If it was good enough for the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, it’s surely good enough for the movies. Kill off a parent (too many stories to count), threaten a flapper with sexual assault (early 1930s Boop), quash a young protagonist’s confidence before restoring it (every animated everything, ever): It’s nerve-wracking just thinking about the real-life doubts, fears, crises, all resolved — we hope — just in time.

Pixar’s “Inside Out” (2015) leaned into old, turbulent emotions in a new way, all the way. The story dealt with 11-year-old Riley, a Minnesota girl into hockey, who relocated, uneasily, with her parents to San Francisco. A big move means big challenges for any kid — and any parent. Director Pete Docter and the “Inside Out” screenplay acknowledged Riley’s depression while underscoring her ability to manage it, and flourish. The emotions depicted in the control room of her mind — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust — navigated their increasingly tricky human charge, as well as their own clashing personalities. And people went; it was a hit.

I hope the same for “Inside Out 2,” the engaging sequel that pits the now 13-year-old Riley against new challenges and a tangle of new insecurities. It’s chaotic, sometimes very funny, occasionally wrenching, and at 96 minutes, exactly one minute longer than “Inside Out.”

The human storyline is simple and sure-footed. Riley hits puberty, which hits back as puberty does. She and her besties at school are invited to a summer hockey camp, which bodes well for their self-esteem and their social futures together.

But there are new kids in town, in her mind. Emotion management center honcho Joy (Amy Poehler providing the can-do, no-problem vocal inflections once again) must accommodate these new emotions led, anxiously, by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), along with Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and the très French and consistently witty embodiment of Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos, plumbing heretofore unplumbed depths of disaffected disengagement). Nostalgia pops in for a couple of appearances; June Squibb voices her, unerringly.

Riley piles up a stack of rapidly accumulated wince-worthy memories along with many good ones as she ingratiates herself with the cool older girls at the camp. She feels as if she cannot win this phase of her life. How to reconcile one established friend group with a longed-for new and cooler and slightly older one? Gradually, Riley’s innate good-heartedness gets sidelined while new, edgier, arguably meaner personality traits muscle in on the action. Anxiety becomes a huge presence in her summer of emotional riddles, just as it dominates the screenplay by Meg LeFauve (who co-wrote the first “Inside Out”) and Dave Holstein.

Anxiety’s on-screen presence is a lot. Too much? Maybe. How to vary these escalating scenes focused on a character, a feeling, who’s not quite an antagonist, but not a hero? These challenges have been acknowledged by the film’s creatives.

They didn’t solve everything, to be sure. Like most sequels to Pixar’s very good or great films, this one’s sometimes busy to a fault, and little monomaniacal in its pacing. But we’re are a long way here from the mechanical likes of “Monsters University” or “Cars 2.” “Inside Out 2” still feels human-made, and genuinely concerned about how Riley deals with this chapter of her life. The wordplay remains tiptop, as when Joy and company face a dangerous river crossing (memory bubbles substituting for water) known as the Sar-Chasm, which renders everyone’s expressed thoughts, sincere or not, in a jaded, “as if!” tone of adolescent dismissal.

Crucially, Phyllis Smith returns as the measured, morose voice of Sadness, alongside some new voices for familiar characters (Tony Hale in for Bill Hader as Fear; Liza Lapira in for Mindy Kaling as Disgust; Kensington Tallman replacing Kaitlyn Dias as Riley). The new emotions come from the first film’s developmental long list of possibilities. I love how Pixar, at its corporately owned peak, invested millions of dollars in figuring out how to wrangle some peculiar, hard-to-market narratives into workable shape. Even if “Inside Out 2” sometimes favors speed over, well, everything else, it’s gratifying to see an ordinary and, yes, anxious 13-year-old’s life, like millions and millions of lives right now, treated as plenty for a good, solid sequel, and without the dubious dramatics of the first movie’s climax.

What’s happening on the inside can be enough.

“Inside Out 2” — 3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG (for some thematic elements)

Running time: 1:36

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 13

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Expectations were all over the map for “Ride or Die” given the dismal moviegoing market thus far this summer and Smith’s less certain box-office clout. In the end, though, the Sony Pictures release came in very close to, or slightly above, its tracking forecast.

“Ride or Die,” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, is Smith’s first theatrical test since his 2022 slap of Rock earned him a 10-year Oscar ban. The “Bad Boys” film was in development at the time and ultimately went forward with about a $100 million production budget.

Smith starred in the Apple release “Emancipation,” but that film — released in late 2022 — was shot before the slap and received only a modest theatrical release before streaming.

This time around, Smith largely avoided soul-searching interviews looking back on the Oscars and instead went on a whistle-stop publicity tour of red carpets from Mexico to Saudi Arabia, where he attended what was billed as the country’s first Hollywood premiere. The 55-year-old Smith, who for years was one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,” the YouTube series “Hot Ones” and on Friday, made a surprise appearance at a Los Angeles movie theater.

Given that “Bad Boys” trailed May disappointments like “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “The Fall Guy” – both of which struggled to pop with ticket buyers despite very good reviews – the “Ride or Die” opening counts as a critical weekend win for the movie business.

