SLEEPING DOGS LIE
R, 89 minutes

Finally, a movie that deals maturely with the pressing issue of curious coeds who fellate their dogs. The unnervingly ordinary “Sleeping Dogs Lie” is about sunshine-perfect Amy (Melinda Page Hamilton), who instantly regrets confessing a youthful cross-species indiscretion to her fiancé. At Sundance, the movie (known as “Stay”) diverted bored festivalgoers who had little better to talk about, and it arrives in theaters billed as a drama about the role of secrets in relationships, maybe á la “Chasing Amy.” Its slender interest lies in imagining how a sexual taboo plays out when it’s not just laughed off.

Director Bobcat (now just “Bob,” please) Goldthwait is probably still better known as a yowling 1980s sideshow than the gainfully employed TV director he’s become. He handles this material as straight as if on a dare. Amy and her less-than-understanding beau John (Bryce Johnson) break up awkwardly, if not entirely credibly. The rift happens on a visit to Amy’s square parents when the two are canoodling and trading secrets. Amy is essentially disowned, despite embarrassed protestations.

In a movie like this, Amy’s brother (Jack Plotnick), a meat head still living at home, becomes comic relief (along with his kindly ogre of a friend, played by Brian Posehn). Amy seeks solace in her sensitive teaching colleague, Ed (Colby French); the two sit at child-size desks. It’s all sincere and plain to the point of blandness.

Mr. Goldthwait ultimately loses his grip on the hypocritical scale of values that tolerates Amy’s deceitful brother and her fiancé’s own icky confession (think communal cookie). The film feels like one of those acting exercises that forces participants to do a deathbed scene using just the word “penis.” The director’s last release, the almost expressionistic comedy “Shakes the Clown,” remains his more compelling oddity.

— Nicolas Rapold

ALSO OPENING THIS WEEKEND

JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
Unrated, 86 minutes

With previously unseen footage and interviews with former members of the Peoples Church, this documentary explores the events leading up to the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. A cult which developed a large following in the 1970s, the Peoples Church was led by Jim Jones, who brought his congregation of more than 900 people to an idyllic community in Guyana before inciting them to mass suicide.

FLICKA
PG, 94 minutes

Sixteen-year-old Katy McLaughlin (Alison Lohman) dreams of fulfilling her family legacy by working on her father’s ranch in modern-day Wyoming. But Katy’s father (Tim McGraw) wants more for her, insisting that Katy go to college. Katy finds a wild mustang, which she names Flicka, and sets out to make her a riding horse. But Flicka and Katy are more alike than she could have imagined.

JAAN-E-MANN
Unrated, 165 minutes

In this Bollywood flick set in New York, Suhaan (Salman Khan) is a suave and polished wordsmith and Agastya (Akshay Kumar) is a tongue-tied nerd who can’t seem to get a sentence out. The two friends are polar opposites with only one thing in common: their love for Piya (Preity Zinta).

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

The Sun Recommends

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

THE DEPARTED
R, 149 mintues

Like its milieu, Irish-Catholic Boston, “The Departed” has plenty in common with the mean streets that Martin Scorsese has trod before, without the watershed setting or the whiff of Grand Guignol that complicated the mix in his last violent romp, the period piece “Gangs of New York.” It has plenty more, too. For both these reasons, it’s awfully fun to watch.

The same could be said for the two informers at the center of the story, which is borrowed from the 2002 Hong Kong policier “Infernal Affairs.” Ostensible gangster Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di-Caprio) and ostensible police sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are both the opposite of what they appear to be. Billy, a strung-out undercover cop, puts his life on the line cozying up to Boston’s biggest crime lord, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Colin, the spit-and-polish young star of the special investigations unit, coolly foils every sting.

— Darrell Hartman

49-UP
Unrated, 135 minutes

Imagine that your past had been shared in documentary form with millions of others. That is the fate of Michael Apted’s subjects in “49-Up.” Every seven years since 1964, he has come back to profile the same group of people his camera first encountered when they were 7 years old. Now they’re 49. Not many of them have welcomed his return.

