New releases

"Flawless" A heist flick, set in London in 1960, that's assured and neatly crafted - the time zips by while you're watching it. Demi Moore does late-period Joan Crawford as a diamond executive who cooks up a theft of her own company with a shabby night janitor (Michael Caine). Lambert Wilson channels Paul Henreid as a metrosexual insurance investigator. In director Michael Radford's hands it's eminently watchable tosh. (108 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

"Quantum Hoops" This is a documentary about a Cinderella team in search of a fairy Division-III godmother. Say hello to the California Institute of Technology's basketball team, the Beavers. They haven't won since 1987. But Rick Greenwald's movie fails to put that stunning record into any appreciable perspective. He films one thrilling game, but the movie is less a profile than a Caltech recruitment video. (88 min., Unrated) (Wesley Morris)

"Run Fat Boy Run" If the words "from director David Schwimmer" sound terrifying, the comedy that's made those words possible won't make you change your mind. A slothful Londoner (Simon Pegg) enters a marathon to win back the fiancée (Thandie Newton) he ran out on. What can you say about a movie that features both Newton's blinding loveliness and the sight of a man soaked in the contents of a giant foot blister? Stay home. (100 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

"Shelter" If Gus Van Sant ever made a Lifetime movie disguised as a video for a Jack Johnson song, it might go something like Jonah Markowitz's mellow but soapy drama about a surfer who falls for his best friend's older brother. It's a gay movie like other American gay movies. Boy meets boy. Boy comes out. Boys fight opposition. Opposition caves. If there's life beyond the closet, not enough movies know it exists. With Trevor Wright, Brad Rowe, and Tina Holmes. (88 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

"Stop-Loss" The latest drama to examine the effects of the Iraq war on the US soldiers who are fighting it is earnest, outraged, and confused. Ryan Phillippe plays a veteran going AWOL after the Army forcibly reenlists him (the "stop-loss" policy of the title). Director Kimberly Peirce piles on the dysfunction while forcing her story into the unconvincing confines of a road movie. With Channing Tatum and Abbie Cornish. (113 min., R) (Ty Burr)

"21" A depressingly shallow morality tale about the rise and fall of an MIT undergrad (Jim Sturgess of "Across the Universe", manfully tripping over a generic American accent) so desperate to come up with Harvard Med tuition that he joins a secret blackjack club led by professor Kevin Spacey and card-counts his way to Vegas riches. Bowdlerized from the nonfiction best-seller "Bringing Down the House." (123 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

"CJ7" If more American parents took their kids to Hong Kong-style family-friendly sci-fi flicks (subtitles, shmubtitles), 9-year-old Xu Jiao would be a star. In Stephen Chow's magic-toy farce, she plays a boy in a love-hate relationship with his otherworldly pet critter. This is basically Chow's exclamatory tribute to "E.T." But it's Spielberg by way of Nintendo, with Chow himself as dad. In Mandarin, with subtitles. (86 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)

"Drillbit Taylor" Owen Wilson is a homeless guy who takes a job playing bodyguard to three nerdy high-school freshmen. But we're well beyond wedgies here. We're in horror-movie territory, and there's nothing Wilson can do about it. This movie has a disturbing sadistic side. The filmmakers (Seth Rogen co-wrote; Judd Apatow produced) aren't so much interested in a movie about the tyranny of bullies as they are completely turned on by the violence they inflict. (102 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

"Military Intelligence and You!" Director Dale Kutzera has crafted an entire fake WWII training film with the intent of skewering attitudes surrounding the Iraq War, and the result is (or wants to be) a remixed "Reefer Madness" for our age of mass denial. It's a great idea for 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the movie's 78 minutes long. With Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Bennett, and (in archival footage) Ronald Reagan and Alan Ladd. (78 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

"On Broadway" Writer-director and Boston native Dave McLaughlin turns the true story of his effort to write and produce a play into this film. Even with a host of Boston-based actors and production crew, "On Broadway" never offers more than a superficial view of Boston and the people who call it home. (101 min., unrated) (Terry Byrne)

"Paranoid Park" The latest Gus Van Sant movie is slight but fascinating. A Portland skateboarder (Gabe Nevins) gets mixed up in a security guard's murder. The explanation is easy to the point of being anti-dramatic. The movie's actual subject is Van Sant's ongoing preoccupation with the lives of unmoored young men, the way his art flirts with indecency and the way his creative wisdom and skill transcend it. (83 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

"Shutter" Photographs preserve a trace of your identity, and if you're lucky, it's a good moment. If you're unlucky, you're Megumi Tanaka (Megumi Okina), wan specter who menaces a newlywed couple in "Shutter." The first of many mistakes the lovebirds make is deciding to honeymoon in Japan. Another is accidentally running over a nubile hitchhiker (Okina), who starts showing up as a milky smudge in their photographs. Moody, artsy violence follows, and whil the basic elements are familiar, they combine in novel and not uninteresting ways. (85 min., PG-13) (Michael Harding)

"Snow Angels" The latest disappointment from the formerly auspicious David Gordon Green ("George Washington") brings us a tale of life in a small town. When one couple, played by Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell, can't make things work, it all takes a forced turn into banal ugliness. This is a movie straining hard for thunder, especially in the bogus finale. It's just hard to take seriously. But Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby contribute the film's only loveliness as high-schoolers on the local train to his bed. (106 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

"Today the Hawk Takes One Chick" Cambridge-based filmmaker Jane Gillooly focuses a still, clear lens on a tiny corner of Africa's AIDS crisis - the "gogos" of Swaziland caring for their orphaned grandchildren - and in so doing illuminates the whole. Heartbreaking but in none of the obvious ways: rather than disease per se, Gillooly's subject is the vast social consequences of epidemic. In SiSwati and English, with subtitles. (72 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

"Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns" Tyler Perry is inching closer to the sweet spot in his quest to make perfect emotional porn for African-American church ladies. Angela Bassett (in fine form) plays a Chicago single mother traveling south to meet the cousins she didn't know she had. Perry throws in the whole Oprah agenda, broad character comedy, and a dreamboat suitor (Rick Fox) for Bassett. (100 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

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