The latest entry into the Steven-Seagal-with-rap-costar mini-genre -- including Exit Wounds, with DMX, and the straight-to-video Ticker, with Nas -- pairs the born-again Buddha with two: Ja Rule (as a version of his hip-hop persona -- adorable, bighearted thug) and Kurupt (as skinny-funny third-guy). Set in a sort-of future, the film places Ja and Seagal as prisoners in the newly reopened, Oz-ified Alcatraz (Seagal is not really an inmate, but an undercover fed). Morris Chestnut breaks in to the prison with a super-SWAT-type team, planning to force “dead man walking” Bruce Weitz to confess the location of $200 million in gold. But Don Michael Paul’s debut feature is unoriginal in ways extending far beyond mere plot points. It piles on much rain and lightning, Matrix-y costumes (aside from Chestnut’s own swirling black topcoat, his comrade Nia Peeples wears black spandex and so much eye makeup that one of the inmates calls her out: “Hey mama, got that blue stuff working, huh?”), time-lapsing zap-pans and all varieties of shooting: two-fisted, from mid-air, faux-video-gaming. My favorite fight pits Seagal against Chestnut on giant chains, kicking and swinging at each other like they’re in some heavy-metal version of Crouching Tiger’s bamboo trees scene. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham)

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

The first Harry Potter was perhaps the only literary adaptation in memory to be better loved by those who had read the books than those who hadn’t -- Chris Columbus’ literal-minded faithfulness may produce insufferably lengthy films (the new one clocks in at 2 hours, 41 minutes), but they also allow you to pass leisurely through J.K. Rowling’s magnificent plots. (You can tell they’re bad movies based on good books.) At least they continue to pick good actors to add to a cast that includes Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman and the late Richard Harris (who sounds as if he barely made it through production). This time around, Kenneth Branagh joins the cast as the pompous, vain Gilderoy Lockhart (funny how well Branagh can play an arrogant prick) and The Patriot’s Jason Isaacs steps in as Lucius Malfoy, father of the bratty Draco. Columbus’ pacing is still murderously slow, his ideas as pedestrian as the worst TV -- an evil character gets a band of light across the eyes, and so forth. More than the exits, what Chamber makes you impatient for is the day when Y Tu Mamá También’s Alfonso Cuarón takes the helm with movie no. 3. Now that should be something to see. --Sam Adams (AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Bridge; Narberth; Roxy; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

Read a review by 12-year-old Hannah Drake Altman.

STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN

Clearly cast in the mold of Buena Vista Social Club, Paul Justman’s documentary struggles with structure to the point where it’s still introducing characters a half-hour before the end, but the story it’s got to tell is so strong that the minor flubs don’t matter. The Funk Brothers were the unofficial conglomeration of musicians who backed virtually every hit from Motown’s Detroit era, and as an opening title claims, played on more No. 1 hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and Elvis combined. Based on Allan Slutsky’s biography of legendary bassist James Jamerson, Shadows mixes interviews with the surviving Funk Brothers with new performance footage, where Chaka Khan, Bootsy Collins, Ben Harper, Joan Osborne and

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others step in for Motown’s greatest vocalists. Based on an orchestral style that kept individual musicians from standing out and a factory mentality that discouraged the lifting of the curtain, these musicians have languished in obscurity despite being part of some of pop music’s best-known songs. (It didn’t help that most of Motown’s albums were released without credits, or that Motown discouraged them from sharing the spotlight.) It seems inconceivable now that you’ve never wondered who played the guitar riff on “My Girl” or the drums on “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” but you don’t feel educated so much as elated -- by the music, and the sense of a lingering wrong finally redressed. --S.A.(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

See Sam Adams’ interview with producer Allan Slutsky and subjects Bob Babbitt, Uriel Jones, Jack Ashford and Eddie Willis.