Ajami — jointly directed by Scandar Copti, an Israeli-Arab filmmaker, writer, and actor, and Yaron Shani, a Jewish-Israeli filmmaker — is a movie that pulls no punches and takes no sides while delineating in a somber (but cinematically engrossing) manner the layers of conflict and bitterness that afflict Israeli and Palestinian societies. It does so through a series of interlocking tragedies involving Arab, Christian, and Jewish families, where all three groups and their extended social relations come up against each other, mostly in Jaffa, a tough Arab community near Tel Aviv, and in Tel Aviv itself.

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For a film about three people stranded on a ski lift in ice-cold weather with little hope for survival, Adam Green’s Frozen is not without its charm. The picture milks the dire situation for all its horrific worth, even if it stumbles a bit due to the high-concept trappings. Thankfully the great outweighs the few plodding moments, as a new entry in the “danger in everyday places” genre steps up to scare anyone who’s ever put their trust in a tiny seat suspended by razor-sharp cables, with nothing but open air underneath them.

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If you’re wondering why John Travolta has never really made a name for himself as a badass action hero, From Paris with Love should clear up any confusion pretty quickly. Running around with that d-bag goatee, in an Ed Hardy T-shirt and with a medallion purchased from a kiosk at the mall, he just rubs you the wrong way. Of course, he did a fine job playing hitman Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction so many years ago, so maybe the unending awkwardness of watching Travolta unload clips into bad guys and drop carpet F-bombs derives less from the weirdness of his casting and more from the simple fact that this is a crappy movie.

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When District B13 exploded onto the scene in 2004, so did the phenomenon known as parkour (or free-running), where participants move through any situation by adapting to whatever obstacles come in their way with astonishing speed and agility. B13’s director, Pierre Morel, and producer/screenwriter Luc Besson masterfully showcased this art by setting it within the confines of a burnt-out future slum — adding some fantastic fight scenes along the way. Years later, the same slum is revisited in this follow-up, which tries to match its predecessor’s energy but ends up floundering when it should be delivering the action-packed goods.

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For a film that fits so snugly into the tried-and-true formula of star-crossed lovers, Dear John is full of pleasant surprises.

The setup is a familiar one: In February of 2001, 21-year-old Special Forces officer John Tyree (Channing Tatum) meets college student Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) while he’s on leave and she’s on spring break. After a two-week courtship, they have sworn their eternal love and promise to get back together in one year after his tour is up and she graduates with a special education teaching degree. In the meantime, they exchange letters — since he’s being transferred all around the globe, snail mail turns out to be the most intimate, reliable form of communication they have (besides, an old-fashioned love story is no place for texts and e-mails).

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The very best film series seem to exist in a place outside of time, even when they’re set in a very specific period. With its story ties to feudal Japan courtesy of Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Star Wars played like a classic, mythical adventure set against a vividly realistic futuristic backdrop. The same could be said about The Godfather trilogy or George A. Romero’s Dead trilogy, which somehow manage to feel modern and fresh despite the fact they all take place at very specific times in very specific places, some of which — such as a certain shopping mall — aren’t so glamorous. Bleak and all-brick, with ominous nuclear towers serving as a toxic town gate, Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire, England, “be fit for naught but dogs” in the words of DCS Bill Molloy (Warren Clarke). It’s also the black center of this gripping, deeply unsettling tale of murder, corruption, and collusion.

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By fashioning Naomi Klein’s nonfiction book The Shock Doctrine into a feature-length documentary, multi-faceted British director Michael Winterbottom streamlines her arguments, and offers a rather compelling explanation of how the confluence of economic theory and secret CIA studies laid the foundation for the Bush administration’s Iraq War battle plan.

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Despite the misleading name, romantic comedies are seldom particularly funny. Most of the time, the comedy is just a benign backdrop for the romance, so a movie that aims squarely to be light entertainment never strays into overly serious territory. But When in Rome makes an honest attempt at being funny, filling out the supporting cast with actual comedians like Will Arnett, Dax Shepard, and Bobby Moynihan — you know, the way that real comedies do.

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