Review in a Hurry: Take a handful of popular Marvel Comics characters, cast them with solid actors (be it Hugh Jackman as Wolvie, Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool or Taylor Kitsch as the card-throwing Gambit) and you can’t go wrong, right? Well, you can if you make them spout dreadful dialogue, your effects look cheap and you hire a director who’s totally wrong for the material.

The Bigger Picture: A big part of Wolverine’s appeal as a character was his mystery, but hey, Marvel finally decided (ill-advisedly) to spill the details of his origin in comic books. So Hollywood has followed, equally ill-advisedly.

Little is revealed about Jackman’s metal-clawed mutant that we didn’t already gather from the other three X movies, and what is revealed often comes off as downright silly. (He got his name from a stupid faux Indian story his girlfriend made up? Really?)

The movie, which is mostly set sometime in the ’70s, starts intriguingly, with a plot that looks like it’ll be similar to Watchmen: Someone is picking off former members of a secret military team of mutants, and Wolverine, who quit when the team’s methods went too far, must figure out who…and get revenge when somebody close falls victim.

This involves signing up for metal skeleton injections courtesy the villainous Col. Stryker (Danny Huston), who apparently also invented the Bush doctrine of preemptive war on possible terrorists.

The original team includes the likes of Fred Dukes (Kevin Durand), an immovable object who will eventually be known as The Blob; super sharpshooter Agent Zero (Daniel Henney); wisecracking sword master Wade “Deadpool” Wilson, who can cut flying bullets in half; teleporter Wraith (a surprisingly good will.i.am); and of course Wolvie and Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), the latter of whom turned evil during the Vietnam War for no particularly good reason.

Internet fanboys have been demonizing Fox’s Tom Rothman, but the real reason that what ensues is so poorly executed is most likely director Gavin Hood. The obnoxious sentimentalizing and clichéd execution (characters stare up to the sky and cry out in grief-stricken anger more than once!) were also evident in his inexplicably overrated Oscar winner Tsotsi.

Also, screenwriter Skip Woods wrote the videogame-based bomb Hitman. What did you expect from these two?

The cast gives it their all, but they’re wasted in what is essentially an infomercial for potential future spinoffs. And the special effects don’t even look finished—are we sure it wasn’t the leaked workprint that was screened for press?

The 180—a Second Opinion: Audience members who can truly turn off their brains and just be entertained may be satisfied by the colorful characters having a few cool fight scenes. But remember when the X-Men films actually stimulated our brains instead of deadening them?

Review in a Hurry: Ghosts mischievously fulfills your vengeful wishes against exes, with surprising sensitivity and humor. It also helps that the whipping boy is Matthew McConaughey, who earns his smirk this time around.

The Bigger Picture: Every jilted woman harbors a potent revenge fantasy. It looks a lot like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and goes like this: You force the lover who’s wronged you to relive all of the moments where they took you for granted. Every one of their callous gestures witnessed in perpetuity until they tearfully repent and insist that they’ll want another chance.

Though Ghosts may look indistinguishable from the dozen other McConaughey paycheck rom-coms, this time we’re not meant to be charmed by that honey-dipped Southern tongue. In Ghosts, McConaughey plays a loathsome narcissist, Conor Mead, with a merciless “no strings attached” policy that leaves an unfathomable amount of women in despair.

The weekend of his baby brother’s (Breckin Meyer) wedding, Conor runs into his first and most passionate love (Jennifer Garner, who is so sallow and brittle in this movie that she has the warmth of a stick insect). Thrown off his game and soused in Scotch, Conor is then visited by the ghosts of relationships past, present and future.

Predictable? Of course. But the filmmakers dole out the pop psychology and payback in creatively cheeky ways so that you’re genuinely bought into Conor’s redemption.

Now, McConaughey has done us all wrong with his tortuously lazy career choices. The man has clearly made a decision to put his feet up, take his shirt off and let the money roll in.

