Mark Kennedy

Beneath the beauty and the violence is a story about the ties between siblings, fatherly expectations, the modern world’s demands versus traditions and our own legacies.

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

Cortés argues that Little Richard created the template for the rock icon and she’s got the receipts, tracing his musical and stylistic influences through everyone from the Beatles to David Bowie, Elton John and Lizzo. If there was a king, he was it.

Fuqua is a lyrical director who directed Washington to an Oscar in “Training Day.” He’s not afraid to spend time in the still darkness with McCall and likes to focus on small moody elements, like rain hitting the gutters. But he can also deliver red meat: A sequence in which McCall fights off a passenger in the back seat of his car is a mini-masterpiece of taut, sinewy direction.

Many of the best scenes are silent, enhanced by a wonderfully wistful score by James Newton Howard.

Reynolds is once again at his arch and nihilist best here, while acting and jumping in so much facial prosthetics that it makes him look like he’s inside melted cheese — or, as the first movie put it, an avocado that had relations with an older avocado.

Have plenty of tissues nearby when you watch the top-notch Netflix film All Together Now, a teary tale of fellowship.

Fitting for a movie with an actual skeleton in a closet, “Adulthood” is about legacy and how we become our parents. It’s also about recognizing that our parents are human and complicated.

Teen Titans GO! to the Movies is the sort of silly film you and your kids can both enjoy, a slice of pure escapist fare in these divisive days.

There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t does what sequels apparently must do these days — load up the characters, return to favorite bits and go global — but nails the trick, a crowd-pleasing return that already has a fourth in the works.

This very American fable has been blessed with three remarkable performances.

If the knock on “The Secret Life of Pets” was that it was a rip-off of “Toy Story,” then the second film better grounds itself in its own universe. Like its main three characters, it has learned to be comfortable in its own animated skin.

This is a premise that could turn horrifically treacly or maudlin. But Greg Kwedar — who directs and co-writes with Clint Bentley — has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand, even if he uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots.

The loving, lyrical Maite Alberdi -directed documentary is the story of one man’s decline due to Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s so much more. It’s a stronger love story and one that tries to say things about a country’s collective memory, too.

The series’ first new installment in eight years is a reliably funny, sweet and wonderfully realized passing of the torch, with a paw in the past and another into the future — an elegant goodbye and a hello. Many other filmmakers — ahem, Marvel and DC — might learn a thing.

The uplifting Edie is worthy of your time, mostly thanks to Hancock and Scotland’s natural beauty.

Queer is best when it’s a character study of Lee, who in Craig’s hands is charming, selfish, arrogant, abrasive, foppish and sometimes unable to read a room. It’s a million miles from 007, even if Lee carries a pistol.

Just Mercy is not always an easy film to watch, but it is necessary.

Objectivity is not Meeropol’s goal here but better understanding of who this slippery character is, and this film succeeds in that.

For all of the inherent drama, it becomes clear that Burden, the man at the center of a film which bears his name, is really just a cipher, a sponge upon which we put meaning.

A Working Man is exactly what you expect when you unleash Statham on a noble mission.

The script crackles with small, brilliant moments.

Over the course of an hour and half, we learn a ton but never come much closer to understanding him. It’s as if he traveled back in time to flip us the bird just to mock us for trying.

The film nicely sends up spy capers, Broadway and buddy movies and is a lot like its two leading characters: Kindly, a little silly and as sweet as a candy-colored drink at the pool bar.

If “Barbarian” came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, “Weapons” doesn’t disappoint but it doesn’t have the advantage of surprise. It will, at the very least, make you feel a little dread when the clock hits 2:17 a.m.

The Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake.

The film allows Witherspoon and Kutcher to show off their naturally funny sides, especially when they’re fishes out of water. But many of the scenes drag on and sometimes the exposition is chalky.