Review – The Show

Giancarlo Esposito directs and acts in this heavy-handed condemnation of reality show excesses. After Bachelor-esque contest ends with an unexpected on-air homicide, the show’s star and producer find themselves enthralled by the ratings potential of a snuff series featuring live broadcasts of increasingly elaborate suicides. Before the show reaches its final episode, it’s plumbing the depths of pathos and gore. Mildly amusing

Review – Us

Jordan Peele serves up a delightfully creepy tale of a family that finds itself face to face with doppelgängers seeking to replace them. It isn’t easy to pack intelligent, stylish and violent into a single movie, but this one does the trick. Worth seeing

Review – Ma

Ugh, what a depressing movie. Octavia Spencer plays a woman with no end of icky problems. She has a tragic backstory of high school bullying and abuse. In turn she inflicts Munchausen by proxy on her daughter and goes full-on psycho with some of the neighbor kids. Plus she works at a vet’s office, so we’re stuck for the whole picture wondering what horrible torment is going to be inflicted on animals. I admired the unflinching brutality of the story, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. See if desperate

Review – Godzilla: King of the Monsters

At this point I’m kinda losing track of what Godzilla movie is a sequel to what other Godzilla movie. Based on the casting, I’m guessing this is a follow-up to the 2014 version. If so, it’s everything the first one was only more so. More monsters. More confusing, plot-stretching nonsense. A little longer. A little more expensive. But for the most part, if you liked the previous one then you’ll probably get a kick out of this one too. Mildly amusing

Review – Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

After re-inventing Sleeping Beauty in the first one, this one didn’t have as obvious a plot direction. So it piles on the special effects and serves them up with familiar pro-nature, pro-fairy themes. The battle at the end drags out far too long, but otherwise this is on par with its predecessor. Mildly amusing

Review – The Secret Life of Pets 2

Animated animals face mild levels of peril, round two. See if desperate

Review – The Death of Stalin

Armando Iannucci brings his farcical fakeumentary style of political satire to bear on the title event. Thus serious-as-a-heart-attack characters such as Khrushchev and Beria find themselves transformed into Altman-esque, bungling bureaucrats. The effect is surprisingly entertaining. There’s just enough absurd, actual history here to make the broad comedy of the fictional parts work. Worth seeing

Review – Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Not with a bang. The special effects are the star of this final chapter in the Star Wars saga, which is fitting enough. But instead of supporting them with a straightforward space opera plot, J.J. Abrams can’t resist the temptation to employ his hallmark blend of grandiosity and moral ambiguity. If you told me back in 1977 that this is how it would end, my 11-year-old self would have been disappointed. As my 54-year-old self is now. Mildly amusing