Beautiful to look at and well acted western, is undercut by being a bit episodic and longer than it needs to be given it's fairly simple story. Based on the book of the same name, but abondending large amounts of the plot and motivations of the characters involved. Keeping a bit more of the books complexity (especially in the Captain Kidd(Hanks) character would have served the movie well. Hanks accents seems to "wander" quit a bit and the dir. Greengrass can't help but include a few shots without a steadycam (more annoying than stylish here). It's good (3 1/2 out of 5), but it could have been great.
I Care A Lot (Netflix) is a dark and mean spirited comedy. The actors are brilliant but the characters are vile individuals. The plot starts off with elder abuse and spirals into even nastier stuff. Pike, Dinklage, and Wiest are in top form but even the minor characters are impressively cast (Chris Messina...as the lawyer is next level good). (4 stars out of 5) but with a good chance that some who watch it will hate it.
Half Brothers (rental) is billed as a zany comedy...it is mostly a low key after school style drama with a occasional burst of low bar "comedy". The chuckles are mostly goat based (and one funny running gag about zip lines). By not deciding what sort of movie it wanted to be it mildly misses being much of anything. 2 stars out of 5 (because the two leads do enough to keep it watchable).
Willy's Wonderland has a silent Nicolas Cage performance that is mostly him just beating the hell out of evil "Chuck E Cheese" style animatronics and playing pinball (. Everything else in the movie is petty dreadful (especially the acting by the townsfolk/teens). It could have used a bit less other characters and maybe a bit more of a "Five Nights at Freddy's" scary vibe.... but if Cage wailing on a ostrich sounds like your jam...go for it.
It is a movie. I am sure that the people who made it have parents that are very proud of them. It is not a good one. It looks like it was shot on someones phone. The screenplay is barebones and seems cribbed from a half-remembered Dean Kootnz novel. The actors would be fine understudies at a local playhouse. But to its credit, it does land the ending with more style than the rest of the movie so I rounded it up to 1 1/2 stars.
