Since I don’t watch trailers, I often go into a movie knowing little to nothing about it, and sometimes my decision to see a movie or not is based on who is in it. The last time I saw a movie because it had Samuel L. Jackson, it was Kong: Skull Island, and that didn’t work out so well. Fortunately, The Hitman’s Bodyguard turned out better.

The film features Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) as a professional bodyguard. He’s very careful, very thorough, and very good. He’s never lost a client. And then he does, and everything falls apart. He loses his triple-A rating and suddenly finds himself with a much less desirable client list. He also loses his wife Amelia (Elodie Yung) because she’s an Interpol agent and he thinks she had something to do with the death of his scumbag client.

Meanwhile, an evil dictator (Gary Oldman) is facing charges of crimes against humanity. The only problem is that all of the witnesses against him keep dying, and the prosecution is running out of options. Their last hope might just be notorious assassin Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), who’s locked up behind bars. Interpol makes a deal to get him to testify, but their security escort turns out to be less than effective, and it ends with only Amelia left to protect him. Suspecting a leak in Interpol, she reluctantly decides to outsource the job to Michael. He and Darius have a troubled past, but Amelia assures Michael that she’ll get him back his elite bodyguard status if he can pull off the job.

I was skeptical, but The Hitman’s Bodyguard turned out to be a pretty fun movie. It does have a lot of problems, but it’s still better than I expected. Gary Oldman gives a performance that’s not quite as over-the-top as Léon: The Professional, but it’s still the kind of hammy, over-acted role that he does very well. Ryan Reynolds plays the kind of highly sarcastic character we’ve come to expect from him, and it’s surprisingly not too annoying this time. And Samuel L. Jackson gives another clinic in the overuse of profanity, but this time, he’s actually given a reasonably well-developed character.

It’s definitely the kind of movie you can’t think about too much. There are logic problems all over the place, and there are plenty of times where the movie just doesn’t make any sense. On top of that, the evil henchmen are overwhelmingly clichéd, some of the humor is obvious and lame, and the movie has no idea how to end. And yet if you can turn off your brain for a while, you could do a lot worse.

The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW, often pronounced “bliss”) is a combined middle school and high school with a predominantly African-American student body, most of whom are from lower-class or middle-class families. It launched in 2008 with just a sixth-grade class, and the 2015–2016 school year will see those girls become its first graduating class. The school has the very ambitious goal of seeing every one of those girls accepted into college.

One of the school’s most popular extracurricular activities is a step dance program, in which the girls shout, stomp, clap, and otherwise, move in a coordinated manner. The girls take it seriously, but they lost all of their competitions in the 2014–2015 school year, and now they have their sights set on winning a regional competition with students from not only Baltimore, but throughout the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. areas. This documentary focuses on members of that team not only on the dance floor but also in class and in their lives outside of school.

It’s an interesting film, but it suffers from being either too close to the subject matter or intentionally misleading. At no point does it attempt to explain to the audience what stepping is, but that’s understandable because it doesn’t seem to be all that complicated, and because it has been portrayed in other films. But it also does an abysmal job of adequately describing the school. The documentary doesn’t explicitly state that it’s a school for African-American women from low-income families (and it’s not, according to the school’s website), but the film doesn’t make any attempt to show or imply anything else. It may well be that it’s only focused on members of the step dance team and that all of them fit that criteria, but you would think that it might find a few seconds to better describe the school where a substantial amount of the content is set.

Less understandable, though, is that the movie does a really bad job of following the team over the course of the year. We see a lot of practices, and we spend the majority of the time with a few key members of the time, but we don’t see the competitions. The documentary tells us multiple times that they didn’t win any of the competitions from the previous year and implies that there were several of them. But Step only shows us one expo and one competition from the year that it’s actually covering, and not even very much from either one of those. It’s possible that they were so bad in the previous year that they weren’t invited to anything else, or that they did so poorly at those competitions that the footage was omitted, but again, the film should at least make some effort to tell us something. Likewise, the fate of one of the most significant characters until we see it in text tacked on at the very end of the movie.

While the documentary has problems with what it doesn’t show, the things that it does show are strong. It shows many of the challenges that the girls face and it doesn’t see to pull any punches or put its best foot forward for the benefit of the camera. Some of the girls are extraordinary, and others are not. Some of the parents are highly involved, and others are not. Some of the girls make obviously bad choices, but at least they don’t give up. It’s cheesy at times, but ultimately pretty inspirational. I’m clearly not the target audience for the movie, and I don’t care at all about step dancing, but I didn’t have any problems with losing interest over the short 83-minute runtime.

There have been several movies that feature a character living in a world that is not what they think it is. Many of them, like Room, Dogtooth, Bad Boy Bubby, and The Truman Show, are surprisingly good. Brigsby Bear continues that trend.

For as long as he can remember, James (Kyle Mooney) has been living in a survival shelter with his parents, Ted and April (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams). Something has happened to the world, and it’s not safe to go out without respiratory protection. About the only form of entertainment James has is a television program called Brigsby Bear, and he’s obsessed with it. But the air is not poisoned, and Ted and April are not James’s parents, and Brigsby Bear is not a real TV show. Ted and April abducted James when he was a baby, and Ted, a former animatronics engineer, has been making the show exclusively for James.

