Tom Russo

In one amusing bit of dialogue, Stallone and Schwarze-negger kid each other about being smarter than they look. For a little while at least, we thought we might be able to say the same about Escape Plan.

Rodriguez does a fair job of keeping the zaniness coming: Vergara’s machine gun bra, Gibson delivering exposition in a “Star Wars” prop, bad guys offed by helicopter blades in dementedly creative ways. It’s enough that you’ll hope Rodriguez makes good on that new faux trailer — for “Machete Kills Again . . . in Space.”

The guys in Metallica are here to remind us that there’s a band behind the rage rock. The IMAX 3-D release Metallica Through the Never is all about reasserting their relevance, loudly.

It’s another brightly rendered effort, but, as the title indicates, a lot of the real creativity seems to have been used up the first time around.

Just one more touch of “realism” in a sexual melodrama played so straight that it’s nuts.

In the end, it’s hard to remember another action entry that expends so much energy on frenetic blacktop choreography and attention-deficit editing with so little to show for it.

Instead of all-seeing, it’s more like seen it all before.

Director Thor Freudenthal (“Diary of a Wimpy Kid”) finds his groove with a succession of flashy 3-D renderings... They’re digitized riffs on the Sarlacc pit from “Star Wars” and the finale of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — but as with the “Potter” cribbing, when it’s done well, it encourages “Percy” audiences to forgive the derivative chunks and thin emotion.

Jackman spends enough time compellingly playing stranger in a strange land that you’ll put up with a few unwanted doses of the old familiar.

There is less eye candy than you would expect, and it’s underwhelming.

A sequel that has some snappy interplay, typically courtesy of Malkovich, but mostly feels like a cast working to manufacture what came naturally the first time.

Turbo makes an entertaining go of it by borrowing very liberally from the “Fast & Furious” franchise — Michelle Rodriguez even voices a character — and sticking a slime trail onto “Rocky” for the rest.

The scope of the ’toon espionage-adventure goings-on is surprisingly limited. But the filmmakers so clearly love working on these characters, their creative joy is infectious.

At more leisurely, less furious moments, meanwhile, the cast shows the easy chemistry that comes with having now done a couple of these all-hands-on-deck episodes.

It’s all a fair attempt, but Aselton isn’t going to make anyone forget Kathryn Bigelow.

After all the mesmerizingly illicit buildup, the film’s willful lack of a payoff is almost as strange as one of those essays.

Our advice: Forgive any conflicting elements and just drink them right down. They might be a peculiar blend, but they’re well crafted, just as you’d expect from Loach.

Quaint and crass get together — or would that be “bump uglies”? — with awkward, thoroughly flat results in The Big Wedding, an ensemble comedy with a tonal cluelessness as surprising as the name cast that signed on for it anyway.

There are echoes of Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” in all of this that are impossible to miss.

Not that there’s all manner of comedy craftsmanship demanding study here, but the movie does seem to be a funny jumble of contradictory impulses.

Are we really looking to Evil Dead for gnarly possessions played straight? That’s what Alvarez gives us for an overlong stretch, until his reinterpretation of the malevolent-hand gag kicks off a last act that’s more freewheelingly, twistedly grisly. (Don’t skip the credits, because the fan-energizing momentum peaks at the very end.)

How funny that Pryce, a tweedy Brit playing a bad guy, should be the one person doing anything remotely heroic for this dud.

Butler serves the cause well, considering. Think that cause is a thankless one? Shhh, don’t tell Secret Service agent Channing Tatum or president Jamie Foxx, headed your way in June with, yes, “White House Down.”

Some of the exotic landscape the group trailblazes looks imported from “Avatar” — happily, bringing that immersively dimensionalized, eye-catching quality along with it.

Among the ingredients “21” is missing: the infectiously random silliness of a Zach Galifianakis, the smug hunkiness of a Bradley Cooper, and any sort of Vegas-y gloss whatsoever.

The crew doesn’t much look the part either, save for Schaech’s Stalin ’stache. Yet the movie does show the ability to get past this, even with the weight of all its narratively risky conspiracy theorizing. It’s a shame the intrigue has to get torpedoed by elements that mostly feel correctable.

A giant chef character is an icky bit of inspiration (complete with booger humor to soothe any shell-shocked young’uns in the audience), and the monsters are key to an epic-scale third act. If you thought the tale ended when Jack clambered back down from the skies, then you haven’t given it as much thought as Singer.

Snitch gets a decent amount of drama (and action, of course) out of the argument that there’s paying for a crime, and then there’s overpaying.

