Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

This feels just like the first one except with slightly more going on. But it's still juvenile compared to the rest of the entries in the Marvel Universe. It almost feels like the characters are doing voices for animation rather than for live action -- everyone's very hammy.

C+

The Beguiled (2017)

During the Civil War, one of the few girls still housed at a southern young ladies' boarding school nearby comes across a wounded Union soldier in the woods. She helps him to the school, where his injury is treated and he's allowed to convalesce... and to awaken libidos.

It's well-made and stands on its own, but it pales slightly when compared to the original. I'm just not sure why this needed to be remade when the Clint Eastwood version still packs a punch. But, then again, maybe the answer is as easy as "Colin Farrell," who does some damn fine beguiling work of his own here.

B+

Triple Frontier (2019)

Five retired & struggling special forces reluctantly get back together to steal millions from a Brazilian drug lord. They've got a solid plan which should get them in and out, kill only one bad guy, and set them up for life. But, of course, the plan doesn't get followed and everything goes very badly.

This movie, while it looked great & was well-acted, drove me bananas. Would highly-trained men really chuck the safety of their plan -- which is going to give them far more than they need -- in order to grab more cash than they can carry? It's ridiculous. And the stupidity kept right on piling up.

C 

The Silence (2019)

Why does this movie even exist? We already have "The Birds" and "A Quiet Place" so, even if this were done well (and it's really not), why?

We follow a family with a deaf daughter (who can conveniently speak since she's only been deaf for a few years) as the world gets turned upside down. Big bat-like swarms descend on any sound, so everyone's gotta be quiet. Sure, we all know that's scary due to A Quiet Place's proof of concept, but the truly terrible CGI monsters rather ruin any chance viewers would ever jump and the "seen it before but BETTER" thought in the back of my mind during every single scene gets in the way of ever being too invested. There was also a huge timeline issue. From my point of view, following the family, about two days pass from the time they leave home to the time they visit a town for antibiotics. But that town is almost completely vacant, monster eggs are already incubating in stinky corpses, and a weird cult called "The Hushed" who've cut out their tongues already exists. That seems kind of quick.

Fails in both execution and originality.

D+

The Breaker Upperers (2019)

Best friends run a business that gets people out of relationships for them. The service can be just a quick "she doesn't want to be with you any more" phone call or a more elaborate charade involving costumes. Great premise.

But it's got this weird '80s vibe of silly situations that rarely go far enough, which makes for a pretty limp movie. Also, they wasted the brilliantly funny Celia Pacquola in a sad-sack role -- I didn't even recognize her at first, mistaking her for Kelly MacDonald.

C+

Malevolent (2018)

College kids run a "cleanse your home of ghosts" scam, but that doesn't mean there aren't really ghosts...

The initial ghost-busting scene is pretty good. A grieving father and daughter are desperate to have the recently deceased matriarch move on. The scammers do their thing but, for the first time, the "medium" in the group really does sense then see a presence. When they take a job at the home where infamous slayings of a trio of foster daughters took place, the danger ratchets up.

But then you see what's going on and it's just weird and silly rather than scary.

C-

Southpaw (2015)

Gyllenhaal plays a boxing champ from the wrong side of the tracks. He punches hard, gets punched hard, and doesn't give up. He's got a too-goo-to-be-true wife from the same side of the tracks & a cute daughter. But he loses it all in what seems like a matter of days after his wife is killed in a freak accident.

He lives in a shithole, his daughter's in a group home where she tells a friend she "doesn't really know anymore" if he's her father (??), and he's being trained (in a dumpy gym that looks like it smells like butt) by Forrest Whitaker who teaches him to keep his hands up and get out of the way of fists. In just six weeks, he's back on top.

It's basically a dumb Rocky III.

C-

Slow West (2015)

When the woman he loves flees to America with her father, a Scottish kid decides to find her. Jay is utterly unprepared for the journey, but is soon joined by a "brute" who offers to guide him west to find her.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable trek viewed in a series of vignettes: the trading post visit, splitting up, getting drunk, etc. It's not a comedy, but there are moments of levity and an economy of language that allowed me to enjoy the journey along with them. The vibe reminded me rather strongly of "The Gal Who Got Rattled" segment in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

B+

Out of Thin Air (2017)

This documentary concerns the disappearances of two men from the same small Icelandic community and those who served time for the supposed crimes. Though all six confessed to either killing or aiding with body disposal (sometimes changing their stories), they did so only after intense pressure tactics from the police and, even then, their confessions did not match.

It's a film that should inspire outrage, but it's too blandly presented to result in viewer emotion of that caliber. It's as though the filmmaker was only interested in providing the information rather than trying to make it flow into a compelling story.

