Capitalism: A Love Story is classic Michael Moore… which is to say, this is not his best work. It is unevenly entertaining, hopelessly skewed, yell-at-the-screen infuriating (for a number of reasons), and yet still largely compelling, just like the vast majority of Moore’s films. As Jeff Walls noted in his review of the theatrical release, “there’s no denying [Moore] knows how to make his case in a strong and entertaining way.” The film is certainly worth seeing; but it only tells part of the story. If you like what you find here, take the next step. Get serious. And remember: Michael Moore is an entertainer at heart. And that, my dear friends, is why he (and the rest of us!) likes Wally Shawn.

In 2001, Antoine Fuqua directed Ethan Hawke to an Oscar nomination in the down-and-dirty cop drama Training Day. Now, the two are reuniting for Brooklyn’s Finest, another gritty cop drama, but this time with far poorer results. There is not a single original character or idea in Brooklyn’s Finest and the result had the preview audience complaining of those two-plus hours they will never get back.

Director Tim Burton teams up with star Johnny Depp and wife Helena Bonham Carter for the seventh and sixth time, respectively, for this most recent adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel and its sequel. The film is being released by Disney, the studio who previously adapted Carroll’s stories in 1951. But Burton and screenwriter Linda Wolverton are bringing a slightly different take with their new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, as they have Alice is returning to Wonderland years after her first visit. It’s like what Spielberg did in Hook, only with much better results.

If this film was intended to make me feel like a compulsive liar—which, perhaps, I am; it’s hard to tell what the truth actually is after seeing this film—then Steven Soderbergh succeeded brilliantly. If the point was pretty much anything else at all… well, better luck next time. Just about everything connected with the film feels like a fabrication, artificial to the core. Still, it’s likely that this frothy concoction plays exactly as Soderbergh intended from the get-go. What The Informant! doesn’t offer much of, unfortunately, is any insight into the nature of truth, or truth-telling. Unless…

What many viewers may miss is the chance the movie provides for a glimpse into our own not-too-distant cultural past. In cultures that place far less value on leisure that ours does today, children have always represented a blessing styled as “a quiver full of arrows” by the Old Testament—but not because they are merely so many little bundles of joy. For most of human history, that blessing has been very utilitarian in nature: a means to a family’s livelihood, hands to work the fields. And history is rife with examples of parents who have simply run away because they find themselves unable to cope with the pressures of feeding them.

Director Roman Polanski has been in the news a lot recently, but not for his filmmaking. Still wanted in the United States for a 1977 sexual assault case, Polanski was recently arrested in Europe and will likely have to travel back to the U.S. for sentencing. Sounds like the guy could use a distraction and a hit movie may be just what he needs. But The Ghost Writer moves slowly and the end reveal is not nearly mind-blowing enough to make it worth the monotony. It’s a nice effort that certainly harkens back to the paranoid thrillers of the seventies, but it is not nearly as successful as, say, Michael Clayton. Sorry, Jake, this is not Chinatown.

George A Romero’s name has become synonymous with zombies, so it comes as no surprise that, in this era of fondness for both the undead and remakes, his canon of work is being mined. Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead is one of the better of the recent zombie movies and helped usher in the era of the modern, fast-moving zombie. Now, director Breck Eisner is remaking Romero’s 1973 flick The Crazies and while it is no Dawn of the Dead, it is sure to delight fans of the genre.

At every step along the way Blood Done Sign My Name avoids the triumphalist tone of so many civil rights films. Not once do you get the impression that this is one of those “one act changed everything forever” stories. Instead it recognizes that the progression toward racial equality was—and remains—a two-step-forward, one-step-back proposition. It’s a good thing that we don’t get to the end of the film thinking that everything’s gonna be rosy. The strength of Stuart’s film lies not in legal ramifications but in human ramifications. These will keep you hooked through the two-plus hour running time, and will leave you feeling inspired and satisfied even if the last twenty minutes come off as rather perfunctory.

Long considered to be overlooked, legendary director Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar for directing his exciting 2006 cops-and-robbers flick The Departed. For his next narrative feature, Scorsese reunites with star Leonardo DiCaprio for the fourth time to make Shutter Island, a puzzling thriller based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. Previously set to be released last October, the movie now hopes to take advantage of the notoriously lightweight month of February. On a first viewing, however, I must say that the film is rather underwhelming. There is little about this movie that suggests “A Martin Scorsese Picture” and I’ll bet in time only his biggest fans will be giving it that second look.

As much as the project wants to be hip and edgy, I just found it annoying—mostly due to the visual style, which melds a low-def video source with rough-hewn quasi-animation to produce compact video that imitates, after a fashion, comic-book art. I found myself making choices that would just conclude things quickly—and succeeded wonderfully, my own ending coming after a scant 35 minutes. Whew! I was really fearing I’d end up in the four-hour version. Those who are searching out something new for newness sake might be interested in this release; but claims that the film will change the way we think of interactive video are overstated.