Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’
Rated R
???
It’s post-Katrina New Orleans and there are snakes in the water — none bigger than Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), a corrupt detective, who slinks through town snorting coke, smoking heroin, harassing women and brandishing a .44 Magnum stuffed in the front of his pants. “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is a kind of remake of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult classic “Bad Lieutenant.” Director Werner Herzog has summoned the sensational spirit of the original while making something fresh and gloriously insane. Cage dives headlong into the madness, and it’s plain fun to see the actor give himself so fully to a character. The film keeps closer to the original’s plot than one might want of a movie by a skilled director. And the ending feels like a forced, extra dose of Herzog mania. But it has a pulse, and it’s a marvel to watch.

‘The Blind Side’
Rated PG-13
?? 1/2
This redemption-minded sports flick serves its inspiration straight-up with no twist. Writer-director John Lee Hancock wisely lets the true story of Michael Oher — the African-American teen who found a home and, eventually, football stardom, after being adopted by a wealthy Memphis family — speak for itself. That direct focus delivers a feel-good crowd-pleaser, but it also drains the film of the kind of subtle nuances that might have separated it from other Hollywood Hallmark-like efforts. The movie dutifully chronicles the transformation of Oher (newcomer Quinton Aaron) from blank slate to a fully formed young man, emphasizing the involvement of Leigh Ann Tuohy (Sandra Bullock). Bullock brings her trademark spunkiness to the mother hen role, delivering an iron-willed woman who looks past appearances to do the right thing.

‘Red Cliff’
Rated R
?? 1/2
John Woo’s Hollywood movies never quite capture the grace and gutsiness of his Hong Kong action films. Woo has brought a good dose of Hollywood scale and style to his first film shot in mainland China, though. The U.S. release of “Red Cliff” suffers from the inevitable emasculation of a historical pageant chopped in half — it was cut down from a two-part, five-hour version for Asian audiences. Yet what remains on screen is impressive. What’s lost in the abbreviation is the emotional element as Woo chronicles an epic clash of warriors in the 3rd century. Fine moments of humanity and heroism do remain, particularly in the friendship forged between a warrior (Tony Leung) and a sage (Takeshi Kaneshiro) as their outnumbered forces square off against a power-mad general (Zhang Fengyi).

‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
Rated PG
???
With George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray leading the top-notch voice cast, director Wes Anderson has found an ideal story and medium — stop-motion animation — to bring his cockeyed vision to the cartoon world. In the hands of “Rushmore” director Anderson, Roald Dahl’s children’s book about a poultry-thieving fox gets loving treatment and a distinct handcrafted style that sets it apart from the computer-generated imagery dominating animation today. Clooney provides the voice of a fox whose capers against three evil farmers bring the mechanized wrath of the human world down on him. It’s lightweight fun, yet the film succeeds on all levels, presenting cute and clever varmints to charm children while offering adults screwball humor.

‘The Messenger’
Rated R
?? 1/2
First-time director Oren Moverman delivers a moderately engaging war-on-terror homefront drama that unfortunately strays about without finding its center. Ben Foster, whose specialty has been playing captivating mad dogs such as his “3:10 to Yuma” gunslinger, is a stout but far less-interesting presence in the restrained title role here. Foster’s a war hero just back from Iraq and assigned to the Army’s casualty-notification service, one of those grim, uniformed guys who bring the worst imaginable news to next of kin. Woody Harrelson’s his boss and mentor, Samantha Morton’s a war widow with whom Foster strikes up a budding but taboo romance. The film works best capturing individual moments of grief, the range of emotion that comes with abrupt bereavement.

These are powerful snapshots in a drama that’s otherwise a bit out of focus.

‘Pirate Radio’
Rated R
2 stars
No movie can be all bad when juiced up with a soundtrack of more than 50 classic rock songs, the musical backdrop for a story about merry deejays blasting illicit tunes into stodgy mid-1960s Britain from a boat offshore. The best thing to say about this rock ’n’ roll romp from writer-director Richard Curtis is that it’s all about the music, man. The Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix — these are the stars here, and the well-chosen songs are the main thing keeping the film afloat. Mostly a hodgepodge of music montages and prolonged, occasionally funny gags, the movie spends a lot of time talking about how great rock music is but only captures its soul through the actual playlist of songs. It’s a big disappointment when you consider the potentially explosive combination of Curtis’ supergroup of comic talent, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost.
— Associated Press