Your long weekend movie guide: John Wick takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin', while A Dog’s Journey pulls at the heartstrings

Black and Blue

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• Directed by Deon Taylor
• Written by Peter A. Dowling
• Starring Naomie Harris, Tyrese Gibson and Frank Grillo
• Classification R; 108 minutes

Black and Blue stars Naomie Harris (Moonlight) as Alicia West, a rookie cop in the New Orleans police force who is dragged into a game of cat and mouse with corrupt superior officers after her body cam records them executing an unarmed drug dealer. By verbalizing its themes time and again, Black and Blue leaves little up to interpretation. It hits you over the head with its meanings and then does so again for good measure. However, while the script often fails to possess a deft touch, Harris’s performance is steady, often grounding what could have been histrionic. (Opens Oct. 25)

Jojo Rabbit

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• Written and directed by Taika Waititi
• Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson and Taika Waititi
• Classification PG; 108 minutes

Jojo Rabbit offers the fall movie season’s trickiest tightrope. Just teetering on the edge of bad taste, and very occasionally tipping over into stone-cold comedic genius, Taika Waititi’s film is a terrifying act of daredevilism. Such is the case, in the year 2019, of experiencing anything marketed as an “anti-hate satire.” What’s more: an anti-hate satire set in Germany during the waning days of the Second World War and focusing on a schoolboy named Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) obsessed with the Nazi Party, an orphaned Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) hiding in his attic and frequent conversations with an imaginary friend in the form of the Fuhrer (Waititi). (Opens Oct. 25 in Toronto before expanding to other Canadian cities Nov. 1)

Pain and Glory

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• Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar
• Starring Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz
• Classification R; 113 minutes

Toward the end of this slight but entertaining bit of meta from Pedro Almodovar, a film director’s old mother tells her son that her neighbours back in the village are sick of seeing themselves portrayed in his movies. Enough of the autofiction, she says. That’s one of several wry in-jokes in Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, a sentimental look at artistic inspiration said to be only lightly inspired by his own life. Antonio Banderas plays an aging gay filmmaker with numerous ailments and a creative block that is cleared by a daisy chain of coincidental encounters with figures from his past. (Opens Oct. 25 in Toronto and Ottawa)

The Lighthouse

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• Directed by Robert Eggers
• Written by Robert Eggers and Max Eggers
• Starring Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe and some birds
• Classification R; 105 minutes

The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’s over-the-top follow-up to his 2015 horror sensation The Witch, trades the terror of folklore for the horror of isolation in a black-and-white thriller about two lighthouse keepers working off the coast of New England (actually Nova Scotia) circa 1890. The corncob pipe-smoking sea veteran Thomas (Willem Dafoe) has no love for his younger assistant Ephraim (Robert Pattinson), and the food, chores and ambience are beyond dreadful. But the real problem for both men is when a storm extends their duties indefinitely, and a certain roommate-from-hell madness sets in. (Opens Oct. 25)

Western Stars

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• Directed by Thom Zimny and Bruce Springsteen
• Starring Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa
• Classification PG; 83 minutes

Western Stars is the cinematic embellishment of Bruce Springsteen’s new album of the same name. (It’s a lovely record, an homage to the late-1960s country-pop style of Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell.) In his New Jersey ranch, Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, strum expensive acoustic guitars in front of whiskey-bar friends and an orchestral string section. The full album is performed, with a cover of Rhinestone Cowboy thrown in. Between songs, Springsteen explains the lyrics and admits things about himself of which he’s not particularly proud. (Opens Oct. 25)

This weekly guide was compiled by Lori Fazari, with reviews from Barry Hertz, Anna Swanson, Kate Taylor and Brad Wheeler.