Ratings based on four-star system.
‘Alice in Wonderland’
Rated PG
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Director Tim Burton’s new extravaganza, the second Disney-backed “Alice” and a bookend to the cheerily benign 1951 animated version, won’t be for everyone. It’s a little rough for preteens, and it doesn’t throw many laughs the audience’s way, but along with “Sweeney Todd,” this is Burton’s most interesting project in a decade. Wonderfully well-chosen Australian actress Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, and Johnny Depp continues his fruitfully nervy collaboration with Burton by playing the Mad Hatter.

‘The Back-Up Plan’
Rated PG-13
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Jennifer Lopez plays a Manhattan pet store owner whose wheelchair-bound dog is her only steady male companionship. Aussie hunk Alex O’Loughlin plays a cheese-maker who sells his wares at the Tribeca Farmers Market. They meet cute, and we wait for our heroine to reveal that she recently was artificially inseminated. In the late ‘90s, Lopez not only had It, but an easy warmth to go with It. Several contrived rom-coms later, the actress has become a calculating sort of charmer, a mirror of the material she’s given.

‘Clash of the Titans’
Rated PG-13
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“Clash of the Titans” could be the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D. The third dimension, especially in the action scenes, is more of a distraction than an enhancement. This remake of the creaky 1981 original is also hampered by a numbskull plot and plodding dialogue. Sam Worthington of “Avatar” stars as Perseus, the demigod who leads a group of warriors an entire Noah’s ark of inhuman adversaries, including the dreaded Kraken.

‘Date Night’
Rated PG-13
?? 1/2
“Date Night” is a product substantially inferior to the material routinely finessed by stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey, on their respective hit TV shows, into comic gold. A married couple leave the kids with a sitter and hit Manhattan for dinner. In an effort to be seated at a trendy restaurant, they claim another couple’s vacated reservation, leading to mistaken-identity trouble. The script is weak, but the actors keep saving this one, including James Franco and Mila Kunis, whose only scene is a memorable one.

‘Death at a Funeral’
Rated R
?? 1/2
Ragged in its technique but pretty funny anyway, the remake of the 2007 British comedy “Death at a Funeral” won’t please everyone, but seeing so many good, resourceful actors mix it up has its satisfactions. The nominal leads belong to Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, rivalrous brothers whose father has passed, and whose down-low life they know nothing about until a mystery man (Peter Dinklage, repeating his role in the original) shows up with incriminating photos. Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover and Zoe Saldana are also part of the high-powered cast.

‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
Rated PG
? 1/2
Kids may enjoy this live-action film version of the Jeff Kinney books, but an astonishing percentage of the books’ appeal has vanished. The petty jealousies, vindictive pranks and raging insecurities as endured by put-upon protagonist Greg Heffley were great fun on the page, thanks to the doodly, episodic energy of Kinney’s journal entries. Redone for the real world, with real actors and a serious lack of wit, “Wimpy Kid” is no longer special. The movie lacks the cleverly hyperbolic touch that takes the audience a step or two away from comic realism.

‘Furry Vengeance’
Rated PG
? 1/2
Brendan Fraser plays a well-meaning developer who has moved his family to a new subdivision in the middle of a pristine forest. The future roadkill of the forest aren’t taking this deforestation lying down. On the sliding critter-comedy scale, “Furry Vengeance” falls somewhere between the Chipmunks and the Chihuahua (the one from Beverly Hills). And if its scheming woodland creatures, slapstick violence and bird-poop gags don’t do anything for you when you take your kids, just remember: You’re doing it for them.

‘Greenberg’
Rated R
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The title character of this film is the least shticky role Ben Stiller has played in years, and he responds with a performance as clean and strong as the one Jim Carrey gave in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Stiller plays an ex-musician who has moved from New York to L.A., where he becomes involved with his brother’s personal assistant, an off-center beauty played by the talented Greta Gerwig. Director Noah Baumbach’s curiously entrancing film responds to the push and pull of its characters rather than confining them to a conventional outline.

‘Harry Brown’
Rated R
? 1/2
Letting his grave, limpid stare do most of the heavy lifting, Michael Caine makes not a single interpretive misstep in the British thriller “Harry Brown.” The tragedy is that the performance comes to nothing. Nearly everything else in the film is vile. Caine plays a stoic pensioner who becomes a vigilante in his South London housing project, where drug-fueled human vermin run the show while police turn a blind eye.

