“Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” (in theaters)

This is the third “goodbye” movie for “Downton Abbey,” but it looks like this one might actually stick.

Whether or not you want to be there for “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” depends on whether you’re a fan of the show. If you are, you’ll enjoy the overstuffed but well-meaning love letter to the long-running series. The storyline does suffer without the sparkling, witty presence of Dame Maggie Smith, who died in 2024 and whose character was killed off in the previous film. But writer Julian Fellowes does an otherwise solid job of letting the series regulars play, bringing in Simon Russell Beale and Arty Froushan (as Noël Coward) to add the necessary conversational sparkle. He also addresses a long-running issue with the series, finally initiating an in-universe torch-passing that feels like Fellowes himself might be letting go. 

It’s 1930, and financial difficulties have hit Downton Abbey along with the rest of the world. The Earl of Grantham may have to sell a family property, but far more pressing is the realization that it’s long past time for him to turn the reigns over to his daughter Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery). Lady Mary is facing her own issues, namely becoming a social outcast after divorcing her most recent husband (their way of writing out Matthew Goode, who briefly appeared in previous films).

Fellowes finds a way to work nearly everyone in, including characters who left the household a long time ago. The ending is a montage in memory of dearly departed characters, most notably Smith and her dowager duchess, which feels like a fitting goodbye. 

Grade: Two and a half stars

The Long Walk (in theaters)

You know those short stories you read in high school or college, the ones that mess you up so profoundly you still think about them years later even though you’ve never read them again?

“The Long Walk” is basically that experience in movie form. Adapted from a Stephen King novel (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), the post-apocalyptic story is a lightly but powerfully sketched journey of love and violence that ends up being absolutely gut-wrenching. It slowly but surely pulls you in over the course of the titular walk, propelled by powerful performances from the largely unknown cast. By the end, it lingers in a way you’ll never forget. 

The movie follows a group of young men who volunteer for The Long Walk, an annual national event in war-torn America. If you can keep pace and last the longest, you’ll get a ton of money and your greatest wish. If you falter at all, you get shot in the head.

The real emotional heft of the movie comes from the two leads, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson. Hoffman in particular is a relative unknown, but his nuanced performance holds a lot of the movie’s emotional weight. If the moments of shocking violence don’t hurt you, the connection between Hoffman and Jonsson’s characters will. They’re a light that makes the darkness that much more horrible.

It’s a combination that will haunt you long after you’ve left the theater. 

Grade: Three and a half stars

Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Denver Film Critics Society and the Utah Film Critics Association. Drop her a line at [email protected].

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