Doom
I realized at some point during Andrzej Bartkowiak's big-screen gamer adaptation that I've spent an inordinate amount of my life watching guys with huge guns wandering through dark hallways waiting for monsters in the rafters to rip their faces off. I had plenty of time to ponder, since the empty-hallway-to-creature ratio is particularly high here. The producers of Doom would probably much rather the audience spend that time thinking about bio-engineering or good and evil or heaven and hell, given the amount of time spent jabbering about such things in the endless labs to which all those hallways lead. But that would be a waste of time, since the final payoff has nothing to do with the debate between science and religion, and everything to do with a 10-minute binge of first-person shooting lifted directly from the game, followed by a final wrestling match with the Rock. Stripped of all charisma to play a hard-ass Marine sergeant, Rock is at least given the keys to the Schwarzenegger Catchphrase-O-Matic, though "Semper Fi, motherfucker!" has to have been used before. In the generally dreadful realm of video game adaptations, I'll take Milla Jovovich's Matrix-fighting zombie dogs any day. --Shaun Brady (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA Cheltenham; UA 69th St.)

Dreamer
Cale (Dakota Fanning) feeds her race horse popsicles. Though the mare, named Sonador, has broken her leg, Cale's dad, horse trainer Ben (Kurt Russell), bought her from his mean employer (David Morse), then put her in a cast until she healed. Now, daughter and dad are spending time together, just like mom (Elisabeth Shue) hoped would happen. The horse — who carries Cale's backpack in her teeth and follows the girl around like a dog — is so inspiring that even Cale's grandfather (Kris Kristofferson, same as he ever was) and the stable hands (including all-purpose character player Luis Guzmán) are inclined to generosity and joy. John Gatins' movie is hardly believable (with a spotty record, Sonador is invited to run in the Breeder's Cup), but it is sweet as can be, enhanced by a rousing score, gorgeous tracking shots over wide Kentucky expanses and charming father-daughter exchanges. Indeed, Russell gets points for holding his own against scene-eater Fanning. He's endearing even when he's supposed to be gruff, twinkly when all looks lost. The oddest add-on is the "Arab" (underused Oded Fehr), so wealthy and competitive with his brother that he's willing to back a horse with a broken leg. --Cindy Fuchs (UA Riverview)

MirrorMask
Shot on a shoestring budget (presumably as a loss leader for the Jim Henson Company), the directorial debut of Dave McKean, best known as an artist for the Sandman comics, unleashes a flurry of visual ideas and then tries to cage them in a predictable, Labyrinthean story. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas, the cast-off child of Yes) is the sullen teenage daughter of a circus couple who wants to "run off and join the real world." Instead, the real world comes running to her, in the form of a brain tumor that fells her mother (Gina McKee) and sends Helena into a CGI dreamworld where a sleeping queen (McKee again) must be awakened before the land falls prey to her dark counterpart (ditto). McKean's Sandman collaborator, who co-wrote the script, clearly needs no boning up on his Bruno Bettelheim: Helena's burgeoning adulthood and need for independence is played out via her quest to save the queen, not to mention her relationship with a jaunty Harlequin type called Valentine (Jason Barry, with a stubbly plastic goatee and ingratiating Dublin accent). McKean's talent for combining photorealist collage and primitivist sketching is evident in the fantasy backgrounds, but McKean never finds a way to connect his actors to their environment, physically or emotionally. Leonidas is either too old or just too mature for her part; her plucky precociousness overwhelms any sense of vulnerability. She doesn't seem like she's on the verge of adulthood, but already past it. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

Stay
Tricked out with digital composites and showy lens choices, Marc Forster's art-film penance for Finding Neverland gussies up second-hand Hitchcock with New Age nonsense. Scripted by David Benioff (25th Hour), Stay echoes The Sixth Sense as an agnostic vision of purgatory with the psychiatrist as father confessor. Ewan McGregor plays the shrink in question, who gets handed a troubled young artist (Ryan Gosling) whose unexplained guilt, presumably over the car crash that opens the movie, may be driving him to self-annihilation. But since McGregor's girlfriend, Naomi Watts, is also an artist with a history of suicide, it's not clear who needs the second chance, or whether we're already watching it. Benioff's script is full of self-satisfied references to Greek mythology — blind seers, a diner waitress named Athena, even Gosling's last name, Letham — presumably left over from Benioff's work on Troy, and Forster amplifies the nudging with visual references to twos and threes: too many identically dressed pairs to count, a cash register reading $4.22, even a scene that plays out in front of apartment 2I — get it? (If not, rent Strangers on a Train.) McGregor traps himself in a hard-bitten Yank accent that makes emoting a strain, and Gosling pulls out every tic he didn't use in The Believer; only Watts, as the movie's still, threatened center, comes off even close to well. --S.A. (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.)