ABOMINABLE

1/2 PG, 97 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. It can be a rare occurrence to find a kid-friendly animated film these days that actually surprises and delights. Dreamworks’ “Abominable,” written and co-directed by Jill Culton, does indeed surprise and delight, all while following a familiar hero’s journey tale that borrows from favorite friendly creature films. One part “E.T.” and one part “King Kong,” this fits into the category of movies like “The Iron Giant,” “Lilo & Stitch” and the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise, where plucky kids bond with strange, exotic creatures and attempt to save them from the capitalistic forces of exploitation. “Abominable” doesn’t change this formula; it just executes it exceptionally well, with a fresh perspective and plenty of magic. The creature in question is a Yeti, whom Yi (Chloe Bennet) unexpectedly encounters on the roof of her Shanghai apartment building while he seeks shelter from the predatory Burnish Industries. Chloe has been mourning the loss of her father, yearning for adventure. And in short order, she quickly decides to help the Yeti, whom she nicknames Everest, find his way home. Her pals, the adorably earnest and rotund Peng (Albert Tsai), and his cousin, the suave, phone-addicted Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), also find themselves on the journey to deposit their new furry friend back in the Himalayas. Along the way, Yi grapples with grief, family and her identity. This is an emotionally complex journey, because the main characters are slightly older (the characters would fit right in with the “Stranger Things” teens) and their emotional range is greater, more nuanced. It’s also worth nothing this is a film with a specifically Chinese perspective, the culture imprinted in small details and in larger world views and philosophies. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

AD ASTRA

1/2 PG-13, 122 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Space, the final frontier (or at least another one), has always served as a vast, blank and mysterious terrain upon which storytellers can splay the unlimited possibilities of their existential, metaphysical and symbolic journeys. In James Gray’s sprawling space epic “Ad Astra,” the journey is a deeply intimate and personal one, a metaphorical voyage writ large. A man searches for his father, emotionally, by literally searching for his father, physically. His goal? To “find him or finally be free of him.” Gray has imagined an expansive near future full of “hope and conflict” where humans have gone searching beyond Earth for resources, answers and life. Our hero, Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), a calm, collected astronaut whose resting heart rate has famously never risen above 80, is tasked with a journey beyond Earth to find life, in a searing, intimate sense. His father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a brilliant scientist and astronaut, has been on a journey to Neptune for the past 29 years on a research mission called the “Lima Project.” When a series of electrical surges originating from Neptune blasts Earth, Roy is called upon to finally go in search of his father, in hopes his personal connection might appeal to the man he’s long-since believed dead. The universe of “Ad Astra” is rich with detail, both uncanny and banal. Commercial space flights to the moon are filled with the same kind of price gouging and low-brow convenience culture as our airports are, naturally. But Gray can pivot swiftly from that to a thrillingly action-packed moon pirate rover chase indebted heavily to “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and then, to a sequence of bloody space horror inspired by the likes of “Alien” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Small and meaningful details are embroidered into the tapestry of “Ad Astra” that make this world what it is: wry jokes,