2/4 ARCTIC DOGS FAMILY ANIMATION $4 MILL BO PG 92 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO

VOICED BY Jeremy Renner, James Franco.

Mail room clerk Swifty (voiced by Jeremy Renner) has a dream: to become a Top Dog, a star courier with the Arctic Blast Delivery Service. There’s just one problem: Swifty is a fox, not a dog. Feeling trapped in his dead end job, Swifty decides to prove his mettle so he steals a sled and heads out to develop a package. But this delivery is more than Swifty bargained for, as he learns when he winds up in the sights of evil villain Otto Von Walrus (voiced by John Cleese). Can a little fox defeat a supervillain whose dastardly plan will destroy the earth as we know it?

Will rent as easily as ABOMINABLE, DORA AND THE LOST CITY, TOY STORY 4, ALADDIN and A DOG’S JOURNEY.

2/4 DOCTOR SLEEP THRILLER $32 MILL BO R 132 MINUTES DVD/BLU RAY DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO

Ewan McGrego (TV—FARGO—FILM—TRAINSPOTTING, VELVET GOLDMINE, STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 and II, MOULIN ROUGE!, BLACK HAWK DOWN, T2)

You’d think a sequel to one of the greatest psychological horror films of all time, the 1980 Kubrick classic “The Shining,” would be a disastrous, pointless mess. So it’s a bit of a minor miracle that “Doctor Sleep” is every bit as good as the movie on which its based. This continuation of the original story is engaging, well acted, skillfully shot, and touches on deeper themes that you wouldn’t expect from a horror film. It stands on its own as well as being a satisfying sequel. Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is now all grown up, and is a struggling alcoholic. Still scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook Hotel, Danny is doing his best to turn his life around and accepts the help of a kind stranger (Cliff Curtis) to get back on his feet. Everything is going well until one night he gets a “shine” vibe from teenager Abra (Kyliegh Curran), who has one of the strongest gifts he’s ever encountered. But Danny isn’t the only one who’s picked up on Abra’s powers, and she’s soon the target of the villainous Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her gang of followers who feed off the “shine” of others. The first-rate performances elevate the material with McGregor and Ferguson turning in some of their career-best work. They inhabit their characters so well it’s downright scary. Even the supporting cast leaves an impact, especially Jacob Tremblay, in a small role as an abducted boy. His scene is one of the most terrifying in the film, and it’s unforgettable. Fans of “The Shining” will delight in a couple of throwback sequences that are incredibly clever. We see Danny and his mom and dad as their younger selves but instead of utilizing hokey de-aging CGI, director Mike Flanagan chooses to cast look-alike actors. By the time the movie turned back to the Overlook Hotel, I was on the edge of my seat (fueled by an uneasy nostalgia) until the very end. The ominous tone is carried throughout, blending well with the significant themes of intense fear, trauma, addiction, grief, and healing. It’s cerebral and thoughtful, but still thrilling and entertaining. “Doctor Sleep” is one of the better movies of the year, and it should be embraced as a modern instant classic by fans of “The Shining.” This will rfent as well as HOBBS & SHAW, COUNTDOWN, ZOMBIELAND 2, SPIDER MAN: FAR FROM HOME, DARK PHOENIX and SHAZAM!.

2/4 THRILLER $20 MILL BO R 109 MINUTES DIGITAL COPIES WITH THE DVD AND THE BLU RAY NO COMBO

Helen Mirren (WOMAN IN GOLD, TRUMBO, RED I & II, HITCHCOCK, THE DEBT, THE CLEARING)

