“The Jungle Book” (PG)
A live action version of the classic Rudyard Kipling story, about a boy named Mowgli who’s raised by wolves . . . and forced to abandon his jungle home after a tiger threatens the pack and his animal friends.
A kid named Neel Sethi is Mowgli, and the animals are all done with computer graphics. More importantly, Bill Murray plays Baloo the bear, and Ben Kingsley is Bagheera the panther. They protect him after he leaves the pack.
You should recognize plenty of other voices too. Idris Elba is the tiger Shere Khan, Lupita Nyong’o is the mother wolf, Scarlett Johansson is a snake named Kaa, Christopher Walken is the orangutan King Louie . . . and the recently departed Garry Shandling is a porcupine from the book who didn’t make it into the 1967 Disney movie.
Scarlett Johansson was eight months pregnant when she voiced Kaa. All of the locations in the film are computer-generated.
“Barbershop: The Next Cut” (PG-13)
Ice Cube has merged his shop with the ladies from Regina King’s beauty salon to make ends meet. So now it’s co-ed with men on one side and the women on the other. Common plays one of his barbers, and Nicki Minaj is one of her stylists.
And when Chicago’s gang violence gets out of control, they turn the shop into a sanctuary for the community by offering up free cuts and styling.
The rest of the cast includes Anthony Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer, Eve, and Tyga. And it’s directed by Spike Lee’s cousin, Malcolm D. Lee.
Ice Cube and Common feuded in the 1990s during their rap careers. The movie was set in Chicago, but filmed in Atlanta.
“Criminal” (R)
Kevin Costner plays a violent convict who’s used in an experimental procedure where the government transplants the memories of a dead CIA agent into his head so they can get to the information he died to protect.
But Costner escapes and turns to the guy’s widow to figure things out. Ryan Reynolds is the dead agent, Gal Gadot is his widow, Tommy Lee Jones is the guy who does the surgery, and Gary Oldman is director of the CIA.
Nicolas Cage turned down the lead role in the film. The movie cost $31.5 million to produce.
