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DOOM Stating that Doom is probably the best of the numerous flicks based on a video game ranks as the feeblest praise imaginable. It's akin to noting that benign genital herpes is the best sexually transmitted disease to acquire, or that strawberry is the best tasting Schnapps flavor. Still, in a sub-sub-genre that has subjected us to the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Resident Evil, we'll take our favors where we can get them. Doom rips off Aliens at every turn (at least its makers steal from the best), as a group of military grunts find themselves combating vicious creatures at a manned outpost in outer space. For a good while, director Andrzej Bartkowiak actually attempts to make a real movie rather than just a video game simulation, but eventually the movie runs out of creative steam and turns increasingly daffy. Rating: **
GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' Rapper 50 Cent may have set the music world on fire, but as a movie star, he's as relevant as a dead mic. His starring vehicle, about a drug dealer trying to make it as a rap star, is yet one more uninspired crime pic that liberally borrows from all the violent "dis dis bang bang" titles that preceded it. Yet the movie it most resembles -- coincidentally, given the proximity of the release dates -- is this past summer's Hustle & Flow (in which a pimp tried to make it as a rapper). It's fascinating to place both films side by side and see how one succeeds while the other doesn't. With its rich characterizations and pungent atmosphere, Hustle flows. Get Rich Or Die Tryin', with its frayed theatrics and stiff performance by 50 Cent, isn't worth a plugged nickel. Rating: * 1/2
JARHEAD In adapting Anthony Swofford's book about Marines bored by their experience during the Gulf War, director Sam Mendes and scripter William Broyles Jr. have made a movie that isn't exactly a war movie or an anti-war movie; if anything, it's the pioneer in the new genre of the semi-war movie. Jarhead is about warriors without a war, men who have been primed to kill and are then denied that opportunity. Mendes and his actors (led by Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx) do an admirable job of punching across this frustration, and our sympathies are with these characters even if we don't exactly endorse the reasons for their mental morass. Jarhead does its best to remain apolitical, yet the very nature of the piece insures that correlations can be made to the current debacle in the Middle East. Mendes may have been reluctant to offend the war hawks, but history can't afford a similar luxury: It's too busy repeating itself to balk. Rating: ***
KISS KISS, BANG BANG Scripter Shane Black, best known for penning Lethal Weapon, makes his directorial debut with this fast and furious yarn that isn't a buddy/action movie as much as a send-up of a buddy/action movie. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are both in top form, respectively playing a none-too-bright thief who gets mistaken for an actor and the gay private eye assigned to prepare him for his screen test. The murder-mystery plot becomes needlessly complicated and doesn't hang together all that well, resulting in a tendency for the picture to move forward in fits and starts. But for the most part, this is sharp entertainment, as numerous Hollywood cliches are gleefully turned inside out. As scathing indictments of Tinseltown go, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang may not be The Player, but it's a player nonetheless. Rating: ***
THE LEGEND OF ZORRO Set approximately nine years after The Mask of Zorro, this sequel finds Don Alejandro de la Vega (Antonio Banderas) having trouble shedding his day job as Zorro in order to spend more time with his lovely wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and rambunctious young son Joaquin (Adrian Alonso). External pressures force the couple to split, with Alejandro drowning himself in booze and Elena taking up with a Frenchman (Rufus Sewell) who's clearly up to no good. The presence of Anthony Hopkins (who played the original, aging Zorro in the first film) is sorely missed, but Banderas and Zeta-Jones remain a sexy and spirited screen couple. Their fiery passion, combined with some solid action scenes, results in an undemanding good time. Rating: ***
LOGGERHEADS Jumping between various North Carolina locations, this drama from Monroe native Tim Kirkman follows a trio of interconnected stories. At Kure Beach, an HIV-positive drifter (Kip Pardue) camps out on the beach so he can study the area's loggerhead turtles. In Eden, a minister's wife (Tess Harper) misses the son she and her husband (Chris Sarandon) shunned once they had learned he was gay. And in Asheville, a perpetually distraught woman (Bonnie Hunt) decides to search for the child she long ago gave up for adoption. The deliberate pace is sure to make some viewers squirm, but I was struck by how quickly Kirkman was able to make me care about these aching individuals. All of the performances are noteworthy, though I was especially drawn to Hunt's change-of-pace turn as a woman who seems incapable of forming a smile on her face. Rating: ***
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