As we go deeper into the cave, walls squeezing, water rising, the movie has a narrative pull as sure as gravity.

What saves Immortals as a moviegoing experience is the exuberant, kid-in-a-candy-store virtuosity of its director, former music-video wunderkind Tarsem Singh (The Cell).

They're all fascinating 
 subjects - or would be if Jig didn't dance around their personal stories in favor of overheated waiting-for-the-scores suspense.

There's nothing particularly inventive in the plot or grade-school humor, but the movie skates by on the timeless, undemanding charm of watching a tie-wearing bear try to steal people's lunches.

The cooking scenes are fun, but Samir's reawakening and romance with a co-worker (Jess Weixler) hold about as many surprises as a prix fixe meal.

Why are they fighting again? Never you mind. Just sit tight till the next action sequence (it won't be long), and get ready to laugh - with equal parts scorn and fanboy joy - as Beckinsale strikes another Rodinesque pose under a slo-mo shower of inhuman innards.

A pocket-size supernatural thriller that plays a bit like Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" retold by an unstable Sunday School teacher.

Basically a nifty VFX reel in search of a plot.

At best, his poker-faced vignettes nail the icy comedy of war: A man chats on his cell phone, unworried about a tank targeting him a few feet away. At worst, they're totally opaque and unmoving.

All those twangy, homespun observations interrupt and annotate the narrative until Black and MacLaine's scenes start to feel as trivial as reenactments on a true-crime TV show.

Underwhelming in the style of most off-brand CG, Alpha and Omega is livened by pretty Rocky Mountain backdrops and leadened by stock characters and the wolves' weirdly prissy behavior.

At least they do look sharp in those suits.

Worse, he (Reiner) vacuum-seals it all in a patronizingly wholesome package, like an extended episode of "The Wonder Years" with all the wonder sucked out.

The exception is newcomer Jenn Proske, who spoofs Twilight star Kristen Stewart's flustered, hair-tugging angst with hilarious precision.

A well-meaning dud.

Good news: The shrill CG rodents, who last infested theaters in 2009's Squeakquel, are stranded on a jungle island with little hope of survival. Bad news: They've brought us along.

Trite lessons are learned. Plotlines play out in familiar arcs. A few blips of sex and drug use aim to make the movie feel more grown-up. Instead, they make it off-limits to the only age group likely to find any charm in its smug Britcom cutesiness.

PA4 develops the story ever so slightly (not enough to satisfy fans) and delivers a few good scares (not enough to satisfy newbies); mostly, it plays like a overlong prologue for the already-in-the-works PA5. Here's hoping this is just the tension-racking lull before the next big scream.

There isn't a shred of subtlety in their clowning - or in any part of the movie, which clumsily shoots for operatic highs and lows. But with so many borrowed bits and pieces, the only feeling it successfully evokes is déjà vu.

Lawrence's gender-bending jokes are played out, and his slapstick is wooden and slow.

Most of the movie's action-horror set pieces play like lame Gwar music video outtakes, and Cage's signature mix of irony and off-the-rails mugging only works when you can see the actor's face. In Ghost Rider form, his character is just a skeletal automaton with neither a tongue nor a cheek to put it in.

Cooper, who looks appealingly wolfish in his expensively tailored suits, plays the whole thing with a dutiful, earnest expression lacquered on his face, his eyes misting on cue at the exact same moments yours will be rolling into the back of your head.

No movie -- whether aimed at adults or kids or canines themselves -- has the right to be as tiresome and unoriginal as this action-comedy mutt.

Faster grafts that genre's style onto a deadbeat script and leaves it to Johnson - as deadly focused as a gunsight - to make it all believable.

An indistinct romantic-dramedy-ish something or other about the rekindled romance of an actress (Rachel Bilson) and her childhood best friend (Tom Sturridge).

A ho-hum series of kills and lulls so predictable that it doesn't even look like much fun for the sharks; when they open wide, they might as well be yawning.

Though it doesn't work as entertainment, this numbingly chipper rom-com (directed by Dermot Mulroney) might be of historical value someday as an A-to-Z guide to the genre's most overworked clichés.

Spectacularly poor judgment in everything from acting to costuming (Olsen's Harajuku-troll get-up is scarier than her curse) puts Beastly right on the cusp of the so-bad-it's-good Hall of Shame.