DORA AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD

PG, 102 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. These days, there’s no intellectual property that hasn’t been mined for a big-budget, live-action Hollywood remake. But the adaptation of the popular educational kiddie cartoon “Dora the Explorer” into the summer-friendly romp “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” is a no-brainer. The beloved character of Dora, with whom Gen Z grew up, becomes a winning 21st century heroine in this perky action-adventure flick that pulls heavily from the “Indiana Jones” movies and other kid-friendly action-adventure classics. To adapt the interactive kiddie show into something a bit more sophisticated to appeal to the preteen set who are no longer the preschool set, director James Bobin and co-writer Nicholas Stoller (who cut their teeth in comedy) have brought a healthy dose of irony to the format. Their leading lady, Isabela Moner, proves to be more than up to the challenge of walking the fine line of sincere in silly in her performance too. “Can you say ‘neurotoxicity’?” she asks the audience in one of Dora’s signature direct addresses to the camera, with a wide-eyed and slightly manic enthusiasm that lets us know we’re all in on the joke. Dora falls into that grand cinematic tradition of brave naïfs who embark on big adventures (see: Herman, Pee-wee). Dora has been brought up in the jungle by her professor parents (Eva Longoria and Michael Peña), and she knows everything about her surroundings. She just doesn’t know much about other people. Her parents ship her off to “the city” to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg) to study the indigenous culture of American high schools and pick up some social skills while they go off in search of Parapata, an ancient Incan city of gold. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE FAREWELL

PG, 98 minutes. Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. In her moving sophomore feature film, “The Farewell,” writer/director Lulu Wang dives into the specific and the personal to unearth universal nuggets of divine truth about family, faith and fear. At the beginning, “The Farewell” announces it’s “based on a real lie.” Wang reveals it’s about her own family, a “good lie” they once chose to tell. In “The Farewell,” Chinese American New Yorker Billi (Awkwafina) is wracked with guilt when her family collectively decides to hide her beloved grandmother’s (a luminous, delightful Zhao Shuzhen) terminal lung cancer diagnosis from her. The family solemnly gathers at Nai Nai’s home in Changchun under the pretense that Billi’s cousin, Haohao (Han Chen) is marrying his Japanese girlfriend of three months, Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara). Through the preparations for the wedding, the family savors their last few moments with her, transferring their grief and celebration of her remarkable life through this bizarre show wedding. They seem superstitious that if Nai Nai discovers her diagnosis, she’ll die. Not of cancer, but of fear. But the carefree Nai Nai remains as spunky as ever, just a bit winded, even though her children and grandchildren look positively stricken at seemingly every last hug and bite of meat pie. The goodbye ruse at the center of “The Farewell” is the vessel for Billi to return to her family roots and reconnect with her Chinese heritage, to process the trauma of immigrating to the West as a child. The perfectly cast Awkwafina portrays Billi as the embodiment of what it means to be both Chinese and American, not just in her code-switching but in her belief systems. Her Americanness comes out in her demonstrative emotions, her outspoken insistence on honesty and individual freedom. It takes a bit of nudging to connect with the Chinese beliefs that shape her family dynamic. A family that operates as one being takes some getting used to for the fiercely independent Billi. But she welcomes the warm embrace of a large extended family after growing up in a country without them. But the insistence on little white lies as a means of avoiding worry rankles Billi, as it’s the source of her childhood trauma. She never understood why they left or where they were, or why she didn’t hear about her grandfather’s illness. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW

