Mark goes to the movies: Paycheck (dir. John Woo) If I think hard, I might be able to think of an on-screen couple with as little chemistry as Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman in this movie. Everyone else plays their parts to perfection: Aaron Eckhart as Yuppie slime (now that's a new one for him), Paul Giametti as Leading Man's Hobbit.

I was a lot sadder to watch the continuing descent of John Woo (the man who invented most of the action-movie moves plundered by every hack director in the past ten years) from Godfather of Action Cinema to Jerry Bruckheimer II. Until the last 15 minutes or so (when Uma goes to work with the Ninja moves she learned from Tarantino, plus one really impressive plumber's wrench and one cooperative robot), I thought this flick was the nadir of this path, the dullest movie John Woo has ever directed. Mark's rating: *½