Contributor: Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Drillbit Taylor

What kind of bodyguard can you hire with a few weeks’ allowance and some Bar Mitzvah money? A lying, cheating, stealing, conniving one who looks an awful lot like Owen Wilson.

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The Stepfather

All families have their ups and downs. But Michael’s family is having a particularly trying time. Maybe that’s because his stepfather is a serial killer.

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Iron Man 3

I had hoped to be inspired. Instead, I was merely entertained. Iron Man 3 is what you’ve come to expect from a standard superhero movie

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Fantastic Mr. Fox

Mr. Fox has a good life: a wife, a child, a nice burrow in the woods, a comfy job at the local newspaper. Why, then, does he want to kill chickens so badly?

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New in Town

Before she can say ‘BRRR, it’s cold’ three times fast, Miami girl Renée Zellweger is up to her knees in snow and small-town values.

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Evening

Claire Danes and Vanessa Redgrave embody the morning and evening of one woman’s life in a story full of love and loss, decisions, duty and despair.

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Wanderlust

Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston try to get away from it all at a commune of sorts. If only we could get away from this movie.

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Good Luck Chuck

Jessica Alba has been telling everybody she’ll never appear nude in a movie. Instead, she should have been promising to never appear at all in ‘Good Luck Chuck.’ (It’s that bad.)

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The Debt

A remake of an Israeli thriller, The Debt examines the price of a lie and the weight of the world resting on the shoulders of three spies tasked with bringing a Nazi war criminal to justice.

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Halloween II

Rob Zombie wants us to see Michael Myers’ face—and then to watch as he obliterates the faces of others.

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Oblivion

Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi actioner mashes up all sorts of things. And some of them aren’t even alien. It’s clever and mindless. It’s fun and foul. It’s instructive and destructive.

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Scream 4

After an 11-year hiatus, the Scream franchise sharpens its knife to skewer the slasher film genre, our celebrity-obsessed culture … and its own audience.

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Awake

This Jessica Alba-Hayden Christensen thriller borrows a supposedly real medical misfire to stage a harrowing journey to the OR for open heart surgery.

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To the Wonder

Inspirational (and insufferable) director Terrence Malick is back with a sometimes wonderful, sometimes sexual (and always unusual) rumination on love and faith.

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Evil Dead

You’ve already seen the title. So you don’t need to read this review. Really, you don’t. Don’t even bother. Move the cursor away. Click on something that’s quick instead of dead. Something green instead of red. Please. No, no, DON—

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