Chris Nashawaty

Wilson has some deliciously awkward laughs thanks to Harrelson’s curmudgeonly, childlike performance, but it zips right along without ever landing any emotionally resonant blows.

Schwarzenegger, for one, seems to be having a hoot.

After about 10 minutes, The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter feels borderline promising. After 80, it feels like a blown opportunity.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s wild-card performance is the only reason to bother with "Dallas Buyers Club" director Jean-Marc Vallée’s manipulative downer.

We're treated to what's essentially a slick, airbrushed promo reel of a bunch of genuinely sweet superstars who can't believe their dumb luck. That's charming. But it's also a little boring. What it's most definitely not is a documentary.

Since the film’s last-minute rewrites, casting switcheroos, and musical chairs behind the camera are irrelevant to the actual quality of the movie, I’ll avoid rehashing them here, save to say that the disarray shows on screen.

Sadly, it isn’t a great movie. It’s a disappointingly mild period thriller that’s light on thrills. Even Paul Rudd, one of the most likable actors in Hollywood, can’t rescue it.

Aside from one gag in particular, the scares lack any real mechanical knack. The one thing the otherwise forgettable film has going for it is Shaye, who over the course of the Insidious quadrilogy has miraculously created a real flesh-and-blood character with Elise.

Neither scary enough to be a horror film nor funny enough to be a comedy.

Stalingrad is a 3-D epic that's one-dimensional.

It’s little more than a handsome snooze that even the Masterpiece Theatre crowd may find a bit too snoozy.

Son of a Gun becomes a somewhat predictable but excitingly twisty heist film involving a double-dealing Russian heavy, a desperate femme fatale, and a fortune in gold bars. It has just enough muscle and style to make the familiar feel fresh.

The film comes to crackling life during the planning and climactic execution of the raid. And Padilha, the Brazilian director behind 2007’s "Elite Squad," knows how to stage these white-knuckle sequences, especially when he cuts back and forth between the on-the-ground tactical assault and a modern dance performance featuring one of the commando’s girlfriends.

What makes the film more than just a dusty Grisham retread is that the case (as compelling as it is) is merely the backdrop for a more emotionally engaging story about fathers and sons played, like a duet, by two virtuoso actors who give the film not only all they have but probably more than it requires.

The Predator isn’t a dumb movie exactly. But it’s not a smart one either. What it is, is something uncomfortably in between: a satire of a franchise that was already in on its own macho joke.

The sequel still manages to walk the tightrope between clever and crass. For a while, at least.