsewhere in the city lives Leo (Masataka Kubota), a boxer whose promising career seems to be cut short when he goes down too easily during a bout. After looking at his MRI, a neurologist tells Leo that he has an inoperable brain tumor and not long to live.

When Leo crosses paths with Monica, it’s when she’s running in terror from Otomo (Nao Omori), a dirty cop who’s involved in a plot to kidnap Monica so Yasu can deliver drugs to an ambitious junior yakuza, Kase (Shota Sometani). Leo can’t help himself but to drop Otomo on the ground with one punch, and he and Monica are suddenly on the run, as a convoluted gangster plot plays out in their wake.

Mike keeps the action moving with barely room to breathe — and the action is so outlandish and comical that, at one point, it literally becomes a cartoon. When Miike does slow down, he creates space for a tender romance to bloom between Leo and Monica, two innocents amid the gunplay and swordplay going on around them. 

“First Love” is the sort of over-the-top action comedy where when someone mentions a contract killer named One-Armed Wang, you can bet the farm that a guy will eventually show up cocking his shotgun with his one good arm. It’s got plenty of gags, buckets of blood, and a surprising amount of soul.

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‘First Love’

★★★1/2

Opened September 27 in select cities; opens Friday, Nov. 1, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for strong violence, drug use, and some sexual references and language. Running time: 108 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.