THE EXPENDABLES 3

To date, Sylvester Stallone has played Rocky Balboa on-screen six times, John Rambo four times, and, with the release of The Expendables 3, Barney Ross three times. According to the Internet Movie Database, Rambo V, with Stallone writing and starring, is currently in pre-production, and Rocky is set to return in a new feature titled Creed. In other words, Sylvester Stallone is the very last man you'd want handling the remains of your beloved dead horse.

MOVIE 43

Ordinarily, Movie 43 would be the sort of unsatisfying, throwaway release that I'd dispense with in a paragraph, or maybe just a sentence or two. And it's not as though its opening-weekend box-office intake - a meager $5 million, despite the presence of nearly every star in Hollywood - necessitates longer consideration of the film. But this anthology comedy in the style of those '70s cult classics Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube seems to me a special case. How often, after all, do you get the chance to write about what might be your all-time least-enjoyable experience at the cineplex - including that time during the early '90s when you had to leave a screening for emergency root-canal surgery?

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT

Say what you will about the current state of movies. Yet in the history of the medium, have the actors who populate film comedies ever been as across-the-board-excellent as they are right now? It took about 20 minutes for this question to pop into my head during The Five-Year Engagement, and once it did, I'm not sure I ever stopped pondering it; from the stars to the supporting cast to the bit players who show up for all of three seconds, director Nicholas Stoller's rom-com features an embarrassment of performance riches. The movie itself? Eh, it's okay.

MONEYBALL

On paper, the casting of Brad Pitt as Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane in Moneyball must have seemed inspired. On screen, it's so, so much better than that. Pitt has, of course, given many wonderful performances over the past two decades (and just as many blandly acceptable or downright dreary ones). But to my mind, his Billy Beane - driven, hopeful, cocky, incensed, funny, tender, and smart as hell - is the actor's first chance to employ all of his gifts in the service of an emotionally expansive, fully shaped character, and Pitt's beautiful and generous work here is truly a sight to behold. Director Bennett Miller's last feature film was his 2005 debut Capote, which netted Philip Seymour Hoffman a Best Actor Oscar. With Moneyball, Miller might find himself batting 2-for-2 for his stars in that category.