'Blood: The Last Vampire' better as a video game
With bad acting, fake digital blood effects and blurry fight scenes, "Blood: The Last Vampire" is more of a video game than action film based on a 2001 cult anime. Korean star Gianna plays a 400-year-old Samurai warrior who hunts down demons in a Vietnam War-era Japan, apparently overrun by bad American actors. Aided by a secret group called "The Council," she slices through legions of demons in this waste of Cory Yuen's fight choreography. Rated R for language and violence. 89 minutes.
At the Century Centre, Chicago.
'The Hurt Locker'
Kathryn Bigelow's tense, muscular Iraq war film, written by embedded journalist Mark Boal, is hardly fawning in its depiction of a U.S. soldier who uses the war as an excuse to abandon his family and avoid domestic life. It focuses on a military bomb disposal unit run by Sgt. James (an impressive Jeremy Renner), who thrives on danger, unlike the careful Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and a soldier (Brian Geraghty) stuck between the two father figures. Stripped of politics (the story could easily be about a Chicago bomb squad), "Hurt Locker" offers white-knuckle sequences with humanizing moments. Rated R for violence and language. 130 minutes.
At the River East and Century Centre in Chicago, and the Evanston CineArts 6.
'Summer Hours'
The After Hours Film Society presents Olivier Assayas' bittersweet poem to growing up, growing old and making room for the next generation. Three siblings (Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jeremie Renier) have different goals after their mom dies. $9 admission. Not rated. 102 minutes. . . .
7:30 p.m. Monday, July 12, at the Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove.