Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019): CAST AND CREDITS: The first post-Avengers: Endgame Marvel movie quickly skates over the ramifications of that movie's ending, which I think will soon be one of those 'Now let us never speak of those five years again!' things in upcoming Marvel joints. 

Tom Holland makes a good Peter Parker. Marvel has wisely emphasized Peter's mechanical and problem-solving genius, a welcome nod to Peter's status as a very clever fellow in the classic Steve Ditko/Stan Lee comics of the 1960's. Hey, that guy beat the Sandman with a goddam vacuum cleaner!!! 

Pretty much all the actors are charming, and Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio is a hoot. Even the tweaking of Mysterio's origin is funny yet convincing, though I sort of miss the idea of a character who was a visual and special effects movie guy. Maybe because he could have teamed up with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Stuntman. 

The whole thing plays like one of those Roger Moore James Bond movies where everything stays pretty light and jokey while Bond travels from country to country destroying priceless artifacts and occasionally landmarks. Recommended.

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018): CAST AND CREDITS: The first adaptation of the post-Stieg Larsson Lisbeth Salander novels is a competent, surprisingly bland thriller. Salander, played with competence but little spark by Claire Foy, is now basically Batman or The Equalizer, but with more hacking skills and lesbian sex. Would I have cast Stephen Merchant as a computer whiz? Mmm. No. He's fine, but I kept expecting Ricky Gervais to wander in at any minute. Which would probably have spiced things up! Lightly recommended as a time-filler.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): CAST AND CREDITS: Technically the third (!) film in a trilogy of Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017) sees Godzilla once again playing hero against an invasive super-monster from outer space, the monster originally known as Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster in the old Toho Studios kaiju movies. 

I had a lot of fun. The tone remains fairly light throughout, striking a nice balance between the grimmer Godzilla (2014) and the light-as-hell Kong: Skull Island. The human characters are paper thin but generally not all that annoying. Mothra and Rodan also play major roles, while the movie also teases a King Kong/Godzilla buddy movie should a fourth film get made. Recommended.

The Front Runner (2018)

The Front Runner (2018): adapted by Matt Bai, Jay Carson, and Jason Reitman from the book All the Truth Is Out by Matt Bai; directed by Jason Reitman; starring Hugh Jackman (Gary Hart), Vera Farmiga (Lee Hart), J.K. Simmons (Hart Campaign Manager Bill Dixon), Alfred Molina (Ben Bradlee), Mamoudou Athie (AJ Parker), and Sara Paxton (Donna Rice):

Solid, enjoyable tour through The Fall of Gary Hart during the early Presidential campaigning season of 1987. Hugh Jackman is perfectly fine as the charismatic Hart, the Democratic Front Runner when we begin in 1987. His polling numbers suggested that he could beat presumptive Republican candidate George H.W. Bush. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Hart would become the first Presidential candidate whose campaign would be derailed by the sort of tabloid gossip previously, mostly, absent from Presidential campaigns. After him, the deluge! The accusations made against Hart now seem quaint in the Age of Trump. Well, quaint if one is a Republican. Democrats still savage their candidates over these and lesser outrages. The Republicans don't care.

The film-makers streamline the story of Hart somewhat, omitting a later, unsuccessful return to the Democratic race after his initial withdrawal. The story nonetheless still resonates, balancing the seeming puerility of the causes of Hart's political demise with characters who question Hart's decision-making abilities, his truthfulness, his ability to navigate political adversity, and the larger questions of male privilege and the inequality of power in certain 'relationships.'

In all, The Front Runner presents a sea change in how the media would cover politics and politicians. There's no small irony that Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee (played here by Alfred Molina) finally decides to go with the story, given that Bradlee spent the entire JFK Administration alternately covering up for, and partying with, JFK and friends. Recommended.

Searching (2018)

Searching (2018): written and directed by Aneesh Changanty with Sev Ohanian; starring John Cho (David Kim), Michelle La (Margot Kim), and Debra Messing (Detective Vick): Tight, innovative thriller plays out entirely on the computer screen through various applications and feeds. It works on a TV screen without causing eyestrain because the camera does zoom in on relevant material, unlike the Unfriended movies, which are best watched on a computer screen from 18 inches away.

John Cho plays a widower who discovers one day that he doesn't know what his teen-aged daughter has been doing in the months since her mother died. Cho's quest to find his daughter will play out on Facebook and in chat rooms, vlog posts and email and texts. Debra Messing plays the police detective assigned to the case, already more than 24 hours old by the time Cho realizes his daughter is missing.

