Three of the finest actresses in movies play three grieving sisters in the very moving “His Three Daughters.” The “he” in the title is the father of the three women, and he is dying, almost entirely off-screen. Two of his daughters, the uptight, judgey, trying to maintain control Katie (Carrie Coon) and the placid, yoga and meditation-loving Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) have temporarily moved back into the apartment where the third sister, the weed-smoking Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) never left. She still lives with their father in the room she had as a child.

Beyond their different temperaments and the conflicting guilt, jealousy, and relief feelings of the two who have just arrived and mutual resentment with the one who stayed, there are additional stresses in their relationships. Katie and Christina are the man’s biological daughters. Rachel is a step-sister, the daughter of the woman he married after his first wife died, and yet she is the one who has been most devoted to their father.

Death watch for a parent is unbearably stressful under any circumstances, and family members often respond to the chaotic kaleidoscope of emotion by clamping down on anything that will give them a sense of control. For Katie, it is getting her father, who is barely conscious, to sign a do not resuscitate order, and she barks at Rachel for not getting it done earlier, and for being high all the time. Christina copes by calling home to reassure her very young daughter because it is the first time they have been apart. Rachel is more sanguine, or maybe she’s just in a haze.

The sisters go from understated digs to bickering to outright hostility. Confined to the apartment, not knowing how long it will take, two of them are far from home and the third feels that the other two are intruders who do not consider her a full and respected partner. All three give beautiful, layered performances that reflect a depth of understanding of each character’s history and they way they respond to fear and grief.

Near the end of the film, it takes a big chance that some may find confusing or too much, with a monologue from a character played by Jay O. Sanders. For me it was wise and very moving, a counterweight to the pettiness and misdirection of much of what has been going on between the sisters. It brings the story to a sobering but satisfying conclusion.

Parents should know that this movie is about a very sad death of a father and the attendant family stress. Characters use strong language, drink and smoke marijuana, and there are some sexual references.

Family discussion: Why were the sisters so different? What do we learn from Katie’s and Christina’s calls with their daughters? What is the meaning of Vincent’s speech?

If you like this, try: “Two Weeks,” with Sally Field and “A Monster Calls”

Two old pros play two old pros in the irresistible “Wolfs,” basically an hour and 40 minutes of George Clooney and Brad Pitt bickering plus some crime stuff (drugs, chases, shooting), and there’s nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, it is delightfully entertaining.

The title may be a callout to Wolfe, the Harvey Keitel character in “Pulp Fiction,” the fixer, the clean-up guy, the hyper-capable, unflappable character who can make even the messiest, most embarrassing, most serious, bloodiest, lock-you-up-forever or get-you-killed situation go away. We are smack dab in the middle of exactly such a situation before the credits roll. While we are looking at a winter nighttime skyline, we hear the sounds from just one penthouse hotel room, one which we will later learn goes for $10,000 a night.

It’s a very bad sound. It’s a scream of shock and pain, with shattered glass, followed by the words and gasps for breath one might imagine someone present in such a situation might say. That person is Margaret (Amy Ryan), a “law and order” prosecutor, and she is horrified to find that a young man she has invited to hotel suite has apparently accidentally killed himself by jumping off the bed and landing on the now-shattered bar cart.

After a gruesomely funny retrieval of her purse from under the body, she scrolls through her blood-spattered phone to find someone to call. There is a number with no name. Just two brackets: []. She has been told to call this number if she needs help and she has been told what to say. “I was told that if I needed help, serious help, I was to call you. There is only one man in the city who can do what you do.”

George Clooney’s character, identified in the credits only as “Margaret’s man,” so what the heck, we’ll just call him George Clooney, tells her not to talk to anyone or do anything and he will be right over.

He arrives and gets to work. But then someone else arrives, too, “Pam’s man,” who we will call Brad Pitt. He also is “the only man in the city who can do what you do.” Pam, the owner of the hotel (I won’t spoil the Oscar-winning performer who provides the voice) has her own “wolf.” And we settle in to see these two guys, every bit as good at what they do, radiating screen charisma, brilliant acting, and the comic rhythms they have perfected over decades of friendship, as their characters are at what they do, whether it’s providing a change of clothes for the client to getting rid of a body.

