Letters to Juliet is like a puppy. It’s sweet, cute, and relies on long looks from its big eyes to get away with being bad. And it’s so adorable that you don’t want to be mean to it, but sometimes you have to be stern so it knows that something is not okay.

When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) takes the stage at an Expo at the beginning of Iron Man 2, he does so in a manner completely befitting his self-assured bravado – by jumping out of a plane and landing on a platform covered with scantily clad dancers. It’s a move that only a man who knows he’s got a hit on his hands could make. Which is also why, though Steve Jobs is too scared to do it, director Jon Favreau can pull it off. He knows that the Iron Man franchise is returning as reigning champ and is going to set the bar for summer movie blockbusters.

Somehow, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) has slithered its way into theaters. Arguably, this indie horror, written and directed by Tom Six, should have never made it out of the damp corners of a genre geek’s hard-drive. But it did, and we have IFC to thank. Or hate. Centipede is surely to draw strong opinions on both sides, but what’s certain is that it’s a film that cannot be unseen.

With a rash of slasher film remakes in the past decade, it was inevitable that Nightmare would get its own update. In the company of more conventional films like Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and countless imitators, there’s probably no other horror movie of the era more worthy of a fresh look by a new audience.

It’s just too easy. When a film is titled The Greatest and it’s not the greatest, it’s just too tempting to make wordplay of it. But I’ll try to resist.

Bearing the title of The Losers, the underachiever of a film — a veritable step-bastard of The A-Team, too, in more ways than one — sets the bar pretty low. The moniker is supposed to be ironic, of course. But after sitting through the 98-minute film, it just proves to be true. That isn’t to say the Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard)-directed film isn’t fun. As anyone who’s been through high school knows, the aimless slackers can be a hoot. The Losers rise to meet such ascribed low expectations, and dodge anything of intelligence or quality like it’s trigonometry — under the cover of bazookas, quips and bullets.

The least offensive thing about Kick-Ass is its title. The most offensive? That’s way too hard to pinpoint.

Is The Eclipse a ghost story? Not completely. Will it haunt you? Absolutely.

”Just accept it.” That’s the advice given to Perseus when he discovers a sword from the gods in the forest. There’s no good explanation for it and no explanation is attempted. The same advice holds true for Clash of the Titans. It’s an action movie made for thrills. That’s it. Just accept it. It’s conceivable you might enjoy it.

If time travel were real, and it were possible to go back in time and change the future, I would return to the moment just before entering the theater for Hot Tub Time Machine and take myself out, Tonya Harding-style, because that would be more humane than sitting through the film. Another alternative would be to go back and stop writers Josh Heald, Sean Anders, and John Morris from scripting the damn thing in the first place.

It’s simply amazing how wonderfully director Atom Egoyan squanders his incredible cast in his latest film, Chloe. He manages to take a sexual thriller like Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction and turn it into Ishtar.

Attendees at SXSW 2010 were treated to a “super secret screening” of Centurion, directed by Neil Marshall, the man behind one of the best horror films in recent memory, The Descent. Marshall’s recent Doomsday was a bit of a miss, so I was anxious to see what Centurion might hold in terms of the director’s art and style this time around. The blood work and gritty sensibilities clearly mark this as a Marshall film, but the overall blandness does as well. Centurion, for all the booming, blood and promising historical context, is a pretty boring film.

MacGruber, which began as a small Saturday Night Live sketch back in 2007, has today turned into a feature-length film thanks to director Jorma Taccone (writer on SNL). Suffice to say, if you don’t care for the skit, which parodies the popular MacGuyer character from the late ’80s, you won’t care for the movie. MacGruber solicits audible laughs through absurdity and shock, which is, of course, expected. It’s hard not to chuckle at Will Forte bunny-hopping around nude with a celery stalk up his ass, or Val Kilmer playing a villain named Dieter Von Cunth; and the various occasions to declare that it’s time “to pound some Cunth.” MacGruber is pure blockbuster silliness, executed in a decently (if not impressively) seasoned way.

Folks at SXSW were probably a little bit confused when they heard a documentary called Bear Nation was screening, and that it had nothing to do with the animal. Well, at least not in the literal sense. The film is actually a look at a sub-culture of the gay community that is traditionally identified by their bear-like characteristics — namely, big and hairy. Directed by Malcolm Ingram, Bear Nation is a charming and forthright look at this brotherhood of burly men. The film poses more questions than it answers, but on the whole it’s an intriguing and enlightening anthropological excursion.

