This week, Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy play deadly assassins in Wanted; David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-open the X-Files in I Want to Believe; and the next chapter in The Chronicles of Narnia arrives on DVD.

Wanted
Universal
Single Disc: $29.98
Two Disc: $34.98
Blu-ray: $39.98

Plot: When the father he never knew is murdered in cold blood, a wimpy office drone named Wesley (James McAvoy) is drafted into an elite league of assassins and trained to hunt down his father’s killer. Along the way, he flirts with gorgeous colleague Fox (Angelina Jolie) and makes an enemy of the league’s leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman).

Opinion: As you can probably tell, Wanted‘s plot is derivative nonsense, swiping elements from a long list of other movies (Star Wars and The Matrix just to name a few) and working them into a screenplay that must have read like gibberish on the page. Fortunately for everyone involved, the task of bringing this script to the screen was handed to Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, whose previous credits include the visually dazzling (if borderline incoherent) fantasy/horror hybrids Nightwatch and Daywatch. Never one to hold the camera still when he could send it hurtling after bullets and falling train cars, Bekmambetov brings a kinetic energy to the picture that helps you forget—or at least ignore—its severely underdeveloped story. Naturally, these kind of visual pyrotechnics wear out their welcome and eventually I found myself wishing that I could pat Timur on the shoulder and tell him to just chill out already.

Extras: A number of very technical featurettes, which focus primarily on the film’s special effects and action sequences. The best of the bonus features covers the differences between the comic book and the movie, with commentary from Wanted creator Mark Millar.

Verdict: Rent It

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The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Fox
Single Disc: $29.99
Three Disc: $34.98

Plot: When an FBI agent goes missing and her severed arm turns up in the snowy wilderness, the Bureau calls in the one man who knows his way around freaky shit: Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Joining him in this latest X-File is his longtime partner—and now lover—Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who is dealing with her own crisis of faith as she attempts to save the life of a little boy at the hospital where she’s currently employed.

Opinion: It took X-Files creator Chris Carter ten years to mount another big screen version of his cult TV series and this is the best he could come up with?  Seriously, I Want to Believe feels like the final nail in the coffin for a franchise that stopped mattering somewhere around the turn of the 21st century.  According to Carter, he and his co-writer Frank Spotnitz dreamed up the storyline for this film some years ago while the show was still on the air and, indeed, the script does feel like late-period X-Files: ponderous and slow, without any of the imagination or wit that made the first few seasons such fun to watch.  The biggest problem with the film’s central mystery is that it doesn’t remotely seem like an X-File; would the FBI really drag Mulder out of hiding to solve what’s essentially a kidnapping case?  Don’t bother looking for clues to that vast alien conspiracy that was a staple of the series; there are no close encounters of the third kind here.  In fact, all supernatural elements have been drained away and what we’re left with is a glum procedural about a mystery that’s not particularly…well, mysterious.  The only question about the show’s convoluted mythology that I Want to Believe ends up addressing is: “Are Mulder and Scully doing the nasty?”  And the answer is…yes, frequently.  That’s right, Fox and Dana are an honest-to-God couple now, a development that will probably thrill some fans, while pissing others off to no end.  At least this movie’s enormous box-office belly flop means that we’ll be spared from seeing Mulder and Scully ever becoming–ugh–parents.

Extras: Disc One offers a commentary track from Carter and Spotnitz that works great as a cure for insomnia, not so much as an entertaining extra. There are also three inconsequential deleted scenes, a listless 10-minute gag reel, an Xzibit music video and two featurettes. The mother lode is housed on disc two—a 90-minute making-of documentary that the show’s fans will watch religiously.

Verdict: Rent It (X-Files fans only); Skip It (everyone else)

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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Disney
Single Disc: $29.99
Three Disc: $39.99
Blu-ray Two Disc: $35.99
Blu-ray Three Disc: $40.99

Plot: One year after their first trip to the magical land of Narnia, the Pevensie children find themselves back in that otherworldly realm, fighting alongside the heir to the throne, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), to rescue Narnia from the clutches of his treacherous uncle.

