Film Shorts

The Green Inferno (R) Eli Roth’s latest horror film is about a group of student activists who find themselves being stalked by a supernatural force in the South American rainforest. Starring Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Daryl Sabara, and Sky Ferreira. (Opens Friday)

Ashby (R) Nat Wolff stars in this comedy as a high-school student who befriends his new next-door neighbor, a terminally ill former CIA assassin (Mickey Rourke). Also with Emma Roberts, Kevin Dunn, Zachary Knighton, Michael Lerner, and Sarah Silverman. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story (PG-13) Sara Bordo’s documentary profile of the online activist who suffers from a rare deformative condition. (Opens Friday)

Coming Home (PG-13) Zhang Yimou’s latest film stars Chen Daoming as a political prisoner who returns home after the Cultural Revolution to find his wife (Gong Li) suffering from dementia. Also with Zhang Huiwen, Guo Tao, Yan Ni, Zhang Jiayi, and Liu Peiqi. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Hotel Transylvania 2 (PG) The sequel to the animated hit features Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) trying to keep his baby grandson from leaving the hotel. Additional voices by Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Molly Shannon, Fran Drescher, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, Dana Carvey, Chris Kattan, Jon Lovitz, and Mel Brooks. (Opens Friday)

The Intern (PG-13) The latest comedy by Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated) stars Robert De Niro as a retiree who takes an entry-level job with a successful fashion website. Also with Anne Hathaway, Nat Wolff, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Andrew Rannells, Linda Lavin, and Rene Russo. (Opens Friday)

Lost in Hong Kong (NR) Zheng Xu directs and stars in the sequel to his comedy Lost in Thailand as a Chinese man who takes his wife (Zhao Wei) and her brother (Bao Bei’er) to Hong Kong, only to get embroiled in a murder investigation. Also with Du Juan, Tin Kai-Man, Suet Lam, Andrew Dasz, and Hong Tao. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Meet the Patels (PG) Ravi Patel stars in his own documentary about his family’s efforts to arrange a traditional Indian marriage for him. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

The New Girlfriend (R) The latest film by François Ozon (In the House, Swimming Pool) stars Anaïs Demoustier as a woman who discovers that her late best friend’s husband (Romain Duris) is a cross-dresser. Also with Raphaël Personnaz, Isild Le Besco, and Aurore Clément. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Pawn Sacrifice (PG-13) Tobey Maguire stars in this dramatization of Bobby Fischer’s ascent to world chess champion and simultaneous mental decline. Also with Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lily Rabe, Robin Weigert, and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Pay the Ghost (NR) Nicolas Cage stars in this thriller as a man whose young son vanishes during a Halloween party. Also with Sarah Wayne Callies, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Lauren Beatty, Juan Carlos Velis, and Lyriq Bent. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)

Sicario (R) Emily Blunt stars in this thriller as an FBI agent who gets pulled into an ethical murk while assisting on an anti-drug mission in Mexico. Also with Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Maximiliano Hernández, and Victor Garber. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Sleeping With Other People (R) Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie star in this comedy by Leslye Headland (Bachelorette) as a sex addict and a serial cheater who try to remain platonic friends. Also with Natasha Lyonne, Adam Scott, Andrea Savage, Jason Mantzoukas, Margarita Levieva, Adam Brody, Amanda Peet, and Katherine Waterston. (Opens Friday in Dallas)

Stonewall (R) Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) directs this dramatization of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall Riots. Starring Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ron Perlman, Caleb Landry Jones, Matt Craven, Jonny Beauchamp, and Joey King. (Opens Friday)

Now Playing

American Ultra (R) This stoner action-comedy isn’t as good as Pineapple Express, but Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart’s acting makes it worth a hit. Eisenberg plays a pothead convenience-store clerk who has been preprogrammed to be a CIA sleeper agent and goes live when his own agency tries to put a hit on him, while Stewart plays his far-more-functional girlfriend. Director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) isn’t the most skilled, but he keeps things moving at a reasonable clip. The actors’ efforts to put a sane face on things while cars are blowing up around them and he’s killing bad guys at the drop of a hat are what gives this likable affair its comic juice. Also with Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, Tony Hale, Nash Edgerton, John Leguizamo, and Bill Pullman.