Police finally catch up to Ted and April and James goes to live with his real parents (Mark Walsh and Michaela Watkins) and sister (Ryan Simpkins). He’s confused and culture shocked, and neither Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear) and Dr. Emily (Claire Danes) are of much help. Then James meets one of his sister’s friends, Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), who is interested in filmmaking and offers to help make a movie to provide closure to his favorite character.

The “twist” that James’s life isn’t what he thought it was isn’t really a spoiler because it’s revealed early on, and because it’s pretty clear that something fishy is going on even before we actually get confirmation. The plot is engaging and important to the film, but the movie is really about James coming to terms with his new reality, and other people coming to understand him.

This movie is much less dark and much less of a downer than most other films of this type. It’s funny and sweet and thoroughly enjoyable. You don’t really care that the basic premise isn’t all that believable. You’re also not too concerned about how quickly James makes friends with teens who are much younger than he is and you think would be much more prone to avoiding or making fun of him. Minor quirks like these just add to its charm and keep it moving along so that it can focus on what’s important, and it’s just so much fun that it’s easy to overlook the flaws and let yourself be taken in by the movie.

Mumblecore films rarely do anything for me. Landline is a mumblecore period film set in the 1990s, and that twist doesn’t do the concept any favors.

The film focuses on a family of awful 90s hipsters living in a world of their own problems that stem from their laissez faire approach to the world. Parents Alan (John Turturro) and Patricia (Edie Falco) do their best to seem unshakeable in the face of their daughters’ attempts at rebellion and shock value. The elder daughter Dana (Jenny Slate) has been engaged to Ben Jay Duplass) for a few years and their relationship has stagnated, leading her to have an affair with her friend Nate (Finn Wittrock). Younger daughter Ali (Abby Quinn) seems intent on getting drunk and high and skipping school and offending her parents, who don’t seem to do any more than try to seem unphased and let their daughters make their own mistakes, which only perpetuates their awful behavior. And then we find out that Alan has been cheating on his wife with his experimental theater acting partner Carla (Amy Carlson).

There are things that happen in this movie, but there’s not much of a coherent plot. I think that it’s supposed to be funny, and I think that the movie thinks that it’s very funny. And yet there’s nothing in the movie that actually comes anywhere near the vicinity of comedy.  It’s just 97 minutes of apathetic boredom with these terrible people making things terrible for themselves and then wallowing in the consequences. And that’s all I have to say about that.

If you want to listen to all eight books in The Dark Tower series on Audible, you’ll have to invest 145 hours and 15 minutes, which comes out to just over six days of listening. I didn’t make it more than a couple of hours before I gave up. I’ve heard it gets better, but I didn’t hear anything to make me want to give it another shot. But when I heard that Sony had condensed all 8715 minutes of the book series into a 95-minute movie, I was on board. Sure, the reviews were bad, but I can handle an hour and a half of a bad movie to get a Cliff’s Notes version of the series to see if it’s worth revisiting. After seeing the film, I don’t think I’ll be going back to the books.

There’s a big dark tower at the center of the universe, and it keeps bad things from outside the universe from getting in. It’s said that the mind of a child can destroy the tower, and Walter (Matthew McConaughey) wants to test that theory. He’s been kidnapping children with special psychic abilities (that is, kids who “shine”) and hooking them up to his contraption to shoot a beam of screams at the tower. So far, all he’s been able to do is cause minor damage to the tower, which is felt in all the worlds throughout the universe as earthquakes, but he’s going to keep trying until he finally succeeds.

Jake (Tom Taylor) is a kid who lives on Earth (or “Keystone Earth” as it’s called in the movie) and has been having the same weird dreams over and over again. They’re about some man in black who has been taking kids and using them to shoot a tower, and some other man named Roland (Idris Elba) who is a gunslinger and is the only one that has thus far been able to successfully withstand the man in black. Jake shines hard, and Walter is onto him. He’s got agents out to find him, but Jake manages to stumble across a teleporter and use information he recalls from his dreams to transport himself to another world where he meets up with the gunslinger in an attempt to save the universe.

I don’t think that Stephen King intended to write a young adult series, but that’s definitely what the filmmakers thought it was. The movie is firmly in the same vein as The Maze Runner or Divergent, and it’s about the same level of quality, which is to say not great. Without a doubt, the worst part is the character of Walter. It’s crappily written and isn’t helped by McConaughey’s performance, but at least you can’t accuse him of not committing to it. If they’d gotten someone like Nicolas Cage or Gary Busey, then it could have likely been something highly entertaining in its ridiculousness.

The movie also has a number of references to other Stephen King works. Aside from the “shine”, there are obvious tie-ins to It, Christine, and 1408. King’s name appears prominently on a billboard near the end, and there are a lot of subtler references that are probably nods to his other work but could conceivably be passed off as incidental similarities.

But not everything about the movie is bad, though. In its best moments, like the assault at the end of the film, it is pretty reminiscent of The Matrix. And most of the rest of the time, it mostly resembles a movie made from a YA novel. If you’re into that kind of thing, then maybe you’ll enjoy it. Otherwise, it’s just pretty meh. But it’s surprisingly not as awful as critical reviews might have you believe.

