Planetary Union Network | "Pria"

Guess who was a guest on the latest episode of the Planetary Union Network podcast?

Sadly, a last-minute schedule change prevented me from joining that part of the conversation, but it's a really cool interview. Frakes compares directing the Orville cast with directing the cast of Next Generation and talks about the similarities and differences between The Orville and Star Trek: Discovery. He's got a great take on it.

After the interview, I joined Dan and Joe to talk about the Orville episode that Frakes directed: "Pria." Among other things, we discuss Isaac's character development in the episode and the casting of Charlize Theron as the title character.

N3rd World | The Orville vs Star Trek: Discovery

On the most recent episode of N3rd World, Dan and Ron and I are joined by the awesome Brandon J Carr to compare and contrast Seth McFarlane's The Orville with Star Trek: Discovery.

7 Days in May | Revisiting 2016 favorites and '80s unfavorites

Jane Got a Gun (2015)



Spent some time this week revisiting some of my favorite movies from 2016. Some of them were new to David and Diane, but all of them I wanted another look it.

I was especially eager to watch Jane Got a Gun again. I loved it last year, but lukewarm reviews by other folks made me wonder if I just wasn't in a really good mood when I watched it the first time. The answer is: nope! It's great.

I love how it unfolds in three different time periods with everything leading to a big showdown between Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor. Joel Edgerton helps Portman, but where most movies would have had him take over and become the hero, Jane lets Portman hold onto that role. She is awesome and the movie is awesome. Glad I put it in my Top 5 last year.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)



Liked it even better the second time. Alexander Skarsgård is an excellent Tarzan; probably the best ever, though we'll need to finish Greystoked before I can make that claim. Legend isn't a faithful adaptation of a Burroughs novel and it even changes some basic elements of Tarzan lore, but each change is considered and smart and exactly what's needed to keep the legend fresh and alive.

My only complaint is that the CG animals could be more convincing, but I'm thrilled with the story and the characters.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)



My favorite Kelvin Star Trek movie. That's not saying anything in comparison to Into Darkness, but I'm a big fan of the 2009 reboot and this is better. These are the characters - not growing into the people that I know and love - but already as I know and love them. Plus Jaylah. Plus everyone is 300% more kickass than they were in the original series. (And that's not because the original series wasn't kickass. It totally was. But not everyone got to do it back then and they certainly didn't get to do it directed by Justin Lin.)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)



After watching this again and loving it just as much, I realized that it's directed by the same guy who's directing Thor: Ragnarok. Which makes me 1000x more excited for that movie than I already was. Taika Waititi knows how to make stuff funny, but also full of heart. If I ever meet him, I'm going to have someone take a selfie of us.

The Island (1980)



This has been on my list for so long. Michael Caine in a horror/thriller about modern-day pirates who dress as Golden Age pirates? And written by Peter Benchley? Yes, please.

It starts well enough with some scary and gruesome boat attacks. Caine plays a reporter named Blair Maynard who wants to investigate the disappearances, but he gets stuck with his kid for the weekend and has to take the boy along. Maynard's a pretty lousy dad, but Caine plays him with charm and it's clear that he loves his son Justin, even if he doesn't really know what to do with him. The movie is pretty good while it's about the pair of them traveling around the Caribbean and trying to bond. In a cruel twist of fate, it's not until the pirates show up that the movie sucks.

I can see how this could be a fun adventure novel, but putting them on screen makes it impossible to take the pirates seriously as a threat. They're bloodthirsty and dangerous, but also unbelievable and goofy. How their civilization has been able to survive all of these centuries is never seriously addressed, so they come off as deadly historical reenactors. It's as silly as it sounds.

Also silly is the drama around Justin's joining the pirate gang. There's a great story to be told about a kid who deserts the already shaky relationship he has with his father to do some horrible things with a bunch of new friends. How far can a child go before a parent gives up hope of bringing them back? Unfortunately, this isn't that story. Justin's transformation from normal kid to Lord of the Flies is way too quick and the movie doesn't really care whether we believe it or not.

