Scuff him, scrape him, buff him up; nobody is going to buy Shia LaBeouf as a country boy. He has a face built for Instagram and his posture is that of a narcissist demanding bottle service at a trendy club.

Premium Rush is crap. It may, however, be somewhat fun crap, depending on your tolerance for scenery chewing, "look how current we are" cultural references and spandex.

Everybody needs a little help. Writer/director/actor Dax Shepard could have probably used another writer, a third director (David Palmer already co-directed) and a better group of actors for Hit and Run, a movie that is a cinematic traffic accident with multiple fatalities.

Before Pixar flexed its artistic muscle (a muscle they could stand to exercise more frequently these days), the message in American animated films ranged from "always be true to yourself" to "always be true to yourself and also get heterosexually married."

Writers Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell move beyond the standard skewing of attack-ad politics and candidates that are either incompetent or lecherous. Oh, sure, they have fun with the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, but the villains are the ones shouting “pay no attention to the douchebags behind the curtain.

Total Recall is the sci-fi tale of a quasi-postapocalyptic duckface war between Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel, with Colin Ferrell as the judge. At least, that’s what this remake of an adaptation of a short story, written by a gob-stopping five separate writers, seems to be about. Any larger theme is missed among the cacophony of dubstep and techno sounds, Farrell’s unrepentant shirtlessness and Biel and Beckinsale’s leather pants.

They should hand out oxygen tanks before each screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild because writer/director Benh Zeitlin’s debut feature film takes your breath in the very first scene and plays keep away with it for more than 90 minutes.

Seeing as how it has an extraterrestrial plot, let’s describe The Watch using an astronomical metaphor. Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade are like comedic planets that orbit a central, burning sun. And that sun is made entirely of penis jokes.

From Christian Bale’s bark to Hans Zimmer’s “gonna getcha” score, if director Christopher Nolan has driven one point home in his Batfilms, it has been this: “Take my films seriously, yo.” From meditations on the fine line between vengeance and justice to the moral ambiguity of using high-end technology “for the greater good,” this Bat-trilogy has cleverly and successfully fused “real world” stuff with “comic book” stuff. Until now.

'Savages,' Taylor Kitsch’s last summer gasp and director Oliver Stone’s latest pulpy romp, is quite nearly good. Aside from its bloated meandering and terrible choice in leading lady, it was one solid landing away from respectable marks from the judges, even if the level of difficulty wasn’t all that high.