★ MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. Theater locations are accurate Friday-Thursday, unless otherwise noted. Movie times are updated daily and are available here.

1945
Ferenc Török’s drama adapts GĂĄbor T. SzĂĄntó’s short story about two men returning to a small Hungarian village whose residents are forced to reckon with their experiences in the shadow of the Holocaust. Not screened for critics. Cinema 21.

★ AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
See review this issue. Various Theaters.

★ B-MOVIE BINGO: THE RUNNING MAN
Your monthly opportunity to literally check off a bingo card full of B-movie clichĂ©s! This month: The Running Man, the 1987 Schwarzenegger movie based on an all-but-forgotten Stephen King novel. It’s basically about a reality TV show, except people die. Also featuring Richard Dawson and Dweezil Zappa, for whatever that’s worth. BOBBY ROBERTS Hollywood Theatre.

BEIRUT
A perfectly serviceable airport novel of a movie, Beirut has enough espionage-y twists to keep you occupied for 109 minutes and mostly distracted from the fact that its best parts never fully develop. BEN COLEMAN Various Theaters.

BLUMHOUSE’S TRUTH OR DARE
The worst thing about Truth or Dare is its premise: A group of college kids go to Mexico for spring break, where they meet a mysterious dude who lures them to an abandoned convent to play truth or dare. When they return to SoCal, the friends realize the game never ended, and that the consequences of being dishonest or failing to complete a dare are deadly. The story of Americans visiting an “exotic” place and catching an evil virus is old, stupid, offensive, and also boring. In all other areas, though, Truth or Dare delivers as another dumb-but-fun horror movie from dumb-but-fun horror movie machine Blumhouse Productions, with plentiful jump scares, self-aware millennial humor (i.e. when they comment that a demon makes people’s faces look like a fucked-up Snapchat filter), and plenty of true-blue horror tropes, like “Oh no, the demon says we have to have sex or we’ll die!” I probably wouldn’t spend money to see this in a theater, but it’s satisfying junk food for those who enjoy testing their adrenal glands. CIARA DOLAN Various Theaters.

★ THE BOOK OF LIFE
The Book of Life somehow stuffs a love triangle and a story about self-identity into a cosmology shaped heavily by the mythology of Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Death, unsurprisingly, looms over the film’s three main characters: Manolo the reluctant bullfighter (voiced by Diego Luna), Joaquin the cocky soldier (Channing Tatum), and Maria the scholarly, willful, kung fu-trained anti-princess (Zoe Saldana). But that weight’s also been balanced by a surprising amount of lightness and whimsy—thanks to some of the most stunning animation and set design you’ll ever see. (As if a kids movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro wouldn’t look beautiful.) DENIS C. THERIAULT Fifth Avenue Cinema.

★ CASTLE IN THE SKY
The word “genius” gets batted around with regard to filmmakers with a numbing, reductive frequency. But if Hayao Miyazaki doesn’t qualify for that title, who does? Since making his directorial debut with 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki has blazed his own distinct trail, blending atomic-clock action timing with an awe-inspiring, hand-rendered sense of the infinite. Screens as part of the Hollywood Theatre’s Hayao Miyazaki Celebration series. ANDREW WRIGHT Hollywood Theatre.

THE DEATH OF STALIN
It’s a bad time for political satire—things are simply feeling a little too real right now. The rawness of our current moment is really the only problem with The Death of Stalin, the historically accurate comedy from Armando Iannucci (Veep) about the infighting between Joseph Stalin’s lackeys after the Russian dictator’s death in 1953. There are very funny performances from Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, and Monty Python’s Michael Palin, whose comedic influence can be felt throughout Iannucci’s script, particularly in a sidesplitting funeral scene. But there’s something legitimately upsetting about witnessing the incompetence and corruption of the banally evil; each laugh sticks deeper in your throat until you don’t really feel like laughing anymore. Oh well—at least we’ve got our own revolution to look forward to. NED LANNAMANN Various Theaters.

★ THE ENDLESS
See review this issue. Hollywood Theater.

GRACE JONES: BLOODLIGHT AND BAMI
Sophie Fiennes’ portrait of the actress, model, and singer Grace Jones. Not screened for critics. Cinema 21.

THE HEART OF NUBA
A documentary about American doctor Tom Catena and his work in Sudan. Not screened for critics. Cinema 21.

I FEEL PRETTY
I Feel Pretty is about a woman (Amy Schumer) who suffers from a lack of confidence due to, you know, existing. After hitting her head in a spin class, she starts to believe she’s beautiful, which leads first to a positive attitude and then to successes in love and her career in selling makeup. (UGH.) It’s supposed to be funny, because everyone can plainly see that Schumer is disgustingly average! LOL, right?! A silly lady over 30 who weighs more than 120 pounds thinks she’s pretty! HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! I laughed until I cried, because I am also over 30 and weigh more than 120 pounds, and my body could serve as a punchline, too. ELINOR JONES Various Theaters.

Castle in the Sky IT’S A TRAP DON’T TRUST THE ROBOT IT’S A TRAP

★ ISLE OF DOGS
Superficially, Isle of Dogs dazzles. Wes Anderson’s second foray into stop-motion animation—following 2009’s unassailably wonderful Fantastic Mr. Fox—is full of delectable visual treats. (This time, the director’s grade-school diorama aesthetic floods your ocular circuits with a retro-futuristic version of Japan, where all the dogs of Megasaki City have been exiled to Trash Island following an outbreak of snout fever.) Things get a little more... complicated below the surface, as Anderson’s depiction of the film’s Japanese humans leaves something to be desired. NED LANNAMANN Various Theaters.