Ant-Man (PG-13) The weakest Marvel movie since The Incredible Hulk. The film stars Michael Douglas as a scientist who secretly invents a suit that shrinks its wearer to insect size while keeping his or her strength, and Paul Rudd as a cat burglar he recruits to help him keep his former protégé (Corey Stoll) from weaponizing the technology. The movie isn’t funny, and Rudd’s performance is atypically off; he seems too nice to be a criminal. The villain is uninteresting, the shrinking is done without any sense of wonder, and the subplot involving the burglar’s young daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) is sloppy sentimentalism. There are moments of visual wit here, but the storytelling and characterization aren’t up to the standards that Marvel has set for its comic book movies. Also with Evangeline Lilly, Bobby Cannavale, Anthony Mackie, Judy Greer, Michael Peña, T.I., David Dastmalchian, Martin Donovan, Hayley Attwell, John Slattery, and uncredited cameos by Sebastian Stan and Chris Evans.

Assassination (NR) Very confusing. This thriller set in 1933 is about a group of Korean freedom fighters in exile trying to kill the head of the occupying Japanese military (Sim Cheol-jong) in Shanghai. The film is a dizzying whirl of double crosses and betrayals, and that’s even without accounting for the three male leads who look alike and have similar hairstyles and the identical twins separated at birth. Gianna Jun gives an impressive performance as the twins, doing her own stunts and looking badass as a sniper heading up the mission. Director Choi Dong-hoon (Thieves) also assembles two superb action sequences, including one midway through when the assassination plot goes spectacularly wrong. Still, non-Koreans may find this hard to follow. Also with Ha Jung-woo, Lee Jeong-jae, Oh Dal-su, Jo Jin-woong, Choi Deok-moon, Park Byeong-eun, and Lee Kyeong-yeong.

The Beauty Inside (NR) You may think this is one of those wacky Korean romantic soap operas, but it was actually adapted from an American TV miniseries. The film is about a furniture designer who tries to woo a beautiful woman (Han Hyo-ju) when he wakes up every day with a different person’s face and body: old, young, fat, thin, male, female. More than 20 different actors portray the main character. You may wonder where the hell this idea goes, and the answer is, nowhere terribly interesting. Han is a nice lyrical presence and does some yeoman work playing romantic scenes opposite different scene partners. However, director Baek Yeong-jeol’s tone gives you too much of the same thing. Also with Do Ji-han, Park Shin-hye, Lee Beom-soo, Park Seo-joon, Kim Sang-ho, Chun Won-hee, Jiri Ueno, Lee Dong-hwi, and Ko Ah-sung.

Black Mass (R) Deeply ordinary, though it tries so hard to be very serious and important. Johnny Depp plays notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who bands together with his politician brother (Benedict Cumberbatch) and their childhood friend-turned-FBI agent (Joel Edgerton) to make Whitey a bureau informant. Depp is a sleek, vampiric killer here, but the rest of the high-powered cast has little to do besides try on their Boston accents. Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) directs this thing tediously, cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi seems allergic to anything that looks good, and composer Junkie XL scores this like a Wagner opera. This thing aims for epic tragedy, yet its hero comes off looking like a deluded ninny for trusting in this group of gangsters. Also with Peter Sarsgaard, Kevin Bacon, Dakota Johnson, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Julianne Nicholson, David Harbour, Corey Stoll, W. Earl Brown, Bill Camp, Juno Temple, and Adam Scott.

Captive (PG-13) Kate Mara stars in this drama based on the true story of a single mother taken hostage by an escaped convicted killer (David Oyelowo). Also with Michael Kenneth Williams, Mimi Rogers, Leonor Varela, and Jessica Oyelowo.

Fantastic Four (PG-13) The floor has been lowered for Marvel Comics adaptations, and by lowered, I mean dropped about 20 stories. Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Miles Teller play four young scientists who travel to another dimension and return with superpowers. The character development and the sense of wonder that accompanies the powers are missing here, and it takes forever just to get going. Director Josh Trank (Chronicle) blamed the studio for the mess this is; for certain someone screwed it up. Somehow, after the two previous failed adaptations, they got this wrong again. Also with Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, and Dan Castellaneta.

Everest (R) Baltasár Kormákur directs this thriller about a climbing party ambushed by a deadly snowstorm on Mt. Everest. Starring Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Robin Wright, Sam Worthington, John Hawkes, Jason Clarke, Martin Henderson, Michael Kelly, Naoko Mori, Emily Watson, and Keira Knightley.

Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos (NR) Animated films in Spanish have a long way to go before they catch up to the ones made in America or Japan. This Mexican production is about a young rooster (voiced by Bruno Bichir) who has to win a prizefight to save his farm from being bought up by a soulless rich land baron. This sports movie is essentially about cockfighting, which may give you pause. What should give you pause are the lame jokes, stale cultural references, and rudimentary drawing style. The movie is based on the TV series Huevo Cartoon. This stuff probably plays better on the small screen, to kids who are very small. Additional voices by Carlos Espejel, Angélica Vale, Omar Chaparro, Maite Perroni, and Ninel Conde.

The Gift (R) The Australian actor Joel Edgerton makes an impressive debut as a writer-director in this Hollywood thriller. At first it seems like the story of a well-to-do Los Angeleno (Jason Bateman) and his wife (Rebecca Hall) being stalked by his former high-school classmate (played by Edgerton himself) after returning to SoCal, but then the filmmaker pulls a nicely executed bait-and-switch on us and reverses our sympathies. It’s hard to discuss this further without giving too much away, but Bateman and Hall are close to their best here. This feels like one of those French chillers that packs a nasty sting at the very end. Also with Allison Tolman, David Denman, Busy Philipps, Katie Aselton, Susan May Pratt, Beau Knapp, Wendell Pierce, and Nash Edgerton.

Grandma (R) Lily Tomlin stars in this comedy as an elderly lesbian who takes a road trip with her granddaughter (Julia Garner) to get her an abortion. Also with Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Laverne Cox, Nat Wolff, Sarah Burns, John Cho, Sam Elliott, and the late Elizabeth Peña.

Hitman: Agent 47 (R) Apply any pejorative you want to this video-game adaptation: cynical, rote, lazy, forgettable, mean-spirited. They’ll all be true. Rupert Friend stars as a shaven-headed superhuman killing machine who turns on the corporation that created him and others of his kind. Dozens of people get killed here, and somehow it all feels bloodless. Polish director Aleksander Bach has won young filmmaker awards from the Cannes and New York film festivals, but from this shiny piece of hackwork, you’d be hard pressed to figure out why. Also with Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Thomas Kretschmann, Rolf Kanies, Sebastian Hülk, Ciarán Hinds, and Jürgen Prochnow.

Inside Out (PG) After a dip in form during this decade, Pixar is now back to producing masterpieces. This animated film takes place mostly in the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias), as her primary emotions Joy and Sadness (voiced by Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith) are stranded in the recesses of her brain and must find their way back to headquarters before remaining emotions Anger, Disgust, and Fear (voiced by Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Bill Hader) ruin her life. Under Pete Docter’s direction, the animators’ imaginations run riot depicting Riley’s mindscape and invent brilliant gags about abstract thoughts and the subconscious. A deeper brilliance lies in the way Joy comes to realize that Sadness is an essential part of Riley’s life. Pixar tried making a movie about a girl before in Brave, and it failed. This time, they got it right. Additional voices by Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paula Poundstone, Bobby Moynihan, Frank Oz, Rashida Jones, Flea, and John Ratzenberger.

Jurassic World (PG-13) The dinosaurs are fascinating and the people are boring, but then, why should this be any different from the 1993 original? In this fourth film, the dinosaurs are housed at a well-established theme park that turns to genetically engineering new dinosaurs to keep attracting customers, and it’s up to a raptor handler (Chris Pratt) and a scientist (Bryce Dallas Howard) with two so-cute-you’ll-barf nephews (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) visiting the park to save everyone. Director/co-writer Colin Trevorrow is so busy shoehorning in references to Steven Spielberg’s original that he ignores how sexist this thing is. There’s no shame in Trevorrow’s inability to equal Spielberg’s flair, but the sense of wonder that pervaded his Safety Not Guaranteed is nowhere in evidence here. I was bored. Also with Irrfan Khan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Judy Greer, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, Lauren Lapkus, and B.D. Wong.

