This week’s movie releases

In The Rum Diary Johnny Depp plays a decade-younger version of Hunter S. Thompson, more than 10 years after he played the gonzo journalist’s alter ego in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He does so with the help of Withnail and I writer-director Bruce Robinson, who is back behind the camera after 19 years, and his manically mannered dialogue rather fits the spirit of Hunter S.’s early-1960s roman à clef.

Depp is Paul Kemp, a New York writer who has come to Puerto Rico to work on a struggling local paper. Stimulant-fueled hijinks with new photographer pal Michael Rispoli ensue, but he also gets mixed up with a sleazy businessman (Aaron Eckhart) with a crooked plan for a hotel development on some virgin real estate and a very hot femme fatale of a girlfriend (Amber Heard)... Depp wisely reins in his addled rodent act from Fear and Loathing..., offering just enough to intimate the man to come, and, like a good rum, it all slips down nicely. But a little more passion, a little more outrageousness or a few more laughs might have helped add a bit more zing to the straight-up setup.

Another slice

With all the sequels and prequels and reboots, you need to take a small course to understand some film series these days. American Reunion is, apparently, the eighth film in the franchise spawned by 1999 teen comedy American Pie, though only the fourth featuring members of the original cast (four straight-to-DVD efforts followed the first three movies). Anyway, nine years on from their last big get-together in American Wedding, Jason Bigg, Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott, Chris Klein and Tara Reid reunite for another slice of raunchy humor.

In Safe, British action man Jason Statham plays a former cop and cage-fighter pummeling Chinese and Russian gangsters and corrupt NYPD police as he protects a 12-year-old math whiz with a valuable code inside her head.

French historical drama Farewell, My Queen stars Diane Kruger (Inglorious Basterds) as Marie Antoinette and Léa Seydoux as her loyal personal reader, who stays by her side when the rest of her servants flee in the early days of the Revolution.

After the recent La montaña rusa comes another Spanish love-triangle drama, El sexo de los ángeles, which features Astrid Bergès-Frisbey and Llorenç González as a young couple whose relationship is shaken up by the arrival of the provocative and mysterious Álvaro Cervantes, who was named Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Málaga Film Festival for his role.