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PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH
**** Through the cash-grabby muck of soulless animated sequels and uninspired adaptations comes “El Macho Gato,” swooping in like Errol Flynn to save the day. In the Shrek universe’s first offering in over a decade, Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) has frittered away his previous eight lives—and the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura) has come to claim his last, compelling the once fearless feline into a cozy life as a domesticated house cat. But Puss kicks off his kitten mittens and redons his boots when he hears of a magical MacGuffin that can restore his lost lives. He’s joined by a heartwarmingly hilarious dog, Perrito (Harvey Guillén), and reunites with Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), facing down the likes of Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) and the three bears and Jack Horner (John Mulaney) along the way. The big-ticket voice actors offer an unexpected level of characterization, and the film features dynamic animation akin to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Kids will be swept away by a fairy tale that sincerely and movingly evokes the power of family and friendship, while adults will admire how forthrightly the film confronts life beyond the endless hope of youth. And all audiences, no matter their age, will appreciate the film’s conviction that one beautiful life matters as much as nine. PG. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, St. Johns Twin,Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Beaverton, Wunderland Milwaukie.
BABYLON
**** In Babylon, there’s a scene where one woman woos another by sucking rattlesnake venom out of her neck. That’s the movie in a nutshell—sweet, slightly insane and irrevocably romantic. It’s true to form for director Damien Chazelle (La La Land), who is enamored with the romance of things lost. This time, the subject of his jubilant-mournful gaze is pre-talkies Hollywood, as embodied by a swaggering, fading star (Brad Pitt), an exuberantly vulgar it girl (Margot Robbie), and a naïve striver (Diego Calva), whose evolution—from eager chauffeur to cynical executive to rueful family man—brashly illustrates how Tinseltown makes and unmakes its denizens. Even at 188 minutes, the film can’t fully illuminate the inner lives of everyone in its vast ensemble (which includes Jovan Adepo as a trumpet player caught in a maelstrom of success and bigotry). Still, to drink in Chazelle’s mad brew of screwball vignettes and nostalgic yearning is to experience a transcendent high. Babylon’s Hollywood is callous and cruel—two behind-the-scenes deaths are greeted with nonchalance by the film’s “heroes”—but it can also be frantically glorious, as Calva’s character learns when he steals an ambulance to get a camera to a set before the sun goes down. He makes it in time for the director to get a shot of Pitt, in medieval garb, smooching his co-star as the light fades from the sky. What a town this was then, Chazelle seems to sigh, though not without defiance. Despite being about a cinematic age long dead, Babylon is blazingly alive. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Cinemagic, City Center, Eastport, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Studio One, Tigard.
CORSAGE
** If you thought Princess Di had it too easy, consider Empress Elisabeth of the Habsburg monarchy. Presented publicly as a near-mute, suffocatingly corseted doll, Elisabeth (Vicky Krieps) leads a double life in 1877 Vienna. In private, she’s an expert equestrian, gymnast and fencer, and an advocate for the institutionalized (not to mention a skilled flirt). Her duality flawlessly suits Krieps (Phantom Thread, Bergman Island), who excels in roles that withhold a rich inner life just beyond a patriarchal view. But director Marie Kreutzer (The Ground Beneath My Feet) stretches Elisabeth’s subjugation into a thin, melancholic silence. Corsage aimlessly repeats the notes of Elisabeth’s quiet, failed rebellions to diminishing returns. Considering all that the film ahistorically invents for the character, there’s ample room to make more joy, more passion, more fireworks from Elisabeth’s individuality and desires (without reaching for the opulent heights of a cinematic cousin like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette). NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower.
A MAN CALLED OTTO
** Tom Hanks has officially entered the curmudgeonly phase of his career. In A Man Called Otto, based on the Swedish-language film A Man Called Ove and the novel by Fredrik Backman, Hanks plays a retired widower who loses the will to live until a new family intrudes into his neighborhood (and, gradually, his life). It’s a story built on the most tired of tropes: the supercilious old white man reluctantly offering sage guidance to today’s incompetent youth while finding his purpose in the process. Worse, Hanks isn’t even right for the role; he seems unable to shake his established persona to sell the emotional journey of a “mean” man we’re supposed to grow to love (an archetype Bill Murray and Clint Eastwood portrayed to near perfection in St. Vincent and Gran Torino, respectively). It doesn’t help that the film never colors outside the lines in its depiction of an elder’s enduring relevance in a changing society, only taking a view from the cheap seats at the story’s more urgent dynamics (including storylines dealing with suicide and gender identity). PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower.