The idea of a motion picture built around the rehabilitation efforts of a chirpy teen, with pronounced Christian messages to boot, doesn’t exactly promise a searing portrait of determination at the edge of catastrophe. Thankfully, “Soul Surfer” has an astonishing event to work with, dramatizing the incredible true story of Bethany Hamilton, a 13-year-old girl who faced an unimaginable test of survival, surrounded by her loving family, her faith, and tasty waves beckoning the surfer girl back to the spot of her greatest misfortune.

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“Take Me Home Tonight” has endured a bumpy ride on its way to theatrical distribution. Shot nearly four years ago, this comedy has been shoved around the release schedule, handled gingerly by studios that didn’t exactly know what to do with a comedy aimed at twentysomethings about the 1980s. Their hesitance is understandable, with the feature trapped between traditional coming-of-age sympathy and brazen nostalgia, presumably aimed at a generation that’s stopped going to the movies.

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A political thriller mixing an unsettling cocktail of emotional speeds, 1988’s “To Kill a Priest” successfully translates broad political situations and tight psychological spaces. Although it dissolves in the end, the tragic story of Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko makes for a surprisingly gripping statement on influence and resolve, brought vividly to life by two commanding and fairly odd performances from Ed Harris and Christopher Lambert.

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A more accurate title for “Peep World” would be “Famous People Flailing.” Here’s a wholly unpleasant dramedy, generally uneven and reckless, from director Barry Blaustein, who was last seen helming 2005’s “The Ringer.” You remember, the Johnny Knoxville comedy about the Special Olympics? Well, the filmmaker’s sense of humor hasn’t improved much in the intervening years, with his latest effort an unfinished, unlikable take on familial depression and friction.

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“Waking Madison” appears as though it emerges from a heartfelt place of concern, yet the execution of this psychological drama is thoroughly unremarkable, consumed with ambiguity and obvious mood while its critical sense of humanity is pushed aside for low-budget dreamscape showboating. Writer/director Katherine Brooks has passion, but her feel for storytelling is seriously tangled.

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For “House of the Rising Sun” to work as a thriller, it needed a new cast, a fresh script, and a director with a little more interest in properly establishing characters. Muddled and frequently comatose, the picture yearns to be a turbulent ride of crooks and cops, yet it never rises to the occasion, generating a feeble mystery sold by a cast of brutes trying to pass themselves off as actors.

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Movies based on video games always face an impossible challenge of adaptation, especially anything pulled from the 1990s, when gaming was just starting to showing interest in expansive narratives and complex characterizations. “Tekken” is a failure on many levels, but it does make a plucky attempt to replicate the flippy-floppy nature of the fighting elements, creating a limb-snapping effort of escapism surrounded by bland writing and sleepy performances.

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Personally, I harbor no romantic feelings for the 1981 Dudley Moore sleeper smash, “Arthur.” Distractingly clunky, the feature is best appreciated as a film of its time, when a mainstream comedy could be built around the antics of monstrous alcoholic and still be regarded as adorable. It’s strange to be confronted with a remake of such beloved material, which still holds to a clownish boozehound mentality to acquire laughs, though much of the overt foam has been shaved away out of respect for the disease. Then again, Moore made “Arthur 2: On the Rocks,” so perhaps the character isn’t as precious as I recall. Remake away, boys.

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“Dawning” is an exhaustively disappointing film. Co-writer/director Gregg Holtgrew appears to have his heart in the right place, staging a psychological thriller in the middle of Northern Minnesota woods, where isolation provides a sinister backdrop to vague evildoing. Unfortunately, there’s little terror within the picture, which spends too much time exploring clichéd characters, skipping fingernail-chewing suspense to cover tedious, repetitive domestic matters.

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