By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Coming to Amarillo movie theaters this week: Moms on a bender, an action hero on a mission — and an even-more-insane version of "Pokemon Go"?
Bad Moms
This new comedy boasts a promising cast — including Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis as the leads, along with support from Christina Applegate and Jada Pinkett Smith — and a creative team with some raunchy comic chops (The Hangover writers Scott Moore and Jon Lucas, who also direct here). But Moore and Lucas also wrote The Change-Up and 21 & Older, not to mention the godawful ABC series Mixology, all of which gives me major pause. However, reviews are fairly mixed. "For the film to be about more than just wildly outrageous behavior (although those moments are the one that provoke the biggest and well-earned laughs), these have to feel like real people and we have to care about them too. And we do, thanks to a strong cast of comic actresses who have an easy chemistry with each other," writes Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com. "Amusing as it is, the movie never resolves its tension between real truths and movie-land problem-solving where the good guys win out because they’re good—no matter how “bad” they pretend to be," writes Jesse Hassenger at The AV Club. (R for sexual material, full frontal nudity, language throughout, and drug and alcohol content; United Artists Amarillo Star 14, 8275 W. Amarillo Blvd., and Cinemark Hollywood 16, 9100 Canyon Drive)
Jason Bourne
After what I guess was a one-off with Jeremy Renner, the action franchise brings back director Paul Greenglass and star Matt Damon as the mysterious spy, who reemerges with his memory fully intact and on a mission to find out the truth about his past. "It’s not that Jason Bourne is a bad movie," writes Moira Macdonald for the Seattle Times "Like every installment in this franchise, it’s meticulously and breathlessly edited, well-acted (with one exception) and handsomely filmed in a far-flung variety of world cities. ... (But) the movie gets lost in its focus on flash and speed, and forgets about the man — and the fine, quiet actor (Damon) — at its center." Cary Darling of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is somewhat more positive: "While far from being the most memorable chapter in the ongoing Bourne story, it’s a nevertheless engrossing return to form that also touches on such live-wire issues as security and safety versus privacy and freedom." (PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and brief strong language; AS-14, H-16, Tascosa Drive-In, 1999 Dumas Drive)
Nerve
A reserved teen (Emma Roberts) gets embroiled in a social-media game that requires her to do escalatingly dangerous dares (with stranger-turned-partner Dave Franco) in this new action-thriller that opened Wednesday to mostly positive reviews. David Ehrlich of IndieWire compares it to a cross between Pokemon Go and David Fincher's The Game: "Blisteringly cool one moment and ridiculously silly the next (much like its high school heroine), this punchy and propulsive late summer surprise is able to capture the way we live now because it displays such a vivid understanding of the reasons why we live that way." Alan Schertuhl of the Village Voice calls the film "ludicrous but amusing": "If one patch of dares disappoints, there's another coming right up, and the directors stage and shoot them with swooning neon kinecticism." (PG-13 for thematic material involving dangerous and risky behavior, some sexual content, language, drug content, drinking and nudity-all involving teens; AS-14, H-16)
Still playing
Alice Through the Looking Glass (Premiere Cinemas Westgate Mall 6, 7701 W. Interstate 40); The Angry Bids Movie (WM-6); Central Intelligence (H-16); The Conjuring 2 (WM-6); Finding Dory (AS-14, H-16); Ghostbusters (AS-14, H-16); Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (AS-14); Ice Age: Collision Course (AS-14, H-16, TDI); The Jungle Book (WM-6); The Legend of Tarzan (AS-14, H-16); Lights Out (AS-14, H-16); Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates (H-16); The Purge: Election Year (H-16); The Secret Lives of Pets (AS-14, H-16); Star Trek Beyond (AS-14, H-16); Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (WM-6); X-Men: Apocalypse (WM-6); and Zootopia (WM-6).
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
