The Perfection (2019)

Former star cellist Charlotte must leave her prestigious academy to spend a decade taking care of her sick mother. During that time, Lizzie rises to represent that academy as its superstar cellist. Charlotte determines to reconnect with her former instructors, befriends Lizzie, and away we go.

I liked this so much until the final act. When you find out what was going on, it's another one of those "oh... this tired plot point again" reveals. But, up to that point, it's a pretty great piece of what-the-fuckery.

B-

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Wick has been labeled excommunicado by the assassins' guild and has to be quick on his feet and call in favors in order to survive. The first JW was pretty fun. The second was alright. But seriously -- they need to stop now. There were some fantastic sequences, but it was so non-stop that it all just started to blur together and become boring.

As for the characters: there was a fun one who was both fanboying on Wick while being determined to be the one who succeeds in taking him out. He was, unfortunately, completely negated by Halle Berry's character. She was extremely boring and didn't feel of-a-piece with the rest of the goings-on.

What a misfire.

D+

Insidious (2011)

Family moves into a new house and, almost immediately, their son goes into a comatose state and poltergeisty things start happening. They move, but son's still in a comatose state and things are still going bump in the night. And day.

This is just a jump scare-heavy, cheap-looking nothing. The only redeemable bit is Lin Shaye as a kind of ghost-hunters supernatural guide.

D+

Voyeur (2017)

Gerald Foos buys a motel and modifies it so that there are observation platforms above each of the rooms, then watches and documents what he sees. Journalist Gay Talese was first contacted by this guy about three decades ago and is now releasing a book on the subject. But is he trustworthy?

The film winds up being as much about Talese as it does Foos. I found myself assessing the two men and coming to much the same conclusion: they both have assigned themselves "work" and think that their findings are way more important than they are. They are, actually, both voyeurs.

Undeniably interesting, but I also felt pretty gross afterward. Plus Foos reminds me so much of my father in law that family get-togethers will likely be even more uncomfortable now.

C+

Dead in a Week: Or Your Money Back (2018)

Young writer has been unsuccessful in his many attempts to end his own life, but gains hope when an assassin offers to help. Too bad he finds something to live for only after signing the contract. The hitman has problems of his own since he's being encouraged toward retirement but isn't quite ready to hang it up.

This movie succeeds on the charm of its two leads and the idea to make the assassin trade corporate and mundane. If it had gone on any longer than its 90-minute run time, I think it could've worn-out its welcome.

B

Christopher Robin (2018)

Christopher Robin of the hundred-acre woods and many stuffed friends, goes off to boarding school, grows up, gets married, gets a job and forgets the magic of his childhood. But Winnie the Pooh hasn't forgotten and is determined to find his old friend.

I think I could've been charmed by this if Paddington hadn't already been released and succeeded so well in this space; this winds-up feeling like an also-ran.

C+

Booksmart (2019)

Best friends who also happen to the Valedictorian and Salutatorian of their class sacrificed fun in order to work hard to get into prestigious schools. They discover -- on the last day of school, natch -- that many of their classmates also got into those great colleges while balancing parties and a social life. They decide to cut loose on the night before graduation to make up for all of that lost time.

This is a silly, raunchy buddy comedy focusing on two girls I'd have loved to have been friends with. It also featured an animated segment that was pure hilarity. Great fun.

B+

Shimmer Lake (2017)

Bank robbery and its aftermath told in reverse order: Friday / Thursday / Wednesday / Tuesday / Monday. If it was told straight, there would be, literally, no surprises and no reason to watch. Worked well enough but is, ultimately, forgettable.

C+

The Daughter (2017)

The population of a town built around its sawmill is thrown when the mill announces its closure. At the same time, the mill's owner is planning his second marriage to a woman less than half his age, which brings his angry adult son back home and into the life of a childhood friend.

The mood is set well and the simmering secrets generate genuine dread. I was fully enjoying the story. That is, until the secrets come out and the results are bizarrely wrong. The childhood friend reacts in a way that makes no sense in context of what we've seen from him for the first 4/5 of the movie.

You can't ruin a character's reputation just to manufacture drama & expect the audience to be impressed.

C

The Trust (2016)

I'm fairly certain that this movie didn't make much sense but I was not quite straight while watching, so I can't be completely sure it was as dumb as it seemed.

Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood are cops who decide to steal from a drug dealer's heavily-reinforced improvised vault by coming down through the floor of the apartment above it. But Cage is weird (weirder than usual) and Wood -- once he sees what's actually in the vault -- loses both his nerve and his trust in his Cage.

Extremely low-rent and missing a few crucial details that would explain things fully. I think.

C-

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012)

Jiro has been in the business of sushi for 70 years and, at the time this film was made anyway, he was the oldest man awarded 3 Michelin stars.

This is a thoughtful look at his restaurant and what it takes to be the best in this field. Hint: it takes everything. All the time, energy, and all the space in one's head. Both of his sons have followed him into the business as well. It falls short of being inspiring just because -- unless one is an artist (and I believe that Jiro is) -- it's not worth devoting yourself to your job like that.

Really interesting regardless.

