It's a zombie world and we just live in it.

There's one comic beat buried deep in The Family that explains why Luc Besson thought this mob comedy would be worth making. Relocated with his biological family to a rural village in the Normandy region of France after betraying his Brooklyn-based professional "family," ex-Mafioso Fred Blake a.k.a. Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro) is the guest of honor at a special movie screening hosted by the town's film society. The movie on the docket is Some Came Running, the 1958 Frank Sinatra/Dean Matrin film, but -- quel dommage! -- they've mistakenly been sent the print for another movie, a Martin Scorsese picture. I'll give you one guess as to which… and no, Kundun and Hugo would be the wrong picks.

The rebooted Star Trek series heads Into Darkness... and not in a good way.

With the re-energized Fast and the Furious franchise having returned him to pop culture relevance (however briefly), Vin Diesel and his regular collaborator, writer/director David Twohy, are seizing the opportunity to take one more run at Richard B. Riddick, the intergalactic, night vision-enhanced bad-ass they originated in 2000's surprise hit Pitch Black and effectively killed off (metaphorically, though not literally) in 2004's not-so-surprise bomb The Chronicles of Riddick. The secret to Pitch Black's success is that it plays like a lean, mean John Ford Western dressed up in sci-fi clothing, Stagecoach in outer space if you will, with Riddick functioning as its Ringo Kid -- the cool-as-hell antihero who is technically part of the larger ensemble, but gets the best lines and the best bits of action. The bigger-budgeted sequel, on the other hand, proved to be as muddled and convoluted and the original was clean and elegant, tying Riddick up in a confounding mythology that tried and failed to position him as some kind of Conan figure. The third film, simply titled Riddick, tries to split the difference, once again embracing a stripped-down approach to genre filmmaking (one that shares a lot in common with another filmmaker named John… Carpenter, rather than Ford), but still trying to show how its title character fits into the larger futureverse Diesel and Twohy are laboring to create.

Originally shot in 2011 and sneaking into theaters before the November release of 2013's higher-profile Nelson Mandela biopic, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom -- starring Idris Elba as the iconic South African civil rights crusader -- Winnie Mandela purports to be a life story of Mandela's now ex-wife, chronicling her personal bravery and public activism during her husband's long incarceration. But even though it's her point of view, the movie is still very much his story. Despite the title and the presence of an Oscar-winning actress (Jennifer Hudson) in the central role, Winnie Mandela turns out to be only moderately interested in the woman for bears that name.

Ken Marino and Gillian Jacobs have demon trouble in the horror sort-of comedy Bad Milo.

Jesse Eisenberg was this summer's unlikely magic man.

You can tell it's the final days of the summer movie season when the only new wide releases in multiplexes are a One Direction documentary promotional video and an action vehicle for the not-so-dynamic duo of Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez, both of which are making pit stops in theaters prior to debuting on DVD where they really belong. If you simply can't abide the idea of seeing a movie that's been in theaters for longer than a week, I'd suggest going with the One Direction thing -- this despite not having seen it or deliberately listened to one of the manufactured band's manufactured tunes -- if only because the screaming of the group's target audience is sure to keep you awake. There's no such respite from the abject tedium of Getaway, which accomplishes the impressive task of vanishing completely from your mind as you're sitting in the theater watching it. Normally, I'm stridently against folks spending an entire movie on their cell phones, but in this case, it's not like there's anything happening onscreen that merits your attention.

Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn just can't seem to get it together in the women-in-crisis movies, The Lifeguard and Afternoon Delight.

When you stop and think about it, Marvel's announcement that James Spader will be playing Joss Whedon's latest Big Bad, the ass-kicking robot Ulton, in 2015's sure-to-be top-grossing movie The Avengers: Age of Ultron... despite what those Jarvis conspiracy theorists would have you believe. No, what's really surprising is that it's taken Spader this long to play a comic-book villain. The dude has been a grade-A onscreen creep since the late '80s, when movies like Less Than Zero pushed him onto a bad boy path that most recently led to his starring role as a Hannibal Lecter-style mentor on NBC's action-packed fall series The Blacklist. Considering his resume, he's the ideal choice to put Iron Man & Co. through their paces. Here are the future Ultron's five creepiest movie roles to date.