An awkward blend of ultra-realistic violence, boundaries-bending satire and low comedy.

O’Loughlin is the very definition of comic dead weight. Imagine making Greg Kinnear carry half of "Baby Mama," or sending Tina Fey out with Matthew Fox on "Date Night" and you’ll get the picture.

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans' choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 boogeyman blockbuster A Nightmare on Elm Street proves stunningly, rousingly…adequate…for the job.

If “the gals” have to bow out, at least they try to do it in a sprint -- in their Manolo Blahniks. It’s a pity nobody told them you can’t run in heels -- in sand dunes.

Forever After still goes down like warmed-over porridge. You don’t have to be Goldilocks to think that this time they’ve cooked their Golden Goose.

Kilmer makes a worthy, if somewhat underscripted villain. And some of the bits -- MacGruber idiotically setting traps that the bad guys never fall for -- tickle. But this still feels instantly dated, a "Hot Rod in a Role Models" era.

It has humor and a touch of charm, but plainly needed more love, more passion, more Shakespeare.

Brolin is so damned good in the saddle, in the hat and in the part that a half-sober viewer could half forget how half-arsed this movie he's starring in is.

It's so sentimental and sweet that you can almost forgive the kids' comedy Ramona and Beezus for not being nearly funny enough.

It's still a short-enough time-killer of a thriller -- not the worst of the summer, but a long way from the current state of the art.

All these years after Predator, these decades past the classic film, "Most Dangerous Game," that inspired this genre, it’s good to see the idea of the hunter becoming the hunted still gets the blood racing.

The movie's central gimmick isn't enough, and when more supernatural twists that don't play by the movie's own fantasy rules kick in, it lost me.

The Expendables feels, well -- disposable, a movie whose nostalgia isn't enough to make this 50. caliber trip down Memory Lane worth the fake napalm.

Its grisly violence and ridicule-religion tone make it sort of the anti-"Exorcism of Emily Rose."

The performers are given stock types to play, and Elba and Dillon, at least, can do a little with that.

There's an unexpected wistfulness, a bittersweet undercurrent to Going the Distance that could not have been in the script. This romantic comedy co-starring Drew Barrymore and longtime beau Justin Long was finished just as the real life couple was splitting up. For good, this time.

Devil is the sort of story Rod Serling would have taken for a spin in "The Twilight Zone," back in the day. Shyamalan came up with the idea, produced it and got others to script and direct this 76 minute exercise in movie minimalism.

A well-acted tale of an underdog's triumph that sorely lacks an underdog, it teeters between pleasantly generic film biography and rank manipulation.

Cute, bordering on cutesy, yes. Light and shallow and inconsequential in a lot of ways. But funny? Rarely.

A confident, cocky and often comic promenade down the same primrose path.

The script piles the preposterous on top of the absurd and the film's thin charms dissipate, revealing the creaking movie star contraption underneath.

While we may ogle Tamara, blush at her charms and revel in her world, in the end Tarama Drewe is just a bit of Brit tease that doesn't come off.

A musical vamp on young LA's decade-long Pussycat Dolls fascination with tarting up like strippers and shaking those money makers, it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts. But those parts. Oh my.

A barely serviceable romantic comedy.

The new creature feature Monsters is an intriguing mash-up of "District 9," "The Host" and assorted recent post-apocalypse road pictures.

But as useful as it is to chew on ideas that don't hew to climate change dogma, Cool It leaves big questions about Lomborg unanswered.

Too cute, too star-studded and entirely too long.

An unsatisfying if often surprising experience, a less warm and fuzzy "Parenthood."