★ ITZHAK
Free of stodgy narration and edited in an almost stream-of-consciousness fashion, Alison Chernick’s loving portrait of violin maestro Itzhak Perlman works in glimpses of the classical music exemplar’s sizable ego (watch him slyly find a way to get a solo during rehearsals for a guest appearance at one of Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden shows), but the strongest impression that comes across is Perlman’s impressive generosity, as seen in his work with a new generation of musicians. ROBERT HAM Living Room Theaters.

LABYRINTH (1986)
While your normal jubilant time will be had watching babyfaced Jennifer Connelly alternately fuss and frolic in a Muppety wonderland full of magic dancing and farting bogs, every successive viewing of this Jim Henson classic will be a just a little bittersweet, being that we now exist in the dark timeline where David Bowie has left the building. Guess you’ll just have to sing along all the louder when he makes his fabulous presence felt. BOBBY ROBERTS Various Theaters.

★ LEAN ON PETE
Andrew Haigh’s fantastic and harrowing new film explores the sadness and danger of an upbringing that affords altogether too much freedom. Charley (Charlie Plummer) is the son of a single father who can barely keep himself out of trouble, let alone make ends meet, but the 15-year-old doesn’t rebel in the typical teenager ways. Instead, he’s constantly on the lookout for the stability his home life can’t provide, leading him to spend time at a nearby racetrack, where he does odd jobs for a horse trainer, Del (Steve Buscemi), and bonds with a quarter horse named Lean on Pete. The film was shot in Portland and the southeastern Oregon town of Burns, and Haigh’s screenplay is adapted from the excellent 2010 novel by local writer/musician Willy Vlautin. NED LANNAMANN Laurelhurst Theater, Living Room Theaters.

★ LOVE, SIMON
If you’re one of those people who only reads the first sentences of movie reviews, here you go: Love, Simon is FANTASTIC, and you should see it IMMEDIATELY. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

★ MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO
Possibly the most beloved of all Hayao Miyazaki movies? Or is that Princess Mononoke? Eh, doesn’t matter. You pretty much can’t lose with this guy. Screens as part of the Hollywood Theatre’s Hayao Miyazaki Celebration series. ANDREW WRIGHT Hollywood Theatre.

★ PRINCESS MONONOKE
Possibly the most beloved of all Hayao Miyazaki movies? Or is that My Neighbor Totoro? Eh, doesn’t matter. You pretty much can’t lose with this guy. Screens as part of the Hollywood Theatre’s Hayao Miyazaki Celebration series. ANDREW WRIGHT Hollywood Theatre.

★ A QUIET PLACE
The horror films that linger into the wee small hours after watching are often the simplest ones. A Quiet Place, director/co-writer/actor John Krasinski’s startlingly good monster movie, quickly establishes a lean, mean scenario and then cranks up the tension. This is a ruthlessly efficient primal scream generator, and audiences are going to go bananas. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.

RAMPAGE
Rampage is a searing indictment of the military-industrial complex, the privatization of space, and unrestricted corporate modification of genetic code. The fruits of humanity’s hubris are laid bare in this harrowing vision of a world we are utterly unprepared for. Just kidding! Rampage is an expensive video game movie about a giant monkey and flying wolf and a spiky lizard and they all fight each other. It’s exceptionally dumb, exceptionally fun, and weirdly faithful to its 16-bit source material. BEN COLEMAN Various Theaters.

RE-ANIMATOR
Stuart Gordon’s 1985 cult classic. Dead stuff gets re-animated! Academy Theater.

READY PLAYER ONE
Nope. ERIK HENRIKSEN Various Theaters.

★ SAFETY LAST!
Harold Lloyd’s 1923 silent comedy, with live pipe organ accompaniment. Hollywood Theatre.

SOUVENIR
Director Bavo Defurne’s romance starring Isabelle Huppert. Not screened for critics. Cinema 21.

SUPER TROOPERS 2
Super Troopers 2 strikes all the familiar chords for revivals like this: It has amplified versions of the same foul-mouthed, gross-out set pieces cooked up by the members of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, but now they’re peppered with marquee actors and celebrity cameos. The reasons for getting us back into the world of these uniformed buffoons—something to do with the US annexing a small piece of Canada and a drug smuggling ring?—are entirely unnecessary. As long as you cover one of the cops in shit after a bear pushes over his porta potty, you’re going to satisfy the fans of this franchise. ROBERT HAM Various Theaters.

★ THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE ARTS
See Film, this issue. NW Film Center’s Whistsell Auditorium.

WYRD WAR: MYSTICS IN BALI
A 1981 Indonesian horror flick, screened as part of “Wyrd War’s third annual Walpurgisnacht celebration!” Hollywood Theatre.

★ YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE
A tormented veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) uses his particular set of skills to locate kidnapped girls, and then go absolutely primal on their captors. (He favors hammers.) During an especially high-profile case, his strictly maintained veil of anonymity slips. Director Lynne Ramsay’s first feature since We Need To Talk About Kevin strips the righteous vigilante genre down to the bare fixtures, then brilliantly tweaks whatever remains, with gritty and occasionally surreal results. (An early action sequence viewed entirely through security cameras is a sterling example of almost giving the viewers what they want.) As for Phoenix, an actor who can occasionally seem like a collection of overdetermined tics, he’s magnificent here—somehow maintaining a thousand-yard-stare even while blinking away tears. A fierce, brief, and thoroughly hypnotic movie, with a score by Jonny Greenwood that aims directly for the spine. ANDREW WRIGHT Various Theaters.