★★★Bombshell One of the highest-profile stories to emerge from the #MeToo movement gets feature treatment in this female-centric look at the fall of Fox News boss Roger Ailes amid sexual misconduct charges in 2016. Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie make good on the promise of their splashy casting, delivering a film that’s both soberly, compassionately thoughtful and bristling with the energy of its high-powered setting. (108 min., R) (Tom Russo)
½ Cats A triumph of vulgar, wrongheaded “showmanship.” Tom Hooper’s movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s cat poems heads straight into the uncanny valley by digitizing Dame Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson, and a host of talented dancers into creepy cat-people. Not since “Springtime for Hitler.” (110 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
★★★½A Hidden Life Terrence Malick’s strongest, most emotionally transcendent work in years is a biographical drama about an Austrian farmer, Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), who took a stand against the Third Reich. It’s both a modern religious film — a genuine rarity — and a warning to 21st-century America. (174 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
★★Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Arriving with a blockbuster sound and fury that has been dialed up to 11, the final movie in the final “Star Wars” trilogy is a dismayingly safe act of franchise closure. It’s narratively satisfying but only very rarely inspired. With Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaacs, and others. (141 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)