Yellowbeard (1983)



The '80s were full of pirate movies that didn't work as well as they should have. I'm sure I'll get back around to some more of them later, but Yellowbeard showed up on my TiVo, so I gave it another look.

I was so disappointed back in the day. You take most of Monty Python and put them in a movie with Cheech & Chong and most of the cast of Young Frankenstein. I don't care what the movie's about, that's got to be hilarious. Making it about pirates is bonus. But Yellowbeard isn't as funny as its individual parts promise. And when I first saw it years ago, the letdown was unrecoverable. I hated it.

Watching it again, I laughed quite a bit. As Stacia says at She Blogged By Night, "Yellowbeard is a complete disaster, but it’s a funny disaster." She has a great analysis of what went wrong (and what went right) and links to still further information from Yellowbeard's director, so I highly recommend checking out her review. I'll probably never watch it again, but I'm glad to have it redeemed at least a little in my memory.

High Road to China (1983)



Another one that I wanted to like back in the day better than I did. It suffered by getting compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a comparison that the marketing of the movie asked for, but it's not the best way of approaching the film. I haven't done an exhaustive history of it, but I have no doubt that it was greenlit thanks to Raiders' success. High Road had been in development since the late '70s though, so it's conception was inspired by neither Indiana Jones nor '30s movie serials. High Road is an homage to a later genre: mid-century war/adventure movies.

It's telling that it was originally going to be directed by John Huston and was ultimately directed by Brian Hutton, because it has way more in common with The African Queen and Kelly's Heroes than The Adventures of Smilin' Jack. I still don't completely love High Road to China, because I never really care about whether Selleck and Armstrong get together, but I do appreciate it as a globe-trotting adventure with a war movie finale.

Argoman, the Fantastic Superman (1967)



Went to see Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live and this was the movie. I'm probably breaking some kind of social contract by telling you, because it was billed as a Secret Surprise Film. (There were two shows - an early and a late - and because of schedules, Diane went to the early one - which was Eegah - and I went to the late. David went to both.) Joel Hodgson was there to MC and he said that he wanted the second film to be a secret because he feels the show works best when the audience doesn't know anything about the movie. I'm only telling you, because the chances are really, really tiny of someone reading this who also has tickets to an upcoming late show of the tour. If I've spoiled it for you, I'm sorry. You're in for a great show, though.

It's hard to judge Argoman the Fantastic Superman in The Incredible Paris Incident on its own merits outside of the experience of the show that I saw it in, but I think it's safe to say that it's awful. It's a late '60s Italian film inspired by James Bond and Adam West's Batman. Mostly Bond, if Bond was the millionaire playboy secret-identity of a superhero. (Unlike Batman, Argoman the Fantastic Superman actually has powers. They're not defined very well, but telekinesis is part of it. And also unlike '60s Batman, it took me a long time to decide if Argoman was a good guy or a bad guy. That's probably the Bond influence again.) Calling it "camp" implies some intentionality that I'm not sure was there, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. If you like horrible Italian cinema from the '60s, it's bonkers enough to make it worth tracking down - whether or not you have wisecracking robots to watch it with.

Windjammer (1937)



It's a decent idea. A lawyer finagles his way onto a yacht to serve a subpoena to a well-protected tycoon who's leaving the country on a race across the Pacific. The execution is miserable though, with the lawyer's seeming super ineffectual and the tycoon's being infuriatingly entitled in a way that I think is supposed to seem whimsically charming. Maybe. I had a hard time telling what kind of tone the movie's going for.

Complicating things is the tycoon's equally entitled daughter who hates the lawyer for obvious reasons until she suddenly doesn't and we enter romantic comedy territory. I think maybe the whole movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy? That would explain why it doesn't really care about how horrible the woman's dad is. Anyway, I'm sorry I watched it.

