SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY

excitement of lethal CIA agent Henry Cavill and his biceps and mustache. But for a film ostensibly about politically motivated violence, it’s strangely apolitical, and it doesn’t have much to say on that topic at all. Ethan is motivated to extreme acts of adrenaline-pumping bodily peril simply because he loves his loved ones and wants to save them. But frankly, the lack of any sort of social or cultural relevancy is obvious. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

SKYSCRAPER

PG-13, 102 minutes. Through tonight only at Westbrook, Lisbon. The hardest working man in showbiz, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson debuts his third blockbuster action flick in nine months this weekend. The descriptively titled “Skyscraper,” which comes on the heels of “Rampage” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” is written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed Johnson in the very funny buddy comedy “Central Intelligence.” “Skyscraper” — a sort of reverse “Die Hard,” where a family man breaks into an imposing structure to save his family — scoots by on the thinnest of premises, and an even thinner script. While it’s a completely disposable story, “Skyscraper” is fascinating simply for Thurber’s fascination with evolving Johnson’s star persona. In “Central Intelligence,” he cast Johnson against type, liberating him from gruff meathead roles and uncovering his goofy comedic talent. In “Skyscraper,” Thurber takes Johnson to a darker, grittier place. Don’t expect to see much of his megawatt grin here. Johnson’s Will Sawyer is tough as nails, using brute force, blunt instruments and plenty of duct tape to rescue his family from a burning building. He barely even touches a gun. In so many of his films, Johnson is like some kind of comic book superhero: cartoonishly strong, his biceps bulging to an unimaginable size — he dwarfs the usually yoked Vin Diesel in the “Fast and Furious” films. But in “Skyscraper,” Thurber seeks to diminish that strength. The camera looks down on him rather than up, and he’s outfitted in rumpled business casual rather than tactical spandex. It makes Johnson more human before we then watch him perform feats of strength and derring-do using simple machines, like Buster Keaton on human-growth hormone. Thurber literally handicaps Will, who loses his leg in a bombing as an FBI rescue team leader 10 years prior to the events of the film. He loses the limb but gains a wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), the surgeon who operated on him. They’re in Hong Kong with their twins at the tallest skyscraper in the world, The Pearl, where Will is putting in a bid as a security consultant for the self-sustaining city in the sky. Scams, theft, arson and double-crosses ensue, and soon Will is outside The Pearl, which is on fire, trying to get in to save his trapped family as a team of thieves are trying to get out. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency PG-13, 143 minutes. Through tonight only at Westbrook. “Solo: A Star Wars Story” begins with the Star Wars franchise’s signature tag line, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” But it seems like only yesterday that the title character met his end in “The Force Awakens,” the first installment in yet another trilogy that feels like it’s trying desperately to take another bite of the original apple — one that only looks shinier and juicier, by comparison, the more chomps are taken out it. As far as “Solo” is concerned, this dutiful excavation of Han Solo’s early years performs all the necessary feats of fan service that viewers have come to expect from seemingly endless iterations of the series. The grouchy but somehow sexy curmudgeon that Harrison Ford created in the 1977 film and its sequels is shown here as a young man. As rendered by the moodily attractive Alden Ehrenreich, who could have played a young Henry Hill in “Goodfellas,” this Solo bears only a glancing resemblance to the gruff, irreverent flyboy whom Ford portrayed so winningly. — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES

