Isabelle Allen and Hugh Jackman in Les MiserablesLES MISÉRABLES

Director Tom Hooper's take on the über-beloved musical Les Misérables is, in numerous regards, a maddeningly weak stage-to-screen transfer. Scenes have been bluntly presented with no discernible invention or style. The incessant employment of closeups creates stagnancy in sequences and numbers that beg for breathing room. The movie's two most prominent actors are cast in roles for which they can't nearly do vocal justice. And, so help me, I ravenously gobbled up every last, unsubtle, frequently disappointing morsel of the thing.

Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna in BatleshipBATTLESHIP

In the latest effects-heavy entertainment by Hancock director Peter Berg, a group of heroic U.S. Navy and Japanese-military officers team up to fight a race of marauding aliens, four of whose spaceships have crash-landed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Battleship? This thing should've been called KerPlunk.

Amy Adams, Jason Segel, and The MuppetsTHE MUPPETS

I adored nearly every minute of the big-screen reunion The Muppets, the musical-comedy brainchild of screenwriters Jason Segel (who also co-stars) and Nicholas Stoller. But before commencing with the rave, I should probably offer a caveat, because I can barely imagine the conditions under which I wouldn't have adored this movie.

Sacha Baron Cohen in BrünoBRÜNO

Returning with a comedy in a vein similar, re-e-e-eally similar, to that of their 2006 smash Borat, director Larry Charles and co-writer/star Sacha Baron Cohen now present us with Brüno, another mock-doc based on one of Cohen's famed Da Ali G Show characters. With a storyline that you can easily summarize in three words - Borat gone gay - it's the pair's latest attempt to shock the masses into spasms of outrage and gales of uncontrollable laughter, and I'll readily admit that the movie is pretty funny, and sometimes awfully funny.