Another day, another movie about dirty cops. Ho hum.

“Street Kings,” the new-to-DVD police drama starring Keanu Reeves, gets its hands dirty with some pretty lax law enforcers. Reeves plays the king of the crooked cops, a detective who doesn’t mind planting evidence as long as it cleans up the streets. But who’s gonna tidy up his soul?

My Washington Times review dissects the film’s descent into incoherence. It’s a shame, since Reeves isn’t bad in this cop thriller, and the fine supporting cast (Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie and Chris Evans) also deserves better.

(Photo: Keanu Reeves takes the law into his own bloody hands in “Street Kings”)

No one’s perfect, especially movie critics. So consider this the first of an ongoing series of mea culpas — reviews I wish I could take back.

In 2004 I gave a sunny review to “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.” Watched it with fresh eyes last night and I can’t believe I got snookered the first time.

‘Date” stars Kate Bosworth as Rosalee, a grocery clerk in West Va. who gets a dream date with Hollywood hunk Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel). It’s all part of an image boost for the actor, whose hard-partying lifestyle is starting to affect his box office clout.

But the actor takes a liking to Rosalee, much to the consternation of her fellow grocery worker Pete (Topher Grace, all blinkered expressions and endless stammering). He’s had a crush of Rosalee for years, and just when he’s ready to make his movie a dashing movie star gets in his way. [click to continue...]

By the end of British director Christopher Smith’s horror comedy “Severance,” you’ll be impatient to see what he’s got planned for an encore.

It’s not because “Severance” is so good — no, the director needs a little more seasoning. It’s more that Smith is on to something.

Set in an unnamed wooded area in Hungary, “Severance” swats down both the military and corporations with one red-stained hand. Employees from the fictional company Palisade Defense, a British arms manufacturer, travel to Eastern Europe to do some corporate bonding. You know, play paintball, eat meals side by side and pretend to like your detestable boss and the office suck-up.

The plan quickly disintegrates. [click to continue...]

Hollywood can’t stop producing film after film about the Iraq War - even if all of them have tanked at the box office.

Yet the sturdy drama “Beyond the Gates,” a look at the Rwandan genocide, got almost no attention or theatrical play two years ago. So genocide ranks one full-length feature (”Hotel Rwanda”) but the war in Iraq gets a dozen?

Never mind the inequity. “Gates” deserves to be seen.

John Hurt, one of our least appreciated actors, stars as a Catholic priest who helps educate impoverished locals at a remote African village. His mission turns into a humanitarian nightmare when the assassination of the Rwandan president sparks a slaughter.

Hurt, alongside a naive but kind English teacher (Hugh Dancy), try to save the Tutsi refugees fleeing the marauding Hutus. Shot on location, “Beyond the Gates” employed several genocide survivors in the film’s crew. Perhaps it’s cruelly appropriate that a movie documenting a genocide ignored by the global community got ignored by movie audiences nationwide. Feel free to buck the trend and rent this trenchant story.

(Photo: Hugh Dancy and John Hurt star in the searing drama “Beyond the Gates.”)

Westerns are dead. Long live “3:10 to Yuma.”

Director James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma,” a remake of the terrific 1957 western, didn’t revive the genre like some folks hoped. But it proved plenty of good stories still wait to be told from the wild, wild west.

My Washington Times review recaps the film’s many highlights.

I recently caught up with the original, which starred Glenn Ford in a rare villainous role, and found it held up remarkably well. It got re-released on DVD last year when the remake hit theaters, but it didn’t have any tasty extras beyong a glimpse at the Mangold update.

As taut as the 1957 version is, the remake improves upon the source material. And let’s hear it yet again for Russell Crowe, who plays the wickedly compelling Ben Wade. We know Christian Bale takes the less flashy role as the rancher trying to save his farm, but this is Crowe’s movie from the opening reel.

(Photo: Russell Crowe plays a charismatic killer in the western remake “3:10 to Yuma.”)

Entering your local Blockbuster-type rental store isn’t as easy as it looks. The hits are easy to spot - the store will have a dozen or so copies and you’ll know them by heart from their ad campaigns. But too often you’ll see some name actors in projects you’ve never heard of before.

I posted a simple primer for successfully navigating the local video store over at eHow.com. I spent about five years working for a Mom and Pop video store (we’re talking VHS), and I took pride in steering customers toward movies that matched their tastes. I suspect not every Blockbuster employee takes similar care.

It’s fitting that one of Eddie Murphy’s next projects is a remake of “The Incredible Shrinking Man.”

His box office clout is following a similar trajectory.

Murphy’s “Meet Dave” looks to make an abysmal showing this weekend. The in-the-know Nikki Finke has the film bringing in roughly $5.3 million over its initial Friday-Sunday run.

That’s a disastrous number, although Murphy can’t be fully to blame. The movie’s concept wasn’t easily understood by adults, and yet children were a far more appropriate market for the film’s silly gags. But it’s still hard to fathom that a movie coming out against weak competition and rated PG could bring in so little.

Could a desperation move like “Norbit 2: Bigger, Fatter and Even Less Funny” be far behind?

Update: Anne Thompson of Variety has an interesting take on where Murphy stands today. She may be right, but it wasn’t that long ago that audiences cheered whenever Murphy broke into that impossibly wide grin.