Johnny Angel (1945)



A case study on why genres are important. I've got a few wishlist searches on my TiVo, so sometimes I record things and I don't really remember why. I bet I grabbed this one because it's about a sea captain investigating the death of his sea captain father and there's gold involved. But that's all I knew about it, so going in I was expecting some kind of adventure story. Which means that I got impatient with how slowly and moodily the story was unfolding.

When that happens, I usually stop the movie for a minute and do some research. Learning that Johnny Angel is a film noir (that just so happens to be about a sea captain and some gold in New Orleans) made all the difference in the world. I started it up again, confident that I could enjoy it for what it was. Expectations are weird.

It's pretty good. None of the cast is especially remarkable except Hoagy Carmichael as a really cool cabbie, but the mystery is good and the movie is awesomely atmospheric. I like how the mystery unfolds, too, with some pleasant (if not especially shocking) twists.

Black Bart (1948)



Between this and Frontier Gal, I'm pretty much done with Yvonne De Carlo Westerns. Or at least with seeking out Westerns specifically because she was in them. She may be Lily Munster - and she's certainly gorgeous - but man does she play some miserable characters. Black Bart isn't focused on rape the way that Frontier Gal was, but it's still about a supposedly strong-willed woman who bends to a man's wishes simply because he's the man.

In this case, the man is a stagecoach robber named Black Bart. He's kind of a Zorro character except that he deserves to be an outlaw. In fact, his master plan for robbing stagecoaches really puts him in the supervillain category. And yet I think we're supposed to find it tragic when he gets what's coming to him. I don't know. If he's supposed to be charming and likable, then the movie makes a huge miscalculation, because he's a boring weasel. I'm glad to see him fall and only sorry that he drags De Carlo into it. I guess it doesn't actually end too badly for her, but that's only because the movie completely forgets about her at some point and never comes back to her again.

Fort Apache (1948)



Got interested in watching John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" as a trilogy. I've seen Fort Apache before and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but I have no memory of Rio Grande. Or maybe I've seen it, but I'm getting it confused with the million other Westerns named after rivers. Anyway, I've certainly never watched the three movies close together enough to understand why people consider them a trilogy, so I'm gonna work on that.

Fort Apache is good, if frustrating. It's frustrating in the same way that Mutiny on the Bounty is. I don't have patience for rigid, narrow-minded characters who have authority over more level-headed people. The fear of that scenario playing out in real life is a big reason that I'd never fit well into a military organization. But Fonda is great at the role and the script gives him some humanizing moments in addition to the maddeningly bull-headed ones. I end up feeling bad for the guy, which is remarkable considering how much I dislike him.

Shirley Temple sure is a joy, though, as Fonda's daughter. And I like John Agar more in this than I usually do. John Wayne is typically watchable, too. So as this kind of military drama goes, Fort Apache is the best I've seen.

The Bribe (1949)



Finally, I checked off another Vincent Price noir movie with The Bribe. Robert Taylor plays a government agent investigating a ring of airplane engine smugglers (?!) and Price is the (not really a spoiler, because it's Vincent Price) mastermind behind the operation. Ava Gardner and her husband (John Hodiak) are suspects, but Taylor gets too close to Gardner and his loyalties are compromised. Charles Laughton is Price's front man in the operation; mostly there to give voice to Taylor's conundrum by reminding everyone of the stakes as often as possible.

Taylor is never a compelling lead. He even makes Ivanhoe boring, for goodness sake. I don't know that I've ever seen Ava Gardner in anything else, so I don't want to judge her too harshly for The Bribe. She's dull too, but that might be Taylor's rubbing off on her. Vincent Price is great, but he's barely in the thing, which leaves Laughton to do all the hard work. His character is purely there for exposition (and I guess a red herring, if you're super gullible), but he does fantastic things with it.

Kudos also to directors Robert Leonard and Vincente Minnelli for giving a mediocre story tons of style. The final showdown between Taylor and Price is unforgettable and there's a good reason that The Bribe was one of the movies edited into Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

Song of the Week: "Goodbye" by Echosmith

I love the guitar in this and the chorus is amazing and hilarious: "When you finally find yourself... tell him I said, 'Goodbye.'"

