Shoots Itself in the Head There's a trend in these big budget action moves to try and support the thing with hefty story components: profundity, explorations of fate and power (often via revealed conspiracies). We come to expect this, and I believe have rather clear thresholds...
Salt-of-the-earth Cole falls head over heels for enigmatic Sadie—but then makes the shocking discovery that she's a secret agent. Before they can decide on a second date, Cole and Sadie are swept away on an international adventure to save the world.
How I Met Your Spy Mother Gosh, another film I cannot recommend from the trailer on. This script comes from a vending machine with the selections: ‘romantic comedy’, sexy girl superhero/Bond, two and a half big action sequences, with the governance in that order. It almost seems...
A tech worker with agoraphobia discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime but is met with resistance when she tries to report it. Seeking justice, she must do the thing she fears the most: leave her apartment.
Powdered Banana Here we have a master filmmaker, someone who can squeeze a brilliant vision out of just about anything. We have a very talented and experienced scriptwriter, someone who has impressed before. And a very competent actress who fills the role well. She has a...
Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.
Samsinging I use Apple products. I probably would use them even if the experience were poor, if they didn’t give utility, purely because of the privacy issue. But they do give pleasure. Some of that pleasure is in the absolute quality of the user experience. I...
Sussex, England, 1938. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Thomasina and Martha Hanbury, two ingenious sisters, create LOLA, a miraculous machine.
Retroactive Reinterpretation First, you should know this comment is written after a long break from lucidly watching serious movies, as my current movie time is often guided to mainstream films. I am giving this film a four, because it is one of the two from 2022...
When the family patriarch is murdered, seven women find themselves trapped together in his mansion to solve the mystery.
Minivan to Chucky’s This is a play that has been made into a movie a few times. I saw this Italian version dubbed into fairly good English. Its appeal is supposedly in the characters, and the economy of production. I’ll let others judge whether the interaction...
A knight framed for a tragic crime teams with a scrappy, shape-shifting teen to prove his innocence.
Your Local Manager I came to this with kids, not knowing anything. The story is ordinary, with features borrowed from a familiar bucket. But it had energy, massive energy in more than one dimension. The title character, the city backgrounds, and most particularly the camera —...
Professor Charles Xavier and his team of genetically gifted superheroes face a rising tide of anti-mutant sentiment led by Col. William Stryker. Storm, Wolverine and Jean Grey must join their usual nemeses—Magneto and Mystique—to unhinge Stryker's scheme to exterminate all mutants.
Utterly Pedestrian I have enthusiastic hopes for big budget action pictures. That's because the market is so crowded, and the viewing public so visually sophisticated that we know that some thought must go into these things. This is especially so when you are building a franchise,...
Two mutants, Rogue and Wolverine, come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.
Missed a Chance One nice thing about this is the casting of McKellan and Stewart. Despite the latter's adventures with the stupid StarTrek, he is an intelligent actor, as is McKellan. They tower over the amateurs in this film as their characters should. About bad acting,...
Sundance Sundown One of the advantages of age is that I’ve seen older films when they were new. If you consider film viewing as at least a craft — as I do — then it matters that you are able to bring the personal anchoring of...
