Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse (R)
Michael B. Jordan, Jodie Turner-Smith.
Michael B. Jordan does the best he can with this very OK adaptation of a Jack Ryan universe character. According to Wikipedia, this movie has been floating around in development since the 1990s (the book on which its based came out in 1993), and a lot of this movie’s elements (character’s action spurred on by dead wife, off-the-books CIA stuff, the Russians but not, like, directly) have a “fished out from the back of the 1990s storage unit” feel. The movie is at its best and most lively when it focuses on Jordan, playing Navy SEAL John Kelly, and lets him singlehandedly MacGyver his way out of situations. (A sequence at about the 40-minute mark where he takes on a whole bunch of armed guys using only two shirts is maybe the movie’s most clever and most energetic scene.) Available via Amazon Prime video, this movie is about 80 percent as fun as an episode of CBS’s The Equalizer reboot; watch it for Jordan when you want relaxing, if vaguely disappointing, by-the-numbers action. B- mostly for Jordan, mostly for that aforementioned scene. Available on Amazon Prime.
Things Heard & Seen (TV-MA)
Amanda Seyfried, James Norton.
Seyfried plays a woman who hates her husband so much that the possible haunting of her remote-ish farm house is, like, third on her list of problems. In 1980, Catherine (Seyfried) and George (Norton, who I still know best as the original hot, mystery-solving vicar on Grantchester) move to upstate New York so that the disappointing George can take a job at the only college that will have him. This move means that Catherine, who has a successful career as an art restorer, has to give up her job and becomes isolated in their super spooky new house with their young daughter Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). The move and perhaps, it’s hinted, general marriage woes have so stressed Catherine out that even before they box up their belongings and head to the country Catherine is struggling with the relapse of an eating disorder.
Once they get to the house, she finds a Bible that lists a former resident as “damned” and there’s all sorts of funny business with the lighting and just basically you don’t have to be a Ghostbuster to recognize that it’s haunted. (That might be a mild spoiler but the movie is pretty clear pretty quickly that it’s a haunting.) George is unsupportive about the spookiness of their house, possibly because he is busy gaslighting his wife in other ways and then cruelly using her struggles to get her to doubt herself (or at least try to convince her that others will doubt her).
This movie maybe veers into cartoonish-ness toward the end and doesn’t always know how to handle Catherine’s illness but it was basically an enjoyable little bit of haunted thriller. B- Available on Netflix.
Nobody (R)
Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielson.
Also Christopher Lloyd, RZA and Alexey Serebryakov, as the shady criminal guy. Written by Derek Kolstad (who wrote the first two John Wick movies and has a writing credit on the third), this stylish action movie with comic touches comes in at a tidy hour and a half and is now on VOD in addition to being in theaters. I think wherever you enjoy your movie nights, if you liked the John Wick movies (and I most definitely did), you will also like this tale. As with that series, Nobody’s lead, Hutch (Odenkirk), is a regular guy — or so it would seem until a moment of violence in his house awakens the person he used to be. Then, enter the guns, the car chases, the Russian mafia. This movie is exceptionally skilled in its pacing and offers well choreographed (if John Wick-ily violent) fight scenes. Everyone here (but particularly Odenkirk) seems to be having fun. B+ Available for rent and in theaters.
We Broke Up (NR)
William Jackson Harper, Aya Cash.
It was the presence of Harper (The Good Place’s Chidi) that drew me to this recent release, which is sort of an inverted romantic comedy. It begins with the breakup of Lori (Cash) and Doug (Harper) after 10 years together — and the day before they are going to travel to the wedding of Lori’s little sister Bea (Sarah Bolger, who I mostly know as a supporting actress in TV costume dramas but is fun here). A very intentionally extra affair (it’s at the summer camp the girls used to attend with all sorts of elaborate planned activities), the wedding presents Lori and Doug, whose fondness for Lori’s family prevents him from sitting it out, with a conundrum: tell people about their break up and suck attention away from Bea? (And perhaps, for Lori, upend their sister dynamic, with Bea as the “impulsive one,” in a way she isn’t ready for.) Or try to make it through the three days of the wedding trip presenting a “happy couple” front? The gentle comedy and sincere performances worked for me. B Available to rent.