B

The Invisible Guardian (2017)

Detective is sent to her Spanish home town (where it is ALWAYS raining) to lead an investigation into the serial killings of teenage girls. It's pretty rote stuff -- a religious aspect, a ritual, etc. There are also a lot of flashbacks to the detective's childhood, in which she was despised and regularly abused by her mother, despite her sisters being treated well. The mother's behavior is never explained; it's just another moody movie bit to add to the pile, I guess.

But, with all that standard angsty stuff, there's also a Bigfoot "spirit of the forest" being helping them solve the crime, which is pretty darn dumb.

D+

Gerald's Game (2017)

Couple heads to their lake house during the off-season to spice up their marriage with a little light bondage. Problem is, hubby's heart is a ticking time bomb with only enough time to get wife chained to the bed before the time runs out on its clock...

This is a terrific re-telling of one of my least favorite King books. Her hallucinatory guides are a brilliant device. And the flashback, which I found too graphic in the book, was simply heartbreaking here. I loved this very much until the denouement. For me, the horror was in the situation itself and the memories it kicked up. Adding a real monster to the mix was an unnecessary hedging of bets in the book and I wish they'd have dropped it here.

B-

Calibre (2018)

Two longtime friends are off for a weekend hunting trip. There's not much to do in the village where they've booked rooms, so they spend their first evening in its one pub -- drinking too much and getting to know the locals. Worse for wear the next morning, they're off to the woods to bag some deer. But things go wrong almost immediately.

The atmosphere is everything here. The dread was almost too much to take at times. But, every step of the way, it all felt honest. This is a knock out.

A

Christine (2016)

Christine Chubbuck was a field reporter for a Sarasota news program in the early '70s. I knew nothing about her or her story before seeing this film and Gary and I watched it for 45 minutes with one of us exclaiming every five minutes or so: "what is this about?" or "why is this a movie?" Gary bailed at that point since we were bored out of our minds -- but I finished it up the next day.

For the next hour, I continued to wonder why the hell anyone wanted to make a movie about this woman. These were my deductions from Rebecca Hall's performance and the movie as a whole:

• Christine Chubbuck was on the spectrum -- possibly undiagnosed Asperger's
• She felt entitled to promotions even though we were shown nothing that would warrant this
• Her co-workers seemed to take care with her; they all seemed to think her weird but also liked her enough to be kind and patient
• Her boss often got frustrated with her, for what seemed to be good reasons.
• Her mother may have not been terribly good at mothering, but she definitely didn't seem to be to blame for Christine's difficulties

But then, the "event" -- the entire reason this movie exists -- occurs in the last 15 minutes. Christine shoots herself on air. I truly wonder how many people stuck with it long enough to see it, because this was so dry that I really didn't care.

F

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Han Solo genesis story & we get all the hits: how he met Chewie, how he met Lando, how he acquired his ride, and why he doesn't trust anyone. It's fast, fun, and fairly predictable.

B-

Band Aid (2017)

Ben & Anna are a millennial couple if ever there was one. They live in a decent California neighborhood (despite their jobs being freelance graphic artist and Uber driver respectively), they go to therapy, they spend a lot of their time baked, and they argue about everything except the one real thing they need to talk about. While high at a child's birthday, they improvise a song on the spot, which gives them the idea to turn their fights into songs.

Turning fights into songs as therapy is a pretty great premise for a movie. But having that be just about 20% of the movie feels like a bad choice. There's a lot of time spent with next-door neighbor Armisen who has two gorgeous women -- his "best friends" -- at his house all the time (though he can't understand why anyone would be interested in them), wears a leather jumpsuit as pajamas, has Cocoa Tuesdays with his houseguests, and used to be in a one-man band that was reviewed as "really very weird." Why do I know all of this about a secondary character? My guess is that they let Armisen riff and thought everything he did & said was far funnier than it really is (the Armisen trap fallen into by so many creatives).

Anyway. This couple really shouldn't make it. Ben is a man-child who doesn't seem to really want to put in the work to be a good husband. Or to hold a job. Or to even clean his own dishes. Anna deserves better. Randomly, however, Ryan Miller -- lead singer of Guster, one of my favorite bands --shows up in a drum circle. Why? No idea. But spotting him was about the only time I was happy during this whole movie.

D+

Long Shot (2019)

Theron is an all-business politician with her eyes on a presidential run. She hires Rogen -- journalist & childhood neighbor -- to do some speech writing for her and, well, it's a rom-com... There aren't many surprises but there are lots of laughs.

The two leads have chemistry for days.

B+

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

It's five years after Infinity War and the world is coping rather poorly with half the population disintegrating. Weirdly, they prioritized the erection of an expansive memorial honoring "the vanished" over day-to-day garbage collection...

But Ant-Man pops back into the world from the quantum realm hours after he entered, as far as he knew. So, he theorizes that time works different there and maybe they could time travel and get everyone back? Apparently Janet Van Dyne's brain wasn't big enough to work out how NOT to age 30 years in there, but dummy Scott Lang pulled it off...? Whatever.

And "whatever" was pretty much my feeling about this movie. We lost about a dozen heroes and were coping with that reality... so getting them all back feels like a cheat. And, no, killing off a couple of biggies doesn't make it feel like any less of a gratuitous trick. And the end battle, where a series of heroes were attempting to get the glove with the stones across the battlefield was just incredibly dumb asset management. Take one of the stones OUT of the glove so that, in case it's dropped, it's no longer a viable weapon. I mean duh.

C