You can't take the 'cast from me

A whole lot of podcasting going on this past week, On Hellbent for Letterbox, Pax and I dove back into the world of spaghetti westerns with Lee Van Cleef in the bonkers Sabata. We also discussed Gregory Peck in The Bravados, Matt Wagner and Francesco Francavilla's Zorro, and Robert Conrad and Ross Martin in The Wild Wild West.





Then over on Dragonfly Ripple, we talked sci-fi and politics. Carlin and I start with a discussion of how we introduce our kids to politics and then get into some sci-fi TV with political elements with the kids. We start with the two V mini-series from the 1980s and then move on to Firefly. Plus, on Jetpack Tiger, Carlin and Dash talk about their experience with Star Wars Celebration.





And finally, there are a couple of recent Starmageddon episodes I have't told you about yet. In the first one, Dan talks about finally finishing Clone Wars, Ron and Dan discuss their addiction to the Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes mobile game, and we share our thoughts on the most recent Star Trek: Discovery casting: Jason Issacs as the captain and Rainn Wilson as our favorite Star Trek rogue, Harry Mudd.

Then in the latest episode, we're joined by David Spell to discuss all of the exciting news from Star Wars Celebration, including the Last Jedi trailer, the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II video game, and the girl-friendly Forces of Destiny.

My Top 10 Movies of 2016

10. Rogue One



I've talked about this one at length on podcasts. Recorded my initial reactions on Starmaggedon, then got together with the Nerd Lunch crew to dig more deeply into it. But if podcasts aren't your thing, here's the short version.

I went into Rogue One just hoping for an entertaining movie that was different from the typical Star Wars experience, and that's exactly what I got. It's a great story and everything a prequel should be. My only disappointment was that I didn't connect with any of the characters as much as I wanted to. I feel empathy for many of them, appreciate the moral journey that Cassian goes on, enjoy what Saw Gerrera represents to the Rebel Alliance at large, and I really really like K-2SO. I just don't love any of these folks as much as I do Rey, Finn, and Poe.

9. Sing Street



I love the setting and the music. That's a lot of fun and the original songs are super catchy and sound right out of the '80s. I also really love the relationship between Conor and his older brother and the themes about firstborn children blazing trails for their younger siblings.

I'm not crazy about the assertion that success can only be found outside of Dublin, though. Especially since the movie has to ignore the existence of U2 in order to make that claim. It's a major omission for the sole purpose of forcing Conor down a particular path, when I'd much rather have seen him make a different choice anyway.

Very good movie, but as someone who adores director John Carney's Begin Again, I expected much more from his take on my favorite music genres.

8. Magnificent Seven



Another one that I went into more detail about on a podcast. Very nice update. I love the diversity in the cast and these actors are all compelling and great. I also love James Horner's score, especially how he suggests the original Elmer Bernstein music without simply dropping it in whole.

My issue with the movie is that it replaces the complex themes of the original with a straightforward revenge story. Peter Sarsgaard is great as the villain, but the character is so charmless and excessively evil (unlike Eli Wallach's Calvera in 1960) that he becomes less interesting.

Still, the way the heroes react to Sarsgaard's character is great and that's where the real story is anyway.

I liked it even more the second time I saw it. Everyone's motivations may be simplified from the original, but I don't like the characters any less for it. In fact, I like all of these Seven more than a couple of the originals.

7. Doctor Strange



Visually stunning with great performances. I loved the sense of humor. Strange has a similar character arc to Tony Stark, but it's different enough to stay interesting. Stark's ego and selfishness makes him charmingly careless while Strange is arrogant and often mean. The similarities seem intentional though and I love the movie's description of the mystical masters as essentially the Avengers of the spiritual world.

6. Legend of Tarzan



I was extremely skeptical after seeing the trailers, but I love this movie.