C+

The Siege of Jadotville (2016)

Story of an untried Irish troop sent to the Congo on a UN "peace keeping mission." When a separate mission in the region results in the death of citizens, the Irish "war virgins" are attacked by a group of mercenaries that outnumber them by about 20 to 1.

Most of the movie concerns the siege & the on-the-fly brilliance of their Commander, Pat Quinlan. I don't generally feel very connected during war scenes, but the filmmakers did an amazing job here. The combination of despair and resolve of the men came through. I felt for Quinlan as he demanded help from those who viewed his group as sacrifice pawns and was inspired by his refusal to accept the label.

A truly great war movie.

A-

The Polka King (2018)

Charming immigrant dreams of American success, but there's not as much money in polka as he expected. To give his family a good life and pay his band a decent wage, he starts selling promissory notes with huge interest rates -- your basic Ponzi scheme. The story is pretty bizarre, encompassing a bribe to get his tour group a personal visit with the pope, another to get his wife voted Mrs. Pennsylvania, and a horrible injury while incarcerated for his fraud charges. But, through it all, it's impossible not to root for this upbeat guy who's done bad things.

It reminded me strongly of Bernie. Probably because Jack Black once again is playing a true-life sweetheart who winds up on the wrong side of the law.

B

The Incredible Jessica James (2017)

Jessica is a struggling New York-based playwright freshly single. She teaches a children's theater workshop, can't stop obsessing over her ex, is ready to be disappointed by new guys, and is utterly self-centered. And that inflated sense of self-worth is at its absolute off-putting peak for the first 10 minute or so of the film, which almost had me bailing. I am so glad that I stuck with it.

As we watch Jessica fumble her way through her job, dating life, and family life, we get to know her. It's easy to see that her strong personality is a must, otherwise she could crumble. I feel very lucky to have spent time watching her stumble and recover.

Chris O'Dowd is at his very best here as Jessica's rebound guy.

B+

Talvar (2015)

This movie covers the investigation/prosecution of an actual double-murder in India. While I appreciated that the film didn't seem to have a theory it was pushing hard as THE theory, that also made it a little difficult to form a decent opinion of what actually did happen (not that I should be able to do so). It's basically a "maybe this" or "maybe that" so what's the point?

But the reason I'm giving this a low score is that, out of a cast of hundreds, maybe 5 or 6 had any aptitude for acting. Mostly it was stiff or over-the-top and took me completely out of the story.

D+

Certain Women (2016)

We peek into the lives of three women, loosely linked by location.

One is a lawyer with a messy personal life and a particularly problematic client. The next seems alone in her own family: she doesn't quite jive with her husband and daughter and her high standards make it difficult for them to bridge the gap. The last is a seasonal ranch hand who finds something to look forward to when a young lawyer from out of town starts teaching a weekly adult education class.

I felt invested in these lives because the director made sure I felt the frustration -- the longing for more -- pulsing through each of them and manifesting in different ways. I have great appreciation for the deliberate pace, which allowed me to feel the way in which time can begin to slip away and one's life can become just a series of days to get through. I know it could've been boring, but I found it to be simply truthful.

B+

Fear (1956)

Bergman is Irene, a woman who succumbed to the attentions of another man while her husband was imprisoned (unexplained) and then at a facility to recuperate. Understandable, I'd say. She breaks it off when her husband returns home, but finds herself being blackmailed by her ex-lover's ex-girlfriend.

As Irene gets more desperate to keep the blackmailer from spilling her secret, her husband notices she's "off" and pleads with her to tell him what's upsetting her. Since I guessed the twist right off, I'll tell you: her husband is behind the blackmail scheme. He wants to punish her? Or possibly -- since he's a scientist who regularly works with guinea pigs -- maybe just study her? Whatever he's doing, it's not cool.

By the end of the film, Irene has found out what he's done and is about to commit suicide when he finds and stops her from doing so. There's an embrace where he asks for forgiveness and she asks for forgiveness for being so cruel. Uh -- what?? You were lonely and in serious need of comfort. Your husband is the cruel one. Yeesh.

C

Invisible (2017)

To all appearances, 17-year-old Ely is a typical teen drifting through her inconsequential days. She doesn't care about school, doesn't have many friends, and seems to have little parental oversight. She works for a veterinarian and has regular sex with her much older co-worker, finally resulting in a pregnancy. Ely never seems to panic, though. She still seems to drift. Abortion is illegal in Argentina (where this is set), so she researches other methods to end the pregnancy. We see more glimpses into her home life and sparks of personality, but really not much.

This was well-acted and deliberately quiet and truly human, but I just couldn't understand why it was made. It's a slice of life, sure -- but was it worth viewing?

C+