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

RETURN TO SENDER

The fastidious, self-sufficient Miranda (Rosamund Pike) finds her stable lifestyle ruined when a blind date goes horribly wrong — she is raped in her own kitchen by William (Shiloh Fernandez). After he goes to prison, she reaches out to him, and the two strike up a very uneasy friendship. It smells like a cheap exploitation thriller, and, well, it is. All of the nuance Pike brought to her role in Gone Girl is mostly lost in the meandering, poorly plotted script, which dithers between actually taking things like rape trauma seriously and trying to out-plot-twist a Lifetime murder movie. Opens Aug. 14 in wide release

KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET

There’s something about The Prophet that doesn’t quite sit right. It’s a collection of moralistic tales based on a book of prose poetry by Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, stitched roughly together as stories/sermons/ animated shorts told by the wise and politically dangerous Mustafa (Liam Neeson) as he leaves house arrest for a very ambiguous “freedom.” The film has flashes of brilliance, when the trippy animation and Neeson’s gravelly voice transcend the moment. But most of the time, the framing plot seems super-fluous, the animation sits on the wrong side of uncanny and everything feels just a wee bit too self-important to truly sit back and absorb.

Opens Aug. 14 at Kahala

A LA MALA

The beautiful Mala (Aislinn Derbez) wants to be an actress one day, but until then has a job that involves flirting with other people’s boyfriends as a fidelity checker of sorts. Things are great until she’s given a can’t-lose job with a huge payoff (the big break she’s been waiting for) — and she falls in love with the charming, handsome gentleman. This Mexican film feels and looks like Gossip Girl (it’s probably not a coincidence that Derbez starred in the Mexican adaptation of the series), which isn’t necessarily bad, except that Gossip Girl probably puts more effort into plot. It’s just all very basic, but if that’s what you’re looking for, then that’s what you’ll get, and no more.

Plays at 11 a.m., 2:45 and 6:30 p.m. Aug. 13; and 1:15, 4:45 and 8:15 p.m. Aug. 16 at the Movie Museum