Death Sentence is a brutal crime drama starring Kevin Bacon and Kelly Preston as the parents of two teenage sons. One night after playing in an amateur hockey game, and with a college hockey scholarship all but assured, the older son and his father stop off for gas in a seedy part of town. But the son is suddenly killed in a robbery inside the gas station. Kevin Bacon portrays heroes and villains with equal ability, and this role demands qualities of both. He delivers, but the movie is hurt by its last 20 minutes, when his character suddenly becomes a Charles Bronson-like avenging machine; considering this is an insurance company executive with no apparent expertise with weapons, and no predilection for killing, that’s a huge stretch. Aisha Tyler plays a detective in a throwaway role; she is riveting in her brief moments on screen. The drama is highlighted by a superbly shot chase scene through the city’s back alleys and on a rooftop garage, and an eerie supporting cameo by John Goodman as a sinister gun dealer. A chilling home invasion evokes tragic recent events in Connecticut. Death Sentence has excellent performances, but its last act is preposterous.

Not to be confused with its namesake 1954 movie, Them is a psychological horror thriller set in a nearly deserted home in the middle of a wooded area near Bucharest, Romania. Parisian-born Olivia Bonamy portrays a French teacher at a nearby school. One night she and her live-in lover, a writer played by Michael Cohen, are awakened by strange noises, with their dog barking and the TV turned on. A prolonged catand mouse chase ensues as they flee mostly unseen pursuers; thus the title seems appropriate. The chase is endless, and if you already sat through The Blair Witch Project, you may want to pass up on this one. The film is repetitive and never as terrifying as it thinks it is.

Jeff Garlin, the Chicago-born comic actor, is best known as Larry David’s best friend and agent on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now he’s written, directed, and stars in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, a poignant, funny story about fighting loneliness. He portrays a struggling actor at Second City, the famous improve theater. But his agent drops him, he still lives with his mother, he can’t find a woman, and he refuses to give California a try to boost his career. To make matters worse, he can’t get an audition for a local production of Marty for which he’s a natural. Sarah Silverman, Gina Gershon, and Bonnie Hunt round out the cast. Grab a dairy product and a buddy, and go see I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.

Right at Your Door is a horrifying thriller set in Los Angeles starring Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack. He’s an unemployed musician whose wife leaves for work one morning just before a series of dirty bombs explode across the city. A thick cloud of toxic dust has engulphed L.A., and survivors are ordered to barricade windows and to refuse sanctuary to anyone. What follows is a protracted series of encounters between the husband and his wife, whom he refuses to admit back into their home. But no husband would adhere to such an order, even if it meant certain death. The pacing bogs down, and as the crisis intensifies, there isn’t much for the story to do but have the actors get more hysterical.

And speaking of hysterical, Death at a Funeral is finally in theaters after several months on the shelf. A family has gathered in a plush home in the English countryside for the funeral of the patriarch. But his two sons are feuding, and another family member has accidentally taken some hallucinatory drugs and is prancing naked on a rooftop, to the horror of his wife. Director Frank Oz has much more up his sleeve. Peter Dinklage, the vertically challenged actor, turns up and reveals that the deceased led a double life and was secretly gay. This is a fast-paced, door-slamming comedy of manners that will have you in stitches.

Finally, there’s 3:10 to Yuma, the remake of the 1957 movie that starred Glenn Ford as an outlaw and Van Heflin as a farmer-turned-bounty hunter determined to bring the killer to the train that will take him to the Yuma, Arizona prison to hang. Russell Crowe has the former role and Christian Bale the latter, and both actors— New Zealander Crowe and Welshman Bale—are adept at shedding their accents and immersing themselves in one of the best remakes ever attempted. Every one of the characters has the unwashed look of the Old West and the shady characters who gave it the enduring allure and mystique it still enjoys. Peter Fonda, at first almost unrecognizable, has a memorable supporting role as a bounty hunter. Gretchen Mol, so good in the title role in The Notorious Bettie Page, and convincing in The Ten and Puccini for Beginners, has only one important scene here, as Bale’s wife, who is nearly seduced by Crowe’s manipulative bandit. The action is thrilling and shocking, the sense of instant death pervasive, and the performances riveting. Look for Luke Wilson in a cameo in this movie set during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. This is an homage to half a dozen Westerns, and is good enough to revive the genre.