Writer/director John Watts keeps the story moving briskly and it is a treat to see it all play out, with some wild twists and turns that include the wedding of a gangster’s daughter, a seedy motel with a safari room that rents by the hour, and coffee with a very big fan of Frank Sinatra. It is fun to see the two characters, master problem solvers able to consider every risk and option, try to top one another, and yes, grudgingly learn that they have more in common than they thought and yes, that it might be nice to know someone who understands what it’s like. But that takes a while and it is hilarious and exciting along the way thanks to a fresh mix of action and comedy and the sizzling chemistry of the co-stars. Outstanding camera work from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and music video cinematographer DP Larkin Seiple captures just the right tone, making the most of the winter setting and locations like Chinatown, a couple of bars, and a small suburban home.

I won’t spoil the identity of a third party who ends up being part problem, part solution, except to say he takes them on quite a chase (in his underwear!) and provides a nice naive counterpoint to their seen-everything, cannot be flustered demeanor.

From about the halfway point, I was not just rooting for them to succeed; I was rooting for a sequel. Good news: one is on the way.

Parents should know this movie includes a lot of violence including chases and shoot-outs with some gory and disturbing images and many characters killed. It also includes drug dealers and other criminals and very strong language. Characters drink alcohol.

Family discussion: Do you think there are people like the wolfs? What kind of background would they have and who would have their contact information? What is the importance of their view that one’s word is “the measure of a man?”

If you like this, try: “Oceans 11”

I don’t think there is a sadder sentence than this one: “I thought I would always be able to go back.”

We all know that feeling, captured memorably in the last act of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” When Emily gets a chance to revisit a day from her early teen years, the mingled joy, nostalgia, and regret for taking every part of that life for granted are overwhelming. Something like that happens to Elliott (a terrific Maisy Stella) on her 18th birthday. Instead of dinner with her family, Elliott (a terrific Maisy Stella) goes off with her friends for a celebration involving some sketchily-sourced mushrooms. While her friend Ro (Kerrie Brooks) dances and her friend Ruthie (Maddie Zeigler) zonks out, Elliott has a conversation with…her future self (Aubrey Plaza), age 39.

If you were 18, what would you ask your future self? (Don’t ask for stock tips; that’s off limits.) If you had a chance to talk to your 19-years-younger self, what advice would you give? If you were 18, what advice would you take?

Elliott’s family owns a cranberry farm in a spectacularly beautiful section of Canada. But all she can think about how how excited she is to be leaving — she is about to go to college in Toronto and she has a been dreaming of the excitement of independence in a big city for as long as she can remember. Her middle brother, Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) loves the farm and is happy to be the one to take it over when his parents retire, but Elliott cannot wait for what she considers her real life to begin.

Older Elliott has had almost two decades of that “real life.” The wonderful Aubrey Plaza does not often get a chance to show the kind of warmth she does here, and it is a pleasure to see. Her 39-year-old Elliott is fragile in a way the younger version is not. She insists she is happy with her life (and proud to be a near-40-year-old PhD student) but she has clearly experienced some difficult times. The least successful moments in the film are a few brief indications that humans have had some setbacks in the next 29 years. They seem to be from an earlier draft that someone forgot to leave out.

The one very clear piece of advice older Elliott is very firm about is telling her younger self to stay far away from anyone called Chad. This is a mystery because younger Elliott has no idea who that might be and she is exclusively attracted to girls, so she cannot imagine how anyone named Chad might be a problem.

And then Chad (Percy Hynes White) suddenly appears, as Elliott is skinny dipping in a pond. He is her parents’ summer hire for the farm. And he is…irresistible. Despite her promise, despite her resolve, despite her fundamental notion of herself as exclusively gay, his patient kindness and “symmetrical face” are intoxicating.

