New releases
★★½ Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle This documentary about the epic public battle over the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound is both refreshingly evenhanded and overly snarky — a civic farce that explores how the refusal to hear other points of view results in perpetual acrimony and white noise. (86 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)
★★Lola Versus A well-intentioned indie that tries to be a “real” version of a Hollywood romantic comedy and ends up feeling more ersatz than ever. Greta Gerwig plays the title character, a mopey New York hipstress struggling to regain her balance after getting dumped by her fiancee. The self-consciously clever script is by director Daryl Wein and costar Zoe Lister-Jones. (87 min., R) (Ty Burr)
★★½ Rock of Ages For those who can’t stop believin’ and fans of bizarro Tom Cruise performances. This star-studded adaptation of the Broadway jukebox musical, dedicated to the enduring power of cheesy ’80s pop-metal, alternates plastic bombast with moments of comic invention: It’s karaoke night on a Hollywood budget. Cruise plays an Axl-like rock god; Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, and two dull ingénues also appear. (123 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
★★★ Safety Not Guaranteed A small, charming shaggy-dog comedy about an oddball (Mark Duplass) who claims to have built a time machine and the alt-weekly intern (Aubrey Plaza) who wants to find out if he’s crazy or not. The film sticks to its droll indie aesthetic while giving Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) the star-making role a lot of us have been waiting for. With Jake M. Johnson. (94 min., R) (Ty Burr)
★½ That’s My Boy As a Somerville middle school kid, Donny scores with his teacher, gets her pregnant, and raises their son when she goes to jail. Now all grown up, the loser-doofus Donny (Adam Sandler) tracks down his estranged offspring (Andy Samberg) on the eve of the son’s wedding. Cue the family reunion and Val Halen-infused soundtrack. Full of wooden writing, stereotypes, and bodily fluids, this is more raunch-fest than comedy. (114 min., R) (Ethan Gilsdorf)
★★½ Whores’ Glory A documentary about prostitution from Austrian director Michael Glawogger that’s deeply depressing and expertly made. (Too expertly? Some scenes almost seem staged.) A triptych, the film shows a Vegas-slick brothel in Bangkok, an alleyway bordello in Bangladesh, and streetwalkers in a Mexican border city. There’s no narration; the voices we hear belong to the women, their handlers, and johns. In Thai, Bengali, and Spanish, with subtitles. (114 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
Previously released
★★½ Bernie Jack Black dials back the boorishness to play Bernie Tiede, a real-life Texas funeral director and community pillar who in 1996 shot his aged companion (Shirley MacLaine) in the back. Richard Linklater directs it as a loopy black comedy with generous input from local “witnesses” — the movie’s bouncy, amusing, and wholly lacking in a point. With Matthew McConaughey. (104 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
★★ The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Proof that art-house movies can be as clichéd as multiplex fare. A comedy-drama about a group of British retirees at a ramshackle hotel in Jaipur, India, it’s predictable fluff aimed at desperate or undemanding 50+ audiences. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, and Tom Wilkinson almost turn it into something. (124 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
★★½ The Dictator The despot here is a tall, fit, flamboyantly bearded North African goofball (Sacha Baron Cohen) who winds up working in a Brooklyn food co-op. That’s the best idea in the movie, which lacks the cultural tension in “Borat” and “Bruno,” satires that Cohen and director Larry Charles previously made together. This one is lazy, a satire that can’t bring itself to properly satirize anything. (88 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
★★★ Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story If Colonel Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu has faded from public consciousness outside Israel since he died in the famous Entebbe hostage rescue mission he led in 1976, this documentary should rectify that. His brother, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and others recount Netanyahu’s childhood in Israel, his years at Harvard, and his military leadership. But his own words, in letters and poems, are the most memorable. (87 min., unrated) (Loren King)
★ HIGH School Like a lot of recent comedies, this would like to be a Judd Apatow movie, but lacks the inventiveness to give its familiar characters lifelike quirks. When over-achiever Henry and pothead Breaux scheme to avoid expulsion for smoking pot by getting their whole school stoned, the few laughs come mostly from bit players: middle-aged teachers and elderly school board members spouting druggy profanities or lurid fantasies. (93 min., R) (Jeremy C. Fox)