Colorful as the 3-D aliens-among-us comedy is to look at, though, Corddry is handed a role that’s beige as can be, and so are his castmates.

A movie that passably ambles along in generic-melodrama mode before finally insulting audience intelligence one time too many.

The best we get here are modest action diversions.

It's a surprise that Stallone is as funny as he is playing a hit man paired with a cop in Bullet to the Head. He's man-cave witty in a way that his "Expendables" movies have strived for but haven't really managed.

Wirkola tears through Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters with such giddy abandon, it ends up being splattery fanboy fun. Preposterous, clearly, but fun.

Kim doesn't sweat interweaving his story threads in any tightly controlled way. Just when the need-for-speed stuff really starts to gain traction, he'll shift for a surprisingly lengthy stretch to comic relief with the deputies and local wacko Johnny Knoxville.

The frustration, though, is how much the movie leans on made-ya-jump scares and contrived plot devices when its quieter chills and already fraught setups are so potent.

O'Brien and his castmates seem to play loose with his script a bit more than they should in an effort to give the material a lived-in feeling.

As a combat action spectacle, the movie takes a straightforward, gritty approach that makes for mostly solid viewing.

This does seem to leave room for bigger, bolder, more momentous adventures down the line.

But when there's such a lighthearted, boys-at-play manner about the story's established aspects, it creates an odd disconnect from the World War II tolerance lessons that the filmmakers seek to add. War and persecution are bad, kids - except when it's all in good fun.

All over the map in the details it throws at us, and the level of immaturity it aims for.

Some might say there isn't enough that's fresh here to recommend the movie in a big way, except that every generation of trick-or-treaters deserves its monster mash.

Pretty clearly determined to deliver the antidote to Stallone's movie, the filmmakers take their cues from Christopher Nolan's Batman filmscape, dropping Dredd into a fictional concrete sprawl (actually South Africa) that's relentlessly grounded, visually and dramatically. In a generic way, the environment works.

Funny about retribution, though - it's a tricky thing to make time for when you've still got mutant zombie hordes after you. The real premise turns out to be a busy rehash of the first movie's story line.

As it stands, The Expendables 2 is lazily satisfied with repeating the first movie's formula, shortcomings and grisly strengths alike.

The squirminess stands out here because there's so little going on the rest of the time.

Compared to the first two movie installments, this one is uncharacteristically scattershot in the life-lessons department.

It makes you wonder if the series' animators, who took time out for "Rio" just before this, aren't so secretly yearning to sail different creative waters.

You can picture the DreamWorks corporate confab: "OK, the kids respond to move-it, move-it repetition - give us something else repetitive, and let's get herding." It wasn't just desperate, it was insulting.

Some of this vigilante-fantasy misbehavior is wickedly funny.

If only there were more genuine rah-rah fun involved, instead of just endless, thudding, seen-it-all-before mayhem.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin delivers his conflicting elements mostly as intended, and with obvious ambition. But he fails to take care of certain fundamentals - most problematically, coaxing out the emotion he's seeking from Statham and young newcomer Catherine Chan.

The movie could also teach something to the makers of "Pirates of the Caribbean" about delivering a story quirky enough to actually stick with you.

The movie's unlikely sincerity can't completely offset its ugliness for less bloodthirsty viewers, but it helps, and it does smooth over some narrative rough edges.

If you're an "Escape From New York" fan, you might have wondered about those rumors about a possible remake...Well, wonder no more. Producer Luc Besson's action factory has beaten everyone to it, stylishly. They're just calling the thing Lockout, and setting it in outer space.

The moments that elevate Wrath above the routine are right in line with Liebesman's "Battle: Los Angeles'' high points: frenetically shot u-r-there combat sequences that feel like the real thing.

Hand it to Amanda Seyfried - she seems to have a knack for underplaying unstable characters in a way that lets their nuttiness creep right up on you.

A sequel seemingly eager to assert that monster mashes are about B-movie chills not "Twilight'' melodrama. Eager to a fault, ultimately.

Just because a Japanese animated film is screening at the Museum of Fine Arts doesn't mean that you can count on Miyazaki-caliber artistry.

The story and settings hold interest throughout, but at times the very lack of emotional connection that Yeshi laments in his father seems to hinder the film.

The film's indefatigable holiday spirit is infectious.

The actors also acquit themselves well singing the film's numerous tunes. Breslin's voice is pleasantly melodic, while Nivola sounds like someone who's been grinding it out on tour for years.

What's more genuinely wacky is what a kick the movie can sometimes be, completely in spite of its big, flat stunt.