“The fact that a movie overperformed is the best possible news,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “It seems like all we’ve been doing over the past few weeks and almost since the beginning of the year, with a couple of exceptions, is try to figure out why seemingly well-marketed, well-reviewed movies have underperformed. This ignites the spark that the industry has been waiting for.”

“Ride or Die” still didn’t quite manage to match the opening of the previous “Bad Boys” film: 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life.” That movie, released in January 2020, debuted with $62.5 million. After the pandemic shut down theaters, it was the highest grossing North American release of that year, with $204 million domestically.

“Ride or Die” added $48.6 million internationally. Though reviews were mixed (64% on Rotten Tomatoes), audiences gave the film a high grade with an “A-” CinemaScore. Black moviegoers accounted for 44% of ticket buyers, the largest demographic.

In the film, which comes 29 years after the original, Smith and Lawrence reprise their roles as Miami detectives. The plot revolves around uncovering a scheme to frame their late police captain (Joe Pantoliano). In one of the movie’s most notable scenes, Lawrence slaps Smith and calls him a “bad boy.”

Movie theaters will need a lot more than “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” though, to right the ship. Ticket sales are down 26% from last year and more than 40% below pre-pandemic totals, according to Comscore. A big test comes next weekend with the release of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” After sending several Pixar releases straight to Disney+, the studio has vowed a lengthy, traditional theatrical rollout this time.

Last weekend’s top film “The Garfield Movie,” slid to second place. Also from Sony, the family animated comedy collected $10 million in ticket sales over its third weekend, bringing its domestic gross to $68.6 million.

The weekend’s other new wide release, “The Watchers,” failed to click with moviegoers. The horror film, directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of M. Night Shyamalan, is about a stranded 28-year-old artist in Ireland. Following poor reviews, the Warner Bros. release grossed $7 million in 3,351 theaters.

That allowed “If,” the Ryan Reynolds imaginary friend fantasy, to grab third place in its fourth weekend of release, bringing the Paramount Pictures cumulative domestic total to $93.5 million. Rounding out the top five was “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which added $5.4 million in its fifth weekend of release. It has grossed $150 million domestically and $360 million worldwide.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” $56 million.

2. ”The Garfield Movie,” $10 million.

3. “If,” $8 million.

4. “The Watchers,” $7 million.

5. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” $5.4 million.

6. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” $4.2 million.

7. “The Fall Guy,” $2.7 million.

8. “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” $2.4 million.

9. “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” $1.9 million.

10. “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” $1.8 million.

They’re not attributes at all, really. They’re more like placeholders for the seats you wish they had. In a word: tough. They’re tough on the hindquarters. Noisy, too. You even think about shifting your weight during a screening, and the seat intuits your intentions and commences to squeaking before you actually make a move.

But changes are coming, all 740 of them.

Following the Aug. 11 presentation of the Lakeview theater’s final 70 MM Film Festival attraction, the theater’s main venue closes its grand, slightly careworn doors for a $750,000 renovation including new seats, new carpeting, new lighting and replastering, repair and general spiffing-up of the proscenium arch framing the screen. (The smaller one will remain open.)

Reopening is scheduled to reopen on Sept. 6 in time for the annual Noir City festival, hosted by Eddie Muller of Turner Classic Movies and the nonprofit Film Noir Foundation.

Here’s some intel on what’s coming soon.

THE SEATS: “Yes, I sat in them,” Music Box general manager Ryan Oestreich told me. “The Irwin Seating Company of Walker, Michigan, sent us a sample. What people want is support, and a nice, level seat that folds up without making noise. And cup holders! Now we’ll have cupholders. It’s ridiculous we’ve gone this long without them.” All but 34 of the 740 new seats will have them.

 THE ARMRESTS: “Wooden armrests, really nice wood. We’re trying to maintain the historic atmosphere of the room, and we picked out seats that do that.” Plus you can …

SPONSOR A SEAT: If your ego’s telling you “put your name, someone’s else’s name” on a nice shiny tiny metal plate on a nice new armrest on a nice new Music Box Theatre seat, you can do it. Name of a business, your movie-loving grandparents, whatever. It’s $750 for one seat, $1,400 for a pair; more at revive.musicboxtheatre.com

UNDER YOUR FEET: This summer’s renovations include patching the problematic areas of the theater’s concrete floor with a new epoxy coating. “Paint doesn’t work,” Oestreich says. “When you paint floors you get a five-, maybe 10-year lifespan on the job. We’re applying this industrial grade epoxy with a 25-year life. Grippier surface, too, which is better for safety and easier to clean.” New carpet, too; design to be determined (the staff is still assessing samples), but if the Music Box Theatre is essentially a period picture unto itself, the carpet, Oestreich says, needs to complement the period.

THE ARCH: The proscenium arch framing the Music Box stage, and the screen dominating it, needs new plaster, which means scaffolding, which is a big reason for the nearly month-long shutdown of the big venue. Plus a sponge-cleaning once the plaster work is done.

