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Opening wide this weekend: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—Final thirds of trilogies of trilogies don’t come along every day. Yet, here we are marking the last chapter of the nine-movie Star Wars cycle that began in 1977, and it feels, to me at least, if not a non-event, then just another blockbuster movie. In the film, the heroes visit a festival on a planet that, C-3PO tells us, is only celebrated “every 42 years.”...

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For Boomer-era people on, the annual watching of certain movies has become a traditional part of marking the holiday season. But this can be a chore. The equally essential TV specials, like Rudolph, The Grinch and A Charlie Brown Christmas, don’t require the same investment of time, during an already hectic season, as movies do. Yet when the holidays are over, you may feel a pang that you didn’t get to White Christmas or Scrooged...

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At Harkins Arizona Mills: I See You—Helen Hunt lives in a gorgeous waterfront home in an affluent Ohio neighborhood. But she’s seriously in the doghouse with her police detective husband (Jon Tenney) and even more so with her enraged teenage son (Judah Lewis) over a recent affair. Weird, seemingly supernatural things are happening in the house, and in the community, where adolescent boys have gone missing. This brooding thriller manages a polished look on what...

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Knives Out—Remember those facetious mysteries of the ‘70s, like Murder by Death or Sleuth; the sort of thing that unfolds mostly in one old-dark-house setting, with scherzo strings or tinkling harpsichord on the soundtrack? If so, you may feel a special nostalgic pull from this goofball all-star ensemble whodunit from writer-director Rian Johnson. The story concerns Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) a rich mystery writer living in a cluttered rattletrap Massachusetts manse with a bunch of...

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Opening this weekend: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood—The life and career of Mr. Rogers is a truly remarkable story, and it was very capably told in last year’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? This drama, in which the kid-show host is played by Tom Hanks, is trying for something different. To begin with, Mr. Rogers isn’t the central character; most of the movie’s screen time is devoted to Matthew Rhys, as a fictionalized...

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At Harkins Fashion Square: The Report—From its generic title on, this political drama is all business. Even the protagonist, played by Adam Driver, has a generic-sounding name: Daniel J. Jones. If memory serves, there isn’t a single scene in the film that shows him at his home, or tells us anything more about his personal life than that he was a jogger. The focus of the film, written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, is...

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Opening wide this weekend: Last Christmas—The holiday season is here, whether we approve of it starting so early or not; the first Christmas movie of the season has opened. The title of this English romcom refers, of course, to the Wham! hit of 1984 penned by George Michael, and the soundtrack (and soundtrack album; the perfect stocking-stuffer) is packed with other Michael favorites. So for some audience members it might be a relief simply that...

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Opening wide this weekend: Terminator: Dark Fate—Another day, another killer robot from the future for Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in this newest sequel to the sci-fi classic of 1984, directed by Tim Miller. This time the murderous cyborg has the handy multitasking ability of separating his handsome human form (Gabriel Luna) from his scary mechanical skeleton. He arrives in Mexico City to terminate Dani (the charming Natalia Reyes), a seemingly ordinary young factory worker. The...

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If your kid loves fire trucks, he or she should come to the Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting. If you love fire trucks, for that matter, you should come to the Hall of Flame Museum. And both you and your kids should definitely come to the Hall of Flame this Saturday, November 2, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., for “Safety Day at the Museum,” a festival of fun and fire safety education. And...

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At Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Chandler: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein cereal party—Out of the many Halloween-appropriate movie-going options available right now, from The Lighthouse to Zombieland Double Tap to The Addams Family, you might want to consider a fun old-school possibility, the 1948 favorite in which the comedy team mixes it up not only with the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange) but with Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and the tortured Larry Talbot, aka the Wolf Man...

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In wide release: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil—Not really evil, exactly. In her live-action star vehicle from 2014, the horned sorceress from Sleeping Beauty, here played by Angelina Jolie, got both a backstory and a whitewash. She placed the curse of perpetual sleep on poor innocent Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning), sure, but she was driven to it when Aurora’s jerk father did her wrong, and she later repented her spite and became the girl’s doting godmother....