An airport novel of a movie, Bill Condon’s The Good Liar is efficient and consumable, if a bit hollow. For the most part, the film successfully marries the levity of con-artist hijinks, the suspenseful ambiguity of a Hitchcockian romance, and the heightened realism of a postwar spy adventure. But like so many pulpish mysteries, its resolution fails to neatly tie up these elements, and though it’s never especially difficult to anticipate at least the general direction in which the plot’s twists are taking us, it’s an enjoyable couple of hours, held together by strong performances and an unpretentious presentation. For reasons dictated by the protagonists’ ages and historically specific backstories, The Good Liar is set in 2009. British retirees Roy (Ian McKellan) and Betty (Helen Mirren) first meet on an online dating service, initially going by the respective pseudonyms of Brian and Estelle. Once these initial, foreshadowing lies have been dispelled, the two begin an adorably tepid romance, all handshakes and polite compliments. Betty hesitantly invites Roy over to her place when the restaurant where they planned to meet turns out to be closed. They watch Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds , and the two have a cordial debate about whether the film’s ahistorical representation poisons the minds of the young. Of course, the Roy that Betty knows is a lie: Hardly a retiree, the octogenarian is an active, high-level financial scammer. We’re acquainted to Roy’s alter ego as he abandons his cane and strides ably into a strip club—a shot presented in low angle so as to capture some gratuitous nudity on the dancers’ raised platform. Roy proceeds to a private booth, where he and his partner in crime, Vincent (Jim Carter), are meeting with a pair of investors (Mark Lewis Jones and Stefan Kalipha) they’ve planning to scam out of their money. This subplot will eventually spill over into the main romantic plot, though through a more circuitous route than expected. If, with its “exposed breasts connote shady dealings” rhetoric, this introduction to the seedy Roy lands a bit too hard, McKellan’s performance is more successful in threading together the multiple sides of the man. Even before Roy’s criminal associates start alluding to his dark past, McKellan suggests the weight of a troubled history in his character’s actions. He communicates a sadness and resentment that isn’t manifest in the dialogue, even as Roy takes evident pleasure in the money scams he runs on investors and, eventually, on Betty. The Good Liar is the type of neatly fabricated mystery in which every emphasized detail will prove to be significant, so when Betty’s grandson, Steven (Russell Tovey), explains that his dissertation topic is the Nazi architect Albert Speer, one can guess that WWII will play some role in the resolution of Roy and Betty’s romantic arc. When Betty suggests a continental vacation—first stop, Berlin—it’s fairly obvious that a confrontation with Roy’s shrouded war history is in the mix. Still, the final third of the film proves to be more deeply rooted in ‘40s Germany than even the pointed discussion of Speer suggests, but don’t look to the film for any particular insight into wartime Germany or the experiences of the “greatest generation.” Here, the war serves mostly as a dramatic facilitator of final twist rather than a lived experience. This will go very well with DOWNTON ABBEY, JUDY, THE KITCHEN, THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, WELCOME TO BERNADETTE, and LONG SHOT.

2/4 LAST CHRISTMAS COMEDY $44 MILL BO PG-13 143 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO BEFORE REDBOX

Emma Thompson (MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL, THE CHILDREN ACT, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, BRIDGET JONES BABY, BURNT, SAVING MR. BANKS)

Kate’s (Emilia Clarke) life is a total mess. A series of very bad decisions has landed her without a place to lay her head and a bore of a job as an elf-clad assistant at a year-round Christmas shop in Covent Garden. Her boss (Michelle Yeoh) doesn’t like her, her mom Petra (Emma Thompson) annoys her with constant worrying, and her attorney sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) thinks she’s wasting her life. When handsome Tom (Henry Golding) walks into her life, he seems too good to be true. He’s absolutely perfect, but of course he has plenty of secrets of his own. Tom is the perfect Manic Pixie Dream Boy and Kate is a girl you want to root for. The two leads have a decent enough chemistry, but Clarke is the real standout. She has a bright future as a rom-com star. She’s delightful and charming, with a lovely comedic timing. What’s so disappointing is that her breezy, charismatic performance is held back by the film’s story and pacing. She deserves a much better vehicle to showcase her talents. There is no reason for this film to have a Christmas theme or to be set in late December. It’s just a cheap way to sell tickets to a supposed “holiday movie.” The script, penned by Thompson, is dreadful. It lacks focus with too many jumbled subplots rambling all over the place. The disjointed story tries to be too many things at once, including a comedy, a drama, and a romance, and somehow manages to fail at all of them. Even worse, it’s too serious and not very fun — an element that most consider a holiday movie must-have. The film is at its best when it goes for the laughs early on. This will rent as well as HUSTLERS, WELCOME TO BERNADETTE, BOOKSMART, BREAKTHROUGH, and FIVE FEET APART.

