Photo © Lionsgate Films
Madelaine Petsch in The Stranger: Chapter 2 (2025)
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie
(In Theaters Sept. 26)
After 11 seasons as a wildly successful Netflix series, “Gabby’s Dollhouse” succeeds in extending its reach beyond the preschool crowd with this film blending animation and live action. Cat enthusiast Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) owns the cat dollhouse where her kitty-friends live. She shrinks into a cat-sized animated avatar to visit them there. In her normal form as a teenage girl, Gabby joins her Grandma Gigi (Gloria Estefan) for a road trip to Cat Francisco, her beloved cat dollhouse stowed in the back of Gigi’s SUV. Once there, Gabby’s dollhouse is jostled free, and cruises downhill to a vendor’s stand, where it is bought by eccentric millionaire Vera (Kristen Wiig). To retrieve the dollhouse and its kitty inhabitants, Gabby dons special cat ears that allow her and Grandma Gigi to transform into animated cat-sized avatars. They make their way to Vera’s mansion where she has added the dollhouse to her all-things kitty collection but has hidden the cat dolls somewhere yet to be discovered. The trailer reveals the franchise’s charming fantasy world is irresistible for children, and for some mildly embarrassed (i.e. me) adults. (Lisa Miller)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
(Arrow Video 4K Ultra HD)
The title is the giveaway. The Good, The Bad, The Weird is Korean director Kim Jee-woon’s tribute to Sergio Leone—specifically the ‘60s spaghetti westerns that turned Clint Eastwood into a star. Call Kim’s 2008 production an “eastern” if you will. Set in the dry desert of Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the 1930s, it features laconic violence, a train robbery, bandits on horseback, a trio of villain and a lot of double crossing. The two-disc limited edition is packed with extras, including a booklet, mini-documentaries and everything a fanatical cineaste could want. (David Luhrssen)
One Battle After Another
(In Theaters Sept. 26)
Loosely adapted from the absurdist 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, this film is the pet project of director-screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson. Penned during the Reagan era, the novel is now set in the present day, when a retired anarchist is attempting to protect his teenaged daughter. Ex-revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a demolitions expert, currently looking over his shoulder due to years spent disrupting the authoritarian U.S. government. Still pursued by old adversary, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), Bob tries to lead a normal life with his 16-year-old daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Bob and Willa were long ago abandoned by Willa’s anarchist mom Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), determined to fight on for the cause.
Satiric banter between father and daughter is meant to demonstrate danger and tension of their situation as the action heats up to become a cluster of seamlessly executed chase sequences. Benicio del Toro appears as a Judo instructor pulled into Bob’s perilous world when he and Willa show up on the military’s radar. Clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, the derring-do falls consistently between 9-and-10. It’s all highly invigorating ... and equally exhausting. (Lisa Miller)
The Strangers: Chapter 2
(In Theaters Sept. 26)
This relatively low-budget horror-porn is built around three mysterious (two male, one female) masked killers. They are stalking Maya (Madelaine Petsch), the young woman they failed to kill in Chapter One. Having survived an attack that murdered her boyfriend, Maya awakens in a hospital only to discover she’s alone and is being hunted. Eventually, Maya escapes on foot, but the killers pursue her into town where she finds neither comfort nor safety. Sluggishly paced, and devoid of the reveals to the killers’ backstory that were promised, this chapter simply bridges the gap to its final installment. With all three chapters filmed simultaneously in 2022, the question is whether viewers can survive the boring repetition of Chapter Two, until Chapter Three’s release. (Lisa Miller)