After a fast, funny start, the new sequel, Johnny English Reborn, proves to be more of the same.

The basic story is identical, and when there are fraught, climactic opportunities for the movie to make a gutsy departure, it passes up the chance.

For all Kendrick's stolidity, he delivers a couple of wrenchingly tender scenes.

Never thought we'd say this about a movie, but Bucky Larson probably doesn't wring as much out of recurring bodily-fluid gags as it could.

Alba, meanwhile, is again ridiculously shoehorned into a comedy gig, although she does have an amusing opening bit spying while nine months pregnant. If only diaper bomb gags weren't the inevitable follow-up.

Stabs at the dramatic don't amount to anything that makes us care, even for Bell, who has been solid on AMC's "The Walking Dead'' and in the chairlift chiller "Frozen.'' But genre fans who have been thirsting for gore via acupuncture needles or a LASIK machine should get their giddy fill.

Macdonald knows plenty about crafting something evocative from unscripted material.

Zooey Deschanel shows off her singing on a couple of generically pleasant soundtrack ditties.

Some entertaining inventiveness, before nagging limitations finally drag it down.

By the time the giant, snarling spider shows up - the most boggling of the movie's various "holy schnitzel" touches - parents of the littlest "Hoodwinked" fans may be feeling hoodwinked themselves.

Scholey, Fothergill, and crew do impressive work, but we're also reminded that wild animals don't know from cues, marks, and scripts. That's part of what makes them so compelling.

Credit Bowers and company, finally, for making some good calls about where to follow the leads furnished to them by the book and the first movie, and where to get creative.

"Mars" needs Mom more than the filmmakers seem to realize.

In The Desert of Forbidden Art, documentarians Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev offer some background on the late Savitsky, a painter who initially collected ethnic folk art quashed by the Stalin regime.

Fresh or not, creatively merited or not, here it comes: the third installment of Martin Lawrence's big, dopey franchise.

An intermittently arresting, mostly standard action entry that deals death noisily more than cleverly - a lot like the original.

The film is also packed with enough sharply scripted screwiness from Adam's roommate (Jake Johnson), Emma's roomie (Greta Gerwig), and others to keep viewer impatience to a minimum.

Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander's dark-comic expansion on his cult Internet shorts, in which he crafts a back story for Santa that's as black as stocking coal.

While the movie seems designed to be a breakout for Jang, it's Lee whose work actually makes an impression.

The copious violence, as always, is an assault - even aurally, as every thudding knife strike is made to sound like a boulder dropping on the theater.

Laurence Olivier gives the textbook course on Shakespearean villainy as crown-stealing schemer Richard. Considered by many to be Olivier's best take on the Bard. [22 Feb 2004]

This thoroughly stripped-down thriller simmers in a way that's still unsettling 25 years later. [24 Oct 2004]

The initial close-up of Thompson - all sourly snaggletoothed and begoggled - is as funny as anything in the original. And just that one quick glimpse would have been perfect.

There are some amusing looks at the elation - and panic - that come with winning big, from the praise-Jesus swooning of Kevin's grandma (underutilized Loretta Devine).

There's no gore in Campillo's tale, just a group of emotionally remote but otherwise seemingly healthy undead who inexplicably wander back into the world a world unsure how to reassimilate them, be it in the workplace or more intimate fronts. The complications he imagines are achingly smart; witness the grieving parents feeling even further despair at the realization that their returned little boy isn't truly all there. The film does, ultimately, lack closure, but maybe that's part of the point. [26 June 2005]

Has a pleasantly freewheeling, European art film feel to it, a welcome reminder of the New Hollywood of the '70s. [04 Sep 2005]

The result is sometimes charming and always visually astonishing.

H.G. Wells's tale of nature's little critters turned steroidal gets cheesy screen treatment from director Bert I. Gordon, a veteran of the ginormous creature genre of the '50s. [09 Sep 2007, p.N32]

This isn't just physical love, warts and all, but warts, liver spots, saggy parts, and all. Still, the thing that ultimately keeps your head turned is how persuasively filmmaker Andreas Dresen ("Summer in Berlin'') argues that desire can create just as much emotional tumult in golden years as in youth.

William Friedkin directs the adaptation of Matt Crowley's off-Broadway play about a group of gay men in Manhattan speaking increasingly frankly as a birthday party wears on. Sufficiently effective that you wonder what Friedkin was thinking with Cruising. [09 Nov 2008, p.N16]

Alpha and Omega is sweet, if not fresh.

A characteristic early offering from horror icon David Cronenberg, rough production values and all. [30 May 2004]