Trying to keep up with yesterday's news:

Once upon the early ‘70s, Italian director Dario Argento excelled at fashioning elegant, sinister, psychologically unsettling horror mysteries (“giallo” films, as they were often called), but a steady decline into sadism drove him underground and out of critical esteem. Three decades later, he’s still up to his old tricks, only now the violence has escalated to new extremes while his filmmaking has atrophied, perhaps even taken a few steps backward. Mother of Tears (the ostensible final entry in a series of three, following Suspiria and Inferno) feels obsessively depraved, even for an Argento film, with plenty of eviscerations and exposed brains to offend the eye. It’s unquestionably degrading (for audience and filmmaker alike), but also unexpectedly hokey—a coven of punk rock witches inspires more sniggers than shivers, and Mater Lachrymarum herself is nothing more than a lascivious model in a skanky tee shirt. It seems very unlikely that the trilogy will become a tetralogy.

Kung Fu Panda is a lively, likable Dreamworks animation that satisfies itself with the tired theme of following your dreams and fulfilling your destiny. A perfectly suitable message for kids, but can’t we be a little more creative? The scenes of stealth and attack, aided by the kind of slow motion that only computers can accommodate, are playfully amusing, as are some of the facial expressions (including that of a dentureless old turtle), but Panda’s sudden prowess in the martial arts field is cheaply earned. Dustin Hoffman’s subdued voice performance as a masterly raccoon remains the best reason to see it.

Despite a breathtakingly stupid scenario (plants release deadly toxins causing humans to self-destruct), The Happening is a mildly creepy botanical horror film that takes an apocalyptic scenario and shrinks the scale down to a small group of bewildered characters. The lack of any visible menace allows for some unusual suspense scenes, and although the domestic subplot is insufficiently fleshed out, the basic humanizing message is lumberingly, insistently pedaled. M. Night Shyamalan is a director in search of a screenplay; his words may fail him, but his visual sense never errs.

The Incredible Hulk is more of a do-over than a sequel, effectively sweeping Ang Lee’s bizarre 2003 attempt at comic book mythmaking under the rug. Graciously dispensing with gratuitous exposition, the film still skimps on characterization, possibly the result of a compromised screenplay co-authored by star Edward Norton. The chase-fight-flee, chase-fight-flee redundancies of the narrative grow tedious quickly, although an early steeplechase through a crowded Brazilian shantytown succeeds in quickening the pulse. Though played by a sympathetic Norton, Bruce Banner seems like one of the more problematic of recent superheroes—the filmmakers are unable to make his virtuous self-control interesting.

Encounters at the End of the World is a Werner Herzog documentary shot in Antarctica, and the German director continues to amaze with his ability to find eccentric characters wherever he goes. (Or do they find him?) Among the many arresting sights are a live volcano, a multitude of octopi living under the ice, and a lone penguin inexplicably hurtling toward the horizon (and certain death). As much as there is to occupy the eye, Herzog revisits old thesis statements about the futility of existence a little too frequently, though as is often the case with the director, his camera makes the most eloquent argument.

Driven by a voluptuously probing camera and an insistent, strings-based Ennio Morricone score, The Unkown Woman dives into its complex narrative headlong, barely pausing to catch its breath. The story is an unusually seedy thriller involving a prostitution ring presided over by a bald tyrant (a terrifying Michele Placido), but director Giuseppe Tornatore (the sentimental Italian who brought us Cinema Paradiso) provides just enough human interest to engage the heart. His secret weapon is Kseniya Rappoport, who plays the shady nanny whose designs on an affluent middle class family aren’t clear until the very end. Displaying both quivering vulnerability and steely determination, hers is the kind of performance that critics like to call “fearless,” and one of the few that actually earns that distinction.