When The Ring came out in 2002, and even The Ring Two in 2005, VHS was still in pretty widespread use. That’s not so much the case in 2017. VHS absolutely still be a huge component of any real film enthusiast, since an absolutely huge number of films released on VHS have never been made available in any other format, but the general public seems to be either completely unaware or completely indifferent to that fact. So if you’re going to have a new release in 2017 that deals with a video being passed around, you should either treat VHS with respect or not use it at all. Rings chooses option C, which is to treat VHS like antiquated garbage at the beginning, and then to completely ignore it for the rest of the movie.

Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) is a pot-smoking physics professor with an apparent fondness for vintage stuff. That’s the only explanation offered for his purchasing a VCR from the family of a kid who died (but who apparently wasn’t all that into VHS himself, from the meager selection of tapes available). But there was a tape already in the VCR, and, by watching it, Gabriel signed his own death warrant. After watching the two-minute video, you get a phone call in which a female voice says “Seven days,” and then you die a week later. Unless you make a copy of the tape and get someone else to watch it, in which case your death sentence is transferred to them.

Rather than just getting one other person to watch the tape, Gabriel sets up some kind of pyramid scheme, in which he gets several people to watch it, and then gets other people to watch it behind them, and so on. It’s apparently because he wants to study the process in the hopes that it will reveal the secrets of the universe or some garbage, but that’s how Holt (Alex Roe) and his girlfriend Julia (Matilda Lutz) get sucked in. But when Julia watches the video (now transferred onto USB thumb drive) to save Holt, something prevents her from making a copy. The video is different for her. It’s got extra stuff. And now she has to figure out what all of that means before her time is up.

Rings is not terrible. There’s nothing good about it, and it’s lazy and uninventive, but it’s not actually terrible. They mostly ignore the earlier films in the series, except for the basic premise of a tape that will kill you if you watch it. There are unnecessary plot lines, unnecessary characters, and a number of things that just don’t make sense. But it does take a couple of interesting turns along the way that elevates it a bit beyond the utter garbage that it could have been, and I didn’t have any trouble staying awake through the 11:30 pm screening. So I guess we can commend it for that while still hoping that its box office performance doesn’t warrant another sequel.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know who James Baldwin was before watching I Am Not Your Negro. If you’d asked me to name the most prominent black figures in the 1960s civil rights movement, I’d of course name Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. If pressed for a fourth, I’d probably have fumbled around and eventually come out with Harry Belafonte or Muhammad Ali. But based just on what I’ve seen in this hour-and-a-half documentary, it certainly appears that Baldwin deserves a lot more recognition.

As a teenager, James Baldwin knew that he had a lot of strikes against him. He was black. He was gay. He had come to the realization that the church was doing more to propagate oppression than to cure it. He didn’t feel safe in America and fled to France where he became a writer. But as civil rights activism became more front and center, he felt compelled to return.

From the clips presented, and particularly from an appearance on the Dick Cavett show, it seems like Baldwin may have been more eloquent, more logical, and more compelling than the more well-known leaders of the movement. He didn’t have the drawn-out, sing-songy, “black preacher” intonation used by many of his peers, which may not have been as effective at riling up supporters of the movement, and which opponents may have perceived as more gay and therefore easier to dismiss. But his words managed to evoke spontaneous applause from the 2017 audience, and certainly made me want to seek out more.

While the documentary’s primary focus is the 1960s, it covers a much broader swath of American history than that. It’s a takedown of the way that non-whites (especially African Americans and Native Americans) have been portrayed in the media, with a particular focus on early 20th-century films, although Sidney Poitier’s work from the 1950s and 1960s also gets some attention. It also draws parallels with more modern events like the Rodney King beatings, the Jerry Springer show, and the Ferguson, Missouri protests and riots, although these clips seem to have been integrated in a more clumsy and less organic way. But by far, the best parts of the film are those that use Baldwin’s words directly, whether from his writing or appearances. It may well be the case that documentary could’ve been even more powerful and effective in the hands of another director, but the quality of the source material still shines through and makes it a must-watch film. And probably also a must-seek-out-more-James-Baldwin film.

These are the movies that I watched in a theater in January of 2017, in the order in which I saw them:

Geteven (aka Road to Revenge; 1993; first-time watch) — Normad (William Smith), Huck Finney (Wings Hauser), and Rick Bode (writer/director/producer/singer/songwriter John De Hart) are police officers. But when Normad frames Huck and Rick for selling drugs, he’s promoted to judge, and they’re kicked off the force and get jobs as limo drivers. Normad is also the leader of a satanic cult in which Rick’s former girlfriend (Pamela Jean Bryant) was a member until she freaked out and returned to Rick when they sacrificed a human baby. Now Normad and his fellow cult members are after her, while Rick and Huck still hold a grudge against Normad for his past and ongoing shenanigans. No one would ever call this a good movie in the classical sense, but it is far more entertaining than the vast majority of classically good movies.

