First Christian Church of Gurnee

Opening This Week

Two CIA agent pals use their training and technology to compete for the same woman in This Means War.

This Means War ★★ The more preposterous the situation at the center of an escapist entertainment, the more genuine the characters need to be. There’s no inherent reason why this premise — two CIA agent pals (Tom Hardy and Chris Pine) using their training and technology to compete for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon) — couldn’t have generated a romantic-action-comedy with a heart. Co-screenwriter Simon Kinberg worked wonders with a similar romantic-entanglements-go-high-tech concept in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, yet here there are only token moments to establish light-hearted one-upmanship between Tuck (Hardy) and FDR (Pine), and virtually nothing to indicate why such an intense rivalry would emerge between two apparently inseparable bros. Yet they still make more sense than Lauren (Witherspoon), whose erratic personality shifts suggest she should be under surveillance for more traditional reasons. There are stretches when the film works on a purely superficial level, including Chelsea Handler’s dirty-mouthed comic relief as Lauren’s best friend. But in general, the problem isn’t that it’s a movie where people find themselves in wild situations; it’s that the wild situations don’t actually involve anything that feels like a person. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance While hiding out in Eastern Europe, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) must once again become the Ghost Rider when members of a secret church hire him to save a boy from Satan. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) The Secret World of Arietty ★★★ If your impression of animated features has been shaped entirely by the whiz-bang studio product of the CGI era, bring an open mind to this adaptation of The Borrowers from Japan’s Studio Ghibli. They move to Japan the story of a sickly boy named Shawn (David Henrie) who discovers a family of tiny people — including teenage Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler) — living under the floorboards of his house. Like many of Studio Ghibli’s films, Arrietty centers on an adventurous young female protagonist and a fantastical world of intricate detail, with a distinctive, hushed sense of pacing that’s allows time to absorb all that detail. It’s a bit less compelling as narrative, though, both because of an occasional focus on mythology over character and English-language voice characterizations that sometimes feel flat. But Arrietty holds your attention not through sheer manic refusal to let you catch your breath, but rather by trusting that texture and depth can be just as fascinating as pure speed. (G) (Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) Shame ★★★ Movies about addiction of any kind often avoid the risk of not taking the subject seriously enough by taking it far too seriously. That’s the main problem facing co-writer and director Steve McQueen’s (Hunger) often-compelling character study, which follows a New Yorker named Brandon (Michael Fassbender) dealing with a sex addiction that insinuates itself into his life in a variety of ways. McQueen is never overt about the specific causes for Brandon’s psychology, using his relationship with his equally but differently screwed-up sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), to hint at some deeply rooted issues. But despite terrific individual moments and Fassbender’s intense performance, McQueen faces the same familiar structure that accompanies most narratives of addition. By the time Shame reaches its crescendo of degradation, Brandon no longer connects as an average guy with an emotionally damaging problem. He’s living an opera. (NC-17) (Nickelodeon Theatre)

