HOODWINKED
PG, 81 minutes

The Weinstein Company’s first animated feature rips a page from “Pulp Fiction,” the brothers’ venerable Miramax crown jewel. “Hoodwinked” retells the story of Red Riding Hood from multiple perspectives, replete with poppy dialogue and spastic eruptions of action.

The combination of idiotic chase scenes and “Fletch” in-jokes suggests the usual aspirations for adult-kiddie double vision. At its best, the experience is closest to the old Looney Tune reels, i.e., a fitful sequence of hit-or-miss bits that general audiences can tune in and out of.

It’s a welcome if predictable move to tweak fairytales in the shadow of the hulking “Shrek” franchise. The strongest move of “Hoodwinked” is to ditch the quest format that burdens almost all animated features. Instead, a police investigation of Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, and Grandma cycles through Rube Goldberg trajectories to that tale’s famous climax. For good measure, there’s also a lobotomized Austrian woodsman on the scene and a mysterious string of muffin-bakery closings.

The voice talent navigates the deadpan lunacy well enough, especially Glenn Close as Grandma and Andy Dick as an ingratiating bunny. But “Hoodwinked” struggles under its smart-aleck self-regard. It has the air of a jokemeister simultaneously desperate for and overconfident of your attention.

Visually, “Hoodwinked” has the unpleasant, smoothed-wedge look of a video game. One repeated aerial “pan” of the fairy-tale forest barely even holds together. That’s consistent with the hodgepodge approach. Even the plot expediently lifts surprisingly specific elements from, of all places, the Spongebob movie: the police-investigation opening, the borderlands character who can’t stop singing here, a crazy goat), and the slowly revealed conspiracy to monopolize the food industry. Now who’s been hoodwinked?

– Nicolas Rapold

LAST HOLIDAY
PG-13, 108 minutes

Poor Alec Guinness. In his lifetime, he saw decades of work overshadowed by a single berobed mystic in an American outer-space yarn. Now one of his many delightful efforts, “Last Holiday,” probably will be forgotten in favor of the remake centered on the singer of “Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here.”

That’s not to put down the multitasking Queen. Her easy charisma warrants the cottage industry she’s built out of that frank appeal scholars dub “sass.” But it’s not enough to buoy the bland, broad for mulas and queasy mistaken-identity routines that pad out “Last Holiday.”

Wayne Wang’s film is one of those morality tales in which the protagonist has to waste piles of cash to realize that cash is not the answer. The occasion for shy store clerk Georgia (Queen Latifah) is a terminal diagnosis. Stunned, she decides to live out her dreams.

Georgia tells off her profit-mad boss and takes off to a jet-set hotel in the Czech Republic. Georgia is wowed by the opulence there and soon wins over the heavily accented staff with her earthy humility. Georgia gets a massage. Georgia is shocked that it involves being beaten with branches. In a nod to plot development, her state’s double-dealing senator and a cutthroat businessman, who are also staying there, mistake Georgia for a high roller. Machinations ensue, and even her workplace crush (LL Cool J) gets resolved.

Queen Latifah’s smooth timing never falters, and she gets across the melancholy at the heart of the escapade. But she succeeds in spite of the screenplay, which is most interesting for its love-hate bitterness about wealth and happiness. For a story about a woman coming out of her shell, it takes an awful lot of shots at insidious business attitudes (the deftest of which is the “Young, Hip, Rich” manual her boss worships). Add the pall cast by the poverty-revealing tragedy of Hurricane Katrina (Georgia lives in Louisiana), and maybe the grim irony would impress old Alec after all.

– Nicolas Rapold

WHEN THE SEA RISES
unrated, 93 minutes

In the sweet French love story “When the Sea Rises,” Irene (Yolande Moreau) plays a touring stage comic with a double life. Onstage she has a satirical one-woman show, while offstage she is reserved and timid. Packing and unpacking props, she focuses on the next tour date and fields cell phone calls from her husband back home.

Her real life gets a bit of drama from an affair with a shaggy puppeteer who comes to a show. Dries (Wim Willaert) sees a kindred playful spirit and doesn’t recognize that their fling must have an expiration date. Irene, enjoying herself, pretends the same. But a wistful, fateful air clings to her.

“When the Sea Rises” is the collaboration of cinematographer Gilles Porte and Ms. Moreau, an actual stage comic. Mr. Porte contributes effortless roadside shots of industrial-rural Northern France, while Irene’s show, “Dirty Business,” is based on one Ms. Moreau once performed.

The live segments that were filmed before a live audience provide lovely, subtle countercurrents to the pathos of the story. Irene’s stage persona is tragic-pathetic – like a Beckett bumpkin. She cuts a striking figure on a nearly bare stage wearing a striped housedress and eyeless pointynosed mask. Her hands, painted red, clutch a handbag gaily festooned with a leek. Every show she pulls a male volunteer into a guns ‘n’ romance fantasy, imagining their “grand amour.”

Ms. Moreau eases into both roles with a quiet confidence. The same simplicity infuses the entire movie, which at times risks torpor in its languid run-up. It’s no “grand amour,” to be sure, but it’s not intended to be. The abrupt ending sighs with the knowledge that all good things must come to an end.

– Nicolas Rapold

THE KEEPER: THE LEGEND OF OMAR KHAYYAM
PG, 95 minutes

“The Keeper” is one Iranian’s labor of love for the heritage that won’t pop up in news coverage of the latest geopolitical stand-off. What better place to start than with the 11th-century Persian scholar whose greatest hits thrive in translation: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on”?

Mr. Mashayekh structures his film like many ancient tales – focusing on the story and the storyteller. A modern-day Iranian family in America recounts the life of Omar Khayyam (played by Bruno Lastra). Their “keeper” is 12-year-old Kamran, charged with knowing the ancestral history. The two dramas alternate on screen: Omar’s rise in the Sultan’s court, his friendships, and separation from a beloved slave girl; and Kamran’s race to piece together the legend from dying relatives.

“The Keeper” begins its story so confidently and shifts times so ambitiously that you might think a magisterial epic is cranking up. The international cast, which includes German hottie Moritz Bleibtreu (as the Sultan) and Vanessa Redgrave, is also impressive. But the didactic style and characters like Omar’s dashing, plot-spurring friend Hassan (Christopher Simpson) signal the film’s more modest ambitions.

Mr. Mashayekh has a good eye for deep reds and pulls off some simple but effective shots. A mention of the Crusades and tense words about faith versus reason gesture toward commentary, but it all remains safe for general audiences.

– Nicolas Rapold

LIBERTY STREET: ALIVE AT GROUND ZERO
unrated, 120 minutes

Peter Josyph’s “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” opens with a title card that reads “This Film Was Shot With One Camera by One New Yorker Who Needed To Take a Walk.” The doc is a dreamlike, contemplative march through downtown Manhattan post-September 11, but in retrospect, the statement seems almost like a warning. Patience is required to endure this sober, melancholy, and lengthy documentary.

Mr. Josyph’s footage is mostly comprised of stolen shots – photography at ground zero was highly restricted immediately after the attacks. When not focused directly on the ruins, Mr. Josyph’s film profiles a handful of residents at 114 Liberty Street who struggle to return their lives to normal after nearly losing their home (it is yards from where the World Trade Center stood).

There is an intimacy to witnessing Liberty Street’s community begin to come back to life, but at two hours (liberally coated in mediative silence; there are entire sections devoted to nothing more than witnessing construction crews sweep away the ruins of the fallen trade center) the film is often more frustrating than stimulating.

– Edward Goldberger

THREAT
unrated, 80 minutes

A group of Richard Linklater rejects try to wax philosophical before beating each other up in “Threat,” Matt Pizzolo’s disaster appearing exclusively at Two Boots Pioneer this week.

The movie centers on Jim (Carlos Puga), a homeless punk-rock wannabe who spouts endless miserable jargon. What does anything matter, Jim wonders, when we’re all going to die anyway?

Lest one think Jim is alone in his chronic skepticism, he teams up with Kat (Katie Nisa, who co-wrote with Mr. Pizzolo) a loner who at one point wonders aloud: “What’s up with people saying being raped is worse than getting killed?” Whoa! That’s deep.

Jim’s one enduring friendship, despite their culture gap, is with hip-hop-loving Fred (Keith Middleton). But their association leads to a 20-minute race-riot sequence in the final act. This is the highlight of the film, but by then it’s too little, too late.

– Edward Goldberger

APRIL’S SHOWER
unrated, 98 minutes

If you’re looking for a film with the plot plausibility of bad gay porn and all the irritating characters and games that make most people fear wedding showers, you’ll love “April’s Shower,” an unsexy lesbian bridal shower-themed sex romp.

– Meghan Keane