question: Jason Statham and Ben Foster turn in enjoyable performances, but this superficial remake betrays them with mind-numbing violence and action thriller cliches.

numbered reviews: 1. With "The Mechanic," Statham has found a vehicle nicely suited to his narrow but nevertheless real talents.
2. Less frenetic than your usual Jason Statham action franchise film, this remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson/Jan-Michael Vincent vehicle is more of the kind of character-driven suspense audiences often say they want.
3. A sputtering remake in need of a more powerful recharge.
4. ...services its action like an insensitive lover - hard, rough and fast. But its one-night-stand approach to the genre probably won't attract the loyalty Luc Besson's seductively Euro-trashy Transporter flicks have earned.
5. "The Mechanic," 2011 edition, is a striking-looking work, combining an arty inkiness with a retro-graininess that more or less screams 1970s, albeit without the cliches and flatness. If only you liked the people in the picture.
6. Considerably more fun than the rather lethargic original.
7. Statham has at least three more movies coming out this year. I bet at least one of them will be better.
8. Even by the sloppy, soulless standards of hit man movies, "The Mechanic" is a mess.
9. The auteur who gave us Con Air... is back, extending his cinema terrible of violent, unthinking nihilism and brutal, pointless action. Oh, and misogyny for fun. Hoorah!
10. Jason Statham doesn't stretch much as an actor. He doesn't have to. His taciturn delivery and bullet-headed intensity make him the perfect star for the current amped-up trend in action movies.


question: Roving Mars is a decent thrill ride even when it starts feeling like a commercial plug for NASA's failing space program.

numbered reviews: 1. Unlike most IMAX films, which have a stately, almost static feeling, this movie has moments as immediate and involving as a feature film.
2. [Butler] caught the tense moments at NASA as scientists waited to see whether the robots would land safely. And he got amazing pictures from them of the red surface of Mars pocked with what may be dried-up lake basins and riverbeds.
3. ... a heartfelt tribute to a couple of robots.
4. [P]retty much a big, beautiful ad for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and so what?
5. While it does present a series of stirring images of the Red Planet, far too much of the film's already brief (40-minute) running time is consumed by shots of anxious-looking scientists and engineers peering intently at their computer monitors.
6. If this is the real Mars, we'll stick with the more vivid depiction of the planet from Total Recall, thank you very much.
7. Manages to present scientific inquiry as an emotional journey, during which two exquisitely designed machines go from being gears and hinges to the embodiment of our best hopes and dreams.
8. Read no more if you want to grow up to be an astronaut; here are 40 minutes of nonstop robots, spaceships and bright-eyed NASA geeks enthusing about tangles of circuitry and nifty hydraulics.
9. Placing this 45-minute commercial for the space program on overpriced IMAX screens isn't doing so much a public service as, well, business as usual.
10. The movie is more compelling than exciting with one exception: the kind of rocket blast-off sequence for which IMAX screens were seemingly invented.


question: The humor is less sharp and more warm-hearted this time around, and the characters are enjoyable to revisit.

numbered reviews: 1. Low-key to the point of being listless.
2. Like going out for a bad meal with a group of people you love being with. You're happy to be in their company; you just wish you didn't leave feeling hungry.
3. An uplifting, and funny, film about real people.
4. Outside of being well-acted and funny, Barbershop 2 is actually about something.
5. Twice the amount of Cedric makes this twice as funny as the original!
6. "Barbershop 2" shows a maturity over the original, making it a worthy sequel.
7. Some jokes hit and others miss, but the laughter, camaraderie and warmth will keep you smiling as much as it did the first time around.
8. [Fumbles] around with what had been a winning cast of characters, reducing their living, breathing relationships to a series of exchanges of cheap insults.
9. It's a warm, often funny reunion of the sassiest, chattiest characters ever to buzz a brother's head.
10. Heartstrings will be tugged and ribs tickled, particularly thanks to Cedric the Entertainer.


question: Full of endearing characters, this doc about a choir of "seniors behaving badly" is uplifting and delightful.

numbered reviews:
1. Regardless of your age, you'll leave Young at Heart with a big smile on your face. This musical is sheer joy and infectiously happy. It's one of this year's best films.
2. An extraordinary documentary about a senior citizen chorus that reveals singing as a spiritual practice that opens our hearts, provides fresh energy, and connects us with others.
3. To observe a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80 perform in the documentary Young@Heart is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.
4. Young@Heart's worst enemy is its director, Stephen Walker, whose incessant pushing and prodding strives to manipulate in ways both needless and trite.
5. Anybody who thinks the Rolling Stones are old should check out the charming documentary Young@Heart, which features a group of rock performers whose average age is around 80.
6. Sure to be a hit not just with the AARP crowd, we'll surely see a lot of the film's ready-to-be excerpted videos.
7. The film's appeal is at once sentimental and perverse: It's not every day that you get to see a 92-year-old woman soloing on 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go.'
8. Though the group members are hilarious and their stories effortlessly touching, the clumsy filmmaking and manipulative editing muddle what should have been a simple human story.
9. How can we be uplifted by a James Brown classic when the singer in fact doesn't feel good but actually has a painful-looking spine condition?
10. What makes Young@ Heart work well is the way director-narrator Stephen Walker focuses on how great music transcends age and generational shifts.