THE RATIONALE: “Each year since 2016,” Oestreich says, “we’ve invested anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 back into the building. The bathrooms, the marquee (replaced in 2017, originally estimated at $250,000, eventually costing $400,000), new roof, new AC unit for the main theater, all of it. It’s expensive. And it’s a risk, closing down the main theater for a month. It’s our main revenue generator.” And that, Oestreich says, is why they’re finding ways to get Music Box loyalists to pitch in and get something for it.

SEATS FOR SALE: The theater’s working with the nonprofit Rebuild Exchange to yank out, lovingly, the current, variously worn, uneven, slightly lumpy seats, some aisle seats equipped with remnants of the original 1929 brass accents. They’re selling them to general public, in sets of two or four. Details to come. There are other ways to give back go the venue and its makeover. Donate $100 or more and you get the movie poster of your choice, from the Music Box’s 22-year-old archive.

“We’re able to make these renovations because of the community built around this place,” Oestreich says. “And we have a supportive owner. Without those two components, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Scholastic announced Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the fifth volume of Collins’ blockbuster dystopian series, will be published March 18, 2025. The new book begins with the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, set 24 years before the original “Hunger Games” novel, which came out in 2008, and 40 years after Collins’ most recent book, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”

Lionsgate, which has released film adaptations of all four previous “Hunger Games” books, announced later on Thursday that “Sunrise on the Reaping” will open in theaters on Nov. 20, 2026. Francis Lawrence, who has worked on all but the first “Hunger Games” movie, will return as director.

The first four “Hunger Games” books have sold more than 100 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages. Collins had seemingly ended the series after the 2010 publication of “Mockingjay,” writing in 2015 that it was “time to move on to other lands.” But four years later, she stunned readers and the publishing world when she revealed she was working on what became “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” released in 2020 and set 64 years before the first book.

Collins has drawn upon Greek mythology and the Roman gladiator games for her earlier “Hunger Games” books. But for the upcoming novel, she cites the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume.

“With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,'” Collins said in a statement. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

The “Hunger Games” movies are a multibillion dollar franchise for Lionsgate. Jennifer Lawrence portrayed heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film versions of “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay,” the last of which came out in two installments. Other featured actors have included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland.

“Suzanne Collins is a master storyteller and our creative north star,” Lionsgate chair Adam Fogelson said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more fortunate than to be guided and trusted by a collaborator whose talent and imagination are so consistently brilliant.”

The film version of “Songbirds and Snakes,” starring Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, came out last year. This fall, a “Hunger Games” stage production is scheduled to debut in London.

A long-distance parrot delivery takes her (and parrot) to the Connemara region in western Ireland, through a scenic, oddly unmapped patch of forest where The Watchers reside. These creatures, barely glimpsed at first, move quickly, are prone to unsettling shrieks and, as the film proceeds, require more and more expository interludes for the four humans trapped in those woods. For now, they’re protected by a sleek concrete and glass bunker. Fanning’s character, Mina, is the fourth and latest visitor/prisoner, and the most determined to scoot.

The script follows the book’s story beats quite faithfully. The leader of the human survivors, Madeline (snow-haired beauty Olwen Fouéré, whose unblinking intensity makes every utterance stick), has been trapped in the magical forest — magical in a not-fun way — the longest. Ciara, whose husband has gone missing-presumed-dead in the woods, is played by Georgina Campbell (also good, though the role feels thin). Twitchy, slightly off Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) makes the best of things and follows all the rules for survival, dutifully.

The Watchers come out of their subterranean tunnels when the sun sets, and (no spoilers here) appear to have a great interest in simply studying the humans behind the thick but not impenetrable windows of the bunker. How’d that bunker get there? What do these Watchers look like? What do they want? What past tragedy haunts Mina? As in the novel, the answers emerge in due course.

The most insinuating elements of this debut feature (Shyamalan’s filmmaker father, M. Night Shyamalan, served as one of the producers) point to a filmmaker of legitimate promise and a knack for slow builds. The movie isn’t gory (strike one in 2024) or innately sadistic (strike two). It’s also a little sludgy in the writing. There are times in “The Watchers” when Madeline, a sometime educator, we’re told, turns into a de facto adjunct professor specializing in expository restatement.

Time and the next feature will tell if Shyamalan can further develop her visual assurance while realizing not every story turn benefits from a verbal recap or footnote. Even with its drawbacks, I found “The Watchers” worth watching, even with its odd (and perhaps too faithful to the book) final 15 minutes. The director works well with cinematographer Eli Arenson to envelop the chamber-sized ensemble in various shades of dread, or comfort.

This tale of supernatural riddles wouldn’t work at all if we couldn’t invest in Mina’s psychic burden. Fanning doesn’t have to stress it; she knows how to let it come through in small matters of body language, and in the eyes. That makes acting sound easy, which it is not. Neither is adapting a story involving a dense underlay of folklore, in this case to imperfect but absorbing results.

“The Watchers” — 3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror and some thematic elements)

Running time: 1:42

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 7

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Either way, Godzilla’s been an ideal companion.

