Conan the Barbarian (R)
Pity the fool who tries to reprise the role that made Arnold Schwarzegger an icon. In 1982s Conan the Barbarian, when he was asked What is best in life? he responded with the immortal line To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women, and you smiled in recognition, knowing a movie star had been born. more

Vampires suck
New ‘Fright Night’ aims to stand out with a ferocious Colin Farrell and a mix of humor and horror more

Fright Night (R)
As a teenager I saw 1985’s Fright Night — about a boy who is convinced his next-door neighbor is a vampire — and didn’t think much of it. And that was before vampires had become ubiquitous. The new remake, written by Marti Noxon ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and directed by Craig Gillespie ( Lars and the Real Girl), has its moments: I like the ingenious way imperious bloodsucker Jerry (Colin Farrell) forces his neighbors out of their home so he can confront them. But in the era of Twilight and Let the Right One In and The Vampire Diaries and True Blood, there’s an irrelevance to the movie that the filmmakers, hard as they try, can’t quite shake. There’s something awfully square about the picture: It would have played a lot better a decade ago. more

Politics, pasts bond an odd couple
Baya (Sara Forestier) the whirlwind heroine of The Names of Love, is a vivacious, half-Algerian, self-proclaimed “political whore” who wants to sleep with as many right-wingers as possible, then convert their political view in mid-coitus. She is such a dynamo that when she receives an urgent phone call, she rushes out to catch the subway wearing nothing but shoes. This makes the movie sound like a cartoon (Forestier won the Best Actress Cesar, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for her performance), but director Michel Leclerc has more than madcap comedy on his mind. When Baya meets middle-aged Jewish scientist Arthur (Jacques Gamblin), she jumps into bed with him too. The tryst fizzles, but the mutual interest does not. Despite their age differences, their tragic pasts — the Vichy regime for Arthur, the Algerian War for Baya — bond the couple in a way mere sex never could. An unlikely romance blossoms, and that’s where the trouble begins. more

The Guard (R)
The hugely inspired oddball pairing of Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle does wonders for The Guard, a buddy-cop movie with a difference. The blustery Gleeson, as Sgt. Gerry Boyle, is the perfect opposite to the straight-laced, by-the-book FBI agent Wendell Everett (Cheadle), with whom he’s paired to crack a crime ring involving drugs, prostitution, corruption, and pretty much every other crime imaginable. more