More empty and lifeless than the zombies that overrunits banal B-movie post-apocalypse, "Land of the Dead" may bethe return of George A. Romero to the genre he created, but there's littleto distinguish this film from the countless gory imitators the writer-director'swork has spawned.

The fourth picture in Romero's "Dead" series,it takes place in a decimated world where a handful of rich elitists livein a self-contained, weakly defended luxury skyscraper and a lower classof humanity scrapes by in the streets behind protective walls and electricfences. But unbeknownst to all of them, the zombies in the wasteland outsidehave begun to think and organize.

This sounds like a fantastic -- and wholly original --concept that could take the genre to a scarier new level. But "Landof the Dead" fails to exploit the refreshing plot point any furtherthan is necessary to bring the undead through the city's pathetic ramparts,led by the moaning-groaning influence of a single zombie who has developeda primitive ability to reason.

The movie has nothing new to offer, although it is madea tad more watchable by something old -- Romero's simple, straightforwardcinematography that makes all the action (especially the mediocre scares)much clearer and eerily more immediate than the shake-shake, chop-chopstyle applied to most modern horror flicks. Its other great asset is thebody-decay makeup on the legions of walking corpses and the dead staresand lumbering gaits of some of the key zombie actors.

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Xxx Review

By Rob Blackwelder

Weak

More wow-worthy than an afternoon at the X-Games, more feebly-scripted than a gunfire-filled X-Box action game rated "M" for mature, "XXX" is cool, cool, cool until director Rob Cohen gets to the last act and has to make room between stunts to resolve the knuckleheaded plot.

Billed as a tattooed, testosterone-injected, street-smart, 21st Century usurper to James Bond's explosions-and-espionage glory, the flick is a custom-designed career vehicle for Vin Diesel, Hollywood's fastest-rising bald-and-bulging bad-ass. Considered a hot property after stealing all the thunder in "The Fast and the Furious," Diesel has re-teamed with Cohen, that film's director, for this picture about an extreme sports daredevil and social activist hoodlum recruited by the National Security Agency to go undercover where their Bond-ish, well-bred, erudite agents can't fit in.

The movie begins with Xander Cage (Diesel) -- known as Triple X because of a tattoo on the back of his neck -- swiping the new Corvette of a politician who wants to censor rock music and video games. He straps cameras to the car, then gives a live web-cast diatribe about the First Amendment while driving off a bridge into a gorge and parachuting to safety as the car blows up.

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