Long Shot (Jacob DeMendola, 2017) -
A largely pedestrian true-crime documentary that gets by on a novel enough twist in its proceedings (which I am still hesitant to spell out even as they make up the main reason to watch this, so look it up if you're interested) but I don't think that it makes for an especially strong reason to actively recommend this unless you're already into true-crime stuff and looking for something short.
Supernova (Walter Hill, 2000) -
This spaceship-intercepts-distress-signal-and-things-go-wrong story ends up playing like the poor man's
Event Horizon with its semi-competent visuals being outmatched by a plot that's paced just quickly enough to compensate for its sheer dullness.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning, 2017) -
Very much a shameless rehash of
Curse of the Black Pearl (pretty young couple, undead villain, stuffy British secondary antagonist, etc.) that admittedly recaptures a fraction of the franchise's swashbuckling magic but not enough to totally distract from how this installment once again goes through the same motions.
Girls Trip (Malcolm D. Lee, 2017) -
Pretty standard as far as comedy plots go and I didn't get as many laughs as I'd hoped for given its reputation as one of the year's best comedies, but it's got a big heart and that goes quite a long way towards making it work as a whole.
The Hitman's Bodyguard (Patrick Hughes, 2017) -
The high concept of a washed-up bodyguard being forced to protect a hitman he hates sounds decent in theory, but its execution here is abysmal. The action is mostly clunky (there's one stand-out scene involving a hardware store and that's it), it has some of the ugliest digital cinematography I've seen, and it can barely muster any sense of fun whatsoever through its constantly-bickering cast.
American Made (Doug Liman, 2017) -
I think I have to admit to myself that I ultimately don't care too much for this particular kind of true-crime movie that functions as a tragicomic perversion of the American Dream (or, to put it more bluntly, a
GoodFellas riff). Even its greater point about the politically twisted intersection of the War on Drugs and the military-industrial complex is largely lost in the middle of seeing Tom Cruise bumble his way through a generic rise-and-fall narrative.
Hatchet for the Honeymoon (Mario Bava, 1970) -
I've watched a bunch of Bava films now and I find him to be a fairly dependable filmmaker who can deliver lean and mean movies that trade in agreeably lurid styles that more than compensate for fluffy thriller plots. This one plays like a prototype for
American Psycho with its mix of satire and sadism, which makes it an enjoyable watch but I do think Bava's done this same thing much better in other movies.
Manos: The Hands of Fate (Harold P. Warren, 1966) -
I've already watched the corresponding
MST3K episode at least three times, so watching it without the riffs is practically a formality at this point. In any case, whatever you've heard about this movie is true - it really is one of the worst movies ever made. The entertainment value here mainly comes from the off-kilter screen presence of Torgo and the uncanny-sounding jazz on the soundtrack (plus the odd moment of bizarre production design), but otherwise you really are better off watching this with Joel and the 'bots.
Pottersville (Seth Henrikson, 2017) -
A bizarre little movie where Michael Shannon's small-town shopkeeper inadvertently perpetrates a Bigfoot hoax while drunk on moonshine. The curiosity factor of seeing noteworthy names attached to such a strange-sounding project is enough to make this more intriguing than your typical holiday-season Netflix-queue fodder, but the novelty definitely wears off before too long and leaves you with a saccharine mishmash of moments that'll remind you of better movies.
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016) -
A film about a group of French terrorists who carry out a series of bombings before hiding out in a high-end department store. It's a very protracted exercise that plays with its technical and narrative conventions enough to compensate for moments where its existentialist treatment of the terrorists wears a little thin on one's interest level.