Oliver Stone’s unusual and inescapably interesting “W.” feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years. The director’s third feature to hinge on a modern-era presidency, after “JFK” and “Nixon,” offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive’s psychological makeup and, considering Stone’s reputation and Bush’s vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics. For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, “W.” is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically. The picture possesses dramatic and entertainment value, but beyond serious filmgoers curious about how Stone deals with all this president’s men and women, it’s questionable how wide a public will pony up to immerse itself in a story that still lacks an ending.

A fabulously designed underground metropolis proves more involving than the teenagers running through its streets in "City of Ember," a good-looking but no more than serviceable adaptation of Jeanne Duprau's 2003 novel. Director Gil Kenan's disappointing live-action follow-up to his enjoyable toon debut, "Monster House," shows promising flickers of visual invention throughout, but the dramatic sparks fail to ignite in this simple-minded exercise in juvenile dystopia. Families may show interest initially, but long-term B.O. prospects look so-so.

Conservatives score a few political points but aren’t very funny in “An American Carol,” a cheesy spitball directed at the very large target of a Michael Moore-like filmmaker. Poorly made indie production has a script that feels like a list of ripostes collected over the last several years to liberal criticisms of the U.S.: The whole enterprise feels far more agenda- than entertainment-driven. Talkradio and grassroots marketing have been trying to rally the B.O. troops, but the pic’s opening-weekend take of $3.8 million shows that the target audience is more likely to check this out when it takes over Wal-Mart shelves. Those with a real craving for hilariously potent anti-left propaganda will have to go back for another toke of “Team America: World Police.”

What do you call a documentary composed of elements of somebody else's personal diary film? Homage? Portrait? Assemblage? Case study? After documentary filmmaker Richard P. Rogers struggled vainly for decades to wrap a self-reflexive film about his own dissatisfied upper-class existence, his pic was posthumously completed by friendly elf/ex-student Alexander Olch. Olch utilizes read-aloud entries from reimagined personal journals as structural stepping stones in "The Windmill Movie." Perhaps better entitled "What Price Closure?," pic recounts in excruciating detail its own conception, status and conclusion. Appealing to the cinematic intelligentsia and the self-deprecatingly elitist "Sideways" crowd, narcissistic docu could spark lively discussion.

The specter of death becomes more than a young cinematographer can handle in Sebastian Silva's distinctive if self-consciously quirky black comedy, "Life Kills Me." Imbued with the mordant mood and tone associated with East Euro film comedy, Silva's debut has had near-zero exposure outside of Chile, where it premed at last year's Valdivia Fest and then played a late-year local commercial run. Despite problems and tics, this is a fine Chilean export deserving of (at least) wider fest play, but its age may limit it.