Imagine that Macaulay Culkin’s character from Home Alone was so traumatized by his childhood misadventures that he became a sadistic serial killer. Chances are he would operate in a similar manner to “The Collector,” a vicious, masked master of traps who likes to toy with his prey by rigging their homes with lethal, Rube Goldberg-style contraptions. From an opening credit sequence that resembles the intro to a television series (”This week on The Collector…”) to the fact that the eponymous psycho’s motivations are still unclear by the time the credits roll, Saw IV, V, VI, and VII screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan’s first attempt at flying solo is a blatant franchise grab that will have most viewers squirming in their seats — as long as they don’t make the mistake of playing plausibility police.

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Combine a few stupid but lethal bad guys, one likable loser in over his head, an array of quirky supporting characters, millions of dollars in cocaine, and enough guns to arm a commando team, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a solid crime comedy — and that’s exactly what Next Day Air is.

Leo (Donald Faison) thinks he’s having just another average day. He works for Next Day Air — the shipping service run by his mother. To help pass the time, he smokes weed while making his deliveries. That afternoon, in his impaired state, he accidentally delivers a shipment of cocaine to inept bank robbers Brody (Mike Epps) and Guch (Wood Harris) — instead of to the low-level drug dealer who’s supposed to get it — setting in motion a series of double-crosses, lies, and schemes that just might end in his death.

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Movies about powerful crime figures pose unique problems for socially responsible directors. After all, films about really bad men do run the risk of making murder, blackmail, and torture glamorous — even when the director doesn’t mean for them to be. But, Matteo Garrone avoids these pitfalls skillfully in his drama, Gomorrah, by tempering the excitement of thug life with a healthy, if scary, dose of social realism.

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Nearly a decade after proving that lightning could indeed strike twice with Snatch – his giddy, reputation-cementing follow-up to the landmark Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels — it would seem that Guy Ritchie is finally starting to grow up. Sure, he’s still got a good pint of piss in him, but in the wake of such box-office disasters as Swept Away and Revolver, he seems to finally understand that sometimes it pays to exercise a bit of restraint.

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Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill is a perfectly polished three-star thriller, a compulsively watchable piece of Hollywood product that’s sure to sell popcorn as DeNiro and Pacino fans dutifully file in to receive their recommended weekly allowances of badge-flashing testosterone and pistol-whipping machismo.

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The caped crusader gets a stunning dose of hardcore dramatics in The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s ambitious follow-up to Batman Begins. Hailed as the first real big screen adult take on a popular comic mythos, the film goes to great lengths to show that costumed characters can indeed exist in genres outside of their comfort zone – which in this case, spells gritty crime drama. Nolan’s Gotham City might be beautiful, but it’s decaying from the inside out – as are most of the people in control of it. So at what point do the efforts of a costumed vigilante cease to have an impact on the society he vows to protect – and when does his mere presence present a detriment to them when it’s all said and done? It’s these kinds of hefty issues that embody what could accurately be touted as a reinvention of the entire superhero film altogether. Thick with rich dramatics, daring performances and a few knockout scenes of action gusto, The Dark Knight strives to not only one-up its precursor, but to also lay down a measuring stick of quality for the rest of Hollywood to live up to.

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American Gangster: Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe reunite for this long-awaited unofficial sequel to Virtuosity.

Michael Clayton: Finally a movie with George Clooney playing a loyal servant to The Man who grows a conscience and stops playing ball. It’s about time.

Margot at the Wedding: If you see just one Jack Black nude scene this year, make it this one.

Kurt Cobain - About a Son: Mulattos, albinos and mosquitoes all agree that this way better than the Krist Novoselic documentary.

Also out this week: Rendition, Lust, Caution, In the Valley of Elah, Zebraman and Nightmare Detective