Wondering what else is in theaters this weekend? Here are three films recommended by The New York Sun’s critics that you can still catch around town.

THE ASTRONAUT FARMER
PG, 102 minutes

One of the great things about Billy Bob Thornton is that he’s such an ornery crust-bucket. Directors can toss him into the most potentially saccharine fare, and he’ll squeeze out just enough vitriol to trick you into thinking it’s all really a sarcastic mockery of Hollywood sentimentality.

That dual nature makes him ideal as the fallen starman of “The Astronaut Farmer.” The film, written by the twin-brother team of Michael and Mark Polish (“Twin Falls Idaho,” “Northfork”) and directed by the former, follows that unfortunate convention of coy yet painfully unclever joke titles: Mr. Thornton is a former astronaut named Charles Farmer who gave up outer space to save his family’s farm. But all is not well in Middle America. The bank is about to repossess and auction off his Texas farm, and everyone thinks he’s a wacko. Why? Because he’s building a rocket ship in his barn that he intends to fly into outer space, that’s why.

Steve Dollar (February 23)

BREACH
PG-13, 110 minutes

Far too many spy films have tried to explain everything in excruciating. Thankfully, the director Billy Ray approaches “Breach” in a fundamentally different manner, denying us the dramatics until we can first appreciate the players who will act out the drama.

Enter Chris Cooper, an actor who has turned being shrewd into an art. When he zeroes in and squints at someone, his wheels churning as he measures credibility, there is an impenetrability that makes him an endlessly fascinating actor to watch. He is inscrutable and detached, and without question the perfect man to play the part of Robert Hanssen, the notorious FBI agent arrested in 2001 and charged with selling American secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 15-year period.

But when a younger agent, played by Ryan Phillipe, is assigned to shadow Hanssen, he finds that his mark is obscured as much by his family life as by his transgressions.

S. James Snyder (February 16)

THE LIVES OF OTHERS
R, 137 minutes

Captain Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a model member of the East German stasi, a skilled interrogator doing his brutal business. He is a true believer, and, yet, even in the early stages of “The Lives of Others,” there are hints that all is not well. He is hunched, buttoned-up, withdrawn, his demeanor as much captive as guard.

The film tells the story of what happens when, at the request of a government minister, Captain Wiesler puts famous playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) under close surveillance as someone who may be disloyal to the republic. Eventually, Wiesler discovers that the politician’s real motive is sexual rather than ideological. He has his eyes on Dreyman’s girlfriend (nicely played by Martina Gedeck) and wants Dreyman out of the way. And that’s not the most important thing that our Stasi officer discovers. As (courtesy of bugs installed in the playwright’s apartment) he sits listening day after day to the minutiae of Dreyman’s life, the captain begins to find out some truths both about the evil of the regime he has served so loyally and, ultimately, about his own capacity for good.

Andrew Stuttaford (February 9)