Reel-View Ratings: The Bigger The Beard, The Better The Movie

SUFFRAGETTE

It seems incredulous to think that women only received the right to vote less than a century ago in Great Britain and the United States, and yet, Suffragette is keen to remind viewers that yes, the fight is still fresh in history’s eye. Carey Mulligan stars (and shines) as Maud Watts, an ordinary washerwoman who gets caught up in the increasingly violent and desperate suffrage movement in London at the turn of the 20th century. The film is faithful to history but never goes out of its way to enliven things, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves in a way that comes off as a tad dry. But Mulligan surges and carries the show. Opens Nov. 13 at Kahala Theatre

LABYRINTH OF LIES

A young German prosecutor takes on a monumental, nigh-impossible task 15 years after World War II: holding the Nazi guards at Auschwitz accountable for their crimes. With zeal, he pursues his task — and discovers that Germany prefers to forget its past. Labyrinth of Lies elegantly uses the temporal enlightenment of its modern-day audience to illustrate just how different life was when WWII was still a raw wound that could be bandaged and then pointedly ignored. There are clunky moments alongside the poignant ones, and the ending loses focus with too many revelations delivered too quickly. But at its best, it serves as a reminder that ordinary men can be evil, too. Opens Nov. 13 at Kahala Theatre

LOVE

An arthouse film full of extremely graphic, up-close-and-too-personal, very uncensored sex somehow manages to be anything but titillating in this Gaspar Noe film. The auteur director is trying to tell the story of Murphy and how he lost the most alluring woman in the world when a swinger session results in an unexpected pregnancy, but instead he mostly just loads the film with sex, sex and more sex, with some wooden acting all around to bookend it. Three-dimensional penis shots could certainly have enhanced this flaccid film, but being well-endowed in bed does not translate to acting prowess for this cast. Lars Von Trier pulls of pornographic irreverence better in Nymphomaniac. Opens Nov. 13 at Kahala Theatre