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