22 Jump Street R
This sequel makes fun of youthful conventions and itself. Since inept cops Schmidt and Jenko (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) had their only success as undercover high school narcs, their hardnosed Captain (Ice Cube) sends the pair off to college to go undercover again. Jenko becomes instantly infatuated with fraternity life and with winning a spot on the football team. Left alone to find a gang of designer drug dealers, Schmidt starts a potentially disastrous romance with art student Maya (Amber Stevens). After the success of its first installment, the sequel’s larger budget permits bigger stunts and grander chase sequences, especially after the action moves south for spring break. A fun but ridiculous finale establishes the mismatched cop duo as so silly they oughta be against the law. (Lisa Miller)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 PG
Four years after the original film, we find Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) as a teen hunk in love with Astrid (America Ferrera). Aboard their trusty dragons, Hiccup and Astrid go in search of new lands. They run afoul of Eret (Kit Harington), a mercenary rounding up stray dragons for his villainous boss Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou). With the help of Hiccup’s dragon Toothless, the pair escapes and seeks a secretive dragon-rider said to be determined to thwart Drago’s evil plans. Hiccup is tested by the film’s action-packed climax when Bludvist and his enslaved dragons attack Hiccup’s homeland of Berk. (L.M.)
Ida PG-13
In stark black and white, Ida’s cinematography is both beautiful in itself and evocative of its setting, Communist Poland circa 1960. The protagonist, Anna, is a teenager in a convent preparing for her vows. She is sent to the city to meet her one living relative, Wanda, a cynical Stalinist prosecutor. Anna’s first shock is learning she is Jewish and what follows on her journey of discovery with her disillusioned, alcoholic aunt is as gorgeously composed as a woodcut of a bleak landscape, and as full of subtle surprise as life itself. Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski directs. (David Luhrssen)
Opens June 13, Downer Theatre.
