‘SUCKER PUNCH’

★ (out of four)

“Sucker Punch” is not just a “bad movie.” We see bad movies every week, and we forget about them and move on. “Sucker Punch,” on the other hand, will live on in infamy long after you and I are dead. Beyond just wasting your time and boring you out of your skull, this is a film of such mind-bending awfulness that it could conceivably change how you approach the very art of filmmaking. It is bad on a very fundamental, very rare and almost theoretical level. I cannot recall the last time a film actually made me feel as though I had just been violated.

‘RANGO’

★★★★

Imagine if Quentin Tarantino decided to make a Western-themed, animal-populated, animated reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” by way of Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown,” and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what “Rango” is all about. Like a kiddie-friendly version of “Pulp Fiction,” the movie approaches its story from a deep-meta, borderline-postmodern perspective, and successfully filters an entire genre through the lens of pop consumerism. This is the Western reinvented as interactive entertainment, tailored to an audience that has been inundated since birth by the romantic myths of pop culture. 

‘HALL PASS’

★★ 1/2

“Hall Pass” is easily their funniest, most charming and most genuinely heartfelt comedy since their 1997 magnum opus. Many of the funniest gags involve raunch-flick staples like pot brownies and public masturbation, but the filmmakers often get a surprising amount of mileage out of familiar material. The story moves along at a brisk place, and the Farrellys resist the temptation to turn their buddy flick into a mere reworking of “The Hangover.” 

‘THE EAGLE’

★

Where to begin? For starters, the film takes the deadpan tone of a serious, old-school epic, making it feel like the most lifeless and uninspired adventure movie of 1957. (Watching Macdonald’s film, my mind couldn’t help but wander to Neil Marshall’s similar but vastly superior “Centurion,” which, in contrast, embraced its tawdry nature with infectious enthusiasm.) There is no rousing spirit or good-natured fun to be found in “The Eagle,” which is a slow-moving, dreary affair that has the attitude of an Old Hollywood production without any of the actual spectacle.