Chile Pages,

out in painfully predictable fashion. Romantic comedy, rated PG-13, 102 minutes, Regal Santa Fe 6. (Thomas Floyd/The Washington Post)

THE LIGHTHOUSE

A horror movie about inner and outer darkness, this film begins with two lighthouse workers, Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Winslow (Robert Pattinson), arriving on a small, desolate island. Over many solitary days and nights, they work, eat, drink, and dig at each other, establishing a bristling antagonism. In time, their minds and tongues are loosened by alcohol and perhaps a simple human need for companionship. The wind howls, the camera prowls, the sea roars, and director Robert Eggers flexes his estimable filmmaking technique as an air of mystery rapidly thickens. With control and precision, expressionist lighting and an old-fashioned square film frame that adds to the claustrophobia, Eggers seamlessly blurs the lines between physical space and head space. Horror, rated R, 109 minutes, Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Manohla Dargis/The New York Times)

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL

Disney’s revisionist Maleficent took the Sleeping Beauty story that inspired the studio’s own 1959 animated classic and turned it upside down. In that live-action retelling, the evil sorceress Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) became both hero and villain. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil picks up where the first film left off: in the land known as the Moors, a CGI paradise now ruled by the former Sleeping Beauty, Aurora (Elle Fanning), and overrun with mythical critters. Aurora’s love interest (Harris Dickinson) is still in the picture, and, as the film opens, this anodyne Prince has just proposed marriage to Aurora. It’s a big and busy film, characterized by a focus on fighting and weaponry. But the worse sin is that it’s boring; unlike the first film, there’s no one to care about. Fantasy action, rated PG, 118 minutes, 2D only at Regal Santa Fe 6. (Michael O’Sullivan/The Washington Post)

MARRIAGE STORY

This drama begins on a sweet note, as Charlie (Adam Driver) and his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) take turns enumerating the other’s most special qualities. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, it is nothing new within the cinematic canon of breakup movies. Charlie and Nicole are a New York couple, the center of an artsy constellation that revolves around his theater troupe, in which she has been the longtime leading lady. On the surface, they have it made. But Nicole misses Los Angeles, where she grew up, and she resents having subsumed her own creative life to parenthood and Charlie’s artistic ego. This isn’t the chronicle of a disintegrating relationship as much as one evolving under severe duress, as Charlie and Nicole renegotiate the terms of their engagement, custody of their son, and — perhaps most brutally — the narrative of their life together. Drama, rated R, 136 minutes, The Screen. (Ann Hornaday/The Washington Post)

MIDWAY

In this vividly choreographed and mostly accurate telling of the 1942 Battle of Midway, the violence is strictly PG-13. But the action, particularly the aerial combat, is impressively choreographed. And the Japanese, while clearly the enemy, are shown to be capable of great bravery as well as cruelty. Director Roland Emmerich opens his tale with a focus on Navy intelligence officer Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson), who argued that Japan’s next target, after Pearl Harbor and the Coral Sea, would not be the South Pacific, but a tiny, previously insignificant atoll in the North Pacific. There are so many featured stars (Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Mandy Moore) that many of the film’s human elements are given short shrift. Drama, rated PG-13, 138 minutes, Regal Stadium 14. (Michael O’Sullivan/The Washington Post)

PAIN AND GLORY

As he grows older, Pedro Almodovar grows more reflective. Pain and Glory is not strictly autobiographical, but it is strewn with deeply personal breadcrumbs to lead us through passages of the great director’s life. The central character is Salvador Mallo, a famous Spanish filmmaker played by Antonio Banderas, who won Best Actor at Cannes for this performance. The time frame shifts between memories of his character’s childhood, where his mother is portrayed by Penelope Cruz, and the present, when Julieta Serrano takes over the role. If the mood is more somber than in earlier Almodovar classics, the color scheme is as riotously rich as ever. As he casts an eye back over his life, the septuagenarian director may have lost some of his youthful exuberance, but he hasn’t lost his touch. Drama, rated R, 113 minutes, in Spanish with subtitles, Violet Crown. (Jonathan Richards)

PARASITE

Director Bong Joon Ho creates specific spaces and faces that are in service to universal ideas about human dignity, class, and life itself. That’s a good way of telegraphing the larger catastrophe represented by the cramped, gloomy, and altogether disordered basement apartment where Kim Ki-taek (the great Song Kang Ho) benignly reigns. A sedentary lump, Ki-taek doesn’t have a lot obviously going for him. Fortunes change after the son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik), lands a lucrative job as an English-language tutor for the teenage daughter, Da-hye (Jung Ziso), of the wealthy Park family. The other Kims soon secure their positions as art tutor, housekeeper, and chauffeur. In outsourcing their lives, all the cooking and cleaning and caring for their children, the Parks are as parasitical as their humorously opportunistic interlopers. Drama, rated R, 132 minutes, in Korean with subtitles, Jean Cocteau Cinema. (Manohla Dargis/The New York Times)

PLAYING WITH FIRE

John Cena heads a cast that includes Keegan-Michael Key and John Leguizamo in this comedy set in the world of wildlands firefighting. The three men play rugged, if buffoonish, firefighters who are in over their heads when tasked with rescuing and taking care of a trio of boisterous young kids. Comedy, rated PG, 96 minutes, Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)

PLAYMOBIL: THE MOVIE

After the success of the various LEGO movies, here comes another animated adaptation of a beloved European toy company. This time, the German line Playmobil gets the treatment in this comedy about two people named Maria (voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy) and Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) who are transformed into Playmobil figures and transported to Playmobil world. As they fight for survival, they traverse from one playset to the next. Jim Gaffigan, Daniel Radcliffe, and Meghan Trainor also lend their voices. Animated family film, rated G, 99 minutes, Regal Stadium 14. (Not reviewed)

QUEEN & SLIM

This debut feature by music-video and television virtuoso Melina Matsoukas (written by Lena Waithe), starts out as a restrained comedy of romantic disappointment. The title pair — played by Jodie TurnerSmith and Daniel Kaluuya — are in a diner after connecting on a dating app, and the lack of chemistry is palpable. It’s a cold night in Cleveland, and a second date is unlikely. A lethal encounter with an aggressive white police officer (country singer Sturgill Simpson) changes everything. The non-couple turn into fugitives, and Queen & Slim becomes an outlaw romance. In the course of their flight they become folk heroes. They also fall in love. The film is full of violence and danger, but it isn’t a hectic, plot-driven caper. Its mood is dreamy, sometimes almost languorous, at least as invested in the aesthetics of life on the run as it is in the politics of black lives. Drama, rated R, 132 minutes, Regal Stadium 14 and Violet Crown. (A.O. Scott/The New York Times)

21 BRIDGES

Chadwick Boseman portrays NYPD detective Andre “Dre” Davis in this overly schematic but reasonably watchable film, which has 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, doesn’t really believe that, but people think he does. When eight cops and a civilian are killed in the robbery of a wine store with a freezer full of 300 kilos of cocaine, Dre’s presumptive trigger-happiness is what gets him assigned to the case by the precinct captain (J.K. Simmons) whose officers were gunned down. He convinces the police brass and the FBI, who convince the mayor, to shut down Manhattan while he uses almost superhuman deductive skills to tighten the noose around the perps. Action, rated R, 99 minutes, Regal Stadium 14. (Michael O’Sullivan/The Washington Post)