1/2 PG-13, 135 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It’s pretty incredible to how from the humble beginnings of 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious,” a twist on “Point Break” with muscle cars instead of surfboards, has now spawned a nine-film franchise. And the soupedup series shows no signs of slowing down. This summer, star Vin Diesel has tossed the keys to his action superstar costars, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, for their very own spinoff, the cumbersomely titled “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.” What’s ironic, and somewhat fitting, is the entire vehicle is stolen by their costars, the devastatingly charismatic Vanessa Kirby and Idris Elba. In true “Fast and the Furious” fashion, a pair of specialists, former U.S. federal agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and former mercenary/criminal (and murderer of beloved character Han) Deckard Shaw (Statham), are recruited by the government to track down a tiny, world-ending thingamabob that they will retrieve through a series of vehicular feats performed in various far-flung spots around the globe. They have a very particular set of skills, you see. Hobbs is very good at punching, while Shaw can navigate a McLaren around hairpin turns at high speeds like no one else. They’re clearly the only ones cut out to track down a virus that threatens mankind’s existence, wrestled over by a comely MI6 agent, Hattie Shaw (Kirby), Deckard’s sister, and a tech-enhanced super soldier, Brixton Lore (Elba), working for a shadowy group with Thanos-like plans for the virus. They believe in a “human evolution” that sounds a lot like machine-assisted eugenics, and “black Superman” Brixton is their finest example. “Hobbs & Shaw” is built around the acid-tongued rivalry of the titular characters, and the script by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce gives Johnson and Statham plenty of time to talk smack as they ruthlessly rib each other from London to Moscow to Samoa, on planes, semitrucks and automobiles. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE KITCHEN

R, 102 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It’s two-thirds of the way through “The Kitchen” before anyone asks Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy) what, exactly, she wants. It’s her son, at the dinner table. We’ve seen Kathy struggle and scrape by to survive, utterly sick of depending on and thanking men for her existence. We’ve seen her turn to a life of crime, wresting away control of the Irish mob in late 1970s Hell’s Kitchen while her husband is away in prison. We’ve seen her flourish in the brutal and bloody collections and protections “business” she builds with two other mob wives, the abused, broken Claire (Elisabeth Moss) and Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), a black woman, an outsider. But what does she really want? What she tells her son is she wants her kids to be in charge one day with no one to mess with them because they know their mother is the formidable Kathy Brennan. She wants power, which is what all the women in “The Kitchen” want, even the spiteful mob madame Mrs. O’Carroll (Margo Martindale), who calls the shots and keeps her boys in charge (in name only). A desire for power is the central axis around which the characters’ actions hinge, and it’s the engine that drives them down a darker and darker path, lined with coffins. In Andrea Berloff’s directorial debut, which she also adapted from Ollie Masters’ and Ming Doyle’s comic book series, women snatch their power. But to what end? “The Kitchen” starts with a bang, the liquor store robbery that sends husbands Kevin (James Badge Dale), Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James) and Rob (Jeremy Bobb) up the river, and it rapidly proceeds apace. Shot with a dank griminess by legendary cinematographer Maryse Alberti, the film quickly checks off every requirement of the ‘70s gangster genre: some handshakes, some heavies, montages of cash stacks set to classic rock, a disco celebration party, replete with feathered hair. “The Kitchen” feels a bit color-by-numbers in terms of the generic beats it hits, but Berloff hits each one hard. The gender flip is what distinguishes it, watching women rather than men perform the acts of brutal benevolence. Although it errs on the side of broad, the script rings true to their circumstances. The women bemoan the prison of patriarchy they’ve lived in while happily stepping into the void left by their husbands and eclipsing them in every skill of the trade: negotiation, intimidation, elimination. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

LION KING

PG, 118 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington. Still playing at Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. In the case of this “Lion King” remake, 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. But 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. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press

MAIDEN

PG, 97 minutes. Starts Friday at 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

ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD

R, 161 minutes. Through tonight only at Madison Art Cinemas. Still playing at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It’s shocking to say that Quentin Tarantino’s Manson murders film is perhaps his most sedate and self-reflective yet. But maybe that’s because it’s not a Manson murders film. It’s not even a revenge picture. Rather, “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” is a rumination on stardom and myth-making, a memo on the cult of celebrity and the narratives we use to process the world around us. Can’t movie magic change these stories? The reality we live in? The film is a bit rueful, sentimental even, which is a new mode for the enfant terrible auteur, and it even casts his most operatic historical fantasy revenge pictures in a new light. “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” is still very much a Tarantino film, chockablock with his obsessions and peccadilloes. His fetishes and fixations are front and center, from the macro (flashbacks nested inside of flashbacks, random voice-over narration) to the micro (lots of bare female feet). Tarantino’s camera obsessively points out every detail of the period-specific production design, whole swaths of Los Angeles dressed to the nines in its very best 1969 duds. He wants to show it off, each poster, tchotchke and perfectly designed beer can. The nearly three-hour film has a lively (enough) pace because Tarantino can’t stop showing off each detail, the radio and records crackling, the TV blaring, offering a constant blanket of background white noise. We are in Hollywood after all, where it all happens, where the movie stars are your neighbors. Early in the film one of our protagonists, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio in fine and funny form), a movie star teetering on oblivion, has a heart-to-heart with producer Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino) about what it means to be a hero or a heavy. Rick used to be a hero, the star of a TV Western, “Bounty Law.” But now he’s a TV heavy, chauffeured to set by his best and only friend and stunt double, Cliff Booth (a soulful Brad Pitt). — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

PG-13, 111 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” actually makes you care about the fates of its characters, likable or venal. It has a way of treating even the gross-out bits, involving scarecrow transformation nastiness and the aftermath of a Cinerama Dome-sized spider bite, for real emotion and no little anguish. The movie’s good even when it goes in too many directions at once, because it gets the kids right. It comes from a half-dozen short, sharp tales of woe — and “whoa!” — created by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated, with fabulous, sinister panache, by Stephen Gammell. The first volume was published in 1981, followed by two sequels. Since there’s no connective tissue in the original collections and the film is not a series of separate, “Twilight Zone”-model episodes, the project faced a daunting adaptation challenge. How to give ‘em enough story in between the stories to make the thing hang together? “Scary Stories” recalls the recent, massively popular Stephen King adaptation “It” (2017) in its attempt to provide a narrative spine, a creepy backstory, an awful small-town secret and a reason for all the disappearances and unsolved murders in the Pennsylvania town of Mill Valley. Director Andre Ovredal (“Trollhunter,” “The Autopsy of Jane Doe”) and screenwriters Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman cleverly stitch here and amalgamate there, working from the story cooked up by producer Guillermo del Toro along with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. The protagonist is Stella, an emotionally isolated high school student living with her father, coping with the breakup of her parents’ marriage. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME

PG-13, 129 minutes. Through today only at Stonington. Still playing at Waterford, Lisbon. 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. Fate intervenes when Venice is attacked by a monstrous creature made of water, and Peter contains it with the help of a newly arrived superhero dubbed Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). — Rafer Guzmán, Newsday

TOY STORY 4

G, 100 min. Through today only at Stonington. Still playing at Lisbon. It’s easy to question the necessity of another “Toy Story” movie, especially after the emotionally devastating “Toy Story 3.” Arriving nine years later, “Toy Story 4” has to earn its relevance. It does so in spades, with astonishingly beautiful animation, smart humor and a story filled with the kind of pathos and poignancy we expect. In a summer glutted with tiresome sequels, the team at Pixar more than makes the argument for another “Toy Story” by combining the beloved characters and tone of the original trilogy with fresh comedic elements and new additions to the toy crew — most importantly, a spork named Forky who isn’t even sure he’s actually a toy. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

YESTERDAY

1/2 PG-13, 116 minutes. Through today only at Stonington. Still playing at Lisbon. Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis’ “Yesterday” requires its viewers to take quite a few leaps of faith. First, you have to wholeheartedly buy into the rule that, categorically, the best songs ever written are by The Beatles. They’re great songs, to be sure. But in “Yesterday,” they are revelatory, tear-jerking, Best Songs Ever, no matter the context or who is singing them. It’s very high stakes, but then again, most everything about “Yesterday” is high stakes. This heightened high-concept magical dramedy presents the idea that a weird electrical blip/solar flare causes electricity all over the world to go out, while simultaneously wiping our collective consciousness clean of all traces of The Beatles. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service