‘Thalavan’, directed by Jis Joy and starring Biju Menon and Asif Ali, has hit theatres today, delivering an entertaining investigative thriller. Recently, Malayalam cinema has seen an influx of police-themed movies, raising the question of what ‘Thalavan’ has to offer. Biju Menon’s last release, ‘Thundu’, another police movie, received a lukewarm response at the box office, so audiences were curious about ‘Thalavan’. This film is well-crafted and contains enough substance to be considered a solid investigative story.

The story revolves around two police officers, Jayashankar (Biju Menon) and Karthik (Asif Ali), and how one becomes a suspect in a murder case. While the movie may not be excessively gripping, it certainly manages to capture your attention. From the outset, the film dives into the investigative phase, immediately hooking you to the story. There is also an ongoing ego clash between the two officers, though this subplot doesn’t significantly impact the main story.

I will (almost) always watch a film about the Beach Boys — the latest, titled simply “The Beach Boys,” premieres Friday on Disney+ — not just for the part they played in American musical and cultural history but for the part they played in my own. From 1966 to 1969 my father worked for the band, in the capacity of a tour promoter; that these were their years of lesser popularity, as rock got heavy and dour and jammy, meant that this relationship gave me no cachet among my peers. But it was interesting to me.

I saw them play, in striped shirts, white suits, colorful velours and out of costume, at the Hollywood Bowl, when the kids still screamed during their shows; at the Melodyland theater-in-the-round across from Disneyland, when they seemingly couldn’t get booked any closer to L.A.; and at the Whisky A Go Go, when “Sunflower” was released. I saw Dennis Wilson drag race; his Shelby Cobra rolled over my toe as it was being pushed to the starting line, but as much of the weight had been stripped out of the car, no damage was done. Bruce Johnston introduced me to Eric Clapton backstage at a Blind Faith concert. (“This is Eric,” he said. “Hello,” I said.) I rode for a minute in a car with Carl Wilson and his parents.

I knew them as much as any child knows a parent’s business associates, which is to say, not at all really, but they were familiar characters, as were the support staff in the office, the studio and the road. They came together in stray bits of news and gossip, coalescing into a pantheon that floated about my life. The Maharishi, with whom the band briefly toured, gave my dad his mantra. And there was Charles Manson, of course, the ineradicable dark blot in any telling of this tale, who attached himself to Dennis looking for pop stardom. My father had moved on by the time of the Tate-La Bianca murders, but as he had once thrown Charlie out of the office — that was a moment in our house.

Directed by Frank Marshall (“Rather”) and Thom Zimny (whose documentary “Elvis Presley: The Searcher” is one of the best films about Elvis), it covers well-traveled — oft-surfed? — territory. Not even counting the scores of online videos and the all-star tributes, there’s a wealth of full-blown films about the band as a whole and of Brian Wilson, the foundation of their sound, going back decades, including three biopics: two for television — the Dennis-focused “Summer Dreams” and “The Beach Boys: An American Family” — and the well-regarded big-screen Brian young-and-old movie “Love and Mercy.”

It’s irresistible material, a show business story and a family drama, salted with child abuse, drug addiction, mental illness and recovery, a war between art and commerce and an arc of success and failure and success — when “Endless Summer,” a two-LP best-of package went to No. 1 on the charts in 1974, it catapulted the group into permanent residency as “America’s Band.” With its range of good-time rock ’n’ roll and ambitious, eccentric art-pop, they’re at once a band for everybody and a band for geeks.

Running less than two hours at a time when four-hour rock docs are not unusual, this is a swift, compact telling, with surprisingly little in the way of music and whole swaths of recording history skated over. But it looks fantastic, with a bounty of archival photographs and home movies, many of which are new to me, even as a veteran of these things. Apart from new interview footage with the survivors, in and around the band, and the customary pop musician testimonials, not much if anything will be new to the fans. What is new, among Beach Boys documentaries, is the tone, which does not linger on the sensational episodes and downplays the squabbling to emphasize the love.

For a group whose relations have been famously divisive, and whose story has been marked by tragedy — the early deaths of Dennis and Carl are represented only by a closing title card — it’s essentially good-natured, even sentimental. (The film checks out early in their ongoing, competitive careers, before the Beach Boys became Mike Love’s band and Brian a solo artist, and surprisingly omits their 50th-anniversary reunion tour and final studio album, the 2012 “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” which is not bad at all.) Everybody, even problematic Wilson dad Murry, gets their due. A staged but genuinely sweet closing scene may bring a tear to your eye.

Like the Beatles or the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys are a perennial act whose influence will long outlive them. And eventually the idiosyncratic pop music they made in the late 1960s — my years in their orbit, which is to say my Beach Boys music — came to be celebrated. Few bought “Friends” when it came out in 1968, but now you can listen to a four-part podcast in which well-informed fans take it apart, tenderly, track by track, instrument by instrument, voice by voice.

2/5 stars

Mere months after Hollywood’s actors and writers reached an agreement with studios to protect their likenesses and creative output, it appears Netflix is already doubling down on its advocacy of artificial intelligence.

It is set in a near future when Earth is at the mercy of the world’s first “AI terrorist”. Lopez’s jaded heroine must overcome her distrust of technology and put her life in the hands of a sentient machine to save the planet from Armageddon.

Atlas adopts a decidedly more positive stance, suggesting that humanity’s continued survival relies on achieving synergy between man and machine.

As in that film, a female protagonist with prior experience of a non-human threat accompanies a squad of heavily armed marines on an off-world combat mission.

Rather than extraterrestrial xenomorphs, the antagonist is rogue android Harlan (Liu), who has vowed to stop humanity destroying the Earth by any means at his disposable. When the rest of the squad is wiped out upon arrival, it falls to Lopez’s data analyst Atlas Shepherd to take up arms herself.

Her survival relies upon forming a successful neural link with an AI-powered mech suit named Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan), something she is initially loath to do because of her innate distrust of technology – the result of a tragedy from her past.

Lopez has built a career playing mature, feisty women navigating a male-dominated world, and is absolutely in her element here.

Despite appearances from Sterling K. Brown and Mark Strong in supporting roles, it is Shepherd’s frosty banter with Smith that provides the film’s strongest relationship in an otherwise effects-heavy, overlong action thriller offering few surprises.

One could argue that the film is allegorical, addressing society’s attitudes towards any number of marginalised demographics.

At a time when AI is becoming frighteningly ubiquitous in daily life, however, Atlas perhaps should be taken at face value, while its overwhelmingly positive stance is cause for genuine concern.

Atlas is streaming on Netflix.