Wildhorse Stadium Cinemas
655 Marketplace Plaza
970-870-8222
www.metrotheatres.com
“Dark Shadows” PG-13
5:45 and 8:20 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
12:30, 3:10, 5:45 and 8:20 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“The Raven” R
5:10 and 8 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
2, 5:10 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“The Avengers” PG-13
5, 7 (3-D) and 8:10 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
12:40 (3-D), 1:35, 5, 7 (3-D) and 8:10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“The Five-Year Engagement” R
7:40 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
4:50 and 7:40 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“The Hunger Games” PG-13
4:40 and 7:50 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
1:20, 4:40 and 7:50 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“Chimpanzee” G
4:50 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday
12:50 and 2:50 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Chief Plaza Theater
813 Lincoln Ave.
970-879-0181
www.carmike.com
“Bully” PG-13
3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. today and Monday through Thursday
12:30, 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“The Artist” PG-13
2:50 and 7:50 p.m. daily
“The Lucky One” PG-13
2:55, 5:25 and 7:55 p.m. today and Monday through Thursday
12:25, 2:55, 5:25 and 7:55 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“Mirror Mirror” PG
5:20 p.m. today and Monday through Thursday
12:20 and 5:20 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
“21 Jump Street” R
2:45, 5:15 and 7:45 p.m. today and Monday through Thursday
12:15, 2:45, 5:15 and 7:45 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
"Dark Shadows"
Comedy, PG-13, 112 minutes
Tim Burton’s film is all dressed up with nowhere to go, an elegant production without a central drive. There are wonderful things in the film, but they aren’t what’s important. It’s as if Burton directed at arm’s length, unwilling to find juice in the story. Johnny Depp is flawless as the vampire Barnabas, transported from the 18th century to 1972, but the other characters get lost in arch mannerisms.
This is the eighth collaboration between Burton and Depp, who go back to “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) together. I think the best use of Depp in a Burton world was “Sleepy Hollow” (1999). Here Depp seems to inhabit a world of his own, perhaps in self-defense. The others seem to be performing parodies of their characters. “Dark Shadows” begins with great promise, but then the energy drains out.
As always with Burton, the visual style is wonderful.
Rating: Two and a half stars
"The Raven"
Thriller, R, 111 minutes
“The Raven,” a feverish costume thriller, attempts to explain Poe’s death by cobbling together spare parts from thrillers about serial killers.
John Cusack stars as Edgar Allan Poe in an overwrought serial killer melodrama having only the most tenuous connection to the great writer. Starting with one fact, that Poe was found wandering delirious in Baltimore in 1849, the movie concocts a plot that depends much more on sensational acting than on suspense or atmosphere. With Luke Evans as a detective who teams up with Poe.
The use of sensational effects may be a temptation for a director like James McTeigue, whose first feature, “V for Vendetta” (2005), was actually pretty good. They create a problem of proportion for a period film like this, where personality and atmosphere should create suspense; extreme violence is unnecessary, though I realize that at least some Friday night moviegoers will be hoping for it and have only a vague notion of when 1849 might have been.
Rating: Two stars
"Bully"
Documentary, PG-13, 106 minutes
The film follows the stories of several children in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa and Georgia. Two of them committed suicide. Their lives had become unendurable without anyone noticing, or taking it seriously enough. I can believe it. The most infuriating people in the film are teachers or administrators who don’t know what’s happening or don’t want to know, perhaps afraid of bureaucratic difficulties or angry parents. (I imagine, but don’t know, that the parents of bullies are likely to flare up in anger at accusations against their children — and then possibly abuse their kid themselves later. Do bullies often have nice parents?)
An interesting and often touching documentary about several victims of bullying, two driven to suicide, and the parents and teachers who often had no idea what was going on. But it is episodic, and we’re not sure what we learn from these personal stories except that they are sad.
Rating: Three stars
"The Avengers"
Action-adventure, PG-13, 142 minutes
One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one anothers’ worlds, preventing gridlock. The Avengers, however, do share the same time and space continuum, although in recent years they’ve been treated in separate single-superhero movies. One assumes the idle Avengers follow the exploits of the employed ones on the news.
“The Avengers,” much awaited by Marvel Comics fans, assembles all of the Avengers in one film — Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye.
A threat to Earth from the smirking Loki, resentful adoptive brother of the Norse god Thor, causes Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to assemble all of the Avengers: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). The result is sort of like an All Star Game for Marvel superheroes.
“The Avengers” is done well by Joss Whedon, with style and energy. It provides its fans with exactly what they desire. Whether it is exactly what they deserve is arguable.
