DOWNTON ABBEY

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. Through today only at Waterford, Lisbon. Still playing at Stonington, Westbrook. 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, cameos, little bits of the potential space culture of a not-toodistant future. We long to spend more time in the eerie, beautiful spaces. The film is not without flaw. The third act gets becomes sludgy, bogged down in overly explanatory narration. Liv Tyler is resigned to a thankless wife role that requires almost no screen time and only illustrates Roy’s inability to form meaningful relationships. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE ADDAMS FAMILY

1/2 PG, 87 minutes. Niantic, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. The enduring appeal of “The Addams Family” is quite impressive. With only four notes and a couple of snaps, plus a classic black dress, one can instantly evoke the classic American Gothic clan, who are creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. Since Morticia’s 1938 debut on the pages of The New Yorker, in a cartoon drawn by Charles Addams, the unusual family has been iconic in every possible format: a 1960s TV series (thanks to that catchy theme song by Vic Mizzy), two animated series, two wildly popular 1990s feature films, a Broadway musical, video games and now, an animated feature directed by “Sausage Party” helmers Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, written by Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler and Erica Rivinoja. Former New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff said in a 2010 interview that Addams’ work “delighted in turning upside down our assumptions about normality and its relationship to good and evil.” That is the underlying thesis of this “The Addams Family,” which isn’t a new take so much as a deeply faithful rendering of Addams’ cartoons, in style and content. The animated figures hew closely to Addams’ cartoons, imparted in the dry, deadpan, punny wordplay integral to the Addams appeal, upending the idea of what normal looks like. This is all par for the Addams course, so what new territory can be wrought here? There are some supernatural liberties that can be taken, for sure, in this computer animated format, but the core beliefs are in place. The Addams might look, talk and act darker and weirder than most, but what makes them the weirdest is they’re a loving, tight-knit family (with both parents alive, it should be noted). Oscar Isaac’s Gomez is smitten with his wasp-waisted wife, Morticia (Charlize Theron), and both are invested for their children, Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Pugsley (Finn Wolfhard), and their extended families. The appeal of this “The Addams Family,” which doesn’t break the mold, is simply to spend some more time in this gently spooky world, which is a gateway for budding creepsters and goths. It’s refreshing that it doesn’t try to overreach the limitations of its story, but it’s so slight, it merely whets the appetite for more Addams fare, rather than providing anything truly satisfying. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service PG, 122 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Waterford. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Into our disheveled modern world, run by politically, morally and sartorially sloppy leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, the feature film version of “Downton Abbey” arrives just in time to tidy up. All brand names and franchises lean into the concept of fan service; this one leans so far, it falls forward onto a fainting couch. It’s not a movie, really. It’s a commemorative “Downton Abbey” throw pillow. It’ll no doubt placate millions of fans of creator Julian Fellowes’ global TV smash, which preoccupied much of our own United States in its six PBS seasons from 2011 to 2016. Screenwriter Fellowes keeps things in moderate-to-medium bustle, circling an extremely simple idea. King George V and Queen Mary are coming to Yorkshire (the time is 1927, just after the series’ narrative timeline): They’ve invited themselves, along with an invading army of butlers and cooks, to stay at the pleasantly expansive manse of the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville, who gets weirdly little to do) and his Yankee wife, Cora Crawley, the Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern, same). What else happens? There is a lot, yet it feels like a little. Downton’s retired butler Carson (Jim Carter, he of the gorgeous stentorian voice) swings back into service, gratefully, while Barrow (Robert James-Collier), onetime footman promoted to butler, is introduced into Yorkshire’s gay underground. The depiction is sympathetic, though it will strike some as slightly ahistorical. Attempted political assassination shares the story with a half-hearted mystery angle (who’s stealing all the silver and jewelry?). A new character, Lady Maud (Imelda Staunton), matches wits with her estranged dowager cousin, the resident Pez zinger dispenser Lady Violet (Maggie Smith). Meantime the servants are revolting, discreetly. Sidelined by the insufferable royal crew charged with preparing and serving meals and waiting on the king and queen, the Downton staff wages a stealth rebellion. — Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

GEMINI MAN

H1/2 PG-13, 117 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Legendary director Ang Lee first dipped his toe into the world of high frame rate cinema with 2016’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” which was shot and shown in select theaters at 120 frames per second (as opposed the usual 24). Lee and executives hoped critics and audiences might give the new look a chance, but the bizarre adaptation of the best-selling novel wasn’t the hit that allowed the format to break through to the mainstream. Perhaps they just needed a real movie star to sell it. So for his next trick, Lee has put not one, but two Will Smiths in an action movie, “Gemini Man.” Too bad everyone involved forgot about the part that actually makes you care: the script. For what is essentially a tech demonstration of the high frame rate and a completely digital young Will Smith clone character, Lee has dusted off a 22-year-old script from Darren Lemke, on which Billy Ray and “Game of Thrones” showrunner David Benioff also have writing credits. The rewrites over the decades have stripped anything interesting away from the story, which is a mere skeleton, a limp gesture at other, better espionage movies. Smith plays Henry Brogan, a highly skilled assassin who has grown a conscience in his old age. For some garbled reason, his agency turns on him, and he goes on the run with an old pal from the Marines (Benedict Wong) and a young upstart agent, Danny (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The assassin they send after him is “Junior,” his 23-year-old clone, who was raised by Henry’s former comrade and current genetic mercenary farmer, Clay Verris (Clive Owen). The plot is as boring and low-stakes as could be. There’s no doodad to find, computer chip to destroy or super-virus to avert. It’s just one young, digital Will Smith chasing older, real Will Smith around Cartagena and Budapest while both Will Smiths grapple with the existential crisis of facing… yourself. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

