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

CANOPY

An Australian pilot (Khan Chittenden) and a Singaporean freedom fighter (Mo Tzu-yi) have no common language, but they do have a common enemy: Japanese soldiers hunting for them through the war-torn Singaporean forests of 1942. It’s atmospheric and beautifully shot, but so minimalistic as to be, well, kind of boring. Perhaps some of the 5 million leaves so lovingly highlighted would have been better replaced with a more focused plot. (PG-13)

Plays at noon, 3:15 and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 25 and 1:45, 5 and 8:15 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Movie Museum

FURY

Everything is caked with mud in David Ayers’ Fury — the film’s namesake tank, the tank’s jaded five-man crew and the crew’s equally grimy moral compasses. But that’s the reality of war for the Greatest Generation, and Fury never pulls any punches in depicting the bloody downward spiral of these soldiers in the closing days of World War II on the German front.

There’s a pivotal scene with two German women that doesn’t quite ring true, but Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman turn in solid performances.(R)

Opened Oct. 17, wide release

THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA

Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata’s final film is a homage to old-school animation, more like a watercolor or charcoal drawing than the brightly colored CG employed by most modern animation. Every black line flickers with emotion, and the tragedy of Princess Kaguya, the girl from the moon, found in a stalk of bamboo and destined never to find peace on Earth, lives in every hand-drawn frame.Whatever the new era of Ghibli has in store, it has a tall legacy to live up to after this. (PG)

Opens Oct. 31 at Kahala Theatre