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time watching the Science Channel, and they frequently ran programs that investigated airplane crashes to figure out what caused them. There was never just one reason. The disaster was always triggered by a series of failures that compounded things into a bad day for those involved. That’s Detroit.

In July of 1967, racial tension was high all across the country. Detroit, in particular, had a large, densely-packed African-American population and a predominantly white police force that didn’t have a high opinion of the black community. One night, things came to a head when the police raided a private club and found their actions much more visible to the general public than they would have liked. A crowd gathered, people got angry, and a riot broke out. Buildings were trashed, looted, and burned, and the National Guard was called in to try to keep order.

At the Algiers Motel, things were calm until a jeep full of National Guardsmen pulled up nearby. One of the morons in the hotel had a starter pistol and thought it would be fun to fool the soldiers into thinking they were under fire. They didn’t find it funny and stormed into the hotel with a few local police officers. One of the cops, Krauss (Will Poulter), soon took charge and made it clear that they weren’t going to leave until the sniper had been found or everyone was dead. Krauss wasn’t the most level-headed or racially sensitive guy, and things didn’t go so well for anyone.

The movie is mostly well done, but it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience. The subject matter is bleak for most of its runtime, and that runtime is quite a bit longer than it needs to be. The meat of the film is mostly well paced, but the lead-in and follow-up both seem to go on a bit too long.

Perhaps the most baffling thing about the film is John Boyega’s role as a security guard at a liquor store that is across the street from where the Guardsmen pulled up and found themselves under “fire”. Boyega is the top-billed actor in the film, and we spend a substantial amount of time following his character, except that he’s completely unnecessary and totally incidental to the plot in every way. He’s just a spectator, and all of the time spent following him is a complete waste of the audience’s time. Yes, the film is based on a true story, and yes, the character he was playing was there when it happened, but there is no reason whatsoever to focus on that character.

On the other hand, the acting is good, and the film consistently achieves its goal of stirring emotion. It’s certainly not a bad movie, but it could have been so much better if it had been tighter and stayed more focused on the important aspects of the story.

Hell or High Water was one of the best new films to come out last year. I didn’t care for Sicario as much, but it was very well received by a lot of people. Both were written by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote Wind River. And this time he directed it as well.

The film features Jeremy Renner as fish and wildlife agent Cory Lambert. He’s an expert hunter and animal tracker, and he’s often called to go after wild animals who are bothering people or livestock in the frigid, snowy Wyoming mountains near the Wind River Native American reservation. On one such excursion, he comes across the body of a dead girl who looks like she had been running for her life after being raped. It’s his daughter’s best friend, and she died in a manner that wasn’t all that different from the way that Cory’s daughter died.

Because it happened on the reservation, the FBI was called in to investigate. And in this case, the FBI is agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen). While she’s clearly passionate about the case, she’s also clearly out of her league, not to mention unequipped for the brutal weather conditions. The tribal police, led by chief Ben (Graham Greene), is a tiny force with a lot of ground to cover, so Banner enlists Lambert’s help to try to figure out what went wrong.

Wind River is a very good film, even if it falls a little short of the standard set by Hell or High Water. There are clear similarities between the two crime thrillers, particularly in their rugged settings and deliberate pacing. Renner plays his character very well, but it does seem like Lambert comes off a little too infallibly superheroic in every way except dealing with his feelings about his dead daughter, and he even handles that pretty well. That’s in stark contrast to Olsen’s character, who isn’t quite bumbling, but still finds herself in constant need of bailing out. I would have liked to see more depth and more development for both characters.

The film’s cinematography is also worth mentioning. It makes heavy use of handheld camera but surprisingly doesn’t suffer from the shakycam syndrome that seems to plague many other films with big action sequences. On the other hand, there is a lot more camera movement in the slower sequences, always staying close to cover almost like the camera is some kind of predator that is stalking Lambert. Although I generally like the effect, it does seem a little misleading at times because it almost feels like someone’s about to jump out and attack.

Ultimately, while the movie has problems, it’s just so engaging that its shortcomings are easy to forgive. Renner and Olsen work very well together, and its 107-minute runtime feels just right to ensure that it keeps moving along even while many of its scenes play out very slowly. I’m sure that it’s one that I’ll see again, and I’m interested to see whether it fares as well as Hell or High Water on a repeat viewing.

Zodiac (2007; rewatch) — Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle when the paper receives a letter from someone claiming responsibility for a couple of recent murders. The letter taunts the police, threatens to do it again, and includes a code he says will reveal his identity. While the police (including characters played by Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, and Dermot Mulroney) try to solve the cases on their end, Graysmith becomes even more obsessed with the case than the paper’s crime reporter (Robert Downey, Jr.). It’s a tense, well-crafted recreation of the real-life events based on Graysmith’s own book.

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969; first-time watch) — An agonizingly tedious look at the lives of a number of Japanese cross-dressing “gay boys” with a whole lot of repetition, a whole lot of the song “O, Du Lieber Augustin” that would probably be better suited for a circus or an amusement park, and not much of interest except for a few seconds of shock at the end of the film.

