Ages 6 and older
“Minions” (PG): Consistently amusing if not consistently hilarious, “Minions” will give kids 6 and older the giggles over the pratfalls and general silliness of the rubbery, banana-yellow creatures. Adults can savor the multi-layered jokes and ’60s soundtrack. From their begoggled eyeballs to their nonsense speech — mixed with scraps of Romance languages — to their big emotions, the Minions are irresistible, even their deep need to serve villains is cute. The plot gets twisty, but kids will keep up: First, we learn some Minion “pre-Gru” history — their evolution from the primordial ooze, serving bad-guy dinosaurs, cavemen, vampires and even Napoleon, then exile in an Arctic cavern. Finally, Kevin, Bob and one-eyed Stuart venture out to find a new villain. They land in 1960s New York, hitchhike with a family of bank robbers to “Villain-Con” in Orlando and meet Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock), who hires them to steal Queen Elizabeth II’s crown. (91 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: A couple of gags involve mild toilet humor. There are Abominable Snowmen and bears. Scarlet’s husband tries to torture Kevin, Bob and Stuart, but it feels nice to their squishy selves. A chandelier falls and maybe kills someone. There is a big explosion. Rodent phobics note: There’s a sewer rat.
Ages 10 and older
“Mr. Holmes” (PG): Kids 10 and older with a fondness for old-fashioned whodunits may get quiet pleasure out of “Mr. Holmes.” Even if they only know the noisy, PG-13-rated “Sherlock Holmes” films starring Robert Downey Jr., they just might fancy a story in which Holmes is older than their grandparents. This delicately crafted and atmospheric fable, based on a novel by Mitch Cullin, puts the elderly Holmes (Ian McKellen) in 1947. He is 93 and losing his memory. An unsolved case haunts him. Alone and frail, Holmes settles into his house by the sea intending to live out his days beekeeping and sprinkling his food with “prickly ash,” a substance he hopes will cure his forgetfulness. His war-widowed housekeeper (Laura Linney) has a bright young son who loves reading about Holmes’s cases as recorded by doctor Watson. Holmes is a “real” detective in this story, his exploits embellished in books and films. Impressed by the boy’s intelligence, Holmes teaches him beekeeping and allows him to help unravel the unsolved case. (104 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: Holmes visits Japan and sees the ruins of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. Spoiler alerts: One unsettling scene shows the little boy barely alive and covered with insect bites, though he survives. The unsolved mystery involves a wife, her controlling husband and implications of murder and suicide.
PG-13
“Ant-Man”: Most teens and a lot of kids between 10 and 13 will get a charge out of “Ant-Man,” especially if they love comics, science, insects or any combination thereof. Despite the big digital effects, this is the most human of the recent Marvel Comics adaptations, with a different, gentler sort of sparkle and snap. There are references to “The Avengers” and the superhero agency SHIELD, but “Ant-Man” is its own film. Paul Rudd plays Scott, a skilled burglar newly out of prison and hoping to go straight and pay child support for his little girl, Cassie. Things go badly, so he agrees to rejoin his burglar buds on another heist. Breaking into a vault in a San Francisco house, he finds a strange suit and helmet, puts them on, hits a button and suddenly is ant-size, zipping through city sewers. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the original comic book Ant-Man, owns the house and invented the suit. Too old to keep scrambling his atoms, Pym wants Scott to be Ant-Man, break into Pym’s old company and steal back the miniaturization formula from Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who has nefarious plans and his own miniaturized alter-ego, Yellowjacket. (117 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: Yellowjacket aims a weapon at a person and an animal and reduces each to gelatinous puddles. The mayhem includes a few punch-ups, a wrecked helicopter and an exploding building. Scott’s little girl is threatened by Darren/Yellowjacket. The generally mild dialogue includes two S-words and a few less-crude expressions.
“Terminator Genisys”: This long but witty reboot of the “Terminator” franchise is full of action but rich in character, too. Teens into sci-fi thrillers should have a good time, even if they don’t know the earlier films well or at all. Frequent plot clarifications come straight from the lips of the original “I’ll be back” Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), whose outer skin has conveniently aged despite his robotic innards. The narrative shifts from 2029 to 1984 and years in between. Our narrator, Kyle Reese, a character from the first and fourth films, recounts the rise of Skynet and how its operating system unleashed nukes that killed 3 billion people. That became known as Judgment Day. John Connor has led an insurgency against Skynet machines ever since. He rescued Kyle as a child and raised him to fight. Kyle travels from 2029 to 1984, when the first film was set, to save Sarah Connor so that she may give birth to John. But Kyle finds that Sarah has made a friend of the Terminator sent by Skynet to kill her. Now all three traverse time to prevent Judgment Day. (125 minutes)
THE BOTTOM LINE: The fights don’t involve much blood, but there’s plenty of head-banging. Terminators get holes in their flesh or metallic skeletons but heal instantly. Nudity is implied in all time-travel scenes. There is one use of the F-word, but the rest of the dialogue is only moderately profane. The nuclear holocaust images are disturbing.