Cut to sleep-deprived adult Mike (Hutcherson). He lives with his much younger sister Abby (“Stranger Things”-ready Piper Rubio), who obsessively draws pictures of her with Mike and some cartoon animals. Almost unemployable, Mike accepts a job offered by a weirdly menacing agent (Matthew Lillard) at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an abandoned 1980’s-era pizzeria/arcade.

Like in the game, Mike’s job is to sit before an array of security camera screens at night and make sure no shenanigans occur. Mike has a habit of taking sleeping pills in order to induce a reoccurring dream in which he experiences the moment Garrett was taken while he, Garrett and his parents were on a camping trip. Ergo, Mike is the sleeping security guard. He relives the moment Garrett was taken over and over. If this sounds like the plot of a bad Stephen King story, it is. I would hazard a guess that King is the favorite writer of the creators of this film’s plot. But they in no way share King’s power to mine our collective dreams for horror gold.

The plot will further involve “ghost kids” who appear to Mike in his dreams, animatronic, giant robotic and cartoonish animals – a bear, a rabbit, a duck, a fox and more – that lurk at Fazbear’s and can track down and kill humans in hideous ways for a PG-13 movie and a strange police officer named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail, “Once Upon a Time”), who appears to be the only police officer in town. We are reminded repeatedly that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was huge in the 1980s, and in some scenes the robotic animals can be seen performing The Romantics’ 1983 hit “Talking in Your Sleep” (Get it?). Mike takes Abby to work (?). She befriends the strange creatures in the shadows. How? Why? “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is only for the most gullible viewers. The rest will find their eyelids impossibly hard to hold up.

In an opening scene, a security guard at Freddy’s runs through a maze of hallways before being strapped to a chair and get his face chewed off (off camera). Someone else gets a head bitten off. One of the animatronic creatures is just a skull-like head. Somehow, this thing gets from place to place and flies through the air without appendages or explanation. Mike and Abby’s evil Aunt Jane (a scenery-chewing Mary Stuart Masterson, speaking of the ’80s) appears in a few badly-staged scenes to demand custody of Abby. If she had a mustache, she’d twirl its ends. Hutcherson does a lot of running in the film and not a lot of acting. But he is hardly to blame. The makers of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” appear to forget that you need a screenplay to make a movie, not just a collection of things that happen. The film wants awfully to be a variation on a theme of King’s “It.” It ain’t.

(“Five Nights at Freddy’s” contains gruesome imagery, violence and endangered children)

“Five Nights at Freddy’s”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: D

The action begins in Paris. The killer is a like a monk in his cell, not praying, but waiting in extremely stoic circumstances (a breezy construction site) for his target to appear. We hear the assassin narrate the action in a monotone. He tells us that boredom is his enemy. An electric heater glows by his side. He wears black rubber gloves and quotes Popeye. He practices some form of yoga. He eats from McDonald’s, wears shades and a hat with a drawn-down band in public. In a park, a boy shoots a woman in the head with a toy gun. Is it his mother? His nanny?

Ah, the banality of gun violence. Remember when Fassbender was in everything? He’s taken a bit of a break and hasn’t had a film credit since 2019 after the dreary thing that was “Dark Phoenix.” “The Killer” is hardly a great return to form. Didn’t Fassbender already make this when it was called “Assassin’s Creed?” It wasn’t very good then either. The Paris hit does not go well. The killer, who may remind some of the much more soulful one played by Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic “Le Samurai” (1967), escapes, erasing any memory of him as he goes, helmet in the Seine.

In his use of one of many false names, he uses a credit card with the moniker Felix Unger, one-half of the 1970s TV show “Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.” Our man is the odd single. The killer has a fatal attraction to the uniquely mewling music of the Morrissey-fronted, post-punk 1990s band The Smiths.

The killer is a man of few words. “Empathy is weakness,” is his mantra. He retreats to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. A local woman he cares about was savagely attacked. The attackers were looking for him, of course. Now, he seeks revenge (Isn’t this a form of empathy?). Next  he is in New Orleans, and he’s got a nail gun. As a lawyer trying to talk his way out of getting nailed, Charles Parnell is a breath of fresh air. The killer knows how long it takes three nine-gauge nails to the chest to kill and how much sleep-aids to mix with meat to knock out a pit bull. These are dark arts.

The film’s highlight is a fight scene (from the director of “Fight Club,” no less) between the killer and an actor credited as The Brute (Sala Baker, TV’s “The Mandalorian”). It must be five minutes long and really is something to see. But great action alone does not a great movie make.

Fassbender is not a compelling figure in the tradition of Clint Eastwood or Denzel Washington. He is an intelligent Everyman. The last victim, the killer was told, “resembles a Q-Tip.” Of course, that turns out to be second-billed Tilda Swinton, who is in the film for about 15 minutes and sports a white ‘do. Swinton and supporting cast member Arliss Howard command the screen. But the killer remains a nobody, and I never liked The Smiths. “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable,” indeed.

(“The Killer” contains extreme, graphic violence, profanity and brief sexuality)

“The Killer”

Rated R. At the Kendall Square and Coolidge Corner. Grade: B-

Life is so complicated. Our heroine Leila Jamshidpour (Layla Mohammadi) gets pregnant, and in spite of her independent spirit, she decides to have the baby with the halting approval of “Hedwig.” “The Persian Version” then proceeds to examine the terrible relationship Leila, who has five or six grown-up brothers, has had with her tall, beautiful mother Shireen (Niousha Noor). Complicating Leila’s relationship with her mother is her father’s daunting medical state.

Her father, whose name is Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand) is a longtime physician so in need of a heart transplant that he is about to be given an organ that will probably fail in two years in order to keep him alive. Typically, matriarch Shireen proclaims that Leila, a budding filmmaker, must stay home with grandmother Mamanjoon (Bella Warda) while her father is under the knife and the rest of the family shelters at the hospital. When Leila was a child, Shireen often forced her daughter to make dinner for the entire family.

In a magical realist style name-checked by Leila, we will then experience the family’s tangled and intricate back story, including the reason why her parents fled Iran in the 1960s for Brooklyn; the early months of Shireen’s marriage to Ali Reza when they lived in the remote mountains; and the true identity of one of Leila’s brothers. We will also hear about why Iran and U.S. “got a divorce.”

Now, try to imagine all of this being related to us using Cindy Lauper’s anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” as a refrain, along with both Iranian and contemporary music, including an appearance by Iranian pop star Googoosh, and both traditional Iranian dance and contemporary dance. Whew.

“The Persian Version” is both the story of an Iranian-American family, an entity that is naturally conservative due to its Muslim background, and the coming-of-age story about an Iranian-American lesbian having the child of a straight British actor dubbed “the ugly one” by her brothers, told in a free-wheeling, free-associative manner. Shireen has a guardian spirit named Iman Zaman, who appears in the nick-of-time to save her and her children. Faced with a disastrous medical bill, Shireen announces, “We don’t do bankruptcy,” and launches a brilliant career as a realtor in nearby New Jersey.

Written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz (“Circumstance”) in her sophomore outing, “The Persian Version” combines semi-autobiography, soap opera, music, dance and the kind of enthusiasm that cannot be faked. Keshavarz may think that the film is about Leila. But the truth is that it is a celebration of Shireen. And for the absolutely magnetic and fearless Noor, whose Shireen is alternately mother, evil stepmother and “strong Iranian woman,” “The Persian Version” may be her star-is-born moment.

(“The Persian Version” contains sexually suggestive material and profanity)

“The Persian Version”

Rated R. In English and Farsi with subtitles. At the Landmark Kendall Square and AMC Boston Common. Grade: A-

Directed and co-written by Justine Triet (“Sibyl”), the film is a dense, sophisticated deep dive into the complexities of a marriage after the French husband dies in a tumble from the third floor of the family’s fix-it-up, wooden chalet in Grenoble, where he, his German writer-wife and their piano-playing 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) lived.

Before her husband’s death, Huller’s Sandra Voyter is interviewed in the chalet by a young journalist. But they have to give up because Sandra’s husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), also a writer, although a failed one, is renovating on the third floor and blaring deafening music.

When their son Daniel, whose vision has been impaired by an accident, returns to the chalet with the blue-eyed family dog Snoop, he finds his father bleeding and mortally injured at a front of the chalet. He calls his mother. But it is too late; the man dies. How did he fall? He has an injury that suggests that he was whacked on the skull before he fell. Will the wife, the only known person to have been in the chalet, be indicted? A suspect, she is interviewed by the authorities.

One of the many things we learn about Sandra and Samuel (the characters have the same first names as the actors) is that they use real experiences and people they know as fodder for their fiction. In fact in a crucial development, the authorities learn that Samuel may have been recording a fight he got into with Sandra on the day before his death. The case becomes news. Sandra becomes the focus of national attention. Her neighbors in the glorious Alpine city of Grenoble never accepted her, and yet they pack the courtroom where her fate will be decided.

Huller is like quicksilver as the accused wife. It’s impossible to get a fix on her. While she hikes the mountainous area near the chalet, the authorities eerily reenact the accident in the distance using a dummy. At times, “Anatomy of a Fall” reminds one of Park Chan-wook’s similarly labyrinthine and darkly romantic 2022 murder mystery “Decision to Leave.” Sandra and her lawyer Vincent Renzi (vulpine-faced Swann Arlaud) appear on the verge of more than a professional relationship. In one heated exchange with her husband, Sandra says that she was forced by their marriage to leave her home in Germany and her language to live in Grenoble and speak French. In “Anatomy of a Fall,” all marriages are a mystery.

At two-and-a-half hours, “Anatomy of a Fall” can be a tough sit. But like “Sibyl,” Triet’s 2019 “Persona”-like examination of a relationship between a psychologist-writer (Virginie Efira) and an actor (Adele Exarchopoulos), the film is full of fascinating flourishes. At the tribunal, lawyers clatter up and down stairs like mice in a maze, while the “other” audience, the one in the courtroom, sits slavering for more juicy bits about Sandra’s sexual history to be revealed. The film is a sexual house of mirrors. As you try to figure out whodunnit, Vincent whips up a lunch of spaghetti, parmigiano and fresh pepper. Huller is riveting as usual, and “Anatomy of a Fall” gives us a lot to chew over.