However hard it’s been to explain that love. Some people just don’t get Godzilla.

But starting June 7, the Music Box Theatre in Lakeview is making an elaborate, affectionate case for the big guy that generations of G-Fans never thought possible. They call it “Godzilla vs. Music Box,” and, well, I have never felt more seen.

For one week, the esteemed art house will screen 24 of Godzilla’s 35 live-action movies, some Japanese, some American, all made since the atomic giant ate his first train 70 years ago. The centerpiece is a 24-hour marathon of Showa-era Godzilla — aka G-fandom’s shorthand for the classics, the 15 films made in Japan between 1954 and 1975, from the grim Hiroshima/Nagasaki allegory of the original “Godzilla” to later costumed, candy-colored, giant-monster smackdowns, culminating in the inspired lunacy of “Terror of Mechagodzilla.” A marine biologist falls in love with a mad scientist’s daughter, who is really a cyborg controlling Mechagodzilla, a robot built by space aliens, who themselves control a dinosaur with an orange mohawk and unleash both monsters, only to be beaten by Godzilla, with an assist from Interpol.

Who couldn’t fall in love with that?

The weird malleability of a 400-foot-tall monster has meant sometimes Godzilla is a radioactive Ed Asner, a lumbering grump, four horsemen of the apocalypse rolled into one cold-blooded lizard, and sometimes a defender of Earth. Sometimes both at once: “Godzilla Minus One,” last winter’s touching Japanese import, now the highest-grossing Japanese-language film in United States history and the first Godzilla movie to win an Academy Award (for best special effects), delivered an old-school nihilistic vision of the post-World War II doomstroller. Only months later, the Hollywood-made “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” itself a blockbuster, offered us that softer Godzilla — so exhausted he sleeps away his days curled into the Colosseum in Rome.

“Godzilla vs. Music Box” starts smartly with the historical Godzilla, the bad Godzilla. On Friday, there’s a double feature of “Godzilla Minus One” and 2016’s underrated “Shin Godzilla,” with an intermission panel discussion on Godzilla as an “atomic age anti-hero,” featuring local experts on Japanese culture and professor Yuki Miyamoto of DePaul University, whose work focuses on nuclear discourse and environmental ethics.

The birthday party continues Saturday with the marathon (as of this writing, it’s two-thirds sold out); a Sunday night screening of that iffy 1998 “Godzilla” by Roland Emmerich, followed by its Japanese response, “Godzilla 2000”; weeknight showings of a couple of Japanese-made Godzilla films from the ‘90s; a Field Museum entomologist presenting insects and a showing of “Mothra vs. Godzilla”; a screening of the matinee classic “Destroy All Monsters,” presented by TV legend Svengoolie; Godzilla comic book artists; Godzilla tattoo artists; Godzilla historians; Japanese toy vendors, Japanese snacks. If that’s not enough, the Chicago-based Japanese Arts Foundation, which helped organize this party, will continue festivities into the fall, with more G-events. (It’s not related to the Music Box festival, but G-Fest, the international Godzilla convention thrown annually in Rosemont, has its own 30th anniversary next month, July 12-14; more at www.g-festcon.com.)

“Godzilla fans are eating so well right now,” said Kyle Cubr, senior operations manager at the Music Box, who has been pushing for a Godzilla blow-out for years. He tracked down clean copies of the originals. He contacted one of the monster-suit actors for advice on prying prints out of Toho, Godzilla’s Japanese creator. He sought a rare copy of “Rodan” only to learn Quentin Tarantino has the best print and doesn’t part with it. Not until the past year, when Godzilla became G-Money again, have stars aligned. The 70th anniversary arrives in the wake of “Godzilla Minus One,” the ongoing popularity of the new American series from Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. and the success of the Apple TV+ Godzilla streamer with Kurt Russell, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.”

“Godzilla has never been bigger,” Cubr said.

In fact, he’s so big 70 years after his birth that Toho and Legendary now have a reported agreement that Toho can’t release a Godzilla film the same year Legendary releases one; that’s why, despite the success of “Godzilla Minus One,” it vanished from theaters soon after New Year’s Day and arrived on video more than six months after its release. So that Music Box screening — “we received a special exemption,” Cubr explained — is rare right now.

All of which, to this G-Fan of Gen-X vintage, rings bittersweet.

Godzilla toys! Godzilla historians! To be a Godzilla fan decades ago meant an occasional movie still in the Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, a goofy Saturday morning cartoon, few toys and a short-lived Marvel comic. I was so starved for Godzilla, I went late to Jimmy Bricker’s birthday party because “Godzilla Vs. Megalon” was on “Creature Double Feature” and I had not seen it. I’m sure I gave him a better excuse.

