Gerard Butler plays a real-life biker who went Rambo in southern Sudan in a movie with a white-savior storyline that makes The Help look like something written by Stokely Carmichael. Read more>>

Forget about vampires and zombies! It’s ‘social distancing’ that you need survive the kind of plausible global pandemic envisioned by Steven Soderbergh in this all-too-terrifying bio-thriller. Read more

Hard-partying teenage girls in love find themselves under surveillance — even at home — in Iranian-American filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz’s debut feature. Read more>>

Terri may be a small movie, but it has a lot to say. You only have to pay attention to feel its message. Read more>>

In case you’re not up to speed on the extraordinarily complex history of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy regarding gays and lesbians in the military, and the policy’s ramifications, this well researched documentary will quickly fix that. Read more>>

Without doubt, the greatest disappointment of the week is this lame wannabe psychological thriller which unwisely revealed its things-are-not-what-they-seem twist in the Coming Attractions trailer. Read more

How to juggle marriage, motherhood and a career? That’s the dilemma hotshot Boston investment analyst Kate Reddy (Sarah Jessica Parker) faces every single day, including weekends and holidays. She’s really ambitious, so when her boss (Kelsey Grammer) offers her the business opportunity of a lifetime, she’s determined to do it all…which includes sending something that looks ‘home made’ to the classroom bake sale, throwing her youngsters elaborate birthday parties and endlessly transporting them to and from school, play dates, and appointments. Read more

Tom McCarthy pens his stories like making a cake. The batter, though tasty enough by itself, serves a much bigger purpose. McCarthy takes ordinary people we can relate to, throws hurdles in their paths and takes them on a journey that in the end is as sweet as frosting on a cake. Win Win should leave everyone who likes sports, drama and comedy happy they went to see it. Read more>>

While there’s murder, corruption and drug trafficking, it is wry comedy that propels this buddy cop/crime caper, set in a tiny port town outside of Galway on the rugged west coast of Ireland.

To call paunchy, beer-guzzling Garda Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) a rowdy, unorthodox rebel would be an understatement. He’s a vulgar, irascible, crotch-grabbing curmudgeon, as his new, young partner, Aidan McBride (Rory Keenan) discovers, while they’re examining a bullet-riddled corpse of a man with Bible pages stuffed in his mouth, a potted plant between his legs and the number “5 ½” written on the wall above him. Apparently, the victim is connected to half a billion dollars in drug-dealing money – but Boyle doesn’t realize that until the arrival of visiting American FBI Agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and the subsequent disappearance of McBride, as reported by his weeping Romanian wife (Katarina Cas).

Meanwhile, willful, whoring Boyle - who describes himself as a “lowly country nobody” - is partnered with strait-laced, disciplined Everett - an odd couple, if ever there was one - as they search the provincial, Gaelic-speaking Connemara region for the ruthless, cocaine-smuggling culprits and Boyle keeps a watchful eye on his dying mum (Fionnula Flanagan).

Written and directed as a first feature by John Michael McDonagh (older brother of “In Bruges” playwright/filmmaker Martin McDonagh), it’s more comedy than thriller, since the bad guys (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Wilmot) are revealed early on and, despite an inexplicable penchant for quoting Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, their demise seems inevitable. So it’s the battling banter between Boyle and Everett that commands attention, along with the growing respect that have for one another.

“I’m Irish,” Boyle explains. “Racism is part of my culture.”

One caution: if you have trouble comprehending the Irish brogue, you may miss much of the dialogue. Isn’t it too bad that films with thick Irish/British dialects don’t have subtitles for American audiences?

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Guard” is an amusingly subversive 7, filled with nasty, impudent Irish humor.

Combining the suspense of a political thriller with international espionage and a smattering of social commentary about the fallibility of our veneration of heroes, this is a fascinating remake of the 2007 Israeli film “Ha-Hov.” Read more