(“Anatomy of a Fall” contains gruesome images, profanity and mature themes)

“Anatomy of a Fall”

Rated R. In English, German and French with subtitles. At the AMC Boston Common and Coolidge Corner Theater. Grade: A-

But the goodness ends there. Cue the “Friends”-sounding opening theme music. Dobrev plays Wren Pepper, a low-achieving, thirty-ish singleton who works in a gift shop in an unidentified city and yearns for more time with her beloved friends from high school (there is no mention of college). The tall, self-centered blonde Jill (Hayley Magnus, TV’s “The Mapleworth Murders”), who is also a mother, has become some sort of girl boss. Redhead Cece (Stephanie Koenig, TV’s “The Flight Attendant”) has a new baby and is totally stressed out about it, and marathon runner Laurel (Sherry Cola, “Joy Ride”) has her training to keep her busy. In an opening scene, Cece claims to have learned how to sleep with her eyes open (I did that watching this).

Wren manages to get drunk in the morning and try to leave without paying at a local bar. She ends up in jail. When her behavior further shocks her friends, Wren blurts out the lie that she has cancer.

When asked to specify, she says that she, a heavy smoker and drinker has a “little tonsil cancer.” Yes, there will be a lot of puking, but very little in the way of mirth or humor. At The Inviting Place, the modest gift and card shop, where Wren works, the customers are few and far between. Her oddly tolerant boss Malcolm (Ray McKinnon, TV’s “Rectify”) is, like almost everyone, sympathetic when he hears Wren’s news. We hear the words “Uber,” “Postmates” and “Tinder” in quick succession as if to check them off a list of magical utterances that must be pronounced in any new movie.

Wren goes to a cancer support group, where she meets Leo (Brandon Mychal Smith), a kind and handsome young man with liver cancer, who feels like it’s OK  to use harsh language in front of other people’s kids in the pet store where he works. I didn’t know if it was a character flaw, or if writer-director Cram forgot there were kids in those scenes. “Fight Club” and “A Walk to Remember,” two films that could not be more different, are referenced.

Wren talks about having sessions with her friends during which they would fire “love missiles” at her to help her heal. Wren and her friends go out drinking at a club, where the other young women are slightly younger than they. Wren, Cece, Jill and Laurel get drunk, pole dance (of course), get into hair-pulling fights and land in jail (this is Wren’s second time). An alarm clock montage accompanies Wren’s quest to “atone.” We know Wren has reached her redemption when she finally cleans her filthy bedroom (and tries to eat a sandwich that has been in her trash). I’m sure it’s possible to make a comedy about having cancer. “50/50” was not bad. “Sick Girl,” which manages to waste the talent of Wendy McLendon-Covey as Wren’s mother, is. Bad.

(“Sick Girl” contains profanity, sexual references and drug use)

“Sick Girl”

Rated R. On Digital and VOD.. Grade: C

Slyly slipping in some archival footage, Chin and Vasarhelyi fill in the background history.

Nyad, who took her surname from the Greek word for “water nymph” at the encouragement of her father, set records swimming across Lake Ontario and around Manhattan Island and from the Bahamas to Florida (102 miles). The action begins when Nyad (Bening) tolerates a surprise 60th birthday party thrown by her best friend Bonnie Stoll (Foster).  A Boomer born in 1949, Nyad worked for 30 years for ABC News, and she hasn’t been in the water in ages. But she’s a fierce Scrabble competitor, and she doesn’t want to “succumb to mediocrity” in her old age. Like Tennyson’s Odysseus, she dreams of a crowning, final adventure, and she concocts a plan to swim from Cuba to Key West.

At the local pool, Nyad gets into the water and doesn’t get out until after dark. She’s just warming up. Speaking to a class of children, she admits that she poops in the water during marathon swims. What are the dangers? Sharks, stingrays, Portuguese man o’ wars and venomous jellyfish.

Diana and Bonnie arrange for a team of young kayakers to protect her during the swim using an electric “shield” to repel sharks. It doesn’t however work on jellyfish. After a terrible introductory meeting, Diana enlists dyspeptic charter fisherman John Bartlett (Rhys Iffans, completing an acting trifecta) as her navigator. It is inevitable that Diana, who sports a red light on her bathing cap, will vomit seawater and hallucinate during her swim. Bonnie and the team keep close to Diana in the boat, cruising at the same speed and keeping a light on the swimmer. Bonnie and John are vigilant.

During the swims, while Diana sings and counts, we see what she is thinking. We get a rather cheesy-looking version of the Taj Mahal in one of these scenes. But we also encounter her childhood, her introduction to competitive swimming, and her sexual abuse as a child by a beloved coach.

Bonnie and Diana are a gay comedy team, arguing, bantering and fighting over Diana’s willingness to risk her life. A crowd cheers Diana on her first attempt. By the fifth, Diana is older and the crowds have gone. But she and her assistants have engineered a body suit and eerie face mask that she can wear to protect her from jellyfish at night. Yes, it is exciting to see Bening, Foster, Iffans et al reenact Nyad’s relentless five attempts to make the swim. But it is the bond between Diana and Bonnie that is the film’s beating heart and its strength. In 2013, at the age of 64, Nyad sets a record for longest ocean swim without shark cage or flippers, 110 miles. She is a true legend. But the film is a celebration of two women’s friendship and of two of America’s greatest actors putting on a great show. Onward.

(“Nyad” contains scene suggesting sexual abuse, profanity and brief nudity)

“Nyad”

Rated PG-13. At the Landmark Kendall Square. Grade: A-

Upon her arrival, Virginia Otis (an excellent Emily Carey of “House of the Dragon”), whose scientist father Hiram (David Harewood) calls her “Pumpkin,” comes across a history of “Canterville Chase” text and digs in. Her father wants to install modern electricity in the old manor. Her mischievous younger brothers Louis and Kent (a delightful Jakey Schiff and Bennett Miller) seek hijinks wherever they can find it. Virginia’s mother Lucretia Otis (Meera Syal) wants very much to fit in with local society and plans a dinner party.

Portraits of terrified previous owners of Canterville Chase adorn the walls in a very Harry Potter sort of way. We hear of a prophecy concerning a massive, dead almond tree. Before long, we meet the spectral Sir Simon in chains and spooking up a storm. Unfortunately, Sir Simon, who likes to quote Shakespeare, does not scare the Otises very much. Virginia almost ignores him. The boys play football (American-style) with his head. Sir Simon, who disappears in puffs of smoke, is decked out in green tights, blue boxers, a gold tunic and a big, ruffled collar. He wants to know why Virginia wears “breeches.” She explains that they are “riding breeches” and promptly rides out to meets her rather hapless love interest Henry Fitz Humphreys, the Duke of Cheshire (a fun Freddie Highmore). Eventually, we learn that Sir Simon was suspected of murdering his beloved wife Eleanor (Elizabeth Sankey). Virginia takes on the task of lifting the curse upon Sir Simon.

Also in the film’s remarkable voice cast are Imelda Staunton as the cook and housekeeper Mrs. Umney, Toby Jones as the local vicar The Reverend Chasuble and Miranda Hart (TV’s “Call the Midwife”) as a inventive, ghost-chasing friend of the Reverend. Laurie has less to do as the voice of Death.

Directed by Kim Burdon (“Fireman Sam”) and Robert Chandler (TV’s “Boy George: One on One”), this “Canterville Ghost” is not the first animated adaptation of Wilde’s story, which has been adapted many times before (there was a 1970 Soviet animated film, believe it or not).

The role of Sir Simon has been previously played by Patrick Stewart and John Gielgud. The most famous adaptation was the 1944 American feature film, starring a wonderful Charles Laughton as Sir Simon, Robert Young as an American WWII soldier, child actor Margaret O’Brien and Una O’Connor. A 1966 ABC TV movie musical of Wilde’s story featured Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Michael Redgrave and music by “Fiddler on the Roof” songwriters Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. This latest “Canterville Ghost” might not be the best. The computer-generated animation is not exactly inspired. The hit-and-miss screenplay boasts a “ghostbusters” joke. But like Noel Coward’s much adapted “Blithe Spirit,” “The Canterville Ghost” is always welcome.

(“The Canterville Ghost” contains mature themes and swashbuckliing)

“The Canterville Ghost”

Rated PG. At Apple Cinemas. Grade: B+

Nevertheless, director Scorsese, who co-wrote the screenplay with the great Eric Roth (“Dune”) based on the 2017 book by David Grann, has concocted a mesmerizing and dense tale of Faustian dimensions. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio in his 6th film with Scorsese) is a not particularly bright WWI army cook. returning from the front. Di Caprio wears a strange, almost goofy expression on his face and seems to have stuffed his cheeks with cotton balls a la Brando in “The Godfather.”

Burkhart is headed to Oklahoma’s Osage country to work for his uncle “King” William Hale (a veritably sulfurous Robert De Niro in his 10th Scorsese film). A great friend of the Osage people, Hale owns a cattle ranch that does not have oil on it and speaks the Osage language and socializes with their leaders. Notably, the Osage in the film, who have made millions from the wells which dot the landscape, wear woolen blankets as outer clothing.

At first, “King” Hale plays matchmaker, encouraging Ernest to meet and court a young Osage woman named Mollie (a powerful Lily Gladstone), who is at first comically skeptical of Burkhart, whom she meets when he works as a cab driver. She makes fun of her clumsy courtier although she likes his handsome (?) face and bright blue eyes. Eventually, they marry. She has diabetes, which cannot be treated at the time and is often unwell. Mollie’s sister Minnie (Jillian Dion), who is also married to a white man, has some unidentified “wasting sickness.” Mollie’s beloved mother Lizzie (the venerable Tantoo Cardinal, “Dances with Wolves”) is old and weakening. Mollie’s sister Anna Brown (Cara Jade Myers), who is married to Ernest’s surly older brother Byron (Scott Shepherd, “Dark Phoenix”), is a hot-tempered, heavy drinker with a revolver in her purse.

