RICHARD JEWELL

It’s hard to imagine having more fun at the movies than with Rian Johnson’s delectable murder mystery “Knives Out,” a sparklingly wordy delight of fascinating faces, cozy sweaters, fireplaces and a delectably depraved wealthy family fighting over the massive estate of their dearly departed patriarch. But within the tightly crafted and finely embossed package, Johnson has smuggled a deceptively radical and empathetic message of acceptance, tolerance and wealth redistribution. It’s “Murder, She Wrote” with a side of political activism, two great tastes that taste great together. We meet the tony Thrombey clan upon the unlikely demise of their patriarch, Harlan (Christopher Plummer), a wildly successful mystery novelist who has built a publishing empire off which his good-for-nothing children leech. By all appearances, it seems Harlan has killed himself, with a knife, in his study. Yet, an inquisitive detective (Lakeith Stanfield), his hapless partner (Noah Segan) and a mysterious private investigator (Daniel Craig) just have a few questions for the family, several of whom were financially cut off by Harlan on the night of his birthday party and death. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together, but it will take a keen mind to deduce the different probabilities each family member presents. Benoit Blanc (Craig), the flamboyant, honey-accented Southern investigator, soon latches on to Marta (Ana de Armas), the good-natured nurse and daughter of an undocumented mother, who became Harlan’s closest friend and confidant in his final years. Blanc trusts in Marta’s “kind heart,” as well as her extreme physical reaction to telling any lie (she upchucks). — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

LAST CHRISTMAS

1/2 PG-13, 102 minutes. Through today only at Stonington. Emma Thompson and Paul Feig’s holiday rom-com “Last Christmas” feels in tune with the Hallmark Lifetime approach, just with higher profile stars and a much bigger music budget. The film is inspired by that delightfully cheesy 1980s Christmas tune “Last Christmas” by Wham! It becomes a bit of a jukebox musical for George Michael’s greatest hits, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The screenplay, by Emma Thompson, Greg Wise, and Bryony Kimmings, plugs a literal reading of the song into a “Bridget Jones”-style story with a light Brexit dusting for topicality. Arguably two of the biggest stars of the moment, Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding are Kate and Tom, who meet by chance outside the Christmas shop where Kate’s working, dressed up in an elf costume. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

G, 99 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook, Lisbon. This animated feature film was inspired by the Playmobil brand toys. Characters are voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy, Gabriel Bateman, Jim Gaffigan, and Daniel Radcliffe. A review wasn’t available.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

PG, 96 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook. John Cena stars in this movie in which firefighters find their lives turned upside down when they rescue three siblings but can’t find the kids’ parents. A review wasn’t available.

1/2 R, 131 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. In “Richard Jewell,” a movie about the security guard who found what’s known as the Centennial Park bomb during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and was subsequently falsely implicated in planting it, the villains are more starkly delineated than the heroes. The bad guys are the government, represented by an overzealous, unscrupulous FBI agent (Jon Hamm), and the media, represented by a sleazy reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Olivia Wilde), who wrote a story identifying Jewell as the subject of the FBI’s investigation. It’s the Trump-iest movie you’ve ever seen, set a full 20 years before the election of the famously press-bashing, “deep state”-loathing president. That’s perhaps no surprise, coming from director Clint Eastwood, who has professed his admiration for Donald Trump. But it does seem a little weird from the pen of screenwriter Billy Bay, whose “Shattered Glass,” while detailing the journalistic malpractice of disgraced magazine reporter Stephen Glass, at least respected the standards of the newsgathering profession. Wilde’s