Learning to Drive (R) The formidable talents of Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley could have stood a much sturdier vehicle than this wispy exercise. She plays a recently divorced New Yorker who decides to take driving lessons from Kingsley’s Sikh cabdriver, who’s considering whether or not to agree to an arranged marriage. Clarkson’s messy emotions and Kingsley’s calming presence behind the wheel make a nice contrast, but Sarah Kernochan’s script is low on insight, and director Isabel Coixet doesn’t know how to shape the material. Also with Grace Gummer, Jake Weber, Sarita Choudhury, John Hodgman, and Samantha Bee.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (PG-13) It looks fantastic, but what is it for? Guy Ritchie’s movie version of the spoofy 1960s British spy TV show stars Henry Cavill as a suave CIA agent who teams up with a KGB rival (Armie Hammer) and a Nazi scientist’s daughter (Alicia Vikander) to prevent a group of former Nazis from building a nuclear weapon. The cast, the Roman setting, the Kodachrome colors, and Joanna Johnston’s costumes all look absolutely groovy, but the movie is neither funny enough as a comedy nor works as a spy thriller. Ritchie’s sense of action is off, and only rarely does he achieve the insouciant, carefree vibe that he’s aiming for. Also with Elizabeth Debicki, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth, Christian Berkel, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (PG-13) James Dashner’s dystopian YA novel would have been better if it had been adapted into a video game instead of a movie. If you were controlling the hero, you’d probably make smarter decisions than him, and a pixelated version of him would show more personality than the relentlessly uninteresting Dylan O’Brien. This sequel to last year’s hit continues the adventures of the teens who survived the maze. Director Wes Ball engineers a nice sequence when O’Brien and Rosa Salazar (a ghostly new presence here) flee the zombies up a half-toppled skyscraper, but this still comes off as a half-assed Hunger Games rip-off. Also with Kaya Scodelario, Ki Hong Lee, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden, Alexander Flores, Jacob Lofland, Giancarlo Esposito, Aidan Gillen, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, and Patricia Clarkson.

Minions (PG) The yellow, gibberish-spouting beings were always the best thing about the Despicable Me movies, but can they carry their own film? Sort of. The bulk of the story is set in 1968, when three of the minions venture to America to look for an evil job and find a supervillainness (voiced by Sandra Bullock) who wants to take over the British crown. The film is padded out with predictable jokes about England, the 1960s, and the music of the time — when the minions surface on Abbey Road, guess who walks over them? Fortunately, enough of the focus is on the minions and their slapstick gags that the movie remains watchable. Additional voices by Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Geoffrey Rush, Hiroyuki Sanada, Pierre Coffin, and Steve Carell.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (PG-13) In its fifth installment, the spy series is as implausible and as gripping as ever. Tom Cruise returns as superagent Ethan Hunt, who discovers the existence of a rival spy agency just as IMF is being dismantled. Director Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) is the latest to take over the series, and he engineers terrific action sequences involving a backstage assassination plot at an opera performance and a motorcycle chase down the highways of Morocco. As a British agent who has an in with the rival agency, Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson is a blazing addition to the series as well. It’s a fine piece of summer escapism. Also with Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Sean Harris, Tom Hollander, Jens Hultén, Simon McBurney, and Alec Baldwin.

Mistress America (R) Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s latest comedy doesn’t have the magic of Frances Ha, but it’s still a nifty little satirical farce. Gerwig plays Brooke, a young New Yorker whose difficulties following up any of the creative ideas that tumble out of her brain provide material for her future stepsister (Lola Kirke), a college freshman trying to get into her school’s literary society. Baumbach and Gerwig know their way around bohemian caricature, and the director beautifully orchestrates the farce. However, the script doesn’t hold up; Baumbach and Gerwig want us to appreciate Brooke’s shortcomings while loving her for her boundless enthusiasm for new starts, and the filmmakers wind up falling off the wire. The dialogue is highly quotable, though. Also with Matthew Shear, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Heather Lind, Michael Chernus, Cindy Cheung, Dean Wareham, and Kathryn Erbe.

