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Reviewer’s grade: C- Victor Salva’s “Peaceful Warrior” is a predictable, often cheesy example of the film genre we can call “sports inspirational,” with Zen master as coach. Calling to mind films like “The Karate Kid,” TV shows like “Kung Fu” and books like “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Salva’s heavily meaningful film focuses […]

n went nuts over when he was a sprout, I like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles best. Come on, they were fun. Now they’re back and this time, slightly more serious. They still have to defeat a super-villain and his minions “? that’s a big part of the fun “? but they also have to […]

Reviewer grade: D+ Settling into an implausible movie thriller is a bit like checking into a cut-rate motel room: Keep your distance and everything looks OK. Only on closer inspection will you notice the sooty walls and God-knows-what on the bedspread. It certainly doesn’t pay to look too closely at “Shooter,” a lunkheaded action-thriller in […]

Reviewer grade: C   Work builds character. Family is important. It’s better to give than to receive. If such truisms strike you as fresh and exciting, there’s plenty more where that came from in “The Ultimate Gift,” the latest offering from 20th Century Fox’s faith-based division. But this treacle is more dispiriting than spiritual.   […]

Reviewer grade: B Although the scripting is often nothing to cheer about, writer/director Robert Collector hits an emotional three-pointer or two in “Believe in Me,” a story of girls basketball in Western Oklahoma in the Sixties. The film, based on Harold Keith’s novel “Brief Garland,” tells the fictionalized story of real-life coach Jim Keith, Harold […]

Reviewer grade: B- If you’ve been waiting for a realistic movie on the Battle of Thermopylae, keep waiting. If you want one that’s all thud and blunder, with eye-popping CGI and exhilarating fight choreography, and you don’t care a damn about dialogue or reasonable motivation, welcome to Sparta.   Director Zack Snyder follows up his […]

Reviewer grade: D   Family man and investment banker Richard Cooper (Chris Rock) is bored with life. His wife, Brenda (Gina Torres), won’t have sex with him, forcing him to daydream about sleeping with beautiful women he sees in public. When old flame Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington) comes back in his life, Richard begins to […]

Reviewer grade: C-   Wes Craven and his son Jonathan co-wrote this sequel to last year’s successful remake of Papa Craven’s 1977 original. This time out, a team of National Guard recruits is taken into the desert of the American Southwest to find out why some scientists camped there have not been responding to radio […]

Reviewer grade: D+   Why do strange things happen to good people? I dunno. Maybe because they’ve lost their faith in anything bigger than themselves. Or they’ve lost their ability to find a good script. There you go “? “Premonition” in a nutshell. I just saved you nine bucks. Thank me by dropping some of […]