And though he butters himself thickly with that cocksure shtick this time, too, here he honestly earns your heart. Conor has the flamboyant confidence of a matador, but McConaughey draws out the right amount of sleaze and tenderness to transform Conor from a bullfighter to a rodeo clown. Witnessing him suffer the reprisals of an estrogen lynch mob and humble himself before his childhood love is cathartic and pleasurable.

The 180—a Second Opinion: You may not be ready to forgive McConaughey for his sadistic crimes against cinema, in which case do not set foot into this movie. He lays it on thick and you could feel smothered by all that that coco-buttered charm.

Review in a Hurry: Obsessed would be an ordinary, cheap seduction thriller if it weren’t for its extraordinary mix of stars. The immaculate Beyoncé Knowles and devastatingly handsome Idris Elba attack their silly parts with a ferocity that gives this dumpy little movie the spark it needs to be compelling.

The Bigger Picture: There are there two types of bad movies. There are bad bad movies, the kind that leave you resentful for having time wasted and your emotions bullied. And there are good bad movies.

These happy few don’t pretend to be anything besides entertainment and commit themselves to making every mistake a movie can.

Obsessed is a great bad movie. It shamelessly hand-feeds viewers exactly what they ordered: Beyoncé looking fabulous while she kicks. Ass.

Obsessed is little more than a 90-minute prelude to a remarkably well-choreographed final fight scene between a sweaty, grunting, voluptuous Beyoncé and a home-wrecking bombshell named Lisa (Ali Larter). Both ladies are, in case it needs to get better, outfitted in impossibly high heels.

Lisa is psychotically obsessed with the infinitely dashing Derek (Elba). The first two-thirds of the movie focus on Lisa, an office temp with a big mouth and a penchant for revenge, attempting to seduce Derek, some type important business muckety-muck.

Fearful that he may offend his domestic goddess, Sharon (Knowles), by mentioning any of Lisa’s advances, Derek continually lies to his wife. Big mistake: No mortal can make a fool of Beyoncé.

Now there’s little reason to extol on Knowles’ talent or fierceness. It’s a proven mathematical theorem that Beyoncé + spotlight = razzle-dazzle fun.

Instead, let’s throw some light on the next big thing you may not be aware of yet: The untouchably cool Idris Elba. He usually plays a strong second to a more animated lead man (The Office, The Wire), but in Obsessed, Elba makes his star turn. He’s pliable and playful. He harnesses his natural gravitas to effortlessly fill the lead role.

The script is tedious and the story predictable, but watching the chemistry crackle between Elba and Beyoncé is like watching Greek gods flirt. It’s fantastic, scrumptious fun.

The 180—a Second Opinion: It’s a great bad movie, to be sure, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that Obsessed is fundamentally, at its core…bad.

Review in a Hurry: This is a movie about how awesome Steve Lopez, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, is. Really, he’s awesome. He makes friends with homeless people and stuff. And he’s played by Robert Downey Jr., so he’s probably secretly a superhero, too. Good performances save this from being a lame hagiography. Just.

The Bigger Picture: Four years ago, against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina, and the beginning of major cuts at the Times, Lopez came across a homeless cello player named Nathaniel Ayers (here played by Jamie Foxx), and wrote a column about him. Turns out the schizo musician once went to Juilliard, and his story touched the hearts and minds of numerous readers who wanted to help out and give Nathaniel a forum for his music—whether he liked it or not.

In amateur hands, this could have been yet another cliché about a mysterious black man teaching the white-bread hero everything he needs to know to solve his own issues before dying or disappearing in timely fashion (see: The Green Mile, In America). In the hands of director Joe Wright (Atonement), it’s a little bit messier. Ayers isn’t painted as a saint; he’s genuinely crazy in a potentially dangerous way, and kudos to Foxx’s lack of vanity on that score. Lopez is still Robert Downey Jr., so we like him even when he’s kind of a jerk. But just to bring him down to earth, screenwriter Susannah Grant has contrived two separate sequences in which he gets urine sprayed on him.

There’s a lot going on here that isn’t really given its due—the hypocrisy of L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s homeless programs, the downsizing of old media—and it often feels like Wright has bitten off more than he can chew. But points for ambition: One sequence in which we are made to see the music as Nathaniel does gets into Fantasia-like realms of color, and will doubtlessly be enjoyed by college kids in ways other than intended.