Opinion: The problems with Prince Caspian begin with the actor who was tapped to take up the title character’s sword and leather jerkin. Onscreen, Barnes is a cold fish—all matinee idol looks, but no gravitas or authority. he shift in focus to Caspian means that the Pevensie kids have less to do. The loss of Tilda Swinton’s White Witch is also deeply felt; it’s telling that the best scene in the movie features that character briefly returning to bedevil our heroes once more. Perhaps the biggest difference between the first film and this one is the tone; where The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe was a traditional family-friendly adventure, Caspian more closely resembles a war movie and even though it received a PG-rating, it may be too intense for really young viewers. I’ve got to admit that I even got a little uncomfortable watching these teenagers repeatedly charge into battle to kill hundreds of adult soldiers. It’s bloodless killing of course, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any more appropriate for the under-5 set. On the plus side, the production values and the special effects are top notch, the action sequences are solid (but not exceptional), and the theme of growing up and leaving “home” is sure to resonate with older kids. In that respect, it’s an entirely serviceable sequel. But if you go in expecting the same magic found in Wardrobe, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Extras: All the usual making-of featurettes, a blooper reel and deleted scenes, plus a digital copy for your desktop.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly attempted to recapture some of that Talladega Nights magic in Step Brothers (Sony, $28.96), which fell just short of crossing the magic $100 million mark when it hit theaters in July. That’s disappointing by Ferrell standards, but at least Step Brothers performed better than the family-friendly laffers Space Chimps (Fox, $29.99) and Meet Dave (Fox, $29.99), which were completely ignored during their theatrical run. The former is a decent animated flick about—you guessed it!—chimps in space while the latter is the latest belly flop for the once unstoppable King of Comedy, Eddie Murphy.

If you’re still looking for a stocking stuffer for the film buff in your life, it would be tough to go wrong with Casablanca: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $64.98), another extras-laden box set from the good folks at Warner Brothers, who are flooding the market with great gift ideas this holiday season. Packaged in this Moroccan-style box is a two-disc edition of the 1943 Humphrey Bogart classic, a branded passport holder, a luggage tag, a photo book, replicas of various props from the film and a collection of archival documents about the film’s production. If black-and-white romances aren’t your speed, Warner is also coming out with the Austin Powers Collection: Shagadelic Edition Loaded with Extra Mojo (Warner Bros., $74.98), which marks the swinging spy’s first excursion into Blu-ray. Relive those pre-Love Guru days when Mike Meyers was actually funny.

Finally, in TV news, Metalocalypse: Season Two (Cartoon Network, $29.98) offers all 19 episodes from the cult animated show’s sophomore year in a two-disc set with plenty of geek-friendly bonus features. Meanwhile, Universal continues to preserve the long history of late-night staple Saturday Night Live for future generations with Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fourth Season (Universal, $69.98), which transports viewers back in time to 1978, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Star Wars mania was in full swing and The Blues Brothers made their not-ready-for-primetime debut.

From Iron Man to The Incredible Hulk to Hellboy II to The Dark Knight, comic-book movies are all the rage this summer, so it’s a little odd that Universal isn’t pushing the comic connection with their new action flick Wanted, which blasts its way into theaters today.
Of course, that marketing decision may have something to do with the fact that the movie version of Wanted bears only a passing resemblance to the Mark Millar-penned six-issue series that was published between 2003 and 2004. In the comic (which, full disclosure, I haven’t had the pleasure of reading) a group of super-villains has taken over the world and wiped all of Earth’s heroes out of existence. Meanwhile, ordinary folks go about their ordinary lives, including one Wesley Gibson, an employee at the kind of dreary office ridiculed in movies like Fight Club, The Matrix and Office Space. But, like Neo before him, Wesley soon discovers he’s got a higher calling. See, his long-lost father was a criminal mastermind known as The Killer, an unsurpassed marksman who was unexpectedly assassinated by an enemy of The Fraternity, the cabal of super-villains that runs things. His wimpy son is recruited to take his place in the organization by super-hot female operative Fox, but once the thrill of being a super-bad gun expert wears off, Wesley starts to wonder whether he’s really cut out of Fraternity life.