For a film that has such little action and movement, Helena from the Wedding is surprisingly captivating and in the most subtle of ways. Director Joseph Infantolino leverages all the drama of an extended stare and implications of the classic, troubled exchange between couples: “You OK? I’m fine.” Surrounding three-and-half couples that spend a New Years Eve in a snowy cabin, Helena packs an impressive spectrum of relationship conditions — newly weds, divorce, pregnancy, cheating, spousal inequality, wandering eyes — into the small vacation home. With the cold backdrop and dreary domestic scenarios, Helena may not be a particularly bright yarn, but it’s intensely genuine and emotionally vibrant.

Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass may turn out to be the most exciting film of SXSW 2010. The odd-ball take on modern-day superheroes is a supremely twisted, fun take on the genre tale that lives up to its name, despite some missteps here and there.

Most know the generic meaning of a “mama’s boy.” A son walking into the bathroom while his mom is taking a shower — see-through shower curtain, mind you — is something a touch beyond that descriptor. Marisa Tomei being that mother aside, the parent-son relationship depicted in Cyrus is a pretty taboo one. It’s with that unconventional context that the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair) bring us a film that is at once creepy, meaningful and most of all damn funny — not to mention one of the best films of SXSW 2010.

There are so many mysteries on the island, it feels like you’re never going to get any answers. Is there a way off the island? Can the others on the island be trusted? And are dead people really speaking to the living? Just when the questions make your head start to spin, you remember that Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t on a plane that crashed and you’re not watching “Lost,” you’re watching Shutter Island.

Cupid! Hey, Cupid! Come over here and shoot me. Right through my eye, please, because it would be less painful than having to watch Garry Marshall‘s latest confectionary concoction. Valentine’s Day is already a manufactured holiday filled with cute rhymes in lacey cards, candied hearts that induce nausea, and flowers, flowers and more flowers. There’s little need for another gag-inducing love-fest unless it’s good. And Marshall’s Valentine’s Day is not.

There’s a sweetness to Alice Sebold‘s 2002 mega-bestseller “The Lovely Bones” that belies the story of a young girl’s brutal rape and killing. That same sweetness, so magnificently captured on the page, is missing from Peter Jackson‘s film adaptation of Sebold’s book.

The average (sex) teen-aged boy thinks (sex) about sex (sex) every 7 seconds (sex). While this might be an old wives’ tale (like that one about hairy palms) you wouldn’t know it from Youth in Revolt. It’s a quintessential coming of age story revolving around sex, sex, and more sex.

Crazy Heart could also be known as The Wrestler: The Musical: washed up has-been tries to piece together a life out of a once-successful career while fighting addiction, trying to reconcile with an estranged child, and wooing a younger woman. But whereas Mickey Rourke played a wrestler, Jeff Bridges plays singer/songwriter Bad Blake and provides a soundtrack to his misery. Fittingly, his music is the music of pain: country.

Five minutes into A Single Man, fashion designer Tom Ford‘s directorial debut, you realize you’re seeing art. At first it seems to be that highly esoteric, stylistic art meant to alienate and rise above the masses. Then the film morphs into art in its purest form. For here is a visionary creating his masterpiece and [...]

“Elementary, my dear Watson.” If you just became indignant about the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote that famous line, you will likely not enjoy Guy Ritchie‘s Sherlock Holmes, because you will never get past the overhaul of the famous detective (Robert Downey Jr.) as an action star who jumps out of windows, [...]

James Cameron‘s Avatar is decidedly one of the (if not the) most anticipated films of 2009. This weekend, the nearly $250-million alien tale of epic proportions hits theaters. And it’s about time. Avatar is more than 15-years in the making. Poor Cameron had to wait for technology to catch up to his vision for the ground-breaking yarn before it could be fully spun. The film’s visuals clearly benefited from this extended period of study and execution. The writing and the plot, on the other hand, didn’t. As Avatar’s appearance continued getting better with time, its story and structured waned. Considering the holiday time of year, it’s ironic that to enjoy Avatar is to revel in the wrapping. Remember that when opening your presents in the coming weeks.