Older Elliott has somehow managed to put her phone number in younger’s cell (as My Old Ass), so they are able to have some conversations and text exchanges, and older keeps reminding younger to have nothing to do with Chad. She also tells younger to be nicer to Mom (a lovely Maria Dizzia) and her brothers. For those last few days before she leaves for college, younger Elliott takes time to realize how much she has at home and how much she will miss everyone and everything. One of the toughest parts of growing up is realizing that you will not always be able to go back, and, as Emily says in “Our Town” that no one is able to appreciate it while it is happening. “My Old Ass” conveys all of this with welcome heart and humor.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, teenage drug use, and sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: What would you tell your younger self? What would you ask your older self?

If you like this, try: “17 Again”

“Transformers One” has just about transformed me into a fan. I know — based on a toy and a Saturday morning cartoon series and lots of movies already so it was hard to imagine that they could surprise me, but they did, with well-designed action scenes, an origin story drawing from classic sources, and A-list actors bringing their A-game as voice talent.

Quick recap: Transformers turn from robot-y creatures into car creatures. The good ones are the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime and they befriend humans. The goofy one is Bumblebee. The bad guys are Decepticons, led by Megatron. The bots we meet here will become these characters.

It takes place long before the Autobots come to earth. They are on their home planet, called Cybertron, where an arrogant ruler cruelly oppresses the worker bots. Cybertron is in dire distress following a brutal war with the Quintessons.

There is a sharp class distinction between the overlords, who have cogs in their chests that give them the power to transform, and the cog-less workers, who spend their days doing drudge work in the mines, looking for Energon, the once-plentiful substance that sustains them.

They are literally kept in the dark, spending their days in the mine and being lied to about who they are, the history of Cybertron, and what is really happening.

Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) are best friends. Their support for one another is what keeps them going. They do not realize that the restrictions that constrain them keep them from noticing how different they are. Orion is more optimistic, willing to take some risks. D-16 does not want to get in trouble. “No bad things happen when you stay on protocol,” he says, as Orion is beginning to understand that protocol itself is the bad thing.

Orion enters himself and D-16 into a race reserved for bots with cogs. This challenging of the hierarchy brings the unwanted attention of the cog bots, who punish Orion and D-16 by reassigning them. That is where they meet a straight-laced supervisor named Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and the goofy, motormouthed B-127 (a very funny Keegan-Michael Key, sneaking in a reference to his “Substitute Teacher” sketch).

The four bots end up on the planet’s surface, where they discover they have been lied to about pretty much everything. They were not created without cogs; their cogs were taken from them. Now be-cogged and able to transform, they discover their new powers as they learn about the lies they have been told by the forces holding their community down.

The closer they get to escaping oppression, the more the two friends find they see everything differently. Orion sees hope and opportunity. D-16 sees threats that can only be removed through power. This almost Shakespearean divide (Othello and Iago, Professor X and Magneto) adds weight and meaning and a deeper sense of transformation to the various actions scenes,.

What makes that work is the superb voice talent. Hemsworth shows us Orion’s shift from generalized naive good will to a more mature understanding of his opportunity as a leader, even as he sees the sacrifices it may require. And Brian Tyree Henry matches him, going from hesitation to hurt to anger. We are genuinely sad to see the end of their friendship even as we recognize its inevitability.

Parents should know that this PG-rated film has extended action sequences, mostly with machines battling each other. Some are injured and broken/killed and an animal is blown up. There is some mild schoolyard language, with “screwed” perhaps the strongest used.

Family discussion: Why do Orion and D-16 see the world differently? How does hope affect Orion’s thinking? How does fear and anger affect D-16’s?

If you like this, try: the original cartoons and the Michael Bay live-action films

Happy fall! Some of what we’re looking forward to in September, October, and November, with sequels, a prequel, some based on books, some on true stories, and some are the prestige productions we will be seeing at the Oscars. The teams from two beloved classics are reuniting. In 1988, Tim Burton gave us “Beetlejuice,” and now Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara join him for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” with Jenna Ortega playing the daughter of Ryder’s character, Lydia. And Robin Wright and Tom Hanks, who starred in Robert Zemeckis’ Oscar-winning “Forrest Gump,” co-star again in a different story with Zemeckis directing. The trailer gives us a glimpse of some of the movie magic we’ll be seeing in a multi-generational family story called “Home,” showing their characters in their 20s.

