Borderlands *1/2
I’ll leave it to the actual gamers to explain how/whether Borderlands is a crime against the video game that is its source material; I can only explain how it’s a crime against filmmaking. Apparently the basic premise of a search for long-lost alien technology on a distant planet remains intact, in this case involving a bounty hunter named Lilith (Cate Blanchet) hired by a corporate CEO (Edgar Ramírez) to rescue his kidnapped daughter (Ariana Greenblatt). Lilith eventually teams up a renegade soldier (Kevin Hart), a masked warrior (Florian Munteanu) and a scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis) to protect said daughter, while Jack Black voices a theoretically comic-relief robot so profoundly unfunny and irritating that it should single-handedly destroy what remains of the AI industry. With no actual characters to hold interest, that leaves the genre elements, which consist of a thoroughly generic “Chosen One” plot, an equally generic grungy space-pocalypse aesthetic and action sequences that indicate whatever Eli Roth’s talents as a director might be—talk amongst yourselves—action is not one of them. Blanchett commits to the bit despite being given one of those now-ubiquitous trauma back-stories—if Star Wars were made today, there’s a 100% likelihood Han Solo would get a flashback explaining exactly why he’s so cynical—but there’s little she can do to rescue this lazy jumble of familiar elements that doesn’t exactly encourage me to try out the game. Available Aug. 9 in theaters. (PG-13)

Cuckoo ***1/2
A brief tangent-cum-lecture: We’ve grown so used to having movies exposition-dumped to death that a lot of people are unable to process narrative components that are genuinely uncanny. That’s what writer/director Tilman Singer serves up in this horror story of 17-year-old American Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) who, following the death of her beloved mother, accompanies her dad (Martón Csókás), stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and young half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu) on a work trip to a resort in the Bavarian Alps owned by the mysterious Herr König (Dan Stevens). And soon Gretchen is noticing odd things like people vomiting in public, and Alma experiencing seizures. The specifics of the weirdness aren’t always easy to comprehend, though there seems to be an allegory at work for control over reproduction and genetic “preservation,” which tracks well with having antagonists with German accents. But I’m not convinced you need to be able to spit out a Wikipedia-ready synopsis in order to groove to what Singer is serving up—some terrifically-constructed set pieces, an unsettling visual representation of people getting stuck in time loops, and huge laughs that any pure comedy would kill for. Even the stuff that could easily lead to “It’s About Grief, Actually” gets turned at an angle so it’s more about finding a more expansive definition of family. It kind of stops dead rather than finding an ending to match the vibes of the previous 95 minutes, but that’s nit-picking a movie that effectively melds creepy, entertaining and “wait what the hell is going on here.” Available Aug. 9 in theaters. (R)

Dìdi ***1/2
You can spot pieces of a dozen other coming-of-age tales in writer/director Sean Wang’s debut feature, but he melds them so deftly with the specificity of his characters’ time, place and cultural background that it never feels like you’ve seen it all before. That time and place is 2008 Fremont, California, where the summer before Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) enters high school finds him dealing with uncertainty about friends, nascent crushes, the impending departure of his older sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) for college and tensions in the household as Chris’s mother (Joan Chen) raises her kids mostly solo while Chris’s father is working abroad. Dìdi certainly capitalizes on the unique adolescent experience of Millennials, with friendships and potential romances revolving around early social-media—it’s easy to forget that MySpace was once a pretty big deal—and the first generation growing up with cell phones and attempts to shape their online personas. But the filmmaker also wants to touch on more universal insecurities of being young and not yet sure about your place in the world, especially when those around you keep emphasizing your ethnicity as a defining part of your identity. Young Izaac Wang nails a sweet spot between likeable and kind of typically 14-year-old-boy dickish, while the story finds warmth in the fact that the parents you think will never understand you might be the only people who will ever care unreservedly about you. Available Aug. 9 in theaters. (R)

The Instigators ***
A creative team with a previous pedigree in fleet-footed capers is, of course, no guarantee that they’ll get it right another time, but director Doug Liman (Go, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and co-stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck (reunited from the Ocean’s trilogy) prove that they understand the assignment. It’s the tale of an attempted robbery of the election-night shindig for a corrupt Boston mayor (Ron Perlman), with cash-strapped Marine vet Rory (Damon) and inveterate screw-up ex-con Cobby (Affleck) joining the crew—which, as these things will, doesn’t quite go according to plan. Heist-gone-wrong narratives tend toward gritty consequences, but the script by Affleck and Chuck MacLean opts instead for a lighter tone, emphasizing the mismatched dynamics between the taciturn Rory and motor-mouthed Cobby. The chemistry proves effective, even if the hand-wave explanation as to why they’d stick together doesn’t feel particularly convincing, because Liman knows to keep the action moving from set piece to set piece, and effectively use callbacks. The killer supporting cast—Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Hong Chau, Ving Rhames, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones—tends to make the movie feel a bit overstuffed, and the token attempts at filling out the protagonists’ emotional lives don’t quite land. And fortunately, all of that matters little when The Instigators just keeps putting a smile on your face. Available Aug. 9 via AppleTV+. (R)

It Ends With Us ***
Crafting a romantic drama that manages to be sexy, address domestic violence and be PG-13-friendly is no easy needle to thread, so kudos to director Justin Baldoni and screenwriter Christy Hall for pulling it off in their adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel. It’s the story of Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), whose new relationship with surgeon Ryle (Baldoni) brings up memories of her teenage first love, and its connection to the abuse she witnessed in her household. There’s no question that the source material leans hard into romance tropes—naming your primary male characters “Ryle Kincaid” and “Atlas Corrigan,” I mean come on—and the flashback structure gets a little clunky at times. But there’s a surprising delicacy to the way Baldoni approaches his difficult subject matter and to the complex feelings that can be generated by having a trusted person be an abuser, and he similarly helps his cast pitch their performances in a way that feels restrained and human—all while realizing that it’s not aesthetically unpleasing to watch hot people be hot with one another. The result is a narrative that generally feels light on its feet while clocking in over two hours, because even though its “hurt people hurt people” sensibility could feel like letting bad guys off the hook, it’s a solid way to end up with a mellow drama, rather than melodrama. Available Aug. 9 in theaters. (PG-13)