THE WHITE CROW

R, 127 minutes. Starts Friday at Madison Art Cinemas. For his third directorial outing, esteemed English actor Ralph Fiennes tackles the story of Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and his high-profile defection from the Soviet Union in 1961. In “The White Crow,” the spirit of Nureyev seems to strain against the choices of the film, in the same way he strained against the rigid adherence to tradition and governmental restrictions of the Soviet Union. As Nureyev, Ukrainian ballet dancer Oleg Ivenko is like a caged bird, eyes flashing, wings batting. He is an astonishing discovery who carries the unique biopic, a political thriller dressed up as a dance movie. Fiennes and writer David Hare use three eras from Nureyev’s life to explain his defection. His arrival into the world, born on a Trans-Siberian train into a life of poverty in the landlocked city of Ufa, is intercut with his touchdown in 1961 Paris as a dancer with the Kirov Ballet on a publicity tour of Western Europe. The timelines are distinguished visually and fit the norms of the era — childhood is high-contrast grayscale, while the Parisian section is shot on color Super 16 mm with breezy, handheld new wave touch. A classical style marks his time spent in Leningrad training under the close eye of ballet master Alexander Pushkin (Fiennes), whose wife takes the rebellious Nureyev under her wing, and under her own roof. Questioned about the defection, Pushkin quietly offers an interrogator a simple, deceptively complex explanation for Nureyev’s actions: “an explosion of character.” The curious phrase encompasses both Nureyev’s outré personality and resistance to rules, as well as his expression of true self. When his French friend Clara (Adèle Exarchopoulos) asks him what he wants during the airport standoff with his Soviet handlers and the French police, Nureyev responds simply, “I want to be free.” His defection is the purest expression of his own desire, his own character. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

HER SMELL

R, 135 minutes. Friday only at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. You may not see a better movie with a worse title this year than “Her Smell.” Scratch that, actually; the title’s perfect. It’s the name of the rock club where we meet the pop supernova that is Becky Something (a mesmerizing Elisabeth Moss), who fronts an all-female punk band called Something She. But it also captures something of the acrid effect she has on anyone who crosses her path. Becky is more than just another over-indulged, over-liquored celebrity narcissist; she’s a bad mood, a toxic atmosphere, a cloud of rage, self-pity and unbridled malice that comes rolling off the screen in thick, annihilating waves. In a word, she reeks. That’s not an orthodox recommendation, to be sure, and this movie — a blistering, exhilarating eruption of raw talent and nerve from writer-director Alex Ross Perry — may well send you screaming from the theater, ready to embark on a violent bender of your own. For the better part of two hours, we watch as Becky undergoes the mother of all backstage meltdowns, finally self-destructing with such spectacular, lacerating fury that she rips a hole in the picture and leaves you wondering if you can trust the glimmer of redemption that remains. Turns out you can. Perry can be a pitiless anatomist of the human psyche, but also a disarmingly sincere one. A funny thing happens when he throws a frame around Becky, who, like any number of real-life and fictional musicians who have crashed and burned, is never not performing. She is a reminder that someone we might not care to spend five minutes with in real life can turn out to be riveting cinematic company. — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM

R, 130 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic, Westbrook, Lisbon. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington. Movies can be blessedly simple. As the first “John Wick” showed, all you really need is a car, a gun, a dead dog and Keanu Reeves. Who needs “kiss kiss” when you’ve got plenty of “bang bang”? Alas, nothing in today’s movie-land stays minor-key. Chad Stahelski’s “John Wick” has quickly spouted into a three-and-counting series, the latest of which is “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum.” What was once a taut, minimalist action movie with an appeal predicated on low-expectations and leanness has grown into a franchise with a typically overcooked subtitle and de-rigueur world-building. “Parabellum” finds Stahelski moving further beyond Wick’s hardboiled origins and into a more extravagant action thriller. It starts right where we left off with Reeves’ uber-hitman. He’s on the run in New York having violated the fiercely enforced rules of the High Table, an international assassin’s guild that sets combat protocol for a vast criminal netherworld, including that no “business” should be conducted in the Continental, the Manhattan hotel presided over with panache by its manager, Winston (Ian McShane). There’s a $14 million bounty on Wick’s head, just posted by the High Table, which has begun a soon-to-conclude countdown to make Wick “excommunicado.” For every other bounty hunter, it’s open-season on John Wick. And in these films, one lurks down every alley; the ratio of regular person to hitman is, like, 2 to 1. With pursuers all around, Wick stealthily seeks out old associates for help, including Anjelica Huston, as a kind of ballet-and-wrestling instructor, and Halle Berry, who has a fiefdom in Casablanca and a few lethal dogs. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press

A DOG’S JOURNEY

1/2 PG, 108 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Engaging critically with Dog Movies can be a challenge for a critic. Who wants to be the crank who scoffs that the heartwarming animal movie is just too contrived and sentimental? But it can be hard to avoid, with the sickly sweet pandering pabulum of recent films like “A Dog’s Purpose” and “Dog Days.” Fortunately, “A Dog’s Journey,” the third in a trilogy of films adapted from W. Bruce Cameron’s novels, offers up an interesting, complex story into which we can sink our teeth. Directed by Emmy-winning TV director Gail Mancuso, written by “Purpose”