'Queen & Slim'

Director Melina Matsoukas and writer Lena Waithe have been making their voices heard on TV, but they explode on the big screen with “Queen & Slim,” a searing drama about two African Americans on the run and running out of options.

It begins with a first date in a diner in Cleveland. She (Josie Turner-Smith) is a defense lawyer who just learned a client is going onto Death Row. She didn’t want to be alone tonight, so she hooked up on Tinder with the guy (Daniel Kaluuya), a working-class guy whose profile looked good. They aren’t really hitting it off, so it seems like the date will end with him taking her home, and that will be the end of it. (The movie doesn’t tell us their names until late in the film, and never uses the nicknames of the title.)

On the drive home, though, a cop (played by the country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson) sees our guy swerve a bit, and uses that as an excuse to pull him over. He’s being cooperative, if exasperated by the familiarity of a white cop hassling a black man over nothing. The cop reads his eye-rolling as defiance, and orders him to step out of the car. She gets out of the car, demanding the cop’s badge number. Shouting ensues, until the cop suddenly shoots her in the leg. Our guy then struggles with the cop, gets the cop’s gun, and in a fateful instant, shoots the cop dead.

The details are important, because the way Waithe’s sharp screenplay and Matsoukas’ pinpoint direction depict it, the shooting can be interpreted so many different ways. Some may wonder why the couple didn’t just get on the ground or stay in the car. Others may recognize the cop’s actions for the racial profiling that they are, and see that the couple was doomed no matter what they did. What viewers see depends on where they stand, based on one’s experiences with authority — which, all too often, is determined by race.

Our couple kicks into survival mode. She tosses his cellphone out the window, aware that it could be used to track their location. They ditch his car and steal a truck from a Kentucky lawman (Benito Rodriguez). Their immediate goal is New Orleans, where her Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine) might be able to help.

Along the way, they hear news reports of the interstate efforts to arrest them. They also discover that black folks along the way know all about their case, and have turned them into folk heroes — the black “Bonnie & Clyde,” as Uncle Earl puts it. But even that leads to tragic consequences.

Waithe (who shares story credit with James Frey, the infamous author of the fake memoir “A Million Little Pieces”) creates a nuanced, but electrifying, portrait of two mismatched people who turn to each other when everything is stacked against them. They know the odds of surviving this nightmare are against them, but their shared desperation provides hope that they can find a way out. Waithe also captures the intense atmosphere of an underground South, a land of marginalized people so in need of a voice that they’ll elevate this couple into legends.

Matsoukas, whose resumé ranges from music videos (notably Beyoncé’s “Formation”) to several episodes of Issa Rae’s “Insecure,” brings fascinating detail and pops of color everywhere this couple turns. And she highlights the intensity of emotions — even love and lust — that come out when the pair are looking over their shoulders.

The actors playing the title characters are compelling. Kaluuya (“Get Out,” “Black Panther”) is soulful and dynamic as a good man trying to follow the rules of surviving in America, someone who thinks fast when those rules fail him. Turner-Smith, in her first leading movie role, emerges as the emotional engine of the film, channeling righteous fury and a keen sense of preservation as they travel deeper into the South.

“Queen & Slim” will ignite arguments about the way it depicts racial injustice. One thing that can’t be argued is that Matsoukas and Waithe definitely know how to make thought-provoking, incendiary drama that isn’t afraid to dig into the fault lines between the races to see what shakes out.

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‘Queen & Slim’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, some strong sexuality, nudity, pervasive language, and brief drug use. Running time: 132 minutes.

'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'

Early on in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Andrea Vogel (Susan Kelechi Watson) learns her husband, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), is going to profile Fred Rogers for Esquire magazine, and she gives him a warning: “Please don’t ruin my childhood.”

It’s a fear the audience shares as director Marielle Heller begins this loving biographical drama, when she first reveals a version of the “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” opening, with its diorama of a suburban neighborhood. But then the door opens, and Tom Hanks enters as Mr. Rogers, one national treasure portraying another, and our fear dissipates.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'21 Bridges'

Sometimes a police thriller can be violent, loud, dumb and fun — or, in the case of “21 Bridges,” it can be larded on with such self-importance that it’s just violent, loud and dumb.

Chadwick Boseman, the go-to actor for playing black superheroes (Black Panther, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown, etc.), stars as Andre Davis, an NYPD detective with a reputation for shooting first and justifying his actions later. To some, that makes him the perfect guy to investigate a horrific crime: The shooting of eight cops at a Brooklyn restaurant that was also a depot for cocaine trafficking.

The script, by Adam Mervis and Matthew Michael Carnahan, starts by showing us these cop killings from the side of the killers. They are Ray (Taylor Kitsch), a veteran who served in Afghanistan, and Michael (Stephan James, from “If Beale Street Could Talk”), the brother of Ray’s deceased Army buddy. They were planning to haul away 30 kilos of cocaine and were surprised when they found 300 kilos at the restaurant — and when things go bad, they drive over the bridge into Manhattan.

