Various responsibilities have derailed and bamboozled my very bestest of plans. Reviews for Project Hail Mary and Ready or Not 2: Readier and Nottier are coming, I promise. But to tide you over until they arrive sometime next week, here is a smattering of reactions for things that you can stream at home. It’s not like you were going to venture into the dreaded “outside” anyway, right?
War Machine (Netflix)
This is about a killer robot from outer space who crash lands in the middle of the final training exercise for newbie Army Rangers. Reading that, you probably have just one question: Is it stupid good or stupid bad? Yes! Colossal human and national treasure Alan Ritchson plays the lead. Good! Dennis Quaid appears. Bad! The movie desperately wants to be a Predator riff with a Terminator playing the hunter. Good! They decided to give the extraterrestrial tin man no unique characteristics, and the whole thing lacks any sustained momentum. Bad! If you haven’t guessed, it is spectacularly okay, which is why it has somehow become a massive hit for Netflix. Americans agree on nothing outside of a willingness to watch mindless mediocrity. I’d be grumpier about it, but Ritchson deserves nice things.
Grade = C
The Bluff (Amazon Prime)
This is about a former lady pirate who goes full John Wick when her former pirate co-conspirator comes after her for revenge and stolen treasure. Reading that, you probably have a familiar question: Is it stupid good or stupid bad? STUPID GOOD! It is, in fact, the perfect kind of delightfully dumb action entertainment for which you were hoping. Priyanka Chopra plays “Bloody Mary,” a former East India Company slave who got super, super good at putting sharp objects inside of people’s bodies. Karl Urban is her nemesis and has himself a delightful time feasting upon all of the scenery. What’s remarkable about The Bluff is that it hits a sweet spot just below “I wish I had seen this in a theater” and just above “I’m watching War Machine.” Your buckles will be adequately swashed. Your jib will be decently cut. Your mateys will be sufficiently argh-ed.
Grade = B-
It Was Just an Accident (Disney/Hulu)
And now for something that is not-at-all stupid and fully good. Set in Iran, as many upsetting things are these days, the film follows a mechanic who accidentally encounters a guy who used to torture him. At least, he thinks so. You see, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) is a former political prisoner who only ever heard the voice of his tormentor. Well, he heard his voice and the sound of his artificial limb, which is why he was called “Peg Leg.” Impulsively, Vahid kidnaps his suspected former captor. But doubt begins to eat at him. What if he’s wrong? What if this isn’t the guy? And even if it is, does what Vahid is doing now — or even worse what he is contemplating doing — make him just as evil as the man he despises? This is a thorny, tense, wildly upsetting film, which is pretty appropriate for a story set in a country that is currently appearing in real news headlines that are thorny, tense, and wildly upsetting. It is a firecracker of a movie that will have you anxiously watching its lit fuse grow shorter.
Grade = A
Dead of Winter (HBO Max)
A newly minted widow (Emma Thompson) on her way to a remote Minnesotan lake to do some ice fishing stumbles into a poorly-planned kidnapping plot. Reading that, you probably have a familiar question: Is it stupid good or stupid bad? Stupid bad! Save for the film’s last 10 minutes, which get so preposterously stupid as to boomerang back around to being fantastic for a fleeting moment, this misfire is tonally indecisive. It wants to be Fargo, down to the accents, but it can’t quite nail that sinisterly satirical Coen Brothers’ approach. The result is that the intentionally funny stuff feels more upsetting than silly and the sincere stuff feels funnier than it should. Judy Greer goes bonkers, which is a treat, but the whole thing just flops around like a frigid fish.
Grade = D
In the Blink of an Eye (Disney/Hulu)
The rise and fall of director Andrew Stanton, from Pixar genius to “guy who did John Carter,” was enough to make his direct-to-streaming return to live-action feature films a must-see. The movie is a triptych that spans the breadth of human existence, from cavepeople to future interstellar colonizers. Reading that, you probably have a familiar question: Is it stupid good or stupid bad? Stupid bad, but not with an exclamation point. That is to say, it is cringy in the ways you would guess. The links between the three stories are fairly groan-inducing, and the attempt at an uplifting message is barely worthy of the kind of silent nod you give someone who lets you into traffic. But still, it’s not bad. It really isn’t. However, it is also very, very much not good. And when you shoot for a story that summarizes the totality of humanity and miss, even slightly, things look worse than they are.
Grade = C-