A plane delivering high-tech equipment flies into a storm and a crate falls out, landing on an island inhabited only by animals. Inside the crate is a super-intelligent, ultra-capable robot programmed to complete any task a human might require. The contrast between the natural world of the plants and animals and the metal and programming of the robot is the premise for this story, based on the book series by Peter Brown, told with humor and heart by specialist in “opposites attract” stories director Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon,” “Lilo & Stitch.”

On one side, fur, feathers, and scales. On the other side, metal and code. The robot, identified by the corporation that created it, is called ROZZUM unit 7134, is a kind of souped-up Swiss Army knife. One of the movie’s greatest pleasures is the way its infinitely adaptable parts and appendages are deployed. Nothing in the robot’s programming has prepared it for the island. But it is capable of learning and adjusting to its environment, so after failure to get a satisfying answer to questions like, “Are you my client?” and “Do you need assistance?” she (we will use that pronoun because the robot has the sweet voice of Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, takes the local next step. She sits down and observes her new environment to learn how to communicate with her fellow inhabitants, which enables us to hear what they have to say, thanks to the brilliant voice work of Pedro Pascal as a fox named Fink, Bill Nighy as a goose named Longneck, Ving Rhames as a falcon named Thunderbolt, Mark Hamill as a bear named Thorn, and Catherine O’Hara, hilarious as always, as Pinktail, a mother opossum covered with her babies.

Roz (as she will ultimately be called) could hardly be more poorly fashioned for this environment. It is funny to see her expect the animals to feel rewarded when she follows her programing by giving them stickers, promotional material for the company that made her, followed by a burst of confetti, even more out of place in the lush natural world than she does. The animals at first consider her a monster.

The early scenes about their unfitness for each other leads organically to interest, understanding, respect, and ultimately a very heartwarming sense of family. A turning point is Roz’s rescue of an orphaned goose egg, left alone after an accident and stolen by Fink for a meal. Roz does not understand what it means to care for the egg, and then, when it hatches and the little gosling imprints on Roz as its mother, she has a task at last: to teach the bird to eat, swim, and fly, so that it can be ready to migrate before it gets too cold. “I do not have the programming to be a mother,” Roz says. “No one does,” Pinktail correctly observes.

Roz develops what can only be described as feelings for the little goose, named Brightbill (Kit Connor). She loses some components and breaks down a bit, from pristine and shiny to scuffed and mossy, with a prosthetic calf made from a log.Is she mirroring what she sees around her? Is she creating the programming necessary to give a child a sense of security and the knowledge he is special to someone? Or is there some way for a machine to develop a soul? Or is it just a reflection of all of the damage to her mechanics? Possibly all of the above. But it is a smaller reach than one might think from being programmed to be of service to placing meaning and purpose on that imperative.

A lot more happens, including some parent-child estrangement (adolescents!) and a lot for Brightbill to learn from his fellow geese, as well as Fink becoming less “fox-y” and all of the animals learning to help each other. The action scenes are dynamic and involving but it is the gentleness of the lessons the characters learn about kindness that will make this film an endearing family favorite.

Parents should know that there is some sci-fi-style shooting. A character is killed off-screen sacrificing himself to save others and a character’s family is discreetly killed in an accident. Another character appears to have been eaten but is not. Characters use some schoolyard language.

Family discussion: What was the most important thing Roz learned and how did she learn it? If you had a Roz, what would you ask her to do? Do you think we will have machines like that?

If you like this, try: the books, and “The Iron Giant” and “Wall-E

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