Okay, now contrast that plot with the movie’s storyline, which sets up The Fraternity as a secret society of assassins that was established centuries ago by a guild of weavers. That’s right, weavers—you know, the guys that make clothes. Anyhow, these ancient weavers discovered that their loom spoke to them in a kind of binary code, providing the names of targets that “fate” decreed had to die. Over the course of their existence, Fraternity operatives have developed a host of special talents, most notably the ability to “curve” the bullets they fire out of their guns. Once again, the assassination of one of the organization’s top agents kicks the story into gear, leading Fox (Angelina Jolie, in a role she was born to play) to approach the dead killer’s son Wes (James McAvoy of Atonement fame) and convince him to join the Fraternity. After a brief period of indecision, the depressed worker bee happily leaves his life of 9 to 5 drudgery behind and enters the Fraternity’s headquarters in a giant factory on the outskirts of some unidentified town that strongly resembles Chicago. There he meets the leader of the group, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), as well as other operatives who sport names like Gunsmith (played by Common), The Butcher (Dato Bakhtadze) and The Repairman (Marc Warren). Under the tutelage of Fox, the newest recruit enters into an intense training period that involves beatings, shooting lessons, beatings, subway rooftop chases and more beatings. Once he’s finally mastered the art of kicking ass, Wes starts wracking up the body count before coming face to face with the man that killed his father. But wait! Could it be that this guy isn’t his father’s killer but…his actual father? Paging Luke Skywalker!!

As you can tell, the plot of Wanted is derivative nonsense, borrowing elements from a long list of other movies (Star Wars, The Matrix and The Godfather just to name a few) and working them into a screenplay that must have read like gibberish on the page. Fortunately for everyone involved, the task of bringing this script to the screen was handed to Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, whose previous credits include the visually dazzling (if borderline incoherent) fantasy/horror hybrids Nightwatch and Daywatch. Never one to hold the camera still when he could send it hurtling after bullets and falling train cars, Bekmambetov brings a kinetic energy to the picture that helps you forget—or at least ignore—its severely underdeveloped story. Of course, there will be a sizeable number of moviegoers who find the film’s hyperactive visual style completely unwatchable. Here’s a good litmus test: if you got queasy watching The Bourne Ultimatum‘s jittery camerawork, you may experience similar headaches and nausea during Wanted. Bekmambetov’s trick is to regularly speed up and slow down the action, all the while letting things like bullets, computer keyboard keys and teeth fly directly towards the camera lens. (One can only imagine how this movie would have looked in 3D.) Naturally, these kind of visual pyrotechnics can wear out their welcome after awhile, particularly if there isn’t a great story to hang them on. Eventually, even I grew weary of the film’s relentless hyperactivity and found myself wishing that I could pat Timur on the shoulder and tell him to just chill out already. With all the craziness going on around them, the actors don’t get much of a chance to, you know, act, but McAvoy and Jolie are able to score a few memorable moments. (I have to admit that the normally svelte Angie looked scarily thin here—an assassin’s arms shouldn’t resemble chopsticks!) As far as this summer’s comic-book movies go, Wanted isn’t a crowd-pleaser on the level of Iron Man and probably won’t come close to the grandeur of The Dark Knight or Hellboy II, but at least it’s not as boring as The Incredible Hulk.