Suddenly, Osage people begin to drop like proverbial flies. Their deaths are not investigated by the sheriff (Moe Hedrick), and the evidence disappears. It’s clear from the start that Hale’s plan is to eliminate anyone who stands between him and his family and the rights to the oil.

This is a story of white men murdering indigenous people for money and property. Someone breathes the word “Tulsa,” referring to the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre. Like the gangster film, “Killers of the Flower Moon” tells a fundamental American story. Di Caprio does his best to find the humanity in the spineless Ernest and succeeds in part. Gladstone is deeply sympathetic in the midst of the film’s treachery.

As you might expect. “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which reportedly cost $200 million, offers viewers the best cinema has to offer: lensing by Rodrigo Prieto (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), editing by the great Thelma Schoonmaker, “Raging Bull”), casting by Ellen Lewis (“The Departed”), production design by maestro Jack Fisk (“The Tree of Life”) and music and music design by the late Scorsese regular Robbie Robertson formerly of The Band. Robertson’s almost subliminal drums are the film’s haunting animistic refrain. Scorsese, 80, also includes a film-within-a-film, a newsreel, a radio show and an obit. Jesse Plemons finds power in a few words as a government agent. As one of Hale’s killers, real Texas cowboy Ty Mitchell (“True Grit”) is a standout. An Osage man named Henry Roan (William Belleau) also appears in the 1959 James Stuart drama “The F.B.I. Story,” which covers some of the same terrain. The masterful Scorsese gives us the whole, bloody picture. Cue drums.

(“Killers of the Flower Moon” contain graphic violence and profanity)

“Killers of the Flower Moon”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and other suburban theaters. Grade: A-

But the surroundings are breathtaking. When the story’s protagonist Kirsty Macleod (Hermione Corfield, “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”) discovers that her beau Murdo MacAulay (Will Fletcher, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”) has been hiding a copy of Charles Dickens’ “The Old Curiosity Shop” inside the cover of a Bible, she whispers, “Sacrilege.” The form of Christianity practiced by her and Murdo’s people is as severe as the weather. Murdo, who has returned from the military where he worked as a typist, also admires the work of American poet Robert Frost. Kirsty and Murdo agree to marry and move to America aboard one of the steamers they see in the distance from their cliffs. But something terrible happens. The young men of the village are called up to the front, and during a “road dance” Kirsty suffers a head injury and is raped by an unidentified man.

Murdo and the other men, including the jealous and drunken Iain Ban (Tom Byrne) and Angus (Luke Nunn), the shy beau of Kirsty’s younger sister Annie (Ali Fumiko Whitney), all leave the day after the attack on Kirsty. Before long, she suffers from morning sickness and binds her swelling belly to hide her pregnancy from prying eyes of the village busybody Old Peggy (Alison Peebles). Also living in the village is a semi-recluse named Skipper (Jeff Stewart). Kirsty’s mother sends Skipper eggs.

When you aren’t mesmerized by the candlelit interiors or the waves breaking on the cliff bottoms captured by cinematographer Petra Korner (TV’s “Shadow and Bone”), you almost get swept way by the dramatics of MacKay’s novel adapted by the director Richie Adams (“Dog Man”).

“The Road Dance” has its roots in the works of Thomas Hardy and George Eliot. Its stark, rural Scottishness is what sets it apart. The mysterious loner Doctor Macrae (Mark Gatiss) helps Kirsty after her rape. But he only treats her head injury. Kirsty keeps the rape a secret. Skipper wanders in the hills, muttering lines from, of course, “Macbeth” (The hurly-burly is so not done). Old Peg has a surprisingly helpful streak. “The Road Dance” inevitably takes a turn in the land of soap opera.

But Corfield makes Kirsty such a living part of the landscape that you cannot abandon her. As her widowed mother Mairi, Morven Christie (TV’s “The Bay”) is a sly scene stealer. It is the duty of compassionate shopkeeper Peter (Sean Gilder) to deliver dreaded telegrams to local families. The stern Constable (Ian Pirie) is not likely to let a detail slip by. Minister MacIver (Forbes Masson) reminds his congregation that they are on their way to hell. It all ends with a new beginning.

(“The Road Dance” contains mature themes, a sexually suggestive scene and war violence)

“The Road Dance”

Not Rated. On AppleTV, Amazon, Google Play and more. Grade: B

The film’s notably resilient protagonist Rose (the talented Odeya Rush, “Lady Bird”) works the graveyard shift at a Florida hotel, while her mother Alma (Saffron Burrow, speaking in a workable American accent) works the swing shift at a local diner.

Alma’s new boyfriend Derek Stipes (Eric Dane) has invited Alma and Rose on a 10-day voyage aboard his sailboat by way of vacation. Alma is gung-ho; Rose not so much, especially after she finds Derek’s AR-15 decorated with a dagger-through-a-rose symbol stowed under a seat cushion. OK, I never said the film was subtle. Barr and co-writer Mark Jackson (“War Story”) manage to concoct a combination of the 1989 Nicole Kidman breakthrough drama “Dead Calm” and an offshoot of the Liam Neeson 2008 B-movie classic “Taken” with Rose as both a victim and a knockoff of the Neeson character.

Rose, whose father died in service in Iraq, is a quick learner. She picks up the art of knot-making from Derek pretty quickly. Derek is impressed with her shooting skills when they give the assault rifle a workout. But can she learn to use a sextant just from watching Derek?

One of the film’s tricks is withholding just how evil a characters is until later. For a bit, characters play at a dangerous game of “Cast Away” on an uninhabited island with a big cliff. Rose will learn the meaning of the expression from the frying pan into the fire after she is rescued by a group of sailors.

Rush might look a foot shorter than the statuesque Burrows (“Westworld”). But they have an engaging mother-daughter chemistry, and Rose’s impatience with Alma has a lived-in feeling. Her beautiful mother has probably had a long line of bad choices behind her. Dane’s Derek at first seems only like a bit of jerk and a horny, old dude. But he will believably sprout horns and tail.

Other developments don’t necessarily seem exactly likely. But they are credible steps in a yarn of this sort. Things began to go south when  Alma gets beaned by the spar and lands in the water. A carved mermaid turns out to be foreboding in more ways than one. Somewhere along her half-wild childhood, Rose appears to have picked up some fighting skills, check. Another sly move arrives when Rose learns that the name of the “second hand” boat was also the name of Derek’s ex (?) wife, and Rose doesn’t call him on it. We keep hearing about a character named “The Captain” and his appetite for “young girls.” Yes, that is the unsavory Liotta role. Enjoy it while you can.

“Dangerous Waters” does not “devolve” into “Die Hard” on a boat. But that’s where it’s headed, and by now we’ve come to expect bad-ass behavior from Rose, and, again, it’s not a bad ride.

(“Dangerous Waters” contains sexually suggestive content, profanity and extreme violence)

“Dangerous Waters”

Not Rated. On VOD. Grade: B

A tall, slender, olive-skinned “Madonna” as she was often described, Baez was hard to pin down. Was she white? Was she Black? Both? As it turns out, the artist, who spent 60 years on the road, performing and trying to make the world a better place, was of Mexican descent with a Quaker background.

The film, directed by “Frontline” veterans Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle and Karen O’Connor, isn’t as interested in the music as it is in the evolving mind and social consciousness of the artist, beginning with a bit of writing entitled “What I Believe” by 13-year-old “Joanie” Baez. The film’s subject is a genius. But the film often seems like a semester-long course, taught by and all about Baez.

She was a sensitive kid, worried about the disadvantaged, moody, tormented by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. At the same time, we accompany the present-day Baez, who is known to press her own costumes, on a sold-out, small-venue concert tour where her son Gabe Harris serves as drummer and percussionist. Joan’s late, older sister Pauline long since moved away to the Carmel Valley in Northern CA. Her late, younger sister Mimi, who for a time imitated Joan, married musician and author Richard Farina. The present-day Baez runs out of her hotel in Paris to dance barefoot in the street.

This Joan is not much different from the one who recorded songs by a young folk/protest singer named Bob Dylan, whom she invited onstage at her shows, giving his fledgling career a boost. The two perform together again at the 1963 March on Washington. Baez singing “We Shall Overcome” at that March is a hugely important moment in American history. She and Dylan were lovers. But “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” is not a comprehensive study of that relationship, although Baez does allow that, “Dylan broke my heart.” We hear about a more recent relationship she has had “after men.” We flash back to Selma and Montgomery. She remains a beloved star to Black people. She spent over a month in jail in 1967 for blocking the entrance of an Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland.

The new interviews with Baez are refreshingly candid. Describing her marriage to anti-Vietnam War protester David Harris, she says, “He was too young; I was too crazy,” although she “loved being a mom.” Back with Dylan for the famous Rolling Thunder Revue, Baez becomes too fond of Quaaludes. After a lifetime in therapy, Baez comes to believe that she was sexually abused by her father, something her father, who died in 2007, vehemently denies on tape. Is she a victim of false memory syndrome? “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” Baez intones, quoting Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by way of farewell, although at 82 she remains, a gray giant.

(“Joan Baez I Am a Noise” contains mature themes)

“Joan Baez I Am a Noise”

Not Rated. At the Landmark Kendall Square and suburban theaters. Grade: B

The chemistry spills all over the screen in this film, thanks to some brilliant casting. When Loewen’s legal team learns that O’Keefe has hired Gary and that the case will be heard in a small Mississippi county called Hinds, where the population is two-thirds African-American, Loewen hires Howard-and-Harvard-educated Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett) to represent them. Her nickname is “the Python.”

Directed and co-written by Maggie Betts of the impressive 2017 entry “Novitiate,” “The Burial” is a lot funnier than it has any right to be, except for Foxx’s remarkably adept comic style, which is as much physical as verbal. Foxx is firing on all cylinders here. Seldom before have we been reminded of the resemblance between a courtroom and a church, and seldom, if ever before, has anyone made a courtroom resemble a Black church. We all know that Harvard grad Jones (the “Men in Black” films) is the past master of the slow burn and comic scowl. He can sour milk by looking at it.

