LITTLE WOMEN

for the ages. A sprightly, attractively composed coming-of-age comedy set in World War II Germany, “Jojo Rabbit” is an audacious high-wire act: a satire in which a buffoonish Adolf Hitler delivers some of the funniest moments; a wrenchingly tender portrait of a mother’s love for her son; a lampoon of the most destructive ideological forces that still threaten society and, perhaps most powerfully, an improbably affecting chronicle of moral evolution. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL

1/2 PG-13, 123 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. In 2017, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” was a critical and commercial success, anchored by the charms of megastars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Jack Black, and the pleasure of watching them all play against type. Director Jake Kasdan and company know a good formula when they see it. So the sequel simply offers more: There’s more crazy video game hijinks and more stars playing personas vastly different from theirs. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

JUST MERCY

1/2 PG-13, 136 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. This stirring, stylish legal drama feels familiar on several levels. The story of a wrongly accused man sent to death row, it is an affecting examination of how justice is confused with inhumane retribution. Based on factual events, “Just Mercy” is the story of Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian, who in 1987 was arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, but who was railroaded by a racist and incompetent legal system in Alabama. McMillian’s case became famous by way of “60 Minutes” and the memoir of Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard-educated attorney who came to his defense and has become a leader in criminal justice reform. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

KNIVES OUT

1/2 PG, 130 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. It’s hard to imagine having more fun at the movies than with Rian Johnson’s delectable murder mystery. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

LIKE A BOSS

H1/2 R, 83 minutes. Through today only at Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. What should have been an easy breezy buddy comedy is rather a flabbergasting tone salad. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

PG, 135 minutes. Through today only at Madison Art Cinemas. Still at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. This film’s pacing and rhythm reveals writer-director Greta Gerwig’s full-gallop approach to the four March sisters, their mother and their intertwining private lives during and after the Civil War. The way Gerwig handles them, the March family’s stories are treated as a disarming comedy of manners under serious, cloudy skies. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

1917

1/2 R, 119 minutes. Niantic, Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Sam Mendes’ “1917” is nothing short of astonishing. Designed as two extraordinarily long, unbroken shots, the film is a stunning feat of cinematography, production design and performance moving seamlessly as one piece. But the most incredible thing about “1917” is how often you forget about the trick of it all, absorbed in character and story. For Mendes, it’s a passion project dedicated to his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, “for the stories he told us,” which places this breathtaking World War I film into a stark and very human reality. The story, from a fragment of a war story told to him by his grandfather, is simple: A message must be delivered. Two young lance corporals are given the order to deliver a message by morning to a battalion of British soldiers who are walking into a trap if they attack the German line as planned. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

PARASITE

R, 132 minutes. Opens Friday at Madison Art Cinema and Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” is a slick, Hitchcockian family thriller and a class warfare cri de coeur. It would be criminal to describe the details of the plot of this deliciously twisty and utterly unpredictable fable. The Kim family, mother (Jang Hye-jin), father (Song Kang-ho), daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and brother Kiwoo (Choi Woo-shik), live a precarious existence in a damp basement. Kiwoo’s friend wants him to take over a gig tutoring the daughter of a wealthy family. Ki-woo begins working for the wealthy Park family. Once he’s in, it’s not long before his “art therapist” sister is too confidently spouting psychobabble that the sweet, gullible lady of the house (Jo Yeo-jeong), neurotically eats up. Once the scrappy and resourceful Kims understand the cracks in her veneer, they burrow their way deep into their luxurious lifestyle. — Katie Walsh, Tribute News Service

PG-13, 142 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. This is a scattershot, impatiently paced, fan-servicing finale that repurposes so much of what came before that it feels as though someone