Review: 'Kung Fu Panda 4' brings back Jack Black for martial-arts laughs, but without the surprise and visual boldness of the first three films

It’s been 16 years since audiences first met the roly-poly Po in “Kung Fu Panda,” and eight years since we saw him last in the third installment — so it’s a mild disappointment that the latest chapter, “Kung Fu Panda 4,” isn’t all that special.

Oh, it’s fine, entertaining and energetic, and Jack Black still is giving his all in providing the friendly voice to the franchise’s unlikely hero. But the visual boldness and verbal wit of the first three installments is a bit lacking. 

Black’s Po is enjoying being the Dragon Warrior, the local hero in the Valley of Peace. Po’s mentor, the red panda Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), is none too happy that he’s using the staff of wisdom, the jade emblem handed down by Shifu’s master, Oogway, to cut the ribbon for a new restaurant being opened by Po’s adopted goose father, Mr. Ping (voiced by the apparently immortal James Hong). 

Shifu tells Po it’s time for him to choose his successor, and take his next step in his journey — to become the valley’s spiritual leader. Po is hesitant, because he’s unsure he can fulfill that destiny, and because he’s having fun kicking butt as the Dragon Warrior. 

As he’s walking through the Jade Temple, Po catches a thieving gray fox, Zhen (voiced by Awkwafina), and throws her in jail. But when Po learns that Tai Lung (voiced by Ian McShane), his nemesis from the first movie, has seemingly returned from the spirit realm. The truth, which is more threatening, is that a shape-shifting sorceress, the Chameleon (voiced by Viola Davis), is seeking to expand her empire — so Po must go face her, aided by the one creature who knows the Chameleon’s movements: Zhen. (You could have guessed, right?)

Director Mike Mitchell (“Trolls,” “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”) and co-director Stephanie Ma Stine create some eye-grabbing martial-arts animation and squeeze plenty of laughs from the script (by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger, who co-wrote the first one, and Darren Lemke). Some of the best gags are the throwaway bits, like the weak cheers Chameleon’s pummeled guards give when she accomplishes something. 

As the movie progresses through its emotional beats, its subplot involving the partnership between Mr. Ping and Po’s panda dad, Li (voiced by Bryan Cranston), and its menagerie of comical side characters, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve been here before. 

That’s not something one usually says about a “Kung Fu Panda” movie, because the series has had a strong run of visual inventiveness and cross-cultural artistry as it melds dynamic animation to martial-arts movement. So consider “Kung Fu Panda 4” a pleasant curtain call, and a chance for the franchise to stop before it runs out of steam.

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‘Kung Fu Panda 4’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 8, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for martial arts violence, scary images and some mild rude humor. Running time: 94 minutes.

Review: 'Dune: Part Two' delivers epic scale, visual wonders, powerhouse performances — and a tantalizing hint that there's more to come

When a cynical movie fan looks at a classic epic and says “they don’t make ‘em like that any more,” one can point to “Dune: Part Two” and say that they do — by combining stunning visuals, complex characters and a story that moves with ferocious action and carries meaningful themes, all under the sure hand of director Denis Villeneuve.

A quick refresher, if you don’t have time to see Villeneuve’s first chapter of this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction classic: In the year 10,191, two great houses — the noble Atreides and the villainous Harkonnens — maneuver for power, in the form of the hallucinogenic spice that gives navigators the ability to fold space and make interstellar travel possible. The only source of the spice is the desert planet Arrakis.

In the first part, the Atreides family takes command of the colony on Arrakis, hoping to make an alliance with the indigenous Fremen, who have adapted to the desert and to the spice. But Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) has laid a trap to destroy the Atreides army, and to kill Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac). The duke’s mistress, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), escape the attack and are saved by the Fremen. (Really, just go watch Part One; it’s streaming on Max.)

Part Two picks up with Jessica and young Paul quickly adapting to Fremen life — which includes listening to their tribal leader, Stilgar (Javier Bardem), tell everyone that Paul is the fulfillment of a prophecy of a messiah who will take the Fremen to paradise. Stilgar’s kinswoman, Chani (Zendaya), and many of her generation distrust the prophecy, thinking it’s a way for the great houses to continue to enslave the locals.

Chani’s not too far off. The manipulative sisters of the Bene Gesserit have been planting these prophecy stories across the galaxy — and Jessica, a member of the order, isn’t above using those stories to keep Paul and her unborn child alive. Paul is wary of such stories, because he sees himself in his nightmares,  leading armies and starting a genocidal holy war.

