Reviews

Killers is a movie about a spy named Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) who leaves the life after meeting Jen (Katherine Heigl). They get married, move into a neighborhood where "they know the neighbors" (which is something Spencer always wanted) and live happily ever after... at least until the powers that be want him dead and end up activating the sleeper cell neighbor-killers who are out for the 20 million dollar contract on his head. He juggles saving his life with keeping his marriage with Jen together. There's also an ending twist (in the loosest sense of the world as you can see it from the beginning) that Jen's dad, Mr. Kornfeldt (Tom Selleck) is also in the spy life.

The movie is an action/black-comedy and it largely succeeds in that particular respect. Rob Riggle plays Henry, one of Spencer's friends and also one of the killers. There's a pretty funny exchange between them and Jen as Henry and Spencer try to kill each other. Heigl plays a ditzy/cutesy Jen, which also works for the most part. Kutcher is the one that just doens't seem to fit. He comes off as stiff.

On the action side, there are some good fighting scenes, including a nice car-fu and antler-fu scene.

I enjoyed it, more in parts rather than as a whole. It's a typical popcorn movie that could have been more, but just didn't have that *thing* that, say, Grosse Point Blank or Heathers had. 6/10.

Travelers is a 3 season Netflix series centered around a team of five people who have come from the future by transferring their consciousness into 5 people living in the 21st century. Each of the five people were historically about to die just before being "taken over" by these travelers. The traveler mission is to change the course of history by averting a string of disasters that will cause worldwide disaster. The "leader" is an AI computer in the future, called the director, sending out missions by considering all possibilities and executing the best one. As the series progresses, there's another group called the faction, who believes the future shouldn't be crafted by some AI machine.

Each episode was pretty much consistently good, in that it had the right amount of action, drama (remember, these travelers must continue the lives of their hosts), philosophy (the moral implications of what they're doing), and plot twists. Each episode also felt "fresh" from the others in that it told it in a different way. I contrast this with some sci-fi "monster of the week" episodes in other series like the X-files.

As the show progressed, it got more complicated. Adding the Faction made it difficult to know which traveler was on what side. A few episodes had some nice twists, notably S2E8 where Grace/0027 was put on trial and found guilty for violating protocols, only for us to find it was a plot by the Director to flush out a Faction member.

Outside of the intricacies of the mission and Faction, the travelers also had to deal with their personal lives. Each of the core team had an issue of their own: MacLaren's (Eric McCormack) uneven relationship with his wife, Marcy's (MacKenzie Porter) relationship with her host's social worker as well as being re-written, Carly's (Nesta Cooper) relationship with her abusive boyfriend and dealing with her son, Trevor's (Jared Abrahamson) relationship with his parents -- ironically he's the oldest traveler but went into the youngest host -- as well as his eventual temporal aphasia, which was causing him to fall into a catatonic state, and Philip (Reilly Dolman), dealing with drug issues pretty much all throughout the series.

I enjoyed each episode pretty consistently. Near the end of season three, they brought in Trevor's disease, Philip's increasing effects of not taking the historian drug, Grant's crumbling relationship with his wife, Marcy dealing with the death of her boyfriend. They were adding threads to the story, each of which were interesting and I was eager to see the resolution. To be clear, I very much enjoyed each episode and couldn't wait for the next one.

Then it all ended.

It was as if Netflix execs, out of nowhere, "okay, wrap this up in the next episode". The last episode was still pretty good, but it just came out of nowhere. I wish they more time to build up to the finale and also had more time to close some of the threads. For a series like this, the ending affects the series as a whole (I'm looking at you, "How I Met Your Mother").

The other issue I had is the whole point of the traveler program was to avert disaster caused by climate change. So, uh, why not just bring back scientists who can bring about fusion, carbon capture, degradable plastics, efficient energy storage, etc. Moreover, climate change was apparently the central cause, but none of the missions involved that. Some of the major ones were averting an asteroid, stopping a plague, stopping the development of a "singularity engine", stopping a nuclear device going off. One can argue they couldn't because that's bringing back information from the future, but they did exactly that when they brought back the specialist/serial killer to stop the singularity engine.

Between the abrupt ending, the subplots that didn't get resolved, the missions not related to the central core, that's where I felt that the sum of its parts were greater than the whole, rather than the other way around.

One last thing is the series does end with an option for a continuation, but it would likely involve a completely different team. I don't think they can capture that same magic while also not seeming derivative to the original. Or maybe I'm wrong about that.