But we should thank the subjects who, however reluctantly, are still allowing Mr. Apted to pry into their lives. For the 7-Up series looks with each installment more and more like one of the most remarkable cinematic projects there has ever been.

This is not only because of the intrinsic interest of the life stories it tells. Even more interesting are the reflections in those stories of slow-moving changes in our world that we might not otherwise notice.

— James Bowman

THE QUEEN
PG-13, 97 minutes

In all the decades of Queen Elizabeth II’s painstakingly (and sometimes painfully) dutiful, conscientious, and tenacious reign, there has only really been one brief, bizarre period, of just about a week, when there was the slightest danger that the Windsors might, like so many of their less fortunate relatives in so many less fortunate countries, be asked to pack their bags. It’s that interlude, the disturbing, slightly frightening days that followed the death of Princess Diana that is the focus of “The Queen.”

Watch Her Majesty carefully enough and it’s just possible to detect that the smile, the wave, the small talk, and all the rest of it are acts of will, the work of an actress, a pro, trapped in a role that will last a lifetime. Dame Helen Mirren catches this perfectly. She plays a woman playing the Queen, an approach that goes a long way to explaining why she is so remarkably convincing. Monarchy is a performance.

— Andrew Stuttaford

THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
NC-17, 95 minutes

With humor and fearless gusto, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” the new documentary by Kirby Dick, takes square aim at the surprisingly secretive organization that minds our PG’s and R’s. The Motion Picture Association of America may be best known as moderator of the movie-going public’s intake of sex and violence, but Mr. Dick uncovers an organization rather less savory than its family image.

The film initially concerns itself more with the organization’s questionable practices as ratings arbiter than with its business role, but it ultimately shows how the two are inextricable. It also sets about identifying the mysterious faces of the members of the appeals board of the MPAA.

— Nicolas Rapold

A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS
R, 98 minutes

The director Dito Montiel uses what he knows, namely the streets of New York and its residents, to make a film that proves how painful even the most inevitable of changes can sometimes be.

Mr. Montiel grew up in Astoria, Queens, roaming the streets with his friends and observing the weird jumble of 1980s New York. They had free reign of the city at night, meeting its strange inhabitants, finding wayward locations to take over, girls to chase, and occasionally laws to break.

The film tells the story of an adult Mr. Montiel, played by Robert Downey Jr., making a long overdue visit back home after achieving literary success, as he recounts his not so glory days back in Astoria. Shia LeBoeuf, playing the young Dito, puts in a nuanced and moving performance.

— Meghan Keane

SHERRYBABY
R, 96 minutes

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the title character, and just like Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich,” she sets out on a scantily clad expedition to exceed preconceived notions about herself. But “Sherrybaby” is everything that “Erin Brockovich” was not. Thanks mostly to Ms. Gyllenhaal’s tumultuous performance, it is a much more realistic portrayal of someone struggling against the constraints of low expectation.

Though an ex-con and former heroin addict, Sherry is determined to straighten out her life. She returns home after three years, expecting to rehabilitate her relationship with her daughter. While it is endearing to watch someone turn her life around for the sake of a child, it is nevertheless difficult to watch someone who, despite a strong desire to do right, just can’t cut it.

— M.K.

JACKASS: NUMBER TWO

R, 92 minutes

If your morals and maturity are malleable, or if you’re a fan of Johnny Knoxville and his posse of pain-proof morons, then “Jackass: Number Two” will serve as a blessed distraction from the box office’s more polished, responsible offerings.

The comedic fashion of today is detached irony, smarty-pants sarcasm that comments on society’s folly with aloof reserve. In that light, “Jackass” thunders back onto the scene, a celebration of pain and bodily fluids upending the polite snark wielded by those who try to make us see our world differently.

The sheer audacity on display during this movie, which is nothing more than a relentless tidal wave of hand-over-eyes horror, makes one think that if the Academy presented awards for Best Use of Gravity and Best Use of Poisonous Snakes, J2 would sweep.

— John Devore