Meanwhile, Baron Harkonnen puts his nephew, Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista), in charge of Arrakis’ spice production — and when he can’t handle the Fremen guerrilla assaults, the Baron sends in his other nephew, the psychotic Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). All of this is observed by the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and her daughter, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), a student of the Bene Gesserit’s Reverend Mother Mohaim (Charlotte Rampling).

That’s a lot of characters to keep track of — and I haven’t even mentioned Paul’s old combat tutor, Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), and another sister, Lady Margot Fenring (Léa Seydoux). But Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts delineate the characters and their relationships with economical storytelling and fluid pacing, so it’s difficult to get overwhelmed by the plot. 

The look is sweeping, as the Fremen show their skill at riding the massive sandworms — oh, man, the worms — that populate Arrakis. As impressively eye-popping as the worms are, there’s also a jaw-dropping sequence on the Harkonnen’s monochromatic home world.

In the lead role, Chalamet grows into a full-fledged leading man. No longer the child of “Call Me By Your Name” or the man-child of “Wonka,” Chalamet deftly portrays Paul’s evolution from novice freedom fighter to shrewd leader, someone who understands the danger of his messianic persona but isn’t afraid to use it to achieve his ends.

So many of the supporting cast deserve special mention, from Bautista’s impotent raging to Bardem’s world-weary true believer and Butler’s dead-eyed portrayal of ravenous evil. (And if you thought Butler’s Elvis Presley impression was good in “Elvis,” his vocal imitation of Skarsgard here is better.)

But the biggest weight in “Dune: Part Two” is carried, powerfully and gracefully, by Zendaya, who must portray Paul’s love interest and embody the movie’s moral dilemma — between freedom and colonialism, between love and duty. 

Zendaya is also the pivot point for the movie’s ending, which ends with the idea that the story isn’t done. There is the unmistakeable feeling that Part Two is the equivalent of “The Empire Strikes Back,” the narratively denser and emotionally darker section of the trilogy. If Villeneuve makes good on his recent talk of making a third movie (based on Herbert’s sequel, “Dune Messiah”), “Dune: Part Two” is the downpayment that tells us it’s going to be spectacular.

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‘Dune: Part Two’

★★★★

Opens Friday, March 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some suggestive material and brief strong language. Running time: 166 minutes.

Review: 'Drive-Away Dolls' is good-natured raunch, a wild throwback to the days of seedy drive-in movies

Triangulated somewhere amid the B-movie speed of Roger Corman, the exploitation raunch of Russ Meyer and the throwaway humor of “The Big Lebowski” lies “Drive-Away Dolls,” an agreeably wild bit of grindhouse fun about two gals unwittingly getting caught up with some bad dudes.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are best pals, two lesbians living in Philadelphia, circa 1999. Jamie is a big-mouthed Texan whose girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), has kicked her out of their apartment after catching her with another woman. Jamie camps out with Marian, who is Jamie’s emotional opposite: Introverted, tightly wound and still nursing a torch for her ex years after their breakup.

Marian wants to get away, to go to Tallahassee, Fla., to visit her favorite aunt. Jamie suggests a fun and profitable way to get there: Get a “drive-away” job, driving a rental car after a one-way trip. Jamie calls a rental service and tells the guy, Curlie (Bill Camp), they want to drive to Tallahassee. Curlie thinks Jamie and Marian have been sent by a shadowy figure to deliver the car — and a mysterious package in the trunk – to Tallahassee. Curlie only realizes his mistake when the real drivers (C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick) and their minder, The Chief (Colman Domingo), show up to claim the car.

From here, Jamie and Marian head south, with Jamie trying to get Marian to loosen up — and break her sexual dry spell – at whatever lesbian bars they can find in the Deep South. At some point, they figure out that they’re being followed, and also discover exactly what they’re carrying in the trunk.

What does this have to do with a nervous guy (Pedro Pascal) we see meeting an untimely end in the first reel? Or the conservative senator (Matt Damon) whose billboard gives Jamie the creeps? Or the women’s soccer team who invite Jamie and Marian to their makeout party? Or the psychedelic interludes featuring an alluring flower child (played by someone not listed in the credits, but instantly recognizable)?

Director Ethan Coen — in the big chair for the first time without his brother Joel — creates a hilariously down and dirty movie (co-written with his editor and wife, Tricia Cooke) that draws apparent inspiration from low-rent ‘60s drive-in movies. There’s a free-wheeling feel to the whole thing, as if Coen was told he could do anything he wanted as long as he didn’t spend much money.

