SOMETHING NEW
PG-13, 100 minutes

“Something New” is the best romantic comedy of the past 12 months, and one of the few recent movies to treat African-Americans like human beings. Audiences should feel free to ignore the somewhat retro attempts by the film’s publicist to turn the plot of “Something New,” involving a black woman dating a white man, into a talking point. If you want to send a message, try Western Union. What the multiplex needs now is love, sweet love, and that’s the one thing that “Something New” has plenty of.

Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is an uptight career woman hitting her late 30s. Her clutch of equally single female friends has gone from lamenting being alone on Valentine’s Day to pretending that they find it empowering. Gritting her teeth, she winds up on a blind date with a white landscaper (Simon Baker) who is such a hunk of burning love that even he has to squint or risk being blinded by his own golden glow. The burning in their loins and the ticking of their biological clocks overcome racial differences, and the rest of the movie is about navigating that last chance relationship: You want it to be the one, but what if you’re kidding yourself?

Romantic comedy lives or dies on the strength of its actors. In the case of “Something New,” they knock it out of the park. But it’s not their burnished good looks or their chemistry that sell this story – it’s their completely unstylish commitment to sincerity. No zingers, no post-ironic hipness, no attitude, just an absolute belief in the importance of love. And whatever variety of Grinch with a pea-size heart you are, by the end of this movie, you’ll be believing it, too.

-Grady Hendrix

LA SCORTA
unrated, 95 minutes

Pity the poor, breakable heroes of “La Scorta.” When a Sicilian judge gets gunned down by the Mafia for poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, a new judge is immediately sent to fill his still-warm chair and four young cops are assigned as his bodyguards. Doomed from the second the picture starts, they futilely fulfill their duties as Ennio Morricone’s funereal score beats them to death with all its symphonic might.

Originally released in 1993, “La Scorta” will be at the Pioneer theater until February 8. The film is based on actual events and carries itself with the scruffy, 1970s machismo of closely observed cop classics like “The French Connection” or “Fort Apache, the Bronx.”

But “La Scorta” also offers up a new take on the action genre: the inaction movie. Guns are rarely fired and the bad guys remain hidden in the shadows. All too aware that you can kick down all the doors in the world and wave your gun in everyone’s face but at the end of the day the bad guys are still going to get you, “La Scorta” skips the adrenaline buzz and goes straight for the bleak and depressing hangover.

– Grady Hendrix

BLOSSOMS OF FIRE
unrated, 74 minutes

“Blossoms of Fire,” Maureen Gosling’s gung-ho documentary about the modern-day matriarchal town of Juchitan, focuses on a community of women who value “food, clothing, and fiestas” above all else. It’s a recipe for success, judging from all the smiles, not to mention the Mexican city’s centuries of stability.

Juchitan somehow supports a population of more than 100,000, which seems hard to sustain on even the yummiest food, the most florid clothing, and the most rocking fiestas.

This matriarchy relies on the power of the purse. The women work long hours and manage their husbands’ finances.

These are women passionately into both the beauty and the pragmatics of life. Ms. Gosling’s subjects argue persuasively for a way of life driven by culture, not coin. Viewers will either feel the same love as the besotted males who croon the ballads on the soundtrack, or paraphrase Tolstoy on how boring happy families are.

– Nicolas Rapold

ANDREW W.K. – WHO KNOWS?
unrated, 75 minutes

“Andrew W.K. – Who Knows?” (playing at the Pioneer theater until Sunday) should put any question regarding Andrew W.K.’s commitment to partying hard and having fun to rest. With his long, greasy mane and sweaty white T-shirt, W.K. looks for all the world like a high school rock messiah, and he tears through the 20 or so songs in the film like a colony of bats out of hell.

The singer takes his heavy metal influences and howls them back with such unrestrained glee that his audiences, whether in a huge arena in Taiwan or in a tiny club in North Carolina, seem almost overcome with W.K’s music, his persona, and their own emotion. “When it’s time to party, we will always party hard!” becomes the battlecry not of a group that’s having a good time, but a group that is aggressively and relentlessly having the best time anyone has ever had in the history of the world.

– Kevin Lam

SUITS ON THE LOOSE
PG, 93 minutes

“Suits on the Loose” is ostensibly about two delinquents (Eric Ty Hodges and Brandon Beemer) who escape from a boot camp-style reform school in the middle of the Mojave Desert and steal the car, clothes, and identities of two Mormons they encounter. But the film is actually a 93-minute commercial for Mormonism.

When the pair get to the town of New Harmony, they must pass themselves off as missionaries to evade capture, and – as it turns out – learn that Mormonism isn’t so bad. Much like the Latter-day Saints advertisements of the 1980s, “Suits on the Loose” turns out to be a not unpleasant soft sell for conversion.

– Kevin Lam