The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ***
Barbara Robinson’s 1972 novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever remains one of sweetest, most earnest examples of faith-based family entertainment this side of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Dallas Jenkins’ adaptation retains nearly everything that makes the source material work. Narrated in flashback by Lauren Graham, it’s set in a picturesque 1970s small town where well-meaning mom Grace (Judy Greer) agrees to take over directing the town’s beloved Nativity pageant, only to find that the Herdmans—a sextet of near-feral siblings with absentee parents—are dead set on taking it over. The nostalgic set-up allows for a production design that evokes A Christmas Story in its sense of timelessness, which helps from the outset at making this feel somewhat different from most contemporary holiday fare. At its heart, though, this is a story of sanctimonious self-described Christians needing to learn the real message of the Christmas story, and on that level Jenkins absolutely delivers—particularly with Beatrice Schneider as eldest Herdman kid Imogene doing lovely work conveying what it feels like to be a rejected outcast. And not for nothing, bonus points to Jenkins for casting Alexis Bledel look-alike Molly Belle Wright as the younger version of Lauren Graham. Jenkins’ direction sometimes lacks the raucous energy to make it as entertaining as it could be, but when it brings an honest tear to an agnostic’s eye, it’s doing something right. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (PG)

Elevation ***
There are infinite possible variations on a premise that’s effectively the same as A Quiet Place—which doesn’t mean that you can’t make one that’s lean and effective. In this case, the invasion of earth by seemingly unstoppable creatures leaves just a few survivors taking advantage of the fact that the beasts can’t go above 8,000 feet elevation—and one of those survivors, Will (Anthony Mackie), has to make a descent three years later for medical supplies to save his son. The ensuing bug hunt finds Will traveling with a pair of companions (Morena Baccarin and Maddie Hasson), and director George Nolfi keeps the action clipping along as our protagonists make their way through an abandoned mine shaft and into town. Most significantly, in the fine tradition of features like Tremors, he and the screenwriting team understand that over-explaining what the monsters are and how they got there is completely unnecessary if you deliver effective set pieces, like Will and company trying to hold their breaths to avoid detection by one probing tentacle. There’s nothing radically inspired about either the action beats or the character arcs, just the kind of no-fat genre fare that’s able to get in and get out in 83 minutes before credits. With efficiency like that, it hardly matters that it’s basically A High Place. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (R)

Heretic ***1/2
See feature review. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (R)

Meanwhile on Earth **1/2
The term “elevated horror” has already become a bit of snarky joke, but that didn’t stop Jérémy Clapin (the 2019 Oscar-nominated animated feature I Lost My Body) from attempting what could best be described as “elevated science-fiction.” It’s the story of 23-year-old Elsa Martens (Megan Northam), who still grieves her brother, French cosmonaut Franck (Sébastien Pouderoux), three years after a space mission in which he was lost and presumed dead. Then Elsa receives a mysterious message, suggesting that extraterrestrial beings have Franck, and will allow him to return if Elsa helps them with their … troubling plans. Things very occasionally drift into icky genre territory (tw: sexual violence), but for the most part this is a character study about someone unable to move beyond a heartbreaking loss—very similar to I Lost My Body, in that respect. Unfortunately, where Clapin’s previous film was able to use inventive animation to give the story a surreal boost, this one is mostly live action, except for a few segments bringing to life Elsa’s cartoons. And Northam’s performance rarely finds the kernel of pain to make it genuinely compelling, especially when it feels essential to distinguishing Meanwhile on Earth from similar, better-realized plot points in the masterpiece Under the Skin. It’s an interesting idea that never makes the leap to an emotionally affecting one, leaving it less elevated than enervated. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (NR)

Memoir of a Snail ***
As distinctive as writer/director Adam Elliot’s stop-motion animated feature is, it’s rough sledding for a while getting past the bleakness surrounding the central character. She’s Grace Pudel (voiced by Sarah Snook), an Australian girl who first suffers the death of her mother in childhood, then loses her father as well, then winds up separated from her beloved twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) when the two orphans are sent to foster homes on opposite sites of the continent. That’s just the beginning of Grace’s troubles—though she does find friendship with an elderly bon-vivant named Pinky (Jacki Weaver)—and folks should be aware of any number of trigger warnings from suicidal ideation to abusive religions to anti-gay “aversion therapy.” Elliot’s style makes it easier to get past the hardest content, since it’s fascinating to watch plasticine lips approximate speaking in tongues, and kind of a hoot if you’ve ever wondered what it might have looked like when John Denver had sex. Not every animated feature needs to be for children (this one 100% is not) nor do they all need to be breezy and happy-go-lucky (witness John Hertzfeldt). Just go in with your eyes open as Memoir of a Snail digs into heartbreak, grief and despair about one’s own worth by using odd little stop-motion bodies. Available Nov. 8 at Century 16 South Salt Lake. (R)

Small Things Like These ***1/2
Ireland’s “Magdalene laundries”—the system of convents that turned unwed pregnant young women into de facto slave labor—have been the subject of several fiction and non-fiction films over the years, but this adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel approaches the subject from a fresh and uniquely heartbreaking angle. It’s the story of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a family man running a fuel-coal delivery company in mid-1980s Ireland, one of whose clients is a local convent. There Bill encounters some of its young residents, and faces a crisis of conscience deciding how to respond to what he has seen. Director Tim Mielants and screenwriter Edna Walsh prove efficient at conveying the small-town atmosphere where ruffling the feathers of the Catholic Church could harm Bill’s livelihood, as well as showing the flashbacks to Bill’s own childhood with a single mother that shapes his response. And Murphy’s performance is a terrific display of internalized conflict, perhaps best in an awkward confrontation with the convent’s smug Mother Superior (Emily Watson). It’s much easier in text than on the screen to present a character study built around someone’s internal struggles, but Small Things Like These becomes a powerful example of how the most Christian thing one could do on a Christmas eve is consider giving shelter to a pregnant girl with nowhere else to go. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (PG-13)

Weekend in Taipei **
The oeuvre of Luc Besson as writer and/or director clearly is an acquired taste—and if I haven’t acquired it yet, I just don’t think I’m ever going to. Here, he co-writes with director George Huang the story of DEA agent John Lawlor (Luke Evans), who goes rogue to investigate Taiwanese businessman Kwang (Evans’ Fast/Furious co-star Sung Kang) for drug trafficking, only to discover that Kwang’s wife is Joey (Lun-Mei Gwei), the love he left behind 15 years earlier. Huang and Besson quickly reveal that Lawlor is the father of Joey’s teenage son Raymond (Wyatt Wang), and much of the narrative is theoretically built around the idea of this threesome trying to reconstruct a family while also running for their lives. None of the character stuff really lands, though, ruining Yang’s game performance as a kid improbably discovering that both his parents are total badasses—including, satisfyingly, a mom who is no damsel in distress, and can jimmy a car lock with her bra’s underwire. And while Huang’s direction of the action sequences is impressive and technically proficient, the simple genre elements are deadened by Kang lacking any kind of genuine menace as the major villain. The filmmakers opt to set the climactic fight between Lawlor and Kwang in front of a movie screen showing Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers, which certainly is a choice, albeit one that serves to remind that Luc Besson is no Zhang Yimou. Available Nov. 8 in theaters. (R)