Foxx’s Gary does not merely represent his clients. He preaches his cases and rains fire and brimstone down (and Jean-Claude Van Damme references) on their adversaries’ heads, while living like a billionaire in a Florida coast mansion that he shares with his wife and “childhood sweetheart” Gloria (Amanda Warren, better known as Regina Haywood of TV’s “East New York”). Gary flies in a private jet he has dubbed “Wings of Justice,” and wears a jewel-encrusted platinum watch and ring. He has not lost a case in 12 years. He and Gloria have been featured on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” But Gary is also not a contract lawyer, and his cunning opponent is.

O’Keefe is a modest man and World War II hero nearing the end of his life. He desperately wants to leave a rich legacy to his family, and after agreeing to a deal, Loewen drags his heels, presumably in the hopes that O’Keefe, whose business is in trouble, will have to declare bankruptcy. That O’Keefe’s wife is played by Pamela Reed is only one of many strokes of casting genius in the film. There is some trouble within O’Keefe’s ranks. O’Keefe’s long-time attorney and friend Mike Allred (a fine Alan Ruck) is the product of generations of white, good-old-boy privilege. He addresses all Black men as “son,” even after O’Keefe’s newly-hired young Black attorney Hal Dockins (a very strong turn by Mamoudou Athie), straight out of law school, asks Allred to stop.

“The Burial,” which is based on a story in The New Yorker by Northampton resident Jonathan Harr, is more than just great fun and a credible courtroom drama in the manner of Sidney Lumet’s David Mamet-scripted 1982 classic “The Verdict.” “The Burial” is a reminder that there is a way that we can have a discussion about race in America without being at each other’s throats.

(“The Burial” contains profanity)

“The Burial”

Rated R. On Amazon Prime. Grade: A-

“Prince” Jeremy paid his dues as an editor on such films as “The Harder They Come” (1972) and “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1973). Thomas’ first effort as a producer was the Dennis Hopper vehicle “Mad Morgan” (1974), followed by the Jerzy Skolimowski Cannes award-winner “The Shout” (1978), the first of several collaborations with English actor John Hurt, including the great 1984 Stephen Frears’ gangster movie “The Hit.” Thomas was off like a rocket. He formed an artistic partnership with auteur Nicolas Roeg (Don’s Look Now”), beginning with the belatedly acclaimed “Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession” (1980). Thomas also formed close working relationships with Bernardo Bertolucci (“The Sheltering Sky, “Little Buddha,” “Stealing Beauty”), David Cronenberg (“Crash,” “Naked Lunch,” “A Dangerous Method”) and Takashi Miike (“13 Assassins”). More recently, Thomas has brought us “Kon-Tiki” (2012), “Dom Hemingway” (2013), “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2013), “High-Rise” (2015), “Blade of the Immortal” (2017) and also Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman” (2018) and his magnificent, live-action “Pinocchio” (2019). In time for last year’s awards races,Thomas produced director Skolimowski’s 2022 delightful, Academy Award-nominated donkey biography “EO.”

“The Storms of Jeremy Thomas,” written, directed, photographed and narrated by Mark Cousins (“The Eyes of Orson Welles”), takes a trip to Cannes as its framework. Cousins, the brain behind the “The Story of Film” TV series, has a comprehensive knowledge of film and knows precisely where Thomas stands. He’s a giant. Thomas, also a bit of a gear head, gets behind the wheel of an Alpha Romeo Quadrifoglio and drives very fast with Cousins from his thatched-roof home outside London to Cannes for the film festival, where three-time BAFTA award-winner Thomas is in his element.

Debra Winger, Tilda Swinton and Ken Loach’s producer Rebecca O’Brien sing Thomas’ praises. I wish Cousins had gotten Cronenberg to lend his voice. Thomas refers to the late, great J.G. Ballard, the author of “Crash” and “High-Rise” as “my Melville.” Passing through Paris, Thomas takes time to visit the Drancy Internment Camp Memorial outside the city, a place from which French Jews were transported to Auschwitz during World War II. Asked about the most memorable films of his youth, Thomas names Carl Theodor Dreyer’s still unique and stunning “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) with an unforgettable Falconetti in the title role. The film ends with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s unforgettable music from the 1983 Thomas production “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” with David Bowie… and Thomas in his lap pool. Take another.

(“The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” contains profanity, sexually suggestive scenes and nudity)

“The Storms of Jeremy Thomas”

Not Rated. At the Landmark Kendall Square Grade: A-

Now, the great Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar (“Talk to Her”), who turned down “Brokeback Mountain” all those years ago (it was directed by Ang Lee), tries his hand at the form with the 30-minute English-language short “Strange Way of Life.” The film, which takes its odd-sounding name from a famous fado song, is both moving and a bit baffling.

Shot in Spain’s Andalusia region, “Strange Way of Life,” which was lensed by Almodovar regular Jose Luis Alcaine (“Volver”), certainly looks like a Western. But the film was sponsored by Saint Laurent, and at times you may ask yourself if that explains the presence of such beautifully laundered and folded undergarments and a stunningly green jacket worn by Pedro Pascal’s Silva as he rides into town. Silva is worried about his murderous son (George Steane), who has killed his mistress, the sister-in-law of Jake (Ethan Hawke), the town’s sheriff and Silva’s one-time lover.

Silva and Jake enjoyed a two-month whirlwind affair 25 years earlier, and neither ever got over it. Still, they married women. Silva had a son and the apparently bisexual lovers went their separate ways.

But the flame is rekindled when Silva shows up to beg for his son’s life. After a dinner full of toasts and a night of lovemaking, Jake loans Silva some of his linen and then trots out of town on horseback to track down Silva’s son and bring him to justice. Silva headed out first.

In a flashback, a drunk and infatuated Jake and Silva are played by two handsome  male models, wriggling on the floor of a wine cellar, wine pouring down on them.

All in all, “Strange Way of Life” is not much of an addition to gay Westerns or to the work of Almodovar. Still, Hawke and Pascal have a lot of screen presence and chemistry, which makes the film watchable and worthwhile and in the end truly poignant, even if you wish the two actors were co-starring in a full-length effort. But the emphasis in “Strange Way of Life” is on appearance, not realism. I can think of no other explanation for a scene in which two single-action revolvers are notably not cocked when they should be, something that got me thinking distractedly about the tragedy that occurred on the set on the Western “Rust” with Alec Baldwin.

Almodovar frequent collaborator Alberto Iglesias provided the haunting score. “Strange Way of Life” will be paired in its theatrical release with Almodovar’s 2020 English-language short “The Human Voice,” a more successful effort featuring Tilda Swinton and based on a play by Jean Cocteau.

(“Strange Way of Life” contains bloody images, violence and sexually graphic language)

“Strange Way of Life”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, Coolidge Corner Theater and suburban theaters. Grade: B

When Liv and Hanna first arrive at the pub, they meet at-first-frosty cook and caretaker Carol (Ursula Yovich, “Australia”) and pub owner Billy (Hugo Weaving), who just happens to be a drunk and keeps pickled snakes in glass jars on shelves behind the bar. Hanna and Liv also run into their predecessors in rooms upstairs, Jules (Alex Malone) and Cassie (Kate Cheel), Englishwomen whose going-away party runs out of control.

After Billy gives them a two-minute lesson in serving and ringing up the sales on an ancient register, Liv and Hanna get the hang of the barely controlled chaos that is the pub on most nights. The customers get drunk, and the more drunk they get the more dangerous some of them become. Hanna and Liv have both their potential abusers and potential protectors in the rowdy crowd. But who is what? The sole woman in the crowd is an older person named Glenda (Barbara Lowing). But she is just as drunk and abusive as some of the men. Hanna and Liv were warned to expect “male attention.” But this is “The Road Warrior” for real in the wifi-and-police-free Aussie Outback.

Hanna is courted by the tall and good-looking young man named Matty (Toby Wallace). He takes her and Liv in one of the several vintage vehicles with big bush-wacker front bumpers to a place to swim, a hidden away waterfall and pool. It’s a peaceful oasis. But on one night a customer named Dolly (Daniel Henshall, “Okja”) drunk out of his mind, wanders up to the women’s rooms, looking for mischief. A terrified Hanna locks him out. The nearest town is a six-hour drive. Hanna finds a snake in her room. Dolly removes it, pickles it and leaves it in a jar on the bar for Hanna. Is it a gift or a warning?

Directed and co-written by Kitty Green, who wrote and directed the 2019 Garner vehicle “The Assistant,” “The Royal Hotel” once again stalks a dangerous realm inhabited in this case by both kangaroos and toxic men. The talismanic snakes behind the bar are only one sign of the rule of the males of the species. We also have the half-armored vehicles and big-banging fireworks.

But this is also the land where the C-word is a common synonym for “mate.” When asked why they traveled to Australia, Hanna tells her questioner it was “the furthest away.” What were she and Liv running away from? Suddenly, Torsten (Herbert Nordrum, “The Worst Person in the World”), a very tall cruise ship passenger interested in Hanna, arrives in a tiny red car. Everyone continues to drink too much. Liv is wilder than Hanna and often drinks herself to the point of oblivion. Is she repeating behavior that sent her on this mad voyage to the real-life land known as Oz? Garner and Henwick are completely believable as friends who have experienced life together. As the more sensible one, Garner exerts more self-control, and in one scene becomes fiercely protective. By the way, “The Royal Hotel” was “inspired by” the 2016 Australian documentary “Hotel Coolgardie.” Pour you another?

