Projects that ruin Rihanna

It wasn't enough that actor turned director Peter Berg embarrassed himself by making Battleship, a badly judged action vehicle for Rihanna.

Now Berg has announced he will direct a theatrical documentary about the pop star's life.

• Twenty-one years after his suicide, grunge icon Kurt Cobain is the subject of a documentary that hits HBO in May. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck combines never-before-heard music, home movies, animation and Cobain's own art to trace the musician's short but influential and often tragic life story.
• Ron Howard will unfortunately not be sparing audiences a further instalment of his Dan Brown adaptation series. He's getting ready to make a film of Brown's Inferno, starring Tom Hanks, who revives his role as Robert Langdon, the symbologist hero of the books, and Ben Foster as the villain of the piece.

Also Opening

Strange Magic

It's not every movie about which one can say "the best thing in it was the albino rat".

Glenn Kenny, rogerebert.com

The disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

An expansive, roaming, sometimes unwieldy excursion across a landscape mined with sorrow, secrets and unresolved questions of identity. It is a study of friendship and inter-generational miscommunication as well as romantic failure.

AO Scott, nytimes.com

The Gambler

Place your bets, ladies and gents: Will this update of 1974's The Gambler, in which James Caan played a college prof addicted to the turn of the card and the role of the dice, equal or surpass the original? Don't get your hopes up.

Peter Travers, rollingstone.com

Focus

A romantic caper stocked with con artists and good looks but little sizzle.

Todd McCarthy, hollywood-reporter.com