New releases
★½ Planet of Snail A sweet but inert Korean documentary about a young writer who’s blind and deaf and his doting wife. Because his experience of the world is largely tactile, he lives like a snail, hence the title. (87 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
★★ Switch Scott Tinker, a University of Texas at Austin geologist, makes for a personable if bland narrator-guide for this informative if bland documentary. It’s a kilowatt travelogue, going from Texas to India to Iceland to northern Canada — and numerous points between — as it surveys what forms the world’s energy future will likely take. (98 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
Previously released
★ 2016: Obama’s America Well, fair’s fair. George W. Bush got Michael Moore and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Now Barack Obama gets Dinesh D’Souza and “2016: Obama’s America.” Both films are wildly partisan attack documentaries made by wildly partisan and generally annoying polemicists (D’Souza is more personable, actually, than Moore). The difference is that Moore is a talented filmmaker. Based on D’Souza’s 2010 bestseller, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” (89 min., PG) (Mark Feeney)
★★★ Bachelorette Kirsten Dunst’s temper in movies isn’t terribly long. For most of this oversexed, obscene, drugged-out comedy, she’s made it even shorter. The part is nothing new — she plays a woman who’s shocked that a friend is getting married before she is — but her rawness is both real and astounding. Written and directed with energy and wit by Leslye Headland, and staffed with nasty caricature by Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher. (87 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
★½ The Cold Light of Day A limply formulaic action-thriller that wastes a decent cast and lovely Spanish locations. Henry Cavill — soon to be seen as Superman, in “Man of Steel” — is a neophyte on the run from spies after his CIA agent dad (Bruce Willis) is sidelined. Costarring Sigourney Weaver, who snarls enjoyably as she pays her bills. (93 min., PG-13) (Ty Burr)
½ Compliance Proof that something based on a true story can be gruesomely implausible. A young woman who works at a fast-food restaurant (Dreama Walker) is accused of theft. Pleading understaffing, a policeman (Pat Healy) telephones the manager (Ann Dowd). He talks her through an increasingly degrading interrogation, search of the woman’s person, and even more outrageous stuff you really don’t want to know about. (90 minutes, R) (Mark Feeney)
★★The Expendables 2 Sylvester Stallone and his mercenary crew are dispatched to Eastern Europe on a safecracking job, but when the group is ambushed by Jean-Claude Van Damme, they’re soon ordering up a combo meal of plutonium recovery and revenge. There’s enough chunky bloodshed to equal the first installment’s grungy thrills, but what’s also the same is the disappointing lack of cleverness. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Chuck Norris. (102 min., R) (Tom Russo)
★★★ For a Good Time, Call . . . Two women in their late 20s, played by Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller, start a phone sex company. It’s like one of those bromances. This version is simultaneously as emotionally sincere and more archly self-conscious. It achieves both parity and parody. It’s a bra-mance. (88 min., R) (Wesley Morris)
½ The Inbetweeners Movie So much for British cultural superiority: Crude, moronic teen sex comedies aren’t an American monopoly. Four repulsive losers celebrate their graduation from high school by going on holiday in Crete. As if Greece didn’t have enough problems. Based on a British sitcom, an American version of which is running on MTV. (97 min., R) (Mark Feeney)
★★½ It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl This documentary about the founder of Zionism is sober, detailed, and handsomely mounted. It takes for granted that Herzl’s legacy is an unmixed blessing, a view not all would agree with. Ben Kingsley narrates, and Christoph Waltz is the voice of Herzl. (96 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
★ Kumaré Vikram Gandhi, a first-generation American of Indian descent, decided to masquerade as a guru to debunk phony spiritual leaders. He let his hair grow, started using an Indian accent, and found disciples. Gandhi directed this documentary about his masquerade. Slack and smug, it feels familiar, but not in a good way. Morgan Spurlock reimagines “Borat”: “Super-Spiritualize Me”? (84 min., unrated) (Mark Feeney)
