HUNTER KILLER

FREE SOLO

1/2 PG-13, 97 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Both intimate and expansive, “Free Solo” is a documentary beautifully calculated to literally take your breath away. And it does. The film’s subject, Alex Honnold, is the foremost practitioner of free soloing, the art of climbing dizzyingly sheer rock faces with no ropes, no harnesses, just bare hands and dazzling determination and skill. “There’s no margin for error; you have to do it perfectly,” one climber explains, comparing the endeavor to an Olympic sport where “if you don’t get the gold medal you are going to die.” “Free Solo” opens with an arresting overhead shot, almost too unnerving to watch, of Honnold at work, his chalked hands finding crevices that don’t seem to exist, pulling off seeing-is-not-believing moves that are more astonishing than the most ambitious special effect. When Honnold shocked the free soloing world by climbing Yosemite’s imposing 3,200-foot El Capitan, the New York Times made the event a front-page story and called it “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.” Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, “Free Solo” chronicles the ins and outs of that instantly legendary climb as well as a whole lot more. On one hand, the documentary lets us in on how much went into the climb on a physical, psychological and emotional level, showing us how meticulously even the tiniest move is planned. But “Free Solo” is also a surprisingly personal film, allowing us privileged glimpses of Honnold’s private life. This includes the dynamics of his relationship with girlfriend Sanni McCandless and the question of whether the emotional connection romance entails is compatible with the kind of laser focus free soloing demands. Vasarhelyi and Chin are ideal people to tell this story, and not only because they’ve already done another superb mountaineering film, 2015’s “Meru,” which was short-listed for the best documentary Oscar. Chin has been an accomplished climber as well as a photographer and filmmaker, so he’s known Honnold for years and has the kind of rapport with the climber that makes the film’s candor and emotion possible. Chin insisted his entire crew, including fellow cinematographers Clair Popkin and Mikey Schaefer, be experienced climbers, and one of the film’s most compelling aspects is how nervous these extremely knowledgeable folks were about Honnold’s safety. — Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times R, 121 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Think of every military action movie cliche you can. The maverick hero who’s just an average guy. The uptight rule-following second-in-command who learns a good lesson. The token concerned woman who has one line. Enemies who aren’t so different after all. So many of these hackneyed stereotypes are thrown at the Gerard Butler-starring Navy thriller “Hunter Killer” that you have to wonder if this is the “Scary Movie” of submarine movies. Directed by Donovan Marsh, and with an army of action producers behind it, “Hunter Killer” is just this side of a parody. But there’s so much fun to be had with formula, and if you aren’t taking “Hunter Killer” all too seriously, the film is a hoot, even if that’s not exactly what the filmmakers were going for. Based on the novel “Firing Point” by George Wallace and Don Keith, adapted by Arne L. Schmidt and Jamie Moss, the plot concerns an underwater dogfight in the Barents Sea that’s keeping World War 3 at bay, while on the surface, a coup d’etat is unfolding at the Polyarny base in Russia. When the USS Tampa Bay goes down with 110 sailors, the target of a Russian torpedo, Captain Joe Glass (Butler) is yanked out of the Scottish highlands, where he’s bow hunting moose (naturally). He’s plopped at the helm of a “hunter killer” sub, the USS Arkansas, to figure out just what is going on in Kola Bay. If there’s a playbook, no one’s following it. Joe Glass, well, he’s not a regular captain; he’s a cool captain. “XO, would you rather be right or to be alive?” he asks his executive officer (Carter MacIntyre), who sputters every time Glass goes rogue, picking up a few Russian sailors from their sunken sub and piloting the Arkansas into a treacherous fjord littered with mines and sensors with the help of Russian captain Andropov (Michael Nyqvist). — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

MID90S

1/2 R, 84 minutes. Starts tonight at Lisbon. Jonah Hill’s directorial debut “Mid90s” ends with what is seemingly the film’s inspirational spark. It’s a sequence shot in the style of those ‘90s homemade skate videos, the ones that would have been passed around on VHS tapes housed in battered paper covers. Set to classic rap music, the style is grainy, handheld, filmed mostly with a fish-eye lens, following teen boys on skateboards as they grind rails, kickflip and ollie. They hang out in parks, cruise in the backseats of cars and taunt the camera, helmed by a skater nicknamed “Fourth Grade.” It’s a perfectly executed slice of ‘90s nostalgia, and the film begs the question, just who are these kids? “Mid90s,” written and directed by Hill, opens with a shockingly violent beating, punches thrown by Ian (Lucas Hedges) at his little brother, Stevie (Sunny Suljic), thudding like cannonballs. This brutal beatdown is the true thesis of “Mid90s,” which explores the violent initiations of boys into manhood against the backdrop of a laid-back LA skate shop crew. The film’s poster tagline, “Fall. Get back up” underlines the notion of bootstrapping violent masculinity, but quickly, this coming-of-age film becomes body horror. Taking the hardest hits is the shrimpy, achingly young Stevie (Sunny Suljic). When his brother beats him in his bed, he swallows his cries. Repeatedly smacking into concrete while mastering his skateboard is cake. These are his own hits, not administered by