Ratings based on four-star system.

‘The Book of Eli’
Rated R
★★★
The latest in a wave of post-apocalyptic films is this sly “Mad Max”-y sort of Western, pitting Denzel Washington as a high plains drifter with God on his side against Gary Oldman as the entrepreneur ruling a makeshift dirty town somewhere in what’s left of the Southwestern United States. “Eli” may traffic in familiar landscapes and archetypes, but it allows its cast the space and time to make the characters breathe. This film from the Hughes Brothers (“Dead Presidents”) simply is better, and better-acted, than the average end-of-the-world fairy tale.

‘The Crazies’
Rated R
★★★ 1⁄2
One of the year’s nicest bloody surprises, the remake of the 1973 George A. Romero virus thriller “The Crazies” must be approached with the proper expectations. It should not be judged for what it is not. But nearly everything about it works. The good people of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, turn into murderous lunatics, owing to a nearby downed plane carrying germ-warfare viral nastiness leaking straight into the town’s water supply As in Romero’s Vietnam-era original, the real adversary is the U.S. government, which, after the craziness starts, launches “containment protocol.”

‘Cop Out’
Rated R
★
Tracy Morgan plays the motor-mouth NYPD detective partner of Bruce Willis, and there’s no reason these two couldn’t headline a perfectly proficient action comedy. But this is a lousy, invention-free script, and Kevin Smith — an interesting and valuable filmmaker doing direction-only work for hire — cannot do anything to save it. His directorial personality is not to be found.

‘Crazy Heart’
Rated R
★★★★
There’s a powerful symmetry at work in “Crazy Heart.” It’s a parallel between protagonist Bad Blake, a country singer at a nadir of disintegration, and star Jeff Bridges, whose exceptional film choices have put him at the height of his powers in time to make Blake the capstone of his career. It’s a mark of how fine a performance Bridges gives that it succeeds beautifully even though the besotted, bedeviled country singer has been an overly familiar popular-culture staple for forever.

‘Creation’
Rated PG-13
★★
There is angst, lots of it, for Paul Bettany to muck around in as he portrays the great evolutionist Charles Darwin. Not that angst is bad, but here it makes a muddle of Darwin’s story. Even the sheer beauty of the setting and the attention to detail in re-creating his family life is not enough of a distraction. Bettany’s significant other, Jennifer Connelly, portrays Darwin’s wife, Emma.

‘Dear John’
Rated PG-13
★★
Like “The Blind Side,” ‘’Dear John” offers audiences a meat-and-potatoes story of love, loyalty, heartfelt generosity and other matters seldom brought to the screen with any skill at all. I truly wish this adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel were a better, less shamelessly manipulative movie, but a couple of the actors got me through it alive. Amanda Seyfried, who plays a driven-snow saint without making you gag, falls for a Green Beret (Channing Tatum, not so good) with an autistic father (Richard Jenkins, another asset). Tears ensue.

‘Edge of Darkness’
Rated R
★★★
In his first starring role since 2002’s “Signs,” Mel Gibson plays a detective bent on revenge after his nuclear-researcher daughter is murdered. This entertaining thriller, a compressed two-hour version of a six-hour 1985 British TV miniseries, also features Ray Winstone as an assassin/fixer/philosopher who quietly becomes the most intriguing character. Director Martin Campbell’s film offers not surprises, exactly, but craftsmanship and low, brute, cunning satisfactions.

‘From Paris With Love’
Rated R
★★★
“From Paris With Love” doesn’t do much for Paris or love, or your brain cells, but it flies like a crazed eagle on uppers. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a low-level spy and Paris embassy functionary who longs for more exciting work. Fortune smiles, and he teams up for an anti-terrorist assignment with a visiting American intelligence ace (John Travolta). Half of Paris is dead or dying 40 minutes into this 92-minute bleed-for-all, which efficiently blends all the mayhem with a droll air of camp.

‘The Ghost Writer’
Rated PG-13
★★★ 1⁄2
Director Roman Polanski turns a conventional conspiracy thriller into a triumph of atmospheric menace. A hated politician (Pierce Brosnan, playing a variant on ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair) owes his publisher an autobiography. Enter the ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), who arrives on Martha’s Vineyard to research his subject. Some may perceive this as an anti-Bush polemic, but Polanski is less intrigued by specific topical reference points than by the cramped corridors of power and what misdeeds lie in the shadows.