Alligator (1980; rewatch) — David (Robert Forster) is a homicide detective who discovers that several human and animal deaths are the work of a giant alligator living in the sewers. Things get political when the alligator’s size is attributed to improper disposal of test subjects at an animal research facility, and its wealthy owner (Dean Jagger) pushes the mayor to have David fired and bring in a big game hunter (Henry Silva) to take care of the problem. It’s such a fun movie, thanks in part to a terrific John Sayles script and in part to Forster’s self-deprecating focus on his receding hairline.

Blood Beach (1980; rewatch) — When people start disappearing on the beach, Police Captain Pearson (John Saxon) and Sergeant Royko (Burt Young) enlist help from shore patrol officer and playboy Harry (David Huffman). It’s got some good moments, but the end is highly unsatisfying when we get neither a good look at the creature or a solid explanation for what’s really been going on.

Piranha (1978; rewatch) — While trying to track down a couple of missing teenagers, Maggie (Heather Menzies-Urich) and Paul (Bradford Dillman) learn that a supposedly shut-down military research facility isn’t so shut down after all, and Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) has been creating a highly aggressive and resilient species of piranha. Unfortunately, they only learn that after letting them escape, putting a downstream summer camp (run by Paul Bartel) and a brand new water park (run by Dick Miller) in grave danger. Another wonderful film with a John Sayles screenwriting credit.

Cruel Jaws (1995; first-time watch) — In one of the most blatant Jaws rip-offs ever made (including footage taken directly from films in the Jaws series and other Jaws knock-offs, and musical cues stolen from other movies, including Star Wars), a shark is terrorizing a coastal town that relies on tourism. The mayor, in cahoots with a real estate tycoon, demands that everything stay open, leading to the deaths of many people. It’s a horrible movie with no creativity, and yet it’s a pure joy to watch in its brazen thievery.

American Ninja (1985; rewatch) — A military base in the Philippines is having problems with ninjas stealing their equipment. Joe (Michael Dudikoff) is a new recruit who isn’t used to the “don’t put up any resistance” tactic they normally use, and he acts to save the Colonel’s daughter (Julie Aronson) using a mysterious set of skills that, thanks to his amnesia, he can’t remember learning. This sets off a chain of events that leads to a lot of fighting and exposes a lot of corruption. Also featuring Steve James, and John LaMotta, it’s a deeply flawed and highly enjoyable movie.

Ninja in the U.S.A. (aka Ninja U.S.A.; 1985; first-time watch) — An American businessman is in the drug trade. The cops know it, but he’s good at escaping legal trouble. He’s also got an army of ninjas to help him when things get rough. But when he goes too far and kidnaps a cop’s new bride, all bets are off. It’s a fairly similar plot to American Ninja, but with a lower budget, terrible dubbing, more slow spots, and more insanity.

All the President’s Men (1976; rewatch) — After a group of men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, a pair of rookie newspaper reporters (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) start digging deeper and stumble onto a massive espionage operation and cover-up that goes all the way to the top. It’s an incredible film, with a top-notch cast that also includes Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty, Jack Warden, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, and Meredith Baxter.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997; rewatch) — Late into the night after some July 4th celebrations, a group of recent high school graduates (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze, Jr.) accidentally run over someone on a dark, isolated road. They dump the body in the water and vow never to speak of it again. But one year later, someone starts taking their revenge. It’s a painfully bad teen slasher that hasn’t gotten any better with age.

MASH (1970; rewatch) — During the Korean War, an irreverent group of Army surgeons (including Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt, Elliott Gould, Robert Duvall, and Fred Williamson) work near the front lines trying to do what they can for wounded soldiers. They do what they can to keep the mood light, even in the midst of death and destruction all around, and they succeed admirably, but not everyone feels that’s appropriate.

The Laughing Woman (1969; rewatch) — Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy) frequently hires women to be his sex slaves. But one weekend, the girl he was expecting canceled at the last minute, and he kidnaps one of his coworkers to participate instead. She’s soon caught in a web of Stockholm Syndrome as things get weirder and creepier. It’s got a lot of misogyny and shock value, but it’s often so ridiculous that all of the negatives just drift into the background.

Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998; first-time watch) — After Kirikou crawls out of his mother and into the world, he learns that his village is under siege by an evil sorceress. She’s taken nearly all of their men, stolen all their gold, and dried up their water supply. Tiny Kirikou decides that he needs to do something about it. It’s an incredible animated film based on an African folk tale that crams so much comedy, creativity, and charm into a very tight 74 minutes. It’s a crime that it’s such a little-known film.

Snake Deadly Act (1980; first-time watch) — The son of a kung fu expert unknowingly falls in with his father’s mortal enemy, learning various fighting styles (including snake and the highly unlikely lobster style) along the way. Even if the plot is somewhat cryptic, there’s a ton of fighting and some great comedy.

Fists of the White Lotus (aka The Clan of the White Lotus; 1980; first-time watch) — After the members of the White Lotus Clan destroy the Shaolin Temple and kill its master, two of the remaining Shaolin students, brothers in law, kill the head of the White Lotus Clan. So the White Lotus retaliates, killing one of the Shaolin students, leaving the other to seek further revenge while caring for his widowed pregnant sister. But his attempts at revenge keep failing because his technique can’t touch that of the White Lotus master. It’s an incredible film that pulls of the rare feat of having multiple endings without feeling like it goes on too long.

