What to watch (and what to skip) In theatres this week

What to Watch (And What to Skip) In Theatres This Week

 If you’re convinced space movies are all about  boys and their toys, you really need to see the radical, uncanny  High Life (Rating: A), from French director Claire Denis. 

The film  stars Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche as the passengers of a space prison ship filled with human guinea pigs, on the edge of a black hole and, says reviewer Liam Lacey, on the boundary of body and spirit.

Robert Pattinson gets suited up in Claire Denis’ “radical and uncanny” space movie High Life.

Jim Slotek looks at the inspirational reality-based Canadian film, The Grizzlies (B), about a Saskatchewan teacher, (Ben Schnetzer) who used lacrosse to give purpose to desperate Nunavut teens.  Co-written by Graham Yost (Speed, Justified) the film features Tantoo Cardinal and Will Sasso and “a landscape that is both crushing and awe-inspiring.” Jim also talks to Nunavut-born producer Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and director Miranda de Pencier, about flipping the “white savior” teacher trope.”

The music film, Teen Spirit( C-plus), the directorial debut of Max Minghella,  stars Elle Fanning as a Polish immigrant farm-girl on the Isle of Wight (not exactly type-casting) who enters an English singing competition TV show.  Jim Slotek found the film more a dream-like parable about stardom than anything coherent.

For baby-sitting the kids this Easter weekend, there’s Disney’s documentary feature,  Penguins  (C plus), which reviewer Thom Ernst reports mixes genuinely astounding footage with needless cutesy embellishments, including a penguin named Steve, whose internal monologue is voiced by Ed Helms.

The Curse of La Llorona  (D), says Liam Lacey, is a frighteningly dull horror flick based on a Mexican legend of a ghostly bogie-woman who snatches children. The film stars Linda Cardellini as a widowed social worker and Better Call Saul’s Raymond Cruz as a slightly amusing “unorthodox” exorcist.

Have a great weekend.