The following paragraphs will make you think I haven’t seen The Hitman’s Bodyguard; let me assure you, I have. But I will struggle to summarize its plot. Or even locate the plot from between all the gratuitous explosions. I think it goes like this: Ryan Reynolds was once the caviar of bodyguards, but he let some VIP get shot in the brains, and now he’s been downgraded to the spam of bodyguards, which is really, really embarrassing and he’d do just about anything to be caviar again.
Meanwhile: Samuel L. Jackson is a hitman who is safely in prison. BUT he’d also be an excellent witness in an international court of law against a crazed, genocidal 
Belorussian dictator (Gary Oldman). So he cuts a deal: if they let out his wife (Selma Hayek), he’ll give testimony. The only catch is that every other witness has been systematically murdered. Sam Jackson nearly is as well, but one of Ryan Reynolds’ disgruntled CIA exes calls him in at the last minute to try to get Jackson to the Hague in one piece.
I suspect that this movie is bad because it never slows down long enough for you to ask yourself whether you’re enjoying things. The thing feels like it’s been edited by a two year old high on 5 juice boxes. It relies HEAVILY on the odd couple banter between Ryan and Sam, but if this is a Deadpool wannabe, it should wannabe harder. I feel like I just ran an obstacle course and I’m just so grateful to have crossed the finish line I cannot recall a single event along the way. Bleeding eardrums, I think. Some tulips? A car that smells like ass. The Hitman’s Bodyguard may not be an actual movie but just a compilation video of Reynolds’ and Jackson’s greatest hits. Lots of motherfuckers. Lots of explodey explosions. I refuse to overthink this one.
Kenneth Branagh directs himself as Agatha Christie’s famed Poirot, and he’s equally right in both roles. He leads an all-star cast including Daisy Ridley, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe and more. The only thing you can complain about with such an ensemble is that we spend precious little time with any one of them – Dench is particularly underused.
again, this movie misses its mark with me. I think it’s pandering and condescending and incredibly obvious that was written and directed by MEN. But I’m not a Bad Mom, I’m a Good Aunt. And the role of Good Aunt is really easy: you buy lots of presents, you let them get away with everything three notches above murder, and you give them 100% of your time and attention once or twice a month. Being a mom, bad or not, is infinitely harder because parenting is about the details. So if carving out 104 minutes to sneak away to one of those fancy movie theatres that serve wine is all you can muster for yourself this holiday season, have at it.
is not exactly an excellent movie. But Connolly is pretty much everything you could ask for and more, and the kid actors are a goddamn delight. They’re mouthy and disarming – the kind that completely enchant you, unless they’re yours. But they’re not, so you can sit back while your own are in bed and watch their antics, guilt-free. Because oh yes, there will be antics. It’s a silly little film that, in the end, I enjoyed quite thoroughly. It’s a notch above a time-waster; a movie that doesn’t need to be seen with any pressing urgency but if you come across it randomly you might find yourself pleasantly surprised, as I did.
room because she wanted to share something for “just the ladies.” Turns out, it was a GIF she’d seen on Facebook: Name your vagina by using the last movie you watched. Of course, instead of being boring and truthful (and smart and scrolling by without comment), women (and men) are falling over themselves to come up with the best titles they haven’t recently, or ever, seen: No Country For Old Men, Lethal Weapon, Sausage Party. Feel free to take you best shot in the comments section. As for me, well, I couldn’t quite remember the name of the last movie I’d seen – only that it was a documentary on Netflix about Hasidic Jews. I was a little worried.
In the wake of a bad breakup, Ben decides he just won’t leave his apartment anymore. His friends think he’s a dick but aren’t as concerned for his mental health as they perhaps should be. His world condenses down to shouting at 11 year olds over video game platforms, gaming internet dates with the same Richard Attenborough material, and chatting up whatever cute delivery persons cross his threshold.
herself. But the truth is, her mother has recently died and she really doesn’t have anyone else in her life. So there’s maybe a little sympathy there, or there should be. But it also means that her $60K inheritance will fund a trip to L.A. where her latest obsession lives. Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen) is an “Instagram star.” She lives and makes her living online, creating picture-perfect moments for her followers to drool over while being sponsored by trendy businesses to do so. So she’s kind of the perfect match for Ingrid. They both eat this shit up. It’s just that a) Taylor doesn’t know they didn’t simply “bump into each other” and b) Ingrid’s a little unhinged and every damn thing is about to unravel.
every book attributed to her name, I wasn’t sure that there would be much left for me to discover. But when Dunne asks her what it was like, in the 1960s, to have seen that 5 year old girl she once wrote about, the one tripping on the LSD her mother had given her. There’s a pause, and we mentally fill in the appropriately horrified responses, but instead she quietly says “Let me tell you, it was gold.” And that’s what made her work so riveting, her voice to incisive. She was a serious, ballsy reporter, and in a time when female reporters were rare and journalists of her ilk were unheard of.
