Mila Kunis in Jupiter AscendingJUPITER ASCENDING

After months of previews in the wake of its delayed release, the big-budget sci-fi spectacle Jupiter Ascending - originally scheduled for summer 2014 - finally landed this past weekend. And with its opening, a question can now be asked: Was there any point at which Warner Bros. executives seriously considered pulling the plug on writers/directors/siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski's epic stinker? Maybe when Channing Tatum was cast as a human/wolf hybrid with a blond goatee and pointy ears? Or when an incensed Russian beat the hell out of his son with a throw pillow? Or when, for the performer's first scene, the Wachowskis handed Mila Kunis an all-too-symbolic toilet brush?

InsidiousINSIDIOUS

It features every cliché in the haunted-house handbook. It borrows liberally from other, iconic horror movies. It's by the director of the original Saw and the slightly more bearable killer-mannequin flick Dead Silence. And for all of the momentary jolts provided by the loud bangs and shrieking violins on its soundtrack, the most shocking thing about Insidious is how irrationally good it is.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard in NineNINE

Despite its mostly lackluster reviews and rather lame box-office intake, director Rob Marshall's Nine is actually pretty entertaining. But seriously, shouldn't any movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Kate Hudson, and Sophia Loren be considerably better than "pretty entertaining"? (Collectively, these performers have amassed 18 Oscar nominations and eight statuettes, though it's doubtful that Nine will do much to increase those tallies.)