Clive Owen

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Clive Owen is a fantastic actor, one of the best of his generation in films like “Children of Men” and “Trust.” His co-star in “Intruders,” Carice Van Houten, generally makes everything she does more interesting (and memorably appears in the new season of “Game of Thrones”). And yet neither of these talented thespians can do a thing to save “Intruders,” an inert, boring supernatural thriller, a flick that joins the crowded subgenre of childhood boogeyman scare-fests that fail to find the spine-tingling power of what we think may be under the bed.

Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “Killer Elite” is an exhausting, nonsensical, illogical, loud collection of action clichés masquerading as a modern action film. It features characters less three-dimensional than most cartoons doing and saying things that are only done and said in movies. Bad movies. Really bad movies.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – There’s an unsettling potency to relationships that are born online. They take place entirely within the mind, which is capable of producing idealized images never to be equaled by reality. With the right stroke of keys, a savvy writer could potentially seduce a susceptible victim into emotional entrapment. That’s why the Internet is a predator’s playground.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

ATLANTA – Sometimes human tragedy hits dramatically, but other times it subtly, imperceptibly, alters the intrinsic fibers of everyday life in undetectable ways. That is the premise behind Scott Hicks’ film “The Boys Are Back.” It is the story not of death, but of the strategy human beings devise to cope, to defend and to protect themselves against pain and loss.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Writer/director Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”) uses words the same way horror movie directors use blood or action movie auteurs use bullets. His weapon of choice, witty repartee, is delivered wonderfully in the enjoyable, clever, charming “Duplicity,” starring Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Paul Giamatti, and Tom Wilkinson.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Tom Tykwer’s “The International,” an alleged thriller starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, is one of the most surprisingly inert films so far this year, an awfully written conspiracy flick that never gets out of neutral and is only remotely worth someday seeing for one fantastic action sequence.

CHICAGO – For a raucously good time, “Shoot ‘Em Up” is a visceral experience you won’t soon forget. Under the guise of a hardcore action gun flick, this film surprisingly has baby undertones.