New releases

★★★½ The Dark Knight Rises Oh, right, this is what a superhero movie is supposed to look like. Christopher Nolan brings his Batman trilogy to a close with a majestic crash. It’s overlong and more than a little crazy but made with a pop-Wagnerian conviction and undeniable moviemaking skill. Also: Anne Hathaway is the best Catwoman since Julie Newmar. (164 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

Previously released

★½ The Amazing Spider-Man The worst superhero movie since “Green Lantern,” this uninspired, unnecessary remake plays like the contract extension it is. Talented actors like Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans are saddled with generic dialogue, and director Marc Webb (“(500) Days of Summer”) muffs the action sequences. Even the 3-D is obnoxious. This isn’t a movie, it’s a mugging. (136 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)

★★★½ Ballplayer: Pelotero We don’t need a documentary to tell us that baseball is king in the Dominican Republic. But how many of us knew that the island produces 20 percent of the professional players in the United States? And who’s paying attention to the good, bad, and ugly of how they’re treated? This well-crafted film might be essential education for fans. It’s a bonus that it’s so entertaining. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. (72 min., unrated) (Janice Page)

Strand Releasing

Young baseball players in the Dominican Republic are followed in “Ballplayer: Pelotero.”

★★★★ Beasts of the Southern Wild Benh Zeitlin’s astonishing first feature is a magical-realist fable that’s set in a small Louisiana community at the time of Hurricane Katrina but that plays like a primeval foundation myth. As the 6-year-old protagonist, Quvenzhané Wallis gives a performance that grows in majesty over the course of the film. (91 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)

★★Ice Age: Continental Drift For their fourth outing, prehistoric pals Manny the mammoth (Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), and saber tooth Diego (Denis Leary) are dropped into a pirate tale that couldn’t feel any more arbitrarily conceived. Peter Dinklage works hard as an amusingly designed, gold-toothed monkey mariner, but there’s a sense that we’re watching filler. Jennifer Lopez is his tigress first mate. (94 min., PG) (Tom Russo)

★★ The Intouchables France’s second biggest film hit tells the story of a ritzy white quadriplegic (Francois Cluzet) who hires a 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)

★★ Katy Perry: Part of Me Cameras follow the singer as she tours the world after the phenomenal success of her CD “Teenage Dream.” (The daughter of two Pentecostal preachers became the first woman to produce five No. 1 singles off of one album.) But even as she’s playing to packed houses, Perry struggles to keep her marriage to Russell Brand from falling apart. The movie is part concert film, part documentary. (97 min., PG) (Mark Shanahan)

★★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)

★★ Madea’s Witness Protection Tyler Perry returns as America’s least unbuttoned elderly black woman. The great Eugene Levy plays the CFO of a company that’s been used in a Ponzi scheme by organized crime. The feds stash Levy and his family with Madea. “My cousins,” she explains to a neighbor, “they lost all the pigmentation in their skin overnight.” The way Perry delivers the line, it actually is funny. (114 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)

★★★ 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 comic books and the movies based on them. With Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, and Samuel L. Jackson. (148 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)

★★★½ Monsieur Lazhar In a Montreal middle school, an immigrant substitute (Mohamed Fellag) helps his students cope with the suicide of their former teacher. What appears to be a gentle entry in the “To Sir With Love” genre actually has its mind on larger matters and a heart full of sorrow and rage.
In French, with English subtitles. (94 min., unrated) (Ty
Burr)

★★★★ 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)

★★½ Neil Young Journeys The least of the three documentaries director Jonathan Demme has made with the legendary rocker; but in its shaggy, eccentric way, it may be the truest. A May 2011 solo electric stand at Toronto’s Massey Hall — experimentalist and occasionally glorious — is intercut with a guided tour of Young’s rural Canadian roots. (87 min., PG) (Ty Burr)

★★ Prometheus Like opening a gift box from Tiffany’s to find a mug from the dollar store. 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 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)

★★★ Savages Despite a lousy ending, it’s Oliver Stone’s strongest work in years — a propulsive ultra-violent thriller with a mean streak and a devilish sense of humor. Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch play naive pot entrepreneurs in trouble with a Mexican cartel. Costarring Blake Lively, Salma Hayek, and a funny, scary Benicio Del Toro. (127 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)

★★½ Take This Waltz Writer-director Sarah Polley (“Away From Her”) makes her bid to be taken for an auteur with this visually striking, narratively vague story of love, lust, and infidelity in Toronto. Some very good moments, but Michelle Williams’s ethereal uncertainty is in danger of turning into schtick and Seth Rogen is out of his depth. (116 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★★ Ted Writer-director Seth MacFarlane’s debut feature is a crass, foulmouthed, mostly hilarious, surprisingly sentimental bromance about a grown boy named John (Mark Wahlberg) and his bong-huffing teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane). It’s really about that screw-up friend you want to outgrow but can’t. With Mila Kunis and a Boston vibe that feels close to the real thing. (100 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★½ To Rome With Love Woody Allen follows up the biggest hit of his career (“Midnight in Paris”) with a charming but self-indulgent trifle that’s less than the sum of its parts. A large cast gallivants through four separate story lines set in the Eternal City. Two work, two don’t. With Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, Alec Baldwin, and many others. (102 min., R) (Ty Burr)