Rating: 2 stars

This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me: The new X-Files movie kind of stinks.
I was never a big fan of the show (I mean, I wasn’t a detractor or anything, I just never got into it), so the fact The X-Files: I Want to Believe plays like a pretty standard horror/thriller with uninteresting characters (unless, I suppose, you are predisposed to find them interesting) and tired scenarios that wouldn’t look out of place on an episode of Medium (or, uh, The X-Files) doesn’t bother me much.
But I know that the cultish fans of the show were expecting big things from this movie. They wanted to believe, you could say.
And show creator Chris Carter has really let them down.
For starters, of all the paranormal phenomenon that Mulder and Scully could’ve been investigating, they choose psychic ability? Yup, in this film true believer Mulder (David Duchovny) and skeptic Scully (Gillian Andserson) are sussing out an accused pedophile priest (Billy Connolly) who has visions of a missing FBI agent....

Rating: 2.5 stars

So you want the good news or the bad news? Okay, the good news: Mamma Mia! is a sun-kissed, spirited camp romp, with lots of fun moments and some inspired bits of musical comedy.
The bad news: At times the whole enterprise feels a little desperate.
Let’s start with La Meryl herself (aka Meryl Streep): She plays Donna, the owner of a slightly dilapidated inn in Greece. Her 20-year-old daughter Sophie (adorable Amanda Seyfried) is getting married and wants her father to give her away. The problem? Sophie doesn’t know who her father is and Donna has been stubbornly mum on the subject. So Sophie steals Donna’s diary and finds out that her father could be one of three men—her mom’s first love Sam (Pierce Brosnan) or one of the two rebound guys, uptight Harry (Colin Firth) and adventurous Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). She invites them to the wedding and, for reasons that are never made completely clear, doesn’t tell her mother.
Like every other red-blooded American filmgoer, I am an admirer of Meryl Streep. She is obviously a brilliant, nearly peerless actress,...

Rating: 2.5 stars

There was much breathless buzz about Journey to the Center of the Earth being the bestest 3-D movie ever! Indeed, the 3-D effects are pretty eye-popping: Yo-yos spring off the screen at you, dinosaurs slime on you, Brendan Fraser spits on you, etc. It’s all quite vivid. But I’m still not convinced. Generously speaking, the film utilizes true 3-D effects for about 30 of its 90-minute running time. That means you spend a useless hour in those clunky glasses that slightly distort the normal image and give you a headache. (Hey, at least I remembered to wear my contact lenses this time). It just ain’t worth it.
So how’s the rest of the film? It’s pretty standard adventure movie stuff—yet another riff on the Jules Verne classic novel about scientists who fall into a portal into the earth’s core where they discover an alternate universe filled with dinosaurs and luminescent birds and molten hot waterfalls.
In this case, the adventurers are hunky scientist Brendan Fraser (still his own charming brand of macho goofball), his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson, a...

Rating: 2.5 stars

It’s such a great concept, you wonder why it hasn’t been done before: A superhero with a bad attitude, one who saves people, but does so reluctantly, who crash lands, leaves a costly mess, and performs his life-saving duties with a snarl. And for a while, Hancock pulls off this concept brilliantly.
For starters, Will Smith makes a great Hancock. This might’ve seemed like a stretch for Smith—an actor who at times seems desperate to be loved (and we, the movie going public, dutifully oblige). But Smith is actually spot-on as the heavy-drinking, anti-social hero. He makes Hancock both funny (because he’s so darn surly) and sad (because he’s misunderstood). And the director, Peter Berg, has a great way with a visual joke (sometimes it’s amusing to just see Hancock help a beached whale by hurling it into the ocean—and promptly capsize a small boat).
Early in the film, Hancock saves an idealistic PR specialist, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), from being struck by a train. But instead of applauding Hancock’s heroics, bystanders question his technique. (Might he have saved...