4:44 Last Day on Earth

It takes a director as supremely untalented as Abel Ferrara to make the end of the world a matter of apathetic ennui, which he's done in the direct-to-dustheap bomb "4:44 Last Day on Earth."

The Hunger Games

"The Hunger Games" is a bloated turkey, an unbroken string of missed opportunities and unintentional laughs that spends its first 70 minutes establishing its parameters and the second 70 violating most of them with internal inconsistencies and gaping logical holes.

The Raid: Redemption

When asked whether he ever tires of depressing movies, Roger Ebert responds that a good movie is never depressing. I don't entirely agree, but there's a lot of truth to the sentiment. A good movie covering difficult subject matter can inspire in many ways. It can shine a light on an important problem and provide an impetus for action. It can, with its artistry and insight, stimulate the viewer's own creativity, or simply excite or move the audience, creating a connection that affirms our common humanity and shared values.

The Deep Blue Sea

Rachel Weisz turns in her most feeling performance yet in Terence Davies’ “The Deep Blue Sea,” an exceedingly simple yet powerfully poignant postwar story of romantic love so intense and obsessive it becomes the undoing of an intelligent and well-provided-for woman. Weisz’s Hester Collyer is the wife of a respected judge (Simon Russell Beale), but passion has escaped the marriage; he’s sober and undemonstrative, she’s headstrong and ahead of her time, and in need of an outlet for her pent-up sexuality. When that outlet arrives in the form of Freddie, a handsome young RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston), and their affair is inevitably discovered, Hester leaves her uncomprehending husband, explaining without any cruelty that her love for this new man encompasses nothing less than the whole of her. As her world narrows down to him, though, Freddie begins to suffocate, turning to drink and nights out with friends to escape.

Free Men

Tahar Rahim, the highly likable lead from 2009’s terrific “A Prophet,” returns in a World War II movie called “Free Men,” about a black-marketing Algerian Muslim in Paris who, when arrested, avoids jail by informing on a mosque believed to be harboring North African Jews and supplying them with counterfeit certificates. It’s a fascinating subculture, and Rahim holds the screen even given little to work with, but “Free Men” is one of those movies where everything of importance that happens in the world seems to happen to the handful of people we’re following. There’s too much coincidence and contrivance, not enough context or depth of character. A strong supporting performance by Michael Lonsdale as the mosque’s rector isn’t enough to elevate this minor material to the heights to which it aspires.

The Kid with a Bike

Another pair of directing brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) hit theaters with the Belgian import "The Kid With a Bike," about Cyril (Thomas Doret), an 11-year-old boy whose cash-strapped father has abruptly left his apartment and seemingly abandoned his son. Cyril first seeks out his lost bicycle, refusing to believe his father could have sold it, then searches high and low for Dad, whom he finds but who forestalls further contact in a scene of unimaginable, near-existential rejection. Doret's performance never hits a false note, and Cecile de France, who first caught my attention in Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter," gives an equally memorable turn as Samantha, a hairdresser who becomes a weekend guardian and ultimately a foster mother to Cyril, and who (to her considerable surprise) cannot bring herself to give up on him despite his almost animalistic acting-out. (When her boyfriend finally tells her, "It's either him or me," she takes about a picosecond to respond, "Him.") "The Kid With a Bike" has the naturalistic, almost documentary feel of an Agnes Varda or Jacques Doillon film; only a couple of plot-heavy detours toward the end keep it from greatness,

21 Jump Street

I was all set to have a blast watching the movie "21 Jump Street" - a friend had told me it was beyond funny - and it kept feeling like it was about to happen, but it never did. It's a movie where nobody behaves the way a human being would in similar circumstances, so it's essentially absurdist humor, which is very hard to pull off. And it never quite finds its groove for more than a moment at a time; it's an uneasy mix of desperation, the actors flailing about and ever more profanity where the funny lines are supposed to go, and unwarranted nonchalance, as though the set-up were funny enough without worrying about the execution.