Speed dating

When-it-rains-it-pours Local 3

Two weeks of nothing opening downtown that I want to see, then 5 openings this week. Since I'm going to a Mets game tomorrow, that means that even with one yesterday and three today, I'm still deferring Mad Max: Fury Road.

Pitch Perfect 2

Crit

Well, that was disappointing: about a half-dozen smart lines, one funny running sexual confusion joke, and a lot of labored writing and clumsy plotting leading up to zero surprise.

Leaving only the musical numbers, which are admittedly terrific. Am I actually in danger of becoming an a cappella fan? No, probably not. And right now I don't feel in much danger of seeing Pitch Perfect 3.

Wait, did I say zero surprise? Not so: what about Snoop Dogg singing "Winter Wonderland"? Wonderfully surreal. Even better was recognizing one of the Bella alumnae as a beautiful woman with whom another beautiful woman and I spent an evening in a Chicago hotel room many years ago. Trust me, if I told you any more of the story, you'd only be disappointed.

Felix et Meira

Crit

Young Hasidic wife and mother Meira (Hadas Yaron) is starved for music, romance, and ping-pong; Félix (Martin Dubreuil), the estranged secular son of a recently dead father, provides all three. In the way we generally stack our narrative decks, that should be enough for us to root for their escape from Montreal to Brooklyn and then to Venice, but her husband, Shulem (Luzer Twersky), is inconveniently not terrible, has a fair claim to their daughter, and even loves his wife, as best he can.

Yet another film with a Graduate ending, this one in a gondola.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Crit

Yikes! I've never read the book, and I never saw the 1967 film, but this baby is like a Victorian novel on crystal meth. BIG THINGS happen every 5 minutes, mostly Bathsheba (accent on the first syllable, to my surprise) Everdeen (Carey Mulligan, looking appropriately 19th century) saying no, maybe, or yes to one of the three men who want to marry her.

But everything happens so fast that apart from her laudable but one-note ambition Not to Be Any Man's Property, there's no time to really figure out whether she or any of the men has motivations that make sense of their actions. It's all too zoomy.

Trailers

• Minions--The backstory. 
• Jem and the Holograms--Success, betrayal, redemption. Yawn. 
• Insidious Chapter 3--Somehow I missed Chapters 1 and 2.
• Inside Out--Best under-the-radar line in a movie ostensibly for children: "There are no bears in San Francisco."
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl--This theme (or at least the YA subgenre that mines this theme) has become the source of some surprisingly good films, and this looks promising.
• Aloha--Great cast, but suspect.