What do war, famine, disease and poverty have in common? They're four of the few things in life less funny than The Doorman, an excruciating, run-for-the-hills mockumentary about a famous international gatekeeper to ritzy nightclubs. Think Borat with 99 percent less ingenuity and humor. And, in fact, keep thinking about Sacha Baron Cohen's befuddled Kazakhstani journalist, or fluffy clouds on a warm summer day, or your first kiss, or anything else that makes you smile, as conjuring up memories of happier experiences gone by is the prime means of enduring such across-the-board ineptitude.

The dolt at the center of this fiasco is Trevor (Lucas Akoskin), a doofus with an ambiguous European accent, an ego the size of the Pacific Ocean, a taste for overblown threads, and a predilection for Yogi Berra-isms. "I know people. And more importantly, I know people who know me," is typical of Trevor's self-consciously dumb dialogue, though he's not alone in delivering leaden bon mots, as evidenced by one doltish woman's claim that "The Doorman is God, really." Which, I guess, makes me an unrepentant atheist.

Right about here is where all the gushing and excitement and enthusiasm should begin, because I'll tell you right off the "bat" that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is cause for celebration indeed. But then you'll figure out -- after only one sentence -- that I pretty much loved this movie, and then you'll head off to another, more unpredictable film critic. But it's the WHY that interests me so much. What I enjoyed about Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Hellboy 2 could probably be covered in one lengthy -- and inevitably nerd-tastic -- conversation between the two of us. But The Dark Knight... Well, clearly we're approaching a whole new level here.

Several of the pre-release gushings are accurate. Some say "Scorsesian" and others reference Michael Mann. Many spend paragraphs on the (truly amazing) penultimate performance by Heath Ledger, while others will revel in the grown-up tone or epic scope of the film. What amazed me most about The Dark Knight, among several things, is that the flick's got more layers than an onion farm -- and yet it never loses touch with the idea of FUN. True that we're talking about a comic book fun that's decidedly more melancholy than the cinematic exploits of The Marvel Gang, but dang if TDK isn't supremely satisfying for about a dozen different reasons.

Well here's something you don't see every day: A big, flashy summertime "tentpole" movie that A) takes chances, B) bucks convention, and C) takes some real risks with its subject material. Obviously the safe approach is for Will Smith to do (yet another) easily-digestible (if somewhat mindless) blockbuster like I, Robot or I Am Legend or Independence Day -- but this time the endlessly profitable Will Smith is working with a rather distinctive director who refuses to cater to formula. That director would be Peter Berg, and this guy has yet to make a bad film.

Unfortunately the production history on Hancock is not a fantastic one. There was a revolving door of directors and script polishers before Columbia finally started production -- but there were still marketing issues, last-minute reshoots, and MPAA miseries to deal with. And yet, despite all that, Hancock arrives like a breath of weirdly fresh air for moviegoers who like a little heart and soul mixed in with their hyper-kinetic action mayhem. Toss some sharp wit and an impressive display of edge into the mix, and I think you may have one of my favorite movies of the summer. (Although one can plainly tell that there was some late cutting done to the flick, all in the name of the almighty PG-13 rating, of course.)

With two of four Futurama movies now behind me, I think I have the formula figured out. If the first flick -- the very amusing Bender's Big Score! -- was a patchwork and episodic affair, then at least it was a choppy good time. It was great seeing the old Planet Express crew in their resurrected form, but since the film was made with perforations ... it was a little bit of a mess. (Basically, each of the four new Futurama flicks were made to be split into four television episodes apiece. And it really shows.)

So there's my biggest and most basic complaint about Bender's Big Score! and doubly so for Movie #2: The Beast With a Billion Backs. That the writers and producers were asked to create four modular-style movies when the fans were pretty much expecting "normal" movies. The kind with three cohesive acts and what-not. Such is definitely not the case with the first two Futurama flicks -- and I expect that it's a slight malady that will continue across Bender's Game and Into the Wild Green Yonder.

So with that obvious complaint out of the way, I can also say that Futurama Movie #2 is really funny, chock-full of unexpected surprises, stunningly animated, and an absolute treat for the old-school fans. If the movie feels more like four inter-connected mini-stories than one big "movie movie," then oh well. It's still great to see the Futurama gang back in action. Especially because they're still so damn funny.

Here are a few statistics on the 2003 film Hulk:

• Directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger)
• Written by Michael France (Cliffhanger), James Schamus (The Ice Storm), first-timer John Turman (and maybe 15 other screenwriters)
• Estimated budget: $137 million
• Worldwide box office: $245 million
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 61% positive
• IMDb user rating: 5.8 out of 10

So I ask you this: Are we talking about a failure ... or an underrated movie that's been unjustly labeled a failure? It matters not, I suppose, because the arrival of the all-new The Incredible Hulk, Marvel (and Universal) hopes to leave the first Hulk cowering in a dusty vault somewhere. (Until the next DVD re-release, of course.) So while I felt a strange bit of resentment towards this "forget that first movie, let's get a do-over" procedure, I felt pretty confident about the second Hulk's chances. Director Louis Leterrier has shown some skill with action flicks like Unleashed and Transporter 2, the new cast (which includes Edward Norton, Tim Roth, Liv Tyler and William Hurt) was pretty impressive, and (best of all) the producers were making one simple promise from the outset: More action.