★★ Hysteria A comedy-drama about the invention of the vibrator in 1880s London. Somewhere in here is an illuminating farce about a repressed society wracked by urges it doesn’t dare name. So why does director Tanya Wexler insist on stamping it out with moralizing? Stick with playwright Sara Ruhl’s “In the Next Room.” Starring Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (100 min., R) (Ty Burr)
★★ The Intouchables France’s second biggest film hit tells the story of a ritzy white quadriplegic (Francois Cluzet) who hires a bald, Senegalese-born thug (Omar Sy) to take care of him. All the white people do in this movie is flatter and spoil and humor the caretaker. He spouts his crass, egotistical crap, and all anyone does is laugh. America has a racial guilt problem. France’s might be more insidious. In French, with subtitles. (113 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
★★½ Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted There’s some bona fide big-top wonder in this team-up between ragtag European circus critters (notably Bryan Cranston and Martin Short) and our Central Park Zoo expat heroes (Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith). Cascading, colorful 3-D performance sequences are sufficiently dazzling that you may forgive an act wasted on convoluted setup, and those relentless circus-afro ads. (93 min., PG) (Tom Russo)
★★★ Marvel’s The Avengers If you like Joss Whedon’s superhero extravaganza (really, there’s almost nothing to dislike; it’s as close as a movie can come to the fantastical reality of a good comic book), stick around for the closing credits. As fun as it is to watch the actors playing superheroes, the real stars are the hundreds of men and women who’ve closed the gap between what’s doable in comics and the movies based on them. With Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, and Samuel L. Jackson. (148 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
★★★★ Moonrise Kingdom When two 12-year-olds (Kara Heyward, Jared Gilman) plot a secret getaway to a remote part of their fictitious New England island, the adults in their lives come looking for them. Wes Anderson directed and co-wrote the movie with Roman Coppola, and it feels utterly real, vividly dreamt, and totally remembered. Anderson’s dollhouse aesthetic acquires a long-overdue soul. With Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Tilda Swinton. (94 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
★★★ Nobody Else But You What if Marilyn Monroe had never made it out of the sticks? That oddly inspired notion is explored in a playful French meta-mystery that’s occasionally too proud of its own cleverness. Jean-Paul Rouve plays a thriller writer investigating the death of a small-town sex goddess (Sophie Quinton). In French, with subtitles. (103 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)
★ Peace, Love & Misunderstanding Catherine Keener (who should know better) is an uptight Manhattan lawyer and Jane Fonda her hippie-dippy Woodstock mother in this limp culture-clash comedy with a heart of patchouli. Shallowly written and unevenly directed (by Bruce Beresford), it’s crystals and smugness all the way. (96 min., R) (Ty Burr)
★★★★ Polisse There are movies that grab you by the throat and knee you in the groin. And there are movies that grab your throat, knee your groin, drive you to the hospital, help you fill out the police report, and ask you out to dinner, where you both laugh and cry over everything. This is the latter, a thriller about an endangered child-protection unit in the Paris PD and the bond among the detectives. In French, with English subtitles. (127 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)
★★ Prometheus Ridley Scott’s return to the “Alien” franchise is impeccably produced but increasingly scattered. It’s officially a prequel but it feels like a remake: We’ve been here before, with lesser technology but more purpose. Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron, all quite good. (119 min., R) (Ty Burr)
★★½ Snow White and the Huntsman Entertainingly schizophrenic, this re-engineering of the classic fairy tale feels like it was made from pieces of every fantasy-action movie ever made. It barely holds together but there are daft pleasures, from Charlize Theron’s rampant overacting as the evil queen to Kristen Stewart’s surprising underplaying as Snow. Directed by Rupert Sanders. (116 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
★★★ Where Do We Go Now? How can women ever get men to stop killing each other? Director/co-writer/costar Nadine Labaki envisions a dusty Lebanese village where the women, Christian and Muslim alike, join forces to foil their husbands’ bloodymindedness. It’s “Lysistrata” in the desert, overly diffuse but full of laughter, and sorrow. In Arabic, Russian, and English, with subtitles. (110 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)