These days Godzilla is such a familiar, occasionally poignant import that Saira Chambers, executive director of the Japanese Arts Foundation and director of the Japanese Culture Center, decided Godzilla would be the theme of the year for those Chicago organizations. In November, they’re throwing a Godzilla-themed gala. In March, they launched the Godzilla Association for Women, Thems and Non-Femmes. Chambers’ background is in nuclear non-proliferation work, including a stint at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. She loves that Godzilla has become a modern Trojan horse for concepts of peace and nuclear power. To that, I would add thoughts on handcrafted filmmaking, Japanese aesthetics, species conservation and disaster preparedness. Godzilla, after 70 years, almost seems respectable. “He embodies ideas we can’t always wrap our heads around,” Chambers said. “But the main thing is that, for whatever reason you hold onto, he’s still capturing lots of hearts. Godzilla’s still around.”

“Godzilla vs. Music Box” runs June 7-13 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.;  www.musicboxtheatre.com

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

O’Sullivan told me this the other morning in the living room of the fourth-floor Rogers Park walk-up she shares with director and screenwriter Alex Thompson. They’re partners, with a 6-month-old son, Milo. And they just co-directed a movie together.

Sounds like trouble, Thompson concurs with a smile. “Which is why we waited a year or two into our relationship to make a film together.”

That 2019 Chicago-made film, “Saint Frances,” starred O’Sullivan, well-known and respected for her work on many stages around town, as a 34-year-old nanny navigating a series of relational crossroads with her newfound employers, their little girl and her own ambitions.

Five years later, they’re back in strong form, this time as co-directors of O’Sullivan’s “Ghostlight.” It’s a tender comedy-drama starring Keith Kupferer, a veteran Chicago stage actor as well as a regular TV and sometime film presence, in a rare leading role as construction worker Dan, a tightly clenched man clouded by the family tragedy O’Sullivan’s screenplay gradually reveals.

Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Keith Kupferer’s real-life daughter, ignites the role of Dan’s daughter, whip-smart, touchy, grieving in disharmony with both her parents. Her mother, Sharon, is played movingly by another Chicago stage veteran, Tara Mallen, married to Keith and mother to Katherine. The family feeling is everywhere in “Ghostlight,” its title referring to the single-bulb lamp traditionally left illuminated on a theater stage when all else goes dark.

Avoiding his daughter’s therapy session one day, Dan meets a cast member of a no-budget storefront theater production of “Romeo and Juliet” by accident. This woman, Rita, smoking and bitter but sneakily big-hearted, is portrayed by Filipino actor Dolly de Leon, a 2022 Golden Globe nominee for the black comedy “Triangle of Sadness.” In a blink, Dan is thrown into rehearsals (they’re short one actor and he’s the first available human to wander by). In another blink, Dan moves into the role of teenaged Romeo, opposite Rita’s Juliet, likewise middle-aged and unconventionally cast in Shakespeare’s tragedy of enraptured young love.

The theatrics afoot in “Ghostlight” suggest a situation comedy, or at least a comic situation. The feelings underneath suggest otherwise. Its world premiere screenings had audiences in tears at the January 2024 Sundance Film Festival. This spring’s Chicago Critics Film Festival “Ghostlight” screening at the Music Box Theatre: different crowd, same tears —though that time, some assuredly were tears of joy at the sight of Lincolnwood’s beloved Novelty Golf and the adjoining Bunny Hutch.

IFC Films picked it up for theatrical distribution (100-plus U.S. screens) straight out of Sundance. Filmed in Waukegan and Chicago neighborhoods, the film opens commercially here and in New York on June 14, other U.S. markets June 21.

As for the relationship-killing part of co-directing: So far, so good. “We figured out it’s a lot like parenting together,” O’Sullivan says. “Co-directing, parenting — very similar.”

She and Thompson shot “Ghostlight” last September. At one point, O’Sullivan, eight months pregnant and dealing with COVID, co-directed in temporary isolation via monitor and walkie-talkie, communicating with Thompson on set.

That sounds stressful, yet nine months hence the key actors still talk about how not-stressful the filming days were. Ever. They talk about how Thompson’s visual and technical skills and comforting vibe complemented the actor-whisperer acumen of O’Sullivan, already well known to the Kupferers from their overlapping work on many Chicago stages.

“She knows how to talk to actors the way actors want to be talked to,” Kupferer says. “Kelly doesn’t prescribe notes to people; she draws stuff out of you.” Kupferer’s previous screen work, he says, meant the basics: “hit your mark and say your line and don’t screw up the shot. You’re only there for a day, maybe two.”

This project was different, besides being Kupferer’s first lead in a movie. In one tricky scene, when Dan enters a rehearsal as the new, deeply reluctant Romeo, utterly at sea. The actor couldn’t quite locate the angle he wanted after a couple of takes.

“And then Alex came over and said, ‘Look. You can take as much time as you want. We can take all day.’ That was something new for me. It was liberating. I’m tell you, together, he and Kelly are just terrific.”

Mallen notes the “the mutual respect they bring to a room. Any room, any situation. There was Kelly, eight months pregnant with COVID, and Alex would say ‘Hey! Kelly has a note!'” They worked smoothly through walkie-talkies. “No panic, no rushing. Just so much grace and kindness and mutual respect.”

