New releases

★★★ For a Good Time, Call . . . Two women in their late 20s, played by Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller, start a phone sex company. It’s like one of those bromances. This version is simultaneously as emotionally sincere and more archly self-conscious. It achieves both parity and parody. It’s a bra-mance. (88 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

★★½ Lawless In southern Virginia, three bootlegging brothers clash during Prohibition with a sadistic cop imported from Chicago. The movie, which is quite bloody, is very handsomely mounted, but studiedly so. Tom Hardy has serious throw weight as the chief brother. Shia LeBeouf, as the youngest, is kind of twerpy. Guy Pearce preens as the cop. Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, as love interests, are sadly superfluous. (115 min., R) (Mark Feeney)

★ The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure This interactive movie, aimed at the “Barney” set, comes from the producer responsible for the American licensing and marketing of “Teletubbies” and “Thomas the Tank Engine.” The Oogieloves are oversize, plush, garishly colored characters from the pseudo-surreal Lovelyloveville. They spend an interminable 88 minutes looking for balloons for their friend’s birthday party and meeting wacky characters played by Cloris Leachman, Chazz Palminteri, Toni Braxton, and others. (88 min., G) (Loren King)

★★★★ Oslo, August 31st

A coolly observed yet boundlessly compassionate day in the life of a recovering drug addict (Anders Danielsen Lie), Joachim Trier’s drama breaks your heart many times over. The influence of the great French filmmaker Robert Bresson hovers over the proceedings like a benediction. In Norwegian, with subtitles. (95 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

★★ The Possession Another little girl from a broken, middle-class home becomes a demon’s plaything. This time the demon is Jewish and the exorcism is kosher. As the girl, Natasha Calis is a hoot, and this is better-made junk than its recent peers, but it’s morally lazy. Evil really needs to get over itself. (93 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

★★ Sleepwalk With Me The talented comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia directed, co-wrote, and stars in this droopy dramatization of some of his stage material about how he found his voice and lost a relationship that feels doomed the minute you see that Lauren Ambrose is his costar. She’s alive. Offstage, he’s a patch of moss. Birbiglia needs a movie or cable series that wakes up him and his material. (80 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

Previously released

★ 2016: Obama’s America Well, fair’s fair. George W. Bush got Michael Moore and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Now Barack Obama gets Dinesh D’Souza and “2016: Obama’s America.” Both films are wildly partisan attack documentaries made by wildly partisan and generally annoying polemicists (D’Souza is more personable, actually, than Moore). The difference is that Moore is a talented filmmaker. Based on D’Souza’s 2010 bestseller, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” (89 min., PG) (Mark Feeney)

★½ The Apparition A young couple (Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan) run afoul of an “entity,” as a paranormal researcher (Tom Felton) calls the supernatural whatzit. This otherwise-forgettable film has one truly inspired aspect. It’s the first Great Recession horror movie. The setting is a nearly empty development of McMansions in Southern California. So it situates a ghostly presence amid an even ghostlier absence. (82 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)

½ Compliance Proof that something based on a true story can be gruesomely implausible. A young woman who works at a fast-food restaurant (Dreama Walker) is accused of theft. Pleading understaffing, a policeman (Pat Healy) telephones the manager (Ann Dowd). He talks her through an increasingly degrading interrogation, search of the woman’s person, and even more outrageous stuff you really don’t want to know about. (90 minutes, R) (Mark Feeney)

★★ Cosmopolis In search of a haircut, an impossibly rich young man (Robert Pattinson) riding in an impossibly elaborate limo tries to cross an impossibly congested Manhattan. Director David Cronenberg has faithfully adapted Don DeLillo’s freeze-dried dystopian novel. But DeLillo’s dark, deadpan humor doesn’t translate to the screen, nor does his oblique, aphoristic dialogue. With Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton, and a borderline-rabid Paul Giamatti. (109 min., R) (Mark Feeney)

★★½ Hit & Run Charlie (Dax Shepard) is in a witness-protection program. His girlfriend (Kristen Bell) has a great job opportunity in LA. That’s where the bad guys Charlie’s hiding from are. The movie has elements of romantic comedy, road movie, and raunchfest. A surprising amount of it works. (100 min., R) (Mark Feeney)

★★★ Premium Rush The title of this movie about a Manhattan bicycle messenger sounds like an energy drink. Energy it has — too much. Trickiness, ditto. If the plot had any more gears — a romantic triangle, gambling debts, Chinatown gangsters, a race against time — it would be a mountain bike. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is smart and fast and looks just fine hunched over a set of handlebars. (85 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)

★★ Robot & Frank Frank Langella plays a retired jewel thief, Frank. To help with his memory problems, his son gives him a robot personal assistant. With the robot’s help, Frank unretires. The movie’s fairly negligible, but Langella is good. Even better is a sorely underutilized Susan Sa-randon as his romantic interest. Peter Sarsgaard, voicing the robot, is best of all. (89 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)