A documentary about famous Congolese musician Antoine "Wendo" Kolosoy, On the Rumba River is filled with warm, intimate close-ups - of Wendo and his compatriots' weathered countenances; of hands playing percussive instruments and strumming guitars; and of bodies joyously swaying in motion to the sounds of Wendo and his band's rumba music. Visual proximity to Wendo lends compassionate heart to this portrait of the now-83-year-old singer, whose sprawling story includes discrimination at the hands of Belgian colonialists, homelessness, and condemnation of his music by the church. Nonetheless, despite director Jacques Sarasin's physical nearness to Wendo, there's something of a remove to his beautifully photographed proceedings, primarily because the film provides only skimpy details on its subject's myriad experiences while almost completely avoiding any substantive discussion of the 30-year dictatorship (under Mobutu Sese Seko) and ongoing civil war that have so profoundly colored the man's life.

I'm very pleased that my Cinematical colleague James Rocchi both enjoyed Speed Racer and published his review before mine, and here's why: I couldn't wait for the damn thing to end. This garish, aimless film wore out its welcome (and its crayon box) after about 25 minutes, but the cinematic eyesore just kept lumbering on for two full hours. I know it's tough to keep kids still in a movie theater even when they like the movie they're watching, so I can only imagine what parents will be dealing with as Speed Racer's merciless stretches of blah-blah-blah hit the screen. Aside from three or four mega-flashy racing sequences, Speed Racer feels like the pilot episode of a Fox TV series called The Generic Family from Plastic World.

A young man named "Speed Racer" grows up to become a hot-shot car racer (imagine that), but when he refuses to sign with an evil tycoon, it kick-starts a third-act conflict that can only be solved by ... car racing! There's the whole of your plot in a nutshell, but I've left out the resoundingly clumsy flashback structure, the nominally interesting but ultimately pointless side characters, and several absurdly "emotional" moments that might have made an impact if they didn't occur on sets made entirely of bright pink styrofoam and glitter. There's also an allegedly mysterious character called Racer X, a button-cute and entirely superfluous girlfriend character, and (wedged in clumsily whenever things get dull) a mischievous little kid and his monkey sidekick.

Or you could just go see Iron Man again.

The HBO-produced documentary film Baghdad High offers a fairly basic yet intriguing enough premise: The filmmakers gave video cameras to four Iraqi high school students and asked them to simply record as much of their "normal life" as possible. (I'm of the opinion that any time you give a teenager a camera, you're getting everything BUT "normal life," but obviously I'm not the first to claim that the act of recording something instantly obliterates "normalcy.") The point here seems to be that ... hey, you know what? Aside from the fact that they live very far away in a country that's going through some terrible problems these days, these teenagers are a whole lot like ... our teenagers! Wow, how shocking is that?!?!?

What's most interesting about these kids is that, despite the fact that they all live in Iraq, they also come from very different religious backgrounds -- and yet they're still friends! (Hope for the future sometimes comes in small packages, I suppose.) All four of the boys are perfectly charming and entirely typical: They whine about homework, they stress over studies, they gripe about being bored, they argue with their parents, and they do all the stuff that your favorite teens do: Video games, pop music, sports, rough-housing, etc. So far all its admirable intentions, the simple truth is that Baghdad High makes a very good point about the similarities of human nature (especially where teens are concerned), but then it just sort of ... keeps making the same point over and over.

The low-key Spanish import Fermat's Room falls into that (very small) sub-genre that I've just now designated as "math horror." (Vincenzo Natali's Cube also belongs in this group, and maybe even a few other movies that I can't think of right now.) This is a strange but engaging Spanish thriller in which four well-established mathematicians convene after receiving a mysterious invitation, and then find themselves trapped inside a shrinking room. The only way out is to solve a bunch of math riddles, but the biggest question is this: Why the heck is someone trying to kill four mathematicians in the first place?

Handsomely shot and boasting fine work from its five main only actors, Fermat's Room is the sort of mystery / thriller that will appeal to folks who enjoy a good mind-bender as much as they dig a good foreign flick. It's certainly not as bizarre (or nearly as bloody) as Natali's Cube, but I'm betting the films would make for a pretty interesting double feature all the same. And while some of the in-movie puzzles are relatively obvious (hell, they even borrow one from Jim Henson's Labyrinth!), the movie as a whole proves to be sort of a puzzle in its own right. The third act revelations might not be all that shocking, but they work well enough in the low-key context of the piece.

If Seven Days Sunday were an American film, it would probably be some sort of push-button "after school special" affair, one that underlines all its main points and closes with a predictably simplistic message: Violence is bad. But Seven Days Sunday is instead a small German film that aims to dramatize an actual event -- and it's pretty impressive how the filmmakers never once stop to "explain" anything away. Sometimes bad people do bad things, and generally all we can do is analyze the aftermath and hope to prevent future horrors. Period.

Adam and Tommek are a pair of aimless teenagers who spend their days mired in one of Germany's more uncomfortable blue-collar neighborhoods. Although he's supposed to be some sort of altar boy, Adam is much more interested in trying to impress tough-guy Tommek. There's a cute blonde neighborhood girl who certainly seems to hold a torch for Adam, but the two boys are too busy stealing wine and robbing the locals to pay much attention to mundane things like puppy love. (Tommek definitely wants a piece of the blonde for himself, but she seems more than a little turned off by his "extreme" ways -- at the beginning, anyway.)