2/4 PLAYING WITH FIRE COMEDY $41 MILL BO 2173 SCREENS PG 96 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO

John Cena (FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, BUMBLEBEE, BLOCKERS, DADDY’S HOME 2, THE WALL, SISTERS)

The movie begins with a wildfire raging through a Northern California forest. People are stranded in their cars, roads are clogged, chaos and fear are swirling around with the smoke. The soundtrack for this emergency situation? Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” the perky and ubiquitous party anthem from a few years back. Maybe the filmmakers were taking the “Call the police and the fireman” section of the song’s lyrics literally. Whatever the reason, it’s a bizarre choice, but only the first in a series of many. Director Andy Fickman, whose previous high- concept comedies include “You Again,” “Parental Guidance” and his piece de resistance, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,” has slapped together a series of wacky antics with little concern for continuity, logic or pacing. I kept asking myself questions like: “How did that dog get there?” “Where did Judy Greer get that sweater?” “How did they paint that ‘My Little Pony’ mural so quickly?” and “What happened to Keegan-Michael Key? He was standing there a second ago.” Just to give you an idea of how the movie aims to appeal to the widest possible audience with its broad brand of humor, it features an even ratio of poop jokes to John Cena shirtless scenes. I counted. Cena stars as a by-the-book firefighter named Jake Carson, who leads his team of smokejumpers into harm’s way when flames threaten the rugged wildlands of Northern California. (A side note: It was also a strange experience seeing this movie when much of the state was burning in reality.) The fastidious Mark (Key), the sensitive Rodrigo (John Leguizamo) and the mute, burly Axe (Tyler Mane) are his co-workers. (Mane, Cena’s fellow former wrestler, plays a character with that name because he … carries an axe.) When a fire breaks out at a cabin and the team swoops in to put out the flames, Jake finds a trio of siblings trapped inside: responsible teenager Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand), impish little brother Will (Christian Convery) and the tiny, wide-eyed moppet Zoe (Finley Rose Slater). Anyway, the whole point is to get the kids back to the fire depot, a pristine and orderly workplace where they can wreak havoc in a variety of ways. And because Jake can’t get a hold of their parents, he’s stuck taking care of them for far longer than he’d hoped. You see, Jake has no time in his life or room in his heart for other people—not even the scientist (Greer) doing research nearby who has a crush on him. He is all about the work. Nonetheless, madcap hijinks ensue involving paint thinner, soap suds and, yes, poop. There’s one bit involving projectile diarrhea and a protective firefighting suit that defies the laws of physics; I’m still trying to figure out how it makes sense logistically. Then there’s the scene in which Jake has to relieve himself outdoors, with the youngest sibling – a little girl who’s maybe 4 years old – standing directly in front of him and holding his head in place to ensure that he maintains eye contact with her the whole time. It is as uncomfortable as it sounds. From there, it’s a dizzying, 180-degree turn into feel-good territory, with Mark rhapsodizing about the important, brave work smokejumpers do and Jake finally letting his guard down and becoming a warm, doting father figure to these kids when they need it the most. This will easily rent as well as SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME, STUBER, FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, INSTANT FAMILY, BOOKSMART, THE HUSTLE, and HOLMES AND WATSON .