I love that it doesn't spend much time on Tarzan's very familiar origin, but relates only what it needs to in quick flashbacks sprinkled throughout the main story. It's made some minor changes to that - mostly around Jane's background - but for great reasons that improved her as a character.

And it's the characters that I love the most. This feels like Tarzan and Jane, but a mature, contemporary (even though it's set in the nineteenth century) Tarzan and Jane. They're clearly equals and Jane has a lot to do. She's technically the damsel in distress for quite a while, but the movie comments on that and subverts it. Margot Robbie can pretty much do no wrong at this point.

Alexander Skarsgård is a perfect Tarzan. He's big, he's physical, but most of all he's completely convincing as both English lord and wild man. It's awesome, because we meet him in London, then get to watch the civilization slowly fall off of him once he returns home to the jungle. It's simultaneously thrilling and also kind of heart-breaking to watch.

The various tribal people are also fantastic. Sidney Ralitsoele in particular plays an unbelievably handsome and charming ally. I expect to see a lot more of that guy.

I don't always know what I'm going to get from a Samuel L Jackson or Christoph Waltz performance. A lot of times, they're just doing their Samuel L Jackson and Christoph Waltz things, but every once in a while they'll really go all out for a character. I didn't expect Legend of Tarzan to be one of those times, frankly. I was expecting it to be just a big, dumb, heartless cash-grab with half-hearted performances. But everyone's put a lot of effort into it. It helps that they have strong characters to work with. Waltz' motivations are believable and go way beyond just being evil and destructive. And Jackson has a touching backstory that also gives him purpose in the film and explains his actions.

The writers not only get these characters; they also clearly love Burroughs' novels. This feels like a Burroughs adventure. From an alternate timeline perhaps, but the heart is there. And there are lots of references to Burroughs' stuff that I won't spoil.

I do have one minor issue and that's with the quality of the CG. It's not horrible, but it's not especially good either. I was able to overlook it though, because I was so pleased with everything else.

5. Captain America: Civil War



When Warner Bros announced their plans to fast-track the building of a DC cinematic universe, I was worried for two reasons. First, it would be headed up by the folks responsible for the problem-filled Man of Steel. But also, it sounded like WB was hoping to reap the benefits of a shared universe without putting in the years of character development that Marvel had. That's very clearly seen when I compare Batman v Superman with Civil War.

The movies have almost identical plots, with their villainous masterminds who manipulate heroes into fighting each other. But BvS feels forced and unnatural while Civil War is fun and organic. Everything that happens in Civil War flows out of motives and decisions that are believable because Marvel has spent several years exploring and growing these characters. I like all of these people and I understand why they do what they do, even when I don't agree with them.

But Civil War's success isn't all due to work done by previous movies. It's just more smartly written than BvS. The source of the conflict between the heroes is complicated and fascinating, unlike the self-absorption and bigotry that drives BvS. The characters in Civil War are way smarter, too.

So Civil War really shines next to BvS, but even without that comparison, it's a great time at the movies. It's thought-provoking, but it's also funny and the fights are amazingly choreographed. This is superheroics at their best.

4. Jane Got a Gun



I was totally sucked into this story of a woman who's had to make some hard decisions and now faces the violent consequences. There's some High Noon going on in that it's as much about the build-up to the final confrontation as it is about the confrontation itself.

I love that almost as much as I love the way it gradually reveals the characters' pasts and why they currently feel about each other the way that they do. It's all complicated and human; none of it more so than Jane herself. Portman does a great job, as do all of her co-stars.

3. Hunt for the Wilderpeople



Delightful and beautiful. I'm such a sucker for stories about broken people who learn to connect with each other. Especially when they're as charming and funny as this one. I don't want to say too much and oversell it, but I highly recommend this one.

2. Star Trek Beyond



My favorite of the rebooted Star Trek movies. That's not saying anything in comparison to Into Darkness, but I quite enjoyed the 2009 movie and this is better. 2009 did a great job of introducing the alternate timeline and these new versions of the characters, but it's still an origin story. It has to spend most of its time getting everyone into place so that we can have movies like Star Trek Beyond, which is what I really want to see.

