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

MUSTANG

Five Turkish girls spend an afternoon cavorting innocently with some neighborhood boys before they are promptly rounded up and locked in their own home, to be reeducated as proper, virtuous wives. The ghost ofThe Virgin Suicideslingers around this too-similar premise, butMus-tangtakes it down a different path, observing as the girls struggle for emancipation and receive it — to very different degrees. The film’s clear anti-patriarchal message is told through every somehow-faceless girl forced into a loveless marriage, of their grandmother and aunts training them to be wives because they can perceive no other future — though the film is occasionally hampered by laborious, obvious narration from protagonist Lale. OpensFeb. 5at Kahala Theatre

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

There are really only two ways to react to this irreverent genre mash-up: Either you will be bored and disgruntled byPride and Prejudice and Zombies‘ inability to produce something meaningful out of both Jane Austen and decapitation, or you will enjoy it as an inconsequential and pleasant way to spend two hours. The story remains true, after all, to Austen’s famous novel, except that all that Victorian romance now takes place against the backdrop of the zombie apocalypse. Lily James proves herself an able Elizabeth Bennett, both in wit and swordplay, and the congenial cast plays along with the absurd premise, but the two sides remain jarringly separate entities, forced instead to coexist as uncomfortable bedfellows.OpensFeb. 5in wide release

UNDER THE HAWTHORN TREE

A high school student falls in love with a budding geologist. She is too young; he must wait for her, a few years more, until she finishes school and becomes a teacher. That nondescript love story changes when it’s set against the backdrop of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where reeducation camps and the specter of Chairman Mao haunt every achingly platonic sign of longing. Love comes second to filial piety in this world, with sorrowful consequences. Directed by Zhang Yimou, better known for his martial arts epics, the film is a beautiful, tear-jerking romance that synthesizes its context and action to become something oh-so-subtly more than a commentary on either. Plays at11:30 a.m.,3 and 6:30 p.m.Feb. 8;2:15, 4:15 and 8:30 p.m.Feb. 12; and noon and 6:30 p.m. Feb. 18at the Movie Museum