“Boondock Saints: All Saints Day” — The original 1999 “Boondock Saints” was a ridiculously over-the-top action film about a pair of Irish-American twins (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) who set out with guns, recklessness and boozy bravado to rid Boston of criminals and mafia. The film, hardly seen in theaters, became a minor cult classic on DVD. Writer-director Troy Duffy has returned with exactly the same vigilante shlock he produced a decade ago. Because it revels so thoroughly in drinking, fighting and Catholicism, “Boondock Saints” has been called “Irishspoitation.” Like its predecessor, “All Saints Day” laments a society full of red-tape and a culture dominated by the “self-help, 12-step generation.” This comes across less like “Taxi Driver,” and more like what Travis Bickle might have made if someone gave him a camera. Far more interesting is the story behind Duffy and “Boondock Saints,” which is Hollywood legend. For that, rent the fascinating 2003 documentary “Overnight.” R for bloody violence, language and some nudity. 117 min. — Jake Coyle

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” — With George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray leading the top-notch voice cast, director Wes Anderson has found an ideal story and medium — stop-motion animation — to bring his cockeyed vision to the cartoon world. In the hands of “Rushmore” director Anderson, Roald Dahl’s children’s book about a poultry-thieving fox gets loving treatment and a distinct handcrafted style that sets it apart from the sleek computer-generated imagery dominating animation today. Clooney provides the voice of a fox whose capers against three evil farmers bring the mechanized wrath of the human world down on him, his family and a menagerie of neighbors. It’s lightweight fun, yet the film succeeds on all levels, presenting cute and clever varmints to charm children while offering adults merry screwball humor that slyly stretches the film’s family-friendly rating. PG for action, smoking and slang humor. Running time: 88 min. — David Germain

“Gentlemen Broncos” — This latest comedy from the makers of indie sensation “Napoleon Dynamite” is so weird, so off, so simply wrong that even freakish nerd Napoleon would have a hard time lending it his catch word, “Sweet.” The husband-and-wife team of director Jared Hess and co-writer Jerusha Hess, who followed “Napoleon Dynamite” with basically the same movie in “Nacho Libre,” strain to mine another misfit story in like vein. Michael Angarano stars as an aspiring sci-fi writer whose story is stolen by his literary hero (Jemaine Clement). Clement is the lone highlight by virtue of being occasionally funny and not completely off-putting like the rest of the cast, which includes Jennifer Coolidge, Sam Rockwell, Mike White, Halley Feiffer and Hector Jimenez. The filmmakers wallow in such gags as explosive reptile defecation, gonad theft and projectile vomiting, delivering a chaotic, infuriating mess that will challenge the most-devoted of the “Napoleon Dynamite” faithful. PG-13 for some crude humor. 90 min. — David Germain

“House of the Devil” — Filmmaker Ti West’s homage to low-rental 1980s horror scores points for restraint and attention to detail but defaults when the mortgage comes due with a bloody, pointless, uninspired climax. Newcomer Jocelin Donahue stars as a college sophomore on a baby sitting job for a creepy couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) who have devilish plans for her on the night of a lunar eclipse. The movie is 90 percent setup, some of it acutely observed and starkly evocative of the decade in which it’s set, yet much of it as dull and forgettable as the big-hair ‘80s. At the end, when up jumps the devil and his followers at last, West’s moderation vanishes in an instant, the movie collapsing into noisy, splotchy, gory mayhem, clumsily stitched together and obscured by strobe-light effects. For mood, it’s a faithful flashback, but the movie’s about as scary as something you saw again and again way back when. R for some bloody violence. Running time: 93 min. — David Germain

“Pirate Radio” — No movie can be all bad when juiced up with a soundtrack of more than 50 classic rock songs, the musical backdrop for a story about merry deejays blasting illicit tunes into stodgy mid-1960s Britain from a boat offshore. The best thing to say about this rock ‘n’ roll romp from writer-director Richard Curtis is that it’s all about the music, man. The Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix — these are the stars here, and the well-chosen songs are the main thing keeping the film afloat. Mostly a hodgepodge of music montages and prolonged, occasionally funny gags, the movie spends a lot of time talking about how great rock music is but only captures its soul through the actual playlist of songs. It’s a big disappointment when you consider the potentially explosive combination of Curtis’ supergroup of comic talent, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost. R for language, and some sexual content including brief nudity. 116 min. — David Germain

“2012” — The end is not near enough for this latest nihilistic disaster flick, directed by end-of-the-world specialist Roland Emmerich (”The Day After Tomorrow,” “Independence Day”). The 2 1/2-hour film hews close to genre standards: the redeemed deadbeat dad (John Cusack), the coming together of different peoples, the toppling of monuments. The cause of destruction this time is neutrinos from the sun that have heated the earth’s core and destabilized the planet’s crust. Cusack and others skip narrowly ahead of the shifting tectonics; California falls into the ocean and much of the world follows suit. The most grounded thing here is the acting. Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor (as a government scientist), Oliver Platt (as the president’s chief-of-staff) and Woody Harrelson (perfectly cast as a conspiracy theory-addled nut) almost convince you that something decent is at work in “2012.” But it’s just another doomsday film, with new digital effects and stock scenes patched together from “Jaws,” “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Armageddon.” PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language. 158 min. — Jake Coyle