MOVIES: two from or about super popular games and a sequel that brings Sandler and Aniston together again

There's a sequel to a massive hit and also a lot of gaming and killing in the new movies this week. One game sends us a grand adventure. Another tells a true story mixed with international and corporate intrigue. The violence is John Wick-like, set in South Korea and also corporate.

Here's the list:

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: 4 stars

Tetris: 3

You Can Live Forever: 3 ½

Murder Mystery 2: 2 ½

Kill Boksoon: 2 ½

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS HONOR AMONG THIEVES: A rarity. A film based on a game that is actually very good. Pull up your love of adventure movies, like the old swashbucklers, and fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, and you're bound to enjoy this one. The game has been around almost 50 years now and is credited with starting the role-playing genre that's so big these days, especially on the internet. And no, you don't have to know anything about the game (I've never played it) but fans will, I'm told, find lots of references to it, aka easter eggs, to make them happy. More important, the film respects the game, not like previous films that joked too much and failed at the box office. This one just goes with the far-fetched cum-impossible events and has fun doing it.

Chris Pine plays a likeable rogue and thief who is trying to repair his life. His wife was murdered and his daughter has fallen under the spell of a villain, played with unctuous self-possession by Hugh Grant. He proclaims “I'm prepared to do terrible things to get what I want.”

There's a comical gleam in his eye as he says it, just a touch and not enough to mock. (He comes off much better than Jeremy Irons did as another villain in a previous film). Pine can bring his wife back from the dead if he can get to the Tablet of Reawakening. It's locked up in a vault in the city that Grant controls and requires the Helmet of Disjunction to get at it. (Mystical fantasy, this is, for sure).

Along with Pine on this quest are Michelle Rodriguez as a very-tough barbarain, Justice Smith as an insecure sorcerer and Sophia Lillis as a young Druid. They'll run into an array of wizards, soldiers, creatures and assorted beings just like in such games. An obese dragon is a highlight as is a sequence at a rock bridge that requires exact procedures to cross. They're not met and what happens next is very reminiscient of Lord of the Rings. The film is written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, who (as in their earlier work) spin a movie of breezy fun and adventure. (In theaters) 4 out of 5

TETRIS: While we're on the subject of electronic games, here's the story behind one of the most popular: Tetris, with those ever-raining-down bricks that you have to assemble in complete lines. You may not know that there's a complex international thriller behind it. The film, by Scottish director Jon S. Baird , tells it based on true events but you do have to wonder how much of it is true. A car chase through Moscow with the KGB in pursuit seems imaginary. Also you get the impression that Tetris brought down the Soviet Union. That surely is an exaggeration, even though we see an actor as Gorbachev saying the USSR is broke and needs a Tetris deal. The movie is all about that deal.

A US enterpreneur (Taron Egerton) sees the game displayed at a consumer electronics show in Law Vegas, realizes the rights to it aren't locked down and tracks down the inventor (Nikita Efremov) in Russia . That stirs up the authorities who consider him a capitalist trying to steal from Russia. Foreigners aren't allowed to enter a state-run business office without an official invitation. He does so anyway. Competitors come along including one (Toby Jones) who snags some rights, and long-distance from England the blowhard industrialist Robert Maxwell played by Roger Allam. The rivalry gets heated as they struggle over different rights, arcade, computer or hand-held, and over price. You might not have expected these negotiations to be so exciting. Or a movie today to be so anti-USSR. This is practically a Cold War tract in which everybody is being watched, there's nothing in the stores to buy, people are poor and officials are corrupt. But it's engrossing. (AppleTV+) 3 out of 5

YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER: Add this to the list of young lesbian romances. It's a genre that has brought quite a few titles in recent years and this one is so sensitively real it's bound to resonate. Not only with gays, but with anybody who enjoys a love story. Add this complication—it takes place in a Jehovah's Witness community—and you get a most interesting yarn. And, because Sarah Watts, who co-wrote and co-directed the film with Mark Slutsky, grew up in a Witness community, it feels authentic.

Jaime (Anwen O’Driscoll), whose father has just died and whose mother needs some time to heal, is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Quebec. They're Witnesses and she's expected to obey the rules. No holidays or birthdays are celebrated. And "field service" is required.

She stays sitting during the national anthem in one scene and in another has a craving for cake she can't have. And gay romance is wrong. But in church she has eye contact with sweet-looking Marike (played by Vancouver's June Laporte) and the two are drawn together. Marike is devout; Jaime is not and at times skeptical. That difference propels the drama, The film doesn't criticize; it tries to understand. It does a good job of presenting the beliefs, including that armageddon will be followed by Paradise and “nobody will get old.” This is basically a teen romance, but atypical. (In theaters: Toronto since last week, now adding Vancouver and Montreal) 3 ½ out of 5

MURDER MYSTERY 2: Four years ago Netflix had one of its biggest hits ever with the first movie and here's the sequel. It's not as good as the original, the humor is strained, the pace is frenetic and the story doesn't flow as smoothly. It makes you wonder if Adam Sandler really deserved that Mark Twain Comedy Prize he got recently. When the event was shown on TV it was heavily peppered with plugs for this film.

Sandler and Jennifer Aniston are Nick Spitz and his wife Audrey. They get a call from a friend they made in that earlier movie who invites them to his wedding. When they get there he's kidnapped. They're just the people to solve it because he's a former cop (though on the beat not as he lied, a detective) and now together they're running their own agency. They can claim expertise. So can we because what happens is so much like what we've seen before. There's the bride (Mélanie Laurent), the groom's sister (Kuhoo Verma), a former soccer player (Enrique Arce) and a mysterious countess (Jodie Turner-Smith). They're all recognizable from TV series or films. Several are suspects. Mark Strong as an agent from England's MI-6 arrives to investigate and the action eventually gets us to Paris and up the Eiffel Tower where Aniston is made to dangle over the side. Silly, sort of fun but second-rate. (Netflix) 2 ½ out of 5

KILL BOKSOON: You want more like John Wick? Here's a film from South Korea with quite strong similarities. There's an association of assassins with a boss known as The Chairman who says in a speech that “killing is now a global business...we've earned respect.” He runs a company with a board of directors and strict rules. Never kill minors. Only do kills that the company sanctions and actually do what the company sanctions. One member, Gil Boksoon (the title is a nickname) refuses to carry out an order and gets into serious trouble. What makes this notable: she's a woman. “Women aren't really known for killing,” somebody says.

She's a single mother with a teenage daughter and full appreciation of her situation. “Killing people is easier than raising a kid,” she says. She's reluctant to renew her contract and every event to come tests her resolve to stay out. It's a different slant on that modern dilemma: balancing your work and private life. The film is overly stylish. An early kill is seen entirely in a reflection in a water puddle on a street. There's a fight pitting a knife against a magic marker. There's a knife fight in a room of manniquins. Another fight turns into a huge brawl. There are also competitors, younger killers coming along unrestrained by rules. The film is violent and flashy with a touch of philosophy. (Netflix) 2 ½ out of 5