By Matt Brunson

BRIDESMAIDS

DIRECTED BY Paul Feig

STARS Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph

The most perfectly realized scene in Bridesmaids is an early one. Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) have been best friends since early childhood, so when Lillian announces her engagement, it's no surprise that she chooses Annie as her maid of honor. But in more recent times, Lillian has acquired another close friend, the lovely and wealthy Helen (Rose Byrne), and suddenly Annie feels threatened. This tension plays out at a social engagement in which Annie and Helen keep snatching the microphone out of each other's hands, in order to one-up the touchy-feely sentiments directed at Lillian. It's a great sequence, so confident in its ability to convey not only the awkwardness of the situation but also point a laser beam directly at Annie's insecurity, Helen's plasticity and Lillian's bemusement-bordering-on-irritability.

By Matt Brunson

EVERYTHING MUST GO

DIRECTED BY Dan Rush

STARS Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall

Inside every comedian known for vulgarity, there apparently resides a master thespian hoping to break away from the gags that initially defined his career. Jim Carrey has The Truman Show and The Man on the Moon, Adam Sandler has Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish, and Will Ferrell has Stranger Than Fiction and now Everything Must Go.

By Matt Brunson

PRIEST

DIRECTED BY Scott Stewart

STARS Paul Bettany, Karl Urban

Priest begins with some juicy exposition related through trippy anime (not surprising, considering the source material was a Korean graphic novel) before plunging into its story about a "Warrior Priest" (Paul Bettany) who sets out after the vampires who kidnapped his niece (Lily Collins). And for a while, the picture looks as if it might deliver on a palatable pulp-popcorn level: Director Scott Stewart keeps the proceedings moving at a breathless clip, Bettany's seething conviction as both a man of the cloth and a man of action is inspiring, and the obvious plot parallels to John Ford's The Searchers (seriously!) are a nice touch.

By Matt Brunson

IN A BETTER WORLD

DIRECTED BY Susanne Bier

STARS Mikael Persbrandt, Ulrich Thomsen

Director Susanne Bier's In a Better World recently won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which means this Danish drama places a distant second to Melissa Leo's scenery-chewing in The Fighter as the least deserving recipient at this year's ceremony. That's not to say it's a bad movie, but it's hardly satisfying to see the prize go to what's essentially a sincere afterschool special with subtitles.

By Matt Brunson

SOMETHING BORROWED

DIRECTED BY Luke Greenfield

STARS Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin

Folks often wish that real life could be more like the movies, but Something Borrowed makes me wish that the movies could be more like real life. In reality, I suspect most of us would cross a crowded highway barefoot and bleeding to avoid any contact whatsoever with the insufferable twits populating this gruesome rom-com. But moviegoers who don't want to have wasted an exorbitant admission fee (or, in some cases, are professionally paid to suffer through the very last screen credit) will feel bound to remain in their seats, which by the end of the picture will resemble an electric chair more than a plush auditorium rocker.

By Matt Brunson

JUMPING THE BROOM

DIRECTED BY Salim Akil

STARS Angela Bassett, Paula Patton

The opening moments of Jumping the Broom left me cringing, as if I had wandered into the screening for a sequel to Something Borrowed (Something Blue?). Sabrina Watson (Paula Patton) has just finished having sex with someone she hopes will be Mr. Right. Instead, he's merely a player — actually, a caricature of a player — spending the moments after intercourse admiring himself in the mirror and speaking on his cell phone to another hottie-in-waiting. At this point, Sabrina swears off premarital sex, fears that she will never find the right guy, and then suddenly runs into him — literally, as she accidentally smacks him with her car.

By Matt Brunson

THOR

DIRECTED BY Kenneth Branagh

STARS Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman

Kenneth Branagh, whose devotion to the works of William Shakespeare resulted in his designation as the modern-day heir to Laurence Olivier, might have seemed an unlikely choice to helm Thor, the latest in the growing line of Marvel Comics adaptations as well as the first blockbuster of the 2011 summer movie season. Yet it's possible that the man who successfully brought (among others) Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing to the big screen took his marching orders directly from the Bard himself. "O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder," wrote Will in Henry VI, Part 2, a sentiment that Branagh tries to capture in this superhero opus centering on the Norse God of Thunder.

Dividing its time between Asgard (home of Thor the god) and Earth (home of Thor the transplant), the picture finds the titular warrior (played by Chris Hemsworth) ready to be declared king by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins). But Thor's recklessness, to say nothing of his oversized ego, convinces the Asgardian ruler to instead strip his offspring of his mighty hammer Mjolnir and banish him to our planet. This allows Odin's other son, the devious Loki (Tom Hiddleston), to usurp the throne for his own nefarious purposes. As for the Thunder God, he's aided in his earthly endeavors by astrophysicist Jane Porter (Natalie Portman) and her team and, later, by his four faithful comrades from Asgard (three of them described by an Earthling onlooker as "Xena, Jackie Chan and Robin Hood").

