Ratings based on four-star system.
‘More Than a Game’
Rated PG
2 stars
An inspiring story that works very hard to remind you it’s an inspiring story at every opportunity. “Hoosiers” looks subtle by comparison — and this is a documentary. “More Than a Game” traces the origins of LeBron James before he was an NBA superstar, when he and his high school teammates rose from being scrappy Akron, Ohio, kids to three-time state basketball champions. With his first film, director and co-writer Kristopher Belman combines old home videos and TV news footage with fresh interviews with James, his buddies and their coach, Dru Joyce II. Feel-good speeches and proclamations abound, frequently accompanied by the swell of uplifting music. (“Our kids just had a never-say-die attitude,” recalls the coach, speaking in one of many sports cliches, even though the tears in his eyes at the memories seem genuine.) Too often, Belman also states the obvious; we could have figured out for ourselves, for example, that Joyce served as a father figure to James, who was raised in the projects by a single mother who gave birth to him at 16. The fact that James’ talent and discipline allowed him not only to overcome his childhood hardships but thrive on a stratospheric scale is a compelling story in itself — and to his credit, he’s not the sole focus of the film, even though he’s an executive producer. “More Than a Game” also takes plenty of time to let us get to know his teammates, their back stories, and how they found a way to work together and win.

‘A Serious Man’
Rated R
3 1/2 stars
It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what a Coen brothers movie is. That’s part of the allure of them. As writers and directors, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen don’t just pump out the same movie over and over, as so many filmmakers do. From the comic antics of “Raising Arizona” to the noir of “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” the goofballs of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to the outlaws of “No Country for Old Men,” they’re all strikingly different. But there are some thematic threads that frequently run though them, which get tangled together here in the Coens’ most personal film yet. Basically the point is that the universe is random, it gives you insurmountable challenges, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The concepts of justice and karma are irrelevant: Things happen to people whether their behavior is good or bad, and you can question them all you like, but good luck finding any answers. But the Coens are clearly having a little fun in making life so difficult for the nebbishy Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor raising his family in a predominately Jewish suburb of Minneapolis in 1967. Larry tries to do the right thing at home and at work — tries to be a serious man — but out of nowhere one day, the troubles start piling up until they reach an absurd level. Watching and wondering how and when he’ll snap provides laughs, but also a mounting sense of unease, and it should provoke lengthy debate about the nature of faith.

‘Zombieland’
Rated R
3 stars
You’d be justified in thinking you’ve visited “Zombieland” before. There’s been no shortage of zombies at the movies in recent years, just as there’s been no shortage of vampires. And within that genre, a crop of zombie comedies has arisen, from “Shaun of the Dead” to “Zombie Strippers” to “Dead Snow.” Like “Shaun” before it, though, “Zombieland” mostly finds that tricky balance of the laugh-out-loud funny and the make-you-jump scary, of deadpan laughs and intense energy. It’s a total blast even if the story is a bit thin, and it does run out of steam toward the end, but thankfully our trip to “Zombieland” is appropriately quick. First-time director Ruben Fleischer grabs you from the get-go with stylized visuals. Jesse Eisenberg stars as an uber-nerdy college student who’s managed to survive a viral zombie outbreak by adhering to a strict series of rules, which are inspired by his innate fear of everything. While trying to get home to Ohio to see what’s become of his parents, he runs into a fellow survivor (Woody Harrelson) who’s his brash, butt-kicking opposite.

