A UNITED KINGDOM

PG-13, 111 minutes. Starts Friday at Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. The opening title “Based on a true story” can cover a multitude of movie sins, but in “A United Kingdom,” it unlocks the door to a romantic drama that grows more remarkable by the minute. While lovers faced with daunting obstacles is a dramatic tradition going back to Romeo and Juliet, if not further, the real-life barriers facing Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) when they fell in love in 1947 London were unusually intimidating and overwhelming. The African Khama and British Williams had to contend with more than casual British racial prejudice, more than the taunts of yobs on the street or even the horror of Williams’ own father, who tells his daughter, “You disgust me.” Much more. For Khama was not simply a handsome and charismatic African, he was also a prince of his native country, the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and about to become king. And Williams was on the surface simply an ordinary office worker, leading to taunts such as “a chief cannot pluck a girl out of the typing pool.” Back home, not only were Khama’s sister and the aunt who raised him aghast at the match but so were big chunks of the country’s population, especially his regent uncle Tshekedi Khama (an effective Vusi Kunene), who felt he was compromising Bechuanaland’s future and demanded he abdicate the throne. More than that, the love match between these two caused serious international political dislocations. Bechuanaland’s neighbor South Africa, starting to implement its racial separation policy of apartheid, was furious at what it considered an affront, and as an influential member of the Commonwealth, that country had enormous sway with British policy toward the protectorate. Quite a lot for a young couple to contend with; as written by Guy Hibbert and directed by Amma Asante, “A United Kingdom” does a satisfying job of keeping all these balls in the air. “A United Kingdom” is traditional, well-made cinema, with a taste for the obvious at certain points, but it has some powerful advantages. These include its remarkable story plus a director who knows how to convey its essence and a superior cast whose presence elevates the material. — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

GET OUT

R, 103 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington. Starts Friday at Westbrook. Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.” “Do they know I’m black?” Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) asks his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) as they get ready to leave their city apartment for a weekend at her parents’ rural estate. “No,” she replies. “Should they?” “It seems like something you might want to mention,” he sighs. “I don’t want to get chased off the lawn with a shotgun.” It’s a joke but it’s also foreshadowing — and just a hint of the frights to come. In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has —as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?” Those are the kinds of things that Rose’s father, Dean (an excellent Bradley Whitford), says as he and his wife, Missy (Catherine Keener), heartily welcomes his daughter’s boyfriend. “How long has this thang been going on?” Dean asks with forced emphasis on “thang.” But the warm welcome is only skin deep. A deeply bizarre atmosphere takes hold at the house, where all the hired help is black. They are a spooky, robotic bunch, with dead eyes and zombie-like demeanors that would have stood out even in “The Stepford Wives.” Something clearly is off, though Peele takes his time letting the mystery thicken. “Get Out,” produced by Jason Blum’s low-budget horror studio Blumhouse Productions, is serious, even sober in its horror. But its archness has moments of creepy levity. When Chris is given a tour of the house, Dean points out the sealed door to the basement. “Black mold,” he says. Things get even stranger when Chris meets some of the family friends, who all appear oddly frozen in time somehow. Some ogle him with lust, feeling his biceps. The most paranoid (and funny) character in the movie is Chris’ friend, Rod (a terrific Lil Rel Howery), a TSA agent who grows increasingly concerned with every update from Chris. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press