Film Clips: This weekend’s movie openings January 28 2011

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• CAN THE MECHANIC CHANGE YOUR OIL IN 10 MINUTES? Jason Statham and Ben Foster

OPENING FRIDAY

ANOTHER YEAR 4 stars (PG-13) In Mike Leigh’s latest postcard from bittersweet Britain, Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen play Tom and Gerri (really), a happily married couple who try to pluck up the spirits of their depressed, friends. Leslie Manville has been justifiably acclaimed for her sympathetic, cringe-inducing portrayal of Mary, a hard-drinking, desperately lonely unmarried woman who comes across as a bottomless pit of need. Leigh allows Another Year’s plot to meander more leisurely than his tighter stories like Vera Drake, but in the last act a funeral’s repercussions built to modest but affecting epiphanies. — Curt Holman

BIUTIFUL 3 stars (R ) Newly-minted Best Actor Oscar nominee Javier Bardem commands this gritty, downbeat drama as Uxbal, a single dad and all-around hustler in the mean streets of Barcelona. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu narrows his focus from the globetrotting plotlines of Babel to a few days in Uxbal’s insanely complicated life as he switches between his black market work with illegal immigrants, his bipolar ex-wife (Maricel Álvarez) and a health crisis that forces him to question his children’s future. Even at nearly two and a half hours, Biutiful attempts to follow too many plot-threads, but Bardem gives an astonishingly rich and complex performance as a flawed man trying to transcend his surroundings. — Holman

FROM PRADA TO NADA (PG-13) Angel Gracia directs Camille Belle and Alexa Vega in a contemporary, Latina spin on Sense and Sensibility as two spoiled sisters move in with an aunt in East L.A.

THE MECHANIC (R) Having driven fast cars in The Transporter movies, it makes sense that action icon Jason Statham would become a mechanic eventually. He plays an elite assassin who seeks revenge after the murder of his mentor (Donald Sutherland), and takes on a young apprentice (Ben Foster).

THE RITE (PG-13) A seminary student (Colin O’Donoghue) teams up with a Welsh veteran exorcist (Anthony Hopkins) to combat demonic goings-on. Warm up your Linda Blair references now.

SUMMER WARS (2009) In this Japanese anime, a teenage math genius fights to prevent a collision between real life and a virtual world of computer simulations.

DULY NOTED
FRANKENSTEIN (1931) 4 stars (NR) The Plaza reportedly presents a gorgeous print of this classic Universal Pictures horror show, which made an icon of Boris Karloff as the lumpering, flat-headed monster. (The sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, is even better.) Silver Scream Spook Show. Sat., Jan. 29, 1 and 10 p.m. Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave., $8-$12. 404-873-1939. www.plazaatlanta.com