7/10 for the series as a whole with episodes generally closer to 8/10.

Long story short: Three men survive a shipwreck and find themselves in an island with only 4 inhabitants -- 2 men, two young women. Weird stuff happens to the three men. One of the survivors dies while going out on a walk. The two remaining survivors wander around for half the movie, then decide to leave the island, only to not be able to. Second survivor dies. The big reveal is a while back, a young woman was raped and murdered. She took revenge on the then more populated village by killing people through the two young women. She also caused various shipwrecks along with the two women (Odysseus and the sirens and all). Anyway, the last sailor finally leaves, only to be stopped by the singing of the 3 women, but the two live women jump to their deaths, allowing the last guy to go free.

This is tagged as a horror movie, but it's not what you'd typically expect. There are 1.5 jump scares. The rest of it is just creepiness (person doesn't see the woman in his room or as he's walking about). I don't mind that, actually, I'm not a fan of too many jump scares and is generally why I stay away from horror. So that's not really my issue with this movie.

My issue is the plot really doesn't advance for a good hour or so. It's just weird stuff happening to the survivors and then the women getting temporarily possessed. The other problem I had is the two young women decided at the end to sacrifice themselves so the surviving sailor could live (or they thought he died and killed themselves in grief). So, they let the other villagers die, a bunch of sailors throughout the years, then decide to kill themselves over this one sailor? Why? Lastly, yeah, rape and murder is absolutely horrible, but why provide that backstory? It's not like it's justified killing all the completely innocent people. Could have just made her a crazy lady killing people because... reasons.

Bottom line, the movie was a trudge to get through with a payoff that didn't. 5/10 for the pretty scenery, nice acting. It also did somewhat okay with the creepy unsettling atmosphere.

Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) is a recently orphaned kid going to live with his uncle Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black) who just happens to be a warlock. He has a purely platonic friend Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) who happens to be a witch. Lewis starts learning magic, which is then forgotten, until, I guess, the near end of the movie and even then is not particularly central.

Jonathan has but one rule in his house -- don't open the cabinet, which has all sorts of magical protection, but no sort of protection for a curious kid. The cabinet contains a book on how to bring back the dead. Lewis, trying to impress a friend by saying he knows magic, decides not to do one of the many magic spells he knows, and instead decides to steal the book and bring back the dead.

The book guides him to the coffin of Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan) so as to advance the plot. Apparently Isaac was building a clock that could turn back time (thanks Cher, now that's in my head). Isaac wants to rid the world of humans, or something like that.

It's now up to Lewis, Jonathan, and Florence to stop him. Spoiler alert, they stop him.

It's a silly movie of loose ends, plot advances for no reason, actions for no reason. It felt like a smattering of stuff put together. The movie starts out promisingly with magic powers and a magic house, but largely goes nowhere with it. The middle is where it gets boring with an ending that feels rushed and non sensical. Jack Black plays his typical goofy doofus role. Cate Blanchett is fine, but really doesn't have much to work with. I guess if you're a kid, the magic and magic house is kind of cool, and it's pretty thrilling with a couple of good scares (along the lines of a Goosebumps episode), so a kid may enjoy it. For me, 5/10.

Ewan McGregor and Eva Green's breasts(*) star as Michael, a chef, and Susan, an epidemiologist. For reasons never explained, everyone in the world starts losing their senses, with an emotion preceding it. It starts with taste (preceded by intense sadness), then goes to smell (preceded by intense hunger), hearing (preceded by intense anger), and ends with sight (preceded by intense love).

Michael and Eva are two lonely singles who meet up right at the start of the pandemic, and the movie follows their relationship as they and the world lose senses. The movie has a somewhat uplifting feel as the initial fear and chaos of losing each sense slowly turns to acceptance and adjustment. Losing smell means food has to be over-spiced to compensate. Losing smell means the food needs to be more visually appealing with different textures and sounds. I thought that was interesting.

This movie is tagged as sci-fi, but I would call it more speculative fiction. Science doesn't really come into play here; it's more about the human reaction to the loss of senses. I don't mean that as a negative, only that those looking for a science-fiction type plot may be disappointed. It's meant to be an emotional movie and I think it largely does that. As for it being romance, well, it obviously is, but I can't quite determine whether these two were meant to be together, or if they just ended up together due to these circumstances. I think it's more the latter.