‘Happy Tears’
Rated R
★ 1⁄2
Writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s second feature relays a bittersweet story of two grown sisters (Parker Posey and Demi Moore) who return to their girlhood Pittsburgh home to take care of their increasingly difficult father (Rip Torn), who has shacked up with his alleged “nurse” (Ellen Barkin). As the sisters argue, get high and wonder if Dad’s ramblings about treasure buried somewhere in the backyard have any validity, we feel the dull clunk of plot bits going clunk … clunk … clunk.

‘The Last Station’
Rated R
★★★ 1⁄2
The final years of Leo Tolstoy’s life were all war and no peace. The savage rivalry for his attention and legacy between his redoubtable wife and his craftiest disciple has now been turned into a showcase for tasty acting by performers who really know how to sink their teeth into roles. Under the accomplished direction of Michael Hoffman, who also wrote the script, “The Last Station” is well-acted across the board, but the film’s centerpiece is the spectacular back and forth between Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya, his wife of 48 years.

‘Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief’
Rated PG
2 stars
The first installment in Rick Riordan’s five-book series suggests that this could be the start of something adequate. Its limitations are less a matter of scale than of imagination. It may be director Chris Columbus’ fate to initiate a fantasy franchise destined to be improved by his successors, as with the “Harry Potter” juggernaut. Now, Columbus has taken on this fantasy construct in which Greek gods threaten war in modern-day America over Zeus’ missing lightning bolt.

‘Shutter Island’
Rated R
2 stars
A U.S. marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his amiable new partner (Mark Ruffalo) hunt for an escaped patient at an insane asylum run by a shifty doctor (Ben Kingsley), whose island clinic may harbor sinister doings in the name of progressive health care. The esteemed Martin Scorsese directs this adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel, but Scorsese overcooks the stew. Not even supporting players as deft as Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley and Emily Mortimer can make this more than classy, well-acted junk.

‘A Single Man’
Rated R
4 stars
Some films aren’t revelations, exactly, but they burrow so deeply into old truths about love and loss and the mess and thrill of life, they seem new anyway. This is one such film, one of the best of 2009. In adapting Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel to the screen, first-time feature filmmaker Tom Ford (better known for being a famous fashion designer) has put his admiration of the source material to excellent results. Ford also has facilitated a career best for actor Colin Firth, one of the screen’s great and subtle portraitists.

‘The Tooth Fairy’
Rated PG
1 1⁄2 stars
Dwayne Johnson stars as a minor-league hockey player known as “The Tooth Fairy” for his ability to knock his opponents’ teeth all over the rink. The real tooth fairies do not approve of him, so he’s lifted off to Fairyland, where Julie Andrews oversees his stint as a “real” tooth fairy whose wings sprout at inconvenient times. Johnson’s a game and antic presence, but saddled with this material, he comes perilously close to tiring out the audience with all his nervous activity and mugging.

‘Valentine’s Day’
Rated PG-13
2 stars
Set in a sprawling, grime-free L.A., director Garry Marshall’s “Valentine’s Day” is “Crash” with hearts and flowers, an ensemble romantic comedy that believes in bulk. Is “Valentine’s Day” good? Not really, though plenty of the actors are. The massive cast includes Anne Hathaway, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Biel, Queen Latifah, Topher Grace and many others. In sum it plays like 12 landlocked episodes of “The Love Boat” rammed together.

‘When in Rome’
Rated PG-13
1 1⁄2 stars
In Rome for her sister’s wedding, a tightly wound woman (Kristen Bell) drunkenly scoops out of a magic fountain a handful of coins tossed in by lovelorn tourists who become her magic stalkers, smitten without knowing why. These suitors (Danny DeVito, Dax Shepard, Jon Heder and Will Arnett) keep turning up back home and throwing plot obstacles in the way of our heroine after she meets a charming sports columnist (Josh Duhamel). The movie lacks invention and true magic in the worst way, and certain scenes signify nothing less than the death of screen slapstick.

‘The Wolfman’
Rated R
3 stars
The new edition of the old Universal horror title “The Wolfman” constitutes a pleasant surprise, if “pleasant” can be used to describe a brooding $100 million-plus diversion with this many beheadings and eviscerations. Someone or something is on the loose in late-1800s England, slaughtering Gypsies and good, upright English folk. When a famous Shakespearean actor (Benicio Del Toro) is attacked and begins showing signs of trouble, it’s his father (Anthony Hopkins) who takes care of him, though he seems strangely interested in letting “the beast” run free.
— Tribune Media Services