And clarity, says Katherine Mallen Kupferer, who, like her parents, responded strongly to the filmmakers’ earlier “Saint Frances.” The direction she got, she says, was “just so simple, and so clear. That was really helpful for me.” Her performance confirms it. Coming off the Sundance premiere, both Keith and Katherine Mallen Kupferer signed with Fusion Entertainment’s Adam Kersh, already managing O’Sullivan and Thompson.

It has been a fine few months for all concerned. Also a little strange, having your two feature film collaborations coincide with a pandemic and an uncertain future for theatrical exhibition, streaming acquisition and movies approximate size, for example, of “Ghostlight.”

“Saint Frances,” distributed by Oscilloscope, enjoyed an auspicious film festival run in 2019. Then its March 2020 theatrical debut hit the pandemic wall. Many discovered director Thompson’s film later, via virtual screenings and then broader online streaming.

Then came a logical but worrying development, O’Sullivan says. “I think what’s happening to cinema is also what’s happening to live theater. People have gotten out of the habit of going. I saw way more plays (pre-COVID) than I see now, and not just because of our baby, but because I’m out of the habit.”

“Saint Frances” was filmed for $75,000. Post production, including sound recorded at Skywalker Sound, brought it to $130,000. “We cut so many corners in production,” Thompson told me. “We shot so fast. And it was a cicada summer. A lot of complaints from our sound design team that summer.”

The financing came from the back room of a Panera. At the time, Thompson ran a movie club for seniors in Bannockburn, near Highland Park, with monthly meetups at a Panera Bakery and Cafe. Each month he assigned his class two new movies on a similar theme, one new, one older, for discussion purposes. He asked his students if they knew anybody interested in making movies. The answer was yes; some turned out to be in the class, and others were contacted. And then a few others.

Separately, there was the matter of seed money, “which I learned is very useful, just so you can say ‘We have seed money,'” explains Thompson. “It might be $5,000. Or $100,000. Or just a thousand. But you need it to prove that somebody believes in you, other than you.” Chicago-based investor Ian Keiser and Dallas-based Pierce Cravens, who’ve backed Thompson since 2012, seeded “Saint Frances.”

Thompson then directed a feature he also co-wrote, “Rounding,” a low-budget mystery yet to be released. That cost just under $500,000. “Ghostlight” came in at just under $500,000 as well. Thompson and O’Sullivan’s next project, “Mouse,” a high school story scripted by O’Sullivan and co-directed by O’Sullivan and Thompson, begins filming this September near where Arkansas native O’Sullivan grew up. Budget: just under $3 million, roughly 23 times that of “Saint Frances.”

More money, more pressure, says O’Sullivan. Some sample dialogue from their Rogers Park living room the other day includes O’Sullivan’s use of the word “Sisyphean” to describe how she’s feeling about her newest script, only recently begun.

“Sisyphean?” asks Thompson, skeptical but easygoing. “Is it?”

“Maybe not to you, but …”

“Doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“Maybe it’s about me having just had a baby. And trying to write in a way so that people will want to make the movie.”

Thompson, smiling; they’re both smiling, thereby proving the importance of love, respect and tone modulation in any important relationship: “But you don’t have to convince anyone to make it.”

“Yeah, I do!”

“Well, I mean, it’s gotta be good …”

O’Sullivan: “Yeah! I’m trying to make it good! But the first draft is always garbage. Well, not garbage, but it needs a lot of work. I was talking to some aspiring writers the other day and I said (low, defeatist murmur): ‘I hate writing.’ And they were like, ‘You do?’ And I said, ‘Yeah! I hate being confronted by by my own mediocrity, again and again and again. (pause) I wonder if that ever goes away.”

Thompson has had his own doubts. “You come into directing,” he says, “thinking that being a director means calling the shots and having the answer to everything. In other words, an absence of curiosity. Everyone else gets to be curious, but you’re the one ‘on mission.’ But when we made ‘Saint Frances,’ because it dealt with abortion and Kelly wrote a personal story, I had a really intense sensitivity, I guess, about how it felt for me to direct that story. I found out I just had to defer to Kelly’s script. I remember (cinematographer Nate Hurtsellers) saying: ‘We just have to get out of the way. Get out of the way of what’s working.’ And I started to see that directing is about collaboration, and curiosity.”

Their best-known actor in “Ghostlight,” de Leon, is currently in Munich filming Season 2 of “Nine Perfect Strangers.” O’Sullivan and Thompson mailed her manager the script and, de Leon tells me, along with “a really sweet note, saying they’d watched ‘Triangle of Sadness’ and this and that. A lot of really nice things. I’m a sucker for people like that.”

“Have you met them?” she asks me. Yes, just yesterday. “They’re just wonderful people, with such good hearts,” she says. “I don’t know if I should say this, but initially they (talked to me) about the role of Sharon. But I just resonated more with Rita. I loved her. I’m a theater person like she is. So Adam (Kersh) asked them if they were open to me playing Rita, and they were, so I did it. And it’s a beautiful script.”

On a first read, de Leon found some of the “Ghostlight” plotting to be “a little convenient, a little too coincidental,” with Dan’s private anguish directly mirroring the events of “Romeo and Juliet.” She talked with O’Sullivan, who said, “‘I think if we show this in the most realistic way possible, it’s going to work.” De Leon adds, “And sure enough, it does.”

