This Weekend: 21, Stop-Loss, Fatboy and Superhero Movie

21: Kevin Spacey produces and stars as an unscrupulous teacher at M.I.T. who gathers a group of his best students and gets them to figure out the statistical methodology to rig blackjack games, then takes them to Las Vegas to have them run the tables for big payoffs. Until the resulting personality changes in shy student Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) start causing serious conflicts. A slick caper film based on a true story - or, rather, “inspired by true events” - and unapologetically popcorn in its structure, nevertheless it’s not quite as clever as it hopes to be, but it’s still pretty entertaining, with cool performances from Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.

Stop-Loss: Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are soldiers finally finishing their tours in Iraq and coming home to their families only to learn that they won’t be allowed to, and they’ll be shipped right back into the thick of things. So they have to decide whether or not they’re going to stand for that crap.

Superhero Movie: It’s pretty much what you’d expect. Limp comedy, punchlines that will be old in a week, references to things on the internet masquerading as jokes, and since it’s from some of the people who made Airplane!, it makes you wonder if that still holds up. Thankfully, the consensus is that it does.

Run, Fatboy, Run: David Schwimmer directs Simon Pegg in this romantic comedy about a commitment-phobic man who tries to win his ex-fiancée Thandie Newton back from Hank Azaria by committing himself to finishing a marathon, despite being horribly out of shape.