Beyond plays like an episode of the show, but a really badass episode of the show. It's got everything I want in a Star Trek story: strange new worlds, new life and new civilizations, reflections about humanity, and plenty of action. As much as I hear fans talk about action as if its some kind of necessary evil for Star Trek these days, it's always been a vital ingredient of the series and I love having it in the mix.

And speaking of "new life," I have a new favorite Star Trek character in Jaylah. Holy Neck Pinch, she's awesome.

1. Moana



I was hoping to love this. I'm a big fan of Disney animated movies when they're done well and the Pacific islands setting is so my bag. Plus, The Rock. But it's even better than I imagined.

The movie subverts expectations while still feeling very much like what it is. And those coconut pirates are totally rad. I laughed a lot, I was deeply moved, and the songs are as good as any Disney musical since The Little Mermaid (or maybe Aladdin; in a really long time, is my point). You know how little girls everywhere drove everyone crazy with their personal renditions of "Let It Go?" That was me with "How Far I'll Go." And David and I can't stop singing "You're Welcome," either.

22 Movies I Liked Just Fine from 2016

Here we are right in the middle of the bell curve.

46. For the Love of Spock



I talked more about this on Starmageddon, but the short version is that this is a good, professional documentary celebrating the character of Spock for Star Trek's 50th anniversary. For those who haven't heard a lot of the behind-the-scenes details of Spock's development before, there are plenty of interesting anecdotes presented in a visually interesting way.

But for those of us who already know the origin of the Vulcan neck pinch, I wish there was more about Adam Nimoy's relationship with his father as well as some deeper exploration of Leonard Nimoy's relationship with his daughter. It seems like she had a different experience from her brother and I would have liked to understand that better.

45. Alice Through the Looking Glass



I loved Tim Burton's critically underrated Alice in Wonderland and would have told you that I welcomed a sequel. But the trailers for Alice Through the Looking Glass made me less excited. Burton's version sent Alice on an emotional and spiritual journey that I deeply connected to. For a sequel to be as effective, it was going to have to find a new journey for Alice, but the trailers for Looking Glass made it appear mostly interested in just offering more of what Burton did.

And that's indeed what's going on. Looking Glass is mostly about fan-service. If you liked Burton's Alice in Wonderland, here's some more with these characters and that setting. Alice even repeats her spiritual journey from the first one (a huge no-no for a sequel), just not as powerfully.

The biggest change comes in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen at the personification of Time. He's good in the part, but he's doing essentially the same schtick that he did as the more-enjoyable Station Inspector in Hugo. Adding Time as a character also introduces a time-travel element to the story, but that's all about the fan-service, too. It's just a device so that Alice can witness the origin stories of the Hatter and the Red Queen. These stories are both supposed to teach Alice something about her own life back in her world, but the messages are really trite compared to what Alice learns in the first film. Or maybe I just didn't connect to them as personally. Either way, Looking Glass was amusing enough, but offered nothing new.

44. Central Intelligence



I love The Rock. And this is my first Kevin Hart movie, but I liked him a lot, too. He's pretty much what I expected from seeing trailers for his other films.

Both actors are funny and charming, but they're also both playing super exaggerated characters in Central Intelligence. One of them needed to play it straight. Hart's got the more grounded character, but he's still out there enough that the whole movie feels flighty and rather slight. It has some great things though to say about friendship, bullies, expectations for life, and finding your calling.

43. Manhattan Night



'40s noir by way of '90s sex thriller. Unfortunately, I only like one of those genres.

The mystery is good and it resolves well with some nice surprises, but it's not the surprise classic that I was hoping for.

42. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping



I don't think I'm a prude, but I may have reached the limit of the number of times I need to hear the F-bomb in my life. And I'm pretty sure Popstar doubled it. It's a funny movie with some great cameos, but I'm not connected to the world that it's parodying. This probably just makes me old.

41. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them



I kind of dig what Eddie Redmayne's doing and I very much like Dan Fogler's character, but the rest of the people in the movie are uninteresting. So is the plot: a thin, easy mystery padded with unrelated scenes of Redmayne's collecting creatures. I figured that I could at least rely on some excellent world-building by JK Rowling, but even that's disappointing. Instead of a magical world that I wanted to immerse myself in, Fantastic Beasts takes place in an oppressive dystopia that I couldn't wait to get out of.

Redmayne and Fogler kept me interested and some of the creature designs are fun, so I ended up liking the movie. But I'm also aware that that's largely thanks to a tremendous amount of goodwill created in me by the Harry Potter series so far. I'll likely watch the sequel out of curiosity, but if we didn't get any more of these, I'd be okay.

40. Ghostbusters



Funny enough with some good effects and just enough story to pull it together. Which pretty much echoes my feelings about the original. It's a decent Ghostbusters remake, but my least-favorite Paul Feig movie since Bridesmaids.

39. Arrival



Has some great things to say about life and some truly unique and cool ways to say them. But it can also be on-the-nose and sloppy in the process. I might like it more after another viewing or two, but I was underwhelmed the first time.

38. Passengers



POSSIBLE SPOILER:

Passengers takes the romantic comedy plot formula and wraps it in a mostly humorless science fiction setting. Fortunately, it's got completely charming people to spend time with, a core dilemma worth discussing, and an ending that I quite like. I understand that not everyone feels that way about the ending, but part of what I like about the movie is that it makes that kind of disagreement and discussion possible.

37. Outlaws and Angels



Great idea for a story. A gang of brutal bank robbers invade the home of a pioneer family. When the youngest daughter of the family begins to seduce the gang's leader, it's not clear if she's doing it to save her family or escape from them. There's an excellent thriller here with some interesting characters; I just wish it weren't buried under so much graphic violence and pretentious symbolism.

36. Don’t Breathe



POSSIBLE SPOILER: 

Another unique premise that's very good at being tense. The problem with this one though is that it's not as morally ambiguous as I was hoping for. I wanted it to let me root for the "villain," but it steals that option away and without ever giving me a good reason to root for the main characters. So I ended up very curious about, but not especially invested in, where the story was going to go.

35. Hail, Caesar!



A lot of fun, but I wish I hadn't seen the trailer, which makes it look like more of a single, cohesive story. That's what I was expecting: something along the lines of Raising Arizona or O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Instead, Hail, Caesar! is a series of vignettes loosely tied together by some common characters. The individual pieces are all amazing and awesome; I just wanted a stronger narrative to pull everything together.

34. The Duel



A lot of cool elements here. It's a Western version of the story where a government agent has to take down the charismatic leader of a religious cult. And that's blended with an interesting murder investigation and a marriage that gradually reveals itself to be something other than it first appeared. Some of those things resolve well and some of them don't.

The two leads are just as uneven. Woody Harrelson is compelling as the cult leader, but Liam Hemsworth doesn't do enough with his Texas Ranger character. He's fine as a ruggedly stoic cowboy, but with everything he goes through, the role needs some emotion that he's not delivering.

33. Love and Friendship



I love Jane Austen movies, but this is a minor entry in the Austen film canon. It's funny and charming and I'm sure I'll revisit it, but when I'm in the mood for Austen I'll still head first to Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility or the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, with Douglas McGrath's Emma being a close third choice. But, if I'm marathoning Austen films, I'm not skipping this one either.

I also love Kate Beckinsale and she was a huge draw for me, but ironically, I would have liked the movie more if it had focused on her character's daughter instead. That's where the real story is.

32. Swiss Army Man



Strange and beautiful and whimsical and ultimately... deeply disturbing. I loved the journey, but the destination was nowhere I wanted to go.

31. X-Men: Apocalypse



I enjoyed it, even as I was aware that it wasn't doing anything new. It's the same basic story that the X-Men movies keep retelling; counting on my already established fondness for these characters to carry me through. A lot like the X-Men comics in that way, actually, but there's a reason I don't read X-Men comics anymore.

