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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Dark Phoenix: The IMAX 2D Experience

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It didn’t have to end this way — in such thoroughly standard smash ‘em up fashion, with minor heroes dutifully duking it out with faceless hordes for punchy-power bolt minute after punchy-power-bolt minute until the mayhem quotient has been met and the principals can finally square off for their climactic lightshow. It didn’t have to end with so little emotion, so little meaning — with a sad little speech about evolving, for Phoenix’s sake. It didn’t have to, because a fair chunk of writer-director Simon Kinberg’s take on one of the more famous storylines in Marvel Comics’ history plays less like a superhero movie and more like a small-scale, humanly significant trauma drama. (Except the trauma victim will maybe destroy the world if she can’t recover.) We open, a la Shazam!, with a little kid in the backseat of a car who inadvertently causes a frightening, slo-mo, psyche-scarring crash. But this little kid has mutant superpowers, and so she gets scooped up in the protective arms of Charles Xavier and taken into the X-Men family. Unfortunately, there are lots of ways to screw up as a parent (surprise, surprise, it’s Xavier who gets the movie’s real emotional arc), especially when you’re trying to make the world a safe place for your kid through an unending PR campaign of heroic do-goodery. That part of the story was surprisingly thoughtful and engaging — almost tragic, even. But it seems it wasn’t explodey enough, fighty enough, actiony enough for a supermovie. Because what do you know: here comes the alien invasion, and the save-the-world stakes, and the sad sameness of fulfilled expectations. (2019) — Matthew Lickona

Rated PG-13 | 1.0 hour, 54 minutes
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