The Island President

“The Island President,” the new documentary from director Jon Shenk (“Lost Boys of Sudan”), features Mohamed Nasheed, the charismatic president of Maldives, a nation comprised of approximately 1,200 low-lying islands (the average ground level is just 4’3” about sea level) in the Indian Ocean. Maldives has the lowest natural highest point in the world (7’10...”), and even a small rise in the water level threatens to inundate its makeshift seawalls and wipe out its population.

Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman arrived on the scene in the early 90s with such moderately witty films as “Metropolitan” and “Barcelona,” then disappeared for the better part of a score. On the basis of his new film, the staggeringly unfunny “Damsels in Distress,” he’s quite welcome to stay away. This arch, twee picture stars Greta Gerwig as Violet, the leader of a tetrad of coeds (Rose, Heather and Lily – laughing yet?) who try to help the young women who come to their “suicide center” (the middle panel reading “prevention” keeps falling off, ho ho).

We Have a Pope

Some ideas make great feature films, others great shorts. Nanni Moretti’s comedy “We Have a Pope” would benefit from the latter format; it could be a delicious short story about a cardinal who, though nobody’s front-runner, emerges from the conclave at the Holy See as the new Pope (or doesn’t emerge, actually), realizing only after accepting the job that he’s stricken with panic and in way over his head. Stretched to 104 minutes, though, the film feels severely underfed. There are some truly clever ideas and some big laughs, but “We Have a Pope” careens like a driver without tires from broad, almost puerile comedy to a would-be introspective examination of an older man who’s devoted himself to God and missed out on many of life’s possibilities, and now quakes with fear and dread at the prospect of leading billions of followers. A more sure-footed director might better have melded the two halves; Moretti’s picture ends up neither fish nor fowl.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

The first two hours of the Turkish import “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” are unlike anything I’ve seen at the movies: a rapturous, immersive, trancelike long night spent mostly in a police car, driving the unlighted roads of the Anatolian steppes with a local chief, an underling, his driver (whom everyone calls “Arab”), a forensic doctor, and an arrestee who’s confessed to killing a man and burying the body but doesn’t quite remember where (he says he’d been drinking). Every so often, when the man thinks they’ve come to the spot, they and their procession – which also includes an Ankara-based prosecutor, a police sergeant, and two comically unhurried diggers – pull over and decamp for a while.

Bully

You’ve undoubtedly heard of “Bully,” Harvey Weinstein’s doc about the epidemic of bullying in American schools. It’s worth seeing more for its subject matter and sensitivity than its artistic merit. As a documentary, it’s underreported and structurally loosey-goosey. It lacks the empirical data that contextualizes the anecdotal material in the best contemporary documentaries (say, those of Alex Gibney). It’s also too freeform in the stories it tells and how it interweaves them – to be frank, some are more compelling than others. Still, the project is a worthwhile undertaking; this is material that needs to be seen and an issue that cries out to be addressed at all levels of the educational system.

The Trouble with Bliss

Why is it always the tone-deaf screenwriters who never shut up? There’s about 90 minutes of prattle in director Michael Knowles’ dreary and droopy-lidded 97-minute bomb about Morris Bliss (Michael C. Hall), a reactive-to-the-point-of-inertia thirtysomething who seems to do nothing but bump into quirky characters and get back into bed (which we watch him do... half a dozen times). Not one nanosecond of one scene, not one line of dialogue bears any relation to anything any flesh-and-blood person has ever said, or would say.

Goon

The “Slap Shot” wannabe hockey comedy “Goon” stars the always-likable Seann William Scott as Doug Glatt, a bouncer who becomes the enforcer and unwitting hero of the minor-league Halifax Highlanders. Doug’s annoying best friend is played by Jay Baruchel, the movie’s co-writer, whose screen presence lacks any heft or appeal. Liev Schreiber channels Danny McBride as Ross Rhea, the most famous enforcer in the league, with whom Doug inevitably collides late in the season.