Queen of Katwe – 6.5

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A by-the-book sports movie, with no story-arc cliche left unexplored, made interesting and eminently watchable because of its (purported) setting: the slums of Kampala, Uganda. I couldn’t help think of the current hurricane-induced tragedy in Haiti as I watched Phiona’s family evicted from their one room, then washed by a flash flood. Seeing humans triumph over these odds was heartwarming, as always; and learning that the story was true trumped my suspicions that so much could be accomplished through the game of chess.

Deepwater Horizon – 6.5

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Sully, Everest (which I watched on the plane the day before), Patriots Day (for which I saw the trailer) and Deepwater Horizon – there seems to be a trend to dramatize recent real-life tragedies, and the formula is becoming somewhat predictable. There’s the Everyman in the lead – a guy just doing his job, albeit a rather specialized job demanding expertise as well as competence. And the wife, who adds nothing to the plot but is there to tug at the heartstrings: while I quite enjoyed the shots of Keira Knightley, I could have done without Laura Linney and Kate Hudson. Then there are the technical details, which are just beyond viewer understanding but are crucial to the outcomes. DH went a little overboard, so to speak, in this regard, with the characters speaking so fast we had trouble hearing what we couldn’t understand. And the calamity, too, was rather overdrawn; so that we were surprised that only 11 people died, instead of being saddened by the calamity. At the end, though, I felt I knew more about the event but hadn’t had a particularly memorable dramatic experience. The bad guys – BP execs – were caricatures (John Malkovich, anyone?), and there wasn’t a lot of clarity as to what went wrong, how it could have been prevented, or who, if anyone, were heroes. Questions abound.

Little Men – 7.5

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Greg Kinnear plays the fumbling father, Jennifer Ehle plays Laura Linney and Paulina Garcia plays the more challenging role (thus, the cigarette smoking) of the dress store owner seeking to avoid eviction by the yuppie couple moving into the Brooklyn brownstone that houses her boutique. The core of Ira Sachs’s movie, though, is the sons, two 13-year-olds who are testing their families, each other, and themselves. Their relationship recalls the recent French film, Microbe and Gasoline, although the American version, surprisingly, is far more realistic. Nothing big here, but thoughtful.

Sausage Party – 5

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This was a feature-length cartoon put on by, as Mad Magazine used to boast, “the usual gang of idiots” – in this case, Seth Rogen, Josh Hill, Bill Hader, James Franco, Kristen Wiig, Paul Rudd, etc., etc. The conceit was cute, the jokes and language prurient, but there wasn’t much more here than in an episode, say, of South Park.

Sully – 8

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A well-made movie about real people just doing their jobs – how rare and how nice! And oh, I cried the whole time, so there was plenty of drama and heroism. All along the way Clint Eastwood interjected tertiary characters in a way that humanized the story even more and added a light, often comic touch into the mix. Tom Hanks does what he does best – exude decency, while his copilot, Aaron Eckhart, leavened the dough and was always more interesting to watch. The Laura Linney thread, the wife-at-home, was a bit heavyhanded for me, and the press mob was tiresome and unoriginal. The bigger issue is why the NTSB panel was so adversarial – the FAA claims this is a misrepresentation – but that little fiction is a small price to pay for having my heart warmed.

Equity – 6.5

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This film was doubly remarkable: 1) it based an adventure/crime thriller on an IPO; and 2) all the protagonists were women. Alysia Reiner was a more appealing Assistant U.S. Attorney than Anna Gunn’s investment banker, but both made more sense than Sarah Megan Thomas, whose role needed more filling out to be understandable. The men were all cads. The story gave me the bigger problem: who was really hurt by the insider trading scheme here? where was the crime? did I care? Or, as one character insisted, was it all a game? Props to Reiner and Thomas, who wrote and produced as well as starred.

Elevator to the Gallows – 8

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A wonderfully moody feature debut by the great Louis Malle from 1958, filmed in black-and-white – mostly black – with a perfectly adapted score by Miles Davis and sultry performances by Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet. The Hitchcockian tension begins with the opening shot and never lets up; the plot unfolds like a textbook tragedy – there is no way out; and the only smile comes from the cocky German tourist before he gets blown away. Movies (and the world) were slower paced back in the ’50s, but their power was just as great.

Hell or High Water – 7.7

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This film takes place in the same country for old men made familiar by the Coen brothers’ classic, with a jowly Jeff Bridges reprising the role previously played by Tommy Lee Jones. Much less happens here, and that is the movie’s other strength – i.e., besides the gorgeously banal West Texas setting – its remarkable realism. No one here is larger than life; there are no gratuitous killings; our hero doesn’t miraculously dodge a fusillade of bullets; and everyone has a believable motive for what they do. The brothers rob banks – one because he desperately needs the money for his kids, the other because he needs the action. The Texas Ranger works his way through the case, plodding step by step – even recalling my favorite memory of “Maverick” by sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for the crime to come to him. We enjoy the people, the bit characters as well as Chris Pine; and in a clever play on our emotions, we are allowed to be happy that one of the crooks gets away, because it is really The Bank that is the Bad Guy.

Lo and Behold – 4

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Two hours of my life I won’t get back, or more appropriately, two hours I could have spent more profitably surfing the web. Werner Herzog’s subtitled “Reveries of the Connected World” was a bunch of “reveries,” all right, but there wasn’t much connection. Herzog is one of my all-time favorite directors, and his sense of open wonder is usually refreshing, but here it came across as naivete, if not ignorance, as he asked his internet-savvy subjects such unhelpful questions as, “Do computers dream?” and “Could your soccer-playing robot discs beat Brazil?” The common thread through Herzog cinema is the oddball, and that continued here, in spades. On one end of the spectrum were the fruitcakes, cited as examples of the Internet’s harmful effects; on the other were computer geniuses, who only appeared odd because Herzog clearly had no idea what they were talking about. Anyone who went to this movie hoping to understand what the Internet is or how it works would walk out as baffled as ever. Anyone who was already worried about the fate of our civilization, however, would have added another potential cataclysm to fret: solar flares.

Cafe Society – 7.5

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A sweet love story, depending entirely on your view of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. Unlike classic Woody Allen, the ancillary characters were ciphers and the jokes few and far between. The period clothes, settings and music, of course were impeccable. I have always been infatuated with Kristen Stewart, and she’s never been more seductive, in the emotions she portrayed as well as her looks. Eisenberg, however, represents the Woody Allen issue: the doofus whom the beautiful women find irresistible, and it’s hard to go along on that ride. Eisenberg has the same mannerisms he’s had in every role he’s played so far, which is also wearing thin. I fondly remember this same couple in similar roles in Adventureland seven years ago; you’d think Eisenberg would have outgrown some of his stutter by now. When we are asked to accept him as maitre-d’ of the hottest club in town, we realize we are lost in Woody’s fantasyland.