A perfectly serviceable entry in the cinematic superhero sweepstakes, Thor provides viewers with a good time as long as they're not taking notes and comparing it to other high-profile Marvel properties. More straight-laced than the Spider-Man films and less exciting than the X-Men oeuvre (the first two, anyway), Thor can't even match the rollicking ride of the original Iron Man, which had the advantage of Robert Downey Jr. to steer it over rough terrain. But that's not to say there isn't much to enjoy here. The film is gorgeous to behold (the 3-D is used effectively), and the battle sequences are ably handled — there's a kinetic kick in seeing Thor twirl Mjolnir to batter opponents, a perfect realization of the manner in which it was caught on the printed page. Hemsworth is well-cast as Thor — he's not as interesting an actor as, say, Downey or Tobey Maguire or Hugh Jackman, but then again, Thor was always a bit of a stiff when compared to Iron Man and Spider-Man and Wolverine — and while he and Portman don't set off any massive fireworks, they prove to be an affable screen couple (at any rate, Natalie Portman + Chris Hemsworth > Natalie Portman + Danny McBride).

Thor's primary flaw is in the storytelling department. Most Marvel flicks (and DC, for that matter) have managed to relate an origin tale while still allowing room for expansion within the same film — for example, X-Men showed how Wolverine joined the outfit but also managed to touch upon the global prejudice against mutants and Logan's search for his own roots. Thor suffers from a lack of such vision: All of the expository dots are dutifully connected, but by the time we're ready for the movie to really kick into high gear, it's suddenly over. I suppose a sequel could handle the overreach, but considering the only planned follow-up is The Avengers, in which Thor will be battling Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye for the spotlight, it's uncertain whether he'll be given the royal treatment that presumably should be accorded a god.

(For another look at Thor, go here.)

By Matt Brunson

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001)

DIRECTED BY Wes Anderson

STARS Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston

Like most of the films proffered by ­ writer-director Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums doesn't offer the sort of instant guffaw gratification we generally get from American comedies; instead, its laughs are like stealth bombers, sneaking up on us to the extent that we suddenly find ourselves chortling even as we're wrapped up in the movie's unexpected air of melancholia.

By Matt Brunson

POTICHE

DIRECTED BY Francois Ozon

STARS Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu

A Continental cousin to those plucky British comedies in which working-class peons struggle against their bourgeois employers (latest example: Made in Dagenham), the French romp Potiche is primarily an excuse for audiences to once again spend quality time with those two titans of Gallic cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. Teaming up for the umpteenth time, the pair remain graceful in shared banter and spiritual chemistry if not exactly in physical terms (Depardieu's gigantic girth leaves us worried for his continuing health).

By Matt Brunson

FAST FIVE
***
DIRECTED BY Justin Lin
STARS Vin Diesel, Paul Walker

Stating that Fast Five is the best of the Fast and the Furious series is perhaps like claiming that the Big Mac is the best hamburger served at McDonald's: It's not so much a declaration of excellence as an example of damning with faint praise. Still, fans of this high-octane franchise will find plenty to enjoy, newbies should be able to hop aboard the ride without getting left behind (any references to past pictures tend to be negligible or easy to absorb), and dates dragged against their can at least enjoy the comfortable auditorium seats.

OK, so the viewing experience admittedly offers more than just a soft chair. For starters, even with a generous 130-minute running time, the film never brakes for boredom. There's also a notable attempt on the parts of director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan to give everyone a moment to shine in the spotlight. And considering this entry brings back various characters from all four previous installments, that's a lot of illumination taking place.

Front and center, of course, is the triumvirate of bad-ass Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), bad-ass wannabe Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) and bland Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster). Return offenders include Tyrese Gibson (who still can't act a lick, bless him) and the always engaging Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as two of the numerous car-crazy accomplices. New to the cast is Dwayne Johnson as a federal agent in hot pursuit of our anti-heroes. As for the plot, it concerns the efforts of — oh, who am I kidding? All that's important is that it involves lots of car chases, mucho macho posturing, a nonstop barrage of wisecracks (some amusing, some anything but), and the continued sight of Brian O'Conner trying to look like a bad-ass (or did I already mention that?). Oh, most of it takes place in Rio de Janeiro. Look fast and you can even spot a cameo appearance by Blu, the animated star of the current hit Rio. OK, not really, but wouldn't Rio and Fast Five make for a more intriguing cross-promotion than Rio and Angry Birds?