I enjoyed the ride but ended the movie with "that's it? So, what's the point?" The movie ends with Susan and Michael finding each other (after having a fight due to Michael's disease caused rage). Right after they find each other, they embrace and go blind. So happy ending for an instant, and then what? I can only imagine it going downhill from there -- for them and society as a whole. Maybe that was the point, or maybe the movie backed itself into a corner and ended because there was nowhere else to go that wasn't obvious. For me, it was an interesting concept, with a bit of a letdown at the end. 7/10.

*As for Eva Green's numerous topless scenes, by no means did I mean that as a negative, nor do I think it was done in a gratuitous manner. It is a budding relationship, after all. But they definitely do have quite a bit of screen time.

Proximity stars Ryan Masson as Isaac, a math nerd working at JPL. He intercepts some mysterious signal, which causes aliens to abduct him on a hike. He's brought back along with some sort of power to make things disappear -- or something. It's not clear and they don't talk about it until the very end. Anyway, he decides to meet someone who happens to have a similar experience, Sara (Highdee Kuan). He then gets caught by some secret agency who, I kid you not, have some android robots as guards for... reasons? He and Sara get taken to some secret area where he subsequently escapes with her in such a manner that you think "well, obviously they were let go", but no.

They find that this secret area is in Costa Rica, but luckily they just happen to stumble onto super hacker Zed (Christian Prentice), who knows about this secret group and the androids. The three team up to find Carl (Don Scribner), a former abductee. Carl has somehow managed to translate the alien transmission into English. They find Carl, the aliens find them, and it turns out the aliens just want to know from Isaac/Sara about Jesus. The bad guys then find them and kill Sara and destroy the house. But Isaac apparently has some super speed power, the ability to revive Sara, and the ability to be invisible, I think. The movie ends with Carl and Zed forming some sort of group, and Sara and Isaac hitching up and opening up a restaurant.

Sheesh, where to begin. First of all, the movie does start well, with Isaac being abducted, showing the video to a news reporter who took a skeptical viewpoint, causing others to think it was all video editing. There was an interesting story there, but instead of doing that, it took the path I stated. So...

What's with the androids? What's the point of them even existing? They were cool to watch, but had no point. My thought it they didn't want to show people getting killed? The Jesus thing came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Now, I'm not an anti-religious zealot, and I'm fine if this movie wanted to be about aliens searching for Jesus (I think a decent movie could be coaxed from that). But the whole Jesus thing comes out of nowhere and is so jarring that you're taken out of the movie and going "wait, what's that all about?". Isaac and Sara's relationship adds no value and is so artificial. This secret group that has working frigging androids can't catch a bunch of kids flying on a prop plane and a train from Costa Rica to British Columbia Pacing is extremely slow at times Why were they abducted? Why was Isaac given powers?

Really, the movie is just a jumble of scenes that don't really work well together, tied by some sort of a plot that loose threads everywhere and that barely makes sense.

There are some highlights: Highdee Kuan's eyes are absolutely amazing in the movie The androids are a bit fun to watch The characters look like other people. For me: Isaac looks like a cross between DJ Qualls and Asa Butterfield Zed looks like a cross between Jared Leto and the Anonymous mask Carl looks like an old Stephen King with long hair

4/10. Stuff like this makes me think the crap I've written in the past and then read months later with embarrassment could actually be made into a movie.

Dark is a three season, 26 episode tv show that centers around residents of a small town in Winden. Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hofmann) is the main character. We find out his father hanged himself for reasons unknown. His mother is having an affair with a policeman from town. He has feelings for Martha (Lisa Vicari), who is the girlfriend of one of his friends Bartosz (Paul Lux). Martha has an older brother Magnus (Moritz Jahn) and younger brother Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz). One night, Jonas and friends, along with fellow student Franziska (Gina Stiebitz), go to a cave looking for some drugs. Things go crazy as they hear a loud sound from inside the case, causing all of them to run away. Mikkel disappears in the craziness.

As the story unfolds, things get exponentially crazier and complex. We find out that Mikkel time travelled into the past. Moreover, Mikkel ends up being Jonas's father, which is a paradox, and also means that Martha is his aunt. We eventually find this time travel business involves many people in the town, but seems to largely revolve around Jonas and Martha. They have a child who ends up being the father of a family tree that ends with Jonas and Martha, who have a child that ends up being the father of a family tree that ends with Jonas and Martha, who...

