New releases

★★ Assassin’s Creed The smash-hit video game inspires a stilted, static movie. Super-secret society battles super-secret society — Assassins vs. Knights Templar — with the future of free will at stake. OK, if you say so. A lavishly talented cast — Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling — gets lavishly wasted. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. (115 min, PG-13) (Mark Feeney)

★★★½ Fences Denzel Washington directed this film version of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, with he and Viola Davis re-creating their Tony-winning performances from the 2010 Broadway revival. You don’t get groundbreaking cinema, but what you do get — two titanic actors and a great American tragedy — makes up for that. (140 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★½ Lion The true saga of Saroo Brierley, who wandered away from his Bengali village at 5, was adopted by a family around the globe, and found his way home via Google Earth. It’s a foolproof audience-pleaser of a story, so great filmmaking craft is neither necessary nor present. With Dev Patel as the adult Saroo, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara. (120 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★½ Passengers In the future (sooner than later at the rate things are going) masses of humanity will emigrate to distant planets. They will travel for a century or more in suspended animation on starships. What happens when a man and a woman wake up 90 years too soon and fall in love? So-so dialogue and a generic plot spoils their paradise. (116 min., PG-13) (Peter Keough)

★★ Patriots Day Peter Berg’s re-creation of the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is neither great nor gawdawful. Starring Mark Wahlberg in an invented law enforcement role , it’s professionally made, slickly heartfelt, and offered up as an act of civic healing. At best, it’s unnecessary. At worst, it’s vaguely insulting. (133 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Sing This animated feature takes the shabby-theater charm of “The Muppet Show’’ and burnishes it for the “American Idol’’ generation. Can-do koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) puts on an open singing competition to save his struggling venue, attracting contestants voiced by Reese Witherspoon, Taron Egerton, Scarlett Johansson, and Seth MacFarlane. It’s a menagerie more fully and memorably realized than in “Zootopia.’’ (108 min., PG) (Tom Russo)

★★½ Why Him? “Father of the Bride’’ zaniness gets repackaged with dope tattoos and digital-native aesthetics in a James Franco-Bryan Cranston teaming that’s not as wild as intended, but reasonably diverting just the same. If you’ve been a repeat customer for director John Hamburg’s work as co-writer of the “Meet the Parents’’ series, you should get some laughs. (111 min., R) (Tom Russo)