Review - Backtrack

A psychiatrist (Adrien Brody) discovers that his patients are actually restless ghosts. He spends the rest of the picture trying to figure out what they’re trying to tell him about his personal involvement in a terrible accident years ago. I wasn’t particularly in the mood for a slow-moving supernatural thriller, so I liked this less than I might have if the stars had been more favorably aligned. Mildly amusing

Review - The Enemy Within

HBO reheats Seven Days in May. Other than an expensive cast – including Forest Whitaker, Sam Waterston and Jason Robards – the new version doesn’t add much. Mildly amusing

Review - The Boy

An elderly British couple hires an American nanny to care for their “son,” which turns out to be a child-sized doll. Despite some third act problems, this picture turned out to be better than I expected. Mildly amusing

Review - The Other Side of the Door

If you’ve ever seen more than handful of horror movies, you already know that when you try to bring a loved one back from the dead – even for just a few minutes – odds are it’s going to end badly. Chances of a bad outcome increase to 100% if you opt to disregard any of the warnings about violating the rules. On the other hand, if you’ve never seen a horror movie – as the grieving mother in this picture evidently hadn’t – then what happens when you open a forbidden door may come as a surprise. See if desperate

Review - The Gods of Egypt

Like the Clash of the Titans remake only with Egyptian mythology rather than Greek. As is fairly typical with such pictures, they spent a lot of money on the effects and the cast (particularly the supporting roles) but devoted little effort to coherent storytelling. Mildly amusing

Review - Bridge of Spies

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg team up to produce a predictably over-wrought adaptation of the Cold War prisoner exchange of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. If you can manage not to die of a sincerity overdose, this picture features enough political machinations to keep things interesting. Mildly amusing