(“The Royal Hotel” contains profanity, substance abuse and nudity)

“The Royal Hotel”

Rated R. At the Coolidge Corner. Grade: A-

Written by Peter Sattler (“Camp X-Ray”), Green (“Halloween Ends”) and Scott Teems (“Insidious: The Red Door”), “The Exorcist: Believer” starts out in Haiti, where photographer Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr., “One Night in Miami”) and his heavily pregnant wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves) encounter some practitioners of the local religion, have some blessing performed upon their unborn child and are caught in an earthquake. 13 years later, Victor and his 13-year-old daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett, TV’s “Good Girls”) live alone in a small house. He has a local photography business. He drives Angela to her school nearby. In class, the students listen to someone reciting Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Angela wants desperately to have contact with her dead mother, an angle we also experienced in the far superior and more inventive recent Australian thriller “Talk to Me.” Angela and her friend, classmate and next-door neighbor Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) walk into the woods.

And they disappear for three days. How? Why? “The Exorcist: Believer” doesn’t attempt to explain anything. Every one of its scares is a jump cut, “Boo,” in your face. Angela and Katherine begin to present the symptoms we all know from “The Exorcist.” The make-up effects make them look like the young Linda Blair from the original film, and they sound alike and resemble each other. They’re “The Exorcist” twins, complete with multi-denominational, would-be demon slayers.

Watch out for that green stuff. At her fundamentalist church, Katherine maniacally repeats the words, “The body and the blood,” over and over and looks like she is about to bite the pastor’s face off. Someone murmurs lines from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Lights blink on and off. We hear about “undefined anomalies.” Angela soils her bed. This is messy, but not very scary.

The original “Exorcist” gave all the lapsed believers in the audience a reason to believe again, and many of them were more than willing, if not yearning to do so. “The Exorcist: Believer” gives 90-year-old Ellen Burstyn of the original film top billing even though her role is small and arguably exploitative. As a nurse and former novitiate, the great Ann Dowd (“Hereditary”), playing a version of the Max von Sydow role from the original, brings automatic gravitas. But like the very talented Odom, she cannot overcome the mediocrity of the screenplay. “The Exorcist: Believer” is like the vague riff it plays on Mike Oldfield’s unforgettable “Tubular Bells” theme. It’s an echo of something that was great. But you can barely hear it.

(“The Exorcist: Believer” contains profanity, violence, disturbing images and sexual references)

“The Exorcist: Believer”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: C

In opening scenes, a young executive at their firm is fired and uses a golf club to smash his computer to bits while he weeps and swears profusely. Emily, who went to Harvard, tells Luke, who went to Yale, she has heard he’s getting promoted. But it is Emily who is called by fearsome boss Campbell (East London-born Eddie Marsan at his nastiest) in the middle of the night. Oh, the irony, Emily, who is as capable or even more capable than Luke, gets the position. Luke pretends to be thrilled for her.

“Fair Play” is a fable about sexism at work, in the home and deep in the heart of your closest confidant, your fiance. The story has zero surprises and two truly uninteresting lead characters . Outside of their careers, sexual lives and drinking, Emily and Luke have no interests. Their small talk is minute. They have no friends, and only Emily hears from her family, in this case from her mother (Irishwoman Geraldine Somerville), who is coarse and swears a lot on the phone.

Written and directed by Los Angeles-born Chloe Domont (TV’s “Ballers”), an NYU graduate, “Fair Play” is a bad film on an important subject. The men in the office (Emily appears to be the only woman outside of the cleaning staff) all believe that Emily got her promotion because of sex. What other explanation is there? Emily offers to help Luke move up. He is insulted. He is also going down a rabbit hole in the form of a book by a self-improvement guru with whom Luke is obsessed. I wasn’t sold on this plot twist. Emily has a car pick her up in the morning. Luke must take the subway. I have no idea where they live perhaps because “Fair Play” was shot in Serbia. “New York City” is all trash, $40 cocktails, broken glass and uninviting alleys. We almost never look up or enjoy a skyline view.

Emily loses $25 million and is called a “dumb expletive, expletive” by Campbell. When she more than makes up for it with a better bet, Emily agrees to go to a strip club to celebrate. Bad idea? Emily tells Luke a sordid tale she heard from a coworker at the strip club. She tries to have sex with Luke. But he is suddenly, uh, incapable. Emily’s tightly-wound hair gets tighter every day. What are the chances everything will come to a head the night of Emily and Luke’s covert engagement party, for which “Grandma Lola is flying in?” Why would anyone get on their knees in everyone’s view and beg Campbell for a promotion? Ehrenreich and Dynevor have (hard-to-spell names and) zero chemistry. “Fair Play” is a bust. But Domont was story editor and the 7-episode director of “Ballers,” which I really enjoyed. Let’s hope that “Fair Play” is just a bump in her road.

(“Fair Play” contains profanity, sexually suggestive scenes, nudity and sexual violence)

“Fair Play”

Rated R. On Netflix. Grade: C+

In “Flora and Son,” Flora (a delightful Eve Hewson) is a savage beast, indeed. A 31-year-old Dublin single mother of a rebellious 14-year-old named Max (Oren Kinlan), who has been in trouble with the garda and on the verge of being sent to a juvenile detention center, Flora is at her wit’s end. She is almost a child herself. Max’s father Ian (Jack Reynor, “Midsommar”) is a bass playing ne-er-do-well with a wife and little time for his son. Flora lives in a box-sized council flat with Max and impulsively Dumpster-dives to retrieve an acoustic 6-string guitar and brings it to a music shop to be repaired.

Max scorns it. Unbeknownst to mum, Max has been making his own music using his beat-up laptop and the keyboard to play piano-style notes while collecting other “loops,” such as drumbeats, to use in his creations. He writes his own hip-hop lyrics, too. He’s quite accomplished as it turns out. He also has a crush on a local girl, who appears in sexy videos made by another local musician.

Flora, meanwhile, decides to take music lessons herself online and settles upon a nice looking young-ish man name Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The two hit it off. Hewson and Gordon-Levitt, who can really play guitar, have genuine chemistry. The first song Jeff plays for Flora is entitled, “I Hope I Don’t Fall in Love with You.” OK, not so subtle. Jeff lives in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Hewson, who is the daughter of U2’s Bono, also has chemistry with Reynor, too, and all the other men in the film that Flora encounters. Her wine-sipping, cigarette-smoking, hard-partying young mother is quite the seductive creation. When she isn’t fighting with Max and her ex or flirting with Jeff, who begins by magic to appear in person in her kitchen during their guitar lessons, Flora works as mother’s helper, catering to the messy demands of the baby of a wealthy, young Dublin woman.

Playing together through the magic of the computer connection, Flora and Jeff come close to falling in love. She decides to visit him after they compose a song together that he wants to play for others he knows. Director Carney simply has Flora play a recording of the young Joni Mitchell performing “Both Sides Now” to remind us of the power of music. It’s devastating. One may have to take Flora’s sudden ability to compose music with a grain of salt. But “Flora and Son” is so music-enchanted that you don’t really mind. The film is superbly cast. As the guard who must refer Max to the courts, Don Wycherley (“The General”) is just one example. But “Flora and Son” is all about Hewson. She is glorious.

(“Flora and Son” contains sexually explicit language)

“Flora and Son”

Rated R. At the Landmark Kendall Square. Grade: A-

Once again, the film features a tech-savvy 10-year-old boy named Ryder (Finn Lee-Epp, “Let Him Go”), who leads a group of search and rescue dogs. The smallest among them is the cockapoo Skye (Mckenna Grace), who handles all things related to flight and is hung up about being “the smallest pup.” Also among the pups are Marshall (Christian Carrao), a Dalmatian who is a firefighter and paramedic; Chase (Christian Convery), a German Shepherd, who is a police pup and second in command; Rocky (Callum Shoniker), a mixed breed dog who is the handyman.

Did I mention that each pup has a vehicle that can transform into some other type of vehicle, or that the merchandise generated by the “PAW Patrol” series has made millions; or that Kim Kardashian and her daughter North West are in this film’s voice cast? Is that you Chris Rock as Kitty? Or Kristen Bell as someone named Janet, who is married to Hank (James Marsden)? If you’re hiring big names to embellish your cast, you might as well give them something memorable to do.

In this installment, a mad scientist named Victoria “Vee” Vance (a comically robust Taraji P. Henson), a meteor expert, steals a multi-ton magnet from a scrapyard in order to supercharge it and pull meteors from space to Adventure City and wreak havoc. One of the meteors crash lands and then opens up to reveals magical crystals (Those again?) that endow our heroes with superpowers. Skye, for example, and (not) coincidentally can suddenly fly on her own. Others can control elements such as fire and water, if you get the gist. Chase develops super-speed. Aquatic specialist Zuma (Nylan Parthipan), of, course, can change into water. At regular intervals, we get explosions, montages, musical interludes and see TV reports from Adventure City reporter Sam Stringer (Lil Rel Howery).

Parents not familiar with the series might be confused to see the villain named Humdinger (series regular Ron Pardo), a former Adventure City Mayor-turned-super-villain, who joins forces with Vance. Humdinger bears a striking resemblance to Milburn Pennybags of Monopoly fame. Dialogue is not a crucial element, which is good since most of it is merely intended to be clever or touching.

Director Cal Brunker (“Son of Bigfoot”), co-writing with Bob Barlen (“Bigfoot Family”) and Shane Morris (“Rainbow Rangers”), returns for the second in the series. “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” recycles a plot that might have been used for an “Avengers” movie and maybe was. One may note that Ryder’s fighting suit resembles Spider-Man’s. Nothing in “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” is new or unique, and that was probably by design. “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” like “Barbie,” is as much an advertisement for merchandise, produced in this case by Spin Master Corp. (owner of Etch A Sketch and Rubik’s Cube), as it is a film. Get ready for “The Etch A Sketch Movie.” Are there puppies?

“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie”

Rated PG. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: B-

(“PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie” contains scenes of violence and peril)

A graduate of England’s posh Harrow School in London and a student of engineering at King’s College Cambridge, Vincent left university before getting his degree because he didn’t want to attend lectures about out-of-date techniques. Vincent, who drew motorcycles obsessively and apparently knew what was both on the outside and the inside, wanted to build a motorcycle unlike any before it.

