Anthropoid
⋆⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars
Rated: R for violence and disturbing images. In English and German.
In Sean Ellis' electrifying account of the Czech resistance against the Nazi occupation, freedom fighters Josef (Jamie Dornan) and Jan (Cillian Murphy) head a top-secret mission to kill the nation's powerful and widely feared dictator, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. As Czech members of a task force parachuted in by the British, they work with the Prague underground to orchestrate the assassination. The film's tone is somber, with the assassins and their secretive contacts on the ground torn between courage and crippling anxiety. Fighting to preserve their own lives as well as their countrymen, they spend weeks trying to escape detection, working with scarce intelligence and scant equipment. The mission becomes more troubling as it grows likely that the Nazis will respond to their leader's murder by killing thousands of innocents in retaliation. The explosion of that collateral damage fills the film's taut third act with horrific violence. The urgent scenes of attack and counterattack are gruesome, their intensity moving the story beyond a dramatization of a pivotal historical moment. Watching this vicious David and Goliath battle is a reminder of humanity's limitless capacity for destruction.
Colin Covert
Sausage Party
⋆⋆½ out of four stars
Rated: R for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language and drug use.
Leave it to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to take animated films to a realm they've never gone before — the hard R-rating. "Sausage Party" is the rude, crude, foul-mouthed "Secret Life of Snacks" that could only have come from the brains of these two. The result is unlike anything you've ever seen — and probably won't ever be pulled off in the same way again. The main characters are a sausage (really a hot dog), Frank (Rogen), and his girlfriend, a busty bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig). They live inside the Shopwell's supermarket, where they hope to be chosen by the Gods (grocery shoppers) to go to the Great Beyond. Little do they know what happens outside the supermarket doors, since every morning the food stuffs sing a happy song about how wonderful it is to be chosen. The meat of "Sausage Party" doesn't quite stretch over the feature running time — it could or should have been 30 minutes. But this smack in the face of good manners is surprising and strange, often delightfully so.
Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
Equity
⋆⋆ out of four stars
Rated: R for profanity.
Theater: Edina
"Equity," a drama about female executives navigating sexism on Wall Street, has received lots of attention for being a movie written, directed, produced by and starring women. As an example of doing-it-for-ourselves solidarity and self reliance, it's unquestionably inspiring: a bracing example of the old admonition to organize rather than sit around complaining. The aspirations of "Equity" are so admirable that it's all the more disappointing that the film itself is a letdown. Anna Gunn ("Breaking Bad") plays Naomi Bishop, a gifted investment banker angling for a top spot. Unfortunately for Naomi, there are some obstacles on her path to global domination: Her ambitious associate, Erin (Sarah Megan Thomas), wants her own position within the firm; she must fight for the short attention span of her Jenga-playing boss; and the hedge fund dude from the office, whom she occasionally hooks up with, has his own questionable agenda. The biggest thing "Equity" has going for it is its knockout of a cast, which in addition to Gunn and Thomas includes Alysia Reiner as a wily prosecutor and Craig Bierko as a shark-eyed corporate raider. "Equity" isn't perfect — far from it — but it's an intriguing attempt at rebalancing a system that's been dreadfully out of whack for far too long.
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
