In the future, you can live out your life through a replica while you lie in comfort, manipulating it via mere thought — seeing what it sees, feeling what it feels. Yes, that’s James Cameron’s Avatar. But it’s also Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates, a Bruce Willis vehicle that’s not another Die Hard sequel.

Based on the excellent 2006 graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, Surrogates imagines that mass-produced robot stand-ins have caught on so well, violent crime has plunged 99 percent. That 1 percent takes a terrifying turn when two surrogates are murdered in an act that also offs their owners, reclining supposedly safely at home.

FBI agents Greer (Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell, Silent Hill) are called in to investigate, and to be honest, the trail isn’t exactly cold, given that there’s a crazed anti-surrogate movement headed by a dreadlocked, compound-residing man who calls himself Prophet (Ving Rhames, Piranha 3D).

Despite the core similarity to the aforementioned Avatar, the movie Surrogates really reminds one of is I, Robot, once the murder mystery gets going. Hell, both even feature James Cromwell in virtually the same role! But whereas that Will Smith blockbuster was dreadful in everything but effects, Surrogates musters enough pizazz in a lean, mean 89 minutes — with credits — that it merits a recommendation.

It’s not action on a grand scale, but it sure delivers the goods greater than Mostow’s most high-profile time at bat, with 2003’s disappointing Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. His stylistic changes in bringing the book to life are interesting. For example, whereas Venditti and Weldele’s work was almost monochromatic, there isn’t a color on the palette Mostow doesn’t use, and candy-coated at that.

That’s reflective of society’s superficial nature, which — after technology — is the movie’s true target. With that comes the decision to cast surrogates in plastic, Barbie-like features. In the graphic novel, you couldn’t tell the difference between humans and surrogates, but here, it’s obvious at every turn, which dilutes some of the suspense. Still, the fact that there’s at least some there makes the flick fun for an overnight rental. —Rod Lott

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Our world has no shortage of Alien imitators, but to find one from the UK is so rare, it makes Inseminoid something of a novelty. I mean, Italy, sure — God, yes! — but Great Britain? The royal land of tea and crumpets and Masterpiece Theatre? The mind boggles …

… and the opening narration certainly does, wearing us down with minutiae about the Horror Planet (the film’s alternate title) we neither asked for nor need: its past population, average temperature, number of suns — holy geez, save something for the Wikipedia page! Here are the essentials: scientists, alien, death. Done!

If the title of Inseminoid strikes your ears as rather reproductive, it should, because the movie’s squatty creature rapes one of the characters (Judy Geeson, It Happened at Nightmare Inn) specifically for spawning purposes. Director Norman J. Warren (Bloody New Year) frames said alien rising between Geeson’s spread legs, as if it were an OB/GYN finishing an exam. Inseminoid’s ick factor reaches peak revulsion as Geeson is impregnated via what looks like pickled eggs plucked greedily from the local pub’s communal jar and then, with Re-Animator fluid as a lubricant, slid directly into her womb through a Habitrail.

Later, as the body count rises parallel to audience boredom, surviving crew members plant bombs around the cavernous facility to win their otherworldly war; I swear the explosives are red Wiffle balls. With props like that, Warren was in no danger of hitting this project out of the park.

Despite an interesting cast that includes Stephanie Beacham (Schizo) and former Steve Martin spouse Victoria Tennant (1987’s Flowers in the Attic), this upper-crust, low-wattage blend of sci-fi, horror and accents nearly requiring subtitles is never quite what you think or hope it will be. Inseminoid is a seed that finds no purchase. —Rod Lott

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Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl sprouts tentacles. Oh, well.

Relax — that’s not a true spoiler. Only if you went into Spring thinking it to be a romantic drama would you be surprised by its turn toward the fantastical, yet with the word “MONSTER” appearing on the poster and box art, the movie marks its route with GPS-confident clarity. Besides, Drafthouse Films doesn’t actively recruit viewers of three-hanky weepies; Nicholas Sparks can take care of that bunch.

Spring isn’t really about alien appendages as much as it is about atmosphere — particularly the kind in which Italy is soaked, like crusty bread drizzled with olive oil and vinegar at your neighborhood Johnny Carino’s. The boot-shaped European republic is where Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci, 2013’s Evil Dead remake) flees after his mother dies and he loses his job, all in short order. Certainly aimless and close to hopeless, he is in sad-sack shape when he meets local woman Louise (German actress Nadia Hilker), stunning to the point of seemingly unattainable.

Yet she is up for grabs — for deliberate chunks of time, anyway; she’s just adamant about not getting serious. Evan can’t help but be smitten, of course, so it’s too late when he learns her reasons for staying unattached. The revelation gives Spring its biggest scene — one with practical effects so realistic-looking, one is reminded of the groundbreaking (and Oscar-winning) transformation of David Naughton into An American Werewolf in London.

