Ambitious, soulless and hard as a rock is this James Bond.

Aimed at numbing the mind, not inspiring it. See it on that level and you’ll enjoy it.

A film that is better than it could have been.

Expect little. Enjoy what you get.

Well, I saw Anaconda, and I can only say that, after a while, snakes — even big ones — get old.

The patriotic theme will probably go right over the heads of American audiences — but then we have our own patriotic conventions, which are likely incomprehensible to people outside the United States.

If I were given the choice of seeing the original film or this remake, I’d probably watch the original. But this is good enough that, in the absence of the original film, I don’t begrudge the two hours I spent watching it.

As so often happens, some viewers will go in expecting Halle Berry to play another Academy Award role, in the Best Movie of the Year. Sorry, they will be disappointed. And some will go in expecting nothing but some light entertainment, and they may get a bit more than they bargained for.

This second movie carries on the story of the first so well — again, with little reference to the novel — that I found it much more compelling.

I wish I could list all the things I found nonsensical about this movie.

I certainly hope that the next remake of Verne’s book will be somewhat more true to the original story and less a vehicle for one of the characters to show off his martial arts virtuosity.

This isn’t really the Iliad, of course.

Expect no great literature here, but don’t expect to catch up on your sleep during the movie, either.

If you don’t mind a little violence and a little blood, this is a fun way of killing a couple of hours.

A remake of a historical event: the investment by a large contingent of the Mexican army of a hundred-year-old church in the village of San Antonio de Bejar and the eventual massacre of almost two hundred defenders, including a couple of genuine American folk heroes.

The plot really is three thousand years old …

Mamet, I am told, is a name to conjure with.

This one, I think, is worth seeing — and, for me, worth getting, eventually, for my filmotheque.

Other reviewers would have had it that there should be at least a few people snoring, but there weren’t.

All in all, probably one of the best films of the autumn.

Considerably better than the first film in the series.

How many of today’s under-twenties have more than a vague idea of who these people are, or were?

When you see Captain Jack Sparrow’s arrival in Port Royal, you will suddenly realize that this film is not intended to be taken 100% seriously.

It was fairly well-drawn, it was fun, it was fast-moving, it was not overlong. And nobody sang any songs.

The action is more active, the double entendres more double, the explosions certainly fierier, the cleavage perhaps deeper, than in the first film.

A pleasant way to pass an afternoon, if disaster flicks are your cup of tea.

It was a time when America seemed in danger of being overrun by immigrants, as usual.

The mood of the film is much darker than that of, for instance, Spider-Man; don’t go to it expecting the same pleasant ride you had with Peter Parker.

Worth seeing. I’d go see it again even if I had to pay for it!

I doubt whether anybody who’s not an aficionado of the series would find these books particularly interesting, but four of them should be read by those who are fans.

I think that Stevenson, were he alive today, would not be terribly upset by what the Disney people have done with his story. In fact, he might be willing to stay for a second showing.

Well, I have always enjoyed high-tech effects and lots of explosions, and this film provides both. But I always have the sneaking feeling that I should appreciate the old Bond, whose primary assets were his brain and his hands, a lot more.

This is David Weber having a little bit of fun with his character, whose life is evidently modelled upon that of Horatio Hornblower, given a sex-change operation and moved a couple of thousand years into the future.

I would have had higher expectations if I’d known ahead of time that the writing credits belonged to Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. But perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t. I was able to enjoy the film much more when it surpassed those expectations.

I won’t recommend the movie for the plot, but you might want to see it on the big screen for the waves.

It was an enjoyable and fast moving film — again in the tradition of the fictional British holding out indomitably against unspeakable odds.

I still haven’t decided whether or not this film is better or worse than the book.

This film seems to have been a vehicle for Matt Damon. As such, it’s fairly successful. As an adaptation of Ludlum’s story, I found it pretty lame.

The message on which Slim finally acts is that “you can’t trust the courts to do the right thing”, a point which is nowhere demonstrated in the film but simply repeated to her by people who have no better reason than she does to believe it; the result is, of course, justifiable murder.

The major flaw in the film is that, far too often, the special effects overwhelm the story. As a person who loves a movie with lots of explosions, I probably shouldn’t say that, but …

Worth seeing on the wide screen. For that matter, worth seeing a second time on the wide screen. Maybe even a third — I haven’t quite decided yet.

This is a moderately worthy addition to a relatively small canon. It suffers a bit from being a spin-off, however.

In the end, I suspect that most people will watch this series more for Lex than for Clark and his powers or for the Smallville weirdness.

Although this film will (and should) win no Academy Awards, it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon.

About a sixth of the film is given over to preliminaries, and half of it to a training program to allow the characters to prepare themselves for the rigors of flight in the shuttle. By my arithmetical calculations, this leaves about a third of the film for the actual flight into space.

As someone once said, you don’t worry about film length when people simply look at their watches, but when they hold them up to their ears and start shaking them … X-Men runs almost two hours, but I don’t remember looking at my watch once, and when the film ended, I was surprised at how short it had seemed.

The storm is very well done, and I suggest that those with a tendency to motion sickness might better avoid this film.

The sad fact is that the seeds of a good, classic Mission: Impossible story are present in this film. But that’s just not this movie.

The rest of the film involves, among other things, … a drinking game in a Carson City house of joy, and a useful way to bend the bars in a jail by using a wet silk robe, along with ways to wet a silk robe when you don’t have a carafe of water handy.

It struck me that there were quite a number of flaws in this book, all of which would have been easily correctable.

The film’s creators did not make the mistake of turning Miguel into a bad imitation of Crosby, nor is Tullio any Hope, and Chel makes Lamour look positively Twiggy-ish

Now the Disney people have produced what we may call a “flawed masterpiece” — but, I suspect, as minimally flawed as we can expect at this late date.

The ending is such that there is no need for a sequel. But I’d give odds that there will be one — and I, for one, look forward to it.

This was a fun film, if you overlook the occasional inanities and the so-called “adult language”.

If you liked Gremlins, you’ll probably like this film. But, I suspect, not enough to go back and see it a second time.

All in all, give van Dien and March a few acting lessons, teach van Dien how to smile, get somebody else to write the script, hire Tia Carrera to play La, and I’ll be looking forward to the next movie in the series.