Older Jonas (Adam) and Older Martha (Eva) eventually figure out this cycle of paradox, wtih Adam trying to end the cycle and Eva trying to continue. It's an eternal struggle between the two. Both are trying to end "The apocalypse", some grand disaster at the nuclear plant.

Things are MUCH more complicated than that, with people travelling to the past and future, in 33 year jumps from 2019. The third season adds to the confusion with the discovery that there are two worlds intertwined.

At the end of the series, we find that the two worlds and all the time travel paradoxes are due to a scientist, H.G. Tannhaus, in what is called the origin world. In this world, his son, daughter in law, and grandchild were killed in an accident. He builds a time machine to try to get them back but in doing so, creates these two worlds. Martha and Jonas end up travelling to the origin world, and stopping the accident from happening. However, in doing so, Tannhaus never builds the time machine and Jonas, Martha, and their two worlds cease to exist. The series ends with a dinner party of the origin-world Winden residents who were not part of the family tree paradox, living completely different lives in this origin world than in the two offshoot worlds.

What we're left with is a tragically wonderful ending in that Jonas and Martha realize they are the "glitch in the matrix" (an often used term in the series). But not only are they the glitch, but their whole world. Imagine saving the lives of three people you don't know, causing you to not just die, but cancel the existence of you and your worlds entirely. It's the only possible ending to have in such a paradoxical world, but sad nonetheless.

At the same time, it's also disappointing. This story that unfolded over 3 seasons, 26 episodes, but it's all for naught. All the intricate family tree issues means nothing. The dark matter apocalypse? Nothing. Again, that's not a surprise as... I mean, how else could it end?!? And it's still an interesting, intricate, and intelligent series with how they weaved together so many characters in different times and worlds.

So, like the series, where two contradictory worlds exist at the same time (cue the Schrodinger's cat explanation), I feel both a bit cheated by the series and also wholly satisfied by it. But there's no denying that, while watching it, I enjoyed every gosh darn confusing moment of it and an kinda sad to see it end, while also feeling it ended right where it should have. Solid 8/10 for me.

Dropa is a movie about aliens who were awoken by some nukes, killed off because of a virus, only to find out that 1) it didn't kill everyone and 2) the virus was engineered by humans to get people onboard to kill the aliens. Oh and I guess the main character and his wife were aliens all along. Shocker.

The concept was nice, but the execution just didn't work. About 15 minutes, I found my interest waning. About an hour, I felt the need to take a nap. Finished up the movie only because, well, I was already halfway done. Plot was unnecessarily convoluted, atmosphere was dark and brooding, which might have worked if the plot was better. Acting was the worst kind of bad -- wooden and dull. If it were at least campy, you could have had a bit of fun with that.

The "homage" to Blade Runner kinda worked against the movie as it telegraphed the ending twist.

Didn't like it, but I got a nice nap out of it, so that's a bit of a plus.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood tells the story of fictional actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his fictional stunt double/friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Dalton is in the waning moments of his acting career. They live next to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). This is a revisionist historical fiction movie that mixes real life characters like Polanski and Tate with the fictional Dalton and Booth, though Dalton and Booth can be considered characters based on real life people.

Tate was brutally murdered by members of the Charles Manson gang, and they are also in this movie. However, instead of successfully murdering 8-1/2 month pregnant Tate and her friends, the gang of three were brutally killed by Booth and Dalton (and Booth's dog) after they decided to kill Dalton instead of Tate.

So yes, the movie, in my mind, is Quentin Tarantino building a "what if it happened this way" kind of world instead of the tragic real life events that actually happened. I think this is why the deaths of the three Manson gang was so particularly brutal. Tarantino wanted to build a world where the three died painfully (one was burned by a flamethrower!). Then again, maybe Tarantino just wanted to have a bloody and violent scene. He does tend to do that...

That said, the movie is also just fun to watch. Taking place in the late 60s, there's just that wonderful feel of the movie in that period. DiCaprio and Pitt are great together, Pitt's character is so bad-ass in so many scenes. Al Pacino has a scene where he plays producer Marvin Schwarz and is trying to get Dalton to go to Italy and star in some Spaghetti Westerns. He's not in the movie a lot, but he's fun to watch. Margot Robbie isn't in the movie that much, but sure does seem to capture Sharon Tate's essence and beauty. There's also a scene where Dalton has a conversation with a child actress Trudi Fraser (Julia Butters) and talks about a book he's reading while realizing it parallels his fading career.

