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Draft Day, directed by Ivan Reitman (PG-13, 110 minutes)

Draft Day is not about playing football. It's about who plays football. And where.

Muscular gridiron battles won't be found here. Instead, there's high-stakes chess playing involving strategy, second-guessing, costly blunders, and some surprising last-minute moves, enacted with college football players as pawns. The result is a smartly conceived film capable of engaging viewers who don't know one end zone from the other. And the decently written screenplay more than compensates for the lack of brute on-field physicality.

Kevin Costner leads the charge as Sonny Weaver Jr., general manager of the Cleveland Browns (the new team that's still taking shape after the old team got shipped off to Baltimore). Two years into the job, he's trying to build a winning lineup with the help of the all-important college draft.

This year's draft hottie is Bo Callahan (Josh Pence), a quarterback from the University of Wisconsin. Everybody wants Bo, including Weaver, who's desperate enough to make a painful deal to get the No. 1 draft choice from the Seattle Seahawks' wily GM Tom Michaels (Patrick St. Esprit).

The film takes place over the course of said draft day, with a countdown clock often clicking on screen. Most of the action happens on telephones, and nobody seems to remember that it's polite to say "goodbye" when a conversation concludes -- they just hang up and exhibit appropriate expressions of disgust, triumph, frustration or anticipation. Effective use of split screens and wipes keeps each of the communicators onscreen.

Denis Leary plays, as usual, a snarky, mouthy and defiant character in Coach Penn, who comes to the Browns after a Super Bowl win and immediately butts heads with the suitably gruff GM who, unlike many of Costner's film characters, isn't all that charming. It doesn't help that Weaver's dad, beloved longtime Browns coach Sonny Senior, died the week before the draft.

Costner has never been much of a romantic lead, and again botches that job here with zero chemistry between him and Jennifer Garner as Ali, the team's sexy, smart salary caps manager. The two, who are carrying on what they think is a secret romance, spend much of draft day scurrying into storerooms to furtively argue about a game-changing predicament in their relationship. Despite looking gorgeous, Ali isn't making progress in her discussions with Weaver. So whenever those scenes go nowhere, the story veers in another direction, such as Weaver's contentious relationship with his mother Barb (Ellen Burstyn), then returns to the drama of the draft, which is much more interesting.

The payoff comes when the clock runs out and the action moves to the actual draft at New York's Radio City Music Hall. That's where viewers are rewarded with an exciting sequence helped out with cameos by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and players including James Brewer, Stephen Hill, Demario Davis, Ramses Barden and Zoltan Mesko. Appearing as themselves are ESPN's Chris Berman, Jon Gruden and Mel Kiper and NFL Network's Deion Sanders, Mike Mayock and Rich Eisen.

Moms' Night Out, (PG, 98 minutes) An awkward effort to combine screwball comedy with an earnest Christian message is the downfall of Moms' Night Out. It's not raunchy enough to attract the Bridesmaids crowd, and the spiritual aspect comes and goes so sporadically that it interrupts the narrative (such as it is) instead of adding a dimension of depth.

Directed by Andrew Erwin and Jon Erwin, Moms' Night Out explores the plight of Allyson (Sarah Drew), a stay-at-home mother of three whose husband, Sean (Sean Astin), has some sort of builder's job that requires him to travel much of the time. Allyson is so overwhelmed by motherhood that even her half-hearted efforts to become a mommy blogger are unsuccessful. Being a wife and mother "was my dream; I am literally living it, and I'm not happy," she says. Wah!

She needs a break, so Allyson orders up a Groupon (remember those?) for a ritzy restaurant and recruits a couple of gal pals to enjoy an alcohol-free dinner outing.

Things start to go wrong immediately, starting with a run-in with the restaurant's hostess (Anjelah Johnson, providing one of the film's more successful moments) and becoming more complicated and ludicrous every minute. Unfortunately, the situations seldom succeed in being funny. It doesn't help that there is no true conflict, only misunderstandings.

For No Good Reason (R, 99 minutes) This well-regarded documentary covers 15 years in the life of British illustrator Ralph Steadman, whose agitated, splattered pen-and-ink work illuminated many of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's magazine stories and books.

Steadman's relationship with Thompson is a principal focus here, maybe more than it needs to be. But enough about Thompson; he committed suicide in 2005, and Steadman is still around.

Filmed mostly at Steadman's rural English estate and often observing him at work, the film is fleshed out with comments by the likes of Johnny Depp, Terry Gilliam, Richard E. Grant and Tim Robbins. Directed by Charlie Paul.

Night Moves (R, 112 minutes) This tense, character-driven drama focuses on the process followed by three passionate, radical environmentalists (Jesse Eisenberg as Josh, Dakota Fanning as Dena, who both work at agricultural collectives, and Peter Sarsgaard as ex-Marine Harmon) as they recklessly, painstakingly plot to blow up a hydroelectric dam in Oregon that they perceive as being the symbol of industrial eco-domination and destruction that they vehemently oppose. Directed by Kelly Reichardt.

MovieStyle on 09/05/2014

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