2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

Denzel Washington seems constitutionally incapable of turning in a bad performance, and he and John Travolta make the remake of "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" a very respectable popcorn movie.

Washington is Walter Garber, a New York City subway dispatcher who finds himself negotiating with hijackers who have taken over a subway train. Ryder (Travolta) is the ruthless ringleader of the gang of four holding a carload of passengers hostage and demanding $10 million to free them. The clock is ticking, literally and figuratively, with the city of New York given an hour to produce the cash.

Tony Scott directs with his trademark tricks and style, slowing the motion down, dramatically blurring images and sometimes sending the camera circling in dizzying fashion. No one will ever accuse him of falling prey to claustrophobia or stasis on screen. The action thriller strikes out, though, when it suggests that the tentacles of technology can easily reach underground.

Travolta has the flashy, fun role (he should do villains more often), but in the end, "Pelham" is enjoyable but not especially memorable.

The extras include a commentary with Scott, writer Brian Helgeland and producer Todd Black and there are featurettes on working in the subway system and stylizing the characters.

-- Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor

2 stars = Mediocre
Ratings explained

It's dumb. It's digital. It's derivative. The film from Stephen "The Mummy" Sommers, scripted at a toy-selling TV-cartoon level, is a nonstop shoot-'em-up edited to induce seizures.

Stone-faced dancer-boxer-tough guy Channing Tatum stars as Duke, a soldier who loses a set of valuable missile warheads. An elite team headed by Gen. Hawk (Dennis Quaid) saves the nanomite (metal-eating micro-robots) bombs, and Duke and his pal Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are impressed.

This team, with its super-secret base beneath the Egyptian desert and super-secret "acceleration suits" borrowed from "Iron Man," faces off against an evil arms supplier (Christopher Eccleston), the latest in a long line of "sell to both sides" villains, according to a prologue.

It's no dumber or emptier than "Transformers," but "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" can't help but make one cringe when the bad guy says, as bad guys in bad scripts always say, "This has only just begun."

The two-disc Blu-ray and DVD include a digital copy of the film, commentary by director Stephen Sommers and producer Bob Ducsay and "The Big Bang Theory: The Making of G.I. JOE."

-- Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel

4 stars = Outstanding
Ratings explained

Anyone who has ever gotten sucked into the intrigue and lickety-split pacing of a top-notch contemporary thriller should thank Alfred Hitchcock. More specifically, they may want to thank Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest."

In 1959, the filmmaker who invented, defined and perfected the suspense genre delivered this grand Cary Grant mystery about a New York ad man mistaken for a secret agent, framed for murder and forced to flee directly into the arms of a seductive (and duplicitous) Eva Marie Saint. Many critics and cineastes consider it the quintessential Hitchcock film, so it's no surprise that "North by Northwest" is the director's first motion picture to be released on Blu-ray, courtesy of a new "50th Anniversary Edition" in the high-definition format ($35) as well as on special-edition DVD ($25).

Remastered in 1080p and looking as crisp as one of Grant's immaculate gray suits, "Northwest" sprints through its mistaken-identity storyline in particularly gorgeous fashion on Blu-ray. And don't worry, purists: even with all that technological clean-up, the spectacular finale that finds Grant and Saint dashing across the faces of Mount Rushmore -- a bit of fakery that involved a massive, painted backdrop -- still looks completely convincing. Let's put it this way: when that out-of-control crop duster from the film's most iconic scene starts zipping straight at Grant's head, the actor may not be the only one compelled to hit the deck.

This recently freshened release comes with a suite of special features, but only two are brand new to DVD. "The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style" -- an hour-long documentary that explores the repeating motifs in Hitchcock's work, including his fixations with cool blondes and wrongly accused men -- does a fine job of providing an introduction into the master's work via commentary from fellow filmmakers like Curtis Hanson, Martin Scorsese and Benicio del Toro. The featurette " 'North by Northwest': One for the Ages," on the other hand, is a toss-off, relying on many of the same sources from the "Signature Style" doc to run through the movie's key plot points.

-- Jen Chaney, The Washington Post

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