That said, we never truly get inside Nathaniel’s madness—the movie, though it tries to be evenhanded, is still Lopez’s story, and he’s easily the more boring of the two. With Downey in the role, however, it takes quite a while to notice that.

The 360 Degree Review—a Second Opinion: Some of the small details are way off—in 2005, did Lopez really have an answering machine rather than voice mail? And didn’t any of the filmmakers know that you have to stay perfectly still during a CT scan?

Review in a Hurry: Mother Nature is ready for her close-up, and this spectacularly shot doc gives our big, blue planet her due, with rare peeks at exotic creatures and thrilling action scenes. It all makes you wanna flee the urban jungle to give our Mom a hug.

The Bigger Picture: This BBC production, based on footage shot for its Planet Earth series and released under the new Disneynature banner, covers a lot of ground—and air and water—by showcasing the entire, well, Earth in 90 minutes. (Next year brings the slightly more-focused Oceans.) As overreaching wildlife docs go, this one’s a beaut, with enough funny, scary, awe-inspiring stuff to please everyone.

Though mostly episodic, Earth uses as its framing device the plight of three animal families: A papa polar bear leaves his cubs to forage for food among melting ice caps; a whale and her calf migrate 4,000 miles to the South Pole; a mama and baby elephant, with a herd of 1,000 others, cross the desert in search of water. Between the stories, the film transitions, with surprising fluidness, through seasonal changes in different biomes and introduces us to various species engaged in the circle of life.

Kids will enjoy the cuter stuff—mallard ducklings learning to fly, birds of paradise preening and prancing (aka their mating ritual). But the coolest sequences highlight danger (cranes battling fierce winds over the Himalayas) and, yes, death (a cheetah pouncing on a gazelle in jaw-dropping slow motion and a polar bear/walrus herd smackdown). No worries, parents, Earth cuts away from animal attacks before blood is drawn.

The stunning high-def photography is accompanied by George Fenton’s stirring orchestrations and narrated by James Earl Jones, who strikes a balance of authority, warmth and occasional Darth Vader menace. Only an actor with gravitas and his basso profundo could deliver a line like “This creature is the very essence of wilderness” and give you chills.

Also, catch the closing credits for a humorous peek at the filmmakers who capture these glorious images.

The 360 Degree Review—a Second Opinion: Penguins and great white sharks make obligatory appearances (though not together—that would be cool). C’mon, aren’t there others more deserving of screen time than these cinematically overexposed critters?

Review in a Hurry: Already beloved by female fans of Step Up, Channing Tatum makes a play for the male audience by playing a street brawler in the simply named Fighting. He’s believably tough and appealing, but the long stretches of nothing between the fights make this a chore to sit through—without a fast-forward button.

The Bigger Picture: Alabama runaway Shawn MacArthur (Tatum) is an occasionally homeless hustler (albeit the most handsome and fittest one you’ve ever seen) who sells bootleg novels on the streets of Brooklyn (sample title: Harry Potter and the Hippopotamus).

But when a Chicago hustler named Harvey (Terrence Howard) tests his limits, Shawn erupts with a channeled fury that seems unstoppable. Harvey immediately proposes that they go into business, making big money in the secret world of illegal street fights.

Writer-director Dito Montiel had a tough upbringing on the streets of New York—and even got Robert Downey Jr. to play him in the semi-autobiographical A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints—but street cred alone does not a movie auteur make.

Montiel may know all about the rough side of city life, but when it comes to telling a compelling screen story about it, he’s a little lost. While the fight sequences are effective nail-biters, Howard seems to have been instructed to adopt a fake voice that makes him sound both lobotomized and hung over, while the other thugs talk in faux-Mamet patois that’s irritating as hell. News flash—David Mamet already did a street-fighting movie. It was called Redbelt, and it was way better than Fighting.

