This neat mix of contemporary teen culture and Greek myth (based on the first in Rick Riordan's series) ought to entertain teens and pleasantly surprise adults.

As it feels like the old 1950s special-effects fantasies. It might also inspire kids to read those myths. Zeus (Sean Bean) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) meet atop the Empire State Building.

Zeus fumes that the son of Poseidon has stolen his lightning bolt. Cut to Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a New York high-schooler who sees himself as a loser. During a museum visit, Percy learns he is in fact a demigod -- the child of his mom's long-ago liaison with Poseidon.

Percy's pal Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) turns out to be a furry-legged satyr assigned to protect him. Percy is sent to a demigod training camp, but when his mom is abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld, he goes on a quest to rescue her -- and prove to Zeus that he didn't take the bolt.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Kids 10 to 12 will like this movie if they can handle mayhem that is intense, even if largely bloodless. Percy and his cohorts fight a huge, horned Minotaur, the serpent-haired Medusa and other fire-breathing, multi-headed monsters. An immortal is beheaded, and his severed head bandied about. Percy's stepdad is an abusive drunk. There is mild sexual innuendo.

High-schoolers 17 and older will find many cheap laughs in this buddy flick/action comedy, but that doesn't mean "Cop Out" is anything other than atrocious -- sloppily filmed and trafficking in every kind of ethnic/racial stereotype and cop-movie cliche. Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan play police detective partners Jimmy and Paul. Jimmy is divorced, cynical and wondering how he'll pay for his daughter's wedding. Paul is sentimental, movie-mad and convinced his loving wife is cheating on him. Suspended for the crazy way they went after a drug dealer, the partners turn semi-vigilante. Seann William Scott is funny as a motormouth burglar.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The script is highly profane. There is point-blank gun violence, tasering, beatings, crude sexual slang, a strongly implied sexual situation, gross toilet humor and drug references.

THE CRAZIES. This remake of George A. Romero's 1973 horror film has all the elements needed to engross horror buffs 17 and older. Residents of a nice farming community in Iowa seem to go violently insane from some contaminant in their water supply. Sheriff David Dutton and his doctor wife, Judy, along with his trusty deputy, Russell, see people turn nearly catatonic, then violent. Friends of theirs die or kill their own families. David has to shoot one man, whose wife and son hate him for it. Soon, helmeted, gas-masked government troops descend upon the town, and David, Judy and Russell must try to escape.

THE BOTTOM LINE: "The Crazies" is very bloody. People are shot at point-blank range, attacked with knives and bone saws, impaled on pitchforks, burned alive. We eventually see truckloads of decomposing corpses. The whole effect has a shivery echo of the Holocaust. Before that, sickened people walk around, zombie-like. The film also contains lots of midrange profanity.

SHUTTER ISLAND. A lugubrious mess of a movie, "Shutter Island" (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) may still grab filmgoers 17 and older. It is the early 1950s. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a troubled U.S. marshal and World War II vet. He and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) are sent to Shutter Island, a federal facility for the criminally insane off the coast of Boston. A patient has disappeared. After meeting the chief psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley), his associate (Max von Sydow), other patients and guards, Teddy comes to suspect a conspiracy.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Not for most high-schoolers, the movie has repeated graphic flashbacks of corpses and starving, dead-eyed survivors at the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. There are images (unrelated to the war) of drowned children, murdered by a parent. The gray, gothic atmosphere is creepier than an average horror film. Some of the "treatment" patients receive seems akin to torture. There are hallucinatory scenes and swarming rats. Characters smoke, drink, and use strong profanity and crude sexual language.


THE WOLFMAN. High-schoolers of 15 and older, if they've watched some of the artful, character-driven horror films of yore, will appreciate "The Wolfman," as long as they can handle the gory bits. Darkly moody, gorgeously designed and scored, the film is a remake of the 1941 film with Lon Chaney Jr. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, a Shakespearean actor who returns to England from America after his brother disappears. His father, Sir John (Anthony Hopkins), seems distant and unmoved, even after the ravaged body is found. Lawrence is determined to learn what creature tore apart his sibling. Lawrence is bitten by the beast, faces his first full moon and discovers his family's awful secret.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Characters attacked by the Wolfman are slashed and gashed, dismembered, even beheaded. There are decomposing corpses. When Del Toro morphs into a werewolf, the changes in his bone structure look agonizing. There is a suicide theme related to loss of a parent, crude references to prostitutes and other milder sexual innuendo. Characters drink, smoke and occasionally swear.