Fresh from contributing the liveliest segment to the V/H/S: Viral anthology, co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead give Spring the same sober treatment as their 2012 feature debut, Resolution, which is to say imagination trumps energy. These guys thrive on digging into the details — not just those inherent in the Italian countryside, but the mundane unrestricted by geographic boundaries, from a lizard poised motionless on a wall to a spider rolling a fly into its next meal. This they do very well, lifting their plainspoken stories into a realm that doesn’t ask for your attention, but rewards you for ceding it. —Rod Lott

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As funny and charming as they come, Paul Rudd (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) is, as expected, the best thing about Ant-Man. Give Marvel Studios that much: From Robert Downey Jr. to Chris Pratt, their casting instincts are so reliably solid, they’re uncanny. Their storytelling prowess? We’ll get to that.

Rudd’s Scott Lang is the “good” kind of criminal: a well-intentioned, modern-day Robin Hood who redistributes wealth from a bullying corporation and earns a prison sentence for it. Once out, his felonious exploits also earn him a freelance gig of sorts, carrying the torch of scientist Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, Haywire) by succeeding the disgraced genius as the superhero Ant-Man. Decades before, Pym developed the technology — and accompanying helmet and suit — that allowed him to shrink to the size of … wait for it … an insect, and gain in muscle what he loses in mass.

Pym long ago abandoned his avenging ways because he was afraid of his invention falling into the wrong hands. One such pair of greedy mitts belongs to his former protégé, portrayed by Corey Stoll (Non-Stop). So ineffectual and thinly drawn is Stoll’s villain that if the chrome-domed actor were capable of growing hair on his head, a mustache for him to twirl would not be out of place. It is not the fault of Stoll that until the more inventive second half, Ant-Man tends to slow and sputter when director Peyton Reed (The Break-Up) pays attention to this master-vs.-pupil portion of the narrative; from the sidelines, Rudd can do only so much to keep the film loose and lively.

Call it the curse of the origin story: So much of the movie is spent setting itself up that once it really gets going, half of it has passed. Scenes like Ant-Man’s sparring with The Falcon (Anthony Mackie, last glimpsed in Avengers: Age of Ultron) and the final one involving Pym and his daughter (Evangeline Lilly, Real Steel) are what make one excited by the closing credits’ promise that “ANT-MAN WILL RETURN.” —Rod Lott

You cannot trust an old and filthy-rich white guy. After being responsible for the deaths of several people in his employ — and quite nearly his two adorable grandchildren — John Hammond sure had learned his DNA-manipulating lesson by the end of 1993’s Jurassic Park.

Said lesson just didn’t stick, because now, while Hammond is dead (R.I.P. Richard Attenborough), his reanimated dream of a live-dinosaur theme park is very much alive — and predictably fatal — with Jurassic World, the belated third sequel in the series, seemingly extinct since 2001.

Nary a Sam Neill nor a Jeff Goldblum can be found in this fine, flashy edition. In their place is Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt as Owen, a stoic raptor whisperer; serving as the imitation Laura Dern is Bryce Dallas Howard (Spider-Man 3) as Claire, the park’s harried, workaholic Jill of all trades. Her character also functions as stand-in of sorts for Hammond, in that her nephews (Insidious’ Ty Simpkins and The Kings of Summer’s Nick Robinson) happen to be enjoying a VIP day at Jurassic World when its latest genetically modified attraction decides to free herself from her pen.

Jurassic Park was a phenomenon because audiences enjoyed seeing phenomenally lifelike dinosaurs on a rampage. The anemic 1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s underrated Jurassic Park III also delivered the still-novel spectacle of the prehistoric creatures putting humans in their place on the food chain, which is to say putting them six feet under … provided any identifiable scraps were left behind for proper burial. New not just to the franchise, but big-budget studio films, Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow more than understands this, thus keeping the core of Steven Spielberg’s (and novelist Michael Crichton’s) original concept intact — you don’t muck with 65 million years of history, you know — but makes it just different enough to avoid a brainless retread.

The title of Trevorrow’s previous work, the oddball dramedy Safety Not Guaranteed, could double as Jurassic World’s tagline; for instance, when the pterodactyls escape the aviary to make snacks of the tourists, the movie plays for keeps as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds — an obvious visual influence — did in ’63. (Translation: Innocents die!) I love that Universal Pictures has entrusted a guy from the indie ranks to take on this behemoth tale of anything-for-a-billion-bucks corporate greed; Trevorrow rises to the challenge with an injection of subversion that lurks one hair below the surface. Both sides will be laughing their way to the bank for decades to come.

That the fourth Jurassic adventure doesn’t suck would be good enough; that it’s admittedly kinda great is — apologies in advance, kids — dino-mite. —Rod Lott

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