Transformers: Age of Extinction:

Mark Wahlberg is the star this time, with a more mature male protagonist than we have seen in previous Transformers movies.  Bigger, noisier, more action, and a strong story makes this an excellent special effects movie, with the Transformers condemned by the people of earth who feel that their usefulness has been outlived.  Well, tell that to the new generation of Deceptacons out to do in the last of the Autobots.  Optimus Prime has been relegated to life as a run-down wreck of a semi-truck when Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) , an avid but hapless inventor, discovers him … and soon, the fight is on! Rated 14A.

Chef:   

This delightful film about a high-end chef relegated to running a food truck is entirely the Jon Favreau show – Favreau, director of all the Iron Man movies and producer of the TV series Revolution, wrote the script, directed the movie, and stars in it as well, as Carl Casper, an accomplished chef who gets  into an argument with a food critic that goes viral and costs him his job in an elegant New York restaurant.  His ex-wife (Scarlett Johansson) convinces him that he can make exclusive dishes on the road in a coast-to-coast tour, and rebuild his torn reputation, and that’s exactly what happens, when it becomes a family affair.  Sofia Vergara, Robert Downey, Jr. and Russell Peters all play a part in what is a surprisingly nifty movie. Rated 14A.   

Lucky Them: 

This quirky film-festival-style movie has a capable cast and a good script, but it’s a little offbeat  which may be  disconcerting to some viewers in the early going trying to figure out where it’s all headed.  Toni Collette is a rock journalist working for a Rolling Stone-type publication who has fallen out of favour with the powers-that-be.  In a final plea for her job, she is assigned a  story to try to track down a once-hot-but-now-missing rock star.  Sounds like a good one …. Plus she used to be an item with the man of mystery.  Johnny Depp, Thomas Hayden Church, and Joanne Woodward (yes, Mrs. Paul Newman) also star.  Rated 14A.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001):  

A cartoon character on the U.S.’s Nickelodeon channel, this animated feature has a lot of firsts.  It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, it’s the first major animated film to use standard voice actors rather than major stars, and it’s the first animated film to be made with off-the-shelf software.  Jimmy an his pals come to the rescue when they learn that all the parents in the world have been abducted by aliens, and it falls to them to rescue all the moms and dads.  Sounds a little silly, but it’s actually great fun! Rated PG.

Stash House (2012): 

An action thriller starring Dolph Lungrin as one-half of a couple who move into a house that fits them perfectly … until they find the huge stash of heroin in the walls … and soon learn that the people who put it there want it back … with no witnesses.  Briana Evigan is the girlfriend who learns that there’s more than just drugs in the walls.  There’s something under the floorboards that is even more frightening, and that creates  the need to have her silenced forever.  Rated 18A.