90 Minutes in Heaven (PG-13) Michael Polish’s drama about a man (Hayden Christensen) who’s revived after dying in a car accident and claims to have seen the afterlife. Also with Kate Bosworth, Hudson Meek, Bobby Batson, Elizabeth Hunter, Dwight Yoakam, and Michael W. Smith.

No Escape (R) Just terrible. Owen Wilson plays an American engineer who uproots his family to an unnamed Southeast Asian country where there’s a coup on the day that they arrive. Why is this impoverished land overthrowing its government and executing Westerners? The movie doesn’t care. It just focuses on this white family escaping their ritzy hotel while Asian people get killed all around them. Director/co-writer John Erick Dowdle tries to direct this like his horror movies Quarantine and As Above, So Below. The results are calamitous, squeezing out the social commentary for soppy melodrama and unbelievable coincidences mixed in with the casual racism. You’d think that these Americans would be smart enough to learn the new country’s language or at least read up about it online before they went there. Also with Lake Bell, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare, Sahajak Boonthanakit, and Pierce Brosnan.

The Perfect Guy (PG-13) Michael Ealy is well-cast in this thriller as a charming heartthrob who’s actually a murderous psychopath in disguise. Other than that, there’s little to recommend this buppie Fatal Attraction knockoff that stars Sanaa Lathan as a woman who ditches her commitment-phobic boyfriend (Morris Chestnut) for Ealy’s more assertive but crazy-ass lover. The movie sets the villain up as a security expert and hacker extraordinaire before letting that point go to waste. Lugubriously directed by David M. Rosenthal, this is about as disturbing as a yogurt that’s one day past its expiration date. Also with John Getz, Tess Harper, Kathryn Morris, Rutina Wesley, Holt McCallany, L. Scott Caldwell, and Charles S. Dutton.

Pixels (PG-13) Video-game movies usually suck and Adam Sandler movies usually suck, so this one should be a rousing success, right? No, it’s pretty much the slapdash, brain-dead, more-than-casually sexist affair that you’d expect. Sandler plays a 1980s video game wizard who has to team up with other expert gamers (Peter Dinklage and Josh Gad) to defeat an invasion of space aliens who take the form of video-game monsters from the time period. Director Christopher Columbus and his effects team come up with some nice-looking visualizations of what Pac-Man and Centipede would look like in the real world, but the script is so witless and dependent on ’80s nostalgia that the fun is drained out. Also with Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Jane Krakowski, Affion Crockett, Lainie Kazan, Ashley Benson, Tom McCarthy, Sean Bean, Brian Cox, and Dan Aykroyd.

Ricki and the Flash (PG-13) Jonathan Demme and Diablo Cody collaborate on this cozy domestic drama, and it’s not the nicest fit for either of them, but it’s far more interesting than most other films in this vein. Meryl Streep stars as the lead singer of a SoCal rock band who returns to the family she walked out on in Indianapolis when her daughter (played by Streep’s real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer) implodes during a personal crisis. Cody’s dialogue is best when the razor blades come out, but the movie loses its balance in the second half and the ending comes too easily. The best reason to see this is Streep’s singing, as she sounds like a rocker who has been at the same bar for 20 years, knocking back beers between sets. Her living-room performance of “Cold One” is spellbinding. Also with Kevin Kline, Rick Springfield, Sebastian Stan, Nick Westrate, Bill Irwin, and Audra McDonald.

Shaun the Sheep Movie (PG) This is not a Nick Park movie, but his fans should rejoice anyway. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak adapt their own animated TV series (itself spun off from Park’s A Close Shave) to make this big-screen adventure with only gibberish for dialogue. It’s about a markedly intelligent sheep who leads his fellow sheep and a dogged watchdog in a quest outside their farm to save the farmer, who is suffering from memory loss due to a head injury. From this setup, Burton and Starzak spin a number of literate gags, including references to everything from Banksy to The Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps this lacks the final ounce of ingenuity and feeling that Park’s movies have, but it’s still one of this year’s best movies for kids.

Sinister 2 (R) James Ransone reprises his role as the menacing sheriff’s deputy in this prequel about a house whose inhabitants are marked for death. Also with Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Juliet Rylance, and Ethan Hawke.

