Cinderella (2015)

Very pretty but "nothing new" version of the story. I was bored.

C+

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Scrawny but scrappy guy really wants to be a soldier but can't pass the physical. Science to the rescue!

The pre-manly physique portion is charming. Unfortunately, once he’s buff, the story turned into lots of rock ‘em sock ‘em episodes that kind of blurred together.

B-

The Queen of Versailles (2012)

I truly expected to snicker my superior way through this documentary about richies being brought down several notches by the financial crisis. Instead, I found the lady of the house to be almost inspirational. Sure, she’s ignorant about how to make it without wads of cash, but she’s not angry about having to learn.

Her kids and husband on the other hand? What wastes of space.

B

Very Bad Things (1998)

Well, I accidentally typed “Very Bad Movie” as the title of this post before I realized and backspaced out of my error. Does that tell you anything?

A five-man bachelor party winds up with an accidentally-dead hooker on their hands and the group begins to fall apart immediately. It was artificially loud and frantic - in one scene, Jeremy Piven kept screaming “GOOSED,” which made neither sense nor a watchable sequence. Things go from bad to worse but I didn’t care, I just hated. Them. All.

F

The House of Rothschild (1934)

Five Jewish brothers start a successful banking empire across Europe while combating anti-semitism. If it could've held my attention for more than 20 minutes at a time (I think it took me close to two months to slog through this), I would've felt as though I'd been banged over the head with its message.

Even the B-plot romance was a lazy nothing.

D-

Force Majeure (2014)

A family man runs for his life rather than considering the safety of his wife and children in the face of what looks to be a rapidly-approaching avalanche. Though the danger proves to be non-existent, the consequences of his choice impacts their vacation and relationship.

I liked that I immediately went into “how would I react if Gary did that” mode -- but that there’s no real easy answer. Although I found the film well-done and the wife’s struggle to adapt, in particular, very real, I was a little annoyed by the film’s seeming refusal to take a stand one way or the other and to muddy the waters by making the wife a bit of a harpy even in matters unrelated to her husband’s selfishness. But, of course, maybe her shrewishness was a result of the avalanche experience... as we didn’t get to know them at all pre-event, it’s impossible to say. Having her judge a just-met friend for her permiscuousness and get (justifiably) angry at an inept bus driver left me unclear as to the message.

Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t need to be told what to THINK, but I’d appreciate knowing the POINT.

B

Tim's Vermeer (2013)

Fascinating documentary spotlighting one man’s obsession with how Vermeer was able to get such lifelike light and color into his paintings. His ingenious invention - a lens pulling the image to a mirror rigged directly above the canvas - enabled this non-artist to create a masterpiece more foolproof than a paint-by-numbers kit.

Watching this felt a bit like being let in on a magician’s secrets -- like, “What the hell?? I thought Vermeer was an amazing painter. Now I find out he may have just been cheating!” But then I questioned myself, wondering why in the world I should consider artistic innovation to be a cheat. It's genius either way.

B+

Mr. Turner (2014)

Maybe if I’d had any idea of who William Turner was before seeing this movie, I might have been interested...but I doubt it. I rarely knew what was going on here and was bored out of my mind. It felt disjointed and there was absolutely no one on the screen I was rooting for. It was 150 minutes of quiet, often offputting, nothing much.

The only thing worthy of remark in this movie was the phlegm. Someone was coughing, clearing a throat, and generally grossing me out every few minutes.

C-