Eagle Eye 1 1/2 Stars—HAL goes mobile in this shrill, frantic thriller about technology taking over—and not in good ways, like making coffee for you before you even realize you want it. No, this supercomputer has a political agenda, which theoretically would seem timely with the presidential election approaching. Instead, this half-baked indictment of the Patriot Act and the war on terror feels a few years too late—maybe because that’s when executive producer Steven Spielberg originally came up with the nugget of an idea that “Eagle Eye” would become. Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan co-star as strangers who are forced to work together when their lives are commandeered by an oddly calm but insistent female voice. She’s everywhere—on their cell phones, on other people’s cell phones. She can manipulate stop lights and air traffic, monitor every surveillance camera on the planet and send messages through electronic billboards. She makes the duo steal cars, rob an armored truck, even stow away aboard a military plane. But why is she doing this? What does she want? That’s the overly simplistic mystery to be uncovered in the film from D.J. Caruso, reuniting with LaBeouf, whom he directed in the 2007 surprise hit “Disturbia.” He’s put together a couple of heart-pounding sequences here, but most of the action is edited in headache-inducing fashion. LaBeouf and Monaghan, ordinarily likable and versatile, can’t elevate this B-material; members of the strong supporting cast, including Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Chiklis, are equally slumming it. PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence and for language. 119 min.—Christy Lemire



Igor 2 Stars—Dr. Frankenstein himself could not revive this animated comedy about a hunchbacked lab assistant playing at mad scientist. Frankenstein specialized in reanimating once-living matter, but he would be unable to find any spark of life to resuscitate here. A potentially original premise and an eager voice cast led by John Cusack and Molly Shannon are left to decay amid a clunky story vaguely reminiscent of “Monsters, Inc.” and a clutter of cartoon images often resembling visuals rejected from “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.” Director Tony Leondis and screenwriter Chris McKenna take a jumble of Hollywood horror cliches and shove them through a meat-grinder to concoct an awkward, unfunny comic twist on the evil-genius genre. Cusack plays the title character, aiming to prove he’s more than a hunchbacked gofer by creating an evil behemoth woman (Shannon), who turns out to be a pussycat. The voice cast includes Steve Buscemi, Sean Hayes, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno and Jennifer Coolidge. PG for some thematic elements, scary images, action and mild language. 86 min.—David Germain



Miracle at St. Anna 2 Stars—The most technically ambitious film in Spike Lee’s long and eclectic career. After acclaimed character dramas (“Malcolm X,” “Do the Right Thing”), some ill-fated comedies (“Bamboozled,” “She Hate Me”) and even a documentary or two (”4 Little Girls”), Lee takes on a big, old-fashioned war picture. It’s hard not to appreciate the fact that, after a quarter-century of making movies, he’s chosen this time to leap so boldly away from his comfort zone. But he might not have been ready for the enormity of such a project. “Miracle at St. Anna” is wildly unfocused in terms of tone and, at two hours and 40 minutes, it’s unjustifiably overlong. Lee didn’t write the script—that’s the work of James McBride, who based his screenplay on his novel of the same name—but he didn’t rein in his writer, either, perhaps because he feels so strongly about the subject matter. “Miracle” tells of the men of the 92nd Infantry Division, black troops who served in Italy during World War II and were known as Buffalo Soldiers. Lee has long been critical of films about the war such as Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” for depicting only the white U.S. soldiers who fought. This is his response—voluminous and full of unmistakable anger. That’s not the only emotion that comes out in loud bursts. In following four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller), Lee jumps from visceral battle scenes to intimate drama to lighthearted comedy. Regardless of the situation, though, he smothers everything, as usual, in the distractingly horn-heavy score of his longtime collaborator, composer and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard. R for strong war violence, language and some sexual content/nudity. 160 min.—Christy Lemire



Nights in Rodanthe 2 Stars—The last time we saw Richard Gere and Diane Lane, in the 2002 guilty pleasure “Unfaithful,” they were running off together after covering up Gere’s murder of Lane’s hot, young, Parisian lover. Ah, those were the good old days. Their latest pairing, “Nights in Rodanthe,” finds them falling for each other under circumstances that are even more contrived. Gere plays a stoic surgeon on a mission to right a wrong; Lane plays an earthy mother of two who has separated from her cheating husband. Gere is the only guest at a remote coastal North Carolina inn; Lane just happens to be overseeing the place—as a favor to a friend—the weekend Gere is staying there. And wouldn’t you know it? There’s a hurricane on the way. Surely you see where this is going, and because “Nights in Rodanthe” is based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks (“The Notebook,” “A Walk to Remember”), you know it can’t end happily. We wouldn’t dream of giving anything away, but bring tissues if you’re the sentimental type. You’d pretty much have to be sentimental to tolerate such schlock, or at least be willing to check your cynicism at the multiplex door. Gere and Lane make the first half of director George C. Wolfe’s movie surprisingly tolerable, simply because they have such an obvious comfort with each other (they also co-starred in “The Cotton Club” back in 1984). Both have been around long enough to find some nuance within the potentially treacly script from Ann Peacock and John Romano. But then the storm comes—and it washes away all that good will. PG-13 for some sensuality. 96 min.—Christy Lemire





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