THE GREAT YOKAI WAR
unrated, 123 minutes

“The Great Yokai War” is the most imaginative and heartfelt blockbuster of the summer. It’s also the movie you’re least likely to see. Directed by Takashi Miike, the evil genius of Japanese cinema, it’s a “Lord of the Rings”- sized kiddie film that should be playing at every multiplex across town, instead of on a single screen at the Anthology Film Archives. But don’t let its location fool you: This flick is so massive you can hear its seams busting.

Things kick off with a nightmare vision of post-apocalyptic Tokyo and the introduction of the super-sexualized, whipwielding demoness Agi (Chiaki Kuriyama of “Kill Bill Vol.1”). After the birth of a flayed cow fetus that predicts the apocalypse, it’s clear that this flick takes a gloves-off approach to children. The hero, Tadashi, has been shuffled off to his grandpa’s no wheresville house while his parents slug it out in a nasty divorce He quickly finds himself sucked into another war. This one is between yokai Japan’s funky folkloric demons) and a mechanical army of garbage, burning with hatred over being thrown away by humans and eager to settle the score with an array of chain saws, blowtorches, and chomping, spiked mouths.

Funny, moving, sexy, nasty, and slick “The Great Yokai War” burns with Mr. Miike’s insane energy. But the film also delivers the kind of truth that Peter Jackson shied away from at the end of “The Lord of the Rings”: Every quest has an ending and every child eventually grows up.

– Grady Hendrix

ROOM
unrated, 75 minutes

In “Room,” Julia Barker (Cyndi Williams) suffers from headaches and hallucinations, but what truly ails her is something deeper.

A lower-middle-class parent, she copes with a high-handed boss and a dead-end job at a bingo parlor. Early on she’s seen helping out with a game whose falling chips are possibly a metaphor for latent feelings coalescing At home, she stoically performs her duties as the wife of a feckless husband Kenneth Wayne Bradley) and the mother of two.

At first, the movie seems to strive for a portrait of the soul-crushing nature of work – a more conventional kindred spirit to the Dardenne brothers’ “Rosetta.” Or perhaps it’s a monument to the disorienting, maddening nature of daily routine – a less rigorous, less convincing Amerindie version of Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman.”

But Kyle Henry’s well-made, if vaguely pretentious, narrative debut has a larger scale in mind, and after a blackout, Julia impulsively flies to New York. Once there, she discovers a surreal world of clandestine mediation societies and coke-starved real estate brokers. (Well, maybe it’s not so surreal.)

As a city portrait, the movie has a certain measure of integrity. It’s refreshing to see a film shot on actual New York subways, where viewers will even recognize a particularly ubiquitous panhandler. The movie is also pervaded with a sense of political anxiety, a tone emphasized by a throwaway shot of President Bush speaking on television.

But Julia’s story finally melts into oblivion. The last sequence – with its sudden infusion of Stan Brakhage aesthetics – feels less like a visionary montage than a striking means of closing a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to say.

– Ben Kenigsberg

RANK
unrated, 97 minutes

Full of beer-swilling men with thick Southern accents and even thicker egos, “Rank” chronicles the seven frantic and intense days of the 2004 Professional Bull Riding World Championship in Las Vegas. As might be expected, “Rank” reveals the world of professional bull riding as shaped by rapid-fire action: eight-second stunts, instantaneous, crippling injuries, and blink-of-an-eye defeats. The problem is that the pace of the film itself falls far behind that of its subjects.

Director John Hymans, who previously chronicled the world of extreme fighting in “The Smashing Machine” (2002), found compelling, if not particularly sympathetic, characters in the top three championship competitors: Justin McBride, an injured but fierce athlete; Mike Lee, a born-again Christian and the relative underdog; and Adriano Moraes, the defending champion. And Mr. Hymans finds plenty of dramatic, high-flying (literally) action in and out of the arena.

But with the exception of a lovingly captured scene in which Mr. McBride’s grandmother buckles under the stress of her grandson’s hazardous hobby, the film spends too much time marveling at the sport itself. Hints of emotional depth emerge (namely in Mr. Lee’s bravado and in Mr. Moraes’s relationship with his sons), but are too quickly surrendered in favor of repetitive shots of blood-thirsty crowds and broken bones. The leaden, heavy-handed piano score isn’t a bonus. It strips the film of any momentum, rendering the action monotonous when it should be crisp and electric. “Rank” certainly bucks at times, but on the whole it’s a less than thrilling ride.

– Erica Orden