Collision Course (1998; rewatch) — Fujisaka Natsuo (Pat Morita) is a Japanese investigator who has been sent to Detroit to try to track down a criminal who has stolen a prototype of a new supercharger and wants to sell it to an American car manufacturer. Tony Costas (Jay Leno) is an American detective who puts himself on the case after his friend is murdered. They team up in the most boring and least funny way possible, save for one fun flying kick in the last five minutes. Also featuring Chris Sarandon, Tom Noonan, Ernie Hudson, and Randall “Tex” Cobb.

3-Way Split (1976; first-time watch) — An insolvent actor convinces a stuntman (Robert Vaughn) to help him steal an Incan statue worth millions of dollars. The movie itself is adequate but is primarily noteworthy for the horrendous dubbing of Vaughn’s dialogue. Most of it was recorded at the wrong speed so he sounds like a chipmunk, although some of it was recorded by someone else with a much deeper voice that makes for stark contrast.

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989; first-time watch) — The small town of Purgatory is inhabited by vampires, but they’re reformed vampires who rely on fake blood for nourishment, and who use giant hats and heavy sunblock to go about their daily business. But the blood plant has trouble ramping up to meet the demand, and there are some who prefer the old days of drinking real blood. It’s a fun take on vampire lore that features David Carradine, Bruce Campbell, Deborah Foreman, M. Emmet Walsh, John Ireland, and George “Buck” Flower.

The Night Stalker (1987; first-time watch) — An invincible chanting psychopath (Robert Z’Dar) is killing prostitutes and painting symbols on their body. J.J. Striker (Charles Napier) is a haggard detective who’s good at drinking, annoying, and disappointing, but he does have a good rapport with the ladies of the night. As the body count rises, so does Striker’s resolve to maybe cut back on the drinking and try to catch the killer. If you like Robert Vincent O’Neill’s Angel (and you should), then you’ll probably find this familiar and enjoyable.

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975; rewatch) — After some car trouble, a famous jazz singer (Leslie Uggams) on vacation finds herself stranded in a redneck resort run by a has-been (Shelley Winters). Eddie (Michael Christian) is a bartender with hopes of making it big as a country musician. At first, Eddie’s attention is annoying, but then it becomes more violent. Also featuring Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, and Ted Cassidy. It’s a very dark film, but well worth watching, and the recent digital restoration is of very good quality.

The Master (2012; rewatch) — Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman in a very thinly-veiled caricature of L. Ron Hubbard) has created a new religion and is traveling to write and spread the word. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a troubled drunk former sailor who can’t hold a job after returning from World War II, and Dodd decides to take him under his wing and use him as a test case for the religion. It looks great, especially in 70mm, and has some very good acting, but don’t expect everything to make sense.

Certain Women (2016; first-time watch) — A Kelly Reichardt film featuring a set of three vignettes depicting the lives of women in various circumstances in and around Livingston, Montana. A lawyer (Laura Dern) must deal with a client who won’t accept that he can’t sue for an injury he sustained. A wife (Michelle Williams) tries to negotiate with a confused old man to get some sandstone blocks to use in building her new house. A recent law school graduate (Kristen Stewart) regrets taking a second job that requires an eight-hour round trip twice a week, but one of her students (Lily Gladstone) is always happy to see her. The stories have the barest of plots, but that leaves plenty of room for the acting and filmmaking to shine through. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/04/certain-women/.

Inferno (1980; first-time watch) — Dario Argento’s follow-up to Suspiria has a story that is downright cryptic. It’s got something to do with a book named The Three Mothers, a search for some keys, and people dying. But you don’t watch this movie because you understand what’s going on. You watch this movie because it looks pretty and it sounds pretty, and if you do that, then you won’t be disappointed.

Cameraperson (2016; first-time watch) — A fascinating compilation of footage shot by long-time documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. The clips tend toward dark, heavy subjects like rape, torture, and genocide, so it’s certainly not an uplifting film, but it is an incredibly powerful and human look behind the scenes of documentary filmmaking. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/05/cameraperson/.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001; rewatch) — Upon hearing that a major road is about to be built in a currently-remote area, a down-on-their-luck family decides to open an inn. But the road has yet to be built so customers are scarce, and those that do drop by have a tendency to wind up dead. Only the Japanese would think to approach this subject as a musical with frequent claymation interludes, and only Takashi Miike could pull it off this well.

Lion (2016; first-time watch) — As a small child, Saroo (adult version played by Dev Patel) found himself separated from his family in a set of circumstances that led to him ultimately being adopted by an Australian family (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). Years later, he becomes obsessed with searching for his home in an absolutely moronic way. This search turns him into a tremendous dick, and turns a movie that could have been predictably mediocre into one that was unpleasantly tedious. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/06/lion/.

