Never mentioned among the best Coen brothers movies, and for a reason. Which is to say, it's merely a very good movie with a few touches of greatness. Set in the 1950s, and highly styled with everybody talking like Edward G. Robinson (including Jennifer Jason Leigh, which is strange at first), Tom Robbins plays a hapless mail room clerk promoted to the CEO of a major corporation in an effort to tank the stock so the board can buy a controlling share.

It plays into some of the cinematic stereotypes the Coens thankfully learned quickly to avoid, and the story is entertaining but not novel in the way so many of their movies are—until the ending, which is vintage Coen Brothers and really kind of redeems everything. But you wait through a long B+ movie waiting for an A- ending.

Sam Raimi shares a writing credit, which makes sense...…

Ok nature/animal attack thriller. Kaya Scodelario and her father are trapped in the crawlspace of a house in Florida as particularly ferocious but oddly slow-moving alligators swarm in the rising floodwaters of a Florida hurrican, finding their way into every crevice and attacking everything that moves at the most dramatically opportune moment. Not bad for that.

Some fleeting ok cinematography and occasional well-done action sequences are nice touches. There's a thing with some looters at the convenience store across the street that I liked. Anybody in a movie like this who's first shown stealing an ATM in a flood is obviously going to meet a bad end, but the way they're dispatched is gratifyingly to-the-point.

Decent enough b-movie monster movie, if you're in the mood for a b-movie monster movie. A mechanic is stuck pinned under a car in a garage while giant poisonous nematodes from below the surface of the earth roam and attack people. Somewhere among the better end of what a movie that could be described by that sentence could be.

Very decent, tense thriller. Halle Berry is a 911 operater on a live call with a girl who's been abducted and is in the trunk of a car speeding down the highway. Nothing spectacular but good direction make it watchable, if you're in the mood for a law enforcement action thriller.

Unfortunately the third act sacrifices the moderately successful formula, is less "intense pursuit thriller" and more "Silence Of The Lambs"-derivative stalk-the-killer-around-a-darkened-house, victim-gets-delicious-revenge-in-the-end sort of typical Hollywood stuff. Still, you know, it's alright. I think everything I've ever seen Halle Berry in has been alright, so, it fits.

Moderately entertaining if almost too quirky sci-fi comedy along the lines of, but happily much more restrained than, something like "Being John Malkovich". Paul Giamatti plays himself, so tormented by a gruelling dramatic role that he has his soul scientifically extracted for two weeks so he get play the role. Unfortunately he doesn't realize there is an international trade in extracted souls and his is, er, "misplaced".

The funny thing is he, and other serious actors, like Emily Mortimer, play this absurd idea so straight that it works. They never do reveal exactly what the difference between having a soul and not having a soul is, as everybody who undergoes the process seems to basically still be themselves, although several times people are heard wanting their souls back, and Giamatti is distressed enough to find he can't reclaim his to go through some intrigue trying to get it back.…

Starts out a cute, quirky-but-not-unbearably-so comedy about a geeky small-town movie theater ticket taker who may or may not be the son of God and have the ability to decide whether people will go to heaven or hell after death. Has a couple of unlikely star cameos, like William H. Macy as his therapist, Justin Kirk plays his usual charater as an earthbound ghost who wants to know his permanent fate, and Neve Campbell, improbably, as Kirk's daughter (I guess he had an active sex life at the age of 4) and Milo Ventimiglia in an amusing and out-of-character turn as a womanizing, fast-talking fellow theater employee.

Entertaining enough until it descends from comedy to sentimentality as the subject turns from his obsession with the concession girl and his responsibilities deciding peoples' ultimate fate into him dealing with his complicated feelings about his father's death. I guess the writers forgot…

This was ok. During the pandemic, a woman goes to visit a friend who has been having intense nightmares, and they turn out to be contagious. It gets into some vaguely supernatural and eventually existential ideas as they learn the cause. It ultimately isn't really that rewarding, but, unlike a lot of horror movies, it's underplayed, which works in its favor. Watchable enough if nothing else is on.

Sort of bombastic, portentious sci-fi wannabe-"epic" pseudodocumentary about humans exploring a wormhole and having their brains transplanted into artificial bodies and finding new solar systems and such. Moderately ok, I guess.