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I don’t know how they run things over at Pixar, but part of me thinks that this group of animation geniuses decides what film they’re going to make next by coming up with a list of seemingly impossible ideas and then assigning them to whatever foolhardy filmmaker volunteers. How else do you explain a company producing movies about talking cars, a rat that cooks or, in the case of its new feature-length cartoon Wall*E, the last functional robot on a deserted Earth some 700 years in the future? But that isn’t the only thing that makes Wall*E one of Pixar’s riskiest productions to date. Director Andrew Stanton has upped the ante by keeping the film’s extensive cast of robot characters monosyllabic, which means that much of the film is free of conventional dialogue. Instead these machines communicate to each other (and us) through digital squawks and programmed gestures. What’s marvelous about the movie—and one of the many things that makes it unlike any other film, animated or otherwise, in recent memory—is that we understand everything they’re saying and feeling without all the excess verbiage that pervades so many contemporary big-budget studio productions. Although Wall*E isn’t exactly a silent film–after all, these robots do regularly “talk” to each other throughout–in its best moments it displays the same mastery of visual storytelling that distinguished silent screen legends like Murnau, Tati and Chaplin.

It’s worth noting that if you’ve seen any of the trailers for Wall*E, you only know one aspect of the movie’s plot. Opening in an abandoned metropolis, the first half-hour is given over to establishing the titular robot’s daily routine: a little trash compacting, followed by a hunt for cool knick-knacks (Rubik’s Cubes, sporks and the like) before winding down every night with a viewing of the 1969 Barbara Streisand musical Hello, Dolly! Wall*E’s solitary existence is shattered by the arrival of a spaceship, which drops off a sleek high-tech ‘bot named EVE to scour the ravaged planet for any sign of green life. Partly out of loneliness and partly because EVE is just freakin’ awesome, Wall*E instantly falls in love with his unexpected visitor, feelings which she eventually comes to reciprocate. (I hate to assign genders to these sexless robots, but the movie does encourage us to view EVE as a girl and Wall*E as a boy—besides it’ll be easier for all of you to follow the plot synopsis that way.) Wall*E unexpectedly aids his would-be girlfriend in her mission when he shows her a small plant that he had previously tucked away in his extensive junk collection. Her target located, EVE promptly goes into stasis mode until her spaceship returns to pick her up. Unwilling to let her go, Wall*E hitches a ride and jets into deep space, eventually rendezvousing with a luxury space vessel, which carries the last living group of humans in the entire universe.

It’s at this point that Wall*E really blasts off and becomes an out-of-this-world moviegoing experience. As our little hero follows his true love around the enormous ship, he comes into contact with a whole society of robots, from frustrated little mops to a HAL-like autopilot. One of the movie’s subtle jokes is that these machines actually have more personality than their flesh and blood “masters” who, over the centuries, have devolved into fat blobs that spend all of their time in hover-chairs hooked up to a non-stop stream of televised commercials for “cupcakes in a cup” and other products brought to them by the good folks at the Buy n Large Corporation. The only human who seems to possess a modicum of brain power is the ship’s captain (voiced by Jeff Garlin), who slowly wakes up from his media-induced slumber to help steer the ship back home to Earth. Stanton wisely keeps the humans in supporting roles and, quite frankly, I would have been just as happy if they barely appeared at all. Unlike the dialogue-free sections, the scenes with humans have a tendency to overstate the movie’s themes, pushing it uncomfortably close to the realm of preachiness. At the same time, I admire Stanton for inventing a vision of the future that doesn’t sugercoat where our current appetite for conspicuous consumption might one day lead us.

While the film’s social message comes through loud and clear, it never detracts from the heart of the picture—the unlikely romance between Wall*E and EVE. Having sat through my fair share of love stories so far this year, I’m pleased to say that this relationship is by far the most realistic and moving one I’ve seen yet. Bonus kudos to the filmmakers for creating such a vibrant, memorable “female” character—Wall*E’s name may be in the title, but EVE is the movie’s real star. She’s strong, smart and endlessly capable—it’s no wonder that Wall*E falls immediately under her spell. When you see these lovebirds dancing in the vacuum of space, your heart twirls and soars right along with them.