The last time David DeFalco stepped behind a camera, it was for the 2005 shocker, “Chaos.” A morally bankrupt, technically abysmal reworking of “Last House on the Left, “Chaos” strived to be the final word on screen inhumanity; instead, it was insufferable, highlighting DeFalco’s diseased world view and inability to coherently piece together a feature film. Dialing back the gruesomeness to fiddle around with the DTV action market, DeFalco returns with “Wrong Side of Town,” a burly, brainless exercise in tough guy cinema, with a slew of D-list celebrities and professional wrestling buddies to help fill out his limited vision for weightlifter heroism.

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It’s refreshing to see Robert De Niro shove aside his tough guy screen persona now and then, to remind viewers used to his antics that beyond his icy glare and powder keg temper lies a uniquely sensitive actor. “Everybody’s Fine” is a thorough tear-jerker, but the feature earns most of its sentiment, due in great part to De Niro and his gentle, worrywart lead performance. I’m not suggesting this is De Niro at his most invested and commanding, but his communication of concern adds a needed push of authenticity to a film forever on the precipice of pure schmaltz.

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“Shutter Island” is director Martin Scorsese’s ode to madness. Immaculately crafted and imposingly scored, the picture is a feast for the senses. However, that trademarked virtuoso touch doesn’t translate to the most riveting sit. For the first time in a long time, Scorsese seems to be overcompensating, firing on all cylinders to prevent the inherent stasis of the plot from settling in prematurely. While it’s destined to be pulled apart by film scholars for decades to come, “Shutter Island” remains an anomaly for the maestro, who feverishly works over the script with his typical widescreen gusto, only to end up with a flaccid central mystery barely worth the exertion.

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The painless comparison to make for the French release “A Prophet” is to position the picture in the shadow of “The Godfather.” In terms of epic crime film storytelling and patient character transformation, it’s a solid DNA match, yet “A Prophet” is a far more feral, scattered production, forgoing any sort of reassuring sweep to snap around like a cobra, striking randomly at anyone who steps near it. For better or worse, the picture pulses with menace, creating a striking portrait of the years spent deep inside a turbulent prison society.

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It’s fairly lofty screenwriting ambition to rework Dante’s “Inferno” into a modern comedy about insurance fraud investigation, and it’s a shame “Saint John of Las Vegas” just isn’t determined enough to sell the madness, spending a measly 75 minutes to work its way around primo psychological real estate. It’s a black comedy with a few exceptional scenes, but never gels together convincingly, making the artistic swing for the fences more of a quiet disappointment than a captivating leap of faith.

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Writer/director Adam Green is just asking for trouble with his ski lift disaster movie “Frozen.” It takes an extraordinary amount of patience to tolerate this picture, and an even greater suppression of basic survival logic to enjoy it. Hey, it’s just a movie, right? However, “Frozen” makes it a point to splash blatant illogic in the face of filmgoers, while filling out the rest of the picture with tepid grotesqueries to keep the movie shuffling along.

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“The Wolfman” endured a rough journey from production to the big screen, with numerous reshoots, heavy editorial attention, and a slew of missed released dates. The fractured history of the film’s formation is easily viewed onscreen. A mangled, short-sheeted stab at reanimating a horror icon, “The Wolfman” is a mess; it’s a poorly-stitched, overthought, ear-splitting bungle of a picture, dragging a few normally trustworthy filmmaking professionals down with it.

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This latest effort to ignite a new generation of “Harry Potter” literary franchise hysteria for theaters has played its cards smartly by bringing in the actual director of the first two “Harry Potter” pictures. Chris Columbus returns to fantasy filmmaking after his disastrous flirtation with teen comedy in last summer’s “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” but a little rust still remains on his filmmaking antennae. Boldly produced and vivid throughout, “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” is a clunky kid-sized epic, able to conjure colossal acts of Greek myth wonderment, but never brave enough to shut its pie hole and let the audience process the screen magic.

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Valentine’s Day is a time of romance, endearment, and devotion. “Valentine’s Day” is a Garry Marshall film that’s unpleasant, occasionally mean-spirited, and ripples with Marshall’s prehistoric sense of humor. One’s a dubious holiday intended to boost the power of passion (along with card and candy sales), while the other is an insufferable feature film that’s miraculously saved by a few charming co-stars. I’m sure Marshall is a sweet fellow, but his movies have become clueless, klutzy abominations, with “Valentine’s Day” an affront to the art of love, somehow roping in an all-star cast to help sell the pure ick.

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“Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” is a poignant story of animal attachment, glazed with a sporadically viscous coating of sentimentality. Based on a true story, which was made into a blockbuster Japanese motion picture in 1987, “Hachi” has been Americanized, taking an account of lifelong affection to an attractive Northeastern playground, not to mention hauling Richard Gere in for some required star power. A circular routine of smiles and tears, “Hachi” is delightfully gentle and engaging, refusing to bloat the material past an elementary message of canine loyalty.

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“House of the Devil” is a throwback horror film that actually makes an effort to look and sound like a bygone era. Granted, 1980’s genre nostalgia is nothing cinematically revolutionary, perhaps even tiresome cliché at this point, but writer/director Ti West keeps to the task at hand. Forgoing irony or vile retro winks, “Devil” plays it straight. While that doesn’t generate the most riveting suspense piece of the year, it does deliver a hugely satisfying chiller that’s effectively minimal and marvelously made.

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There’s a power of mimicry and lavish flight photography that keeps the bio-pic “Amelia” in the air. This is not a strong motion picture, nor a particularly informative one. Instead, it’s a finely polished soap opera from a wonderful director starring fantastic actors, and nobody can quite connect the ambition of the piece with the execution. Moments of midair ecstasy hold it together and without those peaceful pauses of expression, “Amelia” is simply mawkish entertainment, stable and worthwhile for the uncommitted moviewatcher, but it never finds a comfortable altitude.

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I’ll give director Drew Barrymore this: she made Ellen Page appealing. “Whip It” takes the tart-tongued “Juno” star to the crashin’, smashin’ world of roller derby for a coming-of-age dramedy that bites off a little more than it can chew. Energetically woven by Barrymore, the film suffers from an acute case of the adaptation blues, trying to cram in as many plot points as possible to fill its belly with caloric melodrama. It’s a diluted journey of feminine self-realization, better with bruises and teamwork than it is with pliable matters of the heart.

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With “District B13” and last year’s runaway train of parental purpose, “Taken,” Pierre Morel positioned himself as a superior action director, and one of the few film minds able to process producer Luc Besson’s harebrained story ideas and cockamamie characterizations. “From Paris with Love” is their latest collaboration, but the timing is off, the script’s stupidity is more grating than endearing, and Morel is forced to contend with a giant slab of Hormel’s finest (assuming the shape of John Travolta) for this action-comedy. These are simple ingredients, but Morel and Besson appear distracted for this round of Euro smash-em-up, making the film disappointingly clumsy and strangely unadventurous.

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As strikingly animated and superlatively textured a motion picture as “The Secret of Kells” is, it can be a little aloof. A blend of history and mythology, the feature is a distinctive enterprise that aims to challenge family audiences and animation purists with a tenaciously 2-D snapshot of the world. It’s a passionate, dreamlike offering of filmmaking that requires the viewer to surrender to its often challenging storytelling, yet the time invested with this fringe player in the animation marketplace clash of the titans is rewarded with a resourceful, exquisite tale of tradition and education.

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