Nick Schager

BEASTLY A modernized riff on Beauty and the Beast that's as subtle as its protagonist's freaky facial blemishes, Beastly offers up an Apple-store-shiny high school crammed with catty cretins, blossoming love in a luxuriant rooftop greenhouse, and a wise, racism-enduring Jamaican maid (Lisa Gay Hamilton) as its de facto Mrs......

EVEN THE RAIN Akin to Truffaut's Day for Night as reimagined by Howard Zinn (to whom it's dedicated), Even the Rain revolves around the Bolivia-set production of a celluloid epic about Columbus' arrival in South America, a historical tale of abuse and rebellion that dovetails with an ongoing conflict between......

I AM NUMBER FOUR Conceived by Oprah-vilified author James Frey as the beginning of a potential blockbuster franchise, I Am Number Four is nothing but a million little pieces from prior superhero series and the Twilight saga. D.J. Caruso's generic adventure, co-written by Frey under a pseudonym, concerns John Smith......

BIG MOMMAS: LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON Irony supplies the sole spark of humor in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, as this moribund second sequel has the audacity to feature Martin Lawrence's fat-suit-encased FBI agent decrying the very same noxious stereotypes in which this film wallows. John Whitesell's extraordinarily witless......

GO  CARANCHO In Argentina, the only thing more dangerous than the rampant auto accidents and understaffed hospitals are the ambulance-chasing attorneys who prey upon the injured and grieving. Pablo Trapero's social exposé-cum-thriller concentrates on one such carancho (translation: vulture), Sosa (Ricardo Darín), and his budding relationship with junkie doctor Luján......

IP MAN 2: LEGEND OF THE GRANDMASTER The famed titular Wing Chun martial arts master returns to protect Chinese honor in Ip Man 2, a redundant if nonetheless occasionally thrilling follow-up bolstered by star Donnie Yen's precision combat skills. Having relocated to Hong Kong in the early 1950s, Ip establishes......

ALIEN GIRL There's no extraterrestrial in Alien Girl; the title of Anton Bormatov's film actually refers to its human protagonist, a sexy, murderous seductress who's equated in the movie to the biomechanical monster of Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic. That sort of strained connection typifies most of this 1993-set Russian thriller......

BHUTTO Despite the biodoc implication of its title, Bhutto is not just a portrait of the late Benazir Bhutto, but also a chronological recap of Pakistan's anarchic history. Duane Baughman's nonfiction film pays reverential tribute to Bhutto, who, after the 1979 execution of her prime minister father, became the first......

JEWS AND BASEBALL: AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY Delivering exactly what its dry truth-in-advertising title promises, Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story provides a dutiful history lesson on the contributions to the national pastime by 20th-century Jewish immigrants. Blandly narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Peter Miller's nonfiction film posits baseball as......