2/11 FORD V ACTION $83 MILL BO PG-13 142 MINUTES DVD/BLU RAY DIGITAL COPY WITH THE BLU RAY BEFORE REDBOX

Matt Damon (DEADPOOL 2, GOOD WILL HUNTING, THE MARTIAN, WE BOUGHT A ZOO, THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, STUCK ON YOU, ROUNDERS, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN)

To the film’s credit, its initially po-faced depiction of an American car company’s competition for entrepreneurial supremacy is swiftly revealed to be cynically motivated. When II (Tracy Letts) agrees to ready his cars for the racing circuit in order to increase the Ford brand’s prestige, he at first opts to simply attempt to acquire Ferrari rather than compete with the Italian car manufacturer. The pompousness of the man’s corporate position is evident from his first entreaties on the proposition, with Letts luridly oozing the unctuousness of his character’s capitalist nobility. This is a man in his 50s who heads one of the world’s largest companies but asserts his authority by birthright. Amusingly, (Remo Girone) ignites the war between his company and Ford by calling out this trait in the man, noting that he’s only “Henry Ford the second, not Henry Ford,” wounding the CEO’s pride. To craft a racecar that could win the 24-hour Le Mans competition, the turns to (), a Le Mans winner turned car designer. Carroll’s experience behind the wheel gives him an intimate knowledge of how a minor adjustment to a vehicle can dramatically change how it handles, and his on-the-fly mechanical expertise is a freedom that Ford’s bureaucratic method mangles with extra hands. “You can’t win a race by committee,” Carroll argues when the company tries to overcomplicate the project. Carroll also demands to use his personal racer, the temperamental but skillful (), saying that the man behind the wheel is as crucial as anything under the hood. Director Mangold bathes these men in golden magic hour light and the cool, reflective blues of twilight. They’re positioned as embodiments of basic goodness, honest work, and personal values: Carroll the business owner who works closely with the men on his shop floor rather than pushing paper in an office all day, and Ken the unpredictable livewire, who keeps his rambunctiousness in check through his love of his wife () and son (Noah Jupe). That the film so often concerns the duel between Ford and these two men, rather than the one between Ford and Ferrari, enriches what could otherwise have just been a typical sports drama. Numerous scenes show Carroll and Ken forced to contend with the nattering nabobs who fill Ford’s executive board, who intrude on design conversations with suggestions that prioritize the branding of the racecar over its actual functionality and want to replace Ken with a more camera-ready driver. The pressure of their constant harping is such that Ken’s testing of the racecar on a practice track feels like a reprieve, with the roar of the vehicle as it makes hairpin turns and pushes for new speed records at times proving hypnotic and strangely tranquil. But the moments that depict Carroll and Ken speaking in gearhead jargon as they make infinitesimal adjustments to their prototype car can be tedious, and the test- driving sequences occasionally exude the canned quality of a sports montage. Mangold manages to perfectly balance the oscillating emphasis on racing and behind- the-scenes drama in the film’s last act, in which the team led by Carroll competes in the 1966 Le Mans race. Scenes of Ken zooming around practice tracks all by his lonesome give way to ones that foreground the life-and-death dangers of competitive racecar driving, with cars spinning out, colliding, and catching fire all around him, and at speeds up to 200mph. All the while, the Ford execs treat Ken as if he were some advertising model, passing down demands that he race more photogenically as the man tries to win the competition in the only way he knows how. Plenty of sports-themed films end in disappointment for its protagonists, but Ford v Ferrari contains an added element of cynicism that stretches far beyond the matter of who wins or loses, a reminder of how badly corporate sponsorship and ownership undermines the individual and team achievements that are foundational to the mythology of sports. This will rent as well as HOBBS AND SHAW, MEN IN BLACK INTERNATIONAL, LONG SHOT, SHAZAM!, THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, and HUSTLERS.