‘Brief Interviews With Hideous Men’
Not rated
1 1/2 stars
The “brief” part is one of the biggest problems here. In adapting the late David Foster Wallace’s book of the same name, writer-director John Krasinski spends so little time with each of the male “subjects” being interviewed about their fears and fantasies, it’s hard to connect with any of them or feel intrigued or moved by their stories. They mainly come off as neurotic, obnoxious or both. And the actors playing them are so self-consciously performing, their soliloquies feel stagey and false. By contrast, the woman questioning them for her doctoral thesis in anthropology, the reserved Sara (Julianne Nicholson), exhibits so little personality, she’s a cipher. Krasinski makes his debut behind the camera here, but the star of TV’s “The Office” is actually more effective in front of it. He appears in one of the stronger sequences in this scattershot production as Ryan (or “Subject No. 20,” as he’s known scientifically), the man who’s come in and out of Sara’s life and inspired her study. But then he undermines his own performance with copious jump cuts, a distracting and gimmicky device he uses far too frequently. Krasinski intersperses the interviews with dramatic segments showing Sara interacting with her various subjects, but neither approach provides much insight into the male psyche. Too often, we get cliches: Men view women as objects, they have commitment issues, they don’t understand what women want. Timothy Hutton, Dominic Cooper, Bobby Cannavale and Josh Charles are among the ensemble cast.

‘Coco Before Chanel’
Rated PG-13
2 stars
The young Coco Chanel noticed style everywhere, even in the crisp white and basic black of the nuns’ habits at the orphanage where she was raised. “Coco Before Chanel” has a similarly keen eye for appearances, but there’s not a whole lot of passion or insight beneath the surface. Director Anne Fontaine’s film, which she wrote with her sister, Camille, traces the early years of the fashion designer who would come to define a bold kind of feminine style throughout the 20th century, one that was as no-nonsense as the woman herself. We see her in her early 20s as a struggling seamstress and part-time singer fending off advances from drunken soldiers, then as the live-in lover to a playboy racehorse owner, and finally as an independent woman honing her skills and refining her look. Audrey Tautou has great appeal as Gabrielle Chanel — Coco, as she was known — presenting the designer’s feistiness not as bravado but as a straightforward reflection of how she felt. Of course, Tautou looks adorably chic in Chanel’s clothes, with her petite, androgynous frame and big, brown eyes. Still, you wonder what moved her, aside from the simplicity of the men’s outfits that would inspire her own suits and hats. While living with the randy Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), functioning as his “geisha,” as he liked to call her, she supposedly was in love with his friend, Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola), but even her involvement in that relationship seems almost passive.

‘The Boys Are Back’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
This true-life drama delicately and deftly finds a balance that’s hard to strike: It depicts death, and the way a family rebuilds and redefines itself afterward, without any mawkishness. Director Scott Hicks’ film, with its dreamlike, sun-splashed landscapes of Southern Australia, is visually arresting (the work of cinematographer Greig Fraser, who recently shot Jane Campion’s luminous “Bright Star”). But the content of Allan Cubitt’s script, based on the memoir by Simon Carr, is meaty and straightforward, which gives it an unexpected power. This is easily Hicks’ best film since the Oscar-winning “Shine” way back in 1996 (since then his work has included the admirable but uneven “Hearts in Atlantis” and “No Reservations”), and much of the allure comes from Clive Owen’s complex performance. As a man learning how to function as a single father after the death of his wife, Owen shows great liveliness but also a natural vulnerability. His character, sportswriter Joe Warr, takes a “Just Say Yes” attitude in raising his 6-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty, disarming in his film debut), which makes for a lot of fun but it also results in chaos. Joe’s frustration in figuring out this whole parenting thing by himself provides inescapable reminders of Dustin Hoffman in “Kramer vs. Kramer”: Once again we have two men sharing a home, realizing they don’t really know each other and unsure of how to relate as they work through their grief. But then the arrival of Harry (George MacKay), Joe’s teenage son from his first marriage, changes the dynamic all over again.