Qualley (“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”) and Viswanathan (“Blockers,” “The Broken Hearts Gallery”), aside from both being smokin’ hot, have great comic chemistry. Qualley’s sure-of-her-self motormouth matches nicely with Viswanathan’s clenched anger, and together they keep this occasionally unsteady narrative on the tracks.

For fans of the Coen brothers over the years, Ethan Coen’s gift for sexy silliness in “Drive-Away Dolls” is an interesting counterpoint to Joel Coen’s recent solo effort, “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Two movies could not be any more different if you tried, and the idea that most of the Coen brothers’ great works — from “Blood Simple” to “Raising Arizona” to “Fargo” to “No Country for Old Men” — is just a result of them meeting in the middle is mind-boggling.

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‘Drive-Away Dolls’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for crude sexual content, full nudity, language and some violent content. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'Perfect Days' is an almost perfect movie, as Wim Wenders examines the little moments that make life worthwhile

At 78, the German-born director Wim Wenders doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone — which makes the quiet magic of “Perfect Days” (which is up for an Oscar in the International Film category) even more impressive.

The movie, which Wenders filmed in Tokyo with a Japanese cast, is a moving consideration of the little joys of life — the beauty we miss because we’re not looking for it. That’s the sort of description that some will see as a red flag, a sign that there’s not really a plot here. There is, but not in the way you might think.

The movie starts as Hirayama (played by Koji Yakusho, from “Tampopo” and “Babel”) wakes up in his small Tokyo apartment to the sound of his neighbor sweeping in front of their building. He gets up, folds up his bedding, waters his plants, puts on his work uniform, goes downstairs and out the door, gets a canned coffee from the vending machine, and gets in his van. He picks out a cassette to listen to on the drive, providing some delightful needle drops that include The Animals “House of the Rising Sun,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and, yes, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” 

Hirayama’s job is to clean public toilets in Tokyo’s city parks. He has a route of a dozen or so facilities, a steady routine of how to clean them — pick up the trash, wipe down the sinks, scrub the toilets, and so on — before going to the next one. Sometimes he has an assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who’s more focused on his phone than his work.

Through the day, Hirayama is smiling. He doesn’t smile because he’s a fool, or looking with bitter irony at the passing parade of shallow people. He smiles out of contentment, because he enjoys going through his life being useful and accomplishing something. He doesn’t even show irritation when he finds a lost child in one of his toilet facilities, and when he reunites the boy with his mother, the mom’s first reaction is to get a wet wipe for the hand the child was using to hold Hirayama’s hand.

When work is done, Hirayama begins another routine. He rides his bike. He goes to the public baths to wash off the day. He goes to an eatery, where the waiter always greets him with a glass of ice water. He has dinner, then goes back to his apartment, lays out his mat, reads a little William Faulkner, and goes to bed. 

The next day starts the same, and so do several days after that. But the days are not identical. One day, Takashi’s punkish girlfriend, Aya (Aoi Yamada), rides in the janitorial fan with them and gets interested in Hirayama’s cassettes. (She’s got good taste — she picks Patti Smith’s “Horses.”) Another day is Hirayama’s day off, so we see him doing laundry, buying a paperback to replace the Faulkner, and collecting the prints from a roll of film with images of the trees he sees during his lunch break.

The closest thing Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki get to a summation, or a declaration of Hirayama’s philosophy, comes when he’s visited by his teen niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano). They’re riding their bikes over a bridge, and Niko wants to follow the river to the ocean. Hirayama says they can’t on this visit, but maybe next time. When’s that?, Niko asks. Hirayama’s reply: “Next time is next time. Now is now.”

The moviegoer gets to experience the “now” of Hirayama’s life, to appreciate the small moments of him enjoying his life. And we get to watch Yakusho, in a performance that’s as brilliant as it subtle, find the emotional gems of his character’s existence. (We also get to see a dazzling array of architecturally stunning public bathrooms, which Tokyo residents keep quite clean.) 

And while “Perfect Days” isn’t driven by its plot, but that doesn’t mean there’s a down stretch or a wasted move. It’s a movie about the importance of little moments — and a movie that’s full of such little moments, every one of which is a reward.

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‘Perfect Days’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 23, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking. Running time: 123 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.

