Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)

Warner Bros. made “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” for 3D big screens in 2012, but watching the pop-art colors, goofy-grin special effects, and family-on-an-adventure story, I thought of the Disney movies from 30 years back, fantasies that put children center stage. “Journey” is proudly rah-rah family fun, hokey with “I love you, dad” montages that rocket past cringingly cloy, but it is miles better than the first “Journey” film, “Center of the Earth.” That piffle drowned in bad CGI, but here we get tiny elephants, giant bees, raging waters, and falling rocks that ring more true. (Sort of.) Speaking of Rocks, Dwayne Johnson replaces Brandon Fraser as the adult who joins our teen hero (Josh Hutcherson) on an adventure that again focuses on Verne and a missing relative (Michael Caine as one cool grandpa). Hutcherson is too old to be short-bus style yelling “Grandpa!,” but Johnson has a ball singing and playing a ukulele. Adults won’t mind when the cast breaks the fourth wall and smirk. B-

Men in Black 3 (2012)

All time travel plots defy logic: If you go back in time to kill Hitler as a child, the absence of an adult Hitler will negate the need to jump back, which means Hitler will rise. But we still love the idea, right? “Men in Black 3” adds a time travel trick hat to its black suits, ties and sunglasses, and the effort further tarnishes the first outing about top secret agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Will Smith) and a secret police force that patrols alien life on Earth. Here, an old nemesis of K’s jumps back to 1969 to kill him as part of an elaborate revenge tactic. In present day NYC, Agent K is dead 43 years, and only J inexplicably remembers him. So back J goes to save K. Ill-conceived from first frame to last, nothing makes sense, not even on the wide girth of a summer flick about aliens, ray guns, Andy Warhol, and moon prisons. The chemistry between Smith and Jones is shit, derailed by Jones’ pained disinterest. Huge props to Josh Brolin as a young K, nailing a TLJ impression so dead-on it deserves its own film, not this crap sequel. C+

Haywire (2012)

Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” exists for one reason: To show mixed-martial arts fighter Gina Carano kick the snot out of such Hollywood heartthrobs as Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, and Ewan McGregor. She does this exceedingly well. The fight scenes are fast, feel brazenly real, and contain none of the CGI’d wirework gunk that turns most female vigilante flicks into fetishized trash. I’m looking at you, “Underworld.” When Tatum pummels Carano in the opening scene, the sight is shocking. Carrano gives back, brutally. Alas, the action is all that’s worth noting as the story (by Lem Dobbs, who wrote Soderbergh’s “Limey”) is a merry-go-round of betrayals so outlandishly unbelievable and confusing, I gave up tracking details and dialogue. Speaking of, and I pray I never meet Carano, but her delivery is tepid, with at least half her words red-flagged as post- production re-recording. She has a tough screen presence, but so much of this film is awkward talk that it feels long at 93 minutes. In a sequel, Carano must fight Liam Neeson. Fact. B-

Land of the Dead (2005)

Three years before the economy collapsed, and six years before Occupy Wall Street tried to shake America out of its cloud of greed and luxury, George Romero – the original Zombie King – made “Land of the Dead,” a rebel grandchild of a grandparent that was once its own kind of hell-raiser. Dig it: In a post-zombie-apocalypse America, the ever-shrinking human population is walled up inside Pittsburgh, divided into two classes – the peasants, fighters, and scavengers on the street, and the privileged suits atop a glass-and-steel tower, safe from harm. Of course the stomach-chomping zombies will come, and the rich will flee, and the down-trodden will do the right thing. Romero goes full satire, casting ex-“Easy Rider” Dennis Hooper as a Donald-Trump-like lunatic carting around cases of money in a world where money is useless. Grimly, the bloody delicious irony zombie shuffles its way stage left as the third act loses its head just when the story demands this world be burned by the hand of an evolved zombie who once pumped gas as a living minimum wage slave. B-

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

A lonely, maladjusted, and overly imaginative young girl arrives at her new home: A rural estate with a foreboding castle-like design and elaborately creepy gardens. Problems compound, from a distracted parent to supernatural creatures that only feign friendliness, and no adult believes the girl because she is lonely, maladjusted, and overly imaginative. Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”? Yes, and its weak-sister “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which boasts del Toro as co-writer. So many repetitions abound I wondered if this loose remake of a 1973 TV movie was an abandoned first stab at a “Pan’s” screenplay, farmed out to a new directing/writing team. Bailee Madison (“Just Go With It”) is the girl, and she’s a young queen with a reason to scream: The rat-like trolls here want her teeth, and soul. The moody atmosphere makes up for the déjà vu vibe, but the real wet blanket is our adult leads, a sleep-walking Guy Pearce as dad, and a stiff Katie Holmes as the girlfriend, each acting as if they’d rather be in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” C+

Alien Armageddon (2011)

“Alien Armageddon” is one a series of independent micro-budgeted flicks with bit-part actors as leads, Mac-laptop-made special effects, and a biblical spin to a well-worn tale: The aliens attack Earth and cook up an evil plot against humanity genre, with the survivors – here, a shop-owner mom (Katharine McEwan) and a murderous cowboy (Don Scribner) included – fighting back. Seen anything like this before? The wholesale cheap sets and locations, and vagueness of a big picture ironically work as writer/director Neil Johnson is open for surprises awesome (are the aliens of God?) and unnecessary (a WTF lesbian scene). It’s an ugly flick, for sure, but it’s more curious about what THEY are, versus normal Hollywood dribble such as “Cowboys& Aliens” or “Battle: Los Angeles,” the latter of which this film was once titled. Be warned: This is not a film to eat by, or for women who are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant. B-