An R-rated horror action comedy fairytale — how's that for genre bending? “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” is more Gatling guns and grenades than The Brothers Grimm. It takes the kidnapped kiddies into adulthood, where they've parlayed their fame at cooking a witch's goose into a business. Got a witch problem? Call H & G — the extermination experts.

The idea of watching a movie in which a sniper methodically crafts his own bullets, practices weekly at a gun range, then waits quietly in an empty parking garage before shooting five people dead may not sound like the most appealing form of entertainment during these tragic days.

“Everything has its season, everything has its time,” goes a famous song from the musical “Pippin.” Well, maybe, but for the many fans of that '70s Stephen Schwartz hit, a return to Broadway has been overdue for years.

It's a Hollywood truism that nobody sets out to make a bad movie, but how else to explain a debacle like “Alex Cross”? This overwrought, oppressively violent police thriller has not got an original bone in its empty little head. From its cliché opening — an irrelevant gun battle and chase — to its derivative climax, this is a film with decades of dust on it.

Starring Daniel Craig as 007 for a third time and Spanish actor Javier Bardem as Bond's latest nemesis, critics have already declared the 23rd Bond film to be one of the finest in the suave British spy's 50 years on the screen.

Efforts to restore investor confidence in Greece's struggling economy took a double blow this week when a major European bottler and a prominent dairy company announced relocation plans.

In nature, lightning occasionally strikes the same place twice. In the movies, it almost never happens. So as good as Liam Neeson was in “Taken,” as good as he often is in “Taken 2,” the sequel － about the family of all those Albanians he killed in “Taken” taking their revenge － is an often silly movie where the strain to stay credulous shows.

You've seen the buddy cop movie a million times before, especially the mismatched buddy cop movie. Having the police officers come from different racial backgrounds is an especially tried-and-true element of this genre; it allows them to make fun of each other for the way they talk, the stuff they like, the activities that take up their free time. It's good for a reliable laugh, in theory.

At some point during the filming of the heist thriller “Stolen,” in which he plays an FBI agent chasing an elusive master thief (Nicolas Cage), Danny Huston must have said “Waaaaaillll shoo.' I'm-o wear me this heyah porkpie hat from heyah on out. See if I don't, Cher.”

The low-budget British aliens-invade-the-hood thriller “Attack the Block” reminded me of Rick's famous line in “Casablanca,” his reply when Major Strasser asks about how he'll feel with the Nazis in New York.