New releases

★★½ Avengers: Infinity War The final installment — Part 1! — in the multi-film Marvel series is an all-star donnybrook that will play well to fans while leaving the unconverted cold. Too many characters result in a movie that’s a series of digital punch-ups separated by quips and gasps. There’s a reason the best recipes don’t call for every ingredient in the pantry. Starring: everybody. (149 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Ghost Stories Everything is not as it seems in this cleverly surreal horror anthology from Brits Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, adapting their hit West End play with spooky-goofy results that potently evoke the Peter Cushing era of stagy, tongue-in-cheek Amicus chillers. (97 min., unrated) (Isaac Feldberg)

★½ Godard Mon Amour Michel Hazanavicius takes on the challenge of making a film about one of cinema’s greats and fails miserably. Focusing on Jean-Luc Godard’s career in the late 1960s when he became enamored of radical politics and with the young actor Anne Wiazemsky, he achieves a subpar Woody Allen-ish romcom with Godardian pretensions. In French, with subtitles. (107 min., R) (Peter Keough)

★★★★ The Rider Cast with non-actors playing characters based on themselves, Chloé Zhao’s simple story of a Native American rodeo cowboy determined to ride again after a head injury draws on neorealist techniques and naturalistic performances to mythic effect. An affecting allegory about male identity, set in the eerily beautiful Badlands of South Dakota. (103 min., R) (Peter Keough)

Previously released

★★★½ Black Panther A smart, supple action fantasy starring a superhero of color leading a strong, unbowed nation of color. Chadwick Boseman (finally) comes into stardom as King T’Challa/Black Panther, and Michael B. Jordan almost steals the film as a villain driven by real-world agonies, but the triumph belongs to director-co-writer Ryan Coogler (“Creed,’’ “Fruitvale Station’’). With Lupita Nyong’o and the ferocious Danai Gurira. (140 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★½ Blockers You probably figured the only message tucked away in this prom-night raunchfest would be the rooster unsubtly perched atop the title on the movie poster. But for a comedy about high school virgins with sex on the brain — and the parents determined to thwart them — this one has some sweetly funny sentiment and reassurances to offer. Starring Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz. (102 min., R) (Tom Russo)

★★★★ The Death of Stalin From Armando Iannucci (“Veep,’’ “In the Loop’’), a brilliantly caustic satire in which the jostlings for power in 1953 Moscow are played as Monty Python-esque farce. A work of brutal screwball comedy, it features fine performances by Steve Buscemi (as Nikita Khrushchev), Jeffrey Tambor (Malenkov), Michael Palin (Molotov), and more. (106 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★½ Foxtrot A startling, quietly sardonic drama from Israel in which sins of state violence and repression tumble down the generations. With Lior Ashkenazi as a well-fed father who learns his soldier son may be dead and Yonathan Shiray as the son who might not be dead after all. Written and directed by Samuel Maoz (“Lebanon’’). In Hebrew, with subtitles. (108 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami  An iconic figure from the 1970s and ’80s, Grace Jones has faded from the limelight, but Sophie Fiennes’s immersive documentary of the singer, supermodel, and actress pursuing her career as she nears 70 shows her as fiery, iconoclastic, and as entertaining as ever, while providing insight into the abusive childhood that shaped her persona. (115 min., unrated). (Peter Keough)

★★ I Feel Pretty Amy Schumer plays an insecure wreck who conks her head and wakes up believing she’s a hot number with newfound confidence. It’s an amiable, jumbled empowerment comedy whose meaning gets lost in a haze of mixed messages. With Lauren Hutton, Rory Scovel, and Michelle Williams, who nearly steals the movie as a high-powered CEO with a kewpie-doll voice. (110 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Isle of Dogs A hand-crafted stop-motion fable about exiled dogs on a Japanese island. So it’s a Wes Anderson movie. His most political, too, and a film visually (and superficially) in love with Japanese culture. A qualified delight, with voicework by Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Greta Gerwig, Bill Murray, and many others. (98 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★★½ Lean on Pete This muted, harsh, often intensely moving story of a boy and his horse is more Steinbeck than “Seabiscuit,’’ with gangly Charlie Plummer hitting the road on a stolen steed named Lean on Pete and drafting along the edge of homelessness. With fine support from Steve Buscemi and Chloe Sevigny; directed by Andrew Haigh (“45 Years’’) from Willy Vlautin’s novel. It’s not a children’s movie. (121 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★ A Quiet Place Listen up: This taut, elegantly bare-boned monster movie makes a virtue of silence, as a rural family headed by John Krasinski (“The Office’’) and Emily Blunt fend off carnivorous alien critters who are drawn solely by sound. Hush now, children. Smartly directed by Krasinski, it’s a movie to see in a crowded, quietly freaked-out theater. (90 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★½ Rampage Dwayne Johnson might not do any Fay Wray shrieking in this classic-video-game adaptation, but his sensitive-souled primatologist is the one person able to soothe the story’s giant ape run amok. The engaging dynamic between our hero and his gargantuan, computer-generated pal is the movie’s best surprise. That and the visually electrifying monster-palooza finale will make you forgive a lot of the ham-handedness. (104 min., PG-13) (Tom Russo)

★★½ Ready Player One Ernest Cline’s popular novel — about the fight to save the virtual-reality OASIS in a future America — has been brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg with a dullish hero (Tye Sheridan), an underused Willy Wonka figure (the great Mark Rylance), much pell-mell digitized action, and a Trivia Night approach to ’80s nostalgia. How do you do, fellow kids? (138 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★★½ You Were Never Really Here Joaquin Phoenix is dangerously good as an emotionally damaged hired killer tracking a lost girl and falling afoul of powerful interests. Director Lynne Ramsay is a moviemaking natural and her latest takes us to beautiful and terrible places. (89 min., R) (Ty Burr)

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