“With Kelly and Alex,” she says, “everything comes from the heart. The film wears its heart on its sleeve, but it’s not sappy. Watching it, it feels authentic and true. That’s what’s special about them, and the atmosphere they create on set. I’ll be honest with you, it was the best working experience of my entire life.”

She’s quiet for a second. “Do you know the expression ‘as above, so below’? It means if the people leading you are leading you in a certain way, the followers adopt that behavior. That’s Kelly and Alex. Leading by example.”

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Chris Rock is nowhere in sight in this movie. But at that moment, the footage spinning in the audience’s mind alongside what they’re watching is a flashback to the wallopalooza at the 2022 Oscars, when Smith over-avenged a “G.I. Jane” joke emcee Rock made at Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense.

The “Bad Boys” franchise is all about righteous payback, so when Lawrence triple-slaps Smith it’s the two-years-later comeuppance the audience knew would come someday, somehow. If the movie’s about anything other than franchise maintenance in a dark time, it’s about karma. (Lawrence’s character, Marcus Burnett, undergoes a near-death experience and can’t shut up about past lives.) If those slaps are photographed and edited with the artless blunt force and cramped, cellphone-screen-friendly framing of nearly everything else in “Ride or Die,” too bad. Those are matters of technique and finesse, neither of which matters here.

Millions remain loyal to the “Bad Boys” vehicles. They enjoy watching Smith and Lawrence do their thing. I enjoy watching them do their thing. But this time, the thing comes with a little extra strain, sloppier mood swings, a grimmer, more numbing array of slaughter. I wish more of “Ride or Die” were like its final 90 seconds, in which three characters are arguing about who’s going to use the grill. Funny, extraneous, nothing much, but a recent preview screening audience seemed especially grateful for the laughs on the way out. Getting there in a genre mashup this mashed-up — a killer giant-sized albino alligator? Sure, fine — is considerably less than half the fun.

Despite its initially rosy box office projections, now downgraded, “Ride or Die” feels about right for this frankly shaken moment in 2024 moviegoing. Habitual multiplex attendance has been eroded by uneasily merged companies formerly in the business of making movies. Now they’re in the business of figuring out streaming platform survival tactics first, and what to throw in the stream second. The fate of theatrical exhibition runs a distant third.

Still, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” constitutes an old-fashioned distribution model, the way “Bad Boys 3” did in early 2020, just before the pandemic. Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah return for duty. The script pits our bad men (Smith and Lawrence are a combined 114 years old now; I’m calling them men) against their corrupt Miami law enforcement ranks, mobbed up with drug cartels. Lowrey marries his physical therapist, Christine (Melanie Liburd, who spends much of the film as a battered, anguished hostage); Tasha Smith replaces Theresa Randle as Burnett’s wife, Theresa.

Returning players include Vanessa Hudgens as good cop Kelly, Joe Pantoliano as the late, dream-sequences edition of Capt. Howard; and Jacob Scipio as Lowrey’s son, whose beef with his dad periodically surfaces after Lowrey and Burnett are framed for murder, pursued by every bounty-hunting gang member with a weapon in Florida.

The script constitutes a string of bush-league errors we’re not supposed to care about, starting with the audience getting way, way out ahead of the characters regarding who’s hiding what. Do we go to franchise items like this, or put up with them on the couch, simply for the white-noise reassurance of gunfire, fireballs, trash talk and periodic reminders that, like the “Fast and Furious” movies, it’s all about family? I wonder.

There are other ways to approach a movie like this. How about making it funny when it’s trying to be? “Ride or Die” makes you pathetically grateful for any comic impulse, such as Lowrey and Burnett running into a Confederate flag-waving enclave of yahoo racists and improvising a Reba McEntire song at gunpoint. Smile, cringe, whatever, it provides a break from the generic, arrhythmic action beats, the witless raunch (Tiffany Haddish, wasted in a one-scene cameo), the clinically alluring gun porn.

Directors such as El Arbi and Fallah, who try everything and nothing matches, might want to check out some ’80s titles for visual and tonal inspiration, starting with Walter Hill’s “48 Hrs.” and Martin Brest’s “Beverly Hills Cop.” Those movies worked, and work still, even if they spun off terrible, heartless sequels. The originals remain super-solid examples of how substantially different action comedies can do justice to both action and comedy. There are more recent examples, but since the nervous 2024 screen economy is stuck in a perpetual time loop with whatever worked before, whether the new script works or not, these two Eddie Murphy ringers are a good place to start.

We can talk plenty about the visual aggravations of “Ride or Die.” But everything has a chance to go fundamentally wrong with a movie long before the first day of filming. If a movie doesn’t care enough about its selling points, aka the stars, to give them decent lines more than twice per hour, the “bad” in “Bad Boys” ends up being the wrong kind of bad. And, in a truly sad way, its own review.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” — 1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong violence, language throughout and some sexual references)

Running time: 1:55

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 6

Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Four films from the January 2024 edition of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, will be screened at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts in Hyde Park and at the Davis Theater in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. Two are documentaries: “Luther: Never Too Much,” director Dawn Porter’s documentary on the late R&B powerhouse Luther Vandross; and “Sugarcane,” directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, an account of cyclical abuse perpetuated in the Canadian Indian residential school system.

