Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the first time since 2006’s “Inside Man” for an elegiac but vibrant story that is complicated and messy. Like life. It is an engrossing crime drama, a family story, a commentary on culture and society, bursting with ideas, masterfully acted by Washington, who just keeps getting better.

The movie begins with Washington’s character, notably called David King, on top of the world. Soaring shots of New York City’s skyline at its most glamorous and inviting are accompanied by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” from “Oklahoma.” We end on a spectacular penthouse balcony, with King greeting the day. We will see his Architectural Digest-ready apartment, filled with fine art and elegant furnishings.

It may not be a beautiful day for King. His company is about to be purchased by a conglomerate with no special background or interest in music or in supporting the emerging Black artists who are so important to King. He predicts that what they want to do is dismiss all of the newer talent and monetize the archive by licensing it for commercials. His plan is to raise the money to buy back enough of a share from a board member, Patrick (Michael Potts), so he will be able to veto the deal. Putting this deal together causes him to let down his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), who was about to make a large contribution to charity, and break a promise to his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), to watch him at a basketball camp led by former Boston Celtic Rick Fox. Trey is disappointed, but happy to meet up at the camp with his best friend, Kyle (Elijah Wright), King’s godson, and the son of widower, ex-con, and King’s chauffeur, Paul Christopher (played by Elijah Wright’s real-life dad).

Then, King gets a call that Trey has been kidnapped for ransom and they are demanding $17,500,000 in Swiss francs. The reason it has to be in francs, not dollars, is clever, like many of the details of the crime, but for some reason this kidnapper makes no effort to stop King from calling the police. The kidnapper also makes another mistake. He mistook Kyle for Trey. Will King continue with plans to take the money he needs to keep his company to pay ransom for someone else’s son?

The way the ransom exchange and subsequent events play out, including a subway train filled with excited Yankees fans and a Puerto Rican Day festival featuring “Do the Right Thing’s” Rosie Perez is tightly constructed. We may think we are in the middle of a gritty first-class thriller, but it turns out there is more. As often happens in Spike Lee movies, the world before us is heightened and the storyline becomes less linear. Is this the story of a crime? Is it about the moral assignment of responsibility? About money? About mistakes? About forgiveness? About risk? About art? About family? All of the above. Like life.

There are winks at the audience, references to Lee’s well-known love of basketball and the Yankees (look for a cheeky sign in the subway car), and a door labeled A24, the name of the film’s studio, to remind us what a personal statement it is. The score by Howard Drossin is arresting but unexpected, a Celtic tone that contrasts with what we might expect for a suspenseful moment.

Washington is utterly mesmerizing as King, crafty, calculating, but essentially a good man, devoted to his wife and son and to music and the people who make it. He knows that what made his company great (there are framed magazine covers with his face on them in his office and references to his many Grammy awards) was his “best ears in the business.” And he knows that the business is not as great as it once was. The supporting cast is superb, with stand-out performances by A$AP Rocky as rapper Yung Felon and Princess Nokia as a young mother. The highlights of this magnificent film, even more than the crime thriller section, are the (mostly) quiet conversations King has with both characters.

Lee and Washington know, as King tells an aspiring singer, that “the hard times will come from the money and the mayhem follows.” They know that “all money isn’t good money” and how to tell the difference. This is a literal masterpiece, based on the term’s origin as work that shows all of the mastery of an experienced creator. It is a crowning achievement by men who have put in the work, learned the lessons over decades, and bring out the best in one another.

Parents should know that this film has extended strong language including many uses of the n-word and a crude and sexist term for a body part. Characters smoke weed and drink alcohol. The story involves a violent crime. Most of the violence occurs off-screen, but there are guns and shooting and characters are injured.

Family discussion: What made King change his mind about paying the ransom? What does he mean about “trying to be practical?” When were the police helpful and when were they not helpful? What does it mean to say “attention is the biggest form of currency,” and do you agree?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man,” “Malcom X,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Chi-Raq,” and “He Got Game”

Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis are back for another big body switch in “Freakier Friday,” the sequel to their 2003 film, based on the 1973 book by Mary Rodgers that has inspired not only several films but many imitations and variations. It’s an irresistible premise, taking two characters at a moment of maximum frustration in their relationship and making them literally walk in each other’s shoes to achieve greater connection and understanding. It also provides many opportunities for wild comedy along the way.