Fruitvale Station (2013; rewatch) — Based on a true story, this film follows Oscar Grant III (played by Michael B. Jordan) in the events leading up to his death at the hands of a California transit police officer. Grant is a flawed man—he’s got a criminal record, he sells weed from time to time, he’s cheated on his girlfriend/baby mama, and he’s recently been fired for chronic lateness—but he’s trying to get his life together and do what’s right. It’s an intense film that deserves to be seen despite how hard it is to watch.

Hidden Figures (2016; first-time watch) — An inspirational dramatization of the true stories of three African-American women (Katharine Goble-Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan, played by Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe, and Octavia Spencer, respectively) who were critical to the success of NASA in the 1960s and beyond, in spite of their color and their gender. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/08/hidden-figures/.

Inherent Vice (2014; rewatch) — Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a private investigator and a dirty hippie. His ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) shows up one night and tells him that her current boyfriend has gone missing. As Doc investigates, he finds an interconnected web of cases involving drug smuggling, prostitution, neo-nazis, and police corruption. The extensive supporting cast includes Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, and Eric Roberts.

Wayne’s World (1992; rewatch) — Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar (Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) host a weekly public access show with a cult following. Slimy ad executive Benjamin Oliver (Rob Lowe) convinces an arcade magnate (Brian Doyle-Murray) to sponsor their show, and convinces Wayne and Garth to go along with it. Benjamin uses the opportunity to take everything he can from Wayne and Garth, including Wayne’s new girlfriend (Tia Carrere). Co-starring Lara Flynn Boyle, Kurt Fuller, Colleen Camp, Ed O’Neill, and Chris Farley.

The Day It Came to Earth (1977; first-time watch) — When a meteorite lands in an Arkansas pond, a creature emerges and starts killing people. Students find the meteorite while swimming, and draw the attention of the creature onto themselves, their professor (played by George Gobel), the police, and everyone else they come into contact with. A fun 1970s film made to feel like an innocent 1950s beach monster movie. It features an early acting performance by Rita Wilson, but Gobel plays the straight-laced professor better than any other human could have.

One Man Force (1989; first-time watch) — A giant, ill-tempered cop (John Matuszak) gets even more irritable when his partner (Sam Jones) is killed and his boss (Ronny Cox) insists that he must stick to legal methods of law enforcement. While taking a not-so-voluntary break from police work, he’s hired as a private investigator to look into the kidnapping of a pop singer (Stacey Q), and discovers the people who kidnapped her may also be behind the death of his partner. Also featuring Charles Napier, a somewhat dull plot, a bunch of nonsensical catch phrases, and a finale that makes it all worthwhile.

The Blob (1988; rewatch) — A cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) and a juvenile delinquent (Kevin Dillon) are an unlikely team in the battle to save their town from an amorphous creature that consumes everything in its path. A remake that outshines the original, holds up well, and just plain thrills from start to finish.

Samurai Cop (1991; rewatch) — L.A. cop Joe “The Samurai” Marshall (played by Matt Hannon aka Matthew Karedas) is a lover and a fighter. His partner Frank Washington (Mark Frazer) flashes more looks than Derek Zoolander. Together, they’re trying to take down a Yakuza gang who call themselves the Katana. The Katana are technically led by some Japanese guy named Fujiyama, but the gang’s real workhorse is a giant-faced white guy named Yamashita (the incomparable Robert Z’Dar), whose fighting and womanizing skills are on par with Marshall’s. Men are killed, women are bedded, logic is abandoned, the English language is mutilated, and audiences are enraptured.

Command and Control (2016; first-time watch) — A harrowing documentary about the little-known September 1980 incident that nearly led to an atomic bomb detonation in a missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas. It includes archival footage interspersed with training video content, reenactments, and interviews with many of the people involved. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/13/command-and-control/.

Live by Night (2016; first-time watch) — Joe Coughlin (played by writer/director Ben Affleck) is a career criminal who lives in gangster-controlled Boston. But that doesn’t stop him from fooling around with a gangster boss’s girlfriend (Sienna Miller), which doesn’t go well for either of them. Joe ends up joining a rival gang to seek revenge, and the audience may end up falling asleep. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/14/live-by-night/.

Pulp Fiction (1994; rewatch) — A masterful presentation of a few nonlinear stories centered around the rarely-seen mob boss Marsellus Wallace (played by Ving Rhames), Henchmen Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) have one heck of a day while trying to recover some of Marsellus’ property. Boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) becomes Marsellus’ enemy when he accepts a payoff to take a dive but doesn’t follow through. And Vincent entertains Marsellus’ wife Mia (Uma Thurman) for an evening, at Marsellus’ request, only to have more excitement than expected.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016; rewatch) — A father-son coroner team (Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch) are tasked with finding the cause of death for an unidentified woman. They start finding weird things almost immediately. And then things take a more scary turn. It holds up well to a second viewing, even when you know what’s going to happen, and even though many of the jump scares are telegraphed in advance.

