Ratings based on four-star system.

‘The Back-Up Plan’
Rated PG-13
? 1/2
Jennifer Lopez plays a Manhattan pet store owner whose wheelchair-bound dog is her only steady male companionship. Aussie hunk Alex O’Loughlin plays a cheese-maker who sells his wares at the Tribeca Farmers Market. They meet cute, and we wait for our heroine to reveal that she recently was artificially inseminated. In the late ‘90s, Lopez not only had It, but an easy warmth to go with It. Several contrived rom-coms later, the actress has become a calculating sort of charmer, a mirror of the material she’s given.

‘Date Night’
Rated PG-13
??1/2
“Date Night” is a product substantially inferior to the material routinely finessed by stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey, on their respective hit TV shows, into comic gold. A married couple leave the kids with a sitter and hit Manhattan for dinner. In an effort to be seated at a trendy restaurant, they claim another couple’s vacated reservation, leading to mistaken-identity trouble. The script is weak, but the actors keep saving this one, including James Franco and Mila Kunis, whose only scene is a memorable one.

‘Death at a Funeral’
Rated R
?? 1/2
Ragged in its technique but pretty funny anyway, the remake of the 2007 British comedy “Death at a Funeral” won’t please everyone, but seeing so many good, resourceful actors mix it up has its satisfactions. The nominal leads belong to Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, rivalrous brothers whose father has passed, and whose down-low life they know nothing about until a mystery man (Peter Dinklage, repeating his role in the original) shows up with incriminating photos. Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover and Zoe Saldana are also part of the high-powered cast.

‘Harry Brown’
Rated R
?1/2
Letting his grave, limpid stare do most of the heavy lifting, Michael Caine makes not a single interpretive misstep in the British thriller “Harry Brown.” The tragedy is that the performance comes to nothing. Nearly everything else in the film is vile. Caine plays a stoic pensioner who becomes a vigilante in his South London housing project, where drug-fueled human vermin run the show while police turn a blind eye.

‘How to Train Your Dragon’
Rated PG
??? 1/2
The swoops and dives of this exuberant animated feature, in which the teen hero befriends the winged enemy, should prove as addicting to its target audience as similar scenes have in “Avatar.” On the Island of Berk, the Vikings have been putting up with dragon attacks for 300 years. Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) meets one of the dreaded beasts and learns dragons are a misjudged species, which puts him at odds with his father (Gerard Butler) and the rest of the village. The flying scenes are fantastic, so seeing “Dragon” in 3-D really is a must.

‘Iron Man 2’
Rated PG-13
??1/2
“A passable knock-off”: That’s how the obscenely rich but heartsick industrialist played by Robert Downey Jr. characterizes the electro-weaponry wielded by his adversary (Mickey Rourke) in “Iron Man 2.” Much of this scattershot sequel to the 2008 smash feels like a passable knock-off as well. Here and there, director Jon Favreau’s diversion takes us back to the considerable satisfactions of the first “Iron Man,” but “Iron Man 2” has a harder time with matters of story clarity and momentum.

‘Just Wright’
Rated PG
???
Audiences may be stunned by the genuine display of niceness in this romantic comedy. Queen Latifah plays a physical therapist who has two months to rehab the man she secretly loves, the nicest guy the NBA, played by Common, after a knee injury threatens to derail his career. Director Sanaa Hamri deftly preserves the heart of this film. The reason “Just Wright” works is simple. It finds ways to let familiar characters move around inside a familiar premise like living, breathing, likable human beings.

‘Letters to Juliet’
Rated PG
???
Amanda Seyfried stars in this enjoyable rom-com as Sophie, a bright-eyed girl on vacation with her single-minded fiance in Verona, Italy. Here, centuries ago, Romeo met Juliet. Today lovelorn letters to the tragic heroine are left at a sacred spot. When Sophie replies to a letter written fifty years earlier, its author Claire, a remarkable Vanessa Redgrave, returns to Verona where the two join forces to scour the countryside for Claire’s long-lost Italian beau. It ain’t Shakespeare. But it’s no “Bounty Hunter” either.

‘Mother and Child’
Rated R
???
Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia’s new film interlaces three L.A. stories. Annette Bening plays a physical therapist who long ago gave up a daughter in a closed-adoption scenario. That baby has grown up to be a fearsome attorney (Naomi Watts), who’s hired by a senior law-firm partner (Samuel L. Jackson) and is sleeping with him. How these two women attempt to make their way toward each other provides the movie’s through-line. You may buy the intertwining pattern of Garcia’s script; you may resist it. But the characters and their dilemmas hold your interest.

‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’
Rated R
??
By today’s standards, this reboot of Wes Craven’s iconic 1984 horror film is only medium-bloody, though it’s more than usually grim. Yet it affords precious little sadistic pleasure, partly because it “dares” to lay out more directly the pedophiliac demons plaguing Freddy the serial killer (Jackie Earle Haley). With Craven’s original, the blurred borderlines between dreamscape and reality gave the best images an eerie force and unpredictability. The remake works the same idea to death.

‘Oceans’
Rated G
??? 1/2
The overly poetic voice-over narration, read by Pierce Brosnan, is the weakest link in this documentary by “Winged Migration” veterans Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard. But once the exhilarating visuals get going, it’s easy to ignore the words. The most arresting thing about “Oceans” is how unexpectedly bizarre many of the creatures that live deeper under the sea than either Charlie the Tuna or “The Little Mermaid’s” Ariel actually look. This really is a film that manages to show us things we’ve never seen and make what we have already seen look different and new.

‘Please Give’
Rated R
??? 1/2
With her poignant, funny new film, writer-director Nicole Holofcener (“Walking and Talking,” ‘’Friends With Money”) is at the top of her game. Catherine Keener plays a woman whose roles as wife, mother, businesswoman and neighbor play out against the background of her self-recriminating sense that a person in her privileged position ought to be doing more to make the world a better place. This is a film that focuses on the tiny moments of connection and consolation that sustain us in a hard-edged world because they are all we have.

‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’
Rated PG-13
?? 1/2
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of movies based on video games. This film, which is moderately entertaining chaos, follows Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a street urchin adopted by the king, as he battles to keep a magical, time-shifting dagger out of enemy hands. A blessedly exuberant performance by Alfred Molina as an ostrich race promoter (!) enlivens a product you might otherwise forget.

‘Robin Hood’
Rated PG-13
???
Ridley Scott’s updated prequel to the outlaw legend brings “Gladiator”-like intensity to Sherwood Forest, reestablishing Russell Crowe’s Robin and Cate Blanchett’s Lady Marion as the linchpins to key Middle Ages historical events. Audiences had better keep up with the frenetic battle sequences, because when Scott storms a castle, he wants you to feel the danger and the thwwwunnnch of the arrow entering flesh. Ultimately, this new “Robin Hood” provides no revelations, but remains a satisfying, large-scale genre movie.

‘Sex and the City 2’
Rated R
??
While Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) are off to Abu Dhabi for more fashion, flings and Cosmopolitans, this franchise’s pre-sold fan base might respond to this second installment with, “Oh … You four again.” Many fans of the series will enjoy this wallow, just as they turned out for the first feature, although I wonder if anyone on the planet, including writer-director Michael Patrick King, honestly believes “Sex 2” makes the most of its running time.
— Tribune Media Services