It’s been some time since Roman Polanski made something as cagey and good-naturedly twisted as “The Ghost Writer.” He’s been off vacationing inside of his youthful trauma during the last decade (“The Pianist,” “Oliver Twist”), which makes his new film a cunning achievement, steered by one of the filmdom’s sharpest minds. Verbose but lovingly toxic, “The Ghost Writer” nails a perfect pitch of paranoia with a distinctly retro flair, restoring some needed maturity to the bustling business of thriller cinema.

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Director Antoine Fuqua has built a career on mediocrity, hitting a few cinematic highlights (“Training Day”), but mostly sticking to the comfort of generic thrillers devoid of sensational feats of filmmaking. As imperfect as it is, “Brooklyn’s Finest” is perhaps the closest Fuqua will ever come to true greatness, revealing a deft command of nerve-racking criminal moods and multi-character tragedy, showing something approaching range while working out a screenplay soaked in oily despair. Missteps abound, but “Brooklyn’s Finest,” when firing on all brooding cityscape cylinders, is a convincing, commanding motion picture.

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“Possession” is the type of movie where miraculous events occur in the plot, but none of the characters bother to accurately reflect the wondrous gravity of the situation. It’s a stillborn chiller (a remake of the South Korean film “Addicted”) and an awfully silly picture, boasting screamingly inept performances and preoccupied direction that spends more time seeking out the perfect camera angle than tightening the story to appropriate nail-biting levels of suspense.

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“Ajami” is an Israeli picture that closely mirrors the work of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu during his emotionally turbulent years with “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel.” Observing the ominous nature of violence and its crushing aftermath, “Ajami” is a striking raw nerve of a feature film, holding to a steady path of dread, but keeping the story on its toes by jolting back and forth through locations and time. It builds patiently, but fascinatingly, providing a portrait of humanity struggling in one of the more volatile areas of the Middle East.

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Director Kevin Smith has set out to pay homage to the buddy cop action festivals of his formative years, and that’s precisely the film one receives with “Cop Out.” The picture is mindless escapism, spreading around as many laughs as it does bullet casings, harmlessly going about the business of slapstick and shoot-em-up. At its worse, it’s disjointed, crafted by a filmmaker with zero experience in the action genre. At its best, it’s a delightfully silly, carefree bit of profane nonsense, effectively scraping away the stale taste left behind by Smith’s lifeless 2008 feature, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”

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“The Crazies” is a sporadically splendid thriller saddled with seriously banal horror embellishment. It should come as little surprise to learn the film is a remake, extracted from the thin skin of George Romero’s 1973 chiller. The paranoia and general Vietnam-era dread has been chiseled off the material by director Breck Eisner, who shapes a more direct shot of scares, gussied up with overtly slick filmmaking that spends more time on technical challenges than it does lacing together a consistently nail-biting motion picture.

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Part of me wanted to appreciate “Toe to Toe” for the way it aches to portray teenage life as more than just sassmouth and cartoon cliques. The rest of me wanted to take can of gas and a book of matches to the negative, preventing the film from ever being exhibited again. A demented, amateurish after school special, “Toe to Toe” is only useful as a means to observe a first-rate actress in the making. The rest is pure rubbish, delivered with all the subtlety of an air horn.

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Coming off arguably their finest effort to date with the kung-fu/blaxploitation adventure “East Meets Watts,” Cinematic Titanic returns with a second helping of their burgeoning live act in “The Alien Factor.” Another lackadaisical statement of unfiltered goofballery from the 1970s, the newest target of riff rage proves to be a worthy contender to the franchise crown, with the gang shaping 80 minutes of uninterrupted hilarity, feeding off the frisky stage energy to give this sorry routine of rubber suits, cruddy acting, and endless strolls a needed kick in the behind.

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The last time David DeFalco stepped behind a camera, it was for the 2005 shocker, “Chaos.” A morally bankrupt, technically abysmal reworking of “Last House on the Left, “Chaos” strived to be the final word on screen inhumanity; instead, it was insufferable, highlighting DeFalco’s diseased world view and inability to coherently piece together a feature film. Dialing back the gruesomeness to fiddle around with the DTV action market, DeFalco returns with “Wrong Side of Town,” a burly, brainless exercise in tough guy cinema, with a slew of D-list celebrities and professional wrestling buddies to help fill out his limited vision for weightlifter heroism.

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It’s refreshing to see Robert De Niro shove aside his tough guy screen persona now and then, to remind viewers used to his antics that beyond his icy glare and powder keg temper lies a uniquely sensitive actor. “Everybody’s Fine” is a thorough tear-jerker, but the feature earns most of its sentiment, due in great part to De Niro and his gentle, worrywart lead performance. I’m not suggesting this is De Niro at his most invested and commanding, but his communication of concern adds a needed push of authenticity to a film forever on the precipice of pure schmaltz.

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“Shutter Island” is director Martin Scorsese’s ode to madness. Immaculately crafted and imposingly scored, the picture is a feast for the senses. However, that trademarked virtuoso touch doesn’t translate to the most riveting sit. For the first time in a long time, Scorsese seems to be overcompensating, firing on all cylinders to prevent the inherent stasis of the plot from settling in prematurely. While it’s destined to be pulled apart by film scholars for decades to come, “Shutter Island” remains an anomaly for the maestro, who feverishly works over the script with his typical widescreen gusto, only to end up with a flaccid central mystery barely worth the exertion.

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The painless comparison to make for the French release “A Prophet” is to position the picture in the shadow of “The Godfather.” In terms of epic crime film storytelling and patient character transformation, it’s a solid DNA match, yet “A Prophet” is a far more feral, scattered production, forgoing any sort of reassuring sweep to snap around like a cobra, striking randomly at anyone who steps near it. For better or worse, the picture pulses with menace, creating a striking portrait of the years spent deep inside a turbulent prison society.

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It’s fairly lofty screenwriting ambition to rework Dante’s “Inferno” into a modern comedy about insurance fraud investigation, and it’s a shame “Saint John of Las Vegas” just isn’t determined enough to sell the madness, spending a measly 75 minutes to work its way around primo psychological real estate. It’s a black comedy with a few exceptional scenes, but never gels together convincingly, making the artistic swing for the fences more of a quiet disappointment than a captivating leap of faith.

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Writer/director Adam Green is just asking for trouble with his ski lift disaster movie “Frozen.” It takes an extraordinary amount of patience to tolerate this picture, and an even greater suppression of basic survival logic to enjoy it. Hey, it’s just a movie, right? However, “Frozen” makes it a point to splash blatant illogic in the face of filmgoers, while filling out the rest of the picture with tepid grotesqueries to keep the movie shuffling along.

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