On the Waterfront (1954; rewatch) — Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando) is a boxer who never quite made it, and now works as a longshoreman whose fate is controlled by the mafia-connected union bosses under the control of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). Terry’s older brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is also fairly high up in the union, and he uses Terry to unwittingly lure a troublemaking friend, Joey, to a fatal encounter. While wrestling with his guilt for his role in the murder, and the deeply-ingrained “no one ever talks to the police” societal code, he falls for Joey’s sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint). It’s a highly-lauded classic, and for good reason.

Patriots Day (2016; first-time watch) — Boston Police work with the FBI to track down those responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Although many of the action scenes are good, the pacing is abysmal and the film glorifies despicable actions taken by the authorities in their pursuit of justice at all costs. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/17/patriots-day/.

Reality Bites (1994; rewatch) — Four recent college graduates (Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, and Steve Zahn) find that their ideals don’t seem to be as compatible with life in the “real world” as they would like. Jobs are hard to get and easy to lose. One-night stands are easy (although AIDS is scary), but love is hard. The movie holds up well and has a heck of a soundtrack.

Maniac Cop (1988; rewatch) — New York City is being terrorized by a killer. But this time it’s a cop (played by Robert Z’Dar). Officer Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell, who has a lot in common with Z’Dar when it comes to size and facial features) is the prime suspect, but Detective McCrae (Tom Atkins) isn’t buying it, despite the insistence of his captain (William Smith) and commissioner (Richard Roundtree) and keeps digging. It’s a fun movie with some good kills, decent creativity, and played surprisingly straight.

Fear (1996; rewatch) — Sixteen-year-old Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) has been daddy’s little girl all her life. But she’s being tempted away from that life, first by her slutty, rebellious best friend (Alyssa Milano), and then by a mysterious suitor named David (Mark Wahlberg). She definitely does not have daddy’s approval to date David, and bad blood boils up all around. It’s one of those enjoyably bad guilty-pleasure movies that would feel right at home on the Lifetime network.

20th Century Women (2016; first-time watch) — Dorothea (Annette Bening) is a single mother who rents a couple of rooms to Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and William (Billy Crudup), and she enlists their help in raising her son without a father. It’s an excellent film that is a pure joy to watch. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/21/20th-century-women/.

The Founder (2016; first-time watch) — Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, a former salesman who falls in love with a unique restaurant called McDonald’s, run by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch). Kroc convinces them to let him franchise their idea, and what follows is both a wild success and an utter disaster. It’s a reasonably entertaining movie, but seems harmed by pushing an agenda at the expense of fairness and accuracy. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/21/the-founder/.

Selma (2014; rewatch) — David Oyelowo portrays Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the events leading up to the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, as a form of protest against African Americans being consistently denied the ability to register to vote. It’s a tremendous film, made all the more powerful and moving by the fact that the screening happened to fall on a day where political marches were occurring across the country.

Split (2016; first-time watch) — Casey, Claire, and Marcia (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula, respectively) have been abducted and locked in a small room by a man (James McAvoy) they soon find has multiple personalities. It’s actually pretty good until they Shyamalan it all up at the ending. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/22/split/.

Middle of Nowhere (2012; first-time watch) — Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) is a very devoted wife. She and her husband (Omari Hardwick) talk most days on the phone, and every weekend she takes the bus two hours each way to the prison where he’s serving an eight-year sentence. With good behavior, he could get out in five years, but as that time approaches, things start to get complicated. Although the film is a bit slow at times, it features excellent performances across the board and wonderful direction by Ava DuVernay.

Notes on Blindness (2016; first-time watch) — When John Hull found himself going blind in the early 1980s, he began to capture his feelings and experiences on audio cassettes. The filmmakers hired actors to portray John, his wife Marilyn, and their children, with most of the dialogue taken from John’s tapes and lip-synced by the actors. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/23/notes-on-blindness/.

Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness (1986; first-time watch) — Mike Strauber had a bad experience playing “truth or dare” as a kid that led to him being committed to an asylum for a while. But he’s much better now. Or at least he was until he caught his wife cheating on him with his best friend. Now he’s lost a lot of sanity and a lot of people have to die. This film provides nonstop exhilaration resulting from its unpredictability, enthusiasm, effects, and theme song.

