Courtesy of Cinema Syndicate

INKHEART
Rating: PG, Adventure
Lead: Brendan Fraser
Director: Iain Softley
Run time: 103 minutes
Not every young-adult best-seller can make a successful transition to the screen. Cornelia Funke’s popular book about a father and daughter who bring fictional characters to life by reading aloud certainly doesn’t. First, it’s necessary to buy Brendan Fraser as a bibliophile. Second, you must overlook sloppy directing and cinematography, choppy editing, and middling special effects. Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent try their darndest to inject haughty whimsy into the proceedings, while Paul Bettany and Andy Serkis suffer as literary creations trapped in the real world. The concept is worthy but the execution leaves viewers’ heads caught in the library and their feet in the cineplex.

UNDERWORLD:
RISE OF THE LYCANS
Not screened in advance for critics

ONDVD

THE EXPRESS
Rating: PG, Sports Drama
Lead: Rob Brown
Director: Gary Fleder
Run time: 129 minutes
As subjects for inspirational gridiron flicks go, the story of Ernie Davis is hard to beat. Known as “The Elmira Express,” he was the first African American to win college
football’s Heisman Trophy, earning the honor at Syracuse in 1961 under the tutelage of Coach Ben Schwarzwalder (Dennis Quaid), who was coming off four testy seasons with the legendary Jim Brown in the Orangemen’s backfield. The polished picture adopts a conservative game plan, running right up the middle on every play, stubbornly refusing to take chances and try the unexpected. Davis’ legacy has been duly recorded but scores no points for probity or derring-do.

MAX PAYNE
Rating: PG-13, Thriller
Lead: Mark Wahlberg
Director: John Moore
Run time: 85 minutes
This adaptation of an outdated video game casts Mark Wahlberg as a brooding detective whose wife and child were murdered by drug addicts high on Valkyr, a blue liquid that either turns you invincible or triggers hallucinations of winged demons. Seeking vengeance, he goes after the drug’s alleged manufacturers but can’t separate friends from foes. Director Moore injects some style into this urban noir, but the plot holes are baffling, even to those who played “Payne” back in the day and should understand what’s happening. Watch through the end credits for the promise of a sequel, but bet the mortgage that it never happens.

SAW V
Rating: R, Horror
Lead: Tobin Bell
Director: David Hackl
Run time: 88 minutes
This latest entry in the Saw series picks up where last year’s “IV” left off, which is to say in a dreary muddle. The saga of moralizing serial killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has become a convoluted puzzle not worth piecing together, and this chapter is particularly inconsequential, equally composed of hackneyed present-day action involving a Jigsaw apprentice’s booby-trap-centric plot, and flashbacks to prior films’ action now seen from a slightly different perspective. As evidenced by the go-nowhere plot, hackneyed visuals, and crude performances—all of which exhibit the intelligence and craftsmanship of a direct-to-video release—”Saw’s” sequelitis has become a creatively fatal condition.