With 450 pounds sterling earned from the sale of a family ranch in Argentina, Vincent bought a factory in Stevenage, 27 miles north of London, where technicians and engineers built unique motorcycles.

Narrated by motorcycle collector, long-distance rider and screen Obi Wan-Kenobi Ewan McGregor, “Speed Is Expensive: Philip Vincent and the Million Dollar Motorcycle” takes a close look at Vincent, his obsessions, colleagues, family and creditors. In 1935, Vincent, along with “the McCartney to his Lennon” Lee Irving, introduced the single-cylinder Meteor, a predecessor of the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow and Lightning. Vincent motorcycles had rear suspensions when most motorcycle still had primitive, rigid rear “hard tail” ends. Jay Leno waxes rhapsodic on the subject of his Vincents. They were lighter than other motorcycles with similarly-sized engines and power; they were also narrow. Because of their low center of gravity, they handled remarkably well. In order to reduce “drag,” a driver named Roland Free stripped off his leathers and rode lying flat on top of a Vincent into the world speed records in 1948 at the Bonneville Salt Flats (150.313 mph). The picture of Free on the Vincent in nothing except his swimsuit bottoms, slippers and wife’s shower cap is famous.

But Vincent, a bachelor having a long-term affair with his secretary, had problems. His motorcycles cost more to make than their competitors and were expensive. After World War II, buyers all over the world wanted cheaper, less complicated and hard to maintain motorcycles to get them to work.

A Vincent had the reputation of a “gentleman’s motorcycle.” Lawrence of Arabia might have owned a Vincent Black Shadow (and died riding it). But increasingly, “gentlemen” wanted four wheels. Motorcycles were the purview of the “ton-up boys” i.e., young people with a need for speed.

The funny thing was: Vincents were being “tuned” by expert mechanics and racers to go faster than ever. Vincent’s decision to take a chance and enclose his “moving sculptures” in fairings and cowls backfired. One observer calls them, “An old man’s wheelchair.” The company eventually was shut down. Vincent, his hard-working wife and daughter moved into a council flat in London. Used Vincents begin selling for peanuts in the 1950s and ’60s. But something strange began to happen. Connoisseurs began hoarding Vincents. Prices began to rise and have never stop doing so.

Directed by David Lancaster, making his debut, “Speed Is Expensive” makes certain that we hear that expression repeated at regular intervals. Lancaster makes good use of his archival material. I’m afraid that too many of his living interview subjects are septuagenarians at best. Where is the new generation of Vincent enthusiasts? James Dickey (“Deliverance”) once wrote a poem with a motorcycle in it that ends with the lines, “Wringing the handlebar for speed/ Wild to be wreckage forever.” Ride on.

(“Speed Is Expensive: Philip Vincent and the Million Dollar Motorcycle” contains nothing objectionable, except that obscenely expensive motorcycle)

“Speed Is Expensive: Philip Vincent and the Million Dollar Motorcycle”

Not Rated. On digital and DVD. Grade: B+

During the day, Donya goes to nearby San Francisco, in part to get away from Fremont’s Afghans, where she works in a small factory producing fortune cookies for area Chinese restaurants. Her coworkers include Joanna (a noteworthy Hilda Schmelling), an American singleton with piercings and a cowboy boot earring on the lookout for blind dates. Also on hand is the silent Fan (Avis See-tho), who writes the fortunes on a laptop and wields a paper cutter to get the printed versions ready to be baked into the cookies. If this sounds a bit absurdist, it is, and I like it.

Donya has been having trouble sleeping and wants to get sleeping pills. Thus, she co-opts the appointment of her motel neighbor Salim (Siddique Ahmed) and shows up at the therapist’s office, demanding to be treated. The therapist Dr. Anthony (Gregg Turkington) has trouble getting through to Donya at first. To the tune of Mahmood Schricker’s marvelous, alternately jazzy and ethnic score, Dr. Anthony asks Donya questions about her family and experiences as a translator. Donya is not forthcoming. But we gradually learn more and more about her. That she wears a tunic with a label that reads “Handmade Fortune Cookie” makes us wonder if she might be the fortune cookie.

Donya eats every day in the same restaurant, where an old restaurant worker with dyed hair, who might be a prophet, offers her advice and watches a long-running Afghan soap opera with her. Donya lies awake in a spare, single bed and when she passes a Bruce Lee mural in the street, Lee’s words, “Be Like Water,” appear to relate to her. Optimist Joanna sings a karaoke version of ’70s folk song “Just Another Diamond Day.” Dr. Anthony talks to Donya about “courage” and ”displacement” and becomes another patient, reading passages from Jack London’s “White Fang” aloud and weeping.

If this makes “Fremont” sound offbeat, I assure you it is. Making her screen debut, Wali Zada is a natural. When Donya is promoted to writing the messages in the fortune cookies, and makes a sudden, sarcastic remark, it’s electrifying. A personality is emerging from a long dark night.

“Fremont” is about getting to know a person and wanting that fictional person you have just met to be happy. The film itself is salutary, designed to blow the cobwebs out of your ears. Donya’s hair literally comes down. Salim even suggests that she seek a non-Afghan love interest. Donya accepts what she thinks is a blind date in Bakersfield and borrows a car to get there. On the way, she stops at a repair shop to check the oil and meets a soulful mechanic played, of course, by Jeremy Allen White of TV’s “The Bear.” The blue-eyed mechanic seems to recognize Donya. Their longing buzzes in your ears. Will these two orphans of the storm fall in love? We can dream that they will.

Directed and co-written by London-raised Iranian Babak Jalali (“Radio Dreams”), “Fremont” is like an immigrant tale written by Flannery O’Connor. It has purity, complexity and mystery and characters as enigmatic as heck. Jalali understands the wonders unlocked by a genuine world globe. The film is also astronomical. Salim tells Donya that the stars in the U.S. “move” at night, while the stars in Kabul “always stayed the same.” Sometimes, moving is good. Yes, I know; it sounds like a fortune cookie.

(“Fremont” contains mature themes)

“Fremont”

Not Rated. In English, Dari and Cantonese with subtitles. At the Coolidge Corner Theater.  Grade: A –

Ross is the de facto leader of the elite mercenary group known semi-jokingly as the Expendables. They are often former SAS or Special Forces fighters-turned-guns-for-hire. In this, the fourth installment in the less-than-acclaimed series, Stallone returns along with series regulars Jason Statham as Brit Lee Christmas, Dolph Lundgren as reformed drunk Gunner Jensen and wrestler Randy Couture as Toll Road. Among the newcomers are Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Easy Day, Megan Fox as Christmas’ romantic partner and fighter Gina, the amazing Thai action star Tony Jaa (“Ong Bak”) as Decha and Andy Garcia as CIA higher-up Marsh.

After a James Bond-style opening sequence, featuring rockets, bombs, armor, 50-caliber machine guns, lots of knife stabs in the throat (this film’s favorite move) and dead bodies piling up, Barney takes Christmas to a strip club where he lost his favorite (skull) ring in a thumb-wrestling match to a bouncer named Jumbo Shrimp (Mike Moller), Christmas finds that he has been once again been tricked by Ross. Soon, Marsh arrives to tell the team that they must track down a briefcase full of detonators that will be used to explode a nuclear device and start World War III. Unfortunately, this plot sounds a bit too credible. The detonators are on a ship headed for Russia.

“Expendables” movies are anarchic music to the ears of fans of such venerable film series as “Die-Hard,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Terminator,” “Delta Force” and more. These “Expendables” movies are the 1980s revisited, and they revisit the 1980s using 1980s-period actors. Previous “Expendables” cast members have included Bruce Willis and Chuck Norris. (Warning the Vin Diesel/Mattel “Rock “Em, Sock ‘Em” robot movie is back on the front burner after the smash hit “Barbie”).

The “Expendables” fans don’t need much in the way of plot, although we are told that the stand-in for the Bond movies’ baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld this time around is a character known by his or her code-name Ocelot. The workable screenplay for this latest entry is by Kurt Wimmer (“Ultraviolet”), newcomers Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams takes us to Libya and Thailand, although scenery is not important here. What the “Expendables” fans want from new-to-series director Scott Waugh (“Hidden Strike”) is action and bloodshed, and they get those elements in spades in “Expend4bles.”

But what they also get are some admittedly amusing running jokes about the advanced ages of some of our heroes, especially Stallone. While his delivery is not exactly rat-a-tat-tat, Stallone knows how to (man)handle a laugh line. Fox’s long, flowing hair seems like a liability in hand-to-hand combat and her lipstick gets such close-ups it should be listed in the credits. She is absolutely fearless about being this film’s sex object, another throwback to the ’80s. “Expend4bles” knows what an AK-47 is supposed to sound like. Like the (vintage) song over the end credits says, “The Boys Are Back in Town.”

(“The Expen4bles” contains extreme violence, profanity and gruesome images)

“Expend4bles”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.  Grade: B

But when Tamira (Mohana Krishan), once Samidha’s dearest childhood friend, shows up at the “Home of the Werewolves” (?) high school, clutching a glass jar and muttering like a lunatic, Samidha does not want to get involved. In fact, she rebukes a concerned Black teacher named Joyce (Betty Gabriel, “Get Out”) when the teacher asks her to look into Tamira’s problem. “Why me?” Samidha asks, challenging the notion that her ethnicity makes her the likely candidate for intervention.

In the film’s background, we hear about violent Hindu myths and see an awful lot of J-Horror-evoking big hair. A local Indian-American family has disappeared, leaving behind a boarded-up house. A big piece of action takes place in a girls’ locker room. Tamira leaves behind an old, leather book complete with calligraphic Hindi cursive and deeply disturbing illustrations, recalling multiple, miniature versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” These faces appear to be swallowed by a larger demonic visage. Your flesh begins to creep. Samidha’s romance with the boy from school appears to endanger him. Samidha is stalked by some growling thing with glowing eyes and no visible body.

“It Lives Inside” has atmosphere to spare. At times, the film, which Dutta co-wrote with Ashish Mehta (TV’s “Hush Hush”), recalls the unforgettable 1957 landmark “Curse of the the Demon,” a film based on the short story “Casting the Runes” by ghost-story maestro M.R. James.