There are some great scenes in the movie. However, there's also that sense of "where is this going" feeling at the same time. That does make the movie seem to drag in parts. To me, it's a movie where I would say "I liked this scene and that scene" vs. "I liked the movie".

7/10 for me.

Will Smith stars as Ben Thomas (well, sorta), an aeronautical engineer turned IRS auditor (well, sorta). He falls for someone that he's auditing, Emily (Rosario Dawson). Emily is behind on her taxes due to a heart condition and Ben decides to help her out, first by freezing her debt, then by walking her dog, fixing her garden, taking care of her, fixing her printer. They become close and end up sleeping together and confessing their love for each other. Sadly though, Emily doesn't have much longer to live unless she gets a heart transplant.

Throughout the movie, we also catch glimpses of Ben's past -- an accident, a wife, a close friend agreeing to something he doesn't want to do, a brother that he gave something to.

The wallop comes at the end when it's all revealed. Ben caused an accident that took his wife and six people in another car. After the accident, he donates a piece of his lung to his brother (the real Ben, and turns out Will Smith's Ben is Tim, and using Ben's IRS badge). From this, "Ben" decides to find seven good people to atone for the seven lives he took. He commits suicide, thereby giving his heart to Emily, his eyes to a "good" blind man, his home to an abused mom, his liver to a youth coach, his bone marrow to a young child. At the very end, Emily meets the man who got Ben's eyes -- Ezra (Woody Harrelson) for that extra gut kick after that gut punch.

The movie is designed to be a tear jerker with as much of a punch at the end as it could muster. I think it largely does that so long as you don't think too deeply about it. Once you do, I think the story starts to unravel a bit. It's also a movie that I think, could have dialed back the emotional hit. It tried too hard.

Will Smith is either great or overacted. He plays a character who looks like he's putting on a smile, wants to be close and distant, and knows he's going to kill himself. And you see that in his character, but it just looks so obvious that he's trying to play it that way. What I'm not sure of is whether it's just obvious because it's overacted, or obvious because I'm used to Will Smith playing that swagger type role and seeing him meek and distant just sticks out.

Lastly, the movie does seem to drag in some places. Probably could have cut a good 20-30 minutes off the movie.

7/10. It's got its faults, but delivers on the tear jerker front if you allow it.

Chun is a girl that's pat of "The Others" -- more than human, less than god beings who manipulate our world, or something. She's at the age where she can visit our world as a red dolphin for 7 days and has to return... for reasons. While a dolphin she apparently falls for a boy, Kun, who saves dolphin-her but ends up dying.

Back in her world, she revives him as a baby dolphin along with her friend Qiu, who secretly loves her. She trades half her life to revive him, but I guess reviving him causes the apocalypse in her world, or something.

Anyway, she brings up dolphin Kun, her world goes all crazy, Qiu sacrifices his life to save her, she ends up dying to save her world, but doesn't die because Qiu saved her, but she has no powers and has to leave her world, or something.

Qiu dies, she and Kun return to our world, now both as humans, and I guess they live happily ever after.

End credits scene shows Qiu revived to take the role of, oh, I don't care anymore.

The story is just a mess. I felt no connection to any characters. Qiu's unrequited love for Chun could have been interesting, but it was telegraphed and forced. This movie felt like a chore to get through rather than something I enjoyed.

I assume this movie will be compared to Hayao Miyazaki movies and there simply is no comparison. Movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Ponyo just have that magic that this movie didn't capture.

Disappointing 4/10 for me. Maybe I was in the wrong mood for this movie? I'm usually not so far off the average IMDB rating.

The Hurt Locker centers around three men in a bomb disposal unit, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Sanborn and Eldridge are the more relatable soldiers, brave but fearful and very cognizant of the dangers of being in the bomb disposal unit. James is the one who sees bomb disposing as something that makes him feel alive. It's a drug to him.

The movie isn't so much a story as it is a collection of intense scenes. In a nutshell, this is what we have: intense bomb scene 1, intense bomb scene 2, intense bomb scene 3, intense desert sniping scenes, intense male bonding scene, intense clearing the area scene, intense "finding the killer" scene, intense nighttime bomb scene followed by intense and dumb chase scene, intense bomb scene. Finally James goes home, gets bored shopping and being with his wife and kid, confesses he really only has one love, and re-enlists for the next bomb disposal rotation.

