list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

Nicely woven sixth chapter with surprisingly smart (if typically absurd) action, dialog and plotting has the IMF after a cache of plutonium and a phantom menace.   Lots of movement and twists without being too much to take in, this may be the best of the series so far with buff Henry Cavill an effective foil to Tom Cruise's lean-mean-machine and Liang Ying in a great bathroom fight scene.   Best action film right now in a sparse and disappointing movie season.

First Man

Ryan Gosling as a brooding and grim Neil Armstrong during his preparations for the Moon landing in 1969 featuring excellent photography, atmosphere and effects.   Unfortunately more than half the film centers on his domestic problems and though Claire Foy is very good as his wife, Armstrong's marital issues are not really what we are interested in and most of it feels like filler as we pine for the actual NASA training, spaceflight and eventual voyage to the lunar surface.

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Death in Venice - 7.5/10

Last Chants For a Slow Dance - 8/10

Made For Each Other - 9/10

Lovers and Other Strangers - 8/10

On The Bowery - 8/10

A Thousand Million - 8/10

His Days Are Numbered - 8/10

The Straight Story - 9/10

Something Wild - 8/10

The Sign of the Leo - 9/10

The Forest For the Trees - 8/10

Coup de Tete - 8/10

A Bad Son - 8/10

Series Noire - 8/10

Mr. Klein - 8/10

The Face of Another - 9/10

Cairo 30 - 8.5/10

The Outfit - 8/10

Chitchat on the Nile - 9/10

Not reboot or sequel, The Predator is closer to a reiteration of the 1987 classic that is uninspired, frugal, derivative and dull even though it's filled with action.   It neither emulates nor improves on the original and takes the easy way at almost every turn.   Too bad.

Has-been writer Melissa McCarthy who lives with her cat and drinks too much starts forging letters by famous literary authors to make ends meet.   Not entirely believable but fun and reasonably sympathetic, based on a real person and produced by people who've seen a lot of Woody Allen movies.

Madly bizarre and grotesquely caricatured depiction of 18th Century British royalty during Queen Anne's reign and the scheming between a Duchess and Baroness close to her.   Taking place during the War of the Spanish Succession, the plotting and characters are so convoluted and repulsive it's hard to care much beyond watching this spectacle unfold into the twisted horror-play it is.   Certainly more interesting and innovative than the other recent period piece, Mary Queen of Scots, the film deserves some credit for its bold originality.

Stan & Ollie

Affectionate and clever depiction of the comedy legends in the years after their heyday during a unstable time in their career.   John C. Reilley and Steve Coogan are brilliant and perfectly cast as the duo struggling to remain significant in a new age of television, Abbott & Costello, and postwar culture.   Engaging without being melodramatic, Stan & Ollie is a fine if incomplete tribute to two of the greatest physical comedians in cinema.

Passengers, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence.

The trailer didn't impress me (at all), and I expected to not like this, but I did. The story itself isn't original, but it's well done and has very nice visuals. The sparse cast is a plus. 

Vice

Christian Bale is spellbinding as Dick Cheney in a film partaking of Oliver Stone and a tradition of American political biopics ~ a lot of handheld cameras, dramatic editing, rousing music, and a strong whiff of the ugly truth ~ Vice splays out the creepiest, smarmiest and most unethical of Conservative politics in the 1970s & '80s with Cheney always at the heart of power in Washington.   Flawless cast, innovative script, well paced, an excellent pairing with W. or Nixon .