HUSTLERS

R, 107 minutes. Through today only at Waterford, Stonington, Lisbon. Still playing at Westbrook, Lisbon. In a year of spectacular comebacks, none is as purely, sensationally pleasurable as Jennifer Lopez’s commanding lead performance in “Hustlers,” a sexually charged caper flick that bumps, grinds and pays giddy homage to sisterhood and shameless venality with equally admiring brio. Lopez plays

Ramona, a dancer at a Manhattan strip club who in 2007 takes a newbie named Destiny (Constance Wu) under her protective wing. “Climb in my fur,” Ramona beckons to her protegee, opening a luxurious coat, puffing a cigarette and propping up one knee on vertiginous platform heels. She’s a lioness and lethal weapon, as tough as she is tender, and in the course of Destiny’s decidedly unsentimental education, Ramona not only tutors her charge in how to perform a proper pole dance but, eventually, in how to fleece privileged white guys whose impunity and vanity make them as vulnerable as the most naive rubes from the sticks. Adapted by writer-director Lorene Scafaria from a New York magazine article about a similar scam perpetrated by a group of dancers at the New York club Scores, “Hustlers” is a funny, naughty, enormously entertaining kick in the pants, promising to be an East Coast “Showgirls,” only to wind up a girls-rule “Goodfellas,” leading viewers into a vicariously thrilling underworld ruled by money, drugs, seduction and a sliding moral scale dictated by ruthless realpolitik. “The game is rigged, and it doesn’t reward people who play by the rules,” Ramona says flatly at one point, when the scam she and Destiny have been running — drugging wealthy men and running up their credit cards — threatens to become deadly serious. When the dollars start drying up in the crash of 2008, the women resort to extreme measures to make their rent and support their families (both have little girls at home). They’re not doing anything to their victims that the masters of the universe haven’t done to the country, Ramona insists — adding that not one Wall Street crook went to jail. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

IT CHAPTER TWO

1/2 R, 169 minutes. Through today only at Stonington. Still playing at Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. Pulling off “It Chapter Two” is an almost impossibly tall order. Following up “It,” the first installment in the evil clown saga, director Andy Muschietti has to balance loyalty to Stephen King’s crazy, 1,138-page tome, as well as to the kooky 1990 made-for-TV miniseries starring Tim Curry. Now add the fan factor: the nostalgic original fans, and the rabid new generation of fans the circus-sized 2017 hit garnered. For Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman, the way to solve the problem seems to be a “more is more” approach, especially when tackling the wild, woolly and just plain weird source material. There’s more spooks, spider-clowns and splattering fluids, and even 34 more minutes of terrifying adventures with Pennywise the Dancing Clown. It’s a lot, but in the end, does all this hullabaloo even add up to anything? What “It Chapter Two” has going for it is a shockingly excellent cast of adult Losers (casting by Rich Delia) that picks up the mantle where their younger selves left off 27 years ago. Bill Hader and James Ransone not only look eerily like their younger counterparts (Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer), but they perfectly capture the tics and mannerisms of Richie and Eddie too, proving to be the runaway breakout stars of the film. James McAvoy takes on the role of Losers Club leader Bill, originally played by Jaeden Lieberher, while Jessica Chastain, reuniting with her “Mama” director Muschietti, embodies the essence of young Beverly (Sophia Lillis). Jay Ryan is the glowed-up Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), and Isaiah Mustafa brings a reverent solemnity to the role of Mike (Chosen Jacobs), the keeper of the traumatic memories who summons his friends back to Derry after a brutal homophobic hate crime results in Pennywise’s return, invoking the blood oath they made as kids to kill the clown. Muschietti fundamentally understands what makes Pennywise so scary and so funny, and he strikes a marvelous balance of tone, earning laugh-out-loud and terrifying moments in equal measure. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

JEXI

R, 86 minutes. Waterford, Stonington, Lisbon. Adam Devine stars in this comedy about a guy too obsessed with his phone.