Davis arrives at the crime scene with tempers already on edge. Capt. McKenna (J.K. Simmons), from in whose precinct the deceased cops worked, vows to give Andre all the manpower he needs, and partners him with a narcotics detective, Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller). Davis drops a bombshell order: Close all 21 bridges leading in and out of Manhattan, as well as the tunnels, ferry terminals and subway lines that go off the island. 

The audience is well ahead of Davis here, because the script and director Brian Kirk lay everything out in such a ham-handed way. There’s a moment where a character walks in, and you’d half expect the character to say, “Hi, I’ll be your dirty cop this evening. Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” Things are that obvious.

Things are also incredibly violent. The body count extends far past the eight officers gunned down in Brooklyn, and Kirk seems to wallow in the ferocious gunplay and bloodshed, as the movie lumbers toward a finale that’s equal parts preposterous and predictable. By the finale, though, those bridges are open and we in the audience can make a grateful escape.

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’21 Bridges’

★1/2

Opens Friday, November 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and language throughout. Running time: 99 minutes.

'The Irishman'

Martin Scorsese’s 3-1/2 hour mobster drama “The Irishman” stands at a crossroads in American movies, when we are reconsidering how we watch movies and arguing about what is cinema instead of mere entertainment.

“The Irishman,” which in many ways is a culmination of the 77-year-old director’s astonishing career, provides plenty of ammunition in both of those discussions.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Frozen II'

Disney’s animated “Frozen II” is wetter and wilder than its predecessor, showing that sometimes the elements can come together to make magic twice.

Co-directors Jennifer Lee (who again writes the screenplay) and Chris Buck gather most of the voice cast from the first “Frozen” — including Idina Menzel as the snow-powered Elsa and Kristen Bell as her non-magical sister Anna, along with Josh Gad as the snowman Olaf and Jonathan Groff as hunky reindeer herder Kristoff. More importantly, they bring back husband-and-wife songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who made “Let It Go” the Oscar-winning earworm that even Elsa is a bit embarrassed about now.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Ford vs. Ferrari'

If movies were automobiles, “Ford vs. Ferrari” would be an old-fashioned muscle car, a big piece of Detroit steel, gleaming on the surface but with plenty of horsepower where it counts.

The title suggests one kind of conflict, between two automakers. And, yes, director James Mangold shows us that battle in the 1960s, as the Ford Motor Company and its CEO, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), seeks to overcome slumping sales by coming up with something new. That idea, brought in by a younger executive, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal), is to put Ford’s money behind a race car, to challenge the legendary Ferrari at the 24 Hours of LeMans.

But the real battle at the heart of this story is waged by two men, auto designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and race driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Ford, at Iacocca’s suggestion, hires Shelby to lead the effort to develop a car that can beat the grandmaster, Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone). Shelby hires Miles, a great driver but also a temperamental one, and they soon are in the throes of building a great race car from the ground up.

But Shelby and Miles soon realize they’re not just fighting the clock or gravity. They’re also fighting the entrenched corporate culture of Ford, often in the person of the image-obsessed marketing boss Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas). Beebe is more concerned with what Miles might say into a hot microphone than whether he can win a race — and Shelby finds he has to claw back at Ford’s straitlaced attitude to get a car in shape for LeMans.

It’s a man’s world in “Ford vs. Ferrari,” but one woman does stand out. That’s Caitrione Balfe (“Outlander”) as Mollie, Ken’s wife, who’s supportive of her husband’s racing dream but not blind to the dangers he faces behind the wheel.

Damon captures Shelby’s Texas swagger, and a tight-lipped determination to get his car on the track no matter what. It’s not as splashy a role as Bale’s Miles, but it’s a dead heat which actor does more to keep the story flowing.

Mangold and his writers (Jez Butterworth, his brother John-Simon Butterworth, and Jason Keller) capture the cool, retro feel of the 1960s nicely. They also manage to capture that special swagger of Detroit’s car culture, and the executives who have faith that their product to overcome the tumult of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, and the whole upheaval of the ‘60s.

Mangold’s command of the camera and editing bay are seen in the movie’s frenetic final half hour, a nail-biter depiction of the 24 Hours of LeMans. It’s a perfect half-hour at the movies — something as elusive as the “perfect lap” Miles seeks — and a capper on a biographical drama that has both speed and gentle handling.

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‘Ford vs. Ferrari’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some language and peril. Running time: 152 minutes.

'Charlie's Angels'

Brimming with excitement, solid comedy and good feeling, writer-director Elizabeth Banks’ “Charlie’s Angels” is the action movie you didn’t know you needed.

Yes, it’s a reboot of Aaron Spelling’s famously titilating ‘70s detective series, which made Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson household names. And, yes, we went down this road in the early aughts, with Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu.

The fact that Banks shamelessly references both incarnations of the franchise — and, in an instant, makes them canon — is just the first sign that she’s got the chops to make this thing fly.