Montiel seems to be aiming for a mix of drama and combat akin to that in the original Rocky, but despite his star’s copious charms—Tatum here is reminiscent of a younger John Cena, and yes, that’s a good thing—the film is a mess. Shooting as many takes out of focus as he does, and cutting away to outside-the-window shots and back for no reason, well, that doesn’t come off as artsy, but incompetent. And considering the amount of screen time allotted to emoting versus action, the movie could easily be renamed Talking.

With that said, the fights are awesome. If you can rent this cheaply some day and just stick to those parts, you’ll have fun.

The 360 Degree Review—a Second Opinion: The central conceit, that so many small corner liquor/grocery stores in New York stay in business by holding illegal fights in the back room, is really a good premise. If a sequel is ever greenlighted, that aspect should be played up more.

Review in a Hurry: Have you ever chugged three Red Bulls right before a game of Grand Theft Auto? This ADD-infused action sequel—in which hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) survives a King Kong-like sidewalk plunge only to promptly wake up and have his heart cut out and replaced with a battery—is a bit like that. Except even less family friendly.

The Bigger Picture: It’s very, very tough to describe this movie without using unprintable language, and absolutely impossible to quote any of the dialogue. Suffice it to say that just about every bad thing imaginable happens to anyone who stands between Chev and his stolen heart.

While the original Crank maintained at least the semblance of reality, implying that the movie’s over-the-top qualities were mainly hallucinated by its drugged-out hero, the sequel jettisons all pretense immediately, from the moment the closing scene of part one is reenacted as an 8-bit Nintendo-style game.

This time around, rather than keeping his adrenaline up, Chev has to keep his low-energy battery from running out of power, the solution to which is electrocuting himself at regular intervals.

Every woman onscreen (including a returning Amy Smart as Chev’s long-suffering stoner girlfriend Eve) is a naked hooker or stripper, while every man is a complete psychopath with some bizarre quirk, from Clifton Collins Jr. as an evil Elvis impersonator to Efren Ramirez as a gay biker with something called Full Body Tourette’s, and even David Carradine playing a 100-year-old Chinese gangster named Poon Dong.

Don’t even ask about the Godzilla sequence—it must be seen to be believed.

Co-directors Neveldine and Taylor, who don’t go by their first names anymore, were not only clearly inspired by crazed Japanese auteur Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Audition), but they may have even outdone him in many respects.

The only reason this gets an A- instead of an A is that the original was, well, original. The new, more fantastical elements give things a fresh enough infusion, however, that it’ll still rock your world, especially with Faith No More’s Mike Patton on soundtrack duties. Be sure to stay through the end credits for some hilariously demented outtakes.

The 180—a Second Opinion: As perhaps you can imagine, there is something to offend everyone in this film and induce headaches or nausea in people susceptible to such things. Plus no kid should be allowed to see it, ever.

Review in a Hurry: Afraid that pubescent shrieking and swooning will drown out critical plot points of this zany body-swap flick? No worries! 17 Again is essentially a flipbook of Zac Efron pictures with some sound thrown over it.

The Bigger Picture: Zac Efron is violently pretty. To witness this magnificently structured specimen engage in the most mundane activity—tossing his honey-colored hair out of his flirty eyes, reciting dull dialogue in an insipid comedy—is absorbing.

But let’s be clear: If it weren’t for Efron’s freakishly good looks, there’d be few good reasons to face the screen while 17 Again is playing.

The plot is a total afterthought to the star’s abs, but let’s get into it, for kicks: A magical janitor is about to leap off a bridge. Mike (Matthew Perry as older, bloated Efron), a sad man-child, estranged husband and distant dad, rushes to save the suicidal custodian.

Just as Mike reaches out—the janitor vanishes! I know! So zany! So Mike falls, and as he plummets, he’s given the opportunity to make different “life choices” by, you guessed it, being transformed into his 17-year-old self. The movie then becomes 2K9 Marty McFly: Mike tries to change the course of destiny but instead he changes—you ready?—himself.

As if the janitor-cum-spirit-animal gimmick wasn’t bizarre enough, the movie gets downright surreal when Efron, perhaps the most famous young star of the moment, tries to act like an ordinary teenage boy. But he seems incapable of spontaneity, as static as the magazine foldouts he’s immortalized in. Perhaps then, 17 Again is some high-concept critique on child fame dressed up as throwaway fluff? But I doubt it.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Efron’s jeans are tighter than sausage casings.

