THE DARK KNIGHT    [B+]

Batman began three summers ago - now it's time for him to finish what he started. Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman hover on the verge of victory over Gotham City's corruption, thanks to the help of the stalwart Lieutenant Gordon and the capable D.A. Harvey Dent. But then a grinning, horrific specter rises up out of nowhere to thwart Batman at every turn... a devious anarchist who calls himself The Joker. In order to defeat him, Batman will have to explore the darker side of justice and risk becoming more villain than hero himself.

A great movie in its own right, not just standing on the pillar of the Batman storyline.  Maggie Gyllenhaal was an unfortunate casting choice.  She is a fine performer -- truly great in The Secretary -- but I could not suspend enough belief to see her as the love interest in this movie.

HANCOCK   [B]

I feel like the producers of this movie did an excellent job of lowering expectations.  Based on what I was hearing, I almost didn't go to see this movie.  I'm glad I made up my own mind.  Don't listen to the nonsense; this was a very entertaining movie.

The movie does take a surprise twist in the middle, leading some people to claim that it is two movies spliced together.  But the twist is not a spoiler, and it is not without some foreshadowing.  You know from the moment that the character played by Charlize Theron sees Hancock that there is some history between the two.  The surprise is just the precise nature of that history.  The people who complain about the 90 turn just weren't paying attention.

Admittedly the movie doesn't spend a lot of time on character development -- Hancock is a jerk from frame one -- but it's fun to learn how everybody got where they are.  Ignore the other critics and go enjoy Hancock's world for 90 minutes.

WALL-E   [B+]

Pixar’s latest creation is not a racecar, fish, bug, or monster.  It is time for the robot.  WALL-E, a name derived from Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class.  Humans so polluted the world with trash, that they left behind robots to clean up the mess and went on a long space cruise.  For reasons revealed in the movie, the cruise turned into a 700 year trip, and WALL-E is the only one left (at least the only one we see).  As we learn, although gone the cruise ships still send back robots to probe the planet.  That's how WALL-E meets EVE -- a very fancy robot indeed.  The rest of the movie is a robot love.  Can love survive while saving the earth?

The graphics in this animated tale are the best I have ever seen. A great family movie.  My only complaint is the use of one real actor.  It may just be me, but when you present animated humans, especially when they are very stylized as they are in this film, then your mind's eye adapts to that interpretation.  To then throw a real human into the mix is just strange, because then you instantly reduce all the animated characters to cartoons, like Roger the Rabbit. 

HELLBOY   [C+]

"Hellboy" is a standard-issue superhero movie -- except that writer-director Guillermo del Toro, taking his cue from "Hellboy" comic book creator Mike Mignola, brings a wicked sense of humor to this particular monster mash. Not the goofy slapstick of "Men in Black," mind you, but dry wit and humanizing touches that make Ron Perlman's title character more than a big red monster. A good thing too, for "Hellboy" is pretty derivative stuff. Pulling elements from "The X-Files" and "X-Men" to "Star Wars" and Perlman's own "Beauty and the Beast" TV series, the world of Hellboy feels awfully familiar.

The sheer ingenuity and obvious joy del Toro puts into the major action sequences lifts the movie out of the mundane. Otherwise, the paranormal stunts, the fights between good and bad demons, the face-off between the good scientist and the evil charlatan have all been done to death.

In essence, much of the movie is an extended battle between a creature that cannot die and a creature that does die only to be reborn -- and nobody on the creative team seems to understand that is a hugely static situation. As with those endless fights between Keanu Reeves' Neo and the hundreds of Agent Smith clones in "The Matrix" sequels last summer, the risk of tedium is high.

Starting out much like "X-Men" in the final days of World War II, Hellboy is born -- so to speak -- when desperate Nazis hire evil mad monk Grigori Rasputin (Karel Roden) to open a portal to the cosmic void to bring to Earth a creature who will cause Armageddon. Then, American GIs intervene and in the ensuing mayhem that creature, dubbed Hellboy, is intercepted by the good side, meaning Professor Broom (John Hurt), founder of the clandestine Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Raised like a son by Broom, Hellboy becomes a champion for good rather than evil.

Perlman's Hellboy is a red giant, his leathery skin the shade of terra cotta, his horns sheered daily at the forehead much as a normal man would shave, a large right fist made of pure concrete and, oh yes, a tail just like the devil. Something of an overgrown kid, he lives in a bachelor pad underneath the BPRD, where he pumps iron, indulges in pizza and beer and raises dozens of cats. His job is to hunt down monsters, which he does with cool nonchalance and a number of wisecracks.

Only one thing throws him and that is Selma Blair's Liz Sherman, a fellow freak with pyro-kinetic abilities. Hellboy has an enormous crush on her. When John Myers (Rupert Evans), a young FBI agent, joins the "nanny squad" of normal humans who must look after Broom's freaks, Hellboy becomes hugely jealous of the burgeoning friendship between Liz and John.

The main story line is not terribly interesting. Rasputin returns to Earth -- where exactly has he been since 1944? -- to claim Hellboy for the dark side. He unleashes two villainous creatures, Sammael (Brian Steele), a hideous monster that as the "lord of resurrection" refuses to die, and Kroenen, once a human being but now a bloodless killing machine.

Coming to Hellboy's defense is Liz and another exceptional creature, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), a fish-man with near psychic intuition. The movie's best moments come not during battles between Hellboy and his enemies, but rather in Hellboy's bratty behavior, which drives agent Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) crazy, and his growing envy of Liz and John.

Shot in the Czech Republic, the movie mixes CG with models, matte paintings, animation, animatronics and prosthetics to give the comic book world a hint of realism. Marco Beltrami's music, dramatic and full bodied, is a major plus.

OPEN RANGE   [C-]

The first half of Open Range is presented almost as a documentary.  If you would like a glimpse into how cowboys on the open range interact, set up camp, deal with a hard rainstorm, retrieve their missing horses, etc., then this film will not disappoint.  The writers no doubt felt that this long introduction was necessary to give us some insight into the characters that would be playing out the drama to come, but such character development could have been accomplished much more elegantly (and efficiently).  The acting is very good for this documentary portion, compelling you to want to like it, but there is just nothing there.

The story was formulaic -- an evil land baron with his army of bad guys versus two vastly under-gunned American cowboys who only want to live free  Like other identical movies, most recently Monte Walsh with Tom Selleck, the film's main intent is to build to the ultimate showdown that we all are waiting for.  It is always fun to see just how the good guys are going to overturn the odds against them.  And what a gunfight it is.  The movie concludes with the best western gun-battle I have seen.  The sound effects are amazing.

The gun-battle is followed by a tacked-on romantic conclusion that is both far too long and utterly implausible (sending the message once again that women cannot resist a scoundrel).

Open Range will undoubtedly garner some strong reviews based on the impeccable acting.  The acting was so good that you desperately want the movie to be better than it was.  However, as interesting as it might be just to watch Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall sitting around talking about how ten years equals a decade, it would not make a movie.  Wait and rent this one.