Rating: Three stars
— Roger Ebert
"The Five-Year Engagement"
Romantic comedy, R, 124 minutes
Like a delectable meal that goes on too long, “The Five-Year Engagement” continues past gratification to overindulgence. It’s a very good movie. If a tough editor trimmed it from 124 minutes to 90, it would be wonderful. Judd Apatow’s latest production, starring Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, concerns two imperfect, exasperating, well-intentioned ordinary people who trip themselves up on a daily basis. They’re a lot like what most of us see in the mirror, only with better dialogue.
There’s humor in every beat of the story, and the laughs come from the characters’ humanity, not camp comedy. “Engagement” is chockablock with inventive humor and sharply drawn secondary characters, yet it feels as if stretches are unfolding in real time.
Rating: Three stars
— Colin Covert, MCT
"Chimpanzee"
Comedy, G, 78 minutes
Partway through the four-year production of the Disneynature documentary “Chimpanzee,” an inconvenient thing happened: Isha, the mother of the film’s cuddly star, Oscar, was killed. But as the film’s executive producer, Don Hahn, noted at a recent screening: “Well, it’s a tradition in Disney, so let’s keep going.”
A good thing they did. Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, both documentary veterans, end up with a story far more dramatic than just a day-to-day chronicle of life among the chimps of Africa’s Tai Forest. As for the movie’s unexpected ending, it’s so perfect it could have been borrowed from one of Hahn’s other Disney productions, like “The Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast.”
Rated G and narrated with kid-friendly humor by Tim Allen, “Chimpanzee” humanizes its subjects in the usual ways: Oscar’s group of chimps, led by the hulking male Freddy, are the “good” guys terrorized by a villain named — what else? — Scar. Still, the movie doesn’t entirely sugarcoat things. Oscar’s family are the ones who devour a rather horrifying delicacy (monkeys!) and they’re also the ones who coldly reject the newly orphaned chimp.
Rating: Three stars
— Rafer Guzman, MCT
"The Lucky One"
Romance, PG-13, 101 minutes
A Marine sees a photograph almost buried in rubble in the middle of a combat scene. He steps over to pick it up, and with that small movement he saves his life. A nearby explosion would have wiped him out. The photo stays with him through his third tour of duty, and when he comes home he determines to find the girl in the photograph. He doesn’t know her name or where she lives, but wouldn’t you know, through happy chance he happens to be passing through Louisiana — and there she is!
I’m not going to say anything at all about the odds of that happening. The odds are overwhelmingly against anything in any movie happening, so I should just shut up and pay attention. This is yet another love story adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, and it has been cast with appealing romantic leads, a snaky villain with a drinking problem, a grandmother with infallible instincts, and a lot of adorable dogs. It also has leaves bursting into bright autumn colors, and a lake just right for a couple to steal away for a quiet chat on a rowboat.
Nicholas Sparks has a good line in stories like this. They usually involve the triumph of love over adversity, they are usually set in beautiful natural settings, they usually involve such coincidences as finding a message in a bottle, and they usually make me stir restlessly, because such escapism is shameless. Still, credit must be given to a film that delivers the goods, and if you’ve ever liked a Nicholas Sparks movie, you’re likely to enjoy this one.
Rating: Two and a half stars
— Roger Ebert
"Mirror Mirror"
Comedy, PG, 106 minutes
As the title of “Mirror Mirror” suggests, two sides battle for our attention. At its core, “Mirror Mirror” is a comedy and a clever spin on the Brothers Grimm classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The actors are caught somewhere in the middle of this quirky, unsatisfying film — a fractured fairy tale that alternates between amusing and infuriating with each new scene. Still the fairest of them all, Julia Roberts portrays the Queen, who insists in the opening narration that we are witnessing the familiar story from her perspective. But Roberts never sells the “evil” part of this evil Queen.
Rating: Two stars.
— Jon Niccum, MCT
“The Hunger Games”
Sci-fi action, PG-13, 142 minutes
Jennifer Lawrence is strong and convincing as the lead in a science-fiction parable set in a future where poor young people are forced into deadly combat for the entertainment of the rich. The earth-toned naturalism of forest hunting scenes is in odd contrast to the bizarre oddballs at the top in this society. An effective entertainment, but too long, and it avoids questions about this society’s morality.
Rating: Three stars.
“21 Jump Street”
Comedy, R, 109 minutes
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum play Schmidt and Jenko, who were opposites in high school and now, a few years later, find themselves partners in a police undercover program that enrolls them in high school. They don’t look young enough, but so what? The movie cheerfully ignores the dramatic focus of the 1980s Fox series and becomes a mashup of screwball comedy, action and the “Odd Couple” formula. Better than you might expect.
Rating: Three stars.
— Roger Ebert