I just read on Wikipedia (so it must be true!) that TRON—the 1982 sci-fi flick about a computer engineer (Jeff Bridges) who enters his own video game—was inspired by the Atari game Pong. But of course, Pong has about as much to do with today’s video games as a Model T has to do with today’s cars. (If you watch the trailer for the original TRON on YouTube, they treat computers like some sort of ominous futuristic threat to humanity—which, okay, proved accurate, but still).

Yes, this sequel somewhat updates the original’s wide-eyed view of the digital world, but it’s still working with an outmoded mainframe, if you know what I mean.

In TRON: Legacy, Kevin Flynn (played by both an eerie, computer-simulated young Jeff Bridges and the wily old actor himself) has been missing for 20 years. His rebel son Sam (dishy but dull Garrett Hedlund) wanders into the cob-webby arcade where Flynn used to work and gets sucked through a portal into the grid. There, he discovers a world of avatar-like “programs” who engage in old-fashioned video-game-style battles for survival....

Burlesque can’t decide if it wants to be a serious musical, a la Chicago, or a piece of guilty-pleasure trash, a la Showgirls. As such,  it’s stuck in the middle—too cheesy to be good art and not nearly fabulous enough to be good camp. It needed, frankly, more catfights, more glitter, more transvestites! Instead, it’s an earnest story of small-town girl Ali (Christina Aguilera) who lands a waitress job at a burlesque club in Los Angeles, with dreams of being a star. Cher plays the tough (yet tender) owner of the club, who resists Ali at first, but eventually sees that the kid’s got moxie to burn!

Stanley Tucci is on hand, natch, playing Cher’s loyal gay sidekick. And for reasons unknown, Alan Cumming is also in the film, albeit briefly, playing the coat check boy (or somethin’). (My theory: They got their big-get Tucci after they had already cast Cumming and didn’t have the heart to tell him he was no longer in the film.)

Kristen Bell plays a rival performer, but they don’t even bother to make her that nasty. She’s more of a misunderstood bad girl...

There’s been a lot of talk about the scene in 127 Hours where hiker Aron Ralston (James Franco) cuts off his own arm. Some people reportedly passed out at screenings. Others were only able to look at the carnage through clenched fingers. Still others so dreaded the scene, they chose to avoid the film altogether.

What people don’t tell you is that, at that point in the movie, you’re absolutely dying for Aron to cut off his arm. It’s basically either arm evisceration or death. And while the scene is grisly and, yes, hard to watch, it’s also a cause for celebration. In my own mind I was thinking, “Do it! Do it!” as poor Aron dug the (dull) knife into his flesh.

I imagine that director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) never considered not showing Aron do the unthinkable deed. In fact, I’d venture to guess that the whole reason he chose to make the film was because of that scene.

After all, we’d all heard the true story of the hiker who fell into the canyon with his arm pinned under an intractable...

If nothing else, Morning Glory has an A-list feel. It has an A-list cast: Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, and Rachel McAdams. It has an A-list release date: right before the holidays. And its premise—plucky young producer (McAdams) tries to get a semi-retired newsman (Harrison) to do happy talk on the morning news— is reminiscent of the decidedly A-List Broadcast News.

But Morning Glory is not an A-list film. It barely makes it onto the B-list.

So what’s the problem? Let’s start with a script that seems to have been buried in a vault for 20 years. Not only is this a film about TV that makes no mention of Hulu, Facebook, or TiVo (there is one token reference to YouTube), but at one point, the low-rated morning show is threatened to be cancelled in favor of—wait for it—game shows and soap operas. (The only thing more endangered than low-rated morning talk shows? Game shows and soap operas.)

The other problem is the film’s aggressive cutesiness. McAdams, who is undeniably adorable, is playing that stock chick-...