SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC
unrated, 112 minutes

“What kind of a world do we live in where a totally cute white girl can’t say “Chink” on network television? As a Jew – as a member of the Jewish community – I was really concerned that we were losing control of the media.”

If you just smiled, don’t miss “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic,” a rude, crude, often hilarious performance film by the titular stand-up comedian. If you didn’t, see it anyway. Ms. Silverman writes funny stuff, but like all good comedians, it’s the pace and tone of her delivery that gets the chortles rolling.

Deft with deadpan, she gets part of her effect by playing dumber than she really is, yet without excessively winking at her audience. The gist of her shtick is to muck with liberal pieties, and her specialty is to punk on ethnic humor taboos. Jews, Asians, and blacks are mercilessly joshed; there’s a memorable bit of surrealism concerning her taste for jewelry made from the skeletons of Ethiopian babies.

She encourages American Airlines to work on their spin, suggesting the motto “First through the towers!” She keeps her “7 year-old lesbian niece” in line by warning her that every time she’s bad an angel gets AIDS. But remember, kids, “If God gives you AIDS – and God does give you AIDS – make lemonAIDS!”

Distasteful? Yes, thank God. (On the subject of Jews being blamed for the death of Jesus: “I’d f-ing do it again in a second.”) But Ms. Silverman’s humor is never crass in the Andrew Dice Clay mold. It’s all about irony, not insult. She’s very good at what she does, but not (yet) great; this is not the second coming of Lenny Bruce. Fearless as the material can be, it never reaches the delirious heights of low taste seen in “The Aristocrats” – but then, what does? “Jesus” isn’t quite magic, but then young Ms. Silverman is just warming up.

– Nathan Lee

ZATHURA
PG, 113 minutes

Two of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s books, “Polar Express” and “Jumanji,” have been adapted for the big screen, and both movies struggled to stretch the books’ slight length to 90 minutes. Relying on digital spectacle, they sacrificed the eerie menace of Mr. Van Allsburg’s stark illustrations. In “Zathura,” director Jon Favreau has created a movie as good as the book. Ditching the broad slapstick of “Elf,” he has made a kids’ picture loaded with quiet, surrealist menace.

Walter and Danny are two believable brothers: They hate each other and argue about everything. Left alone by their harried dad (Tim Robbins), 10 year-old Walter settles down with “SportsCenter” after locking 6 year-old Danny in the dreaded basement. Danny escapes with a mechanical 1930s board game in tow, and before you can say “Holy rocket ship!” the boys’ house has come unmoored and is floating somewhere off the rings of Saturn, subjected to meteor showers, killer robots, flesh-eating lizards, and stranded astronauts.

The game’s cards pop out at random intervals, intoning “Your robot is defective,” before unleashing a 10-foot-tall killer clockwork machine on the terrified kids. In the third act, the air whooshes right out of the movie when fearsome flesh-eating lizards arrive looking like giant, plastic action figures. By then, however, “Zathura” has enough good will in the bank to get by on memories of the remarkable first 60 minutes.

– Grady Hendrix

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE
PG-13, 107 minutes

Some might find a South African film that ignores race relations or the legacy of apartheid trivial, but it’s an encouraging sign that “Cape of Good Hope” doesn’t need to exploit Big Issues to get released. There are a year’s worth of “All My Children” plotlines pressurized and packed into this slight movie: Dying fathers, thoughtful gigolos, hunky widowers, extramarital affairs, unwelcome sexual advances, infertility, and dogs trained to attack blacks are just the tip of the iceberg.

“Cape of Good Hope” follows 13 characters around a Hout Bay animal rescue center run by Sharifa, a devout Muslim whose desire to please her track-suited husband by bearing children wars with her fears of the gynecologist. Jean Claude is the handyman, a Ph.D. refugee from the Congo living in a man-size kennel. Lindiwe is a black maid with dreams of a college degree, whose mama wants her to marry the local minister. And Kate is a smart, funny, wealthy white woman whose choices in bedmates are life-shatteringly bad.

This ensemble melodrama is as tightly constructed as a stage play – with all the predictable pathos you’d expect. You don’t doubt for a minute that everyone will end up better off than when we found them, but the pleasure comes in seeing what unlikely series of coincidences will get them there.

– Grady Hendrix

SCREEN DOOR JESUS
R, 119 minutes

Thou shalt not be a hypocrite. This commandment comes not from Mount Sinai but from debut filmmaker (and former preacher) Kirk Davis, whose “Screen Door Jesus” portrays conservative Christians as two-faced rubes.

The small-town drama begins with the discovery of Christ’s image on Mother Harper’s (Cynthia Dorn) dilapidated screen door in pious Bethlehem, Texas. All hell breaks loose as religious fanatics flock to pay homage while the town harlot (Scarlett McAlister), her guitar-playing boyfriend (Mark Dalton), the corrupt and philandering mayor (Richard Dillard), and a racist banker (Cliff Stevens) fall prey to lust, greed, pride, and envy.

Christians in the film run a gamut of caricatures from pious Pentecostal to self-righteous Baptist. They believe television is evil, protest “gayward ways,” distrust ecumenism, condemn nakedness, forbid medical treatment, exhibit intense racism, and force people to get baptized. But the complex issues of race, sexuality, and theology they encounter are a bit much for this struggling ensemble cast to deal with.

Despite the divergent tones of the film, Mr. Davis manages to weave all the stories together cohesively, with cinematography far better than the budget would indicate. If Mr. Davis wants to expose hypocrisy, he has succeeded. But he forgets the central tenet of Christianity: Hypocrites, like all sinners, are forgiven for their misdeeds – even for making films like “Screen Door Jesus.”

– Mollie Ziegler