Director Dutta, who examines such themes as the shame experienced by those who look different in a white community, keeps his camera moving without shaking. He does a lot with sound and shadow and secludes his creature in the dark until he’s ready to show it to us (I was a bit disappointed). We hear about a “pishacha,” a Hindu demon known as the “eater of souls.” In the traditional lead of the imperiled girl, Suri is completely likable and prickly when appropriate. As usual in films of this kind, she becomes quite the warrior when she has to. “It Lives Inside” is not perfect, and, although it has a unique cultural context, it is also derivative. But it is a remarkably skillful debut. Dutta is someone to watch.

(“It Lives Inside” contains violence, disturbing images, profanity and drug use)

“It Lives Inside”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters. Grade: B+

But the actor has had a scant number of starring roles, except in obscure efforts. In the frequently daffy, outlandishly-named “Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose,” which is based on a true story (!), Pegg plays the title role of “beardo” Dr. Nandor Fodor. According to his attractive, singleton live-in assistant Anne (Minnie Driver), Fodor is “the world’s foremost parapsychologist” as well as author of a scholarly tome. The truth is that Fodor, like the magician Harry Houdini (Edmund Kingsley) before him, is an expert at debunking people who claim to have had encounters with the supernatural.

“Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose,” which was written and directed by American Adam Sigal (“When the Starlight Ends”) begins lightheartedly with a short film “A Brief History of Animals That Could Talk.” Crows, we are told, can learn to laugh. The film’s starts out in London a few years before World War II. Everyone smokes, heavily. Fodor has Anne read letters from supplicants. Usually the letters are about dead relatives. But one tells the tale of a mongoose on the Isle of Man named Gef – rhymes with Jeff (voice of Neil Gaiman) – who can speak and is a bit of a clairvoyant to boot.

Nandor, who speaks in an American accent with hint of Eastern Europe (the real Fodor was American-British and of Hungarian descent), meets with an older colleague named Dr. Harry Price (Christopher Lloyd), another American. Price claims to have stayed with the family closest to Gef on a failed sheep farm. The head of that family is friendly businessman Mr. Irving (Tim Downie, “Paddington”). We also meet his expert pastry cook wife Mrs. Irving (Ruth Connell, TV’s “Supernatural”) and their almost adult daughter Voirrey (a delightfully mysterious Jessica Balmer).

Voirrey is of all things an accomplished ventriloquist. Hmm. Also on hand is a deep-voiced, amusingly skeptical “hand” named Errol (the charismatic Gary Beadle, “In the Heart of the Sea”). When Dr. Fodor and Anne arrive at the Irving farmhouse, they are informed that Gef likes speaking while out of sight behind the home’s paneling or around a corner rather than face to face.

The set-up of “Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose” is rather like that of Arthur Conan Doyle’s still-popular 1902 novel “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” Fodor, an obvious Sherlock Holmes type, and his deflating Watson, Anne, travel to a remote area (Dartmoor in “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Isle of Man in this tale) to investigate some extraordinary phenomenon.

Evoking “The Banshees of Inisherin,” another story set on an isle, “Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose” has a grieving drunk (Paul Kaye, “Game of Thrones”) haunting the local pub. Also like the Academy Award-winning ”Banshees,” “Nandor Fodor” is an examination of a remote community’s weird histories and strange inhabitants. An unseen Gef recites lines from William Butler Yeats and Lewis Carroll. I am not making any great claims for this film. But I enjoyed the cast and the isle eccentricity, and I’d love to see Pegg play the Holmesian Fandor (with Driver as his Watson) in a Netflix series. Anyone listening?

(“Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose” contains profanity, smoking and partial nudity)

“Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose”

Rated PG-13. On VOD Grade: B+

She has spent her days hanging out with her slightly older friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and watching videos of her mother on her phone and crying. Out of the blue, a tall, thin young man appears in her tiny backyard, a genie out of a bottle, claiming to be her father Jason (long-necked Harris Dickinson, the male model of “Triangle of Sadness”). This stranger, a 30-year-old man-child with the hair around the top of his head dyed white, making him resemble a marsupial, claims to have been in Spain, working spots popular with Brits and learning a bit of Spanish. He says that Georgie’s mother told him to leave after Georgie’s birth.

Georgie, who has a list of the stages of grief taped to the fridge, is confused and upset by the arrival of this man, claiming to be her long-lost dad. She and Ali imagine Jason as a vampire (we see him in costume on screen), a convict and a gangster. Since her mother’s death, invoking one of the most acclaimed Italian neo-realist films, Georgie has become a bicycle thief, and she has been building a kind of bicycle-parts stairway to her mother in heaven in a spare room, right to the ceiling.

Like much of “Scrapper,” this carries meaning, but not really a lot of weight. Georgie also sells the bicycle fruits of her labor to a local repair shop owner, who will only take the stolen bikes “for parts.”

Writer-director Charlotte Regan stages scenes in which the girls of the community, all dressed in Barbie pink, address the camera directly, saying rude things about Georgie. In another scene, some young men of the council flats are dressed to match the yellow window frames behind them. We also get a lot of running around using the dreaded and mostly (thank you, Lord) obsolete shaky-cam.

Yes, “Scrapper” shares stylistic bits with the 2012 effort “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” At times, “Scrapper” also recalls Charlotte Wells’ 2022 release “Aftersun” with Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. Regan’s flourishes perhaps worked in the many low-budget music videos that she made before making “Scrapper,” her feature film debut. But they don’t all work in “Scrapper,” and many of her whimsies have the effect of making growing up poor and disadvantaged look like quite the lark.

Georgie is like the super-heroine of poverty and truancy, a Petra Pan sprung from the imagination of Regan, who once lived at a council estate in North London with her grandmother. Georgie’s father’s brightly-colored West Ham tunic, which Georgie wears every day, is her superhero costume. It’s an amusing conceit. If you like talking spiders, “Scrapper” is the place to go, and I like them very much.

Yes, the disadvantaged have as much fun in many ways, as the privileged. But the rich really are different for a reason. And, for all of its cheeriness, “Scrapper” also has its moments of darkness. In one scene, Georgie wakes up terrified by her father, who is trying to slip money under her pillow after she loses a tooth. The poor kid has never heard of the Tooth Fairy. In the end, new friends Jason and Georgie paint their flat the color of the sun.

(“Scrapper” contains a child in peril and mature themes)

“Scrapper”

Not Rated. At the Brattle Theater. Grade: B+

With the support of his devoted wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), Keith has decided off-hours to sing the praises of a stone-and-mortar video-and-electronics chain called GameStop with a lot of shops in eerily deserted malls. Keith believes that the hedge fund headed by Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogan) has unfairly “shorted” GameStop’s stock, and he has started an internet-based grass-roots movement to correct that by encouraging his online followers to buy GameStop stock and HOLD.

One of the amusing aspects of “Dumb Money,” which was directed by Craig Gillespie of “I, Tonya” and “Cruella,” two terrific films, is that every time a character is introduced we see a caption telling us what that person’s net worth is. In Gill’s case, that figure is in the tens of thousands. In the case of the film’s supremely arrogant and super-rich high rollers, characters right out of TV’s “Succession,” those numbers are in the hundreds of millions, and, yes, billions.

“Dumb Money” is a David and Goliath tale set in the world of investing, which many people feel is rigged in favor of the rich. As the film reminds us, the rich got bailed out by the government after 2008. The not-rich got soaked. In the film’s fine supporting cast, America Ferrera is the standout as Jenny, a single mom of two driving a 20-year-old Honda Accord, who sinks her seriously meager savings into GameStop and watches as her investment goes through the roof.

Also in the mix are Myha’la Herrold (TV’s “Industry”) and Talia Ryder (“West Side Story”) as two college students in serious debt, who make a modest buy into GameStop and have the ride of their lives. Pete Davidson is fun as Keith’s stoner, DoorDash-working younger brother Kevin, although at this point Davidson may need to broaden his horizons. Vincent D’Onofrio of “Full Metal Jacket” fame appears to be riffing on Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” as the frequently-massaged money guru Steve Cohen. Anthony Ramos (“In the Heights”) is a gyrating, comic revelation as a low-level GameStop  mall worker, who has secretly invested in the company. As a hedge fund Darth Sidious-type, Nick Offerman’s Ken Griffin leaves a sulfurous stench in his wake. Admittedly, some of the players get a bit lost in these dense woods.

But Dano’s Keith presides over the action like Mickey Mouse’s wizard-in-training in Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” summoning not marching mops and buckets, but legions of ambulatory cash. The screenplay by writing partners Lauren Shuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo (“Orange Is the New Black”) does a mostly fine job of keeping the, ahem, wealth of information flowing clearly, although I remain in the dark about the meaning of the expression, “short squeeze.” I was surprised to see the Winklevoss twins listed as executive producers of this film, considering how they were depicted in “The Social Network” (2010), another excellent film based on a book by Mezrich. “Dumb Money,” which was shot in Jersey City, New Jersey, is supercharged by a soundtrack, featuring Cardi B’s “WAP,” Meat Loaf and the White Stripes. This movie bangs.

(“Dumb Money” contains profanity, sexually suggestive material and drug use)

“Dumb Money”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common Grade: A-

Based on the engrossing, true story of Saul Armendariz aka Cassandro, “Cassandro” was directed by Academy Award winner Roger Ross Williams (the short “Music by Prudence”) with Garcia Bernal as executive producer and Armendariz as consultant. The film’s fictional Saul lives in late 1980s El Paso, TX, with his beloved mother Yocasta (a superb Perla de la Rosa), who takes in laundry and seamstress work (Saul helps). Yocasta often takes her annoyed adult son to a baseball field, where his father serves as an umpire. Saul, whose father was married to another woman when he was born, washes and waxes cars when he isn’t in nearby, across-the-border Juarez, making a few dollars fighting in the ring as El Topo. Saul, who came out when he was 15, is attracted to a fellow fighter named Gerardo aka El Comandante (another impressive turn by Raul Castillo, “The Inspection”), who has a wife and family. Saul wants to switch roles in the ring and become the “first exotico to win.”