My biggest gripe is there's nothing really going on with the characters. Sure James and Sanborn have a conflict that temporarily resolves after the desert sniper scene, then goes right back to what it was, and sure Sanborn has a come to Jesus moment when he almost dies but shrapnel, and yes, Eldrige battles with his fear of not making it out alive, but none of this really goes anywhere. The "big reveal" in the end is James's only true love is the addiction to danger, and not his wife and baby. But this is telegraphed right from the beginning with the quote about addiction to war and also by James saying how many bombs he disposed. The story doesn't really go anywhere; it's just a collection of intense scenes.

My other issue is there are so many intense scenes that, after the first couple, you get a bit immune to the impact. There's no variety.

I guess I do have a third grips. Eldrige is conflicted at the beginning as, had he killed the remote bomber, his first leader (the one James replaced) would have lived. He goes into counseling , asks his therapist to go with him on a "safe" mission, therapist dies from an IED. I wish they would have done more with that. Yes, it might have been conflicted with the main story, but I felt it was actually the more interesting one.

All that said, all the main characters were great, and there is definitely an intensity to this movie. It's well made from that point so, a 7/10 for the quality behind it. It's good, but ultimately I found it lacking. I liked Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty more than this movie.

Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play Adam and Eve, two vampires married to each other. Eve lives in Tangier and Adam lives in Detroit. Adam is depressed, tired, despondent, lamenting the zombies (us normal people). Adam is also a reclusive rockstar musician or something.

The movie starts off pretty boring with us watching the two of them do nothing, followed by doing nothing, and then more doing nothing, and then drinking blood and doing nothing. Eve decides to go and pay him a visit to help with the depression and this is where the excitement begins. They start by lounging around listening to music and talking, then going for a drive and talking, then goin on a walk, then playing chess, then listening to music, Adam gets some blood from the blood bank, they listen to another song, drive and talk. Somewhere, there should have been a 15 minute scene of watching them watch paint dry, but that probably would have been too thrilling.

Anyway, Eve's sister Ava pays a visit, they watch a music video, listen to live music, Ava kills Adam's lackey, they kick her out, go to Tangiers, listen to music, end by turning a young couple into vampires.

Boring, boring, boring. I suppose it's a commentary on vampire life, and/or meant to create an atmosphere vs actual stuff going on. Yeah, maybe, but it's still boring. Painfully boring. Waste of ~2 hours boring.

Hiddleston and Swinton are great in their roles, and there's some redeeming quality in watching them together, but that only goes so far. There is one chuckle scene with Adam and Even disposing of a body in acid and, as the flesh melts away, Swinton delivers a perfectly deadpan "That certainly was visual." Outside of that, it's just a movie of people yapping away with some eclectic songs.

3/10. Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is one of my favorite movies as that seemed like a journey to a destination. But I've been disappointed with the last few movies of his that I've seen. Perhaps Dead Man was a fluke or I was in the right mindset at the time. Dunno.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford tells the story of how Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) went from sycophantic young fringe member of the James' gang to the murderer of his idol, Jesse James (Brad Pitt).

The movie, shall we say, likes to take it's time unfolding the story. There are spectacular visuals of the country, shown slowly enough for you to drink in fully up to the point of boredom. Much of the negative criticism of this movie is that slowness, as well as the overall length of the movie. Indeed, an easy hour could have been cut with no real effect on the plot, although the "art" of the movie would have been compromised.

It's a movie that 1) you need to be in the mood for and 2) is probably best seen in a theater where the visuals can envelop you. I saw it on TV and felt like some of that was lost.

That said, I was still engrossed in the movie. Yes, I can see how this movie could be considered boring and slow moving, but for reasons I really can't explain, I didn't get that feeling. Instead, it felt like a meditation.

Affleck and Pitt are both great in their roles. Sam Rockwell plays Charles Ford (Robert's older brother) and Sam Shepard has a small role in the beginning as Frank James. Both are great as well.

Come for the acting and visuals, and decide to stay based on how you feel about an hour into it. For me though, 8/10. Something in it worked for me.

Blood Simple is a, well, simple movie about cheating and revenge. Abby (Frances McDormand) and Ray (John Getz) have an affair, which is photographed by PI Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh). He shows the pictures to Abby's husband Marty (Dan Hedaya). Marty ultimately asks Loren to kill Abby and Ray for 10,000, but Loren double crosses Marty by faking photographs of their murder and ends up killing Marty instead.

