Entertainment

It would be easy to dismiss “Smile” as just another seasonal scare-fest.

Making a movie about famous funny people: super hard. Audiences spend half the time watching it performing stupid checklist tricks in their minds.

The Puppetry Arts Institute presents "In the Mirror: Three Tales from Asia" this Saturday. The show is performed by Monica Leo of the Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre.

With two published sequels ready and waiting, DreamWorks Animation has a franchise in the works with “The Wild Robot,” a big success in its first weekend. It’s good, too. Based on the first of three books by writer-illustrator Peter Brown, the feature runs on the same spirit of well-paced adventure and strategic shifts in mood found in the first “How to Train Your Dragon,” or in a more openly comic vein, the first “Kung Fu Panda.”

What: Encore Theatre of Independence presents the comedy "Dearly Beloved!” by Jones, Hope and Wooten (2005), directed by Patricia McLaughlin and Michael Masterson and produced with permission of Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Naive, decadent, sluggish, dazzling, touchingly sincere in its belief that “a vital conversation” about the state of our nation can save us, even with barbarians at the gates: There’s something to vex everyone in “Megalopolis.” Francis Ford Coppola’s new film is a philosophical argument for the artist’s place in society disguised as a movie that does not care for delivering what you want, or think you need.

New horror film “Speak No Evil” hits theaters this weekend, starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy and Aisling Franciosi. It’s a remake of a 2022 Danish horror film directed by Christian Tafdrup and written with his brother Mads, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently streaming on Shudder — it’s well worth the watch before, or after, you see the remake.

What: City Theatre of Independence presents the comedy "Noises Off!” by Michael Frayn (1982), directed by Bill Pelletier and produced by arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.