‘Hot Tub Time Machine’
Rated R
??? 1/2
A chlorinated, R-rated “Back to the Future,” ‘’Hot Tub Time Machine” accomplishes what “Snakes on a Plane” did not: It offers a merrily idiotic movie to go with its willfully idiotic title. Three semi-estranged friends (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson) reunite for a skiing-and-drinking weekend at the lodge they frequented back in the day. Turns out the hot tub’s a time machine. That’s the premise, and the movie sticks to it. This picture knows no finesse but plenty of low-comic spirit.

‘How to Train Your Dragon’
Rated PG
3 1/2 stars
The swoops and dives of this exuberant animated feature, in which the teen hero befriends the winged enemy, should prove as addicting to its target audience as similar scenes have in “Avatar.” On the Island of Berk, the Vikings have been putting up with dragon attacks for 300 years. Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel) meets one of the dreaded beasts and learns dragons are a misjudged species, which puts him at odds with his father (Gerard Butler) and the rest of the village. The flying scenes are fantastic, so seeing “Dragon” in 3-D really is a must.

‘Iron Man 2’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
“A passable knock-off”: That’s how the obscenely rich but heartsick industrialist played by Robert Downey Jr. characterizes the electro-weaponry wielded by his adversary (Mickey Rourke) in “Iron Man 2.” Much of this scattershot sequel to the 2008 smash feels like a passable knock-off as well. Here and there, director Jon Favreau’s diversion takes us back to the considerable satisfactions of the first “Iron Man,” but “Iron Man 2” has a harder time with matters of story clarity and momentum.

‘Kick-Ass’
Rated R
1 1/2 stars
This super-violent superhero movie revels in geek revenge. High-schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), who transforms himself into the self-appointed butt-thumper of the title, discovers there’s a masked 10-year-old girl out on the mean streets already, going by the handle “Hit Girl” (Chloe Grace Moretz). She is the protege of her ex-cop father, also a crime-fighter behind a mask, operating as “Big Daddy” (Nicolas Cage). The gore is stupidly relentless from beginning to end.

‘The Last Song’
Rated PG
2 stars
This adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel is primarily for teens looking for something disposable to cry about for a couple of hours. Miley Cyrus stars as a surly one-time piano prodigy who finds summer love, and Greg Kinnear turns in a credible performance as her dad. Those familiar with the Sparks catalog will find the contours of “The Last Song” either comforting or shopworn. It depends on your tolerance for wordless, song-drenched transitional scenes in which lovers throw each other into the surf while the soundtrack does the rest.

‘The Losers’
Rated PG-13
2 1/2 stars
The comic-book adaptation “The Losers” drags you down to its level at gunpoint with its drooling fetishization of weaponry, its focus on Zoe Saldana in wee shorts, various and sundry assassinations designed with gamers in mind, and more rabid mistrust of the U.S. government than you’d find at a tea party fundraiser. For all its insidious slickness, the film is easier to take than, say, “Kick-Ass” or “V for Vendetta,” both of which came to the screen saddled with misguided pretentions. No pretentions here.

‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’
Rated R
2 stars
By today’s standards, this reboot of Wes Craven’s iconic 1984 horror film is only medium-bloody, though it’s more than usually grim. Yet it affords precious little sadistic pleasure, partly because it “dares” to lay out more directly the pedophiliac demons plaguing Freddy the serial killer (Jackie Earle Haley). With Craven’s original, the blurred borderlines between dreamscape and reality gave the best images an eerie force and unpredictability. The remake works the same idea to death.

‘Oceans’
Rated G
3 1/2 stars
The overly poetic voice-over narration, read by Pierce Brosnan, is the weakest link in this documentary by “Winged Migration” veterans Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard. But once the exhilarating visuals get going, it’s easy to ignore the words. The most arresting thing about “Oceans” is how unexpectedly bizarre many of the creatures that live deeper under the sea than either Charlie the Tuna or “The Little Mermaid’s” Ariel actually look. This really is a film that manages to show us things we’ve never seen and make what we have already seen look different and new.

‘Please Give’
Rated R
3 1/2 stars
With her poignant, funny new film, writer-director Nicole Holofcener (“Walking and Talking,” ‘’Friends With Money”) is at the top of her game. Catherine Keener plays a woman whose roles as wife, mother, businesswoman and neighbor play out against the background of her self-recriminating sense that a person in her privileged position ought to be doing more to make the world a better place. This is a film that focuses on the tiny moments of connection and consolation that sustain us in a hard-edged world because they are all we have.
— Tribune Media Services