PREVIEWS

LITTLE ROCK — New this week Argo 89 R Based on supposedly recently declassified documents. Ben Affleck directs and plays a CIA rescue specialist who concocts a cockeyed plot to create a fake movie as a way of rescuing six Americans who escaped the 1979 Iranian takeover of the American embassy and subsequent 444-day hostage crisis. With Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler, Clea DuVall, Victor Garber. (120 minutes)

Atlas Shrugged Part II PG-13 With the global economy on the brink of collapse and brilliantly creative folks continuing to mysteriously disappear, a tycoon discovers in an abandoned factory a revolutionary motor that could seemingly power the world. See review at blooddirtandangels.com. With Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe; directed by John Putch. See review at blooddirtangels.com. (112 minutes)

Butter 78 R Jennifer Garner plays the wife of the longtime winner of a local butter-carving contest who, when he decides to bow out of this year’s competition, enters it herself and gets into a heated, no-holds-barred battle with a young woman (Yara Shahidi) with a natural gift for sculpture. See review at blooddirtandangels.com. With Olivia Wilde, Ashley Greene, Hugh Jackman; directed by Jim Field Smith. (92 minutes)

Here Comes the Boom 85 PG A former collegiate wrestler (Kevin James) is now a 40-something, apathetic biology teacher in a failing high school who begins, as cutbacks threaten to cancel the music program and lay off its teacher (Henry Winkler), to raise money by moonlighting as a mixed-martial arts fighter. With Salma Hayek; directed by Frank Coraci. (105 minutes)

Perks of Being a Wallflower 89 PG-13 Logan Lerman plays a high-school freshman whose social prospects are limited by the recent death of a friend and an even more recent breakdown of sorts, until he befriends a charismatic, openly gay senior (Ezra Miller) and his stepsister (Emma Watson). See review at blooddirtandangels.com. With Dylan McDermott; directed by Stephen Chbosky. (103 minutes)

Searching for Sugar Man 87 PG-13 Director Malik Bendjelloul takes a documentary look at rocker Rodriguez, discovered in a Detroit bar in the late ’60s by two record producers struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics who were sure their album would propel him to stardom. Instead, it bombed and the singer disappeared into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome onstage suicide; unbeknownst to him, a bootleg made him a big star in South Africa. (86 minutes)

Seven Psychopaths 89 R A comedy, believe it or not, in which a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster’s (Woody Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu. With Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko; directed by Martin McDonagh. (109 minutes)

Sinister 82 R Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime novelist whose discovery of a box of mysterious, disturbing home movies plunges his family into a nightmarish experience of supernatural horror. With Vincent D’Onofrio, James Ransone, Fred Dalton Thompson, Nicholas King, Clare Foley; directed by Scott Derrickson. (110 minutes)