Return of the Five Deadly Venoms (aka The Crippled Avengers; 1978; first-time watch) — A kung fu master’s wife is killed by having her legs cut off in the same attack that left his son armless. The son is given iron arms, and they eventually team up with a man with iron legs, a blind man, a deaf-mute, and an idiot, all in an effort to seek revenge against the evil tiger-style fighters that were responsible for the initial attack. It’s a good enough film when you see it in a very sleep-deprived state, but it’s probably much better when you can give it the focus it deserves.

Bastard Swordsman (1983; first-time watch) — Every ten years, the head of the Wu Ti clan fights the head of the Wu Tang clan. And every ten years, the head of the Wu Ti clan defeats the head of the Wu Tang clan. The Wu Tang chief’s only hope is to master the mysterious and mystic silkworm style of kung fu, but he’s killed before he gets the chance. There’s a servant working at the Wu Tang temple that is the butt of everyone’s jokes because he doesn’t know who his father is, and it shouldn’t come as much surprise to anyone who knows the title of the movie who might save the day. It’s a fun movie with great wirework, but its logic doesn’t stand up well to any degree of scrutiny.

The Young Master (1980; rewatch) — Dragon (Jackie Chan) and Tiger (Pai Wei) were orphans who were taken in by a kung fu school. After Tiger defects to a rival school, he finds himself unwanted by either and becomes involved in a scheme to break a prisoner out of police custody. Dragon is mistakenly thought to be the one responsible, and he’s pursued by the police while also working to restore his friend’s honor. Everyone in this movie is either an unbearable asshole or an overly-emotional douchebag, and most people are both. It’s a thoroughly awful experience.

The Saber Tooth Dragon vs the Fiery Tiger (aka The Greatest Plot; 1977; first-time watch) — After the king dies, his will decrees which of his sons will be his successor, and it’s not the one that everyone expected it to be. Nor is it a good choice, because the new king is totally self-centered, unwilling to accept even the slightest criticism, and in every other way a complete asshole. At a celebration in honor of a war hero, the drunken hero offends the king, and the king makes his life miserable so that he finally commits suicide. His companions vow to get revenge. It’s kind of a dull movie. It’s certainly not the greatest plot, and it does nothing to warrant such an awesomely dumb title as The Saber Tooth Dragon vs the Fiery Tiger.

Streets of Fire (1984; rewatch) — Pop singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is kidnapped in the middle of a concert by The Bombers, a motorcycle gang led by Raven (Willem Dafoe, shirtless in vinyl overalls), with Greer (Lee Ving) as second in command. Her former boyfriend, Tom Cody (Michael Paré), makes a deal with her manager and current boyfriend Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) to go get her. Tom teams up with ex-army drifter McCoy (Amy Madigan) for the rescue job. Directed by Walter Hill and also featuring Bill Paxton, Elizabeth Daily, and Ed Begley, Jr., the film is a fun “Rock & Roll Fable” in a highly stylized world with a great soundtrack.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975; rewatch) — R. P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent to a mental hospital for evaluation after he tries to use an insanity plea to make his prison sentence easier. He ends up under the oppressive thumb of the power-hungry Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who has things the way she likes them and is willing to use underhanded measures to keep it that way. After bonding with the other patients (including Will Sampson, Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd, and Vincent Schiavelli), McMurphy tries to instigate changes that make things more fair and bring a sense of normalcy, but Ratched isn’t having it. Even if it’s more fictionalized and less cutting than Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital, but it’s still a tremendous film capable of evoking a powerful reaction.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985; rewatch) — After being exposed to a toxic gas left over from a failed Army experiment, two medical supply warehouse employees (James Karen and Thom Mathews) realize that they don’t feel so great, and also that things that had previously been dead are now alive. They call their boss (Clu Gulager), who tries to arrange a disposal of the reanimated tissue with the mortician (Don Calfa) next door, but this only exacerbates the problem and sets off a chain of events leading to mass destruction, starting with a group of punks (including Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, Miguel A. Nuñez Jr., Brian Peck, and Mark Venturini) who happen to be nearby. It’s one of the best zombie and funniest movies ever.

Jaws 4: The Revenge (1987; rewatch) — After her son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) is killed by a shark, Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) is convinced that it’s out to get her and what’s left of the family. Her son Michael (Lance Guest) convinces her to come with him and his wife Carla (Karen Young) to the Bahamas while he researches conchs with his partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles). While Ellen falls for local pilot Hoagie (Michael Caine), the shark begins its assault. This is a terrible movie, but Master Pancake Theater’s mocking made for a very fun screening.

Beat Street (1984; rewatch) — A group of friends try to find ways to express their art. There’s a DJ who’s interested in mixing new music, a graffiti artist who specializes in subway trains, and several breakdancers. They’re determined not to let life and reality (including parents and other family obligations, the police, and competition) get in their way. It’s basically an extended music video that is overly long and light on plot, but it’s packed with music and does a reasonably good job of holding your interest.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2016; first-time watch) — A documentary about the frequent failings of city planners to modernize cities without destroying neighborhoods, creating slums, increasing crime, and in general not achieving their desired goals. Although the ultimate focus is on the New York City face-off between activist Jane Jacobs and famed city planner Robert Moses, that focus is a surprisingly small amount of the film. It’s a fairly dull documentary that should have been much more interesting than it is.

