Amreeka A Palestinian divorcee (Nisreen Faour) and her bright teenage son (Melkar Muallem) move in with her sister’s upper-middle-class family in a small Illinois town. First-time writer and director Cherien Dabis has a strong, authentic sense of scale. (93 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris).
Bright Star A quiet, watchful, transporting film about the romance between 19th-century poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). (119 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
Disgrace A harsh, sometimes ugly tale of post-apartheid South Africa, based on a novel by J.M. Coetzee. John Malkovich plays a decadent Cape Town professor who loses his job and wanders through a metaphorical landscape of humiliation and acceptance. (120 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)
Fame In this sugarless update of the 1980 movie, innocent songs and unsuspecting dance routines are hacked to bits. The new edition is also set at a performing arts high school where fresh young faces descend for four years of, of - well, that’s part of the problem. We don’t know if these kids have talent. (99 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)
Pandorum Director Christian Alvart and screenwriter Travis Malloy must have seen “Aliens’’ in the cradle, for they’ve digested it with love and delivered a highly effective sci-fi thriller. (108 min., R) (Justine Elias)
Surrogates The latest Bruce Willis futuristic action rama-lama is a pretty watchable sci-fi B movie, a case of a good director (Jonathan Mostow) and some intriguing ideas struggling to overcome formula plotting, limp dialogue, and a case of the sillies. (88 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
An archive of movie reviews can be found at www.boston.com/movies . 
