[...] those series boasted some of the industry's strongest writers; choosing a script by novices for his feature debut, Zisk flounders in "The English Teacher," a comedy whose cringe-worthy moments aren't the kind he might have aimed for when directing "The Office." When former student Jason (Michael Angarano) brings her a play he wrote during an unsuccessful attempt to break into Broadway, she thinks it's brilliant and convinces her school's drama coach, Carl (Nathan Lane), to mount a production. Julianne Moore has suffered plenty onscreen over the years, but this film's presentation of Linda's pain as a comic fiasco is so tone-deaf — from the pushy playfulness of Rob Simonsen's score to the "gotcha!" humiliations popping up in emotional encounters — that one can't help but pass the time wondering if this might, with the same cast but a head-to-tail replacement of the creative team, have worked as a wrenching little drama. The current script's feel-good resolution is so implausible that even the pic's narrator (Fiona Shaw), whose voice suggests a deep affinity for fairy tales, can't get through it without expressing disbelief.

Even calling "Stories We Tell" a documentary seems rather limiting and not entirely accurate; it's also a deadpan comedy, a juicy melodrama and a gripping mystery, all cleverly blended together with great focus. Relatives and longtime friends remember her mother, Diane Polley, who died of cancer when Sarah was only 11, as a charismatic, fun-loving stage actress. The fact that these anecdotes are sprinkled with healthy helpings of dry, self-effacing Canadian humor makes us want to get to know these people even more. Because we are seeing the same moments over and over, as recalled from varying perspectives, "Stories We Tell" grows a tad repetitive, and the proliferation of shaky, hand-held camera can be a little dizzying. "Stories We Tell," a Roadside Attractions release, is rated PG-13 for thematic elements involving sexuality, brief strong language and smoking.

[...] the new chiefs of Starfleet aren't coming up with much to call their own. The action in "Into Darkness" is top-notch, the visuals grand, though the movie's needless conversion to 3-D muddies the images. Director J.J. Abrams was most definitely not a fan-boy for this franchise when he made 2009's "Star Trek," which reintroduced Kirk, Spock and the rest of the starship Enterprise gang with a time-travel twist that allowed the William Shatner-Leonard Nimoy original to coexist with an entirely different destiny for the new players. "Into Darkness" opens with a splashy action sequence to again show the cockiness of Capt. James Kirk (Chris Pine) — with his willingness to flaunt the rules — and the icy intellect of half-Vulcan First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), who's willing to sacrifice his life to stick to the Starfleet playbook. Kirk, Spock and their Enterprise crew are dispatched to take Harrison out with weapons that could prove the mother of all drone strikes, maintaining the usual see-how-relevant-we-are conceit of the "Trek" cosmos. With his rumbling voice and stony stare, the star of Britain's detective update "Sherlock" is fearsome and relentless, a one-man army who truly seems like more than a match for poor Enterprise, all on his own.

Baumbach, whose previous films include the subtle, brilliantly observant "The Squid and the Whale," borrows from a couple different sources here: the chatty, cultured New York epitomized by 1970s Woody Allen films and the black-and-white intimacy and restless youth of the French New Wave. Frances is having a harder time forging a path between those two points than her best friend and roommate, Sophie (a grounded Mickey Sumner, Sting's daughter), who works at a publishing house and has a serious boyfriend. When Sophie moves out of their Brooklyn apartment to live in her dream neighborhood of Tribeca (this movie it dead-on in its vivid sense of place) Frances finds herself hopping between couches and friends. Among them are a couple of artists/trust-fund kids (Adam Driver and Michael Zegen) and a fellow dancer (Grace Gummer) who's clearly reluctant to take her in. If there's a misstep, it's in the rushed romance between Sophie and her preppy financier boyfriend, which sets the story in motion but is never really believable.

With Roth playing one of the leads and handing off directorial duties to Nicolas Lopez (Santos), the film tends to feel shoddier than the first two "Hostel" movies, even if the team draws laughs from the sight of spoiled hipsters getting their comeuppance in the Third World. Given how the torture-porn genre has been waning, credited writers Roth, Lopez and Guillermo Amodeo bring down the ketchup count considerably here, and "Aftershock" is less of an all-out bloodbath than a throwback to hokey horror and disaster flicks from the '70s and '80s. [...] just when "Aftershock" is starting to feel like one long Spanish-language spring break video, disaster strikes in a crowded nightclub, leaving the group stuck between collapsing ceilings, severed limbs and all-out urban anarchy. Strictly abiding by horror film scripture, the characters get knocked off more or less in the order of transgressions committed, beginning with Ariel, who spent the first act annoyingly texting his ex and justifiably gets his hand chopped off.

The people of "Peeples" make a better impression than most collections of oddballs in the weary mold of comedies centered on meeting the prospective in-laws. With a long, boring buildup that finally pays off with scattered laughs in the second half, "Peeples" also manages to leave a better impression than the "Tyler Perry Presents" tag on the posters might imply. Craig Robinson moves up from caustic supporting player on "The Office" to show himself an engaging romantic lead in the chubby, lovable, gregarious Jack Black school, while Kerry Washington lightens up from heavier drama as the love of his life, a daddy's girl whose daddy, naturally, doesn't approve. [...] everything Wade does puts him at odds with family patriarch Virgil Peeples (David Alan Grier), a stern federal judge who thinks no man is good enough for his daughter, especially not a guy whose classroom repertoire includes a ditty about saying it, not spraying it, to discourage kids from peeing in their pants. Once she has the whole gang assembled and all the dominoes set up to knock down, Chism gradually makes her farce pay off here and there, the pace picking up and a few gags connecting as Wade's weekend from hell sinks to the lower depths.