Anna (Lohan), a rebellious young teenager in the original film, is an adult now, the single mother of an equally rebellious teenage daughter named Harper (Julia Butters of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”). Harper is at the “please drive away like you don’t know me” stage. And Anna, like all of us, no matter how hard we try not to, is channeling her mother, calling after Harper hopefully as she goes to school, “Make good choices!” (A line Curtis improvised in the first film.)

Anna’s mother, Tess (Curtis), still a therapist and still happily married to Ryan (Mark Harmon), provides a lot of support. Just to let us know how up to date they are, Tess has a podcast and a new book coming out, Rebellion With Respect. She plays pickleball. And she’s still talking about reframing.

When Harper and a new classmate from London create a mess in science class, Anna and the classmate’s father meet in the principal’s office, and there’s an immediate spark. Eric (“The Good Place’s” Manny Jacinto) is a chef, and his daughter, Lily (Sophia Hammons) is very unhappy about the move. In a quick but cute montage Eric and Anna fall in love and get engaged. As their parents get closer, the animosity between surfer girl Harper and aspiring fashion designer Lily gets frostier, especially because it means Lily will be stuck in California.

At Anna’s bachelorette party on a Thursday night, a wacky fortune teller slash every other possible job played by “Saturday Night Live’s” Vanessa Bayer reads the palms of our four leads, and the next morning…is Friday. A freakier one. Twice as freaky, in fact. The Anna and Tess now find themselves in the bodies of Harper and Lily.

So Anna-now-Harper and Tess-now-Lily find themselves in high school, where they plot to stop the wedding and very much enjoy the young bodies, so good at bending without any aches or pains and with “metabolisms at the speed of light” to enable them to enjoy so much junk food. They also have to suffer through detention presided over by none other than Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky re-creating his character from the earlier film). Also returning: the other members of Anna’s old rock group, Pink Slip.  Christina Vidal (Maddie), and Haley Hudson (Peg) and Chad Michael Murray as Anna’s high school crush, Jake. Rosalind Chao, Pei-Pei in the earlier film, appears as Mama P. There are references to Lohan’s other most memorable roles, including Elaine Hendrix from “The Parent Trap” as Anna’s assistant. And there’s a joke at the end about Jake’s interest in Tess from the first film.

Harper-now-Anna and Lily-now-Tess go out into the adult world where they enjoy the freedom of driving a car and wearing some wild outfits. Harper-now-Anna has to comfort Anna’s client, a pop star named Ella (an engaging Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), who has just been dumped by her boyfriend as she is about to introduce her new album. And Lily-now-Tess has to puzzle her way through the Senior aisle in the drug store.

Whew. The four-way switch and lots of new characters and complications — I haven’t even gotten to Eric’s family and Santina Muha as an immigration official) — clutter up the storyline. But it is still great fun to see Lohan and Curtis throw themselves (sometimes literally) into the younger characters. Their chemistry is still sky high and they are clearly having a blast. The surrounding chaos (a food fight! makeovers! a crazy car ride!) is very entertaining.

Curtis and Lohan are also producers and they know what the fans and newcomers to the story want, including a Pink Slip reunion so rousing that it might make us look forward to a Freakiest Friday some day.

NOTE: Stay for the credits to enjoy some behind-the-scenes clips.

Parents should know that this movie includes some mild language, references to bodily functions, and some family issues, including teenagers unhappy about their parents’ marriage.

Family discussion: If you switched with your parent or child, what do you think you would learn? What’s the best thing about getting older? What’s the best thing about being younger?

If you like this, try: The original Freaky Friday book and the many movie versions and variations, including “17 Again,” the other “17 Again,” “Family Switch,” and “Vice Versa“

“The Naked Gun” reboot comes from a dream team ideally situated to reboot the sublimely silly 1980s franchise. Liam Neeson fits perfectly into the Leslie Nielson tradition as a Hollywood-handsome dramatic actor fearless about looking ridiculous. And The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer is just right as a co-writer and director who goes pedal to the metal, respecting the original when it comes to the non-step goofiness but wasting no time on respecting what doesn’t deserve it (see the OJ joke in the trailer).

As anyone familiar with this franchise knows, the plot barely matters and the characters exist just to deliver all of the sight and verbal gags. It’s just one absurd joke after another, and I don’t want to spoil them, so this will be a bit vague.

