A domestic drama from 1984, “Blame It on the Night” is a perfectly functional tearjerker that rarely satisfies. Perhaps more interested in selling soundtracks than emotions, the picture is a vague offering of thoughtful human interaction, though supported by satisfying performances and a snapshot of MTV-fueled rock stardom in the mid-1980s. A magical time when a 37-year-old man with a mild perm could make an arena of teenage girls swoon.

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For the first hour, the southern drama “Bloodworth” captures a perfectly compelling tone of discovery, approaching solemn incidents of domestic disturbance with a countrified stillness. Criminally, the final 30 minutes erase most positive feelings about the feature, with concentration lost to the demands of a complicated literary translation. It’s an interesting picture, teeming with inspired performances and intriguing developments, but it’s a viewing experience best left unfinished.

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The producers blew a major opportunity when they decided to turn “Immigration Tango” into a feature film. A concept more suited for a sitcom translation, the movie rushes through unrelenting mediocrity, hoping to captivate with its tepid comedy and chilly romance, making an inert farce without the benefit of a laugh track. It would’ve been right at home on network television.

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When Martin Scorsese’s filmography is explored, there are typically two efforts that define his oeuvre: 1976’s “Taxi Driver” and 1980’s “Raging Bull.” However, during this fertile creative period there was another picture, sandwiched in-between, a 1977 feature that effectively stalled and oddly reenergized Scorsese’s career. “New York, New York” isn’t a forgotten or lost picture, but one that’s rarely brought up when a discussion of the maestro is introduced. A shame, really. While it’s flawed and fattened, it’s one of Scorsese’s more appealing experiments, looking to resuscitate the traditional Hollywood musical within the raw mood of the 1970s, creating an unusually frosty, but pleasingly unpredictable candy-coated psychodrama.

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I’ll freely admit that I have a sensitivity to movies set in the Midwest, a place I called home for the majority of my life. To most Hollywood productions, the Midwest is an alien landscape for hopelessly naïve folk going about their naïve business while the coasts take care of the culture and style for America. That’s not the Midwest I know. I shouldn’t take “Cedar Rapids” seriously as an incisive take on “flyover” country ethics, but the least this tepid comedy could do is provide a vibrant sense of humor. Instead, it’s a riff-heavy, wildly formulaic modern comedy that uses stereotypes and improvisations in a gentle, but tedious manner to bring the laughs.

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Never one to leave a Hollywood trend alone, producer Roger Corman decided to assemble his own “Star Wars” space opera cash machine with “Battle Beyond the Stars,” a low-budget (of course) take on Lucasian matinee mayhem. The results are predictably formulaic, but never cynical, with Corman and his team of filmmakers creating a sincere, engaging sci-fi spectacle that makes a lovely ruckus, though it lacks a cracking pace that helped shape “Star Wars” into a legend.

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“Ceremony” is a film that thrives on chaos, refusing to establish characters or situations before it tosses the viewer into the thick of discomfort. The disorientation is irksome, but so is much of this exhausting picture, which seems to value secrecy as a way of initiating interest, yet doesn’t offer anything worth the time invested, issuing derivative characters and tuneless situations of longing coated with an ineffective layer of crooked whimsy that often acts like salt in the wound.

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There have been many deep-sea documentaries, but rarely is there one narrated by a turtle. “Ocean Wonderland” is a 2003 IMAX release that employs a whimsical storytelling method to pull viewers in tightly, observing a big blue community through the eyes of its most passive resident. Considering the agreeable but formulaic structure of the picture, any sort of unusual deviation from the norm is most welcome.

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I’m honestly baffled by “Beastly” and I’m not sure if it’s just my personal reaction to this brain-dead feature or if there’s something genuinely crooked about its assembly. I walked away from the film with a host of questions, as far away from the state of swoon the producers intended as possible. It’s a cold, often unbearably illogical film, but I almost need to recommend it just for the opportunity to read varied reactions from viewers. Surely, I’m not crazy, yet “Beastly” made me feel disconnected from reality, and not in an enchantingly escapist manner.

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