He doesn’t win his first fight against the man mountain named Gigantico (the aforementioned Clown). But he does toss the big guy around a bit and the get the better of him, briefly. Most importantly, Cassandro begins to win over the audience, which had started out by chanting a homophobic slur at him. Soon, they are cheering “Ca-san-dro” as the much smaller man holds his own against Gigantico. A promoter named Lorenzo (a slyly fabulous Joaquin Cosio, “Quantum of Solace”) gets wind of this different rising star “exotico” and forms a partnership with the eager young fighter.

“Cassandro” is a fictionalized take on the life of the real Cassandro. The core of the film is the relationship between Saul and his mother, who never marries because she is still hopelessly in love with Saul’s father. The love between mother and son is a bright light shining off the screen, and (the arguably slightly too old) Bernal and de la Perla are wonderful to behold in the roles. As Sabrina aka Lady Anarquia, Roberta Colindrez (“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance”) is another one of this film’s casting delights. Are you ready for Bad Bunny as a “straight” young man who gets into a clinch with Cassandro? As Saul’s father, Robert Salas also just slams it.

As an entertaining, semi-true story about a gay, Mexican-American, mama’s boy trying to change the way the world perceives him, “Cassandro” is a genuine winner with a basketful of flamboyant wrestling-ring costume changes. Saul wants to show the world what he can do. Director and co-writer Williams, making his feature debut, does a remarkable job, giving “Cassandro” something money cannot buy: a heart the size of Texas.

(“Cassandro” contains profanity, simulated sex, drug use and other sexually suggestive scenes)

“Cassandro”

Rated R. At the Coolidge Corner Theater and Landmark Kendall Square. Grade: A-

The spiritualist has been hired by the distraught former opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly, “Yellowstone”) to make contact with her recently dead daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson). The séance is to take place at the dank and chilly Drake palazzo after the annual Halloween party for rowdy Venetian orphans in party masks. Prepare yourselves for a lot of tolling bells and a screeching parrot.

Venetians, we are told, believe that every home in their city is “haunted or cursed.” Poirot has a bodyguard in the form of a retired Italian policeman named Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio, “John Wick: Chapter 2”), who pushes one Poirot client wannabe into a canal. A skull-faced storyteller weaves a scary tale for the children using silhouetted figures and crude rear-projection. We learn that children were once imprisoned, starved and murdered in the palazzo. One of the séance guests Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan, “Belfast”) is a veteran suffering from “war neurosis,” whose sensitive young son Leopold (an excellent Jude Hill, also “Belfast”) takes care of him. Another guest is the volatile former fiance of the young, dead woman. The party looks very expensive for a woman who claims to be ruined. The cinematography by Branagh regular Haris Zambarloukos (“Belfast”) is one of the film’s strong suits. At any rate, the atmosphere is extravagantly morbid, what with all the masks, and a figure of Death riding a gondola, approaching the Drake residence.

In the séance scenes, Mrs. Reynolds appears to get a vintage typewriter to type out letters using her mind, while Poirot prowls the scene eager to unmask a person he believes to be a fraud. The palazzo sports a chiming grandfather clock with a Garden of Eden motif and a scantily-dressed Adam and Eve and serpent who make hourly appearances. The highlight of the séance is Mrs. Reynolds speaking in what Mrs. Drake insists is the voice of her daughter.

To the accompaniment of a big storm arriving on cue, someone dies horribly. It is at this point that Poirot goes into his super-intelligent, human-bloodhound mode, mustachio bristling, if not barking.

As usual, Irishman Branagh makes a meal of Poirot’s Belgian accent. I prefer Branagh’s damaged Swedish detective Kurt Wallander to his Poirot any day. When the killer is unmasked, I found it convoluted and hard to swallow, in a manner of speaking. For a spookier Venice-set mystery, see the 1973 Nicolas Roeg classic “Don’t Look Now.” The “Haunting” screenplay by Michael Green (“Jungle Cruise,” “Murder on the Orient Express”) is more like a board game than a narrative. Who needs AI? All will be explained by the pince-nez’d Poirot. But tell me this, Hercule, why am I so bored?

(“A Haunting in Venice” contains violence, disturbing images and mature themes)

“A Haunting in Venice”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: B-

Shot in France using a real abandoned church, “The Nun II” has its Catholic credentials in order, and once again gives us a demonic nun bearing a weird resemblance to rock star Alice Cooper. The Catholic element is what gives these films some semblance of verisimilitude.

Written by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing of “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” and Akela Cooper of “MEGAN” fame, based on characters created by Gary Dauberman (“Annabelle Comes Home”) and the horror and action film phenomenon James Wan (“The Conjuring”), “The Nun II” is a sequel to “The Nun” (2018) and the ninth installment in “The Conjuring” universe.

Now, I like nun movies as much as anyone (one of my favorites is Ken Russell’s still shocking 1971 horrorshow “The Devils”), and I bring a Catholic parochial school background to these films. Like its predecessor, “The Nun II,”  which is in essence a remake of the wildly successful (in spite of terrible reviews and audience scores) first film, borrows a lot of plot development and incense-infused iconography from the late William Friedkin’s landmark horror film “The Exorcist” (1973).

This new “Nun” movie, directed by Michael Chaves (“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”) has nothing to offer except 1 hour and 50 minutes of jump cuts (the film equivalent of someone shouting, ”Boo!” in your face) and newly-anointed “Scream Queen” Taissa Farmiga furrowing her brow while decked out as the spiritually powerful, but otherwise vapid Sister Irene of the first film. Also returning is actor Bonnie Aarons, who played the satanic homeless person in David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001) and originated the role of the demon nun Valak in “The Conjuring 2” (2016).

In this installment Valak has reappeared in rural France in 1956 in the sacristy of a church, where the demon causes a bottle of wine to explode and water to boil in a stone font and then immolates a priest. Sister Irene has a new BFF in this film. She is Sister Debra (Storm Reid), who is from Mississippi and was sent to a convent by her father after the family home was burned down. Sisters Irene and Debra find themselves in a French town with a boarding school, where Valak seeks another relic, the gouged out eyes of St. Lucy of Syracuse. Also at the boarding school is a hunky gardener named Maurice (tall Belgian Jonas Bloquet of the original film), who is romantically interested in a teacher named Kate (Anna Popplewell, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”). The teacher has a daughter named Sophie (Katelyn Rose Downey) at the school. The demonic nun takes a special interest in Sophie, of course. In one scene, some “mean girls” lure Sophie into a ruined chapel and lock her in. Someone becomes possessed by Valak, adding to the number of satanic baddies. Girls scream and run. The demonic nun kills some people gruesomely (Why?). This happens. Then, that happens.

In the film’s technically best scene, Sister Irene encounters a possessed newsstand in a dark street and pages of multiple magazines begin to unfold, flapping maniacally before her, revealing a certain face. In the worst sequence, a character we barely know is lured into the ruined chapel and killed (Why?). With its Escher-meets-Hogwarts-like stairways, door-pounding demon goat and collapsing floors and bell tower, “The Nun II” is more like an amusement park ride you did not want to take than a movie. The most frightening thing about “The Nun II” is the inevitability of “The Nun III.”

(“The Nun II” contains gruesome images, frightening scenes and a demon resembling Alice Cooper)

In the film, Shahidi and A’zion are Los Angeles best friends Jane and Corinne, respectively. Jane bakes delicious cakes while avoiding applying to UCLA or USC law school as her lawyer parents (Navid Negahban and Adina Porter) desperately want. Corinne works in a music agency across from the iconic Capitol Records building as an assistant to the powerful, legendary and seemingly terrifying agent Benita (Midler). Corinne longs to be promoted to junior agent and keeps pitching ideas to Betina, who shoots down Corinne’s latest idea for Cardi B to plug some beauty product while on tour.

At first, “Sitting in Bars with Cake” appears to be an offbeat rom-com (with cake) and two appealing, albeit artificial young women on the hunt for success and true love in the City of Angels. Corinne, who has a (sort of) boyfriend named Dave (Aaron Dominguez) tries to get Jane to wear sexier outfits. Jane demurs. “If it works for Mr. Rogers, it works for me,” she says. The two concoct some scheme to make 50 cakes and bring them to 50 different L.A. watering holes over a year. Each line of dialogue sounds like it should have quote marks around it. Director Trish Sie (“Pitch Perfect 3”) gives us the “Right Stuff” shot of cake-barring movies. Corinne and Jane and their carefully designed friends go to bars.

Then, Corinne has a seizure, and all of a sudden, “Sitting in Bars with Cake” becomes the dying girl movie (with cake and best friend). “Sitting in Bars with Cake” is based on a true story concerning Shulman and a best friend. Corinne’s fictional parents Ruth (Martha Kelly, TV’s “Euphoria”) and Fred (Livingston, “Band of Brothers”) arrive from rural California to stay with Corinne and Jane, who are forced to share a bed. Beardo Fred is a tinkerer, who fixes all thing needing fixing, using tools and tape Ruth keeps in her handbag. This “bit” gets wearisome. As Jane gains confidence and even a boyfriend named Owen (Rish Shah) with a posh Brit accent, Corinne withers.

The treatments, we are told, are not working. The film is not working for me, either. For some reason, we hear more than a snippet of the 1958 Sheb Wooley novelty hit “The Purple People Eater.” Is this turning into “Pitch Perfect 4: The Dying Girl?” Jane finally admits to her parents that she does not want to go to law school. We are reminded that “hipster nerds” tend to gravitate to L.A.’s Silver Lake district. As usual for films of this type, dying makes Corinne oracular. Are we far from the laughing jag turning into a fit of copious weeping? No.

(“Sitting in Bars with Cake” contains sexually suggestive scenes, profanity and mature themes)

“Sitting in Bars with Cake”

Rated PG-13. On Amazon Prime. Grade: C+