Southpaw (R) Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic, but this boxing drama is far less than that. He plays Billy Hope, an orphaned kid-turned-boxing champion who loses everything after his uncontrolled temper results in his wife (Rachel McAdams) being killed. Director Antoine Fuqua’s simplistic sense of drama is about as subtle as a right cross to the jaw, and about as much fun. Screenwriter Kurt Sutter gives us cliché after cliché, from the wise old trainer (Forest Whitaker) in a dingy gym to the cute kid (Oona Laurence) who needs to be saved to the redemptive title fight against the mouthy rival boxer (Miguel Gomez) who started it all. Gyllenhaal proves his range by playing this boiling rage case, but both he and we deserved a better vehicle than this movie that could have been made in 1935. Also with 50 Cent, Skylan Brooks, Victor Ortiz, Beau Knapp, Rita Ora, and Naomie Harris.

Straight Outta Compton (R) Musical thrills and good timing carry this rickety biopic over its many rough patches. F. Gary Gray’s bio details how Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), and Ice Cube (played by the rapper’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.) came together to form N.W.A. in the 1980s. The movie glosses over the group’s casual misogyny and homophobia, and the latter half sags as the music stops and the rappers’ life stories get turned into soap opera. Still, the young cast perform thrilling cover versions of N.W.A.’s greatest hits, and the recent wave of police shootings of unarmed black men have put the country in just the mood to hear “Fuck Tha Police” right now. Also with Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, Marlon Yates Jr., R. Marcos Taylor, Keith Stanfield, and Paul Giamatti.

Trainwreck (R) Maybe this isn’t the unfiltered Amy Schumer, but it is terribly funny. The comedian writes and stars in this comedy as a hard-partying, bed-hopping New York journalist who ponders settling down when she falls for a sports surgeon (Bill Hader) whom she’s assigned to profile. The movie stumbles badly in the second half when it tries to turn serious, even though the star gives it everything with the dramatics. Still, the Schumer sense of humor comes through. There are not one but three hilariously awkward sex scenes, plus unexpected comic support from John Cena as a boyfriend with unacknowledged homoerotic tendencies and LeBron James as a gossipy, Downton Abbey-obsessed version of himself. Schumer has never headlined a movie before; I’m intrigued to see the next one. Also with Tilda Swinton, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, Ezra Miller, Randall Park, Vanessa Bayer, Mike Birbiglia, Dave Attell, Method Man, Daniel Radcliffe, and Marisa Tomei.

The Transporter Refueled (PG-13) Ed Skrein tries to be Jason Statham. It doesn’t go well. He slides behind the wheel of this franchise as a high-performance driver who gets caught up in some prostitutes’ attempts to avenge themselves on the Russian mob boss (Radivoje Bukvic) who made them sex slaves. The Monaco setting is nice to look at, but the car stunts are nothing special, the prostitutes are carbon copies of one another (the matching costumes they wear on the job don’t help), and Skrein himself demonstrates all the personality of his Audi’s dashboard. Ray Stevenson injects the only moments of humanity as the driver’s dad, who is also sucked into the plot. Also with Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic, Yu Wenxia, Yuri Kolkolnikov, Lenn Kudrjawizki, and Noémie Lenoir.

Vacation (R) Turn the car around. This continuation of the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies concerns the Griswolds’ grown son Rusty (Ed Helms), who takes his own family on a road trip from Indianapolis to Walley World. The film repeatedly makes Rusty look like an idiot and a petty tyrant, and Helms isn’t a savvy enough actor to realize it. The Griswold clan seems to actively detest one another, and the hijinks they get into are wearisomely predictable. Despite an impressive roster of comic talent, the only actor who emerges with any credit is Chris Hemsworth as an archconservative, hypermasculine TV weatherman from Plano, imbuing a potentially hateable part with a buoyant charm. Also with Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Leslie Mann, Charlie Day, Ron Livingston, Michael Peña, Norman Reedus, Keegan-Michael Key, Regina Hall, Colin Hanks, Tim Heidecker, Kaitlin Olson, Beverly D’Angelo, and Chevy Chase.

