A Stephen King movie that warms your heart, tears you up, maybe even makes you want to get up and dance?

We kid you not — it’s our vote for best new movie out this weekend. As for Wes Anderson’s latest? Not so much.

Read on.

“The Life of Chuck”: Most know Stephen King as today’s most revered horror author, the expert conjurer of the kinds of macabre souls that are embedded in our nightmares — the killer clown Pennywise from “It,” the all-work-and-no-play Jack Torrance from “The Shining” and the wackadoodle fan Annie Wilkes from “Misery.”

Those are but a few of King’s most memorable troublemakers. But the King of Horror occasionally shows his softer, more reflective side. The one that propels “The Life of Chuck,” a moving novella, now a film, taken from his best-selling collection “If It Bleeds.” It relates an introspective story about an ordinary man’s life, but catalogues it in reverse. If you’re a person of a certain age you might immediately assume that sounds like a copycat of David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” It’s not. Even though both dabble in fantastical elements, they’re quite different in tone and thematic emphasis.

“The Life of Chuck” encourages us to relish those small, impromptu moments and to appreciate the fact that our world contains a multitude of people and places, some met through chance encounters or during major life events. To impart that wisdom on screen, a filmmaker well-versed in King’s prose and themes is essential, and director Mike Flanagan fits the bill. He has shepherded two King novels — “Doctor Sleep” and “Gerald’s Game” — into very good films and is the right person for this adaptation. He’s proved he’s equally at home with the diabolical and the sentimental. Here, he avoids going overboard with either. Flanagan stays in lock-step with King’s wistful parable even though the material presents thorny challenges since it shifts emphasis among various characters. That can be problematic for an on-screen adaptation but Flanagan changes tempo and moods, and does it well.

Act III opens the film and eerily focuses on the titular high school teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his nurse ex-girlfriend (Karen Gillan) as they deal with an impending Armageddon while wondering why there are weird billboards announcing the retirement of Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) sprouting up all around town.

Act II (easily my favorite) finds businessman Chuck spontaneously breaking out into a crowd-pleasing dance number with a stranger (Annalise Basso) at an outside mall. Act I gives us a youthful Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) who lives with his grandmother (Mia Sara) and his grandfather (Mark Hamill). Act II and Act III are better than Act I, but I still found much to like in Act I, the most nostalgic sequence in here that makes you feel like an awkward kid again.

But it just can’t compare to that dance bit, a Jell-O shot of pure happiness that can brighten up the dreariest of days. Better brace yourself since King — as he often does — absolutely devastates you with one simple line, delivered, in this case, by Nick Offerman, who narrates each act. It’s an unexpected emotional wallop that knocks you off your feet. “The Life of Chuck” pricks the soul like that even as it warms our aching hearts.

Details: ???• out of 4; opens Friday in select theaters and in a wider release the following week.

“The Phoenician Scheme”: Wes Anderson loves to frolic and revel in the creative worlds he creates, which is why he walks a tightrope with each film he makes. Sometimes he gets too carried away with all that whimsy he’s known for and forsakes his story, damaging a promising film by making it too twee and precious. His latest confection suffers from that fate even if it does have modest charms, good laughs here and there and two fine lead performances. Too often, though, “Phoenician Scheme” doesn’t know when to reign in its affectations or simply axe a bad screenplay idea. Those moments are like an annoying cutesy intruder that stops Andersons’ latest effort dead in its tracks. And it doesn’t help that the flighty tale he and Roman Coppola concoct goes on a repetitive journey and tosses in numerous top-name stars who fleetingly appear and then disappear (Scarlett Johansson, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks and Jeffrey Wright are among the wasted actors, and these are actors who should never be wasted.)

Anderson’s 13th feature is indeed a step back for a talent who’s given us gems such as “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” The 1950s-set story concerns the misadventures of targeted-for-death tycoon Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro) and his nun daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), the unlikely heir to his empire, and his extra-able trainee. They fly to key destinations to buttress a saggy bottom line of daddy’s corrupt business dealings. In between, they fend off assassins and meet with Zsa-zsa’s sometimes backstabbing partners and relatives. When the finer points of Zsa-zsa’s grandiose, costly project — the cumbersomely titled Korda Land and Sea Phoenician Infrastructure Scheme — gets introduced in the form of a collection of shoeboxes (how very twee that is), the film gets stuck in a rut, having the duo drop in for visit after visit to various “sites,” making the whimsy seem a bit stale.

Per the norm of Anderson films, the production details are glorious to behold and keep us occupied whenever our attention wanders, which happens more often than it should. What also peps up “The Phoenician Scheme” are some of its performances, specifically del Toro’s. He is the kind of rugged handsome actor who’s suited so well for his brusque character.

Threapleton is his perfect foil but also stands on her own. Her Liesl proves she has a sharper mind than her pop. The biggest laugh comes from Michael Cera’s quirky performance as a personal tutor who travels with Zsa-zsa and Liesl. He lands the best surprise in the film, the one that makes us realize “The Phoenician Scheme” could have been so much better if it bothered more with its plot and less with star-studded cast.

Details: ??; opens Friday in theaters.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.