Capsule reviews for April 29

The Man Who Knew Infinity

Something doesn’t add up in this well-intentioned biopic of Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), a math prodigy from India who travels to Cambridge in the early 1920s to work with the faculty on getting his theorems published. His primary collaborator is Hardy (Jeremy Irons), a curmudgeonly professor who tries to guide his prized pupil through wartime culture changes and academic pressures. The performances are solid, although the script by director Matthew Brown skips past the substance in the youngster’s work, along with context about his legacy, in favor of slick crowd-pleasing tactics. He’s got such a beautiful mind, yet the film never gets sufficiently inside his head. (Rated PG-13, 108 minutes).

Pali Road

The tropical scenery provides a picturesque backdrop for this unintentionally hilarious thriller set in Hawaii, where a young doctor (Michelle Chen) wakes up after a car accident with a case of amnesia. That leads to confusion about her marriage to an affluent surgeon (Sung Kang), who just happens to be an adversary of her prior boyfriend (Jackson Rathbone), about whom she’s having hallucinations. Such melodramatic material might have worked with a lighter touch or even as high camp, but director Jonathan Lim employs a heavy-handed approach for an overwrought script that takes itself way too seriously before the ending really flies off the rails. (Not rated, 92 minutes).

Ratchet and Clank

The latest attempt to cash in on the science-fiction superhero craze is this predictable animated saga based on an obscure video game. It chronicles the title characters – a diminutive space mechanic and his nerdy robot friend – who fulfill their dream of joining the heroic Galactic Rangers just as an evil alien empire is hatching a plan for interplanetary domination. It’s technically competent, although this cut-rate Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff strains to be hip and clever as it crams every frame with visual and aural chaos at the expense of compelling characters or narrative coherence. The voice cast includes John Goodman, Paul Giamatti and Sylvester Stallone. (Rated PG, 94 minutes).

Term Life

“This is bad. Really bad,” says the narrator about his predicament, but he could easily be describing this formulaic crime thriller from director Peter Billingsley (Couples Retreat) about a heist planner (Vince Vaughn) with a bad haircut who becomes a target when a corrupt cop (Bill Paxton) frames him for murder. While on the run, he takes out a timely life insurance policy to protect his estranged teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), later seeing an avenue to redemption and reconciliation. A potentially intriguing character is squandered by a clichéd noir wannabe script that manages only some meager laughs amid the generic shootouts and chase sequences. (Rated R, 92 minutes).

The Wait

Juliette Binoche enlivens this otherwise pedantic Italian drama about the grieving process with a stirring performance as Anna, a grieving mother who has retreated to a villa in Sicily, where she welcomes an unexpected visitor. Jeanne (Lou de Laage) claims to be her son’s French girlfriend who is coming to spend Easter weekend with his family – except she hasn’t heard the tragic news, and Anna can’t bring herself to share it. Rookie director Piero Messina weaves some gorgeous imagery into the character-driven proceedings, even if he gets carried away with the religious symbolism. Yet despite its intimacy, the film doesn’t generate much emotional resonance. (Not rated, 100 minutes).