★★½ Lawless In southern Virginia, three bootlegging brothers clash during Prohibition with a sadistic cop imported from Chicago. The movie, which is quite bloody, is very handsomely mounted, but studiedly so. Tom Hardy has serious throw weight as the chief brother. Shia LeBeouf, as the youngest, is kind of twerpy. Guy Pearce preens as the cop. Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska, as love interests, are sadly superfluous. (115 min., R) (Mark Feeney)
★★★ Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present A theatrical, narcissistic, unaccountably likable woman known for her feats of endurance-as-art, Abramovic is preparing for a major museum retrospective when this documentary begins. The show’s main attraction is a performance piece which requires Abramovic to sit in a chair for almost eight hours a day for three months as people come to sit opposite her. The entertaining film explains Abramovic — in all her complexity — brilliantly. (105 min., unrated) (Sebastian Smee)
★★★★ Oslo, August 31st A coolly observed yet boundlessly compassionate day in the life of a recovering drug addict (Anders Danielsen Lie), Joachim Trier’s drama breaks your heart many times over. The influence of the great French filmmaker Robert Bresson hovers over the proceedings like a benediction. In Norwegian, with subtitles. (95 min., unrated) (Ty Burr)
★★ ParaNorman The ghoulification of American family entertainment hits a dead end in this highly creative but depressingly jaded stop-motion thriller about a kid who sees dead people. For older kids only, provided they don’t mind dismembered zombies coming at them in 3-D. (And those are the good guys.) (93 min., PG) (Ty Burr)
★★ The Possession Another little girl from a broken, middle-class home becomes a demon’s plaything. This time the demon is Jewish and the exorcism is kosher. As the girl, Natasha Calis is a hoot, and this is better-made junk than its recent peers, but it’s morally lazy. Evil really needs to get over itself. With Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as dad and mom. (93 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)
★★★ Premium Rush The title of this movie about a Manhattan bicycle messenger sounds like an energy drink. Energy it has — too much. Trickiness, ditto. If the plot had any more gears — a romantic triangle, gambling debts, Chinatown gangsters, a race against time — it would be a mountain bike. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is smart and fast and looks just fine hunched over a set of handlebars. (85 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)
★★ Robot & Frank Frank Langella plays a retired jewel thief, Frank. To help with his memory problems, his son gives him a robot personal assistant (the movie’s set slightly in the future). With the robot’s help, Frank unretires. The movie’s fairly negligible, but Langella is good. Even better is a sorely underutilized Susan Sarandon as his romantic interest. Peter Sarsgaard, voicing the robot, is best of all. (89 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)
★½ Samsara Much of Ron Fricke’s wordless documentary — the title is Sanskrit for “ever-turning wheel of life” — is stupendously beautiful. Even more of it is stupendously dull. The film shows national parks, cathedrals, monasteries, waterfalls, African tribes, assembly lines, military parades, even dancelike calisthenics in a Philippine prison courtyard (that bit’s pretty cool, actually). It’s like an issue of National Geographic gone mad. (102 min., PG-13) (Mark Feeney)
★★ Sleepwalk With Me The talented comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia directed, co-wrote, and stars in this droopy dramatization of some of his stage material about how he found his voice and lost a relationship that feels doomed the minute you see that Lauren Ambrose is his costar. She’s alive. Offstage, he’s a patch of moss. Birbiglia needs a movie or series that wakes up him and his material and sets them loose. (80 min., unrated) (Wesley Morris)
★★ The Words Bradley Cooper faces another ethical challenge. This time he’s a writer who didn’t write his blockbuster novel. That story is a story within a story, which also contains a third tale. It’s confusing. Worse than that, it’s dull. Written and directed by the first-timers Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal and costarring Zoe Saldana, Dennis Quaid, and Jeremy Irons. (96 min., PG-13) (Wesley Morris)