‘The Damned United’
Rated R
3 stars
You don’t have to be a soccer expert, or even know much about the sport, to get sucked into the competing personalities and personal dramas depicted here. Sure, it probably helps in terms of appreciating some of the details and nuances, especially if you’re a fan of British football. But director Tom Hooper doesn’t include very much action on the field: “The Damned United” is more about the larger-than-life figures behind the scenes, mainly Brian Clough, the real-life manager of Leeds United for a brief and tumultuous period in 1974. And you don’t even have to know who Clough was to care about him. As he did with his brilliant and underappreciated supporting work as Tony Blair in “The Queen” and David Frost “Frost/Nixon,” Michael Sheen brings this cocky coach vividly to life. It is such a joy to see him grab hold of a starring role like this, and to see him work once again with screenwriter Peter Morgan, who wrote those earlier films. Morgan has an uncanny knack for taking powerful and polarizing leaders and making us see them in a totally new and humanistic light. He did it with Queen Elizabeth II, Richard Nixon and, in “The Last King of Scotland,” Idi Amin. Clough won’t be nearly as well-known to American audiences but Morgan shows us his foibles, his vulnerability, which should make him compelling to anyone. Based on David Peace’s novel, “The Damned United” jumps back and forth between Clough’s hiring as the new Leeds coach, after the departure of the beloved Don Revie (Colm Meaney) for the English national team, and the unlikely rise Clough enjoyed with perennial cellar-dwellers.

‘Love Happens’
Rated PG-13
0 stars
Love supposedly happens here. We’ll have to take their word for it. Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston are so utterly lacking in chemistry with each other (and they’re both pretty bland individually) that it’s hard to discern any genuine emotion. What first-time director Brandon Camp gives us instead is a cliche-addled romantic drama that’s short on both romance and drama, one that’s filled with soggy platitudes and contrived catharsis. Camp also wrote the script with Mike Thompson, which contains such unimaginative, heavy-handed metaphors as walking across hot coals, shopping at Home Depot as a means of rebuilding a life and setting a bird free in the woods. It’s a painfully earnest slog reminiscent of such gooey fare as “Pay It Forward,” one that belongs on cable, if anywhere, and probably wouldn’t even have seen the light of day theatrically if not for the involvement of its two main stars. Eckhart plays self-help guru Burke Ryan, a widower who wrote a book about coping with loss after his wife’s death in a car accident three years ago. Now he’s a nationwide sensation, playing to sold-out crowds at cult-like seminars and helping others work through their own grief. Aniston co-stars as a florist named Eloise, who creates the flower arrangements at the hotel where Burke’s Seattle workshops are taking place. Both are apprehensive about falling in love again, which means that naturally they’re meant to do so with each other.

‘Bright Star’
Rated PG
3 stars
In telling the story of the final years in the brief life of poet John Keats, this very easily could have been a stuffy, period costume drama. Instead, writer-director Jane Campion has fashioned a fascinating mix of contradictions. Her film is at once gritty and ethereal, grounded and romantic, quaint and contemporary. Those appealing contrasts extend to the casting choices, as well, with the pale, reserved Ben Whishaw playing off the vibrant, direct Abbie Cornish. One of the smartest moves Campion made was to focus on a short, pivotal period for Keats, rather than trying to construct a comprehensive (and potentially cursory) biopic. “Bright Star” follows the three-year relationship between the writer and Fanny Brawne, his next-door neighbor in Hampstead, north London. It was a time of great productivity for him, as we’d later come to appreciate, but it’s also when he experienced his only true love. Fanny, a flirty and style-obsessed 18-year-old, may not seem like an ideal fit for the 23-year-old Keats at first — and his collaborator Charles Brown, played by a brash and scene-stealing Paul Schneider, does his best to exert his territoriality and keep them apart. But in time they become fascinated by the foreignness of each other, until they eventually become inseparable. Physically, they never progress beyond hand-holding and a few chaste kisses, but the charge those acts carry is palpable. Like the dreamy white light that streams in from the windows of Fanny’s country home, the emotion of “Bright Star” bursts through the stillness and grabs you.