The other two are feature films: Aaron Schimberg’s dark comedy “A Different Man,” addressing themes of ableism, disability, identity and body horror; and director Caroline Lindy’s “Your Monster,” described by Sundance programmer Ana Souza as “a welcome re-steering of the rom-com into darker realms” starring Melissa Barrera.

The Sundance x Chicago weekend’s five panel discussions range from the screenwriter and filmmaker-centric “Playing for Keeps: How development labs could be the investment that leads to local artistic sustainability,” i.e., how the Sundance Institute’s projects might be adapted to other cities such as Chicago, to “Stronger Together: How festivals, art houses, and independent exhibitors are working together to revive and reinvent the theatrical experience in the post-pandemic era.”

Sundance Film Festival director and Indiewire co-founder and former editor Eugene Hernandez and Facets executive director Karen Cardarelli lead the “Stronger Together” panel.

Tickets for the films go for $20; the panels are free but require reservations and seating is limited. The late June project also features community events and master classes, with details to come. Much of the activity will take place in the downtown Chicago Cultural Center.

Sundance Institute x Chicago runs June 28-30 at Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.; Davis Theater, 614 N. Lincoln Ave.; Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. For more information go to SundanceInstitutexChicago.com.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

“ The Garfield Movie ” earned a chart-topping $14 million in ticket sales while “Furiosa” settled into second place, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

“Garfield” fell only 42% in its second weekend in North America. It also topped the global box office adding $27 million from international territories, bringing its running worldwide to $152.2 million. The animated pic featuring the voice of Chris Pratt will essentially have the market to itself until “Inside Out 2” arrives on June 14.

“Furiosa,” meanwhile, fell 59% from its first weekend, adding $10.8 million from 3,864 locations in the U.S. and Canada. That puts its running domestic total at $49.7 million and its global sum at $114.4 million against a $168 million production budget.

There were several new releases that opened on over 1,000 screens this weekend: Sony/Crunchyroll’s anime “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle”; IFC’s horror “In a Violent Nature”; Roadside Attractions’ Diane Keaton-Alfre Woodard-Kathy Bates comedy “Summer Camp”; And Bleecker Street’s father-son drama “Ezra.” None managed to crack the top five, however.

Disney also released the well-reviewed “ Young Woman and the Sea,” starring Daisy Ridley as the first woman to swim the English Channel, but did not report its ticket sales. Likewise, Richard Linklater’s “ Hit Man ” is currently playing in select theaters around the country before it comes to streaming next week, but Netflix does not release box office numbers.

Third place went to Paramount’s “ IF,” with $10.8 million in its third weekend. John Krasinski’s imaginary friends fantasy starring Ryan Reynolds and Cailey Fleming has now made over $80.4 million domestically. Disney/20th Century Studios’ “ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ” landed in fourth place in its fourth weekend with $8.8 million. It has now made $140 million domestically and $337.1 million globally.

And the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action-comedy “ The Fall Guy, ” which is currently available to purchase at home, rounded out the top five with $4.2 million, bringing its domestic total to $80.3 million. Globally, the Universal release has made $157.9 million.

“Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” based on the Japanese high school volleyball series, made an estimated $3.5 million from 1,119 locations. The slasher “In a Violent Nature” opened to $2.2 million from 1,426 locations (a massive release for IFC Films and Shudder). And, “Ezra,” about a stand-up comedian (Bobby Cannavale) and his autistic son, earned $1.2 million from 1,320 screens.

The 2024 box office is struggling compared to both last year (down 23.9%) and pre-pandemic standards (down 42.2% from 2019 and 46.4% from 2018), according to data from Comscore. On this weekend last year, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” opened to $120.7 million while “The Little Mermaid” was still pulling in over $41.4 million in its second weekend. This year has yet to have any film open to over $100 million domestically.

While “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” had yet to storm theaters at this point last year, there had been several substantial hits including “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.36 billion global total), “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($845.5 million) and “Fast X” ($704.7 million).

The top-grossing movie of this year remains “ Dune: Part Two,” which Warner Bros. released in early March and has made over $711 million globally. Its domestic take of $282.1 million represents 10.5% of the overall box office for 2024.

“Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve over the weekend said that he was “disappointed to still be number one” while at the Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto where he was collecting an award.

“I hope soon that there will be other successes at the box office,” Villeneuve said, as reported by Yahoo. “I hope sooner or later that this summer box office will be much better.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Garfield Movie,” $14 million.

2. “IF,” $10.8 million.

3. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” $10.8 million.

4. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” $8.8 million.

5. “The Fall Guy,” $4.2 million.

6. “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” $3.6 million.

7. “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” $3.5 million.

8. “In a Violent Nature,” $2.1 million.

9. “Ezra,” $1.2 million.

10. “Sight,” $1.1 million.