PG, 88 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Lisbon, Westbrook. When it comes to superhero movies, there’s a perception that you’ve got to choose between DC’s gritty, dour offerings or Marvel’s winking humor. But five cartoon wannabe heroes armed with fart jokes are trying to change that. Warner Bros. has elevated its “B’’ level DC superheroes in Team Titans Go! from basic cable to the big screen in hopes they can do what so many of its A-list films cannot — add a dose of surreal and goofy humor to its universe. Think of it like “Deadpool” for the middle school set.”Teen Titans GO! to the Movies “might be aimed at fans of the manic and underrated Cartoon Network show but any parent who tags along will likely chortle as the film gleefully skewers the world of superheroes and the film industry itself. Jokes take on “Apocalypse Now,” ‘‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “The Lion King.” There’s a scene when Shia LaBeouf gets beaten up and an appearance by Stan Lee, the Marvel icon, who, yes, makes fun of himself in a cameo in a DC film. This is a film that adores mocking itself: One of the original songs features Michael Bolton singing the exquisitely cheesy “Upbeat Inspirational Song About Life” that features colorful unicorns, dolphins and jet skis. The film’s central premise is mocking the endless supply of tightsand-cape wearing flicks out there. The Teen Titans — Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven — want one,

too, but they’re not considered famous enough to warrant their own franchise. So they band together to force Hollywood to take them seriously. “Having a movie is the only way to be seen as a real hero,” intones Robin. They decide they need an arch-nemesis to legitimize them and find one in Slade (a sort of DC version of Deadpool, which proves a rich vein of jokes). Part of the reason they decide on Slade is his name is “fun to say in a dramatic way.” He’s voiced by Will Arnett, who played Batman in the two “LEGO” movies, and is happy to break the fourth wall: “Don’t you know anything about arch-villains?” he asks when he seems to be defeated. “We always have a back-up plan.” Some of the other guest voices include talk show host Jimmy Kimmel as Batman, singer Halsey as Wonder Woman, rapper Lil Yachty as Green Lantern, actor Wil Wheaton as Flash, comedian Patton Oswalt as Atom, and actress Kristen Bell, as a film mogul. The filmmakers are brimming with ideas, from explosive diarrhea jokes to time-travel montages accompanied by Huey Lewis & The News’ “Back in Time.” And they’re also not afraid to bite the hand that feeds them — much of the shenanigans take place on the Warner Bros. back lot. “Teen Titans GO! to the Movies” is the sort of silly film you and your kids can both enjoy, a slice of pure escapist fare in these divisive days. — found they shared not only physical attributes but mannerisms, habits, likes and dislikes. Their heartwarming story and head-spinning similarities turned them into media darlings: They popped up on television talk-shows, appeared in a movie with Madonna and used their fame to open a Manhattan eatery called Triplets. There were few signs that their story would be revealed as part of a dark conspiracy, or that one of the siblings would meet a sorrowful end. “When we first got together, everybody said, ‘Are you guys angry?’” Shafran recalls. “We said, ‘No, we’re just happy we found one another.’ And we really, really were.” The first feature documentary on the triplets, Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers,” tells a different story than what the public saw in 1980. It wasn’t until 15 years later that the triplets — born at what was then Long Island Jewish Hospital (now Long Island Jewish Medical Center) in New Hyde Park — learned they had been part of a clandestine behavioral study conducted by a prominent psychiatrist with the help of a now-defunct adoption agency, Louise Wise Services. Around the same time as that discovery, one of the triplets killed himself. The story instantly captivated Wardle. “At the heart of this story, you’ve got a compelling human family drama,” he says. “But then you’ve got these much bigger themes that allow you to explore free will, destiny, nature versus nurture.” In the mid1990s, the triplets received calls from The New Yorker journalist Lawrence Wright, who was working on a story about twin studies. What the triplets learned came as a shock: Their adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, had been working with a child psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Neubauer, who had launched his own study. Essentially, Louise Wise was supplying Neubauer with test subjects — not just the triplets, but also about a dozen pairs of identical twins — who could be given to different families and monitored. None of the triplets’ adoptive parents were told their son had siblings, and researchers paid regular visits to each family. — Rafer Guzmán, Newsday

1/2 R, 88 minutes. Through tonight only at Stonington, Lisbon. Back in 2014, when the computer-based “Unfriended” was released, the kind of online menace we could imagine was mostly bullying. Now, in the summer of 2018, with the release of “Unfriended: Dark Web,” the online threats to the very fabric of our existence are so much realer. Foreign hackers are being indicted for