Now Playing

Beauty and the Beast 3-D ★★★★ I was surprised to learn that Disney’s Beauty and the Beast would be re-released in 3-D, because in my mind, it has ever been thus. Twenty years removed from being the last animated feature to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination, the fairy-tale romance between the smart, bold Belle (Paige O’Hara) and the surly, isolated Beast (Robby Benson) is still gloriously charming in its eficiency. The songs by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman are among the finest in the entire Disney canon, from the exuberant “Be Our Guest” to Angela Lansbury’s lovely performance of the title song. But I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated the character animation of Belle; watch for slight eye movements and wrinkles of the nose that convey an emotional range in keeping with the magnificent music. While technology might only now be allowing Beauty and the Beast to be in actual 3-D for the first time, see it again to appreciate how much depth it always offered in so many ways. (G) (Carmike 14) Big Miracle ★★★ Beyond the feel-good story you’re expecting, here’s a surprise: it’s also an improbably fascinating case study in pragmatic altruism. Based on the real-life 1988 incident, it begins with an Alaska television reporter (John Krasinski) discovering three gray whales stranded near one of the few open holes in the ice of Point Barrow, with no access to the open sea. The story makes national news, and suddenly an unlikely team of allies — including a Greenpeace worker (Drew Barrymore), an oil-company tycoon (Ted Danson) and Reagan administration operatives — is trying to save the whales. At times, director Ken Kwapis over-stuffs his bag of sub-plots, including the ex-romance between Krasinski and Barrymore. But this narrative ultimately immerses itself in the details of people understanding the power of public relations, and figuring out that doing a good deed could be exactly the thing that gets them exactly what they want. From Reagan asking the Soviets for help, to an environmentalist cutting ice alongside an oil baron, it’s a fairly remarkable lesson in the ideological sacrifices required to get something worthwhile accomplished — which, from a contemporary perspective, really seems like a big miracle. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal 7; Regal Sandhill) Chronicle ★★★ This, first of all: Director Josh Trank really doesn’t know how to keep his “found footage” concept consistent, mixing up surveillance footage with stuff that the movie tells us is buried underground, so that the compilation of these particular images doesn’t make a lick of sense. But man, is it often viscerally effective at giving the superhero origin a fresh burst of adrenaline, plus a dark thematic resonance. In the woods outside Seattle, three high-school students — outcast Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and big-man-on-campus Steve (Michael B. Jordan) — discover a mysterious something in a hole in the ground that endows them with strange powers. Trank stages terrific scenes of the trio learning their capabilities — including, not surprisingly for adolescents, playing pranks — that give a big-budget concept a welcome low-fi aesthetic. Max Landis’ screenplay also turns into a surprisingly potent metaphor for troubled, bullied teens turned vengefully violent. In the guise of an action movie, Chronicle winds up lingering in the dark places a person’s mind can go when a sense of powerlessness gives way a desire for absolute power over life and death. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) Contraband ★★ There’s a flicker of hope when Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) — a reformed talented smuggler forced back into “the life” from workaday domesticity to help pay off his screw-up brother-in-law’s debt to a criminal (Giovanni Ribisi) — admits that he’s actually excited about his return, because he’s missed it. But director Baltasar Kormákur — who starred in the Icelandic thriller of which this is a remake — quickly abandons character dynamics for tangled plot machinations and a grittiness that doesn’t blend well with the attempts at Ocean’s Eleven-style heist shenanigans. Predictability isn’t exactly the issue, as the narrative weaves into funky, unexpected territory and the supporting cast features funky work from Ribisi, J.K. Simmons, Diego Luna and others. It simply grinds along without paying off on the idea of a criminal who still romanticizes “the life” suddenly confronting the darker side. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) The Descendants ★★★ After his scathing cinematic satires, Alexander Payne’s always-engaging comedies of discomfort feel like the work of someone trying to be something he really wasn’t. His adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel follows Matt King (George Clooney), a scion of Hawai’ian land wealth dealing with the imminent removal of his wife from life support after an accident, even as he learns that she’d been having an affair. Payne does a terrific job of preserving the story’s distinctive setting, and at times he’s almost poetically graceful at allowing grief to become an organic part of the story. Yet it’s also frustrating when Payne tries to inject ironic distance, turning a genuinely anguished emotional release into a cheap laugh. Possible greatness stunted into mere good-ness when Payne becomes that guy who has to crack a joke if things get uncomfortably real. