“Bandslam” (C): This “High School Musical”/”Camp Rock” clone is

“Bandslam” (C): This “High School Musical”/”Camp Rock” clone is about music and high school and guilt and fitting in. It’s surprisingly not awful for something this over-familiar. Gaelan Connell stars as Will, a dweeb who is so into music that he narrates our tale through a series of unanswered fan letters to David Bowie. Will befriends Sam, the hip Goth chick (Vanessa Hudgens of “HSM”) who shares a class assignment with him. But he lets his head be turned by the pushy Charlotte (Alyson Michalka of “Phil of the Future”). She has a band. They need a manager, a guy with an ear. It’s all directed toward the big regional battle of the bands, whose winner earns a record deal. 111 mins. Rated PG for some thematic elements and mild language.

“District 9” (A): This is one intense, intelligent, well-crafted action movie — one that dazzles the eye with seamless special effects but also makes you think without preaching. “District 9” has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction, but it’s really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he’s forced to confront his identity. Aliens who arrived in their spaceship more than 20 years ago have now been quarantined in cramped and dangerous slums; the nerdy bureaucrat charged with moving them to new quarters (the tremendous Sharlto Copley) is transformed in the process. 113 mins. Rated R for bloody violence and pervasive language.

“The Final Destination” (C): The fourth and reportedly last entry in this horror series about young people confronted with visions of their impending deaths. They try to escape their fates, but death always catches up. Why didn’t Warner Bros. show it to the press? The last time a “Final Destination” film screened for local critics was back in 2000 with the original. Why we’d see it: The action sequences — these teens die in some of the most outlandish “accidents” imaginable — are off the charts ... and they ought to be cool in 3-D. We also appreciate the series’ sick sense of humor. Why we wouldn’t: They’re all the same movie with interchangeable (not to mention disposable) cast members. 1:22 mins. Rated R.

“Funny People” (C): This Judd Apatow-directed film provides the eternally adolescent Adam Sandler with yet another opportunity to show his serious side. But it also allows Apatow to display some previously unexplored darker instincts, with a story that mixes his typically raunchy-guy talk with deeper discussions about mortality. Both men rise to the challenge. But Apatow should have maintained his focus on the friendship that forms between Sandler (as superstar comedian George Simmons) and Seth Rogen (as aspiring stand-up Ira Wright) as well as the established comics and wannabes that surround them. 145 mins. R for language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality.

“G-Force” (C): Jerry Bruckheimer might just own your children. The action-mogul has teamed up with Disney to concoct a live-action/animated apocalypse entertainment with equal parts high-tech violent gadgetry and soft-fur anthropomorphism. This noisy caper movie is about a kindly computer geek who devises a chip to make humans understand animal speech and who trains a squad of genetically engineered rodent superspies to save the world. 90 mins. Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor.

“The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard” (D): Enduring the soul-sucking process of buying a used car is bad enough. Watching a movie about soulless used-car salesmen is even worse — especially when it’s a comedy that strains desperately for raunchy, politically incorrect laughs. Except for a couple of amusing lines here and there, the results just feel flat and generally unpleasant. 90 mins. Rated R for sexual content, nudity, pervasive language and some drug material.

“Halloween II” (D): What is it? Mental patient/boogeyman Michael Myers is back, cutting up teens and tracking down his little sister. It’s a remake of the 1981 sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror hit “Halloween.” Why didn’t Dimension Films show it to the press? “We are not screening the film for critics or promotionally,” the studio said in a statement. “Not unlike some other blockbusters this summer, we are holding the suspense for opening.” Ooooh ... can’t you feel the suspense building? Why we’d see it: Musician-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie has real talent (see his “Halloween” remake and, even better, “The Devil’s Rejects”). Why we wouldn’t: We’re burned out on the franchise. Aren’t nine “Halloween” movies enough, already? 1:41 mins. Rated R.

“Inglourious Basterds” (C): Everything that’s thrilling and maddening about director Quentin Tarantino’s films coexists and co-mingles here: the visual dexterity and the interminable dialogue, the homage to cinema and the drive to redefine it, the compelling bursts of energy and the numbingly draggy sections. And then there is the violence, of course: violence as a source of humor, as sport, violence merely because it looks cool on camera. The film follows a band of Jewish American soldiers, led by twangy Tennessean Lt. Aldo Raine (a hilarious Brad Pitt), who hunt Nazis. 152 mins. Rated R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.

