list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

a Cure for Wellness (2016) Directed by Gore Verbinski

Great name for a horror director yes, but mercifully, he never tries to live up to it. Starts promisingly enough as a meditation on the rampant capitalism inherent in providing exorbitant rest cures for erm...uber successful capitalists. (Poachers farmed by Gamekeepers?) This idea is never explored in any depth however and we soon degenerate into a hybrid Lovecraft/Poe 'Dorian Gray with pet eels' style romp shot in the beautiful medieval castles of Germany. You know the back story drill: Aristocrat weds 'sis' in quest for racial purity and everlasting life. Scandalised local villagers break out the pitchforks and wreak their horrific revenge. 'Baron Douchebag' survives and attempts to dip his own daughter. Daughter (Mia Goth - yes really) with complete justification and some mounting 'daddy' issues, protests vigorously and is saved by young venture capitalist turned flotation tank surfer (Dane DeHaan) The movie looks fantastic but Verbinski seems to lose his nerve half way through and abandons a satisfying tension between the old stratification (hereditary peerage) and the new (corporate wealth) Based very loosely on Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain novel, a Cure for Wellness just ends up as a missed opportunity.

^ Wow, I'm impressed.   That is bad.

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 .

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. 

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.

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.

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.