“The Bourne Ultimatum”

 All along, they’ve been calling this the summer of threes — you know how “they” can be, putting things into tidy little boxes. And they focused mainly on the ballyhooed blockbusters that came out at the beginning of the summer: third installments in the “Spider-Man,” “Shrek” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchises. But now as we’re creeping into August, traditionally a dumping-ground time at the movies, we have easily the best threequel of all. “The Bourne Ultimatum” kicks all of their butts — literally and figuratively. It’s the first one that doesn’t feel like a dragged-out continuation of a series, but rather a climactic, satisfying culmination. (Though, who knows? The ending does leave the door open for the possibility of “Bourne 4.”) Paul Greengrass, who also directed part two, 2004’s “The Bourne Supremacy,” as well as the riveting “United 93,” continues to prove himself a master of mood. He’s done something astonishing here: He’s made an action film that’s both delicate and aggressive, a difficult balance to strike. It’s all stuff you’ve seen before — car chases, fistfights, international jet-setting and spy vs. spy intrigue — but it’s so expertly crafted and the cast is so superb that “Bourne Ultimatum” exceeds all expectations of the genre. Matt Damon remains a strong, stoic force in the center as the amnesiac assassin of Robert Ludlum’s novels, still seeking answers about his past. David Strathairn, Joan Allen and Julia Stiles co-star. PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of action. 110 min. Three and a half stars out of four.

“Bratz”

The Transformers did it — they made the leap from the toy store to the big screen. But unlike those dazzling, shape-shifting robots, the Bratz are actually less than meets the eye. Yes, the four young women who play the living dolls are pretty and perky and they have enough energy to light up a decent-sized suburb. Girls — a very specific niche of girls ages 8-10 — will probably want to be them. And in these tabloid-friendly times, they are much better role models than Britney/Lindsay/ Paris/Nicole. They go to class and fight to stick by each other when high school cliques threaten to tear them apart, rendering them BFFs (best friends forever!) no more. But wow, is this movie mind-numblingly vapid and shrill. In the hands of director Sean McNamara, who also did the painfully earnest Hilary Duff vehicle “Raise Your Voice,” it isn’t even a movie so much as an extended commercial for MTV and Skechers shoes and the L.A. outdoor shopping center The Grove, sort of the Las Vegas of malls. That’s where Sasha (Logan Browning), Jade (Janel Parrish), Yasmin (Nathalia Ramos) and Cloe (Skyler Shaye) go for retail therapy when the pressure to fit in starts to get them down. Chelsea Staub is pretty hilarious in an intentionally over-the-top way, though, as the queen bee who rules Carry Nation High School so completely, she has the various social groups organized into a lunchtime seating chart. PG for thematic elements. 110 min. One and a half stars out of four.

“El Cantante”

If it weren’t for the infectious, wall-to-wall salsa music, which Marc Anthony performs with a clear, stirring voice and great passion, it would be easy to write this off entirely as a shameless vanity project. Not for Anthony, mind you, but for his wife, Jennifer Lopez, who gets top billing and serves as a producer. Director Leon Ichaso has made a pretty standard biopic of salsa legend Hector Lavoe, hitting all the obligatory highlights of the singer’s life: his arrival in New York from Puerto Rico, his first gig, his first meeting with the sassy Puchi (Lopez), who would become his wife and the mother of his son. There’s the rise to stardom (marked by the de rigueur montage of screaming crowds, concert posters and newspaper clippings) followed by the descent into heroin abuse, his attempted suicide and eventual death from AIDS in 1993. Through it all there’s Lopez, making a million wardrobe changes and shaking her thing backstage in a million gratuitous cutaways. She and Anthony do have chemistry, though, and watching the real-life couple isn’t nearly as distracting as it was when Lopez co-starred with then-fiancé Ben Affleck in the notorious “Gigli.” A lot of that has to do with the fact that Anthony actually can act, something he previously hinted at in “Man on Fire.” R for drug use, pervasive language and some sexuality. 116 min. Two stars out of four.

“The Ten”

Anytime you compile a series of vignettes and call it a feature film, you’re going to have hits and misses. It’s the nature of the structure. Some recent examples (“Paris Je T’aime,” “Coffee and Cigarettes”) have had more hits; “The Ten,” unfortunately, has more misses. Directed by David Wain and co-written by Wain and Ken Marino, the film presents a series of stories based on the Ten Commandments — well, sort of. It’s more like, maybe someone kills a person, or maybe someone takes the Lord’s name in vain, and a comedy sketch is created around it. You’re not walking into it expecting complex humor; after all, these are the guys who brought you “Wet Hot American Summer,” which had its moments (though Marino also wrote “Diggers,” which showed real humanity and depth). But some of these shorts are really reaching. Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Gretchen Mol, Winona Ryder, Oliver Platt and Jessica Alba are among the ensemble cast. Liev Schreiber goes massively to waste in the least funny segment of all. R for pervasive strong crude sexual content including dialogue and nudity, and for language and some drug material. 95 min. One and a half stars out of four.