Ryan Reynolds

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Good cartoons know that we’re in on the joke, that all the surreal actions will satisfy our basic funny bone. Great cartoons give us a little bit more, an empathy or a story that really goes beyond expectations. “The Croods” is a great cartoon, and a wonderful achievement in animation evolution.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – With obvious comparisons to “24” and “Buried,” Gabe Torres’ “Brake” comes with a bit of referential baggage in its trunk. Also in there is Secret Service Agent Jeremy Reins (Stephen Dorff), a man trapped in a nightmarish kidnapping situation in the trunk of a car. He wakes up there and it’s where the vast majority of “Brake” takes place as he’s tortured physically and mentally by a group of terrorists trying to find the Executive Branch’s secret bunker.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “Safe House” is so overly familiar that you not only will think that you’ve seen it before and know exactly where it’s going before it gets there, but you will also barely remember having seen it once it’s over. It’s cinematic fast food – relatively streamlined but also not difficult to make for anyone involved, generally bad for you, and totally forgettable. It’s all so, well, “Safe.”

Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – It’s always risky for a screenwriter to craft a film about a family of writers in that when the result is a script so generically awful as that for “Fireflies in the Garden” it’s going to stick out even more prominently. After sitting on the shelf for years (it played festivals in 2008 and was supposed to be released that year) and reportedly undergoing some reshoots, this stale drama is finally getting a limited release and will prove just how limited it is to the poor saps who pay to see it.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “The Change-Up” is an undeniable mess, as any movie that opens with a grown man getting baby crap projected into his mouth would be (and that’s just the beginning), but one of the worst scripts of the year is saved from the depths of comedy hell by a talented cast headlined by the typically-restrained Jason Bateman playing against type.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The tipping point is close approaching in the super hero movie aura, especially as the B-list get their moment in the projection machine. “Green Lantern,” featuring Ryan Reynolds, stays true to its comic book roots, but lacks any cohesive passion within the main story.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – In one of the most unusual settings for a film, actor Ryan Reynolds performs as a one-man tour de force as the only on-screen character in the new film “Buried.” Set in a coffin buried beneath the sands of Iraq, Reynolds conveys the panic, hope and inevitable outcome of a man buried alive and fighting for his very existence.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – At some point in our lives, most of us have had to reach beyond our job descriptions to appease a demanding boss. Common themes from making coffee to picking up dry cleaning are familiar and often tolerated as one strives to “get ahead”.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – How did Wolverine get to Northern Alberta, Canada, where he makes his first appearance in a bar cage match in Bryan Singer’s “X-Men”? And what about all those flashbacks to his dark past and the experiments that turned him into a legend?

CHICAGO – The makers of “Love Actually” and “Notting Hill” know how to do romantic comedy that doesn’t somehow fall into the trap of a formulaic chick flick like “27 Dresses”. “Definitely, Maybe,” which is their latest effort, on the other hand isn’t particularly original and really isn’t very funny.