The Little Hours (2017; first-time watch) — After a servant (Dave Franco) gets caught cheating on the wife (Lauren Weedman) of his master (Nick Offerman), the servant is taken in by Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly), head of a convent featuring some very irreverent nuns played by Molly Shannon, Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, and Kate Micucci. It starts a little slow and dry, but ultimately becomes pretty funny. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/16/the-little-hours/.

A Ghost Story (2017; first-time watch) — Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara are married, but not so happily. Their biggest struggle seems to be about their house, where Casey wants to stay but Rooney wants to move. Rooney ultimately wins that battle when Casey is killed in a car accident that leaves him as a white-sheet-covered ghost who stays in the house and follows it and its inhabitants as time marches on. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/16/a-ghost-story/.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991; first-time watch) — When the Communists took over mainland China, a number of families fled to Taiwan to escape their rule. Si’r’s family was among them. It’s a better life, but Si’r can’t seem to stay out of trouble, both at school (where he’s been relegated to night school for poor performance) and in the streets. He’s got his own feud with the head of one of the gangs, and he likes a girl who’s dating someone who’s pretty dangerous in his own right. It’s a slow film that takes four hours to play out, but it doesn’t drag or feel too long.

Mean Streets (1973; rewatch) — Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) is a low-level criminal who’s always broke and borrowing money from everyone and never paying it back. He’s also got the kind of awful personality that makes you wonder why he hasn’t been killed a thousand times over. Most of that thanks goes to his friend Charlie (Harvey Keitel), who does his best to smooth things over with everyone Johnny has offended. The people in it are often so unpleasant that you really have to wonder why the film is as beloved as it is.

The Driver (1978; rewatch) — A professional getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) and a dirty detective (Bruce Dern) battle it out in the streets of Los Angeles. The detective knows who the driver is, but can’t ever seem to get any evidence against him, so he resorts to setting him up. A Walter Hill film featuring Isabelle Adjani and Ronee Blakley, it’s got some good car chases, but it’s at its best in the slow-crawl pursuit at its climax.

The Hidden (1987; rewatch) — Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) is a homicide detective who’s trying to catch a spree killer who was a model citizen until two weeks ago. FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives to help just as the killer is captured, only to find that another formerly-innocent killer has popped up to take his place. It’s an alien who keeps traveling from body to body and Gallagher is the only one with the means and knowledge to stop it. Also featuring Clu Gulager, Claudia Christian, Lin Shaye, and Danny Trejo, it’s a very fun movie that keeps you on your toes.

The Conversation (1974; rewatch) — Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a private investigator who specializes in audio surveillance. He’s hired for a very difficult job: to record a conversation between a couple of people moving around in a busy, noisy area. He manages to pull it off and then becomes obsessed with the subjects and their conversation. It’s an incredible, tense film with top-notch acting.

No Retreat, No Surrender (1986; rewatch) — A crime syndicate is taking over karate dojos across the country to use as a front for their operations. Tom Stillwell (Timothy Baker) runs a dojo in LA, but he’s forced to shut it down and flee the city after he takes a beating from the syndicate’s top martial artist (Jean-Claude Van Damme, playing a Russian). Tom gives up karate, but his son Jason (Kurt McKinney) doesn’t want to and gets the ghost of Bruce Lee to train him to defend himself against the evil Seattle karate thugs that won’t leave him alone. It’s a blatant rip-off of The Karate Kid, but with about as much quality as The Miami Connection. It’s pretty amazing.

Dunkirk (2017; first-time watch) — In 1940, the Nazis had pushed their way through France, leaving hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers trapped in Dunkirk, just across the channel from the UK. Wanting to evacuate the soldiers but not weaken their ability to defend their homeland, the British pressed their civilian citizens to use their own boats to form rescue parties. It’s surprisingly short for a Christopher Nolan film, but also surprisingly dull with relatively few shining moments. It also really suffers from its use of nonlinear storytelling. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/21/dunkirk/.

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973; first-time watch) — After watching Frankenstein and being frightened by the film, a young girl believes the monster is real and living in a nearby abandoned building. She loses touch with reality and runs away from home. It’s a wonderful, haunting film.

Night of the Living Dead (1968; rewatch) — When the recently-deceased start coming back to life, a shell-shocked woman takes refuge in an empty house. She is soon joined by a much calmer and more assertive man who tries to get things done, and then they discover that two other couples are already in the cellar. As the cannibalistic creatures try to get at them from the outside, there’s plenty of fighting on the inside while they try to decide what to do. It’s a historic film that launched an entire class of horror films, sadly screened in honor of writer/director George Romero’s passing.

Grease (1978; rewatch) — After spending the summer together, Danny (John Travolta) and Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) don’t expect to see each other again, until Sandy shows up at Danny’s school. Danny is popular and has a reputation, so he’s not the nicest guy to Sandy at first. It’s a musical with several popular songs, and there’s a strong supporting cast (including Stockard Channing, Dinah Manoff, Joan Blondelle, Frankie Avalon, Sid Caesar, Lorenzo Lamas, and a criminally underused Eddie Deezen), but it’s just not a great movie. Fortunately, Master Pancake was on hand to mock it, and they did a very good job with it.