Neeson plays the son of Nielson’s character, Frank Drebin, Jr., wanting to live up to the record and values of his dad. The film opens with a bank robbery by a gang with a lot of guns. I won’t spoil Drebin’s trick for getting into the bank, but I will say it sets the tone, along with the real purpose of the robbery, not the cash but a gadget in one of the safe deposit boxes, clearly labeled “PLOT DEVICE.”

The villain in this story is Richard Cane, an entirely imaginary, I’m sure, tech billionaire whose company happens to make self-driving electric vehicles. Danny Huston is also perfectly cast as the superficially charming sociopath who plans to reboot society by unleashing humanity’s most savage instincts until only the alphas survive. Basically, he wants to unplug civilization and plug it in again. His company is meaningfully named Eden Tech, with “technologies to rival the gods.”

Pamela Anderson is more than game as Beth Davenport, sister of a murdered man connected to Cane and who may also be connected to the bank robbery. At one point, she gets up to scat sing a jazz number. That is really her singing. She is surprisingly tuneful and also hilarious. When Drebin tells her to take a chair, she doubles down on the pun with the insouciantly businesslike way she drags it out of the room. CCH Pounder is excellent as always as the tough police chief with a sleepy husband.

Nothing is sacred here and everything is up for humor, including the franchise itself. The movie features witchcraft to animate a sexy snowman, a double entendre conversation about turkeys. There are references to “Sex and the City,” Bill Cosby, Tucker Carlson’s “End of Men” idea about radiating genitals, pop-up Halloween stores, and TIVOs. And, as always in these films, the jokes fly by so fast and so shamelessly that by the time you realize you didn’t like one, three funnier ones have appeared.

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop silly jokes, some of it suggestive or vulgar, with bathroom humor, a threesome (with a snowman!), silhouettes that appear to be sex acts, and a bare bottom. The storyline includes a murder, a violent bank robbery, a reference to suicide, and a dastardly criminal plot. There is some strong language, including the r-word.

Family discussion: This movie has many different kinds of humor. How many can you identify? How does this movie connect to the originals and what does it do differently? In what ways do both Drebin and Cane think the world was better before?

If you like this, try: the earlier “Naked Gun” television series and films

“Oh, Hi!” has four exceptionally appealing young actors who make the most of an uneven script from writer/director Sophie Brooks. The set-up is universally familiar: the searing combination of humiliation, self-doubt and fury when learning that the person you trusted does not match your feelings about the relationship or indeed the absence thereof.

As the movie starts, Iris (Molly Gordon), clearly very upset, answers the door to let in her friend, Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), confessing that she has done something bad.

Then we go back in time to 33 hours before. Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman), her boyfriend of a few months, are driving to their first weekend getaway in the countryside. Their spirits are high, singing along to “Islands in the Stream” and stopping at a farm stand to buy strawberries. A hint of possible problems — he knocks over the farm stand and they end up having to buy all the strawberries. Still, all goes well at first as they are delighted with each other and with the house they have rented for the weekend. Isaac prepares a marvelous dinner, they have marvelous sex, and it is understandable why Iris thinks they feel the same way about each other, especially after they discover some bondage equipment in the home’s closet and decide to give it a try. They have sex again, this time with Isaac splayed and bound to the bedposts.

And then, in the rosy afterglow, Isaac confesses that he is not exclusive with her and considers them as just “having fun.” Iris makes the mistake of Googling what to do, and then she makes the bigger mistake of telling Isaac she is going to keep him bound to the bedposts for 12 hours to prove to him that he should be in love with her. So, she starts demonstrating how lovable she is and he starts pretending to go along with her.

Iris calls her ride or die friend Max for help. Max arrives with her affable boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds). Iris has backed herself into a corner and so has Brooks. This shift into a rom-com version of “Misery” is not entirely successful, and the execution of this section of the film is tonally messy. The premise is intriguing but the movie cannot decide whether it wants to be creepy or funny and is not especially either.

Molly Gordon is always utterly captivating on screen. Beyond her considerable talent as an actor and wrier (“Theater Camp”), she has impeccable comic timing. A lot of the movie depends on her considerable appeal and she is never less than watchable, but even she cannot figure out how to make this work. The same is true of Lerman, who does his best but cannot quite show whether Isaac is either too clueless to understand the signals he is sending to Iris or too heartless to tell her the truth. None of the conversation with Max and Kenny makes much sense. David Cross has a couple of brief moments as a neighbor who is weird but less creepy than he originally appears.