We’re also getting a sequel to the DC Comics story of the Joker, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and a prequel with the origin story of the Transformers, and a look at a different kind of origin story, the very first episode of “Saturday Night Live” in 1975.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an abusive reform school, Nickel Boys, comes to the screen with Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Jimmie Fails from “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.” And two family action comedies for Christmas!

Plus two of the most anticipated films of the year, releasing for Thanksgiving — part one of “Wicked” and “Gladiator 2.” Here’s a glimpse at what’s ahead.

September

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, and Tim Burton are back in another story of the ghost with the most. “Wednesday’s” Jenna Ortega joins the cast as the daughter of Ryder’s character.

His Three Daughters Elizabeth Olson, Natasha Lyonne, and Carrie Coon are three sisters who are very different but have to find a way to work together to care for their dying father.

I’ll Be Right There Wanda (Edie Falco) takes care of everyone. Who takes care of her?

My Old Ass Would your young self want to meet your older self? Would she listen? What would your older self want to tell your younger self? Aubrey Plaza gets a chance to find out when her younger self conjures her up.

Wolfs In “Pulp Fiction” there is a character called Wolfe, played by Harvey Keitel, who gets called in to fix dire and messy situations that seem un-fixable. In “Wolfs,” “Oceans 11” stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt play rival versions of that character who are forced to work together.

The 4:30 Movie Kevin Smith’s semi-autobiographical story is a nostalgic comedy about a group of teenagers in the 1980s.

Subservience An android housekeeper/nanny develops some dangerous ideas.

Omni Loop Mary Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri star in a time loop story.

Also of note in September: The Neo-noir “Killer Heat,” the origin story/prequel “Transformers One,” an acerbic Ian McKellen as “The Critic,” “Continue” with writer-director-star Nadine Crocker based on her own life and mental health challenges, “Hounds of War” stars Frank Grillo in the story of mercenaries on a suicide mission, and festival favorite “A Different Man” with Sebastian Stan as a man with a disfiguring disease who has an operation to become handsome

October

Joker: Folie à Deux Lady Gaga joins Joaquin Phoenix in this sequel to the latest version of Batman’s most famous villain.

Saturday Night We’ve been staying up late to watch “Saturday Night Live” for half a century now, and characters, catch phrases, and stars from the show, still produced by Lorne Michaels and still live, are enmeshed in our culture. Jason Reitman wrote and produced the story of the very first episode.

We Live in Time Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield star in a romance from A24 that seems to have a mystical element.

Goodrich Michael Keaton plays the title character, who has to ask his estranged adult daughter (Mila Kunis) to help him take care of the children he had with his second wife.

Piece by Piece Music polymath Pharrell Williams tells his story — with LEGOs.

Also of note in October: “House of Spoils” a spooky story about a chef, “Nickel Boys” based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Tom Hardy returns in “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Brothers,” with Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as twins on the run, “Things Will Be Different, a sci-fi thriller, and Saoirse Ronin in “The Outrun,” based on Amy Liptrot’s bestselling memoir

November

Conclave A powerhouse cast brings us inside one of the most secret places on earth — the selection of a new pope.

Here Robert Zemeckis reunites with his “Forrest Gump” stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in this multi-generational family saga.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever A remake of the beloved film based on the book about a riotous production features Judy Greer, Pete Holmes, and Lauren Graham.

Red One Santa is missing! And there’s only one person who can rescue him, Dwayne Johnson, of course, with some help from Chris Evans.

Spellbound A princess has to save the day when her parents are enchanted.

Wicked What were Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West like as teenagers? Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo play the young witches in a movie based on the beloved Broadway musical, inspired by The Wizard of Oz. (Part 1 of 2)

Gladiator II Back to the arena! This time with Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Denzel Washington.