DARKEST HOUR

PG-13, 125 minutes. Starts Friday at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Westbrook. Until this year, perhaps the greatest piece of moviemaking about Dunkirk was only part of a movie: It was a breathtaking sequence of the massive World War II evacuation, filmed in one astonishing five-minute take that dramatically punctuated the movie “Atonement,” directed by Joe Wright. Now Wright returns with a fully fledged Dunkirk film: “Darkest Hour” is already receiving awards chatter for Gary Oldman’s deliciously crafty portrayal of the film’s main subject, a newly minted British prime minister named Winston Churchill. Wright brings his signature good taste, including sumptuous, jewel-box sets and elegantly staged set pieces, to an enterprise in which Oldman’s hugely enjoyable star turn is equaled by similarly well-judged performances from Kristin Scott Thomas and Ben Mendelsohn. Handsomely filmed, intelligently written, accented with just a dash of outright hokum, “Darkest Hour” ends a year already laden with terrific films about the same subject and ties it up with a big, crowd-pleasing bow. — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

DEN OF THIEVES

R, 90 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. and the state’s most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank. PG, 106 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. The beloved children’s book “The Story of Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf, with illustrations by Robert Lawson, was published in 1936. But the simple, pacifist story about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight has resonated across generations. It’s a natural progression that this favorite character would find a home on the big screen in an animated feature, “Ferdinand,” but perhaps the filmmakers behind the raucous “Ice Age” movies aren’t exactly the right team to adapt this elegant story to the screen. The peaceful spirit of Ferdinand the bull is celebrated in the film, directed by Carlos Saldanha, but the rather sparse story has been filled out with the typical animated feature fare of manic action, a coterie of wise-cracking animals, body humor, dead parents, car chases, dance-offs and pop music. Elegant and simple, this film is not. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

1/2 PG, 105 minutes. Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. First things first: Though it features a character named “P.T. Barnum,” “The Greatest Showman” is in no way a factual account of the life of the celebrated 19th-century circus founder and huckster. In fact, you’ll have to completely set aside any unsavory stories you may have heard about the real-life Barnum, because this one is played by the ever-charming Hugh Jackman. Resistance is futile. Directed by first-timer Michael Gracey, the musical never aspires to be anything more than a heaping helping of PG-rated holiday cheese, something that the whole family can partake of. For the most part, it meets that low bar, though you’ll have to suspend disbelief at every turn. The story begins during Barnum’s boyhood, when, while working in his father’s tailor shop, he falls in love with Charity, the daughter of a wealthy client who would never let his only child run off with the son of tradesman. But once the girl becomes an adult, played by Michelle Williams, she can’t be talked out of marrying her beloved. (Just forget, for a second, that Jackman is 12 years older than Williams.) Fast-forward a few years, to when they’re parents to a couple of kids and struggling to make ends meet. As if on cue, Barnum dreams up a novel way to make money, via a museum of curiosities, complete with human attractions. After putting out a call for unique individuals, he forms his troupe during a musical montage: There’s the bearded lady (Keala Settle) and tiny Tom Thumb (Sam Humphrey), not to mention the sibling trapeze artists W.D. and Anne Wheeler (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Zendaya). When W.D. warns that people won’t like seeing black performers onstage, the showman replies, with a knowing smirk: “Oh, I’m counting on it.” At first, Barnum isn’t entirely sensitive to the needs of his employees. When he tries to recruit the man whom he would christen Tom Thumb (a dwarf who isn’t interested in having people stare at him), Barnum replies, “They’re laughing anyway. You might as well get paid.” But pretty soon, he’s as progressive as a 21st-century Twitter liberal, empowering his group of former pariahs to live their best lives. — Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

I, TONYA

R, 119 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic, Waterford, Lisbon. Still playing at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Molly Craig Gillespie’s bitter, funny, wildly entertaining biography of disgraced Olympic skater Tonya Harding, “I, Tonya,” might be titled “Sympathy for the Devil.” In 1994, Harding became the public’s prime suspect in a physical attack that left a rival skater, Nancy Kerrigan, unable to compete in the national championship. Harding’s eventual punishment, a lifetime ban from Olympic skating, seemed like just deserts. That’s not quite the version of events we get in “I, Tonya,” which alerts us straight off that we are about to go through the proverbial looking glass. A title card warns us, with a wink, that the film is based on “irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” with Harding and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, who served time for his role in the attack. These are self-serving accounts, of course, but not without their moments of truth. And as they converge and diverge, we get a more sympathetic picture of Harding than many of us would have thought possible. In fact, “I, Tonya” casts Harding, played by a terrific Margot Robbie, as something approaching a working-class heroine, a kid from a hardscrabble family whose talent and determination elevated her to the most rarefied strata of professional athletics. The problem was, Harding didn’t have the “class” to compete there. In her too-blue eye shadow and pulled-back hair, Harding never seemed to belong on the same ice as American sweethearts like Kerrigan. As one judge tells her in a moment of confidence, “It’s not all about the skating, Tonya.” “I, Tonya” manages to get us almost completely on Harding’s side. For starters, there’s her bitter and joyless mother, LaVona (played by an unbelievably good Allison Janney), a tough-love type who forgot the love part. Harding’s husband, Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), was an abusive wimp who walloped her around the house and then melted into tears. And everyone will regret ever meeting Gillooly’s inept, delusional friend Shawn Eckhardt (an excellent Paul Walter Hauser). — Rafer Guzmán, Newsday

INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY

PG-13, 103 minutes. Waterford, Lisbon. A parapsychologist discovers a horrific threat inside her own home. With Lin Shaye, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell.