2/18 A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD FAMILY $36 MILL BO PG 119 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO

Tom Hanks (CASTAWAY, PHILADELPHIA, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, TURNER AND HOOCH, PUNCH LINE, THE MONEY PIT)

All of it is so eerily familiar: the gently comforting music, the hand-built miniature buildings. Even the televisual texture of the image is exactly as anyone who watched the beloved children’s series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood might recollect. Then Fred Rogers himself walks into frame—or, rather, Tom Hanks, the actor playing him. He sings the famous theme song. He changes from his outdoor to his indoor clothes. And he breaks the fourth wall with that tranquil gaze that lets each person watching know that they’re gloriously unique. You’ll likely never doubt the reality of what you’re seeing at any point, though there’s something unsettling about the precision of both Hanks’s performance and the frame housing it— uncanny valley effects that have been achieved through fully analog means. The tension that emanates out of this opening scene, and many more besides it, isn’t a fault, but a virtue of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood . This is a knotty film masquerading as a simple one. Director Marielle Heller proves that the equally steely and empathetic eye that she brought to last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? was no fluke. She takes a screenplay by Micah Fitzerman- Blue and Noah Harpster that many filmmakers would turn into cringe-inducing treacle and consistently interrogates the sentimental trappings. Rogers isn’t even the primary focus here. Rather, it’s Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire writer based loosely on columnist Tom Junod, who profiled Rogers back in 1998 (also the year the film is set). Lloyd is both a new father and a damaged son. He’s been estranged from his own dad, Jerry (Chris Cooper), for years, and he’s developed a reputation for work that takes his subjects down several pegs. Lloyd loves his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson), and their infant child, but cynicism and anger are his go-to modes. Right after he gets into fisticuffs with Jerry at a family wedding, Lloyd’s editor (Christine Lahti) assigns him to profile Mister Rogers for an Esquire issue about heroes. An unwitting disciple is about to meet his guru. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a spiritual film of sorts, though it doesn’t make the mistake of presuming Mister Rogers or his perspective to be above doubt or suspicion. “How does it feel to be married to a living saint?” Lloyd asks Rogers’s wife, Joanne (Maryann Plunkett), in one scene. She proceeds to bring that lofty sentiment down to earth, noting her husband’s temper and hinting at other day-to-day challenges that his public will never see. The image Mister Rogers projects is sincere, but it takes work to maintain. And it only helps other people insofar as they’re able to access the truth underlying the benevolent illusion. This gets to the heart of Heller’s approach. Time and again she and her keen-eyed DP, Jody Lee Lipes, draw our attention to the falsity of Rogers’s world, most notably in the sections in which Lloyd visits the WQED studios in Pittsburgh where Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is filmed. In one scene, the camera pulls back from within one of the show’s many miniature models to reveal Lloyd hovering over it like a colossus. In another, a musical interlude between Lady Aberlin (Maddie Corman) and the Rogers-performed puppet Daniel Striped Tiger is shown from the perspective of Lloyd and the on-set crew so that we see the machinery, such as it is, undergirding a childlike song about controlling your anger. Heller isn’t exposing or devaluing the beliefs that are being extolled, but is showing us the place from which they spring. It’s left to the audience, as it is to Lloyd, to assess how applicable Rogers’s lessons are to life itself. The narrative, of course, proceeds along exactly the redemptive and reconciliatory paths you might expect. There are ways in which Heller can’t avoid the “movie we need right now” aura of the script. But even in scenes where the scales tip toward mawkishness, as when a group of subway riders serenades Mister Rogers with his own theme song, Heller makes sure to emphasize a look or a line reading that complicates our sense of the sentimentality. This will rent as well as JUDY, THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL, A DOG’S JOURNEY, BOOKSMART, LONG SHOT, RUN THE RACE, and GREEN BOOK.

