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Brodie Sanderson as Matt and Nisreen Faour as Muna in Amreeka.

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AMREEKA
Grant Park. 14A
A single mother (Nisreen Faour) leaves the West Bank with dreams of an exciting future in the promised land of small town Illinois, only to scramble to make a living at a neighbourhood White Castle. This first feature by Cherien Dabis (The L Word), shot in Winnipeg, makes potent points about the follies of prejudice and pride, but a light directorial touch prevents the film from sliding into melodrama, and Faour is wonderfully appealing. 4 stars

Starting Friday:

2012
Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A
It's the end of the world as we know it, and Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) feels fine about his most elaborate apocalypse movie yet, as failed novelist John Cusack realizes the end is near, and the government has a top-secret plan to save a few from the ravages of an impending mega-disaster.

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM
Cinematheque. PG
Gerald Peary, a film critic for the Boston Phoenix, offers an insider's perspective of the business of film reviewing. On opening night, a panel of local critics, including Alison Gillmor, Robert Enright, Uptown's Aaron Graham and the Free Press's Randall King will reflect on the movie with moderation by filmmaker Sean Garrity.

PIRATE RADIO
Polo Park. 14A
In the mid-'60s, the BBC mandated that rock 'n' roll would only get an hour of play per day, necessitating a pirate radio operation in the Atlantic where rogue DJs (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, among others) spun the platters that mattered. This comedy was written and directed by Richard Curtis.

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae
Cinematheque.
This documentary brings together the greats of reggae's golden age to reflect on Jamaica in the '60s, the music and, of course, Bob Marley.

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AMELIA
Grant Park. G
Hilary Swank stars as the pioneering aviatrix in this biopic co-starring Richard Gere and directed by Mira Nair. Whatever it was that made Amelia Earhart the darling of the skies back in the 1930s eludes the director. This murky biography hopscotches through the era like one of those sleek silver Electra planes Amelia banged around in. 2 stars (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

THE BOYS ARE BACK
Globe. PG
Clive Owen maintains his elegant edge as he delves into single fatherhood in a family drama that steers clear of sentiment. He plays a sportswriter whose wife has died, leaving him to raise two children in the Australian countryside. The father-and-son dynamic is at once sad, coarse and immature -- pretty realistic, that is -- and never surrenders to tear-jerking. 3-1/2 stars (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

THE BOX
Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. PG
A suburban couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) are offered a simple wooden box by a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) who promises the press of its button will bestow $1 million with the stipulation that pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world -- someone they don't know. What button did director Richard Kelly push to get the money to make this awful thriller? 2 stars (Reviewed by David Germain)

CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Towne. PG
A teenager unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires when he joins a touring sideshow filled with monstrous creatures. A celebration of this wussified new breed of vampire, the movie is an occasionally clever, but muddled adaptation of Darren Shan's books. 2 stars (Reviewed by Peter Hartlaub)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Polo Park, St. Vital, Kildonan Place, Garden City, Grant Park, Towne. PG
Thanks to technology, Jim Carrey and Robert Zemeckis' new take on the Charles Dicken's classic brings to life the fantasy about miser Ebenezer Scrooge's holiday redemption in a way old Hollywood never could have dreamed. 3 stars (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

COCO AVANT CHANEL
Grant Park. PG
Before she became a 20th-century fashion maven, the orphaned Gabrielle Chanel (Audrey Tautou) worked in a provincial bar as singer and a seamstress for the performers, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sang nightly with her sister. Coco remains an elusive character, but the naturalistic settings and fashionable accoutrements are nothing to sneeze at. The costumes are especially sensational. 3 stars (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

THE COLLECTOR
Towne. R
A sort of spinoff of the Saw movies, this incomprehensible and ultraviolent horror film tells the story of a madman who fills a house with booby traps and tortures the family to death. It's filled with nauseatingly explicit scenes of violence: you feel tension, but it's because you're repelled. 1 star (Reviewed by Jay Stone)

COUPLES RETREAT
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. PG
If you're looking for plot, narrative intricacy or layers of subtle characterization, you're barking up the wrong palm tree. This is a movie about four amiable couples, their low-level relationship woes, and the South Pacific getaway that makes everything all better. A slight but sweet coming-of-middle-age story for couples. 2-1/2 stars (Reviewed by Colin Covert)

AN EDUCATION
Grant Park. PG
Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a very bright girl on the cusp of her 17th birthday, finds herself in a whirlwind romance with the much older David (Peter Sarsgaard), who introduces her to a lifestyle she never imagined could be hers -- but with unanticipated consequences. (Not reviewed)

THE FOURTH KIND
Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 14A
Unlike the benign aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the creatures in this film are engaged in abduction -- and generally messing with the lives of various citizens of Nome, Alaska, which is the startling conclusion of a doctor (Milla Jovovich) investigating several cases of apparent psychosis. It delivers a few goose bumps, but in the end the film is more desultory than disturbing. 2 stars (Reviewed by Robert W. Butler)

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne. 18A
Gerard Butler vows elaborate revenge after his wife and daughter are murdered, not only on the criminals but on the justice system that enabled the bad guys. The movie wastes two powerful actors: Butler seethes like a pontificating right-wing blogger and Jamie Foxx, as a prosecutor trying to stop the campaign of terror, is uncharacteristically dullsville. 1-1/2 stars

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
Globe, Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A
A reporter (Ewan McGregor) trying to lose himself in the romance of war gets more than he bargains for when he meets a special forces agent (George Clooney) who reveals the existence of a secret, psychic military unit whose goal is to end war as we know it. 4 stars (Reviewed by Katherine Monk)

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT
Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne, Garden City. PG
Michael Jackson's final musical testament was cobbled together from rehearsal footage prior to his abortive concert tour. 3-1/2 stars (reviewed by Rob Williams)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Globe, Polo Park, St. Vital. 14A
This low-budget horror flick causes more terror with a billowing sheet or a creaking door than all the Saw movies put together. Director Oren Peli's less- is-more "documentary" about a couple haunted by a demon might be the most genuinely scary movie in years. 4 stars (Reviewed by Jill Wilson)

SAW VI
Garden City, Polo Park, Towne. 18A
The moralist psycho Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) died two movies ago, but is still making his presence felt in this latest round of grisly gameplay starring Costas Mandylor. It's the usual hysterical/gory stuff, but since the designated victim is an insurance company exec (Peter Outerbridge), the movie is surprisingly topical on the American health-care debate. Hey, it makes more sense than Glenn Beck. 2 stars

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Garden City, Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Polo Park, Towne. PG
Spike Jonze's adaptation of the classic kids' story embellishes Maurice Sendak's minimalist 10 sentences with a backstory to the wolf-costumed Max (Max Records). Max's troubled home life is imaginatively refracted through his fantastic adventures among a motley group of affable but dangerous monsters. It's a fine movie -- it's just not really a kids movie. 3-1/2 stars

ZOMBIELAND
Polo Park, St. Vital 18A
A quartet of survivors of a zombie plague follow their dream of a life free of cannibalistic undead. Director Ruben Fleischer boldly splices the post-apocalyptic-flesh-eating-cannibal movie with the wistful coming-of-age movie, and darned if he doesn't make it work. Too bad the middle section of the film loses integrity -- both in structure and in principle -- due to a gratuitous extended cameo that pulls the audience out of the story for a session of unseemly celebrity worship. 3 stars