Paula Patton

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The best that can be said for the video game adaptation “Warcraft” is that it’s not the incoherent, CGI heavy and Michael-Bay-type nightmare it could have been. It’s still somewhat incoherent – full of computer generated cannon fodder – but I am surprised and happy to report it did not induce any headaches, even in pointless 3D.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The 1986 Chicago-based movie, “About Last Night,” has potential for a thematic redo. That opportunity seems squandered in this 2014 version, as the focus is just on casting and crudeness, as practiced by co-stars Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Joy Bryant and Regina Hall.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Experiencing an unfunny comedy is one of the most painful time wasters in the movie going adventure – not only will that time never come back, but wanting to laugh when no motivation for hilarity is produced is like having eternal hiccups. “Baggage Claim” (hic) is (hic) that (hic) sort of movie.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – While you wouldn’t normally compare the new action/comedy “2 Guns” with the comedy “I Love You, Man,” really the only difference between what Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington are doing now versus what Paul Rudd and Jason Segel did in 2009 is that “2 Guns” uses crime as the means by which two grown men fall in love with one another.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “Disconnect” is a punch in the gut, the backlash of our current technology, and a film that could have happened yesterday. It is a trenchant cautionary tale, warning us about the excesses of every blinking screen and “smart” device that supposedly is making our lives easier, but can just as easily become instruments of destructive. It is about how we live now.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Brad Bird proves that he can make the leap from Pixar to action with one of the best genre films of the year, the adrenalized “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” Proving there is a way to make a big budget franchise installment that feels vibrant, alive, and like more than just a pathetic retread of what has come before (unlike this year’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Sherlock Holmes” entries), “Ghost Protocol” delivers with breakneck pace and stellar action choreography. This movie wastes little time – it’s a lean, mean, action machine.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – There is a tradition within the African American community during weddings. It stems from the past, when marriage was deemed illegal for the race, and provides the title for a new film, “Jumping the Broom.” The now symbolic gesture is the basis for a clash between families and social classses in one seriocomic marriage weekend.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Romantic comedies are a roving beast in the Movie Zone, one that can never be captured properly time after time, yet never dies either. Queen Latifah and the rapper Common put an interesting and necessary twist on the genre, but still cannot help but fall back on the recurring rom-com clichés that eventually undermines the new film “Just Wright.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The final scene of Lee Daniels’ “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” ends with a dedication that the film is for “precious girls everywhere”.