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WALL-E 3 1/2 Stars—Within the rumbling, stumbling hunk of junk that is WALL-E beats the sweetest, warmest heart—a robotic representation of humanity’s highest potential. And within this futuristic sci-fi adventure lies an artistic truth: that Pixar’s track record remains impeccable. Following high-concept movies about a superhero family and a gourmet rat, this is the Disney computer animation arm’s boldest experiment yet. “WALL-E” is essentially a silent film in which the two main characters, a mismatched pair of robots, communicate through bleeps and blips and maybe three words between them. And yet director and co-writer Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”) is resourceful enough to find infinite ways for them to express themselves—amusingly, achingly, and with emotional precision. Ben Burtt, a two-time Oscar winner who created R2-D2’s signature sound effects in the “Star Wars” movies, provides the “voice” of WALL-E, or Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. Seven hundred years after Earth was abandoned, WALL-E is still doing the job he was programmed to do: pick up all the trash that was left behind and compress it into tidy packages. But he’s a romantic at heart with an eye for nostalgia, sifting through garbage for items like bowling pins, a Rubik’s Cube, an iPod, a spork. It’s only upon the arrival of the sleek, shiny Eve (voiced by Elissa Knight), a robot sent back to the planet on a search mission, that he realizes how lonely he’s been. G. 97 min.—Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic



Wanted 3 Stars—The movie is called “Wanted” and the star is Angelina Jolie. No, it is not a documentary. It is, in fact, a super-stylized, wildly outlandish action flick that will pick you up, throw you around, drop you back down on the ground and leave you begging for more. It’s the ideal, mindless summer thrill ride—one that you can’t take too seriously, even when it starts to take itself too seriously. Based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, “Wanted” follows the transformation of Wesley Gibson (the increasingly versatile James McAvoy) from miserable cubicle dweller to master assassin. Jolie, as the aptly named Fox, yanks him from his dreary life and introduces him to The Fraternity, a secret society of freakishly skilled, highly trained killers—of whom his late father, the man he never knew, was the best of the best. Intimidating dudes with names like The Butcher and The Exterminator oversee his schooling—which mainly consists of beating him bloody to toughen him up—led by the courtly Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Kazakhstan-born director Timur Bekmambetov clearly had a blast emptying his own clip of filmmaking tricks: sped-up sequences, slo-mo, curving bullets that defy the laws of gravity and physics. And he serves up one tremendous car chase that will make you apprehensive about driving through Chicago anytime soon. R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality. 110 min.—Christy Lemire



RATINGS: 4 stars: Excellent; 3 stars: Good; 2 stars: Fair; 1 star: Poor