Clueless (1995; rewatch) — Cher and Dionne (Alicia Silverstone and Stacey Dash) are best friends and some of the most popular students in their very affluent high school. They’re mostly focused on themselves, but when her older stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd) convinces Cher to try to make a difference in the world, they decide to take a new student (Brittany Murphy) under their wing to help her fit in. It’s like a much tamer 90s take on Valley Girl.

Arrival (2016; rewatch) — When a dozen UFOs park themselves across the earth, the military calls upon language professor Dr. Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) to help communicate with the aliens, and upon physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to see what knowledge can be gleaned from them. It’s a very good film (much in the vein of Contact meets Interstellar), but it would be even better if it had stuck more closely to Story of Your Life, the short story on which the movie is based.

Mark of the Witch (1970; first-time watch) — A college student researching the occult stumbles upon a book of spells. She and a group of friends accidentally summon a witch that had been executed over three hundred years ago, and the witch seeks revenge on those who turned against her. Although it’s a bit slow in a couple of places, it takes some unexpected turns and there’s a lot to like about this movie.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007; first-time watch) — Aubrey is the kind of good girl that would be any parent’s dream: kind, creative, talented, and chaste. She’s abducted by a serial killer but manages to escape. Her body is found lying on the side of the road, missing an arm and a leg. She’s taken to the hospital and reunited with her parents, but there’s one problem: she claims that she isn’t Aubrey, but rather an orphaned stripper named Dakota. The movie is an utter failure in just about every way (although it really tries to be artsy in the way of a Lynch, Cronenberg, De Palma, or Kieslowski film), and yet it occasionally manages to be fairly entertaining in its terribleness.

Julieta (2016; first-time watch) — A character study in which the titular character recalls the events of her life that led up to her being estranged from her daughter. It’s a dull and aimless film that’s an uncharacteristic miss from director Pedro Almodóvar. Full review at https://nawilson.com/2017/01/28/julieta/.

Bangkok Dangerous (2008; rewatch) — Nicolas Cage plays Joe, an assassin for hire who likes to stay anonymous and detached. He’s hired to do four jobs in Bangkok, where his anonymity and detachedness, will be challenged. It’s not awful, but it’s also not worth watching.

Joe (2013; rewatch) — Nicolas Cage plays Joe, a mostly-good man with a short temper and a strong aversion to most police officers. Tye Sheridan plays Gary, a kid with an incredibly strong worth ethic who just wants to support his family because his drunken monster of a father won’t. Joe gives Gary a job helping to clear a woodland so they can plant new trees, but Gary’s father and Joe’s personal demons and past enemies get in the way. An excellent film with terrific performances.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999; rewatch) — Nicolas Cage plays Frank, a paramedic who likes helping people but is haunted by a past failure. He’s having a particularly tough time when he responds to a call for a heart attack patient and meets Mary (Patricia Arquette). It’s a very good movie with an impressive cast that also includes John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore, but it’s overlong in the way that many Scorsese films seem to be.

Army of One (2016; rewatch) — Nicolas Cage plays Gary Faulkner, a guy who doctors claim is sane, but who doesn’t act that way. One day, God (Russell Brand) speaks to him and tells him to go to Afghanistan to find and capture Osama Bin Laden. Based on a true story, except for the part where Nicolas Cage doesn’t look or sound like the real Gary (who seems to look and sound pretty normal), but instead chooses to speak in a horrendously fake and unbelievably annoying voice (much like the one he used in Deadfall), and to go with the “Brent Spiner from Independence Day” look. It’s even worse and more unbearable than it sounds.

Lord of War (2005; rewatch) — Nicolas Cage plays Yuri, a Ukrainian-born New Yorker who becomes an international arms dealer with his horrible cook turned drug addict brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), who courts and marries Ava (Bridget Moynahan) with a lot of help from lies and deceptions, and who tries to stay ahead of government agents (including Ethan Hawke) and competitors (including Ian Holm). The majority of the film is pure boredom, but the opening sequence, in which we get an incompetently-executed PoV shot from just behind and above a bullet, is so terrible that its lack of entertainment value is much less noticeable.

Natural Born Killers (1994; rewatch) — It’s love at first sight for Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), then it’s love on the run when they kill Mallory’s parents (Rodney Dangerfield and Edie McClurg), and a whole lot more people. Plotwise, it’s not much more than an ultraviolent Badlands, but stylewise, it’s incomprehensible chaos. It’s like they were trying to learn the editing software by choosing a different effect at random for each shot, except that doesn’t adequately explain the indiscriminate camera tilts and haphazard background music.

Bullet Ballet (1998; first-time watch) — After his girlfriend commits suicide by shooting herself, Goda (writer/director Shin’ya Tsukamoto, best known for his Tetsuo series) becomes obsessed with getting a gun for himself. But guns aren’t so easy to come by in Japan. After a failed attempt to make one, he gets himself mixed up with criminals. It’s occasionally slow and sometimes cryptic, but ultimately enjoyable, with a kind of Jim Jarmusch meets Takashi Miike feel to it.