The Wilgus Stories (2000; first-time watch) — A series of three stories centered around a boy named Wilgus at different ages that could have just as aptly been called Riding in Cars with Assholes. In the first story, “Fat Monroe”, he hitches a ride with Ned Beatty, who is an asshole. In the second story, “Night Ride”, he’s riding around with his drinking and gun-happy uncle, who is an asshole. In the third story, “Maxine”, he gives an older woman and childhood crush a drinking-and-smoking-filled ride home after she has just had an unproductive visit with her pregnant daughter. It’s short, and there are good things about it, but having likable characters isn’t one of those things.

Jungle Trap (2016; rewatch) — A group of people travel to the jungle to the site of an abandoned hotel in search of an idol, only to find the hotel haunted and their lives in danger. It’s a fun movie, but the story behind it (shot in the late 1980s but only now getting a released after sitting in a barn for a quarter of a century) is even better.

Killing Ground (2016; first-time watch) — A couple takes a New Year’s camping trip to a remote area with a waterfall, only to find other people already there. Or at least, it seems that there should be. There’s a car and a tent, but no people. But thanks to an interesting way of telling the story, we know more about what’s going on than the characters do. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/24/killing-ground/.

The Beguiled (1971; first-time watch) — A wounded Union soldier (Clint Eastwood) is found by a student at a southern school for girls, and they take him in to allow him to recuperate. All the girls fall in love with him, and it leads to jealousy, which leads to a bigger problem. It’s not quite as good as the new Sofia Coppola version, but it’s still a good watch, especially when you get to see it projected from a perfect 35mm print.

The Zodiac Killer (1971; rewatch) — An unknown killer is on the loose in San Francisco. Maybe it’s a truck-driving, womanizing deadbeat dad. Maybe it’s a mailman who prefers rabbits to women. Maybe it’s a man who’s proud of his burglary prowess. This movie was actually a ploy to try to capture the real Zodiac Killer, devised by the owner of a chain of pizza restaurants. It’s not well made, but it’s surprisingly fun and often unpredictable.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975; rewatch) — A pair of men (Al Pacino and John Cazale) enter a bank just before closing time with the intention of robbing it, but everything starts going wrong. One of their cohorts flakes out on them. The bank doesn’t have that much money on hand because they just missed a pickup. And the cops show up before they can make their getaway. Neither wants to go back to jail, so they’ve got to try to find a way out of this, with just them and their hostages against an army of law enforcement. Masterfully directed by Sidney Lumet and also featuring Charles Durning, Carol Kane, and Chris Sarandon, it’s a terrific film and surprisingly progressive for its time.

Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965; first-time watch) — Norah (Juliet Prowse) is a pretty young woman who works at a dance club. She’s started getting threatening and harassing phone calls. She doesn’t know the identity of the caller, but we do. It’s Lawrence (Sal Mineo), who also works at the dance club and has taken to watching her through her apartment window and following her around. And to make matters worse, Norah keeps encountering unwanted creepiness from the people she goes to for help, including a cop (Jan Murray) who specializes in sex crimes and her boss (Elaine Stritch). It’s a very dark movie with a lot of artful sleaze that goes in unexpected directions.

The Witch’s Mirror (1962; first-time watch) — A husband murders his wife and marries a new woman. The ghost of the murdered wife comes back to seek her revenge on the husband and the new wife. The first half is well done, but kind of slow, but it really gets going in the second half with a kind of Mad Love or Eyes Without a Face vibe.

The Curse of the Doll People (1961; first-time watch) — After four men steal an idol from a voodoo-practicing tribe, a witch doctor places a curse on them. Then he sends his killer dolls, often delivered by his zombie, to kill each of them in turn. It’s an interesting premise and a good ending, but the bulk of the film is too slow and repetitive.

The Untamed (2016; first-time watch) — An alien octopus comes to Earth to have sex with humans, including Verónica, who introduces it to Fabián, his sister Alejandra, and her husband, Ángel. The encounters are intensely pleasurable for the women, although they can be overwhelming. They don’t work out as well for the men. It’s heavily inspired by Zulawski’s Possession and a number of Cronenberg films, but it’s not on par with any of them. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/29/the-untamed/.

Boy and the World (2013; first-time watch) — After his father leaves, a young boy goes out looking for him and encounters many strange things and frightening things. It’s very simply animated with pencil-drawn stick figures, almost like that done by Don Hertzfeldt, but with a bit more color. It’s clearly got a message, but it’s not always clear what exactly that message is.

Der Fan (aka The Fan aka Trance; 1982; first-time watch) — Simone (Désirée Nosbusch) is obsessed with German pop singer R (Bodo Steiger). She’s written him several letters and has all but ruined her academic life by frequently skipping school to wait for the mailman in hopes of a reply, and by a complete lack of concentration when she does make it to class. When it becomes clear that her parents won’t continue to put up with her behavior, she runs away and actually gets the chance to meet him. But things don’t go in quite the way she had envisioned. It’s a good movie that is fairly predictable until the end, where it goes off the rails in a pretty enjoyable way.