Review: 'Ordinary Angels' is a story of grief and grace that feels contrived even though it's based on a true story

A title card in the opening moments of “Ordinary Angels” informs audiences that it’s based on a true story — which turns out to be unnecessary, and beside the point. 

In a movie like this — a four-hankie story of a taciturn widower, his medically imperiled daughter, and the stranger who takes up their cause — you expect it to be a true story, because the narrative is too implausible to be anything else. That still doesn’t make the drama any easier to swallow.

The story starts with that stranger, Sharon Stevens (Hilary Swank), a hair stylist in Louisville, Kentucky, whose main extracurricular activity is being a lively drunk at the bar — and then relying on her best friend and business partner, Rose (Tamala Jones), getting her home. When we see this happen for what must be the umpteenth time, judging from Rose’s exasperation, the morning after includes Rose dragging Sharon to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

It’s when Sharon leaves that meeting, and buys some beer, that she sees a newspaper story about the Schmitt family. Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson, the star of “Reacher”) is a roofer dealing with a double tragedy: His wife, Theresa (Amy Acker), recently died, leaving Ed to care for his daughters Ashley (Skywalker Hughes), age 8, and Michelle (Emily Mitchell), who’s 5 and needs a liver transplant. Sharon thinks she can be helpful, so she passes around the tip jar at the hair salon, and gives a few hundred dollars to Ed and his mom, Barbara (Nancy Travis).

But Sharon, a brash woman who never takes “no” for an answer, isn’t done. She applies her business smarts to getting Ed’s finances organized — and working to drive down the hundreds of thousands of debts accrued by Theresa’s long illness. Ed, while appreciative, starts to feel both overwhelmed by Sharon’s bigger-than-life personality and a little angry that this stranger has inserted herself into his life.

Director Jon Gunn cut his teeth in the faith-centered films of the Irwin brothers (his screenwriting credits include “I Still Believe,” the Kurt Warner biopic “American Underdog” and “Jesus Revolution”). This movie isn’t as overtly religious — there are discussions of God and faith, and the Schmitt family minister (Drew Powell) is featured — and more centered on the power of community to come together in a crisis.

The script, credited to Meg Tilly (yes, the actor from “The Big Chill”) and Kelly Fremon Craig (“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.”), stays largely free of treacly sentimentality for a surprising amount of time. The focus is on the human drama, of Ed struggling to accept help and Sharon realizing that her campaign to assist the Schmitts is deflecting from working on her own problems. 

In the big finale, all the restraint goes out the window. It’s an all-hands-on-deck effort to get Michelle to her transplant during a massive snowstorm — and even though it all happened (as evidenced by the obligatory real footage during the closing credits), it feels phony and contrived. “Ordinary Angels” is proof that events that are real don’t necessarily feel real when put up on screen, and that can make all the difference.

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‘Ordinary Angels’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic content, brief bloody images and smoking. Running time: 117 minutes.

Review: The 15 short films up for Oscar are, as always, a wildly diverse collection of stories with some genuine standouts.

The all-you-can-eat buffet of the short films nominated for Academy Awards — five each in three categories: Live-action, animated and documentary — gives moviegoers a reminder that not all stories take 90 minutes or three hours to tell.

The live-action program is dominated by one 40-minute film: Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” which may deliver the most Anderson-style whimsy in the shortest amount of time possible. (If you want more of the same, Anderson made three other shorts based on Dahl stories, and all four of them are streaming on Netflix, though you have to dig for them.) 

The story goes through narrators like Russian nesting dolls: First Ralph Fiennes as Dahl, recounting the life of idle rich man Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), who tells of a story he learned of a doctor (Dev Patel), and the doctor’s account of a man in India (Ben Kingsley) who trained himself to see without his eyes. It’s charming, with rapid-fire narration, deadpan performances and Anderson’s gift for perfectly composed tableaux.

And although “Henry Sugar” is the favorite to win the category, that’s not the film in this category that tugs hardest at the heart strings. That race is a dead heat between two stories about the after-effects of violence: Director Misan Harriman’s “The After,” starring David Oyelowo as a London man who loses everything dear to him in a random attack, and director Nazrin Chadhoury’s “Red, White and Blue,” with Brittany Snow as a single mom dealing with the reality of trying to obtain an abortion in red-state America.

The other two live-action nominees, also worthwhile, are: “Knight of Fortune,” a droll comedy from Denmark about grief, and “Invincible,” a dark drama from Quebec about a troubled teen in juvenile detention. 

