Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Edge of Darkness’
Rated R
?? 1/2
It’s been seven years since his last film, but Mel Gibson is still playing martyr. After righteously battling injustice in “Lethal Weapon,” ‘’The Patriot,” ‘’Payback” and others, Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a humble Boston police detective and single father to a 24-year-old daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic). When Emma is killed, Craven sets out to find the killer, a journey that leads him into a complex web of corporate and political cover-up. Hellbent in a beige raincoat, he attacks with little self-regard. Now 54, Gibson is grayer and grimmer. The wildness and fire that once exploded unpredictably from Gibson is dimmed after several hard years for the actor. But he fits well in “Darkness.” Some might reasonably swear off films with Gibson, but there aren’t a lot of actors making movies that try to bring contemporary rage to the multiplexes. Perhaps, though, crusades needn’t always be a bloodbath. With Ray Winstone as a weary, philosophical government operative and Danny Huston as a slick CEO.

‘Saint John of Las Vegas’
Rated R
??
This deadpan comedy has Steve Buscemi playing John, an insurance man sent to look into a dubious car accident just outside Vegas. John doesn’t want to go — Vegas did a number on him — but he doesn’t resist too hard, either. Maybe he knows it’s time he faced his demons. But first-time writer-director Hue Rhodes never tries to fill in the blanks about John’s past or compulsions. He’s too busy echoing Dante’s “Inferno” and sending John on a superficial road trip through Oddsville, USA. Buscemi can do droll desperation with the best of them, but the underdeveloped John remains a cipher. Sarah Silverman is wasted as the sweet contrast to John’s weary fatalism. As a portrait of one man’s journey toward dignity, “Saint John” isn’t bad enough to create its own special circle of hell. As a comedy, though, it’s anything but divine.

‘Creation’
Rated PG-13
???
A pretty small film considering its huge themes — evolution vs. divinity, essentially, Darwin vs. God. Small actually benefits here in presenting what is, for many, a black-and-white debate about whether life on Earth developed through nature’s random opportunism or the guiding hand of a supreme maker. Director Jon Amiel casts the matter in personal terms as Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany) wrangles with the book that would spread the theory, his own loss of faith over the death of a daughter (Martha West) the backdrop to his struggle. Darwin’s chief conflict is what his theory means for his departed daughter and the conviction of her deeply religious mother (Bettany’s real-life wife Jennifer Connelly) that the girl’s soul lives on eternally. Bettany and newcomer West beautifully capture the sweet joys of a father and a bright, favored child, along with the momentous deprivation when she’s no longer there.

‘Extraordinary Measures’
Rated PG
??
This medical drama has been marketed as another “Blind Side,” a true story about quiet heroism, doing the right thing and overcoming great odds. But imagine if “The Blind Side” had focused on the legal processes necessary for Michael Oher’s adoption instead of the football and spunky Sandra Bullock and you have an idea of the strange path “Extraordinary Measures” takes on its road to inspiration. The movie tells the fictionalized story of the Crowley family, whose two youngest children are afflicted with Pompe disease, a metabolic disorder that leads to muscle degeneration and short life expectancy. The dad (Brendan Fraser) decides to fight for a cure, partnering with an eccentric scientist (Harrison Ford) to beat the clock and save his kids’ lives. The filmmakers strangely focus on funding and paperwork instead of the human drama with a lot of time spent watching Ford and Fraser bicker and make investor presentations. The debut feature of CBS Films, who, next time, might want to deliver a film that veers a little farther from the kind of fare people can watch at home for free.

‘Tooth Fairy’
Rated PG
??
Following the big-screen exploits of elves and bedroom monsters, tooth fairies were inevitably ready for their close-up. “Tooth Fairy” steals liberally from “Monsters Inc.” and “Elf,” among many others. It’s very much what you’d expect: a tale of optimism overcoming disbelief; family fare with comical casting (Julie Andrews as a Fairy Godmother); The Rock in a tutu. But despite its predictability and pat Hollywood cliche, “Tooth Fairy” is mostly charming, thanks largely to the toothy grins of Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) and Stephen Merchant, the British comedian and Ricky Gervais sidekick. Johnson plays a minor league hockey player who’s summoned to Tooth Fairy duty (Merchant plays his guide) to penalize his dream-dashing ways. Obvious puns (some from Billy Crystal in a cameo as a veteran fairy) and fully expected redemption follow. Johnson, a human Buzz Lightyear, and the spindly Merchant make the obvious material surprisingly winning.

‘The Book of Eli’
Rated R
??
In the future, according to “The Book of Eli,” we’ll all dress like we’re in a Nine Inch Nails video. A meteorite and a subsequent war 30 years earlier has scorched the earth and the population, who outfit themselves in goggles and leather. Across this charred land strides our Christian cowboy, Eli (Denzel Washington), a mysterious, solitary man who carries the last remaining Bible in his backpack, along with a knife and a shotgun. Eli is a prophet carrying The Word, and “The Book of Eli” suggests mankind will be saved by it. The Christian theme notwithstanding, “The Book of Eli” is really only a sepia-colored, shoot-’em-up Western. The Hughes brothers (“Menace II Society”) let nary a bullet or arrow fly without sending their cameras behind to track it in slow-motion. Washington and Gary Oldman (as a frustrated dictator trying to steal the Bible) create sparks and help drive the film forward. With Mila Kunis in post-apocalyptic chic and Tom Waits as a paranoid shopkeeper.

‘Fish Tank’
Unrated
??? 1/2
Writer-director Andrea Arnold has created something so real and raw with this British teen drama, you may come away with a twinge of guilty voyeurism, a sense of peering too closely and impolitely into other people’s lives. Arnold made a remarkable find with her teen lead, Katie Jarvis, who had not acted before but proves a natural, at least for the sort of honest intensity needed to anchor the story. Jarvis plays Mia, a 15-year-old alienated from friends, her mom (Kierston Wareing) and everything else around her bleak home in a crumbling industrial town east of London. Her mother’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) becomes both someone new to confront and an intriguing mix of father figure and dream suitor to Mia. Extreme things happen, yet it all feels genuine, even inevitable, thanks to the devoted, fearless cast and Arnold’s attention to detail, which helps the film unfold like actual lives playing out on screen.
— Associated Press