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Beauty and the Beast

Crit

I never recognized this before, and in fact I didn't get it until well into the film, but this is the story of an egotistical blowhard who is harmless enough until he takes up demagoguery and stirs up the people to rise up against people who are different, whom they don't understand and thus fear.

There's also a subplot, with songs I found universally blah and special effects I found mostly meh. But it became magical for me at about the same time it did for Belle (Emma Watson): you can see her feel an unaccustomed moistness at her first glimpse of the Beast's enormous . . . library. When their love begins to develop as the marriage of true minds, I confess I got a little soppy myself.

Trailers

• Coco--Guitars and generations, appropriate in the wake of the Chuck Berry obit.