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CHICAGO – Remember that episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” where Rob and Laura Petrie become convinced that the baby they took home from the hospital is not their own? Imagine if they were right and that 18 years had passed before they came to this crushing realization. And imagine if the birth parents weren’t a kindly black couple, and instead the Petrie’s sworn enemies?

CHICAGO – There are so many lens flares in the hazy, visually drab “Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome” that it looks like J.J. Abrams sneezed on the lens. And that’s not all “Galactica” creators Michael Taylor and David Eick took as inspiration from Abrams’ slickly generic yet crowd-pleasing “Star Trek” installments. Yet this latest attempt at rebooting the beloved sci-fi franchise is a complete misfire.

CHICAGO – “The Man with the Iron Fists” is the most tedious picture in many a moon. How, you may ask, can wall-to-wall action possibly by tedious? Two reasons: 1.) The action is nonstop, and 2.) The characters are impossible to care about. The single take of Uma Thurman’s devastated outburst upon awakening from her coma is the emotional hook that keeps the audience engaged as she wreaks her path of vengeance through both volumes of “Kill Bill.”

CHICAGO – In contrast with the other subpar supernatural blockbusters released last August, Nick Murphy’s “The Awakening” lacks the cheesy thrills of “The Possession” and the hilarious ineptitude of “The Apparition.” Instead, it’s a humorless and ponderous bore buoyed only slightly by its vivid lead performance from Rebecca Hall, a supremely gifted character actress who has yet to receive the cinematic showcase she deserves.

CHICAGO – Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are an awfully cute couple. Their effortless puppy-dog chemistry is sweet without being cloying and endearing without verging into treacle. Resembling a more stretched-out and irreverent Zach Braff, Shepard makes Bell appear more at ease than she ever has before on film. I can’t imagine a better pairing for a romantic comedy.

CHICAGO – Perhaps acknowledging that his status amongst Hollywood muckrakers has diminished in recent years, Oliver Stone follows up his toothless Bush biopic and needless “Wall Street” sequel with a wholly inconsequential yet thoroughly diverting little thriller. It’s pure trash that also happens to be Stone’s most compulsively watchable effort since 1995’s “Nixon.”

CHICAGO – Nothing causes would-be lovers to fall into one another’s arms quite like a good, old-fashioned apocalypse. The nerve one lacks to pursue a romantic obsession tends to reemerge when faced with impending extinction. While Abel Ferrara’s “4:44 Last Day on Earth” and David Mackenzie’s “Perfect Sense” took a brooding look at last-minute romance, director Lorene Scafaria heads in quite a different direction.

CHICAGO – “Silent House” inspires the same strange mixture of feelings that I felt while watching fascinating yet severely flawed pictures like “The Life Aquatic” or “I Heart Huckabees.” My rational mind recognizes that the film doesn’t quite work, and yet my inner cinephile urges me to recommend it anyway. Here’s a movie that’s nearly worth seeing in spite of itself.

CHICAGO – The sex comedies of Judd Apatow have rendered “American Pie” passé, but that certainly isn’t going to stop the franchise from pumping out paychecks. When compared to “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Superbad” (not to mention Lena Dunham’s “Girls” series), the “Pie” farces are shallow and sophomoric. No wonder they’re most popular among junior high schoolers.

CHICAGO – A decade ago, director Paul Weitz made a wonderful film about the unusual friendship that developed between an aging loner and a fatherless youth preoccupied with the well-being of his suicidal mother. The picture was 2002’s “About a Boy,” and it featured Hugh Grant in a performance sorely deserving of an Oscar nomination.