“Julie & Julia” (C): The Julia parts are a delight, but the ones about Julie? More like an annoying distraction. Writer-director Nora Ephron has woven together the real-life stories of two women separated by decades and a body of water but connected by a love of food and a quest for identity. One is Julia Child (Meryl Streep), the larger-than-life TV cook and author who inspired untold numbers of ambitious gourmands to embrace French cuisine the way she had. The other is Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a New York cubicle dweller who spent a year making all 524 recipes in Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and blogging about it. Ephron cuts back and forth between their lives — reminiscent of her earlier hits “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” — and too often spells out the obvious parallels. 123 mins. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality.

“Orphan” (C): Esther is unfailingly polite, a sensitive painter and pianist, a vision of traditional feminine charm in her prim dresses and bows. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, working from a devilishly clever script by David Leslie Johnson, maintains steady suspense while mercifully mixing in some moments of dark humor. 123 mins. Rated R for disturbing violent content, some sexuality and language.

“The Perfect Getaway” (C): The whole movie is essentially one big red herring, flopping around on an idyllic Hawaiian beach, desperately trying to call attention to itself. Everyone’s a suspect and no one’s a suspect, and writer-director David Twohy’s raison d’etre with this thriller — aside from jolting us — is to mess with our brains and keep us guessing until he reveals his Big Twist. It’s not as earth-shattering as “Bruce Willis is actually dead” but it’s a pretty good one, and it’ll make you go back and think twice about what the characters did and said to make sure it all makes sense. It does, but it’s also a gimmick, and a self-conscious one at that. 98 mins. Rated R for graphic violence, language including sexual references and some drug use.

“Post Grad” (D): This comedy about a driven, hardworking college student who can’t find a job after she graduates has no idea what it wants to be, and as a result it gets nothing right. Alexis Bledel maintains a steady level of wide-eyed pluckiness as Ryden Malby. When she doesn’t get the job she applied for, she ends up back home in the San Fernando Valley with the kind of eccentric family you find only in the movies. Ryden rebuffs the romantic advances of her best friend, and instead enjoys a fling with her sexy Brazilian neighbor (Rodrigo Santoro), even though — duh — the guy she’s supposed to be with has been right in front of her all along. 89 mins. PG-13 for sexual situations and brief strong language.

“Shorts” (C): Robert Rodriguez mashes up “Shorts,” fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing and following tangential story lines. But the editing high jinks don’t obscure that this family adventure film is essentially about a group of kids who end up with a “wishing rock,” a rainbow-colored stone that grants the holder any wish. And as tends to happen with such things (be they oil lamps or monkey paws), trouble ensues. 89 mins. Rated PG for mild action and some rude humor.

“Taking Woodstock” (C): Ang Lee hasn’t directed a comedy since “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman” back-to-back in 1993 and 1994. And so, on the heels of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Lust, Caution,” Lee lightens up — and the result is actually too lightweight. He approaches the fabled concert from an outsider’s angle, which is innovative. But in telling the story of the people who inadvertently launched the event, Lee leaves out the substance. Elliot Teichberg (comic Demetri Martin) , a New York City interior designer, moves back home with his Russian immigrant parents (Henry Goodman and an over-the-top Imelda Staunton) to help them salvage their Catskills motel. An arts and music festival in a neighboring town has lost its permit. As president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce, Elliot thinks it would boost the economy to play host instead. He happens to know a guy named Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) with a 600-acre dairy farm. R for graphic nudity, some sexual content, drug use and language. 120 min.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” (C): Eric Bana plays a guy named Henry who can travel through time, only he can’t control where or when he goes. He’d be a frustrating guy to fall in love with, but Rachel McAdams’ character, Clare, must be made of stronger stuff than the rest of us, because not only does she tolerate Henry’s pesky inconsistency, she believes he’s her destiny, and that he has been since the first time she saw him as a precocious 6-year-old girl. 107 mins. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, brief disturbing images, nudity and sexuality.

“The Ugly Truth” (D): In a battle-of-the-sexes comedy like this, the guy and the girl who hate each other at the beginning realize they’re meant for each other by the end. But there’s nothing even remotely likable, much less lovable, about Katherine Heigl’s Abby Richter. She’s a control freak who runs a tight ship at a Sacramento TV station, producing the morning news with unflappable efficiency and zero creativity. When Gerard Butler’s brash Mike Chadway gets hired to boost ratings at the station, he and Abby immediately clash. Naturally, that will change. 100 mins. Rated R for sexual content and language.