THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

PG-13, 121 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts tonight at Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Lisbon. “Battle of the Sexes” shares its title with a headline-grabbing 1973 tennis match between 29-year-old women’s champion Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and 55-year-old former star Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell). It’s an excellent example of hyperbolic branding that reinforced men’s fears of emasculation at the hands of some imagined bogeywoman — when really, as Stone’s King tells a smug tennis official (Bill Pullman), “We just want a little bit of what you’ve got. That’s what you can’t stand.” “Battle of the Sexes,” directed by spouses Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (“Little Miss Sunshine”), feels like the right movie at the right time: an upbeat, great-looking and beautifully acted piece of entertainment that also works as a simple request for respect and equal treatment in American society. It makes its case without too much preaching or demonizing (though there is a bit of gloating), and it never forgets that what we’re really here to see is a sports movie, with all the drama and suspense that entails. On all counts, “Battle of the Sexes” delivers. The film’s two leads couldn’t be better. Stone absolutely shines as King, a ferocious athlete and vocal advocate for gender-equal pay. She turns into a stammering schoolgirl, though, when an attractive hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (an excellent Andrea Riseborough), becomes King’s first female lover. Carell all but steals the movie as Riggs, a high-energy gambling addict and born showman. He spouts misogynistic one-liners, but only to help boost interest in the match. For Riggs, the match is a career comeback and a potentially big payday, but for King it takes on a symbolic and personal importance. Just about every aspect of this movie is pitch-perfect, from Sarah Silverman’s supporting role as a chain-smoking publicist to Simon Beaufoy’s impeccable screenplay to Nicholas Britell’s lovely, slightly loungey score. What registers overall is a sense of optimism — a belief that, in some not-too-distant future, equality might actually exist. — Rafer Guzman, Newsday

AMERICAN MADE

1/2 R, 115 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. As soon as the Universal logo flickers and switches to its retro ‘70s look and the disco music starts to play, jazzing up Jimmy Carter speeches and old news footage, we know what we’re in for with the cocaine-smuggling adventure “American Made.” This is a romp and a half. Maybe even three. Director Doug Liman has never been a minimalist filmmaker, and “American Made” just might be his most maximalist film yet. It skitters and jumps, shivers and boot-scoots, never, ever sitting still. You could say it’s like “Blow,” on well, blow. But there’s a breezy sunniness to this film, which looks like a faded snapshot reclaimed from an ‘80s photo album. VHS lines and time stamps crackle effervescently. “American Made” casts a nostalgic golden filter on what was admittedly a rather dark and dramatic period in U.S. history. Drug cartel-related violence plagued the Southeast while the first lady urged everyone to “just say no.” Meanwhile the American government was essentially allowing the illegal import of cocaine while providing guns to the rebels fighting the Communist Sandinista army in Central America. This is all told through the true life story of pilot, drug smuggler and informant Barry Seal (Tom Cruise). Hotshot flyboy Seal is Maverick gone a bit soft, a commercial TWA pilot who takes up with the CIA and Medellin cartel because he’s got mouths to feed and an elastic moral compass. Through Barry’s perspective, “American Made,” which is written by Gary Spinelli, is the Iran-Contra Affair for Dummies, explained in simple terms and sometimes animation via Barry’s voiceover (a framing device has him telling his life story into a VHS camera in late 1985, early 1986). With a Louisiana drawl, Cruise’s Barry joshes about how his top secret CIA gig taking surveillance photos of the Communist armies turned into delivering Soviet AK-47s to rebel fighters, and returning with thousands of kilos of cocaine, dodging DEA and FBI planes along the way. All the while, he was raking in more cash than he could keep track of. Magnetically energetic as always, Cruise merely serves as the star vessel through which this story passes. The supporting actors steal the show, including Caleb Landry Jones as his redneck brother-in-law, and a fantastically smarmy Domhnall Gleeson as Barry’s CIA contact “Schafer.” Jesse Plemons is also predictably great in a small role as a naive small town sheriff. — Rafer Guzman, Newsday

FLATLINERS

PG-13, 108 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. This is a remake of the 1990 movie written by Mystic native Peter Filardi about medical students who decide to stop their hearts for short periods to experience the afterlife — and then be brought back to the living. This version features a screenplay by Ben Ripley based on Filardi’s story, and it stars Ellen Page, Diego Luna and Nina Dobrev.