Movie Stars

The Cartel Everything in Bob Bowdon’s documentary about America’s woeful public school system is important, including Bob Bowdon. Bowdon is a regional TV news reporter. And as is the wont of certain TV news reporting, his approach pre-chews every detail, lest we fail to understand it. The movie is so hyperbolically righteous and archly condescending that, even as he’s often onto something, you feel like he’s putting us on. (90 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

Furry Vengeance A pro-nature, anti-development family comedy that appears to be made by and for people who never leave the mall. Brendan Fraser plays a builder whose home and family are assaulted by woodland critters; the latter are grotesquely manipulated into cutesy “human’’ behavior through the miracle of cut-rate computer animation. Take the kids camping instead. With Brooke Shields, cringing. (92 min., PG) (Ty Burr)

The Girl on the Train A rare disappointment, if still an entertaining one, from André Téchiné. The girl is Jeanne (Èmilie Dequenne). She’s 20, lives in the Paris suburbs with her widowed mother (Catherine Deneuve), and it’s obvious just by the carefree way she glides around on her in-line skates that Téchiné will give her plenty to care about 90 or so minutes later. Things culminate with a hate crime that gives the movie its title. But these characters might be too inscrutable for their behavior to make sense. (94 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

The Good, the Bad, the Weird An epic South Korean spaghetti western, set in 1930s Manchuria with everyone in cowboy hats. The movie’s a lot of fun before it wears you out, and it wears you out earlier than it should. An hour later you’re hungry for “A Fistful of Dollars.’’ In Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese, with subtitles. (130 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

The Headless Woman The condition of headlessness in Lucrecia Martel’s film is figurative. But all the movie’s enveloping ambiguity depends on it. A middle-class, middle-aged woman (Maria Onetto) runs her car over something on a road and proceeds to have a quiet nervous breakdown. Martel is working at an intellectual remove, but after three movies she appears to have mastered atmospheric mystery. If Hitchcock and Antonioni ever had an interest in class guilt, you’d have Martel. (87 min., Unrated) (Wesley Morris)

House (Hausu) Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi puts an indelible stamp on a familiar genre tale of nubile schoolgirls in peril in this psychedelically nonsensical import from 1977. The film jumbles crude prosthetics, animation, and composite work to imagine everything from a carnivorous piano to a girl whose bisected lower half keeps right on kung-fu fightin’. (88 min., unrated) (Tom Russo)

It Came From Kuchar A fondly messy documentary about George and Mike Kuchar, twin brothers from the Bronx who together and separately were responsible for some of the earliest films in the 1960s underground movie explosion: el cheapo marvels of filth and hilarity with titles like “Hold Me While I’m Naked’’ and “Diary of a Teenage Rumpot.’’ (86 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

Mississippi Mermaid François Truffaut’s messy, aching ode to shady ladies and l’amour fou returns, with 13 more minutes than in its 1969 US release. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a plantation owner willing to overlook the fact that his mail-order bride isn’t who she says. She’s played by Catherine Deneuve; wouldn’t you? In French, with subtitles. (122 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

October Country First-time filmmakers Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher chronicle a year in the life of Mosher’s dysfunctional family, telling their Halloween-bookended tale with an eerie, offbeat artistic sensibility that turns the clan into a sort of Addams Family on food stamps. Sometimes all the creativity is a plus; sometimes it feels like the monster that ate the movie. (80 min., unrated) (Janice Page)

Phish 3D A documentary that showcases jam band Phish in action at its 2009 Halloween weekend festival. The 3-D cinematography adds nothing to this relentlessly straightforward concert film that is more souvenir than exposition on why 40,000 people followed this band into the California desert for a weekend. While fine for fans, if you never got the Phish scene, this won’t help. (135 min., unrated) (Scott McLennan)

The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom A grim contradiction haunts this worthy, if uninspired, documentary. Color and beauty often fill the screen: monks’ robes, protesters’ banners, the spectacular Himalayan landscape. Most wondrous of all are the face and character of the Dalai Lama. Yet against that is the fact of China’s domination of Tibet. It’s a David-and-Goliath story with no prospect of a slingshot. (79 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)

Clash of the Titans The remake of the 1981 Greek myth action epic is mostly a noisy bore, with some decent CGI monsters and fun hamboning from Ralph Fiennes (as Hades) and Liam Neeson (as Zeus). Sam Worthington plays Perseus. Shot in 2-D and poorly converted to 3-D; save your money and stick to the flat version. (106 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

Date Night Tina Fey and Steve Carell in another of those movies that crosses the comedy of remarriage (or, in this case, the alleged comedy of rekindling) with the chase thriller. It has its moments, not enough of them funny. Here’s some advice for screenwriters using “Romantic Comedy for Dummies’’ to shake up the genre: Skip the chapter on couples on the run. (87 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

Exit Through the Gift Shop An art-world documentary that’s one of the best, most karmically satisfying comedies of the year. Banksy, the anonymous British street artist (or soulless graffiti punk, as you will), tells the tale of one Thierry Guetta, an inept filmmaker turned art-world sensation, and the joke is on all of us, Banksy included. With Shepard Fairey, who looks appropriately mortified. (87 min., R) (Ty Burr)