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal 7; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close ★★★ The central story elements — the 9/11 attacks; a grieving family; a mysterious, mute neighbor — are the stuff that make critics numb with fear of emotionally manipulative preciousness, but the sentimentality here has an unexpected edge. The adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel casts Thomas Horn as 11-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father (Tom Hanks) died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. One year after the attacks, a still-mourning Oskar finds among his dad’s belongings a key bearing the enigmatic label “BLACK,” launching Oskar on a quest through New York City to find its meaning. Oskar’s one big collection of quirks as a character, and the suggestion is that he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum. That single-mindedness helps bypass potential sad-boy stumbling blocks, with director Stephen Daldry finding off-kilter ways to explore the search for closure. Max von Sydow (as the aforementioned mysterious mute neighbor) adds gravitas to another oddball character; the story never has as much impact once he leaves. But give Daldry and company credit: It’s a tearjerker that somehow doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve been jerked around. (PG-13) (Regal Columbiana Grande) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ★★★ The riveting opening credits convey everything director David Fincher could bring to Stieg Larsson’s über-bestseller — while the rest of the film reminds us how much he can’t change. The centerpiece remains the intersection of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and enigmatic hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) during an investigation into a girl’s long-ago disappearance. Superficially, the material feels like a good fit for Fincher; there’s impressive visual style at work, and Fincher’s masterful pacing had me gripping armrests during scenes where I knew exactly what was coming. But structurally, it’s a plot-heavy potboiler with long stretches of expository interviews occasionally punctuated by sex scenes, and a 20-minute denouement that loses all momentum from the true climax. Larsson deserves credit for introducing an iconic pop-culture character, but it’s not always worth slogging through 150 minutes for parceled-out doses of Lisbeth. (R) (Regal Columbiana Grande) The Grey In Alaska, an oil drilling team struggles to survive after a plane crash strands it in the wild. Hunting the humans are a pack of wolves who see them as intruders. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal 7; Regal Sandhill) The Iron Lady ★★★ The opportunity to see Meryl Streep — America’s answer to Shakespearean acting royalty — play Margaret Thatcher is the main reason for checking out this biopic. And, as it turns out, really the only reason. Director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan open in 2009, with a retired Thatcher living under supervised care in the early stages of dementia, before her memory spins her back to her youth and political career. The setup offers hope that the narrative might ditch the relentlessly chronological structure that mires so many cinematic life stories in Wikipedia-entry detail. Then there’s the slump-in-the-chair moment when it turns resolutely conventional. Even as the timeline shifts between 2009 and the past, Lloyd and Morgan focus on the most obvious and least interesting bullet points of each era. It’s disappointing because Streep’s performance is most compelling when she’s conveying the ferocity of Thatcher’s convictions — whether at a time when she has the power to do something about them, or when she no longer does. Streep’s presence guarantees you won’t doubt for a moment that you’ve seen the story of Margaret Thatcher; the rest of the film can’t decide what that story is. (PG-13) (Carmike 14; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande) Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ★★ I never saw the original 2008 Journey to the Center of the Earth, but I’m not sure it matters; the Hollywood sequel has evolved to the point where specifics of previous installments are irrelevant. Dwayne Johnson replaces Brendan Fraser, playing the new stepfather of Josh Hutcherson’s Sean from the original film as they follow a coded message to … well, the title’s right there. The filmmaking team builds in plenty of formula elements: comic relief (Luis Guzmán); romantic interest (Vanessa Hudgens); whiff of respectability (Michael Caine). Given the high level of monotonous sameness, it probably made sense to slam everything into high gear right away, avoiding too much pointless characterization. Journey 2 is smart enough to get some old-school pop out of its 3D, including berries that ricochet off of Johnson’s impressive pecs as though his nipples had turned into machine guns. But this doesn’t just feel like a sequel to one particular movie. It feels like a sequel to every movie. (PG) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) Joyful Noise ★★ Writer and director Todd Graff’s would-be-uplifting musical dramedy theoretically revolves around a small-town Georgia church choir and its efforts to win a national competition, with the rivalry between the new choir director (Queen Latifah) and the widow of the previous director (Dolly Parton) acting as a loose anchor. But in practical terms it bounces between a half-dozen melodramatic plot threads: the romance between Latifah’s daughter (Keke Palmer) and Parton’s grandson (Jeremy Jordan); the struggles of Latifah’s autistic younger son; economic hardships hitting the choir’s town; tension between Latifah and her soldier husband (Jesse L. Martin). It’s like Glee for audiences who don’t want to have to watch gay characters. Of course, there’s plenty of talk about God’s will and plenty of big gospel-funk production numbers attempting to persuade us it’s all about something bigger than a vanity project for the two female leads, each of whom gets a solo spotlight song. Tossing in enough gratuitous naughtiness to land a PG-13 rating while simultaneously scolding the idea of gratuitous naughtiness, it’s a movie where the only thing distracting from its narrative incoherence is the cynical insincerity with which it panders to its Christian target audience. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) Man on a Ledge ★★ Sam Worthington has been cast by someone who clearly doesn’t understand what he is, and what he most definitely is not. Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop wrongly convicted of a felony who engineers a prison escape and an elaborate plan to prove his innocence, requiring him to place himself on the ledge of a Manhattan hotel’s 21st floor. Much of the energy comes from a heist involving Cassidy’s brother (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez), though the scenes feel designed mostly to impress with the cleverness of the plan. It’s a fast-moving plot machine, admittedly, but there has to be at least a basic effort to make the wronged hero worth rooting for —and Worthington only commands attention only when he’s in motion. The longer he stays fixed in one place, the more he exposes his limitations, and the more we need to understand what has driven Cassidy to this moment. The more we need to understand Cassidy as a character, the less wise it seems to cast a guy whose strongest talent seems to be making the costume designer and/or the stunt coordinator look good. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) One For the Money Unemployed and newly-divorced Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) lands a job at her cousin’s bail-bond business, where her first assignment puts her on the trail of a wanted local cop from her romantic past. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal Sandhill) Red Tails ★★★ For all his fascination with cutting-edge visual effects, as a storyteller George Lucas is as resolutely old-fashioned as contemporary filmmakers get — and both sides of that cinematic identity get a workout in this Lucas-produced WWII drama. It’s the fact-based story of the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps, the first wave of black fighter pilots from the pioneering Tuskeegee Airmen. Director Anthony Hemingway bounces between the flyboys themselves — including the obligatory hot-headed hotshot (David Oyelowo) and his hard-drinking captain (Nate Parker) — and the senior officers (Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.) advocating for them to see real action in opposition to institutional bigotry about the capabilities of “negroes.” Plenty of tin-eared dialogue and whoop-it-up take-it-to-jerry action ensue, the kind that almost dares you to snicker at its unapologetic use of war-movie tropes older than World War II itself. The characters are thin, but the dogfights are well-staged, and the throwback sensibility is surprisingly disarming. If Lucas could ever embrace movies where people talk like, well, people, he’d really be on to something. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) Safe House A young CIA agent (Ryan Reynolds) is tasked with looking after a fugitive (Denzel Washington) in a safe house. But when the safe house is attacked, he finds himself on the run with his charge. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ★★★ It was far from elementary that director Guy Ritchie would try to improve on a formula that banked $200 million in 2009, so give him credit for coming up with something more satisfying than its predecessor. A more streamlined plot finds Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) investigating the connection between the cunning Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) and a series of bombings that have pushed Germany and France to the brink of war. The mere presence of the detective’s greatest enemy raises the stakes; the over-the-top action sequences have been toned down such that the climactic confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty takes place mostly in their minds. Most notably, the film commits boldly to a more-than-casual bromance between Holmes and Watson; the two men even share a formal dance as they ponder the details of Moriarty’s plans. Ritchie being Ritchie, the action he does include often feels more frantic than exciting, and some plot explanations make no chronological sense of you take a moment to think about it. But for significant stretches uninterrupted by pointless bombast, A Game of Shadows is fun, witty and — shockingly — occasionally restrained. (PG-13) (Regal Columbiana Grande) Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace Two Jedi Knights (Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson) uncover a wider conflict when they are sent as emissaries to the blockaded planet Naboo. (PG) (Regal 7; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) Underworld: Awakening When human forces discover the existence of the Vampire and Lycan clans, a war to eradicate both species commences. The vampire warrioress Selene (Kate Beckinsale) leads the battle against humankind. (R) (AMC Dutch Square; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Sandhill) The Vow A car accident puts Paige (Rachel McAdams) in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo (Channing Tatum) works to win her heart again. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike Wynnsong; Regal Columbiana Grande; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill) The Woman in Black ★★ Hammer Films’ horror has always been more about spooky atmosphere than about ooga-booga scares — and this ghost story should have trusted the old-fashioned formula. In this adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel set in turn-of-the-century England, widowed attorney Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is sent to a remote village to settle an estate that includes a manor with a grim, possibly supernatural history. Director James Watkins provides a solid centerpiece sequence involving Kipps’ long, haunted night at the house, which might have been considerably more effective if Radcliffe could convey anything like mounting terror instead of consistent wide-eyed surprise. And Watkins might have trusted his creepy images themselves instead of cranking up the music whenever a spectre appears. If you want to make an old-school under-your-skin ghost story, you — and your leading man — really need to commit to it. (PG-13) (AMC Dutch Square; Carmike 14; Regal 7; Regal Pastime; Regal Sandhill)

Theaters

AMC Dutch Square 14 800 Bush River Rd., 888-262-4386 Carmike Cinemas 14 122 Afton Ct., 781-3067 Carmike Wynnsong 10 5320 Forest Dr., 782-8100 Monetta Drive-In 5822 Columbia Hwy North, Monetta, S.C., 803-685-7949 Nickelodeon Theatre 937 Main St., 254-3433 Regal Cinema 7 3400 Forest Dr., 790-9001 Regal Columbiana Grande Stadium 14 1250 Bower Pkwy., 407-9898 Regal Pastime Pavilion Cinemas 8 929 North Lake Dr., Lexington, 951-3604 Regal Sandhill Cinemas 16 450 Town Center Place, 736-1811 St. Andrews Road Multi Cinemas 527 St. Andrews Rd., 772-7469