[7] Clint Eastwood directs and stars in The Mule, the story of a 90-year-old man who becomes a drug runner for a dangerous Mexican cartel. The money keeps Eastwood’s character motivated. Meanwhile, his ex-wife and daughter express disappointment with his continuing absence in their lives and the feds start closing in on his illegal activity. Eastwood is playing a character more naive and corny than …
[7] Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck star in Andrew Dominik’s dramatization of the last months of famous outlaw Jesse James’ life. Pitt plays James and Affleck plays his admirer-turned-assassin, Robert Ford. The young Ford character is smitten from the outset, but ridicule from James and the other gang members slowly hardens his heart. Jealousy eventually turns him against his idol. As James, Pitt is unstable …
[7] Melissa Leo turns in a fierce, memorable performance in writer/director Courtney Hunt’s story of two women who strike up an unlikely partnership smuggling illegal immigrants to make ends meet. After a Mohawk woman from a nearby reservation steals her car to make a smuggling run, Leo decides to join the woman on her next trip. Both women hate what they’re doing, but the Mohawk …
[7] Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave) brings Lynda La Plante’s novel to the screen. Widows is about a woman who rallies the girlfriends and wives of her deceased husband’s gang of robbers, all of whom died in a botched robbery with her husband, to execute plans for what would have been their next heist. They all need to do this because their dead lovers …
[8] I very much enjoyed Drew Goddard’s previous work on Cloverfield and The Cabin in the Woods, and I’m a big fan of single-location ensemble stories, so I was excited to see what Goddard had in store with Bad Times at the El Royale. Bad Times features about seven characters — the titular hotel’s front desk boy and six guests — who each have a …
[7] Lee Daniels (Precious, The Butler) directs this moody piece about a college dropout who helps his older brother investigate the murder of a police officer. The convicted killer’s girlfriend joins the investigation to help prove his innocence. Zac Efron and Matthew McConnaughey play the brothers and Nicole Kidman plays the girlfriend — each of them showing range and abilities you haven’t seen from them …
[7] Director Justin Kurzel tells the true story of Australia’s most notorious serial killer through the eyes of his teenaged accomplice. Teenager Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) falls in with his mother’s new boyfriend, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall). Bunting becomes a father figure to Jamie and preys on the boy’s feelings of insecurity, transforming him into his own private henchman. First, they scare a molester out of …
[7] Spike Lee directs the stranger-than-fiction true story of a black Colorado police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. John David Washington stars as Ron Stallworth, who struck up a relationship with local KKK members over the phone and acted through a white surrogate for face-to-face encounters. Adam Driver plays Stallworth’s partner in the investigation. Just how much is truth and …
[5] Pre-Code bad girl Barbara Stanwyck stars in this hybrid of a love story and a prison movie. Stanwyck plays Nan, a woman who works with a team of mobsters who rob banks. She goes in and distracts the security guards while the men rush in with guns and grab the cash. But Nan is eventually captured and sentenced to prison. But then an evangelical …
[8] Ridley Scott (The Martian, Alien) directs the true-life tale of the 1973 Getty kidnapping. After masked men whisk 16-year-old John Paul Getty III off the streets of Rome, his mother tries to get the ransom money from the boy’s grandfather, John Paul Getty — the richest man in the entire world at that time. But the oil tycoon won’t pay the ransom and the …
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