2006’s “Happy Feet” was a jubilant, toe-tapping viewing experience…for about an hour. Its eventual slide into darker issues of animal captivity and environmental disaster was a laudable deviation but tore the pace apart, making the effort a bizarre, confused message movie featuring a cast of dancing penguins. With the cute factor off the charts, “Happy Feet” was a massive hit at the box office, which is why we’re faced with “Happy Feet Two.” Again, director George Miller looks to marry the Earth’s woe with the wiggly antics of flightless birds, but there’s really nowhere for this story to go after the conclusion of the original picture. There’s plenty of bopping, singing, and intense displays of global warming wreckage, yet the sequel is even more scattershot with these wildly disparate cinematic elements. If “Happy Feet” was tonally unsteady, “Happy Feet Two” is tone-deaf. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Is the horror genre so dried up that we now must face the wrath of calendar dates? “11-11-11” submits a story of demonic overthrow with a specific gimmick, counting down the terror of times and dates that tie into 11/11/11, a day that will bring indescribable misery to the planet and its inhabitants. “11-11-11” will also bring plenty of misery to moviegoers who choose to spend time with the latest from Darren Lynn Bousman, the underwhelming director who previously masterminded a handful of the “Saw” pictures. Straining unbelievably hard to manufacture a take on calendar apocalypse shenanigans, Bousman overcooks a simple premise, spending too much time on laborious exposition and not enough on dramatic elements, allowing wooden performances and a low-budget chill to paralyze the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Immortals” is peeled from the mind of director Tarsem Singh, a visual stylist extraordinaire who previously gave birth to ornate epics such as “The Cell” and “The Fall.” He’s obscene with screen details, often cursed with a commitment to the movement of images, pulling influences from art and high fashion to shape imposing epics devoted to adventures of the mind. While stunning and extensively produced, Singh’s features never achieve a critical feel of humanity, always cold to the touch. They are museum pieces meant to be acknowledged, not necessarily enjoyed. “Immortals” is the director’s attempt to play ball with the blockbusters, marrying “Clash of the Titans” with a night at Studio 54, executing a violent epic in his own inimitable way. Once again, Singh comes up short, as his latest is decidedly mortal — an eye-catching drag through the heavens overloaded with hackneyed screenwriting and expressionless acting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’m not even sure this qualifies as a real movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

140 minutes is a long time to devote to a bio-pic, only to learn absolutely nothing momentous about the subject. Perhaps that’s the way J. Edgar Hoover would’ve preferred his life story to be told, but as cinema, the caginess creates an interminable viewing experience. Handsomely mounted but otherwise devoid of passion and insight, “J. Edgar” is a bizarre attempt to catch a shadow, providing the audience with spicy bedroom details when the very basics of everyday motivation and behavior would be more welcome. Director Clint Eastwood shows too much leniency with Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay, dutifully following a flawed blueprint, ending up with a dismal, unenlightening motion picture, at times bordering on character assassination, even for a man as controversial as J. Edgar Hoover. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

One doesn’t buy a ticket for “London Boulevard” expecting a vigorous display of originality, reshaping the con-goes-clean subgenre with an inspiring display of invention. No, material like this needs to be served with a certain sense of familiarity, hitting low notes of brutality and intimidation in a manner that’s both exhilarating and horrifying. It’s far from a perfect film, yet “London Boulevard” carries itself quite successfully for much of its running time, spinning a familiar story with panache and attention to the needs of trembling introspection. Flawed but impressively executed, the movie has a distinct reverberation that holds the formula together, making the mean business of unlawful behavior convincing in the face of absolute predictability. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With 2005’s “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” and 2009’s “Fighting,” writer/director Dito Montiel showed interest in detailing the seedy underbelly of life in New York City, soaking up the heart and soul of a violent metropolis. Unfortunately, he’s constructed two decidedly underwhelming pictures, each falling well short of their poetic intentions. A third effort, the cop drama “The Son of No One,” joins the group, forming a trilogy of mediocrity, finding Montiel swinging wildly to capture an elusive tonality of vulnerability, which always slides into excessive melodrama. The toxic textures of the city are firmly in place, but the rest of this movie flounders, focused too intently on heavy thespian articulation and a central mystery that’s solved by the start of the second act.

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Writer/director Pedro Almodovar has always been drawn to the dark reaches of human behavior, though he usually surveys areas of pain and jealousy with a cheeky sense of humor and a heavy sense of compassion. “The Skin I Live In” is a chilling effort from the Spanish filmmaker, taking matters of revenge and obsession to extreme ends. As with any Almodovar picture, it’s a long, winding road to Hell, populated with grotesque encounters and a perverse sensuality, blended into a fascinating, gorgeously crafted tragedy with intense horror highlights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s amazing that anyone in Hollywood could find enough material to fill one movie featuring lovable(?) stoners Harold and Kumar, but here we are facing a second sequel. The baked boys are back with a seasonal romp, and outside of a few holiday tunes on the soundtrack and a cameo by Santa, it’s pretty much the same old salty stuff. Fans of the series will undoubtedly gobble up the latest round of marijuana-cloud antics, especially with the movie’s pronounced 3D presentation, permitting the characters a chance to blow bong hits into the audience, giving the party ambiance that extra dimension. Outsiders should head elsewhere to satisfy their entertainment needs, for this continuation is all about repetition, only with a slightly duller edge than before. After all, predictable stoner mischief is less cute when it features men in their late-30s. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It appears director Brett Ratner wanted a version of “Ocean’s Eleven” to toy with, so he picked up its screenwriter (Ted Griffin) and one of the stars (Casey Affleck) and built his own heist comedy. “Tower Heist” is being marketed as an endless stream of criminal antics and bellylaughs with an all-star cast, but it’s not an exceedingly silly movie. In fact, long stretches of the picture are devoted to the motivation and execution of the central crime, with laughs stuffed into the pockets of the screenplay as it unfolds. Regardless of its erratic comedic velocity, the feature is satisfying presentation of matinee entertainment, providing basic elements of suspense and financial crash wish fulfillment with an efficient filmmaking snap. It’s hardly original, but “Tower Heist” is appealing, even when it arrives wearing more of a scowl than a smile. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Chalet Girl” is fluff best served to young teenage girls dreaming of exotic locales and unattainable men, a fantasy set to blaring pop music and decorated with a heavy splattering of sarcasm. It has its charms, mostly provided by the cast, but it doesn’t add up to anything memorable, best appreciated as a lighthearted distraction for sleepover parties, handed unique life through its European locations and lovely snowscapes, lending the frame a refreshing white glow to counteract all the mundane particulars of the script. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As a thriller, “The Double” is ridiculously convoluted, spending more time trying to explain motivations and clarify names than it does serving up legitimate armrest-tearing thrills. I’m sure the filmmakers are quite proud of their cat’s cradle of a movie, but what’s lacking is a mounting sense of unrest, a tense acceleration of reveals and attacks, permitting the monkey business collected here a sense of speed to help overcome its unnecessary density. Instead, the feature labors over details as though the C.I.A. is going to use this as a training tool for new recruits, taking a very silly, logic-leaping effort with the utmost seriousness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com