FREEZE FRAME: “Ready Player One” (PG-13), “Loveless” (R)

There probably isn’t a director better suited to adapting Ernest Cline’s pop novel “Ready Player One” for the big screen than Steven Spielberg. It’s the sort of visual-heavy sci-fi extravaganza that a lesser filmmaker like Michael Bay would have made a complete mess of. Tye Sheridan stars as a kid who, in the dystopian future, plays a virtual reality game in an attempt to save mankind from an evil corporation. While it deviates from the source material, Spielberg keeps everything in sharp focus and finds the sentimental heart beating at the story’s core. The game is packed with 80s pop culture references, so anyone who lived through that era will probably get pangs of nostalgia. For everyone else, it’s a rousing, entertaining adventure.

“Loveless” is a Russian drama that won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This bleak and heartbreaking film from Andrey Zvyagintsev (Andres VAY-gin-siv) is about a crumbling marriage and its adverse affect on an unwanted 12-year-old boy. When he overhears his parents bitterly discuss divorce and their plans to send him off to boarding school, the lad disappears. The quarreling parents join forces with local officials and volunteers in a desperate attempt to find him. The film is as chilling as a Moscow winter and could be interpreted as a harsh examination of Russia under Putin.

Also opening this week, “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony” is a suspense drama about a woman scorned. Taraji P. Henson stars. “God’s Not dead: A Light in the Darkness” is a faith-based film about a church’s rebuilding efforts after a fire. John Corbett and Tatum O’Neal are among the cast members. “Leaning Into the Wind” is a documentary about environmental artist Andrew Goldsworthy.

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