Let’s face it — we need summer movies. The money they take in is a positive sign of life in a movie business that’s been on the proverbial landslide for the last few years. While the 2011 lineup appears to be sequel and reboot heaven, there’s plenty more to make it an appealing grab-bag of options.  

The most exciting part of the latest installment in horror maestro Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson's slasher deconstruction series is the intro, which is how the original was able to grab audiences — by offing a familiar actress during the pre-title sequence, it meant that anything could happen. Grade: C-plus.  

It’s tempting to call Rubber an intimate glimpse into the tire condition. But that might seem excessively flippant. True, it’s hard not to describe this new independent film about a killer tire, which can be seen first-run on Time Warner Cable’s video-on-demand platform, without allowing for some humor.  

If you're reading this section of the paper, odds are you're a) someone over the age of 18 and b) someone who is interested in what's going on in movie theaters. Congratulations on being a survivor in a species on the verge of extinction. It's no breaking news story to anyone who follows the movie industry — or anyone who looks occasionally at the movie listings — that mainstream movies are directed overwhelmingly at teenage boys.  

Director Miguel Arteta knows how to handle outsiders caught in comedic flux and, in Ed Helms, he’s got an emerging performer who gets the laughs without overplaying his hand. Helms displays an engaging charm and an understanding of the real human drama, even in the face of utter outrageousness that puts him squarely in the camp of comedic actors like Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. Grade: B-plus.   

Yet another unique genre hybrid, Cedar Rapids centers itself on the unlikely coming-of-age story of Tim Lippe (Ed Helms, who’s both affecting and hilarious), an alarmingly nave but perpetually goodnatured 34-year-old insurance salesman who’s never been outside his tiny hometown of Brown Valley, Wisc. Lippe’s life is turned upside down when he has to represent his company at an insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he meets a trio of colleagues that will forever alter his once-narrow worldview.  

To listen to Variety’s 3-D guru David Cohen talk you’d think that we’ll all be wearing 3-D glasses for every movie we see in the coming years. He compares the advent of 3-D to the arrival of sound in cinema. You’d never hear Cohen say that only 70 percent of the population can properly see 3-D due to a variety of ocular anomalies that include things such as color blindness. Naturally, that means only seven out of every 10 people can actually see 3-D.  

As things stand, this is certainly not the strangest adaptation of the Bard; in fact, it could be argued that Gnomeo & Juliet is rather conventional, especially for kiddie 3-D fare, when a few creative sparks (and a richer use of the extra dimension) might have been able to woo a few more hearts. Just be thankful Shakespeare never came up with a sequel. Grade: C  

'Single White Female' redux would be a better title for Christian E. Christiansen’s 'The Roommate,' except any connection with that film might lead audiences to believe that 'The Roommate' has a hint of credibility, which it most certainly does not. Grade: F  

James Cameron lends his immense clout to this production about a team of spelunkers with all sorts of internal drama, but the journey fraught with painfully dull dialogue and thematic issues that are simply too on-the-nose. Grade: D-plus.