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

SISTERS

It’s a comedienne’s dream when real-life besties Tina Fey and Amy Poehler team up for a raunchy, over-the-top flick about sisters who can’t quite grow up. Brassy Kate (Fey) and earnest Maura (Poehler) are devastated when their parents announce that they are selling the family home — so the middle-aged sisters decided to throw one last rager. While the humor itself occasionally spirals out of “too funny” territory into just plain (and vaguely distasteful) “too much,” Fey and Poehler remain imminently watchable and captivating throughout. Meanwhile, fellow SNL alum Maya Rudolph steals the spotlight and, yes, that was John Cena with the facial tattoo. Opens Dec. 18 in wide release

THE ASSASSIN

When a beautiful female assassin (Shu Qi) shows compassion toward a target, she is punished with a new mission: kill a morally questionable governor (Chang Chen) — who also happens to be her childhood sweetheart. Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s foray into wuxia is a landscape of sweeping, deliberate cinematography, with brutal but quick fights that are never filmed the same way twice. While there isn’t as much fighting as the title implies, and the plot can be difficult to follow in its naturalistic depiction of courtly politics, The Assassin feels as real as a reality-defying, high-flying martial arts film can possibly be.

Plays at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 19, 4 p.m. Dec. 27 and 7:30 p.m. Jan. 1 at Doris Duke Theatre

THE BIG SHORT

The 2008 financial crisis gets the Hollywood treatment in this tonally chaotic glimpse at how buying debt made some men billionaires and also ruined the economy. The film has quite the balancing act here: portray an unusually sympathetic view of the scornful men who realized that debt was profitable (the savant-like Christian Bale, cocky Ryan Gosling and too-loud-but-strangely-guilty Steve Carrell), explain all these labyrinthine financial terms without boring people and keep the story churning whilst juggling all these characters and jargon. It manages, somehow, but in doing so, draws comparisons to The Wolf of Wall Street — and Scorsese’s ultimately is the better film.

Opens Dec. 23 at Kahala Theatre