28 Days Later… (2002; rewatch) — Rage-infected primates escape from a research lab and create a pandemic that brings about the end of civilization. Nearly all humans have been killed, have killed themselves, or have contracted the disease. Jim (Cillian Murphy) had been in the hospital when it all went down and slept through a lot of it, but now he’s awoken into a much different world. He’s not entirely alone, though, and soon teams up with a woman (Naomie Harris) and father-daughter team (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns) to try to make it to a military outpost and the promise of help. It’s a violent, fast-paced, and very well-made film that focuses as much on the monsters who are still human as it does on the ones who’ve been turned.

I’m a big fan of Pedro Almodóvar’s films. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Volver. Bad Education. Talk To Her. The Skin I Live in. All of them terrific, unlike his latest film.

Julieta is a character study in which the title character (played at different ages by Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte) recalls the events leading up to her estrangement from her daughter Antía. It’s roughly along the lines of a Boyhood, except the 99-minute Julieta feels far longer than the nearly three-hour Linklater film. Most of the scenes are loaded with unnecessary detail, which makes it feel aimless and scatterbrained, but it’s poorly presented so that you’re not always sure where things are happening or what’s really going on. Even the core plot isn’t apparent right away, and I was led astray a couple of times into thinking that it was going to focus on one storyline only to find that it was either irrelevant or of lesser importance. The women are portrayed as irrational and hyperemotional, while the men are unabashed philanderers, so it’s hard to sympathize with anyone. There’s not the slightest hint of comedy, and any time the film gives us something that we might enjoy, it rips it away again, often without explanation. Even the musical cues seem out of place, with odd choices like the building ominous score that the movie provides for a scene with a woman sitting on a park bench.

I really have nothing more to say about this dull, meandering mess of a film. I’m baffled by its selection as Spain’s awards candidate film over the far better The Invisible Guest, and can only assume that it’s getting the nod purely on the strength of Almodóvar’s earlier work. He’s definitely got many films worth watching, but Julieta isn’t one of them.

Out of all of the possible disabilities that one can have, blindness is probably the one that seems the scariest and hardest to deal with. Going deaf or losing a limb would certainly be an unpleasant and undesirable experience, but I can imagine being able to cope with that kind of thing more easily than losing your sight. Notes on Blindness didn’t do much to change that opinion.

John Hull had vision problems of some kind for much of his life, but he started going blind in the early 1980s. He was in his late 40s, around the time his second child was to be born. It didn’t happen all at once—the black spot in his vision grew bigger and bigger until he could sense only the difference between light and darkness, and then even that went away. He was completely blind but was determined to not become helpless.

He began recording his feelings and experiences on audio cassettes, and the recordings were transcribed and published in the 1990 book Touching the Rock. And now they’ve been used to create a truly powerful film gives you a degree of insight into his life as a father, a husband, a professor, and a man living without sight in a very visual world. Most of the dialogue in the film comes directly from John and his family (also on some of the tapes), with hired actors lip-syncing the words.

John is candid and well-spoken. The film is sometimes haunting, as he describes things like his sadness over being unable to watch his children grow, the heartbreak of his memory fading, and his panic upon hearing one of his children screaming in pain but being unable to find her. But he also describes the relative joy of rain helping to illuminate the world around him through the sound of the falling drops, or of being able to focus on the sound and feel of a pipe organ reverberating in a cathedral.

The audio content is by far the best aspect of the film. The accompanying visuals are often helpful and illustrative, and the acting is good, but there were a couple of occasions when they delved into territory that was a bit too artsy and pretentious for my taste. I was initially concerned that it might venture into “experimental” film territory, which is not my thing, but it quickly won me over, and I’d have to consider it one of the best and most moving biographical documentaries that I’ve encountered in recent years.

Of all the films that M. Night Shyamalan has directed, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that Split is one of them.

Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley) has devoted her life to studying people with multiple personalities. Her research suggests that when a new identity takes over (“takes the light”), their body may actually undergo certain physiological changes. For example, she’s found that one personality may have a higher cholesterol count than another. These findings aren’t widely embraced by the larger scientific community, but she’s convinced, and she continues to meet with her subjects on a regular basis.

Kevin (James McAvoy) is one of those subjects, and he’s got about a couple dozen identities in his head. They all know about and acknowledge the others, but they all have very different characteristics. Lately, Dennis has been taking over a lot, and he’s the biggest and strongest of them. And now he’s gone and kidnapped three teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula) and locked them in a small, mostly featureless room.