2/18 DARK WATERS THRILLER $13 MILL BO PG-13 126 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO BEFORE REDBOX

Mark Ruffalo (NOW YOU SEE ME 2, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, IRON MAN 3, AVENGERS, DATE NIGHT, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, SHUTTER ISLAND)

In 1998, Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), a farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, attempts to enlist Cincinnati lawyer Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) to file suit against DuPont. The chemical company, it seems, has been dumping toxic chemicals in a landfill near Tennant’s farm, polluting its creek and killing its livestock. As an attorney for a firm that defends corporations, Bilott initially refuses the case but eventually goes to bat for Tennant: Bilott grew up in West Virginia and becomes emotionally invested in protecting the land he loved as a child. In the course of his investigation, Bilott discovers links between cancers and birth defects in the Parkersburg community and Dupont’s unregulated manufacture and disposal of PFOA (or C8), an indestructible chemical prevalent in many everyday household products. Yet what should be an open-and-shut case of corporate malfeasance and corruption drags on for years due to Dupont’s legal maneuvering, which costs Bilott his health and many of Bill’s clients their patience and social inclusion in Parkersburg, a Dupont company town to its core. Dark Water ’s strong suit is its central performances. As Bilott, Ruffalo provides a bristling tension in exploring the grey area between moral conviction and obsession as the lawyer’s selflessness borders on single-mindedness. And a scene-stealing Camp uses his bulk, not to mention a convincing rural drawl, to impart various shades of frustration, outrage, sadness, and disillusionment in the face of Tennant’s near-helpless situation. Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, can only do so much in the role of Bilott’s wife, Sarah, who seems to exist only to criticize others, be it her husband for his tunnel vision or his senior partner, Tom Terp (Tim Robbins), for taking Bilott’s self-sacrifice for granted. Given Sarah’s intriguing backstory (she gave up a career in law to become a housewife), as well as Haynes’s predilection for exploring complex women, her characterization feels especially thin. More important, perhaps, than any of these characters is West Virginia itself. The state isn’t featured often on film, which is a shame since it possesses an abundance of natural beauty. Of course, you won’t see that in Dark Waters , as Edward Lachman’s cinematography evokes the spoilage of that beauty by employing sickly, desaturated blues and greens, especially in outdoor winter scenes where you can practically feel the despair emanating from the screen. In this sense, the film harkens back to Haynes’s Safe , where toxicity appeared to suffuse the protagonist’s ordinary surroundings. The environmental details of Dark Waters reinforce the depth and expansiveness of Dupont’s crime, so that by the time John Denver’s signature “Take Me Home, Country Roads” ironically, if inevitably, plays during one of Bilott’s deflating drives through Parkersburg, Haynes has made the audience feel that this isn’t some remote, godforsaken hamlet, but rather the entire polluted planet. This will rent as well as AD ASTRA, THE KITCHEN, UNPLANNED, INTRUDER, RUN THE RACE and THE UPSIDE.

2/18 21 BRIDGES ACTION/THRILLER $31 MILL BO R 99 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO BEFORE REDBOX

Chadwick Boseman (BLACK PANTHER, MARSHALL, DRAFT DAY, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR)