Among the animated films in competition, I have to admit a personal bias toward “Ninety-Five Senses,” because I know the filmmakers, Jared and Jerusha Hess, the Utah husband-and-wife team behind “Napoleon Dynamite.” The movie, produced by the Salt Lake Film Society’s MAST filmmakers’ incubator program, depicts an old man (voiced by Tim Blake Nelson) describing the five senses. The story has a brutal twist in the middle, and goes down some dark and fascinating roads.

Also quite effective is director Tal Kantor’s “Letter to a Pig,” a French/Israeli production in which a Holocaust survivor tells his story to a high-school class, where one girl’s imagination gets swept up in his horrific tale. 

The remainder of the animated program, all good: The Iranian “Our Uniform,” which uses fabric to reminisce about the filmmaker’s hijab-wearing school years; the French “Pachyderme,” a remembrance of a girl’s childhood visits to her grandparents’ lakeside cottage; and “War Is Over!,” a World War I allegory featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over).”

(Shorts International, the company that distributes the Oscar shorts programs, has added two more animated shorts to fill out the program — since the five nominees run about an hour in total.)

The documentary program isn’t quite as good as the other two compilations, but there are some gems.

My favorite is “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” in which director Sean Wang interviews his Taiwan-born grandmothers — ages 94 and 83 — who live together in the Bay Area. (Wang cast one of them as his fictional grandmother in his narrative film “Di Di,” which won the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.)

For filmmaking prowess, the best may be “The Last Repair Shop,” directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, which tells the stories of the people who work for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s music department — lovingly fixing instruments used by students who otherwise couldn’t afford them. The camerawork is lush, and the movie ends with a musical interlude that’s simply beautiful.

Nearly as compelling is “The Barber of Little Rock,” in which directors John Hoffman and Christine Turner follow Arlo Washington, a financier and activist working to bring economic opportunity — and economic justice — to the underserved parts of Arkansas’ state capital.

S. Leo Chiang’s fascinating “Island In Between” makes the political personal and vice versa, as he goes back to his native Taiwan — and, in particular, the island of Kinmen, which is physically closer to mainland China but politically and emotionally linked to Taiwan. 

The favorite to win the category is also, to me, the weakest of the five. In “The ABC’s of Book Banning,”director Sheila Nevins (the longtime head of HBO’s documentary department) talks to Florida school kids about the books that have been banned, restricted or challenged across the country. Nevins also talks to some of the authors whose works have been targeted, including poets Amanda Gorman and Nikki Giovanni. The urgency of the topic, and the fury audiences will surely feel about it, far outweighs the pedestrian filmmaking. 

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Academy Award-nominated live-action short films

★★★1/2

Academy Award-nominated animated short films

★★★1/2

Academy Award-nominated documentary short films

★★★

The animated and live-action programs open Friday, February 16, and the documentary program opens Friday, February 23, all at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated; the live-action program is probably R for scenes of violence; the animated is probably PG-13 for stylized depictions of violence; the documentary program is probably PG-13 for thematic content. Running time: The live-action program is 140 minutes, with one short in Danish and one in French, both with subtitles; the animated program is 80 minutes, with one short in French and Hebrew, one in Farsi, and one in French, all with subtitles; and the documentary program is 140 minutes, with two shorts in Chinese, both with subtitles.

Review: 'The Taste of Things' is a multi-course meal for the senses, capturing the beauty of food and Juliette Binoche

Food and film are love languages in “The Taste of Things,” a French romance expressed most passionately and sensually when its lead actors strap on their aprons and start literally cooking.

Dodin Bouffant (played by Benoit Magimel) is a famed restaurateur in France, circa 1885. His secret weapon is his chef, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), who may be the finest cook in the country.

Eugénie, for reasons known only to herself, never chose to exploit those gifts by going to Paris and becoming famous cooking for the crowned heads of Europe. She has enjoyed applying her gifts in Dodin’s kitchen, working with him on exquisite dishes and gently rebuffing his occasional marriage proposals. Sure, they would sometimes share nights of passion (this is France, after all), but their real romance was by the stove.

Writer-director Tran Anh Hung — a Vietnamese-born filmmaker who explored similar foodie pleasures in his 1993 film “The Scent of Green Papaya” — captures Eugénie at work one summer day, preparing a multi-course meal for Dodin and his gourmet colleagues. The colleagues are important, because it’s through their rapturous descriptions we understand how good Eugénie’s dishes are when we can’t taste them ourselves. They are so captivating to the eye, thanks to Tran’s direction and Jonathan Ricquebourg’s sumptuous cinematography, that we would be surprised if they didn’t hit the nose and tongue just as pleasingly.

