Green Room

Picard gets upset when Chekov refuses to ignore a red-shirt death. Shock rock romp provides solid violence and tension you can really sink your teeth into but seems envious of both the artistry and sincerity of its less yellow predecessor.  Plot holes and unjustified twists ruin simple but tense premise.

Black Mass

Hollywood’s obligatory annual crime movie is too broad to feel personal but too small to feel important, much like FBI’s investigation.  Underwhelming structure or lack thereof produces a mediocre mess despite great performances.  Depp’s first actual acting in years. Maybe if the Mass were #white he would’ve gotten the Oscar.

Hardcore Henry

Excessive cutting, terrible acting, and lack of finesse make Hard-to-watch Henry an ultimately failed experiment.  Still this stream of stuff includes a few interesting ideas, most of which are not Sharlto Copley. Clever concept and ambitious acrobatics, though not overly satisfying, might just produce a superior army of cinematic clones.

Deadpool

Ex-man movie dives into depths of its self-referential gimmick and comes up feeling fresh and new. Reynolds is resurrected from his history of comic failures, while Miller’s comedy gets lost amidst an entire movie of the same.  Unlike it’s hero, this film has a fantastic surface but tragically little beneath.

Midnight Special

Presumably based on the babblings of an abnormal child, this Muddy mind-bender feels like a discarded draft of a stillborn Stephen King concept. An exceptional cast do their best to navigate this underwhelming world, only to be reminded that there’s a better one elsewhere. Bright-eyed expectations run and take shelter.