I’ve always liked Al Pacino, even if I can’t always figure out why. I mean let’s face it – it isn’t as if he possesses the most versatile acting range in the world. His characters are generally about the same from movie to movie.

Still, they are certainly entertaining characters, and perhaps that is why I enjoy watching him. In this case, he is teamed with John Goodman as the two try to catch someone who is killing men who take out personal ads.

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I can certainly understand Anne Hathaway wanting to shed the image of The Princess Diaries.

Bijou Phillips, on the other hand has to rid herself of Bully. I can’t say either made a particularly good choice with this movie.

Phillips made a step up perhaps in that she didn’t take her clothes off quite as much. But her character was actually even less developed this time around than she was in Bully, if that is even possible. Hathaway, meanwhile, actually had what was perhaps an interesting character, but it seems about the only compelling reason to see this movie is the fact that she’s not the little princess any more. As it turns out, that’s not enough.

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Remember, remember, the 5th of November…

On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with several barrels of gunpowder, intent on leveling the building in a statement of rebellion. Some 400 years later, a terrorist has taken on a Fawkesian mask and assumed his role as speaker of the people in an attempt to remake the government.

Meanwhile, Natalie Portman has escaped a potentially damaging past of parents who were rabble-rousers and now glides through her own life, but one night she comes into contact with the self-labeled V, who rescues her from those who would do her in and delivers a lovely alliterative verse in the process.

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In this movie, Scooby and the gang from Mystery, Incorporated return for another bout with monsters, only this time they are real monsters. It seems that someone has decided to steal some of the costumes donated by the gang and run them through a machine (run by “randamonium”), which turns them into the real thing!

As with the first time around, it’s Matthew Lillard as Norville ‘Shaggy’ Rogers that steals the show. While it’s unlikely that Scooby Doo himself could have been done in any way other than with computer animation, and it demeans Lillard’s performance somewhat.

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Caroline (Kate Hudson) has a new job as a nurse to for a couple at a plantation. It seems that the husband needs constant care these days and the wife can’t keep up by herself, and the nurses just keep running away. Something doesn’t seem right, but Caroline needs a job and the money is good.

Sure enough, as soon as she gets there things start to go all funny. There are noises galore and that attic is the worst. It’s got all sorts of spooky things in it and that Violet (the wife, played by the incomparable Gena Rowlands) has something up her sleeve.

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This coming-of-age movie has one variation that most don’t. The girl (Elisha Cuthbert) is – or was recently – a porn star.

And in the middle, she goes back to Las Vegas for an appearance at the annual convention to be one again, before the boy goes back to rescue her from her evil boss (Timothy Olyphant). Naturally that won’t work out well. A high school kid at an adult film convention?

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In this latest release from the team of Disney and Pixar, we enter the world of (you guessed it) cars. There are no humans whatsoever in this one, as there have been (albeit only somewhat) in most of their other releases. This time around we are in a world that is inhabited solely by mechanized vehicles. Mostly cars, but also RVs, trucks and even a helicopter or two.

The star of the show is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), the hot rookie on the Piston Cup circuit, and he is headed to California for a three-car showdown in the final race of the season to settle once and for all who will be the winner of the Piston Cup (after a bizarre three-way tie in the last race of the season).

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Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas return to reprise their roles from 1998’s The Mask of Zorro.

It’s now ten years later, they have a son, and California is on the verge of joining the union. This means that Alejandro (Banderas) must fulfill his promise to Elena (Zeta-Jones) and hang up his crime-fighting mask once and for all to be with his family. Of course, he isn’t quite sure he’s ready to do that.

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Perhaps the original Major League wasn’t a great film. It was still funny. It wasn’t for kids, but it wasn’t that bad either. This time around something was missing. Actually a lot was missing.

The same basic cast is back, but the edge is gone. While the desire to produce a wider-market film is understandable, in the process, something was lost. I’m not saying that adult language makes a film better, not by any means. But along the way something happened. Otherwise, how can a movie with almost the entire cast back, and the addition of a great character actor in the form of Randy Quaid go wrong?

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This has got to be one of the worst movies I’ve seen for some time, and I’ve seen some bad ones. I have this annoying habit of hearing something is good, or needing to see something because I keep hearing good things and then regretting it for a long time afterwards. I think this will haunt me in this way.

Napoleon Dynamite (apparently his real name) is a high school student with problems. He doesn’t seem to like anyone or anything, and he appears to think that he has a much better grasp on reality than he does. So off he goes to school, on a bus filled with much younger children than himself (that one was never really explained).

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