The Visit (PG-13) The best movie M. Night Shyamalan has made in years, and maybe his (intentionally) funniest one ever. Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould play siblings whose weeklong visit to stay with their estranged grandparents (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie) at their Pennsylvania farm turns more and more disturbing each night. The found-footage approach gives a peppier rhythm to Shyamalan’s stately filmmaking, enough of the gags land to sustain you during the non-scary parts, and even the trademark Shyamalan plot twist pays off satisfyingly. Hope for Shyamalan’s career lives again. Also with Kathryn Hahn and Celia Keenan-Bolger.

A Walk in the Woods (R) Bill Bryson’s memoir of trying to hike the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail gets turned into a sitcom, but at least there’s a nice little comedy team at the center of it. Robert Redford plays the journalist and Nick Nolte plays his recovering-alcoholic buddy who agrees to accompany him so that he doesn’t die. The hike is divided into neat little episodes, and first-time screenwriters Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman make sure that you see every punchline coming. A late scene on a mountain ledge achieves the sort of serene wisdom and camaraderie that the movie is aiming for, but that’s it. The badly served supporting cast includes Emma Thompson, Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal, Susan McPhail, and Mary Steenburgen.

War Room (PG) If your husband abuses you, lock yourself in a room and pray until God makes him stop. That’s the advice that this movie gives out, and it is so jaw-droppingly awful that I almost admire it. Priscilla C. Shirer plays a realtor who’s counseled by an all-wise elderly seller (Karen Abercrombie) about dealing with her cheating, possessive, wealthy husband (T.C. Stallings). Director/co-writer Alex Kendrick tells women in the audience to be good little submissive wives in such a patronizing way that he makes Tyler Perry look enlightened by comparison. For all its blather about God, this movie writes domestic abusers a blank check. I can’t think of anything worse that any recent movie has done. Also with Beth Moore, Alena Pitts, Tenae Dowling, Michael Jr., and Jadin Harris.

We Are Your Friends (R) I need more interesting friends, then. Some interesting bits about the art of the DJ are mired in this tedious, boilerplate drama about an up-and-coming San Fernando Valley spinner (Zac Efron) who has to choose between a burgeoning career and his loyal circle of friends. The EDM aside, this is exactly like the other movies about young musicians that we’ve been watching for the last several decades, and Efron looks like he’d rather be off watching one of those other movies. I think I might join him. Also with Wes Bentley, Emily Ratajkowski, Jonny Weston, Shiloh Fernandez, and Jon Bernthal.

Wolf Totem (PG-13) China’s official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar race is this picturesque snoozer set during the Cultural Revolution, when a Beijing student (Feng Shaofeng) is sent to help the herdsmen of Inner Mongolia, where he rescues and tries to domesticate a wolf cub. French director Jean-Jacques Annaud and cinematographer Jean-Marie Dreujou capture some amazing shots of the mountain greenery along the Mongolian border, but the story doesn’t offer up anything you haven’t seen before in English and probably other languages besides. Also with Shawn Dou, Ankhnyam Ragchaa, Basen Zhabu, Baoyingexige, and Yin Zhusheng.

Cooties (R) Elijah Wood stars in this horror-comedy as a schoolteacher who must lead his fellow teachers to safety after a virus outbreak turns all the children in his community into monsters. Also with Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, Nasim Pedrad, Jorge Garcia, and Kate Flannery.

The Look of Silence (PG-13) Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to his documentary The Act of Killing follows an Indonesian family confronting the government official who murdered one of their brothers.

Meru (R) Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary about three climbers’ attempts to scale one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas.

Phoenix (R) Not a movie about the capital of Arizona but a post-World War II drama by Christian Petzold (Barbara) about a facially disfigured German woman (Nina Hoss) who searches for the husband (Ronald Zehrfeld) who might have sold her out to the Nazis. Also with Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens, Imogen Kogge, Felix Römer, and Frank Seppeler.

Rosenwald (NR) Aviva Kempner’s documentary about Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago philanthropist who partnered with Booker T. Washington to build schools for African-Americans all over the South.

The Second Mother (R) This Brazilian drama is about a live-in maid’s college-age daughter (Camila Márdila) who disrupts the lives of her mother’s employers when she comes to stay with her mother (Regina Casé) to take her college exams. Also with Michel Joelsas, Karine Teles, Lourenço Mutarelli, Helena Albergaria, and Bete Dorgam.