A haiku:

Unlikely heroes
Battle cartoon sorcerer.
Go Whoopi Goldberg.

(Not reviewed.) (Narberth)

A haiku:

Who's the best fat chick—
Madea or Big Momma?
Like we really care.

(Not reviewed.) (AMC Orleans)

Timur Bekmambetov's 2004 Russian blockbuster kicks off in 1992 as events begin to unfold that, 12 years later, will threaten the tenuously maintained truce between the forces of light and darkness. But hope for a sci-fi translation of the state of the former Union is drowned out by a surfeit of everything-louder-than-everything-else style. Not even the subtitles are immune, as the text swirls, flickers and interacts with characters, a tactic that quickly moves from novel to annoying, and would prove distracting if everything else on screen weren't equally superficial. This is a decidedly post-Matrix horror film, which sounds fine as long as it means exaggerated action and flashy visuals (some of which actually manage to register, such as one vampire's POV of a child's head as a tangle of coursing Visible Man veins); but Night Watch is also chock full of messianic prattle and storytelling simultaneously simplistic and incomprehensible, more like The Matrix sequels than the original. For all Night Watch's reliance on wow factor, there really isn't anything here that hasn't been seen before, and if the end result of the Cold War is that the Evil Empire can now make blockbusters as convoluted and empty as ours, was the Reagan era really worth it? --Shaun Brady (Ritz 5)

Paul Walker's excellent tough-guy adventure begins with a galvanizing bang. For the first six minutes (which you can view online, so skip the rest of it), the hyperstylized violence is speedy, brutal and deft. What follows is a pile-on of cliches and satire, with a couple of gangster neighbors, their wives (Walker's is the awesome Vera Farmiga) and young sons immersed in a hell of twisty paybacks after a traceable handgun ends up in young Cameron Bright's hands and he shoots his abusive, John Wayne-fan stepdad (Karel Roden). From here, Wayne Kramer's gonzo gunfest (throbbing close-ups and whomping cuts) turns plot-weird, with Bright hauled off into a kiddie-porn-making household. (Yes, there are worse evils than thugs who tend to shoot each other.) As Walker tries to put things right (or at least avoid incessant poundings and grisly death), he's up against a nosy detective (Chazz Palminteri) and hoodlums (including snappy dresser Johnny Messner), eventually running smack into a hockey puck, repeatedly. (Depending on your feeling about Walker, that alone might make the entire two hours worth your while.) Nutty and surreal, it's the sort of formal exercise in violent excess that Tarantino copies off Peckinpah and Woo—poetic, in its way. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans)

See Cindy Fuchs' review and interview with director Eugene Jarecki. (Ritz East; Ritz 16)