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The Innocents, directed by Anne Fontaine
The Innocents, directed by Anne Fontaine

The Innocents,

directed by Anne Fontaine

(not rated; 1 hour, 40 minutes)

This is a muted, beautiful and powerful film concerning women of faith who must unflinchingly face the brutal reality of life in 1945 Poland.

At the end of World War II in Warsaw, a panicked Benedictine nun shows up at a clinic treating survivors of German concentration camps and leads French Red Cross nurse Anne Fontaine (Lou de Laage) to her convent where a fellow nun is about to give birth; five others are obviously about to follow. Harsh reality, brought on by Russian soldiers, soon clashes with belief and tradition. With Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne, Joanna Kulig. Based on the journal of Madeleine Pauliac, a French doctor who worked in post-war Poland; subtitled.

Cell (R; 1 hour, 38 minutes) Even though it's based on Stephen King's best-selling novel, this creepy attempt at horror can't compete with other versions of the overused genre. It follows Clay (John Cusack), a graphic artist who somehow survives a zombie outbreak caused by an electromagnetic signal transmitted by cellphones. With Stacy Keach, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman; directed by Tod Williams.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (R; 1 hour, 38 minutes) It's not the cast's fault that this lewd, pratfall-filled and overly obvious sex comedy doesn't give them much to work with. Still, the likes of Zac Efron, Adam DeVine, Stephen Root, Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza are doing the best they can with what they're given, and their efforts provide the film's only charm. Directed by Jake Szymanski.

Central Intelligence (PG-13; 1 hour, 54 minutes) The clever matchup of Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson adds value to this middling action comedy in which a once-bullied geek (Hart) who grew up to be a top-notch CIA agent attends his high school reunion, where he recruits a former hotshot school athlete (Johnson), now a boring accountant, to aid in his raucous, flawed and death-defying investigations. With Amy Ryan, Aaron Paul, Jason Bateman; directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber.

The Shallows (PG-13; 1 hour, 26 minutes) An entertainingly trashy poor relation to Jaws, this moment of summer escape, complete with tense moments, concerns a surfer (Blake Lively) who gets trapped on a small rock in the ocean, 1,000 feet from shore, by an aggressive shark that has no intention of allowing her to make a break to the secluded beach. With Oscar Jaenada, Sedona Legge; directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.

Warcraft (PG-13; 1 hour, 40 minutes) Based on the popular video game, this is a murky, violent, and confusingly complicated live-action fantasy filled with warriors and sorcerers and orcs and magic with no clear purpose other than to showcase overwrought special effects. With Travis Fimmel, Ben Foster, Toby Kebbell, Paula Patton; directed by Duncan Jones.

Dekalog (1989) This four-disc Blu-ray set from Criterion contains Krzysztof Kieslowski's stunning series of 10 made-for-Polish-TV films that each use one of the Ten Commandments as a basis to explore how ordinary people living in a late-Communist housing complex in Poland deal with the challenges and decisions that life throws at them. This is a restoration, sourced from the original 35mm camera negatives of the films, which are considered by many to be one of the 20th century's finest achievements in visual storytelling.

MovieStyle on 09/30/2016

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