‘The Informant!’
Rated R
3 stars
The exclamation point in the title is your first clue that Steven Soderbergh’s intentions here are more than a little askew. Then you notice Matt Damon’s helmet of hair, his pouf of a mustache, his corny sportswear and the paunch where the “Bourne” trilogy star’s taut abs used to be. And once the strains of Marvin Hamlisch’s jaunty score begin — an ideal accompaniment to the faded, ’70s-style cinematography — you know you’re in some vividly retro, comic parallel universe. “The Informant!” is about a serious, real-life subject — a whistle-blower who spied for the FBI to expose corporate corruption — only Soderbergh, directing a script by Scott Z. Burns, approaches it in the goofiest way, rather than as a serious drama like “The Insider” or even his own “Erin Brockovich.” It’s a kick, really, but it also keeps you guessing: Is Damon, as Mark Whitacre, just a regular guy who gets in over his head? Is he far more scheming and malevolent than his folksy Midwestern demeanor would suggest? Or is something else entirely going on here? Damon doesn’t just dig into the role physically. He also keeps you on your toes with Whitacre’s happy-go-lucky personality, a misplaced confidence that buoys him regardless of the situation, coupled with a surprisingly high comfort level for duplicity. One of the neatest tricks that throws us off course is Whitacre’s running interior monologue: a series of voiceovers in which he provides stream-of-consciousness musings on everything from indoor pools to the Japanese word for tuna. His thoughts may not be as innocuous as they seem.

‘Jennifer’s Body’
Rated R
2 stars
The second screenplay from Diablo Cody following her debut smash “Juno” is so chock full of her quirky trademarks, it almost plays like a parody of something she’d write. The self-consciously clever dialogue, the gratuitous pop-culture references, the made-up phrases intended to convey a specific high school ethos — they’re all there. Even though fembot Megan Fox is an excellent fit to spit out these witty quips, it’s all so familiar, it makes you wonder whether Cody has any other weapons in her arsenal. Part of the allure of the Showtime series Cody created, “The United States of Tara” — beyond the versatility of star Toni Collette — is the humor she finds in everyday suburbia, the reality and the absurdity. And that’s the best part of “Jennifer’s Body,” too. Never mind that it’s a mash-up of horror flick and teen comedy: When her characters talk about regular stuff like awkward adolescent sex and high-school dances, it’s funny in a relatable way. It’s when Cody tries too hard to dazzle us that she loses her footing; meanwhile, director Karyn Kusama struggles in her own way to find the right tone. The result: “Jennifer’s Body” is never scary and only sporadically amusing. Fox is a great choice, though, to play Jennifer, the queen bee in the small town of Devil’s Kettle. One night, after attending a concert by her favorite band that goes disastrously awry, Jennifer seems … different. This is immediately obvious to her childhood best friend, the nerdy Needy (Amanda Seyfried). But soon the whole town knows something’s wrong when boys’ bodies start turning up eviscerated.

‘9’
Rated PG-13
3 stars
Despite their roughhewn appearance, the resourceful rag dolls in “9” obviously were crafted with great love and care, both by the scientist who made them in the film and the mastermind behind them in real life, director Shane Acker. If only as much complex thought had gone into the script. The animation is so breathtaking in its originality, so weird and wondrous in its detail, you wish there were more meat to the screenplay from Pamela Pettler, who previously wrote “Monster House.” Based on Acker’s 2004 animated short of the same name, which was nominated for an Oscar, “9” follows a group of creatures who represent the last vestige of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s set in the future after a war between mankind and machines but eerily resembles Europe after World War II, with its sepia tones blanketing the decimated surroundings in danger and fear. (Parents, don’t be fooled: It may look like a cute and clever cartoon, but “9” is genuinely frightening.) 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) awakens to find no people are left, but there are a few others like him: tiny, fabric dolls stitched together coarsely but sturdily, with lenses for eyes. (As in “WALL-E,” the eyes convey a lot more emotion than you might imagine.) Each has a number on his or her back signifying who they are and the order in which they were created. They include 1 (Christopher Plummer), the priestly, rigid leader; 2 (Martin Landau), an aging but feisty inventor; 5 (John C. Reilly), who’s loyal but afraid of everything; and 7 (Jennifer Connelly), a brave and butt-kicking warrior.
— Associated Press