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Movie stars: capsule reviews

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 03, 2012

Thomas Horn and Sandra Bullock star in Extremely Loud & Incredibly… (Francois Duhamel/Warner…)

Previously released

★★ ½ The Adventures of Tintin Director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson bring the intrepid boy reporter of Hergé’s classic comic books into the digital new millennium with mixed results. The film’s a visual marvel that’s cold to the touch, with a chase-rinse-repeat story line that grows tiresome and motion-captured characters that lack the warmth of human beings. (107 min., PG) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Albert Nobbs As the title character, a woman passing as a male butler at an upper-crust hotel, Glenn Close skulks through Edwardian-era Dublin like a eunuch on a stealth mission. Rodrigo Garcia’s drama is cautious to the point of stodginess. Close (who co-wrote the script) gives a fascinating performance, even if Janet McTeer steals the film. (113 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★ ½ Carnage Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage’’ isn’t a great play and this is hardly Roman Polanski’s finest hour, but the schematic tale of two upscale couples descending into savagery as they discuss a fight between their young sons is good, stinging fun, and the performances are wonderful. John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and the peerless Jodie Foster star. (79 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★ ½ Contraband Mark Wahlberg, money, guns, grime, shipping containers, violence, and several plot holes: It’s a better time than you’d think. With Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Foster, J.K. Simmons, and Kate Beckinsale. (109 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

★★★ Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close The 11-year-old protagonist (Thomas Horn) of Stephen Daldry’s movie is a handful. Mostly for an audience tasked with watching him whirl across every inch of New York’s five boroughs. The film’s whimsy and cuteness should exasperate, but there’s great, poignant urgency at its center, much of it courtesy of Horn and Max von Sydow, who plays his elderly sidekick. With Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, and Viola Davis. (129 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

★★ The Grey It’s cheap the way this movie wants to be both a Liam Neeson “Quit Taking My Stuff’’ movie and an existential thriller about survival. We’ve come to see Neeson danse-macabre with wolves. Instead, we get a lot of scenes of men being sad because they have no idea where they are and there are no women to have sex with. Those moments aren’t bad, but they’re not enough, either. (117 min., R) (Wesley Morris)