In his latest film, 21 Bridges , Chadwick Boseman takes a break from Wakanda politics and biographies to invigorate the cop thriller subgenre with a sordid tale about a pair of cop killers who might not be as awful as they seem. You read that right, these two wanna be dope thieves (Stephen James and Taylor Kitsch) – despicable as their actions may be – just possibly may have a clue to a much larger issue taking place in downtown Manhattan. And once Detective Andre Davis (Boseman) is brought in on the case, he shuts down the island and its 21 bridges as he pursues his suspects…and the truth. Andre is the son of a murdered cop, and as the film opens, we learn he has grown into a police officer unafraid to pull his weapon if a suspect attacks. When eight officers are slain at a drug house masquerading as an upscale restaurant, Andre is brought into the case by Captain McKenna (J.K. Simmons) for his perceived proclivities towards frontier justice. McKenna’s direction is crystal: these men should not be brought in alive. Boseman’s fierce demeanor serves him well as he navigates an emotionally volatile police force while hunting the two perps. It is clear to Davis from the start that there is more to this story, and much of his assumption is defined solely by Boseman’s focused gaze as he surveys the crime scene and mounting clues. Even as he is forced to partner up with narc officer Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller), Boseman’s limited dialogue and suspicious nature forces him to rely on mannerisms and facial tics to convey his character’s constantly evolving contemplation. As two thieves who suddenly find themselves enormously in over their heads, Kitsch and James deliver remarkable turns as they savagely gun down police officers with no provocation, and yet utterly convince us to empathize with their characters. It is a testament to the strength of these two actors that they can open a film with such viciousness and somehow convey an inner humanity to what would be one-note villains in any other thriller. James in particular becomes a character the audience is almost rooting for by the final frame. 21 Bridges is entertaining through and through. From start to finish, it’s an engaging, sleekly shot thriller with solid performances and taut action that will no doubt live long and prosper on TNT for years to come. It is also exceptionally predictable. By the time Davis is assigned to the case, if you have caught even a handful of cop flicks in your life, you will have mapped out every conceivable plot point. Even the trailer essentially hands you the keys to the entire storyline. Does that dilute your enjoyment? Not at all. But if you are looking for surprises or unexpected turns, you’d be better off sticking your hand in the guy’s popcorn bucket sitting next to you than anything you’ll find here. 21 Bridges establishes Chadwick Boseman as a lead deserving of more opportunities outside of Black Panther or random celebrity biopics, and Andre Davis is an honorable cop worthy of partnering up with. Though the script lacks originality, solid performances and Brian Kirk’s slick direction keep this vehicle in gear for the long haul.

2/25 DISNEY’S FROZEN II $425 MILL BO PG 103 MINUTES DVD/COMBO DIGITAL COPY WITH THE COMBO VOICES OF: Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Sterling K. Brown, Martha Plimpton.

The turbulent events of Frozen behind her, Queen Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) is ruling Arendelle with the support of her loyal sister Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell). Kristoff (voiced by Jonathan Groff) is bumbling through his attempts to propose to Anna, to the despair of his reindeer, Sven. And thanks to Elsa’s magic permafrost, Olaf the snowman (voiced by Josh Gad) is free to bask in the sunshine and meditate aloud on his growing maturity. Then Elsa starts hearing voices. When Elsa answers the voices, the power of the elemental spirits of earth, air, fire, and water is unleashed. Windstorms batter Arendelle and the earth heaves, forcing an evacuation of the kingdom. Desperate to save their people, Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff head north to a mist-encircled magical forest, home of the Northuldra people, where Elsa believes she will find a way to appease the elements. Frozen II is a very different movie from the 2013 blockbuster hit; darker and more complex. The first Frozen was a movie about love in romantic and sisterly guises. This sequel is a sterner film, about duty to country, duty to the truth, and duty to oneself. It’s less about following your heart and more about following moral imperatives, however agonizing the consequences. “Do the next right thing”, King Runeard told his daughters before his death, and that maxim guides the conduct of both girls, now powerful young women, in their perilous quest. When Anna believes all is lost, his words are what keep her moving as she sings the emotional centerpiece of the movie, “ The Next Right Thing ”. The light moments are needed because the film’s story is fraught with peril. There are a few battle scenes and some people are killed off screen. Magical fire traps characters, the cast are swept up inside a tornado, Elsa is attacked by a water creature, and rock giants throw boulders and try to stomp people. And to make it much worse, two major characters have death scenes. This really isn’t a movie for preschoolers, especially if they cry easily. For kids who won’t be scared by the dangers inherent in the story, Frozen II, has a lot to offer. Its messages about integrity are supplemented by its examination of environmental stewardship, relationships with indigenous peoples, moving past fear, and righting past wrongs. Far from being frozen in a fairy tale formula, this movie has a lot to say in today’s world. This will rent as easily as ABOMINABLE, TOY STORY 4, ALADDIN, SECRET LIFE OF PETS 1 & 2, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON I & II and BUMBLEBEE.