Machete is played by scary-looking character actor Danny Trejo, whose entire career seems to be made up of playing tough Latino hoodlums, including the recent Rodriguez action thriller Predators (see my review of Predators). In this film, he's a machete-wielding Federale who starts out trying to free a girl from evil druglord Torrez (Steven Seagal). He slaughters at least a dozen bad guys but is ultimately betrayed and left for dead after watching Torrez kill his wife in cold blood.

Three years later, it's a Texas border town and the story changes to Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) running for re-election on a Draconian anti-immigration platform. His cynical media manipulation plan includes hiring a Mexican day laborer to hurt, but not kill him. It proceeds until they unwittingly tap Machete to play assassin. He decides to fight back against the system and predictable mayhem ensues.

Meanwhile, seemingly innocent taco-truck operator Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), secretly runs a sort of underground railroad for illegal aliens called "Operation Network", while skeptical immigration officer Sartana (Jessica Alba) keeps a close eye on things while she tries to crack the secret group.

All the storyline is but an excuse to propel Machete from massacre to massacre, and some of the scenes are so silly that it's hard not to laugh and just enjoy the mayhem. Bloodbath porn. Not your cup of tea?  Then you won't like Machete and should skip it.

Despicable Me is a surprisingly violent animated movie that suffers from being released within a few weeks of the film Toy Story 3. Where Toy Story 3 has warm characters who seek to do well by each other, Despicable Me is populated by characters who constantly hurt each other as the filmmakers clearly sought a cheap laugh and tried to string together a series of hit-or-miss sight gags.

The story has Gru (voice of Steve Carell trying to sound Russian) as an evil mastermind, ensconced in suburbia with his black Victorian house and huge metal jet car. Beneath his house is a vast subterranean lair where he's plotting to (insert evil laugh) commit the perfect crime. He's created little yellow creatures known as minions, and while there are amusing scenes where hundreds of them congregate to hear his evil plans, they generally treat each other in a slapstick violent manner that really got on my nerves and was far too aggressive for a children's film.

The Great Pyramid of Giza has been stolen by the up-and-coming evil genius Vector (voice of Jason Segel), as shown in an amusing opening sequence. Gru is determined to regain the title of most evil criminal and comes up with a plan to steal the moon. To fund his efforts, he goes to the Bank of Evil seeking a loan, just to bump into Vector and the Spy-vs-Spy competition is on. Gru's plan to bring down Vector?  Adopt three little girls Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Elsie Fisher) and use them to break into his lair.

There are a lot of fun sight gags in the film and the story, while predictable, isn't that terrible. What really upset me was the non-stop level of violence that the characters exhibited towards each other. I realize that's part of the story, the "comic book slapstick violence", but I was startled how each time a character would punch, kick, push, shoot or otherwise hurt another that the audience would laugh. That's not my idea of a good kids film, but if you disagree, you might well find Despicable Me a good diversion.

Predators immediately jumps into the action with Royce (a terrific, pumped up Adrien Brody) in freefall without having a clue how he got there. He deploys his parachute at the last possible second and slams into the earth. When he rises, he finds he's been dropped into the jungle with a cast of killers including Central American guerilla fighter Isabelle (Alice Braga), Russian Spetsnaz soldier Nokolai (Oleg Taktarov), Mexican enforcer Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), Sierra Leon death squad soldier Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), escaped death-row convict Stans (Walton Goggins) and odd-man-out doctor Edwin (Topher Grace).

After evading some vicious traps and an attack from strange and unknown boar-like creatures, they realize that they're not on Earth at all, but instead have been transported to an alien game preserve with strange, alien creatures seeking to hunt and kill them, purely as sport.

Most man-against-nature films get derailed with back story, narrative devices and a desire to build sympathy for the characters. Predators doesn't waste the time, it's an action genre picture boiled down to its essence, and it's thrilling and suspenseful, even with the occasional plot hiccup.

Modern writing is all about disclosure, so in that spirit, let me disclose that I'm a lukewarm Jackie Chan fan. He's been in some terrific action and comedy films, notably Rush Hour and The Forbidden Kingdom, but he's also been in a lot of dreck, movies that are just downright stupid, like the Rush Hour sequels, Shanghai Knights, and the worst of the lot, Around the World in 80 Days. He's a successful action star, but not so good at picking projects.

Which brings us to his newest film, The Spy Next Door. One of the first releases of 2010 it's positioned as a sort of kung fu version of Kindergarten Cop, where the running shtick is that he's a super-spy with great martial arts skills, but his cute neighbor Gillian (Amber Valletta) and her three children think he's a bumbling salesman. The kids, in fact, are puzzled by why Gillian is dating Bob (Chan), as are we viewers, because there's absolutely zero chemistry between the two of them on screen.

The fundamental problem with The Spy Next Door is that it's more a Jackie Chan movie than a G-rated family film, which is what it appears they started out making. Comic violence is marginally acceptable in a children's action film, but there's a lot of violence in this film, including Jacking slamming a bad guy face down into a coffee table in one scene, and the kids seriously injuring other bad guys in other scenes. What the heck? That's why it got a "PG" rating, I'm sure.

There's a storyline of sorts, but it's rather incidental to the stunts and action sequences, very much a trademark of a Jackie Chan movie, and in this case, it doesn't work. I compare it to the witty Robert Rodriguez film Shorts (see my review) and the difference is that there's no real sense of style, no sense of humor, no narrative cohesion to make this newer film hold together. The most amusing part of the film is the bloopers during the closing credits, which is most assuredly not a good sign.

His new film Shorts is definitely cut from the same cloth as Spy Kids.  It's a frantically paced whirlwind of a movie where the narrative bounces around and the actors look like they're having just as much fun in their crazy universe as we are watching it. And it's hilarious. There were so many jokes, play on words, visual gags and more jammed into its brief 89 minutes that it was easily one of the most entertaining films I've seen this year.

The story is set in Black Falls, Texas, a small town that's dominated by Black Box Unlimited, a company that sells a gizmo that can transform itself into just about anything you might desire, from a cellphone to a dog groomer, can opener to a music player. It comes in three sizes: Super Grande, Grande, and Niño, and its primary competitors are the Purple Pyramid and the Silver Cylinder.

The company is run by the evil Mr. Black (James Spader) who relishes his power and control, all the while trying to motivate employees to create the ultimate Black Box, version "X", that will do everything and be owned by every single person on the planet. Black has two children, the fabulously named Helvetica Black (Jolie Vanier) and her older brother Cole Black (Devon Gearhart), and they're the bullies of the local school, particularly relishing the chance to pick on new-kid-in-town Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett), whose parents run the main development teams at the firm.

But the storyline is almost just an excuse to weave together a series of funny and often quite astonishing special effects and visual effects that combine to make Shorts a rollercoaster of a fun ride for children and adults alike.