“I think women can do anything,” says Sabina Wilson (Kristen Stewart), in the movie’s first line of dialogue. In context, she says it seductively to draw out a sexist embezzler (Chris Pang), and to distract his guards so her colleague, Jane Kano (Elsa Balinska), can knock them out cold. But it also serves as a mantra for the cast and for Banks.

The Townsend Agency, the boutique detective firm from TV days, has gone international, performing secret missions for a select clientele. Sabina and Jane are two of the Angels. Their fixers are all called Bosley, and when the original Bosley (Patrick Stewart) retires, a younger Bosley (played by Banks) guides them through a new case.

The client is Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott), a tech genius on a team that has just developed a groundbreaking renewable energy source. Elena has discovered that the device could be weaponized, emitting an electromagnetic pulse that could silently dismantle a person’s nervous system. The problem for Elena is that other people have also figured this out, and will go to lethal lengths to stop Elena from telling the company’s visionary CEO, Alexander Brock (Sam Claflin).

It’s up to Sabina, Jane and Bosley to protect Elena, and find the devices before they fall into the wrong hands. This leads to globe-hopping from Hamburg to Brazil to Istanbul, with Elena (and, by extension, us) learning about the Townsend Agency’s inner workings along the way. Needless to say, it beats your job, hands down.

Banks, directing only her second movie (she debuted well with “Pitch Perfect 2”), strikes the perfect balance of comedy, action and glitz, as the movie runs the Angels through their paces. Stewart’s reputation as a dour, serious actress gets happily demolished here; she hasn’t been this playful, or funny, even in her turns hosting “Saturday Night Live.” Scott, last seen as Jasmine in the “Aladdin” remake, makes the wide-eyed Elena a happy participant in the danger. And Balinska, who at 5-foot-10 towers over her co-stars, has a deadpan comedic delivery that punctuates the movie’s sneakily smart humor.

This “Charlie’s Angels” is more energetic, and more fun, than an action franchise as familiar as this one has the right to be. Let’s get this franchise rolling with another installment, and pronto.

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‘Charlie’s Angels’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 15, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for action/violence, language and some suggestive content. Running time: 118 minutes.

'The Report'

While the news channels are riveted by one kind of presidential scandal, writer-director Scott Z. Burns’ procedural drama “The Report” takes us back to the good old days when presidents did things like authorize torture of detainees under the guise of fighting terrorism.

The story begins in 2009, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, reads in The New York Times that CIA agents destroyed videotapes of waterboarding procedures. “I want to know what’s on those tapes,” Feinstein tells one of her staffers, Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver), and tells him to start digging into it. Soon, Jones is told to expand his investigation to a broader look at the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices.

Jones is given a room in the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., with a separate computer server and as much access to documents as the CIA will allow. When he first enters the room, he notices there’s no printer or paper. “Paper has a way of getting people in trouble at our place,” his CIA minder tells him. Jones replies, “At our place, paper’s how we keep track of laws.”

Burns, who wrote Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling but concise global outbreak thriller “Contagion,” feeds the audience a lot of information, and makes it quick, understandable and devastating. 

Burns details how, after 9/11 and the panic that ensued, a pair of contract psychologists, James Mitchell (Douglas Hodge) and Bruce Jessen (T. Ryder Smith), sold the CIA on a scientifically shoddy program of humiliation and physical duress to try to break down detainees’ reticence to talk. The program, which included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and putting detainees in stress positions, was given the bureaucratically banal name of “enhanced interrogation techniques” or EIT.

What Jones discovered was that EIT was more likely to produce bad information than good, and tainted any chance of trying detainees in American courts. A prime example of EIT done to ridiculous amounts was the supposed terrorism mastermind Khaled Sheikh Muhammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. As Feinstein asks Jones, “If it’s so effective, why do they have to do it 183 times?”

Compiling the information for the report — which ultimately grew to 6,700 pages — was one part of the battle. The other was getting it, or even an executive summary of the report, released to the public.

Burns assembles an impressive ensemble cast to tell the story of this investigation. Besides Bening’s rock-solid Feinstein, the cast includes Maura Tierney as a CIA official overseeing the EIT program, Tim Blake Nelson as a CIA whistleblower, Ted Levine as incoming CIA director John Brennan, and Jon Hamm as an Obama administration official who tries to minimize the damage the report’s release could cause.

At the center, standing like a very tall beacon of truth, is Driver, who calmly digs through the documents, analyzes what they mean, confronts moral quandaries on all sides, and tamps down his righteous fury when he discovers how badly the CIA behaved. Driver gives Jones — who is a real person, not a composite character created by Burns for narrative expediency — the indignation that any of us should feel at learning how much abhorrent, damaging and illegal behavior was done in the name of the American people.

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‘The Report’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 15, at select theaters, including Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for some scenes of inhumane treatment and torture, and for language. Running time: 119 minutes.