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Movie Stars

Movie Stars

Felicity Jones as Nelly Ternan in “The Invisible Woman.’’David Appleby/Sony Pictures Classics/David Appleby, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

New releases

★ ★ ★ The Invisible Woman Ralph Fiennes’s second film as director is nominally about Charles Dickens (Fiennes), but it’s really about Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), the young mistress Dickens hid from Victorian society until she began to vanish from her own life. A master class in acting and a quietly ravishing experience on a big screen. (111 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★ ★ ½ Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit The late Tom Clancy’s super-CIA-guy hero makes his fifth movie appearance — the first not based on a Clancy novel. This series reboot is an origins story, with Chris Pine as Jack just starting out. Kenneth Branagh, who directed, plays a Russian oligarch seeking to bring America to its proverbial knees. Keira Knightley is the future Mrs. Ryan, with a first-rate Kevin Costner as Jack’s handler. (106 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)

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★ ½ The Nut Job Animated park critters Will Arnett, Katherine Heigl, and Brendan Fraser angle to get their paws on a nut shop’s stash. You think of the twisty ingenuity that heist movies are so great at showcasing, and about the ways that animation could unfetter the scheming, and you hope for some fun. Disappointingly, this one just spins its wheels like rodents in a Habitrail. (85 min., PG) (Tom Russo)

★ ★ ½ Ride Along Motor-mouthed Kevin Hart plays a security guard and combat-video-game obsessive with imminent plans to marry his live-in girlfriend, and big dreams of becoming a real policeman. Neither idea sits well with his prospective brother-in-law (Ice Cube), a truculent detective who offers him a chance to prove his manhood by riding shotgun with him for a day. Hart’s yammering gives this a boost. (100 min., PG-13) (Tom Russo)

★ ★ ★ ½ The Square What does a revolution feel like from the inside? Jehane Noujaim’s electrifying, often heartbreaking film takes us into Tahrir Square during the uprisings of the Arab Spring and the months of chaos and betrayal that followed. An impassioned work of documentary impressionism and a story that’s hardly over. In English and Arabic, with subtitles. (103 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

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Previously released

★ ★ ★ August: Osage County A black comedy of prairie family dysfunction, stolidly adapted from Tracy Letts’s 2007 play. At its center, in one of her most flamboyant yet gimmicky performances, is Meryl Streep as cancerous, poisonous matriarch Viola Weston. A fine guilty pleasure rather than a great movie, with Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, and (thankfully) Chris Cooper and Margo Martindale. (121 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★ ★ ★ ½ Faust Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov takes on the German legend about the philosopher whose hubristic quest for knowledge and power tempts him into a deal with the devil. With its scatological humor and archly blasphemous discussions it might be Sokurov’s closest stab at a romp, but still ventures into places where few filmmakers go. In German, with subtitles. (134 min., unrated) (Peter Keough)

★ ★ ½ Lone Survivor Writer-director Peter Berg viscerally re-creates two days in June 2005, when Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) and three fellow Navy SEALs (Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster) fought a small Taliban army in the mountains of Afghanistan. The movie’s in the tradition of soldiers’ stories that find hard, simple truths in notions of sacrifice and courage. The problem is that the wars we fight now aren’t as simple, and the best recent movies about them aren’t either. (121 min., R) (Ty Burr)

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★ ★ ★ ½ The Past This film from Iran’s Asghar Farhadi isn’t on a level with his Oscar-winning “A Separation,” but it’s taut, quiet, democratic, and observant. Bérénice Bejo stands out in a superb cast. In French, with subtitles. (130 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)


Find an archive of reviews at www.boston.com/movies.