The Lone Ranger (PG-13)

There’s a rollicking Wild West adventure buried deep inside The Lone Ranger, a bloated, mega-budget revival of the story of the iconic gunslinger and his Native American sidekick Tonto. The movie is a spirited entertainment whenever it manages to take flight, such as in two enormous action sequences that bookend the film set aboard speeding locomotives, or the occasional comic exchanges between the masked hero (a square-jawed, endearingly earnest Armie Hammer) and his bizarro mystical partner Tonto (Johnny Depp in subdued oddball mode, buried under pancake makeup and wearing a dead bird on his head as a hat). When The William Tell Overture, the Ranger’s theme song since his radio days in the 1930s, finally blares on the soundtrack after being sneakily withheld for much of the picture, the effect is so rousing that you levitate in your seat a little bit.

MAN OF STEEL (PG-13)

Man of Steel (PG-13)

What went wrong with Man of Steel? The early teasers promised Terrence Malick. The finished film is more Michael Bay. Henry Cavill as Kal-El, a fugitive from a dead planet who gets god-like powers from our sun, is easily the best actor to ever play the role, pensive and thoughtful in spots, furious and heroic in others. There’s a lot going on behind his eyes. In smaller roles, Russell Crowe fares better than Marlon Brando did as Jor-El, who can communicate with his son from beyond the grave, and Michael Shannon seems like the perfect maniac to play General Zod, a power-mad despot who shares Kal-El’s powers.

THIS IS THE END (R)

This Is the End

This Is the End is a marvelously sustained, high-wire goof – a movie so nutty and daring, so crazy and out-there, that it feels like a low-budget independent except with big stars and a sizable budget. The movie marks the directorial debut of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who had previously collaborated as writers on Superbad and Pineapple Express. Their new movie has that same brash, did-they-just-say-that? attitude, only this one takes it to apocalyptic extremes – literally.

THE PURGE (R)

‘The Purge’ (R)

According to the what-if? scenario of The Purge, in the near future government will shut down for 12 hours one night each year — no police, no hospitals, no 911 — and people will be free to do whatever they want, even commit murder, without legal consequence.

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AFTER EARTH (PG-13)

After Earth (PG-13)

One thousand years after mankind abandoned Earth, a spaceship crashes on the planet, killing everyone aboard except the commanding officer Cypher (Will Smith) and his teenage son Kitai (Jaden Smith), who is trying to live up to his father’s legendary military record. As Cypher’s leg is broken, he can’t walk, so Kitai must venture outside by himself, find the tail of the shattered vessel and obtain a homing beacon that will send help.

PARADISE: LOVE (unrated)

Paradise: Love (unrated)

The Austrian divorcee Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) is 50, overweight (bordering on obese), lonely and in dire need of a vacation. She drops off her sullen, cellphone obsessed daughter at the home of a relative and heads off to Kenya, where she quickly learns that all the young men on the beach selling bracelets and tchotkes are also available for sex. They’re not prostitutes — they don’t talk about prices or time frames — but they willingly jump into bed with women like Teresa and make them feel, at least for a moment, desirable and happy and attractive.

THE HANGOVER PART III (R)

The Hangover Part III (R)

There’s exactly one good scene in all of The Hangover Part III, a hilarious bit of business halfway during the end credits that reminds you what made the original film so good. The rest of this odious, mean-spirited movie — the crassest cash-grab to come out of a Hollywood studio in recent memory — appropriates the title and the characters from the previous pictures and sends them on a would-be adventure involving gangsters, gold bars and decapitated giraffes.