American Movie

Officially, “It’s Complicated’’ is a Meryl Streep movie. As Jane, a well-to-do baker and businesswoman having an affair with, Jake, her married ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), Streep deploys all her best moves. The pseudo-menopausal power-walks are here. So are the eye roll that could pull planets out of alignment and the sing-songy line deliveries. In other words, she’s in movie star mode, and she’s irresistible. But Baldwin achieves something not many men have been able to with Streep: You notice him. It’s fair to say that Baldwin has always been an asset to any movie (his “I am God’’ monologue in...

When "Scream 3" arrived in 2000, Bill Clinton was still in the White House, most cellphones could make only calls, reality television was a novelty, and Lady Gaga was just some girl named Stefani from the Upper West Side. Everything's changed in the intervening 11 years, but, sadly, not the "Scream" franchise, which has coughed up a needless fourth installment that coasts on the winking ironies and Teflon self-awareness of its predecessors. I don't need to tell you "Scream 4" is unnecessary.

In "Something New," Sanaa Lathan plays a single, upscale, have-it-all Los Angeles professional named Kenya McQueen. Because Kenya is all these things and an African-American woman, she's also faced with the annoying reality that the pickings of worthy black men are slim. But she and her girlfriends believe their I.B.M. (ideal black man) is out there, and he'll come along. While Kenya waits, a friend sets her up on a blind date with Brian (Simon Baker), a white landscape architect.

FATAL ATTRACTION ★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Date Night Movies) Director Adrian Lyne transforms a legitimate thriller into a manipulative piece of cinematic nonsense. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close try their best. (R; runs through Feb. 20) THE CRUCIBLE ★★★★ (Comcast Movies: Free Movies) This is Arthur Miller's drama of the Salem witch hunt turned into an electrifying movie, with Miller himself writing the screenplay. Sexual hysteria segues into political paranoia in Nicholas Hytner's bold, fevered camerawork.

When "Scream 3" arrived in 2000, Bill Clinton was still in the White House, most cellphones could make only calls, reality television was a novelty, and Lady Gaga was just some girl named Stefani from the Upper West Side. Everything's changed in the intervening 11 years, but, sadly, not the "Scream" franchise, which has coughed up a needless fourth installment that coasts on the winking ironies and Teflon self-awareness of its predecessors. I don't need to tell you "Scream 4" is unnecessary.

Chances are the last time you caught Mark Borchardt onscreen, he was pounding beers and raging on about his ambition to direct a horror movie in the little-film-that-couldn’t documentary “American Movie.’’ All these years later, it looks like Borchardt has finally managed to make the sort of picture that was in his head, with the help of similarly DIY-minded writer-director Jon Springer. It also looks like Borchardt didn’t spend the intervening decade studying acting at Juilliard.

FATAL ATTRACTION ★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Date Night Movies) Director Adrian Lyne transforms a legitimate thriller into a manipulative piece of cinematic nonsense. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close try their best. (R; runs through Feb. 20) THE CRUCIBLE ★★★★ (Comcast Movies: Free Movies) This is Arthur Miller's drama of the Salem witch hunt turned into an electrifying movie, with Miller himself writing the screenplay. Sexual hysteria segues into political paranoia in Nicholas Hytner's bold, fevered camerawork.

You don't know anybody at the start of "Ballast. " The actors are mostly untrained, and the writer and director Lance Hammer had never made a feature. But as you head up the aisle once this magnificent movie has suddenly, bluntly ended, they are all difficult to forget: three people holding onto each other in order to stay afloat and a filmmaker praying for them to succeed. The movie is a beacon of independent filmmaking, not simply because Hammer opted more or less to self-distribute it, but because it's evident that we're a million miles away from Hollywood.

New releases Amelia It’s Oscar season: Time to wheel out Hilary Swank for her annual viewing. This biopic of aviator Amelia Earhart is a big, hollow white elephant with a sharp idea struggling to get out: How does a woman marketed to the public as a star turn herself back into a human being? Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor play the men in Earhart’s life. (111 min., PG) (Ty Burr) Antichrist Lars von Trier’s most extreme film, and that’s saying something.

On the surface, a big Wal-Mart store might seem out of place in the midst of the old-fashioned curio shops, the little dim sum eateries and the colorful lanterns and pagodas that make up one of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States. But then so does the Catholic church that offers Sunday Masses in Croatian. Or the one that performs them in Italian. Not to mention the imposing statue of French hero Joan of Arc that stands just a stone's throw from the one of modern China's founding father, Sun Yat-Sen.

Officially, “It’s Complicated’’ is a Meryl Streep movie. As Jane, a well-to-do baker and businesswoman having an affair with, Jake, her married ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), Streep deploys all her best moves. The pseudo-menopausal power-walks are here. So are the eye roll that could pull planets out of alignment and the sing-songy line deliveries. In other words, she’s in movie star mode, and she’s irresistible. But Baldwin achieves something not many men have been able to with Streep: You notice him. It’s fair to say that Baldwin has always been an asset to any movie (his “I am God’’ monologue in...

New releases Amelia It’s Oscar season: Time to wheel out Hilary Swank for her annual viewing. This biopic of aviator Amelia Earhart is a big, hollow white elephant with a sharp idea struggling to get out: How does a woman marketed to the public as a star turn herself back into a human being? Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor play the men in Earhart’s life. (111 min., PG) (Ty Burr) Antichrist Lars von Trier’s most extreme film, and that’s saying something.

Chances are the last time you caught Mark Borchardt onscreen, he was pounding beers and raging on about his ambition to direct a horror movie in the little-film-that-couldn’t documentary “American Movie.’’ All these years later, it looks like Borchardt has finally managed to make the sort of picture that was in his head, with the help of similarly DIY-minded writer-director Jon Springer. It also looks like Borchardt didn’t spend the intervening decade studying acting at Juilliard.

You don't know anybody at the start of "Ballast. " The actors are mostly untrained, and the writer and director Lance Hammer had never made a feature. But as you head up the aisle once this magnificent movie has suddenly, bluntly ended, they are all difficult to forget: three people holding onto each other in order to stay afloat and a filmmaker praying for them to succeed. The movie is a beacon of independent filmmaking, not simply because Hammer opted more or less to self-distribute it, but because it's evident that we're a million miles away from Hollywood.

In "Something New," Sanaa Lathan plays a single, upscale, have-it-all Los Angeles professional named Kenya McQueen. Because Kenya is all these things and an African-American woman, she's also faced with the annoying reality that the pickings of worthy black men are slim. But she and her girlfriends believe their I.B.M. (ideal black man) is out there, and he'll come along. While Kenya waits, a friend sets her up on a blind date with Brian (Simon Baker), a white landscape architect.

"All people in the world, even I, I prefer a bad American movie to a better Norwegian movie. Why is that? It's something which I am trying to study but I have not been successful. I don't know, I have no answer. " Jean-Luc Godard , interview , The Boston Globe, Dec. 28, 2004