Movie Stars

"As Tears Go By" Wong Kar-wai was about 30 when he introduced himself in 1988 with this comic gangster romance, and while he was obviously working on becoming the king of lush movie atmospherics, he was also apparently a student of both John Woo and Martin Scorsese. Wong smothers his thematic modesty with tremendous style. Some directors give you a healthy ratio of mashed potatoes to gravy. Wong seems not to care for potatoes. Happily starring Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung, not one of whom is quite near peak sexiness. In Cantonese and Mandarin, with subtitles. (102 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

"Death Race" Jason Statham competes in a pay-per-view prison bloodsport in Paul W.S. Anderson's straight redo of producer Roger Corman's campfest. Joan Allen and Ian McShane's unlikely casting keeps things from dragging until the engines rev, pulverizingly. (89 min., R) (Tom Russo)

"Elegy" Ben Kingsley plays a New York City college professor and virile academic superstar forced to confront his mortality when he embarks on an affair with a much younger student (Penelope Cruz). There's a lot of rich emotional angst here, but director Isabel Coixet misses the lacerating humor of Philip Roth's source novella, "The Dying Animal." The movie's an elegant drag. With Patricia Clarkson, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Sarsgaard. (113 min., R) (Ty Burr)

"Frozen River" On the New York-Canadian border, an impoverished mother (Melissa Leo) and a young Mohawk woman (Misty Upham) ferry illegal immigrants across Native American land. Courtney Hunt's spare, gripping drama - it won this year's Sundance festival - does what too many independent American movies only pretend to do: It takes you to an unnoticed corner of our country and shows what it's like to actually live there. (97 min., R) (Ty Burr)

"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" An enchanting 2006 Japanese anime feature about a high school girl who discovers she can rewind time. It's like "The Butterfly Effect" adapted to the world of smart, hapless teenage heroines, but instead of the standard manic anime approach, the film is rich and observant in the manner of the great Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away") and his Studio Ghibli colleagues. In Japanese, with subtitles. (98 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

"Hamlet 2" The British farceur Steve Coogan comes close to wearing out his welcome, and it's a fascinating sight. He plays an infantile high school drama teacher determined to win over the tough kids and mount a crackpot sequel to "Hamlet" (complete with Jesus cameo). The laughs are there, but Coogan works so hard at playing a "character" that he neglects to come up with a character. (92 min., R) (Ty Burr)

"The House Bunny" No one else in the movies manages a look of stupefaction and bliss the way Anna Faris does. Faris plays her usual lunatic-idiot. This one's a homeless Playboy Bunny who moves into a sorority house and gives the socially and cosmetically challenged sisters makeovers. The movie doesn't turn any corners. It's lazy and content to keep playing dumb long after it's really funny - "Illegally Blonde," maybe. But Faris and the rest of the girls, namely Emma Stone and Kat Dennings, rescue a lot of the standard issue cuteness. (92 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

"The Night James Brown Saved Boston" During James Brown's famous 1968 concert at the Boston Garden the night after Martin Luther King's assassination, some black teenagers and young men began to storm the stage. White policemen approached. Brown started yelling at the crowd with a mix of fury and pride. "Step down there. Be a gentleman," he told one boy. The crowd calmed, and violence was averted. That so many people managed to come together on a night fraught with fear is the message of this documentary, timed to the concert's 40th anniversary. The film, directed by David Leaf and narrated by Dennis Haysbert, is a straightforward retelling of those events, interspersing concert footage with talking heads. (74 min., unrated) (Joanna Weiss)

"The Rocker" A grubby little redemption comedy that in every way feels like a consignment-shop Jack Black vehicle. It wears better on Rainn Wilson, the movie's ungainly, oft-humiliated star. Wilson, too, plays a washed up musician reborn in the glow of youth. The tots in "School of Rock" have been replaced with a trio of likable Cleveland teens (Teddy Geiger, Josh Gad, and Emma Stone) whose band needs a drummer. Occasional hilarity ensues. Geiger, Gad, and Stone are easily the best things in the movie - so good that they make Wilson seem superfluous. They're just good, smart, interesting kids playing lame music from the bottom of their hearts. (102 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

"Sixty Six" Director Paul Weiland's story follows a London kid (Gregg Sulkin) who's counting on his bar mitzvah to make him cool, only to find that it's the same day as England's appearance in the World Cup soccer final. Eddie Marsan, as the boy's father, gives things a header from "Sixteen Candles" into deeper drama. (95 min., PG-13) (Tom Russo)

"Tropic Thunder" It only sounds like a Thai porno. Really it's a war movie within a comedy. Five actors - Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, and Brandon T. Jackson - playing Vietnam soldiers caught behind enemy lines wind up behind enemy lines under the assumption that somehow they're still being filmed. Written by Stiller, Etan Cohen, and the actor Justin Theroux and directed by Stiller, the movie is usually very funny and especially where, powerfully surreal, Tom Cruise is concerned. He's the heart of darkness in this Vietnam-film sendup, a movie star having the time of his life playing a war criminal. (107 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" The new Woody Allen movie is aggravating, a fitfully good romantic comedy that lapses into tourism and dumb gags. It looses Scarlett Johansson's lusty but insecure Cristina and Rebecca Hall's prim Vicky on Spain. Both women's lives are upended when a stranger (Javier Bardem) invites them to fly with him to Oviedo for sex. The Spaniards are clichés. But there's tremendous grace in what Penelope Cruz does here. Allen has come looking for postcards and this increasingly inspired woman sends him home with a portrait. With Chris Messina and Patricia Clarkson. (96 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

"What We Do Is Secret" A stylized, dramatized telling of the rise and quick fall of The Germs, the pioneering LA punk band that lasted from 1977 to 1980, when leader Darby Crash committed suicide by overdose. Shane West captures Crash's snaggle-toothed intelligence and fury, but the movie never wavers from the clichés of rock lives and rock biopics. (93 min., R) (Ty Burr)

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