The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981; rewatch) — Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin) is a housewife and a mother. Her husband Vance (Charles Grodin) is an advertising executive who works on accounts for a number of household chemicals. When Pat is exposed to a particular combination of those chemicals, she begins to shrink. Doctors (including one played by Henry Gibson) can’t figure it out. The whole thing turns into a tragedy, a media circus, and a plot for world domination (including Ned Beatty and John Glover). It’s a really fun, mostly family-friendly film, with Tomlin breaking out a few of her beloved characters.

The Running Man (1987; rewatch) — After being framed for mass murder, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) ultimately finds himself on a game show (hosted by Richard Dawson) in which criminals must face a series of trained killers for a chance at a pardon. Richards, along with cohorts played by Yaphet Kotto and Maria Conchita Alonso, must survive encounters with Jim Brown, Toru Tanaka, and Jesse Ventura in this unoriginal and poorly acted but highly entertaining film full of terrible puns.

Atomic Blonde (2017; first-time watch) — Just as the Berlin Wall is about to fall, a list of British spies is on the loose and threatens the safety of many people. Lorraine (Charlize Theron) is sent in to meet up with David (James McAvoy) to track down that list before it falls into the wrong hands. It’s a totally unoriginal plot that plays out in a thoroughly uncreative way, but there are some good fights, and there is some good music. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/07/31/atomic-blonde/.

Charlize Theron’s choice of roles seems to be all over the map. Some of her films have been great, and others terrible. She’s been in highly lauded movies that are utter garbage, and in some lambasted movies that are pretty fun to watch. And then there’s Atomic Blonde, which is kind of in the middle of all of that.

The film is set in 1989 Berlin, just as the wall is about to come down. It’s a city loaded with spies from all over the place: United States, United Kingdom, USSR, France, and of course both halves of Germany. Amidst all of the chaos, a list of British spies has gotten loose and is threatening to surface, which the Russians want very much to happen, and the British want very much to avoid. It’s also got the identity of a suspected double agent who is working for both sides. David Percival (James McAvoy) is the head British spy in Berlin, but the Brits (including senior agent Eric Gray, played by Toby Jones), working in conjunction with CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman), decide to send in badass MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) to make extra sure that the list doesn’t get out.

If you think this plot sounds familiar, you’re right. It’s exactly the same premise as Mission: Impossible. If you want originality, look somewhere else. You should also look elsewhere if you want cleverness because nothing that happens in this movie is a surprise. Just like Mission: Impossible, there is much double-crossing and misdirection, but David Leitch isn’t in the same league as Brian De Palma when it comes to pulling this stuff off. But Leitch was involved with John Wick, and that does show in the fight scenes because there are some good ones in Atomic Blonde, and all of the best of those feature Charlize giving it to one, or sometimes several, cocky guys. There’s also plenty of good late 80s music, even if you throw out the most obvious German-themed songs like “99 Luftballons” and “Der Kommissar”.

With its lack of originality and creativity, Atomic Blonde was never going to be a masterpiece. If it had been shorter, had more fighting, and had less of McAvoy’s highly annoying character, it could have at least been a fun distraction. But as it is, it’s trying to be too many different things while not doing any of them all that well. It’s adequate, but not worth rushing out to see.

Filmmakers like David Cronenberg and Andrzej Zulawski have clearly had an impact on cinema around the world. Many people have tried to imitate their styles, and few are successful. The Untamed is Spanish director Amat Escalante’s attempt. It’s not a bad movie, but I’m honestly not sure whether it’s a good one.

A space octopus has come to Earth where it is being looked after by a couple of new-age medicine hippies. It’s got an insatiable appetite for sex, and it’s apparently very good at it because its partners (or at least the female ones) keep coming back for more. Verónica (Simone Bucio) is one of those partners, but it seems that she needs a break because its pleasure has also started incurring pain. After her most recent encounter, Verónica ended up in the emergency room, claiming that her injury was a dog bite. She was attended by Fabián (Eden Villavicencio), and they hit it off right away, despite Fabián’s homosexuality.

Meanwhile, Fabián’s sister Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is married to a horrible man named Ángel (Jesús Meza). He’s inconsiderate and abusive to Alejandra and their two children, and he’s openly homophobic toward Fabián. In that latter case, however, Ángel doth protest too much, and he corners Fabián and makes advances toward him, only to become enraged when he is flatly refused. The next day, Fabián is found comatose and naked in a field, and Ángel is arrested for it. Alejandra is utterly distraught, so Verónica decides to introduce her to the sex octopus.

This film is clearly inspired by Zulawski’s Possession, and the similarities are undeniable. The Untamed is a much more straightforward than Possession, but it’s still pretty cryptic. It’s possible that a second viewing would clarify things a bit, but I’m not sure that it’s in the same “need to rewatch several times to really grasp it” category as Possession. It also doesn’t do nearly as much to justify its veil of artsy pretension.

Even while being vague, The Untamed is still at least interesting to watch. It never becomes boring, and there’s no shortage of nudity. Parts of it do seem unnecessary, and in particular, a hallucination scene involving an animal orgy, and it could have easily been edited to be less controversial, but that would significantly take away from its entire reason for being. But since it doesn’t seem to have the kind of depth that you see in Cronenberg or Zulawski films, it’s ultimately much less substantial and much more forgettable.