Ray decides to confront Marty only to find him dead with Abby's gun at the scene, so he decides to dispose the body. Ray believes Abby killed Marty and, through miscommunication, doesn't realize that Abby didn't kill Marty.

First and foremost, the acting by McDormand, Walsh, and Hedaya is just excellent. Dan Hedaya is almost criminally underrated and plays the creepy bar owner/husband perfectly. Walsh is similarly great as a seedy, oily, used car salesman type.

The story starts off interesting, gets a bit slow, then picks up at the end. There's a lengthy scene of Ray disposing of Marty's dead-but-not-dead body that got a bit tiresome.

There are also three scenes (at the hotel in the beginning, at Ray's house when Loren takes the pictures, at Ray/Abby's apartment when Loren is sniping) where it could have been easily solved by closing the curtains. The apartment scene was particularly annoying as Ray was so worried about being shot but decides to just walk around when Abby turns on the light and then gets shot.

The miscommunication between the two also got a bit frustrating. Ray assumed Abby killed Marty, and so never outright said it, since Abby would have probably said "Whatch talkin' bout?" The problem is it felt danced around and not natural.

Bottom line, I enjoyed it, loved the acting, had a few issues with the story.

12 Monkeys is a movie about a virus unleashed in 1997 (23 years too soon...) that kills off 5 billion people. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back to get various biological samples in hopes of helping find a cure in the future. He cannot change the past -- there is no way to stop the virus from being unleashed.

Unfortunately, he travels too far back and is put in an insane asylum along with Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). Cole's psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) has some sort of connection to James.

He tries to escape, gets caught, gets sent back to his present (2035, apparently), gets sent back as a second chance, gets dropped in 1917 to get a bullet hit on his leg, gets re-sent to 1996, determines Goines is the person that, along with the 12 monkeys army, will release the virus. Ah, but it's not Goines, but the associate of Goines's father. Cole dies in attempting to kill the associate, and the timeline stays intact, which is what it was going to do anyway, so this was all a waste unless this was all meant to happen in exactly the way it carried out.

It's a fun ride. Brad Pitt is great when he plays crazy, and he was great in this movie. However, the memory thing when Cole shifts back seems to be convenient for what the plot needs at the time, and he gives just enough to make everyone think he is insane except, for some reason, Railly (yeah, yeah, they have some soft of connection).

The time travel concept always bothers me as it just leads to paradoxes. In this case, the premise is you can't change anything, which means the whole point of Cole trying to stop the virus was pointless. But perhaps they knew that Cole was supposed to do exactly what he did, hence why they sent him. But what if they didn't? Wouldn't things change? Perhaps they would but would always come back to them sending him back. Thing is, that's just not tightly woven. The other thing is, what constitutes an "event". Maybe the virus would always be unleashed no matter what, but why is that fixed and other things malleable? How big of an event does it need to be that it's fixed? In the grand scheme of the universe of billions of galaxies, and billions of planets in those galaxies, why would time care that 5 billion people were affected in a planet in an insignificant arm of an insignificant galaxy?

I didn't knock the movie for that though and it's a solid 7/10 just missing that something that makes it special.

BlacKkKlansman tells the inspired by story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) a black cop in Colorado during the 60s. He decides, on a whim, to infiltrate the KKK after reading a newspaper add. Being a black KKK candidate obviously has some challenges, so he gets the help of Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to act as "Ron" for the face to face meetings.

Ron is able to not only join, but become a pretty central figure in the local chapter. Ron is also able to have multiple conversations with David Duke, who can tell Ron is white because of the way he speaks.

In the movie, Ron develops a relationship with BSU leader Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) and also thwarts a bombing attempt by the KKK at Patrice's house. He was also able to identify two NORAD employees that were part of the Klan.

The movie is good, but uneven, especially when Spike Lee gets heavy handed on things. I do have some bias in that I read the book first and thought the book was way better, more comedic, and less heavy handed with the race issues. I think telling a story in a more neutral way and having the reader come to the conclusion serves better than getting told it over and over. That said, it's the prerogative of the director to direct the movie how he likes and it's my prerogative to have an opinion on it.

When the movie is funny, it's funny though, and John David Washington as well as Adam Driver give great performances. Alec Baldwin gives a performance at the beginning which is short but also great. It reminds me of his small scene in Glengary Glen Ross -- small but powerful.

6/10 with a recommendation that you read the book as well.