JOKER

R, 122 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. From the hysterical levels of overpraise, concern-trolling and general hype that have greeted “Joker,” casual observers might assume that it’s either genius, right-wing propaganda or some diabolically potent combination thereof. The truth is, it’s just a movie — a fine movie, not a great movie, a movie that will please the specific subculture of fans it aims to service, while those who have survived this long without caring about comic-book movies can go on not caring. A grim, shallow, distractingly derivative homage to 1970s movies at their grittiest, “Joker” continues the dubious darker-is-deeper tradition that has plagued nearly every Batman installment since Tim Burton handed the baton to Chris Nolan. Here, director Todd Phillips — best known for raunchy bro-downs such as “The Hangover” — takes the tonal atmosphere to an even more grisly, nihilistic level, throwing out cinematic references as fast as he can look up Martin Scorsese’s filmography. “Joker” is a flagrantly seedy movie, one that constantly evokes the garbage, vermin and social apathy that New York was known for at its worst. Welcome to Gotham City, where the weak are killed and eaten. And no one is weaker than Arthur Fleck, an aspiring stand-up comedian whose day job is working as a clown, either entertaining kids in the hospital or sign-waving on crowded city streets. Portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in a florid, Pagliacci-like turn as sad-clown-turned-mad-clown, Arthur is a pathetic man-child who lives with his mother (Frances Conroy), jotting down idle thoughts and bad puns in his joke journal (“I just hope my death makes more cents than my life”) and nursing a deluded ambition to appear on a late-night show hosted by a comic named Murray Franklin. The fact that Franklin is played by Robert De Niro is just one of many nods to Scorsese, in this case to the brilliant “King of Comedy.” In that film, of course, De Niro played the unhinged fan; now, he’s assuming the chair occupied by Jerry Lewis in that film. The reversal is clever, but maybe too clever by half, as “Joker” doubles down on the movie quotes, invoking “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” and the entire 1970s canon of grimy urban classics. Although Phillips can be commended for borrowing from the best, the hat-tips become exhausting, as “Joker” begins to feel less like an original film (it’s the first production that Warner Bros. is releasing on its label of stand-alone films inspired by DC Comics), and more like a funhouse reflection of images and themes we’ve seen before. Drawing on such notorious historical figures as John Wayne Gacy and “subway vigilante” Bernard Goetz, Phoenix creates a character who epitomizes the self-pity, entitlement and rage that have infected a small but disproportionately vocal (and psychotically violent) cohort of American society. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

JUDY

1/2 PG-13, 118 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Madison Art Cinemas, Westbrook. In the last moments of Rupert Goold’s “Judy,” Miss Garland herself (Renée Zellweger) tells (or perhaps implores) her audience: “You won’t forget me, promise me you won’t.” The film does make sure of that, preserving the iconic star in amber, though it’s not as the soft, golden-voiced teen we know so well. This is not Judy not in her prime, but Judy at one of her lowest points, at her most real and raw, and in a transformed and transfixing performance, Zellweger captures Judy as her flawed, vulnerable, sweet, charming, and deeply human self. Based on Peter Quilter’s stage play “The End of the Rainbow,” adapted by Tom Edge for the screen, “Judy” takes place during a run of shows in 1969 at London’s Talk of the Town dinner club. A destitute Judy Garland reluctantly takes the gig in hopes of earning enough money to regain custody of her children, Lorna (Bella Ramsey) and Joey, from her ex-husband Sid Luft (Rufus Sewell). During the contained period, the film unspools what makes the famous Garland tick. Yes, it is indeed the uppers, downers, booze, insomnia, anorexia and deep-rooted trauma inflicted by a childhood spent laboring under the watch of a controlling, verbally abusive Louis B. Mayer. But what we learn is Judy is driven equally by her desires as she is by her demons. All she wants is to be loved. And every night, if she chooses, she can receive that love, in droves, from her audience. Zellweger embodies Garland’s brittleness, twitchy and strained, hardened by years of drugs and her rough upbringing of long work days and forced diet pills. Judy has crystallized, thin as glass, ready to shatter at any moment. She works because she must, and because she loves her children, but also because it’s all she’s ever known, to get up on stage and sing. It’s how she earns her living, her love, her existence. Goold’s film is unshowy, merely a platform for Zellweger’s virtuosic performance. Goold is smart to simply give breathing room to Zellweger, and to the musical numbers, letting her stalk the stage in anger, glory and confusion without cutting away. Zellweger ably reminds us all that her ability to act while singing is unparalleled. And in “Judy,” she proves she may well be the best singing actor of her generation. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

THE LION KING

PG, 118 minutes. Through today only at Westbrook, Lisbon. Still playing at Stonington. In this live-action remake of “The Lion King,” the songs are still good, the Shakespearean story still solid. And, well, Beyonce’s in it. And yet Jon Favreau’s “The Lion King,” so abundant with realistic simulations of the natural world, is curiously lifeless. The most significant overhaul to an otherwise slavishly similar retread is the digital animation rendering of everything, turning the film’s African grasslands and its animal inhabitants into a photo-realistic menagerie. The Disney worlds of cartoon and nature documentary have finally merged. By turning the elastic, dynamic handdrawn creations of Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s 1994 original into realistic-looking animals, “The Lion King” has greatly narrowed its spectrum of available expressions. Largely lost are the kinds of characterization that can flow from voice actor to animation. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press