30. Zoolander 2



I almost didn't watch this one because of the universally horrible reviews, but I'm glad I went ahead. It's not as funny or good as the first one, but it's funny enough and I just really like spending time with these characters.

29. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies



Was hoping for something goofy and fun, similar to Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. And it is, in parts, but the movie never forgets that it's based on Literature. It never lets itself get completely silly; going instead for a serious take that's occasionally interrupted by ridiculous moments.

But even though it's not exactly what I wanted, it is a pretty good version of what it wants to be. It's not a great adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but it's an effective zombie movie with an interesting spin on the mythology around those monsters. And Lily James and Sam Riley are pretty awesome as the leads.

28. The Girl on the Train



PROBABLE SPOILERS: 

I was considering reading the book until I saw the trailer for the movie. Whatever blurb I read about the novel made it seem like the eponymous Rachel is a complete stranger to a couple that she sees every day on her commute and then one day she notices something strange and when the woman disappears, Rachel has to solve the mystery.

That's all technically true, but the movie trailer revealed that Rachel is actually deeply connected to the couple and probably somehow involved in the woman's disappearance. I'm much more interested in characters who are drawn into adventure against their will, so I wasn't sure I cared about one who got there because of her own bad choices. But I went to see it anyway and I'm glad I did.

It's a good thriller. It's not great, but it kept my interest and Emily Blunt is awesome in it. Actually, everyone's pretty awesome in it and it has a lot of my favorite actors right now from Haley Bennett (Magnificent Seven) to Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) to Luke Evans (tons of stuff). There are even great, smaller roles for Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, and Lisa Kudrow. It's a lot of fun to watch and the mystery is compelling for a while as I'm trying to figure out what did happen to Megan (Bennett). Did she run away? Is she still alive?

Unfortunately, once that answer is revealed, Roger Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters makes it pretty easy to figure out who's responsible. It would have been a complete giveaway except that the movie doesn't play fair. It has the character abruptly change personalities as soon as they're revealed. It does this in a cool and clever way, but it's still a trick and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I loved watching Rachel's investigation, but felt cheated by the answers she uncovers.

27. Deadpool



The trailers and other marketing for Deadpool didn't make me laugh at all (except maybe for that poster above), so I had decided not to see the movie. But positive reviews from friends and critics made me reconsider and with little else going on at the theater one week, I checked it out.

And it's not too bad. I was surprised at how much I cared about the character even while I found him and his girlfriend super annoying. Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are great foils whom I enjoyed whenever they showed up. And it was great to see Gina Carano and TJ Miller.

The movie has a great look to it, too, and I enjoyed the way it used music. My biggest problem with the movie is that it's just not my humor. I chuckled twice and both times were at lines that reveal character, not actual jokes. The jokes were just more of what the trailer suggested: references to sex, poop, and other movies. So while I had a pretty good time watching Deadpool, it ultimately didn't feel like it was for me.

Then again, I watched it again later in the year with a different crowd and laughed more. It may be the kind of movie that's best viewed in a living room with a bunch of friends.

26. Neon Demon



Neon Demon presents itself as a commentary on the fashion industry, but it's doing so much more than just that. I found some challenging insights about humanity's relationship with beauty in general. We're seldom able to just appreciate it for the gift that it is. Instead, we have to get all selfish about it: either becoming jealous of it or wanting to own and control it.

This is strange film and I don't always love the visuals that Nicolas Winding Refn chooses, but I very much appreciate what it's saying.

25. Free State of Jones



Bigger in scope than I expected and that's mostly a good thing. It's not so much the story of one event as it is the history of a very interesting part of Mississippi during the Civil War and into the Reconstruction period (and even into the Civil Rights Movement a little).

All based around this one guy, but what a fascinating person. I just wish it had more to say about the experiences of the black characters. That would have made it more compelling and important to me.