The real action, though, is watching Eugénie working her magic. She knows exactly which pot to put on the stove, what vegetables should be chopped, and when to put in the roast. Sometimes, Dodin comes in to assist, and they move together like well-choreographed figure skaters, each one anticipating the other’s moves and matching them adeptly. When they speak, it’s usually to pass on information to Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), a 14-year-old girl who’s in training to be Eugénie’s assistant.

The chemistry between Binoche and Magimel is delicious. This is in part because Binoche could look lovingly and generously at a potted plant and you’d believe it to be true love. It may be also that the two actors were lovers a quarter-century ago — their relationship lasted five years, and produced a daughter, now 24. Whatever the formula, it works because the actors play characters who don’t talk about love as much as they show it, with every turning of the spatula and flick of the whisk. 

“The Taste of Things” is a movie meant to make you fall in love — with the food, with the stars, with the French countryside — and it succeeds beautifully.

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‘The Taste of Things’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, February 14, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Century 16 (South Salt Lake). Rated PG-13 for some sensuality, partial nudity and smoking. Running time: 135 minutes.

Review: 'Bob Marley: One Love' barely scratches the surface of the reggae legend's fascinating life

If you know nothing about Bob Marley, the legendary reggae musician and Jamaican activist, the biographical drama “Bob Marley: One Love” will teach you that much and maybe a few timeline details — but anyone with knowledge of Marley’s complicated life will feel like major sections are glossed over.

The movie primarily centers on the last five years of Marley’s life, from 1976 to 1981 — with abundant flashbacks to his childhood. The main story starts with Marley (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) planning a concert, called “Smile Jamaica,” designed to be a respite from the bitter and often political campaign at the time. Both sides viewed Marley and the concert with suspicion, each thinking Marley supports the other.

Two days before the show, gunmen — to this day, it’s never been determined whose side they were on — snuck into Marley’s Kingston home and started shooting. Marley was grazed by a couple of bullets, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) was shot in the head but survived (a doctor explains that her dreadlocks kept the bullet from reaching her brain), and his manager, Don Taylor (), took six bullets and survived. Bob and Rita performed at “Smile Jamaica” as scheduled.

The violence, however, left its mark on the Marley family, and they fled Jamaica. Rita took the kids to stay with family in Delaware, while Bob and some of his band, The Wailers, relocated to London, where the head of Island Records, Chris Blackwell (James Norton), set them up in a studio. It’s there that Marley experimented with British rock, blues and soul, bending them to accompany his reggae sounds to create what some consider his greatest album, “Exodus.”

Four writers are credited with the screenplay — Terence Winter (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) and Frank E. Flowers (“Metro Manila”) in one pairing, Zach Baylin and director Reinaldo Marcus Green (who collaborated on “King Richard”) in another. The script drops little trivia bombs along the way, with such minutiae as the Island Records marketing guy (Michael Gandolfini) objecting to the album cover of “Exodus,” because Marley’s face wasn’t on it. 

The deep stuff about Marley’s relationship with Rita? Even in the one major argument we’re shown, we barely scratch the surface of the tensions within the marriage. (A salient fact not mentioned in the film: Of the Marleys’ 11 children, six of them were born to women outside the marriage.) Before the movie gets too close to anything uncomfortable or less than legendary about Marley, someone notices the bloody mess in his toe — the first hint of the melanoma that took his life in 1981.

This is the third straight biopic Green has directed — “King Richard,” with Will Smith as Venus and Serena Williams’ dad, and “Joe Bell,” starring Mark Wahlberg as a guilt-ridden dad walking across the country, were the others — and maybe he should stop for awhile. He certainly should, before making another biography of a musician, watch the 2007 spoof “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” as a reminder not to step into every cliche in the genre as he does here.

Whatever is worth preserving in “Bob Marley: One Love” comes from the performances, both acting and musical. Ben-Adir, whose resume includes playing Malcolm X (in “One Night in Miami…”) and a Ken (in “Barbie”), finds Bob Marley’s questing spirit, and Lynch (“Captain Marvel,” “The Woman King”) shows Rita to be his rock and consigliere. And the music — sometimes sung by Ben-Adir, but usually Marley’s originals — is untouchable.

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‘Bob Marley: One Love’

★★

Opens Wednesday, February 14, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for marijuana use and smoking throughout, some violence and brief strong language. Running time: 104 minutes.