The Geat Is Good, Not Great

Anthony Hopkins, Michael O'Donoghue star in exorcism flick

(NEWSER) - Though it does a thing or two right, most critics are panning The Rite, the story of a young priest who heads to exorcism school and apprentices under Anthony Hopkins. Whatever your expectations, just don’t expect innovation:

• The film is an “overwrought thriller with a surfeit of solemnity and the devil's own sound design,” writes Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal . The screenplay is “ponderous enough to banish Oscar anxiety for all concerned,” and by the final battle, “you're ready to give the devil whatever due it takes to get The Rite over and done with.”
• The Rite has Lou Lumenick wishing for pea soup and spinning heads. Instead, "this threadbare and risible rehash of The Exorcist," presents "a donkey with glowing red eyes, a plague of frogs, a pregnant woman spitting up railroad bolts ... and a scenery-chewing Anthony Hopkins," he writes for the New York Post .

Film is a wild ride without much substance

(NEWSER) - If you're heading out to see the new Angelina Jolie flick Wanted, critics have some advice: Lighten up and enjoy it. "It’s trash, but I love it anyway,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. The story of a “nobody” office worker who winds up “a tight, muscled killing machine” in a team of assassins, the film’s got “passion as well as pow” without “a scintilla of redeeming social value,” Travers notes. More»

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones return for alien flick

(NEWSER) - Sure, no one was that desperate for a Men in Black 3—but it's actually a pretty good summer movie. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back defending the planet from aliens, and this time, Josh Brolin's along for the ride as a young Jones.

• The movie "turns out to be so much fun," writes AO Scott in the New York Times . While it "carefully fulfills its blockbuster imperatives—with chases and explosions and elaborately contrived plot twists—it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty, and genuinely fresh territory."

Johnny Depp stars in Tim Burton film

(NEWSER) - Critics aren't thrilled with Tim Burton's latest offering, inspired by the late-1960s cult TV show of the same name and starring Johnny Depp as an 18th-century vampire who is buried alive, only to be accidentally dug up in 1972. The film isn't sure what it wants to be:

• Dark Shadows "tries to serve too many masters," writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News . "Initially it’s an epic valentine to the show. Then it’s a vamp-out-of-water story. Soon it’s a gung-ho comedy. Finally it's a monster flick." Still, it "unearths enough fun."

Joss Whedon directs Robert Downey Jr. in superhero blowout

(NEWSER) - Sure, it's an effective moneymaking scheme: release movies about individual superheroes, then one about all of them. But with Joss Whedon at the helm, The Avengers really works. What critics are saying:

• "Even if you don't particularly like comic-book adaptations, this film just might make a believer of you," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times . "Whedon is the key reason why this $220 million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision."