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.

It was with cautious optimism that I went to see R.I.P.D.. I’m not normally one for action movies -- which, in the age of Transformers, have become heavy on the explosions and light on the everything else. But, R.I.P.D. does have a few things going for it. It stars Jeff Bridges and it has an intriguing premise, based on a comic book by Peter M. Lenkov. It also does not feature a talking snail… like Ryan Reynolds’ other movie that’s opening this weekend.

The 2010 action comedy RED wasn't exactly a critical favorite or box-office record beater, but a $90 million final gross gave the franchise-hungry studio Summit (the company that Twilight built) incentive to get the movie's gang of Retired and Extremely Dangerous counter-intelligence agents -- including Bruce Willis's eternally wry Frank Moses, John Malkovich's eternally paranoid Marvin Boggs and Helen Mirren's eternally hot Victoria -- back together again for another gag-friendly action picture. Before you join them on their globetrotting second adventure, here are five things you should know about RED 2.

Like almost everyone else who saw Jurassic Park during its initial theatrical run 20 years ago, I have a lot of nostalgic fondness for Steven Spielberg's feature-length montage of dino rampage, which was based on Michael Crichton's best-selling book. It's an old-fashioned summer blockbuster executed with then new (and now old-fashioned) digital wizardry that plays like gangbusters when seen on the big screen with a packed crowd. And I have no doubt that the third-dimension enhanced Jurassic Park 3D, which opens theatrically on Friday, will be one of the better post-3D conversions of library titles, if only because Spielberg is a James Cameron-level stickler when it comes to the presentation of his past work. But as impressive as the T-Rex, those velociraptors and the rest of the film's computer-generated cast of giant lizards might look in 3D, there are some deep-seated flaws with Jurassic Park that even the format change won't be able to compensate for or distract from. Flaws like...

The standards for budget, special effects and an audience's tolerance for teenagers killing each other are much higher now than they were back in the early '00s -- a fact made extremely clear when Battle Royale was essentially banned from United States theaters. But what if this week's The Hunger Games movie had been released in 2002? (Yes, we know the book would've had to existed first, but just go with it.) Who would've starred in it? What would the music have been like? Would it have been better than the actual 2012 version? Let's speculate:

Apparently inspired by last week's 30 Rock, the good folks at Marvel Studios have given us a whopper of a Leap Day present: an all-new, all-expanded trailer for Summer 2012's first superhero blockbuster, The Avengers. Unlike the first teaser, which hit the web back in October, this one features more dialogue, more effects-heavy action (to be fair, most of the effects weren't finished four months ago) and more clips of the costumed heroes trading Joss Whedon-scripted barbs with each other. Even with all the bonus footage though, the studio is still keeping us mostly in the dark about what exactly is going to happen in the film beyond the Avengers assembling to squabble amongst themselves and battle some kind of invading interstellar army led by Thor's newly emboldened adoptive brother, Loki. (This is a Joss Whedon joint, so there's got to be more to it than just that, right? Or maybe this time the big twist will be that there is no twist...) But through a few close viewings, we did manage to tease out a few potential story points from this two-and-a-half minute sneak peak, things like...

Strangely absent from the Super Bowl's batch of movie trailers was a teaser for The Amazing Spider-Man, the impending reboot of the lucrative Spider-Man movie franchise with Andrew Garfield taking over web-slinging duties from Tobey Maguire. The movie has certainly piqued the interest of fans, from the fact that it sends Peter back to high school and re-tells the story of how he became Spider-Man to the decision to swap the series' previous love interest Mary Jane out for Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) to the darker tone suggested by the first trailer. (Also? No more organic web shooters. Andrew's clearly got a bigger brain than Tobey.) We haven't seen any other footage from the film since that two-minute teaser debuted last July, but that changed today, when Sony held a simulcast of a new trailer and sizzle reel from The Amazing Spider-Man (due out July 3) at select theaters around the word. We attended the New York screening -- there were also presentations in Los Angeles, London and Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and Tokyo -- and here's our take on what we saw.

Almost as notable as the movie trailers we saw during the Super Bowl were the trailers we didn't see. For example, there was no Dark Knight Rises teaser (Warner Bros. clearly knew they didn't need any extra publicity for what's likely to be the summer's biggest hit), no Amazing Spider-Man, nothing for Pixar's latest offering Brave and zilch for Ridley Scott's kinda sorta Alien prequel Prometheus. On the other hand, we got our first good shot of the Avengers all assembled together, a second peek at The Hunger Games (which actually aired during the Super Bowl pre-show, but we'll count it) and what appears to be a Transformers spin-off called Battleship. Here's our take on what Hollywood had to show us, listed in alphabetical order:

With two Oscars and 31 directing credits to his name (his 32nd , J. Edgar opened in theaters yesterday) there's no question that Clint Eastwood has secured his legacy as one of Hollywood's premiere filmmakers. But when you produce that many movies over the course of a multi-decade career, there are bound to be a few flops... just ask Woody Allen. And going by the majority of reviews, J. Edgar may be one of the films that's omitted from Clint's career highlights reel. We'll have our own thoughts about the film next week, but in the meantime here are our picks -- in chronological order -- for Eastwood's five worst movies as a director.

The last filmmaker you'd associate with an Elizabethan-era drama exploring the identity of the "real" author behind the work of William Shakespeare would be Roland Emmerich, the director of such spectacle-driven, explosion-filled entertainments as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. And yet, there's Emmerich's name in the credits for the already-controversial Anonymous, which opens in theaters on Friday. It's a daunting departure for Emmerich, but he's far from the first director that's attempted to upend his image by accepting an assignment that seems well outside of his comfort zone. Here are some of the other biggest directorial change-ups from within the past decade or so.