GRETEL & HANSEL

PAIN AND GLORY

1/2 R, 113 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. There are layers upon layers of intertextual storytelling of the self in Pedro Almodóvar’s meta memoir “Pain and Glory.” The actor synonymous with Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, portrays a character that is some version of Almodóvar himself as a wild-haired Spanish film director, Salvador Mallo. It’s a film about reconciling every version of oneself, and the ways in which life has a magical way of forcing that to happen. “Pain and Glory” is about emotional pain, but physical pain too, the fears and anxieties that manifest physically and the fear and anxiety pain brings up. Beset with back pain, the ailing Salvador hasn’t directed a film in years while recovering from a lumbar fusion surgery and the loss of his beloved mother. But as a legend in Spanish cinema, he’s fêted at screenings of his older films. One such film, “Sabor,” occasions the kickoff of his trip down memory lane. After running into an old actress friend (Cecilia Roth) over coffee, he decides to look up the star of “Sabor,” Alberto Crespo (Asier

Etxeandia), from whom he has long been estranged. The coffee date is the first domino to fall in the cascade of events that leads Salvador face to face with the ghosts of his past. From old collaborators to old lovers and long-forgotten versions of himself, the random, inherent magic of coincidence reveals itself as the inevitability of fate in this fable about how we learn who we are, again and again. Salvador struggles to control his own body in the present, gripped with a mysterious choking ailment as well as chronic pain that Alberto teaches him to relieve with heroin, the devastatingly effective tonic. The opiate haze allows him, for a moment, to surrender to the whims of the world, but he has to the kick the stuff to start to be present for what life presents him: an old lover, Federico

PG-13, 97 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Lisbon, Westbrook, Lisbon. The fairy tale gets the horror-thriller treatment. A review wasn’t available by deadline.

THE RHYTHM SECTION

R, 109 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts tonight at Stonington, Lisbon, Westbrook, Lisbon. A woman seeks revenge against those who orchestrated a plane crash that killed her family. Stars Blake Lively, Jude Law, and Sterling K. Brown. A review wasn’t available by deadline.