The cast is great, the concept has potential, but, like Iris with Isaac, we are disappointed to find it is less than we expect.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong language, nudity and explicit sexual references and situations. Characters drink alcohol and there is discussion of bondage and possible murder. A character is injured.

Family discussion: Should Isaac have been clearer about his feelings? Should Iris have been clearer about her expectations? Who would you call for help as Molly called Max?

If you like this, try: Molly Gordon’s “Theater Camp”

Four seems to be the magic number. After three unsatisfactory tries at getting Marvel’s cosmic ray-enhanced superheroes on screen, Marvel Studios got it right, gorgeously produced, well cast, gracefully relegating the origin story to a few “archival” clips, and putting our quartet and us right in the middle of the action.

It is set in a fantasy version of the 1960s, inspired by the visual style, not the history or pop culture. In the first scene, Reed is looking for iodine, the painful antiseptic used for minor cuts in the 50s, and Sue Storm uses something that was not invented in our reality until the 1980s. There is a Calder mobile in their headquarters living room and the men we see in the outdoor scenes all wear hats, so handsome this movie just might bring back the fedora. The production design from “Loki’s” Kasra Farahani is dazzling and endlessly inviting, a heightened version of a mid-century concept of the future. The cerulean blue and white accents of the retro F4 uniforms designed by Alexandra Byrne (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) place us in a time and a world that is like but not the same as ours.

The Four are Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), a brilliant scientist whose body stretches, his wife Sue (Vanessa Kirby) who has the power of invisibility, including creating invisible shields, Sue’s impetuous and very single brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn), who can burst into flames and fly, and Ben Grimm, known as The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who looks like he is made from mountain rock and is very, very strong.

As the movie begins, the world is celebrating them as heroes and protectors. It has been four years since the space expedition exposed them to the cosmic rays, they have defeated or, in the case of the subterranean Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), negotiated a peace agreement, and established a United Nations-type organization called the Future Foundation.

The superheroes and the people they protect believe F4 and their adorable robot, Herbie, will always keep them safe. And then they face their biggest and most terrifying challenge. Sue is pregnant. While Reed and Sue know that the molecular changes from the cosmic rays may affect the baby, they believe, with some reassurance from Sue’s ability to make her abdomen invisible so they can see the fetus, the baby will be fine.

Big and terrifying challenge #2: the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives to announce that Earth is about to be consumed by Galactus (Ralph Ineson), a planet devourer. F4 tracks the Silver Surfer to find Galactus, confident they can defeat him. And this leads to the first Marvel action sequence that features a very pregnant superhero. Galactus offers them a terrible choice, and when they refuse, the people on earth quickly go from fans to haters.

The film moves briskly, with one of the shortest run times in the MCU, under two hours. But it creates a fully-realized world, with small details like the Mole Man’s dad jokes, Ben Grimm’s “beard” and copy of 50s classic child care bible Dr. Spock, and a sweet brief appearance by Natasha Lyonne as the teacher of students who are big fans of The Thing. Fans will enjoy some glimpses of popular villains from the comic books. Director Matt Shakman (the similarly retro fantasies “Game of Thrones” and “Wandavision” and “The Great”) understands that the action scenes and the family dynamic are central to the storyline and he has fun with scale when Galactus arrives. While the stakes are dire, he stays away from gratuitous carnage. The film has good-natured humor, impressive special effects, some tender moments, and even a light gloss of commentary on what we expect from our heroes, and how we approach moral dilemmas and life-threatening challenges. I’m iffy about one twist, but overall, this is a film that respects comic book characters and what we love about them.

Parents should know that this movie features extended comic book/action-style peril and violence, with some scary creatures and disturbing and graphic images. There are mild references to reproductive biology and a woman goes into labor (discreetly filmed). Characters use some mild language.

Family discussion: Philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that all decisions should be based on the greatest good for the largest number of people. How does that idea appear in this film and do you agree? What do you think will happen to Franklin? What is the law of levers and how do you see it around you?

If you like this, try: “Superman,” The Fantastic Four comics, and maybe just for fun watch the earlier films so you can compare them.

NOTE: Stay through the credits for one extra scene indicating where the story is going and, at the very end, a nostalgic moment.