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

PG-13, 118 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Twenty-two years later — and many leaps forward in video game and movie technology — comes a sequel to “Jumanji.” “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” a souped-up follow-up to the 1995 film starring Robin Williams, also shares as its source the surreal 1981 picture book by writer and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, about siblings who open a board game that brings jungle animals careering through their house. The new film, directed by Jake Kasdan, is a genuine hoot and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is smarter and more humorous than the first movie, and its digital effects — which include stampeding albino rhinos and mountain-scraping aerobatics — are far snazzier, as one would expect. It also delivers a message, geared to teens, about overcoming their insecurities to participate fully in life, without pounding the lesson into the ground. The film’s stars — Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan — are darn near impossible to dislike, in roles that require them to play teenagers trapped in adult bodies. Some explanation is necessary. In a prologue set in 1996, an abandoned copy of the Jumanji game from the first film is found on a beach. A teen rejects the old carved box, preferring his video game. But he hears the sound of drums coming from the box, opens it, and cut to a present-day high school where four kids have landed in detention: neurotic nerd Spencer (Alex Wolff); hunky football jock Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain); shy brainiac Martha (Morgan Turner); and Instagram selfie queen Bethany (Madison Iseman). Left to tidy up a storage room as part of their punishment, the four discover the Jumanji box, inside which is an antique video game. The original board game, it seems, has evolved. The teens select avatars and accidentally, in a molecule-scrambling instant, beam themselves into the game’s jungle — not as themselves, but as their digital alter egos. Spencer is now Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Johnson), a muscle-bound adventurer (though inside he’s still a worried kid). The handsome Fridge learns he is now Franklin “Moose” Finbar (Hart), a diminutive zoologist who whines a lot. Martha is now martial arts dynamo Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan). Best of all, the self-absorbed Bethany has turned into Dr. Shelly Oberon, a paleontologist and cartographer played by Jack Black. — Jane Horwitz, The Washington Post

LADY BIRD

R, 115 minutes. Starts Friday at Stonington. Still playing at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. American movies today are generally aimed at four different audiences: kids, adults, females and males. The coming-of-age screwball comedy “Lady Bird” crosses all those mutually exclusive boundaries to take us down novel, delightful paths. While it’s focused on a high school senior looking forward with a touch of angst and confusion, this effervescently witty story about the life and times of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson goes against most teen-movie conventions. It rejects Hollywood’s custom of painting each character in a single color. A rare delight of honesty and humor, like “Rushmore” and “Juno,” it covers the highs and lows and magic of teenage life and resonates in all directions. The film is a dazzling collaboration between two of the most impressive art-house actresses of the past decade. Saoirse Ronan plays the awkward but brilliant title character, a small-town girl aiming for something better. Greta Gerwig moves behind the camera in her debut as solo writer/ director, smoothly and effectively guiding the progress of fun, nostalgia, heartaches and optimism from start to finish. Neither has ever been better. I can’t recall many who have. Lady Bird invented her own nickname (she considers it her given name because “I gave it to myself”). It suits her because she wants to fly away from California’s state capital, a stable, respectable community where she feels incurable claustrophobia. A lovable brat, she shares the viewpoint of the Joan Didion quote that fills the opening screen: “Anyone who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.” Lady Bird’s own snark comes in moaning critiques like “The only thing exciting about 2002 is that it’s a palindrome,” the sort of pessimistic punchline that Ronan delivers with dead-on accuracy. — Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

MOLLY’S GAME

R, 140 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. Molly Bloom’s 2014 memoir “Molly’s Game” was more of a tell-some than a tell-all. In the book, the former freestyle skiing Olympic hopeful discussed the accident that derailed her athletic career. Mainly, she wrote about her improbable career running a pricey, underground poker game in Los Angeles and, later, in New York City, where she ran afoul of mobsters, drugs and the feds, who arrested Bloom as part of a mafia investigation. Her book named names, up to a point. Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire were among her A-list regulars, blowing through cash like Kleenex. But her memoir left a lot out, and that’s where writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s movie “Molly’s Game,” taking place before and after the publication of her book, comes in. It’s a good, brash biopic. For the first hour it’s very nearly terrific. Jessica Chastain plays Molly, driven hard by her taskmaster father (Kevin Costner), growing up in a fiercely competitive family. Years later in LA, Molly gets a job working for an industry bottom-feeder (Jeremy Strong) who hosts a weekly poker game. Molly’s duties include recruiting high-rollers who might want to pal around with movie stars over huge, steaming piles of chips. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

PADDINGTON 2

PG, 103 minutes. Through tonight only at Niantic. Still playing at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It seems miraculous when a film adaptation gets a much beloved character just right, but when the sequel is even better? That’s nearly impossible. That’s a unicorn. Director Paul King (with writer Hamish McColl) managed to set the bar high with 2015’s “Paddington,” and now, incredibly, King and co-writer Simon Farnaby raise it with “Paddington 2,” bringing the warmth and gentle humor of the late Michael Bond’s indelible children’s books to the screen, along with Britain’s finest actors. Paddington Brown (voiced by Ben Whishaw) has a singular sense of