Review in a Hurry: Read all about it: Greed! Corruption! Muuurder! Russell Crowe headlines as a newspaper reporter investigating corporate foul play. This adaptation of the six-hour BBC series packs plenty of plot—and talk and characters—into two hours. And while often rich, it doesn’t reach its full potential.

The Bigger Picture: In many ways, State plays like a good old-fashioned ’70s, paranoid political thriller, with tenacious journalists dodging danger while digging for the big story. Here, the contemporary spin features commentaries about defense contractors and the demise of the newspaper biz. (But clearly, some stories—like prominent politicians who can’t keep it in their pants—remain timeless.)

Ben Affleck stars as the philandering, up-and-coming Congressman Stephen Collins, who launches a probe into Blackwater-esque PointCorp, a security company raking in billions from the War on Terror. There’s more to this military-industrial complex than meets the eye—or so suspects Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) after several civilians are murdered, including Collins’ mistress/research assistant.

Under the stern eye of his editor (Helen Mirren), Cal partners with fresh-faced blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) to track down the killer and uncover the politico-corporate conspiracy.

Even after its rapid-fire opener, the pic keeps the pace clipping, including a tense parking-lot face-off between Cal and a gunman. But State sometimes lays a heavy hand on the trigger: The overbearing soundtrack proves distracting, and all the op-eds—blogs, bad…print journalism, good—start to get soapboxy.

Crowe disappears into the shaggy newshound role, an ink-slinging vet who eschews newfangled technology for an ancient computer and a sensible car. Though his slob in a Saab establishes a lively rapport with Della, their relationship never rises above the standard pro-and-rookie treatment.

Affleck, not quite credible as Cal’s friend and former college roommate, works too hard in several key scenes. But other actors impress in supporting turns, including regal Mirren, Jason Bateman as a sleazy publicist and Jeff Daniels as an unctuous legislator.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Pick another flick if you dislike glowering Crowe and his bad-boy rep. The way he wields his phone, you half-expect him to hurl it at an unwilling source.

Review in a Hurry: Somewhere between the piercing Ice Storm and the charming Freaks & Geeks lies the vast wasteland of the ’70s family drama. Writer/director Derick Martini lays it on thick with failed marriages, bullies and a debilitating disease. Fortunately, Rory Culkin, Alec Baldwin and Emma Roberts breathe life into the comings and goings of two very miserable families.

The Bigger Picture: Culkin stars as Scott Bartle, a 15-year-old from a well-to-do household who suffers beatings and humiliation in the midst of a bad economy. His brother (real-life bro Kieran Culkin) has returned home en route to the Falkland Islands, and while he can certainly protect Scott from the town alpha male, things only seem to get worse with his arrival.

Their real-estate-tycoon father (Baldwin) is too busy creating the suburban utopia Bartletown to be a good dad, and their mother (Jill Hennessy) insists on wrapping Scott in electric tape ever since their neighbor contracted Lyme disease. Was anyone ever happy in the Me Decade?

Scott’s only real friend is Adrianna (Roberts). Culkin does a fine job as a picked-on sensitive type, but it’s Emma who really shines. The starlet proves herself as she breaks free from Disney days (Hotel for Dogs, Nancy Drew) to tackle teen angst among the severely depressed. She’s the one person in the film who can lighten the mood.

Baldwin sheds most of his 30 Rock bluster, and Timothy Hutton plays Adrianna’s dad, the unlucky guy who‘s contracted the titular disease and is married to a less than faithful Cynthia Nixon.

Save for Roberts, the rest of the cast wallows (and so well) in the murk of self-pity and confusion that was the post-Vietnam era. It might sound like a bummer time at the multiplex, but these are the kinds of families that linger long after the film is over.

The 180—a Second Opinion: An independent film about dysfunctional families is as cookie-cutter as the homes in Bartletown. If you don’t take to the cast, Lymelife could leave you underwhelmed.