The Joneses This disposable dramedy starring David Duchovny and Demi Moore is standard Hollywood piffle dolled up with extra-slick product placements for the latest trendy stuff. It’s cute and clever to a point — the Joneses are a faux family embedded in upscale suburbia by a stealth marketing firm — but what might have been a smart and significant commentary on excessive consumption is ultimately just an Audi commercial that runs out of gas. (96 min., R) (Janice Page)

Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D The latest entry in the 3-D sweepstakes is a souped-up though flatly paced concert movie capturing the affable country superstar’s sold-out 2009 tour, including generous footage of his Gillette Stadium stop. The film’s flashy cuts and fancy camera angles, vibrant sound mix and 3-D effects don’t bring us closer to the man, or make up for what is a fairly rote, even remote, concert experience. (99 min., unrated) (Jonathan Perry)

Kick-Ass The new superhero action-parody — half a scrappy “Spider-Man’’ sendup, half a desperate wannabe — indulges in all sorts of bad behavior designed to appall your mom while delighting the young, the jaded, and the smug. While it has moments of lowdown style, it’s also nowhere near as subversive as it thinks. With Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, and Chlöe Moretz as a foul-mouthed middle-school masked avenger. (117 min., R) (Ty Burr)

Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis Kasztner, a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer, successfully negotiated with the Nazis to save Jews during the Holocaust. The Israeli who gunned him down in 1957 considered him a collaborator rather than hero. For all that it’s heavy-handed and clumsily told, Gaylen Ross’s documentary is provocative and consistently interesting, not least of all because of her interviews with the murderer, Ze’ev Eckstein. (118 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)

The Last Song Miley Cyrus plays a sulky teen whose mood improves when she meets a boy (Liam Hemsworth) the summer before she chooses not to go to college. Tragedy ensues. Allegedly, this is the movie in which Cyrus gets all, like, dramatic. If by “dramatic’’ one means pouty, sullen, and cute, then OK. The bad news is cheap and predictable (whoever coughs loudest is hospitalized soonest) and serves only to punish. Nicholas Sparks co-adapted his novel himself. (108 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)

The Losers A gang of CIA-contracted mercenaries hunts down the boss who betrayed them. The director, Sylvain White, does everything he can to approximate the unreality of certain comic book titles. But an arch jokiness toward sex, violence, and suspense rots away the thrill. With Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, and Jason Patric. (98 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

Mid-August Lunch How’s this for a pickle? To avoid paying outstanding condo fees, a 50-ish Italian bachelor agrees to take in his property manager’s mother for a few days. This is in addition to his own mother (Valeria De Franciscis), who’s also the bachelor’s housemate. Directed, written by, and starring the haggardly handsome Gianni di Gregorio, the movie has been executed with a perfect blend of calm and uninflected farce. It’s rare to find realism applied to comedy. It shouldn’t be rare. They’re a perfect pair. In Italian, with English subtitles. (75 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

Oceans Come for the oceans. Stay for the critters. We head to the beaches of South America just in time to see orcas snatch sea lions for lunch and to Alaska, where humpback whales form a floating, fleeting mountain range. But the water itself is afterthought. It’s more like “The Stuff in Oceans.’’ A Disneynature documentary from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, who made “Winged Migration.’’ Narrated by Pierce Brosnan. (87 min., G) (Wesley Morris)

The Secret in Their Eyes That this Argentine thriller was the shock foreign-language Oscar winner last month says more about the meekness of Academy voters than it does about the ultimate quality of the film. Apparently, there’s no underestimating the appeal of romantic drama crossed with the criminal-investigation thriller. The plot hinges on a young Buenos Aires woman’s murder in 1974 and the legal employee (Ricardo Darin) determined to find her killer. It has the high, slightly nauseating stink of perfume on garbage. In Spanish, with subtitles. (127 min., R) (Wesley Morris)

The Square The surprise of this nasty little Australian film noir is how thrillingly bad things get, all because Ray (David Roberts) and Carla (Claire van der Boom) want to ditch their respective spouses and run off together. She’s prone to saying things like “We wouldn’t be hurting anybody,’’ which, given the film’s eventual body count, suggests a lack of appreciation for what she’s gotten herself into. Directed by Nash Edgerton. (88 min., PG) (Wesley Morris)

Sweetgrass A meditative and intensely beautiful documentary about the last sheep run in Big Timber, Mont. Made without voice-over narration or other hand-holding, this isn’t just about the passing of a way of life but the death of a particular sense of time: slow, profoundly observant, in tune with the larger cycles of nature. (101 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)

Vincere “Il Duce’’ and “sex bomb’’ have never appeared in the same sentence. But what else can we conclude from Marco Bellocchio’s robustly acted tale of Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) and his little-known mistress (Giovanna Mezzogiorno)? It’s a gale-force blast of warring hormones staged as opera. It also makes a shrewd case for the irresistible pull of certain great politicians: You want them, and they know it. (108 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)

An archive of movie reviews can be found at www.boston.com/movies. Theaters are subject to change.