Howard Marks lived a life that seems to combine “Catch Me If You Can” with the drug elements of “Goodfellas.” To tell his story would require a very deft screenwriter and director indeed. It would be a mistake to start at, say, his early school days, dwell a bit long on actually getting to Oxford, spend way too much time in Ireland and on the general joys of smoking joint upon joint and repeated copulations with his longtime girlfriend/eventual wife (Chloë Sevigny, with a wavering English accent) — and fail to further explore the logistics behind his 43 aliases, 89 phone lines and 25 companies. It would also be a mistake to barely touch on just how it required a worldwide task force effort to finally catch him and bring him to justice. One would want someone with the Coen brothers’ facility with dark humor and madcap, surreal antics. Alas, Bernard Rose is no Coen brother.

And it’s a good thing Levon Helm ain’t in it for his health, because the health of one Levon Helm ain’t all that great these days. But that doesn’t keep this drummer — one of just a few surviving members of The Band — from living, performing and even writing more music and lyrics; by these actions, you will know there is a true artist in the room.

Helm is 70 and, while weathered and raspy (he’s a throat cancer survivor and has continuing vocal issues), remains a charismatic presence in any room — which is catnip for a documentary filmmaker like Jacob Hatley. All eyes gravitate to Helm, who happily goes on about scenes in movies or fields fan questions from visiting performers like actor Billy Bob Thornton, who asks what happened to The Band after that second, brilliant album. Helm more or less shrugs and just says they were pretty much done by then.

The comedy is about a man slouching through life until he learns he’s about to become a father. Deep down inside the movie, there is a kind and heartfelt story of redemption and growing up. But it comes couched in easy, cliché humor, too many tit-and-balls jokes and a kind of deus ex machina (or perhaps deus ex instrument) that propels the story into motion but has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the film.

Barry, our titular hero, is kind of a skeevy loser. He’s a slacker at his job, an ogler at all times, and spends his evenings enjoying nacho night at the local TGIF with his air-guitar-playing buddy and sleeping with whoever’s left at last call. He might have good intentions or basically be a decent guy, but it’s hard to tell — until the accident, after which Barry wakes up in a hospital sans testicles.

As director Elijah Drenner points out, exploitation on film is nearly as old as the medium itself. As far back as 100 years ago, women were disrobing for the camera and men were turning one another into bloody pulps. Featuring talking heads who include Joe Dante and John Landis, Drenner’s history lesson moves rapidly, paralleling the story of the 20th century with the rise of this alternate form of moviemaking. As one filmmaker notes, making grindhouse was a precursor to the punk movement — art made cheap, quick and often very ugly. Anyone could do it, and there was no shortage of hacks willing to.

But it’s not just about talking heads. Drenner has a storehouse of behind-the-scenes clips and old archival photos and footage that proves this was no passing fad, and his thesis — that as long as it made money, someone would be willing to make it — is proved.

Never get a geek angry. Seriously. You may not suffer physical injury, but by the time he’s done with you, you’d prefer if you had just shed blood and gotten it over with.

George Lucas – the brain behind the “Star Wars” franchise, among very few other films, has in fact angered many, many, many geeks. The reason he still has his sanity, however, is that he also managed to make them love him first. And in “The People vs. George Lucas,” the geeks at last get a platform to air both their major grievances and their major affection – sometimes in the same breath.

“Star Wars” is the focus here, along with Lucas; it’s a film whose first viewing fans in the film liken to being born. The first half of the movie tags along with “nerdlebrities,” straight-up fans, members of the media and even real-life famous folk like Neil Gaiman.

If there is a theme to “Kick-Ass,” Matthew Vaughn’s latest comedy-action hybrid, it could be this: Know thyself. Such a lofty concept applies to Dave, a hapless teen who notes, “Like most other kids my age, I just existed” and 11-year-old home-schooled Mindy, who has learned deadly arts at the knee of her vengeful papa. It also goes for audiences, who might initially seek out “Kick-Ass” as a spoof of comic-book heroes – forgetting that Vaughn was a producer on the brutal, if funny, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and directed the black-hole-dark “Layer Cake.” Neither was prone to subtle displays of violence.

Neither is it the case here. But with such caveats, “Kick-Ass” has true moments of hilarity, entertainment and sometimes sickening daring. Aaron Johnson’s David is mop-headed and dopey, but he learns how to be his real self by donning a scuba suit and going out in the world as a crime fighter.

To comics, Bill Hicks was known as "the comedian's comedian." A tireless stand-up who got his start as a teenager, sneaking out of his parents' home to sneak into Houston open-mic nights, Hicks virtually burst out of the gate as a professional, with a fully formed sense of how to make people laugh.

Yet outside the insular world of comedians, Hicks is largely known to audiences in the form of grainy Nth-generation copies of his stand-up; seen piecemeal like this it's hard to appreciate his particular brand of genius. And today Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994, isn't around to prove why he's worth remembering.

"American: The Bill Hicks Story" is an inventively crafted, if occasionally myopic, look at the comic, making extensive use of those Nth-generation stand-up copies, personal photos (arranged in a clever collage style, a la "The Kid Stays in the Picture"). The film is told entirely through interviews with Hicks' friends, family and fellow Houston comedians.

We all have one: a mother. If we’re lucky, she’s a woman who cares about us above all else. Sometimes the intensity of her affection can be smothering, but if you ever get in a jam, it’s her love that you want driving your defense.

Such is the case with Mother (Kim Hye-ja, star of Korea’s beloved, long-running TV series “The Rustic Diary”), a character who isn’t even given a name. A single parent to Do-joon (Won Bin), a handsome 27-year-old with the mind of a child, Mother defends him fiercely against harm both real and imaginary. And with help from his best friend Jin-tae (Jin Goo), Do-joon does get into all sorts of trouble, most of it innocent, until one night on the way home from the bar, he encounters a teenage girl. The next morning, she’s found dead, and Do-joon is swiftly arrested and convicted of the crime.

“Remember” reminds us what’s important in life, and what doesn’t work in films. It proves that a film may be entertaining even when falls short of its own goals. Though the story keeps the audience’s attention and contains a few comedic and emotional moments that are rewarding, the movie falls flat in many of the key dramatic moments and, ultimately, feels disjointed.

The story revolves around Tyler (Robert Pattinson), a Holden Caulfield-esque character who is struggling through life, who gets into a bar fight and is arrested with his loveable loser friend and roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington). In what starts out as part of a crass bet, Tyler becomes involved with Ally (Emilie de Ravin), the daughter of the cop (Chris Cooper) who arrested and then roughed up Tyler. The two have each experienced personal tragedies that have left them emotionally scarred, but they embark on a relationship that helps them deal with their own feelings of loss. Pierce Brosnan also stars as Tyler’s emotionally closed off, high-powered attorney father.

Separated by half a century, Detective Tom Adkins (Jon Hamm) and Matthew Wakefield (Josh Lucas) share the experience of losing a 10-year-old son. In 2008, eight years after his boy Tommy (Ty Panitz) disappeared during a Fourth of July celebration, Tom and his wife Barbara (Rhona Mitra) do little more than share a house, one room of which is an untouched shrine in the hope that its occupant will return home someday.

When Tom is called to a construction site where the workers have uncovered a box with the skeleton of a boy inside, the couple hopes, finally, for closure. But the body is 50 years old. He is someone else’s son, and Tom is determined to figure out whose.

Hamm’s and Lucas’ performances are fine, but first-time director Anders Anderson is heavy-handed and overwrought, portraying emotional turmoil with clichés like dropped mixing bowls and too often returning Tom to the scene of his son’s disappearance.