Kathy Scruggs is implied to have slept with Hamm’s Tom Shaw for information, and she gleefully celebrates her paper’s scoop by fist-pumping her way around the AJC newsroom. There’s plenty of room for outrage over suspicions that fell on an innocent man, without resorting to demonizing reporters and law enforcement officers as caricatures of corruption. On the other side is the title character, a nerdy, overweight rent-a-cop who, as the film opens, is about get fired from his campus security job at a local college for overly aggressive harassment of pot-smoking undergrads. Played by Paul Walter Hauser (“I, Tonya”) with a nuance and commitment that makes it seem like he was born for the part, Richard is mocked for his girth, for his large collection of guns and for his inability to tamp down his uncool, almost grandiose enthusiasm for “law enforcement,” as he constantly tells anyone who will listen. Doth he protest his innocence too much? Richard doesn’t look like a hero, but its opposite, as his eccentric attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) is constantly reminding him. Hauser, as Richard, is absolutely superb: nebbishy, so solicitous of authority that he barely bothers to defend himself and seeming, at times, slightly dimwitted. — Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post

QUEEN & SLIM

R, 132 minutes. Through today only at Lisbon. In a Cleveland diner called the Fortyniner, two people who’ve just met on Tinder share a table. While there is no romantic equivalent of a gold rush in progress, something’s in the air. The man, whose real name we never learn, is a devout Christian who works at Costco. The woman, likewise nameless, has made her career as a criminal defense attorney, and has just lost a murder trial. Her client, we learn, will be executed. Death hangs heavily over “Queen & Slim.” So does love, and a fierce, reckless embrace of life — black lives, specifically, but as with any vital film, the specifics point to more than one story or set of circumstances. Daniel Kaluuya of “Get Out” stars in director Melina Matsoukas’ supple, provocative feature debut, opposite another British performer, model-turned-actress Jodie Turner-Smith (Syfy’s “Nightflyers”). What happens to these two characters, what they do about it, and how screenwriter Lena Waithe’s story has been filmed and scored to one of the year’s great soundtracks, leads the audience along the path of road movies and lovers-onthe-run ballads of old. But “Queen & Slim” lives in the present, not the past, and while it’s going to be divisive (I hope!), it’s going to stir up a lot of big emotions in a lot of moviegoers. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

21 BRIDGES

1/2 R, 99 minutes. Through today only at Waterford. The movie “21 Bridges” opens with a bang. Not literally — it’s just a close-up of a 13-year-old boy’s tear-streaked face, as he listens to the off-camera sermon delivered at his father’s funeral. We learn that Dad, a New York City cop, has been killed in the line of duty, but not before he “punished” three of the four criminals he was pursuing. It’s an artful — and telling — moment, not only for the image’s simplicity, emotional power and good casting. Playing Andre, the young actor, Christian Isaiah, really looks like he could grow up to be Chadwick Boseman, who later portrays NYPD detective Andre “Dre” Davis as a grown man. It also sets the stage for the rest of the overly schematic but reasonably watchable film, with the erroneous assumption that it’s the role of the police to not just enforce the law but to mete out harsh justice for those who break it. Dre, of course, who is the film’s hero, doesn’t really believe that, but people think he does. The second scene in the film shows him in front of an Internal Affairs panel that is investigating his propensity for discharging his firearm on the job. And when eight cops and a civilian are killed in the robbery of a wine store with a freezer full of 300 kilos of cocaine — only 50 of which are actually taken — Dre’s presumptive trigger-happiness is what gets him assigned to the case by the captain of the precinct whose officers were gunned down (J.K. Simmons). Dre, it is assumed, will find the perps and, you know, save us all the headache and heartache of endless appeals and plea bargains with a strategic bullet or two. He is assisted in the hunt by a DEA agent (Sienna Miller, with whom Boseman has an unfortunate lack of chemistry). Ah, but chemistry — or, for that matter, character development — is not what “21 Bridges” is about. It is a game of hide-and-seek, as Dre quickly convinces the police brass and the FBI, who convince the mayor, to shut down Manhattan: every bridge, tunnel, train track and river into and out of the city, for a window of a few short hours while he uses his almost superhuman deductive skills to tighten the noose around the perps. (Taylor Kitsch plays the cop killer, and Stephan James is his more reluctant — and less bloodthirsty — partner). It’s a pretty artificial, not to mention absurd, scenario, as Dre goes after his quarry with speed and success that is surprising even for someone with his Sherlock Holmeslike forensic powers. Soon enough, it becomes apparent to him that there is a setup going on. — Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post