BOOKSMART

R, 102 minutes. Starts Friday at Lisbon. Olivia Wilde didn’t have to go this hard — but she did. For her directorial debut, “Booksmart,” the actress-turned-director comes out swinging with not only one of the best movies of the year, but one of the best high school movies of all time. With a stacked supporting cast, a script crackling with densely packed jokes and a bravura, awards-worthy comedic performance from star Beanie Feldstein, “Booksmart” more than earns its high marks and hype. Wilde’s screen style is joyful, colorful and rhythmic — it’s simply exuberant. With Jason McCormick’s cinematography and a thumping soundtrack by Dan the Automator, “Booksmart” creates an intoxicating energy that brings to life the script by a crack team of female writers: Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel and Katie Silberman. The story is a familiar tale, told with a contemporary perspective and aching specificity. A pair of less-than-popular teenage pals decides they want to enjoy one night of high school hedonism before graduation. Think “Can’t Hardly Wait” or “Superbad.” But this time, the girls are the subjects, not the objects. Ruthlessly ambitious class president Molly (Beanie Feldstein) suffers an existential crisis on the last day of school when she realizes the classmates she considered

burnouts have been accepted to elite colleges, just as she has. Determined to not be the loser who only chose studying and school, she ropes her quieter, fiercely feminist, queer best friend, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever), into changing their high school narratives by going to the last big party. They just have to find it first. Molly, on the hunt for a “seminal fun anecdote,” an ever the over-achiever, earns a whole high school diploma’s worth in a single night. — Katie Walsh, Tribune New Service

CRAWL

R, 88 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook, Lisbon. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington. During a Category 5 hurrican, a woman is trapped in a flooding house — with alligators. Alexandre Aja directs, and Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Ross Anderson, and Anson Boon star. A review wasn’t available.

LION KING

PG, 118 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Life moves in a circle, “The Lion King” tells us, and, increasingly, so does studio moviemaking. Close on the heels of “live-action” remakes of “Aladdin” and “Dumbo” and on the precipice of a reborn “The Little Mermaid,” ‘‘The Lion King” is back, too. Round and round we go. Cue Savannah sunrise. Cue “Naaaants ingonyama bagithi baba!” The remakes have themselves been a mixed bag offering some combination of modern visual effects, fresh casting and narrative tweaks to catch up more dated material to the times. Don’t count on a new “Song of the South,” but much of the Disney library will soon have been outfitted with digital clothes for the Internet era. It’s easy to greet these remakes both cynically and a little eagerly. In the case of “The Lion King,” the songs are still good, the Shakespearean story still solid. And, well, Beyonce’s in it. And yet Jon Favreau’s “The Lion King,” so abundant with realistic simulations of the natural world, is curiously lifeless. The most significant overhaul to an otherwise slavishly similar retread is the digital animation rendering of everything, turning the film’s African grasslands and its animal inhabitants into a photo-realistic menagerie. The Disney worlds of cartoon and nature documentary have finally merged. It’s an impressive leap in visual effects, which included Favreau, cinematographer Caleb Descehanel and VFX chief Rob Legato making use of virtual-reality environments. Some of the computer-generated makeovers are beautiful. Mufasa, the lion king voiced again by James Earl Jones, is wondrously regal, and his mane might be the most majestic blonde locks since Robert Redford. And the grass stalks of the pride lands shimmer in the African sunlight. But it’s a hollow victory. By turning the elastic, dynamic hand-drawn creations of Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s 1994 original into realistic-looking animals, “The Lion King” has greatly narrowed its spectrum of available expressions. Largely lost are the kinds of characterization that can flow from voice actor to animation. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press

MAIDEN

PG, 97 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas. It doesn’t get much more inspiring than the incredible story of Maiden, the first yacht crewed entirely by women to compete in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Depicted with meticulous detail and sensitivity in the documentary “Maiden,” directed by Alex Holmes, the film chronicles the fight the women faced just to get onto the water. Compared to the sexism and obstacles they faced on land, the grueling challenges of the high seas were a walk in the park. At the center of the story is Maiden’s skipper, the fierce and determined Tracy Edwards, who first dreamed of competing in the race as a crew member and found herself a pioneering woman in the sport of sailing when she

decided to place an all-female team in the 1989 race. Edwards, who struggled with problems at home, skipped out of her small town in Wales as a teenager in favor of tending bar in Greece. She made her way onto a yacht as a stewardess, crossing the globe, learning to sail and watching her aspirations come into focus, aided by none other than a friendly charter guest, King Hussein of Jordan. Edwards begged her way onto a yacht in a Whitbread race as a cook, though she would have preferred to be on deck. In 1986 she came up with the grand plan to captain her own ship, with a crew of women (or “girls,” as they’re constantly referred to). The press treated her like a joke, while macho male skippers never took her seriously. But she scraped together the money and assembled an international crew of accomplished female sailors. “Maiden” is a grand adventure the likes of which we don’t see often anymore. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