Split is a fairly middle-of-the-pack Shyamalan film. It’s no The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, but it’s also nowhere near as bad as The Happening or After Earth. It’s actually quite entertaining at times, and the acting (especially from McAvoy) is generally pretty good. But the film requires you to accept a given premise, but I never really managed it. Every time I decided to just go along with it, the movie would take things too far and snap me back out of it.

But even bigger than my inability to suspend belief is the film’s sudden abandonment of key characters. The girls are initially locked in a room together, but they’re separated fairly early on, at which point two of them basically just disappear from the movie. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say that they may well have filmed additional scenes that were recklessly chopped out to get the runtime under two hours. The movie’s problems with pacing and tone suggest that it wasn’t planned out all that meticulously, and that they had painted themselves into a corner when it turned out too long.

And then everyone’s talking about that last shot of the movie. It’s dumb. It feels like a kind of “me, too” moment, but for something that stopped being a fad a couple of years ago. It adds nothing, except maybe fear that there might be a sequel, and fuel to the theory that Shyamalan really has no idea what he’s doing.

In Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, it’s said that you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. The Founder shows that to be true for Tim Burton’s Batman, as Michael Keaton is visibly older, with a face that reminded me of The Joker at times, and his character isn’t such a nice guy.

That character is Ray Kroc, a traveling salesman with a history of not-so-great products. He’s currently trying to sell a blender designed to make five milkshakes at once, but no one seems to need that much capacity. Well, nobody except Dick and Mac McDonald (played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch, respectively). They run a unique restaurant called McDonald’s that’s like nothing Ray has ever seen. It’s got a very limited menu, with just hamburgers, fries, sodas, and soon milkshakes. You have to walk up and order your food through a window rather than having a carhop come to your vehicle, and when you get your food, it’s all in disposable paper bags and wrappers and cups rather than served on a real plate with real silverware. But the food is good, the service is astonishingly fast, and business is booming.

Ray is in love at first sight. He wants the McDonald brothers to let him franchise their restaurant, but they just couldn’t get the people managing those stores to live up to their high standards. But Ray is persistent, and they eventually agree, provided that he signs a contract that gives them full control over everything that happens in the stores. Before long, Ray has opened up his own store, and then acts as a middleman to sign up other franchisees. But there’s a problem. Business is great, but Ray’s barely scraping by because the brothers’ high standards and resistance to change are holding him back. So he’ll just have to cut them out.

The Founder is entertaining enough, but it seems to lose something as it goes on. Perhaps it’s just because Kroc turns into such a slimeball that it becomes uncomfortable to watch. He’s so mean to those nice brothers, so indifferent towards his wife, so creepy towards another man’s wife, and otherwise infected with the sense of unscrupulous entitlement that seems to plague the get-rich-quick schemers who finally do.

Of course it’s a true story and it couldn’t have turned out any other way, but the film certainly seems to have an agenda. For example, it doesn’t make any mention of his philanthropy (for example, he created the Ronald McDonald House, which provides a place for families to stay when their children are receiving treatment at hospitals that aren’t near their homes). There’s not a single reference to many of the things that would become the restaurant’s trademarks, like their clown spokesman or signature food items like Big Macs and Happy Meals. And it makes it seem like he dumped his wife (played by Laura Dern) and immediately picked up the wife (Linda Cardellini) of a sub-franchisee (Patrick Wilson), when the real Krok had another wife for several years between the two. Some creative license is to be expected, but the film primarily seems intent on making Kroc look like a monster while omitting anything that might make him seem more human, and it ultimately suffers because of that.

I highly recommend watching 20th Century Women the way that I did: as soon as possible, and just after reading Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, which is the short story that inspired the movie Arrival. With that story on my mind, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in their styles of narration and their treatment of time, and I think it made me appreciate both all the more.

Dorothea (played by Annette Bening) is a single mother who’s worried about her son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) growing up without a father. They live together in an old house that they’re renovating, and they’re renting out a couple of rooms to help make ends meet. One of the boarders is Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a young newspaper photographer who’s into music and is dealing with cervical cancer. The other is William (Billy Crudup), who’s great at fixing cars, helping Dorothea work on the house, and having one-night stands. And Jamie’s best friend Julie (Elle Fanning) doesn’t technically live there, but she does end up spending most nights in the same bed as Jamie, albeit in a manner that’s way more platonic than Jamie would like. Dorothea asks them all to help provide guidance to Jamie about how to navigate life in the real world, from a perspective other than her own.

It’s difficult to adequately describe what makes this movie so good. All of the characters are very complex and fully-formed, and we seem to learn something new about them in each scene. Just when you think you’ve got someone pinned down, they show you a new layer to their personality. They’re all good people, trying their best most of the time, but they’re also flawed and human and very relatable.

The way that the film exists in and out of time also lends to its appeal. It’s mainly set in the late 1970s, but makes sure that we’re clued in on each character’s past, and it also gives us glimpses into their futures. It isn’t exactly a nonlinear film, but it takes a very casual approach to jumping around in the timeline. And yet somehow it does it in a way that makes perfect sense and never leads to any confusion about when any given event takes place.

