Synopsis: The Ruins follows a group of friends who become entangled in a brutal struggle for survival after visiting a remote archaeological dig in the Mexican jungle - where they discover something deadly living among the ruins.

Synopsis: Dodge Connolly, a charming, brash football hero, is determined to guide his team from bar brawls to packed stadiums. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his ragtag ranks. The captain hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport finally capture the country’s attention. Welcome to the team Carter Rutherford, America’s favorite son. A golden-boy war hero who single-handedly forced multiple German soldiers to surrender in WWI, Carter has dashing good looks and unparalleled speed on the field. This new champ is almost too good to be true, and Lexie Littleton aims to prove that’s the case. A cub journalist playing in the big leagues, Lexie is a spitfire newswoman who suspects there are holes in Carter’s war story. But while she digs, the two teammates start to become serious off-field rivals for her fickle affections. As the new game of pro-football becomes less like the freewheeling sport he knew and loved, Dodge must both fight to keep his guys together and to get the girl of his dreams. Finding that love and football have a surprisingly similar playbook, however, he has one maneuver he will save just for the fourth quarter.

Story: When U.S. soldiers return home from fighting in Iraq (and obviously anywhere else not touched upon in this movie), the war doesn’t necessarily end. Stop- Loss follows a trio of those soldiers – Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) – from Tikrit all the way back to their small Texas hometown, to which they return heroes. Brandon is the natural-born leader with a solid head on his shoulders; Tommy’s head is considerably less solid; and Steve is the textbook alpha-male, quick to explode bits of virility. However, they’re all now struggling to adjust to the normalcy of home life – even Brandon, who can’t shake the horrifying combat flashbacks. But then Brandon learns that he has been stop-lossed: forced to return to active duty in Iraq against his will. The direct order couldn’t have come at a worse time for Brandon, who had just washed his hands of Iraq’s atrocities and was planning on staying home for good. Before long, he’s AWOL, on his way to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to find the senator who promised to help him. Brandon makes a few painful but necessary pit stops en route to D.C. that further fuel his contempt for the war. Ultimately, he is faced with a can’t-win decision.

Acting: The acting in Stop-Loss, much like the film itself, runs very hot and cold. For some viewers, of course, it’ll all be hot primarily because of Phillippe and Tatum, both of whom are in Army mode (read: shirtless). But the performances are a slightly different story. Phillippe has carved out a niche for himself with these brooding, serious roles of late (i.e., Breach), but they don’t seem like much of a stretch. He succeeds for the most part as Stop-Loss’ imperiled protagonist, although he has a tendency to kick it into angst overdrive on occasion. Tatum (Step Up), on the other hand, rarely succeeds in the movie and does seem like he’s stretching his limits during scenes that call for conveyance of real emotion – scenes of emotional shirtlessness, if you will, as opposed to the physical kind. Indie veteran Gordon-Levitt (The Lookout), as usual, is the best of the bunch, making easy work of the movie’s most genuine, complex character. Abbie Cornish (Somersault) – Phillippe’s rumored real-life girlfriend – plays Steve’s girlfriend and the one with whom Brandon drives across the country. She hides her Australian accent well enough for credibility as a born-and-bred Texan, but her performance and presence are forgettable.

Direction: Writer-director Kimberly Peirce apparently doesn’t make movies unless she needs to get something off her chest. Nine years ago, she had something very powerful to say on the subject of transgender discrimination and sexual violence with Boys Don’t Cry (for which Hilary Swank won an Oscar), and now the Iraq War is on her brain. Whereas most of today’s vocal war opponents simply aim to incite anger and outrage over the war, Peirce does them all one better: She’s staunchly anti-war, sure, but she is also pro-soldier, and Stop-Loss is the soldiers’ story before it is a Bush diatribe. Peirce is effective at speaking on the soldiers’ behalf and making the final third of the film very stirring. But the transition to get to that point? Not so much. The difference between much of the film and its final act is like night and day – or more fittingly, like dramatization and documentary. Stop-Loss is an MTV Films production and feels every bit like it early on, complete with overly juiced-up theatrics and music that detract from the story’s human aspect. Which would be one thing if it stayed that course throughout, but it doesn’t; it makes an unsubtle turn near the end, switching from a vendetta, man-on-the-run story to an insightful, topical commentary on the war and its soldiers. Fortunately, that commentary outweighs the unevenness.

Review: When Stop-Loss finally ceases beating around the bush – no, not George W. – it’s powerful, stirring and even bipartisan in a sense. Unfortunately, it takes a while to get there.

Hollywood.com rating: 1?2

Story: It’s basically the first Spider-Man film, with dirtier jokes. The plotline dutifully follows – and upends – all the story points of the wall-crawler’s big screen opus, replacing Peter Parker with Rick Riker (Drake Bell), a geeky high schooler bitten by a genetically enhanced dragonfly who then gains requisite superpowers. Rick has the pert love interest (Sara Paxton), the megalomaniacal nemesis the Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), and a dotty, doting uncle-aunt combo (Leslie Nielsen and Marion Ross) as well as walk-ons encounters from other superheroes spoofmeisters including Tracy Morgan as Professor X, Craig Bierko as Wolverine, Simon Rex as the Human Torch and Pamela Anderson in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her turn as the Invisible Girl, quite literally. But despite some allusions to a handful of recent heroic hits, Superhero Movie sticks surprisingly close to the Spider-Man template only, and never adequately attacks the entire phenomenon of comic book flicks.

Acting: To use accomplished parody film icons like Nielsen (Naked Gun) and Robert Hays (Airplane) is to invite disastrous comparison. Fortunately, disaster doesn’t strike – not entirely. The new kids, Bell (of Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh” fame) and Paxton (Aquamarine), are sunny enough on-screen personalities but don’t quite have the comic chops or the oh-so-serious ironic approach to mark them as standouts in the genre. Most of the star cameos fall flatter than you’d hope, though Marion Ross surprises with a go-for-broke turn that will forever color the way you think of “Happy Days’” Mrs. Cunningham. McDonald does all the film’s heavy lifting, gleefully chewing the scenery, spitting it out and then re-chewing the remains. Special props go to Miles Fisher for his brief but brilliant send-up of Tom Cruise.

Direction: Superhero Movie neither soars to the silly heights of its predecessor Scary Movies nor crashes to the ground like the dreadful Epic Movie. Craig Mazin, who wrote the third and fourth Scary Movie offerings and helmed the 2000 superhero spoof The Specials, has enough of a solid feel for the material. The laughs come at a decent pace, though lots of the gags lack inspiration and too many of the spot-on shot swipes from the Spider-Man films stop at imitation and rarely achieve a greater sense of parody and fun. Still, if a silly look at superheroics is what you’re after – and TV’s “The Tick” is still lingering in your Netflix queue – then Superhero Movie wins the day in the end.

Review: This latest churn-‘em-and-burn-‘em genre parody flick offers a handful of sophomoric (in a good way) and worthwhile laughs to even the most serious-minded comic-book fans.

Hollywood.com rating: