Angelina Jolie

Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Movies based on video games are almost never good… even the best ones only ascend to the level of “barely watchable.” By that measure, “Tomb Raider” can be considered a modest success since it didn’t make me want to claw my eyes out. I have to confess I never saw either of the first two films with Angelina Jolie, but after watching this I’m not actually clamoring at the bit to catch up.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Olympic runner, plane crash survivor, and WWII POW Louis Zamperini had an extraordinary life of defeating even more profound conditions from cruel nature and fellow man. His is a tale of grandiose cinematic potential, especially considering our desire for beat-down underdogs and their gauntlets of adversity, but such gets a surface-level treatment from director Angelina Jolie’s underwhelming tribute “Unbroken.”

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – If “Maleficent” were an actual fairy tale storybook, I’d say it has beautiful illustrations but not much story to tell. As the title character, Angelina Jolie is a towering presence with an unforgettable look, but the film itself is all dressed up with nowhere to go. “Maleficent” the movie’s story moves so slowly it makes a sloth look like a cheetah.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The sorrows of war has been played out too many times in our so-called modern age. The excessively cruel Bosnian war – a three year conflict that introduced the vile term “ethnic cleansing” – is the background of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Good and evil, chase and fight. Those are the two basic formulas that dominate “Kung Fu Panda 2,” the sequel to the very popular first film. That redundancy is helped by the spirituality of an animated panda and some spectacular 3D rendering.

Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Though you probably don’t know his name, Christopher McQuarrie’s involvement might sell you on paying to see “The Tourist” even more than “A”-list stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. After all, McQuarrie is the writer behind 1995’s Oscar-winning magnum opus by the name of “The Usual Suspects”.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Perhaps the creators of “Salt” took the potential double meaning of its title a bit too seriously because the film has been overloaded with one flavor at the expense of the variety that could have turned this well-done action movie into something a bit more memorable. Angelina Jolie is great and the film is undeniably expertly made but it’s also shockingly lacking in personality or moments to make it register as more than just an extended chase scene.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – With curving, clinking and kissing bullets, “Wanted” indeed does Chicago proud. And Angelina Jolie sells it. And Morgan Freeman is ominous. And in his body of work, James McAvoy – the star of this orgasmic summer blockbuster – becomes a man.

CHICAGO – It’s all the rave today to exhume an epic from long, long ago and bring it back on the monster screen bigger, better and with more grandeur than ever fathomable before.