Searching works in part because it remains intimately focused on Cho's grief and anger. It's also extremely clever in displaying all the ways we are watched in our day-to-day life, voluntarily and involuntarily. The film-makers also do a nice job of creating a twisty plot that plays fair with the audience with its investigative plot. All the evidence of what happened is there -- you just have to watch carefully. All this and several distinctively Hitchcockian tropes deployed in a thoroughly modern manner. Recommended.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007): written by Kelly Masterson; directed by Sidney Lumet; starring Philip Seymour Hoffman (Andy Hanson), Ethan Hawke (Hank Hanson), Marisa Tomei (Gina Hanson), Albert Finney (Charles Hanson), Rosemary Harris (Nanette Hanson), Aleksa Palladino (Chris), Michael Shannon (Dex), Amy Ryan (Martha), and Brian F. O'Byrne (Bobby): 

The great humanist director Sidney Lumet's final film is an acting showcase for everyone in it, as Lumet's films generally were. It feels like a great, lost Jim Thompson novel re-earthed -- a twisted tale of crime, incompetence, chance, and family. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a scene in a car that's an all-time great freak-out. 

Revealing much of the plot actually spoils the plot really quickly. Suffice to say, Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play desperate brothers, Marisa Tomei spends an ultimately unsettling amount of time topless, and Michael Shannon does an early version of his Unsettling Michael Shannon Character. 

Filmed in and around NYC, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is the last addition to Lumet's catalogue of urban, paranoid (melo) drama. The weirdest trivia about this movie is that it reunited Lumet and Albert Finney after more than 30 years. Lumet directed Finney as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in the 1970's all-star film version of Murder on the Orient Express. The two movies -- and two Finney performances -- couldn't be much more different while still sharing a 'detective' arc for Finney's character in both movies. Highly recommended.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Murder on the Orient Express (1974): adapted by Paul Dehn from the Agatha Christie novel; directed by Sidney Lumet; starring Albert Finney (Hercule Poirot), Lauren Bacall (Hubbard), Martin Balsam (Bianchi), Ingrid Bergman (Greta), Jacqueline Bisset (Countess Andrenyi), Sean Connery (Arbuthnot), John Gielgud (Beddoes), Wendy Hiller (Princess Dragomiroff), Anthony Perkins (McQueen), Vanessa Redgrave (Mary), Michael York (Count Andrenyi), Colin Blakeley (Hardman), Richard Widmark (Ratchett), Rachel Roberts (Hildegarde), and Jean Pierre Cassel (Pierre): 

The producers brought the 'so many stars in head-shot boxes on the poster!' approach normally used by Hollywood for disaster movies and historical epics at the time to this adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's most famous Hercule Poirot novels. With a twist!

Frankly, it's a bit... soporific in its first half, as various clues are laid out prior to the eponymous murder. And Albert Finney is a honking, sputtering, too-jolly-by-half Hercule Poirot. The high-powered cast goes through its paces, nabbing a sympathy Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Ingrid Bergman along the way (even though Bergman had already won two deserved Oscars and should have nabbed a third for Notorious). It's an interesting movie, and something of a departure for Sidney Lumet. Lightly recommended.

The Fog of War (2003)

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara (2003): directed by Errol Morris; starring Errol Morris and Robert McNamara as themselves: Errol Morris pretty much just puts a camera on Kennedy/LBJ Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and interviews him several times. It's fascinating stuff as McNamara wrestles with his failures in Viet Nam, excusing some by noting that LBJ wouldn't listen to him sometimes while owning others. 


We don't learn much about his private life (though Morris includes a scene in which McNamara discusses not discussing sensitive issues from his private life). We certainly learn about McNamara's theories on the rights and wrongs of war ('proportionality' is a key idea) as we survey his career, structured along those 11 lessons noted in the sub-title. Nor Morris' greatest documentary, but probably an essential one for anyone who wants to understand the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Highly recommended.

The Colorado Kid (2005) by Stephen King

Scene actually in novel, sort of

The Colorado Kid (2005) by Stephen King: Hard Case Crime recently reissued King's novel he wrote expressly for them when their line was launching back in 2005, complete with some new introductory material and illustrations. I think it's a dandy mystery. Is it a mystery? Well, you have to read it!

It's not the pulpy paperback material sometimes reprinted by Hard Case (God bless them), which makes the lurid covers of both this edition and the original comical rather than entirely representative of the tone of the novel. The Colorado Kid would form some of the inspiration for the TV series Haven, though Haven carried over just about nobody other than the eponymous Kid who, it's no mystery from the back cover blurb, is already dead when the novel begins. 

Nothing like this in novel

If the novel isn't quite a mystery, it is a novel ABOUT mystery. It's also a love letter to old-style journalism, old coots, and the fresh-faced enthusiasm of the young just starting out on their own. It's certainly the King novel that would work best with a David Lynch adaptation. Highly recommended.