Short Takes

TERMINATOR SALVATION
Rise of the Machines was the subtitle of the last Terminator movie, but it could stand for the entire series: in 25 years of onslaught, a fast, funny, furious B-movie made by a couple of ambitious Roger Corman vets has been steadily "upgraded" into a clanking nine-figure juggernaut, and jettisoned most of its human components along the way. Today the cheapo original looks smartly low-tech, capped by a stop-motion skeleton out of a '50s Ray Harryhausen picture; it's the advances, starting with T2's once-astonishing morphing effects, that have aged like the Apple Newton. Now CGI loaded from lead foot to metal skull, the new T4 seems dated on arrival, mostly by its stubborn refusal to have fun. In the future, robot wars will evidently assure that nothing has any color, people all speak in clenched monotones, and conversation is limited to stuff like, "You point a gun at someone, you better be able to pull the trigger." Still fighting the sentient defense system Skynet, the resistance rests its hopes on the foretold John Conner (Christian Bale), a memory-clouded ally (Sam Worthington) and a kid named Kyle Reese (Star Trek's Anton Yelchin) who will go back in time to 1984 and turn into Michael Biehn. Where in the previous films even the bad robots had witty, striking human attributes, here they're just Happy Meal-giveaway buckets of bolts distinguished only by their neat-o accessories—attack-cycle appendages, Doc Ock tentacles, etc. That still puts them ahead of Bale's grumpy Conner and the other wasted actors (including Bryce Dallas Howard and Jane Alexander), all chained to the film industry's own special brand of robot enslavement. Directed by McG, whose staging here is as thuddingly generic as his Charlie's Angels movies were distinctively feathery, the witless grind of Terminator Salvation makes you want nothing more than to go back 25 years and clobber James Cameron. (Opens Friday) JIM RIDLEY

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN
Wide-eyed kids attended by their pouchy-eyed parents will have few complaints about Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian; all you people in between and beyond could do worse as well. Director Shawn Levy and star Ben Stiller return (as do Robin Williams, Steve Coogan and Owen Wilson—alongside newbies Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Christopher Guest and Jay Baruchel) for this bank-breaking sequel to the 2006 original, in which a directionless single dad takes a job as the night guard at New York's Museum of Natural History, then takes on its various exhibits when an ancient Egyptian tablet brings them to life. Smithsonian begins with those same exhibits being shipped off to the Washington, D.C., museum of the same name, Larry Daley (Stiller) having abandoned them for fortune as a small-time inventor. When the tablet winds up in D.C., it animates the entire museum's collection, including a rogue posse led by a lisping Egyptian pharaoh (Hank Azaria) and a gratingly plucky Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams). Though it's a little slow to start and some of the humor clunks, the film features a wholesome charm, some truly dazzling effects (the Lincoln Memorial alone is worth it), and enough mild, parent-nip in-jokes to keep all but the stone-hearted happy. (Opens Friday) MICHELLE ORANGE