OUR IDIOT BROTHER (1-1/2 out of 5 stars)

The spontaneity of the moments captured by OUR IDIOT BROTHER's outtakes, shown during the closing credits, in no way resemble the insipid and even insulting blather of the film itself. IDIOT is another ham-handed attempt to throw together a lengthy list of famous faces (I'm looking at you, VALENTINE'S DAY) in a bland cavalcade of cinematic clichés and flat characterizations. It's yet another corporatized, profit-maximized "comedy" showing neither ingenuity nor insight and barely qualifying as entertainment.

Paul Rudd — an actor whose innately clever sense of humor always emerges in unscripted interviews but is all too rarely displayed in his abysmal choice of films — plays Ned, a sunny, oblivious hippie type who naively asks a stranger on the subway to hold his cash. After serving an eight-month jail sentence for selling dope to an undercover cop (in a clear case of entrapment, if you ask me), he couch surfs with each of three sisters while working, not terribly hard, to get his life back on track.

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FRIGHT NIGHT (2 out of 5 stars)

This predictable, paint-by-the-numbers remake of the scarier '85 cult classic is chock full of moments that may have proven suspenseful or hilarious had they not been so sloppily timed. Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin and David Tennant's characters are all dreadfully dull, the dialogue is trite and multiple details go unexplained in a script not too different from the original (with a few modern touches such as iPhone apps and Real Housewives), yet still somehow worse.

Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is a semi-geeky teen in puce-colored sneakers living in a remote desert McNeighborhood bordering Las Vegas. Imogen Poots plays his gorgeous girlfriend Amy, and unlike most nerd-and-a-hot-girl film items, they're believable together. His spurned childhood friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) rightly suspects a vampire behind the growing number of classmates' disappearances, a disparity not necessarily easy to gauge given the many strippers and other nocturnal entertainers who hide away in the daytime.

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5 DAYS OF WAR (4 out of 5 stars)

5 DAYS OF WAR astounded me, especially considering its mere $20 million budget (per IMDB), lack of stateside publicity and disappointing marketing materials. (A badly Photoshopped poster and heavy metal-fueled trailer framing it as a run-of-the-mill blow-'em-up.) The Georgian army apparently gave director Renny Harlin — known for big-budget action flicks like DIE HARD 2 and CLIFFHANGER — free use of their tanks, helicopters, jets, guns and even military personnel, contributing greatly to a vastly entertaining, horrifying war film.

Documenting a five-day war in the summer of 2008 that few Americans were fully aware of due to round-the-clock Olympic coverage coming out of Beijing, the movie also serves as a worthy tribute to war correspondents who risk their lives to communicate urgent news to the world, a sacrifice all too easily taken for granted. Indeed, the film is dedicated to the more than 500 reporters who've perished in action over the past decade.

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THE HELP (3-1/2 out of 5 stars)

Based on Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel, THE HELP is an unexpectedly amusing film about a segment of American history rarely explored on the big screen: the daily lives of African-American maids in the segregated South.

The story pulls you in from the get-go and may make you shed tears as its misty moments increase proportionally to the characters' raised stakes. Some performances are sure to receive recognition come Oscar season, although the one character who’s lacking — and my primary complaint about the film as a whole — is Emma Stone's "Skeeter," a sort of Erin Brockovich without the sex appeal.

The year is 1963 and Eugenia Phelan (a.k.a. Skeeter) has returned home to Jackson, Mississippi after graduating from Ole Miss with a journalism degree. She moves in with her ailing mother Charlotte (Allison Janney), hiding the effects of chemo with an array of ugly wigs and determined to marry off her only daughter before she dies.

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