By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer

In Amarillo theaters this week: Tom Hanks saving the world, looming financial disaster and some special Halloween treats.

New to theaters

Equity

A female investment banker (Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad) tries to repair her reputation and steer a major new IPO launch in Equity, a new drama screening exclusively at Premiere Cinemas Westgate Mall 6 that's as notable for its creators as it is for its story.

Gunn's Naomi isn't the only woman leading the charge here; the film boasts a female director, female writers and female producers.

What they've crafted is an ingenious new angle on a fairly standard story about corruption in the financial sector and sexism in the workplace. Yet, despite that description, the film is far from a polemic lecture; it's a taut drama filled with intelligent choices and logical twists that upends our expectations at nearly every turn.

Gunn, in particular, is top notch, giving Naomi layers upon layers of an inner life. She's childless and in an only moderately successful relationship, but Naomi leans in to her choices and makes no bones about her ambition. It's admirable and, even in 2016, surprising to see in a film.

The movie isn't entirely successful; there's a little too much contrivance and a few flabby characters. But, even beyond its good intentions, Equity has moments that are absolutely riveting and thoroughly relatable.  (R for language throughout; Premiere Cinemas Westgate Mall 6, 7701 W. Interstate 40)

Inferno

Reviews are decidedly cool for the third installment of Robert Langdon's (Tom Hanks) ongoing attempts to save the world from different manners of prophesied apocalypse, as seen previously in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009). This time, the crisis revolves somehow around Dante's Inferno and his depictions of the various levels of hell, with Langdon teaming up with a young doctor (Felicity Jones, soon to star in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) to prevent doomsday. "Inferno actually may be better than the first two movies because it doesn’t treat the source material as Gospel. It’s honestly ridiculous, a Nicolas Cage National Treasure puzzle-thriller with a degree in art history," writes Boston Globe's Ty Burr in one of the more positive reviews. "Sometimes (director Ron) Howard cuts to images of pained souls writhing in unending anguish. Sometimes Hanks can't remember anything that happened. I understood them. I envied him," writes Newark Star-Ledger's Stephen Whitty in a more typical review. (PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, disturbing images, some language, thematic elements and brief sensuality; United Artists Amarillo Star 14, 8275 W. Amarillo Blvd., and Cinemark Hollywood 16, 9100 Canyon Drive)

Special engagements

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

What would Halloween be without a visit from Jack Skellington and crew? Catch their antics in special screenings at 2 and 7 p.m. Friday and Monday at the Amarillo Star 14. (PG for some scary images)

Hocus Pocus  and The Addams Family

Tascosa Drive-In, 1999 Dumas Drive, will hold a Halloween carnival at 7 p.m. Saturday, featuring games, screenings of Hocus Pocus and The Addams Family and a video-game tournament on the screen. Admission is $10 per car load. 

RiffTrax Live: Carnival of Souls

The former Mystery Science Theatre 3000 guys return to skewer this midnight-movie favorite about a young woman who survives a horrible car crash — or does she? If you missed last week's live screening, catch the rebroadcast at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Amarillo Star 14. (NR)

Newtown Live

Director Kim A. Snyder spent three years in Newtown, Conn., to tell the story of the survivors of the worst mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history. Her acclaimed documentary, which will air on PBS's Independent Lens in 2017, will screen at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in an event that also features a live town hall discussion moderated by CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and featuring survivors and families of the victims of the shooting. (NR)

Rush: Time Stand Still

Celebrate 40 years of the prog rock giants with this new documentary about their anniversary (and possibly final) tour. It'll screen at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Amarillo Star 14 theater. (NR)

Still playing

The Accountant (AS-14, H-16); Boo! A Madea Halloween (AS-14, H-16); Deepwater Horizon (AS-14, H-16); Finding Dory (WM-6); The Girl on the Train (AS-14); Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (AS-14, H-16); Jason Bourne (WM-6); Keeping Up with the Joneses (AS-14); The Magnificent Seven (AS-14, H-16); Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (AS-14, H-16); Ouija: Origin of Evil (AS-14, H-16); The Secret Lives of Pets (WM-6); Storks (AS-14); and Suicide Squad (WM-6).

Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.