20th Century Women is just plain charming. It’s often very funny but doesn’t shy away from other emotions like sadness and anger. The acting is as solid as the writing and direction, and it makes for a film that’s a joy to watch.

An early scene in Patriots Day features people singing country music in thick Boston accents. Sadly, this was not the most unpleasant moment of the film.

The movie tells the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon, in which brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev each planted and set off a homemade bomb near the finish line, killing three people and injuring many more. Mark Wahlberg plays hot-headed and indiscreet Boston police sergeant Tommy Saunders, who’s been given an unfavorable assignment at the race by his commissioner (John Goodman) as payback for an earlier infraction. But when things go down, he keeps his wits about him in the early moments of confusion, and then pours himself into the investigation, even after it’s taken over by the FBI (whose lead agent is played by Kevin Bacon).

There’s a good movie in Patriots Day, but it’s unfortunately buried in one that’s not so great. The action scenes are where the film really shines: the bombing itself, its immediate aftermath, the initial part of the investigation, and the confrontations that occur when the suspects find themselves cornered. But there are also parts where it really drags. The movie spends way too much time setting things up and getting us way too familiar with characters who aren’t all that essential to the story, and then it keeps dragging us away from the investigation to check in on them. In the heat of the final showdown, the film grinds to a halt for a few minutes so that Wahlberg’s character can show us that he’s sensitive and has feelings, despite already giving us one of those scenes earlier with his wife (played by Michelle Monaghan).

Long stretches pass without any updates on the investigation, and I often found it difficult to tell how much time had passed between events portrayed. For example, the first of the aforementioned “Sergeant Saunders is a sensitive guy” scenes features him going home to his wife. It was probably meant to be at the end of a long day, many hours after the bombing, but it’s easy to mistake that for just a few minutes after the investigation has gotten up and running. Further, while it’s inevitable that a film like this will have the “look at these pictures from the real-life event” moments at the end, this one takes it to new levels of excruciation and pandering with several minutes of interviews and reenactments. And this time it doesn’t even do the courtesy of running them over the end credits when it’s okay to leave because the movie is technically over.

Another thing that I found particularly frustrating was the repeated portrayal of the authorities doing despicable things with an “ends justify the means” attitude. A woman is interrogated while being repeatedly refused due process and legal counsel. Miranda rights are suspended. Officers exceed their jurisdictions. The people of Boston and the neighboring communities are essentially held hostage. Even if we assume that the film is merely depicting what actually happened, it certainly doesn’t have to glorify it to the extent that it does.

My biggest aggravation with the film is that its problems are so obvious and so fixable. It’s ultimately a failure of editing. All of the sins committed by director Peter Berg could have been swept under the rug in the cutting room, but this movie insists on accentuating the mundane and worshipping the contemptible. I can only hope that David Gordon Green’s Stronger (due out later this year and dealing with the same topic) does it better.

With Good Will Hunting, Gone Baby Gone, and The Town, Ben Affleck proved that he can write great films. And with Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo, he showed that he can direct great movies. Live by Night demonstrates that he’s also capable of writing and directing some not-so-great films.

Joe Coughlin (played by Affleck) is a career criminal, much to the dismay of his police officer father (Brendan Gleeson). He lives in Prohibition-era Boston, a town ruled by gangsters, but he doesn’t want any part of the gangster life. And yet he’s stupid enough to be fooling around with Emma (Sienna Miller), who just happens to be the girlfriend of gangster boss Albert White (Robert Glenister). They plan to run away together to California after Joe pulls off one more big heist, but things are not meant to be. The heist goes bad, and some cops get killed. Plus, Albert finds out about Joe and Emma. Fortunately for Joe, the cops show up to arrest him before the mob can do any serious damage to him, but then they beat him to within an inch of his life before throwing him in jail for a few years. Emma isn’t as lucky.

When Joe gets out (considerably earlier than he otherwise would have, thanks to his father’s intervention), he wants revenge against Albert. Albert has been pushed out of Boston by a rival gang and is now running things down in Miami. Joe joins up with that rival gang, gets himself sent to nearby Tampa, and does his best to run things for his boss while plotting against Albert.

Live by Night is a film that tries really hard to be Miller’s Crossing. But trying is not enough. It’s got good people (the cast also includes Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Elle Fanning, and several others you’ll recognize by face if not by name), and I suppose the acting is good enough, but the story is just all over the place. It takes forever to set up its stupid premise, and even longer to decide how it wants to end. Along the way, there are far too many distractions from the real plot. There may be a decent 90–100-minute film in there somewhere, but at over two hours, it’s just a chore.