MIDSOMMAR

R, 140 minutes. Through today only at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” says Happy Hogan, the burly Marvel mascot played by Jon Favreau in “Spider-Man: Far From After the success of his directorial debut, last year’s defining horror film “Hereditary,” there’s almost impossibly high expectations swirling around writer/ director Ari Aster’s sophomore feature, “Midsommar.” With this kind of anticipation, what other choice does Aster have than simply to defy expectations? Where there was dark, now there is light. “Midsommar” is set in the land of the midnight sun at a Swedish midsommar festival celebrating the summer solstice, where the sun rarely (if ever) sets. The setting primes us to expect the unexpected, but one thing’s for certain when it comes to Aster: Always expect to be disturbed, defiled and maybe even delighted. You’ll never look at flower crowns the same way. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

PAVAROTTI

PG-13, 140 minutes. Starts Friday at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas. Director Ron Howard’s recent interest in documentary filmmaking has created three productions that share a similar musical baseline but are very different in design and texture. “Made In America,” a backstage look at Jay-Z’s music festival, had a raw chaotic nature to it, while “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” took a more intimate approach in looking at the Fab Four. Howard’s third and latest offering, “Pavarotti,” takes a more traditional approach to storytelling. In a three-act design, Howard shows the life and legend of Luciano Pavarotti, the man dubbed “The People’s Tenor.” Through a standard mix of interviews and archival footage, Howard tells a warm and inviting story of the singer from his humble beginnings to the almost godlike status he achieved in the opera world. The thread that holds the project together is how genius can be both a blessing and a curse. The way Howard has put the film together, it’s as if Pavarotti had lived a life similar to the tragic characters he sang about with such power and grace. The spiritually unbridled persona Pavarotti showed the world often was a mask to hide the emotional turmoil of his married life and his driving passion to use his fame and fortune to help give the world a voice. Howard includes all the usual documentary suspects in tracking Pavarotti’s life. Because the film was made with complete cooperation with the family, the material includes new interviews with family and friends mixed together with old footage of Pavarotti chatting about his life and career through various talk show and news appearances. The biggest thing going in Howard’s favor is when a person is as famous as Pavarotti, there’s no shortage of photos and film footage. — Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service

ROCKETMAN

R, 121 minutes. Westbrook. There are a few surprises tucked in amid the sweet sounds and bright, kaleidoscopic visuals of “Rocketman,” though the way it ends is not one of them. It plays out its final moments, as all biopics these days apparently must, over a montage of photos of its real-life subject. Still, because that subject is Elton John, this conventional postscript has its bonus pleasures, and not just because the images we see are unusually colorful and extravagant to behold. The sight of John at some of his most memorable concert performances, many of which are re-created in the movie, will probably only burnish your admiration for Taron Egerton, the game and gifted 29-year-old actor who plays him.. — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2

PG, 88 minutes. Westbrook. It was probably too much to ask that this sequel live up to 2016’s “The Secret Life of Pets,” an unexpectedly clever and touching film about what your pets do when you’re not at home. The buddy comedy about two domestic dogs who accidentally join a gang of feral strays was wildly contrived but, thanks to several heartwarming moments, hard to resist. The sequel makes resisting easier. Writer Brian Lynch and director Chris Renaud (both returning) cobble together three wispthin plotlines that, added together, still barely qualify as a full-length feature. The main story concerns Max (Patton Oswalt), a terrier who becomes obsessed with protecting his owner’s toddler, Liam (Henry Lynch). A side story involves the pampered Pomeranian Gidget (Jenny Slate), who must retrieve a toy from an apartment filled with mangy cats. Least convincing is the tale of Daisy (Tiffany Haddish), a Shih Tzu who appears out of nowhere and convinces Snowball (Kevin Hart), an excitable rabbit, to rescue a tiger cub from evil circus owner Sergei (Nick Kroll). — Rafer Guzmán, Newsday

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

PG-13, 129 minutes. Through today only at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” says Happy Hogan, the burly Marvel mascot played by Jon Favreau in “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” He’s quoting Shakespeare as a way of telling Peter Parker (Tom Holland) that in a post-Avengers world, he must step up and be the hero people need. Not just people — Hollywood needs him, too. With the original “Avengers” franchise at an end, Marvel is entering its next phase. Its fortunes now lie with new heroes played by new stars, like Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill, of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, of “Ant-Man.” Tony Stark, the beating palladium heart of the Avengers played by Robert Downey Jr., once pinned his hopes on Spider-Man to carry the legacy. That means Marvel has, too. Not to worry. Spidey already passed his first test with 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” a charming, funny teen film that just happened to be about a superhero. (Think “Freaks and Geeks” with capes and tights.) Director and co-writer Jon Watts returns for the follow-up, which repeats the formula with surprising success. “Spider-Man: Far From Home” welcomes us back into the engaging teenage world of Peter Parker, just another high school kid struggling with encroaching adulthood, his feelings for a girl (MJ, played by an endearingly quirky Zendaya) and — oh, yes — his secret identity. The film begins with Peter ducking the calls to adventure he receives from Avengers commander Nick Fury (the dependably arch Samuel L. Jackson). Peter has a big school trip to Italy coming up, and he’d rather spend it wooing MJ than fighting evil. Fate intervenes when Venice is attacked by a monstrous creature made of water — part of an army of Elementals — and Peter contains it with the help of a newly arrived superhero dubbed Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal, in purple cape and cloud-filled space-helmet). Initially, it all feels like “Peter Parker’s European Vacation,” thinly plotted and a more than a little