Quirky, kind of fun English film about three couples living in a backyard bunker after the apocalypse when things get crazy. It was billed as a "horror comedy", which typically puts me off, but it really wasn't, it was more of a straight comedy with postapocalyptic horror theme, but played entirely for laughs, not like a horror movie that was so bad they called it a comedy in hopes of salvaging it. I've seen less entertaining films.

This film is pretty good. A lot of Stephen King adaptations are terrible, even ones of good books, but this one about a writer being held captive by a psychotic fan works due to strong casting—James Caan, Kathy Bates, and a couple of other recognizable if not-exactly-tip-of-the-tongue character actors in the supporting cast.

Decent enough African supernatural thriller about a couple who hire the daughter of their deceased housekeeper who makes weird traditional foods and practices whatever the old tribal religion is, and she begins to exert weird control over the household.

Odd movie starts like a horror flick and becomes a neo-noir crime thriller with minor horror elements. Gay couple agree to ferry drugs by swallowing them wrapped in condoms to get them across a border, unaware it's not exactly a drug.... When one ruptures in one guy's stomach due to a punch in the stomach from a homophobe in a bathroom, they much go to the drug kingpin's house in the woods to try and get the rest out.

Not for the squeamish. Some wrigging stuff, and kind of an anal fixation. But it's not bad, if you are up for the horror elements. It's ok. Probably on the low end of adequately watchable.

Irish monster movie about people trapped on a farm with the monstrous results of a genetic experiment to make cows breed grow. Takes a while to get going but actually pretty watchable for what it is, if you're in the mood for this sort of thing.

Julianne Moore in the sort of supernatural/horror thriller that Julianne Moore occasionally stars in, about a "split personality" case that seems to be manifesting the personalities of dead people. If you're going for an actual horror movie, you don't cast Julianne Moore, but at the same time, she's a pretty good actor, and they usually cast other pretty good actors around here. In this case, the guy who plays the lead, who has to shift believably through maybe 10 different characters over the course of the film. Does pretty well. The whole thing would have been terrible with less of a cast but squeaks barely into "watchable" as it is.

Pretty charming action comedy buddy picture starring Nic Cage as a not-entirely-flattering version of himself, sucked into working for the CIA while staying as the houseguest of a rich guy in Spain who may be the head of a crime syndicate, but definitely turns out to be an over-the-top huge Nic Cage fan. Lands somewhere near the high end of the range of what that could possibly be, I enjoyed it.

A pretty amusing entry in the "Purge" movies. A Black family moves to Beverly Hills on purge night, unaware that the father who seems to have struck it rich has left a trail of unpaid bills and pissed off people, every one of whom has decided to settle the score on the "Purge", a night when all laws are suspended for 12 hours. Heavily steeped in Black American culture—funny cameos from Snoop Dogg, Paul Mooney, and Mike Tyson as the vengeful owner of a bouncy castle party rental who's been stiffed on his bill—and almost nonstop rapid-fire riffing make what could have been a pedestrian enterprise amusing enough to sit through.

An alright thriller. A gorgeous couple leaves the city to await the destruction of the earth by an asteroid in a remote Tennessee backwoods campsite. Things get complicated as other gorgeous refugees start to show up.

A young Liana Liberato punches way above her weight in a heavy but decent family drama about the emotional fallout on her family from her abuse by a predator. Probably better than just watchable if you like that sort of thing.

This is a flawed but not bad movie. What starts seeming like a horror movie becomes more of a small-scale postapocalyptic, but not at all scary or supernatural, survival drama.

Residents of a small town find themselves unable to sleep. Slowly people start acting erratically and gradually Things Fall Apart.

So far, so good. But halfway through it switches gears from a horror flick to an ecological message story, as it turns out the local tapwater has become contaminated with methamphetamine, and soon all the bottled water has run out, and people look for where they can congregate where there may be some clean water, leading to struggles.

Despite the weird change halfway through, it's not bad. It's anchored by a couple of alright performances. If it had been consistent in terms of theme and mood, it might have qualified as something even a little memorable. Still, either way, not…

Decently ok Kiwi horror film about a neurotic hiker who falls in with a bunch of other hikers in the remove wilderness and starts making everybody crazy with paranoia about them being followed by a dark shape, accusing other hikers of being killers, clumsily losing people's flashlights, and generally being a good bit past annoying and ruining everybody's trip.

It was entertaining, I found it fairly watchable despite mostly annoying characters and ultimately kinda of a silly third act. It's a little bit different.