For several of director Czubek’s subjects, vulnerability is their overriding concern.  This is never more present than in Sarah McKinley’s case.  A very young, slender mother—recently widowed by a cancer-ridden husband—she presides alone over a desolate 2,000 acre spread in Blanchard, Oklahoma, wide-eyed over the immensity of her loneliness. With one hand around her weapon and another around the baby, she eyes the rubble from a recent break-in.  She stood her ground and shot the intruder dead.  Now she must live with the psychic consequences of her actions.

What’s a romantic comedy to do when it is neither romantic nor comedic? When that film is “Admission,” it plunges forward drunkenly, hoping to overcome its inadequacies with goodwill created by the cast. Thankfully for director Paul Weitz (“American Pie,” “Little Fockers”) that cast contains Tina Fey, Paul Rudd and Lily Tomlin, a group that would make a line at the post office more appealing. 

“The Lone Ranger” debuted in theaters in time for the July 4 holiday, and while Johnny Depp’s decision to play Tonto—a fictional Native sidekick to the white cowboy—has drawn attention and criticism, the film’s release means that all things Native are unusually relevant—and marketable. And that can be a good, bad, and very ugly thing, all at once. Tonto action figures are already being sold as “Native American warrior spirit” caricatures. The Lego Corporation is pushing its “Comanche Camp” toys. And Subway is hawking plastic soft drink containers with Tonto snapshots.

How could a character so admired, so charismatic, become so thoroughly unappealing quite so fast? In reality, though, the wheels of Don Draper’s downward spiral have been churning slowly since the very beginning of the series. What made season six immediately different was that, for the very first time, we weren’t really on Don’s side. Prior to this season, even within the throws of his most despicable past deeds-- the lies, the cheating, the arrogance-- Don has remained an appealing anti-hero that most viewers stood by, loved, and even defended. 

Americans have long celebrated justice and freedom, but director Eugene Jarecki’s “The House I Live In” forces viewers to look closely at political policies that have turned the nation into the No. 1 jailer in the world. As Jarecki (“Why We Fight,” “Freakonomics”) points out in the documentary, the U.S. contains 25 percent of the world’s prisoners despite possessing only 5 percent of its population.

It’s amusing to watch Steve Carrell and Steve Buscemi strut around in jeweled costumes, tossing their lion-mane hair to and fro. It’s also funny to watch Jim Carrey play an over-the-top Criss Angel wannabe. Sadly, these are the only highlights in “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” a slow, humdrum comedy that would have worked better as a 10-minute sketch than a feature film. Because the performers are charismatic, director Don Scardino is able to milk a few laughs from the tepid, committee-written screenplay, but that’s hardly an endorsement. 

Revealing secret symbols or transforming a flat plane into a 3-dimensional world, anamorphosis activates a sudden shift or rupture in its impression on the spectator. Whereas perspective seeks to systematize an image of the known world for the benefit of the human eye, anamorphosis “leads the eye slowly through incomprehension and then offers a resolution.”

Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm, directed by Jacob Hatley, is not seeped with nostalgia like so many other music documentaries (Martin Scorsese’s treatments of Bob Dylan or George Harrison, the Jim Brown directed tribute to Pete Seeger or even – though to a lesser extent – Lian Lunson’s documentary on Leonard Cohen). It is grittier and, one would believe, more truthful – a candid look into the final years of the life of Levon Helm, in many ways the special ingredient that really gave The Band their flavor.

Director Bryan Singer’s reinvention of “Jack and the Beanstalk” was a disappointment at the box office, a fact that probably has more to do with the concept than the execution. Although a fairy tale, the movie is presented as a big-budget, special-effects blockbuster that plays as much like “Clash of the Titans” as a Disney cartoon. That places a lot of limitations on audience.    Teens and young adults don’t typically line up for fairy tales, yet “Jack” has a dark tone that may concern parents of younger children. 

For a movie that looks gorgeous, evokes memories of a cinematic classic and boasts a bundle of star power, “Oz the Great and Powerful” is oddly flat. It’s not that the film is terrible; it’s just not as good as it could or should have been. Based on the “Oz” novels of L. Frank Baum, the story is set decades before events portrayed in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”  That makes the project a prequel of sorts, and director Sam Raimi knew audiences would compare his work to the classic preceding it.